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Joe Biden has been better than we could have hoped — but is that enough?

Joe Biden inherited a disaster of epic proportions from Donald Trump.These multiple overlapping crises include the coronavirus pandemic, which has now killed more than 530,000 Americans. The economy is in ruins. The United States has lost its position as the world’s indispensable nation. The country’s democratic institutions have been undermined and badly damaged by Trump and his movement. Trump attempted to stage a coup and his followers launched an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Law enforcement and other experts are warning that right-wing terrorism will become a feature of American life and poses the danger of insurgency. Trust in government is highly partisan. Public opinion polls and other research shows that the neofascist Age of Trump has accelerated a crisis of legitimacy for American democracy.  

To overcome these challenges, Biden will have to be much more than a caretaker or transitional president. He must resist his natural tendencies to be a compromiser who seeks out bipartisan solutions, comity and goodwill with Republican Party. In short, Biden needs to become a political champion.

Biden has not even been president for two months, but in that short time he has shown that perhaps he may in fact be equal to the challenge.

Last week, Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP), which has been described as one of the most progressive acts of legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s. With the ARP, Joe Biden is now being described by friends and foes alike as being a “transformative” president.

Thomas Schwartz, a professor of political science and history at Vanderbilt University, shared his thoughts on this with Salon by email:

The “transformative” label may stick, simply because of the sheer size and scale of this $2 trillion measure.  I think the Republicans are largely right in that it goes far beyond the immediate issue of COVID relief, and does address many issues that are central to the Democratic agenda, including child poverty, education funding, and other equity issues. There is a danger that if the Democrats are unable to get any other legislation through the Senate, that there will be a media narrative of failure. 

But one could make the case that the tax cuts that Ronald Reagan got through early in his presidency were his only major legislative success, and that after the recession of 1981-1982, the steep economic growth vindicated him.  The same could happen to Biden, with sharp increases in economic growth as the country reopens and the pandemic fades, and this will be rewarded at the polls.

Even at the left-wing publication Jacobin, which offers “a socialist perspective on politics, economics, and culture,” Hadas Thier acknowledges the scale of this accomplishment: 

The passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill was met by euphoria from the liberal media, along with requisite nay-saying from some on the Left. Undoubtedly, there are, as usual, good reasons to be frustrated with the Democratic Party leadership’s refusal to fight harder for the inclusion of a desperately needed minimum wage increase, and their unnecessary concessions on the size and scope of direct payments and unemployment benefits. Yet the bill will substantially alleviate the suffering of many, while also signaling a political and economic shift toward the provision of public welfare.

Thier argues that leftists “should grapple with how we take advantage of this moment, highlighting the ways government programs help working people, and working to build the confidence and organizing capacity to demand more from the Democrats.”

Unlike previous approaches to the pandemic (and the economy more generally) under the last administration, the ARP actually helps the poor, working class and middle class, instead of (almost exclusively) transferring the public’s money to the richest Americans and corporations.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the ARP is the fact that it will substantially lower childhood poverty by increasing the child tax credit to $3,600 a year for eligible families. This additional assistance will have a spillover effect on entire communities by improving life opportunities and social capital. Moreover, improving children’s quality of life is a form of national investment likely to produce adults who are more educated, healthier and better able to contribute to the country’s overall prosperity.

The president of the United States has many roles. There are the formal ones: He or she is the chief executive, chief diplomat, legislative negotiator and military commander in chief. There are the informal ones: A president is the country’s moral leader and conscience, a type of parental figure, national cheerleader and protector of the nation’s prosperity. 

The president is also a type of counselor or civic secular high priest for the nation.

It is this latter trait, as president in a time of plague, uncertainty, anger, loss and trauma, when the nation grapples with the destruction and death caused by Donald Trump’s regime, in which Biden’s temperament and life experiences are especially valuable.

In an email to Salon, Jeff Bennett, a professor of communication studies, also at Vanderbilt, explains the power and importance of Biden’s role as a non-sectarian clerical leader:

Biden has been performing what is often referred to as the “priestly function” of the presidency and has been fulfilling this role since the day of his inauguration. During times of crisis presidents often call for unity by appealing to shared values and asking people to sacrifice for the greater good. Biden opened his primetime speech by acknowledging the collective losses that Americans have suffered and his deliberate dwelling on that point serves an important function. Recognizing the extent and severity of our losses — the loved ones who have died, the time that has been lost, the milestones that were never celebrated — is necessary for processing the national trauma that we’ve experienced and formulating ways to move forward.

Trump was not especially good at performing this priestly role. Any acknowledgement of loss seemed to implicate him in the massive numbers of deaths that occurred on his watch. So, rather than discussions of sacrifice or national values, he tended to shy away from this important role. And at the end of the day, it’s one of the many reasons he lost the presidency.

Biden’s ability to fulfill this priestly function helped to make the ARP possible. Public opinion polls show that to this point the American people (including many Republicans) overwhelmingly support Biden’s approach to resolving the pandemic crisis.  

Biden’s use of language is another obvious contrast with his predecessor. This too helps to explain Biden’s early successes with the ARP and other policies. Bennett elaborates:

Biden’s explicit attempts to unify the nation are reflected in both this speech [on the passage of ARP] and in his inaugural. In both speeches, containing the pandemic is essential to our shared struggle. But, so too is overcoming the obstacles presented by political polarization, which has negatively impacted our ability to reign in COVID-19. Biden used the words “you,” “we,” “democracy,” and “America” more than any other president in American history in his inaugural. We have a return to those themes of unity and common cause in his primetime address. Likewise, Biden relied heavily on religious imagery in his inaugural, invoking words like “faith,” “prayer,” “God,” and “church,” so it’s not surprising to see those figures reappear in this most recent speech.

Of course, the ARP is just a beginning in terms of a liberal or progressive revival in America. Like any legislation, it is imperfect and awkwardly attempts to balance competing interests and priorities. As the beginning and not the end of America’s recovery from the pandemic and Donald Trump’s destructive regime, a project of American economic renewal should include vastly expanded and recurring COVID survival checks, an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and then the creation of a guaranteed living wage and a national health insurance program such as Medicare for All.

A wealth tax increase on millionaires and billionaires — especially those who profited from the death and destruction caused by the coronavirus — should be enacted. The country’s extreme levels of wealth and income inequality must be reduced because they are obvious threats to the long-term stability of American democracy. In all, as Biden explained in his recent Rose Garden address, the American economy should be built from the middle outward, not from the top down.

These policies enjoy broad support among the American people.

There will be many obstacles ahead in Joe Biden’s struggle to be the champion the American people need and deserve. Most notably, the Republicans and their allies are escalating their war on democracy and their efforts to make America into a fascist state under what is de facto one-party rule. America’s mainstream news media is still wrestling with the failures that made Trump’s regime possible, including the compulsion toward “both-sides-ism,” the manufacture of phony controversies (such as the obsession with Biden not holding a press conference) and a reluctance to speak the truth about the neo-fascist Republican Party and its followers.

As Joe Biden approaches the end of his second month as president, he has shown us he is capable of rising to the challenge of this historical moment and becoming America’s champion. But the challenges that lie ahead will be steeper still. 

Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene report record donations as GOP sees post-riot financial boom

Donations to Republican lawmakers surged following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, even though dozens of corporations stopped contributing to members of Congress who voted to overturn the results of the election following the siege.

The biggest Republican backers of former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” that the election was somehow stolen have seen a financial boom, despite many political obituaries predicting their downfall. Republican fundraising committees supporting members of Congress who objected to the electoral count outraised Democrats by more than $2 million in January alone.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who pumped his fist at the Jan. 6 mob not long before it overran the Capitol, and later led Senate objections to the certification of electoral votes, reported raising $969,000 in January, including from 12,000 new individual donors. That number marks the biggest fundraising month ever for Hawley, and is roughly eight times more than the $120,000 he raised in the entire first quarter of 2020.

“Media outlets and pundits have tried to make hay over the past few weeks because some corporate PACs paused donations to Senator Hawley,” Wes Anderson, the senator’s pollster, said in a memo last month. “The corporate PACs that have stopped donating account for a VERY small percentage of total fundraising that is more than offset by a huge surge in grassroots support.”

The split between corporate PACs and big-money donors and the growing number of grassroots donors “reinforces that the biggest divide in today’s Republican Party may be between the elites and the base,” J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told Salon by email. “While some higher-up Republicans — such as Sen. Mitch McConnell — have, at times, hinted that they’d want the party to move beyond Trump, the base seems perfectly comfortable supporting — and donating to — Trumpian candidates.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a longtime conspiracy theorist who was among the most prominent House Republicans in pushing false claims about the election, has also raked unprecedented donations after voting to overturn the election and being stripped of her committee assignments for spreading false claims and calling for Democrats to be executed.

Greene, who reported raising $1.6 million in January amid growing media coverage of her anti-Semitic remarks, attacks on mass shooting victims and conspiracy theories about 9/11, bragged that she raised $335,000 over just two days in February ahead of the vote. It marked a massive shift from Greene’s first campaign in 2020, when she raised less than $81,000 from donations of $200 or less, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Instead, Greene loaned her campaign about $950,000 in personal cash that could be repaid later with donor funds. Greene, who ran unopposed in a deep-red Georgia district last year, pledged to give about half of her take, or $175,000, to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which may help explain the Republican caucus’ decision to stand by her amid the controversy. While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., praised Greene for apologizing for her past remarks in private, she has expressed no remorse publicly and has used the controversy to solicit contributions.

“How stupid they are,” Greene said of Democrats in an interview with the Washington Examiner before the vote to remove her from two committees. “They don’t even realize they’re helping me. I’m pretty amazed at how dumb they are.”

The influx of small donations underscores how Trump, who leveraged his rabid online base into record numbers of small-dollar donations in 2016 and 2020, has upended Republican fundraising. Nearly half the $774 million Trump raised came from donations of $200 or less, compared to just 17% of Mitt Romney’s haul in 2012.  

The Republican online fundraising platform WinRed, which was launched in response to the success of the Democrats’ ActBlue, has also made it easier for grassroots supporters to contribute to specific candidates’ campaigns. Once reliant on corporate donations and large donors, Trump allies like Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Devin Nunes, R-Calif., have “tapped Trump’s grassroots supporters to become top small-dollar fundraisers,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

While the Capitol riot brought widespread mainstream condemnation and corporate boycotts, Trump’s popularity quickly rebounded to pre-riot numbers among Republican voters, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll, and his new super PAC raised $31.5 million in January alone. The survey found that just 27% of Republicans hold Trump at least partially responsible for the riot and only 24% blamed congressional Republicans, while 46% of GOP voters blame President Biden and 58% blame congressional Democrats.

An analysis by Reuters found that the more than 45 corporate political action committees that vowed to cut off funds to Republicans who objected to the electoral count had given those 147 lawmakers about $5 million during the last election cycle, or just 1% of the money they raised. Since the riot, the National Republican Congressional Committee reported raising $7.5 million in January, outraising Democrats by about $500,000. The National Republican Senate Committee raised another $8.3 million in January, outpacing Democrats by more than $2 million, and another $6.4 million in February.

“Corporate PACs are a diminishing part of the mix as small donations ramp up because of the wild success that ActBlue and now WinRed are having,” Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said in an interview with Salon. But mega-donors and some corporations still play “important roles,” she said, because they are increasingly contributing to outside groups that spend significant sums of money in the most competitive races.

It’s not surprising that Hawley and Greene have been the biggest beneficiaries of the donation influx.

“It’s always been true that if you say inflammatory things you’ll get noticed, and notice gets donations,” Krumholz said. “It’s incontrovertible: When you look at the members who are receiving the greatest portions of their funds from small donors, we see some of the members who are viewed as most extreme ideologically,” she added. “But that may also be true for large donors.”

Some Republican mega-donors, like the Mercer family, have focused their donations toward some of the most far-right members of Congress and outside groups, many of which promoted Trump’s “big lie” for months. While Trump personally brought in unprecedented amounts of small-dollar donations, he also benefited from massive contributions to his PACs, like the $75 million check the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife cut last year.

Krumholz also stressed that it is very early in the cycle to be fundraising as aggressively as Hawley and Greene.

“There isn’t any kind of balancing effect at this point in the cycle,” she said, meaning that with the midterm elections more than a year away, there’s no need to appeal to a broader base. “So this is really focused on events of the 6th and actions taken since. The money surge is around that which is going to incentivize certain types of more ideologically extreme donors.”

Dan Eberhart, a major Republican donor and CEO of the energy firm Canary LLC, agreed that platforms like WinRed and the explosion of text-message-based mobile fundraising have been a “game-changer” for Republicans, who have traditionally trailed Democrats in grassroots fundraising.

“People are spending a lot more time in front of multiple screens this past year and are seeing a lot more solicitations for political donations,” he said in an email. “At the same time, they are reading news stories online that are driving them to click on that political ad. … We’re also just more polarized and engaged in politics than we have been in the recent past. That’s pushing people to get involved in politics and the easiest way to do that is click the ‘give now’ button and donate $5. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but boy does it add up.”

Coleman, of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, noted that recent voting and registration patterns show that high-income suburbs where many moderate Republicans have traditionally raised large sums of cash are increasingly moving toward the Democrats, which could force Republican fundraising pitches to become even more extreme.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if, longer term, that pushes the GOP rightward in its grassroots fundraising pitches as well,” he said, “given that those higher-income and corporate donors are increasingly less receptive to the party.”

But Eberhart predicted that “corporate PACs aren’t going anywhere,” particularly when it comes to individual issues that could impact their interests.

Some corporate PACs have already dropped any plans to halt donations. The Chamber of Commerce, the top business lobby in the country, announced earlier this month that it would not withhold donations to lawmakers who objected to the electoral certification.

“We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification. There is a meaningful difference between a member of Congress who voted no on the question of certifying the votes of certain states and those who engaged and continue to engage in repeated actions that undermine the legitimacy of our elections and institutions,” Ashlee Rich Stephenson, a senior political strategist at the organization, said in a memo. “For example, casting a vote is different than organizing the rally of January 6th or continuing to push debunked conspiracy theories. We will take into consideration actions such as these and future conduct that erodes our democratic institutions.”

