AOC calls for probe of Cuomo’s disastrous handling of Covid-19 outbreaks in nursing homes

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday joined a chorus of state and local officials demanding a probe of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s catastrophic response to the coronavirus pandemic in the Empire State’s nursing homes.

“I… stand with our local officials calling for a full investigation of the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during Covid-19,” the prominent Democratic lawmaker, who represents New York’s 14th Congressional District, said in a statement released Friday.

Ocasio-Cortez added that remarks made earlier this month by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top aide, “warrant a full investigation.”

.@AOC on Andrew Cuomo's handling of nursing homes pic.twitter.com/R6ab0Nw0LX

— Ross Barkan (@RossBarkan) February 19, 2021

In a video conference call with state Democratic legislators last week, DeRosa admitted that the administration withheld data on coronavirus deaths in nursing homes because Cuomo, a Democrat, feared the full picture would “be used against us” in a federal investigation by then-President Donald Trump’s Justice Department.

DeRosa’s remarks came two weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James, also a Democrat, released a report accusing the Cuomo administration of undercounting Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%. As Axios reported, Cuomo shrugged off James’ allegations, saying: “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”

Cuomo, who in October 2020 published a self-congratulatory book about his response to the pandemic, “has dismissed claims of wrongdoing,” The Guardian reported Friday. The governor said “information was not produced fast enough, which created ‘a void. And conspiracy theories and politics and rumors fill that void and you can’t allow inaccurate information to go unanswered.'”

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, Cuomo has publicly lashed out at—and reportedly threatened to “destroy”—state Assemblyman Ron Kim, one of the few Democratic lawmakers willing to criticize the powerful governor months ago over his disastrous approach to nursing homes during the pandemic.

In July of last year, Kim demanded the creation of an independent, bipartisan panel to investigate the Cuomo administration’s handling of long-term care facilities during the coronavirus crisis. The assemblyman also called on the governor to be fully transparent about the Covid-19 death toll in New York’s nursing homes, which he and other lawmakers believed was being significantly undercounted by the state government.

As Common Dreams reported in May 2020, Cuomo was widely criticized for taking two months to revoke the New York state health department’s directive, issued last March, requiring nursing homes to accept still-recovering Covid-19 patients despite the lethal risk they posed to other vulnerable residents in long-term care facilities.

DeRosa’s comments have not only vindicated Kim and other early critics but also led to allegations of a cover-up and growing scrutiny of the administration.

The Cuomo administration now finds itself at the center a full-fledged investigation by the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, the Albany Times-Union reported Wednesday.

In addition, Democratic leaders of the New York State Senate are beginning efforts to repeal Cuomo’s “unilateral emergency powers granted during the pandemic, setting up a remarkable rebuke for the governor from members of his own party,” the New York Times reported Wednesday.

Ocasio-Cortez’s intervention puts even more pressure on Cuomo.

“Thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers lost their lives in nursing homes throughout the pandemic,” the progressive congresswoman said. “Their loved ones and the public deserve answers and transparency from their elected leadership.”

How to ensure electric cars aren’t just for rich people

In late January, General Motors announced a pledge to only sell electric vehicles by 2035 and make roughly 30 different models of automobile without a traditional combustion engine. A week later, Ford revealed it was pouring more than $20 billion into its EV program and that it would only offer electric cars in Europe by 2030. By 2025, Jaguar will become an all-electric luxury line of cars. Meanwhile, Tesla, the world’s biggest EV maker, is building a massive factory near Austin, Texas, where it will build not just sedans and trucks but also, potentially, the batteries.

As automakers ramp up EV production, U.S. car buyers are increasingly making the switch themselves. With more than a dozen new electric cars and SUVs set to hit U.S. showrooms this year, sales are poised to reach record levels in 2021, industry analysts say.

That’s driving state agencies, electric utilities, and startups to install thousands more EV charging stations in public places so that drivers can get around without running out of juice. Chargers are popping up in office building garages, retail outlet parking lots, highway corridors, and apartment complexes.

The challenge is figuring out how to make these accessible to everyone.

In California, for instance, low-income communities on average have the fewest total chargers per capita, while high-income communities have the most, a recent state assessment found. In some cases, the chargers in low-income areas are primarily used not by residents but commuters, who might top off their Teslas on their way to another part of town.

This imbalance largely reflects the current market: Private charging companies build stations where electric cars are likely to circulate, not in places with limited EV adoption. So as the EV industry enters a likely boom phase, efforts are accelerating to ensure that all drivers can join the transition to zero-carbon transportation. Advocacy groups and government agencies nationwide are working to close gaps in existing EV programs, which have broadly struggled to reach both people in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

“A lot of subsidies and market incentives have catered to the ‘early adopters,’ the people who can afford this technology,” said Leslie Aguayo of the Greenlining Institute, a racial and economic justice group in Oakland, California. “We want the focus to be on the frontline, hard-to-reach communities that are most impacted by poverty and pollution, not the folks that already have income and are getting Teslas.”

Aguayo manages Greenlining’s environmental equity program, which mainly works in California to shape and study electric transportation policies. Along with curbing carbon dioxide emissions, EVs have other more immediate benefits, she said. Battery-powered cars are generally cheaper to operate than internal combustion engines, due to lower fueling and maintenance costs. And electric vehicles don’t emit any of the toxic tailpipe pollutants that disproportionately affect poorer people and people of color.

Yet two big roadblocks keep many drivers from ditching their gas-burning vehicles: the lack of home garages and shared spaces to charge batteries, and the cost of buying a new car, electric or otherwise.

* * *

California has more than 650,000 battery-powered cars on its roads today, and millions more are expected to join them in coming years. The state is currently working to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035 — creating an urgent need to expand charging infrastructure across the state.

Last fall, the California Energy Commission, or CEC, said it would spend $384 million over three years to begin filling the equity gaps regarding the locations of battery charging stations, along with building refueling stations for cars that run on hydrogen gas. About half that investment is focused on building EV chargers within low-income communities — particularly at or near multifamily dwellings.

The funding is meant to serve areas that the private sector won’t, including rural regions, said Patty Monahan, CEC’s lead commissioner for transportation in Sacramento. Some individual EV charging stations may never pencil out financially for their operators, but they’re still needed in order to connect more people to the larger network. “Ultimately, we want it to be easier to refuel an electric vehicle than to refuel a conventional vehicle,” Monahan said.

California isn’t alone in its effort. In New York, a $750 million program is underway to create more than 50,000 charging stations statewide, with about a quarter of that funding set aside for low-income communities. Ohio’s largest utility, AEP, is providing $10 million in incentives to offset some of the cost of installing EV chargers at apartment buildings, workplaces, and local government buildings; about 10 percent of stations will be in limited-income areas. Colorado regulators recently approved Xcel Energy’s $110 million plan for transportation electrification, which includes adding 20,000 charging stations by 2023. The utility will also offer enhanced rebates for low-income customers and “higher-emission” communities that want to install EV charging equipment or purchase vehicles.

Nationwide, the number of public charging stations still falls “significantly short” of what’s needed to meet the projected demand for 15 million light-duty EVs in 2030, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory said in a recent report. But the infrastructure build-out is actually surpassing current charging demand, and nearly 100,000 public and workplace EV chargers are available, according to the latest count by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Locator.

Abby Brown, who leads the station locator, said the database doesn’t currently specify if charging stations are installed in low-income census tracts. But researchers are exploring whether to add such capabilities. The locator can be used to help planners “determine where charging infrastructure isn’t available, but might be needed to serve the public and underserved communities,” Brown said.

* * *

Locating charging stations in lower-income and rural areas only solves the fueling issue. In Seattle, Elizabeth Escobar is working to help democratize EV adoption.

Escobar is the chief business officer at Express Credit Union, a nonprofit financial cooperative. In August 2019, her team launched an EV loan program in partnership with the national advocacy group Plug In America. Express’s “fair financing” loans offer lower interest rates for electric models purchases versus those for standard autos loans. People with lower credit scores can borrow money for EVs without making big down payments. And, importantly, the loan programs applies to both new and used models.

“We really feel that owning an EV will benefit our members financially,” Escobar said. She noted that used electric cars in the area go for around $10,000 — nearly one-fourth of the price of a new electric sedan.

So far, the credit union has issued nine EV loans. However, none have gone to people from lower-income backgrounds, and Escobar said the program has struggled to draw interest in general. She speculates that might be because people aren’t aware of the potential cost savings, can’t navigate English-language materials, or assume that only wealthy people can own EVs. The COVID-19 outbreak thwarted last year’s plans to host test-driving events, but her team has hosted webinars in English and Spanish to promote the loans.

Escobar said she’s undeterred. With President Joe Biden promising to increase federal EV incentives, and with new models hitting the road, more credit union members might soon decide to participate. “We’ll be here ready,” she said.

Aguayo of the Greenlining Institute stressed that electric car ownership is only one piece of building a cleaner, more equitable transportation system.

For some communities, public investments in pedestrian-friendly sidewalks or bike lanes might serve a more immediate need than battery charging stations, she said. Other areas could benefit more from well-run fleets of battery-powered buses, or from car-sharing models that allow many people to use the same electric car. Electrifying freight trucks and other medium- to heavy-duty vehicles will have the greatest impact on eliminating toxic tailpipe pollution, even if gas-guzzling passenger cars continue to circulate.

“It’s not just about replacing internal combustion engines with EVs,” Aguayo said. “It’s about, ‘How do you holistically create a transportation system that works for the community?'”

Now Ted Cruz may be buying his own books through a mystery company

One day before the Georgia Senate runoff elections — and two days before the Capitol insurrection — a leadership PAC attached to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a mystery company that had previously bought copies of Cruz’s book, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. The expenses raise questions about whether the controversial conservative senator (and Cancún frequent-flyer) used those political campaigns, and Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the democratic process, to raise money for himself. That could push the FEC to issue a ruling on a pending issue that could have consequences for former President Donald Trump’s fundraising.

Over the course of 2020, the Cruz-affiliated Jobs, Freedom, and Security PAC paid $1.2 million — nearly 80% of its operating budget — to a company called Reagan Investments LLC for “sponsorship advertising.” The only other committee to register any disbursements to that company was Trump Make America Great Again, for a fundraising promotion for Cruz’s books in December, according to The New York Times. However, the Trump group clearly marked the payment for “collateral: books”; campaign finance experts told Salon that the PAC’s payment classifications — all of them for “sponsorship advertising” — were unusual and opaque.

On Jan. 4, 2021, the day Cruz traveled to Georgia before the runoff elections, his leadership PAC reported a $240,000 expense for “sponsorship advertising” to Reagan Investments, which appears to correlate with another series of small-dollar donations that poured into the PAC over the next few days. It isn’t clear how much of the funds raised, if any, went to Republican runoff campaigns: Cruz’s PAC only spent a few thousand dollars in support of former Sen. Kelly Loeffler. In fact, most of the contributions rolled in after the runoffs were over and as the events surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection were playing out, while Cruz joined a handful of Republican Senators to object to the counting of Electoral College votes.

Legal experts tell Salon that if the money was for promotional book sales, as the filings may suggest, then the leadership PAC could be using Reagan Investments as a pass-through to allow Cruz to keep the royalties, which are generally between 10% and 15% for hardcover books, and about half that for paperbacks. Political candidates are not allowed to do that through their campaign committees. But the identity of Reagan Investments itself poses a mystery.

The PAC’s filings claim that Reagan Investments LLC is located in an office building across the street from the Texas State Capitol in Austin. The company does not appear in Texas business registries. OpenCorporates records, however, show that a company by that name was organized in Missouri on Jan. 23, 2020 — two days after the PAC reported its first-ever payment to the company, of about $57,000. The agent on that registration, James Thomas III, was involved with a scheme that unlawfully funneled dark money from a conservative nonprofit to a political committee, resulting in a $350,000 FEC fine in 2018.

In a phone interview, Thomas claimed he was simply the organizing agent and could not immediately recall who operated the company, or its purpose.

The company’s address in Austin, however, matches that of an office suite occupied by a Missouri-based consulting firm called Axiom Strategies, founded in 2005 by Jeff Roe, who managed Cruz’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign and advised his successful 2018 re-election contest against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke. Roe was also connected to the dark money scheme, and although the FEC did not cite Roe for a violation, Thomas told investigators that he “primarily took direction” from Roe.

Roe is also the registered agent for Axiom’s Texas branch. Salon visited the Austin suite, which appeared functional and furnished, but unoccupied. Jobs, Freedom, and Security PAC has also paid Axiom directly, according to federal filings.

Throughout the first half of 2020, while Jobs, Freedom, and Security PAC spent hundreds of thousands in monthly advertising dollars with Reagan Investments, the PAC raised only a fraction of that amount, per FEC records, and it is not immediately clear what Cruz was paying the company to do. In July, the committee began accepting regular donations in the thousands of dollars, but in October, after Cruz published his new book, “One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History” — which coincided with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — the PAC saw a sudden and sustained influx of flat donations in the kind of small-dollar amounts that typically align with book promotions and packages. Those receipts continued to come in after the election and through December, when the Trump campaign launched its cross-promotion.

Cruz’s leadership PAC also supports active candidates, and donated directly to a number of campaigns for the 2020 cycle. But it reported only $109,000 in independent expenditures, all of that in a June donation to support Texas congressional candidate Raul Reyes in a Republican primary which he lost.

Furthermore, the PAC reported that it paid $615,000 to the Republican fundraising platform WinRed for credit card processing fees on Jan. 12, a week after the Reagan Investments advertising payout, after having paid WinRed only a few thousand dollars for all of 2020. The PAC’s receipts total more than $758,000 in January alone, about 50% more than it raised from 2019 to 2020 combined.

However, experts told Salon that without further clarification, the vague “sponsored advertising” classification stands in the way of any conclusions.

“Sen. Cruz spending nearly a quarter million dollars on ‘sponsorship advertising’ is certainly odd and raises several questions into his leadership PAC’s financial behavior,” said Jenna Grande, press secretary for government watchdog Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group that filed the original FEC complaint detailing the dark money scheme involving Thomas and Roe. “We would certainly welcome an explanation from him about these suspicious expenditures,” Grande added.

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, echoed the point.

“I don’t know that we can conclude that Reagan Investments LLC is a pass-through for book purchases,” Fischer told Salon in an email. “Trump MAGA described its payments to Reagan Investments as ‘collateral: books,’ whereas Cruz’s leadership PAC described every payment to Reagan Investments LLC as ‘sponsorship advertising.’ Just because Trump’s payments were for a specific purpose doesn’t mean we can conclude that Cruz’s payments were for that same purpose when the payments were reported differently.”

Fischer continued: “That said, I really don’t know what ‘sponsorship advertising’ means, and it looks like Cruz’s leadership PAC was the only political committee that reported payments for that purpose in the entire 2020 election cycle. Cruz’s failure to meaningfully disclose how his leadership PAC is spending its money means we can only guess about where the million-plus ultimately went.”

If Reagan Investments is a means for Cruz to collect publishing royalties, the senator would appear to be converting donations to personal use and possibly filing false FEC reports. If that were the case, Jeff Roe could potentially be considered a co-conspirator. Candidates who sponsor leadership PACs are generally allowed to use donor funds for personal expenses, meaning Cruz could keep any royalties, but the FEC currently has a pending review of a related question: Whether the personal use prohibition should extend to leadership PACs that belong to active candidates, such as Cruz.

An unfavorable ruling could have implications for Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America: If the former president decides to run again in 2024, he may not have unfettered personal access to the millions of dollars in the PAC’s account, and that could circumscribe his ability to spend those contributions on his personal business empire.

