Expert: How you can tell propaganda from journalism − let’s look at Tucker Carlson’s visit to Russia

Tucker Carlson, the conservative former cable TV news pundit, recently traveled to Moscow to interview Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his Tucker Carlson Network, known as TCN.

The two-hour interview itself proved dull. Even Putin found Carlson’s soft questioning “disappointing.” Very little from the interview was newsworthy.

Other videos Carlson produced while in Russia, however, seemed to spark far more significant commentary. Carlson marveled at the beauty of the Moscow subway and seemed awed by the cheap prices in a Russian supermarket. He found the faux McDonald’s – rebranded “Tasty-period” – cheeseburgers delicious.

As a scholar of broadcast propaganda, I believe Carlson’s work provides an opportunity for public education in distinguishing between propaganda and journalism. Some Americans, primarily Carlson’s fans, will view the videos as accurate reportage. Others, primarily Carlson’s detractors, will reject them as mendacious propaganda.

But closely considering these categories, and evaluating Carlson’s work in context, might deepen public understanding of the distinction between journalism and propaganda in the American context.

Promoting authoritarians

Carlson’s ability to secure the Putin interview was commendable. Interviewing dictators – even the most murderous ones, such as Cambodia’s Pol Pot – can represent a significant journalistic achievement.

Yet, Carlson’s listless approach to the Russian dictator, who droned on endlessly, proved a wasted opportunity. Despite Carlson’s passivity, the interview did, in fact, reveal aspects of Putin’s intentions likely unknown to many Americans. For example, Putin blamed Poland for provoking Hitler’s attack on the country in 1939, which sparked World War II – a statement at odds with the facts. He also seemed to signal his desire to attack Poland, or another neighbor, in the near future. Had Carlson’s trip concluded with the interview, it might have been judged journalistically worthwhile.

Yet, that’s not what Carlson did.

Producing a travelogue, Carlson toured Moscow and made videos extolling the glories of Russian society, culture and governance. The Moscow subway impressed him, while the low prices in a Russian supermarket “radicalized” him “against our American leaders.”

‘Classic case of propaganda’

There are numerous ways to evaluate the truthfulness of Carlson’s reports.

For example, if things are as copacetic in Russia as Carlson claims, then emigration out of the country should be minimal, or at least normal. Yet, since the 2022 Ukraine war mobilization, Russians have fled their country in historically high numbers.

Even those cheap supermarket prices Carlson loved are a mirage. They exist only through subsidies, and with Russia’s continued devaluation of the ruble in 2024, combined with a planned huge increase in military spending, Russia’s government continues to make every Russian poorer to fund its war.

In other words, what’s cheap to Carlson is expensive and getting more expensive for almost all Russians. This trend will continue in 2024, as Putin recently projected Russia’s inflation rate to be 8% in 2024 – more than double the projection for the United States. In fact, a Russian citizen complained directly to Putin in December 2023 about the price of eggs, and Putin uncharacteristically apologized.

But research shows that fact-checking Carlson’s claims is not likely to change many people’s opinions. We know most people don’t appreciate being told their preferred information is inaccurate, and when untruthful reports accord with their perception of reality, they’ll believe them.

Instead of categorizing Carlson’s Russia videos as “reporting,” “journalism,” “information” or “fake news,” we could define it instead as a classic case of propaganda.

A headline from The Hill about Carlson’s Moscow visit. Screenshot, The Hill

‘Emotionally potent oversimplifications’

Propaganda is communication designed to bypass critical and rational examination in order to provoke intended emotional, attitudinal or behavioral responses from an audience.

Public understanding of propaganda usually links it to lying, but that’s not quite correct. While some propaganda is mendacious, the most effective propaganda will interlace carefully selected verifiable facts with emotional appeals.

For an average American, those Russian supermarket prices really were cheap. But that’s a selected truth presented without context essential for understanding.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described propaganda in a democracy as “emotionally potent oversimplifications” peddled to the masses, and that’s precisely what Carlson’s videos seem to provide.

That Carlson has evolved into a propagandist is not surprising. In 2022, The New York Times analyzed his Fox News broadcasts between 2016 and 2021. The paper concluded that Carlson’s program became far less interested in rational dialogue and critical exchange – by interviewing people who disagreed with him – as it evolved into a monologue-driven format in which Carlson preached often factually dubious assertions to his audience.

At one time, early in his career, Carlson demonstrated significant journalistic talent, especially in magazine feature writing. But his dedication to accuracy – and even basic truth-telling – was exposed as a sham when his texts from the Dominion voting machine lawsuit were revealed and illustrated his mendacity.

Distinguishing between Gershkovich and Carlson

Carlson is not the first American reporter to travel to a foreign dictatorship and produce propaganda in the guise of journalism.

The New York Times’ Walter Duranty infamously ignored the Stalin dictatorship’s horrific starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. The Times’ Berlin correspondent Guido Enderis specialized in “puffy profiles of leading Nazis” while whitewashing the regime’s more evil aspects in the mid-1930s.

More recently, correspondent Peter Arnett was fired from NBC News for appearing on state-controlled Iraqi TV in 2003 and praising the success of “Iraqi resistance” at the outset of the U.S.-Iraq war. Although Arnett’s comments did not originally appear on NBC, they were rebroadcast widely.

But what makes Carlson’s actions particularly galling to some was that his propaganda appeared while Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains imprisoned by Putin’s regime for alleged spying, but which was really accurate reporting from Russia. When Carlson questioned Putin about Gershkovich, the dictator replied that a prisoner exchange might be negotiated.

Ultimately, the distinction between journalism and propaganda is the difference between Gershkovich and Carlson.

Gershkovich sits in a Russian prison for investigating the truth about Putin’s Russia in service to the American public and his employer. Carlson flies around the world praising authoritarian leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, while “rooting” for dictators like Vladimir Putin when they attack their neighbors. “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am,” he said in 2019 about the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

To expose abusive governmental power and hold it accountable “to the opinions of mankind” is literally written in America’s Declaration of Independence. To travel abroad praising dictatorships for their subways and cheeseburgers while ignoring their murderousness, and to return “radicalized … against our leaders” because foreign supermarket prices are low, is certainly not journalism. It is propaganda.

Carlson’s videos may have one beneficial result: If enough Americans learn from them how to detect propaganda and distinguish it from ethical and professional reporting, then perhaps Carlson unintentionally provided a valuable media literacy service to the nation.

Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

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

Real sneakerheads get why Donald Trump’s gold shoes are a failure . . . and ugly, too

Former president, now presidential candidate and the world’s most famous defendant Donald Trump dropped the Never Surrender high-tops at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia last Saturday. This marks the end of Sneaker Con, for me at least, but we’ll get to that.

Various outlets have reported that Trump may have released the shoes to pay for his massive legal fees. If this is true, then he’s going to have to crank out a lot more, because only 1,000 pairs of Never Surrenders were produced with a hefty price tag of $399. The shoes sold out, bringing in $399,000 not counting production cost and taxes. The fraud judgment against him in New York is $350 million.

Five sneakers D. Watkins can't live without

The Never Surrender is the ugliest shoe I ever saw in my life – and trust me, I’ve crossed paths with tens of thousands of sneakers. Never Surrenders are gold high-tops with a round toe box. The midsole is white and there’s an American flag stretched across the back. They look too flat to hoop in, too ridiculous to style, too stupid to wear with jeans and too gaudy to take seriously.

Here are six things I’d rather do then wear a pair of Never Surrenders:

I would surrender. Not sure what I’d have to surrender to, but falling to anything would be better than wearing those shoes.

Listen to a 10-hour album of Joe Biden rapping all of my favorite Jay Z lyrics.

Walk on crushed up pieces of glass barefoot.

Eat all three of the denim jackets inside of my closet.

Vote for Trump, put a Trump campaign sign in my lawn and serve as his Vice President.

Die.

I’d rather die, than be caught wearing a pair of Never Surrenders and apparently so would Trump. I haven’t even seen any video of Trump wearing his own hideous shoes, which is the No. 1 rule in sneaker culture and Business 101 in general, when you are the face of a product. You need to be seen enjoying that product. Imagine Elon proudly not driving his Tesla. You’ll almost exclusively see Michael Jordan in Jordans, unless he’s wearing dress shoes (which also may be Jordans) and there are dozens of stories on the internet told by celebrities who foolishly pulled up to Jordan events or functions not wearing Jordans. I’ll sum them all up for you in one line; you find some Jordans to put on or leave. But I wouldn’t expect Trump or any one on his team to understand the ways in which one should properly promote a sneaker, because they are outsiders.

I was born into Nike culture.

Back in 1985, the water pressure in the bathroom sink was strong enough to break toothbrushes, and maybe bones. It was four of us in a one bedroom, but we housed up to 10 people at times who all shared that sink, which always told me when my dad was home. You see my dad was the only one that turned the faucet up to the highest level when washing his face, when shining his gold tooth and definitely when cleaning his Nike Air force 1’s. Dad scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed at the sole with a soft sponge, using the force of the water to power-wash the dirt away. I would later teach him the benefits of using a toothbrush, and then a magic eraser years later.

It was the fly corner dudes who mixed and matched those shoes with athletic and or formal attire in a way that was never seen before.

I wouldn’t call my dad a sneakerhead, but his experience, as one of those fly corner dudes from the '80s is very important in understanding the foundation of the culture Trump and his minions are trying to imitate.

Because it was the fly corner dudes who always kept fresh sneakers – hence my dad at the sink, cleaning his shoes and sometimes polishing when he couldn’t afford a new pair. And it was the fly corner dudes who had Air Force 1’s in multiple colors, back when Nike started doing color of the month. And it was the fly corner dudes who mixed and matched those shoes with athletic and or formal attire in a way that was never seen before. Standing out wasn’t their only motivation for fashion innovation – these guys wore what they had. For example, my dad once rocked a black Adidas track jacket with a pair of black tuxedo pants and slip-on loafers. He accessorized with dark shades and zipped the jacket halfway so that his thin gold necklace could poke out. The whole neighborhood went crazy over this look. What the neighborhood didn’t know was that my dad only had enough money to buy the track jacket – the matching track pants and shell-toe Adidas shoes were still on layaway. You work with what you have.

Mismatched shoes sometimes originated from losing a shoe, just as multicolored shoe strings often came from not having a set of shoestrings for all of your shoes – necessity. Making lemons out of lemonade was a way of life, and thankfully we made it look so cool. Us kids grew up following those fly corner innovators and developed our own styles.

By the time I reached high school, athletes like Penny Hardaway, Scottie Pippen, Tim Duncan and many other NBA All Stars earned big endorsement deals with sneaker companies. Sneaker culture exploded but it was still beautifully niche, as all of the brands realized the power of urban markets. They made colorways and marketed directly to us. Corny posers and pretenders didn’t care about sneakers the way we did; that feeling of opening up a box of new Jordan’s was something that we owned. This was the '90s before Sneaker Con, the resale market or sleeping outside of a store to get a shoe was in existence. There were some very popular people in sneaker culture, but they were all underground. You knew guys like DJ Clark Kent and Fat Joe had the biggest Nike collections in the world. You knew that eBay and InStyleShoes had all of the heat. Remember there was no social media, so word of mouth was everything. YouTube and the internet introduced us to sites like Nice Kicks, other blogs and shoe legends like Mayor and DontChargeAbdul. The true collectors collected, we had fun, we shared and traded, we enjoyed the many styles that helped to define us and who we were. The streets continued to make sneakers cool, so cool that people from far removed places wanted to imitate.

But it's not just sneaker culture being hijacked. The fashion industry in general draws inspiration from people and cultures who they never dream about giving credit to. Balenciaga is a perfect example. They have designer trash bags that retail at $1,850 for you to carry your clothes in. Everybody from poverty knows that when you can't afford a suitcase you put your clothes in a trash bag. I imagine one of their designers saw this, thought the person struggling looked cool, which they probably did and then did their take. The brand also sells a 10X sneaker for $1,300 that makes a person's shoes look 10 times too big for their feet. Again, people from poverty know that we pass shoes down to our little brothers and sisters even when they are too big. Balenciaga saw this and duplicated that look. Trump probably doesn't know why his own shoes are gold – which is likely inspired by kids who used to spray paint their worn kicks bronze, gold or metallic in an effort to revamp them. All of the major brands from Gucci to Louis Vuitton have their own version of street wear, where they witness the flyest people in urban America, and then cut and paste their style while attaching their mega names, too.

The fact the sneaker culture has become so mainstream, that someone as corporate and square as Trump has the confidence to throw his hat in the ring – is leading me to believe that sneaker culture is done.

