Make this super simple Martha Stewart muffin recipe for an easy morning pick-me-up

Domestic doyenne and all-around icon Martha Stewart posted a lip-smacking image on her Instagram over the weekend.

Touting her banana chocolate chip muffins which "kids and adult alike will clamor for," Stewart writes that they're "studded with semisweet chocolate chips" and "feature a basic batter made of all-purpose flour, light brown sugar, egg, butter, milk and sweet, ripe bananas."

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7_kF9sROqv/

I've been in my banana era lately, so the idea of this recipe stood out to me immediately, but you can also feel free to make tweaks if need be: almond milk instead of dairy, egg substitute instead of eggs, a different sugar or alternative sweetener instead of light brown sugar — whatever suits your tastes or proclivities. It's super customizable: The only person who probably should steer clear is a surefire banana hater.

Either way, just be sure to use super-ripe bananas! You don't want to go with anything green in this case; the flavor of an under-ripe banana in baked goods is a no-go (trust us).

You can also opt to make one large loaf as opposed to individual muffins, if you'd prefer. You can find the recipe here.

Why a new method of growing food on Mars matters more on Earth

The first thing Brazilian astrobiologist Rebeca Gonçalves remembers learning as a child was the order of the planets. Her uncle, an astrophysicist, also taught her all about the constellations dotting the night skies over Sao Paulo. “Ever since I was little, I have been in love with space,” she said.

That led to a career in space agriculture, figuring out how to grow food on other planets. She credits time later spent living among the Kambeba, an Indigenous tribe in the Amazon rainforest she is descended from, for her conviction that it is essential that she do more than explore distant worlds. She wants to preserve this one, too.

“It’s a very conscientious topic within the world of space agriculture science,” said Gonçalves, noting that “every single piece of research that we produce must have direct benefits to Earth.”

How living on Mars would warp the human body

That ideal makes her latest research particularly timely. She and a team at the Wageningen University & Research Centre for Crop System Analysis found that an ancient Maya farming technique called intercropping works surprisingly well in the dry, rocky terrain of Mars.

Their findings, published last month in the journal PLOS One, have obvious implications for the possibility of exploring or even settling that distant planet. But understanding how to grow crops in the extraordinarily harsh conditions on other planets does more than ensure those colonizing them can feed themselves. It helps those here at home continue to do the same as the world warms.

“People don’t really realize [this], because it seems far away, but actually our priority is to develop this for the benefit of Earth,” said Gonçalves. “Earth is beautiful, and it’s unique, and it’s rare, and it’s fragile. And it needs our help.”

Intercropping, or growing different crops in close proximity to one another to increase the size and nutritional value of yields, requires less land and water than monocropping, or the practice of continuously planting just one thing. Although common among small farmers, particularly across Latin America, Africa, and China, intercropping remains a novelty in much of the world. This is partly because of the complexity of managing such systems and largely unfounded concerns about yield loss and pest susceptibility. Modern plant breeding programs also tend to focus on individual species and a general trend toward less diversity in the field.

This is a missed opportunity, according to Gonçalves. Evidence suggests intercropping can combat the impacts of climate change and unsustainable farming practices on yields in degraded soils, which comprise as much as 40 percent of the world’s agricultural land. “The potential of intercropping really is very high for solving some of the climate change issues,” she said.

That’s why she decided to try deploying it on Mars, where the regolith — the name for dirt on other worlds — has no nutrients or biological life in it whatsoever, not unlike heavily degraded soils on Earth. Working out of a greenhouse at the university, the researchers planted a variety of tomatoes, carrots and peas in a simulation of the loose material covering the planet’s bedrock after augmenting it with a bit of nutrients and soil.

What they discovered was that although intercropping doubled the tomato yields and led to faster growth as well as thicker plant stems compared to monocropping, the carrots and peas grew better on their own. (The researchers suspect the limited amount of nutrients they added to the coarse regolith is the likely cause.) By contrast, intercropping in sandy soils — the experiment’s control, found in many regions on Earth — significantly increased yields for both the tomatoes and peas.

While the results may appear mixed, what’s remarkable is that the team could grow anything at all in the simulated regolith, which is, as Gonçalves notes, essentially “grinded stone.”

Of course, agricultural conditions on Mars, where it’s extremely cold and dry with precious little oxygen, are much more extreme than those on Earth, where climate change is prompting chronic droughts and a long-term shift to drier conditions that further depletes water supply.

And yet the dirt covering the Red Planet bears striking similarities to sandy terrestrial soil severely damaged by climate change in arid and semiarid regions around the world, including swaths of sub-Saharan Africa, northern China and southern portions of South America — breadbaskets where water scarcity and volatile rainfall patterns have in recent years led to failed harvests and reduced crop yields.

What this experiment demonstrates, according to the authors behind it, is that this could be an untapped solution to resuscitating depleted farmland — while also tackling agriculture’s widespread land use problem. Past studies have shown that, on average, intercropping with two crops needed 19 percent less land than each individual crop grown in isolation.

“Take a village in Africa that is suffering with degraded soils, and the farmers are suffering, the community is suffering. If we can have the setup that we have created for a Martian colony, it’s really no different than a small African village, because we could have the same technology there,” said Gonçalves. “It’s really endless, the possibilities that we can have for applying, almost duplicating this Martian colony system, into local communities on Earth.”

But how adaptable are solutions like these in parts of the world where they are needed most? The short answer: It’s complicated.

A 2024 paper exploring the challenges of applying technology developed for space research throughout the Global South found that, when analyzing case studies in Guyana, Tanzania, Nepal, and Vietnam, power inequalities and the exclusion of historically marginalized groups persisted because of discourses, structures, and relations stemming from historic colonial structures. This builds on past research that revealed how India’s “green revolution,” in which the country adopted modern methods of industrializing farming, led to unintended agricultural and health consequences for small farmers.

Gonçalves’ work is part of a rapidly growing body of research in space agriculture driven by billions of dollars of investment and the keen attention of governments, policymakers, and the private sector.

Just two years ago, a team at the University of Florida published a landmark paper revealing how it grew thale cress in lunar regolith collected during the Apollo era. That same year, scientists at Iowa State University grew turnips, radishes, and lettuce in simulated Martian regolith, while other studies nationwide reviewed deployment challenges for research experiments where crops including wheat were germinated in simulated lunar and Martian dirt. Together, these space-oriented investigations further indicate a surge in momentum for a field that seizes upon our collective fixation with other worlds, while subtly exploring solutions to an Earthbound crisis so politicized it prompts feelings of disconnection.

Although Gonçalves’ study provides a “tantalizing” look at how traditional agricultural methods could be used on Mars, it may not be the “most logical approach” there, said Gene Giacomelli. He considers soilless, or hydroponic, growing procedures the “only approach” to safely begin producing food on another planet. He is the founding director of the Controlled Environment Agricultural Center at the University of Arizona, where he has spent more than 20 years developing a greenhouse for use on the Red Planet.

Still, Giacomelli agrees that intercropping could be useful in the eroded soils of Earth, an idea that also intrigues Thomas Graham. He’s an associate professor at the University of Guelph who has studied space farming since 1997 and believes Gonçalves’ work underscores “the importance of quality soils to a reliable food supply, both on Earth where soils are under considerable pressure, as well as in future space applications.”

Early in his career, he was involved in a project funded by NASA to build a small greenhouse in the high Arctic tundra of Canada, a “Mars-analogue site” known for its unforgiving conditions. While there, he witnessed the “horrendous food insecurity issues” facing those living in some of Canada’s northernmost remote communities. “Getting fresh food up there is very difficult, if you can get it at all,” he said. “And it’s horribly expensive.” This led him to explore technological solutions to the challenge of growing crops in the most extreme of extreme environments — outer space.

“I’ve been fortunate to be able to help explore space while helping people ensure that they have a meal to eat,” said Graham. “It also helps with my way to contribute to helping society adapt to the mess that we’ve made with climate change.”

Solutions like greenhouses developed for colonizing other worlds could, according to Graham, be deployed in drought-ravaged areas on Earth “the very next day” after they’re devised.

Of course, achieving that in a way that benefits the people that could use it most will rely upon the right combination of funding, political will and inclusive adoption. Without that impetus, the widespread application of these kinds of agricultural techniques may be almost as far away as our capacity to feed those who one day populate the cosmos.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/why-a-new-method-of-growing-food-on-mars-matters-more-on-earth/.

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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“False gospel”: The new GOP attack on Dolly Parton is a tactic borrowed from the Christian right

It was inevitable that Republicans would go after Dolly Parton. Under the leadership of Donald "Make America Great Again" Trump, Republicans have grown to loathe most everything they used to hold in high regard. Forget patriotism — nowadays, Trump rallies are replete with claims that the United States is a "s__thole." The Super Bowl is now derided as an "election interference psyop." Once-beloved Budweiser beer has become a hate object. The same conservative forces who used to pretend they were defending American icons like Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head from imaginary "cancelation" are now mostly in the business of canceling anything and everything that Americans might enjoy.

Parton's "love they neighbor" view is downright banal to most people, but it does run directly against the "hate and fear your neighbor" message of MAGA.

"There’s Nothing Loving About Dolly Parton’s False Gospel," the wet blankets at The Federalist recently declared. The much-derided essay from Ericka Andersen castigates the beloved singer-songwriter for "condoning immoral sexual behavior," by which Andersen means being gay or queer. Andersen doesn't directly come out and claim Parton is lying about being a Christian, but gets close with terms like "secularized spiritual leader" and "false gospel."

The faux-theology is a paper-thin cover for what is really a political attack. It's not just that Andersen resents that Parton offers innocuous statements of love and acceptance of LGBTQ people, sentiments shared by most Americans. As with the attacks on the NFL, Taylor Swift, and the "Barbie" movie, it's about encouraging paranoia in the Republican base. The message, from Trump down through the right-wing media, is that white conservative Christians are under attack from every corner of society. As New York Times writer Jamelle Bouie explained on Bluesky, this allows conservatives to "see themselves as involved in revolutionary action that justifies anything under the sun." Including lying, committing crimes, and, as we saw on Jan. 6, violence.

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The invocation of religious language isn't surprising. This tactic is borrowed directly from the world of fundamentalist Christianity. For decades, far-right Christian pastors have used a similar strategy to alienate their congregations from the outside world, leaving pastors with total control of their flock's lives. Believers are routinely threatened with hell for even thinking about whatever pop culture is trendy.

In the 80s, of course, this was the notorious "Satanic panic," where everything from daycare centers to popular rock albums to Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games was said to be a gateway directly to demonic possession. In the 90s, fundamentalists declared that Pokemon "teaches children how to enter into the world of witchcraft." For the past couple of decades, Christian fundamentalists have been freaking out over the "Harry Potter" series, which only seems to have quieted a bit as the author JK Rowling has so loudly championed the far-right opposition to trans rights. Lately, the biggest target for hyperventilating accusations of demonic possession is, of course, Taylor Swift, as well as most other big pop stars. If it might create a chance for young people to bond with those outside of the church, it gets demonized.

Separating people from any connection to the outside world is an effective tool for control, which is why everyone from abusive husbands to cult leaders uses it. As the GOP morphs into the cult of Donald Trump, then, it's not surprising that they've also grown fond of telling their followers to shun any interests outside of Trump rallies and MAGA media. After all, even a casual conversation about football with a dreaded liberal might be a reminder that Democrats are normal people and not the "evil" and "sick" people who need eradication, as Trump regularly claims.

