When fascism hits home: My student fought for peace and justice — then ICE took him

There’s an old adage regarding dangerous behavior: It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. One could say the same thing about fascism denial, particularly when it comes to privileged individuals in the United States who have — until very nearly this point — wished away warnings about rising fascism in their country as fanciful thinking.

But it seems increasingly difficult to characterize what’s happening in American politics in 2025 through fascism-denial goggles when the nation’s president laments, using eugenics-style rhetoric, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country” – particularly as the federal government brutally cracks down on immigrants through legally dubious and politically motivated revocations of visas and deportations. Nowhere is this clearer than in the targeting of international students who have been involved in protests of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza.

This issue has hit home for me personally, after numerous media reports that a student activist at Columbia University, Mohsen Mahdawi, was “arrested by immigration officials as he attended an interview as part of his application for US citizenship.” Mahdawi holds a green card as a legal U.S. resident, and was in the final stages of the legal process for obtaining citizenship. He is also legally protected under the First Amendment, like every other citizen or legal resident, when it comes to expressing his views in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (or pretty much anything else), whether or not this administration likes what he says.

"Disappear without recourse": Trump's defiance of a court order means "any American" could be next

Mahdawi’s lawyer declared that his client had been detained “in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian.” This arrest is one of many (at least 300) ordered by an administration that is using the rhetoric of fighting antisemitism to target particular groups – Muslim students and Palestinians in particular – for detainment and deportation.

I know Mohsen Mahdawi because he was my student at Lehigh University before he transferred to Columbia. He took several of my classes, including a course on American political institution, and my course on social movements, prior to and during the COVID pandemic. In all my time at Lehigh, Mohsen was one of my most gifted, committed, thoughtful and engaging students. I knew he would do great things after transferring to Columbia and beyond. While I was sad to see him leave Lehigh, I was also happy to lobby for him, writing a letter of recommendation and meeting with him to strategize about his transfer application.

I also remember thinking that Mohsen's activism — though based on nonviolent, pacifist principles — was likely to make him a political target in a country that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitic bigotry.

Students like Mohsen, in fact, are why I do what I do as an educator. In our many conversations inside the class and out, we spoke about countless political and social issues. I remember his deep passion for politics and his commitment to nonviolence, particularly in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was a dedicated campus activist who worked to educate fellow students, both about politics more broadly and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular.

Mohsen is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in the occupied West Bank, and moved to the U.S. during the 2010s. I remember when he told me about his aspirations to play a pivotal role in the future, working toward impacting American political discourse in a way that would help broker a long-term peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. Like other peace activists, he wanted a solution that was conducive to the creation of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. I also remember thinking that his activism, although based on nonviolent, pacifist principles, was likely to make him a political target in a country that has become notorious for conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitic bigotry. Sadly, these concerns have become reality following his arrest.

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Mohsen’s future remains very much uncertain. His attorney has applied for a federal court order to temporarily restrain the government from deporting him. But his fate, like those of many other Palestinian activists, hangs in the balance depending on how the courts respond when it comes to protecting essential free speech rights.

As a U.S. citizen, I’m fortunate not to have been targeted (at least not yet) in the Trump administration’s war on dissent and in its dark turn toward authoritarian and fascistic politics, which is especially directed against immigrants working on behalf of Palestine. I don’t know how much longer that good fortunewill continue. We see this president declaring an all-out war on higher education, and universities like my own targeted by the federal government for alleged antisemitism, even though our students, faculty and administration have made efforts to create an environment on campus where antisemitism is not tolerated. Ultimately, such efforts don’t seem to matter to the Trump administration, which has promised to “root out” “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within our country” – fascist rhetoric targeting colleges and universities for alleged leftist-radical bias.

American intellectual culture has never had a good track record when it comes to protecting critics of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. I remember a mentor of mine – a Palestinian professor who taught me for years during my undergraduate and graduate years – warning that I should avoid any academic and scholarly work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because the U.S. has never respected that sort of work as legitimate scholarly analysis and discourse. My mentor was obviously speaking from experience: He had been attacked for decades as enabling “terrorism” for his criticisms of Israel, despite his longstanding commitment to nonviolence and a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, and despite his unequivocal rejection of antisemitic ideology.

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Americans are at a crossroads when it comes to the rise of fascism. We can choose to look the other way as political activists are targeted, detained, repressed and deported for their ethnic backgrounds and political views. We can do nothing as the Trump administration sends up trial balloons meant to destroy what is left of academic and intellectual freedom and the First Amendment right to express one’s opinions – independent of how controversial those opinions may be. But a choice to do nothing is in fact an abdication of our basic freedoms, and only enables an administration that is set on destroying individual rights and political dissent. By remaining silent, we implicitly embrace rising fascist politics. But a nation cannot survive, democratically speaking, when an administration spits in the face of due process, legal rights and the rule of law.

Alternatively, Americans can choose to fight back against the assault on our democracy. That will likely require mass protest against the Trump administration. It may indeed require a national, nonviolent strike action in which citizens utilize protest to make the country ungovernable, as well as the impeachment and removal of a president who has made clear that he’s dedicated to dismantling the remnants of American democracy and the rule of law. Time is quickly running out for the people of this country to take a stand. If we don’t act soon, there will be little left to defend.

about the ICE crisis

“RoboCop” actor Peter Weller on the crooked line leading from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump

Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 film “RoboCop” is a dystopic masterpiece. Set in a (then) near future deindustrialized Detroit, Peter Weller's character Alex Murphy is a police officer who is brutally killed while on duty and then resurrected as the cyborg RoboCop to end crime in the city. Murphy must struggle to regain his humanity in the face of the cruelty of the megacorporation (Omni Consumer Products) that de facto owns Detroit (and by implication America), the police department and most other aspects of public and private life. RoboCop is no longer viewed as human. He is a product with a serial number, an object of capitalist technological “innovation” and a sociopathic ethos where profits are more important than people and life itself.

“RoboCop” is a direct indictment of Ronald Reagan's America and its 1980s ethos of unrepentant greed, spectacle and violence. 40 years later, in the Age of Trump, those hegemonic forces are even more powerful, to the extent that they are viewed by many as common sense and permanent features of American life and culture. Verhoeven’s “RoboCop” is now more of a documentary than science fiction and genre entertainment.

For all of “RoboCop’s” social commentary and entertainment, if not for Peter Weller’s performance, it would likely be remembered as just another disposable action film of the 1980s with lots of shooting and explosions about a cop turned cyborg who fights a giant bipedal robot (ED-209) at the end of the movie.

I spoke with Peter Weller last weekend at the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) in Chicago. We discuss the legacy and politics of “RoboCop,” his long career, turn as a Renaissance man, the importance of jazz and his friendship with Miles Davis. He explains why we should embrace our spirituality and kindness to survive these very difficult and tumultuous times.

Lost in the malignant normality of the Trumpocene

Beyond his iconic role in Verhoeven’s two “RoboCop” films, Peter Weller has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including the cult classics “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!”, David Cronenberg’s adaptation of “Naked Lunch,” and “Screamers.” Weller has also directed TV shows, including FX’s “Sons of Anarchy.” Weller earned his PhD in Italian Renaissance Art History and Roman History from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2014. His new book is “Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting.”

I want to thank you for what you just did. You have been here most of the day, for hours and you were done signing autographs. You saw that family with their two young children in line and you told them it was OK to talk with you. They didn't buy an autograph. The father just wanted to say hello and thank you for "RoboCop" and your other films. You insisted on signing an autograph with a personal note for their son, who was about 7 or 8 years old. You didn't ask for any money. You made a memory for that child that he will take with him forever. In these times of such trouble, we are going to need so much more of that kindness and humanity. We need to make more good memories together.

Extra kindness is the most important thing now for me. My 2025 New Year's resolution is extra kindness. The Talamud says (and I ain’t no authority on Jewish law — but I think its Berakhot or Blessing 17) that the highest wisdom is kindness. By my nature I am not always a kind person. I can be a cranky guy most of the time. So, I have pledged myself to extra kindness this year.

Where does that critical self-reflection come from for you? I am especially concerned about younger folks right now with all the troubles and horribleness in America and around the world. Some of them have that moral and ethical code and practice the critical self-reflection we are going to need as a people. Too many others do not.

Does anybody really know when they're young, what they stand for? What they're about? Here is something that just happened. Last night, I was talking to a group of young men. I had smoked a cigar at a wonderful spot here in Chicago with a guy and we started talking about history and Kenya. Another guy is talking about Pan-Africanism. The other guy starts explaining how everybody's ripping off Africa as though that is new. And I had to say, now mind you he is 24 years old, "Listen, man, people have been ripping off Africa since back to the Roman Empire. So, it's not like this is something new, where we’re going to the Congo and stealing rare earth metals to make microchips and circuits for computers."

"I had a marvelous two-hour lunch with Ronald Reagan. I never agreed with his politics, but his most penetrating social trait was how very forthcoming and honest he was with me, regarding everyone from Angela Davis to Gorbachev."

We then started talking about Christianity and religion and faith. They are studying theology. They are all good young guys. I listened to them, really listened, and I had to ask them: Beyond theology what are you really studying? They tell me about the New Testament and studying, and biblical truth and interpretations that lead you to the Truth — that capital "T" truth. I'm looking at these young men, kids really, relative to me, and I'm thinking, I'm going to be 78 soon. It's taken me this long through prayer and a lot of meditation, to find my center. But even I don't know what the Truth is. I'm not going to proselytize. I know the distinction between experience and dogma. That's the only judgment I can make. When is someone preaching to me versus when is someone suggesting something?

I was pen-pals with Saul Bellow. I learned a lot from him. He wrote this book called "Ravelstein," it was his last book. And in it he said, "that which is important is never taught, only revealed." And so, I can listen, and I can read. I can do that over and over again. So can every young person in the world. But once in a while, they're going to get a revelation. They're going to go, that's what's true for me! But I'll be damned if I'm going to stand on some pulpit and tell them what that the Truth is.

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A student recently asked me about St. Francis of Assisi and the stigmata. Did he really receive the stigmata? It's not whether or not he really received the stigmata. It's the parable, the fact that he identified with the pain and the suffering, and then the kindness of what he thinks Jesus was trying to teach. The facts don’t matter as much as the meaning of whether or not you can see that Saint Francis identified with the kindness and the suffering enough whereby somebody would tell the story about him, emulating the sorrow and the pain of Jesus. The Shroud of Turin. If you are asking whether it is the real and authentic burial cloth of Jesus, then you are asking the wrong question. It is a symbol of something, of throwing your hat over the wall of the 10th door of knowledge. In the end, it is a symbol of not knowing rather than knowing and taking a leap of faith.

During an interview, William Friedkin, director of the 1973 "Exorcist" film, shared how he was invited to Turin, Italy to view what is believed by many to be a sacred relic of Christ. He explained that he didn't know if it — the Shroud of Turin — was real or not, but he felt the power of faith and belief in its presence. It is in such moments — if we are open to the experience — that we feel the power of metaphor, symbols, and yes, faith. Those are transcendent experiences. Few have them.

Friedkin was and will always be one of my dearest friends, and one of the smartest humans I ever met in the film world. Belief is an action; faith is a state of mind. I go back to Zen sitting and Zen meditation. I got to do it every day. When I don't continue with that spiritual practice, I get agitated. When I am continuing with the Zen practices, I can sit in a space of faith, which is really trust. It's not an action. It is something much more. It is about opening your mind to possibilities and connectedness to something else, bigger, maybe even the uncanny. It's just having your mind blown by the parable or the event of something that's never happened before to you.

During an interview about the 2024 election, a rabbi offered the wisdom that to get through these tough times here in America with all the pain, dread, fear, sorrow, loss, terror and collective disinhibition we are seeing, we are going to need to build our own inner Noah’s Ark. As bad as today is, it is good as compared to what comes next. Things are going to become much worse in the United States and much faster. How are you building that inner Noah’s Ark?

I have got to meditate in the morning when I wake up. I have to play the trumpet. I have to go to the gym. I have to take care of my family. I have to keep writing. That is my Noah's Ark. I truly believe what President Obama said on Marc Maron's podcast. "Don't believe anyone if they said nothing has changed in this country." I agree with Obama. I’m not going back to 1968. We have made too much progress as a country to surrender it.

You are best known for your iconic role in Paul Verhoeven’s "RoboCop" film. "RoboCop" is a searing indictment of Reaganism and a type of religious politics which claims that greed is good and is some type of salvation and eucharist. Thinking about the present and this disaster. Is it a straight or crooked line from Reagan to Donald Trump? Something else?

It's a crooked line from Reagan to Trump.

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Reagan tried to undo most of the Great Society programs that were created by Lyndon Johnson. Reagan did not want to spend money on the country’s infrastructure, social democracy and helping people and solving our collective problems. Nope. Trickle-down economics was the answer. Trickle-down economics does not work. It was not the answer then. It is not the answer now. Trickle-down economics is garbage. We have decades of evidence that it does not work. So, what are we doing now in this country? More of that mess. I'm afraid to turn on the damn news. I had a marvelous two-hour lunch with Ronald Reagan. I never agreed with his politics, but his most penetrating social trait was how very forthcoming and honest he was with me, regarding everyone from Angela Davis to Gorbachev.

At this point in American history and society, is "RoboCop" more of a documentary than anything else? If I were curating a film festival, I would feature "RoboCop," John Carpenter’s "They Live," "Idiocracy," "Children of Men," and some Terry Gilliam. We are living in that dystopic present.

"RoboCop" endures and we are still talking about it almost four decades later because of the social and political issues it confronted, right there, dead center in the film. Thank God for Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, because they had their fingers on the pulse of the country in the Reagan 80s and “Reaganomics.” What we are seeing in this country with reactionary politics is just the pendulum of history swinging backward in a bad way. Progress is not guaranteed, especially with so much anger out there, rightly or wrongly, misdirected and the bad choices it is enabling that are making things worse in this country.

You are an accomplished jazz musician. During your recent interview with Marc Maron, you were talking about Amiri Baraka aka Leroi Jones. I had to stop and rewind the conversation. I said aloud, “Weller is quoting 'Blues People'? Damn! He is truly a Renaissance man.” Share some of that journey with me. You also knew the legend Miles Davis. What was he like?

First, speaking of Amiri Baraka I walked up to him at a party in New Orleans at Anne Rice’s digs; told him I was a fan and that I had just finished shooting "Naked Lunch" and William Burroughs would have probably wanted me to send Baraka a good vibe. The cat thanked me profusely, and I saw a moment of nostalgia in him that was quite moving. By the way, Reagan — in his 60s dilemma with the California campus situation wrote SF State chancellor Glenn Dumke — that “we wouldn’t invite Leroi Jones into our living rooms.” I was thrilled that Anne Rice sure as hell invited him into hers! Secondly — Miles. I wanted to play the trumpet. It’s brassy. Trumpeters need to play all the time because of the embouchure and muscle memory. But I liked it loud, man. I wanted to play like Duke Ellington's guys, Cat Anderson and those guys. I didn't really get Miles. He was too melancholy for me at the time.

Then I heard him a couple of years later on Armed Forces Radio playing “There's a Boat Dat's Leaving Soon For New York” from Porgy and Bess. Miles became my artistic guru of sorts. I can hear some Miles and I remember exactly where I was in my life at that time and what was going on. I know exactly what I was thinking. I know with whom I was hanging or the trauma I was going through at that moment. In the mid-1970s when he wasn't around, I was lost. I really was. Miles is a channel for me, a map and a direction. I was so very fortunate to spend time with Miles Davis.

A close family friend who was like an uncle to me played with Miles a few times. I asked him about Miles, and he said, “moody.” That the Miles you got depended on the time of day and what was going on.

Miles was a moody dude. He could be cold to people. But when we would get together he seemed really happy to see me. Quincy Jones was also really important to me. I miss him. I first met him in Italy while he was touring with Michael Jackson. All we talked about was trumpets and music. Quincy was a trumpet player, and he played with Billy Eckstine and so many other greats. We would meet for dinner on occasion and there would be people like Sidney Poitier there. Quincy also introduced me to Ray Charles. Wow. That was very special. I believe Quincy liked talking to me because he was now surrounded by movies, popular recording, production, and the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. We would talk about music. I just assume he couldn't recollect or revel in discussions about Count Basie and Duke Ellington and sitting on the bandstand and blowing trumpet with many other people, especially in Hollywood.

I wonder about the type of art that the Age of Trump and this global rage and discontent will spawn.

We are going to find out. Jazz is political. Jazz is angry. Jazz is not some nice mood music for a party. No. Jazz comes out of politics of the color line and Black American life and struggle and the human experience.

What’s next for you?

I am off to another convention. Then I am going over to Europe to give a presentation at an art society that is hosting me in Gibraltar. That talk is going to be on my new book and the Italian Renaissance. My new book is, "Leon Battista Alberti in Exile: Tracing the Path to the First Modern Book on Painting." It’s from Cambridge University Press. Alberti was a genius — a polymath who grew up in exile from Florence. Scholars would have you think Alberti came to Florence and wrote the first modern book on painting in a couple of months. I say hogwash. His little book on painting — "De pictura" — is a collection of everything he saw before he hit Florence. Get it. And hopefully, there is a new movie project as well. Of course, I can’t talk too much about that yet. There is always jazz. I have a gig in June. I need to keep reinventing life…that is the key.

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DOGE is trying to outsource the US government — and Trump wants Big Law to make it happen

The White House has effectively extorted some of America’s most prestigious law firms to provide almost $1 billion in pro bono legal services to the Trump administration. This comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., publicly threatened to eliminate entire federal courts if he doesn’t like how they rule. Both of these actions should set off alarms—not just for lawyers, but for anyone who cares about democracy.

Some lawyers and legal analysts insist these agreements are “unenforceable,” or will only advance causes supported by the president, but not actual pro bono services for the government. However, the increased attacks on the integrity and structure of government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) make it clear that these propositions aren’t mere suggestions. These agreements are an intentional effort to outsource government work in alignment with their efforts to downsize and deconstruct the government. President Trump and his allies want to use big law to conduct government business as their “solution” to laying off thousands of federal working people. They also want to use this to continue their attacks against foundations, universities, civil society organizations and corporations that refuse to comply with their agenda.

To my fellow lawyers reading this: Your bar license is not just a ticket to power — it’s a tool of public trust.

To justify their actions, the Trump administration is distorting the meaning of “pro bono,” which traditionally translates as “for the good of the public,” to instead mean “for the good of President Trump’s interests.” People are right that this is abnormal and unheard of, but it’s part of a neo-segregationist power grab aimed at cementing power for the wealthy by destabilizing our government institutions and undermining our democratic system of checks and balances.

Understanding this context forces us to examine the legal profession's influence and responsibility in this moment because lawyers aren’t bystanders, and far too often, our profession has protected power rather than challenged it, whether by defending corporate interests at our expense or embracing “neutrality” as cover for complicity. Lawyers make a choice when they refuse to reject blatantly unconstitutional aims of the neo-segregationist agenda and instead offer legal legitimacy to its work. Historical titans of the profession like Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Pauli Murray and Clarence Darrow stand out because of their legal prowess and their courage to stand up to power, something that can be uncommon in our profession because many are willing to roll with the punches of oppression for prestige and monetary gain.

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Most of us—across race, class, and background—want the same things: to be treated fairly, live with dignity, and have a justice system that works for all of us. And while the courts haven’t always delivered on that promise—especially for Black, Brown, Indigenous, poor, working-class, and LGBTQ+ communities—they’ve long served as one of the few institutions where everyday people can push back against unchecked power. What’s happening right now is not a matter of opinion or partisanship — it’s a test of whether we believe in the foundational idea that the law should protect people, not just power.

As a mother, I recognize the stakes of how this will impact my daughter’s future freedoms. Watching the coordinated erosion of justice from all sides should drive us all to action — whether it’s fighting back against billionaires funding lawsuits to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, protesting lawmakers threatening the courts, or holding law firms accountable for prioritizing prestige over principle. The Trump administration is not just testing the boundaries of power—they’re testing whether we’ll use ours. So, it’s time to use our power to resist and reject these efforts, loudly.

To my fellow lawyers reading this: Your bar license is not just a ticket to power — it’s a tool of public trust. Like any tool, you can use it to build or to break. You can use your skills to defend communities under attack, protect the independence of the courts, and fight for the people systems often leave behind. Or you can use your skills to fast-track their suffering and attack the rule of law. The difference is the choice you make.

To those outside the legal field: The fight for justice has never belonged to the courts alone. The law only has meaning when we, the people, demand it live up to its promise. And we each have so many ways to demand the law live up to its promise. From protests and community coalitions to our roles in boardrooms and voting booths, this moment isn’t solely about the legitimacy of the courts or law firms. It’s about what kind of country we want to live in — and what each of us is willing to do to build it. Otherwise, people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Mike Johnson will simply decide that you don’t have a choice or a voice in what our future looks like. And I’ll be damned if my choice is silence.

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“We’re not moving on, we’re doubling down”: The grassroots fight to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home

Members of immigrant advocacy group CASA in Maryland have been holding their breath for more than a month as they wait for updates from the government on the fate of a Salvadoran man the Trump administration wrongly deported.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a father of three and member of the grassroots organization, was removed to El Salvador last month despite a 2019 court order protecting him from deportation to the Central American country because of the threat of gang violence. The Supreme Court last week largely upheld a lower-court ruling that mandated the Trump administration "facilitate" his return to the United States, but federal officials have since taken a hands-off approach to complying with it — if they've even complied at all. That resistance prompted U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., to travel to El Salvador earlier this week to advocate for Abrego Garcia's return, an effort that culminated in their successful meeting Thursday.

CASA's policy director, Cathryn Jackson, told Salon that the Trump administration's refusal to return Abrego Garcia — and efforts to malign his character in the interim — has rattled group members and the surrounding community.

"Of course, we're concerned. What we're seeing is that Trump's resistance — they're exposing the lengths they're willing to go to defy the law flat-out," she said. But the inaction from the administration hasn't shaken their faith, she added. "What I will say is that, in terms of outcome, we are staying vigilant. We're not moving on, we're doubling down. We have not lost faith in any way that he will be returned."

"Disappear without recourse": Trump's defiance of a court order means "any American" could be next

In the month since Abrego Garcia's arrest, CASA, which provides financial, legal, health and social services to more than 173,000 working-class members across the country, has made it a goal to elevate his family members' voices and push the government for accountability. They aimed to ensure his story doesn't slip through the cracks amid the barrage of enforcement actions flooding the system and the airwaves since President Donald Trump took office. In that sense, they've been successful.

The case has garnered international attention and marks one of the first times the Trump administration has admitted error since it initiated its crackdown earlier this year, an effort that has sparked a flurry of litigation as immigrants and their families challenge removals, legal status recissions, detentions and the administration's apparent disregard for preserving their due process rights. Still, CASA and the growing legion of supporters they've helped mobilize remain determined in advocating for Abrego Garcia's return and supporting his family through the battle.

