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How Larry King got duped into starring in Chinese propaganda

Jacobi Niv had paid Larry King a few thousand dollars apiece to narrate half a dozen videos for companies or projects in Israel, where King is still a big name. But what Niv wanted King to tape on March 27, 2019, wasn’t the usual infomercial. It was more like a disinfomercial.

An Israeli with designer clothes, a buzz cut and a long history of failed businesses and inflated credentials, Niv had known King for nearly a decade. King sometimes taped Niv’s promotional videos at the same Glendale, California, studio where the longtime television host filmed “Larry King Now” and “PoliticKING” for Ora Media, the digital TV network he started with his wife, Shawn. The crew resented the way Niv would stride into their homey, basic studio, bringing extra work for them. But he had ingratiated himself with King, in part by sending him lavish floral arrangements and other expensive gifts on Jewish holidays, King and others said.

 

That morning, Niv emailed a script to King’s executive producer, Jason Rovou, who recognized that it wasn’t Niv’s typical fare. It was about China, not Israel, and the content appeared to be news-related.

After a 300-word preamble on the U.S. trade deficit with China, King was to introduce a guest, Russian journalist Anastasia Dolgova. The first of King’s scripted questions for her was open-ended: “How can we strengthen the relationship between the 2 countries?”

It soon got more pointed. “Dolgova, you wanted to present us with a case that you mentioned on your show as well,” the script read. “There were several Chinese people who worked in China and allegedly committed crimes there who then fled to the United States and Europe, continuing on with their normal lives while leaving many angry people behind.”

Dolgova’s answers were not in the script. They were plugged in separately. King was expected to tape his questions without speaking to her. His skill at the give-and-take of interviewing, of sensing the moment and asking the right question that draws a revealing response, would not be of any use.

How Larry King unwittingly starred in Chinese propaganda

Rovou sensed trouble. The idea of lending the set — and his boss’s reputation — to a potentially controversial video that Ora couldn’t control disturbed him, according to three people familiar with the incident. Rovou worried that King could be helping a foreign government spread false information, reminiscent of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election — a topic King routinely discussed with guests on “PoliticKING.”

When Niv showed up at the studio, intent on making the video, the usually laid-back Rovou confronted him. “It annoyed the holy hell out of Jason, like I’ve never seen him,” said Ian Smith, then a director at Ora. “Jason, to his face, told him how annoyed he was with him. Everyone knew he didn’t like what Larry was being asked to do.”

Niv took Rovou’s outburst in stride. “Jason didn’t want to do this video, not this video, any video,” Niv recalled. “He would say, ‘Why do you come here without telling me in advance?’ So I told him, ‘Look Jason, I set it up with Larry.'”

Rovou implored King not to do the video. King waved away his concerns. The then-85-year-old host, who was in poor health, also made it clear that shooting elsewhere — he occasionally taped Niv’s videos at a Beverly Hills hotel — would be a burden.

Defeated, the crew gathered around the chestnut-colored wood-paneled set of “Larry King Now,” an Emmy-nominated interview show that has featured more than 1,000 guests from Oprah Winfrey to Harrison Ford. Staff loaded the teleprompter and started filming. In the same white shirt, blue floral tie and black suspenders that he wore for an episode of “PoliticKING” taped that day, King ran through the monologue and the string of questions, the last being, “I’m amazed, are you sure that the story you are telling here is real and authentic?” He concluded, “We will continue to bring you interesting stories.”

Early that afternoon, Rovou emailed a link of the raw footage to Niv.

“Ora can’t do favor tapings,” Rovou wrote. “I just can’t have this dropped on me again.”

* * *

Rovou’s fears were well-founded. In the twilight of a remarkable radio and television career spanning more than six decades, battling health problems but determined to stay in the public eye, King was ensnared in an international disinformation scheme. Based on social media analysis and the retracing of a trail that wound through two Israeli entrepreneurs to Ora’s California studio, it appears that the Chinese government, possibly in concert with Russia, manipulated an American broadcasting icon.

“It’s unfortunate that Larry found himself unwittingly being exploited,” said Ora’s CEO, John Dickey. “I’ve seen it over the years. He’ll talk to anybody. He’ll give access to anybody, to a fault. He loves to mentor. He loves to be available. With a star that shines as bright as his, you’re going to have some people come into your orbit who are not positive. … This was obviously not right, and in hindsight, I wish it never would have happened. Larry didn’t know, and Jason could only protest so much.”

Posted on YouTube under the title “Larry King US China Special Conference 2019,” and quickly spread by social media accounts linked to Chinese government influence operations, the fake interview went viral across Chinese-language social media, likely reaching hundreds of thousands of users on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

As diplomatic tensions escalate between the U.S. and China, the video demonstrates how foreign disinformation campaigns are growing increasingly aggressive even as they conceal their origins to boost credibility. Social media is only one element of China’s far-ranging propaganda efforts. China also disseminates its message on university campuses, where its Confucius Institutes convey a whitewashed view of Chinese history and politics, and its Thousand Talents program aggressively woos top scientists.

The video has other implications as well. By conveying Chinese disinformation through a journalist for Russian media, it may exemplify the increasing media cooperation between the two countries. In addition, it raises questions about whether Niv — and King himself — should have registered as foreign agents on behalf of China.

“This is something that the Department of Justice would certainly be interested in, particularly given the department’s emphasis on combating Chinese influence within the United States,” said Matthew Sanderson, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who specializes in the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “Who was calling the shots and who is behind the interview?”

In the video, King appears to conduct a live interview with Dolgova, who according to her LinkedIn profile is the head of the International Department at Russian state-linked broadcaster REN TV, and used to be an editor and news analyst for the state-owned Russia-24 channel. The topic is Guo Wengui, a wealthy Chinese dissident who lives in Manhattan. Chinese authorities contend that Guo committed crimes in China, including rape and kidnapping, and they have unsuccessfully sought his deportation from the U.S.

Dolgova, who appears to be reading from a script in a home office, hits the key points of the Chinese government’s position, warning the U.S. against granting Guo political asylum: “The U.S. has really gambled with someone like him,” she says. “He’s actually fled his country from criminal felonies, such as corruption, bribery, money laundering and even sexual harassment.” Guo’s case, she adds, sends a “dangerous message. … If you are wealthy, bring your millions to America and all will be forgiven.”

When King asks, “Could such events affect the relationship between the countries, and how?” Dolgova responds, “This is all happening in the middle of a trade war truce, so peace between Washington and Beijing. We have got days to go before the truce is over and a deal is set to be struck. … Now, we have this criminal that the U.S. is protecting because he’s a poster boy for free speech even with his long criminal track record.” She sums up: “It isn’t even about U.S.-China relations anymore. It’s about doing the right thing.”

* * *

In two emails to ProPublica and two phone interviews, Niv initially maintained that the video was nothing out of the ordinary. He said that Itai Rapoport, an Israeli former journalist who runs a production company, had approached him and “asked to sign a deal where Larry was to host an online conference” about U.S.-China relations, covering the economy, immigration and history. “We started with one episode about Chinese people with influence who moved to the U.S.”

The 36-year-old Niv said he had “no idea” who Guo was. He said that Rapoport provided the script and offered Dolgova as an expert because she had researched the topic. “Larry asked her questions, like he would do in any other conference,” Niv said. “…It was a very simple conference hosting work.”

However, Niv later acknowledged having had increasing qualms about the video as it continued to circulate on social media despite his efforts, at the urging of King’s wife, to take it down. “The only time that I got suspicious that something is not right is when I kept looking at the video again and again and again,” he said. “When I removed it, it kept coming back to YouTube.”

Dolgova and Rapoport declined to comment. “Unfortunately now is not the good time,” Dolgova wrote in a Facebook message.

“Unfortunately I cannot talk about my clients,” Rapoport said. “It’s very private.”

In a telephone interview, King expressed remorse and bewilderment. He said he is not familiar with Guo or Rapoport and hasn’t watched the video. “To me, it was just a small favor for a guy who I like,” he said. “I have no idea what it was for.”

Niv, he said, “gave me some cockamamie reason” for doing the video. “It sounded like I was helping someone in need,” King said. “I never should have done it, obviously.”

He added, “I was stupid. I did what he asked me to do. But I felt sorry for him. I regret having done it, but I had no idea it got international scale. … Obviously, he used me.”

King said he occasionally tapes questions for infomercials or convention videos in advance, without conducting a live interview. While he recalls little of the circumstances of the Dolgova video, he said, Niv would have encouraged him to participate by saying that it was connected to Israel. Whenever Niv pitched him on an infomercial, King said, “it was never without Israel being mentioned, because that would appeal to my instinct as a Jew. He would say, ‘It’s going to be very helpful for us.'”

“That’s all I know. It came and went.”

* * *

ProPublica found that the Chinese government was involved in distributing the video. Our analysis of data released by Twitter showed that nearly 250 fake accounts linked to China’s government shared nearly 40 different links to the video a total of more than 500 times. Around half of those fake accounts had more than 10,000 followers.

One Facebook account sharing the video purportedly belonged to “Gabrielle Mcdowell,” but the account’s profile photo was lifted from a photoshoot for a Chinese model named Xu Yanxin. The account owner, whose posts were in Chinese, shared no personal details.

Such tactics are characteristic of China’s growing manipulation of social media to attack its perceived enemies, including dissidents like Guo, Hong Kong protesters, Taiwan and the U.S. Although Twitter is blocked in mainland China, officials there in recent years have increasingly used it to spread disinformation aimed at influencing the Chinese diaspora, Westerners and others globally. Foreign Ministry officials have signed up for Twitter accounts en masse, with officials overtly spreading conspiracy theories, including one that the U.S. military brought the coronavirus to Wuhan. The Chinese embassy didn’t respond to emailed questions for this article.

A Guo supporter, in a Chinese-language tweet to more than 20,000 followers, wondered about Dolgova’s role. “There are so many Sino-U.S. relations experts in China and the United States. Why did the big-name host decide to interview a Russian journalist with broken English?”

But borrowing foreign media like Dolgova is part of the Chinese state media playbook. “They procure a Russian journalist to act as the mouthpiece for the content they want to put out there,” said Roman Sannikov, a cybersecurity researcher who has looked into the spread of disinformation from Russia. “It’s too obvious to have a Chinese person.”

* * *

As his career has wound down, King has maintained a presence on American screens thanks in part to Russian state media.

At his peak from 1985 to 2010, as host of CNN’s “Larry King Live,” King was arguably America’s foremost television interviewer of politicians and celebrities. Guests included Nelson Mandela and every U.S. president since Richard Nixon; O.J. Simpson called into the show the day after he was acquitted of double murder in 1995. A Brooklyn native with a mellow, rumbling voice, King was an American original, known not only for his affable manner and easy banter, but also for his trademark suspenders, support for Israel and eight marriages. A member of both the national Radio and Broadcasting halls of fame, he’s twice won the Peabody Award, and he has also hosted the awards ceremony.

In his last month on CNN, December 2010, King interviewed Barbra Streisand, Angelina Jolie and Al Pacino, and two people who would influence the next stage of his career: Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim and then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Without an immediate landing spot, King taped infomercials and other paid interviews. But he still yearned for his own show.

In March 2012, King and Slim announced the creation of Ora, funded by Slim’s América Móvil, the Latin American telecom giant. Ora, which means “now” in Italian and is Shawn King’s middle name, made several deals in 2013 with the Russian-controlled international news network RT to license and air its shows. The second Ora show that King hosted, “PoliticKING,” launched on RT America that June. “PoliticKING” is “a terrific fit for RT’s viewers around the world who want to see Larry engage leading lights on the critical issues of the day,” Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, said.

RT has been criticized for censoring reporters and spouting the Russian government line. A January 2017 report by U.S. intelligence agencies called RT the Kremlin’s “principal international propaganda outlet.”

On several “PoliticKING” episodes, King interviewed members of Putin’s cabinet. He chatted with Russia’s then science and education minister, Dmitry Livanov, about growing tension between the U.S. and Russia in 2015. King also spoke with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in July 2018, an interview touted by RT.

RT has “never interfered” in his programs, King said. “I have a wonderful working agreement with them, they never bother me at all.” Ora’s Dickey and Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor in chief, concurred. “Everything we produce and license is unfettered, unbiased, uninfluenced,” Dickey said. King’s shows, including exclusive content for RT, are Ora’s “fully independent productions,” Belkina said.

* * *

In September 2018, six months before King taped the Dolgova video, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a ceremony in Vladivostok, Russia. There, the Russian state-controlled Rossiya Segodnya news agency and Chinese state-controlled China Media Group signed an agreement to cooperate in news exchange, joint reporting and distribution, and promotion of each other’s reports, especially on social media.

Simonyan, the RT editor in chief who had praised the Ora deal as a “terrific fit,” also serves as editor in chief of Rossiya Segodnya. RT hailed the pact as “Russia & Asia working together to create new media language.” China Media Group head Shen Haixiong told RT there must be a “framework for strategic media cooperation, especially between Russia and China.” (China Media Group was established in 2018 to consolidate China’s largest state television and radio companies.) Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of Rossiya Segodnya, added that the new partners “need to fully understand how much Russia and Asia complement each other.”

The Russia-China partnership reflects the alignment of the two countries’ political messaging, as both promote alternatives to liberal democracy in a post-Cold War world. To achieve that goal, the Kremlin is building a “global media conglomerate,” said Nataliya Bugayova, a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Russian media outlets have signed more than 50 cooperation agreements with foreign media since 2015, she said. Including the Vladivostok pact, Russian and Chinese state-run news agencies have agreed at least six times since 2017 to share content and technology, according to a study by Bugayova and George Barros.

China has initiated its own partnerships with foreign media organizations, said Louisa Lim, a journalist and senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. About one-half of the journalism unions she recently surveyed in 58 countries had journalists participate in exchanges or training programs sponsored by Chinese organizations. More than one-third reported that their countries had entered into content-sharing agreements with Chinese outlets. Through these partnerships, China is “offering another model of journalism that is … designed to counter the Western media narrative,” she said.

The media relationship with Russia appears to have benefited China. On several occasions, outlets linked to Russia’s government have supported Chinese propaganda. In December 2019, for instance, RT aired a documentary that accused the U.S. of colluding with the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

When Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, tweeted that reports of mass detention camps for China’s Uighur Muslim minority were the “LIE of the CENTURY,” she cited an article in the Grayzone, a website founded by Max Blumenthal, a frequent contributor to RT and the Russian-controlled Sputnik news agency. Similarly, Chinese government spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s tweet that the coronavirus originated in the U.S. cited a website previously found by NATO to spread Russian propaganda.

China and Israel are also drawing closer. China has become Israel’s second-largest trading partner, behind the U.S., and a Shanghai-based company has a 25-year contract to manage the container terminal of Haifa’s seaport. On a May visit to Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that letting China invest in such critical infrastructure was a security risk and would jeopardize “the capacity for America to work alongside Israel on important projects.”

* * *

Guo, the subject of the King video, is among the earliest and most frequent targets of China’s covert Twitter influence operations, according to an analysis of Twitter-released data by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. ProPublica’s own analysis found that more than half of the nearly 30,000 accounts that Twitter has linked to the Chinese government and suspended had targeted Guo in at least one tweet. The tweets call him a liar, a cheat and rapist who should be repatriated — paralleling Dolgova’s accusations in the video.

Guo rejected those accusations through his attorney, Daniel Podhaskie. “The fact that Guo is the most targeted individual by the Chinese Communist Party’s fake social media arsenal reflects the CCP’s fruitless efforts to discredit Guo and silence his campaign to bring freedom to the Chinese people,” Podhaskie said.

A real estate developer and investor, Guo fled China in 2014 as the government began to arrest his business associates. The next year, Chinese media began accusing him of wielding political connections for personal gain: most luridly, of gaining control of a luxury hotel development in Beijing by leaking a sex tape — obtained from a top Chinese intelligence official — of an uncooperative city bureaucrat. Chinese authorities have sought his arrest on corruption allegations, which he has denied.

In January 2017, Guo resurfaced in New York. He accused Chinese officials of corruption and called for regime change in live-streamed videos broadcast from his $67.5 million penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. China responded with the Twitter campaign, which began in April 2017.

Guo has made powerful allies in the U.S. He is a member of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, and his associates include former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who has a $1 million contract with Guo’s media company for promotional services. On a recent podcast with Bannon, Guo accused China of releasing the novel coronavirus from a Wuhan research lab and covering up the true death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dolgova says in the video that Guo and Bannon “tried to create a fund … to fight Communism and yet no one has heard of that fund or heard anything from Bannon.” In a statement, Bannon said, “This is a war to the knife with the Chinese Communist Party — I’m honored they consider me public enemy #1 against their totalitarian regime.”

* * *

Everyone has a different story about how Niv and King first met. Niv told an Israeli magazine that former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sent King a letter of introduction. King said he had “no memory of that at all,” adding that a former Beverly Hills mayor introduced them. Danny Ayalon, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told ProPublica that he introduced them at Niv’s request around 2011.

Regardless, “I liked him right away,” King said in a 2017 interview with an Israeli outlet. “Then we forged this kind of partnership and investment firm. I have a lot of confidence in him, and I think he’s a terrific thinker and a futurist — he looks ahead.”

King’s wife, Shawn, was less enamored of Niv, especially after their experience with businessman Mykalai Kontilai. In the mid-2010s, Kontilai asked the Kings to host a television show called “Collectors Cafe,” promoting a collectibles auction website Kontilai planned to launch. The Kings also attended Kontilai’s dinners with investors, and Larry introduced him to Slim. Kontilai “for sure” used Larry’s credibility to attract and retain investors, King said. Larry taped segments with celebrities including actor Dick Van Dyke, designer Betsey Johnson and rapper Joseph Simmons of Run DMC. The show was never broadcast and the site never launched. In May 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint in federal district court against Kontilai, alleging he misappropriated more than $6.1 million of investors’ money to “fund his lavish lifestyle.” The case is pending.