Mike Johnson's Satanic panic: How evangelical delusions trained Republicans to love Trump's lies

The need to keep his followers in a constant state of fear of the outside world goes a long way to explaining why Trump has bizarre diatribes about sharks — yes, sharks — in his speeches. It's hard for those who aren't fluent in MAGA-ese to get what Trump is talking about when he said he saw "some guys justifying" shark attacks by saying, "they were not hungry, but they misunderstood." Obviously, this didn't happen. But the moral of the story, for those unfortunate souls who know Trump's pattern well enough to translate, is that the "crazy" world outside of MAGA is so evil that they'll let sharks eat you. So it's best to stay far away from the "they" of Trump's endless fear-the-world rants.

Parton's "love they neighbor" view is downright banal to most people, but it does run directly against the "hate and fear your neighbor" message of MAGA. It's especially unsettling to Republicans, as Andersen explicitly writes, because it's a direct allusion to what was recently a common Christian message: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." As New York Times writer Elizabeth Spiers argued on Bluesky, the Trump base now openly embraces "a bastardized version of Christianity that’s reverse engineered from their biases," rejecting compassion in favor of "permission to judge people they don’t like and punish them for deviations from conservative norms."

Russell Moore, who was once a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention but got pushed out for, among other things, being anti-racist, agrees. He has spoken publicly about how Christian ministers can no longer preach about the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus famously blessed the meek, the peacemakers, and the merciful. If ministers try to teach this scripture, Moore said congregants will revolt, calling it "weak." The relentless cruelty of Trumpism is their true faith.

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Andersen's attack on Parton is part of a larger trend where the GOP is becoming an arm of the once-fringe Christian nationalist movement. As Paul Rosenberg has explained at Salon, these are folks who believe their rigid version of Christianity must "exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions." To justify stripping freedom of religion away and imposing theocracy on Americans, Christian nationalists, including Trump, claim to be acting in self-defense. They make false accusations that they are somehow "canceled" by the "woke mob," and thus the only way to restore their "rights" is to take rights away from everyone else.

Andersen employs this dishonest tactic by claiming "the culture is on a constant witch hunt for those who would call homosexuality sinful." Never mind that LGBTQ people have suffered imprisonment, violence, and discrimination. Ignore the fact that, if conservatives had their way, queer people would lose their right to marry, would be denied health care, be fired from their jobs, and be put in jail for having consensual sex. She wants readers to believe the real victims are homophobes, because people accurately call them bigots. And that all those terrible things they want to do to LGBTQ are justified, because they feel "witch hunted" by having people disagree with them.

Journalist Katherine Stewart and Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State joined Dahlia Lithwick on her Amicus podcast last week, and they pointed out that this Christian nationalist attitude leads directly to violence. Whether they're explicitly complaining about "demons" or using sanitized political language like "woke," the MAGA argument remains the same: They are beset on all sides by evil forces they believe are out to get them. Therefore, they are entitled to do whatever it takes to "protect" themselves. It's all a phantasm, of course. The freedom to be a loud-mouthed bigot remains untouched in the U.S., protected as always by the First Amendment. But it's a useful lie to justify a fascistic crackdown on America, and so a lie that MAGA is embracing. Even if doing so means attacking an icon like Dolly Parton.

about this topic

The “real crisis” for Trump comes at sentencing: “He can’t apologize”

Donald Trump is utterly and totally predictable. He is aggressive, violent, hostile, antisocial, and impulsive with an unquenchable thirst for power in all its forms. His prime directive is to always attack. Donald Trump was taught this by his infamous mentor, the political fixer and attorney Roy Cohn. Trump’s personality and Cohn’s teachings were a perfect fit for each another.

It has served him remarkably well in politics. He won the presidency, took over the Republican Party, survived two impeachments, and is now tied with President Biden in the early 2024 polls despite attempting a coup and being convicted of a criminal felony. The latter "distinction" may actually help his popularity with his MAGA followers and other supporters.

When cornered or confronted, Donald Trump responds by lying, obfuscating, evading, and then becoming even more aggressive. To wit: After being convicted in his New York hush-money election interference trial, Donald Trump was not cowed or humbled. He instead escalated his threats of revenge and retribution against his perceived enemies. Trump’s revenge and retribution, per his repeated public statements and promises to be the country's first dictator, will almost certainly include imprisonment and executions for “treason.”

Trump will be sentenced in July for his crimes of paying hush-money payments as part of his election interference scheme. On Monday, Trump met with his probation officer for a pre-sentencing interview that will help to determine if Judge Merchan (who presided over his trial in New York) will put him in prison. Trump’s prime directive of ruthless aggression may backfire here, with him being sentenced to prison for his crimes and continued refusal to show any type of contrition.

Beyond a reasonable doubt: Trump's criminal conviction matters politically

Like Donald Trump, the American mainstream news media is also almost totally and utterly predictable. Even after eight years of experience with Trump and his assaults on democracy and norms, they continue to normalize him and the MAGA movement. This is functionally the same as surrender.

As a class, America’s elites have been trained by Trump’s constant attacks as well. They are now positioning themselves for maximum profit and opportunism (and survival) with the assumption that Donald Trump is going to defeat President Biden and become the country’s first dictator.

"Putting Donald Trump in jail will not make him more powerful, it will further diminish him."

David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and bestselling author who teaches at Syracuse University College of Law, although he is not a lawyer. He has written three books about Donald Trump, who Johnston has covered for 36 years. In this conversation, he reflects on the hush-money election interference trial and what it feels like to finally see Donald Trump held somewhat accountable for his decades-long crime spree. Johnston also puts Trump’s “guilty” verdict in a much larger context as reflecting the moral rot of today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement – and American society more broadly.

Johnston also shares his thoughts about what Trump’s conviction will mean (or not) for the 2024 election and how the American mainstream news media remains most ill-equipped and negligent in how it is covering the corrupt ex-president and the existential threat to democracy embodied by his MAGA movement and the other neofascist forces.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

You have been reporting about Donald Trump for many years. How does it feel to finally see him convicted of a felony?

I’m not giddy or elated. This is a very sad day for America. And it's sadder because tens of millions of Americans think that Trump is their savior, their leader, their hero. I do feel some sense of relief. I wrote a piece at DCReport, the lede of which was, "Donald Trump is a felon. I've waited 36 years to write that." But I was surprised at the feeling I had when the verdicts came in, which was kind of flat.

This isn't over yet. We're a long way from it being over.

On Saturday, it was raining here in Chicago, and I felt compelled to walk down to Trump Tower. I sat outside of the building and just pondered how we arrived at such a point with him being tied with President Biden in the early polls and now being convicted of a felony.

Here's where we went wrong. There is not one word in our Constitution about wealth and riches. Our Constitution is about freedom and limits on power. The preamble makes it clear that the purpose of our Constitution is to see how far the human spirit can go if we set people free in a system of ordered liberty. But ever since Ronald Reagan came along and persuaded people to kill the New Deal, and tricked people into thinking that if their boss pays less in taxes, they'll get a pay raise and be better off, we have seen a moral collapse at the top in this country, led by the big accounting firms, the big law firms and big businesses controlled not by the owners, but by hired help. And at the same time, there's a growing lack of appreciation for this for two reasons. One is that very few Americans receive a moral education as they grow up and we no longer teach civics in a serious way. The second is that only about 10% of Americans are old enough to remember the last years of the New Deal.

The Age of Trump is much more than "just" a political crisis. It is a moral crisis. How do we locate Trump's conviction in this first criminal trial relative to the country's democracy crisis?

First of all, don't pay a lot of attention to the polls. The polls have systematic errors with the methodology, questions and how people even understand the questions they are being asked by the pollsters.

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As Mitt Romney has pointed out, there are a lot of Republicans who have no interest in democracy. They don't care. That tells me that they haven't thought through what happens when you don't have a democracy. Let's get right to the end point of that. If we fall into a dictatorship starting with Trump, down that road, inevitably, are firing squads. Whether they come soon or they come later is not the point. The firing squads will come. That is the very nature of dictatorships.

A fundamental moral education is essential to stopping a Trump dictatorship. There are a large number of people who call themselves Christians, but who do not believe in turning the other cheek and don't believe in sacrificing for the stranger. Instead, they preach hate and wish death upon people they don't like. The fake Christians also want to take away women's rights. The influence of the Christian right and these faux Christians is extraordinary in terms of its connection to how the moneyed classes are operating with near impunity in this country. Let's not forget that greed is one of the seven deadly sins.

What does the Republican Party's collective response to Trump's conviction further reveal about their moral character?

It indicates that they have no interest in the rule of law. Such a person has the childish wish that things be the way they want them to be no matter what. “I will scream and cry and kick if I don't get what I want.” Donald Trump was convicted by a jury that included a person who said that he essentially gets all his news from Trump’s Truth Social. Anyone who paid close attention to the hush-money trial – that’s very few people — knew that the prosecution proved every element of its case. Michael Cohen went to prison for the same facts in this case—and Cohen was prosecuted by Donald Trump's Justice Department. So it's kind of hard to argue that there's no case here as Trump, his Republican propagandists and other agents are doing so loudly.

What grade would you give the American mainstream news media for its coverage of Trump's hush-money election interference trial?

I will give two grades. For technical accuracy, I’ll give them an absolute "A." The grade for context, however, is C or C+.

Donald Trump is a master at exploiting the conventions of journalism. What is journalism? Overwhelmingly, it is an accurate recitation of what the official sources—such as the government, whether it's the president or the mayor, a company, or nonprofits—say. The news media is not nearly so good at putting things in context and presenting them correctly. Consider how long it took The New York Times to use the word "lie" in relation to Donald Trump. Now the successor word is "false claims" or "falsity." The hush-money trial and verdict are going to continue to be covered. But too much of the coverage is simply allowing Trump supporters, with little or no challenge, to make their wildly untrue claims.

The conventions of journalism are not designed to deal with con artists. They're designed to deal with people who have sincere political views, regardless of whether you like or dislike their views. But when you're dealing with a con artist, now you're dealing with someone whose every action and word is fraud. The small segment of journalists like me who do investigative reporting, we know how to deal with con artists. But the system within the newsroom doesn't really understand it. Every serious investigative reporter who's written pieces that sent people to prison will tell you that they had to struggle, even with the very best and editors who had experience with con artist stories, because they run high legal risks, and the risk that people will accuse you and your publication of pushing some agenda when you are just telling hidden facts.

Here is an obvious mainstream media failure: Trump's speech, which was more like an unhinged rant, the day after his conviction in New York. At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin correctly called out the news media's failure to consistently warn and report about Trump's apparent, and at this point rather obvious, challenges with emotional and mental stability. Donald Trump's mind and personality are extremely dangerous. That needs to be discussed much more.

That was not a press conference but a performance. Trump does not sit down with journalists who are going to ask tough questions. Jen Rubin [a conservative columnist] is exactly right: There is this fundamental failing that amounts to malpractice. But the reason for it is news organizations, especially the big successful newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and The Wall Street Journal, are very stodgy, rigid, Institutionally conservative organizations. The newspapers are really stuck in the conventions of journalism, which work very well when covering a normal politician, even if they're espousing the most outrageous views.

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A few news media critics have proposed some fixes. The biggest one I'm in favor of is instead of quoting Trump, and then showing why it's not true, which is the convention, report that the story is about to quote Trump and we will show you that what he said is false. Having focused the reader to expect a lie, you then quote him, and then you dissect the lie. That gives the reader or listener or viewer a totally different lens to grasp what Trump says. That is an application of George Lakoff's "truth sandwich" model.

Donald Trump is a coup plotter, a sexual assaulter as confirmed by a court of law, and now a convicted felon. How come that factual description is not consistently used by the news media when they discuss and write about Donald Trump?