Gucci stole one of Dapper Dan's famous designs back in 2017, which is the opposite of the origins of his designs. Black people have been historically discriminated against in high-end stores. This frustrated Dapper Dan back in the 1980s, and forced him to do something about it. In response to this ongoing discrimination, Dapper Dan created his own high-end boutique in Harlem where he took prints from brands like Fendi and Gucci and made them into stylish clothes for Black people in the neighborhood. Celebrities like Mike Tyson and LL Cool J were regulars at his shop. Dapper Dan became so popular and started getting so much traction that Fendi’s lawyers had his store raided, which eventually put him out of business. Decades after Dan closed his doors, Gucci was caught using one of his designs. They found an image of an old Louis Vuitton puff coat he designed back in the day and recreated it, without giving him any credit. When the brand was called out, they made amends by building Dap – Gucci's Dapper Dan atelier – in Harlem. Dap now does work with Gucci and the Gap. It would be great if Trump was called out the same way, as he is the Gucci in this situation.

The fact the sneaker culture has become so mainstream, that someone as corporate and square as Trump has the confidence to throw his hat in the ring is leading me to believe that sneaker culture is done. Which brings me to Sneaker Con, and the people who put on that event in combination with the fans, collectors and buyers. There's no way in the world Donald Trump should have been able to make an appearance and be gifted a platform by a culture that he doesn't contribute to. His speech, lack of knowledge on sneakers, and hideous shoes should have caused mass protest but instead, a collection of squares lined up to take pictures with Trump, holding up the flat, poorly designed uninteresting Surrenders.

Which means that the people of Sneaker Con are not a part of my tribe. I have attended Sneaker Con in the past as it was a great place to collect, talk about shoes, buy and trade but I will never attend again, and encourage my collecting community to stay away from those people, as they will do anything for clout.

However, I would never let a square, scamming politician keep me away from a culture that was elevated and made special by the people from my neighborhood, people like my dad all over the country who couldn't always afford luxury, so they created it.

about this topic

Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

When the Center for Climate Integrity released its report about plastic recycling, one might have expected the environmentalist non-profit to encourage the practice. Anyone raised in the late-20th and early-21st century knows that the term "recycle" is often synonymous with "environmentalist causes."

"Plastic is not designed to be recycled — despite industries and governments telling the public that we should recycle plastic."

Yet the title of Center for Climate Integrity's report — "The Fraud of Plastic Recycling" — reveals a very different point-of-view. What if plastic recycling in fact does little to help the environment, and instead serves the interests of the same Big Oil interest groups destroying Earth's ecosystems?

"Through new and existing research, 'The Fraud of Plastic Recycling' shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years, despite their long-standing knowledge that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale," the authors of the report proclaim. "Now it’s time for accountability."

The Center for Climate Integrity is not alone in characterizing plastic recycling as a false crusade. Erica Cirino, communications manager at the Plastic Pollution Coalition and author of "Thicker Than Water: The Quest for Solutions to the Plastic Crisis," pointed to data that clearly shows we do very little recycling anyway, despite the overwhelming emphasis on it.

No, you don't eat a credit card worth of plastic every week. But you still swallow a lot of it

"In 2017, scientists estimated that just 9% of the 6.3 billion metric tons of plastics produced from about the 1950s (when plastics were first mass produced) up to 2015 had been recycled," Cirino told Salon. "Plastic recycling rates vary widely from region to region around the world. In the U.S., plastic recycling rates are currently below 6 percent."

Yet even those numbers are deceptive, Cirino warned, as they incorrectly imply that at least the plastic which does get "recycled" is handled in ways that help the environment. "Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter where or how you set out your plastic for recycling collection, whether at the end of your driveway, at your local recycling center, or in a municipal recycling bin: Most plastic items collected as recycling are not actually recycled," Cirino explained. "Surprisingly, plastic is not designed to be recycled — despite industries and governments telling the public that we should recycle plastic."

The same companies that created the plastic pollution crisis are motivated to keep the public from believing that their product needs to be phased out.

Instead the plastics that people think get "recycled" are often instead shipped from the Global North to the Global South, with waste haulers often dumping and openly burning plastic without regard to environmental laws, Cirino explained. People who live near the sites where these things happen face a lifetime of health risks, to say nothing of living in a degraded environment.

"People who earn incomes by picking wastes make the least from cheap plastics, and because of constant exposure to plastics in their line of work face elevated risks of cancers, infectious diseases (which cling to plastics), respiratory problems and other serious health issues." Even the plastics that do get reused somehow are less "recycled" than "downcycled," as "manufacturers mix in a large portion of freshly made plastic or toxic additives to melted down plastic waste to restore some of its desirable properties."

If you want to understand why the general public mistakenly believes that plastic pollution significantly helps the environment, one must look at the same fossil fuel companies that caused the problem.

"Many people in the Baby Boomer Generation and Generation X remember the 'crying Indian ad' that was published in the 1970s," Melissa Valliant, communications director for the nonprofit Beyond Plastics, told Salon by email. "It was an iconic ad of the time, created by Keep America Beautiful — a corporate front created in 1953 by powerful generators of plastic waste, like PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. This was really the start of a decades-long streak of multi-million dollar ad campaigns leveraged by the plastics industry to convince consumers that if they just were a little better at putting the right plastic in the right bin, the plastic pollution problem would disappear."

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes.

"Ultimately, our world must decide what it values: money or life."

Simply put, the same companies that created the plastic pollution crisis are motivated to keep the public from believing that their product needs to be phased out. By claiming to care about the environment while presenting a false solution to the problem of plastic pollution — one that, conveniently, removes the onus of responsibility from the companies themselves — plastic manufacturers have been able to have their cake and eat it too.

"The continued promotion of recycling, which is a proven failure, distracts from the real solutions," John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA Oceans Campaign Director, told Salon by email. "Most people agree that we can no longer afford to produce trillions of items packaged in a material that will last for generations and that we will only use for a few minutes or seconds before being discarded. Plastic bottles and bags don't typically get turned into bottles and bags, but the myth that they will is one of the biggest barriers to real solutions."

Indeed, a compelling question arises from the fact that the crusade to recycle plastic is more corporate propaganda than true Earth-saving measure: Should we recycle plastic at all?

"No," Cirino told Salon. "Even if plastic recycling rates were higher, recycling alone could never come close to solving the serious and wide-ranging health, justice, socio-economic, and environmental crises caused by industries’ continued plastic production and plastic pollution, which go hand in hand." Cirino argued that, given how plastic production has grown exponentially and its pollution problems have likewise worsened, emphasizing recycling over meaningful solutions is at best irresponsible.

"It’s clear recycling is not enough to solve the plastic pollution crisis," Cirino concluded. "The fossil fuel industry, governments, and corporations really need to turn off the plastic tap, and the UN Plastics Treaty could be an opportunity to do so on a global level—if member states can come together and form a treaty with real ambition. Ultimately, our world must decide what it values: money or life."

Erin Simon, the vice president and head of plastic waste and business at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), offered a different perspective.

"Everyone has a role to play – and that includes the average consumer as well," Simon wrote to Salon. "But individuals are often limited in what they can contribute because recycling infrastructure and availability is different in every community. For those who can recycle, they should understand what can and can’t go in their recycling bin by contacting their local waste manager. For those who currently can’t recycle at home or work, they should advocate for better access to recycling services by contacting local community leaders and local government officials. In addition to recycling, shifting to reusable products is another way for individuals to reduce personal waste."

Simon also advocates for multinational approaches, writing to Salon that the upcoming fourth (of five) negotiating session for a United Nations Global Treaty to End Plastic Pollution has promise.

"A Global Treaty is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for governments, businesses, and communities to secure a future free from plastic pollution," Simon explained. "As we approach the next round of negotiations in April 2024 in Canada, WWF will be advocating to ensure the final draft of the treaty is globally binding for all Member states, and provides a clear path to ban, phase out or reduce problematic single-use plastics. WWF is also calling for the treaty to include defined requirements for product design and innovation in plastic waste management systems, while also providing policies and incentives that allow businesses to transition to more sustainable and innovative options."

Hocevar also praised the Global Plastics Treaty as a possible solution to the pollution crisis.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

"The Global Plastics Treaty being negotiated right now is a huge opportunity to finally solve the plastics crisis," Hocevar told Salon. "We need President Biden to ensure that the U.S. deals with the root cause and works to reduce plastic production and use. Without dramatically reducing plastic production, it will be impossible to end plastic pollution."

Chelsea Linsley, a staff attorney at the Center for Climate Integrity and one of the report co-authors, perhaps summed it up best.

"The best and most effective solution to the plastic waste crisis is to reduce the amount of plastic produced in the first place, especially for unnecessary single-use plastics," Linsley wrote to Salon. "The Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act is an example of legislation that could implement real solutions, such as reducing and banning non-recyclable or easily replaced single-use plastics and establishing programs to support reuse and refill efforts. However, for such measures to be successful, the plastics industry must not be allowed to perpetuate the myth that recycling is an equally effective solution."

about plastic pollution:

Judge says Texas school district can punish Black student for length of his hairstyle

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

ANAHUAC — A Texas judge on Thursday said the Barbers Hill Independent School District can punish a Black student who wears his hair in long locs without violating Texas’ new CROWN Act, which is meant to prevent hairstyle discrimination in schools and workplaces.

The decision came after a monthslong dispute between the district and Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School who has been sent to in-school suspension since August for wearing his hair in long locs. Legislators last year passed a law called the Texas CROWN Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of hair texture or protective styles associated with race. Protective styles include locs, braids and twists.

But the Barbers Hill school district successfully argued it can still enforce its policy that prohibits males from wearing hair that extends beyond eyebrows, earlobes or collars even if it’s gathered on top of the student’s head.

Judge Chap B. Cain III issued the ruling after a short trial in which lawyers for opposing sides argued over the legislative intent behind the CROWN Act. Lawyers for Barbers Hill said lawmakers would have included explicit language about hair length had they intended the law to cover it. Allie Booker, representing Darryl George and his mother Darresha George, said protective styles are only possible with long hair.

“You need significant length to perform the style,” Booker said. “You can’t make braids with a crew cut. You can’t lock anything that isn’t long.”

George exited the courtroom in tears, walking alongside his mother and several lawmakers who co-authored the CROWN Act.

“As I was walking down with Ms. George and Darryl, you could sense the anger, you could sense the confusion,” said Candice Matthews, the statewide chair of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats. “Darryl told me, with tears in his eyes: ‘All this because of my hair?’”

Greg Poole, superintendent of the Barbers Hill school district, declined an interview after the decision came down. In a statement sent through the district’s spokesperson, Poole applauded the decision.

“The Texas legal system has validated our position that the district's dress code does not violate the CROWN Act and that the CROWN Act does not give students unlimited self-expression,” Poole said.

Poole also suggested that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on college admissions will have ramifications on Texas’ new CROWN Act.

“The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that affirmative action is a violation of the 14th Amendment, and we believe the same reasoning will eventually be applied to the CROWN Act,” Poole said.

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 40 years of legal precedent and rejected race-conscious admissions in higher education at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The majority found that the universities’ admissions policies, which use race as one of several factors in college admissions, violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which mandates that people are treated equally under the law. The majority of justices found that the race-based policies do not pass “strict scrutiny,” meaning the policies are not justified by a compelling state interest.

It’s unclear how the debate about the CROWN Act is analogous to that SCOTUS ruling. Unlike the college admissions case, Barbers Hill officials have not contested the legality of the CROWN Act itself. They have simply rejected a particular interpretation of the law. The Texas Tribune reached out to Poole to clarify his comments, but he did not immediately respond.

Booker said after the Texas ruling Thursday that she intends to appeal the decision. She also said she will file an injunction in a pending federal lawsuit filed by Darresha and Darryl George against the school district as well as state leaders.

In a statement, Rep. Rhetta Bowers, D-Garland, said she was disappointed in the decision and that it undermined the purpose of the CROWN Act, which Bowers authored.

"Darryl George's case serves as a poignant reminder of the systemic injustices that persist in our society, particularly when it comes to issues of race and personal expression," Bowers wrote. "No one should ever be made to feel inferior or face barriers in education or employment due to their hairstyle."

During the trial, Booker called upon two witnesses: Darresha George and Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, who co-authored the CROWN Act and chairs the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. Attorneys asked George’s mother few questions, only asking her to identify her son and define his hairstyle.

Reynolds, however, was questioned at length as the two sides argued over the intent behind the law. Reynolds said he co-authored the bill because he was disturbed by Barbers Hill’s treatment of DeAndre Arnold, a Black student who was told he couldn’t attend his graduation ceremony at Barbers Hill High School unless he cut his locs. A judge issued a preliminary injunction in that case, blocking the school district from enforcing its policy in that particular case. Litigation is ongoing in the case.

“I felt compelled to file legislation to protect students who were similarly situated,” Reynolds said from the witness stand.