Shawn had expressed her distrust of Niv to Larry, but he had shrugged her off, he and others said. In a 2014 letter to the director of a hotel in the Alpine resort of St. Moritz, Switzerland, where Niv was seeking to stay, Niv had referred to “Larry King Now” as “my new show” and to Slim as “my partner.” (Niv told ProPublica that his assistant mistakenly used the wrong template.) Such instances led King’s manager — Shawn’s father, Karl Engemann — and Ora’s attorney to send letters in 2014 and 2015 to Niv warning him to stop misrepresenting his relationships with Larry and the company.

Niv is variously described in Israeli news articles and on his Facebook page as president of “Larry King Foundation”; “KING Entertainment Group“; and “Larry King Holding Company.” ProPublica could find no such entities, and King said they don’t exist. Niv said he made up the names “to describe what we are doing.”

“He was obviously playing off my name,” King said. “I did sign a few things [with Niv], but they went away because the business went out. … I said, sure I’ll help. And then suddenly it was gone. Then he’d have another thing, and it was gone. He’s a wheeler-dealer, but I felt sorry for him. I never envisioned him hurting anyone. But I certainly don’t like him using my name without my authority. It’s dangerous, what he’s doing.”

In 2014, Israeli media reported on Niv’s launching of the “Israel Silicon Valley Chambers of Commerce” with King and Technion Israel Institute of Technology. ProPublica found no evidence of the organization’s existence. Technion spokeswoman Doron Shaham said that “preliminary discussions … did not bear fruit. There has been no interaction with Mr. King or his representatives since then.”

Niv’s actual businesses mostly failed. In 2004, when Niv was 21, he co-founded Koteret, or Headline in Hebrew, a magazine that attracted well-known Israeli journalists, including Ofri Ilani. When Niv recruited him, “I left my previous job and moved on to Koteret,” Ilani recalled. “The wage was low but there was a promise that the magazine would develop and become the Israeli New Yorker.” The magazine folded after several issues.

* * *

In 2012, Niv and Larry co-foundedLCI-LifeChanging Internet LLC in California, according to archived versions of its website. It aimed to develop digital platforms and content, and is no longer active. “He is an amateur bad businessperson with an ambition to gain notoriety just through the networking but not necessarily understanding how to launch products,” said Calvin Mays, the group’s former head of marketing. Niv also formed LK Eyewear LLC, which never got off the ground.

Niv dismissed criticism of his business acumen. “Overall, I’m very happy and proud with my initiatives,” he said in an email.

Niv recently established an online store for adult incontinence products. “Our co-founder Larry King is a senior himself,” the website says. “…During his own quarantine, he noticed the lack of specialized services for the elderly, many of whom have existing issues with mobility and other forms of accessibility.”

In November 2018, an Israeli magazine ran a cover story, “Larry King’s Prince,” about the friendship between Niv and King, with five photos of them together: King in his suspenders and blue tie, Niv sporting a Burberry shirt in one shot, a Hermes belt in another. Niv boasted of moving in A-list circles: meals with Tina Turner and Rihanna, a trip to a spa with Naomi Campbell.

“Did you know that the legendary interviewer Larry King’s right-hand man is Israeli?” the article asked rhetorically.

The article intrigued Rapoport, who had founded his production company in 2007. After reading it, he called Niv, reaching him at a mall in California, Niv said. Rapoport told him that he was impressed by Niv’s other videos featuring King and pitched the idea of an online conference about U.S-China relations, Niv said.

“He told me: ‘The first video we want to do is about people that went out from China to the U.S. And I have a reporter, she made a study on it, she’s very knowledgeable about the case, and Larry can interview her,'” Niv said.

Niv said he recognized Rapoport’s name as a former news reporter on an Israeli television channel. Rapoport’s firm, which has a number of major Israeli companies as clients, prides itself on making promotional videos that resemble actual news. Its website highlights the effectiveness of this approach with viewers: “84% accept private news as real news!”

Recently, Rapoport’s company has done other work related to China. In September 2019, his company shot footage for a video for an Israeli builders’ group about the Haifa port, where Shanghai International Port Group won the 25-year deal to operate the container terminal. “The Israelis are running the business here, the Chinese are [putting] in the hard physical work,'” he wrote on his Facebook page at the time. His post included a photo of the flags of Israel, China and SIPG — the Shanghai port operator — flying side by side.

Rapoport’s proposal delighted Niv. “I went to Larry, and I told him, ‘Larry, look, it’s the first time that someone approached me because he knows that I know you,'” Niv said. “‘This is what he wants to do, what do you think about it?’ He looked at it, he told me, ‘Let’s do it.'”

One month before the taping at Ora, Rapoport sent Niv a message on WhatsApp, giving him a choice of Dolgova or an Italian journalist as King’s video guest. Niv said he picked Dolgova because “she looks better in front of the camera.”

Rapoport sent Niv several videos of Dolgova and told him she is “a star” on Russian television, Niv said. “I thought OK, it’s someone good to talk with, and that’s it.”

Niv didn’t independently verify Rapoport’s information about either Dolgova or Guo. “I didn’t need to do due diligence about the guy that she’s speaking about,” he said. Rapoport “told me that he is a very, very, very, very bad guy. … I said OK.” Niv also didn’t ask Rapoport about the identity of the client who was sponsoring the conference, he said.

After receiving a transcript of Dolgova’s answers from Rapoport, Niv said, he showed it to King over breakfast at a Beverly Hills coffee shop. “Larry told me, ‘Look Jacobi, it doesn’t really matter because she’s the one who made the research, I’m only interviewing her,'” Niv said.

King said he doesn’t recall seeing Dolgova’s responses. “I have no idea who that lady was or what she said. All I know is, I got a list of questions and I asked them.”

Initially, Niv said, Rapoport wanted King to interview Dolgova on one of the Ora programs, but Niv replied that it wouldn’t be possible. Niv had King pre-tape the questions to “save Larry’s time,” he said. “We do it often.”

On March 28, 2019, the day after the taping at the studio, Niv sent the completed video to King’s assistant. As he and Rapoport had arranged, he asked for it to be posted to King’s official social media. Rovou, King’s executive producer, dug in.

“It is offensive to me as a journalist and a producer and I think it should be so for Larry, too,” Rovou wrote to the assistants to Larry and Shawn King. “It’s one thing if he’s paid to do this for a conference video to be seen somewhere internally but it should not see the light of day or be bounced around on his social media.”

Five days later, it still wasn’t posted, so Niv sent a follow-up text to King’s assistant.

“I really don’t want to bother you but it’s not on yet,” he wrote. “Larry said it will be posted today. … I’m really concerned about the timetable with the conference. They are on the edge with that.”

* * *

Niv had a backup plan. He created a channel for King on YouTube, posted the video there and sent a link to King’s assistant. On April 5, the assistant sent it to Rovou, who was furious. He hadn’t known that the video would be available on social media. “I thought this was dropped?” he replied, adding Shawn King and her father to the email thread.

Watching the video, Shawn King was baffled; she had never heard of Guo. She was also upset by Larry’s uncharacteristic mistakes. Less than an hour after receiving Rovou’s email, she called Niv and demanded that he remove the video from YouTube. She yelled into the phone that he should have run the deal past her or her father.

“That woman that you say is a journalist, there is nothing, nothing on the internet that says anything,” she told Niv. “She has no credentials. … Larry didn’t even interview her. She was dropped in with the questions. It’s a script. It wasn’t in an interview.”

“You are ruining his brand,” she continued. “You were told many years ago: Do not go directly to Larry. … And when you saw him, you didn’t say, ‘Oh wow, he doesn’t look so good, let’s just kill this thing.’ Don’t ever go to Larry again.”

Niv took it down, he said, but it was already out of his hands. Suddenly, on April 9, King’s video rampaged through social media. That day, a Twitter account with more than 300,000 followers posted the link. The account’s first seven years of posts had been deleted, indicating that it had been hijacked and repurposed.

“While discussing China-US trade negotiations on his show, Mr. Larry King ended up talking only about Guo Wengui’s rape case,” the account tweeted. Guo’s “reputation in the U.S. already stinks.” Twitter later determined that the account was related to a Chinese government influence operation.

There were other signs of a carefully orchestrated campaign. The video had been posted on dozens of unrelated YouTube channels. It also appeared within a short time across social media accounts with limited discussion and engagement between them. In quick succession, some Facebook accounts shared inaccurate English and Chinese transcripts of King’s exchange with Dolgova, suggesting that the script had been circulated in advance.

* * *

Alarmed at the video’s sweep across social media, Rovou reached out again to Shawn King. She was driving to watch the older of her and Larry’s two sons play baseball when Rovou called. She pulled her car over and looked on her phone at the links Rovou was sending her.

She called Niv and berated him. When she arrived at the baseball game, he called back, telling her that he did the video as a favor to Larry and that “they” had fooled him, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Niv didn’t tell Shawn King who “they” were. But he vowed to call them immediately to insist they remove the video from YouTube.

Over a series of emails, Shawn King pressed Niv. “I’m beyond disappointed and furious,” she wrote. “Why on earth is that video back up? You have no right to post it. Take it down immediately.”

Niv replied that the video “was not posted by me or my people. … The only one who has it is us and the conference people, which probably did it WITH NO PERMISSION!” he wrote. “We will request YouTube to remove it immediately.”

Aside from the China video, the other videos Larry King participated in were “small beautiful projects supporting Israel,” Niv assured Shawn. The videos were “not a business for us,” he wrote. “I did it from time to time mainly for Larry if he needed, and to support Israel.” He added that Larry earned a $7,000 “down payment” followed by an additional $3,000 in cash for participating in the video. (In a phone interview, he said that Larry’s share may have been $7,000, and that Niv got the remainder, an amount he didn’t specify.)

Niv told ProPublica that, as a result of concerns about how King looked in the video, “we decided to remove it and redo the conference at a different time. No one ever stated anything about the content of this one chapter of the overall conference.”

If Niv “had any intent or interest” in disparaging Guo, he added, “I would obviously leave the video there and wouldn’t take tremendous effort to remove it immediately.”

As the video continued to pop up, Niv said, he called Rapoport. “I told him: ‘Itai, something here is driving me crazy. What is happening here? I don’t understand.’ He gave me all kinds of excuses.” Niv then enlisted a friend at an Israeli television company to help him take down the video, he said. (Rovou also asked YouTube to remove it.)

In the meantime, King’s health was deteriorating. That month, he had a stroke. “I was out of it for most of April,” he said. “I woke up in intensive care. … They thought I was going to die.”

* * *

Niv is not registered as a foreign agent. Given the circumstances of the video, it is “likely” that he should be, and possibly King as well, said Sanderson, the Foreign Agents Registration Act attorney. The act would apply if the request, direction or funding for the video came from a foreign source, he said. The maximum penalty for a willful violation is five years in prison, or a $250,000 fine, or both.

Since U.S. media are exempt from registering, King’s exposure to FARA might rest on whether he was “acting in his capacity as a member of the news media, or is he doing an infomercial where he’s paid specifically to do the interview,” Sanderson said. “The substance of some of his questions and the structure of the interview itself could undercut his claim to be exempt.” Given his age, King could also argue he was “doing something at the behest of a longtime business partner who he regularly knows and trusts … and that he didn’t know about the origins of any money or request.”

That excuse might not help Niv, Sanderson said. “If you’re an international businessman, to say that you accepted money in an outside-the-norm type of transaction or message, and you didn’t do any investigative work to determine what the actual purpose of the task was — just accepting money, sight unseen — typically the (Justice) Department hasn’t accepted that type of argument,” Sanderson said. “…Ignorance and naivete are not free passes here.”

Foreign agents are required to file with the Justice Department the message they’re distributing — in this case, the transcript and video link — at the time it is distributed. The video itself should include a disclaimer identifying it as informational material distributed on behalf of a foreign principal.

“One of the issues here is should people have been on notice that this was distributed on behalf of the foreign government,” Sanderson said.

King said that, as an interviewer, he shouldn’t need to register.

“Would I register as a foreign agent? That’s crazy. I’m not a foreign agent.”

Niv denied working for China. “I never got approached by anyone that was related to China,” he said. “No one Chinese.” Rapoport “told me we are doing a video for him.”

* * *

The King video is harder to find online than it once was. YouTube has taken many copies down. By May of this year, aiming to combat Chinese disinformation, Twitter suspended and released data on nearly 30,000 Chinese government influence accounts, many of which had spread the video.

ProPublica found only 14 Facebook accounts still online that had posted the video or its transcript. Seven other accounts that we identified as making similar posts in 2019 are no longer online. Facebook declined to comment on whether it had taken down those accounts; their owners could also have removed them. We couldn’t trace any of the 21 accounts to their actual owners, suggesting that they had been fake.

Guo’s supporters were appalled by the video — and couldn’t believe King was involved. Most of their discussions on Twitter came to the same conclusion: It was a sophisticated political deep fake that used machine learning to imitate King’s voice and likeness. Guo himself took that view. On April 10, the day after the video began to circulate, he live-streamed a message to his followers.

“When we looked up the videos, virtually all of them were posted by wumao on YouTube,” Guo said, using a common term for Chinese government-funded internet trolls. “The transcript of the fake interview was released at the same time.”

Echoing the same false assumption, Guo’s lawyer asked Ora on April 18 to join in “legal action” to take down the video. “The creator of the Video clearly doctored Larry King footage,” Podhaskie wrote. “Not only does the Video make false claims about my client, it impersonates Larry King and appears to signify Mr. King’s endorsement of the defamatory remarks.”

 

This year, Ora laid off many staffers and moved out of the Glendale studio. The pandemic has delayed plans to tape some Ora programs at RT’s Los Angeles studio. “Larry King Now” had its final episode in February. Its replacement is a show hosted by comedian Dennis Miller.

King recently renewed his contract for “PoliticKING” through 2021-2022. He’d like to keep working for the rest of his life and “collapse on the set asking a question,” he said.

Ora no longer allows King to tape infomercials on the set, Dickey said. “What was an accommodation to his schedule and his age, … we just can’t put ourselves in that position any more, and we don’t.”

Niv’s incontinence business has changed its mission. It will now have “free online courses” to help the elderly, he said. Rapoport asked him for more videos featuring King, but Niv wasn’t interested, he said. He told Rapoport that he didn’t want anything more to do with him.

“Seriously, who needs this headache?” Niv said. The China video “really put me in a very bad position, and I really hate it, and I feel like I don’t deserve it. I never, ever thought that there is something not right.”

“I felt like someone took advantage of me,” he continued. “I wish that I knew (about the connection to China), and I wish that I knew it on time. … Today I am more intelligent, I am more knowledgeable.”

In a Facebook post on Feb. 4, Rapoport displayed a photo of himself behind interlocking table-top flags of Israel and China. “Preparing super interesting lecturers for an economic conference that will be held tomorrow,” he wrote.

After almost 22 years of marriage, Larry King filed for divorce from Shawn in August 2019. (The divorce is pending.) They remain close and talk regularly by phone, he said.

Based on the revelations about the video, King said he is “breaking off relations” with Niv, including “bowing out” of the incontinence venture. He now believes, he said, that Niv took advantage of his friendship, and that the gifts on Jewish holidays were “part of the con.”

On July 20, four days after receiving emailed questions from ProPublica, Niv called King. He arranged to come over the next day “to bring me a cake and take a picture with me,” King said. On Shawn’s advice, King canceled the date.

Shawn King and Rovou “turned out to be right,” King said. “Shawn has always said I’m easily taken advantage of.”

Investigative journalist Uri Blau contributed reporting and translation. Priyanjana Bengani, senior research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, and Mia Shuang Li, research associate at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School, contributed reporting.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

 

Showtime’s “The Go-Go’s” film shows the punk side of a pioneering girl group

Maybe you don’t even know all the spectacular things The Go-Go’s achieved. They were the first all-female band who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to earn a No. 1 album. They remain, by the way, the only one. They are among only a handful of musical acts who went to No. 1 on a debut album. Where they stayed for six weeks. At the peak of their ’80s fame, their members faced addiction and open heart surgery. They’ve been on dozens of magazine covers and toured all around the world. But what really got me, somewhere in the midst of watching “The Go-Go’s,” was the nugget that Charlotte Caffey was once kicked out of Ozzy Osbourne’s dressing room for being too rowdy. These girls, they’re absolute legends.

After a Sundance debut earlier this year, Alison Ellwood’s effervescent Showtime documentary now comes on the heels of Liam Firmager’s “Suzi Q,” a similar exploration of a revolutionary female force in popular music. The two films serve as nostalgic companion pieces, time trips though very different eras in the recording industry. More than that, though, they’re testaments to the often overlooked legacy of female musicians. And they leave you wondering why so few women — and far fewer female bands — have been able to attain the success of their predecessors. “This is the dawning of a new era,” Gina says brightly to the camera in a clip from 1981. It’s four decades later, and Haim and The Chicks can’t be everywhere, everybody.

Contemporary music fans likely have many of the same impressions of The Go-Go’s that those of us who lived through their ascent did — that they were those chipper, chirpy girls who made music videos of frolicking in water fountains and waving on water skis. Charlotte, Kathy, Belinda, Gina, and Jane was the cool one, right? The iconic Los Angeles band’s first album, “Beauty and the Beat,” was a double platinum smash, but I promise that if you were an aspiring teen rock chick back then, your idols were Joan Jett and Chrissie Hynde, not those girls in their Jockeys on the cover of Rolling Stone. Their personalities seemed too sunny; their songs too catchy.

Yet as “The Go-Go’s” makes clear, they were every bit as innovative and badass as Kristin Hersh or Kim Gordon. The price of their staggering success just happened to be their street cred. And if their reputation is one of pure fluff and their names are not yet in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the shame is on us, not them. Interviews with the members of the group, as well as fellow musicians and pop journalists, as well as a treasure trove of archival footage and photographs, present a vivid portrait of a groundbreaking group.

The group came out of the Los Angeles punk scene of the late ’70s, a motley collection of girls who started a band because, well, that was what you did back then. It was exciting, Jane Wiedlin admits now, to think they could be “Like the Shirelles and Shangri-Las . . . but this time were were going to play instruments.” The only challenge was that they didn’t know how to play instruments, a condition that fortunately has never been a dealbreaker in punk rock. Their first set was three songs long, and as a friend of the band recalls, “Two of them were the same song.”

