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Why San Francisco is considering a bill that would let shoppers sue closing grocery stores

In 1984, the managers of a Safeway supermarket located at Bush and Larkin Streets in San Francisco announced the abrupt closure of the store; they would be permanently shuttering within the week, leaving community members with few choices for places to get fresh groceries. In response, the city’s Board of Supervisors passed the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act, a law that would require grocery stores to provide six-months advance notice — and a promise to engage in good-faith negotiations with community members — before closing. 

However, then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein quickly vetoed the law and it was largely forgotten, until now. 

Four decades on, an eerily similar situation is playing out in San Francisco. In January, another Safeway — this time at Webster and Ellis, in a historically Black area that serves many senior citizens — announced they would be closing. This prompted both protests from community members and for two city supervisors, Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin, to reintroduce the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act.

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“It was a good idea in 1984, and it’s an even better idea now,” Preston said in a statement. “Our communities need notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a transition plan when major neighborhood grocery stores plan to shut their doors. Meeting the food security needs of our seniors and families cannot be left to unilateral backroom decisions by massive corporate entities.”

The proposal comes as San Francisco has experienced an exodus of both residents and large companies. According to a 2023 CNN report, since the pandemic, nearly 40 retail stores have closed in Union Square, a major commercial hub in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown, with dozens more closing in surrounding areas. The reason for the mass departure is multifaceted, with experts pointing to a mix of sluggish tourism traffic, rising crime rates and less need for commercial real estate during an era of remote work. 

However, San Francisco isn’t the only city struggling with the question of how to ensure its most vulnerable residents have and maintain access to community groceries — and if the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act passes, it would set an interesting precedent in the national fight against food insecurity. 

The newly-proposed bill in San Francisco begins by classifying supermarkets as being essential to the vitality of a community and, as such, “the closure of a supermarket can have widespread effects on a community’s well being by reducing access to food and creating food insecurity. 

“Supermarket closures can have an especially dire impact on senior citizens, people with disabilities and people who lack the means to travel by car or public transportation to supermarkets outside the neighborhood,” the ordinance says. “To safeguard the interests of workers, including the employees of some supermarkets, federal and state laws require large businesses to notify their employees of their intent to close or transfer ownership of the business.” 

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The ordinance acknowledges that the Board of Supervisors recognizes a supermarket may conclude that it is to its economic advantage to close when it is no longer profitable to stay in operation. 

“This Article 57 does not preclude the owner from making such a decision,” the ordinance authors write. “Nevertheless, given the life-sustaining services a supermarket provides to residents in the neighborhood, and the important role it plays in strengthening and stabilizing the community it serves, an owner has a responsibility as an integral part of that community to undertake a reasonable effort to work with neighborhood residents and the City to explore opportunities to remain open for business, or to identify a replacement supermarket.” 

They continue: “Through this Article 57, the City seeks to leverage community and City resources to ensure that neighborhoods are not left devoid of supermarkets and residents are not left without access to supermarkets; that supermarkets continue to serve the community even when there is the possibility of a supermarket closure.” 

"The City seeks to leverage community and City resources to ensure that neighborhoods are not left devoid of supermarkets and residents are not left without access to supermarkets."

According to the bill, affected individuals can initiate a lawsuit if a grocery store fails to comply with the closure notice requirements. The course of action could range from seeking damages and injunctive relief to declaratory relief or a writ of mandate to fix the violation.In a statement regarding his decision to help revive the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act, Supervisor Preston said that the abrupt closure of a neighborhood-serving store is no less harmful than it was 40 years ago. 

“Food insecurity is on the rise, especially for seniors and families, as food prices skyrocket and food programs face major cuts,” he said. “We need to be doing everything in our power to maintain access to groceries in our neighborhoods.”

San Francisco’s decision to consider this ordinance comes at a crucial time for the grocery industry in the United States. Currently, Albertsons and Kroger, the two biggest supermarket chains in the country, are fighting to merge, a move that some experts fear might lead to higher prices for shoppers, many of whom are already reporting anxiety about food inflation. Simultaneously, cities across the United States are grappling with how dollar stores have swarmed their urban centers, often pushing out the remaining large-scale grocers and exacerbating food deserts. 

For many of these communities, when a supermarket leaves, it’s not just inconvenient — it’s a staggering loss. Whether the Neighborhood Grocery Protection Act will dissuade future departures remains to be seen. The ordinance was introduced by Preston and Peskin last week and, in San Francisco, legislation that creates or revises major City policy shall not be considered until at least 30 days after the day of introduction. 

In the meantime, however, the Safeway that was planning on closing in the city has agreed to keep their store open until at least January 2025. 

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Reagan’s great America shining on a hill twisted into Trump’s dark vision of Christian nationalism

In August 1982, Ronald Reagan’s father-in-law was dying. Nancy Reagan’s beloved dad, Loyal Davis, was an atheist – a troubling fact to the 40th president. So Reagan penned a private, handwritten note in which he recounted how the prayers of colleagues and friends had cured him of a painful stomach ulcer.

Giving hope for what lay beyond, Reagan entreated the older man, “We’ve been promised this is only a part of life and that a greater life, a greater glory awaits us … and all that is required is that you believe and tell God you put yourself in his hands.”

For decades, some of Reagan’s critics have questioned his religiosity, noting he rarely went to church. But the missive to his father-in-law reveals a deep and heartfelt faith. That faith also factored heavily into his political stands and policies, as I discuss in my book “Righting the American Dream: How the Media Mainstreamed Reagan’s Evangelical Vision.”

In recent years, Donald Trump, another former president and the current Republican presidential candidate, has often spoken about his faith, posing for photo ops with right-wing preachers and praising his “favorite book” – the Bible.

The latest such demonstration was a video in which Trump promoted sales of a pricey US$59.99 version of the Bible. “Let’s make America pray again,” he urged viewers. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.”

While Reagan and Trump – two of the most media-savvy Republican presidents – used religion to advance their political visions, their messages and missions are starkly different.

Why religion plays a part in politics

In my book, I explain that underlying American politics is a religious vision that links citizens to civic values. The most prevalent vision is that God blessed America and tasked its citizens with spreading freedom and democracy. It’s an idea that has undergirded Americans’ patriotism and inspired American domestic and foreign policies for decades.

Reagan telegraphed belief in a God-blessed America by describing the United States as “a shining city on a hill.” Reagan flipped the original meaning of a Biblical phrase from a 17th century Puritan sermon. In Matthew 5:14, Jesus warns that the world will judge whether or not his disciples, a symbolic city on a hill, stick to their ideals. By adding “shining,” Reagan sanctified American exceptionalism and the United States’ role as a global model of freedom.

A close up of a man speaking in front of a microphone with the American flag next to him.

Reagan described the U.S. as a ‘shining city on a hill,’ signaling American exceptionalism. J. David Ake J./AFP via Getty Images

Once elected, Reagan sought practical ways to apply his faith in freedom, which, like many evangelicals, he believed came from God. By cutting taxes, ending industry regulations and privatizing government functions, he hoped to give individuals more economic and political freedom.

Reagan’s love of freedom also fueled his hostility to the Soviet Union. He labeled its communist government “an evil empire,” because it denied its citizens freedom. Casting a geopolitical stance as a cosmic battle between good and evil, Reagan made defeating communism a religious calling.

I argue that Reagan’s evangelical vision was mainstreamed through the media, which reported his interviews and public statements. This vision was not always apparent, but Americans liked his policies even if they missed their religious dimension. In other words, when Reagan proposed allowing the free market to determine the economy, limiting federal power and standing up for democracy worldwide, one didn’t need to be an evangelical to agree.

A new religious vision

Trump saw an opening for a new kind of religiously tinged politics when he ran for president in 2016. But unlike Reagan’s vision of spreading freedom and democracy here and abroad, Trump’s vision sticks closer to home.

I would argue that Trump’s religious vision is rooted in white Christian nationalism, the belief that the white Christians who founded America hoped to spread Protestant beliefs and ideals. According to white Christian nationalists, the founders also wanted to limit the influence of non-Christian immigrants and enslaved Africans.

Likewise, Trump’s rhetoric, mainstreamed by the media, portrays “real” Americans as white Christians. Many of these are men and women fearful that secularists and religious, racial and ethnic minorities want to replace, if not eliminate, them.

By most measures, Trump is not personally religious, although supporters contest that claim. But he has convinced conservative Americans, especially white evangelicals, that he is “God’s instrument on earth.”

When confronted with his financial misconduct, sexual crimes and outrageous lies, backers say that God works through flawed men. And evidence of that work – the U.S. Supreme Court overturning abortion rights, building the border wall and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – has won him their support.

Trump’s mainstreaming of white Christian nationalism is evident in his latest scheme. The God Bless the USA Bible sports an American flag on its cover. Included with scripture is the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Pledge of Allegiance and the handwritten lyrics to singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” A portion of the sales will benefit Trump’s organization.

Christianity and nationalism hand in hand

Former President Donald Trump and his faith.

Trump rejects America’s role as the “shining city on a hill” and its mission to spread freedom and democracy. His goal is to restore what he calls the “founding fathers’ vision.” It’s a vision shared by Americans who think the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation, despite proof to the contrary.

Religion can be a force for good or ill. Reagan believed that his religious vision would promote individual freedom and spread democracy worldwide. Americans may agree or disagree on whether he was successful and at what cost.

But Trump’s religious vision – one that hawks Bibles, disparages democracy and mocks governance – isn’t one that Reagan would recognize.

 

Diane Winston, Professor and Knight Center Chair in Media & Religion, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

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

USC cancels speech by pro-Palestine valedictorian, citing “alarming tenor” of her critics

The University of Southern California has canceled its traditional graduation speech by Class of 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Muslim who has expressed support for Palestine on social media, the Los Angeles Times reported. The school is citing safety concerns over emails and messages they received that threatened to disrupt the ceremony.

In a campus-wide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman wrote that the attacks on social media, targeting Tabassum for her pro-Palestine views, had escalated to an "alarming tenor" over the last few weeks. "The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period," Guzman wrote, saying later that the school is providing Tabassum support.

The cancellation will please on- and off-campus pro-Israel groups that opposed Tabassum's selection as speaker, attacking her for her pro-Palestine views and minor in the university's Resistance to Genocide program.

We Are Tov, a group that describes itself as "dedicated to combating antisemitism," targeted Tabassum in an Instagram post for "promoting antisemitic writings in her Instagram bio," for "supporting calls for #endtheoccupation," and for including link on her Instagram bio that offered to help people "learn about what's happening in Palestine" (and referred to Zionism as a "racist settler-colonial ideology"),

Pro-Israel groups have argued that criticism of Zionism — a nationalist movement that supports Israel remaining a Jewish-led state — is inherently antisemitic. Pro-Palestine activists reject this characterization; the page linked on Tabassum's Instagram concedes that "some anti-Zionists can be antisemitic (just as some Zionists can be antisemitic)" but says the accusation is meant "as a way to shut down criticism of Israel."