You won't get that in any of the mainstream news organizations, except in commentary television. As good as the evening shows are at CNN and MSNBC, they are not news programs, but primarily commentary programs. The conventions of journalism don't allow you to take the approach that they do. The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Philadelphia Inquirer or The Boston Globe would probably allow language such as "convicted felon." But even then, there is going to be resistance. The old conventions deem that you do not want to make it appear that you are biased, even when you are just reporting facts. Facts are facts. If you're balanced about them, for example, if you say that "Donald Trump, a convicted felon, who insists that he has done nothing wrong" you have met all the rules. But you're not going to get that line in the newspaper or elsewhere very often, because it will be seen as tendentious — and if there's anything that scares editors and producers it's accusations not so much of being left or right but that a news story is tendentious.

Those are obsolete habits that are not suited for the existential challenge that this country — and the news media as an institution — is facing from aspiring dictator Trump and the larger neofascist movement. Will the news media ever change? They are rapidly running out of time.

I'm not hopeful about that. When there is a new development in the world, the institutions always lag behind.

Does Donald Trump want to go to jail? He is continuing to attack and bait Judge Merchan in such a way that it seems like he is daring him. Is Trump's bluster just a mask for his terror?

Donald Trump is terrified. He does not have the internal character to endure a jail sentence the way Nelson Mandela, whom he compared himself to the other day, did. Donald Trump is a bully. He is a hollow vessel. He is a miserable human being. Be very glad that you are not Donald Trump. He is a man who has never known joy, has never known contentment. He cannot laugh at himself. Trump believes that he can use the aura of power he has built around him — at least as seen by his acolytes and his cultist — into intimidating the system. Donald Trump is counting on the American people being afraid of him. Donald Trump only cares about money. Donald Trump is his money. That's why he can never fill the empty vessel he is because there's nothing there.

Will Trump be able to contain himself during his pre-sentencing interview? He needs to appear contrite and apologetic if he wants to avoid prison.

Donald Trump can bring his lawyers and they can certainly try to moderate what he says in the pre-sentencing interview. But the pre-sentencing report prepared by a probation officer will likely not contain anything new in terms of who Donald is or anything the judge doesn't know. What it will provide the probation officers with is opportunity to judge whether he can even fake contrition, and that's where Trump has an irresolvable problem. Roy Cohn taught him that if law enforcement comes after you then you attack them. They are corrupt. They are dishonest. You are as pure as the fresh fallen snow. Never, ever give an inch. You are perfect. Well, that's not going to work with the probation officer and Judge Merchan. But that approach will work with Trump cult followers and too many other members of the public.

I think the meeting with the pre-sentencing probation officer is an opportunity for Trump to manipulate, but it's also a high risk that he will just dig himself further. At the sentencing hearing, if the judge calls on Trump to speak, I think there'll be a real crisis for him. He will know that he can't apologize. Trump cannot say "I was wrong." All he can do is attack the judge, and that's an invitation to a longer sentence. That's how the system is supposed to work. If you refuse to acknowledge and take responsibility for wrongdoing, you're sure to get a longer tougher sentence than somebody who says, "Yeah, I screwed up, and I recognize that now."

I will be surprised if Judge Merchan does not give Trump some time behind bars. That could be the absolute minimum of 30 days. More likely, it may be much longer up to the four-year maximum.

What of the concerns — and I am undecided here — that putting Donald Trump in prison will only make him more popular among his MAGA people, and perhaps even some independents and undecided voters as well?

Putting Donald Trump in jail will not make him more powerful, it will further diminish him. I'm not surprised that there was a brief surge in donations from people. I also believe that surge of money came from people who don't really understand what is really happening with Trump and his conviction. They are angry about things they don't understand. The polling data I have examined shows two things. Will you vote for Trump if he's convicted of a felony? Something on the order of one in six Republicans indicate they probably will not. Even larger numbers of independents say that. Trump cannot get back to the White House without independents and 90% or more of Republican support. Now keep in mind that if Donald Trump were to win the Electoral College, and he's in a New York state prison, he can be President of the United States. Let me reiterate: Donald Trump can be president from a jail cell. It's an absurdity. And hopefully at that point, enough members of the Senate would wake up to convict him upon impeachment by the House.

What I worry about are all of these Republicans—senators, congresspeople, many of them who are lawyers that know better. They are attacking the criminal justice system and encouraging violence. Supporting Donald Trump and his lies is an abomination. I hope that voters turn out en masse and they get rid of these Republicans. If you are unwilling to risk your reelection to show your fealty to this lifelong, immoral, criminal con artist then you don't deserve to hold a public office. If you're unwilling to stand up and say the truth that Donald Trump got a more than fair trial, and was convicted based on the evidence, then you don't belong in public life. What is going to be very revealing about the character of the American people is how many of these Republicans are voted out of office.

As an expert in the law, how do you assess Trump and his allies' attempts to get the Supreme Court to throw out the New York hush-money election interference conviction?

Trump would have to appeal to the New York Intermediary Court of Appeals, and then the state appeals court to get to the Supreme Court, he then has to show that there's some constitutional violation. I have a hard time seeing Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Gorsuch, whose jurisprudence I don't like but who appear to be basically principled, going along with this. Alito and Thomas, they'll do anything.

They don't care. The Supreme Court should not even hear an argument from Trump on this matter. But it's possible the Supreme Court will issue a temporary restraining order preventing him from being imprisoned, if that's what Judge Merchan orders, until after the election. An imprisonment order would send a very strong signal and I think you would begin to see Trump's support slip away, not grow.

Here's the long-term thing to worry about. There are plenty of people right now today who will tell you that Adolf Hitler was right. A hundred years from now, we don't want any Americans, except absolute nutcases, a fraction of 1% of people, saying Trump was right. That's the real horrible danger here for American democracy and society. Trumpism can lead to the long-term corruption of this country and its values and principles.

If you called Donald Trump and he picked up the phone, what would you say to him?

Donald, if you are sentenced to prison, have you thought about what you're going to do? And if so, how are you going to spend your time in prison?

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Abandoning drug decriminalization is a mistake — the drugs were never the point

Attempts to roll back drug prohibition in North America are being met with fierce opposition and even repeal in some cases, delivering severe blows to progressive groups arguing that drug use should not be a crime.

In April, the Canadian province of British Columbia announced it was walking back its policy of decriminalizing personal quantities of narcotics (i.e. you wouldn’t be arrested for holding a gram of coke, but selling is still a crime). It follows Oregon, which decriminalized drugs in 2020 but reversed course earlier this year, meaning having a bag of white powder in your pocket is once again a jailable offense.

To galvanize voters, the Biden Administration must reject half-step on marijuana reform

The idea was to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars on inflicting yet more punishment on individuals living already chaotic lifestyles, which would further damage their mental health and job prospects, and instead give them space to put their lives back together. But amid a spiraling death toll from the fentanyl crisis and homeless tents filling the sidewalks, lawmakers lost their nerve. If only we’d threatened those people with prolonged confinement and career-ending consequences, that’d show those poor folks to make pin cushions out of their veins!

On closer examination, this doesn’t add up: fentanyl fatalities have been piling up across the nation, regardless of any state policies, while Portland actually fared better in terms of its crime rate than other cities like Seattle and Sacramento, where narcotics are still penalized.

But in any case, blaming permissive policies because you’ve sidestepped someone’s street encampment misses the point: it’s never been about the drugs.

The war on drugs has been a smokescreen for terrorizing troublesome minorities.

The truth is, an illegal drug is just whatever the government says it is, and that in turn is defined by a particular moment in history, culture and politics – for instance, America’s first drug laws in the late 19th Century were to shut down opium dens at a time when racist paranoia about Chinese immigrants (the so-called Yellow Peril) reached its zenith. Meanwhile, there was no particular taboo about well-to-do white women shooting up morphine.

Since then, the war on drugs has been a smokescreen for terrorizing troublesome minorities.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?” admitted former Nixon advisor John Ehrlichman in a now-infamous quote.

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“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Even today, the law has little to do with the dangers posed by the drugs themselves: nearly six times as many Americans die from alcohol and cigarettes as illicit drugs, yet few are calling to execute bartenders, or round up drinkers and smokers into camps.

“Yeah, sure,” you might say, “except everyone knows where to find their nearest bar, but not everyone knows the kind of lowlife that’ll sell you drugs. So obviously drinking is gonna have a higher body count, because it’s more available. Duh.”

An illegal drug is just whatever the government says it is, and that in turn is defined by a particular moment in history, culture and politics.

Such arguments lack the nuance that death comes from illicit drugs being unregulated. Fentanyl of varying potency has turned up in everything from heroin to bogus oxycodone pills (the latter being what killed Robert De Niro’s grandson last year). But fentanyl is used safely as a painkiller in hospitals across the globe every day – it being sold to unsuspecting drug users under less-than-clinical conditions is what makes it deadly.

It doesn’t have to be that way. After all, we don’t have this problem with booze any more. Ever since Prohibition was repealed in 1933, you can sip a brewski at your local bar without worrying if it’s been poisoned with industrial-grade methanol. Again, it’s not about the drugs – prohibition creates this situation.

Many people have a visceral reaction to witnessing an unhoused person sparking up a meth pipe, and it’s very easy to think decriminalization has failed if you don’t see the people whose lives haven’t been upended by the justice system, precisely because they haven’t been upended. The vast majority of drug use is non-problematic. The media focuses on problematic drug use because it’s a sexy story – functioning, well-adjusted crack, meth and opioid consumers are boring.

“Easy for you to say,” you retort, “I see these junkies with their missing teeth, sunken faces, and gross, scabby skin every day. You’re telling me these folks drank too much caffeine?”

Convicted drug dealers are political prisoners: I should know — I was one

But there’s little evidence that the ugly mugs we see on drug war propaganda, such as Faces of Meth for example, are, in fact, because of meth. It’s far more likely that certain drug users’ haggard appearance is from a combination of poor diet, hygiene and living on the street – you sleep rough, you look rough. If the cops are after you and you’ve nowhere to live, booking a spa day is unlikely to be a top priority.

But either drugs themselves or their “evil” pushers are blamed for all manner of social ills, which are actually the product of upbringing, circumstances or the breakdown of personal relationships, as if they’re the cause, and not merely a symptom, of social decay.

Take the 1980s crack cocaine crisis, for instance. While crack can indeed be terribly habit-forming, addiction is more complex than just taking a drug and developing dependency. Crack didn’t create the hood, it didn’t drastically cut back public services or limit access to health care, and it didn’t artificially inflate its own value through prohibition, making it valuable enough to steal and kill for.

When Black people migrated to the big cities in the north, they were redlined into ghettos. Then Reagan drained funding from public housing, schools and services in inner-city areas, while blue-collar jobs moved offshore.

“[Black] neighborhoods always had high unemployment, high homicide rates long before crack,” Dr. Carl Hart, a professor at Columbia University and author of Drug Use For Grown-Ups, once told me. “But it was a convenient story for Ronald Reagan’s America and subsequently George Bush’s America. It was a story everyone loved, even some Black people. You had to explain why things were so horrible.”

But crack did however provide an excuse for law and order politics, presenting the war on drugs as a simple solution to complex problems, and caging untold numbers of young (often minoritized) men and women.

"[Black] neighborhoods always had high unemployment, high homicide rates long before crack."

“So now you have this story everyone bought into of crack being the enemy: that’s the reason our country’s falling apart,” Hart continued. “Just like with terrorism or the Cold War with the Soviet Union, you always need an enemy to society. We exported it to our allies so now there’s a worldwide war on drugs — which is really a war on the poor because rich people are still gonna do drugs. You think the war on drugs affected the Rolling Stones? Hell no.”

