Judy Collins on talking groupies with Linda McCartney and her “flying leap” to cover the Beatles

Inimitable singer-songwriter, activist and Grammy-Award winner Judy Collins recently joined “Everything Fab Four” host Kenneth Womack to talk about her decades-long career, and how the Beatles’ music changed its course. “Everything Fab Four” is a podcast co-produced by me and Womack, a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon, and distributed by Salon.

Collins (whose father was a singer, musician and radio host) began playing piano and singing at the age of five, and was performing for audiences before she was a preteen. As she tells Womack, “I was really kind of ready for the ’60s when they happened.”

Collins, who signed with legendary Elektra Records at the beginning of that decade, largely recorded folk and protest songs to start. It was famous banjoist Eric Weissberg, who toured with her in 1965, that really brought the Beatles to her attention during their time on the road together.

“[The Beatles’ songs] were spellbinding,” says Collins. “Enchanting, singable, accessible, beautiful, and harmonic.” It led to her covering several of the band’s tunes, including “Norwegian Wood” and the song that would cause her to take “a flying leap in another direction” with her music, “In My Life” — with which she has started closing concerts again in recent years.

She also speaks about her friendship with Linda McCartney, whom she first got to know in the mid-’60s when the photographer snapped a series of pictures of Collins and her son in New York City. The two women became close and, as Collins explains, “When I started dating Stephen Stills, Linda called me one day and she said, ‘What do you do about the groupies? They’re everywhere. I’m going out with this guy, and his name is Paul McCartney and he’s in this group called the Beatles. They’re everywhere — the groupies are everywhere.'”

Collins says, “I told her, I think you’ll make the right decision. And she did — she never left his side.” She continues, “When [Linda] died, it was such a blow. She was an angel.”

On the topic of powerful women, longtime social activist Collins has nothing but positive things to say about how “awake” today’s women are. “[They’re] experiencing history being made, and reacting to things in the moment. It’s wonderful.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Judy Collins on “Everything Fab Four,” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple, Google or wherever you get your podcasts:

“Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon. Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin, the bestselling book “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles,” and most recently “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” Read more of his work at Salon here.

“Waikiki” filmmaker: “Hawai’i is marketed as a paradise . . . but things are only getting worse”

“Waikiki,” is the first narrative feature written and directed by a native Hawaiian. Filmmaker Christopher Kahunahana’s drama is ambitious and ambiguous, and that is what makes it so auspicious. He traces the downslide of Kea (Danielle Zalopany), an indigenous woman whose smile as she dances for tourists masks her very real despair.

Kea is living in her van to avoid her abusive boyfriend, Branden (Jason Quinn). When the couple has a fight one night, Kea drives off mad and accidentally hits Wo (Peter Shinkoda) a homeless man. Her troubles are compounded after her van gets towed. As Kea’s situation worsens, she is haunted by her traumatic childhood and suffers hallucinations.

“Waikiki” addresses the marginalization and mental fragility of women like Kea in society. Despite having three jobs to get the cash to pay for a place to live, she cannot qualify for an apartment. She is treated badly by men and even teased by a group of guys at a diner, whom shames them for their lack of sympathy.

While the film features gorgeous imagery of the island and scenes that emphasize the traditions and music of Hawai’i, much of “Waikiki” shows the gritty underbelly as Kea and Wo eke out a difficult life on the streets in this island paradise.

Kahunahana spoke with Salon about the film ahead of its premiere at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

Since your film is the first narrative feature written and directed by native Hawaiian, what can you say about the Hawaiian film industry and your path to becoming a filmmaker?

I’ve been trying to make films for 30 years. I made a couple of short films. I went to University of Hawai’i and there wasn’t a film program. I did an independent study degree, doing theatre and writing, and production classes. But now there is an academy for creative media that does film, animation, and video games, so folks now can get great training. Hawai’i is a Hollywood backdrop. I worked on a crew after watching “Magnum P.I.,” shooting Vietnam War scenes here from my roof. It was so intriguing; it piqued my interest to work in film. You could be trained to work in the industry, but that doesn’t lead to directing.

There are a lot of great documentaries by Hawaiian filmmakers and social issue films. But it’s tough to make a film when you have to meet day-to-day needs in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. Half of the people who are Hawaiian live in diaspora, because they can’t afford to buy a house here. A median home here is priced at $850,000. Everyone works two to three jobs. It’s a bittersweet experience to premiere in New York and be sitting in Hawai’i in my underwear.

You depict the travails of an indigenous woman who experiences mental health issues and abuse. Why was this narrative the story you wanted to tell for your feature debut?

Indigenous Hawaiians are not just residents. We have Hawaiian blood. My kupuna, my ancestors — their bones are in the ground in Hawai’i, and they are indigenous. They are figuratively nature as much as my grandma. That is part of our everyday life growing up here. The main theme is that as a Hawaiian, being disconnected from the land or culture — as when we lose land or culture — we lose our mental health. It’s an allegory. The water in the film starts as an ocean, goes to a waterfall, and then into a stream. Waikiki was built on a kalo farm; kalo is our staple. Haloa was the first child of the earth mother and father and was stillborn. The second child was Hawaiian, so that ties us to the land; the health of the land dictates the health of the people. When people are dislocated from their land, they have mental health issues, addiction, and abuse.

What observations do you have about the way indigenous Hawaiians are treated, the way women are abused, and the way the economic inequality is seen in Hawai’i in particular but in the world in general?

There is intergenerational trauma. The monarchy was overthrown and stripped people of language and values — that is abuse. When you are not connected to the land, and another system exploits land and labor, in that system, you can only be a servant. Unless you are wealthy, everyone who grows up here experiences this. I worked as a busboy and valet in the tourist industry and didn’t make minimum wage.

What about being an indigenous filmmaker?

It’s important for me as an Indigenous filmmaker that people value what we say. The points in “Waikiki” are not easily digestible. Tourism and military are the key industries here, and we don’t talk about how we are using our land and resources in sustainable ways. It is important to have these conversations. People thought I was shooting myself in the foot by talking about the difficulties Hawaiians have, but this is reality. Kea is based on people I know. Hawai’i is marketed as a paradise, and everyone buys into it. But things here are only getting worse. I shot the film in an industrial neighborhood of transition. There are always construction buildings in the background.

It’s cheaper to live almost anywhere else. Las Vegas and San Francisco are less expensive. There are no tech jobs here. The creative industry is growing, but it’s not New Zealand where the government funds films. Films are great for our economy, and people can afford to buy houses if they work on sets as crew. But to make a feature I had to sacrifice those things to make a story about Hawai’i. But It’s changing. There are young hungry Hawaiian filmmakers. There’s a momentum.

“Waikiki” takes some narrative risks with how Kea makes some difficult decisions and has moments of real despair. Can you talk about her psychology?

I never was one to be drawn to hero films or where everything is great at the end. That’s not real life. I’m interested in people’s journey, and that’s not always linear. They are both heroes and villains in the story. I want the audience to pull for her even when she’s not making the best decisions. When Kea is with Wo, I want people thinking, “Why is she with him?” I want them to question her sanity, but I also want them to root for her to succeed. The first half is in real time but as the story progresses, we spend more time with her memories and dreams, and I experimented more in the second half.

There are some interesting surrealistic touches: a ringing phone, and an image of Kea as a youth with her grandmother in the Pacific Ocean. How did you come up with these symbols, and do you want viewers to attach meaning to them?

As an artist, I have my own truth in the story, but I knew that when people watch the film, it’s all subjective. It’s a mirror held up to someone and what they see is what comes from their personal connection to the story; they will see a different film. I want them to see a truth in the film that aligns with how they see the world and make them have empathy for others. I want them to imagine the story for themselves. Native people see the story as violence against indigenous women, but the doctors who see it think it’s about psychosis. I think it’s important for people to find the story within themselves and see their desires, fears, and hopes. We have a word, koana, that is for things that have subtext or multiple meanings. And that is something I worked a lot on — how to present these layers without being too on the nose.

You show some touristy aspects of Hawai’i, but are far more focused on the native culture, traditions, folklore and music. Can you explain what folks unfamiliar with the island and its culture need to know to appreciate your film?

That was the challenge with making the film. How much is necessary to include before it’s didactic. I want people to connect emotionally and then research things on their own. I had to set up people’s perceptions of Hawai’i and then swoop into a close-up of Kea’s face dancing for tourists and then show her in a karaoke bar where people are buying her time. I’m showing the duality of the character’s life, which is the reality a lot of people face here.

“Waikiki” screens Oct. 29-30 at the virtual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and is the closing night film at the Hawaiian International Film Festival, Nov. 25-29.

Trump’s chief of staff makes shocking admission: “We’re not going to control the pandemic”

President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made an astonishing admission on Sunday, telling CNN that the White House has given up on trying to control the spread of the novel coronavirus. Notably, a fresh outbreak within the administration recently infected at least five advisers to Vice President Mike Pence.

“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump in the upcoming election, responded to Meadows’ comment by saying, “This wasn’t a slip by Meadows; it was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

Meadows’ remarks are particularly ironic because Pence chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, and his performance in that role was implicitly praised by Trump when he told a rally on Sunday that America is “rounding the turn” when it comes to addressing the pandemic.

While Meadows’ words imply that their hope rests in mitigation and vaccines, such pharmaceutical products are quite time- and labor-intensive to produce, and no safe vaccines are near ready. There are at least three distinct phases in which vaccines are slowly rolled out, each of which is intended to make sure that the drug is safe and effective for a diverse range of people based on their age, race, sex and other demographic factors. Skipping those phases, as some foreign institutions and governments have in order to speed production, can create deadly problems.

Meadows’ words also belie the Trump administration’s lack of trust in public health official and initiatives since the onset of the pandemic, a mistrust that has worsened its spread in the United States compared to other countries. In addition to slashing or eliminating programs that would have focused on preventing or controlling the disease prior to the outbreak, Trump downplayed the disease’s significance in February despite admitting at that time that he knew how dangerous it was.

The president has also repeatedly denigrated the importance of wearing a mask, even though the scientific consensus is that wearing a mask in public helps both protect the wearer from infection and ensure that the wearer will not infect others. “It’s a horrible message,” American University political science professor Dr. Allan Lichtman explained to Salon in July. “It shows he doesn’t care about the health of his constituents. He cares more about his own image than he does about keeping the people around him safe.”

Trump also blasted Biden during the first presidential debate for wearing a mask, telling viewers that “every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from him and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” The administration’s derision of public health mitigation measures likely contributed to him and many within the White house contracting the coronavirus earlier this month.

As of Monday, Johns Hopkins University’s system for tracking COVID-19 has identified more than 8.7 million cases in the United States, and 225,000 deaths.

With one week left, Trump team rolls out new campaign message: Let the coronavirus win

In the last week before Election Day, Donald Trump and his team have decided the best possible message on the coronavirus pandemic is the same one Trump wanted back in the spring.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Bob Woodward in a taped conversation on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

By “panic,” of course, Trump meant he didn’t want people to have negative feelings that he was worried might imperil his re-election. With the confidence borne from never facing meaningful consequences for decades of sociopathic behavior, the president embraced the idea that as long as he kept accusing the media of exaggerating the virus in order to damage him politically, the public (or at least his public) wouldn’t take the coronavirus seriously.

On Feb. 28, when the coronavirus had only just started to threaten the U.S., Trump gave a speech in South Carolina where he declared, “This is their new hoax,” saying that “Democrats want us to fail so badly” that they were willing to exaggerate the threat of the virus in order to endanger his re-election.

Now, with more than 225,000 people dead and 8.6 million infected, all trends make clear that the situation is getting worse, as the U.S. sets new records in transmission rates, dwarfing earlier peaks in the spring and summer. The virus has torn through the White House, infecting Trump and his wife and his son and dozens of others close to the president, including five aides to Vice President Pence whose diagnoses were announced over the weekend.

Despite this, Trump is still committed to the same lie he rolled out in February: The panic is a hoax perpetuated by Democrats and the media to hurt him.

“That’s all I hear about now. Turn on television, ‘COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.,'” Trump said at a Saturday campaign rally in North Carolina. “A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. ‘COVID COVID COVID COVID.’ By the way, on Nov. 4, you won’t hear about it anymore.”

There has been no such plane crash anywhere in the world, an example Trump appears to have made up whole cloth. But it’s also telling that the number of fake dead that Trump conjured up in this imaginary disaster was still well below the 943 people who had died of COVID-19 the previous day.

On Monday, Trump doubled down, tweeting that it should “be an election law violation” to cover “COVID, COVID, COVID” this close to the election.

This further confirms what Trump told Woodward in the spring: He knows he’s lying when he accuses his opponents of exaggerating the pandemic. He remains confident that he can brazen this out, and believes his lies have the power to erase the millions infected and the death toll that’s quickly approaching a quarter of a million. (Either that, or he recognizes he’s got no other options.)

“We are not going to control the pandemic,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows shouted at Jake Tapper of CNN on Sunday, in the condescending tone that is standard for Trump officials talking to reporters.

Meadows went on to say they are “going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas,” which is just more Trumpian lying designed to trick people into believing that mask-wearing and other social distancing efforts are not necessary. Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, hospitals are being overwhelmed with patients and morgues are running out of room.

As Democratic nominee Joe Biden said in a statement, this “was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis,” which was to ignore the whole thing and hope “the virus would simply go away.”

Or, as journalist Lindsay Beyerstein put it bluntly on Twitter, the Trump campaign’s closing argument is, “F*ck you, die of COVID.”

Trump’s strategy of waving his hands and telling people not to notice the pandemic that’s wreaking havoc on the country is working on one set of people: His followers, who have a cult-like devotion to him.

A new Pew Research poll shows that only 24% of Trump supporters believe the coronavirus is an important election issue, compared to 82% of Biden supporters. This represents a sharp decline in Trump voters taking this seriously since August, when 39% of Trump voters saw the pandemic as an important issue.

Trump’s injured ego and his unwillingness ever to admit he was wrong has infected his entire base of support. Most of his voters have apparently now decided that getting infected and risking death is a better option than facing that the hated liberals were right about Trump all along.

This polling also made clear that maintaining one’s support for Trump means embracing an increasingly incoherent set of rationalizations. Eighty-four percent of Trump supporters claimed that “the economy” was their main voting concern. That, of course, is profoundly delusional, since the economic crisis facing the country is a direct result of Trump and the Republicans failing to take the coronavirus seriously. Now the pandemic is spiraling out of control, which will only deepen the economic crisis, but so far Republicans are refusing to pass any meaningful legislation to curtail the economic damage.

Trump may think the lying-and-whining strategy is a good one, since he has evidently convinced his already loyal followers to walk straight off a cliff with him. But it doesn’t seem to have any impact on the rest of the country, except perhaps to stiffen the resolve of the strong majority of voters who dislike Trump to overcome the myriad obstacles Republicans have put in their way to vote him out of office.

But even if Trump’s “what coronavirus?” strategy doesn’t win him re-election, it will still have major ramifications going into the winter. Trump has made it a loyalty test for his supporters to shun social distancing and masks, which has clearly contributed to the spread of the virus. Even if he loses in November and his supporters become less belligerent and reckless — and there’s no guarantee of that — it will be too late for many people. The pandemic is entering into another critical stage, and many people will get sick and die who otherwise wouldn’t have. Our entire nation will once again pay an unfathomable price, all because Trump’s voters were more concerned about sticking it to the liberals than about their own families and their own lives.

Fox host tells South Carolina voters not to vote for Graham: “He has betrayed the American people”

Fox Business host and indefatigable Trump ally Lou Dobbs ripped into Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over the weekend, telling his overwhelmingly conservative audience in the final countdown to Election Day that he did not know “why anyone” would vote for a candidate who had “betrayed the American people.”

“Just to be clear I don’t know why anyone in the great state of South Carolina would ever vote for Lindsey Graham,” Dobbs said on his Friday broadcast. “It’s just outrageous. This is the guy who keeps saying, ‘Stay tuned.’ He said he was going to get to the bottom of Obamagate with the Judiciary Committee, which has been a year and a half, actually longer, of absolute inert — inert — response to these pressing issues of our day.”

“Obamagate” is a reference to a widely discredited conspiracy theory alleging that former President Barack Obama ordered his administration to spy on then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Dobbs then invoked President Trump’s own words in a stinging series of critiques of the Republican senator, who a recent poll found trailing Democratic rival Jaime Harrison, a fundraising powerhouse, for the first time.

“I believe that the president’s words about the senator then apply today,” Dobbs said, reading Trump’s remarks from a Feb. 17, 2016, campaign event in Graham’s home state of South Carolina:

I think Lindsey Graham is a disgrace, and I think you have one of the worst representatives of any representative in the United States. I don’t think he could run for dogcatcher in the state and win again. I really don’t. Other than that, I think he’s wonderful. He’s one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen. That guy is a nut job.

