“Unconscionable”: Texas energy companies spark new round of outrage by price-gouging in an emergency

As the winter storm in Texas still leaves thousands without power, Texans are reporting that the cost of their utility bills has skyrocketed, with some bills in the thousands for just one week of power.

“The average price for electricity in Texas in the winter is about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration,” NPR reported. “Texas utility regulators allowed that price to rise to $9 per kilowatt-hour.”

Those most affected by the price hikes are on “variable-rate power plans,” which gives energy companies the discretion to change the price depending on consumer demand. Generally, when demand increases, the price does too. Variable-rate plans are particularly desirable during periods of low energy usage (i.e. normal weather conditions) because customers get to pay at a discounted rate. However, when the devastating winter storm hit Texas, leaving millions without water and heat, those discounted rates went out the window.

Many utility companies have already begun the process of damage control. Last week, CPS Energy (“the nation’s largest municipally-owned gas and electric utility”) told customers that, while it is “unacceptable to have customers bears the costs on their monthly bill,” it was “working diligently to find ways to spread those costs to 10 years or longer to make it more affordable.”

Wholesale electricity retailer Griddy –– now being sued by a Chambers County resident for $1 billion –– remarkably insisted that its customers switch electricity providers before they might be affected by the price spikes. However, switching providers can take days, making it too late for customers to skirt around the bills.

Scott Willoughby, a 63-year-old veteran on Social Security told The New York Times that Griddy had charged him $16,752 for the month of February. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” Willoughby said, “But it’s broken me.”

Griddy wrote in a blog post last Thursday, “We intend to fight this for, and alongside, our customers for equity and accountability – to reveal why such price increases were allowed to happen as millions of Texans went without power,”

On Sunday, the Texas Public Utility Commission implemented two orders: to halt power disconnections due to non-payments and discontinue sending monthly estimates to customers. However, it should be noted that the commission gave the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) –– which oversees the majority of Texas’ power grid –– the go-ahead to increase prices due to a bottleneck in supply.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbot –– who erroneously attributed green energy to the sweeping outages –– has called for an investigation into ERCOT, five of whose board members announced they would resign on Wednesday. “We have a responsibility to protect Texans from spikes in their energy bills that are a result of the severe winter weather and power outages,” Abbot said on Saturday during an emergency meeting. Texans, however, are demanding that concrete action be taken.

“The state government is gonna have to step in and basically hold people harmless—in other words, make sure that those exorbitant costs are not passed onto the customer here,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. “And I think they’re gonna see that there’s gonna be a movement throughout Texas of people who are liberal and conservative and across the political spectrum who are refusing to pay $2,000 when for two days they didn’t even get power, and they’re not even responsible for the poor planning that went on by state leaders.”

Other officials echoed Castro’s concerns, emphasizing that customers should not bear the brunt of the financial cost when so many of them are already in vulnerable positions during the storm.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg told CNN on Sunday that “it would be unconscionable for bills to go up and for bills to be put on the backs of residents of the state that have been suffering and freezing their homes for the last week, through no fault of their own.”

Although it’s clear that Texas’ energy crisis was primarily brought on by a wildly unregulated energy market, Republicans have nevertheless continued to blame green energy solutions. “Where is the story about the $2B “green” bio plant the City of Austin funded — that didn’t produce 5 minutes of energy while Austin residents were without power for days?” tweeted Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Tex. “Doesn’t much of the staff for @TexasTribune live in Austin? That’s a layup.”

What Biden could learn from Bill Clinton’s unfinished work on environmental justice

Environmental justice isn’t just a buzzword or hashtag for Dr. Beverly Wright — it’s what helps her get out of bed every morning. For the last 35 years, fighting for her Louisiana community’s access to a healthy and safe environment has been her mission, and it’s put her in rooms with the last three Democratic presidents.

Wright’s federal advocacy began in the early 1990s, when she worked on the country’s first executive order focused on environmental justice, which then-President Bill Clinton signed in 1994. Executive Order 12898, or EO 12898, instructed federal agencies to pursue environmental justice policies that would limit the “disproportionately high and adverse” effects of environmental harms on low-income communities and people of color, who are more likely to be burdened by issues like high pollution rates and contaminated water sources. The order also empowered the federal Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which was two years old at the time, to influence the priorities of the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.

“The executive order was a culmination of the work that we had been doing for decades,” explained Dr. Wright, executive director at the New Orleans-based nonprofit Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. “Hundreds of us grassroots organizations and civil rights organizations came together and drafted that order.”

EO 12898 brought national attention to the environmental justice movement and inspired a wave of regulatory and policy actions by states who required their own environmental agencies to adopt similar practices. In 1994, only four states had a law or executive order promoting environmental justice on the books. Within 20 years, all 50 states plus the District of Columbia had instituted some type of environmental justice law, executive order, or policy.

But at the federal level, Clinton’s executive order was never really enforced. EO 12898 lacked any concrete requirements that environmental justice be a determining factor in siting, rulemaking, and permitting decisions, and it didn’t create any pathways for judicial review regarding compliance. That meant that no person or organization could sue to try to ensure that the order was enforced. Instead, EO 12898 directed federal agencies to adopt and implement their own unique environmental justice strategies. However, it took decades for even some cabinet-level agencies, like the Department of Health and Human Services, to do so. Even today, not every federal agency has fulfilled the order’s mandate.

“Clinton’s environmental justice order was limited but groundbreaking,” said Wright, who attended the signing of EO 12898. “It’s like civil rights: We integrated the water fountains, but there was a whole lot of stuff left to do to get to Martin Luther King’s dream.”

For Dr. Wright and other justice advocates, the fight to enforce EO 12898 was mired in frustration. Wright was unable to forge a working relationship with Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush. Under his administration, the EPA’s inspector general found that the agency wasn’t conducting environmental justice reviews of its policies and programs and had never even tried to develop a framework to do so. Bush also instructed the EPA to remove racial disparity as a factor that should be considered in permitting and rulemaking decisions. And though Obama subsequently developed a strategic plan for environmental justice within the EPA and restored some of EO 12898’s power, the call for environmental justice was ignored by former President Donald Trump. The EPA’s authority and staffingdiminished significantly under his leadership, and it was as if EO 12898 didn’t exist.

This is why Dr. Wright, who was one of the hundreds of community organizers who advised President Joe Biden on his new environmental justice plans, believes Biden has his work cut out for him as he works to implement a “whole of government” agenda to tackle climate change.

Pushing to curb the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and develop new clean energy jobs, Biden has so far issued four executive orders focused on climate change — and environmental justice is a central tenet of the plans. With these actions, Biden is also hoping to alleviate racial and economic disparities that have plagued communities of color. While signing Executive Order 14008 on “tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad,” he said, “lifting up these communities makes us all stronger as a nation and increases the health of everybody.”

Biden’s plans to focus on environmental justice aim to build upon the work that Clinton started in 1994. Their centerpiece is the creation of three new federal councils: a White House interagency council on environmental justice; an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department, or HHS; and an office dedicated to environmental justice at the Justice Department. Biden also plans to elevate the EPA’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council to a White House entity so the group will have a direct line to the president.

The new White House interagency council on environmental justice will be made up of representatives from most of the cabinet departments as well as the EPA, and it will work with the newly elevated White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council to develop an overarching federal strategy to address environmental injustices. First on the docket is creating a new Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and interactive maps to identify and highlight disadvantaged communities. The new tool will build on the EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, which tracks pollutants across demographics and links pollution to economic and social indicators. The interagency council will also publish annual public performance scorecards based on its implementation of new strategies, though performance measures have not been specified.

The orders creating the new environmental justice offices at HHS and the Justice Department are more vague. The order creating the HHS office, for example, says it must “address the impact of climate change on the health of the American people.” Former California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who has experience establishing a state-level environmental justice office in California’s justice department, will lead HHS if confirmed by the Senate.

Though advocates like Dr. Wright have celebrated Biden’s multi-pronged approach to environmental justice, the vagueness of the policies’ wording gives them pause.

“[Biden’s plans] are amazing to read, but when I’m reading it I’m like, ‘Can this all be true?’ The federal government has been speaking EJ [environmental justice] language for a while now. But putting things on paper is one thing, implementation is another,” she told Grist.

Wright believes Biden’s most important proposal is his executive order directing the government to ensure that 40 percent of its sustainability investments“benefit” so-called frontline communities, which carry the largest pollution burdens. That could include investments in clean energy, clean transit, affordable housing, and clean water infrastructure. Biden has also directed the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, to publish a public scorecard regarding its environmental justice spending efforts.

The initiative is poised to face its fair share of challenges. Biden has set a May deadline to identify the communities targeted for investment, but most of the people tasked with leading the initiative have yet to receive Senate confirmation of their White House positions, such as possible OMB director Neera Tanden and Brenda Mallory, a nominee to chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The other parts of the plan, including identifying specific focus areas for investment and tracking yet-to-be-created metrics on how communities are benefitting, will also be difficult. Since the commitment is not to direct 40 percent of raw spending to disadvantaged communities, but instead to ensure that cumulative benefits reach these communities, those leading the initiative will have to create new metrics to value the investment benefits. Complicating matters further is the fact that the program’s broad areas of focus, such as housing and transportation, have to be translated into tangible investments such as electric buses or affordable housing complexes, with little ultimate control over who benefits.

For Wright, Biden’s ambition is a cause for celebration, but implementation is another story — as it always has been. “The boogeyman when you’re fighting systemic racism is implementation,” Wright told Grist. “It’s getting everyone in the room to do what they already know is right.”

If Perseverance finds life on Mars, this is what it will look like

Now that the NASA rover Perseverance has successfully touched down on the red planet, the rover is due to set about its primary mission of trying to search for signs of life on Mars. Indeed, from its landing site to its specialized tool kit, the plucky car-sized rover is purposefully designed to look for life signs. Specifically, Perseverance contains complex machinery for testing the atmosphere and scooping up soil samples so they can be returned to Earth.

If Perseverance’s exploration yields signs of life, that would obviously be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. But what, exactly, would the life itself look like? Could we actually discover funny little green men in flying saucers or a sophisticated and awe-inspiring civilization?

Scientists tell Salon: Probably not. (But you probably knew that already.) Yet the life sign that scientists expect to find on Mars would have their own bizarre and alien properties — and, if they exists would reveal many secrets about how common or uncommon life is in the universe.

“I think the first thing to keep in mind in our expectations for life on Mars is that it’s probably microbial,” Dr. Woodward Fischer, a professor of geobiology at Caltech, told Salon. This means that, among other things, scientists are not going to be looking for skeletons or the types of fossils associated with multicellular organisms like animal and plant life.

But that doesn’t mean that Perseverance isn’t looking for fossils.

“When it comes to microbes, there is a fossil record, but it’s much more subtle and it’s much more nuanced,” as microbes do not express their diversity through their shape or form but rather through their metabolism, Fischer said.

Hence, one possibility is that scientists would find the byproducts of microbes in the form of minerals. There are, Fischer said, “certain minerals that the environment doesn’t otherwise want to make, but the presence of biology there helps make those minerals.” Some iron oxide minerals, for instance, would suggest the presence of microbial life.

Another possibility, Fischer said, is that scientists will find microscopic evidence of former life in the fossil record that include parts of cells themselves, “preserving little filaments and little rods and balls that would actually reflect their former cells.”

Scientists could also find a type of rock called stromatolites. These are unusual rocks that look “kind of like a flaky biscuit” which can range from “the size of your finger” to “the size of a minivan.” Fischer explained that “they’re these little laminated fabrics that are the result of microbial mats that were once present. They’re sticky and they help bind together sediment on the sea floor and they can build these accretionary structures. So it’s kind of like a coral reef, but built entirely by microbes.”

This may be disappointing to people who are hoping to find more advanced civilizations. Yet Dr. Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI [Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence] Institute, told Salon that when it comes to Mars, “you can safely assume it never got past the stage of making bacteria — single-celled organisms.”

Why?

“The food supply was probably not adequate and there wasn’t enough time,” Shostak explained. “Mars went bad rather quickly. Within a billion years after the birth of Mars, Mars was probably not a great place to live unless you were a bacteria.” Those organisms, if they did live on Mars, “might have been in the lakes and rivers, and even the ocean that we think covered Mars was three and a half to four billion years ago.”

As Shostak pointed out, billions of years ago the planet may have been covered in oceans. One way to visualize it would be to imagine that everything in the current Martian topography which is up to 200 feet deep was filled with water, he explained. That is roughly how Mars might have appeared three to four billion years ago, according to some of the evidence compiled by scientists about the possible presence of liquid water on the Martian surface.

By contrast, Shostak pointed out, someone who might try to pour a glass of water on Mars today would see it immediately turn into vapor “like dry ice” because Mars only has about 1% of the atmosphere that exists on Earth. Billions of years ago, though, the planet had more atmosphere, which allowed liquid water to stay on the surface of Mars. That, combined with the minerals and sunshine, could have created the conditions necessary to support life. Shostak also said that if there is still life on Mars it would not be on the surface, but underground in aquifers and lakes underneath the Martian soil.

This understanding of what Mars may have looked like billions of years ago also helps explain why the Jezero Crater, which is just north of the Martian equator, was selected as the landing site of the NASA rover.

“The part that makes it so great is here is this crater that we know, from observations from orbit, hosted a big delta,” Fischer explained. “Not only was there water flowing into this crater, forming a delta, there’s water that’s moving sediment around forming a delta, but water also floating out of the crater. And that lets us know that there was a lake that filled much of the crater,” estimating that it would have been roughly the size of America’s Lake Powell. Astrobiologists are excited about any part of Mars that might have been wet because, when it comes to finding alien life, “we think water is really important.”

Of course, given that humans have never discovered extraterrestrial life, it is valid to ask why water is so important. Indeed, it is legitimate to inquire as to why we assume that the six elements which are most common in life on Earth — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and phosphorus — are considered to be prerequisites to life forms that may exist on other planets. If life is a form of matter that contains sentience, should we assume that only certain elements are capable of creating life forms?

“It depends on how narrowly you want to think about life,” Dr. Michael L. Wong, a research associate at the University of Washington’s astrobiology program and astronomy department, told Salon. “Are we looking essentially for a life that is just exactly like us — carbon-based with the other elements that you mentioned? That’s one form of life, but who is to say that that’s the only form of life that can be possible?”

Wong also pointed out that “life actually requires a lot of metal cofactors and its enzymes. Iron, for instance, is in our blood and that’s all over Mars as well, the iron oxides.” At the same time, although Wong said that he would be surprised if hypothetical Martian life contained completely different elements from life on Earth. The reason is simple: “Earth and Mars share that geochemical backdrop. Mars is smaller and it has slightly different geochemistry, but largely it’s quite similar” to the geochemistry on Earth. This includes the presence of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere as well as methane that was discovered by a previous rover mission.

“I think that the case is that Mars is very similar to earth and therefore Mars life would be very similar to Earth,” Wong told Salon.

Fischer also explained to Salon that it will be telling whether any life discovered on Mars is chemosynthetic (meaning that it relies on inorganic chemical reactions to derive energy from food) or photosynthetic (meaning that, like plants, it can derive energy from sunlight).

“If you figure out how to use that energy from the sun, you can really spread out across the planet,” Fischer told Salon. “You basically go from being limited to that chemosynthetic life that needs to live near — energy sources like springs or hydrothermal vents or volcanic sources of the things that you need to live — to being able to spread out across large planetary surfaces that are based in light.” It would also mean that you would need all of the reduced compounds that get made, for instance, by a volcano. If Mars is able to support photosynthetic life, it would be much more widespread than if it is limited to chemosynthetic life.

