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Goosebumps may be a side effect of hair follicle muscles, scientists say

A new study may reveal the answer to a longstanding anatomical mystery: how did human beings evolve to get goosebumps?

In an article published in the journal Cell, study leaders Dr. Ya-Chieh Hsu and Dr. Sung-Jan Lin of National Taiwan University explain the existence of goosebumps appears to relate to our body’s ability to grow hair. 

More specifically, goosebumps are created by the contraction of the same muscle that links hair follicle stem cells to our sympathetic nerves. The sympathetic nervous system in mammals is the involuntary system that controls the body’s rapid involuntary response to dangerous or stressful situations.

Likewise, the sympathetic nerve reacts to coldness — or emotions (like fear) that stimulate it in the same way as feeling cold — by contracting muscles. The contraction of those muscles is precisely what forms goosebumps. Intriguingly, that same process, the scientists discovered, stimulates hair follicle stem cell activation and ultimately leads to new hair growth.

Lest you were getting excited about the possibility of undoing baldness, the findings don’t mean that, say, being constantly cold and thus self-inducing goosebumps will grow back lost hair — particularly since we can’t get goosebumps on the tops of our heads.

“[Goosebumps] requires concerted actions of the hair follicle, the arrector pili muscle (APM), and the sympathetic nerve,” the authors explain. “We show that [arrector pili muscles] and sympathetic nerves form a dual-component niche to modulate hair follicle stem cell (HFSC) activity.”

The scientists studied skin under extremely high resolution using electron microscopy. Using this method, they discovered that the sympathetic nerve, which reacts to cold by causing hairs to stand on end, has a direct connection to the stem cells in hair follicles. 

“We could really see at an ultrastructure level how the nerve and the stem cell interact. Neurons tend to regulate excitable cells, like other neurons or muscle with synapses. But we were surprised to find that they form similar synapse-like structures with an epithelial stem cell, which is not a very typical target for neurons,” Hsu said when speaking to The Harvard Gazette.

In the conclusion of their study, the authors speculate that — contrary to the popular assumption that goosebumps are an anatomical anomaly that used to serve a purpose but today has no connection to essential biological functions — goosebumps may actually continue to serve a biological role.

“The erection of hairs, feathers, and spines plays a role in thermoregulation, courtship, and aggression, features essential for evolutionary success across the animal kingdom,” the authors write, citing a classic text by Charles Darwin (“The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals”). “The anatomical connection between [arrector pili muscles] and [hair follicle stem cells] is conserved across mammals, raising the possibility that there might be evolutionary advantages to preserving this anatomical connection beyond goosebumps.”

As moratoriums come to an end, Silicon Valley faces an apocalyptic eviction scenario

California’s populous coastal megalopolises are notorious for high rents and high costs of living. Throw in a pandemic, a recession, a socially unresponsive federal government, and the end of an eviction moratorium, and you have a recipe for a social crisis. 

Now, a new report from Working Partnerships USA, a non-profit organization based in Silicon Valley that focuses on addressing poverty and inequality, reveals the extent of the looming eviction crisis in Santa Clara County — home county to San Jose, Mountain View and other highly unequal Silicon Valley cities. Their report finds that thousands of people are at risk of being evicted once the eviction moratorium ends in the county.

“An estimated 43,490 renter households in Santa Clara County are at the highest risk of eviction — roughly 16 times the typical number of evictions filed in a whole year,” the organization wrote in a report titled “The Eviction Time-Bomb.” “These are households with people who have lost work, but do not receive unemployment or other income replacement.”

The report identified two key issues: the impending expiration of the $600 per week supplemental unemployment benefits, which is scheduled to happen on August 1; and the termination of the county’s eviction moratorium on August 31.

Not only will renters be required to resume paying rent on a diminished income once these two policy expirations have occurred, but the ordinance which protected families during the moratorium does not prohibit landlords from charging for months of back rent and evicting tenants starting six months after the moratorium ends. Landlords will also have the right to sue renters in order to garnish their wages for unpaid rent and report them to credit agencies as a way of punishing them for not doing so.

The subtext of the report is that the eviction crisis in Santa Clara foreshadows a renter apocalypse that will soon grip much of the Golden State.

Many other large California counties have eviction moratoriums that are set to expire. Los Angeles County’s Board of Supervisors approved an eviction moratorium and rent freeze that ends on September 30, 2020, though it may yet be extended. San Mateo County, just north of Santa Clara County, has an eviction moratorium that is set to expire on August 31, 2020. 

Working Partnerships USA also pointed out that members of the African American and Latinx communities are likely to be especially hard hit by these developments.

“COVID-19 has cost thousands of people in Santa Clara County — especially Black and Latinx people working in industries that pay low wages — the jobs and income they depend on to make rent,” the authors of the report write. “Over 200,000 working people in Santa Clara County filed claims for Unemployment Insurance (UI) or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims just between March 15 and May 30, 2020. Thousands more, including many of the estimated 95,000 undocumented workers in the county, have likely been ineligible or unable to access programs to replace their income.”

Previously, US Congress passed an eviction ban as part of the CARES Act, although landlords around the country flagrantly violated that ban and proceeded with evictions, as ProPublica reported in April.

Working Partnerships recommends that cities implement a permanent prohibition on evicting tenants who are unable to pay their rent as a result of income lost due to the coronavirus pandemic, providing relief to tenants who are most at-risk and making sure tenants faced with eviction have access to legal services, education and services that can avert homelessness and displacement.

Salon spoke with Jeffrey Buchanan, the director of public policy at Working Partnerships USA, who discussed the broader national implications of the crisis facing Santa Clara County.

“When you look at this disaster, particularly in the housing market, it has exposed the flawed structure of how we deal with housing, particularly rental housing,” Buchanan explained. “Here in Santa Clara County, we have a handful of billionaires that are the largest owners of rental housing, and it’s largely low income people of color who are disproportionately relying on rental housing. And that’s as a consequence of history of red lining, of occupational segregation, of other forms of discrimination and predatory lending that has ensured that, for particularly for Latino and black families, they don’t have equal access to being able to be owners of housing.”

He added, “It’s really set up a system where a handful of billionaires and a number of largely wealthy, large investors that own most of the rental housing, in our community at least, are setting the rules of the road of how housing policy works often times. “

Buchanan pointed out that, throughout America, working families are often unable to keep up with the rising cost of housing regardless of the wage increases or other theoretically ameliorative policies that are put in place to help them.

“I think for many of us, seeing how this has played out has really made the case for more community ownership of housing, rethinking even the kind of existing models around affordable housing that in this moment are almost just as challenging for adapting to tenants that see their income go to zero,” Buchanan told Salon. “Trying to think about what kind of models for community ownership — what this consolidation of corporate ownership of so much of our housing means, and what that means in trying to develop policy that addresses the needs of the many rather than the few.”

Recently Salon spoke with Dr. Richard D. Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, about the housing crisis caused by the pandemic-induced economic shutdown. Wolff was of the opinion that the pandemic has exposed serious structural flaws in capitalism itself.

“The irony that we will all look back on is that the very inequalities that helped to produce this latest crash of capitalism are actually being made worse by how it’s being managed,” Wolff told Salon, explaining how landlords are likely to resist any long-term efforts to provide rent relief to those who were rendered unable to afford their residential or commercial rent due to the pandemic. “And what that means is exactly what it meant in 2008 and 2009, when the same thing happened: The inequalities only got worse, and here we are barely a decade after the end of the last one. And we’re in an even worse one, rivaling the Great Depression.”

Sweden’s sobering coronavirus death toll bodes ill for the laissez-faire pandemic approach

Public health officials in Sweden projected that anywhere from 1,100 to 4,400 more coronavirus-related deaths are to be expected in their country. The death projections are likely a consequence of the Scandinavian nation’s controversial hands-off response to the pandemic, one which many right-leaning Americans have sought to emulate.

State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell from the country’s Public Health Agency told reporters on Tuesday that the most likely scenario is that there will be clusters of new cases which will quickly subside. He added, “we’ve seen [this increase in cases] now in different parts of the world, and which seems like something that COVID-19 is creating more than most other diseases.” He also claimed that “in Sweden, the positive trend with a fairly quick decline in cases continues.”

The report itself laid out several possible scenarios for the coronavirus’ path through Sweden. If the virus continues to spread in accordance with current trends, the report projects that only 1,100 more people will die. If there is a brief spike due to people abandoning safety procedures and then resuming them, the death toll is expected to increase by roughly 3,250. If COVID-19 follows a traditional pandemic trajectory, more than 4,400 deaths related to the virus may occur.

Sweden’s death toll is already the highest in Scandinavia. Since the outbreak there have been 5,667 reported deaths out of 78,504 confirmed cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. By contrast Denmark has only had 611 reported deaths out of 13,554 confirmed cases, Norway has 255 deaths out of 9,059 confirmed cases and Iceland has 10 deaths out of 1,840 confirmed cases. Sweden has a population of 10.2 million people compared to 5.5 million for Norway, 5.9 million for Denmark and 350,000 for Iceland.

Infamously, Tegnell denied that wearing face masks would make a difference, stating that there was “little scientific evidence” that masks would do anything. That is untrue, and contradicts the scientific consensus on face masks as a preventative public health measure.

Tegnell defended himself last month when confronted about Sweden’s death toll, telling the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Sweden’s Public Health Agency “didn’t know that there would be such a big potential for the disease to spread in elderly care homes, with so many deaths” and that “we knew that group was very fragile and that we would get a lot of deaths if they got infected. But we didn’t know that the disease would enter so easily and for the spread to be so big.”

Despite these sobering facts, Tegnell insisted that the social distancing recommendations “worked well,” that he did not believe Sweden should have done things “completely” differently and that “if we were to encounter the same disease, given exactly what we know about it today, I think we would reach a conclusion to act somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did.”

Indeed, Sweden has not enacted as many public health restrictions as most other European countries, including not mandating face masks despite the World Health Organization’s recommendation and evidence that masks can effectively reduce transmission of the virus. The country has urged citizens to work from home if possible, for individuals above 70 to stay at home and to avoid unnecessary travel, as well as to practice social distancing. The country did also close universities and ban gatherings of more than 50 people.

Sweden has become something of a rallying cry for conservatives who oppose the economic shutdown and other measures that have been taken to address the pandemic. Sweden decided not to issue stay-at-home orders or forcibly close businesses like restaurants and cafes. It has kept open schools for children under the age of 16 and has only recommended masks for healthcare personnel. As Professor Olle Kampe, a senior consultant in endocrinology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Business Insider in May, “We are sacrificing old people and people with diseases, so I don’t [think] that it’s something that anyone should copy.”

Sick of working from home? “Corporate” will remind you of how lucky you are to escape your cubicle

The final episodes of Comedy Central’s “Corporate” were filmed before the pandemic shut down the entertainment industry, requiring post-production to be completed by staff members working from home. Whether that’s an appropriate ending to a show that reflects the soullessness of American corporate life back on its less-than-enthusiastic participants – i.e. the audience – is debatable.

This detail does lead me to appreciate one benefit to the reality of forced workplace camaraderie at spirit-crushing companies: the semi-regular availability of retirement celebration sheet cakes and the very occasional “Happy Trails” pizza lunches. Be sure to examine those flickering memories closely, though, because they happened less often than you may remember, and the quality of those treats was basic at best.    

Office life was perceived to be a necessary evil to maintain team cohesion and worker productivity until an invisible virus forced most of us to work from home . . . while teaching our children, who are at home with us. Suddenly home is where everything happens, and no part of our lives is separate from the others – even worse, we’re supposed to stay in our houses and limit in-person socializing.

Our work-from-home lifestyles and the accompanying marathons of Zoom meetings probably make a person wistful for a recently departed past that by nearly all accounts needed to change. Workplaces gave us some place to go, a luxury in these socially distanced times. Large numbers of Americans have returned to some version of it already.

Commutes, irritating and stressful though they are or might have been, also are open windows of time during which we could take in a book or watch a show or even better, do nothing at all.

It’s enough to make a white-collar drone miss the relative privacy of that people-fattening pen known as the cubicle, which is where “Corporate” comes in.

As it enters its third and final season, the series shifts further into the surreal.  Work buddies and corporate cogs Matt and Jake (Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman, who created the series along with Pat Bishop) and their co-workers at the soul-sucking mega-conglomerate Hampton DeVille have all but succumbed to the apathetic fog that serves as their method of coping with being awake.

Hampton DeVille CEO Christian DeVille (Lance Reddick) and his right hands John and Kate (Adam Lustick and Anne Dudek) fill their hours with profligate spending and assigning pointless tasks to the people who work under them. It almost doesn’t matter Aparna Nancherla’s Grace is head of human resources given that everyone at the company has tossed their emotional connection to humanity out of the window.

“Corporate” never was the kind of series built for mass appeal despite the accessibility of its humor and the idea that for all their tics and idiosyncrasies, these characters aren’t very far removed in behavior from the people we already know.

