America is a failed state. Biden’s inauguration won’t suddenly change that

In the waning days of the Trump presidency, there’s a steady drumbeat coming from the corporate news media and its pundits: the suggestion that, come Jan. 21, everything will suddenly and magically return to “normal.”

Never mind the mounting COVID death toll, which on several days this month has spiked above 3,000 a day.

The projection of normalcy is essential to preserving the existing economic order, to organize our self-image as the noblest of nations built on the wisdom of great white men, the landed gentry, who — with the exception of their reliance on slavery — were divinely inspired when they wrote the Constitution.

After four years with Donald Trump at the helm, one would have to be a comatose ancestor worshipper not to see how Trump exploited the shaky 18th-century architecture of patriotism for his own family’s enrichment.

A man who failed to win the majority of the popular vote in 2016 had carte blanche to turn state against state in a COVID civil war that produced a body count that may end up rivaling that of the Rwandan civil war of the 1990s, when actual weapons were used to kill 800,000.

The Trumpian internecine conflict tore the nation asunder at the granular level. Millions of once close-knit extended families have become alienated from each other over arguments as to the efficacy of wearing a mask or socially distancing.

And the legitimate public health remedy of social distancing and limiting in-person communication only encouraged the stratification of our society that was already well underway, thanks to late-stage vulture capitalism and its acceleration of wealth concentration.

Trump, by pitting red against blue, robbed the entire county of its most essential defense: cohesion. But Trump was not happy with that alone. He dug deeper, like the sadist he is, fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia that existed in volcanic fissures just below the surface of our nation. He hoped to ride that lava flow of ash and burning cinder to realize his ambition.

But to finger Trump alone for our miserable situation fails to not fully grasp the awful truth that’s been decades in the making. That true narrative reads more like science fiction than like the accurate, if bleak, recounting of our post-9/11 history it is.

As the world’s wealthiest nation, we invested vast sums in the deadliest and most ecologically destructive weapons known to man. We cut public health spending and closed hospitals in rural and urban areas where the poor lived.

Life expectancy declined in the U.S. three years in a row, just as it did around the time of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Two decades into the 21st century, millions of American households either had no health care insurance or were underinsured. Thus, well before the onset of the pandemic, we had a significant population of Americans beset with chronic disease and with inadequate medical care. Even though we also have the most expensive health care system in the world.

In pre-COVID America, the vast wealth inequality we were seeing rivaled what we had experienced during the Great Depression. Now, in the jaws of this killer virus, the daily experience gap between those who are privileged enough to work from home, and those forced by economics to go out in the world to earn their daily bread, harkens back to the era of feudalism: the nobility safe in the castle, while the “essential” serfs must face bandits, wolves and weather outside the walls.

“There are the college-educated knowledge-based workers, who can continue to work insulated in their homes, who are served by the essential workers in transit and retail sectors who have to be out in the world to serve them,” observed Dr. Harriet Fraad, a New York psychotherapist who focuses on the intersection of family life and the economy. “This means during this pandemic that it’s the poor and working class, made up primarily of women and people of color, who are more likely to die.”

In his victory speech, President-elect Joe Biden pledged “to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify” and who will seek to “heal and restore the American soul.”

That presumes America had a soul before the pandemic.

A fully honest examination of the struggles of tens of millions of American households before COVID, and how they have fared during the pandemic, suggests we have yet to find it.

The icy backstory to that “clink clink” you’ll hear when raising a toast to the end of 2020

If ever there was a year to toast drawing to an end, it’s 2020. Over the festive period, people around the world will be raising a glass to better times ahead.

Accompanying sighs of relief will likely be the subtle tinkling of ice.

In researching a book on the social, medical and moral history of gin and tonic, I have imbibed – moderately – in bars from the Raffles Hotel in Singapore to the Morse Bar in Oxford. At each venue, my G&T was always served over ice.

The history of chilled drinks goes back to antiquity. But it was the innovative “frozen water” trade from New England to India in the mid-19th century that popularized ice.

Frigid luxury

By that time, ice had been used to chill the drinks for millennia – but only ever for the elite.

Chilled wine was all the rage in first-century Rome. Ice chunks were brought down from the summits of Mounts Vesuvius and Etna to chill the food and drink of the wealthy. Roman author Pliny the Younger ascribes to Emperor Nero both the invention of the ice bucket and the chilling of water.

The Mughal emperor Humayun chilled summer fruit juice into a frozen sherbet in the mid-1500s. He used ice shavings from huge blocks of ice he transported on muleback from Kashmir to the capital city of Delhi. To keep it from melting, the ice was treated with potassium nitrate, otherwise known as saltpetre. By the 18th century the Mughals were so dependent upon ice for chilling both food and palaces that they built large “baraf khana,” or ice houses, to store the product.

Across the world in 17th-century Florence, the ruling Medici family would host elaborate feasts featuring tabletop mountain ranges sculpted from ice made by chilling water in winter. They also acted as patrons to Bernardo Buontalenti, the pioneer of modern-day ice cream.

But until the early 1800s, only emperors and the fabulously wealthy enjoyed the cooling effects of ice.

Cool customers

That changed with a young man from Boston. Frederic Tudor was born in 1783 to a wealthy Boston family who summered on a pond in Rockwood, just north of the city. There, they enjoyed ice cream and chilled drinks thanks to ice harvested in winter and stored in an ice house.

When his brother, William, quipped that they should harvest ice from the estate’s pond and sell it in the tropics, Frederic took the notion seriously. He begged and borrowed from his social network, which included Revolutionary War heroes and merchant elite, to fund his ice enterprise.

According to Tudor’s diary, held at the Harvard Business School, he started shipping ice to the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1806. But islanders remained unconvinced of the benefits of chilling. The ice melted on the dock, and Tudor landed in debtors prison, owing over US$5,000 to his patrons.

Despite this setback, Tudor’s entrepreneurial spirit was said to be undimmed. By 1826 he had garnered enough business to hire noted inventor Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth as foreman for his company – The Tudor Ice Co. Wyeth created new types of saws, pulleys, iron grids and hoisters needed for efficient ice harvesting. He cut huge blocks of ice from Fresh Pond in Cambridge using horse-drawn ice cutters, and moved them via rail to ships in the Boston and Salem harbors.

From there, the world awaited.

Ice houses of India

In 1833 Tudor was approached by Samuel Austin, a merchant of silks and spices, to ship ice to Calcutta, modern-day Kolkata, 16,000 miles away, as ballast to add weight to his empty ships. Austin knew that the colonial British in India were frightened of the tropical heat, believing it to be deadly, and they often escaped to the hills during the endless summer.

So on May 12, 1833, the ship Tuscany sailed from Boston for Calcutta, its hold filled with 180 tons of ice cut during the previous winter. When it arrived in Calcutta four months later, the ship still held 100 tons of ice. It meant Tudor could sell his superior ice at just 3 pence for a pound, undercutting his rivals who sold dirtier ice for much higher.

When news of the ice in Calcutta circulated, British merchants in Bombay, modern-day Mumbai, excitedly raised money to build an ice house in the city’s docks. Initially, demand was limited to the British and Parsis – Persians settled in India – but Tudor’s low prices and superior commodity soon ensured that most elite Indians had access to cold beverages through their homes, clubs and restaurants.

Bombay’s ice trade with the U.S. was robust and continued through much of the 19th century, when, during the American Civil War, Indian cotton was used to fill the empty ice ships returning home.

By 1853 India became Tudor’s most lucrative destination, with Calcutta alone yielding an estimated $220,000 in profits.

A few of the structures built to accommodate the trade still exist today. A decade ago, I visited an ice house in Madras, modern-day Chennai – now known as Vivekananda House – an engineering marvel. British military engineer Col. J.J. Collingwood borrowed a Syrian roofing technique for the ice tower – a domed structure built using clay cylinders. This roof kept the ice very cool, as it was doubly insulated.

On Walden Pond

The American naturalist Henry David Thoreau noted the trade in the winter of 1846. After observing a crew of 100 ice cutters of the Tudor Ice Co. at work on Walden Pond, he wrote, “The sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.”

It wasn’t just India. Ice cut in New England was transported to Singapore, Jamaica, Havana, New Orleans and Hong Kong.

As well as being able to deliver in bulk, Tudor also marketed the quality of his ice. His claim that the ice of Wenham Lake – 10 miles North of Boston – was the “purest” in the world spawned many imitators. In 1844, a competitor, The Wenham Lake Ice Co., opened an ice store in The Strand, London, where it displayed a large block of ice with a newspaper placed behind it so that passersby could read the print through the frozen water.

Ice King on the rocks

The Tudor Ice Co. flourished despite competition. In December 1847, The Sunbury American newspaper reported that 22,591 tons of ice were shipped to foreign ports.

In the space of 40 years, Tudor had built an ice empire, block by block, earning him the moniker the “Ice King.”

But the icy winds of change were blowing. In 1844, the American inventor John Gorrie, a doctor who specialized in treating malaria – also related to the birth of the G&T – had produced a prototype of the modern air conditioner.

In 1851, Gorrie received a U.S. patent for one of the world’s first ice-making machines, and by 1860 he was successful in making ice through artificial refrigeration. Meantime, the New England lakes grew dirty with pollution from coal-fired railroads.

The Tudor Ice Co.’s market declined precipitously; the company closed in 1887.

Tudor had died earlier in Boston, in the middle of winter, 1864. By that time, he had created what the ice industry now defines as “the clink effect” – the ability of ice cubes to recall a host of positive associations – around the world.

Tulasi Srinivas, Professor of Anthropology, Religion and Transnational Studies, Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson College

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

Roger Stone visited Trump in person to thank him for presidential pardon

Roger Stone, the close ally and informal adviser to Donald Trump, bragged on Monday that he had personally thanked the president for pardoning him last week.

“My wife and I both had the opportunity to thank the president personally for righting the injustice of my conviction in a Soviet-style show trial, which featured the epic bias of the judge who withheld exculpatory evidence from my defense, misconduct by the jury forewoman and substantial misconduct by the prosecutors,” Stone told ABC News about his encounter with Trump on Sunday night. According to Stone, he ran into the president in passing while going to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. He and his wife, Nydia Stone, were guests of Newsmax publisher Christopher Ruddy. Although the White House declined to comment on the matter, a source who was in the dining room — which had roughly 100 people in it — shared a picture of Trump interacting with Stone by patting the convicted felon on the shoulder.

Trump’s decision to pardon Stone was not entirely unexpected. As Salon’s Heather Digby Parton wrote after Trump commuted Stone’s sentence days before he was supposed to report to prison in July. Stone had intimated in an interview with journalist Howard Fineman that he could “play Judas” against Trump. “I think we might have expected a full pardon, but since there was reportedly so much resistance within the administration, Trump may have decided that commutation before the election, and then pardon afterward looked like a reasonable compromise,” Parton wrote.

There is no evidence to support any of Stone’s claims about supposed judicial misconduct during his trial. Stone was convicted in November 2019 of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and making false statements. In February, Stone was sentenced to 40 months in prison, although he was able to achieve a number of delays when it came to actually being incarcerated.

There is some debate within the legal community about whether accepting a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt. In the 1915 Supreme Court case Burdick v. United States, the court wrote that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it.” President Gerald Ford later used this quote to justify pardoning his predecessor, President Richard Nixon, who was facing criminal charges related to his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Yet pardons do not legally establish that a person is either guilty or acknowledging guilt, with President George H. W. Bush famously pardoning former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger because he believed that official’s conviction in the Iran-Contra scandal had amounted to “the criminalization of policy differences.”

Salon spoke with Stone in 2017 about his alleged connections to Russia, during which he adamantly denied any contact or coordination with Russians involving the 2016 presidential election. When this reporter asked Stone, after the political operative was the victim of a hit-and-run, why he had sent him a text message saying that he suspected it might have been perpetrated by someone who did not want him to testify about the Russia investigation, Stone insisted that there were a number of “false statements” by members of the House that he wanted to correct.

Stone is also an inflammatory figure because of his association with radical right groups and causes. In 2018 he was photographed flashing an allegedly white supremacist hand signal with members of the Proud Boys, the same radical right group that Trump encouraged to “stand back and stand by” during one of his debates with President-elect Joe Biden. Stone told this reporter at the time that “we reject the claim that is a symbol of bi[g]otry and we specifically denounce White Supremacy.” In September Stone urged Trump to declare martial law if he lost the 2020 presidential election and has subsequently taken a leading role in “Stop the Steal,” a movement that accuses Democrats of stealing the election from Trump despite being unable to prove their claims.

The Trump campaign has lost 59 of the fraud-related cases it has brought to court (some presided over by Republican and Trump-appointed judges), only winning a case that involved a procedural question. Trump’s own attorney general William Barr admitted after investigating voter fraud accusations that there was no reason to believe Biden had not legitimately won the election. The Supreme Court also unanimously found that Trump’s fraud claims have no merit, three of whom were judges appointed by Trump himself.

Salon reached out to Stone for this article but he declined to comment.

Is farming with reclaimed water the solution to a drier future?

On a Saturday in late October, Carolyn Phinney stands hip-deep in a half acre of vegetables, at the nucleus of what will one day be 15 acres of productive farmland.

“You can’t even see the pathways,” she says, surrounded by the literal fruits of her labors. The patch is a wealth of herbs, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, kale, winter squash, and zucchini. So much zucchini — fruits the size of bowling pins hidden under leaves as big as umbrellas. “Zucchini plants are supposed to be 30 inches across. Ours are 8 feet,” she says. “Everything looks like it’s on steroids.”

Phinney, pictured above, is the farmer behind CoCo San Sustainable Farm of Martinez, Calif., a farm built on reclaimed land, using reclaimed water, and started with a simple mission: to get kids to eat more vegetables.

In 2010, Phinney learned local school districts served pizza more often than salad because produce cost four times more than cheese and bread. She set out to make vegetables in her county more affordable — or free, if possible. The effort has paid off. Since May of this year, Phinney has grown and donated more than 13,000 pounds of produce to local food banks and school districts. All of it from just this half acre. Phinney is the farm’s only full-time employee, and she has worked with a team of volunteers to get the food in the ground so far.

Summer vegetable harvest from CoCo San Sustainable Farm.

“We could produce several hundred thousand pounds of produce [if we were] in full production,” she says, referring to the 14.5 acres of bare earth and citing a time only a few years away, when the remaining land will be irrigated and planted in vegetables.

Phinney’s achievement is all the more remarkable considering the location. Prior to Phinney, Contra Costa County had used the 15-acre property as a dumping ground for excavated subsoil trucked in from elsewhere. The ground was so poor that even weeds struggled to grow there. However, as prospective farmland, the place had two big things going for it. It was cheap — Phinney leases the land for a dollar a year — and it came with a free and near limitless supply of water.

The farm is located on sanitary buffer land owned by the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (CCCSD) and is adjacent to their water treatment plant. Phinney irrigates all her crops with reclaimed wastewater, which she says is nutrient rich, safe, free, and abundant. And for Phinney, the water is the real secret to growing such healthy, high-yielding plants.

Around the same time Phinney was trying to fix school lunch, she met Mike McGill, board president of CCCSD, and learned that the county discharged around 50 to 200 million gallons of treated wastewater per day into nearby Suisun Bay. After treatment to remove solids and sterilize microbes, the water remains high in nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and micronutrients. Liquid fertility, according to Phinney, who felt the county was just dumping it.

“I said, ‘With all that free water, too bad you don’t have any free land,'” says Phinney.

As it turned out, McGill had a lead — albeit on land that was literally both dirt cheap and dirt poor — and had been looking for years to divert more of CCCSD’s wastewater away from the bay and towards projects that demonstrate the value of recycled water.

California is one of the most intensely cultivated states in the union, one where agriculture represents a $50 billion industry. But the state is also among the most water-strapped; for that reason it’s the home of the nation’s first future’s market for water and much of the state is once again in drought. Yet most of its farmers get their water from the same sources as towns and cities — aquifers, rivers, reservoirs, and snowpack — putting population and food production in competition with each other.