Tabassum released a statement addressing the cancellation, writing that she was "shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice." She continued: "I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me."

The cancellation was criticized by others who believe it was done to censor Tabassum, not protect her. “USC cannot hide its cowardly decision behind a disingenuous concern for ‘security,'" said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Los Angeles chapter.

Ex-prosecutors: Trump already touched the “third rail” in hush-money trial — and it could cost him

You can tell that Donald Trump’s criminal trial is not going well for him by the simple fact that it is actually happening. His alleged co-conspirator, former fixer Michael Cohen, has already served a year in prison for his role in paying off an adult film star to influence the 2016 election – and now he will be testifying that the former president told him to do it.

Trump’s best hope is perhaps that a single juror sympathizes with him and prevents a unanimous verdict. That could happen even with the most stringent vetting. But what if a juror voted to acquit based not on their honest judgment of the facts, or even their own previously concealed bias, but because they feared the consequences, for them personally, of a guilty verdict?

That’s something that New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan says he won’t stand for. On Tuesday, he admonished Trump for “audibly uttering something” and gesturing toward a prospective juror – located about 12 feet from the former president at the time of the outburst – who had been questioned about having shared a video on Facebook of celebratory crowds on the day of the 2020 election. The juror, a woman who was ultimately dismissed, had argued she could still be impartial, maintaining that the video was not intended to be a partisan statement.

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"No more games": Legal experts says judge already put "out of control" Trump's lawyers on notice

“I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan told Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.”

Whether Trump has the ability to comport himself with dignity has been a major concern – not just for the judge, but for his own defense team. It is of course unprecedented for a criminal defendant to be a former U.S. president, and good reason to bar anyone from hectoring a potential juror, no competent legal counsel would suggest in-court bullying is an effective means of achieving a desired outcome. What Tuesday’s episode suggests is that no, of course Trump can’t behave like a responsible adult.

Appearing on MSNBC, Catherine A. Christian, a trial lawyer who previously served in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, was asked by anchor Chris Hayes whether she had ever seen a defendant try to engage a prospective juror who could ultimate decide their fate.

“No – and I’m not making light of this – only the mentally unwell ones,” Christian said. “That’s the only time you see criminal defendants acting out, literally, and then you sort of understand it.”

There’s a reason it’s considered the “third rail” of criminal proceedings, Karen Agnifilo, a former assistant Manhattan district attorney, told CNN.

"The third rail is if anyone starts to make the jury feel any kind of intimidation whatsoever,” she said, noting that “the jury has to be protected at all costs and not just for safety reasons.” That is, jurors should only ever have to think about the facts of the case, not a personal interaction with a defendant – and that’s why no judge will tolerate it, she explained.

"Trump can make comments about the judge, about the court, about the D.A., but you do anything involving the jurors you're going to see a very swift reaction,” she said.

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While Trump was reportedly “furious” after he was scolded, the judge he accuses of being “corrupt” and “conflicted” actually did him a favor, according to legal experts.

Lisa Rubin, a legal correspondent at MSNBC, noted that Trump violated courtroom decorum during the first E. Jean Carroll case, pounding the table and making other physical gestures to communicate his displeasure.

“And we all know how that story ended,” Rubin said. “None of the jurors were positively impacted by that performance.” They concluded, in fact, that he was sexual predator.

Trump’s behavior is more likely a product of poor impulse control than a cynical or indeed nefarious strategy – because, again, no good lawyer would recommend it.

“His conduct in the courtroom – it's very demonstrative and it’s very emotional at times,” conservative attorney George Conway commented Wednesday on “Morning Joe.” Conway said he doesn’t think Trump “has a complete ability to control himself,” a fact that will cost him.

Again, just look at the last time he did it in the Carroll case, Conway said.

“He basically sat in front of the jury and just showed contempt for the entire process and contempt for the jury,” he said, “which dovetailed nicely with what the other side was trying to prove, which was: This is a bad guy who doesn’t respect anybody and anything, including the law."

Trump, who has appeared to doze off each day of the trial so far, should consider remaining unconscious, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance commented on her blog. “Trump would do well to sleep more in court if this is the best he can manage when he’s awake,” she wrote.

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“Profiting off a loser company”: Trump could cash in on scheme to water down Truth Social stock

Trump plans to water DJT stock by issuing millions of new shares. It’s part of a new Trump scheme to make money for himself and his bankers from a failing company that rang up just $4.1 million in revenue last year and lost more than $58 million.

At its peak, the market valued the company at $8 billion, which, in market terms, is a delusional fantasy. It’s true value is zero, especially if Trump is incarcerated.

The stock watering plan also reminds us that savvy investors and investment bankers make money when stocks fall and rise. Profiting off a loser company is a lucrative but risky and sophisticated game, not one to try at home. Unless you want to be wiped out financially right down to losing your house, since the potential losses to you are unlimited.

Here is how it works: By Issuing millions more shares of DJT, the Trump company ticker symbol, the company will collect cash to keep it going since it isn’t earning a profit or taking in much from customers. The new shares dilute the stock the way bar watering the gin makes it less potent.

Shorts borrow shares from investors and sell them, paying a fee to the investor. If the stock price falls, the shorts buy back the same number of shares at the lower price, return them to the person they were borrowed from, and keep the difference in price between the sale and re-purchase.

People who hold shares are called longs. They have a long, or ownership position.

Watering helps those who short stocks, called shorts, in two ways.

Shorts borrow shares of stock, paying the investor a fee for the loan of their shares. The shorts then sell the borrowed shares.

Note: If you own a stock brokerage account that allows you to buy on the margin, the investment house can loan out your shares without you knowing it. The brokerage assumes the risk of making you whole if things go awry.

The first way that shorts benefit from stock watering is that millions of new shares become available to sell short.  Right now, there are hardly any shares left to borrow and sell short.

For example, if a short sold at $26, roughly the DJT price Monday, and bought back for $1 later, the profit would be $25 per share less than the fee paid to borrow the shares. In this scenario, the short seller makes a bank vault of cash while the loyal Trump supporter who held onto their shares gets wiped out.

While that’s a nifty and lucrative result, what happens if the stock price rises? Should the stock price rise, say to $51 from $26, the person with the short position would lose $25 per borrowed share. Ouch.

Second, issuing more shares lowers the value of each existing share, putting more downward pressure on DJT.  

DJT trading began three weeks ago. DJT shares peaked March 26 at $79.38 and started falling. On April 15, the day Trump’s first criminal trial began in Manhattan, DJT shares traded at about $26. That means the stock has already lost more than two-thirds — down 71%, closing today at $22.84 — from its peak value. Ouch.

Trump owns 58% of the pre-dilution shares. But he can’t sell his shares for 5 months under a so-called “lock up” intended to reassure investors that the company isn’t a pump-and-dump scam to run up the share price so the insiders can cash out, leaving the buyers with losses when the stock collapses.

But Donald can still cash in and walk away with a fortune, perhaps several billion dollars, since at its peak, the company was valued at about $8 billion for reasons that have nothing to do with market fundamentals like profits and expectations of future profits.

How would that work?

Donald can pledge his DJT shares to an investment bank. The bank then loans Donald cash secured by those shares.

CEOs have done this for decades, pocketing cash without selling their shares — or having to tell investors! In those deals, the CEO or founder could borrow as much as 90% of the share value. If the stock rose, the investment house got the first 35% or so of the increase. If the stock fell, as we see with DJT shares, the investment house also makes money because it shorts the stock.

After the price collapses, the investment bank closes its short position by buying back cheap shares, and Trump’s loan is paid off.

The bankers keep the fat fees charged for arranging the deal plus any surplus on the short.

In this case, the investment bank might loan Trump only half of the value of his shares. In that scenario, it would double its money because when the bank closes its short position, its gross profit would be twice as much money as it loaned Trump. And then there are the fees the bank collects for arranging the deal.

It’s a win-win for Trump and the bank — and nothing but losses for people who went long, buying and holding DJT shares as they fell from almost $80 to zero.

At the April 22 hearing before Justice Engoron on Trump’s putative bond in the persistent fraud case, AG Letitia James should ask if Trump hypothecated his DJT shares and collected cash through a loan against them.

If he did — and I think that is highly likely — this could seriously complicate collecting the nearly half a billion dollars Donald owes in disgorgement and interest. Trump can delay payment while he appeals, but he has no chance of reversing the finding of fraud, only of persuading a court to shave back the size of the award. That, too, seems unlikely for anything but a modest amount of what he owes.

Whether it’s cheating at golf, cheating novice roulette players at the Trump Castle casino, cheating illegal immigrants out of their wages in building Trump Tower, cheating on his wives, cheating insurance companies, cheating on damages from 9/11 — he suffered none but collected big time — cheating on his income taxes, cheating on his property taxes, or trying to cheat by stealing an election and overthrowing the government, remember that Trump is always and everywhere looking to make money for himself with no regard for who gets hurt.

Mike Johnson’s gambit could blow the GOP’s chances

It seems like only yesterday that Republican president in exile Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were pledging fealty to one another in a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago. Actually, it was five days ago and it appears their political union was as short-lived as the marriage of the Golden Bachelor. While Johnson faces the most difficult week of his short career as speaker, when asked if he supported Johnson's plan to finally pass the long-stalled foreign appropriations bill, Trump blandly replied, "We'll see what happens with that." So much for their beautiful friendship. 

Trump has his own problems right now, of course. He's in the midst of his first criminal trial in New York where he's alternately nodding off and being admonished by the judge for intimidating the jurors. So I suppose it's too much to ask that he be concerned with something as trivial as national security. It's just too bad that his inexplicable admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his desire to thwart any deal at the border to boost his own electoral chances has led the House MAGA caucus to refuse to allow the Senate-passed bipartisan appropriations agreement to come to a vote. All Trump has to do is say the word and it's almost certain they could get it to the president's desk by the end of the week. 

With only a two-vote margin, Johnson would not survive a vote without Democrats jumping to his defense.

The state of play changes from minute to minute so there's every chance that this will be outdated by the time you read it. But as it stands on Wednesday morning, Johnson is preparing to present four separate bills, one for Ukraine, one for Israel, one for Taiwan and one with a hodgepodge of policies including the banning of TikTok. If he manages to get them to the floor for a vote (not a given since MAGA Republicans are routinely voting against procedural rules which means Democrats may have to do it), he could conceivably gather together enough votes to pass Ukraine aid with a majority of Democrats and separately pass Israel aid with a majority of Republicans. The Taiwan bill shouldn't have any trouble but who knows what's going on with that fourth vote?

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Mike Johnson basks in Trump’s shadow while all flood lights turn to Marjorie Taylor Greene

No doubt Johnson thought he had Trump's backing for this plan when he left Mar-a-Lago on Friday but it's likely that Trump was only half listening. If he did agree he certainly didn't communicate that to MAGA ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who said this week that she plans to pull the trigger on her motion to vacate the chair if Johnson makes any move to help Ukraine. (She was calling the Ukrainians Nazis over the weekend.) On Tuesday she was joined in her crusade by Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who stood up in a GOP meeting and demanded that Johnson resign. He later went before the cameras and declared that he is now a co-sponsor of Greene's motion to vacate. 

