Republican Ron Johnson refuses to condemn alleged Kenosha shooter when pressed by CNN host

In a highly contentious interview on CNN Sunday morning, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) repeatedly refused to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse, the Donald Trump fan accused of shooting and killing two Black Lives Matter protestors early this week.

Speaking with “State of the Union” host Dana Bash, Johnson repeatedly spoke over her while manically spouting out prepared comments and ignoring her questions that led the CNN host to finally cut him off.

“The 17-year-old accused of committing those two murders was a Trump supporter,” Bash began only to have Johnson interrupt with “It is a tragedy.”

“Do you condemn –” she attempted as he spoke over her again and repeated, “It is a tragedy. “

“Do you condemn it?” she persisted.

“t is a tragedy, it is a tragedy,” he replied.

“It is a tragedy –but do you condemn it?” Bash pressed.

“Listen, I don’t want to see any loss of life. It is a tragedy, and the way you prevent tragedies is you support –,” he attempted before Bash cut him off again.

“A tragedy could be a car accident –,” the CNN host explained only to have Johnson interupt once more.

“You allow for peaceful protesters, but you don’t allow — you don’t allow peaceful protests to turn into a siege,” he attempted. “Listen, I don’t want to see anybody lose their life. I don’t want to see the violence continue. I don’t want to see businesses burn down. I don’t want to see economic destruction. I condemn it all.”

Watch below:

Scientists are searching space for extraterrestrial viruses

Since the dawn of the Space Age, astrobiologists have worked to determine whether neighboring planets harbor life forms, particularly microbes like bacteria, archaea, and fungi. Some scientists are wondering if they left something out. Now, the search for extraterrestrial life has landed on viruses.

NASA’s Virus Focus Group is integrating advancements in virology into astrobiology, the study of life’s origins, evolution, and distribution in the universe. By providing a forum for scientists interested in astrovirology, they hope to formulate “new areas of research to advance our understanding of how viruses may have influenced the origin and evolution of life here on Earth, and perhaps elsewhere in the Solar System,” according to a Focus Group presentation from 2015.

Recent NASA-sponsored astrovirology workshops amass interest from scientists spanning borders and levels of experiences, says Kathryn Bywaters, a scientist with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at NASA Ames Research Center. “It created a forum where people could express these ideas that they haven’t really been able to vocalize on the community level.”

With an active and engaged community of interested researchers, the hope is that these workshops will spur NASA towards allocating more funding towards astrovirology research.

Microbes, or organisms such as microscopic fungi, archaea, bacteria, and amoebas, occupy virtually every environment on our planet, and astrobiologists have long-considered the possibility of microbes living elsewhere in our solar system, such as on Mars, Venus, and some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. However, microbes on Earth are outnumbered and modulated by viruses.

Viruses, while not technically “alive”, vastly outnumber all living organisms on our planet tenfold. There are an estimated 1031 viruses on Earth — if every virus on Earth were lined up end to end, that line would extend 100 million light years. And as evidenced by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they can dramatically influence life on Earth.

But extraterrestrial viruses have not traditionally been a major search target in astrobiology. “We haven’t looked for [extraterrestrial] viruses specifically before because we’ve just barely started to scratch the surface of understanding them on Earth,” says Bywaters. “Previous to now, the technology and the know-how and the understanding of viruses hasn’t been at a point that we could really extrapolate that to other planetary bodies.”

Astrobiologists are only now beginning to incorporate knowledge of viruses into the growing body of knowledge about life’s origin, evolution, and distribution in the cosmos. Over the years, astrobiology has been a key component of investigating life’s history: by researching the conditions that may resemble early Earth or be found on other planets, scientists can investigate the environmental conditions that may have led to the development of life.

Although virology studies have historically focused on viruses influencing human health, scientists have also discerned a more comprehensive picture of the many functions that viruses play in our world. Certain viruses modulate human, animal and planthealth, giving organisms physical and chemical tools to resist pathogens and environmental stressors. They frequently co-evolve with their hosts and drive host evolution, including catalyzing the development of the mammalian placenta. They regulate nutrient turnover in our oceans, breaking apart cells and releasing nutrients critical to marine ecosystems.

Viruses are a unique case in nature — although they are composed of the same molecules like proteins and nucleic acids as living cells, they cannot reproduce independently. Instead, they need to hijack the cellular machinery of a host to replicate. Finding a virus on Mars or a Saturnian moon would be a revolutionary advancement in astrobiology. “Assuming that viruses replicate the same way in all systems, detection of a virus would be an indirect detection of cellular life,” says Kenneth Stedman, a professor at Portland State University and co-chair of the Virus Focus Group.

Adding viruses to the docket of targets in the search for extraterrestrial life would probably not even require a major shift in instrumentation or technology, says Bywaters. Technologies intended for use on spacecraft are currently being developed to analyze long-chain polymers such as DNA and RNA and would be capable of detecting living cells, viruses, and even non-conventional life forms different from what we would see on Earth.

To say that viruses have a bad reputation among humans would be an understatement. As the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed, these tiny biological agents have the potential to harm human health and drastically alter social behaviors. Although some viral strains have massive impacts on human health, the vast majority of viruses only infect microbes. Bywaters hopes that astrovirology can assist in “changing the mentality of the general populace that viruses don’t have to have this negative connotation,” as they are not always “these evil little things that destroy the world.”

Stedman emphasized via email that viruses are “critical for life on Earth as we know it — and maybe off Earth too.” Astrovirology can help scientists continue to learn about viruses on Earth: along with searching for extraterrestrial viruses, the field could provide insight into how viruses helped shape life’s origin and evolution, since viruses emerged early in the evolution of life on Earth. Additionally, it can lead towards better understanding the roles that viruses play here on Earth, “particularly early Earth and extraterrestrial analog ecosystems,” says Stedman.

“[Astrovirology] really pushes the boundary of what sort of life or what signs of life you could look for,” says Bywaters. “There’s so much we don’t know. That mystery and intrigue is really what fascinates me, because it shows you that anything is possible.”

Christian fundraising site has raised over $250,000 for accused Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse

According to a report from the Religion News Service, a website dedicated to raising funds for Christian endeavors has allowed supporters of accused Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse to accumulate over $250,000 for his defense.

Rittenhouse, 17, is facing extradition to Wisconsin and has been charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide in addition to charges of recklessly endangering two other victims and possessing a weapon while under the age of 18.

As RNS reports. the fundraising site Give Send Go has been hosting the plea for money for Rittenhouse, reaching $223,000 by early Sunday morning — exceeding its goal of $200,000.

The Give Send Go campaign for Rittenhouse, titled “Raise money for Kyle Rittenhouse Legal Defense,” contains a statement reading, “Kyle Rittenhouse just defended himself from a brutal attack by multiple members of the far-leftist group ANTIFA – the experience was undoubtedly a brutal one, as he was forced to take two lives to defend his own. Now, Kyle is being unfairly charged with murder 1, by a DA who seems determined only to capitalize on the political angle of the situation. The situation was clearly self-defense, and Kyle and his family will undoubtedly need money to pay for the legal fees. Let’s give back to someone who bravely tried to defend his community.”

RNS notes that Give Send Go bills itself as the “#1 free Christian crowdfunding site,” with a mission statement that reads, “Outside the obvious funding for mission trips, GSG also can be used to raise funds for medical expenses, business ventures, personal needs, churches, nonprofits, ministries or any ‘God Adventure’ you embark on.”

You can read more here.

Pence praises Trump’s “seamless” COVID response, leaves out his state feuds

Vice President Mike Pence portrayed his boss, President Donald Trump, as a leader who has reached out across the aisle to help during the coronavirus pandemic.

“President Trump marshaled the full resources of the federal government and directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both parties,” Pence said during his speech Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention.

Clearly, the federal government has provided supplies and funding to states led by both parties in response to the pandemic, and Pence himself has held regular conference calls with governors in both parties. But Pence was speaking about the actions of Trump, not his own.

Pence’s comments ignored Trump’s multiple feuds, frequently with Democratic governors, about state-federal responsibilities and the pandemic response.

A Trump campaign spokesperson sent us a list of dozens of teleconferences and meetings that Trump or Pence had with governors, including Democrats such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer. In March, Trump sent a letter to governors thanking them for “stepping up to help America confront this unprecedented global pandemic.” The campaign pointed to actions by administration officials to brief governors about making available supplies, such as testing swabs, utilizing the National Guard, and reopening state economies.

Trump argued with governors over COVID-19 supplies, tests

Early in the pandemic, Trump traded barbs with governors, especially over where the responsibility lay in securing medical supplies for the states.

After declaring a national emergency over the health crisis on March 13, Trump directed governors to order their own ventilators, respirators and supplies, saying the federal government is “not a shipping clerk.” Governors in both parties shot back that Trump’s stance, and the lack of coordination from Washington, left states bidding against one another and the federal government for access to critical equipment.

Cuomo said it was akin to competing on eBay with all the other states plus the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Whitmer and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican and then chair of the National Governors Association, were among those pleading for better coordination from FEMA to ensure that supplies were distributed based on need.

“The lack of any centralized coordination is creating a counterproductive competition between states and the federal government to secure limited supplies, driving up prices and exacerbating existing shortages,” they wrote in a joint March 30 op-ed in The Washington Post.

A couple of days earlier, Trump said during a White House briefing that governors should be “appreciative” toward him and the federal government.

Speaking of Pence, Trump said: “He calls all the governors. I tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan.'” On Twitter, Trump said Whitmer was “way in over her head, she doesn’t have a clue.”

In April, Trump said that testing “is a local thing” and that states should turn to commercial labs for help. After he was blasted by governors from both parties, Trump said the federal government would step up efforts to get testing supplies.

Governors also called on Trump early on to enact the Defense Production Act, a law that gives the president authority to expedite the supply of materials for national defense, in order to ramp up production of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing supplies. While the president did eventually invoke the act to produce ventilators and medical equipment, he delayed efforts to do so and did it sparingly. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson called for him to broaden its use.

Trump’s justification for slow-rolling the act was that he didn’t want the government to intervene in the private sector.

“You know, we’re a country not based on nationalizing our business,” Trump said at a coronavirus task force press briefing on March 22. “Call a person over in Venezuela, ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well.”

In April, Trump said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, had reopened Georgia “too soon.” In May, he criticized Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, for keeping parts of his state closed that Trump said were “barely affected.”

Trump said in mid-April that it was up to him — not the governors — to decide when to reopen states on lockdown.

Some governors bypassed the federal government to work together

Frustrated with the responses from the Trump administration, some governors teamed up with one another to get needed supplies.

In May, a coalition of governors from seven Northeastern states, including New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware, joined together to buy personal protective equipment and ventilators and create a unified reopening strategy.

As late as July, some governors were calling on the feds for help and not getting what they needed. There were shortages of testing supplies, as well as personal protective gear. Washington state asked for 4.2 million N95 respirators. It received a bit under 500,000. It asked for about 300,000 gowns. It got about 160,000.

On Aug. 18, a bipartisan group of governors — five Democrats and five Republicans — announced they would be partnering with the Rockefeller Foundation to create a national testing strategy in the absence of federal action. The 10 states are Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Utah, Arkansas, Rhode Island and Virginia. Their goal is to buy and deploy 5 million COVID-19 antigen tests.

Feuds Between Trump Administration and States Continue

The Trump administration sought to pressure states to reopen schools for in-person instruction. In July, Trump threatened to cut off funding if schools didn’t reopen.

This summer, the Trump administration reduced the federal share of National Guard assistance to the states to help with pandemic response, despite pleas from governors in both parties. An Aug. 3 memo said that the federal government would no longer continue to pay for 100% of the tab for most states and that it would be reduced to 75% as of Aug. 21.

And when the CDC unveiled new testing guidelines that downplayed the need to test people who don’t show symptoms — about 40% of those infected — Cuomo and California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that they wouldn’t follow it. Asymptomatic people are thought to be significant spreaders of the virus. Both governors at times praised certain responses by the Trump administration to help their states respond to the pandemic.

Our ruling

Pence said, “President Trump marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset. He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties.”

Trump and top administration officials have communicated with governors of both parties for months in meetings, phone calls and written communication. But Pence’s comment ignores that Trump has feuded with governors over state-federal responsibilities, supplies and policies for shutting down or reopening. Trump also has suggested a lesser role for the federal government and said that the handling of COVID-19 should be left to the states.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

This story was produced in partnership with PolitiFact.

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

Wildfire smoke adds to compounding crises for the Bay Area’s homeless

As if the Bay Area’s homeless population weren’t already facing a massive health threat from the pandemic, a series of wildfires in Northern California have cast an apocalyptic haze of smoke over the Bay Area. Days of lingering wildfire smoke have put the region’s homeless population in yet another compromising situation that could have seriously damaging health effects for those without homes who are constantly exposed to the smoky air.

“I think if coronavirus and homelessness was a crisis within a crisis, you add wildfires to that and it’s a crisis within a crisis within a crisis,” Margot Kushel, MD, who is the director of University of California–San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative and has cared for the homeless population for 25 years, told Salon. “What we’re seeing is that for people who have asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or heart disease, which is very common in homeless populations, is that the smoke worsens those symptoms or those problems and makes it harder to breathe.”

While varying winds have given a few days of respite from the pollution, the Bay Area’s air quality has been considered “unhealthy” for nearly two weeks now. On Friday afternoon, smoky air from the CZU Lightning Complex wildfire stalled over the San Francisco Bay Area, extending an air quality warning through the weekend. In some areas, parts of San Francisco reached an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 465 on Friday afternoon. Any figure above 100 is considered “unhealthy for sensitive groups.” Over 150 is considered to be unhealthy for everyone.

Specifically, AQI measures how much “particulate matter” is in the air. These microscopic pieces are too small to be filtered by our lungs, because they’re smaller than a hair follicle. Hence, due to their size, particulate matter poses a health risk to anyone breathing it, and can cause damage deep in the lungs and worsen existing respiratory health conditions.

It is impossible for many homeless people who have been living on the streets to escape the unhealthy air. In normal times, the region’s homeless outreach team would be out in the streets offering water, masks, and access to shelters with filtered air. But shelters now come with the added risk of coronavirus: multiple congregate shelters in the Bay Area have had coronavirus outbreaks, as Salon has reported, and are either closed or have limited capacity due to the pandemic.

“The choice is being in a congregate shelter or being outside, and [with] COVID it’s pretty clear that it’s safer to be outside than to be in a congregate shelter,” Kushel said. ” I think for people who are outside, it’s just worsened their already precarious health situation.”

Gwendolyn Westbrook, who leads the United Council of Human Services in San Francisco, a supportive permanent housing program, told Salon she has done outreach to people living in tents in San Francisco.

“I know most of the people who are on the streets are trying to stay inside their tents because of the smell,” Westbrook said. “It has had a devastating effect on everybody, really.”

Westbrook added that the wildfire smoke has made the homeless plight even worse.

“I try to make sure that they have their face coverings on, which they’ve been excellent about,” Westbrook said. “Everything is so hard on the people who are homeless nowadays.”

Inhaling wildfire smoke, as Salon has reported, can alter a person’s immune response, perhaps making them even more vulnerable to the coronavirus. For the sheltered population, who have better health than homeless people, this is certainly problematic. In 2017, respiratory-related ER visits doubled after a smoke season in Montana. But it’s even more troubling for the homeless population, who are more likely to have poor health.

“Homelessness creates new health problems and exacerbates existing ones,” the NHCHC reported in a 2019 report. “Living on the street or in crowded homeless shelters is extremely stressful and made worse by being exposed to communicable disease (e.g. tuberculosis, respiratory illnesses, flu, hepatitis, etc.), violence, malnutrition, and harmful weather exposure.”

Researchers previously suspected that more people die when there is more particulate matter in the air since it can trigger asthma attacks and heart attacks. According to data from 2019, 42 percent of unsheltered chronically homeless people in Alameda County in California have at least one chronic health problem. A lack of access to regular health care, in addition to being without safe and stable housing, factor into why researchers suspect that the average life expectancy for homeless people is between 17 and 26 years shorter than the general population. Researchers predict the number and severity of wildfires in the U.S. in the coming years could mean a rise in smoke-related deaths; as many as 44,000 per year by 2100. Certainly, the most vulnerable populations will be affected the most.

Adding a respiratory pandemic to what we already know about the homeless population’s overall health, plus wildfire smoke, and the bigger picture is disconcerting.

