Can Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense dismantle Trump’s pernicious military legacy?

In the military realm, Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America’s involvement in its twenty-first-century “forever wars” — the fruitless, relentless, mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. After all, as a candidate, Trump pledged to bring U.S. troops home from those dreaded war zones and, in his last days in office, he’s been promising to get at least most of the way to that objective. The president’s fixation on this issue (and the opposition of his own generals and other officials on the subject) has generated a fair amount of media coverage and endeared him to his isolationist supporters. Yet, however newsworthy it may be, this focus on Trump’s belated troop withdrawals obscures a far more significant aspect of his military legacy: the conversion of the U.S. military from a global counterterror force into one designed to fight an all-out, cataclysmic, potentially nuclear war with China and/or Russia.

People seldom notice that Trump’s approach to military policy has always been two-faced. Even as he repeatedly denounced the failure of his predecessors to abandon those endless counterinsurgency wars, he bemoaned their alleged neglect of America’s regular armed forces and promised to spend whatever it took to “restore” their fighting strength. “In a Trump administration,” he declared in a September 2016 campaign speech on national security, America’s military priorities would be reversed, with a withdrawal from the “endless wars we are caught in now” and the restoration of “our unquestioned military strength.”

Once in office, he acted to implement that very agenda, instructing his surrogates — a succession of national security advisers and secretaries of defense — to commence U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan (though he agreed for a time to increase troop levels in Afghanistan), while submitting ever-mounting defense budgets. The Pentagon’s annual spending authority climbed every year between 2016 and 2020, rising from $580 billion at the start of his administration to $713 at the end, with much of that increment directed to the procurement of advanced weaponry. Additional billions were incorporated into the Department of Energy budget for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons and the full-scale “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Far more important than that increase in arms spending, however, was the shift in strategy that went with it. The military posture President Trump inherited from the Obama administration was focused on fighting the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a grueling, never-ending struggle to identify, track, and destroy anti-Western zealots in far-flung areas of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The posture he’s bequeathing to Joe Biden is almost entirely focused on defeating China and Russia in future “high-end” conflicts waged directly against those two countries — fighting that would undoubtedly involve high-tech conventional weapons on a staggering scale and could easily trigger nuclear war.

From the GWOT to the GPC

It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the Pentagon’s shift from a strategy aimed at fighting relatively small bands of militants to one aimed at fighting the military forces of China and Russia on the peripheries of Eurasia. The first entailed the deployment of scattered bands of infantry and Special Operations Forces units backed by patrolling aircraft and missile-armed drones; the other envisions the commitment of multiple aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, nuclear-capable bombers, and brigade-strength armored divisions. Similarly, in the GWOT years, it was generally assumed that U.S. troops would face adversaries largely armed with light infantry weapons and homemade bombs, not, as in any future war with China or Russia, an enemy equipped with advanced tanks, planes, missiles, ships, and a full range of nuclear munitions.

This shift in outlook from counterterrorism to what, in these years, has come to be known in Washington as “great power competition,” or GPC, was first officially articulated in the Pentagon’s National Security Strategy of February 2018. “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” it insisted, “is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers,” a catchphrase for China and Russia. (It used those rare italics to emphasize just how significant this was.)

For the Department of Defense and the military services, this meant only one thing: from that moment on, so much of what they did would be aimed at preparing to fight and defeat China and/or Russia in high-intensity conflict. As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it to the Senate Armed Services Committee that April, “The 2018 National Defense Strategy provides clear strategic direction for America’s military to reclaim an era of strategic purpose… Although the Department continues to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, long-term strategic competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

This being the case, Mattis added, America’s armed forces would have to be completely re-equipped with new weaponry intended for high-intensity combat against well-armed adversaries. “Our military remains capable, but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare,” he noted. “The combination of rapidly changing technology [and] the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous period of combat in our nation’s history [has] created an overstretched and under-resourced military.” In response, we must “accelerate modernization programs in a sustained effort to solidify our competitive advantage.”

In that same testimony, Mattis laid out the procurement priorities that have since governed planning as the military seeks to “solidify” its competitive advantage. First comes the “modernization” of the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities, including its nuclear command-control-and-communications systems; then, the expansion of the Navy through the acquisition of startling numbers of additional surface ships and submarines, along with the modernization of the Air Force, through the accelerated procurement of advanced combat planes; finally, to ensure the country’s military superiority for decades to come, vastly increased investment in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, and cyber warfare.

These priorities have by now been hard-wired into the military budget and govern Pentagon planning. Last February, when submitting its proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2021, for example, the Department of Defense asserted, “The FY 2021 budget supports the irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which drives the Department’s decision-making in reprioritizing resources and shifting investments to prepare for a potential future, high-end fight.” This nightmarish vision, in other words, is the military future President Trump will leave to the Biden administration.

The Navy in the lead

From the very beginning, Donald Trump has emphasized the expansion of the Navy as an overriding objective. “When Ronald Reagan left office, our Navy had 592 ships… Today, the Navy has just 276 ships,” he lamented in that 2016 campaign speech. One of his first priorities as president, he asserted, would be to restore its strength. “We will build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines,” he promised. Once in office, the “350-ship Navy” (later increased to 355 ships) became a mantra.

In emphasizing a big Navy, Trump was influenced to some degree by the sheer spectacle of large modern warships, especially aircraft carriers with their scores of combat planes. “Our carriers are the centerpiece of American military might overseas,” he insisted while visiting the nearly completed carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in March 2017. “We are standing here today on four-and-a-half acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory, the likes of which there is nothing… there is no competition to this ship.”

Not surprisingly, top Pentagon officials embraced the president’s big-Navy vision with undisguised enthusiasm. The reason: they view China as their number one adversary and believe that any future conflict with that country will largely be fought from the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas — that being the only practical way to concentrate U.S. firepower against China’s increasingly built-up coastal defenses.

Then-Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper expressed this outlook well when, in September, he deemed Beijing the Pentagon’s “top strategic competitor” and the Indo-Pacific region its “priority theater” in planning for future wars. The waters of that region, he suggested, represent “the epicenter of great power competition with China” and so were witnessing increasingly provocative behavior by Chinese air and naval units. In the face of such destabilizing activity, “the United States must be ready to deter conflict and, if necessary, fight and win at sea.”

In that address, Esper made it clear that the U.S. Navy remains vastly superior to its Chinese counterpart. Nonetheless, he asserted, “We must stay ahead; we must retain our overmatch; and we will keep building modern ships to ensure we remain the world’s greatest Navy.”

Although Trump fired Esper on November 9th for, among other things, resisting White House demands to speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the former defense secretary’s focus on fighting China from the Pacific and adjacent seas remains deeply embedded in Pentagon strategic thinking and will be a legacy of the Trump years. In support of such a policy, billions of dollars have already been committed to the construction of new surface ships and submarines, ensuring that such a legacy will persist for years, if not decades to come.

Do like Patton: strike deep, strike hard

Trump said little about what should be done for U.S. ground forces during the 2016 campaign, except to indicate that he wanted them even bigger and better equipped. What he did do, however, was speak of his admiration for World War II Army generals known for their aggressive battle tactics. “I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur. I was a fan of George Patton,” he told Maggie Haberman and David Sanger of the New York Times that March. “If we had Douglas MacArthur today or if we had George Patton today and if we had a president that would let them do their thing you wouldn’t have ISIS, okay?”

Trump’s reverence for General Patton has proven especially suggestive in a new era of great-power competition, as U.S. and NATO forces again prepare to face well-equipped land armies on the continent of Europe, much as they did during World War II. Back then, it was the tank corps of Nazi Germany that Patton’s own tanks confronted on the Western Front. Today, U.S. and NATO forces face Russia’s best-equipped armies in Eastern Europe along a line stretching from the Baltic republics and Poland in the north to Romania in the south. If a war with Russia were to break out, much of the fighting would likely occur along this line, with main-force units from both sides engaged in head-on, high-intensity combat.

Since the Cold War ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union, American strategists had devoted little serious thought to high-intensity ground combat against a well-equipped adversary in Europe. Now, with East-West tensions rising and U.S. forces again facing well-armed potential foes in what increasingly looks like a military-driven version of the Cold War, that problem is receiving far more attention.

This time around, however, U.S. forces face a very different combat environment. In the Cold War years, Western strategists generally imagined a contest of brute strength in which our tanks and artillery would battle theirs along hundreds of miles of front lines until one side or the other was thoroughly depleted and had no choice but to sue for peace (or ignite a global nuclear catastrophe). Today’s strategists, however, imagine far more multidimensional (or “multi-domain”) warfare extending to the air and well into rear areas, as well as into space and cyberspace. In such an environment, they’ve come to believe that the victor will have to act swiftly, delivering paralyzing blows to what they call the enemy’s C3I capabilities (critical command, control, communications, and intelligence) in a matter of days, or even hours. Only then would powerful armored units be able to strike deep into enemy territory and, in true Patton fashion, ensure a Russian defeat.

The U.S. military has labeled such a strategy “all-domain warfare” and assumes that the U.S. will indeed dominate space, cyberspace, airspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. In a future confrontation with Russian forces in Europe, as the doctrine lays it out, U.S. air power would seek control of the airspace above the battlefield, while using guided missiles to knock out Russian radar systems, missile batteries, and their C3I facilities. The Army would conduct similar strikes using a new generation of long-range artillery systems and ballistic missiles. Only when Russia’s defensive capabilities were thoroughly degraded would that Army follow up with a ground assault, Patton-style.

Be prepared to fight with nukes

As imagined by senior Pentagon strategists, any future conflict with China or Russia is likely to entail intense, all-out combat on the ground, at sea, and in the air aimed at destroying an enemy’s critical military infrastructure in the first hours or, at most, days of battle, opening the way for a swift U.S. invasion of enemy territory. This sounds like a winning strategy — but only if you possess all the advantages in weaponry and technology. If not, what then? This is the quandary faced by Chinese and Russian strategists whose forces don’t quite match up to the power of the American ones. While their own war planning remains, to date, a mystery, it’s hard not to imagine that the Chinese and Russian equivalents of the Pentagon high command are pondering the possibility of a nuclear response to any all-out American assault on their militaries and territories.

The examination of available Russian military literature has led some Western analysts to conclude that the Russians are indeed increasing their reliance on “tactical” nuclear weapons to obliterate superior U.S./NATO forces before an invasion of their country could be mounted (much as, in the previous century, U.S. forces relied on just such weaponry to avert a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe). Russian military analysts have indeed published articles exploring just such an option — sometimes described by the phrase “escalate to de-escalate” (a misnomer if ever there was one) — although Russian military officials have never openly discussed such tactics. Still, the Trump administration has cited that unofficial literature as evidence of Russian plans to employ tactical nukes in a future East-West confrontation and used it to justify the acquisition of new U.S. weapons of just this sort.

“Russian strategy and doctrine… mistakenly assesses that the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘de-escalate’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia,” the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2018 asserts. “To correct any Russian misperceptions of advantage… the president must have a range of limited and graduated [nuclear] options, including a variety of delivery systems and explosive yields.” In furtherance of such a policy, that review called for the introduction of two new types of nuclear munitions: a “low-yield” warhead (meaning it could, say, pulverize Lower Manhattan without destroying all of New York City) for a Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile and a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

As in so many of the developments described above, this Trump initiative will prove difficult to reverse in the Biden years. After all, the first W76-2 low-yield warheads have already rolled off the assembly lines, been installed on missiles, and are now deployed on Trident submarines at sea. These could presumably be removed from service and decommissioned, but this has rarely occurred in recent military history and, to do so, a new president would have to go against his own military high command. Even more difficult would be to negate the strategic rationale behind their deployment. During the Trump years, the notion that nuclear arms could be used as ordinary weapons of war in future great-power conflicts took deep root in Pentagon thinking and erasing it will prove to be no easy feat.

Amid arguments over the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, amid the firings and sudden replacements of civilian leaders at the Pentagon, Donald Trump’s most significant legacy — the one that could lead not to yet more forever wars but to a forever disaster — has passed almost unnoticed in the media and in political circles in Washington.

Supporters of the new administration and even members of Biden’s immediate circle (though not his actual appointees to national security posts) have advanced some stirring ideas about transforming American military policy, including reducing the role military force plays in America’s foreign relations and redeploying some military funds to other purposes like fighting Covid-19. Such ideas are to be welcomed, but President Biden’s top priority in the military area should be to focus on the true Trump military legacy — the one that has set us on a war course in relation to China and Russia — and do everything in his power to steer us in a safer, more prudent direction. Otherwise, the phrase “forever war” could gain a new, far grimmer meaning.

Demand for COVID vaccines expected to get heated — and fast

Americans have made no secret of their skepticism of COVID-19 vaccines this year, with fears of political interference and a “warp speed” timeline blunting confidence in the shots. As recently as September, nearly half of U.S. adults said they didn’t intend to be inoculated.

But with two promising vaccines primed for release, likely within weeks, experts in ethics and immunization behavior say they expect attitudes to shift quickly from widespread hesitancy to urgent, even heated demand.

“People talk about the anti-vaccine people being able to kind of squelch uptake. I don’t see that happening,” Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccinologist with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told viewers of a recent JAMA Network webinar. “This, to me, is more like the Beanie Baby phenomenon. The attractiveness of a limited edition.”

Reports that vaccines produced by drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna appear to be safe and effective, along with the deliberate emphasis on science-based guidance from the incoming Biden administration, are likely to reverse uncertainty in a big way, said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine.

“I think that’s going to flip the trust issue,” he said.

The shift is already apparent. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found that by the end of November 60% of Americans said they would get a vaccine for the coronavirus. This month, even as a federal advisory group met to hash out guidelines for vaccine distribution, a long list of advocacy groups — from those representing home-based health workers and community health centers to patients with kidney disease — were lobbying state and federal officials in hopes their constituents would be prioritized for the first scarce doses.

“As we get closer to the vaccine being a reality, there’s a lot of jockeying, to be sure,” said Katie Smith Sloan, chief executive of LeadingAge, a nonprofit organization pushing for staff and patients at long-term care centers to be included in the highest-priority category.

Certainly, some consumers remain wary, said Rupali Limaye, a social and behavioral health scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Fears that drugmakers and regulators might cut corners to speed a vaccine linger, even as details of the trials become public and the review process is made more transparent. Some health care workers, who are at the front of the line for the shots, are not eager to go first.

“There will be people who will say, ‘I will wait a little bit more for safety data,” Limaye said.

But those doubts likely will recede once the vaccines are approved for use and begin to circulate broadly, said Offit, who sits on the FDA advisory panel set to review the requests for emergency authorization Pfizer and Moderna have submitted.

He predicted demand for the COVID vaccines could rival the clamor that occurred in 2004, when production problems caused a severe shortage of flu shots just as influenza season began. That led to long lines, rationed doses and ethical debates over distribution.

“That was a highly desired vaccine,” Offit said. “I think in many ways that might happen here.”

Initially, vaccine supplies will be tight, with federal officials planning to ship 6.4 million doses within 24 hours of FDA authorization and up to 40 million doses by the end of the year. The CDC panel recommended that the first shots go to the 21 million health care workers in the U.S. and 3 million nursing home staff and residents, before being rolled out to other groups based on a hierarchy of risk factors.

Even before any vaccine is available, some people are trying to boost their chances of access, said Dr. Allison Kempe, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and expert in vaccine dissemination. “People have called me and said, ‘How can I get the vaccine?'” she said. “I think that not everyone will be happy to wait, that’s for sure. I don’t think there will be rioting in the streets, but there may be pressure brought to bear.”

That likely will include emotional debates over how, when and to whom next doses should be distributed, said Caplan. Under the CDC recommendations, vulnerable groups next in line include 87 million workers whose jobs are deemed “essential” — a broad and ill-defined category — as well as 53 million adults age 65 and older.

“We’re going to have some fights about high-risk groups,” said Caplan of NYU.

The conversations will be complicated. Should prisoners, who have little control over their COVID exposure, get vaccine priority? How about professional sports teams, whose performance could bolster society’s overall morale? And what about residents of facilities providing care for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, who are three times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the general population?

Control over vaccination allocation rests with the states, so that’s where the biggest conflicts will occur, Caplan said. “It’s a short fight, I hope, in the sense in which it gets done in a few months, but I think it will be pretty vocal.”

Once vaccine supplies become more plentiful, perhaps by May or June, another consideration is sure to boost demand: requirements for proof of COVID vaccination for work and travel.

“It’s inevitable that you’re going to see immunity passports or that you’re required to show a certificate on the train, airplane, bus or subway,” Caplan predicted. “Probably also to enter certain hospitals, probably to enter certain restaurants and government facilities.”

