Trump fans claim reporter called Kayleigh McEnany a misogynistic slur — but video shows otherwise

Like her predecessors Stephanie Grisham and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany has had an adversarial relationship with the mainstream media, leading to testy exchanges. And on Tuesday, after a terse back-and-forth with Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, some right-wing critics accused the reporter of calling McEnany a “lying bitch” during a press briefing.

But video and the White House transcript of the conservation shows that Halkett never said that.

Halkett, originally from British Columbia in Western Canada, has been covering the White House for Al Jazeera’s English-language division since the late 1990s. At the press briefing, Halkett had a tense discussion with McEnany when the two briefly addressed voting by mail. McEnany told Halkett: “There are questions about mass mail-out voting, and I know you don’t want to hear them — which is why you talk over me.”

Far-right activists who have accused Halkett of calling McEnany a “lying bitch” include Chuck Callesto, American Majority founder Ned Ryun and Brigitte Gabriel (founder of the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America). Gabriel posted, “Hey @KimberlyHalkett, We all heard you call the @PressSec a ‘lying bitch’ on a hot mic. What do you have to say for yourself?”

This is her response. pic.twitter.com/t2OWNmNLrL

— jrenman (@jr_enman) July 21, 2020

But CNN’s Daniel Dale has fact-checked Halkett’s critics, tweeting that McEnany was never called a “lying bitch.” And a White House press transcript of the exchange shows what was actually said. When McEnany decided that she didn’t want to talk to Halkett anymore, she told her, “You’ve gotten two questions, which is more than some of your colleagues” — to which Halkett responded, “OK, you don’t want to engage.” Halkett, according to the transcript, accused McEnany of not wanting to answer her questions, but the words “lying bitch” were never used.

The transcript bears out Dale’s description of what was actually said. Dale tweeted, “Nobody called McEnany a ‘lying bitch.’ When McEnany declined to continue responding to follow-ups, the reporter muttered, ‘OK, you don’t want to engage.’ You don’t even need to slow down the audio.”

Nobody called McEnany a “lying bitch.” When McEnany declined to continue responding to follow-ups, the reporter muttered, “OK, you don’t want to engage.” You don’t even need to slow down the audio (https://t.co/apu5EdLI8Y) to hear the correct words clearly. pic.twitter.com/SsDkbojsIQ

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 21, 2020

You can also listen to the video below to hear the exchange:

“Some are saying” is such garbage. The official White House transcript has the quote correct. https://t.co/BRzATL5Q1o pic.twitter.com/eZNbgTvfes

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) July 21, 2020

Federal police are in the streets — but they couldn’t protect a federal judge’s family

The murder last Sunday of the Daniel Anderl, the 20-year-old son of a federal judge from North Brunswick, New Jersey, and the serious wounding of her husband comes along with the news that President Trump has sent armed federal agents to Portland,, Oregon to apprehend leftist protesters off the street and hold them illegally, apparently to avenge graffiti on a federal courthouse.

Judge Esther Salas has presided over high-profile trials like that of the former “Real Housewife” star Teresa Giudice and the suit brought by Deutsche Bank investors looking to hold President Trump’s bank accountable for failing to monitor “high-risk” customers, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Salas was appointed by President Obama and was the first Latina to be nominated to the federal bench in New Jersey. According to multiple press reports, the shooter in the case was Roy Den Hollander, a right-wing, anti-feminist attorney who had a matter pending before Salas and had appeared on Fox News.

According to press reports, Hollander traveled to the North Brunswick tree-lined street where Salas’ family lived dressed as a FedEx deliveryman. His body was found in upstate New York on Monday after he apparently shot himself.

Hollander’s actions comes amid a growing trend of threats made against federal judges, according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for protecting them.

“In the 2019 fiscal year, the Marshals Service said there were 4,449 threats and inappropriate communications against its protected persons,” reported Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post. “That’s a huge spike from 2015 when it logged just 926 threats.”

That huge spike in threats against the federal bench is not happening in a vacuum.

When Trump was a candidate for president in 2016, he directed public ridicule at U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a widely respected jurist, because of Curiel’s ruling in a fraud case involving Trump University. Trump said Curiel had “an absolute conflict” because he was “of Mexican heritage” and opposed Trump’s proposal to build a border wall. (Curiel was born in Indiana and had taken no public position on the wall.)

Trump has continued to Twitter-target federal judges who presided over the criminal prosecutions of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime confidant Roger Stone, all of whom were convicted or forced to plead guilty.

Every time he takes on a sitting federal judge, the self-styled “law and order” president adds to the burden of the U.S. marshals who must track individuals like Cesar Sayoc Jr., on the fringes of Trump’s base. Last year, Sayoc, an ardent Trump supporter from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sending pipe bombs to more than a dozen prominent Democrats and celebrities, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

On May 29, Pat Underwood, a Federal Protective Services uniformed officer, was shot and killed while guarding a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, amid street protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In that case, the FBI arrested 32-year-old Steven Carrillo, an active duty Air Force sergeant and right-wing extremist who apparently hoped exploit the protest from the Floyd murder to foment a civil war. Carrillo was already the leading suspect in the June 6 fatal shooting of a deputy sheriff in Santa Cruz County, California, and the wounding of his partner in an ambush attack that included the use of multiple improvised explosives.

Just days after Underwood was killed, Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr ordered elements of the U.S. Park Police and the National Guard to use pepper spray to clear Lafayette Park of peaceful protesters so Trump could walk across the street from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for his Bible-clutching photo-op.

Trump was flanked during his walk to the church by Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley later told a National Defense University commencement that he “should not have been there,” adding that his “presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”

These dystopian events are reminiscent of the authoritarian atmospherics in Chile in 1973, as recounted in Costa-Gavras’ signature 1982 film “Missing.” The film chronicles the efforts of an American family to track the whereabouts of their journalist son who “disappeared” amid Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-sponsored military coup against the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende.

Our nation is slipping deeper and deeper into a pandemic that could kill as many as 200,000 by Election Day. One out of five American families could face eviction from their homes by the end of September.

Den Hollander, the apparent North Brunswick shooter, had previously sued multiple NBC News anchors, as well as anchors from other networks, alleging they had engaged in an illegal conspiracy to prevent Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Meanwhile, the current occupant of the Oval Office fixates on extralegal strategies to “protect” federal courthouses, while perpetuating a climate of fear that has federal judges looking over their shoulders.

Premature births have gone down during the pandemic — and doctors are baffled as to why

Medical experts are baffled as to why that has there has been a surprising drop in the number of premature babies born during the coronavirus pandemic, as first reported by The New York Times.

At University Maternity Hospital Limerick in Ireland, a neonatologist named Dr. Roy Phillip began investigating the matter when he learned that the hospital had not ordered any of the breast milk-based fortifier that doctors feed to the tiniest premature babies, as the Times story recounts. After being told that no babies had been born who required it, Dr. Phillip and his team compared the birth weights of babies (which tends to correlate to whether a baby is premature) born in their hospital between January and April of 2001 all the way through that same period in 2020.

They found that the number of babies born under 3.3 pounds had been reduced by 75%, while none at all had been born under 2.2 pounds. Even after the Irish lockdown began to end in June, the numbers continued to stay at unprecedented lows, according to Dr. Phillip.

At the same time that Ireland was discovering its own reduced number of preemies, medical professionals in other countries were finding the same thing. A neonatologist named Dr. Stephen Patrick at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville discovered that roughly 20 percent fewer NICU [neonatal intensive care unit] babies were born at his hospital in March than usual. A neonatologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Dr. Belal Alshaikh, learned that premature births across the province dropped by nearly half during his country’s lockdown.

At the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Dr. Michael Christiansen learned that the rate of babies being born before 28 weeks had dropped by 90 percent from March 12 to April 14 in 2020 (during the main lockdown period in Denmark) compared to the rates over the previous five years. Doctors in Australia and the Netherlands made similar discoveries of their own.

According to the Times article, potential explanations for the drop in premature births tend to involve the consequences of women staying at home, including the increase in physical rest, reduced exposure to infectious diseases and reduced exposure to air pollution.

“I saw this as well. I, too, was intrigued,” Mark Mercurio, a professor of neonatology at Yale University told Salon by email. “Our NICU has been as busy as ever, and I don’t personally have the specific numbers at hand from the most recent months to tell you whether our premature birth rate, especially the very preterm ones, is down. I have contacted those who keep those stats.”

It is worth noting that the two papers discussing this phenomenon have been posted on the preprint server medRxiv but have not yet been peer reviewed. Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Professor of Obstetrics at the University of Western Australia John Newnham said that “it would extraordinary if the described reduction had occurred. Such a quantum leap would be a major advance and may have been discovered by accident.”

He added, “But these results need to be replicated because very early preterm births have been stable over the last decades. The first explanation to be excluded is whether pregnant women have gone to a closer hospital because of the lockdown.”

The seeming drop in premature baby births is only one of the medical mysteries that has emerged from the coronavirus pandemic. There are questions about why people respond so differently to being infected with the virus, the correlation between being asymptomatic and health issues arising from the virus, where the virus originated, how much of the virus can make you sick, how long one can remain immune after infection and the role played by children in spreading it.

A Pennsylvania fair held a transphobic dunk tank event mocking the state’s secretary of health

Many Pennsylvanians are outraged after learning that a man seemingly impersonating Dr. Rachel Levine — the state’s Secretary of Health and one of the few openly transgender government officials in the United States — participated in a transphobic dunk tank event at the Fireman’s Relief Carnival at the Bloomsburg Fair in eastern Pennsylvania on Saturday.

Levine, who has gained prominence in the Keystone State due to her role in addressing the coronavirus pandemic, appeared to have been mimicked by a man wearing a black and pink dress, according to The Morning Call. The images posted on the fair’s Facebook page showed the individual in a dunk tank while the author of the page wrote, “Dr. Levine? Thank you. You were a hit and raised a lot of money for the local fire companies. Wonder why so many were trying to dunk you.”

Salon reached out to the Bloomsburg Fair for comment and has not received a reply.

Situated in the small town of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, just 40 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre, the Bloomsburg Fair previously gained media attention as a site of far-right fervor. In 2016, a registered sex offender (convicted on child pornography charges) was allowed to sell Nazi flags next to banners expressing support for Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy until visitors complained.

“Public displays of bigotry have no place in our public discourse,” Adrian Shanker, Founder and Executive Director of the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in nearby Allentown, told Salon by email. “The first responders at the fire company that benefited from this vile transphobic fundraiser at the Bloomsburg fair deserve better. Transgender Pennsylvanians who have had to see a continuous stream of transphobic attacks on the Secretary of Health deserve better, and of course, Dr. Levine deserves better. It is okay for someone to disagree with her policies. But they should do so in a respectful way.”

Shanker was not alone among LGBT activists in expressing disgust at the spectacle.

“When transgender people are mocked and portrayed inaccurately, as was done at the Bloomsburg Fair, it directly correlates to a transphobic culture that has killed at least 22 transgender and gender non-conforming people in the U.S. this year alone,” Human Rights Campaign Pennsylvania State Director Ryan Matthews said in a statement to Salon. “Dr. Levine is an expert in her field and has worked tirelessly to protect Pennsylvanians during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of mocking a person’s gender identity, we should focus on protecting our state’s most vulnerable from this virus.”

Like many other public health officials, Levine has been subjected to harsh attacks from conservatives as she guides Pennsylvania through the pandemic. Along with Gov. Tom Wolf, she implemented a months-long lockdown, advocated a statewide stay-at-home order and helped put in place a color-coded system to aid counties in planning safe re-openings. Levine emphasizes using data and cutting-edge science in shaping state policies responding to the pandemic, even as she has faced criticism from conservatives who prioritize reopening the economy and claim the mandatory shutdowns violate their civil liberties.

Among her pre-pandemic public health policies, Levine is best known for issuing a standing order that allows anyone in Pennsylvania to get the opiate overdose reversal drug naloxone without a prescription; making it easier for Pennsylvanians to alter their birth certificates to reflect their gender identities; and working to guarantee Medicaid coverage for transgender health services.

Levine has faced frequent transphobic attacks throughout her career. Prominent incidents include a Pittsburgh radio personality repeatedly misgendering Levine during an interview, a township commissioner resigning after saying at a public meeting that he was “tired of listening to a guy dressed up like a woman” and the administrator of a small town recreation commission’s Facebook page posting a meme saying, “If you are ordered to wear a mask by a guy who wears a bra, you might be Pennsylvanian.”

In the aftermath of the anti-Levine dunk tank incident at the fair, Bloomsburg Fair President Randy Karschner released a written statement arguing that “a fellow dressed up in a dress to get people to throw balls at the dunk tank to raise money. It turned into where people thought we were offending Dr. Rachel Levine, and that was no intention at all.” The dunk tank mime himself, Main Township Fire Chief David Broadt, claimed he did not set out to impersonate Levine but played along after fair attendees said he looked like her and began shouting, “Where’s your mask?”

“I know Dr. Levine professionally and hold her in the highest regard,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, told Salon by email. “She has served the people of Pennsylvania well to date on other public health problems like the opioid epidemic. I am unaware of any serious missteps unique to Pennsylvania in her response to COVID-19. She should be supported for the good of the residents of Pennsylvania.”

Dr. Russell Medford, chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, expressed similar views.

“I’m not from Pennsylvania, but I’ve reviewed the materials and Pennsylvania has had a good course — with its ups and downs, but on a good course now — regarding COVID-19,” Medford told Salon. “We need the best qualified, experienced, and committed experts in public health to help lead us out of this pandemic, and it appears to me that Dr. Levine is well-qualified with an excellent track record to enable Pennsylvania to deal with the highest possible probability of success with the complexities of this pandemic going forward, period.”

He also wondered whether the event ridiculing Levine, who is Jewish, may have also been motivated by anti-Semitism, noting that the same fair once allowed a vendor to sell Nazi flags.

“There has been a lot of pressures on public health officials that have no bearing on the execution of their jobs, and transphobia and antisemitism are just two examples of that,” Medford said.