Watching the film, it’s pure pleasure to witness such scrappy exuberance, such mayhem so enthusiastically pursued. It’s awesome to learn that the women who gave us “Head Over Heels” played on the same bill as X. “People probably assume we were put together by some guy,” a band member correctly observes, “but we did it all ourselves.” The Go-Go’s were never a slick act manufactured in a studio, pieced together to create a specific, media-friendly package. They were instead just a bunch of troublemaking young women, doing what women are still rarely rewarded for — making a whole lot of noise. “An American punk girl band who are objecting to being spit at?” the founder of Stiff Records fretted when they were shopped to the label. “I don’t know if it’s going to work.”

This wouldn’t be a rock and roll documentary without sex, drugs and drama, and “The Go-Go’s” offers plenty of all. Yes, for any Go-Go’s fanfic writers, there was at one point an intra-band romance. There was also Jane Wiedlen’s far less secret love affair with Terry Hall of The Specials, a dalliance that produced one of the greatest pop songs of all time, “Our Lips Are Sealed.” There was drug use, and partying, hidden and not so hidden. Those bubbly, energetic performances? Maybe she’s born with it — maybe it’s lots and lots of cocaine.

But there’s so much more to the story of these talented women than a typical “Behind the Music” trajectory. As the burgeoning group fired and hired members and managers, their musicianship improved and sound evolved. You can hear the roots of that transformation as Charlotte Caffey describes how she wrote “We Got the Beat,” the song that propelled them forward in their pop fame but which also remains an undeniably pure rock ‘n’ roll tune.

Even as they became Top 40, MTV-ready darlings, the band had a famously “take no crap” attitude that no doubt seemed at odds with the tutus and tiaras image. They gave one of the most famously debauched guest performances ever on “SNL,” rivaling The Replacements for what Gina Schock recalls as “cross-eyed drunk” ballsiness. They took irreverent Polaroids that became instantly notorious. And then of course there was the incident in Rio when the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, had enough of their antics. In a decade famed for excess, the ladies earned a place in the big leagues.

It was creative differences that inevitably drove the band apart — conflicts over songwriting in particular, but a whole raft of personal issues, career ambitions and sheer exhaustion as well. Wiedlin first left in 1984, just three years after the group’s big breakthrough, and each member of the band is candid about the numerous reunions and “horrible” disputes they’ve had over the years. But the members also acknowledge their irresistible alchemy, the kind that keeps bringing them back together.

For most of “The Go-Go’s,” the core members of the band are presented individually, reflecting on their history from their separate perspectives. But late in the film, we see them together in their more recent collaborations, including a Broadway musical. They talk frankly about recovery and mental health. They stand together as one of the most successful bands of the 20th century. A group of women whose place is unparalleled in music history. And then they perform a new song together, in their greying hair and reading glasses. “You ready to go loud?” Kathy Valentine asks as they start to play. “Yeah, man,” answers Wiedlin. “Go loud.”

“The Go-Go’s” premieres on Showtime on Saturday, Aug.1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

How psychedelic drugs are used as a tool of state violence

In August, 2019, Michael Pollan spoke about the promise of psychedelic therapy to a receptive audience at the American Psychological Association Convention. Pollan was coming off of a very successful year: The New York Times called his book one of the best of 2018, and his lecture marked the culmination of a public discussion that has helped to bring psychedelic therapy to mainstream consciousness.

Then, just a few weeks later, Elijah McLain, a young black man, was killed by police after being involuntarily administered ketamine. A psychedelic substance with powerful dissociative effects, ketamine has been promoted as a template for psychedelic therapy and is also increasingly used as a tranquilizer by police departments that are attempting to avoid the liability of firearms and tasers.

McLain’s case marks but one example in a long and significant history of psychedelics and cannabis being used as tools of state violence, a racist history that has been glossed over by Pollan and many others promoting the psychedelic research renaissance.

The strategic architecture behind this renaissance has been, in large part, built on alliances with military and law enforcement at various levels. Behind the optic appeals to national pride and the realities of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced by veterans and first responders, organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and their supporters have expressed the hope that these kinds of treatments will ultimately lead to solutions for structural problems within society, leading us out of the darkness of everything from religious conflict to climate change.

For a movement grounded in science this is a highly suspect leap of faith with no historical or scientific basis, and Elijah McLain’s case is just one horrific example of the opposite. By branding the psychedelic renaissance as a kind of archaic revival of the ancient uses of plant medicine sacraments into modern society, advocates have been able to kaleidoscope over the history of psychedelic drugs as tools of state violence, which is well documented and historically continuous.

The Vikings, whose homeland was depleted of natural resources, used psychedelics to inspire a colonial war of aggression to solidify and feed the state back home. The Viking Berserker warriors, known for their veracity and viciousness, and from which the word berserk is derived, would appear en masse, naked for battle except for the carcass of an animal, covered in blood and in a murderous trance. That trance, most historians agree, was psychedelic-induced. They would thrust themselves after the enemy and kill using whatever method or tool was available to spare, the rock in their hands or their teeth, literally gnawing on their opponent’s body. Scholars debate about whether it was Amanita muscaria or Amanita pantherina mushrooms that were a key component of inducing that trance, but regardless, using the psychedelic state was a way to comport the mind and body of the warrior into a war like frenzy. The intention was not only to kill, but to dominate as viciously as possible and to tower over the psyche so as to leave the subjected incapacitated by fear.

 

Similar stories of the use of Amanita muscaria and other mushrooms in wartime exist across time and across culture, including amongst the Tartars, who created a mixture of cannabis and the mushroom. In 1814, during the war between Sweden and Norway, the Varmland regimen used Amanita muscaria and was described as rabid, foaming, and vicious. In 1945, Soviet soldiers supposedly used them during one particularly brutal battle in Hungary. Although there are other examples of wartime uses of psychedelics, including in indigenous cultures, we’re focusing here on examples of state violence.

The English word “assassin” comes down to us from the highly mythologized Nizari Isma’ili State, a religious order in the 11th century Islamic world. The meaning of the word comes from the group’s nickname, the Assassins, and the reputation of the order’s small inner circle that was employed to carry out espionage and assassinations of key political figures. They were famous for their fanatical bravery, never attempting to escape once they committed to a mission, a cultish determination that is thought to have been bred in part by Nazari chiefs’ administration of hashish both as a tool for mental control and motivation.

While the Pentagon was spending billion on the drug war in Central and South America, Rick Doblin, the founder and executive director of MAPS, went to meet officials with the Department of Defense to discuss his interest in developing MDMA and cannabis to treat PTSD. It was reported that these “unlikely partners” were a sign that attitudes on drugs were “changing, and quick.”

Yet this seemingly unlikely alliance was neither extraordinary or revolutionary. Although MDMA, a psychostimulant, has distinct effects, it is structurally very similar to other amphetamines. They also have overlapping physiological and psychological effects. In one study, some subjects had a difficult time distinguishing between MDMA and methamphetamine, and the researchers found that some of the differences in phenomenology could be a result of the strong social bias around each substance.

The use of various amphetamines within military operations has a history that extends as far back as their medical use. They found applications by both sides in World War II, a use that was threefold. Firstly, they helped to reduce fatigue and appetite, a use that was continued in the US Air Force until 2017. Secondly, it was used to relieve the crippling psychic and emotional pain of depersonalization caused by killing, something that directly reflects current interest in treating conflict-related trauma. And thirdly, in Germany, amphetamines were used by the general population, saturating the lives of everyone from factory workers to housewives. It is understated to what extent substance use has historically defined both active conflicts and wartime culture, on and off the battlefield.

The encouragement of microdosing amphetamine to increase stamina and kill efficiency is one of the first known and reported benefits of microdosing. Now a fad that the popular media reports amongst everyone from Silicon Valley executives to soccer moms, many suggest that microdosing psychedelics can help to produce a state of flow, increasing cognitive and emotional efficiency. Unsurprisingly, the military is showing enthusiastic interest, with recent publications such as in the Marine Corp Gazette celebrating FDA trials and the potential for microdosing to increase soldiers’ efficiency in battle. This and the therapeutic potential of PTSD treatment have a better chance of keeping a shell-shocked soldier in active duty, a soldier who, depending on job and rank, represents tens of thousands or even millions of dollars in investment.

The use of drugs by the state is not limited to increasing effectiveness. The Nazis were early proponents and practitioners of experimentation for their potential as weapons of social control. Most notably and darkly, mescaline was administered to Jewish and Romani prisoners at Dachau. The CIA was so interested that after the war they recruited the same doctors as advisors, shielding them from war crime prosecution. The current psychedelic renaissance is historically embedded within this continuum. In cooperation with local police, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other representatives of state order, the CIA used the lessons that were learned in Dachau and applied them to torturing US citizens, most notably African-Americans, prisoners, and poor people. The use of not only psychedelic drugs, but psychedelic therapy as an implement to consolidate state power was established in these early years.

Between 1935 and 1975 the NIMH Addiction Research Center (ARC) in Lexington, Kentucky conducted numerous studies involving very high and prolonged doses of LSD, as well as experimentation with ibogaine on formerly opioid-addicted black inmates. One such study looked at LSD effects on black inmates who were offered heroin as a coercive incentive for their participation, compared to the effects on unincarcerated white people who were treated at the lead researcher’s home in an environment designed to reduce anxiety. In the 1970s, the ARC program moved to Baltimore where it became the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Although this longstanding research program obviously violated research ethics laws, it has never been renounced by NIDA or any other major psychedelic research institution.

These illegal and immoral research methods were common practice within MKULTRA, the CIA’s infamous “mind control” research program, which provided funding for ARC between 1957 and 1962. ARC was one of 80 institutions involved in the program, the intention of which was to learn how to break the psyche. Although much is made about the therapeutic benefits of ego death, this mental state was weaponized by the CIA, measured for its capacity to force compliance, crush dissent, and extract information. That experience of oneness and openness can bring about an apolitical view of history, where there are no good guys or bad guys.

Throughout their research, torturing unknowing civilians by high doses of LSD and by many other means, MKULTRA focused heavily on highly policed environments. Another famous example is the story of Whitey Bulger, a Boston-area crime boss who spent years as a federal fugitive. Years before that he was incarcerated in the Atlanta Penitentiary, where he and 18 other inmates were given high doses of LSD every day for over a year. He described feeling like he was going crazy, and in correspondence where he expanded on those experiences later in his life, he said, “I was in prison for committing a crime, but they committed a greater crime on me.” After his release, he cooperated for more than a decade as an FBI informant, and was allowed to continue his black market activities — including selling drugs, extortion, racketeering and murder.

Between 2002 and 2010, MAPS conducted the first study on “war and terrorism-related PTSD” in Israel, a study that recruited participants in direct partnership with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF). An organization that Amnesty International describes with “widespread constitutional violations, discriminatory enforcement and culture of retaliation” for their treatment of Palestinians, this “chronic human rights violator” also provides the ‘gold standard’ of surveillance and crowd suppression training for thousands of American law enforcement officers every year, including the police force in Minneapolis where George Floyd was brutally murdered. This training was on display throughout the suppression of the recent Black Lives Matter protests.

MAPS has consistently prioritized the trauma suffered by purveyors of state violence in their research. Continuing this drug development agenda, from 2010 to 2016, MAPS conducted a Phase II pilot study treating the service-related trauma suffered by first responders, including police. During the same period, while the drug war raged and millions of Black and brown people languished in the penal colony of the USA, being killed by police became the leading cause of death for young Black men.

The state’s interest in psychedelics has obviously grown out of its potential to extend the interests of both the military and prison industrial complex. Given this history, it is not surprising at all that MAPS and other organizations would seek to collaborate with the Pentagon or the IDF. Now, this history provides a very shadowy backdrop for MAPS’ recent announcements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter. The obligatory statements of allegiance reflect the same hollow efforts put forth by brands such as Sprite and Nike. Yet it fails to acknowledge the deep-seated relationships that researchers have forged with purveyors of state violence and racism at home and abroad.

It is also no surprise that paralleling the rise of ketamine clinics across the United States, involuntary state-administered ketamine has been weaponized by police, in particular against Black people. Elijah McLain is just one example. His crime was, first, being a young Black man, but also being different. He was a sensitive young man who would volunteer to play violin for animals in the shelter. Had he born into, say, British aristocracy, we would describe him as eccentric. However, his body was Black, his behavior was different, and he was a threat. He was snuffed out with the help of one of the medicines that the psychedelic community has been advocating for and using as a model for future medicalization.

We are not so cynical that we do not endorse the use of psychedelics, or any other modality to relieve human suffering, including that of veterans or anyone who has been placed on the front lines of state violence. However, cynicism can certainly be justified while we watch psychedelic researchers distance themselves from the revolutionary progress of the 1960s, without distancing themselves from overtly racist and violent history of state-sponsored psychedelic research.

Where is the public outcry on the part of researchers regarding Elijah’s murder, or the acknowledgement of other past, present crimes? What will be done about the certainty of future crimes as the legitimate uses of psychedelics are monopolized by state and corporate power?

Robert Reich: 5 key demands for the new coronavirus bill

COVID-19 has left the economy in tatters, put millions of people on the brink of financial devastation, and taken the lives of over 145,000 Americans. Congress has just days left to pass legislation that will keep struggling Americans afloat and stave off economic catastrophe. 

Here are five key demands for the new bill.

1. Contain COVID-19. Its catastrophic rates of sickness and death, as well as tragic economic consequences, require the boldest remedies this country is capable of mustering. There will be no economic recovery until the virus is contained. 

Other nations – among them, Germany, South Korea, and Italy – have contained the pandemic with comprehensive testing, contact tracing, and isolation. The House of Representatives wants to provide $75 billion for these measures in addition to free access to coronavirus treatment and support for hospitals and other providers. This is the absolute minimum of what’s needed.

2. Extend unemployment benefits to help people survive the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Previous coronavirus relief legislation added $600 to weekly unemployment and extended coverage to gig workers and others not normally eligible. But those payments are about to end for roughly 25 million people. If they do, we can expect more human suffering, and more joblessness because the extra purchasing power has helped sustain the economy. The payments should be continued at least through the end of the year, as the House bill provides.

Some say the extra unemployment benefits have discouraged recipients from seeking jobs. That’s highly unlikely. Given the size of the economic collapse, few jobs are available anyway. And normal unemployment benefits typically pay a small fraction of the wages of jobs that were lost. 

Even with the extra benefits, working people will have a strong economic incentive to return to work once COVID is contained and these benefits expire. Not to mention it’s good for the economy when people have extra money to spend to sustain remaining economic activity. Finally, it is beneficial to the public’s health that as many people as possible avoid workplaces that pose any risk of infection. Keeping people home to contain the virus is the only way we get the economy back on track.

3. Prevent a potential wave of evictions and foreclosures. 32 percent of households missed their July rent or mortgage payments. The bill must extend the federal eviction moratorium, and provide assistance for renters and homeowners to pay rent, mortgages, utilities, and other related costs. Substantial additional resources for housing assistance is a no-brainer.

4. Shore up state and local budgets. State and local governments are facing huge budget shortfalls over the next three years. Without federal aid, vital public services will be on the chopping block – schools, childcare, supplemental nutrition, mental health services, low-income housing, healthcare – at a time when the public needs them more than ever. 

For public schools, the issue isn’t so much whether to reopen but how to do so in a way that doesn’t risk the health of students, teachers, and other school personnel. This will require substantial additional resources. If we could afford to give corporations a $500 billion blank check in the last round of relief legislation, we can surely afford to help struggling state and local governments. The House Bill provides nearly $1 trillion to state and local governments, which is minimally adequate.  

5. Don’t compromise what’s needed in the bill out of concern about the national debt. The real issue is the ratio of debt to the size of the economy. The government must spend large sums now to help the economy recover faster – thereby reducing the ratio of debt to the overall economy over the long term. Besides, as we learned during the Great Depression and World War II, large spending to reduce human suffering and promote economic wellbeing is well worth the cost. It’s what almost every other nation is doing.

None of this should be controversial. This bill is perhaps our only chance to get COVID-19 under control, Americans fed, and the economy back up and running. 

Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and demand they fight to protect the American people. The window to act is closing, so raise your voice now.

Bill Barr has done this before

As violent crime continued to climb in Chicago and other cities across the country, Attorney General William P. Barr announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was mobilizing to help: Dozens of federal agents would be sent to work with local police to combat gangs and illegal guns.

“Our message to gangs, gang leaders and gang members is this: When we throw the federal book at you, it will be a knockout blow,” Barr said.

That was in 1992, during Barr’s first stint leading the Justice Department, under former President George H.W. Bush.

If it sounds too recent or familiar to have happened nearly three decades ago, that’s because Barr, now attorney general under President Donald Trump, made a strikingly similar announcement on July 22.

Some of the details were different, of course. In 1992, Barr said the FBI was shifting about 300 agents from monitoring spies from the recently collapsed Soviet Union to taking on gangs and violent crime in American cities. Eighteen of the agents would be redeployed to Chicago.

This month, Barr stood next to Trump as he announced a Chicago “surge” of more than 100 agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other agencies, along with staffing increases in other cities where gun casualties were making headlines.

Residents of Chicago could be forgiven for concluding that they’ve heard this before, since, of course, they essentially have. Barr even acknowledged that federal law enforcement agencies have carried out such operations “for decades.” Every presidential administration in the last 30 years has announced it was sending more federal agents to Chicago to try to stem violent crime.

But this time the circumstances are different — the politics are shifting. After 3 ½ years of Trump’s inflammatory comments and tweets, some thinly coded and others overtly racist, his administration’s announcement is widely seen in Chicago as a political move to use the troubles of a majority-nonwhite city to fire up his supporters.

And it’s happening as a growing number of people are demanding that their governments send something into their communities other than more guys with guns.

Chicago has a long, ugly history of violence. As in other cities, violent crime surged in Chicago in the 1960s and ’70s, dropped and leveled off, then spiked again during the 1990s. But since then, as murder and shooting totals plummeted in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, Chicago’s numbers didn’t fall as far or as fast, and they’ve climbed again during several devastating stretches in the last 10 years.