But with a grueling winter surge ahead, and new predictions that COVID-19 will fell as many as 450,000 Americans by February, the tragic reality of the disease will no doubt fuel ample demand for vaccination.

“People now know someone who has gotten COVID, who has been hospitalized or has unfortunately died,” Limaye said.

“We’re all seeing this now,” said Kempe. “Even deniers are beginning to see what this illness can do.”

Ossoff debates empty podium as GOP senator no-shows amid scrutiny over stock trades

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jon Ossoff on Sunday was forced to debate an empty podium after incumbent Georgia Sen. David Perdue, facing growing scrutiny over his potentially unlawful trades, refused to show up at the televised event, which came less than a month ahead of the state’s pivotal January 5 runoff races.

Ossoff, who narrowly lost a Senate runoff to Republican Karen Handel in 2017, suggested Sunday that Perdue declined to participate because he “doesn’t feel that he can handle himself in debate, or perhaps is concerned that he may incriminate himself in debate.”

“It shows an astonishing arrogance and sense of entitlement for Georgia’s senior U.S. senator to believe he shouldn’t have to debate at a moment like this in our history,” Ossoff said. “His blatant abuse of his power and privilege to enrich himself is disgraceful.”

I showed up to debate tonight.

David Perdue pleaded the fifth.pic.twitter.com/doKt1EiJ0j

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 7, 2020

The Georgia Democrat was referring to recent suspiciously-timed stock trades by Perdue that led the Justice Department to launch a probe into possible insider trading. As the New York Times reported, Perdue earlier this year “sold more than $1 million worth of stock in the financial company Cardlytics, where he once served on the board.”

“Six weeks later, its share price tumbled when the company’s founder announced he would step down as chief executive and the firm said its future sales would be worse than expected,” the Times noted. “After the company’s stock price bottomed out in March at $29, Mr. Perdue bought back a substantial portion of the shares that he had sold. They are now trading at around $120 per share.”

Ossoff used his opportunity as the lone candidate on the debate stage to slam Perdue and the Republican-controlled Senate for refusing to pass additional relief as the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis continue to get worse nationwide, leaving millions unable to afford basic necessities and at risk of total destitution.

“It’s absolutely astonishing that the United States Senate, since midsummer, has not passed any additional direct economic relief for the American people,” said Ossoff. “They should be in emergency session right now… Where is Congress? Where is David Perdue?”

It's absolutely astonishing that the United States Senate, since midsummer, has not passed any additional economic relief for the American people. pic.twitter.com/oFyvgzG74I

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 6, 2020

The contest between Ossoff and Perdue is one of two Senate runoffs set for January 5; Democrats must prevail in both races to create a 50-50 tie in the Senate, which could be broken by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Both candidates for Georgia’s other runoff, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) and Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock, showed up to debate Sunday and sparred over coronavirus relief, criminal justice reform, and the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Loeffler, who has also faced scrutiny over shady stock trades, refused to say that President Donald Trump lost the November election and ducked several questions about his false claims of voter fraud.

Warnock, for his part, repeatedly attacked what he characterized as Loeffler’s unethical profiteering and slammed the Republican incumbent over her support for repealing the Affordable Care Act, a move that would strip health insurance from tens of millions of Americans amid a deadly pandemic.

.@Kloeffler dumped $3 million of stock to protect her own wealth after a private Senate briefing on the coronavirus pandemic.

Now she's refusing to support a ban on senators trading stocks.

Kelly is only looking out for Kelly. https://t.co/qU5SR9TwYJ pic.twitter.com/IG3V0PIo8u

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 7, 2020

“Healthcare is on the ballot, workers are on the ballot, voting rights is on the ballot, criminal justice reform is on the ballot,” Warnock said in his closing remarks. “And if you give me the honor of representing you in the U.S. Senate, I’ll be thinking about Georgia every day.”

President Trump asked Pennsylvania’s House speaker for help overturning the election results: report

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump personally asked the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for help overturning the presidential election results in the state.

“President Trump called the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives twice during the past week to make the extraordinary request for help reversing his loss in the state, reflecting a broadening pressure campaign by the president and his allies to try to subvert the 2020 election result,” reported Amy Gardner, Josh Dawsey, and Rachael Bade. “The calls, confirmed by House Speaker Bryan Cutler’s office, mark the third state where Trump has directly attempted to overturn a result since he lost the election to President-elect Joe Biden.”

According to a spokesman for the speaker, “Cutler told the president that the legislature had no power to overturn the state’s chosen slate of electors.”

Previously, Trump invited GOP leaders from the Michigan House of Representatives to the Trump Hotel, to try to test the waters to see if they were willing to intervene in the election certification. He also called Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) on Saturday to ask him to call a special session to replace the state’s electors, something Kemp told him he couldn’t do.

Trump and Kushner buy $31 million plot on Miami island known as the “Billionaire’s Bunker”: report

Senior White House advisor Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner are reportedly making a major real estate investment in Florida.

“Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have splashed out on a $30 million-plus dollar lot of land on Miami’s uber-swanky and high-security Indian Creek Island — known as the ‘Billionaire’s Bunker’ — Page Six can exclusively reveal. Ahead of President Trump’s exit from the White House, the couple is busy making plans for life after D.C. and have viewed numerous properties and lots of land in the Miami and Palm Beach area,” The New York Post reported Monday.

The newspaper believes the lot was purchased from Spanish singer Julio Iglesias.

“The private, guarded and gated Indian Creek Island is also one of the most secure places in Florida, as it boasts a 13-man police force for just 29 residences,” the tabloid reported. “It measures 1.84 acres with 200 feet of private waterfront. The lot was for sale at $31.8 million. Taxes are $472,764 a year.”

The couple have been looking to move somewhere other than back to New York City, which is said to be inhospitable, to live after Trump leaves office on Jan. 20. Posters have gone up in Manhattan telling the couple they are not welcome.

Matthew McConaughey slams the “condescending” left as “arrogant towards that other 50%”

Matthew McConaughey dares Americans to “get aggressively centric.” During a recent interview on comedian Russell Brand’s “Under the Skin” podcast about his new memoir “Greenlights,” the actor likened the country’s political parties to two vehicles on opposites sides of the highway that “are so far apart, their f**king tires aren’t even on the pavement anymore.”

Brand, who was born in the United Kingdom, said that he has noticed increased political divisiveness, especially over the last several years.

“We live in a time, I feel, in my country and yours, where there’s this sort of — I have sensed a lot of condemnation and criticism of what I might describe as normal working people,” Brand said. “A kind of offhandedness, ‘Oh, they’re dumb, they’re voting for Brexit, they’re voting for Trump.'”

Brand said that rhetoric doesn’t sit well with him. “I spend enough time with people who have been described in this manner to feel ill at ease with it,” he said, before asking McConaughey, “How do you feel about that kind of judgment?”

McConaughey responded that for the country to become more unified, “the left will have to understand the science of ‘meet you in the middle.'”

“There are a lot [of people] on that ‘illiberal left’ that absolutely condescend, patronize, and are arrogant towards that other 50 percent,” he said.

He chided some liberal celebrities, without citing specific individuals, for politicizing “get out the vote” messages. “They can’t help themselves,” McConaughey said. “At the very end of it, they go, ‘So we don’t let those criminal bastards get back in office.’ No! Don’t say the last part! You lost 50% of your audience.”

He also noted that many liberals couldn’t believe that Trump won the election four years ago, and said that many voters on “the right” are now “in denial” about President-elect Joe Biden’s victory over Trump “because their side has ‘fake news.'”

“No one knows what the hell to believe, right?” he said. “So they’re putting down their last bastion of defense.”

McConaughey’s solution? Voters on both sides of the aisle should focus on shared values, such as basic trust, agreeing not to cheat one another, a sense of fairness and a sense of humor.

“Let’s get aggressively centric,” he advised. “I dare you.”

While McConaughey’s political musings would have perhaps only been previously of interest to his fans — or fans of Brand’s podcast — they bear slightly more interrogation as the actor has lightly flirted with the idea of entering politics.

While promoting his book on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” in Texas last week, McConaughey left the door open for a gubernatorial run after he was asked if he would be interested.

“It would be up to the people more than it would me,” McConaughey said in the interview. “I would say this. Look, politics seems to be a broken business to me right now. And when politics redefines its purpose, I could be a hell of a lot more interested.”

McConaughey went on to walk back the remarks on an appearance on “The Late Night Show With Stephen Colbert.”

“I have no plans to do that right now,” he said. “Right now, no. I don’t get politics. Politics seems to be a broken business, politics needs to redefine its purpose . . . Whatever leadership role I can be most useful in, and I don’t know if that’s politics.”

And, as the Dallas Morning News reported, the notoriously apolitical actor has actually only voted twice since 2012 — a level of political participation which perhaps makes it easier to advocate for being “aggressively centric.”

Bob Dylan sells entire catalog of songs to Universal Music Publishing

UPDATED: The song-catalog bonanza of 2020 just hit a peak that is not likely to be topped: Universal Music Publishing Group has acquired Bob Dylan‘s entire catalog of songs in a blockbuster agreement encompassing more than 600 copyrights spanning 60 years, ranging from 1962’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” to this year’s “Murder Most Foul.”

His catalog was previously administered in the U.S. by his own company; a rep for Sony/ATV Music Publishing tells Variety that it will continue to administer Dylan’s catalog outside of the U.S. through the end of their agreement “in several years.”

Terms were not disclosed, but the amount is said to be between $300 million and $400 million. Stevie Nicks sold 80% of her publishing catalog to Primary Wave last week for a reported $100 million, demonstrating just how robust the market has become.

Read more from Variety: Jax Taylor fired from Bravo’s “Vanderpump Rules”

Dylan has long controlled the rights to the vast majority of his compositions. Since the UMPG deal makes no mention of future compositions, presumably he is free to sign a new deal for them, although he has released just two albums of original material in the past decade.

The influence and impact of Dylan’s songs cannot be overstated: In 2016, he was the first songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, cited by the Swedish Academy “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” According to UMPG, his songs have been recorded more than 6,000 times over the past six decades, by a vast array of artists all across the world, particularly songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Lay Lady Lay,” “Forever Young,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” “Tangled Up In Blue,” “Gotta Serve Somebody,” the Academy Award-winning “Things Have Changed” and so many more. Since the release of his first album in 1961, Dylan, 79, has sold more than 125 million records around the world, and, although sidelined by the pandemic, he has toured relentlessly since 1988, performing more than a hundred shows each year since.

In an internal memo announcing the deal to the staff, UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge said, “Great songwriters recognize authenticity and gravitate to those companies whose people honor their creativity and, in turn, create true value for their work. And that is exactly what’s happened here because of our incredible publishing company led by [chairman/CEO] Jody Gerson. I want to thank Jody, [COO] Marc Cimino and the entire family at UMPG for being, without a doubt, the best at what they do. They have turned a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity into a reality.”

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Even amid the pandemic, over the past couple of years copyrights have skyrocketed in value. While the music industry, and live entertainment in particular, have been deeply damaged by the lockdown, recorded-music and music publishing have proven to be strong assets. The expected tax policies of the incoming Biden administration have heated up the market even more: In recent weeks artists ranging from Calvin Harris to the Killers have sold catalog assets to private equity firms, and Hipgnosis Songs has made an aggressive move into the industry, spending more than $1 billion on catalogs since mid-2018, largely by successful, non-superstar songwriters and producers.

However, the Dylan-UMPG deal is exceptional on every level — not least for the quality and timelessness of the catalog, and the fact that a traditional publisher, rather than an investment fund or private equity concern, is making the acquisition.

In a statement announcing the deal, Gerson said, “To represent the body of work of one of the greatest songwriters of all time — whose cultural importance can’t be overstated — is both a privilege and a responsibility. The UMPG global team is honored to be Bob Dylan’s publishing partner, and I especially want to acknowledge [COO] Marc Cimino, whose passion and perseverance were instrumental in bringing this opportunity to us. We look forward to working with Bob and the team in ensuring his artistry continues to reach and inspire generations of fans, recording artists and songwriters around the world.”

Grainge said in his official statement: “As someone who began his career in music publishing, it is with enormous pride that today we welcome Bob Dylan to the UMG family. It’s no secret that the art of songwriting is the fundamental key to all great music, nor is it a secret that Bob is one of the very greatest practitioners of that art. Brilliant and moving, inspiring and beautiful, insightful and provocative, his songs are timeless—whether they were written more than half a century ago or yesterday. It is no exaggeration to say that his vast body of work has captured the love and admiration of billions of people all around the world. I have no doubt that decades, even centuries from now, the words and music of Bob Dylan will continue to be sung and played — and cherished — everywhere.”

The “Murder on Middle Beach” finale is aggravating and raises new questions – and that’s the point

During the last four minutes of of HBO’s docuseries “Murder on Middle Beach,” a black screen pops up with a single, heartwrenching sentence: My family still lives without answers about my mother’s death. This was actually where the four-part series began, as first-time filmmaker Madison Hamburg set out to investigate the events surrounding the murder of his mother, Barbara Beach Hamburg, who was found stabbed and bludgeoned to death outside her home in an affluent Connecticut suburb in 2010.

So in a sense, it feels like we as viewers are coming full circle, which raises the question: What actually makes for a satisfying end for a true crime series? Do we need a case to be closed, or at least a prime suspect in view, to feel like a narrative arc was actually achieved before the final end credits?

The answer — much like some of the details presented in “Murder on Middle Beach” — is complicated.

Over the course of the docuseries, which began as a student film when Madison was in college, Madison says that he has a few goals. The first is to further understand his mother as a person because, as he says early in the first episode, children rarely know who their parents actually are. His second goal was to absolve his family members of the crime, which dovetails with the obvious goal of discovering who actually killed Barbara.

From the jump, the suspect list was long. Madison’s’s father, Jeffrey Hamburg, was presented as a main person of interest throughout the series.

Jeffrey, who was an exorbitantly wealthy former CEO of Southern Electric International, and Barbara had an incredibly acrimonious divorce. The day Barbara was found killed, she and Jeffrey were actually due in court to discuss Jeffrey’s claim that he could not afford his child support and alimony payments.

Jeffrey refuses to discuss the case or his marriage with Madison, except to point to Barbara’s alcoholism and, prior to recovery, her pattern of black-out drinking as evidence that Barbara wasn’t necessarily to be trusted — a line he holds even once Madison finds boxes of documents in the final episodes that could potentially implicate him in unethical (and potentially illegal) business practices that made Barbara feel unsafe.

Then there’s Conway Beach, Barbara’s sister. She suffered for years from alcoholism, addiction and physical and mental health issues — as well as a palpable jealousy towards Barbara and Barbara’s daughter, Ali. Due to Conway’s addiction, she lost custody of her son to Barbara, after which Conway attempted to hire a hitman to kill Barbara because she “snapped.”

“My ulterior plan was to get all my money out of my 401(k) plan and get revenge against my baby sister, your mother, your father, and both of you, even Ali,” she told Madison. “I was so messed up, I didn’t know what to do. I was so angry. My whole family wasn’t speaking to me.”

It’s a shocking twist and, just when viewers need things to be put into context, the details become murky. Conway remembers taking a bag of money to a Florida hotel to meet someone who presented themselves as a hitman. While waiting for the person to arrive, she grabs a drink at the lobby bar. She blacks out and wakes up the next morning upstairs on a bed, naked and cashless.

Conway presents the situation like she simply was scammed; she and Barbara eventually came to terms, and Conway moved in with her prior to the murder (though the docuseries alleges that there was tension between the two because Barbara had asked her to move out). She’s convinced, however, that she knows who the killer is: Ali, Madison’s sister who was still in high school at the time.

This allegation feels circumstantial at best. Conway and Ali are the ones who discovered the body and Conway said Ali acted “strangely.” She cites the fact that the teenager had a rocky relationship with her mother, which was only intensified by Ali’s struggles with borderline personality disorder. That said, in the final episode Ali’s alibi is confirmed: her mother dropped her off at school the morning that she was killed. She remained in class until Conway picked her up.

Then, there is the still-plausible idea that Barbara was killed by someone she had crossed through her participation in “The Gifting Tables,” a pyramid scheme wherein potential members would “gift” existing members of the organization money in order to join, then recruit new members for their own eventual pay-outs. Initial buy-in was about $5,000 and, under leaders like Barbara, women would liquidate savings accounts or refinance their homes for a chance at entering the more lucrative circles of the group.

It should be noted that this was at the height of the recession, and participants — many of whom Barbara recruited from her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings — were discouraged from telling their husbands or partners about their participation in the Tables.

By the end of the series, the only suspect who has a truly rock-solid alibi is Ali, and a number of questions about that, in my mind, remained unanswered: Who was the masked man who was allegedly seen lurking outside Barbara’s window the day before she was murdered? Who called Barbara to tell her that her court time had been changed from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. the day of her murder (ostensibly making time for the crime to be committed)?