Speaking with Salon last month about Pennsylvania’s response to the pandemic, Rutgers University political scientist Dr. Ross Baker said that “while Philadelphia certainly has had a large number of COVID-19 patient cases, central and western Pennsylvania have had relatively low rates. Governor [Tom] Wolf has been pretty aggressive in terms of social distancing and mask wearing.”

Update: A Bloomsburg Fair official denied on Tuesday evening that the event was meant to be a dig at Dr. Levine. On Wednesday Gov. Wolf issued a statement in which he said, “The COVID-19 pandemic has brought hate and transphobia into the spotlight through relentless comments and slurs directed at Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, who is a highly skilled, valued, and capable member of my administration and Transgender. The derogatory incident involving the Bloomsburg Fair is the latest of these vile acts, which by extension impact Transgender people across the commonwealth and nation.”

Hallmark Channel to finally add LGBTQ+ characters and stories to holiday features

It’s Christmas in July and the Hallmark Channel is already preparing for their popular spate of holiday programming — and this year, their definition of making the yuletide gay could be different.

The network has plans to add in LGTBQ+ characters and storylines to their holiday programming according to a recent statement made in Out magazine. An unnamed representative quoted in the article says the network is in “active negotiations” to include more queer characters and plots in both their “Countdown to Christmas” and “Miracles of Christmas” holiday lineup.

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It’s unclear who the network is negotiating with specifically or how far along these talks are. Crown Media Family, the company responsible for most of Hallmark’s holiday features, suspended production on all shows and features back in March due to the global health crisis and it’s unknown how much content was filmed prior to the shutdown.

“Diversity and inclusion is a top priority for us and we look forward to making some exciting programming announcements in the coming months, including announcements about projects featuring LGBTQ storylines, characters, and actors,” said George Zaralidis, VP of network program publicity at Hallmark’s parent company, Crown Media Family Networks, in a statement. “We are committed to creating a Hallmark experience where everyone feels welcome.”

The Hallmark Channel has been slow to embrace diverse storytelling. It wasn’t until 2017 that the company started expanding Black women from supporting to lead roles, with 2018 being the first year a significant number of features starred Black actresses. And it wasn’t until 2019 that the network put a Jewish character in a lead role.

But LGBTQ+ representation was considered even more of an uphill battle. Last year the network pulled four commercials airing on their channel — all from the wedding planning site Zola — featuring same-sex couples. After a loud backlash against Hallmark, the company reversed course and said they would be working with activist groups like GLAAD to “continue to look for ways to be more inclusive and celebrate our differences.”

Giving stories to queer characters would be a huge step in the right direction for the company, particularly as its brand of comfort and warmth remains so vital due to current events. It’ll be interesting to see if Hallmark can walk the walk this Christmas.

A study that links solar activity to earthquakes is sending shockwaves through the science world

A peer-reviewed paper that found a correlation between solar activity and earthquakes is sending tremors through the scientific community. Salon reached out to scientists to inquire after the research paper’s seismic conclusions, and discovered a surprising amount of rancor among skeptical geophysicists and seismologists.

The paper, published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, theorizes that clusters of protons from the sun may correlate to large earthquakes on Earth. The sun, like all active stars, constantly vents matter in the form of solar wind, which includes particles like electrons, protons, and ionized helium atoms. The distribution and density of these particles vary, as the sun has variable “weather” just as the Earth does.

Researchers Vito Marchitelli, Paolo Harabaglia, Claudia Troise and Giuseppe De Natale looked at data on earthquakes and solar activity to ascertain if there was a correlation. Their data consisted of worldwide earthquake data as well as measurements of solar protons from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint satellite of NASA and the European Space Agency that was launched in 1995 and is still active.

Understanding the researchers’ thesis requires a brief foray into statistics. If earthquakes happened at completely random times of day, one could map them on a chart depicting time, and the dots would be randomly distributed, with no apparent pattern. Moreover, the rate at which they occur would be statistically constant, albeit random — meaning they would favor no one time over any other one.

But evidently, earthquakes don’t fit this pattern.

“Large earthquakes occurring worldwide have long been recognized to be non Poisson distributed,” the researchers write. The Poisson distribution is a statistics term that formally describes a situation described above, wherein events occur at a constant rate and independently of previous events. Radioactive decay is a good example of something else that observes the Poisson distribution: individual events of atomic decay are randomly distributed, but over time they average out to something predictably constant, which is why physicists are able to predict precise half-lives for any isotope.

Because earthquake timing seems to fit some unseen pattern, they posit that big earthquakes must then “involv[e] some large scale correlation mechanism, which could be internal or external to the Earth.” They continue:

“Till now, no statistically significant correlation of the global seismicity with one of the possible mechanisms has been demonstrated yet. In this paper, we analyze 20 years of proton density and velocity data, as recorded by the SOHO satellite, and the worldwide seismicity in the corresponding period, as reported by the ISC-GEM catalogue.”

They conclude, “We found clear correlation between proton density and the occurrence of large earthquakes [of magnitute greater than 5.6], with a time shift of one day. The significance of such correlation is very high, with probability to be wrong lower than 10^-5” [meaning one in 10000].

In statistical terms, that would imply a very confident correlation between the two events, meaning proton density and the occurrence of these large quakes. Indeed, one in 10,000 is close to the gold standard of statistical certainty.

Despite this, multiple geophysicists and seismologists were very skeptical of the paper’s conclusion for other reasons. Salon spoke with several who were critical of the findings.

“My first thought is that what keeps the global time distribution of earthquakes from being Poissonian is the occurrence of aftershocks,” Tom Parsons, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey, told Salon by email. “Once a catalog is declustered and aftershocks are removed, then it is difficult to show non-random inter-event times. As aftershocks are primarily a local phenomenon, it strikes me as unlikely that they are caused by global-scale solar activity.”

In other words, Parsons notes that earthquakes aren’t randomly distributed, and thus wouldn’t adhere to the Poisson distribution, because often earthquakes aren’t independent events: one earthquake can trigger a follow-up quake, or vice-versa. “Declustering” refers to separating related “clusters” of earthquake events, such as a quake and its accompanying aftershocks.

Co-author Giuseppe De Natale, when approached about this criticism, contended to Salon by email that “the large scale correlation among worldwide earthquakes is not only due to simple ‘clustering,’ meant as main shock-aftershocks sequences.”

De Natale clarified that the researchers “absolutely don’t say that the aftershocks are caused by solar activity.” (Indeed, correlation does not equate to causation, as high school math teachers everywhere are fond of reminding us.) “In fact in this case we would not get a so high statistical significance for the inferred correlation,” he continued.

De Natale also shook off the criticism about “clustering” of earthquakes and aftershocks undermining his thesis. He told Salon that the correlation they found pertains to “a very peculiar behavior of worldwide seismicity, which we are presently noting and studying, evidencing a tendency of global seismicity [. . .] to occur clustered in times, but at mutual distances of several thousands of [kilometers]; so, they cannot be ‘aftershocks’ in the common sense.” He argued that this “seems to be strictly related to the triggering effect of proton density (and hence of solar activity).”

De Natale pointed to other earthquake incidents, including ones that were very deep underground, as “isolated events” that prove that the aftershock criticism is unwarranted. Even large, shallow earthquakes, De Natale says, did not exhibit Poisson distributions even after isolating them from aftershocks, meaning that they appeared to be correlated to something.

Greg Beroza, Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and a professor of geophysics at Stanford University, had a similar reaction to the paper as Parsons.

“The claim seems extraordinary and the physical mechanism is obscure. This is an example of statistical seismology, and there are many potential pitfalls associated with that kind of work,” Beroza told Salon by email.

De Natale responded to Beroza’s criticism, too. “We agree that the physical mechanism we propose is still very qualitative and needs more experimental evidence,” he said. “However, the evidence of correlation is extremely strong with probability to be wrong (i.e. just by chance) less than 1/100,000. Furthermore, we used several different, very advanced statistical techniques to confirm the correlation.”

He continued: “So, it is possible that the physical mechanism is not the appropriate one, but, in our opinion, it is almost impossible to deny the existence of a clear correlation between proton density and worldwide earthquakes.”

Another top seismologist called into question the rigorousness of the study and expressed deep skepticism about its conclusions.

“I’m not an enthusiast,” John Emilio Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California, told Salon. “There are a lot of red flags in that paper. I’m frankly surprised it made it through review. I have to admit I didn’t go through the numbers and try to reproduce their statistical analysis, which would really be the key, but they kind of misunderstand a number of things and they approach the problem in a pretty roundabout way, so I’m fairly skeptical.”

He added, “They make a whole set of arbitrary rules with who knows how many pre-parameters and then make these complicated plots whose meaning really isn’t clear. So it’s not a direct test of their ideas.”

De Natale responded to this criticism: “We use just one parameter to infer the correlation: the level of proton density. Moreover, we use different and very advanced statistical procedures to statistically test the correlation.” De Natale cited one of these statistical procedures, a “renowned” method to “test seismological forecast algorithms” known as the Molchan method.

De Natale added, “I understand these methods, for people not used to handle them, can be difficult to understand; but they are very sound — and the statistical results, showing such a high significance, are almost impossible to deny.”

Whether or not solar activity is correlated with earthquakes on Earth, earthquake prediction has long been considered a holy grail of sorts for geologists and actuaries alike. Indeed, a robust means of predicting earthquakes could save lives, and aid disaster relief and preparedness. Yet probing deep within the Earth, to the point where faults might be observable, is an impossible task for any sort of scientific imaging due to the density of rock; rather, modern seismology relies on indirect observation and observational seismic data instead. Indeed, recent advances in earthquake prediction technology — such as those that predicted the increasing likelihood of a large Southern California quake — derive from computer modeling using seismic records and geologic models.

Jeff Daniels on theater vs. film and the man who never forgave him for making “Dumb & Dumber”

Jeff Daniels has delivered some blistering performances on screen — as the divorcing father in “The Squid and the Whale,” or on Netflix’s Western “Godless,” for which he won an Emmy. But he is also great with comedy, as the milquetoast Charlie Driggs in Jonathan Demme‘s classic, “Something Wild,” as the movie character who walks off the screen in Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” and even the numbskull Harry in the hit “Dumb and Dumber.” Yet it was his work with Aaron Sorkin on “The Newsroom,” which also earned him an Emmy, and his subsequent role in “Steve Jobs” that led to Daniels’ recent turn as Atticus Finch in Broadway’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Theater is where Daniels got his start acting. He appeared in Lanford Wilson’s play “Fifth of July,” which begat a long career with the playwright, and prompted Daniels to become a playwright himself. He also founded the Purple Rose Theater Company in Michigan.

In the new film, “Guest Artist,” Daniels plays the title character, Joseph Harris, a gay, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who has parlayed his success into becoming a successful drunk. Gin is his preference, and Harris drinks it dramatically, tilting his head back, opening his mouth wide and just pouring out the entire contents of the bottle. The film is based on Daniels’ play, which is based on an actual incident that happened to Daniels’ mentor and friend, Lanford Wilson.

Commissioned to stage his new play in Lima, Michigan, Harris travels by train since he’s afraid of flying. His reputation arrives before he does. Moreover, Kenneth Waters (Thomas Macias), an apprentice at the Lima Playhouse who was supposed to meet him at the station, is late. When Kenneth does arrive, he reveals that he has his own play for Harris, his idol, to read.

“Guest Artist” is compelling as Harris makes grand pronouncements that Kenneth soaks up until he starts to challenge his playwright hero. Their snappy exchanges are the best part of the film, as Daniels acts haughty and Macias develops more of a backbone.

As a writer, Daniels captures the egotism rife in the theater and the difficulties of sustaining genius. As an actor, Daniels makes Harris a character who is equally irascible and pathetic and renders him loveable even if he is unlikable.

Daniels spoke with Salon about his mentor, his play, and adapting it for the screen.

Most actors write screenplays, and some write novels, but you choose playwriting. I know you run a theater company, but can you discuss this decision?

In a play, there’s no cut to at the end of every scene, like in a screenplay. If the characters are in the room and in real time, you have to keep them in the room. I came out of the theater, and this story [“Guest Artist”] happened with Lanford Wilson, co-founder of the Circle Repertory Company. He had yet to hit his prime — the Pulitzer was 10 years away. He was the first star I ever met.

I had no idea of the writing process, story structure. I was fascinated by Lanford. You have the first draft and then the second, third, fourth, and you open with the fifth. It changes and grows, and the writing process leads to discoveries. I became fascinated with that. When I was able to open a theater company, I thought, I could do this. I can put two people on a bench for 20 minutes and make them funny. But what do I do before and after? I took the time to learn how to do it. I can write comedy, which sells tickets. I learned what to leave in and what to take out, and structure. The good playwrights hide the structure. That’s where I was. When I started making movies, the idea of peddling a screenplay around Hollywood was nauseating to me when I can write a play and it can be produced. And that’s what I did.

Lanford could knock out a play once a year. I took that idea and ran with it. I learned pretty fast. I kept at it, and that work becomes more solo, and more like a painter with a painting. The playwright is king or queen. On a movie set, the screenwriter was someone you never see. He was two drafts ago. As Harris says in the film, “Movies are bupkis.” Lanford wouldn’t consider doctoring a screenplay for $100,000. He was a pure artist.

You often play characters that are either hapless or erudite, and in “Guest Artist” you do both. Can you talk about creating Joseph Harris?

Harris learns something from the kid. The kid breaks him and shows him who he is. That is something he wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Harris comes in brilliant, then he’s not so brilliant, and then the kid helps him. It’s what you want in a tragic hero. I’ve always looked for the flaws in a character and what makes them human. I’m not afraid to play that. I want to play that, not the hero who is always likeable. The actors with a great script ask, “Where’s the speech in the third act where the character is redeemed?” I’ve never wanted that speech. Turn it up. He’s been an asshole up to this point; why make him OK? Don’t let the audience off the hook. “Godless” was one of those roles.

Harris is gay. I’m glad you didn’t have him hitting on Kenneth. But can you talk about that undercurrent in the film?