Wastewater reclamation could be a way to alleviate some of that pressure and is already common practice elsewhere in the state, mostly as a way to recharge aquifers in Orange County (which reclaims and purifies 130 million gallons of water a day) and prevent saltwater intrusion in coastal cities. On a smaller scale, many California cities use treated wastewater for landscaping. One flashy example is the water features of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, whose lakes, fountains, and waterfalls are filled with treated wastewater.

Read more Civil Eats: The New York Farmers Responding to Food Insecurity

The water Phinney uses falls under Title 22 of California’s Code of Regulations, which, in addition to landscaping, allows for the application of sterilized, treated wastewater to agricultural crops. CCCSD’s wastewater treatment process involves a primary treatment of sedimentation, a secondary biological treatment which uses micro-organisms to dissolve suspended organic compounds, and then disinfection with UV light. The treated wastewater is then filtered through a dual media filter and then another round of disinfection with sodium hypochlorite (liquid bleach) to produce recycled water. The resulting water is approved for all agricultural use in California, including root crops.

Still, few municipalities are following Phinney’s lead and using treated wastewater directly for food production. But that’s not because it hasn’t been proven safe.

In a landmark study from the 1980s, crops of artichokes, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and celery were irrigated with Title 22 wastewater in the Monterey Wastewater Reclamation Study for Agriculture (MWRSA). The study took place in Castroville, Calif., located in the fertile Salinas Valley. Cities and farms in the Salinas Valley both draw from the same aquifer. In the early 1970s, as evidence piled up that groundwater was being severely overdrawn between the two, risking saltwater intrusion from the Pacific, the region turned to recirculating treated wastewater.

Michael McGill, board president of Central Contra Costa Sanitary District, holds a jar of reclaimed water. (Photo credit: Cirrus Wood)

At the end of five years, the study concluded no discernible difference in levels of bacteria, viruses, or heavy metals in the soil of crops irrigated with wastewater compared to test groups irrigated with well water. Nor were the levels any different in the crops themselves. While the study did suggest that treated wastewater could increase nitrate levels in surface groundwater, the same effect was also found in two of the fields irrigated with well water. The study did not find any negative impact to farmworker health or crop marketability.

Most of the agricultural practices suggested in the MWRSA have since been adopted in the Salinas Valley on operations such as Ocean Mist Farms in Castroville, which uses 9,000 acre feet of reclaimed water annually on its fields of artichokes.

There have been several studies of the agricultural potential and environmental impact of reclaimed wastewater in California in the 30 years since. So why hasn’t the practice been more widespread in the state?

“Quite frankly, we have too much water in Northern California,” says CCSD’s McGill. Laws regulating water use—and reuse—in much of the state have been determined [based] on presumed abundance. “There’s not a lot of pressure except during times of drought to reuse treated wastewater.”

That may sound odd considering the state went through several severe droughts between 2011 and 2018, and has regulated surface water for more than a century. But groundwater rights are determined by land ownership. Anyone who owns property above an aquifer can drill in, start pumping, and take as much as they want.

Which sets up a classic tragedy of the commons. Without oversight, private individuals have little incentive to conserve a public resource. Overdrawing groundwater has caused the land to sink in the Central Valley — in some places by as much as 28 feet — and farmers have to drill ever deeper wells to sustain their livelihood. During the same severe drought, some towns went completely dry.

Read more Civil Eats: Op-ed: Dear Secretary of Agriculture, This Is Your Chance

In 2014, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed a package of laws collectively known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). The package set up local groundwater sustainability agencies to oversee and manage groundwater use with the goal of restoring the state’s aquifers to sustainable levels within 20 years. The state’s most overdrawn basins had until the end of January 2020 to draft their plans, which means they are still close to two decades away from sustainability.

It’s up to those local agencies to determine what counts as a sustainable aquifer, and to ensure that pumping does not exceed recharge, especially in the heavily agricultural Central Valley. Injecting treated wastewater into the aquifer is certainly one option. Another is to use it directly for irrigation instead of groundwater.

A corollary would be to import wastewater from further away, treating populated areas as auxiliary aquifers. During the height of the last drought, when the Central Valley experienced a roughly two trillion gallon annual deficit, the Bay Area was dumping roughly one trillion gallons of treated wastewater into San Francisco Bay.

Such a scenario would mean neither cities nor farmers would have to cut back on water use. For example, CCCSD could build a 35-mile pipeline, diverting their wastewater from Suisun Bay to fill irrigation canals in the Central Valley. “To some extent, farmers would love that,” says McGill.

Just from the CCCSD alone such a project would deliver 20,000 acre feet of water — about 20 million gallons — annually to farming communities. Albeit, such a pipeline would cost between $2 and $3 million per mile to build, but inexpensive when compared to the $15.9 billion estimate for the state’s Delta tunnel project.

The region hasn’t embraced reclaimed water but it’s not entirely for lack of trying. In 1997, the nearby Dublin San Ramon Sanitary District (DSRSD) approved plans for reinjecting treated wastewater into the source aquifer. Since both municipalities and farmland drew from the same source, groundwater reinjection was the shortest route to supplying both with much needed reserves. However, after the district invested $24.5 million, the public outcry was so intense the plan was scuttled in the early 2000s.

Some critics reject using water derived from sewage outright. “People think, ‘Oh, poop water,'” says Phinney. But their numbers are dwindling. Orange County, which tends to be on the conservative side, has embraced the term “Toilet to Tap,” so neither Phinney nor McGill see much reason the rest of the state can’t follow suit, rethink attitudes, and reuse water. In 2016, DSRSD even came back to the idea.

But as for applying treated wastewater directly to crops, like Phinney is doing, there’s not much in the way of opposition. Neither Phinney, McGill, nor other sources contacted for this story were aware of agencies, organizations, or individuals actively combatting the use of reclaimed water for food production.

There might not be much opposition because the state doesn’t have much history with it, and very little reclaimed water goes towards agriculture. A University of California, Berkeley paper from March 2020 estimates that less than 1 percent of agricultural water comes from reclaimed wastewater. For many Californians, water reclamation isn’t a top shelf issue when the current system of distribution works well enough.

Peppers growing at CoCo San Sustainable Farm.

But that could soon change. “There are an awful lot of water practices based on abundant, free, available water,” says McGill. “And, of course, as the population grows, the climate changes, and we come to recognize not as much water ends up in the snowpack, we’re just not going to have as much available.”

“The real bottom line here is we can’t use our water just once,” says Phinney. Fifteen acres of vegetables may be a good place to start, but it’s just a start.

Trump’s last-minute “Middle East arms bonanza” continues with $290M sale to Saudi regime

Despite opposition from the public and some members of Congress, the Trump administration in its waning days is rushing through weapons sales to a handful of Middle East nations with records of human rights abuses, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose U.S.-backed blockades and airstrikes have exacerbated civilian suffering and death in Yemen’s ongoing civil war.

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday announced a flurry of deals, including $290 million in Boeing-made, precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia, $65 million in drones and fighter jets to the UAE, $169 million in military equipment to Egypt and $4 billion in helicopters to Kuwait.

“President Trump’s lame duck Middle East arms bonanza continues,” said William Hartung, director of the arms and security program at the Center of International Policy. “Selling more bombs to Saudi Arabia, given its history of indiscriminate airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians in Yemen, should be a non-starter.”

While the actions of Saudi Arabia and the UAE have come under increased scrutiny as a result of the Saudi-led assault on Yemen, Hartung also encouraged Congress and the incoming Biden administration to “review the sale of equipment to Egypt in light of its brutal and counterproductive counter-terror campaign in the Sinai, which has involved severe human rights abuses, the killing of innocent civilians, and the driving of thousands of families from their homes.”

As The Guardian reported Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team has complained that “it is not being properly briefed by the Pentagon on ongoing military operations, as is customary for an incoming administration in the weeks preceding inauguration, on January 20.”

In an effort to impede the transfer of at least some weapons, the New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs is reportedly planning to file a lawsuit Wednesday against Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the proposed deal with the UAE.

The filing will claim that the Trump administration has failed to meet the legal requirements of the Arms Export Control Act. For the deal to proceed, there must be “a full rationale for the sale and a consideration of the impact on U.S. security and world peace,” The New Arab reported Wednesday. “The lawsuit also cites the UAE’s actions in the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen.”

Although the U.S. Senate in early December failed to block President Trump’s $23 billion weapons deal with the UAE, “the lawsuit calls for an injunction to stop the sale,” The Guardian reported.

The Trump administration has attempted to justify selling arms to the UAE, The Guardian noted, by claiming that the weapons allow the Emirates “to deter increasing Iranian aggressive behavior and threats.”

According to a press release issued Tuesday by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arms deal with Saudi Arabia “will support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East.”

Critics of the weapons sales, however, say the deals will worsen human rights violations and destabilize the region.

As The Hill reported, “Tuesday’s notice kicks off a 30-day clock during which lawmakers can block the sale if they choose to.”

The Trump administration notifies Congress of its intention to sell 3,000 GBU-39 SDB I munitions to Saudi Arabia at a value of $290 million.

Lawmakers can, and indeed should, block the sale. pic.twitter.com/34MFwzSMoY

— Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) December 30, 2020

“If Congress can’t block it,” Hartung said, “the Biden administration should do so when it takes office.”

Ten actions Biden can take to undo Trump’s war on immigrants

Last July the Migration Policy Institute documented more than 400 changes to America’s immigration system made between President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and the middle of 2020, and concluded that Trump “has dramatically transformed the U.S. immigration system, in bold-brush, sweeping ways but also in small technical details across the immigration portfolio… The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic during Trump’s fourth year in office turbocharged many of these efforts.”

Yet, as destructive as Trump’s efforts have been to block immigration, the president failed to reshape border policy through convincing Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. This means that the administration’s many restrictive and punitive actions against émigrés (who include refugees and asylum seekers)—made by presidential executive order, directives issued by the attorney general’s office and regulatory changes—are subject to swift reversal once Joe Biden occupies the Oval Office. The following is a list of the most important reversals Biden can undertake.

Rescinding Migrant Protection Protocols

MPPs, which, far from protecting migrants, force thousands of asylum seekers to live in fetid refugee camps just south of the U.S.-Mexico border while their cases are being adjudicated in U.S. courts, have directly led to “people dying and disappearing,” according to Holly Cooper, co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California, Davis’ law school. “The migrant camps in Mexico — kids are being shot, trafficked. It’s hell on earth.” But, says Cooper, since the MPPs were created via executive order, they can be rescinded simply through Biden signing a new order on day one of his presidency.

Removing asylum barriers

Under Trump, Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr used their unitary powers to reverse long-established case law around asylum, making it all but impossible for victims of domestic violence and an array of other crimes committed abroad to claim asylum. Ramon Valdez, of the Portland, Oregon-based Innovation Law Lab, which has filed numerous lawsuits against Trump’s asylum policy, says the Trump efforts amounted to an “attack on the principle of asylum. Broad swaths of people who should be eligible for asylum suddenly aren’t, because of tampering with case law.” Because attorney generals have such extraordinary power over the interpretation of immigration law, it will be just as easy for the new attorney general to reinterpret asylum law in a way that doesn’t automatically exclude the great majority of applicants.

Ending immigration court quotas

Using similar unitary powers, in January 2018 the Director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, at the direction of the attorney general, sent a memo to all immigration court judges mandating a high minimum number of cases that they must hear. Under that system, for nearly three years now, these judges have been forced to hear a vastly increased number of cases per day, undermining due process and making it harder for asylum seekers to get a full and fair hearing. All the Justice Department would need to reverse this quota system is an email sent out, on day one, to all immigration judges saying that the Trump-era quota system no longer held. It’s low-hanging fruit but it would have a huge impact on the way immigration courts work.

Undoing the Asylum Cooperative Agreements

Also on the topic of asylum: Biden’s team could immediately begin to negotiate an end to the Asylum Cooperative Agreements, which the Trump administration strong-armed Central American countries to sign onto, and which allow the U.S. to deport asylum seekers from, say, Honduras, to one of Honduras’ neighbors. Even before the pandemic, this policy was denounced by human rights activists, who were concerned that deportees would end up vulnerable to gangs, to human traffickers and to extreme poverty in the countries to which they were sent. Scores of COVID-positive deportees were flown into Guatemala, helping to seed a disease outbreak in a country lacking a medical infrastructure to deal with the crisis.

Raise refugee limits

In each of the four years of Trump’s term in office, the presidential finding on refugee admissions has drastically lowered the cap on those admissions. When President Barack Obama exited the White House in January 2017, that limit was 110,000 per year. Today’s cap, set to kick in starting in January, is a mere 15,000. Biden can increase that number to something more in line with the historical norms, and he can end the process of “extreme vetting” that Trump’s team used to limit still further the numbers of who would be admitted. That, however, will take months rather than weeks, as Biden will have to submit a new presidential finding on refugees.

Pull the plug on the Muslim travel ban

But there is action that Biden can take immediately that would make it possible for refugees from countries red-flagged by the Trump administration to enter the U.S. again. On day one, Biden can, through an executive order, end the so-called “Muslim travel ban” against citizens of Iran, Yemen, Syria and several other predominantly Muslim countries.

Reviving DACA

Immigrant rights advocates hope that the incoming administration will withdraw the Trump administration’s support for legal efforts to revoke the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Since there are already several court rulings in place preserving DACA, including a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, a Biden pivot on this would, in and of itself, be enough to preserve DACA for the foreseeable future.

Restoring the Flores Settlement Agreement

Through withdrawing administration support for Trump’s legal efforts to end the Flores Settlement Agreement — which limits the numbers of days children can be held in immigration detention facilities — Biden’s team can similarly, in effect, turn away from a core part of Trump’s efforts to lock down the border. There is currently an injunction against the administration ending Flores. If Biden’s Department of Justice simply accepts that injunction, the Trump effort to engage in wholesale family detention as a deterrent strategy against asylum seekers will end.

Protecting Temporary Protected Status

Advocates at Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) L.A., which works on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Central American and other holders of Temporary Protected Status who have been threatened with deportation by Trump’s efforts to roll back virtually the entire TPS program (which often helps victims of natural disasters), hope that Biden will protect TPS. He could do so by announcing that his administration would no longer appeal court rulings that have, to date, prevented the program from being ended.

As a longer-lasting fix, to ensure that people from Honduras, El Salvador and the other countries included in TPS continue to be eligible and are once again issued new work permits, Biden’s team could revisit the decisions to end Temporary Protected Status for migrants from the affected countries, explains Xochitl Sanchez, a CARECEN organizer. To do so, all they need do is re-examine the evidence the Trump administration used to declare conditions on the ground now safe enough to return TPS holders to their countries of origin.

Ending wealth tests

Finally, as a matter of social equity, Biden must immediately reverse the multitude of Trump-era actions intended to impose a de facto wealth test on immigrants. First among these are the Public Charge rules that allow any usage of food stamps, medical assistance or housing aid to be counted against an immigrant when they apply for citizenship, and allow consular officials overseas a huge amount of discretion in determining whether a visa applicant is likely to use public aid at some point down the road.

Several courts have issued injunctions against Public Charge. While it rewrites the rules, and goes through the public comments period before those new rules become the law of the land, Biden’s administration should no longer contest the existing injunctions against Public Charge. In a similar vein, the Biden team could announce in the Federal Register that it is reversing the huge fee increases Trump implemented for work authorizations, asylum applications and citizenship applications, all of which were intended to make it harder for poor immigrants to gain legal, permanent status in the U.S.

CNN reporter works over Donald Trump Jr’s “fact-free” defense of “incessant liar” dad

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale corrected Donald Trump Jr.’s claims about his plans for covering Joe Biden’s presidency.

President Donald Trump’s eldest son retweeted an excerpt from an article published by The Atlantic, where Dale said he didn’t expect fact-checking the president-elect to be a “24-hour, seven-day-a-week job” as it had been cataloging the outgoing chief executive’s lies — which Trump Jr. twisted into an admission of bias.