The reasons have long been debated and are probably more complex than most would acknowledge. But politicians, law enforcement leaders and many residents have repeatedly blamed Chicago’s gang culture and open-air drug markets, then called for policing strategies to attack them.

The fact that most of the hardest-hit neighborhoods have also been shelled out by segregation, business closures and job losses — including thousands of layoffs from government agencies and shuttered schools — is well known. Yet the need for immediate responses to the bloodshed, rather than those that tackle the deeper problems, always seems to consume political and financial capital in Chicago.

In 1992, the city banned loitering by people deemed to be gang members until the measure was ruled unconstitutional. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley led an effort to sue gun manufacturers for creating a public nuisance in Chicago and other cities; the case was tossed out of court. Speed bumps and cul-de-sacs were built on dozens of side streets to thwart drive-by shootings, though as police and paramedics discovered, such obstacles also made it harder for them to respond to emergencies.

Far more common have been announcements that more police will be deployed in high-crime areas, often under the banner of a new task force, program or initiative. That’s where the feds often come in — literally.

Soon after Trump took office in 2017, he called Chicago a “war zone” and blamed local leaders for being “politically correct.” He also threatened, via Twitter, “I will send in the Feds!”

Rahm Emanuel, then Chicago’s mayor and a frequent Trump sparring partner, rejected the idea of troops in the city. “I’m against it, straight up,” he told reporters. But Emanuel added that he welcomed additional resources to fight gun crimes. Within two weeks, CNN reported that 20 more ATF agents were being sent to Chicago.

Since Lori Lightfoot was elected mayor last year, she has repeatedly blasted Trump for racism and disrespect for civil rights — even as she’s been attacked in Chicago for not yet delivering on promises to reform the Police Department and drive up investment in underserved neighborhoods.

On July 20, after another weekend of appalling violence in Chicago — dozens of people were reportedly wounded in shootings and at least 12 people killed — Trump suggested at a press conference that he was again ready to send in federal agents. Lightfoot responded with a letter that criticized his administration’s “incendiary rhetoric” as well as the tactics of Department of Homeland Security agents who had seized people off the street in Portland, Oregon.

Yet Lightfoot also said the city could use other kinds of federal help, including “more federal prosecution or investigatory resources” to pursue violent crime and gun cases. She added that the government could help Chicago invest in underserved neighborhoods. “The violence our city is confronting is symptomatic of a larger public health and economic crisis.”

Trump and Barr announced the latest “surge” of federal agents to Chicago that week, describing it as part of a national crime-reduction initiative called Operation Legend. The FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security would together send dozens of investigators and agents to the city, with the U.S. attorney in Chicago, John Lausch Jr., overseeing the operation.

Underneath the politics and symbolism, the announcement signaled that federal and local officials were returning to their old strategy: send in more cops.

Shifting federal agents to cities under fire is “commonly done, and as a matter of fact, when I was the special agent-in-charge there, I asked for it,” said Jack Riley, who formerly served as the top agent in the DEA’s Chicago office. “It’s been called 20 different things in the past. [Operation Legend] is just the newest version of it.”

This federal surge may involve more agents than previous efforts, and Riley believes it could help tamp down violence in Chicago if it is carefully coordinated and sustained. Operations on the street should be carried out by agents who know the city, with those from out of town used in support roles. And as agents are conducting investigations and making arrests, the U.S. attorney’s office needs enough staff to prosecute the increased caseload, said Riley, who went on to serve as the No. 2 official in the DEA, overseeing global operations, before retiring.

“Are there going to be additional prosecutors?” he said. “That’s been an issue before.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago received a staffing boost in 2018, but no additional prosecutors are included in the latest operation. A spokesman for the office declined to comment.

Plus, the agent surge is only likely to last until fall, when the city’s usual spike in violence typically recedes along with the warm weather. So, like previous efforts, the surge is temporary.

If those earlier short-term operations worked to reduce gun violence, it’s hard for city residents to see as shootings spike again.

Over the last three years, the U.S. attorney’s office here has prosecuted more than 500 defendants on weapons charges, records show. Some of the defendants are traffickers or leaders of other criminal enterprises. But many tend to be lower-level players caught with illegal guns that have traded hands multiple times. Law enforcement officials argue that prosecutions for illegal possession help deter others. Still, the approach hasn’t shut down the gun marketplace, as firearms continue to flow into the city from suburbs and neighboring states.

So far Operation Legend appears to be following the playbook of those earlier initiatives. The first three arrests made as part of the Chicago surge were all for illegal gun possession, according to court filings.

On July 23, the day after the latest federal deployments were announced, Black Lives Matter Chicago and 10 other organizations sued Barr and other administration officials. The groups, seeing no reason to trust the Trump administration, asked for a federal court order to protect their right to protest in the event of any Portland-style tactics. In addition, they made what amounted to a defund-the-federal-police argument, claiming federal resources would be better spent on investing in their communities than flooding them with more law enforcement officers.

“We should take their money and use it to help people facing eviction, use those resources for people who need access to food,” Amika Tendaji, an organizer with Black Lives Matter, said in an interview. “The police haven’t been able to do anything [about the violence]. We need to actually address the root causes.”

More and more leaders are signing on to this approach. Over the last week, advocacy groups, churches and more than 30 state and local elected officials added their names to a letter urging Lightfoot and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart not to cooperate with the federal operation.

“Donald Trump has repeatedly demonstrated both his callous disregard for Black, indigenous, and immigrant lives, and his increasing inclination towards fascism and authoritarianism,” the letter said. “We grieve deeply the lives lost to gun violence in Chicago. … At the same time, we are clear that we cannot police ourselves out of this terrible situation.”

Chicago is now on a pace to record one of its highest annual murder totals in two decades. It’s hard to argue that the old strategies have worked.

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

The gender pay gap that no one is paying attention to

That women are paid less than male colleagues is a stubborn fact in the U.S. workplace.

As of July, women earned 84 cents for every dollar a man earned. It is a discrepancy that has garnered significant attention from scholars, the media and sex discrimination lawsuits.

But this figure only tells part of the story regarding gender pay inequality.

As a professor of business management, I have long studied compensation and inequality and know that base pay is only one way that women are disadvantaged in the workplace. Recent research by myself and colleagues shines a light on how female employees — particularly in the tech industries — likewise lose out when it comes to other forms of pay that receive far less attention: equity-based awards.

These are stock grants, in which employees are offered shares in the firm as a form of pay, and stock option grants that offer the right to buy company stock at a preset price in the future. The value of both are tied to the employing organization’s market price.

Less of an option?

Equity-based awards are commonly used in technology firms and startups and can make up a substantial part of employees’ compensation. In fact, according to the 2014 General Social Survey, which was administered to a national random sample of working adults, 20% of all workers in the private sector own stock and stock options in their companies.

Some estimates suggest the average value of stock options to employees who receive them is $249,901, and the average value of stock is $60,078.

My colleagues and I wanted to see if gender played a role when it comes to equity-based pay.

Aaron D. Hill of the University of Florida, Ryan Hammond at the data storage company Pure Storage, Ryan Stice-Lusvardi at Stanford University and I analyzed equity-award data from two technology organizations. We found a gender gap for equity-based awards ranging from 15% to 30% – even after controlling for the typical reasons that women tend to earn less than men, such as differences in occupation and length of service at a company.

What’s in a name?

We wanted to know what could be behind the discrepancy, so we ran an experiment in which we asked working professionals to play the role of a manager in a fictitious company. Participants were asked to read a set of employee performance reviews and distribute stock options to their team based on one of two criteria often used for equity-based awards: retaining talent and recognizing high potential employees.

The fictional employees were randomly assigned one of two gender-typical names, Steven and Susan, so that each profile was given the man’s name half the time and a woman’s the other half. This helped ensure that any differences between the profiles did not affect the results.

What emerged was a gender gap favoring men when it came to distributing stock options based on retention — but not based on potential.

In other words, the data showed when it came to equity being used as an incentive to keep employees at the company, there was a significant gender gap.

Our results were backed up by what we saw in the data provided by the technology firms, as well as publicly available data of executives.

These findings come at a time when many companies are seriously looking at gender pay discrepancies.

But even with efforts underway to address the gender gap in base pay and bonuses, we believe that many businesses do not appear to be focusing equal attention to equity-based awards. We heard this firsthand in interviews conducted with 27 human resources professionals at both public and private companies. Although nearly all interviewees acknowledged their employers were doing pay audits for base pay, and sometimes bonuses, only three said their companies conducted audits on equity-based awards.

We also found evidence of this within the two technology companies we studied. There was small to no gender gaps in salary and bonuses after controlling for typical reasons that women receive less pay; however, large gender gaps existed in equity-based awards.

Unequal equity

Part of the reason this gender gap in equity awards exists is down to why they are handed out to employees in the first place. Stocks and options are most often distributed to employees to keep them from leaving. In fact, a survey of 217 companies found that almost 90% said retention was the primary objective of their stock option program.

Our interviews with HR professionals backed this up. Interviewees described equity-based awards as retention incentives for “high performers” and as “a forward-looking reward program.”

And studies have shown that men tend to be perceived as more capable in work settings than women and as such are likely viewed as more important to retain in a company and often seen as a higher risk of leaving for a rival. As a result, men are likely to receive more equity-based awards than women.

While some companies are working hard to address gender inequality, our findings suggest that efforts should be applied more broadly to all forms of pay.

Felice Klein, Assistant Professor of Management, Boise State University

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

Trump’s vaccine director awards former employer $2.1 billion government contract

The White House on Friday awarded a record-breaking $2.1 billion contract for development of a Covid-19 vaccine, raising questions about a former pharmaceutical executive’s involvement in the administration’s decision.

The deal is for 100 million doses of a vaccine manufactured by Sanofi, a French drug maker, and its British partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

As Fortune reported:

The deal follows billions of dollars of U.S. commitments to other experimental vaccines—all still needing to show their effectiveness in testing—and may stoke concerns that other countries will be left behind. Vaccines are seen as the key to leading the world out of the pandemic that has killed about 675,000 people in a matter of months.

Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a former GSK executive, is head of the White House’s Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s program to develop and disburse an effective coronavirus vaccine. Slaoui’s connection to his former company has been the focus of concern from advocacy groups and politicians skeptical of his claims of neutrality.

According to the New York Times:

Dr. Slaoui is not a federal employee, instead working under a $1 contract that exempts him from federal rules that would require him to list his outside positions, stock holdings and other potential conflicts. Dr. Slaoui said in an interview in May that he was determined to avoid any conflicts of interest, but that his GSK stock represented his retirement from 29 years at the company, and that he had told federal officials he would not take the job if he had to sell it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) raised concerns over Slaoui’s ties to GSK in May.

“It is a huge conflict of interest for the White House’s new vaccine czar to own $10 million of stock in a company receiving government funding to develop a Covid-19 vaccine,” Warren tweeted. “Dr. Slaoui should divest immediately.”

As Common Dreams reported, the former executive’s refusal to relinquish his shares in the company made the process of awarding a contract a “sham,” in the words of former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub.

“You can’t have a contractor supervising government officials,” said Shaub.

Federalist Society founder suddenly turns on Trump, calls for a second impeachment

Steven Calabresi is not among the usual slate of conservative critics of the president. He doesn’t appear on MSNBC to lambast the Republican Party or write denunciations of the White House for The Bulwark. But in a new piece for the New York Times on Thursday, he offered a blistering rebuke to President Donald Trump’s suggestion on Twitter that he may seek to delay the November election.

Calabresi started with his Trumpist bona fides, confirming that he’s not inclined to criticize the president:

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote op-eds and a law review article protesting what I believe was an unconstitutional investigation by Robert Mueller. I also wrote an op-ed opposing President Trump’s impeachment.

Then he continued, cutting to the heart of the matter:

But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.

The United States has never in its history delayed a presidential election, he pointed out, and there’s no justification to do it now. Calabresi noted that it’s not even within Trump’s power to delay or cancel the election, and it’s up to states whether they want to use mail-in ballots, which the president has decried.

But unlike some political commentators who dismissed the president’s comments because he lacks the official capacity to carry them out, Calabresi took Trump’s threat seriously.

“President Trump needs to be told by every Republican in Congress that he cannot postpone the federal election,” he wrote. “Doing so would be illegal, unconstitutional and without precedent in American history. Anyone who says otherwise should never be elected to Congress again.”

Republicans in Congress — the people necessary to make good on the threat of impeachment that Calabresi raises — should follow his lead and hold the president’s feet to the fire. They ought to tell him: Back down or be replaced.

 

On the de-Trumpification of America: It definitely won’t be easy, but it must be done

Despite the deep hole he’s in, Donald Trump could still win re-election, as we are constantly reminded. If he loses, some observers warn, there could be considerable trouble, even violent resistance. But perhaps the biggest problem facing us in the medium-to-long term is what happens if Trump loses. In particular, what do we do to undo Trumpism? Not just to counter the destruction Trump has wrought, but the decades-long preconditions that made his election possible, if not almost inevitable.

This question was raised recently by Foreign Policy in Focus editor John Feffer, whose 2017 book, “Aftershock: A Journey Into Eastern Europe’s Broken Dreams” I reviewed here.  That book was deeply steeped in the difficult challenges of rebuilding democratic culture and, unsurprisingly, Feffer’s recent column cited several historical signposts to illuminate the challenge we face — the end of the Confederacy, Nazi Germany and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. All those efforts to rebuild were “flawed in various ways” he wrote — the first and last most dramatically. But learning from them “might help us avoid repeating the mistakes of history.” 

The thrust of Feffer’s argument is twofold: First, that Trump is backed by an amalgam of forces, including “the bulk of conservative civil society,” and even if he’s defeated, Trumpism — the particular articulation he’s given to those forces — will survive the election and continue to be an existential threat. It “could succeed in finishing what Trump started — disuniting the country and destroying the democratic experiment — unless, that is, the United States were to undergo a thorough de-Trumpification.” In fact, he notes that “a post-election insurrection is not out of the question.”

Trump himself may be expendable, from the far right’s point of view, but Feffer writes that “Trumpism — which lies at the intersections of racial and sexual anxiety, hatred of government and the expert class, and opposition to cosmopolitan internationalism — is not so easily rooted out.” In part, that’s because it’s “a political chimera with the head of an establishment machine and the body of a radical social movement.”

Second, Feffer argues that we must learn from the examples of the past, flawed though they might be in many ways, in order to do better. While I agree with Feffer’s core argument, both his choice of past examples and the lessons drawn from them are less satisfying. That’s not a reason to abandon his approach, but to pursue it more robustly. 

Two of the examples — Nazi Germany and Saddam’s Iraq — are classic examples of “pathocracies,” which I’ve written about before, and thus led me to reach out to two experts I’ve consulted in the past: Ian Hughes, the author of “Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy,” and therapist Elizabeth Mika, who wrote perhaps the most politically crucial chapter of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” (Salon review here). 

“Pathocracy is the situation where dangerously disordered personalities predominate in positions of power.” Hughes said. “Such individuals’ propensity for violence and greed, their incapacity for basic human empathy and their disordered perception and cognition, which renders them unable to ameliorate their distorted worldviews with reality and reason, mark them out as a danger to others.” 

We may not be a full-blown pathocracy yet, Hughes and Mika agree, but we’re headed in that direction. 

“We are at the beginning of this process,” Mika said. “Like the virus-induced disease, it may need to take its course before it weakens and we can start to rebuild from the devastation it will cause. It’s hard to say what shape this devastation may ultimately take.”

Hughes referred to “The Dictatorship Syndrome,” by Alaa Al Aswany, which describes how a fully entrenched pathocracy operates like a machine, without any need for the dictator’s instructions. 

“The U.S. is clearly not in that situation. It does however have many features of a society on its way towards pathocracy,” Hughes said, from the “clearly disordered president who enjoys widespread popular support” to the legion of lackeys eager for power and the erosion of democratic institutions they carry out for him, to the state-sponsored spread of “misinformation, hate mongering, and attacks on democratic opponents” and the resulting chaos of antisocial behavior. 

The “partial collapse of democracy” in the United States, Hughes said, “can be used as one guide to the necessary response to Trumpism once Trump has been defeated,” Hughes said. “So too can comparisons with previous undemocratic regimes, such as those used by Feffer.”

But democratic recovery is extremely difficult, Hughes warns. He mentioned the example of Jared Diamond’s book “Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change,” which explores how countries have successfully navigated similar major upheavals in the past. “The lesson I drew from his book, however, and from history more broadly, is that nations seldom learn from their descent into pathocracy,” Hughes said  So he argued that a more limited, targeted approach is better than one that tries to change everything at once.

Mika is skeptical as well, but from a different direction. “The way I see it, de-Trumpification as such is not possible yet, as we have not fully Trumpified yet,” she said. 

What I mean by that is not only that Trumpian fascism has not fully taken over our society — which I hope against hope does not happen — but that we don’t fully understand what is happening and why. And understanding is key. Its lack has brought us Trumpism in the first place.

I see Trumpism as an inevitable and necessary confrontation with our shadow. This confrontation is meant to break apart our (deadly) illusions, most of all that about our non-ending progress, exceptional greatness, and immunity to pain and suffering that envelop such large swaths of the world.

We have cultivated these illusions at the expense of our growth and health, as our shadow side remained repressed and invisible, especially to those in power who have been most involved in the production of our toxic myths. Of course working Americans and minorities know the shadow all too well, as it is their daily bread.

This parallels an argument Hughes made in May, describing America as “a place where bad ideas never die.” As the depths of America’s failure to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic became clear, he contrasted the fate of the two Cold War superpowers:

The fall of the Soviet Union is remembered by many as the end of a bad idea — the idea that a one-party state can violently suppress its citizens in the name of the collective good. The “Fall of America” moment [caused by the pandemic] is of a different nature. It can be understood, not as the end of a bad idea, but rather as the pyrrhic victory of a whole set of bad ideas long present in U.S. culture which have grown to define the country in the last few decades.

