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The Southwest’s race against the climate clock

In the headwaters of the Rio Grande, last winter’s snowpack hit close to the historical norm. Yet, in the spring, summer and fall of 2019, the state’s largest river dried for more than 40 miles. Even after water managers ended the irrigation season early, and farmers stopped drawing water from the river for fields and orchards, the Rio Grande dropped to record lows through the city of Albuquerque — nearly drying up entirely in October.

In the coming years, as human-caused warming continues, New Mexicans will face even more dire conditions. And while some New Mexico lawmakers plan to introduce bills on solar energy, prescribed fire and statewide greenhouse gas reductions in the coming legislative session, the physical world — from the forests to the farm fields — is changing at a pace that far exceeds political action.

This year, the U.S. Southwest is facing La Niña conditions, which will bring a drier than normal winter. Already, stream flows are below normal across the state and many reservoirs are nearly tapped out. In southern New Mexico, managers with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District have already warned farmers they should brace for a “zero allotment” of water in 2021.

An expert on water issues, state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-Albuquerque) is leading the charge on climate change in the legislature. And during the 2021 session, she is introducing the Climate Resiliency and Security Act.

“We’re already seeing the signs of climate change in our water supplies,” says Stansbury, who worked on Capitol Hill and for the federal Office of Management and Budget before returning home to New Mexico a few years ago and running for office. (Stansbury is also planning a run for U.S. Congress, to replace Rep. Deb Haaland, whom the Biden administration has nominated as Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.)

And things are going to get worse.

Recently briefed on a draft federal report, Stansbury says New Mexico is staring down a 70% to 100% reduction in snowpack that feeds the state’s two largest rivers — the Rio Grande and Pecos — between 2070 and the end of the century. “Every tiny rural community, every farm in our state is vulnerable to climate change,” she says. “And if we don’t institutionalize helping our communities, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”

If passed, the bill would codify in state statute climate-related targets set by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to at least 45% below 2005 levels by 2030. The bill would also expand that goal to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Stansbury’s Climate Resiliency bill, still in draft form, directs state agencies to develop climate strategies with specific goals — and support — for communities, creates a mechanism to receive state and non-state funding, and requires consultation and collaboration with tribes and disproportionately affected communities.

Climate policies must be durable, she says. When implemented by executive order, they’re too easily undone by the next administration. That’s clear to see on the federal level — and also in New Mexico.

Statewide attention to climate change has emerged only in fits and starts. Between 2003 and 2011, Gov. Bill Richardson moved the needle on renewable energy and initiated work on climate change within some state agencies.

But during the eight years that followed, Gov. Susana Martinez halted all action on climate change, rolled back environmental rules, and appointed industry-friendly leaders to the New Mexico Environment Department and the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

During Martinez’s administration, many state legislators even stopped introducing bills related to renewable energy or water planning altogether — knowing the governor wouldn’t lift a pen to sign them.

In 2007, for example, legislators introduced 24 bills and memorials related to climate change. In comparison, a total of 22 bills even mention “climate change” in the years 2011 through 2017.

Passing the Climate Resiliency bill would ensure that those emission reduction targets, programs and funding mechanisms continue into the future, no matter who is governor.

 * * *

“Right now, we have a very short timeline, with some really huge obstacles,” says Artemisio Romero y Carver, a high school senior in Santa Fe and a member of the steering committee for YUCCA, or Youth United for Climate Crisis Action.

As a youth group, YUCCA can’t deliver votes on Election Day. But their voices — and their direct action work to hold politicians accountable — lend an urgency to an issue like climate change that can be missing from policy conversations about the future. Children and teens will suffer the most from the consequences of climate change; as warming accelerates and impacts deepen, they’ll have fewer and fewer options for mitigation and adaptation as water supplies shrink, coastal or desert regions become uninhabitable and food insecurity increases.

“We have less than ten years to change the way we use energy and fundamentally change economies if the human species is going to continue past 2050,” says Romero y Carver. (In 2019, the United Nations warned that only 11 years remained to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restructure energy systems to “avert catastrophe” on climate change.)

Even if New Mexico follows through on plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 or 2050, that’s too late, he says, pointing out that lags behind the timeline for actions that scientists say can avert the worst impacts of climate change. “We support climate bills that call for this transition within the timeline that is set by science,” he says. “That is the only timeline we should consider.”

Not only are New Mexico’s communities, waters and landscapes affected by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, he says, but New Mexicans also play a global role in causing climate change.

The Permian Basin, which straddles the Texas–New Mexico border, is one of the world’s largest oil fields. Companies are developing the field at a dizzying pace, and selling the oil as quickly and cheaply as possible. Despite a dip in production last spring, drilling has ramped back up in the basin. In December 2020, companies were pulling out more than 4 million barrels of oil and 16,901 million cubic feet of natural gas daily — even though prices remained low for both products.

New Mexico’s development of fossil fuels, like in the Permian, is contributing to “global ecological collapse,” Romero y Carver says, and New Mexicans need to acknowledge that reality.

Often, state officials defer responsibility, pointing out that federal policy is necessary to control development or emissions — or that states can’t accomplish much on their own. “It’s not a federal problem,” Romero y Carver says. “It’s an issue of state politics, and it will determine the fate of our species.”

* * *

Like other western state forests, New Mexico’s are overly dense, thanks to more than a century of fire suppression and a U.S. Forest Service that can’t keep pace with the thinning and prescribed fire projects necessary to tame doghair thickets and remove hundreds of thousands of acres of dead trees killed off by combinations of drought, warming and insect infestations. Not only that, but the forests are already parched — and will become tinderboxes by early spring if the La Niña forecast holds.

Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo) is introducing a bill focused on prescribed fire and restoring the long-term health of the state’s forests. It’s just one part of the climate solution, he says.

New Mexico also needs to diversify its economy, steering away from reliance on the oil and gas industry, a leading contributor to climate change, he adds. That’s also a boom-and-bust industry — whose bust, McQueen says, will eventually be permanent.

As renewables become increasingly more affordable, and the electricity and transportation sectors phase out fossil fuels, New Mexico needs to prepare for the loss of oil and gas revenue.

“Economic diversification is imperative for us,” McQueen says. “But it’s not a top-down problem. It’s opportunistic.” The legislature can’t change the way business is done in the state, but it can encourage new or emerging industries — as it did with the film industry more than a decade ago.

All of that takes time, as does building momentum to pass climate-related legislation, even if voters want their leaders to take action.

“For a long time, it’s been very difficult to get progressive environmental legislation passed,” says Jon Goldstein, director of regulatory and legislative affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund.

He’s hopeful that’s now changing.

“A number of the new faces coming in, particularly to the state Senate, are exciting to see,” he says. “I think people are increasingly aware of that clock and feeling like this is something that we need to take care of, not just for us, but for our kids.” Goldstein points to a 2020 Majority Institute poll that showed “strong support for ambitious policies” to limit climate pollution in “battleground legislative districts” ahead of last year’s election. Not every progressive candidate won in New Mexico — but most did. And all of the legislators in those districts have a clear mandate for action on climate change.

“There’s a new infusion of leadership and a desire for action on issues like climate — it feels like a real watershed,” says Goldstein, who also served in the administration of former Gov. Richardson.

In New Mexico, the House of Representatives is led by Rep. Brian Egolf (D-Santa Fe). And last year, Democrats nominated Sen. Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque) as president pro tempore, the senate’s top leadership post. Stewart has a long history of supporting environmental issues and renewable energy, and in particular, solar.

During the 2021 legislative session, YUCCA activists like Romero y Carver will keep working with other conservation and racial justice organizations. One of their main priorities is to encourage policies that will end the state’s dependency on fossil fuels and implement plans to build a transition economy, Romero y Carver says. “We want to make sure that government is responding to the climate crisis instead of solely industry demands.”

Cracking apart the ties between state government and the fossil fuel industry is daunting. Romero y Carver says it has been “terrifying” to witness the power that industry executives and lobbyists wield in the state.

“Initially when I looked at it, I felt desperate and defeated,” he says. “But I don’t think there is anything more powerful than people united in community. As powerful as the oil and gas industry is, if we’re organized, and loud, and [if we] say what we want and make our public servants act as servants to the public, we can stand a chance.”

But there’s not much time.

Even if politicians act on the timeline to cut greenhouse gas emissions that the United Nations warned was imperative, it won’t stop climate change — only help the world avoid the worst impacts.

“We’re not ending climate change, just mitigating disaster,” says the 17-year-old. “But we have to act like our lives depend on it. Because they do.”

Copyright 2021 Capital & Main

Big businesses talk a big climate game — just not on Capitol Hill

For nearly a decade, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat of Rhode Island, has been beating the bushes to find Republican partners on climate legislation. When asked to explain why his GOP colleagues have been so resistant to join him in taking action on climate change, Whitehouse doesn’t point to the usual suspects: President Donald Trump, donors like the Koch Brothers with a rooting interest in fossil fuels, or the influential Heartland Institute.

Instead, he points to corporations, and not just the fossil fuel firms that you’d expect, but woke tech companies like Google, which is working to power every search with carbon-free energy,  along with other giants like Coca-Cola, which aims to quash a quarter of emissions from its entire supply chain.

The same companies touting their efforts to go “net zero” are silent on the issue when lobbying Congress, according to Whitehouse. The result is that there’s no counterweight to oil and gas lobbyists able to influence Republicans, no big businesses clamoring for members of Congress to take on climate change. Whitehouse has had some success in reaching across the aisle to pass small bipartisan bills, but he keeps bumping into the same barrier: Corporate lobbying was all on the side of inaction.

“When you got one team not even showing up on the field, and the other team is out there with their massive dark-money cudgels threatening to take the head off any Republican who crosses them, that is a very important background to where we are,” he said. “That’s the reason we have to do so many small bills rather than biting the bullet and tackling this problem while it is still possible.”

It’s a situation that green-friendly big businesses have the power to change, Whitehouse said.

What do these companies have to say for themselves? Very little. Grist reached out to Google, The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsico, Apple, and a handful of other businesses and trade associations that Whitehouse called out. Only three responded. A representative from Apple didn’t address the lobbying question directly but pointed to the company’s most recent environmental progress report. “We have spoken clearly and unambiguously: across different forums, in public statements and closed-door discussions, and through our actions,” the report says. “Whether making known our support for the United States upholding its obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement or backing a price on carbon, we’re pursuing strong policies that promote decarbonizing our economy.”

Walmart’s vice president for federal government affairs, Bruce Harris, responded in an email that the retail giant was one of the first big companies to adopt climate targets back in 2016, and that it had signed on with We Are Still In, a large coalition of businesses and local governments supporting the Paris climate agreement, and America’s Pledge on Climate Change. Harris also pointed out that Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, is the chair of the Business Roundtable, an advocacy group for corporate leaders, which recently called for “a national climate policy solution to reduce U.S.-based emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement and by at least 80 percent by 2050, through a market-based mechanism that includes a price on carbon.”

A representative from Coca-Cola sent a statement saying that the world needs to dramatically reduce emissions and that it’s “supportive of effective and well-designed policies and mechanisms that would help make this happen.” Coke is also part of We Are Still In, which recently published an open letter to the incoming Biden administration urging action on climate change.

But there’s a big difference between making a public declaration and pushing members of Congress to pass legislation. The Environmental Defense Fund has been tracking these corporate declarations with its Climate Authenticity Meter and considers many of them helpful in building momentum toward legislation. The problem is, they’re still just words. The Business Roundtable’s call to action, for instance, is “just a statement — a promise to lead. Time will tell if the [Business Roundtable] and its members follow through with the advocacy required to move climate policy forward.”

When it comes to actual lobbying, the heavy hitters aren’t individual corporations, but the trade associations representing them, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Beverage Association. It’s one thing if a single company asks a politician to vote for a bill, and quite another when the request comes from an entire industry. “With the Chamber of Commerce, for instance, there’s always the implicit threat that if you don’t go along with us, we’ll go against you in the next election,” said Tom Lyon, a professor who studies corporate environmental strategy at the University of Minnesota.

Perhaps the trade group representing the highest concentration of companies making big carbon-cutting commitments is TechNet, which did not respond to requests for comment. TechNet lobbies for pretty much all tech giants, from Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon, all the way to Zoom. Early last year, it put out a 13-page, bullet-point studded document, explaining the policy objectives these companies hoped Congress could achieve. Some of these priorities extend well beyond immediate self-interest: The corporations asked the government to overhaul immigration policy and address systemic inequality. But when it came to climate change, there was nothing.

“The silence is deafening,” Whitehouse said.

So why aren’t these companies doing more? A pair of University of Glasgow academics, political science professor Kelly Kollman and business school lecturer Alvise Favotto, tried to figure out if corporations were connecting the dots between the do-gooder policies they were adopting within their company and the policies they were lobbying for in government. They wanted to know if the people working to make the companies more environmentally friendly, for instance, were coordinating their efforts with their lobbyists. Their findings, published in 2019, suggest that they were not — in the 150 corporations they surveyed in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany.

“Looking at these organizations from the outside, you’d think that if they are going to be making these commitments about diversity and climate change, they would go to their lobbyists and say, ‘Are we OK on these things? Are these things aligned?'” Kollman said.

For many business people, lobbying was an afterthought — something they tried to stay out of. People who are passionate about business are more likely to believe that business, not government, are the best tools for changing the world. Kollman remembers one sustainability officer explaining his approach to government action as hands-off: “This person said, ‘We see our role as trying to change markets, and trying to change business models, we don’t see our role as trying to change policy,'” Kollman said. “It’s just not in the mindset of how they make the world a better place. And I think that was a genuine answer.”

Their survey showed, however, that these views have been shifting. “Our data showed that close to no one saw lobbying as something that should be part of their corporate social responsibility reports until around 2006,” Favotto said. By 2013, 46 percent of the U.S. companies they were studying had begun at least acknowledging their lobbying in their corporate social responsibility reports.

More academics are beginning to study the relationship between corporate statements and corporate lobbying. Lyon directs the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Minnesota, which is setting up a task force to investigate the transparency of business lobbying efforts. Several organizations — Influence Map, Preventable Surprises, and The Center for Political Accountability — have begun tracking the issue, and there’s talk that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could mandate better corporate sustainability disclosure, he said.

“There are all these nascent efforts,” Lyon said. “People are realizing that this is a big issue.”

With a new Congress and a new president, it appears the ground is shifting. TechNet is now calling for federal climate action to “limit warming to at least 1.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2050,” though it’s not clear if the group will make this issue a lobbying priority.

More and more corporate leaders are taking an interest in the lobbying their companies are paying for, said Victoria Mills, head of EDF’s corporate climate policy program. “I do think we are starting to see much more active engagement by companies on climate policy,” she said.

Still, Mills said she agreed with Whitehouse about the general state of affairs.

“He’s not wrong. You have some leaders out there, but by and large, the vast majority of companies are silent.”

Immunity after coronavirus infection lasts at least five months, scientists say

As the COVID-19 vaccine rolls out, many of those who have contracted coronavirus are wondering if they should still get vaccinated. It’s a vital question with its roots in the science of immunology: indeed, with some viruses, such as chicken pox, the patient becomes immune for life after contracting them; in the case of other viruses, such as many influenzas, patients’ immune systems “forget” how to identify and protect agains the virus after a period of time, which may be months or years. Since the novel coronavirus is so new, it was unknown how long after recovering from the virus the body would remain immune, and whether that might affect one getting the vaccine.

Now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is saying that those who have recovered from COVID-19 should still get the vaccine. Their recommendation comes, in part, due to a lack of conclusive data around how long immunity lasts after being infected.

“Experts do not yet know how long someone is protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID-19,'” the CDC states. 

And yet, experts are working around the clock to find out. According to a new study published on Thursday, scientists at Public Health England (PHE) think that natural immunity lasts up to five months — but that’s not an absolute certainty, and it comes with some caveats.

There have been multiple cases of patients getting coronavirus twice, which is evidence that being infected doesn’t make one immune forever, at least in certain patients. Previous studies have suggested natural immunity lasts between three and six months. But the new study out of the UK frames it in a different way. Specifically, the study found that a previous infection of COVID-19 lowers the risk of reinfection by 83 percent compared to people who have not been infected before. Putting a percentage on the chance of getting reinfected is useful for public health experts and citizens alike to calculate risk.

The study regularly tested nearly 21,000 health workers for COVID-19 and COVID-19 antibodies in the United Kingdom National Health Service between June and November of 2020. In that span, 6,614 participants tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies, and 14,000 had no signs of previous infection. However, of those who had tested positive for antibodies, 44 healthcare workers tested positive for antibodies had “potential reinfections,” according to a press release about the study, months later.

So what does this mean?

“This means even if you believe you already had the disease and are protected, you can be reassured it is highly unlikely you will develop severe infections . . .  but there is still a risk that you could acquire an infection and transmit to others,” said Susan Hopkins, Public Health England senior medical advisor and the study study’s lead, in a press statement. “It is vital we all stay at home to protect our health service and save lives.”

Another equally concerning finding from the research is that previously-infected people can still carry high enough levels of the coronavirus that could continue to infect others.