At the time, Trump was responding to Graham’s prediction that the Republican Party would get “slaughtered” if Trump won the nomination.

Casting Graham as a turncoat on the Trump administration, Dobbs again invoked Obamagate as his sole example.

“Graham has betrayed President Trump at almost every turn. He has betrayed the American people and his oath of office,” Dobbs concluded. “He’s done absolutely nothing to investigate Obamagate, except to tell everyone stay tuned time and time again: ‘Stay tuned.’ Senator Graham needs to be tuned out in South Carolina.”

Graham has found his campaign foundering in recent weeks under the pressure of Harrison’s war chest and strong debate showing. A Morning Consult poll released Thursday showed Harrison ahead of Graham 47% – 45%, with 12 campaign days remaining.

“Lindsey Graham is scared right now, and he should be,” campaign spokesperson Guy King told Salon in a statement. “As Lindsey scurries off to Washington to play another round of political games, our grassroots movement is catapulting forward. South Carolina is ready for a leader who will stand up and fight for them — something Lindsey Graham fails to do.”

Harrison has sought to cast Graham as out of touch and divorce him from the interests of voters in the state, and that strategy appears to have yielded results. Graham’s slipping poll numbers coincide with his return to Washington to chair the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.

Quinnipiac polls have shown the two neck-and-neck for months, and the pollster recently acknowledged that Graham was in “the fight of his political life.” Election analysts at Cook Political Report recently shifted the race in the typical GOP stronghold to “toss-up.”

“It’s a jump ball at this point,” a Republican strategist in the state told Cook. “Jaime is peaking at exactly the right time, and he’s got a deluge of money. [Harrison] is blocking every pass there is from Republicans.”

After one hearing last week, Graham, who has begged for cash in several recent Fox News appearances, was accused of illegally soliciting campaign donations in the halls of the Senate building.

“I think people in South Carolina are excited about Judge Barrett,” Graham said. “I don’t know how much it affected fundraising today, but if you want to help me close the gap . . . Lindsey Graham dot com — a little bit goes a long way.”

After congratulating Harrison on a record-setting $58 million raised last quarter, he added: “I never felt better about my campaign than I do right now.”

Will Trump supporters accept defeat? If he loses, it could get really ugly

One of the more interesting (and somewhat confounding) polling results in this election cycle has been the belief among members of both parties that Donald Trump will win re-election, regardless of who they’re actually planning to vote for. His approval rating has been stuck in the low 40s throughout his term, which is unprecedented, and he’s been behind in the polls from the beginning of the campaign. Yet most Americans still remain convinced that he is going to win. This is from Gallup in early October:

Regardless of whom they personally support, 56% of Americans expect Trump to prevail over Biden in the November election, while 40% think Biden will win. Republicans are more likely to believe Trump will win (90%) than Democrats are to think Biden will (73%). Fifty-six percent of independents predict that Trump will win.

How can this be? Well, of course it all depends on what the definition of “win” is.

The explanation for the Democrats and many Independents is obvious. With all of Trump’s talk about mail-in voter fraud and lawsuits and promises of intimidation at the polls, they believe it’s possible that he will pull out all the stops to create or fake a victory regardless of the legitimate electoral outcome. With his statements to the press that he wants the ninth Supreme Court seat filled in order to ensure a victory, it’s not being all that paranoid to assume it could happen.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are living in an alternate universe in which Trump holds a massive lead in all the polls and is heading for a landslide. They believe this because he tells them that every day.

It’s unlikely we will have full results on election night next week, since some states won’t even begin counting mail-in votes until that day, while others allow ballots to arrive some time after Election Day. There’s certainly the possibility of lawsuits if contests are close. Nonetheless, we will probably know the winner within a few days — Trump’s scenario that it could take “months” is hot air — and it’s worth pondering how the two sides will react.

According to this Reuters-Ipsos poll, more than four in 10 voters on either side will not accept the results of the election. It doesn’t go into details, except to say that 22% of Biden supporters and 16% of Trump supporters say they would engage in street protests or violence if the other side prevailed. But let’s look at the reasons that might happen.

Obviously, if Trump prevails there will be an uproar among Democrats despite the fact that a large number of them believe he’s going to win anyway. But in the unlikely event that he wins outright without any legal shenanigans, partisan court victories, discarding of valid votes or intimidation at the polls, I suspect they will be even more shell-shocked than in 2016, but will accept the outcome with depressed equanimity. If they take to the streets under that circumstance, it might be to stage a protest against pollsters for their overwhelming incompetence. Joe Biden has had a steady and substantial lead in all the polls for months now.

On the other hand, if despite a clear defeat at the ballot box, Trump nonetheless finds a way to “win” through lawsuits decided by right-wing judges who throw out legal votes or takeovers by GOP state legislatures, there will be a massive outcry. People understand that Republicans might try this, but that doesn’t mean they’ll stand for it. In that scenario, our nation would face the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War. God help us if that comes to pass.

But what about Republicans? They’re already living in a miasma of disinformation, conspiracy theories and lies. Alex Wagner of Showtime’s “The Circus” interviewed a bunch of fanatical Trump-supporting militia members and reported that for whatever reason they believe Trump will win in a landslide:

.@alexwagner discusses her conversations with militia leaders w/ @NicolleDWallace: "They are entirely certain that Donald Trump is going to win in a landslide which is something you hear Trump say too. Trump has not opened the door up to this even being a close election." pic.twitter.com/pBX7F7OVOl

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) October 22, 2020

Reporting from Trump rallies on cable news inevitably shows the same attitude even among the more mainstream voters. Trump’s supporters simply do not believe that he can legitimately lose. And why should they? Their Dear Leader — the only source of information they trust — has said so explicitly, over and over again. In fact, that claim has already been institutionalized:

Multiple social media analyses, including one conducted by a group of nonprofit researchers on behalf of NBC News, have detailed how a collection of the president’s relatives and members of his inner circle, along with far-right media manipulators and an online army of disciples, has created or spread false or misleading content that supports his “rigged” narrative, while his campaign is urging supporters to join an “army” and “defend their vote.”

Every single day, Trump is out on the campaign trail threatening to defy the election results. His newest rationale (one of many) is that “they spied on his campaign” and he didn’t get a “friendly transition” in 2016, so he sees no reason to give the Democrats one in 2020:

Trump came into office with a peaceful transition of power. Hillary conceded promptly. Obama tutored him. To suggest that it wasn’t a peaceful transition is ludicrous and to use that as some excuse for him to not transition is absurd. https://t.co/CqKXDOQ3z6

— Touré (@Toure) October 25, 2020

What this adds up to is this: if the polls are right and Biden wins the election by a healthy margin, Trump voters almost certainly won’t accept the results. Put yourself in their shoes and it isn’t that hard. Four years ago, a lot of Hillary Clinton voters felt as if they’d had the wind knocked out of them by that shocking and unexpected result. That’s what these Trump voters are going to feel, except that the dissonance will be a thousand times worse. They are expecting a Trump landslide, and have been told by him that the only way he can possibly lose is through fraud on a massive scale.

The difference between then and now, of course, is that Clinton and Barack Obama and every Democratic official immediately accepted the results and their supporters largely agreed voters that Trump had won, at least under the antediluvian constitutional machinery of the Electoral College. There is every reason to think that Trump will do quite the opposite, and I’m afraid there’s no reason to believe we can depend upon Republican officials to step up and do the right thing.

And there’s that undeniable pall that hangs over the whole process, with the possibility that well-armed Trump supporters who have been told they simply cannot lose the election will try to take matters into their own hands. After all, some militia-style goons have already plotted to kidnap and “try” Democratic officials for “treason.” We can’t predict how far they’ll be willing to go if their world is turned upside down by an unexpected electoral defeat.

Shortly after the election in 2016, I wrote an column about the “sore winner” syndrome, in which angry Trump supporters were assaulting Democrats and screaming at them on the streets, even though their guy had won the election. This reflects a longstanding attitude among this political faction in which it’s never enough to win by normal means — they can’t be happy about until they force their rivals to admit they were wrong and offer an unconditional surrender.

Imagine what these people might do when they lose.

Gov. Greg Abbott spends millions to keep Texas from turning blue

Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign is ratcheting up its down-ballot efforts in the final weeks before the November election, working to defend the Republican majority in the state House and to remind voters about the importance of electing the party’s judges farther down the ballot.

In what his campaign described as a “mid-seven-figure” total expenditure, it is putting its weight behind two dozen House races and running statewide TV and radio commercials about judges. The news of the effort, detailed to The Texas Tribune, comes as early voting is underway and both sides have already invested millions of dollars in the House fight.

Abbott’s campaign is confident Republicans will beat back the Democrats’ drive to capture the majority, which would be a major prize ahead of the 2021 redistricting process.

“They’re spending a lot of money — there’s no question about that — and that’s nothing we didn’t expect from Day 1,” Abbott’s chief political strategist, Dave Carney, said in an interview. He acknowledged Republicans “will lose some members,” but noted the possibility that the party could win back some seats it lost in 2018.

“I think there’s zero chance that they can take control of the House,” Carney added.

Democrats are currently nine seats short of the majority in the 150-member House, after picking up 12 in 2018. Some Democrats see as many as 34 seats on the November battlefield — the 12 seats that they won two years ago and now have to defend, and 22 other pickup opportunities. Abbott’s campaign has zeroed in on 24 districts. Ten of those are held by Democratic freshmen, 10 are represented by GOP incumbents and four are open seats in battleground territory.

Across those 24 districts, Abbott’s campaign is appealing to 1,030,000 voters who Carney described as “either Abbott supporters or high-likelihood swing voters.” The campaign has already been targeting that group of voters with digital ads touting Abbott’s candidate endorsements, with mentions of specific issues that poll well in each district.

In one of the more recent — and aggressive — prongs of its offensive, Abbott’s campaign is running digital ads tying Democratic candidates to Beto O’Rourke, who has made himself a central figure in the House battle through his Powered by People political group. Abbott’s campaign has produced 96 spots — four for each of the 24 districts — highlighting O’Rourke’s positions separately on guns, taxes, the Green New Deal and police funding. The ads are served to targeted voters in each district depending on what the Abbott campaign has modeled as each voter’s top issue.

Before naming specific candidates and showing photos of them with O’Rourke, each ad begins the same way: “Extreme liberal Beto O’Rourke wants to turn Texas into California — and he’s recruiting a team to do it.”

The O’Rourke-centered strategy is a broader repeat of the one Republicans used in the January special election for House District 28, where Republican Gary Gates won by 16 percentage points despite massive national Democratic attention and assistance. While O’Rourke has argued Republicans attack him because they are threatened by his work to make the state more competitive, Abbott’s campaign believes O’Rourke remains a liability in battleground districts.

An August poll from Rice University and the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation found that O’Rourke was the least popular politician statewide out of 10 who were tested, with a net favorability rating of negative 16 percentage points.

Abbott’s campaign has also cut a digital spot in which state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, an anesthesiologist, defends Texas Republicans on health care, the subject of many Democratic attack ads in the House fight. Oliverson says in the spot that Republicans in 2019 “passed legislation to protect patients with preexisting conditions from losing access to health insurance.” That is a reference to state Senate Bill 1940, which would temporarily bring back Texas’ high-risk insurance pool covering people with preexisting conditions, though experts say it would provide far less protection than current Obamacare provisions.

“So, remember, on health care, Texas Republicans are working for you,” Oliverson says.

The House Democratic Campaign Committee scoffed at the Abbott campaign offensive.

“Gov. Abbott’s 11th-hour entry into the battle for Texas, after millions of votes have already been cast, confirms he is seeing the same numbers we are. They are losing,” Andrew Reagan, executive director of the HDCC, said in a statement. “Frankly, given the now open warfare among Texas Republicans, Abbott’s move seems more about the next GOP primary than this election.”

Straight-ticket voting

Abbott’s campaign is concerned with more than just the House majority next month. This is the first Texas election without straight-ticket voting, and both sides are anxious about what that could mean for lower-profile races toward the bottom of the ballot.

In a radio interview last week, Abbott acknowledged the high excitement around the presidential race, but said it “could be catastrophic for the future of the state of Texas” if Republicans only vote for Trump and then leave.

The TV ad that Abbott’s campaign is airing on behalf of judicial candidates seeks to rouse Republicans to vote all the way down the ballot by invoking recent protest violence and the “defund the police” movement, flashing headlines about how it has unfolded in Austin and Dallas.

“We need to support our police and elect Republican judges who will enforce the law and get tough on criminals, so vote for Republican judges for the Supreme Court and down the ballot,” Abbott says while the commercial shows boxes being checked off on a ballot scrolling downward.

In the radio spot, Abbott puts a finer point on the message, twice urging support for judges “all the way down the ballot.” He adds, “Every office matters so we can keep Texas safe.”

Abbott’s political standing

The governor, who is not up for reelection until 2022, has long made clear that keeping the state House in Republican hands is his top political project this November. In a speech last October, before the coronavirus pandemic upended the election cycle, Abbott promised to campaign in the lower-chamber battle “as though I am on the ballot myself.”

Abbott’s campaign certainly has the funds to make a difference, holding $37.7 million cash on hand as of the end of June.

However, the scale of Abbott’s financial commitment to the House fight has been something of an open question recently. On its latest campaign finance reports, which covered July 1 through Sept. 24, Abbott’s campaign had spent only $36,000 to help House candidates after the July 14 primary runoffs.

But it is not unusual for some candidates and PACs to wait until after the end of a reporting period to ramp up their spending so as not to tip off their opponents earlier than they need to. That appears to be the route Abbott’s campaign has gone, and its ramped-up spending could be reflected in the next wave of reports to the Texas Ethics Commission, which is due Oct. 26.

Abbott’s political stature has taken a hit as he has navigated the coronavirus pandemic, with his approval ratings sagging over the summer. That has left Democrats confident that he is no longer as reliable an asset for down-ballot Republicans.

Carney said he is not concerned about Abbott being a liability for candidates down the ballot, adding that the governor’s internal numbers have been “picking up” since the summer. Plus, Carney noted, the campaign is communicating to voters in House races who it knows already like the governor.

“He’s the most popular political figure in the state still,” Carney said. “We don’t feel queasy about [it] — we’re doing no harm.”

The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Ralph Nader on Trump’s corruption, “corporate state fascism” and why Democrats keep losing

Autocracy is kleptocracy. Donald Trump has repeatedly shown this to be true as he has abused the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family, and to reward his political allies and other agents.

Trump has at least 3,400 conflicts of interest. Investigative reporters from Forbes, Vanity Fair, the New York Times and the Washington Post, along with independent watchdog and public advocacy groups have exhaustively detailed how Trump and his family have personally profited from his presidency.

Trump’s adult children have become tens of millions of dollars richer from business partnerships and other financial ventures made possible by their father’s presidency. Trump’s company — which he still owns and controls — has received tens of millions of dollars (if not more) from direct payments to his hotels and other properties made by foreign countries.

Trump is also personally enriching himself through direct transfers to his businesses from the American people when he charges the Secret Service and other government agencies for staying at his properties.

Trump claims to be a billionaire. Like other wealthy Americans who pay less in taxes than poor and working-class people, Trump’s own tax documents reveal that he paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017. In 10 of the previous 15 years, he paid no income taxes at all.

The Trump regime and the Republican Party have systematically expanded their destruction of workers’ rights, unions, the environment and public health and safety more generally. Coronavirus relief efforts were intentionally sabotaged and undermined by denying resources and other support to Democratic-led states and cities.

Trump’s corruption and general malfeasance are indicative of a much larger problem in American society where the country’s political and financial elites live by laws and norms which they created for their own benefit. Such an arrangement can be reasonably described as legal theft: There is one set of rules in America for the rich and another set of rules for everyone else.

In that way, Donald Trump represents a unique opportunity that may never be repeated in American history for the gangster capitalists, plutocrats and the other elements of what Noam Chomsky describes as the RECD (“really existing capitalist democracy”) to become even richer and powerful by looting the government and further destroying civil society, the commons, and the other social and political institutions and norms that are prerequisites for a humane society.

How are such an abominably unjust set of outcomes made to appear legitimate and normal to the American people? To cite one example, benign-sounding language about a supposed “K-shaped recovery” is used to describe extreme income and wealth inequality, and the reality that America’s millionaires and billionaires have enriched themselves through the human and financial destruction caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

To further legitimate such injustice, minimum wage and working-class people in the service industries are described as “heroes” and “essential workers” in the PR newspeak of the corporations, the mainstream news media and the political classes. In reality these “essential workers” are treated as disposable human beings to be sacrificed in the death cult of capitalism.