Greene demanded that Johnson resign as well:

Johnson was not amused. After the meeting, he told the press that he was not resigning and that it was "an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs." He has a point but that ship sailed when his predecessor Kevin McCarthy sold his spine to the far right by agreeing that any right-wing kook could call for the speaker's ouster. 

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With only a two-vote margin, Johnson would not survive a vote without Democrats jumping to his defense. As of Friday, when Congressman Mike Gallagher, R-Wi., departs after having resigned in disgust of what has become of the legislative body, that two-vote margin shrinks to one. However, it remains to be seen if Greene is serious about calling for this vote against Johnson or just wants to hold it over his head while garnering attention from the media. She spoke with Breitbart on Tuesday evening and said, "Yes I am prepared to do it. But the process of how I am doing it and going about it is I am being respectful of my conference and a Republican majority and I’m also being respectful of my colleagues. I didn’t like how it was done when they threw out Kevin McCarthy. It was done by force and no one had a say."

But separating it into four different bills will require the Senate to vote again and there's a chance that they might be able to muster a filibuster if they decide to use the impeachment farce as an excuse to blow up the Ukraine funding.

Despite her constant refrain that she has many (so far silent) supporters for this move, there is little evidence that's true. Greene added this hedge, "the reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker." In other words, she's probably bluffing. 

The big question now is how the House Democrats and the Senate will deal with all this. There are two Democratic congressmen, Tom Suozzi of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida, who have said they'd vote to keep Johnson if it comes to that. It's hard to say whether they'd actually do that if it came down to it. More immediately urgent is how the Democrats might handle the rule vote. (Johnson could agree to a suspension of the rules and bring it to the floor but he refuses.) The question is what the Democrats would want in return for helping him out and if they'd be satisfied just to get this appropriations bill over and done with. That is unclear but we should know in the next couple of days when we see how and if they can get these bills to the floor. 

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There is a possibility that it could run into some difficulty in the Senate, however. Yet another surreal moment occurred on Tuesday when the House formally delivered the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Greene's demand to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer refers to the fact that Democrats may not bring up the impeachment for trial at all, which has a number of GOP Senators up in arms and could gum up the works on these bills Johnson is attempting to put together. If he would just put the bill the Senate already passed on the floor, that would be the end of it. But separating it into four different bills will require the Senate to vote again and there's a chance that they might be able to muster a filibuster if they decide to use the impeachment farce as an excuse to blow up the Ukraine funding. Thirty Republican senators voted against the original bill and so far there does not seem to be a border component in any of the new bills (Trump's doing, I'd guess) which was one of the incentives for the others to vote yes. 

This is, in short, a huge mess and it will be a miracle if they get anything passed. Between Trump's self-serving meddling and Marjorie Taylor Greene's showboating, not to mention the general lunacy of the MAGA caucus in both chambers of Congress, the lunatics are running the asylum — and the security of the whole world is hanging in the balance. 

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Sleepy Don’s dilemma: Napping in court could help Trump win the case, but it hurts him with his base

Toddlers are superior to Donald Trump in all ways, but they share one trait with the old man: A tendency to veer wildly between throwing tantrums or crashing into naps.

On Monday, Trump's urge to sleep took over during the court proceedings at the Manhattan-based trial regarding "hush money" payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Multiple courtroom reporters saw Trump nodding off. "Trump closed his eyes several times. He then abruptly caught himself and stiffened his posture," the Washington Post reported.

There was much merriment in the political press over this because Trump is forever accusing his opponent, President Joe Biden, of being "sleepy." As usual with Trump, every accusation is a confession. Trump's campaign appears to be especially chagrined by this, claiming it's "100% Fake News coming from ‘journalists’ who weren’t even in the court room." (Every word of that statement, needless to say, is a lie.) Trump's team has been working overtime to weave an illusion for his MAGA base that he is not the tired and cranky old man clearly visible in the pictures, but more like a hyperactive toddler or perhaps a petulant teenager. The campaign sent out an email Monday afternoon falsely claiming Trump "stormed out of court." Even while Trump was dozing off, someone pretended to be him posting on Truth Social. Presumably, they believe Trump's loyalists are dumb enough to picture their orange savior furiously typing on his phone under the defendant's table.

Will Scharf, who is hired as a Trump attorney but who mostly seems to spend his time doing P.R. for his client on cable news, even tried to seed the laughable idea that Trump might testify. On CNN, without breaking character, Scharf claimed Trump "would be a very compelling witness in this case." Trump is not going to testify. He has professional lawyers working on this case, not the clown car he rolled out for his civil trials. They know better than to let a prosecutor anywhere close to asking their client a question.

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These lies are all an elaborate theatrical performance for the MAGA base, so they can keep telling themselves that their beloved ex-president is acting exactly how they like him: Like a 4-year-old flailing on a grocery store floor because Mom said they cannot have another candy bar. Trump supporters mistake petulance for strength. To keep the donations flowing, so Trump's fancy lawyers can get paid, it's crucial for him to pantomine belligerence, even if what is actually on display in court is a weary old man. 

That Trump is just a man — and a tired, old man at that — is the information Trump is most eager to conceal from his supporters. His entire mystique to the MAGA crowd is based on their faith that he's somehow impervious to the normal forces that work on the rest of us.

The irony of this is that "Sleepy Don" is likelier to win at trial than the "Tantruming Trump" his followers so admire. Outside of the MAGA bubble, most people are repulsed when a grown man acts like Prince Joffrey from "Game of Thrones." This is likely why, even though he was widely mocked for sleeping during the first day of the trial, journalists once again report that Trump nodded off periodically on the second day. His lawyers likely told him to stay quiet. Whining at cameras is how Trump energizes himself, and without that, he drifted off. 

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One juror who was dismissed spoke to MSNBC and remarked on how the setting stripped Trump of all the bells and whistles that he uses to seem larger than life. "You see somebody blown up so larger than life on the media, for so many years," she said. "To see them in person is very jarring. And you get the sense that oh, this is just another guy."

That Trump is just a man — and a tired, old man at that — is the information Trump is most eager to conceal from his supporters. His entire mystique to the MAGA crowd is based on their faith that he's somehow impervious to the normal forces that work on the rest of us. His ability to project immunity from consequences for his crimes is a huge part of his appeal to his worshippers, of course. But he also wants them to believe that he is above petty concerns like sleep or eating right, much less that he's affected by the process of aging. The aspirational fantasy Trump sells his folllowers is one where his bad actions and stupid behaviors never catch up with him.

Remember Trump's reaction when he caught what was obviously a very serious case of COVID-19? He was so focused on trying to fool his voters into thinking he wasn't sick that he probably made himself sicker in the process. Nor was it just the ridiculous photos from the hospital where he pretended he was working or him trying to look triumphant stripping off his mask from the White House balcony. He was once so worried about looking weak that he once denounced reports of "mini-strokes" that no one had made. 

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The supervillain act Trump puts on certainly impresses his loyalists, who seem at this point like they'd root for Thanos to best those "woke" Marvel heroes like Captain America or Spiderman. Normal people being called for jury duty, however, likely take a different view. His acting out during the second E. Jean Carroll trial seemed to have only proved her lawyer's point that Trump is a bully and a pig. The result was the jury awarding Carroll over $83 million — over 16 times what the jury in the first trial, which Trump didn't attend, gave his sexual assault victim. 

Thus the conundrum that will face Trump throughout this trial: On one hand, raising money to pay for all this means playing the loudmouthed bully his followers swoon over. On the other hand, showing the jury what a pig he is will only convince them that he, as Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen will attest, did mastermind a conspiracy that resulted in serious damage to both their lives. 

Right now, Sleepy Don who wants to stay out of prison is winning out. But Trump's ego is fragile. His need to have his supporters cheer him will start to chew on him. Their wish to see him act like a jerk will not be satisfied by low energy rants outside the courtroom or laughably false claims he "stormed" out of the trial. Add Trump's severe impulse control problems to the mix, and things could get hairy. This trial is expected to last weeks. While I have no doubt Trump is tired enough to sleep through all of it, his need for stimulation and attention may eventually start to overcome his urge to take a nap. 

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“That was a missed opportunity”: Elliot Ackerman on how failures in Ukraine could help with Iran

Saturday’s attack on Israel by Iran is an extreme escalation in the decades-long shadow war between the two countries, one that entered a new phase with the horrific events of Oct. 7 and the terrorist attacks by Hamas. The Iranians undertook this action in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on its consulate in Damascus, Syria, which killed several high-ranking officials in April. As quoted by the Financial Times, a United States military official described Iran's attack on Israel as "the largest-ever single barrage of ballistic missiles and attack drones launched against a country."

Almost all the missiles and drones were destroyed by the Israeli military and its allies. It is now being reported that a large number of Iran’s ballistic and cruise missiles failed to launch or crashed before reaching Israel. The few missiles that did reach Israel caused minimal damage and no deaths. Unfortunately, a seven-year-old girl was severely injured by shrapnel near the Nevatim Airbase in Southern Israel.

The Iranian attack was publicly choreographed to be more of a symbolic act of retaliation and signaling than one intended to do maximum damage. To that point, the Iranian government announced that they had ceased their offensive military operations against Israel. However, on Sunday Iran cautioned that it reserves the right to respond with far greater and more lethal force in the future if they deem it necessary.

Israel’s war cabinet, which consists of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, defense minister Yoav Gallant, and former defense minister Benny Gantz, have met several times since Saturday’s attack by Iran. On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen Herzi Halevi said that Israel will respond to the Iranian attack. The form of this response, be it a direct military strike, cyberwarfare, or a covert action has not been publicly revealed. The Biden administration is cautioning the Israelis that the United States will not (publicly) support military retaliation against Iran. The clear goal of the Biden administration is to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran before it spirals out of control into a much larger and potentially much more destructive regional war that will inevitably drag in the United States.

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As of the time of this writing, and based on what is publicly known, the Israelis have not launched a counterattack on Iran. In keeping with its deterrence policy, the Israeli government is signaling that if such action is to be undertaken it will occur sooner rather than later.

In an attempt to better understand these tumultuous events, what they mean for the Middle East and the world, and how Iran’s attack on Israel is understood in combination with the war in Ukraine, I recently spoke with Elliot Ackerman. He is the author of several bestselling books, including "2034: A Novel of the Next World War." His new book is "2054: A Novel." Ackerman is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a Marine Corps veteran who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart.

We have Iran retaliating against Israel on Saturday by launching hundreds of drones and missiles. How are you making sense of all this?