“We now know that most of those who have had the virus, and developed antibodies, are protected from reinfection, but this is not total and we do not yet know how long protection lasts,” Hopkins said. ” Crucially, we believe people may still be able to pass the virus on.”

Hopkins emphasized that this study has painted “the clearest picture to date of the nature of antibody protection against COVID-19,” but that these “early findings” should not be “misunderstood.” In other words, don’t let this ruin your day.

As Salon has explained before, it’s difficult to study long-term immunity using human data because the coronavirus is so new to science. One study that gained a lot of attention  published a study in the scientific journal Nature Medicine suggested that natural immunity can last up to 12 months— but that was based on studying four different seasonal coronaviruses, not the novel coronavirus (known as SARS-CoV-2).

Some viruses, such as measles, confer lifelong immunity on those who have either contracted them or been vaccinated against them. Yet the science continues to suggest that is not the case with SARS-CoV-2. How long immunity lasts from the COVID-19 vaccine is also unknown, but if it ends up being  “transient immunity,” that could mean that the vaccine is not a one-and-done deal. It could require a booster, or even be a seasonal vaccine — like for influenza.

“This may end up being a vaccine that’s not a one-time thing or even a two-time thing, it may end up being like, one time and a booster, or it may end up being what we call either a seasonal vaccine, or vaccine that needs to be administered every couple of years,”  said Dr. Charles Chiu, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of California–San Francisco, in September. He noted that transient immunity could cause problems for the country reaching herd immunity, too. Public health experts hope that humans will ultimately eradicate the coronavirus with a mix of vaccination and mitigation strategies, like mask-wearing and social distancing.

“The hope is that the vaccine, while it may not be 100 percent effective or durable, is enough so that then, if we have enough testing and containment measures in place, we can simply eradicate the virus,” Chiu said.

My mistake: M. Night Shyamalan’s “Servant” is actually a comedy under the impression it’s a thriller

For more than a week now America has had a front row seat to white nonsense in sundry forms. Whether it’s government officials preaching unity by way of driveway-shoveling or relatives downgrading the white supremacist attack on the Capitol that left five people dead to an expression of everyday folks exercising their First Amendment rights, we are soaking it in as a nation. 

Fellow citizens who aren’t white have contended with this special brand of nonsense for all of their lives, so to them this massive eruption in Washington D.C. is nothing new. But for people who claim to be hitherto unaware of its existence or unsure of what exactly qualifies as white nonsense (which is white nonsense in itself), allow me to quote Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 statement on the meaning of obscenity.

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so,” Stewart said as a lead in to the pertinent part of the statement: “But I know it when I see it.”

White nonsense generally describes behavior that combines idiocy, delusion and aggressive self-importance. In many respects it’s similar to “white people s**t,” but not entirely one and the same.

Exhibit A: Jenny Cudd, the proprietor of Texas-based Becky’s Flowers (!!!) who recorded herself giddily confessing she had broken into the Capitol building and then posted said video on social media. That there is high level white nonsense.  If her reaction to the FBI showing up at her door was any shade of, “Moi? But whyeeee?!” That is also white nonsense.

The fact that she took time off from operating her business to participate in an insurrection against her own government is basic white people s**t. Generally the s**t begets the nonsense, a notion amply demonstrated in shows like “Tiger King”. But there are also times when the fictional white nonsense wonderfully exists apart from any specific type of s**t, as we enjoyed in “The Undoing.”

Horror flicks and thrillers are almost entirely built on white nonsense too, which is why many of us laugh our asses off while watching them. And once I began viewing “Servant” through that lens, it finally clicked for me that Tony Basgallop’s creation, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, is actually a dry white nonsense comedy (we’re talking midwinter ashy dry) masquerading as an earnest creep show.

Plenty of viewers found the bewildering case of Philadelphia couple Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose, “Six Feet Under“) and Sean Turner (Toby Kebbell) to be eerie enough in its first season, mind you, although they may have been bamboozled by the superior acting. That Ambrose and Kebbell are performing their hearts out alongside Rupert Grint, who plays Dorothy’s smug brother Julian, is indisputable.

Regardless of all that, there is something about the appearance and season-ending disappearance of their au pair Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) and infant son Jericho that rocked some people to the very core. In any case, “Servant” wigged out enough of an audience to scare up a third season, which Apple TV+ announced prior to this week’s second season premiere.

But if you, like me, were not knocked over by the bizarre misadventures of Sean, Dorothy and Julian maybe you’ll get a jolt out of the white nonsense at play in these new installments. Prevalent as it was before, the second season blows it up to the magnitude of a kaijū capable of leveling cities. You can’t fail to notice it.

As a reminder: Sean is a chef and self-described “professional bon vivant,” yes he says those words. Dorothy is a TV reporter who goes a little mad after her flesh-and-blood infant son dies tragically. They love fancy foods and good wines, and their home looks like a spread in Elle Décor.

When we first meet the couple Dorothy is treating a ghastly looking doll as if it is real, and everyone goes along with it, including Leanne. But then – hey-o! – the doll is suddenly replaced by a real boy not long after Leanne settles in. Nobody knows what to make of the instant infant except for Dorothy, who goes along with this miraculous white nonsense because she’s touched in the head.

Bur Sean and Julian rightly view Leanne as suspect, which, fair enough. The girl looks like she strolled into their million-dollar Philly brownstone straight out of “Children of the Corn.” Strange things begin happening to Sean, though, including a spontaneous loss of his sense of taste – and all that is before Leanne’s mud-covered Uncle George (Boris McGiver) drops by for a visit.

More bewildering white nonsense transpires, whirling to an apex when Leanne and George disappear with an eccentric aunt wielding a death stare . . . and so does living Jericho, replaced by a doll yet again.

Much of the white nonsense in “Servant” is baked into the dialogue and situational settings. In a moment of suicidal despair over Jericho’s vanishing Dorothy admits she would hang herself “with my Hermès belt next to his crib,” which . . . is quite precise.

The same goes for Sean stress-eating prosciutto while hiding in his wine cellar – as one does! – or angrily shoving artisanal pizzas into the wood-fired oven that comes standard with the “professional bon vivant” package.

Another common characteristic of white nonsense entertainment is that non-white bystanders are often forced to patiently bear it. In “Servant” Dorothy’s best friend Natalie (Jerrika Hinton), the person who first gave her the doll, is called upon to pacify Dorothy when she reacts to Jericho’s re-vanishing by going on a rampage.  

When a Latinx cop shows up Natalie is there to talk the officer into standing down. Good thing because even at her calmest Dorothy exhibits extreme Karen behavior – screaming at the help, accusing her beaten-down husband of not being a good father and, as mentioned above, yelling at the cops.

It keeps going! A Black private investigator (Phillip James Brannon) is placed in harm’s way, recovers from that, and accepts money again to help enable a scheme that is pure uncut white people s**t . And this leads to nonsense that forces Sean’s assistant chef Tobe (Tony Revolori) to do dangerous labor that is not part of his job description. Why? Because Julian, who is supposed to undertake the suspect mission, shows up in a tuxedo and tails.

At the local TV station Dorothy’s Black co-anchor can only shake his head in horror as she returns to fill in for a colleague and reads the headlines in full ga-ga-goo-goo mode, hoping that the lost baby that is definitely not hers will recognize her voice. Because if there’s one thing country-fried cults are really into, it’s encouraging babies to watch the local news.

“Servant” vibrates with such luxury brand histrionics, all of which undercuts the story’s escalating supernatural queerness. True to Shyamalan form Leanne has powers that have yet to be fully explained, but between their unpredictable appearances and the return of Screaming Dirty Uncle it’s all .  .  . a whole lot.

The thought of jumping into this Olympic-sized pool of white nonsense may not be tempting for anyone drowning in the reality of it, and as I implied it takes a conscious paradigm shift to enjoy “Servant” as a laugh riot. 

But if you’re committed to sitting through these new episodes, it may be helpful to recall Eddie Murphy’s classic bit expressing bewilderment over “Poltergeist” and “The Amityville Horror.”

“I got a question,” he deadpanned. “Why don’t white people just leave the house when there’s a ghost in the house? . . .  And not only did they stay in the house with the poltergeist, they invite more people over!”

Murphy riffs on before he imagines his reaction. “I would’ve been in the house saying: ‘Oh baby this is beautiful,'” he says. “‘We got a chandelier hanging up here, kids outside playing. It’s a beautiful neighborhood . . . I really love it, this is really nice.'” 

Then he switches to an unsettling whisper: “Get out!”

“Too bad we can’t stay, baby!” Murphy concludes. 

“Servant” is not a ghost story in the classic sense, unless you want to count inconsolable grief as a malevolent spirit. Even then, its stylized ridiculousness robs it of any tension or fright, and that leaves us with questions similar to Murphy’s. Why don’t we leave this house? Why are they inviting more people over? Why am I laughing at this? The answer is the same in every case: because this is top shelf white nonsense. You can only truly get that once you see it.

New episodes of “Servant” premiere Fridays on on Apple TV+.

Fluoridated water isn’t just good for teeth — it can lead to higher incomes, too

“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,” said the (fictional) General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden, in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic film “Dr. Strangelove.” General Ripper’s comment might come across as comically silly to a modern audience, but it was based on a very real conspiracy theory, one that persists to the present day — namely that, putting fluoride in the water supply is part of a sinister plot to undermine public health. A new study once again debunks those beliefs.

In an article published in The University of Chicago Press Journals, Linuz Aggeborn and Mattias Öhman of Uppsala University used Swedish registry data to examine the health effects of putting fluoride in drinking water. “First, we reconfirm the long-established positive effect of fluoride on dental health,” the authors write. “Second, we estimate a zero effect on cognitive ability in contrast to several recent debated epidemiological studies. Third, fluoride is furthermore found to increase labor income. This effect is foremost driven by individuals from a lower socioeconomic background.”

The first statistic is noteworthy because it speaks to the reason why fluoride is often included in drinking water — namely that, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts it, “drinking fluoridated water keeps teeth strong and reduces cavities by about 25% in children and adults.”

The second observation refers to studies like a controversial one published in 2019 by the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics which observed a link between pregnant women drinking fluoridated water and lower IQ scores among their young children. The third is because the authors “hypothesize, on the basis of our earlier findings, that the effect of fluoride on labor income grows through dental health capital.”

Anti-fluoride conspiracy theories have a long and not particularly distinguished history. Infowars host Alex Jones frequently says that drinking fluoride can make you stupid, a claim that may or may not be linked to his hawking of water filtration devices. (He also says his IQ dropped by 20 points because he drank fluoridated water… and I’m not going to take the bait on that one.) Some fluoride opponents claim, incorrectly, that the Nazis put fluoride in the Jews’ water supply to pacify them and/or give them cancer. And then there was the Cold War era paranoia about fluoridation that Kubrick spoofed, which characterized fluoridation as part of a Communist plot to weaken Americans’ willpower (or, in the case of Hayden’s character, render them literally impotent).

In 1945 the Michigan town of Grand Rapids became the first community in the world to be artificially fluoridated. Early studies found that towns which fluoridated their water saw a decline in decay by 50% or more. That number has declined since the 1970s because fluoridated toothpaste has been introduced to the market, since “the relative effectiveness of water fluoridation has fallen in recent years since the absolute decay values in non-fluoridated areas has fallen,” according to a Nature article.

Insurrection and impeachment, reports say, have rendered Trump’s final days lonely and volatile

Minutes after the House of Representatives dealt President Donald Trump a staggering blow in his final days in office by impeaching him for the second time, he held a private White House ceremony to give the National Medal oof Arts to country music star Toby Keith. The moment was strikingly different from 13 months before, according to inside reports, as the outgoing president’s support system of allies and friends has dissolved almost entirely amid his desperate election challenges and insurrectionist rhetoric. Some have abandoned him, and some he cut away himself, such as Vice President Mike Pence and former LifeLock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani, who has long been understood as be one of Trump’s most loyal defenders.

Notably, Trump has also been deprived of his Twitter account, which throughout his term had served as both an outlet for his rage and a virtually bottomless source of validation. Even if he were still online, frankly, the tweets themselves would not be the same.

“100% Republican Vote. That’s what people are talking about. The Republicans are united like never before!” he tweeted first thing in the morning on Dec. 20, 2019, after his first impeachment. He could not make that claim about Wednesday, when 10 Republican members of Congress, including third-ranking GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming, voted against him on the charge of incitement to insurrection ahead of the attack on the Capitol last week.

Additionally, with less than a week left in his presidency, Trump’s own inner circle has further tightened, and he has unleashed his anger on staff who have not yet bailed out on his administration, The Washington Post reported Wednesday night.

Last week, Trump blew up his relationship with Pence, who declined to carry the president’s water on Jan. 6 as he had for the last four years, according to The New York Times. Trump’s decades-long friendship with Giuliani has allegedly also frayed, despite the former New York mayor’s loyal and rabid defense on his client’s behalf.

Trump has reportedly directed staff members to stiff Giuliani for his legal fees, two officials told the Post, and ordered that he personally approve any reimbursements for his personal lawyer’s expenses, which presumably were logged while traveling the country to make the president’s baseless case in courts, state legislatures and the press. In fact, Trump has criticized some of Giuliani’s decisions in that time, according to the Post, and bristles at the $20,000 daily rate that the former U.S. attorney reportedly requested, although Giuliani has made efforts to deny that. (Salon reported that the Trump campaign appears to have flown Giuliani from Washington to Philadelphia on Trump’s private jet the day after the election, at a cost to donors of $16,000.)

Ahead of the electoral-vote ratification in Congress last Wednesday, Trump reportedly told Pence, “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy.” The president then blasted Pence in a bombastic speech, rousing a mob of supporters who then laid siege to the Capitol, chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and hunting the halls for the vice president as he tried to coordinate a military response, while his boss watched on TV from the West Wing.

On Wednesday, Pence was among a cadre of close advisers, including son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner, who urged Trump to put out a video statement after the House vote, in which the president, while expressing no specific remorse, condemned the attack in much clearer terms than in the video he released the day of the riot, when he told the invaders, “We love you. You’re very special.” Still, officials told The Times, aides had to convince Trump it was the right decision after the message had posted.

Among the staff who crafted language for the video were White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Stephen Miller, Trump’s top speechwriter and close adviser dating back to the early stages of his campaign.

In another sharp contrast from 2019, congressional leaders have enraged the president, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, resigned after Pence took the 25th Amendment off the table. McConnell has reportedly told people he supported impeachment in the House, and may vote to convict Trump in the Senate. Trump has reportedly expressed even more anger for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who voted against impeachment but condemned the president from the House floor, and, after two months of prevarication finally stated that Trump had lost the election and that Joe Biden will become president next week.

QAnon congresswoman vows to impeach Joe Biden one day after his inauguration

Following Wednesday’s House impeachment vote in which Democrats formally charged President Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” several Republicans in Congress later expressed their condemnation of the decision using inflammatory rhetoric. One of GOP lawmaker, freshman Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, even preemptively announced her plan to impeach Joe Biden immediately after he takes office next week. 

“On January 21, 2021,” Greene declared on Twitter, “I’ll be filing Articles of Impeachment against Joe Biden for abuse of power.” So far, no other members of Congress have rallied behind her.

Greene is a vocal anti-masker, refusing to wear a mask around other members of Congress even after several Democratic House members announced this week that they are COVID-positive. Greene, instead, blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for spreading the virus in the Capitol, saying to Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wa., on Twitter, “Before you point fingers at me or anyone else, you need to talk directly to @SpeakerPelosi about exposing ALL of us to covid when she called back POSITIVE covid House members last week for votes for Speaker!” Greene, however, offered no direct evidence of Pelosi’s alleged role in spreading the virus. 

During the impeachment proceedings, Greene attempted to draw upon Democratic hypocrisy, noting, “Democrats are on record supporting violence when it serves their cause.” She added, “They should be removed today for supporting violence against the American people.” This statement comes, of course, after a deadly insurrection at the Capitol –– an insurrection led by her own supporters. 

In the past, Rep. Greene has supported a litany of conspiracy theories to make up for her gaps in knowledge. Such conspiracies include –– but are not limited to –– an “Islamic invasion” of government offices; Jewish billionaire George Soros collaborating with the Nazis; “Pizzagate”; Hillary Clinton’s link to pedophelia and child sacrifice; the “Clinton Kill List”; 9/11 Truthism; and mass shootings as “false flag” operations. 

When Rep. Greene cast her bid for office, she attempted to distance herself from her exploits with QAnon. “I don’t [consider myself a QAnon candidate],” she told Fox News back in August of last year. “I think that’s been the media’s characterization of me. Never once during my campaign did I ever speak about QAnon or Q.” There is, nevertheless, a mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise. (Perhaps she has a conspiracy to explain that too.)

In any case, Rep. Greene did not last long in office without relapsing back into her old ways by supporting Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. She will no doubt continue to be an outspoken advocate for the “silent majority” in the Biden administration –– but with over 100 advocacy groups pushing for the GOP to deny any QAnon supporters from committee appointments –– we should hope people like Greene will be given less room to speak to their “truth.” 