In total, “coronavirus-fascism” has shone an ever starker light on how American society in the Age of Trump has become a full-on pathocracy, one rapidly approaching a moment when it cannot be cured or otherwise redeemed.

Ralph Nader has been fighting for the freedoms and rights of the American people for six decades. He is an author, attorney, consumer advocate and activist, as well as a five-time presidential candidate. (His still-controversial Green Party campaign in 2000 has been blamed, fairly or otherwise, for the razor-thin margin of votes in Florida that elected George W. Bush.) Nader’s new book (with co-author Mark Green) is “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.”

In this conversation, Nader explains how the plutocrats and the CEO class are benefiting from the coronavirus pandemic and why America’s mainstream media and other voices have largely been silent, if not complicit. Nader also warns that voting for the Democratic Party (which he describes as the “lesser of two evils”) helped to create the disaster that is the Age of Trump. He offers a case for why the Democratic Party (along with “liberals” and “progressives” more generally) lacks the necessary energy and language to defeat Trumpism and the Republican Party’s decades-long assault on social democracy.

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

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Given your decades of experience in politics and social change work, is there a moment when you feel like American society went off the rails? When things were truly broken and got us to where we are today, with the Age of Trump and American fascism?

It went off the rails when the Republicans and the right wing stole the 2000 election from Al Gore and blamed the Green Party, including me. The 2000 election was a judicial coup d’état led by [Justice Antonin] Scalia. It was one of the most criminogenic political decisions one can imagine. Scalia could not even defend his own decision. Subsequently, the 2000 election also helped to create eight years of a George W. Bush presidency. The result of the 2000 election was a huge increase in judicial power, in essence creating a group of unelected tyrants — and that problem is only going to get worse with Trump going forward.

And of course, one must acknowledge all of the public policies that resulted from Bush being “elected” in 2000. A mockery has been made out of elections and the law. There is now unchallenged gerrymandering by the Republicans. Trump, like George W. Bush, also won the election with the Electoral College. The Republicans have flattened the Democratic Party at almost every turn. The Democrats are the only political party standing in the way of massive Republican corporate domination of our society. In 1938 Franklin Donald Roosevelt described what we are witnessing with today’s Republican Party as “fascism.”

What do the Republicans understand about power, raw power, that the Democrats do not?

The Republicans have more energy. They go for the jugular, while the Democrats go for the capillaries. One example: Do you know any Democratic senator that has as much drive and maniacal energy as Mitch McConnell? Can you compare the Koch brothers with George Soros? The Republicans transformed the judiciary. They’ve elected a president in the form of Donald Trump who lost the popular vote. They’ve got their own “news” network in the form of Fox. Where is the counterpart for Democrats or the left and progressives?

Donald Trump and the plutocracy, in a country controlled by gangster capitalism, is a moral obscenity. There are long breadlines. The very rich have only become richer because of the coronavirus pandemic. Social inequality overall is worsening. How can the news media and other members of the mainstream media — and the Democrats, liberals and progressives — speak more clearly about these obscenities? Or are voices in the media and elsewhere just too scared to tell the truth about the depth of the crisis?

The corporate media types and as well as the Democrats need to open a dictionary and read it carefully. They collectively lack the language that can adequately describe the grotesque, vicious, cruel and omnicidal things that are going on in America today.

Here is one example. What are they calling massive unprecedented hurricanes, droughts, floods, sea level increase and wildfires? “Climate change.” You see that language everywhere. I tried to get environmental groups to use better language such as “climate chaos,” “climate destruction” and “climate catastrophe.” Do you know who coined the phrase “climate change”? The right-wing wordsmith Frank Luntz. In 2002 he told conservatives and other elements of the right wing, “This phrase, ‘global warming,’ is too alarming. We got to find another phrase.” They said, “What phrase?” He said, “Let’s call it ‘climate change’. It sounds like the seasons: Autumn, winter, spring, summer.” Democrats and environmental groups lapped up that phrase like a cat drinking milk.

Another weak example of language is calling something “problematic” when it should be described as “terrible” or “grotesque.” Here is another example: Instead of plainly saying that right-wing corporatists are lying, the mainstream media types and the Democratic Party will say it’s “magical thinking.” Instead of saying something is really obstructive and bad, they will substitute “challenging.”

How is the coronavirus pandemic and this season of death an opportunity for gangster capitalists here in America and around the world? Trump, the Republicans and the right are leading a literal death cult where the solution is to go out and die for “the economy.”

As things get worse in America, criminally bad in fact, big business gets stronger. That is the trend. It did not happen in the 1930s, by the way. It didn’t happen in the 1960s either. But big business counterattacked and they took control of Congress. Congress is the only tool left to take on gigantic corporations and the corporatocracy and its criminal, omnicidal behavior.

One would think that more of these progressive groups would focus on Congress? No. They put out exposés. They denounce corporate crime on Wall Street. They have marches and all the energy goes up into the ether.

Those forces are scamming the American people. They began looting, stealing and cheating the public the very minute that the United States government began its so-called relief efforts. A public flood of money was released, and even the best reporters and journalists cannot keep up with all of the corruption. Big business is getting this “relief” money directly. Even subsidiaries of right-wing corporatists such as the Koch brothers are getting this money.

The corporatists have crowded out the attempts of liberals and progressives and others to focus on winning a living wage, universal health care and other policies that would help the American people. That is a sign of a crumbling society. It is when the big crooks not only get away with the obscenities with impunity, but they actually come out of the disaster stronger and more dominant.

We are seeing huge numbers of small businesses going bankrupt in this country because of the economic devastation caused by the pandemic. Amazon will be bigger. Facebook will be bigger. Google will be bigger. ExxonMobil will be bigger. There are going to be fewer but more strong and larger giant drug companies, giant banks and giant insurance companies.

How did the social Darwinist ethic that profits matter more than people take hold in late-20th and early 21st century America?

The countervailing forces were broken. They broke the labor movement. They weakened and blocked the consumer movement. They broke the use of the tort system.

What does it mean to be a progressive or a liberal in this perilous time?

To be a liberal or a progressive in this moment means to take on giant corporations that have taken over government and used it as a type of personal bank, and turned the rest of the government against the American people. In total, it is a type of corporate state fascism. It is here right now. And it is just becoming deeper and more powerful.

If Donald Trump is defeated, his voters and other supporters are not going to disappear. Public opinion and other social science research show that there are tens of millions of people in America, almost all white, who are authoritarians. What do you think the Trumpists want? What is their vision of America?

Donald Trump’s supporters want a White America. Trump has increased their numbers and power. Trump wants civil strife. Trump is the chief inciter of domestic terrorism and violence in this country. Trump has given his supporters and their racism and other antisocial behavior much more visibility and helped to grow their numbers. Many of Trump’s supporters are literally white supremacists. Many of the men are angry, because in their minds, women have rejected them. They are very alienated. Many of them have lost their jobs. Trump’s supporters see no future for themselves. So they get a feeling of empowerment and feel consoled for their problems by joining a cult-like group. It makes them feel powerful. These Trump supporters also have weapons. We saw what Trump’s followers are capable of in Michigan.

Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and other notable voices on the left have made a compelling argument that all people of conscience must vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats as a way of stopping Donald Trump so that the country and the world can be saved. What are your thoughts on that strategy? Should the left disregard its longstanding critiques and concerns and choose to support Biden?

I am not openly supporting Joe Biden. But I am going to oppose Donald Trump. Chomsky says the Electoral College makes it simple: In the solid red and blue states a person can vote for the Green Party, but in the swing states, you have to vote for Joe Biden. I believe that people should only vote their conscience. They should only vote for the people they believe in. When you vote for the least of two evils, the worst evil ends up dominating the least evil. As an example, when you vote for a Democrat as the lesser of two evils, what has been the result? The Republicans control most state governments, the U.S. Senate and the White House.

If Joe Biden wins on Election Day and Trump actually leaves office, I am deeply concerned that the public’s expectations are going to be too high. The American people will end up depressed and spent because a return to “normal” did not solve the many problems that Trump both created and also made worse. If Donald Trump somehow manages through means illegal and quasi-legal to “win” the election and stay in power, then the American people will experience something akin to a collective nervous breakdown. Most will just surrender to Trumpism and American fascism and learned helplessness.

The premise of your observation is that you can beat the fight out of the American people. As in other countries, we have seen that happen. Unfortunately, in America more and more of the people do in fact look defeated, with a few exceptions, Donald Trump has pummeled the American people into submission. Is American-style fascism possible? Of course. There are pockets of it all over the country — and now in the federal government and elsewhere at the highest levels here in America.

You have been a truth-teller, an activist, an organizer, a candidate and involved in social change work more generally for a very long time. How do you sustain the energy and drive?

The easy answer is that I do not like white flags. I do not like surrender. I don’t like bullies. It is in my DNA. I also keep foremost in my mind images of the people who I am trying to champion, defend and protect. In my mind I always see that coal miner dying of black lung disease spitting up black soot and blood.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this interview quoted Ralph Nader, both in the text and the headline, as saying that in swing states, people who oppose Donald Trump should vote for Joe Biden. That was how both the writer and the editor understood his remarks. Nader has since clarified that he was paraphrasing Noam Chomsky’s point of view but does not share it, and believes that “people should only vote their conscience.” The original headline has been replaced and minor changes have been made to this transcript. Salon regrets the misunderstanding.

The U.S. of A(rms): The art of the weapons deal in the Age of Trump

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.

Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.

If the narcissist-in-chief had been honest for a change, he would have dubbed those Abraham Accords the “Arms Sales Accords.” The UAE was, in part, induced to participate in hopes of receiving Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and advanced armed drones as a reward. For his part, after some grumbling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to one-up the UAE and seek a new $8 billion arms package from the Trump administration, including an additional squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35s (beyond those already on order), a fleet of Boeing attack helicopters, and so much more. Were that deal to go through, it would undoubtedly involve an increase in Israel’s more than ample military aid commitment from the United States, already slated to total $3.8 billion annually for the next decade.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

This wasn’t the first time President Trump tried to capitalize on arms sales to the Middle East to consolidate his political position at home and his posture as this country’s dealmaker par excellence. Such gestures began in May 2017, during his very first official overseas trip to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis greetedhim then with ego-boosting fanfare, putting banners featuring his face along roadways leading into their capital, Riyadh; projecting a giant image of that same face on the hotel where he was staying; and presenting him with a medal in a surreal ceremony at one of the kingdom’s many palaces. For his part, Trump came bearing arms in the form of a supposed $110 billionweapons package. Never mind that the size of the deal was vastly exaggerated. It allowed the president to gloat that his sales deal there would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States. If he had to work with one of the most repressive regimes in the world to bring those jobs home, who cared? Not he and certainly not his son-in-law Jared Kushner who would develop a special relationship with the cruel Saudi Crown Prince and heir apparent to the throne, Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump doubled down on his jobs argument in a March 2018 White House meeting with bin Salman. The president came armed with a prop for the cameras: a map of the U.S. showing the states that (he swore) would benefit most from Saudi arms sales, including — you won’t be surprised to learn — the crucial election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Nor will it surprise you that Trump’s jobs claims from those Saudi arms sales are almost entirely fraudulent. In fits of fancy, he’s even insisted that he’s creating as many as half a million jobs linked to weapons exports to that repressive regime. The real number is less than one-tenth that amount — and far less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

American arms dominance

Donald Trump is far from the first president to push tens of billions of dollars of arms into the Middle East. The Obama administration, for example, made a record $115 billion in arms offers to Saudi Arabia during its eight years in office, including combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, military ships, missile defense systems, bombs, guns, and ammunition.

Those sales solidified Washington’s position as the Saudis’ primary arms supplier. Two-thirds of its air force consists of Boeing F-15 aircraft, the vast bulk of its tanks are General Dynamics M-1s, and most of its air-to-ground missiles come from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And mind you, those weapons aren’t just sitting in warehouses or being displayed in military parades. They’ve been among the principal killers in a brutal Saudi intervention in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

A new report from the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (which I co-authored) underscores just how stunningly the U.S. dominates the Middle Eastern weapons market. According to data from the arms transfer database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the period from 2015 to 2019 the United States accounted for 48% of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa, or (as that vast region is sometimes known acronymically) MENA. Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.

In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us.

The influence of U.S. arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91% of its arms imports), Israel (78%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Jordan (73%), Lebanon (73%), Kuwait (70%), the UAE (68%), and Qatar (50%). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come.

Devastating consequences

None of the key players in today’s most devastating wars in the Middle East produce their own weaponry, which means that imports from the U.S. and other suppliers are the true fuel sustaining those conflicts. Advocates of arms transfers to the MENA region often describe them as a force for “stability,” a way to cement alliances, counter Iran, or more generally a tool for creating a balance of power that makes armed engagement less likely.

In a number of key conflicts in the region, this is nothing more than a convenient fantasy for arms suppliers (and the U.S. government), as the flow of ever more advanced weaponry has only exacerbated conflicts, aggravated human rights abuses, and caused countless civilian deaths and injuries, while provoking widespread destruction. And keep in mind that, while not solely responsible, Washington is the chief culprit when it comes to the weaponry that’s fueling a number of the area’s most violent wars.

In Yemen, a Saudi/UAE-led intervention that began in March 2015 has, by now, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians through air strikes, put millions at risk of famine, and helped create the desperate conditions for the worst cholera outbreak in living memory. That war has already cost more than 100,000 lives and the U.S. and the United Kingdom have been the primary suppliers of the combat aircraft, bombs, attack helicopters, missiles, and armored vehicles used there, transfers valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

There has been a sharp jump in overall arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia since that war was launched. Dramatically enough, total arms sent to the Kingdom more than doubled between the 2010-2014 period and the years from 2015 to 2019. Together, the U.S. (74%) and the U.K. (13%) accounted for 87% of all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in that five-year time frame.

In Egypt, U.S.-supplied combat aircraft, tanks, and attack helicopters have been used in what is supposedly a counterterror operation in the Northern Sinai desert, which has, in reality, simply become a war largely against the civilian population of the region. Between 2015 and 2019, Washington’s arms offers to Egypt totaled $2.3 billion, with billions more in deals made earlier but delivered in those years. And in May 2020, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it was offering a package of Apache attack helicopters to Egypt worth up to $2.3 billion.

According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, thousands of people have been arrested in the Sinai region over the past six years, hundreds have been disappeared, and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Armed to the teeth, the Egyptian military has also carried out “systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests — including of children — enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced eviction.” There is also evidence to suggest that Egyptian forces have engaged in illegal air and ground strikes that have killed substantial numbers of civilians.

In several conflicts — examples of how such weapons transfers can have dramatic and unintended impacts — U.S. arms have ended up in the hands of both sides. When Turkish troops invaded northeastern Syria in October 2019, for instance, they faced Kurdish-led Syrian militias that had received some of the $2.5 billion in arms and training the U.S. had supplied to Syrian opposition forces over the previous five years. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish inventory of combat aircraft consists of U.S.-supplied F-16s and more than half of its armored vehicles are of American origin.

In Iraq, when the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS, swept through a significant part of that country from the north in 2014, they captured U.S. light weaponry and armored vehicles worth billions of dollars from the Iraqi security forces this country had armed and trained. Similarly, in more recent years, U.S. arms have been transferred from the Iraqi military to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside them in the fight against ISIS.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, while the U.S. has directly armed the Saudi/UAE coalition, its weaponry has, in fact, ended up being used by all sides in the conflict, including their Houthi opponents, extremist militias, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This equal-opportunity spread of American weaponry has occurred thanks to arms transfers by former members of the U.S.-supplied Yemeni military and by UAE forces that have worked with an array of groups in the southern part of the country.

Who benefits?

Just four companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics — were involved in the overwhelming majority of U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90% of the U.S. arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.

In its brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the Saudis have killed thousand of civilians with U.S.-supplied weaponry. In the years since the Kingdom launched its war, indiscriminate air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have hit marketplaces, hospitals, civilian neighborhoods, water treatment centers, even a school bus filled with children. American-made bombs have repeatedly been used in such incidents, including an attack on a wedding, where 21 people, children among them, were killed by a GBU-12 Paveway II guided bomb manufactured by Raytheon.

A General Dynamics 2,000-pound bomb with a Boeing JDAM guidance system was used in a March 2016 strike on a marketplace that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. A Lockheed Martin laser-guided bomb was utilized in an August 2018 attack on a school bus that slaughtered 51 people, including 40 children. A September 2018 report by the Yemeni group Mwatana for Human Rights identified 19 air strikes on civilians in which U.S.-supplied weapons were definitely used, pointing out that the destruction of that bus was “not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of gruesome [Saudi-led] Coalition attacks involving U.S. weapons.”