“CNN ‘fact checker’ admitting that he’s pivoting from fact checking Biden to focusing on ‘online disinformation,’ AKA CNN code for Republicans who use the internet + ‘congressional leaders’ which will almost undoubtedly = congressional Republicans in practice,” Trump Jr. tweeted.

CNN “fact checker” admitting that he’s pivoting from fact checking Biden to focusing on “online disinformation,” AKA CNN code for Republicans who use the internet + "congressional leaders" which will almost undoubtedly = congressional Republicans in practice.

So predictable 🙄 https://t.co/SzkFuYKIFJ

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 29, 2020

Dale, however, called out the president’s son for spreading online disinformation.

“Not at all what I said; no ‘pivot,'” Dale responded. “What I said: Since Biden — like every non-Trump Republican in the 2016 field and potential 2024 field! — lies way less frequently than Trump, there’ll be time in the Biden era to *also* fact check others in addition to the president.’

“CNN will rigorously fact check President Biden,” Dale added. “It’s just objective and obvious fact that it takes less time to fact check basically everyone in politics than it takes to do Trump, a staggeringly incessant liar. If you choose to call me biased for stating that fact, feel free.”

CNN will rigorously fact check President Biden. It’s just objective and obvious fact that it takes less time to fact check basically everyone in politics than it takes to do Trump, a staggeringly incessant liar. If you choose to call me biased for stating that fact, feel free.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 29, 2020

Manhattan DA steps up investigation of Trump’s finances with hiring of forensic accounting experts

Legal and constitutional experts have been debating President Donald Trump’s ability to grant himself a preemptive pardon before he leaves office on Jan. 20, 2021. But presidential pardons only exist at the federal level, not at the state level — which means that they would not affect any investigations being conducted by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., whose office has been aggressively probing Trump’s finances. And Washington Post journalists Shayna Jacobs and Jonathan O’Connell are reporting that according to sources, Vance’s office “has retained forensic accounting specialists to aid its criminal investigation of President Trump and his business operations, as prosecutors ramp up their scrutiny of his company’s real estate transactions.”

“Vance has contracted with FTI Consulting to look for anomalies among a variety of property deals, and to advise the district attorney on whether the president’s company manipulated the value of certain assets to obtain favorable interest rates and tax breaks, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains highly sensitive,” Jacobs and O’Connell report. “The probe is believed to encompass transactions spanning several years.”

The Post reporters note that in 2018, Vance’s office launched an investigation “to examine alleged hush-money payments made to two women who, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, claimed to have had affairs with him years earlier” — adding that the investigation “has since expanded and now includes the Trump Organization’s activities more broadly.”

“Vance’s office has suggested in court filings that bank, tax and insurance fraud are areas of exploration,” Jacobs and O’Connell explain.

N.Y. prosecutor hires forensic accounting experts as Trump criminal probe escalates https://t.co/z0Xa96fMsr

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 29, 2020

FTI Consulting, according to the Post reporters, “provides a range of financial advisory services to clients worldwide in public and corporate sectors.”

“The analysts hired by Vance probably have already reviewed various bank and mortgage records obtained from Trump’s company as part of the ongoing grand jury investigation, and they could be called on to testify about their findings should the district attorney eventually bring criminal charges, said the person familiar with the arrangement,” according to Jacobs and O’Connell.

Vance’s office has been pursuing Trump’s tax returns and probing his relationship with Deutsche Bank and the insurance broker Aon, and the president has argued that the probes amount to harassment. Trump and his allies have also accused Vance, a Democrat, of investigating him for partisan reasons.

“It is possible Vance could find evidence that the Trump Organization, as a business entity, has broken the law, without attaching personal liability to Trump or other individuals at his company,” Jacobs and O’Connell explain. “To bring criminal charges, the district attorney must be able to prove there was an intent to break the law — which probably would require the testimony of an insider witness, experts have said.”

Congress rocked by COVID: Incoming GOP House member dies weeks after winning election

Louisiana Congressman-elect Luke Letlow has passed away after being hospitalized with COVID-19.

On Tuesday, Dec. 29, the newly elected congressman’s spokesperson released a statement on his Facebook page confirming his death. “Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, 41, passed away this evening at Ochsner-LSU Health Shreveport due to complications from COVID-19,” Letlow spokesman Andrew Bautsch said.

Bautsch also included remarks on behalf of Letlow’s family saying they: “appreciate the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time.”

Letlow’s death comes almost two weeks after he was hospitalized at St. Francis Medical Center in Monroe, La. On Dec. 23, it was announced that he had been transferred to Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport Academic Medical Center in Shreveport where LSU Health Sciences Center Chancellor G.E. Ghali confirmed he was in stable condition and being treated with “Remdesivir and steroids as part of his regiment therapy,” according to The New Star.

However, over the next several days, his condition worsened.

In the wake of Letlow’s death, a number of other lawmakers offered their condolences on social media. With a number of photos he had taken with Letlow, Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.) tweeted, “Luke Letlow is now with our Creator, but his premature departure from this world is a huge loss to Louisiana and America. Just weeks ago, voters overwhelmingly chose Luke to represent them in Congress.”

He added, “They saw what so many of us know of Luke – kind, smart, quick-witted, God-fearing, hard-working, honest and just a good guy. I looked forward to working with him in our small delegation in Washington. This news is hard and words cannot express my sorrow right now…”

Luke Letlow is now with our Creator, but his premature departure from this world is a huge loss to Louisiana and Am… https://t.co/F7Vv4Kmo2F

— Rep. Garret Graves (@Rep. Garret Graves)1609297416.0

Life is a fragile gift. Luke’s passing reminds me how thankful we should be everyday for all of the blessings and c… https://t.co/Id26YXTrN0

— Rep. Garret Graves (@Rep. Garret Graves)1609297418.0

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell (D) also weighed in via Twitter saying, “”We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of Congressman-elect Luke Letlow. He was a promising young leader who loved Louisiana deeply. Our prayers go out to his family and loved ones.”

We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of Congressman-elect Luke Letlow. He was a promising young leader who lo… https://t.co/iisN3h1GfH

— Mayor LaToya Cantrell (@Mayor LaToya Cantrell)1609298644.0

Details about Letlow’s funeral arrangements have yet to be announced. According to CNN’s outline of Louisiana state law law, “a special election will now take place to elect someone to represent the state’s 5th Congressional District.”

Looking ahead: The top food and agriculture stories for 2021

If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that predicting the future is risky business. In a world with such an uncertain future, does predicting top stories for the coming year even make sense? In late 2019, COVID-19 was not on our radar at all. We wrote about the next 12 months with a confidence that looks poignantly naive in retrospect. We could not have predicted how a pandemic — now known to us as the pandemic — could have disrupted supply chains, decimated the restaurant industry, sickened and killed food and farmworkers, caused huge increases in poverty and hunger and transformed how we grocery shop.

One thing we know for certain about the coming year: The coronavirus pandemic is far from over, and we will continue to see tumult well into 2021. In light of all this, we’ve tried to approach these predictions with a tremendous amount of humility and a fair amount of caution.

Food insecurity will dominate daily life for a huge number of people

The pandemic disrupted nearly every facet of American life this year, and brought with it the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Though there were some signs of recovery over the summer, unemployment claims are rising again to record highs. This, combined with a spike in grocery prices, has aggravated the nation’s persistent problem with food insecurity: Nearly four in 10 Americans reported not having enough to eat this year, and nearly 17 million children are expected to struggle with finding enough to eat.

While stimulus packages in the spring included some additional funding for emergency food programs like SNAP, those resources have since run out. Other fixes, like the Farm to Families Food Box program, have been riddled with allegations of mismanagement. Meanwhile, food banks are left to fill the hole left by inadequate government support, with lines stretching for miles in some areas. As aid dwindles, more and more Americans have turned to shoplifting grocery items. As for additional government funding: The House has passed a relief bill with more substantial aid, but the Senate is unlikely to approve anything before next year.

Looking ahead

Without dramatic action, hunger will get worse until the economy dramatically improves. Some potential measures that could forestall this — like the proposed 15% increase in SNAP benefits — will rest on the final makeup of the Senate, which won’t be determined until Georgia’s special elections in early January. Still, anti-hunger groups are hopeful that the incoming administration can remove some of the barriers towards SNAP access, making it easier for immigrants and people who have recently lost their jobs to enroll in the program. These changes won’t solve the US hunger problem overnight, but could go a long way towards improving life for millions.

Restaurants will fight for their lives

This year was absolutely devastating for restaurants. While some large chains are actually managing to do well, small business owners and their workers are suffering greatly. By the end of 2020, restaurants are projected to lose a catastrophic $240 billion worth of revenue. Current unemployment rates in the hospitality industry sit around 15 percent, higher than almost any other industry. One in five restaurants have already closed — by end of year there will have been over 100,000 closures. Those that remain face ever-changing regulations and predatory service charges from delivery apps. Paycheck Protection Program loans were an inadequate, short term fix for what has turned out to be a long term problem. With these low-wage restaurant workers out of work (many of whom are undocumented and therefore unable to make use of federal hunger benefits), the food insecurity problem discussed above grows and grows. And of course, restaurant closures have ripple effects throughout the food system, decimating markets for various farmers and fisherpeople.

Looking ahead

There are two options here: Let restaurants die, or fund them to stay afloat through the first half of 2021. Unless Congress offers some sort of support, 2021 will be grim indeed. There is legislation on the table — already passed by the House but waiting on the Senate — that could do this: the Real Economic Support That Acknowledges Unique Restaurant Assistance Needed To Survive Act, or the RESTAURANTS Act. We are hopeful that the Senate will see that letting small businesses die is not good for anyone. And while we can cross our fingers that life after the vaccine will include a return to indoor dining, many restaurants will be long gone before that happens, if they’re not thrown a lifeline.

Public awareness of labor abuses in the food industry will climb

While the pandemic has affected everyone, it hasn’t affected everyone equally. Workers in the food system have been some of those most hurt by the virus, with many in the meat industry among the hardest hit. There have been more than 50,000 confirmed cases recorded so far and deliberate efforts from the industry’s management to conceal data from health agencies has allowed operations to continue despite health risks. Farmworkers, who had to deal with the virus, wildfires and extreme heat, have also faced the difficult choice between their paychecks and their health. While some of these risks are unique to the pandemic, the realities of the past year also exposed many of the fundamental injustices that workers in the food system face. Public outcry over outbreaks and poor conditions helped push some companies towards greater transparency and adopting better protections for workers.

The heightened awareness of labor issues in the food system doesn’t stop with the pandemic: With issues like child slavery in the cocoa industry currently being argued before the Supreme Court, wider labor and equity issues in the food system are getting more attention.

Looking ahead

While a COVID-19 vaccine is on the horizon, the pandemic will be with us through next year, bringing questions of whether food and farm workers should be early in line to receive a vaccine. Hopefully, the poor treatment of essential workers during the pandemic can also spur changes that make workplaces less dangerous to begin with: Labor groups are already campaigning to block proposed line speed changes in meatpacking plants that would make the job more dangerous, for example.

Plant-based foods will continue their meteoric rise in popularity

In 2018 and 2019 we predicted that plant-based foods would continue to rise in popularity and accessibility and we were right. But sales for plant-based meat, specifically, grew exponentially more than anyone could have predicted. Brands like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat and Oatly have been joined by plant-based products from major meat and dairy companies like Tyson, JBS and Whitewave, making not-really-meat and not-really-milk major market opportunities for big and small companies alike (to the tune of $23.1 billion by 2025). The coronavirus pandemic shone a light on some of the industrial meat industry’s cruelest practices: Unsafe working conditions and virus outbreaks temporarily reduced capacity at plants enough to force the euthanization and disposal of animals that got too old to slaughter. The public seeing both the industry’s cruelty and fragility in such stark light may have contributed to the explosive growth of demand for plant-based meats this year.

Looking ahead

In 2021, sales of plant-based products will continue to rise and more companies will get in on the action — at both the production and retail level — to be sure. But the same major questions persist that should give us all pause: Are the sales enough to move the needle on meat consumption, as these companies claim they will? And, while these foods might produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than livestock production, can they really be called sustainable when they are made from the very same problematic ingredients used to feed factory-farmed cattle and dairy cows? Is the halo of health surrounding them a mirage? Regardless, it’s likely that people’s newly heightened awareness about the problems with meat production will give even more wind to plant-based meat’s sails, despite the lingering unanswered questions about its sustainability and health.

A return to normalcy at the USDA, EPA and FDA

After four years of the Trump administration’s meddling, many federal agencies look very different than they used to. Many saw their budgets slashed, and some were even led by administrators — like the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change-denying chief Scott Pruitt — who wanted to break them down from the inside. The Department of Agriculture wasn’t spared from this damage: The agency’s research arms were moved to Kansas City, hobbling research efforts and causing a massive departure of scientists and other professionals from the agency. These disruptions have big consequences: Looser regulations on food safety and pollutants have led to fewer safety inspections and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Reduction in research capacity means that important statistics went unreported, impacting the calculations that determine things like minimum wage for farmworkers.

Looking ahead

The upcoming change in administration offers hope that this combative approach to federal agencies will end. President-elect Joe Biden’s platform for rural America pledges to restore funding for USDA conservation programs, among other changes. We don’t know yet if relocated groups like the USDA’s ERS will return to their headquarters in Washington, DC and rehire their personnel, but the remaining staff at other agencies appear ready to get back to work: observers suggest that recent actions at the EPA, such as the publication of a report showing the herbicide glyphosate is harmful to most endangered species, are signs that agency scientists are eager to return to their core mission.

These changes are all welcome, but some have argued these departments need even more dramatic refocusing: promoting healthy food access and climate change-fighting local food networks rather than catering to agribusiness interests. With the announcement that President Obama’s secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, will be returning to Biden’s cabinet, it’s unclear how much change is really on the table.

Black farmers will fight for land justice

This summer, as the country began to reckon with its racist roots of colonialism, land theft and slavery, food and agriculture were, thankfully, part of the conversation. One important truth confronted: Black landowners have systematically been stripped of their land. There are currently many different efforts to help reset land ownership and return what was lost. During his campaign for the presidency, Biden promised Black farmers that he would work to advance equity in rural America with a specific focus on farmers of color.

In late 2020, Sens. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Justice for Black Farmers Act, intended to correct racial inequities in agricultural policies and institutions and racial discrimination at the USDA, including inequalities that existed under Vilsack’s direction in his previous term as secratary of Agriculture. (It’s worth noting that not all Black farmers are satisfied with the oversights of the Black Farmers Act.)

Looking ahead

Vilsack’s return to the USDA has infuriated farmers of color and their allies, and called into question Biden’s commitment to doing anything meaningful for farmers of color. But eight years have passed since he left the post, and the world has changed a lot since then. This issue has momentum and the people who voted for Biden will not forget the promises made. If the Biden team is looking for additional ways to achieve a more equitable future through land policy, the National Young Farmers Coalition has some suggestions available in a new report.

A reckoning for farm aid and subsidies

Trump’s trade war dramatically reshaped the way that some farms do business, and led the USDA to give out billions of dollars of direct payments to help farmers recoup lost sales. When the pandemic disrupted farmers’ sales even further, these payments increased again, totaling more than $46 billion in 2020. While the funds have become an important lifeline for many farms, economists are worried that these payments — much like other subsidies — are a dangerous tool to use in the long term: They’re too expensive to maintain indefinitely, but retracting them too soon would spell financial doom for many farmers.

Looking ahead

While the end of the pandemic is in sight, major changes to American life — specifically how and where we eat — mean that the market for many farmers may take a long time to recover. Farmers who rely heavily on exports may not see an instant recovery with Trump’s departure either: Biden’s team doesn’t plan to immediately end tariffs against China, and global economic uncertainty means that markets could be unreliable.