That night at that depot, Harris’ [sexuality] is noted. He’s the guy coming in from New York, and there is this young apprentice who may be gay. Kenneth’s father makes wingnuts, and probably is a hardcore Republican. The kid thinks he’s gay. Maybe Harris sees a similarity? Lanford was not accepted. He thought, that sounds like me 30 years ago. So, you change the subject and Harris becomes more understanding. What you don’t see is that when Lanford was a young guy, his dad was an asshole. So, Harris is more understanding with Kenneth who has been through stuff — or is going through stuff. Harris decides, let’s teach the kid to be an artist. F**k his father; I’m going to help this kid.

Joseph is called a dinosaur and has some attitudes about TV and movies, and believes that there is “a slow, poisoned, disintegration of creative America.” Do you share his values? What are your thoughts on the state of the art today, especially given COVID?

I think art and artists are resilient and however we come out of this thing art and creativity in American will find a way. Artists are the weeds that grow up from the sidewalks. It’s exciting to see where creativity will take things. Playwrights are dinosaurs. You can’t write a play for your phone. That will be interesting with COVID.

Theaters are still there, and vital. You wonder if it will come back the same way. You hope so. The theater has been through other things, TV, and movies — which were supposed to take people away. To see Lee J. Cobb on Broadway in “Death of a Salesman,” there’s electricity. I hope we don’t lose that.

I’m not as hard-assed as Lanford was. He never forgave me for “Dumb & Dumber.” We didn’t talk about it. He would tell me what he really thought. Lanford was on Broadway two or three times. “Talley’s Folly” won the Pulitzer. But there’s a way to use the commercial scene and campaign ads and interviews — which are less artistic and more business — to deliver your message. We did that with “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Even Lanford would have said you can reach more people at the Shubert Theatre than Off-Broadway. Off-Broadway is a medium close-up and Broadway is bigger than life. It’s a leap.

Do you believe, as the play suggests, that greatness requires trouble, disturbance, change? Given the state of the world we’re in, that’s a timely point.

I don’t remember the line exactly but it’s something like, “No one wants to be disturbed or challenged anymore,” and part of that is a reaction to movie sequels and action pictures. I think there is a lot of truth in that. People want the happy ending. But we’ve had some good success with theater where you make people feel uncomfortable. “Mockingbird” did that with the closing argument. I turned to a predominantly white audience and threw a right hook at white America every night. No one moved during that closing argument. How long can you sustain that moment?

I wrote a play called “Flint” that was about systemic racism. A Black couple and a white couple dealing with water that was yellow six weeks before the state said something. It was more about race relations and made people uncomfortable. But most people want to know, “Is it funny? Am I going to laugh?” That’s what theater and art can do though — change you and make you think differently and talk about what you just saw. Lanford was great at that.

Hooking on a point of fear Harris has: Do you still think you have something to say?

Jim Carrey told me while we were promoting “Dumb and Dumber To,” that he’s tired. I said, “You can’t quit. It’s your gift. It won’t let you quit.” Jim’s now written a book and is painting. If I can’t act, I’ll write a play, or a song I can play in my show. They can be very current. I’m like a shark and need to keep moving. I have no aspirations for writing something that will one day be on Broadway. Broadway is terrific and wonderful. But I think there’s something about, “Have you written a great play?” Lanford thought he was done, and we talked him into writing two more plays. You can run out of things you want to write about, but you wait for the next one. We have to find out when we’re coming back. When theaters come back that will indicate what I might do. Right now, my creativity is in playing songs and a proper golf swing.

“Guest Artist” is available to stream on demand on July 21.

Guest Artist Official Trailer from Guest Artist on Vimeo.

Matt Gaetz calls for Liz Cheney to “step down or be removed” as House Republican Conference Chair

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is taking his feud with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) into the public spotlight.

Hours after Gaetz and other hardline conservative Republicans reportedly clashed with Cheney over her insufficient loyalty to President Donald Trump, the Florida congressman took to Twitter to demand Cheney’s resignation as the House Republican Conference Chair.

“Liz Cheney has worked behind the scenes (and now in public) against Donald Trump and his agenda,” Gaetz wrote. “House Republicans deserve better as our Conference Chair. Liz Cheney should step down or be removed.”

Cheney reportedly received an earful from other Republicans besides just Gaetz on Tuesday, as Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chip Roy (R-TX), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Jim Jordan (R-OH) all took turns calling out Cheney for assorted disagreements during a GOP conference meeting.

Liz Cheney has worked behind the scenes (and now in public) against @realDonaldTrump and his agenda.

House Republicans deserve better as our Conference Chair.

Liz Cheney should step down or be removed. #MAGA

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 21, 2020

Did feds provide personal security for St. Louis couple who brandished guns at peaceful protesters?

The white couple from Missouri who were caught on camera brandishing firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters walking in front of their mansion last month have been charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said Monday.

Gardner announced the charges against local plaintiffs’ attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey in a statement alleging that the “disturbing” event had endangered “peaceful, unarmed protesters.”

“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner at those participating in nonviolent protest,” she said.

“We must protect the right to peacefully protest,” she added, “and any attempt to chill it through intimidation will not be tolerated.”

Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson told a local St. Louis radio station Friday that he would pardon the couple, a promise he repeated to Fox News host Sean Hannity after news of charges broke.

“Without a doubt, Sean,” Parson said when asked about a potential pardon. “I will do everything within the constitution of the state of Missouri to protect law-abiding citizens. And those people are exactly that — they are law-abiding citizens. And they’re being attacked, frankly, by a political process that’s really unfortunate.”

Parson added that it was a “sad day” for his state. The governor, who is seeking election this fall, also said President Donald Trump had agreed in a call that the McCloskeys should not face charges.

“They had every right to protect their property, their home — just like any of us would,” Parson said. “If you had a mob coming towards you, whether they tore down a gate or not, when they come on your property, they don’t have a right to do that in an aggressive manner. And people have a right to protect their selves, their families, their property.”

Hannity then asked Parson about information he had gleaned from “a source” claiming that federal authorities had helped protect the McCloskeys’ property when a group returned to protest July 3 outside of their home.

“I had a source telling me that when the protesters went back to the McCloskeys’ home that there was no local police present,” Hannity said. “But the president had sent in some support. Is there any truth to that?”

Parson did not say one way or the other whether the federal government had afforded the McCloskeys what would amount to a personal security detail. But he did confirm that he had spoken with the president about what to do in the event of charges.

When protesters returned to the McCloskey manse July 3, “more than a dozen men in plain clothes walked the grounds and peered out from a second-floor balcony of the couple’s home,” the Associated Press reported.

In a call with Salon, Patricia McCloskey declined to comment on Hannity’s comments regarding federal “support.” Patricia McCloskey said she had not yet seen the broadcast and would need to consult with her husband before responding.

The McCloskeys’ attorney, Joel J. Schwartz, initially told Salon twice in a phone conversation that Hannity’s claim was accurate: Federal agents had, in fact, provided security at the couple’s home.

Schwartz, who said he was “disheartened” by the felony charges, also told Salon that Mark McCloskey had personally arranged for additional security. He said that the McCloskeys needed the support, because they had received threats.

After telling Salon he would ask Mark McCloskey for more details, Schwartz changed his story, writing in a text message: “I do not have any information regarding who contracted for security at their home.”

“The federal government did not procure security for him,” Schwartz added.

However, when asked whether the federal government had provided security, Schwartz said he did not know and would not comment. Given multiple opportunities, Schwartz did not deny the claim.

In a follow-up call with another journalist from Salon, Patricia McCloskey declined to comment.

“I thought I put a call block on this,” she said.

A spokesperson for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department told Salon that it had monitored the July 3 protest but “cannot confirm who was on their property.”

The charges against the McCloskeys come after a lengthy joint investigation between Gardner’s office and the SLMPD, throughout which the McCloskeys have gone on a media blitz in what appears to be an effort to drum up support from Trump and his allies in conservative circles.

The McCloskeys took part in a virtual Trump campaign event Friday night, where they were interviewed by Kim Guilfoyle, the romantic partner of the president’s eldest son and a senior campaign official. Guilfoyle tested positive for COVID-19 on July 4.

“I thought I was going to die,” Mark McCloskey told Guilfoyle, describing the initial protest.

“I thought that within seconds we’d be overrun, they’d be in the house, they’d be setting fires, they’d be killing us,” he added.

Patricia McCloskey said the couple had called St. Louis police before arming themselves, but authorities said they received no such call, local CBS affiliate KMOV reported.

Reached for comment for this article, a spokesperson for Parson’s office referred Salon to the governor’s Twitter statement about Gardner’s charging decision.

Gov. Parson, who was previously sheriff of Polk from 1993-2004, has long been at odds with Gardner, the city’s top prosecutor and a Democratic elected official. In 2018, Gardner, who is Black, dropped invasion of privacy charges against Parson’s predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Eric Greitens, in exchange for his resignation amid fallout from an extramarital affair.

Parson, who had been elected lieutenant governor, now faces his first gubernatorial election in November. The former small-town sheriff has made it known that he plans to run on a law and order platform, and he has enlisted Trump and Attorney General William Barr as allies.

Earlier this month, Parson sent Barr a letter requesting federal assistance to combat a spate of violent crime in St. Louis, unbeknownst to the city’s mayor, who only learned of it later via Twitter.

Parson told Hannity on Monday that Trump had already sent more than 200 FBI agents to the state to help combat violent crime.

Comfort food for your eyes: Here are 7 easily bingeable sitcoms you haven’t seen

What, you haven’t written the modern equivalent of “King Lear” yet? You gave up on needlepoint and your herb garden died back in April? You’ve reached the point in all of this where your main form of recreation is staring at the walls? I know, me too. In another lifetime, we enjoyed a lengthy, satisfying era of prestige television, but we are in the age of comfort TV now. And those “New Girl” reruns are a finite commodity.

You’ve probably long ago worked your way through all the long-running, cheerful hit comedies we can all recite by heart. (One word: PIVOT.) You’ve likely also already discovered or rediscovered the critically acclaimed and the cult hits, from “Kim’s Convenience” to “Happy Endings” to “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23” to “The IT Crowd.” Your dark thoughts are always now just one push notification away.

So if you are currently running out of entertainment options and suddenly decided you want thought-provoking documentaries or topical dramas, perhaps with subtitles, I can’t help you out. If on the other hand you’re wondering, “What can I have in front of my eyes that I haven’t seen and won’t ask too much of me?” I have some suggestions. The following are series that will provide attractive people and gentle chuckles, the better to help you amicably kill a few hours of this hellscape time. Watch them while you’re folding your laundry or ordering takeout. But for God’s sake, don’t scroll through Twitter at the same time, or the sedative effects will be immediately canceled out.

 ”Crashing” (Netflix)

Ready for the (somewhat) lighter side of “Fleabag’s” Phoebe Waller-Bridge? Set in a condemned hospital where an artsy group of English millennials live as caretakers, 2016’s “Crashing” is somewhere at the “Crazy Ex Girlfriend” tier of comedy, equal parts absurd and emotional. It’s romantic, exuberant, original, and just the thing for anyone who’s ever tried to pass off their emoji pajamas as workplace apparel.

“Downward Dog” (for purchase on Amazon )

This charming 2017 ABC comedy was too good for this world. Starring the perfection that is Allison Tolman, “Downward Dog” follows the adventures of a Pittsburgh woman juggling career and romance — as seen through the eyes of her adoring, vacuum-cleaner-averse canine Martin. Canceled after just eight episodes, the show is weird, sharp and fresh, thanks in no small part to the droll narration of its co-creator Samm Hodges. “The fact that I need 14 hours of sleep, you know,” deadpans Martin, “is not something I should have to feel bad about.” So say we all, buddy.

“Champions” (Netflix)

Created by Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling, “Champions” will scratch your “Give me something ‘Mindy Project’-level, ensemble comedy” itch. Anders Holm is Vince, a Brooklyn gym owner whose life is upturned when a former flame (Mindy herself) drops off the child (Josie Totah) he never knew he had. It’s classically formulaic sitcom stuff, but the twist — an ex-jock suddenly learning to raise his gay, biracial, Bravo-watching kid — gives it freshness.

“Bajillion Dollar Propertie$” (Pluto TV – free!)

Aw, remember the defunct Seeso? The best original series of the failed comedy network was a fizzy parody of real estate porn like “Million Dollar Listing” and “Selling Sunset.” Comedy MVPs and podcasting royalty including “Bojack Horseman’s” Paul F. Tompkins and “Space Force’s” Tawny Newsome lead an agile cast (including “The Other Two” sibling superstar Drew Tarver; BTW watch “The Other Two!”) delivering dialogue credibly insane enough to delight reality TV fans — “I’d say my managerial style is hands off. . . . . but I have long fingers.”

“Us & Them” (Crackle)

The American version of co-creators James Corden and Ruth Jones’s beloved British series “Gavin & Stacey” has long been a television white whale. The show was scheduled to air on Fox back in 2013. Then the episode order was cut in half, then Fox opted not to even air what it had in the can. Why? It’s adorable!

The show finally saw the light of day in 2018, when it came to Crackle. Alexis Bledel and Jason Ritter star as long-distance colleagues turned long-distance lovers, both of whom come with an inevitable array of colorful friends and family. It’s a genial romance, with just enough goofiness from supporting players like Jane Kaczmarek and Michael Ian Black, as a warmly doting uncle who doles out rape alarms and knows exactly how many adult bodies could fit in the trunk of a car.

“Better Off Ted” (Hulu)

At the height of “Mad Men” mania, ABC unleashed a contemporary look at the glamour of corporate life, complete with its own handsome leading man (Jay Harrington) and icy blonde (and who’s icier or blonder than Portia de Rossi?) costar. But the fictional Veridian Dynamics, creator of products like “weaponized pumpkins” and dabbler in questionable human experiments, is no Sterling Cooper. A bracing workplace comedy, its “Jabberwocky” episode can hold its own beside “The Office’s” classic Sabre Pyramid presentation for elevating nonsensical business speak to pure poetry. “Imagine a way to do business that’s faster than a cheetah and more powerful than . . . another cheetah.”

