“I showed you all”: Lizzo gratified “South Park” presents her body positivity as weight loss answer

"Guys, my worst fears have been realized. I've been referenced by a 'South Park' episode. I'm so scared. I'm gonna blind duet to it right now."

Thus begins Lizzo's TikTok post, which she also shared on Instagram, on Saturday, in which she watches the "South Park" clip from the "End of Obesity" episode that was released Friday, May 24 on Paramount+. In the special, all of South Park is trying to get their hands on weight loss drugs, with varying results.

As with everything "South Park," anyone and everyone is fair game for satire. There's the American healthcare system, which proves too Byzantine for the boys to navigate when trying to obtain medical help for their friend Cartman. Meanwhile many of South Park's adult residents seem to have gamed the system or received the drugs illegally, and are now holding weight loss parties where crop tops appear mandatory. A few like Stan's mom Sharon, however, are out of luck. Her insurance won't cover the drugs since she doesn't have diabetes, so she instead has turned to an alternative.

Churches are preaching the Gospel of Lizzo now

"Now there's a whole new obesity drug for those of us who can't afford Ozempic and Mounjaro," Sharon tells Kyle's mom Sheila. "I controlled all of my cravings to be thinner with Lizzo."

Cue the fake commercial, as Lizzo reacts live, eyes wide with a hand over her mouth. The ad reveals Lizzo to be an appetite suppressor, packaged in a red and white box. "This is a prescription used along with listening to her songs and watching her music videos to become happy with how you look," reads the fine print.

An announcer says, "Lizzo makes you feel good about your weight, and it costs 90% less than Ozempic . . . In case studies, 70% of patients on Lizzo no longer care how much they weigh."

Meanwhile, this information is interspersed with Sharon's own first-person testimonials. "I've lowered my standards and my expectations," she squeals whilst buying art and riding in bumper cars. "I don't give two s**ts!"

The body positivity isn't the only message though. It appears that the "South Park" creators also had something to say about the artist's music.

"Lizzo helps you eat everything you want and keep physical activity to a minimum," continues the ad. "Some patients report constipation while listening to Lizzo. Stop listening to Lizzo if you're experiencing suicidal thoughts. Serious side effects may include pancreatitis, hypothermia, s**tting out of your ears."

Lizzo, however, appeared unfazed by that criticism, instead taking the more positive aspects of the messaging to heart.

"That's crazy. I just feel like, damn, I'm really that b***h," she says in her post. "I really showed the world how to love yourself and not give a f**k to the point where these men in Colorado know who the f**k I am and put it on their cartoon that's been around for 25 years. I'm really that b***h and showed y'all how to not give a f**k and I'm gonna keep on showing you how not to give a f**k. Oh, oh, oh, Lizzooooo, b***h!

While Lizzo is known for her body positivity, last year she was sued by former backup dancers who alleged that she fostered a toxic work environment that engaged in racial harassment, religious harassment, disability discrimination and fat-shaming.

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“I don’t want to see some glittery vampire”: Why Anne Rice’s undead reigns in a post-“Twilight” era

Nobody throws shade like a vampire. Makes sense right? Existing forever in darkness means figuring out how to navigate and manipulate it, a talent that can rub off on the people who play these monsters.

Take “Interview with the Vampire” stars Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid, the actors bringing Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt to life in the TV adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel. Like their immortal counterparts, these two thoroughly enjoy their work, and they especially delight in knowing their vampires go against the grain of the type of bloody romance 20- and 30-something viewers were raised with.

“I want to see crazy, demonic, messed up, tortured creatures. Like, I want to see my vampires like that, whether I'm watching this or I'm reading it,” Reid said in February, when I sat down with him and Anderson in Pasadena, Calif., to discuss the series. “I don't want to see some glittery vampire who's at odds with themselves and, like, can't go near their human counterpart because they're scared of eating them. I want to see full bloodthirst.”

Both Reid and Anderson smirked mischievously when the man behind Lestat punched down at the sparkly undead, a hint that this topic had come up before between them. Or maybe they were curious as to where the person sitting with them landed on the subject.

“Sure, OK,” I said. “Let’s talk about ‘Twilight.’” Why not? For a time in the aughts, Stephenie Meyer’s creations supplanted Rice’s among teenagers and adults harboring dreams of eternal romance and brooding lovers who could not live without them. But Louis and Lestat are the O.G.s of tainted infatuation, and the actors take pride in that.

Their working relationship informs their riveting performances, but the consideration each has for their vampire’s lot translates into a palpable yearning, or the type of regret that yawns with an unhinged jaw. Or, when talking about Lestat, an insouciant cruelty.

"A thin veil": Why that "Interview with the Vampire" letter to Louis rings true to Anne Rice's style

The third episode of Season 2, “No Pain,” continues Louis’ conversation with journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) as the two retrace the vampire’s past through the diaries of his companion and adopted daughter Claudia (Delainey Hayles). In the present Louis’ companion is Armand (Assad Zaman), a much older vampire who explains to Daniel how he was also Lestat’s lover for a time.

In the main, though, Armand explains the seductiveness of Lestat’s refusal to stay hidden and his insistence on flaunting his nature onstage to a Parisian audience that has no idea that the deaths in his theatrical portrayals of vampirism are quite real. Lestat is unashamed of his beauty and lethal nature, and humans are easily distracted.

“We are all anti-heroes."

“Interview with the Vampire” was first published in 1976, and its sequel “The Vampire Lestat,” came out in 1985, spurring the series’ popularity among children of the ‘80s. That era and ours are defined by excess and the chasm between haves and have-nots, whereas the Cullens, the principled coven in Meyer's fantasies, arrived in a decade informed by the mainstreaming of abstinence and purity rings.

Edward Cullen is the perfect gentleman, protective of Bella to a fault. Lestat is the opposite of that with Louis and Armand, whose coven’s traditions he upends by flamboyantly informing them that God doesn’t exist and is a fiction used to control them. Not long after that they and Armand join him in the footlights' glow, feeding on the unfortunate as scores of humans applaud while witnessing a homicide.

Nevertheless, “Interview with the Vampire” is as aggressively romantic as it is brutal. A cut between two scenes illustrates that juxtaposition. In one moment someone schools Claudia in the post-World War II Paris coven’s natural means of corpse disposal and affectionately teaches her that their hungry rats love human hearts. Seconds later we watch Louis and Armand strolling by the Seine which Armand poetically describes as “contained and beautiful . . . a vein, winding through the heart of Paris.”

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“Something that’s really enticing about the way that this has been adapted, but is very much a part of the books, is the idea that humans are pretty despicable,” Anderson said. “Humanity is pretty doomed in lots of ways, and it kind of always has been throughout history.”

“Interview,” he noted, is simply more honest concerning the ways that aspirational ideals perpetuated in popular culture are largely fictional.

"This show is for our generation now, as opposed to what ‘Twilight’ was back then."

Louis, for example, might not be the tragic figure we think he is. Anderson teases that viewers still haven’t seen his character as he truly is. Maybe in Dubai, where he lives with Armand in the present as their kind is quietly setting in motion a worldwide coup of sorts. But even there, he speaks of his past from the perspective of a romanticized victim which he cautions the viewer to question as they empathize with him.

Interview With the Vampire (AMC)

“Not to say that COVID and lockdown directly inspired this show, because I can't speak to that . . . But I think when you go through a collective trauma — and I know, obviously, everyone comes at that from a different context, it affected people differently — but I feel like maybe people just don't really want to be fed the bulls**t,” he said.

Reid concurred. “That’s why I think this show is for our generation now, as opposed to what ‘Twilight’ was back then,” he offered. “It’s sort of like, these vampires do horrible things practically every day, but we ask you to stay with us. And we see people do horrible things all the time, every single day. And we are forced to stay with them. Which is life.

“Fortunately or unfortunately with an Anne Rice vampire, you identify with them,” Reid continued. “But that's a different thing.”

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Reid’s second season Lestat is an entirely unfamiliar beast compared to the monster we met in Season 1, who seduces Louis with the promise of showing him the heights of hedonistic pleasure and the most horrific behavior imaginable.

“They’re trauma bonded, Louis and Lestat,” Reid observed, inspiring Anderson to break in with, “And Jake and Sam also trauma bonded!”

Interview With the Vampire (AMC)

“I mean, you know what you’re in for if you kind of get married with dead bodies everywhere, and brains and guts on your hands,” Reid deadpans, “so of course Louis kills him. How else are they going to end the honeymoon phase? With a murder!”

But is Lestat actually gone? In these new episodes he’s Louis’ constant companion but an imaginary one. Lestat's figment doubles as his love's guilty conscience and a glamorized memory. Readers know unreliable narration is the spine of “The Vampire Chronicles,” which the series interprets as Louis’ contending with a faulty memory. Every detail of his recollection must be perfect, he insists to Daniel, which is an impossible order to fulfill for anyone, including a supernatural being.

“It’s relatable. More relatable than aspirational,” Anderson explained, linking his character’s memory lapses and relative vulnerability to the show’s appeal.

“Right. We’re all well past faking it now. We've all been through a lot of crazy stuff,” said Reid.

“We are all anti-heroes!” Anderson declared with a playful flourish. “Unless you're a child. Otherwise, yeah, we all have stuff.” And it is not obligated to sparkle.

"Interview with the Vampire" airs at 9 p.m. Sundays on AMC and streams on AMC+.

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Conflict expert William Ury reveals the “cheapest concession you can make” negotiating

“Conflict has become a growth industry,” says author and educator William Ury. “The real question now is, how do we deal with it?” It’s a question Ury has been searching for answers to for over 40 years now, beginning with 1981’s groundbreaking “Getting to Yes” (coauthored with Roger Fisher), the perennial bestseller that set the template for modern negotiation technique.

Now, several decades, books and successful corporate and political negotiations later, Ury is back with a fresh perspective on how to manage the conflicts in lives, from thorny work situations to day-to-day disputes with our family members. Describing himself as a “possibilist,” Ury explains in his new book “Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) In an Age of Conflict” why we should lean in to conflict rather than avoid it, and how to achieve more by sometimes saying less.

It’s a refreshingly humane, common sense approach that takes the pressure of "win-lose" out of our most potentially fraught interactions, compelling enough that President Biden was recently spotted conspicuously carrying a copy. Speaking with Salon recently, Ury revealed why we need to go "the balcony" before getting heated, and what's beyond even the "win-win."

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

"Not only is conflict natural, but conflict is surging."

Tell me why we need to rethink our understanding of conflict.

There's a general popular connotation of conflict like a bad thing. The reason why I'm proposing to people that we rethink that is because I think in today's time, not only is conflict natural, but conflict is surging. Conflict has become a growth industry. And we're not going to end it. In fact, it seems like all the trends are for increasing, because the more change in the world, the more conflict. The more disruption in the world, the more conflict. The more social media algorithms promote engagement through conflict, the more conflict we're going to perceive.

To me, the real question now is, how do we deal with it? How do we navigate it? And I want for us to really see our agency, that we have a choice. A lot of people think we don't have a choice, that’s the way things are. In fact, what I've just found in my whole life, is people do have a choice. We can rescue our agency here. We may not be able to end conflict, nor should we. With all the injustice in the world, all the changes that need to be made, we're going to have to engage our differences. It’s going to take creative friction to get to better solutions that will result from people speaking up.

Why negotiating gives you anxiety — and why it shouldn't

We think of conflict often as very male-centric. I wonder how you see that changing over time in our global and domestic lives as well, because this is a book that is about the world, but also about our families and about our relationships.

Women are natural third siders. They've been playing that role informally for eons. In organizations, there are male egos which get in the way of getting things done. In the world of politics, I deal with what I call "the ME problem," the male ego. I’m not saying women don't have egos, but it's just different. There are anthropological studies about women that show they tend to be more relational. They're less likely to say, “Who's winning this? Am I on top?” Which is, in today's interdependent world, not that effective. Because when you take that kind of win-lose and apply that in your marriage, your marriage is going to be a serious difficulty.

If you bring that mentality to an interdependent world, you're not going to advance nearly as far as you could if you said, “Okay, how do we both solve this problem? How do we get your needs and my needs [met]?”

People are always talking about win-win. For me, what’s very important is the third win — the win for the whole, the win for the culture, the society, the family, the team. That actually needs to be understood, because it's not just win-win, it's a win-win-win. The third win is is critical. That's why such an important part of that book is what I call the third side, which is gets activated because it's for the benefit of the larger whole.

Let's talk about that third side. When you're looking at problem solving, what you're talking about in this book again and again is you, me and the problem or you, me and the solution. The first concept you introduce is about taking time. The way you describe it is "going to the balcony," which for you, is mental. But it can also literally be physical.

Everything is so reactive, and we're driven to make a decision, have a reaction, respond immediately. Whether it's in a work environment, or whether it's with a person that we have a conflict with, everything escalates immediately. How do we get to the balcony, especially when there's not a lot of incentive?

This is why we need to build in "the balcony." The balcony can be a place. Switzerland, for example, it's been historically a balcony. Camp David has served as a balcony. Places where people can get away for a moment, calm their nervous systems, getting out in nature. I'm a big walker in nature, because nature is a natural balcony. Meditation is a natural balcony. Otherwise, the reactive mechanisms that were evolved to deal with running away from a sabre-toothed tiger or whatever it was. They don’t serve as well when we're dealing with another human being.

We have our prefrontal cortex for a reason, which is to slow down, inhibit a little bit. Those balcony skills need to be learned by kids fairly early on, because the environment is getting more and more reactive, and we need to counterbalance it. But we can be creative. I ask people, "What's your favorite way to go into balcony?" It's amazing, the number of things that people give me, if we can integrate it and actually build in time for silence, time for breaks. Even with meetings, just break them up and give yourself a chance to think.

"When angry, you'll send the best text you’ll ever regret."

We think of negotiation, conflict resolution as goal-oriented behavior. People are trying to get an objective. In fact, what happens is, our reactions make us act in ways that go exactly contrary to our own interests. As that saying goes, when angry, you will make the best speech you'll ever regret. When angry, you'll send the best email you'll ever regret, the best text you’ll ever regret.

It might just be building in a few seconds of silence, a little bit of pausing, can make a huge difference. I cite in the book this MIT colleague, Jared Curhan. He took his students and taped negotiations. He counted the amount of silence in the conversation, and the degree of cooperativeness to the outcome. And guess what, there's a correlation.

One of the interesting things about this book is thinking about dealing with inequitable dynamics, and someone else in the room has much more power than you. It feels very scary to be quiet then. What happens when we're in that dynamic, where it's not two partners coming up the table?

Where there's a power inequity, which often is the case, that’s all the more reason for you to go to the balcony. You get a chance to really think, what do I really need here? I've got to bring my best, highest potential self to this, because I'm going have to find a way to level the playing field, even situationally. There's a confident pause. But also, on the balcony, you look at your BATNA [best alternative to a negotiated agreement], because the stronger my walkaway option, the stronger my Plan B, I'm going to have more confidence and I'm going to have a little more power in that negotiation.

On the balcony, one of the things you ask yourself is what you can do to equalize the power. And that will lead you straight to the third side, which is, can you build a coalition? You [alone] may not have as much power, but who are your allies? Where do you build that winning coalition that can level the playing field so that you can have a fair and equitable negotiation? That’s something that you do by going to the balcony, looking around and seeing. People often just look at an interaction, they just see the two people. But there's that community around you which is a kind of an untapped resource to say, “Who can either be on my side or at least can be neutral? Who can hold set some ground rules here, so I can't be steamrollered by someone with superior power or authority?”

One of the foundations of negotiation is positions and interests. It comes down to the why. As you put it, that means you keep asking that of the other side, but also keep asking you of yourself, “Why am I here? Why do I care about getting a raise? Why do I care about that person who cut me off in traffic?” When you're exploring the why, how do you get to that with yourself?

In the book, I gave an example where I was meeting in Paris, and the guy said, "Why are you here?" I said, “La vie est trop courte.” [Life is too short.] This was a colossal fight between these two giant tycoons. It was affecting their families, employees of the company, even their societies, That morning, before the lunch, I went for a walk and I saw an installation of Chinese art, of these giant Buddhas playing in the sky.