We are starting to notice a pattern with the Iranians. When they are placed into a position where they know that for domestic political reasons they must respond, the Iranians calibrate its efficacy. For example, after the U.S. killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the Iranians responded, but their missile attack wasn't effective. No U.S. service members were killed by that strike into Iraq. At the time, what the Iranians did was widely derided as being evidence of incompetence. But in the context of Iran's response to the Israeli attack on the consulate in Syria, the Iranians chose to respond directly and not through their proxies. The Iranians understood that their weapon systems weren't going to be able to get through the Israeli, American, British, and Arab countermeasures. The Iranians can claim a victory for having tried to hit Israel, but at the same time the Iranians do not have to fear the massive Israeli retaliation that would occur if all 250 plus of their drones had found their targets, leading to civilian deaths inside Israel.

"Every time any actor decides to roll the iron dice of war, there is a significant chance that they are going to miscalculate. "

Obviously, the danger in that type of approach from the Iranian point of view is that you are relying on the efficacy of your adversary's countermeasures to ensure that the conflict doesn't spiral out of control.

The American news media almost always depicts Iran as being irrational in its behavior. For example, the Iranians were retaliating for Israel attacking its consulate in Syria and killing numerous high-ranking officials. That context tends to be intentionally lost in the mainstream American news media narrative. What we are seeing with Iran attacking Israel is an example of tit-for-tat and part of a much larger picture of strategic decision-making and maneuvering.

What you are saying here is very important and is not exclusive to the Iranians. This gets to human behavior. When we look at an adversary and they are behaving in ways that do not make sense to us we assume that they are irrational. However, in reality, they are entirely rational in their behavior — but they are proceeding from another paradigm or understanding of the facts. That puts the impetus on us to understand their behavior. To that point, if you are the Iranian leadership in Tehran, how do you see the world? If we make that mental leap, we can better understand their behavior and appreciate its rationality.

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What was the reasoning behind how the Iranian government calibrated its use of force against Israel?

These decisions are always made for both internal and external consumption. After the strike against Israel on Saturday, the mullahs declared that it had achieved all of its objectives — without declaring what those objectives were in the first place. These claims of victory were packaged for an Iranian domestic audience. Just as in the United States, domestic politics drives most everything. The end game for the Iranians is to continue to sow enough division in the Middle East, so that they have influence. Ultimately, chaos in the Middle East means that Iran is not made peripheral by the other actors in the region.

Wars are often caused by errors in signaling and other miscalculations. How can the conflict between Iran and Israel, as seen with this most recent escalation, spiral out of control into something much worse?

If the Iranian drones had found their targets and hundreds of Israelis were dead, then the crisis would have escalated. We would be seeing a very different response by Israel as compared to what is likely coming. Every time any actor decides to roll the iron dice of war, there is a significant chance that they are going to miscalculate. Embedded in all wars, including those wars where both sides want to fight, is a basic miscalculation because both sides always believe they can win. By definition, both sides cannot win at the same time. It's a very dangerous game that everybody is engaged in right now in the Middle East. All we can do is hope that the current crisis deescalates and that this brinkmanship, these tit-for-tat exchanges of fire between Israel or Iran or whomever else, stop.

How is Israel calculating its response to Iran's attack and the larger conflict in the region post-October 7?

In the American media, the predominant narrative is that October 7 and September 11 are comparable events. That is the wrong paradigm. Israel is not experiencing the attacks on October 7 in the same way we Americans experienced September 11. September 11 was not existential for the United States. People were not wondering if the U.S. would still exist in two or three years. A cornerstone of the Israeli experience is very much having their backs up against the wall existentially, surrounded by neighbors, many of whom had pledged to destroy them or don't even recognize the right of Israel to exist. October 7 is more like what the United States and the British faced with Nazi Germany in World War II. This means as a nation, Israel has a much higher threshold to endure the ire of the international community by being so tough in their response to October 7.

 Who has the greater power to inflict harm on the other? Israel or Iran?

They can both annihilate each other if they want to. Israel has nuclear weapons. By all reports, the Iranians have the ability to enrich uranium and create nuclear weapons in short order. If both sides were to ever take the gloves completely off it would be devastating for the region. The more important question is: Which party is going to be most effective at outmaneuvering the other? Will it be Israel or Iran that can use the combination of military power and diplomatic power to box the other one in?

As others have highlighted, one of the ways to understand the conflict in the Middle East at present (and much longer term) is as a proxy war between the United States and Russia. Using that framework, if you are Russia how are you assessing these recent developments?

Unlike the alliances that we see between the United States and Israel or Jordan or Ukraine for example, these are very different from how Russia approaches its international relationships. Russia doesn't have allies, they have interests. Russia's shared interests with the Iranians up to this point are that the Iranians have provided them with weapons. Russia and Iran are also mutual antagonists of the United States. But I don't think that the Iranians or the Russians are going to support one another in the same way that we see with NATO and Ukraine or the Western nations and Israel.

Drones are at the center of the story of how Iran retaliated against Israel. In the Ukraine war, drones are dominating the battlefield. Where are we in the story that is the future of war?

The great 19th-century military theorist Clausewitz said that "the nature of war is slaughter." There's nothing that I've seen that would lead me to believe that, despite all the exquisite technology we have today, the fundamental nature of war has changed. However, throughout the ages, we have created new tools to make war. We're at a moment where there are many new tools that are arriving on the battlefield. Those new tools force commanders to innovate. I've traveled to Ukraine several times since the war started. Every time I return to Ukraine the war has a different shape. There's new technology; tactics and countertactics have been developed; the cycles just seem to be getting faster. We can count on that cycle to speed up in the future. I am of the belief that if there is ever a peer-to-peer level war in the 21st century, specifically in the next 10 to 15 years between the U.S. and China, or NATO and Russia, or whoever it may be, we'll look back at Ukraine, and say that this was a moment that was like the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Technologically speaking, the Spanish Civil War served as a preview to the Second World War. In Ukraine, we may be witnessing a similar type of preview.

War is a lethal classroom. How fast are these changes happening on the battlefield? How do experts such as yourself assess them?

This will come down to who can deploy the new technology most effectively and react to how the other side uses it in turn. It is a cycle of innovation and counters and who can pivot and adapt and outpace and innovate better than the adversary. When we look at the future of war, the winners and losers are going to be defined by who can toggle between different types of technologies the quickest. Who can go from high-end exquisite platforms such as the F-35 and Ford-class aircraft carriers and then, after losing them, toggle to lower-tech forms of warfare? The future of warfare is going to be a mix of very high-tech and very low-tech. The winners will be those who can operate seamlessly between the two extremes.

The battlefields of Ukraine are now like the trenches of World War I — but with 21st and late 20th-century technology. As a science fiction fan, it is like Warhammer 40k or perhaps even Dune or one of those other great dystopian universes. It is surreal in a dark and tragic way. It is also very frightening for what it portends about the future. 

The last time I was in Ukraine, several soldiers showed me videos of trenches being cleared. The trenches looked like something out of the First World War. But the soldiers clearing them had a half dozen drones in front of them. The drones would go first, and if they encountered the enemy, the drones would detonate. It was emblematic of the old and the new: a trench from the First World War being cleared by the latest technology. Toggling between the high tech and low tech as I explained earlier is using electronic countermeasures to shut down the drones. We could deploy a specific type of electronic countermeasure packet in this one area that is going to shut down our enemy's drones. We're going to have a window of two hours where they can't operate their drones. No cell phones. No GPS. You can't operate any of that type of technology. Inside that counter-electronic warfare bubble. You're going over the top and shooting each other in the face with a rifle. In this modern war, and especially future war, that is the type of toggling that forces are going to need to be able to do between the most exquisite intelligent AI-powered drone swarms and knowing that you can lose them at a moment's notice. That will mean switching to compasses and calling in artillery using a map — and doing it all seamlessly.

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One of the claims that we are seeing now, is that the war in Ukraine is proof that the mass movement of troops on the modern battlefield is no longer viable because of the ability of the adversary to quickly find and mass fire(s) against them. If true, this will dramatically change the nature of combined arms and other approaches to maneuver warfare. What are your thoughts on this?

These things come in seasons. One can make the argument that the mass movement of troops is dead because those troops will be observed and taken out with drones. But if you are able to deploy electronic countermeasures, that give you, for example, a 100-kilometer square area, or even a 10-kilometer square area, where you know nothing is flying then you can mass troops at a specific point. The history of war is counters to counters, it is a lethal dance. The United States needs to have a military that can be nimble enough to adapt in that way because that cycle is only going to get faster.

What has happened with the narrative that these "wonder weapons," be it Abrams tanks, ATACMS, HIMARS, Bradley fighting vehicles and soon F-16 fighters, will be decisive and turn the tide in favor of the Ukrainians. Many experts cautioned against such simplistic premature conclusions. Unfortunately, it seems that too many among the news media and general public consumed that hopium and are now being surprised by the facts on the ground in Ukraine.

There is the old saying that the only better answer than "yes" is a quick "no" — and the worst answer is the slow "no."  I would argue that what we've done to Ukraine is even worse, in some ways than the slow "no" in that we have given them the slow "yes." So, if in March 2022, the Abrams and ATACMS and F-16s started showing up that could have made a real difference. But just like how on the battlefield, one maneuvers through the air, the land, and the sea. Time is also a maneuver space on the battlefield. We allowed ourselves to be badly outflanked in terms of time and dragging our feet to deliver the Ukrainians these weapons systems. The nature of the battlefield has changed. The Russians are dug in ways they weren't dug in early on. The efficacy of these weapons systems is not going to be as great as it would have been two years ago. Should we still send those weapons over? Yes, we should, and they will still make a difference. But that was a missed opportunity. And I would argue that had those weapons shown up much more quickly, we could be in a very different position in Ukraine today.

What do the Ukrainians need right now from the United States and NATO?

Sustained support that the Russians believe is going to last. What will bring Putin and Zelinsky to the table is if Putin believes that he doesn't have the option of waiting the Americans and Europeans out. So, counterintuitively, by going all in on the war and convincing our adversary that there's no way we're leaving, you get a shorter war. The way you get a longer war is by equivocating and by making your support contingent on too many variables. We saw this in Afghanistan with our failures to defeat the Taliban. The Ukrainians need the United States as a country to assume a posture that convinces the Russians that our resolve is not faltering, and that the Ukrainians will be able to fight in perpetuity. That is the clearest way to get the Russians to the negotiating table to end this war.

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“Already the law:” Federal agency clarifies that abortion leave is covered by workplace protections

This week, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) finalized its Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations, after being criticized by conservative lawmakers and religious organizations. Part of the update included a clarification that accommodations, like a leave of absence, under the law apply to abortion care. 

The EEOC said it received approximately 54,000 comments — “most of which were form or slightly altered form comments from individuals,” the agency said — urging them to exclude abortion from the definition of “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions.” But abortion-related protections are consistent with Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the EEOC said.

“In the final regulation, the Commission includes abortion in its definition of ‘pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,’ as proposed in the NPRM and consistent with the Commission’s and courts’ longstanding interpretation of the same phrase in Title VII,” the final rules concluded.

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The law applies to all industries and employers with more than 15 employees. While the law passed in December 2022 and went into effect in the summer of 2023, it wasn’t until Monday that the EEOC released its final regulations and made a concentrated effort to clarify abortion care is included.