“Sunnyside” (Hulu)

This “blink and you missed it” Kal Penn comedy launched on NBC just last September, and almost immediately found itself on the cancellation list. But if you like shows involving once somewhat mighty guys fumbling around with a new group of misfits (I’m looking at you, “Community.”) you’ll find plenty to enjoy as Penn’s former New York City councilman becomes a tutor to a diverse group of immigrants aspiring to become American citizens. Joel Kim Booster and Poppy Liu are perfection as a pair of ultra-rich, ultra-weird siblings, and when one frazzled character declares to the group that “I’m done cooking. I’m done living up to everyone’s expectations. Now shut up and drink your bean water,” it’s almost too relatable right now.

Author Kylie Cheung: As the “perpetrators of sexual violence,” men need to join the feminist fight

The past few years have largely felt like a setback for the cause of feminism, starting with the fact that Donald Trump, who is as unfit for the presidency as humanly possible, managed to beat the eminently qualified Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. But young author Kylie Cheung wants to help pave a path forward. In her new book, “A Woman’s Place: Inside the Fight for a Feminist Future,” Cheung lays out a vision for a feminism that can learn from those setbacks and use that experience to push for a better future.

Salon spoke with Cheung about being a young feminist in such perilous times and what it means to have a feminism that keeps going in the face of even some of the ugliest defeats. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re a young author trying to get publicity for your book during a once in a lifetime economic and social crisis, or at least I hope it’s just once in our lifetime. How are things working out for you? How is trying to promote the book going?

Actually, right now, I think a lot of the messages in the book have been more timely than ever. As we kind of live in this time where, I’d say even before 2016 there were a lot of really existential fights for women and people of color that were raging on. And then the 2016 election really seemed to bring all of that to the forefront, and then really ever since then, whether through these different elections, through fighting Kavanaugh’s appointment, through fighting so many different cruel policies. I think the truth is that there’s definitely going to be a lot of really painful outcomes.

The sole message of the book is that no single outcome really ends this fight of the feminist movement. The message of this book is that there’s no way to really lose other than giving up. I think if anything, it’s been more timely than ever.

You were in your first year of college when the 2016 election went down, which is certainly a shocking event at any age, but especially at such a young age. How did that election influence your views of politics and feminism?

It was definitely a big wake-up call. I was expecting Hillary Clinton to win, and her loss and my being blindsided by that really woke me to a lot of my own privileges that had blinded me to a lot of the realities within the country.

I definitely think in terms of the Trump administration being a big wake-up call. It raised my consciousness about a lot of the problems that were existing even before his election.

For example, ever since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there had been around 1,200 or so anti-abortion laws that had passed across the country since. Nearly 90% of U.S. counties are without abortion providers.

But I think about the consciousness-raising that it did for me and for a lot of young people, a lot of young women, to become aware of our power. And not just our power but the crucial need for us to be at the forefront of this fight, in particular, was definitely a big wake-up call.

You have a chapter titled “The Right to Bear Anger,” which explores how men have a lot more social permission to be angry than women. Even, and I’d say especially, when women have more right to be angry. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings, you argue, especially highlight how this is true. How is that so?

I definitely think the Kavanaugh hearings were just such a salient example of this, where if you look at his testimony juxtaposed with Dr. Ford, you could just see that, as a survivor of assault, she has managed to come with so much grace and so much dignity. And he, just in terms of being faced with some level of accountability, some level of being confronted about his own actions, there was just so much rage there. And I think the foundations of that rage were really just this male entitlement and this shock at being held in any way, even just a little bit accountable.

That is such a striking example of this disparity, in terms of who is given social permission to wield anger and how that anger is responded to in society.

Going back to the 2016 election, when you look at the anger of Trump supporters, that was given so much validation and that was so, I think, deeply legitimized by a lot of mainstream media. They would profile different Trump supporters but would never really profile, say, the many people of color, the women, the undocumented people, all of these different marginalized groups and what the election meant to them, where they had every right to be angry, to be infuriated by the system that’s so built against them.

There definitely are legitimate reasons for anger among different communities that have been left behind by our political system, by our economy. For people who are marginalized on the basis of their identity, there’s even more reason to be angry. And yet the only anger, it seems, that we are willing to shine a light on, be sympathetic to, in terms of what we are asked to pay attention to by a lot of mainstream media, would be white male Trump supporters in rural parts of the country.

When I was a younger writer starting out myself, in the ’00s, feminist bloggers like me were trying to start this conversation around sexual consent and “yes means yes” and all of that stuff. We got laughed at and told it was ridiculous to expect people, especially young people, to embrace the idea of enthusiastic consent, this idea that everyone in a sexual encounter should actively want to be there. So as a bonafide young person, I want to ask you, how does your generation actually think about these issues?

It’s really interesting, I think, to be this age at this time, to have been on a college campus as #MeToo was emerging. Even among a lot of men who would like to think of themselves as allies, and a lot of people who I think might have good intentions, there was just so much fear-mongering. This fear of, “Oh, now I have to think about how I might be making someone else feel, when I never had to do that before.”

This fear is not equitable to the fear of being raped and killed, which is something that young women, all women really, have had to live with all of our lives, and how that’s shaped so many different aspects of our everyday lives. Just in terms of walking alone at night!

For so long we’ve given men a pass to see themselves as not having a role in this when, in most cases, men are the perpetrators of sexual violence. They have the greatest role in this issue.

It’s really a time to call on young men to not just implicitly support women, but to explicitly and actively talk about rape culture and predatory behaviors with male friends. And for reporters to not just be asking women about sexual violence, but ask everyone about that. And to dispel this myth that the onus should fall solely on women to fight this issue when we are not the sources of it.

Trump himself said that this is such a “scary time for young men.” One of the things about that comment, and all the ways various conservatives have kind of echoed that idea, is really about reversing reality. In reality, men present a real danger to women. Most sexual predators are male, and victims come in all genders, but most of them are still female. It’s about reversing who’s the victim and the victimizer. Why do you think this myth that men are the victims of these false accusations and women are the real predators has such a hold on people?

This reminds me of that famous quote about how when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality seems like oppression.

#MeToo was such a good opportunity for a lot of media outlets to dig deeper into how this movement might have made even some women feel even just a little bit safer in their workplaces, or just a little bit more visible. Instead, we saw so many headlines about all of these different male celebrities who now felt afraid, or these studies about how male supervisors now felt scared to spend one-on-one time with female employees.

Just all of these different ways that the male perspective and male comfort were so prioritized in all of this, I think really speaks to how there’s always the sense that people who are in positions of privilege, if there’s even a little bit of a shift, that will be seen as just so oppressive toward them instead of celebrated as shifting power dynamics to favor people who have always been marginalized and always had to live in fear.

The Democratic primary started off in this promising way, with a lot of candidates of color and women and even a gay candidate. By the end, however, it was whittled down to two straight white men who are both older even than the Baby Boomers. And then it was just down to Joe Biden. So what happened here? Should we just give up all hope of a Democratic leadership that looks more like Democratic voters?

A deeply disappointing and deeply frustrating process. Even talking about sexism becomes such a liability for female politicians who are seen as weaponizing sexism, or seen as “playing the gender card.”

It really just goes back to the fact that there’s never going to be a singular outcome that will end this fight. For better or for worse. I think even if we had nominated a candidate who’s more representative of the shifting demographics, the work would obviously still need to continue. I think that a core message I try to speak out against in the book is that, even in these losses that are very difficult and painful, the organizing that we did, the consciousness and the awareness that we raised for the importance of having more representative leadership for our party, that lays the groundwork for winning future fights.

GOP meeting devolves into shouting match: Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan air grievances with Liz Cheney

A meeting between House Republicans on Tuesday reportedly got “heated” after several hardline conservatives went after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for her occasional criticisms of President Donald Trump.

Sources tell Politico reporter Melanie Zanona that Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Chip Roy (R-TX), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Jim Jordan (R-OH) all took turns calling out Cheney for assorted disagreements.

Roy, for instance, slammed Cheney for praising Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who has been frequently at odds with President Donald Trump over the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jordan, meanwhile, reportedly attacked Cheney “for all the times she has broke with Trump” while saying “it’d be better if their conference chair helped Trump instead of going after him.”

Biggs, meanwhile, “even accused Cheney of undermining their ability to win back the House & said if you don’t have something nice to say about Trump, then don’t say it at all,” reports Zanona, who described the meeting as “a full blown Freedom Caucus venting session/pile on.”

Cheney, for her part, reportedly stood her ground and defended both her praise of Fauci and criticisms of the president.

Feminists have warned us — and now another “men’s rights activist” turns to murder

When the son and husband of Esther Salas, a federal judge in New Jersey, were shot at home on Saturday evening by a man dressed as a Fed Ex driver, attention first focused on Salas’ role in a financial case involving Deutsche Bank and Jeffrey Epstein. Soon, however, it turned out that the assailant — who took the life of Daniel Anderl, Salas’s 20-year-old son — had no involvement in that case. Instead, he was Roy Den Hollander, an attorney and notorious “men’s rights” troll who had a long history of filing frivolous lawsuits trying to “prove” that men, not women, are the real victims of sex discrimination. After what appears to have been an attempted assassination of Salas, Den Hollander went home and killed himself.

Den Hollander’s previous cases involved his efforts to sue nightclubs for having “Ladies Nights,” where they charge women lower prices for admission and drinks, and to sue Columbia University simply for having a women’s studies program. He also accused his ex-wife, a Russian-born woman who dumped him once her green card application had been approved, of being part of a global crime syndicate that included her divorce lawyers, a bank in Cyprus, a New York police detective and a topless bar. (That case, unsurprisingly, was dismissed.) As a New Yorker profile in 2007 made clear, Den Hollander was obsessed with the idea that he was entitled to having younger women sexually available — or, in his words, “waiting to give delights, understanding and loyalty.” Since that wasn’t working out, he spiraled into tantrum and sued everyone in sight, desperately seeking prove that men are the real victims of oppression.

For much of Den Hollander’s career as a professional misogynist, liberal observers treated him as a joke. I certainly made fun of him at my former blog for his Ladies Night suits, as the guy who wanted to believe that “the stripper really likes him.” Den Hollander was once the butt of a joke on a segment for “The Colbert Report.” On Fox News, however, he was greeted as a hero, brought on to claim that women “are a suspect class” who “walk all over [men] in their stiletto heels.”

But this shooting is a sobering reminder of a grim reality, which is that the misogyny that Den Hollander was peddling can far too easily go dark and turn to violence. Cheered on by an online community of bitter woman-haters who blame feminism for all their woes, men like Den Hollander frequently turn to outright terrorism against institutions and communities who didn’t give them all the goodies to which they think their sex entitles them.

The case that Den Hollander had before Salas, a suit challenging the fact that Selective Service registration only applies to young men, was yet another feeble effort to prove that men are the victims of sex discrimination, even though there hasn’t been a draft in decades. Nonetheless, Salas actually allowed the case to go forward, even though Den Hollander called her a “lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama” on his website in 2019. The case was transferred to other lawyers last year.

Whatever the details of this tragic incident may be, the larger takeaway is obvious: Den Hollander was just the latest in a long line of men who would rather blame feminism than themselves for their personal failings, and who lash out violently at the world in acts of murder or terrorism.

The most famous of these, of course, was Elliot Rodger, who went on a 2014 shooting spree in Isla Vista, California, killing six people and injuring 14 others, apparently seeking revenge for his perception that “you girls have never been attracted to me.” Rodger identified as an “incel,” which is short for “involuntarily celibate” but better describes an ideology of men who believe that, because of feminism, they are being denied sex with women of the “hotness” caliber they believe they deserve.

There have been plenty more such attacks: Chris Harper-Mercer murdered nine people at an Oregon community college in 2017, citing Rodger as an influence. Scott Beierle shot up a yoga studio in Florida in 2018, killing two women and injuring four other people. Alek Minassian ran his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people and injuring 16, and also cited Rodger as an influence. Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda threw a 5-year-old boy over a railing at the Mall of America in a fit of outrage that women wouldn’t have sex with him. Earlier this year, a teenager who identified as an “incel” attacked women in a Toronto massage parlor, killing one. In May, 20-year-old “incel” Armando Hernandez live-streamed his shooting spree at an Arizona shopping mall, apparently targeting heterosexual couples. Just last month, another “incel” blew his hand off trying to make a bomb designed to kill “hot cheerleaders”.

Well before Rodger, there was George Sodini, who shot up a gym in suburban Pittsburgh in 2009, killing three women and injuring nine others. He was angry because — guess what! — he felt entitled to sex with the gym-toned women he saw there, and wasn’t getting any.

Den Hollander is also part of a long line of men who target judges and courts, believing that “the system” is out to get them because they’ve lost legal battles with ex-wives or have faced charges of violence against women.

One such man, Thomas Ball, set himself on fire outside a New Hampshire courthouse in 2011, apparently to protest his wife’s divorce proceedings and court rulings against him. In a posthumous manifesto mailed to a newspaper, he blamed those things on “the man-hating feminists” who allegedly run the government. Ball’s manifesto, however, hints at the real reasons: He admitted he had “slapped” his 4-year-old daughter badly enough to bust open her lip, which he considered a minor transgression but most normal people would view as child abuse.

Ball’s dramatic suicide became a rallying point for the “men’s rights” community, who saw him as a martyr to their cause, rather than a self-pitying, narcissistic, violent misogynist. Ball’s manifesto was posted on sites like A Voice for Men and his call to burn down courthouses was treated as inspirational.

This reaction to misogynist violence is standard in the world of “men’s rights” and “incels” and other online forums where men who hate women gather to talk about how they are society’s real victims. After Sodini’s murders, Tracy Clark-Flory, writing for Salon, found that the online world of “pick-up artists” — a related flavor of men who feel entitled to sex and are bitter they don’t get as much as they want — was sympathetic to this murderer, seeing him as a hapless victim instead of a vicious killer. Rodger’s long, self-pitying manifesto has become something of a Bible to the “incel” community, who often refer to him as “Saint Elliot.”