Grace’s inability to care about the people she’s supposed to look after isn’t all that far off from the real role of a large corporation’s human resources office, which is to protect the company as opposed to its workers. John and Kate can’t really define what it is that they’re in charge of, so they hang on to their power by pointlessly screaming at their underlings.

Kindlier versions of these characters populate feel-good series such as “The Office,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Parks and Recreation” and scores of other comedies that validate the dream that our workplaces are where our other families live – not families of choice but of purpose. Meanwhile in an upcoming episode of “Corporate,” worker bees on one of Hampton DeVille’s fine companies toast all the personal touchstones they’ve missed out on for the sake of a very important project for the company, only to have the rug pulled out from under them prior to its launch.

“Corporate” never peddles comfort, drawing instead on a well of nihilism and cynicism. That may be why its audience has always been miniscule compared to other cable comedies. Like “Silicon Valley” does in its best episodes, this is a show that acknowledges the noxious nature of office ecosystems and success ladders, and the pointlessness of working oneself out of actually living. Desk jockeys don’t watch “Corporate” to soothe themselves. They do it to validate the suspicion that they’re not crazy.

Through storylines about deep depression, the stress-inducing terror of performance reviews, the addictive nature of workplace gossip and the weird limbo of office travel, “Corporate” reminds us that some aspects of industrial communal living simply aren’t conducive to psychological health, to say nothing the current threat to our physical selves.

Then again, the constant stream of news reports about unsafe conditions in manufacturing plants and warehouses where workers struggle to fulfill an accelerating stream of products ordered by mail has been doing this all along. This adds a coincidental undercurrent of venom to these episodes along with all the half-hours of “Corporate” that come before this season.

If life at all the companies Hampton DeVille represents seemed cruel and dispiriting before, now its craziness only underscores the banal insanity of operations and the power we assign them. Reddick’s Christian DeVille is deliriously intimidating, and like many cosseted multi-billionaires lording over sprawling clusters of companies he’s the most insulated from harm, regardless of what happens to the rest of us.

What choice do we have, then, but to savor freedoms we can claim – like, say, laboring all day in pajamas or going on strike from shaving or, say, actually making a “good job” treat for ourselves that tastes good? People who have the good fortune to work from home may appreciate “Corporate” more than they might have in previous years because it reminds us that as stultifying as combining home and work may feel a few months into it, our lives could be worse…and for people who used to live in their offices until recently, it probably has been.

The third and final season of “Corporate” premieres Wednesday, July 22 at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.

Netflix’s heartwarming “Love on the Spectrum” helps “bust the myths” about dating with autism

In “Love on the Spectrum” — one of several new reality programs that came to Netflix this month — filmmakers highlight the ways in which finding love for young adults with autism can be a complicated, intimidating, and in some cases, incredibly fulfilling experience. 

Over the course of five heartwarming episodes, viewers follow seven singles as they take their first steps into the world of dating, with the help of their families and experts who provide participants with practical advice for navigating the confusing world of seeking romance. We also meet two long-term couples — Ruth and Thomas, and Jimmy and Sharnae — who are both ready to take their relationships to the next level (complete with some next-level romantic gestures that, confession time, brought me to tears). 

According to director Cian O’Clery, “Love on the Spectrum” isn’t just different from traditional dating shows because of the inclusive casting of its participants. 

“There are a lot of dating shows out there that you see, after the show has been aired, people speaking out against the production,” O’Clery told Salon. “They had a horrible experience and felt they were turned into villains. We’re very different from that. This is all about telling positive stories and being there for our guys.” 

O’Clery spoke with Salon about the inspiration for the series, how he balanced being a “fly on the wall” with providing support for his participants, and the possibility of a follow-up series. 

What drew you to this documentary project? 

Well, we had, at Northern Pictures, made other series featuring people with disabilities, and just during that process we spoke to hundreds of young adults on the spectrum, as well as their families and job coaches and psychologists and organizations. 

And we just kept finding — the thing that was really standing out for us — was that lots of people were wanting to find love and many of them hadn’t even been on a date. So I guess that was the initial idea. We were hearing about this large population of people who had been supported through their childhood in learning a lot of social skills, and a lot of training and support is there for people on the spectrum throughout school. 

But once they leave school and reach adulthood, oftentimes that support kind of drops off and we just found there were lots of people out there who really wanted to find love and to have a relationship and were struggling. 

Also, we wanted to help bust the myths and misconceptions about autism, the main one from this series obviously being that people on the spectrum aren’t interested in love or in relationships. We thought it was a great opportunity to address those issues, as well as kind of help educate audiences a bit more about autism.

You just mentioned something that I was curious about. So as you say, I think we, as a society, are getting better about having support systems and early-intervention for children with autism. Through those programs, neuroatypical kids are taught some of the skills needed to succeed in home and school environments. But in this series we see programs or support groups for helping them work through more “adult” activities like dating. How common are those programs? 

I would say definitely not as common as it should be. In Australia, for example, most of the support out there for young adults is having to do with employment. So there are a lot of organizations that provide a bit of training in terms of how to get a job, but  in the terms of dating relationships, there is practically nothing. 

There is a program called PEERS, founded by Liz Laugeson at UCLA, and they use that program worldwide. And there are people in Australia that run that program, but it is very limited. You know, one psychologist might practice here and another there, but there is nowhere near the amount of support that we saw people asking for. 

One thing to note, I think it’s really important to know that the spectrum is so diverse and so wide that there are obviously people on the spectrum who don’t need support, who don’t want support when it comes to social skills and dating relationships; on the other hand, there are lots of people that do. 

And a lot of the elements that you saw in the series, for example, Michael going to that singles dinner — that was something that we had to help organize as a production. So we worked with a disability organization to help organize that. They do other things that don’t really have anything to do with dating, so we had to help facilitate that. When Andrew went speed dating, we helped facilitate that as well. 

So there are people out there saying they want to organize these things, but it’s, you know, mostly people’s parents doing it on their own time, which makes it hard. 

Early into the season, we watch Michael go on a date and it doesn’t end super well, and he asks you whether he went too far with his questions — like he was seeking advice or checking his behavior. I was curious how you balance between being flies on the wall, but also recognizing that these are kind of vulnerable situations and being there to offer support? 

It’s kind of hard to put into words, but I think it’s just something that you develop over years of working with different people. I think it’s something that you feel and, like you say, it’s about just trying to maintain the right balance, I guess. 

Having said that, we made it really clear to everyone who was part of the series that we were there for support and that if they were feeling overwhelmed in any way to reach out to us. We didn’t want them to feel that they couldn’t speak up or they couldn’t ask us for advice. 

I guess that comes to one of the points of our methodology in terms of production: we were making the show on their terms. So it’s all about them and we fit it into their schedules and work around them feeling comfortable, which is so important. 

You know, there are a lot of dating shows out there that you see, after the show has been aired, people speaking out against the production. They had a horrible experience and felt they were turned into villains. We’re very different from that. This is all about telling positive stories and being there for our guys. 

Backing up for just a moment — over the last several years, we’ve seen a fair amount of scripted television programs, like “Atypical,” “The Good Doctor” or “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay,” that depict characters who are on the spectrum seeking out and eventually falling in love. Why do you think these narratives are becoming more common in the world of pop culture? 

I don’t know, to be honest. But thinking about that topic and changing the angle a little bit, what’s interesting for me is that I thought it was a great opportunity to introduce real people. These dramas have been quite big and quite popular and what I think that does is it paints a picture of autism that audiences will latch onto. I think it’s great that there’s representation, but when you’re not actually meeting real people and seeing the diversity of people out there, it’s hard. 

So a lot of the people we spoke to don’t like Sheldon [played by Jim Parsons on “Big Bang Theory”]. They’re kind offended by that, and I think it’s because of the fact that audiences and the general population will latch onto those things and say to people, “You’re like Sheldon” or “You’re like the Good Doctor.” So, I think that’s why it is such a great opportunity to introduce real people to tell their stories in their voices. 

And as for why . . . I think it maybe comes from how we’re only just starting to really understand a lot more about autism in the last, you know, five years or 10 years. I mean, when we were meeting people who were, say, 30 years old and on the spectrum, when they were really young there was just no understanding. It’s quite a recent thing that we are really getting to know more about what autism means, the diversity of the spectrum. 

In the series it was brought up several times — like by Olivia, who was one of my favorite participants — that autism presents differently in women than in men. Was that something that surprised you? 

Not totally just because I had worked on other documentaries where we told stories of girls on the spectrum as well. That said, the understanding of autism and girls is really, really recent. I should say, I’m obviously not an expert in this field; I’m just someone who has worked with a lot of people and heard a lot of stories. 

But it’s interesting. Lots of girls get diagnosed later in life. What’s also happening now quite a lot is that parents are getting diagnosed. A lot of moms are being diagnosed now, because their children get diagnosed and when they hear about the diagnosis and what the traits are and what the presentation is, they think to themselves, “Hang on, that sounds a bit like me.” 

Again, I shouldn’t speak too much about these things because I’m not an expert, but there are theories that women are better at “masking” than men. The theory being that girls are generally better at copying other people’s behaviors as they grow up in school, so they are able to mask their traits; that’s one the theories as to why it’s been harder to diagnose in girls. 

Speaking of parents, a perspective that I was really compelled by was that of the parents of the show’s participants. In the second episode, we are introduced to Maddi and her mother, who is really her biggest supporter. And her mother is asked if she ever worries about Maddi being alone. She tears up and says it’s something she worries about frequently. Was that a fear that you came across often in speaking with family members of participants?

Yeah, definitely, for some people on the spectrum — again, speaking to the diversity of the spectrum and everyone if different. But yes, a lot of parents said that was a really big fear. You know, it’s a horrible thought to think that your child might not end up with someone or might be alone, and a lot of parents not only worried about their child not finding a partner, but not being there to look after them in the cases of people who need a bit more support. 

That’s one of the reasons we wanted to include the stories of couples in the series. Just to show that, “Look, there are people making it work.” Yes, maybe these people were lucky in that they met the right person at the right time, but it can happen and people can have great relationships. 

Another participant I connected with was Kelvin. At one point, Kelvin is asked “Do you think you are a romantic person”? And he responds: “I will be,” like it is a skill to learn. After producing this series, do you wish that kind of thinking about romantic relationships was more normalized? 

Well, I think there is skill to be learned for all of us, right? You know, it can be hard for people on the spectrum to pick up social cues and for social interactions to come naturally. Oftentimes learning those skills is an important part of their journey. But I mean, there are skills to be learned for all of us. I could have definitely done with a lot of those skills in my young adult years. 

Have you kept up with the participants? Would you consider a “where are they now” edition of the show? 

We are in touch with them regularly! You know, I let them all know recently about the Netflix release, which they were all very excited about. I speak to Michael probably three times a week — every second day — about something. He’s always got a question for me. We speak regularly and are on great terms. 

They are all great people and I’m really fond of them all. They all enjoyed the experience and we’re always really keen to hear how they’re going and how things are for them. In terms of a “Where Are They Now?” I would just say to stay tuned — no plans at the moment, but stay tuned. You never know. 

“Love on the Spectrum” is currently streaming on Netflix.

And she was: Talking Heads’ Chris Frantz on their “Twilight Zone” sound & his romantic rock memoir

When you read a lot of rock and roll memoirs and watch a lot of music documentaries, you become accustomed to certain recurring motifs. There are fateful meetings with future superstars. There are conflicts within the band and competitions with other artists. There is fame, sex, and excess. What you don’t necessarily expect is an entire chapter reminiscing about the author’s wedding day. But then again, none of those memoirs were written by the guy married to Tina Weymouth.

As a founding member of two iconic bands — Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club — Chris Frantz helped define the sound of an era and influenced generations of musicians. He’s an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a successful music producer and the cowriter of one of the most sampled songs of all time, “Genius of Love.”  Yet  his new book is not the typical braggy litany of accolades and debauchery one might expect from pop royalty. Instead, it’s a love story.

For Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club fans, “Remain In Love” offers a fresh perspective on the groundbreaking group, an eyewitness account from the guy on the drums. Frantz delivers anecdotes of encounters with Debbie Harry and The Ramones, the backstories of how hits like “Psycho Killer” were created and yes, insight into the sometimes fraught dynamics of working with David Byrne. But it is at its core a uniquely tender tale of devotion, one that just happens have CBGB’s as a prime backdrop. Plenty of memoirs will tell you what it feels like to have a Billboard smash, but you’d be hard pressed to find too many, from any author, that offer an utterly sincere appraisal of spending fifty years head over heels. Salon spoke recently to Frantz via phone about marriage, music and making your wife the hero of your story.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for lengthy and clarity.

Your book is full of supporting players who are so large in so many of our imaginations. And yet, this is entirely a love story. To put a musician’s memoir in that context is so unusual. What made you want to write this book right now, and what made you frame it around this relationship?

Two and a half years ago, I got myself an agent and found a publisher. They said to me, “Chris, how long do you think it’ll take you to write this book?” I said, “Oh, six months.” They’ve had more experience than I did, so they said, “How about two years?” That worked out fine.