What details, if any, does Conway remember about the person she planned to hire to kill Barbara? How did she contact them? Did she ever try to contact them again? Why did Jeffrey’s financial dealings make Barbara feel like her family’s safety had been compromised? And, as Jeffrey alleged via a phone call to Madison, is there any evidence that the documents detailing his financial decisions had been fabricated?

I’ll admit, on my first watch of the finale, I was a little frustrated by the lack of answers. The pace picks up in the fourth episode in such a way — through the confirmation of Ali’s alibi and the discovery of Jeffrey’s financial records — that it felt like we were rocketing towards a last-minute reveal that would position “Murder on Middle Beach” as the next “The Jinx,” the shocking 2015 HBO docuseries, which shows Robert Durst in the final moments of the series mumbling what sounds like a confession on a still-hot lapel microphone: “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.”

Instead, we’re left with questions. So many people had the opportunity, the motive, the means.

But after watching the entire series through again on Monday morning, I realized that’s obviously the point — one that I had lost sight of while tuning in week-to-week for the last month, eager to see how the case concluded. Madison Hamburg has been transparent in interviews about wanting to produce “a different take on true crime.”

“It wasn’t a story about a murder, it’s a story about identity and about my mom and that’s a really hard sell,” he told the Connecticut Insider. “Thank God that HBO saw the potential and the rest is history.”

In a genre that so often luridly dehumanizes its victims, specifically women, as a means for salacious storytelling, “Murder on Middle Beach” is less about clinically dismantling family secrets for their evidentiary value, than it is about assessing how those family secrets bond and tie us — and what it means when those bonds are severed.

Through Madison’s eyes and camera lens, we watch as his relationship with his father crumbles, as he has to inform Ali that Conway believed she was capable of killing her own mother, as he has to badger his local police department again and again (before finally escalating to a formal Freedom of Information Act appeal) for a 1,600-page case file with details about their investigation into Barbara’s death.

It’s revealed in the “Murder on Middle Beach” epilogue that in October 2020, Madison was granted that case file and that he and his team had started reviewing it for additional information about the murder. That’s essentially a thousand more opportunities to discover not just what happened to his mother, but to find another slash in the family tree. It’s a sobering, overwhelming realization.

I’ve written before about the trend of “true criminal justice” documentaries and docuseries — the kind wherein the narrative is less about solving a mystery and more about turning the magnifying glass on the legal proceedings that surrounded it — are an opportunity for filmmakers to present a fuller picture of criminality and victimhood.

“Murder on Middle Beach” adds to the genre as well. It doesn’t have a tidy ending, but grief rarely does. Filmmakers could learn a lot from how Madison Hamburg focuses on the emotional ripple effects of crime, and the very human toll that loss takes on a family and community.

“Murder on Middle Beach” is currently streaming on HBO Max.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this incorrectly stated Ali Hamburg was diagnosed with bipolar disorder; she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Scientists have just gotten closer to creating a universal flu vaccine

A new report reveals that scientists may have taken the first crucial steps toward developing a vaccine that will treat not specific strains of influenza, but all of them. The finding could change the way that the flu vaccine is doled out — meaning that, instead of being vaccinated for a specific strain of flu every year as humans currently are, one single shot could vaccinate us against any and all strains in perpetuity.

The new study, which was first published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine on Monday, describes a universal flu vaccine candidate that could change the way we vaccinate ourselves against influenza. The theoretical vaccine takes advantage of the properties of the influenza virus, which, as the article explains, resembles a lollipop, with a head and a stalk. The “candy” part of the virus, the head, is covered in proteins known as hemagglutinins (HAs).

Existing influenza viruses target specific HAs by injecting weakened or inactivated version of the influenza virus directly into the body, which can then recognize the antigens — that is, the molecule or molecular structure found on a disease-causing organism (or pathogen) — and develop an appropriate immune system response.

The challenge in fighting the viruses this way, though, is that the influenza virus can quickly mutate and swap genes between strains, making it possible for people who have developed immunity to one strain of the virus (whether naturally or through vaccines) to be vulnerable to an evolved version. This is why new vaccines are repeatedly developed and given out, so that our bodies can keep up with the latest influenza evolutions.

“Influenza virus infections are a substantial public health concern,” the authors of the paper explain. “Seasonal influenza causes between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths every year globally, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, influenza pandemics occur at irregular intervals and can claim millions of lives. The most devastating example is the H1N1 pandemic of 1918, which caused 40 million deaths according to conservative estimates. Current seasonal influenza virus vaccines contain three or four strains of influenza virus that cover the viruses circulating in the human population.”

The new vaccine candidate, which was developed by virologist Florian Krammer of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and her colleagues, attempts to circumvent this problem by developing a vaccine that kills the virus by targeting it stalk rather than by aiming for the head. The previous challenge to doing this is that the human body has grown accustomed to attack influenza strains through the head and can override efforts to produce antibodies intended to target the stalk. Krammer and her colleagues have attempted to solve this problem by creating a strain of the virus that uses the influenza stalk but creates a completely new head. Because the so-called chimeric HAs (cHA) do not trigger immune memory, the body does not create as many antibodies targeting the head and instead focuses more on the stalk, which it does recognize.

“Boosting with a cHA that has the same stalk but a different head induces another primary response against the new head but a recall response against the stalk, since the immune system has already seen that stalk,” the scientists explain in their paper.

As researchers rush towards production of a novel coronavirus vaccine, it has been a banner year for biomedical research, with all kinds of advance in the field of immunology and microbiology. Last week, in a paper published by the scientific journal Nature Communications, scientists announced that they had used CRISPR – a genetic technology that can alter DNA — to successfully edit SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus), a virus similar to HIV, out of the genomes of rhesus macaque monkeys’ cells, potentially laying the groundwork for similar biotechnology to help people defeat HIV. Meanwhile, some of the most promising vaccine candidates for the novel coronavirus, which are being distributed shortly, rely upon an entirely new vaccine technology, known as synthetic mRNA, that has never been mass-produced until now. Indeed, last month, multiple biotechnology companies, including Moderna and Pfizer (which worked with BioNTech), developed promising coronavirus vaccine candidates that made it past Phase III, or the part of a clinical trial where a smaller group of patients is expanded and made more diverse so that a vaccine can be tested for efficacy and safety.

By contrast, the influenza study was only a Phase I experiment, one in which 51 people received a variety of vaccines and 15 people were given placebos. The small size of the study is further underscored by the sheer number of influenza strains that exist, with three to four strains being known as group A and other influenza virus strains being known as group B. According to Krammer, if their technology is successful, it will take years before there are enough cHAs from both groups to turned into a universal influenza vaccine.

Biden’s economic adviser picks are underwhelming the left, to say the least

President-elect Joe Biden has started to assemble his economic team, which will face the daunting task of trying to pull America out of a recession in which what mild semi-recovery that has occurred has primarily benefited the wealthy. Many progressives are concerned that his early picks will not rise to the occasion.

One subject of left-wing concern is Brian Deese, Biden’s pick for National Economic Council (NEC) director who infamously urged President Barack Obama to curb government spending instead of providing increased assistance to the working class and poor adequately when he served as Obama’s deputy director of NEC during the early months of the Great Recession, according to Politico. As the Action Center on Race and the Economy, a self-described “campaign hub for organizations working at the intersection of racial justice and Wall Street accountability,” tweeted, Deese used to support fracking and fossil fuel production, opposes proposals that would have increased oversight over political spending and has financed racist institutions like police foundations. Likewise, Kate Aronoff of The New Republic wrote a scathing op-ed criticizing Deese for preaching “fiscal discipline” during the Great Recession, supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and defending drilling in the Arctic. The new progressive group No Corporate Cabinet also pointed to Deese’s advocacy of cutting social programs, defending fracking and increasing the production of fossil fuels.

Aronoff elaborated on those views in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, in which she pointed out the connections between Deese and Wally Adeyemo, Biden’s deputy treasury secretary nominee, and the finance firm BlackRock.

“BlackRock has very smartly cultivated its reputation as a sort of ‘good guy’ on Wall Street,” Aronoff explained. “They’re not an investment bank. They just handle the money of retirees. They’re an asset manager. And they have very cannily cultivated this reputation and an enormous amount of unaccountable power. Time after time, they have sought to shirk regulation and — in the last year especially, and while Brian Deese has been there — really greenwashed their image, so put out this sort of idea that BlackRock is taking the climate crisis seriously, all the while continuing to invest in fossil fuels at an enormous rate.”

In addition to opposing the kind of generous stimulus spending that progressives believed was necessary to fully recover during that economic crisis, Deese also supported large-scale financial deregulation and cutting corporate tax rates that suggested he was sympathetic to the corporate sector.

“The appointment at the NEC [Brian Deese] and the choice for deputy treasury secretary [Wally Adeyemo] are a little troubling,” Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the progressive think tank the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Esquire. Applebaum noted they both had former positions at BlackRock, a global investment management firm, with Adeyemo serving as a former chief of staff to BlackRock’s chief executive and Deese serving as the Global Head of Sustainable Investing. “BlackRock… has oligopolistic power in asset management, there’s no question about it,” Appelbaum said. “Having two people from Blackrock in a position to make decisions like that—whether it should be [too big to fail] or not—is troubling.”

In picking Deese, Biden is deliberately connecting his administration with Obama’s, a president whose administration he repeatedly promised to emulate during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Obama praised Deese shortly before the end of his presidency by claiming that “he engineered the Paris Agreement, the [Hydrofluorocarbons] Agreement, the Aviation Agreement, may have helped save the planet, and he’s just doing it while he’s got two babies at home, and could not be a better person.” Deese has also been defended by supporters who point to his role in organizing the government bailout of the American automobile industry.

Many left-critics were similarly dismayed by Biden’s choice to tap Neera Tanden to run the Office of Management and Budget at the White House. As president and CEO of the center-left think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) since 2011, Tanden regularly hobnobbed with wealthy business leaders from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and elsewhere in corporate America in order fundraise for the think tank, according to The Washington Post. The Post estimates that between 2014 and 2019 CAP received no less than $33 million in donations from the financial sector and between $4.9 million and $13 million from Silicon Valley companies and foundations. It has also received donations from Walmart and defense contractor Northrop Grumman. CAP argues that less than 2.5 percent of its funding from 2019 came from corporate sources, although that figure does not include money from business leaders or foundations connected to institutions like Wall Street.

Tanden is infamous for her tense relationship with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and democratic socialist who was Biden’s chief challenger in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Notable incidents involving Tanden include referring to Sanders supporters at ThinkProgress (which is affiliated with CAP) as “crazy leftists,” having public feuds with the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, laying off the organization’s unionized newsroom (Tanden claims the unionizing had nothing to do with it) and, according to Sanders himself in a 2019 letter, “maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas.”

The underlying dilemma is that, while leftists want to restructure the economy so that lower income Americans will do better even if that means the wealthy lose some of their status, many Democrats want stimulus measures that are less focused in scope.

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton, wrote in The Guardian on Sunday that there is a difference between stimulus measures meant to revive the economy (which many corporate executives support, as this would help them as well as ordinary Americans) and bringing about long-term structural changes in the economy, such as those necessary to address growing income inequality. When Sanders ran for president in 2020, for example, he pushed strengthening labor rights, guaranteeing universal single-payer health care, providing free college education, raising the minimum wage and implementing a Green New Deal.

“But [JP Morgan chief executive] Dimon and his ilk will doubtless continue to fight any encroachments on their power and wealth,” Reich wrote. “They will battle antitrust enforcement against their giant corporations, including Dimon’s ‘too big to fail’ bank. They’re dead set against stronger unions and will resist attempts to put workers on their boards.”

Because Biden has made it clear that he does not want to be viewed as alarming to Wall Street, Reich wrote that it is a problem that people like Dimon “will oppose substantial tax hikes to finance trillions of dollars of spending on education, infrastructure and a Green New Deal. And they don’t want campaign finance reforms or any other measures that would dampen the influence of big money in politics. Even if the Senate flips to the Democrats on 5 January, therefore, these three impediments may discourage Biden from tackling structural inequality.”

Viggo Mortensen says “Green Book” criticism is “based on a load of bullsh*t”

Viggo Mortensen has some strong words for critics of the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner “Green Book.” In a new interview with The Independent, the actor railed against controversy that director Peter Farrelly’s movie played into a white savior narrative. Mortensen is currently promoting his new film “Falling,” in which he plays a gay man struggling to care for his ailing, homophobic father.

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“Much of the criticism that was leveled at [‘Green Book’] was not only unreasonable, but it was inaccurate, mendacious, and irresponsible,” he said. “It’s based on a load of bulls*** and an axe to grind and little else. Does it affect what I’m doing, or how people perceive me as an actor? Maybe it does. But I can’t really do anything about that.”

In “Green Book,” Viggo Mortensen plays an Italian-American driver tasked with escorting and protecting concert pianist Dr. Don Shirley, played by Oscar winner Mahershala Ali. The latter won Best Supporting Actor for the film, while Mortensen was nominated for, but lost, the Best Actor prize. Shirley’s family publicly criticized the film as a misrepresentation of their relative, while other critics have condemned “Green Book” as simply the story of a bigot’s (in this case Mortensen’s character) redemption. Shirley’s brother, Maurice Shirley, went so far, in 2018, as to call the movie a “symphony of lies.”

“It’s become a cliché to say, ‘Is this movie going to be the ‘Green Book’ of this year?’ ‘Green Book’ has become a pejorative,” Mortensen said of the movie set in segregated, 1960s America.

“Falling,” which Mortensen wrote, directed, and stars in, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has also since weathered controversy over the fact that Mortensen is a straight actor playing a gay man.

Mortensen told The Independent that “he wouldn’t think of asking someone what their sexual orientation or identification was. Neither do I assume that actors who identify as being homosexual only want to play homosexual roles. I wasn’t intending to play [the gay son] John, but I ended up playing him, because I had a high enough profile, and I also didn’t have to pay the actor.”

Mortensen added, “There’s no need to ask people how they see themselves. What’s important to me is the person that will do a good job in this role.”

Entire Arizona legislature shuts down after Rudy Giuliani potentially exposed lawmakers to COVID-19

The Arizona state legislature will shut down for the next week after Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani potentially exposed lawmakers to the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Giuliani had tested positive for the virus on Sunday. The former New York mayor traveled to multiple states to pressure Republican lawmakers to help his bid to overturn the results of the election based on unfounded allegations of voter fraud. The 76-year-old was hospitalized at Georgetown University Medical Center after receiving his diagnosis, ABC News reported.

It is unclear when Giuliani first tested positive or when he was exposed. His son Andrew, a White House adviser, said he tested positive on Nov. 20. Christianné Allen, the communications director for the former mayor, also said she began quarantine on the same day. (Giuliani’s ill-fated press conference in which a dark goo dripped down his face took place one day earlier.)

A maskless Giuliani held a show hearing with 15 Arizona lawmakers at a Hyatt Regency hotel in Phoenix last Monday before privately meeting with several Republican legislators and leaders the following day, according to The Arizona Republic. Giuliani also traveled to Michigan and Georgia, potentially exposing other lawmakers.

A Michigan official said the legislature did not have plans to shut down but would conduct “normal contact tracing procedures in accordance with CDC guidelines to keep people safe.” Senate staffers in Georgia were instructed to work remotely until they were tested for the virus, according to WXIA.

The Arizona meeting was attended by U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., as well as about a half-dozen state senators and representatives. The following day,, Giuliani met with the Republican leaders of the state Senate and House. The Arizona Republican Party tweeted a photo of Giuliani and other attendees maskless and not social distancing at the meeting.

Learn their names:@AZDavidGowan @SylviaAllenAZ @SonnyBorrelli @MarkFinchem @Leo4AzHouse @BretRbrts
@KellyTownsend11@RepDavidCook @NancyBarto

The fight for our republic has only just begun! #ArizonaHearing pic.twitter.com/q9XAOqzKr6

— Republican Party of Arizona (@AZGOP) December 1, 2020

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that Giuliani had tested negative before traveling to the state and “did not experience any symptoms or test positive for COVID-19 until more than 48 hours after his return.” It is not uncommon for people infected with the virus to test negative early in the incubation period.

Trump’s team said no lawmakers nor members of the media were “on the contact tracing list.”

But Republican leaders said the entire state legislature would be closed this week “out of an abundance of caution,” according to the Republic.

State Sen. Martín Quezada, a Democrat, said the episode was “the epitome of COVID-19 irresponsibility.”

“You owe it to the very people who work in the Capitol buildings to be better than this,” he told his Republican colleagues.