That was a reset: Okay, so this is life, so what are we doing scrapping here? For what? Suddenly, it really got reframed as helping our friends resolve their problem, rather than representing our friends as gladiators. Just underneath the positions, you get to the interest — the real interest — not just the financial interest, but what people really wanted. It turned out to be a win for both sides, but more importantly, a win for their families and the community.

Northern Ireland is a great example in which sometimes impossible causes and impossible conflicts do get resolved. But history also shows us what happens when we dehumanize, depersonalize. You say early on in the book that you have never seen anything like this in your lifetime. We are suffering as entities, and we are suffering is individuals. This book is also ultimately about suffering.

It is. It’s about how we deal with suffering. How do we prevent future suffering? How do we heal suffering? To go back to Northern Ireland, who could have imagined that Martin McGuinness, the head of the IRA, and Ian Paisley, who was the biggest firebrand, would actually almost become friends working together?

The first time I met Martin McGuinness, just after the Good Friday accord, he said to me, “People have been giving me your book ‘Getting Yes’ for years. I must have five copies on my shelf. Now I'm going around telling people how we did it over in Ireland.” He’d become a kind of a proselytizer for conflict resolution, so go figure what's possible.

Go back to the first half of the 20th century. World War I breaks out and then, 20 years later, World War II, and then the menace of a nuclear war. Is this time worse than that? In terms of suffering, tens of millions of people were dying in wars. You just have to put that in perspective. What’s new here is that there are so many crises happening simultaneously. There's what the French call a polycrisis, which is, there's the environmental crisis, there’s the political domestic polarization crisis, there’s the war in Ukraine, now there's AI coming through, threatening job stability. Everything is happening so fast and so furious, which is, which is why we need to cultivate kind of resiliency. And what can give us resiliency, but the way in which we deal with these things?

Speaking as if I put on my hat as a Martian anthropologist for a moment, looking at this species, the truth is, there's no problem that we're facing that we couldn't address if only we can work together. It's not like we're dealing with typhoons, or an asteroid from outside. These are human-made problems. We’re incredibly inventive and adaptive, and we learn. Now we are learning about conflict.

We often learn the hard way, but we are we are learning. When I was young, everyone thought there was going to be a nuclear war between United States and the Soviet Union. We came very close to it in the Cuban Missile Crisis and other crises. But it didn't happen for a whole variety of reasons. That's why when people ask me if I'm an optimist or a pessimist, I say I'm a possiblist. It's looking at the negative possibilities but then you look for where the positive possibilities are. The truth is, there's a lot more agency here than we give ourselves credit for. That's what I'm trying to wake people up to. You don't need magic. You just need to unlock our own natural human potential that's inside of all of us.

When we walk into a situation where we're trying to have a conversation about a conflict, that may be scary. How do you claim agency for yourself and what best outcome you might be?

One is the power that you have to influence yourself and go to the balcony, look at who your potential allies could be. Just really understand what your why is. You also have what I would call your inner BATNA. In the situation, whatever happens to me, what's most important to me is within my zone of control. I can control my attitude. That then removes the other side's ability to manipulate you because what most people want in the end is some kind of happiness. Well, who can give you happiness? Happiness, as we know, is manufactured within us. What's wonderful about that, as you take that in, is then you don't give the power to the other side. The other side doesn't decide doesn't get to decide what matters most to you.

I would also say, what people also want is to be seen. What you're talking about and writing about is how when you give that to someone, it changes the whole game. It changes everything. When you walk into a room and you show respect, and you listen, that is I think the most powerful thing you can do.

Absolutely right. The thing is, people think, “Why should I respect that person?” It's that you're tapping into that indivisible dignity that every human being shares, no matter who they are, what they are. When you do that, then you actually are more likely to receive it too as a result. And it's coming from self-respect. That’s a sign of strength. If you want to actually try and influence someone, then show them a little bit of respect. It's the cheapest concession you can make.

about conflict and communication

Cracking the Christian nationalist code: A glossary for the confused

While Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s Gaza war has outraged or alienated many would-be supporters, Donald Trump has never expressed even the slightest interest in Palestinian rights. Trump’s allies in the evangelical community — by far his strongest base of support — interpret Middle East politics through a biblical lens that gives Israel title to all the lands from the Nile to the Euphrates — and also sees the apocalypse they believe is coming as desirable. Striving for peace and universal human rights, in their view, goes against God’s will.

A key figure who epitomizes this view is John Hagee, founder and leader of Christians United for Israel, which boasts 10 million members, which is greater than the total population of American Jews. It was founded in 2006 after the publication of Hagee’s book “Jerusalem Countdown,” which asserts that a U.S.-Israel war against Iran is both biblically prophesied and necessary to bring about the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming. Two years later, John McCain rejected Hagee’s endorsement in the 2008 presidential campaign, after a sermon of Hagee’s surfaced describing Hitler as fulfilling God's will by hastening the return of Jews to Israel.

But Hagee is just one figure in the still-poorly-understood Christian dominionist movement that’s supporting Trump and MAGA Republicans in general. Their goal is to remake America into a right-wing Christian theocracy. Canadian scholar André Gagné’s recent book “American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times” (Salon story here) does much to explain the evangelical wing of that movement, known as the New Apostolic Reformation, drawing on its own own words.

As I noted in that article, three high-profile NAR leaders — Lance Wallnau, Paula White-Cain and Dutch Sheets — were intimately involved in bringing Trump to power, supporting him and then fighting to keep him in power after the 2020 election. They're just the tip of the iceberg. Since 2020, Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, has been a co-leader of the “ReAwaken America Tour,” which is connected to multiple NAR figures, as Jennifer Cohn reported in 2022. Just this month, Salon contributor Frederick Clarkson of Political Research Associates reported on Wallnau’s latest political venture, dubbed the “Courage Tour,” which targets 19 counties that “are going to determine the future of America.”

My calling as a Christian minister: Stand up against evangelical hypocrisy

It remains quite a challenge to relate the beliefs and practices of NAR leaders to what’s unfolding this year, in what figures to be one of the most consequential presidential elections in history. This is true both because religious movements tend to be complex, with contradictory currents and various shades of belief and practice, and because the NAR does not have a traditional membership structure, and the structures it does possess are often obscure to outsiders.

In addition, the media generally fails to depict social and religious movements clearly or understand how they function. A handful of key terms can help clarify matters, from overarching concepts like “dominionism” to deliberately vague phrases like "covenant marriage" (as associated with House Speaker Mike Johnson) or "government schools" (rather than public schools).

To help meet that challenge, I’ve put together the following glossary of terms, drawing heavily on the work of others: First there’s the “Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation” co-authored by Gagné and Clarkson, recently published in an updated and condensed version with a glossary. Clarkson’s group has a broader glossary of terms, including some that provide relevant context. And Julie Ingersoll, author of "Building God's Kingdom" (Salon interview here), helpfully provided additional terms.

The glossary is divided into three sections. First is an alphabetical set of terms with broader applicability, setting the stage for the terms that directly describe dominionism and its dominant forms. Second is a set of terms that describe America’s dominionist landscape, ordered to reflect its internal logic. Third is an alphabetical list of terms used by dominionists themselves, often with meanings that differ from their more conventional definitions. Millions of people who use these terms do not identify as dominionists, but are arguably helping to spread profoundly anti-democratic ideas.

Preliminary terms

Christian nationalism: The belief that America was founded as, and intended by God to be, a Christian nation. This is based on an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, rooted in parallels between America and Israel, which was commanded to maintain cultural and blood purity, often through war, conquest and separatism. It’s an important premise for most of the Christian right, which claims it is seeking to restore or reclaim this mandate. The Christian nationalist vision has been used, for example, by theologian Francis Schaeffer to justify the anti-abortion movement, and by advocates of dominionism to advance a theocratic society. Sometimes identified as “white Christian nationalism” to distinguish it from the Black Christian nationalist tradition identified with the civil rights movement.

Christian Zionism: Primarily an evangelical doctrine, originating in 19th-century British premillennialism, that regards supporting the State of Israel as crucial to fulfilling prophecies in the Book of Revelation. This culminates in the battle of Armageddon, with the mass slaughter of Jews as Israel is covered in “a sea of human blood,” as described by Hagee. While Jewish Zionists hold a wide range of views and some support a Palestinian state, Christian Zionists oppose any such accommodation. In the extreme, they support Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, and are especially eager for war with Iran.

Demonization: Portraying a person or group as malevolent, sinful or evil, perhaps even in league with Satan, as a potential pretext for discrimination and violence. The NAR and those influenced by it believe that actual demons influence earthly events. Religious conservatives who deny that Republicans have courted white supremacist support and who view abortion as profoundly evil, for example, have explained Black support for Democrats as resulting from the influence of the demon Jezebel.

Imprecatory prayer: The act of praying for God to smite his enemies. Such prayers are found in the Bible and are often directly quoted by modern Christian Right activists, notably by leaders of the NAR.

Intercessory prayer: The act of praying on behalf of others. Intercessory prayers, such as praying for the nation or for certain politicians or government officials, are common among those associated with the NAR.

Pentecostalism: A major subset of modern evangelical Christianity characterized by a focus on “gifts of the spirit” — speaking in tongues, prophesy, casting out demons, etc. — which was traditionally premillennialist, denominational and apolitical prior to engaging with Christian reconstructionists in the 1980s.

Philosemitism: A term referring to the exaggerated or grandiose “love” displayed by Christian Zionists and other Christian conservatives toward Jews, which often involves the adoption of certain Jewish practices, such as blowing the shofar. Despite profuse statements of support for Jews and Israel, Christian Zionist philosemitism coexists with conspiratorial antisemitism and with a stated end-times goal to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, after which Jews must convert to Christianity or be slaughtered.

Postmillennialism: The belief that Jesus will return to Earth after the "millennium," a thousand-year messianic age in which Christian ethics prosper. Postmillennialism encourages a much more socially and politically activist orientation than premillennialism,

Premillennialism: The belief that Jesus will physically return to the Earth heralding a literal thousand-year messianic age of peace. This was traditionally the dominant view of fundamentalist and evangelical American Protestants, who saw the world becoming more and more fallen until the apocalypse. Books like “The Late Great Planet Earth” and the “Left Behind” series popularized this view.

Theocracy: A system of government in which political leaders are also clerical leaders of an official organized religion, or are backed and validated by said religion and its leaders.

Theonomy: A system of government in which civil government is ruled under religious law. While technically distinguishable from theocracy, it’s largely a distinction without a difference.

Understanding the dominionist landscape

Dominion: The purpose for which human beings are created — sometimes meaning only men, since women were created to help and support men in their exercise of dominion — according to the book of Genesis.

Dominionism: The theocratic idea that Christians are called by God to exercise dominion over every aspect of society by taking control of political and cultural institutions. It is the underlying ideology of contemporary Christian nationalism, providing both a justification for political engagement and an agenda. It mandates the promulgation of a comprehensive “biblical worldview.” There are two major forms of dominionism in America today: Christian Reconstructionism and the New Apostolic Reformation. In Christian Reconstructionist postmillennialism, the “dominion mandate” is thwarted by the Fall but restored with the Resurrection. Beginning in the 1980s, dominionist postmillennialists began making inroads in the charismatic and Pentecostal movements by emphasizing the practical demands of dominion and sidelining speculation on theological questions where they disagreed.

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Christian reconstructionism: A theocratic movement founded by R.J. Rushdoony, whose three-volume “Institutes of Biblical Law” defines what a biblically-based society should look like. While its most extreme teachings — such as stoning children who disobey their parents — are generally ignored, its influence in other areas, including the Christian homeschooling movement, has shaped the views of millions who’ve never heard of Rushdoony. Its vision is rooted in Calvinist theonomy and the idea that America is, or should be, a Christian nation, and provides a blueprint for the reconstruction of society after secular government is undermined. It provides a reason for political activism in a way that premillennialism did not.

New Apostolic Reformation: An evangelical dominionist movement, originally identified and named in the 1990s by evangelical theologian C. Peter Wagner, which seeks to restore the supposed “fivefold ministry” of the 1st century A.D. via a networked, top-down, prophecy-guided governance structure of prayer networks, replacing the democratic, doctrinally-guided church model that has dominated Protestantism since its founding. It has since become the leading political and cultural vision of the Pentecostal and charismatic wing of evangelical Christianity.

Fivefold ministry: This refers to the offices of the church— apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers — as outlined in Ephesians 4:11-13. As mentioned above, the restoration of these offices and their relationship is a key element of the NAR vision. The doctrines and denominations of traditional Christian churches are deemed to be under the influence of a “religious spirit,” perhaps demonic, and are obstacles to advancing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Apostle: Someone who, recognized by other apostles, exercises authority over individual leaders, churches, Christian organizations or networks, and is responsible for establishing God’s governing order in designated spheres of ministry, accountable to boards of directors, elders or deacons

Prophet: God speaks to and through his prophets of the fivefold ministry, but it’s apostles who judge, evaluate, strategize and execute God’s revealed word. Prophets are therefore expected to submit to the authority of the apostolic leaders. There have been controversies about various prophets and prophecies, particularly regarding the role of Donald Trump and the outcome of the 2020 election.

Apostolic network: A band of autonomous churches and ministries united in an organizational structure and led by one or more apostles. New networks are created in order to identify, attract and equip new generations of apostles.

Apostolic center: The hub of an apostolic network, which displaces the traditional church or church building to accommodate the broad functions of the fivefold ministry. They often seek to transform today's churches into training, education and mission centers. They go beyond pastoring local congregations and seek to create communities of expanding influence with social and economic impact.

Seven mountains mandate: A campaign being waged by leaders of the NAR to popularize and make practical the work of taking dominion over society. The campaign, first driven by activist leaders Lance Wallnau and Johnny Enlow, but then embraced by C. Peter Wagner and other NAR leaders — divides the work of dominionism into the metaphorical conquest of seven mountains whose demonic influences must be driven off. These mountains (sometimes also called gates or spheres) are religion, education, government, family, media, business and arts & entertainment.

Spiritual warfare: This refers to the battle that supernatural forces of evil wage against Christians. It is believed that demonic forces are responsible for the problems of daily life as well as conflicts between people and even nations. Modern-day spiritual warfare practitioners believe these demonic forces can be contained through the power of prayer, but also defeated through social and political activism.

Strategic-level spiritual warfare: This idea, typically rooted in an interpretation of Ephesians 6:12, is frequently cited by NAR figures: “We’re not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Accordingly, Wagner taught that demonic forces control nations, regions, cities, groups of people, neighborhoods and important networks around the world, and are devoted to preventing the advancement of the Kingdom of God. NAR leaders often engage in public prayers of spiritual warfare against demonic forces they contend control the religious, political and gender identities of others. Once these “evil principalities'' have been identified, they can be spiritually confronted through both imprecatory and intercessory prayers, sometimes by way of organized prayer walks in supposedly afflicted areas.

Understanding and recognizing dominionist narratives

“Appeal to Heaven”/Pine Tree flag: This flag, with a pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven” on a white background, was first used on frigates commissioned by George Washington. It has been widely promoted as a Christian nationalist symbol, spearheaded by NAR prophet Dutch Sheets, who wrote a 2015 book of the same title. It was prominently displayed during the Jan. 6 insurrection and has has hung outside Mike Johnson's office and Justice Samuel Alito's beach house.

Biblical worldview: A comprehensive framework in which the Bible speaks to every area of life. This idea can be interpreted in many ways,, but in the NAR context it is used as a justification for conservative moral codes, opposition to the values of secular democracy and guidance in how to advance the Kingdom of God.

Biblical spheres of authority (also called “sphere sovereignty” or “jurisdictional authority”): Adapting the work of theologian Abraham Kuyper, Rushdoony taught that “the Bible speaks to every area of life” with a claim that God delegates authority to men in three distinct spheres of government: ecclesiastical or church government, civil government and family government. These spheres are exhaustive of all aspects of life, but each sphere is limited in its authority and restricted from reaching into that of the others. The church is charged with preaching the gospel and resolving disputes between Christians, civil government provides for the national defense and the punishment of "evildoers,” and family government has authority over economics and education. This is the framework upon which the Christian right claims that the Bible forbids regulation of business and that public education violates biblical authority. It’s also the basis on which they still claim to “believe in separation of church and state,” which is understood as essential although both are governed by God.