In fact, there’s no indication that Republicans are backing away from the “big lie.” Instead, they have made it a core part of their platform. The party has rolled out hundreds of proposed voter restrictions across the country after losing a presidential election that saw record turnout despite the coronavirus pandemic, with many Republicans citing voters’ concerns about “election integrity” — concerns that were manufactured and inflamed by Trump and his allies’ false claims. A poll last month found that a majority of Republicans believe the 2020 election was invalid, although there is no evidence to suggest any widespread fraud or election-rigging.

In fact, the only lingering fundraising concern for Republicans some two months after the riot is Trump himself. The ex-president recently demanded that the NRCC, the NRSC and the Republican National Committee stop using his name and image to raise funds, apparently because he holds a grudge against the handful Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach or convict him for inciting the January insurrection. Trump later called on his supporters to send donations directly to his PAC after the RNC balked at his cease-and-desist letter.

“No more money for RINOS,” Trump said in a statement, referring to “Republicans in name only.”

“They do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base — they will never lead us to Greatness,” he said. “Send your donation to Save America PAC at DonaldJTrump.com. We will bring it all back stronger than ever before!”

That may be why, despite the unprecedented fundraising boom, some Republicans still worry they could face financial trouble in their bid to retake both chambers of Congress next year. Dan Conston, who runs the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP super PAC, warned in a memo earlier this month that the “single biggest threat to Republicans taking back the Majority is insufficient candidate fundraising.”

Krumholz called Trump’s demand “unprecedented,” saying she had “just never heard of such a thing. That may pose a challenge to them moving forward.”

Jordan Libowitz, communications director at the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the move was “not surprising.” While many Republicans “may not be happy with what [Trump is] doing, for once he’s not actually breaking any rules.”

“He’s never been party-first, in fact, he’s never been anything but Trump-first,” Libowitz said in a statement to Salon. “By directing the money to his leadership PAC, he’ll be able to spend it at Trump businesses with very little in the way of regulation. He can rent out his properties, hire Ivanka as a consultant and pay himself to travel on his own plane.”

While using donor money for personal gain would turn off many supporters in the past, “I don’t really know if it’s possible for Trump to go too far,” Eberhart said. “What taboo in politics is left for him to break?”

Trump has amassed about $80 million in cash on hand for his Save America PAC, which aggressively solicited funds for his election challenges but ultimately spent very little of that on actual legal costs.

“He can play kingmaker in the Republican Party or he can use it to benefit himself and his family,” Eberhart said. “Trump’s political aspirations have always been about the glory of Trump. What he decides to do with those funds will determine what the Republican Party looks like for the next decade.”

Between “The Bachelor” finale and “The Talk,” reality TV has shown us the toll of ignoring racism

Shocked, not surprised.

That’s been March’s unofficial theme since the revealing two-hour special “Oprah with Meghan and Harry” became CBS’s hit of the season. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex served a heaping helping of jaw-droppers that Sunday night, but to anyone slightly aware of the Royal Family’s history, Meghan Markle’s revelations about their racism and emotional toxicity weren’t entirely unexpected.

Distressing? Obviously. Markle’s truth stung Piers Morgan deeply enough for him to accuse her of lying while using vile coded language, and for Sharon Osbourne to reassure him on Twitter, “I am with you. I stand by you.”

When the public called her out for giving aid and comfort to a racist, she took out her anger on her co-worker Sheryl Underwood while the cameras were rolling on their CBS daytime show “The Talk.” Alarmed at the additional negative reaction to prioritizing her tears of those of her traumatized colleagues Osbourne offered up a cover-the-bases apology to non-white people in general, but not Underwood or fellow co-host Elaine Welteroth.

And when that didn’t work Osbourne did an about-face and declared that CBS set her up, around the same time new details about Osbourne’s fondness for using slurs to describe her co-workers came out. Anyway, “The Talk” is currently on a hiatus that’s been extended into next week.

All of this was shocking. Little of it was surprising. Once these trains leave the station they make a set of predictable stops, and every line arrives more or less on schedule. There’s the racist act, and the insensitive reaction to the act, eventually leading to the perpetrator claiming to be the victim. Crazy, but that’s how it goes.

* * *

“The Bachelor” finale and its accompanying controversy fits right in both thematically and socially with all this: America doesn’t have official royalty to worship, but we do adore fairy tale romance in a luxurious setting. This is the first season to feature a Black Bachelor in the franchise’s 25 seasons: Matt James was supposed to continue “The Bachelor”‘s champagne-and-roses love story until the reality of America’s lasting affair with white supremacy pierced the fantasy.

We could see this wreck coming weeks ago, when Rachael Kirkconnell, one of the last two women standing, was outed on social media for having attended an antebellum-themed “Old South” party with her sorority sisters in addition to giving a thumbs up to racist posts and costuming herself as a Native American.

Cut to Monday’s “Bachelor” finale, when we arrived at brace-for-impact destination so many suspected was coming since this was shot before those revelations came to light. James selected none other than Kirkconnell to receive the coveted final rose, but did not get engaged. They declared their mutual infatuation and giggled at the prospect of having a family. It was a discomfiting crash between the blissfully ignorant recent past and the slow motion “nooooooooo” we’re enduring at present.

Then it was time for an uncomfortable conversation about this hot mess, hosted by Emmanuel Acho (subbing in for longtime “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison after he mounted a stupid defense of Kirkconnell’s actions excusing her racism because it was 2018). The “After the Final Rose” special following the finale is shot in the present – a present when the decision James made months ago in the romantic finale means something far different now that he knows more about the woman he picked.

No amount of pearls of wisdom from Acho were going to gussy that up regardless of his talent for smoothing our way through chats people would rather not have in his web series “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.” Still, on Monday night the former NFL player ushered us through several of those within a single hour and did the job ABC expected him to do, which is to bring a considerate outsider’s perspective to a production whose entrenched whiteness and insistent “racial blindness” brought James and the audience to this point.

Acho’s interview wasn’t without problems, mind you. He’s great at offering sage observations with authority such as when he told Kirkconnell, “I’ve heard a definition of prejudice. Prejudice is a willful commitment to ignorance.”

But then he pops out with, “I’ve been very intentional in saying, what you did was racially insensitive, it’s racially ignorant. And it plays itself out as racism. But that doesn’t necessarily classify someone as racist,” which is a terrific way to provide relief to people who want to be absolved of their racism while taking extreme offense at being called a racist. (See: Sharon Osbourne.)

Acho gently steered James through a dialogue about the pressures of being the first Black person to do anything in the public eye, in his case to star in a romantic unscripted competition show meant to end in a marriage proposal in an era of cultural strife. The star’s very real abashment at having fallen for a woman who at best, in his words, “might not understand what it means to be Black in America” and at worst is a white woman pursuing a Black man who doesn’t realize she’s racist, is unmistakable.

Then Acho voices the seemingly innocent questions “Bachelor” fans may be asking such as, if he honestly cares about her why can’t he making teaching her about anti-racism part of their relationship? (Which . . . ugh.) James’ short, and very wise answer is that anti-racism education is not his job.

Then Acho poses his version of Harrison’s dumb argument about 2018 being “a long time” ago. “What would you say to people who imply if you broke up with her over an action from three years ago, that wasn’t intended to be malicious, then you, Matt James, never really loved Rachael?” he asks.

“Know what else was a long time ago?” James asks in return, before answering his own question: “Plantations. And so I would ask those same people who are so triggered, to bring that same energy to supporting folks of color, who are asking for change. Because a lot of those conversations that are being had, are outside of people of color, and people who have never been the only person who looks like them in a room, and someone who’s never been discriminated against.”

Not surprisingly, he and Kirkconnell’s happy ever after ended shortly after their return to the real world. When she finally comes to the stage James doesn’t have much to offer other than tears and long gaps of silence. Acho asks if it is possible for them to ever reconcile, and while James professed that he was “looking forward to seeing her put in [the] work,” his final answer was a quiet but firm no.

Feel free to question whether the connection between James and Kirkconnell was genuine. One truly does wonder. The anguish overflowing from that rose-and-candle-strewn stage was certifiable.

* * *

What all of these interviews and reports have in common – other than exposing white supremacy’s necrotic effect on our culture – is that each takes place in a non-scripted format, and it seems from responses to online coverage that this factor rubs a few folks the wrong way. It’s easy to see why that is – fictionalized tales dealing with racism are easy to brush off.

But when they turn up in the news this violate the unspoken pact we have with celebrities and TV shows to help us forget the nasty side of the social structure and everyone’s part in upholding it, willingly or not.

Prince Harry and Meghan’s separation from Buckingham Palace shatters the carefully manicured image of the Royal Family as morally upright and blemish-free. Osbourne committed her sins in full view of her show’s audience and yet, when she tweeted her pseudo-apology on March 11 a number of her loyalists insisted she shouldn’t have to apologize for anything. “[W]hat happened on Wednesday was your cohosts fault . . . that kind of discussion should never have happened on camera,” offered one enlightened gentleman.

James expected to make television history for all the right reasons on a series that represents, as Acho described it to Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show, a soft-scripted depiction of “the utopian relationship in America.” Instead his completely unavoidable despair turned klieg lights on the show’s performative but ultimately empty promise to portray diversity, dispelling the show’s illusion of perfect, “never knew love like this” passion. Again.

“I think we all have to commit both in shows like ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘The Bachelorette’ and in our society, of more accurately representing the whole, more accurately serving everyone,” Acho tells Colbert. “But how do you do that? It isn’t as simple as injecting a Black lead into a show . . . Who’s casting? Who are your producers? Is there diversity across every board?”

Acho was asking that of “The Bachelor,” but he could be saying that about any number of reality shows that have come under fire for clinging to their exclusionary casting choices or granting more camera time and therefore more central storylines to white contestants as opposed to people of color – or worse, capitalizing on racist interactions to beef up ratings.

Obvious that question also applies to “The Talk,” a production that’s churned through a number of non-white co-hosts, including Holly Robinson Peete, who was among the first previous “Talk” host to come forward about Osbourne’s – how did Acho put it? – racial insensitivity.

The Black woman who didn’t win James’ heart, Michelle Young, is on deck to star in one of upcoming and back-to-back seasons of “The Bachelorette.” Her edition is in the fall, with “Bachelorette” stars Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe co-hosting in Harrinson’s stead for the 17th season, debuting this summer.

It could be that by the time Young has her turn to find The One in the show’s McMansion the producers of “The Bachelorette” will have finally learned something from James’ suffering and not put her through the same trials visited upon first Black “Bachelorette” Rachel Lindsay, who spent several episodes being courted by a Confederate flag-waving bigot. If they don’t, nobody should be surprised, but we should remain upset enough to insist its producers better.

Season 25 of “The Bachelor” is currently streaming on Hulu.

Seth Meyers: “Trump was Fox’s big star, and defending him was their No. 1 mission”

“Late Night” host Seth Meyers’ “Closer Look” segment focused on the failure of Fox News to turn President Joe Biden into someone people hate. He noted that it’s really difficult to hate someone who’s making good on campaign promises and delivering legislation that people want.

After the network went through a month trying to manifest culture wars with whatever conspiracy they could find in a comment thread, they’ve now tried to concoct scandals that don’t even make sense.

The first one, Meyers explained, was after Biden’s address to the nation where he said that if everyone does their part, gets vaccinated, wears masks, and continues to be cautious, Americans could be celebrating Independence Day like we’re all back to normal again.

Fox News twisted that simple statement to mean that Biden was going to cancel the Fourth of July.

“He’s not!” Meyers shouted. “You’re all free to do whatever you want in your backyard! I invite all of you to go to Tucker’s house for a barbecue where I’m sure he puts out Coors Light and drinks the SamAdams you brought. Sane people knew what Biden was saying. Most people have been following public health advice because they don’t want to get their friends and family sick and vice versa. But if we all do our part we can safely gather again this summer. It wasn’t a directive. It wasn’t a mandate. It wasn’t an executive order it was a suggestion like ‘you should wear a helmet on your motorcycle.’ Or ‘don’t eat raw chicken.’ But, over at Fox News, the slogan may as well be, ‘We RUN with scissors!”

Meyers explained that Fox News is so desperate to play the victim that they’ll take the tiniest suggestion and turn it into a scandal about Democrats trying to destroy your life.

Their latest scandal is slamming Biden because he’s not thanking Donald Trump for the coronavirus vaccine. In fact, Trump had no role in creating the vaccine. It was a claim he made back in December while he was still in office.

“The vaccines – and by the way, don’t let Joe Biden take credit for the vaccine . . . Don’t let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me,” said Trump in the Oval Office.

Forbes reported at the time: “The evidence shows Donald Trump had no role in creating the vaccines to fight COVID-19. There is nothing in the record that warrants him taking ‘credit’ for the vaccines. A review of events shows immigrants and immigrant-led companies created the vaccines.”

In the case of Moderna’s vaccine, French-born CEO Stéphane Bancel began work to design the vaccine in Jan. 2020. Trump didn’t even announce Operation Warp Speed until May 15. In fact, at the time that Moderna began working on the vaccine, Trump wasn’t even acknowledging that the virus was real. He was still downplaying it as nothing more than “the flu.”

Further, Trump had an opportunity to buy as many vaccines as he wanted from pharmaceutical companies. He refused. By contrast, when Biden came into office he began buying up vaccines and implementing the Defense Production Act to get more made. It meant that people could be vaccinated quicker and the country could get back to normal faster. Trump was never fully able to understand that the economy was linked to the virus and the safety that people feel.

“The Fox & Friends” glossed over the fact that over 500,000 Americans have died to attack that Biden not only refused to give Trump credit for inventing the vaccine, he “kicked him in the groin.”

“Well, Biden doesn’t need to kick Trump in the groin, he already looks like he got kicked in the groin,” joked Meyers.