Sales for Cruz’s 2015 book, “A Time for Truth,” drew scrutiny after The New York Times refused to put it on the bestseller list, citing “strategic bulk purchases” that appeared inorganic, prompting Amazon to push back on the paper’s claim. HarperCollins, that book’s publisher (Cruz’s new book was published by the conservative-oriented house Regnery), said it had “investigated the sales pattern” but found “no evidence of bulk orders or sales through any retailer or organization.” The Cruz campaign immediately put out a press release demanding that the Times either offer evidence or apologize.

“The Times is presumably embarrassed by having their obvious partisan bias called out. But their response — alleging ‘strategic bulk purchases’ — is a blatant falsehood,” campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler told Politico at the time. “The evidence is directly to the contrary. In leveling this false charge, the Times has tried to impugn the integrity of Senator Cruz and of his publisher HarperCollins.”

The Cruz campaign did not immediately respond to Salon’s requests for comment, by email and phone. The campaign’s outgoing voicemail informs callers that book orders will take four to six weeks to fulfill, citing an allegedly high demand.

Companies pan for marketing gold in vaccines

For a decade, Jennifer Crow has taken care of her elderly parents, who have multiple sclerosis. After her father had a stroke in December, the family got serious in its conversations with a retirement community — and learned that one service it offered was covid-19 vaccination.

“They mentioned it like it was an amenity, like ‘We have a swimming pool and a vaccination program,'” said Crow, a librarian in southern Maryland. “It was definitely appealing to me.” Vaccines, she felt, would help ease her concerns about whether a congregate living situation would be safe for her parents, and for her to visit them; she has lupus, an autoimmune condition.

As the coronavirus death toll soars and demand for the covid vaccines dwarfs supply, an army of hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and long-term care facilities has been tasked with getting shots into arms. Some are also using that role to attract new business — the latest reminder that health care, even amid a global pandemic, is a commercial endeavor where some see opportunities to be seized.

“Most private sector companies distributing vaccines are motivated by the public health imperative. At some point, their DNA also kicks in,” said Roberta Clarke, associate professor emeritus of marketing at Boston University.

Among senior living facilities — which saw their largest drop in occupancy on record last year — some companies are marketing vaccinations to recruit residents. Sarah Ordover, owner of Assisted Living Locators Los Angeles, a referral agency, said many in her area are offering vaccines “as a sweetener” to prospective residents, sometimes if they agree to move in before a scheduled vaccination clinic.

Oakmont Senior Living, a high-end retirement community chain with 34 locations, primarily in California, has advertised “exclusive access” to the vaccines via social media and email. A call to action on social media reads: “Reserve your apartment home now to schedule your Vaccine Clinic appointment!”

Although the vaccine offer was a selling point for Crow, it wasn’t for her parents, who have not been concerned about contracting covid and didn’t want to forgo their independence, she said. Ultimately, they moved in with her sister, who could arrange home care services.

This marketing approach might sway others. Oakmont Senior Living, based in Irvine, reported 92 move-ins across its communities last month, a 13% increase from January 2020, noting the vaccine is “just one factor among many” in deciding to become a resident.

But some object to facilities using vaccines as a marketing tool. “I think it’s unethical,” said Dr. Michael Carome, director of health research at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. While he believes that facilities should provide vaccines to residents, he fears attaching strings to a vaccine could coerce seniors, who are particularly vulnerable and desperate for vaccines, into signing a lease.

Tony Chicotel, staff attorney at California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, worries that seniors and their families could make less informed decisions when incentivized to sign by a certain date. “You’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get moved in in the next week or otherwise I don’t get this shot. I don’t have time to read everything in this 38-page contract,'” he said.

Oakmont Senior Living responded by email: “Potential residents and their families are always provided with the information they need to be confident in a decision to choose Oakmont.”

Some people say facilities are simply meeting their demand for covid vaccines. “Who is going to put an elderly person in a place without a vaccine? Congregate living has been a hotbed of the virus,” said retired philanthropy consultant Patti Patrizi. She and her son recently chose a retirement community in Los Angeles for her ex-husband for myriad reasons unrelated to the vaccines. However, they accelerated the move by two weeks to coincide with a vaccination clinic.

“It was definitely not a marketing tool to me,” said Patrizi. “It was my insistence that he needs it before he can live there.”

The concept of using vaccines to market a business isn’t new. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic ushered in drugstore flu shots, and pharmacies have since credited flu vaccines with boosting storefront sales and prescriptions. Many offer prospective vaccine recipients coupons, gift cards or rewards points.

A few pharmacies have continued these marketing activities while rolling out covid shots. On its covid vaccine information site, CVS Pharmacy encouraged visitors to sign up for its rewards program to earn credits for vaccinations. Supermarket and pharmacy chain Albertsons and its subsidiaries have a button on their covid vaccine information sites saying, “Transfer your prescription.”

But the pandemic isn’t business as usual, said Alison Taylor, a business ethics professor at New York University. “This is a public health emergency,” she said. Companies distributing covid vaccines should ask themselves “How can we get society to herd immunity faster?” rather than “How many customers can I sign up?” she said.

In an email response, CVS said it had removed the reference to its rewards program from its covid vaccination page. Patients will not earn rewards for receiving a covid shot at its pharmacies, the company said, and its focus remains on administering the vaccines.

Albertsons said via email that its covid vaccine information pages are intended to be a one-stop resource, and information about additional services is at the very bottom of these pages.

Boston University’s Clarke doesn’t see any harm in these marketing activities. “As long as the patient is free to say ‘no, thank you,’ and doesn’t think they’ll be penalized by not getting a vaccine, it’s not a problem,” she said.

At least one health care provider is offering complimentary services to people eligible for covid vaccines. Membership-based primary care provider One Medical — now inoculating people in several states, including California — offers a free 90-day membership to groups, such as people 75 and older, that a local health department has tasked the company with vaccinating, according to an email from a company spokesperson who noted that vaccine supply and eligibility requirements vary by county.

The company said it offers the membership — which entails online vaccine appointment booking, second dose reminders and on-demand telehealth visits for acute questions — because it believes it can and should do so, especially when many are struggling to access care.

While these may very well be the company’s motives, a free trial is also a marketing tactic, said Silicon Valley health technology investor Dr. Bob Kocher. Whether it’s Costco or One Medical, any company offering a free sample hopes recipients buy the product, he said.

Offering free trial memberships could pay off for providers like One Medical, he said; local health departments can refer many patients, and converting a portion of vaccine recipients into members could offer a cheaper way for providers to get new patients than finding them on their own.

“Normally, there’s no free stuff at a provider, and you have to be sick to try health care. This is a pretty unique circumstance,” said Kocher, who doesn’t see boosting public health and taking advantage of an uncommon marketing opportunity as mutually exclusive here. “Vaccination is a super valuable way to help people,” he said. “A free trial is also a great way to market your service.”

One Medical insisted the membership trial is not a marketing ploy, noting that the company is not collecting credit card information during registration or auto-enrolling trial participants into paid memberships. But patients will receive an email notifying them before their trial ends, with an invitation to sign up for membership, said the company.

Health equity advocates say more attention needs to be paid to the people who slip under the radar of marketers — yet are at the highest risk of getting and dying from covid, and the least likely to be vaccinated.

Kathryn Stebner, an elder-abuse attorney in San Francisco, noted that the high cost of many assisted living facilities is often prohibitive for the working class and people of color. “African Americans are dying [from covid] at a rate three times as much as white people,” she said. “Are they getting these vaccine offers?”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Listen to the “thunk” as Perseverance lands on Mars

NASA released on Monday the first panorama video of the Perseverance rover landing on the surface of Mars, along with audio files of a Martian breeze and the rover’s various equipment operating.

The video shows everything from the moment that the parachute containing the delicate equipment opened, through the nail-biting seven-mile descent to the surface of Mars’ Jezero Crater, and concluding with the rover actually touching down on the Martian surface. While the rover was not able to pick up any sounds during its descent, it managed to catch a faint Martian breeze after the vehicle had touched down. It also managed to record the sounds of the rover’s machinery working properly on the Martian surface.

NASA has released two 18-second audio clips: One includes the noise that comes from the rover itself and the other is modified to filter it out.

When watching the video, one is particularly struck by how the Martian dust blows away from the planet’s surface as the rover lands. One can see tiny grains and larger pebbles, similar to what you’d expect to find on a beach. When it finally does touch down, one of the NASA scientists proclaims excitedly, “Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life.” The team at NASA starts applauding and jumping with joy at the announcement.

When Perseverance touched down on the surface of Mars last week, it was the heaviest and most technologically advanced NASA rover to ever land on the Martian surface, as well as the first to do so while carrying a helicopter. It also landed in a spot that, because of its treacherous terrain, was the most dangerous where any rover had ever landed. Yet it was vital for the rover to land at the Jezero Crater because scientists believe the 28-mile wide location used to be a lake. As a result, if there ever were ancient microbial life on Mars, the Jezero Crater is a great place to start looking for it.

Mars has long been considered one of the planets most likely to currently or previously have hosted life because it used to have conditions similar to those on Earth. Some scientists even speculate that life may have come to Earth on Martian rocks that were propelled into space by a powerful impact.

The ultimate goal behind the Perseverance mission is to perform what is known as a “sample-return mission,” one in which rock and soil samples are scooped up from another celestial body and returned to Earth for further study. Sample-return missions are extremely rare because of their cost, and a sample-return mission has never been performed from another planet; only moons, comets and asteroids.

You can watch the full video of Perseverance’s landing below:

HBO’s Swedish import “Beartown” is a chilling interrogation of the power we give young, athletic men

Beartown is dying. It’s an industrial Swedish town where actual industry is on the decline and development has stalled or even reversed. Sometimes it feels as if the surrounding forest, thick with knobby spruce trees, is encroaching on the city, like nature has forgotten anyone lives there at all. But for Beartown (or Björnstad) residents, there remains a glimmer of hope for the town’s future: its junior hockey league.

“Beartown,” the new five-episode HBO limited series from Sweden, centers on the league’s hopes for ascendency after former National Hockey League player Peter Andersson (Ulf Stenberg) returns to Beartown, his home town, after an injury cut his time playing professionally in the United States short. He’s joined by his wife, Mira (Aliette Opheim) and their 15-year-old daughter, Maya (Miriam Ingrid).

Peter immediately connects with Kevin Erdahl (Oliver Dufaker), a driven 17-year-old who spends all his free time on the ice, or preparing to be on the ice with endless, sweat-drenched cardio sessions on the stationary bike. He’s a star player, talented enough that at some point over the decade he’s played hockey, the team started to just build around him. He responds to Peter, who is a technically good coach to all the boys. Moody, sure, and too tolerant of locker room talk where claims and conquests in games bleeds into how they talk about girls, but he treats them like adults, which they like (and which causes more overbearing parents to bristle).

The entire team improves — which we observe in a series of tight montages of blades on ice, pucks hitting the net and boys’ bodies slamming into the walls of the rink — and their chance at winning a series of key semifinal games are in reach. The town clings to news of their success, viewing it as an allegory for the town’s future. If the hockey team succeeds, national money will get poured into the local sports complex. If the local sports complex improves, commerce may follow, and Beartown could see some kind of resurrection.

Much like the Fredrik Backman novel on which it is based, the front quarter of “Beartown” is a story, like that of so many sports films, of a struggling team made new by a coach burdened by some mysterious weight from his past. Then it all comes crashing down.

At an out-of-control party, Kevin sexually assaults Peter’s daughter, Maya, who initially doesn’t want to report the crime because she’s aware of both the position it will put her father in, as well as the fact that the entire town is completely united behind her rapist, cheering for his success. Once she reports it, however, she’s immediately revictimized as the town splits between those who believe her story and those who believe Kevin’s claims that while “maybe it wasn’t all that soft and gentle, she wanted it like that.”

Director Peter Grönlund amplifies the conflict through depictions of the stark and desolate landscape. The bleakness of “Beartown,” a common motif in Nordic noir, peels back any distraction and centers the effects of the two competing narratives, while simultaneously giving space for Ingrid’s complex performance as a sexual assault survivor. Over the course of five quickly paced episodes, she begins to embody a girl who’s haunted by trauma, who feels as isolated as the town in which she’s living. It’s a stark contrast to the enthusiastic girl she was at the beginning of the series, someone who is bubbling with crushes and just coming into herself.

In many ways, “Beartown” is reminiscent of shows like “Unbelievable” and ” “I May Destroy You,” which both illuminate the fallout of rape. But while watching “Beartown,” I couldn’t help but think of “Friday Night Lights.” That show is set in the fictional working class town of Dillon, Texas, a place where football is king.

Both are stories of places where the social fabric of the town and its residents’ identities are intrinsically tied to the rise and fall of their respective high school sports teams. Weekly games are almost akin to religious services, which may seem backwards to people who didn’t grow up in towns like that, but often people are at their most human — and the good and bad that entails — when there are wins and losses on the line.

“Hockey is just a silly little game,” Backman wrote in his novel. “We burn and bleed and cry, fully aware that the most the sport can give us, in the very best scenario, is incomprehensibly meager and worthless: just a few isolated moments of transcendence.”

But, as in “Friday Night Lights,” Beartown residents deify those transcendent moments — like when the players manage to move the puck the entire length of the rink with a kind of breathless ease, with only seconds remaining on the clock, and as a result — Kevin becomes a kind of god. What would it mean for them, and for the town, if he’s actually a monster?

At their core, many stories of sexual assault are also stories about abuses of power. This can mean the kind of wild, institutional power that men like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein wield (or wielded) in their respective fields, but “Beartown” unflinchingly interrogates the kind of power we, as a society, consistently extend to young, athletic men. Just think of rapist and former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner. It also contemplates what redemption and restitution can look like — and to whom it should be extended.

“Beartown” has its shortcomings. Some of the less central members on the team and residents come across as flat, and as such, there are several characters whose loyalties vacillate and it’s unclear exactly what emotion or motivation is underpinning the shift. However, the main cast members are smartly written and deliver powerful, intimate performances that fully communicate the story’s complexity.

The series’ creators stripped “Beartown” of the melodrama that’s often inherent to stories centered on teenagers, and of the salaciousness that lesser series lean on when writing about sex crimes. In its place, they revealed a narrative that’s chilling in its survey of how we can lose what makes of human in the pursuit of a win.

“Beartown” premieres Monday, Feb. 22 at 9 pm ET on HBO.

https://youtu.be/JBo6UIcIxDE

11 upcycling hacks to win at pantry storage

Welcome to Storage Wars, a new series about the best ways to store, well, everything. From how to keep produce orderly in the fridge (or not), to ways to get your oddball nooks and crannies shipshape; and yes, how to organize all those unwieldy containers once and for all — we’ve got you covered.

* * *

Is it weird to say that one of my passions in life is organizing cabinets? I find it incredibly satisfying when pantry items are neat and accessible, and I’m forever buying bins and baskets to help organize my pantry ingredients. However, the cost of these little items can add up (not to mention that it’s single-use plastic, which isn’t exactly an eco-friendly choice), and it got me thinking: There’s got to be a better way to keep cupboards organized with things I already have around the house.

I asked around, and it turns out that a lot of people have their own ingenious upcycling solutions for keeping pantries tidy: “I save every quart and pint container from takeout and delis to reuse in my pantry (leftovers in the fridge, too, for that matter), and stuff them full of rice, pasta, candy, goldfish — you name it,” Caroline Mullen, assistant editor at Food52, told me. “They’re perfect not only for seeing what’s inside, but for very satisfying stacking.”

