How a semi-secret right-wing media empire is blanketing America with lies

Propaganda used to be a dirty word in this country. Long associated with authoritarian regimes in countries like Russia and China, propaganda as it has been understood over the decades meant centralized control over the way a nation’s citizens access the news — not just the news about the country they live in, but about that country’s place in the world.

When Vladimir Putin took over in Russia a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the first things he did was to begin his gradual seizure of control over the Russian media. Ownership of newspapers and broadcasting stations, both television and radio, had only recently been privatized, and Putin engineered a process whereby one news outlet after another was sold to friendly oligarchs. Eventually, virtually all formerly independent news outlets were returned to de facto state control as Putin tightened his grip on power.

In Hungary, right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has sought to follow the Putin model, closing unfriendly news outlets for violating various newly-passed laws and turning them over to the control of oligarchs friendly to his regime. Right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson and, through him, broadcast companies like Fox News have approvingly noted Orbán’s control over how people in Hungary get their news. When Carlson was the biggest prime-time host on Fox News, he even broadcast his show from Budapest for a week, promoting Orbán and the “illiberal democracy” he brought to his country.

In this country, the takeover of broadcast and print news has progressed more slowly, but arguably just as surely. Sinclair Broadcast Group, owned by the arch-conservative Smith family of Baltimore, went on a buying spree that began back in the 1980s and ‘90s, taking control of local television stations around the country. Sinclair even came up with a way of getting around FCC rules that barred ownership of two competing stations in one market throughj so-called local marketing agreements, under which Sinclair could operate a second station in a given market by selling it to a corporation that would eventually come under Sinclair’s control if and when FCC rules are relaxed. Next came so-called shared services agreements, which allowed Sinclair to control a third station in Columbus, Ohio, where Sinclair already operated two stations.

How Sinclair is taking over local news and pushing America to the right

Then Sinclair doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on its strategy to take over local stations, beginning another buying spree, this time buying multiple stations from media outfits like Cox Communications and Allbritton Communications. Cox sold Sinclair five stations, Allbritton sold seven. On Sinclair went, buying cable outlets such as the Tennis Channel and Bally Sports, a network of local sports channels. In 2017, Sinclair went after Chicago-based Tribune Media, in a takeover attempt that would have dramatically increased the company's footprint, putting Sinclair in 10 major-city media markets. Over a period of years that purchase eventually fell apart, but Sinclair came out of the whole thing with control of 193 stations in more than 100 markets around the country.

With that immense market control, Sinclair started experimenting with supplying centralized news content through morning shows that ran on multiple local Sinclair-owned stations. From there, they went on to produce a show called “The National Desk,” a two-hour evening newscast provided to Sinclair stations that did not have local news shows. Then Sinclair began “must run” news segments that were centrally produced but required to be run as part of Sinclair-owned stations’ news broadcasts. The “must run” segments began with support of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and went on to include stories critical of the so-called “deep state,” a political fiction that Donald Trump has pushed since he first ran for president in 2015. Sinclair has continued over the years to run pro-Trump “must run” segments, including excerpts from Trump speeches criticizing CNN and other news outlets as “fake news,” while praising Sinclair Broadcasting.

Now we find ourselves in the midst of the 2024 election campaign, and what is Sinclair doing? Last week, Sinclair picked up the widely-discredited Wall Street Journal story about Biden’s age and cognitive abilities, and began broadcasting “must run” segments featuring allegations that Biden is showing “signs of slipping” made by — wait for it — former Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Sinclair news hosts read from identical scripts describing the Journal’s story as “calling into question the mental fitness of President Joe Biden.” The issue, Sinclair hosts told their audiences darkly, “could be an election decider.”

Was anybody else quoted by either Sinclair or the Wall Street Journal about Biden’s alleged diminished capacities? Nope. Did either the Journal or Sinclair mention that McCarthy had been quoted in the New York Times praising Biden’s negotiating skills during discussions in the Oval Office over the budget in 2023?

I’ll give you one guess.

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Now Sinclair has gone full-court press on Biden’s age, running repeated video segments that are alleged to show the president’s “senior moments.” The segments are part of a package sent out as a “must run” to Sinclair stations, also including a story that features a quote from a spokesman for the Trump campaign saying, “The lights are on but nobody’s home.”

What do these videos show? They show Joe Biden at a Juneteenth celebration at the White House watching a musical performance. Sinclair’s segments describe Biden as “dazed” and “not moving” at the Juneteenth event and then show an edited clip of Biden’s remarks during which he slurs the word “history.” Biden, of course, has had an acknowledged speech impediment throughout his life and his decades in politics. He occasionally stumbles over words and often jokes about it.

Sinclair’s coverage of Biden’s visit to Normandy Beach for the D-Day anniversary celebration last week included a rumor spread on Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter) that Biden had soiled himself at the celebration. The “must run” segment included the words “diaper,” “poop” and “pooping,” summing things up with the editorial remark that the D-Day appearance “paints a poor picture for President Biden, 81, who is fighting off harsh criticisms of his physical and mental capabilities.” The “must-run” segments all appeared at the same time on June 10, 9:24 Eastern, on at least 86 Sinclair-affiliated stations, according to a report on Judd Legum’s Popular Information.

Sinclair's “must run” segment on Biden's D-Day appearance included the words “diaper,” “poop” and “pooping,” and concluded that the event “paints a poor picture" of Biden, "who is fighting off harsh criticisms of his physical and mental capabilities.”

Legum adds that Sinclair then featured a June 13 must-run segment covering Biden’s attendance at the G7 summit in Italy, alleging that Biden “appears to start wandering off at the G7 summit and has to be handled back in.” Actual footage of the event shows Biden leaving the group of leaders to walk over to greet parachutists from each of the G7 nations who had landed nearby.

Sinclair has received so much blowback for this shameless propaganda that the company felt obliged to respond, issuing a statement last week claiming it was "outrageous and offensive" to suggest that its coverage of Biden and its relentless parroting of the Journal story were "politically biased."

In fact, this propaganda is being produced in conjunction with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign, and then distributed around the country through a network of TV stations owned and operated by a company that reliably supports the Republican Party and Donald Trump himself. Similar garbage-content is being produced by Trump-friendly print media like the New York Post and other right-wing papers. Trump himself shows up at his campaign rallies week after week and talks about Biden “wandering around,” with a wink and a nod to the right-wing media’s tsunami of misleading and fabricated “coverage” of Biden’s alleged missteps and mispronunciations.

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Meanwhile, Trump frequently cannot identify politicians who appear with him — twice calling Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, a friend and ally he has known for years, "Ronny Johnson" — and descends into nonsensical tirades about electric boats and marauding sharks he fears are ready to attack him.

You could, perhaps, try to write all this off as politics as usual in the modern era of partisanship and intractable division. It’s happened before. Remember the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry in 2004 when he was running against George W. Bush? Coordinated lies about Kerry turned his heroism and his Vietnam medals into a liability when he was running against a man who managed to dodge the draft by joining the Air National Guard and then refusing to show up for meetings.

But this time around it’s different, and a lot worse. With the network of local television stations owned by Sinclair and Fox News on cable systems around the clock, we’ve entered a world that even Orbán and Putin would admire. While those two authoritarians had to use state power to control the media in their countries, right-wingers in this country have used big money and capitalism to accomplish something similar: American-style propaganda produced by the Republican Party and the Trump campaign, and sent out nightly by Sinclair Broadcasting on stations that reach more than 40 percent of American households, That doesn’t even include the reach of Fox News propaganda blathered nightly by Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

It’s not news. It’s a red blanket that has been thrown over America by right-wing billionaires and a political party that has embraced the kind of authoritarianism that once upon a time this country stood against.

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Cancer risks are far higher for LGBTQ folks. Here’s how health justice groups are fighting back

Discrimination, and the chronic stress it causes, have been identified as key drivers of heightened cancer risks among LGBTQ+ communities in a pioneering new report from the American Cancer Society. The first-of-its-kind study found LGBTQ+ people face a disproportionate burden of the disease, with a higher incidence of certain cancers and later-stage diagnoses. The ACS has begun a campaign to increase early detection screening and is now calling on U.S. clinicians to step up their level of care by acknowledging — and fixing — discriminatory medical practices which leave marginalized groups behind.

The ACS report, published in the journal Cancer, arrived the same day as a Pride Month proclamation from the White House. In his May 31 speech, President Joe Biden laid out a series of health-focused initiatives aimed at LGBTQ+ communities — including new anti-discrimination rules for health care providers, expanded mental health resources, and new training programs through the Department of Health and Human Services.

“One of the biggest take-aways from our report is that LGBTQ+ people are probably at higher risk for cancer, yet experience multiple barriers to high-quality healthcare access like discrimination and shortfalls in provider knowledge of their unique medical needs,” said ACS' Rebecca Siegel in a release.

On the radar: What Alito's remarks could signal about future LGBTQ battles and Christian nationalist agendas

Siegel is the study's lead author and the ACS' senior scientific director of cancer surveillance. Using data gathered from the Centers for Disease Control, her team examined the prevalence of cancer risk factors across the U.S., based on the National Health Interview Survey (for information on sexual orientation) and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (for gender identity).

“Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to prevent and detect cancer early," she said, "which is why it’s so important to remove these roadblocks for this population."

The ACS reports that 40% of all cancers among the general population are attributable to "modifiable risk factors" — including tobacco and alcohol use, along with unhealthy diets and excess body weight. These risk factors are driven by stress. Along with a number of sexuality-distinct health variables, the vast majority of sexual and gender minorities (SGM) experience each factor more frequently than straight and cisgender counterparts, creating an overall rate disparity through the accumulation of smaller, categorical ones.

Among the range of categorical cancer risks, here are five major factors currently driving disproportionately high disease rates among LGBTQ+ populations — and the changes that medical experts are calling for in the fight for nationwide health justice.

In its new report and research summary, the ACS goes through the main cancer-risk factors, one after the next — tobacco, alcohol, excess body weight, and unhealthy diet. For each one of these factors, the report notes its rates of discovery can be linked to "minority stress" — the term for stress arising from systemic discrimination of marginalized groups. Much like health disparities other researchers found in 2023, ACS linked this psychological burden to the greater-than-average use of cancer-causing substances like tobacco and alcohol. The disparity is made worse by a lack of access to treatment for substance use disorder and by economic disparity preventing healthy nutritional access.

"Reducing minority stressors by implementing interventions at the structural, interpersonal, and individual level is a crucial component of mitigating cancer disparities in LGBTQ+ communities," the ACS wrote. "These interventions include establishing institutional safe spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals and programs designed to increase knowledge and empathy among providers."

The biggest risk-factor among the gay and stressed is a familiar foe. Cigarettes, accounting for 80% of all lung cancers globally, continue to be far more popular among LGBTQ populations than among heterosexuals. 23% of bisexual women smoke compared to just 10% of straight women. Meanwhile, the National LGBT Cancer Network holds that smoking rates among gay men are nearly double those of the general population. The ACS also found bisexual women were more than twice as likely as straight women to have more than seven alcoholic drinks per week.

What one study calls stress, however, many others describe as a painful part of a national mental health epidemic heavily impacting SGM groups and contributing to earlier-in-life use of cancer-causing substances.

Last year, a systematic review and meta-analysis of 27 studies — featuring 31,903 LGBTQ study subjects, 273,842 controls, and a 95% confidence interval — delivered resounding confirmation that SGM groups are far more likely than others to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Additional research from the Department of Veterans Affairs found that, while the average prevalence of PTSD among the general U.S. population is about 4.7%, the rate among LGBTQ groups is as high as 48%.

And while mental health gaps exist across all SGM age groups, Black gay kids suffer the heaviest burden. John Hopkins University has been ringing the alarm for years on a growing national crisis of suicide among Black LGBTQ youth, who have the sharpest rate increase compared to their peers — among ages 10-17 that rate increased by 144% between 2007 and 2020. In the first such move of its kind, the Human Rights Campaign last year declared a national state of emergency for LGBTQ Americans — a response to the flood of discriminatory legislation offered at statehouses across the country.

Transgender and nonbinary youth also continue to struggle for mental health care access with fewer than average specialist providers, according to a 2023 poll from the Trevor Project — and 86% of them are straining under the psychological burden of anti-trans legislation debates. Half or more of the trans youth respondents said anti-trans policies caused feelings of anger, fear, sadness and even hopelessness.

Cause for optimism has been mounting since 2019, however, when LGBTQ youth took the lead to become the most politically active demographic group in the U.S. And despite persistent backlash from far-right groups over LBGTQ activism, clinical studies show that the choice to stand up to discrimination through protest actually improves mental health.

Access needs: More cancer-screening, health worker education

While financial and insurance limitations remain the biggest obstacle to SGM health care access, the ACS found that fear of discrimination and prior negative medical experiences continue to drive down the number of SGM seeking preventative treatment and early detection scans — the two best ways to stay ahead of of cancer. One in six LGBTQ adults report avoiding taking health care action due to previous experiences of discrimination.

Continuing education and training among health workers remain key strategies for driving down gaps in SGM cancer detection, per the report. The ACS found that only 25% of medical students are confident in the healthcare needs of transgender patients. The organization's analysis also notes a separate study which found 30% of medical students reported being uncomfortable treating transgender patients.

Findings from a Harvard-led survey this year encouraged increased training on LGBTQ needs among health workers in oncology. The survey found that while most health workers in oncology are philosophically comfortable treating sexual and gender minorities in their care, only 50% are confident in their knowledge of LGBTQ-specific needs during treatment.

These disparities are far more likely to impact trans patients, according to the ACS — especially when it comes to getting preventive screenings. In one promising development, however, researchers observed that "prevalence of cancer screening and risk reducing vaccinations in LGBTQ+ individuals is similar to or higher than their heterosexual/cisgender counterparts except for lower cervical and colorectal cancer screening among transgender men."

The ACS is currently on a mission to increase screening for colorectal cancer across LGBTQ populations. Despite being the second-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths, patients who detect the cancer early have a 91% five-year survival rate compared to advanced cases caught later. The ACS also offered another reason for optimism.