Even if it turns out that we don’t discover life on Mars on this current expedition, however, that does not mean that it will have been for nothing.

“We can expect, first of all, just really beautiful, exciting pictures from Mars,” Wong told Salon. “This is a brand new location we’ve never been there before.” Because there are so many cameras on the rover, “we’re going to get some marvelous images, so the public can be excited about that. I, as a scientist, just love looking at Martian landscapes and just imagining being on another world.”

Experimental film “Erēmīta” is an inventive & vivid celebration of our pandemic hermitage life

Add “Erēmīta (Anthologies)” to the growing list of collected short films — including Netflix’s “Homemade” — created during the pandemic. This hour-long program, made during the first lockdown, was compiled by filmmaker Sam Abbas. It features six shorts by cinematographers from around the world who were told to shoot on their cell phones without any lenses, rigs, or audio devices.

The program is mostly experimental, and is (as with most short anthology programs), a mixed bag. That is more an observation than a criticism; this kind of cinema is designed for sensorial appreciation. The entries in “Erēmīta (Anthologies)” eschew the “set-up, suspense, payoff” arc of narrative shorts and instead deliberately create a hazy, seductive, dreamlike feeling.

The film opens with a quote defining the word hermit, or eremite, as “a person who lives in seclusion from society.” Additional text cites Nietzsche and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” which featured the titular hermit who lived in solitude for 10 years (accompanied by an eagle and a snake) and “did not grow weary of it.” Sections in the documentary are titled, “Eagle and Snake,” or “Zarathustra” as an homage to Nietzsche.

“Erēmīta (Anthologies)” has a variety of different styles and approaches, which will appeal to different viewers for different reasons. There are some impressionistic scenes of slow cinema — a static shot of a woman and her dog, a sink filling with water, and ambient sounds.

Eventually, the first short, “Solsticio de Invierno,” by Soledad Rodriguez, begins. It features compressed and distorted images, such as the texture of an animal’s fur, or the pavement. There are shots of cats, the sky, balconies, and trees. Spanish is heard on a car radio, as is the driver’s turn signal. The short is not subtitled, but the images — sometimes seen in extreme close-up — create vivid impressions. Blue ocean waves, or parts of an elephant provide some sense of location, but the overall effect is disorienting, especially during the short’s final, obfuscating shot. This may be the very point.

The “Interlude” that follows looks like a still shot of an empty bed. Though maybe that is a body lying under the sheet. It is hard to tell, but viewers have four minutes to contemplate.

“Erēmīta (Anthologies)” continues with “A Well Watered Woman” by Ashley Connor, which is features some arresting images of a foot on a bathroom tile, or a hand on a wall. There are many other close-ups of skin and body parts, edited rapidly, along with shots from rooftops, bodies of water, clouds, and more. Connor’s short is wonderfully textured, zooming in on a lace curtain, or a screen, or a window. Shadows on a street are playful, as are reflections of bodies.

Images of a field, or flowers, also allow viewers to create associations with pandemic conditions and how life is balanced between being inside and outdoors.

The next short, “Point of View,” by Stefano Falivene, opens promisingly with scenes shot in empty streets of Rome, but once the film enters a house it immerses viewers in Zoom calls — one involving a student discussing Dante, and the other of a man talking about filmmaking in Italy with a colleague. These conversations may capture the way school and work are handled during pandemic conditions, but these scenes are not particularly interesting or as meaningful as when someone talks about feeling anguish over the death of the elderly because of COVID.

Better is “The Florida Project” cinematographer Alexis Zabé’s “Shelter in Place” a documentary portrait of the “community of artists and outsiders that make the Venice [California] Boardwalk their home.” The denizens express their frustration of being in greater limbo during the pandemic, but one man also describes his sense of freedom. “Shelter in Place” is easily the most accessible short in “Erēmīta (Anthologies)” and it ends on a particularly poignant note, with an image of the words “Love; Be Kind” created in a cyclone fence out of yellow caution tape.

The last entry, “Ceux d’en Haut,” by Antoine Herberlé, is a curious exchange between two neighbors (Julia Herberlé-Neubern and Camille Soumar) who live in the same apartment building. There are lovely moments of the neighbors sharing a piece of cake or dancing in silhouette, but the narrative here, which includes reassembling a radio, is a little too thin to be satisfying.

“Erēmīta (Anthologies)” also includes “Piece(s)” directed by Abbas that segment the program.

The film as a whole allows audiences to take what they want from each vignette. The cinematography is often inventive, even if the emotional response is tenuous. But there are moments of Zen, scenes that are boring, scenes that are enthralling, and — because these are experimental shorts — glimpses of nudity and moments of pretention and self-indulgence. Regardless of what one gets out of “Erēmīta (Anthologies),” this ambitious project provides different forms of connection and reflection, and that may be its greatest accomplishment.

“Erēmīta (Anthologies)” will screen in virtual cinemas starting Friday, Feb. 26 in New York, California, Texas, Washington, and Maine with 100% of the filmmakers’ share of revenue from rentals donated to Amnesty International.

You’re vaccinated now. What can you do?

After nearly a year of lockdowns and uncontrollable spread of the coronavirus, Americans are desperate for life to return to normal. The commonly-understood answer answer is “when we’re all vaccinated.” Indeed, since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccines have been a symbol of hope — yet the newly-vaccinated are being confronted with a different reality. Instead of feeling confident about safely mingling with people unmasked and inside, the vaccinated aren’t rushing out to host raves and make-out parties (nor are they encouraged to by public health experts). As some experts have mused, getting vaccinated isn’t a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”

The confusion and disappointment over what you can actually do differently once vaccinated is in part due to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s comments and verbal guidance. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has previously warned that vaccinated people shouldn’t dine indoors or go to movie theaters just yet. Doctors largely agree that even the vaccinated have to take similar pandemic safety precautions — such as avoiding close contact with others, wearing a mask, and avoiding indoor gatherings.

Of course, with such a high unvaccinated population, safety precautions in public spaces have become normalized, and will be for a while. But what about in private? How does gathering work when some people have, and haven’t, been vaccinated? What about if you throw a COVID-19 survivor into the mix?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to provide specific guidance on the more real-world situation vaccinated people are encountering. Fortunately, Fauci said he anticipates that the CDC will soon update its guidelines to include more direct guidance for fully vaccinated people.

“I believe you’re going to be hearing more of the recommendations of how you can relax the stringency of some of the things, particularly when you’re dealing with something like your own personal family when people have been vaccinated,” Fauci said. He added that the CDC wants “to make sure they sit down, talk about it, look at the data and then come out with a recommendation based on the science.”

However, Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center, tells Salon he’s worried that all the focus on what you can’t do has been undermining the benefits of the vaccine. And he thinks people should feel free to do what they want once they’re vaccinated, especially with other vaccinated people.

“There has been, I think, an overemphasis on things not changing when you’re vaccinated — and I think that really is underselling the benefits of this vaccine,” Adalja said. “I tell people to pursue whatever activities they want to pursue as long as they’re vaccinated and wait two weeks [after the second dose], and if you’re doing activities with another vaccinated person on the same timeline, there’s really no issue at all.”

However, Adalja added that he’s somewhat in the minority with his opinion.

“I think you’ll talk to somebody else and they’ll say something completely opposite,” Adalja said.

Indeed, Adalja’s comments highlight an ongoing dilemma, that public health officials, doctors and scientists are divided on what vaccinated individuals can and cannot do in society. That’s because the data is still forthcoming — and data is at the core of the mass confusion.

When asked what vaccinated people can and cannot do, right now, Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California–San Francisco, answered with more caution.

“There are some things you can do differently, if you’re around other vaccinated people you don’t have to wear a mask all the time, but that really applies to small gatherings, in a house — that doesn’t mean 80 people,” Rutherford said. “But until we get most people vaccinated, you’re always going to have to take some precautions.”

Rutherford said he suggests that vaccinated people assume they’re part of the 5 percent “failed vaccination” group. As explained by the World Health Organization, vaccine efficacy is the percentage of “reduction in disease incidence in a vaccinated group compared to an unvaccinated group under optimal conditions.” Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have nearly 95 percent when it comes to vaccine efficacy, while the forthcoming Johnson & Johnson vaccine has about 66 percent efficacy. Rutherford said there’s a small chance that vaccinated people can get infected — with either symptomatic or asymptomatic cases — and spread the virus.

“There’s a five-percent failure rate, so there’s a chance that they might not be immune,” Rutherford said.

But as Salon has reported, the efficacy of these vaccines is extremely high — especially when compared to other vaccines, like the flu vaccines, which are often below 50 percent efficacy. And then there’s the nagging question as to whether or not vaccinated people can spread the coronavirus to unvaccinated people. Notably, new data published by researchers in the United Kingdom indicated that the vaccine stops transmission. A separate study from Israel found similar results. More data is expected within the next couple of months, perhaps making this concern a moot issue.

Monica Gandhi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California-San Francisco, told Salon the real-world data that’s emerged over the last week has been “incredible,” in part because it indicates that the vaccines are reducing transmission and keeping people nearly 100 percent safe from getting severe cases of COVID-19.

“So, what can vaccinated people do after they’re vaccinated? Well, they’re safe from what led us to pay attention to SARS-CoV-2 to begin with, which is severe disease, and I mean 100 percent safe, and they are also not likely to transmit it to others,” Gandhi said. “So, with fellow vaccinees, they should do whatever they’d like — they should have dinner, they should gather in groups, they should go to the indoor dining rooms that are opening.”

All three experts agreed that in private spaces, all vaccinated people should feel free to do whatever they want—no masks, no distance. However, the opinions on how vaccinated people can safely mingle with unvaccinated people — and people who had COVID-19 but still aren’t vaccinated — differed.

When asked if people who are unvaccinated can visit with vaccinated people now, Adalja said he thinks it’s safe, specifically in the situation where, let’s say, a younger person wants to visit with their vaccinated grandparents.

“Obviously, nothing has a zero risk, but yes I think it’s safe,” Adalja said. “I don’t think that there is a very high risk of a vaccinated person getting an asymptomatic infection.”

What about a vaccinated, small group of friends having an unvaccinated group over for dinner? Rutherford said he doesn’t think that’s safe.

“That’s a bad idea, eating and drinking are the worst because you take your masks off,” Rutherford said. “But if everybody’s been vaccinated, that’s different — I would feel comfortable having a dinner indoors without masks.”

Gandhi said everyone has to “decide with their level of comfort, based on the data” how willing they are to mingle unvaccinated and vaccinated people together.

“A vaccinated person against an unvaccinated person in your family, and your decision to want to be close to that person, I think depends on your personal comfort level with the data,” Gandhi said. “The problem is that restrictions in society are not going to ease until everyone is vaccinated, so when they go to indoor dining they will have all of those restrictions in place, including the waiters wearing masks and distancing from other people, and that’s absolutely fair because we have an massive unvaccinated portion of our society.”

But what about vaccinated people hanging out with people who have recovered from having COVID-19, but aren’t vaccinated?

“Natural immunity generates a strong antibody, T cell and B cell responses, and you likely cannot get it [COVID-19] again, and likely you can’t pass it on,” Gandhi said. “It’s absolutely true that naturally immune people could certainly, as they have been by the way, hang out without restrictions.”

Rutherford said he would advise the two groups mingling based on when the person had COVID-19.

“If you had it in December, CDC guidance is that you should wait 30 to 90 days to get vaccinated, and what that means is that you’re not high priority because you have naturally acquired immunity,” Rutherford said. “If they had it in March or April of last year, they need to get vaccinated.”

Adalja agreed.

“For all intents and purposes I would treat a recovered person, especially if it’s been within several months that their recovery has been, in many ways as a vaccinated person,” Adalja “Those two can interact without fear. I think the risk is very low.”

Whose rights matter in pandemic America?

In June 1990, future South African President Nelson Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress only months after being released from 27 years in a South African apartheid prison. He reminded the political leadership of the United States that “to deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them.”

Three decades later, Congress would do well to finally heed that warning. In a moment of unprecedented crisis, when 140 million people in the richest country on the planet are poor or low-income, when tens of millions of them are on the verge of eviction and millions more have lost their healthcare in the midst of a pandemic, at a moment when Congress and the president are debating the next Covid-19 relief package, isn’t it finally time for human rights and guarantees to become the standard for any such set of policies?

I was introduced to the idea of using a human rights framework to address racism and poverty when I got involved in the National Union of the Homeless and the National Welfare Rights Union. From poor and dispossessed leaders building a human-rights-at-home movement, I learned about the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). I came to understand how the concept of inalienable rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution meant that all people should be guaranteed the right to jobs that pay living wages, an adequate standard of living, public education, and the ability to thrive (not just barely survive).

Today, Congress is being driven to respond to a crisis that has this country in its grip with a $1.9 trillion relief package. The lesson of history, however, is that such measures, when they align with the basic demands of justice, should not be piecemeal or temporary. They should not be opportunities accessible only to some but rather guarantees of promise and possibility for everyone. Plagues and pandemics are not simply storms to be weathered before a return to what passes for normal. Americans should not be fooled into thinking that the very policies and measures that left this world of ours a wreckage of inequality, racism, and poverty will now lift us out of this mess. Instead, our political leaders would do well to follow the principle of “Everybody In, Nobody Out.”

Matthew Rycroft of the United Kingdom Mission to the U.N. offered a warning to the Security Council appropriate to this pandemic moment:

“How a society treats its most vulnerable — whether children, the infirm or the elderly — is always the measure of its humanity. Even more so during instability and conflict. When a society begins to disregard the vulnerable and their rights, instability and conflict will only grow.”

The Right Not to Be Poor

In 1948, after two bloody world wars punctuated by the Great Depression, the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saw a need to safeguard basic rights and a minimum standard of living for people worldwide. The nations of the U.N., according to human rights scholar Paul Gordon Lauren,

“came to regard the economic and social hardship suffered during the course of the Depression as contributing greatly to the rise of fascist regimes, the emergence of severe global competition, and ultimately to the outbreak of war itself… They believed that poverty, misery, unemployment, and depressed standards of living anywhere in an age of a global economy and a technological shrinking of the world bred instability elsewhere and thereby threatened peace.”

At the time, the American government, ascendant on the international stage, saw some value in the framework of human rights, even if its actions at home and abroad didn’t match up to it. In reality, that same government was putting significant effort into separating political and civil rights from economic rights. It was using every tool in its toolbox from racism to Cold War paranoia to vilify the very idea of economic rights, let alone the interlocking nature of injustice and the need for wholistic remedies.

Social movements suffered from this ideological assault, as Black organizers in the 1950s and 1960s were blocked from the very idea of universal human (including economic) rights and pushed to focus more narrowly on the terrain of “civil rights,” as historian Carol Anderson has so vividly described in her book Eyes Off the Prize. Nearly two decades after the release of the UDHR, even on the heels of major civil rights victories, leaders of the Black freedom movement recognized that too much remained unchanged and a deeper fight was needed.

It was in this context that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and others began to articulate the necessity for a broad movement of the nation’s poor across racial lines. In 1967, a year before he launched the Poor People’s Campaign, he wrote:

“We have left the realm of constitutional rights and we are entering the area of human rights. The Constitution assured the right to vote, but there is no such assurance of the right to adequate housing, or the right to an adequate income. And yet, in a nation which has a gross national product of 750 billion dollars a year [$20 trillion in 2020], it is morally right to insist that every person has a decent house, an adequate education, and enough money to provide basic necessities for one’s family.”