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Civil government: Conservative Christians may refer to what the rest of us simply call government with this term, to emphasize that there are other forms, namely biblical government. It can function as a verbal tic of sorts, implying that the speaker is drawing on a theological or philosophical system built on Christian Reconstructionism and dominionism.

Covenant marriage: This concept made its way into public discourse when Mike Johnson became speaker of the House, and used the term to describe his marriage. In circles that emphasize biblical patriarchy, often rooted in the Calvinist or Reformed wing of Christianity, some have suggested that civil government should have no role in consecrating marriage. Only ecclesiastical authorities sanction marriage, and do so with additional patriarchal commitments. Until recently, covenant marriage has been a practice inside certain churches and only under their authority. Now some states, including Johnson’s home state of Louisiana, offer covenant marriage as an optional form that is legally more difficult to sever. While this remains entirely voluntary to this point, it's part of a larger critique of divorce, which many Christians believe should be more difficult.

Government schools: Dominionists oppose public education on the grounds that it's unbiblical because God delegated responsibility for educating children to “the family.” They have led an effort to undermine, defund and ultimately dismantle public education beginning as far back as the 1950s. An early part of this effort was working to undermine the sense of community ownership of public schools and identify them with “the government,” while also nurturing broader American suspicion of government. This can be another “tell” as to the speaker’s theological background.

Lesser magistrates: Following the Calvinist/Reformed tradition in Protestantism, Christians who try to reconcile the biblical command to submit to civil authorities with increasingly heated rhetoric about tyrannical government sometimes reach back to John Calvin’s notion of “lesser magistrates.” Since all government officials are understood to work under the authority of God, resistance to higher levels of authority can be legitimated when it is directed by legitimate lower-level officials. This is expressed in the “constitutional sheriffs” movement, which holds that county-level government is the only constitutionally legitimate form (although the U.S. Constitution never mentions sheriffs) and that sheriffs have not only the authority but the obligation to nullify state and federal mandates they see as illegitimate. This topic pulls together the Reformation, pro-slavery Presbyterianism and Christian Reconstructionism.

Patriarchy: Historians and sociologists may use this term as a descriptor, and feminists may deploy it as a pejorative. In the dominionist context, patriarchy is positively understood as the biblical form of family government upon which other institutions of society rest. “Biblical” families are understood as building blocks of the church and society, each headed by a man with wife (or wives) and children in submission to him. Ideas of gender equality are considered heretical.

Religious freedom: The idea that people’s religious views should be neither an advantage or a disadvantage under the law. Historically, this has also meant that people should be free to make up their own minds, without the undue influence of powerful governmental and religious institutions. In this sense, the constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state is intended to protect religious freedom. The Christian right and the Roman Catholic bishops have sought to redefine the term as a sword, forcing others to accommodate, subsidize and submit to their views, primarily via exemptions from civil rights laws protecting LGBTQ and reproductive rights.

Shofar: A ritual musical instrument made from the horn of a ram, used on important Jewish public and religious occasions. In recent years it has been appropriated by Christian Zionists and NAR associates and incorporated in prayer walks, such as the one around the Supreme Court the day before the Jan. 6 insurrection. Shofars were also blown during the insurrection itself and became associated with far-right Republican Doug Mastriano's 2022 gubernatorial campaign in Pennsylvania.

Support for Israel: In Christian Zionist terms, Israel must be supported in order to destroy it in the battle of Armageddon.

Dominionists know they are a small minority, even among regular churchgoing Christians. Their power comes in large part from remaining illegible and portraying themselves in deceptive ways that journalists and scholars have sometimes taken at face value, even as dominionists admit they are engaged in a long-term propaganda war. This isn’t to say they are not sincere. They are, indeed, sincerely devoted to destroying democracy, which they believe is evil.

It hardly matters whether someone like Mike Johnson — who has a covenant marriage, professes a “biblical worldview” and checks nearly all the other dominionist boxes — consciously identifies as such, or is honest about it with himself or us. What matters is what a person of Johnson’s apparent convictions actually does, and toward what end.

about the reborn Christian right

The new normal? How inflation has wrecked how we shop for groceries

Early in the pandemic, the phrase “the new normal” started to be deployed with great frequency, almost as if insisting there was some semblance of normalcy about the situation would, in fact, make it so. In the new normal, happy hours took place within the confines of the digital rectangles of a Zoom meeting room, held with the knowledge that inevitably someone’s WiFi would drop or their screen would freeze mid-sip; standing six feet apart during a conversation became a courtesy, instead of a quirk among those among us who are distrustful of close-talkers; and, for a period of time, wiping down bags of potato chips and cans of soda with antiseptic spray wasn’t an activity reserved for germaphobes.

As time has passed, some of our pandemic-era habits have worn off (even ones public health workers and scientists wish we would keep up), though there’s one area where many Americans are still adapting to our current “new normal” — the supermarket.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, while the cost of groceries moderated last year, this is the first month of year-over-year acceleration in US grocery prices since August 2022. That means that, since COVID began in March 2020, the cost of food at home has jumped 24.6%, which explains why a 2024 survey found that 72% of American respondents said groceries are where they feel most affected by inflation.

"Drill, baby, drill": Trump's plan to curb food inflation? He doesn't seem to have one

As part of that survey, respondents indicated they also experienced more negative emotions — like anger, anxiety and resignation — while shopping for groceries. However, inflation hasn’t just changed how people feel about grocery shopping. It’s fundamentally changed how they actually shop, and not necessarily for the better.

For instance, grocery “shop-hopping” has become more common among customers looking for bargains.

The average American bought food at 20.7 stores in the year leading up to February, up from 16.8 in the same period in 2019 and 2020, according to data from Numerator. Similarly, May data from the grocery shopping app, Flashfood, indicates that 36% of the platform’s users “visit more than one retailer to shop” deals offered through the app, and the company estimates that a customer who shops at multiple stores saves almost three times more than those who only shop at one.

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Even the Wall Street Journal has declared that “the era of one-stop grocery shopping is over,” though the strategizing about how to best afford groceries doesn’t stop there.

On May 14, the Urban Institute released a new study highlighting how many families in 2023 relied on credit, including Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) options and payday loans, and savings to meet their food needs. According to the organization, “families who were already facing food hardship were most likely to take on debt to pay for groceries, which could leave them less able to meet their basic needs in the future.”

According to the study, about 33.4% of adults managed to pay their credit card bills in full after using them for grocery purchases, while 20% only made the minimum payment and 7.1% failed to meet the minimum payment. The data also revealed that more than one in six adults utilized Buy Now, Pay Later Services over the past year, with 3.5% specifically using BNPL for groceries. Alarmingly, 37% of these BNPL users missed payments.

Additionally, 19.3% of adults tapped into savings meant for other purposes to cover grocery expenses. The survey found a notable correlation between financial hardship and the use of alternative payment methods, particularly among those experiencing severe food insecurity. Debt repayment challenges were more prevalent among those with very low food security, with nearly half relying on credit cards for groceries, but struggling to pay off their balances.

“Although access to credit and loans can provide a lifeline for families struggling to meet basic needs, relying too much on these financial coping strategies may lead to financial instability if families have a hard time keeping up with debt or do not recover from using savings not intended for routine expenses,” said Kassandra Martinchek, senior research associate at the Urban Institute.

This survey comes after another May study from the organization that found Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits did not cover the cost of a modestly-priced meal in 98% of United States counties last year. As such, part of the Urban Institute’s recommendations, the Urban Institute suggests lawmakers reconsider plans to cut funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Martincheck continued: “To address families’ challenges meeting their basic needs, policymakers could increase access to and sufficiency of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and other safety net programs while also providing near-term options to help families manage current debt burdens and access affordable credit.”

from Salon Food

“A formula for civil war”: Second flag flown by Supreme Court Justice Alito dire sign for democracy

The inverted United States flag is a mainstay in MAGA circles. When hoisted by a ship at sea it indicates that the vessel is in grave distress. The Tea Party flipped the flag to symbolize the distress inflicted upon the right by progressive taxation and a Black president. After the 2020 election, the Stop the Steal Movement made it a shorthand for their conspiracy theories of a stolen election.

In the days following the Jan. 6 insurrection, the New York Times recently reported, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew his American flag upside down. When asked why such a polarizing symbol was prominently displayed outside his home for several days, Alito gallantly blamed his wife for inverting Old Glory as a salvo in a political dispute with a neighbor who erected a “Fuck Trump” sign.

One judicial ethics expert interviewed by the Washington Post flatly refused to believe that Alito— whose position demands the appearance of impartiality—would have knowingly allowed such an explosive symbol to be displayed outside his home for several days. Well, so much for that theory: On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the Alitos unfurled an even more radically subversive symbol at their New Jersey beach house last summer: a white flag adorned with a single pine tree and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven.”

"Out of control": Legal experts say Justice Alito's "Stop the Steal" symbol is a huge red flag

Many people are dimly aware that the Appeal to Heaven flag is connected to Trump and the insurrection, but what most don’t realize is that the banner is the calling card of a Christian supremacist movement seeking to impose theocracy on America. This non-denominational Christian tradition rooted in evangelism and Pentecostalism is known to scholars as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Leaders teach that the group’s political enemies are possessed by demons.

Dr. Matthew Taylor is a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies in Maryland. His research revealed the preeminence of NAR Apostle Dutch Sheets in gathering the faithful to Washington on Jan. 6 to overturn the 2020 election for God. Sheets is the leading popularizer of the Appeal to Heaven flag as a symbol of revolutionary theocracy. In the run-up to Jan. 6, Sheets took pains to associate the Appeal to Heaven flag with Donald Trump and the prospect of his reelection.

While Sheets and his fellow Apostles claim to abhor violence, their habit of exalting themselves as instruments of God while demonizing their opponents and working their followers into a frenzy sets the stage for political violence, as we saw on Jan. 6.

The original Appeal to Heaven flag was commissioned for George Washington’s navy. The text references Enlightenment philosophy, not Biblical law. It comes from John Locke who argued that the people have the natural right to “appeal to heaven,” i.e. to start a revolution, if the government won’t address their grievances. The appeal to heaven is legit gangster in the original. It's the idea that only God can judge you if you wage a revolution against tyranny—assuming you've gone through all the proper earthly appeals first.

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Most Americans would agree with it representing beleaguered colonists opposing a tyrannical king in the 1700s. However, the venerable flag has been co-opted by Christians who think Trump deserved a putsch because the courts refused to take his frivolous election fraud lawsuits seriously.

“I don’t know if you can understand [the flag’s] denotation or its connotation without recognizing that there’s an implied threat of violence,” said Taylor, “We’ll only tolerate the current system for so long and then we’re going to fight.”

Sheets repurposed the Appeal to Heaven flag in the 2010s as a symbol of his brand of Christian supremacy and embarked on a vigorous lobbying campaign to get powerful Republicans to display it.

Sheets falsely claims talk of an “appeal to heaven” proves the Founding Fathers wanted a theocracy. This is ironic because Locke is the intellectual father of the separation of church and state. His famous letter on religious toleration argues that the state must never impose a religion on the people.

Sheets believes that his version of Christianity trumps the rule of law. "I don't care what they say about marriage. It ain't over 'til God says it's over," Sheets said after the Supreme Court upheld gay marriage in 2015. "It's not settled law until God says it's settled law and we're going to change these things. There's got to be a hope that comes — if we appeal to heaven, He can turn this thing around."

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We don’t know how Alito, a devout Catholic, came to display a flag so closely linked to Protestant supremacy, but he’s not alone in Washington. Speaker Mike Johnson displays it outside his office. Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society has also flown the flag at his home. After Jan. 6, some Neo-Nazi groups started marching with the flag.

Worse, the NAR’s beliefs about demons elevate Stop the Steal conspiracy theories to the realm of religious dogma, and thereby place their claims outside the realm of empirical evidence or reasoned debate.

“If you believe the election was stolen by demons, you don’t have to prove it because it was stolen by demons,” Taylor explained, “Once you buy into that premise the sky is limit as to how far the radicalization can go.”

The implications for democracy are dire. “It’s a formula for chaos and at its most extreme it’s a formula for civil war,” Taylor said. His research shows that, far from being discredited by the failed insurrection, the New Apostolic Reformation has only become more popular and influential in the intervening years.

As a Supreme Court Justice Alito is called upon to rule impartially on cases involving the insurrection, Donald Trump, election integrity, and the separation of church and state. His decision to fly a flag endorsing insurrection in the name of theocracy calls into question his impartiality on all of those issues.

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What was the Nakba? And why does 1948 matter so much to Palestinians and Israelis?

On May 18, a photo of two Israeli soldiers circulated on social media. They were standing in front of a bullet-riddled house in what appeared to be Gaza. Its wall was spray-painted with the words "Nakba 2023."

This apparent mocking acknowledgment of the term's importance put those two soldiers in a peculiar kind of agreement with millions of Palestinians who mourn the event known as the Nakba — Arabic for "catastrophe" — not only as a historical moment that shattered their nation and drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, but also as a state of anguished existence that continues to define their lived experience.

The events most closely associated with the Nakba occurred in 1947 and 1948, amid the formulation of a plan to divide the territory known as Palestine between the then-indigenous Arab population (which encompassed both Muslims and Christians) and Jewish settlers who had been migrating to Palestine in increasing numbers since the late 19th century. Many Jewish settlers had emigrated from Europe to escape antisemitic pogroms and persecution, and many more were arriving in the aftermath of the Holocaust, in which roughly 6 million Jews had died. The partition plan was devised by the British government, which had administered Palestine since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and a special committee of the United Nations, a brand new global entity.

Are the campus protests antisemitic? For many Jewish activists, a difficult debate

Worldwide sympathy was on the side of the Jewish arrivals, understandably enough, but Palestinian Arabs questioned why they should have to surrender their land, as they saw it, to pay for Europe's sins. Nearly all of them opposed the partition plan, which gave 56% of the territory in Palestine to the significantly smaller Jewish population.

Zionist leaders, who had longed for a Jewish nation-state and were essentially promised one by the British in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, urged their followers to accept the U.N. proposal as a stepping stone toward even further expansion. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's revered founding father and first prime minister, described the plan as "the decisive stage in the beginning of full redemption and the most wonderful lever for the gradual conquest of all of Palestine," echoing the maximalist Zionist creed which held that Jews had a historic or divine right to the entire territory of Palestine from "the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea."

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's revered founding father and first prime minister, described the partition plan as "the most wonderful lever for the gradual conquest of all of Palestine."

As the U.N. prepared to vote on partition, fighting broke out between Jews and Arabs. In one violent tit-for-tat, members of Irgun, a Zionist paramilitary force, threw bombs at Arab workers standing in line at a Haifa oil refinery. The furious survivors went on a rampage, lynching several of their Jewish co-workers. Hours later, the Haganah, another Zionist group, assaulted the nearby Arab villages of Balad al-Shaykh and Hawassa, killing many inhabitants in revenge.

Jerusalem, which the U.N. had designated as an internationally-administered city, was rapidly torn apart by urban warfare between Jewish inhabitants and Arab supporters of the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, a ferocious anti-Zionist who had been allied with Nazi Germany during the war. For the first few months of 1948, Arab militias managed to blockade the Jewish-held sectors of the city, attacking convoys of supplies along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road until they were repelled by Zionist relief forces.

Despite the intensity of the violence, the Palestinian response was comparatively disorganized and far from being unified in purpose. While some Arabs answered calls from al-Husseini and the Arab Higher Committee to join the armed struggle, others ignored them or gravitated towards organizations like the League for National Liberation, which unlike the hardline AHC preferred a peaceful approach and was willing to grant equal rights to Jews in a democratic Arab-majority state, rather than only those Jewish settlers who had arrived before 1917. Even Jewish officials like Haganah intelligence chief Ezra Danin commented that "the majority of the Palestinian masses accept the partition as a fait accompli and do not believe it possible to overcome or reject it.”