"Regardless of their sexual orientation, people whose health care providers knew their sexual orientation were more likely to have been encouraged to get cancer screenings compared to people whose providers didn’t know their sexual orientations," the organization reports.

Breast, cervical cancer rates higher for lesbians, bisexuals

When compared to heterosexual women, lesbians and bisexual women are at higher risk for both breast and cervical cancer. Like other SGM groups in the ACS' study, the women's stress-driven substance use was collectively higher on average than that of most straight counterparts. Discrimination-driven threats to economic security are long-standing chronic stressors for women encountering sexism and racism. When combined with prolonged SGM-specific stress those stressors intensify, though other factors continue to spur health disparity rates.

"Lesbian women were the only subgroup that was less likely than heterosexual women to be encouraged to receive cancer-preventive care, such as HPV vaccinations and Pap tests," the ACS said, adding that "when they are tested, the result is more likely to be abnormal."

This ACS's findings follow a historical trend noted across more than 20 years of data — and largely concur with the findings of a scoping review published in March in the Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, pointing to the series of discrimination-based obstacles lesbian and bisexual female breast cancer survivors face across the care continuum, including unique post-treatment challenges.

"Starting before diagnosis, disparities for SMW (sexual minority women) have been identified in breast cancer risk and screening. Lesbian and bisexual women have a higher prevalence of breast cancer risk factors including nulliparity (having no history of giving birth), obesity, alcohol use, and smoking. SMW are also less likely to have health insurance coverage, a recent pelvic examination, or mammogram. Studies show Black SMW have even higher delays in breast care than white SMW, reporting intersectional stigma (i.e. stigma for Black and sexual minority identities) and lower social support," researchers wrote.

"SMW breast cancer survivors may experience distress in clinical settings through discrimination, discomfort disclosing sexual orientation or relationship with their support person, and lack of culturally appropriate support services.

Double impact: Cancer-causing infections threaten gay, bisexual men

Overall, about one in eight American men will get prostate cancer, representing 'the second-leading cause of cancer deaths after lung cancer. And the odds of developing it increase with age, disproportionately impacting Black men. The third most common type is colorectal cancer. Increased screening rates and drug use changes can have a dramatic impact on rates for these types of cancers. But detecting, treating and preventing cancer-causing infections may be among the most critical factors in reducing cancer rate disparities among gay and bisexual men.

"The prevalence of cancer-causing infections, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), human papillomavirus (HPV), and hepatitis C virus (HCV) are considerably higher in some LGBTQ+ population groups," the ACS said. "According to the CDC, for example, 70% of HIV infections are attributed to male-to-male sexual contact (versus 22% to heterosexual contact and 7% to injection drug use). HIV-infected individuals are at a higher risk for at least 10 cancers."

While a lack of awareness among providers is currently an obstacle to bringing those rates down, the National LGBT Cancer Network has advocated for faster infection treatment through the wider use of anal Pap tests which are now more available than ever.

Before Pap smear tests became routine in the 1940s, women faced sky-high rates of cervical cancer. And according to the advocacy organization, rates of anal cancer among gay men are now just as high in 2024. The organization specifically points to high-risk strains of HPV which still cause most cervical cancers in women, noting that these strains are also responsible for the development of anal cancers in men. The organization said HPV is present in 65% of gay men without HIV and 95% of those who are HIV positive.

After prostate cancer, skin cancer is the most common form of the disease in men — and UV radiation exposure is still a significant risk factor for cancer among bisexual and gay men, according to the ACS. The groups were also found to face higher odds of developing skin cancer than straight men, according to a 2020 study in JAMA Dermatology, largely attributed to tanning bed use.

Representation is survival: LGBTQ data needed

The ACA's report is one of several to emerge in recent years offering a partial look at the cancer disparities suffered by non-heterosexual groups. But ACS researchers are loudly calling for more data — including more surveys, studies and collaborative reporting efforts — specific to the marginalized communities most at risk.

“All people should have a fair and just opportunity to live a longer, healthier life free from cancer,” wrote Lisa A. Lacasse, the head of ACS' advocacy arm. "The ACS Cancer Action Network urges policymakers and lawmakers to prioritize policies that address the serious challenges and barriers to comprehensive access to health care that LGBTQ+ people experience. Importantly, passing laws that facilitate and increase the appropriate collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data is crucial to better understanding cancer disparities and to ultimately improving health outcomes."

The ACS isn't the only one. Health research outfits across the U.S. are calling for better reporting and more LGBTQ representation in the data. In its 2024 annual disparity report, the American Association for Cancer Research also called on providers and scientists to open the floodgates.

"Population-level cancer data on members of SGM communities are lacking," the report reads, "making it difficult to understand the true burden of cancer in this population."

The organizations echo the concerns of a 2022 executive order from the White House, outlining a full slate of data types notably missing in LGBTQ health studies. Followed by additional directives in the past two years, the 2022 order saw the Biden administration directing federal agencies to rally around the administration's LGBTQ number-crunching office — the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Research Group — just as ACS has.

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Another evangelical abuse scandal: It’s a big reason why they worship Trump

Another week, and another prominent Christian right pastor gets outed for alleged or apparent sexual abuse. Robert Morris, the founder of Gateway Church in the Dallas suburbs, was accused last week by a woman who says he first molested her when she was 12 years old. The abuse continued for the next five years, she said, until she finally asked adults for help. At the time, Morris was a married man in his mid to late 20s.

Morris responded to the allegations with a statement admitting to "inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady," with no mention of her age. In another entirely predictable development, it appears that church leaders knew about Morris' conduct all along, but kept it to themselves after concluding there were "no other moral failures." The victim says she considered suing Morris or the church in 2005, but backed off when Morris' lawyer accused her of being "flirtatious."

We've heard variations of this story over and over again, but this particular scandal is important for two reasons. First of all, Morris is not some backwoods fire-and-brimstone preacher, but the leader of one of the largest and most influential megachurches in the country. Gateway's services draw 25,000 people a week, making it the ninth-largest church in the country, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. On YouTube alone, Gateway has nearly half a million subscribers, and the church is especially famous for its worship music, which was streamed over 300 million times last year.

Secondly, there's the connection to Donald Trump. Morris served on Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board during the 2016 campaign and has been a relentless MAGA cheerleader ever since. He has been repeatedly accused by tax experts of violating the law that prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates. Gateway hosted Trump during the 2020 campaign, where Morris explicitly offered thanks to God "for this administration."

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Despite all this, we can expect the Beltway punditry to keep on pretending that white evangelicals' unrelenting support for Trump is mysterious or hypocritical, given that he's a chronic adulterer who, according to a New York jury, has committed sexual assault. Evangelicals have declared themselves the avatars of sexual morality for so long that many folks in the chattering class just can't accept that it was never actually true. As ex-evangelical therapist Jeremiah Gibson told Salon earlier this year, sex has never really been the issue with evangelicals. It's more about "the performance of gender" and maintaining a rigid gender hierarchy. While right-wing Christians talk a lot about "purity," that expectation only applies to women. Men, as the history of Christianity in America makes clear, largely get to do what they want, confident that the church will usually look the other way — even when the behavior is criminal or blatantly predatory.

If anything, being a sexual predator can bolster a man's reputation with evangelicals, who may be suspicious of men who adhere too closely to the stated values of chastity and purity.

If anything, being a sexual predator can bolster a man's reputation with evangelicals, according to sociologist Samuel L. Perry, author of "Addicted to Lust: Pornography in the Lives of Conservative Protestants." As he told Politico in May, evangelicals can be suspicious of men who adhere too closely to the stated values of chastity and purity. In fact, Perry said, evangelical churches teach that "God gave men tremendous sexual appetites because he wanted them to be leaders and initiators and people who take charge." If that will to dominate sometimes leads to molesting a 12-year-old, well, that's just "a risk of those appetites" they so admire. Blame for that kind of sexual abuse tends to be shifted to the victims, who may find themselves — as the woman in this case says she did — accused of tempting those poor, vulnerable men with their uncontrollable desires.

The problem with expecting women — or in so many cases, underage girls — to bear the responsibility for maintaining "purity" is that it directly conflicts with another mandate placed on women in evangelical circles: total submission. Women were placed on earth by God, according to this theology, primarily if not exclusively to serve men — and that isn't just about cooking, cleaning and saying "yes, sir" a lot. There's tremendous pressure, as "tradwife" content makes clear, on women to be "smoking hot," to use a surprisingly common evangelical term. It's a lose-lose situation: Women are supposed to make themselves attractive and compliant, but if a man abuses or assaults her, that's her fault for not uttering the otherwise forbidden word "no." Furthermore, if she did say no but failed to fight him off, after a lifetime of being told that it's sinful "pride" to stand up for yourself, then that's her fault too.

Southern Baptist scandal: It's no coincidence that anti-abortion churches protect sexual abusers

To deal with this contradiction, evangelicals — well, they don't deal with it. They put their fingers in their ears and yell "WOKE MOB" until the people pointing out their hypocrisy get bored and go away. Last year, that was starkly obvious in the response to "Shiny Happy People," a documentary about the infamous Duggar family and their larger religious community, which has severe problems with sexual abuse. The film offered explicit evidence about how the evangelical insistence on female submission creates a perfect environment for such abuses, but Christian influencers and leaders insisted that these were isolated incidents rather than an indictment of their entire philosophy of gender.

We can already see the same pattern playing out again in response to the Gateway scandal. Christian therapist and former Gateway employee Bob Hamp spoke out on Twitter, arguing that "[l]arger system dynamics are at play that both foster and protect ongoing predatory behavior" and calling on believers not to use the word "forgiveness" to sweep that larger conversation under the rug. But that appears to be exactly what is happening. Morris is stepping down, but his church claims this was a planned retirement, not the result of this scandal. In his statement, he claims that the victim and her family "graciously forgave" him in 1989. The church claims that its internal concerns were settled with a "two-year restoration process" led by religious counselors. The accuser, however, phrases it differently, writing that "we forgive because we are called to biblically forgive" but adding that her "father never ever gave his blessing on Robert returning to ministry."

As Hamp wrote on Twitter, "While the church is trying to deal with the issue of 'sexual sin' it has only one category for it," meaning that it equates garden-variety fornication (i.e., sex outside marriage) with sexual abuse. When men indulge in such since, as Perry noted, the church treats that as a minor-league sin at worst. Evangelicals often admire it, overtly or otherwise, as evidence of a "man's man" who "goes after what he wants." Morris will benefit from the same allowance that Trump has repeatedly gotten for his predatory and violent sexual proclivities. It seems that the evangelical world pretty much agrees with Trump, who once told CNN that, "fortunately," men have long been allowed to get away with sexual assault.

"Or unfortunately for her," he added.

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But his emails: Trump’s increasingly unhinged calls for violence

Donald Trump is on the warpath. Following his historic felony conviction on hush-money and election interference charges, the ex-president has rapidly escalated his threats of violence and mayhem, along with other forms of cult-leader and dictator rhetoric, in service to his plan for revenge and retribution against those he believes have impeded his ascent to universal worship and glory.

Reality, of course, is simpler: Donald Trump was convicted by a jury of citizens, based on the overwhelming evidence against him. There is no conspiracy or witch hunt against him. He is, at best, finally being held somewhat responsible for his decades of obvious criminal conduct.

Trump unleashed: This is the calm before the storm

Trump’s escalations, as I have repeatedly warned, offer an example of how the personal is political for someone like him, meaning aspiring autocrats and authoritarians. Donald Trump has already promised to be a dictator on “Day One” of his regime if he defeats Joe Biden in November. Trump and his agents’ threats of violence (and not-infrequent acts of violence) serve their authoritarian political project. Trump's personality, emotional life and thinking are centered upon violence and other antisocial behavior. His new status as a convicted criminal and the prospect, however unlikely, that he may actually go to prison have created a form of synergy between the personal and political that is potentially, if not likely explosive as seen on Jan. 6.

Trump’s recent fundraising emails, alongside his campaign speeches and media interviews, offer a public chronicle of his escalating threats of violence, destruction and revenge. Consider this excerpt from an email I received:

BIDEN’S SOVIET TACTICS DON’T SCARE ME!

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

Because this fight has always been bigger than me, Friend.

It’s about restoring power where it belongs — TO YOU THE PEOPLE — and ending the tyrannical Biden regime’s reign of terror once and for all.

In this one, the language is even more explicit:

THEY OPENED FIRE ON MAGA!

NOBODY is safe from the RADICAL LEFT WAR MACHINE.

I warned you this would happen after my rigged conviction.

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This one contains an implicit but barely concealed threat against President Biden, along with the absurd claim that Biden tried to have Trump killed, presented as an incitement that may require a response:

BIDEN'S DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING

He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me … BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force… BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to bury me with so many witch hunts that I'd be forced to quit… BUT HE FAILED.

STAND WITH TRUMP

34 RIGGED FELONY CONVICTIONS calls for an unprecedented response.

And if our response to his tyrannical regime isn't MASSIVE, Biden will move onto his next target: YOU!

In what is perhaps the most ominous and dangerous of these, Trump literally told his followers in a Thursday email that he might face the death sentence. (Before walking it back just enough, in classic Trump fashion.) The point of the metaphor is clear enough: Trump and his followers face existential danger, and those who remain loyal must be prepared to defend their leader at any cost:

THEY WANT TO SENTENCE ME TO DEATH!

You know they’d do it if they could, but Crooked Joe’s team of lowlifes and radical left thugs will settle for a LIFE SENTENCE. …

Remember, it’s not me they’re after…

THEY’RE AFTER YOU – I’M JUST STANDING IN THEIR WAY!

But with your support,

I’ll NEVER give up.

I’LL NEVER SURRENDER! …

Your support is the only thing standing between the Biden regime and their ultimate goal of DESTROYING AMERICA ONCE AND FOR ALL.

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I hardly need to state that all of this is a bald-faced lie. Trump's criminal convictions do not carry a potential death sentence — or a potential life sentence either. The prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officers involved in Trump’s felony trial were not obeying Joe Biden’s commands. Whatever one may think of Biden, he's a stickler for the rules of representative democracy, and believes in an independent judiciary.