Attorneys for Barbers Hill repeatedly objected — with mixed success — to Booker’s line of questioning. They interrupted nearly every one of her questions to say they were irrelevant or that the intent behind the law was plain within the law itself.

“It would be an error to consider Rep. Reynolds’ comments as indicative of legislative intent,” Barbers Hill attorney Sara Leon said in her closing argument to the judge. “You do have evidence of legislative intent, which is the language of the statute, which does not mention length.”

Judge Cain ultimately sided with Barbers Hill, saying that the CROWN Act could have been written to say that individuals with braids, locs or twists are exempt from any hair length policy. He encouraged lawmakers to go back to the Legislature and file a new version of the CROWN Act that includes specific language about length.

The judge did not comment on the constitutionality of Barbers Hill’s policy, which Bookers had called into question during her opening and closing arguments. She said that the district’s grooming policy violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution because it is only applied to one gender. And she further argued that because the CROWN Act names a specific “protected class” of individuals with a particular hairstyle associated with race, the burden must be on the school district to prove that their grooming policy is the only way to achieve a “compelling state interest.”

“The district has not proven that the policy is tailored to serve those interests,” Booker said, citing an affidavit from Superintendent Poole that articulated the purpose of the dress code is to “teach grooming and hygiene, instill discipline, maintain a positive and safe learning environment, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards, and teach respect for authority.”

In light of the ruling, George will remain assigned to in-school suspension, where he is allegedly denied instructional materials and hot food.

Before the trial, George said the experience has been isolating and damaging to his mental health.

“It feels lonely,” George said. “When you’re only stuck in one room for a whole semester it makes you feel some type of way. You see everyone else walking around talking and laughing and you can’t do that.”

We can’t wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas’ breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/02/22/texas-crown-act-judge-barbers-hill/.

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

Turnips, parsnips, apples and more: 5 ways to use winter produce before it goes bad

Despite the snow and frigid temperatures, winter brings with it an array of delicious, seasonal produce. Root vegetables — like carrots, onions, potatoes and beets — winter squashes, cruciferous vegetables and greens are just a few notable cold-weather favorites. Citruses, including grapefruit, oranges and lemons, alongside pomegranates and kiwifruit are key offerings on the sweeter front. There’s also apples and bananas, which remain popular year-round.

Amid the colder months, it may be tempting to stock up on fruits and vegetables. But staying prepared — or rather, over-prepared — comes with its own risk, especially when there’s inadequate planning. Fresh produce that isn’t stored properly tends to go bad pretty quickly. An abundance of fresh produce also makes it difficult to keep track of what’s good to eat and what’s not. Having a well-stocked refrigerator filled with rotting foods is incredibly wasteful and displeasing, to say the least.

How to store literally every dang fruit and vegetable

Monitoring your produce doesn’t have to be a difficult (or stressful) task, thanks to a few handy tips. From mindful shopping habits to meal prepping tricks, here are five ways to use winter produce before its goes bad:

Only buy what you know you can eat

A good rule of thumb is to make a list with weekly meals in mind and only buy necessary ingredients. The United States Environmental Protection Agency recommends keeping a running list of meals and their ingredients that your household already enjoys. Before buying those ingredients, double (even triple) check your refrigerator, freezer and pantry to avoid buying foods you already have. It’s also helpful to include quantities on your shopping list to prevent overbuying any one ingredient.

Running low on dinner inspiration? Whip up a frittata!

Perhaps the easiest and tastiest way to make use of a handful of winter produce is to make a frittata. The recipe itself is pretty simple. All you’ll need are vegetables, eggs, Parmigiano Reggiano, milk and parsley.

This recipe from Italy Magazine specifically calls for leek, green onion, kale, brussel sprouts and portobello mushrooms. After the vegetables are cooked, pour over the egg mixture (six large eggs whipped together with cheese, milk and parsley) and cook over medium heat for five minutes until the eggs are just barely set. Finish the frittata in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Garnish with more cheese and fresh parsley.

Make a 4-ingredient marinade

Marinades aren’t just for proteins like chicken, pork or beef, they are also great on vegetables. Take for example this recipe for miso-maple marinated winter vegetables from Salon’s Michael La Corte. To make, you’ll need one to two pounds of your favorite winter vegetables (La Corte suggests fennel, cauliflower, celeriac, rutabaga, parsnips, carrots, turnip, winter squash, radicchio, radish, beet, jicama, or kohlrabi), peeled, cored and cut into bite-size cubes or chunks. For the actual marinade, you’ll need white miso, rice wine vinegar, any neutral oil of your choice and maple syrup.

The miso-maple marinated winter vegetables can be enjoyed on their own or alongside rice and protein.

Make a homemade vegetable broth

If you’re looking to use up all the veggies and greens that have been forgotten and are approaching their expiry date, be sure to make a generous serving of homemade vegetable broth. The broth can be used to make soups and classic comfort meals to warm you up on a cold day.

Hearty winter vegetables (like cabbage, carrots, leeks, parsnips and radishes) and hearty greens (like arugula, komatsuna, mustard greens, radish tops, spinach and turnip tops) are best for making stock. Simply add your vegetables in a stock pot and heat over medium heat until they are lightly browned and fragrant. Stir in a cup of water and then transfer the cooked vegetables to a crockpot. Add the remaining eleven cups of water and fresh herbs to the mix and continue cooking for approximately eight to ten hours. Once finished, allow the broth to cool, strain into a large container and refrigerate.

If all else fails, make a stir-fry

To preserve your favorite winter vegetables, simply stash them in the freezer until they are ready to be used. Just be careful about refrigerating smaller vegetables, like fresh broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, because they have low water content.

Frozen vegetables are perfect for making stir-frys. Simply sauté your veggies in a wok or large skillet with a tablespoon of oil over medium high heat. In a separate bowl, whisk together soy sauce, garlic, brown sugar, sesame oil, chicken broth (homemade vegetable broth works too!), and cornstarch. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and cook until the sauce has thickened. Enjoy the stir-fry with noodles, rice and your choice protein.

about fresh produce:

“Can’t escape this”: Legal analyst says fraud ruling may force Trump into “personal bankruptcy”

Former President Donald Trump may file for personal bankruptcy after a judge ordered him to pay more than $400 million in penalties for fraud, MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin predicted on Thursday.

"It could also prompt him to file for personal bankruptcy because, again, in this order Donald Trump and the business entities that were found liable, are jointly and severally liable," Rubin said. "That means that any one of them can be liable for the whole of the judgment attributed to them and that also means that Donald Trump can't escape this just by plunging those business entities themselves into bankruptcy, because that would leave him individually on the hook for the totality of it.”

Rubin said the “only way to escape it all together would be to file for personal bankruptcy, which would place an automatic stay on further litigation, including judgment execution."

Trump is barred from borrowing money from any financial institutions registered or chartered in New York but that still leaves "lots of financial institutions the probably fall outside of that" and “wealthy individuals” and “even foreign countries” who may help bail out Trump, Rubin said.

"I asked the Attorney General's office early this week, 'Would we know, as the public, who loans following Trump this money to him? Would you even know, as the Attorney General's office?'” she added. “And I believe the answer was, 'We are not clear on that.'"

“Oh my God”: Tommy Tuberville mocked for “running in circles” in disastrous IVF interview

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., on Thursday couldn't seem to figure out whether he supports or opposes the Alabama Supreme Court's unprecedented Tuesday ruling that frozen embryos are children — or exactly what the determination even was. In the span of just three minutes, according to HuffPost, Tuberville flip-flopped on his stance, first stating he is "all for" the court's decision before saying he opposes the impact of the ruling.

From there, the Alabama Republican voiced support for fertility treatments like IVF, which some clinics have paused in the ruling's wake out of fear of prosecution for wrongful death if they destroy unused embryos, and said he wanted to delve more into the legislation before providing additional comment. There is no legislation.

“I was all for it,” the Republican senator began when questioned by reporters at the Conservative Political Action Conference, later going on to assert that Americans "need to have more kids" and an opportunity to do so. But when a reporter noted that state health clinics have stopped IVF treatments, Tuberville dismissed it as part of a separate conversation on abortion. When corrected, the congressman insisted he knew and agreed "people need to have access."

HuffPost asked his reaction to Alabama women who will lose access to fertility treatment. It's "unfortunate" and "hard," Tuberville said. “Really hard. Because again, you want people to have that opportunity. We need more kids. I’d have to look at the entire bill, how it’s written. I have not seen it.” Corrected again, Tuberville snapped that he was aware it wasn't a bill but hadn't looked at it.

After downplaying the ruling's significance to another reporter, Tuberville backtracked, agreeing that it has sparked conversation and that fertility treatments are a non-partisan issue. “We don’t need that,” he said of the decision's effect on clinics. “We need people to have an opportunity to have kids.”

Asked by another reporter whether he disagrees with the court's determination that embryos are children, then, he said he'd have to look into it more before walking away. “I haven’t seen that.”

Senator Tuberville really has no idea what’s even being discussed. The people of Alabama chose this mess over Doug Jones. pic.twitter.com/u3gJLNpSkj

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 23, 2024

The panel of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" marveled at Tuberville's answers.

"Oh my God," exclaimed host Mike Brzezinski, adding that the senator "clearly doesn't know what IVF is."

"You know, he had no idea," agreed co-host Joe Scarborough. "You know, it'd be like Forrest Gump if he got the ball and just ran in circles. He was just running in circles, he was getting dizzy.

"This is such a nightmare for Republicans politically, they know it," he added.

“Oh…my…God.” Morning Joe hosts gobsmacked by clueless Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville twisting himself into knots. (Video: MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/huTuksbnuV

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) February 23, 2024

Chef Anne Burrell’s 7 best plant-based, vegan and vegetarian recipes

In many instances, people think of vegan or vegetarian fare as being light and nutritious — and not especially filling. However, chef Anne Burrell, someone whom I hold in high esteem for all things culinary, epitomizes the concept of vegan or vegetarian food that is bold, flavorful, hearty and unique.

Burrell, who's held the roles of executive chef, culinary school instructor, host of her own instructional Food Network cooking show and judge of multiple competitive cooking shows, is an excellent resource for all things cooking, no matter if you're a novice or a top-tier, super-accomplished cook.

Salt is a necessity in every recipe. Black pepper is not. Here’s why

Here, I included everything from salads to main courses and desserts, with nary a piece of meat anywhere on the list. Some of the options are fully plant-based while others have some dairy components, but feel free to tweak, twist or customize as you see fit to help align with your dietary specifications.

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

Conversely, if your family is comprised of vegetarians with one errant carnivore, many of these dishes could also be elevated by simply adding some protein in the form of some roasted chicken, grilled shrimp, or other similar options.

No matter how you make these dishes, you're sure to be satisfied.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Soba Noodles with Edamame and Peanuts

Mixing soba noodles with sesame oil, garlic, ginger, carrots, mushroom, edamame, soy sauce and peanuts makes for the ideal lunch, light dinner or midnight snack. The chew of the noodle and the mushroom is contrasted with the crunch of the peanut, which is a wildly satisfying taste sensation.

This comes together quite quickly, so make sure you have everything "mise'd out" (mise en place), being sure that everything is in its place prior to starting the cooking process. Be sure to chop and prep. all the ingredients before starting for a smooth cook.

Asparagus, Pecorino and Red Onion Salad

This super-light dish is one of my absolute favorite salads in Burrell's oeuvre (and I'm not even an asparagus fan!). Opting for raw, uber-thin pencil asparagus adds a brightness and freshness that is only amplified by the sharp pecorino and the acidic red wine vinegar. The tiny bits of red onion add bright pops of both flavor and color and the olive oil out rounds out the whole shebang.

Be mindful of your salting here, just because pecorino can be very salty. This is a raw, plant-based dish, but as the instruction put it, the vinegar actually "cooks' or tenderizes" the asparagus after the salad is refrigerated for about an hour before serving. It's a perfect side dish.

Roasted Acorn Squash and Portobello Mushroom Salad

This salad, a wonderfully fitting dish for autumn, is super filling and satisfying – while still being entirely plant-based. Squash, mushrooms, radicchio, arugula and apple are tossed together before being garnished with pumpkin seeds, making for a perfectly tart, pungent salad.

Note: Only the squash and mushrooms are cooked, while the apple, radicchio and greens stay raw, but feel free to add any of those items to the oven, too, if you'd prefer

Swiss Chard and Ricotta Crostata

Think of this as a savory pie or maybe even a dinner quiche? The crust, which contains both Parmesan and mascarpone, is flaky and tender before being filled with a bunch of Swiss Chard, leeks, garlic, ricotta, eggs and some more Parmesan. The flavor profile is truly fantastic; trust us on this one. I love the chew of the greens against the soft eggy-ness of the "custard" and the subtle bite of the crust.