It should be noted that the sales of such weaponry have not occurred without resistance. In 2019, both houses of Congress voted down a bomb sale to Saudi Arabia because of its aggression in Yemen, only to have their efforts thwarted by a presidential veto. In some instances, as befits the Trump administration’s modus operandi, those sales have involved questionable political maneuvers. Take, for instance, a May 2019 declaration of an “emergency” that was used to push through an $8.1 billion deal with the Saudis, the UAE, and Jordan for precision-guided bombs and other equipment that simply bypassed normal Congressional oversight procedures completely.

At the behest of Congress, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General then opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding that declaration, in part because it had been pushed by a former Raytheon lobbyist working in State’s Office of Legal Counsel. However, the inspector general in charge of the probe, Stephen Linick, was soon fired by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fear that his investigation would uncover administration wrongdoing and, after he was gone, the ultimate findings proved largely — surprise! — a whitewash, exonerating the administration. Still, the report did note that the Trump administration had failed to take adequate care to avoid civilian harm by U.S. weaponry supplied to the Saudis.

Even some Trump administration officials have had qualms about the Saudi deals. The New York Times has reported that a number of State Department personnel were concerned about whether they could someday be held liable for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen.

Will America remain the world’s greatest arms dealer?

If Donald Trump is re-elected, don’t expect U.S. sales to the Middle — or their murderous effects — to diminish any time soon. To his credit, Joe Biden has pledged as president to end U.S. arms and support for the Saudi war in Yemen. For the region as a whole, however, don’t be shocked if, even in a Biden presidency, such weaponry continues to flow in and it remains business as usual for this country’s giant arms merchants to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East. Unless you’re Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, selling arms is one area where no one should want to keep America “great.”

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Trump’s EPA refuses to reduce pollutants linked to coronavirus deaths

In April, as coronavirus cases multiplied across the country, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected scientists’ advice to tighten air pollution standards for particulate matter, or soot.

In the next few weeks, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler likely will reaffirm that decision with a final ruling, despite emerging evidence that links particulate pollution to COVID-19 deaths.

There was enough evidence to support a stricter standard before the pandemic, said Christopher Frey, an environmental engineering professor at North Carolina State University who studies air pollution. The added threat from the coronavirus is like “icing on the cake,” he said, and should compel Wheeler to adopt an even more stringent limit.

Particulate matter kills people. “It is responsible for more deaths and sickness than any other air pollutant in the world,” said Gretchen Goldman, a research director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Wheeler’s decision was specifically about fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, microscopic solid and liquid droplets less than one-thirtieth the width of a human hair. The pollution comes from cars, power plants, wildfires and anything that burns fossil fuels. When people take a breath, the particles can lodge deep into their lungs and even enter the bloodstream. The pollutant causes health complications that can lead people to die earlier than they would have, and it is linked to conditions such as COPD, asthma and diabetes.

Frey was part of a 26-member scientific panel that advised the EPA on particulate pollution until Wheeler disbanded the group in 2018. Twenty of the former members continued to review the science and provided unofficial advice to Wheeler as part of the public comment process. Their letter told Wheeler— a former coal lobbyist — that tightening the standard would avoid tens of thousands of premature deaths per year.

Firing the advisory panel and opting not to pursue a more stringent particulate standard were in keeping with the administration of President Donald Trump’s dim view of environmental regulation. By one tally compiled by The New York Times, 72 regulations on air, water and soil pollution, climate change and ecosystems have been canceled or weakened, with an additional 27 in progress. EPA leadership has sidelined or ignored research by agency scientists, and career staff are censoring their reports to avoid terms like “climate change” out of fear of repercussions from political staff. Many of the changes involve narrowing the scope of science, and scientists, that contribute to policy, experts said.

The EPA has an “apparatus of particulate matter science denial” that rivals its attacks on climate science, Frey said. “If I wanted to get rid of [regulations on] particulate matter, I would do all the things Wheeler is doing.”

Wheeler made his decision “after carefully reviewing [the] scientific evidence and consulting with the agency’s independent science advisors,” an EPA spokesperson said in a statement. “The U.S. now has some of the lowest fine particulate matter levels in the world, five times below the global average, seven times below Chinese levels, and 20 percent lower than France, Germany and Great Britain.”

These standards are set “based on protection of human health,” not how the levels compare to elsewhere, Michael Brauer, a public health professor at the University of British Columbia, said in an email. There are “ample studies” demonstrating health effects when particulate pollution is at levels “well below” the current standard, he said.

The National Association of Manufacturers did not return requests for comment. Jim Harris, a spokesman who represents many petrochemical facilities in Louisiana, pointed to written comments from a coalition of industry groups including the National Mining Association, American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“The evidence indicates that the current suite of [particulate matter standards] protects public health, including the health of at-risk populations, with an adequate margin of safety,” they wrote to the EPA after Wheeler proposed keeping the regulation unchanged in April. More stringent standards “cannot be justified, given the substantial uncertainties in, and limitations of, the scientific evidence.”

Complying with a new standard could cost the manufacturing sector nearly $20 billion and complicate the permitting process for business expansions, they wrote, citing an analysis from the American Forest & Paper Association (ProPublica asked for the report but didn’t get a response before deadline). These proposed projects “create jobs and bring much needed tax revenue to local communities now in critical need of economic development,” they wrote.

Wheeler’s decision could delay stronger regulation for years. The Clean Air Act dictates a meticulous process for considering a new standard; each review usually takes at least five years, Goldman said. Once the EPA adopts a new rule, states have several years to adjust. If Trump loses the election and a Joe Biden administration restarts the particulate review process right away, “we’re really looking at a decade before people are incentivized to reduce particulate pollution,” she said.

Ignoring Evidence, Pausing Enforcement Amid a Pandemic

While scientists have yet to prove that exposure to air pollution increases the risks of dying from COVID-19, a mounting body of research suggests a link. Researchers in the U.K. and Italy have found correlations between high COVID-19 mortality rates and elevated pollution levels. A study conducted by the State University of New York and ProPublica found an association between COVID-19 mortality, particulate pollution from diesel engines and hazardous air pollutants — a class of chemicals that can cause cancer. Hazardous air pollutants are often found attached to particulate matter.

The comments from the industry coalition against strengthening the regulation emphasized the “preliminary” and “evolving” nature of research on air pollution and the coronavirus. If relevant peer-reviewed science becomes available, they said, “EPA could consider them during the next PM [standards] review.”

Emerging evidence should be enough, said Mychal Johnson, co-founder of South Bronx Unite, a community organizing group in the Mott Haven neighborhood. Of all of the roughly 3,100 counties in the country, the Bronx had the highest combination of COVID-19 mortality rates and air pollution levels, according to the SUNY-ProPublica study. Johnson said the pandemic has “pulled back the scab” on the environmental harm in his neighborhood, which has high rates of asthma.

Mott Haven is flanked by two interstate highways. Asphalt playgrounds sit next to those highways, close to the pollution coming out of tailpipes. For decades, policymakers have permitted industrial sites in the area, including waste transfer stations, a FreshDirect warehouse and two natural gas “peaker” plants that generate electricity when there’s high energy demand.

Sometimes the pollution is “so thick you feel it in your lungs and your throat,” Johnson said. “You can’t really describe the smell, it just stinks.”

The community was disproportionately vulnerable when the pandemic hit, both because of the number of people who had preexisting health conditions and the number who worked front-line jobs that put their lives at risk, he said. If the EPA isn’t “moving forward to make sure our policies are strong, to save lives, then we’re definitely moving back[ward].”

It’s too early for conclusive evidence on the coronavirus and particulate matter, said Brauer, the University of British Columbia professor. Even the official death count from COVID-19 remains preliminary, he said. There is, however, plenty of evidence from other respiratory illnesses showing that “if you’re exposed to an infection and at the same time exposed to pollution, that infection is more likely to become severe.”

There is also growing consensus that factors like air pollution contribute to health disparities in poor and minority communities, and those who are disproportionately affected are more vulnerable to COVID-19, he said.

Wheeler doesn’t need definitive proof, said Bernard Goldstein, a professor emeritus of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh. The law allows Wheeler to consider a “margin of safety” that acknowledges ongoing research, Goldstein said. “You have two different things that violently attack the same organs” in the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, he added. From a margin of safety perspective, it’s enough to say “I’ve got data showing the dam is about to break.”

Far from acknowledging the pandemic as an added threat, Wheeler has used it to loosen reporting requirements for coal plants and other polluters. The temporary policy, announced on March 26, said the EPA would not penalize businesses that failed to monitor or report pollution, as long as they were “making good faith efforts to comply with their obligations during this difficult time.”

Nine state attorneys general sued the EPA in response. They dropped the lawsuit after the EPA ended the practice Aug. 31.

The policy has already had deadly consequences, said Claudia Persico, an assistant professor with American University’s Department of Public Administration and Policy in Washington, D.C. An analysis by Persico and Kathryn Johnson, a doctoral student, found that the EPA’s coronavirus policy led to a 14% increase in particulate matter emissions in roughly 700 counties with major polluters, and that change is “associated with” more than 7,300 additional deaths from COVID-19 from March 26 to July 11. The paper is undergoing peer review. Two other experts who read the study told the news publication Grist that the paper’s methodology is sound.

Persico and Johnson’s research controlled for the effects of pandemic shutdowns that temporarily drove down emissions in many counties. Their estimate of 7,300 deaths only accounts for the counties where the first COVID-19 deaths occurred after March 26, leaving out major metropolitan areas like New York City and Chicago, Persico said.

“Because we allowed this rollback, more people died,” she said. “And that’s a pretty serious thing.”

The EPA says the practice did not permit any additional release of pollutants. “There is no support in the [Persico and Johnson] paper for their allegation that ‘policy-induced increases in pollution’ occurred,” the agency said in a statement.

The spokesperson pointed to a peer-reviewed study led by the University of Minnesota that “reported declines in air pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic.” But that paper only captured what happened in the initial shutdowns, from March 13 through April 21, when many nonessential businesses closed and commuter traffic plummeted; particulate pollution dropped 11% in 63 counties that adopted early business shutdowns.

There was also a marginal increase in particulate matter in 59 other counties without early shutdowns, but the findings were not conclusive. The study didn’t include data from after April, when pollution may have rebounded as businesses reopened, said one of its authors, Jesse Berman, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. The study doesn’t prove or disprove whether the EPA’s lack of enforcement increased pollution. “It just wasn’t designed to do that,” Berman said.

Cementing a “Full-Frontal Assault” on Science

The particulate pollution decision shows how the Trump administration has rewritten the rules on how independent science affects regulation, Goldman said.

The latest particulate pollution review kicked off during President Barack Obama’s second term. In 2018, EPA staff scientists published an exhaustive, 1,881-page summary of the science. The report found strong evidence that particulate matter can kill people through its effects on the cardiovascular system. Even short-term exposure may be deadly, it said. Additional evidence showed how it can damage children’s lungs and exacerbate asthma.

Under normal circumstances, that report would have gone to a review panel of more than 20 outside scientists, including Frey. The panel included epidemiologists, physicians, biostatisticians and other experts who specialize in particulate pollution. The members work with the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, or CASAC, a seven-member team that helps Wheeler determine the final standard.

But Wheeler dismissed the review panel a few days before it could weigh in on the EPA report. He and his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, also replaced most of the independent scientists on CASAC. It once had a plurality of doctors, biostatisticians and epidemiologists, and it is now dominated by state regulators from Republican states and led by a consultant with close ties to industry. None of them are experts in epidemiology — the study of how diseases affect populations, a linchpin of particulate matter research.

“All of the current members hold Ph.D.s in fields that include health sciences, toxicology, ecology, chemical engineering and risk analysis,” and the majority of CASAC members recommended maintaining the current standard, the EPA spokesperson said. Wheeler has considered the committee’s advice “but is also reviewing additional input provided during the public comment period,” the statement added.

The EPA has turned the entire process into “a sham,” said Lianne Sheppard, a professor of biostatistics and environmental health at the University of Washington. Sheppard served on CASAC from 2015 to 2018 and was a member of the now-dismantled particulate panel. The large panel existed because the science is so vast and complex that “no seven people, no matter how expert they are,” can review the information on their own, Sheppard said.

Goldman said the EPA under Trump has always sought to undermine the science, as particulate matter involves “super inconvenient” math that complicates deregulation efforts.

Many environmental rules involve a cost-benefit analysis. On one side of the ledger is the price of forcing industry to comply with a new rule; on the other, money saved from avoiding pollution-related deaths and illnesses. A good cost-benefit ratio can do wonders for selling the rule to the public. Often, the strategies used to reduce one air pollutant also cut down on other pollutants like particulate matter. Those ancillary gains count as a “co-benefits.”

Since particulate pollution kills so many people, even a small reduction can tip the scales in favor of regulation, Goldman said.

When the Obama administration moved to regulate mercury from power plants, for instance, the savings from reducing mercury, a poison that damages children’s brains, came to just $6 million. The co-benefits from slashing particulates — a byproduct of those efforts — added up to billions.

Wheeler’s EPA watered down the mercury regulation in April by disregarding the co-benefits from reducing particulate matter. Frey and other experts feared it would set a precedent. Indeed, within weeks, the EPA introduced a new regulation to codify the practice. It proposed that key air pollution rules would report co-benefits separately. Frey said it opens the door for “cherry-picking” what goes into the economic analysis.

“As soon as you start saying, ‘We’re going to look at this thing but not these things,’ that’s not benefit-cost anymore. That’s just a game,” he said.

The agency is now reviewing public comments on the rule.

In another move, the EPA plans to finalize a “Transparency Rule” that could force agency scientists to prioritize studies where researchers have made all of the raw data publicly available. That’s simply not possible for many health studies, where doing so would reveal private medical data, Goldman said, and it ignores how these studies have already been vetted through the peer-review process. Scientists “cannot legally, ethically provide” such data, she added. “Everyone in the scientific community and their brother [has] said this is a terrible idea.”

The rule could dismiss key epidemiology studies on the dangers of particulate matter, especially those that show why the current standard is inadequate, Goldman said.

Epidemiology is a complicated discipline that requires careful analysis and statistics. When researching air pollution, epidemiologists might study whether residents in neighborhoods with high levels of particulate matter are in worse health than those in areas with less pollution. They would need to control for other factors, such as income, to make sure the health effects they’re seeing truly come from particulate matter.

Over decades, epidemiology has provided “this giant statistical power” that shows how harmful particulate matter can be, and the findings have been repeated in different cities, on different groups of people, with varying levels of pollution, Goldman said.

EPA’s attempt to disqualify these studies is a “full-frontal assault on epidemiology,” Frey said. “This administration is just taking tools out of the toolbox and scooping things out.”

Three weeks ago, the agency finalized another rule allowing certain polluters to follow weaker air emissions standards. Wheeler has said the environmental rollbacks will continue if Trump is reelected.

Sara Sneath contributed reporting.

This story was co-published with The Times-Picayune and The Advocate.

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Gavin Newsom pledged to ban fracking in California — but he just greenlit more of it

On Sept. 23, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to ban hydrofracturing in the state by 2024. Just three weeks later, on Oct. 16, his administration approved permits to frack six new wells owned by a company with whom he has lobbying ties.

That company, Aera Energy – a joint venture of Shell and ExxonMobil – is represented by the lobbying firm Axiom Advisors. Axiom’s lobbyists include Jason Kinney, a senior advisor to Newsom while he served as lieutenant governor, and Kevin Schmidt, a policy director for Newsom during the same time period. Kinney’s wife, Mary Gonsalves Kinney, Capital & Main previously reported, is also the personal stylist for First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Jason Kinney has been called a “majordomo” for the governor by Sacramento political press.

The North Belridge Oil Field in Kern County. Other oil fields are shown in gray. Image by Antandrus.

The permits, granted by the California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM) for wells in Kern County’s Belridge field, came on a Friday just over two weeks before Election Day. The Newsom administration has established a pattern of approving permits during busy moments: CalGEM handed out a dozen on June 1, just days after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The administration also issued permits days before the Fourth of July weekend, and immediately after Memorial Day weekend. More were approved in early April, just weeks into the dawn of the COVID-19 era in the U.S.

Press officers for Newsom deferred commenting to the California Department of Conservation, which oversees CalGEM. The agency did not directly answer questions about the permit approvals’ timing.