Arizona Republicans make sneaky moves to rig redistricting commission before any lines are drawn

Last August, more than one hundred Donald Trump supporters gathered in front of a Flagstaff, Ariz., gun store for a rally. The “Team Trump On Tour” bus dominated the shopping mall parking lot. U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, spoke to the crowd. 

Then, in September, Trump backers gathered again at Timberline Firearms and Training, this time for a “shooting day” to support the president.

Now, the owner of that gun store, Robert Wilson, has been selected one of the five finalists to become the powerful chair of Arizona’s redistricting commission — the supposedly independent, and almost certainly decisive voice on a five-person board (along with two Democrats and two Republicans) who will determine this swing state’s legislative and congressional districts for the next decade. 

Wilson might be a registered political independent. But “hosted Trump rallies at his gun store, with a speech by the Freedom Caucus chair” doesn’t inspire confidence in his actual independence or his ability to be the fair-minded, scrupulous arbiter that this position requires. 

Indeed, someone fair-minded might look at the list of five finalists recently selected by the state’s Commission on Appellate Court Appointments — an ostensibly nonpartisan personnel board — and wonder if the Republicans are trying to ratfuck Arizona’s independent commission before a single line has even been drawn.

Four of the five finalists, while registered as independents, have either strong public opinions, or close ties and/or financial interests through jobs, family and partners into the state’s political power structure. 

Those opinions and connections largely lean in the same direction — toward Arizona Republicans. 

If the Commission on Appellate Court Appointments — yes, CACA for short, because you can’t make this stuff up — produced a list of names overwhelmingly likely to give Republicans that 3-2 edge on the independent redistricting commission, well, that might not be a coincidence either.

Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, has stacked CACA with loyalists throughout his time in office, and, for more than a year leading up to this appointment, refused to name any Democrats at all to this quietly influential board. Democrats accused him of conducting “sham interviews” for the board.

“This is a long-term, dual-pronged strategy to bias the independent redistricting commission,” said State Sen. Martin Quezada, a Democrat, who has been ringing alarms about the politicization of this commission for years. 

“This has been a neutral board over the years. This governor stopped appointing Democrats and packed it with Republicans and a couple independents — but the independents always seemed to be married to people in the administration or reliable lobbyists.”

The four commissioners already named to the commission — two Republicans and two Democrats, vetted by CACA and then selected by the majority and minority leaders of Arizona’s state house and senate — will meet Thursday and begin the process of selecting their chairperson from the five finalists. It could take as long as two weeks.

If those four partisan members deadlock, as seems likely, the tie-breaker would essentially go to the Republicans. Under that scenario, the decision would then revert to CACA. That means, for example, if the two Republicans dig in their heels and insist on Wilson, the gun shop owner, as chair, and Democrats refuse to yield, CACA could simply appoint him — or another of these seemingly less-than-independent independents — anyway. It certainly doesn’t give Republicans on the commission incentive to compromise now.

All of this has national political implications: It could hand Republicans a crucial advantage for the next decade in a state that has become so competitive that it was narrowly carried by Joe Biden in November and now has two Democratic U.S. Senators. A commission biased toward Republicans would give them a leg within the state’s congressional delegation at a time when control of Congress remains tight. It could also help the GOP maintain control of the state legislature, which in turn, could lead to additional voter suppression in a state where that has become increasingly commonplace.

The patient, long-term GOP chicanery here is yet another sign of how committed the party remains to continuing the advantages it won in Congress and state legislatures through redistricting in 2010 and 2011, and stretching them into another decade. New districts will be drawn nationwide this year, after the Census Bureau releases data to the states.

“It’s pretty obviously going to be a right-leaning commission at the end of the day,” Quezada told me.

Just what kind of CACA is happening in Arizona? The five finalists, from among more than 25 applicants, include the Flagstaff gun store owner as well as:

  • Thomas Loquvam, a well-connected general counsel and registered lobbyist for one of Arizona’s major utilities, whose sister, Jessica Pacheco, in 2014, helped direct another prominent utility’s seven-figure “dark-money” operation against Democratic candidates for the state commission that regulates all public utilities. (Lobbyists are supposed to be prohibited on the commission.)
  • Megan Carollo, the owner of a high-end floral boutique whose partner, according to state Democrats, both advises the Arizona Mexico Commission — a trade association chaired by the governor, and now led as president by Pacheco, the utility general counsel’s sister — and serves as president of a firm that has received more than a million dollars in contracts from the governor’s budget.
  • Erika Schupak Neuberg, a Scottsdale psychologist and national board member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who has been a prolific donor to Arizona’s GOP governor and related SuperPACs, many members of the congressional delegation, as well as to some Democratic politicos. 

The fifth candidate, Gregory Teesdale, a long-time developer and venture capitalist, is the only finalist without an apparent connection that could potentially be considered a conflict of interest. 

“It was a very disappointing process to watch unfold,” says Franny Sharpe, the deputy political director of the Arizona Democratic Party. “It just confirmed everything that we had feared.”

In December, an Arizona superior court judge rejected an effort by Democrats to disqualify Wilson and Loquvam. In Wilson’s case, the judge ruled that the state constitution didn’t require the chair to be an actual independent, just registered as one for at least three years. With regard to Loquvam, the judge interpreted “lobbyist” narrowly; he is registered to lobby the state Corporation Commission, not the legislature.

Nevertheless, Loquvam certainly has the kinds of political connections that could well undermine the very notion of moving the line-drawing power from politicians to the people. As the Arizona Mirror reported, he worked for Pinnacle West, the company that runs the massive Arizona Public Service utility, which “has spent millions against Democratic candidates for the Corporation Commission,” seeking to install more utility-friendly regulators on the important board. The APS, meanwhile, according to the Mirror, “secretly funded” its campaign for “friendly regulators” by “laundering the money through the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.” Those activities, in turn, were led by Loquvam’s sister, Pacheco.

“Put the law aside for a minute and just look at those two individuals. It’s pretty obvious, Quezada says. “When someone’s having a Trump rally at their gun store, not super-independent. A lobbyist. That might be a standard that could be adopted.” (Wilson denied the rally was intended to support a candidate, and said he is a “strong advocate of an informed electorate.”) Quezada says he believes the other three candidates “lean Republican, for sure,” but that all Democrats can hope is that their lean is “not as obvious as the other two.”

Arizona’s commission, of course, was intended to get the politicians, political cronies and other self-interested parties out of the business of drawing districts. It hasn’t worked. Indeed, it might be the leading national example of why a poorly designed independent commission does next to nothing to actually improve the drawing of fair lines.

Arizona’s commission places the burden of drawing lines onto five people. Four of them are essentially chosen by lawmakers. One person must stand between the two political parties. It’s an impossible task — and of course one that both parties will look to warp to their own advantage. Democrats believed that Republicans got the better of the commission after 2000. Republicans thought Democrats worked the rules better than them after 2010. One former GOP member of the commission told me for “Ratf**ked,” my book on the weaponization of partisan gerrymandering, that in 2020, his party would look to dominate the appellate court application process. 

“Next time,” Scott Freeman told me, “it will be game on.” Next time has arrived.

Netflix’s gorgeous “Dig” loses sight of its own discoveries in favor of soapy period melodrama

Archaeology is a way of looking at the past in the present to understand the future. “Life is revealed; that’s why we dig,” says Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes), the main excavator in 1938 at Sutton Hoo, in Netflix’s classy historical drama, “The Dig.” The film directed by Simon Stone (“The Daughter“) is based on a true story. Screenwriter Moira Buffini (“Harlots“) adapted John Preston’s novel.

Basil has been hired by Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) to do fieldwork on her property. She entrusts him, it seems, because he is both humble and honorable. His initial efforts on her property yield little, but then Basil unearths the oval burial mound (the rest were circular) and discovers something spectacular — the remains of a ship that may be Viking or, Basil suspects, Anglo-Saxon. 

“The Dig” is ingratiating as the crusty Basil and the upper-crust Edith bond during the excavation. They both claim to have been interested in archaeology since they were “old enough to hold a trowel.” He talks about his hunger to study, and she regrets her father denied her the opportunity to attend university. There is a class difference between them, but there is also a mutual respect. He appreciates that she insists he gets credit for his find. Basil even enjoys the company of Edith’s young son, Robert (Archie Barnes), and promises to show the boy the cosmos through his telescope. 

Stone uses this charming first act to establish the themes of money, credit, and death that shift into higher gear once Charles Phillips (Ken Stott), of the British Museum, takes over the archaeological site. He brings on a team that includes Stuart Piggott (Ben Chaplin) and his young, inexperienced wife, Peggy (Lily James), as well as John Brailsford (Eamon Farren). Rory Lomax (Johnny Flynn), who is Edith’s cousin, also helps out, mostly taking photographs of the progress and finds. 

As work continues, an accident, of course, leads to a tremendous discovery. As scenes depict the careful excavation of artifacts, viewers may think less about the historic ramifications of the treasure, and more about how much fun the film crew must have had in burying the precious items for the actors to uncover. Yes, the digging is more interesting than the lab work — which is what most archaeologists actually spend their time doing — and is also more cinematic.

Stone offers some visual beauty in the excavation scenes. Viewers can feel the heat of the blazing sun, or the rain, as Basil lays tarps or bails water. There is an incessant, but not irritating, score that helps drive some of the action. The filmmaker often employs voice-overs of characters talking to complement what is happening on screen, occasionally cutting back and forth between storylines to keep the action nimble. These efforts mostly pay off as “The Dig” mines its drama from soapy storylines. 

Peggy is frustrated that Stuart is more interested in spending time in the lab with John Brailsford than expressing any romantic interest in her. Meanwhile, she finds herself attracted to the dreamy Rory, who is called up by the RAF. In addition, Edith’s state of health is as fragile as the archaeological site. 

These subplots allow for discussions of death and the value of appreciating the fleeting moments of life. Rory talks about his photos being a way of fixing history. Peggy appreciates the provenance of a coin she was given as a child, which is mirrored by a 6th century coin found at the Sutton Hoo site. And there are planes that fly over the site and news reports to remind folks that England is on the brink of war.

Eventually, the real focus of the find — ownership, value, and credit — is addressed. There is discussion of an inquest to determine who has the right to the artifacts, which have become a “national sensation.” There is snobbery on the part of Charles Phillips regarding Basil’s work on the site. In addition, while the local Ipswich Museum folks are keen to get the treasure, the British Museum is also willing to pay for the priceless artifacts. End titles reveal what transpired in real life, perhaps because it would be hard to depict what occurred on screen. At least the denouement addresses the film’s theme of making something visible that has long been unearthed.

Stone juggles all these plots and themes with prudence, but there is a nagging sense that the film should have played up the importance of the Sutton Hoo find more. Even with the attention to Basil and Edith — Fiennes plays stubborn but proud, although Mulligan is more of a wispy presence than a fleshed-out character — it is odd that “The Dig” pivots to place so much emphasis on Peggy’s personal life. 

Surely, the film will spark far more interest in seeing the artifacts on display or learning more about the excavation than in caring about a supporting character’s love triangle. Alas, “The Dig” is not a film for armchair archaeologists. It is more of a diversion for viewers looking for handsomely mounted period British melodrama.

“The Dig” streams on Netflix beginning Friday, Jan. 15.

Can “True Cost Accounting” tell us more than a price tag?

40 McNuggets for $13.99 sounds like an unbelievable deal. So, maybe it is.

Groups like the Sustainable Food Trust are on a mission to demonstrate how, in the current commodity food system, big corporations can offer shockingly low prices and still rake in profits because they cut corners at every step along the supply chain, offloading long-term costs onto the public while duping them into thinking their dinner was a bargain.

For example, companies pay wages too low to support families, shifting a portion of their labor costs onto taxpayers (in the form of nutrition benefits and housing subsidies). They concentrate hundreds of thousands of chickens in one place, and when waste pollutes waterways, taxpayers pay to clean them up. Ammonia from the concentration of animals in confinement leads to high rates of asthma in surrounding communities, raising healthcare costs for neighbors.

“When you add up all of these hidden costs, cheaper chicken isn’t so cheap after all,” the narrator says in the video “A Tale of Two Chickens,” produced by the Sustainable Food Trust.

But is it really possible to add those costs up? And even if you could, would it lead to meaningful changes in the system?

Proponents of “True Cost Accounting,” a framework to holistically evaluate the impacts of food production systems, say the answer to both of those questions is “yes.” And the movement is gaining traction among global non-profits, academics, and forward-thinking businesses. In January 2020, the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future published an academic report on True Cost Accounting that summarized publications and approaches that currently exist and outlined opportunities for further research. In May 2021, an anthology of essays called “True Cost Accounting for Food” that includes real world examples of applying True Cost Accounting to food system change and features prominent contributors like Kathleen Merrigan and Ricardo Salvador will be released. (Fun fact: one of the most high profile proponents of TCA is His Royal Highness, Charles, Prince of Wales. Prince Charles spoke about TCA at a 2013 conference in London and is the “patron” of the Sustainable Food Trust.)

Experts say the framework is a compelling tool that could inform future food policies, business practices and consumer choices in a way that tackles many of the biggest issues of the day — like the climate crisis, racial justice, hunger and obesity and economic inequality — at once. But it also lacks uniform metrics, has yet to be widely applied in real-world scenarios and requires policymakers and CEOs to embrace a complexity and depth of analysis that is far beyond the current norm. And in the private sector, companies externalize their costs for a reason. Getting business leaders to care about their impacts and to make changes that will likely affect their bottom line is almost always an uphill battle.

Here’s what you need to know about True Cost Accounting and how it might contribute to building a better food system in the near future.

What is True Cost Accounting?

In compiling the Johns Hopkins report, research associate Anna Aspenson found that while most shared values and principles, definitions of True Cost Accounting (which is often referred to as TCA) vary, especially in terms of scope.

“A good working definition for me is that True Cost Accounting is an initiative aimed at expanding our current economic methods for understanding the diverse impacts of various [food] production systems,” Aspenson said.

Many groups take the idea of “capital” and reframe it to include not just goods and money, but other forms of “capital,” like social, human and natural. And a huge component involves measuring what food companies call “externalities.” These are negative effects of activities within the supply chain, like pollution, biodiversity destruction and worker health issues, which companies are not held responsible for.

“Ideally, what you would have in a True Cost Accounting system is a measure of the cost of doing certain things, and that includes secondary costs. So let’s say you put a bunch of antibiotics into a system. Then, we’re looking at the cost of treating antibiotic-resistant diseases later on and trying to make some cost assessment of that externality,” explains Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D., a sustainable food systems expert and the chief science advisor for FoodPrint. “Assessing what we call ‘externalities’ that are not accounted for in the cost of doing business or in the price tag are important.”

On the flipside, Barbara Gemmill-Herren, Ph.D., said that measuring and including what she calls “positive externalities” that benefit the public — such as producing nutrient-dense foods, conserving biodiversity, or reducing greenhouse gas emissions — is just as important to TCA.

Gemmill-Herren is a sustainable food systems professor at Prescott College and a senior associate for the World Agroforestry Centre in Kenya. Previously, she joined the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization to coordinate pollinator work globally and then led an initiative to promote agroecology. That initiative led her to TCA, as a possible tool for communicating the benefits of agroecological methods.

“Conventional agriculture produces higher yields . . . through inputs replacing ecosystem services and then a lot of negative externalities,” she said. Many people she encountered in agriculture policy used yields as the primary measure of performance, but what if you looked beyond yields, she thought, especially given yields are higher than necessary in countries like the U.S.? “I know this from pollination, that if you really run an accurate ecosystem on ecological principles, it can generate positive externalities. [It’s true] for pollinators in Kenya, and they’ve found the same in New Jersey, that organic farms can have an incredible diversity of bees, including rare and endangered bees. The crops are full of flowers and full of nectar, and they’re not getting hit by pesticides. So respecting the positive externalities of agriculture, I think, has to be part of the whole movement for change.”

How does True Cost Accounting work?

Of course, getting from this philosophical idea of accounting for the many impacts — both positive and negative — of various systems to a tool that can actually be applied is tricky. (We should mention that our idea of a FoodPrint is basically a consumer-facing form of TCA, since we encourage people to take into account all of the impacts of their food choices, from animal welfare to social justice and public health.)

In the Johns Hopkins report, Aspenson outlines various frameworks that have been developed, and some of the work overlaps. Many organizations in the field are working to apply the TEEBAgriFood Evaluation Framework, which is the most used (despite its unwieldy name). In September, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food (GAFF) published a report with guidance on how to apply the overarching framework. The same month, guidelines to help businesses use the framework were produced by a coalition including the Natural Capital Coalition, the U.N. Environment Programme, and the European Union, and the Natural Capital Coalition is also doing TCA trainings for businesses in Brazil and Mexico.

Still, a lot of the work is guidance and reports. How is it actually applied on the ground?

GAFF has funded a few studies that apply the framework, including one on corn production in Minnesota. And Gemmill-Herren cited a few examples that came out of work done by the U.N. Environment Programme and funded by the EU. In Indonesia, a team studied and presented the benefits of investing in agroforestry over palm oil plantations using a TCA framework. “It really did convince the Indonesian government to incorporate a large investment in agroforestry in their five-year plan,” she said.