Despite the mainstream news media’s dedicated efforts attempts to normalize Trump's propaganda escalations — in this case by largely ignoring them — none of this is normal, at least not in a healthy democracy. Trump’s communications with his most faithful followers should not be seen as bluster or hyperbole. They amount to a coordinated effort to radicalize the most volatile and delusional elements of the MAGA base — and then, perhaps, to mobilize them. Toward what end, exactly? We already have a pretty good idea.

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John Kerry warns that Project 2025 would be “absolutely unimaginable and destructive”

During a sweltering rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, June 9, former President Donald Trump complained to his supporters about "sweating like a dog" in the triple-digit heat. Because climate change is breaking temperature records all over the world, one might have assumed that the aspiring leader's next act would have been to express concern for the other people at his event.

Instead the Florida man told the attendees — ostensibly as a joke — that they needed to stay alive just long enough to cast their ballots for him.

"We need every voter. I don't care about you, I just want your vote, I don't care," said Trump. Six people from the rally were later hospitalized for attending.

Turn up the heat: Climate change activists are gearing up for a sizzling summer of dissent

One person who definitely did not laugh at Trump's joke is John Kerry. A former United States Senator and Secretary of State, as well as the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, Kerry's most recent job was as the first U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. A longtime environmentalist, it made perfect sense for President Joe Biden to tap Kerry for this role, especially as Kerry and his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry co-authored a determinedly optimistic book warning about climate change, "This Moment on Earth."

In the 2007 book, the Kerrys spoke with ordinary Americans from all walks of life about the differences they were making to protect the environment. More than a decade-and-a-half after its publication, Kerry told Salon that he still firmly believes in the hopeful vision laid out in "This Moment on Earth," and does not share the view of anti-capitalists that more radical measures are necessary.

At the same time, Kerry expressed tremendous alarm about the prospect of Trump winning the 2024 election. Trump's advisers have already announced their backing of a broad-reaching right-wing policy plan called Project 2025; if implemented, Project 2025 would gut environmental regulations and place science deniers in positions of power over climate policy. That is no doubt the foremost reason that Kerry spoke to Salon.

"This is really as big a fight as you get in an election," Kerry said during our conversation. "And I hope young folks all around the country who have the energy and obviously the vision and the passion to put themselves on the line for this must make it one of the real top voting issues of this next election."

Will the La Niña cycle cool down Earth's record-breaking heat streak? Not so fast, experts caution

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

During a recent rally in Las Vegas, Trump told audience members who are suffering from the climate change-exacerbated heat that "I don't care about you, I just want your vote." Now he says that was a joke. But do you believe it can be dismissed as just humor given his ongoing denial of climate change?

It is remarkable, narcissistic, even if it was a joke. It Is just all about him. It is never really about them. Never really about people, and certainly never really about a serious issue like the climate crisis, which he denies, which he is at the forefront of trying to dismiss.

He met recently at Mar-a-Lago for a dinner fundraiser with a bunch of oil and gas people. He just looked at them and said, "I'm your guy for drill, drill, drill" and "If you want the things you need, you gotta raise a billion dollars for me." He literally made an open quid pro quo demand of people! He is one of those people spreading lies, not only about the election, but about climate, about wind turbines supposedly killing people and giving you cancer.

Here are these people sweltering in a 100-plus degrees — something like 102, 103 degrees — everywhere is hotter and more dangerous. He is living at that moment in the middle of a very significant manifestation of how bad things are getting … and he's making a joke about it. It really tells you all you need to know about him.

There is so much, it's hard to keep up with all the negatives, but I think that everybody knows because he's the guy who pulled out of the Paris Agreement, which did great damage to the reputation of the United States and slowed down the transition to clean energy in America. Everyone knows that he doesn't care about the issue, and he doesn't care about people. He cares about himself. What we need to do is get more facts out there so that people can embrace, at the foundation, of why they need to be moving in a different direction.

The reality is that this is a very dangerous time on a global basis on a number of issues — i.e. the challenges to democracy itself in Ukraine, Russia, China. There are a host of really big challenges right now, but one of the biggest is that not enough attention is being paid the unbelievable damage being done in many parts of the world as a consequence of the increased warming. I just was looking today, when I was getting up, it was raining massively down in Florida, and they had more water in the span of a day or so then they normally get in something like a millennium.

Joe Biden promised he would rejoin the Paris Agreement within hours of being sworn in. He did that. He created this new position of special presidential envoy. He set America on a path to increase our own ambition here at home, and try to reduce our emissions, which we have done last year. The emissions of our country lowered by 4%, and the economy grew by 2.5%. So that puts the lie to Donald Trump's distortion suggesting that it's going to hurt our economy to make this transition. The fact is that the fastest growing jobs in America have to do with clean energy, and there is now more money going into clean energy, creating more clean energy jobs, than there are in fossil fuels. So everything that he seems to say about this, either evinces a massive misunderstanding or a massive distortion.

Either way, we can't afford four years of that.

"There is always a robber baron capitalism that unfortunately haunts the economic structure."

One of the stories from your book "This Moment on Earth" that I feel is really inspiring from that book is Rick Dove, the retired Marine and Vietnam veteran who became a Riverkeeper on the Hudson River. It speaks to how a lot of Americans, at least at that point, embraced environmental issues, even if they didn't want to be identified with the term "environmentalist." Looking back 16 years later, do you feel that humanity's understanding of these issues is better, worse, or about the same as when you wrote that book?

I think without any question — without any question — humanity's understanding of the issue has grown markedly, not the least reason for which is Mother Nature herself is sending daily messages like the kind I just described down in Florida. All over the world, people are suffering the consequences of the increased warming. You could look in India where it nearly reached 50 degrees Centigrade [122 degrees Fahrenheit]. I predicted, frankly, just about two and three months ago, I said, "Look, we're going to have somewhere in the world where we're going to be cracking 50 degrees." It's only June and we're already doing that.

The implications on the planet for everybody — farmers in South Dakota, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, anywhere around our country — are finding that their crops are behaving differently, are growing differently. There are water challenges. There are fire challenges. There is drought. There is too much water when you have these flooding rains, and that comes from the fact that the ocean is warming, because 90% of the heating of the planet goes into the ocean.

As the ocean warms, there is more and more moisture that goes up in the atmosphere. As it travels around, it dumps this massive amount of moisture in the form of these bomb blast rainstorms, and people suffer for it: flooding, dying and fires. People are dying. The quality of air is taking the lives of about 7 million people a year around the planet because it's so bad. People get lung cancer. People with emphysema or other problems with breathing, like COPD, have much more increased and repetitive health incidents. I think there is a massive new awareness in the world, and there are more and more activists too.

People like Rick [Dove] and others are trying to do things. The problem is many people are feeling a sense of helplessness because they work like hell to try to make things happen, and then you have somebody going out doing something that's massively damaging in one form or another. I'm encouraged that people are aware of that. Regrettably, supposed leaders are not leading, and I'm talking about people in the other party.

For instance, the IRA — the Inflation Reduction Act, which is one of the most important and consequential pieces of legislation in a long, long time and has had a major impact in growing the response to the climate crisis – not one single Republican voted for that in the House or in the Senate. That's just crazy. You can't politicize this issue. You've got to humanize it, and respond to the crisis that humanity is facing in a broad base. I think more and more people are aware of that, and more and more people are frustrated that they're not responding.

Now, one quick addendum: Some people say climate doesn't poll very high. A lot of people aren't picking it as the first issue in their minds. That's true, and they don't, but that's because the first issue on their minds is their job or their income level measured against inflation. People are anxious to respond to that, but at the same time, one of the single biggest threats we face globally — every country on a shared universal basis — is the crisis of climate, which is going to cost many lives and cost many more billions of dollars in cleaning up the mess or responding to the crisis in an emergency, rather than responding to it in an orderly, thoughtful, constructive way that builds out the infrastructure we need to be able to not only withstand the current level of storms, and of dangers, but also to avoid some of them in the long term.

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"More than targeting capitalism per se, put the focus on the denial and on the delay…"

There's a spectrum of debate within the Democratic Party on these issues, with some like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who strongly criticize capitalism as a system, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). They argue that climate change is proof that capitalism fundamentally has failed. What do you and President Biden think of this point of view?

First of all, President Biden and I both share a deep sense of the genuine concern and the passion of AOC and of Bernie to try to deal with this issue, but I think that capitalism can contribute in a number of different ways. Capitalism can provide some of the solutions to the crisis.

Right now, the rate at which the solar industry is growing, the rate at which the wind turbines and wind farms are being deployed, the rate at which new technologies are coming online like hydrogen, green hydrogen, better electrolyzers to make that hydrogen, the chase for clean energy by looking for some newer technologies that might make a difference — like battery storage is getting longer — the motive to try to come up with a good product that could sell and make a positive difference to people's lives is very strong, even within some of what happens in capitalism.

A view of the partially melting glaciers as a polar bears, one of the species most affected by climate change, walk in Svalbard and Jan Mayen, on July 15, 2023. (Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

There is always a robber baron capitalism that unfortunately haunts the economic structure. That's been true since the first days of human beings. But that's something we can control if we want to. That's something we could do something about, and it's something we do something about when we get the interstate commerce regulation to be on the side of consumers, or we get new products that are protected, or require seat belts in cars — just to pick one sort of idea that was put in place years ago. There was a big fight, I mean a really big fight, as people resisted doing that.

We as citizens in a democracy have to make sure we're dominating the playing field with our actions, with the laws we're passing, with the vision and the values that we're putting in place to protect people. We did that with smoking, but when we banned smoking on airplanes, it took us a real huge fight, and these things shouldn't be that hard a fight. I'm very sympathetic when Bernie and AOC express a frustration with the system where too much money often gets into the system and prevents good things from happening, or it takes much longer than it should. That's the downside and the bad side of it. But the upside and good side of it is that we're able to cure a disease, or we're able to put a drug like Paxlovid in order to deal with COVID.

If you look around you, you'll see this sort of balance driving it. But I share the anger and frustration that comes about because there are these powerful vested interest forces that resist the propagation of good regulation, of good restraints to bad behavior. But I don't think it's automatic that it has to happen. If you have good people with good laws and good accountability and good transparency and good prosecution, you can create a balance that works pretty effectively.

"The president is evaluating [declaring a climate emergency] very closely."

More than targeting capitalism per se, put the focus on the denial and on the delay, and on those who are being swayed by those vested interests that only want to make more money and ignore the consequences of some of the choices that they make. That's a reality. And so I think that if we could get people to face up to the truth and to put the truth more in circulation and to honor that truth, we'd be a lot better off.

What are the consequences in terms of climate change if President Biden loses to Trump, especially if Project 2025 is implemented?

The consequences of Project 2025, if they were implemented, would be absolutely unimaginable and destructive. It would cost an enormous number of lives and would have gigantic long-term consequences for the planet itself.

That is not hyperbole. I say that because we know exactly what Donald Trump tried to do the first time, and Project 2025 is specifically geared to make sure they can do what they didn't achieve in the last round, and that they can put the people in place who they know are absolutely committed to this destructive path. This is really as big a fight as you get in an election, and I hope young folks all around the country who have the energy and obviously the vision and the passion to put themselves on the line for this must make it one of the real top voting issues of this next election.

Remember, Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement. Donald Trump took all the money out of a lot of climate activity. He never proactively led efforts, which is another role of the presidency. It's not just to propose something, it's to lead. It's to mobilize people to actually get something done. And he was a counter-mobilizer. He tried to undo things — pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement, pulling out of the trade agreement which had America putting its best, the gold standard, the way we think people should do business on the table, and leaving nothing in its place.

Now there is one other reality though about this, if Donald Trump were to win: The marketplace has now made big decisions based on the reality of the climate crisis. Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen — you run around the world to the automobile manufacturers, they have spent billions of dollars retooling their factories in order to produce electric vehicles. I absolutely guarantee you, they are not suddenly — because a president might be changed — going to go back and say, "Oh, okay, let's undo all the changes we made in our factories, and how we ought to reproduce. We ought to go back to producing internal combustion engine cars." That's not going to happen.

There are a lot of practical, real reasons why it's not going to happen. First of all, the largest marketplace of the world, which is on a global basis, is not even going to think about that. They're going to produce electric vehicles. And in order to be competitive, in order for the United States to be able to win the economic battles, we're going to have to have products that are competitive with the other ones that the rest of the world wants and is ordering and making.

"We know exactly what Donald Trump tried to do the first time… they can put the people in place who they know are absolutely committed to this destructive path…"

Believe me, the other automobile manufacturers of the world would be laughing to the bank, although they'll be sad for the climate. From a business point of view, Donald Trump would destroy American competitiveness in this new industry. I think the market just isn't going to let that happen, so in addition to the power sector, people likewise want clean electricity. Companies themselves have made commitments to try to achieve net zero by 2050. They're not suddenly going to turn around and adopt policies that will undo their ability to be able to do what they know they need to do, as a matter of good business, as a matter of corporate citizenship, but also because they've got kids and grandkids and they don't want to leave the world in a worse place than it is today, which is where it's heading to some degree.

Activists hold a banner reading "Business as usual is killing us" as they take part in an protest by the Extinction Rebellion climate change group, along Whitehall towards Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament, in central London on September 3, 2020 on the third day of their new series of 'mass rebellions'. (JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images)

I think Donald Trump would have a critical negative impact on decision-making and on the deploying of things. That would slow some things down. But he can't undo this direction that has been adopted by the marketplace of the world.

What has President Biden done to address climate change compared to the changes that scientists say are necessary? One example that comes to mind is I've interviewed scientists who believe that there should be a declaration of a climate emergency. What are your thoughts on that?

The president is evaluating that very closely. He has done more than any president in the history of our nation to move the needle to the place it needs to be in order to respond to the climate crisis. Within hours of being sworn in as president, he rejoined the Paris Agreement. On that same day, I took my oath of office as the first U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

Under President Biden's instructions, we began robust diplomacy on a global basis to bring people to the table to raise their ambition to reduce emissions. And it worked. We did it. The president hosted a major climate summit of the 20 largest emitting nations in the world, the 20 largest economies, and we wound up getting Russia, China, India, a whole bunch of countries to raise ambition on a global basis.

