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The pure emptiness of Katie Britt

If there’s one thing the last 72 hours have taught us, it’s how hard it is to be a woman and a Republican these days.  Take the woman who has dominated the news over the weekend, Alabama Senator Katie Britt. She appeared on national TV to give the Republican rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union Thursday and for her efforts was famously lampooned by Scarlett Johansen on Saturday Night Live.

The phrase “deer caught in the headlights” seemed to have been invented to describe Britt as she posed in front of what appeared to be a greenscreen image of her own kitchen. She went from weepy to ecstatic to inordinately sincere and back again, zig-zagging her way through a script some committee of Trump campaign staffers had lashed together for her to act her way through. The disconnect between the words she read off the teleprompter and her voice and expression was, uh…how can I put this? Jarring isn’t quite right. Annoying? Well, yes, there’s that. 

What’s that feeling I’m reaching for, hovering just out of reach of my consciousness? Okay, I’ve got it. Watching Britt’s face and listening to her whisper her way through the introduction of her remarks, I felt embarrassed for her. Really, I did. She had no sense at all of what she was saying, or how to say it, because she was just reading words, not expressing them, or feeling what she said.  She whispered, “our country is less secure,” and then smiled widely into the eye of the camera.  That is simply not the way you say those words, and having said them, how you react to what you’ve said.  It doesn’t even rise to the level of fake.  It’s just…nothing, a pure emptiness knowable only to, yes, Katie Britt.

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I’m going to do something I probably shouldn’t attempt. I’m going to try to figure out why she read the phrase the way she did and then punctuated it with her wide, entirely inappropriate and obviously insincere smile.

Katie Britt is a product of the University of Alabama “Machine,” the informal but hugely powerful group of fraternity and sorority members who run the Student Government Association by proxy, electing presidents of the association each year, and through them influencing and in many cases running student life on the university campus.  Being a part of the “Machine” at the University of Alabama is the way you get ahead in the state’s business and politics, which in that tightly-knit southern state are one and the same.

Watching her face with even just a smidgen of empathy, you can’t help wondering what it must be like to be Katie Britt, to have been given what has to be seen as evident ambition and talent and squashed it in service not just to Donald Trump – that’s bad enough – but to an idea and a way of life that has so emptied her of anything even marginally recognizable as real.

The way you get ahead in the “Machine” is to play along in the university’s “Greek” system, which in the case of fraternities, prizes good old boyism like partying, drinking, adolescent misbehavior and copying what your father did when he was in the same fraternity you’re in, because he got you in.  With sororities, it’s a female version of the frat stuff, bottom-lined by whatever passes for this year’s version of antebellum submissiveness. Britt was president of the Student Government Association (SGA) during the 2003-2004 school year, which on the SGA website appears with an unexplained asterisk next to it. 

In Alabama, the “Machine” is thought to have legendary powers: they elect the student body president, the Homecoming Queen, members of the student senate and other student presidents on campus, and many of those same campus officers go on to bigger and more powerful positions in state and federal government, like, for example, Katie Britt. The “Machine” is often compared to Yale’s Skull and Bones, one of those college frat things that nobody will admit to being a member of, but everybody knows how powerful it is, and how powerful you are if you’re associated with it. The power of the “Machine” at the University of Alabama has held since the 1920s, with the sole exception of 1992 through 1996 when the SGA was banned by the university. 

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It's a much longer story, but the banning in 1992 involved the harassment and assault of a non-machine candidate for president of the SGA, who was – you guessed it – a woman.  According to “Crimson White,” the student newspaper, a cross was burned on her lawn, and she was assaulted, causing “a golf ball-size bruise on her cheek, a busted lip, and a knife wound on the side of her face.” I couldn’t find any records of arrests for the assault, or what happened after the woman “fled the campus.”

On its website, the University of Alabama Student Government Association says its goal is to “strive to continue promoting a culture that instills servant leadership in its members so that its constituents may serve societal needs on a larger scale beyond the institution.”

Got that not-so-subtle phrase – “servant leadership” – dripping with Christian theological undertones? Those words also describe the look on Katie Britt’s face and her tone of voice last week as she dutifully read the script written for her by the Trump campaign, masquerading as the Republican National Committee, now co-chaired by one of Trump’s personal servant leaders, his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump. 

There is another word to describe Britt’s manner as she spoke for Republicans last week: smarmy. Speaking from what appears to be her kitchen, Britt described the room as “where we laugh together, and it’s where we hold each other’s hands and pray for God’s guidance.” She then studiously looked away from the camera’s gaze, looked back into the camera’s eye and intoned in a mock whisper: “And it’s where many nights, to be honest, it’s where Wesley and I worry.  I know we’re not alone.  And so tonight, the American family needs to have a tough conversation.”

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It's hard to capture just how blatantly studied and overacted and false Britt’s entire spiel was. But the thing that kept coming across to me was how learned her delivery was.  She was good at it in a way that bad actors are – they deliver lines with what they’ve been taught is just the right emphasis on certain words, with just the right turn of the head, flutter of eyelids, pursing of lips, and in the case of Britt, smile after smile so posed and automatic, any emphasis a real smile would have afforded to an alleged thought or fact in an individual line is lost in a glare of teeth and lips. Following her whispered secrets of what she and her husband Wesley say at their kitchen table, Britt settles into a mock-confidence you can only attain if pretty much everything in your life has been given to you by connections and powerful friends and whispered confidences that began in college dorms or sorority bedrooms: “Because the truth is, we’re all worried about the future of our nation.” Delivered by a woman who probably has yet to feel an actual worry beyond having forgotten to pick up diapers from the store or empty the cat box, the line had all the force of a snowflake landing on a gloved hand.

The reaction to Britt’s so-called rebuttal has been brutal. I compared her mockingly to an alien from another planet. Writer Jonathan M. Katz dug into her speech to find the made-up story about meeting an immigrant who she indicated had been trafficked and raped under President Biden’s watch when it turned out that it had happened during the presidency of George W. Bush — in Mexico

But experiencing the speech again, I think we’re missing the point. Watching her face with even just a smidgen of empathy, you can’t help wondering what it must be like to be Katie Britt, to have been given what has to be seen as evident ambition and talent and squashed it in service not just to Donald Trump – that’s bad enough – but to an idea and a way of life that has so emptied her of anything even marginally recognizable as real. 

At least an actor in a role on the stage or in a film knows they are delivering lines, picking up a paycheck and moving on to the next role. Katie Britt is playing a self she gave up rights to long ago. The “Machine” ran her at the University of Alabama. Now the Republican Party runs her. Imagine how that must feel. She’s not a shell, or in words we would apply to a man of her ilk, an empty suit. She is a Republican ideal of womanhood. She did what they told her to do. She said the words they gave her to say. She accomplished everything they set out for her to accomplish. The question is, can reality – any reality – penetrate the pretense of life she and the Republican Party are presenting to the American public?

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Biden special counsel Robert Hur’s resignation from DOJ makes his testimony “even more problematic”

Special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated and declined to charge former President Joe Biden over classified materials found in his home and office, resigned from the Justice Department and will appear as a private citizen in his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, according to The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg.

Hur, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland, formally stepped down one day before his Tuesday appearance at the request of Republicans led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. He drew criticism from Biden and the Democrats for criticizing the president’s memory in the report even as he declined to charge him.

Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann explained that the Justice Department “cannot give instructions” to a former employee about what he “can and cannot testify to.”

“That makes it even more problematic from our perspective … if he was still a federal employee, DOJ would have to approve his testimony and they’d be involved in his appearance tomorrow,” a Democratic Judiciary Committee source told The Independent.

“It’s hard not to anticipate some real ugliness with Robert Hur’s testimony,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. “He already showed his partisan colors in the inappropriate parts of his report. And he and the [Republicans] obviously contemplate he can vilify Biden now that he’s testifying as a ‘private citizen.’”

Republican women don’t care about rape victims

It can be confusing, tracking the multiple lawsuits journalist E. Jean Carroll filed against Donald Trump, who sexually abused her in the 90s and then lied about it. This is no doubt why U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote a brief that bluntly laid out the main takeaway: Trump raped Carroll, as the word "rape" is commonly understood. 

"The fact that Mr. Trump sexually abused — indeed, raped — Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established," Kaplan wrote in a court filing. This document allows journalists to use the R-word when discussing what Trump did to Carroll in a department store changing room in New York. 

Considering that they back Trump, you'd think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing.

So considering that they back Trump, you'd think Republican women would avoid acting like they think rape is a bad thing, much less something to get worked up over. Yet Republicans in the MAGA era have embraced total shamelessness as a political weapon. That means Republican women gleefully exploit sexual violence, crying giant crocodile tears over rape and other gendered violence, when in reality, they do everything they can to screw over actual victims.

During her response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address Thursday night, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., recounted a lurid story of a girl "sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12." Britt suggested this was Biden's fault, saying, "Biden's border policies are a disgrace." Britt's story was swiftly exposed as thoroughly dishonest. Yes, there was a 12-year-old who was sex trafficked. But, as journalist Jonathan Katz demonstrated, the ordeal happened not in the U.S. under Biden, but in Mexico in 2004-2008 — when George W. Bush was president. The victim herself, activist Karla Jacinto Romero, denounced Britt on CNN. She said that Britt was "using my story and distorting it for political purposes" and it's "not fair at all." 

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When she was confronted — surprisingly — by a Fox News host over her dishonesty, Britt signaled that she intends to keep exploiting this rape victim's tragedy to stir up racist fears of migrants. She denied lying, claiming that a 20-year-old story was necessary to illustrate "what is happening now at an astronomical rate." (Then why not use a more relevant — and recent — example?) The depths of Britt's depravity are only more obvious when one considers how vulnerable migrants are to sex trafficking if they are denied safe harbor in the U.S. 

Fake concern that is selectively employed is much worse, especially in service to Trump, a man who does everything he can, personally and politically, to inflict more suffering on women.

Considering that there's a wealth of other issues Britt could have lied about (and did), one has to wonder why she centered her speech around a graphic story about rape. The reason is as cynical as her lie: A growing number of female voters are turning away from the GOP, out of anger over the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the worship of a sexual predator like Trump. So it seems the way Republicans think they can get those women back is with threats: If you keep voting for Democrats, dark-skinned men are going to rape and kill you. 

We see this in the grotesque exploitation of the murder of Laken Riley, a junior at the University of Georgia, which has been getting non-stop coverage in right-wing media. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, has been arrested in what police call a "crime of opportunity." Republicans have been cynically hyping this story as "evidence" that undocumented people are especially dangerous — even as Republicans refuse to pass border security legislation, on the orders of Trump. 

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Riley's murder is an outlier, in one sense, because all evidence shows immigrants, especially undocumented ones, commit crime at lower rates than native-born people. But her murder was typical in another way: It was committed by a man. As Salon's Gabriella Ferrigine wrote, "This is the reality of running as a woman. Cities, suburbs, rural roads — male violence and harassment manifest ubiquitously, anywhere we run." Ibarra's alleged crime is part of a larger tapestry of gendered violence that goes straight to the top, with Trump's lifetime of assaults of women. 

But at the State of the Union, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tried to make a racist spectacle of Riley's death. She co-opted "Say Her Name," a rallying cry meant to bring attention to Black women victims of police violence, and screamed Riley's name at Biden, pretending she was standing up for silenced victims. Turns out Greene herself could not say her name, calling her "Lincoln Riley" instead of "Laken Riley" in an interview with NewsNation. The error was richly symbolic of how Greene is erasing the reality of this young woman's life and death, and distorting it into a warped fairy tale to justify pre-existing hatred of immigrants. 

Over the weekend, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., made an even bigger fool of herself than usual by justifying her own betrayal of rape victims, by hiding behind her own past as a survivor. ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked Mace how she can continue to support Trump, even though two separate juries have determined Carroll told the truth and he lied about the rape in the department store. Unable to answer that question with anything resembling dignity, Mace instead melted down with obviously false accusations that Stephanopoulos was trying to "shame" her about being a rape victim herself. 

"I find it offensive that as a rape victim you’re trying to shame me for my political choices," Mace squawked, in response to Stephanopoulos calmly asking, "You don’t find it offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable for rape?"

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Mace sounded like the ridiculous caricature of feminists propped up in right-wing media. She acted as if having been raped gives one a lifetime pass to abuse and mistreat whoever you wish. And she is absolutely mistreating Carroll, who is not a "potential rape victim," as Mace said, but a woman who has been suffering from trauma for nearly three decades due to this assault. Mace should be ashamed. Not of being raped, but of her willingness to throw other victims under the bus, and acting like a brat when held accountable for supporting a system that protects and rewards sexual predators like Trump.  

It's rare for a male journalist to handle himself as George Stephanopoulos did. He held a Republican woman to account for her misogynist views.

It would be better if Republican women just admitted they don't care about rape victims. Fake concern that is selectively employed is much worse, especially in service to Trump, a man who does everything he can, personally and politically, to inflict more suffering on women. Last week, journalist Kelly Weill wrote about how disgusting the feigned outrage can get, in an article for her MomLeft newsletter. She noted that anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians keep accusing reproductive health care providers of "trafficking." In-vitro fertilization is called "trafficking of human embryos." Abortion provision is routinely equated with sex trafficking. 

"The argument erases any of the agency of the person seeking an abortion," Weill writes. Agreed, and frankly, it also erases the agency of rape victims. This framework rejects the concept of consent altogether. In this worldview, a woman's right to say "no" or "yes" simply doesn't exist. All women are simply objects to be acted upon, not people who can decide for themselves what they want. It's why Republicans shrug it off when Trump assaults a woman, but flip out if a woman chooses abortion for herself. If he wants to force her into childbirth and "grab them by the pussy," well, that is all fine by them. They just want it to be a conservative man, and not the woman herself, who is in control of a woman's body.

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This view that women — and girls — are passive receptacles was articulated with chilling clarity by Laura Strietmann, the head of Cincinnati Right to Life, in a recent testimony before the Ohio state legislature. "While a pregnancy might have been difficult on a 10-year-old body, a woman’s body is designed to carry life," Strietmann said. It's well worth watching the clip, just to get a full sense of how angry Strietmann is at the very idea that anyone with a uterus, even a literal child, should be allowed to decline childbirth. 

What rape and forced childbirth have in common is a belief that a woman has no autonomy worth respecting. That her vagina and uterus are "designed" to be used by others how they see fit, and women themselves have no say. 

There remains this gendered assumption in the Beltway media that Republican women, being women, are inclined to have more concern and sympathy for other women than Republican men do. So they're often deployed, as Britt was, to talk about reproductive health care and sexual violence, in hopes that their awful beliefs sound less bad, coming from a woman. Unfortunately, this trickery sometimes works on a male-dominated media. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley got a pass for her anti-abortion views when the men running in the GOP presidential primary did not. It's rare for a male journalist to handle himself as Stephanopoulos did. He held a Republican woman to account for her misogynist views. But as this past week reminded us, Republican women can be just as cruel to women as the men can be, even if they deliver the hateful message from their kitchens. 

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“Obviously low IQ”: Former DHS official says “Donald Trump has apparent repeated memory lapses”

During last week’s State of the Union speech, President Biden fired a series of broadsides against Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. President Biden fired off this opening salvo and the Republicans in the audience, and more generally, never recovered from it.

Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today. What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time.

Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not.

But Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons it needs to defend itself. That is all Ukraine is asking. They are not asking for American soldiers. In fact, there are no American soldiers at war in Ukraine. And I am determined to keep it that way. But now assistance for Ukraine is being blocked by those who want us to walk away from our leadership in the world. It wasn’t that long ago when a Republican President, Ronald Reagan, thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Now, my predecessor, a former Republican President, tells Putin, “Do whatever the hell you want.” 

A former American President actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader. It’s outrageous. It’s dangerous. It’s unacceptable.

In an essay here at Salon, Heather "Digby" Parton described Biden’s speech in the following way:

Everyone was expecting a historic train wreck of a State of the Union last night and they got it. But it wasn't the one they thought it would be. President Joe Biden's address was powerful and dynamic and no doubt put a lot of timorous Democrats' worries to rest (at least for a day or so.) It was Donald Trump's highly touted response that failed dramatically. 

Biden came out swinging and knocked the Republicans so far back on their heels that they had to completely abandon the image of him they've been building since 2020 — a man so old and feeble that he can't even feed himself — and instead hilariously whimper about his loud macho aggression….Biden gave a barn burner of a speech that wasn't boring, which is highly unusual for any president but especially unusual for a president many people have been convinced has one foot in the grave.