Inspired by her ingenuity — and knowing the internet definitely had more amazing ideas — I took a deep dive on Pinterest to see what other upcycled items can be used for pantry storage. Here are my favorites!

1. Use sturdy boxes in place of plastic bins

Instead of spending money on baskets to organize pantry ingredients, cardboard boxes are a perfect alternative — and a lot of times they’re free! “The thick sturdy [boxes] in any size are great — I don’t think I have any official organizing gear in my pantry, just stuff I was going to recycle,” says Jess Kapadia, senior editor at Food52.

My mother is a big fan of using shoe boxes to organize bags of grains, and some people even use old soda boxes as makeshift dispensers for canned goods.

2. Save those spaghetti sauce jars

Spaghetti sauce jars are a hot commodity in my house — we take the labels off them and use them as drinking glasses! Classico jars are my personal favorite thanks to their large size (it’s also our favorite brand of sauce), and it got me thinking that if we saved the lids, they’d be useful for storing ingredients like dried beans or chocolate chips, too.

3. Turn wine crates into rolling bins

If you happen to have a few wine crates lying around (or really any other wooden crate), they make ideal rolling bins to put on the floor in your pantry. All you have to do is outfit them with small caster wheels and handles, and voila! You’ve got the perfect spot to store bulky, heavy items that don’t fit on your shelves.

4. Get lids for your Oui yogurt jars

Not only is Oui yogurt delicious, but the cute glass jars are amazingly versatile once empty. Pinners apparently frequently use the little containers to make candles or plant succulents, but they’re also perfect to use as small storage containers. In fact, Yoplait sells special plastic lids that fit perfectly onto the jars, so you can use them to pack snacks in your lunchbag or store small quantities of pantry supplies.

5. Turn creamer jars into ingredient dispensers

I’m kind of mad I didn’t think of this myself. Not only are creamer bottles the perfect size to line up in your cabinets, but their flip-top lids allow you to easily pour out ingredients into measuring cups. You can use them to store baking ingredients, rice, grains, and even dried beans. I might have to go dig a few out of my recycling bin to try it!

6. Repurpose old office supplies

Before you donate those old magazine holders, you might want to take them for a spin in your pantry! There are a number of ways to use these containers for storage, including laying them on their side to hold reusable water bottles or standing them up and placing produce inside.

If you don’t have any magazine holders, don’t go buy them! You can make the same style of container using a cereal box or a flat-rate shipping box from the post office.

7. Create a plastic bag dispenser

If your family goes through juice at a fast pace, the oversized jugs can easily be turned into plastic bag dispensers — all you have to do is cut the bottom off and mount the container to the wall upside down. As you unpack groceries, you can simply put the plastic bags into your new dispenser, and when you need a bag, just pull one out the bottom. So smart. (My mother also swears these jars are the best for starting seeds in the winter.)

8. Get creative with coffee containers

Plastic coffee cans are an extremely popular crafting item on Pinterest, and it’s easy to see why! They’re made from heavy-duty plastic with tight-fitting lids, and many even have built-in handles that make them easy to pick up. You can use them to store all sorts of pantry ingredients, and there are lots of tutorials on how to make them look nicer, whether you paint them or wrap them in decorative paper.

9. Make hanging storage from cereal boxes

Instead of buying a behind-the-door organizer to store aluminum foil and plastic wrap, you can make one for yourself using a cereal box. Simply cut the box into your desired shape and size, decorate how you please, then hang it up using a couple Command Wire Hooks.

10. Organize disposable utensils in flip-top boxes

Flip-top containers like the ones dishwashing pods come in are another versatile storage solution. We love the idea of stashing disposable utensils inside them, making it easy to grab just one, but you could also use them for wrapped candies, individually bagged snacks, or perhaps even your favorite pie weights, if you’re an avid baker! (They’re probably not the best for loose ingredients, as they don’t always shut tightly.)

11. The perfect to-go containers for liquids

Looking for a better way to transport salad dressing or condiments in your lunch box? The little jars that contain water flavoring — such as Mio or Crystal Light — are perfect for it! Just remove the label, pop the top, and fill it with your must-have lunch condiments. You can even keep a few prepped and ready to go in the fridge, if you tend to rush out the door in the morning.

Related reading:

This post contains products independently chosen (and loved) by Food52 editors and writers. As an Amazon Associate and Skimlinks affiliate, Food52 earns a commission on qualifying purchases of the products they link to.

George Clooney to produce docuseries on college abuse scandal Jim Jordan was accused of covering up

The decades-long abuse scandal in the athletic department at Ohio State University will be chronicled in a docuseries produced by George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The series is based on a Sports Illustrated story from last year by Jon Wertheim, detailing a long list of allegations against former Ohio State sports doctor Richard Strauss and the ensuing lack of action from university officials.

“This article uncovers the most widespread sexual abuse scandal in the history of American higher education. It is a story about power, abuse, enabling and the hierarchy of college sports that had been concealed for far too long,” said Wertheim, who will be an executive producer of the series. “Because these courageous men made the decision to remain silent no longer, we can finally begin to hold the abuser, and those who were complicit in their silence, accountable for their actions — and inactions. With the help of 101 Studios, [SI owner] Authentic Brands Group and Smokehouse Pictures, their voices and stories — harrowing as they are — will be amplified.”

Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan has been accused of participating in the scandal’s cover up. Speaking to Ohio state legislators last year, a former captain of the university’s wrestling team said that Jordan begged him to deny Ohio State doctor Richard Strauss’s sexual abuse of wrestlers from 1979 to 1997.

“Jim Jordan called me crying, groveling, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for a half-hour,” whistleblower Mike DiSabato said. “That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on there.”

Meghan McCain complains she hasn’t gotten a vaccine yet, calls for Dr. Fauci to be fired

On Monday, the U.S. surpassed 500,000 deaths due to COVID-19. In a discussion of the somber milestone on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Meghan McCain criticized the U.S’s handling of the pandemic and called for the firing of the head of the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

McCain’s rant included her dissatisfaction with the “inconsistent” messaging from the leadership of Dr. Fauci, and also included her disbelief in her unique struggle of not knowing when she will receive her vaccine. McCain began her comments with a clip from an interview with Dr. Fauci from this past weekend on CNN. She said she found the clip upsetting, mostly because Fauci did not feel comfortable offering advice to vaccinated people on when and who they safely could and could not see.

McCain continued reacting by saying, “Next week will be a year since we left the studio, and I have been very responsible in many different ways, as so many Americans have been. And the fact that Dr. Fauci is going on CNN and he can’t tell me that if I get the vaccine, if I’ll be able to have dinner with my family … it continues to be inconsistent messaging.”

She compared the state of affairs in the US to that of Israel, one of the most successful nations thus far in vaccinating their population. Shockingly, McCain failed to acknowledge the high mask usage rates in Israel and the drastic difference in population between the Middle Eastern nation and the United states, which are just a few of the factors that have contributed to the efficiency of the Israeli government’s public health efforts.

“The fact that I, Meghan McCain, co-host of ‘The View,’ don’t know when or how I will be able to get a vaccine because the rollout for my age range and my health is so nebulous, I have no idea when and how I get it.”

.@MeghanMcCain says “there’s terribly inconsistent messaging” for day-to-day life after being vaccinated.

“The idea that I can get vaccinated and I won’t be able to see friends and nothing in life changes… I for one would like something to look forward to.” pic.twitter.com/mPIKHNcjwb

— The View (@TheView) February 22, 2021

McCain offered a solution to her frustration: getting rid of Dr. Fauci, one of the leading figures in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

“I think we need to have more people giving more opinions and honestly quite frankly, I think the Biden administration should remove him and put someone in place that does understand science or can talk like these other countries about how we can be more like these other places that are doing this successfully.”

In true Meghan McCain fashion, The conservative pundit has turned a day in memoriam for the hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in the United States into a conversation about herself. As the conversation continued, co-host Whoopi Goldberg exasperatedly decided to cut to commercials before McCain could come any closer to becoming a real-life version of Gretchen Wieners.

Student debt is causing a mental health crisis. Forgiving it would ease distress for millions

President Joe Biden’s inauguration also inaugurated a public debate over student loan debt, particularly what his administration might do to alleviate it. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), along with other House and Senate Democrats, have repeatedly urged Biden to forgive $50,000 of individual federal student loan debt through an executive order during his first 100 days in office. But this week, during a Feb. 16 CNN-sponsored town hall, Biden dampened hope of that happening.

“The American dream is to succeed, but how can we fulfill that dream when debt is many people’s only option for a degree?” asked one woman at the CNN town hall. “We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed. We need at least a $50,000 minimum. What will you do to make that happen?”

“I will not make that happen,” Biden responded. “I am prepared to write off $10,000 [of] debt, but not $50,000.”

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki expanded on Biden’s comments, saying the president “does not favor $50,000 in student loan relief without limitation.”

Democrats in Congress like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have argued that Biden needs to be “pushed” on the issue. Meanwhile, payments for federal student loans are delayed with 0 percent interest through Sept. 30, 2021 due to the economic crisis precipitated by the pandemic.

The United States is unique among developed countries for shunting a huge amount of the cost of college onto its students; most European nations have free or heavily-subsidized post-secondary educations. That creates a disproportionate economic burden for America’s college graduates compared to our international coevals, and one which often manifests itself in ways beyond the mere economic: American college graduates make different life decisions because of their indenture, and have a concomitant increase in stress and anxiety as a result.

Previous research has shown that student debt is likely to delay home ownership, restrict career choices, discourage entrepreneurship and lead to a higher dissatisfaction in career choice — and there’s also an inextricable link to poor mental health. With around 43 million borrowers owing $1.6 trillion in federal student loans, it seems as though even minimal forgiveness could have reverberating social and psychological effects on the mental health of the nation’s tens of millions of debtors.

Randy Withers, 45, graduated from Florida State University of 1997. He went to school to be a teacher for 10 years, but when the economy crashed in 2008 his world was upended. He lost his house, and career — since he was working in a private school — which eventually led him to go back to school in 2011. He originally borrowed $40,000 to get a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling, which ended up costing $20,000 a year. He graduated with over $100,000 in student loan debt; yet since the interest kept accumulating, he is up to $145,000 now. Withers currently works at a psychiatric hospital.

“I will never, ever, ever be able to pay off those student loans — it’s just simple math,” he said. “I don’t work in a career where I make enough money to do that.”

Even as a mental health professional, it’s taken a toll on his mental health.

“It’s more of a long term slow-burn anxiety . . . it’s like a monster on your back that, you know, you just can’t get rid of. It’s not that I’m unwilling, I just lack the economic means to to pay it off,” Withers said. “I made these choices to go into school, I’m not blaming anybody, but it does take an emotional cost — it’s like carrying a mortgage for a house you don’t live in.”

From a clinical perspective, he can see why people become depressed, anxious and even have suicidal ideation from having too much debt.

“When you lack resiliency and coping skills, and also when you don’t understand the various mechanisms that are in place, as far as student aid relief, and the income sensitive type stuff, it can be really quite overwhelming,” Withers said.

Cass Kim is a speech language pathologist, a career that requires a master’s degree. She graduated with over $100,000 in debt. Four years ago, when federal loan interest rates increased, she refinanced her loans, which she’s been required to pay off during the pandemic. She still has $40,000 in student loan debt to pay off.

“It’s just kind of this constant anxiety, it’s this constant weight of just this extra expense — because it’s not like I’m paying $200 a month, I pay $800 every month,” Kim said. “It’s the anxiety of ‘Am I going to make this payment?’ ‘How long am I going to pay this?’ and just always thinking about what else I could be doing with that money.”

Kim said she started her own small business creating children’s books to promote speech sound awareness and pre-literacy skills.

“I created this book line and it’s beautifully created, and I just can’t help but think like if I had, you know — $400 more a month, like, ‘how much bigger I could make this?’ and how many more eyes I could get on it,” Kim said.

Jeff Neal said he made the “fatal error” of going to college and majoring in English. He graduated in 2009, and was unable to find a job. It wasn’t until he got a job at a startup ecommerce business as an office manager that he realized with his student loans, and degrees, it was going to be hard to “prosper” in life. He started spending all of his free time picking up random gigs on Craigslist. He ended up starting to sell live roaches online to reptile owners to get out of debt. Neal said becoming obsessed with paying his debt has had a negative impact on his mental health.

“You become obsessive, because it’s all you think about, you become sleep deprived and it’s difficult to focus on anything else,’ Neal said. “It’s kind of damaged some relationships, just because you’re unwilling to talk about other things when you spend time with other people, an it doesn’t have the most positive effects when you’re just solely focused on one mind-numbing objective — which is to clear out your debt and just trying to increase your net worth.”

For people like Kim, forgiving $10,000 of federal student loans would be of little help because she already refinanced.

“The reason that I refinanced into private loans is specifically because the interest rate was getting driven up so much on the federal loans,” Kim said. “So it won’t personally affect me, but I think that the more that they can forgive the better.”

“If everybody’s trying to focus on this overwhelming amount of debt that they’re trying to pay off, they’re just not going to have the same kind of money to put back into the economy,” Kim added.

Trump lashes out after Supreme Court loss, calls probe into his tax returns a “fishing expedition”

On Monday, the Supreme Court allowed a New York prosecutor to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns, marking a fatal blow for his legal effort to block an accelerating criminal investigation into his business dealings. In turn, the former president lashed out at and attacked the justices, including the three nominated to the bench by him, who rebuffed his attempt to block the probe without comment.

“This investigation is a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country,” the former president, who has been deplatformed from Twitter, said in a press release. “It just never ends!”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is now permitted to compel Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, to hand over Trump’s tax releases as evidence for alleged hush money payments, as well as other illegal financial transactions. “The work continues,” Vance tweeted on Monday. Mazars said it was “committed to fulfilling all of [their] professional and legal obligations.”

In 2019, Vance led an effort to subpoena Trump for eight years of tax returns in order to uncover new evidence regarding hush money that Trump allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal––two women with whom the former president had extramarital relations.

In a 7-2 ruling in July of last year, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s bid for immunity from a state criminal subpoena, concluding that the former President was not entitled to special treatment. The Court’s decision, however, allowed Trump to go to lower courts to make his case.

In October, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately ruled that “there [was] nothing to suggest” that subpoenaed documents were “anything but run-of-the-mill documents typically relevant to a grand jury investigation into possible financial or corporate misconduct.” The decision prompted Trump’s lawyers –– who originally argued that the subpoena was overbroad and in bad faith –– to re-introduce the case to the Supreme Court while federal justices were simultaneously deciding to grant an appeal. His lawyers said that the subpoena was merely issued to harass former President Trump as it did not have explicit grounds to demand access to eight years of tax returns.

“Its near limitless reach-in time, scope, and geographic reach-has all the hallmarks of a fishing expedition,” Trump’s legal team argued. “And the fact that the subpoena was issued to a third-party custodian while tensions were running high between the Trump Organization and the district attorney, and for dubious reasons of efficiency, only makes the allegation of bad faith that much more plausible.”

But Vance has maintained that the investigation would capture a broader range of concerns than just the hush money allegations. “The investigation concerns a variety of business transactions,” Vance said in court filings, “and is based on information derived from public sources, confidential informants, and the grand jury process” and may include concerns related to many forms of fraud.

Trump, however, compared the New York investigation to fascism.