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But the AHC, which was propped up by the Arab League and riven by self-serving factionalism, proved especially useful to the Zionists, who declined to negotiate with other Palestinian representatives and used the AHC to characterize Palestinian nationalism in general as terrorist and reactionary. This was convenient for Zionist leaders, who worried that the roughly equal populations of Jews and Arabs within their earmarked territory did not provide, in the words of Ben-Gurion, "a stable basis for a Jewish state."

In March 1948, Zionist leaders finalized Plan Dalet, which laid the guidelines for a military campaign to drive much of the Arab population out of Jewish-allocated territory. The plan's intentions, along with the culpability or responsibility for the subsequent displacement of Palestinians, is still fiercely debated. Israeli historian Ilan Pappé asserts, in his book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," that the general section of Plan Dalet, which called for the “destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris)," provided carte blanche for military commanders to commit atrocities.

Plan Dalet was a blueprint that "spelled it out clearly and unambiguously: the Palestinians had to go," Pappé writes. "The aim of the plan was in fact the destruction of both rural and urban areas of Palestine."

Other historians, however, characterize Plan Dalet as a primarily defensive strategy aimed at fending off attacks by the Arab Liberation Army, a volunteer organization of Palestinians and other Arabs, and invasion by the military forces of the Arab League nations surrounding Palestine. "The essence of the plan was the clearing of hostile and potentially hostile forces out of the interior of the territory of the prospective Jewish State, establishing territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population and securing the future State's borders before, and in anticipation of" the invasion by Arab states, writes Benny Morris, another prominent Israeli historian, in "1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."

For many Palestinians, Israel's war in Gaza and the Hamas attack last October that provoked it are not standalone events, but the culmination of 75 years of abuse and erasure by the Israeli government.

Just as Palestinians were not monolithic in their goals and methods, many members of the Jewish left and labor organizations, as well as some of the official decision-making bodies they influenced, did not initially countenance a plan for expulsion. Chaim Weizmann, who was Israel's first president and certainly a Zionist, suggested that the hundreds of thousands of Arabs living in Jewish territory could enjoy the same rights and protections as anyone else. But when the exodus of Palestinians began in earnest, liberal and left-wing Zionists largely viewed that as good news, or in Weizmann's words, as a "miraculous cleansing of the land."

The brutal results of the campaign are not in serious dispute. Beginning in April, Zionist forces spearheaded the expulsion of Palestinians from hundreds of cities, towns and villages. Some were forced to leave at gunpoint, and others through the denial and destruction of food sources or whisper campaigns designed to sow panic. On April 9, Zionist militants killed more than 100 Palestinians in Deir Yassin, with some captives later paraded through Jerusalem and executed. Such massacres terrified thousands of other Palestinians into fleeing for their lives.

On May 14, Ben-Gurion formally declared the establishment of the state of Israel. A day later, the Arab League, whose nations hoped to use the plight of the Palestinians as a pretext to seize land for themselves, declared war and invaded. Through the month of July, the newly-constituted Israeli Defense Forces captured the towns of Lydda and Ramle, then herded 50,000 to 70,000 of their inhabitants along a road to Arab-controlled territory during a summer heat wave. Over the next three years, the abandoned homes were resettled with Israeli Jews.

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Even as some Israeli officials, like Haifa mayor Shabtai Levy, pleaded with local Arabs to stay, promising safety under a Jewish administration, many Arabs decided not to place their fates in the hands of those they deemed either untrustworthy or subject to manipulation by their more extremist compatriots. Pro-Israel voices have asserted that many Palestinians voluntarily left their homes, some at the urging of the AHC, in hopes of returning after invading Arab forces had won. That may have been true in some cases, but does not negate the impact of induced starvation, economic devastation and threats of violence.

By the end of 1948, around 750,000 Palestinians were living in squalid refugee camps across the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and various Arab countries. About one-third of them had already fled or been expelled before Israel's declaration of independence. Their towns and villages were renamed and resettled or simply destroyed, some to be excavated decades later like the ruins of a lost civilization. Palestinian society, as it had existed for generations, had collapsed. The Nakba came to define modern Palestinian identity, and yet for many Palestinians, it is not part of the past, but still unfolding. To them, Israel's immensely destructive war in Gaza and the Hamas attack last October that provoked it are not standalone events, but the culmination of 75 years of abuse and erasure by the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel itself.

In the decades since 1948, the state of Israel has continued to push a different narrative of the nakba, focused on Arab aggression, necessary Jewish self-defense and examples of Israeli officials encouraging Palestinians to remain in Israel. Jewish Israelis often cite the nation's historical mission, and the undeniable present-tense logic that an independent modern state with 75 years of history and a population of 9.5 million cannot be completely hand-waved away to make up for past injustice. Many pro-Palestine activists, who point to injustice that is still happening, call for the right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, and for replacing the Jewish state with a secular, democratic one-state solution in which Jews and Arabs share equal rights. For many Israelis, that's an entirely unrealistic vision that would lead to anti-Jewish genocide and "suicide for Israel as a Jewish state."

Such a solution certainly looks remote at this point, but the Israeli government has taken pains to suppress what it considers the Nakba "myth," with its implication that the Palestinian struggle for land and rights is justified. Ironically, as noted above that denial seems to have morphed in unexpected ways recently, as allies or surrogates of Benjamin Netanyahu's government openly flaunt "Nakba 2023" as a matter of policy.

about Israel, Gaza and the Palestinian question

Hate “The Phantom Menace”? The Ewok Line theory could explain why

Twenty-five years onward from the theatrical debut of "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace," nearly every one of its haters has a story about how George Lucas wrecked their childhood.

Maybe it was the acting, or more accurately, its absence. Many cite the introduction of the whole midichlorians pseudo-science which, as my still-traumatized husband explained during a recent rewatch, negated the mystical wonder of the Force connection. "The podracing . . . the podracing . . . " he muttered his breath with all the resignation of Colonel Kurtz gasping out his last words.

This man loved "Star Wars" well into his 20s . . . until Lucas brought Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans into his orbit. The Naboo natives’ barely intelligible patois moved critics like NPR’s Bob Mondello to wonder what Lucas was thinking in “ [introducing] "a race of idol-worshiping primitives who speak with Caribbean accents and behave like refugees from 'Amos n Andy.'" The Jar Jar hatred ran so deep and fierce that it brought years of virulent harassment upon Ahmed Best, the actor who voiced him.

To the manchild I love, that character and most of what surrounded it marked the death of any nostalgia he held for “Star Wars.”

This explains why the bulk of the movie’s silver anniversary coverage breaks down to measuring how we feel about “The Phantom Menace” all these years later as opposed to appreciating what it contributes to moviemaking or the franchise canon. Our love or hatred frequently boils down to what age we were in 1999.

Less often examined is the mechanics of “Star Wars” as a brand with emotional staying power and Gen X’s insidiously possessive attitude concerning the original trilogy. This existed long before Lucas wrote and directed “The Phantom Menace,” the opening act to the prequel trilogy that arrived 16 years after “The Return of the Jedi.”

Indeed, the origins of the middle-aged "Star Wars" fan's signature smug dismissal may be yub-nubbing their way through that installment, the same one that forced Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia to fight in a bikini.

Greetings from Tatooine, Arizona

The 25th anniversary of “The Phantom Menace” coincides with the 41st anniversary of a fictionally established but sound theory first presented by Neil Patrick Harris’ Barney Stinson in a seventh season episode of “How I Met Your Mother” called “Field Trip” that first aired in 2011.

He called it “The Ewok Line,” a demographic border established on May 25, 1983. Those who turned 10 before that date were “too old for something so cloying and cute,” said Barney. Anyone who turned 10 afterward loves the Ewoks “because, why? . . . They reminded you of your Teddys.”

The sitcom father of all F-boys is right. Well, not quite . . . it’s writer Jamie Rhonheimer who verbalized the source of the first schism within the “Star Wars” congregation.

The origins of the middle-aged "Star Wars" fan's dismissal of "The Phantom Menace" may be yub-nubbing their way through "Jedi."

Frankly, I was not aware of it until college, when I attended a marathon screening of the original movies in the campus' largest lecture hall. By the time the “Jedi” reel was in the projector about half the audience was inebriated, setting up the roar that met the Imperial AT-STs firing on Endor’s fuzzy cuties. Everyone who detested them cheered while the rest of us sat there in horror. (Fun fact: this is the first movie my husband and I attended together, only we hadn’t met yet. Guess which team he was on.)

“HIMYM” presented The Ewok Line as one of its many jokes that rings true because it solidifies a generational quirk that many 30- and 40-somethings didn’t recognize as a commonality. It’s also one of the rare times that Barney was correct instead of purely ridiculous, although for him the Line was a secret metric he used to guess a woman’s age.

Regarding “Star Wars,” it was the smaller fault line that predicted the chasm created when the people who waited for a full driver's licensed teenager’s existence for a new “Star Wars” chapter were greeted by Jake Lloyd listlessly yelling “Yippee!” That's the actor who had the unenviable task of playing the nine-year-old boy who would become Darth Vader.

I remain in the thumbs-down camp concerning the prequels, by the way; instead of rehashing the same quibbles, I’ll simply direct you to Charles Taylor’s 1999 review for Salon. What he said.

At the same time, today I can better appreciate that Lucas didn’t make those films for me. He made them for 1999’s children. As such the love/hate division has become less binary as the franchise’s mythology has expanded and we’ve all matured. To varying degrees.

If people feel better than we once did about those prequels, credit Dave Filoni’s contributions to the “Star Wars” mythos by way of “The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels.”

That acclaimed pair of animated series thoughtfully filled in the gaping potholes left between the prequels, and fleshed out Anakin Skywalker’s backstory and psychological profile. Thanks to them, old-school devotees have a respectable consolation prize to enjoy with their children and grandchildren.

We might also contemplate our collective recognition of the dangerously intoxicating effects of nostalgia and the ways one’s loyalty to the original trilogy exemplifies that. “A New Hope,” “ The Empire Strikes Back” and “Jedi” collectively became a kind of morality North Star for Gen X, augmented by Joseph Campbell’s authentication of the films as spiritual parables.

Several essayists have described common characteristics of the “Star Wars” generation in terms of its existence at a technological turning point. We remember having to physically dial phone numbers using devices that plugged into walls, or when only a handful of movies came out each summer. The pioneering special effects Lucas used in “A New Hope” are part of setting those expectations. So were the action figures – the disenchanted devotees' Teddys.

Remaining tethered to playthings and the imagination surrounding them for that long led millions of us to build backstories and worlds in our heads, some described on classic Kenner packaging and others teased into reality in official novels and comics. Which we also read – how else were we expected to quench our thirst for all those years?

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And the marketplace assigned value to all that. EBay came online a few years before Lucas reawakened the Force in theaters, letting the masses know our old lightsabers and plastic Tauntauns had actual monetary value above and beyond the price tag.

Did critics misjudge their cinematic worth back then? From a canonical perspective, perhaps.

Our disappointment may also be a function of movie consumption evolving as well. Those feelings over ownership over “Star Wars” probably have something to do with the fact that we actually owned copies of the original movies on VHS. Home video systems enabled superfans to rewatch the confrontation between Han Solo and Greedo repeatedly to determine who shot first. (It was Han, dammit!)

That also meant we could pick apart the smallest details about each scene to amplify some sense of profundity that, truth be told, probably wasn’t there in the first place. “The Phantom Menace” left no doubt of that, revealing Lucas to be less of some space opera guru than a guy more skilled at whiz-bang effects than character development or thoughtful exposition.

The man gave the role of Queen Amidala to Natalie Portman, an actor who went on to win a best actress Oscar in the same year as “Field Trip,” and dulled down her abilities to the level of taxidermied fish puppetry. But you know who wasn’t scrutinizing Portman or Liam Nesson or Samuel L. Jackson for emotional range? People born on the post-1983 side of The Ewok Line.

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Many “Phantom Menace” lovers embrace it as the first “Star Wars” they saw in theaters where they are close to Padme Amidala’s age, 14, or Anakin’s; he was nine. Genre fantasy can especially empowering for the young, enabling them to relate to somebody like themselves tossed into a position of trust and power instead of relegated to the booster seat.

Those folks loved the podracing scenes and the fact that boy Anakin saves the day by, in effect, hitting the off switch on a massive remote. Most embrace the silliness of Jar Jar as opposed to expanding his clumsy slapstick into something more sinister than his maker intended.

Did critics misjudge their cinematic worth back then? From a canonical perspective, perhaps. In 2024 we’re awash in “Star Wars” stories, some better than others, thanks to the seeds Lucas planted in those prequels. The best of them map new roads through this universe that call upon mature, thoughtful perspectives differing extensively from what Lucas endeavored to do two and half decades ago.

In terms of their overall execution . . . they’re still really, really not good. That said, not every critic bludgeoned “The Phantom Menace.” This is what the late, revered Roger Ebert wrote in 1999:

At the risk of offending devotees of the Force, I will say that the stories of the "Star Wars" movies have always been space operas, and that the importance of the movies comes from their energy, their sense of fun, their colorful inventions and their state-of-the-art special effects. I do not attend with the hope of gaining insights into human behavior. Unlike many movies, these are made to be looked at more than listened to, and George Lucas and his collaborators have filled "The Phantom Menace" with wonderful visuals.

Some of them were cuddly and meant to be kid-friendly. That doesn’t exempt them from disdain or criticism but maybe all these years later we naysayers might observe more closely which side of the line we stand on and what that position says about us.

“Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace" is streaming on Disney+. "How I Met Your Mother" is streaming on Hulu.

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Rafael Nadal prepares to die at the tournament he won 14 times

After tennis, Rafael Nadal can look forward to spending his days in sunny Mallorca with the people and things that he loves. There's his fishing gear, which he brings to the shore to savor "the calm and tranquility, the beauty of the sea." There's his wife María Francisca, who he met in 2005, the same year he won his first French Open. And there's his one-year-old son Rafael (Jr.), who carries a miniature racket and a patrilineal frown wherever he goes. This life seems far, far away from the life he's had for more than twenty years—one that has carried the aging Nadal through punishing cycles of elite competitive tennis, and to the extreme reaches of ecstasy and despair.

But to enjoy the promise of a new life, Nadal has to be reborn, and in order to be reborn, Nadal first has to die.

For Nadal, the red clay of the French Open, his favored killing ground, is the perfect place to die. After falling to Alex de Minaur in an early round at Barcelona in April, Nadal seemed to recognize that it was nearly time. "It wasn't today that I had to leave everything and die; in Paris, let it be what God wants," he said.

Are professional tennis players doping, too?

That time is now here, in the last week of May, during a tournament that he has won 14 times in a sport where most careers don't last 14 years. In the last two decades, the French Open has become akin to a blood ritual where 128 of the world's best tennis players fight for the honor of eventually getting flattened by Nadal's heavy, destructive topspin forehands (or the mere threat of one.) Only two players have ever survived against him there: Novak Djokovic in 2015 and 2021, and a white-hot Robin Söderling in 2009. It is because Nadal has won 112 matches at the French Open that those three losses, all of which were avenged, stand out so prominently.

Nadal is old, by tennis standards. He has been for at least five years. And he is carrying hip and abdominal injuries that have slowed him down since 2022 and might spell the end of his career in 2024. After a medical recovery period that left him sidelined from most tournaments, Nadal is entering his potentially last French Open as an unseeded player. For the first time in a long while, his victory does not feel inevitable; he might not even make it past the first round.

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For his opening foray, Nadal drew a meeting with world no. 4 Alexander Zverev, a man 11 years younger than Nadal and whose aggressive, penetrating baseline power was once marred by a tendency to sink his serves into the net. Not anymore—since recovering from a rolled ankle in 2022 (that he sustained while battling Nadal to the precipice), he has found new form, blasting 90% of his first serves in during a successful championship run at the Rome Masters 1000 tournament last week. It's an ominous sign for Nadal, who hasn't beaten a top-10 player yet this year.

But Zverev's ranking isn't the only reason why tennis watchers fell to their knees at the supermarket. The German stands accused of domestic abuse against his ex-girlfriend, and his lack of contrition only confirmed some people's views that he had always been arrogant, hypocritical, and violent. When Netflix decided to feature Zverev in their tennis docuseries "Break Point" without mentioning the abuse case, critics accused the producers of whitewashing. If Nadal was going to symbolically pass the torch to anyone at the end of his career, many would wish it was "anyone but Zverev."