"The community is rallying. Our community is angry. Our community is outraged. Our community is shocked, but our community is resilient," CASA Legal Director Ama Frimpong told Salon in a phone interview, highlighting the strength and courage of Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, in leading the charge.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Abrego Garcia on March 12 as the sheet metal union apprentice returned home from a shift at a construction site. On March 15, the 29-year-old was erroneously included on a deportation flight to his native El Salvador for detention in its Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT, due to an admitted "administrative error." The mega prison, intended to hold Salvadoran gang members, is notoriously opaque, and human rights advocates previously told Salon they fear its prisoners face torture and other abuses, as has been documented in other Salvadoran facilities. Abrego Garcia said that he had recently been moved to a different detention center with better conditions, Van Hollen told media Friday.

The Trump administration accuses Abrego Garcia of being a ranking member of the MS-13 gang, but — as judges have noted in court filings — has not provided substantive evidence of such affiliation in court. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia and his family also deny that he has ties to any gang, and he has never been charged with a crime in the U.S., El Salvador or elsewhere.

Frimpong said the organization has been working closely with Abrego Garcia's family, particularly Vasquez Sura, his mother and his brother, in boosting their efforts to get the word out about his case, supporting them in "whatever ways and manners" they seek. A CASA advocate is serving as co-counsel for Vasquez Sura in the litigation and Frimpong said the organization has worked to ensure the family feels empowered to continue speaking out.

The group has also organized a number of actions to press for his release and return to the U.S., and support his family, including launching a petition, holding rallies and informational meetings, gathering donations and providing community members with resources to contact their lawmakers and the Trump administration on Abrego Garcia's behalf.

Jackson said that each public action in Maryland has seen hundreds of attendees, while the petition has garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, with thousands also calling and writing elected officials at all levels of government. As Abrego Garcia's story gains more attention, she said, she's only seen that momentum grow.

"Every day, the movement is growing. Although folks are facing a lot right now, there is a drive to fight back," Jackson said, noting the "chilling effect" that the Trump administration's immigration policy has had on the community. "People are fired up. They're outraged. They understand the seriousness of what's happening. They are witnessing, firsthand, the harm."

She added that, in the face of the administration's attacks, the organization and members of the community are also fighting back "by telling the truth" and "reclaiming the story."

"They're sharing the stories that ICE tries to erase every single day," she said. "They're showing that immigrants are not numbers or cases. They're parents, they're students, they're essential workers, they're caregivers. They're people and dreams."

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Earlier this week, the organization hosted a faith vigil where local clergy and leaders sang, prayed and called for Abrego Garcia's return. The group also facilitated an opportunity for Vasquez Sura to speak to the media ahead of a hearing in the case on Tuesday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

"As we continue through Holy Week, my heart aches for my husband, who should have been here leading our Easter prayers," she told the crowd outside the Maryland courthouse. "Instead, I find myself pleading with the Trump administration and the [Salvadoran President Nayib] Bukele administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar."

CASA previously aided in coordinating a day on Capitol Hill for the family to meet with lawmakers and demand answers from the Trump administration, also hosting a press conference with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on April 9.

On April 4, the day of a key hearing in the case, the organization held dual actions in support of Abrego Garcia at the CASA headquarters and outside the courthouse, an effort joined by local clergy and his "brothers and sisters" of the SMART Union and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis would later order the Trump administration to "facilitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcia's return to the country by midnight on April 7, calling his removal from the U.S. "wholly lawless." The administration appealed the case up to the Supreme Court, which ruled last Thursday the administration must "'facilitate' Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."

The court, however, did not affirm Xinis' ruling in full, writing that her call for the administration to "effectuate" Abrego Garcia's return may have overstepped her authority. The Trump administration has since used its interpretation of the Supreme Court's ruling to avoid bringing Abrego Garcia back, and on Thursday the Department of Justice filed a motion asking the district court to stay its order to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return.

Adam B. Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University, told Salon that the Trump administration's read of the order — characterizing in court Tuesday their reluctance to address the judge's questions as a debate over what facilitate means in this context — is "false and misleading."

"The thing that the court unambiguously required the government to do — to facilitate — is Abrego Garcia's release from the prison, and the administration, as the judge noted [Tuesday], hasn't done anything to facilitate the release," Cox said in a phone interview. "It has pretended as though the Supreme Court's order said not that they had to facilitate his release from the prison, but instead that they only had to facilitate his re-entry into the United States."

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When reached for comment, the Department of Homeland Security directed Salon to an interview about the case between spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin and ABC News, in which the former repeatedly said she would defer to the Department of Justice on the issue and pushed unsupported claims that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13. She also acknowledged the clerical error that led to his mistaken deportation to El Salvador but maintained he should be in a Salvadoran jail or a U.S. detention center.

The Trump administration has also repeatedly argued it does not have the authority to bring Abrego Garcia back because he's now in Salvadoran custody, which judges have denied. In a meeting with Trump on Monday, President Bukele also said that he would not "smuggle" Abrego Garcia into the U.S. and asserted that he does not have the power to return him.

CASA, however, rejects those arguments. For the organization's leaders, the president's reluctance to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. is a power move to show the Trump administration believes itself to be above the law.

But, Frimpong added, the community-led efforts to bring Abrego Garcia back reflect its resilience against the attacks it's facing, his case presenting a "clear example of the harmful and dangerous ways" ICE operates under the Trump administration.

They're "really engaging in lawless, aggressive action to target Black and brown community members and treat us in a way that makes clear that they believe that we are disposable and not worthy of basic human and constitutional rights," Frimpong said.

She noted that Maryland has seen an "aggressive and indiscriminate" uptick in immigration enforcement since Trump took office as well as detainees subjected to "horrible conditions" in a Baltimore holding room. (In a statement to CBS News, ICE denied the claims, saying that it ensures the facility is compliant with federal law.)

"One thing that [Abrego Garcia's] wife has made clear is that this is not just about Kilmar. We want Kilmar home, but this is about all the Kilmars, right?" Frimpong said. "This is about everyone within our community who is being affected by the Trump administration's attack on the Constitution."

about Trump's immigration policy

A trip too far: The LSD experience that blew up the Huxley family

In November 1956, three people gathered in a converted Connecticut barn to take LSD, a powerful psychedelic drug that was legal at the time.

The children had just been put to bed upstairs. In the converted barn's main room, Elizabethan ballads drifted through smoke-thick air as someone scattered chrysanthemum petals across a sheepskin rug. The flowers seemed to reanimate in the candlelight, blooming and dying with each flicker. Two of the participants lay hand-in-hand in ecstatic communion, while a third sat rigid and apart, his detachment crumbling into barely contained fury.

By midnight, everything would shatter.

The true story of Michel Foucault's LSD trip that changed history

One participant spiraled into visions of nuclear war. Another transformed into a 10-foot colossus of feminine power. And in the space between these extremes, a marriage began its quiet collapse.

The aftershocks would reverberate through three generations of Britain's most celebrated intellectual family, the Huxleys, leaving wounds that simmered in private letters for more than sixty years.

It’s fitting that this story should be told on Bicycle Day, the annual commemoration of April 19, 1943, when Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first rode his bike home under the effects of LSD — and ushered in the modern psychedelic era. Nearly 14 years after that inaugural ride, the drug had drifted from the lab into the lives of artists, seekers and intellectual elites like the Huxleys.

The trip's architect was Dr. Humphry Osmond, the psychiatrist who had first guided Aldous Huxley — the author of “Brave New World” and “The Doors of Perception” — in experiments with mescaline. and coined the term “psychedelic.” His subjects that evening were Aldous' only son, Matthew Huxley; Matthew's wife, Ellen; and Francis Huxley, Matthew's cousin and the son of biologist Julian Huxley.

Author Aldous Huxley with his daughter-in-law Ellen Huxley and his grandchildren Trev and Tessa, Connecticut, 1955. (Courtesy Aldous and Laura Huxley Papers, UCLA)

The seeds of the LSD trip were planted a year earlier, in the summer of 1955. Aldous Huxley, recently widowed and struggling with his grief, came to stay with Matthew and Ellen. During those long Connecticut evenings, as Ellen read to him (his eyesight was failing) and fashioned him clothes from old trousers, Aldous began sharing intimate confessions about his psychedelic experiences. The drug, he told her, had finally broken through his English reserve: “It was the first time I could really cry.” LSD “hits you where you are most blocked,” he explained, as cited in David Dunaway’s unpublished interview with Ellen Huxley from 1985.

"Something begins to take charge of me, an intelligent automatism," Francis Huxley wrote later. His body dissolved into the surroundings, "swimming" rather than walking through space.

Ellen was already straining against the constraints of domestic life. A frustrated filmmaker trapped in the role of housewife, she found herself increasingly alienated from Matthew, who seemed content with their conventional existence. When she pressed Aldous to help them experience LSD for themselves, he demurred. Undeterred, she reached out directly to Osmond, who had been following the fault lines in the younger Huxleys' marriage with professional interest.

By 1956, Osmond had developed what he considered an ideal protocol for psychedelic experiences, rejecting sterile hospital environments in favor of comfortable, aesthetic settings. The converted barn, with its rustic beams and carefully curated music collection, seemed perfect. More intriguing was the group's dynamic: Matthew, the dutiful son carrying the weight of the Huxley legacy; Ellen, pushing against the boundaries of her prescribed role; and Francis, fresh from publishing his anthropological study of an indigenous Amazonian tribe, embodying everything his cousin Matthew was not — rootless, adventurous, unconstrained by convention.

The evening began at 7:15 p.m. It was the eve of the 1956 presidential election fought between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. The Huxley troupe took their careful doses of Sandoz LSD in liquid form. Francis, who would later produce 14 pages of meticulous notes, felt it first: “Something begins to take charge of me, an intelligent automatism.” His body dissolved into the surroundings, “swimming” rather than walking through space. Someone had the unsettling idea to play a recording of Aldous reading from his novel “Time Must Have a Stop” — a passage about a character's journey into the afterlife. Though he was 3,000 miles away in California, Aldous' distinctive voice filled the room, his baroque prose about “a vast ubiquitous web of beknottedness and diversity” sending Francis into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

Then came the moment that would alter everything. As Elizabethan folk songs replaced Aldous' voice, Francis took a chrysanthemum and held it to Matthew's nose before scattering its petals across the sheepskin rug. “I scatter them in the air itself,” he wrote, “and the music becomes full of flowers.” Matthew, perhaps sensing the evening slipping away from him, reached for his wife's hand. But it was Francis and Ellen who found themselves transported, dancing as flowers bloomed in the air around them.

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Ellen's account burns with the electricity of the moment: Matthew still detached, being scientific and “taking the group pulse.” “We hated him for not giving in to the joy,” she wrote. “He seemed to sit on the rim of the world, and we others in the bottom of the cup. Why didn't he laugh? Francis and I lay on the floor, hand in hand, our noses pressed into the sheepskin rug — this is pure joy.”

Matthew's response would turn the euphoria to ash. He left the room, returning with a metronome whose loud, mechanical clicking lacerated the otherwise-fine mood being created by a Bach record on the turntable. His stated purpose — ”to set our experience against an objective reality” — was transparent in its desperation. As the harsh clicks fought against the music, Osmond, the experienced guide, was forced to intervene. Francis dismissed the gesture as “absurdly pompous,” but the damage was done.

The evening plunged deeper into darkness. A wave of what Francis called “telepathic communication” swept through the group. It brought violent dissolution. The men, as though seeking a scapegoat for the chaos, turned collectively on Ellen.

“They all turn on me, scrapping like dogs, men against women,” she wrote. Humphry's demand — “why did you do it?” — triggered a transformation. Ellen felt herself grow “10 feet tall and very thin and very powerful and malignant.” Francis, his earlier tenderness forgotten, saw her as “the old yellow hag who plots destruction and brings about the downfall of the world.” Ellen, rather than shrinking from their attack, embraced her power, becoming “full of poison which is reinforced by the drinking of the lemonade.”

"They all turn on me, scrapping like dogs, men against women," Ellen Huxley wrote. She felt herself grow "10 feet tall and very thin and very powerful and malignant."

As midnight approached, the psychic tension in the room crystallized into apocalyptic terror. When Osmond casually remarked that “Things must come to an end at midnight” — meaning simply the trip — Francis spiraled into nuclear paranoia. Convinced they alone could prevent global annihilation, he frantically wondered: “Do I pick up the phone and call Eisenhower and [Soviet Prime Minister] Bulganin?” The group, desperate to contain the mounting chaos, formed a circle and joined hands — all except Matthew, who remained outside their ritual. Francis watched his cousin with growing horror: “He reminds me of my brother and then slowly turns into him … he is the Other, and his face takes on a menacing symmetry.”

The breaking point came in what Francis would later call an exorcism. “Damn you, Matthew, damn you; I hate you, I hate you,” he shouted across the divide, adding with acid-logic, “It is only by saying this that I can be certain I do not in fact hate him.” Only Osmond's intervention — a steady mantra of “Together, together” — and the administration of niacin finally brought the group back to what Francis called "drab reality," leaving him with the bitter taste of failure, “knowing that we have, after all, failed to change the world as we set out to.”

But the real aftermath was just beginning. The next morning, after Matthew left for work, Ellen and Francis became lovers. The LSD had pulled back a curtain that couldn't be drawn again. When Francis' parents, Julian and Juliette, visited that weekend, Ellen's letter to Osmond practically vibrated with barely contained secret joy: “They were obviously nonplussed by Francis and me … I'm sure that Juliette thought we were living together … as indeed we were, living together.” Her emphasis carried the weight of revelation: “She had married the wrong Huxley,” as quoted in Ron Roberts and Theodor Itten’s “Francis Huxley and the Human Condition.”

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For three years, the affair simmered beneath the surface of family life. It reached its breaking point in 1959, when Matthew found them together in their Brooklyn Heights home. Francis was recovering from malaria contracted in Haiti, with Ellen as his nurse. Matthew's ultimatum was stark: Francis must either marry Ellen or leave. It was a miscalculation.

Francis chose exile, moving in with a filmmaker friend nearby. The cousins never spoke again.

Matthew and Ellen never mentioned the trip to their two children, Trev and Tessa. Trev only learned of it in his 70s, when the letters and trip reports were published in “Psychedelic Prophets” in 2019. When Aldous learned of the marriage's collapse, a letter to his son Matthew exposed his own buried guilt: “I know very well what you mean when you talk about dust and aridity and a hard shell that makes communication in or out extremely difficult … Unfortunately, when you were a child, I was predominately in the dust-crust stage, and so must have been a pretty bad father.”

The acid-induced crisis had cracked open not just a marriage, but the emotional fortress of English reserve that had shaped both father and son. Matthew, as his own son Trev would later reflect, had always “felt mauled by Aldous and burdened by his massive family legacy,” as he said in a video interview in December, 2023.

But the collapse of Matthew’s marriage would bring them closer together.

In an unpublished letter to his parents, Francis Huxley glimpsed something deeper at work: "There were too many Huxleys in that situation … involving the shadows of our parents and the way we react to them."

Francis, in a remarkable unpublished letter to his parents, glimpsed something even deeper at work: “There were too many Huxleys in that situation … involving the shadows of our parents and the way we react to them.” This cryptic observation hinted at buried family secrets — perhaps even his mother Juliette's initial attraction to Aldous before she settled for Julian. The LSD had not just revealed the younger generation's desires; it had somehow excavated and reenacted the hidden dynamics of their parents' lives. In the same letter, Francis attempted to reassure his parents who were deeply concerned about his affair with Ellen: “No one is likely to explode or throw himself under a car, or do anything foolish.”

Each participant of that day in November 1956 forged their own path. Ellen finally broke free of domestic constraints, becoming a documentary filmmaker and co-directing the cult classic “Grey Gardens.” Matthew remarried in 1963, with Aldous attending the wedding just months before his death from cancer. He also decided to write a book about a different Amazonian tribe — “Farewell to Eden,” published in 1965 — a move that seemed, perhaps unconsciously, like a bid to rival his cousin’s intellectual terrain. Francis, meanwhile, continued his anthropological wanderings, carrying whatever insights or regrets he gained from that night into his studies of other cultures' sacred rituals. Unlike Matthew, Francis continued to take psychedelics throughout his life and became an advocate for the collective rights of Indigenous people.

Francis Huxley (left), Julian Huxley and Aldous Huxley, 1954. (Courtesy Francis Huxley Archives)

Yet the questions raised by that evening in Connecticut still resonate. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley would later privately debate LSD's power as an emotional and sexual catalyst.

“We've stirred up enough trouble suggesting that drugs can stimulate aesthetic and religious experiences," Aldous cautioned. “I strongly urge you not to let the sexual cat out of the bag.”

It may be too late for that. In the present day, Women's Health asks “Could MDMA save your marriage?” while Psychology Today suggests that “[p]sychedelics may foster peace among couples, families, coworkers and nations.”

Mind-altering drugs and marital weirdness have long gone hand-in-hand. Years later, in 1967, John Lennon would dose his wife Cynthia with LSD at a party at Brian Epstein's house — leading to a nightmarish experience in which she saw her husband transform into a demonic figure, fracturing their already strained marriage.

Earlier this year, the New York Times covered the fractures that emerged in the close-knit psychedelic scene over a sexual abuse scandal that dogged an inquiry into MDMA as therapy for PTSD. A husband-wife therapy team in Canada spooned and cuddled a participant during her MDMA session. While MDMA is different to the “classic” psychedelic drugs like LSD, it can relax boundaries in the same unsettling way. After the trial ended, client and therapist began a sexual relationship.

In 2021, a student in the California Institute of Integral Studies' psychedelic therapist training program, Will Hall, came forward about sexual abuse allegedly committed by two celebrated healers, Francoise Bourzat and Aharon Grossbard.

In the 1980s, Dr. Richard Ingrasci positioned himself as a trusted guide into altered states. He built a sterling reputation through research publications and mainstream media appearances, even testifying to Congress in 1985 that MDMA had a “low potential for abuse” and should remain legal. But in 1989, his photo appeared on the Boston Globe's front page with a chilling headline: “Therapist accused of sex abuse of clients.” According to Psymposia, multiple troubling abuse allegations were leveled — including by one woman who attempted suicide in the aftermath — but charges were dropped after Ingrasci surrendered his medical license.

But perhaps psychiatrist Sidney Cohen came closest to understanding what had really happened to the Huxleys when he wrote that “LSD does nothing specific … it springs the latch of disinhibition.” The drug hadn't created these currents; it had simply made them impossible to ignore. It changed forever how three generations of Britain's most celebrated intellectual family would understand themselves and each other.

about the psychedelic experience

They beat cancer. Then they got hit with massive bills

When most people think about cancer, they imagine the physical toll that it takes: weeks of chemo or radiation treatment, or multiple surgeries and visits to various specialists.

What often gets lost in the shuffle are the financial ramifications. Because whether you survive cancer or not, the diagnosis is often an express ticket to Bankruptcy-ville. In fact, about 25% of cancer patients either lose their homes to foreclosure or go bankrupt.

Lynn Reublinger, a school teacher with metastatic breast cancer, has a spouse who helps cover the bills that come with her treatment. But she knows if she were single, life would look very different.

“I have a lot of friends online and they are in that situation, and usually they have to have a GoFundMe to help them,” she said.

Study links 22 pesticides to cancer

How cancer impacts your finances

Finding the right doctor, choosing a treatment plan and deciding which type of surgery are among the first thoughts after a cancer diagnosis.

Unfortunately, any of those options can impact your ability to work. And even if you’re able to keep your job under the Family and Medical Leave Act, you may wind up needing to take an unpaid leave of absence.

Surviving cancer can leave you with lifelong problems that can hinder your ability to work. A survey found that only about half of cancer survivors work full-time. Even those who have been cancer-free for years still report working less and taking more sick days than those who were never diagnosed.

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And since about 45% of those diagnosed with cancer are of working age, there’s a huge group of cancer patients whose working years are heavily impacted.

Cancer survivor Mollie Kallen says a caregiver is often needed to help patients through treatment, surgeries and doctor visits.

Reublinger says when she needs to travel for treatment, her husband has to take time off work to take her.

“If the roles were reversed, it would be a real problem for me,” she said.

The cost of cancer treatment

While some types of treatment are covered under health insurance plans, more experimental drugs or treatments are often excluded. Some prescriptions can cost thousands of dollars per month, leading some patients to fundraise online — or worse, go without.

Kallen, cancer survivor and upcoming author of “It’s Not About Me — How To Be Your Own Advocate Through Cancer,” estimates that her cancer journey has cost her about $10,000. Luckily, she says, she had good insurance that covered much of her care, including the three months she needed round-the-clock care after a bone marrow transplant.

Some prescriptions can cost thousands of dollars per month, leading some patients to fundraise online — or worse, go without

Kallen knows that her experience was out of the ordinary and that most people can easily spend that much in just a single year of cancer treatment. The biggest determining factor of cost? What kind of insurance coverage you have.

“The bottom line is that people don’t know what their insurance is until they have to use it,” Kallen said.

Kallen says one of the biggest things people may not realize is that if you can’t work because of your cancer, you will have to either pay for COBRA or buy private insurance. Depending on your family’s finances, you may also qualify for Medicaid. And if you were the insurance-holder for your family, that can also impact your finances.

In Kallen’s case, COBRA cost about $3,000 a month, an amount that is out of reach for many families.

The costs can continue after cancer

Many people don’t realize that even if your cancer is in remission, you may still have cancer-related expenses. This might include medications or treatments to prevent the cancer from recurring. You may also need imaging, bloodwork or other procedures on a regular basis.

“They definitely go down, but the costs are still there,” Kallen said.

"I’m at the point where I’m trying to look at my finances to find more money for these integrative services because they really do help"

If you end up partially or completely disabled after your diagnosis, your future earnings will take a dive. This can cause a huge ripple, affecting how much you can save for retirement.

Reublinger, who hosts the “It’s the Company We Keep” podcast, says her cancer affects her every day. She’s had to take a leave of absence since she can no longer stand for more than 15 minutes at a time. Many of the extra treatments and services that help her feel better — various supplements, massage and acupuncture — aren’t fully covered by insurance.

“There are so many things that are so good for you that cost a lot of money,” she said. “I’m at the point where I’m trying to look at my finances to find more money for these integrative services because they really do help.”

about personal finance

Elevate your munchies: A food lover’s guide to 4/20 cannabis cravings

When Matt Bellassai appears in a TikTok video, visibly stoned and wielding a spatula, it’s not your typical munchies montage. The comedian’s “Baked Baking” series, which features Bellassai preparing intricate desserts while delightfully elevated, has racked up millions of views — and perhaps just as many cravings. It’s a jubilant rejection of the guilt-laden connotations often associated with cannabis and food. Instead of shame, there’s joy. Instead of instant noodles, pâte à choux.