“The new phenomenon of ‘headhunting’ prosecutors and AGs—who try to take down their political opponents using the law as a weapon —is a threat to the very foundation of our liberty,” his statement read. “That’s what is done in third world countries. Even worse are those who run for prosecutorial or attorney general offices in far-left states and jurisdictions pledging to take out a political opponent.”

Trump continued: “That’s fascism, not justice—and that is exactly what they are trying to do with respect to me, except that the people of our Country won’t stand for it.”

Although Vance is now able to wield Trump’s tax returns against the former president, the documents will not be made public due to grand jury secrecy rules. The evidence will only be made publicly available if Vance chooses to indict Trump on criminal charges down the road.

How to use radicchio in winter dishes (and bring color into a time when it’s kind of dreary outside)

Like most children, Lane Selman didn’t like the bitter bite of radicchio growing up. “I’m from Florida originally, and it’s not popular in Florida at all,” she says. “My mother ate a lot of radicchio, with cranberries and walnuts, but I was always like ‘What is this thing?’ I didn’t eat it.”

Today Selman, an agricultural researcher at Oregon State University and Director of the Culinary Breeding Network, is a bonafide radicchio cheerleader. Part of her work includes identifying ideal varieties of vegetables for the region, including radicchio, and as co-founder of Sagra del Radicchio, an annual radicchio festival, Selman is often found praising the oft-overlooked winter vegetable. “It brings joy to my life: to make salads with it and bring color into this time when it’s kind of dreary. Even looking in my garden, I have several rows of the pink radicchio and it’s beautiful,” she says.

A truly winter vegetable

For many farmers in colder climates, winter farming either means hardy crops that can withstand the cold, such as kale and other brassicas, or greenhouse growing, which can be resource-intensive and is used to grow ingredients out of season. And many shoppers, even farmers’ market regulars, retreat to the convenience of grocery store produce when the cold weather hits. “As soon as it starts raining, and there’s just a lot of roots at the market, [shoppers] kind of don’t go to the market anymore,” says Selman. “They go to the grocery store and back to buying whatever lettuce and cucumbers that are out of season and brought in from somewhere else.”

A key reason Selman devotes her energy to promoting radicchio, in her research at Oregon State and through grant-funded projects like the Eat Winter Vegetables campaign and Chicory Week, is its seasonality. “My whole goal is supporting farmers to be able to grow and sell things all year round,” she says. “We promote these vegetables because we want people to be more excited about winter vegetables.”

Unlike greenhouse-grown lettuces or vegetables that are shipped from around the world to the grocery stores, radicchio can be grown, with very few inputs, in the cool climates of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest from September through March. As Jason Salvo, who runs Washington’s Local Roots Farm and co-founded Chicory Week, told Heated, “If people can get a radicchio salad, a local salad in January . . . we’re not trucking up romaine from the Imperial Valley, we’re keeping our dollars local, so we’re building our local economy.” If you’re in cooler regions where radicchio thrives, choosing it over lettuces during the winter is choosing local, supporting small farmers and promoting seasonal eating.

For the general American palate, which prefers more mild tastes, radicchio isn’t an appealing flavor. A member of the chicory family (which also includes frisee, Belgian endive, and dandelion greens), it’s most often described as bitter. And only one variety of radicchio is typically seen in U.S. grocery stores: the red, ball-shaped Chioggia, which has crunchy, bitter leaves that are often confused for cabbage.

Selman, Salvo and others are working to educate consumers about the many other varieties of radicchio with Chicory Week and other events. More inviting and less bitter varieties include the light pink Rosa del Veneto, the green and purple speckled Castelfranco radicchio, and the Treviso Tardivo radicchio, with its squid-like leaves. “I think the really cool Italian heirloom-y varietals [of chicories] are the most fun, because they’re pretty. We don’t see them very often,” says Jenn Louis, a Portland-based chef and author of “The Book of Greens.” “And they are really cool. Some are speckled green and white, some are dark red.” And while these niche varieties might be less common in U.S. grocery stores, they are becoming more popular among small farmers and are showing up at farmers’ markets in cooler regions.

Bringing Italian technique and knowledge to the US

If there are such beautiful and delicious varieties of radicchio, then why is Chiogga, a bitter variety that hasn’t exactly won radicchio a huge following, the only one generally available in the U.S.? You might think one could simply pick up seeds for other radicchio varieties from the local garden store and grow your own. Radicchio, however, is native to the Veneto region of Italy — Pliny the Elder mentions it in his book “Naturalis Historia,” published in AD 77 — and up until recently most of the cool weather crop sold in the U.S. was either Chioggia grown in California or other varieties exported from Italy. Purchasing seeds, unless at a very large quantity, was not possible, and information about seeding, harvesting and storage was sparse and rarely in English.

As farms like California’s J Marchini Farms began growing radicchio in the 1980s, the chicory became known as the pop of color in bagged salad mixes. Salvo’s Local Roots Farm and Pennsylvania’s Campo Rosso are among the handful that began growing more unique varieties in the past decade. The vegetable is notoriously difficult to grow; some varieties, like Treviso Tardivo, are grown in the dark to delay maturing, others depend on getting the planting and harvest dates just right. “All the people that really understand how to grow radicchio well have gone to Italy . . . to visit farms and they get information that way. We would like to bring that information here for farmers to understand [how to grow radicchio better],” says Selman.

Through the Culinary Breeding Network, Selman has arranged two trips to Italy, in 2014 and January 2020, to bridge connections between farmers and breeders, and to document the methods used for each variety. She also recently helped start a collaboration between an Italian seed breeder and the Washington-based seed company Uprising Seeds, who will sell seeds for radicchio varieties as well as brassicas that are specific to Northeast Italy. “They will be selling [these Italian] seeds for the first time in the U.S. market,” Selman says. “It’s really high-quality seed and it’s exciting to be able to connect so directly to the breeder. Now, even gardeners will be able to get small packages.” With another recently funded grant, she has several additional research trips to Italy planned, pending COVID-19 travel restrictions.

Radicchio’s rise

As these unique varieties become more readily available, more and more people are taking note of radicchio’s flair. The vegetable ended up on the cover of Bon Appetit’s February 2021 issue, and articles proclaiming its trendiness have recently graced The Wall Street Journal and Food & Wine magazine. The hashtag #radicchio has been used on Instagram more than 160,000 times, where the pretty pink leaves of the Rosa variety often pose like models. Along with the Sagra del Radicchio and Chicory Week, other cities have started radicchio festivals, including Vancouver’s Radicchio Festival.

As food writer Leah Koenig writes in Taste, part of the uptick in radicchio interest stems from the broadening American palate. “Radicchio’s rise happens to synchronize perfectly with a moment when American consumers are slowly coming around to more challenging flavors — flavors with funky, sour, and spicy profiles,” Koenig writes. “That openness now extends to the bitter flavors that we taste in things like hoppy IPAs, intensely dark chocolate, turmeric, and tahini.”

The farmers dedicated to growing and promoting the vegetable have also seen an uptick in the market. Selman compiled data as part of a recent grant application for continued radicchio research, citing numerous growers who had seen demand increase exponentially over the past few years. Farms like Western Massachusetts’ Kitchen Garden Farm, which sells directly to stores in New York City, Boston, and Providence, and Local Roots Farm saw radicchio sales double in the past year. “Only carrots and lettuce exceed radicchio in terms of total dollars per year,” Local Root’s Salvo writes on the Chicory Week website. “Year-round sales are important to our business and employees. Winter sales improve our cash flow, profitability and our ability to retain employees.”

Developing a taste for radicchio

Although some consumers are becoming hip to radicchio’s flavors, thanks to the work of ambassadors like Selman and farmers like Salvo, the vegetable still remains a bitter conundrum for many. “We also really need to educate them about how to prepare it, because people are not that excited about the challenge with the different flavors, right?” says Selman. “I mean they’re earthy, they’re bitter, they are not sweet and bright like the things that you eat other times of the year.”

At their annual festival (which was held virtually this year), Selman and her team introduced attendees to radicchio, many for the first time. If you’re just trying it, Louis has a few suggestions for tamping down the bitter flavor. First off, when using radicchio leaves raw, she suggests soaking them in ice water for at least 30 minutes, which will help crisp up the leaves, and also lessen some of the bitterness. (Make sure to spin it in a salad spinner before using to remove some of the water.)

From there, it’s all about balance. “Try using something that may be a little fatty and creamy,” she says. “So think about a Caesar salad, because you have that rich, kind of fatty dressing to kind of calm down some of the bitterness of the radicchio.” It’s also common to pair raw radicchio with citrus, nuts, and good aged balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

As for cooking, some of the longer leaves of radicchio, such as Treviso, with its dense, football-shaped head, can be grilled. “You can use them almost like a grilled romaine, that’s pretty fun,” says Louis. And even in cooking, thinking about balance is a good idea with radicchio. In her “Book of Greens” cookbook, Louis combines the rich creamy flavor of creme fraiche and parmigiano with radicchio as a stuffing for her salt-roasted potatoes.

But with radicchio, it’s really about embracing the bitter, at least to some extent. “It’s always gonna be a little bitter,” says Selman. “One of the farmers I work with here, he’s been selecting for so long to have the littlest amount of bitterness that I don’t actually like it. It doesn’t taste the way it’s supposed to taste, because I like a little bit of that sharp bitterness.”

***

Recipe: Salt-roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes with Radicchio and Crème Fraîche

Jenn Louis, “The Book of Greens”
Yield: Makes 8 small stuff potatoes

A couple of recipes in this book call for just half a head of radicchio. These cute little potatoes make a great use of that other half. Though tiny, these potatoes are rich, the perfect balance for the bitterness of the radicchio. They are easy and quick to make, and they look really spiffy because of the melted cheese on top. They are the perfect accompaniment to a steak, and they make nice little hors d’oeuvres, too.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons [60 ml] olive oil
1 head radicchio, halved through the core
Kosher salt
8 small Yukon Gold potatoes
1⁄2 cup [120 ml] crème fraîche or sour cream
1 green onion, green and white parts, thinly sliced into rings
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons finely grated Parmigiano- Reggiano
Worcestershire sauce, for drizzling

Method

Preheat the oven to 400°F [200°C].
Heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large ovenproof sauté pan over medium-high heat. Place the radicchio, cut side down, in the pan and cook until the cut surface is golden and caramelized, 3 to 4 minutes. Using tongs, turn the radicchio over and season lightly with salt. Place the pan in the oven and roast until the radicchio halves are very tender when gently pressed with a finger, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Place the potatoes in a bowl and toss with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon salt. Toss so each potato is well coated with salt. Place the potatoes on a sheet pan and bake until tender, about 30 minutes.
Finely chop half of the roasted and cooled radicchio. Mix in a small bowl with the crème fraîche, green onion, black pepper, and a light sprinkling of salt. The roasted potatoes will be quite salty, so not much is needed for the filling.
Cut an X in the top of each potato and, holding the bottom of each potato with your thumbs and forefingers, press to open each X. Divide the radicchio filling evenly among the potatoes, then top with the Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Place the potatoes on a sheet pan and bake until hot and the cheese is melted and golden, about 15 minutes. Drizzle with Worcestershire and serve immediately.

NOTE: You will have 1⁄2 head radicchio left from this recipe. Eat it as a side dish with steak or use it to make the hand pies on page 95 or substitute for chickweed in arepas (page 85).

OTHER GREENS TO TRY frisée, pan di zucchero

***

Recipe: Insalata Nostrana

Chef Cathy Whims of Nostrano, Radicchio Zine
Serves 6-8

This is the classic salad that introduced (and then hooked) at least a decade’s worth of Portlander’s to radicchio. It was created by chef Cathy Whims of Nostrana and is still one of our favorites. It is wonderful with the Rosso di Verona, but any radicchio will do. Try it as a bed for a roast chicken.

Ingredients

2 large heads of radicchio, such as Rossa di Verona
3 cups cubed focaccia bread or crusty country bread
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
2 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons white wine
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
4 or 5 oil-packed anchovy fillets, finely chopped
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
Black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Method

Break apart radicchio into 11/2-inch pieces and soak in ice cold water for at least 30 minutes, but up to 2 hours. Meanwhile, prepare croutons and dressing. Bake the bread cubes in a 375°F oven on a large baking sheet until toasted; about 10 to 15 minutes. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan, add the sage and rosemary, and cook until fragrant. Turn off heat, add croutons, and toss well. Let them cool.
To make the dressing, add the garlic, vinegar, wine, mayonnaise, anchovies, olive oil, and pepper to a food processor or blender and process until emulsified. You could also do in a mortar and pestle with a little more time and elbow grease. Season to taste. When you’re ready to serve, drain the radicchio and dry well in a salad spinner. Place the leaves in a large salad bowl and toss to coat with the dressing. Add the croutons and a generous shower a Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings.

Recipe republished courtesy of Lane Selman/Radicchio Zine.

Trump reportedly plans to position himself as “presumptive” 2024 nominee in CPAC speech

Donald Trump will make his first public appearance since leaving the White House next Sunday at an event held by the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, where he plans to announce that he is the “presumptive 2024 nominee” of the Republican Party, according to Axios.

“He’ll be talking about the future of the Republican party and the conservative movement,” said a source familiar with his appearance. “Also look for the 45th president to take on President [Joe] Biden’s disastrous amnesty and border policies.”

According to a longtime Trump adviser, the former president plans to speak as “a show of force” to deliver the following message: “I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.”

Founded in 1974, CPAC has been a mainstay event of the conservative movement for decades and grew increasingly sympathetic to the nationalist and populist far right throughout Trump’s presidency. It continues to be one of the largest, most influential conservative gatherings every year, serving as a distinct ideological barometer for the Republican Party, especially on its right flank.

CPAC’s event will feature seven panels, many of which are expected to discuss “election security” and appear calculated to bolster Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. The panels boast such titles as “Failed States (PA, GA, NV, oh my!),” “Other Culprits: Why Judges & Media Refused to Look at the Evidence” and “The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up and Even Admits It.” The entire event will likely lend Trump a platform to continue spreading baseless claims of election fraud — and also to vilify Republicans in Congress and elsewhere who opposed his effort to overturn the election results.

According to Axios, Trump is expected to meet with advisers at Mar-a-Lago to begin hatching a plan for his comeback bid, which may or may not include a 2024 presidential campaign. Reports have said his plan will begin with the upcoming midterm elections next year, especially in the Senate, which offer the former president an opportunity to boost the campaigns of those who have shown him loyalty.

Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said that despite Trump’s recent loss, support for the former president runs far deeper than most would think. “Trump effectively is the Republican Party,” Miller said. “The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grassroots Republicans around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grassroots.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who remained doggedly loyal to Trump for nearly all of the latter’s term, has reportedly declined to appear at CPAC, two sources told CNN. Although he recently joined the Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow, Pence reportedly intends to remain off the political radar for at least the next six months.

Pence’s eventual refusal to back Trump’s claims of election fraud –– made official by his acknowledgment of Joe Biden as the legitimately-elected president –– speaks to increasing fractures within the GOP in the wake of the Capitol riot, which have severely tested the Republican Party’s overall allegiance to the former president.

Leading up to the riot, President Trump made clear that he expected Pence to prove his loyalty by invalidating the election certification process, something the vice president has no constitutional authority to do. Pence, however, played the certification process by the book, and two weeks later attended Biden’s inauguration ceremony.

Several members of Congress, such as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., have met privately with Trump in Florida to discuss the new direction of the Republican Party. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., however, has said he will not do so, and harshly criticized Trump for instigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — even after voting to acquit him at the conclusion of the ex-president’s most recent impeachment trial.