In Senegal, the government was considering taking out very large loans to intensify rice production using industrialized inputs and irrigation. To convince them otherwise, Gemmill-Herren led a study using TCA to show the impacts of that system compared to investing in alternatives. “They depend very heavily on rice and they import a lot, so you can understand how they want to ramp up production,” she said. But by applying a systems model, she was able to outline what repaying those loans with interest would mean for the country compared to what would happen if they invested the same amount of money in farmer training on agroecological approaches to rice production. “We could really document what the impact would be not just on the production of rice, but on many other aspects like women’s empowerment and youth employment. You look along the whole value chain and look at the idea of investing in smaller-scale rice mills and being able to employ the local community, and the local community being able to take some of the rice byproducts to feed livestock, for example,” she said. “This government has really . . . embraced agroecology and I think not only this one study but these kinds of studies help them to say ‘this is the way we should be going there.'”

These examples all relate to policy making, but TCA can also be applied by private businesses to evaluate their practices and make positive changes within their supply chains.

Eosta, an international organic produce distributor based in Europe, uses a system it developed using a TCA framework to evaluate its growers and communicate their process to consumers. The framework includes social, economic and climate impacts, organized into a “sustainability flower.”  Each grower’s practices and scores across the metrics measured in each petal, like biodiversity and health, are then made available online. For example, Hugo Sanchez grows organic apples and pears for Eosta in Argentina. His sustainability profiledetails his use of compost for soil health and calculates what it calls the “benefit for society” that improved soil creates, among other impacts.

Rangan says other companies, like Danone (makers of Dannon yogurt and other products), are working on some version of this kind of accounting behind the scenes. “Danone is a company that’s really dedicated themselves to this effort. A lot of that is going on in the background. The company wants to know where the real savings are and where the real expenditures are, and in many ways, it’s True Cost Accounting,” she said. Of course, while some companies are truly mission-driven and operate based on principles that drive them to minimize negative impacts, most will externalize costs as often as they can if it helps their bottom line. Except, as consumer attention to how food impacts health, workers, and climate change increases, companies may see accounting for negative impacts and improving their practices as potentially profitable.  For example, Eosta specifically lays out the fact that the sustainability flower is used to monitor and manage farmer practices but also to market “the added environmental and social value to help farmers capitalize on their social and environmental performance.”

“I think the question is: When does it go from internal accounting for a company to a marketing plan? It’s really important because that provides an important foundation for them making these kinds of claims to the public,” Rangan said. For example, Chipotle’s recent impact tracker is an attempt to market how the company operates differently compared to others and how it is improving its performance on several different environmental and health impacts. As more restaurants add metrics like carbon labeling to their menus, TCA could make it possible for them to go deeper.

The future of True Cost Accounting

The systemic nature of TCA evaluations can be both a strength and a limitation. One challenge is convincing governments and companies to actually value all of these elements (like fair wages and health outcomes) and another is actually coming up with a number to compare the “true cost” of a food like a McNugget.

“Being able to put a cost on something can be a valuable tool in getting to change, especially policy change,” Rangan said. “That said, there are some things you just can’t put a value on. Social justice is one of those things that’s pretty difficult to put a dollar value on, so in those cases, it may be that you need to do some other semi-quantitative or qualitative assessments in order to communicate accurately what the value or benefit or the cost is.”

That kind of assessment might be valuable in a policy discussion but is much harder to boil down to a price tag. And then, if you are able to come up with a number, and it’s clear that a system is costing the public on some front, what then?

Waiting around for companies to respond to consumer pressure likely isn’t enough. Some TCA supporters advocate for a “polluter pays” model that would essentially try to get the companies to internalize those “externalities.” But Aspenson said especially when it comes to impact on human lives and on climate change, that kind of model won’t be enough, either. “We might have some money in our bank from the polluter, but this is a question of survival. It’s like our house is on fire and we’re counting which pennies to save,” she said. “We don’t want to get paid for someone’s chance to degrade irreplaceable resources.”

What Aspenson advocates is using TCA evaluations to argue for much deeper structural changes to the food system. “Economic arguments are incredibly useful in our current policy making system, but we need to have this long-term, common goal of economic and cultural change, because capitalism just won’t save us. It got us into this current situation, and I think True Cost Accounting needs to reckon with that. What does an accounting system look like that uses practical economic terms, but also supports that long-term goal of economic change and deep change?” In other words, McNuggets shouldn’t be more expensive, they should be history.

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner barred Secret Service from using their restrooms, sent them to Obama

The United States Secret Service agents assigned to guard first daughter Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner were forced to use a $3,000-per-month rental toilet after the couple barred them from using any of the six bathrooms in their house.

The Washington Post reports that Secret Service agents were strictly forbidden from using any of the toilets in Jared and Ivanka’s house located in the elite Kalorama neighborhood in Washington D.C.

This forced agents to find creative ways to properly relieve themselves, including trips to former President Barack Obama’s house, which is located in the same neighborhood, as well as renting a porta-potty.

The agents finally found a permanent restroom when the government spent $3,000 a month to rent out a basement studio from one of Jared and Ivanka’s neighbors.

So far, the government has spent more than $100,000 just to rent out the bathroom.

“A White House spokesperson denied that Trump and Kushner restricted agents from their 5,000-square-foot home, with its six bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms, and asserted that it was the Secret Service’s decision not to allow the protective detail inside,” the Post writes. “That account is disputed by a law enforcement official familiar with the situation, who said the agents were kept out at the family’s request.”

Republicans threaten violence if Trump faces repercussions — but it was impunity that moved his mob

There is no way to defend Donald Trump’s behavior last week, when, after pouring gasoline for months, he lit a match and set the insurrection fire. And, by and large, Republicans aren’t even trying. Instead, the Republican arguments against impeaching the president for a second time largely cite “concerns” — or what might be better described as threats — that any effort to hold Trump accountable for his behavior may anger an already angry mob, leading to more violence. 

“A vote to impeach would further divide this nation, a vote to impeach will further fan the flames,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R.-Calif., warned after admitting during Wednesday’s impeachment debate that Trump bore responsibility for the insurrection last week. Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., made a similar argument, saying impeachment will “further the unrest” and “possibly incite more violence.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed the same argument on Wednesday, saying impeachment “could invite further violence.” On Fox Business Thursday, one day after Trump was impeached, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro went even further, arguing that the “Democratic Party did violence to this country by attacking a president who I believe was legally elected on November 3.”

Of course, Trump lost the Nov. 3 election to Joe Biden by 74 electoral votes, the exact number he won by in 2016. Yet his team continues to amplify the foundational lie that lead to last week’s violent desecration of the U.S. Capitol. In addition, multiple Republicans have spent the days since whining about Trump being “canceled,” callously acting as if the loss of his Twitter account is the real crime while ignoring the ones he incited, like beating a cop to death with a fire extinguisher during a treacherous riot. 

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The flaws in this let-the-terrorists win argument should be immediately evident.

For one thing, Trump supporters already violently tried to overthrow the government — not because Trump was being impeached, but because they reject the results of a democratic election and believe Trump should be illegally installed as an authoritarian leader.

Republican logic would suggest that democracy itself should be thrown out because a small number of bullies demand it. They certainly wouldn’t accept this logic if foreign terrorists attacked the U.S. Capitol, and so it shouldn’t be taken seriously now. 

But more to the point, there is no evidence that the mayhem was caused because of anger over Trump facing consequences for any of his numerous corrupt or criminal acts. On the contrary, the overwhelming evidence shows that impunity fueled the Capitol riot. The insurrectionists acted out of a belief that neither they nor the president they love would ever face any repercussions. 

That the insurrectionists were confident they would never face a single, solitary consequence has been one of the most remarkable — and remarked upon — aspects of this entire ordeal. Very few of the attackers bothered to cover their faces. On the contrary, many of them photographed and live-streamed the event, after spending weeks online publicly planning the attempted coup. In fact, the only reason many of the participants are facing arrest now is they were so public about their role in the assault. 

But while this behavior initially seems baffling, a deeper examination shows that it makes a lot of sense. After all, for five years, Trump supporters have watched their beloved president run roughshod over all the rules and norms of D.C. with nary a consequence for it. He lies without repercussion. He openly colluded with Russia to cheat in the election and got away with lying about it. His lawbreaking started during the campaign when he conspired with his lawyer to illegally pay off mistresses for their silence. His entire presidency has been defined by his open criminality, from his obstruction of justice during the Russia investigation to the extortion scheme against the Ukrainian president that got him impeached the first time to his post-election efforts to steal the election by pressuring and even threatening state and local election officials. 

Despite Trump being a shameless and avid criminal, he has yet to face anything resembling a real punishment. He was impeached for the Ukrainian extortion scheme, but the thoroughly corrupt GOP decided to acquit him, despite his obvious guilt. People around Trump went to prison — including his campaign manager Paul Manafort and his lawyer Michael Cohen — but he skated away, scot-free.

Of course a lot of Trump’s supporters started to imagine he had almost god-like powers shielding him from the normal sanctions people can expect for committing crimes. And a lot of them started to imagine that they, too, could do whatever they wanted, no matter how violent or seditious, as long as they did it for Trump.  

It’s also important to note the race and class privilege that fueled the impunity of the Capitol rioters. 

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“They were business owners, CEOs, state legislators, police officers, active and retired service members, real-estate brokers, stay-at-home dads, and, I assume, some Proud Boys,” Adam Serwer writes at the Atlantic. 

People, in other words, who have grown accustomed to the idea that their race and economic status shields them from accountability. In their world, going to jail is for other people — lower class people, people of color, leftists  — and not “respectable” people like themselves. It’s why so many were pouty about COVID-19 restrictions and mask-wearing. Responsibility to your community is for those other people, in their view, and not for the likes of them. 

The only way to stop the violence is to strip Trump and his followers of their sense of impunity. The only way that happens is with, heaven forbid, actual sanctions for their actions.

Obviously, everything Republicans say is pure bad faith, which is why all this concern trolling — or really, threats — about “fanning the flames” shouldn’t be taken seriously. But what should be taken seriously is the impunity with which Trump and his minions operate. This has gone on too long, and the riot at the Capitol was the result. If there’s any hope of stemming the tide of violence, consequences — real ones — need to start flowing. People who participated in the riots need to be prosecuted. Any members of Congress who incited the riot or, as some are alleging, assisted the insurrectionists, need to be investigated and prosecuted. 

And above all other things, Trump needs to be punished.

The impeachment is a good start, but it’s not enough, especially since there’s little chance of the Senate, which is still half-Republican, convicting him. Trump has been impeached before and got right back to criming, empowered by his unjust acquittal. As painful as it may be for Joe Biden to admit this, the newly elected president needs to unleash the Department of Justice on Trump, both for his role in the insurrection and for all his crimes prior to it. 

Trump and his supporters staged a coup against the U.S. government because they thought they could get away with it. The only way to keep them from doing it again is to make sure they know there’s a price to pay — by extracting it. 

FBI warns racist extremists, militias emboldened by Capitol siege may target Biden inauguration

The FBI and other federal agencies have warned law enforcement to be on high alert against potential violent actions targeting next week’s presidential inauguration, amid concerns that racist extremists and anti-government militias were emboldened by last week’s deadly Capitol siege.

FBI Director Christopher Wray and acting Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli pressed police chiefs across the U.S. on Wednesday to share any intelligence of extremist plots, warning of potential threats beyond the Capitol, including the homes of members of Congress and other elected officials, state capitols and other federal buildings, according to The New York Times. The FBI previously warned about “armed protests” targeting all 50 state capitals ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and “various threats to harm” Biden, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The National Counterterrorism Center, the Justice Department and DHS also released a bulletin Wednesday warning that last week’s Capitol riot could be a “significant driver of violence” for extremist and militia groups targeting next week’s swearing-in.

The bulletin, which was published by Yahoo News, warns that anti-government militias and “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists … citing partisan political grievances will very likely pose the greatest domestic terrorism threats in 2021.” The Capitol breach, which these groups view “as a success,” along with the death of a protester shot by police, will likely “increase collaboration” between racist extremists and militia groups as well as followers of “QAnon conspiracy theories,” the agencies said. Supporters of the “false narrative of a ‘stolen election,'” a conspiracy theory pushed by President Trump and his Republican backers, are likely to continue to pursue violence to “attack and undermine a government they view as illegitimate.”

The federal agencies predicted an increase in plots against “officials at all levels of government, law enforcement, journalists, and infrastructure.” They also warned that groups exploiting conspiracy theories like QAnon are likely to inspire “lone actor” threats against “racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and institutions, law enforcement, and government officials.”

The bulletin also cited a potential threat from the “boogaloo” movement, whose followers support a “second civil war or insurgency against the US Government,” against Biden’s inauguration. Though this movement “may not necessarily share” the views of the Capitol rioters, followers “who seek a race war may exploit the aftermath of the Capitol breach by conducting attacks to destabilize and force a climactic conflict in the United States.”

A separate bulletin from the Secret Service obtained by The Daily Beast also warned of a planned boogaloo demonstration ahead of the inauguration, whose “organizers have encouraged attendees to bring weapons.”

The Tree of Liberty, a group affiliated with the boogaloo movement, is also planning an “armed” protest before the inauguration, according to the bulletin.

Multiple suspects linked to the boogaloo movement have been charged with plots that sought to exploit last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests to commit violence.

Capitol Police also warned lawmakers in a briefing of three separate potentially violent threats, including a demonstration promoted as the “largest armed protest ever to take place on American soil” and a protest to honor Ashli Babbitt, the protester killed by police while trying to breach the House chamber. Officials also warned of a plot to surround the Capitol, White House and Supreme Court, with the potential goal of harming or assassinating members of Congress or other officials.

Officials have greatly ramped up security around Washington since the rioters were able to easily overrun an overwhelmed Capitol Police force on Jan. 6. D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said that 20,000 members of the National Guard are expected to be on hand for the inauguration, prepared to combat a “major threat” to the ceremony.

Defense Department officials told the Times on Tuesday that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy has decided to arm troops around the Capitol amid concerns that as many as 16 groups, some of which have vowed to bring firearms, plan to hold protests in the city. Pentagon officials are also worried about potential improvised explosive devices, such as the pipe bombs found at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters on the day of the riot, according to Politico. (The devices did not detonate, although authorities have not explained why.)

“They’re very, very worried about these, what they referred to as domestic violent extremists, embedding themselves in other protests,” Tucson, Arizona, Police Chief Chris Magnus told the Times. “Christopher Wray seemed particularly concerned about what was sort of the disregard these folks have for democratic government.”

“It kind of shook everyone up, you know, seeing what happened at the Capitol. It gives you a terrible feeling of uneasiness, and so, they’re concerned with that,” added Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina. “They’re concerned with the mindset of, ‘Are we safe here in this country?'”

Dr. Lance Dodes warns we aren’t rid of Trump yet: He “will continue to have no conscience”

Last Wednesday, thousands of Donald Trump’s white supremacist supporters, at his de facto command, launched an assault on the U.S. Capitol with the goal of stopping Joe Biden from becoming the next president. While investigations are ongoing, some people in the mob may have planned to kidnap or assassinate members of Congress they consider “traitors,” along with Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the ceremonial count of the electoral votes. Trump’s fascist mob was well equipped for the task, as some of their members were armed with guns and other weapons, and clad in paramilitary gear.

Five people have now died during and after the Capitol attack. Dozens more were injured. This Trump-inspired uprising is likely not over and may be in its early stages. There are credible reports by the FBI and other American law enforcement agencies that right-wing paramilitaries and other domestic terrorists are planning even more violence across the country in the days leading to Biden’s inauguration next week. This attack was not an isolated event: The entire Age of Trump has been typified by right-wing violence. When Trump finally leaves office, the right-wing violence he has enabled and permitted may only get worse.

On Wednesday, by a vote of 232 to 197, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for a second time, on this occasion for “incitement of insurrection.” All 222 Democrats (along with 10 Republicans) voted to impeach, while four Republicans abstained. Trump is now the only president to have been impeached twice, and clearly rivals only Andrew Johnson or James Buchanan for the shameful distinction of being the worst president in American history.

Instead of being cowed by the violence at the U.S. Capitol and his second impeachment, Trump, like other autocrats and fascists, appears even more desperate and emboldened. On Tuesday, during a visit to his “border wall” in Texas, Donald Trump warned the Democrats and the American people that there will be consequences — implying more violence by his followers — for his impeachment or removal. Trump then claimed the Democrats were causing the country “tremendous anger, and division and pain,” another example of stochastic terrorism aimed at inciting violence by his political cult members against their shared “enemies”.

Under pressure from Republican leaders and his remaining White House advisers, Donald Trump released a video on Wednesday evening in which he “condemned” political violence and claimed that his “true supporters” would never engage in such behavior. This is patently insincere: From the beginning of his 2016 campaign, Trump has encouraged political violence by his followers and other cult members. Moreover, during the assault on the Capitol Trump was reportedly gleeful and excited.  

Ultimately, the disaster that is Trump’s presidency did not need to happen. It was all a choice.

Those Americans who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 (and in even larger numbers in 2020) are responsible.