“The Governor has expressed his commitment to work with the Legislature to change state law to prohibit the practice of hydraulic fracturing by 2024,” said Uduak-Joe Ntuk, State Oil & Gas Supervisor for CalGEM, in a statement emailed to Capital & Main. “For the remaining time that hydraulic fracturing is expressly permitted under state law, CalGEM’s process for reviewing permits for the practice continues to be the strongest in the country.”

The Belridge Producing Complex in Kern County, at roughly 55 square miles, is one of the largest fields in the U.S. The complex has 6,431 wells. Infrared camera video shots taken for a 2015 report by the nonprofit advocacy group Earthworks at the nearby Lost Hills Oil Field, which is part of the complex, showed high levels of methane emissions. Methane emissions, which continue to rise in 2020 according to data collected by the firm Kayrros, is a greenhouse gas 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

Drilling in the Belridge Complex has also had severe impacts on local groundwater, according to a Sept. 2019 study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. Water samples taken for the study showed that irrigation wells in the agribusiness-heavy county contained benzene, ethylbenzene and xylenes. Two water samples showed levels of benzene, which can cause cancer, higher than the legal safety limit for drinking water.

Oil drilling in California has disproportionately negative health impacts on Latino communities and other people of color, according to a 2014 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. According to U.S. Census data, Kern County’s population is 54.6% Latino.

Despite these impacts, in June 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exempted certain steam-injected and disposal wells in North Belridge from the Safe Drinking Water Act upon request from CalGEM because “portions of the formations proposed for exemption in the field do not currently serve as sources of drinking water” and “cannot now and will not in the future serve as sources of drinking water.”

Mapping data published in the EPA permit shows the exemption applies specifically to wells drilled by Aera.

Since Trump took office in 2017, 18 different oil field sections in Kern County have received such aquifer exemptions, according to the EPA. This came after the Obama administration declared in 2011 that the oil industry had contaminated aquifer territory outside of the exempted zone, opening up a multiyear investigation, one with a Feb. 2017 deadline by which to stop underground injection into nonexempt aquifers.

As that deadline approached, the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and other lobbying groups sued CalGEM, then known as the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR). WSPA filed the lawsuit one day before Trump’s inauguration, with Trump’s granting the industry four exemptions in the next three months that followed.

Even though the Newsom administration had requested six more exemptions in Kern County since the governor took office, Newsom has continued to position himself as Trump’s environmental adversary. In recent weeks, Newsom has slammed Trump for his climate change denial. In a filmed Sept. 14 meeting, he told Trump that “the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident,” saying “climate change is real and is exacerbating this,” referring to the unprecedented wildfires still burning in California.

According to drilling data collected by the groups Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker Alliance, Newsom issued 190% more oil drilling permits in the first half of 2020 compared with the first half of 2019. He has issued over 7,000 new permits since taking office in 2019, according to data the groups collected, now published on the website NewsomWellWatch.com.

Pointing to that data, activists have denounced Newsom’s discrepancy between word and deed.

“He keeps tweeting ‘climate change is real’ but turns around and shows us he values profit over people’s health,” Nalleli Cobo, a college sophomore activist who grew up with oil drilling next door to her childhood home in South Los Angeles and is battling cancer, said in a press release. “Gov. Newsom – stop being a hypocrite and remember you work for us, the people.”

Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, called the fracking permits granted by Newsom “an absurd act of climate whiplash.”

“First he passes the buck to the legislature, then he gives out new permits like gifts to Big Oil,” Siegel said. “By continuing to fast-track more fracking and drilling, Newsom is fanning the flames of the climate emergency.”

Biden’s big health agenda won’t be easy to achieve

If Joe Biden wins the presidency in November, health is likely to play a high-profile role in his agenda. Just probably not in the way he or anyone else might have predicted.

Barring something truly unforeseen, it’s fairly certain that on Jan. 20 the U.S. will still be in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic — and the economic dislocation it has caused. Coincidentally, that would put a new President Biden in much the same place as President Barack Obama at his inauguration in 2009: a Democratic administration replacing a Republican one in the midst of a national crisis.

Obama had only a financial crisis to deal with. Still, Biden would have a couple of advantages his Democratic predecessor lacked, including the fact that, as vice president, he helped guide the country through that financial meltdown. He’s also had time to plan how to address the crisis, which was not the case in 2009, when the economy was in freefall just as the new administration was taking office.

But like Obama before him, Biden will face a long must-do list on taking office. He will have to tackle the pandemic and economic crisis before he can turn to some of the big health changes he’s promised, such as expanding the reach of the Affordable Care Act, creating a “public option” that would allow every American to enroll in a government-sponsored plan and lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60.

And even if Democrats do retake the Senate majority and keep control of the House, it is unlikely the majority in either chamber will be as large as in 2009, when Obama had 60 Senate votes.

Still, no matter what the partisan makeup of Congress, “priority one is to get the COVID response going,” said Len Nichols, a professor of health policy at George Mason University.

Biden’s COVID plan includes taking major responsibility for the pandemic back from the states. His federal response would include more money for, and coordination of, testing and contact tracing; ensuring adequate protective equipment for health professionals; and assuring the public that new treatments and vaccines will be based on science, not politics.

In an updated version of his plan, Biden has also promised that one of his first calls if he is elected will be to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, who has been derided by President Donald Trump. “Dr. Fauci will have full access to the Oval Office and an uncensored platform to speak directly to the American people — whether delivering good news or bad,” says Biden’s website.

Biden’s COVID plan also addresses the economy — including calls for emergency paid leave for workers dislocated by the pandemic and more financial aid for workers, families and small businesses.

“If we’ve learned anything, it is that the health sector and the economy are not two separate spheres. They are connected,” said Nichols. “I think health care and the economy are complementary and will be for the foreseeable future.”

Assuming Biden gets beyond the pandemic and recession, he could move onto some of his bigger health promises, including expanding eligibility for Medicare, creating a “public option” health plan and boosting premium subsidies for the ACA.

Biden took heat throughout the primaries for his “moderate” approach to improving health insurance access and costs, compared with the “Medicare for All” plans for a government-run system supported by his top rivals, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). But that doesn’t mean his far less sweeping approach would be easy to get through Congress.

“There’s a really big difference when you’re running the government than when you’re running for office,” said Dan Mendelson, a former Clinton administration health official and founder of the health consulting firm Avalere Health.

Many of Biden’s proposals, including a public option and larger subsidies to help low- and middle-income people pay for insurance, are the very things that an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress could not pass as part of the original Affordable Care Act in 2010. Conservative Democratic senators objected to the plan.

“We pushed,” Obama said in a recent interview on the podcast “Pod Save America,” talking about the public option. “I needed 60 votes to get it through the Senate. Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson and a couple others said, ‘I’m not voting for a public option.'”

Mendelson said another big obstacle is that for all the detail Biden has in his health plan, concepts like the public option “are not well-defined, and there are many different theories of what it should be and where it should be fielded. There’s no common vision about what it really means.”

The same thing is true, he added, for something that seems as simple as reducing the Medicare eligibility age. “More than half these people have commercial insurance,” he said. “What will happen to them?”

Grace-Marie Turner, of the conservative Galen Institute, suggested Biden — or Trump, if he’s reelected — might be better served by pursuing one of the more bipartisan health issues that already have broad support from the public, like prescription drug prices or “surprise” medical bills patients receive after getting care from a doctor outside their insurance network while being treated at an in-network facility. “It would be a big statement,” she said. “Whoever wins would then have the wind at their back.”

But even those issues have a way of getting complicated. Both Democrats and Republicans say they want to bring down drug prices, but Republicans are vehemently against one of the Democrats’ preferred ways of doing that: by allowing Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers. And surprise medical billing has so far defied efforts to fix it, as Congress seems unable to choose between health insurers and health providers, who each want the other to bear the additional costs.

As always, even when health is at the top of the agenda, it proves difficult to address.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Amy Coney Barrett may be the next woman on the Supreme Court — but does a nominee’s gender matter?

President Donald Trump has so far appointed fewer women as federal judges than any president since Ronald Reagan. In the Senate confirmation hearings now underway for Amy Coney Barrett, Republican senators have repeatedly pointed out that the president is appointing a woman to the Supreme Court.

I am a scholar of the politics of courts who has studied the demand for greater gender and ethnic diversity on courts around the world. Research shows gender diversity in the judiciary matters – but not because women and men necessarily judge differently.

Women on the bench

Jimmy Carter was the first president to take gender diversity in the courts seriously. The federal bench was “almost entirely male and white” when Carter entered office in 1977, according to professors Rorie Solberg and Eric N. Waltenberg. In his four years as president, Carter appointed women to more than 15% of the available federal district court positions.

Reagan appointed far fewer women by percentage to the federal courts than Carter – just 10% of his nominees between 1981 and 1989 were women – but answered concerns about that by putting the first woman on the United States Supreme Court, appointing Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981.

Later presidents went on to appoint more women to the judiciary, including the Supreme Court. Presidents Clinton and Obama appointed a greater percentage of women to federal courts than either President George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush.

For years now, political scientists have looked at judges’ rulings to see if they can identify differences in outcomes based on their gender, particularly in the lower courts, which hear more cases than the Supreme Court.

But women do not all agree on legal issues any more than men do. What differences researchers have found – for example in how judges handle immigration cases – can also be explained by work experience. If women more often entered immigration courts after first working as immigration lawyers while men more often started as prosecutors, that could account for what appear to be gender-based differences.

Both men and women both learn from their lives, including in ways that will affect how they judge. When people ask about gender and judges, many have women in mind. But men also have life experiences that contribute to how they judge. Untangling gender or race from work, life and education experience – and from the political party of the president who appointed them – is messy.

Antonin Scalia served both President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford before he became a Supreme Court justice, an experience most analysts argue shaped his legal interpretations about executive power. But Scalia wouldn’t have had that experience if he weren’t a man. So did his judgment reflect his experience or his gender?

The case for diversity

No matter how you answer that question, diversity of life experience is one reason gender representation on the bench matters.

Here’s another: Not seeing women in leadership roles feeds beliefs that women do not belong in leadership roles. And exemplars – such as the only woman in a high-level position – are vulnerable to harsh judgments that arise from discriminatory beliefs based on their gender.

These biased expectations are very difficult to change.

As more women hold positions in fields dominated by men, like the law, however, it becomes more difficult to believe that all women are essentially the same and easier to assess them based on their work. Furthermore, research shows teams of people with more diverse life experiences often come up with more ways to address a problem.

Employing women equally in political positions, including on courts, is also a critical aspect of women’s hard-won equality. Gender diversity is one result of increasing expectations that politics and law not discriminate based on sex – an achievement Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped secure.

That right, explicitly, does not hinge on gender-based differences in behavior. Women can and do vote however they choose because they are equal citizens. They can and do serve on juries, just as men do, without giving a reason for why they should.

Four women – Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – have now served on the small, slow-to-change Supreme Court, each with their different way of interpreting the law. So Americans are free to assess, and even disagree with, the legal interpretation of a Supreme Court nominee like Judge Barrett without feeling they’re simultaneously judging all women.

Justice Ginsburg and Judge Barrett

Barrett and Ginsburg could not be more different.

Justice Ginsburg began her career advocating for gender equality with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project, a project she organized. Over her many decades on the bench she became a feminist icon, inspiring movies and a children’s book.

Judge Barrett, in contrast, has been a judge since only 2017, making it difficult to assess her legal interpretation. But she is backed by the leading conservative advocacy group, the Federalist Society, which the Trump administration relies upon to identify judicial nominees. The Federalist Society is pro-guns, anti-abortion and anti-business regulation.

As a law professor, Barrett wrote articles that give clues to how she might judge. She has criticized the Supreme Court’s decision upholding part of the Affordable Care Act, for example. And some abortion advocates cite her writing on how to weigh legal precedent to argue she would be willing to overturn earlier court decisions that protect reproductive rights.

These big differences between Justice Ginsburg and Judge Barrett – not simply their shared gender – would characterize Barrett’s work on the Supreme Court.

Susan M. Sterett, Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

Pence blasted for “negligent” decision to keep campaigning despite exposure to top aide with COVID

Despite being considered a close contact with a top aide who tested positive for Covid-19 and began quarantining on Saturday, Vice President Mike Pence is still planning to maintain his travel and campaign schedule with the November election just over a week away—a decision medical experts denounced as potentially dangerous for Pence, those accompanying him, and the public.

The White House announced Saturday that Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short and at least three additional members of the vice president’s staff have tested positive for Covid-19, another outbreak within the Trump administration that comes weeks after the president, one of his top aides, and his press secretary contracted the virus. Two unnamed officials briefed on the matter told the New York Times that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows attempted to keep news of the latest outbreak from going public.

Pence spokesperson Devin O’Malley said that both the vice president and his wife tested negative for Covid-19 on Saturday and “remain in good health.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines recommend that those who come into close contact with someone infected by the coronavirus “should stay home for 14 days… even if you test negative for Covid-19 or feel healthy.”

To justify keeping up the vice president’s travel plans—which are set to take him to North Carolina and Minnesota on Sunday following two stops in Florida on Saturday—Pence’s communications team pointed to the CDC’s guidelines for essential personnel.

“Critical infrastructure workers may be permitted to continue work following potential exposure to Covid-19,” the guidelines state, “provided they remain asymptomatic and additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community.”

But public health experts rejected the notion that Pence’s campaigning amounts to essential activity. Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease expert at George Mason University, called Pence’s decision to maintain his aggressive travel schedule “grossly negligent.”

“It’s just an insult to everybody who has been working in public health and public health response,” Popescu told the Associated Press. “I also find it really harmful and disrespectful to the people going to the rally… He needs to be staying home 14 days. Campaign events are not essential.”

Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, also voiced alarm at Pence’s decision to keep campaigning despite close exposure to a virus that has killed nearly 225,000 people in the U.S. and continues to spread nationwide.

“Pence tested negative but that doesn’t immediately mean anything,” Feigl-Ding noted. “Both [Stephen] Miller and [Kayleigh] McEnany tested negative for 4-5 consecutive days before testing Covid-19 positive on the final day. Early infection [is] not always detectable, but it’s still maybe infectious.”

How QAnon uses satanic rhetoric to set up a narrative of “good vs. evil”

In front of a TV audience on Oct. 15, President Donald Trump declared that he knew “nothing about” QAnon, before correcting himself to say: “I do know they are very much against pedophilia.”

What he didn’t do was disavow what has been referred to as a “collective delusion.” Part of that could be down to QAnon followers holding up Trump as some sort of savior — someone playing four-dimensional chess against shadowy political insiders and power players known as the “Deep State.”

But that is only part of what Anons — followers of QAnon — believe. What Trump didn’t mention is the atrocious claims that underlie this supposed chess match, and the demonic imagery and language that are used in the course of the conspiracy.

As a professor of religion who teaches courses on the cultural significance of monsters, I see many similarities between Anon claims and prior rumor panics that employed satanic rhetoric. Moreover, given the growing popularity of the QAnon conspiracy — and its encroachment into mainstream politics — I believe that ignoring this rhetoric risks harm to those targeted by the conspiracy.

Accusations of evil

The QAnon conspiracy theory started with an anonymous 4chan post in October 2017. The author, who later signed his or her posts as “Q”, remains unknown. Since then Q has posted anonymous messages, known as Qdrops, on 8chan and now 8kun — on both online message and image boards.

The conspiracy claims that deep-state politicians and the “Hollywood elite” are involved in a large child abduction network that harvests the chemical compound adrenochrome — which is obtained from the oxidation of adrenaline — from sexually abused children subjected to satanic rituals.

Anons say that adrenochrome is consumed by some Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites for its psychedelic and anti-aging effects and is more potent when harvested from a frightened victim. Trump, they believe, is planning a day of reckoning that will see the arrest, conviction and even execution of dozens of current and former government officials for their involvement in child sex trafficking.

In analyzing the Qdrops, I have noted a discourse of evil woven throughout Q’s nearly 5,000 messages. Peppering the Qdrops are claims like “many in our government worship Satan.” According to Anons, Trump is engaged in a battle of cosmic significance between the “children of light” and the “children of darkness” and is working to dismantle pedophile networks that are abducting children for satanic rites.

In using such language and imagery, Q does not portray perceived political adversaries as merely having a difference of opinion, but as being downright evil.

For example, in an Aug. 10, 2018, Qdrop titled “Many in Power Worship the Devil,” Q states: “PURE EVIL. HOW MANY IN WASHINGTON AND THOSE AROUND THE WORLD (IN POWER) WORSHIP THE DEVIL?”

On Aug. 26, 2020, Q posted an image suggesting that the 2020 Democratic National Convention logo resembled a Satanic Baphomet pentagram, which incorporates a goat’s head and a five-pointed star. Accompanying text asserts that one party — Republicans — discusses God while the other party — Democrats — discusses darkness.