500,000 dead Americans: One year of COVID exposes the rot of GOP ideology

The U.S. is expected to cross a grim milestone on Monday that was unimagined by even the worst projections from the beginning of the pandemic nearly one year ago: Half a million dead from COVID-19. And those are just the direct deaths from recorded instances of the disease. Excess mortality rates show that for every two official COVID-19 deaths, there’s another excess death, likely due to myriad related causes, from increased rates of poverty to strains on the health care system to undiagnosed cases. What is clear, however, is that the past year has exposed the rot of GOP ideology that led to such excess death and despair.

While Republicans love to quibble to muddy the waters around pandemic failure assessment, there is no denying that Donald Trump’s approach to the coronavirus — do as little as possible, push for premature re-openings, hide the evidence by discouraging testing — led to hundreds of thousands more dead Americans than we would have seen under a competent administration.

Yet, as tempting as it might be for some to attribute those failures to Trump’s unique combination of laziness and malice towards the public, the situation in Texas is a cold reminder of how well his failures fit with the larger GOP approach to policy. The state is in shambles, laid flat because the power and water systems — poorly managed due to the Republican mania for low regulation — were no match for the kinds of extreme winter storm events that climate change is making more common. Texas’s situation illustrates how Trump’s approach to the pandemic is just one aspect of the Republican approach to everything, which is to say, to neglect government duties in favor of pandering to wealthy interests and to deflect and deny when the consequences inevitably occur. Democrats must now do more to seize the moment.

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

The utter failures of the GOP’s ideology have never been better illustrated than they are right now. The villains, such as Sen. Ted “Cancun” Cruz and Donald “Let’s Have A Coup” Trump, couldn’t be more sinister. And Republicans themselves know it, which is why, as Greg Sargent of the Washington Post said, they are resorting to “scorched-earth distraction politics and counter-majoritarian tactics to insulate themselves from accountability.” (Changing course to suck less, of course, was never on the table.) The moment is, in other words, ripe for Democrats to undo decades of conservative propaganda demonizing the very idea of government services and to usher in a new, FDR-style approach where the government is once again viewed as the solution to collective problems.

Such mobilization will require swift, bold action well beyond the most immediate needs to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, there’s already good reason to fear that the Democrats are going to be dragged down by cowardly centrists who can’t get out of the failed notions of “bipartisanship” and fear of a right-wing backlash that has hobbled the party’s ability to make real inroads for generations. If Democrats fail to quickly pass meaty, life-changing legislation for Americans, what’s going to happen is what has been happening for decades: voters will drift away from the polls, leaving an already over-powered right-wing minority to dominate. Both the government’s ability to handle responsibilities and public trust in our institutions will continue to degrade. Temporary Democratic wins will become fewer and farther between, as Republicans use their regained power to pass more laws securing minority rule. Breaking the vicious cycle has to happen now, or it may never happen.

First, the good news: President Joe Biden definitely understands that massive relief efforts for the coronavirus pandemic are an incontestable baseline. Despite efforts from Republicans to leverage mewling about “unity” and “bipartisanship” to drag down the amount that Biden plans to spend, Democrats are moving forward with a $1.9 trillion package proposed by Biden, which they can pass through the budget reconciliation process that only requires 50 votes in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.

But the grim reality is that as big a number as $1.9 trillion may be, the bill is simply not enough to even begin the process of restoring faith in government. There are years of Republican malfeasance to the chronic wealth inequalities and lack of health care, capped off with half a million dead from a pandemic and a decaying infrastructure system. There is so much that needs to be done to bring this country back from the brink, including passing the public health care option that Biden has publicly claimed to support, investing in infrastructure in a way that ameliorates climate change instead of making it worse, and passing massive democracy reforms that roll back all the ways Republicans hang onto power despite being a minority. Even something as simple as granting statehood to Washington D.C. could do wonders to set the country back onto the path to wholeness.

Unfortunately, there is good reason to believe that after passing a coronavirus relief bill Democrats are going to twiddle their thumbs for two years and then get wiped out in the midterms, having understandably lost the support of millions of voters who busted their butts to elect Biden only to see inaction on most of the issues facing the country. Unless something drastically changes and Democrats take seriously the need for filibuster reform, Republicans will kill everything on the long list of must-pass bills. The result will be a do-nothing Congress and voter apathy that will drive down turnout beyond the goals of even the most robust GOP voter suppression efforts.

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

The filibuster holdouts are just a couple of centrist senators, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are currently acting as if they don’t care if Democrats lose power in the 2022 and 2024 elections. But the blame still falls on the shoulders of the larger Democratic party for not doing more to seize this moment of crisis to explain to both these senators and to the public at large why Republicans have failed them so badly — and what needs to happen to fix the situation more permanently. Instead, the fight has already focused on executive orders and budget reconciliation, with Democrats debating whether student loan forgiveness is possible through the first and minimum wage raises through the latter.

Any one of those individual policy ideas is good but falls far short of what needs to happen if there’s any chance of turning this country around. It’s heartbreaking to see Democrats clip their wings so early by seemingly giving up on the only thing that could actually work to save us, which is ending the filibuster. Maybe it’s not possible and Democrats like Sinema and Manchin are too foolish or pig-headed to see that their refusal to budge dooms both their party and the nation. But certainly, it should be worth it for Democrats to give all of their energies to this issue. It’s not like they have anything to lose by trying. Failing to end the filibuster means they will lose power, perhaps permanently, anyway. Half a million people are dead. If that’s not enough reason to change course, nothing ever will be.

FBI investigating Roger Stone and Alex Jones’ potential ties to Capitol rioters: report

The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and InfoWars founder Alex Jones’ potential ties to the deadly Capitol riot, according to The Washington Post.

Investigators are looking at whether the two Trump allies and “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander played a role in inciting the January 6 violence as part of a larger investigation into the “radicalization” of the rioters, according to the report.

“We are investigating potential ties between those physically involved in the attack on the Capitol and individuals who may have influenced them, such as Roger Stone, Alex Jones and Ali Alexander,” a U.S. official told the outlet.

A law enforcement source told NBC News that “charges were unlikely,” though the Post report noted that investigators want to determine “whether anyone who influenced [the rioters] bears enough responsibility to justify potential criminal charges, such as conspiracy or aiding the effort.”

All three men pushed former President Donald Trump’s false claims about the election ahead of the riot. Stone and Alexander have credited each other with leading and organizing the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol attack.

Stone and Jones also have extensive ties to the Proud Boys, whose members were seen in videos leading the invasion of the Capitol and face conspiracy charges for their alleged role in the siege. Stone, who was pardoned by Trump for seven felonies related to the Trump-Russia investigation, testified that he worked closely with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who later urged members to “turn out in record numbers” on January 6. Tarrio and Proud Boys organizer Joe Biggs were also frequent guests on Jones’ show. At least 18 members and associates of the group have been charged in connection to the Capitol attack, some of whom appeared to be using communications devices to coordinate, according to prosecutors.

Another video taken on January 6 showed Stone surrounded by members of the Oath Keepers, an anti-government extremist militia group whose members also face conspiracy charges for their alleged role in the riot. Members of the militia acted as security for Stone while he was in town, according to Vice News.

“This is nothing less than an epic struggle for the future of this country between Dark and Light, between the godly and the godless, between Good and Evil,” Stone declared at a rally on January 5 in DC, adding, “I will be with you tomorrow—shoulder to shoulder!”

Stone, who helped lead the infamous “Brooks Brothers riot” to oppose the 2000 presidential recount in Florida, has denied any “advance knowledge” of the January 6 riot and said he played “no role whatsoever” in the events of that day. He told the Russian-funded outlet RT that he was invited to lead the march but “declined.”

“There is no evidence whatsoever that Roger Stone was involved in any way, or had advance knowledge about the shocking attack that took place at the US Capitol on January 6th. Any implication to the contrary using ‘guilt by association’ is both dishonest and inaccurate,” Stone’s attorney Grant Smith told the Post.

Jones has said that he was invited by the White House to “lead the march” from the Ellipse to the Capitol and paid nearly $500,000 to organize the event.

“Roger Stone spent some substantial time with Trump in Florida just a few days ago, and I’m told big things are afoot and Trump’s got major actions up his sleeve,” he said on his show on January 1.

Jones later said that he didn’t lead the march but followed the crowd to the Capitol. His attorney cited a video in which Jones urges the mob not to fight with police.

“If you wish to know what Alex Jones’ role was [on Jan. 6] you need look no further than the video,” attorney Marc Randazza told the Post.

Alexander said in a now-deleted video that he “schemed up” the event with Reps. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; and Mo Brooks, R-Ala., to put “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.” Brooks and Biggs denied the allegation. Biggs and Gosar later sought pardons from Trump for their role in the event, according to CNN, but Trump turned them down.

Alexander later told the Post last month that he “remained peaceful” during the riot.

“Conflating our legally, peaceful permitted events with the breach of the U.S. Capitol building is defamatory and false,” he told the outlet.

Prosecutors have launched an extensive probe into the radicalization of those that took part in the riot, some of whom have blamed Trump and his conservative media allies for stoking lies about the election in court documents.

“Every terrorism case I’ve ever worked on . . . has shown something about the radicalization process, or how a person came to harbor the views, animosity and intent to commit a crime of violence,” Mary McCord, a former top national security official at the Justice Department, told the Post.

But prosecutors would have to clear a high bar to bring charges for incitement.

“It’s incredibly hard under current law to say that someone like Alex Jones saying something a day or a week before is going to meet that standard as the law has been interpreted,” First Amendment attorney Ken White told the outlet. “I anticipate that you will see increasingly creative alternative approaches by federal prosecutors, like conspiracy.”

The family recipe I couldn’t wait any longer to learn

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Wash spinach.

It’s the recipe that has eluded us all: mom’s creamed spinach à la Julia. The spinach we devoured at Thanksgiving, on any night we came home from college, on Sunday nights with roasted chicken and potatoes, just the three or, even better, four of us. The one my friends talked about for years: ”Your mother’s spinach: I’ve never eaten anything like it.” Or, “Will your mother make the spinach if I come over for dinner?”

Drop in the washed spinach and cook for 3 minutes. Dump into a colander, then immediately run under cold water to stop it from cooking.

For years, my sister and I attempted to make it on our own. Each time, it tasted wrong. Often, simply . . . bad. We laughed at our own failures — we considered ourselves good cooks — but why did it matter? Mom was always coming for a visit soon enough, or we’d be headed home in a few months and we’d eat her perfect version again.

When the pandemic hit, an urgency overtook me: Mom is 80. She lives clear across the continent in another country, so we don’t know when we will see her again, or eat her cooking. This only brought up darker, more terrifying thoughts. What if we never learn to make the spinach —

From our various kitchens, we prop up our computers. My daughter, Noa, and I put on aprons. We all peer into our screens: my parents in Montreal, Dad manning the camera; my sister in Southern California; my aunt in Toronto; my second mom (as we call a family friend) in Nova Scotia. We are all talking over each other. All of us have gone more gray over the past 14 months, since we’ve been together around the table, some of us a little wider in the middle, all of us a little crazed, desperate for one another. “Then what, Mom?” “Then what? Judy?” “Did you take it out already?” “Should I be cutting the spinach?” “Should it be wet?”

Squeeze out all the excess water. Then place spinach on cutting board. Chop.

Photo by Toby Izenberg.

Noa squeezes and squeezes. She sets it aside, then goes back for more. “Look, Mama!” The bottom of our sink fills with green water. My sister is behind, dumping in a second batch of spinach; my aunt is going at her own pace, and it’s not clear she can hear over all the noise of the talking and boiling and chopping and draining. Mom No. 2 isn’t even doing it, she’s just watching us, sitting at her computer in her office like we are a TV show. “This is the most entertaining thing I’ve watched in months,” she says, laughing. “The Rasminskys making spinach.”

Melt a lot of butter in the bottom of a pot. Like, way more than you think: 3 tablespoons per 10 ounces of spinach. Or even more, if you want.

“Does Le Creuset work, Mom?”
“That’s not Le Creuset. What are you using?”
“It’s just a regular — ”
“Dad, we can’t see what Mom’s using, tilt the camera!”
“What?”
“They can’t see, Michael!”
“You can use Le Creuset. I’m using something smaller, because it’s only us —”
“That’s what I’m using! Le Creuset!”
“What?”
“It’s fine, whatever it is, it’s fine. A pot.”

It’s a lot of butter. That’s the thing. That’s the key. It’s Julia. Then add the spinach. Stir and cover the pot for a while.

“A while? Like, a minute? 10 minutes?”

Cover for a minute or two. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of flour. This is for 10 ounces of spinach, so you do the math if you’ve cooked more spinach. Stir until it dissolves. Add a little salt and pepper and grated nutmeg. Stir.

Photo by Toby Izenberg.

I watch my mother and count how long she grates for. Nine seconds. Her fragile hands. The crooked finger. My dad holding the camera steady.

Add half a Knorr cube. It has to be Knorr to get the right taste. Then slowly add a cup of water. Make sure the cube dissolves!

“I don’t have K— I don’t have Knorr!”
“Mom, I’m just using vegetable stock.”
“Vegetable? Why not chicken or beef?”
“I don’t have —”
“It won’t taste the same, but use what you have.”
“Oh sh*t, I put in way too much stock! F*ck, I think I ruined it. Mom?”
“How is it?”
“I don’t know, did I ruin it? Shi*.”
“It’s . . . it’s OK?”

Adjust the seasoning. You could add another 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter.

We stir and stir. We taste once, twice, and soon I’m eating it out of the pot, just like my aunt, who stands in her kitchen eating it straight: “Judy, it’s delicious.” Noa tells me it tastes like Grandma’s. I don’t think so, but I don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe it needs salt? Maybe it was the Knorr cube? Maybe this is a dish only Mom should make, a dish we only know how to eat in my parents’ kitchen.

Photo by Toby Izenberg.

Maybe what I want is not the taste of spinach done right, but the taste of home, of another time. The taste of sitting down with Mom and Dad and my sister around the old table on Redfern, a bottle of wine — or, reach back further, Abby, milk in a tall glass — a perfectly roasted chicken, the skin so taut and crispy, the comfort of Mom’s cooking, of safety, of a night together, of our bedrooms upstairs and the snowy city outside and school in the morning.

Maybe what I want is just to have them close, the shape and smell and sound of them, to have my dad ask if I want more chicken, to serve my Mom more spinach, to pour my sister some wine, to sit in the same seats we’ve sat in for decades, in the breakfast room, which was the place where we ate all the meals, not just breakfast — and be a family again.

Recipe: Mom’s Creamed Spinach à la Julia

Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Serves: 2

Ingredients

10 ounces washed spinach
2-3 tablespoons unsalted butter (or more)
2-3 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 Knorr stock cube
1 cup water
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Directions

Put a pot of water to boil with salt. Wash spinach. Put spinach in boiling water and cook for 3 minutes at a slow boil.
Drain spinach and run cold water over spinach to stop it from cooking. A handful at a time, squeeze the spinach to get the water out. Chop. (You can now store, refrigerate and continue whenever.)
In a pot on medium heat, melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter, then put spinach in and stir. Cover for a minute or two.
Add 2-3 tablespoons of flour and stir until the white dissolves. Really make sure white dissolves!
Add a little salt and pepper and grate nutmeg for 9 seconds. Stir. Add 1/2 Knorr stock cube (chicken or beef preferably) and continue to stir while gradually adding 1 cup of water. Be sure the stock dissolves completely!
Correct seasoning. At the end you could add another 2-3 tablespoons of butter.
Take off heat. It’s really important not to cook it too long, either while you’re preparing it or when you heat it up to serve later! You just want it gently heated. Overcooking is what kills it.