In addition, the president passed this most significant legislation on the climate in history. The IRA has had more impact at creating new jobs, new industries within the climate sector in an effort to try to reduce emissions than any legislation before. He also passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure piece of legislation. He personally went to each of the Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings of the last years — excuse me, I misspoke on that, he was not able to come, but he sent a massive group of people to come to Abu Dhabi — and it resulted in probably the strongest outcome of a COP since the very beginning. This was on a par with Paris.

It had a major impact because that resulted in the declaration that all of us need to transition away from fossil fuels. We need to be accelerating it in this decade. We need to be laying out our plans to hit 2050 net zero, and we need to do it according to the science. Everything we do needs to follow the science, and that means holding the Earth's temperature to 1.5 degrees [Celsius.]

Here is the best way to measure it: When I came into office, when President Biden was sworn in and came into office, the world was headed to about four degrees of warming or more. That's where we were going, to 3.7 to 4 degrees [Celsius] of warming. Now, because of the measures we have taken in the last three years, the International Energy Agency tells us that if we did everything we have promised, everything laid out at each of the COPs since Paris, we would be at 1.7 degrees of warming instead of heading towards 2.5, which is where we are.

So what is the difference? The difference is that not everybody is doing what they said we should do. Not everyone has implemented or is implementing to the full measure necessary. So we know we can get there. We know we could win the battle, but we also know because too many countries are still dependent on coal, they're not transitioning fast enough, and we have to continue to lead the effort to get them to transition fast.

It's sort of like the frog being boiled in the pot. As you bring the heat up, the frog is not aware of the impact, and then boom, it's too late. What we're witnessing is a kind of frog effect on a global basis where we're in the cauldron and it is getting hotter, and if people don't take seriously the consequences to the human body of being outdoors in that extreme heat, it can have profound health impacts — including dying.

It does every year. We lose human beings who don't or can't take care to protect themselves from being out in that extreme heat — if you're not getting enough water, if your body isn't able to replace the sweat that you put out and you literally overperspire. Unfortunately, I don't think it's just at a rally that this is something to be concerned. It's everyday life everywhere where you're having that kind of heat. Last year, it was over 110 degrees for 31 straight days in Phoenix, Arizona.

Now we're seeing much greater heat levels in every part of the planet today, including in the Arctic and the Antarctic, where both are melting at record rates, and the two poles are the fastest heating. They are warming faster than any other part of the planet, so the massive loss of ice, which is melting and flowing into the ocean, which is creating its own challenges to ocean life, has real consequences for all human beings. People need to understand the connections. You have to connect the dots for all of these things. The climate crisis is also a health crisis, and people need to pay very close attention and learn more about the consequences of extreme heat.

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Is there anything about climate change and the future of humanity that you think people need to know more about?

Responding to the climate crisis does not require that everybody give up things they love to do or having a high quality of life, or that your job is going be under pressure. On the contrary, responding to the climate crisis is the greatest economic opportunity that we've had since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. We're going to see new products, we're going to see cleaner air. It will be safer for people. Their health will be better.

The upsides of this transition are extraordinary, and we should be embracing it and moving faster in that direction because it's going to create a massive amount of new economic activity, new products, and all of those products are going to be products that have a sustainable life if they do it properly.

I see the upside of this. The downside is where Donald Trump and his friends are, who don't want to do something about the climate crisis. They're going to wind up costing everybody else a lot more money, and they're going to wind up costing lives. That's the measure here. It seems to me, practically speaking, that most Americans know that it makes more sense to opt in the direction of addressing the climate crisis and getting the benefits of a safer, cleaner, healthier world that we live in as a consequence.

about climate change:

In Michigan: Climate change, bird flu and dairy cows — and why “none of us saw this coming”

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between IPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

Earlier this month, Laurie Stanek shoveled hay to a group of young black-and-white Holstein cows, just a few among the roughly 200 cattle on her family dairy farm. Located in northern Michigan's Antrim County, she has worked there for almost 50 years now.

The farm day starts early.

"We're out here at 5 o'clock every morning to get started feeding the babies," she said.

But there are some additional chores for farmers in Michigan, now that avian influenza, or bird flu, has made the jump to cattle.

New state requirements include limiting the number of visitors and increasing disinfection practices like cleaning boots and vehicles. Michigan also has prohibited poultry or lactating cows from being shown at events like fairs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has required that lactating cows moving across state lines receive a negative test result on bird flu.

"We are conscious that the threat is there, and we wouldn't let just anybody come in," Stanek said, referring to the state requirement to limit visitors.

With outbreaks of bird flu in dairy cattle across the country, health officials are emphasizing biosecurity — that is, efforts to prevent the introduction and spread of disease.

Researchers are still working to understand how climate change is affecting the spread of the bird flu. But, as Grist has previously reported, H5N1 has spread outside its typical seasons as migratory patterns have changed. And research has shown that generally, climate change could join a host of other factors in making the transmission of viruses between species more likely — something called "viral spillover."

"We are in a place where the threat of emerging pathogens is much greater than ever before. So therefore, the need for biosecurity is even more significant than it has ever been before," said Suresh Kuchipudi, a professor and chair of the infectious diseases and microbiology department at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Public Health.

Some, like Kuchipudi, say scaling up biosecurity operations can help the agricultural sector become more resilient to climate change. But it's just one part of the complicated process of responding to the spread of viruses like the bird flu.

This strain of avian influenza is called H5N1, and it's highly pathogenic, meaning it's deadly for poultry. First detected in the 1990s, it has surged over the last several years, spreading to birds and mammals across the world.

The spread to cattle is new.

"I'm a virologist by training, and my other virologist buddies and I all have to admit: None of us saw this coming," said Kim Dodd, the director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Michigan State University. Animals like foxes can contract the flu when they eat an infected carcass. But cattle don't eat meat.

"We didn't expect to find [highly pathogenic] avian influenza in dairy cattle, and to find that it amplifies so well, and that we have so much virus in the milk," Dodd said. "And so that's really a big part of trying to understand, you know, what do we do about that to be able to help control the outbreak."

The first confirmed case in cattle was reported in Texas earlier this year, and 11 more states have confirmed cases of the bird flu in dairy herds.

Michigan has reported the most cases in the country. As of Wednesday, the state had confirmed 25 instances of the flu in herds. It also has 2 of the 3 confirmed cases of the disease in people — the other was a dairy worker in Texas.

In May, state officials declared the flu an "extraordinary emergency," calling it a threat to animal health, human health, trade and the economy.

Officials and researchers have said Michigan's high case count is an example of robust testing in response to the outbreak. Overall, the response to the bird flu outbreak in cattle has been somewhat rocky. States have pushed back against federal efforts to address the virus, and public health experts have raised concerns about the lack of testing and warned that the true reach is likely greater that official counts.

Those involved in Michigan's response have said part of its response is collaboration with farmers. "That takes two sides," said Dodd. "It takes the people who are looking and the people who are testing, but it also requires that the people who own the animals are opening their doors and allowing testing to occur."

H5N1 causes a reduction in cows' milk production, among other symptoms. It can devastate the poultry industry; since it was detected in commercial flocks in the United States in 2022, it has led to the deaths of close to 100 million farmed birds.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have maintained that the danger to the public is relatively low. But dairy workers are now more at risk of exposure to the bird flu as they work with cows; the virus appears to be spreading largely through milk.

"We want to make sure that we're limiting the further spread of the virus, so that we're continuing to protect human health, and we don't have so much virus in the environment that could potentially mutate and affect humans in a different way," said Tim Boring, the director of the state Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

One of the ways the state is doing that is by urging farms to follow biosecurity measures. These are pretty low tech — like wearing protective gear and disinfecting equipment. How effective they are comes down to compliance.

"I'm sure they're serious. I'm sure they're not fooling around. It's their livelihood, their investments," said Jean-Pierre Vaillancourt, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Montreal. But "if they're not sharing data, and they're not doing good surveillance to figure out who's where and what and all that, we already have a big problem."

Climate change coincides with the spread of certain diseases, as animals interact with one another in new settings. While biosecurity may play a role in prevention or response, it likely won't stop the next pandemic, Vaillancourt said. He argues that we should actually be looking at disease from a regional perspective.

"What can we do to minimize the spread between sites?" he said. "That requires data sharing."

That's where industry and institutions often fall short. Farms that have outbreaks can face stigma and lose money, and farm workers that test positive can deal with health and economic issues. Worker advocacy groups have also voiced concerns that testing isn't reaching those on the front lines.

Some public health experts say the surge of bird flu in cattle is an opportunity to hone that response and protect animal and human life in the process.

"The fact is, [governments] need to learn how to get this right when the stakes are lower, because there are less forgiving bird flu viruses than this one," said Amesh Adalja, a scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

The agricultural industry will have to be part of any response to infectious diseases as the climate changes. Humans often interact with animals in agricultural settings. Preventing and responding to viruses also requires establishing trust with farmers.

"This is going to be part of how you think about building resilience, is that you kind of have this integrated approach," Adalja said.

That approach is known as One Health, which many involved in public health have pointed to as a framework that acknowledges the connection between people, animals and the environment and seeks to address issues like disease in a holistic way.

Wildlife surveillance systems and vaccine programs can help track and control viruses like the bird flu.

And the dairy industry can learn something from those working with pigs, Vaillancourt said. An effort called the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project has involved farmers and the industry in keeping track of disease in pigs.

The big picture, he said, is that everyone involved in livestock needs to think about stopping the spread of disease. Say a farmer needs to move some cows.

"How do we move them?" he said. "Which roads are we going to use to minimize contaminating a site on our way. How do we clean and disinfect the vehicles when we go from one site to another site?"

A few efforts have been pushed forward as the virus has spread. The federal government announced that it would spend $824 million in emergency funding on its response, and the USDA just launched a voluntary pilot program to test cow milk in bulk.

And agricultural officials in Michigan say more safety measures on farms could become a bigger part of the state's approach to climate change.

"Improving biosecurity in new ways that we hadn't previously considered, I think, will increasingly be a component of robust climate resiliency actions," said Boring, the director of the state agriculture department. "So we're seeing a little bit of that in real time here with our response to H5N1 here in the state."

And back in Antrim County, Laurie Stanek said dealing with animal sickness is just part of running a farm; they're paying attention to the new rules and doing what they've always done.

"A lot of it's just good herdsmanship — just common sense," she said. "You keep your animals healthy so they in turn give you a healthy product."

That, she said, is what their livelihood depends on.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/health/in-michigan-climate-change-bird-flu-and-dairy-cows-and-why-none-of-us-saw-this-coming/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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Biden says Trump would pick more Supreme Court justices who like “flying flags upside down”

President Joe Biden is warning Americans that their basic freedoms could be rolled back if Donald Trump returns to the White House and appoints more conservatives to the Supreme Court.

In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel on Saturday, Biden, appearing alongside former President Barack Obama, stressed what a Trump presidency could mean for the nation's highest court. Trump is "likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees," Biden said, adding that Trump’s already-appointed justices “have been very negative in terms of the rights of individuals.”

There is currently a six-justice conservative majority in the Supreme Court, with three of the right-wing justices appointed by Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The three appointees were pivotal in overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Biden noted that, after the court ruled that there is no right to an abortion, “you had Clarence Thomas talking about the fact that there are going to be other things we should reconsider, including in — in vitro fertilization, including contraception, including all these things."

“Look," Biden continued, "the fact of the matter is that there has never been a court that’s been this far out of step."

If elected, Biden warned that Trump could appoint two more justices who would be “flying flags upside down,” a reference to conservative justice Samuel Alito, who flew an upside down flag outside his Virginia home following the January 6 insurrection (a symbol adopted by Trump supporters who claimed the 2020 election was stolen).

Both Biden and Obama urged Americans to vote in the upcoming election.

“And hopefully, we have learned our lesson because these elections matter in very concrete ways," Obama said. "And we’re now seeing how much it matters when it comes to the Supreme Court."

Diddy has returned key to NYC following request from Eric Adams

Sean "Diddy" Combs has returned the Key to New York City following a request by Mayor Eric Adams earlier this month after a video of the disgraced hip-hop mogul physically assaulting his ex-girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, went viral. NBC reported that Adams had previously awarded Combs the key in September.

“The Key to the City of New York is presented to individuals whose service to the public and the common good rises to the highest level of achievement, and who act as a model for fellow and future New Yorkers,” Adams wrote in a June 4 letter to Combs’ offices, per Rolling Stone. “After internal deliberations, the Key to the City of New York committee recommended nullifying and rescinding Mr. Combs’ key. I have accepted their recommendation.

“I strongly condemn these actions and stand in solidarity with all survivors of domestic and gender-based violence,” Adams wrote, according to NBC. “Our city has worked tirelessly to make sure survivors are heard and seen by our administration.”

Combs has faced a number of civil lawsuits related to sexual assault and sex trafficking in recent months, and now may face a possible indictment.

The world is farming more seafood than it catches. Is that a good thing?

A new report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, has found that more fish were farmed worldwide in 2022 than harvested from the wild, an apparent first.

Last week, the FAO released its annual report on the state of aquaculture — which refers to the farming of both seafood and aquatic plants — and fisheries around the world. The organization found that global production from both aquaculture and fisheries reached a new high — 223.3 million metric tons of animals and plants — in 2022. Of that, 185.4 million metric tons were aquatic animals, and 37.8 million metric tons were algae. Aquaculture was responsible for 51 percent of aquatic animal production in 2022, or 94.4 metric tons.

The milestone was in many ways an expected one, given the world's insatiable appetite for seafood. Since 1961, consumption of seafood has grown at twice the annual rate of the global population, according to the FAO. Because production levels from fisheries are not expected to change significantly in the future, meeting the growing global demand for seafood almost certainly necessitates an increase in aquaculture.

Though fishery production levels fluctuate from year to year, "it's not like there's new fisheries out there waiting to be discovered," said Dave Martin, program director for Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships, an international organization that works to reduce the environmental impact of seafood supply chains. "So any growth in consumption of seafood is going to come from aquaculture."

But the rise of aquaculture underscores the need to transform seafood systems to minimize their impact on the planet. Both aquaculture and fisheries — sometimes referred to as capture fisheries, as they involve the capture of wild seafood — come with significant environmental and climate considerations. What's more, the two systems often depend on each other, making it difficult to isolate their climate impacts.