“This is not negligence,” state Sen. Victoria Steele, a fellow Democrat, said on Twitter. “It is willful, deliberate, endangerment of others.”

Trump’s campaign has continued to push back on criticism. Legal adviser Jenna Ellis called closing the legislature “absolutely unnecessary” as she attempted to claim that Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers was using “COVID as an EXCUSE” to not call a special legislative session to override his state’s voters.

After failing to show any evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities and being rejected by courts in every contested state, Trump’s legal team has turned to pressuring state Republican lawmakers to appoint pro-Trump electors who would subvert their state’s voters.

Several Republican state lawmakers said they still planned to hold a rally on Monday to “protect the vote.”

“It’s a rally to support the legislature calling for decertification of the election results,” state Rep. Bret Roberts tweeted.

But Republican leaders have said such a move would not only be improper but illegal.

“As a conservative Republican, I don’t like the results of the presidential election,” Bowers said in a statement. “I voted for President Trump and worked hard to re-elect him. But I cannot and will not entertain a suggestion that we violate current law to change the outcome of a certified election.”

Bowers said it would violate “the basic principles of republican government and the rule of law if we attempted to nullify the people’s vote based on unsupported theories of fraud.

Trump’s attempt to pressure Republicans to hold a special session to override their states’ votes was likewise rejected by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a longtime Trump ally. Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said in a statement that holding a special session “in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.”

“Any attempt by the legislature to retroactively change that process for the Nov. 3 election would be unconstitutional and immediately enjoined by the courts,” they said.

Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell even led a lawsuit seeking to decertify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory but the case was promptly rejected.

“With nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden, plaintiffs’ equal protection claim fails,” U.S. District Judge Linda Parker said in a ruling on Monday, adding that even if their allegations had merit, the “alleged injury does not entitle them to seek their requested remedy because the harm of having one’s vote invalidated or diluted is not remedied by denying millions of others their right to vote.”

Trump attorney suggests Jesus wants the election overturned: “I’m doing the right thing for God”

Jenna Ellis, an attorney for President Donald Trump, on Monday explained that she had religious reasons for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

During an interview on Fox Business, Ellis was asked how she maintains a positive attitude amid setbacks in court and Rudy Giuliani’s COVID-19 diagnosis.

“You know, my life is in service and honor to the Lord Jesus Christ,” Ellis said. “And so whatever anybody else says really doesn’t bother me. I hope that I can be a light and inspiration to everyone else that no matter what anyone else says about you, it’s all about just who you are as a person and made in the image of God and in Christ.”

“And that’s ultimately at the end of the day, as long as I know that I’m pursuing truth and I’m doing the right thing for God and my country, that’s all that matters,” she added. “So that’s what gives me my optimism and my hope.”

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

President Trump claims that Rudy Giuliani has “no temperature” following COVID-19 hospitalization

Rudy Giuliani, the lead attorney overseeing the long-shot crusade by President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election, has been hospitalized after testing positive for COVID-19, Salon has independently confirmed.

Trump himself first announced the diagnosis in a tweet on Sunday, one day after telling a rally crowd in Georgia “we’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner of the pandemic.”

Reports soon broke that Giuliani, 76, had been admitted to Georgetown University Hospital that day. The former New York mayor later tweeted that he had been “getting great care and feeling good,” and was “recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.”

Thank you to all my friends and followers for all the prayers and kind wishes.

I’m getting great care and feeling good.

Recovering quickly and keeping up with everything.

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 7, 2020

Salon first reported on Friday that Christianné Allen, Giuliani’s 21-year-old communications director, had been in quarantine since coming down with symptoms on Nov. 20. She had attended a campaign press event with her boss one day earlier. Allen told Salon she tested negative twice before testing positive on Nov. 28. It is unclear when Giuliani first tested positive.

After the election, Giuliani embarked on a nationwide barnstorming tour to promote the Trump campaign’s false claims of election fraud, and his many maskless appearances have stoked fears that he and his entourage might have exposed a number of federal and state officials to the virus.

Giuliani, whose age puts him at higher risk for a severe infection, has traveled extensively with Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis, who has been seen without a mask in close proximity to the former mayor at several so-called “hearings” regarding the baseless voter fraud allegations.

At one such event last week, the Arizona Republican Party tweeted a photo of a maskless, grinning Giuliani with a number of state officials, none of whom were wearing masks. On Sunday, the Arizona legislature canceled sessions for the next week amid concerns about contagion.

Trump’s pro bono personal attorney had until his diagnosis seemingly enjoyed a streak of good fortune, having been exposed to a number of associates who later tested positive for the virus. One of them was his adult son, Andrew, who holds a vaguely defined White House post and tested positive for COVID-19 the day after attending the Nov. 19 press event like Allen.

In previous conversations with Salon, Giuliani repeatedly downplayed concerns about the virus. Following possible exposure at the Republican National Convention in August, Giuliani told Salon that he did not worry “at all” about contracting the disease and the mortality rate was “lower than most things” he might face. He also expressed confidence in a hydroxychloroquine cocktail treatment, which studies have shown to be ineffective and possibly increase the likelihood of heart failure.

“I’m not worried at all. I was checked before,” Giuliani said at the time. “So was everyone I was in contact with.”

“I also don’t panic over it,” he continued. “If I should get it now, mortality rate is lower than most things I could face. It’s not the same disease it was 4 months ago. Also there are many therapies that give you 95% plus chance of staying out of hospital. In first five or six days hydroxychloroquin [sic] and zinc and possibly adding arithromycin [sic] will work for sure. It did for 5 of my friends and 99% in recent study. If we follow the science we would give people the honest information.”

Giuliani also appeared to have made it through an apparent White House superspreader weekend in late September, after which at least 25 people in Trump’s orbit tested positive. That weekend, Giuliani had joined campaign manager Bill Stepien and former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., to prep the president ahead of the first debate. The group convened at the White House several times, after which everyone but Giuliani tested positive. Christie was later hospitalized.

The country has in recent days endured record numbers of hospitalizations and daily deaths. Public health experts have raised alarms that winter and the concomitant holiday and flu seasons will accelerate the deadly trend. Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week that the upcoming months will likely be “the most difficult in the public health history of the nation.”

On Monday, Trump reassured reporters that his longtime friend did not have a temperature and was feeling well.

“Rudy’s doing well. I just spoke to him. No temperature,” Trump said. “He actually called me early this morning. It was the first call I got . . . Greatest mayor in the history of New York. And what he’s doing now is more important — and he will admit that.”

Giuliani’s important work as mayor including stewarding the city following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Armed Trump supporters surround Michigan secretary of state’s home, threaten her family: officials

About two dozen protesters descended on Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home on Saturday in support of President Donald Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims.

Authorities responded to a public disturbance call outside of Benson’s Detroit home just before 10 p.m. local time on Saturday, Michigan State Police told MLive. Some of the protesters open-carried weapons, but police said the crowd dispersed once officers arrived. No one was arrested.

Protesters chanted “stop the steal” and demanded election audits, echoing Trump’s unfounded claims aimed at overturning an election which he lost by a significant amount of votes. Unlike states with razor thin margins like Arizona and Georgia, Trump lost Michigan by more than 150,000 votes.

“You are not going to take this election from a man that has earned it completely 100% by a freaking landslide,” one pro-Trump protester said in a livestream.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a joint statement that the protesters were “taunting and intimidating” Benson’s family.

“At least one individual could be heard shouting ‘you’re murderers’ within earshot of her child’s bedroom,” they said. “This mob-like behavior is an affront to basic morality and decency . . . Terrorizing children and families at their own homes is not activism. This disturbing behavior masquerading as protest should be called out for what it is and roundly condemned by citizens and public officials alike.”

Benson, the state’s top election official, said the threats did not only target her family but also all of the state’s voters.

“The demands made outside my home were unambiguous, loud and threatening,” she said in a statement. “They targeted me in my role as Michigan’s chief election officer. But the threats of those gathered weren’t actually aimed at me – or any other elected officials in this state. They were aimed at the voters.”

Benson added that she and her four-year-old son were decorating their house for Christmas and about to watch “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” when the protesters descended.

It is unclear why protesters threatened Benson, since she announced that her office would conduct an audit of ballots in the entire state. Benson said the protest outside her home was an extension of Trump’s attempts to discredit the election.

“Through threats of violence, intimidation and bullying, the armed people outside my home and their political allies seek to undermine and silence the will and voices of every voter in the state — no matter who they voted for,” Benson said. “Their goal is to overturn and upend the results of an election that are clear and unequivocal, and that 5.5 million Michigan citizens participated in.”

Vowing to protect and defend “every voter and every vote” from the baseless attacks, Benson hit out at Trump’s legal team and the president’s allies for pushing “bogus legal claims and so-called ‘affidavits’ that fail to allege any clear or cogent evidence of wrongdoing.”

Trump’s legal team has made unfounded claims of fraud and irregularities in court, which have been roundly rejected. They have since targeted Republican-led state legislatures in a flailing bid to pressure lawmakers to vote to appoint electors that would overturn the will of the voters.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who tested positive for COVID-19 after the hearing, appeared before the Michigan House Oversight Committee with discredited witnesses to allege fraud. Former Trump attorney Sidney Powell also filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results echoing Giuliani’s claims. A federal judge rejected the lawsuit on Monday as “nothing but speculation and conjecture.”

“Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters,” US District Judge Linda Parker wrote. “This, the court cannot, and will not, do. The people have spoken.”

Benson is the latest Michigan official to face threats amid Trump’s torrent of falsehoods.

State Rep. Cynthia Johnson, who is Black, said she received multiple calls saying that she should be lynched.

Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, a Republican, said he and his family, along with other lawmakers from both parties, have received “numerous” violent threats for “trying to do their job and help people.”

Michigan’s top statewide officials, who are all women, have faced protests and threats for months amid Trump’s election falsehoods and attacks on coronavirus restrictions.

Armed demonstrators descended on the state Capitol, and protesters surrounded Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s home in April to protest pandemic restrictions. The FBI later said it had busted a plot by extremists to kidnap and murder Whitmer and other elected officials.

As Trump attempts to overturn the election in multiple Republican-led states like Georgia, the attacks have not been limited to Democrats.

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Republican voting system manager, slammed Trump and fellow GOP lawmakers for failing to condemn the violent threats after a young county employee was targeted with a noose just for doing a trivial part of his job.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Sterling warned, “someone’s going to get shot, someone’s going to get killed.”

GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler backs Trump’s attempt to overturn the election at Georgia Senate debate

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., refused to acknowledge President Donald Trump’s election loss and backed his attempt to overturn the result of the election during Sunday’s lone Georgia Senate debate.

Some Georgia Republicans worry that Trump’s baseless allegations about the election could cost them in the two upcoming Senate runoffs in the state, which will determine what party controls the Senate. Even though Georgia’s Republican governor and top election officials have forcefully pushed back on Trump and his allies’ false claims amid death threats, Loeffler repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election. Instead, the unelected senator said she supported Trump’s legal efforts aiming to overturn the will of the voters.

“It’s vitally important that Georgians trust our elections process and the president has every right to every legal recourse,” Loeffler said. “And that’s what’s taking place.”

Without citing any evidence, Loeffler claimed that there were irregularities in the state’s election. In fact, there has been no evidence of widespread irregularities in the state.

Rev. Raphael Warnock, Loeffler’s Democratic challenger, criticized the Republican for “casting doubt” on a legitimate election to placate the president’s supporters.

“The people have spoken on the presidential election, and they’re waiting on their senator to be focused on them — not the person in the White House,” he said.

In debate with Democratic opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler does not answer directly when asked if she stands by President Trump's narrative that the election was rigged, says he "has every right to every legal recourse" https://t.co/Pl5X2WUDrZ pic.twitter.com/U8jseVREDz

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) December 7, 2020

Loeffler’s comments came after the state’s top election officials repeatedly rejected Trump and his supporters’ claims aimed at reversing the results of the race.

“The president’s statements are false. They’re misinformation,” Gabriel Sterling, the state’s voting system manager, told NBC News. “They’re stoking anger and fear among his supporters.”

“We’ve never found systemic fraud — not enough to overturn the election,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, told ABC News.

“The mountains of misinformation are not helping the process,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a fellow Republican, said in a statement. “They are only hurting it.”

Loeffler was widely criticized for her “robotic” performance at the debate, where she appeared to recite prepared lines throughout the night. She referred to “radical liberal Raphael Warnock” at least a dozen times and accused him of being a socialist, which he is not, and seeking to take away people’s guns, which he is also not.

Is @SenatorLoeffler ok?

Here's a supercut of Kelly Loeffler's entire, deranged #GASenateDebate performance in 85 seconds. pic.twitter.com/7TKa8ZUxYQ

— Alex Mohajer (@AlexMohajer) December 7, 2020

Warnock, the senior pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, took issue with Loeffler trying to use his sermons to attack him. She “lied not only on me, but on Jesus,” he said.

“It’s clear to me that my opponent is going to work really hard spending millions of dollars of her own money trying to push a narrative about me, because she’s clearly decided that she does not have a case to be made for why she should stay in that seat,” he added.

Loeffler also dodged questions about whether members of Congress should be banned from trading stocks after she and fellow Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., came under scrutiny for selling millions of dollars in stock after Congress began to receive private coronavirus briefings in the early days of the pandemic.

“What’s at stake here in this election is the American dream. That’s what’s under attack,” Loeffler said. “When they attacked me for a lie, a left-wing media lie, conspired with the Democrats by — this is an attack on every single Georgian who gets up every day to work hard to provide a better life for their family, who wants to live the American dream.”

The Department of Justice and the Senate Ethics Committee dropped their investigations into the stock trades earlier this year.

“I’ve been completely exonerated,” Loeffler claimed. “Those are lies perpetrated by the left-wing media and Democrats to distract from their radical agenda.”

Warnock accused Loeffler of prioritizing self-interest over her constituents.

“Kelly Loeffler’s out of touch,” he said. “She’s thinking about people who are like her. And I’m OK with the fact that she wants to make money — I just think you shouldn’t use the people’s seat to enrich yourself. You ought to use the people’s seat to represent the people.”

.@Kloeffler dumped $3 million of stock to protect her own wealth after a private Senate briefing on the coronavirus pandemic.

Now she's refusing to support a ban on senators trading stocks.

Kelly is only looking out for Kelly. https://t.co/qU5SR9TwYJ pic.twitter.com/IG3V0PIo8u

— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 7, 2020

Warnock also pressed Loeffler on race issues after she repeatedly attacked the Black Lives Matter movement and criticized her own WNBA team for showing support for activists.

“She used her enormous privilege and power as a United States senator to pick a fight with the Black women on her team,” he said. “She says she is against racism, and that racism has no place. But she welcomed the support of a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and she sat down with a white supremacist for an interview,” he added in an apparent reference to Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and One American News Network host Jack Posobiec.

“That’s incredibly sad — these comments that he’s made, Loeffler replied. “There’s not a racist bone in my body.”

"There is not a racist bone in my body" — Kelly Loeffler pic.twitter.com/6mwup9PKyS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2020

The Atlanta Press Club also hosted a second debate, though only one of the candidates showed up.

Democrat Jon Ossoff faced off against an empty lectern after Perdue refused to participate in any debates following a viral exchange in which the Democrat assailed the Republican as a “crook” over his stock transactions.

Ossoff blasted Perdue as a “coward” for skipping the debate.

I had to ask an empty podium a question. pic.twitter.com/wmydtUuPRw

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 7, 2020

“It shows an astonishing arrogance and sense of entitlement for Georgia’s senior U.S. senator to believe he shouldn’t have to debate at a moment like this in our history,” he said.

Ossoff alleged that Perdue had declined to debate, because he didn’t want to “incriminate himself” over the stock sales that the Democrat described as a “cartoonish abuse of power.”

The moderator noted that investigations have not found any illegality on Perdue’s part.

“His blatant abuse of his power and privilege to enrich himself is disgraceful,” Ossoff replied. “He can’t defend the indefensible . . . The standard for our elected officials must be higher than merely evading prosecution.”

Perdue got rich, Georgians got sick. pic.twitter.com/ZTo6DPDxQB

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 6, 2020

“I showed up to debate tonight,” Ossoff tweeted after the event. “David Perdue pleaded the fifth.”

I showed up to debate tonight.

David Perdue pleaded the fifth.pic.twitter.com/doKt1EiJ0j

— Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) December 7, 2020

Trump lost the election — but his legacy of coronavirus denialism is here to stay

Donald Trump encouraged coronavirus denialism for months for one simple reason: He thought it would help him win re-election. Ever the believer that appearances matter more than reality, Trump felt that as long as people acted like there was no pandemic — by refusing wearing masks and continuing to crowd into public places, especially his rallies — that was as good as there being no pandemic. The mounting death toll and hurricane-like effects on our health care system didn’t matter to him, as long as he could pretend everything was doing well and take credit for it.