Why Republicans are keeping Trump’s Big Lie alive

Donald Trump may be spending his post-presidency golfing at Mar-a -Lago but he remains front and center in the hearts and minds of millions of Republican voters, as evidenced by the 46% who said in a new Suffolk University/ USA Today poll released over the weekend that they would join a Trump Party if he decided to split off from the GOP. A whopping 80% of Republican respondents said they support punishing any Republicans in Congress who voted for Trump’s impeachment. He is still their Dear Leader even in exile.

So the GOP still has a Trump problem. If it loses 20-30% of its voters, it will prove difficult to win any elections whether it’s called the Trump Patriot Party or the plain old GOP. That is because the polarization that powers the extreme right-wing under Trump depends upon having every last self-identified Republican vote their way. There are no more crossovers when it comes to Donald Trump.

This is the dilemma now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., finds himself trying to navigate as he tries to take back the Senate in 2022. So far, he’s tried to have it both ways. Perhaps he and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham are playing some elaborate game of “good cop-bad cop” with Graham ostentatiously currying Trump’s favor while McConnell writes op-eds in the Wall Street Journal desperately trying to assuage big money donors and appalled suburban voters with reassurances that the Republican establishment hasn’t gone completely mad.

It’s impossible to know how any of that will work out but whatever happens, the GOP is taking advantage of one major aspect of Trump’s legacy: The Big Lie. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 76% of Republicans still say they believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election and that Trump was the legitimate winner. Republican lawmakers in states across the country are now rushing to pass various draconian vote suppression schemes.

It’s not that they haven’t been doing that all along, of course. That’s conservative electoral strategy 101, about which I’ve written many times. Having lost the popular vote seven out of the last eight presidential elections, they know very well that they do not have the support of a majority of voters in the country. Now that Trump conveniently persuaded GOP voters that the presidential election was stolen from them in broad daylight, the opportunity to curb voting in some new and ingenious ways has presented itself and they are going for it.

So far this year at least 165 bills that would restrict voting access are being considered in state legislatures nationwide reports the Brennan Center for Justice. And the excuse Republicans are using is that they must do this to “restore trust” in the voting system — trust that was destroyed by the outrageous lies of Donald Trump and his henchmen. What a neat trick. Apparently, the only way they can restore trust is to “fix” problems that don’t exist but which also happen to suppress Democratic votes. Take Georgia, for instance, ground zero for Trump’s post-election machinations. According to the Brennan Center, the Republican legislature has proposed curtailing early voting — including on Sundays when historically Black churches have caravaned congregations in what is called “souls to the polls” — making drop boxes more onerous to access and requiring several new steps in order to vote by mail. One of the most counterintuitive restrictions is a new process that disallows dropping ballots off on Election Day and three days prior. It makes no sense. If you’ve forgotten to get your ballot in the mail you should be able to walk it in. What can possibly be a reasonable rationale against that?

You can see how important this issue is right now by the fact that this week’s CPAC conference is featuring seven panel discussions on “election protection” with names like “The Left Pulled the Strings, Covered It Up, and Even Admits It.” “Failed States (PA, GA, NV, oh my!)” and “They Told Ya So: The Signs Were Always There.” Here’s one of the featured speakers, a lawyer who secretly helped Trump behind the scenes:

.@CletaMitchell is a national election law expert who will share her on-the-ground experiences in #Georgia and the true facts about what happened on Nov 3rd and since then at #CPAC2021 in #Orlando. pic.twitter.com/xrL1DqHuFp

— CPAC (@CPAC) February 20, 2021

It goes without saying that the right-wing media continues to flog this lie but it is spread far and wide by the the major networks as well which continue to feature guests who find subtler ways to poison the public’s mind. Take Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La, on ABC’s “This Week” dodging the question in a different way, suggesting that the “real problem” is that the states didn’t follow their own laws in the election, as some of Trump’s bush league lawyers argued at the time before being shot down by every judge who heard them.

This version of the Big Lie is what MSNBC’s Chris Hayes dubbed “High Hawley-ism”, after the unctuous mewlings of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, during the post-election period, which Hayes says is a trial balloon for GOP state legislators to unilaterally award electoral college votes to whomever they choose. You may recall that was what Trump was trying to do up until the very minute his rabid mob sacked the Capitol. Hayes wrote:

This dubious theory, that only state *legislatures* can make these kinds of changes also invites all kinds of mischief by federal judges to reach in and overrule state supreme courts. It didn’t work in 2020, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.

Further, as Scalia memorably noted there is no constitutional guarantee of the right to vote for president; we vote for electors. Every state with R control could pass a law awarding all state electors to the candidate that won the most counties and basically guarantee R victory.

As the New York Times reported at the time, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gave plenty of signals during the election campaign that they were amenable to this idea, making it clear that they believe state legislatures have the right to enact strict measures against (non-existent) voter fraud. As Wendy R. Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Times:

Even without the reasoning, it’s very clear that what the court has done throughout this election season has made it clear that federal courts are not going to be significant sources of voting rights protection in the lead up to elections. It’s the unique constitutional role of the courts to protect individual rights like voting rights, and they’re treating it like policy decisions.

That’s what Trump put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court to do for him last fall, but the cards just didn’t fall his way enough to put it to use. Even so, the Big Lie about the stolen election has opened the door for a wave of voter suppression not seen in decades with a Supreme Court ready to rubber stamp it. It may end up being his greatest legacy.

Trump is only welcoming to Mar-a-Lago those who are eager to “exact vengeance” on his GOP enemies

As President Donald Trump enters his new life post-presidency, he’s getting exactly what he wanted when he was in the White House: Zero responsibility with all of the perks and power, according to Vanity Fair.

The Former Presidents Act provides that Trump gets a pension without pressure to donate it to charity, taxpayer-funded healthcare, security and $1 million a year to handle his staff.

According to a report in Vanity Fair, Trump is relishing his power as ex-president and in his control of the Republican Party’s voters. That power is coming in handy as he looks to his next goal of taking down anyone who opposes him.

“If you’re Trump, you don’t gotta play nice with these people anymore,” the report said, citing someone close to Trump. “You don’t have to do the whole fake political thing where you pretend to like people you don’t actually like.”

So, instead of meeting with people like Nikki Haley, who he refused, according to a Politico report this week, Trump has only been meeting with those who are in the pro-MAGA orbit.

Over the weekend, Politico also reported that former Florida Attorney General and Trump impeachment defense attorney Pam Bondi met with Trump. Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie came for dinner. Trump has also enjoyed meeting with political candidates “eager to fulfill his promise to exact vengeance upon incumbent Republicans who’ve scorned him” said Politico. The former president is working diligently to ensure MAGA has a huge presence in the 2022 midterm elections, which could ramp up soon.

While Trump has raised hundreds of millions of dollars in wake of the 2020 election, it’s unclear if he intends to share the money with candidates he supports in 2022. He has several mounting lawsuits against him that could hamper fundraising — and his attention — as these investigations move forward.

Read the full report from Vanity Fair.

Stephen Miller melts down on Fox News over Democrats’ immigration reform bill: “This is madness!”

Former White House adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday accused Democrats of “madness” over a push to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

Miller made the remarks on Fox News after network host Maria Bartiromo announced that a “new border crisis is afoot” due to a reform bill that has been introduced by Democrats.

For his part, Miller argued that granting citizenship to immigrants would “erase the essence” of the United States.

“The legislation put forward by Biden and congressional Democrats would fundamentally erase the very essence of America’s nationhood,” Miller claimed, explaining that he was upset by the idea that immigrants could legally regain entry after being deported by a former administration.

“This is madness!” he exclaimed. “This administration has already dismantled border security, canceling President Trump’s historic agreements with Mexico and with the northern triangle countries, restoring catch and release and additionally gutting interior enforcement, issuing a memo, preventing ICE from removing the vast majority of criminal illegal immigrants that it encounters!”

“This is a policy choice disguised falsely to the court and to the country as a resource issue!” Miller shouted. “That is a lie and it’s a lie that threatens public safety.”

“Wow,” Bartiromo replied.

Miller contended that the U.S. has enough resources for enforcement but not enough to treat immigrants humanely.

“So ask yourself, who is going to pay for the education?” he said. “What does it mean when classrooms, God willing, reopen? What does it mean for classroom size? What does it mean for health care? Then you add on top of that the families that are being released. Who is paying for the medical bills? Who’s paying for the health care costs?”

“That’s coming out of your pocket book!” Miller said. “And it’s a public safety issue!”

“If you give low-skilled, illegal immigrants a path to citizenship, that will mean a net fiscal transfer of trillions of dollars longterm to pay for social security, to pay for medical care, to pay for Medicaid,” he added. “It’s an extraordinary expense to give that to 20 million illegal immigrants.”

Financial author William Cohan on how Trump can make billions — and save himself one more time

Too many Americans have tried to replace the horrors of the Age of Trump with happy-pill halcyon tales suggesting that Donald Trump and his movement have been vanquished and made irrelevant by the hopeful possibilities of Joe Biden’s presidency, and an imminent return to some new form of “normal.”

Predictably, the hope-peddlers, stenographers of current events, professional centrists and other obsolete voices among the American news media have been more than willing to oblige and circulate such fictions.

Here are some uncomfortable truths.

For all of the allure of liberal schadenfreude and President Biden’s popularity, Donald Trump and his followers have not been broken or otherwise defeated psychologically, emotionally or politically. If anything, he and they are becoming more bold, confident and sure of their long-term success.

Trump is behaving like a type of shadow president who believes he was never truly defeated by Biden and the Democrats. Trump will apparently speak at the CPAC political cosplay gathering next week, where he may announce himself as a kingmaker for the Republican Party, call out enemies who are to be purged for “disloyalty” and perhaps even announce that he will be starting a new political party for “real Americans” and “true patriots.”

There is no civil war within the Republican Party about the legacy of Trump’s presidency and the future of the “conservative” movement. Trump did not break the Republican Party or otherwise mold it into his vision. Instead, Trump gave the party, along with its voters and camp follower permission to be their true, ugly, dangerous, anti-democratic, white supremacist selves. It is no surprise then that Donald Trump remains extremely popular among Republican voters. His personal popularity, in fact, eclipses that of the Republican Party itself.

Public opinion polls and other research has repeatedly shown that Trump’s followers believe that he and they were betrayed by the “Deep State” or other such imaginary forces who “stole” the 2020 election from their Great Leader.

Law enforcement and other experts in terrorism and counterinsurgency have continued to warn that Trump’s insurrection and coup attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 are just the beginning of a sustained period of right-wing terrorism and other political violence directed against Democrats, liberals, progressives, nonwhite people, Muslims, Jews and others deemed to be enemies of Trump and his movement.

What of Donald Trump’s finances? The apparent media consensus holds that Donald Trump is on the verge of imminent financial collapse. Hundreds of millions of dollars in loans are coming due over the course of the next few years and Trump now lacks the protection of the presidency, along with the ability to exploit public resources to personally enrich himself as well as his family and other allies. Trump is also facing serious criminal investigations related to his questionable business practices as well as other apparent crimes related to his insurrectionist plot.

But this consensus about Trump’s fading finances and wealth overlooks one important detail: He is a cult leader, and his followers are potentially an almost infinite source of funding.

William Cohan is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair. His writing has also been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Atlantic, Fortune and The Nation. Cohan is also the author of several bestselling books about finance and Wall Street, including “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World” and “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.” His most recent book is “Why Wall Street Matters.”

In this wide-ranging conversation, Cohan explains how Donald Trump could potentially use his fanatical followers to make billions of dollars each year. He also details how the corruption of the Trump regime likely includes manipulation of the stock market and other financial crimes, which he believes the Biden administration and Congress should investigate.

Cohan also shares his thoughts on the present and future of the American economy in an age of pandemic, and what the wild speculation in such companies as GameStop and Bed Bath & Beyond really reveals about the stability of the stock market.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

There is a desperate yearning for a return to “normal” following Trump’s presidency and the coronavirus disaster and all the personal and financial destruction it has caused. What will this new normal look like for small businesses, for example? I worry that many neighborhood businesses will be gone forever.

Big-name brand stores in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan are struggling, while independent stores in Brooklyn are doing fine. Many small and medium-sized businesses have struggled greatly throughout this crisis. The Fed has helped in an extraordinary way those companies, generally big companies, that can access the capital markets. Those companies have refinanced debt and obtained more debt and equity financing. They have also been able to issue junk bonds and refinance their debt.

This represents about 1% of companies. And then there are the other 99% of businesses that are small and medium-sized businesses. If it weren’t for the PPP loans, many of those businesses would have closed down. There are other businesses, such as restaurants and other small and medium-sized businesses, which are just going to disappear. But on the other hand, I see anecdotal examples where new entrepreneurs are coming along, people willing to take risks. The economic disruptions in New York, for example have made a lot of retail space much more affordable than it has ever been in the last two decades or so. It is creative destruction. This is the nature of capitalism generally, and the pandemic has exacerbated those tendencies.

A hundred years ago there was the Spanish flu pandemic, and it was followed by the Roaring ’20s. The reason it was called the Roaring ’20s was because World War I had ended, and the pandemic had ended, people were ready to live again, and all that pent-up energy was released.

There probably will be a crash, given where the asset bubbles are already. High-yield bond markets are in a bubble. The stock market is at an all-time high and certainly looking pricey. Bitcoin is out of control. Tesla is out of control. We have these GameStop-like charades. And this all comes before we have another version of the Roaring ’20s. Ultimately, I think it is inevitable that a financial crisis is going to happen once every 10 to 15 years anyway.

In addition to the GameStop speculation, trading cards and other collectibles are now back in a huge way as well. I knew folks who opened baseball card, comic book and memorabilia stores in the 1980s and 1990s, and when that bubble burst, they lost everything. How do you explain the re-emergence of that market?

The truth is that each one of these narratives results from a different set of circumstances. What is driving Bitcoin is very different than the shenanigans that drove GameStop. But it all gets portrayed in the headlines in a very similar way. Now, both in my opinion represent a ridiculous level of speculation and gambling. They also both have this underpinning of wanting to “stick it to the man” and change the world.

With GameStop, that roller coaster has come and gone. Bitcoin is still going up. I think it’s another just way to gamble, whether you understand what’s going on or not. FOMO, or “fear of missing out,” was the driver behind GameStop. GameStop came and went before the SEC could get its mind around it — and there wasn’t even a head of the SEC because we were between administrations. There will be hearings and people will try to figure out how to prevent the GameStop insanity from taking place again. Such things have been going on for a long time. Flights of fancy are part of human nature — for example, tulip mania in the 17th century. What’s the difference between GameStop stock and Bitcoin and tulip bulbs? To me, there is no difference.

One of the arguments is that what’s happening now — with GameStop, for example — is all proof that Wall Street is a type of casino. Wall Street is corrupt. It can be rigged and played easily.

There are some 3,500 publicly traded equities in the U.S. So, one or two or three become the fascination of speculators, for whatever reason. We all know that now the Redditors got ahold of GameStop and AMC and Bed Bath & Beyond and whatever else may be next. But by and large, the capital markets are one of our country’s greatest assets. They are certainly the envy of the world, whether Americans appreciate that or not. Has there always been speculation? Yes.