That shift reflects a broader cultural evolution. As of early 2025, medical marijuana is legal in 38 states and Washington, D.C., while 24 states allow recreational use. The legal cannabis market is projected to reach $76.39 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research.

Alongside legalization has come a culinary renaissance — one where cannabis and cuisine are increasingly intertwined. “Munchies” once meant hastily melted cheese over cornflakes (surprisingly good, to be honest). Now, it means saffron-infused honey, cannabutter croissants or carefully paired terpenes and tasting menus.

How pot brownies came to reign as “the OG edible”

“The biological relationship that people have with both food and cannabis — and the cannabis culture of stereotypically being associated with creativity, happiness and enjoyment — creates a perfect storm for the cannabis munchie subculture to explode,” said Tommy Verderame, a longtime grower and now brand manager for Trulieve Cannabis Corporation.

Verderame recalled a visit from his 85-year-old grandfather, who stopped in Arizona en route to Las Vegas. Before heading to a local Italian restaurant, Verderame offered him a low-dose THC/CBD capsule.

Cannabis dinner with Trulieve Cannabis Corporation (Trulieve Cannabis Corporation)“We’re sitting outside on a beautiful, but warm late October evening and the patio is jumping. I can tell he’s feeling good,” Verderame said. “He’s cracking jokes and engaging with the waitress, just loving life.” Then came the lasagna, which disappeared in a flash. “I knew this was an elevated experience for him when he said it was the best lasagna he’d ever had. For an 85-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut, an epicenter of Italian cuisine, to say this — he must’ve been high.”

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While cannabis may heighten appetite, it also enhances the entire eating experience. “When THC binds to our CB1 receptors, your hypothalamus gets activated, dopamine gets released and your olfactory sensitivity is heightened, “ Verderame explained. “So essentially, the mind and body are saying, ‘Bring it on.’”

This piece is a celebration of that amplified connection: a guide for those who savor both food and cannabis, offering inspiration, recommendation, and the tools to take your next meal — or high, or both — to another level.

Sweet snacks

Handcrafted Chocolate – Edibles work better and faster when paired with a fat. Instead of a spoonful of peanut butter, enjoy an indulgent Handcrafted Chocolate. My favorite is the Mango Passionfruit Black Sesame Bar. It’s gooey, the flavors all stand out, yet are completely balanced and it’s such a decadent treat. Handcrafted Chocolates also (read as: primarily) offers beautiful, hand-painted chocolate truffles filled with a variety of delicious, inventive flavors.

Sugar Plum Chocolate Covered Potato Chips – Sweet and salty really go hand in hand, especially when you’re toasty. Sugar Plum hand-dips rippled potato chips in milk and dark chocolate, though you can choose just dark chocolate, which was my preference. The chocolate is thick and sweet, but the entire snack isn’t dipped, leaving some salty chip exposed. They also have chocolate-covered popcorn!

Brownie Points Baby Brownies – Bite-sized brownies. Twenty-four flavors. Zero regrets. These chewy, rich mini brownies are perfectly portioned for late-night cravings, and the individual packaging makes them easy to stash in your bag — or next to your bed. They’re the ideal sweet treat when you want a little bit of everything.

Tamalitoz Chilli Pops Chamoy – These aren’t your childhood lollipops. Born in a small Mexico City candy shop and inspired by traditional Mexican flavors, these pops are an explosion of spicy, sweet and tangy. Swirls of coconut, tamarind, chamoy and cucumber are dusted with lime chili flakes, creating a deeply complex candy experience.

Zabar’s Mini Black and White Cookies – Everyone loves a good black-and-white cookie: dense but soft, cake-like, with its signature half-chocolate, half-vanilla icing and roughly palm-sized proportions. But Zabar’s mini versions make a compelling case for downsizing — the smaller format somehow delivers a better bite, with a more balanced ratio of icing to cake. If you’re ordering online, be sure to get some bagels, too.

Cannabis on-the-go

Dogwalkers Cherry Maui Wowie – Tiny prerolls aren’t usually my go-to, but when you’re on the move—or short on time—the Cherry Maui Wowie minis from Dogwalkers hit a sweet spot. Each .35g preroll comes in a pack of three, neatly tucked into a portable container that’s easy to reach for when you want a quick, low-commitment smoke.

Hi-Snaps – Need a quick boost? Hi-Snaps offer a portable, discreet, and genuinely clever way to take the edge off, with microdoses you can fully control. As the name suggests, each one is a slim packet you snap in half over a cold (or warm, but not hot) beverage, releasing 5 milligrams of hemp-derived THC alongside 5 milligrams of CBD. They ship nationwide, which makes them an easy add-to-cart for curious first-timers and seasoned microdosers alike.

STIIIZY 40’s Blue Dream 2G Blunt – I was intrigued when I first came across STIIIZY’s 40’s 2G infused blunts—and quickly fell in love. They’re heavy hitters, full stop, and that’s before you factor in the size. The flower is infused with live resin, wrapped in hemp, and dusted in kief, which sounds like a lot because it is. Still, they burn beautifully (pun intended). Blue Dream — a sativa-leaning hybrid, and very much my speed — is fruit-forward and delivers a bright, buoyant high. If you’d rather roll your own, STIIIZY also offers its infused 40’s flower in 3.5- and 7-gram loose formats.

Encore Espresso Caramel – I often enjoy edibles for the effect rather than the flavor, as I often find them to have an unpleasant aftertaste. But Encore’s Espresso Caramels left me absolutely smacked beyond anything I expected for how much I took, and most importantly, they taste lovely. They are 10 milligrams, each but — at least for me — felt like they pack a much larger punch.

RYTHM Blue Dream Liquid Diamonds Vape – RYTHM’s all-in-one disposable liquid diamonds vape fits nicely in your palm without announcing your indulgence to everyone around you. Strain-specific, in my case, one of my favorites, Blue Dream, is infused with cannabis-derived terpenes and live THCa crystals for a powerful combination that’s certainly enjoyable.

Muha Meds Frosty Mint Blueberry Infused Prerolls – For menthol lovers, try the Frosty Mint Blueberry infused prerolls from Muha Meds. While I personally find mint a borderline repugnant flavor, I know it has a devoted following—especially among cigarette smokers who may appreciate it here, too. Each pack includes five joints, just over half a gram apiece, infused with live resin and coated in kief. They’re a solid, on-the-go option with a flavor profile that, if it’s your thing, really leans in.

Easy (elevated) meals

Algea Cooking Club Roasted Garlic Oil – Sometimes it’s hard enough to get off the couch when the munchies hit, let alone cook something from scratch. In those moments, a bottle of roasted garlic oil and a loaf of bread will absolutely save you. This one smells as good as it tastes—deeply savory, a little sweet—and makes an ideal dipping oil. Munchies: handled. It’s also excellent drizzled over salads, used to sear steak, or tossed into a quick vegetable stir-fry.

Toom – Lebanon’s beloved garlic condiment, toom, is as versatile as it is addictive. A fluffy emulsion of garlic, oil, salt, and lemon juice, it’s naturally vegan and gluten-free. The packaged version I tried was milder than what I’ve made at home or had in restaurants, but still plenty flavorful. Scoop it up with pita chips, swipe it onto sandwiches—or, honestly, eat it by the spoonful.

Pair with: Dialed In Rosin Drops turn anything into an edible. Each small bottle contains 100 mg of strain-specific rosin; the Max Volume hybrid pairs especially well with Toom, thanks to its bright, citrusy notes. Add a capful (or more) directly to your container and get snacking—you’ll be elevated before you know it.

St Pierre’s Belgian Waffles – Sweet, buttery, and crunchy Belgian waffles that you can buy at the grocery store and pop in the toaster to enjoy? Yes, please! St. Pierre’s offers four varieties: butter, chocolate chip, cinnamon and maple, all with crunchy sugar pearls that almost melt and burst in your mouth as you eat the waffle. It’s not gourmet, but it hits just right. Add some crispy chicken tenders and you have easy chicken and waffles.

Delicious spreads

Johnsonville Original Fully Cooked Breakfast Sausage – Craving breakfast when the munchies hit? Johnsonville’s original breakfast sausages come fully cooked and ready when you are. A quick 30 seconds in the microwave, and you’re set. They also make frozen, sandwich-sized patties, which makes building a proper breakfast sandwich feel almost too easy.

Pair with: Benevolent Bakery’s original infused pancake mix is a natural match. Just add water and get it on the griddle. It’s currently available at dispensaries in Oklahoma, with hemp-derived options expected to be available online soon.

Pasturebird Chicken Wings – Grilling steak has its place, but chicken wings? That’s the move for a slow, sunny afternoon spent hovering near the grill. Pasturebird’s pasture-raised chicken is, as the name promises, a step above your standard grocery-store wings — more flavorful, a little more satisfying, and made for this exact scenario.

Pair with: Now here’s the fun part. When the chicken is done, slather it in Sanders BBQ Supply Co Sticky Icky Peach Wing Sauce and let it caramelize for a few minutes over the heat. Infused with 25 mg of THC, it turns your wings into something a little more… transportive. Sticky, smoky, and sweet, it’s basically what wing dreams are made of. Available at nuEra Cannabis dispensaries.

Build-your-own munchies moments

(Blue Ribbon / Goldbelly ) Blue Ribbon Special Sushi Kit

Tex-Ethiopian Whole Smoked Brisket – I had the pleasure of visiting Smoke‘n Ash BBQ during a recent visit to Fort Worth and haven’t stopped thinking about their incredible Ethiopian-style Texas-smoked brisket. It’s seasoned with the traditional salt and pepper, along with berbere, rosemary, garlic and ginger. As it turns out, it’s available for nationwide shipping on Goldbelly. Simply defrost the whole brisket, slice it, and vacuum-seal it in small portions to enjoy whenever the urge hits you, if a whole brisket is just too much for what you had in mind.

Benevolent Bakery Double Chocolate Brownie Mix – Brownies and cannabis are a quintessential pairing. Benevolent Bakery makes enjoying a good home-baked option easy with a cake mix that comes already infused with 100, 250 or 1,000 milligrams, depending on the state. Just add water to the mix and bake, or dress it up with a variety of recipes they offer. For the easiest way to take them up several levels, swap the water for espresso! Available at select dispensaries in New York, Arkansas, Montana, Missouri, and Oklahoma, or online with hemp for national shipping.

H&H Bagels, Cream Cheese & Nova Scotia Salmon – A bagel and lox might be the ultimate edible-era brunch. This kit from H&H delivers the chewy New York-style bagels, thick schmears of cream cheese and perfectly salty slices of Nova Scotia salmon. Add some sliced tomato, avocado and red onion if you’re feeling fancy—and eat it slowly, because every bite is worth it.

Force of Nature Venison Tomahawk Steak – You’ve heard of a beef tomahawk. But a venison tomahawk? Leaner, more complex, and richly flavorful, this bone-in beauty brings that dramatic presentation with a little extra edge. It’s not always easy to find, but Force of Nature delivers straight to your door. Go ahead and get two—you won’t want to share.

Blue Ribbon Special Sushi Kit from Goldbelly – Sure, you could order sushi from your usual takeout spot. But this kit from Blue Ribbon turns dinner into a whole vibe. You’ll get everything prepped and ready to roll (literally): cooked rice, spicy tuna and scallop, sashimi-grade salmon, tuna, shrimp, yellowtail, blocks of crispy fried rice, plus sauces and fixings. The directions are simple, but you can freestyle — I opted for handrolls instead, but no matter how you slice it, the sushi tastes pretty good and makes the perfect stoner date night.

Want to level up with your own rice and fish slicing? Try the Ichiban Home Sushi Kit from Honolulu Fish Co. for an upscale alternative.

Glassware

The Vase by Mantelpiece – Forget about hiding your smoking pieces. Get The Vase by Mantelpiece instead. Versatile and beautiful, it can be a true flower vase or a bong, depending on the day. It’s made to be displayed and has separate water chambers for its dual uses: flowers and flower.

Pair with: Try the Vase with (the) Essence Forum Cut Cookies, an earthy and sweet sativa with purply nugs. Available in 3.5-gram resealable mylar bags in many recreational markets.

NWTN Home Highball Hand Pipe – NWTN says their hand-blown smoking pieces are inspired by heirloom glassware, and I would certainly agree. The new Highball Hand Pipe is almost too pretty to smoke with, but it’s truly perfect. The bowl is exactly the right size for a comfortable session without the flower tasting too burnt, it fits well in your hand with a comfortable weight, and it’s available in multiple colors; orchid is my favorite. Put it in a sealable plastic bag with salt and isopropyl alcohol, and give it a few shakes to make cleaning easy.

Pair with: Savvy’s unfortunately-named B52 Bomber flower is from the Durban Poison and Blue Dream lineages, both excellent strains and some of my favorites. It offers a more budget-conscious experience without significant sacrifice.

Magritte Pipe by AMITHA – A glass pipe is often functional, but it can absolutely be a beautiful home decor piece as well. The Magritte pipe is a perfect example. It’s a sculptural glass pipe that sits atop a silver, or brass, glass base when not in use. It’s creatively designed to be used with or without water, pulls nicely and is simple to clean.

Stündenglass Kompact Gravity Infuser – The Stündenglass is my favorite cannabis “toy” hands down. It’s a gravity bong meets hookah meets hourglass, and allows for serious and delicious rips. But the full-size one is big and hard to bring with you to friends’ places and gatherings, despite my infatuation. I recently tested the Kompact version, toting it along to meet some friends at Canni Infusion Bar, a cannabis lounge in Milwaukee. Not only was it a showstopper, literally, it was so much fun to use, easy to transport thanks to a carrying case, and it also provided for smaller rips for first timers or smokers that prefer to build up their high.

Pair with: Grown Rogue Triple Beam flower is a gorgeous purple hybrid from Apples & Bananas and Hellcat #15 lineage. It’s an earthy and fruity hybrid that offers a balanced experience perfect for the Stündenglass.

Cones for entertaining

Smoke Temple Cross Cone – The cross joint — three ends, one very memorable experience — is about as iconic as it gets when it comes to group smoking. It’s also easier to pull off than it looks, thanks to Daysavers’ ready-to-fill cones. Just be sure you’ve got a second set of hands nearby. Lighting all three ends at once is very much a team effort.

RAW Classic Emperador Cones – RAW makes a lot of cones in many different sizes, but my favorite for sharing, by far, are the Emperador cones. Eight inches long and offering a 4-gram (or more) capacity, it is somehow the perfect size to pack comfortably. Not to mention, it holds up well while you’re passing it around, staying lit and avoiding the dreaded canoeing.

Cannabis gear and storage

(CTOAN) Sticker sheet

Buddy Flowers Fresh Kit – If your bud storage needs an upgrade, the Buddy Flowers Fresh Kit might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a high-tech twist on the classic mason jar, using a silicone lid with a degassing valve and an AirGone Argon Gas Canister to flush out oxygen. This results in fresher flower that last longer without losing potency or flavor.

Judd Joint Case by AMITHA – Tired of smushed joints or plastic tubes? The Judd Joint Case from AMITHA provides a classy way to store your joints and a few cards, slipping right into your pocket or bag until you need it. Available in silver or brass to suit your personal style.

CTOAN’s Lighter Holder Keychain – Never lose your lighter again with CTOAN’s creative and unique 3D printed lighter holder keychains in the perfect green for the holiday. Shaped like the human form and available in four body types, CTOAN’s designs feature rolls and butt dimples, top surgery scars, and stretch marks. They fit perfectly in the palm of your hand and include a lobster clasp for ease of use. Check out CTOAN’s munchies and cannabis themed sticker sheet while you’re at it.

Stash Case and Lighter Duo – For a transportation solution of a smaller variety, you’ll want Smoke Honest’s Stash Case and Lighter Duo. Taking up about as much space as the average lighter, it’s so much more than that. The lighter is hollow with room for a single joint and it’s windproof allowing you to enjoy that joint on the go without stress.

Cannabis tech

Vessel Compass Rise – If you’re tired of the flimsy vape batteries from your local headshop, the Vessel Compass Rise is a welcome upgrade. Sleek and comfortable in the hand, it’s equipped with a USB-C charging port for easy recharging and dependable performance—ideal for leveling up your game.

For a budget-friendly alternative with some features you wouldn’t expect at this price point, like a USB-C charging port and a digital display, check out the G Pen 510 Original for just $12.95!

Pair with: Legend Green Crack Vape Cartridge is a half-gram sativa which, in my experience, helps with the blowout some carts experience, since you finish it off before it has a chance to stop working. The strain enhances creativity and boosts energy while offering citrus notes from the added terpenes.

Puffco Pivot – Whether you’re new to dabs or a seasoned enthusiast, the Puffco Pivot offers a sleek, portable upgrade from the classic torch-and-rig setup. This pen-style vaporizer is discreet and easy to use, with precision heating that delivers smooth, flavorful hits—perfect for dabbing at home or on the move. It’s ideal for those who want potency without the production.

For a much more premium experience (at a serious price point), consider the DaVinci Electric Quartz Rig. It’s chock-full of technology, water-cooled, and touchscreen-enabled, but less portable and discreet, and has a lot of settings to play with.

Pair with: Kind Tree Tangieland Live Resin Sugar is a top-shelf selection for dabbing, since Live Sugar is made from fresh-frozen flower, which is terpene-rich and retains the strain’s flavor profile. Tangieland, a cross between Tangie and Candyland, is citrus-forward and can also be added to joints and bowls.

GermGuardian FLT420B Cannabis Smoke Filter – Tired of waking up to yesterday’s smoke hanging stale in the air? GermGuardian offers a new HEPA filter that’s specifically designed to remove cannabis odors, in addition to everything else. I can’t say I fully understand how it works, but I can say it seems to work. We’ve had an air filter running pretty much nonstop for a long time, and despite its much higher price point, it wasn’t nearly as good at cleaning the odor left behind from a serious sesh. Compatible with the AC4880 Tower Air Purifier.

LĒVO II+ – Making edibles at home used to be a messy, smelly, high-effort affair. The LĒVO II+ changes the game. This countertop infusion machine automates every step—drying, decarboxylation, and infusion—letting you infuse oils, butters, honeys, and more without the usual guesswork. A built-in herb pod keeps plant material separate (no need to strain), while the replaceable carbon filter helps keep odors at bay. The connected LĒVO app adds even more ease, with step-by-step recipes, guided instructions, and a potency calculator to help you dial in your ideal dosage.

Pair with: You don’t necessarily want to use the prettiest nugs or premium flower to make edibles. It would just be a waste. Legend Blue Lemonade Flower Littles, a sativa with fruity and citrus notes, is an excellent option. It’s a budget-conscious flower in little nugs, perfect for making edibles.

Handheld vaporizers

Tabletop and cartridge-based vaporizers are old news, even for occasional users. But handheld dry herb vaporizers offer a notable step up in flavor, convenience and discretion. Designed for life on the go, these devices combine portability with more control over your experience.

Storz & Bickel VENTY Vaporizer – For the cannabis connoisseur, the VENTY delivers best-in-class technology from a trusted name that’s been in the game for over two decades. It offers precision control over temperature and airflow, with USB-C charging for portability. While slightly bulky and encased in plastic, it’s a powerhouse built for performance, not looks. For a smaller, more budget-conscious version with far less customization, and my personal preference, try the VEAZY instead.

Pair with: Vaporizing flower is a completely different experience than smoking it, and really allows you to taste the nuance and flavor in a way you just don’t when you light up. Try the top shelf Verano Reserve Strawberry Cough using the Venty (or better yet, Volcano Hybrid) and then roll up a joint for a cannabis flavor tasting experience. Strawberry Cough is an earthy and berry-forward sativa that is uplifting, flavorful, and energetic.

PAX Four – The PAX Four is the successor to the Plus. It’s the simplest dry herb vaporizer to refill between sessions, and it’s no longer recommended to pack it tight. Thanks to a new hybrid heating system, it creates larger clouds than the Plus, and a redesign allows for easier loading. The updated charging system, now with USB-C, makes it easier to charge on the go. The downsides: Longer heating time, a slightly smaller oven than before, and it shuts off a little too quickly if you forget about it. Still, in a late-night session when ease trumps everything, the PAX Four is a dependable choice.

POTV Lobo – The Lobo finds a sweet spot between discretion, experience and value. It supports a wide range of accessories—from glass mouthpieces to bubblers and dosing capsules. The capsules themselves can be a little finicky, so if fuss-free is your priority, you may prefer the PAX. That said, pre-loading the capsules ahead of time makes for seamless use — and extra batteries mean you can keep the session going without interruption.

Ashtray or home decor?

Houseplant Side Table Ashtray – Add a practical and elegant piece of decor to your home with Houseplant’s glazed porcelain and stainless steel ashtray side table. It’s a beautiful and well-made piece that can also hold your beverages, joints, and, of course, ashes, preventing them from inevitably getting knocked over all the time (ask me how I know). Available in a beautiful green, as well as black, orange, and blue to match any home.

Rogue Paq Poppy Party Ashtray – The ultimate host’s ashtray, the Poppy Party Ashtray looks like a beautiful poppy, in polished brass or nickel-plated finishes. But when you pull out the petals, they transform into individual mini ashtrays, and the stamens become pokers or packers. It’s an elegant way to turn the humble ashtray into a dinner party centerpiece.

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Sticky, sweet, spicy, perfect: The ultimate holiday ham glaze guide

When I was growing up, my father was obsessed with Krakus ham. My mom would make it every Easter and New Year’s Day, spiked with whole cloves and topped with a handful of brown sugar. After some time in the oven, perfuming the entire house, the ham would emerge crispy and crackly on top—a perfect interplay of umami, sweetness, and spice.

While I no longer eat ham, that memory suffused the warm, celebratory holidays of my childhood.

For some people, ham is a non-negotiable centerpiece of the holiday tablescape. Whether spiral-cut, smoked, bone-in, boneless, Krakus or otherwise, it holds an important place in the realm of special occasion meals—and for good reason.

This carrot cake has grown up. Serve it to your loved ones this spring

So when those days roll around, it goes without saying: you don’t want a “mid” ham, the kind your guests push around on their plates with polite disinterest. You want a ham with presence: With a lacquered crust, a resonant aroma, and a glaze that turns it into something more than the sum of its parts.

Most supermarket hams are already fully cooked, which means your job isn’t to roast so much as to gild the lily. This is where the glaze comes in. Some lean into sweet-on-sweet, others gravitate toward sweet-and-sour or spicy-and-sweet combinations. The classic pineapple-and-cherry garnish still has its fans, but today’s glazes go beyond tradition — honey, molasses, fruit preserves, hot sauces, vinegars. A great glaze enrobes and enlivens the meat. It’s the ham’s final suit and it should be tailored accordingly.

