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With vaccines stalled, some see coronavirus rapid tests as an alternative way to return to normal

For the past seven months of the pandemic, hope for returning to normalcy has hinged on the development of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, the virus that causes COVID-19. 

Yet some scientists and public health experts think that this approach isn’t quite right. Some say the path to normalcy lies not in a vaccine (or not solely in one), but also in the prospect of a cheap, ubiquitous coronavirus rapid test. 

Such a test would mean that those who were entering a hospital, a place of work, or going on stage for a presidential debate could know within minutes if they had coronavirus. The implications for society are immense: those with the virus would have near-immediate knowledge of their positive result, and the same for those without. Those who knew their status could then quarantine accordingly, thus eliminating the spread of the virus by those who are silent carriers or pre-symptomatic. 

As we wait for a vaccine, the need for some kind of effective, quick testing regime only grows. The alternatives are less effective: as Salon reported last week, touchless temperature checks are an ineffective gatekeeper to schools and public spaces where essential workers gather. Experts emphasized that accurate rapid testing would be better.

“In order for people to go out to the grocery store, go see their doctor, to go out to have dinner, we need a much more rapid test and we need them in very large numbers and we don’t have that yet,”  Dr. Natalie Lambert, an associate research professor at Indiana University School of Medicine told Salon.

 Katelyn Gostic, an epidemiologist at the University of Chicago, agreed.

“What I think would be more effective, although also more expensive, would be rapid antigen tests,” Gostic said. “Detecting the presence of the coronavirus in someone’s saliva is a much more direct indicator of whether that person is contagious than trying to take their temperature.”

Rapid tests are not a new idea. They’ve been a barrier to entry for parties in the Hamptons. The White House supposedly relied on them, albeit nearly 20 members of the Trump administration and campaign got infected with the coronavirus. Most recently, Nevada halted a rollout on antigen rapid tests in nursing homes after false positives emerged, which the state eventually revoked after the federal government threatened the state.

So would rapid tests be a better bet than a long-shot vaccine at returning us to a sense of normalcy? And can we expect a widespread roll-out of rapid antigen tests soon? Here’s what we know.

What are rapid tests, and how are they different from the COVID-19 swab tests?

Currently, there are two types of COVID-19 tests: diagnostic and antibody tests. A diagnostic test can tell you if you have an active coronavirus infection. The antibody test tells you if you have coronavirus antibodies (notably, antibodies don’t necessarily mean you’re immune to the coronavirus).

As far as diagnostic tests go, there are two of them: molecular tests, (also known as RT-PCR tests) that test for the coronavirus’ genetic material, and antigen tests that detect specific proteins on the surface of the virus. Both are done via a nasal or throat swab, but the antigen’s test results can be returned within an hour, or sometimes even 10 to 15 minutes after taken.

The results don’t need to be processed in a lab. However, the rapid antigen test needs a sample to contain a higher viral load or it could give a false-negative result.

“If an antigen test shows a negative result indicating that you do not have an active coronavirus infection, your health care provider may order a molecular test to confirm the result,” the United States Food and Drug Administration states.

There are many rapid antigen tests on the market, such as BinaxNOW™ by Abbott, cobas by Roche, Sofia by Quidel and Becton, and BD Veritor by Becton, Dickinson and Company.

Do rapid tests have accuracy problems?

No. However, antigen tests are less sensitive than PCR tests. In a recent University of California — San Francisco (UCSF) study, researchers created a COVID-19 pop-up testing site at a rapid transit station in San Francisco, to provide “low barrier” PCR-based testing to the community. In addition to providing PCR-based testing, the volunteers compared results to the rapid BinaxNOW test.

“It’s a cardboard paper card with a little test strip; one takes a nasal swab, it’s not that painful, and you then stick it in a slot in the card and turn it clockwise three times, you add some drops of the little buffer solution that they give you to put in the hole in the card, and you wait 15 minutes,” CZ Biohub Co-President Joe DeRisi, PhD, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF, whose team led the analysis of the BinaxNOW tests for the study, told Salon. “The result is given visually by a little colored band that appears in a window, almost identical to pregnancy tests.”

Over three days, researchers tested 879 people at the transit station; 26 individuals tested positive on the PCR tests. Fifteen of those people were most likely to be actively infectious, the researchers suspected, based on the high amount of the coronavirus detected in their PCR samples. Fourteen out of those fifteen people tested positive with the rapid BinaxNOW tests. Interestingly, 11 people who had negative BinaxNOW test results were positive on PCR tests, indicating some inaccuracy. The researchers said that all those people had lower virus levels, which was expected since these tests are less sensitive and don’t easily discern between uninfected people and those with lower levels of the coronavirus. For this reason, rapid antigen tests, at the moment, won’t replace PCR tests.

“It doesn’t replace a solid PCR test, but it’s an incredibly valuable tool in an expanding arsenal of testing modalities against COVID-19,” DeRisi said. “And why it’s an important tool is its speed; we know that the most important thing in stopping this pandemic is the cutting of transmission chains and to do that we must identify who is infectious and stop them from infecting other people by isolation and quarantine.”

“So compared to a test that may come back two days later, one day later or three days later, something that comes back in 15 minutes allows you to provide isolation and quarantine to that individual much much faster,” DeRisi said.

If these are so critical to stopping the pandemic, why don’t we have widespread rapid antigen testing yet?

The barriers to rolling out widespread rapid antigen testing are both political and physical, but DeRisi emphasized it’s not an issue of technology.

“The barriers are production levels,” DeRisi said. “I know that manufacturers are scaling up greatly right now and I actually predict that there’ll be very, very little barriers by probably the first quarter of 2021,” he added. DeRisi said that training people to use the tests like the BinaxNOW test is crucial to their accuracy. 

Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told Salon another barrier is implementing a cohesive plan, particularly when you often see false positives and false negatives from a rapid antigen test.

“We need to have a plan around how to use those tests,” Adalja said. “They can be followed up by confirmatory tests.”

“We still have this kind of misinformation or misguided view of testing, this scoreboard approach that’s not allowed […] some of the testing to flourish as well as would have, because of the way this has been viewed by the White House,” Adalja said. “And you can even see that in the negotiations of the newest stimulus, that there is reticence about putting in more money for testing because the President does not support more testing than we’re doing.”

Another barrier relates to how the importance of testing is perceived by the Trump administration. In an interview with Fox News, Trump recently said, “cases are up because we have the best testing in the world and we have the most testing.”

In late August, the Trump administration announced a $750 million deal to buy 150 million rapid Covid-19 tests from Abbott Laboratories. However, experts said that number of tests is not nearly enough given how it’s supposed to be used, and how frequently, and how many Americans there are.

So, how will rapid tests be used in the future?

There is some debate around whether rapid COVID-19 tests will be issued by professionals at schools and office buildings, or if they will be used at-home.

“I think we have the technology, and people can test themselves for HIV at home, but there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be able to test themselves for COVID-19 at home,” Adalja said. “But again, then there’s regulatory barriers to try and get an at-home test approved for use by the FDA.”

DeRisi told Salon he would be concerned that at-home testing would come with its own set of issues— like people not reporting that they’re positive, or going to work when they’re positive anyway for a variety of reasons.

“I don’t think a good infection control policy should be left up to the individual to implement on their own,” DeRisi said. “I think it should be within the structure of a healthcare system and the workplace and the schools, that makes a lot more sense to me.”

In HBO’s creepy thriller “The Third Day,” Jude Law makes grief the ultimate jump scare

There’s a certain art to a good jump scare. Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, who worked on the 2012 horror film “Sinister,” once described it as “classic misdirection.” You coax the audience into looking in one direction, or perhaps lull them into feeling like things are finally safe, then seemingly out of nowhere, there’s a shock to the system. The killer is back. A hand appears over the protagonist’s mouth. A new monster leaps from the shadows. 

HBO’s “The Third Day,” which concluded on Monday, has consistently shown a mastery of the emotional equivalent of the jump scare.

In the six-episode limited series, Sam (Jude Law) is lured to Osea, an island off the coast of England, after saving a young girl who had attempted suicide on the mainland. He becomes enamored with the island’s customs and some of the residents’ adherence to a pre-Christian religion, initially unaware of their more brutal practices. Once the islanders promise that they can reunite him with his son who was kidnapped years prior, he opts to stay, leaving behind his wife, Helen (Naomi Harris) and their two daughters.

Helen, meanwhile, is totally unaware of Sam’s location until she receives a mysterious email asking her to come to Osea herself. 

The ensuing hostility between Sam and Helen is neatly built into the show, which is divided into two halves. The first three episodes, labeled as “Summer,” are directed by Marc Munden and show Sam’s point of view. Philippa Lowthorpe directs the final  episodes, called “Winter,” from Helen’s point of view as she explores the mysterious island. 

When she and Sam finally collide in the finale, the series’ writers use well-timed shifts in reality to unnerve viewers, especially as they navigate the show’s well-established tension between truth, legend, and grief-bolstered dissociation. 

The final episodes opens on Sam turning around and finally making eye contact with his wife after a year apart. But we see him through Helen’s eyes, and he doesn’t look great. His hair is disheveled, he’s wearing a suit that looks like rumpled Mark Twain cosplay, and his eyes betray a kind of dormant wildness, like those of an animal that’s become resigned to its life in a cage. 

Helen asks the obvious question, “Why didn’t you come home?” 

Sam’s response is twofold: His grandfather was born on Osea, something Sam didn’t realize until he was informed by the island’s inhabitants, and because he shares his blood, Sam had to step up and lead the island as its “Father.” Secondly, he says that their son, Nathan, is on the island. 

And he’s alive. 

Helen is understandably skeptical. She says that Nathan disappeared 10 years ago and was found dead, a body was buried and everything, but Sam would surely know their own son, right? At least, that’s what viewers have been lulled into believing. It turns out — and here’s the big emotional jump scare — that nothing could be further from the truth. 

Sam leads Helen to “Nathan,” who is preoccupied drawing gory pictures in crayon of people and animals being eviscerated. They exchange cool pleasantries, and viewers are wondering at this point why he isn’t running into Helen’s arms, or vice-versa. But then it’s revealed — that’s not her son. 

He’s the wrong age — Nathan went missing when he was six and would be 16 at this time; the boy drawing is maybe 10 or 11 — his eyes are the wrong color, and his skin is fairer than Nathan’s should be. “He’s not even the right color!” Helen screams at Sam. 

“But his hair,” Sam counters. The boy’s floppy curls are Sam’s final tenuous grasp at the reality he’s crafted and that we, as viewers, had come to believe through Sam’s half of the season.

Once that reality is cracked, more revelations pour from the fissure. It turns out that Sam has a history of delusion, a symptom of what Helen classifies as a performative grief born from Sam’s own guilt surrounding Nathan’s disappearance. He was taken while Sam was on the phone with “one of his flings.” His habitual infidelity (which adds some depth to his earlier drunken affair with islander Jess, played by Katherine Waterston) and subsequent inattentiveness had ultimately led to his son’s death. 

The grocery bag of money that Sam lugged to the island? He’d stolen it from his own family. 

“What if he’d come home?” Sam says as justification. “Nathan, what if he’d come home, and we weren’t there?”

Without the financial resources to pay off Sam’s bad loans, Helen couldn’t leave. She couldn’t create a new reality for herself and their daughters and she would never be able to close the chapter that contained the life and trauma she and Sam had shared. In Sam’s mind, as long as Helen stayed in their home, there was the possibility that Nathan could always come home. He didn’t seem (or care) to realize that he’d bankrupt her, financially and emotionally, in the process. 