I had been wanting to write it for a long time, because every time I read a music magazine retrospective of Talking Heads — and a few of the books that have been written too — they’re just basically regurgitating things that they read in magazine articles, “New Music Express” or Rolling Stone or something. There’s nothing new. No new angle, no refreshment. It’s always just the same old s**t, regarding Talking Heads, that is.

I thought, I have an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks and add some much needed detail to the Talking Heads story. I’ve read a lot of rock memoirs — way too many, actually. And I thought, my tone should be positive because I feel positive about the experience I had, despite all the ups and downs and the twists and turns. This was an experience that is unforgettable, and to me, a dream come true.

And then I thought, who’s going to be the real hero of this book? It’s going to be Tina. She been the love of my life for so many years. We recently celebrated our 43rd anniversary; we’ve actually been living together for nearly 50 years. I thought, I’m going to make Tina the center of attention. Not only has she been the love of my life and the love remains very strong for me, but also, she was just so great on the bass guitar as a musician and as an artist. And that chemistry, that wonderful chemistry that we had in Talking Heads, she was a very important part of that. I noticed that over the past five years or so, there has been a reexamination of Tina’s role in the band by various fans. And most of them agree that she was a very important part.

You do also obviously talk about the band and setting the record straight about what happened in it. What was it about the chemistry, the combination of these personalities that were in some ways so disparate? You have this woman who wasn’t even a musician at that point. You have this guy who is very different, very unusual. You bring in someone else a couple of years into the experience. What was it about the alchemy of that?

I felt good about working with David when I played music with him. That was when I realized that he and I had similar interests. We were both interested in going in a direction that was maybe a little bit less predictable than a lot of bands, who went and copied the Stones or copied David Bowie or copied the New York Dolls. That was not our path.

One thing we learned in art school was that it’s okay to derive ideas from other artists that have gone before you, but you always have to add something that’s unique onto yourself to make it your own. We were very conscious of making Talking Heads music, and the whole demeanor of the band, unique unto itself. We knew that we weren’t going to be able to beat The Who or The Rolling Stones or even the New York Dolls at their own game. We were a different breed.

I worked with David from the days at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design], when we started playing together with The Artistics. I felt a very strong musical bond with him. He was coming from a different place, and his unique perspective appealed to me very, very much. Also, he was a damn good rhythm guitar player, really good. And I imagine still is.

You were in the midst of all of these incredibly interesting and singular artists coming up at the same time. Coming out of that period in New York City, it’s so distinctive, when you think about Debbie Harry, or Patti Smith, or David Johansen.

The sound feels timeless in a way that very eras in music do. I’m wondering how you were able to be inspired by each other, but also really independent in your sound.

It’s just the way it came out. You get up there, you get behind your instrument, you start playing. And sometimes it comes out unique, and sometimes it comes out not so great. Down there at CBGB we were surrounded by everybody. There was a certain degree of competition between the bands, but there was also a great feeling of support and camaraderie between the bands. Well, I wouldn’t say I got that from Patti Smith. Let’s just say that she had more camaraderie with William Burroughs than she did with Talking Heads.

You talk about this in the book, the way that your look and sound was not that grandiose, rock and roll, glittery thing. It was people who went up on stage and looked kind of normal. That that was very intentional.

It was very intentional. We wanted to look, basically, like everyday people. And we caused a bit of a stir. A lot of people didn’t really get it at first. I think they might’ve thought, “Who are these people? What are they doing up there? And what is the sound that sounds kind of like it’s coming from the Twilight Zone?”

One of the things that I appreciated in the book was seeing you as an observer of the sexism in the industry for a female artist. It’s a perspective we don’t really get to see often.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was entirely free from sexism at that point in my life. But I was definitely welcoming of other women in music and art, and I was well aware of the fact that women had a very important role. In Tina’s case, she had such a strong intellect and also such a strong sense of rhythm and a strong sense of music. She had a very strong musical aesthetic.

She understood where David and I were coming from, so we could work together. And it just made complete sense to me.

Romance is this intrinsic part of the band, an intrinsic part of the story. How did you do that? How did you manage to not have the marriage that is the rock and roll cliche?

I’m very fortunate in that respect. I can remember along the way, certain people saying about us, “Oh, they’re driving each other crazy. They’re going to be divorced soon.” Because you know, Tina and I do not agree on every single thing or anything like that. She has very strong opinions about things. With Tina and I, the key is to . . . How shall I say? The key is to remain romantic. Yes, give her flowers. Yes, send her candy. Yes, do the dishes, just little things. And also, the ability to make each other laugh is a very valuable talent.

Now here you both are, as are we all, in this quarantine. This will test the best of relationships. How are you managing it?

We’re doing fine here. We also have one of our sons who lives up on the third floor of our house. He’s happy to be here as opposed to being in Brooklyn in a tiny apartment. Also my brother is living with us. So we have a pod of four people, two beagles, and one pit bull. We’re all getting along fine. Thank goodness.

Who are you listening to these days when you’re making dinner or washing those dishes, Chris?

I’m a big fan of reggae music still and calypso music. I’m kind of into the old reggae and the old calypso, although once in a while, one of the new guys sounds cool to me. I’m also thrilled with Bob Dylan’s new album, which is I think, a real masterpiece, and probably up there with his very best work. I’m excited by that. I don’t actually have the album. I’ve been listening to it online. I think I’m going to order the CD, so I can play it over my big speakers.

Defense secretary wants federal law enforcement agents in Portland to stop dressing like US troops

Although the federal law enforcement officers who have been attacking George Floyd protesters in Portland, Oregon are not acting on behalf of the U.S. military, they have been wearing military-like camouflage. And Defense Secretary Mark Esper, according to Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman, is expressing concerns about their attire and believes the American public should be able to distinguish between military troops and police officers.

The Military.com website reports that on Tuesday, July 21, Hoffman told reporters, “We want a system where people can tell the difference. I can say unequivocally there are no Department of Defense assets that have been deployed to, pending deployment to, or we’re looking to deploy to Portland.”

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown are among the Democrats who have been highly critical of President Donald Trump’s use of federal law enforcement against protesters in Portland, where federal law enforcement officers have been driving around in unmarked vehicles and attacking protesters. Wyden has described them as “Trump’s secret police,” and Brown told PBS that “Trump’s troops” were “pouring gasoline on a fire” in Oregon’s largest city.

Hoffman told reporters, “There are some law enforcement (who) wear uniforms that make them appear military, and the secretary has expressed his concern with this within the (Trump) Administration.”

Esper, according to Hoffman, “has expressed his concern that in some cases, law enforcement appropriately performing law enforcement duties were misconstrued with military personnel — who would not be appropriately doing those (duties).”

Hillary Clinton alternate history series “Rodham” in development at Hulu

Hulu has optioned the rights to Curtis Sittenfeld’s alternative history book “Rodham,” which takes place in a world in which Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton.

The series is described as telling the story of an ambitious young woman, developing her extraordinary mind in the latter part of the 20th century, moving from idealism to cynicism and all the way back again.

Read more Variety: ‘Perry Mason’ Renewed for Season 2 at HBO

Sarah Treem is attached to write and executive produce the project. “The Handmaid’s Tale” executive producer Warren Littlefield will also executive produce “Rodham” via The Littlefield Company along with Sittenfeld. Fox 21 Television Studios, where Littlefield is under an overall deal, will produce.

Should the show go to series, it would be the second project focused on Hillary Clinton that Hulu has aired. The streamer debuted the four-part docuseries “Hillary” back in March. That series chronicled her 2016 presidential campaign while also delving into events from her past that shaped her life.

Read more Variety: ‘Lovecraft Country’ Star Jonathan Majors Breaks Down ‘Ancient Qualities’ of the Horror Series

“Rodham” was originally published back in May and went on to become a New York Times bestseller. Sittenfeld’s other books include “You Think I’ll Say It,” “Eligible,” “Sisterland,” and “American Wife.”

Treem was previously the co-creator and showrunner on Showtime’s critically-acclaimed series “The Affair.” Her other credits include “In Treatment,” “House of Cards,” and “How to Make It in America.” Variety exclusively reported in May that the Gal Gadot-led series about Hedy Lamarr, which Treem will write and executive produce, has been set up at Apple with a straight-to-series order. Littlefield is also an executive producer on that project.

Read more Variety: HBO Max Adds ‘Gomorrah,’ Three Other Series to International Slate

Kim Kardashian asks for “compassion and empathy” for Kanye West

In the wake of Kanye West’s behavior in recent days related to his bipolar disorder, his wife Kim Kardashian West posted a long statement Wednesday morning asking for “compassion and empathy” for her husband.

“As many of you know, Kanye has bipolar disorder,” she wrote on her Instagram story. “Anyone who has this or has a loved one in their life who does, knows how incredibly complicated and painful it is to understand. I’ve never spoken publicly about how this has affected us at home because I am very protective of our children and Kanye’s right to privacy when it comes to his health.”

Read more Variety: Is Kanye West Serious About Running for President?

She said she is making the statement due to the “stigma and misconceptions” around mental health in general, which is exacerbated in this situation by West’s fame, wealth and high profile on social media platforms.

“We as a society talk about giving grace to the issue of mental health as a whole, however, we should also give it to the individuals who are living with it in times when they need it the most,” she continued. “I kindly ask that the media and public give us the compassion and empathy that is needed so that we can get through this.” She also thanked people who have expressed concern for West’s health in recent days.

During a hastily organized rally in South Carolina for his stated president campaign on Sunday, West broke down in tears when discussing abortion and made an outlandish statement about 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Since Monday evening, West has fired off dozens of tweets in which he’s accused many people close to him, particularly his family, of disloyalty and attempting to “lock him up,” among multiple other accusations that he has since deleted. Such behavior is not uncommon for people suffering from bipolar disorder who are in the throes of a manic episode. He also announced that he is releasing a new album on Friday.

West has frequently said that he is bipolar and often disdains medication. He was hospitalized for stress and exhaustion and reportedly placed on psychiatric hold after several onstage rants during his “Saint Pablo” tour in late 2016.

Read more Variety: Kanye West Breaks Down, Makes Dubious Claim About Harriet Tubman at South Carolina Rally

Kardashian-West’s statement follows in full:

“As many of you know, Kanye has bi-polar disorder. Anyone who has this or has a loved one in their life who does, knows how incredibly complicated and painful it is to understand. I’ve never spoken publicly about how this has affected us at home because I am very protective of our children and Kanye’s right to privacy when it comes to his health. But today, I feel like I should comment on it because of the stigma and misconceptions about mental health.

“Those that understand mental illness or even compulsive behavior know that the family is powerless unless the member is a minor. People who are unaware or far removed from this experience can be judgmental and not understand that the individual themselves have to engage in the process of getting help no matter how hard family and friends try.

“I understand Kanye is subject to criticism because he is a public figure and his actions at time can cause strong opinions and emotions. He is a brilliant but complicated person who on top of being an artist and a black man, who experienced the painful loss of his mother, and has to deal with the pressure and isolation that is heightened by his bi-polar disorder. Those who are close with Kanye know his heart and understand his words sometimes do not align with his intentions.

“Living with bi-polar disorder does not diminish or invalidate his dreams and his creative ideas, no matter how big or unobtainable they may feel to some. That is part of his genius and as we have all witnessed, many of his dreams have come true. We as a society talk about giving grace to the issue of mental health as a whole, however we should also give it to the individuals who are living with it in times when they need it the most. I kindly ask that the media and public give us the compassion and empathy that is needed so that we can get through this. Thank you for those who have expressed concern for Kanye’s well-being and for your understanding.”

Read more Variety: Twitter Accounts of Kanye West, Apple, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Elon Musk and More Hacked by Bitcoin Scammers

Fox News host Martha MacCallum grills Kellyanne Conway over Trump’s flip-flop on wearing face masks

Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday got an unexpected grilling from Fox News host Martha MacCallum over President Donald Trump’s sudden embrace of wearing face masks to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

While appearing on the network, Conway heaped praise on the president for recommending everyone in the country wear a mask during the pandemic.

“I think it was incredibly important for the president of the United States to provide information to the public,” Conway said, before pivoting to attacking members of the media for “asking questions that had nothing to do with the development of vaccines and therapeutics.”

MacCallum, however, noticed that this marked a significant shift compared to previous White House messaging.

“But Kellyanne, I guarantee you there are people at home who will listen to that and say, why didn’t the White House have this message for all of us two months ago?” she asked. “Why now? Why wasn’t this pushed and emphasized and encouraged by the president back then when it might have made even more of a difference?”

“The president did say in April if people want to wear a mask, they should wear a mask,” Conway replied, although this was far from a strong recommendation.

You can watch the video below via Fox News:

 

GOP Senate candidate pushes vaccine conspiracy, claims masks “cause more problems than they solve”

A New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate on Friday disputed medical experts calling for the use of masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus despite having no science or medical background.

Republican candidates across the country have echoed President Donald Trump’s skepticism about masks on the campaign trail. The president claimed in a recent interview that masks may make people more likely to contract the coronavirus, in addition to suggesting that they are worn as a sign of disapproval of him personally.