“There’s definitely a concern that if people were to get coronavirus, first of all the smoke would worsen their oxygenation — or, you know, worsen their health even further, and there’s another concern that because the way people’s bodies respond to smoke, often with a cough, that that could increase transmission,” Kushel said.

While the coronavirus has led to some homeless people being housed as a result of the coronavirus, Kushel said there’s a concern about heightened loneliness as a result of the wildfires, too.

Westbrook said the wildfires are just “another thing they have to try and survive,” adding that there are ways for people to help despite the pandemic creating physical barriers.

“By donating to people who have organizations with their best interest at heart, and by donating to people who really truly have a history of helping homeless people,” Westbrook said.

Make this colorful Neapolitan cookie, along with that famous pan-banging recipe from “100 Cookies”

If you’ve spent any time on Instagram since 2017, you’ve seen baker and blogger Sarah Kieffer’s cookies — or, at least, people attempting to recreate her cookies. They’re incredibly distinct. Round and flat, ringed like a tree trunk and layered with chunks of chocolate that rippled out from the soft center to the crispy edges.

Kieffer called them the Pan-banging Cookie because, as the name suggests, it requires bakers to pull half-risen cookies from a hot oven, bang them on the counter so they fall, then stick back in and repeat. This results in the cookies’ trademark sugary crinkles. And they went absolutely viral. Search #panbang and you’ll find thousands of recreations, from homecooks to Martha Stewart’s test kitchen. (The cookies also have the seal of approval from domestic goddess Ina Garten).

Now, Kieffer is back with 99 more cookie recipes for home bakers to try in her new cookbook “100 Cookies: The Baking Book for Every Kitchen, with Classic Cookies, Novel Treats, Brownies, Bars, and More ,” which is now available for purchase.

Kieffer spoke with Salon about what it was like creating a viral cookie, where she looks for baking inspiration and shared a recipe from “100 Cookies” — a colorful Neapolitan cookie (no pan-banging required).

I think a lot of people know you from your pan-banging chocolate chip cookies. I feel like for several months, they just dominated Instagram. How did it feel to be the creator of a viral cookie?

I still can’t believe it – both that the recipe went viral, and that people are still baking them and posting about them on a daily basis. I hesitated to put the Pan-Banging Cookie recipe in my first book; the recipe involves a little more attention than most chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I assumed people would pass by it because it is more time-consuming. But a lot of people ended up loving it, and I am so grateful they did!

In your view, what makes the “perfect” cookie?

I love crisp edges and a tender center, and the salt and sugar balanced just right so you don’t notice either; it’s not too sweet, it’s not too salty — it’s just a delicious cookie.

Where were some of the places you gained inspiration for the cookies in this book?

When I started writing this cookbook, I ordered every cookie book I could find and went through them all, making notes on what was the same in all the books, and what was uniquely different. Books that highly inspired me were “Cookie Love” by Mindy Segal and “Dorie’s Cookies” by Dorie Greenspan; they are both very unique and different from each other, but capture the author’s personal cookie preferences perfectly. I wanted my book to have recipes for everyone, but also highlight my favorites in a unique way.

Did putting together this book of 100 cookies change how you think about them as a food item, or how you think of yourself as a baker?

I have been making cookies for decades, both leisurely at home and also by the hundreds for various bakeries I worked in, so I knew going in that I could bake more cookies per day, for recipe testing, than I could with other baked goods: cakes, pies, et cetera. But I had a lot of work cut out for me because all the cookies would need to be different from each other. For example, in regards to cake, you could have a few solid cake recipes that you build off of for each chapter — the same base but different buttercreams and fillings and whatnot, but I couldn’t really do that in the same way with cookies.

If you were tasked with making another book of 100 baked goods, what would you choose?

Swirl buns. My second favorite thing to make — after cookies, of course — is cinnamon rolls, and I think I could fill a whole book with different kinds of yeasted swirly bun treats.

Sarah Kieffer’s Neapolitan Cookie

Makes about 20 cookies

2½ cups plus 1 tablespoon [364 g] all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

½ cup [8 g] freeze-dried strawberries

1 cup [2 sticks or 227 g] unsalted butter, at room temperature

1¾ cups [350 g] granulated sugar

1 large egg plus

1 large yolk

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 or 3 drops red food coloring (optional)

2 tablespoons Dutch process cocoa powder

White, pink, and brown sprinkles, for rolling (optional)

1) Adjust an oven rack to the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F [180°C]. Line three sheet pans with parchment paper.

2) In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.

3) In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade, pulverize the strawberries into a powder.

4) In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Add the sugar and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla, and beat on medium speed until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until just combined.

5) Dump the dough out onto a work surface and divide it into three equal portions. Put one-third of the dough back into the mixer and add the powdered strawberries and food coloring, if using. Mix on low speed until totally combined, then remove the dough and quickly wipe out the bowl of the mixer.

6) Add another third of dough to the mixer. Add the cocoa powder and mix on low speed until totally combined.

7) Pinch a small portion (about ½ oz [15 g]) of each of the three doughs, and press them gently together, so they adhere to each other, but keep their unique colors. Press the piece into a cookie scoop or roll it into a ball, then roll the ball into sprinkles (if using). Place 6 or 7 cookies on each sheet pan. Bake the cookies one pan at a time, rotating halfway through baking. Bake until the sides are set and the cookies are puffed, 10 to 11 minutes.

8) Transfer the sheet pan to a wire rack and let the cookies cool for 5 to 10 minutes on the pan, then remove them and let them cool completely on the wire rack. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two days.

NOTES Use black cocoa powder for a darker color. The powdered strawberries on their own won’t give a bright pink hue, so I like to add a little food coloring. I also like to roll each individual color of dough into the same color of sprinkles, but you can mix and match however your heart desires.

This two-ingredient, one-pan apricot tart is the simple way to make a French classic

Only a heretic would even look at canned fruit in August. Only a monster would crank open the Dole in the midst of a season lousy with perfectly ripe stone fruits. Hello, I’m that monster. Join me, won’t you, on this delicious road to culinary treason?

On most mornings as of late, I’ll cheerfully slice up a fresh peach to add to my oatmeal or a plum to nestle in my yogurt. Come dinnertime, however, I’m anxious and exhausted after having endured at least one meltdown under my family roof (or sometimes playing the starring role). I’m at my most fragile, and I don’t want to peel anything, chop anything or even uncork anything. Let’s put it this way: This was the summer I got into canned wine.

To that end, I like having canned fruit around, mostly to whizz up in the blender and turn into popsicles. But as my thoughts of late have been turning to fall — or apple cider donut time, as I prefer to call it — I’ve began to think there must be a way to retool a tarte tatin for both warm weather and frazzled nerves.

I love the classic French apple dessert. Why would anyone make apple pie when you can throw the same elements together and wind up with something sticky, caramelized and absolutely gorgeous? I also appreciate the dish for its brief ingredient list: pie dough or puff pastry, sugar, butter and apples. Seriously, that’s it.

Plenty of other home cooks before me have applied the dish’s basic principles to other fruits, but a deep internet dive at first didn’t reveal too much love for the canned stuff. At last, a detour led me to a recipe blessed by no less than a master of French cooking himself.

In his 2004 “Fast Food My Way,” Jacques Pepin takes ordinary canned peaches, deeply caramelizes their syrup and turns the whole works into an elegant dessert. Pepin is one of the most renowned chefs in the world, but the guy is also a genius at making magic with whatever is on hand. His dessert recipes rely on bread, nuts and the like to make showstoppers of humble ingredients. In his follow-up cookbook, he crafts a pear tart with a tortilla. Who says French means fussy?

Jumping off from Pepin’s inspiration, you can use canned pears, pineapple or whatever else rocks your world, and you’re halfway to a beautiful dessert. This week, I put together an apricot tatin in a half hour flat, and I still had time to pop open a can of pinot grigio before dinner even touched the table.

***

Recipe: Two-Ingredient Apricot Tarte Tatin, adapted from Good Housekeeping and Jacques Pepin’s “Fast Food My Way”

Makes approximately eight servings

Ingredients:

2 15-ounce cans of apricots in heavy syrup
1 pre-made pie crust, thawed (or sheet of puff pastry, cut in 10″ round)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425°.
Drain the apricots, pouring the syrup into a heavy 9″ skillet. Gently blot the fruit with a paper towel to absorb any excess liquid, and leave in the colander to continue to drain.
Heat the syrup over a high flame for approximately 10 minutes. The liquid should become thick and deep amber. Stir it gently toward the end of cooking time to prevent it burning.
Remove pan from heat, adding the apricots, cut side down, in a single layer.
Place the pie dough over the fruit, tucking the edges in as needed. (Be careful not to burn your fingers.)
Bake for roughly 20 minutes, or until the crust looks browned and done.
Remove from oven, and let cool 10 minutes or so to set.
Wearing oven mitts, carefully invert the skillet onto a large plate. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Click here to purchase a copy of Jacques Pepin’s Fast Food My Way for more dessert inspiration.

One man killed at pro-Trump caravan in downtown Portland

One man was shot and killed as a caravan of President Trump’s supporters circulated their way through downtown Portland, Ore., on Saturday evening.

The New York Times reports that the man who died, who has not been named, was affiliated with Patriot Prayer, and was wearing a hat with the Patriot Prayer insignia. As the Times wrote:

The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.

A video that purports to be of the shooting, taken from the far side of the street, showed a small group of people in the road outside what appears to be a parking garage. Gunfire erupts, and a man collapses in the street.

The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in the Portland area that has clashed with protesters in the past. Joey Gibson, the head of the group, said Sunday he could not share many details but could confirm the man was a good friend and supporter of Patriot Prayer.

President Donald Trump reacted to the killing on Twitter, suggesting the National Guard should be sent in. “Our great National Guard could solve these problems in less than 1 hour. Local authorities must ask before it is too late,” he wrote. “People of Portland, and other Democrat run cities, are disgusted with Schumer, Pelosi, and thier [sic] local ‘leaders’. They want Law & Order!”

Patriot Prayer has been characterized as a radical right-wing group by media studies professor Gregory Shupak. The group has previously clashed with anti-fascist protesters in Portland. Patriot Prayer’s leader has said little to reporters. As the Oregonian wrote:

A photo from the scene published by Getty Images showed the man [was was killed] wearing a hat with a Patriot Prayer logo. The far-right group has been at the center of multiple Portland demonstrations that often culminate in violent clashes.

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson said he had also seen the photo of the man killed. He did not say whether he knew the person.

“I have to figure out what the hell is going on,” Gibson said Saturday night, before hanging up.

In their statement about the shooting, the Portland Police Bureau did not release any suspect information and sought help from those who might have witnessed the shooting.

Since late May, protesters have assembled almost nightly in downtown Portland near the Multnomah County Justice Center to protest against racial injustice and police brutality. Right-wing counter-protesters, including those from Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, have often met and antagonized the protesters. Last weekend, the local police declined to intervene when Proud Boys and armed militiamen sparred with Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters, resulting in several injuries.

Throughout the nightly protests, law enforcement has fired hundreds of cans of CS tear gas on protesters, on one night gassing the Mayor of Portland as he joined the protest.

The governor of Oregon has yet to comment on the killing. Deborah Kafoury, the chair of Multnomah County within which Portland is situated, issued a forceful statement defending non-violent anti-racist demonstrators and calling out the intentionally antagonistic behavior of right-wing counter-protesters.

“We are witnessing the self-perpetuating cycle of violence fueled by white supremacy,” Kafoury wrote. “We cannot forget that the protests Portland has seen for more than 90 days began in response to the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was then the latest victim of a long and horrendous history of police brutality against Black people, itself a feature of the systemic racism that poisons our country.”

Kafoury continued:

While the overwhelming majority of protestors have engaged in non-violent demonstration to call for police accountability, racial justice and the dismantling of racist institutions, we have also seen instances of interpersonal violence, vandalism and destruction.

Then last night — stoked by a president who has gone out of his way to demonize this city and encourage vigilantism in service to white supremacy and his own fragile ego — armed participants of a pro-Trump caravan terrorized downtown Portland, driving their vehicles and shooting paintballs and pepper spray directly at community members and journalists. They came to create confrontation and were able to do so.

This tragedy will be used to justify escalating violence. It will be used to paint an entire movement with a broad and misleading brush. And sadly, it will be used by the occupant of the White House to deepen divisions and fear.

Those of us who believe in, and are working toward, a more just and equitable community must take an unequivocal stand against the violence that structural racism inflicts on Black and other people of color, against violence inflicted by police, and against violence between community members.

Showtime’s alluring “Love Fraud” exposes the common con artist charming America’s lonely women

When Tracy met Richard Scott Smith, she was a single mother who describes her life at that time as consisting of working, paying bills and not much else. Her whirlwind romance with Smith began with a motorcycle ride that gave her a taste of the freedom and fun that a life with him would afford her.

Ellen remembers dining out at Applebee’s and Cheddar’s with Smith, where he generously bought her wine. Smith was the perfect partner, she says . . . and at one time Sabrina would have agreed with her. She recalls coming home from work to discover gifts left on the bed. Smith made Sabrina feel like God finally sent the man she’d been praying for all these years.

These stories are our gateway into “Love Fraud,” which makes everything that follows all the more tragic and infuriating even though the average person can get where these women’s stories are headed.

One minute she and Smith were dating, Tracy recalls. Soon he was sleeping over and not long after that, he was moving in. Ellen tells a similar tale: weeks after they started seeing each other, he popped the question. Ditto for Sabrina.

Each woman is unique, but all fit a familiar profile – single (mostly) and self-supporting in their 40s or perhaps their 50s. The married women he seduced are bored or unhappy and ripe for distraction. Their courtships with Smith move quickly, to the point that Tracy’s daughter Kayla became suspicious at how fast her mother was falling for this man who still felt like a stranger. So Kayla decided to do a little digging.

A brief online search yielded a website with Smith’s photo at the top, followed by a blog post warning about the new man in her mother’s life. Tracy and Kayla knew him as Mickey, but he had other aliases, including Scott, Richard, and Rick.

Through the blog Kayla and Tracy also found Ellen and Sabrina . . . and Jean, Sandy, Candy, Caroline, Tracy, Angela, Lisa, Jennifer and Christy, women whom Smith loved, left and leeched dry of their assets, savings and good credit.

There may indeed be smoother and more prolific serial scammers than Smith operating in the wild. Ewing and Grady simply happened to come across the blog exposing Smith precisely at the time when they were scouting out subjects for a documentary about con artists in the vein of “Dirty John.”

And this is the point that “Love Fraud” directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are making with this project: Men like Smith are distressingly common. In fact, the typical nature of his crimes works in the series’ favor. Most people will never be indoctrinated by a cult, but just about everybody knows somebody who dated some jerk who ruined their credit or cleaned out their checking account.

They also know such fraudsters so common that police in multiple states can’t be bothered to enforce the warrants against Smith or anyone like him. But a bigamist who is the subject of a revenge blog is enticing enough of a subject for the filmmakers actually participate in tracking him down. And they do so in part by calling upon Showtime’s resources to bankroll the hunt.

“Love Fraud” is very much a work in which every participant evokes a keen awareness of the genre’s tropes. Smith’s victims are candid and genuine in their vulnerability and frustration, and they’re also visibly driven in a way that people aware of the camera’s power tend to be.

The players in this story don’t travel in exclusive or exotic circles, either. Most of the action takes place in Kansas and Tennessee, although the blog and the series indicate that Smith left a trail of broken hearts and busted fortunes in other states. These are very much Everywomen.

And once we meet Smith, as we eventually do, we quickly realize that he’s actually the definition of basic. The man’s sole extraordinary feature is in the fact that he crossed and angered enough women that a few of them decided to team up with a Kansas City bounty hunter and finally take him down.

Said bounty hunter, a grizzled, chain-smoking crusader named Carla, knows she’s a character and plays up her toughness for the camera; she knows she’s the main object of fantasy casting here (aside from Smith, who in his heyday resembles a bargain basement Bill Paxton, may he rest in peace). To her credit, she’s not wrong.

In one scene, Carla stares out into a meadow and waxes poetic about the deadly ferocity of Ozark women. In many others she reliably cusses and spits nails whenever she catches evidence of Smith swindling yet another woman while continuing to evade her. But Carla’s frustration is infectious, and as Smith continues to stay barely one step ahead of her a person can’t help but express amazement at this slimeball’s sheer audacity.