Meanwhile, tensions surrounding the island’s future leadership have boiled over into a full civil war. Jess is adamant that the daughter Sam fathered with her, the result of their one-night stand, is meant to be the island’s true leader, its Mother. Most of the island agrees with her and have gathered weapons to take care of any challengers. That includes Mr. and Mrs. Martin (Paddy Constantine and Emily Watson), the almost Thénardier-like couple whose adherence to the island’s primitive religion led them to commit so many cruelties — kidnapping, murder, and human sacrifice — and subsequent cover-ups. 

Their capacity for evil is fully revealed in this episode, and it’s shocking when compared to their tame, cardigan-covered exteriors. Much of the power of “The Third Day” is found in its capacity for imbuing dichotomous images with equal life. This is on full display in the filming of the show. 

The “Summer” portion leans on fish-eye lenses, spacy videography and landscapes hued with impossibly rich, obviously artificial, color. And while it’s easy to be distracted by the mystery of Osea and its customs, this isn’t just a “stranger comes to town (with murderous residents)” narrative. In retrospect, it’s clear that the visual cues point to Sam’s break from the real world on the mainland. 

He wants to believe in miracles and exist outside himself. As such, the promise of being elevated as a Christ-like leader on the island, devoid of a past and prescribed a future, is intoxicating. 

“Winter,” which features razor-sharp cut scenes and is overwhelmingly gray and taupe, is what happens when the real world, encapsulated by Helen, comes to him. Their ultimate collision is sobering, as the supernatural possibilities of the island are stripped away. Sam is more fallen sinner than savior, and it becomes clear that “The Third Day” is a meditation on loss and how we handle it, just cloaked in some of the trappings of a more straightforward thriller. 

This isn’t a new idea. Shows like HBO’s “The Outsider” and films like “The Curse of La Llorona” have recently trod similar ground, but based on it unique form and finale payoff, “The Third Day” viewers should allow themselves to be lured onto Osea. Just beware — there, grief is the ultimate jump scare. 

“The Third Day” is available to stream on HBO Max.

Elon Musk becomes Twitter laughingstock after Bolivian socialist movement returns to power

Tesla CEO Elon Musk became an internet punchline on Monday after the party of Evo Morales, a left-wing Bolivian president whom Musk intimated that America had every right to overthrow, was restored to power by the Bolivian people.

The redemption at the ballot box of Morales’ party, Movement Toward Socialism, was seen as a rebuke of the role of American elites in helping to oust Morales last year. Why this political battle became a viral moment for media pundits to own the brash billionaire CEO, however, is a longer story. 

Recall that then-President Evo Morales won the Bolivian election last year, facing off against far-right forces backed by the American government. In that election, however, US-backed watchdog groups intentionally cast doubt over his victory to try to instill uncertainty in the democratic process and undermine his party’s claim to power, something that should seem familiar to Americans now that Trump is poised to do the same. The elite media consensus that the election was “rigged” was also aided by the propaganda campaign waged by a US Army veteran who created a vast botnet on Twitter that sent out huge numbers of tweets trying to push the narrative that Morales’ opponent won fair and square. 

This week, Morales watched as the Movement Toward Socialism party achieved almost certain victory in elections held on Sunday. Morales himself is not en route to be Bolivia’s new leader — that distinction belongs to his former finance minister, Luis Arce, as Morales is in exile in Argentina. Morales himself claimed at the time that he was pushed out by forces which opposed him because of his Aymara background (he was Bolivia’s first president to come from its indigenous community, which comprises nearly half of Bolivia’s total population) and because of his attempts to nationalize Bolivia’s lithium.

This is where Musk enters the story. Musk’s business empire is reliant on cheap lithium, a fact which some saw connected to a tweet from the SpaceX CEO, who gloated after Morales’ ouster last year: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Though Musk himself states that his companies get their lithium from Australia, global lithium prices and access are intimately connected to nationalization (or privatization) policies in countries with vast reserves, like Bolivia. 

In any case, Musk’s words were interpreted as an object demonstration of American neo-imperialism — that is, a foreign policy implemented by the United States which holds that the country has the right to meddle in other nations’ political affairs to serve its own self-proclaimed interests. America has done this on a number of occasions throughout its history, from Guatemala and Nicaragua to Chile and Iran. The billionaire class, which Musk is a part of, benefits from this kind of oft-violent intervention by American military and intelligence apparatuses that encourage privatization and resource control of foreign assets for the benefit of US companies and their CEOs.

Now, Twitter has been dunking on Musk in the aftermath of Arce’s victory.

“Elon Musk in July on removal of former Bolivian President Evo Morales. Bolivia holds world’s largest lithium deposits – critical for powering electric cars,” journalist Daniel Medina tweeted. “Today: No comment from Musk as Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo party won Sunday’s presidential election in landslide.”

Political cartoonist Carlos Latuff expressed a similar thought, tweeting that the “people of Bolivia said NO to the military coup, the CIA and the coup-monger asshole @elonmusk! Congratulations @LuchoXBolivia and @evoespueblo.”

Journalist Ken Klippenstein was more succinct, tweeting that he was “calling in a wellness check on elon musk.”

Comedian Christine Sydelko tweeted that people should not forget Musk’s comment, writing that it is “just your friendly reminder that Elon Musk is a giant steaming pile of dog s**t.”

The Bolivian president that Acre is replacing, Jeanine Áñez, has been accused of racism against Bolivia’s indigenous population. In 2013 she tweeted that the Aymara’s New Year celebration was “satanic” and, six years later, mocked Morales as a “poor indian” who was “clinging to power.” Áñez herself is, in the mold of the American evangelical right, openly a right-wing Christian in her views; she even brought a giant Bible with her as she entered the national palace to assume her position as interim president. Although she initially ran in the 2020 presidential election, she withdrew in September so that opponents of Morales’ socialist party could unify against Arce. That plan failed.

Musk has not publicly commented on the Bolivian political situation at the time of this writing.

I can’t believe we have to say this: Pulling a “New Yorker Zoom Incident” at work is a bad thing

You try to live a life of culture and refinement, as my friend Greg likes to say; you even re-up your lapsed subscription to The New Yorker every time the discount rolls back around and have the tote bag collection to show for it. And yet on an otherwise unremarkable Monday you find yourself wandering into a discourse about exactly how much grace to extend a venerable member of that venerable publication’s staff who has been reportedly, allegedly, according to people familiar with the event, observed — in a story Vice broke, to breathless speculation about the questions readers both did and decidedly did not want answered — abusing himself, in the Merriam-Webster “old-fashioned” definition sense, during a work Zoom call. A Zoom call! You go to bed thinking the trending topic “Zoom Dick” will have a short shelf life after the fremdschämen howls are expelled from our collective system. Then you wake up to see “#MeToobin” trending. My god. 

A quick recap: Vice’s Motherboard reported that author, New Yorker staff writer and CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin had been suspended by the New Yorker following an incident in which he exposed himself during a workplace video call. Toobin confirmed that an incident had happened, telling Vice that he “made an embarrassingly stupid mistake,” believing he was off-camera and muted, neither visible nor audible to his colleagues. “I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers,” Toobin told Motherboard. Speculation on the nature of the exposure abounded.

Then Vice updates its story: During an election simulation exercise featuring an all-star cast of his fellow journalists, Vice reports that Toobin was seen on camera masturbating. The New York Times offered this: “During a pause in the call for breakout discussions, Mr. Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex, according to the two people familiar with the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

The story spread fast and wide on its initial scant details for a few reasons. Of course, there’s the obvious schadenfreude angle: Toobin is part of the celebrity-journalist set and prurient gossip about talking heads is tempting, especially back here in the cheap seats. But there’s also the way in which it reflects the sudden collapse of previously expansive white-collar worlds under pandemic protocols, in which any semblance of a life maintained outside of the household is conducted primarily through laptops and smart phones, making this a particularly relevant nightmare scenario from a current-events standpoint. And then there’s #MeToo, because, well, “Zoom Dick.” 

Because of the stories shared and investigated under the #MeToo banner, and because of what was and wasn’t revealed in the initial story, opinions were split at first over which direction the discourse should take: Do we generously assume mortifying wardrobe malfunction, or cynically assume deliberate hostile action? What if the truth fell somewhere in the uncomfortable middle? Is this a there but for the grace of Donald Duck go I moment, or a the Zoom-bombing is coming from inside the house scenario? The answer might depend on how much himpathy a person is willing, or conditioned, to extend. 

“Himpathy” is a term coined by philosopher Kate Manne, author of “Down Girl,” to describe the “inappropriate and disproportionate sympathy powerful men often enjoy” in cases of abusive behavior, especially sexual harassment, gendered violence, and other misognyist acts. The gendered aspect of it is key — it differs from necessary and humane empathy in that it privileges men at the expense of others.

Himpathy can cause otherwise rational people to perform the mental gymnastics necessary to arrive at “the workplace is at fault for encroaching on our private lives,” as if a man in his position is a put-upon clock-watcher under the surveillance thumb of corporate productivity apps even when working remotely, and when can he possibly be expected to find a private moment? Himpathy can cause otherwise rational people to tsk-tsk about how suspension from a prestigious job is enough punishment for a man in such an elite position (also known as “consequences” to the cheap seats) and it would be cruel to humiliate him by talking about it. Himpathy can cause otherwise rational people to expend an irrational amount of energy on justifications for treating any important man with the utmost dignity at all times, even if he reportedly treated the dignity of his coworkers with such breathtaking carelessness. 

The thing is, I understand himpathy. I have been conditioned since birth to extend sympathy disproportionately to men, and to white men in particular — personally, professionally, culturally — at the expense of those they harm in large ways and small. When they do bad things, we’re taught to dig deeper for a reasonable explanation, an exercise in sympathy that often serves to soften their consequences — personally, professionally, culturally.

The endless hypotheticals about the why and the how in this particular story are pure himpathy in action — Oh, the places your imagination will go! — because we know there is no comparable scenario in which we can imagine a prominent woman journalist being defended online after such an event is reported. 

But it’s not that deep. I can’t believe this has to be stated so plainly, and yet: Wanking during work meetings in most industries is not allowed. Push that boundary at your own peril.  

Harmless breaches of work etiquette and technology fails shouldn’t necessarily become major scandals, even if Ashley Feinberg investigates. Accidental embarrassments are bound to happen because humans are fallible, and hard as it might be to imagine whilst trudging through the Twitter muck, most people do know the difference between a person not knowing their fly is down and a person exposing their genitals. So ask yourself: If this exact same incident played out at the office, do you think “he thought the door was shut!” would end the discussion? I wouldn’t test it! 

So many tweets already about the humiliation of one man with the resources, presumably, to endure it. Me, I’m stuck on this passage from the New York Times’ report: “All the while, participants continued as if nothing were wrong, one person on the call said. When Mr. Toobin rejoined, he seemed unaware that he had been seen, this person said.” I’m imagining being one of those other journalists on the call — someone accustomed to focusing on what’s important, no matter the distraction, a professional who routinely asks uncomfortable questions of people caught doing the wrong thing — and considering how I would react in their position. I don’t have an answer, but I know where my sympathies lie. 

From a gun-toting firebrand to a Southern professor, “First Vote” examines Asian American voters

“First Vote” is director Yi Chen’s eye-opening look at Asian American political participation. This hourlong PBS documentary profiles four Chinese Americans with entrenched political viewpoints. 

Lance Chen in Dayton, Ohio, is a staunch Trump supporter and member of the Asia American GOP coalition. He became a citizen to vote for Trump and attends Ohio Republican State Dinners for the opportunity to meet Vice President Pence and see President Trump when he swings by to support Jim Rinacci’s 2018 (unsuccessful) campaign for Senate. 