While the language of human rights is still with us today, the old battle lines remain stubbornly drawn as economic rights are cast as impractical and unenforceable and civil rights reduced to statements of unity, while voting rights, immigrant rights, and indigenous rights are mercilessly abridged. The focus, at best, becomes the mitigation of poverty and racism, not their abolition, while the fundamental principles of human rights laid out in the UDHR — universality, equality, and indivisibility — are eternally undercut.

Sometimes economic rights are championed but their exercise drastically narrowed. For instance, a universal right to housing becomes the right to due process in eviction hearings; the right to health or food becomes the right to access certain welfare benefits. The result? Universal economic rights become limited opportunities offered, at best, to a limited population of the poor. In the process, attention is refocused on the individual lives and choices of the poor, rather than on the system that produces their poverty or what could transform it. And sadly enough, it becomes ever easier to ignore what should be the most fundamental of human rights, the right not to be poor.

How to Build Back Better

Recently, the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris announced that, three years after Trump withdrew the country from the U.N. Human Rights Council, it would rejoin as an observer, with the goal of eventually being voted back to full membership. That move, like Biden’s decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization, as well as his intention to reengage with UNESCO and the Iran nuclear deal, undoubtedly reflects his interest in refortifying America’s international position in the post-Trump era. If he really wants to be an international leader and not just an observer when it comes to human rights, however, undoing the nightmare of the Trump years will only be part of the job that lies ahead.

There will be the continuing fight to ensure that Covid-19 relief is not disastrously watered down by false arguments about balanced budgets and deficits. The costs of inaction — a still-soaring death toll of 480,000 and counting and an estimated 460,000 extra deaths over the next decade thanks to pandemic-related unemployment and its costs — far outweigh the price of decisive action now. The deficits that should truly concern Americans are those in people’s paychecks, the lack of food in their refrigerators, and the grim unemployment numbers that make life a misery. Biden and the Democratic leadership have the presidency and a majority in both houses of Congress. Now is the time to move immediately on life-saving measures like raising the minimum wage to $15 (including for tipped workers).

And genuine Covid-19 relief that buoyed our beleaguered nation long enough for vaccines to be widely distributed would just be a start. After all, before the pandemic hit, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health estimated that 250,000 Americans were dying annually from rising hunger, homelessness, and inequality, conditions that have only deepened over the last year. If the recovery from the 2007-2008 Great Recession is any indication, expect difficult years ahead, even when the pandemic eases. After all, that proved to be a low-wage recovery that disproportionately shifted women and people of color into temporary and precarious jobs. Not surprisingly then, in the decade after that recession, savings were spent down and household debt was on the rise — and only then did Covid-19 hit.

Shouldn’t the administration’s response to this crisis and the underlying fissures in our society (so badly exacerbated in the Trump years) be held to a genuine human-rights standard? In December, the Poor People’s Campaign, which I co-chair, released a set of 14 policy priorities for Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, including not just temporary protections meant to weather the present storm, but permanent guarantees around jobs and income, housing, healthcare, and so much else. Such building blocks for a vibrant democracy and a life free of poverty should be treated as inalienable human rights. Grassroots organizers — whether the Nonviolent Medicaid Army fighting for healthcare as a human right, the Border Network for Human Rights struggling for a just immigration system, or the Homes Guarantee project demanding housing as a right, not a commodity — have been making this point for years.

A new social contract built on human rights requires a fundamentally different approach to foreign policy and rampant American militarism as well. President Biden’s recent decision to scale back engagement in the human-rights catastrophe in Yemen is encouraging, though its results remain to be seen. It’s obviously time as well to end this country’s twenty-first-century forever wars, as well as the suffocating economic sanctions imposed on countries like Venezuela and Iran.

It’s morally indefensible that the U.S. spends 53% of every federal discretionary dollaron the Pentagon and that it has more than 800 military bases around the world; that the Pentagon itself is a giant greenhouse-gas emitter; and that this country is not only the largest arms dealer on the planet by far, but continues to “export” weapons of war to our police departments nationwide through the Pentagon’s 1033 program. Washington’s eternally militarized posture has led to countless human rights violations abroad, while only adding to a loss of human rights at home, as vital resources continue to be siphoned from our schools and hospitals into the military.

A governing agenda that wishes to protect the right not to be poor would at some point also have to reckon with a system that, even amid a pandemic, produced record numbers of billionaires. Last year, as unemployment rates reached historic heights, America’s billionaires gained more than $1 trillion in wealth.

America’s celebrity culture tracks the day-to-day life of the richest men on the planet like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and celebrates the charitable Covid-19 fighting spirit of people like Bill Gates. His big donations shouldn’t, however, distract us from the fact that the wealth of the world’s 10 richest men, including Gates, could buy vaccinesfor every person on the planet.

Intellectual Property Rights in a Pandemic World

As 2020 was ending and the world awaited the arrival of multiple Covid-19 vaccines, India and South Africa made an urgent proposal to the World Trade Organization. They requested that it temporarily suspend intellectual property rights to ensure that all nations could access and produce vaccines and other medical technologies like ventilators, masks, and protective gear. Dozens of other countries came forward to support that proposal, but a few powerful, patent-holding countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and members of the European Union rejected and ultimately quashed it.

On January 18, 2021, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warnedthat the world was “on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure” because of the unequal distribution of vaccines between rich and poor countries. Indeed, a new reportestimates that at least 85 countries — mostly in Africa and parts of Asia — won’t have widespread coverage until late 2022 or even 2023, if ever. Meanwhile, vaccine hoarding among rich countries has already reached a fever pitch. And this global reality is being replayed in terms of vaccine distribution within the richest countries as well. In the United States, early evidence suggests that the wealthy are already getting significantly more vaccinations than the poor and people of color, even though Covid-19 rates are far higher in poor communities.

While all of this may have been predictable, it wasn’t inevitable. The WHO has cautioned that a “me-first” approach to the vaccines leads to shortages, hoarding, and the pushing-up of prices. And although the profits from this intellectual property are private, the six front-running vaccine candidates have had a total of over $12 billion of taxpayer and public money poured into them.

Intellectual property rights and exclusive vaccine contracts with Big Pharma aren’t the only reasons why Covid-19 is morphing ever more distinctly into a poor people’s pandemic. They are, however, barriers to a universal and equitable response to a virus that has exposed the world’s fragile interconnectedness. With a deadly novel virus on the loose and mutating, at a moment when access to a vaccine may be the difference between life and death, profit over people remains a hegemonic principle. And horrifyingly enough, changes in intellectual property policies over the last few decades may have done even more to increase inequality on this planet than tax cuts for the wealthy.

In the last year, we Americans have battled Covid-19 largely through the same world of trickle-down economics and “austerity” for the poor that was such a reality of the prepandemic world. The Trump administration’s response to the disease was a bitter mixture of triage, denial, and greed. The sins of our leaders will leave deep and lasting wounds, but there is, at least, a lesson to be learned from all the suffering, if we’re brave enough to take it in: life should come before profit, human rights before property rights. Amen.

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here.

Rachel Maddow calls out Joe Manchin’s “bad faith” opposition to Biden’s nominees

On Tuesday night’s edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the MSNBC host bashed Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for putting forth what she called a “bad faith” opposition to Joe Biden’s agenda in much the same way that Republicans like Sens. Richard Burr and Ted Cruz have.

According to Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Richard Burr, their opposition to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stems from the fact that he isn’t a doctor, not that he is simply a member of the Democratic party.

But Maddow quickly shot down that complaint as disingenuous by pointing out that both senators backed former President Donald Trump’s former HHS secretary — who was also not a physician.

“Sen Cruz voted for him even though you’ll be shocked to learn, Alex Azar is also not a doctor,” she said. “‘See, it’s unacceptable to nominate a non-doctor to be health secretary unless that nominee is from a Republican president in which case ….. I have to go.'”

Sen. Burr took issue with Becerra’s experience serving in Congress overlooking health issues. “Sen. Burr said that’s not appropriate experience for someone joining the Cabinet to work on health issues,” Maddow noted, adding, “That’s his stance against Xavier Becerra being health secretary. Yes, he worked on health stuff a ton in Congress but that’s not the experience you need for being health secretary in the Cabinet.”

Maddow then turned her attention to the other side of the aisle, calling on Manchin to rethink his opposition to Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tande.

“The other person who is playing that same bad faith game within the Democratic Party is West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin,” she said. “He has decided this year, with a president of his own party, with a Democratic president in power, that he’s got a new standard now, now he says that Biden nominee Neera Tanden has a history of having said things like calling Mitch McConnell ‘Voldemort,’ or calling Ted Cruz ‘heartless.”

Oh c’mon @Sen_JoeManchin voted for Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr. If folks don’t see this as the misogynist trolling that it is? https://t.co/NXbjf5IS7I

— Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) February 22, 2021

She concluded with a call to Sen. Manchin to reconsider his decision and acknowledge the double standards he is applying on President Biden’s and former President Trump’s nominees.

“I think that Senator Joe Manchin not only knows his power, but I also think that he is an introspective guy who thinks about his ethical role in the world,” she said. “And I find it impossible to believe that he is not reconsidering his position on this, given the starkness of the doubles standard that he is applying without even any effort to defend it.”

The committee vote on Tanden’s nomination was postponed Wednesday morning.

Watch below:

French-inspired lentils are the easiest cure for your winter blues—and they’re impossible to mess up

You need a cure for your winter blues when the gray sky’s been hanging roughly six inches over your head for a solid week, when the wind is rattling the windows and when the idea of a snow day just isn’t cute anymore. I give you: lentils.

Lentils, like their old friend barley, too often get typecast in the role of “soup thing.” This is unfortunate, as anyone who’s ever eaten dal will attest, because lentils are just so, so good. They’re cheap and nutritious; they keep in the pantry forever. Lentils make you feel like you’ve been fed — like really fed, with real food. I can’t improve upon the great Laurie Colwin’s assessment in her classic “Home Cooking” that “lentils are friendly — the Miss Congeniality of the bean world. They take well to almost anything.”

I’ve always been a lentil lover, but it was Susan Herrmann Loomis’ lovely “French Farmhouse Cookbook” that made me truly appreciate their casual elegance. Loomis, an American living and teaching culinary arts in Normandy, doesn’t just write about food — she celebrates the people who cook it. In the book, she recounts sharing a simple meal and being presented by her hosts, at its conclusion, with a branch of dried lentil pods as if it were a bouquet. There’s something about that image that has always stuck with me — the beauty and generosity of it.

What’s your winter comfort food? Tell us in the comments!

You could make this dish more elaborate. You could neatly and finely dice your carrots and onion. You could sauté the vegetables and aromatics in a skillet first to deepen the flavors. You could deglaze said skillet with a quick pour of a good but not precious red wine. You could add a fried egg on top, because a fried egg on top is never a bad idea. Or you could do as I prefer, and just chop up everything roughly, simmer it all in a big pot and go listen to old Radiohead albums for a half hour.

Any way that you arrive at dinnertime, this is a meal that’s a warm blanket on a cold night, a snoring dog at your feet. The kind of thing that makes you like winter again. It comes together with what you’ve already got on hand, and it’s all but impossible to screw up. That’s lentils for you: friendly, forgiving and deeply comforting.

* * *

Recipe: Winter Lentils

Adapted from Susan Herrmann Loomis

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup of dried lentils (Puy, aka French, are suggested — but use what you’ve got!)
1 medium yellow onion (or a few stalks of green onion)
2 carrots, cut into rounds (Add a parsnip or stalk of celery if you like.)
4 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly (or more, if you like)
1 fresh bay leaf, if you’ve got it
2 1/2 cups of vegetable broth (or use water — it’s fine!)
1 cup of diced cooked ham (You can substitute chorizo, salami, prosciutto or any salty cooked meat you enjoy.)
A generous glug of olive oil
Cracked black pepper and sea salt to taste (A big pinch of za’atar goes nicely here.)

Tip: You can easily make this dish vegan. Just leave out the meat!

Instructions:

Add first six ingredients to a large saucepan or pot with a heavy bottom.
Simmer over medium high heat for roughly 30 minutes. Brown, red or yellow lentils will cook faster. Check now and then to make sure the pan isn’t getting dry. If it is, add more broth or water, a half cup at a time.
Check for doneness by tasting a few lentils. They should be tender — not too firm.
Fold in the ham, and stir to incorporate.
Dish out to a big serving plate. Season with salt, pepper and a nice pour of olive oil.

Serving suggestions: Serve with green salad and aggressively lemony dressing and French bread slathered with brie. Or just eat unaccompanied, because it’s already perfect.

More Quick & Dirty: Have you read the first two columns?

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

Mike Pence rallies Republicans to vote against COVID relief bill backed by a majority of Americans

Congressional Republicans are hoping to trim down an already delayed pandemic relief bill crafted in conjuction with Biden’s White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress, despite the fact that large majorities of the American public, as well as much of corporate America, are in support of its passage.

The $1.7 trillion package contains a vast array of provisions including but it not limited to the following relief efforts: $1,400 checks for individuals making less than $75,000, a minimum wage hike to $15 per hour, pension resolution and subsidies for laid-off workers, an extension of unemployment benefits until August, tens of billions of dollars dedicated to a comprehensive vaccine rollout, and an increase of the $2,000 Child Tax Credit.

The bill has support from over 150 top business leaders in America, like Stephen Schwartzman, the chairman and CEO of Blackstone, Sundar Pichaithe, CEO of Google, John Zimmer, co-founder and president of Lyft, Brian Roberts the chairman and CEO of Comcast, and John Stankey (CEO of AT&T).

It also has a wide breadth of support from the American people.

According to a poll conducted by Yahoo News in early February, “Ordinary Americans overwhelmingly favor most of Biden’s agenda.” Fifty-eight percent of Americans, for example, support Biden’s minimum wage increase. Seventy-four percent support $2,000 stimulus checks, which amounts to $600 more than the current provision.

Republicans, meanwhile, are attempting to keep all their members in line against the bill as lawmakers set the stage for a floor vote in the House on Friday, calling former Vice President Mike Pence back to the place where he was almost killed by an angry mob a little more than a month ago:

GOP leaders believe that the moment is similar to 2009, when a new Democratic President pushed through a major relief plan with scant GOP backing — more than a year before their party took back control of Congress, a message that former Vice President Mike Pence privately delivered to a group of conservative lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon.

Indeed, Republicans believe that public opinion will shift on the matter — eventually.

The bill is expected to receive an even-split vote at 50-50, meaning that, if a single Democrat breaks rank with their caucus, the bill could be scuttled in the Senate. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have signaled their disapproval of the plan’s minimum wage hike, casting doubt over whether the bill will successfully be pushed through via budget reconciliation.

“If the Democrats continue down the path they’re on, and that is to not make any attempt to try and get Republican input or ideas,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., “It makes it hard for any of our members, even those that might be inclined to do so to vote for it, to vote for anything. So, if it’s in its current contours, it’s hard to see very many, if any, Republicans being for it, especially given the way the Democrats have approached it.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, echoed Thune’s concerns in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, calling “the Biden stimulus” an “unsound economic policy.” Romney said to CNN on Tuesday: “I think the leadership in the House and the Senate just wants to blast ahead with reconciliation without any input from Republicans at all, and that’s not the way good legislation is crafted. Good legislation has both sides working on things, knocking off the edges, finding a better and better bill.”

On Monday, a three-page memo written by Republican Study Committee was disseminated to GOP lawmakers pushing Republicans to challenge Democrats on “all the left-wing items” they are “hoping the public won’t find about.”