Despite all this, the media still tends to cover these acts of misogynist violence as isolated events perpetrated by “lone wolf” oddballs, instead of as lethal outbursts from a semi-organized movement that engages in “stochastic terrorism,” in which political leaders or movement activists deliberately use provocative and inciting language in hopes of inspiring their followers to commit acts of terrorism (while maintaining some shreds of plausible deniability).

(Let’s not forget the long history of violence against abortion providers, a different but related expression of male violence meant to control and punish women for wanting autonomy.)

Online misogynists are spread out over various websites and forums, but they are a discernible movement, just as surely as the “boogaloo” and other white supremacist movements that work in the same way. They have their own jargon, tropes and core beliefs — and they share an enthusiasm for celebrating individual acts of mayhem or terrorism, in hopes of encouraging more o.

But when Reddit recently brought down the hammer on hate speech, in reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement, getting rid of forums like The_Donald that traffic in racist hate speech, they mostly ignored the dozens of forums dedicated to fomenting misogynist hatred.

It’s easy to see why. As past coverage of Den Hollander’s career makes clear, men who hate women are too easily normalized in our society, and are too often the objects of pity and sympathy rather than seen as the bigots they are. Sympathy for the incel murderer has even reached the pages of the New York Times, as when conservative columnist writer Ross Douthat wrote pityingly of “the unhappiness of incels” and their exclusion from the sexual marketplace, instead of seeing them for what they are, misogynists outraged that women now have the right to say no.

Philosopher Kate Manne coined the term “himpathy” for such sympathetic reactions that center the feelings of men, even truly odious men, over those of women, who, after all, are still being subject to sexual harassment, sexual assault and domestic violence at alarming rates. While the himpathizers often present themselves as trying to find a solution to the problem — if we could only get those incels laid, maybe they wouldn’t hurt women! — in reality, this attitude only reinforces the real problem, which is male entitlement.

A man like Den Hollander was fun to laugh at, no doubt. His entitlement, as a middle-aged man who expected the sexual worship of college-aged girls, was undeniably hilarious. But his presence in forums like Fox News, still the nation’s highest-rated cable news network, demonstrated that there’s still considerable social support for his core belief — one shared by an increasingly bitter and violent online community — that women exist to serve men and that their reluctance to be servile is a violation of men’s rights. The #MeToo movement has done a lot in recent years to help dismantle this view, but we clearly have a long way to go.

Doctor who created cognitive test Trump brags about acing says questions were “supposed to be easy”

In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace that was filmed on Friday, July 17 and aired over the weekend, President Donald Trump bragged about his performance on a cognitive test and challenged former Vice President Joe Biden — the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — to take the same test. Trump insisted that parts of the test were quite difficult, but according to the doctor who developed the test, it was meant to be easy.

Developed by Dr. Ziad Nasreddine in 1996, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment or MoCA test is designed to screen for early signs of Alzheimer’s or dementia. Wallace, during his interview with Trump, reminded the president that MoCA was “not the hardest test” and noted some of the questions. But Trump disagreed, insisting that parts of MoCA were, in fact, challenging and urged Biden to “take a test right now.”

In an interview with Market Watch, Nasreddine confirmed that he didn’t intend for MoCA to be difficult. Nasreddine told Market Watch, “This is not an IQ test or the level of how a person is extremely skilled or not. The test is supposed to help physicians detect early signs of Alzheimer’s, and it became very popular because it was a short test — and very sensitive for early impairment.”

Nasreddine discussed some of the questions with Market Watch, including one in which the person taking the test is asked to draw an analog clock and depict a specific time — explaining, “You need planning and executive function and spatial skills to space the numbers on the clock correctly . . . There are ‘traps’ that patients who have cognitive impairments fall into with this test.”

Other examples of MoCA questions, according to Market Watch’s Nicole Lyn Pesce, might range from the person being asked to describe the similarities between a watch and a ruler or being asked to identify some animals depicted in illustrations.

I'm a psychologist. I've administered this test (the MOCA) hundreds, if not thousands of times. Let me tell you, bragging about acing this test is the equivalent of bragging that you tied your own shoes this morning. https://t.co/ldzfcq9RGk

— chuuch (@ch000ch) July 19, 2020

I see the president is bragging about “acing” the MoCA again. I’m a doctor, we use this test all the time. You can’t “ace” the MoCA. You either get perfect or we take away your driver’s license.

— Ty Berry (@tberry3) July 19, 2020

Pesce notes that Nasreddine and his “peers are growing increasingly concerned that the test might not be as accurate anymore, because too many elements have been shared online. This allows people to potentially practice the questions to perform better on the exam.”

Nasreddine told Market Watch that if someone performs poorly on MoCA, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person has early onset Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. However, Nasreddine noted that MoCA “is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment.”

“The purpose is to detect impairment,” Nasreddine explained. “It’s not meant to determine if someone has extremely high levels of abilities.”

Lifetime’s “Surviving Jeffrey Epstein” trailer highlights survivors and Ghislaine Maxwell

On the one-year anniversary of disgraced financier and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein’s death by suicide, Lifetime will debut a two-part investigative documentary “Surviving Jeffrey Epstein.”

Following the impact of Lifetime’s “Surviving R. Kelly” and “Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning,” the new Epstein documentary special will tell the stories of eight survivors over the course of four hours, while also investigating how the New York billionaire used his connections to the rich and famous to both manipulate young girls and conceal his abuse from the general public.

It’s directed by award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (“The Preppy Murder,” “Reversing Roe,” “The Devil Came on Horseback”) and executive produced by Shura Davison and Gena McCarthy.

This Lifetime special follows the May Netflix docuseries “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.” As Salon reported, that series — which asserts that Epstein abused at least 36 underage girls — also centered the voices of Epstein’s survivors as they relive some of the worst experiences of their lives.

Lifetime’s “Surviving Epstein” includes some of the same voices featured in “Filthy Rich,” but the newly released trailer also promises “new survivor stories” and “new secrets exposed.” It also promises to focus on some of the individuals in Epstein’s orbit who enabled his pattern of abuse.

“Ghislaine knew exactly how to pull you in,” one survivor says in the trailer, referring to Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell, who was arrested in New Hampshire by FBI agents on July 2. It is anticipated that she will remain in custody until her trial in 2021.

According to the indictment, Maxwell “assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.”

According to a press release, Lifetime has partnered with Rise, a national nonprofit organization, to run a special PSA during the airings of the documentary to encourage other survivors of sexual assault and abuse, to help establish Survivors Bills of Rights in their states. This state-to-state effort builds upon the the federal Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bills of Rights Act, which was signed into law in 2016 and established statutory rights in federal code for survivors of sexual assault and rape.

Through the law, survivors of sexual assault are given the right to have a rape kit preseved for the length of a case’s statue of limitations and be notified of the kit’s destruction. The intent of the federal bill was to serve as a model for states to follow.

Lifetime will also run a PSA from anti-sexual assault organization RAINN to provide hotline resources for those in need.

“Surviving Jeffrey Epstein” airs over two nights, Sunday and Monday, Aug. 9 & 10, at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.

Leaked memo: Trump administration authorized domestic surveillance of protests to protect statues

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized domestic surveillance to identify threats against monuments and statues in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting vandalism against federal memorials, according to a department memo obtained by Lawfare.

The document, issued by the DHS Office of Intelligence & Analysis, described “Activities in Furtherance of Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, Statues and Combatting Recent Criminal Violence.”

The document says DHS personnel are “collecting and reporting on various activities in the context of elevated threats targeting monuments, memorials and statues.” It also provides legal guidance on the “expanded intelligence activities necessary to mitigate the significant threat to homeland security” posed by threats to statues.

Senior DHS official Ken Cuccinelli appeared to refer to intelligence gathering on protests during a Monday interview with CNN.

“We got intelligence about planned attacks on federal facilities,” he said in response to questions about the administration’s controversial deployment of federal authorities to Portland. “If we get the same kind of intelligence in other places about threats to other facilities or officers, we would respond the same way.”

But the memo “makes clear that the authorized intelligence activity covers significantly more than just planned attacks on federal personnel or facilities,” wrote Benjamin Wittes, a Lawfare editor, and Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at the University of Texas School of Law. “It appears to also include planned vandalism of Confederate (and other historical) monuments and statues, whether federally owned or not.”

The document provides legal guidance to personnel detailing what kind of intelligence collection is appropriate. The document was issued after Trump signed an executive order on June 26 reasserting that the federal government would prosecute “any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes or desecrates a monument, memorial or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property.”

The order directed Attorney General William Barr to work with local law enforcement to pursue investigations and prosecutions of alleged monument and statue vandals “regardless of whether such structures are situated on federal property.”

Though the order was “widely mocked for not doing anything” since a 2003 statute already made it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to damage any “any structure, plaque, statue or other monument on public property commemorating the service of any person or persons in the armed forces of the United States,” Wittes and Vladeck wrote, the DHS appears to be “interpreting the June executive order as defining a new homeland security priority — one that actually justifies intelligence collection.”

The document says the legal guidance is “specific to expanded intelligence activities necessary to mitigate the significant threat to homeland security articulated in the president’s executive order of June 26, 2020.”

It specifically authorizes personnel to “engage in physical surveillance, the use of mail covers and the use of monitoring devices only to the extent permitted by and consistent with [rules limiting their use to counterintelligence investigations].”

“I&A personnel are not permitted to engage in electronic surveillance or unconsented physical searches,” it adds. “Use of these techniques within the United States will be coordinated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

This means, Wittes and Vladeck wrote, that protesters can “reasonably expect that there will be ongoing DHS collection and analysis of public source information” and likely the social media posts of demonstrators.

The document states that this intelligence collection is authorized in response to threats of violence and threats to damage government facilities. But it also adds that it can be used in response to “threats to damage or destroy any public monument, memorial or statue (MMS).”

The memo clarifies that the surveillance cannot be used “for the sole purpose of monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment or the lawful exercise of other constitutional or legal rights, or for the purpose of suppressing or burdening criticism or dissent.” Officials must “establish reasonable belief” that the intelligence collection supports one of the stated missions.

“You may collect information about (i) threats to MMS; (ii) individuals or groups that pose such threats, or their tactics, techniques or procedures (TTPs); and (iii) information that otherwise informs an overall assessment that threats to MMS will materialize,” the memo says, adding that “persons merely engaging in non-violent protest activities near MMS or making hyperbolic statements about MMS likely do not constitute a threat to MMS.”

A “‘threat to MMS’ means the infliction of any damage sufficient to impede the purpose or function of the MMS,” the memo continues.

The document goes on to add that any information collected which does not relate to one of the stated missions must be purged within 180 days. Information retained by the agency can be disseminated to other federal, state and local law enforcement in advance of any of the stated missions.

The memo drew concerns from legal experts.

“It is unpersuasive, because it should be obvious that vandalism and other damage to monuments, even federal monuments, does not threaten the security of the homeland to any greater extent than most property crimes,” Wittes and Vladeck wrote. “The premise is alarming, because it uses the cover of minor property damage, whether to federal property or otherwise, to justify intelligence gathering against ordinary Americans — most of whom have nothing to do with the underlying property damage, and many of whom are engaged in the most American of activities: peacefully protesting their government.”

Jake Tapper calls out Fox News host Brian Kilmeade for sharing fake tweet linked to AOC: “Good Lord”

Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade was blasted on Monday for spreading a lie about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Kilmeade tweeted a photoshopped image designed to look like a tweet from Ocasio-Cortez, who is also known as AOC.

The tweet claimed it was “vital” for governors to maintain coronavirus restrictions to stop Trump from being re-elected.

“Is this what [President Donald Trump] has been saying?” Kilmeade asked in a since-deleted tweet, that was captured by the Internet Archieve.

The tweet has been debunked by the fact-checking site Snopes.

“This tweet image was a fabrication, however, and not something posted by Ocasio-Cortez. It does not appear in her Twitter timeline, nor was it recorded by databases that capture and preserve deleted tweets,” Snopes reported. “Moreover, although the tweet was supposedly ‘shared over 20,000 times,’ we could find no instances whatsoever of the original tweet’s having been shared or commented upon at all. It exists only as a screenshot of a faux tweet posted to a private Facebook group.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper corrected Kilmeade for pushing the debunked conspiracy theory.

“That’s not real, Brian,” Tapper noted. “It was debunked a long time ago.”

“Good Lord,” Tapper added.

That’s not real, Brian. It was debunked a long time ago. Good Lord.https://t.co/T4A4Iccsn5 https://t.co/JB5vG6Cdm1

— Jake Tapper 🦅 (@jaketapper) July 21, 2020

As of publication, Kilmeade has not apologized on Twitter for spreading fake news.

We all know Donald Trump is preparing to rig or steal the election — but exactly how?

By now, it’s relatively easy to forecast Donald Trump’s tyrannical moves. There are no advanced Frank Underwood-style chess gambits in play here. It’s barely Candyland, despite the fascistic goals involved. Trump is, on top of it all, a simple-minded, easily predictable Golgothan who telegraphs every move of self-preservation. Sometimes it can be reassuring to have a sense of where he’s going with his repetitious blurts. At other times it leaves us with this perpetual sense of instability, knowing what might be lurking around the corner. The November election fits horrifyingly into the latter category.

I believe I know how Trump will try to interfere with the process as well as the outcome, and it’s more than a little unnerving, especially given the cataclysmic stakes this time. Warning: This is a bit of a horror show, so hang on tight. Oh, and everything that follows presumes a close race, with the advantage leaning in Joe Biden’s direction.

We’re all brutally aware that every move Trump makes is aimed squarely at re-election. If he’s not re-elected, he could face criminal prosecution and dozens of lawsuits after he returns to being a private citizen. He knows better than anyone that the presidency is the only thing saving him either from the slammer or from an underground escape to a non-extradition country.

As part of his herky-jerky maneuvers to evade legal jeopardy, we also know he’s willing to sentence hundreds of thousands of Americans to death, and millions more on top of that to suffer from permanent pre-existing conditions, due to his near-genocidal indifference to the pandemic — indifference aimed at manipulating the stock market and thereby boosting in his re-election chances. It’s a matter of historical record that he was impeached by Congress and put on trial for trying to cheat in the election, while refusing to discourage Russia from cyber-attacking the process again.