"There's a lot of overlap between fisheries and aquaculture that the average consumer may not see," said Dave Love, a research professor at the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University.

Studies have shown that the best diet for the planet is one free of animal protein. Still, seafood generally has much lower greenhouse gas emissions than other forms of protein from land-based animals. And given many people's unwillingness or inability to go vegan, the FAO recommends transforming, adapting, and expanding sustainable seafood production to feed the world's growing population and improve food security.

But "there's a lot of ways to do aquaculture well, and there's a lot of ways to do it poorly," said Martin. Aquaculture can result in nitrogen and phosphorus being released into the natural environment, damaging aquatic ecosystems. Farmed fish can also spread disease to wild populations, or escape from their confines and breed with other species, resulting in genetic pollution that can disrupt the fitness of a wild population. Martin points to the diesel fuel used to power equipment on certain fish farms as a major source of aquaculture's environmental impact. According to an analysis from the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown, swapping out fossil fuel-based generators on fish farms for renewable-powered hybrids would prevent 500 million to 780 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2050.

Other areas for improvement will vary depending on the specific species being farmed. In 2012, a U.N. study found that mangrove forests — a major carbon sink — have suffered greatly due to the development of shrimp and fish farming. Today, industry stakeholders have been exploring how new approaches and techniques from shrimp farmers can help restore mangroves.

Meanwhile, wild fishing operations present their own environmental problems. For example, poorly managed fisheries can harvest fish more quickly than wild populations can breed, a phenomenon known as overfishing. Certain destructive wild fishing techniques also kill a lot of non-targeted species, known as bycatch, threatening marine biodiversity.

But the line between aquaculture and fish harvested from the wild isn't as clear as it may seem. For example, pink salmon that are raised in hatcheries and then released into the wild to feed, mature, and ultimately be caught again are often marketed as "wild caught." Lobsters, caught wild in Maine, are often fed bait by fisherman to help them put on weight. "It's a wild fishery," said Love — but the lobster fishermen's practice of fattening up their catch shows how human intervention is present even in wild-caught operations.

On the flipside, in a majority of aquaculture systems, farmers provide their fish with feed. That feed sometimes includes fish meal, says Love, a powder that comes from two sources: seafood processing waste (think: fish guts and tails) and wild-caught fish.

All of this can result in a confusing landscape for climate- or environmentally-conscientious consumers who eat fish. But Love recommends a few ways in which consumers can navigate choice when shopping for seafood. Buying fresh fish locally helps shorten supply chains, which can lower the carbon impact of eating aquatic animals. "In our work, we've found that the big impact from transport is shipping fresh seafood internationally by air," he said. Most farmed salmon, for example, sold in the U.S. is flown in.

From both a climate and a nutritional standpoint, smaller fish and sea vegetables are also both good options. "Mussels, clams, oysters, seaweed — they're all loaded with macronutrients and minerals in different ways" compared to fin fish, said Love.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/the-world-is-farming-more-seafood-than-it-catches-is-that-a-good-thing/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

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“He couldn’t even remember me”: Trump has “severe memory issues,” says author who interviewed him

The author of a new book about The Apprentice says Donald Trump is suffering from severe memory loss, with the former president not even recognizing him despite the two having just spent an hour together for an interview.

In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ramin Setoodeh, co-editor-in chief at Variety, said he did an hour long sit-down interview with Trump while researching for his book, "Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass." A few months later, Setoodeh met with Trump again, this time at Trump Tower, to discuss his time in the White House. Trump had "no recollection of our lengthy interview," he said.

“Donald Trump had severe memory issues," Setoodeh said. "As the journalist who spent the most time with him, I have to say, he couldn’t remember things. He couldn’t even remember me.

The remarks come after Trump said President Joe Biden should take a “cognitive test,” because “I took a cognitive test and aced it,” during a speech in Detroit this past weekend; in the next sentence, Trump couldn’t remember the name of the doctor who administered the test, twice referring to Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, as “Ronny Johnson.”

Setoodeh said the cognitive decline in the presumptive GOP candidate should not be ignored.

“I think that the American public really needs to see this portrait of Donald Trump," he said, "because this shows what he is like and who he is and who he has always been."

Giada DeLaurentiis’ strawberry peach crumble is a summer winner

For years, I've argued there may be no better summer dessert — outside of the realm of ice creams, sorbets and other frozen delights — than crisps and crumbles of all iterations. With roasted fruits, bites of oats and cinnamon, rich butter throughout and caramelized, rich syrups, they're a cornucopia of flavors, colors, temperatures and textures (and don't forget the whipped cream or ice cream, too!)

Apparently, Giada Di Laurentiis concurs — she recently shared the recipe for her gluten-free Strawberry Peach Crumble on Instagram and it looks like a surefire winner.

The recipe couldn't be simpler, calling for butter, lemon juice, strawberries, peaches, light brown sugar and rice flour, which is then topped with a mixture of oats, almonds, cinnamon and some of the aforementioned ingredients also present in the fruit component. The rice flour is a simple swap that will allow a much wider swath of people to enjoy this dish, no matter if you're serving it at a large gathering this summer or on a cozy night at home with your just your closest loved ones.

Of course, you can swap in and out fruits based on what you have on hand, possibly even using a mixture of frozen and fresh fruits and you can also add in plant-based butter or margarine if you're looking to go dairy-free. Nut allergy? No worries, just omit the almonds and you're good to go. Or throw caution to the wind and make this with the butter, the almond and all-purpose flour, too, as long as no one in your immediate party is gluten-free, of course.

Another bonus is for those with raw fruit allergies — like me — who will be able to enjoy this luscious dessert since the fruit has been cooked off.

Regardless, it's going to be delicious. The full recipe can be found here.

Why Armie Hammer is “grateful” for the cannibalism accusations that led to his “career death”

Armie Hammer has commented on the cannibalism allegations that he said led to the demise of his career.

Hammer on the June 16 episode of the "Painful Lessons" podcast spoke about the "bizarre" accusations, which were formally made by his ex-girlfriends Courtney Vucekovich and Julia Morrison in the 2022 documentary "House of Hammer." The women in the documentary revealed explicit text messages and voice notes reportedly from Hammer in which he detailed his sexual fantasies of bondage, cannibalism and rape.

“There were things that people were saying about me that just felt so outlandish . . . that I was a cannibal," the "Call Me By Your Name" actor said. "Now I'm able to sort of look at it with a sense of distance and perspective and be like, 'That's hilarious.' Like, people called me a cannibal, and everyone believed them.

“How am I going to be a cannibal? It was bizarre, right?” Hammer added.

“Even in the indiscrepancies [sic], even in the . . . whatever it was that people said . . . I'm now at a place in my life where I'm really grateful for every single bit of it," Hammer said, according to PEOPLE. "Because where I was in my life before all of that stuff happened to me I didn't feel good . . . I never was in a place where I was happy with myself, where I had self-esteem; I never knew how to give myself love."

Hammer also observed that he entered a program after his "career death" led him to "hit rock bottom."

“It killed me. It killed my ego. It killed all the people around me that I thought were my friends that weren't," Hammer said. "All of those people in a flash went away, but the buildings were still standing. I'm still here. I still have my health, and I'm really grateful for that."

“That is not history”: Adjoa Andoh, the other “Bridgerton” queen, challenges the usual period dramas

Since this was my first time speaking with Adjoa Andoh, the “Bridgerton” actor who makes Lady Agatha Danbury a force second only to Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) in formidability, I begged her pardon before asking about her character's other defining trait: her outstanding fashion.

In 19th century Grosvenor Square, and in a sea of effervescent pastels and ruffles, Lady Danbury is a vision in saturated plums and burgundies sculpted by lines and high collars that could slice brie. The Queen has her artistic pompadours and diadems; Lady Danbury crowns herself with her signature hat, worn at a jaunty tilt. In Julia Quinn’s novels, the character walks with a cane. Andoh’s interpretation of that accessory implies anything but infirmity.

“For my iteration of Lady Danbury,” Andoh shared in a recent Zoom conversation, “it is a stick that has swagger.”

Each new “Bridgerton” season redirects its focus to another of the titular family’s children, inviting us to tag along as they seek a suitable match that balances social politics and romance. While the circumstances of each courtship shift with each character, Lady Danbury is a regal constant. A loyal friend to the family’s matriarch Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) and one of the queen’s most trusted confidantes, Lady Danbury is a character – bolstered by Andoh’s performance – one aspires to know and, maybe, to become.

A "Bridgerton" happy ending hints at long-anticipated queer romances ahead

Smitten viewers may hope that she remains ever thus. Not Andoh. “To me, that's not interesting . . . it's not life,” she said,"because none of us are in aspic. It's almost like the fiction of the magical Negro. It doesn't exist because we're humans. We're not gods or monoliths. I don't want to watch that. And I don't want to play that. I want to play someone who has to navigate life like we all do, because there's learning in it, and there's drama in it, and there's interest in it.”

In the latest “Bridgerton” storyline Lady Danbury’s calm is unexpectedly rattled by the unannounced arrival of her long-absent brother, Lord Marcus Anderson (Daniel Francis). For most of the season we don’t know why Lady Danbury had a falling out with her brother, but discover the truth in the seventh episode, “Joining of Hands.”

“What would happen if Lady Danbury had a relationship?"

When they were children Marcus ruined Agatha's plans to escape her family, resulting in her father marrying her off to an older man she couldn’t stand. This is where her story picks up in “Queen Charlotte,” where the character’s younger version is played by Arsema Thomas.

Regarding this new revelation, Andoh says, “OK, so here’s where Adjoa goes into a bit of a heavy turn. But you know, I have been thinking about D-Day, and the 80th anniversary of the war, and all the different people who had the most awful hardships in their lives, who don't want to discuss it. . . . I know we're talking about fiction. We're not talking about real life, terrible war experiences. Nonetheless, I reflect on those stories, and I reflect on grandparents who never talked about their wartime experiences and other experiences.

“Her brother and all of that childhood, she never talks about it,” Andoh continued. “She never raises it. Why? It was painful, and it was hard, and she is trying to move forward. So I think when you say she's rattled when he appears, you are right. Because he's rattling the edifice that she has created in order to go forward, in a way that she finds comfortable and one she can manage. And for me . . . a character rattled? A formidable person off their game? It's fabulous to play.”

In addition to her extensive activism work, Andoh’s career spans decades and includes credits on long-running U.K. TV series such as “EastEnders,” “Casualty” and “Doctor Who” along with an extensive list of theatrical roles, including directing and starring in a production of William Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” (Elsewhere on Netflix, she also pops up in Season 2 of “The Witcher.”)

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“Bridgerton,” however, brings together a vast community from different countries and cultures, all linked by an affinity for romance and the story’s inclusive interpretation of Regency-era storytelling. Which, as Andoh points out, is closer to the truth of how Britain was and is.

Shonda Rhimes’ interpretation of that period, as shaped by creator Chris Van Dusen, who handed the showrunner reins over to Jess Brownell for this new season, is a refreshing response to those of us who grew up watching all-white period productions on PBS, courtesy of “Masterpiece Theater.”

"I want to play someone who has to navigate life like we all do, because there's learning in it, and there's drama in it."

Andoh says this production “gives us the opportunity to be less ahistorical in our representation of the past. So all those ‘Masterpiece’ things that you would have seen with an entirely white canvas are ahistorical. That is not history,” she said. “You know, this is a tiny little island in the North Sea that punched above its weight, went all over the world, colonized, took, stole brought back did all the things that Great Britain did in order to become ‘great.’ It went out to the world, and the world came to it.”

Through the show’s popularity, that’s still happening – and not just among the “posh-os,” as Andoh describes the upper class. Part of the promotional tour for the show took her to Johannesburg in South Africa and Warsaw, Poland. “Africa, flew to Johannesburg to celebrate ‘Bridgerton’ — Africa in all its variety, all its communities. Same thing in Poland. All of Central Europe came to Warsaw to celebrate ‘Bridgerton.’”

Andoh thinks of the show’s global fandom as “a big tent. And it's a tent that says, ‘Your gender, your race, your religion, your sexuality, I don't care. Do you like the show? Come on in. You're welcome.’"

She added, “I'm interested in the places where we come together and when we just engage with each other at what I would call a soul level.”

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Surmising what we can from the ending of Season 3, it looks as if the show intends to cash in some of that currency it’s built with fans to introduce queer romances in its fourth round of episodes.

As Andoh reminds us, change is always afoot in the ‘Ton. So what does that mean for Lady Danbury? The actor floated some possibilities.

“You know . . . with Violet, she talks about gardens in bloom and all of that,” Andoh said. “What would happen if Lady Danbury had a relationship? How do independent, powerful women — and this is a 21st-century question as well — who have made a life for themselves, how do they make space for their hearts? How do you accommodate the heart space into a world that you've made quite safe and secure?

“I would love to see a bit of that as well,” Andoh concluded. So would we.

All episodes of "Bridgerton" are streaming on Netflix.

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Who really controls our food and water? Here are the 6 most shocking revelations from “The Grab”

The next world war may be fought over food and water.

That’s what agripreneur Edward Hargroves predicts in “The Grab,” a new documentary thriller from “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Over the course of six years, the documentary spotlights Nathan "Nate" Halverson, an Emmy-winning reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting, who has been looking into a dire global trend in which governments, financial investors, and private security forces are quietly acquiring the world’s last remaining food and water resources. From China’s acquisition of a major pork producer in the US to Russia’s importation of American cows, grass, and even cowboys, the examples are both vast and plentiful. Food and water are basic necessities for mankind. However, because there isn't enough arable land on Earth to accommodate for a growing population in the near future, the value of such natural resources is now astounding.

"Unnecessary and unacceptable": Why the American hunger crisis could get worse in 2024

“The 20th century had Opec,” said Halverson in the film. “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec.”

For Halverson and his team, their investigation is still a work in progress. The revelations that have been made are enough to conclude that the international scramble for food, water, and farmland is very much real. And various parties — whether that’s nations, major companies, or mercenaries — are doing whatever it takes to “grab” the most resources possible.