Nadal, on the other hand, is generally beloved not only for his numerical achievements, but also an endearing and authentic personality that has proven more than generous to meme-makers. His exhilarating, nerve-scorching playing style, underrated craft, and indomitable willpower has bound his fate to the hearts of millions, many of whom can signpost their own lives with the victories and defeats they witnessed him endure, and endured with him. The Spaniard has some controversies of his own, but in the last hours before what might be his final hunt on Philippe-Chatrier, all seems forgiven, for now.

Though Nadal sees the end in sight, he can't be sure whether it will happen on Monday, or maybe another day (or even, remotely, next year.) Maybe he'll perform a miracle and keep going into the second week. Injuries didn't prevent him from storming through the 2022 French Open on one foot. But for now, the only world that matters is the one he'll share with Alexander Zverev and a crowd of spectators who will be firmly in his corner.

"If, if, if…" Nadal once said. "Doesn't exist."

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Despite a landmark pay agreement for college athletes, a union push remains hot

After a settlement between the NCAA and a class of current and former college athletes, students have finally won their largest demand: they will be paid via a revenue-sharing agreement, should a judge approve it.

Amid mounting pressure from labor activists and legislators, the NCAA and its partners settled the class-action suit with a $2.7 billion dollar sum and a payment model moving forward, but labor organizers say they don’t expect a cooling-off of their efforts to unionize student athletes around the country, who generate over a billion dollars in annual revenue.

At Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where Ivy League men’s basketball players won a 13-2 bid to organize under the SEIU Local 560, the push to secure a collective bargaining agreement is heating up.

“With this settlement, the NCAA continues to do everything it can to avoid free market competition,” Chris Peck, President of the SEIU Local 560 in Hanover, New Hampshire, told the Associated Press. “[The settlement] only supports our case that the NCAA and Dartmouth continue to perpetrate a form of disguised employment.”

The agreement, though a monumental victory in the fight for compensation for the value-generating class of athletes, does little to address the concerns of the union, including solidifying student athletes' classification as employees. An NLRB ruling paved the way for Dartmouth’s push, identifying the athletes as employees citing Dartmouth’s “right to control the work performed” under their agreements.

Organizers didn’t dispute the fact that the settlement was a big win for student athletes. Per attorneys representing the greater class of NCAA students, the move will finally allow athletes to reap the benefits of their labor.

“This landmark settlement will bring college sports into the 21st century, with college athletes finally able to receive a fair share of the billions of dollars of revenue that they generate for their schools,” Steve Berman, attorney for the student athletes, said in a statement. “Our clients are the bedrock of the NCAA’s multibillion-dollar business and finally can be compensated in an equitable and just manner for their extraordinary athletic talents.”

NCAA lobbyists had urged Congress to pass a carve-out in antitrust law, even referencing the push in their statement on the settlement, now likely continuing to push for a designation of student athletes as non-employees. Ultimately, union organizers say that bargaining agreements, not just pay structures, are necessary to secure their rights within their workplace.

“The solution is not a special exemption or more congressional regulation that further undermines labor standards, but instead, NCAA member universities must follow the same antitrust and labor laws as everyone else,” Peck told the AP.

These are the top 7 sweeteners for conversions, plus other tips and tricks for stress-free baking

ICE’s Health-Supportive Culinary Arts program dedicates 56 hours to baking and desserts, and students experiment with ingredient conversions for cookies and brownies for two very popular days of class. We asked Chef-Instructor Olivia Roszkowski for a primer on the realm of alternative sweeteners that her class explores and tips for working with the ingredients, including three sugars, two syrups and a nectar.

In Health-Supportive Culinary Arts, we teach students how to season their food, which frequently involves adding salt, sweetness, spice and acid. We stress variety in diet and discuss ancient traditions such as Ayurvedic cuisine, which focuses on the six tastes for balance.

We strive to teach our students techniques, particularly the art of baking in Module 3. Our mantra is utilizing whole, minimally processed foods, so in addition to stressing the involvement of whole grains, we educate about using sweeteners that are minimally processed and contain minimal additives. Date sugar contains minerals, dates contain fiber and raw honey has enzymes. All of our sweeteners are plant-based except for honey.

Here are seven sweeteners with tips for baking and hacks for making snacks.

Maple syrup: the boiled down sap of sugar maple trees. It takes 35-50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
Brown rice syrup: Soaking and fermenting rice activates enzymes to modify starches into sugars, which are later strained and boiled down into a syrup.
Maple sugar: Evaporated maple syrup is made from the controlled crystallization of pure syrup and has a sweetness equivalent to white sugar.
Coconut sugar: made from the nectar from the palm of the coconut tree and can range in color depending on the cooking caramelization time.
Organic cane sugar: strong but neutral in flavor, it is purely crystalline which means that it melts to a liquid over heat and emulsifies easily with other liquid ingredients. It is also hygroscopic, which allows it to attract and hold on to moisture.
Agave nectar: filtered, reduced juice from several varieties of the cactus family that lends a light color and neutral taste to baked goods.
Date sugar: ground, dried dates that works great in wet batters like flourless chocolate cake or truffle batter.

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Alternative Sweetener Tips

Chef Olivia recommends organic or non-genetically modified brands for the highest quality ingredients. To replace the sweetener in a recipe with one of the options above, start with a 1-to-1 ratio, tasting for sweetness level and reducing liquid ingredients when using a liquid sweetener. Remember:

Liquid sweeteners cannot be creamed and create a more cakey, softer baked good.
Dry sweeteners hold in more moisture.
Add more moisture when using coconut or date sugar to prevent dry cookies.
Brown sugar has acid, so when removing and replacing it in recipes, make sure to increase baking powder or cream of tartar to ensure a rise.
Add a drop of stevia to sweetener of choice to intensify sweetness level.
Grind and make sure to sift larger granules to help with emulsification.
Press down cookie dough, as natural sweeteners have bigger molecules and can create denser products.
Reduce oven temperatures to avoid dark color.

Quick Hacks with Additional Sweeteners

Here are five things you can make with alternative sweeteners.

Foolproof coconut caramel: Simmer 1 cup coconut sugar with a can of coconut milk.

Quick fruit jam: Simmer dried fruit like figs or apricots in juice and puree with a hand blender.

Instant cookie dough: Mix equal parts coconut sugar and nut butter for quick dough that you can also bake. You can add flavor with a teaspoon of baking powder, a pinch of salt and any spices you like, such as ginger, vanilla or cinnamon.

Plant-based honey: Reduce down apple cider or juice until it reaches a syrup consistency.

Date puree: Blend pitted dates with hot water or coconut milk for a natural fruit sweetener.

Study with Chef Olivia

Nestlé taps into weight loss drug market with new frozen food line for Ozempic users

Major corporations are tapping into the lucrative weight loss drug market, which is anticipated to grow from $6 billion to $100 billion by 2030, per Goldman Sachs. Last month, Costco announced that it was expanding its partnership with Sesame — an online telemedicine platform that connects medical providers nationwide with consumers — to offer eligible members exclusive pricing on prescriptions for GLP-1 weight loss drugs including Ozempic and Wegovy. The big-box retailer's weight loss program followed in the footsteps of rivals Amazon and WeightWatchers, which offer similar services to members. Same with luxury gyms, like Life Time and Equinox, which debuted new clinics to accommodate their growing number of members who are on such medications.

Now, Nestlé is joining the mix with a new frozen food brand for individuals taking GLP-1 drugs. Called Vital Pursuit, the brand will include 12 portion-controlled meals, high in fiber and protein, “intended to be a companion for GLP-1 weight loss medication users and consumers focused on weight management,” the company announced Tuesday. The meals will be available in select stores later this year and may come with a suggested retail price of $4.99 or less, CNN reported.

“We know that every consumer on a health journey has individualized needs and considerations, and having options to support those needs will continue to play an important role,” Tom Moe, president of Nestle USA Meals Division, said in a statement obtained by CBS News.

GLP-1 agonists, a class of type 2 diabetes medication that gained popularity online as an anti-obesity drug, are on the rise. Overall, one in eight American adults have used a GLP-1 agonist, per Healthline. Half of those individuals are reportedly taking one of these drugs, whether that’s Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy or Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, among other medications. Approximately nine million prescriptions were written for GLP-1 medications in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to analytics firm Trilliant Health. And an astounding 24 million people, or 7% of the U.S. population, is expected to be using the drugs by 2035, Morgan Stanley Research analysts predicted in a recent report.

Costco will offer prescriptions for GLP-1 weight loss drugs to eligible members

Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy work by mimicking the action of a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1), which is responsible for managing blood sugar levels, slowing digestion and reducing hunger and food intake. GLP-1 levels are lower in those living with obesity but can be "enhanced" and function on a cellular level via these medications. Studies have shown that patients using GLP-1 agonists alongside making lifestyle changes lost about 33.7 pounds (15.3 kilograms) versus 5.7 pounds (2.6 kilograms) in those who didn’t use the drug.

Research into GLP-1 weight loss drugs is still ongoing, but doctors do know that the medication slows the movement of food from the stomach into the small intestine. As a result, patients tend to feel full faster and longer, and eat less. Patients are advised to follow a balanced diet in order to heighten the effects of the medication in managing blood sugar levels and weight.

Nestlé’s Vital Pursuit hopes to supplement prescription drug users with the key nutrients they may be missing due to consuming less food. The meals are made with whole grains or protein pasta and enriched in nutrients like potassium, calcium and iron. A specific meal lineup has yet to be announced, but the brand reportedly touts offerings like whole grain bowls, sandwich melts and pizzas.

Shortly after Vital Pursuit was announced, Nestlé received backlash from chef and television personality Andrew Zimmern who slammed certain users of blockbuster weight loss drugs while speaking with TMZ. Although he supports the drugs helping people, especially “for those in an obese category or if they have comorbidities,” Zimmern said he's not a fan of them in other instances.

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“There is something a little messed up about people buying $200 — $300 injectables and jamming them into their stomach just to look better,” Zimmern said in a clip from the interview.

He continued, speaking about the irony of “some big processed food companies” launching a food line that’s eaten with weight loss drugs: “I think the really sad truth is we’re gonna have more processed food that costs $5 or less to go with your very expensive injectable. I also think linking a drug like Ozempic with a food line is about as messed up as it gets.”

Zimmern went on to suggest that obesity can easily be combated by “taking care of our bodies” through eating healthy, sleeping, exercising and practicing good habits. “It really is that simple,” he said.

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Weight loss medications continue to be a contentious topic. Many have described the drugs as “lazy” while others bashed weight loss companies — and now major corporations — for seeking out a quick-fix solution. Those who are actively on the medications praised them as life-changing and helpful. But mainly, they stressed that the medications are a necessity.

Oprah Winfrey, who revealed in December that she’s been using weight-loss medications as a “maintenance tool,” is one of the most vocal supporters of the drugs. Winfrey highlighted the power of weight loss drugs in her prime-time ABC program, aptly titled “An Oprah Special: Shame, Blame and the Weight Loss Revolution.”

“In my lifetime, I never dreamed that we would be talking about medicines that are providing hope for people like me who have struggled for years with being overweight or with obesity,” Winfrey said. “So, I come to this conversation in the hope that we can start releasing the stigma and the shame and the judgment to stop shaming other people for being overweight or how they choose to lose, or not lose weight, and more importantly to stop shaming ourselves.”

about blockbuster weight loss medications:

Prosecutors accuse Weinstein’s lawyer of witness intimidation

The judge overseeing Harvey Weinstein’s retrial on sex crimes charges was asked by the Manhattan district attorney’s office to urge the lead defense lawyer to stop making public statements meant to intimidate and attack witnesses.

Prosecutors asked Justice Curtis Farber, via a letter filed to the judge on Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court, to remind Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, of his "ethical obligations.” The letter detailed obligations specifically pertaining to out-of-court statements intended to question the “credibility and character” of witnesses, under the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.

Aidala was accused of violating the rules during his critical public statements about Miriam Haley. The former TV production assistant testified at Weinstein’s 2020 trial that he forced her to have oral sex in his Manhattan apartment in July 2006.

Weinstein, the former Hollywood producer who was convicted of committing rape and sexual assault against Haley and another woman, lucked out when his convictions were overturned last month — the New York State Court of Appeals ruled he hadn’t had a fair trial.

Only days after the case was overturned, at a news conference, Aidala accused Haley of lying to the jury. He added that he was well prepared to cross-examine her if she “dares to come and show her face here,” the New York Times reported.

The prosecutors contested his statements, claiming that his comments crossed the line and were “designed to let Ms. Haley know that if she testifies, Mr. Aidala will make it as unpleasant for her as possible,” according to their letter. They also resisted his claim that Haley had lied to the jury, mentioning it in the footnotes.

Weinstein’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, defended Weinstein and Aidala in a statement to The Daily Beast on Friday, claiming that the disgraced producer’s name continues to surface in media in “the most awful, leading and suggestive narratives.”

“Harvey deserves a fair legal playing field, and if that means his lawyers, who are the most knowledgeable and appreciative of the issues and the law, are the right people to speak out, and as long as prosecutors use media to their benefit, defense teams have to be able to as well.”

Britain’s Tories head for a July 4 beatdown — but the post-Brexit crisis isn’t over

I’m not here to praise Rishi Sunak, or to bury him — the soon-to-be-former British prime minister has dealt with both of those tasks admirably, all by himself. If Sunak is remembered for anything, it will probably be as a curious footnote: After becoming the fourth leader of the U.K.’s government (and the Conservative Party’s parliamentary majority) within four years, he managed to restore a semblance of political stability and “normalcy” to 10 Downing Street after the tragicomic chaos and self-destruction of the Brexit vote and Boris Johnson’s tenure. Whether stability and normalcy are achievable long-term goals in any so-called democracy these days remains to be seen.

Sunak wrote a memorable first draft of his political obituary this past week, standing in a drenching rainstorm on the pavement outside his official residence to announce that an unscheduled general election — a “snap election,” in British parlance — will be held on July 4. (The social media meme “10 Drowning Street” took off within minutes.) All 650 seats in the House of Commons will be up for grabs, and nearly all observers expect Sunak and the Tories — a term that predates the official founding of the Conservative Party by 150 years — to lose, perhaps in a historic wipeout, returning the opposition Labour Party to power for the first time since 2010.

Despite that presumed change in government, this won’t be an exciting or dramatic campaign, especially compared to the apocalyptic-slash-geriatric nightmare spectacle we will endure on this side of the Atlantic, where one candidate faces dozens of felony indictments and the other seems determined to alienate as many of his party’s core supporters as possible. It’s no exaggeration to say that Sunak — the first person from a nonwhite immigrant background to hold the office and also the wealthiest prime minister in history — and Keir Starmer, the bluff, bland, profoundly noncommittal Labour leader, are both much closer to being Joe Biden than Donald Trump.

In other words, they’re both believers in what I once heard the doomed Jeb Bush, facing his Waterloo in the New Hampshire primary of 2016, describe as “regular-order politics.” Neither of them is likely to alter the trajectory of post-Brexit Britain’s multiple social and economic crises in any fundamental way.

Boris Johnson only wishes he were Trump: His comeback dreams won't come true

One of the numerous supposedly-charming anomalies of the British parliamentary system is that the prime minister has wide latitude to call for an election, with six weeks’ notice, virtually anytime within five years of the last one. (There was a brief effort to move to regularly scheduled elections, like a normal democracy, but that never worked and has officially been ditched.) Sunak could have hung on until the current Parliament expires next January, in hopes that his dire poll numbers might improve. Presumably he didn’t want to come off as quite that desperate and undignified — he does look good in his expensive suits! — and suspected it might be unwise to inflict an election campaign on the British public during the Christmas holidays.

Most observers expected a gradual rollout toward an election in October or November, semi-coincidentally around the same time as the U.S. presidential election. The surprise announcement that the election will instead be held on the day that Britain’s most prominent former colony celebrates its independence is a different kind of coincidence, one that serves to illustrate how much the political trajectories of these long-intertwined nations have diverged in recent years.