However, Democrats have steadfastly maintained that the urgency of the relief package far outweighs and wonkish concerns over specific policy proposals. “All of us will have differences of opinions,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Maine, who has been a staunch supporter of the $15 wage hike, “This is a 1.9 trillion dollar bill, I have differences and concerns about this bill,” he said, “but at the end of the day we are going to support the President of the United States.”

Elon Musk’s climate change prize is empty and worthless

About a week ago, my Twitter timeline lit up with people tweeting at Elon Musk with pictures of trees.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason: Musk, the richest person in the world, had announced that he was running a $100 million competition to identify the best carbon capture technology.

Elon Musk is not the first wealthy man to offer a prize to find a solution to climate change. In 2007, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson created the $25 million Virgin Earth Challenge to find commercial solutions for removing carbon dioxide from the air. Late in 2020, Prince William announced his Earthshot Prize, which will award five prizes of $1.3 million each for the next 10 years, a total of $65 million. The Earthshot Prize, in part, “aims to turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism that we can rise to the biggest challenges of our time.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s approach is similar: last February, he pledged to give grants worth a total of $10 billion to environmental organizations and scientists to fight climate change. The first 16 winners were announced in November 2020. Amazon’s corporate climate change funding, like that of other technology companies, partially centers on finding carbon capture solutions, just like Musk’s prize.

None of these prizes will make substantial dent in our fight against climate change. They may support some good individual work (I have no doubt that the NGO recipients of Bezos’s first Earth fund grants deserved the money!), but funding competitions and prestigious prizes is a missed opportunity by the world’s wealthiest – the individuals who, research shows, are most responsible for climate change – to make a real, material difference in the planet’s trajectory.

These prizes and pledges are hollow and egotistical. Despite the developments promoted on the slickly-designed sustainability section of their website, Amazon’s carbon emissions rose by 15 percent in 2020. Elon Musk is already planning to abandon Earth and move to Mars, so it is hard to take his intentions to save our green planet seriously. And even Richard Branson, a vocal proponent of making aviation carbon-neutral, surely knows that $25 million just isn’t going to save the world.

Some scientists have said that we could temporarily halt the increase in global emissions for $300 billion – that’s just 1.5 times the net worth of Jeff Bezos. That figure is just a stopgap measure to buy the planet time to come up with permanent solutions. If Bezos gave 98 percent of his worth to the cause (a la Jeremy Grantham), and asked his friends to do the same, we could raise that money in a snap. To completely halt climate change will cost trillions of dollars. On the one hand, climate tech prizes are agonizingly close to producing real change, if only a few billionaires decided to be selfless for once, and on the other are laughably paltry in comparison to the sum the world really needs.

So, who are these prizes truly for? Scientists and policy makers know how to stave off the worst effects of climate change, and it is pretty straight-forward, though not easy: slashcarbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030, and cut them to “net zero” by 2050. The carbon capture technologies that Musk and Branson are looking for with their flashy competitions will be part of the effort to hit net zero emissions, but that doesn’t mean that on their own they are a magic-bullet technical solution, like a vaccine that will inoculate us against climate change. The bulk of our efforts to reduce emissions will require governments and societies to make difficult choices and weigh detailed trade-offs – real, functional, policy work.

Funding prizes, making grants, and “inspiring optimism” is not the real work of addressing climate change. Instead, it is a clever diversion meant to convince us that the prize-givers are trying to help. While society is oohing and aahing over their perceived generosity, they are free to continue with their carbon-emitting (and space-polluting) business. Even viewed in the best, least cynical light, these acts of philanthropy are just tinkering around the edges of a crisis.

These men – Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Prince William, Jeff Bezos, and countless others – hold immense power, and their wealth means they have extensive networks of people who want to work with them. If they really want to help solve climate change, they must leverage their power and their networks to push governments toward taking substantial action for the planet. Now that the US is back in the Paris Agreement, vocally supporting comprehensive climate change action and pushing for the Green New Deal would be an excellent place to start. They should also follow the recommendations of Project Drawdown, and begin to quietly invest in revolutionizing our electric, agricultural, and education systems so that they work better for society and the planet.

To be fair, Amazon and other companies are making moves in the right direction, by investing in carbon dioxide-capturing concrete and forest conservation. Every dollar they give counts. But, given their enormous net worth (Amazon is reportedly worth over $1.6 trillion), they could easily and must do more – especially since their operations amp up global carbon emissions. Amazon, specifically, could start by investing in renewable energy to power its expansive data centers; as of 2019, it was falling appallingly short of its commitment to power Amazon Web Services with 100 percent renewable energy.

Climate change is the most complicated economic, social, and environmental problem that humanity has ever faced. Unfortunately, there isn’t going to be a single miracle technological solution to this challenge, no matter how many Earthshot prizes are offered. We got to this point through hundreds of years of perverse economic incentives and environmental externalities. Getting out of it will require us to drastically change our behavior, our expectations for how we engage with the world, and our priorities.

If the world’s wealthiest truly want to alter the course of climate change, they’ll need to do the same. Giving away billions of dollars to causes like composting, securing Indigenous land rights, and promoting women’s health and education probably won’t garner as much publicity as creating a flashy prize, but it will do vastly more good for the planet and the rest of us living on it.

Related reading

Hillary Clinton piles on Ted Cruz for his Cancun trip with thinly veiled jab about family dog

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lambasted Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for traveling to Cancun, Mexico to escape the bitter winter storm his constituents were left to face.

On Friday, Feb. 18, Clinton took to Twitter with advice for Texas voters as she took a subliminal jab at Cruz. Although she did not specifically name the Texas senator, it was clear who she was referring to. “Don’t vote for anyone you wouldn’t trust with your dog,” Clinton tweeted.

Don't vote for anyone you wouldn't trust with your dog.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 19, 2021

The tweet came as reports surfaced about Cruz’s family dog, Snowflake. With a photo of the dog standing in a doorway at Cruz’s home, Houston-based journalist Michael Hardy tweeted, “Just drove by Ted Cruz’s house in Houston. His lights are off but a neighbor told me the block got its power back last night. Also, Ted appears to have left behind the family poodle.”

Just drove by Ted Cruz’s house in Houston. His lights are off but a neighbor told me the block got its power back last night. Also, Ted appears to have left behind the family poodle. pic.twitter.com/TmLyGQkASy

— Michael Hardy (@mkerrhardy) February 18, 2021

Although the power was restored at the senator’s home on Thursday evening, Cruz and his wife had no way of knowing that at the time they left their dog for their flight to Mexico. Hardy also pointed this out.

He added, “When Ted Cruz left for Mexico the power was out. His wife Heidi texted a friend it was freezing. While he was gone the power came back. So Snowflake was in the cold for part of a day, but it could well have been longer. Ted left a security guard to take care of Snowflake.”

Other Republicans have drawn criticism over their treatment of dogs. Mitt Romney told a story of strapping a dog in a shielded crate to the roof of his car during a road trip. And former President Donald Trump frequently used “dog” as an insult and showed no desire to care for animals.

Snowflake quickly caught the attention of Twitter users and a parody account has even been dedicated to him. After returning to Texas, Cruz’s office released a statement defending his actions. The embattled lawmaker claimed his daughters were the reason for the trip.

“Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon,” Cruz wrote.

He added, “My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas. We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm.”

As a result of his actions, Texas Democrats are now calling for Cruz’s resignation.

“The Texas Democratic Party calls on Ted Cruz to resign or be expelled from office,” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said. “Barring that, we will put all of the resources we have into defeating him and every Texas Republican who abandoned us in this disaster, including Governor [Greg] Abbott and Lieutenant Governor [Dan] Patrick, in 2022 and 2024. We are in a battle for the soul of our state. We must restore ethics, competence, and a government that works for the people.”

GOP is still gaslighting about the Capitol riot: Trump’s allies claim coup and QAnon never happened

Donald Trump’s insurrection failed. While historians will likely debate for decades how close he really came to succeeding, one thing is for certain: His failure has put his most prominent defenders in a tough spot. Instead of lining up to sing the praises of President-for-Life Donald Trump, which is where they want to be, his sycophants are stuck trying to make excuses for, minimize, or deflect attention from Trump’s failure.

First, they tried to minimize Trump’s responsibility for the insurrection. That tactic fell apart after an impeachment trial where the prosecutors made such an airtight case for Trump’s guilt that even people who voted to acquit him pretended it was on a legal technicality, rather than try to argue for his innocence. Now, some folks on the right are trying a new tactic, one you might call the “go big or go home” strategy. Trump’s loudest defenders are now outright denying that the nation saw what we all clearly saw on January 6.

During a Tuesday hearing about the security failures that led to the Capitol riot, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin unleashed a bunch of conspiracy theories denying that all those people waving Trump flags while chanting “no Trump, no peace” were, in fact, there for Trump.

Ron Johnson is using his questioning time during the Capitol security hearing to promote a conspiracy theory that the January 6 insurrectionists weren’t actually Trump supporters, but were “provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” pic.twitter.com/t72QkHDbaG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2021

Johnson has also been rejecting the idea that the insurrection was a serious event because he falsely claims it wasn’t an armed insurrection. This, of course, is flat-out false. Law enforcement seized Moltov cocktails, bear spray, guns, and knives from insurrectionists. Others improvised weapons, often using flagpoles or fire hydrants, or seized weapons from the Capitol police officers they then attacked. The likely reason it wasn’t worse is D.C.’s strict gun laws prevented many would-be rioters from making it to the Capitol in the first place and discouraged others from carrying guns for fear of being stopped by police.

Johnson was echoing a narrative that has been percolating up, as these narratives do, from the right-wing fringes. And there’s every reason to be concerned that this will follow the same path so many other right-wing conspiracy theories do, where it starts from the fringes, gets amplified by people like Johnson, and eventually settles into the common wisdom of the Republican Party.

“There was no insurrection, there was no coup,” said Dinesh D’Souza, a fake historian, convicted criminal, and conservative pundit still in good standing enough to appear on Laura Ingraham’s show Fox News Tuesday night. Instead, he insisted the heavily videoed and photographed insurrection is “a false narrative” invented by liberals who want to say “Trump was presiding over all the social unrest so they could then try to blame on him.”

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

The “don’t believe your lying eyes” strategy was in full bloom on Tucker Carlson’s Tuesday night show in a segment where Carlson denied the existence of QAnon, the online conspiracy theory cult that many of the insurrectionists are engaged in.

“We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which, in the end, we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it,” Carlson said, insisting that “cable news” and “politicians talking on TV” are “the ones spreading disinformation to Americans” by talking about the existence of QAnon.

Of course, QAnon is very real and well-documented — more so than most cults, since it exists mostly online and thus has a lengthy written history across many websites, including 8kun, where the “Q drops”, which are believed to be authored by the people who own the site, are published. Indeed, Carlson is no doubt aware that a good deal of his own audience believes the QAnon conspiracy theory, and likely are taking this broadcast as a coded signal to play dumb about it.

The word “gaslighting” gets thrown around a lot, but this is very much the definition of the word. It comes from the psychology of abuse, and refers to the way an abuser might, for instance, beat his wife and then pretend the next day it didn’t happen, calling her hysterical if she insists it did. Gaslighting isn’t just lying. It’s denying an obvious truth, and insisting that anyone who disagrees is crazy or is making stuff up. It was a favorite tactic of Trump’s, who kicked off his presidency by gaslighting the nation about the size of his inauguration crowd. And now it’s being used by his allies, to argue that the evidence of our own eyes and ears isn’t real.

Lying about something so obvious seems like it’s a bad strategy, but perversely, it can often work better than other strategies conservatives use to mislead or deflect. The brazenness is why it works. It induces helplessness in interlocutors by signaling that there is no reasoning with you. What’s the point of arguing with someone who will say up is down and black is white?

As Philip Bump of the Washington Post noted Wednesday, “It is probably not a strong indication that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) commands a lot of respect from his peers that the claims he offered during a hearing Tuesday about the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 generally were met with a shrug.” While Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., did try to push back a little, it’s true that Johnson’s diatribe was so dumb that most other senators just said nothing at all, because how do you argue with someone talking such utter nonsense? There is also a not-unreasonable fear that many have that they’ll get dirty themselves by getting into an argument with someone so clearly unhinged.

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

But what ends up happening is that the wild conspiracy theory is allowed to go unchallenged. It’s why the strategy of the Big Lie is so effective and Trump was so reliant on it. Smaller lies can be debated and debunked. A Big Lie, however, exhausts your opponents and ends up going without rebuttal. Trump did this with his lies about election fraud. They were so big, so ridiculous, and so obviously untrue that it was hard to even know where to begin with a debunking. The result is that a strong majority of Republican voters now claim to believe Trump won the election.

That’s what Carlson, D’Souza, and Johnson — as well other Republicans who adopt this lie — are counting on.

Denying the sky is blue breaks the will of their opponents to argue back. It frees them to spread this lie unchecked until it becomes the received wisdom of the Republican base. Soon, we can expect drunk uncles around the nation to count on their own stubborn unwillingness to admit evidence to “win” arguments over whether the insurrection is real. Who needs facts when you have lies that work by exhausting your opposition?

Top officials testify they never saw FBI warning of possible Jan. 6 “war” against Congress

Former top U.S. Capitol security officials blamed intelligence failures and each other for the deadly Jan. 6 riot in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned after the riot, testified at a joint committee hearing that intelligence the department received from federal law enforcement and Washington, D.C., police suggested that the threat of violence on Jan. 6 was “remote” or “improbable.”

“Without the intelligence to properly prepare, the USCP was significantly outnumbered and left to defend the Capitol against an extremely violent mob,” he said.

But the FBI had indeed warned of potential violence the day before the attack in a memo that Sund said he had not seen until this week.

“This is a report that I am just learning about within the last [24 hours], they informed me yesterday of the report,” he said.

The FBI field office in Norfolk, Virginia, issued a threat report to the Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police on Jan. 5, warning that extremists heading to the city were prepared for “war.”

Former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger and former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, both of whom also resigned after the attack, said they were unaware of the warning ahead of the riot. Acting D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee told the senators that he never saw the memo, which had not been “fully vetted,” before the attack.

“What the FBI sent, ma’am, on Jan. 5 was in the form of an email,” Contee said. “I would certainly think that something as violent as an insurrection at the Capitol would warrant a phone call or something.”

Sund agreed that intelligence suggesting a “coordinated attack” would have been “extremely helpful.”

“That type of information could have given us sufficient, advance warning to prep, plan for an attack such as what we saw,” he said.

The memo, which was obtained last month by The Washington Post, showed that extremists planned to meet in states like Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina before heading to Washington.

“An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal,” the document said.

Steven D’Antuono, the head of the FBI Washington field office, told reporters after the attack that the memo was shared with all law enforcement partners, including Capitol Police and D.C. police, but Sund testified on Tuesday that the warning never made its way up the chain of command. D’Antuono said last month that the intelligence was not actionable and that the FBI did not believe there would be anything more than a lawful demonstration.

Numerous news outlets have noted for weeks, however, that rioters openly planned the attack in public view on social networks. Some Capitol Hill staffers were warned not to come in to work on Jan. 6 because of the threat posed by the planned protest, according to the Post.

The Jan. 5 memo came just two days after an internal Capitol Police intelligence report obtained by the Post last month warned of potential violence that could target “Congress itself.”

“Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th,” the report said, noting that some organizers were urging Trump supporters to arm themselves with weapons and combat gear and that the rally was “promoted by President Trump himself.”

“The Stop the Steal protest in particular does not have a permit, but several high profile speakers, including Members of Congress are expected to speak at the event,” the document said. “This combined with Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike.”