At the end of the State of the Union speech, President Biden made a bold move, landing another salvo on his critics and enemies, who are advancing the lie of a narrative that he is somehow “too old” or perhaps even “senile” and therefore should not seek a second term in office.

In my career I’ve been told I’m too young and I’m too old.

Whether young or old, I’ve always known what endures.

Our North Star.

The very idea of America, that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.

We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either.

And I won’t walk away from it now.

My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are.

Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are among the oldest of ideas.

But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back.

To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future of what America can and should be.

Tonight you’ve heard mine.

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President Biden was clearly implying that it is actually Donald Trump, and not him, who especially in these last few days and weeks, has repeatedly shown that he appears to be facing serious cognitive challenges in terms of his speech, thinking, and memory.

Sounding the alarm about Trump’s growing dangerousness, Dr. John Gartner explained to me in a widely read conversation here at Salon that, “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing”.

Dr. Gartner’s colleague, Dr. Harry Segal, who is a senior lecturer at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical School, even went so far to suggest that Donald Trump should withdraw from the 2024 presidential campaign.

Because Donald Trump lacks impulse control and is almost pathological in his levels of projection, almost on cue following the State of the Union Speech he accused President Biden on his Truth Social disinformation platform of being a “psycho.”

"It’s impossible to not see the clips of his antics, and yes, the obvious sloppy, sweaty decline is notable."

At several events last week, as predicted by Dr. Gartner and his colleagues, President Trump continued to manifest apparent challenges in speech, memory, and cognition.

In an attempt to make better sense of Donald Trump’s obvious cognitive challenges and related behavior in the context of the country’s democracy crisis and the 2024 election, and what may happen next, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.

Will Bunch is a national opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Clearly, Donald Trump is struggling to hold a coherent thought or find the proper word, and I notice it seems to be increasing every time he gives a speech. Everyone ages differently, and I think of my dad who just turned 87 and it totally lucid in conversation although he does occasionally forget a name (as do I, at 65!), I’m not at all an expert on brain health, but based on what’s observable and also the folks who are experts whose analyses I’ve read I think there’s a real problem.

Voters should have serious conversations about what it means to be president, what the real issues are around presidential health, and how Trump and Biden might be different from each other. Generally speaking, I think the Ronald Reagan “charismatic actor” reinvention of the presidency makes people forget that we’re actually electing the CEO of a massive organization, with smart people in corner offices channeling the policies and morals of the boss. No one is bombing Barbados instead of Syria because an aging president said the wrong thing. That said, I think Trump’s mental struggles should be taken seriously by voters because in his case it seems to be linked to his moods and his temperament. He’s promised a presidency of “retribution” and to surround himself with aides who can act on his whims. That’s concerning. But will most voters care? Probably not.

It feels like the lessons the mainstream media have taken from the Trump years are exactly the wrong ones: a doubling down on a bland and ultimately phony interpretation of “balance and objectivity.” It seems that occasionally going out on a limb and calling out Trump for some of his lies from 2017-2021 means they were salivating for a chance to prove they can be just as tough on Biden – whether or not he deserves it. For a time, that stalking horse was “inflation,” but the price increases cooled, and Biden got four years older, so here we are. So much of this is journalists indulging voters by focusing on style when the substance in this election is life or death for America.

Miles Taylor is a national security expert who served under the Trump administration as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Writing as “Anonymous," Taylor published the widely discussed 2018 New York Times op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." Taylor’s most recent book is “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.”

Donald Trump is obviously a deeply troubled person. Strip away the politics and his biography, and any person who would spend time with the man would come to the same conclusion: he’s a sick person, devoid of any moral system beyond relentless self-aggrandizement. The self-interest colors his every interaction. The man’s eyes scan every room — and situation — opportunistically for leverage, for moments to advance himself at the expense of others. This has happened to the people closest to him … to his employees … and to the country.

On a more simple level, Donald Trump has apparent repeated memory lapses, difficulty synthesizing complex information, disinterest in nuance, and an obviously low IQ. He’s not a smart man, and some would say he shows clear signs of decline. If it were a screenplay, a wannabe gangster with dementia might be an oddball comedy. But on the national stage, it’s a civic tragedy.

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Ultimately, the election is less about Trump than it ever was. It’s now about us. We elevated a man to the nation’s highest office, witnessed a truly innumerable string of incidents displaying his ineptitude and immorality, watched him attempt to subvert the Constitution and commit crimes, and now we are giving serious consideration to restoring him to that office. If that is what we are doing, one might say we deserve a second Trump presidency. Perhaps it will be enough to shock the conscience of our society that it’s time to renegotiate our social contract. Perhaps not.

Yes, Joe Biden has lost his step. It shows. But there’s no comparison between an elderly man and an authoritarian one.

Jared Yates Sexton is a journalist and author of the new book "The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis."

I see a deeply unwell person. I think sometimes we get lost in politics and forget to look at the situation as human beings. What we’re dealing with is an abusive, deteriorating man who is somehow even getting worse. Fascism feeds on that unwellness and accelerates the process until it leaves a husk, a host, and that’s what we’re watching in real time. Everything else stems from that and that, coupled with the rhetoric, tells a story we should all be listening to.

As I say all the time, a healthy political system and American society would have rejected Donald Trump in 2016 like so much bad food. That it didn’t betrays a sickness. What should happen is a complex series of legal consequences and systematic expulsions. On a political level, a complete rejection by the electorate and movement toward something reconciliatory.

Biden’s age is an issue. We should be concerned about the fitness of a president. The media obsession is simply the same thing that propelled the e-mail debacle. Lazy journalism mixed with the neoliberal refusal to wrestle with itself. They want a right-wing turn in their bones but aren’t even conscious about it. These cycles give themselves away after a while.

Investigative reporter Heidi Siegmund Cuda writes about US politics and culture at her Substack newsletter and for Byline Times, and Byline Supplement.

I do my best not to watch the spectacle of Trump. He’s an avatar for the destruction of our country and America as a reliable ally, and his “moth to flame” circuses have turned us into stock characters — the outraged or the devoted. But it’s impossible to not see the clips of his antics, and yes, the obvious sloppy, sweaty decline is notable. But always when we’re watching a propagandist in action — how much is organic and how much is miming Vincent the Chin’s ‘bathrobe shuffle’? It behooves him to be “losing it” when committing crimes, and this cat has had more than nine lives. He detonates narrative warfare wherever he goes, so it’s difficult to decipher what is planted to create spectacle to feed the mangy cult and what is a true trash fire of a human.

The more critical framing for me is what it says about us that a man who led an insurrection, is an adjudicated sex assaulter, a convicted fraud, an agent of Russian disinformation who engaged in a cover up of his own nefarious activity, and a likely superspreader of America’s most guarded secrets, is a political party’s frontrunner. I guess I don’t care if he mispronounces “Venezuela” while appearing to get high on his own supply, I care about the fascism. Project 2025 is a fascist endeavor.

If we were a healthy society, we would prioritize a return to decency and the rule of law. We would swiftly arrest Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for their complicity in an attempted coup, which somehow this country seems to have forgotten. I’m tired of limited hangouts — I’m tired of small sentences for big crimes, and convictions for minor players. I want to see this country standup against authoritarians and oligarchs, who are trying to remove all barriers to their unrestrained lust for power. From the moment Trump removed language to water down support for Ukraine at the 2016 RNC, his role has been to hand Ukraine to Russia, which he is now doing through his proxies like Mike Johnson. I bring this up because until we have a proper framework, we will be continually tilting at windmills. The proper framing is Trump, his proxies, and his handlers, are aiming to destroy the US as an international power. They are using narrative warfare as a battering ram, and we need to take back the narrative quickly. We need to bullhorn the stakes. Women will likely have to take the lead, because it’s our rights that are imperiled.

The media’s obsession with Biden’s age (“But His Age….”) is America getting caught in the trap of narrative warfare, yet again. “But His Age” is simply “But Her Emails” as we saw with Hillary Clinton — it’s a gaslighting mantra for simpletons who don’t want to think too hard about the fact that we are the targets of a global fascist criminal movement attempting to eviscerate democracy. The New York Times and cable news know this, and they’ve placed their bets on fascism. Big News is big business and big business has historically supported fascism. This is why we as independent members of the media must help shape the narrative. Our choice is literally good vs evil. We have a choice between decency and a vast criminal network — a choice between standing up for our imperfect democracy or succumbing to complete authoritarian capture. It’s not about age — by Biden’s side is a perfectly healthy vice president, who can capably handle the labor of democracy should he fall ill.

The 2024 election is not about anything other than decency — are we good people — is our President a good man — are we decent — do we know right from wrong. If we are decent, we will re-elect Joe Biden, we will do everything to help Ukraine defeat Russian imperialism. We will rebuke the cruelty of Trumpism and Putinism. We know that Trump is a cruel man. We knew that when he called immigrants ‘rapists’, called women “fat pigs”, “dogs”, and “disgusting animals”, mocked a disabled person, and ginned up violent rhetoric to encourage his MAGA base to kill Mike Pence. We must decide who we are. Are we decent?

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Idaho is becoming an OBGYN desert, threatening the lives of mothers and infants

At the end of this month, an Idaho labor and delivery unit will shutter its doors. It's not exactly an anomaly; it's the third such closure in the state following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which triggered laws in the state that criminalize physicians who provide abortion care and make access to the procedure impossible. 

As of April 1, 2024, West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, Idaho, will no longer deliver infants. According to a statement on the hospital’s website, the closure was an outcome the institution “worked for years to avoid.” While West Valley Medical Center didn’t cite restrictive abortion laws as the reason for the closure, Dr. Kara Cadwallader, who is a family medicine physician in Idaho, told Salon in a phone interview that providers feel as if their “hands are tied” and they can’t do their jobs in a state where abortion is completely banned (with only a narrow exception in which an abortion is "necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman") and where physicians face jail time for providing a standard part of care.

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“These really restrictive abortion laws or other health care laws tend to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable in your communities,” Cadwallader said, referring to those who are low-income, have disabilities, mental health disabilities and those who already have difficulty accessing care. “I think the Caldwell closure will demonstrate that even more because that's a hospital that is utilized by a lot of the more rural folks who live in the western part of the state.” 

“These really restrictive abortion laws or other health care laws tend to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable in your communities.”

Cadwallader said people who relied on that hospital will now be another 40 miles from high-quality maternal care, which people might not be able to access on a regular basis — especially those who don’t have a car or have to rely on public transportation.

The news of the clinic’s closure comes at a time when the state of Idaho is struggling to retain and recruit obstetrician-gynecologists. According to a report published last month by the Idaho Physician Well-being Action Collaborative (IPWAC), a group of physicians in Idaho whose mission is to improve quality of life for Idaho physicians — including Cadwallader — the state has lost 22 percent of its practicing OGBYNs in the 15 months following Dobbs. The report also found that 55 percent of the state’s high-risk OB-GYNs have left the state, leaving less than five in the entire state to treat patients. 

“In a time when we should be building our physician workforce to meet the needs of a growing Idaho population and address increasing risks of pregnancy and childbirth, Idaho laws that criminalize the private decisions between doctor and patient have plunged our state into a care crisis that unchecked will affect generations of Idaho families to come,” Dr. Caitlin Gustafson, an OB-GYN and the board president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation, said in a news release about the report.

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Cadwallader provided an example of how a lack of high-risk OBGYNS in the state could directly affect a pregnant patient, based on a story that one of her colleagues experienced firsthand. A pregnant woman’s water broke when she was 19 weeks pregnant, a time when the fetus is very unlikely to survive outside of the uterus. The pregnant patient is also at a high risk of developing a severe infection like sepsis when this happens. A typical potential treatment would be to terminate the pregnancy — or refer the patient to a maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialist who can closely monitor the situation. 

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“But you can’t have a termination, and there are no MFMs to take care of her [in Idaho],” Cadwallader said. “Or they don’t want to take care of her because they can’t do their treatment that’s recommended, and so that patient is on their own, care is delayed, and we know that prompt attention for high-risk conditions is what prevents maternal mortality.” 

In the coalition’s report, the authors warned that the OB-GYN exodus puts the state’s own maternal mortality rate at risk. Previous data has shown that Idaho is in the 10th percentile of maternal pregnancy outcomes in the country — meaning that 90 percent of the country has better pregnancy outcomes than Idaho. Doctors in the coalition are worried the post-Dobbs landscape will only worsen these outcomes.

"You can’t have healthy citizens without healthy babies."

Cadwallader shared another anecdote about a patient who possibly had an ectopic pregnancy to illustrate how much more easily a pregnancy-related death can occur post-Dobbs. The patient, Cadwallader described, needed emergency treatment as she was pregnant and bleeding. The results from her blood work showed that her hormones were declining, which indicated that the pregnancy wasn’t going to be successful and doctors were concerned. In order to prevent the potential ectopic pregnancy from rupturing in the fallopian tube, which can lead to severe bleeding or death, a doctor would usually go in and aspirate the contents of the uterus.

“So they called me to come do that, and I said, ‘Well, I'm happy to do that, but is it legal?’” she told Salon. “And so we had to spend about an hour talking to attorneys and the decision was that I could be prosecuted for causing abortion.” 

They had to send the patient out of state. 

“I have no idea what happened to that patient,” Cadwallader said. “I don't know if she ever got care. A very simple five minute procedure was the care that she needed, and again, we had to send someone away with possibly an ectopic pregnancy and say, ‘I can't help you.’”

Cadwallader said this will only worsen the maternal mortality crisis in the United States, too. Indeed, the U.S. is an outlier among its counterparts when it comes to maternal mortality rates. In 2020, the average maternal mortality rate of all high-income countries was 12 deaths per 100,000 live births. For the U.S., it was 24 deaths per 100,000 live births. While a majority of OBGYNs believe that Dobbs has exacerbated pregnancy-related deaths, actual data is hard to come by for a variety of reasons. It’s not just Idaho that’s experiencing a massive decline in quality care for pregnant people. As Salon has previously reported, abortion laws are driving an exodus of women's health specialists in many red states. 

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Joelle Puccio, the director of education at the Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction, told Salon via email she's concerned that this will affect neonatal mortality rates as well.  "If infants have to be transported to a facility with ability to provide higher levels of care, it can delay vital procedures," they said. "This trend will cause long lasting harm to our entire population. You can’t have healthy citizens without healthy babies."

Puccio noted that this problem is unlikely to stay confined to Idaho. "I don’t think people in this region of Idaho will go to Oregon, because eastern Oregon is also experiencing a dearth of providers and staff, causing many Oregonians to seek care in Boise. But in similar cases in other states, yes, definitely people will have to travel long distances for care, or just forgo care altogether," Puccio said.

“I think Oklahoma, Mississippi, Texas, are in the exact same boat,” Cadwallader said, adding that Idaho is surrounded by states like Oregon and Washington who support high-quality healthcare. “But I look at the south and these states are completely surrounded by other states that don't provide high-quality maternal care anymore, and so I think in a way, it’s hard to imagine, but they might even be worse off.”

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The Kate Middleton mystery: A complete timeline of the Princess of Wales’ royal family PR disaster

“Where in the world is Kate Middleton?” has been a growing question in recent months following the Princess of Wales’ conspicuous absence. But on Sunday, a photo of Kate and her three children was released by the Palace, seemingly to show all was well on Mother's Day in the UK. That reassurance, however, was cut short after online sleuths whipped out their magnifying glasses and asserted that the photo looked alarmingly fishy. The photo seemed like a shoddy attempt by the Palace to silence the slew of conspiracy theories surrounding Kate’s health and whereabouts. And expectedly, people were not happy.

Concerns regarding Kate’s well-being reached a fever pitch last month after William abruptly pulled out of a planned outing to his godfather King Constantine of Greece's memorial service on Feb. 27, People reported. In January, Kensington Palace announced that the Princess of Wales underwent a “planned” abdominal procedure without providing more information on her health. They noted that her medical condition was non-cancerous and that Kate wasn't expected to return to public royal duties until after Easter. She has reportedly been recovering in Windsor since she left the hospital two weeks after her surgery. 