Climate change will be treated as real by people in charge

Last year, the explosion of the Youth Climate Movement made it look like 2020 might be the year that world leaders got serious about climate change. Sadly, between the pandemic and other distractions, that didn’t happen, especially in the US. Nov. 4, 2020, marked the US’s formal withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, capping off a year and a presidency marked by climate change denial. The Trump administration rolled back additional environmental regulations this year, along with opening up new areas of the Arctic for drilling. And this wasn’t just a US trend; while companies pledged to pressure Brazil after last year’s massive fires in the Amazon, vast new areas of delicate habitat were torched for development, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the effects of climate change were more apparent than ever: a record-breaking California fire season and the news that 2020 is set to be the hottest year on record added a sense of near-apocalyptic doom to an already tense year.

Looking ahead

The US looks poised to resume its international commitments to action on climate change, with the Biden administration announcing its intention to return to and strengthen the Paris accords and appointing John Kerry and Former EPA head Gina McCarthy as “Climate Czars” to oversee international and domestic climate policy in an expansion of a role that hasn’t been filled since 2011. All this signals a good start, though it isn’t enough to safeguard the future; it is almost certain that global emissions will climb again as economies start to recover from COVID-19, making nationwide and local action more important. With talk of carbon markets for farmers and more companies announcing soil health and other initiatives, we predict that regenerative agriculture will continue to grow as part of the proposed solution. As regenerative agriculture expands its horizons, however, there are outstanding questions about what defines “regenerative,” whether industrial monocultures can be truly regenerative and how the movement can be more inclusive of Indigenous people and people of color.

The plastic revolution will come back to life

Last year, we anticipated the fight against single-use plastics in the food system would continue, and while there was early progress — several cities rolled out plastic bag bans, for example — this movement was quickly derailed by the pandemic. Plastic packaging boomed as restaurants pivoted to takeout, coffee shops embraced disposable cups and some stores even stopped allowing reusable bags. And although the plastic industry pushed the narrative that reusables were unsafe, the subsequent science showed they may even be safer than disposables. Still, the “hygiene theater” of pandemic safety has a long hangover, and many businesses have been slow to accept reusables again — even using disposables for dining in.

Looking ahead

As pandemic recovery moves forward in 2021, we’re confident that the fight against plastic in the food system will regain its strength. This month a group of 550 organizations wrote to the Biden administration demanding action against the plastic pollution crisis, with specific calls for everything from ending subsidies to plastic production companies to eliminate the purchasing of plastic, disposable products by the federal government and replace it with reusables. Whether the administration will have the teeth to stand up to the petrochemical industry is dubious, but we predict companies and consumers will forge ahead. You can be part of the solution and take up our plastic reduction pledge.

Home cooking is here to stay (at least until there’s a vaccine)

2020 was the year that everyone became a home cook, mostly not by choice. Faced with stay-at-home orders, people who were able to stocked up their pantries and started to cook for themselves in record numbers. Sourdough bread from scratch, dried beans and scallions regrown on windowsills found their way into people’s kitchens. Celebrity chefs and regular people took to the internet to teach people how to handle all of these ingredients. Even nine months in, the number of people eating at home more regularly than they did pre-pandemic has remained high. Also setting records: seed purchases and subsistence home gardening.

Looking ahead

For the foreseeable future, people will (in theory at least) still be staying home, meaning more meals eaten — and likely cooked —at home. There have already been a few cycles of excitement and dread around home cooking, and we predict there will be a few more cycles to come. There will be more loaves of sourdough and more pots of beans in all of our futures.

The anti-porn religious lobby just destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of pornographers

On Tuesday, December 8th, porn-hosting giant Pornhub removed 10 million videos from its platform. The reason for the massive scrub was the result of the company’s recognition that sex traffickers had used the site to post videos of rape, sexual assault, and child abuse. On December 14th, Pornhub released a statement, which said, “Last week, we enacted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history. We banned unverified uploaders from posting new content, eliminated downloads, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations…As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program.”

They should have said: Under pressure from the porn abolitionist movement that operates under the guise of thwarting sex trafficking, we are going to compromise the economic lives of hundreds of thousands of performers—during a pandemic, no less. I respect and commend those writing and speaking for people who have been trafficked and teenagers whose abusers post revenge porn on Pornhub or other sites. However, who is speaking for the hundreds of thousands of pornographers whose economic livelihoods have been served upon an altar for penance?

Certainly, sex trafficking isa scourge. But censorship is not the answer. As a Pornhub user put it, “The internet is becoming more and more sanitized every day because of people taking extreme measures to make us ‘safer.’ It’s censorship masquerading as public safety.”

In Pornhub’s statement, the industry leader noted that the social media giant Facebook reported 84 million cases of flagged items involving sexual abuse on the platform over the past three years. At the same time, the Internet Watchdog Foundation found only 118 such cases on Pornhub. Thus, as Pornhub wrote in their announcement, “it is clear that Pornhub is being targeted not because of our policies and how we compare to our peers, but because we are an adult content platform.”

Let me frame this differently: 0.0008 percent of videos on Pornhub featured sexual abuse. As a result, Pornhub elected to purge over 10 million videos and users whose accounts had already been verified. This is a far cry from the site Nicholas Kristof decried as being “infested with rape videos.” Yes, as Kristof says, we can agree that “promoting assaults on children or anyone without consent is unconscionable.” However, Pornhub nor any other mainstream porn site is invested in such promotion.

Now, in this watershed moment, let us hope nobody falls asleep at the wheel. Sleight of the hand can be hard to catch. The organizations behind the curtain advocating for the purge, such as the National Center on Exploitation and Trafficking Hub, have an end game that is not merely about trafficking or the abuse of children. These are abolitionist groups that see all porn as a public health crisis and that seek to abolish all porn as we know it.

Not only does the porn abolitionists’ momentum raise serious concerns regarding free speech and the First Amendment, but puts people’s livelihoods at risk. “Pornhub should have also stood up for sex workers,” said Akynos, a sex worker and founder of the Black Sex Workers Collective.

When Pornhub hit the panic button, they did not merely delete the accounts posting illegal content. They removed videos from even their verified users. The only content remaining was from people in their model program. Many online pornographers believe that the end result was that Pornhub became a subscription site only and not public. “No viewers means no money,” one Pornhub content producer said regarding the purge.

Compounding pornographers’ expected loss of wages, Mastercard and Visa announced, immediately following the Pornhub purge, that they would no longer process payments from Pornhub, effectively blocking revenue from the site. The move was a reaction to Kristof’s Times article about the platform hosting videos depicting child abuse.

“What bothers me is that Visa and Mastercard are major card companies that have now pulled back from allowing sex workers to make a living because of this one company’s giant misstep,” Akynos told me. “It won’t just be Pornhub that they aren’t messing with, it will be everyone else… So, now we have to figure out new ways in order to make money, and this is what sex workers have to do…we are constantly getting trampled on, and then we have to figure out how we can reinvent ourselves and go around and jump through these hoops just so we can make a living.”

Something similar happened several years ago following Congress’ passage of FOSTA/SESTA, two related bills whose acronyms stand for “Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act” and “Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act” respectively. Though ostensibly a bill designed to halt sex trafficking, it had the ancillary effect of squelching the incomes of millions of sex workers by suppressing or censoring the online platforms where they find clients. Indeed, after FOSTA/SESTA’s passage, companies such as Payoneer, PayPal, and American Express stopped taking payments from sexual enterprises. In many cases, this meant that sex workers now had to find new sources of income in more dangerous locales in real life.

Beyond Pornhub, the anti-porn lobby is calling for all credit card companies to stop taking payments from all porn sites. Jessie Sage, sex worker and co-founder of the Peepshow Podcast, and I discussed the effects of this crisis on laborers—a subject she unpacks with sex workers on her newest episode. Jessie told me, “I believe that this will have ripple effects on our industry that extend far beyond Pornhub. Mindgeek [Pornhub’s parent company] is the largest company in the industry, and if Visa/Mastercard is willing to pull its financial services from them, the smaller companies are not far behind.”

Further, Jessie went on to talk about the financial harms of censorship and the continuing knee-jerk moves from payment processors. “Right now, 100% of my income comes from the sex industry. About 30% comes from advertising on the podcast (which by the way, our advertisers are all pornographers), and the rest comes from phone sex, video sales, and Onlyfans. So, if clip sites are no longer allowed to process payments, if the bank accounts of performers get shut down, if I can’t sell my content to my customers, this will impact both my sex work revenue stream and my multi-media magazine (Peepshow) because it is all funded from the same sources.”

This moment is a blip on the screen and part of a much longer history of the coalition between the anti-porn and religious lobbies to rid our society of the so-called “filth” that nets billions in profits yearly, providing an honest living for so many.

Pornhub’s new policy and the ricochet it caused did far more harm to content producers than it did to sex traffickers or pedophiles. The purge caused irrevocable damage to pornographers, and compounds the precarity they and other sex workers have faced under the pandemic. Indeed, Pornhub’s new policies will have the most devastating effects on marginalized pornographers. People of color and trans performers, for example, have found spaces for individual entrepreneurship online, in an industry that historically would rarely hire them. We must recognize that Pornhub’s censorship and the move to restrict payment processing for all sex workers will have the most devastating effects on the most marginalized.

Many content producers are scared, dismayed, concerned about the online porn industry’s future, and livelihoods. I spoke with Trip Richards, a successful online model, who described this situation’s stakes in detail. Trip explained:

When I first heard of the decision by Visa and Mastercard to stop processing payments to verified adult models on Pornhub, I was dismayed. I knew immediately that the decision would do nothing to address concerns of illegal or objectionable content on the site (or anywhere else on the net) but rather that it would remove the income that tens of thousands of verified models, including myself, rely upon… Losing this income in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and national economic crisis is especially devastating. During the pandemic, record numbers of adults have turned to online sex work—sharing their personal videos on platforms like Pornhub, Onlyfans, and Justforfans to make ends meet and joyfully share their own self-expression. The decision by the credit card companies to fundamentally shut down Pornhub disproportionately impacted minorities, including people of color, trans people, and people with disabilities—as they are the folks most likely to participate consensually in sex work due to its autonomy, scheduling flexibility, and inclusiveness of diverse bodies. They also represent the groups who are most economically vulnerable, especially during this pandemic when so many low-wage, gig-economy, and service-industry jobs have evaporated…But snatching away income from verified models who had already complied with all the legal requirements was not the right way to ensure a safe online space. In fact, the long-term consequences of such a move are invariably to push objectionable content deeper underground—where it is harder to discover, remove, and prosecute—while simultaneously forcing people currently involved in consensual online sex work, like myself, toward more risky ventures where we have less autonomy and less financial stability. Speaking personally, as a transgender man who has been a model since 2014, sharing my work on online platforms has offered me financial freedom and personal happiness I never thought possible, and has allowed me to stay safe while pursuing my own goals as an artist, educator, and activist. Losing this stability now is absolutely devastating.

We must listen to the voices of adult content producers. Saving, protecting, and supporting sex trafficking and sexual abuse survivors do not have to come at the expense of other marginalized people. This is not a zero-sum game, even if the politically savvy master illusionists in the anti-porn lobby want you to believe it is.

# # #

Update 12/31: A Visa spokesperson responded to the story, noting that the “suspension of acceptance privileges for Pornhub and other MindGeek content sharing platforms that host user-generated content remains in effect pending the completion of our ongoing investigation.” The spokesperson added that they will “reinstate acceptance privileges for MindGeek sites that offer professionally produced adult studio content that is subject to requirements designed to ensure compliance with the law.”

“Disclosure” director Sam Feder on the trans TV experience: “People don’t know what they don’t know”

On June 9, 2014, Laverne Cox was featured on the cover of Time magazine next to a headline that read, “The Transgender Tipping Point — America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.” In the mainstream’s view, this was a signal of progress; Cox at the time was starring in “Orange Is the New Black” and received her first Emmy nomination that year for her work on the Netflix series, making history in doing so.

To “Disclosure” director Sam Feder, this supposed new era of visibility and acceptance wasn’t being felt in his community. That led him to embark upon years of research about this disconnect between what the media was saying about progress for transgender people and reality as they’re living it.

“Very quickly I found out that 80% of Americans say they’ve never met a trans person, and that all they know about us is what they’ve seen in film and TV,” Feder told Salon in a recent phone interview. “And when you look at that history, you see that we’ve been distorted and dehumanized in every way possible. And dehumanization always leads to violence.”

“Disclosure,” executive produced by Cox, is the stunning result of Feder’s thorough inquiry, a one-hour and 47 minute examination of how film and television shapes how we see ourselves and how others see us, and more specifically how psychologically perilous that can be for marginalized communities.

For a century transgender men and women have seen themselves portrayed in film and TV as deceptive, as objects of mockery or disgust. The rolling impacts of that are all around us, evidenced in political attacks on trans rights and the rollback of legal healthcare protection for transgender people. There’s also the miserable statistic reported by the Human Rights Campaign that so far in 2020, at least 42 transgender or gender non-conforming people have died violently, the majority of whom were Black and Latinx transgender women.

But this also is the year that Elliot Page came out as trans, a revelation largely met with support. Feder’s film is at the center of this discourse, thoughtfully examining the relationship between pop culture and real life through multiple perspectives and with ample reflection, moving contemplation and humor.

With awards season getting underway and nominations expected to be announced soon, we spoke with Feder about “Disclosure” and what it lends to the discussion of transgender portrayals and rights in 2020. As always, this conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you take me back to the beginning of this process? What made you decide that this was the film that you wanted to make?

So, why disclosure? I think I’ve been ruminating on the ideas of disclosure for many years, probably for decades. You know, I grew up watching daytime talk shows. I saw “The Crying Game” in theaters in 1992, and I think I began to make films in my early twenties because I felt so alienated by it. And I really stopped watching what was out there for a long time.

And at the same time I’d been in conversations with most of the people you see in the film, right? This is my community. These are the people that I’ve come up with. I’ve known Yance [Ford] for nearly 20 years. Lilly Wachowski, her partner and I have been friends for almost as long. You know, I interviewed Susan Stryker and Jen Richards for, I don’t know, probably two or three other projects along the way.

And then suddenly 2014 sneaks up and mainstream media outlets are shining a light on trans visibility… but at the same time, the trans people that I was in community with were not at a tipping point, right? The people I was surrounded and living day to day with know we’re still disproportionately unemployed, lacking access to safe and affordable housing and healthcare.

I really wanted to understand why the mainstream media was declaring a change for a community it had so little connection to. And then I wanted to understand what led to this wave of visibility that we were seeing. And I thought creating a history of trans representation from the perspective of that unique moment could start to provide some of the answers I got.

So I was really wrapping my mind around this paradox of a celebratory increase of trans visibility, along with the increase of social and legislative violence. Along with that I wanted to see what the media taught the world to think about trans people and what we have learned to think about ourselves. It felt urgent that more voices within a historical context were added to this emerging public discourse.

One of the things that makes this film so important is in the way it reminds the audience that so many trans characters are part of stories where disclosure is treated as the big twist, and the typical reaction of disgust is completely normalized. Even seemingly innocuous or well-meaning series or films have gotten this wrong.

Deconstructing these images and really researching all of this must have been quite an experience for you. What was it like to process all of this personally, as you were making this film?

You know, it was simultaneously excruciating and validating. Because when you see this history that points to the transphobia you’ve witnessed for so long, for me this was proof. “Here’s the data, here’s the proof.” And it’s a bummer that the onus of proof is on the person experiencing it.

But you know, so often every marginalized communities are told that they’re too sensitive, that what they’re experiencing isn’t real. Here, we saw over a hundred years of this proof and all these images point back to the same thing that we’re seeing arguments around transphobic legislation built upon today, which is that all of these images we see in one way or another say that trans people aren’t real, that we don’t exist. For that onus to be on the trans person is absurd.