Sund previously told reporters that he had asked Irving and Stenger for permission to put the National Guard on standby but said they refused, fearing the “optics” of having troops around the Capitol, and suggested he informally ask the National Guard to be on alert. But on Tuesday all three men maintained that intelligence did not suggest that the Jan. 6 protest would be markedly different from previous pro-Trump or left-wing protests in the city.

“There were clearly intelligence issues with information that was out there that didn’t get to the right people, actions that weren’t taken,” Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told reporters on Tuesday.

The FBI has also maintained that the intelligence was “raw” and lacked “specific or credible details.” But Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., said the intelligence failure showed that law enforcement needs to take online chatter more seriously.

“The federal government must start taking these online threats seriously to ensure they don’t cross into real-world violence,” he said.

The officials who testified Tuesday also discussed the delay in the National Guard’s response, though they contradicted each others’ timelines.

Sund testified that he called Irving at 1:09 p.m. to request National Guard assistance. Irving denied Sund’s claim and said he had no recollection or record of a call from Sund until after 2 p.m., at which point he and Stenger requested National Guard help. The Pentagon has said that it received at least three phone calls between 1:26 p.m. and 2:26 p.m. from Capitol Police, D.C. police and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser requesting National Guard assistance, but the decision to send in the National Guard did not come until 3 p.m. Troops did not actually arrive until 5:40 p.m., by which time police had already quelled the chaos.

Contee said that he was on a call with Sund and Pentagon leaders at 2:22 p.m. and was “stunned at the response from Department of the Army, which was reluctant to send the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol.”

“While I certainly understand the importance of both planning and public perception — the factors cited by the staff on the call — these issues become secondary when you are watching your employees, vastly outnumbered by a mob, being physically assaulted,” he said. “I was able to quickly deploy MPD and issue directives to them while they were in the field, and I was honestly shocked that the National Guard could not — or would not — do the same.”

Sund said that Army Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt pushed back on the request because he didn’t like “the visual of the National Guard standing a line with the Capitol in the background” and troops ultimately did not arrive until “4.5 hours after I first requested them and 3.5 hours after my request was approved by the Capitol Police Board.”

Sund blamed Irving and Stenger for slowing the response.

“Irving stated that he was concerned about the ‘optics’ of having National Guard present and didn’t feel that the intelligence supported it,” he said, adding that Stenger also did not approve the request for National Guard assistance ahead of the riot and instead “suggested I ask them how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance.”

“I notified the two sergeants-at-arms by 1:09 p.m. that I urgently needed support and asked them to declare a state of emergency and authorize the National Guard,” Sund said. “I was advised by Mr. Irving that he needed to run it up the chain of command. I continued to follow up with Mr. Irving, who was with Mr. Stenger at the time, and he advised that he was waiting to hear back from congressional leadership but expected authorization at any moment.”

Irving denied that the conversation had ever happened, and also that he waited for authorization from congressional leaders or was particularly concerned about “optics.”

“That is categorically false,” Irving said. “‘Optics,’ as portrayed in the media, did not determine our security posture. Safety was always paramount when evaluating security for Jan. 6. We did discuss whether the intelligence warranted having troops at the Capitol, and our collective judgment at that time was no, the intelligence did not warrant that.”

The former security officials also took issue with the assessment from retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who was tapped by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to review the security failure at the Capitol. Honoré said that Capitol officers “were doing their job” during the mayhem but suggested that Capitol Police leaders may have been “complicit” in the attack.

“I’ve just never seen so much incompetence, so they’re either that stupid, or ignorant or complicit,” Honoré said last week.

The Tuesday hearing did not focus at all on recent reports that six Capitol officers have been suspended and 29 others are under investigation for their actions related to the Jan. 6 riot.

“Even our best efforts were not enough to stop this unprecedented assault on the Capitol,” Sund testified. “However, casting blame solely on the United States Capitol Police leadership is not only misplaced, but it also minimizes what truly occurred that day. The focus going forward needs to be on the efforts to improve intelligence and the coordination of security measures between all involved agencies.”

The officials also pushed back on claims by Republicans and conservative media hosts like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who falsely argued on Monday that “there is no evidence that white supremacists were responsible for what happened on January 6. That’s a lie.”

All four officials who testified on Tuesday said that white supremacists and extremist groups were involved in the attack.

Capitol Police Captain Carneysha Mendoza noted to the committees before the officials’ testimony that “multiple white supremacist groups, including the Proud Boys and others” had come to Washington for previous rallies after the election. Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, some of whom now face conspiracy charges, can clearly be seen in numerous videos leading the assault on the Capitol.

Mendoza said that the Jan. 6 riot was “by far the worst of the worst” that she had seen in her 19-year career and argued that even if there were 10 times as many officers “this battle would have been just as devastating.”

“At some point, my right arm got wedged between the rioters and railing along the wall. A CDU sergeant pulled my arm free and had he not, I’m certain it would have been broken,” said Mendoza, an Army veteran. “I proceeded to the Rotunda, where I noticed a heavy smoke-like residue and smelled what I believed to be military-grade CS gas — a familiar smell. It was mixed with fire extinguisher spray deployed by the rioters. The rioters continued to deploy CS inside the rotunda. I received chemical burns to my face that still have not healed to this day.”

The extinction crisis: Coming to a dinner table near you?

For 10,000 years we’ve relied on domesticated plants for our staple foods. But it’s the wild relatives of those crops that are becoming increasingly important to our future food supply.

Over hundreds of thousands of years, these wild foods have adapted to pests, diseases, extreme climates and other inhospitable conditions. That makes their genes particularly important for plant breeding, especially when we’re looking for foods that can withstand a changing climate. Some varieties are still key food and cultural resources today, too.

In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have taken stock of these wild foods and the conservation threats they face. They inventoried and modeled the distribution of 600 native wild taxa in the United States, including the relatives of barley, beans, grapes, hops, plums, potatoes and other foods.

What they found was concerning: More than half of the wild relatives are endangered in their native habitats. And that poses a threat to our future.

“The contributions of crop wild relatives to food security depend on their conservation and accessibility for use,” the researchers wrote. With mounting extinction threats, the researchers recommended that three quarters of the taxa be deemed an “urgent priority” for collection to boost conservation.

To do that we need a multipronged approach.

“Given the diversity of U.S. native crop wild relatives prioritized for action, ambitious collaborative conservation efforts are needed among gene banks, botanical gardens, community conservation initiatives, and organizations focused on habitat conservation,” they wrote.

So far ex situ conservation — in gene banks and botanical gardens — is insufficient. The study showed 14% of the plants were entirely absent from these repositories, and another 33% were found in fewer than 10 locations. That leaves us with “relatively limited genetic variation for research and education,” the researchers concluded.

Better collaboration with botanical gardens, hobby gardeners and citizen conservationists can help close that gap, they recommend.

Outside of seed banks and gardens, protecting the habitat where these species grow naturally is also important.

Based on the researchers’ mapping of the potential distribution of the plants, some are likely to be found in areas that are already protected — such as the Patuxent Research Refuge, the Grand Canyon, Olympic National Park, the Indiana Dunes, Gulf Islands, Yellowstone and other areas.

But more habitat conservation efforts are needed, and that may include the widening of current protected areas or the establishment of new protected spaces, they write.

That can be tough to do with competing demands on land, but it will also provide additional benefits.

Conserving these natural habitats, the study finds, will help safeguard ecosystems and other species, providing both “known as well as currently unrecognized benefits to society.”

Beyond the work of scientists and land managers, the fate of these wild foods may come down to better public awareness. And for that, botanical gardens could be the best champions.

“While all involved organizations will need to enhance their public outreach around native crop wild relatives,” the researchers conclude, “botanical gardens, which receive more than 120 million visitors a year in the United States, could play a particularly pivotal role in introducing these species to people, communicating their value and plight, and better connecting the concepts of food security, agricultural livelihoods, and services provided by nature for the public.”

Roasted garlic is simply the best — here’s how to make it

Years ago, in what feels like another life, I went to visit my former childhood neighbors who had moved back to the south of France. The entire experience was a culinary revelation for me (see: pan bagnat on the beach, bakery-fresh chouquettes every morning) but one meal stood out. A very typical dinner of grilled veggies and local meat was made complete with one tiny packet of foil filled with pure gold: a whole head of garlic, roasted until creamy and fragrant. We squeezed out the cloves and spread them on fresh bread like butter. It was an allium-epiphany.

My love for garlic is well-documented. In my family, every plate of Italian food involves a fork battle over any rogue cloves. But roasting garlic actually transforms it entirely. Garlic’s signature smell and taste are only released when the cloves’ cell walls are broken, as when it’s chopped (or chewed!). Rupturing garlic cells releases allicin, the chemical compound that gives garlic its pungent bite. As garlic cooks, that chemical reaction tones down, and the allium’s natural sugars start to caramelize (similar to onions) instead.

If you’ve ever dropped garlic on a hot pan and left it a little too long, you know how quickly can burn and turn inedibly bitter. But when roasted slowly in the oven in an enclosed space — either wrapped in foil or a lidded, oven-safe pan — garlic turns sweet and the texture completely changes. The result is quite similar to garlic confit, but with way less oil needed. The cloves become soft and spreadable, and taste more mild and sweet than raw, or even sauteed garlic — which is why you can eat so much more of it. It’s a totally new experience, and I highly encourage everyone to try roasting garlic at least once, even if just to try garlic in a new way. Plus, it could not be easier. Here’s how to roast garlic.

Boom, Roasted!

Using a sharp knife, cut off about a half inch or less from the top of the top of the head of garlic. Ideally you want to cut off as little as possible while still exposing the top of the cloves. Place the entire head of garlic in a large piece of aluminum foil. Drizzle a tablespoon or two of fat(I typically use olive oil but you could use clarified butter or schmaltz for a richer flavor) over the whole head. Fat helps the garlic caramelize rather than just steam. Season with a big pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper as well. You can (and I love to) add other flavors in the foil packet while you roast, like a pinch of red pepper flakes and woody herbs like rosemary or thyme. Fold up the packet like you’re wrapping a gift.

You can drop the packet on a sheet pan, or just toss it right into the oven. Roast (or grill!) the garlic for about 45 minutes at 375ºF. The roasting time depends on the size and freshness of the heads of garlic, but ultimately you’re aiming for a golden brown color throughout, and cloves that feel soft and easily squeeze out of their skin. Tip: Roast multiple heads at once to ante up meals throughout the week. Just make sure to use the cloves soon after roasting — Botulism toxins can easily grow on warm or room temperature cooked garlic, so don’t leave out a head of roasted garlic for more than 1-2 hours. Store roasted garlic in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Dig In

My favorite way to eat roasted garlic is still simple: smeared on good bread, preferably toasted or grilled and drizzled with olive oil. It tastes like the most intense garlic bread you’d ever had, yet not too garlicky. But if eating straight-up garlic cloves isn’t your thing, here are a few more options to utilize your squidgy garlic gold.

Deep Dish Skillet White Pizza With Roasted Garlic, Broccoli Rabe, And Bechamel

Resident Baking BFF Erin McDowell’s favorite deep dish pizza involves roasted garlic and now we see why. Add bitter broccoli rabe and rich bechamel into the picture and you have a perfect balanced pizza that ticks all the boxes.

Capunti With Roasted Garlic and Miso Sauce

According to the author, Food52’s Resident Pasta Maker, Pasta Social Club’s Meryl Feinstein, this pasta sauce is supremely savory, luxurious, and complex. “Think buttery, salty garlic bread in pasta form.” I was sold at ‘buttery’.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

One of the easiest ways to appreciate the full benefit of roasting garlic is to swap it for raw in one of your favorite garlicky recipes. These creamy mashed potatoes contain two whole heads of roasted garlic, but the resulting mash isn’t overpoweringly pungent. It’s buttery, rich, and completely delicious.

Roasted Garlic Soup With Olive Croutons

This soup puts the flavor of roasted garlic on full display. Its sweet notes shine, especially when paired with salty, briny olive bread-croutons.

Roberta’s Roasted Garlic Dressing

Think of this dressing like Caesar’s more sophisticated cousin: It’s got anchovies, it’s got lemon, it’s got egg yolks emulsified into oblivion. It’s also got more umami and depth thanks to a whole head of roasted garlic, Dijon mustard, and sherry vinegar. Use on any and all salads.

Shrimp Burgers Roasted Garlic-Orange Aioli

These shrimp burgers are outshined by an addictive, citrusy aioli. The creamy concoction is bolstered by a lot of roasted garlic, and would be amazing served alongside pretty much any dish in need of a spread of dip, but especially on a BLT.

Fox News’ COVID denialism now threatens U.S. vaccine rollout — but its roots are deeper

One of the great challenges for public health officials during the COVID pandemic has been establishing trust among the public, particularly racial minorities who have a long history of both exploitation and neglect by the medical establishment and the government. In recent months there has been a lot of discussion about how to get past vaccine hesitancy in this population with efforts at outreach and communication aimed directly at these communities. And thank goodness, after all, Black and brown Americans have been hit the hardest of all demographic groups aside from elderly residents of nursing homes. There has been an unconscionable number of deaths and serious illnesses in these communities so it’s vital to get them the latest information, delivered by trusted messengers, as well as easy access to the vaccines.

The good news is that the vaccination program is quickly picking up steam, with Black and Hispanic vaccine skepticism specifically falling substantially over the past few months. There, of course, must be continuing efforts to get the word out and get vaccines in some of the hard-to-reach areas to encourage even more participation, but it now appears that a new group has arisen as the real barrier to achieving herd immunity: white Republicans.

Coronavirus vaccine skepticism has come way down for Black and Hispanic people since last fall. Where skepticism remains high is among white Republicans. Nearly 60% of white Rs will either not take the vaccine or are unsure.@Civiqs tracking: https://t.co/lLKHxCP3IM pic.twitter.com/O1NT9xB4ZF

— Drew Linzer (@DrewLinzer) February 23, 2021

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found similar numbers.

From a Republican respondent asked “If there is one message or piece of information you could hear that would make you more likely to get vaccinated for COVID-19, what would it be?”

‘Not sure there is anything that could be said. If it is proven effective and no side effects after a year or 2 of use I would no longer have concerns.’

Republicans who want to “wait and see” are less likely than others to say they will turn to the CDC or state and local health departments for information when making decisions about whether to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

The partisan gap among white people on vaccinations is simply astonishing. But then again we shouldn’t be too surprised.

Some of this is simply reflexive loyalty to Donald Trump, who constantly “downplayed” the virus and consequently allowed it to run out of control on a level unmatched by any other developed country. But it isn’t all Trump. Right-wing media must shoulder much of the responsibility for the growing anti-vaxxer attitude on the right.

This week we passed the grim milestone of 500,000 COVID deaths. A year ago, when the virus was first declared a global pandemic, such a number would have been unthinkable. Trump said at the time that he had it completely under control. Obviously, he didn’t. It’s one of the main reasons he lost the election and it was left to his successor to memorialize the dead on Monday.

Luckily, this is something that President Joe Biden is very good at. He held a somber ceremony at the White House which was carried live on the mainstream news networks and observed with appropriate gravity by nearly all who commented —except Fox News.

The hosts of Fox News followed up their coverage of the memorial with their same COVID disinformation they’ve fed their viewers from the beginning. And they did this even after issuing a statement the same day insisting that they have always given accurate scientific information during the crisis. As Media Matters reported, on the night that America observed the horror of half a million COVID deaths, Laura Ingraham was insulting the head scientist at the National Institute of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, as an “ancient medical bureaucrat with a fancy title spewing lies or unprovable accusations.” Ingraham took issue with Collins calling masks a “life-saving medical device.” She later featured former Trump adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, a man with no expertise in epidemiology, who agreed with her about the uselessness of masks.