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Updates regarding Kate’s condition have been scant, which has encouraged many to further look into what’s really going on with the royal family. Redditors speculated that Kate and William's relationship was on the rocks. Spanish media believed that Kate was stuck in a coma. And folks on Twitter were convinced that Kate had undergone a Brazilian butt lift (better known as a “BBL”).

Last week, a spokesperson for the prince told People that “his focus is on his work and not on social media.” The Palace recently assured the public that the Princess of Wales “continues to be doing well” in her recovery. Kate was also spotted during a car ride with her mother Carole Middleton, although many claimed that the princess wasn’t actually in the photo.

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

New developments in Kate's so-called "disappearance" have been coming in by the hour. Here’s a look at what’s happened thus far:

Jan. 9, 2024: Kensington Palace doesn’t make a social media post for Kate’s birthday

Royal experts noted that Kensington Palace failed to make a social media post celebrating Kate’s 42nd birthday. There were no posts wishing Kate a happy birthday nor were there any posts thanking people for their birthday wishes.

The lack of posts isn’t incredibly eyebrow-raising considering that the Palace didn’t make posts about Kate’s birthday or William’s birthday in 2023. Kate’s birthday did receive posts in 2018 and 2022. New pictures of her were also released on her birthday in 2020 and 2022.

Jan. 17: Kensington Palace announces that Kate is in the hospital

The Palace released an official statement, saying the princess underwent a “planned abdominal surgery” and will be hospitalized for 10 to 14 days. The Palace said it is unlikely Kate would return to public duties until after Easter, which falls on March 31.

Multiple outlets reported that William had “shifted his schedule” to help his wife and care for their children. This was also the only day journalists were allowed to report on Kate’s health from outside the hospital.

Jan. 18: Prince William visits Kate at the hospital

William is photographed driving to the London Clinic to visit Kate. Royal experts said this is the only time William is seen visiting his wife.

Jan. 20: Spanish journalist Concha Calleja challenges the Palace’s claims

Calleja claimed that Kate was hospitalized on Dec. 28, despite Kensington Palace’s January announcement, and added that the princess was not doing well. The report subsequently spurred online conspiracy theories. One social media user said they saw a royal convoy heading to a London hospital on Dec. 28. Other sleuths pointed out that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s longtime nanny is Spanish.

This is also the first time a UK tabloid hasn’t provided any bizarre gossip story or predictions regarding a royal family issue. Calleja’s report is the first real follow-up story to Kate’s surgery announcement.

Jan. 20: Kate will reportedly work from bed during her recovery

The Sunday Times reported that Palace aides failed to notify Kate’s 30 charities and patronages “to confirm postponing and rescheduling engagements” until one week before her surgery. The newspaper said Kate will be “work[ing] from bed” and “aides insist her work will not stall.” The report fuels more online conspiracy theories.

Jan. 24: More media outlets ramp up coverage surrounding Kate

People’s royal reporter wrote that Kate’s hospitalization wasn’t planned for: “The carefully guarded news about Kate’s situation came as a surprise even to those who work closely with the royal family, PEOPLE understands.” Page Six later reported the same.

Additionally, the UK tabloid the Mirror fueled conspiracy theorists with its story titled, “Kate ‘your best friend one minute and worst enemy the next’, expert claims.” The story is filled with several glaring errors. First, the Mirror sourced the story from “a recent article for the Daily Mail” written by royal reporter Robert Jobson — but links to a post from 2022. Second, it changed its story title just a few hours after publication and replaced Kate’s name with Prince Harry’s. The new and current title of the story is “Prince Harry ‘your best friend one minute and worst enemy the next,’ expert claims.”

The Mirror added an editorial note to the bottom of the post reading, “A previous version of this story erroneously referred to Kate, Princess of Wales, instead of Prince Harry” and removed the link to the 2022 Daily Mail story. The link now redirects to the Daily Mail’s homepage.

Jan. 25: William has allegedly visited Kate in the hospital every day

That’s according to The Sun, which added that Kate’s three children have not visited her yet. Other outlets claimed the children stayed in touch with their mother via FaceTime. 

Jan. 28: Calleja says Kate is in a medically induced coma 

Other Spanish media outlets also reported the same. More conspiracy theorists started taking Calleja’s claims into consideration and the report garnered much popularity online.

Jan. 29: Kensington Palace says Kate will return home to Windsor Castle to continue her recovery

“She is making good progress,” Kensington Palace said in a statement.

Kate’s departure was not photographed, even though members of the media were set up around the hospital in order to photograph the King and Queen.

Feb. 1: A Kensington Palace spokesperson denies Calleja’s coma claim

An unnamed Kensington Palace spokesperson denied Calleja’s “total nonsense” claim that Kate is in a coma to The Times.

“No attempt was made by that journalist to fact-check anything that she said with anyone in the household,” they said. “It’s fundamentally, totally made-up, and I’ll use polite English here: it’s absolutely not the case.”

BuzzFeed News’ former royal correspondent Ellie Hall explained that Palace spokespersons do not go on the record very often. “[T]he fact that someone in the Palace said this and the journalist was allowed to cite it to a spokesperson is significant,” she added.

Feb. 2: Calleja defends her reporting

Calleja claimed she “touched a nerve” by reporting the truth and said she trusts her source  “100%.” Hall explained that it’s “interesting” to see a story like this still be covered in the mainstream media following the Palace’s vocal denial. Reporters like Calleja often “don’t have the credibility to defend themselves.”

Feb. 7: Kate’s brother inspires a few ludicrous conspiracy theories

The princess’ brother James shared a video of his family on vacation in the Alps. Sleuths realized that Kate’s parents, Carole and Michael Middleton, haven’t been spotted since Kensington Palace announced her surgery.

Feb. 7: William participates in first royal event since Kate’s hospitalization announcement

The event was an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle. William presented medals on behalf of his father to several attendees. He also mentioned his father’s and wife’s health in a speech. “I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you, also, for the kind messages of support for Catherine and for my father, especially in recent days,” he said. “It means a great deal to us all.”

Feb. 9: Kate leaves Windsor Castle for her children’s half-term holiday

The Daily Mail reported that the Wales family has relocated to Anmer Hall, at Sandringham. The trip to Sandringham wasn’t photographed.

Feb. 17: Kate and William visited a school they are considering for their oldest son Prince George

The visit allegedly happened before Kate’s surgery, the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden clarified on X.

Feb. 27: William abruptly pulls out of his godfather’s memorial service

Concerns regarding Kate’s well-being reached a fever pitch when news broke that William had pulled out of attending a memorial service at Windsor for his godfather, the late King Constantine of Greece. The prince was scheduled to give a reading. Kensington Palace said his absence was due to “a personal matter.”

Feb. 27: Buckingham Palace announces the death of Thomas Kingston

Kingston was a member of the extended royal family. Royal experts noted it was quite odd that multiple media outlets reported that William’s departure from the memorial service was not connected to Kingston’s death. Conspiracy theorists frequently referenced the strangeness of these reports, and pointed to the fact that Kingston once dated Kate’s sister Pippa Middleton.

Feb. 29: Kensington Palace reiterates the princess’ recovery timeline

In a statement made to several news outlets, including Page Six and NBC News, a spokesperson for the Palace said, “Kensington Palace made it clear in January the timelines of the Princess’ recovery and we’d only be providing significant updates. That guidance stands.”

Feb. 29: Wales friends and a former Palace employee talk to the Daily Beast

The unnamed friends and a former Palace employee sat down with Daily Beast royal reporter Tom Sykes to talk about Kate’s “disappearance.”

“If William has read any of this stuff, it will only make him more determined to stick to his guns and keep his wife out of the limelight while she recovers. The stuff people are writing is toxic,” one source said.

BuzzFeed News’ former royal correspondent Ellie Hall explained that “friends” of members of the royal family don’t normally talk to reporters unless they’re given permission.

March 1: William ignores a question about his wife’s health

The question was asked during an official event in Wales. The news, however, isn’t reported until March 4.

March 4: TMZ publishes a paparazzi image of the princess and her mother 

The news outlet reported that the image — which shows Kate in the passenger seat and her mother driving — was taken that morning, possibly after Kate dropped her children off at school. Several media organizations followed suit and published the pictures shortly afterwards.

Several UK news outlets reported that Kensington Palace did not “authorize” the taking of the paparazzi image, adding that they would refrain from publishing it out of respect for Kate’s privacy. Two days later, royal reporter Emily Andrews wrote on X that the Palace “exerted huge pressure on the British media” to not publish the image.

March 5: Kate’s uncle speaks out against the conspiracy theories 

“There’s a reason why [the royal family] is not talking about it and they are giving her a little bit of space,” said Kate’s uncle Gary Goldsmith, a contestant on the reality TV show “Celebrity Big Brother.”

March 5: The British Army posts and removes its claim that Kate will attend Trooping the Colour

Kensington Palace told reporters that Kate’s appearance at this year’s Trooping the Colour event on June 8 had not yet been confirmed. The U.K. Ministry of Defense removed its claim that Kate will be at the event and her image from their website.

March 6: A spokesperson for the prince addresses the conspiracy theories

Speaking to People for its Wednesday cover story, a spokesperson said on behalf of the prince, “His focus is on his work and not on social media.”

March 7: Kate’s uncle says he has spoken to his sister Carole about Kate’s health

Goldsmith spoke about Kate’s health once again when fellow “Celebrity Big Brother” contestant Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu asked about the princess’ whereabouts. “Because she doesn’t want to talk about it, the last thing I’m going to do is [talk about it],” he said. “There’s this kind of this code of etiquette. If it’s announced, I’ll give you an opinion.”

He claimed he has spoken to his sister Carole about Kate’s health and said that she’s getting the “best care in the world” and “she’ll be back, of course she will.”

“All the family has put the wagons down and [are looking] after the family first before anything else,” he said. “They put a statement out, they said, ‘She’s going to take some time to recoup and we’ll see you at Easter.’”

March 10: Kate and William post on Instagram for Mother’s Day

On Sunday, Kate and William’s official Instagram account (@princeandprincessofwales) posted a picture of a healthy Kate posing alongside her three children — Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis — in celebration of Mother’s Day in the UK. It’s the first official photo of the princess shared since she underwent planned abdominal surgery earlier this year.

“Thank you for your kind wishes and continued support over the last two months. Wishing everyone a Happy Mother’s Day. C,” the caption read, adding that the photo was taken by the prince.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4U_IqTNaqU/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=ad74086b-0a5b-49c7-9bd0-e3035ecf6967

The post quickly went viral with many saying the photo clearly looked off. Skeptics claimed that in the photo, Kate’s wedding ring was missing, the right side of her hair was visibly photoshopped and the bottom of Charlotte’s left sleeve was also photoshopped.    

“Tell us the truth! Where’s ar’ Kate Middleton?,” wrote one individual on X (formerly Twitter).

Other users said the image was AI generated — one analysis found that the photo was 77.37% AI generated and only 22.63% human generated. A separate user took it one step further, alleging the Palace of editing Kate’s 2016 Vogue cover photo and using it in her Instagram post.

March 10: Reuters publishes, then deletes the photo 

After Kensington Palace released the Mother’s Day photo of Kate, Reuters published it in an article titled, “In pictures: Kate, the Princess of Wales, through the years,” before deleting it just a few hours later. In a post made on X, the outlet wrote, “We are deleting a post containing an image of the Princess of Wales following a post-publication review.”

Getty and the Associated Press also pulled the images. A kill notification from AP read: “At closer inspection it appears that the source has manipulated the image.”

“The Associated Press initially published the photo, which was issued by Kensington Palace,” the news wire said in a statement to NBC News. “The AP later retracted the image because at closer inspection, it appears that the source had manipulated the image in a way that did not meet AP's photo standards. The photo shows an inconsistency in the alignment of Princess Charlotte's left hand.”

Kensington Palace refused to offer any comment at the time. 

The Daily Telegraph, the British daily broadsheet newspaper that normally writes in support of the royal family, later published the front page story, “Photo from Palace was doctored, say agencies.”

March 11: Kate supposedly breaks her silence on the photo

Kate formally addressed the photo being doctored in an online statement: “Like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I wanted to express my apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother’s Day. C”

March 11: Kate is pictured leaving Windsor Castle with William

The Daily Mail reported that Kate was pictured alongside Prince William leaving Windsor Castle in a car. The prince was heading to Westminster Abbey for the annual Commonwealth Day service, while the princess was reportedly heading to “a private appointment.”

In the photo, William is seen looking down at his phone and a person who could be Kate is sitting right next to him. Her head is facing away from the camera and looking out the car window.

March 11: CNN is reviewing all handout photos previously provided by Kensington Palace

The media outlet explained that the royal press team ​​”wasn’t transparent about the fact [the Mother’s Day photo] had been adjusted.”

“That will have damaged the trust between the palace and media organizations — many of which, like CNN, will likely be assessing all royal handouts,” CNN wrote. “The editing storm has undermined the existing relationship and when public interest over any possible cover up escalates, as it has done recently, many news outlets will now take that speculation more seriously.”

CNN added that it’s “unacceptable to move, change or manipulate the pixels of an image” because doing so “would alter the reality of the situation the image is intended to document.”

March 12: The Daily Mail claims Kate is “shell shocked” over the photo blunder

According to “several well-placed sources in royal ­circles,” Kate allegedly found the public fallout over the “edited” photo deeply “upsetting.”

“Everyone, including the Princess, is a bit shell shocked by what has happened,” one source told the Mail. “A mistake was made but she has put her hand up and apologized. It’s been very upsetting all round. But a lot of people feel it is time to acknowledge the error was made in good faith, as was her apology, and move on.”

The Times also reported that Kate was “shaken” by the news agency “kill orders” and decided to “own up” to editing the photo when the subsequent online frenzy reached Kensington Palace.

March 12: Conspiracy theories involving William and his so-called mistress Rose Hanbury begin to brew

The new theories specifically focused on the recent photo of William and Kate in the car. Sleuths on TikTok and Twitter speculated that the prince was actually by himself in the car and a picture of the princess’ head was Photoshopped next to him. Others hypothesized that the woman in the car wasn’t Kate — it was Rose Hanbury, also known as the Marchioness of Cholmondeley (pronounced CHUM-lee).

Unconfirmed rumors of an affair between William and Rose have been circulating since 2019. Earlier this week, The Independent published a profile on Rose, titled “Lady Rose Hanbury: Who is the Marchioness of Cholmondeley?” The story quickly caught the attention of many online conspiracy theorists.

March 12: The photographer who took the car photo speaks out against the conspiracy theories

James Bennett, the professional photographer who took the picture of William and Kate in the car, shot down all the conspiracy theories related to the photo in an interview with the New York Post. “We don’t change our photos in Photoshop other than adjusting the light levels if necessary,” Bennett said.

Bennett claimed that he and his partner were hired by a news outlet to get a shot of William heading to Westminster Abbey for a royal event. “The cars left Windsor Castle and I photographed them a short distance away on Datchet High Street — outside No. 39, to be precise!” he said. “Car shots are unpredictable at the best of times and with some reflection on the glass, it can be difficult.”

He added: “As it happened, it wasn’t until I checked on the back of the camera to make sure I had a frame of Prince William that I realized there was someone sitting next to him. It turned out to be Catherine!”

The photo was syndicated in the US by the photo agency GoffPhotos.

March 13: Palace sources say Kate is “smiling, upbeat, and enjoying being out”

A royal source told Harper's Bazaar that the atmosphere at Kensington Palace offices has been “tense, but there is a sense that this will pass. They aren’t too worried.”

A Buckingham Palace insider added: “Some staff can’t quite believe how badly KP have cocked things up by not paying close enough attention to what was being released to the world. Didn’t anyone there think to check the photo before it went out?” King Charles III is allegedly being “kept abreast” of latest developments, but “isn’t too concerned” about the current situation.

Regarding Kate’s recovery, a Palace insider said the princess is “doing well, all things considered,” adding that she has left the house at least three times in the past two weeks. In one such occasion, which occurred just over a week ago, Kate was “smiling, upbeat, and enjoying being out.”

“[This situation] has caused some stress for the princess, but she tends not to pay attention to online chatter or even the press,” a royal insider said. “I think people forget that this was simply a mother wanting her family to look their best in a photograph that was going to be heavily scrutinized. She was protecting her children.”