You can watch the video below via YouTube: 

“Wonton” and “ghetto”: Sharon Osbourne’s racist slurs resurface, even as she claims she’s the victim

Sharon Osbourne has kept herself especially busy these past few weeks what with her on-air meltdowns, Twitter spats and attempts to defend her racist friend, Piers Morgan. You would think that this series of problematic engagements would exhaust Osbourne, but she’s speaking out to claim she’s actually the victim in all of this.

It all started when Osbourne unraveled on “The Talk” last week. After being confronted about her comments on Morgan’s inherently racist reaction to the recent Meghan Markle and Oprah interview, Osbourne turned on her Black co-host of “The Talk,” Sheryl Underwood, demanding that she “educate her” on racism. As Melanie McFarland wrote, “perhaps it’s knowing that people who cry ‘Educate me! Tell me!’ aren’t seeking understanding as much as they want absolution without amends . . . without honestly making an effort to grapple with the reasons they were wrong.” 

Osbourne refuses to accept any responsibility for how she conducted herself on the show and, in fact, has twisted the story to her advantage by depicting herself as a “sacrifical lamb,” according to ET. She claims that the questions regarding Piers Morgan were sprung on her and that it was this surprise ambush by her co-hosts, not her own racism, that caused her to take it too far with Underwood. 

Take a breath because it gets worse.

Osbourne’s display of ignorance about racism on “The Talk” has caused countless instances of her past as a racist, slur-spewing public figure to resurface. In Yashar Ali’s recent newsletter, he describes how evidence of Osbourne’s offensive tendencies — calling her lesbian ex co-host Sara Gilbert a “p***y licker” and “fish eater,” for example — has been long overlooked in the name of preserving Osbourne’s image as a funky, British mother figure. But now that her outburst at “The Talk” has attracted both publicity and repulsed reactions, sources have come forward with their personal accounts of Osbourne’s misconduct and refuse to stay silent. 

Former co-hosts of “The Talk” Holly Robinson Peete and Remini left the show in 2011. When CBS announced that “The Talk” would go on a short hiatus, Robinson Peete brought up memories of when Osbourne complained that the Black co-host was too “ghetto” for the show and that this comment was shortly followed by Robinson Peete getting fired. Despite Osbourne’s claims that “ghetto” is, in fact, not in her vocabulary, videos that show her calling Remini’s speaking style, you guessed it, “ghetto” prove otherwise. Osbourne’s racism doesn’t end there. Remini disclosed that in 2010, Osbourne told her that “Holly (Robinson Peete) wasn’t a good person, not to trust her and that we should find ‘another Black person who is funny.'”

Osbourne’s publicist, Howard Bragman, responded to Robinson Peete’s allegations with the following statement:

“The only thing worse than a disgruntled former employee is a disgruntled former talk show host. For 11 years Sharon has been kind, collegial and friendly with her hosts as evidenced by throwing them parties, inviting them to her home in the UK and other gestures of kindness too many to name. Sharon is disappointed but unfazed and hardly surprised by the lies, the recasting of history and the bitterness coming out at this moment. She will survive this, as she always has and her heart will remain open and good, because she refuses to let others take her down. She thanks her family, friends and fans for standing by her and knowing her true nature.”

If this statement does anything, it reinforces Osbourne’s stubborn refusal to take any accountability, and I have a feeling that it will do nothing to rehabilitate Osbourne’s image. 

Remini had more to share with Ali about Osbourne’s controversial past — Osbourne spoke about her former Asian co-host Julie Chen in a horrifically offensive way. Ali writes, “According to Remini, in one exchange during the first season, Osbourne said of Chen: ‘I mean, who the f**k does slanty eyes think she is? She shouldn’t be pillow-talking with our boss.’ In another exchange, according to Remini, Osbourne said of Gilbert: ‘Why won’t the p***y licker do anything about the wonton?'”

Wow. Those remarks are heinous on their own but become an even bigger pill to swallow considering the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes that have haunted us over the past year. Examples of Osbourne’s hateful speech, though they were resurfaced from 10 years ago, are not going anywhere; they have become temporally linked to the “stop Asian hate” movement and, most recently, Tuesday night’s shootings in Atlanta. 

After all of this, it comes as no surprise that CBS is extending its probe into and hiatus on “The Talk” though next week, and honestly, I couldn’t thank them enough for their decision. We all need a break. 

McConnell’s “scorched earth” threat over filibuster shows he’s “getting scared,” critics say

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s threat Tuesday to unleash never-before-seen “chaos” on the Senate if Democrats take aim at the legislative filibuster was viewed by progressives as a strong signal that the Kentucky Republican is beginning to get nervous about losing his most powerful tool of obstruction as support for weakening—or outright abolishing—the archaic rule continues to mount.

Just hours after Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) became the highest-ranking Senate Democrat to speak out in support of filibuster reform, McConnell—the upper chamber’s chief obstructionist—took to the floor to vow “a completely scorched-earth Senate” if the majority party moves to eliminate the 60-vote threshold, which effectively gives the minority veto power over most legislation in a narrowly divided chamber.

On top of promising that Republicans would “use every other rule” to obstruct the Democratic agenda should the majority vote to nuke the filibuster, McConnell said the GOP would take the first opportunity they get to “erase” every Democratic achievement and ram through longstanding right-wing policy objectives, such as “nationwide right-to-work” and “defunding Planned Parenthood.”

Far from being a reason for Democratic leaders to shy away from mounting support within their caucus for filibuster reform or abolition, progressives said McConnell’s threat-laced speech shows that the party is moving in the right direction and should step on the gas.

“Mitch McConnell is terrified of the filibuster being abolished,” tweeted consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. “Is there any better sign that we should do it?”

Eli Zupnick of Fix Our Senate said in a statement Tuesday that “McConnell is clearly getting desperate as momentum grows to eliminate the filibuster as a weapon he can use to maintain power from the minority and prevent Democrats from delivering on their promises.”

“McConnell eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees when he was in power and has already made it clear that he and his caucus plan to use every tool at their disposal to delay and obstruct the majority’s popular agenda,” Zupnick added, “so Senate Democrats should ignore these latest hypocritical threats and continue their work delivering results in the face of unanimous Republican opposition.”

Sawyer Hackett, a senior adviser to Julián Castro, tweeted that McConnell’s speech is “zero cause for flinching.”

“McConnell has used every ounce of his power to enact his agenda without Dem input,” Hackett wrote. “Without the filibuster, the GOP would have to actually campaign on their record and the public would see the benefit of Dems in majority.”

McConnell’s remarks came days after the House and Senate passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that Democrats had to push through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process due to unanimous Republican opposition. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) offered a taste of the kind of obstruction McConnell might have in mind for the near future when he forced the Senate clerk to read aloud all 628 pages of the bill, which took nearly 11 hours.

Given the rules constraining the reconciliation process, progressives have argued that the only way Senate Democrats will have any hope of passing a much-needed expansion of voting rights, immigration and labor law reform, climate legislation, and more is if they eliminate or significantly reform the legislative filibuster—moves that would require the support of all 50 Democratic senators plus a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.

In recent weeks, several Senate Democrats previously skeptical of filibuster reform have come out in favor of reform or complete abolition, pointing to persistent Republican obstruction that turned the Senate into a legislative graveyard.

After calling the filibuster a “weapon of mass obstruction” on the Senate floor Monday, Durbin told HuffPost that it was McConnell’s conduct in recent years that changed his opinion on the modern filibuster, which he used to support.

“Senator McConnell taught me that I was wrong,” said Durbin. “He managed to use and abuse the filibuster so many times and stopped the Senate in its track.”

Durbin suggested reviving the talking filibuster, which would require senators who wish to block a bill to speak continuously on the Senate floor—a dramatic change from the status quo of allowing the minority party to obstruct legislation via email.

Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, has said he would be open to a return to the talking filibuster, telling Fox News earlier this month that “maybe it has to be more painful, maybe you have to stand there.”

With momentum clearly on the side of significantly weakening the filibuster, Adam Jentleson of the Battle Born Collective argued Senate Democrats should plow ahead with a major change to the archaic rule without fearing the retaliation McConnell has promised.

“Trading this for the ability to actually pass bills like voting rights seems like an easy call,” Jentleson, who previously served as a staffer for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said of McConnell’s “scorched Earth” threat.

“If McConnell’s tactics become truly onerous,” Jentleson added, “Dems can always pass further reforms to end obstruction. McConnell’s goal is to make government fail, Dems’ goal should be to make it work.”

Eric Trump’s pushing Florida Republicans to change state law so Doral resort can become a casino

Eric Trump, the former President’s son who runs the family business, is pushing to transform the Trump Organization’s Miami Doral Resort into a gambling destination by actively lobbying Republicans in the state legislature to change a longstanding law.

Trump’s come as part of a Republican-backed effort to legalize casinos in parts of the state that have long prohibited them. According to The Washington Post, the Florida state legislature has not yet formally submitted a bill for review, but whispers of a proposal have circulated around the state’s leadership. The proposal, reportedly being led by Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson, a Republican, is expected to allow real estate developers to dole out gambling permits without the approval of municipal governments. 

“My understanding is they are trying to take the gambling permits that are in South Florida and make them portable and preempt local governments from stopping them,” said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelbe, a Democrat and an ardent opponent of new casinos in the state. Gambling in the Sunshine State has long been relegated to just a few settings, such as tribal casinos and racetracks. 

The bill would prove quite favorable for Trump’s business endeavors. Eric Trump told the Post that the Doral Resort would be a “natural choice” for a casino. “Many people consider Trump Doral to be unmatched from a gaming perspective,” Eric Trump told the Post, “At 700 acres, properties just don’t exist of that size and quality in South Florida, let alone in the heart of Miami.”

The resort has reportedly been in financial straits for years, which was recently exacerbated by the pandemic. According to the club’s government disclosure form, revenue at the club plummeted by 44 percent this year. Bloomberg reported that the club either laid off or furloughed some 560 workers. Bloomberg also found that the former President’s net worth has sharply declined by $700 million since the start of his presidency. 

The feud over gambling in Florida is timeworn according to sources familiar with the issue. According to Simpson’s spokesperson, the senator “has been involved in these negotiations for years. She said, “if they get to a place where he believes an agreement would benefit the State of Florida and have the support of his colleagues in the Legislature as well as the Governor, he would be happy to discuss further details.”

The issue is further complicated by the fact that it doesn’t map clearly onto party lines. In the past, Republican leaders have thwarted attempts at legalization. Furthermore, the state mandates that legalization occur by way of a state ballot measure, putting the onus on both lawmakers and voters. 

If passed, the potential bill may help the Trump Organization rebound from its business losses. However, Florida Rep. Joseph Geller, D, expressed doubt over whether there would be wide legislative interest in aiding the Trump Organization, given Trump’s past failed ventures in Atlantic City. 

“This guy has bankrupted every casino he’s ever run. How do you bankrupt a casino?” he said. “I don’t think we need a failed casino. We don’t want to be the next Atlantic City.”

Candace Owens threatens to sue Cardi B over “photoshopped tweet”

Candace Owens is threatening to sue Grammy-winning artist Cardi B after the rapper shared a tweet attributed to Owens that the right-wing pundit says is photoshopped.   

Several conservative media figures have seized upon Cardi B’s recent performance of her 2020 hit “WAP” at the Grammys on Sunday to reuse their tried and tested outrage bait: explicit rap lyrics. Owens appeared on Fox News to slam Cardi B’s performance with Megan Thee Stallion saying, “this seems like an attack on American values, American traditions.” 

Parents “should be terrified that this is the direction that our society is heading towards,” Owens continued. 

Soon after her appearance, Cardi B responded on Twitter: “only you can monitor what your kids watch [no one] else.”

“I take issue with you being used to encourage young women to strip themselves of dignity,” Owens replied to escalate the fued, to which Cardi B responded with the nude photo of former first lady Melania Trump.

“No! Candy, men treat women on how a woman allows a man to treat them. I mean look at Melania she was a porn star however she didn’t allowed Trump to treat her as so or shame her for her passed and made her into a First Lady & the mother of his child.”

The Twitter brawl reached its climax when Owens threatened to sue Cardi B for posting a “photoshopped tweet” in which the commentator appears to have written that her husband cheated on her with her brother.

Owens, however, claims the tweet is a fake and she is “100% suing” Cardi B over the “wild lies against private members of my family.”

Owens’ boss Ben Shapiro has also chimed in: 

For her part, Cardi B observed that instead of focusing on issues that matter like racism or gun violence, conservatives prove time and time again by showing up on Fox News and starting Twitter feuds, they want to distract people from having real discussions that affect everyday Americans.

Recent vaccines for other (non-COVID) viruses may help protect you from COVID-19

The immune system is a marvel of evolution, and it is far from being fully understood. The newest immunological head-scratcher: Researchers have found that being vaccinated recently for something other than coronavirus — say, a hepatitis or measles vaccine — makes one more resistant to COVID-19. 

In an article published last month by the journal Scientific Reports, scientists found that a number of different vaccines were associated with lower rates of infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. These included the vaccines for Geriatric Flu, Haemophilus influenzae type-B (HIB), hepatitis A/hepatitis B, measles-mumps-rubella, pneumococcal conjugate, polio and Varicella.

In particular, the patients studied who had been vaccinated against polio and HIB generally had the lowest relative risk for being infected by SARS-CoV-2 across all time horizons. (A “time horizon” refers to the amount of time a patient has been using a given vaccine.)

The study also found that, among younger patients, there was a “strong negative correlation” between having received their measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and Varicella vaccines and rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

But as with many scientific studies that have sociological components, it is hard to separate causation and correlation. For instance, it may be that those who are regularly vaccinated are healthier and more aware of their health in general, and thus less likely to contract COVID-19 as a result. If the two facts are causally linked, it may well be that those other vaccinations actually are slightly protecting the populace against COVID-19, perhaps through some immune mechanism.