“As food and water become more precious, countries are looking to grab up that resource for themselves, whether it’s to wield power or whether to make sure they’re feeding their people,” Halverson said. “And so the question is, what countries are doing this? Where are they doing it? And how are they doing it?”

Here are the six biggest moments from the documentary:

China’s takeover of the world’s biggest pork producer raises some eyebrows

In 2013, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer, was acquired by a Hong Kong-based company called WH Group (formerly known as Shuanghui International) for nearly $5 billion. The business deal was the largest-ever Chinese acquisition of an American company, thus prompting lawmakers and the media to wonder whether a hidden player was involved. Smithfield Foods’ CEO at the time, Larry Pope, told Congress that the Chinese government was not behind WH Group’s purchase. However, Halverson proved that untrue. While on a reporting trip to WH Group’s headquarters, Halverson obtained a secret document that revealed the government-owned Bank of China approved the hefty loan to buy Smithfield in a single day. The document also specified that the Bank had a “social responsibility” in backing the deal for “national strategy.”

When a similar story was uncovered — this time involving several Saudi-owned companies making profit off of acquired land in Arizona’s La Paz County — Halverson picked up on a pattern:

“Other countries around the world were growing increasingly worried about food and water,” he said in the documentary. “And their strategies was to buy and purchase and grab other countries’ food and water supplies.”

Global climate change is expected to benefit Russia’s agriculture and food supply

Russian officials have proclaimed that Russia will benefit from climate change, which they say will expand the growing season in certain parts of the nation. But scientists argued the opposite, saying that rising temperatures would exacerbate the environmental impacts already plaguing Russia, including flooding, heat waves, drought, and wildfires.

“Some Russian cities in high-latitude regions report infrastructure damage from thawing permafrost and soil instability for up to 80 percent of buildings and for pipelines,” according to researchers and members of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS) in a February study.

Russian officials, however, have disregarded the consequences and instead, are encouraging citizens to view the impacts in a positive light. Despite the warnings, officials believe high temperatures will provide a more livable climate along with a year-round Arctic sea route.

Additionally, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine further intensifies its climate consequences, scientists said. “The humanitarian disaster is of the utmost importance — the number of deaths and structures that were destroyed — but the collateral damage is intense destruction to the atmosphere,” explained Debra Javeline, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.

Russia’s cattle supply could provide geopolitical power

As explained by Halverson, when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, cows were slaughtered in huge numbers, causing the number of cattle in Russia to plummet. When Putin came to power in 1999, he decided to rebuild Russia’s cattle herd. “Not just to feed Russians, but to give Russia geopolitical power,” Halverson said.

According to some Russian officials, cattle will award the nation more strength in their oil reserves and weapons.

“Of course, it’s food that has become…much more powerful than oil. And in the future, food will be driving the world. It’s for sure,” said Viktor Linnik, the founder of Miratorg Agribusiness Holding, a privately-held Russian agribusiness company based in Moscow. “[I]n the future, for Russia, the driver will be agriculture. We will feed all the world.”

The dehumanizing email exchanged between Erik Prince and his right-hand man

Amid their reporting, Halverson and his team uncovered another alarming story, one concerning displaced farmers in Zambia. The farmers, who have lived and farmed for generations in their homeland, were being expelled by mercenary militias via a deeds system that allocated the land to commercial farms controlled by outside parties in a slew of nations, including the US and China. The displacement effort is “the new colonization of Africa,” said Brigadier “Brig” Siachitema, a Zambian human rights lawyer who is advocating for communities that have lost their rightful land.

There isn’t a sole villain fueling the displacements. Rather, an intricate yet obscure network of private contractors is at play, “a Russian doll of LLCs and LLCs” who are controlling these farms, explained Halverson in the film. Halverson and his team gained access to a collection of emails within the private equity firm Frontier Services Group (FSG), which was founded and led by Erik Prince, who was also behind the private military contractor Blackwater. In one particular email exchanged between Prince and Sean Rump — a partner at Prince's FSG — it’s made clear that African land will be taken in any way possible, even if it comes at the expense of innocent lives.

“If you come across some run over, shot, or otherwise f**ked up native, say a prayer for them. You don’t help injured, bleeding people in Africa. AIDS, Hep A, B and C and a myriad of ailments that keep their life expectancy around 42 is to be avoided at all costs. People die in the third world. It’s Darwin selection at its most pure,” the email read.

“With a story like this, you’re also dealing with the fact that you’re witnessing the callousness of the way we’re seeing people treat other humans,” Halverson said. “It gets to you after a while.”

Erik Prince resigned from FSG shortly after United Nations report

In 2021, a United Nations report alleged Erik Prince violated an arms embargo on Libya. The confidential report, obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post, said Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries and weapons to military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has fought to overthrow the UN-recognised Libyan government, in 2019.

Shortly after, on April 13, 2021, Prince resigned from his positions as executive director and deputy chairman of Frontier Services Group. Six days later, Prince’s longtime attorney and business associate took a seat on the company’s board, the documentary said in its conclusion.

There is enough water in the world to grow enough food to feed the world, per Halverson

“There is enough water in the world to grow enough calories to feed everyone in the world. Not just today, but in the year 2050 when there’s nine billion people and when there’s 10 billion people. The intelligence community says this is solvable. Engineers say this is solvable. If we solve it," Halverson said.

"The Grab" is out in theaters and on-demand June 14th. Watch a trailer for the documentary below, via YouTube:

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A Caesar-ish salad so decadent you won’t believe it’s vegan

One of my absolute favorite ingredients is tahini. It is magnificent no matter what it's added to, from hummus to desserts to savory, rich sauces — and even dressings or vinaigrettes, as shown here.

A Middle Eastern condiment comprised of nothing but ground sesame, it is exceptionally smooth, thick and flavorful, with an oddly beguiling flavor that is somehow simultaneously both subtle and robust.

In recent years, tahini has made a home in many "vegan Caesars." I am hesitant to label this recipe a "vegan Caesar" because it technically is not. There is, obviously, no egg, no cheese, no croutons, no anchovy, so by definition, it is indeed not a Caesar.

Caesar is the comfort food of salads

It does, however, impart some of the same flavor, texture and consistency notes that you might get from a classic Caesar, but without any of the dairy, sugar or gluten/wheat (I do include walnuts and cashews, but feel to remove those, too, to also make it nut-free. You could also add grilled chicken or grated parm. to defeat the entire purpose of the vegan aspect — it's all up to you! It'll be delicious regardless).

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This is one of those recipes that might sound a little wonky (aquafaba? nutritional yeast? maple syrup?), but I promise the end result is so much more than the sum of its parts.

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Romaine and endive salad with a Caesar-ish, vegan tahini dressing

Yields

04 servings

Prep Time

25 minutes

Ingredients

For dressing:

2 tablespoons aquafaba (the thick liquid from the top of a can of chickpeas)

Handful of cashews

3 cloves garlic, peeled

1/4 cup tahini

3 to 4 lemons, juiced and zested

1 tablespoon malt or rice vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon Worcestershire

1 teaspoon maple syrup, optional

1 to 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

2 tablespoons imitation heavy cream (Califia has an amazing one)

Onion powder, to taste

Kosher salt, to taste

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

For salad:

1 large bag romaine lettuce, cored removed, sliced in large, slightly-bigger-than-bite-size pieces (I also love Little Gems here)

2 to 3 endive, sliced about the same size as the lettuce

Fried shallots, divided

Fried chickpeas, divided

Dried chives

Toasted sesame seeds

Toasted, chopped walnuts, optional

Directions

In the base of a blender of VitaMix or VitaPrep, add aquafaba, cashews, garlic and tahini. Blend well until smooth and rich.
Add lemon zest and juice, vinegar, Dijon, Worcestershire, maple (if using) and blend again.
Add nutritional yeast, non-dairy heavy cream, onion powder, salt and pepper. Blend one more time, taste and adjust for seasoning.
In an especially large bowl, combine lettuce, endive, chives, sesame seeds, and half of each of the shallots and chickpeas. Toss with a few tablespoons of the dressing, top with the remaining shallots and chickpeas, and finish with walnuts, if using.

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Texas pastor and ex-Trump adviser admits to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a child

The pastor of a megachurch in Dallas who previously served as a spiritual adviser to Donald Trump has admitted to “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s, according to a statement obtained by local ABC affiliate WFAA.

Last Friday, “The Wartburg Watch" blog posted the account of Cindy Clemishire, who accused Gateway Church pastor and founder Robert Morris of molesting her when she was 12. The evangelical church is one of the largest in the U.S. and was founded by Morris in 2000.

Clemishire said the abuse lasted several years, from December 1982 until 1987.

On Sunday, Morris admitted to “inappropriate behavior with a young lady,” though he didn’t specify her name or age, according to WFAA.

“When I was in my early twenties, I was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying," Morris said in the statement. "It was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. This behavior happened on several occasions over the next few years."

The sexual abuse allegedly began while Morris, married and working as a traveling evangelist, was staying at the Clemishire’s family home in 1982. In 1987, he claimed, the situation was “brought to light and it was confessed and repented of."

At the request of Clemishire’s family, Morris stepped away from ministry for two years to undergo a “restoration process,” before returning in 1989.

Though the Clemishire family forgave Morris, they never supported his return to the church.

“I think leaders can get caught up and think it’s our responsibility to protect God and it’s not. Our responsibility is to protect the people. God is bigger than all of that,” Clemishire told WFAA.

In 2016, Morris was named a member of Trump's Evangelical Executive Advisory Board. In 2020, Trump appeared at Morris' church for a roundtable discussion on race and policing.

“Alarming”: John Oliver exposes Trump plot to create his own loyalist “Deep State” if he wins

John Oliver on Sunday's episode of "Last Week Tonight" delved into how former President Donald Trump's second term could hypothetically play out given that polls give him an edge over President Joe Biden.

“You can go on his website and see it all laid out, and it’s pretty alarming,” Oliver said, before playing a clip of Trump articulating his plans to dismantle trans rights.

"I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth," Trump said in the clip. "No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong with the wrong gender," he added, claiming that it is a concept "never heard of in all of human history" until it was recently invented by "the radical left."

John Oliver takes on Donald Trump and the "long history" of politicians being "weird around corn"

"That is really the Trump experience in a nutshell right there," Oliver said. "Hateful ideology, a promise to make life harder for minorities, all wrapped up in a non sequitur so stupid it is inconveniently funny. The radical left invented trans people a few years ago? I’m sorry. What?!? Did they put it on 'Shark Tank' and I somehow missed it?”

The host then brought up a number of Trump's other plans if he assumes the presidency again, including mass deportation, requiring local law enforcement agencies to implement controversial policing tactics such as stop-and-frisk, slashing funding for schools that implement a mask or vaccine mandate, and impose a universal tariff of at least 10% on all imports.

"He's promising to get revenge on his enemies," Oliver said. "At rallies he’s told supporters that ‘I am your retribution,’ which sounds like something you’d hear out of the mouth of Megatron rather than a major presidential candidate."

"He's been specific about who will be on the receiving end of that retribution," Oliver added, before showing footage of Trump claiming that he will "root out communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they'll do anything — whether legally or illegally to destroy America and destroy the American dream."

"Was he falling asleep at the end there?" Oliver jokingly asked. "Second, it's not usually a great sign when a politician starts referring to groups as vermin, unless of course they're running for mayor of Zootopia and they're gunning for the little Rodentia votes."

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Regarding the ex-president's 2016 policy goals that never became reality, Oliver said that "Trump as president was sort of like a hamster in an attack helicopter."

"Sure, he wants to bathe the whole world in blood and terror — he wants it with his whole rotten hamster heart — but luckily he doesn’t know what buttons to press and his brain’s the size of a peanut so that’s put some hard limits on the damage he’s actually able to do," the host quipped.

However, Oliver acknowledged that Trump is likely to have much more help this time around if he is elected, given that "a group of conservatives have given him a plan to hit the ground running."

"That is why while Trump’s first term was bad, his second could be much, much worse,” Oliver argued.

Oliver then explained the blueprint for Trump's potential second term: Project 2025, a "step-by-step gameplan" organized and backed by more than 100 conservative organizations like the National Rifle Association, Liberty University, and The Heritage Foundation.

Project 2025's 900-page handbook, for example, includes plans for dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it is "one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry." Oliver observed other initiatives included in the handbook, such as installing a pro-life task force to replace Biden's reproductive healthcare task force, disassembling the FBI, defunding the Department of Justice, outlawing pornography, and more.

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Speaking about the two figures spearheading Project 2025, Trump associates Russ Vought and John McEntee, Oliver said, “Their goal here is clear: To assemble an army of vetted, trained staff who can begin dismantling the administrative state from day one."

"Which is a little weird if you think about it," he added. "They’re assembling an army of future government bureaucrats who hate the government."

The Project 2025 takeover would be largely implemented through the reinstatement of Schedule F, Oliver explained, an executive order Trump signed weeks ahead of the 2020 election which would have stripped civil service protections for thousands of employees and granted Trump the power to oust civil service of any senior or mid-level officials he determined to be misaligned with him. Biden swiftly undid the measure once he assumed office.

“For all of Trump’s talk about wanting to get rid of the Deep State, Schedule F isn’t eliminating it, it is creating a Deep State that is loyal to him and driving good people out of government,” Oliver said. “And I do get that ‘Trump Unraveling Civil Service Protections’ isn’t the sexiest headline, but it’s also the action that could unlock his ability to do all of the incredibly damaging things that he and those involved in Project 2025 have been planning.”

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver airs on Sundays at 11 p.m. ET on Max.

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We should all be cooking more like Appalachians

When you hear the term “Appalachian cooking,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If your answer is scrappy, down-home country fare, heavy on southern influence (maybe with a squirrel thrown in for good measure) you’re in good company — but you’re also wrong. At least partially.

Appalachian cooking isn’t necessarily southern. It can look a lot like comfort food, and yes, comfort food can be rich, savory and biscuit-centric. But Appalachian cuisine is far more interesting than just sausage gravy. It reflects a culture and belief system much deeper than just putting food on the table, and it can be a whole lot healthier – and more cost effective – than you imagine. In fact, it’s likely that you already incorporate some Appalachian concepts into your cooking and lifestyle without even realizing it.