The Republican Party, which embraced Donald Trump and his vile anti-democracy movement, is responsible.

A news media which normalized Trump’s fascist and authoritarian white supremacist regime are responsible.

Those who denied the obvious warnings about Trump’s coup attempt — and who mocked or tried to silence the people who were trying to warn the public — are responsible.

Writing at the Atlantic, Tom Nichols locates the disaster of Trump’s presidency and America’s national peril as a moment comparable to the Cuban missile crisis or the darkest moments of Nixon’s presidency:

We can’t keep hoping for the best or relying on those not in charge to keep Trump in line. Even one day more is too long for him to be in the White House. We escaped disaster over just a few days in 1962 and in the dark of an autumn night in 1973. Peace was kept, in part, by the presence of steady professionals such as Schlesinger and the Kennedy team, the likes of whom are nowhere to be found in Trump’s Washington.

We no longer have a margin for error. A second impeachment is the only reliable solution, and it should take place immediately.

The disaster that Nichols describes could have also been prevented if warnings from many leading mental health professionals had been listened to and then acted upon. Since at least 2015, they have sounded the alarm and tried to educate the public about Donald Trump’s pathologies, his malignant narcissism and his psychopathic or sociopathic tendencies.

Dr. Lance Dodes is one such voice. He is a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a training and supervising analyst emeritus at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

In our most recent of several conversations, Dodes explains that Trump’s coup attempt and other dangerous behavior are a function of the president’s obvious mental pathologies, and observes that this disaster was totally and utterly predictable. Dodes warns that Trump believes that he is a godlike figure — and that when that delusion is shattered, Trump will become even more dangerous. At the end of this conversation Dr. Dodes implores the country’s leaders to remove Donald Trump as rapidly as possible, noting that if this man were a private citizen he would already be in prison or a secure mental health facility

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

The dominant narrative in the American news media is that Donald Trump is stupid, a crook, a charlatan, a buffoon, etc. Such claims have done the work of minimizing how dangerous he is to the country and the world. While so many tried to deny the likelihood of Trump attempting a coup against the United States, that is exactly what happened. This is the greatest crisis facing this country since the Cuban missile crisis.

I completely agree. Most professionals in mental health have long understood that far from being a buffoon, or the naïve idea that he is “crazy like a fox,” he is severely mentally disturbed. Unfortunately, starting in 2016 the official psychological organizations in this country failed to speak out. The American Psychiatric Association actually threatened to throw out those of its members who understood the problem and had the courage to speak up, falsely claiming that speaking out would be unethical. Ironically, this meant that they threatened the most ethical and courageous members of the profession. If they had done their ethical duty to society it would have given the country a chance to save itself from the deaths and suffering of the past four years.

How do you think the mainstream news media has handled Trump’s mental health?

Poorly, because many of them saw Trump is just a buffoon, or believed the psychologically ignorant idea that he is just being clever. As a result they didn’t recognize they were dealing with a dangerous and delusional psychopath whose endless lies needed to be openly and vigorously challenged. Many in the media covered his every tweet as if it was true. He was yelling at White House journalists saying, “You’re fake” from the beginning of his term and it was years before they objected. The reporters should have said, “No, Mr. Trump, you cannot talk to the free press that way.” They should have covered his assault on the free press as a major story. The media failed to do their job to protect the country.

If he were a private citizen, how would Donald Trump be treated by law enforcement and other authorities?

At this very moment he would be in jail for having incited a riot. But the multiple other crimes he’s committed over many years would have put him in jail years ago. If he were in any other position his complete incompetence dealing with the pandemic would have led him to be removed from any responsible position regarding the health or welfare of Americans.

In terms of mental health, is a diagnosis a type of prediction in terms of future behavior?

That’s the most valuable part of making a diagnosis. When Trump was first elected, many hopeful people said, “He’s been horrible, but he’ll grow into the job.” The impossibility of that was easy to predict because of his diagnosis. If a few people in my field hadn’t incompetently denied his condition, and if the American Psychiatric Association hadn’t tried to gag its members, the public could have been made clearly aware of his diagnosis and been in position to far better understand and deal with him and his behavior.

While the assault on the Capitol was taking place, Trump was reportedly excited and transfixed by the spectacle. This is part of a broader pattern in which Trump has repeatedly shown a fascination or obsession with violence. How does this fit into your warnings about Trump’s mental health and behavior?

This man is fundamentally different from virtually all the people that you’ve ever known. The pain and suffering of others mean nothing to him. It’s hard to get that across because we all say, “He must be like us,” which is a normal expectation. He is nothing like us. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we know that he is going to continue to act on his delusional beliefs and he will continue to have no conscience about what he does to cause suffering to others.

Here is my prediction. Donald Trump does not care if he is impeached or removed from office by the 25th Amendment. Either one serves his goal of declaring that he was betrayed and that there is a plot against him and his supporters. He will declare himself a type of shadow president and cause chaos and destruction. His behavior is only going to bet worse. Trump will not stop seeking revenge on the American people.

Four years ago, we said he was going to get worse. And we’re still saying he can only get worse. The closer and closer he gets to being what he would consider a loser, the more dangerous he becomes.

How were you feeling as you watched Trump’s coup attack and its aftermath?

It was horrifying and terrifying to see the insurrectionists get into the Capitol building, partly because it was obvious that there was some plot going on; this wasn’t just a mob on its own. There was a clear risk of a coup successfully led by Donald Trump. A few years ago, I said on MSNBC that among the risks Trump posed were that he would start a nuclear war, but that there were also other risks: that he would try to create an emergency, declare martial law and dissolve Congress. It’s never been a secret that Trump wants to be like Putin or Hitler or Stalin or his friend in North Korea. He wants to be a supreme tyrant, and in his mind that’s what he is. Anyone who threatens that delusion is his mortal enemy. If he could have taken over via a coup, he would have.

We can’t read the man’s mind, but based on his public behavior and the personality type, what do you think his internal monologue is right now?

Trump is a very simple person. He says outwardly, “I am being persecuted” and he says the same thing to himself. His beliefs are not affected by reality.

Donald Trump also has a type of God complex. He is a delusional megalomania. His followers believe him to be a type of God as well. What happens to Trump and his followers when he loses his power?

It would be a sign of greater mental health if Trump were able to become depressed with a loss, because it would mean he has accepted the loss. But as we have repeatedly seen, he cannot tolerate that reality. When he loses power, rather than becoming depressed, he becomes more delusional. He attributes the problem to persecution by his enemies and mercilessly attacks them. That’s what the coup attempt was.

The American Psychoanalytic Association, of which you are a member, recently issued a statement of concern regarding Donald Trump’s mental health and the safety of the United States and the world. How did this come about?

I’m proud that the American Psychoanalytic Association became the first and so far only major national psychological organization to say that Trump must go. I wish the statement had come out four years ago, but I’m glad they’re the first to break away from the self-imposed paralysis of the major psychological organizations. And I hope the country will listen.

What should happen next?

In an ideal world Trump would be voted out today via the 25th Amendment. If he were not president, he would have already been in jail or contained in some safe facility.

Was the Capitol raid an “inside job”? Some Democrats think so — and evidence is mounting

More than 30 House Democrats sent a letter to the acting House sergeant-at-arms on Wednesday calling for an investigation into “suspicious” groups of visitors inside the Capitol building the day before the Jan. 6 attack. Some of the lawmakers, the letter says, had encountered tour guests who later appeared connected with the next day’s Stop the Steal event by the White House.

Some of the signees are military veterans “trained to recognize suspicious activity,” the letter says, who witnessed “an extremely high number of outside groups” in the building on Jan. 5.

“This is unusual for several reasons,” the letter continues, “including the fact that access to the Capitol Complex has been restricted since public tours ended in March due to the pandemic,” prompting top staff to question the sergeant-at-arms about the activity that same day.

“The visitors encountered by some of the Members of Congress on this letter appeared to be associated with the rally at the White House the following day,” the members wrote, adding: “Members of the group that attacked the Capitol seemed to have an unusually detailed knowledge of the layout of the Capitol Complex. The presence of these groups within the Capitol Complex was indeed suspicious.”

The letter asks whether logbooks from that day include names of visitors admitted by their colleagues — who are not specified but assumed to be Republicans — and whether video logs documenting those visits are available. Pointedly, the group also asks whether law enforcement has also tried to access visitor information.

Ahead of the letter, several Democrats had previously, albeit somewhat cryptically, raised the possibility that preparations for the invasion extended into the halls of Congress, including among some of their fellow members. No one has yet offered hard evidence of outright collaboration or formal organization, but circumstantial evidence in the public record, combined with inside accounts, suggests that the plans unfolded for a number of weeks among a leaderless and to some extent coordinated network of like-minded people who converged at the same target on the same day.

Speculation about such coordination has been simmering online since the attack, but on Tuesday Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., sent it viral, claiming in a Facebook video that she saw unnamed fellow representatives guiding what she characterized as “reconnaissance” tours in the Capitol the day before the attack.

“I also intend to see that those members of Congress who abetted [President Trump] — those members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 for reconnaissance for the next day — those members of Congress who incited the violent crowd, those members of Congress that attempted to help our president undermine our democracy, I’m going to see that they’re held accountable,” Sherrill said.

Though Sherrill did not explain why she described the alleged Jan. 5 tours as “reconnaissance” for the deadly siege that played out the next day, she said in the video that she had passed her information to authorities.

“We’re requesting an investigation right now with certain agencies,” she told Politico. On Wednesday she joined the group that notified the Sergeant at Arms.

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, chair of the subcommittee that oversees funding for the Capitol Police, offered more detail, saying that “a couple” of his colleagues seemed to fit Sherrill’s description, and that this information had been passed to law enforcement as early as the night of the attack. Ryan added that “handfuls” of people had been escorted through the building on Jan. 5, and that clearly they were not “one-on-one” or “small family” tours.

“You look back on certain things and you look at it differently,” said the Democrat, who told reporters the day after the siege that he would launch an investigation into the Capitol Police response.

These claims are at least somewhat plausible, based on the public record. A number of Republican elected officials supported and heavily promoted the rally, most specifically Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, who had coordinated for weeks with event organizers. One organizer cited Gosar and two other Republicans by name as helping foment a “maximum pressure” campaign on Congress.

Other Republican lawmakers have also drawn circumstantial suspicion, such as newly elected Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who has expressed admiration for QAnon conspiracy theories. Boebert’s tweets about the location of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others during the attack have led to calls for her arrest.

Speaking more broadly, many Republicans lent their support to the rally and its central cause: Objecting to the Electoral College votes. More than 140 representatives and a dozen senators had announced before the Jan. 6 joint session that they would object, and many of them, including Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, routinely promoted the false claims of election fraud that fueled the insurrection. 

Some officials have suggested that the attackers displayed uncanny knowledge of the Capitol complex, perhaps indicating advance or insider access to the building. Sarah Groh, chief of staff to Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., told the Boston Globe on Wednesday that panic buttons in the congresswoman’s office appeared to have been ripped out of the wall.

“Every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit,” Groh said, explaining that the panic buttons had been installed because Pressley, one of the group of four Democratic congresswomen of color known as “the Squad,” had received a number of death threats.

Also this week, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told radio host Rashad Richey that he believed the attack was an “inside job.”

These startling allegations have drawn more attention as law enforcement begins to sort through the chaos and arrest suspects, but they popped up last week as well. One senior Senate aide, asked by Salon last Thursday how the invaders found the Senate parliamentarian’s office — an obscure space deep in the building where electoral votes were stored, and which the mob ransacked — said that it was a “fascinating question.”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” the aide said. “They somehow got into every nook and cranny.”

On Friday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina told CBS News that he believed “somebody on the inside” had helped the insurrectionists.

“They knew where to go. I’ve been told … by some other congresspeople that their staff are saying that they saw people being allowed into the building through side doors,” Clyburn said.

“Who opened those side doors for these protesters, or I call them these mobsters, to come into the building, not through the main entrance where magnetometers are but through side doors. Yes, somebody on the inside of those buildings were complicit in this,” said the veteran Democratic leader.

Clyburn also observed that the rioters ignored the office marked with his name plate, but said that the unmarked office “where I do most of my work in, they were on that floor and outside that door,” indicating insider knowledge. He added that police were “not just derelict. You could say they were complicit.”

Other evidence comes from the attackers themselves. In a since-deleted video from December, Ali Alexander, self-styled right-wing provocateur and chief organizer of Stop the Steal, said that he had worked with Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs and Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama on a plan to apply “maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

“It was to build momentum and pressure and then on the day change hearts and minds of congresspeople who weren’t yet decided or who saw everyone outside and said, ‘I can’t be on the other side of that mob,'” Ali said, though he did not explicitly call for violence or an invasion of the Capitol building.

While social media posts show that Gosar’s relationship with Alexander and Stop the Steal goes back at least to late November, a Biggs spokesperson told The New York Times that the congressman was “not aware of hearing of or meeting Mr. Alexander at any point,” and “did not have any contact with protesters or rioters, nor did he ever encourage or foster the rally or protests on Jan. 6.”

Alexander also claimed in a Tuesday afternoon interview with Alex Jones that the Secret Service had escorted the two of them from the rally to the Capitol, but they were waylaid en route.

“The fact is that you and I were escorted out by Secret Service in order to lead the overflow crowd of our event with the president to the U.S. Capitol peacefully,” Alexander claimed, adding that a 10-minute speech on the way saved them “by the grace of god” from “the front line on the U.S. Capitol.”

“And we would have been blamed,” he added.

Jones has also claimed that the White House set up a Secret Service escort for him, but said that he and Alexander, like President Trump, never found themselves at risk — they broadcast instead from a landmark rooftop with a clear view of the chaos.

Our psychopath president has finally imploded: And all this was totally predictable

Donald Trump’s attempted coup against our government was predictable. He had it all planned out. He would incite thousands of supporters to attack the Capitol, disrupt the proceedings of the Senate and find a way to maintain his grip on power. He knew full well that his violent insurrectionists had blood on their minds and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence were in harm’s way. He knew there was a chance that both Pelosi and Pence could be kidnapped or murdered. He did not care one whit. He was partying and celebrating as the attackers formed and began their deadly march. He was inciting an insurrection against the United States for his own personal gain. Democracy and human life were of no concern to him.

But his efforts failed. The Senate was not overtaken. Joe Biden was certified as the next president. Pelosi and Pence were both safe. The attackers are being hunted down one by one and arrested. Trump has now been impeached for the second time, with 10 Republican members of Congress joining with every Democrat. Pence apparently contemplated the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment (although he has now said he will not do so). The majority of Americans believe that Trump should be removed from office immediately for his treasonous behavior. 

After last week’s insurrection attempt, Trump is now trying to act as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. What is the big deal if some looters swarmed through the Capitol? As he has always done, Trump relies on lies, denials, conspiracy theories and fake bravado to skirt through life and through his presidency. But rhetoric and actions are observable truth. And Trump’s clear incitement of insurrection means he is a traitor. It means he disavowed the will of the people and the rule of law. It means his personal gain is more important than the Constitution and his oath of office.

This all makes sense because Donald Trump is a psychopath. He is fueled by his narcissism, his sadism, his paranoia and his antisocial proclivities. We have been eager to ignore these things, but Trump’s sadism and violence have been front and center in his psyche the entire time. This is the man who separated young children from their families at the border. This is the man whose inaction has killed 372,000 Americans due to the coronavirus. This is the man who has tried to encourage violence multiple times at his campaign and presidential pep rallies. And this is the man who glorified violence in Charlottesville and in other cities. 

We should not be surprised that Trump’s sadism and violence boiled over in response to his humiliating election defeat. He has been hell-bent on hanging onto power at any cost. He has been willing to throw anyone and anything under the bus to ensure his self-preservation and his survival.  So a violent insurrection in the sacred halls of the Capitol was the perfect plan in his mind. A few deaths would be palatable, even entirely acceptable, if it meant he could remain in power. 

What should now be clear to everyone is that Donald Trump does not love democracy or our country. He is an authoritarian. He wants absolute authority and control over people. He loves adulation. He is a greedy opportunist. He is a master of demagoguery. He is corrupt and criminal. He is a traitor of the highest order. He was virtually the worst possible person to become president because everything about him is antithetical to our nation’s principles and ideals. Being president is so much more than being rich. Personal character, love of democracy and love of country are far more compelling attributes.

Trump is a cataclysmic problem that will be solved soon. He will be booted out, or simply leave. Social media platforms have banned him. Companies are halting their financial contributions to his party and his supporters. The PGA has pulled its 2022 championship tournament from his New Jersey golf course. More and more Americans are rejecting him by the day. His mantra as a traitor is beginning to take hold. Ultimately, it will be set in stone. 

Millions of supporters followed Trump for four years as if he were the pied piper. They did not realize or understand that he is a con man who thrives on hoodwinking and exploiting others. He lies every time he opens his mouth, and uses conspiracy theories and fear-mongering to seduce the allegiance of citizens who believe in him for various largely irrational reasons. Trump is no public servant, no brilliant businessman, no rich savant and no political leader. He is a fraud, a failure and a coward who ran for president in the first place to enhance his brand and make money off the public. Once in office, he became enthralled with power, adulation and grifting. He realized that being an authoritarian leader would allow him to express his sadistic and cruel tendencies — and that being a dictator would allow his racist and xenophobic and misogynistic impulses to run wild, without oversight or accountability. In the end, Trump decided that he wanted to remain in office so that he could establish an endless regime of Trumpism — all in his psychopathic image. 