There are countless directions a glaze can go, depending on your flavor preferences and what you already have in your kitchen. The key is striking a balance: too spicy and it overpowers the meat; too sweet and it risks hardening into a candy shell. But when it’s right, a good glaze can transform a humble ham into a holiday showstopper.

Start with something savory. Pantry staples like Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, or a splash of vinegar can ground your glaze, giving it the depth and acidity it needs to balance the sweetness. Even a spoonful of soy sauce or balsamic can add complexity without dominating.

Sweeteners, of course, are foundational. Brown sugar is the classic, lending a toasty, molasses-like note. But don’t overlook honey, agave, white sugar, maple syrup or even sorghum if you want something with a bit more edge. These ingredients don’t just sweeten—they caramelize, forming that coveted glossy, crackly crust.

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Fruit is another natural partner. You can thin out jams or preserves—apricot, cherry, fig, even marmalade—or simmer down fresh or frozen fruit into a sticky glaze. A handful of blueberries, strawberries or even rhubarb cooked down with bourbon and a touch of chili flake before being strained or puréed makes for a rich, violet-toned sauce that’s both vibrant and unexpected.

For those who like a little heat, there’s no shortage of options. Chili powders, red pepper flakes, chipotle in adobo, even jalapeño can all bring a slow-building warmth. Just tread lightly if you’re feeding a crowd—spice tolerance can vary wildly.

Texture matters, too. A great glaze doesn’t have to be smooth. Think of chili crisp: it’s not just spicy, it’s crunchy and layered. You can take that idea and run with it—maybe a glaze that incorporates whole cherries, or one made from reduced pomegranate juice that finishes the ham with a jewel-like sheen.

And finally, spice. Cloves are the old-school favorite (and for good reason—they pierce through all the richness). But you can also branch out with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, or cardamom to give your glaze a slightly more modern edge.

Tips for a Perfect Finish

Cook time: Even if your ham is pre-cooked, you’ll want to warm it through and develop a browned, caramelized crust. That might take more than 2 hours, depending on size—so plan accordingly.
Glaze timing: Apply glaze during the final 30 minutes or so of cooking. Any earlier, and the sugars might burn. Reapply glaze every 10 minutes or so to build up a beautifully sticky exterior.
Avoid burning: Steer clear of solid glaze elements that might scorch, like garlic cloves. A sprinkle of garlic powder works better.
Score the ham: Cutting shallow slashes across the surface creates more surface area for caramelization and helps the glaze seep into every nook.
Foil or no foil?: Some wrap their ham in foil to prevent drying out, but this can hinder the glaze’s ability to caramelize. Consider roasting uncovered for at least part of the cook time.
Reduce your glaze: Simmering the glaze on the stovetop before brushing it on concentrates the flavors and creates a more luscious finish.
Adjust for scale: Whether you’re feeding four or fourteen, tailor your glaze quantities accordingly. Some like their ham thickly lacquered, others prefer a more restrained finish.

A good glaze is a good glaze—no matter what you’re coating. But on a holiday ham, it can become something almost mythic: a little sticky, a little spicy, a little sweet. And absolutely unforgettable.

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“The Ugly Stepsister” rewrites “Cinderella” as a grotesque and darkly funny feminist fable

“The Ugly Stepsister,” written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt, takes its cue from “Cinderella,” but this inspired body horror comedy is no Disney film. This fairy tale is both Grimm and grim — and not unlike “The Substance” in the main character’s quest for beauty at any cost.

Elvira (Lea Myren) dreams of marrying Prince Julian (Isac Calmroth) even before he knows who she is. When her mother Rebekka’s (Ane Dahl Torp) new husband Otto (Ralph Carlsson) dies on their wedding day, the family’s assets are seized. The only way out of poverty is for Elvira to marry a wealthy man. But with braces on her teeth and a nose in need of rhinoplasty, getting Prince Julian to notice her at the Ball, where he will choose his bride, is going to be difficult. But Rebekka is determined to live well, and rather than bury her husband, she leaves his corpse to rot and invests in Dr. Esthétique (Adam Lundgren, marvelously campy) to improve Elvira’s looks. The faint of heart will want to close their eyes when he sews on eyelashes in one of several squirm-inducing sequences.

"The Substance" explores the dark side of society's beauty obsession

“Beauty is pain,” Dr. Esthétique explains, and “The Ugly Stepsister” gets more violent and disgusting as Elvira gets more exquisite (with the help of a nasty and very hungry tapeworm). Blichfeldt films all this with an unblinking eye, satirizing the lengths women go to in order to reach the standards of beauty they feel they must achieve.

“The Ugly Stepsister” won the Audience Award at the recent Overlook Film Festival, and it's best seen in the theater with a crowd, especially during its more potent moments. Blichfeldt spoke with Salon during Overlook about making her delightfully disgusting debut feature.

Since this is your feature film debut, can you discuss how you came to make films?

Cinema came quite late in my life. Many filmmakers who are movie buffs have been lovers of movies since they were kids. My family was all about books. I grew up in Northern Norway, far away from anything pop culture. We got our first VHS and DVD player when I was 13. When I started watching movies, I fell in love with “Amélie,” and became obsessed with it because it is a movie that plays with form — music, locations, camera movements — all things that are cinema. When I did drama in high school, I moved from home and rented films. Struck by Nicole Kidman’s face, I rented “Dogville” at the age of 16, and that was shocking to me in the best way. I thought, “If this is cinema, I want in.” I started doing films after school at a youth center. I understood I didn’t want to be in front of the camera, I wanted to be behind it.

What inspired you to retell “Cinderella” as a body horror comedy?

I didn’t choose “Cinderella,” or the stepsister, the story of “Cinderella” through the stepsister chose me. It was an idea I had in a creative nap. I envisioned a chubby, beautiful woman struggling with the beauty ideal. And in this nap, I envisioned her as Cinderella, fitting the shoe, to my surprise. And still in a dream state, she sees that the shoe is full of blood. Of course, I’m not Cinderella. I am the stepsister. When I woke up, I was in shock. I could relate to those feelings of shame and despair she felt when she realized she was the stepsister. She tried to fit in, and she failed. But it was this overlooked, ridiculed character that I saw myself in. I had never been in her shoes before — pun intended — and that was a great revelation to me. From that moment, I knew it was going to be a body horror. That got me really excited because I had gotten into [the genre] a few years prior and have totally fallen head over heels for everything body horror. The balance of campy fairy tale, beautiful dresses, body horror, and gore — that mixture was what I really wanted to play with to make a cinematic experience that would lure people in and have a great time, but also make sure that it was carrying my message.

Lea Myren in "The Ugly Stepsister" (Lukasz Bak/IFC). The film has a very distinct tone, from its 1970s European style imagery to fantasy sequences to some painfully funny and gruesome episodes of horror. Can you discuss your approach to the material?

When I was developing the script, people were nagging me about it being a modern fairy tale, and why I did not set the film “today.” But that is not what this is about. What I found in this fairy tale is that the stepsister is the most relatable character and has been for thousands of years. I knew I wanted it to feel like an old fairy tale to keep that perspective and even trick a less literate audience into thinking that this is maybe the real story — hack other people’s relationship to the fairy tale.

"What I found in this fairy tale is that the stepsister is the most relatable character and has been for thousands of years."

We have a Czech version of the fairy tale called “Three Wishes for Cinderella.” It is a tradition in Norway and Germany to see this film every Christmas. It is beautiful in its uncanny realism. So many fairy tales today are so glossy and unreal that they don’t have a real impact. I wanted to give my film the grittiness of reality, but still keep it heightened and fantastic. So, through that movie, I dive into the ‘70s, especially in Eastern Europe. I found this amazing “Beauty and the Beast” version, and erotic fairy tales. It is the uncanny mixture of campiness and reality. The ‘70s works as a lens that makes sure our tastes and fashion of today are obscured when we look into the 1800s.

Your film is a dark comedy of manners about propriety — the finishing school, but also the prince and his friends — as well as about how characters who are “othered” behave. What observations are you making about society and how it has or hasn’t changed over the centuries?

There is a lot of two-facedness out there. There is a lot of doublespeak, that as women, we have never been as emancipated and free to do what we want as we are today. Hopefully, we will keep moving in that direction because the winds are turning in our world right now, which is really scary. As a young woman, I was told that I am free and can choose to do what I want with my body, but what I am trying to say is that although legally we are emancipated in a lot of the world, our culture is still dragging with it ideas that date back thousands of years. It is only just 100 years since women got the right to vote, and before that, they were owned by men. The only way to get somewhere in life was to please the male gaze as an object of desire, to give birth, and have sex. We have not dealt with women’s historical objectification in our culture. We are not aware, or it is not part of our conversations about the struggles we are facing with the tyranny of beauty. It’s not that I think we should become like men, or behave like men, but we have to bring that into the conversation.

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You are certainly commenting on beauty as Elvira undergoes a series of painful procedures to change her outside to match her inside. Do you think your film will change minds about how we strive for beauty ideas?

I really hope so. I think the big realization I had quite early was that almost all girls are fed this princess fantasy, and this is what you dream — to become a beautiful woman some rich handsome man will choose. This is putting our value in our looks, and that’s what you should strive for: to be this beautiful, gracious woman. But I realized there is only one Cinderella. There is only one ideal. It’s changing all the time, but most of us will not fit that shoe. We are stepsisters. I hope the film makes people understand that it is ridiculous. There is only one Kate Middleton who can marry the prince. The rest of us have to find something else to do in life, and not in our looks. If you put your value in your looks, you are less free to play with it and change it up and do what you want. I hope that is what people take away.

“Beauty is Pain” is a key theme here. Elvira goes to several extremes to improve her appearance. Can you explain how and why you came up with the eyelash sequence, which you shot in excruciating close-up, and the truly disgusting tapeworm? How far was too far?

I didn’t know how far was too far. What, for me, separates splatter gore from body horror is that body horror always carries meaning. I needed it to be integrated into the story. I needed the story to deserve it. The different procedures, like the sewing of eyelashes, I think that’s an urban legend. It is based on research. It doesn’t have to be totally real because it is a fairy tale, but I wanted folks to not be sure. It was based on a notice in a late 1800s newspaper, which said that the newest fashion in Paris is sewing in eyelashes with a needle and thread and using cocaine for pain relief. I thought that was a gruesome and cool idea. It reminds us of what women are doing now. It was also important to make an eyelash extension that had a different feel to it — the Twiggy ‘60s thing — so if anyone had [sewn] eyelashes, it didn’t feel like I was pointing at them.

"There is only one Kate Middleton who can marry the prince. The rest of us have to find something else to do in life."

The tapeworm was also from research. I wanted her transformation to be about weight and eating, which is part of many women’s struggles with fitting in. The tapeworm diet was, of course, gross, but it would have felt a bit unrealized if she just took it and became skinny. I had the epiphany that what goes in must come out; I found a meaning it could carry. For me, up to the point where she [swallows] the egg, she has been the victim; people have objectified her and done stuff to her. This is the first action that she does to herself. It is a metaphor for how she internalizes the external gaze and starts self-objectifying. As the worm grows in her stomach, it eats her up metaphorically and literally from inside, which is what self-objectifying is. I knew when it needed to go out, it would be a big cathartic moment, and it needed to be shocking to see how big it had grown. It needed to become this monster. As for how far to take it, I used myself as the first audience.

Lea Myren in "The Ugly Stepsister" (Lukasz Bak/IFC), I will say that while I was unsurprised by the gruesome violence, I wasn’t expecting the graphic sex. What decisions did you make in depicting those scenes?

It was shocking to me when I realized that Cinderella was sexually active. This was a realization that made me understand her as a character beyond the archetype. She has a natural beauty, but she is a natural in everything. She has no shame. She is a woman having sex. It is not problematic or difficult. But for Elvira, everything is hard and difficult. I could relate to that. I had friends who would naturally start dating and have sex, and I was left on the side, wondering, "How do they do this?" I didn’t understand it at all. I knew Cinderella being sexually active was going to be shocking for the audience and for Elvira to see, since she doesn’t know what sex is. I wanted to describe sex that was natural, erotic and as shocking as it can be. That was a lot of fun. And that is my sense of humor — to show a vagina and a penis and show this is how it happens.

When she first sees the prince, she isn’t quite sure what she is seeing. She’s intrigued, but it’s not proper, and yet she is still aroused.

As a young woman, especially in that time, there is so much of the world that is hidden. You are not supposed to take part in that, or have those images in your head, or want eroticism. But that is a part of human nature. There is a lot of mixed emotion in these young girls. Even today. This is not part of the conversation in the narratives they are told.

The film also expresses interesting ideas about love, as many of the characters are looking for money, not necessarily romance. For Elvira, love is a fantasy, but for her stepsister, Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), who loves the stable boy, Isak (Malte Gårdinger from “Young Royals”), it is an impossibility. All the other sexual relationships seem to be transactions. Can you discuss this?

There is the theme of class in the film. We say that the “Cinderella” story is rags to riches, but in all versions, especially the European ones, she is a noble girl put into the kitchen by her wicked stepmother. It’s more riches, into the kitchen, and then to riches again. That was an important piece I wanted to remind people of. Cinderella always has class. She had a noble upbringing, was well fed and had loving parents. The stepmother is a single mom and a widow at a time in history when her only way to secure money is through her body and her sexuality, and by marrying. It is very transactional. Marriage has been that for so long. I think it is funny to put that in there. The whole marrying a prince thing has been very transactional and not so romantic.

Isac Calmroth and Lea Myren in "The Ugly Stepsister" (Lukasz Bak/IFC). Yes, look at Princess Diana.

And see how that went! That didn’t go well.

What can you say about the use of sound in the film? The tapeworm rumbling is amusing, as are the sound effects of some of the gore. On the soundtrack, you feature harp music, which is very appropriate for some scenes, but you also use anachronistic synth on the soundtrack to give the film a real vibe.

What is funny is that we pulled back a lot in the sound design of the gore. With a lot of gore sound, it was telling the audience too much and how they should feel, so it felt less horrible. I wanted the audience to lean in to be there. When the sound then comes, you are so invested, you go “Ugh!” It was fun to make it really realistic. With the music, we also went for a ‘70s feeling with the harps and synths, but in the editing, we wondered if people would understand that we know this is camp. It became a pastiche of ‘70s music and the ‘70s take on the fairy tale. We had this idea that we wanted to put some more modern music on it, so it still felt like 2025, and that there is a storyteller who knows what she is thinking about in this moment. That’s my secret language with the audience. It makes Elvira’s feelings more modern.

How does the film play in Norway? Is there a universal appetite for “The Ugly Stepsister,” or do you think the film is more of an acquired taste?

It’s in cinemas in Norway now. The arthouse 40-something audience is a bit on the fence about the grossness. But young girls are eating it up — hopefully not the tapeworms — and that for me is a dream come true. That is my number one target audience. That is everything for me.

“The Ugly Stepsister” opens April 18 nationwide.

about body horror

“The Wedding Banquet” updates a queer cult classic for a new generation, without losing its heart

It’s difficult to get excited about a remake. Even now, after years of watching brave executives hack away at the walls of the content mines with their billion-dollar pickaxes to unearth intellectual property no one could’ve imagined (or wanted), the cyclical nature of the modern movie industry is hard to get used to. No matter how often audiences demand original content, their needs are rarely met. Want to experience something new? Too bad. You’ll get “Shrek 5” where Shrek’s ogre offspring use TikTok, and you’ll like it.

But when an Oscar-winning director’s stateside breakthrough that became an essential part of countless lives and changed the direction of an entire subgenre of cinema gets remade, one has to sit up and take notice, even if their remake fatigue tells them otherwise. After all, Ang Lee’s 1993 film “The Wedding Banquet” is exceptionally special. The Taiwanese director’s second feature marked his first American theatrical release, paving the way for lighthearted queer cinema in a decade still contending with the ravages of the AIDS crisis. The film, about a bisexual Taiwanese landlord who enters a marriage of convenience with his woman tenant to quell his persistent parents, was a major success among critics and audiences. Unlike so many queer films of the time, Lee’s movie was not a sullen documentary, nor was it about HIV/AIDS or gay people who get killed or turn out to be murderers themselves. “The Wedding Banquet” was a romantic dramedy about family and love, and how difficult it can be to reconcile a breach between those two things when they are fundamentally linked.

“The Wedding Banquet” doesn’t simply slap a new coat of paint on a faded project; it finds new resonance in a classic story, setting a standard every remake of this nature should aim for.

Unlike other recent remakes like “Road House” or “The Crow,” where the bar set by the original film isn’t exactly sky-high, remaking something as beloved as “The Wedding Banquet” is a uniquely challenging task. A lot has changed for queer people over the last 32 years. You may have heard we can get legally married now. (Let’s hope that’s still true by the time you read this!) And the dynamic between the three central characters in “The Wedding Banquet” looks more like your modern-day polycule than it does an outrageously absurd farce. Those things don’t mean that queerness is universally accepted now. But our experiences have become so widely acknowledged that they necessitate a major narrative overhaul for any remake to be halfway decent.

Stop the remakes!

Happily, the new version of “The Wedding Banquet” is more than just decent, it’s a worthy companion to Lee’s original film, with as much potential impact as its progenitor. Directed by Andrew Ahn and co-written by Ahn and the original film’s co-writer James Schamus, “The Wedding Banquet” is star-studded and delightful, an amiable and intimate look at contemporary queerness and all of the intricate difficulties it poses, even in a more progressive society. The remake flips the script with intention; instead of merely swapping a gender here or adding new characters there, Ahn’s film also explores how the queer experience has changed in the last three decades — and how it hasn’t. “The Wedding Banquet” doesn’t simply slap a new coat of paint on a faded project; it finds new resonance in a classic story, setting a standard every remake of this nature should aim for.

Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran in "The Wedding Banquet" (Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street)In this iteration, Ahn casts a wide net, expanding the story from Lee’s original to further examine how queer relationships contend with Asian diaspora. Instead of one central couple, there are two, each with their own neuroses and ways of relating to one another. Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone) are a lesbian couple living together in the Pacific Northwest, while their friends Chris (Bowen Yang) and his boyfriend Min (Han Gi-chan), a Korean artist in the states on a student visa, shack up in the pair’s guest house in the garden. It’s a dream living situation for any group of queer friends, one that ensures there’s always a friendly ear close by, ready to listen when someone needs to blow off steam. And that’s happening a lot these days. Angela and Lee are trying their second round of an exhausting IVF process. Meanwhile, Chris harbors envy over Min’s artistic success, as his own creative pursuits are on pause in favor of leading bird tours around the greater Seattle area. Instead of voicing their concerns to their respective partners, Chris and Angela let their feelings stew, only venting to each other privately.

That quickly changes when Lee’s second round of IVF doesn’t take, putting even more strain on her and Angela. The couple needs to have tough conversations about whether or not to continue the process, one that they can barely afford, both financially and emotionally. And when Min’s visa nears its expiration, he proposes a solution that he thinks will work for everyone.

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To avoid being cut off by his rich, homophobic grandparents, Min suggests that he and Angela get married. Their marriage will allow him to score a green card and keep up appearances with his family, ensuring that the cash from his trust stays rolling in. In return, Min will pay for Lee’s third and final round of IVF and help support their child. Naturally, such a convoluted plan only begets more problems, particularly with Angela’s mother, May (Joan Chen), who prides herself on being the best (aka, the most public-facing) gay ally she can be. How will May possibly fill her days — and her Instagram grid — if she can’t boast about her lesbian daughter online and at local PFLAG meetings? The dread is real, but it’s nothing compared to the unexpected arrival of Min’s grandmother, Ja-Young (a terrific Youn Yuh-jung), who sees through the entire scheme.

With this revelation happening early in the film, Ahn and Schamus quickly pivot away from the expectations of a remake to confirm their intentions. They want this version of “The Wedding Banquet” to be modern and realistic, and let’s face it, no grandparent in 2025 is going to buy Lily Gladstone and Bowen Yang as a straight couple who happen to live in the guest house out back. If Ahn’s updated film kept in line with Lee’s original, it would need to restrict itself to some of that movie’s more outdated narrative elements, impeding the remake before it’d even have a chance to get going. But letting Ja-Young in on the plan from the start enables “The Wedding Banquet” to go to emotional places its predecessor could not. It’s less about how we fit into cultural traditions and more about how cultural traditions fit into our lives. That means the titular wedding banquet isn’t as realized as the original film’s. But the scenes leading up to the nuptials ask many more interesting, funny questions about life’s larger truths, rather than spending a fair amount of time watching our characters trying to make a lie seem believable.

Keeping the truth from someone might not be outright dishonesty, but it’s a rot that decays the same way, just festering at a slower pace.

To its credit, Lee’s “Wedding Banquet” was adept at imbuing humanity into what could’ve easily been a very unserious comedy. Though it’s not streaming anywhere, it’s worth seeking out, especially for its ending, which finds a beautiful intersection between tender and emotionally heavy thanks to its trio of stars. As Min, the remake’s answer to the original film’s Wai-Tung (played by Winston Chao), Han is just as dopey and lovable as his predecessor. Whereas Wai-Tung was an overserious Brooklyn landlord, Min is a lighthearted Seattle artist. Despite the personality differences between the characters, Ahn and Schamus deftly illustrate their similarities. They’re both openhearted to a fault, only lying to protect and care for the people they love.

In this updated version, Ahn probes further into that theme and to great success. “The Wedding Banquet” ponders the lengths we’ll go to to protect our loved ones from being hurt, and asks how far is too far when shielding people from the realities of life. Instead of talking openly with their partners, Chris and Angela bottle their feelings and tuck the vacuum-sealed vials in a dark corner where they’ll never be found. It’s a false idea of protection, arguably this movie’s central lie. Keeping the truth from someone might not be outright dishonesty, but it’s a rot that decays the same way, just festering at a slower pace.

Han Gi-Chan, Youn Yuh-Jung and Kelly Marie Tran in "The Wedding Banquet" (Luka Cyprian/Bleecker Street). Ahn relays this most beautifully when he pulls focus from the interpersonal chaos of Angela, Lee, Chris and Min, and diverts it to Ja-Young. With the cat out of the bag, no one has to pretend around her, but everyone still feels uncertain about how to act. She arranges for the wedding to continue as planned, if only to appease Min’s grandfather, who stayed behind in Korea. They can take ceremonial photographs, have them published in local Korean papers, and Min’s other grandparent will remain none the wiser until the day he dies. It’s a concession Min is willing to live with, but one that seems to unsettle Ja-Young.

As Ja-Young goes about her days leading up to the wedding, Ahn recalls a pivotal line from the original “Wedding Banquet,” when, during a private moment together, Wai-Tung’s father tells his partner, “I watch, I hear, I learn.” In Ahn’s film, Ja-Young does the same. Ahn frames her face in plenty of moments of quiet introspection, and in another scene, shows her flipping through a book of Chris’ sketches, curious about where his passion lies and how his family reacted to his coming out.