Do you grow vegetables, fruits or herbs? Have you ever repurposed food scraps, meat bones or a Thanksgiving turkey into broths or a hefty sandwich? Ever cooked a meal too large for your family and shared some with your neighbors? If so, you’ve cooked — and lived — Appalachian-style.

Measuring your food waste for six weeks can change your habits

Encompassing all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states as far north as New York and as far south as Georgia, Appalachian food is an amalgamation of Native American, African American, German and Italian influence based in hundreds of years of tradition and thrift around the maxim, “Waste not, want not.” The result is a swath of cuisine ranging from pepperoni rolls, favored by Depression-era miners as a quick grab-and-go meal, to sophisticated farm-to-table dishes flavored by hand-picked ramps, wild onions and morel mushrooms.

Houston Oldman, owner of Dancing Bear Appalachian Bistro in Townsend, Tennessee, has made it his goal to provide the best Appalachian dining experience in the U.S. and to teach people that modern principles can coincide peacefully with food traditions that always relied on what you could grow or procure locally.

“I try to make our restaurant a center of conversation about this type of food,” Oldman says. “We have access to foods and techniques our ancestors could only dream of, so we bring modern touches to the quiet, peaceful nature prevalent in the Tennessee culture.”

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What does that look like? Dancing Bear’s executive chef Jeff Carter, formerly of Blackberry Farm, makes everything from scratch, with almost all the ingredients grown or raised locally. “The recipes and techniques come from our forefathers,” says Oldham, “like using local, pasture-raised meat, vegetables grown in our own garden, and methods such as pickling and butchering to preserve every part of every ingredient. But having access to foods outside of our region and adding a new hydroponics farm provide modern-day options that give us the best of both worlds.”

With an emphasis on community and all natural ingredients, Hawk Knob Appalachian Hard Cider, West Virginia’s first cidery located in Lewisburg, is proof that embracing old-school techniques can uncover new flavors. Unlike sweeter ciders you might find in your local brewery, these brews are closer in taste to a sour ale or dry wine. Chef and manager Amanda Bennet says that’s because – true to Appalachian tradition – no sugar enhancements are added. “We let the apples do what they do,” she says.

“We use every part of the fruit, press it on property, and wait patiently for fermentation without the assistance of sugar, either in the still or in repurposed bourbon barrels,” Bennet continues. “The skins and pulp are not discarded – they’re used as feed for cattle and pigs. Then we hand-bottle and label, so from start to finish, the process is personal.”

The result is a product that is local, seasonal, and homemade, without relying on artificial ingredients or preservatives. Even the environment is Appalachian – pull a chair up to the pond, drop a line and wile away the hours having good conversation with your neighbors. Healthy, sustainable food and drink, a strong sense of community, and a keen respect for every part of an animal or plant source are the tenets of the Appalachian tradition.

So if you’re looking to lower your grocery bill, eat more organically, and avoid the waste that tends to come with privilege, dip into the Appalachian methods that still hold water a century later. Your wallet and your health will thank you.

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Trump wishes “Radical Left Degenerates” a Happy Father’s Day

Donald Trump wished a happy Father’s Day to American dads on Sunday, including “radical left degenerates who are ruining the country.”

In the tangential Truth Social post, written in all caps, Trump once again accused the left of rigging the court system and bringing the U.S. into “third-world nation status.”

Trump and his allies have repeatedly accused President Joe Biden and the left, falsely, of orchestrating Trump’s most recent conviction in court where he was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

“We need strength and loyalty to our country and its wonderful constitution. Everything will be on full display come November 5th, 2024 – the most important day in the history of our country. Make America great again,” Trump's all-caps message concluded.

The June 16 post is just one of many times that Trump has used his holiday messages to go after his rivals. Just last month, he wrote a Memorial Day post aimed at the “human scum” presiding over his hush money trial. In a Truth Social post last Christmas, he called for various people who are “destroying the nation,” including Biden and special counsel Jack Smith, to “rot in hell.”

In May 2023, Trump wished a Happy Mother’s Day to the “wives of radical Left Fascists, Marxists, and Communists who are doing everything within their power to destroy and obliterate our once great Country.”

Biden’s campaign team shared Trump’s last post on X, calling it a “deranged” message “attacking the judicial system.”

“The peanut gallery”: Experts say Cannon opened door to “unheard of” GOP intervention in Trump case

There should be no consequences for Donald Trump lying about federal law enforcement officers and falsely claiming he “nearly escaped death” because they were authorized to kill him, two dozen Republican attorneys general argue in a brief filed Sunday in the former president’s classified documents case.

In May, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, just before he was convicted on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial, told his followers on Truth Social that he had been targeted for assassination by “Crooked Joe Biden’s” Department of Justice when FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago home to search for national security secrets he took from the White House. In order to do so, Trump and far-right allies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., distorted the exact same “standard procedure” the FBI always follows, including when Trump was president, under which agents are authorized to use force if they encounter a deadly threat while carrying out a law enforcement operation.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with stealing state secrets, wants to bar the former president from lying about law enforcement again. In a filing last month, he asked U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the former president’s oft-delayed case, to impose a gag order that would prohibit “statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”

"Not appropriate": Cannon removes indictment text referring to Trump sharing classified information

Cannon has not yet definitively ruled on the matter, so far only chiding the prosecution for lacking “professional courtesy” by failing to discuss it first with Trump’s legal team. In the meantime, in the wake of MAGA incitement, one avowed Trump supporter has already been arrested in Texas for threatening to kill federal law enforcement officers — specifically, texting an FBI agent and threatening to “slaughter you like the traitorous dogs you are,” per a June 13 press release from the Department of Justice.

So what? That’s the response from the 24 Republican AGs, including Texas’ Ken Paxton. In a June 16 filing, they ask Cannon to grant them permission to intervene in Trump’s case, claiming the former president’s freedom to slander law enforcement is sacrosanct.

A gag order barring Trump from making false claims about the law enforcement agents involved, specifically, in his classified documents case “may affect the election, the First Amendment rights of tens of millions of Americans, and will prevent [former] President Trump from opining on this important national election matter,” the Republicans argue.

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In that, the AGs are merely echoing the argument from Trump’s own legal team, which last week argued that Trump’s incitement is actually “campaign speech,” suggesting he’d like to talk about his scheduled June 27 debate with President Joe Biden, and that a gag order would constitute “totalitarian censorship of core political speech.” Ignoring the arrest in Texas, they also maintain that the government has failed to demonstrate that the specific agents Trump accused of trying to kill him are themselves at risk.

Although it is possible she sides with the government, legal experts who have observed her thus far say there is now an established pattern of the judge siding with the defense, perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that, a year after being randomly assigned the case, there are no indications that she will schedule a trial before November.

Bradley Moss, a criminal defense attorney who specializes in national security issues, told Salon that Cannon should not even be wasting the court's time by considering arguments from outside parties. She's already scheduled a hearing at which right-wing attorneys who aren't part of the case will be given time to argue that the Constitution prohibited the appointment of a special counsel in the case.

"The influx of amicus briefs in this case is unheard of and largely the result of Judge Cannon’s decision to allow everyone under the sun to chime in on a criminal matter," Moss said. "This should be a simple legal issue to resolve over modification to bail conditions. It does not require input from the peanut gallery."

The constant, self-imposed delays on Cannon's part have come despite the fact that the case is arguably the most straight forward of all those against Trump: He definitely took the documents in question — he’s on tape discussing top-secret Iran war plans and admitting that he has no right to share them — and definitely did not hand them all back.

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“The main thing that [has] stood out to me is how she has constantly caused delay in the case instead of moving it forward,” Shira Scheindlin, a former federal judge, told NPR over the weekend. The second: “[S]he seems to have a visceral dislike of Jack Smith and his team. She’s constantly criticizing them. She’s constantly being sharp and sarcastic with them, and she almost never treats the defense that way.”

She is inept, Scheindlin said, but also perhaps cynical.

“I think she is inexperienced and I think it makes her insecure in her rulings. She's tentative,” Scheindlin said. “But the motivation may be mixed in with intentionally delaying enough to make sure this doesn't go before the election.”

Cannon has scheduled a hearing on Smith’s gag order request for June 24, although it is unclear when she might actually issue a ruling. That hearing will come more than a month after the case was originally set to go to trial.

about Trump's criminal cases

Biden campaign slams “convicted criminal” Trump as part of new $50 million ad campaign

President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign has launched a new ad calling Donald Trump a “convicted criminal."

The 30-second ad titled “Character Matters,” not only references Trump’s 34 felony convictions, but also his past cases of sexual abuse and defamation.

“Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s been working — lowering health care costs and making big corporations pay their fair share,” the ad narrator states, comparing the two presidential candidates. “This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who’s fighting for your family,” the narrator continues over images of Trump’s mugshots.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing throughout his many court battles and has dismissed his most recent hush money trial “rigged.” He is due to be sentenced next month.

Biden, whose son, Hunter, was convicted of three felony charges last week, has said it is “it's irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don't like the verdict.

The ad comes just a 10 days before the first presidential debate in Atlanta and will air in swing states across the country, as well as national cable. It is part of a $50 million ad buy from the Biden campaign this month, which includes more than $1 million of media targeting Black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters.

"We will make sure that every single day we are reminding voters about how Joe Biden is fighting for them, while Donald Trump runs a campaign focused on one man and one man only: himself," Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.

Donald Trump is counting on Mike Johnson to save him: The speaker will definitely try

Over the weekend Donald Trump committed one of his worst verbal "glitches" of the campaign so far. After delivering his standard line about how Joe Biden should be forced to take a cognitive test and rambling on about how he had "aced" his, Trump then said:

Doc Ronny Johnson, does everyone know Doc Ronny Johnson from Texas? He was the White House doctor and he said that I was the healthiest, he feels, president in history so I liked him very much.

Trump was very close with this former White House physician and Navy admiral — who was demoted to captain for a range of inappropriate behavior, including drinking on the job — who is now in Congress. I wrote about their relationship some years back:

Brig. Gen. Dr. Richard Tubb said in a letter that the doctor had been attached like "Velcro" to Trump since Inauguration Day. Tubb explained that [the] office is “one of only a very few in the White House Residence proper,” located directly across the hall from the president’s private elevator. He said that "on any given day 'physician's office,' as it is known, is generally the first and last to see the President."

So Trump surely knows, or at least used to know, that the doctor's last name is Jackson, not Johnson. He does that a lot, doesn't he? Recall that he repeatedly confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi at another rally earlier this year. But doing it in the same breath as he slags Biden's cognitive abilities takes it to a whole other level.

Trump says Biden should take a cognitive test like he did, but can't remember doctor's name

If I had to guess, maybe Trump was confusing Jackson's name with that of House Speaker Mike Johnson, whom he's reportedly been haranguing to somehow overturn his New York criminal conviction. (Which really isn't something the Congress can do —perhaps he confused him with his former fixer Michael Cohen.)

Politico reports that Trump is obsessed with the idea of using congressional power to go after Democrats he believes have "weaponized" the justice system:

It’s a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker Mike Johnson. Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader.

“We have to overturn this,” Trump insisted.

That's an interesting choice of words, don't you think? He has a habit of calling people up and demanding they "overturn" outcomes he doesn't like. Recall the famous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding that he "find" enough votes to overturn the election result in that state. He said publicly, more than once, that he believed the Supreme Court would overturn the results of the 2020 election, largely because the three justices he'd put on the bench owed it to him. At one point he was just posting #OVERTURN on social media.

#OVERTURN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2020

That obviously didn't work, but it hasn't stopped him from deploying the same demands in the wake of his conviction last month. Unlike Raffensperger, Johnson appears ready and willing to do what he can to help. After all, he was an election denier before it was cool.

Back in 2020, Johnson was among those who argued that the way some state officials had changed voting procedures during the pandemic was unconstitutional. He reportedly strong-armed 125 House members to join him in a Supreme Court brief supporting a lawsuit filed in Texas to undo the election results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin. According to ABC News, Johnson "told them Donald Trump was watching" and let it be known that he was in close contact with the then-president.

The Supreme Court refused to take that case due to lack of standing but Johnson didn't let up. He trafficked in some of the kookiest election conspiracy theories, including the one about how Dominion voting machines were rigged and somehow tied to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013. In other words, Johnson is a card-carrying election denier who will do everything he can to help Trump this November if he wants to challenge the results again (which he and the Republican National Committee are already setting up to do, should Trump lose).

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Trump obviously knows this, which is why he immediately got Johnson on the horn after the conviction, hurling the aforementioned "F-bombs" and demanding that Johnson find a way to throw out his conviction. Politico reports that Johnson was already on board:

The speaker didn’t really need to be convinced, one person familiar with the conversation said: Johnson, a former attorney himself, already believed the House had a role to play in addressing Trump’s predicament. The two have since spoken on the subject multiple times.

Whether the speaker can fulfill Trump's demands is another story. House Republicans managed to vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt last week — but that wasn't easy to pull off and will have no practical effect. It's unclear whether they can pass any of their proposals to punish those who are prosecuting Trump, let alone a proposed law that would allow presidents to move state cases to federal court. While Johnson is reportedly still interested in trying to "defund" special counsel Jack Smith's office, one senior appropriator told Politico that was a "stupid" idea. Needless to say, no such bills will pass the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority.

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Johnson may be doing all this to appease the hard right and fend off another effort to oust him from the speaker's office. I'd say it's more likely that he's trying to help Trump because he's a true believer.

After Trump demanded that Johnson overturn the conviction, the speaker appeared on "Fox and Friends" to reassure the faithful that his pals on the Supreme Court would take care of it:

I think that the justices on the court — I know many of them personally — I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight. This will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it; it’s just going to take some time to do it.

That had to be music to Trump's ears and no doubt made him love the speaker even more. But I hope Johnson doesn't expect the ex-president to remember all these favors. He's having a little trouble in that department lately. At this point, Trump could confuse him with Mike Pence and all that goodwill would go right out the window.

about Ronny Jackson's colorful career

Trump unleashed: This is the calm before the storm

Donald Trump is unleashed.