“Causality is nearly impossible to extract through retrospective observational studies like ours that are enabling inference from real-world data sets,” Dr. Venky Soundararajan, co-founder and chief scientific officer at the biomedical data company Nference and corresponding author of the study, told Salon by email. “However, the phenomenon of immune training — wherein the immune system, similar to our muscles, learn from repeated stimulation — is being increasingly better understood through multiple biological studies that have examined surprising cross-protective effects from vaccination for ostensibly unrelated conditions.”

As Soundararajan alluded, the concept of “immune training” is roughly analogous to that of weight training. Weightlifting regularly makes one’s body more adept at lifting heavy objects in the real world, outside of the safety of the gym; comparably, giving one’s immune system a metaphorical workout through regular vaccines may have a similar effect on real-world pathogens. 

“Anything that boosts our immune system – like other vaccines — helps us fight other viruses or pathogens,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, told Salon.

Gandhi noted that there is evidence that immune training works.

“This is one idea behind why India did better than other countries in not having high rates of severe disease with COVID-19 — because of frequent exposure to other pathogens,” she added.

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“Some crossover immunity is enhanced by vaccinations for other infectious diseases,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and former secretary of health in Maryland, told Salon. He speculated that the process “probably works by activating the body’s immune system in a general and nonspecific way to protect some against new disease.”

Soundararajan added that, when it comes to COVID-19, he believes the new study is the first to draw a decisive link between reduced risk of developing the disease and “specific, recent, non-COVID vaccination.” He argued that the methods used in the study reduce the chances that the results are coincidental. Soundararajan even suggested that the safe administration of these other vaccines for other diseases are a supplement to keep Americans safe “in conjunction with” FDA-authorized COVID vaccines. 

Some experts uninvolved with the study were more hesitant to draw conclusions.

“This has been seen for other diseases, so I think there is a reasonable chance this is a real effect,” Dr. Justin Lessler, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote to Salon. Lessler said there are “many factors” that affect vaccination and COVID-19 risk, and advised being “cautious about interpretation.”

Lessler’s views were echoed by Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center.

“This is an observational study by its very design is exploratory and only shows a modest relationship, but not cause-and-effect, between prior vaccinations for some other pathogens and a reduced likelihood of COVID-19 infection but not for hospitalizations or severe disease,” Medford told Salon by email. 

He added, “This study in no way obviates the need for COVID-19 vaccinations.”

Indeed, there is overwhelming consensus among public health experts that the most surefire way to protect oneself and other people from COVID-19 is to get vaccinated.

Atlanta spa shootings and the Capitol riot: Gun control is the best tool to fight terrorism

There’s still much that’s unknown about the shootings in Atlanta on Tuesday night. The suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, appears to have been targeting massage parlors. Eight people have been killed, including six Asian-American women. Early reports from the sheriff’s office indicate that the shooter targeted the victims because he blamed them for his supposed “sex addiction.” While the sheriff pointed to such comments to deny any alleged racist motivation, it’s rare that such misogynistic motives don’t come with a heavy dose of racism as well.

The attack happened at a time of heightened national concerns over domestic right-wing terrorism, and for good reason. In Donald Trump’s America, hate groups exploded in number, and hate crimes hit record levels. In the past year, hate crimes against Asian-Americans, in particular, have spiked, fueled by Trump and his allies trying to pin the blame of the coronavirus on East Asians. And, of course, there was the Capitol insurrection Trump incited on January 6, which most Republicans refused to hold him accountable for. All of this is after Republicans blocked anti-lynching legislation last summer. 

So there’s a great deal of talk now about what can be done to stem the rising tide of pro-terrorism sentiment in the country, from individuals trying to “deprogram” QAnon family members to the Department of Justice, under newly confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland, prioritizing anti-terrorism initiatives. But this Atlanta shooting, which so far has all the hallmarks of a self-radicalized “lone wolf” attack, is a reminder that the single best way to combat domestic terrorism is with a policy that’s both mundane and yet politically loaded: gun control. 

“Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It’s a pretty good life,” is what the Atlanta shooting suspect wrote as his Instagram tag. The second in his life list is what he is alleged to have used to snuff out the lives of eight people in three separate locations in a very short period of time. 

Contrast his shooting spree with the death toll from the Capitol riots in January. That crowd was at least a couple thousand people — and over 300 have been arrested — but only one person was directly killed by that crowd, an officer named Brian Sicknick. (There were four rioters who died and two more officers who committed suicide after the fact.) This wasn’t because, as some of the dumber members of Congress have suggested, that the crowd was peaceful. The crowd did injure 140 police officers and were howling about how they wanted to kidnap members of Congress and “hang Mike Pence!” No, the low death toll was almost certainly because D.C.’s extremely strict gun laws hobbled the ability of the right-wing mob to bring their guns to town. 

To be clear, some rioters did have guns, but surprisingly few, considering how much the insurrectionist crowd is enamored with firearms. Instead, the crowd largely attacked law enforcement with weapons like chemical sprays, crowbars, and improvised weapons like fire extinguishers and flagpoles. But the reason that most of the rioters didn’t bring guns to D.C. is because they knew doing so risked being arrested on weapons charges — which is exactly what happened in some cases — before they even had a chance to storm the Capitol.

“Dc is no guns. So mace and gas masks, some batons. If you have armor that’s good,” Kelly Meggs, a member of the Oathkeepers who was arrested for her part in the insurrection, advised her fellow would-be rioters on Facebook in the days ahead of the attack. Another Oathkeepers leader, Jessica Watkins, was allegedly orchestrating a plan to build up an armed presence outside of D.C., to rush into the district if Trump called for it. Without Trump making a direct order for an armed insurrection, however, she explicitly worried about being caught in a “trap” with their guns.  

Before the rally that turned into the Capitol riot, D.C. police were blanketing the area with reminders that guns were prohibited and that being arrested for having them was possible. They backed these threats up, too, arresting multiple people there for the rally on weapons charges in the days before the rally. So it’s really no wonder so many of the insurrectionists had tasers and handcuffs and bear spray — but not that many had guns. 

“If the federal and local gun laws had not been in place, law enforcement almost certainly would have confronted protestors threatening to overrun the Capitol who were not just angry but armed—as in Michigan,” Jake Charles of the Duke Center for Firearms Law wrote in the days after the insurrection. He noted that police reaction would have likely been far “much more explosive had the D.C. rioters been carrying the same semi-automatic rifles.” Indeed, the bloodshed on both sides would have likely been exponentially worse. 

Last week, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed two gun control bills to strengthen background checks, closing loopholes that allow people who shouldn’t pass checks to buy guns by exploiting the backlog of background checks or by going to background check-free dealers online or at gun shows. Such legislation enjoys upwards of 70% support from voters across the political spectrum. Unfortunately, there’s no chance of any of these bills getting through the Senate without filibuster reform. The good news, however, is that things are looking a little brighter in that department if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s latest meltdown is any indication. 

As more information comes out about the shooting, there’s likely going to be a lot of very important discussion about the motivations behind hate crimes and domestic terrorism. Bigotry against women and Asian-Americans almost certainly fueled this murderous rampage. The way Christian fundamentalism distorts sexuality is also a likely factor. These are all serious issues in our country that need full redress, which will be long and difficult and will likely take generations, if we’re lucky. In the meantime, however, we know one swift way to reduce the deadliness of terrorist attacks: Make it way harder for people to get guns. Just two weeks ago, Sweden had a similar situation where a young man attacked multiple people in a public place. But he was armed with a knife, not a gun, so the seven people affected were injured but not dead.

Guns make it way too easy for someone who has wound himself into a hateful place to unleash death on innocent people. Bigotry is hard to eradicate, but the least we can do is make it harder for bigotry to kill. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses Guam National Guard troops of trying to “ambush” her with cookies

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Tuesday demanded that the Pentagon withdraw National Guard troops from the U.S. Capitol after accusing a delegate leading members of the Guam National Guard of trying to “ambush” her with treats and factual information.

Del. Michael San Nicolas, a nonvoting Democrat who represents the U.S. island territory of Guam in Congress, led a group of Guam National Guard members stationed at the Capitol to Greene’s office on Monday with cookies and guidebooks after the freshman Republican had earlier referred to Guam as a foreign country.

Greene, who was not present at the time of the visit, responded by sending a letter to top Pentagon officials alleging a “dangerous and troubling trend” of lawmakers using members of the armed forces to “intimidate civilians, harass members of Congress and their staff and attack conservative journalists for expressing their views.” The letter claims that San Nicolas and two dozen troops tried to “ambush my office unannounced and subsequently video record my staff without solicitation or consent.”

Greene drew criticism earlier this month for describing the U.S. territory as a foreign country in comments she apparently made in a side room to a small group at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando last month after being snubbed from the main stage.

“We believe our hard-earned tax dollars should just go for America, not for, what, China, Russia, the Middle East, Guam, whatever, wherever. Right?” she said in a video streamed on her Facebook page. “If we want to build roads, if we want to put money into schools, if we want to build border walls, we want it right here at home.”

Guam has been a United States territory since 1899 and those born on the island have been considered U.S. citizens since 1950. The island’s officials responded to Greene’s comments by offering to educate her.

“We would be more than happy to send Representative Greene’s office a copy of ‘Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam,'” the office of Democratic Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero told the Guam Daily Post.

“Congresswoman Greene is a new member, and we will be paying a visit to her and delivering delicious Chamorro Chip Cookies as part of our ongoing outreach to new members to introduce them to our wonderful island of Guam,” San Nicolas told the outlet.

San Nicolas made good on his promise on Monday, bringing along a group of National Guard troops to Greene’s congressional office while toting cookies and guidebooks about Guam. Greene’s aides explained that she was not in the office and promised to let the delegate know when she returned.

San Nicolas and the troops also visited several members of House leadership, including Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.

“They all wanted to say thank you for making sure Guam is included in all the work that you do,” San Nicolas told the Democrat in a video posted to Facebook.

It’s unclear whether Greene ever contacted to San Nicolas and the troops but she responded to the visit by writing a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Daniel Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard, demanding they withdraw all National Guard troops who have been stationed at the Capitol since the deadly Jan. 6 riot.

Greene accused lawmakers of using the troops to “intimidate” and “harass” conservatives, citing President Joe Biden’s “unnecessary mass military occupation” during his inauguration even though they were stationed there under Trump, and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby’s criticism of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson for mocking pregnant service members, along with San Nicolas’ visit.

“The National Guardsmen currently stationed at the U.S. Capitol are being used as pawns by the Democrats in Congress,” she wrote, arguing that they should be stationed at the US-Mexico border — where thousands of National Guard members have already been deployed — instead of defending “Fort Pelosi.”

San Nicolas hit back at the criticism from Greene, who has previously called for Pelosi to be executed, urged supporters to “flood the Capitol” and spent months pushing lies about the election.

“That criticism is unfounded. We were not at all using military service members for political props. I was taking my guardsmen on a tour of the Capitol, and we stopped at several members’ office, and we delivered some goodies,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “Cookies should never be considered a political prop, but neither should our military. But goodwill is absolutely something that we wish to extend from Guam to everybody, and my guardsmen wish to extend the same, and we’re very honored to be able to facilitate that.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., also accused San Nicolas of using soldiers in a “political stunt against a GOP member.” San Nicolas pointed out that they also visited Clyburn as well as the offices of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

“We were very honored to be able to take our guardsmen on a tour,” he said. “It was maybe the third one that I’ve done while they’ve been out here, and they’re very honored to meet members of Congress.”

The National Guard also pushed back on the criticism, arguing that the troops remain a “non-partisan entity.”

“We appreciate Congressman San Nicolas’ efforts to represent our culture of Inafa’ Maolek, or bringing harmony, practiced here in Guam,” Maj. Gen. Esther J.C. Aguigui of the Guam National Guard said in a statement to the Military Times. “We also thank Congresswoman Greene for ultimately helping raise awareness of Guamanians as citizens of the United States, and our rich tradition of service and sacrifice to our nation.”

Military.com reported it was “unclear whether any military rules were broken” and that “no soldier in the video advocated for any political action, and simply meeting with a member of Congress in uniform is not against any military policy.”

Phil Flores, the former chairman of the Guam Republican Party, said he also tried to reach out to Greene to “educate her.” Flores told the Guam Daily Post that Greene’s lack of knowledge about the island was “really disappointing.” He said the incident highlighted the fact that many people in the United States don’t “know about Guam,” noting that his son, a former West Virginia University student, would show his Guam ID at bars but “they would not accept his Guam ID because it’s from a ‘foreign country.'”

Guam Sen. Telena Nelson, a Democrat, agreed that Greene’s comments reflected a general lack of knowledge about the longtime U.S. territory.

“This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that our island is mistaken for foreign soil when the fact remains that we have been woven into the fabric of the United States for over a century,” she said in a statement to the Daily Post. “Our mutually beneficial relationship with the United States has long afforded us many privileges, however, our people and our many contributions remain unknown and unimportant to many Americans. This urges us to not only continue making our island known, but to also amplify our voices and implore our national and federal governments to give Guåhan and our people the committed support we need in our quest for self-determination.”

Atlanta gunman who killed 8 people in Asian spa shooting spree says it wasn’t racially motivated

A gunman who killed eight people, most of them Asian women, in a shooting spree at three Atlanta-area massage parlors on Tuesday evening told police that he was not racially motivated. 

Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds suggested during a Wednesday news conference that 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who was turned in by his family following a brief manhunt, “frequented these places in the past and may have been lashing out.”

According to officials, the attacks began around 5 pm, when the shooter killed four people at one spa near Acworth, just north of Atlanta, Young’s Asian Massage. Cherokee County deputies were called onto the scene, where two people were pronounced dead and three were rushed to the hospital, where two of them later died. One man was reported injured. About an hour later, Atlanta police responded to reports of a robbery at Gold Spa in northeast Atlanta, where officers later found three women who had been shot dead. Officers then found the body of a woman who worked at Aromatherapy Spa, another spa just across the street. 

Atlanta police said on Tuesday night that they suspect the shootings are related, but an investigator currently working to confirm the relation. South Korea’s foreign ministry told NBC News that four of the women were of South Korean descent, but their identites have not been confirmed. 