That was why I held out hope, in the days after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, that Republicans would finally drop the act and start taking the pandemic seriously. After all, as Heather Digby Parton argued Monday morning at Salon, conservatives have a remarkable ability to discard their current enthusiasms the second they lose political value, and pretend that particular lunacy never happened. (You’d never know from its current behavior how gung-ho the American right was for the Iraq war 15 years ago.) It seemed entirely possible that in the face of rising case counts and Trump’s defeat, the right would suddenly embrace public health measures and begin casually acting as if coronavirus denialism was never really a thing.

Unfortunately for the health of the nation, the opposite has happened. If anything, coronavirus denialism is as powerful a force as it was a month ago, when the media finally called the election for Biden.

On Saturday, Trump attended a rally in south Georgia, supposedly to support the Senate campaigns of Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. In practice, it was just another opportunity for Trump to whine at length about how he supposedly “won” Georgia (which he didn’t) and how Republican state officials had conspiring to steal the election away from him (blatantly false, and also preposterous). The crowd ate these lies up, chanting “fight for Trump!” when Perdue and Loeffler bothered to peek their heads out at what was supposed to be their rally.

Just as alarming as the crowd’s hunger to overturn democracy was the unwillingness of most attendees, who were packed shoulder to shoulder, to wear masks. The political usefulness of coronavirus denialism to Trump has ended. But for his avid supporters, continuing to pretend the pandemic isn’t a problem — even as well over 1,000 people die every day — has clearly become an entrenched part of the “conservative” identity.

This attitude is reflected on Fox News, where the steady drumbeat of coronavirus denialism has not abated, even though it no longer has any impact on Trump’s electoral chances. Over the past week, Fox News hosts have called for a “lockdown rebellion,” celebrated businesses that refuse to take safety precautions, continued to bash Dr. Anthony Fauci and hyped snake-oil treatments over scientifically sound prevention techniques like social distancing and mask-wearing.

The situation is similar to the widespread support among conservative pundits and Republican voters for Trump’s coup attempt. They know that Trump’s chances at succeeding are effectively zero, but they keep on encouraging him anyway, because his rhetoric undermines democracy and sets the stage for future Republican power grabs that may well be more successful.

Clearly, coronavirus denialism has some ideological benefit that people on the right find gratifying, which is why it’s continuing even though it no longer offers any political advantage to Trump. It likely serves the same purpose as backing Trump’s coup, by providing cover for a direct assault on the concept of the common good, an attack on science and “elite” expertise, and an attack on the very idea that conservatives have any obligation to be responsible members of the American community.

For decades, right-wing media has conflated selfish behavior with “freedom,” encouraging audiences to see any contribution to the collective good as an attack on human freedom, similar to the way liberals and progressives see assaults on reproductive or voting rights.

That’s how universal health care got reframed as an attack on “freedom of choice,” for instance. In reality, universal health care enhances freedom, making it possible for people to make important life decisions about where to work or whether to get married without being hamstrung by fear of losing health insurance. But after decades of right-wing propaganda equating any expansion of the public good with a loss of individual freedom, millions of voters were easily panicked at even the slightest moves towards expanding health care access.

This kind of rhetoric is being pushed by a wealthy conservative elite whose main goal is avoiding taxes and enforcing inequality, but the result is that any kind of civic responsibility is swiftly reframed as an attack on “freedom,” no matter how nonsensical that may be.

This is most evident when it comes to the issue of mask mandates. By any sensible measure, being expected to wear a mask in public is no more burdensome than being expected to wear pants — arguably, mask mandates are even more reasonable, since there’s a direct public health benefit. But precisely because the American right has absorbed the notion that any responsibility towards others is necessarily an attack on individual freedom, mask mandates are treated as a gross infringement on liberty, while no one seriously objects to shirt-and-shoes requirements in public or commercial spaces.

This knee-jerk assumption that helping your neighbor necessarily comes at great personal cost to yourself suits the wealthy interests of Republican leaders, because it justifies their opposition to taxes and regulation. But for everyone else, the losses are immense. The COVID-19 death toll is rapidly approaching 300,000 people, and soon there will be 15 million confirmed cases. The national failure to take the virus seriously has also undermined political support for more robust government relief, which means that countless more businesses will close and millions of jobs will be lost.

The “freedom” that was preserved is an illusion. If anything, people are far less free. If the pandemic had been more reasonably contained, it’s easy to imagine a situation where lockdowns gradually lighten up as the vaccine starts to be distributed. As things stand, the safe bet is that most of us will be stuck at home until next summer — at the earliest — because the virus is so rampant that anything short of herd-immunity levels of vaccination will make it unsafe to resume anything like “normal” activity.

Trump’s current coup against democracy is failing, but this will be his lasting legacy: Cementing the idea that childish and selfish behavior is somehow a sign of “freedom.” The last remaining threads of conservatism as an ideology of “personal responsibility” are gone. Now the stance of the ordinary right-winger is that social responsibility, in and of itself, is a dreadful imposition that must be shunned. “Triggering” liberals is the only value left standing, and it remains the top priority even in the face of mass illness and death.

Trumpism will continue without Trump — but its leader is running on borrowed time

One version of conventional wisdom holds that if the Republican establishment had tried harder to control Donald Trump, his supporters might have started to question him and he would have lost his stranglehold on the Republican base. We fondly recall those Republican leaders, led by the right-wing senator and former presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, going up to the White House to tell Richard Nixon it was over, or the Senate’s vote to censure red-baiting Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, as events that broke the fever and brought their rabid followers back to reality.

As far as Nixon is concerned, I don’t think any of us should be soothed by that example. It was only six years later that the conservative movement that had been turbocharged by Goldwater’s 1964 defeat reached the pinnacle of national power with the election of Ronald Reagan. The fever didn’t break. It got stronger.

And according to an article in the Washington Post by Yale historian Beverly Gage, we might recall McCarthy as the most hated man in America, but he maintained the support of a third of the country even after he was driven out of politics in disgrace. I wrote last week about the GOP’s reluctance to confront McCarthy (and Trump), out of both fear and opportunism. But Gage points out that out of that ignominious defeat, a new generation of right-wing activists was born. And she adds, ominously:

Something similar is likely to happen as Trump departs the Oval Office warning of elite conspiracies and rigged ballots, encouraging his base to see themselves as noble warriors against an illegitimate political order. While the Trump presidency will soon be over, the history of Trumpism is just beginning.

We don’t often hear, she observes, about “the counter narrative that began to build among McCarthy’s grass-roots supporters during those years, in which the sheer volume of criticism aimed at the senator became proof that he was right all along: that the country was, indeed, run by a menacing but elusive liberal-communist conspiracy aimed at taking down right-thinking, God-fearing Americans.”

That certainly sounds familiar. Gage also notes that this began the construction of right-wing institutions that took advantage of the conspiratorial thinking that sprang from that era. Over the years they dropped poor old McCarthy from their list of mentors, replacing him with more respectable names like Goldwater and Reagan. But McCarthyism was the genesis of what came to be defined as the conservative movement.

Gage continues:

Trump’s story of what happened in the 2020 election bears all the hallmarks of McCarthyite myth: conspiring elites, hidden corruption, even the threat of an imminent socialist takeover. And though Trump will no doubt leave office on Jan. 20, that story — and the powerful sense of grievance behind it — is sure to thrive in the years ahead …

Today’s Republican establishment may ultimately repudiate the man who has held it in thrall — and in fear — for four-plus years. But it is Trump’s base, and their interpretation of his ouster from Washington, that will determine the future of Trumpism.

Trump held a rally in Georgia over the weekend, ostensibly to support the two Republican senators campaigning for the runoff election in January and gave his interpretation:

What do you know? Donald Trump sums up Trumpism better than anyone else. Finally, a moment from him that makes sense. https://t.co/xuhuL7Xgi9

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) December 6, 2020

If you wanted a plain and simple definition of Trumpism, McCarthyism or any other version of the conspiracy-addled conservative mindset, there it is. This sense of grievance has been there for many decades now.

I don’t know whether this will have legs, though. Trump’s supporters are up in arms about what they’ve been told is a stolen election. They believe their leader when he tells them that he has proof and that his forces will prevail. It’s hard to predict what they will do when confronted with the hard cold fact that Trump is no longer going to be president. This Tuesday marks the “safe harbor” deadline for the resolution of all electoral disputes, and the members of the Electoral College will cast their votes next Monday, Dec. 14. Trump’s fans may enjoy playing victims, but when it comes to their leaders, they don’t like losers.

As we consider whether Trump will retain his popularity with this base, I would just remind people that we’ve just recently seen a Republican president topple from dizzying heights of popularity that Trump has never come close to seeing. I’m speaking of George W. Bush, who entered the White House having lost the popular vote and won in the Electoral College, thanks to machinations in a state that was governed by his brother, along with an overtly partisan Supreme Court decision. He nonetheless entered office with a 57% approval rating, which soared to 90% after 9/11. Bush soon fell out of favor with Democrats after he launched the Iraq war, but Republicans adored him as fervently as they love Trump.

Bush flew high for years. The mainstream media extolled him as the second coming of Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. His cocksure declaration that the terrorists would “hear from us real soon” at the World Trade Center site had pundits swooning as if he had delivered FDR’s “a day that will live in infamy” speech. He was perceived as a cowboy who liked to clear brush on his faux ranch in Texas, but also a guy but with a great arm who could “throw a strike” over the plate in the first Yankee game after the terrorist attack. A year or so later, he was seen as a fighter-pilot president who landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, evoking hours of stomach-churning, sycophantic media coverage. Here’s one of the most egregious examples from that day, a so-called commentary from Chris Matthews:

We’re proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who’s physical, who’s not a complicated guy like Clinton. … Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president.

If you think Trump’s rallies are filled with ecstatic followers, you don’t remember the Bush events in 2004 in which he would land on the field on Marine One to the thundering strains of “The Natural” theme. By the way, Bush actually won his re-election campaign, unlike Donald Trump. And guess what happened after that? Within three years, his war was a train wreck, the economy was in free fall and he had bungled the horrific disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Then the global economy imploded and Bush became monumentally unpopular, seeing his approval rating sink as low as 25% by October 2008, just before the election of Barack Obama.

Will Trump’s followers go the way the Bush-loving base once went? I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible. As I said, for all their grievances and feelings of victimization, Republicans don’t like losers. And Donald Trump is most definitely a colossal, historic failure, whose pathetic attempts to pretend otherwise have sealed his legacy as the sorest loser in recent human history.

Unfortunately, whether they call themselves the conservative movement, the Reagan Revolution, proud patriots, the Tea Party, MAGA, Trumpism or something else, that rabid base will still be with us. They love to worship their leaders, but when they get tired of them they toss them out like yesterday’s papers and start looking for the next one. But Wingnut Nation will live on, Trump or no Trump.

The way prisoners flag guard abuse, inadequate health care and unsanitary conditions is broken

Randy Liebich curled up in a ball on his bed inside Stateville prison, about an hour outside Chicago. It was June 2010, and he’d spent the night in a cold sweat, excruciating pain radiating from his back. For months, he’d been filing complaints with prison officials about the lack of medical care. But the forms, known as grievances, got him nowhere.

One was denied, in part because he’d already been to the doctor, and the denial noted he’d received acetaminophen pain medication. Another complaint was deemed moot.

Now Liebich was in the worst pain of his life. According to medical records, a kidney stone had made it impossible for him to urinate. The men in nearby cells shouted for help.

Correctional officers took Liebich to the medical office, where, records show, a doctor used a hemostat, a tweezer-like surgical tool, to try to remove the stone through the tip of Liebich’s penis. But the procedure failed, leaving the stone intact. About six hours passed that day before Liebich was driven to an outside hospital for emergency surgery.

When Liebich got back to the prison, he filed two more grievances about the poor medical treatment he’d received. If staff had addressed his earlier complaints, he wrote, he could have avoided the procedure with the hemostat altogether. But prison officials denied those grievances too.

Liebich filed over a dozen more grievances related to his kidney condition over the next eight years, until a judge threw out his murder conviction in 2018 after finding his lawyers ignored key evidence. Prosecutors later dropped all charges, but Liebich says he still suffers trauma from his experience with the hemostat.

People locked inside prisons rely on grievances to complain if their needs, from health care to sanitation to safety, are unmet. The complaints are among their few means of recourse. But in Illinois, that system is sputtering, with little oversight, leaving prisoners vulnerable to harm, an investigation by WBEZ and ProPublica has found.

The state has paid millions to settle the claims of inmates, some of whom raised concerns early through grievances, only to later suffer serious injuries when authorities denied complaints or failed to act.

In one case, a prisoner at Stateville Correctional Center filed a grievance to complain about roaches crawling over him as he slept. He also said he had extreme pain in his ear and heard constant crackling. But he said his complaints were ignored by prison staff. Two weeks after his grievance, records show medical workers removed a bug from his ear. He later filed a lawsuit, alleging ear pain and hearing loss. The case was settled for $12,500, three and a half years after the first grievance. The state denied wrongdoing.

In another case, a man at Stateville spent months filing grievances and writing letters to prison officials about a protruding bolt near his bunk bed. The warden denied the grievances, because they’d been filed as emergencies, and he disagreed with the classification. Eight months after the prisoner’s initial complaint, he fell out of his bed and hit his eye on the bolt, resulting in “disability and disfigurement,” according to a lawsuit he filed. Records show he was treated by a doctor the same day. The state disputed the man’s claims in court documents, but the parties agreed to a settlement in which the state paid the inmate $70,000.

In Liebich’s case, he filed a lawsuit over the medical treatment he received and alleged that prison staff retaliated against him for complaining. The state denied wrongdoing but agreed to a settlement of $70,000.

The Illinois prison system, which had an average daily population of about 40,000 people last year, is now under federal oversight as part of a legal agreement to improve health care in state prisons. A court-appointed expert found in 2018 that the medical care was so poor that people were needlessly dying.

Because grievances can serve as early warnings for prison administrators about dangerous conditions, experts say tracking the complaints is critical.

But WBEZ and ProPublica found Illinois is faltering. The news organizations requested five years of data from the 15 largest prisons, showing the number of grievances and how they were resolved. Only seven were able to provide information that was complete enough to analyze. Some institutions had an entire year of data missing.

Of the grievances that were reviewed by prison officials, about 5% were decided in part, or in whole, in a prisoner’s favor. Inmates can appeal to a Department of Corrections review board, but the approval rate there was similar, the WBEZ-ProPublica analysis found.

States have different methods of tracking grievances, and it’s difficult to compare Illinois’ system to other jurisdictions, but experts said the findings suggest it’s not working as it should.

“With a rate that low, it just seems like nobody believes in the system,” said Dan Pacholke, former administrator for the Washington State Department of Corrections and co-author of a book on prison safety. “It would certainly be concerning for me … as a superintendent of a prison.”

Others were more blunt.

“What we have here is sort of the fox watching the henhouse,” said Jenny Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, an independent citizen group that has monitored Illinois prisons for more than a century.

WBEZ and ProPublica sought an interview with state corrections officials over the course of four months, but the department declined multiple requests. In a written response, it said the approval rate appeared artificially low, in part, because of prolific grievance filers and frivolous complaints. It also noted that many grievances are resolved informally by counselors; about 13% of grievances in the analysis were withdrawn by the inmate before an official review.

Still, in response to a detailed outline of our findings, corrections officials said they were pursuing a number of measures to improve the grievance system, including plans to hire a chief inspector to oversee the statewide system. Officials also said the department would be transitioning to electronic grievances, a move that would make the system more efficient and data easier to track.

“The operation of a fair and consistent grievance process is a high priority for the Department, and we are working diligently to improve the current system,” the department said in the statement. “Through the implementation of significant reforms and an increase in oversight, we can ensure the concerns of men and women in custody are addressed in a timely manner.”

Prison watchdog groups and some lawmakers lauded the changes, but they said Illinois’ system needs a bigger overhaul with more oversight. Some are pushing a proposal to create an ombudsman that would investigate complaints about the department.

Illinois State Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat and former head of the House Restorative Justice Committee, said family members of people in prison regularly call his office asking for help with a grievance. He commended the department’s proposed changes but said officials need to “make sure that there’s a process in place that will allow for the best outcomes for the people making grievances.”

“You cannot be the judge and the jury and the prosecutor.”

“A safety valve” for inmates

In the fall of 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over Attica Correctional Facility in New York to protest abuse and poor living conditions. It was one of the most violent prison standoffs in U.S. history, leaving 43 people dead. Over the next few years, other prison uprisings broke out across the country, as the prison rights movement grew. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice said the lack of grievance systems had probably made these incidents “inevitable,” because prisoners had no other way to get their needs heard.