Amid sinking poll numbers, Trump on Monday reversed course on his anti-mask rhetoric to declare the wearing of masks “patriotic” Twitter. One day later, he publicly acknowledged in his first White House coronavirus briefing in months that masks “have an impact.” At the same time, the president has refused to wear one in public on all but one occasion or issue an executive order to mandate their use.

Retired Army Brig. General Don Bolduc, who is running in the Republican primary against businessman Corky Messner, himself a climate science denier who has stoked doubts about coronavirus vaccines, echoed Trump’s comments in an interview with New Hampshire Public Radio last week.

“I am unapologetically of the opinion that the masks cause more problems than they solve,” Bolduc declared. “I believe that they collect bacteria. I believe that that they get dirty. I believe that people use the same mask over, and over and over again — and they don’t change it. They don’t change it out. We’ve had a huge littering problem with masks and rubber gloves — and that’s creating a problem.”

Bolduc was pressed on whether issues such as littering “outweigh the scientific benefits” which have been widely discussed by medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Listen, I’d never get into a scientific argument with Dr. Fauci,” Bolduc replied. “But I listen to other people outside of Dr. Fauci.”

Bolduc argued that masks should be used in a “proper setting, like hospitals.”

“But outside of hospitals, I believe that they’re ineffective,” he said, citing no evidence. “They’re not made of the right material in many cases. They don’t breathe adequately there.”

A study published on the National Institutes of Health website found that the universal use of face masks are effective in preventing the transmission of the coronavirus, even if the masks are made of simple cloth. A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association and circulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that “cloth face coverings are a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19.”

“Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus – particularly when used universally within a community setting,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a statement last week. “All Americans have a responsibility to protect themselves, their families and their communities.”

Though masks are primarily recommended to prevent the spread of the virus to others, studies have also shown that they provide some protection against the virus to the wearer. A study by researchers at University of California – Davis found that face coverings reduce the risk of infection by about 65%. Masks have also been shown to reduce the severity of infection.

Bolduc made the comments to defend his opposition to a statewide mask requirement in New Hampshire. Republican governors in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and West Virginia have issued mask mandates. Though New Hampshire has not seen the large spikes in infection plaguing other states, nearby states like Massachusetts and Maine have issued mask requirements.

Bolduc’s campaign did not respond to questions from Salon. Messner said in a statement that masks have been effective in combatting the spread, but he does “not support a statewide mask requirement.”

“Granite Staters have done an amazing job during this pandemic, demonstrating their willingness to voluntarily observe safe distancing, and when needed, use masks,” Messner said. “Our decreasing infection rate is evidence their efforts have been very effective in containing the spread of the virus here in New Hampshire.”

It is not the first time Bolduc has cited his own personal opinion to argue against public safety and science. Doctors called Bolduc out last month after he appeared to echo a widely-debunked conspiracy theory, also repeated by the right-wing commentators Diamond & Silk, that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to implant people with microchips via a coronavirus vaccine.

“This is Bill Gates saying we should put chips inside people now,” Bolduc said during an event in May. “That’s a dangerous violation of my constitutional right.”

“The only bracelets anyone is going to put on me are handcuffs, because I’m fighting for my individual rights, my constitutional rights,” he said at the time. “And the only chip that’s going in me is a Dorito.”

There is, obviously, no evidence that Gates wants to use a coronavirus vaccine, different versions of which are being developed by companies around the world, to implant microchips into anyone.

“I’ve never been involved any sort of microchip-type thing,” Gates told reporters last month. “It’s almost hard to deny this stuff, because it’s so stupid or strange.”

Bolduc said in a statement to NHPR that he was “not opposed to vaccinations” but opposed “increasing reliance on government to tell us what’s best for us.”

“Where there is risk, there must be choice,” he said. “We need to inform and educate parents about the benefits, and if warranted, the side effects of any medication. This is about empowering people to make good decisions.”

Messner has also raised questions over the efficacy and safety of any potential coronavirus vaccine.

“Like all Americans, I look forward to the discovery of a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine,” Messner said in a statement to Salon. “And like flu vaccines, it is up to individuals, in consultation with their doctors, to determine whether or not to be vaccinated.”

Bolduc has also echoed Trump’s baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus may have been engineered in a lab in Wuhan, China.

“They (China) started this shit and they weren’t transparent about it,” Bolduc said in a March interview. “And they probably created it in a lab. And now we’re stuck with it. And the whole world is stuck with it.”

He later doubled down in an interview with local news outlet WMUR, arguing that the virus was “probably a biological program they put together and it got beyond their ability to contain” and that it was designed to have a “a fatal effect on our older generation.”

The State Department recently released an internal cable that sparked speculation by the likes of Trump that the virus was created in a Wuhan lab in response to a lawsuit from The Washington Post. The cable showed no evidence to support the idea that the virus was released “deliberately or inadvertently,” the outlet reported.

“There are lots of data and lots of evidence, as well as previous examples of this coming from nature,” Kristian Anderson, a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research Institute who studied the origins of the virus said. “We have exactly zero evidence or data of this having any connection to a lab.”

A group of doctors led by state Rep. Dr. Gary Wood, a Democrat, called on both candidates last month to stop pushing “harmful conspiracy theories that could undermine the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The letter noted that Bolduc has also “claimed, without evidence, [vaccines] could somehow harm children.”

“While there is no vaccine yet, we know that widespread vaccination — meaning 60 to 80 percent of the world — would be necessary to achieve herd immunity and allow us to safely resume daily life without fear of contagion,” the doctors wrote. “With candidates like you two fear-mongering about vaccines and spreading false conspiracy theories, widespread vaccination in our communities becomes much less likely, endangering our most at-risk populations.”

Political reporters can’t handle the truth: Trump is never going to “pivot”

First things first: Donald Trump is not going to “pivot.” Yes, on Tuesday he stood at a podium and, in stiff and sulky fashion, said words that, as written, were relatively serious and realistic. He admitted the coronavirus pandemic will “get worse before it gets better.” He also claimed that his administration is “developing a strategy” to combat the pandemic, after months of foisting it off on the states and then lambasting any state that tried to take serious measures, while rewarding governors who pushed to reopen businesses and damn the consequences. He said he’d wear a mask now, after months of implying that only soy-boys and wieners wear masks. 

These are all words that Trump said. But they don’t mean anything. As Dan Rather sagely observed on Twitter, Trump “does not pivot” and whatever temporary behavior we see on display, he will always, always, always revert to being “who he is, and always has been,” which is to say a rancid monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. 

Unfortunately, much of the media coverage gave an entirely different impression, presenting Trump’s performance at Tuesday’s press briefing as if it represented a real shift, and seeding the absolutely false hope that Trump might actually start doing something to fight the coronavirus, instead of acting like the coronavirus’s biggest champion. 

“Trump, in a Shift, Endorses Masks and Says Virus Will Get Worse,” reads the headline at the New York Times.

“Pandemic likely to ‘get worse before it gets better,’ Trump says in somber return to coronavirus briefing,” the Washington Post headline read.

“Trump changes course as COVID-19 response faces critical tests,” claims an ABC News analysis. 

The Reuters tweet on the press conference declared, “President Trump, in a shift in rhetoric and tone, encouraged Americans to wear masks.”

White House staff, eager to push this “pivot” narrative, ran to CNN and anonymously assured reporters that Trump has “relented” and they have successfully “linked wearing a mask to political success.”

We’ve been down this road dozens of times before: Trump, facing bad press, sucks it up and, with the posture of a kid being dragged to the dentist, feigns being presidential for a few minutes. Then, with the predictability of a clock, he gets sick of all this “acting respectable” nonsense and goes right back to his preferred mode: vitriol, incompetence and asserting that everything is “great” no matter how bad it gets. 

We’ve even been through this cycle with the coronavirus pandemic. In late March and early April, the press fell all over praising Trump for his “new tone” and for being “grave, sober, grim, realistic” in the face of the fast-rising caseload. 

Trump’s sober-mindedness was as brief as a mosquito’s mating season, however, and by the middle of April, he was encouraging protests against coronavirus precautions, demanding that Democratic governors and legislators “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” and so on. He heavily and successfully pressured red-state governors to reopen prematurely and without much of a plan — which is the primary reason for our nationwide soaring coronavirus rates — and justified it with false claims that hydroxychloroquine was some kind of miracle cure, which it definitely is not.  

Three weeks after Trump’s former “new tone,” he went on TV during one of his so-called briefings and suggested that injecting household disinfectants into people’s lungs was a possible miracle cure for COVID-19, and that maybe actual medical researchers weren’t smart enough to have thought of it yet, unlike his good-brained self. The result was widespread mockery and Trump, his ego bruised, ended the coronavirus briefings and dove ever deeper into conspiracy theories that the whole thing is a hoax invented by liberals to hurt his re-election chances. So that’s how that “pivot” ended.

Indeed, there’s no reason to think that Trump’s words on Tuesday will be reflected in anything resembling action. Despite his claims that there’s a new “strategy” in development, the White House has actually been trying to defund the already-failing coronavirus testing system and force hospitals to report cases to a mysterious data collection service within the Department of Health and Human Services, instead of directly to the CDC. The purpose of all this, of course, is to hide the numbers and hope that tricks the public into thinking Trump has the coronavirus problem licked. (Or that it never existed in the first place. Whichever!) 

It’s no mystery what’s going on here: Trump demoted campaign manager Brad Parscale last week and hired a new one, former White House political director Bill Stepien. As often happens with the revolving door in TrumpWorld, new hires try to rein Trump in a little, coaxing him to pretend to be a normal human being who experiences emotions like empathy and concern for others. The act never lasts. Trump always lashes out shortly after one of these “pivots,” often saying something especially odious, a man gleefully throwing off the shackles of having to pretend to have any pro-social impulses at all. 

This is, after all, the Donald Trump whose father used to tell reporters, “Donald is the smartest person I know” and that “everything he touches seems to turn to gold.” Trump believed his dear old dad’s hype, and has repeatedly asserted that he is the world’s greatest living expert in every topic under the sun, and that, unlike other experts who know stuff because they learned it, he sprung into the world knowing everything about everything and has nothing to learn from anyone. 

So it’s just a matter of time until Trump, whose weary tone Tuesday made clear he was feeling restrained, decides he knows better than all these “experts” about what the public wants to hear, and goes straight back to his comfort zone: Conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and ridiculously out-of-touch claims about how well the administration is doing and how everything is “great” and “perfect” and “brilliant.”

Remember, it was literally just last weekend that Trump, using the same kinds of lies he he used for years to mislead real estate investors, told Chris Wallace of Fox News that the U.S. has “one of the lowest mortality rates in the world” (it’s actually among the highest), that our death rate is going down (it’s been climbing for several weeks and just reached 1,000 a day), and that he was right to claim, as he did over and over again throughout the spring, that the virus would just “disappear” one day (needless to say, that’s not how this works). 

Whatever Trump’s aides wrote on a piece of paper and had him read out loud is not what Trump wants to say — and he is incapable of keeping his feelings to himself, due to his addiction to attention and his absolute certainty that he knows better than everyone else. And what Trump really wants to say is not a mystery: Real men don’t wear masks, the virus is being overhyped as a plot against him, and he can bamboozle people into believing everything is fine simply by declaring it so.

Indeed, the shape of the press conference showed that Trump’s aides know he can only be contained for short periods of time. The briefing was tightly constrained and Trump stuck to written statements. He started to take questions, and pretty quickly the real Trump peeked out. He was asked about Ghislaine Maxwell — the former partner of his old buddy Jeffrey Epstein — who was recently been arrested for her alleged role in child sex trafficking. He responded, “I wish her well, frankly.” 

A few minutes later, Trump, likely realizing his aides might be annoyed with that disturbing answer, abruptly wrapped up the press conference. Most likely he’d been told to cut it short and not open himself up to the inevitable humiliation of talking off the cuff, and, as he does when he’s trying to “pivot,” he took the advice for a moment.

To be fair, many of the articles under those headlines trumpeting Trump’s “shift” noted, several paragraphs down, that Trump has tried to pivot before, and always regresses to his usual self. But that sort of nuance gets lost in a world where most news consumers rarely read past the first few paragraphs and many only scan the headlines. 

Perhaps it’s foolish to expect mainstream news outlets to get smarter about how they cover Trump, just as it’s foolish of such journalists to expect Trump to get smarter, listen to his aides and start acting more presidential. But Trump is a deeply disturbed man who likely suffers from a personality disorder that makes growing, learning or changing impossible. Mainstream journalists, whose job is literally to learn things so they can boil down their knowledge for the general public, can and should do better. Listen to Dan Rather. Trump is not going to pivot. He cannot do it. Stop falling for these stunts and focus on reporting the real news. 

Gaetz may have violated House ethics rules via spending on private TV studio, speechwriting: report

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been caught breaking House ethics rules by funneling taxpayer money to a private speech-writing consultant who also happens to be a scandal-plagued former aide to President Donald Trump.