Such dialogue rises beyond the level of us versus them. Instead, for Q and Anons it elevates the conspiracy to a matter of cosmic good versus monstrous evil.

This, I believe, is of grave concern. Presenting opponents as monstrously evil dehumanizes them. Through that process, Anons may see themselves as would-be monster-killers ready to use violence to remove the evil.

Remembering the past

This process of using the language of evil to dehumanize a perceived enemy is nothing new. It was seen in conspiracies such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, a fictional document first published in Russia in the early 1900s, link a satanic Jewish cabal to the Antichrist.

Examining past rhetoric targeting Jews reveals how such a discourse lubricates the machinery of violence — Hitler called the Protocols “immensely instructive.”

Jewish communities faced the blood libel — the idea that Jews kidnapped children for blood sacrifices — for centuries before it resurfaced in the Protocols. In the Middle Ages this was driven by a fear of Jewish magicians kidnapping and stabbing children for evil rituals. The blood produced from these rites was rumored to be ritually consumed as drink or mixed into matzo. It was a demonic fantasy not based in any reality.

It is noteworthy that Anon claims about child abduction and blood consumption are linked to prominent Jewish figures such as billionaire philanthropist George Soros and the Rothschild family.

Joel Finkelstein, of the anti-hate watchdog the Network Contagion Research Institute has noted that the QAnon conspiracy is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. Indeed, renowned genocide scholar Gregory Stanton warned in an article in September that QAnon’s demonic fantasy was “a rebranded version of the Protocols” and noted that the conspiracy was gaining traction in neo-Nazi circles.

“Satanic Panic”

For those who remember the “satanic panic” of the 1980s, these Anon narratives will sound hauntingly familiar. The satanic panic was based on a series of rumors spread by concerned parents and authority figures, ranging from therapists to law enforcement agencies, convinced that a demonic cabal had infiltrated society to its highest levels. Organizations set up to counter this perceived threat, like Believe the Children, argued that children were most at risk in day care centers run by secret satanists. Prosecutors accepted, with apparent earnest seriousness, the claims being made about child sexual abuse, secret tunnels, and satanic rituals at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California. Similar sensational charges were brought against the Fells Acres Day School and the Wee Care Nursery School. Charges were eventually dropped or reversed in many of these cases.

As the unjust prosecutions demonstrate, the satanic panic damaged the reputations and livelihoods of innocent people.

QAnon is poised to cause similar disruptions in the lives of innocent people. Already there have been incidents including the apparent QAnon-inspired shooting of a mob boss and a live-streamed effort to “take out” Joe Biden. Anons are beginning to show a willingness to take matters into their own hands.

Why it matters now

It is tempting to dismiss QAnon as too small and fringe to lead to the violence associated with prior satanic panics. However, the emerging influence of Q is evident. It is seen not only in the growing number of supporters — QAnon Facebook pages alone boast 3 million followers — but also in Washington with a president who declines to disavow the conspiracy and a Republican QAnon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, looking set to head to Congress in November.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

The size of the QAnon community is difficult to estimate. It is, by no means, mainstream. But past experience has shown us that when a minority drapes its cause in a cosmic discourse of good versus evil, atrocities can follow.

Paul Thomas, Chair and Professor of Religious Studies, Radford University

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

Fox News investigation crushes Hunter Biden smear: Network “found no role for Joe Biden”

A Fox News investigation “found no role for Joe Biden” in the business dealing of his son, Hunter, the network said on Sunday.

The admission was made by Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins.

Jenkins explained that the news organization had been provided documents by Tony Bobulinski, Hunter Biden’s former business partner.

“You’re talking about a business venture with the Chinese energy company in 2017 at a time when Joe Biden was not vice president,” Jenkins explained. “But Fox’s review of Bobulinski’s documents, which were given to us, found no role for Joe Biden in that business venture.”

“There’s another former business partner who says he knows of no involvement by Joe Biden,” Fox News host Howard Kurtz added. “The Wall Street Journal says it also reviewed the text messages and emails, saying, they don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden — the brother — discussing a role for Joe Biden.”

Kurtz added: “My problem with this is these emails are from 2017. At that time, Joe Biden is out of office. So while it may have been unseemly — if it was true that Joe Biden was even acquiescing in a potential deal with China — he no longer has the power of the White House behind him at that time.”

“That’s correct,” Jenkins agreed. “One thing is for sure, it’s not getting the kind of attention that Fox has given it and the New York Post and others as we get close to this election.”

Watch the video below from Fox News.

Why the pandemic is inspiring many to give up alcohol

As states descended into lockdowns, closing bars and restaurants, everyday people stockpiled toilet paper, cleaning supplies—and booze.

Indeed, back at the start of the pandemic, alcohol sales skyrocketed — increasing in the United States by 55 percent the week ending March 21, 2020, compared to the previous year. While some data suggests that people have been drinking more during the pandemic, at least initially, the pandemic has also prompted a life re-evaluation, with many Americans reconsidering the role of alcohol in their lives.

“At first, I was actually drinking more,” Mike Miller founder of Wilderness Times, told Salon. “Just being around the house more opened the door for it more often, so I found myself drinking more frequently.”

For Miller, this meant two to three drinks over the course of five to six days. According to the Centers for Disease and Control (CDC), heavy drinking for men is when 15 or more drinks per week are consumed.

“A few weeks into the pandemic I calmed down and realized I was definitely over doing it,” Miller said. “So, I went cold turkey and completely stopped.”

Miller added that “moderation is difficult,” which is why he found it easier “to just cut it out completely than try to wrestle with limiting myself.”

Despite reports of many regressing into unhealthy consumption patterns amid the pandemic, some have seen it as an opportunity to make healthier lifestyle choices, including abstaining from drink. While there’s no data from the United States yet, a study by researchers at the University College London found that young Australians are actually drinking less during lockdown, partly because of the lack of social opportunities. Similarly, a July poll from Alcohol Change UK found that 37 percent of 1,647 UK residents surveyed had attempted to manage their alcohol consumption during lockdown by having alcohol-free days, reducing the amount of alcohol they purchased, or attending a virtual support group.

David Bakke, a 48-year-old living in Atlanta, told Salon when the pandemic first hit his alcohol consumption “shot up a bit, basically out of fear.”

“That lasted for maybe a little over a month, but once I realized that your immune system has a lot to do with fighting off the virus, I made the transition and got myself back to my pre-pandemic level of drinking,” Bakke said. “I simply decided that I wanted to do everything possible to limit my chances of being infected; if this means a little less partying for the next several months, I’m good with that.”

There is another reason to be concerned about alcohol consumption during a pandemic — namely, alcohol can have a negative effect on the immune system. A paper published in the journal Alcohol Research states that excessive alcohol consumption can “impair the body’s ability to defend against infection,” which is of increased concern in the event that one’s body needs to fight off the novel coronavirus

Maritza Chesonis-Worthington, a functional nutritionist & hormone expert, told Salon it used to be hard for her to imagine giving up alcohol — until the pandemic happened. As a “health conscious” person, her decision to abstain from alcohol happened for a myriad of reasons. First, she wanted to support her immune system and stay healthy. Second, there was less social pressure to drink.

“Perhaps it’s not the substance itself that drives dependency, but rather the connection and sense of tradition that it brings amongst family and friends,” Chesonis-Worthington said. Now she has been finding “novel ways to connect with others.”

But not everyone is cutting alcohol cold turkey. According to a report in the journal JAMA Network Open, Americans are drinking 14 percent more often during the coronavirus pandemic, though this data that comes from the beginning of the pandemic. The study compared responses from a survey of 1,540 participants of their self-reported drinking habits in spring to the year prior. For women, the increase was up to 17 percent compared to last year. The study’s participants were between the ages of 30 and 80; the data collected was from the RAND Corporation American Life Panel.

Michael Pollard, a sociologist and co-author of that behavior, previously told Salon that it was unclear whether these “alcohol use behaviors [will] persist,” or whether they will “go back to the way they were before COVID-19.”

Indeed, some say their drinking habits accelerated at the beginning of the pandemic before declining, as mythology writer Mike Greenberg told Salon.

“When quarantine started up I was so excited, a little too excited,” Greenberg said via email. “Working from home, grabbing a beer around 4 (who’s gonna know?), and having every excuse not to exercise? It was fantastic… until it wasn’t.”

Greenberg said after the first couple weeks, he was drinking nearly everyday.

“The only thing drooping more than my gut was my mental health,” Greenberg said. “It’s been a real battle since then but I’m finally coming out the other side with the local gym reopened I’m exercising more often than not, eating healthier, and sticking to water, juice, and tea.”

“Honestly, I feel like superman in comparison,” he said.

Senate Democrats issue all-hands-on-deck warning against Trump and GOP election threats

With President Donald Trump and his Republican allies working tirelessly to suppress turnout, halt expansions of ballot access, and delegitimize the outcome should it not go their way, a group of Senate Democrats late Sunday delivered an urgent message to the American public just over two weeks out from an election that’s shaping up to be closer than recent polls suggest: “Vote—and vote early.”

In a 13-page report (pdf), five members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)—outlined the various ways in which Trump is attempting to “sow fear and chaos” through disinformation and intimidation tactics, provided key information and deadlines for voters in battleground states, and vowed to “fight to ensure that every vote is counted.”

“In a democracy, citizens should not have to risk their health or their lives in order to cast their vote,” the report reads. “Given the pandemic, there will be a huge increase in mail-in ballots. We urge voters to cast their ballots as early as possible. Despite the president’s false claims, according to the leading election experts in our country, voter fraud is nearly nonexistent. The integrity of the election process is strong and election officials across the country are working around the clock to ensure that all votes are counted and counted accurately.”

The brief report echoes election officials’ concerns that the unprecedented surge in mail-in ballots—disproportionately used by Democratic voters—could “create the false appearance that Republicans are ahead” on Election Night as in-person ballots are tallied and early results are publicized.

“President Trump’s rhetoric indicates he may exploit this illusion and claim victory for himself, then falsely claim that there is ‘massive fraud’ in mail-in ballots that have not yet been counted or reported,” the lawmakers warn. “Americans should be prepared to reject misinformation and be patient about results in places where counting ballots may take longer.”

I'm standing with @SenAmyKlobuchar, @SenSanders, @ChrisMurphyCT, @MartinHeinrich, and @SenDuckworth to make sure Americans know the facts about the 2020 elections

Because Trump's been laying the foundation to undermine them

Here's what you need to know:https://t.co/uHzelMFQ9D pic.twitter.com/nEJpJUyb7w

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) October 18, 2020

In a statement late Sunday, Sanders—who for weeks has been sounding the alarmabout Trump’s repeated attacks on the legitimacy of the election—said “the American people must be prepared for an election that is unprecedented in our history due to the enormous increase in mail-in ballots that have been, and will be, cast as a result of the pandemic.”

“One of the worst lies that Donald Trump is spreading is that there is a massive amount of voter fraud in this country,” said the Vermont senator. “That is a total lie which no election official, Republican or Democrat, can support. What we are doing with this effort is ensuring that the American people understand that if American democracy means anything, it means that every vote must be counted—no matter how long it takes.”

Schumer echoed Sanders, saying, “Senate Democrats want to be clear to the American people that the most powerful defense against this type of autocratic behavior in our country is the will of the American people and that is why we are encouraging every American to vote and vote early.”

The senators’ report comes amid growing anxietyamong Biden campaign officials and allies that despite recent polling showing a strong lead for the former vice president nationally and in key battleground states, a confluence of factors—including GOP voter suppression, ongoing efforts to invalidate mail-in ballots, and potentially high Republican turnout—could swing the election in Trump’s favor. As of Monday morning, according to the United States Elections Project, a record 28.6 million Americans had already voted early.

“There are more known unknowns than we’ve ever had at any point,” Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, told Politico Monday. “The instruments we have to gauge this race, the polling, our predictive models… the problem is all those tools are built around quote-unquote normal elections. And this is anything but a normal election.”

In a memo to supporters on Saturday, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon cautioned Democrats against complacently trusting polls showing the former vice president with a substantial lead over the unpopular incumbent.

“The very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Dillon said, echoing comments she made last week. “The reality is that this race is far closer than some of the punditry we’re seeing on Twitter and on TV would suggest. In the key battleground states where this election will be decided, we remain neck and neck with Donald Trump.”

Get your chocolate and coffee fix in these easy no-bake cookies

I’ve written before about how much I like pastries that can pull double duty as both breakfast treats and desserts (like these miniature blueberry and lemon upside-down cakes, made with hearty cornmeal and a healthy dollop of sour cream). Those sorts of treats can imbue your morning with a certain level of decadence, but I find that it’s a delicate balance — too much of a good thing and you’re setting yourself up for a sugar crash at 3 p.m. You’ve got to include some wholesome ingredients in the mix.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was at the grocery store and I passed a box of “organic energy balls.” Made with peanut butter, miniature chocolate chips and an assortment of nuts and seeds, these snacks were marketed as being a protein-packed bite that would give consumers the jolt of energy needed to hit the gym — or just make it through a lengthy meeting.

But when I scanned the box, I was struck by how similar the ingredient list was to my mom’s old recipe for no-bake cookies. So, why not blend the concepts? I set about creating a sweet no-bake cookie that did away with the added butter and sugar of typical versions, while also upping the protein.

To make it feel a little more breakfast-appropriate, these no-bake cookies are built from a base of rolled oats — and includes a splash of brewed coffee. Feel free to adapt this recipe to include more nuts and seeds if that’s your thing (I’ve swapped out flax seeds and hemp hearts for oats in my own kitchen and it turned out splendidly), or if you want to veer this more solidly into dessert territory, you can always trade the coconut oil for plain, old-fashioned butter.

* * *

RECIPE: Oat and Mocha No-Bake Cookies

Makes 12-16 cookies

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons of coconut oil
⅓ cup brewed coffee, room temperature
¼ cup of honey
1 cup nut butter (I like almond butter, personally, but use whatever you have on-hand)
½ cup of diced nuts
2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
½ cup of unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cups rolled oats

1. In a large saucepan, combine the chocolate chips, coconut oil, coffee and honey. Stir them over medium heat until the chocolate is fully melted and the ingredients are fully combined, then remove from heat.

2. Stir in the remaining ingredients until fully incorporated.

3. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, then use a spoon or an ice cream scoop to form 12 to 16 individual cookies.

4. Place the baking sheet into the refrigerator and chill for at least 30 minutes to allow the cookies to set, then carefully remove them from the parchment to enjoy. Leftover cookies can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.

Potato chips and Nutella are a match made in heaven in this sweet and salty no-bake tart

Back when people used to do things, I was fond of an app that would suggest recipes based on the ingredients you happened to have on hand. It was the sort of thing that sparked my culinary creativity whenever I found myself alone in the kitchen with, say, half a cauliflower head and an apple that had seen better days.

Now, I’m pretty much like, “Yeah, it’s half a cauliflower head and an apple with brown spots, and I guess that’s what’s for dinner everybody.” But there are still days when I consider there may be a more elevated format for whatever is lurking in my cabinets. Days when I want to feel a little fancy — without, of course, actually making an effort.

“Salty” is right up there with “burned” among the most blessed of flavors, whether the dish in question is savory or sweet. Chocolate-covered pretzels will always be my death row last meal request. And, oh my God, have you explored miso as an ice cream topping?

Several years ago, I discovered a Martha Stewart recipe for potato chip cookies. These cookies evoke the crumbly, exquisite pleasure of Mexican wedding cookies — but with potato chips as a bonus — and I’ve been happily baking them ever since. When I went looking to expand my potato-chips-for-dessert repertoire, it wasn’t long before I hit on a dessert that casts my favorite thing in the world — Nutella — in the starring role. BINGO.

Adding oats to the potato chip crust gives this tart’s base a homespun, cookie-like flavor, and the decadent Nutella cream filling only tastes like it should be complicated. The chocolate ganache takes it all to the next level, but honestly, if you’re tired, you can skip it. With just a few ingredients likely lurking in your pantry, you can make something that looks like the sort of special dessert you’d get at a cool restaurant but tastes like potato chips and Nutella. And isn’t that what you’d really want to eat, anyway?