Democrat Kaiser Kuo, in North Carolina, is angry at people like Chen, as he believes the Chinese Americans can do better. He is involved in helping folks register to vote, and is particularly incensed by candidates like Sue Googe, a North Carolina Republican and Tea Party member. The third subject in the film, Googe is described as a “firebrand for conservatives;” her campaign posters show her posing with guns, and she is vocal in her opposition to socialism and communism. At her public rallies, she uses MAGA rhetoric.
Rounding out the participants is very liberal Jennifer Ho, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (she is now at the University of Colorado Boulder), who teaches her students how to think critically about race and whiteness. Her comments on racist monuments on campus are thoughtful, and underscored by an episode in the film where the UNC Chapel Hill’s Silent Sam statue is toppled.

Chen’s evenhanded film also provides brief discussions of laws such as the Refugee Relief Act of 1953, which allowed Asians to immigrate. An early scene in the documentary has Chinese for Trump supporters shouting, “Build the Wall!,” while a latter episode features Lance urging for legal immigration. (One of his colleagues asks, “What if China wanted to send 1 billion people to the U.S.?”)

The filmmaker recently spoke with Salon about her engaging documentary.

What prompted you to address this topic and how did you find the participants for your film?

I had this idea after the 2016 election. I saw an Economist article about Chinese American Trump supporters. Other outlets also covered this story, so It challenged my assumptions about Asian American voters. I was also intrigued by how passionate and actively they were involved in electoral politics — flying aerial banners and forming Political Action Committees. Lance formed his own PAC. Sue Googe ran for office. I came here as an immigrant 17 years ago, and I never saw first generation Asian American Chinese people actively participating in American politics. I wanted to understand why they voted the way they did. I was going through my own naturalization; I am going to be a first-time voter this year. I wanted to talk to voters in my own community and ask them why they voted the way they did.

I wanted people in battleground states. It took about 5-6 months to find Lance and Sue. I talked to a lot of Chinese American Trump supporters, but none were willing to be part of a verité documentary that followed them through the 2018 midterm elections. I found Lance because some supporters listened to his podcast. 

Kaiser explains that his political awareness stemmed largely from his parents, as he grew up in the ’70s, and hated Nixon. While it is not part in the film, can you discuss how you developed your own political awareness? Note: I am not asking you to identify your politics.

One is me being Asian and a woman, and my experience living in America as an Asian woman shapes my political views as does living in DC, with all that’s going on. I went to film school at American University and took classes like the History of Documentary Film. I saw a lot of social issue documentaries that taught me about different social issues. My first job after graduating was at the UN foundation. I made short videos for programs and campaigns about women’s health and climate change to support the UN, and that shaped my understanding of the social issues. 

I had to learn everything about America. I didn’t grow up here and have all that knowledge. I had to learn as an adult. I’m drawn to social issues documentary with my own work. That’s what I’m interested in doing as a person of color and a woman. I do believe equality is important. My values are not shaped by a person; none of my family members are here. It’s really shaped by my education and personal experience.

What I appreciate about Kaiser Kuo’s comments about his anger at Chinese supporters of Trump is that they seem to be voting against their own (and other minority groups’) self-interests. What observations do you have about that? 

They don’t believe they are voting against their own interest. Lance supported Jim Rannuci because “he’s a winner.” One interview I did that didn’t make it in the film was with Yasheng Huang at MIT, who talked about the emotional alignment of Trump as an authoritarian figure to Chinese immigrants from Mainland China that grew up in authoritarian country. 

Lance told me when he first came as a student, he went to a John Kerry rally, and his friends were all Democrats, and he wasn’t interested in politics and voting. It wasn’t until he saw Trump on TV, on Fox News that he started following him. Sue Googe also always watched Fox News when I was at her house. She got into real estate and read “Art of the Deal,” and sees Trump as a role model. 

Sue Googe claims that having lived in and escaped from communist China, that she supports Republicans, as they are against socialism or communism — although Kennedy was a good Democrat, because he was against communism. Her argument makes sense, but it also seems facile. Thoughts?

The story about Sue going back to her home village in 2014, after her parents passed away, was a very emotional moment for her. That emotional trigger probably played a large role [in shaping her politics].

I appreciate the way your film illustrates how Lance canvases for his Republican candidate, Kaiser registers voters, and Jennifer discusses voter suppression. Why do you think the film’s subjects are focused on these different agendas?

I filmed with them for almost two years and they were active during the election period. Kaiser was phone banking, and Jennifer was volunteering at a polling station. Lance was doing door knocking and building a voter base. I wanted to show first-time voters being civically engaged. The 2018 voter ID amendment was on the North Carolina ballot, so I thought that was important to follow as part of the story. Sue supported the law, but Kaiser and Jennifer didn’t. I was interested in asking them about voting rights because it’s controversial and it comes back every election season in North Carolina. It has a history of being struck down by the court.

“First Vote” considers issues of assimilation in that Lance became a citizen so he could vote for Trump. Kaiser’s children discuss what they love (or don’t) about America, and Sue Googe embraces the opportunity she has here. Jennifer, however, has the most complicated issues around identity, claiming that she will always be seen as “other.” What can you say about how political participation instills a sense of identity for Chinese and/or Asian Americans?

One comment I got after people saw the film was that it reminds them that the Asian American electorate is not a monolith. I hope this film will provide a better understanding of the diversity in the Asian American electorate. One reason I wanted to make the documentary was that as I was becoming a voter myself, I looked to educate myself about Asian American voters in the U.S., but I didn’t find a documentary on that subject. When I did my research, I didn’t know Asian Americans didn’t have voting rights until 1952. In 2016, there was a 15% gap between Asian American and white voters in turnout. There are 11 million eligible Asian American voters in 2020. We are the fastest growing racial group and can be the deciding vote. I hope the film will empower and inspire voter turnout this year. 

“First Vote” premieres on Tuesday, Oct. 20 on PBS as part of “America Reframed.” Check local listings. A screening and panel discussion with the film’s participants is also taking place on Oct. 22 over Zoom.

Yale psychiatrist: Trump’s “authoritarian” attacks on science take the US back to “the Dark Ages”

Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Bandy Lee, MD noted that President Donald Trump and his administration’s attacks on science are leading the United States into the Dark Ages. 

“What is the difference between a civilized society and a bare-subsistence one?” Lee asked on Twitter. “It is the systematic training and application of expertise: science to keep out disease; engineering to build safe and durable structures; art to create an uplifting environment; etc. When the defenses of a deprived population meet an authoritarian who needs to suppress all expertise—in order to present oneself as the ultimate authority, the expert in everything, without competition—we negate progress and return to bare-subsistence days called the Dark Ages”

Trump has replaced the top infectious diseases experts and virologists on the Coronavirus Task Force with an X-Ray doctor who doesn’t believe masks stop the spread of COVID-19.

He’s repeatedly attempted to cut funding to science agencies in the government. Even his science adviser left experts wanting more.

“He came in all fired up, promising to make things happen,” one lobbyist says about White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director Kelvin Droegemeier. “But so far nothing has come out of it, and the research community is very disappointed. Another science policy specialist adds, “I give him an A for effort, and an F for performance.”

You can read Lee’s full tweet below:

Will Ivanka Trump be a target of multiple corruption investigations if her dad loses the election?

President Donald Trump’s scurrilous attacks on Joe Biden’s son could turn the spotlight onto his eldest daughter’s shady dealings.

Ivanka Trump, who’s a senior adviser in the White House alongside her husband Jared Kushner, has been the subject of repeated ethics complaints detailing her alleged corruption, according to The Daily Beast’s Dean Obeidallah.

“If Hunter Biden had received a lucrative deal from a foreign country on the very same day his then-vice president father was meeting with the leader of that foreign country, Trump — and many in the media — would be calling that out as sleazy and possibly illegal,” Obeidallah writes. “But Ivanka Trump has done that and worse and we don’t hear a peep.”

The non-partisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) has been tracking Ivanka Trump’s unethical conduct back to early 2017, and has filed complaints covering, among other things, her dealings with China and asked for an investigation into her and Kushner’s real estate holdings.

“In April 2017, on the very same day Trump dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government granted preliminary approval for Ivanka’s long-sought-after trademarks for her namesake fashion brand,” Obeidallah writes.

“Another jaw-dropping example of possible blatant corruption, as CREW detailed, came when Ivanka received preliminary approval for additional trademarks from China’s government on June 7, 2018,” he adds. “What else happened on June 7, 2018? Her father agreed to lift sanctions against the massive Chinese telecommunication company ZTE, which is partly owned by the Chinese government. The Trumps aren’t even trying to hide the conflicts!”

CREW has asked the Department of Justice whether Ivanka Trump and her husband personally benefited from a new tax law that she had worked on, and the watchdog is cataloguing possible violations right up through last week — when she allegedly violated the Hatch Act eight times in 48 hours.

“These allegations demand a full investigation to determine Ivanka and her father’s possible role in these sweetheart deals,” Obeidallah writes. “Despite what Donald and Ivanka may believe, just because your last name is Trump does not mean you are above the law.”

Melania cancels appearance at Trump rally due to “lingering cough” in wake of COVID-19 diagnosis

First lady Melania Trump has cancelled an appearance at a Pennsylvania rally with President Donald Trump due to her ongoing COVID-19 symptoms.

The first lady was slated to travel with the president on Tuesday to her first rally since receiving the COVID-19 diagnosis.

“Mrs. Trump continues to feel better every day following her recovery from COVID-19, but with a lingering cough, and out of an abundance of caution, she will not be traveling today,” a statement from the first lady’s office said.

Trump’s war on voting is backfiring — but that could change with Barrett on the Supreme Court

Donald Trump’s war on mail-in voting seems, like many of his schemes to steal the election, to be backfiring.

As much as he may publicly deny it, Trump knows he’s unpopular and cannot win a free and fair election. So he has determined that the best way to hang onto power is to keep as many Americans from voting as possible. Since nearly the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has been waging war against mail-in ballots, which many millions of Americans are using this year in order to avoid crowded and unsafe polling places.

Trump has repeatedly and falsely declared, with the help of Attorney General Bill Barr and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, that such ballots are dangerous and fraudulent. He has threatened to use mail-in ballots as an excuse to reject the results of any election he loses. His postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has been shamelessly taking measures to slow down delivery of the mail. And the Republicans, under Trump’s leadership, have done everything in their power on the state level to keep as many ballots as possible from being cast and counted. 

And yet, likely because of the very public nature of Trump’s war on voting, the whole scheme seems to be backfiring. Since he isn’t even hiding what he’s doing, it’s been easy for Democrats to communicate the importance of voting early, to protect votes from Trump’s machinations, without facing a wall of skepticism from the usual suspects in the media.

The result is a wave of early voting unlike we’ve ever seen in the United States. As of Tuesday morning, over more than 31 million Americans have cast their ballots, which amounts to at least 20% of the expected vote total for this election. And that’s with two weeks to go. Americans, or at least those Americans likely to vote for Democrats, clearly understand that Trump is trying to deny them their right to vote — and they’re doing what they can to stop him. 

Supporters of democracy secured another win late Monday, when the Supreme Court threw out a Republican challenge to Pennsylvania’s decision to extend the deadline for ballots to be received up to three days after Election Day. That temporary measure was put in to deal with the pandemic and the expected surge of people voting by mail for the first time. Pennsylvania is a swing state that was crucial to Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016, so he’s especially keen on suppressing Democratic votes in that state. 

This is the second fight Republicans have lost in their efforts to prevent people from voting by mail in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign also sued to keep the state from establishing drop boxes that allow voters to skip the Postal Service — and the slowed-down mail — by handing ballots directly over to election officials. That lawsuit was thrown out earlier this month and voters in the state have started casting ballots at the boxes. 

Unfortunately, there’s a fly in the ointment, the nature of which was neatly laid out by Ian Millhiser at Vox: Four of the five Republican justices on the Supreme Court, in the face of all law and precedent, were ready to entertain Trump’s obviously illegitimate challenge to the Pennsylvania election deadline. 