“Love Fraud” doesn’t come across as expressly an advocacy project or as even all that justice driven. At best it’s an odd confluence of true crime, documentary tropes, and visual artistry. The familiarity of this situation that makes “Love Fraud” watchable if not indispensable; it’s basically an event series version of a “Dateline” mystery that crashes in to a “Cheaters” episode around hour three.

This being premium cable, Ewing and Grady elevate production by employing eye-popping animated mixed media collages by British artist Martin O’Neill to evoke Smith’s mindset or give life to the stories he tells via disembodied voice recordings of phone conversations. The filmmakers decided to use these visually adventurous asides instead of employing the cheap action recreation plot, and this choice adds to the sense of seduction and disillusion that fuels the narrative.

And the common nature of this story means “Love Fraud” could easily expand into an anthology series, that given the popularity of this genre, isn’t the worst idea. There’s a smidgen of comfort in knowing that so far, none of Smith’s victims has perished.

On the flip side, that also means he’s still out there, as are many men like him. Sometimes the potential for a subject to generate sequels isn’t necessarily good news. But it can make for tasty viewing.

“Love Fraud” premieres Sunday, Aug. 30 at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime.

Voting by mail is convenient, but not always secret

Voting by mail in 2020 could be a real life-saver for American democracy, allowing tens of millions of people to participate in the election while limiting the spread of the pandemic. It’s widely available, popular, well-protected against fraud and doesn’t provide either political party with any special advantage. But mail-in voting carries its own risk to the integrity of the election.

The problem is that when people cast their ballots to be mailed in, they may not do so in complete secrecy. Our research for our forthcoming book, “Should Secret Voting Be Mandatory?” highlights exactly how crucial the secret ballot is to a healthy democracy.

The erosion of ballot secrecy

The voting-at-home trend in the U.S. has been on the rise at least since the 1990s, with little controversy. In the 2016 presidential election, a quarter of all ballots nationwide were cast by mail — including in the five states that have adopted all-mail voting.

Because of the risk of spreading — or contracting — COVID-19 by sharing indoor spaces with strangers, voting by mail has taken center stage as the 2020 election approaches.

But that gives up one key advantage of in-person voting at official polling places: a secure, safe environment in which every person can cast their ballot secretly.

The secret ballot is a deceptively simple, effective electoral institution. We believe its creation signaled the onset of true democracy. Too often taken for granted, the secret ballot remains a defining feature of legitimate elections worldwide.

Perils of voting without secrecy

Before modern voting procedures were created, there was a lively trade in votes. Employers, landlords, political operatives and even clergy exerted their influence on people who had to vote by voice or public show of hands. In places that used paper ballots, party agents handed out pre-marked, color-coded party “tickets” and watched as voters dropped them in the ballot boxes.

People could be — and were — bribed and threatened into voting for particular candidates, regardless of their personal views on the candidates or the issues.

In the mid-1850s, Australian officials created a way to protect voters from that sort of manipulation. The states of Massachusetts and New York brought the system to the U.S. in 1888. The key element is preserving official control of ballots throughout the electoral process. All votes must be cast in a public space, in the security of a private booth. All voters must use a uniform ballot form listing all candidates, which is available only from election officials at the polling site. The ballot, which is not labeled with any information identifying the voter, is returned to election officials in a confidential manner, and then counted.

That system ensures that all voters must vote in a way that cannot be observed. And no one can prove that any single person cast any particular ballot. Even the voter cannot prove to others how he or she voted. The process makes threats and bribes useless — because there is no way to verify a voter complied.

The adoption of the secret ballot dramatically reduced instances of electoral coercion. Researchers found that indicators of electoral corruption dropped — such as prices offered by those seeking to buy votes, the frequency of petitions challenging electoral results, and the rates at which incumbents are reelected.

Bribery and coercion, but not fraud

Mail-in voting still requires an official ballot, and can still be validated and counted anonymously. That eliminates what’s commonly known as voter fraud — where someone casts a ballot on behalf of someone else.

But it doesn’t address outside forces influencing the authentic voter at the moment they make their decision. The voter marks the ballot outside the supervision of election monitors — often at home. It’s possible to do so in secret. But secrecy is no longer guaranteed, and for some it may actually be impossible.

There is not a lot of research about bribery and coercion in mail-in elections in the U.S. But two surveys undertaken taken after Oregon introduced universal vote by mail in 1998 found that as many as a third of voters completed their votes while others were present. Just 1%, or fewer, reported feeling pressured by the presence of another person. But that may still be enough to tip a close election.

There are other warning signs that electoral coercion remains a threat in the U.S. In recent years, impoverished and otherwise vulnerable citizens in Appalachia and Texas have been paid for their votes. In 2018, the results of a North Carolina congressional election was overturned because political operatives filled out ballots on behalf of voters, without their consent.

Those cases were identified in part because of anomalous patterns in requests for absentee ballots across jurisdictions or discrepancies in vote patterns between absentee ballots and votes cast in person. But if all — or even many — votes are cast by mail, there will be less in-person voting to compare with. Unusual patterns that might signal trouble will be harder to spot.

A return to past practices?

Other forces are at work, too. In 2018, Los Angeles landlords threatened tenants with rent increases if a particular ballot initiative passed.

And in the last two presidential elections, as many as 1 in 4 workers was approached with political information by their employer. Some of that was innocuous or nonpartisan material about registering to vote or company rules about time off to vote. But it also included employer endorsements of referenda or candidates – and even notes in employees’ paychecks threatening layoffs or plant closures if one particular candidate were to win.

Without the secret ballot system blocking landlords and company executives from monitoring tenants’ and workers’ votes, these predictions and warnings could become enforceable threats and meaningful bribes.

Other forms of intimidation may be even more difficult to identify. How could anyone uncover the subtle — or not so subtle — influence exerted at the kitchen table by an abusive spouse or domineering parent, when the family sits down to vote? It happens all over the world in places where ballots are not secret.

In emerging democracies that don’t protect ballot secrecy well, as many as 15% of voters are regularly offered bribes for their votes — and almost half fear being targets of violence during elections.

Secrecy matters to voters

Ballot secrecy is important to voters. Experimental studies have found that a quarter of voters did not believe their votes were kept secret. A note assuring them of a secret ballot increased turnout by 3.5% — a little more of a boost than the 2% increase in voter turnout that results from the convenience of voting by mail.

Forty-four U.S. states have constitutional provisions guaranteeing secrecy in voting; the others have statutes to the same effect. At the same time, five states now vote entirely by mail, and 29 states permit no-excuse absentee ballots. Some states permit voters to register as “permanent absentees” who are automatically mailed ballots year after year.

Once voting shifts from an official polling place to the home, the ability of others to see how a person votes — to watch as a person marks their ballot and examine the ballot afterward to make sure — reopens the potential for bribery and coercion. Then employers, landlords and other power brokers could undermine a century of democratic progress, leaving voters vulnerable to domination, and destroying electoral legitimacy.

Susan Orr, Associate Professor of Political Science, The College at Brockport, State University of New York and James Johnson, Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester

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

Jacob Blake’s father says his son is paralyzed below waist after being shot from behind by police

Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man whom police shot in the back multiple times in Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday, is now paralyzed from the waist down and doctors do not yet know if the injury is permanent, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday.

The younger Blake, a father of six, was reportedly trying to break up a fight before officers followed him to his vehicle and fired several shots at point-blank range as Blake opened the driver-side door. Blake’s partner, Laquisha Booker, told a local television station that the couple’s three children were in the back seat “screaming” when police shot him.

A video of the police shooting began circulating on social media Sunday, sparkingprotests in the Wisconsin city and other communities across the country. The incident came nearly three months after footage of Minneapolis police killing George Floyd led to nationwide demonstrations.

The Sun-Times reported that Blake’s father is driving from Charlotte, North Carolina to be with his hospitalized son, who now has “eight holes” in his body. The 29-year-old grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina before moving to Evanston, Illinois during middle school. He has been living in Kenosha for about three years.

“I want to put my hand on my son’s cheek and kiss him on his forehead, and then I’ll be OK,” said the elder Jacob Blake. “I’ll kiss him with my mask. The first thing I want to do is touch my son.”

xhttps://twitter.com/ceproctor23/status/1298237412116770816

Blake’s father also addressed the protests and unrest in Kenosha, where vehicles and dozens of buildings were set on fire overnight, according to Newsweek.

“Those police officers that shot my son like a dog in the street are responsible for everything that has happened in the city of Kenosha,” his father said. “My son is not responsible for it. My son didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have a gun.”

As ABC News reported:

The man who said he made the cellphone video, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire erupted. He said he didn’t see a knife in Blake’s hands.

The governor said he had seen no information to suggest Blake had a knife or other weapon, but that the case is still being investigated by the state Justice Department.

The officers were placed on administrative leave, which is standard practice in a shooting by police. Authorities released no details about the officers and did not immediately respond to requests for their service records.

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers activated 125 members of the National Guard for the Monday night demonstrations in Kenosha, where county officials imposed an 8:00 pm curfew.

Newsweek reported that “hundreds of people remained outside the Kenosha County Courthouse in the city after the curfew took effect, prompting police to fire the first of several rounds of tear gas at around 8:30 pm in a bid to disperse them.”

Evers also said after the shooting that although all the details aren’t yet known, “what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.”

Blake’s family is being represented by civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, the lawyer confirmed in a statement Monday. Crump is also representing the families of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, who was killed by Louisville police in March.

“We all watched the horrific video of Jacob Blake being shot in the back several times by Kenosha police. Even worse, his three sons witnessed their father collapse after being riddled with bullets,” Crump said. “Their irresponsible, reckless, and inhumane actions nearly cost the life of a man who was simply trying to do the right thing by intervening in a domestic incident. It’s a miracle he’s still alive.”

“We will seek justice for Jacob Blake and for his family as we demand answers from the Kenosha Police Department,” the attorney vowed. “How many more of these tragic ‘while Black’ tragedies will it take until the racial profiling and undervaluing of Black lives by the police finally stops?”

Crump, co-counsels Patrick Salvi and B’Ivory LaMarr, and Blake’s family will hold a news conference Tuesday at 3:00 pm local time at the Kenosha County Courthouse. According to the attorneys, “The family will address Jacob’s current condition and their plans moving forward following the latest occurrence of excessive police force against the young Black man.”

FBI admits it may have “destroyed” records on Trump’s brother Robert

On August 15, President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump — who had been involved in a bitter legal battle with the president’s 55-year-old niece, Mary L. Trump — died at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 71. BuzzFeed journalist Jason Leopold is reporting, on Twitter, that he filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for documents on Robert Trump — and that the FBI, “responded in record time, saying any docs it had may have been destroyed.”

Leopold tweeted a copy of the letter, dated August 27, that he received from the FBI — which told him, “Based on the information you provided, we conducted a search of the places reasonably expected to have records. However, we were unable to identify records responsive to your request.”

I filed a #FOIA request with FBI for docs on Trump's brother, Robert. FBI responded in record time saying any docs it had may have been destroyed. pic.twitter.com/9a23NsBBaY

— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) August 28, 2020

The FBI, in its letter, went on tell Leopold, “Records potentially responsive to your request were destroyed. Since this material could not be reviewed, it is not known if it was responsive to your request.”

The letter was signed by the FBI’s Michael G. Seidel, section chief for record information.

Uncle Robert, we love you. You are in our hearts and prayers, always.

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) August 16, 2020

Robert Trump’s legal battle with Mary Trump had to do with her tell-all book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” which was released on July 14 and paints a damning picture of the president as well as the late Fred Trump, Sr. — father of President Trump, Robert Trump, Maryanne Trump Barry and the late Fred Trump, Jr. (Mary Trump’s father) and grandfather of the president’s children Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany and Don, Jr. Robert Trump fought in court to prevent the release of Mary Trump’s book, citing a confidentiality agreement. But eventually, the courts sided with her and cleared the way for the book’s release.

Mary Trump, the President's niece, writes that Trump "destroyed my father. I can't let him destroy my country," in new book obtained by CNN https://t.co/UufFg86A0m pic.twitter.com/rug8MN3ADd

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 7, 2020

USDA moves forward with sweeping plans to prevent fraud in organics

In 2017, The Washington Post reported on a shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans that were shipped from Ukraine to Turkey to California and sold as organic, even though they had been fumigated with pesticides not approved under the USDA Organic standard and originally sold into the conventional market. And in 2019, an Iowa grain broker was sentenced to 10 years in prison for selling more than $142 million in fraudulent organic animal feed to Midwest farmers between 2010 and 2017.

These were not isolated incidents. Over the last decade, groups like Organic Farmers Agency for Relationship Marketing (OFARM) and the Cornucopia Institute have tracked and analyzed massive shipments of grain from countries including Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, and Russia, with much of it routed through Turkey. They’ve found that the amount of certified organic acreage in the origin countries could not have produced the quantity of grain entering the U.S.

“Serious questions as to whether some countries, like Kazakhstan, even have organic production acreage are alarming, considering reports that imports from these regions have filled the U.S. organic supply chain,” John Bobbe, OFARM’s Executive Director, told the Cornucopia Institute in 2018.

And yet, regulation of this $50 billion global market is done by the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), which was staffed by only 37 people in 2019. Now, the NOP, which regulates the global industry, has released a proposed rule to combat organic fraud, and it could be the most consequential update to the organic standards to date.

“It’s the largest single piece of rulemaking since the organic regulations were implemented in 2002,” said Gwendolyn Wyard, vice president for regulatory and technical affairs at the Organic Trade Association (OTA). “I’ve been referring to it as a ‘beast’ because it covers so many topics and so many different areas. It’s really going to impact everyone in the supply chain.”

“It’s the largest single piece of rulemaking since the organic regulations were implemented in 2002.”

In its current form, the Strengthening Organic Enforcement Proposed Rulewould require all certified organic food companies to have a plan in place to prevent fraud in their supply chains and would ramp up unannounced inspections of all organic operations. It would also make it easier to trace and track imported foods by requiring electronic certificates and mandating that more players involved in the transport and sale of organic foods—like brokers and traders—obtain certification.

The proposed rule is stems from an addition to the 2018 Farm Bill, and it was originally set to be released in September 2019. And while advocacy and industry groups celebrated the step forward, they also contend that the agency had failed to act on several other important issues, such as the Origin of Livestock rule, even when directed by Congress. And just a few days after publishing the proposed rule, the USDA also announced an unexpected reduction in payments made to help farmers manage the cost of transitioning to organic, angering pro-organic groupslike the National Organic Coalition and the Organic Farmers Association.

The OTA’s Wyard said the group has been disappointed by the USDA’s management of the NOP under President Trump and that other near-term changes to the program are unlikely. “This is the only rulemaking I think we’re going to see out of this administration,” said Wyard.

Why organic fraud?

Organic food was once considered niche hippie fare and was mainly confined to produce and meats sold directly to consumers at local markets. Over the past few decades, it has become a multi-billion dollar market filled with premium packaged foods and processed snacks that can cost as much as twice the price of their conventional counterparts. Food industry giants including General Mills and Perdue have jumped into the game, as many consumers have been willing to pay that premium.

But the amount of certified organic farmland in the U.S.—especially for the corn and soy used to make processed foods and animal feed—has not kept pace with the demand for organic food, creating a wide gap between supply and demand that has primarily been filled by imports. That gap in supply and long, complicated foreign supply chains have created a situation ripe for fraud, which undercuts organic producers following the letter of the law.

“Part of the challenge has been that organic has experienced tremendous growth in the marketplace, and so [NOP] has to oversee what is now a worldwide system of organic production,” said Abby Youngblood, the executive director of the National Organic Coalition. “We’ve been working really hard to get the resources to USDA to do that more effectively. They have ramped up in terms of hiring a lot more auditors . . . and they have been making improvements in their ability to oversee the organic marketplace.”

Read more Civil Eats: Kamala Harris Brings Food Justice to the Democratic Ticket

The proposed rule would take that expansion to the next level by closing several loopholes in the standard and adding new safeguards. For example, many people and companies involved in the supply chain that are not directly involved in growing or processing the food, like grain brokers and traders, have in the past been exempt from certification. The rule would significantly shrink that list.

“The allowance of uncertified handlers creates gaps in the organic supply chain, breaking chains of custody and complicating the verification of product origin,” the NOP wrote in the proposed rule. “Improved supply chain traceability is critical to the continuing success of the program and its ability to ensure the integrity of organic products.”