You get the point. He’s capable of doing anything in order to win, even risking his legal future. But none of the above tactics directly addresses how he might handle the actual process of suppressing and overturning votes.

Like a petulant boy who tosses a board game across the room when he’s losing, Trump is going to hurl the election process into absolute chaos. Here’s how: He’ll continue to suppress voting by discouraging absentee voting, while benefiting from new and existing roadblocks to in-person voting. Then, on and after Election Day, he’ll sue to try and stop absentee ballots from being counted.

You might have seen the unintentionally hilarious video of Trump on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend. During his sweaty, lie-filled exchange with Chris Wallace, the president once again repeated, “I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election.” He also said that he might not accept the outcome of the election. “I have to see,” Trump said when pressed on the question. Absentee voting, also known as “mail-in” voting, will be his primary target in his plan to derail the election. (Point of order: all mail-in ballots are absentee, including the president’s ballots. I will therefore use the term “absentee” from this point forward.)

Election Day won’t be a “day” at all this year. In fact, some estimates suggest we won’t know the winner of the presidential election, let alone contested Senate and House races, for a week or more after Nov. 3, mainly due to the record number of absentee ballots used during pandemic conditions. It’ll take days to electronically tabulate all those votes, and maybe weeks for hand-counted ballots in some precincts. I’m not even factoring in the possibility of recanvassing or actual recounts.

So far, 33 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of voting by mail without an excuse for one’s absence. (Oregon has conducted all elections by mail since 1998, with no significant problems. Colorado and Washington state have adopted universal vote-by-mail more recently.) By the way, the absentee voting states include Florida, where Trump will be voting by mail this year — again, with no excuse needed. The other 17 states require an excuse, but at least some of those will likely change the rules before November, eliminating the need for an excuse.

The main focus of Trump’s shrieking about absentee voting, of course, is to establish a hearts-and-minds framework to support legal challenges against those ballots. To that end, he’s routinely exploiting the bully pulpit to manufacture doubt about the reliability of absentee voting. From there, he’s capable of launching a series of lawsuits against boards of elections — perhaps in every state where absentee ballots are used, or just in states with margins too close to call. As long as he continues to hammer his loyalists about the evils of absentee voting between now and Election Day, they’ll be increasingly likely to back him up during the actual process, organizing demonstrations and maybe a few “Brooks Brothers riots” not unlike Election 2000.

Any and all swing states will be ripe for legal challenges — not because of actual election or voter fraud but simply because Trump believes there’s fraud taking place. (Or, to be more accurate, because he claims to believe that.)

The other point is to discourage the use of absentee ballots, with the broader goal of convincing pro-Trump state officials to roll back existing absentee rules. After all, it’s much more difficult to monkey around with absentee votes that, by definition, include a paper trail. On the other hand, in-person votes cast on electronic voting machines are more susceptible to manipulation and hacking, whether by Russian agents or someone else, and we all know about Trump’s business partners in Moscow and their track record with American elections. In his desperation, Trump will be eager to meddle with every voting format, covering all his bases.

Challenge after challenge could rocket-propel the entire election back into the hands of the Supreme Court, home of the infamous Bush v. Gore decision, and there’s no guarantee that Chief Justice John Roberts will swing the way we hope he will. Irrespective of where Trump’s legal challenges land, he will absolutely use the courts as a delaying action, making for a hell of a long process at a time when the patience of the American people is practically nonexistent.

Electors are supposed to cast their ballots on Dec. 14, based on the results of the popular vote. If there’s an actual declared winner by that date, I’ll be shocked. Trump’s legal challenges will be thick and he’s shown zero compunction to give up. (See also his relentless legal challenges to protect his tax returns from prosecutors and congressional oversight.)

It’s also possible that Trump’s indefinite deployment of federal stormtroopers in selected cities will discourage some voters from turning out. Trump’s screeching has also suggested that he might order ICE and CBP goons to monitor polling places, which could discourage Latino citizens or other recent immigrants from voting.

One more thing: As the days following the election descend into chaos, it wouldn’t shock me if Trump simply declared victory before all the votes are counted. That won’t mean much in the grand scheme, but it will further incite his people and worsen the chaos.

I don’t know how all this will end, but I feel relatively secure in forecasting the mayhem. Honestly, as with everything Trump, I hope I’m wrong and this election wraps up without a glitch. But given King Joffrey the Flaccid’s actions lately, especially with his contra-constitutional deployment of unidentified soldiers to disappear protesters from the streets, it would be foolish to count on a smooth ride. The absolute best strategy for the Democratic Party, and indeed all Normals, is to prepare for a bloody mess before we have a winner. The party ought to be fully lawyered up in anticipation of Trump’s psycho-bombs detonating at polling places and in state capitals across the country. Don’t be blindsided.

I think we can all agree that Donald Trump will not go quietly, or accept defeat with any measure of dignity. Knowing the stunts he’s likely to pull, and preparing accordingly, is half the battle.

85 infants tested positive for COVID-19 in a single Texas county where at least one child died

A top county health official in Texas revealed on Friday that dozens of infants had tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Texas has been forced to pause its reopening after seeing an explosion in new infections in recent weeks. The state has reported more than 300,000 confirmed cases as the number of new infections rose to more than 14,000 daily and deaths surged to more than 100 per day.

Annette Rodriguez, the director of public health for Corpus Christi Nueces County, revealed last week that 85 infections in the county have been in infants.

“We currently have 85 babies under the age of one year in Nueces County that have all tested positive for COVID-19,” she said. “These babies have not even had their first birthday yet. Please help us stop the spread of this disease.”

Nueces County Judge Barbara Canales, later clarified that the number “reflects the cumulative total” since March and not a “sudden surge of 85 infants testing positive.”

Canales said Rodriguez was “using the statistic to illustrate that no one is naturally immune to this virus.”

“While the elderly and those with existing medical conditions are at greater risk of illness and death, anyone can get the virus, from the elderly to infants, and without regard to race, gender or economic status,” she said.

She added that “one child under the age of one has died,” though the cause of death had not been determined.

Texas has reported 125 total confirmed infections among children under 1 year old, 537 confirmed cases among children 1-9 years old and 1,409 cases among those 10-19 years old. Data among children is limited, because many are asymptomatic and not tested.

Rodriguez said the county has had an explosion in recent cases. She revealed that 38% of recent tests came back positive, even though experts say a rate as low as 10% means there is not nearly enough testing to measure the full extent of the outbreak.

“This rate must be lowered if we are going to be successful in lowering the number of hospitalizations and lowering the number of people that we’re losing to the virus,” she said. “The next two weeks are critical in slowing the spread of COVID-19.”

“We desperately need you to help lower the transmission of this virus,” she added. “Stay home.”

The announcement came after Texas reversed its requirement for schools to reopen at the start of the fall semester, delaying the move by at least four weeks.

Canales said Friday that she “wholeheartedly” supported the order.

“We are at a tipping point in our hospitals and in our ICU capacity,” she said. “I believe we are at a breaking point with sufficient medical staff to maintain those beds and with medical supplies.”

More than 500 children at Texas child cares have tested positive for COVID-19.

Other states, like Florida, have pushed forward with plans to reopen schools next month despite cases and deaths continuing to rise. Florida has reported more than 23,000 confirmed infections in children under 18. At least four have died and 246 were hospitalized.

To add more context, here's a chart showing the rise in Florida children under 18 contracting COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/yZNOq1uJU5

— Ryan Bass (@Ry_Bass) July 20, 2020

Though children are less likely to become seriously ill from the virus, there have been extensive concerns about them spreading the virus to teachers, school staff, parents and throughout their communities.

A large new study in South Korea found that children under 10 are less likely to transmit the disease, but children between 10 and 19 spread the disease as much as adults do.

“I fear that there has been this sense that kids just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” Michael Osterhollm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, told The New York Times. “There will be transmission.”

Though younger children are less likely to spread COVID-19, they still transmit the disease at about 50% of the rate as adults.

“Young children may show higher attack rates when the school closure ends, contributing to community transmission of COVID-19,” the study said.

Despite these concerns, President Donald Trump and Republican governors have continued to insist that it is more important to reopen schools than to contain the spread of the disease.

“These kids have got to get back to school,” Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said on Friday. “They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

Thousands of small business owners have not gotten crisis loans the government promised them

A $360 billion stimulus program that offers disaster relief to small businesses has been hobbled by delays and confusion, leaving millions of applicants harmed by the coronavirus pandemic waiting months for grants and loans — if the funds ever came at all.

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, or EIDL (pronounced “idle”), was supposed to give small businesses grants and low-cost loans to help with the economic fallout from COVID-19. Though EIDL has gotten less attention than the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program, 8 million small businesses have applied since it was opened to coronavirus-related applications in March. Unlike PPP, the EIDL loans come directly from the government and small businesses can use them for six months’ worth of general operating expenses, not just payroll.

But the Small Business Administration took months to process the loans, with an average wait of 41 days, according to congressional testimony from the official in charge of the program, Associate Administrator James Rivera. At a July 1 hearing, Rivera said the SBA has stepped up its pace and was now processing applications in five days, with 99% of approved funds deposited.

“We’re 99% disbursed,” Rivera said at the hearing. “That’s money in their bank.”

That’s at odds, however, with a nationwide survey conducted on July 6 and 7 by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which found that many applicants had not received promised funds. Of the business owners who said they applied for EIDL, 67% said they’d been approved but only 55% said they’d received the funds. About a quarter said they were still waiting to hear if their loan was approved. The survey was sent to 300,000 small business owners, and 615 responded.

The SBA declined to make any executives available for an interview to clarify questions about the EIDL program. An agency spokeswoman, Carol Chastang, didn’t respond to questions about the apparent discrepancy between Rivera’s testimony and the NFIB survey.

Some of the discrepancy could be the result of widespread confusion about the program, according to NFIB’s research director, Holly Wade. She said NFIB heard from many applicants who didn’t realize they had applied for a loan when requesting a grant, thought the grant was the loan or figured they had done something wrong when they didn’t hear anything from the SBA for months. “The lack of communication proved very confusing and stressful for many EIDL applicants, which is reflected in the incongruent survey data and statements from the SBA,” Wade said.

Out of $360 billion available, the EIDL program has lent $130 billion so far, leaving $230 billion remaining, Rivera said at the hearing. ProPublica and other news organizations are suing the SBA to obtain EIDL data that the agency has yet to disclose.

Jaja Chen, the co-owner of Waco Cha bubble tea shop in Waco, Texas, applied for an EIDL advance and loan on March 29 and was approved in June, but she still hasn’t received the money. A local SBA official told Chen’s company that the agency was having trouble processing direct deposit information.

“The system had a temporary glitch that affected initial disbursements,” the local representative, Sean Smith, said in an email to Chen’s company. “There is a chance that some people got overlooked for the initial disbursement and the [SBA] is trying to go through the apps to see that everyone that is due an initial disbursement will get one.”

Smith didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. Asked about the “glitch,” Chastang didn’t address it. “The EIDL Advance program is providing millions of dollars in relief for America’s small business owners,” she said.

Between the loss of income and restrictions on food service, Chen had to delay the opening of her storefront and reconfigure her business for to-go orders.

“We can’t just continue waiting,” Chen said. “We are very thankful that despite the federal issues we have been able to actually continue to grow our business and recoup some of our losses through creating new ideas and concepts.”

EIDL has existed for decades and typically helps businesses struck by natural disasters like hurricanes or floods. It’s never been used for a nationwide emergency before. Rivera said the agency is now processing as much as $24 billion a week, compared to $11 billion for all loans arising from Hurricane Katrina.

While Congress authorized the SBA to provide grants of up to $10,000 and loans of up to $2 million, the agency capped the grants at $1,000 per employee and the loans at $150,000. The SBA never announced the limits and didn’t publicly acknowledge their existence until the July 1 hearing, leading to widespread confusion among business owners about why they received less money than expected.

“We didn’t communicate ahead of time, and in hindsight we probably should have,” Rivera said at the hearing, as lawmakers recited constituents’ complaints.

Rivera said the SBA imposed the caps to conserve cash since it didn’t have enough funding for all the applications it received. “We would have run out of money,” Rivera said at the hearing.

However, the administration did not request more funding for EIDL in April when it asked Congress to replenish the PPP program. Half of the 8 million applications for EIDL came in the first two weeks.

Chastang didn’t respond to a question about why the SBA didn’t ask for more funding if it determined there wasn’t enough. She said “most applicants will not be affected by the limit” because loan amounts are based on six months of business needs and the average loan is only $62,000. However, the cap contributed to lowering the average loan size; at the hearing, Rivera revealed that 19% of applicants sought more than $150,000.

In April, the SBA shutdown EIDL applications while it overhauled software and added thousands of staff through a contract with Rocket Loans. When the SBA reopened its online portal, it accepted applications from agricultural businesses only. Farm businesses were newly eligible for EIDL assistance, but they also have access to subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Rivera, at the hearing, didn’t say why the SBA decided to prioritize farmers, simply calling it “an agency determination.”

“Congress gave us the authority to make loans to farmers,” he said.

That answer didn’t satisfy the committee chairwoman, Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y. “But Congress didn’t give you the authority to shut down the portal to every other borrower injured by COVID-19,” she shot back.

The EIDL portal reopened for non-farm businesses on June 15. Chastang said, “SBA reopened the EIDL application portal on a limited basis to agricultural enterprises only in order to provide farmers and ranchers an opportunity to apply for and receive EIDL assistance that they were previously not eligible to receive.”

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What’s the matter with Iowa? Gov. Kim Reynolds turns Hawkeye State into Trump’s petri dish

On the same day that Iowa marked its highest number of COVID-19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic, after three weeks of rapid increase, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds defended her refusal to pass a statewide mask requirement and issued a proclamation mandating that all public schools provide in-person classes within weeks.