This is terrible, because, as Millhiser points out, election law is determined by the states and “in questions of state law, the state Supreme Court is supposed to be the final word on such disputes.”

“Indeed, if state supreme courts cannot interpret their state’s own election law, it’s unclear how that law is supposed to function,” he adds. 

In other words, rejecting the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the law shouldn’t even have been an option. That four Republican justices feel otherwise suggests, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, that there’s no legal argument Trump could make that is so preposterous that these four justices would reject it, so long as it serves the end goal of securing Republican power, including a second term for Donald Trump.

Trump has made it clear that he’s looking to the Supreme Court to save him from facing the judgment of voters. That four right-wing justices are willing to go along with this, no matter how much doing so violates the plain wording of the law, is terrifying. That’s especially true in the face of the Republican rush to seat Amy Coney Barrett on the court before the election, since she’s almost certain to be a fifth vote for the principle that Republicans deserve to hold power, law and democracy be damned. 

This is why it’s not hyperbolic to see the Barrett as the last leg being kicked out from under our fragile democracy, which can only be restored by expanding the Supreme Court, if and when Democrats regain the power to do so. It’s hard to imagine democracy surviving if a Supreme Court with six conservative justices gets the ultimate say over elections, and if their guiding principle is that any Democratic victory is illegitimate, regardless of the low-quality, bad-faith arguments presented. The goal of Republicans, under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is to make the U.S. a one-party state and shut out any voters who resist that. They are shockingly close to achieving that goal. 

It’s easy to give into despair, but let’s be clear: All is not lost. For one thing, even this corrupt slate of current justices probably wouldn’t go so far as to completely vacate the results of an election, simply because Trump wants them to. They’ll want to be a bit more subtle about it, using measures like trying to stop vote-counting as early as possible. But if Joe Biden wins the November election in a blowout, as now seems possible, that strategy will become impossible. The fact that so many people are voting early is a good sign — it means vote-counting will be well underway before the Barrett court can rush in to stop it. 

In addition, while Barrett’s confirmation is looking likely, Democrats haven’t given up completely on trying to slow it down or even stop it before the election. Late on Monday, Democrats tried to force a vote to adjourn Senate business until after the election, which would keep Barrett off the court. That move failed, but Senate Democrats have indicated they’ll keep trying to use procedural moves to slow Barrett’s confirmation down until after the election, which is only two weeks away. 

There’s no reason to be Pollyanna-ish here. Things are bad. Republicans are doing everything in their power to end democracy and render the right to vote meaningless, and using the courts as their main weapon on that front.

But so far they haven’t succeeded, in no small part because the American people are still resisting, the courts haven’t completely sold out to anti-democracy ideologues, and Trump himself is as bad at staging a coup as he was at running his business. Moreover, time is running out on the plot to keep people from voting and more votes are being banked every day. There’s still a chance to pull our democracy back from the abyss, but it’s going to require ordinary people doing everything they can to save it. 

Texas doesn’t have to tell voters if their mail-in ballots were rejected until after election: court

A federal appellate court panel on Monday ruled that Texas neither has to give voters a chance to correct issues with their ballots nor inform them if a ballot was rejected until after the election.

The ruling allows election officials to reject ballots over mismatched signatures without allowing voters to correct the problem — or even notifying them of a pending rejection.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled last month that the state’s process for verifying signatures on mail-in ballots “plainly violates certain voters’ constitutional rights” and was “inherently fraught with error with no recourse for voters.” Garcia ordered the state to change its process, because the current one “fails to guarantee basic fairness.”

A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the order last month. It allowed the state on Monday to keep its current rules in place until it reviews the case after the election, according to The Texas Tribune.

Under the current rules, the state does not have any process to allow voters to correct their ballots and does not have to inform voters if a ballot was rejected until 10 days after the election.

The ruling came after the state’s Supreme Court earlier restricted mail-in voting to seniors, individuals with disabilities and people who will not physically be able to vote in person.

Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote in the majority opinion that requiring a new process allowing voters to correct mistakes would compromise the integrity of the ballots “as Texas officials are preparing for a dramatic increase of mail-in voting, driven by a global pandemic.”

“Texas’ strong interest in safeguarding the integrity of its elections from voter fraud far outweighs any burden the state’s voting procedures place on the right to vote,” he wrote. (However, mail-in voter fraud is virtually nonexistent.)

The ruling followed a lawsuit filed by two voters in 2019 after their ballots were rejected due to perceived signature mismatches. The lawsuit was joined by disability, veterans and youth groups, who argued that the rules violated the 14th Amendment.

Judge Garcia, a Bill Clinton appointee, earlier sided with the voters, ruling that the rules had violated certain voters’ 14th Amendment rights.

Garcia said the state had created a “severe burden” without any “meaningful opportunity” to “cure” their ballot.

“As a result, those voters face complete disenfranchisement, and thus, their right to vote is at stake,” he wrote.

Garcia’s ruling required Secretary of State Ruth Hughs to inform county officials to compare signatures to those on file for the previous six years, attempt to notify voters about a pending rejection and allow them to correct the problem.

Voting rights groups involved in the lawsuit vowed to urge county officials to voluntarily inform voters about pending rejections.

“It will affect this 2020 election . . . I think the main thing we’re trying to do now is notify counties that ballot boards are not required to give pre-election day notice, but they can,” H. Drew Galloway, the executive director of MOVE Texas, told The Tribune. “We encourage them to follow the original intent of the lower courts here, so folks (whose ballots were rejected) can go vote in person or contest that decision.”

SCOTUS mail-in voting ruling raises alarm: Democrats may “never win another national election”

A divided Supreme Court rejected a Pennsylvania Republican effort to curtail mail-in voting, but experts say the Democratic victory may be short-lived — and confirming Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett would be a “disaster for Democrats.”

With Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s three liberals, the court split 4-4 to reject a request from Pennsylvania Republicans to block an order from the state’s Supreme Court allowing mail-in ballots to be counted if they are received within three days of Election Day — even if they do not have a clear postmark. The tie left the state decision in place, which Democratic lawyers hailed as “great news for voting rights.”

The four conservative justices, who would have blocked the state court ruling, did not issue a dissenting opinion to explain their votes.

“The unfathomable thing about the four justices siding [with] PA Republicans tonight: they would’ve stripped a state supreme court of the authority to say what the law is in their own state,” Bard College Professor Steven Mazie wrote on Twitter. “That’s way beyond right field. It’s judicial activism on steroids.”

If the conservatives had prevailed, the decision “would create legal chaos over a wide range of issues,” attorney Max Kennerly added.

Some Supreme Court reporters called the split “really scary” and “terrifying.” If Barrett is confirmed next week as expected, the court’s conservatives could potentially upend the election.

“Tonight four conservative Supreme Court justices indicated their support for a radical, anti-democratic theory that would stop state Supreme Courts from enforcing state election laws to protect the franchise,” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern wrote. “And Barrett could soon give them a fifth vote . . . The 2020 election may be in her hands.”

Though the court allowed the state order to stand, “that victory may only last a matter of days,” Vox’s Ian Millhiser reported. “Indeed, the GOP may be able to raise this issue again after Barrett is confirmed, potentially securing a court order requiring states like Pennsylvania to toss out an unknown number of ballots that arrive after Election Day. If the election is close, that could be enough to change the result.”

Some legal experts said it was possible, but unlikely, that the court would take the same case up again.

“It’s possible that Republicans can renew their application if and when Judge Barrett is confirmed, in the hopes that she’d side with them,” Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, wrote. “That said, that close to the election, it’s hard to imagine that all four of tonight’s dissenters would want to upset the status quo.”

Even if the case does not return to the high court, Barrett could be the deciding vote in numerous other challenges brought by Republicans or President Donald Trump’s campaign in Pennsylvania and other states, according to Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court’s split decision leaves many questions unanswered only14 days before the election.

“We have no guidance from the court as to when and whether a state Supreme Court can rely on a state Constitution when it expands or changes state voting rules in a presidential election,” Hasen wrote. “Even though Democrats opposed the stay sought by Republicans in the case, they begged the court to fully take the case and give an explanation as to the scope of state court power in this case. This lack of guidance could be a huge problem in the two battleground states — North Carolina and Pennsylvania — with Democratic state Supreme Courts and Republican legislatures who could battle over any post-election voting rules.”

Trump has repeatedly said he wants Barrett on the court in time for the election, because it “will end up in the Supreme Court.” He declared that he was “counting on them to look at the ballots” at the first presidential debate.

And other Republicans have echoed the president’s rhetoric. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who opposed Merrick Garland’s nomination months ahead of the 2016 election, has argued that it is imperative to confirm Barrett before the election. Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who likewise opposed Garland, also argued that it was necessary to speed through the confirmation, because “the court will decide” litigation about “who won the election.”

Barrett, who has not ruled on any election-related cases on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, demurred when asked during her confirmation hearings if she would recuse herself from cases that could determine the outcome of the presidential election despite precedent possibly requiring her to do so.

“I commit to you to fully and faithfully applying the law of recusal, and part of the law is to consider any appearance questions,” Barrett told Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt. “And I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether the circumstances require my recusal or not. But I can’t offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.”

All of this potentially makes Monday’s ruling a disaster “for anyone who cares about democracy,” Millhiser wrote.

“If Democrats win this election, and they don’t pack the Supreme Court,” he added, “they could very well never win a national election again.”

Let’s imagine the unimaginable: A second term for Donald Trump

With the high-water mark of the election just 14 days away, the tragedy of Nov. 8, 2016, haunts me more and more. 

Four years ago, nearly everyone, including Donald Trump himself, was convinced Hillary Clinton was all but guaranteed a resounding victory. I remember articles predicting that Clinton would win the entire East Coast, including South Carolina. Later, following the third debate of that campaign season, I distinctly recall watching Steve Schmidt on MSNBC announcing in his dramatic monotone, “Hillary Clinton will be the 45th president of the United States.” Election forecasters from Nate Silver to Sabato’s Crystal Ball agreed.

None of that happened, of course, for a variety of reasons, including the attack by Russian military intelligence and what I’ve been calling the “American nervous breakdown.” Sixty-two million of our fellow citizens lost track of right and wrong — brainwashed by a daily infusion of propaganda crapped into the world by Russian troll farms and the conservative entertainment complex. Millions of us lost track of why experience and presidential character were important, and the ideals of humility, decency and honor were rejected in favor of immature trolling, and petty vengeance. 

And how’d that work out, Trump voters? Our republic is in worse shape today than it’s been in a century, perhaps since the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands of us are dead due to Trump’s herky-jerky response to a global pandemic. America is a global pariah. The economy is considerably worse than it was four years ago and 40 percent of our nation’s grownups continue to be willingly suckered by a maniacal, sociopathic con man.

So sue me for being Captain Scarypants again, but despite the polls showing Joe Biden with a seemingly formidable lead, I’m still greatly concerned that Trump will somehow scam and sue his way to a second term. If he does, what will that mean for the United States?

With Trump, there’s no way to know precisely what he’ll do from moment to moment, much less next year or four years from now. As we’ve witnessed, his thing is to jump from childish vendetta to childish vendetta, and one transactional blunder after another. His actions, as always, will depend greatly on how whiny and victimized he feels. And he’s always whining. 

Even though there’s no time-traveling DeLorean that enables us to forecast what another four years of the Trump crisis will look like, I can think of five specific things that will absolutely happen.