Toussaint Losier, a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who has studied American prisons, said grievance systems emerged in this era to create “a safety valve” to “let off some of the steam that could build up over time.” But states also had another incentive. Lawsuits filed by prisoners were clogging the federal court system; by 1974, 1 in 20 civil cases filed in federal court were prison civil rights cases, according to Margo Schlanger, a professor of civil rights law at the University of Michigan and a leading expert on prison litigation. Federal judges called for another venue to evaluate complaints. As one put it, if prisoners had a fair alternative, they’d choose that over the “delayed process of the courts.”

But even after states created grievance systems, the deluge of lawsuits continued. A study from the early 1980s found people incarcerated at two Illinois prisons thought the state’s grievance system was “wholly institution controlled and rarely yielding favorable or even impartial results.”

To stem the tide of lawsuits, Congress passed the Prison Litigation Reform Act, or PLRA, in 1996. The legislation made grievances critical by requiring inmates to exhaust the prison’s internal grievance system before filing a lawsuit. A co-sponsor of the bill, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., said it would “prevent frivolous and malicious lawsuits filed by prison inmates.” Opponents, including then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., argued the bill unwisely limited the court’s power to protect the constitutional rights of people behind bars. The results of the law were striking. The number of lawsuits filed per prisoner shrank by more than 50% over the next two decades, according to Schlanger.

But that’s not because prisoners’ problems were suddenly being addressed through grievances. In fact, some experts say the PLRA may have actually made grievance systems worse. After the law passed, some corrections officials raised administrative hurdles for the complaints, and in doing so made it harder to file lawsuits. Schlanger said prison officials in some states threw out grievances for tiny technical violations, like writing in the wrong color ink.

In Illinois, the state Department of Corrections reduced the window of time within which prisoners can file most grievances from six months to 60 days. It also limited outside oversight of appeals, eliminating a rule that required at least one review board member to come from outside the department. The agency did not respond to a question about the changes.

But officials did note that one reason the approval rate of grievances is so low is because prisoners make technical mistakes, like missing a deadline.

“There was a huge incentive to make the grievance process as complicated and as impossible to complete properly as they could,” said Alan Mills, a lawyer and executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center who has spent decades representing prisoners in Illinois.

Instead of protecting prisoners’ rights, Mills said grievance systems instead work to protect the department and its employees from lawsuits. In 2011, Mills was part of a team that filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of deaf and hard of hearing prisoners who weren’t getting hearing aids or access to interpreters. The plaintiffs argued that they were unable to participate in education programs, stay in contact with loved ones or discuss medical issues with doctors. Mills estimates it took lawyers 18 months to figure out how to exhaust the grievance process so they could move forward with the lawsuit. For example, Mills said, sometimes prison officials would only respond to one issue in a grievance even if a prisoner had listed several issues. This made it unclear if the other issues had been denied, ignored or granted — leaving the prisoner unsure if they needed to file additional grievances.

“This is 10 extremely qualified, experienced lawyers trying to figure out how to navigate this process. Imagine what somebody who dropped out of sixth grade and is sitting in a jail cell with no resources at all; how they can ever figure out how to make it through that process?” Mills said.

The lawsuit later settled with the state agreeing to provide accommodations for deaf and hard of hearing prisoners.

Disappearing grievances, frustrated prisoners

In the spring of 2011, officers at Lincoln Correctional Center ordered about 200 women out of their housing unit. Wielding batons and shields, officers marched the prisoners into a gymnasium and conducted a series of strip-searches, according to a lawsuit the women filed in federal court.

The women were then forced to spread their buttocks and vaginas in view of male staff, and officers made derogatory comments about their bodies, according to the lawsuit. The women, who alleged the search constituted cruel and unusual punishment, also said they were forced to remove tampons and bled on themselves while they waited for others to be searched.

A lawyer for the Department of Corrections denied those claims of mistreatment and said the search was necessary to keep the facility safe from contraband. A jury decided against the prisoners, but the women appealed on different constitutional grounds and that case is ongoing.

Dozens of the women said they filed grievances over the strip-search. But as time passed, many didn’t get an answer. Later, the nonprofit John Howard Association conducted a monitoring visit to the prison. According to its report, the group said it heard “a significant number of consistent, unsolicited, and independent reports” about the strip-search and missing grievances. But the group said that when it asked prison administrators about it, they could not locate a single grievance related to the incident. Nevertheless, the nonprofit’s report said officials there acknowledged problems with the grievance system and said they made changes to improve tracking.

Maggie Burke, a former state corrections official who retired as warden of Logan Correctional Center in 2017, said grievances routinely disappeared. “If it was just an occasional ‘my grievance disappeared,’ … I would think that it was someone who was exaggerating,” she said, adding, “But it happened a lot.”

The problem was so bad that when she became the statewide coordinator for women and family services within the department — about two years after the strip-search incident — she added locked boxes that only she and her assistant could access. That gave prisoners a direct and more secure way to express concerns or send her grievances.

The system is critical, Burke said, because people may act out violently or create other problems when their grievances aren’t addressed.

Dwaine Coleman said that’s what he did while incarcerated at Vienna Correctional Center in 2014 for marijuana possession. He complained of excruciating back pain, and prison records show he had previously been diagnosed with sciatica. But he said a doctor did little more than tell him to eat well and exercise. So he filed a grievance asking to see another doctor.

A month passed before a corrections counselor wrote that the care Coleman was receiving was appropriate, and the grievance went up the chain of command. Two weeks later, he had yet to get a decision from the warden. Desperate to grab the attention of senior prison officials, Coleman tied his prison-issued bed sheet in knots and began flushing it, bit by bit, down the toilet. The water gushed over the bowl, flooding his cell, according to court records.

“The grievance system is a joke. So you kind of have to act out to get your needs met,” Coleman said in an interview. “When you start to act out, there are incident reports that have to be sent all around, and now there’s a paper trail and a lot more people are getting involved.”

Coleman said his attempts backfired though — and tensions between him and the staff continued to escalate. A few days after the toilet incident, Coleman said he got into an argument with a correctional officer during a medical evaluation, according to a lawsuit he filed. On the way back from the health care unit, Coleman alleged, the officer rammed his head into a doorway. A dental record from about two weeks later shows a chipped tooth. During a civil trial, the officer denied assaulting him. But a jury decided in Coleman’s favor and awarded him $35,000 in punitive damages.

Coleman did eventually get a decision from the warden on his health care grievance — three months after he filed it. The complaint was denied, saying the care he received was appropriate.

“Fear of retaliation”

Few prisoners in Illinois have faith in the grievance system. Just 5% considered it effective, according to a 2019 survey by the John Howard Association, which collected responses from 12,780 prisoners across the state. And only 13% said they felt comfortable filing a grievance.

“The biggest reason that people don’t feel comfortable is fear of retaliation,” said Vollen-Katz, executive director of the watchdog group.

After Liebich filed grievances complaining about the poor medical care he’d received for his kidney stone, he said staff began to view him as a nuisance. In January 2011 officers came to his cell and, according to court records, insisted that he give a urine sample for a drug test.

Liebich told the correctional officers that his kidney condition made that difficult. Officers told him that if he didn’t urinate in the next two hours he’d be sent to the “hole,” officially known as segregation. It’s a part of the facility where prisoners are sent as punishment, infamous for being filthy, full of bugs and vermin. (In fact, the conditions were so bad that officials shut down that section of the prison in 2016, though it was reopened for COVID-19 quarantining this year.) For Liebich, the pressure to provide a urine sample felt immense. So, with minutes left to his deadline, he asked if he could have more time.

The guards refused and took him to segregation, according to prison records. Because staff knew his trouble with urination, he believes the whole incident was meant to punish him for filing grievances.

Liebich’s lawyer sent emails to the warden, letting him know about Liebich’s medical condition. But according to records provided by the lawyer, the warden responded that Liebich would need to address his problem through the grievance process.

Five days after the drug test incident, Liebich filed a complaint over being sent to segregation. The officer that reviewed his grievance recommended the warden approve it, according to prison records, but the warden disagreed and Liebich remained in segregation. Still, in August 2011, Liebich pressed forward with a lawsuit alleging poor medical treatment and retaliation. In court documents, prison officials agreed that Liebich was sent to segregation for failure to provide a urine sample, but they denied that officers were acting in retaliation.

The state agreed to a settlement of $70,000 in January 2015, four years after Liebich filed his grievance over his punishment.

Calls for transparency and oversight

Civil rights lawyers, former prison administrators and prisoners say the only way more people behind bars will get their concerns addressed is with independent oversight and increased transparency.

Currently, the entire grievance process is overseen by the Corrections Department.

Grievances first go to a counselor who attempts to resolve the complaint. If they cannot, a grievance officer evaluates the case and makes a recommendation to the warden, who renders a decision. If a prisoner is dissatisfied with the response, they can send their complaint to a statewide board that reviews grievance appeals called the Administrative Review Board.

The whole process can be time consuming.

The state Corrections Department would not say if it had any data showing the speed at which prisons resolved grievances. Records, however, suggest that many complaints were reviewed slowly, or not at all. Over a third of appeals were thrown out because the prisoner had already been released or died by the time the review board evaluated them.

Of those that were reviewed, 7% were found partially or wholly in favor of the prisoner. The panel evaluates thousands of grievances a month. Complaints can range from a missing radio to guard abuse.

“When you’re seeing that many grievances, it’s easy to go, ‘Yeah. OK. You know, that one I don’t really have time for,'” said Joni Stahlman, former assistant deputy director of the women’s division who sat on the Administrative Review Board in the early 2000s. “There’s that tricky line of fairness and getting the work done.”

Prison advocates point to a more fundamental issue though: While the four members of the board do not work at any individual prison, they are still employed by the Corrections Department and appointed by the director. Sitting on the current board are two members who previously worked clerical jobs within the department and one who formerly worked inside a prison as a correctional counselor. Vollen-Katz, of the John Howard Association, said that’s not true independence. “We are asking a closed system to police itself,” she said.

Vollen-Katz said one step the state could take would be to create a corrections ombudsman who could investigate complaints and find solutions. Mills, the civil rights lawyer, agreed, saying the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice already has such a person who “gets copies of all the grievances so that they can track them, find trends, figure out problems, and then bring them to the attention of the department … to fix.”

An ombudsman in the adult system, he said, “would be a huge, huge step forward.”

In order for it to be effective, though, the position would need complete autonomy, enforcement capabilities and the power to share information with lawmakers and the public, advocates said. Other states, like New Jersey and Washington, already have a corrections ombudsman, and last year Illinois state lawmakers submitted a bill to create one. But the legislation stalled.

Illinois State Rep. Rita Mayfield, who co-sponsored the ombudsman bill, said she planned to revive the legislation next year. She said one of her central motivations was discovering and fixing problems before they become expensive lawsuits.

“What can we do to reduce these losses? What is wrong with the system? What can we correct to better utilize those tax dollars?” Mayfield said. The Department of Corrections would not answer questions about its stance on an ombudsman.

Losier, the professor who has studied prisons, said another key change to the grievance system should be more transparency. New York state, for example, issues yearly reports on what types of grievances are filed and how the department handles them. That allows the public and lawmakers to monitor what’s happening inside. But Illinois issues no such report.

New York’s Corrections Department also maintains a database that tracks staff involved in misconduct and abuse claims, so the department can look for patterns. But in Illinois, despite records showing staff misconduct is one of the largest issues for prisoners, the department doesn’t track grievances by guard name.

Burke, the former warden, said that having that information, even internally, would be helpful. “If we have, you know, ‘90% of our grievances are on one person,’ then we know that there’s a problem there.”

Pacholke, the former administrator for the Washington State Department of Corrections, agreed, saying data collection is critical. “If you’re not tracking it, the next thing you know, something really horrific or tragic can happen,” he said.

Neither the Corrections Department nor AFSCME, the union that represents most front-line corrections staff, responded to questions about the potential of tracking complaints about correctional officers.

“There’s nobody that we can really go to for help”

In Liebich’s case, problems within the prison persisted.

In January 2018, after his lawsuit was settled, the staff decided to test him for drugs again, according to discipline records. When he couldn’t provide a urine sample, officers sent him back to segregation.

“They just went through this with me. They know I have these medical issues,” Liebich said in an interview. “They know I had a civil suit about it, and they turn around and they did the same thing to me again.”

Liebich spent his days in a cramped cell. The prison allowed inmates to leave their cells for mental health groups. Liebich said sessions were held in the former execution area, from when Illinois had the death penalty.

“You can literally feel the hairs on your arms and your neck stand up,” Liebich said. He felt powerless.

In January 2019, Liebich filed a second lawsuit against the prison over retaliation. Later that year the state agreed to settle and paid him $25,000, but denied wrongdoing.

Today, he said he still has nightmares about his time inside segregation.

“It’s frightening to think that they can do this to us and get away with it,” Liebich said, “and there’s nobody that we can really go to for help.”

ProPublica Illinois is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to get weekly updates about our work.

This article was produced in partnership with WBEZ, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

Wajahat Ali on reaching out to Trumpers: “White supremacy is a terrible drug”

Joe Biden is a devout Catholic. His deep faith has helped him to endure several life tragedies, including the loss of his wife and infant daughter in a car accident as well as his adult son Beau’s death from brain cancer. As shown through both his private and public behavior, Joe Biden is a fundamentally decent human being. At some point in his life, Biden likely internalized the Bible’s directive that a person should love their enemies.

Such wisdom may help a person live a better life. Unfortunately, that same wisdom can make for bad politics.

Biden won the 2020 presidential election with 80 million votes, the largest total for any presidential candidate in U.S. history. He defeated Donald Trump by almost 7 million votes. The American people spoke at the ballot box and gave Biden a clear mandate to lead the country out of the Age of Trump and the coronavirus pandemic.

But Trump and his followers do not care for such quaint notions of democracy. The only votes that “count,” according to Trump’s neofascist movement, are his supporters’ votes for him. Democracy — especially multiracial democracy — is deemed illegitimate if Trump or other white Republicans and right-wing extremists are not in power.

In response to Biden’s victory, Donald Trump has launched a coup attempt, effectively a range of attacks against the rule of law and the country’s other democratic norms. This ongoing plot involves far-fetched lawsuits (all of which have failed), “burrowing in” loyalists into key national security and other government positions to sabotage the Biden administration, causing more harm to the economy, worsening the coronavirus pandemic and destabilizing strategic areas of the world.

Trump and his spokespeople have already convinced a large majority of Republican voters believe that Joe Biden “stole” the election through “fraud,” and that the “deep state” and other nebulous forces are conspiring against them and their Great Leader. Trump’s representatives are continuing to encourage violence against public officials deemed “disloyal” or “treasonous” simply because they confirmed that Biden in fact won the 2020 election.

In what has been described as one of the most dangerous, delusional, and lie-filled speeches by an American president in the country’s history, last Wednesday Donald Trump posted a video to Facebook aimed at continuing to rally his supporters behind his coup.

As he has done many times during his presidency, Trump is abusing the office of the president and its inherent power by engaging in acts of stochastic terrorism. When the political violence occurs, as it almost inevitably will, Trump and his sycophants will deny any responsibility for the resulting carnage and mayhem.

Too many pundits and other political observers believe that Trump’s coup has “failed” and that he is a “clown” who should be ignored and not taken seriously. Such a conclusion is a failure of political analysis and imagination: It confuses the Republican Party and the right wing’s long-term strategic plan to delegitimize multiracial democracy with what the Trump regime and its allies are doing in the immediate present.

The narrative that Donald Trump’s coup attempt is a failure functions as a happy pill, to distract an exhausted (and politically unsophisticated) public from the damage already done to the America’s political culture by Trump’s authoritarian shattering of democratic norms.

One cannot ignore how Donald Trump’s underlying mental pathologies are connected to his aberrant political behavior. Like other authoritarian strongmen, Donald Trump is incapable of admitting or believing that he has been defeated in a fair election. Moreover, Trump’s mental pathologies make him uniquely qualified as an agent of destruction against American democracy.

In a new interview with Vice News, Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, who is a clinical psychologist, echoes such concerns, warning: “If Donald feels rejected by the American people, he’s not going to distinguish people who voted for him from people who didn’t. … He’s going to take all of us down with him.”

Biden and his spokespeople continue to encourage his voters and other good Americans to “reach out to” Trump’s tens of millions of human deplorables in the interests of healing and unity. But this is a group of people that social scientists and other researchers have repeatedly shown to be motivated by racism, white supremacy, nativism, misogyny, authoritarian beliefs, conspiratorial thinking, anti-intellectualism and other antisocial and anti-democratic traits.