Wyard said that provision alone will be incredibly meaningful for the industry, and that requiring mandatory import certificates from all countries would be another major shift towards effective enforcement. All organic food companies would also be required to have a plan in place to monitor their supply chains to prevent fraud, a tactic the OTA has long supported. Through its Organic Fraud Prevention Solutions program, the organization provides training to help companies create those plans.

The path forward

The USDA published the proposed Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule on August 5 and it’s open for public comment until October 5. After that, the agency will have to work through those comments before publishing a final rule that will then require an implementation period of about a year.

Wyard said some in the industry think that timeline may be ambitious given the scale of the changes, but for many it feels like a long slog.

“If you’re an organic grain producer, it feels as slow as molasses . . . when you’ve been competing with fraudulent products and your prices are being undermined,” Youngblood said.

Other proposed changes to the organic standards have gotten stuck in the mud along the way. The Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP) Rules, which were championed across the industry as crucial to bringing animal welfare standards on organic farms up to a level consumers expect, were finalized in 2017 after the agency worked through five different versions. USDA then withdrew the rules altogether soon after the Trump administration took over, and a lawsuit the OTA filed against the agency is still tied up in court.

The Origin of Livestock rule, intended to close a loophole that allowed dairy operations to retain organic certification while adding conventionally raising calves to their herds, has suffered a similar fate. First proposed in 2015, it was never finalized. Congress then directed USDA to finalize the rule within 180 days in an appropriations bill signed into law in December 2019—to no avail.

On July 1, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue notifying the agency that it had missed the deadline and urging the department “to immediately finalize the rule. In doing so, the lawmakers urged Purdue to “demonstrate meaningful support for the economic stabilization and recovery of family-owned organic dairy farms.”

There is also a long backlog of recommendations from the National Organic Standards Board—the advisory group made up of farmers, scientists, and other organic stakeholders charged with maintaining the science behind the label—that NOP has not yet acted on.

Still, industry experts are confident that a rule cracking down on cheating the system, especially one that mainly aims to curb foreign fraud that affects American consumers and farmers, will move forward, regardless of who is in office.

“Under this administration, from the top all the way down, this has been a high priority,” Wyard said. “As it turns out, our government doesn’t really like fraudulent products coming into the United States. And [because] so much of it is mandated by Congress, we really have that congressional support.” Organic fraud protections written into the farm bill, for example, had bi-partisan support.

Unlike many issues that have divided the organic community in recent years—such as certifying hydroponic farms—cracking down on fraud is a matter on which many in the industry appears to agree. “I think that we, as an organic community, have done a really good job of articulating the scale of the challenges, and we’ve been able to demonstrate that the lack of a level playing field for organic farmers is really undermining their viability,” said Youngblood. “It took a lot longer than we had hoped, but we are certainly encouraged by this.”

Still, advocates said it will take more than a USDA rule to end fraud in the industry, including concerted efforts within private companies. And given the long timeline until implementation, they’ll have to continue to police the issue until the new protections are firmly in place.

“In the meantime, we are continuing to advocate that USDA do as much as they can within their authority to stop the fraudulent activity,” Youngblood said.

“His politics are appalling”: Steve Mnuchin’s family speaks out in disgust over his fealty to Trump

In a deep dive into Steve Mnuchin’s past — and his present as Secretary of the Treasury — family members expressed dismay and disgust over his relationship with Donald Trump, including Mnuchin’s own father who teared up when asked about the path his son has taken.

According to the report from the New York Times, Mnuchin sought out a position in the Trump administration, personally lobbying the president by sharing his history in high finance that made him a wealthy man.

But that has come at a price personally as his family has not only criticized him but publically accused him of racism.

According to the report, a recent encounter at an art gallery between Mnuchin’s father, Robert, and a local artist led to the elder Mnuchin to criticize his son.

“One day last year, Howard Saunders encountered Robert Mnuchin at the Matthew Marks art gallery in Manhattan. The two strangers — Mr. Saunders an artist, Mr. Mnuchin a prominent gallery owner and art dealer — struck up a conversation,” the Times reports. “It turned awkward when Mr. Saunders realized he was speaking to the Treasury secretary’s father. Sounding disgusted, Mr. Saunders asked Mr. Mnuchin about his son. The elder Mr. Mnuchin appeared pained. ‘His politics appall me, too, really appall me,’ he replied, according to Mr. Saunders. ‘But he’s my son.'”

The report also notes that during an earlier attempt by the Times to get Mnuchin’s father to comment on his son “he demurred but seemed to be near tears.”

Mnuchin’s father is not the only family member displeased with his relationship with Trump.

“Robert Mnuchin’s wife, Adriana, has reminded people that she is not Steven’s biological mother. (The couple married when he was a toddler.) She reluctantly attended Steven’s 2017 wedding to the Scottish-born actress Louise Linton. Ms. Mnuchin pretended her arm was injured in order to avoid having to shake hands with Mr. Trump, according to her grandson Zan Mnuchin Rozen,” the report notes.

As for Zan Mnuchin Rozen, in a now-deleted Facebook post he wrote: “my uncle has been complicit in, and in some cases directly culpable for, many years of the marginalization, persecution and stereotyping of black people in the United States.” His actions “cannot and will never be defensible.”

The Times reports that the Treasury Secretary was asked to comment about his relationship with his family and replied that he tried to avoid discussing politics with them.

You can read more here.

Why you need to talk to your parents about how they want to die

It wasn’t easy when I found myself without any guideposts or preparation for handling my mother’s care, but it wasn’t a surprise either. We had been estranged for several years beforehand, so when I got the call at last this summer, it was merely the crap tornado I’d been long bracing for. My sole comfort in all of it was the knowledge we’d have no such messiness when it came to my mother-in-law.

It turned out I was wrong.

However prepared you may think you are regarding your parents’ end of life wishes — and however prepared you think your family is about your own — go back and check again. Have some uncomfortable conversations this weekend. Do some tedious tasks. Do yourself the great favor of spending some time thinking — not about death, but all that comes before it.

Mine is a simultaneously very complicated and very simple situation. My mother cut contact with me — as well as the rest of her family — long ago. When I reached out this past spring, I learned from her husband she has advanced Alzheimer’s. A few weeks later, he died suddenly. From a different state and in the midst of a still raging pandemic, I have been trying ever since to figure out a path and plan for my mom. (It took a big chunk of time to even prove my identity.) But I am, thankfully, an only child. I have no one else to consult with or to co-sign anything. I may be in the thick of a mess of unbearable proportions, but at least it is my mess. I don’t have to share it.

People with more extended family and caregiver circles can have a stickier time of things. When it was time to put her hoarder mom into assisted living, my friend Jess (her name has been changed to protect her privacy) and her sister were in perfect agreement about the care plan — and hit a dead end that lagged on for years about what to do with the house. Several years ago, I watched two distant cousins fight tooth and nail over their father’s power of attorney, a battle that ended in accusations of elder abuse and half the family snubbing their patriarch’s funeral.

That won’t happen to you, right? Your family is untainted by greed; you all get along and work well together. But are you certain who Mom has been talking to lately? Do you know all of her current caregivers, friends, random strangers on the phone?

Just this month, the family of “Star Trek” star Nichelle Nichols filed court papers alleging that her manager “embezzled an unknown amount of money from Nichols, transferred ownership of her house to him, removed her from medical care, taken possessions from her house, subjected her to a grueling schedule of sci-fi convention appearances, intentionally isolated her from family contact and coerced her into signing a long-term lease that has kept him in her guest house for eight years.”

Three years ago, Kerri Kasem — who endured her own very public and brutal fight over her famous father’s care and last wishes — told Salon that to safeguard our elders, preparation is essential. “Grab your camera phone and get your parents in front of you — or you yourself as parents — and say, ‘If while I’m sick and unable to care for myself or speak, [and] the person who is taking care of me isolates me and keeps me from my family and my friends, they should be removed from my care immediately.'”

I didn’t think I had to worry about those issues with my mother-in-law — at least not yet. She is in her eighties and has slowed down significantly in the past few years, but until recently, she was still hosting Thanksgiving dinner and attending bible study every week. She also communicates regularly with her son about her finances and essential paperwork.

Then in May, she was effortlessly taken in by a COVID-19 scammer posing as a Medicare worker. Two weeks ago, our family was visiting her home when she became suddenly violently ill with stomach problems. I watched her become agitated and deeply confused. She couldn’t tell me where her insurance information was; instead, she pointed me toward a recent utilities bill. She kept repeating questions, forgetting the answers almost as soon as she heard them. We brought her to the emergency room, which offered immediate but temporary help. It has become utterly clear in the days since how much there is to be done, and how little equipped we had been all along.

This is what I wish we’d taken care of long ago.

First of all, get a power of attorney in place. Get it for your folks, get it for yourself. A POA just means appointing someone to make financial decisions if you or your parent are unable to do so, a daunting but often inevitable prospect. This is understandably difficult to talk about, because it acknowledges the possibility of profound vulnerability, but it can be extremely difficult to more forward on anything when the finances are tied up. And isn’t it better to do so when everyone is feeling relatively healthy and lucid? Forbes has a clear and trustworthy guide to getting started, even if you can’t afford a lawyer.

In a similar vein, you may be tempted, when discussing money, to consider setting up a joint bank account with your parent. Yes, it can make paying for care and other expenses more expedient. But as Nerd Wallet notes, this can also be risky, because it can put both parties more on the hook for each other’s financial responsibilities, including debts.

Next, make sure everyone is clear on everyone’s healthcare wishes and plans. You’ll want an advance directive, which is a legal document outlining the person’s preferences regarding, for example, pain management, the use of ventilators and do not resuscitate orders. You should also put together a more informal care plan, outlining the person’s broader wishes. This is where you need to have a healthcare proxy named as well, so someone can execute the medical decisions. Have a backup or two named as well. As a recent NPR report noted, right now, “Entire families are getting sick, so having additional individuals who can fill that role should a first or even second agent become ill is particularly helpful.”

Get clarity on doctors, medications and where the hell all the stuff is. I wish someone had known exactly where my mother-in-law’s insurance information was when she was in the midst of a healthcare emergency. And while I’m happy she has long-term care insurance, I’d have preferred to have worked out the details of understanding her plan long ago.

I keep a folder — an actual file folder made of paper — with the contact information for my doctors, my healthcare proxy and do-not-resuscitate order, as well as the sign in information to access my medical portal, bank accounts and credit cards, in a secure space known to the rest of my family. If I fell into a coma today, I would hope they would at least not be left scrambling for vital information.

I want to be as autonomous as possible for as long as possible. I also know that once both my daughters have reached adulthood, I’ll talk to them about how they might one day have to divide executing my healthcare plans. In the meantime, while no one under my roof loves it when I announce how to access my medical chart or why I wouldn’t wish to ever have a feeding tube, I yell because I care.

It is painful to talk about death. But there is a decisiveness, a sense of closure, about it that illness and incapacitation do not provide. We are a sickness-denying culture, even when sickness abounds. My own afterlife wishes basically boil down to, “Here are my meager assets; please cremate me.”

Yet when I consider, with a not insignificant amount of terror, the possibility of inheriting my mother’s Alzheimer’s, I am overwhelmed. All I know for certain is that I would never want to leave my own family as blindsided as I’ve been these past few months. All I know is that we have to talk about how to take care of each other, while talking to each other is still an option.

Making sense of QAnon: What lies behind the conspiracy theory that’s eating America?

In the previous two installments of this series, I chronicled the attempts made by an old friend to convince me of an outlandish conspiracy theory being promoted by the group of rabid online Donald Trump supporters known as “QAnon.” According to my friend, initiates of the Illuminati had teamed up with subterranean demons to torture, rape and eat kidnapped children in underground military bases ruled by Trump’s mortal enemies. Not surprisingly, none of the so-called “evidence” provided by my friend proved any such thing. Onward from there we go …

Fun with Adrenochrome!

The second link my friend sent me, entitled “ADRENOCHROME — Those Who Know Cannot Sleep,” was posted by a QAnon advocate who calls himself Vinctum. On Twitter, Vinctum describes himself as a “Red Pilled Armenian bloke from the Netherlands that’s into Personal Growth, Spirituality, Psychology, and Conspiracy facts.” Though he joined Twitter as recently as January of 2020, he already has more than 3,000 followers. His YouTube channel has considerably more: 181,000 followers.

“ADRENOCHROME — Those Who Know Cannot Sleep” is a nearly 15-minute video that contains almost no facts whatsoever. It’s as if someone read and reread John W. DeCamp’s 1992 true-crime book “The Franklin Cover-Up,” which revolves around reportage about an alleged pedophile ring operated by prominent Republicans like Nebraska businessman Lawrence E. King Jr. (a crime ring that reportedly overlapped with Iran-Contra money-laundering schemes operating out of the Reagan-Bush White House), and decided to toss these scandalous rumors into a giant blender mixed with 100% pure gonzo jabberwocky — but this time around, Democrats are now the evil, mustache-twirling villains at the center of the soap opera. As with so many of QAnon’s claims, elements of past conspiracy theories have been distorted and flipped, always in favor of Republicans. Any allegations that reflect badly on Republicans are conveniently left out of the retelling.

According to “ADRENOCHROME — Those Who Know Cannot Sleep,” Hollywood performers such as Patton Oswalt, Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Hanks torture children on a regular basis in order to maintain healthy, moisturized skin. Of course, it’s just not possible to maintain a superior level of skin care without extracting Adrenochrome from naked, prepubescent bodies writhing in pain on a subterranean obsidian altar built at the feet of an enormous statue built in honor of Baphomet, the great goat-headed god. Vinctum draws passages from Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” to make his case, but can’t even quote Thompson correctly, and even misspells his last name. (Is proper spelling really so much to ask? After all, Thompson’s name is emblazoned on the front cover.) I doubt this poor fellow has ever read “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” from cover to cover, despite the fact that it’s a very short book and shouldn’t take this “bloke” more than a couple of hours to get through it. He doesn’t even seem to understand that the book is meant to be humorous.

In 2017, a year after Trump’s election, I published a novel entitled “Until the Last Dog Dies,” which was about a young stand-up comedian who must adapt as best he can to an apocalyptic virus that destroys only the humor centers of the brain. After wading through hours of this humorless QAnon material, in which even the most innocuous Disney cartoons are flensed of fun and replaced with dark speculations about the demonic symbols hovering like unholy specters over Uncle Walt’s films, I’m beginning to think that my novel was far more prescient that I could have imagined. For example, did you know that Illuminati Satanists inserted the subliminal word “SEX” into the animated film version of “The Lion King” in order to pervert the minds of children around the world? After all, what could be more demonic than the word “SEX”? (Isn’t it odd that these Christians are so concerned about the word “SEX” allegedly appearing for less than half a second in a Disney film, but don’t care at all that their president cheated on his wife with a porn actress? I don’t care what Trump does in his private life, or who he does it with, but this dichotomy seems to be a prime example of what psychologists call “compartmentalization.”)

Vinctum’s only source to back up his peculiar claims that Adrenochrome is being extracted from living human beings is in fact Hunter S. Thompson, but he never bothers to explain how this scenario might work in the real world. What was the source of Thompson’s knowledge? Is Vinctum suggesting that Thompson was a member of the Satanic Illuminati, and that’s how he knew about Adrenochrome being harvested from humans? Vinctum never bothers to clarify. He just floats a spooky suggestion, and allows the viewers to use what little imagination they have to reach their own ill-informed conclusions.

Because I’ve always been something of a masochist (as my friend Damien once told me, back in high school, “You’re never bored when you’re a masochist”), I went to the trouble of following some of the links that Vinctum flashes on the screen while he’s droning on and on. From these links, I learned that Oswalt, the Emmy-winning comedian and actor (who, coincidentally, has been an outspoken critic of President Trump’s policies) is in fact a sadistic pedophile who spends his free time hunting down innocent children at Comet Ping Pong in Washington, D.C. In the weird, wild mythology of QAnon, Comet Ping Pong is the equivalent of Mordor, the home base of arch-villain Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

On the surface a modestly upscale pizza joint in a residential Washington neighborhood, Comet Ping Pong is in reality the ultimate abattoir of evil in which Hillary Clinton and former White House chief of staff John Podesta are alleged to have tortured uncountable children to satiate their heady lust for young, nubile flesh. What was the evidence for Oswalt being a pedophile, you ask? Other than some doctored photos placing him at Comet Ping Pong, nothing. Needless to say, even if Oswalt had visited Comet Ping Pong, there would still be no evidence that the man’s a pedophile. I’ve not seen a single shred of evidence that links Comet Ping Pong to any criminal activity whatsoever, much less an international sex ring. And you know what? No one else has either. If those who devoutly believe they’ve seen such evidence would only pause a moment, take a step back from their own biases, and try to peer through the layers and layers of obfuscation QAnon has placed in front of their eyes, perhaps they would be able to see reality as it actually exists rather than the cheap illusion QAnon wishes them to see.