Employing the Orwellian rhetoric of the Trump administration, Reynolds hailed the “important milestones in our recovery,” just as an unpublished report from the White House Coronavirus Task Force ranked Iowa as one of 18 “red zone” states that lacked stringent enough mask rules and social-distancing regulations.

It gets stranger: Iowans can’t even visit Chicago now, according to a new emergency travel rule imposed by the Chicago Department of Public Health, unless they agree to a 14-day quarantine.

Iowa is not just a state in denial — it’s quickly descendng into a state of negligence.

On a state level, Iowa’s testing procedures have been wracked with delays and errors. En route to work with the governor and the legislature, two state lawmakers had to retake their coronavirus tests, due to “damaged” samples. Last week, state auditor Rob Sands issued a report that found Iowa’s no-bid contract with an out-of-state company violates state law through its four-step rerouting of test results, which are reportedly sent first to Utah before reaching Iowa health officials, and cause an “unnecessary risk of error, equipment failure, maladministration, [and] outright falsification.”

But it’s not just incompetence that plagues Iowa — or the mind-boggling antics of a right-wing legislature intent on passing the most extreme laws on abortion and guns that sporadically push our state into the national headlines. (In case you missed it, even blind people have a right to own and use guns in Iowa, according to a 2011 state law.)

Iowa has become the petri dish of the Trump White House’s reckless policies.

When the White House issued an executive order in late April, invoking the Defense Production Act to keep open all meatpacking plants during the worst moment of the pandemic outbreak in the industry, Reynolds flew to the White House within days to pass on her “sincere thanks.”

Even as the virus ravaged meatpacking plants in Iowa, Trump and Vice President Pence hailed Reynolds and her state as a “success story” for testing and mitigation. Our governor’s glowing response: “We’ve turned the corner.”

A week later, Iowa meatpacking plants ranked the worst in the nation in an independent assessment. With more than 1,300 cases, a single meatpacking plant in Waterloo, Iowa, still ranks in the top 15 worst clusters, according to an analysis by the New York Times. Families of three deceased meatpackers are now suing the Tyson company for knowingly and intentionally putting “profits over the health, safety and well-being of their Waterloo employees.”

When the White House demanded last week that all children attend school in the fall, contradicting Centers for Disease Control guidance, Reynolds responded within hours, jettisoning her long-time advocacy for local control and rejecting local district policies in Des Moines, Iowa City and other cities. Instead, she demanded that “all state agencies, school districts, and other local governmental bodies and agencies shall take all efforts to prepare to safely welcome back students and teachers to school in-person this fall.”

When the Trump administration reneged on promises to include exemptions for ethanol in the final renewable fuel standard last December, angering Iowa corn farmers, Reynolds deflected any criticism of the White House, instead placing the blame on the Environmental Protection Agency.

Last spring, Reynolds couldn’t even bring herself to defend the state’s impressive wind energy policies when Trump visited the state and famously declared that the wind turbines “cause” cancer. Reynolds crafted a painstakingly nonsensical response: It wasn’t “her place” to counter the president, she said. “You know how those things change — one year coffee is good for you, the next year coffee causes cancer. I mean, that’s just what happens.”

No, things don’t just happen in Iowa. We’re used to a lot of political doublespeak and crap. (A research engineer with the University of Iowa recently found that the state’s nearly 24 million hogs produced more fecal waste per square mile than the entire state of California; in a state of 3 million people, the porcine population pumped out waste equivalent to that produced by 83.7 million.)

When the governor’s car recently struck a Black Lives Matter protester in Des Moines, Reynolds called it an appropriate action.

As executive of one of the few states to refuse to enact a COVID-19 lockdown or issue statewide mask requirements, Reynolds likes to say she “believes in Iowans.” Last week, though, the longtime spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Health was forced out of office, thanks to her efforts to provide more information to journalists. “Response to this pandemic has become political and I think we’ve seen that all across the country,” lamented Polly Carver-Kimm, who had spent 12 years in her role as the state spokesperson.

But playing politics with wind turbines and pigs and corn, notwithstanding Iowa’s devastating role in contaminating the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” has its limits when a failing state government requires your children to attend school in a time of a deadly pandemic.

In May, Reynolds made national news with her bizarre disclaimer that we couldn’t afford to “prioritize lives over livelihoods.” She insisted business must go on.

But the lives of children are our priorities. Iowa’s governor may want to make our children the experimental subjects in Donald Trump’s heartland petri dish, but Iowans won’t stand for it anymore.

Robert Reich: Trump’s rush to reopen America is causing a COVID resurgence

Donald Trump said that June’s jobs report, which showed an uptick, proves the economy is “roaring back.”

Rubbish. The Labor Department gathered the data during the week of June 12, when America was reporting 25,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day. By the time the report was issued, that figure was 55,000.

The economy isn’t roaring back. Just over half of working-age Americans have jobs now, the lowest ratio in over 70 years. What’s roaring back is Covid-19.

Until it’s tamed, the economy doesn’t stand a chance.

The surge in cases isn’t because America is doing more tests for the virus, as Trump contends. Cases are rising even where testing is declining. Deaths have resumed their gruesome ascent.

The surge is occurring because America reopened before Covid-19 was contained.

Trump was so intent on having a good economy by Election Day that he resisted doing what was necessary to contain the virus. He left everything to governors and local officials, then warned that the “cure” of closing the economy was “worse than the disease.” Trump even called on citizens to “liberate” their states from public health restrictions.

Yet he still has no national plan for testing, contact tracing and isolating people with infections.

It would be one thing if every other rich nation in the world botched it as badly as has America. But even Italy — not always known for the effectiveness of its leaders or the pliability of its citizens — has contained the virus and is reopening without a resurgence.

There was never a conflict between containing Covid-19 and getting the economy back on track. The first was always a prerequisite to the second. By doing nothing to contain the virus, Trump has not only caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths but put the economy into a stall.

The uptick in jobs in June was due almost entirely to the hasty reopening, which is now being reversed. Across America, a vast re-closing is underway, as haphazard as was the reopening.

In the biggest public health emergency in US history, in which nearly 136,000 have already lost their lives, still no one is in charge.

Brace yourself. Not only will the virus take many more lives in the months ahead, but millions of Americans are in danger of becoming destitute. Extra unemployment benefits enacted by Congress in March are set to end July 31. About one in five people in renter households are at risk of eviction by September 30. Delinquency rates on mortgages have more than doubledsince March.

An estimated 25 million Americans have lost or will lose employer-provided health insurance. America’s fragile childcare system is in danger of collapse, with the result that hundreds of thousands of working parents will not be able to return to work even if jobs are available.

What is Trump and the GOP’s response to this looming catastrophe? Nothing. Senate Republicans are trying to ram through a $740 billion defense bill while ignoring legislation to provide housing and food relief.

They are refusing to extend extra unemployment benefits beyond July, saying the benefits are keeping Americans from returning to work. In reality, it’s the lack of jobs.

Trump has done one thing, though. He’s asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. If the court agrees, it will end health insurance for 23 million more Americans and give the richest 0.1% a tax cut of about $198,000 a year.

This is sheer lunacy. The priority must be to get control over this pandemic and help Americans survive it, physically and financially. Anything less is morally indefensible.

Why is a right-wing flack and Roger Stone ally in charge of Dr. Fauci’s schedule?

Last week the Washington Post published a report titled “Fauci is sidelined by the White House as he steps up blunt talk on pandemic,” which revealed that President Trump had not sought the counsel of the government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in more than a month.

But as the Trump administration has strayed from the advice of many of its scientists and public health experts, the White House has moved to sideline Fauci, scuttled some of his planned TV appearances and largely kept him out of the Oval Office for more than a month even as coronavirus infections surge in large swaths of the country.

The 2,500-word report only briefly touches on the official who does that scuttling: a man named Michael Caputo, a 2016 Trump campaign aide who has been described as a conspiracy theorist with racist views and is closely allied with former Trump adviser Roger Stone.

It’s not clear when Caputo took control of Fauci’s media calendar. In a brief conversation with Salon, he replied, “Weeks ago.” Asked if he could ballpark how many weeks that was, Caputo replied, “No.”

The administration hired Caputo as deputy press secretary for Health and Human Services sometime in early to mid-April, the month the coronavirus was to “miraculously” disappear, according to the president.

In reality, it was the month that reports about Trump’s displeasure with Fauci began to surface. Caputo deleted more than 1,000 of tweets in early April, many of which were graphic or patently offensive, suggesting he was not expecting to be hired at the time.

Officials have suggested to Salon, in the context of Fauci’s recent media appearances, that if HHS were indeed trying to silence the longtime public servant, it’s not doing a good job of it.

It’s unlikely that the administration could silence Fauci outright without drawing intense public backlash, but Caputo has selectively muzzled the eminent disease expert, especially when he darkens or contradicts White House messaging. Per the Post:

The tension between the White House and Fauci was on full display last Sunday, when CBS host Margaret Brennan told millions of viewers that “Face the Nation” had tried for three months to interview him.

White House communications officials, who must approve television appearances related to the coronavirus, responded by allowing Fauci spots this week on PBS NewsHour, a CNN town hall with Sanjay Gupta and NBC’s “Meet the Press” during the prime Sunday morning slot, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Then Fauci joined a Facebook Live event on Tuesday with Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), disputing Trump’s assertions that a lower death rate showed the country’s progress against the pandemic. Fauci called it “a false narrative” and warned, “Don’t get yourself into false complacency.”

Fauci did not end up making any of the scheduled appearances. The White House canceled them after his Tuesday remarks, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate behind-the-scenes conversations.

Additionally, Fauci himself has insinuated that the Trump administration was suppressing his voice. A page dedicated to his media appearances on his agency’s website is missing the months of May and June entirely.

Caputo told Salon that he handles all of Fauci’s media and press and has final say on media calendars for “six different doctors and scientists,” including Fauci.

Dr. Deborah Birx, CDC head Dr. Robert Redfield and Surgeon General Jerome Adams are also under HHS purview, as are Assistant Secretary for Health Adm. Brett Giroir and HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

When Salon asked Caputo about the Post’s report that he had thwarted some of Fauci’s television appearances, which including an invitation from MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Caputo replied that he simply cycled officials through in rotation.

“We have six different scientists and doctors who we use,” he explained. “We get requests from different networks and different shows, and we have far more than just one person we work with. You can’t have all of them on at the same time.”

“Sometimes we are utilizing different voices and different scientists. Fauci is a particularly good one,” he said. “But every day, every network show, presents a different challenge, and we have a wide variety of solutions.”

Caputo then asked if this story was going to run while Fauci’s PBS interview aired last Friday. He was told that was not a goal.

“You would look really bad if you did,” he said, emphasizing how “stupid” it would be to run a story about him blocking Fauci while Fauci was on TV.

“I chose Fauci for PBS tonight,” Caputo continued, contradicting the Post report that the White House gave PBS the nod. “Every single booker asks for Fauci. I give them the person who fits.”

Caputo declined to get into the nitty-gritty of his formula for determining who fits, but did explain his process. “I instruct my team to provide the outlet and point of contact, but not to bother me with the name of the scientist or doctor,” he said. “I can do that.”

If that’s true, then the gatekeeper of public access to critical information from health officials does not care about what information media outlets want. It is a highly unorthodox way to run media relations at any time, not to mention at the federal government’s public health nerve center in the middle of a pandemic.

Journalists often contact government experts precisely because they have specific questions for a specific official, based on that official’s area of medical or scientific expertise. But Caputo, who has no medical or scientific background, suggested that he considers nothing beyond availability and his own gut instincts.

(The voicemail message at the HHS Office of Public Affairs instructs journalists to “please leave your name, outlet, request and contact information.”)

The Post report complicates Caputo’s claim that he calls the shots, alleging that he doesn’t make decisions about Fauci without first consulting the White House:

Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Michael Caputo, a longtime Trump ally, approves Fauci’s television appearances, with input from the White House, said one of the senior administration officials. Several White House aides view Fauci’s interviews as unhelpful and say they’re frustrated he has expressed interest in appearing on programs such as MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” which are hostile to the administration. That one was rejected.

Salon asked Caputo why the deputy press secretary for HHS would tell employees not to “bother” him by including a scientist’s name.

“What’s with your attitude?” Caputo responded. “Don’t give me this — this attitude.”

Salon responded that no disrespect was intended, and Caputo instructed us to try another press contact at the department. (Salon had done so.)

Salon then asked Caputo, twice, whether he had spoken about Roger Stone at any time with HHS officials or with White House hiring chief John McEntee, or with McEntee’s deputy, 23-year-old James Bacon.

Caputo hung up.

Reached for comment, a spokeswoman for the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease said, “The NIAID Office of Communications and Government Relations coordinates media interviews for Dr. Fauci, the director of NIAID. NIAID (part of NIH), like all agencies part of HHS, has always followed HHS’s coordinating process for interviews.”

The spokeswoman did not reply when asked whether that process now involved Caputo, or when he took over Fauci’s calendar.

Michael Caputo has spent a sizable portion of his colorful life in political PR, or what might appear to be PR.

After graduating from high school in Buffalo, New York, Caputo did PR for the Army. He left the Army for college, after which he promoted Ronald Reagan’s agenda in Central America with Lt. Col. Oliver North. He also worked media relations for President George H.W. Bush’s losing 1992 campaign.

Somewhere in there he befriended Roger Stone and took up an apprenticeship with the modern master of political dark arts. For a while Caputo was Stone’s driver.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Caputo moved to Russia, where he worked for President Boris Yeltsin and later as a consultant charged with rehabilitating Vladimir Putin’s image in the U.S. He has claimed he was once shot in Russia during a drunken donnybrook.

When Caputo returned to the U.S. he returned into the GOP operative world, in 2007 running a website designed to smear Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. Spitzer was forced to resign the following year amid a prostitution scandal.

At some point Caputo had befriended Donald Trump, and in 2014 he conceived a PR scheme to secure Trump’s bid for the Buffalo Bills NFL team, creating a fake organization and hiring a fake founder — a double-amputee cancer survivor — to gin up sympathy.

Caputo used the organization to orchestrate a bare-knuckle smear campaign targeting Trump’s chief competitor for the Buffalo team, Jon Bon Jovi, who later said he needed “years of therapy” to get over it.