This is an exceptional lunch or dinner serve with a green salad and maybe even some crisp white wine (or perhaps a nonalcoholic version?)

Tuscan Tomato Soup

A truly wonderful plant-based option and an example of "cucina povera" cooking in Italian culture, this soup is comprised of nothing more than pantry staples, tomatoes and juice, bread, basil and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The end result is much more than the sum of its parts; it will taste like the most flavorful tomato soup you've had. The bread adds to the most unique texture and the addition of tomato juice atop the tomatoes themselves is a perfect complement.

Mushroom and Black Bean Burger with American Cheese

This plant-based dish (with a touch of cheese) is the perfect epitome of Burrell's wheelhouse: Filling, immensely flavorful and unique.

Here, Burrell combines onion, garlic, finely chopped portobellos and shiitakes and crushed Saltines (yes, you read that correctly) into the most fantastic veggie burger you've ever had before topping it with American cheese and a homemade pickle mayo. I also like how she serves this burger on English muffins.

Of course, if you're vegan, omit the American cheese and the mayo and you're good to go.

Goat Cheese Cheesecake with Spiced Wafer Crust

This dish takes cheesecake to another stratosphere altogether.

Gussying up the classic cheesecake crust with Nilla instead of graham crackers, plus some cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg for warmth, as well as goat cheese and sour cream in addition to the customary cream cheese, Burrell's take on cheesecake might subvert your expectations for the iconic dessert going forward. It is that good.

about this topic

CPAC can’t quench MAGA’s thirst

One of the most frustrating refrains one hears these days is that the Republican Party has "suddenly" gone crazy — as if it was a spontaneous explosion of lunacy that came out of nowhere. The fact is that there has been a strain of crazy on the right for a very long time and the allegedly normal Republicans who are now shocked at what's happened to their party were willfully blind and refused to see how toxic that strain was all along. All they had to do was attend any Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) of the past 20 years and open their eyes to what their party was becoming.

I'm not talking specifically about ideology here, although there was plenty of odious far-right philosophy at this confab going all the way back to its first meeting in 1974. I refer to the smart-ass, frat house attitude that came out of right-wing radio, led by the contemptible Rush Limbaugh and all the spawn that followed him. Sure they pretended to be pious conservative Christians dedicated to bringing morality back to decadent America but down in the basement where people sold their right-wing wares, there was always a plethora of nasty merch. From creepy t-shirts to crude caricatures of Black people (especially the Black First family), they made good money selling racist, sexist insults to their devoted fans.

This year, they've outdone themselves with what may be the most blatantly anti-American toy they've ever featured at a CPAC conference: a January 6-themed pinball machine described by The Hill this way:

The game can be played over several modes, including “Stop the Steal,” “Fake News,” “Peaceful Protest,” “It’s a Setup,” “Babbitt Murder” — a reference to the Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by police after trying to climb barriers at the Capitol — “Have Faith” and “Political Prisoners.” As you play each mode, videos from the insurrection play on a screen above.

#January6th pinball machine at @CPAC pic.twitter.com/fWy2nfTVN3

— Thomas Tatum (@JackSmart007) February 22, 2024

January 6 is now literally a game to these people.

Alabama's targeting of IVF is the Christian right's attempt to control motherhood

The first couple of days have largely featured the usual culture war shock jock commentary. For instance Florida congressman Byron Donalds, rumored to be a VP contender on the Trump ticket, demonstrated his homophobia by sharing this lovely little anecdote:

“Little boys are little boys. Little girls are little girls. When I was a little boy, I liked little girls. This is a good thing. This is the natural order that keeps society progressing.”

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville was interviewed by podcast host Ben Ferguson and claimed that "we are at war" because the communists, socialists and Marxists believe that children are part of the United States government and that "Hillary Clinton said it takes a village, why, because she doesn't like your home." Queried later by reporters about the ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court essentially making IVF fertility treatments unconstitutional, he claimed he was "all for it" because "we need more kids." When it was explained that this would actually prevent people from having kids, he said that was a different conversation and that he hadn't read the bill. Of course it wasn't a bill, it was a state Supreme Court decision. Byron Donalds, also said that he was in favor of the ruling as did presidential candidate Nikki Haley in a different venue, although both seemed to be as confused as Tuberville.

CPAC is a mess and you have to wonder whether it's on its last legs.

The panels so far have been the usual obnoxious fare. There was one called “Cat Fight? Michelle vs. Kamala" in which a panel of white people trashed the former first lady and current vice president with one of the participants implying that Michelle Obama is a man, one of the right's favorite tropes. It brought gales of laughter from the entire panel and the audience.

There was another panel called "Babies R Us" which I thought could be an appropriate title for any of the panels considering the amount of whining and temper tantrums they all feature. But this one was about how happy all the panelists were that Roe v. Wade had been repealed, celebrating the fact that their entire agenda is now going to be enacted.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

But all that fun and frivolity doesn't hide the even darker turn the conference has taken. For all of its extremism in the past, it's only since Donald Trump that they've been welcoming authoritarian dictators to the conference. Yesterday, the self-described "coolest dictator," El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, received a "rock-star welcome" from the crowd (who had probably never heard of him until that moment.)

JUST NOW – President @nayibbukele: "Who elected Soros to dictate public policy and laws? Why does he feel entitled to impose this agenda?

Soros and his cronies hit a brick wall in El Salvador… El Salvadorians are now immune to his influence. No one believes his lies anymore." pic.twitter.com/bL2ZgG1RYY

— CPAC (@CPAC) February 23, 2024

It's a little unoriginal but even Bukele knows you really can't go wrong with a little Soros bashing in a right-wing crowd. On Saturday, the new far-right president of Argentina, Javier Milei, will be at CPAC to talk about "fighting socialism and corruption." (CPAC has already featured Hungary's Viktor Orban at earlier conferences.) Authoritarians are the big gets for these meetings nowadays and, needless to say, the superstar wannabe "dictator for a day" Donald Trump will be the keynote speaker as he has been for the past eight years. This is the conference that launched his political career back in 2012 and in recent years it might as well have changed its name to TPAC.

Interestingly, this year's meeting is apparently pretty sparsely attended or at least it was in the first couple of days. Numerous shots of empty seats have been circulating on social media. If they weren't such hypocrites, one might imagine that conservatives might be put off by the raging scandal around the organization's leader, Matt Schlapp, who is under investigation for the sexual assault of a young male staffer and has been accused of several others of drunkenly groping them at various conservative functions. The Daily Beast reports that subpoenas were recently issued to various CPAC officials seeking information about document shredding in relation to the lawsuit amid other claims of financial mismanagement.

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

CPAC is a mess and you have to wonder whether it's on its last legs. The truth is that as much as Trump loves CPAC, the MAGA faithful prefer the newer, more exciting conferences put on frequently by Turning Point USA, run by activist Charlie Kirk. He's more edgy and fun. Why just this week on his podcast he and his guests fantasized about beheading people on national TV.

Charlie Kirk fantasizes about children watching televised executions, saying “At a certain age, it's an initiation” and “I would totally tune in to see some pedo get their head chopped off” pic.twitter.com/Wl7nNQBVPY

— Jason S. Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) February 16, 2024

He also called for Joe Biden to be executed. It's a favorite topic.

One of the guests on that podcast was Jack Posobiac, a notorious right-wing activist who spoke at the beginning of the CPAC conference and made quite a stir when he said, "Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn't get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here," showing his fist. Former White House adviser, grifter and podcaster Steve Bannon exclaimed, "Amen!"

That's what MAGA really wants to hear these days. Even the crude insults toward Michelle Obama and speeches by dictators are too soft for this crowd. Why, even Donald Trump is a bit of a RINO these days. CPAC for all its petty spitefulness just doesn't give them the same thrill anymore. They don't want frat house humor and obscure Latin American leaders. They want blood.

about CPAC

“What a joke”: Experts trash Trump’s “insultingly stupid” filing asking Judge Cannon to dismiss case

Donald Trump’s lawyers claimed in a series of filings to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday that he cannot be prosecuted in the Florida classified documents case because of presidential immunity.

Trump’s attorneys filed at least a half dozen motions seeking to dismiss the 40-count indictment charging Trump with mishandling classified materials and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s team also filed motions seeking to dismiss the case based on alleged prosecutorial misconduct and selective and vindictive prosecution, according to the report.

Similar arguments from his lawyers have already been rejected in the D.C. election subversion case. An appeals court panel unanimously ruled earlier this month that Trump does not have immunity in that case. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the matter, which could settle the question in both cases.

“Really bizarre”: Legal experts trash Trump’s “poorly-written” Supreme Court immunity filing

Trump’s immunity claim on Thursday was related to 32 counts in the indictment accusing him of illegally retaining national security information. The other eight counts are related to alleged obstruction that took place after he left office.

“Specifically, President Trump is immune from prosecution on Counts 1 through 32 because the charges turn on his alleged decision to designate records as personal under the Presidential Records Act (‘PRA’) and to cause the records to be moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago,” the immunity filing says. “The alleged decision was an official act, and as such is subject to presidential immunity.”

Another motion claimed that special counsel Jack Smith was not properly appointed because he was not confirmed by the Senate. Another filing claimed Trump cannot be charged with retaining documents containing nuclear secrets because he remained on a classified clearance list for months after leaving office, a claim Smith’s team has refuted.

Two of the filings argue that the Presidential Records Act allows Trump to designate presidential documents as personal, another claim refuted by the Justice Department.

“The PRA conferred unreviewable discretion on President Trump to designate the records at issue as personal,” one filing says. “As such, President Trump’s possession of those records was not ‘unauthorized’ as alleged in Counts 1 through 32.”

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Legal experts poured cold water on the Trump team’s arguments.

“The arguments are no more meritorious than the ones the court of appeals in DC already rejected,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

“If this were allowed, POTUS could declassify all of our most sensitive secrets when leaving office & sell them to Putin 5 minutes later,” wrote CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen.

“This motion is insultingly stupid,” argued national security attorney Bradley Moss, noting that Trump cannot introduce new facts in a motion to dismiss as he did with his claim that he designated the classified documents he took as personal records.

“What a joke,” he wrote. “You can’t introduce facts, and that alone is fatal to this motion. Trump is stuck with the facts of the indictment, no matter how much this motion pretends otherwise.”

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

Trump’s argument makes no sense even if he did reclassify the documents, Moss said.

“Why would that then put them beyond the reach of the Espionage Act and national defense information? How does the PRA insulate Trump from that statutory provision? Your guess is as good as mine since his motion never addresses it” he wrote. “This motion is such a let down. I was expecting a lengthy diatribe about the PRA’s history but this is nothing more than Tom Fitton’s legal fantasy. Cannon will reject this easily.”

Moss wrote that he was “utterly let down by Trump’s motions.”

“I thought they actually had concocted a legitimate set of legal theories,” he said. “I see no reason to believe any of these will go anywhere.”

about Trump's classified documents case

Whale songs are being drowned out by human ocean vessels, study finds

Whales are best known for their massive size and the biggest among them are the baleen whales. Containing 16 different whale species, the biggest of the baleen whales — the blue whale — measures in at a staggering 31 meters (102 feet) and 190 tons (210 short tons). Even the smallest baleen whale, the pygmy right whale, is a not-inconsiderable 6 meters (20 feet) and 3,000 kilograms (6,600 lb). Given these impressive statistics, one might expect whales to create vocal sounds so powerful that humans could hear them from miles away.

This low frequency makes the whales' vocalizations extremely vulnerable to human noise pollution like shipping traffic.

Instead, as a recent study for the journal Nature demonstrates, the opposite is in fact true. Indeed, the whale song is an ethereal and strange underwater ballad, but before this study it wasn't entirely clear which organs the whales used to make the sound. And although baleen whales have evolved very unique vocal cords to serve their particular needs, that evolutionary edge is no match for human activity … specifically, noise pollution.

The oceans have become a cacophony of man-made noise that’s upsetting sea creatures

As the study authors explain, baleen whales and their toothed whale cousins could not survive with the larynxes from their land mammal ancestors. In order to avoid choking underwater while still producing sounds, their larynxes developed special types of arytenoids (tiny cartilages that are also present in human larynxes). Baleen whale arytenoids look like large, long cylinders which are fused at their base, and thereby create a U-shaped structure covering nearly the entire length of the larynx.

Human arytenoids, by contrast, are smaller, less developed and leave more space over our larynx. That is because, unlike humans, baleen whales need to maintain a rigid and open airway when performing explosive surface breathing.