* * *

Not only does QAnon remind me of Salem witch hunters and New Age UFO cultists, but this brand new religion also resembles L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology. At a backyard barbecue in Venice, California, 20 years ago, I met a fellow who had been a member of Scientology for 10 years until he finally woke up to the fact that he was being played for a fool and decided to turn the tables on them. This man spoke to me for a long time about what it was like living at the large Scientology compound in Riverside, east of Los Angeles. He did hard manual labor, like digging ditches in the desert soil, for 10 cents a day. If he came down with an illness, church officials made him work anyway.

Everyone at the compound had been so thoroughly brainwashed that if you ever questioned the word of L. Ron Hubbard, even for a second, your knee-jerk response was to turn that doubt back on yourself. For example, let’s say you suddenly found yourself entertaining a pernicious thought like, “Hey, is it possible that L. Ron Hubbard’s a liar?” Immediately, you would then think, “Wait a minute… what have I done wrong that I would even be thinking such a thing? Am I a liar? What have I lied about recently? Oh, yes, I did tell a white lie about something, didn’t I, just the other day? So that explains it! Now I understand why I’m doubting the great LRH. I’m so relieved! There’s nothing wrong with Ron. There’s just something wrong with me …”

QAnon’s followers rely on this same psychological safety mechanism on a daily basis. Since 2017, not one of QAnon’s major predictions have come true. For example, QAnon insisted that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, would team up with Trump to expose the “deep state.” In the first week of November, 2017, QAnon announced that Trump would declare “a state of temporary military control” within “the next several days.” By 2020, Hillary Clinton and her Satanic minions were supposed to be in prison. Despite the fact that none of these events have occurred, QAnon never once lost any followers. Instead, these followers have grown even more obsessive and loyal. QAnon’s acolytes said, “Wait a minute, QAnon’s not wrong. We simply misinterpreted his predictions. We’re the ones who are wrong! There’s something wrong with us. We need to continue studying the posts until we come up with the correct interpretation….”

Like Hubbard, QAnon has based his/her/their entire cosmology on past sources without ever acknowledging them. After all, the Great Godhead doesn’t need “sources,” does He? In the late 1980s, a former Scientologist named Bent Corydon broke away from the Church of Scientology and wrote a scathing book about his experiences entitled “L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?”, in which he revealed that Hubbard drew most of his ideas from philosopher Alfred Korzybski, author of “Science and Sanity,” and occultist Aleister Crowley, author of “The Book of Lies” and other tomes about ceremonial magic (or “magick,” Crowley’s preferred spelling). When Hubbard’s documented ties to occult organizations — e.g., Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis in Pasadena, California — became publicly known, Hubbard explained that he had been infiltrating the organization on the behalf of the United States military. Most of his followers believed him.

This same “the Great One can do no wrong” attitude is prevalent among QAnon’s followers. If a video was released tomorrow that depicted Donald Trump having sex with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex-trafficking victims, Trump would calmly approach his podium and say, “I had to do that in order to fully infiltrate the sick perverts who are secretly in control of this country!” and almost every single one of QAnon’s followers would enthusiastically agree.

“Out of Shadows”

In the Christian world of QAnon, Democrats and Satanists are the same.

The hatred that Christians harbor against Satanists has always baffled me. After all, they share the same beliefs. Both groups ostensibly believe in the existence of the same mythological entities. A Christian and a Satanist would naturally have far more in common than a Christian and a Buddhist. A Buddhist doesn’t even believe in Satan. The respective belief systems of Christians and Satanists are branches of the same cosmology.

Perhaps this is why QAnon’s “Christian Patriot” followers appear to spend the majority of their day dwelling on Satanism, the main topic of a thinly disguised QAnon recruitment video entitled “Out of Shadows” which features conspiratorial ruminations by a former Hollywood stuntman named Mike Smith. The third link my friend sent me led to this video, a feature-length YouTube “documentary” that took the internet by storm in April. As of this week, this video had received more than 18 million views. It’s a peculiar film, as it does indeed contain some accurate and vital information.

Of course, the most effective forms of disinformation must include some accurate and vital information, otherwise the lies won’t be accepted so easily. The former Scientologist I met at that backyard barbecue told me that he wouldn’t have pursued Dianetics at all if not for the fact that his earliest encounters with Hubbard’s teachings led to many lifelong anxieties being cured. He felt he had taken away some useful teachings from Hubbard. It’s only after Scientology gets you hooked on the brain entrainment methods that do work, only after you’ve invested so much of your life into their coffers, that they start dumping the really insane nonsense on you.

“Out of Shadows” follows the same pattern. The “documentary” begins by sharing accurate but little known information about Hollywood’s intersection with the CIA. I applaud the filmmakers for bringing to light the fact that the entertainment most of us imbibe so unthinkingly often carries with it a hidden political agenda. This has been true of Hollywood films going at least as far back as World War II, and no doubt even earlier. I myself have written a book that touches on some of these same issues, though my approach to the material is radically different. My forthcoming book, “Hollywood Haunts the World,” is backed up with genuine evidence from the first page to the last.

About 20 minutes into its running time, after dealing with the potentially dangerous intersection between Hollywood and the U.S. intelligence community, “Out of Shadows” abandons any pretense of objectivity when it presents a montage of various news reporters repeating the same words (“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy” being the most memorable refrain), not bothering to mention the fact that this mimicry was the result of a pro-Trump campaign initiated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 2018.

This is from Timothy Burke’s March 31, 2018, Deadspin article, “How America’s Largest Local TV Owner Turned Its News Anchors Into Soldiers in Trump’s War on the Media“:

Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

Stelter’s CNN article, published a few weeks earlier, offers further context, observing that at the time, the FCC was reviewing Sinclair’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media and that “Sinclair critics — Democratic lawmakers and some of the company’s Republican rivals — have alleged that the FCC has given Sinclair preferential treatment.” The scripted promos sent to all Sinclair stations, Stelter wrote, “show how the company wants to position itself in local markets from coast to coast”:

The instructions to local stations say that the promos “should play using news time, not commercial time …. Please produce the attached scripts exactly as they are written …. This copy has been thoroughly tested and speaks to our Journalistic Responsibility as advocates to seek the truth on behalf of the audience.”

The promos begin with one or two anchors introducing themselves and saying “I’m [we are] extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [proper news brand name of local station] produces. But I’m [we are] concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.”

Then the media bashing begins.

“The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media,” the script says. “More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think.’ … This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

The fact that the filmmakers present this montage in “Out of Shadows” with no context whatsoever, then spend the rest of the “documentary” promulgating far-right conspiracy theories, is extremely disingenuous, to say the least. Ironically, the main message of “Out of Shadows” could be summarized as a call to question authority because what we see in the media is driven by a hidden agenda. Unbeknownst to most of the people who saw it, “Out of Shadows” is a perfect example of that very manipulation.

Among corporations and intelligence agencies — not to mention certain high-profile political figures — it’s standard operating procedure to accuse your opponents of offenses you yourself are committing. The filmmakers of “Out of Shadows” take this tactic to heart. This is a consistent strategy used by the QAnon cultists, as when they fret about “black hats” locking helpless children in cages — despite the fact that the only government agents known to have committed such acts against children (i.e., immigrant children) are the Homeland Security agents carrying out the policies of Donald Trump, the very man QAnon claims is working hard behind the scenes to free abused children from subterranean cages. (In a world that still contained nuance and humor, I suppose one might call this “irony.” In our current situation, however, we’ll just have to call it a “fact” and leave it at that.)

After the montage, the filmmakers present genuine information about such insidious U.S. intelligence programs as MK-ULTRA and Operation Paperclip. Veteran conspiracy theorists will find no surprises here, but this might be educational for viewers who have never been exposed to this information. The filmmakers use the CIA’s longstanding involvement with mind control programs to segue awkwardly into a six-minute segment about the late Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, co-author of an infamous 1981 military paper about the future of psychological warfare operations entitled “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory,” in which Aquino and his collaborators offer up such blatantly authoritarian statements as the following:

In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe — neither through the primitive “battlefield” leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth.

These media are, of course, the electronic media — television and radio. State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasters make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have but the courage and the integrity to guide civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they then devise moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.

MindWar must target all participants if it is to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people ….

In case it’s not obvious, that last sentence is a blatant violation of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment. After all, is there an agreed upon definition of “enemy propaganda?” Who decides what “enemy propaganda” is and what isn’t?

Aquino’s story will be old news to viewers well-versed in these areas, but the vast majority of those who saw this video had probably never heard of him, nor had known that a High Priest of a Satanic church called the Temple of Set had served as a U.S. intelligence officer in Special Forces, Psychological Operations for many years. The filmmakers imply that Aquino’s existence is some deep, dark secret of the U.S. military, when in fact the lieutenant colonel flaunted his Satanic affiliations for decades. He even appeared on a 1988 episode of Oprah Winfrey’s show alongside his wife, Lilith.

Keep in mind that the documentary began with the intent to prove that Hollywood is a propaganda tool. So why spend so much time talking about an oddball military officer who published a disturbing paper nearly 40 years ago? Other than his brief appearance with Oprah, Aquino had no known connections to Hollywood.

From Aquino, we then segue back to more or less accurate information about MK-ULTRA, interspersed with wrongheaded analyses of supposed Satanic symbols embedded in pop culture that harken back to the height of the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s. Perhaps you remember such delightfully stupid moments in American history as when Procter & Gamble was accused of slipping demonic symbols into their “man in the moon” logo (devil horns hidden atop Moon Man’s head, three sixes in the curlicues of Moon Man’s beard, and — choke! gasp! — 13 stars twinkling in the background), and when televangelists insisted that Mighty Mouse was imbibing the devil’s drug, cocaine, because he was seen sniffing an animated flower in a single frame of a Ralph Bakshi Saturday morning cartoon.

The filmmakers of “Out of Shadows” seem particularly bothered by innocuous music videos featuring the likes of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. In the case of the latter, the documentary suggests that only the complex machinations of dark and sinister forces could explain Perry’s rise to superstardom after abandoning her original Christian gospel orientation and reshaping herself into a double-platinum pop star. It doesn’t occur to the filmmakers for even a moment that Perry’s decision might have been influenced by the simple fact that the marketplace for a Christian gospel singer isn’t nearly as large as that of a scantily clad, quirky pop singer. (Apparently, this is one of those rare instances in which faith in the fairness of free-market economics has failed the conservative Christian community.)

Most of what these people perceive to be “Satanic symbols” are nothing of the kind. In “Hollywood Haunts the World,” I deal with the plethora of esoteric symbolism woven into numerous films, from Victor Sjöström’s “The Phantom Carriage” in 1921 all the way to Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” in 2020. Very few of these hermetic films could be described as “Satanic” in nature. In my first book, “Cryptoscatology,” when commenting on Alex Jones’ 2000 documentary, “Dark Secrets Inside Bohemian Grove,” I wrote that Jones’ biggest weakness was the typical “Christian tendency to confuse paganism with Satanism.”

Indeed, Christians often confuse hermeticism with Satanism. They confuse esotericism with Satanism. They confuse Freemasonry with Satanism. They confuse spiritualism with Satanism. They confuse Mormonism with Satanism. They confuse homosexuality with Satanism. They confuse Dungeons & Dragons and Procter & Gamble and Mighty Mouse and comic books and pop music and cocaine with Satanism. When anything that is other or different or unfamiliar is confused with Satanism, you’re going to experience a great deal of bewilderment. And then you panic and begin making YouTube documentaries that end up containing about 15% truth and 85% disinformation. That vitally important 15% keeps a lot of eyes on the screen for the duration of the documentary. But that 85% is the real reason you made it, isn’t it?

While suffering through this 118-minute piece of QAnon propaganda disguised as anti-Hollywood/anti-government propaganda, I was struck by the fact that I could easily make the filmmakers’ case for them far better than they were doing themselves. If they really wanted to connect government conspiracies to Satanism, why not go beyond Aquino? Why not mention Louis Tackwood, for example?

What follows are relevant passages from Alex Constantine’s 1993 book, “Blood, Carnage, and the Agent Provocateur”:

In 1971, Lee Smith, an ex-convict from the California Men’s Colony, testified before Congress that he’d been paid to foment prison unrest. He’d been instructed by authorities to blame “Marxist revolutionary forces” for stirring up the violence. Afterward, conditions at the penal colony worsened ….

[Louis] Tackwood, who’d been recruited by [the LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Section] to provoke prison riots, blew the whistle in 1971, charging that the secret LAPD unit had been “set up on the same basis as the CIA” ….

Tackwood pulled LAPD skeletons out of the closet with the publication of “The Glass House Tapes” in 1973, including the disclosure that the department had about 125 provocateurs on the payroll. Some in the press, not many, asked questions. Liberal community groups in Los Angeles, discovering they’d been infiltrated, sued the LAPD. CCS [Criminal Conspiracy Section], the secret police unit, was disbanded, its spies and provocateurs reassigned. In its place evolved the OCID [Organized Crime Intelligence Division], which incidentally maintains no files on organized crime. The OCID does, however, keep extensive files on local politicians and private citizens ….

One of the most controversial aspects of “The Glass House Tapes” was Tackwood’s claim that the Los Angeles Police Department, in concert with various U.S. intelligence agencies, was using Satanic cults in California for the purposes of blackmailing and brainwashing high-profile initiates. I find it ironic that this scenario has now been embraced by the right wing, when back in the early 1970s the only people talking about this were far-left radicals like the members of the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee, with whom Tackwood collaborated on “The Glass House Tapes.” Subsequent nonfiction books like Walter Bowart’s 1978 “Operation Mind Control,” Maury Terry’s 1987 “The Ultimate Evil” and John W. DeCamp’s aforementioned 1992 “The Franklin Cover-Up” explore similar themes in far greater depth, so why are none of them mentioned in “Out of Shadows”?

The same is true of MK-ULTRA and Project Paperclip. Why don’t the filmmakers cite such well-researched books as Gordon Thomas’ “Journey Into Madness: Medical Torture and the Mind Controllers” or Christopher Simpson’s “Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effect on the Cold War“? If the main purpose of this documentary were to inform the public about these topics, books such as these would be mentioned. That’s the type of move that encourages the viewer to pursue further research once the documentary has been seen. As I’ve mentioned before, William Cooper did this on his “Hour of the Time” radio show almost every episode.

At one point in “Out of Shadows,” Mike Smith says:

Let’s take the word “Hollywood.” Where does that come from? Well, “Hollywood” comes from the holly tree. The ancient druids back in the day used to take the holly tree, make wands to weave spells, cast spells, or channel spells. And when they needed help, they would consult the Magis or the “mediums” of the day to help channel their spells to the population. Well, cut to today. What do we have in our houses? We have these black boxes. What are they called? TVs. But if you stop and you say the word “television,” [you get] “tell a vision.” You turn on that television, and what do you get? What’s the first thing that pops up? A list of “channels.” And when you turn on those “channels,” what’s on those “channels”? Programming! They’re programming you. They’ve been programming you your whole life. You don’t even know it!

Jordan Maxwell, who’s been delivering lectures about occult symbolism for decades, said these same exact words to me in Mesquite, Nevada, in the summer of 1999. I first heard Maxwell make this observation during a radio interview on KPFK in Los Angeles in 1993. And yet Smith doesn’t bother to cite Maxwell. Neither do the filmmakers credit him at the end.