Americans should have realized back in 2016 that Trump was a bad actor who had nefarious and cruel intentions. He did not want to protect and serve the people. The oath of office was a bunch of isolated words that had no meaning to him. It was all a big lie and a big con from the beginning. Trump believed he could pull it off because he had spent his entire life promulgating a kind of alternate universe, with the help of enablers and a host of lawyers.  

Trump’s lies, conspiracy theories, magical thinking and corruption rapidly became normalized in our country, such that millions of Americans were radicalized. Fantasy and blather became more important than truth. Trump’s alternate universe seemed to replace the real one. Our Constitution and the rule of law were corrupted. Our democracy was threatened. A psychopath was threatening democracy, and the media pretended not to notice. The opinions of mental health experts were rejected.

Ultimately, the judicial system and our Constitution stood tall throughout this presidency. Elected Republican officials did not. They either drank the Kool-aid or saw loyalty to Trump as a vehicle for personal political advancement. Either way, the Republican Party has been complicit and anti-democratic. Some of its members, perhaps most of them, want to carry on the mantle of Trumpism despite its malicious and destructive impact on our democracy. They will face their reckoning in due time.

Many of Trump’s supporters will have a rude awakening when they realize that their esteemed cult leader was nothing more than a fraud. Once they see him prosecuted for his many crimes, they will understand his destructiveness to them and to our democracy. Truth will again become important. We will all be able to agree on observable facts. Negotiation and compromise will once again be central to our politics. Tribalism will gradually melt away as our interest in unity and cohesiveness expands.

Yet in many ways Trump has been a symptom rather than the sole cause of major divisions in our country. Racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, misogyny and other extreme forms of hate have been simmering in this country long before Trump. But these harmful and demoralizing issues will be easier to grapple with without a national leader who is psychopathic, anti-democratic and anti-American in his mental DNA.

Donald Trump has been an unabashed menace to our country. Many lessons need to be learned. The biggest is that we should never allow a psychopath to run our country, no matter what divisions and hostilities are brewing among the people. His rhetoric, his motives, his intentions and his actions have all created chaos and turmoil — all with the goal of keeping him in power so he could serve himself, not others.

Donald Trump must be pushed out of public awareness and our collective consciousness. His pernicious and nihilistic influence must be washed away by the sunshine of optimism that we as a people can bring to our politics.

 It is time to make that happen. It is long overdue.

What’s behind California’s lagging vaccine rollout

It’s almost too easy to blame California’s COVID woes on failed state leadership. From the constant shifts in policy to the stop-and-start business and school closings and restrictions, a malformed picture has emerged of a government flailing as it attempts to deal with a virus that is not abating – and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s personal missteps have only ratcheted up the levels of frustration and outrage.

But on the subject of the vaccines themselves, let’s not get it twisted: California’s slow-footed rollout of potential life saving doses of medicine is the result, first and foremost, of a federal botch job of the highest order — and it very clearly mirrors what is occurring across the country.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney’s recent scathing indictment of that chaotic process laid it bare. “That comprehensive vaccination plans have not been developed at the federal level and sent to the states as models is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable,” wrote the veteran Republican lawmaker. “The current program is woefully behind despite the fact that it encompasses the two easiest populations to vaccinate: frontline workers and long-term care residents.”

There was no plan. President Donald Trump essentially acknowledged as much when he tweeted, “The Federal Government has distributed the vaccines to the states. Now it is up to the states to administer. Get moving!” It was precisely the type of message that health workers and officials have come to expect from Trump – devoid of either meaning or direction – but in this case, the stakes were enormous.

In truth, the federal government had almost nothing to do with the delivery of one of the two vaccines. Pfizer handled the delivery process of its product on its own, while the Moderna vaccine was shipped in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The result of this one foot in, one foot out process was a decentralized mess, with vast numbers of doses arriving to hospitals and clinics on erratic schedules and needing to be stored at specific temperatures and completely used within hours of opening.

Beyond that, Pfizer vials said to contain five doses’ worth of vaccine actually held enough for six or even seven doses, pharmacists discovered in December. But because the Food and Drug Administration was slow to approve use of the overage, some health providers threw out the extra vaccine because they feared breaching the FDA’s emergency use guidelines that specified five doses per vial.

And absent a federal model, the process for determining how to physically distribute the vaccine – and to whom – was essentially left open for discussion. The rollout, then, has had to magically work on three levels: The federal government tells the state how many doses it will receive each week; the state decides which of its counties get the doses; and local health agencies have to coordinate their varying allotment with providers and vaccination sites so that the shipments wind up in the proper places.

This week, Newsom’s administration issued what it described as a “course correct” that allows those local agencies to more broadly distribute vaccines to health care workers, essentially setting aside earlier state guidelines that would prioritize one group of such workers over another. It was part of a larger plan to loosen restrictions in the face of news that California had administered only about 35% of the 1.3 million doses it had received so far.

“My worst nightmares have been coming true over the last few weeks,” Dr. Michael Wasserman told San Francisco’s KGO on Wednesday. Wasserman, who sits on California’s Vaccine Advisory Committee and is past president of the state’s Association of Long Term Care Medicine, said there are “literally hundreds of thousands of doses out there sitting in warehouses while you have nursing home residents and staff who are waiting to be vaccinated.”

It is a story repeated across the country. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order that seniors could jump the line ahead of health care workers, in defiance of CDC recommendations, led to massive overdemand and all-night long lines in some cities. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted that “a significant portion” of his state’s vaccines might be “sitting on hospital shelves as opposed to being given to vulnerable Texans.” And multiple other states began adjusting priorities in an effort to get current doses administered so that new shipments could arrive.

* * *

This is also a story of wildly mismanaged expectations. In September Trump promised that 100 million doses of the vaccine would be available by year’s end, more than double the CDC’s most optimistic projections. It was the usual empty rhetoric, and ultimately the administration would fall far short of its goal to vaccinate 20 million Americans before the calendar turned over. As Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, said of the Trump administration, “No plan, no money, just hope that states will figure this out.”

Here in January, the states are left to hash out their own solutions, and Newsom has struggled to control California’s process. In a Monday news conference, the governor said the rollout is occurring too slowly, adding, “We are working aggressively to accelerate our pace.” His 2021-22 proposed budget includes $300 million to aid in the distribution of the vaccines. But Newsom has been slow to provide specifics, or even explain what an aggressive acceleration of the state’s effort would look like.

Absent even a modicum of federal leadership, states like California are left with a couple of hopes. The first is President-elect Joe Biden’s stated goal to get 100 million doses of the vaccines distributed within his first 100 days in office. Another possible avenue of relief is a third vaccine, made by Oxford-AstraZeneca, which already has been approved in four countries.

But with cases surging up and down the state, California is facing a monumental challenge to get the vaccines distributed as quickly and efficiently as possible. As of Jan. 12, the number of doses shipped to the state had reached 3.28 million, per the CDC. The number of people receiving their first vaccination was slightly more than 816,000 – not quite 25%. It was one final parting gift from a federal administration that bungled the COVID crisis from the start

Copyright 2021 Capital & Main

Why congressional Republicans have less incentive to do anything about Trump’s “smoking gun”

At least Donald Trump’s “smoking gun” tape is simpler than Richard Nixon’s.

Schoolchildren can easily grasp Trump’s high crime, in contrast to the complex, Machiavellian plot immortalized on the tape that led to Nixon’s downfall. It will be harder to explain to them why congressional Republicans decided to hold Nixon accountable, but not Trump.

It certainly wasn’t for lack of evidence. The tape is clear. Children can identify the principle at stake. They understand cheating. They know that the loser of a race should not declare himself the winner. They know it’s wrong for the loser to try to change the results of the race by threatening those who keep the score and enforce the rules.

Presidential coercion

That is what Trump, the loser of the 2020 election, tried to do to the top election official in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in a phone call on Saturday.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said.

Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes. To pressure this state official to do his bidding, Trump brandished the threat of criminal prosecution. He claimed – falsely, baselessly and ridiculously – that Georgia’s ballots were corrupt even as he was trying to corrupt them himself:

“You are going to find that they are – which is totally illegal – it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan [Germany], your lawyer.”

The nature of this threat (nice place you got here, hate to see anything happen to it … or to you) won’t be lost on anyone familiar with mobster movies. Trump’s take on the tough-guy cliché wasn’t particularly coherent, but it met the trope’s two basic requirements. It was both clear enough to be unmistakable, and vague enough to minimize his own exposure to criminal prosecution.

Congress then – and now

In contrast, Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape defies simple summary, as I was reminded last year while trying to summarize it during an interview with French public television on “le scandale du Watergate.” I get asked such questions as the author of “Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate.”

The Nixon tape captured just one small part of the Watergate cover-up. But its release led congressional Republicans to call on Nixon to resign or face removal.

Now, faced with taped evidence that the president is abusing the power of his office to launch a direct assault on majority rule and the integrity of the vote, the foundations of American democracy, most congressional Republicans either do nothing or actively support Trump.

What changed? Less than meets the eye.

The impact of Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape had less to do with its contents – and the content of the character of congressional Republicans – than with the timing.

As historian Mark Nevin notes, Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape went public at the right time to make a difference. It came out in August 1974, when congressional Republicans had their primaries behind them and were looking ahead to the November congressional elections.

Until they won their primaries, their main worry had been losing their base, which was strongly pro-Nixon, no matter how much evidence came out that the president had broken the law, abused the power of his office and tried to cover it up.

Going into the general election, however, congressional Republicans had to worry about losing the middle, the moderates, the swing voters who were disgusted by the daily revelations of White House wrongdoing.

Before congressional Republicans won their primaries, it was politically convenient for them to stick with the president, so they did. After their primaries, and before the general election, it was politically convenient for them to distance themselves from the president, so they did.

How 2020 is and isn’t different from 1974

With the 2020 presidential election behind us, we’re now in the 2022 congressional primary season and 2024 Republican presidential primary season.

This means that for most Republican officeholders and office seekers, the path of least political resistance is to stick with Trump, even if that path leads away from democracy and equality under law and toward authoritarianism and a hollowed-out republic-in-name-only.

By putting constitutional principle over lockstep partisanship, Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger and countless state and local Republican election officials, along with a small number of congressional Republicans, have demonstrated their commitment to honest elections. The strength and political courage they have shown, however impressive and essential in the present crisis, are not enough to stop the nation’s slide from democracy.

Many congressional Republicans, as big fish in red states or hatchery fish in the protective habitat of gerrymandered districts, have little incentive to serve the majority of American voters. Until they have to either represent the majority or lose their positions of power, they likely will do neither.

Ken Hughes, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

“This cannot go unanswered”: Govt watchdog group files criminal sedition complaint against Trump

A Washington, D.C.-based government watchdog group has filed a criminal complaint calling on the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation to immediately probe “whether President Trump and his associates seditiously conspired to forcefully overthrow our democracy.”

The complaint (pdf) filed Monday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) focuses on the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s win and the actions Trump took that day — and in leading up to it — that directly incited the insurrection attempt.

“In what will be remembered as a dark day for American democracy, President Trump and his co-conspirators appear to have engaged in nothing less than an attempt to overthrow the government by force,” CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “This cannot go unanswered.”

The filing cites as evidence Trump’s remarks before the “Save America March” including “We will stop the steal.” The document further points to the president telling the crowd to “fight much harder” and that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.” Trump also said, “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

The rally was just part of Trump’s “months-long campaign to undermine faith in the democratic process and convince his supporters that he had won an election he had clearly lost.” That effort included his urging Republican lawmakers to “fight” and explicit promotion of the rally, says the filing.

In short, wrote CREW, “Trump’s supporters did exactly what he urged them to do.”

What’s more, the president declared support for the mob’s actions after the attack, including by calling the right-wing extremists “great patriots” and telling them in a video message: “We love you, you’re very special.”

“While President Trump and his associates likely committed a multitude of federal criminal offenses prior to and during the insurrectionary events of January 6, 2021, the president’s larger purpose appears to have been the violent overthrow of the United States government by delaying, hindering, or stopping Congress from affirming the results of the 2020 presidential election,” according to the complaint.

“It appears that President Trump engaged in a seditious conspiracy to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the lawful transfer of power,” the complaint says, “and to thus overthrow the government of the United States.”

An accusation of sedition “should be reserved for only the most extreme circumstances,” CREW wrote. “This is such a circumstance.”

The complaint came as Democratic leadership is facing demands for a swift vote on articles of impeachment against Trump. Freshman Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri is also leading a resolution to launch investigations for removal of House Republicans who helped incite last week’s violence.

Republican Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, meanwhile, are the targets of a petition signed by thousands of lawyers and law students who say Hawley and Cruz “directly incited the January 6th insurrection, repeating dangerous and unsubstantiated statements regarding the election and abetting the lawless behavior of President Trump.”

Progressive lawmakers including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have warned in recent days that failure to hold Trump and other election result-denying GOP lawmakers accountable would ensure that a similar attack on the Capitol will happen again. 

Stop the Steal denied inciting violence: Now its leader wants to “bring hell” to his enemies

In the aftermath of last week’s attack on Congress, Ali Alexander, chief organizer of the “Stop the Steal” election conspiracy movement, rejected any blame for the unprecedented political violence that flowed naturally from his event in Washington on Wednesday.

“I didn’t incite anything,” Alexander claimed in a video shared to Twitter on Friday. “I didn’t do anything.”

Hours after the riot, Alexander said bluntly: “I do not denounce this.”

It’s a common refrain for Alexander, a convicted felon who shed his given name Ali Akbar years ago while trying to establish himself as a Muslim face in Tea Party circles. For the last two months, since the election, Alexander has popped up at “Stop the Steal” rallies around the country, peddling lies and conspiracy theories and telling people he was prepared to die for the cause — denying that he endorsed violence while walking his rally crowds right up to the edge of insurrection. But two days after he shrugged off allegations that he played a central role in the unprecedented political crime last week, with authorities apparently on his trail and his Twitter account suspended, Alexander live-streamed his open embrace and endorsement of political violence.

“Rest assured in this,” he says at one point in the 24-minute monologue. “The lord says vengeance is his, and I pray that I am the tool to stab these motherfuckers.”

At another point in the video — which Alexander appears to have streamed sitting under a dome light in a vehicle moving through the night — the self-styled provocateur, who trades on his association with larger-than-life right-wing personalities such as Alex Jones and Roger Stone, teases viewers that the next step will be violent on a biblical scale.

“When I do unleash the plan, I will unleash …” Alexander says, then closes his mouth and stares at the camera for seven seconds. He continues: “I will unleash a legion of angels to bring hell to my enemies.”

(Alexander often sews talk of “hexes” and mystical beings and QAnon and other fantasy lore into his rambling sermons. At one point in Sunday’s video he plunged into the QAnon universe: “The nation is imperiled. They are trying to rape your children. They are closing our churches and keeping us from the sacrament so that they can open a gateway to hell.”)

The open invocation of violence marks a clear shift from just two days prior, when the co-founder of the original “Stop the Steal” movement pushed back on the firestorm of blame, saying he would not “take an iota of blame that does not belong to me.” But while Alexander moves about freely, some of his connections at the federal level do not have that luxury — such as Republican congressmen Mo Brooks of Alabama and Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both of Arizona, who Alexander has said collaborated with some of his efforts in Washington last week.

“We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” Alexander said in a video posted before the riot.

This Tuesday, Alexander did an interview with Alex Jones, spouting open threats as authorities across the country pour resources into bringing Capitol attackers to justice and heading off what some people believe is an inevitable second attack.

Officials across the government are still reeling from the catastrophic security failure to assess and prepare for the event, widely publicized on social media, where scores of domestic terrorists came tactically equipped to take hostages, fight riot police and hunt down elected officials. Some of the invaders chanted “Hang Mike Pence” while a noose swung from a makeshift gallows outside one of the world’s iconic symbols of democracy.

Now law enforcement is racing against those same groups as they settle on the next target, with President-elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration on Jan. 20 being a top choice: “That is the next date on the calendar that the Pro-Trump and other nationalist crowds will potentially converge on the Capitol again,” read one message posted to a white supremacist Telegram channel, according to The Washington Post.

A highly produced video posted to the alternative social media platform Parler, which has since been taken offline, also set sights on the 20th, framing the event as the “Great Awakening” around audio clips of Trump’s own inauguration. The “awakening” refers to the QAnon fantasy that one day thousands of the president’s enemies in the government, media and “deep state” will be arrested, imprisoned, tried for treason and executed.

“The hour has arrived,” says one of the video’s title cards. “Panic in DC,” reads another. One instructs viewers to “Put on the armor of God.” The video ends with a satellite view of the 2020 electoral map, with blue states engulfed in red, stamped with a final graphic that says “January 20 2021” above the QAnon “WWG1WGA” tag line.