Meanwhile, the murder rate for young Black males doubled between 1984 and 1994, but not because of crack-crazed loons on the rampage. An analysis of drug-related homicides in New York City found only 14% were “psychopharmacological” – under the influence of the drug itself. However, over two-thirds of these intoxicated crimes were committed in a drunken rage, and only 16% high on crack.

Some crack users did turn to crime, but crack ingestion by itself doesn’t induce kleptomania. Rather, smoking crack could prove an expensive pastime, as the price was wildly inflated to compensate for the threats to life and liberty faced by all parties down the supply chain. But in any case, merely 3% of homicides were robberies gone wrong. By far the largest category – nearly three-quarters – were related to the crack business i.e. turf wars and rip-offs over a precious commodity, not because of crack itself, just like the St Valentine’s Day massacre wasn’t because Al Capone sipped a few too many at the speakeasy.

Likewise, today’s overdose crisis should be seen in the context of the dying American Dream. Industries have either shuttered, moved abroad or become automated, decimating tens of thousands of jobs. Adjusted for inflation, the 2020s minimum wage is worth less than it was in the 1960s. Social circles have shrunk to the point that by 2021, over half of young Americans reported feeling lonely all the time, and opioids (and other drugs) help fill that void.

Yet certain voices would have you believe that cities like Portland and San Francisco are literal Hellmouths infested with crime and smelly homeless people because they handle their druggies with velvet mittens, while the real culprits — soaring rents and gentrification — are kicking local residents to the curb in the first place. Conservative writer Michael Shellenberger claims SF’s homelessness crisis started in 2009, when California stopped making housing assistance contingent on sobriety, but this was the same year as the financial crash when many in the middle class lost their homes. The unstable homeless lifestyle is in turn likely to worsen addiction and mental illnesses: losing your job and your home are stressful events for which you may seek chemicals to cope.

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West Virginia, meanwhile, leads the nation in drug deaths, but its affordable housing means the problem stays out of sight and not splayed out over the sidewalk.

Just like the Chinese were blamed in the past, these days it’s another set of immigrants accused of corrupting wholesome, all-American boys and girls with their fiendish ways. The idea of dirty foreigners spreading some sort of disease or contagion is a trope as old as time, and now it’s drugs standing in for the plague: Republicans have demanded Biden shut the southern border, the alleged floodgates of fentanyl.

But of the 1.8 million migrants that the Border Force caught crossing over from Mexico in 2021, just 279, or 0.02%, were found to be carrying fentanyl. The overwhelming majority of smugglers busted transporting fentanyl are U.S. citizens, who’d naturally arouse less suspicion, but that doesn’t fit with the white nationalist talk of an “invasion.”

Portugal, which decriminalized all narcotics over two decades ago, hasn't abandoned its depenalization project, pouring money into treatment services and harm reduction. The coastal country now enjoys among the lowest overdose rates in Europe. Is it really easier to punish people than to help them instead?

about drugs

Thousands of Taylor Swift concertgoers in Madrid have come down with COVID-19 after Eras Tour

Some Swifties in Europe have more than Taylor Swift in common — they have COVID-19 too.

During the singer's European Eras Tour stops, Swift performed in Madrid on May 29 and 30. According to Spanish news site El Nacional, not long after the concert that amassed about 130,000 attendees over two days, thousands online have said they contracted COVID-19. Such gatherings are widely known for being possible superspreader events, as people from many different areas – sometimes even flying in from different countries – are in such close proximity.

One specific X account, known for being a hub for Spanish Swifties, took a poll of their followers, asking if they had become sick with COVID-19 after one of Swift's concerts in Madrid. Of the 10,796 people who answered the poll online, 35%, or 3,780 of the concertgoers said they had.

A one-shot vaccine for COVID, flu and future viruses? Researchers say it's coming

One concertgoer described their symptoms as, "Cough, sore throat, body discomfort and I can hardly speak." Another said that a few days after both concerts, "On Saturday my neck hurt, and I spent the night from Sunday to Monday with a fever of 39C, one of the worst nights of my life." Another person said, "During the weekend, I noticed that I felt different because I was feeling very uncomfortable, and felt dizzy. Yesterday I was coughing non-stop. I took the test today and it came back positive."

It's not just some of the largest European cities facing superspreader events in the coming summer. In the United States, scientists are warning of what they have been calling a "summer wave" of COVID-19 cases. The potential rise in COVID-19 cases stems from new Omicron subvariants like the KP.3 variant, JN.1 virus, or other strains known as the Flirt strains. The Centers for Disease Control said that these new strains of COVID now account for more than 50% of the cases in the U.S. According to the CDC, infection rates and hospitalization have been lower or "minimal" levels of "respiratory illness activity." However, the government agency's data suggests that infections are projected to increase in several states across the country like California, Washington D.C., Florida, New Jersey and Texas.

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Despite the growing concerns about new variants causing an increase in infections, there has been an unexpected outcome to thousands of Swifties testing positive. Some have shared how the COVID experience and symptoms have been difficult to deal with but others have treated it as just another Taylor Swift Eras Tour bonus. "COVID, infected by Taylor Swift, I'll sell my antigen test for 5000 euros!" one person wrote, as if the test was a Swiftie keepsake. Another said, "Taylor Swift is so cute – she included the new COVID variant as a surprise in the Eras Tour Madrid."

Even though some Swifties may wear their positive COVID tests as a badge of honor, Spanish Swifties aren't the only ones who have contracted COVID at the Eras Tour. The Nacional also reported that some French Swifties are experiencing similar symptoms to COVID-19 after the singer's two-day stint in Paris on June 9 and 10. There were also some concerns that some concertgoers contracted COVID-19 last year during the U.S. leg of the tour. However, the Los Angeles Times said it wasn't clear if those cases contributed to a larger spread of the virus.

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Alito speaks out against compromise between left and right: “One side or the other is going to win”

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said there is likely no possible compromise between the left and right, according to a secret audio recording obtained by Rolling Stone.

The conversation was recorded by documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s Annual Dinner on June 3. The event is known for drawing right-wing activists. Windsor, who regularly records conversations with Republicans, attended the event under her own name but asked questions posing as a religious conservative.

In the recording, Windsor told Alito she doesn’t think negotiation with the left is possible if polarization in the country is going to end, but rather it’s a matter of “winning.”

Alito agreed. “On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win," he said. "I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference."

Windsor then told Alito: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you, I agree with you,” Alito responded.

Alito, who has served on the Supreme Court since 2006, made little effort to respond in a neutral matter, instead making very clear his position as a right-wing justice.

How forecasts of bad weather can drive up your grocery bill

It's no secret that a warming world will drive food prices higher, a phenomenon increasingly known as "heatflation." What's less known, but a growing area of interest among economists and scientists alike, is the role individual extreme weather events — blistering temperatures in Texas, a destructive tornado in Iowa — may have on what U.S. consumers pay at the supermarket.

At first glance, the answer might seem logical: A drought or flood that impacts agricultural production will, eventually, drive up prices. But it's not that simple, because what consumers pay for groceries isn't only reflective of crop yields or herd sizes, but the whole supply chain. That's where it gets interesting: Economists are beginning to see a growing trend that suggests weather forecasts play a part in sticker shock. Sometimes the mere prediction of an extreme event — like the record-breaking temperatures, hurricanes, and wildfires forecasters are bracing for this summer — can prompt a spike in prices.

It isn't the forecast itself to blame, but concerns about what the weather to come might mean for the entire supply chain, as food manufacturers manage their risks and the expected future value of their goods, said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University.

"When it comes to the climate risk on food prices, people typically look at the production side. But over the last two years, we learned that extreme weather can raise food prices, [cause] transportation disruptions, as well as production disruptions," said Lee.

How much we pay for the food we buy is determined by retailers, who consider the producer's price, labor costs, and other factors. Any increases in what producers charge is typically passed on to consumers because grocery stores operate on thin profit margins. And if manufacturers expect to pay more for commodities like beef or specialty crops like avocados in the future, they may boost prices now to cover those anticipated increases.

"The whole discussion about the climate risks on the food supply chain is based on probabilities. It is possible that we do not see extreme temperatures this summer, or even later this year. We may realize there was no significant weather shock hitting the supply chain, but unfortunately that will not be the end of the story," said Lee.

Supply chain disruptions and labor shortages are among the reasons food prices have climbed 25 percent since 2020. Climate change may be contributing as well. A study published earlier this year found "heatflation" could push them up by as much as 3 percentage points per year worldwide in just over a decade and by about 2 percentage points in North America. Simultaneous disasters in major crop and cattle producing regions around the world — known as multi-breadbasket failure — are among the primary forces driving these costs. Crop shortages in these regions may also squeeze prices, which can create volatility in the global market and bump up consumer costs.

Historically, a single, localized heat wave or storm typically wouldn't disrupt the supply chain enough to prompt price hikes. But a warming world might be changing that dynamic as extreme weather events intensify and simultaneous occurrences of them become the norm. How much this adds to consumers' grocery bills will vary, and depends upon whether these climate-fueled disasters hit what Lee calls "supply chain chokepoints" like vital shipping channels during harvest seasons.

"As the weather is getting more and more volatile because of climate change, we are seeing this issue more frequently," he said. "So what that means is the supply chain is getting more likely to be jeopardized by these types of risks that we have never seen before."

An ongoing drought that plagued the Mississippi River system from the fall of 2022 until February provides an excellent example of this. The Mississippi River basin, which covers 31 states, is a linchpin of America's agricultural supply chain. It produces 92 percent of the nation's agricultural exports, 78 percent of the world's feed grains and soybeans, and most of the country's livestock. Vessels navigating its roughly 2,350 miles of channels carry 589 million tons of cargo annually.

Transportation barriers created by low water hampered the ability of crop-producing states in the Corn Belt to send commodities like corn and soybeans, primarily used for cattle feed, to livestock producers in the South. Thus emerged a high demand, low supply situation as shipping and commodity prices shot up, with economists expecting consumers to absorb those costs.

Past research showing that retail prices increase alongside commodity prices suggests that the drought probably contributed to higher overall food costs last year — and because droughts have a lingering impact on production even after they end, it may be fueling stubbornly high grocery prices today.

But although it seems clear that the drought contributed to higher prices, particularly for meat and dairy products, just how much remains to be gauged. One reason for that is a lack of research analyzing the relationship between this particular weather event and the consumer market. Another is it's often difficult to tease out which of several possible factors, including global trade, war, and export bans, influence specific examples of sticker shock.

While droughts definitely prompt decreases in agricultural production, Metin Çakır, an economist at the University of Minnesota, says whether that is felt by consumers depends on myriad factors. "This would mean higher raw ingredient costs for foods sold in groceries, and part of those higher costs will be passed onto consumers via higher prices. However, will consumer prices actually increase? The answer depends on many other supply and demand factors that might be happening at the same time as the impact of the drought," said Çakır.

In a forthcoming analysis previewed by Grist, Çakır examined the relationship between an enduring drought in California, which produces a third of the nation's vegetables and nearly two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, and costs of produce purchased at large grocery retailers nationwide. While the event raised consumer vegetable prices to a statistically significant degree, they didn't increase as much as Çakır expected.

This capricious consumer cost effect is due largely to the resiliency of America's food system. Public safety nets like crop insurance and other federal programs have played a large part in mitigating the impacts of adverse weather and bolstering the food supply chain against climate change and other shocks. By ensuring farmers and producers don't bear the brunt of those losses, these programs reduce the costs passed on to consumers. Advanced agricultural technology, modern infrastructure, substantial storage, and efficient transport links also help ensure retail price stability.