It just immediately says that any trans person entering any space has to explain that they’re not who they are choosing to be and living as. That by simply showing up in that way, to have to have those reveal moments — to have to be relegated to being a joke, to being a psychopathic killer to having mental illness, having all of those be the reasons one is or isn’t who they say they are — just erases us from being part of society. So while it was at times gut wrenching, humiliating and aggravating, it was also really validating to see this history that had not been talked about before.

And I imagine it must have been difficult to decide which footage would be included. There’s so much of it, and you had a limited amount of time.

Yes, you’re absolutely right. There’s so, so much we aren’t able to include. I spent the first three years entirely focused on the research, harnessing a mountain of footage. And ultimately I wanted to base this film on personal experiences, to have the personal anecdote be what drives the narrative, moving away from the survey film that’s either semantic or chronological. I really want it shaped by trans people’s experiences and memories and perspectives.

So there’s still a lot missing, but it was really based on personal anecdotes that show how people have ingested this material, how people have been able to love something uncritically and be in that uncomfortable space of understanding that this thing that they’ve been attracted to has also been hurting them. I think that is what also tends to invite a larger audience in, because we all share this nostalgia … And I wanted to structure it in a way based on memory, in the way that we’re reflecting on our past and projecting that onto our future, because progress isn’t linear.

As I was watching, one thing that stuck with me was the way the film re-evaluates the delight of things like the Bugs Bunny opera scene [from the Looney Tunes short “What’s Opera, Doc?”], and views it as something very empowering. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t love that character and that bit, so look at it in a different way was really wonderful. That’s a very conscious choice in the context of this subject matter, to bring a little bit of levity into this discussion. Maybe ‘levity’ is not the best word…

No, that is the best word. That is definitely something that was constantly at my mind on my mind. I didn’t want this to just be a hundred percent downer. There is no monolithic trans experience, as I’m sure you know, and our protagonists have very divergent views on the same thing.

Having in particular, the Bugs Bunny scene and the “Yentl” scene, having these sort of iconic images shown through a trans lens brings that delight and that excitement that can only be shown in this context. And it was those moments when Susan Stryker and Lilly Wachowski talked about Bugs Bunny, and then when Laverne Cox first told me the story about “Yentl,” that I was blown away. Like, those are things that never occurred to me that could be seen in such a delightful way. And that is where so much of the tenderness in the film was held.

One of the things that this film can do for people who are watching it is add context to a lot of the conversations we’re having about identity right now. Obviously trans visibility didn’t begin in 2020, but even the concept of people asking others to state their pronouns — that’s very new. And a lot of people remain resistant to it, if not outright refusing to do it.

I bring that up because one of the things that stuck with me from “Disclosure,” and that I’ve paraphrased to folks since I’ve seen it, is the quote where Laverne counsels giving people the opportunity to learn, grow and change.

You know, ultimately Laverne and I really committed to always believe in two things: One is that people don’t know what they don’t know. And the second is that everyone deserves a second chance. And we wanted to hold that nuance that the film holds, again, critiquing with love.

Even the most well-intentioned allies often struggle with conflict. And so they will often defer to silence rather than fear of making mistakes because our culture doesn’t allow for second chances. And so I think something I’ve seen the film do is it’s given people more confidence to be able really take part in these conversation they haven’t felt prepared to take part of before. That now they feel they have this understanding and sense of history. Now they feel they know 30 trans people, right? That they just spent two hours watching and listening to them. I think it has allowed for a more complicated relationship to the issues and conversations that we were able to have before.

That’s why we highlight, you know, the evolution of how Oprah tells trans stories and how Ryan Murphy would tell trans stories. They both had a very problematic history, but now they’re both leading the way with beautiful work.

And this has been such an important year for those conversations for so many reasons. As we were talking about before, the epidemic of violence against trans women of color continues. Then, recently Elliot Page revealed that he is trans. In viewing such developments there’s a clarity, I think, that comes when the broader audience is identifying with trans men and women who are in the news for reasons other than a crime having been committed against them or, you know, not simply living their lives.

This led to conversations about deadnaming, for instance. So to return to that original point, from my perspective we’ve witnessed forward movement while at the same time learning how far we have to go. How do you view where we stand now?

When it comes to how the media chooses to report on trans people, sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know and it’s really innocuous. And I really feel like you just point it out and move on. … Those who didn’t know what they were doing, they’re going to do better next time. What I saw that was really helpful to me was that most people didn’t care that Elliot came out. They were just like, “Oh, cool, okay, next. What’s the next headline for today?”

Whereas maybe a year ago, 18 months ago, the conversation would just be so much more scandalous and so much more salacious… People would just would have gotten so obsessed with things that are none of their business. And here the worst that we saw was that people were getting his name and his pronoun wrong. I was actually feeling really hopeful that it was not that big of a deal.

What do you think would be a true tipping point where you feel that we’re actually in a place where we, as a culture, are evolving and things are getting better?

That story is one of them. And…I think when it becomes part of how we’re looking at our local politicians Like when we’re deciding, for one of those essential questions to be, “What do they think about trans rights. Do they think trans people belong in the public space? Okay. They get my vote.” When that is just as important as everything else that we’re looking at, then I think that that’ll be a huge statement on how trans people are seen in the world. Right. Because right now we’re just seeing one effort after another to keep us out of public view, to keep us from our fundamental human rights, to keep us from accessing health care, to limit our employment protections. And it is happening again and again and again.

So when we see that non-trans people are questioning that, then we’ll know that we’re really seen as part of society in the way that we deserve to be seen, in the fabric of every culture and society, for all time.

“Disclosure” is currently streaming on Netflix.

Best of 2020: I tried to call my mother to say goodbye

It’s still sinking in that I’ll never hear my mother’s voice again. Of course, I haven’t heard it in a long time already.

Of the myriad ethical conundrums the coronavirus pandemic keeps presenting us daily, one there seems no guidance for yet is what all of us who are estranged from our families are supposed to do now. My father left before I was born. I have met him a handful of times in my life. I have no idea how he and his wife might be doing in all of this, or even quite how to find him. I haven’t seen my mother in nearly a decade, and I’ve barely spoken to her over the past 15 years. I have spent most of my life as an orphan, one who just happens to have two living parents. I had made my peace with that. Then the virus hit.

Mom was an expert in the art of social distancing well ahead of the curve. When I was growing up, her displeasure — not just at me, by the way, but anyone who failed her unspoken tests — always manifested in icy silences. As an adult, I learned to accept that any perceived slight would be met with a period of abruptly canceled visits and unanswered phone calls. Usually they’d last a few months, followed by a warm, out of the blue communication, as if no time at all had passed or no grudge had ever been held.

But as the years went by and I started raising my own family, those stretches became longer and longer. The last time she checked in semi-regularly was when I was in cancer treatment. Then she stopped completely. For the last few years, when I called, the phone would just ring and ring until I gave up, defeated. There were no more birthday calls for my daughters. She did however send a note to my mother-in-law, saying she would no longer be sending her a Christmas card. I was being punished for something, and so was everyone who mattered to me as well.

I may not have understood, but I accepted her clear indications she wanted no contact. And I had to go on hope that if something serious was going on, her husband would put everything aside and tell me. A year ago, I saw a cousin at a family funeral. She said she’d spoken with my stepfather recently, and when she’d asked him about my mother — her godmother — he only said, “She’s forgetful.”

Over the past few weeks, as the virus has intensified, I’ve found myself increasingly concerned about her. So a few days ago, I dialed her number. I expected it to just keep ringing as usual. I considered that I might get through to her, though I had no playbook for what to say if I did. What I had never predicted was that my stepfather would pick up.

My mother, he explained, wasn’t home. She has advanced dementia and she’s in a rehab facility for a recent spill she took. The dementia had been coming for on the last few years.

I tried to reach back to the last time I talked to her and remember how she sounded. Had I noticed, had I wondered? She’d certainly been coherent. But I couldn’t remember a time in my life our conversations had not been puzzling, when I might have put down the phone and not immediately tried to parse what was real.

Her dementia hadn’t been the cause of our estrangement; that had been in the works my whole life. But now I saw that it helped drive that final wedge. My stepfather was candid about how hard it has been on him. He said he figured it had been none of his business if she didn’t want to talk to my family and me. And he admitted that she told him she’d written me off after I had said something especially cruel to her the last time we spoke. Except that I never said it. Our supposed dramatic exchange didn’t even sound real; it sounded like something from one of the daytime soap operas she used to watch before I came home from school. Her husband had believed it, unquestioningly. “She must have told me that story a hundred times,” he said. I’ve no doubt she believed it herself before long.

I’ve spent a lot of time and therapy wondering how this story between my mother and me would end. If she’d reach out for reconciliation. If I would get to say goodbye. If anybody would even tell me when she died. And if I’d feel sorrow or relief when it was all over. I’m beginning to see that the answer is both. Neither nostalgia nor my mom’s current state will change the past, nor make her a person who was ever suited to motherhood. But that’s just the hand we were both dealt here. There’s no room any more for anger or disappointment. Who would it serve? What would it change? Mostly what I feel is just a late-hour kind of forgiveness.

Families fall apart for all kinds of reasons, and even a pandemic is not an imperative for anybody to rush to fix things long broken, or change things that can’t be changed. I called my mom’s number because it felt like the right thing for me, knowing that every one of us has to decide what’s best for our physical and mental health now. “I’m surprised you called,” my stepfather said. “I love her,” I answered.

Let me tell you about the woman who raised me. She was the fifth of six kids in a working class, Irish Catholic family. She was petite and pretty, in a young Shirley MacLaine way. When she was in high school, she wrote a poem about wanting to be a flight attendant. She got pregnant when she was 21. Her parents threatened to kick her out if she didn’t get married, so it’s not a stretch to see where she learned that maternal acceptance is a conditional thing. Her first marriage lasted all of three months. She was a good dancer. She could be really funny. She lied about things she didn’t need to lie about, and sometimes she shoplifted. She loved “Magnum, P.I.” She preferred the Saturday vigil mass so she could make a big breakfast on Sunday. She flirted shamelessly and with everybody. She loved doing laundry. She loved me, too, in her way. She’s gone now, in every sense except the last one.

In a facility somewhere in New Jersey where residents are not allowed visitors for fear of contamination, my mother quietly passes her days. I know it’s going to get worse, but right now her husband says she’s relatively calm and comfortable. In her mind, I’m still a child, and her mother, who died 40 years ago, is still alive. Tom Selleck sometimes comes to visit. Outside, the virus rages, and here in New York every day brings grimmer and more frightening news. But when she looks out her window, Mom just sees her old cat playing in the grass. She is a young woman again. She has somehow pulled the trick of escaping this terror that keeps me awake in the middle of the night, worrying for my own daughters. She’s safe inside her mind and her memories. And I’m happy for her.

Here are the kitchen tools and appliances that made our year of pandemic cooking better

The way America cooked changed a lot this year. We’ve been through ingredient shortages, purchasing limits, viral recipes and, likely, a lot of takeout. But along the way, several tools and appliances have made being in the kitchen a lot more tolerable this year — in some cases, even indulgent.

Here is our list of MVP kitchen tools that guided the way we ate and drank in 2020.

Dough Hook

I’m one of the many Americans who used their extra time at home during the pandemic to hone my bread baking skills. According to data from King Arthur Flour, in the first nine months of 2020, the company sold more than 111 million pounds of flour, accounting for more than a 50% increase from 2019.

Kneading dough is an integral part of bread baking; it helps cross-link proteins to create a strong gluten network, which helps loaves expand without bursting. And while doing it by hand can be a really satisfying process, I love that the dough hook on my standing mixer helps me form a smooth, compact dough ball in closer to eight minutes, as opposed to 20. This year, it kept me baking more often — and, since practice makes perfect, I’ve noticed a difference in my skill level from March to now.

Immersion Blender

I’ve been eager to share the immersion blender gospel with anyone who will listen. You can do so much with one without schlepping out or dirtying up a heavy mixer — which you’re probably already using for bread; see above. Like what? Well, I’m glad you asked.

During the pandemic, I’ve used my immersion blender to emulsify homemade mayonnaise and blitz together dips for my snack plates, to create single-serving smoothies and milkshakes, to pulse vegetables into creamy soups and pasta sauces. (This fall, I practically lived on this pumpkin sage pasta, where I subbed in cubed and pureed butternut squash for the canned pumpkin.)

What I most appreciated about the immersion blender is that, during a period of time when I thought I would scream if I saw another dirty dish in the sink, I was able to create quick, healthy meals without creating too much mess. That felt like a luxury in itself.

Sodastream

“Like many people, what I’ve actually learned from this pandemic is to cherish those creature comforts of home, to really prioritize those little things that make being stuck at home all day every day a lot more bearable,” Salon’s Amanda Marcotte wrote in September. “It’s why there’s been a rush on skin care products, sweat pants, and bidets during this pandemic.”

For her, that comfort was her Sodastream. She grew accustomed to the company’s Diet Dr. Pepper knock-off and their pink grapefruit soda — and was confronted with her “naked need for fizzy drinks in a time of great suffering and pain” amid a pandemic shortage of CO2 canisters. You can read all about it here.

Coffee Accessories

Speaking of creature comforts, I’ve written how this was the year that I promised myself I would get better at making good at-home coffee. I talked with the pros, I bought better beans, I added muddled berries and bitters to my cold brew.

This was also the year that I bought myself a French press, at the urging of Ren Doughty, the outreach and customer support coordinator at Batdorf & Bronson Roasters (and at-home coffee enthusiast). There are a lot of benefits to the French press method. A big one is the texture or mouthfeel of your coffee will actually be different — velvety and more sumptuous — because the oils from the coffee are preserved in the brewing process. More broadly, a French press is great to experiment with because it really puts the person in charge of the final product instead of a machine.

Then, a couple months ago, my boyfriend’s parents sent us a really nice countertop espresso machine with an integrated milk frother. Now, more often than not, I start my mornings with a cappuccino with frothy oat milk. It feels deeply indulgent.

Electric Kettle

For Salon contributor Michelle Eighenheer, her upgrade from a stovetop to a countertop electric kettle was one of her favorite trade-offs, in a year of admittedly terrible trade-offs otherwise.

“I don’t just flip the switch each morning to heat water for a cup of tea, it also comes in handy while cooking with several pans and am unwilling or just too impatient to put on water to boil in a new pot,” she said. “It only shaves a few minutes off the task of boiling water, but somehow it’s still gratifying each time I use it.”

Dutch Oven

Finally, this was the year that I finally invested in a good Dutch oven — just in time for Braising Season™. I’ve already used it to make Chris Shepherd’s Vietnamese braised turkey necks, from his book “Cook Like a Local,” for Thanksgiving, and an embarrassing amount of ragout. This was the year that I also found out, thanks to J. Kenji López-Alt, that it was an essential tool for making a better loaf of bread in your home kitchen.

Southern California’s ICU capacity is at zero. Here’s what that means

On Tuesday, the state of California’s health and human services secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, announced that the state’s stay-at-home order would be extended indefinitely for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley.

The order, which covers an 11-county Southern California area, took effect on Dec. 6 and was set to expire January 4, 2021. The news was not a surprise, but the extension of the stay-at-home order illustrates how the state’s biggest surge is threatening to exhaust intensive care units. It also comes at a time marking the grim milestone of being the deadliest month in the U.S. since the beginning of the pandemic, as numbers continue to surge.

“We essentially are projecting that the ICU capacity is not improving in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, and that demand will continue to exceed capacity,” Ghaly said during a Tuesday press briefing.

ICU capacity, which has been the determining threshold on whether parts of California have to adhere to a stay-at-home order or not, is at zero percent — and like Ghaly said, that does not appear to be changing any time soon. Falling below 15 percent triggered California counties to adhere to a three-week order earlier this month.

Unfortunately, what California is experiencing is on trend for much of the country, which is a shrinkage in hospital resources and ICU beds. Arizona is currently having its worst surge since July, and an estimated 56 percent of the state’s ICU beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients as of December 28. Parts of Nebraska, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and New Hampshire are facing similarly dire situations, according to the University of Minnesota’s COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project. An estimated 62.8 million Americans live in counties where hospitals reported ICU bed occupancy of 90 percent or more earlier this month.