In the final document, the EEOC further elaborated by stating that the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a “workplace anti-discrimination law.” It doesn't mean that taxpayers and funding abortions or require that an employer-sponsored health plan has to cover a procedure. It simply means that, like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), accommodations — like time off for an abortion procedure or to recover — must be granted, as long as accommodation is reasonable and don't post an undue burden on the employer.

"The employer has to provide time off for medical needs related to pregnancy and childbirth, of which abortion is one of them."

Daphne Delvaux, an employment attorney and founder of The Mamattorney, a platform educating women on their rights at work, told Salon the rule ensures that employees who are pregnant, and might choose to terminate their pregnancy, “are able to continue participating in the workforce," by seeking reasonable accommodations from employers.

Delvaux emphasized that this doesn’t mean it’s “a categorical mandate to provide an abortion leave,” adding that some of the media coverage around the change has been “a bit misleading.”

“The employer has to provide time off for medical needs related to pregnancy and childbirth, of which abortion is one of them,” Delvaux told Salon, adding this was “already the law.”

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In a way, Delvaux said, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is an extension of the ADA. However, the ADA was “quite restrictive” for pregnant and postpartum workers.

“A lot of the employees wouldn't kind of meet that high bar of what constitutes a disability,”  Delvaux said. “What the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act decided is that pregnancy and postpartum related conditions and limitations fall within accommodation laws.”

For instance, under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, a pregnant worker could have morning sickness and request time off because they feel sick or request the option to work remotely. A pregnant worker can also request time off, or any other reasonable accommodations, for fertility treatments, extreme fatigue, depression, insomnia, pelvic pain and more.

Notably, the law provides protections in states where abortion care is nearly banned.

“What's different about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is that the law says that if the essential functions of the job can be done later, that they'd have to be temporarily suspended,” she said. “So that in and of itself kind of creates the potential of more leaves of absences. It’s kind of a new revolutionary thing — in the past, employees could ask for accommodations, but only if they could still perform the essential functions of the job.”

Notably, the law provides protections in states where abortion care is nearly banned and in states where people are being forced to travel to access care. For these pregnant workers, Delvaux said she wouldn’t necessarily recommend women explicitly stating they’re getting an abortion to their employers. Instead, she’d recommend saying that the worker experienced infant loss and doesn’t want to discuss it in more detail. This would require revealing the pregnancy in the first place, but that’s how employees can be protected by the law.

“Now, if we want to remove the taboo and stigma on abortion, you can absolutely be bold,” Delvaux said. “It's going to depend on the individual woman and also the workplace setting. And in progressive places, it might even be celebrated.” 

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Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of URGE (Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity), told Salon that time off is one of the biggest barriers people face when trying to access both prenatal and abortion care. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, McGuire said, is a reminder that “pregnancy care and justice for pregnant people applies both for people who need abortion care and people who are looking to continue their pregnancies.”

“The struggles and the needs of pregnant people, whether they're going to become parents, or whether they need an abortion, are very deeply connected,” McGuire said. “I think it's important to consider legislative solutions and policy solutions that allow people who are pregnant to take time off for a whole range of reasons, whether that's to get an abortion, whether that's to get prenatal care, whether that's because someone has been put on bed rest because they have a high-risk pregnancy.”

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Unexpected black hole discovery is the most massive stellar object of its kind in our galaxy

The biggest stellar black hole ever seen in the Milky Way galaxy has just been discovered by a collaboration of astronomers — and it's the second-closest one to us, parked just 2,000 light-years away. Published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics today, researchers describe how their discovery, now named Gaia BH3 (or BH3, for short) was thanks to the "wobbling" wink of a companion star orbiting the black hole. 

BH3, it should be noted, is not supermassive — thus not the most "massive" (in technical terms) in the galaxy. That would be Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way whose mass is about 4 million times that of the sun. BH3, on the other hand, is the most massive in its category of stellar black holes, which were created by the collapse of a star. The discovery promises to let astrophysicists study whether and how this nearby astronomical powerhouse may be pulling in matter from its surroundings.

“No one was expecting to find a high-mass black hole lurking nearby, undetected so far,” lead author Pasquale Panuzzo said in a Tuesday release. Panuzzo is an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris, part of France's National Centre for Scientific Research, and a member of the collaboration of researchers working with data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. It was in this data pool that the researchers spotted the strange pattern of BH3's companion star. Analyzing the pattern further, they realized the star was wobbling as if something were affecting its orbit. The impact soon became clear — and Gaia collaborators quickly mapped out the edges of their discovery.

"This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life," Panuzzo said. To verify the findings, Gaia collaborators looked to an array of international astronomy data pools at other ground-based observatories — including the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph instrument on ESO’s VLT in Chile, the HERMES spectrograph at the Mercator Telescope in Spain, the University of Geneva Observatory, and the SOPHIE high-precision spectrograph at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence in France. 

“We took the exceptional step of publishing this paper based on preliminary data ahead of the forthcoming Gaia release because of the unique nature of the discovery,” said co-author and Gaia collaboration member Elisabetta Caffau from the CNRS Observatoire de Paris. Caffau said an early public release on the data will let astronomers start studying BH3 right away. The team will also release the fuller data set in late 2025 at the earliest. 

 

Hannah Waddingham refusal to “show” her leg: Yes, it’s about sexism, but it’s also more than that

Misogyny, like many other ills of the world, has unfortunately shown no signs of abating. From men punching arbitrary women on the streets of New York City, to powerful male figures slandering and defaming women for outing them as abusers, the issue that some men seem to have with women is a pervasive one. 

Take a recent interaction between actor Hannah Waddingham and a red-carpet photographer at the Olivier Awards in London, for example. The Emmy-winning "Ted Lasso" star, who was hosting the theater awards at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday for the second year in a row, swiftly upbraided a photographer for allegedly asking her to "show" her leg.

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In a video that has since gone viral across the internet, the photographer's comment cannot be heard but Waddhingham's reproach rings loud and clear: “Oh my God, you’d never say that to a man, my friend.”

“Don’t be a d**k, otherwise I’ll move off," the actor, wearing a semi-sheer lilac gown adds, "Don’t say ‘show a little leg’. No.” As Waddingham began to walk away, some members of the surrounding crowd begin to cheer for her. “Have some manners," she says.

Numerous X/Twitter users took to the platform following the clip's circulation to weigh in. 

"Male photographer at Oliver Awards asking Hannah Waddingham to 'show leg' is lecherous stuff," one user wrote. "Men like this need their passes for these events to revoked. Women are not your objects to objectify and command to move as you see fit."

"The one thing we can all agree on is Hannah Waddingham's response to that pap? Right?" wrote another. 

Unfortunately, the objectification and sexualization of women — especially by people trying to service their own benefit, such as a slimy photographer trying to elicit a product entirely predicated on the desires of the male gaze — is a tale as old as time. 

Why are we even asking women these questions? Yes, this was a photographer and not a journalist, but surely a comment pertaining to her upcoming projects would have garnered not only a positive reaction but likely a wide-smile and confident pose.

Why is there a longstanding pattern in which women are consistently asked to address their womanhood, in a way that men are not? 

Certainly, a culture steeped in sexism plays a large role. But I'll indulge in a moment of playing devil's advocate. On the one hand, certain dresses — especially at red carpet-events — are structured to be displayed in certain poses. Plunging backless styles, diaphanous, ultra-sheer slips, a là '90s Kate Moss — and lest we forget Angelina Jolie's 2012 Academy Awards outfit of choice: a black velvet Atelier Versace dress with a thigh-high slit that propelled Jolie's right leg into internet stardom and the cultural canon. These styles encapsulate the term "statement piece," for good reason, as they are meant to showcase the beauty and artistry not only of the garment but also of its wearer. 

And yet, even though the "Game of Thrones" alum's dress did have a slit, her comments are still valid. As one X user, ostensibly responding to critics of Waddingham's sharp response, pointed out, it has "absolutely nothing to do with whether your legs can be seen or not."

"It's about the absolute FACT that no one has a right to demand anything of your body. #HannahWaddingham."

While some may make the valid argument that male celebrities often don suits — which are both more modest in style and typically less embellished than awards-worthy dresses — and therefore they aren't asked to expose parts of their anatomy, the dichotomy of what we expect from our female versus male stars is nonetheless stilted.

More than that, perhaps, is the issue underlying the humanity of it all. Feeling emboldened to address people however we please,— especially if it's done in a way that in a way that makes them uncomfortable — is not a collective trait we should continue to emulate. Rather than speaking in a manner that's devoid of inward reflection and critical thinking, a better approach would be to commit ourselves to the old proverbial saying, "Think before you speak."

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O.J. Simpson’s lawyer reverses comments on disputed Goldman family lawsuit payments

The fallout of O.J. Simpson's death continues to reverberate as his longtime lawyer and executor of the former football star's will retracted a statement he made about the outstanding statements owed to Ron Goldman's family. 

Malcolm LaVergne, who represented Simpson since 2009 until his death, told the Hollywood Reporter that he takes back his comments to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he would fight to prevent the payout of the $33.5 million awarded to the families of Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman after their deaths. 

At the time, LaVergne said he specifically wanted Ron's father Fred Goldman to receive “zero — nothing” of Simpson’s estate. Fred has been battling for justice for his son since the 1997 civil trial verdict. Two years ago, Fred told the publication that he had not received any payments from Simpson. He said the total is raised by 10 percent every year. 

In a conversation with THR, LaVergne walked back his statement, “I can tell you in advance, Fred Goldman’s claim will be accepted. And his claim will be handled in accordance with Nevada law."

“Within an hour of knowing that O.J. died, he started talking s**t. My advocate instinct is, was, ‘Oh, you’re gonna keep s****ing on him even after he’s dead?’” he said. “’Fine, you know? You get nothing.’ And so, those were my remarks then. But I backtracked, and they were pretty harsh remarks. And now I’m going in the other direction.”

“Absurd”: Experts say Trump still “playing games” with fraud bond — and it could blow up in his face

Attorneys for Donald Trump asserted Monday night that the $175 million bond the former president posted to cover the judgement of his New York civil fraud case is financially secure, asking the judge to "set aside" the state attorney general's challenge and award him costs.

In a spate of court filings submitted just hours before the midnight deadline, Trump indicated that the bond Knight Specialty Insurance Company secured is backed by his Charles Schwab account, which contains more than $175 million in cash, CNN reports. Knight Specialty can take over the Schwab account, and any risk it assumes is also fully covered by its parent company, a joint memorandum filed by Trump's attorneys said. 

“The DJT Trust granted KSIC a security interest in a Schwab brokerage account, in which the DJT Trust is obligated to maintain no less than $175 million in cash or cash equivalents at all times,” read an affirmation filed in support of the bond by Gregory Serio, a former superintendent of insurance for New York state.