Other groups have tried to build momentum towards other dates, such as the weekend before the inauguration. One website called “The Patriot Action for America,” since taken down, calls for 15,000 armed supporters to gather at the Capitol for head counts on Jan. 16 and 17, after which they will supposedly deploy across the city and encircle the Capitol building to block Democratic lawmakers from entering. The plan, according to the group, is to “eliminate the democrat ideology from America forever,” but the site denies that this is a plot to overthrow the government.

In the FAQ section, under “Is this going to be a war?” the site says: “Patriots who participate in this action will not fire a first shot, however, the patriots will defend themselves with extreme, and possibly fatal response, to any aggression which would prevent us from obtaining our goal of eliminating the democrat ideology from America forever.”

To avoid repeating last week’s disaster, in which five people were killed, including two Capitol Police officers — one from injuries at the scene and another taking his own life days later — Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy has said that the military will surround the Capitol with unscalable fencing. Upwards of 6,000 National Guard troops are also deploying to help secure the city ahead of the inauguration.

Twitter has also taken precautions, purging bots and accounts that peddle dangerous conspiracy theories. The company permanently suspended Alexander’s account on Sunday evening, citing his influence on last week’s mayhem and fears that he would use the platform to inspire and organize more violence. In Sunday night’s video — which he managed to share via Twitter’s broadcast app Periscope, which gave him the boot on Tuesday — Alexander framed the move among others as an act of violence.

“The fact that they keep crawling me out of here to drag my dead body through the streets is very sick and sadistic, but here we are,” he said in the video. “But I want to tell you, please share my GiveSendGo link — I need to raise that $40,000 immediately.” (GiveSendGo is a Christian fundraising site that doubles as safe harbor for extremists no longer welcome on other more mainstream platforms — Alexander, for instance, has been banned from PayPal, Venmo and CashApp, but maintains a GiveSendGo. His monetized YouTube page is also still active.)

Alexander then declares that he is so committed to the cause that he will never go back to his previous life as a political consultant — unless he doesn’t get that $40,000 in the next week, in which case, he says, he will disappear entirely. The money, he says, is for “security.”

As of Monday night, Alexander had raised $16,000 toward his goal, but may have hit another snag: That morning, PayPal cut its ties with the fundraising site in an effort to distance itself from extremist clientele, including Stop the Steal. Later that day, Facebook announced that it would remove all content that used the phrase, five days after Congress certified Joe Biden’s victory.

Amber Ruffin’s hilariously horrifying book about everyday racism shows this is indeed who we are

Last June in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Amber Ruffin opened four episodes of NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” by telling stories about her own traumatizing run-ins with racist cops. In one she recalls an officer pulling her over and, for no reason, screaming at her until she burst into tears. At the time of this encounter, she was teenager.

In another, the “Late Night” writer and host of “The Amber Ruffin Show” on Peacock recalls the time cops threatened her for joyfully skipping down an alleyway to meet a friend she hadn’t seen in a very long while.

In yet another tale an officer tried to bust her for soliciting because she was sitting in a car with a male friend. Yes, that friend was white. No, they weren’t doing anything wrong. She wasn’t breaking the law in any of the other instances, either. I would love to say this goes without saying, but . . . it doesn’t.

“Look, I have a thousand stories like this,” Ruffin shared with viewers. “The cops have pulled a gun on me. The cops have followed me to my own home. And every Black person I know has a few stories like that.”

If the realization that the perky, friendly Ruffin was subjected to police harassment many times shocked you, wait until you read about the craziness her big sister Lacey Lamar has survived.

Ruffin and Lamar’s new book  “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism” was released on Tuesday, and for obvious reasons the timing of its debut is in some ways unfortunate and in others, perfect. Last week’s violent insurrection perpetuated by white supremacists makes two things crystal clear.

First, our inability to talk in plain terms about racial inequality is killing our democracy. Second, for all of the reading so many white people were supposedly doing, the fact remains that a lot of folks have to be entertained into actually learning something. Enter this timely and timeless book that is hilarious, insightful, aggravating and comforting in equal measure.

Lamar and Ruffin stress that it is not their intent to fill a book with sad stories of their brushes with (or significant exposure to) racism in Omaha, Nebraska, where Lamar still lives. Instead they want to convey with absolute, comedic absurdity of the run-of-the-mill bigotry that Lamar has contended with all of her life, ranging from being profiled while shopping to enduring out-and-out discrimination and abuse in multiple workplaces.

“You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey” is inspired by the numerous texts and calls the sisters exchanged over the years. If Ruffin has a thousand stories, Lamar’s memory is a veritable trove of outrageous incidents because Ruffin says her sister is a lightning rod for white supremacists with no internal editor. “She’s the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, tiny and Black that makes people think: I can say whatever I want to this woman. And I guess you can,” Ruffin writes.

“You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey” will impact readers in various ways, which they address in the preface. White readers, fingers crossed, are going to read it and, in Ruffin’s words, “maybe walk away with a different point of view of what it’s like to be a Black American in the twenty-first century.” Black people will recognize most of Lamar’s stories because some version of it has probably happened to them, and the sisters hope that lets them know they’re not alone.

The book’s publication enables them to be together this week in New York, where “Late Night” is in production. Salon was able to catch them for a conversation over Zoom on Tuesday, where they were enjoying each other’s presence for the first time in a very long while. The following transcript of our chat has been edited for length and clarity.

This book came out this week, and its release also happens to coincide with a very interesting time, to put it mildly. Obviously this was not planned. But did you two have any conversations about the circumstances?

Lacey Lamar: Just that the thing that sticks with me the most is when all this was happening, people were like, “This is not who we are.” Yes, it is. I could have seen this coming.

There’s a little story in the book about two ladies that I worked with that were supervisors who were extremely militant, scary as hell, and said, “You know, one day we’re just going to get a commune together and, you know, we’ll only have certain people. Definitely not –” And they named a few races and because I was standing there, they didn’t say Black people. But it was implied.

And they said, “If anyone comes, you know, if I’m able to see them, I will shoot them and kill them.”

Amber Ruffin: And these are all women!

Lamar: So yeah. Not surprised all that [the insurrection] happened.

Even the title itself, which I want to talk about, speaks to that idea that folks don’t necessarily believe because they maybe either can’t picture or accept that these stories happen. So let’s talk about the title. I want to know whether it was very intentional to use the word “believe” in the title.  

Ruffin: It was not. Maybe from Lacey’s angle, but you know, I’ve lived in a big city for the past 20 years, so I really do mean it when I say, “You’re not going to believe it.” Because almost everyone I talk to is like, “This is a crazy, constant injustice!”  But when Lacey’s friends read this, they’re going to be like, “What’s your problem?” (She laughs.)

Lamar: Every time I hear the title I hear Amber’s voice saying that. Because when we get together for our family reunions, we always go out that evening and we do karaoke. And all of our old friends all get together, and Amber must say it three or four times a night. “Oh my God, guys. You’ll never believe what happened to Lacey.” And she’ll go into this story, and I’m like, “Oh God, I forgot about that.” Seriously, it’s said every time. So when I see that title I picture Amber telling one of my stories and cracking up.

Ruffin: “You’ll never believe it.”

How often were you sharing these stories?

Lamar: Oh, all the time. All the time . . . And a lot of the time I am sharing these stories at work to white racist people to tell them, “Oh, you need to stop doing this. You know, for instance, this happened to me . . .” And I’m telling the story and they’re like, “Okay. Yeah, I can see where you think that that’s bad. Okay.” So there’s that.

Do they learn?

Lamar: Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

Ruffin: It’s a fun surprise.

“You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacy” is structured to read like you two are sitting in the same room and having this back and forth conversation.

Ruffin: That just naturally happened because I knew I wanted it to be conversational. You know, when you’re having a conversation and you go, “Oh my gosh, I had two eggs this morning and that is too many.” And then your friend goes, “Well, I had three. And then your other friend goes, “You’re never going to believe, but this one time I had four!”

That’s just that’s how normal conversations go. So I just built the stories from small to big, in a lot of ways. But in other ways, it kind of hops all over the board. I really wanted the throughline to be that you can believe these stories at the beginning, but by the time you get to the end, your head is in your hands. You cannot believe this is happening.

I love that you have a chapter title that reads “I Want to Put This Book Down and Run Away From It,” simply because as much as I found these stories to be very entertaining, they were difficult to stomach at times. I actually did have to put the book down because it was dredging up bad memories for me and making me angry. I can only imagine what that process must have been like for you to remember them and write them down. Because this is a critical mass of stories you’ve presented.

Lamar: It’s a heavy read at times. You know, I think I’ve read the book completely through three times, but some of the stories I just skip over because it brings you right back there. And the worst story for me, probably isn’t one that people think, but it’s the worst story for me because I feel like it happened yesterday. It’s the story where one of the supervisors is reprimanding me for greeting the little white girl. I mean, it was humiliating. I’m like, “Are we in 1910?” Just the anger that I felt. Like, are you kidding me? And having to sit through that and go around the room and everyone’s like, “I can’t believe you did that, Lacey. That was so rude. Do you know how to talk to people? Do we need training?”

And it went on for 41 minutes and I’m looking at the clock. And at some point  I just block it out and I start, in my head, going, “Okay, if I walk out of this job today, how much money do I have to last until I find another job?” That’s all I was doing was calculating . . . because I was just done. I was not going to be working there any longer. So yeah, that story? I wrote it, I’m done. I’m probably not going to read that again because it does weigh you down. But we tell these stories so much that the sting is gone for most of them.

Amber, were there any stories for you that had that kind of weight to them?

Ruffin: Not really, but they had different effect. Reading this book I feel, and I don’t know if this is sick or not, but I feel comforted, you know? I feel like, “All your little garbage, Amber, does not add up to all of Lacey’s garbage, and she’s fine.” So I’m probably fine, you know?

Also, because all of these stories made a real book that was published and is bought gives you validity. And you’re like, we are correct. Does that sound crazy?

No.

Ruffin: But we are right. Because this book is kind of hopefully breaking the air of like that white thing where you work at a predominantly white place and you, no one ever says “Don’t bring up racist things that have happened to you”? But you know that that’s the rule. This, for me, breaks that wide open and that feels so good to me. I can’t even tell you. So all these stories make me feel good, and the worse the better. Because I like it when bad things happen to my sister. I like that! Just kidding.

Looking at this book in the context of when it’s coming out and people picking it up in the wake of recent events, what are you hoping it will can add to the dialogue?

Ruffin: I hope that it gives people a little bit of a vocabulary, because once you look at the wide array of these stories, then you can take racist happenings and put them on a spectrum. And then you take that whole spectrum and you pick it up and you shift it all the way over to very, very bad, you know? Once, you hear Lacey say “This happened to me and I didn’t like it” – OK.  The 40th time, she says that you go, “Oh, okay, this is a big problem. And it is rampant. And I’ve got to pick a side.”

In the book you describe what Lacey looks like, that she’s small and adorable – and basically telling us that it doesn’t really matter how we look or how we’re dressed or whatever it is. These incidents happens to every Black person.

I want talk about that specifically because Amber, I think part of the reason that people connect with you, besides the fact that they see you are very funny and talented, is that you have a very friendly demeanor that allows people to have an openness to these stories.  When you told your police harassment stories on “Late Night” people were like, “Wait a minute, this happened to Amber Ruffin? Not our Amber!”  Not everybody can do that.

Ruffin:  You know, when I started out on “Late Night Seth” I wasn’t really talking about race and stuff. I was dressing like a doctor and, you know, diagnosing people with the farts or whatever we thought was fun. 

When they realized that their favorite fart-solving doctor – and now I wish I hadn’t chosen that as an example, but here we are! – that their favorite Dr. Fart has suffered a ton of racism, I think people were taken aback and then they kind of looked around and were like, “Wait, is this everybody? Okay. But to what degree?” Well, to this degree.

After George Floyd’s murder I went on “Late Night Seth” and I opened each show with a different story that had happened to me. They’re all in the book. Each story was a different time when I was harassed by a cop. And I had, by this point, said a million things about race on the show.

I thought white people were going to hate my guts because I said this out loud but then, you know, the pandemic hit.

. . .Maybe in my six or seven years here, I’ve received three pieces of fan mail. When I got back to work, there was a big old pile of letters. And they each said basically the same thing, which was, “I cannot believe that this happened. And I especially can’t believe it happened to you because I feel like I know you. So how insane must these cops have been to be behaving this way?” And they seemed like they understood it all the way around, because then they were like, “And then once I reconcile these two things, I have to look at any role I may have played. And the answer is, I did.” And I’m like, Oh my God, these people are all overstanding.

So I thought that was very moving. Not as moving as when Black people go “Amen,” because there ain’t nothing better than that, but you know, it was great.

Lamar: Um, I have been told several times at work, like, “Oh, you just seem so sweet and nice.” So then when you tell them something has happened to you they’re like, “Oh, well I can’t imagine that happening to you.” So I get that a lot, where people are like, “Why would this happen to you?” You just appear to be this certain way and not the stereotypical way that they picture Black people.

Ruffin: Yeah. It’s crazy that white people think that there’s a way that you can behave that warrants the crazy things that have been happening. That there’s a group of people that deserve that treatment, but it’s not you. It’s the other people, which is what people are saying. And that’s insane.

“You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism” is on sale now.

This 45,500-year-old cave painting of a pig may be the oldest known work of art

45,500 years is a long, long time. It is nearly 23 times as long as the distance between the point at which you are reading this article and the birth of Jesus Christ. It is roughly 9 times as long as the distance between the present day and the rise of ancient Egyptian civilization.

And, according to a recent archaeological paper, that is how long ago artists on an island in modern-day Indonesia were in a cave, painting an adorable rendering of a pig. If their estimations are correct, that pig portrait could be the oldest known example of a figurative drawing, meaning a form of art that attempts to depict the real world rather than designs or patterns.

According to the paper published in the journal Science Advances, there is a purplish pig drawn in the Leang Tedongnge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that can be traced back at least 45,500 years through a method known as uranium-series dating. The pig drawing was initially discovered in December 2017 during an archaeological survey in Sulawesi’s limestone karst caves, which are known for being filled with prehistoric art. Scientists decided to learn about its age after that.

Notably, it is possible that the painting is even older than 45,500 years old; the uranium-series dating only measured the age of a mineral deposit known as speleothem on the cave walls. It is also possible that the paintings are not that old, as some scholars argue that uranium-series dating is unreliable because uranium can leach into the water rather than decay and thereby artificially increase an object’s apparent age as told through radiocarbon dating.

The pig in the painting bears a striking resemblance to the warty pig (S. celebensis), which still exists today and even lives on the same island where the picture was discovered. The authors believe it may be identifiable as a warty pig because of its “‘spiky’ head crests, represented by a row of short dashed lines in the crown and upper back area” and the fact that it has close to its eyes “facial warts, represented by two conspicuous, horn-like protrusions depicted side by side in the upper snout area.”

There are other pictures of pigs near the one in the cave, many of them in a state of decay. The authors in the study speculate that the artists could have been telling a story about hunting the pigs or watching them mate.

It was not easy for researchers to find this ancient porcine portrait.

“Getting to it requires a difficult trek along a rough forest path that winds through mountainous terrain and ends in a narrow cave passage, which is the only entrance to the valley,” Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University and co-author of the study, told The New York Times. “The valley can only be accessed during the dry season; during the wet season the valley floor is completely flooded and the residents have to travel around on dugout canoes.”

Another interesting twist to the story is that the artists may not have been human, at least not in the anatomically modern sense of the term. No one has found human remains on Sulawesi that are 45,500 years old, and it is entirely possible that a different species of hominin (the family to which humans belong) lived in Indonesia during that period and created the drawing. Brumm, however, believes that the painting was made by humans, telling The New York Times that this is because of “the sophistication of this early representational artwork.” He also pointed to the fact that the painting uses “twisted perspective,” showing an animal both from the front and from its side, and that there are handprints, both of which are consistent with other forms of prehistoric art created by human beings.

The consensus view right now is that the oldest forms of figurative art were depictions of mammoths and lions painted in Spain’s El Castillo cave and France’s Chauvet Cave between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.

Trump has been impeached (again) with a week to go: What the hell happens now?

Thanks to Donald Trump’s presidency, I think we’ve all become amateur experts on constitutional law — at least to a certain degree. But in search of more nuanced (and legally accurate) answers a few days before Trump’s unprecedented second impeachment, I asked Corey Brettschneider, a professor of political science at Brown University and author of “The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents,” to join me on Salon Talks.

Brettschneider has zero doubt that the framers of the Constitution would support impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office for inciting an insurrection. As Brettschneider explained, the framers specifically feared that a dangerous demagogue like Trump might come to power, which was the very reason they included the impeachment provision in the Constitution. Brettschneider also made a compelling case that Trump absolutely must be barred by the U.S. Senate from ever seeking federal office again. (If he is convicted, the Senate can add that provision on a straight majority vote. “What’s really at stake here is the defense of democracy,” he explained, adding that if Trump is not disqualified from future campaigns, he could do “an enormous amount of damage even just running for office.”