“We found that this U-shaped structure pushes against a big fatty cushion on the inside of the larynx," Professor Coen Elemans, one of the study's lead authors and a biologist at University of Southern Denmark, said in a statement. "When the whales push air from their lungs past this cushion, it starts to vibrate and this generates very low frequency underwater sounds."

On the one hand, the baleen whales' unusual larynx endows them with a remarkable ability. They can vocalize at extremely low frequencies and in so doing communicate with other whales as far down into the ocean as 100 meters deep. At the same time, this low frequency makes the whales' vocalizations extremely vulnerable to human noise pollution like shipping traffic.

"These laryngeal structures set insurmountable physiological limits to the frequency range and depth of their vocalizations, preventing them from escaping anthropogenic vessel noise and communicating at great depths, thereby greatly reducing their active communication range," the authors write in their study.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes.

"We observe navigation impairment that ranges from mild (increased journey time) to extreme (failed navigation)."

This recent study is only the latest in a large body of research about the ill effects of noise pollution on ocean life. Another study this month from the journal Movement Ecology used sophisticated computer models to determine how shipping noise and other human activity impacts baleen whale migration. As the beleaguered animals cope with a smaller communication space, they also struggle to pick up external sound cues and avoid unpleasant noises. The end result is that they cannot migrate as easily as they did before all of the human noise interference.

"Comparing pristine and current soundscapes, we observe navigation impairment that ranges from mild (increased journey time) to extreme (failed navigation)," the authors of the study write.

Whales are not the only aquatic lifeforms to suffer due to noise pollution. A 2021 article in the journal Science found that anthropogenic noise causes distress to animals ranging from dolphins who can't navigate to baby clown fish who struggle to recognize their habitats.

"Existing evidence shows that anthrophony affects marine animals at multiple levels, including their behavior, physiology, and, in extreme cases, survival," the authors explained. "This should prompt management actions to deploy existing solutions to reduce noise levels in the ocean, thereby allowing marine animals to reestablish their use of ocean sound as a central ecological trait in a healthy ocean."

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Similarly a 2023 paper in the journal Science Advances argued that noise pollution is so severe that global solutions are required. As explained by University of California Santa Barbara marine biologist Douglas McCauley, the best way to protect ocean life is to slow down ships, route ships away from whale habitats and develop new technologies to muffle ship noise.

"An ocean of autonomous ships programmed to travel at responsible speeds when whales are near, coastal fleets of quieter electric ships, entanglement-free next-generation fishing, and carefully zoned and properly silenced offshore wind farms are all parts of an achievable, whale-friendly ocean future that is today not very far from reach," McCauley wrote. "We owe it to our whale elders to leverage the power of science to bring this future forward faster."

about whales

Alabama’s targeting of IVF is the Christian right’s attempt to control motherhood

Former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., gets a lot of glowing coverage simply because she occasionally criticizes Donald Trump in her fruitless presidential primary run against him. So it was rattling for many when, on Wednesday, Haley reminded everyone she's ensconced in the fringe worldview of the Christian right. When asked about a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that is expected to destroy in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the state and threatens access across the country, Haley told CNN she agreed with the decision, claiming to believe frozen embryos are "babies."

The Republican-controlled court in Alabama ruled on Friday that lab-created human embryos are "children." Setting aside the odd details of this specific case, the ruling treats the loss of embryos, typically part of the IVF process, as the equivalent of child murder. The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility has already canceled all IVF treatment out of fear that "our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages."

Conservatives view IVF as a cheat code for feminists who want to have children on their own terms.

Haley, for her part, seems surprised by the blowback and has been scrambling with nonsensical claims that she was only talking about "parental rights" when she initially supported the extreme ruling, ignoring the fact that parents have no right to kill babies in any of the 50 states.

A lot of people are understandably shocked to learn that the anti-abortion movement also hates IVF. After all, the movement claims to be all about motherhood. One would think the people who are always yammering on about how a woman's greatest purpose is giving birth would celebrate those who endure IVF, which is both painful and expensive, just so they can have a baby. But no, the Christian right wants to end IVF for two reasons: First, because of the bottomless misogyny and homophobia that fuels the movement. Second, because the end goal for the Christian right is to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, and banning IVF helps them get there.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

It's important to understand that what the Christian right really wants is not motherhood, per se, but a social order where women are second class citizens. They take a dim view of not just abortion and contraception, but all reproductive technologies that make it easier for women to exercise autonomy over their lives. There's a widespread perception that IVF is primarily used by lesbians, single women, and women who waited until their 30s to get married. (In reality, there are many reasons, including male infertility.) Conservatives view IVF as a cheat code for feminists who want to have children on their own terms. They would prefer a system where the only path to motherhood is being trapped with a Trump-voting husband who controls your checking account so you can't leave.

It's hard to convey to non-nutty people how obsessively angry conservatives are with women who wait until they're independent adults before they marry. On a recent episode on Charlie Kirk's popular anti-feminist podcast, for instance, he and his all-male panel were raging about (what else?)Taylor Swift dating NFL player Travis Kelce. "Does Taylor Swift have any eggs left?" Kirk sneeringly asked, as if interrogating the fallopian tube status of pop stars was a normal thing that red-blooded American men talk about.

Dig around in conservative media and it swiftly becomes evident that concern about embryo "life" is not really what's bothering them about IVF. "[T]he traditional family is under unprecedented assault," screeched the opening line of a 2022 National Review article about IVF, under the headline, "Our Looming Procreative Anarchy." The same author earlier complained about women who use IVF to have children slightly later in life, denouncing women who use medical technology for "fulfillment of personal lifestyle desires." At the Christian nationalist First Things site in 2021, the writer argued that IVF is not "biblical" because, "In the natural course of things, we are conceived in a single, unrepeatable act of love between male and female."

Donald Trump may not believe in God, but he still plans to turn America into a Christian theocracy

I have many questions, including the use of "unrepeatable," which is not how most couples experience sex. Or how this writer explains all the pregnancies that occur when people who aren't in love have sex. But I am amused at how he complains, "Sanctioning masturbation for the sake of collecting sperm is dubious." A not-small part of the hostility to fertility treatments on the right is that it often requires men to subject their sexual organs and processes to medical examination, a humiliation that otherwise tends to be mostly restricted to women.

It's the ultimate expression of power, after all, to micromanage something as personal as how and when someone has a baby.

So yeah, it's about sexism. It's definitely not about a sincere concern for embryonic life. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post wrote this week, Republicans keep backing policies to kick pregnant women off health insurance and deprive them of nutritional assistance. Even if they only cared for the "unborn child," these policies make no sense, as these deprivations are more likely to kill or harm the developing fetus than the person carrying the pregnancy. No, this is about restricting reproductive health access to force everyone onto the life path they deem the only "correct" one: young marriage and childbirth, rendering women financially dependent on their husbands. Indeed, the same ascientific claims about "life" are being leveraged to create a legal pretext to ban birth control, as feminist journalist Jill Filipovic outlined in late 2022.

While misogyny and homophobia are most of it, there's an even deeper, unsettling level to this Supreme Court decision: It's part of a larger plan to turn the U.S. into a Christian theocracy. Alabama's Chief Justice Tom Parker made this clear in his opinion, repeatedly citing the Bible and explicitly stating the state constitution has a "theologically based view." As Ruth Marcus wrote in the Washington Post, "Welcome to the theocracy."

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Parker made this even more explicit in a recent interview with Johnny Enlow, a self-proclaimed "prophet" and Christian nationalist. Speaking with Enlow, Parker argued that "God created government" and spoke of the so-called "Seven Mountain Mandate" that the far-right uses as a blueprint for an American theocracy.

During a recent interview with a QAnon conspiracy theorist, the Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice indicated that he is a proponent of the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” which calls on Christians to impose fundamentalist values on all aspects of American life https://t.co/fvIaVqET0l

— Media Matters (@mmfa) February 21, 2024

As Fred Clarkson recently explained in Salon, this is "a vision of Christian dominion over what they call the "seven mountains": religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business." Thus the obsession with Taylor Swift's ova count. Asserting this dominion over Swift's body hits at least 4 of the 7 mountains they believe far-right Christians should exclusively control.

Ultimately, theocracy, like all authoritarian systems, loves imposing arbitrary and cruel rules on the most private parts of people's lives. It's the ultimate expression of power, after all, to micromanage something as personal as how and when someone has a baby. If they could litigate the sexual positions you were "allowed" to conceive in, they would. (And don't rule it out yet!) It's about enforcing gender hierarchies, yes. But it's also about not permitting people any sense of ownership over their own lives and bodies. Every ovum must be accounted for in this religious right version of Big Brother.

about this topic

Dr. John Gartner on a tale of two brains: “Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing”

Donald Trump has demonstrated, in repeated and dangerous ways, that he appears to be profoundly unwell mentally and emotionally. Some of the country’s and world’s leading mental health professionals have concluded that based on his behavior, Trump is likely a sociopath if not a psychopath.

Whatever one may think about the specifics of his policies, President Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a responsible leader and an institutionalist who believes in America and the democratic experiment. By comparison, Donald Trump hates democracy, attempted a coup on Jan. 6, and is a megalomaniac who believes that he is some type of god or messiah. Whatever a fence sitter, undecided, or disgruntled Democrat or other member of Biden’s 2020 electoral coalition who is angry at him over a specific policy may think and feel, there is no issue where Donald Trump will be a real improvement. Moreover, Trump and his MAGA movement will punish those people who they view as being members of the Democratic Party's base of support. Ultimately, a “principled” vote against President Biden (or deciding to abstain in protest) is a vote for Trump and American neofascism.

"Donald Trump is dangerously demented."

“President Biden is old” is an easy, lazy, familiar, and comfortable narrative for the mainstream news media. It is sensational and gossipy (which means more ad revenue and attention), and maintains false balance, “fairness," bothsidesism and “objectivity” in their coverage. This maneuvering also allows the mainstream news media as an institution, or so its leaders incorrectly believe, some measure of protection against retaliation by Trump and his regime, if he takes power in 2025. In all, a focus on Biden’s mental health and age is but another way of normalizing Donald Trump and the neofascist movement and a continuation of the years of failure(s) by the American news media that helped to birth the vile Trumpocene.

The claim that President Biden is old and therefore so diminished mentally and physically that he is incapable of being an effective leader has taken on a life of its own. In many ways, this narrative is immune to the facts and evidence and may be a deciding factor in the outcome of the 2024 election and the future of the United States.

Biden and Trump are both too old – but only one is a traitor

Dr. John Gartner is a psychologist and former professor at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Gartner was a contributor to the 2017 bestseller "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President."

In this conversation, Gartner argues that it is actually Donald Trump and not President Biden who is showing diminished mental acuity and dangerous behavior related to aging. Gartner explains that Donald Trump’s escalating dangerousness is connected to what he believes is a diseased mind that will only get worse. Gartner warns that given Trump’s dangerous personality and emotional state, (Gartner describes this as “hypomanic” behavior) he is almost certainly plotting revenge and how to make his “enemies” suffer as revenge for finally being held accountable by the courts and the rule of law. At the end of this conversation, Gartner explains how even on his worst day as an older person, President Biden is a far superior leader and decision-maker (and human being) than Donald Trump.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length:

For several years, you have not been commenting publicly about Donald Trump. You shared with me how you are tired and exhausted from being in the fight against him and the MAGA movement and decided to step back. I have talked to other members of “the resistance” and they too have told me similar things. They’re exhausted; they’re tired; they’re spent. You were recently quoted in an article at US News and World Report about Biden and Trump’s mental health and age. Why have you decided to retake your public platform?

I'm not quite coming back to discussing politics publicly as I did before. I went through a similar process like some of the other people you have spoken to who have decided to step away from being active members of "the resistance." For five years I did that work with total energy and commitment. I was sounding the alarm about Trump basically every day. I did hundreds of interviews. I made it my full-time job like I was at war. But after five years, when Biden was inaugurated, I thought, okay, the war's over, I can take off my metaphorical uniform. So, not only are many members of the resistance exhausted, but we disbanded when Biden won in 2020. We had a duty to warn the public about Trump and the MAGA movement and all that danger. We were basically saying, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" At this point the American people must know that the British are here.

I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It's a major issue that will affect some people's votes. 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.

What evidence do you have for that conclusion?

"Phonemic paraphasias" —the substitution of non-words for words that sound similar—are not normally seen until a patient enters the moderate to severe stages of Alzheimer’s.

"What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally? You can be sure it would be if it were Biden."

Some examples of Trump’s non-words: Beneficiaries becomes “benefishes.” Renovations become “renoversh.” Pivotal became “pivobal." Obama became “obamna.” Missiles became “mishiz.” Christmas became “Crissus.” Bipartisan became “bipars.”

This is a fundamental breakdown in the ability to use language. If you were talking to your father on the phone and he did this you would think he is having a stroke. There is no healthy older person who speaks that way.