Atlanta police chief Rodney Bryant said that authorities have not yet attributed a motive to the shootings. “We are in the very early stages of this,” he noted. But Long, who was arrested in connection to the killings and lives in an unincorporated area of Cherokee County, indicated that the spas were “a temptation” for him.

“It’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” Sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker told reporters. “It’s still early on, but those were comments that he made.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that President Joe Biden had been notified “overnight about the horrific shootings in Atlanta.” She said, “White House officials have been in touch with the mayor’s office and will remain in touch with the FBI.”

“Our entire family is praying for the victims of these horrific acts of violence,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted. 

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan condemned the shootings “an act of hate,” Police Chief Adrian Diaz is taking added precautions to protect Asian American communities in the city, including police patrols.

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., wrote on Wednesday that she was devastated to hear about the shootings. The Asian American community, she said, “has been facing a relentless increase in attacks and harassment over the past year.”

According to Stop AAPI Hate, 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian attacks have been reported nationally since last March, many of them targeted specifically at Asian women.

“The reported shootings of multiple Asian American women today in Atlanta is an unspeakable tragedy –– for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the Asian American community, which has been reeling from high levels of racist attacks over the course of the past year,” the group said. “This latest attack will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian American community continues to endure.

As food scrap collection peaks, New York community compost sites face evictions

A few days a week, a colorfully painted box truck can be spotted weaving through the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan to pick up food scraps and bring them to a compost yard in East River Park. When they arrive at the yard, Kellan Stanner goes through the freshly collected scraps — half of a scooped-out watermelon, warped vegetable stems, lopsided apple cores — looking for anything that can’t be composted.

After Stanner, who manages the compost operation at the Lower East Side Ecology Center (LESEC), decontaminates the pile, he’ll mix the fresh scraps with wood chips to create just the right balance of “carbon and nitrogen in order to replicate the natural process of decomposition,” he says.

As the compost matures, it will make its way through a series of windrows—heaps of organic material, all carefully rotting with the help of bacteria and fungi. If all goes as planned, the scraps will become nutrient-rich compost in 8–12 months, which will then be donated to the city’s parks, community groups, and nearby gardens.

But things might not go as planned. In fact, this hyper-local system for processing waste might soon not have a home in the park. In October, the New York City Parks Department asked LESEC to vacate its lot, where the compost operation has been for two decades of its 30-year life, to make way for pending construction in the park. Construction is anticipated to begin in the spring, according to a representative from the Mayor’s Office. The Department of Sanitation, the primary agency tasked with finding a new home for the compost yard, has yet to identify a feasible location.

Christine Datz-Romero, the co-founder of LESEC, intends to continue composting in the park for as long as it takes to secure and fully prepare a new site. “My position is that the compost yard will move once a new site is ready to move to. That’s my parameter,” Datz-Romero told Civil Eats.

Across the East River in Queens, another composting site is also being pushed out. The Parks Department has decided not to renew the license of Big Reuse, which has run a composting operation on a half-acre under the Queensboro Bridge for a decade. Initially, the eviction was set for December 31, 2020, but after community pushback, this was delayed until June 30. The Department of Sanitation also has yet to secure a new site for Big Reuse.

“Unfortunately, we have not yet found suitable relocation sites, but we are working closely with the Mayor’s Office and other agencies to relocate LESEC and Big Reuse,” a representative for the Department of Sanitation explained by e-mail to Civil Eats. “We communicate regularly with each nonprofit about this search and are working closely with both partners.” The representative noted that the Department of Sanitation has so far looked at 50 alternative locations for both sites.

Citing budget cuts due to COVID-19, New York City suspended its curbside composting program and its organic recycling program for schools last year. There are no set dates for either service to resume. “We are constantly evaluating our fiscal situation,” a representative from the Mayor’s Office said in an e-mail. Steep cuts were also made to the Department of Sanitation’s NYC Compost Project, the network that includes Big Reuse and LESEC and five other sites. This has left the community composting sites picking up the city’s slack, operating at close to capacity. For instance, in January of this year, LESEC processed nearly 135,000 pounds of food scraps, an uptick from the roughly 80,000 pounds processed in January 2020.

Read more Civil Eats: Op-ed: Using Commercial Bumble Bees as Pollinators Is Putting Wild Bees at Risk

In July, a coalition called Save Our Compost successfully fought to restore $2.88 million, just 10% of the NYC Compost Project’s previous funding, to the budget — enough to restore some food-scrap drop-off sites and keep four community-scale compost sites open.

“We had to shift from focusing on how to expand organics collection and processing to fighting to save a few sites that were really holding the city’s composting program together and doing heroic work for years — or in some cases, decades,” said Tok Michelle Oyewole, a policy and communications organizer with the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and a member of the coalition.

Now, the evictions are prompting big questions about the future of food waste disposal in a city of 8 million that in 2015 committed to sending zero waste to the landfill by 2030.

The legacy of community composters

In the early ’70s, when New York City was undergoing a fiscal crisis, vacant lots — often the result of foreclosure — were commonplace. Members of the nonprofit group Green Guerillas threw seed bombs over the fences of these lots and began cultivating gardens. “This move not only beautified formerly vacant lots but soon became a grassroots program that fostered neighborhood participation,” states a New York City Parks Department’s website.

Community composters like Big Reuse and LESEC are in many ways an extension of this legacy. The site that Big Reuse currently occupies was once full of garbage. “It had been squatted [on] by a private construction contractor for years, probably a decade, and they filled it with construction rubble and old machinery,” said Justin Green, the site’s founder and executive director.

Similarly, LESEC moved into East River Park two decades ago, at a time when it was underutilized. As the first community-scale composter in New York City, they showed how it is possible to create an educational, sustainable waste system in a city. “We were really the first ones who pioneered drop-offs in a public space, the first ones who pioneered having a site in a public park,” said Datz-Romero.

Now, as New York undergoes another fiscal crisis comparable to the ’70s, the question remains whether community composting will be allowed to continue to build a legacy in New York City’s parks, or whether its long roots will be cut short.

A confounding decision

“We are nearing a point where New Yorkers will have no opportunity to recycle organic waste,” said Council Member Antonio Reynoso at a December oversight hearing called by the City Council to address both evictions and community composting on parks land. “Why are the actions of the Parks Department misaligned with the stated goals of the city? Why is the city saying that recycling organic waste is essential but then not supporting the work of community composters?”

Over the course of the five-hour hearing, Sam Biederman, the chief of staff of the Parks Department, justified both evictions by citing “recent operational needs and legal concerns.” In the case of Big Reuse, the Parks Department intends to store vehicles and operational supplies in the lot while restoring the adjacent Queensbridge Baby Park for public use, including for the adjacent public housing. In the case of LESEC, the parkland will be under construction and elevated as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project.

Reynoso took issue with the explanation that the restoration of Queensbridge Baby Park necessitates the eviction of Big Reuse. “That’s like basic colonialist theory to pit one poor community against another. There is space underneath the Queensborough Bridge,” said Reynoso. Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer argued that it’s possible to both build the park and preserve Big Reuse. “They are not mutually exclusive goals,” he said.

Similarly, in her testimony, Datz-Romero argued that the coastal resiliency project could make room for composting within its final plan. “For the Parks Department to say we are building a world-class resilient park and at the same time throw the composting program to the wayside, is just unconscionable,” she said. “We say to create a resilient East River Park, the compost yard needs to return to this park.”

In a claim that could have sweeping implications for the future of city composting, the Parks Department’s Biederman suggested that the sites may not be a legal use of park land. “There are some legal concerns about certain types of composts being practiced on park land,” he said, in response to a question by Council Member Peter Koo about outside composting.

In a December 2020 letter, Parks Dept’s commissioner Mitchell J. Silver explained the legal concern more explicitly, stating that the agency’s “understanding of the appropriateness of composting on parks land changed subject to the 2014 New York Supreme Court decision Raritan Baykeeper v. City of New York.” This case determined that a 20-acre industrial compost facility for processing sludge from sewage plants was an inappropriate use of Spring Creek Park in Queens. (The letter was provided to Civil Eats in response to a request for comment; the Parks Department didn’t offer further comment.)

Eric Goldstein, senior attorney and New York City Environmental Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, disagreed with the given legal justifications. In testimony, he referred to them as “among the most illogical and unreasonable city agency actions in memory.”

In a follow-up interview, Goldstein added that the industrial facility in the Raritan case took up 20 times more space than the composting operations, while generating noise and odor. This prompted a legal challenge arguing that the facility was violating the public trust doctrine, a common law principle that says that parks should be used for the public good.

“Here, it’s exactly the opposite,” said Goldstein. “No one is [legally] challenging these facilities. Environmental groups are coming out of the woodwork to support these two nonprofit groups.”

A broader deprioritizing of community-scale compost

Advocates describe the evictions as part of a broader pattern of the city’s sidelining — and failing to recognize the growing importance of — composting.

Perhaps, the most obvious benefit is that community composting cuts down on food waste, which represents a third of the waste New York City sends to landfills every year. If it’s not composted, that waste is trucked out of the city to a landfill, where it breaks down and releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas that warms that earth 80 times faster than carbon dioxide. Before leaving the city, though, that waste makes a pit stop at transfer stations primarily located in the Bronx, Southeast Queens, and North Brooklyn. These are neighborhoods with higher-than-average rates of asthma and other lung diseases, and those conditions are made worse by the diesel trucks that come and go from the transfer stations.

“Every pound of food waste or yard waste that is processed at a local community composting site, doesn’t need to go to an intermediary transfer station in a community of color or a low-income community,” said Oyewole of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. Collectively, Big Reuse and LESEC divert about 2.5 million pounds of food waste per year.

Beyond this, Oyewole notes that community-scale composting helps educate people about sustainable waste systems, while also having the potential to build good jobs. She points to the success of existing organizations, like BK ROT, a bicycle-powered micro-hauler and composting service staffed by young people of color. “If we were able to localize collection processing with sustainable, zero-emissions vehicles and with good jobs, we’d be achieving so many co-benefits at the same time,” said Oyewole.

This city’s divestment from community-scale composting also has a ripple effect on the broader urban ecosystem: the gardeners, urban farmers, and waste haulers that depend on these sites. This includes groups like Astoria Pug, a two-person, one-dog volunteer team in Astoria that emerged in response to the city’s budget cuts and began collecting food scraps. Currently, Astoria Pug drops off all of their waste at Big Reuse. Likewise, GrowNYC, the nonprofit that runs farmers’ markets throughout the city, relies on Big Reuse for recycling food scraps.

“If this site were to shut down, I cannot tell you where we would go. I cannot fathom what our backup plan would be,” said Gennie Moralez, a regional coordinator with GrowNYC.

Read more Civil Eats: As Mushrooms Grow in Popularity, a Radical Mycology Movement is Emerging

On top of the evictions, other community-scale composting operations have faced pushback from the Parks Department. The Red Hook Farms composting operation — the largest fossil-free composting site in the United States — has been told by the Parks Department that they are no longer allowed to take in food scraps. This, in turn, led their city funding to be diverted. The site was unique because the compost was processed without the use of any machinery, instead relying on around 2,500 volunteers per year. The compost produced was delivered to school gardens, community farms, and used at their own farm sites, which includes the first farm in the city on public housing land.

“We really opened the gate for anybody to compost,” said Domingo Morales, the operation’s former manager. “That site should be a museum [showing] what an urban compost site should be.” Morales also noted that the composting allowed the Red Hook Farms to operate as a closed-loop system, producing food and then recycling the scraps. “Now, it’s like it is missing an organ,” said Morales.

Morales is in the process of building other composting sites without city funding. With the support of a The David Prize, Morales founded Compost Power, which he says aims to “build small compost sites throughout the city, run by their community instead of Department of Sanitation.” He aims to build 10 operations in low-income neighborhoods in New York City, including on public housing land, working closely with the communities to design the sites.

But Morales is in a rare position. Most community groups working to access land to build gardens and compost operations without city funding face significant challenges. The volunteer-based Woodside Sunnyside Composting crew, for instance, have been working to secure access to a lot in Queens that has been sitting vacant for about a decade. The group currently operates out of the Sunnyside Community Garden, growing food to donate to local pantries and composting residential scraps. The additional space would allow for another composting site and a “pantry garden,” focused on growing food for donation.

After attempting to work with the city to no luck, the group decide to move forward with their plans last summer. “Eventually, one person in our group just got fed up and said, ‘You know what, screw it, let’s just do it.’ And we just did,” said Eric Reisenauer, a Queens resident and member of the composting crew. So they cleaned up the lot strewn with debris and garbage and then went around the neighborhood collecting abandoned furniture to fashion into garden beds.

Not long afterward, in late October, the Parks Department ripped out the dozen of already planted beds, as the group documented in a video.

In the end, those working to bring a more circular, ecological approach to New York City’s relationship to food waste will likely keep pushing make sure that compost — and the urban farms and gardens it makes possible — doesn’t leave the city altogether. But the potential loss of Big Reuse and the Lower East Side Ecology Center could have ripple effects that spread beyond the edible.

Take Lashawn “Suga Ray” Marston. He’s recently planted a garden that lives just a stone’s throw from Big Reuse, in Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America, and had planned to work with the composter.

Last September, Marston fulfilled a long-held dream of leading the project to plant a sacred healing garden commemorating those lost to gun violence in the neighborhood. “I wanted to create something more life-affirming in honor of those we lost, while also beautifying the space,” said Marston. He was looking forward to bringing in fresh compost from next door.

Benedict Cumberbatch is a tense & meticulous spy in Cold War thriller “The Courier”

“Ironbark” is a codename MI6 has for GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze), who is passing Soviet nuclear missile information to the West in order to prevent nuclear war. It is also the original title for the entertaining Cold War spy-thriller “The Courier,” which recounts the true events that involved mild-mannered British businessman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) who helped Penkovsky, deliver critical intelligence information to America and Britain.