There’s a broad, general and roughly accurate truism that British and American politics have paralleled or echoed each other since World War II. Sometimes the relationship is fairly tenuous: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal preceded Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s vast expansion of the British welfare state by a full decade, and both were products of a mid-century social-democratic tendency that was global in scale. Lyndon Johnson and Harold Wilson (prime minister from 1964 to 1970) were very different leaders with divergent worldviews, but both represented the big-government, liberal-democratic outlook of the Cold War years.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, rose to power less than two years apart, as forthright ideological allies in the neoconservative conquest of the Anglo-American world. Similarly, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair represented the self-conscious rebranding of their respective center-left parties around an agenda of privatization, deregulation and globalization that we would now call neoliberalism.

Brexit and Boris Johnson seemed to reorder the British political landscape around a Trump-style populist rebellion. But it didn't stick, and that exemplifies the differences between the U.K.'s system and ours.

Then we get to the things that are and are not alike, and that define the current predicaments of the two nations: Brexit and Donald Trump. For most of Barack Obama’s presidency, the Tories held power in London under a muddled center-right coalition government led by David Cameron, who might qualify as a moderate Democrat if you translated him into middle America and subtracted the Etonian-Oxonian upbringing. Increasingly harried by far-right dissidents within his own party, Cameron backed himself into one of the most disastrous own-goals of recent political history by agreeing to the Brexit referendum, which he and virtually all other leading figures in the U.K.’s two major parties opposed.

We know how that turned out, and we also know who managed to surf the Brexit wave successfully, at least for a while: former bad-boy journalist and London mayor Boris Johnson, who styled himself as Britain’s upper-class-twit Trump cognate, ousted former Prime Minister Theresa May (who had ousted Cameron) and scored a smashing victory in the 2019 election on a far greater scale than anything Trump could have imagined. His rebranded pro-Brexit, anti-immigrant Tories won an 80-seat majority in Parliament, flipping numerous districts in the “red wall” of previously safe Labour seats across the post-industrial north of England and seemingly reordering the U.K.’s political landscape around a populist rebellion that united affluent suburbanites and the now-legendary “white working class.”

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But that didn’t stick, for a bunch of cultural, political and institutional reasons that exemplify the differences between the two countries and our systems of government. As I wrote at the time of Johnson’s downfall two summers ago (linked above), he could only wish he were like Trump, whose messianic hold on the Republican Party and its voters only grows stronger as his trials and travails worsen. When the Tories in Parliament got sick of Johnson’s noxious cult of personality and shambolic governing style, and decided he was an electoral liability, they could chuck him to the curb without worrying too much about how his superfans would react.

British politics has nothing like the American party-primary system, let alone the gerrymandered legislative districts whose Republican incumbents are terrorized that any minor deviation from MAGA orthodoxy will lead to a far-right torchlight parade on their front lawn. Johnson certainly had true believers among the hardcore Tory faithful (and no doubt still does), and after he quit their tribe united behind his hand-picked successor, Liz Truss, who shared his pseudo-populist magical thinking but none of his pickled-schoolboy charisma or political cunning. Truss literally proposed a budget that simultaneously cut taxes and increased spending, and famously failed to outlast a head of lettuce.

After her 49 days in office, the party’s power brokers decided that enough was enough. They declined to hold another internal leadership election and straight-up appointed Sunak, who despite his name and his ancestry was perfectly crafted to be an old-school Tory prime minister: Stanford MBA, career at Goldman Sachs, marriage to a billionaire’s daughter. No one hates him with any serious passion, and he may actually think he’s doing the right thing by threatening to deport migrants to Rwanda (seriously!) and insisting that the poor and the middle class must keep on making sacrifices for the good of the financial markets.

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If the BoJo/Brexit moment both did and didn’t resemble what happened in America during the (first) Trump era, one could say the same about the thoroughly unexpected left-wing takeover of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, which was something like the Bernie Sanders campaign on steroids, fueled by entrenched British class warfare. Corbyn nearly won the 2017 general election against Theresa May — a massive what-if that would have sent Britain in unpredictable directions — but was sabotaged by his intra-party enemies and his own incompetence well before the crushing loss to Johnson two years later. (Corbyn was reportedly expelled from the party altogether this week, after announcing he would run for his own seat as an independent against Labour’s official candidate.)

Liz Truss was defeated by a head of lettuce. But she spoke at CPAC and just published a fire-breathing memoir calling for dismantling the U.N. Her comeback dreams are real.

Keir Starmer emerged in the aftermath of Corbyn’s downfall as a middle-road normie, neither a full-on socialist nor a neoliberal reformer, and a supposed return to Labour’s center-left tradition — except that after 14 years of Tory misrule and endless rounds of fiscal “austerity,” no one can explain what that means. Certainly Starmer can’t; his principal campaign tactic involves backing away from any specific promises or commitments while reminding voters that his party isn’t to blame for Britain’s cratering economy, crumbling infrastructure and decaying public services.

That’s true, and it might be good enough under the circumstances — if “good enough” means winning this year’s election and buying some time to manage multiple crises in a formerly dominant superpower that now seems determined to rip itself apart. If that seems like an oddly familiar scenario, at least the Brits know they no longer rule the world.

As Starmer and Sunak and everybody else in politics on both sides of the Atlantic understand well enough, the pseudo-populist and/or neofascist rebellion isn’t over. It just needed a timeout.

Liz Truss may have been derailed by “global elites,” bean-counting bankers and weak-willed fellow Tories, not to mention wilted salad greens (and the death of Queen Elizabeth), but her comeback dreams are alive. She’s become a star on the international right-wing speaking circuit, and just published a fire-breathing, supposedly-not-ghostwritten memoir called “Ten Years to Save the West,” in which she calls for dismantling “the leftist state,” along with the U.N., the World Health Organization and every other regulatory agency on the planet. A reviewer for the Times, a Tory-friendly Murdoch-owned paper, suggested that Truss was “psychiatrically incapable” of learning from her own mistakes. Does that sound like anyone we know?

from Andrew O'Hehir

NOAA warns of most active hurricane season yet

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the top hurricane forecasting body, published a report finding an 85% chance of an above-normal hurricane season, citing a convergence of near-historic sea temperatures and a La Niña pattern. The forecast details projections of 17 to 25 total named storms, including 8 to 13 hurricanes and 4 to 7 of the deadliest category 3, 4 and 5 hurricanes. The report outlines 70% confidence, leaving an outside chance of a less severe or much worse season. Per FOX Weather, it’s the most aggressive forecast on record.

The organization is warning Americans to remain prepared for the upcoming season, coming after the 2020, 2021, and 2023 seasons landed among the five most active on record. It urged vigilance as they roll out improvements to communications systems like an intermediate warning mechanism which will allow for more frequent updates.

“Taking a proactive approach to our increasingly challenging climate landscape today can make a difference in how people can recover tomorrow,” Erik A. Hooks, deputy administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement.

In some of the most active hurricane seasons on record, like the 2020 season which saw 14 named hurricanes, only between 6-10 were predicted. The 2005 season, infamously producing Hurricane Katrina, had a prediction range of 7 to 9 hurricanes, ultimately seeing 15. The year, which saw two of the top five most intense hurricanes in recorded history by NOAA’s air pressure metric, remains the second-most active (behind 2020) and second-most costly (behind 2017) season of all time. The 2005 season did over $172 billion in damage to the United States, while the 2017 season, including the devastating Irma and Maria, cost over $295 billion.

Though the season isn’t officially slated to begin until June 1, a tropical wave, the precursor to a tropical storm, was spotted days ahead of the season’s start, ultimately posing no threat of becoming a stronger storm, WESH-2 reported.

The World Meteorological Organization also released its list of hurricane, tropical storm, or other system names for the 2024 season, providing 26 picks, A to Z, that haven’t been used to refer to especially catastrophic storms. The NOAA forecast predicts 25 storms on the high end, meaning the list is hopefully ample enough to cover all system names.

“Red flag”: Expert says Trump won’t win NY — but his Bronx rally should be a “wake-up” call for Dems

Former President Donald Trump's Bronx rally on Thursday sought to appeal to voters of color in one of the most Democratic counties in the country amid early polling that pins him just ahead of President Joe Biden in key swing states.

The former president delivered his remarks from a small stage in the South Bronx's Crotona Park, railing against the presumptive Democratic nominee and his handling of immigration while casting himself as the candidate who would deliver for Black and Hispanic voters.

“The biggest negative impact is against our Black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose," the presumptive Republican nominee said, referring to the influx of migrants to the city.

Colored with cheers from a diverse crowd united by bright red MAGA hats and "Never Surrender" posters, the rally marked Trump's first large-scale campaign event in the city since 2016.

“I think they’re building an army": Trump spews anti-immigrant sentiments at rally in the Bronx

His stop in the South Bronx, a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood with a high poverty rate, also marked a departure from the majority white areas he normally holds rallies in, a change likely made, in part, because the demands of his Manhattan criminal trial confine him to the city's limits.

Though his audience did not entirely reflect the diversity of the neighborhood, Black and Latino supporters attended in large numbers, reflected by the Spanish coming from the crowd and the invited speakers — including Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., former New York City Councilmember Rubén Díaz Sr. and former congressional candidate Madeline Brame. In around 90 minutes, the multicultural smorgasboard that was the Trump rally soon became emblematic of the broader, nationwide trend of voters of color voicing greater support for the Republican Party ahead of the upcoming election.

The former president's appearance in the South Bronx Thursday demonstrates that his campaign is both better organized and more strategic in its outreach to certain communities, said Dr. Sharon Navarro, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Pointing to his 2020 campaign and his spending "enormous amounts of time, months ahead of time," appealing to Latinos in Florida, Navarro told Salon Trump is reupping that effort.

"We are seeing this again, he is investing time. The Republican Party, which is the Trump party now, is investing time and reaching out to minorities in heavily Democratic areas," she explained. "So this is a wake-up call for Democrats. They're telling Democrats, 'Don't take them for granted. You have to invest time and you have to create this relationship because this is what we're seeing Donald Trump doing.'"

Even without direct outreach, early polling suggests Trump has made headway with Black and Latino voters this election cycle.

A New York Times/Sienna Poll from earlier this year saw 23 percent of Black respondents and 46 percent of Hispanic respondents say they would cast their ballot for Trump if the election were held at the time. Those figures are a notable jump from the 8 percent of Black and 28 percent of Latino voters who backed Trump in 2016, and the 8 percent of Black and 38 percent of Latino voters who supported him in 2020.

While reports have read that data as a marked shift in Black and Latino voters' political leanings moving rightward, Dr. Vincent Hutchings, a professor of political science and Afroamerican studies at the University of Michigan, said that such an interpretation is "obviously uninformed." Instead, he said, the evidence lends itself more to the idea that voters are "less supportive of the Democratic candidate" and "more supportive of the Republican candidate than they are traditionally."

"Voters in general are neither right nor left. They are all over the map when it comes to their political views, and that is true for voters of color as anyone else," he explained. Even then, Hutchings added, evidence that Latino and Black voters are "more open to a Trump candidacy" than expected is "pretty limited."

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Trump's decision, then, to hold a rally in the Bronx reflected a "well-known" strategy, in which candidates give the impression they've made inroads in an opponent's stronghold as a way to push the opponent to redirect their resources there as opposed to another area, Hutchings said, noting that Trump taking the Bronx in November is incredibly unlikely.

The Bronx, like most other New York City boroughs, is staunchly Democrat, with 83.3 percent of its voters choosing Biden in 2020 and 88 percent casting a vote for former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2016.

Still, part of Trump's appeal to neighborhoods like the South Bronx — which boasts a 64 percent Hispanic and 31 percent Black population, while having a poverty rate 24.8 points greater than the national rate — is in the attention he pays to working class issues, Navarro said.

In contrast, the Democratic Party has shifted from working class values toward college-educated individuals, which has alienated voters whose immediate concerns revolve around being "outpriced" and having greater monthly expenses — a refrain heard across the country, she explained, noting that "voters usually vote with what they experience in the immediacy."

"When you do that, you're ignoring a vast population that is hurting now in an economy that seems to do well on paper, but when we talk about practicalities of gas and going to stores, it's hurting the working class," Navarro said. "This is the class that Donald Trump knows will go to the polls, and he is speaking to that audience and Democrats have forgotten to speak to that audience."

During his Thursday evening remarks, Trump appeared to search for a balance between espousing a colorblind, America-First ideal against the "radical left" and appealing to the manifestations of inequity that the Black and Hispanic audience members before him likely endure.

In one moment, while decrying the effort to defund police and vowing to protect law enforcement, he highlighted discrepancies in protection for people of color.

“Remember Black, Hispanic, Asian people need this protection and safety more than anyone else – don’t ever forget it," he said. "And after years of talk by the radical left Democrats, we are going to give them the protection they need and we’re gonna protect the police.”

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At another point, the former president appealed to the crowd's sense of unity while criticizing Biden's handling of the economy, evoking nationwide concerns about inflation and unemployment.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re Black or brown or white or whatever the hell color you are, it doesn’t matter," Trump told his sea of supporters. "We are all Americans and we’re going to pull together as Americans. We all want better opportunity, and I’m not just going to promise it. I’m going to deliver it as I did just a short while ago.”

Hutchings, however, offered other possibilities for the potential increased interest in Trump among voters of color. One could be the "unlikely" possibility that the interest is genuine, while another could be that voters "just aren't paying that much attention yet" to the upcoming race. Navarro echoed the latter point, noting the public's increased attention on the day-to-day impacts of inflation.

Hutchings added, however, that drawing the conclusion that support for the former president among Black voters has risen from the waning support for Biden in the data is hard to do.

"It strikes me as more plausible that some of the traditional Democratic support has withdrawn, and therefore, the support that we would ordinarily expect — about 10 percent for the Republicans — seems higher because those African Americans who are primarily democratic, some fraction of them, especially young people, have withdrawn because of disillusionment," he explained, adding he doesn't expect Trump or any other Republican to receive more than 15 percent of the Black vote.

A survey by Pew Research published last month saw 77 percent of Black voters saying they would vote for or lean toward Biden, as opposed to just 18 percent who said they would vote for or lean toward Trump.

In the case of Latino voters, the current rise in Republican support appears to reflect a return to the 2:1 ratio of votes for Democrats at the presidential level that persisted among the demographic for the past 25 years outside of its shift to 3:1 during the Obama years, Hutchings said.

While historical voting patterns still offer a glimpse at what the future could hold, the relatively unprecedented and "unusual circumstances" of the 2024 election — the ages of the candidates, the nature of a former president challenging a current one and the fact that Trump is facing four criminal trials — make predicting the outcome of November's race difficult, Hutchings continued.

"It's true that Trump is currently doing better than usual among Blacks and Latinos, or another way of saying that is Biden's doing less well," he said. "But historically, those people come home, so to speak."

Navarro said that the election is too far out to be able to tell whether the uptick in support for Trump (or downturn in support for Biden) will translate at the polls.

"But what this does do is raise a red flag to Democrats that they need to be on the ball, they need to be more aware, they need to begin to invest early on and reaching out to these minority communities," she said.

about the 2024 election

Expert says SCOTUS ruling subjects Black voters to “abuse.” Clarence Thomas wants to go even further

This week, the Supreme Court made it harder for plaintiffs to win racial gerrymandering claims in a 6-3 decision that legal experts say is the latest sign of the court’s shift away from policing gerrymandering cases.

The NAACP’s South Carolina State Conference had sued over South Carolina’s GOP-led legislature’s new congressional map for shifting tens of thousands of Black voters to a different district. Lawmakers appealed to the Supreme Court when a three-judge panel found the district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Thursday’s decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, said that plaintiffs have to show that the state had “the purpose and effect” of diluting the minority vote – not just that “race played a predominant role” in redistricting.

“The legislature’s partisan goal can easily explain this decision,” Alito wrote of the decision to move “predominantly black Charleston precincts from District 1 to District 6.”

Bertrall Ross, a University of Virginia School of Law professor, said he found the decision “unsurprising” in the context of the Supreme Court’s recent history of rulings on gerrymandering.