March 13: Agence France-Presse says it no longer considers Kensington Palace a “trusted source”

Phil Chetwynd, Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) global news director, told BBC radio that the news agency no longer considers Kensington Palace a “trusted source” following the botched Mother’s Day photo disaster. Chetwynd said AFP, along with other news agencies, tried to get the palace to provide the original photo so they could determine how much of it had been edited. When they received no reply, they issued “kill” notices informing editors not to publish the doctored photo. Such notices are commonly associated with images from the regimes of Iran and North Korea, not the British Royal Family, Chetwynd specified.

“It’s actually not even very well photoshopped,” he said. “[There were] clearly a lot of problems with the photo, so it shouldn’t have been validated. I think as soon as it was, all the photo editors at all the major agencies immediately saw there was a problem and got together and spoke about it and [said] ‘what do we do?’”

Chetwynd added: “You cannot be distorting reality for the public. There’s a question of trust. The big issue here is one of trust and the lack of trust — or the falling trust — of the general public in institutions generally and in the media. And so it’s extremely important that a photo does represent, broadly, the reality that [it was taken in], and therefore it is not, in a sense, telling some kind of lie or some kind of false truth around an event that happens.”

March 14: William comments on Kate’s artistic skills as he prepares for a “joint” appearance with Prince Harry

The prince praised his wife’s artistic skills during a royal visit that took place just three days after Kate apologized for editing her Mother's Day photograph. 

“My wife is the arty one. Even my children are artier than me,” William said while decorating biscuits with children at the new OnSide Youth Zone in Hammersmith and Fulham, London. The prince went to go see the brand-new purpose-built facilities that will soon be available to young people in the area.

Later tonight, William and his estranged brother Prince Harry will both separately take part in a ceremony paying tribute to their late mother at the Diana Legacy Award.

March 16: New video shows Kate out-and-about with William

TMZ obtained a clip of Kate and William visiting Windsor Farm Shop, a local supermarket and cafe that’s said to be about a mile from their home in Windsor. Onlookers said Kate looked “happy, relaxed and healthy” as she walked around the store, per The Sun.

In the video, Kate is seen smiling and wearing an all-black athletic fit, which included a zip-up jacket, leggings, sneakers and calf-length socks. Despite the recent sighting, online sleuths were convinced that Kate was actually a body double. “Doesn’t really look like her and DEF doesn’t look like the person in the car with Carol[e]. Even a little iffy on it being William tbh,” one skeptic said about the video, referring to the March 4 photo of Middleton in the car with her mother Carole.

“That isn’t her. Higher cheekbones, different smile, different walk, slimmer build. Carrying bag after abdo surgery. Body double,” said another.

March 16: Kate’s friends say the princess may open up about her health struggles soon

Friends of Kate told The Times of London that the Princess of Wales may reveal why she got abdominal surgery after she returns to her duties this spring.

“They will want to be clear and more open, but they'll do it when they feel ready,” one unnamed friend of the royals told the outlet. “I would expect that to be her instinct and it will be her call. They're not going to be rushed.”

Another royal source said Kate and William would speak about the princess’ recovery “out on engagements.”

March 18: Rose Hanbury claims the affair rumors are false

Hanbury said through her lawyers that the rumors of an affair with William “are completely false.” This is the first time Hanbury has publicly addressed the affair following the online rumors.

March 19: William comments on his wife’s absence following the farm shop video

While visiting a housing workshop in Sheffield to promote his new homelessness project, the prince commented on his wife’s absence. “That’s my wife’s area, she needs to sit here,” he said, referring to Kate’s commitment to the Early Years Project.

March 20: Information Commissioner's Office investigates clinic staffers trying to access Kate’s medical records

Three unidentified staffers at the London Clinic, where Kate underwent a “planned” abdominal procedure in Jan., reportedly attempted to snoop on the princess’ private medical records, according to ITV News, which broke the news first. On Wednesday, the Information Commissioner's Office, the U.K. privacy and data protection watchdog, told ABC News it had received a security breach report involving the clinic.

"We can confirm that we have received a breach report and are assessing the information provided," an IOC spokesperson said in a statement.

Al Russell, CEO of the London Clinic, said in a Wednesday statement that the clinic takes “enormous pride” in caring for its many high-profile patients.

Kensington Palace declined to comment on the reported security breach. The Palace told ABC News, “This is a matter for the London Clinic.”

Kate is said to be aware of the reported data breach involving her medical records.

March 22: Kate announces she has cancer and is undergoing chemo

In a new video shared by Kensington Palace on Friday, Kate revealed that she has been undergoing chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.

“In January, I underwent major abdominal surgery in London and at the time, it was thought that my condition was non-cancerous. However, tests after the operation found cancer had been present,” she said in the video.

Kate said the news came as a “huge shock,” adding that she and William plan to “manage this privately for the sake of our young family.”

“As you can imagine, this has taken time. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment,” she said. “But, most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK.”

Kate is the second member of the royal family to receive a cancer diagnosis this year. On Feb. 5, Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles III was diagnosed with cancer after undergoing a procedure for benign prostate enlargement. The Palace did not specify what kind of cancer but said it wasn’t prostate cancer.

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Lily Gladstone’s snub at the Oscars highlights the Academy’s complicated Indigenous history

The long, grueling awards season was supposedly leading to a historic moment for first-time Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone — until it didn't. 

The "Killers of the Flower Moon" actress was the first Native American person nominated in the competitive lead actress category. During awards season, cinephiles and critics alike predicted that Gladstone would take home the gold statute. Especially since she had already won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her performance; all that was left for the actress to take was the esteemed Oscar. Even the night felt like it was primed for Gladstone as the Osage Nation performed their film's nominated song "Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)" at the awards ceremony.

But alas, in a close competition, Emma Stone snagged the prize for her performance in "Poor Things." The loss felt shocking and demoralizing even though there was always a chance for Stone to snag the award. But it felt all the more heightened as we glance at history.

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Lily Gladstone makes Oscars history as first Native American nominated for best actress

Out of the total 78 best actress wins, only two women of color have ever won the award. The second woman of color and first Asian woman to win the award, Michelle Yeoh, only won it last year at 60 years old. The first was Halle Berry in 2002, also making her the first Black woman to win. But mostly, Gladstone's snub sheds light on the long-standing and complicated history the prestigious film awards have with Indigenous actors. 

While Gladstone was the first Indigenous American nominated for best actress, they aren't the only Indigenous actor in history nominated in the major categories. Even though the Academy has recognized some Indigenous actors in supporting actor categories, these nominees have never been winners. That's why Gladstone's historic nomination was supposed to be different. Nearly five decades after the first Indigenous person was nominated, there is still no winner. This predicted win was supposed to be the door that finally blew wide open for Indigenous actors in Hollywood.

Before Gladstone's nomination, more than 50 years ago, actor and chief Dan George, was nominated for supporting actor for his role in “Little Big Man” in 1970. It made him the first Indigenous North American acting nominee in Oscar history. Twenty years later, Graham Greene followed, nominated for supporting actor in 1990 for the movie “Dances with Wolves.” Another Indigenous North American nominated for an acting category was Mexican actress Yalitza Aparicio in 2019 for her lead role in "Roma."

However, these few acknowledgments are not enough to show a wide array of Indigenous representation in film especially since most of the nominations were in the last century. In actuality, it only amplifies the lack of Indigenous actors in the conversation, reinforcing the Oscars' abysmal track record with awarding and acknowledging Indigenous talent. It echoes the empty sentiment of parading diversity and inclusion around just to dangle a win in front of a qualified person without any real hope of achieving it. It's like moving the goalpost just as the person catches up when it's already difficult enough to get to the starting line.

That's exactly what actress Sacheen Littlefeather's historic speech at the Oscars in 1973 addressed. The actress took the place of Marlon Brando when he won best actor for his role in "The Godfather." Brando, a strong proponent for Native American justice, refused to accept the award and sent Littlefeather to decline it for him. But she was met with hostile boos and anger from the audience that even led to actor John Wayne threatening her with physical violence and Clint Eastwood mocking her during the awards show.

During the speech, Littlefeather said that Brando cannot accept the award because of "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee." Nearly 50 years later in 2022, the Academy issued a formal apology for the vitriolic treatment she had received after the speech.

"The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. . .The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable," the letter read. "For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration."

Despite the recognition of the mistreatment of Littlefeather, there has been controversy that Littlefeather was not actually half Native American as she claimed but actually half Mexican. The San Francisco Chronicle highlighted there were no documents proving her Native heritage that she claimed on her father's side. Her biological sisters said, "It was more prestigious [to Sacheen] to be an American Indian than it was to be Hispanic in her mind."

While Littlefeather's identity may be up for debate, it still does not take away from the sentiment. For decades, people have been screaming into dead air about acknowledging the hurt and mistreatment of Indigenous people in Hollywood.

Gladstone's nomination was a chance at doing just that. A chance of rectifying how Indigenous people are still less than one-quarter of one percent of all speaking roles in Hollywood, USC Annenberg reported after studying the top-grossing films in the last 16 years. Even though nearly 3% of the U.S. population is of Native American ancestry. However, this just goes to show that, according the study's researcher Stacy L. Smith, “Lily Gladstone’s role in 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is quite literally an anomaly in Hollywood.”

All we can hope is that Gladstone's nomination and work in "Killers of the Flower Moon" will have an everlasting impact on the way the industry sees Indigenous actors and the roles they are deserving of even after years of being passed over for their white counterparts. Like Gladstone said in her Golden Globes acceptance speech, “This is for every rez kid, every little urban kid, every little Native kid out there who has a dream.”

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Too much heat in the kitchen: Survey shows toxic work conditions mean many chefs are getting out

Chefs are in hot demand. "Chefs, chefs, chefs! Virtually impossible to find anyone," lamented one Auckland restaurant owner recently. Australia is seeing a similar gap, with chefs ranked the eighth most in-demand occupation. Given this culinary skills shortage, we might expect such sought-after employees to be highly valued.

Apparently not. Our new report on chef wellbeing and working conditions shows chefs in Australia and New Zealand experience significant financial hardship and mental health issues, with many wishing to leave their jobs.

This has major implications for tourism, too, as jobs such as cheffing are "keystone occupations" in major destinations. When jobs can't be filled, these places lose money.

Tourism revenue is booming, with visitors reportedly seeking more scenery, history and culture. The food chefs prepare in cafés and restaurants forms an integral part of the tourist experience. But despite the laws of supply and demand, the situation for chefs is unlikely to improve without radical changes to work practices.

Our study is the first quantitative survey to examine working conditions and mental health issues among chefs in both Australia and New Zealand. The survey was distributed through professional culinary associations, and final responses were captured as Australasia emerged from COVID restrictions.

The survey also followed up previous Australian studies, which indicated exploitation was an industry norm, with chefs experiencing burnout and wage theft.

 

'Banter, bollockings and beatings'

The kitchen environment is well documented to be particularly harsh. As one British study titled "Banter, bollockings and beatings" made clear, an often macho culture can prevail, including bizarre induction rituals.

An Australian study published in 2022 showed chefs were significantly more likely than the general population to commit suicide. And even before the pandemic, the industry's "toxic" workplace culture was blamed for mental health issues and high suicide rates among employees.

Most of our chef respondents were men, with an average age of 37. They had been chefs for 16 years on average. Of these, 42% originally came from outside Australia and New Zealand, underlining the profession's high mobility.

The results reveal disturbing insights into chefs' working conditions. It was surprising to find nearly half (44%) of our sample were in precarious employment, given the skills shortage.

Two-thirds (67%) of respondents worked more than 38 hours weekly, but a fifth of the chefs worked 52-61 hours. Of these, 6.33% worked 62 hours or more – well above New Zealand's still commonplace 40-hour work week, and Australia's legally prescribed 38 hours. Despite the fast-paced environment, a quarter did not get their legally entitled breaks.

Economic insecurity was very evident. Financial hardship was reported by almost one in five chefs (15-20%), and a quarter of respondents went without meals due to financial pressure. That those who feed others struggle to feed themselves seems a dark irony.

Two-thirds also reported working when sick, an average of nine days each a year. Post-COVID, this should concern health professionals, policy makers and the broader community.

 

Leaving the industry

The 2023 Umbrella Wellbeing report, which recorded New Zealanders' perceptions of their workplaces and wellbeing, warns that long working hours and poor workplace cultures have adverse health outcomes, with New Zealand faring worse than Australia.

Nearly one in ten of the chefs surveyed suffered mental distress. Results showed high levels of physical and mental fatigue ("exhausted at work", "emotionally drained", "becoming disconnected").

Respondents reported disrupted sleep and unhealthy lifestyles. Almost 15% of the sample consumed alcohol five or more days weekly, with 11.4% saying they had consumed drugs (LSD, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine or ecstasy) in the past year.

One in five hospitality professionals experiences depression according to charity The Burnt Chef Project. In a spoken-word performance for the project, poet and writer Joe Bellman describes "defeated faces and lifeless eyes" behind the kitchen door, where "breaking the human spirit is just company policy".

The majority of respondents said they were likely (with 20% extremely likely) to look for a new employer during the next year. Many of these new jobs will be outside hospitality (which is classified within the overall tourism sector).

Another report commissioned last year by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) found a third of hospitality and tourism workers had high intentions of completely quitting the industries. Reasons included low pay and conditions, stress and toxic work environments.

 

Mental health and healthy hospitality

Maybe not surprisingly, our survey showed intention to quit a job declines with better management support. Failure to improve working conditions for chefs, however, will have lasting consequences for the industry.

The Better Work Action Plan, the first phase of New Zealand's Tourism Industry Transformation Plan, was launched by MBIE in 2023 under the previous government. It followed extensive consultation with representatives from hospitality and tourism, Māori, unions, workers and government.

Its aim was to develop a sustainable tourism workforce by addressing longstanding issues of low pay and poor conditions across the sector.

The first step involved hospitality and tourism workers receiving government approval to negotiate an industry-wide fair pay agreement. However, the current coalition government immediately scrapped fair pay legislation.

The Australian government's post-COVID tourism recovery strategy, THRIVE 2030, has committed to "promote employment standards" regarding compliance obligations and fair work. If effective, these would address the breaches evident in our study.

The hospitality industry relies on young people actively choosing a culinary career. But MBIE forecasts show students are less likely to seek hospitality jobs given these problems in the sector.

By chance, however, New Zealand's new minister for mental health, Matt Doocey, is also tourism and hospitality minister. It is now up to him to make the connection between his portfolios, and work to reduce the heat in the nation's commercial kitchens.

The authors acknowledge the assistance of the AUT Hospitable Futures Research Fund.

Shelagh K. Mooney, Associate Professor, School of Hospitality & Tourism, Faculty of Culture and Society, Auckland University of Technology; Matthew Brenner, Lecturer, The Hotel School Australia, Southern Cross University, and Richard Robinson, Professor of Service Work & Employment, Northumbria University, Newcastle

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

Experts: Trump faces “much larger monetary punishment” over “clearly defamatory” Carroll attack

Donald Trump is flying increasingly close to the sun when speaking about writer E. Jean Carroll on the campaign trail — and a lawyer for the ex-Elle columnist suggested Monday he could get burned again. 

During a Georgia campaign rally over the weekend, the former president repeated claims that Carroll "is not a believable person" and had pushed "false accusations" against him, despite his previous insistences of such resulting in multimillion-dollar judgments against him. The remarks came the day after Trump posted a $91.6 million bond to cover the $83.3 million awarded to Carroll for defamation earlier this year as he appeals the verdict.

“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,” Trump told the crowd in Rome, Georgia, according to NBC News.

“Ninety-one million based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her,” he continued.

“She wrote a book, she said things,” Trump added. “And when I denied it, I said, ‘It’s so crazy. It’s false.’ I get sued for defamation. That’s where it starts.”

Carroll suing Trump again over his weekend remarks is "quite possible," Bennett Gershman, a professor of law at Pace University and former New York prosecutor, told Salon. 

"Trump’s accusation that Carroll is a liar is clearly defamatory and can result in further, and maybe a much larger monetary punishment against Trump, at least until he decides to end his vicious verbal assault on her," Gershman said.

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Legal analyst: Trump may have jeopardized his bond with new attack on E. Jean Carroll

Whether that lawsuit materializes depends on whether Carroll has the "fortitude" to endure "another public spectacle" that places her under increased scrutiny, Gershman explained. If the writer feels Trump "has not yet been sufficiently rebuked and punished" by the previous judgments against him — and if Trump continues to malign her — "she may not hesitate to sue him again and have another jury impose an even larger punitive damage award," he said.