But what does that mean that ICU capacity is at “zero,” and what happens when ICU beds reach zilch? And how does it affect people who have non-COVID-19 emergencies?

Dr. Robert Cherry, chief medical and safety officer at UCLA Health, explained to Salon in an interview there’s a difference between available ICU bed occupancy and ICU capacity.

“I know it’s concerning to hear reports that there are zero intensive care unit capacity in Los Angeles and in Southern California, however it’s important to know there’s a difference between ICU beds and ICU capacity ” Cherry said. “We have the ability to provide critical care in other locations, outside of the intensive care unit, that includes the emergency department, and recovery rooms that are often used for post-operative ICU beds.”

According to California’s Department of Public Health, hospitals are required to submit daily reports on the total numbers of available staffed ICU beds, including both staffed ICU beds and staffed surge beds. Staffing is critical, as there must be healthcare workers available to take care of the people occupying ICU beds.

ICU capacity is a calculation that does not include neonatal ICU beds and pediatric intensive care unit beds. It only takes into account “standardized current adult ICU capacity,” meaning that the calculation of a California region’s ICU capacity is meant to ensure that sufficient ICU bed capacity is available for non-COVID related patients, too.

“You want to be able to take care of both COVID-19 patients as well as other types of emergencies and planned procedures,” Cherry said. The main objective, he added, is to ensure that the region’s hospitals are “maximized” for both COVID-19 patients and those who aren’t suffering from COVID-19. “We still need to take care of heart attacks, strokes, pregnancies and the injured,” he added.

Cherry emphasized that people in Southern California should still go to the emergency room if they have an emergency, and emphasized the importance of those with chronic conditions seeking treatment when needed.

“It’s actually more important than ever that people with chronic conditions take care of themselves during this pandemic,” Cherry said, noting that certain chronic conditions “predispose people to more severe COVID-19” cases.

Yet there are hospitals in Los Angeles county that have already reached a breaking point, and drastically exceeded their ICU capacity. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, some hospitals have diverted ambulances elsewhere or patients have had to wait for hours. Last weekend, according to the report, Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center reportedly had to close its doors to all ambulance traffic for half a day. Another hospital, Memorial Hospital of Gardena, had to suspend ambulance calls for four hours to buy time to move patients. In some hospitals, patients have had to be placed in gift shops and conference rooms.

Cherry said UCLA Health hasn’t had to turn away patients yet, but said the situation is fluid.

“We’ve been fortunate, for now, not having those prolonged wait times, but of course if the surge continues on past the holidays we could be potentially impacted,” Cherry said. “Space is admittedly more tight and staffing resources are more strained with increasing patients, but we do have contingency plans for these types of scenarios.”

When these contingency plans are exacerbated, patients may not be able to make their own medical choices on their treatment. For example, if a patient needs extra care in an ICU, but there are no resources available, “their case will be reviewed, along with other patient cases, to determine how these resources should be shared throughout the hospital,” a December 2020 community letter from Huntington Hospital stated.

Ghaly told the Los Angeles Times that all hospitals are strained, but the crisis is more pronounced for smaller hospitals right now. Last month New Mexico exceeded its ICU capacity; many of the rural hospitals had to call around to other hubs and some patients had to go on waiting lists. In California, some hospitals started rationing care, starting with a temporary ban on elective surgeries.

According to ABC News, Kaiser Permanente has already started to postpone “non-urgent” surgeries in Northern California.

“Given the impact of COVID-19 on health care systems, we have postponed elective and non-urgent surgeries and procedures that take place in our main hospital operating rooms through Jan. 4 at our Northern California facilities,” officials said in a statement. “We are not postponing cancer cases or other urgent/emergent surgeries and procedures.”

What does a vaccine factory actually look like?

Now that pharmaceutical giants Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech SE have released coronavirus vaccines, the biotech industry’s next hurdle is manufacturing hundreds of millions of doses in order to inoculate millions and thereby create herd immunity.

Yet the manufacturing process is hard to fathom for most, as vaccines aren’t mass-produced in the same way as goods like cars and toys. Indeed, the reality defies the popular conception of a “factory”: the vaccines aren’t stamped out like radiators. That’s because the vaccine’s content is microscopic — nanometers-wide strands of artificially manufactured messenger RNA encased in a lipid (fat-like molecules) sheath made of nanoparticles.

The difficulty of envisioning where vaccines come from, and the microscopic nature of their production, makes their production a bit mysterious to the general public. Indeed, just as the coronavirus vaccine research process has faced much public scrutiny, many are curious as to how vaccines are known to be safe and to contain what they say they contain.

In general, the process starts long before vaccines are mass-produced, as companies have to gather the raw ingredients. That means that it usually takes anywhere from one to three years to manufacture a vaccine, according to Vaccines Europe. After assembling the raw materials necessary for vaccine development, companies than have to create the antigen (a live or inactivated substance that can induce an immune response); couple the antigen with substances that help make it safer and more effective; make sure the vaccine is filled in sterile vials or syringes; then package, ship and distribute them.

That’s the normal situation. Obviously, given the extreme urgency precipitated by the pandemic, the situation is slightly different with the coronavirus vaccine. Because more than 81 million people worldwide have contracted COVID-19 (including more than 1.7 million who have died from it), companies have poured far more resources and energy into developing this particular vaccine than usually goes into a vaccine manufacturing process. In addition, while conventional vaccine platforms use weakened forms of disease-causing germs to train the body’s immune system to recognize specific antigens, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are mRNA vaccines. This means that scientists train the body’s immune system to fight a dangerous invader (in this case, the SARS-CoV-2 virus) by injecting a modified strand mRNA — or the single-stranded RNA molecule that complements one of the DNA strands in a gene — into the body. This trains cells to produce proteins like those found in a given virus so the immune system can recognize them as antigens and learn how to fight them. It is a bit like running war games simulations for soldiers so that they will be better capable of fighting an actual enemy in combat.

Despite the fact that these are a newer type of vaccine, the manufacturing structure is basically the same as those for conventional vaccine platforms. Pfizer, for instance, used a manufacturing site in St. Louis to create its raw materials and manufactured the substance itself in Andover, Massachusetts and Kalamazoo, Michigan. In terms of European manufacturing, the company has also created a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing centers in Puurs, Belgium while the company’s partner BioNTech expanded capacity at two factories in Germany.

Jerica Pitts, director of Global Media Relations at Pfizer, told Salon by email that the the plasmid DNA for the vaccine antigen is manufactured in the St. Louis site. The DNA that will be a template for the mRNA vaccine is created in the St. Louis raw material manufacturing facility “in a cell culture process,” with the facility containing massive stainless steel vats for growing the cells and including other equipment needed to purify and linearize it, such as centrifuges and traditional scientific laboratory equipment. After undergoing numerous quality control checks, the raw material is then sent over to their facilities in Germany or Andover, Massachusetts in clear bottles that are kept at frozen temperatures so that the raw materials will not be destroyed en route.

Once they arrive, the DNA template is put in an incubator that includes genetic building blocks so that it can be used to create mRNA. While there the template DNA undergoes an “enzymatic process” — in which enzymes help catalyze a series of reactions, and where it is incubated with the “building blocks” of mRNA.

After that, the mRNA drug substance is purified, and shipped to Kalamazoo. The purified mRNA is then put in plastic bags roughly the same size as large shopping bags, frozen, and — in the case of the Massachusetts facility — hung on a carefully designed frame for transportation to the Kalamazoo facility.

The Kalamazoo, Michigan facility is where the vaccine enters the “formulation, fill and finish” stage, Pitts says. At Kalamazoo, they receive the mRNA drug substance and combine it with other raw materials.

Because it is absolutely essential that the samples remain frozen, the Kalamazoo warehouse has hundreds of ultracold freezers. Each freezer holds stacks of white trays that are roughly the same size as a pizza box, and those trays in turn each have 195 identical glass vials that contain droplets of the frozen vaccine. Once workers are certain that the vaccines are still safe and that there are absolutely no sterilization issues, “the bulk vaccine will then be transferred to an aseptic filling line where it will be filled into a sterilized vial and capped,” Pitts told Salon. There are two filing lines in total, with workers quickly filling the vials; one team can boast of being able to fill 600 vials in a minute.

The now-ready vials are inspected once again for safety, packaged, labeled and then packed into containers, which are stored in various freezers before ultimately being placed in dry ice shipping containers so they can be shipped across the country. This last step is crucial because the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine candidate needs to be kept at –70°C.

Moderna, the other major biotech company with an approved coronavirus vaccine, is utilizing a number of factories and contracting out its work. This includes using a contract manufacturing facility owned by the drugmaker Catalent in Bloomington, Indiana, according to NPR. Catalent makes more than 70 billion doses every year of a number of different types of drugs and is helping Moderna with the process of filling vials with the vaccine so that they can eventually be distributed to the larger population.

Another factory creating the Moderna vaccine is in the Swiss Alps and is run by the biotechnology and chemicals company Lonza Group. Lonza is particularly noteworthy because, instead of building factories that specialize in creating specific vaccines or drugs, it builds shells for facilities that can be quickly modified based on specific manufacturing needs.

Jon Ossoff turns the tables on Fox News reporter

Democratic Senate candidate Jon Ossoff refused to back down on Wednesday when a Fox News reporter attempted an impromptu interview on live television.

As Ossoff was speaking to reporters on the campaign trail in Georgia, correspondent Peter Doocy interrupted to point out that Fox News was broadcasting his answers live.

“Why not talk more about your relevant experience?” Doocy asked.

“I’ve made my career fighting injustice, exposing war crimes and injustice,” Ossoff replied. “I run a business that’s exposed terrorism, that exposed sexual slavery by ISIS, that’s exposed judicial corruption. And right now, we have a crisis of corruption in American politics.”

“And since we’re live on Fox,” the candidate continued, “let me take this opportunity to address directly the Fox audience. We have two United States senators in Georgia who have blatantly used their offices to enrich themselves. This is beyond partisanship.”

Ossoff then “humbly” asked Fox News viewers to go to his website and make contributions to his campaign.

Doocy then interrupted to take a shot at Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock.

“Any concern that the allegations of wrongdoing against Rev. Warnock could possibly be a drag on the Democratic ticket?” Doocy wondered.

“None whatsoever,” Ossoff insisted. “Here’s the bottom line. [Republican Senator] Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman. Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman. And so she is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“We deserve better than that here in Georgia,” he added. “And I want to encourage everybody to make a plan to vote on Tuesday.”

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Josh Hawley becomes first GOP senator to contest Biden’s certification, likely forcing Jan. 6 fight

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced Wednesday that he intends to lodge an official objection to the electoral vote count in Congress next week, an event that under normal circumstances would be a routine ceremony to finalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. Since multiple House Republicans, led by Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, have already said they will raise similar objections, Hawley’s move is likely to delay final certification of the election results by at least several hours.

More to the point, Hawley’s objection would force the joint meeting of Congress on Jan. 6 to adjourn so both chambers can meet separately, debate the objections to electoral votes from specific states and then vote on them. This will present Republicans in both the House and Senate one last opportunity to stand with President Trump’s fanciful but dangerous campaign to overthrow the election results, or to defy him and risk his enduring wrath.

Although Hawley is clearly announcing his fealty to Trump here — and quite likely seeking to position himself as Trump’s potential successor on the populist right, should the president not follow through on his threats to run again in 2024 — the Missouri senator’s statement sought to strike a bland, high-minded tone. Hawley mentioned “purported election irregularities,” but only in vague and general terms: “At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act.”

Despite elaborate political fanfic on the far-right fringes, and a nearly commensurate amount of liberal paranoia, there is no realistic prospect that this potential spectacle will overturn the election results. Both chambers of Congress would have to vote by an overall majority to accept any objection to a given state’s electoral votes, something that has not occurred since the passage of the Electoral Count Act of 1887. (That verbose and difficult law is itself under attack in the courts by pro-Trump Republicans, but the prospect of a historic adverse ruling before next Wednesday seems far-fetched.) This process has been invoked only once in recent history, when Democratic legislators objected to Ohio’s electoral votes for George W. Bush after the 2004 election. Those objections were rejected by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate.

At least in theory, Hawley or other senators, acting in concert with Republican House members, could hold up final certification by hours or even several days, since the tangled text of the Electoral Count Act appears to require that all such objections must be dealt with individually before any states’ votes are counted. But since all 50 states have submitted electoral votes certified by election authorities and state governors (and the alternate slates of pro-Trump electors from several states have been certified by absolutely no one), the pretext for such an extensive delay looks awfully thin.

Furthermore, it’s obvious that the Democratic-led House will vote down any such objections — and highly probable that the Republican-led Senate will also. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his deputy, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, have both opposed any significant delay in the vote count, and are likely to try to minimize the scale and scope of Hawley’s protest. With several Republican moderates, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, likely to vote no, a majority seems out of reach. (As it happens, Republicans will hold only a 51-48 Senate majority on Jan. 6, since no matter what happens in the Georgia special election the previous day, Sen. David Perdue’s current seat will temporarily be vacant.)

So no, Donald Trump still can’t overturn the election, and this attempt will fizzle out like all the others. Still, if Hawley follows through on his promise, there’s no doubt that the damage inflicted on America’s political system by the toxic tire-fire of the 2020 election will get even worse than it was already.

In addition to positioning Hawley as a potential Trumpian avenger, and forcing Republicans to make one more unpalatable choice between Trump and political oblivion — a choice in which the abyss arguably lies in both directions — this Lost Cause last stand seems calculated to convince hardcore Trump voters that Biden was “elected by Democrats” in some sort of anti-democratic Beltway coup. No doubt it’s tiresome to observe that this is literally the inverse of reality, politics through the backwards-machine, as in Christopher Nolan’s ill-fated 2020 film “Tenet.” We’ve all been sent through that machine over and over again during the last five years — and Joe Biden’s not equipped to switch it off.

How to cook filet mignon to absolute perfection

With high demand and only about eight cuts per cow, filet mignon often fetches the highest price in the butcher’s case. When you’re paying upwards of $20 per pound, cooking these precious tidbits can feel a little like a tightrope walk. Don’t be intimidated. By paying attention to a few important details, learning how to cook filet mignon like you’ve been doing it your whole life is actually quite easy.

What is filet mignon?

Filet mignon is a choice steak, indeed. To form it, the butcher makes a cross-sectional cut from the small end of the tenderloin, a long muscle with one narrow, pointed end which runs along the lower part of the cow’s spine. The flesh there doesn’t do much work, and is, therefore, very, very tender.

How to prep a filet mignon

Prepping a filet is simple. First, remove the steak from the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before cooking to bring the meat up to room temperature. This small but crucial step will result in a much more even cook. Next, pat the steak all over with a dry paper towel. Removing extra surface moisture will enable a nice, aggressive sear with plenty of delicious Maillard reaction for a flavorful crust. Finally, season the meat generously on all sides with coarse Kosher salt (which melts more slowly) and freshly ground pepper.

That’s all you really need. However, since filet mignon is a mild-flavored cut, some people like to go beyond salt and pepper with an extra-flavorful crust of herbs or other spices. If that sounds delicious, go for it.

Next, prepare to cook. If you plan to use your oven (more on that later), preheat it now. And if you have an instant-read meat thermometer, keep it handy.

Searing a filet mignon

To develop a phenomenal crust on filet mignon, sear it in a very hot, heavy pan, preferably of cast iron or carbon steel. Set the pan over high heat and add a small amount of neutral, high heat cooking oil such as grape seed. When the oil shimmers, just before it starts to smoke, place the steak in the pan. Do not move the meat for 2-3 minutes, then take a peek. If the filet sports a deep brown sear on the bottom, it’s time to flip it. If the meat sticks at all, it’s not quite done searing. Leave it alone for another minute and it will self-release (trust the process!)