Trump will prosecute dissidents. He’s already started with the Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this year, but now he has a real taste for it. No matter what, Trump will sue to have vote-by-mail ballots thrown out, and will appeal any adverse decisions all the way to the Supreme Court. In the process of doing so, protests will likely erupt, giving Trump his first post-election opportunity to order his secret police to gas, shoot and arrest protesters. He’s already threatened to do exactly this, telling his loyalists, “Our country is gonna change. We’re not gonna allow [more anti-Trump protests] to happen.” Last week Trump bragged about what looked an awful lot like the extrajudicial murder of an American citizen by U.S. marshals in Washington state. Expect much more of that. As Michael Cohen wrote in his book, “Trump never actually jokes.”

Conservatives will own the Supreme Court for a generation. Unless something emerges that forces her to withdraw, it looks like Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed, giving conservatives on the high court a clear majority of 6-3. Meanwhile, Stephen Breyer, one of the three remaining Democratic appointees, is 82 years old, so it’s reasonable to assume he’ll retire or pass away within the next four years. Trump will name his replacement, leaving Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor as the last remaining liberals. If Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito decides to retire, Trump could add another justice or two, extending conservative control for 25 more years, and the ideological regression of America will be turbo-boosted to “ludicrous speed.” 

The pandemic will continue for years, not months. Trump has no intention of doing what’s right. He never has. His genocidal “herd immunity” plan will continue to infect millions, while the CDC will be neutralized. In terms of a vaccine, if the scientists vouch for it, Trumpers won’t take it, and if Trump vouches for it, everyone else will refuse to take it. As long as Trump is president, we’ll be dealing with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. I have no idea how our society can endure given all that, and my worst fear is that we’ll have no choice but to live with the ongoing threat of infection and death.

We’ll lose more time to slow or stop the climate crisis. Like the pandemic in a second Trump term, it’s likely we’ll end up resigning ourselves to the reality of the climate crisis, choosing to mitigate the symptoms rather than solve the problem — Trump’s “it is what it is” approach. At this point, even if Trump rejoined the Paris climate accord tomorrow, and even if all the signatory nations did exactly what they need to do, global temperatures will likely still increase by 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. The West Antarctic ice sheet is slowly melting into the sea. Greenland’s ice sheet has passed its point of no return. Instead of focusing our attention on preventing our own extinction, we’ll end up wasting the next four years resisting Trump while digging and scratching just to hang onto the last shreds of our democracy and national sanity.

Truth will be further eroded as QAnon becomes a dominant GOP voting bloc. It’s always possible this fad retreats back to the margins, but for the moment, the Republican Party has grappled itself to this underground society of suckers and weirdos. Party leadership already recognizes the Q people as a necessary voting bloc — a subsidiary of Trump’s Red Hat army. Trump, the nominal head of his party, has retweeted QAnon tweets, and last week during his NBC town hall, he practically lionized the group as noble opponents of pedophilia (just after saying he knows “nothing” about them). If the president fully embraces QAnon gibberish about the “deep state,” and if that metastasizes in the political debate, it could end up helping Trump ascend to monarch status on a mountain of anti-“deep state” horseshit, granting him carte blanche as Congress and the bureaucracy are rendered (even more) impotent.

Apart from these catastrophes, the thing that keeps me up at night is the basic notion that a sham re-election will endow Trump with the false perception of a mandate. Remember in 2004, after George W. Bush narrowly won re-election? One of the first things he announced was, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and I intend to spend it.” Now imagine Trump saying the same thing, then acting accordingly. It’s terrifying to consider the institution-crushing actions he’ll take with his “capital.” 

The best approach? Assume the worst. He’s given us no reason to assume otherwise. I fear he’ll attempt to establish himself as the American Putin, maybe creating a new title and post for himself so he can remain in power, while juggernauting through the last roadblocks toward a full-on kleptocracy. Suffice it to say there are untold hazards ahead, with each hammer-blow further stripping away our constitutional system until America more closely resembles Russia — dismal, depressed and undemocratic.

I hope I’m wrong about all of this. But based on what we know about Donald Trump, as well as the sinister end-of-days cranks helping him along, I can’t in good faith trust that things will transpire normally. We’ve got a Pandora’s Box full of reasons to believe our country has been seized by villains who don’t care whether the entire system is crushed under Trump’s ponderous bulk. Given everything that’s happened, I worry that they’ve covered their bases with election-stealing contingencies that include shenanigans we haven’t even considered yet. After the shock of election night four years ago, I’m not willing to take anything for granted, including the polls.

There is also reason to believe an unprecedented coalition of American voters will successfully oust Trump, while perhaps humiliating him and his idiocratic movement back to the permanent margins of our politics. This has to be the result of the election. After all, the choice is either a decent, experienced man (who you might disagree with on policy) or a shrieking, saucer-eyed con artist who dry-heaves lies and incarcerates children while bragging to his cult about murdering American citizens. There are 14 days left to make sure it’s not the latter outcome. If everything works out the way it should, I’ll be thrilled to retract everything I wrote today. Please, America — make me do it.

Mitt Romney hits Trump for refusing to denounce “absurd and dangerous” QAnon

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Friday issued a blistering statement condemning President Donald Trump for not denouncing the QAnon conspiracy theory during his town hall appearance on Thursday night.

“The President’s unwillingness to denounce an absurd and dangerous conspiracy theory last night continues an alarming pattern: politicians and parties refuse to forcefully and convincingly repudiate groups like antifa, white supremacists, and conspiracy peddlers,” Romney said.

Romney then blamed both political parties for failing to “expel the rabid fringes and the extremes” and of “eagerly trading their principles for the hope of electoral victories.”

Despite Romney’s warnings about both Republicans and Democrats going to extremes, however, no prominent Democrat has said they support antifa, whereas multiple Republican congressional candidates running this year are either openly supportive of QAnon or are openly courting QAnon believers.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) this week, for instance, touted her endorsement by Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon-believing candidate who has also questioned whether terrorists actually flew a plane into the Pentagon on 9/11.

An authoritarian holds the reins of power: Don’t assume Donald Trump can lose the election

With just two weeks to go, trailing badly in most polls, how can Donald Trump possibly win the 2020 election?

That question and its attendant assumptions are dominating the conventional wisdom regarding the 2020 presidential election. The question itself is not unreasonable, and the evidence in support of the assumed answer (that Trump cannot possibly win) is substantial, if not overwhelming.

Donald Trump trails by approximately 11 percentage points among likely voters in national polls. If that trend continues through Nov. 3, he would suffer one of the worst defeats in recent American political history. More than 26 million people have already voted, four times the number at this stage in 2016. A majority of these early voters are Democrats. Based on precedent, this high turnout is extremely bad news for the incumbent. 

FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver’s website, recently calculated that Joe Biden has an 88 percent chance of victory.

Political scientists and historians have developed various models for predicting whether a given candidate will likely win a presidential election. Nearly all the indicators suggest that Donald Trump will not be re-elected, thanks to a dreadful and worsening economy, the coronavirus pandemic, scandals, social unrest, and a general sense of discontent with his administration.

Trump is apparently bleeding support. The so-called white working class, which supported him so enthusiastically in 2016, seems to be abandoning him. Polls and other research also show that Trump is losing older white voters — another of his key constituencies — by significant numbers, both in key battleground states like Florida as well as nationwide. Trump’s attempt to use white supremacy to frighten “suburban housewives” (his coded term for married white women) into supporting him appears to have failed.

To that point, neuroscientists have conducted new research which shows that Trump’s fear-mongering and other scare tactics will likely not be as effective with undecided voters as they were in the 2016 election.

The Trump campaign has raised significantly less money to this point in the 2020 campaign than has Biden’s campaign. Reportedly, the Trump campaign is no longer able to run ads in states he must win if he is to have any chance at an Electoral College victory. According to rumor, the Trump campaign (and his inner circle more generally) is disorganized, with its members turning against one another and seeking escape. There is a deep sense of dread has taken over that Donald Trump’s defeat and humiliation are inevitable.

Trump’s hospitalization with the coronavirus and the various drugs he was administered have appeared to make an already mentally unwell and pathological person even more deranged, dangerous and out of touch with reality.

“How can Donald Trump possibly win?” is a comforting question for the American people and a mainstream news media collectively suffering from PTSD and still trying to navigate the malignant reality of the Age of Trump (and beyond). At its core, the question reflects a deep desire, if not desperation, for a return to “normalcy”.

The question the American people and the country’s political class should be asking, however, is this: How could Donald Trump possibly lose the presidency?

Trump is a fascist and an authoritarian who has repeatedly threatened that any election where he does not win is by definition illegitimate and to be disregarded. He has also suggested that he wants to imprison leading Democrats such as Biden, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for being part of an attempted “coup” against him. 

As with other authoritarians and fascists, Trump’s followers and inner circle believe that he literally embodies the law. Moreover, they have accepted that his word is law and that Trump’s personal interests are the same as the nation’s interests. For them, Trump is now effectively a king or an emperor. Like other authoritarians and fascists in this century, Trump uses the law as a weapon to give the regime a veneer of democracy and “populist” legitimacy.

Donald Trump has the highest level of baseline support — that is, loyalty among his own party and his core supporters — in the history of modern public opinion polling in America.

The 2020 election is also taking place in a season of death cased by the coronavirus and the Trump regime’s negligence and sabotage of relief efforts. “Coronavirus-fascism” is a unique moment in the country’s history and presents another opportunity for Trump, his regime and his followers to break longstanding norms about presidential elections.

In total, Donald Trump and his regime have many more tools to remain in power than Biden and the Democrats have to remove him. The Biden campaign is well aware of this fact, which is why its spokespeople have been telling Democratic voters to disregard the polls suggesting that a landslide victory on Election Day 2020 is inevitable.

New Yorker staff writer Masha Gessen, author of the new book “Surviving Autocracy,” argues that America in the Age of Trump is in the midst of what Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar describes as an “autocratic attempt.” In a recent interview with Salon, Gessen explained:

One of the concepts in Magyar’s work is that it begins with an autocratic attempt, and up until the moment of an autocratic breakthrough, you can actually use electoral mechanisms to resist the autocratic attempt. And then after the autocratic breakthrough, the institutions have been weakened sufficiently that you can no longer use them to resist. …

[I]n order to be able to use the institutions that we have to resist the autocratic attempt, we have to assume that they’re working and we have to assume that we’re using them in good faith. But the problem is that we might be using them in good faith — but he is not. So in a way we have a clash of realities. And we’re at a huge disadvantage because the institutions were not designed to resist somebody who’s approaching them in bad faith.

Instead of learning these new rules, too many Americans, especially among the chattering classes, are still operating on outdated assumptions about the country’s politics. This is an example of the unhealthy behavior psychologists describe as “repetition compulsion.”

In more normal times “repetition compulsion” in political life would just be a type of quirk. But in a failing democracy such behavior is often catastrophic.

Trump’s weapons to finalize an autocratic breakthrough include the Supreme Court, where Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed before Election Day 2020. Trump has publicly suggested what Barret’s first and most important job will be: she is to vote in his favor if the Supreme Court decides the outcome of the 2020 election.

For decades, the Republican Party has created a system of voter suppression, gerrymandering and other means, both “legal” and otherwise, to prevent the American people from voting for the Democratic Party.

Attorney General William Barr, the Republican Party, right-wing interest groups and other organizations will use their vast resources to keep Donald Trump in power. Such a strategy is about much more than Trump’s reign. It is part of a decades-long plan to protect white power in America by creating a new apartheid order in which a white minority can oppress, with impunity, an increasingly black and brown country.

At the Boston Review, Reed Hunt, CEO of Making Every Vote Count, details the steps involved in Donald Trump’s anti-democracy gambit:

As of now, Biden’s margin is likely going to be closer to 10 million votes. About 145 million people will vote. So, 10 million would put you around a 7 percent range. If everyone who wanted to vote voted, and if all those votes were counted, the probability that the votes would be allocated across the country in such a way that Trump would win the electoral college is vanishingly small when the national margin is that big.