A 2024 study of the role climate change played on the U.S. wheat market from 1950 to 2018 found that although the impact of weather shocks on price variability has increased with the frequency of extreme weather, adaptive mechanisms, like a well-developed production and distribution infrastructure with sufficient storage capacity, have minimized the impact on consumers. Still, the paper warns that such systems may collapse when faced with "unprecedented levels of weather variability."

Last year was the world's warmest on record, creating an onslaught of challenges for crop and livestock producers nationwide. And this year is primed to be even more brutal, with the transition from El Niño — an atmospheric phenomenon that warms ocean temperatures — to La Niña, its counterpart that cools them. This cyclical change in global weather patterns is another potential threat for crop yields and source of supply chain pressures that economists and scientists are keeping an eye on.

They will be particularly focused on the Midwest and stretches of the Corn Belt, two regions prone to drought as an El Niño cycle gives way to a La Niña, according to Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Those growing regions for corn and soybeans are what he'll be watching closely as La Niña develops.

It's something Jennifer Ifft, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, is also thinking about. "If you have a very severe drought in the Corn Belt … that's going to be the biggest deal, because that's gonna raise the cost of production for cattle, hogs, poultry," said Ifft. "So that would probably have the largest inflationary impacts."

As of January, U.S. beef herd inventory was at its lowest in 73 years, which multiple reports noted is due to persisting drought that began in 2020. Americans, the majority of whom are already spending more on groceries than last year, are poised to soon see "record" beef prices at the supermarket. Food prices are also expected to rise another 2.2 percent in 2024, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service.

In a world enmeshed in extremes, our already-fragile food supply chain could be the next system teetering on the edge of collapse because of human-caused climate change. And costlier groceries linked to impending risk is the first of many warning signs that it is already splintering.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/how-forecasts-of-bad-weather-can-drive-up-your-grocery-bill/.

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

Biden considering separate hostage deal with Hamas, potentially bypassing Israel

Biden administration officials told NBC News that they have discussed a potential deal with Hamas that would see the release of five Americans currently held hostage in Gaza if ceasefire talks involving Israel break down.

The report, coming after an Israeli operation that rescued four hostages but, according to Gaza authorities, killed at least 274 Palestinians, is a sign of Biden's increasing frustration towards an Israeli government that has repeatedly scuppered ceasefire proposals over the past several months.

When asked by Time magazine about Israel's invasion of Gaza earlier in June, Biden said that "there is every reason" to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political benefit. In a meeting with the family members of hostages, Israeli security officials reportedly told them that Netanyahu would not countenance a hostage release deal unless it polled well for him.

Although Biden recently announced a proposal that he said was supported by Israel's war cabinet, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners have insisted that they will not accept any deal to end the war without first accomplishing the complete destruction of Hamas.

Biden: “Every reason” to think Netanyahu is prolonging war for his own political self-preservation

The officials who spoke to NBC said that they are seeking the return of five American hostages and the bodies of three Americans who were killed during the Hamas attack on October 7, but do not know yet what they might give in exchange. They said that Biden and his advisors held these discussions in the context of whether the possibility of a unilateral deal with Hamas would add further pressure on Netanyahu to accept some version of a ceasefire.

Family members of the remaining 120 hostages held by Hamas, including the parents of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, have called on the Israeli government to reach an agreement that would guarantee the release of their loved ones and end the bloodshed in Gaza. Some have joined pro-ceasefire protests in Israel and were arrested by police.

“We have seen the reports that the U.S. administration is considering negotiating directly with Hamas on freeing U.S. citizens from captivity in Gaza," Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin told NBC. "We welcome any negotiations that will lead to the return home of our loved ones who have been in captivity for over 8 months. We pray that every family with hostages will be reunited with their loved ones imminently.”

Hamas has also been skeptical of recent proposals, but recently declared openness to a phased release of hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners detained before and after October 7. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that the U.S. is still waiting on an “official” response from Hamas to the latest ceasefire offer.

Meghan McCain says Jennifer Lopez is a “deeply unpleasant person”

Meghan McCain hit out at Jennifer Lopez on a recent episode of her "Citizen McCain" podcast, calling the pop singer a "deeply unpleasant person."

McCain formulated her opinion regarding Lopez's past appearance on ABC's "The View," on which McCain formerly acted as a co-host. "I, too, share similar negative stories that the entire world does,” said McCain of meeting Lopez on the show's set, per The Daily Beast. She claimed that J.Lo had the “biggest entourage I’ve ever seen," and alleged that she tried to have a TikTok in which McCain made clear her negative opinion scrubbed from the internet.

“You don’t always have to be so nice, but it was surprising that people like Kim Kardashian couldn’t be more delightful,” McCain added. “When you’re coming on a show for a 10-minute segment . . . just fake it till you make it for 10 f**king minutes.”

Trump denies mocking soldiers, says only “a psycho” would have called them “losers” and “suckers”

Donald Trump is demanding that President Joe Biden take down a "fake" ad that includes quotes of the former president making fun of dead soldiers.

The Biden campaign ad, released last week, features various quotes from Trump, including something he reportedly said to the father of a fallen soldier: "I don't get it, what was in it for them?" It also includes quotes of Trump allegedly calling dead soldiers "suckers" and "losers," as well as audio of Trump mocking the late Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran.

In 2018, after cancelling a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, near Paris, Trump told his senior staff members “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers." In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the a group of marines as "suckers," as reported by The Atlantic in 2020.

At a rally in Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, Trump denied that any of the statements were true, reported The Daily Beast. He claimed the Biden campaign ran the ad despite knowing it was “phony".

“Unless you’re a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person, who would say that, anyway?” Trump said, referring to his alleged comments.

The ad was launched by the Biden campaign last Friday, the same day that the president was in Normandy to attend ceremonies for the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

“Donald Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about service to his country,” Biden wrote in a post on X promoting the ad.

On Sunday evening, Trump continued complaining in a Truth Social post, calling the ad a “Democratic hit job” and writing that only “a sicko with an axe to grind would suggest that anyone would make such a statement,” referring to himself reportedly calling dead soldiers “losers and suckers."

"Take down the Fake Ad, Joe," he wrote.

With new rules, the Texas GOP seeks to keep its elected officials in line

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Republican voters in Texas sent a strong message this primary season about their expectations for ideological purity, casting out 15 state House GOP incumbents who bucked the grassroots on issues like school vouchers or the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton.

At the same time this spring, the party itself has been making moves beyond the ballot box to keep its elected officials in line.

At its biennial convention last month, the Texas GOP tried to increase its party purity by approving two major rules changes: One would close the Republican primary elections so that only voters the party identifies as Republicans can participate. The other would bar candidates from the primary ballot for two years after they had been censured by the state party.

Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said the moves are clear political shots by the increasingly dominant right wing of the party to root out dissenters and shape the party in its image.

“It says something about this battle, this civil war that’s broken out in the Republican Party of Texas that one side has gotten so concerned that they haven't been able to solidify their control of the party that they want to close their primary,” he said.

But the ideas have drawn pushback from inside and outside the party, with many questioning whether the GOP has the power to enact them without action from the state Legislature.

James Wesolek, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Texas, said the party will be pursuing the policies regardless. He added that “an overwhelming majority” of Republican voters supported the ideas when they were included as propositions in the GOP primary this year.

“We hope the legislature takes action, but we will move forward as our rules dictate,” Wesolek said in an email last week.

Questions remain about how that would work.

Eric Opiela, a longtime Republican who previously served as the state party’s executive director and was part of the rules committee at this year’s convention, said moving forward on closing the primary without legislative action would lead to legal challenges.

Because party primaries are publicly financed and perform the public service of selecting candidates for elected office, they must adhere to the state’s election law, said Opiela, who has also served as a lawyer for the state party.

Currently, any voter can participate in a Democrat or Republican primary without having to register an affiliation. Without a change to state law, the Texas GOP could open itself to liability if it barred voters from participating in its primary elections, Opiela said.

Under the rules approved by the GOP, a voter would be eligible to cast a ballot in a primary if they voted in a GOP primary in the past two years or submitted a “certificate of affiliation with the Republican Party of Texas” prior to the candidate filing period for that election. They also could register with the state party, though the party hasn’t yet unveiled a process to do so.

A voter under 21 could also vote in the primary if it were their first primary election.

But critics are concerned that the party is underestimating the amount of work required to vet a person’s voting history. And Opiela also said that there are concerns about how to provide proper notification to new voters, especially military voters, who might have recently moved into the state and are not covered under the proposal as written. He said such concerns are why these changes should be left to the Legislature, where lawmakers can consider obstacles to implementation and come up with solutions.

“I don’t know that the process was given much thought,” said Opiela. “Those of us who have run an election know that this isn’t easy to pull off.”

Texas is among 15 states that currently have open primaries, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Ten states currently have closed primaries.

Closed primaries are a particularly hot topic in the GOP due to frustration among some in the conservative grassroots over House Speaker Dade Phelan’s primary runoff victory.

Phelan oversaw the passage of major conservative victories including restricting abortion and loosening gun laws in recent years. But he has become a target of the hard right for failing to pass school voucher legislation, appointing some Democrats to chair legislative committees and presiding over the impeachment of Paxton, who is a darling of the hard right.

He finished second in his March primary, but won his primary runoff against right wing candidate David Covey by fewer than 400 votes. Covey and his supporters blamed Phelan’s victory on Democratic voters who crossed over into the GOP primary runoff to vote for Phelan.

It’s difficult to say whether that’s true; Texas doesn’t track party registration. About 4% of the people who voted in the GOP primary this year had most recently voted in the Democratic primary, according to data compiled by elections data expert Derek Ryan, a Republican. But party leaders, such as recently departed party Chair Matt Rinaldi, have pointed to the Phelan race as a reason for a need for change.

“The time is now for Republicans to choose our own nominees without Democrat interference,” Rinaldi said in May.

Taylor, the UTSA professor, said the push to close the primaries was in line with the right wing’s push to force GOP candidates to follow the party line.

“You’re engaging in a form of ideological conformity, you’re demanding 100% fealty to the party,” he said.

But Daron Shaw, a political science professor at the University of Texas, pushed back against those crying foul.

“It is completely unclear to me how it is the ‘right’ of a voter in Texas, particularly one that does not identify as a Republican, to vote in the selection of Republican candidates,” he said. “Ultimately, a party is a private association and if it chooses to select extreme candidates, then presumably the general electorate will react accordingly.”

The rule to bar candidates who had been censured by the state party has also been met with skepticism.

Opiela said that if a candidate turned in an application that otherwise met the requirements for running for office, a court would likely order the party to allow the candidate on the ballot. He also said the provision could open up precinct and county chairs to criminal liability for rejecting applications that met the requirements.

The state party rule tries to cover for that potential liability by stating it would provide legal representation for any party official who is sued for complying with the rule.

Asked by The Texas Tribune to assess the legality of the idea, Rick Hasen, a UCLA professor and election law expert, called it “dicey.”

Taylor, from UTSA, said the move was also a pretty transparent message to elected officials like Phelan and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales to fall in line. Phelan was censured in February for overseeing Paxton’s impeachment and appointing Democrats as committee chairs. Gonzales was censured for supporting a bipartisan gun law in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde shooting, which occurred in his district, and his vote for a bill that codified protections for same-sex marriage.

The censure rule in particular has been denounced as undemocratic, an increasingly common criticism from the GOP’s loudest critics. At the same party convention, the state party changed its platform to call for a new requirement that candidates for statewide office must also win a majority of votes in a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win office, a model similar to that of the U.S. Electoral College.

That proposal, which represents the official position of the party but does not have any power of law, has been panned as unconstitutional.

“There’s a very good argument that such a system would violate the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court,” Hasen said.