Biden’s magnanimity is an admirable quality. Trump and his supporters have not shown themselves worthy of such kindness. While many of progressives and liberals have rejected Biden’s suggestion to make peace with Trumpists, there are others who have taken up the burden.

For several years, author and attorney Wajahat Ali has been speaking with Donald Trump’s voters and trying to find common ground with them as Americans. Out of this experience has come Ali’s recent New York Times essay, “‘Reach Out to Trump Supporters,’ They Said. I Tried.” His essays and other writing have appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, the New York Review of Books and the Washington Post.

I recently spoke to Ali about what he learned from his efforts to find common ground and understanding with Trump’s supporters. In our conversation, he also reflected on what the 2020 election does or does not signal about the enduring power of white supremacy and Trumpism in America. He also discussed why even after Joe Biden’s clear victory, the mainstream news media is still obsessed with the “white working class” and its “pain” and “disappointment,” while largely ignoring the diverse coalition of Americans, many of them nonwhite, who elevated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.

You can also listen to my conversation with Wajahat Ali on my podcast “The Truth Report” or through the player embedded below.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Joe Biden won a landslide victory in terms of votes. Donald Trump and his supporters are still resisting. The pandemic is still raging. How are you feeling and managing your emotions?

I feel happy. As I’ve told people, experiencing joy is necessary, even if it’s temporary. For many of us we felt like we were being choked, figuratively — and, for some people, literally — during the Trump administration. He became president being fueled by hate. Eighty million Americans came out during a pandemic to vote Trump out. Biden won by what looks to be 7 million votes. I have never seen such a spontaneous display of joy on the streets of New York and literally all around the world. It reminded me of the videos I saw at the end of World War II. We, especially people of color, and other people who have been marginalized need these moments. To acknowledge and celebrate the moment does not mean we put our head in the sand and think that the work does not need to continue.

But I think for the moment it is necessary for our mental and spiritual health to at exhale and realize that enough people in this country were saying, “Get rid of this man!” But at the same time, you are confronted with the reality that 74 million people saw four years of chaos and said, “Donald Trump, that’s my guy.” Trump got many more votes than he did last time. We have to reconcile both outcomes together.

I view the 2020 election as a referendum on white supremacy — and white supremacy won. It was not rebuffed. It was not rejected. Trump is more popular now than he was before. How do you reconcile Biden’s victory with Trump and white supremacy’s popularity?

I am wired to be a pragmatic optimist and I also try to observe reality as it is. Enough people came out to vote, even with the structural disadvantages and active efforts to sabotage a democracy. The coup failed not because they didn’t try but because they were incompetent. There were just enough guardrails. I take all that into account.

Your observation is also true that white supremacy is very resilient in this country. We are also dealing with a disinformation system that has radicalized far more people than most are willing to acknowledge or admit. But at the same time I think, thank God at least enough people came out, despite these challenges, to at least vote this guy out, and to flip five states, and to win by at least twice as many votes as Clinton won by.

It’s like measured hope. I take joy and hope in the small victories, while at the same time acknowledging everything you have said.

I am deeply concerned that many white brothers and sisters have been insulated from the day-to-day lived consequences and impact of Trumpism and its war on nonwhite people. Our suffering is an abstraction for many white folks. I fear that many white people who mobilized to vote against Trump will now withdraw, because with Biden they think everything is now back to “normal.”

Moreover, the majority of Americans have still not grappled with the reality of American fascism in the form of Trumpism. They think the 2020 election was the war and victory has been won, when in reality it is just a battle in a very long fight. The empire always strikes back. When tens of millions of Trump voters and the obstructionist Republican Party rise up against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, many Americans, white Americans in particular, are not going to be ready.

Your analogy is astute. We’ve won the battle, we have not won the war. That’s my long-term thinking as well. This is the death rattle of white supremacy, one that has become a global death march. They were playing for all the marbles. Many of us were called hysterical and radical and crazy. I tried to warn the public that the Republican Party will further radicalize and weaponize. I do not see any path towards moderation right now. I want to be proven wrong — to this point I have not been.

This was a victory. It was a big battle that we won because Trump will no longer be president. He will not be afforded the protection of the presidency. However, Trumpism, which is the inevitable consequence of 50 years of the Southern strategy and 400 years of white supremacy in America, is not an aberration. We will not win them over. But maybe we can build a multicultural coalition where we all progress towards the future.

Why have you spent so much time trying to reach out to Trump’s voters?

I am a Muslim. Islam says you respond in a better way. I am looking at a long-term game. I know that if you are a person of color, if you’re Black, if you’re Muslim, if you’re brown, if you’re poor, you have to overcome structural disadvantages in this country. Whiteness is its own tribe. I know that the game is rigged against us and I have to go meet these people and not just tell my story. Basically what I’m trying to do is convince them I’m a human being worthy of respect.

They want us to understand Trump voters and their pain and frustration, whereas we literally have to prove our existence. I thought if I can win over some folks, if I can listen to them, if I can maybe help a few of them realize that white supremacy is a terrible drug that is going to destroy them — that it is not going to make them great again, that Trumpism is going to devastate them — then perhaps I could help to make some positive change.

When has America ever been considerate of Black and brown people’s feelings?

It is their job and America’s job now to reach out to the 80 million people who braved a pandemic and ask us about our anxieties during the last four years. But this is white supremacy. This is an ideology and a paradigm that centers white lives, white tears, white pain, white victimhood and white narratives above all else. It is such a destructive and wild drug that even when they are the oppressor, they are somehow the victims. It is so absurd that those who are victimized by such oppression are then asked to heal them, redeem them and make them feel better.

Biden won with a multiracial coalition of voters. Trump was repudiated. Why do you think so many of the mainstream news media are still addicted to going out to Trumplandia, talking to “white working class” people and centering their feelings in the political narrative?

Whiteness dominates the gatekeepers. The New York Times did a review of the most influential people in America and 91% are white. Those ideological-cultural filters blind people to their biases. We are told that we must understand the pain and grievance of those who supported a man in the form of Donald Trump who wants to ban me because I am Muslim. No one has investigated why my community has “economic anxiety.”

Whiteness is the direct operating system of America. When you center everything around whiteness and white tears and white fragility, it is the whole business model as well. Their default is “both sides.” How do you convince a country that the GOP is now an extreme counter-majoritarian party that is hostile to democracy and is mainstreaming white nationalism? The real answer here is we have to acknowledge the reality and threat of white supremacy and racism. The reason why the United States refuses to do it is that the second that reality is acknowledged, the myths and propaganda of meritocracy are shattered. It makes people realize that the system is unfair. Ultimately, it forces people to confront their role in upholding and or resisting the system of oppression.

You spent several years traveling around the country trying to reach out to Trump voters. Was there a moment when you said to yourself, “I can’t reach these people. I’m done”?

I realized, OK, I had good faith and I don’t knock myself for it. But I’m now going to invest that in helping the majority become stronger, to add more numbers to our ranks, which I think Democrats can do. To help craft policies that will help all Americans, despite all their cruelty and their conspiracy theories and their racism. To this day, do you know what I want for Trump voters? Affordable health care, a living wage, a good paying job, Social Security, good infrastructure, high-speed internet and success for their families. And what do they need from me? To suffer. That is the difference between us. I will move forward to a better future for all Americans, and if they want to catch up to the rest of us then we are here waiting for them. I cannot help someone who refuses to help themselves.

What if Joe Biden asked you to lead an outreach program to help reunify the country? What advice would you give him?

Sometimes the president’s job is to lead the country forward. I would tell Biden that you can have a Lyndon B. Johnson or FDR moment where you can usher in and create a new society. But Trump’s followers will never be into you. They won’t like you. I’m glad that you have not dehumanized them. I’m glad you see them as Americans, but they have been radicalized against you. Joe Biden, be very proactive in your progressive policies. Through your policies you can help your fellow Americans, be transparent, bring back decency and openness to the White House, reform corruption, and help this country move forward.

Stop thanking the troops and lend a hand

By the end of this year, the White House will reportedly have finally brought home a third of the 7,500 troops still stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq (against the advice of President Trump’s own military leaders). While there have been stories galore about the global security implications of this plan, there has been almost no discussion at all about where those 2,700 or so troops who have served in this country’s endless wars will settle once their feet touch U.S. soil (assuming, that is, that they aren’t just moved to less controversial garrisons elsewhere in the Greater Middle East), no less who’s likely to provide them with badly needed financial, logistical, and emotional support as they age.

When it comes to honoring active-duty troops and veterans of this country’s forever wars, we Americans have proven big on symbolic gestures, but small on action. Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s organization, Joining Forces, was a short-lived but notable exception: its advocacy and awareness-raising led dozens of companies to commit to hiring more veterans. Unfortunately, those efforts proved limited in scope and didn’t last long.

Zoom out to the rest of America and you’ll find yellow-ribbon bumper stickers on gas-guzzling SUVs galore; tons of “support our troops” Facebook memes on both Veterans Day and Memorial Day regularly featuring (at least before the pandemic struck big time) young, attractive heterosexual families hugging at reunions; and there is invariably a chorus of “thank you for your service” when a veteran or active-duty soldier appears in public.

In practical terms, though, this adds up to nothing. Bumper stickers don’t watch soldiers’ kids while they’re gone, nor do they transport those troops to competent, affordable specialists to meet their health and vocational needs when they return from battle. Memes don’t power vets through decades of rehabilitation from traumatic brain injuries, limbs blown off by homemade explosives, depression, anxiety, and grief for comrades lost.

I’m the spouse of a U.S. naval officer. My husband has served on two different submarines and in three military policymaking positions over the course of our decade together. We’ve had to move around the country four times (an exceedingly modest number compared with most military families we know). We have dual incomes, as well as extended family and friends with the means to support us with care for our two young children and help us with the extra expenses when that uprooting moment arrives every two or three years. We have self-advocacy skills and the resources necessary to find the best possible health providers to help us weather the strain that goes with the relentless pace of post-9/11 military life.

And yet I feel I can speak for other military families who have so much less for one reason: I’ve dedicated much of my career to research and advocacyon behalf of people affected by the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ve focused my attention, in particular, on the vast loss of life, both abroad and at home, caused by those wars, on decimated and depletedhealthcare systems (including our own), and on the burdens borne by the families of soldiers who have to struggle to deal with the needs of those who return.

Troops from our current wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa are, in certain ways, unique compared to earlier generations of American military personnel. More than half of them have deployed more than once to those battle zones — often numerous times. Over a million of them now have disability claims with the Veterans Affairs Department and far more disabled veterans than in the past have chronic injuries and illnesses that they will live with, not die from. Among troops like my spouse who, as a naval officer, has never deployed to Iraqi or Afghan soil, days have grown longer and more stressful due to a distinctly overstretched military that often lacks the up-to-date equipment to work safely.

And mind you, the costs of caring for the soldiers who have been deployed in our never-ending wars won’t peak for another 30 to 40 years, as they age, and the government isn’t faintly ready to meet the expenses that will be involved.

Homecoming

And mind you, the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs are even less prepared to care for the families of their troops and veterans, those most likely to be tasked with their round-the-clock care.

Among the many grim possibilities from my own experience and the stories I’ve been told as an advocate over the years by military veterans, military spouses, and military children, let me try to paint just one picture of what it’s like when a member of that military returns home from deployment: Imagine your spouse suddenly walking through the door after months away. His face is a greenish hue from fatigue and fear. He may tell you some horror story about some set of incidents that occurred while he was deployed and indicate that he fears, given his state, he might even be out of a job soon. You think about the work you cut back on in the months since he left because you couldn’t handle the 24/7 demands of caring for confused children who had stopped sleeping. What will you do to support the family if his worst fears come to pass?

You need to remind him that, while he’s been rattling on, there are children present whom he has yet to greet. He hugs them now, his face a combination of love and lack-of-recognition (given how they’ve grown in the months since he’s been gone). The kids’ facial expressions are a mirror image of his.

You do your best to catch him up on the changes that have taken place in his absence: the kids’ latest developments, your new work schedule, the need for more childcare support, and the problems of your extended family (including the terminal illness of a family member).

Family or friends want to swoop in and take the kids so the two of you can get away, yet after months of his silence, you’re feeling too confused to want that yet. What’s more, your own hard-earned role as head of the household is suddenly about to be subsumed by his needs. (After all, he’s used to telling others what to do.)

You try to call other spouses who were your lifeline while all your husbands were deployed together, but they’re as stressed out and preoccupied as you are. Even the other commanders’ wives are, like you, up far too often at night as their spouses accept calls about drunk driving, partner violence, suicide threats, and child abuse within the stressed-out command.

Your unnerved husband is helping deal with such events, counseling those still on duty, and you’re counseling him. One night, he tells you that part of the reason for his stress is the things he was asked to do by his war-traumatized commander while he was deployed. These stories keep you awake at night.

You suggest he see a mental health professional. After all, the base has licensed psychologists and psychiatrists on staff, ready to help. He reminds you that the decision to seek care is not private in the military and the stigmaamong those handling his promotions could cost him his career.

So you look for mental-health assistance yourself to deal with the stress and grief over your changed relationship with your spouse. The lone practitioner within 45 miles who accepts military insurance tells you that, to receive care, you must sign a contract accepting that you can be hospitalized at his discretion “because military spouses go psychotic during their husband’s deployments.” You walk away.

Childcare support of some kind is needed more than ever now that your spouse is in such distress. Because you moved posts recently by military order, the Navy tells you that you’re at the back of the local line for financial childcare assistance. You’re in your own hell on earth and in that you’re typical of so many other military spouses.

Perspectives on service from a coastal elite

And you also turn your gaze to the citizenry of this country that, in the world of the “All Volunteer” military, generally ignores us. Before I became a military spouse, I grew up in an affluent part of New Jersey. I remember how war veterans were ignored or even mocked (including by me). In the 1990s, I used to vacation at the Jersey shore and sometimes, from the front porch of our house, my family and I would catch a glimpse of a middle-aged man in military uniform, marching like a metronome up and down the island’s main boulevard. The glazed, far-off look on his face with its telltale ruddiness signaled, I know now, someone who probably drank too much, too often. Back then, we would just refer to him as “the soldier” when he passed and laugh at him, once safely out of earshot.

Of course, he was undoubtedly suffering from some form of mental illness without the sort of care that might have helped him make sense of things. My family and I had no idea that it was normal for war-traumatized soldiers to have difficulty distinguishing the past from the present, that it wouldn’t have been strange for him to see lines of summertime beach traffic and think “convoy” or hear a car engine backfire and think “sniper!”

Later, when I was living in San Francisco, a friend who worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development told me about a veteran of the Afghan War, on leave between deployments, who called their office to request that a military tent village be set up in a popular city park to house homeless and mentally ill veterans like himself. My friend and I laughed about that over drinks, imagining the eyesore of an instant military base suddenly arising in the middle of a popular San Francisco tourist destination.

Some 15 years later, I think: how appropriate it would have been to remind Americans having fun of just what they were invariably missing — theirmilitary and the forever wars that go with them that all of us pay for endlesslybut ignore. Maybe it finally is time to create spaces meant for U.S. troops and veterans right in the middle of everything.

A Task List

President-elect Biden, I’m hoping against hope that you’ll read these thoughts of mine and take steps to support such priorities when you take office, so that our soldiers and our veterans don’t find themselves in ever deeper holes as their service ends:

1. Give those who serve and military veterans, as well as their families, real choices about where to go to get healthcare, whether primary care, physical therapy, specialized surgery, psychological therapy, or dental care. The Veterans Choice Program, first rolled out in 2014, should have been a decent start in expanding that sort of access, but in practice few providers have received authorization to participate because of low reimbursement rates and excessive wait times for approval and reimbursement. Anything your administration could do, including ensuring that there’s just one less form to fill out or a few more dollars in reimbursement, would make a difference.

2. Sponsor large-scale studies on the health of military spouses and children. Evidence of the effects of military life on such families is scattered at best, but doesn’t look good, particularly during and immediately after deployments. The needs of spouses and children who deal with veterans for healthcare, vocational training, and protection from family violence appear high and badly unmet.

3. Advocate making training on the issues faced by our troops and their families central to continuing education requirements among healthcare providers and the staff supporting them, especially the military insurance contractors who are the gatekeepers to care. Urge such providers to place veterans and their families first in line. Make sure therapists, including those focused on children and adolescents, know about the special challenges faced by military kids after parents return. Fund and support off-base family therapy for soldiers and their families, since Department of Defense therapists too often prioritize the needs of the soldier or of the mission above the needs of the family.

4. Teach everyone to stop “thanking” the troops for their service, which effectively ends any conversation instead of beginning one. Teach them instead to ask about what service in the U.S. military in the forever-war era is really like. Believe me, that would start a conversation that wouldn’t end soon.