Politico reports that Gaetz’s office improperly sent $28,000 in taxpayer money to a limited liability corporation linked to Darren Beattie, a Trump aide who was ousted in 2018 after it was revealed he spoke at a conference featuring several prominent white nationalists.

Politico notes that “House rules explicitly prohibit spending taxpayer dollars on speech-writing consultants,” although Gaetz’s office tells the publication that this was the result of a “clerical error” that it is working to correct.

In an additional potential violation, Politico found that Gaetz has built a taxpayer-funded television studio in his father’s house that he uses for television appearances.

“Taxpayers foot the bill to rent the television camera, and the private company that built the studio — which Gaetz refuses to identify — takes a fee each time he appears on air,” Politico writes. “It’s unclear how much it cost the private company to construct the studio . . . This may run afoul of the House gift rule, which prohibits any lawmaker, aide, and their family members from accepting gifts worth more than $50.”

Gaetz is claiming that the TV studio was approved by the House Ethics Committee, although he declined to provide any documentation to back up this claim.

Ohio’s Republican Speaker of the House indicted in $60 million “pay-for-play” bribery scheme

Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder, a Republican, was arraigned in U.S. District Court on Tuesday along with four associates on racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with the largest bribery scandal in state history.

“Make no mistake, these allegations are bribery, pure and simple,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Chris Hoffman said at a press conference announcing the charges.

FBI agents had arrested Householder hours earlier at his rural Perry County farm as the alleged ringleader of what Hoffman described as “likely the largest bribery-money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”

Four others were indicted: former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges; Householder adviser Jeffrey Longstreth; and two lobbyists, Neil Clark and Juan Cespedes.

“This was ‘pay to play,'” Hoffman said, borrowing a term the suspects themselves allegedly used to describe their scheme.

The 81-page complaint describes a conspiracy connected to an Ohio law passed last year, which bailed out two nuclear power plants while simultaneously slashing subsidies for energy efficiency and renewables in the state. The law also pulled money from Ohio residents’ power bills, shuffling $150 million to the nuclear plants each year.

Hoffman told reporters that the group conspired to “pass and maintain a $1.5 billion bailout in return for $61 million in dark money used for various things: to line pockets of the defendants; build a power base for Householder; and to further the conspiracy.”

The charging document describes a concerted effort over several years to support and fund Householder’s run as House speaker, after which, the plan allegedly went, he would usher through the bailout. Householder won the office in January 2019, and the bailout passed in July.

Federal prosecutors claim that from March 2017 to March 2020, a number of groups linked to an unnamed “Company A” — which Hoffman all but named in the press conference as FirstEnergy Solutions — paid out approximately $60 million for the political favor. The money was funneled through a nonprofit called Generation Now, described in the charging document as “a 501(c)(4) entity secretly controlled by Householder.”

“Make no mistake, this is Larry Householder’s 501 (c)(4),” U.S. Attorney David DeVillers told reporters at Tuesday’s press conference.

Part of the money was allegedly spent to attack political opponents who could stand in the way of the conspiracy and support politicians who would be friendly to it. Another part allegedly went into the conspirators’ own pockets.

After Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill in July, opponents put together a ballot initiative to overturn the law. The initiative ultimately failed in October. During those three months, Householder’s company received $38 million. The court filing says the payments were “akin to bags of cash.”

“Unlike campaign or PAC contributions, they were not regulated, not reported, not subject to public scrutiny — and the Enterprise freely spent the bribe payments to further the Enterprise’s political interests and to enrich themselves,” the document says.

Each of the four defendants was charged with “conspiracy to participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of an enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity.” They face a maximum 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors say they have not yet charged “Company A,” but an investigation is ongoing.

Householder, a Republican from Columbus, was first elected to the state House in 1997. He rose to the speakership in 2001 and served until term limits kicked in, in 2004. After stepping away from the House, Householder was re-elected in 2017.

Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow, called for his resignation immediately after charges were announced.

“I am deeply concerned about the allegations of wrongdoing issued today by the U.S. attorney’s office,” he tweeted.

“Because of the nature of these charges, it will be impossible for Speaker Householder to effectively lead the Ohio House of Representatives,” he said. “Therefore, I am calling on Speaker Householder to resign immediately. This is a sad day for Ohio.”

Four former presidents of D.C. Bar Association call for investigation of Attorney General Bill Barr

On Wednesday, Politico reported that 27 prominent D.C. attorneys, including four former presidents of the D.C. Bar Association, have signed a complaint calling for a bar investigation of Attorney General William Barr.

“The complaint argues that Barr has broken Washington’s ethics rules by being dishonest and violating his oath to uphold the Constitution, along with other charges,” reported Betsy Woodruff Swan. “And it highlights four episodes in Barr’s time as attorney general to make the case: his characterization of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s 2016 election interference, his criticism of an inspector general report on the Russia probe, his criticism of FBI officials in a TV interview, and his role in the disbursement of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, outside the White House.”

“Mr. Barr has consistently made decisions and taken action to serve the personal and political self-interests of President Donald Trump, rather than the interest of the United States,” said the letter, adding that “the notion that the legitimacy of an FBI investigation’s initiation should be judged by its end, if applied broadly, could easily chill the initiation of wholly legitimate inquiries for fear of being second-guessed.”

Writing for Just Security, former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger — who runs a legal activist group with two of the signatories — outlined the seriousness of the complaint.

“Sober and highly experienced lawyers like those who signed the complaint wouldn’t take such an action except in extraordinary circumstances,” he wrote. “It is only because Attorney General Barr’s abuses are so serious, so repetitive, and so well documented in the complaint that the signers felt compelled to hold Mr. Barr accountable — to protect the integrity of the legal profession and the American legal system.”

You can read the full letter here.

Trump “pressured” US ambassador to help get the British Open moved to his Scotland golf club: report

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump insisted that if he was elected, there would be a strict separation between his business interests and the federal government. But Trump, as president, has continued to promote the interests of the Trump Organization. And according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Mark Landler and Lara Jakes, Trump tried to move the British Open to his resort in Scotland.

The journalists report that in 2018, Trump asked Robert Wood Johnson — his U.S. ambassador to Britain — to “see if the British government could help steer the world-famous and lucrative British Open golf tournament to the Trump Turnberry resort in Scotland, according to three people with knowledge of the episode.” Johnson’s deputy, Lewis A. Lukens, advised the ambassador not to do it and told him that Trump’s request was unethical. But Johnson, according to the Times reporters, felt pressured and brought up Trump’s idea when he spoke to David Mundell, Scotland’s secretary of state.

“The episode left Mr. Lukens and other diplomats deeply unsettled,” Haberman, Landler and Jakes report. “Mr. Lukens, who served as the acting ambassador before Mr. Johnson arrived in November 2017, e-mailed officials at the State Department to tell them what had happened, colleagues said. A few months later, Mr. Johnson forced out Mr. Lukens, a career diplomat who had earlier served as ambassador to Senegal, shortly before his term was to end.”

The Times journalists note that Trump’s British Open request “was not the first time the president tried to steer business to one of his properties.” In 2019, they recall, “the White House chose the Trump National Doral resort in Miami as the site of a Group of 7 meeting. Mr. Trump backed off after it ignited a political storm, moving the meeting to Camp David before canceling it because of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Trump on alleged abuser Ghislaine Maxwell: “I’ve met her numerous times,” and I “wish her well”

President Donald Trump offered well wishes to Ghislaine Maxwell, the woman accused of helping convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein abuse young girls, during his first coronavirus press briefing in months.

Trump on Tuesday held a briefing on the pandemic, which has killed more than 140,000 Americans for the first time since April 27. Some media outlets praised his “new tone” for acknowledging that infections were spiking and urging others to wear masks, even as he used the briefing to lie about the success of his pandemic response and call for a dramatic cut to federal unemployment benefits for millions of laid-off workers.

At one point during the briefing, Trump was asked about whether Maxwell, who was charged by the Department of Justice with child sex trafficking earlier this month, would reveal the names of powerful people like Prince Andrew alleged to have been involved in Epstein’s sex trafficking operation.

“I don’t know. I haven’t really been following it too much,” Trump replied. “I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years — especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach — but I wish her well, whatever it is.”

Maxwell, who is being held without bail at a federal detention facility, is not only accused of recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse but also participating in the abuse herself, according to the Justice Department.

“As alleged, Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated, aided and participated in acts of sexual abuse of minors,” acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said. “Maxwell enticed minor girls, got them to trust her and then delivered them into the trap that she and Jeffrey Epstein had set. She pretended to be a woman they could trust. All the while, she was setting them up to be abused sexually by Epstein, and in some cases, Maxwell herself.”

“I don’t know the situation with Prince Andrew,” Trump added on Tuesday. “I just don’t know. Not aware of it.”

But Trump actually seemed to know quite a bit about the situation in 2015, when he linked Prince Andrew to Epstein’s private island, where the billionaire was accused of bringing powerful men to abuse girls.

“I think he has a problem. That island was really a cesspool — there’s no question about it. Just ask Prince Andrew — he’ll tell you about it,” Trump said at the time. “The island was an absolute cesspool.”

After becoming president, Trump claimed that he did not “know” Prince Andrew, though he told People magazine in 2000 that the British royal was “a lot of fun to be with.”

Trump also frequently passed time with Epstein and Maxwell in Palm Beach, where they were often pictured together.

“It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump said of Epstein in 2002. “No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

Epstein was found hanged in his cell last year while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges in New York. Trump said after his arrest that he was “not a fan” of Epstein.

“I had a falling out a long time ago with him,” Trump said last year. “I don’t think I’ve spoken to him in 15 years. I was not a fan of his.”

Trump’s latest comments about Maxwell sparked concern at the Justice Department. A federal prosecutor told Politico that the comment may be a signal that Trump would intervene in Maxwell’s case in a similar manner in which his administration intervened in the case of longtime adviser Roger Stone.

“He takes time out of his press conference to send well wishes to a woman accused of trafficking teenager girls for sex,” the prosecutor said. “That’s gross on its face, and in the aftermath of the Stone pardon, it reeks of the president indicating to her that he might reward her if she’ll stay silent about whatever she knows about him.”

Defund Homeland Security: Creating a massive federal police apparatus was always a mistake

It seems like only yesterday that Republicans were wringing their hands and rending their garments over federal officers attempting to arrest a large group of armed militia members who had taken over a federal building in Oregon and were refusing to leave. (The 2016 “Oregon standoff” is the subject of Anthony McCann’s fascinating book “Shadowlands.”) They were led by Ammon Bundy, son of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who triggered an earlier standoff with government forces in 2014, and they said they were planning to occupy the building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge “for years” as a protest against the conviction of two local ranchers who had been found guilty of arson for setting fire to government land. After six weeks of negotiating with federal authorities, the protesters were finally dispersed. Some did time but Ammon Bundy and a dozen others were tried and acquitted.

From 2014 to 2016, the right wing had been up in arms about the federal jack-booted thugs who were allegedly interfering in the protests by the God-fearing, freedom-loving Bundys and their armed allies who were just standing up for their rights. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., met personally with Cliven Bundy during the earlier standoff and said the group had legitimate constitutional questions. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was all-in, calling that protest “the unfortunate and tragic culmination of the path that President Obama has set the federal government on.”

Donald Trump also expressed support for Cliven Bundy, saying, “I like him, I like his spirit, his spunk and the people that are so loyal … I respect him.” (Bundy supported him right back.) In fact, Trump respected the Bundy movement so much he later pardoned Dwight and Stephen Hammond, the two ranchers who had been convicted of arson. They just burned federal land and their supporters only desecrated Native American artifacts on a federal wildlife refuge. It’s not like they tore down a statue or anything important.

I bring that story up now only because as we have watched the events unfold in Portland, Oregon, over the past few days — a few hours west of the Malheur refuge — with federal police in full military regalia attacking and kidnapping protesters, I’m struck by the deafening silence from all those erstwhile defenders of free speech and the right to protest. I guess in order for them to speak out, the protesters have to be carrying AR-15s.

Trump’s decision to send in DHS stormtroopers to Portland is anything but surprising. He’s been telegraphing his intention to do this since the George Floyd murder sparked protests in the beginning of June. And let’s be clear about the reasons. Trump doesn’t care about American cities or statues or “anarchy” or any of the rest of it. He cares about getting re-elected, and since he doesn’t know how to deal with the pandemic crisis, he figured he could use the Black Lives Matter protests to spark a white backlash that will carry him to victory.

Sending troops onto the streets to “dominate” the protesters has been his plan from the beginning. He hasn’t kept it a secret. It’s just that since the military balked at being used for this purpose, he’s had to cobble together units from the Department of Homeland Security and get them outfitted to look like they’re about to take Fallujah. (Using rented minivans seems a little off-brand, but I guess they must not have had time to roll in the tanks. )

I urge you to read the transcript of the call Trump had with state governors on the Monday in June after he had to scurry into his bunker when the protests got close to the White House. His disrespectful language and the daft demands for domination were typical Trump rambling. But he included Attorney General Bill Barr on that call as well, and he was explicit about what they planned to do:

[F] ederal law enforcement, working with your state and local law enforcement, to be more dynamic and to go after the troublemakers. To go after the guys that are throwing the bricks and (INAUDIBLE) … running around starting fires. They have to be taken from the street and arrested and processed. The structure we’re going to use is the joint terrorist task force, which I know most of you are familiar with. Tried and true system, it’s worked for domestic and homegrown terrorists, and we’re going to employ that model. It already integrates your state and local people and it’s intelligence driven and it will go operational.