Under the proposal, the 4.7 million residents of Harris County would have the same voting power as the 64 residents of Loving County.

“It’s basically a tyranny of the minority,” Taylor said. “This is designed to potentially go a step further in nullifying the concept of one person-one vote.”

The proposals come even as the GOP has dominated Texas politics for decades, and the hardline conservative movement continues to grow its influence. Brian W. Smith, a political science professor at St. Edward’s University in Austin, questioned the moves on a political level.

“Texas is already gerrymandered to elect ideologically pure candidates. We’re not seeing a lot of Republicans or Democrats moving to the middle to attract a broad swath of voters,” he said. “The Dade Phelans of the world are not winning because of independents or Democrats, they’re winning because they’re more popular among Republicans than their opponents.”

We’ve added new speakers to the stellar lineup of leaders, lawmakers and newsmakers hitting the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Get an up-close look at today’s biggest issues at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event!

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/10/texas-republican-closed-primaries-rule-changes/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Sabrina Carpenter and Van Leewuen to release a special edition “Espresso” ice cream

The woman behind the alarmingly-catchy, uncontested song of the summer (thus far) is launching an ice cream flavor in conjunction with popular ice cream shop Van Leeuwen. Named after the tune itself, Van Leeuwen's new "Espresso" ice cream — in partnership with singer and actor Sabrina Carpenter — is bound to be a hit.

Much ink has been spilled about the song, from its inherent catchiness to its sometimes nonsensical (yet iconic) lyrics, with Carpenter name-dropping everything from Nintendo to Mountain Dew, along with the memorable line: "I'm working late 'cause I'm a singer."

According to a press release, the limited-release ice cream is "mixed with rich, chewy brownies, chocolate chips and swirls of fudge." It will debut on June 28 at all Van Leeuwen shops and their website. "Doing a flavor collab with a genuine Van Leeuwen super fan is always a lot of fun. We’re so excited to celebrate Sabrina and her newest hit with this extremely delicious ice cream," said Ben Van Leeuwen, the company's co-founder and CEO.

Carpenter, who just released "Please Please Please" last week, has been a fixture in both music and acting for just over a decade, notably starring in the Disney Channel spin-off "Girl Meets World." However, the popularity of "Espresso" —which serves as the lead single from her upcoming sixth studio album, "Short n' Sweet," debuting in August — seems to be taking her music career to new heights. So if you, like Carpenter, are often “working late,” perhaps a pint of this espresso ice cream will be just what you need?

Costco accused of “greedflation”: Wholesaler reports increase in earnings while hiking up prices

Pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and excess savings have all resulted in one thing: high inflation. Amid the spring of 2021, prices for certain goods — especially food — increased greatly, according to the Federal Reserve System. Those price hikes eventually became more widespread by the fall of 2021, and by 2022 inflation had risen to levels not seen in 40 years.

Surely, such high inflation rates coupled with rising living costs came with consequences. Following COVID’s peak, “shrinkflation,” in which items shrink in size or quantity while their prices remain the same, grew rampant. Same with “fast-flation,” which has led to a decrease in consumer demand for fast food due to soaring menu prices.

Recently, there’s been much chatter about “greedflation.” Previously dismissed as a fringe theory, the concept of major corporations exploiting inflation in an effort to make huge profits has become a hot-topic amongst economists, policymakers and analysts alike. Recent studies have shown that company profits for a great number of corporations increased at much faster rates than inflation-related price markups. According to a joint study from think tanks IPPR and Common Wealth, profits for companies across the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Brazil, and South Africa rose by 30% between 2019 and 2022, significantly surpassing inflation. In the U.S., a third of major corporations were found guilty of profiteering.

Energy companies like Shell, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron were at the top of the leaderboard for highest profit surges, the study specified. On the food front, Kraft Heinz saw the highest surges.

"Let them eat cereal": How accusations of "greedflation" fueled consumer ire against Kellogg's

Now, Costco Wholesale is the latest corporation being accused of rampant greedflation. A new analysis from Accountable.US, a nonpartisan watchdog group, revealed that Costco reported consistently high profits and net incomes year over year, all while the company raised store prices and considered increasing its membership fees.

In its third quarter earnings report for fiscal year 2024, Costco reported $1.68 billion in earnings, a 29% increase year over year (YoY). In the previous quarter, Costco reported an 18.8% increase in net income YoY, from $1.4 billion to more than $1.7 billion, “as it spent $8 billion on cash dividends and $322 million on stock buybacks during the first half of its fiscal year 2024,” Accountable.US said.

The big-box retailer added that net sales in Q3 2024 increased 9.1 percent, to $57.39 billion, from $52.60 billion last year.

Amid surges in profits, Costco warned consumers that they may have to pay a heftier fee in the future for the retailer’s annual membership. Costco hasn’t raised membership prices since 2017, and isn’t planning on doing so immediately. During a March earnings call, Costco’s former chief financial officer Richard Galanti said it’s a matter of “when, not if” the retailer raises membership prices. Costco CEO Ron Vachris further suggested a price increase would actually benefit both the company and consumers, during an earnings call on May 30. An increase would award Costco additional revenue that could allow the company to lower store prices and help customers save money over time, Vachris said.

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Costco also upped the prices on some of its key goods. Costco increased its prices on gas, which is often 30 to 50 cents cheaper than other gas stations, GOBankingRates found. Last month, Costco shoppers across the U.S. and Canada noted price hikes on Kirkland Signature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Eat This, Not That reported that in one Brooklyn store, the oil was available for $24.99, compared to $16.99 in March 2023. Costco’s price hike isn’t an exception however, considering that a widespread shortage of olive oil has caused retail prices to reach record highs. Back in September, olive oil production in Spain (which accounts for more than 40% of the world’s olive oil production) had already fallen by a half — from an estimated 1.3 million to 610,000 metric tons — due to a yearlong drought and a spring of extreme heat.

Shoppers over on Reddit also noted that Costco’s Chicken of the Sea, Chunk Light Premium Tuna went up by a dollar and Enfamil baby formula increased from $49 to $58 in the past few months. Additionally, price hikes were seen for ground beef, boneless chicken, frozen burgers and protein powder.

“Costco’s massive uptick in earnings answers the question of whether they really needed to raise prices despite easing inflation. In a word: no,” said Liz Zelnick, director of the economic security & corporate power program at Accountable.US, in the group’s analysis. “Over and over, we see big wholesalers and grocers unnecessarily squeeze American families, chasing record profits rather than stabilizing prices. It’s time these companies answer President Biden’s call to get their greed in check and bring prices down.”

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Salon Food reached out to Costco Wholesale Corporation for comment but has yet to hear back.

Costco joins a list of other top grocery store chains, including Kroger, Walmart and Target, that have reported profit surges and are spotlighted in Accountable.US’ analysis. Despite the greedflation claims, Costco reportedly lowered the prices of several food items in recent weeks. Kirkland Signature shrimp dropped in price by $1, new Costco CFO Gary Millerchip announced during the company’s May earnings call. A 1.5-pound bag of Kirkland Signature Organic Pine Nuts is now $24.99 (compared to $29.99 previously), while a four-pound bag of Kirkland Signature frozen fruit is now $10.99 (compared to the previous $14.99). San Pellegrino Sparkling Water, Kirkland Signature Fully Cooked Bacon, Kirkland Signature Vanilla Extract, Sun West Calrose Rice and Kirkland Signature Grass-Fed Beef Patties are also available for lower prices.

Greedflation has been called out by President Biden, who earlier this year, blamed corporate greed — and not himself — for inflation. In February, Biden said there are “still too many corporations in America ripping people off. Price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.” The president is now being urged by progressives to follow in the footsteps of Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who have made “greedflation” the primary focus of their campaigns. Casey, in particular, released four reports on the issue since November 2023 and is currently working on a price-gouging bill that would allow the federal government to investigate and stop corporate greedflation.

“They’re ripping families off by jacking up prices way beyond their costs,” Casey said of big corporations in an interview with WTAJ-TV. “They’re exploding their prices all the while, they’re getting record corporate profits, and a huge tax cut. A corporate tax cut that they got in 2017. So, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.”

about Costco:

Chappell Roan rejects offer to perform at White House for Pride over Biden’s Gaza response

Singer Chappell Roan during a Sunday performance at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York said that she had turned down an offer to perform at the White House during Pride Month over the Biden administration's handling of Israel's war in Gaza, per The Hill.

“As a response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride,” Roan said to audiences at the festival while onstage. “We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8A6_fot01N/

The singer-songwriter, who The Hill reported identifies as queer and typically performs as her drag alter ego, was dressed at The Statue of Liberty for her weekend performance. “I am in drag of the biggest queen of all,” Roan said while speaking to the crowd. “But in case you had forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.'

“That means freedom in trans rights,” she added. “That means freedom in women’s rights. And it especially means freedom for all people and oppressed. It especially means freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories,” garnering cheers from the crowd.

Roan's comments follow an Israeli raid in Gaza over the weekend that freed four hostages previously abducted by Hamas. The operation saw at least 274 Palestinians killed, according to The Associated Press.

“Hot Ones”: Will Smith revealed the hardest “hit” he took on set while taking on the wings of death

In anticipation of the release of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” Will Smith recounted his most painful on-set “hit” while feasting on a platter of mouth-burning wings during this week's episode of “Hot Ones.” It’s worth noting that “hit” in this context refers to the physical action of striking something or someone, the latter of which Smith himself got in trouble for during the 94th Academy Awards.

When asked by host Sean Evans, “What’s the most painful, inadvertent hit you’ve ever taken while shooting a sequence?” Smith said it was from his “Ali” co-star Michael Bentt, who played Muhammad Ali’s historic rival Sonny Liston.

“[M]y trainer was trying to get me to get the angle of my spine forward and in this second I just was like you know what, commit. And I committed and leaned forward and almost as an instinctual reaction Michael Bentt threw a right hand, and I put my head down and he caught me with a right hand right on top of my head,” Smith said of the moment. “I felt an electrical shock go down the back of both arms to my elbows… that was like the hardest I’ve ever been hit on a movie set.”

From “Hot Ones” to “Chicken Shop Date,” the best celebrity interviews take place over chicken

Elsewhere in the interview, Smith discussed his top four career-defining hits, this time referring to his best movies. In between wiping away hot-sauce induced tears, Smith said his individual best movie is “The Pursuit of Happyness.” Following closely behind is the first “Men In Black.” Smith also gave special shoutouts to the “Bad Boys” franchise and “‘Aladdin,” in which he starred as the Genie.

“If I had to put four of them in a time capsule it would be ‘The Pursuit of Happyness,’ the first ‘Men In Black,’ ‘I Am Legend,’ and probably ‘King Richard,’” Smith said.

The 55-year-old actor, rapper and producer also shared what he believes is the definition of a movie “hit” in 2024: “The definition of a hit is still pretty much the same. Essentially it’s just harder to get one. You used to be able to put some explosions in the trailer and a couple good jokes and people were there. Television is so good there are things people aren’t going to leave their house for anymore.”

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Smith continued, “There’s definitely a higher demand for a certain type of film for people to leave their homes.”

Smith’s upcoming film is the fourth installment of the “Bad Boys” film series. “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” also sees the return of Martin Lawrence, who plays detective Marcus Miles Burnett opposite Smith's detective Michael Eugene “Mike” Lowrey. Joe Pantoliano, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Jacob Scipio, and DJ Khaled will reprise their roles from the series’ previous film, “Bad Boys for Life.”

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” premieres in theaters June 7.