Bon Jovi and Trump both lost their bids to buy the Bills.

In the spring 2016 Caputo joined the Trump campaign, but was forced to quit in June when he celebrated the sacking of former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski by tweeting, “Ding dong the witch is dead!”, adding a picture of the Wicked Witch of the East from “The Wizard of Oz,” her feet protruding from under the house that crushed her.

A month earlier, when Caputo was still with the campaign, he and Roger Stone met with a Russian expatriate living in Florida named Henry Greenberg — his original name was Henry Oknyansky — who offered to sell them dirt on Hillary Clinton.

In 2018 the Washington Post acquired text messages between Caputo and Stone in which they called Greenberg “the Russian.” In his earlier testimony to Congress, Caputo had claimed that he and Stone did not know Greenberg and/or Oknyansky was Russian.

That reaped him high praise:

Thank you to former campaign adviser Michael Caputo for saying so powerfully that there was no Russian collusion in our winning campaign.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2017

Former special counsel Robert Mueller also interviewed Caputo during his investigation into Russian election interference. Caputo likened those interviews to a proctology exam, adding that Mueller knew “more about the campaign than anyone who ever worked there.”

Mueller’s team never charged Caputo with any crime, but they did indict and convict Stone, whom Caputo counts a close friend to this day.

During the campaign, Stone had communicated with “Guccifer 2.0,” the apparent nom de guerre for a group of Russian intelligence officials who funneled stolen Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Stone later communicated with Assange directly, and was alleged in testimony by Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Cohen to have told Trump that email dumps were coming.

This contradicted claims that Trump made to Mueller in sworn written responses.

In January, with the Senate trial of Trump’s impeachment kicking into high gear, Caputo published a book titled, “The Ukraine Hoax: How Decades of Corruption in the Former Soviet Republic Led to Trump’s Phony Impeachment.”

The next month the Senate acquitted Trump, and Stone was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison for obstructing a congressional inquiry into the president, among other felonies.

It is still not clear how or why Caputo’s name came before HHS.

Sometime in April, however, someone placed him in the Department of Health and Human Services — although he has no background in medicine or science, and the United States was in the opening weeks of the worst health crisis in a century.

That was the month that Trump had foretold would “miraculously” vanquish the global coronavirus pandemic, and the month when Fauci’s future in the administration was first seriously thrown into doubt.

“Installing Caputo allows the White House to further control [Alex] Azar’s communications strategy,” Politico reported at the time. Administration officials reportedly believed that Azar, the HHS secretary, had been leaking negative stories about Trump to the press in order to buttress his own record on the pandemic response.

It didn’t take long for Caputo’s deleted tweets to surface.

In late April, CNN uncovered more than 1,300 tweets, many of them racist, misogynistic, cruel and riddled with coronavirus conspiracy theories. Caputo had posted the tweets between February and early April, mere days before his on-boarding at HHS, indicating that he might not himself have expected to be hired for a government position.

Responding to a conspiracy theory that Americans brought the coronavirus to China, Caputo tweeted on March 12 that “millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters.”

Caputo suggested in a March 8 tweet that a Democratic “strategy to defeat” Trump required hundreds of thousands of American deaths. He referenced James Hodgkinson, a left-wing activist with record of domestic violence who shot Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., during a congressional baseball practice in 2017.

“Coronavirus is the Democrats’ new Russia, their new Ukraine,” he added. “And nobody will believe them except their zombies.”

“For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, 100,000+ Americans have to die,” he posted March 11. “For the Democrat 2020 victory strategy to work, you have to believe the media.”

A few days after that story broke, CNN unearthed still more deleted tweets, these tracing back to 2019 and including vile remarks about women.

In December 2019, Caputo posted a reply to former FBI employee Lisa Page, a favorite target of the president’s, with a crass reference to oral sex, writing, “what’s that on your chin.”

In another, he wrote:

“I never thought you broke the law, Lisa — sleeping around with married men is quite legal. Your political opinions also aren’t illegal, just unethical at work, like your affairs. You got dragged into this for hate and love — your hate for Trump and your love for, well, you know.” He added a GIF of a train heading into a tunnel.

In other tweets from this year, Caputo kept calling women “dogface”: “look at this dogface”; “I would never sleep with you, dog-face”; “you have a dogface.”

In October 2019, with impeachment in full swing, Caputo attacked then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, firing off a series of tweets calling him a “piece of shit,” a “traitor,” a “scumbag” and a “seditionist.”

CNN has cached the tweets here.

Additionally, Caputo has apparently owed substantial sums in back taxes, in both New York and Florida. He once complained that the Mueller investigation had almost bankrupted him, but he appears to have been saved from that fate when his self-published GoFundMe page pulled in more than $350,000, outstripping its stated goal by $200,000.

Even a top administration salary, while not petty, is certainly not lucrative, and deputy press secretary positions normally go to junior or up-and-coming officials, not veteran operatives of Caputo’s experience who do not take well to bureaucracy and do not expect to be bossed around.

After Salon’s call with Caputo, an HHS press officer sent an email offering to field follow-ups questions. Our follow-up emails were unanswered.

The media contact page at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — the agency Fauci has helmed for more than 35 years — says “Content last reviewed April 7, 2020.”

Fauci’s own “in the news” page shows a conspicuous two-month gap in on-air appearances between April and July.

In a contentious June 24 call with reporters, Caputo blasted back at questions about the White House’s apparent efforts to discredit Fauci, a Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree.

“The reason why we put this call together so quickly and why we have upwards of 75 reporters on this call is because you’ve been spun up,” he yawped, after going nearly an hour without saying anything.

“Somebody has given you disinformation,” said Caputo, who himself had spread coronavirus disinformation with palpable contempt just a few months prior. “Do you understand? I’m old enough to remember when it was considered dishonest to undermine public confidence in the public health system.”

The PR veteran later took a more subtle approach.

“We have great faith in the capacity of all of our scientists and doctors on the coronavirus taskforce to impart necessary public health information,” Caputo said in a statement. “People like Admiral (Brett) Giroir, Surgeon General (Jerome) Adams and others are carrying these messages very effectively.”

He did not mention Fauci.

The White House and Roger Stone did not reply to multiple requests for comment. Fauci could not be reached for comment.

Confirmed: Fox knew of allegations against Tucker Carlson before his pre-planned vacation

Fox News learned the details of sexual harassment allegations against top network host Tucker Carlson on July 9, four days before Carlson announced on the air that he would be taking a “long-planned” vacation, Salon has confirmed.

Carlson, who claims to have gone into journalism after a career in the CIA failed to pan out, was named in a sweeping and graphic sexual misconduct lawsuit which two women filed against the network Monday in a New York federal court.

The women, Jennifer Eckhart and Cathy Areu, alleged rape and sexual harassment at the hands of some of Fox News’ biggest stars, including the recently fired Ed Henry and Carlson’s primetime colleague Sean Hannity. Areu singled Carlson out for allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation.

Michael J. Willemin, an attorney who along with veteran sexual misconduct litigator Doug Wigdor represents the two women, told Salon that their team informed the network about the details surrounding Areu’s allegations July 9, which a Fox News spokesperson confirmed to Salon in an email.

The spokesperson said the network “promptly investigated” the claims upon learning about them.

“Tucker is still employed, and this has zero to do with his vacation, which was legit and pre-planned,” the spokesperson added.

Carlson made the announcement on his first show after the network was informed of the pending lawsuit. At the same time, Willemin claimed that the network had already known for two weeks that he and Wigdor were representing the women.

The news raises more questions about the timing of Carlson’s short break, which also came amid an onslaught of criticism after network rival CNN revealed that the show’s longtime top writer had secretly posted racist and vile comments on the internet for years.

Carlson, who once took a vacation when advertisers began cutting ties with his show after he called white supremacy a “hoax,” had in the prior days and weeks escalated his own race-baiting rhetoric again. He was accused of “hate speech” after appearing to echo the infamous white supremacist “14 words” slogan: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Following the host’s original July 13 announcement, Salon took up an intrepid investigation into other Fox News personalities who have taken conspicuously timed “vacations” over the years.

Carlson has, in some senses, been riding high after returning in the highest cable news ratings in history the previous month and drawing speculation about a possible presidential run. At the same time, he was the subject of a recent IRS criminal complaint, as well as an ongoing high-profile defamation lawsuit, also filed against the network in a New York federal court.

The latest suit did not deter Carlson from returning to the air Monday. In his first show since the pre-planned interregnum, Carlson attacked The New York Times for allegedly preparing to publish a story which would reveal the location of his house. Carlson suggested that the move would endanger the lives of his wife and children.

The harassment allegations against Carlson stem from a December 2018 installment of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” featuring Cathy Areu, then a frequent guest of the program.

At the end of Areu’s segment, an unnamed producer or writer whispered in her ear to stay put until the program was off air, according to the complaint. She claimed that no one in the crew would disconnect her microphone and earpiece on set, making it impossible for her to leave.

When the show wrapped, Carlson allegedly invited Areu to his hotel room, specifying that his wife would not be present. Areu claimed that Carlson cut her appearances when she refused, featuring her three times in 2019 and zero times in 2020.

A producer said the Fox News host personally reviewed and rejected proposals to have Areu on his show despite the fact that her segments were among the most popular, per the filing.

The suit’s most graphic allegations come from Eckhart, a former associate producer at Fox Business, who accused Henry, the former co-anchor of “America’s Newsroom,” of rape and other forms of sexual violence. Areu also filed sexual harassment claims against Henry, as well as Hannity and the “Media Buzz” host Howard Kurtz. The four men have also been sued in their individual capacities.

The legal complaint was itself so graphic in nature that it included a trigger warning: “This document contains contains highly-graphic information of a sexual nature, including sexual assault.” It goes on to detail Henry’s alleged attempts to groom Eckhart, who claims she was asked to be his “little whore” and “sex slave.” Henry allegedly threatened Eckhart with punishment and retaliation if she did not comply with his demands.

Eckhart alleged that she was ultimately “violently raped while helpless and restrained in metal handcuffs” as Henry “performed sadistic acts on her without her consent that left her injured, bruised and battered with bloody wrists.”

The suit claimed that Henry had earlier forced Eckhart to perform oral sex on him — on network property — before raping her at a hotel where Fox often hosted visiting employees, “thereby facilitating, whether knowingly or unknowingly, Mr. Henry’s conduct.”

Henry also allegedly sent both Eckhart and Areu lewd and abusive text messages. A message to Eckhart referenced “owned & submissive” anal sex, according to the filing. Others said, “F**k you and your safe word. You will know when I am done,” and “When u r owned u don’t get a ‘choice.'”

Yet another text to Eckhart allegedly read, “Good long session last time left you bruised battered dazed sated begging for more.” He appended the tweet with the hashtag “#perfect.”

Henry allegedly abused Areu with “a slew of wildly inappropriate sexual images and messages” for several months this year, according to the court document. The texts, which Areu allegedly retains, include “a ‘closeup’ photograph of a woman’s vagina being ‘clamped’ closed by four clothespins” and a video titled “Fastest Interview … candidate selected in 3 seconds.”

According to the complaint, the video featured a woman job candidate exposing her vagina to the interviewer, who then selected her for the job. Immediately after Henry sent the video, he allegedly texted Areu: “Are you avail for anchor interview.”

Network executives allegedly knew about Henry’s misconduct as far back as early 2017. The suit named Fox News Executive Vice President of Human Resources Kevin Lord, Fox News President and Executive Editor Jay Wallace and Fox Business President Lauren Petterson.

A Fox News spokesperson disputed the suggestion. “There were not sexual harassment claims against Ed Henry at FOX News prior to Jennifer Eckhart’s claim on June 25, 2020,” the spokesperson said in an email.

The filing alleged that the network did not take substantive disciplinary action against Henry, but instead rewarded him with a promotion to co-anchor on “America’s Newsroom,” as well as a streaming show on Fox Nation. Additionally, the suit claimed that HarperCollins, a Fox-affiliated imprint, signed Henry to a lucrative book deal.

When Fox News took action against Henry ahead of the lawsuit, the network allegedly did not inform Eckhart, leaving her to learn the news on Twitter and in press reports, according to the filing.

“It’s heinous to do that to a victim like this — to force her to see him all over the news,” Willemin told Salon.

Fox News issued a statement Monday denying Areu’s allegations against anyone other than Henry, based on “the findings of a comprehensive independent investigation.” The statement also suggested that Eckhart and Areu lack standing to sue the network for Henry’s behavior.

“We expect Fox News to claim – as it almost always does – that an ‘independent’ investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing,” said Wigdor, who in 2018 settled claims brought by more than 20 individuals against the network, including allegations against disgraced former star anchor Bill O’Reilly and former CEO Roger Ailes.

Wigdor said that the network’s investigation did not include interviews with either woman, who both offered to meet under “reasonable conditions.” He called on Fox to interview them in the name of public transparency.

A Fox spokesperson told Salon in an email that the investigators had requested a meeting with each plaintiff, with their attorneys present, and asked for evidence supporting the claims. The Wigdor firm declined, the spokesperson said, saying that the women would not sit for an interview “unless investigators promised that anything either plaintiff said could not be used in any future litigation or proceeding.” The network found those demands unreasonable, the spokesperson said, because “evidence cannot be suppressed or hidden in this manner in litigation.”

“Fox News would have the public believe that it is a different place from the Fox News that was run by former disgraced Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes,” the complaint’s first paragraph read. “Unfortunately, it is actually worse.”

In the spring of 2018, just before former network host Shep Smith departed on his own vacation amid a squabble with the network’s primetime lineup, he told colleague Chris Wallace during on-air banter that everything would be “peachy-keen” on his return.

“Going to take a one-week vacation that was previously planned, and be back in a week, and everything will be peachy-keen and hunky-dory,” Smith said. “I can’t wait.”

“That’s what they always say: Previously planned and one-week vacation,” Wallace replied.

Smith eventually departed the network in 2019 after a public dust-up with Carlson. The network sided with Carlson.

You can read the full complaint here.