People love to gamble. People are at home. They don’t go to work. They’re working from home. They’re sitting around and they get bored. “Why not see if we can make some money sitting around and doing nothing by buying into the GameStop bonanza? If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, so what? I had some fun.” There would be no way, if a person did any analysis on the fundamentals of GameStop as a business, that they would ever buy it unless they perceived that there was an opportunity for a short squeeze — which there was. By and large it was the hedge funds that were shorting GameStop and they made the right call. Over time, chances are the GameStop stock will continue to go down because the fundamental underlying nature of the business is not very good.

“Casino capitalism” is a phrase that is commonly used by critics of today’s version of capitalism. What is that language and concept describing, accurately or not?

“Casino capitalism” is a nice alliterative phrase, but it is a complete oversimplification. There are five or 10 companies where people are speculating. Is there speculation in Bitcoin or in some commodities? Yes, there is a gambling element to some aspects of Wall Street. Did people 20 years ago bid up the price of GE stock to make it the most valuable company in the world? Yes. Is it now trading for a great deal less, a fraction of what it was then? Yes. But for the most part, the public markets and, to some extent, the private markets are the best judge of a company’s value.

The media consensus is that Donald Trump is facing imminent financial collapse. That claim is also part of a much broader narrative of wishful thinking that Trump has been vanquished and will disappear from American public life. What do we actually know about Trump’s money and financial prospects going forward? To my eyes he has many options available.

The fact of the matter is Trump is going to owe $400 million to Deutsche Bank in the next few years. In the past Trump has defaulted on loans left and right. This means Trump lost the assets associated with them. If Trump defaults on what he owes, it would mean that he’d lose a bunch of golf courses or perhaps even Trump Tower. I do not think that Trump is going to let it get to that, because it is obviously a terrible time to be trying to sell a Manhattan office tower. Chances are there will be time for the economy to improve before the money Trump owes will come due.

Two of his best assets are the minority stakes he owns in the Vornado office buildings, one in Manhattan and one in San Francisco. Steve Roth has tried to sell them and couldn’t do it because of the Trump stink. So now the thinking is that maybe he buys out Trump, which in turn would give Trump cash. Then those properties could be sold, now that Trump is no longer attached to them. Certainly, Donald Trump could sell Trump Tower or 40 Wall Street. Those are basically debt-free, valuable assets. Trump is trying to sell his Washington hotel, but there do not seem to be any takers at the moment. I believe at some point in the future there will be.

As I wrote in my recent Vanity Fair article, what I’ve been hearing from people on Wall Street is that Trump could just do the obvious. Look at what Trump did after the 2020 election. He raised something like $300 million from his followers. Trump could also start a Substack site and have somebody write it for him. He doesn’t even have to do it himself. He’s got 72 million followers, so let’s say 10 million of them agree to give him $100 a year. That is a billion dollars. And Trump could get that every year. He could easily begin to monetize these fanatical followers. That is the path of least resistance. And do not forget that Trump is a pretty lazy guy, so the Substack route makes sense.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, made at least $600 million during Donald Trump’s presidency. This is a clear example of influence peddling and profiteering against the public interest. Is there any legal recourse to prevent this type of abuse in the future?

The whole Trump administration has been about abusing power, sucking up public money, and being confident that they will get away with it — and they have. I don’t even know what to say about Jared and Ivanka. They are so keen on self-aggrandizement that they’re completely divorced from reality.

At Vanity Fair you have written extensively about the alleged insider trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, as well as other questionable financial dealings connected to the Trump administration. Should Joe Biden and Congress investigate these matters?

Absolutely there should be investigations. The FTC should be looking into these questions. The suspicious timing of so many of the trades at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is well-documented. To me, investigations would be a necessary corrective and an important step in restoring the integrity of the markets, which should also include GameStop and insider trading among congresspeople. There are lots of ways to go about this. It will be a breath of fresh air if Gary Gensler does it. We certainly knew that nobody in the Trump administration was going to undertake anything of the sort, because they are all grifters.

With the benefit of more information and hindsight, what do you think the American people and the world will discover about the Trump administration? What is the big story not yet revealed?

Getting to the bottom — not of Trump’s taxes — but of his balance sheet and financial projections. I have always wanted to see Trump’s audited financials. I want to know who has lent him money, how much, and what he owes. I want to see it on one page.

That would be the revelation. That’s when the American people and the world find out why Trump kowtowed to Putin and other dictators and oligarchs. Who has their hooks into Trump? Unlike every other president, Donald Trump did not put his assets into a blind trust. In keeping with his disruptive, chaotic approach to life, Trump ignored convention after convention and saw the presidency as the ultimate grift. Getting to the bottom of how much Donald Trump and his family stole from the American Treasury, and who around the world had their hooks into him and why, are the great unexplained mysteries of the Trump presidency.

The new “Greatest Generation” or the worst one? The 2020s will test younger Americans

In 1998, the longtime NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw wrote a book called “The Greatest Generation,” honoring the Americans who came of age during the Great Depression, fought in World War II and brought the planet through the early years of the post-atomic era. Brokaw pointed out that they had faced tests unlike anything previous generations could have imagined and, while hardly perfect, ultimately succeeded when confronting the major issues of their time. Had they failed, the world today would be a much, much worse place.

Flash forward to 2021. Whether we realize it or not, history has put post-baby boom Americans in a similar crucible. To use a quote apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” The generations that endured the hardships of the late 2000s and 2010s will be confronted with challenges in the 2020s no less momentous and grave than the Great Depression, World War II and advent of the nuclear era.

First, a quick history lesson. After the stock market crashed in 1929, the global economy entered a period of intense decline known as the Great Depression. Millions upon millions worldwide languished in horrendous poverty, prompting nations to attempt a wide range of economic reforms to provide relief to their people. In the U.S., President Herbert Hoover’s failure to adequately address the crisis caused him to lose in the 1932 election to Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal programs brought some degree of economic security and alleviated the mass suffering.

The Great Depression itself did not end, however, until World War II, a devastating conflict brought on by the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during the Great Depression, a fascist and racist regime that sought to dominate as much of the world as possible. Initially the U.S. did not enter the war — in large part because American right-wingers and isolationists, including potential Republican presidential candidate Charles Lindbergh, sympathized with the Nazis and used an “America First” philosophy as a cover for not stopping them — but once American military power and industry were involved, the tide rapidly turned against the Nazis (and the Japanese empire in the Far East). Just as significant, Roosevelt’s World War II economic policies brought about full employment, reduced income inequality, gave women and African Americans expanded roles in the workforce and led to legislation like the GI Bill, which ensured that veterans would have education and job opportunities when they returned.

America experienced unprecedented economic growth in the three decades after the war. Yet by using nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945, the U.S. had ushered in a new era of history, one in which humanity for the first time literally had the power to destroy itself. It was clear that world leaders needed to learn how to responsibly manage the incredible technology at their disposal. Fortunately, the Greatest Generation and their elders by and large understood the gravity of the situation and behaved responsibly, staving off nuclear war despite some close calls in subsequent decades. (The president faced with our closest brush with nuclear apocalypse, John F. Kennedy, was himself a World War II veteran, and the first member of the “Greatest Generation” to occupy the Oval Office.)

While the term Greatest Generation is generally used to refer to the Americans who were old enough to fight in World War II — a demographically narrow group — today’s challenges will be addressed by the three overlapping or interlocking generations who followed the baby boomers and were born after roughly the middle of the 1960s: Gen X, the millennial generation and the children and younger adults now known as Gen Z. Their experiences are in many ways wildly different — the oldest members of this group are already in their 50s, while the youngest are still in grade school — they were all shaped by the same set of traumas.

If the inflection point for the Greatest Generation was 1929, the inflection point for our era was the year 2008. That was the year of the financial and economic collapse known as the Great Recession, and also the year America elected its first Black president. Obama brought about a partial recovery (as I’ve argued before, he was the best president in half a century), but the lingering hardships of that massive economic setback created a world of diminished opportunity for everyone: The Gen-Xers who believed they had settled into adulthood, the millennials who were just entering the economy, and the Gen-Z kids coming of age amid tremendous economic insecurity.

Like the 1930s, the 2010s weren’t only defined by economic problems. Just as far right political movements became increasingly powerful in the 1930s, the 2010s saw the ascent of racist and fascist leaders who used the language of nationalism as a cover for their agendas. The most important and conspicuous of the bunch, of course, was Donald Trump, but right-wing populists and their allies came to power — or at least to political prominence — in numerous other nations in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Yet Trump emerged as the main face of far-right politics throughout the world, and cemented that reputation with his final act, a coup attempt and mob assault on the U.S. Capitol. Of the 11 sitting presidents who have run for a second term and lost, only Trump refused to recognize his defeat and instead attempted to overturn the election by force.

Yet despite Trump’s double impeachment — another dubious historical distinction — most Republicans have refused to break from their now-former president, leaving him as the nominal head of their party and paving the way either for a Trump comeback or another candidate like him.

While all of this was happening, the world was burning up — literally. Human industry and transportation have continued to emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, radically destabilizing the climate. The impact was devastating: Forest fires, droughts, floods, superstorms and heat waves, to name just a few. If it continues to go unchecked, scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change will destroy our planet for future generations. We will see more superstorms and heat waves, more forest fires and mass extinction of vulnerable species. Coastal cities will be submerged while other regions may become so dry and hot they will be virtually abandoned, potentially creating millions of climate refugees. We’ll find it more difficult to fight off disease, grow enough food, drink safe water and construct habitable buildings.

None of this even takes into account the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time of this writing has infected more than 110 million people worldwid,e including almost 28 million in the United States. (More than 2.4 million people have died of the disease, including more than 490,000 in the United States.) In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was yet another reminder that the economic status quo has failed to protect people: While the world’s governments could have paid people to stay home and pooled resources to develop and distribute a vaccine as quickly and equitably as possible, this proved impossible under the dictates of a capitalist market economy. As a result, we have seen a patchwork of responses that have conveniently allowed the rich to get richer while the rest of the world entered an economic recession even worse than the one in 2008.

While the pandemic will inevitably pass, it is in many ways a foreshadowing of what lies ahead. We see far-right leaderslike Trump ignoring science and the wealthy putting their immediate greed over the future of our species. There have been some heroes, like Hungarian biochemist Dr. Katalin Karikó and countless frontline workers in the health care industry, but people at the top have let down everyone else in a profound way.

The clock is ticking on all of the problems listed above. When it comes to the climate crisis, the threshold after which change becomes irreversible and apocalyptic may arrive by the end of this decade. Although Biden is doing his best to address the pandemic, he will have to undo the damage left behind by Trump’s catastrophic mismanagement. The midterm elections of 2022 and the next presidential election two years after that could easily return Trump’s movement, or whatever succeeds it, to national power.

All of these problems are coming to a head in the 2020s, just as the problems that built up after 1929 came to a head in the 1940s. You have both long-term existential threats to humanity’s survival (nuclear war in the former case, climate change and pandemics and weapons of mass destruction in the latter) and the rise of right-wing extremists who openly oppose democracy (Hitler and his sympathizers in the 1930s and 1940s, Trump and those like him in the 2010s and 2020s).

There are also solutions. The generations confronting this challenge must follow in the footsteps of the racial minorities and women who, after being empowered during World War II, began to fight for their rights in subsequent decades. Already we see people refusing to accept layers of systemic oppression — whether that’s economic inequality, racism, sexism, religious intolerance, ableism, anti-LGBTQ prejudice and other forms of bigotry and injustice.

In many respects, economic justice is the bedrock issue that connects all these others. Near the end of his presidency, Roosevelt proposed an economic bill of rights that would have guaranteed remunerative jobs, shelter, medical care, food, clothing, recreation, education and the other necessities of life to every citizen. These things must become a reality for everyone, whether brought about by a Green New Deal, a universal basic income or some other method. Unless every person is protected from the fear of poverty, all other social justice achievements will rest on a foundation of quicksand.

In addition, we must fight the dual scourges of right-wing extremism and nationalism. The former leads to oppression and injustice, the latter to a species-wide inability to effectively respond to crises that know no borders. Fighting right-wing extremism is both a political and a cultural struggle. Freedom of speech is a crucial American value, but extremism, bigotry and conspiracy theories cannot be treated purely as commodities in the marketplace of ideas — ultimately they will should down that marketplace, and destroy all our freedoms in the process.

Finally, we must hold all our politicians accountable — and not just the ones we are used to opposing. Just because Joe Biden is a Democrat doesn’t mean he can be counted on to do the right thing (consider his perverse insistence on nickel-and-diming a student loan forgiveness plan. Progressives must exert pressure on Biden and other Democrats to make sure they do everything necessary to protect our planet and preserve our economic and social rights. When leftists have done similar things to liberal presidents (such as Roosevelt), they’ve been able to achieve great things. If left to their own devices, however, career politicians like Biden are all too likely to capitulate to the forces of the status quo.

Franklin Roosevelt gave a memorable speech after he was renominated by the Democratic Party for a second term in 1936, an election he went on to win by one of the biggest landslides in history, in the process forging a coalition that kept Democrats in power for a generation — something that the New Greatest Generation must do again.

“There is a mysterious cycle in human events,” he began. “To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.” That was true then, and it’s true now.

Is Joe Biden committing diplomatic suicide over the Iran nuclear deal?

As Congress struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America’s new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system.

Cautious international optimism toward Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA, better known as the “Iran nuclear deal.” Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the U.S. will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance. After withdrawing from the agreement, the United States is in no position to make such demands, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has clearly and eloquently rejected them, reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the United States does so.

Biden should have announced U.S. re-entry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on the first day of my presidency.”

Then-candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said during the Democratic primary season, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches.” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating and implicitly rejecting Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the U.S. will rejoin.

If Biden simply rejoins the JCPOA, all the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and will work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran would be subject to the same IAEA inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the U.S. That’s how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the U.K., the EU — and the United States.

So why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020 letter supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured the new president that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties.

But instead Biden seems to be listening to opponents of the JCPOA who are telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him “leverage” to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden, turning him into the football, instead of the quarterback, in this diplomatic Super Bowl.

American neocons and hawks, including those inside the new administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his well-known hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of Biden’s previously subservient relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even threatened to launch a military attack on Iran if the U.S. rejoins the agreement, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Guardian on Dec. 31, Israel’s own possession of dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of nuclear weapons is the worst-kept secret in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows, and to respond as required under U.S. law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s all-too-real nuclear weapons, successive U.S. administrations have chosen to cry wolf over nonexistent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. On that occasion, WINPAC director Alan Foley told his staff, “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” — even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that U.S. forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find “not much, if anything.”

What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Benjamin Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November the Iranian parliament passed a law that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if U.S. sanctions are not eased by the last week of February.

To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18 of this year, and election season — when this issue will be hotly debated — begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the U.S. — including lifting relevant sanctions — before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States.

The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to appease neocons and warmongers, domestic and foreign, by bullying Iran — a partner in an international agreement he claims to support — to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

During his presidential campaign, Biden promised to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If he fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, Biden represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of U.S. foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional U.S. allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

So much is hanging in the balance, for the people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of U.S. sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After only three weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

“All Creatures Great and Small” writer on the show’s yuletide finale, gentle peril & Season 2 plans

PBS’ reboot of “All Creatures Great and Small” premiered just days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that shocked the nation and those watching news reports overseas. In the wake of that crisis, it was difficult to predict what appetite Americans would have for a series set in the 1930s Yorkshire Dales about a veterinary surgeon. Nevertheless, the update was an instant hit and – paired with fellow “Masterpiece” Victorian detective series “Miss Scarlet & The Duke” – eventually brought PBS to second place in viewership on Super Bowl Sunday.