“What that acknowledgement does is it cements the status of partisan gerrymandering as a non-justiciable question that the courts will not police – which given the partisan dimensions of our democracy, is a troubling position for us to be in,” Ross told Salon.

Congressional maps challenged as discriminatory will remain in place for 2024 elections

Ross said the court’s stance makes it tricky to police racial gerrymandering because “there historically has been and still continues to be a high correlation between racial voting and partisan voting.”

“And so how do you disentangle whether a particular dispute involves racial or partisan gerrymandering?” Ross questioned. “What I think the court has done is set up these cases in a way that's easier for the state to make the argument that all we were doing was taking partisanship into account. We weren't thinking about race. And to the extent that it's easier for the state to do that, it makes it harder for the court to police real instances of racial gerrymandering.”

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor, said now, when a state defends a map as partisan and not racial, plaintiffs suing over the map have to “include an alternative map that equally accomplishes the state’s partisan goal but results in a substantially different racial makeup for the district.”

“The trouble is that, to the extent the plaintiffs have the goal of also causing some partisan change through their racial claim, being forced to offer that alternative map is going to basically squash any hope of fighting the partisan gerrymander, indirectly through a racial gerrymandering claim,” Stephanopoulos said.

Overall, Ross called the Supreme Court’s decision an expected, but “backwards step.”

“And for those who stand to lose from the federal court removing itself – which includes either racial minorities or minority political parties in a particular state or context – it's going to just kind of reify those losses,” Ross said. “It's going to really deny those groups the opportunity to protect their opportunities for representation in legislative bodies. And that's a troubling portent for our future and given where we are as a country, that deeply polarized, deeply racialized place, such that if you deny those minorities power, this subjects them to abuse from legislatures and laws that they enact.”

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He said the latest opinion reinforces the court’s decision in Rucho. v. Common Cause in 2019, when the court held that “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."

“The court’s not going to police partisan gerrymandering,” Ross said. “And what was a bit troubling from my perspective, because I do think that there's an important role for the court to police price gerrymandering, was the dissenters, Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson conceding that point – in it's not the courts role to intervene in these partisan gerrymandering disputes to the extent that it's about partisanship.”

Stephanopoulos said the court’s decision doesn’t apply when line drawers are considering race to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

“It still might be relatively easier for plaintiffs to win those claims – but those are the claims that Republican plaintiffs are more likely to bring,” he said. “So there's kind of an asymmetry where now there's extra protection when the defense is partisan gerrymandering, but there's not the same extra protection when the defense is compliance with the Voting Rights Act.”

Meanwhile, Ross said he found South Carolina’s case was a “pretty weak case for racial gerrymandering.”

“Most instances with racial gerrymandering, you have the claim that a particular minority group has either been packed or cracked in the sense that they have been placed in a district in overwhelming numbers that's not necessary for them to be able to elect candidates of their choice,” Ross said. “Or other instances, in which their power has been so diffused among many districts for them so that it denies them the opportunity to exercise that power.”

Ross said in the South Carolina case, the district had just a “slight variation in the voting age population of the district.”

According to the opinion, the new map increased the Black voting-age population of District 1 from 16.56% to 16.72%.

“For me, that doesn't strike me as an instance in which the racial gerrymandering doctrine has been traditionally applied,” Ross said.

“If it were to be applied in this particular way, I think the court would have been worried that you had to have intervened in a lot more districting disputes in which it has clearly signaled in past cases that it doesn't have the appetite to intervene that deeply," Ross said. “And so given the limited harm here, I think the court saw this as a way to draw some lines around racial gerrymandering.”

Ross pointed to stronger instances of racial gerrymandering in cases brought in the 2010s in Virginia, Alabama and North Carolina, where the “effort was to pack as many African-Americans into the fewest number of districts as possible to deny them the power in surrounding districts.”

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Stephanopoulos also said that the South Carolina case wasn’t a “glaring case” of racial gerrymandering.

“There wasn't the same explicit admission that race was being used that we've seen in some other recent cases,” he said. “The district didn't look quite as bizarre as some other districts. And it's also the first case of this kind in the Supreme Court, where the claim was that a district had its minority population intentionally reduced as opposed to intentionally expanded.”

No other justice joined in Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent, in which he argued federal courts should get out of the business of deciding redistricting lawsuits altogether.

Stephanopoulos pointed out that Thomas joined in the 1992 decision in Shaw v. Reno.

In that opinion, the Supreme Court held that North Carolina’s redistricting scheme was “so irrational on its face that it can be understood only as an effort to segregate voters into separate districts on the basis of race.”

“It's just kind of bizarre that 30 years into this, he suddenly decides that he has been wrong all along,” Stephanopoulos said. "He was wrong when he originally supported the creation of this claim.”

Thomas also used his dissent to again attack the court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which held that separate but equal schools for racial minorities violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Thomas said the court approved “‘extraordinary remedial measures’” to “‘overcome the widespread resistance to the districts of the Constitution’ at the time.”

“Federal courts have the power to grant only equitable relief ‘traditionally accorded by courts of equity,’ not the flexible power to invest whatever new remedies may seem useful at the time,” Thomas wrote.

Ross said Thomas’ dissent is the latest in an “ongoing effort by the conservative members of the Court to utilize Brown for purposes of advancing a colorblind vision of the Constitution.”

“What was always striking about that is that it's entirely divorced from context,” Ross said. “The way that race was being used at that time, was in a way to support African Americans, African American children in the context of Brown v Board of Education.”

Ross said Thomas is fighting to “get the government to stop using race” based on his argument that the government has used race to subordinate.

“But we have seen efforts by predominantly white legislatures to use race to ameliorate the harms from the past,” Ross said.

Stephanopoulos said Thomas’ idea that federal courts should stay out of redistricting disputes “is an unbelievably undemocratic, anti-democratic idea.”

“It's basically saying that courts will do nothing to police one of the most distortive anti-democratic practices that exists in American politics,” he said. “Thomas would return us to the world before 1963 when the courts got involved in this area, and it's just kind of staggering that he would openly take such an anti-democratic position.”

on gerrymandering

Red states are using the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to expand the death penalty

Even as support for the death penalty wanes across the country, Republican governors, led by Florida’s Ron DeSantis, are signing into law legislation expanding the death penalty.

Earlier this month, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a bill authorizing the death penalty for aggravated rape of a child. The law goes into effect on July 1. Lee’s decision makes Tennessee the second state, following Florida, to apply capital punishment to cases where no one is killed. A third red state, Idaho, is now considering similar legislation.

These laws, as the Death Penalty Information Center explains, “contradict longstanding Supreme Court precedent holding the death penalty unconstitutional for non-homicide crimes.” In fact, they are intended to tee up a case allowing the Supreme Court’s conservative, activist majority to overturn long-established precedent, just as it has done in other high-profile cases.

Proponents of the new laws hope that the court will extend the reach of capital punishment. They also hope to put death penalty opponents on the defensive by painting them as soft-on-crime defenders of child rapists.

Death penalty opponents must work hard to avoid falling into that trap. Their best political strategy, though it might not be a winning legal strategy, will be to say that the court should respect its own precedent rather than mounting a full-fledged campaign to explain why child rapists should not be put to death.

Before looking more closely at the Tennessee law and the political strategy behind it and the others, let’s recall what the Supreme Court has said about using the death penalty for non-homicide cases like rape.In a 7-2 decision handed down in 1977, the court found that capital punishment was “grossly disproportionate” to the crime of rape. Justice Bryon White, who wrote the majority opinion in Coker v. Georgia, turned to history to help explain that judgment.

“At no time in the last 50 years,” White said, “have a majority of the States authorized death as a punishment for rape. In 1925, 18 States, the District of Columbia, and the Federal Government authorized capital punishment for the rape of an adult female. By 1971, … that number had declined, but not substantially, to 16 States plus the Federal Government.”

That situation changed dramatically in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia striking down the death penalty as then applied. Subsequently, more than 30 states reenacted their death penalty statutes, but few reauthorized it as a punishment for rape.

As White explained, it “should also be a telling datum that the public judgment with respect to rape, as reflected in the statutes providing the punishment for that crime, has been dramatically different. In reviving death penalty laws to satisfy Furman's mandate, none of the States that had not previously authorized death for rape chose to include rape among capital felonies.”

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White recognized “the seriousness of rape as a crime.” As he put it, “It is highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim and for the latter's privilege of choosing those with whom intimate relationships are to be established. Short of homicide, it is the ‘ultimate violation of self.’”

Still, White insisted that “in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public,…(rape) does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life…. The murderer kills; the rapist, if no more than that, does not…. We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which ‘is unique in its severity and irrevocability,’ is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.”

Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist, who dissented in Coker, accused the majority of “engraft(ing) their conceptions of proper public policy onto the considered legislative judgments of the States.” They branded the decision to bar the death penalty in rape cases “very disturbing.”

Three decades after Coker, in a case called Kennedy v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that ruling and extended it to cover the rape of a child. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a five-justice majority, conceded that “Petitioner’s crime was one that cannot be recounted in these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt and horror inflicted on his victim or to convey the revulsion society….”

But he argued that “in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other. The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but ‘in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public,’… they cannot be compared to murder in their ‘severity and irrevocability.’”

Justice Samuel Alito, in a blistering dissent, said that he found it incredible that that death could never be an appropriate punishment “no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.”

Understanding the political danger of supporting the court’s decision, in 2008 both of the major party presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, condemned it. “I think,” Obama observed, “that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that… the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution."

This brings us back to the present.

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The fact that Kennedy and the other justices in the Kennedy v. Louisiana majority are no longer on the Supreme Court(Alito and two of the other dissenters remain) has not been lost on the people now openly defying the Coker and Kennedy decisions. They have also been spurred on by court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward its own precedents. Nor has the political danger that Obama recognized for those who openly oppose the death penalty for child rapists escaped notice.

Tennessee State Sen. Jack Johnson, who sponsored the bill, highlighted that both when he wrote in an op-ed he wrote last month in The Tennessean. Setting the political trap, he asked “Was the life of a rapist more valuable than the life of an innocent child who will be permanently scarred forever? In Tennessee, the answer is no.”

“Child rape,” he continued escalating the rhetorical stakes, “is the most disgraceful, indefensible act one can commit, leaving lasting emotional and psychological wounds on its victims. As a legislator, and more importantly, as a human being, our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable comes first.”

Critics of this legislation, Johnson continued, “argue that the death penalty is an unjustifiable punishment and ineffective. However, in cases where a rapist is preying on the vulnerability of a child and inflicting permanent harm on them, a severe form of justice is the consequence they must face.”

Johnson was even more direct in talking about the difference the Supreme Court's composition might make when a challenge to the Tennessee law reaches the court.

“All five justices who supported the 2008 opinion are no longer members of the U.S. Supreme Court (Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer). Three of the four justices who authored the dissenting opinion are still sitting justices (Roberts, Alito, and Thomas). Given the makeup of the current court, there is a strong possibility that Kennedy v. Louisiana could be overturned.”

As Johnson put it, “I feel very certain that the Supreme Court believes there is a strong, compelling state interest to protect children, and we believe this Court will support Tennessee's efforts."

He may be right.

What the Supreme Court did in overturning its own precedents when it allowed states to prohibit abortion, has sent a clear message and prompted Tennessee, Florida (and maybe Idaho) to defy its long-established precedents in the area of capital punishment. As Johnson made clear, they are banking that the court will now allow death penalty states to expand the reach of capital punishment.

Doing so would not only be a backward step in the ongoing effort to end the death penalty in this country, but it would also be another sign that, as former Justice Thurgood Marshall once noted, “Power, not reason, is the new currency of this Court's decisionmaking.”

Author Cass Sunstein unlocks what it takes to be as big as The Beatles

A book with an intentionally cheeky title like “How to Become Famous” sounds more like the work of a teenaged TikTok star than a 69-year-old Harvard professor, but trust that Cass R. Sunstein knows what he’s talking about here.

During a recent conversation with Salon, the professor, former White House administrator and prolific author of books like "How Change Happens” says that “I’ve never had so much fun with a book” as he did with his eminently readable newest one. Taking the initially explosive, entirely enduring allure of The Beatles as his jumping off point, Sunstein explores the mysteries of why certain figures have made a lasting impact on cultural history. Some — like John, Paul, George, Ringo — have defined their own eras. Others — like Jane Austen and Robert Johnson — have grown in stature over time. What made them connect? And, significantly, why them and not the forgotten others among their talented peers?

Sunstein refuses to settle for simple explanations. “The idea that if you had an unhappy childhood, or if you just spend 10,000 hours on something, or if you really are determined to get on the radio, that it's going to work out,” he says, “is culturally present, but comical.” Instead, he suggests a variety of variables that reveal the complexity of the enduring glory that gives us a Stan Lee or a Joyce Carol Oates. And, as he discusses with Salon, the book is also a meditation on the human drive to contribute and to create. "If your work is remembered," he says, "then you actually helped people."

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You talk in the book about the canon, about what it means to be a cult figure, all of these concepts about greatness. Yet fame, as you acknowledge, is a much more elusive concept, and often, one that is not about the test of time. Why “famous?" And what does “famous” mean to you?

Michael J. Fox says fame in the '80s required talent, unlike today

The title is, in a way, a joke. An act of mischief. The idea that there should be a book called "How to Become Famous” strikes me as ridiculously funny, because there is no recipe for becoming famous. The idea that if you had an unhappy childhood, or if you just spend 10,000 hours on something, or if you really are determined to get on the radio, that it's going to work out is culturally present, but comical.

"The idea that if you had an unhappy childhood or if you just spend 10,000 hours on something, that it's going to work, out is comical."

I wrote a paper for the Journal of Beatles Studies on Beatlemania, which is both a topic about fame and a topic about success. The Beatles, I think, are incredibly great. They are or were spectacularly successful, and they're famous. The origin of my interest was, “How did someone or someones become both super successful and very famous?”

There's Beatlemania, there's Christianity, there's Donald Trump, there's Barack Obama, there's William Shakespeare. And I want to insist that the mechanisms behind the success of all of these are the same. They manifest themselves in different ways. But this is about the imperialism of the mechanisms.

Recently in the Times, there was a story about how successful and famous Taylor Swift really is. And of course, the benchmark is the Beatles.

I actually did a fair bit of research on Ms. Swift. I'm a huge fan of hers, and I've been, I'm pleased to say, since 2012, when she sang “Mean” at the Grammys, and and it knocked my socks off. I thought "Who is this person? She's incredible.” Neil Young said Taylor Swift is the real deal. And I think Neil Young is unerring with respect to everything. If Neil Young vindicated my intuition, I thought, “She's really great.”

I did a lot of research on Taylor Swift. She makes appearances in the book, she didn't become the basis of a chapter, because I at least don't know enough about the particular bits that accounted for her success. What I do know is that there's a really interesting story there that's comparable in its interest and complexity to the story of The Beatles, John Keats, William Blake and Bob Dylan. But that's a story yet to be told.

I love documentaries, like "20 Feet from Stardom” and “Every Little Step” where you can see there is a pool of people who seem to have the same amount of talent. The alchemy then of the circumstances, is not one thing.

The number of amazing people who could be spectacularly successful, is really, really high. To my surprise, the book became, I hope, tolerably political about the amazing people around us and in world history who never made it, and who could have except for something. Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, is a hero of the book, who was possibly in Benjamin Franklin's league, but never got a chance really to read and write that well. There are a lot of people who have been out of sight.

There are lots of books that do fantastically well, which is a kind of irony that's too perfect, that say that if you go through a bunch of people in let's say, business or in the arts, there's some unifying characteristic that they have. It might be determination, or it might be some setback, or it might be impatience, and this is what unifies the people, and this is the answer.

That's a prime target of the book, meaning that's sampling on the dependent variable. It would be child's play to show that in, let's say, Washington, DC, if you take 50 people who are doing really well, they share some characteristic, and then to infer that that characteristic is the reason for their success. We could even have a checklist with four things on it and check each of the successful people within a 20 minute drive of where I am right now.

And that would be junk science, because the number of people who have those characteristics who aren't spectacularly successful in Washington DC is really, really large. The fact that the [successful] people share that characteristic tells us exactly nothing about whether those characteristics are the source of their success.