So, what will Trump do? His strategy has to be the following: first, he has to deny people the opportunity to vote; second, he has to make sure that not all the votes that people have cast are counted; third, he has to make sure that judicial rulings on voting and the election are in his favor; and, fourth, he has to have a backup plan in which Republican legislatures take control of the electors if the other steps did not so alter the counting as to give Trump victory in the critical swing states.

Unlike Joe Biden and the Democrats, Donald Trump and his regime are not limited to “normal politics.” Trump has been recruiting what he describes as an “army” of right-wing paramilitaries and would-be terrorists as “poll watchers” who are tasked with intimidating and harassing Democratic voters. Given their recent and past behavior, Trump’s paramilitaries and right-wing terrorists will likely be heavily armed and physically violent. During his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump even told his paramilitaries and other political hooligans to “stand by” in case he does not win the election. As recently seen in Michigan, where a group of Trump supporters planned to kidnap and potentially murder Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Trump’s political thugs are eager to keep their Great Leader in power by any means necessary.

The U.S. military has repeatedly said it will not involve itself in the country’s election and transition of power regardless of the outcome. That decision offers both worry and comfort to those Americans who truly care about the country’s democracy.

If Trump somehow steals the 2020 election, either at the polling booths or in the courts or both, the American people, the news media, and the political class more generally cannot claim that they were in any way taken by surprise or limited by a failure of imagination. They saw a preview of American fascism in the form of Donald Trump and his movement in 2016. The years since then have offered painful lessons about the country’s failing democracy. Unfortunately, too many members of the mainstream news media, the commentariat more generally, and other political observers — as well as the American people en masse — have refused to learn them.

If Donald Trump finds a way to “win” it should not shock anyone. Those who may claim to be amazed or befuddled by such an outcome are themselves among the reasons American fascism took root and flourished in this moment. Such voices are not innocent. They are in many ways complicit.

Paul Krugman reveals the biggest danger Amy Coney Barrett poses to “the future of civilization”

If Nov. 3 brings the massive blue wave that Democrats are hoping for, voters will not only replace President Donald Trump with former Vice President Joe Biden — they will also allow the party to maintain a majority in the House and gain a majority in the Senate. The outcome of the 2020 election remains to be seen, but the prospects for such a sweep are raising hopes about potentially major progressive changes in U.S. policy. 

Liberal economist Paul Krugman, though, argues in his New York Times column that even if Democrats are in total control of the elected branches, Republicans will still be in a position to inflict considerable suffering with a far-right supermajority on the Supreme Court.

The Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett — Trump’s far-right nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court — started last Monday, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is hoping that Barrett will be confirmed before the end of the month. 

Krugman explains: “It looks as if a president who is probably about to become a lame duck — and who lost the popular vote even in 2016 — together with a Senate that represents a minority of the American people, are about to install a right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court…. Even if Democrats take both the Senate and the White House, they’re now almost certain to face a 6-3 Supreme Court — that is, a Court dominated by appointees of an increasingly extremist party that has only won the popular vote for president once in the past three decades.”

The Times columnist stresses that having a far-right Supreme Court majority will be terrible in a variety of ways.

“In the hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Democrats have, rightly and understandably, hammered on the possibility that such a (Supreme) Court would use transparently spurious arguments to overturn the Affordable Care Act, causing tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage,” Krugman notes. “Roe v. Wade is also in obvious danger. But I’d argue that the biggest threat this Court will pose is to environmental policy.”

Krugman notes that billionaire Charles Koch “is reportedly investing millions trying to get Barrett confirmed.”

“That’s not because he’s passionately opposed to abortion rights or probably, even because he wants the ACA overturned,” Krugman observes. “What he’s looking for, surely, is a (Supreme) Court that will block government regulation of business — and above all, a Court that will hamstring a Biden administration’s efforts to take action against climate change.”

Krugman adds, “It’s hard to overstate just how dangerous it will be if the power of the Supreme Court ends up being used to undermine environmental protection…. We’re already starting to see the effects of global warming in the form of fires and floods, and if we waste the next few years, it will probably be too late to avoid catastrophe.”

The economist concludes his column by warning that even if Democrats are in control of the White House and both houses of Congress next year, a far-right Supreme Court could be an environmental nightmare.

“If a GOP-stacked Supreme Court blocks effective climate policy, it won’t just be an outrage — it will be a disaster for America and the world,” Krugman warns. “So, that can’t be allowed to happen. Never mind all the talk about norms, which only seem to apply to Democrats, anyway. What’s at stake here could be the future of civilization.”

Trump and the right share a social Darwinist “herd mentality” — it leads to widespread death

Donald Trump’s promise in an ABC News town hall last month that the United States would soon achieve herd immunity for the coronavirus, and conflating that with herd mentality, may be explained because Trump is counting on the latter to rescue his second term. It’s otherwise impossible to imagine a campaign whose endgame is to recover the lost loyalty of voters over 65 selecting as its closing argument, “Not enough of you have died yet.”

It’s a safe bet that none of his 2016 Republican primary challengers would have embraced the idea that the solution to the pandemic was more American casualties than the Civil War and World War II combined. But many of Trump’s Republican comrades-in-arms have embraced, often eagerly, a default preference for herd immunity — harkening back to the harsh social Darwinism that underlies much of modern conservatism. Early on in the pandemic there were Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana and radio host Glenn Beck, all of whom argued that the loss of more American lives was preferable to scaling back the economy. Then, when the issue became wearing masks, some opponents argued “if I’m going to get COVID and die from it, so be it …” Of course they really meant, “If you are going to get COVID …” Wearing masks was a deprivation of freedom — although this argument seems never to have been extended by Republicans to the prohibition on public nudity. 

As the pandemic surged again, by October Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was referring to “unjustified hysteria” about covid, and asked, after he became infected, “”Why do we think we actually can stop the progression of a contagious disease?” (The obvious answer is that we have been doing so, with increasing success, since the 1854 cholera pump moment. That is rejected by many on the right, because stopping a pandemic may require the government to prevent citizens from endangering others.) 

Herd immunity can sometimes reduce mortality from a disease, but over the centuries has failed to end the curse of influenza, tuberculosis, smallpox, polio, rabies or dengue fever. It fits neatly, however, into a social Darwinist framework. Those who die are the “weak” — the poorest, the youngest and the oldest young — or can at any rate be classified as weak and deserving to die, because they died. Survival of the fittest requires discarding the weak. Remember the “let them die” hecklers who populated some of the 2011 Republican debates on health care. 

This underlying value distortion — my personal freedom extends to my right to endanger you — spreads out across a range of other issues. Today’s Republican reluctance to curb pollution even when it is demonstrably is killing a power plant’s neighbors, to keep pesticides that kill farm workers out of the fields or to do anything at all about the climate crisis, which conservatives have privately conceded for years was real and caused by carbon pollution, are all illustrations of how the toxin of social Darwinism still contaminates much of the right’s thinking about freedom.

So Trump’s response to the COVID crisis — and the willingness of the Republican congressional establishment to enable it — illustrates a deep-rooted flaw in the American right. In a world in which we are, like it or not, all bound together, a tolerable conservatism is one that is willing to protect me from irresponsible neighbors, whether those are COVID-risking teenagers, irresponsible gun owners or multinational chemical companies.

GOP senator who mocked Kamala Harris once asked Black supporter about Perdue chicken and Herman Cain

Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., drew swift backlash on Friday night after he deliberately mispronounced Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris‘ first name at a rally, adding several syllables as he drew laughs from the crowd.

The senator’s re-election campaign said the Republican senator had “simply mispronounced Senator Harris’ name, and he didn’t mean anything by it.” Harris’ press secretary rebuked the remarks as “incredibly racist” as members of the media poured cold water on the campaign’s claim.

“Perdue has served with Kamala Harris in the Senate for four years,” Washington Post White House Bureau Chief Phil Rucker tweeted. “He knows how to properly pronounce her name.”

The controversial remarks prompted the #MyNameIs hashtag to trend on Twitter as people of color shared their experiences about their names.

“Our names are a fundamental part of our identity and pride,” Iranian-American news anchor Asieh Namdar tweeted. “They tell the story of who we are. Pronouncing it properly is a sign of respect. Some of us immigrants with ‘difficult’ names are frankly too too old and too tired to have to say this over and over again.”

Perdue likely has a last name familiar to many Americans because of its resemblance to the namesake of Perdue Farms. However, the Republican is not part of the family who owns the major poultry processing company.

Nevertheless, the senator once invoked this likeness during a brief conversation with a Black man at a 2014 campaign event. Upon introduction, the Republican asked whether the young man liked Perdue chicken before referencing Herman Cain, the former Black Republican presidential candidate. The unprompted exchange, which took place at a campaign stop in the northwest Atlanta suburb of Marietta, was caught on video footage first obtained by Salon.

As seen on the video, a young Black man with a blue Perdue campaign sticker on his maroon shirt introduced himself to the candidate. Amid crosstalk, the unidentified man shook Perdue’s hand in an apparent sign of support.

As he placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, Perdue said, “Let me ask you a question: How do you like Perdue chicken?”

“Delicious,” the man responded.

“Herman Cain’s got to be at our thing Sunday or Monday night,” Perdue continued, referencing the well-known Black Republican politician from Georgia who had run for president two years earlier. 

Perdue added that Cain had jokingly endorsed his campaign by “talking about how much he loves Perdue chicken.”

Cain, a co-chair of Black Voices for Trump, died from complications of COVID-19 in July at age 74. He tested positive for the disease shortly after appearing without a mask at Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla.

Cain was a radio host with a contract which prevented him from officially endorsing any candidate in 2014. However, he said at the time how much he “loved Perdue chickens” with a wink. A few weeks prior to the event, Cain used the line during a talk at his alma mater Morehouse College, a historically Black institution.

The young Black man at the Marietta campaign event wore a maroon shirt, Morehouse College’s color. However, he did not appear in the video to connect Perdue’s opening question about chicken with Cain’s earlier remarks.

The reflexive association of Black people with chicken is a widely known racist trope. A Republican lawmaker from Tennessee received blowback over the weekend for blaming obesity rates in his state on fried chicken.

“Any attempt to use this video to attack Senator Perdue is based on absolutely ridiculous and false assumptions and this shows just how desperate the Democrats are in this race,” a Perdue spokesperson told Salon in a lengthy emailed statement, the entirety of which is printed at the conclusion of this article. 

As criticism of Perdue’s attack against Harris spread on Friday, Perdue Farms took steps to clarify public misconception about connections to the Republican senator amid calls to boycott the company. A spokesperson tweeted multiple times that “David Perdue has no affiliation with our Perdue brand.”

Those remarks also drew comparisons to a 2006 incident when then-Sen. George Allen, R-Va., called a tracker from his opponents’ campaign “Macaca,” which is a Portuguese word for “monkey.” Allen, who later apologized, narrowly lost the election to Democrat Jim Webb.

The Perdue campaign was forced to pull an attack ad in July that enlarged the nose of Democratic rival John Ossoff — a common anti-Semitic trope. A spokesperson, who said the campaign had pulled the ad “to ensure there is absolutely no confusion,” called the distortion “accidental” at the time. Perdue, the official said, had a “strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.”

The communications director for the Perdue campaign, who in a widely ridiculed tweet defended what he called Perdue’s “mispronouncing” of Harris’ name, was once forced to delete a tweet confusing two people of color that he posted while serving as a GOP operative in 2016. He acknowledged the tweet was “disrespectful” in his apology. 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose show once featured a guest who told Black Americans “you need to move on” from slavery, lashed out this August after a guest corrected him for mispronouncing Harris’ name.

“So I’m disrespecting her by mispronouncing her name unintentionally?” Carlson asked at the time before intentionally mispronouncing the senator’s name.