Repeat and sear on the other side. When a nice crust has formed, the steak is nearly done, but not quite. At this point, you have two choices: finish the filet in the pan, or transfer it to the oven.

Finishing in the pan

To finish your filet mignon in the pan, try a technique I call the “baste and roll.” When the top and bottom of your steak are nicely seared, turn the filet on its side and proceed to roll it slowly around the pan. When the meat has browned on all sides, it’s time to baste.

Add a couple of tablespoons of butter, a clove or two of garlic, and a sprig of woody herbs like thyme and rosemary to the pan. Sizzle the aromatics in the butter for a few seconds, then tilt the pan towards you slightly, causing the butter to pool at the lower end. Using a spoon, baste the steak with the sizzling butter. Scoop up a spoonful, drench the meat, and repeat. Do this for about one minute, then use your thermometer to check the temperature in the center of the filet. For a perfect medium rare, aim for between 125 and 130 degrees F. If you’re not there yet, keep basting and rolling until you are.

Finishing in the oven

The baste and roll takes a little effort, but finishing steak in the oven is super-easy. To take this route, preheat the oven to about 450. After flipping the filet, put the steak — pan and all — into the hot oven. Five minutes later, check the temperature at the center of the meat.

Resting and serving

When your filet reaches an internal temperature of 125-130 F, remove it from the heat. If you have a wire rack, set the steak on it to rest. The air flow around the steak will prevent the bottom crust from steaming. Rest the filet for about 10 minutes. The juices will redistribute, and the internal temperature will continue to rise, bringing the meat to a perfect, juicy medium rare.

Since filet mignon has a mild flavor, it goes with pretty much anything you’d like to serve it with. It’s often served with sauce. To slice the steak for serving, cut the meat across the grain.

* * *

Recipes For Filet, Your Way

Filet Mignon With Perfect Roasted Potatoes

Pepper-Crusted Filets with Ricotta Gnocchi, Shiitakes & Brown Butter-Sage Sauce

Mustard-Crusted Pepper Steak

AOC slams Democrat who opposed $2,000 coronavirus relief checks: “Err on the side of helping people”

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York pilloried Rep. Kurt Schrader after the Oregon Democrat voted against an amendment to increase one-time direct payments to most Americans from $600 to $2,000, which passed the House on Monday when 44 Republicans joined 231 Democrats in supporting the bill now awaiting action in the Senate.

Schrader opposed the Caring for Americans With Supplemental Help (CASH) Act because, according to the lawmaker—whose net worth hovered close to $8 million in 2018—”people who are making six figure incomes and who have not been impact[ed] by Covid-19 do not need checks.”

Just over an hour after voicing his disapproval of bigger relief checks for the majority of U.S. households, Schrader voted in favor of overriding President Donald Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), greenlighting more than $740 billion in military spending for fiscal year 2021—and perfectly encapsulating what the ostensibly centrist, national security-minded Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus of Democratic lawmakers to which Schrader belongs, means by “fiscal responsibility.”

“First of all, aid starts phasing out at $75,000,” Ocasio-Cortez began in her rebuttal to Schrader’s statement, which was riddled with erroneous assertions. “It’s already tied to outdated income information, don’t make it worse,” she continued, alluding to the fact that eligibility is based on 2019 tax returns.

Although individuals with incomes in the six-figure range are in fact not eligible for a full relief check, contrary to what Schrader suggested, Ocasio-Cortez reminded the Blue Dog Democrat that people who made $100,000 or more “also had income disrupted.” Besides, she asked, “Is this really a good reason to block aid for millions?”

1st of all, aid starts phasing out at $75k

2. it’s already tied to outdated income info, don’t make it worse

3. Ppl who made $100k+ also had income disrupted

4. Is this really a good reason to block aid for millions

5. If you’re going to err, err on the side of helping people https://t.co/tBSuR99WLN

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 28, 2020

According to Schrader, the CASH Act “is an ineffective and poorly targeted approach to aiding Americans in distress.” He described the measure as “clearly a last-minute political maneuver by the president and extremists on both sides of the political spectrum, who have been largely absent during months of very hard negotiations.”

Schrader was one of two House Democrats to vote against the amendment to increase relief checks from $600 to $2,000. He was joined by outgoing Rep. Daniel Lipinski of Illinois and both voted to override Trump’s NDAA veto, along with 210 other Democratic representatives.

As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Monday night applauded the 20 House Democrats who “had the courage… to vote no on the bloated defense budget,” which he said contributes to “changing the culture of endless war and calling for more investment instead in the American people.”

Schrader took a misleading jab at left-leaning lawmakers, accusing them of choosing “to tweet their opinions instead of coming to the table to get aid in the hands of Americans and small businesses that need it most,” a bizzare claim given that direct payments to struggling people were “not even on the table” prior to the efforts of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus to which Ocasio-Cortez belongs.

In addition to correcting the false information underlying Schrader’s stated reasons for opposing the CASH Act, Ocasio-Cortez told the conservative lawmaker: “If you’re going to err, err on the side of helping people.”

Trump is a historic loser: No other one-term president has refused to leave office

It is obvious by now that President Donald Trump is a narcissist desperately afraid of being thought of as a “loser.” This is why he has gone to such incredible lengths to deny the results of the 2020 election: A man who regularly used the epithet “loser” as a go-to insult long before taking office will now be remembered as one of only a handful of sitting presidents to seek another term and be rebuffed by the American people.

Still, 77% of Republicans claim (whether sincerely or in bad faith) that President-elect Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win. While America has had other one-term presidents, it has never had either a one-term president or a large group of that one-term president’s supporters react with such cringe-inducing, democracy-defying petulance. Being defeated is embarrassing, to be sure, but nothing is more shameful than reacting to a defeat by throwing a giant temper tantrum and lying about the other side cheating.

For that, Trump and those backing his ego-salving coup attempt are in a category of their own in American history —making them historic losers. Let’s briefly look at how America’s other one-term presidents have reacted to their electoral defeats.

Before Trump, America had ten one-term presidents: John Adams, John Q. Adams, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William H. Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. The initial Adams is the most instructive of this group because he was the first president who had to give up power reluctantly. (His predecessor and America’s first president, George Washington, famously did not seek a third term and was eager to relinquish power at the end of his second.) Adams was extremely bitter about losing to Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election and, to prove that point, refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. At the same time, Adams made it clear that democracy could only work if those in power bowed to the will of the people, regardless of their personal wishes. Jefferson later praised Adams’ peaceful transfer of power as the “revolution of 1800” because it established that in America the government is controlled “by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.”

This isn’t to say that Adams didn’t do what he could to figuratively kick Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican supporters in the shins, most notably by appointing a number of Federalists (his party) to judicial offices on his way out the door. (The most famous of the bunch was John Marshall, who Adams chose as chief justice of the Supreme Court.) Other one-term presidents have followed his example, trying to shore up their legacies and/or engaging in vindictive trickery while still accepting the voters’ verdict. Like his father, John Q. Adams refused to attend the inauguration of his successor, Andrew Jackson.

Martin Van Buren took solace in the fact that he actually won more votes during his reelection campaign in 1840 than when he had been first elected in 1836 (as in 2020, that advantage was offset by a massive increase in voter turnout, most of which benefited his opponent William H. Harrison) and immediately began planning another presidential run in 1844, although he ultimately failed in that effort.

In 1888 Grover Cleveland actually won the popular vote but still he lost his reelection campaign — the only sitting president to whom this has happened — and like Van Buren gracefully accepted his defeat and immediately began planning for the next campaign, which he actually won. (Cleveland’s reelection in 1892 made him the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.)

Some one-term presidents simply moved on with their lives. Benjamin Harrison‘s wife died of tuberculosis two weeks before Election Day 1892, and he was so devastated that he focused on finding a healthy way to grieve and develop a post-political career when he learned he hadn’t been reelected. William H. Taft, by contrast, felt acutely humiliated by being the only sitting president to do worse than a third-party candidate — he received 23.2% of the popular vote, less than third-party candidate and former President Theodore Roosevelt, and only won the electoral votes of Utah and Vermont — but threw himself into a new job as a professor at Yale Law School and worked closely with his successor, President Woodrow Wilson, both during and after the transition. Indeed, Taft was so highly regarded as an ex-president that he was eventually appointed as chief justice to the Supreme Court, making him the only American to serve as both a president and a Supreme Court judge.

Herbert Hoover is one of the less impressive names on this list. After losing in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 election because of the Great Depression, Hoover engaged in petty squabbles with Roosevelt’s transition team over economic policy, as Hoover was convinced that Roosevelt was a lightweight and completely unqualified to steer America out of the crisis. The bitterness led to a number of petty swipes taken during and after Hoover’s presidency, and Hoover regularly fought his successor’s policies and accused him of being a tyrant, but he never tried to defy the 1932 election results.

Gerald Ford is a unique case because he was never elected either president or vice president; he reached the latter office because Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned due to a bribery scandal and the former after President Richard Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal. Despite coming shockingly close to winning a term in his own right in the 1976 election, Ford was graceful in defeat and worked so closely with incoming President Jimmy Carter that the successor took the unusual step of praising Ford in his inaugural address.

Carter, by contrast, was less than thrilled when he lost in an unexpected landslide to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, especially since Reagan was a far right-wing candidate whose views were anathema to the center-left Carter. Yet Carter still worked with his successor, even successfully negotiating the release of 52 Americans who were being held hostage in Iran during the transition between their two administrations despite knowing Reagan would receive credit for their release.

George H. W. Bush, for his part, anticipated that he would lose to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election, given his poor polls and the underwhelming economy. His deep disappointment did not stop him from gracefully working with his successor, however, and Clinton repaid the favor by striking Iraq after learning that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had plotted to assassinate the former president. Bush and Clinton eventually became very close friends.

Now compare all of this — the good, the bad and the ugly — with Trump’s behavior.

Since 2016, Trump has insisted that if he runs in an election and does not win, it is because the other side cheated. He did this during his 2016 bid for the Republican presidential nomination when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and, later, repeatedly claimed that if he lost to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton it would be because the election was “rigged” and that he would only accept the results “if I win.” After Trump defeated Clinton in the electoral college (coincidentally by the same margin, 306 to 232, by which he lost to Biden in 2020), he obsessed over the fact that he lost the popular vote and falsely claimed that he had actually won it, creating a voter fraud commission to prove his claim that eventually had to be disbanded because no such evidence existed.

And that was just about the 2016 election. Because he knew that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to vote by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump tried to preemptively discredit mail-in votes with false claims that they were prone to fraud; these were rejected in court, but that did not stop Trump from trying to cripple the Post Office so that “they can’t have universal mail-in voting.” As in 2016, Trump also repeatedly said that the only way he could lose is if the Democrats stole the election, telling Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he would not promise to accept the 2020 election results if they went against him, admitting that he is not a “good loser” and claiming that “mail-in voting is going to rig the election.” This paved the way for him to prematurely claim victory on Election Night because in-person votes were generally counted first and made it look like he had a lead, and then falsely claim that there were “vote dumps” as mail-in ballots were counted and eventually showed that he had lost.

Since then Trump has resorted to gish galloping, or the practice of overwhelming someone with bad arguments in the hope that it will confuse third parties into not seeing that you’re lying and exhaust your opponents by forcing them to debunk all of them. Yet despite repeatedly claiming in public that he was the victim of voter fraud, he never actually alleged voter fraud in more than two-thirds of the 60 cases he brought to court (most likely because deliberately lying to a judge is a crime). More importantly, he lost 59 of the 60 cases he has brought related to the election, winning only in a small procedural case about how much extra time first-time voters in Pennsylvania could get to confirm their identifications in order for their mail-in votes to be counted. Many of the judges who ruled against Trump were Republicans; some were appointed by Trump himself. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, admitted after investigating that there was no evidence that Biden stole the election. (Trump fired Barr for this, not surprisingly.) The Supreme Court itself ruled unanimously that Trump’s fraud claims had no merit, a decision that included the three judges Trump appointed to that bench. Republican legislative leaders in key swing states have resisted Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the election results for the simple reason that it would be illegal for them to do so.

Now Trump is left acting like James Buchanan, the president who was so bitter about Abraham Lincoln winning the 1860 election that he allowed the Civil War to break out rather than work with someone whose political philosophy differed from his own. Yet even Buchanan never contemplated actively stopping Lincoln from serving, or installing himself as a dictator, simply because he did not like the man’s views. Trump initially stalled allowing Biden to begin transitioning into the White House, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic taking thousands upon thousands of lives, and has allegedly considered imposing martial law so he can stay in power. As of the time of this writing, he continues to insist that he won the 2020 election and is continuing to try to find a way to stay in power.

This is what makes Trump one of American history’s biggest losers. Of the 44 men who have served as president, exactly one-quarter of them were spurned by the voters, but Trump alone within that group has threatened to destroy democracy itself in order to stay in power. Compared to the other ten one termers, Trump comes across as a spoiled brat, a petulant child, a would-be dictator motivated not by principle or necessity but a lifelong habit of crying like a baby if he doesn’t get what he wants.

If he actually was a child, this would merely be pathetic. Because he is threatening democracy itself, however, Trump has sunk below pathetic and crashed through the floor into the realm of being a forever loser. Anyone who supports him in his effort is, by extension, a forever loser too.

On restaurant menus, environmental metrics are the new calorie counts

One of the current seasonal offerings at Just Salad is the Sweet Mama, made with spinach, apples, turkey bacon, walnuts and white cheddar. According to the menu, the salad’s production resulted in .56kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO₂e), which is 85 percent lower than the greenhouse gas emissions produced by a quarter-pound beef patty. If you want to reduce the carbon footprint of your lunch even further, choose the Tokyo Supergreens; it’s on the “Climatarian menu” and has a footprint of just .36kg CO₂e.

With the launch of carbon calculations and low-footprint selections in September, the popular New York-based salad chain is now one of many fast casual restaurants around the country making environmental metrics available to customers.

In collaboration with the World Resources Institute (WRI), Panera is now labeling menu items that fall below a determined per-meal threshold as “Cool Food Meals.” And in October, Chipotle introduced Real Foodprint, a tracker customers can use to calculate how the ingredients in their burritos stack up against a “conventional” burrito, on factors like emissions, water use and antibiotics. On the West Coast, Bamboo Sushi and sister restaurant Quickfish offer carbon calculations for each ingredient used on their menus, as well as a map of where each seafood ingredient comes from and the method used to fish or farm it. (Mackerel? Norway, purse seine.)

“Many Americans don’t know that there is a difference in climate impacts [related to food choices],” said Sujatha Bergen, health campaigns director at the National Resources Defense Council. “So these labels not only give consumers information that they can use to combat climate change, it’s also an acknowledgment that there is an impact. It’s an important education vehicle.”

But questions remain about whether the ways in which the information is being delivered will provide real opportunities for expanding knowledge or are merely marketing opportunities that fall short of making sourcing more transparent. As more companies are likely to follow suit, it’s worth digging into how the calculations are being made so far and what experts think of the different approaches.

Zeroing in on greenhouse gas emissions

While other fast-casual restaurants continue to balk at the added costs and challenges of reducing single-use container waste, Just Salad launched a reusable bowl program in 2006. It has been extraordinarily successful ever since; 30 percent of customers now bring in reusable bowls, diverting 75,000 pounds of single-use plastic from landfills every year.

Chief sustainability officer Sandra Noonan wanted to build on that pioneering spirit of environmentalism on the climate front. “I really wanted to make a statement about the role of food in climate change, and I wanted to do it in a way that engaged our customers and started a conversation about climate,” she said.

In other words, rather than just working on reducing the impact of menu items behind the scenes, carbon labeling asks the customer to make a choice, she said, thereby communicating that food choices matter. While it’s too soon to draw real conclusions, Noonan said preliminary data showed sales of low-footprint salads added to the “Climatarian” menu have been about 20 percent higher than before.