This modest but enjoyable film, directed by Dominic Cooke (“On Chesil Beach”), mostly concentrates on Greville’s story as he becomes the unexpected and (initially) reluctant spy. And that will be enough for undemanding audiences; “The Courier” never gets too involved in the overarching politics, preferring to focus on the personal. This may be Cooke’s strength as a filmmaker, because the bromance that develops between Greville and Penkovsky is engaging; it motivates these men to put their lives on the line to change the world. 

Much of the first half of this engrossing drama is setup. In the pre-title sequence, Penkovsky asks two Americans in Russia to deliver an envelope to the U.S. Embassy. When they do, CIA operative Emily Donovan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan) and MI6 agent Dickie Franks (Angus Wright) develop a plan to have Greville pose as a “greedy capitalist” and meet regularly with Penkosvky “on business” to collect and courier information back to the West. Greville, of course, must be discreet, and cannot tell his wife, Sheila (Jessie Buckley), about his assignment. His work eventually puts a strain on their fragile marriage, which had previously been rocked by Greville having an affair. 

“The Courier” gives Cumberbatch another meaty role, and the actor fits into it all too comfortably. First seen losing a game of golf — a deliberate ploy to enhance business relations with two clients — Greville drinks too much and seems like a fuddy-duddy. Cumberbatch makes him appropriately obsequious and apolitical. But as he gets more deeply involved in the cloak-and-dagger business, he becomes emboldened. He returns home from his meetings with Oleg and is more amorous with his wife. But he is also moodier, Sheila notices, and angrier — his stress at deceiving his family causes him to yell as his young son on a family camping trip. 

The actor makes this transformation credible through his meticulous performance. Where he is initially soft and warm, (read: drab and ordinary), he becomes tenser, more coiled as his clandestine work impacts and inspires him. When Greville encounters some danger in the third act, Cumberbatch gets even wirier, and colder, clinging to his moral imperatives. He maintains great control over his emotions — not unlike how he did losing at golf or “lying” to his wife. The actor deftly shows Greville’s development through each expected phase of his spy work, and his character is very sympathetic.  

But Oleg is never given sufficient time to develop in a story that his character initiated, and that shortchanges the film. Even though Ninidze gives a solid performance, he appears to be more of a supporting player in his own narrative.

The film’s big set piece involves the information Oleg is collecting and passing on to Greville about what will become the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, as Oleg, Greville, and Emily, all try to achieve their goals, “The Courier” generates only mild suspense. That may be Cooke’s intention, but it feels misdirected. 

As Oleg and Greville’s working relationship is emphasized, they talk about their families. When Oleg claims he wants to move to Montana with his wife and daughter after he defects, Greville is anxious to visit him. It is an affectionate, heartfelt moment; one might suspect Cooke suggested the actors play their roles as if they were secret lovers. 

But, of course, such plans are fantasies in the real Cold War world. The KGB is not stupid, and they come to suspect each man. Greville returns to his hotel room one day and is aware it has been searched. Oleg’s warning comes in the form of a hospital stay.

“The Courier” does not exactly ratchet up the tension here, and perhaps it should have to emphasize the real consequences of this operation. A meeting Greville has with Emily and Dickie in an underground parking lot, is too cool, even when he insists on going back to Russia to “save” his friend, Oleg. The third act comes off as more negligible than powerful despite a few vivid moments.

The only real emotion stems from Greville validating what he and Oleg shared and risked together. A scene late in the film shows the two spies attending a performance of “Swan Lake.” As Greville is moved to tears by the ballet, Oleg enthusiastically applauds. It reveals the subtext of their relationship. These men are greatly affected by what they are doing, but must mask their true feelings.

Overall, “The Courier” recovers an important historical moment. If only the film didn’t feel so muted.  

“The Courier” is now available to watch on demand.

McConnell’s filibuster threats are already backfiring: Biden signals support for major Senate reform

During the Trump years, there was an excessive amount of hand-wringing over the fact that he and his administration were exploding all the “norms” that had previously held our government institutions together. His insulting behavior and crude lack of decorum woke up many a pundit to the idea that much of our system was dependent upon a good faith adherence to the spirit of democracy as much as any formal rules, regulations and laws. He came to Washington without any serious understanding of how government worked and he didn’t care when it was pointed out to him. Many were left shocked at how feeble our institutions had turned out to be in the face of someone who had no respect for them.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Those norms had always only been as strong as the people who were charged with upholding them and those agreements were unraveling long before Trump entered politics. So we should have seen it coming.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had been making a mockery of Senate norms for years as Majority Leader and he had made it quite clear those old-fashioned notions were no longer operative. There was a time when elected officials would express their support for a new president of the opposite party, wishing them success for the good of the country. McConnell broke that norm during Barack Obama’s first term when he openly admitted that he considered it his top priority to deny Obama a second term. He didn’t believe it was in his interest to accommodate or negotiate in good faith and instead began a campaign of total obstruction so that the president and his administration would fail and the Republicans would take back the White House.

While this sort of scorched-earth tactic wasn’t unprecedented, it was unusual for a national political leader to flaunt his intentions so boldly. There used to be a penalty for being so openly ungracious but McConnell found that it didn’t hurt him so he kept right on going, purposefully paralyzing the Obama administration, making it obvious that democratic norms were no longer functional. And left unable to confirm any members of the judiciary under McConnell’s obstructive tactics, the Democrats had to eliminate the filibuster norm for everything but nominees to the Supreme Court. After he won the majority, McConnell brazenly blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland, Obama’s choice for the high court, for months only to scrap the filibuster for the Supreme Court as well once Donald Trump won the White House and nominated a Republican to the seat. McConnell’s excuse, which he made up out of whole cloth, was that in an election year the seat should stay empty because it should be up to the people to decide which president should choose the new justice.

It was an unprecedented abuse of Senate norms, signaling that McConnell had decided that anything goes. He used every trick in the book to keep Democrats from bringing any bills to the floor. He ignored all legislation that came from the House. And he spent virtually every minute confirming massive numbers of unqualified conservative judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. And when he was asked what he would do if a seat on the high court became vacant during the upcoming presidential election in 2020, he took a long drink of water and smugly said, “Oh, we’d fill it.”

And they did. Six weeks before the election they rammed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in total contravention of everything McConnell had previously said and without even the slightest hint of embarrassment. And now, after all that, he has the nerve to stand on the floor of the Senate and threaten the Democrats with fire and fury if they decide to change the rules in order to pass their agenda over unified GOP obstruction. Shamelessness doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Needless to say, the Democrats are no longer under any illusion that McConnell and the Republicans operate in good faith, as they have demonstrated over and over again that they don’t. They pretend to negotiate in order to delay and then when they get Democrats to compromise they refuse to vote for the bill anyway. It’s no longer worth it for Democrats to waste time playing their game. So, they are now seriously discussing reforming the filibuster in order to pass some of their important priorities. If they don’t, the entire legislative agenda is dead in the water and they know it.

Even the recalcitrant centrists Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema have signaled that they are open to changing the rules to require a “talking filibuster” which would have several elements that make it very difficult for the minority to efficiently obstruct. (The Intercept’s Ryan Grim explains the various possible rule changes in his newsletter this week.) In an important shift, President Biden said on Tuesday that he too is open to the idea:

Mitch McConnell is not pleased.

On Tuesday, he angrily declared that if the Democrats were to change the rules as he routinely does when he is in charge, the Republicans would respond by defunding Planned Parenthood and loosening gun restrictions as soon as they get the majority, which he will do in any case if it pleases him. 

Working himself up into a froth, McConnell warned that if the Democrats were to do this, there would be a “100-car pileup” and “nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.” He threatened the Democrats with delaying tactics saying, “I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum, which, by the way, the Vice President does not count in determining a quorum.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Il, remained unfazed by the threat, however, pointing out that McConnell “has already done that. He’s proven he can do it and they’ll do it again, I assume.”

McConnell’s extreme politicization of Senate norms, grinding the Obama administration to a halt and then confirming hundreds of extremist judges, including three onto the Supreme Court, demonstrated that he has absolutely no respect for democratic norms. He didn’t try to hide it. And that was his big mistake. By being so smug and so flamboyant in wielding his power (remember “we’ll fill it”?) he finally managed to get the Democrats to understand that they have nothing to lose by going around him to enact their agenda and letting the people decide if they like the results. If it works out they, will be re-elected. If not, they did their best. That’s democracy, after all, the most important norm of all.

The curious history of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day

A March 1910 issue of the Spokane Press dedicated a front-page, above-the-fold story to describing the “sacred fluid” that was being served to lines of patriotic Irishmen at a First Avenue bar. “It tastes like beer and looks like paint,” the reporter wrote. “Nobody but the bartender knows how it happened, and he won’t tell, but all day he has been drawing from one of the regular faucets green beer.” 

In the U.S. especially, St. Patrick’s Day has become a drunken celebration of all things green. Growing up in Chicago, I remember how every March the Chicago River would be dyed with vegetable dye — a tradition that began in 1962 — in preparation for the holiday, as patrons decked in green T-shirts and beads cram into area pubs like Schinnick’s and Hinky Dink’s. 

It’s a far cry from the original, more solemn observances of St. Patrick’s Day, Ireland’s patron saint, which usually involved Irish Catholics attending morning mass and perhaps partaking in a feast later in the day. The Connaught Telegraph once described the Irish holiday by saying, “St. Patrick’s Day was very much like any other day, only duller.”

But like many modern St. Patrick’s Day celebrations — like eating corned beef and cabbage, parades and pub-crawling — green beer is a uniquely Irish-American innovation. 

Its popularization is attributed to Dr. Thomas Hayes Curtin, a coroner who was also the toastmaster of a Bronx social club’s 1914 St. Paddy’s celebration. The Evening Independent, a New York City newspaper, reported on the celebration that year. 

“Everything possible was green or decorated with that color and all through the banquet Irish songs were sung and green beer was served,” it said. “No, it wasn’t a green glass, but real beer in regular colorless glass, but the amber hue was gone from the brew and a deep green was there instead. [. . .] All the doctor would tell inquisitive people was that the effect is brought about by one drop of wash blue in a certain quantity of the beer.” 

Wash blue, or blueing, is a laundry product with iron powder and just a hint of blue dye. When applied to dulled fabrics, it makes them look “whiter than white” by counteracting any yellowing or graying. When combined with pale ale, the drink takes on a vibrant green hue. 

Why green? This stems from Irish nationalists seeking a variety of ways to distinguish themselves from the English, according to Time. During the Great Irish Rebellion of 1641, military commander Owen Roe O’Neill brandished a green flag with a harp to represent the Confederation of Kilkenny, which was trying to put an end to Protestant control of the region. 

By the late 18th century, the Society of United Irishmen wore green and white uniforms with hats decorated with green detailing. In 1798, during the Irish Rebellion, the song “The Wearing of the Green” was written. It included the line, “[T]hey are hanging men and women for the wearing of the green”

Some of that context has obviously been lost in Americans’ celebration of the holiday. By the 1950s, green beer, which at that point was made by adding green food dye to a pale beer, was a standard part of the American St. Patrick’s Day experience, according to Vox. (Modern blue food dye yields more of a turquoise beer.)

It wasn’t until 1985, however, that Ireland was introduced to the concoction. As John C. Shelton wrote for the United Press International, that was the first year that the “standard for holiday guzzlers in the United States was shipped to pubs across the Atlantic.” 

“It’s a bit of a gimmick, but it’s going down a treat,” Tony McMahon, a Dublin pub manager, said at the time. “Everyone is insisting on green beer. It’s the ‘in thing’ this year.” 

For other festive ways to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day, check out:

Over sourdough? Here are five cooking projects to take on during year two of COVID-19

If you’ve spent the majority of your time at home over the past year, it’s likely you’ve started a coronavirus project. What’s even more likely is that your project is making sourdough bread. The pandemic’s lockdown spurred a 2020 baking craze, which in turn led to flour and yeast shortages, and the resulting media attention brought on even more excited bakers. Home bakers turned sourdough tutorials into their side hustles, and celebrities also got in on the baking craze. On FoodPrint — a website focused on the entire food system — our primer on making the fermented dough and ways to use the discarded portions quickly became one of our top viewed posts after we published it last year.

Which is all to say, sourdough is kind of old news. Unfortunately, COVID-19 isn’t. Despite the rise in vaccination and decreased infections, experts suggest limiting activities outside of home to continue to keep virus infection rates low. So you might need a new cooking project. May we suggest you make 2021 the year of kombucha, yogurt, sausage-making or homemade miso? A quick #cookingproject search on Instagram shows people making homemade pasta, bagels, and hot dog rolls. If you love baking, but want a new dough, try taking on the multi-step process of making puff pastry. If you enjoy the fermentation step of sourdough, think about DIY yogurt or kombucha.

Yes, TikTokers will continue to throw out-of-season recipes at us (#fetapasta with February tomatoes, what?!) eyeing for trend-setting glory. But as we’re heading into this next phase of the pandemic, we’re still all about waste-free recipes and sustainably-minded cooking. We suggest these tried-and-true cooking projects to help you reduce waste, preserve food, and keep your fingers (and mind) busy this year, and any time you want a cooking project.

Learn how to make yogurt

If the multi-day process of making a sourdough starter was too much for you to take on, but you like the idea of making some of your kitchen staples from scratch, think about making homemade yogurt. This is a hands-off project, which is great for anyone who has less time right now (uhh, me!), plus you can make a healthier, more flavorful, and less expensive alternative to supermarket yogurt when you control the process. All you need to get started is good quality milk and some good quality yogurt with live cultures in it. If you follow the process properly —  most importantly not letting the milk heat up too much — you can have homemade yogurt in as little as four hours. After that, play around with the texture or add flavorings, and enjoy the world of yogurt making.

And if you happen to have a lot of extra milk or heavy cream, or you simply want more homemade dairy products, it’s just as easy to make fresh buttermilk, ricotta, paneer, cultured butter and more using pantry ingredients like lemon juice and vinegar.