In Lee’s film, viewers weren’t afforded as much time alone with Wai-Tung’s Taiwanese parents. Audiences got a sense of their relationship to their son, but little about who they were as people — a choice suited to the film’s incredible, opaque ending. But here, Ahn and Schamus infuse Ja-Young with legible compassion, a major credit to Youn’s fantastic performance. Here, Youn builds on her incredible Oscar-winning turn in 2020’s “Minari” with an equally affectionate role, even if her love comes through in different, more antiquated ways. And when Ahn gracefully reaches a late-period revelation in the film, he reminds viewers that just because Ja-Young is old-fashioned doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of love or change. Sometimes, our worldview is little more than circumstantial, something we cling to to protect ourselves or others from harm. It’s not the best way of moving through life, but it’s a start. Our mistakes make us human, but admitting them brings us together, and in Ahn’s take on “The Wedding Banquet,” all imperfect parties are welcome to RSVP.

"The Wedding Banquet" arrives in theaters Friday, April 18.

about surprisingly good remakes

From chamomile tea to jasmine tea, here are the best teas to sip on and savor this spring

One of my New Year's resolutions for this year is to wean off coffee and drink more tea. It’s quite the challenge considering that I require a minimum of four cups of caffeine to function on a daily basis. But I can proudly say that I’m already off to a great start.

In February, during a gnarly bout of the flu, I found both comfort and strength in my very first cup of elderberry lemon balm tea. So much so that the tea is now an essential bedtime beverage that I look forward to sipping on every night. Same with moringa tea, which I’ll take with a dollop of honey. Most recently, I indulged in buckwheat tea (also known as soba cha in Japanese) while enjoying omakase in New York City. Its toasty yet slightly sweet flavor was unlike any other tea that I’ve tried.

The soothing science of tea steeping

Now that spring has officially sprung, I’ve been on the hunt for more seasonal tea to drink. It seems like I’m not alone in my search. An old Reddit post asked for recommendations for tea that “screams ‘spring’” while another sought out teas that are more fruity and sour in taste, like a strawberry lemon cold tea. A 2023 discussion board on Hungry Onion highlighted must-try teas of the season.

To help narrow down the best teas to drink this spring, Salon Food spoke with Ann Ziata, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education’s (ICE) New York City campus. Ziata shared her favorite spring teas, which can be enjoyed hot or cold.

“Tea can be very personal,” Ziata said. “I would look for drinks that are going to be a little more floral. Drinks that are grassy, green and light in flavor — maybe they're herbaceous and have some mintiness. Kind of moving away from more warming teas that have cinnamon, clove and nutmeg.”

Green Tea

Ziata’s personal favorite is the Republic of Tea’s Dragon Well Green Full-Leaf Tea which is made from top-grade Lung Ching (or Longjing) tea, a renowned green tea from the Zhejiang province in China. Per the brand’s website, Lung Ching is “famous for its jade green color, earthy aroma, mellow taste and long flat leaf” along with its “distinct character” and “unique cooling effect.”

The Dragon Well tea has a slightly grassy flavor that’s signature to green tea while also being “lightly toasted and nutty,” per Ziata.

Black Tea

“I think a really cool choice is Numi’s Chinese Breakfast black tea,” Ziata recommended. “It includes the golden tips of the tea leaves in the blend, so you get more floral notes and more malty and citrus notes. It’s still a nice, robust and full-bodied black tea, but it does have these elements that bring a little more brightness to it.”

She also suggested the Republic of Tea’s Darjeeling Black Full Leaf Tea, which “is less oxidized than most black teas, so you're going to get more fruity flavors and more floral flavors,” Ziata explained.

Jasmine Tea

Mighty Leaf’s Organic Spring Jasmine tea is one of Ziata’s go-to jasmine tea blends. This specific variety is “made of smooth Chinese loose leaf green tea leaves naturally scented by layers of jasmine buds,” according to the tea’s description.

“You get a little bit of those warmer floral notes from the jasmine,” Ziata said. “It’s a little warming — not like a heavy kind of warming.”

White Tea

“A white tea is going to be the most ethereal of all caffeinated teas,” Ziata said. “That is because they don’t go through as much processing, so you get really young leaves and open buds.” The final product is a caffeinated tea that’s both light and fresh in taste.

“White teas, I feel like, get a little bit ignored in the conversation sometimes,” Ziata continued. “You know, we love green tea and black tea so much. I feel very peaceful drinking white tea, although I feel awake too.”

Ziata’s personal favorite is Dona’s Wah White Peony Sachets.

Chamomile Tea

As for herbal teas, Ziata recommended Steven Smith Teamaker’s Meadow blend, which includes golden Egyptian chamomile flowers, hyssop, Cape rooibos, rose petals and linden flowers.

“It’s something a little different, which is nice because in spring, we just want a little variety,” Ziata said of the tea’s taste. "It's nice to have that feeling of change and newness once it starts to get a little warmer out."

For a bargain option, check out Trader Joe's Well Rested Herbal Tea, which touts chamomile, spearmint, peppermint, blackberry leaves, and rosebuds.

Lemon Verbana Tea

The caffeine-free tea is celebrated for its medicinal, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. In fact, the tea is said to improve sleep quality, alleviate muscle damage (making it a great drink amongst athletes) and reduce inflammation and oxidative stress.

Ziata’s favorite brand is Mina’s Louiza, Organic Moroccan Lemon Verbena Herbal Tea. The tea features traditional Moroccan lemon verbena, best known for its “alluring floral-lemony scent, flavor, and many health-giving properties, including the support of the immune system and healthy digestion,” per the tea’s description.

Lemon Verbana tea is best enjoyed warm during the spring months and chilled during the summer.

Roasted Dandelion Root Tea

“I always crave a roasted dandelion root tea every March,” Ziata said. “It’s a very bitter tea. Some people use it as a coffee replacement because it doesn’t have caffeine, but it has a lovely toasted, bitter flavor.”

She added that the tea reminds her of the “thawing of winter.”

Ziata said she usually opts for the traditional and medicinal roasted dandelion root, but Teechino’s line of Dandelion tea blends are great options.

Turmeric Tea

Ziata’s favorite turmeric tea is Organic India’s Tulsi Turmeric Ginger tea.

“Personally, I think turmeric is lovely, but it can be a bit strong on its own,” Ziata explained. Organic India’s blend includes turmeric, tulsi (an adaptogen that’s also known as Holy Basil) and ginger, making the tea peppery and slightly sweet in taste.

“I think turmeric teas are lovely in the springtime,” she added. “Usually we're eating a lot of heavy food in the winter, and we want this feeling of lightness and brightness as we head into spring and summer, when we're going to have more fresh produce available.”

about teas:

“They want to rob it”: Former Social Security head says Musk, Trump are “wrecking” agency to raid it

The Social Security Administration delivers one of the most popular and widely relied-upon services in the country, but that doesn't mean it's always received five-star reviews.

The SSA had a reputation for long processing times, overburdened customer support and inefficiency, but appeared to be turning around under the leadership of Administrator Martin O’Malley. The appointee of President Joe Biden oversaw a 68% dip in call wait time and a 24% decrease in disability hearing delays during his year-long stint at the agency.

That progress may be in jeopardy under Donald Trump. The president has teamed up with billionaire Elon Musk to drastically slash government spending, and the pair has the agency in their sights.

In a phone interview with Salon, O’Malley warned that hard-won improvements to the SSA were quickly unraveling amid the biggest assault on the program in its history.

“For over 90 years, Social Security has never missed a monthly payment and remains one of the most trusted and beloved programs in our federal government,” O’Malley told Salon. “We saw what was possible for that one year. By the time that President Biden left office, every service metric was moving in a better direction… and now these guys seem intent on sinking it.”

At a conference on threats to Social Security earlier this week, O'Malley said cuts sought by the Department of Government Efficiency could pose an existential danger to the system.

“There’s always room to increase productivity… but that’s not what the DOGE/Musk/Trump team has been about. They are gutting this agency’s staffing with a chainsaw, and they are driving it into a total system collapse,” O’Malley said. “It’s going to be extremely expensive to put Humpty Dumpty back together again once they wreck it.”

Elon Musk's war on Social Security unmasks the GOP's true disdain for retirees

Biden concurred with O’Malley’s assessment in a rare post-presidency speech on Tuesday, sounding the alarm over the “breathtaking” damage his successor’s administration has done to the program in mere weeks.

"Fewer than 100 days into this new administration, they have done so much damage and destruction. It is kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon," Biden said. "They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration… already we can see the effects."

O’Malley worries the reputational damage to Social Security might be intentional. Speaking to Salon, he said Trump administration cuts could be a ploy to turn public opinion against the agency and soften the blow of an eventual raid on its coffers.

“I suppose that if they want the $2.7 trillion surplus that this agency has – no other agency generates and runs a surplus like Social Security does –  I suppose they can't do that in an agency that's respected… and trusted by the public,” O’Malley told Salon. "They appear to be wrecking it so that they can rob it and get away with it," he said.

Several offices within the SSA have fully shuttered, and the federal government is gearing up to close down more. To O’Malley, it’s a move in the wrong direction after a year of dramatic improvements.

"They've done mass firing of whole offices, like the Office of Customer Service Transformation, which helped us make so much of last year's progress, fired the head of it – an A-plus player – and the other 70 people in his office," O’Malley said. "Totally illegal. There was no cause. They just did it to send a message that even the highest performers aren’t safe."

More than 7,000 of the agency's staffers are on the chopping block , further cutting a headcount that is already dozens of times lower than that of private insurers, O’Malley shared. Pulling employees from crucial offices when the agency is already at a 50-year-low in staff puts benefits in a precarious place, he told Salon.

“You’re going to see intermittent outages of a lot of the IT systems – there’s about 3,000 of them,” O’Malley said. "They've probably already taken 90% of the actions they need to take to crater this agency and drive it into a total system collapse.”

Without the thousands of dedicated experts who keep the massive records system running, O'Malley believes a sequence of “cascading events” could wreck the whole program. To Musk's untrained eye, the staff of SSA represents something different: bureaucratic bloat.

Musk has parroted claims that the SSA’s phone support systems were burdened with widespread fraud attempts, and made a dubious claim that deceased beneficiaries listed as 150 years and older were receiving millions in payouts.

O’Malley disputed claims made by DOGE that millions of dead people were cashing Social Security checks, explaining the Administration’s partnership with state and local authorities to identify deceased beneficiaries had been proven effective.

“Just because somebody’s record is still in Social Security doesn’t mean they’re still in pay status,” he said.

O’Malley said if Trump and Musk were really concerned with waste and fraud, then their firing of the Inspector General overseeing Social Security did more harm than good.

“It’s underneath that big lie of ‘doing away with waste, fraud, and abuse’ that they’ve been actually doing away with the agency and its ability to serve the customers,” he explained.

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Regardless of whether or not they're finding actual fraud, the SSA under Trump is already augmenting records and cutting off beneficiaries. O'Malley said the administration's plan to cancel the Social Security numbers of some eligible immigrants is “totally contrary to law.”

“They are disappearing people, marking them as dead in the Social Security database if they are people that DHS has deemed shouldn’t be in the country anymore… they’re digitally murdering these folks.”

At least 6,300 immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba who were lawfully assigned Social Security numbers were moved to the agency’s “master death list” last week at the request of immigration authorities. The White House argued in a statement that the move would encourage immigrants to “self-deport.”

“As often happens with fascism, the first group they asked for were the undesirables… Now I understand they’re asking for another 92,000 [Social Security Numbers to be canceled], and I understand there’s another 800,000 they’re going to ask for on top of that,” the former administrator said. “If they can, without any due process, unlawfully do away with Social Security numbers of people who legally entered the country, then they can do the same thing to any of us.”

Threats aside, there may still be hope for the vast agency. O’Malley highlighted the “real bipartisan desire” to strengthen Social Security.

“There are a lot of Republicans who, behind closed doors… want Musk to shut up about Social Security,” he said. “So far, most of them in elected positions are remaining silent as they watch this agency being dismantled, and it’s not like they don’t know.”

To those Republicans defending Social Security in private, O’Malley warned that their window is closing.

“The time is coming,” “Eventuallly, they’re going to drive the agency into a total system collapse that will involve the interruption of benefits for the first time in 90 years.”

about Trump-Musk austerity

An atheist’s unnerving descent into Hallow, the prayer app beloved by MAGA celebrities

When folks started seeing ads about a Christian prayer app featuring "Voice" judge and pop icon Gwen Stefani, the initial reaction was mild bemusement. "This year, I'm excited to share that I've partnered with this amazing prayer, meditation and music app called Hallow," she declared in a Christmas ad, asking viewers to "join me and millions of other Christians around the world."

"Watching your heroes get old is so depressing," said one Redditor, in a typical response. "I never thought I'd see trad-wife grifter Gwen Stefani but here we are I guess."

The annoyance turned to outrage a few months later when Stefani released another ad for Hallow, this time for Lent, while also posting a Tucker Carlson video.

"She’s a MAGA. Sorry to ruin your childhood!" posted one outraged Redditor. "[T]he washed up celeb turned republican pipeline remains almost undefeated," cracked another.

What I discovered is that while religion may not be the opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx famously wrote, this app is a sedative to dull the consciences of MAGA.

In the advertising, the Hallow app seems bland enough. The founder, a rich management consultant unfortunately named Alex Jones, claims the goal is to "share the beauty, peace, and power of the Church’s spirituality with the world," all for $70 a year. But the whiff of MAGA isn't too hard to detect, for someone who knows what they're sniffing for. Early funding came largely from Donald Trump fanboys Peter Thiel and JD Vance, the latter now serving as Trump's vice president. Celebrity endorsements and collaborations include Trump's buddy Mark Wahlberg, anti-abortion actor Jonathan Roumie and Chris Pratt, whose efforts to hide his MAGA leanings always fall short. The app also recruited washed-up British comedian Russell Brand, but they are putting that endorsement deal on pause now that he's been legally charged with rape in his home country.

I'm an atheist who wasn't raised with much religion at all, so I've never observed Lent. But after seeing all this hullabaloo, I thought I'd take my first crack at the season of self-inflicted suffering — in the name of journalism, not Jesus. So I downloaded the Hallow app, after saying a fruitless prayer of hope that it does not steal all my private data. Like most Lent observers, my commitment to my oath to listen to this app faltered at times. Still, I muscled through many days of lessons on how to be a godly woman and treacly prayers read by Chris Pratt. What I discovered is that while religion may not be the opiate of the masses, as Karl Marx famously wrote, this app is a sedative to dull the consciences of MAGA.

At first, Hallow didn't seem so bad, even though I blanched when it immediately gamified the spiritual experience by congratulating me for maintaining my "streak" of daily usage. (My best was three days "praying" in a row, which falls far short of my workout streak on Apple Fitness. Still! Pretty good for a non-believer!) Lots of praying and Bible verses and Jesus talk, which is gibberish to me, but means a lot to many good liberal Christians I know, so I'm not going to discount it out of hand. Mostly, it was just very boring, an opinion seemingly shared by Mark Wahlberg, who sounded like he was reading out of the phone book during his prayers. Even his fake banter with Chris Pratt for their "Fasting Friday" contributions fell flat.

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Do Catholics really fast on Fridays during Lent, I had to wonder. My vague memories growing up in a heavily Catholic part of the country involve people eating a lot of fish at dinner. Pratt and Wahlberg did not clear this up for me, but only made it more confusing. They suggested one way to "fast" is to not look at your phone for 10 minutes before bed, which hardly seems like the level of sacrifice that would focus the mind and spirit on the suffering of Jesus on the cross. It was also hard to figure out how to do that while also using "sleep better" programs like the one titled "Have no anxiety," read by Jonathan Roumie.

My confusion on this issue made me realize that this was a systematic contradiction throughout Hallow, which only grew more aggravating the more I listened. On one hand, there was a lot of self-congratulatory rhetoric, especially offered by Pratt, about how Christians "welcome" hard times and that the faith is not about "how to escape suffering, but how to endure it." What the app offered, however, was escapist materials built around turning off reflection, instead of encouraging it.

The prayers and programs mostly focused on banal and empty affirmations about being grateful, relieving stress, and sleeping better. The universe of problems imagined for the user was comically small: a quarrel with a coworker, a disagreement with a spouse or a fussy child. It seemed all very silly to worry about in our current political situation, where a fascist has taken over the government, tanked the economy and people — most of whom are likely Christians!— are being kidnapped and sent to a foreign gulag. These seemed far more pressing matters to bring to Jesus than the aggravation that your spouse won't fill the dishwasher correctly.

Hallow does provide a space to bring concerns like mine: an "artificial intelligence" feature called Magisterium AI, which offers, "Ask me questions on faith and Church teaching!" Hey, if you're paying for a prayer app, why not play along with the pretense that a mindless computer is your conduit to the mind of God?

"What does Jesus say about sending migrants to foreign torture prisons without due process?" I asked my soulless Jesus interpreter in my phone. The initial response did seem promising, answering, "Treating migrants with disrespect, or denying their fundamental rights, is a grave offense." The AI added, "Catholic teaching would strongly condemn sending migrants to foreign torture prisons without due process." Much better than listening to Chris Pratt explain how a 10-minute phone fast would cast out demons. So I kept at it, asking, "How can JD Vance say he is a good Catholic, when he defends imprisoning people without due process?"

At this point, the AI champion of Jesus chickened out, saying, "A person's overall commitment to Catholic values should be considered, rather than focusing solely on one issue."

"Girls Gone Bible": Spicy Christian podcast sells young women on MAGA. Will scandal hurt or help?

And sure, I bet Vance is eating fish on Fridays, but overall, it feels to me that lying about people to justify torturing them in ways not unlike what the Romans did to Jesus should count for more. But I'm just a lowly atheist arguing with an artificial "intelligence," so what do I know? Jokes aside, it crystallized why I felt so queasy, listening to prayers and programs that reduced the "trials" of Christian life to squabbles with neighbors and nuisances at work. The universe of concerns assumed in the listener was no different than the usual sea of "self-help" debris offered up by other MAGA-coated "wellness," "spirituality" and "lifestyle" influencers online. Though Hallow did present demonic possession as a real and ongoing concern, which at least is more fun than the raw milk-flavored form of magical thinking in the more secular MAGA influencer spaces.

Most of this material doesn't seem political, but it does encourage a form of small-minded narcissism, with the relentless focus on the self. The Jesus of the Hallow app isn't much concerned about social justice or caring for the downtrodden, but about being your good buddy who strokes your hair after a bad day at work. The "demonic" forces the believer is called upon to resist aren't grave evils like human rights abuses. Satan seems more interested in frustrating you with traffic than, say, installing a fascist leader in the White House to destroy democracy. It doesn't seem political, but the project of lulling users into not caring about anything outside their immediate self-interest suits the goals of the MAGA movement. And it's probably more persuasive to ordinary people than overt right-wing propaganda. This isn't the Christianity of the liberal Christians I know, who volunteer, donate money, and care very much about electing better leaders. This is a "don't worry your pretty head about all that stuff" kind of Christianity.

Not that there was no political propaganda on Hallow. As a feminist, I couldn't help but listen to a 9-part series labeled "Feminine Genius" by a woman named Lisa Cotter. My hopes for the accomplishments of Emily Dickinson and Marie Curie — hell, even Gwen Stefani! — quickly went up in smoke. Instead, I got scolded about how I should stop trying to "act like a man," and that women's "gifts" and "genius" are — surprise! — about the ability to "generously live for others." Unlike men, women have the "unique" ability to "see people as people," and not objects, so a woman's role is to make sure everyone is taken care of, while men do all that higher-paid, less caring work. Not that women never get anything in return! In the lesson titled "Receptivity," we're told, "In the act of sex, a husband gives of himself to his wife, who receives his gift." Say what you will, but I did not expect the Jesus app to tell me I'm a genius because I know how to get f—ked.

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That puts Hallow in the larger universe of Vance and Thiel's project to shove their retrograde gender politics on Americans through every avenue they can find, from apps discouraging contraception to calling single women "miserable cat ladies" at every turn. MAGA propagandists repeatedly show that they see gender as the most fruitful locus for radicalizing people to their cause, and the Hallow app reveals one reason why. A lot of how people experience gender is not framed as "political," but personal: dating, marriage, sex, and how you live out your identity. That creates these "self-help" angles that purport only to offer guidance on daily life, but instead smuggle in highly politicized ideas about hierarchy, power, and freedom. Cotter's prayer to "remove any obstacles in our hearts that may want to place men and women in competition," and her exhortation to "stop trying to be your own savior" are offered as personal advice to women. In reality, they're deeply political statements about how half the human race should live in submission to the other half.

I quit Hallow on the day I was told is Holy Thursday — I did learn a lot about how many holy days there are! — and sang my own "hallelujah" in response. I am on the hook for that $70, even though I thought I was only signing up for a few weeks. Vance is stealing my cat food money right out of my Apple Wallet! (Update: I asked for a refund, and Apple's app store promptly returned my money.) Alas, I never did find any contributions to the app by Stefani herself, which is too bad. I want a rewrite of "Just A Girl," but about that rather literal definition of feminine receptivity. But as dumb as it all was, I find myself unsettled. The Hallow app is right-wing propaganda, but not in the hammer-to-the-face way you get from Breitbart or Fox News. Instead, it's a warm bath of permission to ignore the horrors being unleashed by an administration boosted by the people who funded this app, and all offered in Jesus' name, amen.

History holds the answer to Trump’s future

Recently, in an executive order, President Trump directed the removal of “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution. That order was, in essence, an attempt to rewrite history on race and gender. One-hundred-and-one-year-old Colonel James H. Harvey, one of the last of the famed Tuskegee airmen of World War II, blamed Trump, saying, “I’ll tell him to his face. No problem. I’ll tell him, you’re a racist.” In addition, government websites began scrubbing African-American history, including in the case of the National Park Service eliminating a photo of the famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman and descriptions of the brutal realities of slavery.

Black people in America have often led change in this society because our humanity and our liberties were so long suppressed and denied.

Black people in my family and community were, of course, descendants of the enslaved. In their presence (as I well remember), you could feel their closeness to that terrible time in our history. When that Smithsonian news came out, I thought about the killings, rapes, lynchings, breeding, and selling of Black people that was, for several hundred years, so much a part of life in the United States of America and that was, if Donald Trump had anything to say about it, no longer to be part of the true history of the United States. I didn’t have to be reminded of who I was or my status as a Black American that day, or of the history he’d like to wipe out, because I lived in the South in the 1950s and 1960s and racism and Jim Crow were then in my face every day of my existence.

So, let me tell Donald Trump a thing or two.

Long, long ago, in the course of my time in high school and college, I realized that Black people in the South were still dealing with a form of American fascism not so dissimilar from Apartheid in South Africa. At the time, Black southern activists were deeply engaged in transforming the structure of this society.