In the 1970s, the muckraking journalist Mae Brussell (who’s often referred to as “the Queen of Conspiracies”) began dedicating many episodes of her underground radio show “Conspiracy: Dialogue” to what she called Operation Chaos, an alleged CIA plot to destabilize the anti-war movement of the 1960s by assassinating various influential rock stars like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

Alex Constantine, a writer heavily influenced by Brussell, published a book in 2000 entitled “The Covert War Against Rock” that expands on Brussell’s theory at great length. By contrast, former CIA agent Kevin Shipp uses “Out of Shadows” as a platform to flip Brussell’s theory, conveniently leaving the CIA out of the equation and implying that such ’60s and ’70s rock icons as Morrison and Frank Zappa were not victims of COINTELPRO-style surveillance and harassment, but were instead the conspirators themselves. Here are Shipp’s own words:

It’s odd because, in Laurel Canyon, so many of the soon-to-be-stars there — their parents were either in the military industrial complex or intelligence or the Pentagon. In Frank Zappa’s case, his dad was working at Edgewood Arsenal where they were doing biochem studies, psychotropics, exposing U.S. troops to VX nerve gas and other things. The family kept gas masks in their house. He grew up with that in case there was an accident. And Edgewood Arsenal was doing very similar, related MK-Ultra projects on U.S. troops. The Gulf of Tonkin is another prime example. The commander of the Gulf fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin — his son was Jim Morrison. They claimed the USS Maddox was attacked by Vietnamese vessels. It was never attacked. As a matter of fact, they put ghost ships on the radar to make it look like they were Vietnamese ships. The Maddox was never attacked. It was an actual, literal “false flag” to enable the U.S. to declare war on Vietnam. So Jim Morrison’s dad was involved in the false flag of the Gulf of Tonkin.

After presenting information that seems to link MK-Ultra mind control experiments with the unlikely notion that the intelligence community was the main influencer behind the 1960s counterculture movement, we get Shipp’s implication that Morrison and Zappa were somehow brainwashed by their military parents to become rock stars and thereby create a generation of freako-pervo-weirdos. Shipp’s not the first person to suggest something like this. Perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, for example, was convinced that the Beatles were formed by British MI6 intelligence agents to influence American teenagers to experiment with psychedelic drugs. (In my experience, American teenagers don’t need British intelligence agents to indulge in illicit substances.)

If you think we’ve now reached the nadir of absurdity, you’re quite wrong. Numerous QAnon followers — far more than you could imagine — are convinced that Hillary Clinton was assassinated long ago and replaced with a clone, which is clearly a recapitulation of the conspiracy theory introduced to the world by Dr. Peter Beter on May 28, 1979. Beter insisted that President Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger, among several other key American politicians and military leaders, had been murdered by the Soviet Union and replaced with what he called “organic robotoids.” By carefully analyzing news footage, Beter claimed he could tell you the approximate time and place the real Carter was offed and switched with his robot clone. Beter’s special “audio letter” containing this startling announcement is archived on YouTube.

In 1992, a right-wing group called “Police Against the New World Order” — a loose-knit conglomeration of active and retired police officers, National Guard members and military officers — published a saddle-stitched, 76-page booklet entitled “Operation Vampire Killer 2000,” whose main purpose was to warn fellow law enforcement officers (as well as private citizens) of ongoing attempts by “New World Order” globalists to “overthrow the Constitutional Republic of these United States of America” by fomenting various crises that would lead to the establishment of martial law. Here’s a direct quote from the booklet: “Aided by their controlled media, and NWO government-paid agitators/’leaders’ on both sides, the goal is to frighten Americans, of all colors, into accepting Martial Law.”

The group was led by a retired Phoenix police officer named Jack McLamb. Whether his views were right or wrong, sane or paranoid, it’s clear from reading his booklet that McLamb’s intent was to warn the citizens of the United States against encroaching fascism.

QAnon has borrowed much from “Operation Vampire Killer 2000” while also managing to stand the original message completely on its head. Instead of warning against martial law, QAnon is urging people to welcome it with open arms.

In May of 2019, Michael Swanson of WallStreetWindow.com (author of “The War State: The Cold War Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex and the Power Elite, 1945-1963“) interviewed journalist Pearse Redmond about the beginnings of the QAnon phenomena. Here’s Redmond:

[Early on] QAnon was advocating for a military takeover of the country, and martial law being enforced everywhere, and that this was actually a good thing. We shouldn’t really worry if Trump declares martial law and the military takes over policing, setting up camps to intern dissidents and whatnot. That was actually okay, and we should support Trump when he does that. So that was one of the early warning signs for me. Not to fully go the tinfoil hat conspiracy [route] that they’re preparing us for this, but just that [QAnon was] once again acclimating people to that [idea], making it seem that it wasn’t such a big deal, and at the same time sucking in a lot of conspiracy people who were warning about that very thing ten to fifteen years ago, particularly the more right-leaning [conspiracy theorists warning us against] FEMA camps [being set up] everywhere, and now they were [saying], “Oh no, the FEMA camps are good because we won’t be in them! It’ll just be the Democrats!” And that’s a very interesting technique — or experiment — to see if you could do that. QAnon was pushing this idea that [former national security adviser] John Bolton was a good guy, that he wasn’t a part of the Deep State or the Washington elite, that bombing and invading Iran was actually a good thing, and that we should all advocate for that. So, once again, [QAnon was] converting a lot of the alternative conspiracy people who have been — rightfully — questioning what’s going on in Iran and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and suddenly turning them around and getting them to advocate invading Iran and taking their oil and whatnot. So this is really, really strange and disturbing — the speed that these people all dropped [their former convictions and began advocating for] things they were previously against. Instantly, in the course of a few weeks, they had reversed course and basically just became Trump Republicans, advocating that anything Trump says is good.

Louis Tackwood, Alex Constantine, Walter Bowart, Maury Terry, John W. DeCamp, Gordon Thomas, Christopher Simpson, Jordan Maxwell, Mae Brussell, Lyndon LaRouche, Dr. Peter Beter, Jack McLamb. Work plundered from all the above researchers has been stitched together by QAnon into a weird, sprawling patchwork quilt of conspiracies. That the original researchers are never cited by QAnon suggests that the purpose of Q — and particularly of the “Out of Shadows” documentary — is not to inform. It’s to disinform.

That’s why there are only four specific sources cited throughout “Out of Shadows”: the aforementioned former Hollywood stunt man named Mike Smith, who admits that his supposed information was gleaned from too much time spent surfing the internet while convalescing from a work-related injury, which means that his experiences in the film industry are irrelevant in the context of this film; a still active stunt man named Brad Martin; a “former” CIA operative named Kevin Shipp; and a journalist named Liz Crokin. That’s it. Instead of interviewing a university professor like Christopher Simpson about Project Paperclip, they use accurate information only to drive home the real point: Believe in the theories of QAnon. And what’s the inevitable result of accepting QAnon’s theories into your heart?

Voting for Donald Trump.

Pater Familiar: Watching Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic briefings finally let me grieve my father

When Andrew Cuomo became governor of New York in 2011, my father said to me, “You’re related to him. You should go talk to him and see what he can do for you.” My father’s mother was a Cuomo, Esther Cuomo, and she was the product of a two Cuomo marriage, the union of John Cuomo and Sara Cuomo. (It was the old country.) John and Sara immigrated to the United States around 1897 from Nocera, the same part of Southern Italy that birthed the Cuomo political dynasty. So does that mean we’re related? Maybe. I think if you go far back enough the branches in our family trees probably cross somewhere. How far back? Too far back to ask for favors.

So this was kind of a dumb suggestion on my dad’s part, but nothing to get angry about. But I responded badly when he made it and every other time he brought it up until his death in 2018.

The reason I reacted badly had nothing to do with the governor and everything to do with my relationship with my father. My father loved his family, I am certain. He told us so often, if flatly and dispassionately like a priest who does too many weddings. “Oh, I love my family,” he would declare, apropos of nothing, and then move along, presumably to do something that interested him a bit more than we did. Where his money was concerned, he felt entitled to only what was left over after his children got everything they could possibly want. At the macro level of parenting, you couldn’t fault him. At the micro level, he broke my heart. He was distant and joyless and bafflingly uncurious about his children’s lives. Monotone declarations of love came easily and often; attempts at connection were rare.

To add insult to injury, I have one memory of my father being overcome by emotion and it had nothing to do with us. When Roberto Benigni accepted the Oscar for “Life is Beautiful,” my father wept a little. I was dumbstruck. I turned to my mother who shook her head wearily. “He didn’t see that movie,” she said, “he just likes seeing Italian men win things.”

My brother made his peace with the strangeness, but I did not and it made for an ugly adolescence. Our father-daughter dynamic became like a child poking a hibernating bear with a stick. Teenage me preferred an explosive interaction to none at all.

But by the time my father started telling me to call the governor of New York for a favor, I was an adult. I had also, by then, had some success in my writing career, which led to a new strand of tension between us. When I got good reviews, my father sprang into action to have photocopies made and mailed to his relatives. It didn’t look to me like paternal pride, however. It seemed to me that his zeal to share my press was mostly about the pleasure of seeing his own name in print. He was a dour man as a rule, but he occasionally lit up—eyes glimmering, smile beaming—when he talked about himself. His Italian lineage! His service in World War II! He was forever coming at me with maps of Italy and notebooks detailing the minutiae of his war service and I was forever pushing him off because when had he ever shown interest in my minutiae?

My father telling me to call Andrew Cuomo enraged me because it seemed to spring from two of his most maddening qualities: autobiographical narcissism and a lack of curiosity about the finer details of my life. I write plays and television. What exactly did he imagine the governor of New York could possibly do to make that path easier for me? So I not only rejected the suggestion, I banished it. And I banished it to a degree that unnerves me. I have exploited far, far thinner personal material for wit.

In 2019, the National Organization of Italian American Women made me a recipient of their annual award. After the ceremony in New York, a woman approached me and identified herself as the Director of Italian-American Affairs for Governor Cuomo’s office. She bore a boilerplate letter of congratulations and offered me her business card “in case there’s ever anything we can do for you.” I thanked her and pocketed the letter. I said nothing.

Around the same time, my labor union, the Writers Guild of America, was lobbying furiously for a tax credit that would incentivize television shows that film in New York State to hire women and people of color. I traveled to Albany with the union on a lobbying mission. I wrung my hands in meetings about what it would take to get our bill passed. In a room full of writers, surely there was a joke to be made. Something about working it out with my cousin over Sunday dinner, maybe? Nope. Never even thought to mention it.

I missed those opportunities—opportunities for connection or merely for wit—because they came to me via my father. I had spent the entirety of my father’s golden years asserting that his Cuomoness was worth nothing to me. As a person of integrity, I felt I needed to hold firm to that position.

But I could not have anticipated the coronavirus.

I started watching the governor’s press conferences for the same reason most people did: I was scared. Overnight New York felt like a science fiction movie and, in the absence of a coherent message from the oval office, the speculation was nightmarish. I heard that the National Guard was out in HAZMAT suits preventing people from leaving New Rochelle. (Not true.) I wondered if I should take my kid and flee before they locked down New York City. But what if we left and they wouldn’t let us come back?

In this time of surreal terror, a gaping leadership vacuum opened and the governor of New York stepped into it with 111 straight days of daily press briefings. I can’t say I tuned in and immediately found what I was looking for because I was looking for Bill Clinton. I wanted deep, syrupy empathy and beautiful promises. Barack Obama would empathize in a moment like this, but he wouldn’t sugarcoat. And I needed sugar.

Andrew Cuomo offers no sugar. His resting expression is dour. When he speaks emotionally—and he often does—there is a distance, a clinical remove from the content of his words. He says devastating things with a flat affect, things like “you’re going to lose people. That’s life. That’s up to someone else. That’s above my pay grade.” What he brought to the table in the absence of Clintonian empathy was, chiefly, math. He had graphs and tables and metrics illustrating the progress of the epidemic and he updated them daily. His language was the language of machines. Shutting down the economy was “throwing a switch in the basement.” How soon could the city re-open? That was like reading a car dashboard, he told us. It would involve reading dials and meters that would inform the turning of valves. There were blunt sports metaphors (the economy would bounce back like a football, not a basketball) and car talk. So much car talk.

Cuomo’s mantra over the coming months would be “facts not emotions.” His was a “data driven response,” he told us repeatedly. It’s not that he didn’t acknowledge our collective anguish; he did. But he acknowledged it in flat, declarative sentences like “there is no doubt that this is a horrendous time to live through.” And he wasn’t averse to talking worst possible scenarios—flatly, unemotionally. Forget hope and comfort, he imagined disasters I hadn’t even considered. “Don’t be stupid,” he told us often. What would happen if we were stupid? The infection rate would continue to rise and transit workers might stay home to keep their families safe. And if transit workers stayed home and medical personnel couldn’t get to work? Then, my friends, we would be in real trouble. My father did this, too—invited you to imagine the outer-reaches of catastrophe when what you were looking for was reassurance. When I told my parents that I wanted to have a baby on my own, my father’s response was, “If the child was born with problems, that would be very bad.” When I bought car insurance for the first time? He said, “I like to carry enough insurance that if I hit a school bus full of children, I would be covered.” Prudent, sure. But did we really have to go there?

My father never really got it when I tried to explain why this kind of response was unsatisfying. Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, got it, or at least to paid lip service to the critique, which was a start. His three daughters had made him aware of his “flawed communication modality,” he told us. And he told us this often. But he also ended his briefings everyday with the word “love.” Every day he told us that we had to be “New York tough” and then he asked us to also be loving towards one another. You can be tough and loving at the same time, he told us! And how often he told us! This point—the coexistence of toughness and love—seemed almost a fixation for him.

Andrew Cuomo looks like my father in his prime, if my father had hair. It’s the coloring and the deeply etched bulldog lines in the face, the default-to-dour resting expression. They share verbal cadences and odd mannerisms, like shaking both hands at you to indicate they’re about to change the subject even though they have so much more to teach you. I realized pretty fast that these press briefings were going to be a Proustian shit storm for me. It was uncanny and I could not look away.

They both do this annoying thing where they validate your pain by assuring you that it’s awful enough to stand the test of time. When I had a miscarriage, my father said, “You’ll remember this all your life.” Cuomo was fond of telling us that the Coronavirus would guarantee us a place in the history books. Um… good?

They both employ the same maddening rhetorical device in the face of conflict. It goes like this: “You want to do x? That’s fine. But you have to do y.” I did a lot of adolescent screaming at my father about his deficiencies and his response was always the same. “You don’t love me? That’s OK. You don’t have to love me. You do have to respect me.” (My father, no lie, once changed a light bulb while telling me this.) Cuomo uses this construction a lot. “You don’t want to wear a mask? You don’t think it’s cool? That’s fine. You still have to wear one.” And their delivery is the same! There’s a bright, self-congratulatory lilt when they’re embracing your flawed position. Then they drop the hammer. That nice little connection we just made? It doesn’t actually change anything.

And they both exhibit—not a criticism, guys, only an observation—a giddy narcissistic delight when they share something they like about themselves. Cuomo does this thing where he shares with his audience a quotation he finds especially relevant and profound. Then, with a glint in his eye, he says, “Do you know who said that? I said that. That’s me.” Toward the end of my father’s life, he leaned in very close to me and smiled. He said, “Gina, I am so proud…” and, as I readied myself to accept his praise, he finished the sentence, “… of my war service.”

And how many days did I feel the pain of the Cuomo daughters? This, for me, is where this whole thing got weird. The more I watched Andrew Cuomo flail awkwardly at showing affection for his daughters, the more acutely I missed my father. Oh, Governor. When you unveiled the renovation of Terminal B at LaGuardia and compared it to the birth of your daughters? Then I missed my father. Giving your youngest daughter your watch as a graduation present? Very Sebastian Gionfriddo. I know she asked for something that had meaning for you, but by your own admission, “She won’t be able to wear it because it’s a man’s watch.” I missed my father every time you took a stab at paternal empathy and mangled the moment awfully. To his daughter, Mariah, missing her boyfriend, the governor observed, “That old expression, if you love something, let it go and it will return to you. And if it doesn’t return, then it was never meant to be… Words to that effect.”

By 2020 I had come a long way toward forgiving my father for not being the dad I wanted him to be, but the place I found myself wasn’t exactly love. It was chilly acceptance that he did the best he could and gratitude for his financial generosity. Two years after my father’s death and four years after my mother’s, my eight-year-old daughter saw me ache for my mother in difficult moments. “You don’t miss Grandpa,” she said flatly. And she was right. I didn’t.