That is exactly what they are doing in Portland, no? The only glitch is that they’re apparently detaining people without probable cause so they can’t arrest them. But what they can do is photograph them and otherwise catalog their identity, which is almost certainly a big part of the project. They are creating a database of dissidents.

Chicago may be next. According to the AP, DHS is planning to send in 150 officers to help the city with “crime,” assistance that no one has asked for and no one wants. That tracks with yet another Barr project, “Operation Legend,” announced earlier this month “to combat the disturbing uptick in violence by surging federal agents and other federal assets into cities like Kansas City, a city currently experiencing its worst homicide rate in its history.”

As this Just Security post points out, Barr has a long history of manipulating the law to put armed federal troops on the streets, and now he’s found a president who thinks that’s a great idea for his own reasons and has given him the green light. DHS is happily on board. But as Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir observed last Sunday, it doesn’t really matter what the reasons are:

The president and his sniveling retinue of “acting” factotums up and down the national security chain may not have a coherent master plan to rip out the rest of American democracy by the roots and replace it with something more to their liking. But that is unquestionably what their collective hive-mind desires, and there are people behind them, just out of view, who are willing and able to articulate such an agenda clearly. That’s generally how fascism seems to work …

Let’s face it: It would be a lot harder for Trump and Barr to pull this off if we didn’t have a massive federal police apparatus called the Department of Homeland Security in the first place. It was only a matter of time before someone used it to quell dissent. Its fascistic potential was there from the start.

Andrew Feinberg, in the UK Independent, quotes Paul Rosenzweig, who served as DHS deputy assistant secretary for policy during the Bush administration:

There were many who thought that DHS should not be created precisely because they were worried that it would be essentially an internal police force, and there were many like me, who said: “Oh, that’s absurd. Come on. You know we need a coordinated unity of effort against terrorism, and this is a good way to do it.” But there’s a lot of justice to that now.

You didn’t have to be a national security expert to see where all that was going. My mantra throughout the post-9/11 build-up of this massive surveillance and police apparatus has been, “If you build it, they will use it.” They are using it. Of course they are.

Final passage of the Homeland Security appropriations bill is coming up soon. Democrats need to put their feet down and demand that these uninvited incursions into American cities stop immediately. Beyond that, there must be a complete re-evaluation of the department, including consideration of breaking it up entirely. The country managed to function without it quite well for centuries.

The least they can do is change the name. From the moment they started talking about “Homeland Security” we knew it was only a matter of time before we’d see federal police in the streets. How could it be otherwise? The only surprise is that it took this long. 

The real choice: Social control or social investment

Some societies center on social control, others on social investment.

Social-control societies put substantial resources into police, prisons, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the military. Their purpose is to utilize fear, punishment, and violence to divide people and keep the status quo in place — perpetuating the systemic oppression of Black and brown people, and benefiting no one but wealthy elites. 

Social-investment societies put more resources into healthcare, education, affordable housing, jobless benefits, and children. Their purpose is to free people from the risks and anxieties of daily life and give everyone a fair shot at making it.

Donald Trump epitomizes the former. He calls himself the “law and order” president. He even wants to sic the military on Americans protesting horrific police killings. 

He has created an unaccountable army of federal agents who go into cities like Portland, Oregon — without showing their identities — and assault innocent Americans. 

Trump is the culmination of forty years of increasing social control in the United States and decreasing social investment — a trend which, given the deep-seated history of racism in the United States, falls disproportionately on Black people, indigeneous people, and people of color.

Spending on policing in the United States has almost tripled, from $42.3 billion in 1977 to $114.5 billion in 2017.

America now locks away 2.2 million people in prisons and jails. That’s a 500 percent increase from 40 years ago. The nation now has the largest incarcerated population in the world.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has exploded. More people are now in ICE detention than ever in its history.

Total military spending in the U.S. has soared from $437 billion in 2003 to $935.8 billion this fiscal year.

The more societies spend on social controls, the less they have left for social investment. More police means fewer social services. American taxpayers spend $107.5 billion more on police than on public housing.

More prisons means fewer dollars for education. In fact, America is now spending more money on prisons than on public schools. Fifteen states now spend $27,000 more per person in prison than they do per student.

As spending on controls has increased, spending on public assistance has shrunk. Fewer people are receiving food stamps. Outlays for public health have declined.

America can’t even seem to find money to extend unemployment benefits during this pandemic.

Societies that skimp on social investment end up spending more on social controls that perpetuate violence and oppression. This trend is a deep-seated part of our history.

The United States began as a control society. Slavery — America’s original sin — depended on the harshest conceivable controls. Jim Crow and redlining continued that legacy.

But in the decades following World War II, the nation began inching toward social investment — the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and substantial investments in health and education.

Then America swung backward to social control.

Since Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” four times as many people have been arrested for possessing drugs as for selling them. 

Of those arrested for possession, half have been charged with possessing cannabis for their own use. Nixon’s strategy had a devastating effect on Black people that is still felt today: a Black person is nearly 4 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than a white person, even though they use it at similar rates.

Bill Clinton put 88,000 additional police on the streets and got Congress to mandate life sentences for people convicted of a felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug offenses. 

This so-called “three strikes you’re out” law was replicated by many states, and, yet again, disproportionately impacted Black Americans. In California, for instance, Black people were 12 times more likely than white people to be incarcerated under three-strikes laws, until the state reformed the law in 2012. Clinton also “reformed” welfare into a restrictive program that does little for families in poverty today. 

Why did America swing back to social control?

Part of the answer has to do with widening inequality. As the middle class collapsed and the ranks of the poor grew, those in power viewed social controls as cheaper than social investment, which would require additional taxes and a massive redistribution of both wealth and power.

Meanwhile, politicians whose power depends on maintaining the status quo, used racism – from Nixon’s “law and order” and Reagan’s “welfare queens” to Trump’s blatantly racist rhetoric – to deflect the anxieties of an increasingly overwhelmed white working class. It’s the same old strategy. So long as racial animosity exists, the poor and working class won’t join together to topple the system that keeps so many Americans in poverty, and Black Americans oppressed.

The last weeks of protests and demonstrations have exposed what’s always been true: social controls are both deadly and unsustainable. They require more and more oppressive means of terrorizing communities and they drain resources that would ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive. 

This moment calls on us to relinquish social control and ramp up our commitment to social investment.

It’s time we invest in affordable housing and education, not tear gas, batons, and state-sanctioned murder. It’s time we invest in keeping children fed and out of poverty, not putting their parents behind bars. It’s time to defund the police, and invest in communities. We have no time to waste.

Democrats join with GOP to vote down Ilhan Omar’s plan to withdrawal U.S. troops from Afghanistan

The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted down a proposal by Rep. Ilhan Omar to accelerate the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and help bring to a close the longest war in U.S. history.

The Minnesota Democrat’s amendment (pdf) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) fell by a vote of 129-284, with 103 House Democrats joining 181 Republicans in voting no.

“We are deeply disappointed by today’s vote,” Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, told Common Dreams. “The House passed a nearly identical provision several years ago with near unanimous Democratic support.”

“Far too many House Democrats wrongly viewed this somehow as a vote on Donald Trump rather than a vote to end our nation’s longest war,” Miles said. “Frankly, they need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time. They should be able to oppose Donald Trump and end endless wars all at the same time.”

If passed, Omar’s amendment would have removed from the House NDAA language inserted by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) that imposes a series of vague conditions on U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Cheney-Crow provisions require that before the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan can be reduced below 8,000, the Pentagon must certify that withdrawal “will not increase the risk for the expansion of existing or formation of new terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan” and is “in the best interest of United States national security.”

The language was adopted earlier this month with the support of nearly every Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Omar’s proposal would have stripped out Cheney and Crow’s provisions and added language requiring the withdrawal of the remaining 8,600 U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan by April 29, 2021.

“The withdrawal of the United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan must be accompanied by a long-term peace process that is inclusive of all parties to the conflict and sectors of civil society,” the amendment reads.

In a speech on the House floor Monday, Omar addressed critics who alleged the proposal would withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan too quickly.

“There are people saying that we shouldn’t be too hasty in leaving,” Omar said. “Too hasty? It’s been two decades.”

Yale psychiatrist: Trump’s psychosis has infected his followers. Here’s how to get them better

Many believe that the falling poll numbers for Donald Trump are a measure of his mishandling the coronavirus pandemic to the point of calamity or his divisiveness in the face of a racial crisis.  While these things may be partially true, there is a far more important, overriding factor: his inability to hold ongoing rallies.

His loss of continual exposure to the public has meant his supporters would separate enough to see reality for themselves.  This is a phenomenon mental health experts have spoken about in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: how his continual exposure through the presidency would make him uncontainable, and we issued a “Prescription for Survival” in March 2020, to highlight how his removal or, if not, at least removal of influence was necessary for our collective health.

There are many medically unjustifiable misconceptions we have about mental disease, but none is perhaps as consequential as the denial that it can be contagious.  Indeed, its contagion could be more efficient than other forms of infection since it does not require physical exposure but only emotional bonds.  We noted at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that the more important pandemic to gain control over was “the mental health pandemic.”

Weakened hosts, an environment that facilitates transmission, and our lack of consideration even of the possibility—even among some psychiatrists wedded to an atomistic view of people—has made Americans more vulnerable.  In addition, poor mental health contributes to denial, and therefore those who are the most affected are the least likely to admit that anything is wrong.  Bioterrorism is frightening, but psychological warfare even more so, for it hijacks the very mind that is capable of protecting itself.

My focus as a preventive psychiatrist has been the ecology surrounding individuals.  Contagion of mental symptoms is common in public hospital and prison settings, where there are high concentrations of untreated, severe mental disturbances.  Severe symptoms can spread among family members, criminal co-conspirators, gangs, and other tight-knit groups.  A colleague and collaborator at the World Health Organization, Dr. Gary Slutkin, has long advocated that we consider violence and other behavior an infectious disease whose spread we can interrupt.  International terrorism and suicide are known to be contagious, for example.  Effective prevention, therefore, requires population-level interventions and application of psychiatric principles to systems, institutions, and cultures.  The last course I designed for students at Yale Law School was one of translating law into social policies that prevent violence and further societal health.

Three conditions are necessary for the spread of mental symptoms:

1. Severe pathology in an influential figure

The transmission of mental symptoms has been given different names: induced delusional disorder, shared psychosis, folie à deux, trois, quatre,…, or millions—depending on the number affected—or mass hysteria when affecting a whole population.  All describe the same phenomenon, but none are satisfactory.  The latest, induced delusional disorder, focuses on the most commonly transmitted symptom, delusions, but does not cover other possible symptoms, such as mood.  Shared psychosis captures the syndrome-like severity, but is a misnomer because it often does not involve actual psychosis.  Folie à deux, or “madness in two,” is perhaps the most preferred but a foreign phrase.  Finally, “mass hysteria” describes well the frenzied quality that arises from the sharing of symptoms among crowds, but often does not actually involve symptoms of “hysteria”, or histrionics.  The important feature is that mental symptoms are not confined to the person; they take hold and spread across interpersonal boundaries, just as they initially take over one portion, and then eventually the whole of the mind of an individual.

Severe psychopathology in an influential figure, therefore, transmits to others or a group, until the exposed persons or groups come to feel, think, and behave as if they had the same disorder as the primary person.  Unlike normal social dynamics, where enthusiasm, common purpose, or even outrage can be “infectious” but individuals retain their uniqueness, the spread of pathology is especially efficient and deleterious, taking over the personalities of those involved.

Transmission happens more readily in vulnerable persons, but those who succumb are not necessarily of unsound mind to start.  Delusions of persecution or general paranoia are the most common to transmit, but even bizarre beliefs, such as the primary person being of divine origin, are not rare.  Exposure to actual delusions is unlike exposure to strategic lies or simple misinformation; they are more infectious because the primary person is genuinely convinced of them and the emotional pressures for others also to believe them is stronger.  For example, when an influential figure holds the paranoid belief that a serious viral pandemic is a “hoax“, orchestrated by one’s enemies to bring down one’s presidency, it can be more emotionally persuasive than any reality and is difficult to correct.

2. Group members with high emotional investment

Another condition for the spread of mental disease is emotional investment.  Folie à deux describes shared madness within a pair, but here we will focus on folie à groupe, or the spread of mental symptoms in a group.  The group can be a household (folie à famille), a prison dormitory or cell-block, a religious or other highly emotionally-bonded group, a community, or a nation.  Members may have high emotional investment in the primary person because of family relations, gang affiliation, cultic programming, or similar symptoms to start.  Pathology in the primary individual facilitates transmission: a compulsive drive to “tweet”, a desire to deny reality coupled with propaganda, intolerance of uncertainty leading to pressures of conformity, and an insatiable need for adulation driving addiction-inducing, hypnotic rallies.  These symptoms create the ideal conditions for additional transmission of symptoms.