Trump also engages in what we call "tangential speech." He just becomes incomprehensible when he engages in free association word salad speech that is all over the place. Again, that's a sign of real brain damage, not being old, not being slow, not losing a step not being, but of severe cognitive deterioration. What I don’t understand is why those clips aren’t replayed over and over in the mainstream media. Isn’t Trump babbling incoherently the most newsworthy part of his rally? You can be sure it would be if it were Biden.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Biden has been excoriated for forgetting names, which can be a normal part of aging. But Trump isn’t just forgetting names, he’s forgetting and combining people. Trump believes Nikki Haley is Nancy Pelosi. He has said repeatedly that Obama is still president. He said his father was born in Germany when that was his grandfather.

There is also a person's baseline. This is an essential tool for evaluating a person's mental decline. If you look at Trump's interviews and speeches from the 1980s for example, he may have always been a bit of a jerk, but he was articulate and polished. Now if you look at Trump there is great deterioration. By comparison, Biden has never been the most articulate person; he always had a stutter. He always made gaffes. But Biden has a good heart and good judgment. Over the decades we have not seen much evidence of deterioration in Biden's speaking.

The mainstream news media is now advancing a narrative that President Biden is old, too tired, and needs to retire. By comparison, Trump, who is only a few years younger than the president, is being depicted, inaccurately, like he is some type of Immortal or human fountain of youth and vitality. I have made the intervention that Trump looks to some like he is full of energy and life because he is clearly so unwell and out of control and dangerous. President Biden is deliberate and measured.

Trump is what we would clinically describe as "hypomanic." Trump is a man who is sending out messages on what used to be Twitter and also on his Truth Social platform at three in the morning, sometimes dozens of them in a row. A hypomanic personality has certain strengths and weaknesses. But a lot of it is like a vector of force that depends on where you direct it. Trump has directed his energy in purely destructive and hateful ways. What appears to be endless reserves of energy feeds the incorrect impression that somehow Trump is stronger because he has the vitality of someone who is in a crazed state, who's running amok. There's energy in that apparent crazy behavior. But in the end that is not the type of person who we want as a leader. Such a person will not keep us safe. Trump and people who act like him are not going to have good judgment.

What distinguishes “hypomania" from a high energy personality?

Bipolarity exists on a spectrum. On the lower end of the spectrum, at the high end of normal limits, it manifests as an exuberant, confident person and energetic person. At the other end of the scale are people with bipolar type 1 who have psychotic delusions of grandeur.

"Trump is performing for his MAGA followers, but I also am convinced that he actually believes that he has some type of God-like powers."

As I’ve written about, Trump has a hypomanic temperament as his baseline, but it can become inflamed to the point where he does appear to bear psychotic delusions of grandeur. With Trump, in my opinion, we are seeing this second, very unhealthy and dangerous manifestation of hypomania. There is also a sense of entitlement. Oftentimes arrogance goes with temperament. Charisma as well and a high sex drive. There is also a high drive for dominance. There is also something else very concerning and potentially quite dangerous about hypomania. Those who have that type of personality are also prone to severe hypomanic episodes which escalate in a crisis or when they fixate on something they find exciting. Then they can become even more reckless, impulsive and irritable. Such personalities like Trump show even worse judgment in such moments.

How is Donald Trump responding to the pressure from his criminal and civil trials? Last week, he was fined more than 350 million dollars. He now owes almost 500 million dollars in fines and penalties from his two civil cases.

Donald Trump is making a list of all the people he's going to punish and get revenge on. He is thinking about all the institutions in our society he is going to destroy. There's nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. To my eyes, Donald Trump was always an animal — but now he's a wounded animal. Too many Americans — including people in the news media and in politics who should know better — are not comprehending the scale of Trump's revenge. If Trump gets back in power heads are going to roll. There are so many people who are going to be in harm's way. People better wake up and stop being in denial.

Donald Trump’s behavior is wholly predictable. Yet, the mainstream news media, the political class, and the American people as a whole continue to act surprised by his escalating dangerousness, promises of becoming a dictator, violent threats and other pathological behavior. At this point, after at least 8 years of Trump and the MAGA movement and all the horrible things he and they have wrought, one would think the American people and their leaders would be experts on mental pathology.

At this point, anybody with an IQ over 90, who isn't brainwashed by Fox News can see that Trump is unwell, dangerously unfit, malignant personality who has reaped massive destruction (have we just forgotten the hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths?) but even "mainstream" news sources have been normalizing Trump's dangerous and aberrant behavior because the corporate owners of the media want the ad money and don’t want to alienate their potential public by telling too much of the truth about the situation. Instead, they waste precious time talking about if President Biden is too old.

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

Given Trump’s personality type and behavior and now his mountain of debts from the civil cases, there must be real anxiety among the United States government and the national security state and allies about the ex-president having access to top secret and other highly classified information. As others have pointed out, Trump could potentially give away the country’s secrets to hostile foreign governments for money.

Donald Trump has absolutely no loyalty to the country. In fact, there's a perverse way in which I think he takes pleasure in destroying America. That is a function of his malignant narcissism. I have no doubt Trump would sell America's secrets and likely already has given his psychopathic behavior. Malignant narcissists take joy in destruction. An emotionally and psychologically healthy person can't understand it.

Trump is now proclaiming that he is basically the Chosen One, a type of emissary and messiah from “god” and “Jesus Christ." As a clinician who has studied Trump’s behavior, how are you making sense of such claims and what they reveal about his mind?

It's the grandiosity; Trump has delusions of grandeur. That fits both the malignant narcissism and the hypomania. It fits both. Trump is practically declaring that he is God. If someone else was doing such a thing they would likely be hospitalized. Trump's sense of reality testing is very fluid. Yes, Trump is performing for his MAGA followers, but I also am convinced that he actually believes that he has some type of God-like powers.

What about Trump’s followers who see in him some type of god or superhero?

At some level their worship of Trump is cartoonish. They idolize him beyond anything that is reasonable. If you get sucked into a cult, there is this psychology of worshipping the Dear Leader, he or she is omniscient, the Messiah. Some people's personalities are also more vulnerable to joining cults. People who have more primitive personality disorders or other such conditions split the world into idealized figures and devalued figures. Such people also tend to have unstable emotional lives and relationships. On a mass movement scale, Trump is able to mobilize many such people. I would also suggest that many of Trump's most die-hard followers are organized psychologically on this more primitive level. Some have the authoritarian personality described by Adorno after World War II in their attempt to understand who was attracted to the Nazis. Charismatic leaders like Donald Trump excite in their followers a kind of frenzy. But because the MAGA movement, like other fascist and authoritarian movements, is a death cult, what Trump is inciting in them is a kind of a dark frenzy and dangerous excitement. We have seen such energies summoned in some of the worst moments of modern history, most notably in Germany.

Returning to my earlier point. Donald Trump is utterly predictable. You have predicted almost everything that Trump would do given his personality type and mind, sometimes years in advance. What are some of your specific predictions that have come true?

I predicted over a year before the 2020 election that Trump wouldn't surrender power willingly. Trump's threats to put immigrants and other "undesirables" in camps is also predictable and not at all surprising. I was warning the public years ago that Trump should be compared to Hitler. The media and other people told me I was exaggerating, and that Trump wouldn't have concentration camps. He did it. He is now promising an even bigger concentration camp system and the largest deportation program in history. When a person tells you who they are, believe them. Trump is now quoting Hitler and Mein Kampf and talking about "vermin" and "poison" in "the blood" of the country. It's not a dog whistle anymore. It's a foghorn. Trump has really beaten us down. We've become so desensitized.

Let’s assume that both Biden's and Trump’s behavior and personalities continue in the same direction. With that assumption, on their worst day, which of these two men would you rather have as President of the United States?

Even if he was demented, I would rather have Biden than Trump as President of the United States. Dementia brings out the worst in people's character. They become 10 times worse. If Biden really were to mentally decline — and I'm not saying he has or will or is — but he's basically a benign person with good judgment. Biden cares about his fellow human beings. Biden is patriotic, and he actually believes in defending the Constitution and the United States of America. So even if Biden were to become diminished in his cognitive abilities, he's still not going to do something evil or crazy. He just might need more help. By comparison, Donald Trump unleashed would be like Satan unbound.

about Trump and the threat of MAGA's return

Alito’s cries of religious persecution are a chilling preview of Supreme Court in another Trump term

On Tuesday, Justice Samuel Alito gave another startling indication of how troubled he is by recent changes in American society and law. In an unusual “statement” about a case from Missouri, the justice was clear that, in his view, those changes have advanced an egalitarian and secular agenda at the expense of religious beliefs and practices.

The same day that Alito made his statement, Politico broke a story about what it called “an influential think tank close to Donald Trump” that is “developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power.” Politico suggested that “Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life.”

As the country has become less religious and more diverse, those advancing a Christian nationalist agenda think that “Christians are under assault” and hope to use political and legal means to turn the tide.

Enter Justice Alito. The statement he made this week offers a preview of what a Christian nationalist agenda might look like.

As the New York Times explains, Alito wrote to explain why the Supreme Court had rejected a request to hear a Missouri case about people who were not allowed to sit on a jury “after voicing religious objections to gay relationships.” Alito used the case to offer wide ranging comments about what he characterized as mistreatment of people who adhere to “traditional religious beliefs.”

The Missouri case involved jury selection in a suit brought by Jean Finney, a lesbian, who sued her employer, Missouri’s Department of Corrections, alleging employment discrimination. As the Times reports, Finney “claimed that after beginning a same-sex relationship with a co-worker’s former spouse, that co-worker made Ms. Finney’s job intolerable.”The colleague “spread rumors about her, sent demeaning messages and withheld information she needed to complete her work duties…. Ms. Finney sued the Department of Corrections, accusing the department of being responsible for the co-worker’s actions.”

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

At the start of the jury selection process, Finney’s lawyer asked all prospective jurors whether they “went to a conservative Christian church” and were taught that “people who are homosexual shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else because what they did was a sin.” Several potential jurors answered the question in the affirmative.

Finney’s lawyer then questioned each of them individually after which he moved to strike three people who explained their belief that the Bible condemns homosexuality and brands it a “sin.”

In the Christian nationalist state Alito and Trump want to fashion, the question of decisions about the rights of gays and lesbians would be left to people whose religions teach that “homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else.”

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the question Finney’s lawyer asked. It was a pretty standard effort to identify people whose views might predispose them against their client’s contentions.

Indeed, a decade ago, a Florida court observed that lawyers have a duty during jury selection to help “ensure that our jury panels are comprised of only fair and impartial members.” Because public opinion research has repeatedly “shown that religious persons report more prejudice against homosexuality when compared to their non-religious counterparts,” it certainly seems reasonable that Finney’s lawyer would want to discharge that duty by asking about religiously-based views about homosexuality.

Missouri trial judge Kate Schaefer agreed with Finney’s lawyer that “there’s no way somebody who looks at a gay person and says… You are a sinner… Could ever fairly consider case involving a lesbian plaintiff.” The trial judge excused the three potential jurors, explaining that she wanted to “err on the side of caution.”

The Missouri Court of Appeals agreed with the trial judge. As Alito says, that court affirmed the jurors’ dismissal because “it reasoned that the jurors belief that Finney’s conduct was sinful (meaning immoral and wrong) provided a sustainable ground for concluding that they could not impartially and fairly decide her claim that she was unlawfully harassed due to her homosexuality.” The appellate court found that the elimination of the prospective jurors was “based on their views on homosexuality – which the court called ‘a central issue in the case’ – and not because they were Christians.”

But Alito saw things differently.

In his view, what the lower courts did was just the latest example of our political and legal institutions sending a message that “Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.”

Alito insisted that the jurors were excluded merely because of their religion. As he sees it, religious freedom does not end at the church door. Any American should be free to exercise their religious beliefs anywhere and everywhere, including into a jury room.

Alito traced what he characterized as growing prejudice against religion in cases involving the rights of gays and lesbians to the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges, the case disallowing state and federal bans on same-sex marriage. He argued that that case had tilted the playing field and given permission for differential treatment “predicated on religious status or religious belief.”

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

Alito resisted the kind of careful balancing of interests done by the trial and appellate court in Missouri. He warned that religious discrimination of the kind he saw in the Finney case “may spread and may be a foretaste of things to come.”

Tuesday’s statement was not the first time that Alito has defended an extreme view of religious freedom against threats posed by secularism and the commitment to equal treatment under the law.

To take just one example, in a 2020 speech to the Federalist Society, Alito lamented that American society is no longer “inclusive enough to tolerate those with unpopular religious beliefs” and that many people saw any expression of sincere religious convictions just “an excuse for bigotry.”