Salon spoke to series writer Ben Vanstone, who was somewhat surprised at the degree to which American audiences have embraced the series.

“In the reviews, it feels like [critics] understood what we were going for – these really very small stories,” he said. “But within those stories, the stakes can still be big. It’s been a really good response on both sides of the pond, but I think it was more surprising seeing how well it did in America.

“It is very hard for me over here, locked in a room to comprehend that the Yorkshire Dales might be what America is interested in now,” he added. “With the riots in the Capitol that was unfolding . . . I think that was the thing that struck me was how many people felt that sort of gentle peril was needed at the time.”

Even without an uprising, the manageability of “gentle peril” would have been appealing after living through a pandemic that had left millions dealing with loss, anxiety and isolation.

“With the pandemic, maybe it’s a little bit more soothing to the soul,” said Vanstone. “But I also think there’s so many shows built around murder, villains. You’ll have to try very hard to find a villain in this show. The success lies in that it really does have a slightly different tone to a lot of things that run at the moment.”

Sunday’s Christmas-themed season finale was filled with low-stakes drama that wouldn’t move the needle on a daytime soap or even primetime sitcom. The most dramatic moment happens offscreen – when farmer’s daughter Helen (Rachel Shenton) leaves her fiancé Hugh (Matthew Lewis) at the altar. But other than that, we see a little bit of smooching, a well-intentioned lie, a donkey suffering from an upset tummy, and a litter of adorable puppies being born.

That’s gentle peril at its finest.

The episode closes with the residents of the veterinary practice at Skeldale House gathering in front of the crackling fire listening to King George VI’s 1937 Christmas Day speech:

Let us turn to the message that Christmas brings, of peace and goodwill. Let us see to it that this spirit shall in the end prevail, and every one of us can help by making that immortal message a keystone of our daily lives. And so to all of you, whether at home among your families, as we are, or in hospital or at your posts carrying out duties that cannot be left undone, we send our Christmas greetings and wish you under god’s blessing, health and prosperity in the year that lies ahead.

It’s a moment of unity after a tumultuous year for England and echoes how we Americans in our living rooms are seeking messages of hope and warmth like those found in “All Creatures Great and Small.”

Read on for the rest of the interview with Vanstone, who discusses the fallout from the finale, what’s coming for Season 2, and the fate of Mrs. Pumphrey, played by the late great Dame Diana Riggs.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In the finale, Skeldale House holds a Christmas party with Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West) playing Father Christmas. Who thought of getting Tristan (Callum Woodhouse) in an elf’s costume?

It was was Siegfried’s idea because if Siegfried is in a Father Christmas costume there’s no way he’s letting Tristan not do something as well. Any opportunity to get his brother into a situation he might not enjoy, he will take it. We really wanted to push the Christmas theme in that episode and the thought of having Tristan dressed as an elf for pretty much the entire episode was just too delicious to to not to have really.

I think it’s also something quite sad about it to have him in that costume. He’s like a clown in the sort of a classical sense. He’s funny, cracks the jokes and does the pratfalls but underneath it, there’s a kind of sadness to it as well. And I think that the the facade of Tristan versus what’s underneath, I think it was kind of really appropriate to have an elf costume, which is a mask in a way.

I always felt slightly cruel that I was always getting him to do this ridiculous things like kiss Tricki-Woo. I put in the script, “Sorry, Callum,” because he’s got to kiss Derek, who is a lovely dog and a real star – a little bit smelly as dogs go.

Later, we see that Siegried has lied to Tristan to spare his feelings – he did not pass both of his veterinary exams after all. He failed Parasitology. But lying about it seems counterintuitive for their practice. Is Tristan allowed to keep on working with the animals?

It wasn’t until about I think, 1948 that you had to have a qualification to be a practicing vet. Actually, there was a lot of enthusiastic amateurs dotted around the Dales and other farming communities who would turn their hand to a bit of vet practice. So there’s no legal impediment to him working; I would suggest there’s a moral one. And obviously, that’s a story which doesn’t end there. In Series 2, we begin with Tristan unaware of what his brother has done. And, Siegfried, he’s very much done this because he’s so desperate to move forward in his relationship with his brother.

Nicholas Ralph and Rachel Shenton in “All Creatures Great and Small” (PBS/Playground Television UK Ltd & all3media)

In the series, we see that James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) – the pen name of Alf Wight who wrote the semi-autobigraphcal novels –has this unrequited affection for Helen, who at the end of the episode jilts her fiancé Hugh. But even though we all know where this is going, she didn’t necessarily stop the wedding for James, right?

She’s someone who has had a lot of choices taken away from her and her life, what happened to her mom. As for the relationship she’s had with Hugh, he someone that she’s very close to and known for a long time. It all kind of makes sense; he’s a really nice guy, actually and seems like a good match for her. But maybe there’s just something a little bit missing. I think you’re right, I don’t think she’s fully aware of what she’s feeling, I don’t think she’s getting too far ahead of her skis in that she fully understands where this is coming from. It’s just that there’s something there that isn’t right with Hugh, and makes you feel that you shouldn’t be going through with it.

And I do think that there is something quite sudden and surprising, which she isn’t even fully comprehending about James. There’s an intention to earn that relationship in a way between James and Helen. I think it’d be easy just to let them sort of fall together if people knowing the books understand where they end up, but we want to explore why they’re together and and why they work with one another.

How far are you into writing and producing Season 2? How has the coronavirus restrictions affected production?

The final couple of episodes we’re still working on but the majority of it is written. It’s a very strange time to be doing anything with COVID. There’s lots to negotiate and navigate with that. But in some ways, because of the animal welfare stuff that we have to do anyway, we have to be very careful with how many people are on set, who’s around what animals. We had a lot of biosecurity in place to make sure everyone’s boots are clean, and not taking anything onto farms that shouldn’t be taken on. So we’re not too badly set up for it. And the fact that we filmed quite a lot outdoors as well is a good thing.

We see that Mrs. Hall (Anna Madeley) can shoot and that’s from her experience in the First World War. How much more wartime touches will we see with the Second World War encroaching?

Series 1 took place in 1937, Series 2 takes place in 1938, and if we get Series 3, that would take place 1939 and so on and so forth. There is a lurking sense of what’s on the horizon. There are characters in there who are old enough to have experienced the First World War and they bring that experience with them and that will influence them moving forward with the Second World War on the horizon, which will which will play out in later series.

It’s a nationwide effect in terms of shortages of food, and all those sort of people – in the books the young men of the village who are having to leave and sign up to do military service. And Donald Sinclair, who Siegfried is based on . . . served in the RAF as well. So we will certainly be touching upon that as we move forward, but the nature of the show will still very much be the Yorkshire Dales. We’re not suddenly going to be in Arnham or somewhere like that. You’ll see how most people didn’t experience the war – most people weren’t at the front and fighting it. They were still in villages and towns back home and they weren’t all being bombed. And so for me, it’s an interesting way to explore that huge event in history through that very sort of parochial prism of the Yorkshire Dales.

Diana Rigg in “All Creatures Great and Small” (PBS/Playground Television UK Ltd & all3media)

Unfortunately, we lost Dame Diana Rigg after the first season of her playing Mrs. Pumphrey. Is there any sort of farewell to her, a reference to her? Will we get to see her dog Tricki-Woo again in some form?

It’s really sad that we lost Diana. She was such a really brilliant spirit for the show. Both on set and the performance she gave was brilliant and a perfect Mrs. Pumphrey. Tricki-Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey are iconic characters from the books, and in some ways we need to make sure we honor that as well. It’s something that we’re working around at the moment quite how to handle it. It’s not something that we immediately leapt on how to solve because in a way Dame Diana was and is our Mrs. Pumphrey. We’re going to have to find something to do I imagine to continue that character in some shape or form.

What other animal stories can we expect in the next season that we can look forward to?

There’s a horse story that’s pretty exciting and not quite as heartbreaking as Andante. You’re going to see some lambs, which we couldn’t do last year because we were in the wrong season. There’s only a certain time of year that you get lambs. We start filming in four weeks time for Series 2. From about now through to late May is lambing season, so we should have some lambs for you.

“Miss Scarlet & the Duke” creator on the reality of Victorian women & hopes for the show’s future

The finale of “Masterpiece” Victorian-era mystery series “Miss Scarlet & the Duke” hits close to home for tenacious sleuth Eliza Scarlet (Kate Phillips) who discovers that her father’s untimely death wasn’t the result of a heart attack after all but foul play at the hands of corrupt police. Nevertheless, solving the case marks a turn in her fledgling career as a private detective because it could finally keep her solvent.

“You did your job and you did it well,” she imagines her father Henry (Kevin Doyle) saying. “Word will spread that you were involved in this high-profile case and your reputation will grow.”

Eliza needs the good PR. Struggling to make ends meet has been the price of her independence; most middle class women in Victorian London would have preferred to find financial security in marriage instead of work. Taking over her father’s private detective business, however, is a challenge unto itself since women were regarded as helpless and inferior in every way, including mentally. Why would anyone pay for her services?

“She’s a progressive, ambitious woman at a time when women have no real rights,” series creator Rachael New said in an interview with Salon. “She does earn just enough to keep afloat and run this small concern, enough money to be financially independent. But she’s never going to be this hugely successful woman because she’s always got to be a woman struggling in a man’s world. That’s the reality of it.”

Continue reading for the rest of the interview with New, who discusses Eliza’s unusual upbringing, her “will they, won’t they” relationship with William “The Duke” Wellington (Stuart Martin), and the possibility of a second season.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Henry was the one who had raised Eliza to have this agile mind that’s been helpful as a detective. But why did he then pull back and require her to fall into a more traditional woman’s role later in life?

Eliza is obviously a single child. Her mother died when she was young, and her father Henry Scarlet raised her. He was a progressive man and he loved teaching her things, and developing that sharp forensic mind that she had.

He is a bit of a fantasist, Henry Scarlet, he’s a drinker and a gambler, and he doesn’t really pay his bills, which ends up with her being penniless. He doesn’t really want to face the reality.

But then there comes a point where she’s getting into fights and she keeps getting kicked out of school, and he could hear his wife Lavinia Scarlet’s voice in his head saying, “You’re setting her up for quite a miserable time because she’s never going to be enough, giving her that fantasy that she’s going to be equal to men and do what she wants to do when she’s a young woman. You need to give her a reality check.” He knows that he is setting up for a fall if he carries on.

Why did you decide to use the device of Eliza speaking to her late father Henry as if he’s still there to offer advice or sitting in her office?

I lost my dad about 15 years ago. I don’t know if people had the same experience, but you do think of the people that you’ve lost, that you love. I can still hear his voice in my head. “What are you doing, Rachael?” I wanted that to be a presence in the show. I wanted her to have this man who she deeply loved more than than anybody else in her life to be at the present so we could use it as a kind of vehicle to get into her mind and to really dig down into her hopes and dreams.

There’s a lot of bravado there. She wouldn’t necessarily admit to many people if she were upset or wasn’t confident, was feeling worried or anxious, and I think that’s just a nice little way in with her dad giving us a little insight.

How did you decide on the time period and how that affects the methods by which Eliza could solve cases? The forensics we know are not what they used then.

I specifically chose the early [18]80s for lots of different reasons. One of the reasons was I didn’t want it to be too near the Jack the Ripper murders, when actually forensics had moved on quite a bit. During the early ’80s forensics were in its infancy. I think it’s 1878 when the CID [Criminal Investigative Department] is formed, and because I wanted Duke to be this detective at Scotland Yard. So that was the beginning of really starting to focus on murder inquiries and trying to use forensics.

But it was very early days. So we didn’t even start using fingerprints until 1901. So I was really keen on that, because there’s something there’s a much better story you can tell if you’re really just relying on the forensic minds of our detectives; it makes it so much harder for them. And I just think it makes it a bit more exciting.

Although even with Jack the Ripper, they had a team of detectives on this and they still believed that the retina would have had an imprint of the last thing it saw, a sort of photograph. So with the women that were killed they thought that possibly Jack the Ripper image would have been on their retina when they died and stuff like that, which is absolute nonsense.

In the episode “Memento Mori,” you focus on that practice of taking family photographs of people even when they’re dead, dressing them up and making it look as if they’re alive to have a keepsake of them. What did you discover about that in researching it?

When you see these actual Victorian pictures of dead relatives posing in a group photograph, they’re extraordinary. I mean, often you can’t even tell who’s alive and who isn’t. It’s pretty disturbing as well, especially the ones with the children.

But the Victorians were obsessed with grief and grieving. They had huge funerals, they would cover their mirrors over with lace cloths, and to make sure the spirit wouldn’t leave the house, the body would lie in the coffin for a few days in their house. They had all sorts of weird rituals. And they were sort of both terrified by death, but also celebrated it in some ways. It was a really interesting period, because science was coming on so much that this threatened a lot of their religious beliefs.

The funeral parlor owner, Herr Hildegard (Richard Evans), was one of my favorite characters. What can you tell me about that newspaper “The Illustrated Police News” that he loved to read?

That was what we would call like a tabloid paper. It was a real paper and was just full of the ridiculous and the gothic most shocking police cases. They exaggerated a lot of these cases as well. But it was just full of these illustrations; it was this crazy newspaper, and people absolutely loved it. They would get it every week and flip through it, and pass it on to their friends.

I think most people thought it was completely true. That was the point because they didn’t have anything to compare it to. It was a dangerous thing that people would read these insane stories and completely believe in them. There was one I downloaded. The headline was about these two monkeys breaking into this house. It was they just escaped from the zoo or something. It’s just insane and it was written straight as well.

Although there are a few heated glances and talk of a kiss with Duke in the past, nothing really happens between him and Eliza the whole season. At the end, they just go to dinner together. I was surprised that there wasn’t at least a partial payoff for their relationship.

I was a mad, mad fan of “Moonlighting,” and then when Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis kissed, that was kind of the death knell really for that show. Not that I’m not saying they won’t ever kiss, Duke and Eliza, but there’s something really lovely about their friendship. It’s not just about the kissing and the big kind of romance, it’s about them as friends as well. I want to explore that more.

The “will they, won’t they” is the thing that people are going to in for, and I’ll tease that out. But the reason why I didn’t do it was yes, it is too early. I think as soon as that happens, it will change things for Eliza. I don’t ever want her to be defined by what man she chooses because she’s just too much of her own person for that. And, you know, to be honest, there’s no doubt in my mind, she would make him extremely miserable. I think Duke would really like to come home and have dinner on the table and a whole brood of children, and she can’t even cook an egg. But never say never.

Just this month, “Masterpiece” executive producer Susanne Simpson couldn’t make any announcements about the future of “Miss Scarlet,” although she did tease, “Wait for it.” If we were going to get a second season, what storylines would you like to pursue? I imagine you’ve thought of this already.

I would have lots of things in store for Rupert and how he’d navigate his domineering mother, and try and have some semblance of a happy life. It would be really difficult for him because she’s a very difficult woman. I love Mrs. Parker. We would have more of her in Season 2 as well.

I would also delve a lot more into where Duke’s come from. Duke came from Glasgow, from really poor beginnings – basically, the Victorian workhouse. He came to London as a kind of scrappy young man, and Henry Scarlet found him probably doing things that he shouldn’t be doing: pickpocketing and robbing and all sorts of things.

Henry was his mentor, Henry was the one who turned him on to the police. That’s when Duke and Eliza would have, their worlds would have orbited each other but also he would have been to her house when they were teenagers.