My father was no fun and he brought almost nothing to the table—to use a favorite Andrew Cuomo phrase—”on a personal level.” But I would probably not have the life I have today without his financial generosity. He did not ask about my feelings, ever, but he paid for a hippie private school that did. I have no student loans. My father supplemented my teaching income when I was struggling for time to write my plays. When I went through a series of health problems in my twenties, he offered no words of comfort, but paid for any treatment I thought might work. Maybe I would be where I am today without my father, but probably not. A cursory googling of Andrew Cuomo tells me that he is viewed, in the political arena, as effective, but not liked. His father, Mario, was a philosopher, they say, whereas he is a mechanic. Also his former in-laws have accused him of not being fun.

I am very familiar with this particular configuration of attributes.

I’ve been at this essay for a while now and I resolved to put it away after today because, candidly, personal introspection essays do not pay my bills and I have been neglecting the writing job that does. I have a lot of murder television to write, so it’s time to end this thing. I was hoping that a coherent thesis would emerge and that hasn’t happened. But writing this has felt thrilling because it put me back in touch with the reason writers write: we think that if we keep hacking away at a thing that confounds us, we will break through to illumination on the other side. Not this time, apparently. The human psyche is a dense, unfathomable swamp.

This is the best I can do: In a time of personal and global terror, I took comfort in watching Andrew Cuomo because he reminded me so much of the father who never offered me comfort. He was not the balm I went looking for in my COVID spring, but for 111 very bad days, he was there, sharing scary facts and scarier projections after which he would empathize awkwardly and disappear to, presumably, go be the unlikable guy who makes your life possible. And sprinkled throughout these briefings were flights of bizarre autobiographical self-indulgence—projecting his mother and his daughters on screens behind him on Mother’s Day, for example—that were simultaneously so heartfelt and so tone deaf. It was in those strange moments I saw my father most clearly and was surprised to find that I missed him. I came to believe, over those 111 days, that Andrew Cuomo cared a lot, in spite of communication tics that suggested otherwise and I think that journey has made me willing to make that leap with my father. Which, I will give you, is way, way too much to put on gubernatorial press conferences, but there it is. It’s not rational; it’s some weird inner child healing thing. Don’t tell me Andrew Cuomo underfunds public education. This is not a data driven response.

And the irony is sweet. Nine years after my father told me the governor of New York could do something for me, he did

Bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station survived for years in the vacuum of space

A new study reveals that clumps of bacteria managed to survive on the outside of the International Space Station — completely exposed to the harsh conditions of outer space — by hiding and then thriving under the remains of dead bacteria.

Japanese scientists learned this while performing an experiment meant to test the panspermia hypothesis, the idea that spores and other forms of microscopic life may be able to spread organisms from one planet to another by somehow finding a way to survive the extreme temperatures, high radiation levels and airless, nutrient-free conditions of outer space. In their recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, scientists describe how they placed dried cell pellets of the bacteria Deinococcus spp., which has a high level of resistance to ionizing radiation, in aluminum plate wells that were then attached to exposure panels on the International Space Station’s exterior.

“We exposed the microbial cell pellet with different thickness to space environments,” the authors write. “The results indicated the importance of the aggregated form of cells for surviving in harsh space environment. We also analyzed the samples exposed to space from 1 to 3 years. The experimental design enabled us to get and to extrapolate the survival time course and to predict the survival time of D. radiodurans. The results supported the concept of the massapanspermia if other requirements are met, such as ejection from the donor planet, transfer, and landing.” Massapanspermia refers to the specific idea of microbial transfer between planets.

Specifically, the scientists found that the Deinococcus bacteria were able to form tiny balls, sometimes only as thick as five sheets of paper, and that the organisms in the center of the ball managed to survive even as the ones on the outside perished. Although all of the bacteria in the pellets that were only 100 micrometers thick died, roughly 4 percent of the microbes from the pellets that were 500 and 1,000 micrometers thick managed to survive by protecting themselves with the remains of their deceased companions.

The most immediate implications of the study involve possible travel from Earth to Mars or vice versa.

“Accordingly, Deinococcal cell pellets in the sub-millimeter range would be sufficient to allow survival during an interplanetary journey from Earth to Mars or Mars to Earth,” the authors write. “Cell pellets of 1,000 micrometer diameter would be able to survive the shortest travel time in space.”

This is not the first time that scientists have taken an interest in microbial survival in space. Last year scientists published an article in the journal Microbiome which analyzed the composition of the various microbes and fungi that lived on the International Space Station. It found that the most prominent bacteria were Staphylococcus, Pantoea and Bacillus. This research was important in terms of assessing human health during lengthy travel through space.

“Specific microbes in indoor spaces on Earth have been shown to impact human health,” Kasthuri Venkateswaran, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped co-author the paper cataloguing the microbes, said in a statement at the time. “This is even more important for astronauts during spaceflight, as they have altered immunity and do not have access to the sophisticated medical interventions available on Earth.”

Feeling the consequences of Trump’s rotten presidency, first hand

My wife and I have been warned that we may need to evacuate because of fires ravaging the Bay Area.

The climate crisis is to blame for these fires, which are growing in number and intensity every year. It’s also to blame for the increasing number and virulence of hurricanes now hitting the Gulf and Southeast, flash floods along the Eastern seaboard, and fierce winds across middle America.

Two hurricanes are now threatening the Gulf coast. The Gulf has never before had two hurricanes at the same time.

In early August, Illinois and Iowa were hit with winds of up to 110 miles per hour. Homes were leveled. At least 10 million acres of crops were destroyed. Many people are still without power.

Trump isn’t singularly responsible for climate change, of course. But he’s done nothing to stop it. In fact, he’s done everything he can to accelerate it.

No one speaking at the Republican convention mentioned Trump’s abandonment of the Paris Agreement, his rollback of environmental regulations, or his boundless generosity to the fossil fuel industry.

Yet, facing possible evacuation, I’ve been thinking about all this in a newly personal way. So have many others, including, I suspect, some people who voted for Trump last time, who reside in the Gulf states, the eastern seaboard, and the Midwest.

It’s one thing to understand climate change in the abstract. It’s another to live inside it.

I recently got an email from a woman living in North Carolina whose house was destroyed in a flash flood. She describes herself as a lifelong Republican who’s now a “born-again environmentalist.” She said she’ll be voting for Joe Biden.

It’s much the same with the coronavirus. The gross numbers tell a horrible story. Last Thursday alone, 1,090 Americans died of it. Only 5 died of it in Canada that same day, 6 in the UK, 12 in France, 16 in Japan, 16 in Spain, and 10 in Germany.

Yet not even these numbers hit home the way it does when you know someone who has perished or nearly perished from this disease. I know two who have died. A good friend came close. Like me, a growing number of Americans are experiencing the coronavirus personally.

Trump isn’t solely responsible. America’s public health system was never up to the task of dealing with a pandemic. But Trump’s stream of lies, denials, and refusals to take responsibility have allowed the disease to ravage America.

These days, Trump’s only mention of the pandemic is to blame China or claim the official numbers are exaggerated. Many of Trump’s followers believe him. But just as with the floods and windstorms and fires, an increasing number who have experienced Covid-19 personally have become hardened against his lies.

So, too, with the economic devastation that’s come in the wake of the pandemic. Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed. Many are growing desperate. Almost everyone knows someone who has lost a job, or whose wages have been cut.

There’s an old saying that “the personal is political.” People understand politics most profoundly when it’s connected to their own lived experience.

At the Republican convention, Trump and his enablers claimed Democrats want to turn America into a socialist state. They issued racist dog whistles about “rioters and looters” in American cities. They conjured up “deep state” conspiracies. They lied about Joe Biden.

Some Americans believe this drivel. But I suspect the lived experience of most others – including many who voted for Trump in 2016 – is more convincing. A threat to one’s life or the lives of loved ones, or the imminent loss of a job, concentrates the mind.

After almost four years, tens millions of Americans have felt the consequences of his rotten presidency first-hand. Trump’s malfeasance is now more palpable than his fearmongering. The personal is political.

Republican Convention, Day 4: Fireworks … and shining a light on Trump’s claims

President Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president in a 70-minute speech from the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday night.

Speaking to a friendly crowd that didn’t appear to be observing social distancing conventions, and with few participants wearing masks, he touched on a range of topics, including many related to the COVID pandemic and health care in general.

Throughout, the partisan crowd applauded and chanted “Four more years!” And, even as the nation’s COVID-19 death toll exceeded 180,000, Trump was upbeat. “In recent months, our nation and the entire planet has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy,” he said. “Like those brave Americans before us, we are meeting this challenge.”

At the end of the event, there were fireworks.

Our partners at PolitiFact did an in-depth fact check on Trump’s entire acceptance speech. Here are the highlights related to the administration’s COVID-19 response and other health policy issues:

“We developed, from scratch, the largest and most advanced testing system in the world.”

This is partially right, but it needs context.

It’s accurate that the U.S. developed its COVID-19 testing system from scratch, because the government didn’t accept the World Health Organization’s testing recipe. But whether the system is the “largest” or “most advanced” is subject to debate.

The U.S. has tested more individuals than any other country. But experts told us a more meaningful metric would be the percentage of positive tests out of all tests, indicating that not only sick people were getting tested. Another useful metric would be the percentage of the population that has been tested. The U.S. is one of the most populous countries but has tested a lower percentage of its population than other countries.

The U.S. was also slower than other countries in rolling out tests and amping up testing capacity. Even now, many states are experiencing delays in reporting test results to positive individuals.

As for “the most advanced,” Trump may be referring to new testing investments and systems, like Abbott’s recently announced $5, 15-minute rapid antigen test, which the company says will be about the size of a credit card, needs no instrumentation and comes with a phone app through which people can view their results. But Trump’s comment makes it sound as if these testing systems are already in place when they haven’t been distributed to the public.

“The United States has among the lowest [COVID-19] case fatality rates of any major country in the world. The European Union’s case fatality rate is nearly three times higher than ours.”

The case fatality rate measures the known number of cases against the known number of deaths. The European Union has a rate that’s about 2½ times greater than the United States.

But the source of that data, Oxford University’s Our World in Data project, reports that “during an outbreak of a pandemic, the case fatality rate is a poor measure of the mortality risk of the disease.”

A better way to measure the threat of the virus, experts say, is to look at the number of deaths per 100,000 residents. Viewed that way, the U.S. has the 10th-highest death rate in the world.

“We will produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.”

It’s far from guaranteed that a coronavirus vaccine will be ready before the end of the year.

While researchers are making rapid strides, it’s not yet known precisely when the vaccine will be available to the public, which is what’s most important. Six vaccines are in the third phase of testing, which involves thousands of patients. Like earlier phases, this one looks at the safety of a vaccine but also examines its effectiveness and collects more data on side effects. Results of the third phase will be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval.

The government website Operation Warp Speed seems less optimistic than Trump, announcing it “aims to deliver 300 million doses of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 by January 2021.”

And federal health officials and other experts have generally predicted a vaccine will be available in early 2021. Federal committees are working on recommendations for vaccine distribution, including which groups should get it first. “From everything we’ve seen now — in the animal data, as well as the human data — we feel cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert. “I don’t think it’s dreaming.”

“Last month, I took on Big Pharma. You think that is easy? I signed orders that would massively lower the cost of your prescription drugs.”

Quite misleading. Trump signed four executive orders on July 24 aimed at lowering prescription drug prices. But those orders haven’t taken effect yet — the text of one hasn’t even been made publicly available — and experts told us that, if implemented, the measures would be unlikely to result in significant drug price reductions for the majority of Americans.

“We will always and very strongly protect patients with preexisting conditions, and that is a pledge from the entire Republican Party.”

Trump’s pledge is undermined by his efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, the only law that guarantees people with preexisting conditions both receive health coverage and do not have to pay more for it than others do. In 2017, Trump supported congressional efforts to repeal the ACA. The Trump administration is now backing GOP-led efforts to overturn the ACA through a court case. And Trump has also expanded short-term health plans that don’t have to comply with the ACA.

“Joe Biden recently raised his hand on the debate stage and promised he was going to give it away, your health care dollars to illegal immigrants, which is going to bring a massive number of immigrants into our country.”

This is misleading. During a June 2019 Democratic primary debate, candidates were asked: “Raise your hand if your government plan would provide coverage for undocumented immigrants.” All candidates on stage, including Biden, raised their hands. They were not asked if that coverage would be free or subsidized.

Biden supports extending health care access to all immigrants, regardless of immigration status. A task force recommended that he allow immigrants who are in the country illegally to buy health insurance, without federal subsidies.

“Joe Biden claims he has empathy for the vulnerable, yet the party he leads supports the extreme late-term abortion of defenseless babies right up to the moment of birth.”

This mischaracterizes the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion and Biden’s position.

Biden has said he would codify the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade and related precedents. This would generally limit abortions to the first 20 to 24 weeks of gestation. States are allowed under court rulings to ban abortion after the point at which a fetus can sustain life, usually considered to be between 24 and 28 weeks from the mother’s last menstrual period — and 43 states do. But the rulings require states to make exceptions “to preserve the life or health of the mother.” Late-term abortions are very rare, about 1%.

The Democratic Party platform holds that “every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion — regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured.” It does not address late-term abortion.

PolitiFact’s Daniel Funke, Jon Greenberg, Louis Jacobson, Noah Y. Kim, Bill McCarthy, Samantha Putterman, Amy Sherman, Miriam Valverde and KHN reporter Victoria Knight contributed to this report.

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

Death on the job: Workers have never been more expendable than they are now

For hundreds of thousands of essential workers, the potential swearing-in of Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, will have come too late to save them.

It’s kind of surreal, but even as the corporate media celebrates the role of essential workers, it’s clear that the lives of the workforce — and by extension their families — have never been more expendable.

Many of them will have been laid off, as cities, counties, states, school districts and transit authorities add them to the list of 1.5 million public sector workers already laid off — all because President Donald Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked efforts by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to provide the local aid so badly needed.

And those folks will be the lucky ones.

Thousands of other essential workers will have already died from the virus that Donald Trump has done all he could do to spread as far and wide as possible, thanks to his inaction at the federal level and inability to coordinate a national public health response.

An even larger number of first responders, health care professional and other essential workers will have survived their bout with COVID, only to face the prospect of long-term respiratory, coronary or nervous system damage from a virus we still know so little about.

Cannon fodder

The time line for our current crisis goes back to decades of disinvestment in America’s public health infrastructure amid an obscene military buildup set the stage for this virus’s explosion. That, multiplied by the years of decline of the American labor movement, set the stage for the devaluation of the lives of American workers playing out now.

The result is a kind of slaughter that has largely gone under-reported, even as it picks up steam and claims more lives of essential workers.

There’s just no countervailing force — not the unions, not their political allies — strong enough to counter the forces of avarice from own our government, the leaders from which have been pressing for a faster opening of the economy than public health experts deem wise.

That’s a particular shame, because time and time again, the unions and their leadership know very well the best way to protect their workers and save lives. In a pandemic that has the aftereffect of saving everyone’s lives, as the virus has no borders and does not differentiate between union members and non-members.

Indeed, the direct links between better wages and health care benefits and union membership are well established. What is less widely appreciated is the direct link between labor representation and safer workplaces. Workers that are not represented are more at risk from sudden accidental death or premature demise from an occupationally related disease.

The union label as safety net

In New York State, where dozens of workers in the construction industry die every year, a 2019 study by the New York Committee on Occupational Health and Safety found that in New York state 86.7 percent of the deaths happened on non-union worksites, while 92.9 percent of the New York City deaths were on non-union sites.

It should come as no surprise that that it is the undocumented construction workers of color who are at most risk of death or serious injury in these non-union worksites.

A Harvard University occupational health study of anti-union so-called “right to work” states, based on data from 1992 to 2016, found that for every one percent decline in the rate of unionization in Right to Work states, there was a five percent increase in the rate of workplace fatalities.

“In total, RTW [Right to Work] laws have led to a 14.2% increase in occupational mortality through decreased unionization,” according to study’s abstract. “These findings illustrate and quantify the protective effect of unions on workers’ safety. Policymakers should consider the potentially deleterious effects of anti-union legislation on occupational health.”

Long before COVID darkened our doorstep, every year thousands of workers were dying on the job of avoidable injuries and tens of thousands more from occupationally related illness — and yet, it never seems to be a national priority.

The final measure

In 2017, 5,147 workers lost their lives on the job as a result of traumatic injuries, according to the AFL-CIO. “This does not include those workers who die from occupational diseases, estimated to be 95,000 each year.”