“Religious liberty,” he complained, “is fast becoming a disfavored right.”

This classic culture war move resonates with the views of many of former President Trump’s most avid supporters. It fits with Trump’s frequent charges on the campaign trail that “Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted and government has been weaponized against religion like never before.”

Trump has promised that “Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that’s fair and equitable. Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.”

Included in this Trumpian effort would be the kind of “bias” that Alito insists was at work in the Finney case. In the Christian nationalist state Alito and Trump want to fashion, the question of decisions about the rights of gays and lesbians would be left to people whose religions teach that “homosexuals shouldn’t have the same rights as everyone else.”

This includes not only whether they should be protected from workplace harassment and whether, as Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes, religious people should “sit in judgment of a person whose very identity they view as sinful,” but also and most importantly whether gays and lesbians should retain the right to marry members of the same sex. Such a Supreme Court under a second Trump term should serve as a terrifying prospect.

about the Trumpian effort to usher in an American theocracy

Major COVID vaccine study finds heart risks are rare — and the real threat is being unvaccinated

Even while the COVID-19 vaccines have been hailed as one of the greatest achievements in modern science, they have been swirled in misinformation perpetuated by anti-vaccine figures and organizations who question their efficacy and robust safety record. The shots have even been wrongly blamed for high-profile health events, like when LeBron "Bronny" James Jr. suffered a cardiac arrest during practice. While research has shown that a COVID-19 infection is linked to an increased risk in myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle, how — and if — that translates to causation from vaccines has been widely taken out of context.

But now, a new study, published in the journal Vaccine, examined the potential health effects of the coronavirus vaccines. In its international attempt to separate fact from fiction, scientists have found that there are some links between the vaccines and adverse health effects to be aware of — but more research is needed to land on any definitive conclusions.

Heart problems from vaccines are extremely rare. Heart problems from COVID itself are not

“What we wanted to do was to see if there was any signal to suggest that COVID vaccines might be associated with an increased risk of certain medical events occurring,” Helen Petousis-Harris, a co-author of the study and co-director of the Global Vaccine Data Network, told Salon. “So what we did was we compared what we would normally expect to see — because these events occur all the time — what would you normally expect to see, and what are we actually seeing.”

Misrepresenting this study doesn’t tell the whole story about weighing the risk between being unvaccinated and getting infected with COVID-19.

The study included 99 million people across eight countries and found that the first, second and third doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines were linked to rare cases of myocarditis. Specifically, people who received a second dose of Moderna vaccine were 6.1 times more likely to have myocarditis. The condition also developed among people who received the Pfizer vaccine while researchers identified that pericarditis had a 6.9-fold increased risk for those who received a third dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

There was also a 2.5-times increased risk of developing the rare autoimmune disorder called Guillain-Barré syndrome linked to those who received AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Separate research has found that COVID itself can cause this syndrome at a rate far higher than vaccines.

Petousis-Harris told Salon in general that the researchers weren’t surprised with the findings, in part because previous research had already pointed to the rare risk associated with vaccination and conditions like myocarditis and pericarditis. But they did pick up something that hadn’t been discussed before: a link between AstraZeneca's viral-vector vaccine and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare condition that causes inflammation and swelling in the brain and spinal cord.

“And what that enabled was to take the next step, to a different kind of study, to really ask the question: Is this a problem?” she said. “Our colleagues in Australia performed a study in 6 million people, which is in the same issue, to look at that, and found that essentially after the viral-vector vaccines, the risk is about less than one extra case per million doses. So very very rare.”

Notably, the risk was not observed in the mRNA vaccine design.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes.

As Salon has previously reported, COVID-19 vaccines changed the course of the pandemic. The mRNA technology, which was novel at the time, allowed for an effective vaccine to be developed in record time. Yet what the scientific community saw as a historic moment for biotechnology turned into a polarizing debate among American lawmakers who fell for conspiracy theories and misinformation surrounding the vaccines — marking a pivotal turning point for the anti-vaccine movement. Typically, misinformation about vaccines doesn't appear out of nowhere. There is usually a kernel of truth to it, and the misinformation persists because it lacks context.

Unsurprisingly, this study is already being used to justify long-held concerns about the vaccines. But experts say that doesn’t come as a shock and that misrepresenting this study doesn’t tell the whole story about weighing the risk between being unvaccinated and getting infected with COVID-19, and getting vaccinated against COVID-19. For example, previous research has found that the risk of myocarditis is seven times higher from getting a coronavirus infection than getting vaccinated.

Glen Pyle, a molecular cardiologist who investigates cardiac injury associated with COVID-19, told Salon via email the most recent study is “a great example of the continuous safety monitoring that vaccines are subjected to, and it confirms much of the safety work already done.”

“For example, with adverse events like myocarditis it shows that these events are very rare,” he said. “And when we stack these rare risks up against the overwhelming cardiovascular benefits of vaccination, the case for vaccination becomes clear.”

Previous research has found that the risk of myocarditis is seven times higher from getting a coronavirus infection than getting vaccinated.

Pyle added that this study highlights the need for public health experts to communicate the risks of vaccination and how common they are in the right context.

“For example, myocarditis is a very rare complication that increases primarily in younger males,” he said. “On the other hand, cardiac arrhythmias are far more common and they increase significantly with infection, but not vaccination — in fact, vaccination decreases these risks.”

He added there are “small but real increases in rare risks after vaccination, compared to large increases in very common risks with COVID-19.”

This strengthens the case for vaccination, and why cardiovascular societies throughout the world recommend vaccination, especially for people with cardiovascular conditions. Petousis-Harris said it’s hard when a study like this is published because “risk communication” is a complex science on its own.

“You have lots of ways you need to communicate this, and I think it's vital to be open and transparent with people, but you also have to work hard at how you are able to present to them,” she said. “I think it's important to empower our people who are health professionals and vaccinators to be able to confidently have those conversations with people and have the tools that they need to help show people what the risks look like.”

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

She emphasized that any pharmaceutical has risk of side effects.

“Probably vaccines are the safest of all pharmaceuticals by a longshot,” Petousis-Harris said. “One of the challenges is actually expressing how safe they really are. And another challenge is that we have health events happen by chance all the time, and they may or may not be related to a vaccine.”

She added that what has become clear is that it’s been difficult for people to grasp this nuance when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines.

“People are really interpreting anything bad that happens after the vaccine has therefore been caused by the vaccine,” Petousis-Harris said. Notably, the study only examines links and associations — potential “safety signals,” it’s not definitively declaring a cause. “Ultimately, if the issue is transparency, this is transparent.”

about COVID-19

The federal “abortion ban” team Trump doesn’t want you to know about

The architect of a Texas law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties supposedly wants former President Donald Trump and his allies to shut up about abortion until after the November presidential election — when right-wingers hope to implement "legally sophisticated" and unpopular forced-pregnancy policies.

After reporting on Friday that Trump "likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban" with exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person, The New York Times revealed on Saturday that lawyers and strategists in his "orbit" are crafting more complex plans.

"We don't need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books," attorney Jonathan Mitchell told the Times, referring to a dormant 1873 law heralded by an "anti-vice" crusader that criminalized the shipping of various "obscene" materials, including abortifacients. "There's a smorgasbord of options."

"I hope he doesn't know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don't want him to shoot off his mouth," the lawyer added of Trump. "I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election."

Trump and his allies will do whatever it takes to ban abortion and restrict reproductive rights nationwide. In a second term, they want to circumvent Congress and restrict abortion rights using an arcane law from 1873.https://t.co/uzocMUidez pic.twitter.com/doGg2zFhUv

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) February 20, 2024

The architect of a Texas law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties supposedly wants former President Donald Trump and his allies to shut up about abortion until after the November presidential election—when right-wingers hope to implement "legally sophisticated" and unpopular forced-pregnancy policies.

After reporting on Friday that Trump "likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban" with exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person, The New York Timesrevealed on Saturday that lawyers and strategists in his "orbit" are crafting more complex plans.

"We don't need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books," attorney Jonathan Mitchell told the Times, referring to a dormant 1873 law heralded by an "anti-vice" crusader that criminalized the shipping of various "obscene" materials, including abortifacients. "There's a smorgasbord of options."

Mitchell appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month to argue against an effort to remove Trump from Colorado's Republican primary ballot. He previously worked on the Texas vigilante law designed to circumvent Roe v. Wade, the historic abortion rights ruling that the justices—including three Trump appointees—overturned with their June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Calling the existence of the law and its implications "perhaps the worst-kept secret of the post-Dobbs era," The New Republic's Melissa Gira Grant detailed recent coverage of the Comstock Act on Tuesday:

In recent months, numerous opinion pieces from leading experts on abortion, history, and the law, such as law professors David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché, and Mary Ziegler, have warned of these specific plans. There were several at CNN and in the Times itself, and in Teen Vogue and The Atlantic, among others. They follow a trickle of reporting stretching back to the Dobbs decision outlining what legal threats lay on the other side of Roe. Reporters in Texas and reproductive rights reporters have been at the forefront of laying out the Comstock plan and its risks. "I knew about Comstock before Dobbs, but I wanted to say nothing about it," Jonathan Mitchell told Amy Littlefield at The Nation, in a story published in April 2023.

That same month, as a legal challenge to medication abortion amped up the Comstock threat, Susan Rinkunas at Jezebelwarned, "Congress Needs to Repeal This Zombie 1873 Abortion Ban Before It Blows Up in Our Faces." Today we are no closer to that possibility, even as someone like Mitchell has become more explicit. The only thing he may be nervous about is more people paying attention. The idea that Trump can be kept in the dark until after the election is not unbelievable, but more likely is that Mitchell is hoping to make the Comstock plan sound that much more far-fetched with his "Oh no, please don't put this in the paper" feint this week.

Noting Mitchell's new comments in a piece for Jezebel on Monday, Rinkunas reiterated to Democrats on Capitol Hill that "now would be a great time for you to repeal this zombie ban once and for all."

Since Dobbs, Democratic governors and legislators have worked to protect abortion rights for their constituents and "healthcare refugees" from states where GOP officials have ramped up fights for forced-pregnancy laws. Many of the bans or restrictions recently approved in over 20 states are being challenged in courts that GOP governors and Trump pushed to the right.

At the national level, GOP attorneys and strategists now propose bypassing Congress and "leveraging the regulatory powers of federal institutions," including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to enact anti-abortion policies that "could be stopped only by courts that the first Trump administration had already stacked with conservative judges," according to the Times.

"Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the FDA, and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood," the newspaper noted. "Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation's largest provider of women's healthcare, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era."

Planned Parenthood and other groups and experts who support abortion rights have been strongly advocating for Democratic President Joe Biden's reelection — and renewed their warnings about Trump's return to the White House in response to the Times reporting.

The stakes in November are enormous: Trump's allies "are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban or the laws enacted in conservative states across the country." https://t.co/431NKXGiXY

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) February 18, 2024

Quoting from the article, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California president and CEO Jodi Hicks said on social media Saturday: "They 'are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban…' The only thing stopping them from taking your freedom is your VOTE."

Planned Parenthood Texas Votes senior adviser Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator, warned that "as bad as things are now, believe me when I say they'll get much, much worse if we don't do everything we can to win in November—at every level on the ballot."

Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju told the Times that Trump is "trying to masquerade in public as a moderate," but if the likely Republican nominee is elected in November, "he's going to do whatever Jonathan Mitchell wants."

Praising the paper's "deep dive" on social media, Timmaraju added that "maybe the most chilling is how confident they are that he can do the most damage in a second term, without Congress, and with judges he appointed."

. @mintimm outlines the stakes of reproductive rights in 2024:

Even if you're in a blue state, you're not safe from Donald Trump's abortion bans. This election will be Donald Trump v. Joe Biden. We have to re-elect Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/jlfCnZvJxw

— Julia Hamelburg (@juliahamelburg) February 19, 2024

Biden has come under fire for recent remarks on abortion as well as his administration's support for Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, which has created a maternal healthcare crisis and outraged some "current Planned Parenthood employees, legal experts, nurse midwives, abortion fund workers, and clinic staffers" interviewed by HuffPost.

Still, surely aware of polling that shows abortion bans are deeply unpopular with the American public, the Biden campaign has highlighted his support for reproductive rights on the campaign trail—including with statements from the president and abortion rights advocates about the Times articles and a new Politico piece on Trump and Christian nationalism.

While the ACLU does not endorse candidates, the group's chief advocacy and political officer, Deirdre Schifeling, stressed in a statement that Trump and "anti-abortion extremists at all levels will stop at nothing until our rights are stripped away."

"The majority of Americans strongly support abortion rights. We must elect leaders this year who reflect our values and push to restore abortion access in every state across the country," she added. "The only way we can stop extreme bans is to elect a president, and a House and Senate, that will pass federal legislation to protect abortion rights and reproductive freedom —voters deserve nothing less."