Harris has taught others how to properly pronounce her first name by invoking a common punctuation mark: the comma. 

Ossoff’s campaign raised $1.8 million in the wake of Perdue’s weekend remarks. A debate previously scheduled for tomorrow was moved to Oct. 28 after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., abruptly called legislators back to Washington for a possible vote on a coronavirus relief bill.

Perdue Farms did not immediately provide a response Salon’s request for comment.

Below is the Perdue campaign’s full statement to Salon:

Any attempt to use this video to attack Senator Perdue is based on absolutely ridiculous and false assumptions and this shows just how desperate the Democrats are in this race. In 2014, David Perdue was an outsider who had never run for office. Voters heard he was a Fortune 500 CEO and would often ask him out on the campaign trail if he was the “Perdue chicken guy.” Herman Cain, who ended up becoming a dear personal friend of the Senator, would often joke with David that most people probably thought he was associated with the company. At the time, Herman Cain had contractual obligations with his radio show that kept him from endorsing candidates, but he felt so strongly in Perdue’s campaign that he often said on his radio show and in speeches that he really liked “Perdue chicken” when talking about David and the Senate race. One of the speeches where he used the “Perdue chicken” line while answering a question about the senate race was at his alma mater Morehouse College. Several Morehouse College students ended up volunteering and working for the Perdue campaign in the following weeks. Any attempt to turn it into something else is completely absurd. On a final note, Herman Cain was a dear personal friend of Senator Perdue. This attempt to use him after his tragic passing is shameful and disgusting.

The public, the personal, and the utter hypocrisy of the GOP

Trump and many Republicans insist that the decisions whether to wear a mask, go to a bar or gym, or work or attend school during a pandemic should be personal. Government should play no role.

Yet they also insist that what a woman does with her own body or whether same-sex couples can marry should be decided by government.

It’s a tortured, topsy-turvy view of what’s public and what’s private. Yet it’s remarkably prevalent as the pandemic resurges and as the Senate considers Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court.

By contrast, Joe Biden has wisely declared he would do “whatever it takes” to stop the pandemic, including mandating masks and locking down the entire economy if scientists recommend it. “I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he said.

And Biden wants to protect both abortion and same-sex marriage from government intrusion. In 2012 he memorably declared his support of the latter before even Barack Obama did so.

Trump’s opposite approaches, discouraging masks and other Covid restrictions while seeking government intrusion into the most intimate decisions anyone makes, have become the de facto centerpieces of his campaign. 

At his “town hall” on Thursday night, Trump falsely claimed that most people who wear masks contract the virus. 

He also criticized governors for ordering lockdowns, adding that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer “wants to be a dictator.” (He was speaking just one week after state and federal authorities announced they had thwarted an alleged plot to kidnap and possibly kill Whitmer.)

Attorney General William Barr – once again contesting Trump for the most wacky analogy – has called state lockdown orders the “greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” since slavery.

Yet at the very same time Trump and his fellow-travelers defend peoples’ freedom to infect others or become infected with Covid-19, they’re inviting government to intrude into the most intimate aspects of personal life.

Trump has promised that the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, establishing a federal right to abortion, will be reversed “because I am putting pro-life justices on the court.”

Much of controversy over Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court hinges on her putative willingness to repeal Roe.

While an appeals court judge, Barrett ruled in favor of a law requiring doctors to inform the parents of any minor seeking an abortion, without exceptions, and also joined a dissenting opinion suggesting that an Indiana state law requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains was constitutional.

A Justice Barrett might also provide the deciding vote for reversing Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court decision protecting same-sex marriage. Only three members of the majority in that case remain on the Court. 

Barrett says her views are rooted in the “text” of the Constitution. That’s a worrisome omen given that earlier this month Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito opined that the right to same-sex marriage “is found nowhere in the text” of the Constitution.

What’s public, what’s private, and where should government intervene? The question suffuses the impending election and much else in modern American life. 

It is nonsensical to argue, as do Trump and his allies, that government cannot mandate masks or close businesses during a pandemic but can prevent women from having abortions and same-sex couples from marrying. 

The underlying issue is the common good, what we owe each other as members of the same society. During wartime, we expect government to intrude on our daily lives for the common good: drafting us into armies, converting our workplaces and businesses, demanding we sacrifice normal pleasures and conveniences.  During a pandemic as grave as this one we should expect no less intrusion, in order that we not expose each other to the risk of contracting the virus. 

But we have no right to impose on each other our moral or religious views about when life begins or the nature and meaning of marriage. The common good requires instead that we honor such profoundly personal decisions.

Public or private? We owe it to each other to understand the distinction.

Supreme Court agrees to hear case on Trump’s border wall

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear cases challenging the Trump administration’s use of Pentagon funding to pay for a border wall and its policy that has kept tens of thousands of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico while their cases are pending.

In the border wall funding case, the high court will consider a challenge to the Trump administration’s use of about $2.5 billion earmarked to pay members of the U.S. military to instead fund construction of part of his long-promised wall on the southern border. That case, Sierra Club v. Trump, was brought by the ACLU on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

Earlier this month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the administration could not use $3.6 billion in military construction money to build parts of the wall, including projects in the El Paso and Laredo areas. Gloria Smith, managing attorney at the Sierra Club, said the Supreme Court will hear the larger case that challenges the use of both types of Pentagon funding.

“Stopping this wasteful and irreversible damage is long overdue, and we look forward to making our case before the Supreme Court,” she said in a statement.

The other case focuses on the Migrant Protection Protocols, also called “remain in Mexico,” which require most asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their immigration court hearings in the United States.

Implemented as a way to deter migrants from seeking asylum, the policy has sent about 60,000 asylum seekers, most of them from Central America and Cuba, across the southern border. The program launched in El Paso in March 2019 before expanding to the Laredo and Rio Grande Valley areas of Texas.

The program was widely criticized by immigration attorneys and advocates, who said it endangered thousands of vulnerable asylum seekers by sending them to Mexican border states that have seen sustained violence. A May 2020 report by Human Rights First documented more than 1,100 reports of rape, extortion, kidnapping and other crimes by migrants after the policy took effect.

Attorneys have also argued that the program makes proper representation nearly impossible because they can’t easily locate or communicate with clients who are staying in migrant shelters or have no place to live.

After a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies and the Southern Poverty Law Center, the program has been blocked by lower courts, only to be allowed to continue by those same courts.

“Asylum seekers face grave danger every day this illegal and depraved policy is in effect,” Judy Rabinovitz, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement. “The courts have repeatedly ruled against it, and the Supreme Court should as well.”

Rabinovitz said it’s not clear when the court will consider the case, but the timing could hinge on the presidential election next month.

“There are reasons to go at least slower to see who wins the election because [Democratic nominee Joe] Biden has put it on the top of his list to rescind the policy,” she said. “If that’s the case, it means [the lawsuit] will likely become moot.”

Disclosure: The Southern Poverty Law Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism.

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

Trump denies COVID surge, insists “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots”

Hours after bragging about his persistent refusal to listen to scientists when it comes to fighting the deadly coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump on Monday lashed out at Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials, saying during a call with his campaign staff that “people are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”

“People are tired of Covid. People are saying, ‘Whatever, just leave us alone,'” Trump said of a virus that has killed more than 219,000 Americans and is still spreading at an alarming rate across the United States. “He’s been here for, like, 500 years. He’s like this wonderful sage telling us how—Fauci, if we listened to him, we’d have 700,000 [or] 800,000 deaths.”

“If there’s a reporter on, you can have it just the way I said it, I couldn’t care less,” the president added, addressing members of the press on the call.

Trump’s comments came after the airing Sunday night of Fauci’s interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” during which the nation’s top infectious disease expert rejected the president’s rosy depiction of the current state of the pandemic and said the White House has been restricting his ability to speak to the press about the pandemic.

“When you have a million deaths and over 30 million infections globally, you can not say that we’re on the road to essentially getting out of this,” Fauci said, an assessment that directly contradicts Trump’s recent claim that the U.S. is “rounding the turn.”

Fauci also once again voiced his displeasure with the Trump campaign’s decision to pluck some of his comments about the Covid-19 crisis out of context and place them in a campaign ad, making it appear as if Fauci was praising the president’s handling of the pandemic.

“I do not and nor will I ever, publicly endorse any political candidate. And here I am, they’re sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad,” Fauci said of the spot, which is still running in battleground states. “I got really ticked off.”

Final presidential debate will have muted microphones

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced new rules on Monday intended to allow the candidates to speak uninterrupted at the final debate on Thursday.

Under the new rules, each candidate will have two minutes to address each of six topics. For that period of time, his opponent’s microphone will be muted.

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The change comes in response to the first debate, which descended into chaos as President Trump insulted Joe Biden and argued with moderator Chris Wallace. According to a Fox News analysis, Trump interrupted 145 times in 90 minutes, while Biden interrupted 67 times.

Earlier on Monday, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said it would be “completely unacceptable” for anyone to be enabled to mute the candidates.

“[A] decision to proceed with that change amounts to turning further editorial control of the debate over to the Commission which has already demonstrated its partiality to Biden,” Stepien wrote.

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The debate will be divided into six segments, covering COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership. Each topic will have a two-minute opening from each candidate, followed by an open exchange between the candidates. The microphones will not be muted for the latter portion.

“During the times dedicated for open discussion, it is the hope of the Commission that the candidates will be respectful of each others’ time, which will advance civil discourse for the benefit of the viewing public,” the commission said in a statement.

NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker will be the moderator.

The commission acknowledged that the campaigns are not happy with the change.

“We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today,” the commission wrote. “One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.”

Read more from Variety: “The Vow”: What the finale’s surprise twist means for Season 2

The Trump campaign has also complained about the topics, saying the debate should be devoted to discussion of foreign policy, which the campaign feels would allow for a fuller exploration of Hunter Biden’s business activities. Trump himself has also complained about Welker, calling her a “radical left Democrat” during an appearance in Arizona on Monday.

Jeff Bridges reveals cancer diagnosis, says he’s starting treatment

Jeff Bridges took to Twitter Monday evening to reveal he’s been diagnosed with lymphoma. In a nod to his iconic role in “The Big Lebowski,” the Academy Award-winning actor tweeted, “As the Dude would say.. New S**T has come to light. I have been diagnosed with Lymphoma. Although it is a serious disease, I feel fortunate that I have a great team of doctors and the prognosis is good. I’m starting treatment and will keep you posted on my recovery.” See below.

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Bridges, who last starred in 2018’s “Bad Times at the El Royale” and will next be seen starring in the FX on Hulu series “The Old Man,” also added, “I’m profoundly grateful for the love and support from my family and friends. Thank you for your prayers and well wishes. And, while I have you, please remember to go vote. Because we are all in this together.” He then urged fans to head to Vote.org before signing off his message with “Love, Jeff.”

Read more from IndieWire: “Underground Railroad” teaser:  A stirring first look at Barry Jenkins’ series and Nicholas Britell’s score

Bridges has been nominated for seven acting Academy Awards throughout his career, and won Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2010 for his moving turn as a country music legend grappling with alcoholism in “Crazy Heart.” The upcoming “The Old Man,” currently in production, centers on a former intelligence officer living off the radar who finds himself targeted for assassination and is forced back into the world he left behind. It’s based on the novel by Thomas Perry, and co-stars John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat, and Gbenga Akinnagbe.

Read more from IndieWire: “Mulan” actor Jimmy Wong calls out “tired trope” of near-silent Asian roles on “The Boys” and more

Fox News rejected Hunter Biden exposé; New York Post writer refused to put his name on it: reports

When former LifeLock spokesperson Rudy Giuliani approached Fox News with the trove of emails he alleged had been retrieved from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, the network declined to run the story over concerns about its credibility, according to a new report.