There’s an old New Yorker cartoon where it's a professor at a blackboard with this big mathematical equation, and then on the right of it there’s the phrase "then a miracle occurs.” That to me is the story of this book.

When I worked in the White House, I had dinner with President Obama, who's a longtime friend. He said, “CEOs think I hate them. That's not at all true. I don't hate them at all. I like them. But I do notice that some of them are less aware than they ought to be of the fact that their amazingness isn't sufficient for their success. They also got lucky in a bunch of ways.” He went on to say, “Look at me. I hope I'm doing a good job as president, but a lot of things had to break right for me to become president.” That’s something I'm sure I had in the back of my mind when I was working on Beatlemania.

There’s this fantastic book by H.J. Jackson about Romantic literature, which shows that Blake and Austen and Wordsworth and Keats among others were not thought to be the best of the best in their time. They were good. Wordsworth particularly was well received. But Blake was lost, and Austen was not iconic. She was thought to be one of a trio of very good female novelists. Now many people think she's the greatest novelist who ever lived. How did that happen? That's not to say she isn't the greatest novelist who ever lived, but it is to your point that then a miracle happened.

If we want to see the things external to the people that helped produce spectacular success, one is champions. If you have a champion who was relentless, and consider that maybe both the literal possibility and apply it for something like a team of champions that can do it. Brian Epstein was essential to the Beatles’s success. Jane Austen had family members who wrote about her after she died, and that turned out to be essential to her success. William Blake got champions long after he died. Robert Johnson, the great guitarist, someone had to like him enough to get a record released, and that vaulted him in his visibility. The precise mechanisms that followed Johnson's records release are not entirely clear. But there were some people who were electrified and who spoke to other people who are electrified. Among the people who got electrified are Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan.

Connie Converse, who is in some ways the hero of the book, is on her way to iconic status because some young guy heard a snippet of her on the radio. He was an NYU student, and then years later decided that there should be records of Connie Converse, and that vaulted her. Champions are really important.

Networks are really important. If there are networks of enthusiasm that can either develop spontaneously or be engineered, that's great. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics is a hero of the book. He was both lucky and brilliant at network creation. He was lucky because there were spontaneous networks of Spiderman and Fantastic Four fans in the 1960s, He basically went to town with networks. Now, could he have done it by himself? No. Were his own efforts and network creation essential? Almost certainly.

Being prolific helps. Many of our most famous figures, Shakespeare, Blake, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, there's a ton there. That is not enough, but it's helpful. You can have a ton of obscure things; many people do.

Reading this book I was thinking about people I have discovered later along with the zeitgeist, whether it's Vivian Maier, or Henry Darger, or Eve Babitz. Sometimes the art or the the work does not line up with the moment in history for the person to be discovered and appreciated.

The zeitgeist explanation is true, I'm sure, but it's too easy. It has a little bit of the sampling on the dependent variable feature. We could say “Star Wars” became as successful as it did, because it hit the culture at exactly the time when we needed the kind of lift that “Star Wars” provided. That might be true, but unclear that it's true. The fact that Eve Babitz became as iconic as she has, she clearly connected via Lili Anolik’s book with a time when some of her interests are very salient to us. But I'd be careful about zeitgeist explanations because if Babitz became famous ten years before or ten years later, we could also have a zeitgeist explanation.

When I saw the movie “Yesterday,” I did not buy into it because I don't think if you released the song “Yesterday” today, it would be a hit. The Beatles are obviously in the canon, they endure in a way that speaks to generations. But this idea that if you plunk that genius in any moment in time, it would rise to the top, that’s not necessarily true. How do you think that changes then the nature of fame, and "the canon?"

First, I agree with you on [the song] “Yesterday.” It’s an improbable choice for a movie that seeks to determine the inevitable success of The Beatles. On the the theory that the Beatles were so surpassingly great that they would have succeeded at any time, they’re just too astonishing, I say that it's not at all clear that's true. I don't say that that's false. I say we just don't know.

There are a few things you can say that are clearly true: If John's parents hadn't been in a romantic mood the night in which John was conceived, there'd be no Beatles. If John had been in a sour mood the day that he met Paul, there might not be any Beatles. If Brian Epstein hadn't become the Beatles’s manager, it's reasonable to say the Beatles wouldn't have made it. They really struggled at the beginning. If the Beatles had started five years later, or five years before, and they just been the Beatles, I don't know how to answer that question whether they would have done spectacularly well.

Of the musicians in the book, it pains me to think that Bob Dylan’s success was also a product of serendipitous factors. And the serendipitous factors are more interesting than that is if his parents hadn't met there would be no Bob Dylan. He got a really good New York Times review. Did he need that? Maybe so. He hooked up with Joan Baez. Did he need that? Maybe so. That really helped him. I wouldn't assert that these people wouldn't have made it in another time. But I would assert that we don't know whether they would have.

I want to know about that ephemeral X Factor. When we think about someone like Olivia Rodrigo hitting at a particular moment, speaking to something that was also going on in the culture, it’s their work. But there's also something really interesting about them. There's something about the chemistry of the Beatles. Part of this story of these personalities’ fame is their charisma, their chemistry with us as audiences. It’s not just your talent, it's not just how well you can compose a symphony.

"Why did X and Y and Z make it, and why did A and B and C not make it? That's often just a lottery. "

Danny Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner who was my collaborator for 30 years off and on, recently died, and I have his ghost over my shoulder here. The fussy view is, beware of sampling on the dependent variable. The number of people who have charisma or chemistry — two different things — is extremely large, and most of them never made it. So why did X and Y and Z with charisma make it, and why did A and B and C with equal or more charisma not make it? That's often just a lottery.

You might say that while charisma or chemistry is not sufficient, there are plenty of people without that to make it. It is necessary. And so it's not a sufficient condition, but it's a necessary condition. Maybe. To have fantastic story really helps. James Dean has a pretty great story and he's charismatic.

In a sped-up culture where fame is more fleeting, how does that change the canon? How does that change being a cult figure and change our relationship and our desire for fame? Because I wonder also, why do we want to endure in the first place? Why do we want to last beyond our own lifetimes?

I think whatever we think the difference between now and before now is much smaller than intuition suggests. The idea that fame is more fleeting now than it was in, let's say, 1400, Clearly, it's true that you can reach a lot of people in a hurry now, more so than in the history of humanity. That can mean that you can get your name a large number of people's minds more than ever. That can happen faster, whether there's more names on more people's minds, but for shorter times than before. That seems plausible. But I don't know that it's true.

I read a book the other day where the author asked, "Would you rather have your name remembered and your works forgotten, or your your works remembered and your name forgotten?" The author found that a hard question. I think that's the easiest question ever. If your name is remembered, what good does that do anyone? If your work is remembered, then you actually helped people.

If you do something that people read or care about or learn from, it doesn't matter at all whether they remember your name. But getting famous for doing something good? That would be great. Thank you, Robert Johnson. Thank you, Bob Dylan. Because they're famous for doing something amazing.

about the art and artifice of celebrity

X considers “cisgender” a slur, and moderates it over actual slurs

Elon Musk, who purchased Twitter (now X) in 2022 for $44 billion, is using the site’s moderators to lead a crusade against the word “cisgender,” a descriptive term that describes people whose gender aligns with their sex assigned at birth, ordering the platform to label it a slur.

It seems that moderation of the word took precedence over the moderation of actual slurs in early May, according to a TechCrunch report.

In a June 2023 tweet, Musk declared that “the words ‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’ are considered slurs on this platform,” and any Tweet containing the phrase will have its reach “limited,” per dialogue within the app. But TechCrunch notes that slurs against Black, transgender, and Jewish people don’t receive the same treatment and can be posted without warning.

Further, Musk suggested in the past that repeated use of the term could result in “at minimum, temporary suspensions,” despite his attempt to brand himself a “free-speech absolutist.”

The term, which is used in multiple medical and legal contexts, and per the Human Rights Campaign is the preferred term to refer to individuals who align with their assigned sex at birth, is one flash point in a right-wing battle against any term which legitimizes the identity of transgender individuals. Musk’s classification came just a day after transphobic commentator James Esses rallied against the term on the platform.

Musk, who has amplified transphobic content in the past (though telling J.K. Rowling that her repeated anti-trans tirades were getting tired), has so far survived pressure from Tesla investors, some of whom say his far right-politics are hurting the car manufacturer’s bottom line.

The ‘X Corp’ CEO, who sued the news site Media Matters into financial ruin for its criticism of unfettered white nationalism on the platform, culminating in mass layoffs this week that affected employees attributed to "far-right billionaires," continues to use his platform to troll and belittle left-wing individuals and platform extremism.

Trump sends cease and desist to “The Apprentice” movie, which depicts the rape of then-wife Ivana

Donald Trump is apparently not happy with a film that documents his rise to superstardom and the dark secrets behind it, including a depiction of the spousal rape of his then-wife Ivana.

Variety reports that the former president, who was found liable for sexually abusing another woman, E. Jean Carroll, by a New York court, has sent a cease and desist letter to the team behind "The Apprentice," which debuted at the Cannes film festival earlier this May.

“The film is a fair and balanced portrait of the former president,” the film’s production team said in a statement to Variety. “We want everyone to see it and then decide.”

The film, starring Marvel star Sebastian Stan as Trump and “Succession” lead Jeremy Strong as Trump mentor Roy Cohn, has not yet found a distributor, and legal action could pose a challenge for the film’s release.

Representatives for Trump tore into the film, which they called “pure malicious defamation,” promising to block a distribution deal, or face consequences.

“[The film] should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” Steven Cheung, Trump campaign communications director, said in a statement per Variety.

Whether the specific scene was mentioned in the letter was unclear, but a defamation claim from the former president would have to prove that statements in the movie were false, and that producers were negligent in fact-checking claims, in order to hold water.

Ivana Trump, who passed away in 2022, divorced the then-businessman in 1990 and went on to describe feeling “violated” during sex with Trump.

Trump has made no secret of his tendency to abuse women, famously telling television host Billy Bush that he could “grab em’ [women] by the p***y” without consent, due to his fame.

Trump’s Bronx rally wasn’t very big, or very Bronx

During Thursday's rally in the Bronx — a district that Donald Trump lost to President Biden in 2020 by 68 points — Trump attempted to rectify his previous failure by appealing to Black and Hispanic voters, claiming in his speech that he’d win New York state in the 2024 presidential election.

“Joe Biden has a better chance winning Alabama than Donald Trump has winning New York,” David Levinthal, the editor-in-chief of Raw Story, said to CNN's Jessica Dean on a panel on Thursday, discussing the Bronx rally.

Levinthal explained why Trump tried to reason with certain voters — because in swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, gaining the votes of Black and Hispanic individuals who are “disillusioned” and “disaffected” with the Biden administration policies can make all the difference.

But how many people actually attended this rally that Trump seems to be banking on?

As is his fashion, the former president took to Truth Social to brag about numbers that may or may not be real, writing, “THIS WAS A BIG, IMPORTANT, AND EVEN STARTLING EVENT, AND YET MUCH OF THE LAMESTREAM NETWORK MEDIA REFUSED TO COVER IT . . . Gee, I wonder why???”

The truth seems to be a bit skewed from Trump’s version. A local New York evening news report by Jim Dolan on ABC7 revealed just how many, or how few, were there. Not to mention the fact that there were plenty of protesters mixed in.

“First of all, he’s a big fat bigot and he just doesn’t have any love in his heart for anyone — anyone of color, anyone who’s in the LGBTQ+ community,” one protester told Dolan. “He’s a crook, a liar, and a cheat. And he tried to make money off people. And that’s what he’s doing right now,” said a second protestor.

According to Dolan's reporting, those who were in attendance didn’t amount to a lot, judging by the b-roll aired later that evening. What's more, most individuals in the crowd were not even from the Bronx.

When Dolan featured a pro-Trump rally-goer, it turned out he was from Queens.

“Donald Trump can now say he held a rally in the South Bronx, home to immigrants and minority communities, and that it was well attended,” Dolan said. “It’s just not clear that the people who attended were from the Bronx. The campaign controlled who got in, and the campaign, of course, picked only supporters.”

Louisiana lawmakers join red state neighbors in pushing “Don’t Say Gay” on schools

Louisiana State Senators advanced a bill on Thursday to ban discussions of LGBTQ+ issues in schools across the state, and prevent queer teachers from sharing details about their own lives.

Passed by the Senate on Thursday by a 28-7 margin with all Republican and 2 Democratic votes, House Bill 122 heads to Governor Jeff Landry’s desk, a staunch conservative who rallies against moderate voices within his party.

The bill, which would “prohibit teachers and others from discussing their sexual orientation or gender identity with students,” has been likened to the “Don’t Say Gay” bills of Florida, Texas and others by critics, who argue that the bills harm queer youth.

Mirroring Florida’s legislation, the proposal bans the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in the classroom all the way through the high school level.

One Democratic state senator who voted against the bill, Royce Duplessis, cited data suggesting that 40% of LGBTQ+ youth contemplated suicide in the past year, and that “Don’t Say Gay” legislation makes queer youth mental health worse, per the New Orleans Advocate.

The bill, which passed once before — before former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed it — also makes special provisions to keep educators from “covering the topics of sexual orientation or gender identity during any extracurricular academic, athletic, or social activity,” which effectively bans student organizations like Gay-Straight Alliances or queer support groups from campuses across the Pelican State.

The legislation is the second in a week’s span to attack the rights of LGBTQ+ Louisianans, after a transgender bathroom ban monikered the "Women's Safety and Protection Act" passed both chambers last Friday.

As the American Civil Liberties Union noted, more than 35 states have taken up bills to roll back or strip away protections from LGBTQ+ people, with at least 12 states passing such legislation in the first 5 months of 2024.

At a federal level, former President Donald Trump and supporters of the ultra-conservative Project 2025 gear up to strip away hard-fought LGBTQ+ rights gained over the last several decades. Additionally, after attacks on the 50-year-old right to seek abortions, speculation on whether the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges mounts.

Trump embraces support from rappers accused of murder

Brooklyn drill rappers Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow, who boast over 14 million monthly listeners combined on Spotify, briefly shared the stage at a rally in the Bronx with Donald Trump, who enthusiastically accepted their endorsements for president.

One characteristic the trio have in common is their criminal indictments in New York City. While the former president stands trial for charges stemming from making hush money payments and orchestrating widespread fraud, Sheff G is accused of attempted murder, conspiracy, and weapon possession, amongst several other counts to which he pled not guilty in May of last year.

Sleepy Hallow, frequent collaborator and alleged fellow gang member with Sheff G, was charged with conspiracy in the sprawling indictment, which alleged that the duo, along with at least 30 co-conspirators in the ‘8 Trey’ gang, killed a rival gang member and celebrated with a lavish dinner, amongst other violent acts. It's unclear whether the candidate, who faces 34 criminal counts in New York alone, knew of the high-profile accusations against the pair, though prosecutors have made a case for such, quite publicly.

“Sheff G is not a wannabe drill rapper. He is a legitimate person who made it good. He has gold records, he’s made a lot of money,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said, per the New York Daily News. “We allege he [Sheff G] used his fame and fortune to elevate gang violence in Brooklyn.”

Sheff G, who was convicted in 2021 for unlawful firearm possession and put away for 2 years, gave a short but passionate speech to the crowd of at least three thousand on Thursday night, after Trump adjusted the microphone for him.

“They always whisper your accomplishments and shout your failures,” the Flatbush, Brooklyn rapper said. “Trump’s going to shout the wins for all of us.”

Sleepy Hallow kept it even more brief, adding, “Make America great again!” as the former president smiled and clapped nearby, shaking hands with the duo in front of everyone.

Trump also welcomed an endorsement from former Democratic New York City Council member Rubén Díaz Sr., who spent decades spewing homophobic remarks, including suggesting that the city council was “controlled by the homosexual community.” He opted not to run for re-election after his colleagues attempted to force him out of the chamber, and disbanded the committees he led.

The act of welcoming the alleged killers and gang members comes as Trump seemingly ramps up attempts to stoke violence and evade accountability for his past illegal enterprises, facing his own RICO charges.