Likewise, fellow Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson snidely asserted that Americans are “not allowed” to ask questions about the vaccines and insisted that social distancing measures have resulted only in “traumatized citizens and destroyed lives.” Sean Hannity spent the evening flogging the useless treatment pushed by Trump, Hydroxychloroquine, again. When Hannity tossed the show to Ingraham she declared, “when you look at the full, full picture on COVID there are going to be a lot of villains when the history is actually written on this.” Hannity agreed, saying, “a lot of people were dead wrong and it hurt a lot of us.”

I don’t think it’s going to go quite the way they think it will.

Watching Fox News, it’s easy to see how so many Republicans are skeptical of the virus and the vaccines. If they’ve been listening to their leaders and conservative media, they have been hearing lies and propaganda. But the sad truth is that this is actually an old story that predates Trump and Fox News. There is something about health care to which the right-wing seems to be inherently hostile.

As this piece in the Economist lays out, going back to Ronald Reagan in the 1960s when he railed against Medicare and called any expansion of the program “socialized medicine” to his refusal to acknowledge the AIDS crisis as president, conservatives have consistently put up roadblocks to creating a decent health care system in the U.S. In the 1990s, former House speaker Newt Gingrich deep-sixed any hope of passing a health care plan under President Clinton but was actually in favor of a program similar to the one that was later adopted by Senator Mitt Romney, R-Ut, when he was governor of Massachusetts. That plan formed the basic template for what became Obamacare and we all know how the Republicans reacted to that, Newt Gingrich included.

It isn’t just ideological resistance or a belief that it’s economically unsound. It’s not even simple partisanship. There’s just a bone-deep antipathy to any collective attempt to extend a helping hand. I’m reminded of this awful scene from the town hall protests against Obamacare in 2010, which may illustrate what this is really all about:

That lack of empathy there says everything.

When the pandemic hit and state governments and public health officials tried to marshall the people to work together to prevent the spread of the disease, once again the right-wing inexplicably rose up in protest, some even storming their statehouses, carrying guns, demanding they be “freed” from any requirement to follow measures designed to save lives. Today, they make up the largest group of vaccine resisters which, like rejecting Obamacare, will end up hurting themselves the most.

Certainly, the economic hardship of the past year has taken a toll on many people and the frustration of business owners and workers is understandable. But refusing to wear a mask or take the vaccine has nothing to do with that. No, this attitude toward health issues in our culture is something that runs much deeper in the American right-wing. It’s not ideology, it’s pathology.

Everything you need to know about tangy, floral loquats

I have this thing for picking things off trees and eating them. The fruit calls to me. I can spot the first fig ripening on a tree or find a wee wild strawberry growing under a carpet of green.

So when I caught a glimmer of orange in a tree while biking around my hometown of Charleston, you’re damn right I screeched to a halt right then and there to investigate.

Upon closer inspection, I found that each branch of the tree had dozens of clusters of ripening fruit, about the size of apricots, ranging in color from green to neon orange. After asking around I found out that these fruits, which I was now noticing on every street corner, backyard, and alleyway, were called loquats—and that’s when my obsession began.

* * *

What exactly is a loquat?

According to the University of California Cooperative Extension, the loquat is “an ancient fruit, related to the apple [and] the quince,” which explains its tart-sweet flavor. Native to China and Japan, the loquat has spread to many tropical and subtropical sections of the world. I can personally attest to their presence in South Carolina and Texas, where their tang is a welcome refresher from the hot, humid air. They’re also apparently ubiquitous in Florida and Southern California.

The loquat is the platypus of the fruit world; it seems to combine familiar species into something completely new. It has smooth, semi-fuzzed skin of a plum and the inner texture of a grape. When you bite into one, you’re met with an initial sour zip of lemon that gives way to a smooth, mango-like sweetness. Don’t try one before they’re squarely between orange and yellow on the color wheel or they’ll be way too tart.

After sampling my first loquat, I began to brainstorm ways to use my newly-discovered foraged fruit in the kitchen. But when I started asking the internet, my friends, and strangers on the street what they did with their crop of loquats, I found surprisingly little information.

Besides finding a stray recipe for chutney or jelly, when I Googled “best loquat recipes,” a tumbleweed essentially blew across my computer screen. People IRL seemed similarly stumped. While everyone I questioned said they liked eating loquats occasionally, hardly anyone seemed to cook with them. Though I did hear tell of someone baking them into a loquat chess pie and a local brewery adding them into their beer . . .

As I’m not really a pie person (cue gasps!), I decided to do to loquats what I always want to do to fruit — baked it into an upside down cake. Inspired by this rhubarb-y recipe from Kenzi Wilbur, I stewed the halved, de-seeded fruit with brown sugar and butter until they started to slump, poured the mixture into a pan, and topped it with big slumps of thick, buttermilk batter.

The result proved my theory that any fruit can — and should — be the star of an upside-down cake . . .

A couple things to keep in mind when cooking (or eating) loquats:

As Smaug told me on the Hotline, “They really should be eaten right off the tree; they degrade really fast once picked. One of the produce stores in my area used to sell them with big hunks of branches still attached; that helped.”
You’ll have to remove the pit in the middle.
Some people peel the fruit, but others say that peeling removes a lot of flesh is not necessary, as the skin is rather thin.

Additional ideas from the editors:

As author Catherine Lamb notes, the internet is not overflowing with ideas for this under-the-radar fruit. Loquat comes from the same family as stone fruit, apple, and pear, and quince, and can be used in similar ways as, (or in many cases, even directly swapped for) its fruity cousins. Lamb touches on her favorite way to cook with loquats, in an upside-down cake, but if you find yourself with an abundance of the fruit, here are a handful of ideas to use your bounty.

* * *

11 Ways To To Cook With Loquats

Bake with loquats

The most obvious use for loquats is to use them as you would another stone fruit: in dessert, whether it be a cake, tart, cobbler or crumble. Since they come from the same family as stone fruit, feel free to substitute them in your favorite summertime recipes.

Any fruit cake

Loquats bake beautifully into this simple, buttery cake. Always taste one before you start baking; this recipe works best when you adjust the sugar according to the fruits’ natural sweetness. It’s best served warm, with a big dollop of barely-sweetened whipped cream.

Tarte tatin

Since loquats come from the same family as apple and quince, it’s a natural fit to utilize them in an iteration on the classic French tart. This is also a perfect way to cook with loquats that are not fully ripe yet, as their firmer texture will hold up better during baking and flipping.

Crumb pie

Depending on how many you have, you can either substitute loquats for the apricots or peaches in this pie recipe, or mix all three together into a beautiful melange of a filling. When it doubt, pop nearly any fruit into a flaky pie crust with a buttery crumble topping and you’re bound to end up with a winner.

Have a jam session

Loquats are high in both sugar and pectin, making them a perfect fruit for preserving, whether in the form of jam, compote, or marmalade. Making jam or compote is also a wonderful way to preserve the flavor of loquats until you’re able to buy (or forage) them again.

Roasted jam

Leave it to baking and general dessert expert Erin McDowell to uncover the easiest, most hands-off way to make jam at home. Her method for oven-roasting fruit yields delicious jam in under an hour with no babysitting the stove required. Try making loquat jam this way, or experiment with mixing in other stone fruits to make your own unique blends. Loquat pairs splendidly with apricots, peaches, cherries, and other stone fruits.

Tartines with ricotta and a quick apricot compote

Substituting loquats for apricots in this quick compote is seamless. Just taste the fruit before you cook and adjust the added honey for sweetness as needed. Once you have your loquat jam or compote, transform your usual toast into a decadent ricotta tartine. Inspired by a certain Los Angeles restaurant, I like to use thick cut brioche for this tartine, and always top mine with a general sprinkle of flaky salt.

Poach them

One of my favorite ways to cook with stone fruit is to poach them. In this case, poaching loquats in a flavored sugar syrup renders the fruit still slightly firm but yielding and deeply infused with spices and sweetness. Use this article to poaching fruit to guide you through the process. I love to add whole spices like cinnamon sticks, star anise, or cardamom pods, but one of my favorite tips from this article is how to get creative with the poaching liquids themselves. Think beyond water; use steeped tea or a wine, red, white, or sweet, as a poaching liquid.

Ginger poached pears with honeyed vanilla custard

Take a note from this recipe for poached pears and try poaching loquats in spicy ginger beer. Pair with a lightly sweetened vanilla custard for an easy, elegant dessert.

Wine-poached apricots with ricotta

This recipe is sophisticated, composed, and well balanced. Apricots (or in this case loquats) get poached in white wine with hints of fennel and black pepper before being served with lightly sweetened ricotta. While we usually add sweet to our savory dishes, this is a perfect example of adding savory elements to a dessert in a spectacular way.

Go savory

Loquats also work beautifully in savory dishes. Their subtle sweetness and slightly citrusy flavor lends itself to dishes that embrace a balance of sweet and savory. Here are a few ideas to utilize the loquat in more than just dessert.

Samosas with loquat onion jam

While curried potato-and-pea samosas are the headliner here, the loquat-onion chutney jam served on the side really steals the show. Loquats cook down with spices, chili, onion, and an acidic pang from apple cider vinegar. It’s sweet and tangy and you’ll want to put it on everything.

Loquat onion chutney

Speaking of, if you’re tight on time or prefer to skip the samosas, just make the chutney on its own. It’s flavorful in its own right and pairs perfectly with lamb, grilled or steamed fish, or tofu, or try it as a condiment to spice up your usual lunchtime turkey sandwich.

Warming winter squash tagine

This Tagine is the perfect opportunity to incorporate loquats into your dinner routine. The classic Moroccan dish typically incorporates dried fruit like apricots, raisins, dates, or preserved lemons. Loquats can lend a sweet, tart, slightly citrusy note to this warm tagine that’s full of winter squash, chickpeas, and couscous.

Loquats and basil spring pesto

Loquat pesto! This playful rendition of Italian basil pesto accentuates the citrus notes in loquats. It’s also vegan, but not lacking any of the depth of flavor found in traditional pesto. And the loquats aren’t a gimmick here or added for shock value; they add a pleasant body to the texture, plus added bright acidity to balance the rich pine nuts and olive oil.

The GOP’s Ayn Rand death cult: Trump’s party is literally killing the American people

Behold! Death rides upon a pale horse — and Death is a Republican.

The coronavirus pandemic has now killed more than 500,000 people in the United States. This is roughly equivalent to the cumulative number of Americans lost in World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. These deaths from the coronavirus were largely preventable.

Instead, at almost every opportunity Donald Trump and his regime, through willful negligence if not outright sabotage and negligent homicide, made decisions which caused more deaths, not fewer, from the pandemic.

The country’s season of mass death, now nearing its one-year anniversary, will negatively impact American society for generations to come.

A new report by The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, shows in great detail how the Trump regime’s response to the coronavirus (and the country’s well-being more generally) actually shortened Americans’ lifespans through incompetence and malevolence.

The report, titled “Public policy and health in the Trump era” features this summary:

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on the USA, with more than 26 million diagnosed cases and over 450 000 deaths as of early February, 2021, about 40% of which could have been averted had the US death rate mirrored the weighted average of the other G7 nations.

Many of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanising the US populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation. His refusal to develop a national strategy worsened shortages of personal protective equipment and diagnostic tests. President Trump politicised mask-wearing and school reopenings and convened indoor events attended by thousands, where masks were discouraged and physical distancing was impossible.

The racial disparities are extreme: the life spans of Black and brown Americans have been shortened, compared to whites. Given the Trump regime’s racial authoritarian policies, as well as its overall hostility to nonwhite people, such an outcome is a feature and not a bug. The Lancet report continues: “COVID-19 has increased the longevity gap between Black and white people by more than 50%, … Overall, in the USA, Black and Latinx people have incurred more total years of potential life lost than white people because of COVID-19, although the white population is three to four times larger.”

In addition, since 1980 public policies have reduced Americans’ lifespans by 3.4 years as compared to the other “advanced” countries in the G7 (with data included through to 2018). America’s public health problems considerably predate Trump’s tenure in office — but his regime made them much worse.

On this, The Lancet report specifically notes Trump’s “disdain for science and manipulation of hatred,” adding that his “Make America Great Again” promise “camouflaged policies that enriched people who were already very wealthy and gave corporations license to degrade the environment for financial gain.”

The mass death from the coronavirus pandemic reflects a broader pattern of negative outcomes, largely caused by the Republican Party and broader right-wing “conservative” movement.

As exhaustively documented by public health experts and other social scientists, across a range of policies such as gun violence, tax policy, the environment, access to health care, education, voting rights and the size and strength of the social safety net more generally, Republican policies over the last several decades have resulted in the deaths of many more Americans, compared to the policies advocated by Democrats.

While Republicans and the right market themselves as being “pro-life,” in reality their policies could more fairly be described as pro-death. These dire outcomes rest on the following foundation.

Neoliberalism or “gangster capitalism.” Every part of society is to be financialized and subjected to the forces of the market. There is no innate value to human life and human dignity. “Democracy” is but a tool for the market and the moneyed classes to gain more control over society through a process that superficially legitimizes their authority and rule. In this sociopathic worldview, there are “makers and takers,” “productive” people as compared to those deemed to be “parasites” and “surplus” human beings. Social democracy is to be destroyed and ultimately replaced by “market forces” and some version of “managed democracy” or “competitive authoritarianism”.

Social Darwinism. This is a belief in the “survival of the fittest,” where government is seen as having no obligation to the collective good. Moreover, instead of an understanding that government exists to solve problems that are greater than the ability of any one person to resolve, the state instead becomes a tool for plutocrats and other elites to secure more power and resources, at the public’s literal expense.

Right-wing libertarian fantasies of “self-reliance,” “freedom” and the evils of government. Modern conservatism and the right-wing movement have constructed their own alternate reality, one that rejects empirical reality and expert knowledge, and confuses dogma with truth. In total, it is a closed epistemology, a hallucinatory ideology where self-serving fantasies about the “economy” and “human nature” are taken as inviolate truths. This is a form of religious politics in which faith supersedes reason, substantive evidence and truth.

One of the central figures in this right-wing fantasy world is novelist and self-styled philosopher Ayn Rand, whose semi-coherent theories have helped to create an America where cruelty and selfishness have been elevated into virtue.

Lisa Duggan, author of the recent book “Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed,” locates Rand relative to the current age of capitalist barbarism by observing that Donald Trump is not the only person in contemporary America “who mistakenly envisages himself as a Rand hero”:

… the government and business world is full of Rand fans who read Atlas Shrugged in high school. The blend of right-wing white nationalism, combined with hard, zombie neoliberalism that rules the Republican Party right now does not align with Rand’s purest economic and political vision. But the unifying social cruelty, the full deference to the wealthiest as the most deserving of tax breaks, the representation of the poor and of immigrants as unworthy and undeserving of any kind of assistance, the opposition to unions, to universal health care, to minimum wages — that is pure Rand.

Many advocates of these policies learned to legitimize them, learned to moralize them, as in “greed is good,” from reading Rand or just from existing in a Randian milieu (we can be pretty sure Trump has not actually read Rand!). She is the dour visage presiding over the cruelties of our contemporary moment.

Coronavirus fascism. The Trump regime, the Republican Party and the right-wing movement do not believe in multiracial democracy. Fascism uses violence and destruction as a means of creating a “new” world, one based on a return to some mythical past. To that end, the death and misery caused by the coronavirus pandemic creates an opportunity to undermine democratic institutions (and the very idea of government itself) as well as to target those who are deemed to be “the enemy” for elimination.