Watch the full "Hot Ones" episode below, courtesy of YouTube:

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Dissecting the frustration and confusion of the “Bridgerton” split season

Let us speak for a moment on the subject of split seasons. A painful subject for some, we know; “Bridgerton” gentlefolk, we’re peering at you. Sympathetically. Who among us hasn’t experienced the disappointment of being teased to the edge of delight only to be left blue by hiatus interruptus?

Such is the anguish of those who eagerly showed up to the 'ton in May, hearts aflame to watch long-ignored Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) win Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) at long last.

At first Colin denied his stirrings for his old friend. But by the close of the fourth episode, our girl moved him to bare his emotion . . . and more. During a shared carriage ride, Luke led Penelope on a heart-racing detour up her skirt and into the digital underground. How else can one top that . . . save for a marriage proposal? Bliss! What came next?

A month-long wait. How cruel. I ask you, can the ends ever justify such wretched means? In a word: perhaps.

Split seasons aren't novel among streaming services, and certainly not for Netflix. Previously, the streaming service presented divided seasons of “Stranger Things,” “You” and “The Witcher.” If you think that was annoying, prepare for the upcoming sixth season of "Cobra Kai," scheduled to roll out in three parts.

Then there are the multiweek drops of some shows' episodes, alongside other series premiering entire seasons at once. The upshot of all this is confusion and frustration among those of us ready to make a day of powering through our favorite shows only to discover we’re being served only half the episodes.

Why does this have to be so difficult?

"Bridgerton" examines the perks and perils of its wallflower's power

There’s no single answer because the streaming landscape is constantly changing, along with a show’s popularity. But most of it comes down to a common concept: engagement. Streaming series live or die based on “views,” which Netflix measures by dividing the total time spent watching a movie or TV show’s season by their running time.

With new seasons of TV shows flooding an already crowded ecosystem, it's increasingly challenging for any series that isn’t an established hit or supported by existing IP to break out from the rabble. Thus, there’s an elevated emphasis on keeping conversations about certain shows alive for as long as possible.

Can the ends ever justify such wretched means? In a word: perhaps.

Writers like yours truly help that along somewhat, but the meat of that feast happens online, especially via social media.
This is partly how Season 1 of “Bridgerton” became a phenomenon. Another major contributor to its astronomical popularity was the circumstances of its arrival. Not only did it drop on Christmas day, when little else offered competition, but during the 2020 holiday, the first of the pandemic.

Its fans didn’t just binge, they re-watched and raved about it online. The show danced on the ground between comfort-viewing and a turn-on, attracting more subscribers to Netflix. High anticipation for the second season, which arrived in its entirety in March 2022, was assured.

But by then, the streaming equivalent of the marriage market was way more crowded. “Severance” had already premiered a month before Season 2, and attracted sustained attention to Apple TV+. HBO debuted “House of the Dragon” months later, simultaneously debuting weekly episodes on linear TV and its streaming service Max.

Prime Video scored with “The Boys” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Hulu landed a comedy knockout with “Only Murders in the Building.”

All these shows follow a model of dropping two- or three-episode premieres before debuting new episodes weekly. This enables them to dominate the discourse for a couple of months, which in modern TV terms qualifies as a long-term relationship.

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Then we have the this or that of Disney+, where Marvel and “Star Wars” titles debut on a weekly cadence – almost like traditional TV, but not quite – while FX still insists on dumping full seasons of “The Bear” on Hulu in one go. (It also hit for the first time in 2022.) The joy of streaming is that we can watch any of these shows at a pace of our choosing.

But “The Bear” generates a copious rush of passionate reactions, leaving us little choice other than to tear through or be left behind, then join the choir in whining about having to endure however long of a wait there is between new installments.

Indeed, although Netflix innovated series entertainment consumption by normalizing binge-watching, it has returned to the somewhat more traditional release cadence for some titles. Dropping multiple episodes of its reality hits “Love Is Blind” and “Physical 100,” over several weeks keeps those shows in the conversation, culminating in live finales and reunion shows for its romance reality giant.

Those series benefit from Instagram sleuths digging to discover whether certain couples have remained together or broken up before the critical moment is revealed during the show.

“Bridgerton,” though based on Julia Quinn’s sensual novels, changes enough in the TV adaptation to leave us in suspense concerning certain details – like, for example, how Penelope intends to resolve the conundrum of being Lady Whistledown, an alter ego her fiancé despises and would love to see destroyed.

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Having the solution to that puzzle withheld from us for a month is agonizing, but not as much as making viewers return their ice cream pints to the freezer until Penelope and Colin smash on some piece of carved furniture. Netflix suspects you will dutifully wait for that consummation and, while doing so, pay for another month or two of its subscription fees and watch full seasons of other shows new and old. Because why not?

Should the tarry grow especially laborious consider that your forbears survived long gaps in seasons of their favorite shows, including “The Walking Dead,” “Breaking Bad” and “Sex and the City.” Young people, ask the piles of shadow and bone in your household about the sixth and final season of “The Sopranos.” We had to wait for more than a year between its first and second parts and pray our DVRs didn’t dump the old recordings of the previous season. Youths have it easy these days!

Fret not, “Bridgerton” faithful, because your frustration will soon be at an end. By this time next week, we’ll have devoured Part 2, swooned over what will surely be a tasteful presentation of Regency-style nookie, and bask in the delayed afterglow.

We’ll also find out what happens with that piano-playing Bridgerton sister, which is nice! But remember, the end to another “Bridgerton” season brings a new wait of undetermined length for the next romance. A month may seem like no time at all in the larger scheme of things. We never know how good we have it until our love leaves us on hold.

"Bridgerton" returns with Part 2 of its third season on June 13.

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The global orange juice crisis is caused by disease and bad weather

Just as the world is coming out of the tea crisis, another breakfast staple, orange juice, is in the spotlight. Supply constraints have led to prices shooting up by more than 20% in a year.

The primary cause of this orange juice shortage is the significant hit to the orange harvest in Brazil, which accounts for nearly 70% of the global supply of orange juice. This year's harvest is expected to be down by 24% compared with last year – and this is the third harvest in a row that has been difficult.

Orange trees in Brazil, as well as in the US, have been affected by citrus greening disease. This incurable disease is caused by sap-sucking insects that turn the fruit bitter before killing the tree.

Trees in Florida have been hit by a series of hurricanes as well as the greening disease – with both being attributed to climate change. In terms of disease, trees are thought to be most vulnerable in regions where temperatures stay around 25°C for most of the year.

Short-term 'solutions' present major challenges

Producers have considered mixing the new crop with frozen juice, which has a lifespan of about two years. And the International Fruit and Vegetable Juice Association has been lobbying for UN food regulations to be relaxed to allow the addition of other citrus fruits, such as mandarins, to orange juice.

But these "solutions" would present major challenges for the industry in the longer term. Mixing juices requires additional processing, and the logistics and transportation of mandarins and other fruit to processing facilities would add costs, ultimately increasing the price of the juice.

At the same time, consumers might expect lower prices for blended juices. So this mismatch in the expected and actual price could stifle demand – in turn, restricting investment in new orange trees.

Labour costs in places such as Florida are already high, and the lack of further investment would make manual work unaffordable. Taken together, these factors could even prompt the market failure of one of the world's staple drinks.

How to keep orange juice on the table

Addressing this problem requires some long-term strategic thinking. The supply chain for orange juice includes sourcing and harvesting, cleaning and sorting, juicing, pasteurization, packaging and sometimes additional processing.

Multiple businesses are involved: growers, food handlers, fruit processors, blending houses, juice packers and soft drink producers. All operate differently. For example, in Florida, orange growers are diversifying into agribusiness companies, while in Brazil, large processors still source part of their harvest from their own land.

In the short-to-medium term, retailers and wholesalers need to look within their networks. This could mean identifying untapped suppliers to develop alternative sources – Europe has begun importing some of Egypt's orange produce, for example.

And current supplier contracts should be amended to fix prices for the duration of the deal. Anticipating shortages, companies such as Coldpress Juices maintained a safety stock in 2023 and secured contracts with suppliers until December 2024. Arrangements like these create a level of certainty for everyone in the supply chain.

In the long term, retailers and wholesalers need to develop novel approaches to improve their supply chain's resilience to climate threats.

First, investment in agricultural research to develop more resilient varieties of orange would help mitigate the impact. Research and development in infrastructure – including water-saving technologies, better soil management practices, and improved processing methods – would also help guard against disruptions.

Second, digital technologies such as drones for monitoring crops and harvest, transparent data-sharing across the network, and improved forecasting would strengthen governance, control and coordination in the supply chain. However, the need for investment in research and technology has been a barrier to supply chain innovation.

Recent evidence suggests that downstream businesses (wholesalers and retailers) in the agri-food supply chain invest more in digital and other technology than smaller upstream businesses such as farmers, small- and medium-sized enterprises, co-operatives and smallholders. But supply chain innovation requires progress throughout the network. This means that wholesalers and retailers in particular would need to absorb the initial cost of any investment.

Finally, supply chain transparency and visibility could be enhanced by the buying firms forming consortia and buying clubs, where they share information to help gauge customer demand. This approach helps prevent the "bullwhip effect", reducing accidental over-production and wastage.

This strategy of competitors cooperating with each other – known as "coopetition" – can also help them to jointly absorb the costs of logistics and innovation.

By implementing long-term strategies like these, retailers and wholesalers can create a more resilient and efficient food supply chain. With climate change bringing increasing challenges for harvests, this will be vital if we are to ensure a stable supply and keep orange juice on the breakfast table.

Jas Kalra, Associate Professor of Operations & Project Management, Manchester Metropolitan University

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

“We’ve covered this!”: Kristi Noem lashes out at CNN over dog-killing questions

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem got defensive in a Sunday interview on CNN’s State of the Union after anchor Dana Bash questioned the Republican about killing her dog, something she admitted to in her new memoir, "No Going Back."

Referencing the criticism Noem has faced, Bash asked the governor, “Now that you’ve had time to process all of that, in all candor, do you have regrets?”

Noem responded by saying she killed “the vicious animal” to protect her children and that she included the story in her memoir because it was difficult for her.

Before Bash could follow up, Noem interjected.

“We’ve covered this!” Noem shouted.

"But about actually shooting the dog," Bash pressed.

Noem again insisted that the issued had been "covered" enough. "I’m a mom and protected my children from a vicious animal," she said. "We just had a 9-year-old boy in South Dakota killed just days ago from a dog. You know, that happens."

It was hardly the first time Noem has been questioned about the incident. In many of her promotional book interviews, she was grilled by reporters about shooting her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, who she deemed "untrainable." Noem’s memoir has received harsh reviews and intense criticism for its contents, which also ncluded a now-retracted claim that she met North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

After several tense on-air interviews throughout May, Noem, who is no longer believed to be under consideration to be Trump’s running mate, seemed to have canceled the rest of her media tour.

Her return to the cable news circuit on Sunday morning proved to be just as uncomfortable as before.

Asked what she learned from the fall out over the dog-killed anecdote, Noem responded: “I’ve learned that challenging times and hard decisions are hard,” before abruptly changing the subject to why she thinks President Joe Biden is a “trainwreck."

Fox News edits Trump interview clip to remove muddled response to Jeffrey Epstein question

Fox News edited out a section of an interview last Sunday where former President Donald Trump appeared to retreat from a promise to declassify files related to sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein, Semafor reported. The exchange, part of a June 2 sit-down with Fox & Friends, was cut from the original TV broadcast but later reappeared in full on Will Cain's Fox News radio show.

A Fox News spokesperson, challenging claims that the network was protecting Trump, also shared with Salon another brief clip that showed the full Epstein segment, while not included in the original Sunday broadcast, was played on air the next day.