As symptoms spread, cognitive distortions, delusions, and other manifestations take on an emotional power that are difficult to match with normal responses.  Induced delusions function like primary delusions, wherein resistance is too great for evidence or truth to gain traction.  Those who try to maintain their grounding in reality experience stress, anxiety, ostracism and exhaustion and may eventually submit.  When it originates in disease, it is different from culture but is more aptly called a “cultural disorder.”

3. An environment that fosters contagion

Conditions of isolation, either physically or through filtered information, especially when they “immunize” against alternative viewpoints through phrases such as “fake news” or “the enemy of the people,” combined with constant, high levels of exposure to the symptomatic primary individual, is the formula for shared delusions.  The environment, therefore, is very important.

Many have remarked on the cult-like quality of the leader-follower arrangement we see with the president and his supporters.  The dynamic alarmed my colleagues in the mental health profession enough to write entire volumes.  Existing arrangements of “viral” social media, profit-driven news programs that rely on ratings, and rallies that reinforce herd mentality and conformity, all contribute to the spread of symptoms.

How is the recognition of shared psychosis, or folie à groupe, helpful?  We know from the scientific literature that, when contact with the inducing individual is removed, the shared symptoms usually subside just as dramatically as they have appeared.  If removal is not possible, we know that reducing exposure can be helpful.  We can prevent epidemics from occurring in the first place by screening for mental impairment before individuals take positions of influence.  Further, we can take steps to protect ourselves in the future by promoting public mental health and education about mental disease, as well as reducing environmental “toxins” that include propaganda, brainwashing, and filtered information.  Knowing that mental compromise can contribute to physical demise, and recognizing the distinct, characteristic patterns of disease, we can better avoid mistaking it for a normal choice or just another ideology that excites people.

Donald Trump and Chris Wallace: A pseudo-event meant to fluff a fascist

The boundary-breaking Nigerian author Chinua Achebe once observed: “When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.”

Donald Trump, the fire devil and chaos agent, is that trouble and the suffering which comes with it. He is not outside the door; he is firmly inside the White House — and has no plans to leave even if evicted by the voters on Election Day.

Last Sunday, Donald Trump, America’s most powerful Fox News grandpa, was interviewed on that network by Chris Wallace. The malignant reality of the Fox Universe is supposed to be a “safe space” for Donald Trump and other members of his inner circle. For an hour or so on Sunday, that would not be the case.

During his conversation with Wallace, Trump could not answer basic questions about the coronavirus pandemic and his failures of leadership and outright malevolent negligence. He appeared not to care about the 140,000-plus Americans who have died during the pandemic. He struck a pathetic note, telling Wallace that there was nothing good about his time as president, saying, “I think I was very unfairly treated. From before I even won I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.”

He defended the Confederate flag, which symbolizes white supremacy and the systematic subjugation of Black people. He spun ludicrous lies about “the left” wanting to unfairly and irrationally “cancel” Columbus Day. He blathered incoherently about the New York Times’ award-winning 1619 Project, which explores the origins of American democracy and its irrevocable connections to white-on-Black chattel slavery.

Trump bragged about passing a basic test of mental competence given to screen people for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. The test itself is intentionally easy for those who are not so afflicted. Trump found the test difficult and was proud to have passed it.

There was not much news value to the interview, beyond the fact that it happened. 

As he has done ever since he became president, Trump continued to make ominous threats about not stepping down from office if he loses the 2020 election. He continued to lie about the coronavirus pandemic. He proclaimed his greatness. He continued with his casual racism and deeply ingrained white supremacy.

On a certain level, Trump’s performance was very sad. If he were capable of such an emotion, he would have been embarrassed for himself. 

In thinking about Trump’s interview with Wallace, we cannot forget that Fox News is Trump and the Republican Party’s equivalent to Pravda, the Communist Party’s official newspaper in the Soviet Union. There is little if any truth to be found there.

Fox News formerly claimed to be “fair and balanced,” but perhaps now feels that claim is too clearly false. As media scholars and other researchers have shown, Fox News is a right-wing disinformation machine that willfully and consistently lies to its audience. The network is so acutely damaging to America’s public discourse that people who do not watch any news programs at all actually know more about empirical reality and current events than people who consistently watch Fox News.

Fox News advertised Wallace’s interview with Trump as “no holds barred.” Either by express or tacit agreement, that was not the case.

Wallace never asked Trump about the Russian bounties reportedly placed on the heads of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, or about the president’s apparent indifference. Trump was not asked about his personal pattern of corruption, which extends to his inner circle and his administration more generally. He was not asked about his administration’s continuing assaults on the rule of law and the Constitution, conducted with particular vigor by Attorney General Bill Barr, or about his use of a secret federal police force in Portland, Oregon, and other parts of the country.

Wallace did not ask Trump about his recent attempts to order an end to coronavirus testing, in an evident attempt to control information about the spread of the pandemic. 

Wallace also did not ask Trump about his pardon of Roger Stone, an obvious mafia-style quid pro quo in which Stone was rewarded for lying about Trump in order to protect him from criminal charges related to the Russia election interference scandal and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Instead, Wallace allowed Trump to repeatedly claim that he was a victim of the “Russia hoax.” Wallace also praised, soothed and coddled Donald Trump throughout the interview.

We must understand that Chris Wallace is not an objective party interested in the truth about Donald Trump and what he represents. Wallace’s role is to be the “reasonable” voice of Fox News, a journalistic beard for the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and the American right-wing. Wallace’s “tough” interview is a way for Fox News to maintain some superficial credibility as a “legitimate” news outlet. Such stagecraft and optics management are common features of failing democracies and autocratic regimes.

In total, Wallace’s interview with Trump is best understood as a pseudo-event intended to make an illegitimate leader look legitimate. (“Look! The Great Leader does interviews and answers questions! He represents the will of the People!”)

Unfortunately, this interview is being celebrated in the mainstream press as a great and impossible feat, a type of gold standard for reporters and journalists going forward. It has been described as “Pulitzer Prize-worthy,” “the best interview of Donald Trump ever” and even “masterful.”

In reality, Wallace did little more than observe basic journalistic rules about pursuing the facts and asking follow-up questions. A competent high school journalist could have done the same.

In that sense, Wallace’s Sunday interview was the equivalent of a high jump competition where the bar had been laid flat on the ground. Its principal revelation was that Trump could not answer the most basic and simple questions. In essence, he simply tripped over the bar and fell flat on his face.

But Wallace’s interview with Trump matters — because the excessive praise it has received shows how low the most basic standards of mainstream journalism have sunk in the Age of Trump.

There are far too many voices in the mainstream media who, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, have furthered a narrative that Trump was not really a fascist and an authoritarian. In their words, he would ultimately become “presidential” and “rise to the occasion.” Nearly four years into his regime, many of those same voices cling to a hope that Trump is something other than what he repeatedly shows himself to be. In recent weeks, because of his escalating assaults on American freedom and democracy, some of these voices have finally been forced to admit that Trump is a would-be fascist dictator.

The sincerity of these analysis is undermined by their cowardice. Such reporters, journalists and other members of the commentariat are horribly late to the fight but now want to claim vanguard status — when they labored for years to normalize and enable Donald Trump.

I have previously called such people “hope peddlers” — professional “moderates” who actively avoid the truth about Trump and this era. The hope peddlers are still pushing the narrative that somehow the American people will rise and unite, Trumpism will be magically vanquished, and all will return to “normal.” The hope peddlers, for reasons both personal and professional, are desperate for a return to a status quo ante where they can sell their superficial horse-race journalism and participate in a 24/7 news cycle that routinely inflates relatively unimportant issues into massive controversies.

Faced with a profound existential crisis – and no small amount of personal risk, in a failing democracy where Trump and his right-wing allies have targeted reporters and journalists with violence – the hope peddlers have exposed themselves as mere stenographers of current events, incapable of speaking truth to power.

Denial is the unifying theme in the mainstream news media’s fundamental failure to serve as a bulwark of truth and accountability in defense of democracy during the Age of Trump.

According to the Mayo Clinic, the three basic dimensions of denial are a refusal to “acknowledge a difficult situation,” a reluctance “to face the facts of a problem” and an effort to “downplay possible consequences of the issue.”

With some admirable recent exceptions — the George Floyd protesters, anti-fascist activists, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and other people of conscience who have resisted Trumpism and the forces behind it — the American people at large have also shown themselves to be plagued with denial.

There are slightly more than three months until Election Day. Donald Trump’s fascistic machinations are unrelenting and expanding. He has publicly stated on numerous occasions that he will not respect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election if he is defeated. 

Trump is deploying his own private police force, across the United States to put “anarchists” and “radicals” — in other words, anyone who defies him — behind bars, or worse. Trump’s followers are willing to die and kill for him. Bill Barr, serving more as the president’s personal lawyer than the nation’s attorney general, is consulting with John Yoo, George W. Bush’s infamous “torture lawyer,” about how Trump can consolidate power like an emperor, bypass Congress and the Constitution, and then rule by decree.

Trump may try to use his private Gestapo to stop Black and brown people, and others who support the Democratic Party, from voting in November.

David Atkins of the Washington Monthly outlines this scenario, writing that Trump and his campaign team now understand that absent some scandal around Joe Biden, Trump’s “only path to victory lies not in persuading a majority of voters but in choosing his own electorate by suppressing the votes of the majority of Americans who despise him”:

Put all of this together, and it opens the possibility of a terrifying abuse of power. We could end up seeing armed private contractors hired by the RNC and affiliated conservative organizations to intimidate Democratic-leaning voters, bolstered by camouflage-wearing taxpayer-funded rifle-toting border patrol agents aggressively checking papers of every voter in line in the guise of “securing against voter fraud” on the president’s orders. This would be happening during the most tense presidential election in our lifetimes during a raging pandemic, often in lines in which voters must wait 8 to 10 hours to vote due to restricted polling places in minority communities — also a blatant suppression attempt enabled by the Supreme Court’s voiding of many of the protections of the Voting Rights Act. …

The likelihood that these actions would be met with immediate enraged protest would be very high. Election Day violence unheard of since the Civil Rights era could ensue, which would give Trump an excuse to instigate further crackdowns across the country as election day continues. Federal agents could foreseeably be sent in to attempt to stop the counting of mail-in ballots in the days following the election on presidential orders. No need for a Brooks Brothers Riot if you can just send in an armed federal paramilitary, instead.

Absent some form of preventive action by states, municipalities, the Democratic Party and left-affiliated organizations, there is very little to stop Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr and Acting DHS Secretary Wolf from attempting any or all of this.

Trump’s regime and its enforcers are preparing to push America’s democracy off a cliff and into the abyss.

It may be too late to save America from Trumpism because the state of denial lasted too long. These next few months are especially critical if the country’s democracy is to be saved and the hard work then done to heal and improve it for future generations so that another version of neo-fascism cannot emerge in the United States.

To win, good Americans must engage in collective action, corporeal politics, embodied solidarity, and what the late civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis described as “good trouble” to resist and defeat Trumpism. First and foremost, good Americans must vote against Donald Trump in such massive numbers that he cannot make even the most brittle claim that the election was somehow stolen or rigged against him. Such a defeat will reveal Trump as a full-on tyrant engaging in a coup, should he refuse to step down in January as the Constitution demands. The moment of reckoning is here. Will the American people rise to the occasion or once again retreat into the false comfort of denial?

Maine brewery owner cancels Lara Trump event after accusing the campaign of misleading him

A Trump campaign event in Maine was canceled Tuesday after the owner said he was lied to by the campaign about the scope of the event.

Brad and Nancy Nadeau, the owners of Stars and Stripes Brewing, told the Bangor Daily News on Tuesday that they were alerted to the facts from a campaign news release calling them the “first stop” for a “Women for Trump” bus tour that will cross a few states in the northeast, ending in New Hampshire two days after it begins.

“The Nadeaus said on Tuesday they had initially been told that some members of the campaign were going to come in for a beer while getting pizza from an adjacent restaurant,” the report explained. “Brad Nadeau said he was told late Monday that Lara Trump, the Republican president’s daughter-in-law, would be there and reporters may come as well, but he did not know it would be a formal event.”

Understandably they came under a deluge of negative comments from folks in the area wondering why the Nadeaus’ brewery was a Trump hot spot. He called the campaign to cancel the event, noting that their business does not host political events or endorse candidates.

Brad Nadeau is a Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and he has been willing to host charitable events for causes, but not for political campaigns.

“I tried so hard to keep this brewery positive, and we haven’t had any backlash because we don’t do anything that’s negative,” he told the Daily News. “But when it comes to politics, people are so far on either side.”

No one seems to know whether Lara Trump will move the rally to another location or how they’ll proceed. Mercedes Schlapp, Katrina Pierson and Pam Bondi were all names cited as headliners of the event along with many Maine Republicans, except, of course, Sen. Susan Collins, who is barely holding onto her Senate seat in the state.