5. Remove needless barriers to military families receiving childcare, whether they’re active duty and awaiting their next assignment or settling for good in communities where they’ll begin their lives as civilians.

Nothing about us without us

In all such things, take your cues from soldiers, veterans, and their families. Nationally, what about creating a presidential commission that represents such groups in equal measure and in as diverse a way as possible? Let it investigate violations of the rights of military personnel and their families when it comes to health and safety in military commands and on bases across the country and around the world.

Often when I talk about changes like these, I’m met with skeptical looks from family members and friends. Where will we get the money for such changes, since we’re already reimbursing providers at higher rates for accepting military insurance?

The striking thing is that there’s no ceiling when it comes to putting money into disastrous weapons systems, the U.S. nuclear arsenal, or the Pentagon generally. But when it comes to putting money into us, it’s another matter entirely.

How about, as a start, cutting down on waste and fraud? Money that could have done us some good has disappeared into gas stations in the middle of nowhere and other corrupt construction projects in our distant war zones. Tens of millions of dollars or more have been lost to waste and fraud in some of those unfinished foreign reconstruction projects. As economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier has pointed out, U.S. federal defense spending accounts for more than half of all of our government’s discretionary spending, with piles of taxpayer dollars going to expensive contractors who provide services like cleaning, meals, and security guards on bases in those same war zones. Instead of spending $100 more on a single bag of laundry in Iraq, how about spending it on a therapy session for a veteran struggling with postwar trauma here at home?

It’s long past time to end America’s fruitless post-9/11 wars. But if we don’t start re-examining our basic priorities, bringing our troops “home” will just create a new crisis, involving what, in the long run, will be millions of sick, grieving, and injured Americans who will lack the safety net of adequate healthcare.

Please remember, President-elect Biden: war, even failed war, shouldn’t be about sacrifice by the military alone but by all of us.

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If Biden wants to unite the country, one thing is clear: Dump the corporate lobbyists

After the most turbulent election cycle in American history, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by a comfortable margin in both the Electoral College and popular vote. With political polarization at an all-time high, the question of how President-elect Biden plans to unite a deeply divided country is a highly pertinent one. Fortunately for Biden, the Cabinet composition process provides him with an enormous opportunity to maintain the coalition that put him into the White House while expanding his base of support in the process.

But contrary to Beltway wisdom, this will not be achieved by giving alumni of Wall Street and the corporate world positions of influence in his administration. While Americans may be divided on many issues, curbing the political power of corporate actors is something that unifies voters across party lines. Eschewing former corporate lobbyists and executives in favor of qualified civil servants committed to advancing the interests of working people for administrative posts isn’t just the right thing for Biden to do. It’s good politics, and we have the data to prove it.

Earlier this year, Data for Progress released polling that surveyed voters across party lines to find out what Americans wanted to see in the next administration. Fifty-nine percent of voters surveyed believed that corporate lobbyists wield too much influence in government policy-making. When asked about the influence of billionaires, big banks and Wall Street, respondents overwhelmingly agreed these groups hold too much influence in government affairs, by margins of 62, 56 and 52 percent, respectively. On the other hand, 60 percent of respondents indicated they believed working-class people hold too little influence in government, while just 8 percent said they believed otherwise.

It’s no secret that American institutions are facing a crisis of legitimacy. Public trust in government continues to erode, with the revolving door between public office and the private sector serving as a major focal point in Americans’ declining confidence in their elected officials. Polling by Data for Progress conducted in October revealed that Americans across party lines are intimately concerned with the impact that the revolving door between high office and industry has on policy-making.

A wide 56 percent of voters across party lines agreed that putting alumni of the corporate world in the Biden administration would keep the revolving door between Washington and K Street open, to the detriment of working families. By contrast, only 23 percent of voters indicated that corporate lobbyists and executives bring invaluable insight to government and should be chosen by the president-elect for roles in his administration. Few would be surprised that 63 percent of Democrats surveyed agreed that Biden should eschew the appointment of alumni of the corporate world to positions in his administration. Of more interest, however, is that 54 percent of Republicans surveyed agreed that Biden should avoid appointing former corporate lobbyists and executives, with only 22 percent indicating otherwise.

It’s clear, then, that while Biden will have his work cut out for him if he wants to win the support of Republican voters, working to close the revolving door with his Cabinet picks is far more likely to accomplish this than choosing business magnates for key roles. Data for Progress polling also found that proposals to close the revolving door similarly proved widely popular, with a massive 76 percent of voters across party lines indicating concern about the prospect of an administration official who received a bailout in the private sector being tasked with overseeing that same industry in an official capacity.

Polling conducted by Data for Progress over the past several weeks found that voters across party lines see federal government experience and policy expertise, not backgrounds in the corporate world, as attributes they value in potential appointees. Sixty-seven percent of respondents across party lines indicated that Biden should prioritize policy experts with academic backgrounds when choosing positions in his administration. The prospect of appointing individuals with experience in the federal government advocating for the public good was even more popular, with 71 percent of all respondents — and even 61 percent of Republicans — agreeing such people should be prioritized.

When asked the same about potential nominees with backgrounds as lobbyists for major corporations and industries, though, respondents were firmly opposed. Sixty percent of respondents said they disagreed with the proposition that potential nominees with backgrounds as corporate lobbyists should be prioritized in the new administration. While a large majority of respondents, 67 percent, agreed that backgrounds in nonprofits that advocate for the public good is a plus for potential nominees, only 31 percent said the same about backgrounds in Wall Street.

Democrats are not going to maintain the coalition they built in the 2020 election, let alone expand it, by appointing former corporate lobbyists and executives to key posts. Americans are divided on many things, but on the issue of corporate influence in government public opinion is clear, whatever elites in Washington may say: Biden should look to qualified public servants and experts, not titans of the corporate world, for positions in his administration.

How COVID-19 revealed the uncertainty of medical testing

Dr. Jacqueline Chu considered the man with a negative coronavirus test on the other end of the phone, and knew, her heart dropping, that the test result was not enough to clear him for work.

The man was a grocery store clerk — an essential worker — and the sole earner for his family. A 14-day isolation period would put him at risk of getting fired or not having enough money to make rent that month. But he had just developed classic COVID-19 symptoms, and many others around him in Chelsea, Massachusetts, had confirmed cases. Even with the negative test, his chances of having the disease were too high to dismiss.

For many Americans, including clinicians like Chu, who specializes in primary care and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, the pandemic has forced difficult conversations about the limits of medical tests. It has also revealed the catastrophic harms of failing to recognize those limits.

“People think a positive test equals disease and a negative test equals not disease,” said Dr. Deborah Korenstein, who heads the general medicine division at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “We’ve seen the damage of that in so many ways with COVID.”

National COVID test shortages have emphasized testing’s critical role in containing and mitigating the pandemic, but these inconvenient truths remain: A test result is rarely a definitive answer, but instead a single clue at one point in time, to be appraised alongside other clues like symptoms and exposure to those with confirmed cases. The result itself may be falsely positive or negative, or may show an abnormality that doesn’t matter. And even an accurate, meaningful test result is useless (or worse) unless it’s acted on appropriately.

These lessons are not unique to COVID-19.

Last year, David Albanese logged in to the online patient portal for his primary care doctor’s office and discovered that his routine screening test for the hepatitis C virus showed a positive result.

“I never considered myself somebody who’s in a high-risk category,” said the 34-year-old Boston-area college administrator and adjunct history professor. “But I just know that for a couple of days, I was really, really anxious about this test. I didn’t know if I should be behaving differently based on it.”

Within days, a confirmatory test showed Albanese did not actually have the potentially severe yet curable liver infection. Still, the memory of that false positive result gave him a new perspective on testing writ large. He had been skeptical of recommendations shifting breast cancer screening to older ages to reduce the psychological toll of false positives, but he said they made more sense after his own testing drama.

“‘Isn’t it better to do the screening regardless?'” he said he used to think. “Now I realize it is a little more complicated.”

These false positives are especially common for screening tests like hepatitis C antibody tests and mammograms that look for medical problems in healthy people without symptoms. They are designed to cast a wide net that catches more people with the disease, known as the test’s sensitivity, but also risks catching some without it, which lowers what is known as the test’s specificity.

Though some degree of uncertainty is inherent in all medical decisions, clinicians often fail to share this with patients because it’s complicated to explain and unsettling and leaves doctors vulnerable to seeming uninformed, said Korenstein. What’s more, doctors are trained to seek definitive answers and can themselves struggle to think in probabilities.

“High-tech diagnostic testing has led to this mirage of certainty,” said Korenstein. “Back in the day before there were MRIs and what not, I think, doctors were more cognizant of how often they were uncertain.”

Enter COVID. Coupled with genuine uncertainty about an emerging disease and a political environment that has sown misinformation and rendered science partisan, the nuances of testing are too often lost at a time when they are particularly crucial to convey.

Dr. Jasmine Marcelin, who specializes in infectious disease at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, was concerned to see Nebraskans tested at statewide facilities get “inconsistent results without a lot of guidance or explanation about what these results might mean.” When she offers COVID testing, she said, she approaches it as she does any other medical decision, starting with a simple question: “What do you want to learn from this test?”

To answer this, it helps to know something about how coronavirus tests work and how well they do their jobs.

Many of the available tests are meant to tell you if you’re infected right now. For example, polymerase chain reaction tests like the one Chu’s patient received detect small traces of genetic material from the virus. But by some estimates, those tests have a false negative rate of up to 30%, meaning 3 out of 10 people who truly have the infection will test negative. This rate also varies based on who collects the sample, from which part of the body and when in the course of a possible infection.

Antigen tests look for viral proteins and are faster to analyze than the PCR, but also less accurate.

To know if you’ve already had COVID-19, the closest you can get is the COVID antibody test. But the too-common interpretation is black and white: I had COVID, or I didn’t. Here, again, the reality is more nuanced. The test checks your blood for antibodies — your immune system’s soldiers in the fight against the coronavirus. A negative antibody test could mean you were never infected with SARS-CoV-2, or it could mean that you’re currently infected but haven’t yet built up that army, or that these defenses have already faded away.

A positive test, on the other hand, may have mistakenly detected antibodies to another, similar-looking virus. And even if the test correctly shows you had COVID-19, it’s not yet clear if this means you’re protected from reinfection.

Yet, these shades of gray are difficult to internalize. Roy Avellaneda, the 49-year-old president of the Chelsea City Council, got the antibody test out of curiosity and could not help but see his positive result as what he called an immunity pass. “I can act a little bit cavalier with it now,” he said. “Yes, I’ll continue to wear a mask and so forth, but the fear is gone.”

Korenstein said that’s a common though worrisome reaction. “It’s really hard to expect the public to have a more nuanced understanding when even doctors don’t,” she said.

Some of the uncertainty around COVID testing has abated as researchers learn more about the new disease. Early in the pandemic, health care providers retested patients with confirmed cases, looking for a negative PCR test to prove they were no longer infectious. But soon, epidemiologists discovered that a COVID patient rarely infected others 10 or more days after first developing symptoms (or 20, in severe cases), even if the PCR test was picking up traces of the — presumably dead — virus weeks or even months after initial infection. So the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health systems adjusted their policies to clear patients on the basis of time rather than a negative test.

But while the desire for certainty in coronavirus testing is magnified by the rampant uncertainty in other facets of pandemic life, this is simply not something most medical tests can provide.

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Jeff Bezos-backed projects will help track down missing emissions

In February, Jeff Bezos took to Instagram to announce a new project: The world’s richest person would spend $10 billion of his then–$130 billion net worth to “save Earth.” A slew of think pieces followed — where would the money go the furthest?

Not in building solar farms, a solar energy analyst told the Atlantic; the sector already had more than enough capital chasing after it. What about in political organizing to get smart climate policies passed by Congress? Or in research and development to scale up solutions that are too expensive right now, like long-duration batteries that will help the electric grid smooth out the variability of renewables?

Bezos finally named the recipients of the first $791 million from the fund last month, and a large chunk of the money went to a climate solution that pundits hadn’t seen coming: two projects that will reveal where greenhouse gas emissions are coming from, and how they are changing over time.

“If no one invests in that, then we’re basically flying blind in trying to tackle climate change,” said Craig Hanson, vice president of food, forests, water, and the ocean at the World Resources Institute (WRI), which was one of the two beneficiaries.

WRI is using about half of its $100 million donation from Bezos to build software that can track the emissions impact of land-use changes, like when wetlands are cleared or new forests are planted, using satellite data. The other beneficiary, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), will use part of its $100 million from Bezos to launch a new satellite called MethaneSAT that will identify and monitor sources of methane emissions in real time. The data collected by both projects will be available to the public for free.

Science isn’t flying entirely blind on either of these metrics, but the data lacks granularity. There are scientists studying the carbon that’s sucked up and released by forests, grasslands, and other natural systems, and other researchers studying land-use change via satellite, but there’s not yet a tool that brings the two together to create a monitoring system that’s global in scale, according to Hanson. Researchers have found methane leaking all along the oil and gas supply chain, and shown that it’s much more than what’s reflected in the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas inventory — at least 60 percent higher, according to research by EDF. But they don’t know exactly where it’s coming from, and neither do the companies operating the infrastructure.

Better understanding carbon fluxes in our natural systems is essential to getting climate change in check, especially as nature-based solutions like reforestation and storing more carbon in the soil are scaled up in the coming years. Hanson said WRI’s monitoring system will identify what’s actually happening — where forests are growing or shrinking, where wetlands are being cleared — and help determine where to prioritize interventions. It will also help to illuminate a phenomenon called “leakage,” which is when a change in one area, like converting farmland to forest, can lead to the creation of farmland elsewhere on the planet, essentially canceling out the benefit. To that effect, the tool will help hold governments, companies, and NGOs accountable by measuring whether their nature-based initiatives are actually working.

EDF’s methane satellite will fill a similar gap. Just last week, more than 60 oil and gas companies, including BP and Shell, signed on to an initiative to track and reduce methane not only from their own operations but from partner companies’ as well. (No American companies joined.) They’ll have to report their emissions based on measurements taken from their actual equipment, rather than based on engineering estimates, which is how they have done it in the past (and which is why the EPA’s numbers are off). Mark Brownstein, senior vice president of energy at EDF, said MethaneSAT could be used both to help companies report their emissions and to track whether they are keeping their promises.

Some companies intentionally vent gas at the surface of wells because it can be cheaper than capturing it, but some states are trying to curtail that practice, and MethaneSAT could identify rulebreakers. But a lot of the methane from the oil and gas industry is leaked unintentionally, and methane leaks are hard to find. The gas is invisible and odorless, and leaks can occur pretty much anywhere from oil and gas wells to pipelines to power plants. They occur because of equipment malfunctions, poor maintenance practices, or because a facility just wasn’t designed to minimize methane emissions, explained Brownstein. And in the near term, while much of the world will still run on oil and gas, the leaked methane will continue to add up.

“It’s driving a lot of the warming that we’re experiencing right now,” Brownstein said, “and is fundamentally fixable.”

Methane doesn’t last long in the atmosphere — it breaks down after about 10 years into carbon dioxide and other gases. But it’s a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, so much so that over the first 20 years after it’s released, it has about 86 times the effect that CO2 does on global average temperatures. Cutting methane emissions would have relatively immediate benefits.

“If we got all of our methane emissions to zero tomorrow, global temperatures would fall a bunch, maybe 0.3 or 0.4 degrees [C],” or 0.5 to 0.7 degrees F, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the research nonprofit the Breakthrough Institute who’s not involved with MethaneSAT. Global average temperatures have risen by about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) since 1880.

Research has shown that a small number of leaks are responsible for the vast majority of methane emissions from gas infrastructure. And it’s in the interest of gas companies to fix them, since they are losing money on lost product. The challenge is finding those “super emitters.” There are time-intensive ways to do it, like attaching sensors to cars or drones and following the path of gas pipelines or flying over oilfields. But there’s no global, continuous, real-time monitoring system in place — the gap that EDF aims to fill with MethaneSAT.

Brownstein said EDF’s goal is to launch the satellite in 2022. The data it collects will enable anyone to zero in on where large sources of emissions are coming from — in many cases down to the company responsible — and to see how they are changing over time. Interested parties will be able to track whether reductions are being made and climate promises are being kept.

Brownstein said on-the-ground measurements will still be important in major oil- and gas-producing areas like the Permian Basin in Texas, where the field is so crowded with operators that it would be impossible for MethaneSAT to attribute a leak to a particular company.

For that reason, it’s not a silver bullet. But Hausfather said the satellite will be a great tool to have, especially when combined with stricter regulations on methane emissions that the Biden administration is likely to try to enact. “You can do a lot through policy to reduce leakages in the natural gas system,” he said. “We just haven’t as a society done a particularly good job with that so far.”