Asked whether he would declassify files related to 9/11, the JFK assassination, and Epstein, Trump asserted that he would — and on the TV broadcast, that was the end of it. The unedited version reveals that Trump was not so sure.

"I guess I would," Trump said. "I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would, or at least … "

"Do you think that would restore trust — help restore trust?" the interviewer, Rachel Campos-Duffy, then asked in an effort to steer the former president back on course.

"Yeah. I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others. Certainly about the way he died," Trump replied. "It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one."

Fox's editing, which allowed Trump to maintain his facade as a truth-teller in a world of conspiracy, is consistent with the media outlet's pattern of nudging Trump towards certain answers. In one 2023 interview related to the classified documents search in Mar-a-Lago, Fox personality Sean Hannity effectively laid out Trump's answer for him: that the former president wouldn't deliberately possess the documents or obstruct federal agents from looking for them.

Unfortunately, Trump didn't play along.

“I would do that," he said. "There would be nothing wrong.”

The Fox broadcast on June 2 also cut out segments in which Trump recalled having "nice conversations" with the Taliban and referenced the "n-word" to describe Russia's threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

But Fox did elect to keep another Trump falsehood: his claim that he declassified many of the files related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination. "I did a lot of it," he said. He didn't.

This piece has been updated to include comment from Fox News.

Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Trump to Jesus, saying both are “convicted felons”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a self-described "Christian nationalist," compared former President Donald Trump to Jesus Christ at a Las Vegas rally on Sunday. According to the Republican congresswoman, Trump's conviction by a New York jury puts him on the same plane as the messiah.

Dismissing his conviction with profanity, Greene said she and other MAGA supporters are going to "tolerate" references to Trump's legal problems.

"The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about. 'Oh, President Trump is a convicted felon,'" she said, referring to Trump's convictions on 34 felony counts in his hush money trial. Greene said she was fine with it because her lord and savior was also a criminal.

"Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a 'convicted felon.' And he was murdered on a Roman cross," she said, claiming that Trump facing legal consequences for falsifying business records was an example of "political corruption."

Not to be outdone, Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald thanked God for allowing supporters to come and "worship" Trump.

Greene has a history of looking at Trump and seeing Jesus. After Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced in 2023 that he was charging Trump with 34 felonies, Greene said that the former president was "joining" Jesus and Nelson Mandala on the pantheon of "some of the most incredible people in history being arrested."

Trump himself has leaned into the comparisons, even while deriding his flock in private. He is currently hawking an edition of the Bible that boasts of being the "ONLY" Bible "endorsed by President Trump" and "inspired by America’s most recognized patriotic anthem, God Bless The USA."

Trump rants about sharks and death by electrocution after his teleprompter goes out in Las Vegas

Former President Donald Trump's teleprompter apparently broke down at a Las Vegas rally on Sunday, giving the former president free rein to meander into a debate over whether it would be worse to electrocuted or bit by a shark, a rant apparently meant as an indictment of electric vehicles.

“I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there,” Trump said. After referencing shark attacks that injured three people in Alabama, including two teenagers, he concluded that he personally would "take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark."

Although the shark attacks added new flavor, Trump's story about the supposed dangers of battery-powered boats is recycled from a speech in Iowa last year. Both there and in Las Vegas, Trump used the prospect of sinking in an electric boat to attack President Joe Biden.

"He wants to have all electric cars, everything has to be electric, and by 2030 … that's in six years from now, and you know what, electric cars are fine, they have a problem, they don't go far, they cost a lot to buy, and they're made in China, other than that I think they're wonderful, right?" he said, contradicting U.S. carmakers who say that government support is precisely what they need to remain in a competitive global market (under the Biden administration, electric cars with major Chinese components are ineligible for tax credits).

It also turns out that people have been on boats that use electricity for a very long time. In the 21st century, nearly all boats that are not powered by oar have some electric component to them, whether to operate the main engine, lights system, radio, or motor, and the makers of those boats have considered Trump's grisly scenario and used safety standards before he ever raised the subject.

Electric-powered boats do not pose a unique threat of electrocution, but if they did, Trump is betting that electrocution might be a quicker way out than death by shark bite. Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress at the center of his hush money conviction, once recalled his fear and hatred of the seaborne predators. “Terrified of sharks," she said. "He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’”

Legal expert: Probation terms may prove “challenging” for Trump — but “his alternative is prison”

Seated in front of a computer at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Donald Trump will be asked to explain, politely, why he is a man who can be trusted.

The former president has been judged by a jury of his peers, being found guilty of 34 felonies. It is now time, in the eyes of the New York criminal justice system, to devise a fitting punishment. Accordingly, a probation officer on Monday will ask Trump, via video conference, whether he accepts responsibility for his crimes; they will assess his finances (and his mental health); they will consider his family life and ties to community; and they will want to know whether the presumptive Republican nominee continues to associate with criminals.

The list of past and present members of Trump’s inner circle who have been found guilty of serious crimes is long and growing. Just this year, two of his former White House aides, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, were sentenced to prison for defying congressional subpoenas. Allen Weisselberg, former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, is currently on Rikers Island. Paul Manafort, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, and MAGA dirty-tricks specialist Roger Stone each received multi-year prison sentences only to be freed by Trump pardons.

"An expectation of redemption": Trump is fueling MAGA's revenge fantasy

"[Former] President Trump has surrounded himself with a bunch of killers who work every day to help him win," as Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung put it to Axios in March. If that’s still the case come July 11, when Trump is due to be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan in his hush-money case, that could be a serious problem

“There’s nothing wrong with his telling the probation office, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not admitting guilt, and I’m planning on appealing,’” Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC. “Every defendant has a right to do that.”

More difficult, Weissmann said, will be the question about whether Trump’s still “associating with criminals.”

“He’s going to have to discuss whether he still coordinates with Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon. Remember, all those people have been found guilty by a jury and are felons themselves,” Weissmann noted.

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In March, CNN reported that Manafort was “in discussions” with Trump’s campaign team about a possible role going forward. But last month, citing “the media” and its desire to “use me as a distraction,” Manafort said that he would not be doing any formal campaign work but helping from the sidelines “every other way I can.”

But as for Stone, he’s been “a frequent presence at Mar-a-Lago lately,” Axios reported in March, noting that he attended “Trump’s victory party there on Super Tuesday.”

Going forward, such a celebration could land Trump behind bars himself.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney who teaches law at the University of Michigan, told MSNBC that the terms of probation that Trump will likely have to comply with may prove difficult. A prohibition on associating with other convicted felons, typical in cases of other offenders, would in particular “be challenging for him.”

“But if he’s not willing to comply with those kind of conditions, his alternative is prison,” McQuade said. Given his other legal troubles, and his repeated contempt violations in the hush money case, it’s possible he’s headed that way regardless. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would at least be justified in requesting it, according to McQuade.

“I think in light of the way that Donald Trump violated the gag order in this case and his continued lack of remorse in this case,” she said, “[it] would lean heavily in favor of requesting at least some prison time.”

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Donald Trump’s Christian-nationalist radical has big plans for America

Over the weekend, the Washington Post's Beth Reinhard published an excellent article about one of Donald Trump's most visionary advisers, an obscure figure named Russ Vought. He was a boring Republican bureaucrat who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 2020 until Trump left office. He previously served as deputy director and acting director at OMB and prior to his stint in the White House worked at Heritage Action, the activist arm of the Heritage Foundation, where he was budget director for the Republican Study Group in Congress. In other words, for years Vought was a numbers cruncher providing far-right Republicans with their specious arguments about the government going broke and the need to drastically cut the safety net.

Who knew that such a person also had big ideas about how to destroy the U.S. government from the inside?

Vought is a self-described Christian nationalist who is spearheading plans for a rapid expansion of executive power under a theory he calls “radical constitutionalism" (an oxymoron, but it sure sounds snappy.) He has been working for a right-wing network called the Center for Renewing America, which is full of Trump acolytes, many of whom would likely become high-ranking officials in a future Trump administration. That includes Vought, often discussed as a potential White House chief of staff.

Reinhard writes:

“We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”

Vought aims to harness what he calls the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy that stymied the former president by stocking federal agencies with hardcore disciples who would wage culture wars on abortion and immigration. The proposals championed by Vought and other Trump allies to fundamentally reset the balance of power would represent a historic shift — one they see as a needed corrective.

Meet Russ Vought: Mild-mannered mastermind of the GOP's debt-ceiling power play

Vought has been named by the Republican National Committee as the policy director for the 2024 platform committee. He wrote the chapter on the executive office of the president for Project 2025. And he is said to be in charge of planning for the first 180 days of a new Trump administration.

Vought is an evangelical Christian who has adopted the Trump credo that the ends justify the means. While in the White House, he saw people who balked at illegal and unethical activity as squishes and whenever he could do so, his office helped Trump do end-runs around the law and regulations, from reappropriating funds for his border wall to helping him pressure Volodymyr Zelenskyy to slander Joe Biden, the scandal that got Trump impeached the first time around. Vought also came up with the notorious Schedule F, a plan to eliminate many civil service posts and replace long-serving government employees with Trump lackeys. They ran out of time to fully implement that strategy in Trump's first term, but you can bet they'll get it done ASAP if he wins in November.

He's an efficient bureaucrat, trained in the right-wing fever swamps who knows how to get things done. And what he wants to do is horrifying.

Trump's only agenda is to prove he's not a loser, keep himself out of jail and wreak revenge on his enemies. Whatever else his underlings and enablers have planned for his second term is fine with him. Well, Vought has plans, and they're big ones. His "radical constitutionalism" is an extreme reinterpretation of what the American system and the rule of law stand for.

As Reinhard reports, Vought seeks to redefine immigration as an "invasion," which would allow the president to invoke wartime powers. He's on the same page as Trump with respect to mass deportation because he doesn't believe that most immigrants can understand America's supposed Judeo-Christian worldview. He calls this "rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution."

Vought is one of the primary influences in right-wing circles pushing to eliminate any independence of agencies in the executive branch, starting of course with the Justice Department. On a recent podcast, he backed Trump's call to prosecute Trump's enemies saying, "It can’t just be hearings, it has to be investigations, an army of investigators that lead to firm convictions.” He supports invoking the Insurrection Act, banning medical abortions and implementing policies to boost the birth rate. (Yes, he's one of those guys too.) In other words, he is an authoritarian nightmare.

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Whenever I read about extremists like Vought and others who are plotting to overturn the Constitution, like so many others, I can't help but think about 1930s Germany. The parallels aren't perfect but they are way too close for comfort. The Nazi Big Lie was about the supposed "stab in the back" — the notion that the Germans hadn't actually lost World War I but were instead betrayed by Jews, Marxists, democrats and internationalists. Trump's Big Lie is that he didn't lose the 2020 election (typically, it's all about him) but it's had a similar motivating effect on his followers.

In both cases, there is a fairly pathetic attempt to overthrow the government and the political establishment subsequently fails to take the legal steps available to prevent them from making a comeback. This facilitates the growth of an authoritarian movement, infused with racism and grievance. Although this movement never achieves a majority in the country over time its leaders learn that there are better ways of achieving its goals by exploiting weaknesses in the system that had previously gone undiscovered.

This form of revolution doesn't rely on violent overthrow but it does require intimidation and threats of violence against political enemies. It cannot succeed without the enabling and cooperation of establishment politicians and officials who either believe they can control the extremists in their midst or simply sign on for their own ambition uncaring of the consequences. Vought is in the latter category, an opportunist who sees Donald Trump as the ticket to a Christian-nationalist America. Whether Vought is a MAGA true believer is immaterial. He's an efficient bureaucrat, trained in the right-wing fever swamps, who knows how to get things done. And what he wants to do is horrifying.

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