* * *

Recipe: Potato Chip Nutella Tart, adapted from Everyday Pie and What’s Gaby Cooking

Ingredients:

For the crust

5 oz. of potato chips (about one medium bag)
1/2 cup of rolled oats (not instant)
1/4 cup of sugar
6 tablespoons of butter, melted

For the filling

1 8-oz. block of cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup of heavy cream
1 cup of Nutella

For the ganache

1/2 cup of dark chocolate or chocolate chips
1/4 cup of heavy cream

Instructions:

Crush the potato chips, oats and sugar in a food processor — if you have one — or add to a Ziploc bag and crush with a rolling pin. Don’t crush too finely (texture is nice).
Add melted butter to the crumbs, and combine until sandy.
Press the mixture into a tart or pie pan, gently smoothing along the bottom and sides.
Stick in the freezer for 30 minutes while you wash your dishes and make the filling.
Whip the cream, cream cheese and Nutella together until well blended and fluffy. Set aside.
In a microwave safe bowl, heat the cream and chocolate in 30 second intervals, stirring thoroughly each time until fully blended. (It should only take about a minute.)
Remove the crust from the freezer, and pour the filling into it. Gently pour the ganache on top, dragging a knife through the top to create a design (if you like). Top with extra potato chips (if you want to get fancy).
Chill at least an hour, but you’ll be forgiven if you can’t wait.

How coronavirus exposed the flaws of the childcare economy

The U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that childcare workers in the nation have a median salary of just over $24,000 a year—below the poverty line for a family of four. The segment of our nation’s workforce that attends to the basic needs of our children is shockingly underpaid, and now during the coronavirus pandemic, left even farther behind as childcare centers are forced to downsize or close. At the same time, billionaires have minted money during our time of national crisis. The fortunes of the wealthiest have increased by a quarter over the past several months, proving once more that the economy is rigged to benefit the already-rich.

It is no coincidence that an industry dominated by women, particularly women of color (40 percent of childcare workers are women of color—twice their population representation) is in dire straits. The vast majority of childcare workers do not have health insurance. Many are self-employed and, even before the pandemic, operated on razor-thin margins to stay financially afloat. While the cost of operating a childcare center is fixed, children age out quickly, making revenues extremely unstable. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The businesses have little in the way of collateral. Banks are rarely interested in lending to them, beyond costly credit cards, making it difficult to ride out rough patches.”

In other words, childcare is not a lucrative business in spite of its crucial nature, and while the cost of childcare for parents is often far too high, the cost of operating even a bare-bones childcare business is also too high.

Once the pandemic hit, many childcare providers simply lost clients as lockdowns required families to remain at home. According to one survey conducted in April 2020, “60% of programs [were] fully closed and not providing care to any children” at that time. While some workplaces were able to transition to remote environments, by its nature, childcare work was not able to adapt to this “new normal.” While many workers like grocery store employees, nurses, and delivery drivers were deemed “essential” to society and continued working, they needed care for their out-of-school children. Suddenly American women providing childcare found themselves out of work, while women in other industries had no access to the care their children required.

Millions of parents, mostly mothers, have already left the workforce to care for their children during the pandemic. The U.S. Census Bureauin August 2020 found that nearly 20 percent of “working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements.” Additionally, “women ages 25-44 [were] almost three times as likely as men to not be working due to childcare demands.”

Melissa Boteach of the National Women’s Law Center told Politico, “the parents who are not going to be able to go back to work or who are going to have to give up their careers or jobs for less pay—because they can’t find the child care to cover the hours that they need—are disproportionately going to be women and women of color.” In other words, women of color are disproportionately impacted on both ends of the childcare equation—both as providers and as customers who rely on these services.

As I prepared for an interview with Wendoly Marte, director of economic justice at Community Change Action, about the crisis of childcare, I fielded texts from my seven-year-old son who could not find an extension cord for the tablet that he uses for school. My child was in the room next to the home-studio that I work out of and knows never to disturb me during interviews. But he was desperate to turn his device on so he wouldn’t miss his next lesson. I found myself for the umpteenth time wishing I didn’t have to work so I could be more present for my children during a time of deep uncertainty. But I also remembered how much I loved my job and continued to speak with Marte, who explained that I was not alone. “I think a lot of parents have had to make really hard choices over the last few months as they tried to balance working from home and caring for their children,” said Marte, who helps to organize childcare workers and amplify their voices in government.

Like millions of American women, I find myself constantly worrying about the state of my children’s mental health during the pandemic. Isolated from their peers and forced to learn through screens and Zoom chats, they are coping as best as they can. I am terrified of the long-term impacts on them and yet unable to leave a job on which my family depends to help pay the mortgage and purchase necessities, and at the same time resenting the fact that I have to even consider leaving a job that I love and that I have invested years of my life in.

The pandemic has highlighted, in Marte’s words, the need for “a system that is truly universal and equitable and that takes into account the perspective of parents, the children, and the childcare providers.” She articulated that “we’re going to need a serious public investment in a bold solution that actually matches the scale of the crisis.”

There was a crisis in childcare even before the pandemic. More than a year ago, the Center for American Progress explained that “Whether due to high cost, limited availability, or inconvenient program hours, child care challenges are driving parents out of the workforce at an alarming rate,” and that, “in 2016 alone, an estimated 2 million parents made career sacrifices due to problems with child care.” Add to that a public health crisis that has no end in sight, and the U.S.’s childcare industry could collapse entirely under the weight of multiple pressures.

While the federal government made available small business loans through the Paycheck Protection Program earlier this year, the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that the program did not work for childcare businesses and only about half of applicants ever received the government-backed loans. While the federal government’s “Childcare and Development Fund” provides some measure of support through block grants, according to Marte it is not nearly enough and “the money ran out very quickly.”

In late July, House Democrats passed the Childcare Is Essential Act, which Marte’s group has supported. The bill creates a $50 billion fund to buttress the reeling industry. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has made clear that he is far more interested in remaking the judicial system to benefit conservatives than ushering in financial aid bills for ordinary Americans.

President Donald Trump and his allies have expressed an eagerness to return to normal that is not couched in reality as a third wave of coronavirus infections threatens to derail the economy once more. Without direct federal government intervention to save the childcare industry, the future is frighteningly precarious for women, and especially women of color.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has shrewdly outlined a plan for what his campaign calls a “caregiving economy,” promising to “[e]nsure access to high-quality, affordable child care and offer universal preschool to three-and four-year olds through greater investment, expanded tax credits, and sliding-scale subsidies.” The ambitious $775 billion plan is a start, and Biden will need to be held to his promises if he wins the White House.

When the coronavirus upended the economy, the crisis of childcare that had been brewing for years exploded and revealed the truly barbaric nature of a society that leaves human needs to the whims of “market forces.” There is no better symbol of a society’s future potential than the well-being of its children, and judging by that, we are in deep trouble.

HBO’s “The Undoing” does the incredible: Make us nostalgic for lifestyles of the rich and bothered

Well, it’s finally happened. Maybe this is the quarantine talking . . . No, yes it’s definitely the quarantine . . . but I’ve reached that point on the extended social distancing spectrum where I’ve realized how much I’ve missed the zany exploits of fictional rich, entitled people.

I know! Crazy right? But hear me out: such characters are the stuff of American dreams. Take Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant’s New Yorkers in “The Undoing,” products of privileged white tragedy, David E. Kelley-fantasy edition.

“The Undoing” is a limited series designed to be enjoyed with friends and box wine and cheap finger foods – sorry, canapes in this context, not finger foods. Maybe hors d’oeuvres, but preferably canapes and if you don’t know the difference you haven’t been watching enough wealth porn ridiculousness, so get on that!

Point being, it’s a soap neatly wrapped in prestige finery that begs you to get a little turnt on a Sunday. It’s the kind of show your friend circle would give an unnecessary nickname to like, “The ‘Oh No He Di’int!'” That’s what is making me nostalgic. Sure, yes, young people are hanging out together despite what experts and the olds are saying about staying apart, but people of a certain age may (and should!) be refraining from sharing small plates with pals living outside our immediate households right now.

This doesn’t mean we can’t watch Kelley’s East Coast approximation of “Big Little Lies” and bat our eyes affectionately at Kidman’s Grace Fraser and Grant’s Jonathan, a pair of medical professionals residing in a splendid pre-war apartment in New York City with their talented, private school educated son.

Grace and Jonathan enjoy the admiration of their peers and seem to be happy and in love until Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis) drops into their lives. Elena, a beautiful, relatively impoverished stranger with impressive cleavage, has a 10-year-old son who attends the same school as Grace and Jonathan’s boy and starts getting to know Grace through working with her and other bitchy moms to organize a school fundraiser.

Elena is beautiful and fetchingly sulky and has a slamming bod she flaunts freely, leading all the other ladies to instantly hate her. And the – cue the dark violin riffs and make sure those frosé glasses are filled to the rim! – tragedy strikes. There’s a murder. Jonathan disappears and in a flash, Grace’s gilded world starts to crumble.

Now. Lest this convey the impression that “The Undoing” is a creatively stunning and narratively complex series, you’ll note that I likened it to “Big Little Lies.” The first season of that series has its merits, many of them having to with its ability to inspire social lubrication, while the second is a buffet of blah that was barely saved by Laura Dern.

She’s not in “The Undoing. Instead, Lily Rabe takes on the duty of take-charge career-centric bestie Sylvia Steineitz, whose child also attends the private school that serves as the community’s gossip hive. But her role is far less central to the action than Dern’s; besides, the performances meant to coax us into gentle inebriation and/or snack overindulgence are Kidman’s and Grant’s.

Helpfully each is playing to type: Kidman is the long-suffering wife with a poreless skin and a head draped with pre-Raphaelite curls, and Grant is a jerk who doesn’t seem like a jerk at first but, c’mon, you’ve at least seen “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” right?

The important part is that Grace and Jonathan differ from actual entitled people in that they appear to suffer and have souls as well as hired drivers, and Kidman and Grant do a delightfully operatic job of selling their misery. We love to see it, and their drool-worthy apartment’s interiors and the clothes and Grace’s chunky gold jewelry, in the same way we love to watch Donald Sutherland chow down on the part of Grace’s protective and affluent father Franklin Reinhardt.

For all of its trappings, “The Undoing” cannot avoid coming off as dull murder mystery elevated by Kidman’s incredible performance and festooned with overwrought melodrama. Some moments are utterly laughable when they shouldn’t be – one example is when a character blurts, with utter sobriety, “Here’s what happened: I had an affair.”

Whether that comes across as grave or hilarious rests entirely in the delivery but if you aren’t sure about what Kelley is going for, that’s due to his penchant for attempting to be arch when straightforward will do.

Of course, sometimes that approach is terrific. When Grace worries aloud that raising her son in Manhattan may not be healthy and offers, “What about Schenectady?” Jonathan’s reply of, “It sounds horrible, even phonetically,” is a New York comeback that only a writer could think of.

And it works because “The Undoing” is a world made of affect. As manifested through “The Night Manager” director Susanne Bier’s lens, it is gauzy, dreamy and a bit unreal, which takes on a sinister air at points; but the way Kelley realizes it results in a showy, brittle hollowness, like a Christmas ornament.

Choices made in the script highlight Kelley’s privileged view of the world as well, specifically as it comes to race and class differences. “The Undoing” calls this out early on at a school fundraiser when the organizer proudly congratulates the almost exclusively white room for ensuring the institution’s name “is always synonymous with . . . diversity!” Ah, rich folks. They’re a delight.

Then there’s the subplot that involves Elena, ostensibly Latina (although De Angelis is Italian) and her husband Fernando (Ismael Cruz Córdova), neither of whom are written with enough complexity for them to serve as much more than devices. For purposes I won’t go into here, this is more excusable in Elena’s case than Fernando’s although Córdova turns in a moving performance with what little screen time he’s afforded.

Kelley likely has an explanation for this beyond the obvious, which is that he expects the audience for “The Undoing” is tuning in to watch Kidman and Grant be beautiful and awful while coveting their lives and clothing. Grant accepts most of that secondary order, but Kidman’s character isn’t exactly bosom buddy material either.

On the other hand, Kelley also presents us a gift in Noma Dumezweni’s shark-like defense attorney Haley Fitzgerald. Dumezweni enters in the third episode and tightens up some of the slack in the later acts, especially the dragging courtroom scenes.

Those serious settings don’t entirely wipe away the soap foam, and that’s OK! In fact, it’s actually a treat to savor this frothy remnant from a world entirely removed from the one we’re living in while realizing that such a life, though out of reach for the vast majority of us, felt somewhat real not too long ago.

We may not have the one percenter problems, economic mobility or the high ceilings the Frasers enjoy in “The Undoing.” Hell, we can’t even safely share dip anymore. But at least we can get tipsy on its glamourous and familiar view. Or is it tipsy to that view? Whatever. Friends don’t judge.

“The Undoing” debuts Sunday, Oct. 25 at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Workers keep getting fired, penalized for reporting COVID-19 safety violations

When COVID-19 began making headlines in March, Charles Collins pulled out a protective face mask from the supply at the manufacturing company in Rockaway, New Jersey, where he was the shop foreman and put it on. The dozen or so other workers at the facility followed suit. There was no way to maintain a safe distance from one another on the shop floor, where they made safety mats for machines, and a few of the men had been out sick with flu-like symptoms. Better safe than sorry.

Management was not pleased. Collins got a text message from one of his supervisors saying masks were to be used to protect workers from wood chips, metal particles and other occupational safety hazards. “We don’t provide or for that matter have enough masks to protect anybody from CORVID-19 [sic]!” If workers didn’t stop using the masks for that purpose, the supervisor texted, “we’ll have to store them away just like the candy!”

“I was shocked,” said Collins, 38. “They weren’t taking it seriously.”

Shortly after that, Collins left for a planned vacation. When he returned a week later, the company told him to quarantine at home for two weeks because he’d been traveling.

But when the quarantine ended, Collins didn’t want to go back to work. Co-workers, he said, told him that recommended safety measures such as wearing masks and maintaining social distancing hadn’t been implemented. When he told human resources that he feared becoming infected and endangering his mother and his 8-year-old nephew who live with him, he said, he got an ultimatum: Return to work or resign.

Collins stayed home and says he was fired. He hired a lawyer and filed a complaint in the Superior Court of New Jersey under the state’s whistleblower law, the Conscientious Employee Protection Act. The law prohibits employers from firing, demoting or otherwise retaliating against workers who refuse to take part in activities they believe are incompatible with public health and safety mandates.

As many employers, with the strong encouragement of the Trump administration, move to bring employees back, a growing number of workers are resisting what they feel are unsafe, unhealthy conditions. In recent months, a few states have passed laws specifically aimed at protecting workers who face COVID-related safety risks and retaliation for speaking up about them. Some states, like New Jersey, have whistleblower protection laws already. But advocates say stronger federal protections are needed.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, is responsible for enforcing 23 federal whistleblower statutes that protect workers from retaliation if they report workplace safety violations, among other problems.

But according to a new analysis, the agency isn’t up to the task. The National Employment Law Project, a workers’ advocacy and research group, found that of 1,744 COVID-related retaliation complaints filed with OSHA between April and mid-August, 20% were docketed for investigation and 2% were resolved. More than half were dismissed or closed without investigation.

“Even before COVID, workers had a really bad track record of getting any justice for their concerns if they were retaliated against,” said Debbie Berkowitz, director of the worker health and safety program at the National Employment Law Project and a former senior OSHA official.

The numbers are growing. Whistleblower complaints filed with OSHA increased by 30% between February and May, to 4,101, according to an August report by the Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General that criticized the agency’s handling of the complaints.

Nearly 40% of the complaints — 1,618 — were related to COVID-19, the report found, filed primarily by workers who claimed they were punished for reporting workplace safety violations. Those could include, for example, not having appropriate personal protective equipment or sanitation materials, or a lack of social distancing on the job.

While complaints rose, the number of whistleblower investigators decreased from the previous year, according to the report. The average time it took to close an investigation at the end of March was roughly nine months.

Worker whistleblower protections under the Occupational Safety and Health law are “incredibly weak” compared with whistleblower statutes that protect employees who report other types of wrongdoing, Berkowitz said. If OSHA dismisses a complaint, workers have no right to appeal the decision, and once they file a complaint with OSHA they aren’t permitted to take their case to court on their own, she said.

Consumer advocates would like to see those provisions changed.

Advocates have urged OSHA to adopt mandatory COVID safety standards for workplaces, but the agency has declined to do so, maintaining that its “general duty clause,” which requires employers to maintain a workplace free from hazards likely to cause death or physical harm, is sufficient.

“The Administration has remained committed to providing the Whistleblower Protection program with the resources it needs to fulfill its mission,” a spokesperson for the Department of Labor wrote in an email to KHN. “In fiscal year 2020, OSHA asked for and received five new full-time employees and requested an additional ten in the President’s budget for fiscal year 2021.”

If workers don’t pursue a whistleblower complaint through OSHA, they can file a state lawsuit claiming “wrongful discharge” or use a state’s whistleblower law, as Collins did.