To get the numbers, Noonan and her team (with help from MBA students at New York University) gathered life cycle analysis data on every ingredient on the menu, which covered the emissions involved in production. Then, they estimated the emissions involved in transporting each ingredient from their specific suppliers and added those numbers. The measurement CO₂e is used because it includes and standardizes emissions of all three greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane.

Of course, CO₂e looks like a mysterious combination of letters and numbers to many people, and even the most knowledgeable likely don’t know what a “good” number is. For example, a 300-calorie meal only sounds “light” if you know a healthy daily calorie intake is about 2,000 calories for the average adult. That’s why Just Salad included detailed information on what the numbers mean and how it made its calculations on one webpage, and added the burger comparison on every single menu item online. (In the restaurants, menu boards include CO₂e labeling, but there’s no space for burger math.) “Every American knows what a quarter-pound beef patty is. That’s how we’re tackling that,” Noonan said. “Is that enough? I probably would say no, but it’s a start.”

Urvashi Rangan, a sustainable food systems expert and the chief science advisor for FoodPrint, said she thinks assigning numbers to the environmental impact of each meal is an idea that has merit, especially since it could help eaters make quantitative comparisons. But she worries that only labeling emissions oversimplifies the idea of sustainable food choices. (Noonan said choosing only emissions, for now, is a matter of bandwidth, prioritization, and also not overwhelming customers.)

“When we think about regenerative agriculture or better ways to do things overall, a true foodprint includes more than carbon. It includes water, soil health, animal health…It is not just one thing. It is this marriage of all these different things, and it’s about having a systems approach,” she said.

To tap the calorie comparison once again, most people understand that the number of calories in a meal is just one factor among many — protein content, sugar content, quality of the ingredients, antioxidant levels — that determines its healthfulness. So it is with environmental impact. “Ideally, what you would have is a true cost accounting system, which measures the cost of doing certain things, even secondary costs,” Rangan said.

A bigger picture than environmental metrics

Chipotle doesn’t go as far as utilizing a true cost accounting framework. Those frameworks, which look at a total foodprint as defined on this site, are especially important because they extend beyond ecological impacts to factors like animal welfare and labor practices. (The National Consumers League, for example, released a report documenting worker abuses at Chipotle locations earlier this year.)

But the Real Foodprint tracker does take an approach that emphasizes multiple ways food production impacts the planet. “There are many ways to measure impact, especially as it comes to food. We knew that we wanted to go beyond the one-metric approach that we see so often,” said Caitlin Leibert, Chipotle’s director of sustainability.

Leibert worked with sustainability data company HowGood to first pinpoint where the company sourcing had enough data to calculate meaningful metrics. Together, they settled on five: less carbon in the atmosphere, organic land supported, water saved, antibiotics avoided, and soil health improved. “The plan is to continue to evolve and grow the metrics that we use, hopefully adding different areas of focus over time,” she said.

To develop the metrics, HowGood’s researchers first created a standard for comparison in each category, estimating the baseline number for a “conventional” ingredient. That data comes from various sources depending on the metric, including peer-reviewed life-cycle analyses of ingredients and large global data sets like the Global Soil Atlas and the World Resources Institute’s Water Risk Atlas. Then, they used data Chipotle provided on their suppliers and standards to do a modeled analysis of how the same ingredient scored when sourced in that specific way. “We’re working with modeling and standards, we’re not tracking each farm,” explained Arthur Gillett, HowGood’s head of research.

Take tofu (the main ingredient in their “sofritas”), for example. To calculate “less carbon in the atmosphere,” HowGood estimated the standard greenhouse gas emissions associated with conventional soy production and processing into tofu. For comparison, Gillett, explained, there is solid research that now shows with soy, specifically, organic farming results in lower emissions. Since Chipotle is sourcing 100 percent of its soybeans organically, they would then calculate the savings, per portion, based on the savings reported in that research. If your order includes cilantro, you’ll see the number for “organic land supported” tick up a bit, but not as much as with tofu, because about half of the cilantro currently purchased is organic, so the calculation takes that into account. The “water saved” metric calculated how the company’s suppliers both used less and polluted less water. So something like rotationally grazed beef would score higher on water saved compared to conventional CAFO beef (beef raised in concentrated animal feedlot operations). In 2019, about 28 percent of the company’s beef came from farms practicing rotational grazing, so choosing beef might show water savings based on that proportion of overall purchasing.

In the end, for the consumer using the Real Foodprint tracker, the numbers call attention to various environmental impacts, the differences between conventional and organic/sustainable ingredients and Chipotle’s efforts to improve their sourcing compared to other chains. But for an uninformed eater, they are not likely to convey any information on exactly how to make sustainable food choices (other than eating at Chipotle). Here’s the problem: By focusing on comparing ingredients to the “standard,” the tracker ignores comparisons between different foods. So, if you add steak to your burrito, you see that you’ve achieved less carbon in the atmosphere and avoided antibiotics. If you choose veggies instead, those numbers don’t budge. This creates the illusion that beef is better than vegetables on those metrics, when in fact, plant-based foods always have a lower carbon footprint and never contain antibiotics. (The supplemental information provided to explain each metric, however, is useful beyond the menu.)

And on the comparison front, as more restaurants take on projects like this, it can be very difficult to compare metrics from one restaurant to another. Just Salad’s carbon calculations include transportation, for example, while the WRI calculations Panera uses do not. “Eventually, we need to see these kinds of systems rooted in some sort of standardized accounting,” Rangan said. “I think given . . . we’re generating new numbers and new metrics, it’s fine. But it’s really about striking a balance between assessing enough to give you that number while also being transparent about what you are including in that, so that people are very clear on what these numbers represent and what they don’t represent.”

One thing to keep in mind is that metrics are necessary when systems are operating at a large scale, because it’s otherwise difficult to assess value based on actual practices. If you’re shopping at the farmers’ market or are eating at a local restaurant that sources from small farms, you don’t need a soil health metric because you can ask about specific farm practices. Of course that’s not always possible, and compared to Wendy’s or any other big fast food chain, Chipotle’s standards are the most thoughtful: chickens are raised without antibiotics and are given more space. Some come from systems with additional animal welfare certifications, and the company has been working on additional broiler chicken welfare commitments. But they are still raised in CAFOs, and at Chipotle’s scale, that will likely never change.

On the other hand, Chipotle has figured out how to source all pork from operations that raise sows either outdoors or in open barns with deep bedding, and in 2019, about 28 percent of its beef came from rotational grazing systems. Many believe in the power of even small changes made at a large scale, and Gillett said one of the reasons HowGood was interested in the project was that continuous updates are built into the tracker, giving the company regular opportunities to improve its numbers.

“One of the things that got us excited is they now have a scorecard that’s public and then they can work to improve against that,” he said. “Just by putting it out there and normalizing that, it’s an implied promise that they’re going to live up to.”

At Just Salad, Noonan is already using the emissions data to shift purchasing decisions. For example, after many of the dressings scored high due to dairy, the culinary team began looking at other places dairy showed up on the menu and experimenting with vegan cheeses. She also noted that when the company shifted to a supplier that used farms and a distribution center closer to the restaurants, some of the emissions scores went down. Bergen, of NRDC, said those shifts could add up to real change. “The biggest thing [food companies] could do is reduce the volume of climate-intensive foods that they buy and shift their purchases towards climate-friendly foods like plants,” she said. “So companies should pair these consumer education strategies with time-bound, specific, measurable goals to drive down the climate emissions associated with their menus, and I think [creating these metrics] could be one of the tools to do that.”

The umami-rich science of nutritional yeast, Marmite and Vegemite

In The Kitchen Scientist, The Flavor Equation author Nik Sharma breaks down the science of good food, from rinsing rice to salting coffee. Today, he’s introducing us to savory super-ingredients to always keep in the pantry.

* * *

Yeasts are one of the most powerful workhorses in research and the food industry. Simply put, yeast is a single-cell fungus that is round or oval in shape, sometimes looking like the cartoon character shmoo.

In grad school, I worked in a lab that used baker’s yeast to study cancer. We also tinkered with yeast genetics to produce large quantities of proteins to use in our experiments.

As cooks, many of us are familiar with baker’s yeast and brewer’s yeast, aka Saccharomyces cerevisiae (note, there are other species of yeast used to produce alcohol). While they’re both strains of yeast, they behave a bit differently and are also genetically distinct.

Baker’s yeast — be it active-dry, rapid-rise, or fresh — focuses on making plenty of carbon dioxide gas so doughs can rise well, yielding light, airy baked bread. Brewer’s yeast works hard to produce alcohol, as seen in beer-making, by converting the carbohydrates in grains like barley, oats, and wheat, or in non-grains like potatoes. It appears that brewer’s yeast developed its preference to produce alcohol during fermentation in the presence of oxygen (and tolerate high toxic levels of alcohol) as part of its evolution. Read more about the genetic differences and evolution here.

Leftover brewer’s yeast cells eventually led to the development of various savory products, such as nutritional yeast, Marmite, and Vegemite, that many of us stock in our pantries.

One of the earliest studies that discusses the potential of yeast as a source of nutrition comes from the “American Journal of Pharmacy, Volume 88,” published in 1916. Atherton Seidell at the Hygienic Laboratory (now known as the National Institute of Health) found that spent yeast from breweries corrected malnourishment in pigeons. Initially the pigeons were fed only polished rice, a diet devoid of all the necessary vitamins and minerals, leading to paralysis. But after being fed an extract of the spent yeast, the pigeons quickly recovered in a few hours, implying that this ingredient corrected the nutritional deficiencies. These results provided a fantastic opportunity to utilize a waste product from fermentation, at a low price to be repurposed and utilized as a source of nutrients. NPR has a fantastic article by Tove Danovich that takes a closer look at the history of yeast as a source of nutrients — I highly recommend reading.

When it comes to yeast-based food products available in our grocery stores and markets, there are two major categories based on how they’re processed: nutritional yeast and yeast extract.

Nutritional yeast is sold as a dry, yellow-colored powder or flakes of dead brewer’s yeast (the yeast are killed by the application of heat). I keep a jar of Bragg’s nutritional yeast at home and, when I want a cheesy taste in dairy-free recipes, it is often my go-to. I use it in crackers, savory cookies, and even to make dairy-free and vegan cheese dips. I add a generous tablespoon or two of nutritional yeast to nut milk, then heat the liquid with a little cornstarch to thicken — this helps recreate the texture and flavor of cheese.

Yeast extract includes commercial products like the yeast pastes Marmite (the British version) and Vegemite (the Australian version). It is a thick, dark liquid, sometimes dehydrated to form a thick paste or powder. To prepare yeast extract, yeast cells are either salted, which forces the cells to shrink, or steamed, which causes the cells to break. The cell extract that is collected is rich in vitamins like the members of the B-complex and iron. During the first World War, the supply of Marmite to Australia took a big hit, leading to the production of Australia’s very own version, Vegemite. Vegemite also contains spices and vegetables like celery and onion. Learn more about their history here.

Both nutritional yeast and yeast extracts are rich in umami substances, such as glutamates and ribonucleotides, which together create a rich savory profile through a process called umami synergism: When both are present, the umami taste is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s also a tad note of bitterness and, depending on how sensitive you are to bitter tastes, you might find the taste of these products pleasant or intense. Yeast pastes are usually smeared on toast or folded into pasta, savory pastry fillings, stirred into soups, added to meat marinades, etc. — anywhere where you want to bump up the savory profile of a dish.

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

Trump was the worst part of 2020: From the pandemic to the protests, the president ruined a bad year

One year ago today, in the wake of the House of Representatives voting to impeach President Trump, the New York Times published a deeply reported insider account of the president’s dealings with Ukraine the previous summer and how the White House had reacted to it. The story brought home just how alarmed the president’s own henchmen had been at what he was attempting to do. So, as we headed into 2020, the anticipation was palpable.

Trump’s many scandals had overwhelmed the system for years and his ongoing incompetence and corruption were simply part of what had become normalized, every day, shock and outrage. Finally, the country was going to get a big, national tableau in which to lay out the case against Trump in a televised Senate trial in the most important election year in modern memory. It seemed likely that such a historic political event would mean that the next year would be spent in trench warfare litigating Trump’s record of corruption, abuse of power and malfeasance.

But the year started off with the spectacle of the entire Republican Party, except for Mitt Romney, endorsing the idea that their president was perfectly within his rights to use congressionally appropriated military aid to a foreign country to extort its leaders to sabotage his political opponent’s presidential campaign. There was no doubt as to the facts. The president himself provided a transcript of the extortion phone call, calling it “perfect.” Republicans simply decided there was nothing wrong with what he did, leaving it unlikely that Trump would be removed since it would require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.

That should have been a clue as to how they would react if Trump played the same game he played in 2016 and promised that he would only accept the results of the election if he won.

There was also, you’ll recall, a spirited primary race happening at the time which had the country on pins and needles to see who would be challenging Trump in the fall. A year ago today, we had no idea who that person would be although if you looked at the polls that day it showed Joe Biden up by 10 points nationally, a result that most of us shrugged off as a function of name recognition or familiarity that would wear off once the primaries started in earnest. Go figure.

We all know by now the basic outlines of how badly the U.S. government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic under Donald Trump turned out to be. We learned, through the tapes made by Bob Woodward, that Trump believed he needed to be a cheerleader, admitting to the famed journalist, “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” He wanted to play it down because he was afraid that he would lose the election if the economy wasn’t roaring. So he encouraged states to open up prematurely and created a movement of people who refused to take the health crisis seriously by refusing to endorse the strategies that might have lowered the caseload, failing to properly ramp up testing and using his platform to push snake oil and miracle cures that made everything worse.

338,000 COVID deaths and counting, many of them preventable, is beyond tragic. The lost incomes, shuttered businesses and ruinous economic hardship that went along with it are heartbreaking. And while our country has botched the pandemic response on a level unlike any other developed nation, the rest of the world has suffered greatly as well even if they didn’t have the appalling number of deaths that we have endured.

By the time summer 2020 rolled around, Trump was desperate to retake control — but the George Floyd murder brought people all over the world into the streets.

Trump saw another opportunity to win his election by fanning the flames of division and hate. His response in that famous phone call to the governors — “dominate, dominate dominate!” — said everything about his political instincts. The world is very lucky that a man such as he was so incapable that he never truly understood how to use the immense power he had. His instinct was to use overwhelming force against protesters to stage an offensive photo-op and thankfully it backfired spectacularly. The Black Lives Matter movement gained strength instead of losing it.

COVID was still stalking us, however, with deadly hot spots flaring all summer culminating in the current massive winter surges we are now experiencing. Major parts of the country are again on stay-at-home orders even though many people are just ignoring them. The vaccines are on the way but sadly they will be too late to save the lives of many thousands of people who didn’t have to die.

Donald Trump believed that if he “played down” the virus he could win the election which was, literally, the only thing he cared about. Indeed, no one has ever wanted to win an election more than he did. But by November it was clear that his failure was overwhelming and 80 million people came out to vote against him, besting GOP turnout nationally by over 7 million votes. He still refuses to accept this and has created an absurd conspiracy theory to explain that he actually won. Tens of millions of people believe him and will likely be convinced to the end of their days that this ridiculous, provably false nonsense is true.

We couldn’t have predicted the pandemic last January but we certainly could have predicted that Donald Trump would do anything and everything to degrade our democracy and further divide the American people. That was his one very special talent brought into stark relief from the impeachment to the election.

During the campaign he liked to brag that he was nominated for “two Nobel Prizes” and his staff even put the Nobel prize into a little vanity video this week as if to imply he’d won it. He will never win a Nobel Prize, obviously. But after all he’s done, the Gallup Poll shows him to be the most admired man in America in 2020. Maybe that will finally make him feel better. It would make me depressed except that I know 2021, whatever the challenges and crises it’s going to bring, will be better than this dumpster fire of a year because Donald Trump will no longer be running the country. That’s enough to make you feel downright optimistic about the future.