Because coronavirus fascism wields power over its followers in part by arousing their fears, it is not entirely surprising that in the 2020 election Trump actually did better in regions of the country hit especially hard by the pandemic.

In a near-perfect crystallization of the cruel values the sustain today’s Republican Party and right-wing movement, Tim Boyd, the Republican mayor of Colorado City, Texas, wrote on Facebook that those suffering through that state’s ice and snow disaster and electrical outages should: “Sink or swim it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! … If you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your (sic) lazy [it] is [a] direct result of your raising.” (Boyd was at least forced to resign in disgrace.)

Why do rank-and-file Republicans, Trumpists and other right-wing voters support leaders and policies that literally cause them illness, suffering and death?

There are many reasons, including a vast propaganda and disinformation machine comprised of the right-wing media, Christian nationalist churches and related organizations, schools and other socializing agents that create and sustain an alternate reality.

Political parties have become a marker of personal identity. This is especially true of Republicans and right-leaning independents. Because today’s Republican Party is a full-on white supremacist organization, loyalty to the party (and to its neofascist leader) is an embrace of white identity as central to one’s personhood. As a function of that relationship, any criticism of the Republican Party and right-wing movement is seen as an attack on the believers’ sense of being and their emotional, psychological, cognitive and material investment(s) in white privilege and white supremacy.

Perhaps most importantly, rank-and-file Republicans, Trumpists, and other members of the white right believe themselves to be in an existential struggle against various enemies: liberals and progressives, Democrats in general, nonwhite people, Muslims, immigrants and other “enemies” who want to “end their way of life”. Therefore, to embrace death is understood to be a patriotic act in service to a better future.

Ultimately, today’s Republican Party and broader right-wing movement are a death cult, whose millions of ardent followers are willing to sacrifice themselves and their families to sustain it. Much to the dismay of the Democrats and others who believe in “normal politics,” this is the reality we must all face. No “bipartisanship” or “unity” or “common ground” is possible with a fanatical death cult. Joe Biden’s great task and responsibility is to make decisions with that fact in mind and then find a way forward to political victory and a better American society.

Pro-Trump Black group that solicited foreign investors is now under FBI investigation

The FBI has opened an investigation into the activities of a pro-Trump group that appears to have engaged in an off-the-books foreign influence campaign and violated IRS rules regulating the political activity of nonprofit organizations, Salon has learned.

The probe’s scope includes two officials affiliated with the Urban Revitalization Coalition, a now-defunct organization which made headlines last year with suspicious cash giveaways to Black voters and subsequently lost its tax-exempt charity status, a person familiar with the investigation told Salon. The two men — Kareem Lanier and Darrell Scott, a Cleveland-area pastor and former Trump campaign official — also used the URC as a vehicle to “solicit donations” from foreign nationals, including influential Turkish businessmen, while they worked with Trump administration officials to attract new investment in “Opportunity Zones,” economically disadvantaged areas targeted for new incentives under the former president’s 2017 tax bill.

Salon reported the Turkish connections in a two-part series last September.

Some of the solicitations were floated by former MAGA-world star Rabia Kazan, a Turkish author whom Scott and Lanier brought into the URC to facilitate such connections, according to Kazan and people with knowledge of the arrangement. Multiple people told Salon that the group had also approached Americans for donations in exchange for access to the Trump White House. Former Trump officials told Salon that such deals included tickets to a White House Easter Egg Roll, and that Scott was suspected of using his Cleveland church to funnel untraceable large-dollar contributions to Trump’s inauguration.

The URC made headlines last February when it held campaign-adjacent events with cash giveaways for Black voters in underprivileged communities, including a $25,000 raffle — which the organization had promised the IRS it would not do. Politico described the raffles as part of a national strategy to hold events “in Black communities where they lavish praise on the president while handing out thousands of dollars in giveaways.”

Government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington raised concerns that the URC was in breach of IRS rules governing the group’s capacity to participate in political activities. But because the URC never filed a tax return, neither the public nor the IRS have learned much about the group’s fundraising and spending.

Scott, who advised Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, presents himself as a Christian minister reformed from a life of drugs. During the 2020 election he co-chaired Black Voices for Trump, an official campaign arm formerly led by the late Herman Cain, and frequently identifies himself as “Dr. Scott,” thanks to an honorary degree he received from the unaccredited St. Thomas Christian College in 2004. He founded the nondenominational New Spirit Revival Center, headquartered in a former Cleveland Heights synagogue. It has its own radio station.

Scott was often seen at the Trump White House, but told Salon he prided his independence from unenumerated encumbrances that would have accompanied an official administration title. He traveled on Air Force One with Trump a number of times, and watched the 2018 midterm returns with the former commander in chief at the White House. The surrogate is also close with former White House adviser Jared Kushner: Scott calls him “J-Rock,” and the two worked closely to promote Opportunity Zones, a program that created capital gains tax incentives to spur investment in poor and minority communities, which eventually fizzled out.

The URC’s efforts to make inroads with foreign investors dovetailed with the Trump administration’s foreign policy goals of establishing a new overarching trade deal with Turkey. They also overlapped with Turkey’s release of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor and political prisoner held by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Texts from an Erdogan aide, obtained by Salon, describe the release as part of a “mutual” exchange connected to the 2018 midterm elections.

Legal experts told Salon that some of the above activities appear to violate rules governing U.S. tax and lobbying laws.

Kazan previously told Salon that Scott had a particular fascination with Turkey, and that she had connected him with multiple Turkish figures, including billionaire industrialist Mehmet Nazif Günal and Kazan’s own sister, who had married into the Godiva chocolate business empire. Kazan said Scott and Günal had discussed millions of dollars in assets that Günal could no longer access in Saudi Arabia, and that Günal hoped that Scott could help convince Trump to lean on the Saudi king.

A group led by Scott tweeted in 2017 about Saudi Arabia’s King Salman presenting Trump with the kingdom’s highest honor.

Kazan also connected the URC officials with Turkish business representative Ali Akat, who made at least two visits to the U.S. in 2018, in April and November. Akat met with multiple congressmen and GOP operatives, and in April was escorted by Scott to the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, home to offices of White House aides and staff, where they held a meeting, according to photos posted to social media.

In a phone interview, Scott did not deny or express surprise at the existence of a federal investigation into his group. (“FBI, CIA, KGB. They can all look into it, I don’t care. Nothing there.”) He also said that aside from Akat, he never met with any foreign investors. A passage from his book, “Nothing to Lose,” published last summer, claims that the two men conceived of the URC specifically as a way to attract investors from overseas.

“As Kareem and I talked and strategized we concluded that since the money would come from foreign investors, we had to ensure before securing funding that the business would be done right,” Scott wrote.

Though Scott denied meeting other foreign investors, and told Salon that he met “like 500 people a day” in Washington and could not be expected to remember everyone, when reminded of Günal, he immediately recalled a meeting over dinner in May 2018, during which he said the billionaire “was drunk.” A few minutes prior to the phone conversation, Scott had sent Salon an email that read, in full: “I never had any dealings with Turks. It was a lie.” Of his time with Akat, Scott said: “Nothing came of it. It turned out that he was just a con man.”

Expatriate Turkish journalist and newspaper editor Abdulhamit Bilici previously told Salon in a call that “it’s not possible Erdogan could not know” about Akat’s interactions with the URC.

“Even the smallest details of these things wouldn’t happen without his knowledge,” Bilici said. “All businesses in the country, if allowed to operate, pay their dues to him, so to speak.”

In addition to the meetings with Akat and Günal, Scott was apparently close with Turkish journalist Yavuz Atalay, chief White House correspondent for Aksam Gazette, a newspaper that supports Erdogan’s government. Indeed, Atalay’s most recent tweet, as of this writing, is a thank-you note to Scott for a signed copy of his book and “all other gifts.”

Thank you great friend @PastorDScott for the signed book and all other gifts. Cont wait to read it. pic.twitter.com/LnUvY7bShm

— Yavuz Atalay (@_yavuzatalay) February 6, 2021

Scott boasted multiple times on Twitter about meeting Akat. On April 25, 2018, he tweeted, “With some of my Business Homies, Ali and the guys, in DC at the Trump discussing bringing businesses to America! Great things are on the horizon! #urbanRevitalizationCoalition.” Later that evening he tweeted, “With my guy Ali to discuss bring HUNDREDS of BUSINESSES to Urban America. Great things are on the horizon __#UtbanRevitalizationCoalition” [sic], and included a picture of himself with Akat at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

With my guy Ali to discuss bring HUNDREDS of BUSINESSES to Urban America. Great things are on the horizon __#UtbanRevitalizationCoalition pic.twitter.com/SnBt9lWeNt

— Dr.Darrell Scott (@PastorDScott) April 26, 2018

The next day, Scott tweeted: “Finalizing plans to bring 30 billion dollars in investment along with 25,000 well paying manufacturing jobs to Urban America. Great things are on the horizon!!!!! #UrbanRevitalizationCoalition”. He tagged all the tweets with the name of his nonprofit, whose mission, according to its website, was to “Revitalize America’s Urban Communities!”

Two weeks later, and one day after a since-deleted article in the Turkish press quoted Akat about the visit — Scott tweeted, “Myself and @realkareemdream have been negotiating with foreign investors about potentially pouring billions of dollars into Opportunity Zones in Urban Communities all across the country. Great things are on the horizon! ##UrbanRevitalizationCoalition.”

Scott engaged with a reply to that tweet reading: “Talk with the Saudis. They like us now!”

“They’re on our radar screen!” Scott wrote.

They’re on our radar screen!

— Dr.Darrell Scott (@PastorDScott) May 6, 2018

That same day, Lanier quoted Scott’s “foreign investors” tweet, commenting: “Huge Announcement(s) Coming Soon Urban America! @realDonaldTrump & @PastorDScott and many others are fighting everyday for all in our great country!!! @CNN and @MSNBC will be forced to eat their words and report “Real News” for a change. Hahaha!!!#BillionsontopofBillions“

Scott has also deleted his end of a Twitter conversation in which he debated the value of foreign investments.

The “huge announcement,” however, appears not to have come to pass. The Trump administration never struck a large-scale trade deal with Turkey, and intergovernmental communications quickly fell apart that summer in the spat over Brunson’s release.

In a taped phone conversation in Turkish, which Salon obtained and had independently translated three times, Akat acknowledges that Scott and Lanier had asked him for financial “donations.” Akat says that when he declined, the men “pressured” him to remove the photos of their meetings published on his social media accounts and in Turkish media. Kazan told Salon that Scott and Lanier also asked that she delete her own social media photos documenting the visit.

Scott told Salon that their request to have photos deleted was not out of the ordinary.

“If I introduce you to a Black dude, and you take a picture with him, and then you find out he’s a drug dealer, wouldn’t you want to tell him to take that picture down?” he asked. Scott himself used to sell drugs. Akat is the president of the Turkish American Business Association and the Turkish-American Chamber of Commerce.

Following the meetings with Akat, Scott and Lanier brought Kazan on board to the URC. Kazan says that the men were using her entirely for her connections to Turkey.

Experts tell Salon that, by all appearances, the URC was engaged in lobbying efforts on behalf of foreign interests — which would legally require it to register with the U.S. government as a foreign agent.

It is unclear whether the URC maintained communications with Akat and Günal. Scott denied having spoken again with the men, but said he could not remember if they had exchanged emails or text messages.

In an interview with the Daily Sabah — a pro-government Turkish newspaper — given a month before his first U.S. visit, Akat said that he planned to meet with U.S. government officials in hopes of establishing a “Turkish organized industrial zone” in a number of American states. In a later interview with the outlet, following Akat’s November trip to Washington, during which he stayed at the Trump Hotel and received gifts from the White House, he boasted of a major trade deal ahead. The businessman pointed to Godiva Chocolatier, a largely Turkish-owned company, as particularly promising, since Americans were unlikely to perceive Godiva as a foreign brand.

The goal, according to Akat, was to round up Turkish companies who would promise a $1 million up-front investment. These companies would then get first crack at manufacturing opportunities in certain American markets. It is unclear whether Akat met with Scott and Lanier on that second trip, and unclear why trade talks later fell through.

In a since-deleted Facebook post during Akat’s April 2018 trip, Republican strategist and XStrategies CEO Alexander Bruesewitz said he and Akat discussed Godiva at the then-president’s hotel, mentioning Turkey’s “desire to invest $12B in the US” and create 25,000 jobs.

Despite Scott’s tweets, however, he says he lost interest in Akat within days.

“A lot of people like to talk a lot of shit, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, more often than not they shut up,” he said.

Kareem Lanier could not be reached for comment.

Rudy Giuliani evaded getting served with $1 billion defamation lawsuit for nearly a week: report

One-time Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani tried desperately to evade representatives from Dominion Voting Systems who were charged with serving him the company’s massive $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit.

The New York Daily News reports that Giuliani managed to hide from Dominion’s process servers for several days before they finally caught up with him and delivered Dominion’s 107-page lawsuit into his hands.

“After not responding to requests to waive service, Mr. Giuliani evaded in-person service of process for nearly a week,” Dominion attorney Tom Clare told the Daily News. “It took numerous attempts, at both his home and office, before we were able to successfully serve Mr. Giuliani on February 10.”

Clare added that “Mr. Giuliani’s repeated false claims about Dominion have been immeasurably damaging; this service of process is one more step forward in our pursuit of justice.”

One source tells the Daily News that Giuliani at one point saw a process server approaching him, which caused him to rush to his car and slam the door as “a process server lunged forward with a bag full of documents.”

Dominion has sued multiple Trump backers, including attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, for falsely claiming that Dominion voting machines rigged the 2020 presidential election in favor of President Joe Biden.

Republicans are making a risky bet by opposing COVID relief. What are they thinking?

Democrats are unified behind a push for a new round of COVID relief spending even as Republicans coalesce in complete opposition.

The polling has consistently shown that a large majority of Americans, including many Republican voters, support the $1.9 trillion package that President Joe Biden has pushed for. Democrats feel they have the wind at their backs, as the budget reconciliation process will allow them to pass the bill on a party-line vote, and they recently won two Senate seats in Georgia by running explicitly on more relief funding.

So why aren’t the Republicans more afraid of a backlash if they oppose it?

That’s the big mystery hanging over Capitol Hill.

As the New York Times reported, Republicans are trying to message against the bill, calling it the “Payoff to Progressives Act.” They’re nitpicking at certain parts of the bill that they think they can make unpopular. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal skewering the proposed $350 billion for local and state governments, arguing that they don’t need this level of funding and that it will be spent wastefully.

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise attacked the minimum wage part of the bill, Politico reported:

“As more people find out what’s in this bill — and what’s not in this bill — they get more furious,” said Scalise, referring to things like a $15 hourly minimum wage, billions of dollars for pension funds and money for public transit and art. “Sunshine is the best disinfectant for liberal policies.”

Others agreed:

“What’s in it is not going to be popular,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “It’s bad politics for them. Because the narrative is that they’re liberal, they just spend money like there’s no tomorrow, that every time there’s a crisis they load it up with spending.”

On this front, the parties just seem to completely disagree about the facts. Politico described Democrats as being “agog that Republicans don’t see the downside in opposing a bill that polls better than most politicians do.”

Democrats have a lot of reasons to think they’re right. First, as stated, the bill already polls well. Republicans might hope they can turn that around with a focused campaign, but public opinion is often not so easily malleable. And up until now, prior COVID relief spending has been bipartisan and popular. The public understands that the virus is still a major problem, so it will make sense to most people that the Biden administration is offering more support. And since the bill includes direct spending checks to most families, and it’s less likely that Americans can be persuaded that it’s a wholly wasteful boondoggle — after all, many of them will be getting benefits personally.