According to a COVID employment litigation tracker by Fisher Phillips, an employment law firm, since the beginning of the year 169 retaliation/whistleblower lawsuits have been filed across the country — the second-biggest category, behind suits related to remote work/leave, with 206 cases. An additional 27 lawsuits have been filed for wrongful discharge.

Juan Carlos Fernandez, the Morristown, New Jersey, attorney representing Charles Collins, said he’s seen a significant uptick in inquiries from workers about safety concerns in recent months. Before the pandemic began, he typically received one or two such calls per month. Now, he gets three or four a day.

Many callers say they were terminated after they asked for protective equipment on the job, Fernandez said. Others had asked for time off to care for a family member or a child whose school had closed because of COVID-19 and then were told not to come back to work.

In addition to reporting safety violations, Collins’ lawsuit claims, he was fired for asking to take time off. Under the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, employees are generally entitled to two weeks’ paid leave if they’re quarantined, and another two weeks’ paid sick leave at two-thirds pay to care for a child whose school has closed, as well as expanded family and medical leave. Collins has cared for his nephew since his sister died two years ago in a car accident. His nephew’s school closed in March because of COVID-19.

Collins said his employer, ASO Safety Solutions, paid him for only the first week of his company-ordered quarantine. Any additional time off would come out of his accrued sick and vacation time, he was told.

ASO Safety Solutions didn’t respond to requests for comment, nor did the law firm representing the company.

In his response to the complaint submitted to the court, the lawyer representing the company denied that ASO had retaliated against Collins for whistleblowing, asserting he had resigned. The response, by John Olsen, with Ferdinand IP Law Group, also said that the provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act do not apply to the company. The lawyers have exchanged requests for discovery, Fernandez said, which should be answered in the next several weeks.

A few states and cities have stepped in to help whistleblowers. Virginia was the first to put in place statewide workplace safety standards related to COVID-19, spurred by concerns from workers in poultry plants, said Rachel McFarland, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville. The standards include specific provisions protecting workers from retaliation for raising safety concerns or refusing to work in a location they believe is unsafe.

Colorado and the cities of Philadelphia and Chicago likewise passed laws prohibiting employers from retaliating against workers who raise COVID-related safety concerns, refuse to work in unsafe conditions or take time off to minimize the transmission of the virus.

But these laws are the exceptions, said Brent Newell, a senior attorney at Public Justice in Oakland, California, who has represented the interests of workers in meatpacking plants. “Many states haven’t done that and won’t do that,” he said. “For the federal government to put it on the states to protect workers is wholly and fundamentally inadequate.”

How white Trump appointees targeted a top Black civilian in the Pentagon and fired him

This is the second of two articles about the firing of Pentagon official Warren S. Whitlock. In Part One, we showed how racists in the Trump administration targeted the career public servant and dismissed him without a pension or health care.

Warren S. Whitlock, the federal civilian officer assigned to get the U.S. Army moving on racial diversity issues, was fired after two secret, unauthorized investigations.

The firing was justified by the Army because of one erroneous keystroke on his Army computer. In a statement the Army defended the firing without addressing any of the misconduct DCReport uncovered.

Whitlock never got a chance to defend himself before he was fired in January 2019. In part that was because a Trump appointee covered up the improper nature of one of the investigations by requesting retroactive approval. No one told Whitlock he was the subject of so-called 15-6 investigations, named for an Army regulation number. Army officers and civilians dread the 15-6 as a career killer. Only when he was about to be fired did Whitlock learn of the secret investigations and months of secret machinations against him.

Whitlock, with degrees from Princeton and Columbia, had a successful career as a diversity officer in the federal Transportation Department. He took on challenging assignments others believed were impossible and produced success. He was asked to become one of the Army’s highest-ranking Black civilians during the waning days of the Obama administration to shake up what the Obama people considered an underperforming equal opportunity and diversity office. He tackled problems that had languished since George Herbert Walker Bush was commander in chief three decades ago.

But then the racist Trump administration came in. Twice, Whitlock was the subject of secret investigations as both his boss and a subordinate worked to oust him.

The first investigation was over arrangements for the annual Black Engineer of the Year Award. Whitlock’s civilian boss, Diane Randon, questioned his choice of a highly qualified and retiring Army lieutenant colonel for the award. Randon also singled out Whitlock in quietly directing her subordinates to keep tabs on comings and goings.

Undercut by a subordinate

A secret report by a two-star general severely criticized Whitlock. But it also showed that one award’s package was submitted late because Seema Salter, a subordinate who despised Whitlock and behind his back called him a “motherfucker,” had delayed getting her own award paperwork to Whitlock. There is no record of an investigation into why the subordinate delayed her actions and whether she did so to undermine her boss, whom she later bragged, testimony showed, she had gotten removed.

Another subordinate absolved Whitlock. Margo Barfield, Whitlock’s assistant, told him and Randon in a meeting in late 2017 that she was to blame for the problems in planning and arranging the Black Engineer of the Year award at the beginning of the year.

Barfield said she was “completely” responsible, Whitlock testified at his 2019 racial discrimination hearing. That contradicted Randon, who held only Whitlock at fault and used that assertion to arrange the unauthorized investigation.

Randon told the Army inspector general that she was disappointed in Whitlock’s leadership because he didn’t offer to take responsibility for what she called Barfield’s error. Gratuitously, Randon added in the interview that she was “wanting Mr. Whitlock to just throw himself on a grenade…”

After Whitlock was fired his lawyer, David Shapiro, said Randon’s conduct was reprehensible. He told DCReport that the secret monitoring of Whitlock’s time and attendance ordered by Randon was “racist.”

Boss fails to review performance

Randon’s duties included evaluating Whitlock’s performance. But Randon failed to do the mandatory mid-year evaluation in 2017 which, assuming she found his performance wanting, would have officially set in motion training and counseling that could have preserved Whitlock’s job. Instead, her first evaluation, filed Nov. 28, 2017, gave him a 1, the lowest possible rating on a scale of 1 to 5 used for Senior Executive Service civil servants.

“I was floored. No one gets a 1,” Whitlock said. Pentagon officials said they could not find another example of a Senior Executive Service member given that bottom score.

Before Randon’s evaluation, Whitlock had been consistently graded a 4, including his first evaluation at the Pentagon in late 2016 when Barack Obama was still president.

What made Randon’s negative rating all the more surprising was that in December, 2016, just six months after his arrival at the Pentagon, Whitlock succeeded in fulfilling one of his primary tasks. He resolved a problem that had been moldering for decades. He announced the official revision and publication of updates to the oldest of four outdated equal opportunity regulations. The one was from 1988. “That should have been cause for celebration,” said Whitlock, as well as something to impress his new boss, Randon, who arrived the next month.

A year later, in December 2017, while Whitlock fulminated over the lousy job rating Randon gave him, and still unaware he was the focus of the two secret investigations, Army lawyers determined that Randon as investigating officer had “exceeded the scope of the investigation by investigating Mr. Whitlock without notifying” the Army inspector general.

Trump appointee covers up

“It was ascertained that the AR 15-6 investigation… was never approved by the appointing authority,” the lawyers wrote. Their findings became moot because of a curious action by Raymond T. Horoho, whom Donald Trump had named acting assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Personnel, the Army’s top civilian for personnel.

In September 2017, Horoho wrote a memo to the judge advocate general’s office, providing cover for Randon.

Horoho requested “approval to designate Ms. Diane Randon as the approval officer for the subject investigation as an exception to Army Regulation” requiring advance approval by her superiors. Horoho noted that she had “appointed” the investigation months earlier on March 15, 2017. In effect, Horoho wanted approval to back-date the unauthorized first investigation and a second unauthorized probe, the kind of rules abuse that has been common in the Trump administration.

The request mattered if Randon was to be let off the hook. So what discipline was meted out to Randon for arranging an unauthorized investigation? The white woman’s behavior was thoroughly reviewed and addressed with a “teach and train memorandum” sent to Randon.

Meanwhile, Whitlock had no idea he had been investigated, no idea what General Leslie Purser had concluded in her investigative report and thus had no opportunity to challenge the negative findings of his performance. “I was a dead man walking and I was the only person who did not know it,” he said three years later.

In January 2018 Whitlock filed a racial discrimination complaint against Randon, still unaware of the 15-6 investigation and report, but upset over what he regarded as her foul treatment of him.

Unequal treatment

There was one more crisis developing that would seal Whitlock’s fate. This involved the subordinate who had delayed the award paperwork, Seema Salter, and her good friend, another old-timer in the Army equal opportunity office, Spurgeon Moore.

Moore’s wife Patricia entered hospice care. Moore applied for the government’s Voluntary Leave Transfer Program on Oct. 30, 2018. If granted, it would allow him almost unlimited paid leave to spend with his wife in her final days. The leave time costs taxpayers nothing because federal employees donate their own leave hours.

Moore’s wife died the next day. Her death ended his eligibility for the voluntary leave program. However, her death made him eligible for another benefit, the Army Bereavement Leave.

Despite this, four days after Patricia Moore’s death his request for the donated leave-time program was approved. The approval was signed by his longtime friend and colleague Salter, even though she lacked authority to approve the request. It should have been signed by Whitlock, as Moore’s superior, under Army regulations. Whitlock knew nothing of the improper approval.

“Spurgeon should have dropped” voluntary leave application, Whitlock said, “and applied for the military’s bereavement leave.”

Ordered back to work

Bereavement leave would have entitled Moore to about a month off, plus extra days for memorial services and administrative details. Whitlock said Moore basically disappeared.”I didn’t see him in the office November or December, though I would hear he came in several times when I wasn’t there,” Whitlock said. He added he sent numerous emails and left voicemails. “It looked like he was ducking my calls.”

Despite repeated attempts, Moore could not be reached for comment.

Moore let Randon and Salter know he planned to delay his return until after his wife’s burial at Arlington Cemetery. Because of a burial backlog that was not expected until early March, more than four months after his wife’s death. Whitlock noted that this was far in excess of what he was entitled to under bereavement leave.

Around Valentine’s Day, after discussing the situation with both an Army personnel office and with Trump appointee Horoho, Whitlock sent Moore a formal “return to duty” notice.

Randon undercuts Whitlock

Randon quickly tried to get that notice rescinded, she later confirmed under oath. She also barraged Whitlock with emails and phone calls asking what he was doing and to withdraw the return to duty notice, according to testimony during the merit systems board hearing.

Randon testified Moore advised her that he was not emotionally stable enough to return to work. She added that Horoho, who had approved the return to work notice, also was worried about Moore. What Horoho, who was later relieved of his job for unrelated reasons, actually thought is unknown because he was never called to testify.

Meanwhile, at the Army personnel office, the staff that regularly handled requests for voluntary leave became aware an employee in the Army Diversity and Leadership Office was still on extended voluntary leave to help with his wife’s hospice care event though she had died more than two months earlier.

Salter’s “illegal” signing

Vieanna Huertas, chief of the Civilian Human Resources Agency division, testified she was surprised to discover that Salter had signed Moore’s special leave request for two reasons. The first was that Salter lacked authority to approve the request. The second was that Salter signed after the date of death.

Huertas was blunt about Salter’s actions. The approval was “illegal,” a “falsification” of official records. When Moore’s family “emergency had ended… he should have been taken off of the program.”

Meanwhile, Salter’s annual performance rating was upgraded to the highest possible level even though she had improperly signed off on Moore’s extended leave. Whitlock signed the document, telling DCReport he did so at Randon’s insistence.

Discrimination claim

A month earlier, on Jan. 5, 2018, Whitlock had filed his racial discrimination complaint. Federal law was supposed to shield him from retaliation while his case was pending.

Nonetheless, in March 2018, a month after he tangled with Randon over Moore’s leave and return to duty notice, Whitlock was suddenly reassigned by Trump’s then deputy secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, to a job at Fort McNair in Washington, across the Potomac River from the Pentagon. Whitlock and David Shapiro, his lawyer, said it was punitive and retaliatory since he had no significant or relevant duties at the Center for Military History.

Horoho’s office, after work on a Friday, directed Whitlock to meet Horoho at the Pentagon on Monday morning at 8:30. Horoho personally handed Whitlock his transfer notice, which was dated the previous Friday. Whitlock immediately left for Fort McNair. He arrived just as a call from Horoho’s office advised Fort McNair officials of Whitlock’s transfer.

Barred from his old office

When Whitlock went to his Pentagon office to retrieve personal effects, including medical records and legal documents, he was stopped. “I was called into and excoriated by another Trump appointee who said I was never to come back into the Pentagon.”

Six months after his transfer, in September 2018, Whitlock received a formal notice of proposed termination. The stated reasons were “lack of candor” and “conduct unbecoming an Army senior executive.” Whitlock was still unaware of the general’s report.

In December, he received the formal proposal of removal. Under its terms, Whitlock wouldn’t just lose his Army job; he was to be removed from the federal Senior Executive Service just a few years short of eligibility for a pension.

While Whitlock was twiddling his thumbs at Fort McNair, the Army appointed someone to his old job promoting diversity. It was Spurgeon Moore who became, in an acting capacity, “Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Army for Diversity” —Whitlock’s old job. Evidently taking advantage of a special leave time program for which Moore was ineligible was of no consequence compared with Whitlock’s one mistaken keystroke.

Fired

On January 9, 2019, Whitlock was terminated. The Trump administration simply ignored the law that’s supposed to protect people who file a credible claim of racial discrimination.

Whitlock said he was devastated. He was too embarrassed to tell his aged mother. She was also a Columbia University graduate who retired after a distinguished career at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Whitlock didn’t contact former Obama appointees at the Pentagon for advice, either. “I decided I was going to fight this. I had been a hard worker, I accomplished difficult things, I was honest. I didn’t even get the basic official counseling sessions or reprimands or anything that would give me a chance to resign first.”

Weeks later, in February 2019, the next annual Black Engineer of the Year Award conference was held in Washington. Among those attending was a much higher level official than Whitlock—Clarence Johnson, director of the Defense Department Diversity Center.

Johnson testified at Whitlock’s hearings that Salter went around introducing Spurgeon Moore as her new boss. Johnson said Salter bragged about her success in getting a boss she liked to replace Whitlock. “I got the other motherfucker back.”

Salter testified later that she didn’t say that at that event.

In June 2019 the Merit Systems Protection Board judge finally heard testimony. Whitlock’s lawyer, David Shapiro had warned him that board judges almost never deny the government’s position. The system, set up originally to shield whistleblowers, has morphed over time into a legal sword that effectively thwarts federal workers who challenge their bosses.

Sure enough, the administrative judge ruled for the Army. She said that she didn’t find Whitlock’s defense that he accidentally emailed Salter’s draft evaluation “credible.” She said nothing about the severe penalty of discharge over a keystroke.

Appeal to district court

An Army spokesperson characterized the hearing as “a full and open” forum which “found that Mr. Whitlock engaged in the charged misconduct of Lack of Candor on multiple occasions and Conduct Unbecoming an Army Senior Executive. The Judge also found that his claims of discrimination and retaliation were unproven.”

While the statement said “the Army stands by the decision of the Judge” concerning Whitlock it was silent about the extensive wrongdoing by others that DCReport identified.

The Army said nothing about whether it would look the other way or would order a vigorous and independent investigation into the falsification of documents, two unauthorized investigations, inconsistent testimony, approval of leave time by someone lacking authority, approval of leave time under a program that was not available and the improper taking of tens of thousands of dollars of Voluntary Leave that was generously donated by government employees and used by the man who, thanks in part to Whitlock’s antagonists, was put in Whitlock’s old job. These matters all violate Army regulations and could form the basis for prosecutions.

That is, to be clear, an incomplete list of the serious wrongs DCReport found right in the public record.

Whitlock has exercised his right to appeal the administrative law judge’s decision and go to trial in federal district court.

In early 2020, the Army tried to have Whitlock’s case moved from the mostly Black and heavily Democratic District of Columbia to Northern Virginia, where juries have been shown again and again to be very government-friendly. Indeed, it is the government’s preferred jurisdiction in terrorism cases because its pool of potential jurors lean strongly in favor of whatever position the government asserts.

In court papers, the Army argued that transferring the Whitlock case is proper because when Whitlock was fired he worked at the Pentagon, which is in Virginia.

That’s not true. Documents in evidence show clearly that Whitlock was posted to Fort McNair in the District of Columbia. Shapiro is opposing any transfer out of the district.

While his case drags on, Whitlock has managed to maintain a sense of humor.

In August, Whitlock received an email from the company sponsoring the 35^th annual Black Engineer of the Year Awards to be held in February 2021. It was a reminder that he should submit nominations.

Whitlock laughed.