Such activism, I believed then and I believe now, began in 1619, the moment enslaved Africans were deposited in chains on American shores. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass became two spokespeople for those who had lived as slaves. Both tried to change the attitudes of the wider public. Later, many others, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey, would continue the work to end the legacies of slavery and eliminate all aspects of racism. During my youth, the North similarly had strong spokespeople for racial equality in Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. In the West, Cesar Chavez was organizing the United Farm Workers to improve the conditions of Latinos working in the fields of California and the Southwest. At the same time, the emerging American Indian Movement (AIM) and the Asian American movement were growing in a collective struggle against discrimination and racism.

Those organizations energized student movements nationwide through sit-ins and demonstrations and by getting arrested as they fought for civil rights. The Black Panther Party, the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the growing Feminist movement added thousands more actions to that struggle. Years later, such movements would also influence the development of the Black Lives Matter, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer movements and the National Domestic Worker Alliance.

My father always told me as a boy and later a young man: “Don’t go down to Alabama and Mississippi — those White-ass crackers down there don’t like Black folks.” But in 2019, I found myself in Montgomery, Alabama, the first capital of the Confederacy. All those years later, I could still hear my father’s voice ringing in my ears and had trepidations about being in that state with its racist history. I remembered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, demonstrations against White supremacy led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and young people in 1963, the water cannons and dogs used against Black children and adults, and racist Governor George Wallace’s attempt to block integration at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963, saying: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” I remember the horror of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, where four little girls were murdered by White racists.

In February of 2019, I traveled to Montgomery with other board members of my son Khary’s social justice organization, The Brotherhood Sister Sol, to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice created by Bryan Stevenson, the activist, lawyer, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. At the Legacy Museum, visitors experience 400 years of American history that includes enslavement, racial terrorism, and mass incarceration. The National Memorial is the first institution of its kind dedicated to the legacy of the Black Americans who were the victims of the racial terror of lynching. (Four thousand four hundred of those lynchings have been documented in the post-Reconstruction era from 1877 to 1950 by the Equal Justice Initiative.)

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That memorial includes 805 hanging steel rectangles representing each of the counties in the United States where lynchings took place. As I walked through them, I immediately went to those representing Lenoir County and Jones County, North Carolina, where most of my family was born and raised. One victim was listed in Lenoir County, Lazarus Rouse on August 1, 1916, and one, Jerome Whitefield, on August 14, 1921, in Jones County. I was informed by the Equal Justice Initiative that, during the Reconstruction period (1865 to 1876), nine other Black victims were lynched in those two counties. Four of them were killed in 1866 (their names unknown); the other five were Cater Grady, Daniel Smith, John Miller, and Robert Grady on January 24, 1869, and Amos Jones on May 28, 1869.

The Museum and Memorial proved a deeply overwhelming experience for me, a sudden rush of long-ago race history being imprinted in the deep recesses of my mind. For many of those on the visit that day, it was emotional, but as the only Black person in our group to have lived through segregation and Jim Crow, I found it a genuinely wrenching physical experience. And yet while I felt distinctly ill at ease, shaken by what I had seen at the museum and memorial, within hours I began to feel powerful for the part I had played once upon a time as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. That activism, I suddenly realized, had made me a better, stronger person, and I was reminded that the 400 years of Black struggles for equal rights in this country had not only inspired the nation, but the world.

Authoritarianism and Racism

Today, racism in this country is still a central force that progressives are working to change. We are, after all, living in a period when authoritarianism, racism, and incipient fascism are all on the rise again and, of course, Donald Trump is giving all-too-vivid voice to the hate that goes with them.

In a New Yorker article in 2016, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote of the existential place of race for Whites in America this way:

“All immigrants to the United States know (and knew) that if they want to become real, authentic Americans they must reduce their fealty to their native country and regard it as secondary, subordinate, in order to emphasize their whiteness. Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of ‘Americanness’ is color.”

At another point in that year of Trump’s first presidential victory, she added:

“On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters — both poorly educated and the well-educated — embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

“William Faulkner understood this better than almost any other American writer. In ‘Absalom, Absalom,’ incest is less of a taboo for an upper-class Southern family than acknowledging the one drop of black blood that would clearly soil the family line. Rather than lose its ‘whiteness’ (once again), the family chooses murder.”

And the great James Baldwin in his classic 1955 analysis of race in America, Notes of a Native Son, wrote:

“No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact faced, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.”

Many in this diverse nation have compelling stories to tell, generating energy to battle the reactionary right-wing efforts to roll back any progress that has been made in past decades. In my life, I have endured the hardships of racism, as have so many others. However, my family, community, and various forms of activism enabled me to survive.

Walking in the Shoes of Black People in History

It is critical, even in Donald Trump’s America, that our activism remain nonviolent, tactical, and practical. We can reflect on a momentous decision by Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel, Wyatt Walker, Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and other civil rights leaders in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963. Out of desperation, they decided to use high school students in demonstrations there in what became known as “the Children’s Crusade,” recognizing that Eugene Bull Connor, the notorious segregationist commissioner of public safety in that city, would employ violence against them. And, of course, he did. He ordered dogs and water cannons turned on those demonstrations, saying, “I want to see the dogs work. Look at those niggers run.”

The very brutality of Bull Connor, seen across the country and the world on the TV news, generated tremendous support for the civil rights movement.

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I suspect that King, Bevel, Walker, Shuttlesworth, Abernathy and the other civil rights leaders in Birmingham knew that using high school students involved enormous risk, but those students already lived under segregation and racism and were walking in the shoes of others who had been similarly courageous in the past and this, of course, would be their contribution to civil rights.

Wyatt Walker explained what he did by indicating that he made no apology for using such a tactic to reveal the racist brutality of the grim system of segregation to the whole nation. He said, “I had to do what had to be done.”

His words in their simplicity are how we must confront what is now happening in our country, too. We all must take risks to make this a more democratic land that respects all people. The action of those civil rights leaders in Birmingham is one example of Black history that must never be erased because it still inspires others to act.

At the time, of course, the actions of those young people confronting Bull Connor in Birmingham inspired many throughout the country. Two weeks later, on May 19, 1963, along with 15 other protesters, I demonstrated in front of the then-segregated Holiday Inn in Durham, North Carolina. We were confronted with a dangerous situation. The leader of our group was 19-year-old Joycelyn McKissick, a fellow student of mine and the daughter of Floyd McKissick, a local civil rights leader and lawyer hated by many Whites in the area. We could see into that Holiday Inn through its plate glass windows and observe cops walking around its lobby with billy clubs, keeping a watchful eye on us. If that wasn’t ominous enough, 15 feet from us were 10 White men with broom handles and baseball bats shouting, “Fuck the niggers! Fuck the niggers!”

Despite the obvious danger, we continued picketing and singing. Fortunately for us, the White thugs didn’t get a chance to go after us because of the courage of McKissick. Without any warning, she broke from the picket line, ran to the door of the lobby, pushed it open, and flopped down on the floor inside. The cops shouted, “Get that McKissick bitch!” They then began to beat her with batons.

After a few seconds, I pushed open that same lobby door intending to flop on the floor, too, but was met by police officers who started beating me with their batons and billy clubs as I backed up against a plate glass window. I was still standing, trying to block those clubs being swung at my head, when a 260-pound Black football player named Roy burst through the lobby doors shouting, “Stop it! Stop it!” and moved aggressively toward the police. The officers appeared startled and possibly even scared by his size. All of a sudden, miraculously enough, they stopped beating Joycelyn and me. All of the demonstrators were, however, arrested and marched off to jail along with 1,000 people from the sites of other demonstrations in Durham. The city jail couldn’t cope with more than 1,000 arrested demonstrators. So, though we were held overnight, we were released the following morning.

That confrontation with the police in that Durham Holiday Inn empowered me for the rest of my life. Those billy clubs striking my body strengthened my mind and convinced me that, sooner or later, we could indeed overcome segregation and Jim Crow. They caused me to be less afraid and more confident in mass demonstrations to come.

To me, that experience was a powerful tool for change and, looking back, I believe the size of those demonstrations and their public nature caused the police to be somewhat more restrained as time went on, although I was aware that there would be times in other settings when nothing would prevent serious injury or even death at their hands.

Today, the many compelling stories of those suffering in this increasingly diverse nation of ours — from immigrants to domestic workers to all the discriminated-against people I’ve mentioned in this essay — must be told. As we experience Donald Trump’s twenty-first-century version of White nationalism, how we dealt with that difficult past should help us remember that we lived through terrible times by confronting them and that we can do so again, even in the terrible Trump era.

“Asserting a right to stash residents”: Appeals court rebukes Trump DOJ’s Abrego Garcia defense

The Trump administration’s latest bid to keep mistakenly deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia in an El Salvadorian prison was swatted down in a federal appeals court on Thursday, intensifying the legal pressure to facilitate the Maryland man’s return.

In a Thursday ruling, Fourth Circuit Court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the Trump administration was “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.”

“This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear,” the Reagan appointee wrote in a seven-page opinion, joined by two other judges.

Responding to the Trump administration’s plea to stay an order that it “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from El Salvador, judges called the motion “extraordinary and premature,” noting the Supreme Court required that steps be taken.

"Disappear without recourse": Trump's defiance of a court order means "any American" could be next

“While we fully respect the Executive’s robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision,” he added.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed with a lower court’s ruling that the federal government must facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, though justices disagreed with the finding that the feds must “effectuate” his return. Legal experts say the Trump administration’s reaction to the ruling could have chilling consequences for Americans and their due process rights.

Though Attorney General Pam Bondi has claimed Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang – or even a high-ranking leader, depending on the day you ask her – the government has been unwilling and unable to present evidence in any courtroom. The president has made attempts to distance himself from the case, claiming in a Thursday White House presser that he is "not involved in it."

Wilkinson argued that the infighting between the judiciary and the executive branch will only serve to diminish both.

"This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy," he wrote. "The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph."

about the Trump Administration and Abrego Garcia

US-born citizen was held by ICE in Florida jail for entering state as “unauthorized alien”

An American citizen was held in a Florida jail cell on ICE’s orders after he was charged under a new, restrictive immigration law criminalizing “unauthorized alien” entry into the state. He was kept imprisoned even after presenting his birth certificate.

According to a report from the Florida Phoenix, 20-year-old Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez was arrested on Wednesday during a traffic stop. The arresting officer claimed in his report that Gomez-Lopez was in the country illegally and took him into custody.

He was charged under a Florida law that went into effect in February, making it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants to enter the state knowingly. Gomez-Lopez's charge came despite a federal judge ruling the law unconstitutional earlier this month.

"Father of the year": White House mocks man wrongfully deported to El Salvador

Lopez -Gomez's mother brought his birth certificate and Social Security card to a Leon County courthouse, and the charge was dropped. Judge LaShawn Riggans agreed that Lopez-Gomez had sufficient proof of citizenship to drop the charges, but said she did not have the authority to release him from an ICE hold.

“He hasn’t committed a crime for them to hold him, that’s what I don’t understand,” Gomez-Lopez’s mother, Sebastiana Gomez-Perez, told the Phoenix. She was in court for her son’s hearing on Thursday, but was reportedly denied access to visit him in Leon County Jail. “I felt immense helplessness because I couldn’t do anything, and I am desperate to get my son out of there.”

An ICE detainer issued by the Tampa Homeland Security Investigations office mandates that he be held for 48 hours. He was released on Thursday evening, with reporters capturing the emotional moment the young man was reunited with his mother.

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez has been released. This is the moment he reunited with his mom. pic.twitter.com/4ODBw8cGDm

— Jackie Llanos (@LlanosJackie) April 17, 2025

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“Can’t come fast enough”: Trump seeks “termination” of Fed Reserve Chair Powell

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is in President Donald Trump’s line of fire again.

Trump urged Powell’s ouster to cut interest rates to soften the economic blow of his tariff plan in a Thursday post to Truth Social and went on to call for the chair's ouster.

“Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete mess!’” Trump said. “He should certainly lower [interest rates] now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

Speaking to reporters in the White House later on Thursday, Trump added, “If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast.”

REPORTER: Powell says he won't leave even if you ask him to

TRUMP: Oh, he'll leave. If I ask him to he'll be out of there … I'm not happy with him. If I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast. Believe me.

REPORTER: Are you trying to remove him?

TRUMP: Yeah, next… pic.twitter.com/R6nzLVgPQW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 17, 2025

"Progress may be delayed": Powell blames stubborn inflation on Trump tariffs

The president’s attacks came a day after Powell warned that his massive tariffs could send shockwaves through the American economy and complicate growth and stability efforts in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago.

“The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” Powell said on Wednesday. “Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflationary effects could also be more persistent.”

The president has long sought more control over interest rates and has feuded with Powell over his resistance to White House pressure on the rates. Powell can’t be removed from his post until his term ends in May of 2026.

Whether Trump, who has moved to fire thousands of federal workers in recent weeks, will attempt to oust Powell remains to be seen. Some politicians are warning that the plan could itself spook markets.

“If Chairman Powell can be fired by the President of the United States, it will crash the economy,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said on Thursday.

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“Children have human rights”: YouTuber Ms. Rachel speaks after pro-Israel group reported her to DOJ

Children’s educational content creator Ms. Rachel broke her silence to defend the “human rights” of Palestinian children on Thursday, a week after a pro-Israel group urged the Department of Justice to investigate her over posts about the war in Gaza.

“Children have human rights…Standing up for children, especially those who are most vulnerable, is the right thing to do,” Accurso posted on Thursday. “All children have the right to food, water, medical care and education. All children should be protected from violence.”

The popular YouTuber, whose real name is Rachel Accurso, has racked up billions of views with her mellow, early childhood-focused content. However, her advocacy on social media for the tens of thousands of children impacted by the war caused an uproar. The pro-Israel advocacy group StopAntisemitism claimed Accurso had become a “mouthpiece for Hamas” in an April 7 post.

StopAntisemitism escalated their attacks last week last week, when director Liora Rez penned a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding the DOJ investigate “whether or not Ms. Rachel is being remunerated to disseminate Hamas-aligned propaganda to her millions of followers.”

A pro-Israel group says it gave the Trump administration a list of students to deport

“130 more Palestinian children killed. Over 15,000 Palestinian children killed total. Stop bombing children,” one post flagged by StopAntisemitism read.

The group accused the influencer of “incorporating Hamas-like propagated images and stories into her content” and said pictures of starving and injured children shared by Accurso could be misleading.

Accurso’s post was her first statement on the potential investigation from the Trump administration, and came just days after the birth of her second child, Susannah.

Accurso has faced far-right backlash online in the past. She stood behind a post celebrating Pride Month last year, citing her religious beliefs in her own defense.

“There are so many reasons I stand strong in love. I stand with everyone. That’s who I am, and the love back and the ‘God bless’ if you disagree is genuine,” she said last June.

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Meghann Fahy stars in nearly every scene of “Drop,” but she admits, “I still get nervous”

"Before I got into this," Meghann Fahy told me, "I thought maybe I would study psychology and become a therapist." Now, in her star-making role in director Christopher Landon's ("Happy Death Day") twisty new thriller, "Drop," she's finally getting to try it on.

As Violet, a widowed therapist whose night out goes south when she starts receiving threatening demands for her to kill her date, Fahy is on-screen almost the entire film, running a gamut of flirty jitters, terrorized trauma and steely reserve. The New York Times recently called her standout performance "wickedly entertaining."

The New England native has spent a lifetime preparing for it. Growing up as a shy, anxious kid, she got into music and performing. "It's sort of the cure to that in a way," she said during her recent "Salon Talks" visit.

At 19, she was a Broadway leading lady in "Next to Normal." She went on to earn critical acclaim as Sutton on "The Bold Type" and received an Emmy nomination for her role as the very accommodating wife Daphne on "The White Lotus." But now, with "Drop," Fahy gets to tap into the other side of what years of therapy taught her. "In the scene where I'm talking to one of my patients in the film, I was thinking, 'How would my therapist say this to me?'," she said.

The actress also spoke about handling the film's sensitive domestic violence storyline, how being a nanny prepared her for playing a mom, her "incredible" experience on "The White Lotus" and how she handles the butterflies that still arise when she goes on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"

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

Let's talk about your character, Violet. What drew you to this weird, fun, dark, surprising story?

So many things. First, I loved the script because I felt like it moved really quickly, and I never guessed who the perpetrator was. That's two good signs. I was a fan of Chris Landon, the director. This is my first foray into the genre, and I couldn't think of a better director to embark on that journey with. And then I loved the character of Violet, I loved the journey that she goes on. When you meet her, she's kind of a little bit shy, inside of herself a bit, unsure of herself a lot, and then over the course of the film, you watch her become her own hero and save her family. I just loved all of those things.

You've done a lot of ensemble work. How do you prepare to do something where the camera is on you all the time?

To be honest with you, I didn't do anything particular in preparation for it. My style is a little bit more go-with-the-flow. It suits me better to take things as they come, and I didn't have any expectation around that because it was all so new to me, and I think that served me in the end.

Chris Landon was such an incredible leader to me. He was so communicative. He knew exactly what he wanted and why and how to tell me, which sounds trite because, you're a director, so that's what a director does. But he did it so well, he painted a picture for me. When you watch the film, Violet is on her phone a lot. When I was filming, I didn't have any of the graphics that the audience sees. I didn't have the security cam footage or any of that. I was using my imagination a lot, but he was great at keeping me at the right level.

It is such a fun movie, but it's also about a very serious topic. We find out right at the beginning that your character is a survivor of domestic violence. How do you go about playing someone that a lot of people are going to be seeing themselves in?

First and foremost, the way that it was handled in the script felt right to me. Secondly, Chris and I spoke a lot about it before filming. We wanted to be intentional with it. We had a lot of conversations, and there were people in that circle who were also survivors, who were hugely important in those conversations. We kept our ears and our hearts open, that was how we approached it at the beginning, but it's a pretty brutal opening sequence for sure.

You've been acting for a long time. You started singing when you were eight, and you were a really shy kid, I've heard. How did becoming a performer and getting up on stage help you with that anxiety?

It's tricky. I think a lot of people who do things in the industry struggle with that, and I still do. It's a combination of a bunch of things. It's some of what you said, and also just personal growth. I'm a lot better now at rationalizing facts and reminding myself of what those things are, and that helps me not get ahead of myself and have a super emotional reaction to a thing. But I still get nervous all the time. I did ["Jimmy Kimmel Live!"] a couple of nights ago, and I have been on the show before, and he's wonderful, but I always get so anxious before something like that.

"Oh girl, I've been in therapy for a decade."

So it hasn't gone away completely, but I have better tools now to deal with it. In terms of performing, it's sort of the cure to that in a way. If I'm in a situation where I'm on set or something, it's a lot less scary than if I'm on stage. That's innately a lot more challenging. I've just worked on developing better skills to keep myself from talking myself into a place of neurosis.

Well, if you haven't had therapy, you sound like you've had it.

Oh girl, I've been in therapy for a decade. Anybody who's referencing a toolbox has been to therapy. I'm really fascinated by it. Before I got into this, I thought maybe I would go to school and study psychology and become a therapist. It's fascinating to me, on top of it being something that I use as a tool — there's that word again — in my own life. It's something that I'm really interested in learning about, too.

And now you get to play a therapist in this movie.

That was cool. Honestly, in the scene where I'm talking to one of my patients in the film, I was thinking, "How would my therapist say this to me?"

In "Drop," Meghann Fahy gives new meaning to keeping your wits about you on a first date

You got on Broadway pretty young, but it wasn't an overnight success. You had to go back to waiting tables, and you were a nanny. I've heard you say that that's the best job in the world. What did you love about it?

I grew up with kids. My grandmother ran a daycare out of her house, and then my mom did too before she went back to college, so that she could stay home with my brother and me when we were little. I was feeding babies bottles and changing diapers when I was a toddler myself. I've always had this maternal side of me. It's a spot that I have just always been comfortable in, and I think kids are just amazing. What an incredible way to spend your time, because I've had other jobs that have felt like going through the motions or whatever.

"[The new season of 'White Lotus'] had all these different premieres. We just had one, we didn't even go to Italy."

All the kids that I ever nannied were so fascinating, and I felt like I was learning from them and they were learning from me. Plus, you're going on adventures. If you're doing it in New York, you're picking them up and taking them on the train to go downtown to some cool lesson or to a birthday party where you're seeing them play with other kids. I just felt like when I wasn't on a set or a stage or whatever, it was so fulfilling to me to be a nanny.

Did you then transfer that skill set to acting with a five-year-old in this movie? You two seem to have this loving relationship.

Jacob [Robinson, who plays her son Toby] is so sweet. This was his first movie ever, and he was so brave and so good. There are so many scary things that his sweet little character has to go through over the course of the film. I've worked with kids a lot in my career, and I do think that a lot of those things have been heavily informed by all of the years that I spent being around kids and loving them.

You played the younger version of Betty White in an early movie, you've worked with Nicole Kidman, and you are working now with Julianne Moore on "Sirens." When you're working with actresses who have gravitas and long careers, what's the wisdom that you've gleaned from them about how to survive in a tough industry?

It's all about just being an observer of the way that they carry themselves. You mentioned Julianne, and I just recently worked with her, so she really sticks out in my mind. I was so impressed with her ability to move through her day and the way that she interacted with the crew and the other cast with such grace and such obvious talent. That's the most impressive thing that someone can do in their career. I care so deeply about the way that people are treated on set. Any time I see an older woman who is doing that and is not afraid to say what they want and what doesn't work for them, but is always respectful about that, to me, that's, chef's kiss. Everybody's had experiences where they've witnessed somebody, whether it's in the industry or not, who doesn't exhibit that kind of leadership. I'm just trying to sponge all that up.

You get to be a wise elder for the people who are just coming out of Season 3 of "The White Lotus." Everyone's still looking at them. What would be your advice for those actors?

I don't even think I could give them any advice. I ran into Patrick Schwarzenegger earlier today. He was telling me that he just got back from Australia, and they were in Thailand; they've had all these different premieres. We just had one, we didn't even go to Italy. Each season seems to be its own next level up. I really can't think of a downside, there really wasn't one for me. It was just a through-and-through incredible experience. I'm in awe of the evolution of the show itself. It's really cool as a fan to see that happening, and I just think everybody who is on Season 3 was incredible.

And now it's monoculture. It's one of those rare lightning in a bottle things.

I feel like everybody on it gets that and understands that. There's this incredible appreciation that permeates the set. It fosters really beautiful relationships between the actors who have shared that experience together because it is so singular and so rare. It's hard not to think about that while you're doing it.

You did a movie recently that we're still waiting to see in wide release with Josh O'Connor called "Rebuilding." I want to ask you a little bit about that and about what that story looks like to you in the aftermath of the LA fires.