The ideas Hughes cited were that “inequality is good,” that “religious freedom [so-called] trumps public good,” that “in the Civil War, the wrong side won,” the myth of “American exceptionalism,” i.e., “the idea that the U.S. is a unique, morally-superior civilization destined to guide the world” and “the myth of redemptive violence,” meaning “the belief that good can triumph over evil only by means of conflict.” These can all be seen as different forms of narcissistic fantasy and, more specifically, collective narcissistic fantasy. The more we cling to such fantasies, the more our shadow grows.

One of those bad ideas ties directly to one of Feffer’s three examples, that of “Reconstruction after the American Civil War,” and the failure of that process created the historical foundation on which Trumpism is built.  

The lesson Feffer draws is a tough one: “Today’s Republicans, the equivalent of the northern Democrats of the post-Civil War era and a true confederacy of dunces, cannot be allowed to persist in their current incarnation as a vehicle for Trumpism.” To avoid that, “the next administration would have to drain the swamp Trump created, bring criminal charges against the former president and his key followers, and launch a serious campaign to change the hearts and minds of Americans who have been drawn to this president’s agenda.” 

To accomplish that, he concludes, “it’s imperative to separate the legitimate grievances of Trump supporters from the illegitimate ones,” and both must be addressed in different ways. 

This is the strongest aspect of Feffer’s argument — which is not to say it will be easy to pull off. Bringing charges against Trump may well be justified on multiple grounds, but doing so itself threatens democratic norms: The winners don’t throw the losers in jail, not in fully-functioning healthy democracies. But “no one is above the law” is also a central norm — a norm previously violated when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, and that came back to bite us in a big way with the rise of Trump. Clearly, this needs to be carefully thought through, and a professional, non-political investigation into Trump’s actual or potential crimes will be required. 

Feffer also ties this point to the example of Nazi Germany and the Nuremberg trials, where “the Allied victors put nearly 200 Nazis on trial for various crimes: 161 were convicted and 37 sentenced to death.” To follow this example, Feffer suggests that federal prosecutors should prosecute Trump and his top associates as a criminal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Doing so could “not only remove him from the political equation but could effectively delegitimize Trumpism and prevent a second round of it from occurring.”

Yet Feffer also notes that the Nuremberg Trials did not actually delegitimize Nazism. A 1947 survey in the U.S.-occupied sector of Germany found that 55% believed that “National Socialism was a good idea badly carried out,” which included Germans under 30 as well.

But there’s more to that story, Hughes argued. In contrast to the lesson from Diamond’s book that nations seldom learn, “Germany stands out as the truly remarkable exception to this rule,” even though “Nazi officials remained in positions of authority for decades after the war.”

The idea that Nazi crimes were the work of a handful of evil leaders was widespread for decades, Hughes wrote in his review, and only ended “thanks largely to one man, the German Jewish lawyer and Social Democrat Fritz Bauer,” who prosecuted low-level participants in Nazi atrocities, “low-level Germans who had been active at Auschwitz, low-level Nazi police, low-level German judges who had sentenced German resistance leaders and Jews, doctors who had participated in Nazi euthanasia, and rank-and-file German soldiers who had participated in atrocities.” 

Without Bauer’s tireless efforts, Germany would probably never have faced up its past. As it was, that took decades to accomplish. 

“The lesson for the U.S., therefore, is that few countries have attempted to, and none have succeeded in, the immediate de-pathologizing of society following a period of tyranny,” Hughes told me. “Misguided attempts to do so, as in the attempted de-Baathification of Iraq, were an unmitigated disaster. An aggressive attempt at de-Trumpification, or trying to ‘drive a stake through the heart of Trumpism,’ is therefore not a course, in my view, to be pursued in the aftermath of Trump’s defeat,” no matter how desirable that might seem.

That doesn’t mean doing nothing, but rather focusing intensely on more achievable goals. “Vigorous action is required,” Hughes told me. “We need to make the distinction between the minority actively driving an authoritarian agenda, and supporters who are drawn to aspects of their agenda but who will not violently resist democratic decisions,” Hughes said. “The vast majority of Trump supporters are not violent and will accept Trump’s defeat, even as they organize and campaign for the election of someone who will pursue similar policies and similar means in 2024.” 

Of course, Trump is visibly trying to change the equation — and if he wins a second term, he might well succeed. But that’s not where we are today, fortunately. Like Hughes, Feffer views the de-Baathification of Iraq as a terrible failure, but draws hope from the fact that Baathism had been in place for generations, while Trumpism is just being established. 

This suggests a twofold strategy, Hughes argued:  

The response to Trumpism, and defense against it, should therefore focus on stringent measures to contain the power of the GOP and its ultra-wealthy backers (as the most powerful anti-democratic forces in the U.S.), alongside initiatives to reduce the polarization in U.S. society and reinvigorate all American citizens’ beliefs in democracy as the way to organize society.

Democrats already have some idea of how to pursue the first half of this strategy — though their commitment is still quite uneven. HR 1, the top 2019 House legislative priority, includes a suite of measures to reduce the influence of big money on both parties, including creation of a small-donor-focused public financing system for congressional candidates. (Small donations would be matched at a ratio of six to one, a powerful amplification of grassroots support.) A broader array of elite-power-limiting ideas pushed by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other 2020 presidential candidates have gained varying degrees of support, but have not gelled into a unified, broadly-supported plan. Hughes’ analysis provides one more reason why Democrats ought to give this their highest priority. 

But the second part of his strategy, to reduce polarization and strengthen faith in democracy, needs much more attention than it’s gotten so far. It’s particularly difficult because elite opinion and accepted definitions of “consensus” positions vs. “polarizing” positions don’t necessarily reflect actual public opinion — especially when the public is exposed to new information and freed from the constraints of elite partisan cues, as the recent dramatic swell of support for Black Lives Matter has illustrated. 

A poll recently reported in Vanity Fair found that even substantial numbers of hardcore Trump supporters polled in June felt that protesters were “completely right” or “somewhat right” — rising to a stunning 59% majority among softer “Lean Trump” voters, and 72% of undecided voters with “mixed feelings” about the candidates. Even more stunning, the poll was conducted in two waves, and from June 1 to June 11, support jumped “a head-spinning 25 points among Lean Trump voters.”  

This cuts deeply against the core dynamic that brought Trump to power in the first place, and points to a potential historical opening, and perhaps an attitudinal shift that could lead to lasting transformation, along the lines of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In early July, district attorneys in Boston, Philadelphia and San Francisco, in partnership with the Grassroots Law Project, announced plans to create just such a process. 

“When marginalized people have needed to finally rely on this system for justice, it has routinely failed them in the worst ways imaginable. This isn’t a bug in the system, but a feature,” the DAs said in a statement, describing what they intended to transform. 

But the “goals of peace and reconciliation efforts are better defined, I think, where the culprit is relatively clear, i.e. ‘just’ racism,” Mika said. And this initiative is even more narrowly focused on the justice system. Whether it can facilitate broader change, even if it’s successful, is an open question”

Trumpism is an amalgam of grievances that, although fortified by racism, go far beyond it. It is not as much a problem to solve or a rift to heal as a fundamental clash of values. There is no reconciliation to be had, I am afraid, between the psychopathic lack of conscience and our recognition, respect for, and desire to live according to higher values. Choosing higher values, however, is the right path, as we acknowledge and grapple with our psychopathic shadow.

That’s a tall order indeed, but Hughes sees the beginnings of a solution. “Citizens’ assemblies, such as have been put in place in countries such as the UK, France and Ireland, are one possible means of re-establishing practices of democracy which can heal divisions and undermine the appeal of dangerous demagogic leaders,” he said. In his native Ireland, that process played a crucial role in repealing the constitutional prohibition on abortion, as well as advancing a set of climate-change recommendations, all passed by majorities of at least 80%, which helped inspire a wave of climate-change citizens’ assemblies across Europe and elsewhere over the past year. 

“Pathocracies thrive on chaos and division,” Hughes explained. “In an environment of violence and hatred, those whose pathological characteristics match that culture will ascend to power. To destroy a pathocracy, tensions must be reduced, hatreds ameliorated, and reason and care must again become the foundations of society.” 

In the aftermath of Trumpism, he said, “the focus must be on defending against those who seek to create and profit from such destructive environments and instead to create the institutions and norms that will allow the psychologically healthy majority of the population to create the rules.” That’s why he argues that “an aggressive campaign of de-Trumpification would be counterproductive. The best response is instead to strengthen the norms and institutions that [Trump] himself despises.”

This is only a broad overview of what will be needed.  I haven’t even mentioned the courts. Feffer notes that the 200-odd federal judges appointed by Trump “will do their best to block all attempts to deconstruct Trumpism.” His suggested solution, “to make it illegal for judges to be members of the Federalist Society,” is comically inadequate to the depth of the problem. But what matters now is that we begin thinking in such big-picture terms. 

Toward the end of his column, Feffer issued a warning: 

To avoid a second Civil War, however, a second American Revolution would need to address the root causes of Trumpism, especially political corruption, deep-seated racism, and extreme economic inequality.

Otherwise, even if The Donald loses this election, the political creature he represents will rise from the ashes and eventually return to power.

This is the scale on which we need to be thinking — not exclusively or obsessively, and certainly not enough to distract from the immediate task of defeating Trump in November. But it’s necessary to look down the road, because we need to lay the groundwork for the even more difficult struggles ahead.

From Jamie Foxx’s “Power Play” to “Teenage Bounty Hunters,” here’s what’s new on Netflix in August

August brings a full slate of new documentary films and series to Netflix. From the upbeat — like the science series “Connected,” the video game-centric “High Score,” and the nature series “Tiny Creatures — to the revealing, like the deep dives into the legacy of the Paralympics for disability rights and the wellness industrial complex, there is a lot to learn on the streaming platform this month. 

There are also a number of projects that dive into immigrant identity in the United States today, like the investigative series “Immigration Nation” or the feature film “Lingua Franca,” which tells the story of Olivia, a trans undocumented immigrant living in New York’s Brighton Beach community. 

If witty plays on the typical action movie are more your speed, check out “Project Power” — a new film led by Jamie Foxx — or “Teenage Bounty Hunters,” which (you guessed it) follows a pair of teenaged bounty hunters who push against the constraints of their small town and its secrets, all while navigating high school. 

Here are the highlights of the most intriguing projects for the month, followed by a full list of August offerings:

“Connected,” Aug. 2

From the microscopic to the kaleidoscopic, Netflix’s upbeat new docuseries “Connected” reveals the ways we are connected to each other and the world around us. The series, which is hosted by science reporter Latif Nasser, delves into how everything “from the air we breathe, the selfies we post, and even the poop we poop can be traced back to catastrophic shipwrecks, fraudulent elections, and even distant galaxies.”  The first episode on surveillance alone will make you think differently about pigs . . .  and dating apps.

“Immigration Nation,” Aug. 3

In this revealing documentary series, “Trophy” co-directors Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarzs combine in-depth investigative reporting and empathetic storytelling to present a complex portrait of U.S. immigration today. Over the course of the six-part series, filmmakers present unprecedented access to ICE operations, as well as moving portraits of immigrants. 

“Sam Jay: 3 in the Morning,” Aug. 4

Comedian Sam Jay — known for her work as an Emmy-nominated “Saturday Night Live” writer and her debut on “The Comedy Lineup” — returns to Netflix with her first hour-long special. Filmed at the Masquerade in Atlanta, Jay delivers fresh jokes about  relationships, travel nightmares, the audacity of white people, and more, all in her signature witty and raw style. 

“World’s Most Wanted,” Aug. 5

“World’s Most Wanted” offers global content for your true crime queue. This five-part series turns the lens on heinous criminals who have avoided capture despite massive rewards and global investigations.

“Tiny Creatures,” Aug. 7

In this dramatic nature series, filmmakers turn the cameras (probably set on “zoom” with lots of macro lighting) onto some of the earth’s smallest creatures and their big adventures. Narrated by Mike Colter — known for his roles in Marvel’s “Luke Cage” and “The Defenders” — “Tiny Creatures” explores animals’ hidden worlds and epic survival tales. 

“(Un)Well,” Aug. 12

From GOOP to group yoga retreats, the concept of “wellness” is both culturally omnipresent and the basis for a multibillion dollar industry. “(Un)Well” takes a deep dive into that industry, which touts health and healing, while interrogating whether the products live up to their promised claims. 

“3%,” Aug. 14

In this teen-centric dystopian world, created by Pedro Aguilera and directed by “City of Gold” cinematographer Cesar Charlone, 3% of an impoverished society have the opportunity to ascend to a better life on the Offshore. That is, if they survive the selection process. Now in its fourth and final season, we pick up after Marcela, the Head of The Process, has assisted in taking over the Shell, an alternative to both the Offshore and the Inland. 

“Project Power,” Aug. 14

This Netflix original film — which stars Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback — captures the moment an ex-soldier, a teen, and a cop collide in New Orleans when a pill that gives users unpredictable, temporary superpowers hits the streets. Together, they must take down the group responsible for its creation. 

“Teenage Bounty Hunters,” Aug. 14

Fraternal twin sisters Sterling (Maddie Phillips) and Blair (Anjelica Bette Fellini) team up with veteran bounty hunter Bowser Jenkins (Kadeem Hardison) for an over-the-top adventure. Together, they rebel against their buttoned-up Southern community and dive into a world of bail skippers and suburban secrets, all while trying to navigate age-old high school drama. 

“High Score,” Aug. 19

This documentary series explores “the golden era of gaming,” featuring insights from the innovators who brought classic gaming worlds and characters to life. It also takes a look at the rise in competitive esports and new innovations in the industry. 

“Biohackers,” Aug. 20

In this German television series, Mia goes to medical school to get close to a professor she suspects had a hand in her past family tragedy and gets tangled in the world of biohacking. It stars Luna Wedler, Jessica Schwarz and Adrian Julius Tillmann. 

“John Was Trying to Contact Aliens,” Aug. 20

Directed by Matthew Killip, “John Was Trying to Contact Aliens,” is a tender look at the life of John Shepherd, a rural electronics whiz who spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of miles into space — all while enduring a lonely personal life here on earth. 

“Rising Phoenix,” Aug. 26

Elite athletes and insiders reflect on the extraordinary story of the Paralympic Games. From the rubble of World War II to the third biggest sporting event on the planet, the Games have forever impacted the global understanding of human potential, disability, and excellence. 

“Lingua Franca,” Aug. 26

“Lingua Franca” follows the story of Olivia (Isabal Sandoval), an undocumented Filipina trans woman who aims to secure a green card in America and serves as a live-in caregiver for Olga (Lynn Cohen), an elderly Russian woman in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. Eventually, she becomes unexpectedly romantically involved with Olga’s adult grandson (Eamon Farren), but after one of his friends snoops around in her papers and outs her, Olivia’s identity, rights, and immigration status are threatened. 

And here’s everything that’s coming to Netflix in August:

Aug. 1

“A Knight’s Tale”
“Acts of Violence”
“The Addams Family”
“An Education”
“Being John Malkovich”
“Death at a Funeral”
“Dennis the Menace”
“Elizabeth Harvest”
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
“Hardcore Henry”
“Iron Man Armored Adventures”
“Jurassic Park”
“Jurassic Park III”
“The Lost World: Jurassic Park”
“Mad Max”
“Mr. Deeds”
“Moesha” Season 1-6
“My Perfect Landing” Season 1
“Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea”
“The NeverEnding Story”
“The NeverEnding Story 2: The Next Chapter”
“The Next Step” Season 6
“Nights in Rodanthe”
“Ocean’s Thirteen”
“Ocean’s Twelve”
“Operation Ouch” Season 1
“Operation Ouch” Special
“Remember Me”
“Seabiscuit”
“Super Monsters: The New Class”
“Toradora!” Season 1
“Transformers Rescue Bots Academy” Season 2
“The Ugly Truth”
“What Keeps You Alive”

Aug. 2

“Almost Love”
“Connected”

Aug. 3

“Immigration Nation”

Aug. 4

“A Go! Go! Cory Carson Summer Camp”
“Malibu Rescue: The Next Wave”
“Mundo Mistério / Mystery Lab”
“Sam Jay: 3 In The Morning”

Aug. 5

“Anelka: L’Incompris/Anelka: Misunderstood”
“World’s Most Wanted”

Aug. 6

“The Rain” Season 3
“The Seven Deadly Sins: Imperial Wrath of The Gods”

Aug. 7

“Alta Mar/High Seas” Season 3
“Berlin, Berlin”
“The Magic School Bus Rides Again Kids In Space”
“¡Nailed It! México” Season 2
“The New Legends of Monkey” Season 2
“Selling Sunset” Season 3
“Sing On! Germany”
“Tiny Creatures”
“Wizards: Tales of Arcadia”
“Word Party Songs”
“Work It”

Aug. 8

“The Promise”
“We Summon the Darkness”

Aug. 10

“Game On: A Comedy Crossover Event”
“Nightcrawler”

Aug. 11

“Mr. Peabody & Sherman”
“Rob Schneider: Asian Momma, Mexican Kids”

Aug. 12

“Scary Movie 5”
“(Un)Well”

Aug. 13

“Safety Not Guaranteed”

“Une fille facile/An Easy Girl”

Aug. 14

“3%” Season 4
“El robo del siglo”
“Fearless”
“Glow Up” Season 2
“Project Power”
“The Legend of Korra: Book One: Air”
“The Legend of Korra: Book Two: Spirits”
“The Legend of Korra: Book Three: Change”
“The Legend of Korra: Book Four: Balance”
“Octonauts & the Caves of Sac Actun”
“Teenage Bounty Hunters”

Aug. 15

“The Game” Seasons 1-3
“Rita” Season 5
“Stranger” Season 2

Aug. 16

“Johnny English”
“Les Misérables”

Aug. 17

“Crazy Awesome Teachers”
“Drunk Parents”
“Glitch Techs” Season 2

Aug. 19

“Crímenes de familia”
“DeMarcus Family Rules”
“High Score”

Aug. 20

“Biohackers”
“Good Kisser”
“Great Pretender”
“John Was Trying to Contact Aliens”

Aug. 21

“Alien TV”
“Fuego negro”
“Hoops”
“Lucifer” Season 5
“Rust Valley Restorers” Season 3
“The Sleepover”

Aug. 23

“1BR”
“Septembers of Shiraz”

Aug. 25

“Emily’s Wonder Lab”
“Trinkets: Season 2”

Aug. 26

“Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol”
“La venganza de Analía”
“Million Dollar Beach House”
“Rising Phoenix”
“Lingua Franca”

Aug. 27

“Aggretsuko” Season 3″
“The Bridge Curse”
“The Frozen Ground”

Aug. 28

“All Together Now”
“Cobra Kai” Seasons 1 & 2
“I AM A KILLER: Released”
“Orígenes secretos”

Aug. 31

“Casino Royale”
“Quantum of Solace”

Many Black, Latinx and poor Americans who needed relief the most never got a stimulus check: study

Congress approved a round of direct payments to most Americans after the coronavirus pandemic hit, but a new study shows that the payments never got to some of the people hardest hit by the crisis.