The former president's Saturday remarks were a repeat of his longtime denial of Carroll's claims that he raped her in the dressing room of a New York City Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her by dubbing her claims a "hoax" and "con job." Those comments earned him a $5 million judgment last May after a jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The separate case that yielded the $83.3 million damages, which concluded in January, revolved around similar remarks Trump made about Carroll while he served as president. Trump is appealing both cases. 

He threw more attacks at Carroll during a Monday morning phone interview with CNBC, according to The New York Times, mocking Carroll as "Miss Bergdorf Goodman" and calling the judgments "ridiculous."

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"These comments demonstrate that Trump just doesn’t care and will continue to repeat the lies so long as it helps him with his political base," Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor, told Salon. "He has utter disregard for the jury’s verdict and rulings of the court. For him, this is just a business expense of being Donald Trump."

Trump appears "unhinged and out of control" in his reactions to Carroll's accusations and doesn't seem to understand he "cannot bully and defame everybody" or that people will hold him to political and legal account, Gershman added. 

When asked on MSNBC if Trump had defamed Carroll again in his Saturday tirade, former Obama-administration acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Carroll would be "absolutely within her rights" to bring a third lawsuit against the former president, according to HuffPost.

“Remember, Trump lost in front of a jury of his peers on this question of whether he had defamed E. Jean Carroll and now he is doing it again,” Katyal added. “And I’m sure she is sitting there scribbling it all down and ready to go.”

A lawyer for Carroll, Roberta Kaplan, suggested in a statement to The New York Times Monday that her client was considering bringing another defamation lawsuit against the former president.

“The statute of limitations for defamation in most jurisdictions is between one and three years. As we said after the last jury verdict, we continue to monitor every statement that Donald Trump makes about our client," Kaplan said, echoing a similar remark from another Carroll attorney earlier this year. 

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Kaplan's statement makes it seem far more likely a third lawsuit will follow, David Schultz, a professor of legal studies and political science at Hamline University, told Salon.

Schultz and Gershman expect that, should Carroll proceed with another complaint and trial, Trump will receive much steeper punitive damages than previously adjudged as the court attempts to further deter him from maligning her. 

"Most normal people would see the futility of their continued resistance to court orders and vast punitive damage awards," Gershman said. "But Trump is not a normal litigant as we know from his numerous legal setbacks – bankruptcies, phony charities, fraudulent college initiatives, and of course the N.Y. civil fraud conviction.

"So continuing to attack Carroll stems from his need not to appear weak at the hands of a strong and determined woman," he continued.

Given Trump's previously reported financial peril amid his scrambles to ratchet up bonds for Carroll's award and his $454 million civil fraud judgment, plus his continued inflammatory commenting on the writer, Schultz doesn't believe another massive monetary punishment will actually work as a deterrent.

Instead, he suspects Trump's repeated jabs at the former columnist while campaigning — including arguments that the cases were "politically motivated" — are part of a greater strategy.

Trump wants to evoke a Federal Election Commission "but-for rule" on campaign donation uses by repeatedly claiming election interference so that the commission will allow him to use the funds to cover his legal bills, Schultz said.

"I think what he may be counting on is either, A, the Federal Election Commission rules in his favor when he says, 'Okay, I'm going to use campaign funds for this," he said. Alternatively, Trump could be aiming to install enough people to the FEC should he be elected in November that they will conclude his legal battles are campaign-related and relieve him of the payments.

It's possible Trump could be aiming for a similar result with the Republican National Committee after his friend and daughter-in-law ascended to leadership roles last week, Schultz speculated.

"If he can keep saying, 'This is all political,' he's laying the groundwork for him not to be personally responsible for this," he said. 

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“Human rights violation”: Why one abortion isn’t more “worthy” than another

Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will engage in oral arguments in the case U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. 

A ruling in favor of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an organization of anti-abortion activists backed by the Christian right-wing lobbying group Alliance Defending Freedom, could result in eliminating access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in the recommended medication abortion regimen. Specifically, it would restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, in a time when telehealth abortions are growing in popularity even in abortion ban states. It would also prohibit the option to receive it by mail, and shorten the timeframe which it could be used in pregnancy from 10 to 7 weeks. This won’t just impact those living in states where abortions are nearly or completely banned, but those living in states where abortion care remains legal.

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As the nation once again gears up to witness reproductive rights debates among the highest court, doctors tell Salon it’s time for the public debate to be centered around how restricting access to abortion care is limiting patient autonomy. It’s problematic in and of itself that post-Dobbs women across the country have had to prove themselves “worthy” to have access to abortions, a situation that will only be exacerbated if the U.S. Supreme Court limits access to mifepristone. 

“Patients should not need to prostrate themselves to the courts, to hospital ethics boards, to the media to prove their worthiness to access health care,” Dr. Amelia Huntsberger, who previously worked as an obstetrician-gynecologist in Idaho, and relocated to Oregon, told Salon. “I'm so grateful for the patients who have done this because their stories matter and are moving the dial, but I'm outraged that they have had to expose themselves in these ways.”

There is a reason, Huntsberger said, that healthcare privacy laws exist. 

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“HIPAA wouldn't exist if there wasn't general agreement that a patient's health care decisions and records are private and warrant protection,” she added. 

“I'm so grateful for the patients who have done this because their stories matter and are moving the dial, but I'm outraged that they have had to expose themselves in these ways.”

As Huntsberger said, since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, which provided Americans with a constitutional right to access abortion, women across the country have had to beg for access to abortion care in very public ways. Last year, a Texas woman named Kate Cox made headlines when she asked a trial court for permission to terminate her unviable pregnancy. Initially her request was granted, but quickly the permission was rescinded. Eventually, she was forced to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy.

Texas has banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. While there’s an exception for threats to the mother’s life, her situation — which was a fatal genetic abnormality in her fetus that would kill it in utero or shortly after birth — wasn’t deemed worthy enough. Several women in Texas are currently part of a lawsuit suing the state saying they were unable to access the care they needed for their pregnancies.

Currently, 14 states have enacted abortion bans since Dobbs. A few of these states have “exceptions," such as for rape or incest, but some require stipulations such as victims must first report the rape to law enforcement. But medical providers say these exceptions conflict with a patient’s basic right to make decisions about their medical care.

“We shouldn't need to say, ‘even in a situation of rape or incest or an exception for the health of the mother.’ It's unnecessary,” Dr. Jen Ashton, a board certified OB/GYN and chief medical correspondent for Good Morning America, told Salon. “Every woman's situation is different, and every woman is entitled to patient autonomy.”

Patient autonomy is a key principle in medicine that recognizes the rights of patients to make their own healthcare decisions. This is precisely why many people call what’s happening with abortion care access in the U.S. a “human rights crisis.”

“Every woman's situation is different, and every woman is entitled to patient autonomy.”

In a report published by Human Rights Watch in April 2023, the organization said that by overturning constitutional protection for access to abortion, the U.S. was “in violation of its obligations under international law.”

“These human rights obligations include, but are not limited to, the rights to: life; health; privacy; liberty and security of person; to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief; equality and non-discrimination; and to seek, receive, and impart information,” the organization stated.

Ashton added that in the U.S., especially when it comes to healthcare, there is a tendency in the U.S. to “make everything a competition.” This frequently applies to determining which situation is more important in terms of needing an abortion.

“As an OBGYN, it's not for me to pass judgment on any patient and the decision they make for themselves,” Ashton said. “It's my job to educate them and to inform them of their medical options and their facts, that's it.”

Dr. Alison Edelman, professor and OB/GYN at Oregon Health and Science University, told Salon she agrees abortion restrictions are a “human rights violation.” She added there are many reasons a person might need access to abortion care, and the reasoning behind it should never influence whether a person can access it.

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According to a 2013 study that analyzed the reasons people seek abortions in the U.S., 40 percent of people mentioned a financial reason; more than one-third cited reasons relating to timing. Another 31 percent of the study’s participants said they didn’t have a stable relationship with their partner. In discussions around abortion, Edelman said, there is often a stronger focus on the “good abortion,” where an abortion is needed because of a terrible situation versus say the reason could simply be wrong timing. The “good abortion story,” as in the medically necessary kind, can bring people into the conversation at a “different level,” Edelman said.

“But people need to be able to choose the right healthcare for themselves and people have a reason that is important to them, and that's true of any healthcare management decision,” she said. “To make that decision for somebody else, it restricts their autonomy.”

As far as how the country can stop deeming one abortion more “worthy” than another, Edelman said when it comes to policy change, people need to make an impact by voting. 

“The challenge right now is these laws have nothing to do with healthcare, it’s a social agenda,” she said,'' she said. “It's going to take everybody getting out and voting to make the change happen; it’s going to be incredibly important to make our voices be heard.”

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“He said, Hitler did some good things”: Ex-chief of staff says Trump praised Hitler in White House

Former President Donald Trump praised German dictator Adolf Hitler while in the White House, former chief of staff John Kelly told CNN.

Trump repeatedly praised authoritarian leaders while serving as president, Kelly and other former senior advisers told CNN’s Jim Sciutto. Trump praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the former aides said. But his most unnerving praise was for Hitler.

“He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things.’ I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world. And I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recalled, according to Sciutto. “I mean, Mussolini was a great guy in comparison.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe he missed the Holocaust, though, and pretty hard to understand how he missed the 400,000 American GIs that were killed in the European theater,” Kelly added. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing.”

It wasn’t just Hitler’s economic policies, Kelly said. Trump also expressed admiration for Hitler’s hold on senior Nazi officers as he lamented his own lack of staff “loyalty.”

“He would ask about the loyalty issues and about how, when I pointed out to him the German generals as a group were not loyal to him, and in fact tried to assassinate him a few times, and he didn’t know that,” Kelly recounted. “He truly believed, when he brought us generals in, that we would be loyal — that we would do anything he wanted us to do,” Kelly added.

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton added that Trump "views himself as a big guy.”

“He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that," Bolton told Sciutto.

A Trump spokeswoman in 2021 denied that he had praised Hitler. Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cheung told the outlet, “John Kelly and John Bolton have completely beclowned themselves and are suffering from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. They need to seek professional help because their hatred is consuming their empty lives.”

Biden fires back after Trump threatens “cutting” Social Security, Medicare in “word salad” interview

Former President Donald Trump on Monday suggested there is “a lot you can do in terms of cutting” Social Security and Medicare.

Trump, who previously warned Republicans against cutting popular entitlement programs, was asked by CNBC host Joe Kernen whether he had changed his view on the issue.

“It seems like something has to be done or else we’re gonna be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever,” Kernen said.

“First of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of, also, the theft and bad management of entitlements,” Trump responded. “Tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement.”

President Joe Biden fired back on social media, tweeting, “Not on my watch.”

Trump’s campaign sought to clarify his statement, arguing that “if you losers didn’t cut his answer short, you would know President Trump was talking about cutting waste.”

But observers were stunned by Trump’s full answer.

“The headline is obviously Trump's express support for cutting Social Security and Medicare. But it's also notable that when asked a simple policy question by a non-right wing news outlet (his first such interview in months, by the way), Trump's answer is largely gibberish,” tweeted Bharat Ramamurti, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council under Biden.

“This answer doesn’t make any sense,” agreed Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London. “Word salad on a crucially important policy question. And yet this won’t get a big NYT headline or profile on how Trump is confused about how the government works and can’t string a coherent sentence together when asked about what he will do.”

Common, but not ordinary: Why it’s hard to imagine a civilization without onions

Author and journalist Mark Kurlansky and I have something in common. We both really adore onions. 

No matter if red, white, yellow, Vidalia (or even shallots, leeks, scallions or other allium), I will eat them with reckless abandon. I love chopping onions. I love the smell of them, both cooked or raw. I love the tactile nature of working with them, perhaps as evidenced by the fact that I’ve caramelized maybe a dozen of them over the course of just the past two weeks or so.

I could go on and on — and I’m not alone. 

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One of Julia Child’s most famous quotes is “it is hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the dessert.” In Kurlansky’s new book, “The Core of an Onion: Peeling the Rarest of Common Food,” he examines how that observation came to be true, and just how wild it is that an everyday supermarket staple has such a global footprint. 

“Onions have flourished in just about every climate and culture around the world and not only been used for cooking but also for medicinal purposes, and as inspiration for artists, and everything in between,” Kurlansky told Salon. 

This isn’t the first time that Kurlansky has taken a deep dive into singular, particular ingredients. His past books include: “The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell,” “Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World,” “Milk! : A 10,000-Year Food Fracas” and “Salt: A World History.”

So, why onions? 

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"For onions, the new perspective that I found while writing and researching is that we are all different and we are all the same — no matter where you live or how old you are, you’ve eaten onions,” he said. “Also, the enduring popularity of the onion for thousands of years shows that though things can be common, they are not necessarily ordinary."

He continued: “Besides a lifetime love of eating and cooking with onions, it is a food with many numerous unique and incredibly fun attributes and histories. There is no other vegetable with a defense mechanism that if you attack it, it will spit sulfuric acid in your eyes.” (As a cook, that last line garnered a real head nod from me, just as I’m sure it did for you.) 

According to Kurlansky, there isn’t any trace left of the wild onion from which cultivated onions were eventually developed, but it seems to have started somewhere in the Pamir Mountains from Pakistan to Tibet, “maybe Turkestan or Uzbekistan.. “The first culture assumed to have consumed onions were the Sumerians, "who lived in what is present-day Iraq [and] are often credited for the first written record of eating onions, but they are often credited for the first written record of many things, because they were the first to develop a written language."

"There is no other vegetable with a defense mechanism that if you attack it, it will spit sulfuric acid in your eyes."

By 2500 B.C.E, trade routes had developed all throughout the Middle East, extending to Egypt and across the northern Mediterranean to Turkey and Europe,  and then eventually eastward trade moved through Asia.  “Onions and onion seeds probably traveled some of these routes,” he said. 

From there, various civilizations throughout time have grown and used onions in many, many different ways — though not all of them culinary. 

For instance, Pliny the Elder, the ancient Roman author and philosopher, developed 27 different medical remedies using onions, ranging from curing bad vision and insomnia, to healing dysentery, mouth sores and toothaches. In Medieval Europe, people thought onions might prevent hair loss and clear up bad coughs, while Hippocrates, who is considered the father of medicine, prescribed onions to prevent pneumonia, as a diuretic and for healing wounds.

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In the realm of cooking, onions can sometimes be viewed as the unsung heroes of the kitchen because of both their distinct flavor and their versatility. 

“Onions have many personalities,” Kurlansky said. “They can be strong and biting or soft and sweet. They have a considerable content of sugar, dextrose and how much of this is brought out is at the discretion of the cook." 

Perhaps this is why, when asked about his favorite uses of onion, Kurlansky’s answers are as broad and varied as the potential uses of onion itself: in the book, he includes recipes for encebollado, a “Peruvian condiment of red onions marinated in lime,” for glazed Sicilian onions with orange blossom honey, and for James Beard’s iconic onion and sardine sandwich; he waxes poetic about cool, creamy vichyssoise, served in a metal bowl sitting on a dish of shaved ice; he also points to a distinctly American favorite, a cheeseburger served with thin slices of red onion, as well as a side of battered onion rings. 

There’s a certain universality and accessibility to onions that have lent them importance outside of the kitchen. 

For instance, Kurlansky was interested to learn of the “political and historical importance of onions in India,” which is the second greatest producer of onions worldwide behind China. The onion is such a staple there that Indira Gandhi, the country’s third prime minister, “triumphed with a national campaign that used the high prices of onions as a symbol of economic mismanagement.” 

Interestingly, Kurlansky also notes how the onion crop "was originally developed in Bermuda and then in the 1890s, planted in Texas, [which] took over the market completely. America imposed taxes on onions from other countries and that was the end of the Bermuda onion business." The onion, a staple in food and culture, clearly also has vast implications on economy, politics and trade, too. 

“No matter the time period, the culture or the climate — we all eat onions,” Kurlansky said. 

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How to fast safely during Ramadan — what the science shows

For 1.9 billion Muslims, Ramadan is the ninth and holiest Islamic month and this year starts on March 11. During the 30 days of Ramadan, many Muslims fast, refraining from food, drink, smoking and sex, between dawn and sunset each day.

Fasting is only compulsory for adult Muslims. There are exemptions for people who are sick, elderly, pregnant, breastfeeding, menstruating or travelling.