Learn to brew kombucha

Another cooking project popular with fermentation DIYers is making kombucha. Have you ever sipped on a bottle and wondered, “Fizzy, sour, funky. How do they do it?” Armed with the right information, time, and a kombucha starter, you too can figure out how to make the traditional Manchurian drink. First, you’ll need to procure a SCOBY, the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast used to “start” or brew kombucha. If you have a friend already brewing kombucha, ask for a piece of their SCOBY. If not, you can pick up a kombucha kit online, or make your own, starting with some store-bought kombucha.

While brewing kombucha can become quite a project — using a double ferment to increase carbonation, exploring other styles of SCOBY fermentation, such as Jun tea — the basic process is simple. To brew kombucha, steep tea, sugar and the SCOBY starter together for seven days to a month, until the tea is lighter in color and the flavor is less sweet and more vinegary. After that, the SCOBY, which will continue to grow as the kombucha brews, can be used to make additional batches of the drink. Kombucha brewing can also be a regular part of your waste-free kitchen. Make the most of leftover and overripe fruit to flavor your kombucha, or add in leftover herb stems and other aromatics.

 

How to make puff pastry

If the precision of making sourdough was exactly your style, then kick things up a notch and learn how to make puff pastry and other laminated doughs this year. The basic ingredients of puff pastry are simple: flour, butter, salt. The complicated part is the technique: lamination, in which you wrap a block of butter in a dough, then follow a series of folds and turns to create a dough that will bake into an insanely flaky pastry. The complicated part isn’t so complicated, you just need to control the temperature (keep your ingredients cold), follow the process and have a lot of time, enough to allow the dough to rest in between each fold.

If that’s not challenging enough, switch things up and try reverse puff, creating a sheet of butter that will be wrapped around a piece of dough. Whichever style you make, puff pastry is perfect for making croissants and other classic pastry recipes. It’s also a great dough to make quick hand pies or turnovers filled with leftovers like roasted vegetables, fruits or meat.

Learn different food preservation methods

While quick-pickling and jamming should be skills in any waste-free cook’s repertoire, preservation methods can get more complicated and highly specific quickly. Using fermentation ingredients like Japanese koji (rice inoculated with a fermentation culture) or nigari (magnesium chloride), you can get into more serious preservation techniques. If you have some good quality soybeans, koji and salt, plus about six months, you can make your own miso. Koji is also a great way to pickle vegetables and preserve other foods, and it’s also used in making soy sauce, sake and other traditional Japanese ingredients. For a more meditative experience, pick up the art of hoshigaki, helping your stash of persimmons dry out through a traditional hanging and massaging technique.

And preservation doesn’t have to be about fruits and vegetables. If you end up with quality meat from a local butcher, maybe it will be time to learn the art of sausage making. Once you are ready for salami or other preserved sausages, you can use fermentation techniques, like dry curing, to help preserve them.

Cook through a cookbook

Instead of picking a cooking project, why not pick a cookbook project? Make like “Julie and Julia,” and cook your way through an entire cookbook. If you want to master all the breads after sourdough, work your way through “The Bread Bible,” and bake everything from pizza dough and ciabatta to crumpets and bagels. If you gave up a big trip in the last year due to COVID-19, delve into a book devoted to your favorite vacation locale. Do you have a favorite food blogger, or are you trying to eat more plant-based foods? Find a cookbook that really sparks your interest and commit to cooking the whole thing.

A few pointers to get you through it. Make a plan. Take note of all of the recipes before you start and decide how many you need to cook each week or month to get through your book. Instead of going from page 1 to end, keep seasonality in mind and break up pantry basics and complicated recipes to help keep a steady flow to your cooking. Find a friend to cook through the book with you, or to cook through their own book. Plan a socially-distanced park meet-up to share some of your creations.

Matthew Modine (and his wig) star in Netflix’s diverting “College Admissions” true crime recreation

Employing dramatic recreations within a documentary has the stink of cheap perfume about it. Engaging, meticulously reported treatments of most modern-day true crime cases are fine on their own and generally don’t require professional actors to embellish the story.

Then again, cases like the college admissions bribery scandal known as Operation Varsity Blues are made for Lifetime if not exactly once in a lifetime. True to form, the women’s cable channel churned out its fully dramatized version in October 2019 not long after the scandal broke open in the spring of that same year.

By that timeline Netflix’s “Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal” feature deserves credit for taking its time with handling the case even though the conclusions to which it arrives is virtually the same as the moral to the Lifetime story. Not only that, but you also already know what it is: elite universities are the brick and mortar holding our lopsided and unequal social systems in place.

This case simply add more proof that those old bromides about hard work and determination being enough to succeed in our society aren’t true. The true story also happens to have the added benefit of starring Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, the dethroned Queen of Hallmark Christmas.

Huffman and Loughlin were not assigned reenactor counterparts in Netflix’s “Operation Varsity Blues,” a smart decision on the part of filmmakers Chris Smith and Jon Karmen (“Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened.”)

The filmmakers must have known that casting Matthew Modine to star as conspiracy mastermind Rick Singer is adequate star power for this – how to best describe it? – creatively enhanced rendition of a true story.

All of the conversations in the reenacted scenes took place starting in 2018, and are based on wiretap transcripts released by the United States government. However, as is indicated near the film’s start, a few exchanges were “combined or modified for time and clarity.” That means everyone save for Modine is seen casually talking on the phone or pacing nervously on phone when they’re not being led off in handcuffs. From every other cast member’s perspective, it’s a bit of a thankless job.

For his part, Modine develops a convincing interpretation of Singer’s intense physicality as it is described to us by those who personally interacted with him; news footage does give the filmmakers much to work with. Whether the star’s successful performance is entirely of his own making or if as much praise is due the production’s wig wrangler is hard to say. Together, though, they’re probably enough to persuade those curious enough to invest in this particular take to stick with the story through its bumpy ascent and a plummet, marveling at the sheer arrogance and stupidity of the wealthy and entitled.

As one of the film’s interview subjects puts it, this case is not simply extraordinary due to its size and scope but because of the top-down nature of the sting. Instead of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ agents working their way up from the small fry conspirators to hook the big fish, they bagged the whale first and snagged other large fish from there.

From the standpoint of the great unwashed these busts were simply delicious, taking down hedge fund managers, CEOs, at least one California winemaker, a Desperate Housewife and Aunt Becky from “Full House.” We’re talking people who have a few hundred thousand laying around to bribe their child’s way into a top college but not rich enough to, say, fork over a $10 million donation to secure a slot for their dumbass-to-average scion. This method is the “back door” way in to these schools, as the sort-of-documentary explains and many people already know.

Singer created “side doors” for hundred of clients to gain acceptance into such prestigious institutions as Yale, Stanford, Wake Forest, Georgetown and University of Southern California, where he smoothed the way in for Loughlin’s two daughters – including social media influencer Olivia Jade.

The bitter irony of all this is that while most of Singer’s rich suckers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to weeks in prison, or a few months, at most,  for the most part this was merely a smudge on their reputations.

Loughlin’s daughter lost her branding deal with Sephora but, from all accounts, is still quite rich. Huffman, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to having a proctor set up by Singer to correct answers on her SAT test, was sentenced to 14 days in prison, a $30,000 fine, community service and a year of supervised release. She served 12 and is reportedly courting offers to return to TV.

On the other end of the spectrum is former Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer, the only indicted figure to appear as himself in interviews and speak about his experience firsthand likely because he’s the only one who can credibly insist that he didn’t have a full idea of what he was doing, since he gave the checks to the university and his supervisors seemed to know exactly what was happening.

By shuffling interviews with lawyers, academic testing experts and others with knowledge of academia’s bureaucracy between actors playing out phone conversations between Singer and his clients, “Operation Varsity Blues” works best as an explainer of how Singer spun his web and how he tore it apart just as easily.

Everything beyond that, however, is a thin attempt to evoke outrage without actually placing much muscle beyond the injustice of it all. With the malefactors receiving most of the camera time (including one played by “Wandavision” co-star Josh Stamberg, whose recognizability is distracting), Smith and Karmen do little to make the audience feel for the most direct victims of this conspiracy, whoever that is.

Rising seniors is the easier answer to that, of course. Along with its actors and real life subjects “Operation Varsity Blues” includes a sprinkling of home videos from regular teenagers who attest to doing everything right by studying hard, engaging in the right extracurriculars, and following their school counselors’ advice to the letter, and who still don’t get in to their dream school.

Some of the film’s subjects stress that society’s elite already have the edge to get into these schools by dint of their birth and class, but the feature doesn’t do much to explain how many kids who work to get through the front door are denied in order to favor the fortunate and intellectually mediocre.

Instead it chooses to leave us much in the same way the filmmakers dropped us off with “Fyre,” with further confirmation that our system of higher education is part of the scam involved in making it in America.

When referring to the concept of top universities as a product, one of the film’s interview subjects reminds us that the word “prestige” actually comes from an old French terms meaning “illusion”; Singer trades in that concept, but so do places like Stanford. “Operation Varsity Blues” probably didn’t have to put this concept into action by layering dramatic illusion on top of its fact.

Then again, it worked for Lifetime.

“Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal” is streaming on Netflix.

Doctors, Pharma are already talking about booster shots to protect against mutant COVID-19 strains

It feels like there’s light at the end of the tunnel: States are beginning to relax or eliminate COVID-19 restrictions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued guidelines for vaccinated Americans to ease back into post-pandemic life. And President Joe Biden has ordered states to open vaccinations to all adults by May 1.

Yet that light could be snuffed out by the sordid fact that multiple coronavirus strains are circulating throughout the United States — strains that existing vaccines were not designed to combat, and which in some cases may outsmart the vaccines. The CDC has repeatedly expressed concern that the mutated viruses will lead to a surge in COVID-19 cases as some of them are able to evade vaccines.

Of course, new vaccines can certainly be invented, and existing ones tweaked, to combat said mutations. But that brings up the unpleasant logistical prospect that we may need multiple vaccines, perhaps even yearly boosters, to protect ourselves as the disease evolves.

“It is highly possible that we’ll need a booster shot,” Dr. Irwin Redlener, leader of Columbia University’s Pandemic Response Initiative, told Salon. “In fact, we may end up even needing an annual booster shot because we don’t know really how long the antibodies are going to last from the shot or from the natural disease for that matter. It’s in the cards.”

Such a prospect is not unprecedented for a nascent virus. Doctors do the same with influenza, for which new strains emerge annually; those new strains often evade previous vaccines just enough that annual flu shots are necessary to combat them.

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But as Redlener noted, vaccine manufacturers are aware of the problem and are already working on it.

“Moderna has been working on a booster shot to help respond to variants for at least a month,” Redlener explained. “I’m sure that Pfizer and J&J and the other manufacturers are all doing the same. It’s imperative that we pay attention to those variants.” 

Dr. William Haseltine, chair and president of the global health think tank Access Health International, reinforced this perception, adding that the question of COVID-19 booster shots is in some respects independent of whether or not variants emerge.

“It’s very likely that whether or not there were variants, we would need a third booster and annual boosters because the primary immunity from these vaccines is unlikely to last over a year or a year-and-a-half,” Haseltine explained.”We have no idea at this point what the duration is, but if it is like many other vaccines in this category, it’s unlikely to be very long lived with a half-life, I would guess, of somewhere around three to six months. That means that even if there weren’t variants, you would need a booster.”

Immunologists use the terms “durable immunity” and “transient immunity” to refer to the type of immunity that a vaccine confers. If a vaccine confers short-term immunity, it is said to have transient immunity. If a vaccine keeps one’s immune system primed and ready to fight a disease over the long term, then it  said to provide durable immunity. The influenza vaccine is an example of a vaccine that confers transient immunity, which is another reason that annual shots are needed. It is still not known whether the coronavirus vaccine will confer transient or durable immunity; if it is sufficiently transient, regular boosters will become a necessity. 

Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation, told over email Salon that regular vaccine booster shots will help reinforce the immune response, which can wane over time. Medford also said that vaccine technology had advanced to the point that boosters could be “rapidly developed” to target viral variants that “exhibit significant resistance to existing vaccines.”

Fortunately, new vaccine technologies have made it easier to quickly adapt existing vaccines. New vaccine technologies like mRNA vaccines make it “fairly easy” for new vaccines to be developed as variants emerge that threaten the public health. This is because, while conventional vaccines like the kind created by Johnson & Johnson take a weakened or dead form of the disease-causing microorganism and inject it into your body, mRNA vaccines use a more adaptable approach. Scientists create synthetic versions of mRNA, a single-stranded RNA molecule that complements one of the DNA strands in a gene. After they do that, they inject a version of the mRNA into your body so your cells will produce proteins like those found in a given pathogen (in this case, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19). One advantage to this approach is that it is easier to create new mRNA vaccines as the viruses evolve.

Not every expert is worried that we will need new vaccines for COVID-19 variants. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California–San Francisco, referred Salon to a recent thread she wrote in which she expressed optimism that the current vaccines will protect us from COVID-19 in the long term.

“I don’t think that we will need a new vaccine for variants each year although the pharmaceutical companies are working on these boosters now just to show they can,” Gandhi wrote to Salon, referring both to the aforementioned thread. She added that studies have found T cell immunity, or a form of immunity that occurs after a virus has entered the body, persists against known COVID-19 variants.

Mary Trump weighs in on Ivanka’s political ambitions: She lacks the “charisma” to be president

Mary Trump, the niece of former President Donald Trump, does not think that her uncle’s family has the makings of a long-lasting political dynasty.

In an interview with Business Insider, Mary Trump explains that Trump’s children lack the “charisma” of their father, whom she says “has a certain charisma that appeals to people’s lowest and basest instinct and gives permission to people to be their worst selves.”

Mary Trump then explained that Trump’s children “don’t have that,” which makes it unlikely that they’ll be able to coast to the presidency based on name recognition.

Mary Trump also predicted to Business Insider that Trump and his children would be too ensnared in various legal troubles to be able to pull off a presidential run in 2024.

“Thanks in large part to their dad but also to their own anti-social tendencies, going to be defending themselves I’m guessing in a fair number of civil and criminal cases going forward,” she said. “That is the only saving grace at the moment: Donald and possibly two or three of his children are going to be embroiled in lots of legal actions, starting in the future and the not too distant future.”