Congress approved $1,200 payments to most adults and $500 for children as part of the $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March. A new study from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center finds that nearly 40% of adults who live at or below the poverty level never received a payment. A recent study by the Federal Reserve showed that low-income Americans were the hardest hit by the economic crisis sparked by the pandemic, meaning that many people whose struggles have been exacerbated through no fault of their own have been left without aid.

About 30% of Americans over 65, who along with facing the highest health risk have also seen their unemployment rate skyrocket since March, also did not receive a payment, according to the study, which looked at payments sent out through mid-to-late May.

The study also finds a significant racial disparity, with nearly 74% of white adults reporting receiving a payment in comparison to 69% of Black adults, 64% of Latinx adults, and 54% of Latinx adults in families with non-citizens. Black and Latinx Americans have also been disproportionately affected by the dual health and economic crises.

“The challenge is that the payments are distributed through the income tax system, but the IRS generally does not know the whereabouts of low-income people who do not file income tax returns,” Janet Holtzblatt, the lead author of the report, told Salon. “The IRS was able to get the payments to many non-filers by using information provided from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

About 38% of people who did not receive a payment did not file a tax return in 2018 or 2019 and also did not receive Social Security benefits, meaning they had to needed to submit additional information through an IRS web portal developed weeks after the stimulus checks were announced.

Those “non-filers have to go to the IRS website to apply, but many low-income people had not done so by mid-May,” Holtzblatt said. “In some cases, they may not have had access to the internet, preventing them from claiming the payment.”

Though libraries and other facilities offer free internet services, most were shuttered throughout much of spring. IRS offices likewise were closed.

Moreover, some people simply did not know they were eligible for a payment. But you are one of the people who did not receive a payment, there is still time to claim it.

“The key now is outreach. People can still apply by Oct. 15 to receive a payment this year; otherwise, they should file an income tax return next year, even if they don’t owe income taxes,” Holtzblatt said. “The IRS is providing some assistance to state and local government agencies and nonprofits, but a lot of effort and resources are required on the ground to reach out to low-income people and assist them with the application process.”

Congress is expected to approve a second round of stimulus payments in the next round of coronavirus relief, though it remains unclear when that will be given that negotiations on Capitol Hill appear to have stalled.

“We’re talking about the same provision as last time,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters last week. “Our proposal is the exact same provision as last time.”

But that also means that exact same problems which prevented people from getting the first payment will continue in the next round.

“The pandemic presented unique challenges, which hopefully we will not face again. But the challenge of funneling assistance to all Americans during a recession will persist as long as only the IRS is given that responsibility,” Holtzblatt said. “Greater coordination between the IRS and the agencies that have ongoing contact with people living in poverty could hasten payments.”

Holtzblatt suggested that the IRS should work with agencies with whom people have the most contact, such as the ones that administer Medicaid and food aid programs. But even this approach “still would not provide an avenue for reaching people with little or no connection to government agencies,” because “they neither file tax returns nor receive Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits or other types of government assistance,” the study said.

As it did for 4 million people in the first round, the IRS could also send people without bank accounts pre-paid debit cards, but the results were not promising.

“The problem was they came in envelopes with the vendor’s name, and the cards have the vendor’s name,” Holtzblatt told USA Today. “So what do you do when you receive a card from somebody you don’t recognize? Many people did what I would have done and said, ‘Oh, that’s junk mail,’ and tore it up and threw it away.”

On the next round, the debit card envelopes should make clear that they are from the Treasury Department. “That would help get the money to people,” she said.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, this week called on the Treasury Department to “resolve all outstanding taxpayer-specific issues and immediately send these Americans their payments.”

The two Democrats noted that the department estimated it would make 171 million payments but only sent 159 million. Since June, the pace of payments to people that were initially missed has been “unacceptable,” they added.

“As the pandemic continues to ravage the nation, Americans cannot wait any longer for the emergency assistance they were told would arrive in the spring,” Neal and Wyden said in a joint statement. “Treasury must take immediate and decisive action to pay all eligible Americans, including taxpayers who still await a payment date on the Get My Payment portal, individuals who have received a Notice 1444 but no payment and non-filers who do not have the technological means to register on an online portal.”

The statement added that the IRS had been “largely unresponsive” to people who have sought help by phone, mail and email.

The problems are similar to those which have plagued state unemployment systems. Many thousands of people still have not received any federal unemployment benefits before they expired on Friday.

The Treasury Department has only distributed about $323 billion out of an expected $428 billion which should have sent out, based on an analysis by Bloomberg. And state unemployment offices, which have been overwhelmed with record numbers of jobless filings, are still working through large backlogs.

“It is absolutely providing just a crucial lifeline to millions and millions of people,” Heidi Shierholz, a former Labor Department economist who now works at the Economic Policy Institute, told the outlet. “But at the same time, there just have been — and we all know this — just a huge amount of issues with getting those benefits to many, many people.”

When a coronavirus test is not a coronavirus test

Desperate to continue the tradition of a family beach week, I hatched a plan that would allow some mask- and sanitizer-enhanced semblance of normality.

We hadn’t seen my two 20-something children in months. They’d spent the lockdown in Brooklyn; one of them most likely had the disease in late March, before testing was widely available. My mother had died of COVID-19 in May.

So a few weeks ago, I rented a cute house on the Delaware shore. It had a screened-in front porch and a little cottage out back, in case someone needed to quarantine.

I asked my son, who had participated in several protests and had been at a small outdoor July Fourth gathering, to get tested before he came. Testing had been recommended by the governor and the mayor, and many centers were offering an anticipated 48-hour turnaround.

He got one and downloaded the app for results. And waited. And waited. And waited. For 12 days.

Coronavirus testing in the United States has been bungled in every way imaginable. The latest fiasco is perhaps the most Kafkaesque: Tests are now widely available in many places, but results are often taking so long to come back that it is more or less pointless to get tested.

If it takes up to two weeks to get results, we can’t detect brewing outbreaks and respond with targeted shutdowns. We can’t do meaningful contact tracing. We can’t expect people to stay home from work or school for two weeks while they wait for the result of a screen. We have no way to render early treatment and attention to those who test positive, to try to prevent serious illness. It’s a disaster.

Many doctors can do a rapid strep test in half an hour, and the “slow” test takes a day. Imagine if it took 12 days before doctors knew whether to prescribe an antibiotic. You’d end up with more cases of meningitis, pneumonia and rheumatic fever. Strep could spread through families and schools like wildfire.

One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.

For months the hue and cry was about testing not being more widely available. Even many sick people couldn’t get one. The first tests proved faulty. Then good ones were not distributed to the hot spots. Then there were not enough swabs, personal protective equipment or ingredients like reagents needed to administer the tests.

After all these missteps, the political pressure to provide widespread free testing was enormous. And with little help from the White House, many states turned somersaults and delivered. Voilà!

But there was far less pressure to make sure that labs receiving the swabs had the capacity to process all those collected specimens.

Now, in cities like New York and Washington and Los Angeles, there are dozens if not hundreds of clinics where anyone who wants a test can walk in and get the famous stick up your nose or some variant. Though the simple tests are by law “free” to patients, the clinics bill insurers (or the government) hefty fees — sometimes hundreds of dollars — for administering them. This gives clinics the incentive to throw open the doors and do as many tests as possible.

Some hospitals, clinics and cities that run the specimens themselves or outsource to an array of different labs can deliver results in a timely fashion. State labs in Texas, which is experiencing a major outbreak, say their turnaround time is two to three days. But many results take far longer.

LabCorp and Quest, the two biggest commercial labs, have both acknowledged sometimes long delays in processing the vastly increased volume of tests. Governors are furious. Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said that the nine days it sometimes took to get a result from these companies rendered them “almost useless.”

A coronavirus test is not really a test if the result is too late to act on. So labs need to ramp up capacity, as they’ve vowed to do. More important, all those centers offering free testing need to take responsibility for delivering results within 48 or, maybe, 72 hours. That means contracting with labs that can guarantee turnaround.

“Anyone who wants a test can get one” is a nice-sounding political promise, but it’s not helping anyone. Sick people need to know if they’re sick with the coronavirus. Those who have been seriously exposed need to know if they got it. And others will need tests to be cleared for work, school or a family visit with vulnerable relatives.

This is how the coronavirus played out in my family’s vacation: While my son arrived on schedule, his test results did not. So he was consigned to the quarantine cottage. He wore a mask in the house and the car. We ate outdoors and he sat at the far end of a picnic table. We even squirted the ketchup on his burger for him, so that he wouldn’t have to touch the bottle. Each morning we checked the app, hoping for deliverance. It never came.

Finally, 12 days after my son’s last potential exposure at the Independence Day picnic, I agreed he could take off the mask. He had no symptoms and at that point he was most likely no longer contagious, either way. We hugged and enjoyed our last two days of vacation. Then he returned to New York.

The next morning, I got his text: “Test came back negative!”

GOP under fire for slipping $30 billion Pentagon gift into coronavirus relief bill

In a floor speech late Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described the GOP’s newly released coronavirus stimulus package as a “carefully tailored” plan to provide financial relief to desperate Americans.

But a look at the legislative text (pdf) released by Senate Republicans shows the HEALS Act is replete with massive gifts to the Pentagon and defense contractors that would do nothing to aid the unemployed, provide nutrition assistance to hungry children, prevent an avalanche of evictions, or stop the spread of coronavirus.

“Last time I checked F-35s don’t help families pay their bills,” Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) tweeted in response to the GOP’s proposal of $686 million in spending on new fighter jets.

The legislation also includes hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for surveillance planes, Apache helicopters, and armored vehicles.

The HEALS Act proposes a total of $29.4 billion in new military spending just a week after the House and Senate approved a $740.5 billion Pentagon budget for fiscal year 2021.

Meanwhile, as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, the Republican package includes no money for state and local governments, election assistance, or the U.S. Postal Service. The legislation would also slash the weekly federal unemployment insurance boost from $600 to $200.

Roll Call’s John Donnelly reported Monday that “Senate Republicans have laced their roughly $1 trillion coronavirus relief package with at least $7 billion for weapons, most of which are built by leading contractors that contribute heavily to congressional campaigns.”

According to Donnelly:

The draft appropriations portion, made public Monday evening, includes money for fighter jets, helicopters, radars, ships, and armored vehicles that the measure’s authors have deemed “emergency” spending that is not capped by the budget control law…

The top two defense contractors, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing Co., would do especially well under the measure.

The list of weapons is topped by fully $1 billion for an unstated number of Boeing P-8 Poseidon maritime surveillance jets. Also on the list is $283 million for Boeing Apache helicopters for the Army.

Boeing’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense anti-missile system, which is aimed at intercepting incoming ballistic missiles from sites in Alaska and California, would receive $200 million, and $243 million more would go to a missile defense radar program.

“People are dying, or worried about keeping a roof over their families’ heads, or cutting hours because their kids’ schools are closed,” said Anthony Weir, a lobbyist on nuclear disarmament and Pentagon spending at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “And this is the time to jam some military procurement into this year that you didn’t get last year?”

Everything we suspected about Donald Trump has come true

There were 65,853,514 of us who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it didn’t take long to prove how right we were. Donald Trump waited less than 24 hours after he was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States before he dispatched his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to the White House briefing room — attired in a tent-like garment reminiscent of David Byrne’s “Big Suit” in the Talking Heads documentary, “Stop Making Sense” — to lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Trump’s inaugural ceremony and parade had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” Spicer told the White House press corps, which was already showing photographs of the sparse crowd on the National Mall and Trump waving to entire blocks of unoccupied bleachers along the inaugural parade route. Spicer’s lie about Trump’s crowd size was so blatant, it was shocking. 

And the shocks kept coming.

By the time Trump got around on Thursday to his proposal to postpone the November election, the only proper reaction was to say, We told you so. We saw this coming.  

It’s too late for people like Steven G. Calabresi, co-founder of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday calling Trump’s proposal “fascistic and … grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.” 

That ship sailed in February, pal. Trump was a fascist last year when he openly solicited help from a foreign nation, Ukraine, in his campaign for re-election. He was a fascist when the House voted to impeach him in December. He was a fascist when the Senate voted against removing him from office at his impeachment trial in February. He was a fascist on June 1 when he ordered armed troops and other federal agents to use force to remove peaceful protesters from around Lafayette Park so he could march across Pennsylvania Avenue for his infamous Bible-waving photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. 

Trump was a fascist when he ordered his attorney general, William Barr, to drop the charges against his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying about his collusion with the Russian ambassador to lift sanctions against Russia. Hell, Trump was a fascist back in 2017 when he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to “go easy” in his investigation of Flynn and the rest of Trump’s campaign for colluding with Russians in the 2016 election. He was a fascist when he commuted the sentence of his longtime pal and political fixer Roger Stone, who had been convicted of obstruction of justice and lying to the Congress.  

Trump was a fascist way back in 1989 when he advocated bringing back the death penalty in New York after the young men known as the “Central Park Five” were wrongfully convicted of gang-raping a jogger. He was still a fascist last year when he refused to apologize for his harsh comments about the innocent men. “You have people on both sides of that,” Trump told reporters at the White House in June of 2019, again deploying “both sides” in refusing to back down from yet another fascistic position he had taken. He was a fascist every time he called journalists “the enemy of the people” at his rallies. 

See, that’s the thing about Donald Trump. He’s a fascist, and he comes right out and admits it. He did it again on Thursday when he suggested at a White House press conference that the only votes that should count are those tallied on Election Day, thus invalidating mail-in ballots, which can take days to count after elections. “So many years, I’ve been watching elections. And they say the ‘projected winner’ or the ‘winner of the election’ — I don’t want to see that take place in a week after Nov. 3 or a month or, frankly, with litigation and everything else that can happen, years. Years. Or you never even know who won the election.”

There he goes again, telling you who he is. He wants to pick those who are allowed to vote using various laws enabling voter suppression, and then pick which votes are counted. This isn’t the way elections are held in a democracy. It’s the way elections are held in a fascist dictatorship.

Trump is beginning to react in real time to an inexorable shift that has taken hold among the electorate. He can’t budge his waning in the polls no matter what he does. Fox News has lost its ability to rescue his political standing, even among his own base. He’s been in a political slide for two months, and nothing he does to catch up is working. 

There were reports on Thursday that the Trump campaign has pulled its TV advertising from the key swing state of Michigan. By Friday, his campaign admitted that it had hit “pause” in its national advertising strategy. Almost no Trump ads have been scheduled to run in August, the month the Republican National Convention is scheduled to take place. And plans for September are on hold as well. 

Trump began to hold daily coronavirus briefings again last week and his poll numbers haven’t budged. People aren’t reacting to his bluster and lies. They haven’t been moved by Trump calling Portland protesters “anarchists” and “agitators” who “hate our country.” Nothing Trump says about the coronavirus matters. What matters is what’s happening out there in the country, where red states are experiencing steep spikes in cases and deaths from the virus. 

People aren’t affected by Trump anymore. They’re affected by reality. They are worried about the virus. They’re worried about their jobs. They’re worried that they can’t travel to visit their relatives. They’re worried about their rent and their mortgages. They’re worried about losing federal unemployment benefits, which ended this week. They’re worried about whether or not to send their children back to school. The things people have done to protect themselves aren’t working. Being a citizen of a red state doesn’t work. Living in suburbia rather than an inner city doesn’t work. Private schools are as vulnerable as public schools. Corporate jobs are as vulnerable as blue-collar or gig economy jobs. Graduating from Harvard won’t keep you from getting sick. Being a politician or a professional athlete or a famous entertainer won’t protect you. 

People want to know when they’re going to get their lives back, and Donald Trump doesn’t have an answer for them.  

What’s going to happen over the next 95 days? What’s happening right now gives us a pretty good answer. The virus is out of control and will continue to spread. Trump is desperate and will continue to act in increasingly unstable ways. He will reward his friends and use the levers of power, such as the Department of Justice, against his enemies. He will continue to act like a fascist because he is a fascist. 

Trump is losing it because he is losing. He doesn’t know anything else. It’s who he is.

COVID makes clear how the consequences of inequality can be fatal

Capitalism, as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” shows, relentlessly worsens wealth and income inequalities. That inherent tendency is only occasionally stopped or reversed when masses of people rise up against it. That happened, for example, in western Europe and the U.S. during the 1930s Great Depression. It prompted social democracy in Europe and the New Deal in the United States. So far in capitalism’s history, however, stoppages or reversals around the world proved temporary. The last half-century witnessed a neoliberal reaction that rolled back both European social democracy and the New Deal. Capitalism has always managed to resume its tendential movement toward greater inequality.

Among the consequences of a system with such a tendency, many are awful. We are living through one now as the COVID-19 pandemic, inadequately contained by the U.S. system, savages Americans of middle and lower incomes and wealth markedly more than the rich. The rich buy better health care and diets, second homes away from crowded cities, better connections to get government bailouts, and so on. Many of the poor are homeless. Tasteless advice to “shelter at home” is, for them, absurd. Low-income people are often crowded into the kinds of dense housing and dense working conditions that facilitate infection. Poor residents of low-cost nursing homes die disproportionally, as do prison inmates (mostly poor). Pandemic capitalism distributes death in inverse proportion to wealth and income.