Following his historic felony conviction in New York for election interference, the former president has become even more dangerous. As the 2024 election approaches and he feels more pressure from the potential of time in prison for his crimes, Trump’s violent and antisocial behavior will only escalate.

In the last few days and weeks, Donald Trump has, again, threatened to have President Biden and other leading Democrats put in prison. Trump has also threatened them with execution for “treason." During a recent interview with TV personality Dr. Phil, Trump plainly stated that he would have to seek revenge on President Biden and his other so-called enemies.“Well, revenge does take time, I will say that….And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil, I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump’s campaign speeches have become filled with even more menace — what MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has astutely described as “pornographically violent” — even by his standards. While it is easy to focus on Trump’s “unhinged” behavior as he obsesses about his fear of sharks and the evils of electric trucks, the sinister nature of Trump’s speeches and his dark charisma should not be ignored or otherwise overlooked or deemphasized. Trump’s MAGA cultists treat his speeches and rallies like a type of religious service where they are worshipping their Dear Leader as a type of prophet and messiah-god-martyr.

Trump is continuing to summon and channel Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as he uses eliminationist and other genocidal language to describe non-white migrants and refugees and the other people (Democrats, liberals, and “the Left”) he views as “vermin” and human pollution in American society.

Trump's criminal connection

In a democracy, the news media is supposed to serve as watchdogs who hold the powerful accountable and educate the public so that they can make informed voting and other political decisions. Ideally, the news media should tell the public what is important, how to think about it, and then what to do about it. In a country such as the United States that is experiencing a democracy crisis, those responsibilities are heightened. In the Age of Trump, the American news media has mostly failed in those obligations and responsibilities. To that point, the mainstream news media has continued to mostly ignore Donald Trump’s increasingly dangerous language, as seen in his fundraising emails and coordinated campaign propaganda, to radicalize his MAGA people and other followers into committing acts of violence if he is sentenced to prison for his many crimes and/or loses the 2024 election.

Here are some of the most incendiary fundraising emails that Donald Trump has recently sent out to his MAGA followers:

In this email, Trump is telling his MAGA people they are living under a Biden “dictatorship” and suffering under tyranny. This is of course a willful lie and act of projection. Donald Trump has promised to be a dictator on “day one” of his presidency if he wins the 2024 election. President Biden is a staunch defender of American democracy and its institutions. If one accepts the premise of Trump’s claim the logical response is violence and war.

BIDEN’S SOVIET TACTICS DON’T SCARE ME!

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

Because this fight has always been bigger than me, Friend.

It’s about restoring power where it belongs – TO YOU THE PEOPLE – and ending the tyrannical Biden regime’s reign of terror once and for all.

So I’m asking you to boldly and peacefully rebel against the Deep State radicals who’ve infiltrated our government by chipping in and declaring: I STAND WITH TRUMP!

STAND WITH TRUMP

It’s no secret why the Marxists and Fascists in power are so desperate to purge our America First movement from existence.

They know that I’m this nation's last line of defense against the TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

And they’ll do ANYTHING, even burn our entire country to the ground, just to keep me out of office.

STAND WITH TRUMP

But mark my words, Friend. I WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED, BULLIED, OR JAILED INTO SILENCE. As long as YOU are by my side, I WILL NEVER SURRENDER!

Please join me and send these tyrants and villains a message they’ll NEVER forget.

In the following fundraising email, Trump is even more explicit as he uses language about “MAGA” being attacked with gunfire and other such lethal violence by President Biden, the Democrats, “Woke”, and the “deep state” and other supposed non-existent enemies as part of a “witch hunt” conspiracy to oppress him and his MAGA cultists and other “real Americans” (read White Americans). Again, the logical, legitimate, and moral solution to such existential threats is lethal violence and war.

THEY OPENED FIRE ON MAGA!

NOBODY is safe from the RADICAL LEFT WAR MACHINE.

I warned you this would happen after my rigged conviction:

#1 FIRST they weaponize the courts to TAKE ME DOWN.

#2 NEXT they threaten me with LIFE IN JAIL because I refuse to stay SILENT.

#3 And when they’re through with me, THEY’RE COMING AFTER Friend!

They've turned the beautiful country we built together into a WAR ZONE.

But I know that with YOU by my side, NOTHING will stop us from Saving America.

So before the end of the day, I'm calling on ONE MILLION FREEDOM-LOVING PATRIOTS to chip in and declare: END THE WITCH HUNT! >

END THE WITCH HUNT

The future of America rests in your hands!

In this third example, Donald Trump threatens President Biden with a “day of reckoning." Given Trump’s previous public and private comments this means putting President Biden in prison and then executing him for “treason." Trump also continues to trigger the death anxieties and other existential fears of his MAGA people, where again, the predictable (and obviously desired) outcome is violence.

BIDEN'S DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING

He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me … BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force… BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to bury me with so many witch hunts that I'd be forced to quit… BUT HE FAILED.

STAND WITH TRUMP

34 RIGGED FELONY CONVICTIONS calls for an unprecedented response.

And if our response to his tyrannical regime isn't MASSIVE, Biden will move onto his next target: YOU!

So I've set a goal of raising $34 MILLION by the end of the day to make Biden regret EVER coming after us. Chip in today if you STAND WITH TRUMP!

STAND WITH TRUMP

As we speak right now, America has never been closer to COMPLETE TYRANNY.

But please, Friend, do not give up hope.

With your support, the REAL verdict will be handed down on November 5th, when we TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND EXPEL THE DEEP STATE RADICALS.

So please, join my fight and let's send Crooked Joe a message he'll NEVER forget

STAND WITH TRUMP

Together, YOU AND I WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

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The reaction by the mainstream news media, pundits, and other such observers (especially the centrists) to Donald Trump’s escalating threats and promises of violence will follow a predictable and tired routine.

There will be claims that this is all “overheated rhetoric," and that Trump is kidding because it is part of his “performance”. As author Masha Gessen warns, always believe the autocrat and authoritarian, they are not kidding. Moreover, there is little to no substantive evidence to suggest that Trump and his agents are just “performing” their threats of violence and revenge. In reality, this strategy of normalizing political violence serves the larger right-wing project to end America’s multiracial democracy (see Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the Red Caesar scenario).

The most naïve will continue to hide behind America’s “institutions” and “national character” and how “the guardrails” and “the rule of law” will supposedly not allow Trump to engage in the types of violence and authoritarian plans he has publicly outlined and promised against his “enemies." The most absurd among such voices will react with “Trump could not become a dictator in 2016, so why be afraid now?” Such denials and deflections are foolish and the worst sort of toxic wish-casting and hope-peddling. At this point in the Age of Trump anyone with a public platform who says such things should not be taken seriously because they are functioning as useful idiots who are paving the way for the end of the country’s democracy and the ascent of Dictator Trump and his successors’ dictatorship(s).

Some more “sober” and “realistic” voices will intervene that yes, Donald Trump is saying increasingly dangerous things, but his MAGA followers are greatly exaggerated in their willingness to fight and die for him and the neofascist cause. In many ways, this is self-soothing talk. A range of experts on political violence, national security, and democracy are continuing to warn that the threat of violence by Trump’s MAGA people and other members of the right-wing is very serious and should not be underestimated.

More critical voices will suggest that Trump is using the strategy known as “stochastic terrorism”, where through repetition and coded suggestions political violence takes place but the leaders and other agents can then hide behind a veneer or plausible deniability. That is imprecise. As seen with these fundraising emails and other communications, Donald Trump and his propagandists are now basically commanding, in a clear and direct fashion, the MAGA people and other foot soldiers to engage in acts of violence and terrorism.

And there are basic legal questions here as well. Should someone convicted of a felony, like Donald Trump, be allowed to freely make such threats and incitements to violence – including attacks on Judge Merchan and other members of law enforcement and the courts?

I have been tracking Donald Trump’s emails and other communications for more than eight years. In a recent essay, I observed that he has hit a new bottom with his horror politics strategy and its emphasis on serial killers, murder, and other graphic violence. I was incorrect. Following his felony conviction, Donald Trump and his propagandists will only get worse. We will look back at these months before the election and Donald Trump’s sentencing in July (especially if he is put in prison) as being relatively good and normal times as compared to what is going to happen next.

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A tradwife drops a racist slur: Why the right’s trolling economy made Lilly Gaddis’ rise inevitable

Let's stipulate up front that it is theoretically possible that Lilly Gaddis, wannabe "tradwife" influencer, did not realize what she was doing when she used the n-word in a recent cooking TikTok. Her defenders, far more numerous now than in her more anonymous past, offer an "innocence by ignorance" excuse. But even not knowing the story, you'd be right to be skeptical. After all, she didn't just let the word slip — she filmed, edited, and posted the content online. If you actually watch the clip that has gone viral, it becomes even harder to ignore the likelihood that it was a deliberate word choice.

In the video, Gaddis is decked out in the standard tradwife gear of a cleavage-baring sundress and a cross necklace to justify the sexualized marketing. She is vaguely arranging food while providing a rant tailor-made to tickle the reactionary male brain. She accuses immigrants and Black women of being "gold-diggers," while insisting Christian white girls like herself will love you, pathetic male viewer, solely for your masculine might, even if you are "broke." She is going for maximum shock value, dropping not just the n-word, but other five-dollar curses that are clearly meant to to offer a transgressive thrill, coming from a young woman playing at being a more scantily clad June Cleaver.

TikToker Lilly Gaddis fired from her job after she dropped the “N-Word” in one of her cooking videos.

She also referenced “dumb whores,” “immigrants fresh off the boat looking for a green card” and “gold diggers” pic.twitter.com/FQFUpkaAc9

— Videos That Went Viral (@VideosWentViral) June 13, 2024

But just in case there was any lingering doubt that this was a deliberate play for attention, Gaddis soon confirmed it in a tweet responding to the outrage: "Thanks black community for helping to launch my new career in conservative media! You all played your role well like the puppets you are."

This wannabe Christian influencer is so obviously out for attention, so it's tempting to ignore this story in hopes of not letting her have it. Still, Gaddis is an important illustration of the vicious cycle of greed and far-right radicalism driven by the social media ecosystem. The field of strivers wishing to be America's next top troll is growing faster than can be maintained by the existing audience of incels, white supremacists and other miscreants radicalized online. Becoming the next big thing means attracting the coin of the authoritarian realm: liberal outrage. Yet as liberals get numb to the constant barrage of fascist provocation, the trolls have no choice but to up the ante. So this is how we get a woman in an apron pretending to cook on TikTok while dropping the most notorious of racial slurs.

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This story also demonstrates how concerns over so-called cancel culture, which weren't especially sincere to begin with, have devolved completely into a grift. Gaddis was swiftly fired from her actual job at a home health services company, which noted in their statement that she was a "newly hired employee." To be sure, tradwives are rarely housewives to begin with. They're professional content creators who are creating a fantasy of female submission. It appears mostly for male viewers, as evidenced by the camera being focused more on their chest and not the often-unnamed dish they're supposedly demonstrating. But that Gaddis still had to work outside the home shows she wasn't quite making it work in the "cookie dough and MAGA rants" market. And it helps us understand why she felt the need to do something showy and attention-grabbing if she ever hoped to raise her profile. You know, like a housewife does.

This might be one of those situations, like the dog-shooting story from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, where taking the mask entirely off backfires on a right-wing troll.

Like many things MAGA, from Donald Trump selling Bibles to Alex Jones hawking supplements, there's a not-at-all hidden motive of separating fools from their money. Unfortunately, the political impacts of monetized trolling are all too real. The escalating shock tactics have a profoundly radicalizing effect on the audiences that tune in, largely composed of rudderless young men.

I've written previously about the male influencer version of this problem. Content creators like Andrew Tate lure credulous young men in with videos promising exercise and other self-improvement tips, only to steer them ever more towards far-right conspiracy theories and white supremacist rhetoric. Tradwives offer a different spin on the same hustle. These women, who often are not even married, present an eroticized fantasy of female submission. Once viewers are hooked, they get fed ever more fascist ideas. Media Matters did a study documenting this phenomenon which found TikTok's algorithm pushes "users who interact with 'tradwife' content" towards increasing levels of "right-wing conspiracy theory content." A user might start by watching a pretty blonde in a low-cut shirt stir something unknown in a bowl, but soon they were getting a flood of "medical misinformation and anti-government content, specifically fearmongering about the need to prepare for an impending 'civil war.'”

"Tradwives" offer an alluring vision of right-wing Christianity — online warriors are fighting back

This might not seem like a natural fit at first, but in truth, enjoying the sexist fantasy of a "traditional" housewife primes a viewer to be more open to white supremacist and other far-right views. The audience for this content can be persuaded that the reason they don't have a sexy housewife of their very own is because of feminists and "big government" liberals. White nationalists push the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which falsely claims that Jews and Democrats are secretly scheming to "replace" white Christian Americans with immigrants and people of color. Part of this theory involves accusations that the conspirators are suppressing the white birth rate by tricking white women into working and having fewer babies. Sexy girls baking cookies is the bait, but the trap is turning viewers into full-blown white Christian nationalists.

As for Gaddis, it remains unclear if dropping an n-bomb on TikTok is going to pay off well enough to replace that job as a salesperson for health care services. She's had some initial success as a "cancel culture" martyr. Mid-week last week, she had grown her Twitter following to 84,000. By Sunday, it had grown to nearly 118,000 and she was using her flush new audience to hype the literal Hitler fan Nick Fuentes. She got an interview on InfoWars, which is still drawing big audiences even as Alex Jones has to liquidate his empire to pay off over a billion in defamation lawsuits.

But this might be one of those situations, like the dog-shooting story from Gov. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., where taking the mask entirely off backfires on a right-wing troll. Much of the MAGA audience still pretends to have nobler intentions and not to be fascist merely for the pleasure of unvarnished cruelty. Plus, TikTok kicked her off its platform. She's stuck on Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, which is just running on fumes now. The aspiring troll really needs to be on TikTok to rack up the numbers that translate into cold dollars. While TikTok is only too happy to amplify straight-up fascist rhetoric, they still want their creators to be a little more euphemistic in their word choices. So while this may not work out for Gaddis, the pressures of the right-wing troll economy were such that such an event was inevitable.