Sources told Mediaite that “the lack of authentication of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop, combined with established concerns about Giuliani as a reliable source and his desire for unvetted publication, led the network’s news division to pass.”

Giuliani previously told The New York Times that he had chosen to place the material with The New York Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”

The Post, a sister company of Fox News, published the unverified emails in a Wednesday exposé, which drew widespread blowback for its dubious sourcing. The Times earlier reported that most of The Post article had been written by a staff reporter who refused to allow the tabloid to attach his name to the byline over doubts about the article’s credibility.

The alleged emails informing the article were obtained in a circuitous route by two Trump allies: Giuliani and former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who currently faces wire fraud and money laundering charges in a federal court. The pair gave the outlet a copy of what they claimed was content copied from a hard drive belonging to Hunter Biden, the youngest son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, which they said had been obtained from a computer repairman who wished to remain anonymous.

The repairman told a group of reporters last week that a man named Hunter Biden had dropped the laptop off at his store, but medical issues with his vision prevented him from making an identification.

A number of Post staffers questioned the vetting process for the article and expressed concerns about the sources and the timing as the election nears, The Times reported. Upon publication, other journalists pointed out major errors and holes in article, and the FBI has since opened an investigation into the story as part of a possible Russian disinformation operation, according to multiple reports.

The Times also reported that one of the article’s two bylined authors had first learned that her name was on the report after publication; the other writer never previously had a byline at the paper. Both writers formerly worked at Fox News.

The Trump-friendly cable network’s so-called “Brain Room” had previously warned hosts about Giuliani’s reputation for “amplifying disinformation,” according to The Daily Beast.

One day after The Post published its story, The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had repeatedly warned the White House in 2019 that Giuliani was a target of Russian intelligence, and information he passed along might be tainted by his interactions with pro-Putin officials in Ukraine.

In the days leading up to publication, a team of The New York Post’s top editors met to determine a course of action, including the editor-in-chief and the digital editor-in-chief, a person with knowledge of the meeting told The Times. At least two writers refused to put their names on the report, according to The Times.

The bylines eventually went to Emma-Jo Morris — a deputy politics editor who joined the Murdoch-owned tabloid this spring after four years at Fox News — and Gabrielle Fonrouge, a reporter at The Post since 2014.

At Fox, Morris worked as an associate producer for Trump “pillow-talk” confidante Sean Hannity, according to her LinkedIn profile.Morris’ Instagram, which has sent been set to private, included photos of her posing with Bannon and Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally and Republican operative. In July, President Donald Trump commuted Stone’s sentence on seven felony counts.

Fonrouge, the article’s other acknowledged writer, “had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article,” according to The Times.

“The senior editors at The Post made the decision to publish the Biden files after several days’ hard work established its merit,” a senior Post official told The Times in an email.

The Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have all reported that they were not able to independently verify The New York Post’s reporting or the contents of the hard drive.

News outlets have repeatedly debunked allegations of corruption against the Bidens, and a roundly discredited investigation by Senate Republicans — predicated in part on information Giuliani acquired from a Russian agent sanctioned by the Trump administration — found no evidence that the former vice president had engaged in wrongdoing related to his son’s business dealings.

Reports of the FBI investigation echoed headlines from the final weeks of the 2016 election cycle, when U.S. intelligence agencies began probing whether individuals connected to the Trump campaign were involved in Russian government efforts to harm Hillary Clinton via dumps of emails stolen from Democratic officials.

“At least in 2016, Trump’s allies pushed powerful disinformation,” national security attorney Bradley Moss told Salon last week. “These last-ditch efforts barely qualify as trying anymore.”

“It’s a garbage fire story with obscene numbers of legal holes and flaws,” he added.

A Post spokeswoman told The Times in a statement that the story had been “vetted,” and it “stands by its reporting.”

An imperfect “Lovecraft Country” redefines Black magic for itself and its fans

“Here’s to girls like us who know when to create and when to destroy.”

Looking back on the first season of “Lovecraft Country” from the finale, titled “Full Circle,” that line speaks aloud the most solidly realized parts of an uneven if highly enjoyable and ambitious season. A background character speaks it in the seventh episode, “I Am,” and later the credits identify her as Frida Kahlo.

Like so much of “Lovecraft Country” this is an example of series creator Misha Green folding history into fantasy to comment on the world as we know it: In “I Am” Aunjanue Ellis’  Hippolyta has willed herself into Josephine Baker’s inner circle at the height of her fame in France, one stop on a self-realization odyssey taken through an interdimensional portal.

In her fantasy of roaring ’20s Paris, Hippolyta reconnects with the sensuality and beauty that is her birthright before sliding into another place and time, where she trains to lead warrior women into battle against legions of white male attackers. After this, she rewrites her definition of what it means to be a wife to her late husband George (Courtney B. Vance).

She ends her sojourn by becoming a vision of the space adventurer her daughter Dee (Jada Harris) imagines her to be in the comic book she drew, a sapphire-haired character called Orynthia Blue. No single version of the women she embodies defines her – she encompasses all of them. In doing so she fulfills the assignment given to her by the galactic figure (cleverly named Beyond C’est, get it?) to name herself, claiming more power than she realized was possible in the life prescribed to her on Earth.

“Lovecraft Country” is the kind of show that compels the viewer to be patient with its flaws and to stick with it despite the pell-mell nature of a serialized arc – that is, if they opted to stick with it at all. Those who came to Green’s latest series expecting a type of message-driven prestige drama were bound to be underwhelmed at what it actually is, which is a hybrid between serialized family drama and a horror anthology.  

The standalone stories that served as puzzle pieces that snapped into the “Full Circle” endgame made up for the somewhat less compelling A-plot connecting the legacy of Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) and his family with that of Christina Braithwaite (Abbey Lee), whose ancestors enslaved his. Episodes such as  “I Am” allow Green to take inspired swings utilizing classic genre tropes, be they horror based or sci-fi flavored, to spin fantasies centering Black characters that speak to what it means to be Black in the world without becoming polemical exercises.

But for all of the haphazard expositional expediency that bogs down the first season and its finale in particular, one consistent aspect of “Lovecraft Country” that pays off satisfyingly in “Full Circle” is Green’s conscientious centering and uplift of women, and Black women specifically.

Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel positions Tic’s childhood friend and lover Leti as a fighter, traits that Jurnee Smollett takes on with gusto. Watching her swing her baseball bat in the third hour, “Holy Ghost,” is a thing of beauty.

Green, however, alters aspects of the novel to create something new and more closely attuned to conversations we’re having in 2020. Christina’s character is male in Ruff’s novel, for example; in the series she cloaks her self-serving aims in feminist advertising, seeking to persuade the Freeman family to help her achieve ultimate power by retrieving the pages of an all-powerful tome called the Book of Names and handing them over to her.

One of the season’s major flaws was in failing to decisively establish why Tic, Leti and the rest of the Freemans would deign to help her other than the fact that she’s studied a type magic all her life of which they’ve only recently been made aware. But then, they also conclude time and again that if she can learn it, so they can they – and through sheer determination Team Freeman consistently decodes puzzles and finds paths that have eluded Christina despite her many privileges, finding not just the Book of Names’ missing pages but the full tome.

Dee, Hippolyta’s daughter, is a boy in Ruff’s book, where Hippolyta’s cosmic side mission has nothing to do with discovering or claiming her power. No man, let alone a white one, could comprehend the essentiality of that quest for Black women. Nor could they effectively understand the urgency of Black women claiming their right to their anger, journeys that Leti, Hippolyta and Dee take separately, thereby preparing them for their final confrontation with Christina.

“Full Circle,” written by Green and Ihuoma Ofordire, culminates all of these plots with varying degree of success. Leti now carries the Freeman family magic within her by way of being pregnant with her and Tic’s son; Hippolyta has the power to travel between universes and obtain whatever knowledge they require; and Dee, who falls victim to a white cop’s curse in the eighth episode, “Jig-a-Bobo,” now has a robotic arm.

Most significantly, Leti informs Christina that she has used the Book of Names to bind all white people from using magic, making it the sole province of people of color . . . which, as author and four-time Hugo Award winner N.K. Jemisin has pointed out, is what H.P. Lovecraft feared most of all.

Reading this without seeing the stories that explain how these happen makes “Lovecraft Country” sounds absurd, which it is in the best sense while also frustrating anyone pining for some linearity of narrative that is, at the very least, solid.  But the success of this season is in the individual stories and the triumphs those hours yielded for their characters, both in those moments and in the finale.

It is marked by major deaths, mainly those of Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), killed offscreen by Christina, and that of Atticus, who dies but leaves his magical legacy to Dee, Leti and Hippolyta, and charges his father Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams) with being a better grandparent than he was a dad . . . perhaps by embracing his hidden identity as a gay man.

We also witness Christina’s death at Dee’s mechanical enhancement, and if you found it shocking that a show would feature a teenage girl ripping out a woman’s throat in response for said woman begging for help, then you haven’t been watching.

It’s not simply that Christina represents a demonic sort of white entitlement; it’s the matter of Dee being an adolescent who has recently seen the mutilated body of Emmett Till  – “Jig-a-Bobo” is framed around Till’s funeral, which drew thousands – and who, midway through the finale, reads that Till’s murderers will not see justice. Christina pleas for Dee to help her out of a belief that Dee is an innocent, kind teenage girl, willfully ignorant of the fact that Jim Crow America has robbed Dee of the luxury of viridity.

Tic’s death was ordained since the first meeting between Christina, Tic, Leti and Montrose, in which her father tries to sacrifice him to attain immortality for himself and the white supremacist order of warlocks he led, the Sons of Adam. That part of the series plays its A-plot as a connect-the-dots fantasy map from the starting point to the finish without much in the way of surprise or deviation.

Although it fulfills its mission by gathering the floating threads from each individual story and weaving them into Christina’s climactic spell recitation and bloody howl under a full moon, the expository devices used to patch storytelling holes are undeniably clunky.  

Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung), Tic’s fox demon lover from the Korean War, shows up in the United States an episode or two before the finale . . . for what reason? So that her demonic powers can counteract Christina’s spells and neatly explain via a montage of flashes before our eyes how the shoggoth over which Tic has dominion suddenly is now under Dee’s control, or how Leti survived a fall that appears to have killed her. A person would have had to watch closely to see that rapid-fire shower of plot-hole fillers, and even if people who did would have been justified to rate this move as sloppy.

Then again, for every unsatisfying “Lovecraft Country” snippet such as this, there are so many more hints at the possibilities subsequent seasons may yet reveal. The Freemans may hold the key to magic but they’re still living in an era ruled by white supremacy’s monstrosities, to say nothing of the fanged and tentacled demons all around them.

It is a different world in the television industry of 2020 than in seasons past, one in which a number of series that had renewed by networks have recently been canceled due to the pandemic’s impact on productions and the economy. “Lovecraft Country” could very well be a one-and-done series if this plays into the considerations surrounding HBO’s decision on its renewal. If that is the case, it should be hailed for its boldness more than its structural stumbles.

Chalk this season up as a journey of discovery, one with peaks and bumps and a few moments that went off track but found its way home nevertheless.

But the network might also consider that the series’ producers have the chance to learn from the first season’s missteps – a grace afforded to many genre showrunners before her, nearly all of whom are white and male. Green has an opportunity to build a world beyond that of Ruff’s book and leaves its future yet to be born in the hands of this story’s central women. This in itself offers so many fantastic opportunities.

After all, at the end of her search for enlightenment, Hippolyta wonders how could she could fit in everything that she has become into her old existence on Earth, knowing that there is so much more to be explored. “That Hippolyta,” she says with calm wonder, “she was so small.”

The entire first season of “Lovecraft Country” is available to stream on HBO Max.