Social distancing has destroyed especially low-wage service sector jobs. Rarely did top executives lose their positions, and when they did, they found others. The result is a widened gap between high salaries for some and low or no wages for many. Unemployment invites employers to lower wages for the still employed because they can. Pandemic capitalism has provoked a massive increase in money-creation by central banks. That money fuels rising stock markets and thereby enriches the rich who own most shares. The coincidence of rising stock markets and mass unemployment plus falling wages only adds momentum to worsening inequality.

Unequal economic distributions (of income and wealth) finance unequal political outcomes. Whenever a small minority enjoys concentrated wealth within a society committed to universal suffrage, the rich quickly understand their vulnerability. The non-wealthy majority can use universal suffrage to prevail politically. The majority’s political power could then undo the results of the economy including its unequal distribution of income and wealth. The rich corrupt politics with their money to prevent exactly that outcome. Capitalists spend part of their wealth to preserve (and enlarge) all of their wealth.

The rich and those eager to join them in the U.S. dominate within both Republican and Democratic parties. The rich provide most of the donations that sustain candidates and parties, the funding for armies of lobbyists “advising” legislators, the bribes, and many issue-oriented public campaigns. The laws and regulations that flow from Washington, states, and cities reflect the needs and desires of the rich far more than those of the rest of us. The peculiar structure of U.S. property taxes offers an example. In the U.S., property is divided into two kinds: tangible and intangible. Tangible property includes land, buildings, business inventories, automobiles, etc. Intangible property is mostly stocks and bonds. Rich people hold most of their wealth in the form of intangible property. It is thus remarkable that in the U.S., only tangible property is subject to property tax. Intangible property is not subject to any property tax.

The kinds of property (tangible) that many people own get taxed, but the kinds of property (intangible) mostly owned by the richest minority do not get taxed. If you own a house rented to tenants, you pay a property tax to the municipality where the house is located. You also pay an income tax on the received rents to the federal government and likely also the state government where you live. You are thus taxed twice: once on the value of the property you own and once on the income you derive from that property. If you sell a $100,000 house and then buy $100,000 worth of shares, you will owe no property taxes to any level of government in the United States. You will only owe income tax on dividends paid to you on the shares you own. The form of property you own determines whether you pay property tax or not.

This property tax system is excellent for those rich enough to buy significant amounts of shares. The rich used their wealth to get tax laws written that way for them. The rest of us pay more in taxes because the rich pay less. Because the rich save money—since their intangible property is not taxed—they have that much more to buy the politicians who secure such a tax system for them. And that tax system worsens inequality of wealth and income.

Unequal economic distributions finance unequal cultural outcomes. For example, the goal of a unifying, democratizing public school system has always been subverted by economic inequality. In general (with few exceptions), the better schools cost more to attend. The tutors needed to help struggling students are affordable for the rich but less so for everyone else. The children of the wealthy get the private schools, books, quiet rooms, computers, educational trips, extra art and music lessons, and virtually everything else needed for higher educational achievement.

Unequal economic distributions finance unequal “natural” outcomes. The U.S. now displays two differently priced foods. Rich people can afford “organic” while the rest of us worry but still buy “conventional” food for budget reasons. Countless studies indicate the dangers of herbicides, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, food processing methods, and additives. Nonetheless, the two-price food system delivers the better, safer food more to the rich than to everyone else. Likewise, the rich buy the safer automobiles, more safely equip their homes, and clean and filter the water they drink and the air they breathe. No wonder the rich live years longer on average than other people. Inequality is often fatal, not just during pandemics.

In ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle worried about and discussed the threat to community, to social cohesion, posed by inequalities of wealth and income. They criticized markets as institutions because, in their view, markets facilitated and aggravated income and wealth inequalities. But modern capitalism sanctifies markets and has thus conveniently forgotten Plato’s and Aristotle’s cautions and warnings about markets and inequality.

The thousands of years since Plato and Aristotle have seen countless critiques, reforms, and revolutions directed against wealth and income inequalities. They have rarely succeeded and have even more rarely persisted. Pessimists have responded, as the Bible does, with the notion that “the poor shall always be with us.” We rather ask the question: Why did so many heroic efforts at equality fail?

The answer concerns the economic system, and how it organizes the people who work to produce and distribute the goods and services societies depend on. If its economic organization splits participants into a small rich minority and a large non-rich majority, the former will likely be determined to reproduce that organization over time. Slavery (master versus slave) did; feudalism (lord versus serf) did; and capitalism (employer versus employee) does. Inequality in the economy is a root cause contributing to society-wide inequalities.

We might then infer that an alternative economic system based on a democratically organized community producing goods and services—not split into a dominant minority and a subordinate majority—might finally end social inequality.

Susan Collins’ ads seem to feature ordinary people — but don’t reveal their ties to Maine GOP

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican facing a tough re-election race, has run numerous ads over the last three months featuring testimonials from more than 20 people who were presented as ordinary Mainers — but in fact had close ties to the state’s Republican Party or to Collins herself. While such deception is not obviously illegal, it’s intentionally misleading and suggests that Collins has had trouble attracting supporters outside a tight circle of Maine Republicans.

This wasn’t the first time that Collins’ 2020 campaign has committed an unforced video error. Last summer her campaign drew sardonic criticism after posting several minutes of B-roll of the senator meeting with Mainers in factories, a classroom, a kitchen and so on. The video was mocked as a transparent gift of content for outside groups, which could amount to a campaign finance violation.

This year, however, the campaign might catch flak for a July 30 campaign ad that features lobsterman and small business owner Wayne Parry accusing Sara Gideon, speaker of the Maine House and Collins’ Democratic opponent, of “not being honest” about her criticism of the Paycheck Protection Program.

The ad informs the viewer that Parry is a lobsterman from the town of Arundel, but does not mention that Parry also served as a Republican State House representative from 2010 to 2018, and is on the ballot as a candidate again in 2020.

Back in May, the Collins campaign put out a paid social media testimonial from a GOP selectman named Ryan Lorrain, without disclosing his party affiliation. Lorrain had written a letter to the Lewiston Sun Journal in October 2018 praising Collins’ “stand against the media and the political left” during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.

“What she did took courage that few people in politics have shown,” Lorrain wrote. “I encourage others in the public eye to look to her example for handling controversy in a professional and accurate way.”

The campaign ran a paid social media testimonial in May from former Maine GOP chair Mark Ellis. In 2010, Ellis worked as political director on the gubernatorial campaign of Steve Abbott, who now serves as Collins’ chief of staff.

Another Collins-funded social media testimonial that month came from Bill and Jamie Logan, whose daughter, Jessie, once worked in Collins’ Senate office in Bangor. Their personal connection to the candidate was not disclosed.

In July, former Maine House member and state Republican Party executive director Julie O’Brien gave a Facebook testimonial for Collins’ campaign. In 2017, her son, Cameron, was hired as a legislative aide in Collins’ Washington office.

Collins’ campaign posted in April a testimonial from Ashley Luszczki, who worked as policy director for former Republican State Sen. Michael Thibodeau, president of the Maine Senate from 2014 to 2018. Luszczki’s bio says she previously worked as the finance executive for the Maine Republican Party.

In May the campaign ran a testimonial from the husband of former Maine State Sen. Amy Volk, and another from Zach Woods, a Republican selectman from Levant.

The campaign featured K.C. Hughes in a July testimonial, without disclosing that Hughes was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for a Maine House seat in 2019. In May, another Republican candidate for a State House seat, Merle Parise, vouched for Collins in a video posted to the campaign’s Facebook page. In April, Collins’ Facebook featured a video endorsement from Gordon Page of Owls Head — who is currently running to represent District 12 in the Maine State Senate — as well as video testimony from serving State Sen. Stacey Guerin of Glenburn, who is also on the ballot in November. 

Collins ran three testimonials from young Mainers in June 2020 without disclosing their connections to her Senate office or the Maine GOP.

Meredith Coolidge of Yarmouth gave a testimonial after working as a summer intern in the senator’s Washington office. Zach Mills of Gorham spoke for Collins’ campaign after working as a summer intern in her Portland office. And TJ Rogers of Brewer contributed a spot after working as a regional field director for the Maine Republican Party.

Yet another former Collins staffer, Chris Philbrook, appeared in a recent digital ad. Philbrook’s LinkedIn says he served as national finance director for Collins’ 2008 Senate campaign.

The testimonials have also featured a number of controversial Maine Republicans, some of whom have voiced conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic.

In July, Collins’ Facebook page featured a testimonial from former GOP State House member Kathleen Chase, who has recently dismissed the science behind COVID-19 safety guidelines. That same month, Chase shared a Facebook post calling on Americans to “fight back” against public health guidelines such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing, which the post claimed were put in place so the government could “rule over” citizens.

In June, Collins published a video testimonial from former Republican State House candidate Thomas White, who has made caustic comments about abortion rights and Brett Kavanaugh.

White said that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s principal accuser, was an “emotionally unstable woman.” He also called the #MeToo movement the “weaponization of victimhood” and compared it to the Salem witch trials. The Maine Beacon reported that in July 2018, White “shared a graphic criticizing women who have abortions for ‘escaping the consequences of your choices by taking all choices away from another human being.'”

Another Collins testimonial this June featured Cumberland Town Council member Mike Edes. In 2014, Edes ran as the Democratic candidate for Cumberland sheriff, and was accused of illegally coordinating with a political action committee funded by a wealthy Portland real estate developer and Republican donor. No investigation was opened.

Former Maine Sen. Andre Cushing, who resigned from the State Senate in 2018 amid multiple ethics scandals, appeared in a Collins social media testimonial this May. Cushing had been accused of misusing business funds and campaign funds, and was ordered to pay a $9,000 fine to the Maine Ethics Commission for 11 campaign finance reports filed late in the two years between 2014 and 2016. The civil case is currently pending.

In May, Collins’ Facebook posted a video testimonial from Dick Pickett of Dixfield, without disclosing that Pickett has represented Maine’s 116th State House district as a Republican since 2014. The next month, Pickett published an op-ed in the Maine Examiner calling Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ economic shutdown orders “dictatorial.”

Collins also featured a testimonial that month from Maine GOP Secretary Barbara Harvey, whose role in the Republican Party was not disclosed. Harvey published two separate op-eds on the same day in September 2018 defending Collins’ vote to confirm Kavanaugh, extolling the nominee’s “exemplary judiciary temperament” as something “the founding fathers would have taken great pride in.”

And last but not least, the Collins campaign posted in May a testimonial from former Republican Maine State House member Brian Hobart. In June, Hobart posted a Facebook message telling Black Lives Matter protesters to “quit bitching.”

“Stay in your own lane. Quit bitching. Mind your own business. Be thankful for what you have. Don’t keep looking for the truth because you couldn’t handle the truth if you found it,” Hobart wrote.

“I failed my fellow American citizens”: Regretful women for Trump are a sign of his 2020 troubles

Writing in The Guardian this Wednesday, Adam Gabbatt reports that while Trump won narrow victory in 2016 with the help of college-educated white women, there are signs he’s losing that support in a number of crucial swing states.

Gabbatt highlights the story of Claudia Luckenbach-Boman, who voted for Trump in 2016 when she was a 19-year-old college student.

“I really failed my fellow American citizens,” she said. “I’m extremely disappointed in myself, and sometimes I am really afraid to talk about it.

“If I were to vote again for Donald Trump in 2020, it would be just as much a failure as an American, but also a failure as a human being,” she added.

Gabbatt spoke to another woman, who only wanted to be identified as “Julie,” who said she wants to “apologize to the world” for her Trump vote.

“I feel so guilty for having a part in voting this moron in,” she said.

Monica Rey Haft of Dallas also voted for Trump. Now she’s hoping for a Biden win.

“I’m riddled with guilt,” she said. “I know it wasn’t my vote that single-handedly that put him there, but I think with a lot of Republicans it was a lack of checking into it, it was just falling down party lines, it was disgust and disdain for Hillary Clinton and her policies, and I regret that. I regret that I wasn’t more informed.”

Haft assumed that once Trump was elected, his behavior would mature.

“I thought it’s gotta be a shtick, it can’t be real. I thought he would behave like a human being, that he was gonna change,” she said. “Over a few days, it was probably several tweets, or something I heard him say, I thought: ‘Oh my God. This is who this person is.’ And I immediately just thought he wasn’t going to be fit.”

Read the full report over at The Guardian.

House Democrat makes Bill Barr squirm with grilling about his repeated lies

Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., took advantage of his opportunity on Tuesday to question Attorney General Bill Barr and exposed his relentless lying during the House Judiciary Committee hearing. In response, the attorney general appeared at times visibly uncomfortable and tried to shamelessly warp the truth.

“On April 18, 2019, you state that “the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation,’ you’re aware of that?” Neguse asked.

“Mm-hmm,” said Barr.

“Today, yes or no, Mr. Barr, under the penalty of perjury, do you testify that that statement was true at the time you made it?”

“I thought it to be true at the time I made it,” Barr said, putting his hand on his face. “Why isn’t it true?”

“I’ll get to that,” said Neguse.

“Does it have to do with quibbling over—”

“Reclaiming my time!” said Neguse. “You answered the question. I have another question for you.”

But Barr pushed back, clearly getting irritated at the threat of perjuy, saying: “I’m going to answer the damn question. I think what I was referring to, and I’d have to see the context of it, was the supplying of documents.”

“I’ll get to that,” said Neguse.

“Does it have to do with quibbling over—”

“Reclaiming my time!” said Neguse. “You answered the question. I have another question for you.”

But Barr pushed back, clearly getting irritated at the threat of perjuy, saying: “I’m going to answer the damn question. I think what I was referring to, and I’d have to see the context of it, was the supplying of documents.”

Neguse started to become irritated himself, speaking rapidly and forcefully.

“You stated at a press conference on April [18] of 2019 that the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation,” he said. “You knew, when you made that statement, that the president had not agreed to be interviewed by the special counsel. Now on June 18 of this year—”

“I think I subsequently said I was referring to the production of documents,” Barr interjected, his face appearing to twitch uncomfortably in frustration.

Neguse barreled forward with his questioning, but it’s worth noting that Barr’s attempt to justify his obvious lie is untenable. Here’s the full quote from Barr’s press conference:

Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.

Since Trump himself did not agree to sit down with an interview, which the special counsel sought, these claims are clearly false. And Barr knew it.

Neguse moved on to another lie: Barr’s claim that former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman had “stepped down” from his position. After Barr made this announcement on June 19, Berman quickly contradicted it and said he had no intention of leaving voluntarily.

“Do you testify today that that statement was true at the time the department issued it?” Neguse asked.

“He may not have known it, but he was stepping down,’ Barr said, laughing, caught in his lie. “He was being removed!”

“Mr. Attorney General, the statement did not say that he was being removed, it did not say that he was being fired, it said that he was stepping down,” said Neguse. “Apparently, your statement today is that was in fact accurate, when Mr. Berman has testified under oath to this committee that it, in fact, was not.”

“He was being removed, and I wanted the opportunity to offer him another job and talk to him the next day,” said Barr.

“I understand your rationalization,” said Neguse.

Barr wasn’t pleased with that, declaring: “It’s not a rationalization.” But clearly, it was. Barr has already offered Berman another job, and Berman had turned him down. Barr thought that by lying about Berman already stepping down, he could will the circumstances he desired into existence. But it was a lie — one that blew up in his face. And now we all know it.

Watch the clip below:

 

How MacKenzie Scott’s $5.8 billion commitment to social and economic justice is a model for donors

The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced on Dec. 15 that she had given almost US$4.2 billion to hundreds of nonprofits. It was her second announcement of this kind since she first publicly discussed her giving intentions in May of 2019.

In July 2020, Scott revealed that she’d already given away nearly $1.7 billion to 116 organizations, many of which focused on racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ equality, democracy and climate change. All told, her 2020 philanthropy totals more than $5.8 billion. Scott directed her latest round of giving to 384 organizations to support people disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. She made dozens of gifts to food banks, United Way chapters, YMCAs and YWCAs – organizations that have seen increased demand for services and, in some cases, declines in philanthropic gifts.

In the two blog posts she has written to break the news, Scott has encouraged donors of all means to join her, whether those gifts are money or time.

Previously married to Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the philanthropist announced in July that from now on she’ll be using her middle name as her new last name. She left it up to the causes she’s funding to reveal precise totals for each gift.

Morgan State University and Virginia State University, two of several historically Black colleges and universities receiving her donations, said these were the biggest gifts they’d ever gotten from an individual donor. A number of her gifts are also funding tribal colleges as well as community colleges.

As a scholar of philanthropy, I believe that Scott is modeling five best practices for social change giving.

1. Don’t attach strings

All of Scott’s gifts – many in the millions or tens of millions, like the $30 million she gave Hampton University and the $40 million to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which advocates for and builds affordable housing – were made without restrictions. Rather than specify a purpose, as many large donors do, Scott made it clear that she trusts the organizations’ leaders by providing absolute flexibility in terms of how to use her money to pursue their missions. This hands-off approach gives nonprofits an unusual amount of freedom to innovate while equipping them to weather crises like the coronavirus pandemic without stringent restrictions imposed by donors.

2. Champion representation

According to Scott, 91% of the racial equity organizations she funded in her initial round of massive giving, such as the Movement for Black Lives and LatinoJustice, are run by leaders of color. All of the LGBTQ equity organizations, such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Transgender Law Center, that she’s backing are led by LGBTQ leaders. And 83% of the gender equity organizations, such as the Indian nonprofit Educate Girls, are run by women. She says this approach brings “lived experience to solutions for imbalanced social systems.” Backing groups led by people directly affected by an issue is a common tenet of social justice giving at a time when organizations led by people of color receive less funding than white-led groups.

In addition, some of her other gifts to grassroots organizations like Southerners on New Ground, an LGBTQ community-organizing nonprofit, and Southern Partners Fund direct support to a region of the U.S. that is often overlooked by donors and foundations.

3. Act first, talk later

Rather than making lengthy announcements about her plans, Scott chose to distribute this money rapidly and directly. Unlike philanthropic peers like Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, or Bill and Melinda Gates, Scott’s first round of giving wasn’t channeled through a large-scale foundation or other entity, like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, bearing her own name or that of another billionaire. And when she made her public announcement, the gifts were already made.