It definitely hit a lot different. When we premiered at Sundance, it was right in the thick of all of it, and it definitely packed a super, super emotional punch. When you're filming something like that, you think you know the feeling of it, and you do think about people who have been affected in that way. But I certainly personally had never been so closely affected, and my loved ones have never been so closely affected by something as tragic as what happened in LA. So you could feel it in the room as the movie was playing out, this sort of weight.

But I think it's perfect timing in a sense, because the film is so hopeful and the film is so much about community and how the community that we build in the places that we live is what makes anywhere a home. I definitely hope that everyone in LA is feeling that too. I feel like they are. That was something that really came out of that; this really intense sense of community was the vibe that I kind of got, and I love that idea.

It's really lovely. Max Walker-Silverman, who wrote it and directed it is a really special creator. He might be the most genuine person I've come into contact with. He's so sincere and loving and gentle and smart, and he doesn't put anything on screen that's not entirely the truth. I respect him so much for it. It was something I loved. And of course, Josh is incredible and such a lovely human, so it was great.

I want to ask you one more thing, I read an interview where you said that your "Drop" director, Christopher Landon, didn't think that you were doing a good enough job with stabbing at first. What is the secret to doing a credible-looking stabbing?

The thing that I learned is that it's not a singular motion with the hand; it's full-body. That's how I had to learn how to sell it. At first, I was just kind of going in and doing it, and that's just not how it would be. It's a full-body movement, and your shoulders and your other arm have to support the movement that you're making with that. It was incredible to learn all of those things that never occurred to me. Obviously, we've all seen stuff like that on TV and in films and stuff, and they make it look so easy that you think it is.

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with other "White Lotus" favorites

Blue Origin’s all-woman space flight made history, but not in the way it’s promoting

Gayle King wishes everybody would adopt a more realistic perspective about Monday’s Blue Origin space outing. The “CBS Mornings” co-host has been telling anyone who will listen that what she and her five fellow NS-31 mission crewmembers experienced was not a “ride.”

King insisted it was a true spaceflight that gave her a new impression of how precious life and the Earth are. “You're way up there and you're very aware of that,” she told Extra on Tuesday, adding that looking at the Earth from more than 300,000 feet above the ground reminded her to “do better, be better. “

“We can do that, because we're so small in the scheme of things and we're not here for a very long time when you really think about it,” King offered. “So we can all be better in what we're doing in our lives.”

The panorama from 62 miles aloft must be grand, but apparently it’s impossible to read the room from that distance.

Spiritually, sure. King was describing her brush with the Overview Effect, space philosopher Frank White’s term for the cognitive shift a person experiences when viewing the Earth from space. White’s 1987 book discusses how spaceflight augments one’s sense of interconnectedness with the rest of humanity. “All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the [Earth’s] surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon,” he wrote. “The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

Enjoying the same life-changing gaze as Oprah Winfrey’s best friend requires a person to do a whole lot better financially. Replicating Monday’s starstruck mission requires making a $150,000 deposit (fully refundable!) with Jeff Bezos’ privately owned space company to get a return phone call.

Don’t hit King with that criticism, because she got hers. “My question is, have y’all been to space? Go to space or go to Blue Origin and see what they do and then come back and say, ‘This is a terrible thing,’” she added. The panorama from 62 miles aloft must be grand, but apparently it’s impossible to read the room from that distance.

NS-31 Astronaut Gayle King. (Blue Origin)

Terrible things are always happening on Earth, regardless of the strides made in space travel. Watching Mae Jamison become the first Black woman to go to space aboard the shuttle Endeavour in September 1992 was inspiring. That same month, natural disasters killed and injured tens of people in Hawaii, France and Nicaragua.

Today, the United States contends with an administration that reviles scientific expertise and quells curiosity. NASA is staring down a possible 50% cut in funding for its science programs. And there are the more earthbound concerns about the president’s needless trade war, launching us into a recession as the living costs continue to ascend.

As such, few commoners saw Monday’s highly publicized private jaunt to the boundary between Earth and space as some giant leap for all womankind. Our ground-level view looked like something far more ordinary: a two-hour and 21-minute Blue Origin infomercial populated with a curated celebrity-heavy crew.

Space is becoming more commercialized. Can regulations keep up?

By the numbers, the New Shepard rocket’s 31st space mission really did make history. King, pop star Katy Perry, documentarian Kerianne Flynn, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Amanda Nguyễn, aerospace engineer Aisha Bowe and Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez comprised the largest all-woman space mission crew since Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova’s 1963 solo flight. Tereshkova spent nearly three days up there, while Blue Origin’s six-woman party touched the darkness beyond the blue for about 11 minutes.

Not all of what they achieved was nominal. The voyage made Nguyễn the first Vietnamese and Southeast Asian woman in space — that's huge. It also established Sánchez as the first future Bezos wife to achieve weightlessness 62 miles above the Earth, just like Reese Witherspoon's TV anchor on "The Morning Show."

Meanwhile, what was the tech titan's ex Mackenzie Scott doing? Just giving away her fortune – more than $19 billion of it so far – to materially make the world better right now.

Sánchez has talents apart from her betrothed, too. Blue Origin’s coverage identifies her as an Emmy award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, pilot, vice chair of the Bezos Earth Fund and mother of three. She brought this space mission together, a glossy Elle magazine feature revealed earlier this month.

NS-31 Astronaut Lauren Sánchez celebrates a successful mission to space. (Blue Origin)

That fashion shoot doubled as a preview of Monday’s glamorous spectacle. Scan a few YouTube videos from Blue Origin’s previous excursions, mostly enjoyed by everyday millionaires and some lucky contest winners, and you’ll notice a dramatic difference in production values.

Monday’s company-produced coverage was emceed by NFL commentator Charissa Thompson and co-hosted by CNN Space & Defense correspondent Kristin Fisher, herself the daughter of NASA astronauts, and Blue Origin executive Ariane Cornell. All the voices, from ground control to awe-struck passengers, were female. And the co-hosts took all available opportunities to tout Blue Origin’s impressive safety record as if they were selling a line of vehicles.

They were, just not to you and me. Blue Origin is a top government contractor. Two weeks ago, Bezos' company was awarded $2.4 billion in the United States Space Force's latest round of procurement for future rocket launches, significantly less than the $5.9 billion the National Security Space Launch program awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Sánchez would not be in a position to pull off this PR space retreat if her show of female empowerment didn’t serve the interests of one of the planet's richest men.

This, following another Musk spacecraft exploding mid-air in March, and several months after the world’s richest man paid an estimated $288 million for controlling interest in Donald Trump’s whims. Bezos only ponied up $1 million for Trump’s re-election fund, along with preventing The Washington Post, which he owns, from endorsing Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris. Yet his rockets land as precisely as Musk’s, with fewer reports of publicly embarrassing “rapid unscheduled disassemblies.”

Never mind all that – look up, America! Before Thompson accurately described the NS-31 mission crew as “the stars of the show,” she invited Fisher to explain why the public should care about this private trip above others. “I mean, there are some big names on board this flight, and so I think it's really easy to kind of get sucked into the celebrity of it, right? But to do that would really be missing the point,” Fisher said.

Which would be . . .? “This type of space flight is what's making space accessible to everyone, and it really fits the pattern of human exploration from the very beginning,” she continued. “First, you send the professional explorers, the military test pilots. Then the civilians, the scientists, the engineers — kind of the experts — and then you send everybody else: the singers, the journalists and the activists. So this really fits a pattern here.”

Yes, very much like the Samantha Jones rule of fame dictates on “Sex and the City.” “First come the gays, then the girls, then? The industry.” That’s a version of what we’re seeing unfold now, only in space.

Like Samantha’s affair with dear Smith Jerrod, this highly publicized moment is mainly about image-making. Sánchez would not be in a position to pull off this PR space retreat if her show of female empowerment didn’t serve the interests of one of the planet's richest men.

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Monday’s New Shepard expedition reminded me of another theoretical concept, the Total Perspective Vortex. This fictional machine, dreamed up by Douglas Adams for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” radio series, proposed that the unlucky beings placed inside it would be crushed by experiencing their absolute insignificance in relation to the rest of the known universe.

Its inventor built the TPV to irritate his wife and ended up scrambling her brain, Adams wrote. “[B]ut to his satisfaction, he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

Perry’s pop-feminist anthems, along with her achievement badge for having survived 14 months of marriage to a predatory xenomorph, make her this mission’s closest equivalent to Ellen Ripley, if the "Alien" queen had a soft spot for daisies.

If Adam’s fictional inventor were around to witness the NS-31 mission, he might revise that thought. King pointed out that the NS-31 trek followed the same path as Alan Shepard, for whom the rocket in which she traveled is named. “You never see a man, a male astronaut, who’s going up in space, and they say, ‘Oh, he took a ride.’ It’s always referred to as a flight or a journey,” King told Extra, “so I feel that’s a little disrespectful to what the mission was and the work that Blue Origin does.”

A small sense of proportion might have helped King realize that appearing to compare herself to the first American to travel to space may not help her case. Still, Adams understood the comedic potential in the arrogance of privilege. He sent his “Hitchhiker’s” hero Zaphod Beeblebrox through the Vortex only to have the machine confirm his self-regard: “I'm a really terrific and great guy!”

Bezos would like us to think he’s that guy, too. His aeronautics company may not have been the first to sail beyond the planet’s upper atmosphere; Sir Richard Branson beat him in that .01% space race. However, Bezos invited Captain Kirk onboard one of his vessels in 2021, scoring nonagenarian actor William Shatner a record entry as the oldest living person to go to space.

NS-31 Astronaut Katy Perry. (Blue Origin)

Sánchez’s invite list, therefore, had to be consciously tailored to meet a certain bar for the brand. If her design was to uplift leading women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, she could have taken her pick of geniuses to make history with her, but where’s the clickbait in that?

Instead, she aimed for mid-range star power and good stories. Perry’s pop-feminist anthems, along with her achievement badge for having survived 14 months of marriage to a predatory xenomorph, make her this mission’s closest equivalent to Ellen Ripley, if the "Alien" queen had a soft spot for daisies.

Reportedly, she was asked to sing her hit “Firework,” which, considering her proximity to some of the most combustible substances in existence, might have tested God’s urge for a belly laugh. Covering Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” was a wiser selection; its lyrics don’t include the potentially regrettable lines “Make 'em go, ‘Oh, oh, oh’/ As you shoot across the sky.”

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

As for the non-celebrities, Flynn directed a documentary about Lilly Ledbetter’s fight for equal pay. Nguyễn was instrumental in drafting the Sexual Assault Survivors' Rights Act, which Congress passed unanimously in 2016.

She’s also a Harvard graduate who put her plan to join NASA on hold after she was raped to advocate for fellow survivors’ rights. Participating in the NS-31 space mission is the fulfillment of a long-deferred dream. When she emerged from the capsule, she revealed that one of the items she brought with her to space was her hospital bracelet from the day that became the dividing line between the woman she was and what she became. “I got to honor her today,” Nguyễn told Thompson about her former self, one of the webcast’s few legitimately moving moments.

Meanwhile, Bowe, who has won multiple awards for her contributions to aerospace engineering, revealed that she performed “as a science payload operator flying multiple experiments,” including wearing a BioButton for TRISH, a NASA-funded research institute, to study how women’s bodies respond to spaceflight. “I didn’t go to space just for the view,” Bowe posted on Instagram Wednesday.

Maybe we’re all looking at this the wrong way. Since Bezos’ main competitor in the world’s richest man pageant is running around bragging about his plan to seed more wombs, these testimonials emphasize the nobility in the Blue Origin founder’s space flight sponsorship.

If only Bowe and Nguyễn’s mission accomplishments weren’t overshadowed by Perry waving a daisy and offering bumper sticker wisdom about “collective energy” and “making space for future women and taking up space and belonging.” She means well, but that doesn’t change her role in promoting the interests of a billionaire who’s more interested in leaving most of humanity behind as opposed to saving it.

Bezos would like us to believe women can do anything within prescribed limits, whether that means the Kármán line dividing the world from the rest of the galaxy or the price point closing off space travel from the rest of us.

King had some thoughts about that, too. “If you get enough people who are interested” in commercial space travel, she proposed, “it doesn’t have to be that expensive.” If you’re famous enough, it might not cost anything at all.

about this topic

“We’re going to get answers”: Texas Democrat presses ICE over an avowed “fascist” in its ranks

As President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown rears its head, filling federal courts across the country with cases of immigrants caught up in his effort to carry out mass deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been at the center, carrying out in high numbers the arrests, detentions and removals the administration has sought.

But a February investigative report uncovered that among the agency's ranks is a Dallas-area prosecutor alleged to operate a racist social media account. Months later, a lack of information about the prosecutor's standing has pushed federal lawmakers to press the agency for a definitive response.

"We're going to get answers from ICE on this situation," U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, told Salon. "It's not 'if' we're going to get answers. We're going to get answers from ICE on this, and we expect for the answers to be timely, and we're going to continue to push if they don't."

"He's just disappeared": What it's like to be detained by ICE — and why some prefer to be deported

In February, a Texas Observer investigation found that an ICE prosecutor working in the state's immigration courts has likely been operating X account GlomarResponder, which has made a number of openly racist, xenophobic and pro-fascist posts on the platform since the account went live in 2012.

“America is a White nation, founded by Whites. We are the historical and majority population, and it was founded for our benefit. Our country should favor us," GlomarResponder said in one January 2025 post. Other posts include one from last September stating, “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb f***,” and another from May where the account owner professed to be a "fascist."

GlomarResponder also authored a number of anti-immigrant posts, including one from August last year that said, “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, the Observer reported, the account posted an image that read, "It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes." In January, he made a separate post evoking violence against immigrants.

After cross-referencing biographical details shared on the profile with other social media accounts, public records, interviews and court hearing attendance, the Observer linked the account to James Joseph Rodden, a Dallas-area assistant chief counsel for ICE who represents the agency in removal cases. The account, now private, had nearly 17,000 followers as of Tuesday.

Following the report, Rep. Veasey wrote to ICE Acting Deputy Director Kenneth Genalo on Feb. 24 requesting a "full and transparent account" of the actions the agency is taking to investigate the claims within 30 days. Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., joined Veasey in demanding a response from the Trump administration in a separate Feb. 24 letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

"ICE prosecutors play a crucial role in enforcing our nation's immigration laws," Veasey wrote. "Any association with white supremacist ideology by an ICE official not only undermines public trust but also raises legitimate concerns about bias in prosecutorial decision-making."

In a phone interview, Veasey said it was important for him to seek accountability from the agency because the notion that a federal employee who largely interfaces with people of color from outside the U.S. is operating a "KKK-equivalent" social media page is "absolutely alarming."

That he even made it through any sort of background check is even scarier, Veasey added. "It calls into question just all sorts of things: How was he vetted before he was hired? How are they vetting people that worked at the agency or potential hires? It's scary to think about the fact that someone like him was ever working at this agency in the first place."

Veasey would receive a response from ICE on March 6, with the agency acknowledging the media report and stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility will "ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously," according to the Observer. The letter also noted that OPR typically completes those administrative investigations within 120 days.

That response, Veasey said, though appreciated, was wholly insufficient. But it was all the response he and his colleagues would get.

Now more than a month removed from his last correspondence with the agency, the congressman said he still has yet to receive any updates on the agency's investigation into the allegations or information on Rodden's standing with it.

"This should have been something that they should have been able to get back with me two weeks at the latest," Veasey said, calling a 120-day response time for a situation like this "ridiculous."

"I've been doing this a long, long time," he added. "You're not going to fool me at all. I know how long it takes for agencies to respond to people and to get back with people. I understand what sort of case work inquiries and what sort of findings take longer than others, and this is not one that should take 120-plus days. It's just absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary, and they should get back to us immediately."

ICE did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

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At the time of the initial report, an ICE spokesperson declined to confirm Rodden's employment to the Observer or release personnel records for Rodden without his consent. The spokesperson also insisted that the agency "holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and takes seriously all allegations of inappropriate conduct."

Whether Rodden remains employed at the agency is also unclear, a point of contention Veasey called "ridiculous."

"We don't understand why ICE won't just be transparent," he said. "But it also begs the question, too: How long is it going to take for them to find out whether or not he acted in malice, and whether or not he was racist in handling many of these different cases that most likely he touched at one time or another?"

That lack of transparency demonstrates that the Trump administration believes its "running some sort of strongman, authoritarian, backwards country" and that it doesn't have to be accountable to Congress, he said. But the current Congress has a permissive dynamic with the administration that enables that behavior, he added.

"We have a very subservient U.S. Congress, led by Republicans that, quite frankly, are not exercising their authority as a coequal branch of government in holding this White House accountable," Veasey said. "Obviously, you want to be able to work with the president, particularly if you control the House of Representatives. Democrats wanted to work with Joe Biden, and I'm sure that Republicans want to work with Donald Trump. But what I will also tell you is that it's our job to check the administration when they think that they've gone too far."

Veasey said he worked to hold former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden accountable several times over the course of his 15-year tenure.

"It's their job to stand up and to show courage and to demand that these agencies be ran with transparency and that we exercise our congressional oversight when things go too far like they have with this Rodden situation," he said. "But right now, Congress is a very compliant Congress led by these reckless, radical Republicans, and it's not good for the country."

Veasey said that he and his colleagues are continuing to press the agency — and the Trump administration — for answers about the investigation. Their hope, he said, is that they will soon receive a decisive answer. At the very least, he said he expects ICE to be more responsive, transparent and prompt in addressing his inquiry.

In the interim, he said they will continue to demand that ICE turn over information regarding Rodden, the results of its investigation and what disciplinary actions it may be taking, and will take further actions to ensure they comply if they continue to be resistant.

"They have a responsibility to give us answers," Veasey said. "Again, we have coequal branches of government, and the executive branch has the responsibility — and it's their duty, by law — to give us answers to questions about how these agencies are run. There's a reason why Congress has oversight, and these inquiries are a form of oversight, and I continue to plan on exercising that oversight."

In conducting oversight when government officials or agencies are reluctant to produce information, Congress normally launches special inquiries into alleged misconduct, which involves gathering testimony and calling witnesses to obtain answers.

"I'm not worried about if I'm going to get it," Veasey added. "We're going to get it, and if they think that we're just going to go away and not talk about it anymore, they're wrong. We're going to keep pressing it."

about ICE under Trump

Where this goes from here: What the courts might do to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home

Tensions are roiling across the nation over the apparently mistaken deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador and the Trump administration's refusal to bring him back to the United States, despite multiple court orders.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested 29-year-old Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia last month and included him in a deportation flight to his native El Salvador due to an admitted "administrative error." A federal district judge ruled April 4 that his deportation was "wholly lawless" and ordered the government to "facilitate" his release from a notorious mega prison in the Central American country and return to the U.S. The Supreme Court largely affirmed that ruling 9-0 last week, but the Trump administration has used some ambiguity present in the opinion to argue that it only has to clear any domestic obstacles to Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S.

On Wednesday, after multiple attempts to track the administration's progress by mandating daily status reports about their efforts to return Abrego Garcia, federal District Judge Paula Xinis ordered both sides to complete an expedited fact-finding period, including sworn depositions from the Trump administration officials, in two weeks.

"Disappear without recourse": Trump's defiance of a court order means "any American" could be next

"Defendants appear to have done nothing to aid in Abrego Garcia’s release from custody and return to the United States to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been” but for Defendants’ wrongful expulsion of him," Xinis wrote in the order. "Thus, Defendants’ attempt to skirt this issue by redefining 'facilitate' runs contrary to law and logic."

The Department of Justice on Thursday asked Xinis to pause her Supreme Court-affirmed order to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia's return to the U.S. and asked the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to either stay or vacate the district court orders.

Adam B. Cox, a professor of immigration law at New York University who also researches democracy and constitutional law, told Salon Wednesday that the government is deploying a "false and misleading" read of the Supreme Court order to justify its reluctance to proceed as mandated and retooling techniques for delaying the case that President Donald Trump's personal legal team wielded during his bevy of now-defunct legal challenges.

With a government that in both court and public statements appears disinterested in cooperating beyond the bare minimum in these immigration cases, the courts can no longer assume good faith, he argued.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are you making of this mistaken deportation case and the Trump administration's approach to addressing the Supreme Court order that we saw [last] Thursday?

I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. The Supreme Court issued an order that itself included a little bit of ambiguity that obviously required that the government "facilitate" — that was the term the court used — Abrego Garcia's release from the prison in El Salvador. As you can see from the hearing [Tuesday], the government wants to characterize its reluctance to proceed with the questions that Judge Xinis has asked as though their reluctance is a debate over the meaning of the term "facilitate."

I think that is not a fair characterization of the Supreme Court order because, while 'facilitate' is a term that could have a couple of different meanings, the thing that the court unambiguously required the government to do — to facilitate — is Abrego Garcia's release from the prison. And the administration, as the judge noted [Tuesday], hasn't done anything to facilitate the release. It has pretended as though the Supreme Court's order said not that they had to facilitate his release from the prison, but instead that they only had to facilitate his re-entry into the United States. And those are two very different things. The court was clear about what the government was required to do, and they're kind of pretending that the order means something different from what it says.

That was actually one of my questions — just trying to make sense of how they're reading this ruling. As you mentioned, it was that ambiguity with respect to the "effectuate" term that has since been removed from Judge Xinis' order. But, at this point, what comes next? How does the court compel [action]?

Judge Xinis has said that, obviously, they have to facilitate his release. The Supreme Court has been clear and unanimous that the government has an obligation to facilitate his release. That's a starting point, and everything the government has said in court — and even more so in its public statements — has made clear that the government has not taken any steps. So it appears from all the public statements that there's been no steps taken to comply with the clear requirement of the Supreme Court orders.

But Judge Xinis, I think out of an abundance of caution — this is the way courts proceed — her view is, "Well, the first thing we need to do is develop a factual record so that I can determine conclusively whether or not you have taken any steps to comply with the order of the Supreme Court. It kind of doesn't look like it superficially" — that's what she told the government yesterday in the hearing — "but we're going to do discovery. You're going to have to produce documents that the plaintiff asked for, you're going to have to answer questions that they put to you, and you're going to have to present government witnesses that are going to have to testify under oath to answer questions about what the government has or hasn't done." So that's going to be the next step, and that's a step towards the court building a factual record in order to reach a decision about whether the government's complying with the court's order."

Going off of that process, if we still see this argument play out [and] depending on how the trial court will judge the situation, does that go through its own appellate process back up to the Supreme Court?

There's a bunch of ways that it could proceed. In an ordinary case, there's usually nothing appealable at this moment. This is obviously not an ordinary case. Ordinarily, a party that's unhappy with a judge ordering discovery and taking testimony would not be able to run to an appellate court and say, "You can't allow them to take testimony." That's just not how it works. You have to wait until the case is over, and the court's reached a judgment before you go and challenge that in the appellate court. But I do think it's possible in this case that one of two things could happen.