The AFL-CIO continues: “Chronic occupational diseases receive less attention, because most are not detected until years after workers are exposed to toxic chemicals, and occupational illnesses often are misdiagnosed and poorly tracked. All total, on average 275 workers die each day due to job injuries and illnesses.”

Over the years, since the creating of the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration in the 1970s, enforcement and the resources to fund it have waxed and waned, depending on which party was in power and their overall regulatory philosophy.

But with the arrival of Donald Trump in the Oval Office, we were gifted a chief executive who was ideologically opposed to any government regulation of the private sector. Hence, he appointed corporate lobbyists to dismantle regulatory agencies from within and that was part of what also set the stage for his abject failure in containing the virus.

Trump was also openly hostile to the federal unions, and signed three executive orders to drive them out of the government workplace — where they had been since 1962, when President Kennedy signed off on collective bargaining for federal workers.

With the arrival of COVID-19, Trump refused to protect his own workforce, which as president he was responsible for. In the process, he helped to spread the disease throughout the nation even as he denied it was a problem.

As the virus spreader-in-chief resisted testing for the general population, his administration failed to provide personal protective equipment for federal employees in heavy contact with the public, in transit, and in congregant settings with patients and inmates.

It seems like Trump was specifically hellbent on ignoring the words of the unions and of the federal workers who, from the beginning, foresaw what was going to happen.

They wanted masks and testing and when he wouldn’t oblige them, it went largely unreported because with just a few exceptions the corporate media ignores the day in and day out circumstances of America’s working class.

It started with the lack of outrage over Trump’s ignoring the Transportation Security Administration officers who were sentries on the frontlines during the earliest phase of the pandemic as his chaotic travel policy set off panic at airports.

The federal government’s dereliction of duty soon extended to the Transportation Security Administration, the Veterans Administration and Bureau of Prisons.

In addition, four Federal meat inspectors, members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) died from the virus and in the process exposed their families to it.

“The industry is working with the USDA and headquarters to avoid releasing any of this information so that they can keep people working in these plants no matter what,” Paula Schelling, the acting president of AFGE’s National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, told me. “For us it is critical to know these numbers; the number of people sidelined: the number of people who were in contact with someone who tested positive and the number of facility employees who have tested positive.”

As dozens of private sector union meat processing workers died from COVID, and many more were sickened, President Trump used the power of his office to help the meat lacking industry blow off local public health officials pressing for transparency and employee testing as they faced an explosion in cases.

Meat producers pushed back against testing and regulation by claiming that the nation’s meat supply was in jeopardy. In April, that claim prompted President Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act, ordering all meat plants to stay open because they were critical infrastructure.

As the worker body count grew and the union’s concerns ignored, the virus spread well beyond the meat processing plants and into the communities where they were located. This was made possible by the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to help the meat processing industry frustrate and successfully resist local public health efforts to suppress the virus.

“One huge thing to think about is how Trump used his authority under the Defense Production Act to compel continued production in the meat industry but he wouldn’t use that same authority to create a national response to save lives by ramping up testing and contact tracing, or a federal PPE standard,” said John Samulesen, president of the Transportation Workers Union International, which represent transit and airline sector workers.

“We shall not be moved”

From the very beginning of this national tribulation, it has been the nation’s unions standing up for their members and the public health pushing back on risky and expedient decisions by ill-informed managers.

Consider the JetBlue flight crew in Florida in March that refused an order to continue flying after they had been exposed to a coronavirus-positive passenger.

In that case, a manager told the fight crew, represented by the Transportation Workers Union, that they should keep working until they were symptomatic, because they could not spread it until then.

That manager, of course, was wrong. As is now widely recognized, people can be contagious and spread this scourge even when completely asymptomatic. The workers were right. Their bosses were wrong.

Again, the union saw this coming. The unions saw to it that the flight crew got two weeks’ pay to self-quarantine and in the process saved their co-workers and the flying public from an exposure some of them might not have survived.

Sliding guidance

Early on in New York City, when just a handful of COVID cases had been reported, TWU Local 100 workers in the subway decided to wear masks for their own protection but were written up by managers who said it was not part of their uniform and they might frighten the public.

City officials parroted CDC guidance that said healthy people should not, and need not wear masks so they could save them for the healthcare workers. (They didn’t have enough for them either.)

As the virus spread and New York’s death toll soared Governor Cuomo mandated masks.

131 MTA employees, over half TWU Local 100 members, died from the virus.

In April, CDC changed their guidance mandating the general public wear masks.

As we reported in the Chief-Leader, unions representing nurses and New York City’s FDNY EMS warned in March that the CDC’s expedient watering down of occupational health standards, to compensate for the scarcity of equipment, posed a risk to their members’ health, their families and the very viability of the entire public health response.

They warned that the CDC’s efforts to manage PPE inventory by promulgating flawed occupational health regulations would help spread the disease and risk the lives of health care professionals.

It did.

Now, close to 1,000 health care workers are dead.

You see a pattern?

Sliding guidance kills — and when unions get ignored, lots of people die.

Don’t count on the Supreme Court to save the November elections

As election day approaches, voting-rights lawsuits are heating up across the country. In two separate federal cases in August, 20 states and the District of Columbia sued President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to reverse cutbacks to the postal system designed to undermine the agency’s ability to deliver the expected upsurge in mail-in ballots this fall.

At the same time, the Trump administration has filed federal lawsuits to invalidate vote-by-mail procedures adopted in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Jersey. The administration alleges, without any supporting evidence, that easing the rules on mail-in balloting will lead to massive fraud.

The vote-by-mail litigation joins other ongoing election cases that have been launched in Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and elsewhere, challenging restrictive voter ID laws, voting roll purges, the closing of polling stations in minority communities, and other suppression techniques.

A few of the pending lawsuits have already reached the Supreme Court and more, perhaps those involving the Postal Service, are undoubtedly on the way. Thus far, however, the court has declined to take any action to halt the growing tide of voter suppression, displaying a clear animosity to voting rights.

The performance of Chief Justice John Roberts has been especially regrettable, but by no means surprising. Although Roberts has established himself as the court’s decisive swing justice, his record on voting rights, both as a well-connected GOP attorney in his younger days and later on the bench, is long and truly abysmal.

Roberts made his initial mark in the voting-rights field in 1982 when, as a special assistant to Reagan-era Attorney General William French Smith, he authored a lengthy memorandum urging the administration to oppose an expansion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark legislation passed by Congress in 1965 to outlaw racial discrimination in voting.

Eighteen years later, while in private practice in Washington, D.C., Roberts reportedly played an important behind-the-scenes role in the litigation that led to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, the infamous judicial coup d’état that halted a manual recount of the disputed Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election and handed victory to George W. Bush.

In the run-up to his 2005 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Roberts’ role in the Florida recount controversy was the subject of a small handful of newspaper articles, in particular one published in July 2005 by the Miami Herald. According to reporter Marc Caputo, now a staff writer with Politico, Roberts was an integral part of the Republican legal team assembled to work on the Florida recount, operating as a “consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for arguments before the nation’s highest court.”

Roberts was recruited to the team by none other than Ted Cruz, then a young and very conservative Harvard-educated lawyer who, like Roberts, had once worked as a clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist. In 1999, Cruz hired on with the Bush election campaign as a domestic policy adviser.

By the time Caputo caught up with Cruz in 2005, Cruz had become the solicitor general in Texas, and had earned a reputation as a pugnacious litigator, arguing nine cases of his own before the Supreme Court.

Contacted by Caputo, Cruz said that Roberts spent “a week to 10 days” in the Sunshine State working on the recount. According to Caputo, Roberts traveled from D.C. to Tallahassee to advise Gov. Jeb Bush on his options for certifying the outcome of the Florida vote, and later participated in what Caputo termed “a dress rehearsal to prepare the Bush legal team for the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Asked at his confirmation hearing about his views on Bush v. Gore, Roberts declined to comment, remarking, “Well, that’s an area where I’ve not been—I’ve not felt free to comment whether or not I agree. …”

On September 29, 2005, the full Senate confirmed Roberts as the 17th chief justice of the Supreme Court by a vote of 78 to 22. Since then, Roberts has proven time and again to be an enabler of GOP-inspired voter suppression.

In 2008, Roberts joined in the court’s 6-3 ruling (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board), upholding Indiana’s voter ID law. The ruling set the stage for restrictive voter ID laws in other states.

In 2010, Roberts joined the 5-4 majority opinion written by Anthony Kennedy in Citizens United v. FEC. The decision opened the door to the formation of super PACs and unlimited spending in federal election campaigns.

In 2013, Roberts returned to the Voting Rights Act, authoring the majority 5-4 opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. Regarded by some commentators as one of the worst Supreme Court rulings of the past 60 years, Roberts’ opinion gutted the act’s “preclearance” provisions, which had required states and localities with a legacy of racial discrimination, mostly located in the deep South, to obtain advance approval from the Justice Department or the courts before implementing new voting laws and procedures.

Roberts’ reasoning in Shelby was both naïve and dangerous. At the heart of his opinion is the view that racism in America is largely a thing of the past. When the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, Roberts wrote, “the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics.” But, he insisted, echoing GOP talking points, “things have changed dramatically” over the past 50 years, and the act’s preclearance procedures were no longer warranted, nor fair to the states that had been required to comply with them.

The impact of Shelby on voting-rights litigation cannot be understated. The VRA’s preclearance procedures placed the legal burden of proof in such cases on states and local governments to justify material changes to their election laws. In the absence of the preclearance requirements, the burden of proof falls on victimized voters, not only requiring them to initiate cases, but also saddling them with enormous litigation expenses.

If Roberts never participated in another voting-rights case after Shelby, he still would have secured his legacy as an opponent of free and fair elections. But his work didn’t end with Shelby.

In 2019, Roberts turned his attention to “partisan” gerrymandering, the practice of purposely designing electoral districts so as to advantage one political party over its rivals. Partisan gerrymandering is widespread, and where it exists, it stifles political debate, gives rise to state legislatures and congressional delegations impervious to changes in public opinion, and in states like Wisconsin, permits one party to win a large majority of seats even when it fails to receive a majority of the overall popular vote.

Writing once more for a 5-4 conservative majority in Rucho v. Common Cause, Roberts held that issues of partisan gerrymandering are “political questions” beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts.

This year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roberts and his Republican brethren have issued orders in cases from Alabama, Texas, and Wisconsin that have made it harder for voters to cast absentee ballots. And in a case from Florida, the court refused to intervene in a dispute over the right of ex-felons to vote, potentially disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of people with prior convictions in a key battleground state.

So, hold your praise for John Roberts. When it comes to ending the scourge of Donald Trump at the ballot box, he’s not your friend, let alone your savior.

Donald Trump’s pathology of victimhood: It’s dangerous for his own party — and the rest of us

Donald Trump uses victimhood as a means of manipulating and exploiting others. Whenever he fails or is caught in a lie or does something corrupt, he reflexively twists it around and blames others. Not only that, he then claims he is the victim. That is the classic pattern of a malignant narcissist.

Trump has tweeted the phrase “Presidential harassment” 37 times in the past 2 years. In March 2019, he tweeted that he had faced “the most vicious and corrupt mainstream media that any president has ever had to endure.” In July 2020, Trump asserted that he was the victim of “political prosecution” by the U.S. Supreme Court after he lost his tax returns case.

Trump’s constant victimhood is a byproduct of his psychiatric disorder. It is false. It is distorted. It is manufactured in his mind. Trump feels victimized as a way of protecting his self-image of superiority and grandiosity. Otherwise, if he accepts blame for his thoughts or actions, his self-image will crumble and wither away. That is totally unacceptable to him; his grandiose self-image must be maintained at all cost.

Trump’s victimhood has been used throughout his presidency. In his mind, he is the victim of the pandemic, of the economic collapse, of our racial problems. He is the victim of the protests in the cities, of the Russia probe, of his own impeachment, of his associates’ criminal activities — and the list goes on and on.

Trump talks and tweets excessively about being the victim. The aggressors have been Jim Comey, Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, CNN and many others. Trump’s victimhood tweets have a number of predictable and recurring themes: the 2020 election will be “rigged,” he is the target of a “witch hunt,” the media is spreading “fake news,” all negative perceptions of him “unfair,” he is “misunderstood” and “persecuted.”

At the Republican National Convention last week, Trump and other speakers invoked victimhood through their excessive fear-mongering, telling supporters that they are the victims of Black people, gangs, riots, radical liberals, unpatriotic malcontents, the deep state, the free press, immigrants and others.

No matter the facts or reality, Trump instinctively sees himself as the victim. He lives in an alternate universe of victimhood. And everything around him — political party and country — is negatively affected by his victimhood.

In truth, Donald Trump is rarely, if ever, the victim. He is always the aggressor. He is always the offender.

Trump has botched our pandemic response, leading to 183,000 deaths so far, with the numbers increasing daily. The crashing of the economy is the result of his pandemic mishandling. Racial problems have been incited by his comments and gestures. Many protests in the cities have been provoked by his actions. He clearly did conspire with Russian agents. His Impeachment was based on his corrupt behavior with Ukraine. Several of associates and cronies have been convicted of crimes committed with his tacit blessing and under his watch.

Consistent with being a malignant narcissist, Trump is using his pathology of victimhood to transform the Republican Party. He is obsessed with convincing his supporters that they are all victims of countervailing forces in the country, and that they must unite together to fend off “total anarchy, madness and chaos.”

Trump is making the Republican Party the party of victimhood. It is now in his image. Victimhood is its collective political belief system. It is central to the Republicans’ identity. And their primary belief is that Donald Trump is their supreme leader who can take them to the promised land. They cannot define or describe the promised land — as evidenced by the fact that the party has no platform this year — but they believe that united victimhood will bring them sustained power.

What seems clear is that many of Trump’s supporters identify with his victimhood persona. People who have felt victimized by government or by society or by economics or by a significant other are prone to ally with Trump. They perceive themselves as having a special and unbreakable bond with a leader who understands them and is like them — victimized and aggrieved. The result is an “agenda” of shared grievances.

The real problem, of course, is that Donald Trump’s victimhood is totally false and fake. It is a distortion due to his pathology. It is an upside-down concoction in his mind. In truth, Trump is hostile. He is cruel. He is a bully. He is dark and gloomy. He creates crises. He provokes divisiveness. He has no empathy. He is corrupt. He has all the dangerous features that he projects onto others, and for which he then berates them. After all, he is a malignant narcissist.

Where does this leave his supporters? It leaves them out in the cold. Trump does not give a damn about them. He is so self-absorbed and grandiose that he despises the people who claim victimhood with him. His victimhood is a pathological ploy to manipulate and exploit others. Once that is accomplished, he views those people are expendable and dismisses them as dupes. If necessary, Trump will throw all his supporters under the bus, as he has done with many of his loyalists in recent years: Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, just to name a few.

Trump is betting his political fortunes on his victimhood. It is a conniving ruse by a narcissist who wants everyone to believe that his miserably failed presidency is someone else’s fault.

For all of his non-supporters, Trump’s pathology of victimhood is deeply disturbing. It has allowed him to be hostile, cruel, bullying, dishonest and corrupt without no sense of guilt or remorse. It is a sad state of affairs when a president of the United States has a governing philosophy predicated on victimhood — because it is essentially self-destructive.

It is Donald Trump’s psychopathology that is playing out in his party and in our country. And victimhood is a perilous foundation for the preservation of our democracy.

Trump’s college admission now under investigation following new evidence of SAT fraud

Professors have asked President Donald Trump’s alma mater to investigate his admittance to the university decades ago based on “new evidence” revealed by his niece.

Eric Orts and five other faculty members have renewed their request that the University of Pennsylvania to look into Trump’s transfer into the school in 1966 after his niece Mary Trump claimed in her recent book that he had paid someone else to take his SAT exam, reported the Washington Post.

Penn’s provost told Orts on July 20 that the admissions process had taken place too long ago to make an investigation possible, but added that might be possible if new evidence surfaced to substantiate Mary Trump’s claim.

Orts said he contacted provost Wendell Pritchett again after the Post published audio recordings made by Mary Trump of her conversations with Maryanne Trump Barry, her aunt and the president’s older sister, that detailed the admissions scheme.

“I drove him around New York City to try to get him into college,” Barry said. “[He] went to Fordham for one year [actually two years] and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.”

Barry also told her niece that she’d done the future president’s homework for him before he was admitted to Penn.

Orts emailed that audio recording to the provost, but said he had not yet gotten a response to the new evidence.