 

“He is either wrong or lying”: Dems call out Kevin McCarthy for claim terrorists are crossing border

The Biden administration is scrambling to find space in shelters for migrant children along the southern border as the number of detained children tripled to more than 4,000 in the last two weeks. Due to the lack of space in facilities designed for unaccompanied minors and an influx of people, children are currently being held in jail-like facilities — and Republicans have seized on the situation. 

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the U.S. is expected to soon reach the highest number of migrants detained at the Southern border in two decades. Republicans have accused the Biden administration of instigating the crisis at the border, blaming Biden’s relaxed immigration policies as an incentive for people to try to cross into the U.S. illegally.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., claimed this week that he met with border agents who issued “dire warnings” of suspected terrorist threats trying to cross the southern border.

McCarthy’s unfounded allegations, which were echoed by Rep. John Katko, were some of the most alarming claims raised by Republicans aiming to attack Biden’s immigration policies amid the recent surge of migrants and defend the Trump-era assertion that terrorists are crossing the southern border to wreak havoc on Americans. Trump often painted such a picture to gain support for his border wall with Mexico. 

Democrats from border states, however, challenged McCarthy by demanding evidence to back up his claim.

“Weird as the Chairman of the subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations and a border state member of Congress haven’t heard anything about this,” tweeted Rep. Ruben Gallego from Arizona. “Gonna ask for a briefing. Pretty sure he is either wrong or lying.”

Gallego tagged McCarthy in a tweet that said, “Can you have your office arrange for a classified briefing for members to see where this info derived from?”

Former Rep. Julian Castro from Texas took to Twitter to call out the Republican party’s hypocrisy. “In the last nine months of Trump’s presidency there was a 690% increase in unaccompanied minors encountered by CBP. There’s been a 61% increase under President Biden. How come we didn’t hear a peep from you until now?” 

Also from Texas, Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar slammed Republicans for their apathy toward meaningful legislation for immigration and Covid relief. “Their immigration strategy is exactly the same thing as their Covid strategy. Do nothing. Just let people die. P.S. @GOPLeader stop using my community as your prop.”

While Republicans were causing chaos by spreading untrue terrorism claims, the Customs and Border Protection have been experiencing an average of 565 unaccompanied minors crossing the border per day as of Sunday, according to NBC News. Last month the average number of children crossing per day was 313.

The federal government has flown unaccompanied children and family groups from the Rio Grande Valley to the west Texas border city of El Paso, where shelter organizers are scrambling to find adequate space.

The Biden administration has refused to call the situation a crisis, however, they requested help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) on Saturday. FEMA is responding by quickly building “decompression centers” in Dallas and Midland, Texas in order to move more children out of border patrol custody as fast as possible. 

“We are creating joint processing centers so that children can be placed in HHS care immediately after Border Patrol encounters them,” said Mayorkas. “We are also identifying and equipping additional facilities for HHS to shelter unaccompanied children until they are placed with family or sponsors. These are short-term solutions to address the surge of unaccompanied children.”

There are upwards of 4,200 children now in custody, 2,943 of which are being detained beyond the legal time frame of 72 hours. Unable to transfer them to the appropriate shelters, the children are being held in facilities originally built for adults, another scandal in the long list of disapprovals for the inhumane conditions managed by the Customs and Border Protection agency. It has previously been reported that these spaces have exposed detained children to disease, hunger, and inhumane crowding to protect them from Covid-19.

“We are continuing to work to convey to the people in the region that this is not the time to come,” said Press Secretary Jen Psaki last week, “that the majority of people that come to the border will be turned away, which is factually accurate.”

“The people who are being let in are unaccompanied children,” she continued. “That was a policy decision, which we made because we thought it was the most humane approach to addressing what are very difficult circumstances in the region. And that means there are more children coming across the border.”

Psaki continued to press that cleaning up the mess at the border is still one of their top priorities and working on policy that will keep the children safe while moving them as quickly as possible from border patrol facilities to shelters where they can have access to education, health, and legal resources.

There are a number of reasons why the administration officials think people are coming to the border in droves at this moment. Individuals are fleeing prosecution, violence, and economic hardships, among other things. The Central American region also experienced two hurricanes in the fall, putting further stress on the living conditions in these countries and the circumstances that are facing individuals. She also noted that the economic hardships from Covid-19 have hit these countries equally as hard as the United States.

“We’ve been very clear that there is an increase, that there are more children coming across the border than we have facilities for at this point in time,” said Psaki when asked to confirm the number of detained children. “Those numbers are tracked by the department of homeland security, so I would encourage you to go back to them and confirm the numbers.”  

Biden said on Tuesday that he has no current plans to travel to the US-Mexico border but speaking to ABC’s to George Stephanopoulos, he discouraged migrants from attempting to enter the US.

“Do you have to say quite clearly, ‘Don’t come’?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Yes, I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” Biden replied. “Don’t leave your town or city or community.”

Corporate giants push back against Republicans’ rush to restrict voting after Georgia flips blue

Home Depot and Coca-Cola, two major corporations based in Georgia, publicly voiced their opposition toward the Republican-backed effort to restrict voting in the Peach State after Democrats flipped it blue.

Republicans began pushing for heightened voting restrictions in Georgia shortly following the election of two Democrats to the Senate in a special runoff election in January, and civil liberties groups in the state –– such as Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, and the Georgia NAACP –– have been putting intense pressure on business executives and corporations like Home Depot, Coca-Cola, Aflac, Delta Air Lines, and UPS to oppose the democratic backslide. 

On Friday, in a big win for activists organizing against the attack on Georgia’s electoral system, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing that it “supports accessible and secure voting while upholding election integrity and transparency.” 

“Simply put,” the Chamber said, “we believe that it should be easy to vote, hard to commit fraud, and that Georgians should have faith and confidence in secure, accessible, and fair elections.”

According to the Washington Post, representatives from Home Depot and Coca-Cola expressed that the two mega-corps were “aligned” with the Chamber’s statement. 

Other companies have issued more cautious statements that back election integrity and security more broadly, but do not expressly oppose the current voting restrictions on the table. “Ensuring an election system that promotes broad voter participation, equal access to the polls, and fair, secure elections processes are critical to voter confidence and creates an environment that ensures everyone’s vote is counted,” read Delta’s statement CNBC.

“We need to join together to ensure accessible and secure voting while preserving election integrity and transparency,” Aflac echoed. “As this important issue is debated in Georgia and statehouses across the nation, we expect that fairness and integrity will be the ongoing basis for discussion.”

The two bills at front and center –– HB 531 and SB 24 –– would enact highly consequential changes to Georgia’s election system by limiting early voting on Sundays, halting no-excuse mail-in voting, limiting drop box access, and restricting early voting hours. Activists say that these measures would predominantly affect black voters in Georgia, who make up 30 percent of the state’s electorate and largely led the state’s flip to blue in 2020. 

On Sunday, Stacey Abrams, a longtime voting rights activist, called the restrictions “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie.”

“We know that the only thing that precipitated these changes, it’s not that there was the question of security,” she said Sunday on CNN, referring to false Republican claims of electoral fraud. “And so the only connection that we can find is that more people of color voted, and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction that Republicans do not like.”

She continued, “There should be no silence from the business community when anyone in power is trying to strip away the right to vote from the people. There should be a hue and cry.”

Some advocacy groups have launched ad campaigns in Georgia to raise awareness of the current conflict. For example, the Black Votes Matter fund took out a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, expressing the “responsibility and opportunity” the business community has to protect the state’s democracy. Other organizations such as The Service Employees International Union and Progress Georgia have emphasized the spending power of black voters in the state through digital ads. 

“Georgia is backsliding toward a twisted electoral system built on suppressing and manipulating Black votes,” Black Voters Matter founders LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright told The Washington Post. “This is not only blatant voter suppression; it’s an act of retribution against Black voting power.”

Fox News host Tucker Carlson called out for “peddling false anti-vaxxer talking points” to millions

On MSNBC Tuesday, anchor Nicolle Wallace tore into Fox News, and particularly Tucker Carlson, for sowing fear and anger about COVID-19 vaccination.

“A lesson in leadership from Dr. Fauci this morning, emphasizing the need to tell the truth, even if it’s not what people want to hear,” said Wallace. “It’s a lesson seemingly lost on Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, who is peddling false anti-vaxxer talking points to an audience of millions at a time when polls suggest that nearly half of Trump’s supporters will not get the COVID vaccine.”

She then played the clip of Carlson’s show trying to say people can’t celebrate American independence without the vaccine, a twisted and distorted lie about what Biden said in his speech.

“The administration would like you to take this vaccine,” said Carlson in the clip. “Joe Biden told you last week, if you don’t, you can’t celebrate the Fourth of July. But it turns out there are things we don’t know about the effects of this vaccine.”

“There are a lot of things that Tucker Carlson is. Deaf isn’t one of them,” said Wallace. “I saw him in a little box watching the speech. Joe Biden did not say that . . . I know from scientists and doctors, public health officials, the one variable that no one saw coming was how poisoned and misinformed a large bloc of our population would be.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

GOP dreams of a return to Jim Crow — and not just through racist voting laws

It is the year 2021. But Republicans and the right-wing movement are trying to pull the American people back to the past.

Their ultimate destination? It could be Jim Crow white supremacist America of the 1950s. It could be the end of Reconstruction in 1876 – or even a time before that.

In that sense, the Republican Party and its allies and followers are time-breakers, not content with harmless nostalgia and happy-pill lies about the past. Their goal? To radically remake society in their own grotesque vision where white, right-wing “Christians” — men, by definition — rule America unopposed and for all time.

Such a world would be a utopia for them and a dystopia for everyone else.

On Monday, philosopher Jason Stanley described America on the precipice of such as horrible moment in a Twitter post: 

I find it chilling this odd moment of calm while Dems are in power and state after state is introducing bills that, if passed, will ensure permanent minority party rule and the end of US democracy. We have so little time. Watching history unfold.

Because they cannot win a war of ideas and their policies are wildly unpopular with the American people, Republicans and their allies are attempting to restrict the right to vote all over the country.

Zachary Roth of the Brennan Center for Justice describes this racialized “legislative anti-democracy” and what it entails:

It’s upon us: a wave of legislation, in states across the country, aimed at making voting harder. The Brennan Center has tallied over 250 bills in 43 states this year that would restrict access to the ballot. Many would reverse the expansion of vote by mail, which helped lead to the soaring turnout of 2020, or would tighten ID requirements.

But the latest assault on voting shouldn’t be seen in isolation. Some of the same Republican state lawmakers behind these measures are also taking steps to suppress any form of democracy that threatens them — afraid, it seems, that the more say voters have in any form, the worse their side will fare. …

It’s hard to ignore that this explosion of what we might call “legislative anti-democracy” is coming from some of the same people who helped stoke an even more troubling effort to overturn the will of the people. At least 14 Republican state lawmakers attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that led to the Capitol insurrection, and they continue to serve. At least one, State Sen. Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, has been a leader in his state’s effort to pass restrictive voting laws.    

These attacks are targeting those Americans at the base of the Democratic Party: young people, the poor and working-class, college students, urban residents and nonwhite people.  

Black Americans (especially black women) are arguably the most important members of the Democratic Party’s winning coalition. As such, Black Americans have become the near-obsessive focus of the Republican Party and the white right’s efforts to overturn multiracial democracy.

These attacks on Black people’s freedom and their human and civil rights — which were won in blood — involves dreams of a return to the Jim Crow era of “separate but equal,” with literacy tests, poll taxes, felon disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, terrorism and armed intimidation, threats of imprisonment and arbitrary movement of polling places, all designed to make it harder for Black (and brown) people to vote.

Moreover, these Jim Crow dreams are not private; they are very public.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, invoked the white supremacist film “Birth of a Nation” and its hateful depictions of Black people when he told Fox News last weekend that the Democrats use cocaine to buy votes.

Last Wednesday, Arizona State Rep. John Kavanaugh, also a Republican, channeled the exact logic used by Southern and other white politicians during Jim Crow to justify not allowing people to vote. He literally said, “Everyone should not be voting” and that he and his fellow Republicans care about “the quality” of the votes.

White Republican voters largely agree with these efforts to stop Black and brown Americans from voting, along with other groups who generally support Democrats. Republican voters overwhelmingly believe in the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and that therefore America needs more “election security,” i.e., ways to keep “those people” from voting. A significant percentage of Republicans also believe that Trump’s coup attempt and the Capitol attack were justified. Public opinion and other research show that Trump-supporting Republicans are willing to give up democracy in order to maintain white supremacy as the dominant and most powerful group in the country. Other research shows that a majority of Republicans are willing to go to extreme measures, including violence, to protect America’s “traditional way of life.”

In total, today’s Republican Party and right-wing movement are not “conservative”: They are destructive, revanchist and reactionary.

The Republican retreat from the present and embrace of some of the worst aspects of the country’s past is oriented along the color line. The centuries-long struggles of Black and brown people, alongside their white allies, has gradually forced America to be a more full and equal democracy for all people. When Republicans and other “conservatives” attack American democracy, they are attacking that legacy.

Ultimately, “racial democracy,” better understood as whites-only democracy, is an oxymoron. Multiracial democracy is the only real democracy possible in America.

The Republican Party’s symbol is the wise and patient elephant. From the backlash to the civil rights movement in the 1960s to the Age of Trump and beyond, Republican have now fully embraced white supremacy as one of its central values and beliefs. To better reflect those values, today’s Republican Party should replace the elephant with an image of the real “Jim Crow,” a 19th-century white minstrel performer named Thomas Dartmouth Rice whose racist buffoon act was modeled on a debased version of a black slave. One of Rice’s most popular songs was “Jump Jim Crow.” Because he was so successful his “Jim Crow” persona was adopted by other white race minstrels.

In many ways, Rice’s Jim Crow performance still has life in the 21st century, when our nation’s most important white supremacist organization pretends not to be racist. If Republicans reclaimed Rice’s legacy openly, at least they would be honest.