As Ramadan slowly moves across seasons, the fasting days are getting cooler and shorter than last year, at least for those in the northern hemisphere and those close to the equator. Regardless of where you live, it is important to drink plenty of fluids when breaking your fast at sunset and before you start your fast at dawn.

Scientific research has shown that fasting is good for your health. Animal studies have shown fasting results in longer life and better health. In humans, research suggests body weight, blood glucose, blood cholesterol and blood pressure all improve with fasting.

In terms of mental health, Ramadan fasting improves mental health and lessens depression symptoms. Of course, there is an immense spiritual benefit too.

Many homes prepare traditional foods at the time of breaking the fast, often with fried food and sweets. A healthy alternative would be fresh fruit; dates have always been a common tradition.

One of the benefits of breaking fast with fruit is that it provides plenty of glucose for the organs, especially the brain.

Similarly, at dawn, a meal with protein, fat and complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains and beans, can be useful as fats can slow digestion, giving a fasting person a feeling of being full for longer. Complex carbohydrates also provide energy for longer.

Fluid intake is vital, especially if the weather is warmer and the fasting person is planning strenuous exercise.

         

Physical activity

Lifestyle choices are important for your health. Apart from diet, exercise is important, too. Most exercises can be performed in Ramadan, but don't expect to keep to your pre-Ramadan levels.

If you feel dehydrated, too tired or weak, then stop. A good time to exercise is in the morning or later afternoon when the outdoor temperature could be lower. However, this would not affect indoor exercises.

People whose professions require them to be physically active need to be careful that they don't get dehydrated or suffer heat exhaustion – or worse, heatstroke.

Workers in hot climates need to be careful during the hottest part of the day (12 noon to 3pm). If you do need to go out a lot, be sensible and try to stay in shaded areas, if possible. When opening your fast, drink cool fluids and add a pinch of salt too, as excess sweating makes us lose salt. And wear light clothes.

Smoking and vaping are not permitted when fasting, so if you smoke or vape, it might be a good time to try to quit.

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the world. Think of using nicotine gum to help you quit when you break your fast. Islamic scholars allow the use of nicotine patches while fasting.

 

What about the sick?

If fasting would worsen a health condition, you should avoid fasting. However, many people with chronic diseases do fast without any problems.

If you have an illness and you want to fast, you should consult your doctor first, especially if you have a chronic health condition, such as diabetes, a heart condition or hypertension (high blood pressure).

If fasting makes you more ill, how is it beneficial if you can't perform your normal acts of worship, or you need to be taken to the hospital?

Feisal Subhan, Lecturer in Biomedical Science, University of Plymouth

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

Chicken mozzarella fingers: How to combine the 2 best bar foods for happy hour at home

"Yo, meet me at Burkes!" My cousin Tye always said. "Hurry up before you miss happy hour!" 

Cousin Tye was one of the only dudes in my family that kept a nine-to-five and never wanted anything to do with street stuff. Dude was allergic to selling drugs. He was also the cousin whom I talked to about those classic American dramas that most teenagers go through, like what I should wear to the prom, potential places that would hire me if I decided to get a legit job like him and fantastic places to hang around the city where trouble never cared to visit. Kicking it with Tye was like a break from the reality of the violent neighborhood I lived in. 

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Why did Paula Patton's fried chicken recipe break the internet?

I started hitting Burkes with Tye when I was 19 years old, which means I was two years too young to drink. Tye was 23 and had developed a taste for booze that could easily rival the taste I was born with. Here's how it worked: Tye gave me his ID, told MVA he lost his ID and then got himself another ID. 

So as Tye One and Tye Two, we hit all of the downtown bars my cousin loved — those white people college bars, those trendy tourist spots, the old head Black Auntie spots and Burkes.

But we always started and ended at Burkes.

I loved Burkes, not just because of its clientele full of randoms that would never frequent my neighborhood, but because it had a long bar. I mean, the longest bar you've ever seen, which easily sat about 40 people. I could sit back and watch all the different patrons from different places get lost in food and drink: The best burger, the most potent cocktails — and chicken mozzarella fingers. And there were a lot of chicken mozzarella fingers going around, because they were on the happy hour menu, they were huge and I promise that one serving could feed two people. 

My wife Caron and I recently dedicated a night to eating greasy fried foods — onion rings, buffalo wings, and all the bad stuff. And we did, agreeing that everything is okay in moderation. But still even as we ate, I felt like something was missing. I felt bad about the food we were eating, but not bad enough. "Remember Burkes," I said while tearing into a drumstick, "I would be satisfied if I had some of those . . ."

"Chicken mozzarella fingers!" Caron said. 

We went on for about 45 minutes: Oh, how much we used to love that appetizer. I was surprised that the two of us had never crossed paths at that restaurant back in the day when she also used to frequent it regularly. She even remembered bumping into Tye there a few times, which makes sense because he played the spot way more than me. 

Since Burke's is no more, and my craving for those chicken mozzarella sticks remained, I decided to recreate them at home. Surprisingly, the result gave me that Burkes feeling, which is all I was asking for. I thought about calling Tye, so he could come over and have some, but decided that he needs to learn to make his own: Here's how.

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Chicken mozzarella fingers 
Yields
6 to 8 servings
Prep Time
10 minutes
Cook Time
25 minutes 

Ingredients

2 pounds chicken breast tenders

½ cup hot sauce

½ pound mozzarella 

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon red pepper

1 teaspoon black pepper 

4 eggs beaten 

1 cup of buttermilk 

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

Canola oil, for frying

 

Directions

  1. Make batter by whisking the eggs together with the hot sauce and buttermilk.
  2. Mix red pepper, black pepper, flour and paprika together. 
  3. Slice mozzarella into strips about the same size as the tenders.
  4. Align mozzarella strips on top of the chicken tenders. Dredge into batter, letting excess drip off, and then dip into flour mixture, coating chicken mozzarella fingers as best as possible. 
  5. Heat four inches of oil to about 350 degrees F.
  6. Cook in batches, each for about 6 minutes at a time, draining on a paper towel once browned and crisp. 
  7. Serve hot with marinara sauce. 

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Legal expert thinks Judge Cannon may be “looking to toss the case” against Trump at hearing

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing Donald Trump’s classified documents case, set a hearing for Thursday to address the former president’s motions to dismiss the case.

The hearing will focus on “Trump's motion to dismiss classified docs counts 1-32 on unconstitutional vagueness claims and Trump+Nauta motion to dismiss superseding indictment on the Presidential Records Act,” The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported, noting that it suggests Cannon may want to figure out “whether to grant subsequent evidentiary hearings as requested by Trump and opposed by Special Counsel.”

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday rejected Trump’s claim that he was allowed to deem government records as personal under the Presidential Records Act.

The documents marked classified "are indisputably presidential, not personal,” Smith argued. "Trump was not authorized to possess classified records at all.” Smith’s filing also rejected

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin on Sunday questioned why Cannon selected the Presidential Records Act motion as well as another on the constitutional vagueness of the first 32 counts in the indictment out of the seven motions Trump’s team submitted.

“Why did she choose those?” Rubin questioned. "One possibility is she's looking to toss the case, and she's looking to toss it on something other than constitutional immunity grounds, because there is a fear that if the Supreme Court were to uphold, for example, the DC Circuit, she can't go against that. She'll be overturned.

"So, she's looking for, potentially, another reason to throw out the case," Rubin continued. "The Presidential Records Act argument is entirely frivolous. Trump is very fond of comparing it to, what he calls, the 'Clinton socks case'. That's a case involving audio tapes that Bill Clinton made with a biographer. And the reasoning in that case turns on the fact that the judge considered those more akin to diaries, which, by the way, are exempt from the President Records Act. So, it's not analogous at all. Curious to see how that argument goes on Thursday, but why those two motions in particular?"

E. Jean Carroll has “gracious” response to Nancy Mace meltdown over her case

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., on Sunday accused ABC News host George Stephanopoulos of trying to “shame” her as a rape victim because he questioned her support for former President Donald Trump after a jury found him liable of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll.

“I’m not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me about another potential rape victim. I’m not going to do that,” Mace said on Sunday.

Mace, who was raped as a teenager, argued that the Trump trial was civil, not criminal, and that Carroll later “joked” about the verdict.

“I find it offensive and I also find it offensive that you are trying to shame me with this question,” Mace said.

“You don’t find it offensive that Donald Trump has been found liable for rape?” Stephanopoulos pressed as the two went back and forth.

“I find it offensive that as a rape victim you’re trying to shame me for my political choices and I’ve said again, repeatedly, E. Jean Carroll has made a mockery out of rape by joking about it,” Mace said.

Carroll later thanked Stephanopoulos for “valiantly defending me.”

“I wish Representative @RepNancyMace well,” Carroll tweeted. “And I salute all survivors for their strength, endurance, and holding on to their sanity.”

Conservative attorney George Conway, who helped advise Carroll on the case, praised her response.

“I can say utterly without equivocation that @ejeancarroll is one of the most gracious and forthright people I have ever met,” he wrote. “And this is a perfect example of it.”

Legal analyst: Trump may have jeopardized his bond with new attack on E. Jean Carroll

Former President Donald Trump accused defamed writer E. Jean Carroll of making up “false accusations” even after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing her and defaming her when she came forward.

“I just posted a $91 million bond, $91 million on a fake story, totally made-up story,” Trump said at a rally in Georgia, adding that the judgment was, “based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never heard of, I know nothing about her.”

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said that the punitive judgment in the case appears to only have been “enough to make him stop until he was past a point that the judge could no longer order… further consequences for it.”

I'm struck by the fact… he said these things the night after he posted a bond, filed his notice of appeal the judge has long past finalized,” Rubin continued.

"Should E. Jean Carroll and her team want any further relief now their only option is to file another case," she added. "The punitive damage was as great as it was because Donald Trump kept saying it after the initial judgment. The argument they made was that he was not deterred by the first award, and in fact, continued to say it again and again and again."

Rubin said Carroll’s recourse is to “sue again or at the very least to oppose the bond, which is an option that Judge [Lewis] Kaplan gave them.”

“Judge Kaplan said if they want to oppose the bond in any respect, they have until Monday,” she said. “If they do oppose it, it will be in Manhattan federal court."

“Not fair” Sex-trafficking victim shames Katie Britt over State of the Union response story

The woman at the center of the sex trafficking story Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., discussed in her State of the Union response criticized the senator on Sunday.

Britt last week came under fire for seeming to blame President Joe Biden for a harrowing tale of child sex trafficking that occurred in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration. The victim, Karla Jacinto Romero, shared her story in a congressional hearing in 2015.

“We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country,” Britt said in her rebuttal to Biden’s speech last week. “This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.”

Related

Katie Britt seems to have taken some liberties with that sex trafficking story she told

Fox News host Shannon Bream pressed Britt on Sunday about whether she intended to imply that “this horrible story happened on President Biden’s watch.”

“I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12, so I didn’t say a teenager. I didn’t say a young woman — a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12,” Britt replied.

“And so listening to her story, she is a victims’ rights advocate who is telling this is what drug cartels are doing, this is how they’re profiting off of women, and it is disgusting,” Britt continued. “And so I am hopeful that it brings some light to it, and we can actually do something about human trafficking, and that that’s what the media actually decides to cover.”

Jacinto on Sunday told CNN that lawmakers lack empathy when they discuss sex trafficking for political purposes.

“I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair,” she said.

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Jacinto told the outlet that Mexican politicians exploited her story for political purposes and not it is happening again in the United States.

“I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time,” she said. “People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.”

Jacinto told CNN that she met Britt at an event at the southern border with other officials, not during a one-on-one as Britt had stated. Jacinto said she was never trafficking in the U.S. as the senator appeared to suggest. And she said she was not trafficked by cartels but by a pimp who entrapped vulnerable girls and forced them into sex work.

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The White House on Sunday accused Britt of sharing “debunked lies.”

“Instead of telling more debunked lies to justify opposing the toughest bipartisan border legislation in modern history, Senator Britt should stop choosing human smugglers and fentanyl traffickers over our national security and the Border Patrol Union,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Like President Biden said in his State of the Union, ‘We have a simple choice: We can fight about fixing the border or we can fix it.’”

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Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán: The American right’s most disturbing global alliance grows desperate

I've been following Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's increasing influence on the American far right for some time as he hosted the likes of former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson and held a CPAC meeting in Budapest. (They're doing it again in April with Orbán once again doing the hosting duties.) He was the darling of a certain faction of the conservative coalition even before Donald Trump won and whose election in 2016 super-charged the "illiberal democracy" ideology here in the U.S. which we now know as MAGA. He likewise hopes to consolidate the European far-right into a MAGA-style movement throughout the continent.

Orbán's CPAC appearance got a thunderous ovation last year and just last week he came to meet with members of the Heritage Foundation which is busily putting together "Project 2025" for the second Trump term. One imagines he had quite a few tips for them. He wrote the book on how to turn a modern country into a repressive autocracy without becoming a full-fledged police state. 

The truth is that Orbán may need Trump more than Trump needs Orbán.

Trump himself doesn't seem completely sold on that idea since he's pushing for mass round-ups and deportations of non-citizens by National Guard troops and a total lockdown of the country to keep foreigners who "don't like our religion" (or Israel) out of the country. And he's promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections" which leans more in the direction of Putin's Russia or Pinochet's Chile. But Orbán's ideas about how to make the government bureaucracy into a patronage operation, gerrymander the legislature in ways that pretty much strangle real democracy while turning the independent media and academia into impotent irrelevancies are being observed very carefully by the Trump 2.0 planners and they will be implemented if they gain power. (It's also the case that Orbán demonized migrants as a political strategy and even built a fence to keep them out, so they do have that in common as well.)

After the Heritage meeting, Orbán made the pilgrimage down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump. (Notably, he wasn't invited, nor did he ask, to meet with the actual president of the United States.) Trump was very impressed with his guest. He apparently feted him at the usual party that takes place every night at this social club and introduced him to the crowd of paying guests saying, "He’s a non-controversial figure because he says this is the way it’s going to be, and that’s the end of it. Right? He’s the boss.” 

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I'm not sure why anyone questions Donald Trump's intentions when he says things like that. It's always been clear that he is an instinctive autocrat. He couldn't understand why the Department of Justice didn't act as his personal lawyer, for instance, or why he was constrained by the Constitution from exercising power over the entire government. He said repeatedly that he had "an Article II" which allowed him to "do whatever I want" and that the president has "total authority." Even today he argues that the president has "total immunity" which is now pending before the Supreme Court. Of course he admires dictators and autocrats and believes that's what the presidency should be.

It's pretty clear that Orbán sees Trump as an important ally. He's even cutting campaign ads for him on that theme, calling Trump a "man of peace" which is so ludicrous it makes you dizzy:

The truth is that Orbán may need Trump more than Trump needs Orbán. He's isolated in Europe and in order to fulfill his larger agenda he needs a friend in the White House, and Joe Biden will not be that. Over the past month, his party has been in turmoil with the resignation of the president and former justice minister over a pardon scandal involving a notorious child sex abuser. This has placed Orban in a difficult position since he has waged a Ron DeSantis-style crusade against LGBTQ rights and pedophilia (which he conflates for political purposes.) 

He has been the last holdout in the European Union for Ukraine aid and allowing Sweden to Join NATO and both issues were finally resolved in the wake of the scandal just in the past couple of weeks. There's no sense that Orbán is in serious trouble but cracks are beginning to show. It turns out that his Potemkin democracy still has some tiny life left in it, with some independent journalists able to use the internet to get the news out even though all the mainstream news sources have been coerced or co-opted into doing Orbán's bidding. It's just possible that his hold is shakier than it has been in years.

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If Trump wins all that changes. Orbán sees his friendship with Trump and Putin puts him right at the center of a major new alliance and it's not at all an unreasonable assumption. He and Trump, and his lackeys in the U.S. Congress, have, so far, successfully given Russia a major gift by refusing to authorize funding for the Ukraine war effort. Trump even went so far as to say that he would tell Putin to "do whatever he hell he wants" to any NATO country he deemed to be sufficiently "paid up." We have every reason to believe that if Trump wins, Ukraine will be gone and Putin will have prevailed. What happens to the Ukrainians if that happens is going to be a nightmare. 