“KSIC also has a standing agreement with its parent company, Knight Insurance Company, Ltd. (‘KIC’), by which KIC reinsures 100% of KSIC’s risk,” added Serio, who is a partner of government consulting firm Park Strategies. “The $175 million bond at issue is adequately secured.”

But Trump's latest set of filings "doesn't address" the concerns with the bond, Gregory Germain, a Syracuse University College of Law professor, told Salon. The notion that the former president's "reimbursement obligation to the insurance company," that he alleges is secured in the account, sufficiently satisfies the bonding requirement is "simply incorrect," he said. 

"The insurance company must have sufficient capitalization and liquidity to immediately pay the bond amount if the judgment is affirmed, and the insurance company they utilized does not have that capacity," Germain explained, noting that Knight Specialty's parent company "appears" to have enough capital to assure payment of the bond. If Knight Insurance was "acting as a co-surety, the court might accept it."

"But instead of addressing the case properly, Trump has made absurd arguments to support the validity of the bond and has demanded sanctions, which is typical of his blustering and attacking way of handling his cases," Germain added. "Unless Trump provides sufficient surety and stops playing games, the Court will and should determine that the bond is insufficient and allow the attorney general to enforce the judgment."

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“Incomprehensible”: Experts say Trump’s $175 million bond makes no sense

Monday's filings came in response to Attorney General Letitia James challenging the financial ability of Knight Specialty to "justify the surety" earlier this month.

James' office questioned if the company was authorized to underwrite a surety bond in the state and whether it lacked a certificate from the state regulatory body attesting that it's qualified. She gave the company and the former president 10 days to submit filings showing they could financially support the bond. Experts previously told Salon that James could begin the process of seizing Trump's assets if they failed to meet her deadline. 

The company's initial bond filing's missing components and other errors prompted the New York court clerks to order it to refile its bond posting earlier this month, which Knight Specialty did the day after.

The insurer — based in California and registered in Delaware — does not have a license to issue bonds in New York or have the necessary certificate of qualification from the state Department of Financial Services, which Germain notes are required by New York insurance law. Company officials have insisted, however, that they are still authorized to issue the bond. 

Also of concern was Knight Specialty admitting that it only had $138 million in surplus capital in an April 4 filing. New York law prohibits a company from providing a bond to a single borrower that amounts to more than 10 percent of its surplus capital, which would require the company to have $1.75 billion in surplus to cover Trump's bond, experts previously told Salon.

On Monday Knight Specialty said it "independently maintains more than $539 million in assets and $138 million in equity and has access to more than $2 billion in assets and $1 billion in equity, of which nearly $1 billion is cash and marketable securities, pursuant to a reinsurance agreement with its parent company, Knight Insurance Company."

While the company's flurry of late-night filings "appears to move the ball towards assuring the AG that the bond is secure," it also "raises many new questions," former Assistant New York Attorney General Adam Pollock told Salon. 

One arises from the parent company appearing to have "adequate capitalization" without having "authority to do business in New York or to issue surety bonds," Germain pointed out. "The question, I think, is whether that reinsurance would clearly and unconditionally apply and require KIC to pay the bond, and whether the AG would be able to enforce that reinsurance commitment if KSIC was unable to pay," he said.

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Another question revolves around the Charles Schwab account Trump pledged to Knight Specialty. "If Trump has $175M free and clear, why not just directly post it and not pay a fee for a surety bond?" former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The account holds $175,304,075.95 in cash, according to Trump's lawyers. His eldest son authorized the agreement on behalf of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust last month, providing the company with a security interest over the brokerage account. 

A "simple answer" to the latter question, Pollock said, could be that Trump is "earning interest" on the money, which would screech to a halt should he use it to post his bond. Trump's apparent decision to not put up the money himself "also raises the question of whether the collateral is double-pledged to secure another obligation," he said.

Doing so would make the account "unavailable then as true collateral for the surety bond," Weissmann added. 

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This Schwab account appears to be different from another Schwab account Trump used as collateral when he obtained a $92 million bond through Chubb's Federal Insurance Co. earlier this year to cover the $83.3 million verdict of writer E. Jean Carroll 's defamation lawsuit against him, The Daily Beast notes. 

The former president, Germain said, appears to be "trying to use an incapable insurance company as a front to avoid meeting the statutory requirement," but "it's not going to work."

Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron tentatively scheduled a hearing to hash out the bonding issue for April 22, which Trump's lawyers argued Monday is not needed. Pollock countered, however, that not only is the hearing necessary, it will also need to be "detailed" to effectively "sort out whether this bond actually secures the judgement."

The court, Germain said, will have to determine whether Knight Insurance's reinsurance makes the parent company's capital "immediately available" to Knight Specialty if the $175 million bond has to be paid to ensure "prompt payment."

"The AG has valid reasons for questioning the validity of a bond posted by an out-of-state insurer without a certificate from the Insurance department, and having inadequate capitalization to cover the bond," he added. "I am also somewhat doubtful that a reinsurance policy would so clearly cover a default on a surety bond."

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Trump “looks furious” after judge chides him for muttering during jury selection

Former President Donald Trump’s old antics — his whining, pouting and muttering — are making an appearance in Manhattan this week.

In court Tuesday, Trump was reprimanded by Judge Juan Merchan while his lawyer was questioning a potential juror during the selection process. “Trump was audibly saying something and gesturing in front of the jury,” the BBC reported.

“I won’t tolerate that,” Merchan said in court. “I will not have any jurors intimidated in this courtroom. I want to make that crystal clear.”

Merchan advised Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, to make sure his client understood.

After Blanche gave the defendant his required “talking-to,” The New York Times reported that “Trump looks furious.”

Such behavior, going forward, could be incredibly costly for Trump now that he's facing trial over allegations he falsified business records to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star.

“Unlike in the court of public opinion, where Trump’s bluster and bullying may help win supporters and cause some to cower, when court is in session, the rules of evidence and procedure kick in,” Ryan Brescia, an associate dean at Albany Law School, wrote this week in The Daily Beast. "The same tactics that might give Trump some public relations wins do not really work in court. In fact, they often backfire.”

 

The ins and outs of vegan hot dogs

On the most recent episode of our podcast, “What You’re Eating,” we hear from comedian and writer Jamie Loftus, author of last year’s “Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hog Dogs.” While her deep love for this all-American delicacy is clear, Loftus also lays bare the realities of the animal cruelty, labor violations and other problems concealed inside the casing. Even she, a person whose love for hot dogs drove her to write a book about them, admits the case for an alternative is strong. She says as much a cheeky subtitle for her chapter on hot dog production: “A note to my vegetarians and vegans and those who do not engage with the meat dogs — you are right.”

If you were not eating meat in the 1990s and early 2000s, you might harbor painful memories of the wan, wet vegan dogs of yesteryear. But lately, things have taken a turn for the better. Iconic hot dog purveyor Ikea is rolling out its Plant Dog, already available in the company’s European locations, in the U.S. Later this year, the hot dog impresarios at Oscar Mayer will release their own vegan version in partnership with food technology startup NotCo. While fake meat companies have mostly stuck to the sausage sector — and yes, there’s a big difference — Impossible Foods says it’s launching a hot dog product in the near future. Are we seeing a golden age of the plant-based dog? And how much has really changed?

The FoodPrint team hopped on a Zoom from our respective kitchens and tried six different widely available vegan hot dogs to see what worked, what didn’t and what’s worth trying.

 

What makes a hot dog?

While the hot dogs we tend to eat in the U.S. are of the beef and pork variety, Loftus says that products can vary significantly and still fall under the hot dog umbrella. What makes a hot dog a hot dog is, in a way, more about what it’s not. As opposed to a sausage, which has a rougher grind to the meat, a hot dog is made from a finely processed emulsion, which is what provides its distinctive texture. The slurry is held in place by a casing — that is, an intestine — which will crisp up when cooked to give the dog that classic snap.

There are a few ingredients you’ll see often in vegan attempts to approximate the hot dog experience. Vital wheat gluten was present in nearly all of the dogs we tasted, often supplemented with soy products (tofu, soy protein isolate) or proteins from other legumes, like peas and fava beans. Some brands put a big emphasis on protein stats, advertising their offer of 20 or more grams per serving. “It’s interesting because when we think about plant based meats, people panic,” says research and policy analyst Ryan Nebeker, whose Upton’s Naturals Updog contained 19 grams of protein. “They think the macros are going to be way off. Whereas in this case, you’re doing better.”

On the flipside, some dogs felt less filling and more filler. Flavorless binders like potato starch, rice flour and konjac flour are employed to help hold things together. And many brands used significant amounts of various oils, perhaps in an attempt to keep things from drying out. “There’s really not much of anything,” said digital marketing and communications manager Kristen Link, who enjoyed the taste of her Lightlife Smart Dogs but noted that the first ingredient was water.

To help mimic the meatiness of a true hot dog, many vegan versions we tried were heavy on the seasonings. Onions and garlic, pureed or powdered, were common, as were savory spices like nutmeg and paprika. Tomato paste, soy sauce and apple cider vinegar were other ways to up the umami. Some brands rounded things out with sugar — granulated, brown, even hardwood-smoked — and many were very high in salt, with a few containing more than 20 percent of the recommended daily value of sodium.

 

Can a ‘fake’ frankfurter compete?

The vegan hot dogs we tried got generally positive reviews from the staff, most of whom are already mindful about how much meat they consume and are somewhat familiar with plant-based meat substitutes. But there were certain areas where these dogs fell short. Texture was a broad issue. “It was very crumbly, actually, so much so that I almost broke off the end of it taking it out of the package,” said content editor-writer Hannah Walhout, who tried out Tofurky Plant-Based Kielbasa (the closest to the the “sausage” end of the spectrum of the products we tested). “On the whole, it was pretty dry. It got a little crispy, but in a way that is, uniquely, a texture I’ve only seen in vegan meat products.”

Some dogs also demonstrated a distinct lack of “rubberiness,” with a tendency toward the mealy side, and none came close to achieving that coveted snap. “It wasn’t getting any sort of reaction in the skin of becoming nice and crispy,” said Link. “And that’s what I look for in a hot dog.”

Another widely shared complaint was that vegan dogs were sometimes hard to locate in the grocery store. Nobody found them anywhere near the “real” hot dogs, but rather in the freezer aisle, next to the tofu and seitan or relegated to a small “plant-based” section, depending on the store — suggesting there is yet to be a common retail vocabulary that will help shoppers know where to look.

When it came to taste, though, many certainly delivered. “I did legit think that it was flavorful,” said FoodPrint director Jerusha Klemperer, a sometime vegetarian who opted for a Field Roast Classic Smoked Plant-Based Frankfurter. “It didn’t have a lot of weird fake notes. It had tomato paste and apple cider vinegar and sea salt, onions, things that I recognize.”

“It was a little sweet and smoky, and I did enjoy that flavor,” said social media and community engagement coordinator Nat Geisel of their dogs of choice: Morningstar Farms Veggie Dogs. “I like regular hot dogs a little more, but it was better than I expected. I think in the future I would want to try grilling them to add a little bit of a char.”