Read the full report at the Bangor Daily News.

Meet Jaime Harrison, the Democrat taking the fight to Lindsey Graham: Part 2

Jaime Harrison is the South Carolina Democrat running against Sen. Lindsey Graham this fall. He’s overperforming in the polls and blowing Graham out of the water in fundraising, topping the 25-year incumbent in both reporting periods this year. Last week Harrison announced a $14 million haul, while Graham pulled in $8.4 million.

Democrats are typically reluctant to put hope in a state like South Carolina, even with a focused campaign and a charismatic candidate. The buckle of the Bible Belt, South Carolina voted for Democrats all the way from Reconstruction into the 1960s, flipping Republican, like most of the Deep South, in response to the civil rights movement. In 1964, South Carolina was one of just six states to vote for Barry Goldwater, the godfather of the modern conservative movement. It has gone red in every election since then, with the sole exception of 1976, when it went for Jimmy Carter, a moderate Democrat from neighboring Georgia. In 2016, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the Palmetto State by 14 points, 55 to 41%.

Still, Harrison inspires hope. It doesn’t hurt that Graham has disappeared from the state almost entirely, seen now by many constituents as just another club in Donald Trump’s golf bag. Though that obeisance has played well to the gallery on the right, many South Carolinians, including traditional Republicans, feel that Graham has gone MIA when they need him most. The acute crisis of the coronavirus pandemic seems to have driven home an old lesson: Distance can have real consequences, especially at the state level.

Harrison doesn’t have the national name recognition that Graham does, but he’s demonstrated the political chops to run a cagey, powerful campaign. He also stands to benefit as a Black man up against a white institutionalist in a revolutionary year for racial justice.

He also knows the race he wants to run. Harrison’s rhetoric is polished, inclusive and relentlessly on message, and he knows he needs to put in the legwork. While he says he’s trying to build a coalition “like Lindsey Graham 1.0,” a bird’s-eye view suggests something more like Beto O’Rourke 2.0: a blue streak in a red state, against tall odds (although the pandemic has blunted Harrison’s plans for county-by-county barnstorming).

But while Harrison has pulled off the newcomer look, he’s a total insider. His trajectory is the stuff of American myth: He grew up poor in rural Orangeburg, but went to Yale, followed by Georgetown Law. After graduation he signed on as a staffer to South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, where Harrison worked on the Affordable Care Act and eventually rose to executive director of the House Democratic Caucus.

After five years in Clyburn’s office, Harrison moved to the Podesta Group, now defunct but at the time among the largest Democratic lobbying shops in Washington. His personal client list, however, would give many left-liberal voters pause: Walmart, Boeing, General Dynamics, Merck, Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Harrah’s Casinos, the pro-coal special interest group American Coalition for Clean Coal — it’s a lot to take in at once.

Such a résumé might be enough to tank him in a liberal stronghold or a national race (it might have derailed his 2017 bid for chair of the Democratic National Committee), but it’s no poison pill in a place like South Carolina.

Harrison arrived at Clyburn’s office $160,000 in debt, he says, and over the next few years put his salary toward paying that down and helping his mother meet her financial obligations at home. His latest available financial disclosure form, filed in August 2019, lists between $1.1 million and $3.5 million in personal assets. He’s come a long way from Orangeburg.

But throughout his time in D.C., Harrison has kept one foot in South Carolina. In 2013 he became the state Democratic Party chair, and in 2016 left Podesta Group for good. He ran for DNC chair, but dropped out to endorse Tom Perez, who went on to win.

Harrison married Marie Boyd, a graduate from Harvard and Yale Law who now teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Law. She’s one of the country’s top experts in food and drug regulation, and, according to her university biography, her research focuses on cosmetics regulation and the regulation of insects as human food.

Salon spoke with Jaime Harrison at length and broke that conversation in two. You can read part one here, which focuses why he thinks he can beat Graham in South Carolina.

This installment addresses policy issues — most specifically health care  — along with Harrison’s experience in Washington, and offers him a chance to defend his record as a lobbyist for some of the most powerful and politically influential companies and industries in the nation.

At the end of the day, Harrison views this race almost exclusively through the lens of South Carolina, a conservative state by any challenge. For a big-tent Democrat who didn’t have to sweat a primary challenge, that’s a smart play. But it also r raises larger questions: If the Democratic Party continues its leftward movement, how well does somebody like Jaime Harrison fit in? 

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

The former president of Michelin, your client when you were a lobbyist at the Podesta Group, threw his support and his money behind you this year. Before that, he’d been a Lindsey Graham donor. People might reasonably wonder about that.

You sent out a campaign email or fundraising email, literally hours ago, that read, “South Carolina needs a senator who won’t be swayed by money or power.” With your history, that’s a bit of a tough sell.

From the time that I worked as Jim Clyburn’s congressional staffer, all the legislation we were able to pass, I’ve always fought for and worked for the people of South Carolina, and that has not changed since I was a little boy.

When you look at why [former Michelin chair and president Dick Wilkerson] said that he supported me, think about the context: I’m a challenger. Many companies and folks in the business community always hedge their bet, and so they’re going to stick with their company. That’s just sort of the nature of the beast, right? They don’t rock the boat.

Dick Wilkinson was the head of one of the largest companies in South Carolina. Respected on both sides of the aisle, because he was just a pragmatic guy. He just tried to get the job done. He supported Lindsey Graham. And Dick has fundamentally gone to the point that it’s not about Republicans or Democrats, it’s that the people of South Carolina want some change and they want something different. And there are 24 other former Lindsey Graham donors who are now supporting me.

What he said is that, “Jaime Harrison is the future of South Carolina. And if Lindsey Graham could not stand up for the memory of his best friend, a war hero, John McCain, then what would he do for South Carolina?” I think that says it all.

Assuming you get there, do you believe Congress should hold Trump accountable what he’s done, even if he loses? Would you support a possible criminal investigation, or would you let those probes drop?

Listen, we need to focus on the folks here in South Carolina. I mean, that’s where I’m going to spend my energy. We got so many issues here that people in South Carolina need help on, that I don’t have time to be looking back in history and say, “Well, who did this? And why did you do this?” And all kinds of things.

That’s what Lindsey does, the “witch hunt,” while he forgets the issues that people are dealing with here in South Carolina. I’m not going to waste my energy and time on all that stuff.

That’s a trope, right? You go off to Washington and you lose touch. But you too have left home. You grew up poor, but broke out and went off to Yale and Georgetown, worked in D.C., and began traveling in these rarefied circles. You lobbied for companies like Walmart, Boeing and Lockheed. You lobbied for pharmaceuticals, you lobbied for a “clean coal” group. From a liberal perspective it’s hard to reconcile that with your stated platforms and policies.

Can you square that? For instance, would you advocate for an increase in the minimum wage after working as a lobbyist for Walmart?

Yes, I would. But let’s back up first.

Listen, I have lived the American dream, which is something that I am deeply proud of and something that I believe every child in South Carolina or across the country should have the opportunity to do. And I’m proud of the work that I’ve done to help South Carolina in the process because, despite leaving South Carolina, I’ve never left South Carolina. She’s always been in my heart.

Even when I worked in the private sector, I fought for some of the largest companies in South Carolina. Companies like Michelin and Boeing, who have invested millions in the state, and have employed thousands of people across the state. They’re the reason those people can put food on their table and clothe their kids.

I’ve also advocated for the improvement of the South Carolina Port Authority. The dredging of the Port of South Carolina right now — which is a huge, huge issue — is something that I directly worked on. And that supports the employment of almost one out of 10 people in South Carolina. [Fact check: This appears to be accurate.] It has a huge impact on the economy of South Carolina.

I’ve also worked on making sure that there are opportunities for other people to achieve the American Dream. In the private sector, I worked with the University of South Carolina, making sure that we were able to leverage better resources for some of the research that they’re doing and helping students get opportunities that they probably wouldn’t have, had I not worked there. So I’m pretty happy with the things that I’ve been able to do and the perspective that I’ve been able to get.

Listen, unlike Lindsey Graham, who’s in the United States Senate, the only special interests that I’m going to be focused on as a South Carolina senator is helping folks across South Carolina. People like my grandparents, people like my mom. That’s where my mind goes to first

On the issue of increasing the minimum wage, that’s what I believe in. I believe that a minimum wage is really, really important and, yes, I will increase the minimum wage. I don’t think Lindsey Graham has ever voted for a minimum wage increase in his 20 plus years on the Hill.

The only reason he’s talking about it now is because I’m talking about it. The only reason he’s talking about broadband internet and the impact that it’s having on the health care system here in South Carolina and the education system here in South Carolina is because I’m talking about it.

Now, part of the reason why that stuff hasn’t been acted on here is because some of the big companies don’t want it acted on, because they don’t want to move into those markets. But I don’t care. I’m not working for the companies; I’m working for the people of South Carolina and you’ve always got to put the people first.

You don’t support Medicare for All or a universal single-payer system. Could you explain your position on health care?

Listen, I believe that we need to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Here in South Carolina, we’ve never had a full implementation of the ACA. We need to expand Medicaid. That’s what I really want to see. Right now there are holes in the ACA, in terms of mental health, vision, dental. I want to fill those holes and make sure that folks have sufficient coverage. I think, particularly coming off the coronavirus and the stress there, mental health coverage is going to be crucial for so many people in this country. 

So that’s the foundation. And yeah, once I’m in the Senate, we’ll have debates and discussions about other policies. But I want to see a full implementation of the ACA and actually strengthen it. And I think, once we’ve looked at that, we can go from there to figure out if we need to do anything else.

Could you speak more about the expansion of Medicaid? So many states have rejected it, and it gets lost in discussions about the ACA. Do you think you can guarantee coverage to all your constituents, if South Carolina accepts the expansion along with your plan?

I think South Carolina is one of at least 13 or 14 states that have not expanded Medicaid. Most of them are Southern states, and most of those states are the states with the highest ratings of health disparity.

I’m going to bring this down to a personal level. My grandfather, one of the lights of my life, one of the hardest working people I have ever met, my grandfather would work 50- to 60-hour weeks. He did construction. He was one of those guys that sat on the motor grader in those 95-degree days — 102 with humidity — in the summer in South Carolina, and pave roads and those types of things.

My grandfather never had health care in his life until he found out he had undiagnosed diabetes. But then it was too late and he had to get part of his leg amputated, toes amputated off of his foot. It was devastating for us, but there’s so many people … Now, if my grandfather was alive — he had a relatively modest, low-wage job, and probably would have qualified under the Medicaid expansion.

There’s so many people like my grandfather who work hard each and every day but their jobs don’t provide them health care. And as a result they don’t go to a doctor when their body starts to break down. They just go and — my grandfather would get these Goody powders — and just deal with the pain. Because he knew we couldn’t afford the hospital. We couldn’t afford the doctor.

Eventually, the system then paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to take care of my grandfather after the years of health neglect because he didn’t have health care. Changing that would lift a huge burden off our health care system. It would also lift burdens off our rural hospitals, because many of these people live in rural communities.

If you take a look at the states that have not expanded Medicaid and states where rural hospitals have closed, it’s almost like hand-in-glove, a mirror image of each other. Because of the fact that they did not expand Medicaid, it puts much more pressure on rural hospitals. Some of those dollars for the Medicaid expansion were meant to go to these hospitals that are dealing with large pockets of indigent folks who can’t afford health coverage and use emergency rooms at their hospitals.

That’s why you see these hospitals closing. It could be a huge boon for our system just to let the ACA work as the ACA was designed to work, and then see what we need to do to fully address any additional holes in our health care system.

But don’t you see some of your constituents falling through those holes?

They are falling through the holes.

Right now, [Alabama Democratic Sen.] Doug Jones has a bill that we have said that we would support, as well. For the first few years of the ACA, the federal government covered 100% of the Medicaid expansion. Then there was a four- or five-year window after that, when the feds would cover 90% and then leave it to the state to cover the other 10%. Well, Doug has a bill that will allow states to restart the clock. If you were one of the states that did not start the Medicaid expansion, it allows those states to restart a clock and get those first years of Medicaid expansion.

I’ve been saying, in South Carolina, dealing with this coronavirus, why don’t we just expand Medicaid, even on a temporary basis, to cover those folks in the state who probably have symptoms of the coronavirus, but won’t go to the doctor to get tested because they can’t afford to do it? Let’s just temporarily expand the Medicaid and see how that impacts. Do it for the first four or five months, see how it impacts South Carolina. And if it impacts us positively, like I know it will, then we should continue on with it. 

Listen, I’m so happy that we have such strong and vibrant businesses and corporations here that are allowed to provide our people with good jobs and all to take care of things. But, the greatest asset we have as a nation is our people. We got to make sure that we’re taking care of our people. When we don’t and then they drop off, then the greatness of our nation also falls off.

I really do believe that we need that type of new, visionary leadership that understands that. That understands that the status quo isn’t good enough — that we need to do better and we can do better, but we got to change up some things.