All of this is very peculiar in light of Orbán's central thesis about "national sovereignty," which he spelled out in this video (featuring such luminaries as Steve Bannon and Vivek Ramaswamy) that he made after his meeting with the Heritage Foundation. Apparently, Ukraine is not entitled to that particular privilege nor is any NATO country — such as Hungary — if Putin or Trump decide otherwise. 

This alliance between Orbán, Trump and the American right is very disturbing. It's easy to dismiss a Hungarian prime minister as just some guy from a small European country who is punching way above his weight and isn't really relevant. But this is one of those moments when you really have to wonder if you aren't watching the beginning of a tectonic shift in the world order. The movement to appease Putin and force Ukraine to surrender has taken hold on the right and the threat to Western Europe that flows from that is very real. If Trump wins, the chances of a major escalation are very high. Trump and Orbán like to call that "peace" but it's actually just a demand for capitulation. That's what dictators do and that's what they are. 

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The 96th annual Oscars gave us what the movies promise and we need right now: a dose of fun

For the 96th Oscars, ABC’s host Jimmy Kimmel chose to pay tribute to the unforgettable work of Robert Opel, the man who streaked the 1974 Academy Award ceremony as David Niven was presenting.

Fifty years later Kimmel enlisted John Cena for a gag he pretended to object to before sidestepping onstage wearing nothing but Birkenstocks and an Oscar envelope. “Costumes, they are so important,” he squeaked. “Maybe the most important thing there is.” Then he said he couldn’t read the winner without exposing his Peacemaker, and the lights dimmed so the nominees’ clips could run.

A few years ago some critics might have viewed this as tasteless, a sign of how far culture has fallen. But there was no way to forget that this Oscars airs while wars drag on in Ukraine and Gaza, and in the same year as a presidential election contest that’s robbed too many of us of peaceful sleep. Plus, who doesn't love a golden anniversary?

Between that, the applauding dog in the audience, and the fact that a “Godzilla” movie won an Academy Award, this Oscars ceremony was, dare I say it, a four-star good time. Not perfect by any means, but watchable television that endeavored to make celebrating the movies feel personal and accessible.

Masaki Takahashi, Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya and Tatsuji Nojima, winners of the Best Visual Effects award for "Godzilla Minus One" in the deadline room at the 96th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, CA, Sunday, March 10, 2024 (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Like the SAG Awards presenters, Kimmel established this Oscars as a post-strike victory lap for Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA members.

“We were on strike for a long time, for 148 days. For five months, this group of writers, actors and directors, the people who actually make the films, said we will not accept a deal,” Kimmel said, quickly adding. “Well, not the directors. You guys folded immediately.”

Everyone laughed because it’s true. But instead of continuing to lay into the Directors Guild of America members, Kimmel praised, the below-the-line workers who stood with their guilds, bringing a group onstage to be applauded.

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The Oscar winners list: Live updates of the 96th Academy Awards

Kimmel is a four-time Oscar host with nothing to prove and plenty of currency banked with this crowd. The few jokes that verged on tasteless never quite went there, indicative of a man who has read the room and surmised a light touch was in order.

“How many times can one bring his mom as his date before he is actually dating his mom?” he asked “Maestro” director and star Bradley Cooper. “Are you working on a movie about Freud right now and not telling us?”

This Oscars ceremony was, dare I say it, a four-star good time.

Even his groaners had a snuggly shag to them. “At what age do you tell a screenplay that it’s been adapted?” he cracked a few beats before Cord Jefferson won best adapted screenplay Oscar for “American Fiction.”

His one indulgence was to read aloud Donald Trump’s negative review of his Oscars hosting performance on Truth Social: “Has there EVER been a WORSE HOST than Jimmy Kimmel at The Oscars?” the rant began, going on to suggest ABC replace Kimmel with “another washed up, but cheap, ABC ‘talent,’ George Slopanopoulos.”

“Thank you for watching! I’m surprised you’re still awake,” Kimmel cracked, adding, “Isn’t past your jail time?”

Overall the host understood his job was to transition, not dominate; and that this Oscars wasn’t about him but the movies.

Several key races were entirely predictable, and yet that didn’t make the show any less exciting or enjoyable. “Oppenheimer” won seven Oscars, including best picture, best director for Christopher Nolan, best actor for Cillian Murphy and best supporting actor for Robert Downey, Jr., all first winners in their individual categories.

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, winner of Actress in a Supporting Role award for 'The Holdovers' poses in the press room during the 96th Annual Academy Awards at Ovation Hollywood on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California (Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

“The Holdovers” star Da’Vine Joy Randolph completed her awards season conquest by taking home the Oscar for best supporting actress, the only award the movie snagged on Sunday.

But that race was never in doubt; instead, the best actress contest was the one everyone was watching after “Killers of the Flower Moon” lead Lily Gladstone landed the SAG and the Globe and “Poor Things” star Emma Stone snagged a BAFTA. In the end, and near the close of the ceremony, Stone walked away with the golden man, and Oscar passed on an opportunity to make history by rewarding an Indigenous actor who gave one of 2023's top performances.

Stone is in no danger of disappearing from our screens, large or small. (She’s also fresh off an acclaimed run in Showtime’s “The Curse.”) Gladstone isn’t either, to be clear, but leading roles in Martin Scorsese movies don’t rain down equally on everyone. 

Also, in the Academy Awards' 96-year history, only two non-white women have won Best Actress.

Producers can’t control voting outcomes. They can only make sure the machinery runs as well as live TV can and hope the presenters don’t slow the momentum and the entertainment hits as intended.

A good choice, although not everyone agrees, was to have past winners in individual acting categories speak to the performance and, when they could, the character of current nominees. Some are friends, others simply genuine admirers of their peers’ work. Like the opening monologue, this added a human layer to the proceedings instead of enforcing the distance between the industry and the audience.

These interactions replaced the movie clips of their work, which irritated some people. I’d also argue that watching a seconds-long snippet of a performance doesn’t do much for anybody who hasn’t seen it. Watch the movies, people.

Besides, that human touch inspired a few stellar speeches, like Jefferson sticking up for small-budget big swings like his instead of habitually favoring costly behemoths. “I understand that this is a risk-averse industry. I get it,” he said while accepting his Oscar. “But $200 million movies are also a risk. . . . Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies. Or 50 $4 million movies.”

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In that moment the audience, largely composed of people who make and star in $200 million movies, was on his side. Overall, though, a major reason this broadcast worked is because it was centered around two expensive movies many people saw and loved, although the most popular one, “Barbie,” came away with only one Oscar for best original song: “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell.

Finneas and Billie Eilish perform onstage at the 96th Annual Oscars held at Dolby Theatre on March 10, 2024 in Los Angeles, California (Rich Polk/Variety via Getty Images)Along with that the movie and nominated star Ryan Gosling settled for winning the night as a consolation prize with his live performance of “I’m Just Ken,” surrounded by an army of dancers. Joined by his fellow Ken stars (including Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa and Kingsley Ben-Adir) wearing tuxes and sashes in a gender-flipped tribute to Marilyn Monroe’s legendary number from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Gosling gave a little boy band energy and plenty of Elvis, and by the time Slash took his side and the screens went full karaoke the world was Ken's.

Some credit is due to starting the broadcast an hour earlier than usual, ensuring everyone was awake and in high spirits for the Kendom takeover. The show ended a few minutes under the expected three and a half hours – and would have even if Al Pacino hadn’t skipped over the reading the best picture nominees in presenting the final award.

There was no way to ignore the reason this telecast began six minutes late: an enormous protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza disrupted Los Angeles traffic to such a degree that some attendees chose to walk part of the way.

If an Oscars show fulfills the promise of the movies…we should take the win.

Many actors showed their solidarity by wearing red pins on their tux lapels and gowns, but only “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer explicitly used his acceptance speech for winning best international picture to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present,” Glazer said. “Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all are victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”

The Oscar for “Zone of Interest” is the first ever for the United Kingdom,” just as “20 Days in Mariupol,” is the first ever for Ukraine, producer/director Mstyslav Chernov pointed out in his acceptance speech, which quickly turned heartbreaking.

This reminded us of ever-present mourning in the world better than In Memoriam segment which aside from Andrea Bocelli singing “Time to Say Goodbye” with his son Matteo, was rushed to the verge of disrespect and made the deceased names small and unreadable.

Truly disappointing, though, is the fact that it began powerfully by featuring a few moments from the 2023 documentary Oscar winner “Navalny” – specifically, a rallying speech from recently killed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. “Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You're not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means we're incredibly strong. . . . The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.”

It should not go unnoticed that the only winners or presenters to say anything about the horrors in Gaza and Ukraine are non-American directors, and the only figure to speak out against Vladimir Putin’s corruption and violence is a dead man.

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Hollywood remains a very political town where a go-along-to-get-by mentality reigns, and the days of Sean Penn or Richard Gere taking the stage to make overt pleas for human rights in distant lands seem to be long past.

At the same time, that we can recall those moments from Oscar ceremonies that were as memorable and entertaining to watch as this one bolsters the worthiness of this Oscars round.

The nude runner in 1974 may be what stays with us, but this is what Niven said before Opel took the stage: "If one reads the newspapers or listens to the news, it is quite obvious that the whole world is having a nervous breakdown." 

That is a constant, including on the one night each year when we pin our hopes on art and performances we love. Within that capsule, too, there’s always disappointment.

But the two sides can harmonize, speak to each other, and help us to hear and feel more clearly. “Cinema forms memories and memories form history,” Chernov told his fellow filmmakers and performers. As a sign, perhaps, that his message resonated, Murphy wrapped his acceptance speech by acknowledging the dark truth about the man he plays.

“We made a film about the man who created the atomic bomb, and for better or worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world,” Murphy said, “so I’d like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.”

If an Oscars show fulfills the promise of the movies – that is, if it allows us to step outside our melancholy and anxiety for a time and appreciate the possibility, craft and beauty in entertainment — we should take the win.

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The GOP can’t leave MAGA — “Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party”

Power not used is power wasted. Fascism is corrupt power.

What if Donald Trump defeats President Biden and takes control of the White House in 2025? He has already announced his plans to become the country’s first dictator, and to launch a reign of terror and revenge against his so-called enemies. As detailed in documents such as Project 2025, Agenda 47, and elsewhere, the infrastructure is being created right now to put Trump's neofascist plans to end multiracial pluralistic democracy in effect on “day one." The so-called resistance will not have the courtesy of ramping up or mobilizing to stop Dictator Trump’s onslaught. It will be a “shock and awe” campaign visited upon the American people.

Dictator Trump’s reign of terror will be made even worse by the fact that as shown during recent speeches, interviews, and at other events he appears to be encountering severe difficulties in cognition, language, and memory.

In a series of recent conversations with me here at Salon, Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President," has issued this warning: “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden's brain is aging. Trump's brain is dementing.”

If Dr. Gartner and the other medical professionals I have spoken to, both here at Salon and off the record, about Trump’s apparent mental and emotional challenges are in fact correct about how the corrupt ex-president will only get worse and not better, the American people will then be confronted by a horrible reality where Donald Trump will be both a dictator and a mad king. In total, there will be a horrific synergy between an American pathocracy and how the worst people seek political power and a leader who appears to have a diseased mind – which makes Trump easily manipulated by individuals and forces who are even more malevolent and dangerous than he is.

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Trump is degenerating before our eyes — MAGA voters don't notice or don't care

In an attempt to make better sense of Donald Trump’s obvious cognitive challenges and related behavior in the context of the country’s democracy crisis and the 2024 election, and what may happen next, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.

Norm Ornstein is emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and contributing editor for the Atlantic. He is also co-author of the bestselling book "One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported."

Of course, it is increasingly obvious that Trump is facing significant mental decline. And we know from those who were close to him but are no longer, that this is not a new problem. But that issue is eclipsed by the other reality: this is a narcissistic sociopath who will stop at nothing to create a vicious, dictatorship built on retribution, racism, corruption, and sadism.

He doesn’t cushion it, or try to hide his motives, and neither do those he will clearly rely on if he were to assume the presidency. Invoke the Insurrection Act to put down demonstrations against him with violence and brutality. Blow up the federal government by firing tens of thousands of civil servants and replacing them with obedient flunkies. Create concentration camps to house millions before deporting them. Weaponize the Department Of Justice (DOJ), including the FBI, to go after his enemies and critics. Blow up every alliance and replace it with ties to the most vicious dictators in the world. What is especially unsettling, though, is how are key, mainstream, journalistic outlets, like the New York Times and the networks, shrug their shoulders at all of this, and treat him like he is a normal presidential candidate. It is no wonder that so many voters have no idea what a monster he is.

"Mainstream media may not consciously want Trump to win, but you wouldn’t know it from the frame of the coverage."

If this were a healthy democracy, we would have a healthy Supreme Court. We don’t. It is corrupt and not to be trusted when it comes to Trump. If this were a healthy democracy, we would have a press corps that would put a spotlight on what is real and not “both sides” everything while focusing on the horse race instead of the consequences of the election. President Biden needs to use the power of his bully pulpit to focus, over and over and over again, on the consequences of electing this monster for our democracy and the fundamental health of our country.

That the media are focused on Biden‘s age, while ignoring Trump’s infirmities is absolutely maddening. As James Fallows pointed out, in the New York Times there were headlines on Super Tuesday’s outcomes that Trump romped and Biden has trouble while Biden got a significantly higher percentage of votes than did Trump, which tells us all too much about media bias. Mainstream media may not consciously want Trump to win, but you wouldn’t know it from the frame of the coverage.

Darrin Bell is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip Candorville, and author of the graphic novel “The Talk." He is also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker.

Trump seems to be deteriorating quickly. I’m old enough to have seen several loved ones overcome with dementia at around his age, and it seems obvious he’s in the throes of that. The stress of the campaign, the court cases, and the civil judgments against him are compounding to make him a person dangerously unfit for office. Apparent dementia, plus sociopathy, plus a cult-like following, combined with vindictiveness, a persecution complex, a love of autocracy, and an entire far-right ecosystem bent on turning America into one, is a formula for the end of our democratic republic. That might sound hyperbolic if his cohorts hadn’t been inviting right-wing dictators to the Conservative Political Action Conference and issuing a manifesto called Project 2025 that details their plans to turn us into something akin to Russia or Hungary.

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If we were a healthy democracy and society, Congress would impeach Clarence Thomas, and impeach (for lying under oath) every Supreme Court justice who said Roe v. Wade was settled law or a “super precedent,” and then voted to overturn it. The DOJ would prosecute at least three Supreme Court justices for bribery and corruption, for accepting lavish gifts and vacations from billionaires, some of whom had business before the court. Gini Thomas and several members of the House would be indicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The courts would declare gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

We’d pass an amendment declaring “the right to vote shall not be abridged,” and throw everyone involved in voter purging schemes in prison. We’d pass a federal law against book banning in libraries and school districts, we’d make organizing to silence minority authors a hate crime, we’d pass laws rescinding federal funding from any school district that whitewashes the history of race in this country, or that eliminates civics courses.

President Biden and the Democratic Senate would read the damn Constitution and, upon learning that it says nothing about Congress being allowed to set the size of the Supreme Court and nothing about the limit being nine (it doesn’t even specify that a vacancy has to occur before a president can appoint a new justice), they would expand the Supreme Court to 15 members and appoint six new justices. We would eliminate every weakness in our system that contributed to the ability of an unhinged con man ever being in a position to overthrow our system of government. But because we’re NOT a healthy democracy and society, that’s not at all what WILL happen.

The Supreme Court and Judge Cannon will delay two of the most consequential trials until after the election, and Republicans in Georgia may use the travesty we just witnessed in a Georgia courtroom to remove Fulton County DA Fani Willis from the Georgia case whether the judge does or not — and replace her with a MAGA DA who’ll drop the charges or cut Trump a deal, avoiding a criminal conviction. Republicans will be energized, Democrats will be demoralized, some independents will begin to believe the lack of convictions means Democrats WERE persecuting Trump without good cause, and enough Democrats may stay home to hand Trump the election in November. At which point the insurrection and the documents cases will vanish, and Trump’s transition team will prepare for Inauguration Day, where they’ll be able to do what they’ve promised to do: use their power to punish everyone who’s “wronged” Donald Trump, from prosecutors to politicians to his critics in the media.