Associate art director Samarra Khaja, a longtime vegetarian, admitted that “a regular hot dog generally skeeves me out,” but she would buy her Field Roast Signature Stadium Dogs again. “I found it enjoyable,” she said — “very satisfying and moist.”

In the end, the team agreed that trying to compare vegan hot dogs with the meat-based version was not an incredibly useful exercise. “They’re not well served by being compared side to side with a hot dog,” Klemperer explained. “It was missing some of the things that I appreciate about a meat dog, but I loved it on the bun with all the toppings and I would happily eat this again.”

 

Making the most of your vegan hot dog

The dogs themselves can be prepared in various ways: Some FoodPrint staffers tried pan frying, while others went with a boil. Still, none of the methods we tried, including toaster oven, microwave, broiler and even roasting over the flame of a stovetop, seemed to get us definitively to true hot dog perfection.

But often, even with “real” hot dogs, the experience isn’t entirely about the dog. To improve your meatless meal, take care with your toppings and accompaniments: Khaja loaded hers with brinjal (eggplant) achaar and Kewpie mayo, while Nebeker went with a mix of mayo, mustard and diced cornichons. Whatever your tastes, you can plan your condiments for maximum flavor. Take your bun choice seriously, too — our team are potato bun devotees, but there are plenty of gourmet options, including brioche and pretzel — and toast to reinforce it, keep things warm and add flavor and texture.

In the absence of that snap, create textural interest with something that provides crunch, whether it’s a pickle spear or a sprinkling of crushed potato chips. Or you can always try Nebeker’s more involved approach: “If you rub a hot dog in a little bit of sugar or honey and some gochujang, you get a spicy sweet glaze” when you roast it, he says. “I thought it might fix the ‘lifeless gray’ problem, and it really did.”

There are plenty of other ways to fill your bun if the vegan versions really aren’t cutting it, including the classic, crowd-pleasing carrot dog. Nebeker put it best: “‘Hot dog’ is an expansive concept. I think you can reach it from many different angles.”

“We’re screwed”: Congressional Republicans could oust Speaker Mike Johnson over Ukraine funding

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to move forward with long-stalled Ukraine aid has spurred a MAGA revolt, with Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky joining forces with Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to call for his removal at a closed-door GOP conference on Tuesday, Politico reported. 

Amid rising frustrations among conservatives with the speaker’s proposed aid package, Massie became the first Republican to openly embrace Greene’s effort to force a vote on Johnson's ouster sometime in the near future.

Other far-right Republicans say they are open to the idea. Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, for example, said he is willing to consider Johnson’s ouster if the supplemental passes by the end of the week. Perry said that, within the GOP ranks, “there’s always an alternative.” 

But many Republicans also fear a repeat of the Kevin McCarthy saga, when another far-right rebellion cost a House Speaker their job.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has been proposed by some members of the far-right Freedom Caucus as a potential alternative to Johnson, said he does not support ousting the current speaker over his foreign aid package. “We don't need that, no way. We don't want that. We shouldn't go through that again. That's a bad idea,” Jordan said.

“You are not going to get a majority of votes for any new person,” added Rep. Garret Graves, a close ally of former Speaker McCarthy.

Those seeking to remove Johnson will ever better odds come Friday, when the GOP caucus loses Rep. Mike Gallagher to an early retirement, further reducing its narrow majority. At that point, Johnson — who has boasted of support from former President Donald Trump — might have to lean on Democrats to save his job.

During a press conference Tuesday after the GOP conference, Johnson batted down any questions about his ouster, calling the idea that he would resign “an absurd notion.”

Privately, however, Republicans are expressing concern that there will be another embarrassing fight for control over the GOP caucus.

"Folks are very discouraged," one GOP member of Congress told Politico's Olivia Beavers. "We are screwed."

Courtney Love disses Taylor Swift as “not interesting as an artist”

Courtney Love is not a Taylor Swift fan and she's not afraid to say it.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, the former lead singer of the rock band Hole didn't mince words when talking about the multiple Grammy-winning artist, who will release her anticipated 11th studio album "The Tortured Poets Department" on Friday, April 19.

When discussing women at the top of pop music charts and culture, Love said, "Taylor is not important. She might be a safe space for girls, and she’s probably the Madonna of now, but she’s not interesting as an artist."

Swift's representatives did not respond to a request to comment, Variety reported.

Then the singer also blasted Madonna, saying, “I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me. I loved ‘Desperately Seeking Susan,’ but for the city of New York as much as her.”

Additionally, Love criticized Beyoncé, another artist like Swift who continues to smash records while holding a pulse on pop culture. Love praised Beyoncé's new country album “Cowboy Carter” for its significance but not for its actual music.

“I like the idea of Beyoncé doing a country record because it’s about Black women going into spaces where previously only white women have been allowed, not that I like it much,” she said. “As a concept, I love it. I just don’t like her music."

Meghan Markle reveals the first product from her new lifestyle brand: A jar of strawberry jam

Meghan Markle has revealed the first product from her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard: a jar of strawberry jam. An unnamed, insider source told People earlier this month that Markle's brand “will reflect everything that she loves — family, cooking, entertaining and home décor.” 

“Meghan finds the name American Riviera Orchard perfect. It feels authentic to her. She can’t wait for the website to launch,” the source added. “She is excited about her latest, personal venture. This is something she’s been wanting to do for a while. She is excited to share her style and things that she loves.”

American Riviera Orchard honors Santa Barbara, the California town where Meghan and Prince Harry currently reside with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. “American Riviera” is a nickname for the Santa Barbara area, while the name of the family’s neighborhood, Montecito, is included below the American Riviera Orchard’s logo.

According to People, Meghan is pursuing trademarks for exclusive rights to sell cosmetic products, home décor, stationery, linens, small kitchen appliances, condiments, yoga equipment, gardening gear, pet accessories and more under the American Riviera Orchard name.

The recent product announcement comes only a few days after Meghan and Harry announced two new TV productions from their Archewell Productions company, in partnership with Netflix. One series, featuring Meghan, will “celebrate the joys of cooking and gardening, entertaining and friendship,” while the other will “provide viewers unprecedented access to the world of professional polo, a sport Harry has played for years."

“Wasteful beyond control”: A Michelin-starred chef on fine dining’s sustainability crisis

Aphotic does not provide its diners with the "happy fine dining seafood restaurant experience” one might get at Le Bernardin or oceanside at Le Petit Nice in Marseilles — at least according to Peter Hemsley, the chef behind the Michelin-starred, all-seafood restaurant in San Francisco. 

The name of the restaurant, which means “without light” in Ancient Greek, makes reference to the sublayer of the ocean where light stops penetrating. “This name was chosen both for its literal take – describing the dark ocean where many of our fish come from — and also from the philosophical perspective that acts as a motivator for us,” Hemsley said. “To seek out the unknown in our oceans through dialogue, relationships, and through culinary ingenuity."

This ethos is reflected in the design of the dark, foreboding restaurant space, with arched eves reminiscent of an upturned boat and bathrooms completely decorated with hand-picked driftwood from the short, resulting in a “moody ambience” that Hemsley says “plays into the theatrical impression that one is at the bottom of the ocean.” 

Related

What does sustainable fishing actually mean? "Good Catch" author Valentine Thomas has the answer

But the ways in which Aphotic is distinct from other fine dining restaurants aren’t just superficial. Hemsley has focused the restaurant’s service, design and dishes towards battling food waste — a prevalent issue in an industry where 85% of unused food is thrown out. 

Many would consider Hemsley a leader in nationwide sustainability efforts as Aphotic is one of only a few restaurants to be awarded a Michelin Green Star, a new designation that was launched in 2020 to recognize restaurants that uphold outstanding eco-friendly culinary practices.

Uni Honey Crullers (Photo courtesy of Nicola Parisi)

“Chef Peter Hemsley takes full advantage of California's coastal bounty, sourcing exceptional seafood from small sustainable purveyors and utilizing techniques like dry aging and fermentation to maximum effect,” the Michelin Guide writes. “The kitchen’s creativity is displayed in dishes like thinly shaved Monterey abalone with swordfish ‘bacon’ and citrusy dashi broth, as well as a warm bread course paired with a curry-scented hollandaise loaded with sweet Dungeness crab.” 

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Hemsley isn’t convinced Aphotic is doing enough yet, saying that receiving the designation doesn’t necessarily sit well with him. "So much of our operation is wasteful beyond our control," he said. 

However, his approach to seafood is uniquely sustainable. Eighty-five percent of seafood consumed in the United States comes from international waters.

“This is due to the market demand for fresh fish, which is flying in the face of local and federal protection of our coastlines,” Hemsley said. “I chose to eschew international fish — even though the quality can be better from Japanese overnight markets that allocate the best fish in the world — because I believe it is a better way to work. "

He continued: "My desire to build a better seafood restaurant came from a legitimate frustration of being a seaboard chef and operator, and not being able to know where my fish was coming from. I made it my business to get to the bottom of this issue, met best practice fishermen along the way, and in the process became the only restaurant in the Bay Area to actively transparent lines of connection to seafood products on our menu."

Spotlight algae oilSpotlight algae oil (Photo courtesy of Nicola Parisi)

Hemsley is also a proponent of another particular form of ocean-based sustainability, working with Spotlight, an oil derived from algae. 

“When deprived of light and fed a diet of sucrose in fermentation conditions, this algal strain converts that sucrose into fat, lipids, or algal fat – oil,” he said. 

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The resulting oil has a higher smoke point than grapeseed oil, is immune from the farming-intensive practices of seed oils, which require tons of water and space, and carries similar health stats to plant-based oils. In addition to using Spotlight in the deep fryers , Hemsley is also "currently working on infusing the oil with dried Dulse for a seaweed driven pasta on the next menu," adding that "this dish would sort of be a micro/macro science-driven dish with farmed seaweeds and algae oil as the highlight." 

Furthermore, even the bar team is working with "fat washes in algae oil" for cocktails.

Seaweed Salad (Photo courtesy of Nicola Parisi)

Of course, putting together (and executing) the menu of a fine dining, Michelin-starred restaurant is not a simple task. I inquired about some of the imaginative, standout menu items — like Swordfish bacon, parmesan foam, steamed crab head bun, skate cheek karaage, spot prawn mortadella, and of course the oyster ice cream, which Hemsley estimates about 5 to 10% of guests dislike “even though there is nothing wrong about it.” 

“It's thought provoking and delicious, though admittedly strange,” he said. “We could easily have opted for a fruit-based dessert starter, or the ubiquitous chocolate that everyone likes – but that would not be very true to our mission in food, nor would it be a reason to ‘make a special detour,’ the Michelin statement for a 3-star space." 

He continued: “I challenge myself and [my] team to come up with novel flavors and dishes. This is the hard work of what we are doing beyond the painstaking curation of our fishy ingredients, and managing a busy 1 Michelin starred restaurant. This is what we have earned our reputation for, and what drives people to us.”