One is the government could run to the appellate courts right away, even before there's an effort by the court to hold the deposition or to demand answers to the questions that the plaintiffs are going to pose and say, "This lower court judge has no authority to tell we have to answer questions." They could try to do that. I'm skeptical that the appellate courts would agree with them. That would be a radical departure from kind of ordinary court procedure. So that's one path. The second path is the plaintiffs ask their questions, they provide a list of the people they want to testify, and then the government simply refuses to answer the questions or refuses to make their witnesses available. And if they do that, they're going to have to provide legal reasons for that.

We saw in the Alien Enemies Act case before Judge [James] Boasberg that the administration used a kind of broad assertion of the so-called state secrets privilege to try to avoid providing information to the court. Something like that's possible here. The administration could say, "We're invoking the state secrets privilege. We won't answer any of these questions. We won't make these witnesses available to the court." If that happens, then the court might simply draw negative inferences against the government on the basis of their refusal to participate, it could issue a contempt order, or the plaintiffs could try to seek appellate review of their state secrets assertion. So you have, again, a situation where somebody is trying to get the appellate courts involved, where we still don't have this record that the trial court judge is trying to create. That's the second possibility.

The third possibility, of course, is we actually get this record developed The government answers the questions in some way. Their witnesses testify, and then the district court judge is going to issue a decision. She's going to decide whether the government's in contempt or not, and if she finds them in contempt, I'm quite confident that they will attempt to appeal that contempt finding.

Obviously you don't have a crystal ball, but is there any of those possibilities that you think is more likely than not to play out here?

The second possibility, to me — that feels most likely. I don't know for sure. The government doesn't have to run to the appellate court today. It's hard to know what they would say today if they went to an appellate court and said, "Stop the judge in this from moving forward." I think they're more likely to proceed by refusing to participate, either partly or wholly, in this proceeding that the judge wants to run. Maybe they refuse to make some of their witnesses available or refuse to answer some of the questions, and then that's going to create a confrontation between the district court judge, whose position is, "I need to be able to develop evidence I need to be able to know what the facts are to resolve whether you're complying with this order," and the government, who I think is likely to say, "You don't actually have the right to the information that you think you need in order to decide whether we're complying with the government order because that stuff is protected for some reason."

In the Boasberg Alien Enemy Acts case, those initial assertions were vague. The same lawyer, by the way, Drew Ensign, appeared in both matters. He would say, "Oh, it's a foreign affairs matter. You can't." And as Boasberg noted, there's no foreign affairs exception to producing information in court. There's specific legal claims you can make, like state secrets. But the question is whether the government will actually be clear because I think one of the things that has not always been clear about in recent weeks is what the legal basis is it asserts for doing or not doing something. It'll tell the judge, "We're not going to answer your questions, but we actually haven't asserted a legal basis to not answer your questions." So that's going to be a challenge.

In the hearing before Xinis [Tuesday], at one point, when Judge Xinis mentioned the names of a couple potential witnesses — the people who filed the declarations on behalf of the government in court, one of them, whom is a senior DHS official, the other, who is the general counsel of Homeland Security — Ensign is like, "Well, I don't know about testimony from him." And Judge Xinis says to him, "What would be the problem with him testifying? Are you suggesting there might be some sort of attorney-client privilege?" And Ensign responded like, "Well, yes, that's what I'm thinking." And then as Xinis noted immediately, "You put him forward as an affiant," which is just a super standard and legal practice that you always want to be careful about having a lawyer serve as an affiant because, of course, they're also an attorney in the matter who is privy to conversations that are often protected by attorney-client privilege. The usual practice is you'd be reluctant to have someone who's a lawyer on a matter serve as an affiant. But once you do, well, the problem is is that opens them up to having to testify.

So these are the kind of fights we're likely to see in the coming days. And, obviously, I think the government's strategy is, in part, going to be to try to slow things down as much as possible. We saw that in the hearing [Tuesday] when, again, Drew Ensign said, when Judge Xinis raised the possibility of depositions, "I don't really know about the availability of my clients." And she said, "Well, I'm not super interested in that. This is important, so we're going to proceed quickly, and they're going to come available."

That reminds me a lot of the Trump legal team's approach to all of his former criminal or civil cases that we saw over the past few years: trying to slow things down but also having this obfuscation technique in terms of responding to the various court orders or mandates.

Yeah, exactly. I think that encapsulates Drew Ensign's argument in court yesterday and it brings us back to where started, where he said repeatedly, "Oh, you just think this is like a narrow, legal dispute over what the term facilitate means." And that's just false and misleading, right? He's ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court did not say that the government has an obligation only to facilitate his re-entry into the United States or his return to the United States. The court had said you have to facilitate his release from the prison. If you read the transcript, I think that Ensign never acknowledged that's what the order said. And so they're kind of deliberately obfuscating what the court's order is in order to serve their legal interest in the case.

Another thing that developed in the last 24 hours with this case is that we have a U.S. senator, Sen. [Chris] Van Hollen, traveling to El Salvador as of this morning to try and negotiate Abrego Garcia's return. I am curious how that impacts the court proceedings if he's successful, if he's unsuccessful.

I don't think I really see an impact on the court case. The district court judge's initial order and the Supreme Court's order refusing to stay that order, they were both really clear. There's an obligation on the part of the executive branch, the part of the government that unlawfully removed Mr. Abrego Garcia from the country is they have a legal obligation to take steps to get him released from this prison and get him back to United States. And so nothing that others, whether they're public officials or private actors, do to try to negotiate or effectuate his release is going to relieve the executive branch of that obligation until Mr. Abrego Garcia is out of the prison and back in this country.

What do you think the rest of the country needs to take away from this incident, how it's playing out in court, how the government is approaching complying or not complying with this court order, or all of these court orders amid this immigration crackdown that we're seeing?

I mean, I think one of the most important takeaways is that, up until this point, courts — including the Supreme Court, I think, when it issued the order in this case — have operated on a kind of presumption of regularity that presumably the executive branch in good faith is going to listen to what courts say and try to effectuate what courts have asked them to do. That was also true in the Alien Enemies Act case where the Supreme Court didn't grant the plaintiffs the relief they wanted but did say quite clearly the federal government has an obligation to make sure that people who it wants to deport, pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, have an adequate opportunity to file a habeas petition to seek due process protections prior to their deportation from the country. There, just like here, the executive branch seems to be making repeatedly clear — like, if there was any doubt before, there should be no doubt now — that they have no interest in affording any more process than the least they can manage to squeeze out of those court opinions.

In Colorado, a district court held [Tuesday] that the government hadn't even guaranteed that a person who was going to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act would be given even 24 hours notice of the deportation. So it's really hard to understand how that could amount to a reasonable opportunity to seek due process protection if you're afforded not even 24 hours notice of your deportation.

That's the way that the executive branch has been proceeding. The thing that the public needs to understand, the thing that courts will likely respond to, is that the only solution, really, to guarantee that people receive the legal process that they are entitled to, is for courts to not permit any deportation until that process has been given. I think what people are going to seek increasingly are broad, class-wide protection in place in advance of any attempt by the government to deport people so that no one's deported in advance of being able to get these protections because it's clear that the government isn't going to afford people protections after they've already been deported.

It's a very poignant point in a moment where it seems almost dizzying to try and make sense of the fact that we're getting these court orders, we're not immediately seeing compliance with the court orders, and like we discussed earlier, we saw this with the Trump legal teams' approach in his personal cases. Seeing it play out at a government level is just…

There are always going to be mistakes and errors. Historically, there are always instances in which the government violates the law. But if, if we're in a world right now where it's recently clear that we can't fix mistakes or illegalities after the fact, then it does have to be stopped before they happen. That's not the way that courts often like to proceed. Courts like to proceed presuming that the government's acting in good faith, presuming that they're not going to engage in unlawful actions. Courts want to proceed slowly. But that becomes more difficult for courts in this environment when they can't count on the government to do what they're asking.

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Trump’s open defiance of the law leaves no room for Republican redemption

Whatever else you may say about Bill Maher, I never figured him for a hopeless romantic. But he is. After visiting the White House last week, he said he had to report that the crazy man on television, President Donald Trump, is not who he saw at the White House during a two-hour dinner that included Steve Bannon.

Seriously?

Maher spoke reverentially about Trump after the president gave him a private guided tour. In certain circles, the White House is known as the greatest home-field advantage in the modern world — well, it was before Trump showed up. His renovations didn’t help either. But it still has enough magic to win over Maher — who clearly loved rubbing elbows with the president. Trump even showed him his favorite tourist attraction: the exact location where a White House intern performed fellatio on an American president. Apparently, to Trump, that’s of more interest than any of the other major events that occurred in that historical office since John Adams first occupied the White House.

“There is no ‘worst’, there is only worse. Each day is worse.”

Actually, I am not sure which is worse: Trump is apparently enjoying showing off a prurient moment in history, or Maher is referring to it on stage. Maybe it’s me mentioning it?

Maher saw Trump smile and seem normal for two hours. Or to be more accurate, Maher saw Trump not go bat-guano-nuts for two hours. That was enough to give Maher a glimmer of hope that somehow things would be all right.

Still, at best, you’re a hopeless romantic to think that Donald Trump isn’t all that bad just because he was able to keep it together for two hours. At worst, you’re as delusional as Donald if you think he could offer us any hope of supporting the democratic principles outlined in our Constitution. To that point, not more than 15 minutes after Maher’s segment aired, a longtime friend and Trump supporter emailed me. “See, I told you he was reasonable.” Just the effect Trump hoped for. Donald Trump used Maher to preach to his choir through someone they see as Trump’s enemy. I guess Maher used Trump for ratings, or a tutorial guide to the best places you can have sex in the White House. Another transaction concluded.

The winners of Trump's tariff "game show" are in for a rude surprise

Bill Maher was right about a few things, though. Notably that we have to find common ground to move forward. I just don’t think Trump is the guy to do it. Maher was also right about some of the policy reasons people are attracted to Trump, particularly those surrounding DEI, “woke culture” (whatever definition you tend to favor), making Europe pay more for their defense and whether or not biological men should be allowed to participate in women’s sports. Trump addresses those issues in a manner consistent with the concerns of millions of people who, in turn, support him and otherwise would not. It is merely, like Maher’s visit, transactional, and if there is one thing Donald Trump excels at, it is the transactional relationship. “Let’s Make a Deal” with TV’s big trader, “Don the Con” Trump. But while many say it is all just a show, they really miss the point.

Does it matter if he is a crazy person in the White House trying to convince you he is not, or is a sane person trying to convince you he is crazy? What matters are the results. Look around. Donald Trump has thumbed his nose at the judiciary, owns Congress, rules by Executive Order, employs DOGE and Elon Musk as hatchet men to destroy the government while ignoring due process and openly, bald-faced lying about what he is doing. Bill Maher said he wouldn’t back off from future criticism of the president, but to those in Trump’s inner circle, it doesn’t matter.

This week, he denied the Associated Press (AP) entry into the in-house protective pool after a court ruled it had to reinstate the AP, even though for some odd reason that venerable news gathering organization continues to call the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, against Trump’s wishes. Not only did Trump thumb his nose at that court ruling, he also took the extra step of removing all of the wire services from the pool, thus depriving millions, if not billions, of people access to direct reporting from the White House. Jeff Mason and Steve Holland of Reuters, two of only a handful of reporters who have extended experience covering presidential politics, are two of the victims of Trump's latest attempt to limit coverage. There is a method to Trump’s madness.

In this case, it’s all about limiting access to the president and getting rid of critical voices who speak truth to power. And while his fans call him a “strong leader,” it is actually the mark of a coward, bully and weakling to silence those voices critical of his actions.

That’s also why Trump froze billions of dollars in federal aid to Harvard and threatened to pull that university’s tax-exempt status because it stood up to Trump’s bullying tactics on educational aid.

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Trump, already on the wrong side of history, also welcomed El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele to the White House this week. Bukele didn’t wear a suit to the White House, but Trump didn’t seem to mind – though it caused quite a stir in the White House when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently showed up similarly attired.

Bukele is known – according to his many adoring fans – as the “coolest dictator” on the planet. For the rest of the world, Bukele is a disaster. El Salvador has experienced democratic backsliding under Bukele, as he has dismantled democratic institutions, curtailed political and civil liberties, and attacked independent media and the political opposition. Those capable of critical thinking have called Bukele an authoritarian and autocrat, who apparently likes makeup as much as Trump does.

Many believe that Trump is one of his biggest fans, and while Trump fancies himself “cool,” not even his closest supporters say that of him. The best I’ve heard regarding Trump is “he says what he thinks”. The worst I’ve heard about him comes from former Republicans and Trump supporters, including a former member of Congress who describes Trump as “a monster. I was literally sick to my stomach when he said ‘we’ may put homegrown Americans in El Salvadoran jails. Because that statement on top of his refusal to bring back Kilmer Abrego Garcia has me truly scared of what he and his toadies will do.”

Originally, the Trump administration admitted it erred when it sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. But in the Oval Office in front of Bukele, Trump tried to convince the world that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a threat to our country. There was no apology — only the hardening of Trump’s heart.

Trump also said Bukele should build more prisons as he mused out loud about plans to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador.

But wait. There’s more. By Wednesday afternoon, the stock market had plummeted close to 700 points.

The White House also found itself facing criminal contempt of court charges when a federal judge said the administration defied his order to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants that were bound for El Salvador.

“At this point there is no redemption,” Mary Trump told me. “ The best we can hope for, and I hate to say it, is that enough people become fed up with this and say we won’t put up with it anymore.”

Trump has vowed to do something, anything, about the so-called (and non-existent) migrant invasion by April 20. This has some people fearful he will declare a national emergency and martial law that day, or shortly thereafter, to snuff out any resistance to his authoritarian regime. Some protesters are calling for a general strike, while Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland headed to El Salvador on Wednesday to try and arrange for Abrego Garcia’s release from prison.

The El Salvadoran government refused, prompting calls for “proof of life,” while Donald Trump’s administration held a hastily assembled press briefing with press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She then introduced a crime victim to the press room, who graphically described the murder of her daughter at the hands of a criminal and undocumented immigrant in Maryland. It was touching. It was horrifying. Everyone felt that woman’s fear and anguish. But it had nothing to do with Abrego Garcia.

“This poor mother is being used,” one reporter in the briefing room told me. She was, and Donald Trump doesn’t care. He wants to use Abrego Garcia to make a point. Trump doesn’t see him as a person or care that he has a family. And he has racist, lying cowards like Stephen Miller whispering in his ear, telling him everything he does is right.

Trump doesn’t even care about the crime victim pouring her heart out in the briefing room. He merely used her to paint a picture of the press and the Democrats as enemies of the state who would prefer to have gangs of ruthless rapists and murders ravaging the countryside in a display of wanton destruction that would make the Manson murders look like a PTA carnival.

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To the credit of most of the reporters in the briefing room during this display, no one seated in the Brady Briefing room took the bait, so they had no questions for Leavitt after she and the crime victim spoke. A couple of reporters standing on the side of the room wanted to ask a question, but Leavitt walked out purposely without acknowledging them.

What’s the point?

There is no truth in anything Trump does, says or envisions. “He is suffering from a worsening dementia and delusion,” his niece Mary said. “And he has no one telling him otherwise. Stephen Miller is in the Oval Office telling Donald he won a Supreme Court ruling 9-0 when they lost – and no one is pushing back. I guarantee you he hasn’t read the report. None of his minions want to tell him the truth.”

But as delusional as Trump is, no one can be evil all of the time. That takes too much energy. Sometimes you need a refreshment. A hamburger. A coke while walking Bill Maher through the White House, smiling and laughing and taking the comedian’s sartorial jabs with a light-hearted guffaw.

At one point, Maher said he’d never seen Trump smile publicly. I have. So has every other reporter covering him. He laughs too. Usually he laughs at the expense of others, but he did a rare thing and laughed at himself last week as he was talking about water pressure in showers, flushing toilets and washing his hair. Bathroom, scatological and sexual humor is apparently as deep as the Donald gets. At least that’s what I’ve seen in covering this guy for eight years.

After 12 weeks, the second Donald Trump administration is showing us on a daily basis what Mary Trump has said for years. “There is no ‘worst’, there is only worse. Each day is worse.”

And there is no telling how low he will go.

“I mean, what’s next? Is he going to start staking people to the walls?” His niece asked. “After all, it is possible.”

Watching Trump defy the courts, openly lie about it, while White House staffers offer up and back up easily disproved lies only goes to show that Trump’s insanity is nearly complete – and his employees aren’t too far behind him.

And he hasn’t even been here 100 days. Of course, Maher should be invited back to celebrate that mark and he can once again waste our time telling us how cordial Trump is as he takes a sledgehammer to the pillars of democracy.

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JD Vance exposed the truth about Trump’s war on foreign students (hint: it’s not about antisemitism)

"The fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against antisemitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi was crystal clear in his condemnation of antisemitism during his 2023 "60 Minutes" interview. "To be antisemitic is unjust," the student activist plainly stated, denouncing anyone who uses antisemitic rhetoric when protesting Israel's war on Gaza.

On Monday, Donald Trump's administration arrested Mahdawi after sadistically luring him to an immigration office by implying his citizenship application process was complete. The excuse offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio is that Mahdawi needs to be deported to halt the spread of antisemitism. But Rubio's team offered no evidence that Mahdawi is antisemitic, and did not bother to acknowledge his very public denunciation of antisemitism.

Similar accusations have been leveled at Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate and green card holder arrested for participating in the Gaza protests, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student on a visa from Turkey, arrested for signing an op-ed opposing the war. There has been no evidence produced of antisemitism from either, however. On the contrary, the Washington Post reports that an internal State Department memo written before Ozturk's arrest found no evidence to support the accusation. Mikey Barat, Mahdawi's Israeli friend, told The Intercept that while they "do not agree on everything," Mahdawi "has denounced violence" and seeks "coexistence."

Antisemitism is a real problem, and, as Mahdawi stated clearly in his denunciation of it, a few Gaza protesters unfortunately engaged in it. But it's preposterous to pretend that Trump has any sincere objection to it, especially as he and his allies routinely use the antisemitic "great replacement" conspiracy theory to stoke white nationalist fervor. It's instead employed as an empty pretext to wage war on foreign students. In the process, the Trump administration is making a mockery of both the law and of genuine concerns about antisemitism, harmfully associating the issue with the bad faith of fascists.

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Under Rubio, there have been over a thousand student visas revoked all over the country, so it's telling that even in the three most prominent cases, the government can't produce real evidence of antisemitism. Rubio, like most in the Trump administration, uses hyperbolic and accusatory language towards his victims, calling them "lunatics." But when journalists look into the actual students, many of whom are being held in detention centers, it quickly becomes clear that's not the case at all.

On Friday, the New York Times reported on Kseniia Petrova, a 30-year-old biology student who fled Russia after protesting her country's invasion of Ukraine. She's been held for over two months in a Louisiana detention center with 90 other women "sharing five toilets and following orders shouted by guards." Her alleged infraction? Forgetting to declare a bag of frog embryos to customs agents at the airport, work materials for her research at Harvard University.

“President Trump’s immigration crackdown ensnared Kseniia Petrova, a scientist who fled Russia after protesting its invasion of Ukraine.”

[image or embed]

— Saeed Jones (@theferocity.bsky.social) April 11, 2025 at 12:00 PM

Trump's White House, unsurprisingly, refuses to talk about the real reasons behind most of the visa revocations, but one can bet if they had a real-life case of someone who said or did something antisemitic, they'd be blasting that story from every corner. They've made a spectacle out of Khalil, Ozturk, and Mahdawi because they know all three read as "Muslim" — though Mahdawi is Buddhist — and that's all the "evidence" that the MAGA base needs. But some journalists have dug up some of the other stories. One student is being deported for drunk driving. Others had speeding tickets.

Why not tyranny? JD Vance says he's fine with the "inevitable errors" of abandoning due process

Last month, Vice President JD Vance let slip what is likely the real reason for this crackdown when he claimed that foreign students are "bad for the American dream." He argued that international students are bad "for American kids who want to go to a nice university but can’t because their spot was taken by a foreign student." Jath Shao, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney, told NBC News that this is Trump targeting "the small and the weak — people who don’t have as many resources to defend themselves," as part of a larger anti-immigration agenda.

Vance's ploy is cheap and transparent, though there are no doubt plenty of Trump voters with bad SAT scores who want to believe the only reason they didn't get into Harvard was that a foreign student took "their" spot. The chip on Vance's shoulder is real enough, though. As Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times pointed out, diversity initiatives at Yale likely helped Vance get into their law school, because "a promising white candidate from a county that sends few students to an elite college like Yale would get a strong look, even if that person’s grades and test scores were less impressive than other applicants’."

Diversity goals, such as those that likely helped Vance, aren't about charity, but about improving the overall educational experience for all students. It's doubly true when it comes to schools recruiting foreign students. Bringing in talented people from all over the world leads to better research and other academic work. It's a major reason American universities are held in such high regard and why the United States is a world leader in scientific research. Even Republican voters might not be so keen on the purge-them-all attitude if they realized it meant expelling all this talent that helps the larger economy. They might be especially perturbed when reminded that the high quality of American health care depends largely on the influx of medical doctors and researchers from around the world.

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These tensions flared up in December, when billionaire Elon Musk defended H1B visa holders from attacks from the louder white nationalist influencers calling for Trump to kick them all out. Silicon Valley depends heavily on these highly skilled workers, and Musk wasn't inaccurate in his skepticism that the U.S. will produce enough homegrown engineers to take all those jobs overnight. He got roasted by MAGA bigwigs like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer for this, and the issue was never really resolved.

The flimsy "antisemitism" excuse suggests the Trump administration is trying to have it both ways. They want to appease the MAGA idiots who all think they'd get into Harvard, if there weren't some Palestinians and Russians in their way. But they don't want to alarm their wealthy donors, who don't want to see the supply of highly skilled workers shrink dramatically, reducing the value of their investments, especially in fields like tech and medicine. Pretending they're only going after a few "troublemakers" gets them there. The base gets their racist red meat, while the elite get to tell themselves that most of the foreign workforce is safe.

The elites, however, are fooling themselves if they fall for this. Trump and his lackey, Stephen Miller, who appears to be operating as his real chief of staff, are true believers when it comes to hating immigrants. Both men, possessing mediocre intelligence at best, no doubt resent it when those foreigners are far smarter or more accomplished than they will ever be. This attack on foreign students isn't a feint. There are too many of them who are being picked up or deported, too quickly. It's also sending the intended message to other foreign students not to come to the U.S. Competitors in Europe and Asia will benefit from the brain drain into their countries. It's just one more way Trump is making the United States less influential and poorer.

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