Eight years ago, Les Moonves said of Trump’s run, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS.” Mainstream media is focused on Biden’s age for two reasons: The race being a dead heat is good for ratings, and they have a fetish for bothsidesism. That fetish often leads them to exaggerate Democratic politicians’ foibles and minimize or normalize Republicans’ treasonous or downright crazy behavior. The Republican Party has been committing treason on a regular basis ever since Richard Nixon persuaded the South Vietnamese to walk away from the Paris Peace talks, so he could prolong the Vietnam War in order to harm Democrats politically. The party’s been systematically denying Black people the vote for decades now, to maintain their power. They’ve bent the knee to a would-be tyrant with dementia, facilitated an attempted coup, became accomplices after the fact when they refused to convict Trump during his second impeachment and then promoted his Big Lie, and now they’re actively sabotaging Ukraine in its war against a tyrant they love, who’s clearly trying to win now a Cold War we thought his nation had lost generations ago.

The Republican Party is doing all that, yet the media continues to cover them as if they’re a political party and not an organized crime syndicate infested with fifth columnists that poses an existential threat not just to our democracy, but to the entire Western world. “But Biden is old” is a quick and easy way to make sure the polls remain as tight as possible and their ratings remain as high as possible, because if they were to honestly cover what’s going on, the race wouldn’t even be close. 4. As always anything else you would like to add given your specific concerns. If the left stays home and lets Donald Trump win because we’re unhappy with Biden’s failures, just wait until we see Donald Trump’s version of “successes.”

Rich Logis is an ex-MAGA activist and Founder of Leaving MAGA.

The presidential election in November is near-literally life-or-death for Trump. The mythology of business genius he has cultivated for decades is unraveling, and he knows that attaining 270 electoral votes could be the difference between remaining a free man or dying in prison.

We are observing with Trump, in real-time, how life-or-death duress accelerates one’s mental decline, and pushes one further into a “nothing to lose” corner.

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Trump (allegedly) did what he did, on January 6, in Georgia and the purloining of classified information because he never (or minimally) feared legal consequences. He hedged a bet and lost; to keep up mythology appearances, he must continue to lie that he is innocent, has absolute immunity and, of course, that he’s being persecuted by President Biden and Fani Willis—which means it’s MAGA Americans who are being persecuted. Trump dismisses his legal problems because it is how he compensates for the sheer quantity of self-inflicted stress—stress that even the strongest-willed human being would rapidly wilt under.

Does Trump actually believe all this? Probably not. His lawyers are no legal eagles, but even they must know that their defenses are more than absurd. Deep down, Trump is more petrified than he’s ever been; I’m not qualified to make that assessment, admittedly, but I’m virtually certain of it. Why? Because if I was guilty of the crimes he’s alleged to have committed, my brain would overheat and go haywire, too; confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, middle-of-the-night rage tweets and continually delving deeper into conspiracy abysses are symptomatic of his life-or-death realization.

As an ex-MAGA activist, my team and I are building a community for the Trump remorseful, or are having doubts, called Leaving MAGA. I respect that some may disagree, but both parties share culpability in creating the opening for MAGA and Trump (although, the GOP is far more responsible); and I continue to emphasize that frustration with our two-party system, and sentiments of being left behind, were valid reasons for originally getting behind Trump’s campaign. Those reasons, however, are no longer valid.

MAGA Americans are responsible for their own thoughts and actions; it would also behoove us to acknowledge that many of them have been exploited and manipulated into believing that Trump’s “last stand” is also theirs. Trump and MAGA continue to politically traumatize millions into states of desperation and panic—that Trump is all who stands between losing, or preserving, their/our country. This is a toxic martyrdom unlike any seen in American history.

The majority of MAGA Americans are good people, who have allowed themselves to be led astray. I don’t want to see them sacrifice themselves at the altar of the Trump golden calf. I try to avoid hyperbole; but when my personal and political epiphany resulted in leaving MAGA, I concluded that I permitted myself to become someone I’m truly not. Trump would burn down our nation to rule over her ashes because that outcome is preferable to a jailed twilight of his life.

For all the public debates and discourse over whether Trump should be barred from running for office, what has, somewhat surprisingly, been overlooked is that it’s the GOP that should have barred Trump from appearing on the ballot. As a private entity, the Republican Party can prohibit anyone from receiving the nomination.

The potential constitutional crisis facing the nation—a likely-imprisoned felon elected president who pardons himself, like a monarch, and is, possibly, affirmed in his decision by our U.S. Supreme Court—is a quagmire that the GOP is solely responsible for.

The Democratic Party would be well-served to ask—not tell—the American people if a convicted felon president will put their careers, businesses, children’s education, economic mobility, quality of life and future entitlements on upward trajectories. And do you think the political party who nominates that convicted felon has your, and your family’s, best interests in mind? People are moved and motivated by issues that affect their lives; MAGA is antithetical to a bruised and battered — but, I believe —still alive American dream. The health of our democracy is gauged by how many of our fellow countrymen and women feel invested in it; the fewer, the likelier Trump is re-elected.

The “liberal media” mythology is gospel in MAGA. I believed it until I left MAGA; and everyone I knew in MAGA did, too. We also used to mock polls. Pollsters and our national press—incestuous in their relationships—will never recover from the shock of so egregiously missing the 2016 grassroots appeal of Trump. Now that the national press has (as usual) been bullied by the right-wing into running myriad “Biden’s age” reports and punditry, the media is in its own sunk-cost fallacy, and will only intensify efforts to cast doubts on Biden’s ability to serve, with a well-meaning, but delusional, obsessive yearning to save the GOP. Stories about Trump’s age and cognitive confusion are far fewer and between, compared to Biden stories.

Polls are as useless as a winning lotto ticket on a deserted island; but a quick glance of the “liberal media” will show that the press and pollsters have a vested interest in reactionary, horse-race coverage. While in MAGA, I knew well a paid political director for the 2016 Trump campaign. On many occasions, we discussed that polls were political pablum, buttressed by the press to shape public perception, drive traffic to news and opinion sites and generate contributions to political parties. This was true then and is true now. If Trump were to be re-elected, the national press would say that it listened more to Trump voters than in 2016 and 2020. To the credit of The New York Times, they ran a piece earlier this week that featured Biden voters’ reasons for supporting him. 

In the five stages of GOP grief, anti-Trump Republicans are in bargaining/depression; soon they’ll be at acceptance—the final stage. At acceptance, the vast majority of Nikki Haley voters will shuffle right back to Trump once he’s nominated. Maybe, then, our national press will, finally, resign itself to the fact that there is no messiah arriving to salvage the GOP. I pay for much of the media I critique because I believe it still produces a net-positive. But the wish to be liked by those who refer to them as the “enemedia” needs to be retired.

The U.S. is undergoing another historical transformation. We’ve undergone several in our history, ranging from our earliest days; our Civil War; women’s suffrage; World War 2; the 1950s and 60s; Sept. 11; former President Obama’s election and re-election; and, now, MAGA. The question is whether we continue our liberal democracy progress—the continued perfection of our Union—or, whether we regress illiberally. A second Trump presidency will irreparably damage our democracy; it will mean the right-wing has won. And reversing their win will not be so easy to do, democratically; I am not advocating for political violence, but right-wing tyranny has never, in world history, been diplomatically, and peacefully, resolved.

Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party; not because we should desire a one-party nation, but because one of America’s two major parties will nominate someone who helped orchestrate a coup d'état against the Constitution—which Trump swore to defend and protect—and the American people—whom he swore to defend and protect—to remain in power. Yes, I admit: I’m catastrophizing. I also did so in 2016, when I thought the Democrats and Hillary Clinton posed existential threats to our nation, and to my family, my livelihood and I. Ignorant I was; now, I’m clearer-minded, and acutely understand MAGA because I actually lived it.

No civic savior is coming; we are the stewards of our republic.

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Earth’s ice caps are in serious trouble. Three new studies reveal how bad the damage is

Like a trio of canaries in a coal mine warbling at the top of their lungs, three recent studies warn of various ways that global warming is drastically changing the planet. Each study involves the cryosphere, or those regions on the planet where water freezes into ice or snow. Both the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting — and scientists are recording the consequences.

"The earliest ice-free conditions… could occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are likely to occur by 2050."

First is a study by researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment. After creating models based on past data chronicling sea ice area shrinkage in the Arctic Ocean, the scientists determined that we will soon enter an unprecedented future… one where during the summer there is no sea ice at all. Notably, this will happen regardless of whether humanity meets the emissions targets set during the Paris climate accord.

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"The earliest ice-free conditions (the first single occurrence of an ice-free Arctic) could occur in 2020–2030s under all emission trajectories and are likely to occur by 2050," the authors write. This does not mean that the ocean will have literally zero ice in it, but rather that it meets the scientific definition of being "ice-free": When the entire Arctic Ocean has less than 1 square kilometer (or 0.386 square miles) of ice.

At that point, the quantity of ice will be less than 20% of the Arctic seasonal minimum from the 1980s. Because this is unprecedented in recorded history, scientists whose disciplines involve Arctic work will have to encounter a very different environment. There is a nuance to how the region's wildlife will be impacted, and how weather overall will change, based on whether there is occasional daily ice-free conditions, frequent monthly ice-free conditions or even ice-free conditions that last for as long as nine months. Experts will need to understand each different scenario "to assess the true impact of what the transition of the Arctic sea ice cover into its new seasonal sea ice regime means in a warming world."

That last scenario — one in which humanity blows past its emissions goals and the region is ice-free for stretches of up to nine months — would be disastrous.

“This would transform the Arctic into a completely different environment, from a white summer Arctic to a blue Arctic," Alexandra Jahn, associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and fellow at CU Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and co-author of the paper, said in a statement. "So even if ice-free conditions are unavoidable, we still need to keep our emissions as low as possible to avoid prolonged ice-free conditions.”

Like the authors of the Nature Reviews Earth & Environment paper, the scientists behind a recent study for the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) used decades of data about sea ice to project future conditions. This time, though, the authors focused on the Antarctic, and their goal is to anticipate the proliferation of polynyas, or pockets of open water that can exist within sea ice. Led by researchers from the University of Otago, the authors were surprised to discover a dramatic increase in the area of polynyas around Antarctica. At this rate, coastal animals and plants may one day move onto the continent itself.

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Climate change could put humanity in a "new age of Antarctic sea ice."

This is not entirely due to climate change. Some of it appears to be caused by cyclical factors, and could be fueled by phenomena such as the interactions between the Amundsen Sea Low and Southern Annular Mode. Yet the planet's ongoing warming — which is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels — is without question a factor too.

“Recent record low Antarctic sea ice coverage has been linked with ocean warming,” co-author Dr Ariaan Purich, a scientist at Monash University in Australia who studies ocean-atmosphere interactions, said in a press statement. “In coastal environments, large-scale atmospheric variability and trends can interact with changing ocean conditions to shape the extent of sea ice. These findings give us exciting insights that will help us predict coastal sea ice coverage in the future.”

In the study itself, the authors acknowledge that the "specific drivers remain unknown," yet emphasize that because climate change could put humanity in a "new age of Antarctic sea ice," advanced knowledge of both the cycle and the consequences of human activity "will, in turn, lead to more accurate predictions of environmental change, and its implications for Antarctic ecosystems."

Finally, there is another study from PNAS, this one about how Arctic sea life has responded to the loss of 1 million square kilometers of sea ice over the past 25 years. Specifically, the authors studied the seafloor for so-called "benthic primary producers (BPPs)," or the microalgae, macroalgae and seagrasses that are essential to Arctic ecosystems but were nonetheless previously poorly studied. "Primary production" is a term for the process through which some life forms create energy by absorbing organic compounds from the atmosphere, such as through sunlight. Although the scientists thought that the seafloor-dwelling primary producers might flourish in the warmer ocean waters caused by climate change, this did not prove to be the case.

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"Microalgal benthic primary production has increased in only a few shelf regions despite substantial sea ice loss over the past 20 [years] as higher solar irradiance in the ice-free ocean is counterbalanced by reduced water transparency," the authors write. "This suggests complex impacts of climate change on Arctic light availability and marine primary production."

The reason they were surprised is that, although primary producers on the seafloor might theoretically benefit from climate change causing more heat, that is more than offset by how sediments, dissolved substances in the water and phytoplankton absorb all of that sunlight first. They can do this because the water is more transparent than before.

“Our study suggests that the impacts of climate change on sunlight availability and primary production in the Arctic Ocean are complex," co-author Dr. Karl Attard, a marine scientist and Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology in the University of Southern Denmark, said in a press statement. "Additionally, as the Arctic Ocean continues to warm, we may witness more species migrating from lower latitudes, potentially leading to a more productive marine environment than what exists today — at the cost of losing what is special for the Arctic."

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Donald Trump’s classified documents trial is imperative to national security

It is becoming increasingly apparent that those who serve at the highest level of government in the U.S. have failed to protect the national security of this nation.  Recent investigations have shown that Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey have been complicit in failing to protect this country’s secrets by incorrectly storing and poorly handling classified documents. But according to a Thursday filing from special prosecutor Jack Smith, Donald Trump stands apart in his hoarding of national security documents. 

The chief executive should lead by example; those who work in the Intelligence Community and the Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security who put their lives on the line to safeguard this country expect nothing less. Trump allegedly held onto 70 boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort. “During his presidency, Trump used dozens of boxes to accumulate and store records in an informal filing system,” prosecutors allege. “At the end of his presidency in January 2021, around 85 to 95 of these boxes were removed from the White House and transported to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida, where they were later placed in a storage room.” 

Smith adds: “There is no one who is similarly situated.”

Why (and how) should classified material be properly stored and handled?  To begin, these documents could provide sources and methods used to acquire information that was collected that an adversary would like to learn about to stop the U.S. from accessing information about them in the future; information should only be viewed in areas cleared for classified material (like sensitive compartmented information facilities or SCIFs) and should be destroyed or locked up in approved storage containers and areas (or better yet, destroyed by a shredder authorized to be used for the level of classification) when no longer needed.  Secondly, classified material exposure could provide nefarious types with information on plans and capabilities of the U.S. thereby potentially exposing vulnerabilities from those who would want to harm this country.  Third, if discovered by malign actors, this information could be used against the holder for information or pressure. Finally, if adversaries were able to access these materials, they would potentially have indicators and warnings as to what the U.S. might have in store for those potential foes.

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Leaders who work as public administrators inherently have a responsibility to earn and maintain the trust of the public for whom they serve.  Whether one is a career government employee, a political appointee, or a politician, if one needs to access classified material, one should respect the necessity of safeguarding the information to keep one’s nation’s secrets a secret.  Accordingly, there is a need for one standard, and this should exist for everyone (government employees, political appointees, and politicians) and favoritism (or exemptions) should not be afforded based on how one finds themselves in the realm of national security.

A 2022 report showed that roughly 4.2 million people possessed security clearances in the U.S.  The U.S. government has three classification levels beyond unclassified: confidential, secret, and top secret. Of those with clearances, most have secret clearances which afford them information that could cause serious damage; roughly 1.3 million had access to top secret information, which potentially affords the individual with classified information that could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of this country.

 What one has learned is the leaking of classified information transcends any single political party.  Both Trump and Biden have been found to possess documents at both the secret and top secret levels.  What's more is that in the case of both individuals, not only did they mishandle the documents by possessing them when no longer having an active need for them, but both Trump and Biden failed to adequately store these calling into question who might have gained access to the information that could cause either serious of exceptionally grave damage to the security of this country. “While each of them, to varying degrees, bears a slight resemblance to this case,” Smith wrote of Biden, Clinton, Comey and Pence’s cases of classified document mishandling, “none is alleged to have willfully retained a vast trove of highly sensitive, confidential materials and repeatedly sought to thwart their lawful return and engaged in a multi-faceted scheme of deception and obstruction.” 

Professionals who work in the Intelligence Community endure lengthy instruction, annually, on why it is imperative for those charged with a nation’s secrets to properly handle the information and put into fruition mitigating strategies to prevent the mishandling and incorrect storage of classified material.   

Those in levels of authority have the responsibility to lead by example.  Regardless of a person's political affiliation, and whether someone is elected to office, serving as a political appointee, or a career government employee, all who have access to classified information, need to understand their responsibility to secure such documents and should be held to the same standard. This begins at the top with the President of the United States.  Continuation of the mishandling and improper storage of classified material cannot continue.  Those who work in the national security field count on those with security clearances (regardless of the level at which they serve) to properly handle the information to which they have access. We call for improved procedures for offboarding top-level officials, which should be up to standard no matter how powerful the position.

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