Hemsley's intentional, mindful directives and leadership at Aphotic can hopefully reverberate throughout the industry, with products like Spotlight and more sustainability-minded decisions being made daily in the food realm.

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Amazon reportedly hounded an ex-Trader Joe’s employee for data on the store’s best-selling products

An Amazon team that was working on the multinational corporation’s new private-label food brand reportedly pressured a former Trader Joe’s employee to expose confidential store data that could help Amazon compete with the grocery store chain.

Per a Wall Street Journal report published Saturday, Amazon’s Wickedly Prime, launched in 2016, sought to compete with Trader Joe’s by replicating the top 200 items sold at the fan-favorite store. Wickedly Prime specifically targets “foodies,” offering Amazon Prime members “a line of seriously tasty food and beverages,” the brand noted in its Instagram bio. A few of its products include coconut toffee roasted cashews, organic seaweed snacks and garlic mustard aioli.

Amazon hired a former senior manager from Trader Joe’s snack foods division, who allegedly was told only after being recruited that her job role was to help create a product line for Wickedly Prime. Data concerning Trader Joe’s store products is not readily accessible, according to the Journal. So in order to acquire that information, an Amazon manager repeatedly tormented the ex-Trader Joe’s employee — who remains unnamed in the report — for six months, demanding she send over store data along with emails and documents she received while working with the grocer. The employee eventually succumbed to the pressure and handed over the data along with all the requested documents to the manager.

The Amazon manager also reportedly hounded the ex-Trader Joe’s employee for data on the margins of each product. When the employee refused, the manager yelled at her, saying, “You have to give us the data!” according to a source who witnessed the interaction and recalled it to the Journal.

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The manager and other employees on the team distributed the data they had gathered and brainstormed ways they could use it to their advantage, per the Journal. However, their efforts were cut short after another Amazon employee reported the misuse of Trader Joe’s data to Amazon’s legal department.

“We do not condone the misuse of proprietary confidential information, and thoroughly investigate any reports of employees doing so and take action, which may include termination,” an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.

The employees who accessed and used the data were fired, the Journal reported.

Amazon’s recent tussle with Trader Joe’s underscores the severe lengths the corporation will take to compete with major grocery companies. In 2015, Amazon approached several private-label food companies, including TreeHouse Foods, in anticipation of launching its own line of food and household products. The corporation also filed for trademark protection in more than 20 product categories, including milk, coffee, soup, pasta, and water, as well as household products such as razors and cleaners.

Amazon also acquired Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017 and immediately began cutting costs. Enticed by the new low prices, customers from other grocery chains quickly flocked to Whole Foods, according to a report by alternative data intelligence firm Thasos Group, which analyzed mobile phone location data. Specifically, almost 10% of regular Trader Joe’s customers defected to Whole Foods the first week after the Amazon acquisition.

In 2020, Amazon opened its first Amazon Fresh grocery store to the public.

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As for Trader Joe’s, the beloved grocery chain was accused of ripping off smaller food brands, according to a recent investigation from food publication Taste. Such brands also asserted the chain approached them under the guise of doing a deal, only to abandon them, copy their products and claim said products as their own.

Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — an independent federal agency tasked with protecting the rights of private sector employees — accused Trader Joe’s of “illegally retaliating against workers, firing a union supporter and spreading false information in an effort to chill an organizing campaign,” HuffPost reported. In response, the grocer’s legal team mounted a sweeping defense, arguing that the agency is “unconstitutional.”

Trader Joe’s joins Starbucks as well as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon, which have all filed legal papers in hopes of shutting down the NLRB for good.

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Prosecutors file Trump contempt motion over “thugs” post on Truth Social

Prosecutors have filed a motion against former President Donald Trump, seeking to hold him in contempt for violating his gag order with recent attacks on potential witnesses, Politico reported Tuesday.

The motion highlights Trump's posts about potential star witness Michael Cohen. In one of his posts on Truth Social, Trump referred to Cohen and a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office as “thugs.” Judge Juan Merchan said he would hold a hearing to consider the prosecutor’s request on April 24.  

The motion notes that the April 1 gag order imposed on Trump prohibits him from "[m]aking or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding".

Prosecutors working under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg argue that Trump clearly violated those terms when he attacked not just Cohen, his former personal attorney, but Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who alleges that she had an affair with the former president.

The contempt motion notes that the ban on such attacks is part of "lawful order expressing an unequivocal mandate," which Trump expressly violated.

The prosecutors are seeking $1,000, the maximum financial sanction, for each post that violates the gag order.

 

Republican Senator Tom Cotton urges followers to attack pro-Palestine protesters who block traffic

Back in 2020, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton took to The New York Times to demand that U.S. soldiers be deployed against protesters. Now he's again calling for a violent response to protests, but this time by vigilantes.

“I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way,” Cotton wrote Monday evening on X, where he has over 500,000 followers. “It's time to put an end to this nonsense.”

After Cotton's post garnered critical attention, he posted a video the next morning showing a man dragging protesters blocking traffic in San Francisco from the street to the curb, writing: "How it should be done."

As in 2020, Cotton is using the platform available to him to inflame — to pour "gasoline on the fire," as the News Guild of New York, a union representing many Times journalists, phrased it following his Op-Ed.

Amid the war in Gaza and protests over U.S. support for Israel, Cotton is again offering incitement.

The danger is real. While Cotton’s instructions are open to interpretation, there is a history of drivers violently assaulting protesters who block traffic. For example, in 2017, Heather D. Heyer was killed at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., by a white supremacist who intentionally slammed into her while she was in the street.

A “deeply uncomfortable” Trump stares down journalist who reported that he fell asleep in court

A cranky Donald Trump glared at New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman when he awoke from a courtroom power nap during his trial on Monday and found out that she had already informed the world that he had dozed off.

“Mr. Trump appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest,” Haberman wrote Monday.

Haberman went onto CNN later on Monday to explain that the fatigue of a courtroom spares no one, including jurors and judges, but she added that if a criminal defendant falls asleep it has to be reported. 

Shortly after her report on his nap was published, Haberman told CNN that Trump glared at her in the courtroom, describing it as a "pretty specific stare" seemingly because he didn’t like that she made his Monday morning siesta public knowledge.  

“I think that having to sit there and be captive while we all report on him is going to be deeply uncomfortable for him because he is somebody who likes to control things,” Haberman said.

On Tuesday, during his second day in a Manhattan court for his hush money trial, Trump appeared to be tired again.

"Trump is periodically leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, only to shift his weight moments later," NBC News noted in its live coverage. "It is difficult to say whether he has fallen asleep or is resting his eyes."

 

 

 

 

Research shows that an unhealthy breakfast could have the same impact as no breakfast at all

Many parents know it is important for their teenagers to have breakfast before they go to school. Even though young people can be reluctant to eat it, breakfast provides the energy the brain and body need to function through the day.

In our new research we looked at what impact breakfast has on students' motivation to learn and their academic achievement at school.

We also looked at whether it matters if they have a healthy breakfast, an unhealthy breakfast or no breakfast at all.

 

Why did we study breakfast?

As educational psychology researchers we look at ways to improve how students learn.

Unlike factors beyond a student's control (such as teaching quality) or those that can take time to improve (such as study skills), eating breakfast is something students may have some immediate control over.

It is also something that could be quickly addressed by schools.

 

Our research

We wanted to know if eating breakfast affects students' motivation and achievement. We also wanted to know if it mattered whether the breakfast was a healthy one.

So, as part of an Australian Research Council project, we studied 648 Australian high school students from five private schools in New South Wales. Two of these schools were single-sex boys' schools, two were single-sex girls' schools and one was co-educational.

Students were in Years 7 to 9, with an average age of 13–14 years.

We conducted our study during students' science lessons. It was made up of three main components.

First, students completed an online survey of their breakfast habits. We asked if they had eaten breakfast that morning and what types of food they usually eat for breakfast.

Drawing on national dietary guidelines, we created a score for how often students consumed healthy foods for breakfast, such as fruit and vegetables, dairy and protein, wholegrains and cereals and water. We also asked how often they had an unhealthy breakfast, with items such as sugary soft drinks, processed meat, fast food, unhealthy bakery goods and unhealthy snacks. A higher score reflected typically eating a healthier breakfast.

Second, they rated their motivation in science lessons, including how confident they were in doing science schoolwork, how much they valued the subject and were focused on learning.

Third, students did a test based on content in the NSW science syllabus.

In this way, our study was a snapshot of one day in the life of students.

We also asked questions about their personal background, how well they usually perform in science, and also features of the classroom (including the time of the lesson in the day) so we could account for these in our findings.

         

Our findings

We found students who ate a healthy breakfast on the morning of the study demonstrated higher levels of motivation and achievement.

This means, for example, they were more confident about and focused on their science lessons. And they scored higher results in the test of their science knowledge.

In comparison, students who ate no breakfast had lower levels of motivation and achievement.

This was not unexpected. But what did surprise us was students who had no breakfast had similarly low levels of motivation and achievement to those students who had an unhealthy breakfast.

This suggests eating an unhealthy breakfast could be as disruptive to motivation and achievement as not eating breakfast at all.

Because we also looked at students' previous science results, the study showed that even if they had previously performed well in science, they could still score low in motivation and achievement if they had not had breakfast or had eaten an unhealthy one.

Although our study could not dig into specific reasons for this, it is likely because eating the wrong kinds of foods does not properly fuel the mind or body for what is needed to optimally "switch on" academically.

It is also important to note the students in our study were from private schools. Although we took a student's family background into account, the socioeconomic aspect of eating breakfast requires further investigation. It could be that the benefits of a healthy breakfast are larger in a more diverse sample of students.

 

What does this mean?

Our findings emphasize the importance of students eating a healthy breakfast each and every morning.  

Schools can help ensure this by

  • offering a healthy breakfast to students

  • offering a healthy morning snack

  • teaching students about the importance of a healthy breakfast (for example, as part of health and wellbeing syllabus units)

  • giving parents information about the importance of healthy breakfasts, meal ideas and strategies for giving this to their children.

                     

Barriers to breakfast

But schools will need to be mindful of and address barriers to a healthy breakfast. For example, there will be situations where school-provided breakfasts and morning snacks will need to be free. In such cases, it is also possible some students may not want a free breakfast if there is a stigma attached to it (if it is seen as only being for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds).

It is also worth recognizing some students may have body image concerns and not want to eat a snack or breakfast at school. In addition, cultural and dietary differences may mean some foods are not appropriate for some students.

If these barriers are effectively managed, our study shows a small and relatively achievable change in a student's life – a healthy breakfast each day – can have a positive academic impact.

 

Andrew J. Martin, Scientia Professor and Professor of Educational Psychology, UNSW Sydney; Emma Burns, ARC DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University; Joel Pearson, Professor of cognitive neuroscience, UNSW Sydney; Keiko C.P. Bostwick, Postdoctoral research fellow, UNSW Sydney, and Roger Kennett, Researcher in educational neuroscience, UNSW Sydney

 

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