Raising the minimum wage, despite Scalise’s warning, is itself quite popular. It may not even end up in the final bill, but if it does, voters will likely connect it to the legislation’s broader goal of creating a better economy. And it’s not clear why the public will oppose funding for pensions, art, and public transit when it’s clear money is going out to support people broadly.

Republicans are also complaining that Democrats are using budget reconciliation to pass the bill, which means they only need 51 votes, not 60, to get it through the Senate. But Republicans used this process twice to push through partisan legislation in 2017, so the complaints are disingenuous. And there’s little indication that voters will care about these process arguments, especially if they like the final result.

And yet, the GOP is committed to obstinance. “What you need to focus on is how unified we are today in opposition to what the Biden administration is trying to do,” Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, according to Politico.

Since their stated reasons aren’t compelling in the face of public polling, is there a better explanation for the Republican Party’s opposition? Should Democrats be nervous that Republicans know something they don’t, and that the relief bill will backfire?

It seems unlikely. Recent history undermines that GOP’s case. With hindsight, McConnell seems to have significantly miscalculated in September 2020. At that time, he has the opportunity to present the Senate with a new relief bill that would’ve featured more direct spending to American families and other forms of support. The checks would have gone out right before election, and they probably could have helped Trump win re-election. They might have even helped McConnell and the Republicans keep control of the Senate.

But McConnell seems to resistant to learning this lesson. He refused to bring a bill to the floor that would’ve sent $2,000 stimulus checks out ahead of Jan. 5 Georgia Senate runoffs, and the Democrats in the state ran winning campaigns promising to deliver those payments. McConnell now blames Trump for the loss, rather than himself.

Those episodes suggest that McConnell’s own ideological leanings may prevent him from seeing the electoral implications of the policy clearly.

And it’s also worth remembering that in 2017, the Republican Party focused their energies on two highly unpopular ideas: massive tax cuts for corporations, and dismantling Obamacare, which failed. They suffered mightily for these efforts in the 2018 midterms, when Democrats ran a campaign focused on health care and made massive gains in the House of Representatives, winning control of the chamber.

So perhaps Democrats shouldn’t be so worried that Republicans have their fingers on the pulse of the nation and are sensing some burgeoning opposition to big spending bills. Republicans may just not be that good at delivering for a majority of voters, especially since their structural advantages mean they can often win elections even while being less popular than the Democrats generally.

McConnell and the Republicans’ strategy of opposition seems to be picking up where it left off 12 years ago, at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s term. In a remarkably similar set of circumstances, Obama took over and rushed to pass a large spending bill to help save the economy from freefall.

In that case, no House Republicans voted for the plan. Only three Senate Republicans joined on. By the 2010 midterms, Republicans had delivered their own walloping victory over the Democrats. And indeed, most presidents suffer big losses for their parties during the midterms after their election. So McConnell may feel confident there’s little downside to the Republican Party opposing Biden’s popular policy. He also may think Biden would get more of a benefit from passing bipartisan bills than if it just passed with Democratic votes.

Perhaps this is true. But refusing to give Biden any Republican support may also clarify the stakes of elections from voters, and could give the Democrats a powerful issue to campaign on in 2022.

Biden may also face more favorable conditions in the next two years than Obama did in 2009 and 2010. First, the economy does not appear to be in as dire straits as many feared. Coronavirus infections are plummeting sharply and the vaccine rollout is making significant progress. Some optimistic projections suggest we could be heading for real suppression of the virus by April; even in the less optimistic scenarios, much of the country should be vaccinated by the end of the summer. If the virus really is brought under control, the economy could snap back to life pretty rapidly, especially with the boost from the coming relief bill. It appears unlikely to suffer the same fate as Obama’s stimulus bill, which many economists predicted at the time was too small for the task. Biden’s relief bill also delivers support more directly to families, making it more likely to be spent and more likely to be recognized by voters as a result of government policy.

Democrats also paid a price in 2010 for another major policy item on their agenda: Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act, as it is also known, sparked confusion, fear and backlash, which the Republicans weaponized electorally, along with the sluggish economy. The benefits of Obamacare took far too long to make an impact in people’s lives for the Democrats to benefit from it electorally in the midterms.

Biden’s second priority after the COVID bill, on the other hand, has the potential to be much less contentious. He wants to spend trillions more on infrastructure across the country — another hugely popular idea. While there may be downsides to his plan, and Republicans will try to rally against it, infrastructure lacks the fraught tradeoffs that are implicated in any major health care overhaul. Biden may be able to avoid the second-year backlash Obama wrestled with.

Even despite all that, Biden might lose his Congressional majorities in the 2022 midterms. Presidents usually do. But with some fortunate outcomes with the virus and the economy, and the right mixture of popular policies that voters can quickly benefit from, Biden might find the key to defying history. And McConnell might come to regret his big bet on opposition.

Ted Cruz urged to “have a modicum of self-respect” when lecturing others on civility

On Tuesday, following days of criticism for jetting off to Cancun while his constituents were snowed in, freezing, and burning furniture to stay warm, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on a right-wing podcast, where he raged against his neighbors for posting text messages of his family planning the trip, demanding that people “don’t be a**holes.”

On CNN that evening, former George W. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd tore into Cruz for his chutzpah.

“What do you say to Ted Cruz, who says to the people who outed him for trying to act like he was dropping his kids off, or whatever he was trying to spin there? ‘Don’t be a-holes?'” said anchor Erin Burnett.

“Well, I would say to Ted, I agree with him that we all ought to treat each other better and be more civil,” said Dowd. “But he ought to have a modicum of self-respect in this. When he lectures people about behaving and behaving better, it’d be like Ty Cobb lecturing people on sportsmanship, or Bernie Madoff lecturing people about investment fraud, or not doing investment fraud. He sits — to quote ‘Elf’ — he sits on a throne of this kind of stuff.”

“Ted Cruz is not focused on the problem. He needs to buy a mirror and look at the real problem,” added Dowd. “Take responsibility for your actions, take accountability, and don’t start lecturing people. He basically became an internet troll. And don’t lecture people on things you do every day of the week.”

Watch below:

The CW’s new Superman series takes on corporate America, which is as unexciting as that sounds

Truth, justice and the American way. Superman‘s classic motto probably hasn’t been evoked without irony or sarcasm since the mid-to-late 20th century when Christopher Reeve wore the cape and tights. But it hasn’t entirely vanished from the hero’s legacy either.

Frank Miller actively critiques its jingoistic implications in his 1986 four-issue series “The Dark Knight” by making Superman Ronald Reagan’s attack dog, sending him up against Batman when the latter cleans up Gotham by organizing a vigilante crimefighting squad. Zack Snyder’s “Justice League” and “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” borrows flavors of this notion – but in his version it’s Lex Luthor who manipulates Superman into doing his bidding instead of a corrupt White House.

The CW’s new series “Superman & Lois” never mentions the phrase either. In a very real way the question of its meaning informs its entire framing of the newest adventures of Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) who are now married with teenage twin boys. Handsome and popular Jonathan (Jordan Elsass) is athletic and excels at everything, a chip off the Kryptonian block. Jordan (Alexander Garfin) is the omega to his brother’s alpha – moody, taciturn and on medication for an anxiety disorder.

Greg Berlanti and Todd Helbing developed the series as a modern extension of the characters’ appearances in “Supergirl” and The CW’s crossover with other DC titles. But then each of those shows holds the promise of explosions and fistfights, Bam! Pop! Zing! “Superman & Lois” presents a quieter version of war but one no less dangerous.

Here Clark and Lois confront a world that can’t agree on truth and are undecided as to what defines justice and who qualifies as a hero. It even places limits on a man whose genetic profile includes virtual invulnerability and the blessings of superior senses, flight, impossible speed, godlike strength and laser-beam eyes.

None of those superhuman assets can protect Kent from possible downsizing at The Daily Planet, which has recently been acquired by unscrupulous mogul Morgan Edge (Adam Rayner). Superman can save Metropolis from an overheating nuclear reactor but he may be too late to save Smallville’s family farms from predatory lenders. He can be the nicest guy in the world and still be despised by a Smalville friend’s right-wing husband for the simple reason that he threw his lot in with big city folks.

I was never Superman’s biggest fan either. Adulthood has softened my stance somewhat, but I never appreciated his blind and typically unquestioning devotion to the righteousness of the larger system. In my book great heroes acknowledge their darkness and use it. Save for the times he comes under the influence of red Kryptonite or gets hoodwinked into a Freaky Friday switch with an evil alter ego, the Superman I knew rarely did.

The only time I really enjoyed watching him was during a pivotal scene in the series finale of the animated series “Justice League Unlimited,” when he admits to his arch-nemesis Darkseid that playing the Boy Scout gets tiresome.

“But you can take it, can’t you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am,” he says before loosing his full fury.

While it’s not quite enough – that would be too simple of a finish, wouldn’t it? – that sequence reveals a side of his humanity rarely seen in this series or elsewhere. He also sends Darkseid through several buildings and pummels him through the sidewalk because that’s why most of us watch superhero sagas on TV and in movies.

Some of that shows up in “Superman & Lois,” as it must, but the presumption – really, it’s a test – is that people will be more invested in the marriage, family and workplace stories revolving around Clark, Lois and the kids. Such a wager isn’t unreasonable, as the longstanding affection for such series as “Lois & Clark” and “Smallville” prove even now, years after they left the air.

Hoechlin and Tulloch take two of the comic book world’s most iconic roles and freshen them up owing to their believable onscreen connection. Hoechlin’s casting as Superman in his previous guest roles immediately won the fandom’s seal of approval on looks alone, and here he believably teases out Clark as a gentle, slightly out of touch dad whose kids don’t entirely respect him.

Tulloch’s probably the bigger revelation for the way that she makes Lois flinty, determined and not easily shocked. When Lois starts to see connections between the corporate takeover of Smallville’s family farms and what is happening to the Daily Planet her crusader side emerges, and Tulloch makes that fun to watch. If, indeed, that is what you want out of a Superman-related story.

Opening episodes show Lois flexing her investigative reporting skills as the family reconnects with Clark’s first love Lana Lang (Emmanuelle Chriqui), and her daughter Sarah (Inde Navarrette) back home. Lana’s hot and her husband is a surly jerk, and surely there will be tension there, just as Sarah is destined to come between Jordan and Jonathan, only one of whom has inherited his father’s powers. There’s also the matter of a mysterious villain in an unstoppable super-suit who somehow knows Superman’s every move.

Lois’s military general father Sam Lane (Dylan Walsh) breaks down the show’s statement of purpose neatly when he tells Lois, “You may have fallen in love with Clark Kent, but you married Superman. And Superman doesn’t get to have a normal life, no matter how much you want one for him.”

But this line belies the stultifying normalcy of the show. From what the first two episodes of “Superman & Lois” display, though, the struggle is to find something beyond tights and flights to get us to invest in the middle-ages, middle-America Kent-Lane clan after they relocate from Metropolis to Smallville.

The show attempts to take a stance on truth and the American way from the beginning by watching Clark and Lois fret over a venture capitalist’s takeover of their newsroom and Smallville. Through an off-the-cuff remark from one of Smallville’s unlikable locals there’s a strain of conversation it wants to have about the might of corporate America and progress that may lead to an examination of justice’s meaning in the modern age.

When Superman is called into action he’s almost more concerned with figuring out how that part of his life fits into spending quality time with his kids, and while there are ways to present that scenario in a lively way they’re not in play here. (For an example, see “WandaVision.”)

This makes leaden mediocrity the main foe of “Superman & Lois” at its outset.

Admittedly this could be a matter of viewpoint. I’ve always preferred Batman, and he never had problems bringing his adopted kids to work. Maybe Bruce Wayne will show up in Smallville to engage Clark and Lois in a conversation about parenting styles. That’s a crossover I’d be thrilled to watch.

“Superman & Lois” premieres Tuesday, Feb. 23, at 8 p.m. on The CW with new episodes airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. starting March 2.

Texans still feel abandoned after the storm

Power outages in Texas typically come with 100-degree weather, humidity, or maybe even a tropical storm. When a mini ice age hit the Lone Star State early last week, its residents couldn’t have imagined what they were in for. Texans were forewarned about the coming storm, but even before it hit, the infrastructure of the city and the added stress of Covid precautions left people ping-ponging around town to find supplies and grocery stores without crippling lines.

“I went and waited in line at two different grocery stores,” Austin resident Chris Costenbader recalled. “I ultimately wasn’t able to get into either of them. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal at the time because we have enough stuff around the house, but there were some things that would have been nice to get.” The lunchmeat and refrigerator items they did have froze overnight.

Firewood, too, was slim pickings.

“It was hovering around 30 to 34 degrees inside,” said Costenbader, referring to the outside temperature nearing single digits on Monday night. “It was kind of jokingly brought up, but if we wanted to stay in our house like that, we would probably have tried to chop up an old bookcase or something.”

Luckily his neighbors had a gas stove that they used to make hot food, like eggs and soup, to bring around to others who weren’t as fortunate. The neighborhood also made sure to keep an eye out for two elderly gentlemen who live alone.

“You know, I would typically be the person that would go out and enjoy the snow and go explore,” said Costenbader. “But you just had no way to warm back up once you got cold.” At least six people experiencing homelessness died during last week’s storm.

While many neighborhoods in Austin have since regained power, including those where Costenbader and Salon reporter Roger Sollenberger live, plumbing remains non-existent for many residents.

“We filled up our bath because we were on a boil notice,” Sollenberger said late last week. “And I think that’s going to extend until at least probably Sunday, I believe. It’s, you know, people are pouring water into the toilet.” Costenbader said that they too were melting snow in buckets in their living room.

There’s still no clear plan in place to fix the problem.

“I was speaking to Mayor Adler yesterday,” Sollenberger started. “And he told me that they would be getting water in but that there might be a food shortage. But the problem with the water is that they don’t know why water pressure is so low. And what they’re worried about is that a bunch of pipes have ruptured and they have been able to locate them yet.”

Pictures of ruptured pipes in Texas have been circulating around the news and social media for days, showing caved-in ceilings, downstairs flooding, and the destruction of countless homes.

“The hardest thing, I believe, is that we don’t know what we’re preparing for, and the state doesn’t know that either,” said Sollenberger. “Abbott was telling me that he has no idea what the next steps are like in the power grid; that Austin energy cannot get that information from the State because the state is so heavily deregulated with lots of independent competitors, that there’s no real simple Compendium for public information like that. So Abbott, and Austin, is basically flying blind to this, too.”

One person on Costenbader’s street had a snow shovel, so the neighborhood took turns shoveling their driveways and helping push each other’s cars onto the roads. The city of Austin doesn’t have snow plows, so even if residents wanted to flee from the madness, it was likely impossible. But even commuting close to home, to and from the grocery store, may not be a successful trip.

“I heard that it could take weeks to really get everything back together because of the backup and the shortage and the demand,” said Sollenberger about grocery store shortages in Austin. “It could take a long time to actually just get retail stuff back to normal.”

Central Austin resident Laura Gorsky, whose tweet about the situation in Texas went viral, explained to Salon, “We just felt like we were abandoned.”

“I didn’t know where to go to find information. I didn’t know where to go to find water. You think in this situation that FEMA or the State Guard would be coming in. I honestly felt like I had no information about what was happening.”

She continued: “We were lucky that we had friends that live close by and that we were able to get fuel for our camping stove from them.” They now plan to upgrade their sleeping bags and emergency packs in order to prepare for the impending climate crisis.