4. Don’t obsess about scale

Many of the organizations receiving these gifts are relatively small in scale and lack widespread name recognition. The multiracial justice group Forward Together and the Campaign for Female Education, a global aid group often called CAMFED, for example, until recently operated on annual budgets of $5.5 million or less, while the Millennial Action Project had an even smaller budget.

5. Leverage more than money

Philanthropy that’s intended to bring about social change inherently expresses the donor’s values, Scott acknowledged in her announcement. She also recognized her immense privilege, highlighting the need to address societal structures that sustain inequality. And like the many women donors I’ve interviewed and studied, she is using her position as the world’s second-wealthiest woman to amplify the voices of the leaders and groups she supported. Her goal is to encourage others to give, join or volunteer to support those same causes.

As Scott noted, the issues her philanthropy addresses are complex and will require sustained and broad-based efforts to solve.

This is an updated version of an article published on July 30, 2020.

Elizabeth J. Dale, Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Leadership, Seattle University

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

Ivanka Trump made $4 million off Trump Hotel DC while working in the White House in 2019

President Donald Trump’s older daughter and her husband made tens of millions of dollars while serving in the White House.

“Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner earned at least $36.2 million as they served in the White House last year, reporting a boost in income from some companies they own that hold residential and commercial properties, new disclosures released Friday show. President Trump’s daughter and her husband, who both serve as top advisers to him, reported a minimum combined income that was at least $7 million higher than in 2018, when they reported making at least $29 million, according to their personal financial disclosures, which they are required to file annually,” The Washington Post reported Friday.

Federal ethics rules only require disclosures in broad ranges, so an exact amount cannot be determined by examining the filings.

“Their minimum income was lower last year than it was in 2017, the year they entered government service, when they reported earning at least $82 million, the disclosures show,” the newspaper noted. “Still, the filings, which were submitted last month and released Friday, show that the couple continue to collect huge sums from their outside businesses even as they work inside the administration. Their combined income last year ranged from $36.2 million to $157 million, according to a Washington Post analysis of the disclosures.”

The two also have significant liabilities.

“The couple reported between $22 million and $110 million in liabilities, including a new debt that they hold jointly with members of an entity called Times Square Associates, valued at $5 million to $25 million, the disclosures show,” the newspaper explained. “They reported between $203.8 million and $782.8 million in assets in 2019, compared to 2018, when they reported between $181 million and $755 million, The Post analysis of their disclosures found.”

Scientists perform the first gene knockout in a cephalopod

In a potentially massive breakthrough for a number of scientific disciplines, a team of scientists report they were able to perform the first gene knockout in a cephalopod — that is, rendering a specific gene inoperative. 

“If made genetically tractable, squid and other cephalopods offer a wealth of biological novelties that could spur discovery,” the authors of the report, which was based on a study led by Marine Biological Laboratory scientists Joshua Rosenthal and Karen Crawford, wrote in their academic article published in the journal Current Biology. “Within invertebrates, not only do they possess by far the largest brains, they also express the most sophisticated behaviors.”

As a result, the team led by Rosenthal and Crawford figured out how to perform a gene knockout in the squid species Doryteuthis pealeii using the CRISPR-Cas9 system for targeted gene disruption.

The scientists specifically targeted a gene that produces ommochromes, a biological pigment which determines eye color in crustaceans and insects. By knocking out the corresponding genetic material, the scientists were able to effectively eliminate the pigmentation in the squid’s eyes. Just as important, “by precisely timing CRISPR-Cas9 delivery during early development, the degree of pigmentation could be finely controlled.” As a result, “this study represents a critical advancement toward making squid genetically tractable.”

The authors expressed excitement about the scientific possibilities involved in their research, since squids and other cephalopods are among the more intelligent invertebrate organisms and have anatomies quite unusual for animals.

“The ability to knockout genes in squid will enable us to ask new questions,” the authors wrote.

Their research could pave the way for new developments in fields like robotics, medicine, materials science, evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence. It also means squids may join the list of animals that can be widely used in genetic studies, a group which also includes fruit flies, mice and zebrafish.

“Cephalopods (at least the coleoid cephalopods — squid, cuttlefish and octopus) have the largest brains of invertebrates,” Rosenthal told Salon via email. “They have also evolved unique body plans and the most sophisticated systems for camouflage. Our study opens the door on being able to study the genetics of how these systems evolved.”

Rosenthal also discussed the potential medical applications of his research.

“In all biological systems, information is stored in DNA,” he said. “At any one time, the information that is needed is copied into RNA and then decoded into the proteins that perform most of the tasks. Cephalopods have a highly evolved system to edit genetic information as it passes through RNA. This ability to edit RNA can be exploited for human therapeutics, like erasing genetic diseases or managing pain. We now have the ability to study the cephalopod genes that edit RNA at a much higher level.”

He added, “In addition, cephalopods go through a programmed, and pronounced, senescence at the end of their lives. In many ways, this senescence bears similarities to human neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers and Parkinson’s. With genetic tractability, cephalopods may develop into a powerful model for these disorders.”

This is not the only recent squid-related news. Last month, a dead giant squid washed up on a beach in South Africa, providing researchers with a rare opportunity to examine an intact giant squid. The first video footage of a giant squid was captured only seven years ago in 2013.

Giant squid and colossal squid have long held an iconic status in our culture. Tales of large squids attacking ships can be traced back to the age of the Vikings, and the ancient Roman philosopher and naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote 2,000 years ago of a “polypus” that was “enormous beyond all conception” and “exhaled a most dreadful stench.”

Pliny the Elder also wrote that “there is not an animal in existence that is more dangerous for its powers of destroying a human being when in the water. Embracing his body, it counteracts his struggles, and draws him under with its feelers and its numerous suckers, when, as often is the case, it happens to make an attack upon a shipwrecked mariner or a child.”

Stella Immanuel’s theories about the relationship between demons, illness & sex have a long history

President Donald Trump has a new favorite doctor.

On July 27, the president and his son Donald Trump, Jr. tweeted a viral video featuring Dr. Stella Immanuel, in which the Houston pediatrician rejected the effectiveness of wearing face masks for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and promoted hydroxychloroquine to treat the disease.

Journalists quickly dug into Immanuel’s background and found that she’s also claimed that having sex with demons can cause illnesses like cysts and endometriosis.

These beliefs don’t come out of thin air, and she’s far from the only person who holds them.

As a scholar of biblical and apocryphal literature, I’ve researched and taught how these beliefs have deep roots in early Jewish and Christian stories — one reason they continue to persist today.

Hints of demons in the Bible

As in many religions, demons in Judaism and Christianity are often evil supernatural beings that torment people.

Although it’s difficult to find a lot of clarity about demons in the Hebrew Bible, many later interpreters have understood demons to be the explanation for the “evil spirit” that haunts King Saul in the first book of Samuel.

Another example appears in the book of Tobit. This work was composed between about 225 and 175 BCE and isn’t included in the Hebrew Bible or accepted by all Christians. But it is considered part of the Bible by religious groups like Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Beta Israel and the Assyrian Church of the East.

Tobit includes a narrative about a young woman named Sarah. Although Sarah doesn’t suffer any physical affliction, Asmodeus, the demon of lust, kills every man betrothed to her because of his desire for her.

The Christian gospels are full of stories linking demons and illness, with Jesus and several of his early followers casting out demons who afflict their victims. In one of the most prominent stories told in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus encounters a man possessed by a group of demons who call themselves “Legion” and sends them into a nearby herd of pigs who stampede off a cliff.

Demon lore spreads far and wide

Demons pervade biblical apocrypha, which are stories about biblical subjects that were never included in the canonical Bible and include various associations between demons, illness and sex.

The early Christian text “Acts of Thomas” was likely composed in the third century and became hugely popular, as it was eventually translated into Greek, Arabic and Syriac. It tells the story of the apostle Thomas’ travels to India as an early Christian missionary. Along the way, he encounters a number of obstacles, including people who have been possessed by demons.

In the fifth act, a woman comes to him and pleads for help. She tells the apostle how, one day at the baths, she encountered an old man and talked to him out of pity. But when he propositioned her for sex, she refused and left. Later that night, the demon in the guise of an old man attacked her in her sleep and raped her. Although the woman attempted to escape the demon the next day, he continued to find her and rape her every night, tormenting the woman for five years. Thomas then exorcises the demon.

Another demon story is found in the “Martyrdom of Bartholomew,” which probably dates back to the sixth century. Bartholomew also travels to India, where he finds that the inhabitants of a city worship an idol named Astaroth who has promised to heal all of their illnesses. But Astaroth is actually a demon who causes afflictions that he then pretends to cure in order to gain more followers. Bartholomew reveals the farce and performs several miracles to prove his own spiritual prowess. After forcing the demon to confess to his deceit, Bartholomew drives him into the wilderness.

Apocrypha like the “Acts of Thomas” and “Acts of Bartholomew” were popular in the medieval period, and even those who couldn’t read or write knew these stories. They also helped fuel the “witch craze” of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which zealous Christian leaders persecuted and killed thousands of people — mainly women — for their beliefs, often concocting claims that they consorted with demons.

Beliefs that persist today

It’s clear that Immanuel has profited from her beliefs in the supernatural, especially in right-wing and religious circles. She has over 9,000 followers on Facebook and over 94,000 on Twitter, with a dedicated platform as a pastor. In fact, she casts herself as a prophet and destroyer of demons.

It isn’t difficult to find other modern Christians who connect demons, sex and health issues. The conservative Christian magazine Charisma published a story claiming that sex with demons causes homosexuality. And researchers recently were able to show that belief in supernatural evil could predict negative attitudes toward abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex and pornography.

Meanwhile, many evangelical Americans believe that Trump is God’s chosen one, who has been tasked with fighting actual demons. Trump’s personal minister, Paula White, is just one conservative figure known to espouse these views.

If anything, the coronavirus pandemic has shown how many on the religious right continue to rely on faith over science. Studies have already emerged showing how the tension between faith and science has influenced many conservative Christians to resist the use of masks and other public health responses to the pandemic.

With many conservative Christians sharing some of the same views about demons as Immanuel — and conservative Christians forming a core base of support for the president — Trump’s promotion of the doctor’s beliefs makes perfect sense.

He’s preaching to the choir.

Brandon W. Hawk, Associate Professor of English, Rhode Island College

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

James Murdoch resigns from News Corp, citing “disagreements” over editorial content

James Murdoch, the former CEO of 21st Century Fox and the youngest son of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, has resigned from the board of the family’s News Corp media empire, according to a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

James announced the move in an unadorned resignation letter, which reads in its entirety:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I hereby tender my resignation as a member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation (the “Company”), effective as of the date hereof.

My resignation is due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.

The Murdoch empire is divided between News Corp and Fox Corporation, the umbrella company for Fox News, which has been run by James’ brother, Lachlan, following the departure of Roger Ailes amid numerous allegations of sexual assault from women at the network.

James, who has publicly said there are “views I really disagree with on Fox,” abandoned the company last year. While he no longer has an official position on either board, he retains his share of the Murdoch Family Trust, which has voting stakes in both companies.

Rupert and Lachlan wished James well in a joint statement.

“We’re grateful to James for his many years of service to the company,” they said. “We wish him the very best in his future endeavors.”

The conflicts cited in the resignation letter included editorial content printed in News Corp entities the The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, Axios reported. Specifics remain unclear.

News Corp also holds book publisher HarperCollins, as well as major Australian media companies, some of which drew backlash for what many saw as downplaying the role climate change played in the wildfires that decimated huge expanses of the continent in early 2020.

James has made clear that he does not ascribe to his father’s austere conservative politics. He holds a stake in VICE and has given money to Democratic candidates. This June, he and his wife Kathryn each donated $615,000 to the Biden Victory Fund, per Federal Election Commission records.

The political and social tumult over the last few months has given rise to speculation about exactly where the Murdochs stand in relation to the inherited ideology of their empire. The campaign season appears increasingly fraught, as fractures emerge in conservative circles about whether to embrace Trumpism or jettison it amid poor results in polls in hopes of securing congressional wins in November.

Trump himself seems torn about Fox, alternately blasting the network while cultivating close advisory relationships with its biggest draws. 

“I was on Air Force One flying to the Great State of Texas, where I just landed,” the president tweeted this Thursday. “It is AMAZING in watching @FoxNews how different they are from four years ago. Not even watchable. They totally forgot who got them where they are!”

With “Maxxx,” O-T Fagbenle subversively takes on pop culture’s soft-serve cultural appropriation

Subversion is a wonderful thing in mainstream popular culture. The part those seeking to employ it often get wrong is that it’s best presented in targeted and frequent bursts. Anything more and its subtextual potency is lost, defeating the intended usage.

“Maxxx,” O-T Fagbenle‘s six-episode comedy currently airing in the U.K. and streaming in its entirety on Hulu, proves this by cloaking a pointed takedown of the racism, cultural appropriation, and commodification of stereotypes inherent to popular culture’s mass marketing machine within a cringe comedy about a boyband has-been. It also illuminates an unexpected side of an actor best known as the eternally concerned but generally out-of-frame husband to Elisabeth Moss‘ June in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

While the humor lands inconsistently over the first few episodes – at the very least, it requires a bit of acclimation time – the undercurrent of societal critique in “Maxxx” never wavers. The trick is in whether you’re looking for that part.

Unless your world is colored by microaggressions and constant, low-grade ignorance being reflected back at you, you might not even notice the tiniest shards of satire. But if it is, all you need to do is press play, sit back, and enjoy.

As Maxxx, the linchpin of a boyband with overtones of B2K flavored with a few dashes of Ali G, Fagbenle’s faded star is shallow, mystifyingly stupid, and pathetic in all the typical ways. “I’ve just been working on the DL because real Gs work in silence, like lasagna!” he says to explain his disappearance, adding, “Think about it.”

While he isn’t the brightest bulb on the theater marquee, his penchant for waxing philosophical reveals a man in the depths of an existential crisis. Maxxx props up his ego with pills and the devotion of his adopted son Amit (Alan Asaad), and pines away for his ex-girlfriend Jourdan (Jourdan Dunn). Determined to win her back, he embarks on a brave comeback quest, wheedling his way back into the temporary good graces of his eccentric former manager Don Wild (Christopher Meloni, channeling a warped energy similar to the one he works so well in “Happy”).

Don palms off Maxxx on Tamzin (Pippa Bennett-Warner), an untested, conservative, but extremely determined potential hire for his firm, hinging Tamzin’s employment on her ability to wrangle Maxxx and fully expecting both to fall flat on their faces.

The headline question in “Maxxx,” however, is whether it is possible for a star to square authenticity with fame, demonstrated by the title character’s accidental discovery that he actually has talent beyond the public’s expectations.

An improvised riff on his acoustic guitar yields a very thoughtful and poignant track that the principled Tamzin, champion of artistry and innovation, wants to sell, while Don, a man attuned to the realities of the marketplace, would rather push an insipid, pedestrian pop nightmare titled “Soft Serve.”

The washed-up singer is his own worst enemy in the usual ways, and it can be difficult to decide which is more to blame for his many stumbles: his insecurity, his inebriation, or Wild’s self-serving subterfuge. He believes he knows how to orchestrate his comeback and insists she simply sit shotgun in his ill-fated drive, or at least run interference with his obsessed and too-familiar cousin Rose (Helen Monks), whom he names as his assistant mostly so she’ll give him and Amit a place to crash.

Any number of underdog stories begin this way and end with the underestimated parties triumphant, and this series more or less follows that structure.

What differentiates “Maxxx” is the nature of his inner conflict, and the traps and pitfalls lying in wait for Tamzin and her charge. Don gives her a preview of what awaits her within moments of meeting her. When Tamzin brings Don an avant-garde artist, Don responds by pointing to photos of megastars on his wall and boiling their success down to material goods, number of units moved, and what items of real estate those sales gained him.

Meloni’s frenetic Don Wild steals the show and powers it in equal measure, serving as the destructive, libertine force who holds Maxxx’s desired comeback hostage, to a certain degree, because he can and because it’s entertaining both for him to experience and for the audience to watch.

But the choice of the stars he cites on his wall of fame is quite intentional: Jennifer Lopez. Ricky Martin. Michael Jackson, because the rude punchlines just write themselves. The main point is that Wild only puts his reputation on the line for winners; the implication is that Wild is a rich powerful white guy at the top of the heap in the entertainment industry, propped up by people of color.

Surely Fagbenle has some familiarity with that experience.

Plainly most of Maxxx’s problems are of his own making, but key ones are connected to his struggle to establish a sense of identity. Externalizing that internal conflict leads to Tamzin being splashed with the spillover and suffering all manner of abuses and indignities, many of them owing in part to the fact that nothing about her fits the market-drive idea of so-called “Blackness.”  

The script brings this out both in how Tamzin is written and the stiff, decidedly upright way that Bennett-Warner portrays her, and by placing her in situations that are ostensibly about belonging but evolve into something much more serious – for instance, drawing her in to a rap battle with a talented artist of Indian ancestry only to get some killer blows in not with any hidden ability but owing to the rapper’s appropriation of the N-word.

“I mean, what the f**k are we doing here?” Wild rants at Maxxx, “The last few good years of your life, chasing authen-f**king-ticity, when you can have . . . fame?”

Fame costs, and “Maxxx” spells out of the truth in that statement on several levels. That doesn’t make a taxing view. On the contrary, the lithe runtime is designed to maximize impact while minimizing one’s attention expenditure, making it as easy to breeze right by the little barbs as it is to binge.

Fagbenle’s choice to infuse a comedy he co-wrote, directed, and executive produced with these details demonstrates a level of confidence in the audience’s willingness to pick up what he’s putting down with a wink and a whole lot of cheek that other creators might not dare.

It’s refreshing to see him trade in dour angst for purposeful farce and step from a sideline role be centerpiece of a story he can tell in a way that few others might or even have the ability to do. And there’s something keenly satisfying – subversive, even – in seeing a man viewed as a co-star featured at the heart a comeback fantasy that lets us know how overdue he is to receive top billing.

All six episodes of “Maxxx” are streaming on Hulu.