Brettschneider also argues that now that Trump has been impeached, his ability to pardon anyone involved in conduct related to the impeachable offense is restricted, even before his Senate trial. That issue has not yet been tested in our federal courts, but Brettschneider believes that the Framers would support this view and would adamantly oppose the idea that Trump, or any other president, can effectively pardon himself.

Watch my Salon Talks episode with Brettschneider here, or read a transcript of our conversation below to learn more about what may become of our 45th president in the weeks ahead — and even beyond — and why his actions, and their consequences, will be studied by constitutional law scholars for years to come.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Corey, you have been very outspoken in saying the second Trump impeachment is necessary, regardless of what plays out in the Senate and regardless of the fact that he’s about to leave office. Tell us why it’s so important for you, as a constitutional scholar.

I was for the first impeachment. I thought that Trump had not just violated the Constitution but a fundamental idea of the rule of law when it came to using his foreign policy power in order to gain political favor and seeking to get dirt on Joe Biden by offering a carrot to the president of Ukraine — and a stick too, in withholding aid. In that instance it was clearly about removal, about protecting us from basically what had just happened — a president so opposed to the rule of law that he could threaten the whole system.

What we’re doing now is different because in the immediate future, Joe Biden will take over. We’re not really focused on removal. It’s unlikely the Senate trial would be complete before the end of his term. [Indeed, that now appears impossible.] There’s one real focus, I think, and that’s the issue of what the Constitution calls disqualification — to disqualify him specifically from ever holding a federal office again.

The way that this works is the House majority will vote to impeach [as happened Wednesday] and will then send the article or articles of impeachment over to the Senate. There it’s two-thirds to convict — usually to convict and remove, which won’t be relevant. But it’ll be two-thirds to convict followed by a majority vote to disqualify. That’s really where it’s crucial. What’s really at stake here, Dean, is the defense of democracy itself. We don’t want to allow this guy to come back from the dead, to come back to life as a political candidate. He could do enormous damage even running for office. That’s why I’m focused on seeing this Senate trial happen.

In your book, “The Oath and the Office,” you detail the debate at the Constitutional Convention about impeachment. If the framers could have seen what Donald Trump had done in two months of assaulting our democracy, building to that crescendo with his speech on Jan. 6, inciting this insurrection against our Capitol, how do you think they would have understood this? 

I think they were really worried about a demagogue like this. Of course they didn’t have a concept of fascism but they did have the idea of a demagogue, somebody who would use the worst instincts, the worst passions, of the people to benefit him or herself. That’s what Trump is. One fundamental protection they gave us was exactly what you just said, impeachment and removal.

When they talked about high crimes and misdemeanors, that phrase the way the Framers meant it, is often misunderstood. It sounds like crime, something that you and I would have studied in our first year of law school in criminal law but that’s not what it means. There is no category of criminal law called a high crime. Instead, what it refers to is an abuse of power. The thought was, look, you’ve got to call a president out who shows that he or she doesn’t take the oath of office seriously. They took oaths seriously. The first seconds in office the new president has to promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. The thought is, if they don’t take that seriously and you don’t remove them, the whole system might collapse. That’s what we’ve seen. We failed to remove him in the last impeachment and what did he do? He really lived up to our worst fears, by threatening the collapse of the entire system with a literal insurrection.

What’s your view on the article of impeachment the Democrats have released, which is titled “Incitement of Insurrection”? It’s focused on the events of Jan. 6, but it does reference the phone call a few days before that to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when Trump said “Can you find me votes?” He appeared to threaten, at least implicitly, criminal prosecution if Raffensperger didn’t do his bidding. Did you want to see more articles or is this fine?

I was very happy with the way this one article was drafted. I’ll say something about a second article that I would still like to see or statements to the effect of a second article. I’ll say why I think it’s so expertly drafted, precisely as you say: It talks about the criminality in both the phone call and also in the incitement itself. The Constitution does offer protection of free speech but it doesn’t include the incitement to violence, the willing or knowing incitement to violence or speech directed at inciting violence. That’s what Trump did. If you look at that article, it’s very carefully crafted.

Congressman [James] Clyburn has said that he thinks there’s a second reason for impeachment, obviously aside from disqualification, and to my mind it’s worth a second article of impeachment. That is to stop the illicit use of the pardon power by Trump on people involved in this incitement, like Donald Trump Jr., like Rudy Giuliani, possibly including himself. What that article would say, I think, is that the pardon power is revoked. There’s a serious debate going on among scholars about whether or not the phrase “except in cases of impeachment” when it comes to the pardon power allows Congress to revoke the pardon power of the president related to this case of incitement. I think Congress, as Clyburn said, should clarify that, yes, they do think he should lose this pardon power as a way to protect himself.

The pardon power is extremely broad for a president, but it does have that one thing about “except in the case of impeachment.” Can you explain what that really means?

What I call the traditional view is that it only meant a very minor thing, which is that a president can’t stop an impeachment proceeding from happening or couldn’t undo a penalty like disqualification. I call that the traditional view. I think many people in the legal establishment have thought that that’s true. We think there’s evidence [from the Constitutional Convention] that it really was about the ability to strip the power of the president to pardon not only himself but also co-conspirators involved in cases related to an impeachment.  

If we’re talking about the impeachment powers, about Congress’ ability to defend the nation from a criminal president, they’ve got to be able to stop his use of the pardon to basically undermine what they’re doing. It’s a kind of structural argument about self-protection, a value-based argument that the pardon power is supposed to be for the public benefit or a “benign power prerogative,” as Alexander Hamilton called it, not for basically getting away with crimes. It’s a common sense argument of values. When we look at the history, we see nothing in the history that precludes it. When you look at the day that exception was put into the Constitution, it’s unclear what was going on in the minds of the framers.

Is there a Supreme Court decision that decides this one way or another when it comes to that understanding of how the pardon powers are limited in the case of impeachment?

That’s part of why it’s a black box. There’s definitely no final holding on this. There was a 19th-century case that mentions the traditional view in what lawyers call a “dicta,” sort of an aside, but no, there’s been no definitive Supreme Court case. One of the crazy things about the Trump administration is these are things that you and I in law school would have had a professor ask us about: “What if the president tried to use the pardon power to pardon a co-conspirator?” Now we’re seeing this play out in real time. The Supreme Court will have to answer these questions.

America could sit for the bar exam after what Trump has put us through. We’ve learned about the emoluments clause. Who knew about that? Questions about self-pardoning. We all learned a little Latin.

It’s a terrible, tragic moment. This president is very dangerous. I would never underplay the threat and the seriousness of the moment, but one good thing that could come out of it is exactly that. I’m seeing on Twitter, Americans asking, “What does it mean, ‘except in cases of impeachment?'” Pundits would say, “Oh, it means the traditional view.” I would say, no, these people have insight, they have common sense, they’re reading it in the right way. That’s not just true for that, it’s also true for the emoluments clause. Why are courts not stopping Trump from using the office? It’s a really important clause with a terrible brand name. It’s about not using the office for profit. It’s the not for profit clause. I think it’s great that Americans are engaged in that way. 

When we bring up the word “pardon,” what can’t be lost in the conversation right now is that in the recent past Trump has talked about his ability to self-pardon. I’ve got to get your reaction to the possibility of the president, in the last few days of his term, pardoning himself.

This is another argument on both sides. There are people who say that basically the president’s power in regard to the pardon is absolute. It’s a prerogative power. It’s absolute, and if it’s really absolute then he can do it. That’s one side. I don’t agree with that. I think that during the Nixon administration, even Nixon’s lawyers, Nixon’s Office of Legal Counsel said that the president can’t pardon himself. The argument they gave is that you can’t be a judge in your own case. That’s what would be involved here.

Common sense says no way. But there are people who have this absolutist idea of the presidency. To my mind, it goes to the deeper issue, which is that we need reform. This presidency is a loaded gun, and we’ve seen that crazies can get ahold of it. We’ve got to be able, as a nation, to protect ourselves from a crazy in power.

Let’s take it to the practical world. If Donald Trump wants to make sure he’s not going to spend his twilight years in a federal penitentiary, the only way to be sure is not a self-pardon, correct? He’s got to get it from somebody else.

Yeah.

If he self-pardons, he’s going to leave wondering if it’s effective. Doesn’t he have to get Mike Pence as president, either by using the 25th Amendment or by resigning hours before noon on Jan. 20? Look, he doesn’t want to go to jail for the rest of his life. The only way he can know that he’s safe from federal prosecution is to get Pence to do it. 

That would be a good strategy. Thankfully, Pence doesn’t seem to be in the mood, given that he was in the Senate chamber when it was attacked by Trump’s insurrectionists, who were yelling they wanted to kill him. You know, certainly Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon was never successfully challenged. In fact, it was never challenged at all in court. So yes, if he was strategizing the best way to go he should have been nicer to Mike Pence.

But here’s the wrinkle: In New York he’s facing investigations by the Manhattan district attorney and by Letitia James, the state attorney general, and there’s no way to pardon that. The governor of New York is not giving him a pardon and a federal pardon won’t matter there. It might protect him from criminal charges in the District of Columbia. I’ve seen commentators say that because D.C. is federal, the pardon might cover that too. That’s very worrying because in my mind he’s got to be prosecuted for these crimes.

This goes back to another Nixon-era memo that says sitting presidents can’t be indicted for crimes. I think that’s ridiculous. Those memos were never tried in court. They betray common sense. Of course he should be indicted right now. In fact, I would like to see D.C. prosecutors challenge that policy by acting against a madman who tried to bring about an insurrection and incite a riot.

Do you think there’s criminality in what you saw from Donald Trump during the speech on Jan. 6? To me, there was something that got lost a little in the media. The reason he had that rally on Jan. 6 is because the Electoral Count Act mandates that as the day for Congress to meet and count the electoral votes. He had it timed so they could finish that rally and go to the Capitol. It’s not like he just held a normal weekend rally and people stuck around. He picked that day. In my mind, that was his backstop. If Pence wouldn’t stop the certification of Biden’s win, he hoped his people would prevent it. Do you think that adds to the potential argument of criminality?

Oh, absolutely. On the high crimes and misdemeanors front it certainly is fundamental. This isn’t just an incitement to violence. That would be bad enough, and he did that, of course, when he was running for president during the rallies, very similar incitements on a smaller scale. But he was trying to undermine democracy to stop the count. That’s what these people thought they were doing. He knew that’s what they thought they were doing. He encouraged it rather than stopped it.

What’s a more serious crime? We could talk about the technicalities but it seems to me to certainly be insurrection or treason — an attempt to undermine the most basic fundamental thing that makes us a democracy, a peaceful transition of power. So absolutely it matters. I’d love to see much more attention to this.

Let’s talk about the 14th Amendment. Some Democrats are talking about it in the context of disqualifying Trump from ever holding office again, and maybe even expelling some members of Congress, not allowing them to run for reelection. Reuters actually wrote an article saying that for Trump to be barred from running for office you only need a majority vote. That doesn’t seem like a correct reading of the Constitution to me. If they want to disqualify Donald Trump from running again, do they need a majority vote in the Senate or they need first the two-thirds vote to convict?

I think the most certain path, which is backed in precedent — there have been two incidents where this disqualification was used in the case of judges. The first story is incredible, the parallels. It’s a Tennessee judge who incited insurrection in the context of the Civil War and the Confederacy. Congress said, hey, you can’t have people in federal office who are inciting insurrection. The way they did it was through a majority in Congress. Two-thirds did convict him in the Senate to remove him, followed by a majority vote. That’s been the sequence in the past.

Now, I have seen law professors say — and I think this is what the Reuters story was picking up on — that if you read the text of the Constitution, it doesn’t specify the order. So although we’ve done it that way, maybe if there weren’t the votes [for conviction] the Senate could try severing that. I don’t really have a view on that. I think it’s very interesting, because when you look at the constitutional text, we’ve never been in this position. We’re not voting on removal, that definitely requires two-thirds. We’re voting on disqualification. Can you sever the votes — in other words, have disqualification without conviction, without the two-thirds vote? I’m just not sure about that. I’m not sure that courts would uphold it.

Maybe they would, since they tend to defer in matters of impeachment. There’s a case called Nixon v. United States that really emphasizes that the House has the sole power to impeach and that the Senate has the independent and sole power to try the case. Because of the deference in that case, maybe the courts would defer on that matter.

I wonder if they would ask the parliamentarian of the Senate for a ruling in advance, or will make their own ruling when Democrats control the chamber and Kamala Harris is vice president. Let’s say they make their own rule saying they’re going to formalize this: We only need a majority vote. Does it go to the courts? If the Constitution says it’s within the purview of the Senate exclusively, we’re not getting involved, then we have a new rule. 

I would add to that, Dean, you only need a majority to change those rules. So it’s possible they could try that. The parliamentarian might weigh in and [as Senate majority leader] Chuck Schumer might say, this is a unique circumstance, this is a threat to democracy, we’re doing it.

Certain members of Congress are citing a provision in the 14th Amendment that says any president or representative involved in insurrection or rebellion, or giving aid or comfort, will not be allowed to hold office. Do you think there’s a good faith basis to make an argument under there? Would tat be a majority vote scenario?

Going back to my example of the judge in Tennessee who was disqualified for insurrection, they used the impeachment process rather than the 14th Amendment, to be sure. I would say if you really want to get rid of Donald Trump’s ability to run again, go through the process that’s got the precedent that we know and that would be a majority in the House and two-thirds in the Senate to convict, followed by the majority to disqualify.

But if they don’t have the votes, I think the thought could be, look, the country is desperate to make sure this guy doesn’t run again. Who knows? We’ve got this provision there. Maybe it’s a hail Mary. Maybe courts would overturn it if he tried to run, but let’s try it and let’s argue it out. Certainly it is there, as you say, in the text. I do think that this president threatened democracy. I don’t think it was some minor act of violence. It’s not out of the question.

In your view, what reforms are needed by Congress to rein in a future Trump like president?

Look, it’s so deep. I’ve written this book “The Oath and the Office,” and the idea is not just that the president takes an oath to preserve and protect and defend the Constitution, but courts are very rarely going to be there to make sure that a president complies. They’re not going to force the president to say the right things.

I would have hoped they would have struck down that Muslim ban, which was definitely based in hatred and animus, and the court in a crucial moment failed to act. That was one of the worst moments of the last four years. I was deeply involved in that case. I drafted an amicus brief with colleagues. We were cited by the dissent, but not by the majority. It was about as textbook a case of animus as you can get.

Given that, it’s up to us. It’s up to “we, the people” to demand that a president be held to account. But we can’t do that if we don’t know the Constitution. I think that’s the failure here. We’ve got to do something to educate America about why somebody like Donald Trump has no business running for office, holding office or being listened to in the public sphere.

DNA hard drives? Scientists hide a coded digital message in bacterial DNA

Visualize, if you will, a group of bacteria cells. They are kind of silly looking, when you get right down to it: shaped like a sphere or a pill, sometimes covered in tiny hairs or spikes. While technically alive, it is hard to imagine them as being particularly intelligent, much less capable of storing information like artificially intelligent machines such as computers.

Curiously, that’s exactly what a group of researchers just did: edited DNA inside individual bacteria cells in order to store digital data.

A new paper by researchers at Columbia University reveals that they were able to modify the DNA of bacteria cells by inserting specific DNA sequences with encoded data that could be translated into the message “Hello world!” Specifically the DNA sequences were modified to represent the 0s and 1s used in binary code (the same code that is used in computers) and then assembled in various arrangements to correspond with letters of the English alphabet. The end result is that the words “hello” and “world” were written and encoded into the DNA of E. coli cells.

Just as the English alphabet has twenty-six letters that comprise it, DNA has four compounds that serve as the basis for the genetic code: adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. These building blocks that comprise DNA molecules can be modified to store “bits” of information. Two of the Columbia University scientists behind the new research — Ross McBee, a PhD candidate, and Sung Sun Yim, a postdoctoral fellow — explained to Salon by email that they modified the bacterial DNA code using a technology known as CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors (or CRISPR for short), which allows scientists to directly alter DNA. (The scientists who developed CRISPR technology won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their invention.)

“In nature, the CRISPR system basically works as a bacterial immune system, allowing bacteria to ‘remember’ things like viruses that they have encountered in the past and defend against them,” McBee and Yim explained to Salon. “It does this by taking little bits of the DNA of those threatening organisms, and putting it into its own genome. Then, it can use these stored copies to check against, and degrades matching DNA, defending against infection.” They likened this to “a kind of information storage.”

Their labs and others have engineered this system to encode information within DNA or living organisms’ genomes. Their recent paper expands this research to include encoding digital signals.

The authors are very excited about the possible ways this technology can be used in the future.

“At the moment, digital and biological systems exist without good ways of ‘talking’ with each other,” they explained. “In addition to expanding the usefulness of DNA data storage, as a proof-of-concept for direct integration of arbitrary information into living cell populations, we think this work may be important for developing future hybrid digital-biological systems.”

CRISPR has revolutionized biology and biotech research in the past decade, making all kinds of headlines. Last year scientists were able to successfully edit SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), a virus similar to HIV, out of the genomes of rhesus macaque monkeys. The prospect could prove promising for future HIV cure research.