Odysseus becomes first U.S. spacecraft to land on the Moon since the ’70s

On July 20, 1969, American astronaut Neil Armstrong changed history when he became the first human to set foot on the Moon. The Apollo 11 explorer famously proclaimed, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Sadly, Armstrong's leap didn't last for long. Three years later, the Apollo 17 mission became the last American expedition — manned or unmanned — from Earth to the Moon. At least, that was the last mission until Thursday, when the aptly-named Odysseus lunar lander changed the world forever.

Touching down on lunar soil at 6:23 PM ET, the Odysseus lunar lander is also historically significant because it was not primarily funded by American taxpayers. The so-called IM-1 lander was instead designed by a private company known as Intuitive Machines, a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Houston. This is similar to how a Pittsburgh-based company called Astrobiotic built the Peregrine lander with the hope of it landing on the Moon in January. That mission ended in failure due to a series of technical malfunctions.

In addition to the United States, the only other countries to ever put landers on the Moon are the Soviet Union (which beat America to the punch by landing Luna 9 in 1966), China, India and Japan. The latter two both made moon landings within the last year. Each of those missions were unmanned, however, as only the United States has successfully landed humans on the Moon. While the achievement of Odysseus mission does not equal that of the Apollo 11 mission, it does raise hopes that humanity may once again make a leap back into outer space. For better or worse, it will likely be heavily commercialized.

“Next it’ll be birth control”: Hillary Clinton warns of what Alabama’s IVF ruling could impact

Responding to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, Hillary Clinton is warning of what "extreme right" lawmakers will clamp down on next.

In a post to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, the former first lady and secretary of state shared an article on the subject from the feminist website Jezebel, along with her prediction of what women can expect to fear down the line, writing, "They came for abortion first. Now it’s IVF and next it’ll be birth control. The extreme right won’t stop trying to exert government control over our most sacred personal decisions until we codify reproductive freedom as a human right."

In the article that Clinton shared, journalist Kylie Cheung highlights that "the decision to suspend IVF services offers an ominous glimpse at the impacts that legal recognition of fetal and embryonic personhood will have on health care," and in a statement echoing the writer's views, as well as Clinton's, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra worries of the “heart-wrenching consequences for women & their families.”

“I’ve long made clear that overturning Roe was just the beginning of the attacks on women’s health, privacy, & autonomy — and that’s exactly what we continue to see,” Becerra said.

Sorry, Nic Pizzolatto – more “True Detective” from Issa López is coming

HBO's cult crime favorite "True Detective" has been renewed for a fifth season, with Issa López to return as the showrunner under a new overall deal. López helmed the fourth season, "True Detective: Night Country," ushering the series into its most-watched installment. Variety reported that the anthology's season finale saw more than 3.2 million viewers across HBO and Max, demonstrating a nearly 60% increase in viewership since the season premiere in January.

"Night Country" saw Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in the lead detective roles, a deviation from the series' first three seasons that featured male leads, and a focus on an indigenous Alaskan community. Series creator Nic Pizzolatto has been vocal about his disapproval of López's take on "True Detective," expressing negative sentiment in several Instagram replies and reposts, despite still reaping financial benefits from his continued executive producer credit. In response to Pizzolatto's criticisms, López graciously told Vulture, “I believe that every storyteller has a very specific, peculiar, and unique relation to the stories they create, and whatever his reactions are, he’s entitled to them. That’s his prerogative.”

Now, speaking about what is sure to amount to a hotly anticipated return, Variety reported López to have said, “From conception to release, ‘Night Country’ has been the most beautiful collaboration and adventure of my entire creative life. HBO trusted my vision all the way, and the idea of bringing to life a new incarnation of ‘True Detective’ with Casey, Francesca and the whole team is a dream come true. I can’t wait to go again.” Pizzolatto has not commented on the news but posted on Instagram after the latest finale to offer a dedicated space for his fans and detractors to vent in the comments.

“Issa López is that one-of-a-kind, rare talent that speaks directly to HBO’s creative spirit,” added Francesca Orsi, executive vice president of HBO Programming and head of HBO drama series and films, per Variety. “She helmed ‘True Detective: Night Country’ from start to finish, never once faltering from her own commendable vision, and inspiring us with her resilience both on the page and behind the camera. Alongside Jodie and Kali’s impeccable performances, she’s made this installation of the franchise a massive success, we are so lucky to have her as part of our family.”

Wendy Williams diagnosed with aphasia and dementia

Wendy Williams has been diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia (FTD,) per a press release statement from the former talk show host's team. “Over the past few years, questions have been raised at times about Wendy’s ability to process information and many have speculated about Wendy’s condition, particularly when she began to lose words, act erratically at times, and have difficulty understanding financial transactions,” the press release reads. “The decision to share this news was difficult and made after careful consideration, not only to advocate for understanding and compassion for Wendy, but to raise awareness about aphasia and frontotemporal dementia and support the thousands of others facing similar circumstances . . . Unfortunately, many individuals diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia face stigma and misunderstanding, particularly when they begin to exhibit behavioral changes but have not yet received a diagnosis.

“Wendy is still able to do many things for herself,” Williams' team continued. “Most importantly she maintains her trademark sense of humor and is receiving the care she requires to make sure she is protected and that her needs are addressed. She is appreciative of the many kind thoughts and good wishes being sent her way.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, aphasia makes communication difficult and can affect a person's speech, writing ability, and understanding of spoken and written language. In March of 2022, Bruce Willis announced he would be stepping away from acting indefinitely after being diagnosed with the condition. FTD meanwhile creates atrophy of the frontal and temporal brain lobes, which can lead to personality changes, social impulsivity, and emotional changes. It is not the same as Alzheimer's disease or a mental health condition, Mayo Clinic added.

Williams is known for hosting "The Wendy Williams Show" from 2008 to 2021, ultimately leaving her show for numerous health concerns, including the autoimmune condition Grave's disease. The news of her dementia diagnosis comes ahead of the release of a two-part documentary, "Where Is Wendy Williams?" that is slated to premiere on Lifetime.

We looked at 700 plant-based foods to see how healthy they really are. Here’s what we found

If you're thinking about buying plant-based foods, a trip to the supermarket can leave you bewildered.

There are plant-based burgers, sausages and mince. The fridges are loaded with non-dairy milk, cheese and yoghurt. Then there are the tins of beans and packets of tofu.

But how much is actually healthy?

Our nutritional audit of more than 700 plant-based foods for sale in Australian supermarkets has just been published. We found some products are so high in salt or saturated fat, we'd struggle to call them "healthy".

We took (several) trips to the supermarket

In 2022, we visited two of each of four major supermarket retailers across Melbourne to collect information on the available range of plant-based alternatives to meat and dairy products.

We took pictures of the products and their nutrition labels.

We then analyzed the nutrition information on the packaging of more than 700 of these products. This included 236 meat substitutes, 169 legumes and pulses, 50 baked beans, 157 dairy milk substitutes, 52 cheese substitutes and 40 non-dairy yoghurts.

Plant-based meats were surprisingly salty

We found a wide range of plant-based meats for sale. So, it's not surprising we found large variations in their nutrition content.

Sodium, found in added salt and which contributes to high blood pressure, was our greatest concern.

The sodium content varied from 1 milligram per 100 grams in products such as tofu, to 2,000mg per 100g in items such as plant-based mince products.

This means we could eat our entire daily recommended sodium intake in just one bowl of plant-based mince.

An audit of 66 plant-based meat products in Australian supermarkets conducted in 2014 found sodium ranged from 316mg in legume-based products to 640mg in tofu products, per 100g. In a 2019 audit of 137 products, the range was up to 1,200mg per 100g.

In other words, the results of our audit seems to show a consistent trend of plant-based meats getting saltier.

What about plant-based milks?

Some 70% of the plant-based milks we audited were fortified with calcium, a nutrient important for bone health.

This is good news as a 2019-2020 audit of 115 plant-based milks from Melbourne and Sydney found only 43% of plant-based milks were fortified with calcium.

Of the fortified milks in our audit, almost three-quarters (73%) contained the recommended amount of calcium – at least 100mg per 100mL.

We also looked at the saturated fat content of plant-based milks.

Coconut-based milks had on average up to six times higher saturated fat content than almond, oat or soy milks.

Previous audits also found coconut-based milks were much higher in saturated fat than all other categories of milks.

A first look at cheese and yoghurt alternatives

Our audit is the first study to identify the range of cheese and yoghurt alternatives available in Australian supermarkets.

Calcium was only labelled on a third of plant-based yoghurts, and only 20% of supermarket options met the recommended 100mg of calcium per 100g.

For plant-based cheeses, most (92%) were not fortified with calcium. Their sodium content varied from 390mg to 1,400mg per 100g, and saturated fat ranged from 0g to 28g per 100g.

So, what should we consider when shopping?

As a general principle, try to choose whole plant foods, such as unprocessed legumes, beans or tofu. These foods are packed with vitamins and minerals. They're also high in dietary fibre, which is good for your gut health and keeps you fuller for longer.

If opting for a processed plant-based food, here are five tips for choosing a healthier option.

1. Watch the sodium

Plant-based meat alternatives can be high in sodium, so look for products that have around 150-250mg sodium per 100g.

2. Pick canned beans and legumes

Canned chickpeas, lentils and beans can be healthy and low-cost additions to many meals. Where you can, choose canned varieties with no added salt, especially when buying baked beans.

3. Add herbs and spices to your tofu

Tofu can be a great alternative to meat. Check the label and pick the option with the highest calcium content. We found flavoured tofu was higher in salt and sugar content than minimally processed tofu. So it's best to pick an unflavoured option and add your own flavours with spices and herbs.

4. Check the calcium

When choosing a non-dairy alternative to milk, such as those made from soy, oat, or rice, check it is fortified with calcium. A good alternative to traditional dairy will have at least 100mg of calcium per 100g.

5. Watch for saturated fat

If looking for a lower saturated fat option, almond, soy, rice and oat varieties of milk and yoghurt alternatives have much lower saturated fat content than coconut options. Pick those with less than 3g per 100g.

Laura Marchese, PhD Student at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University and Katherine Livingstone, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University

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

Judge in Trump’s NY fraud case denies request for delay in payout

On Wednesday, attorneys for Donald Trump requested a 30-day postponement of the $355 million fine handed down in last week's conclusion of the Trump family's NY fraud trial and, one day later, their request was firmly shot down.

In an emailed response, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron delivered what Law and Crime refers to as a resounding “No,” explaining to Trump's defense team that they "have failed to explain, much less justify, any basis for a stay," adding that he plans to sign a judgment proposed by the state that finalizes his ruling.

A quick visit to Truth Social — Trump's preferred sounding board for firing back at decisions against his wishes such as this one — reveals no direct statement other than a share of a Fox News article with his added quote, “New York Resident Greg Gutfeld Threatens to Move to Florida Over Trump Being Fined for Fraud." Will have to check back later for what is sure to follow.

In the request for the stay, Trump defense attorney Clifford Robert charged New York Attorney General Letitia James with an "unseemly rush to memorialize" the judgement in a manner he argues violates "all accepted practice in New York state court." Engoron, as we now know, obviously disagrees.

Christian nationalist insiders are prepping for Trump’s “dystopian” return

Although former President Donald Trump is not personally religious, his close ties to Christian nationalists — whom he has relied on to gather support for his presidential campaigns — could place the United States on a path to embracing numerous far-right policies, according to documents penned by a leading right-wing think tank.

Politico, which obtained the documents, reported that staffers at the Center for Renewing America (CRA) included "Christian nationalism"—the promotion of the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian country and should emphasize "Christian values" in its policies—on a list of priorities for a second Trump term.

CRA's president is Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, who Politico reported believes his continued close ties to the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee "will elevate Christian nationalism as a focal point in a second Trump term." The two speak at least once a month, the outlet reported.

Vought has been frequently named as a potential White House chief of staff should Trump win a second term, which could position him to carry out other proposals in the CRA document, including:

Invoking the Insurrection Act as soon as Trump takes office, allowing him to deploy the military to stop protests;
Impounding federal funds, or refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress, as former President Richard Nixon did to block agencies from taking on projects he opposed before Congress banned the practice; and
Creating other new ways to expand Trump's presidential power.

Politico reported on the plans to "elevate Christian nationalism" as Trump prepares to address the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Association in Nashville on Thursday — the world's largest association of Christian broadcasters.

Along with Vought, Politico reported that former Trump administration official William Wolfe is likely to significantly influence the White House should Trump win the election. A close associate of Vought's, Wolfe served as deputy assistant secretary of defense and director of legislative affairs at the State Department under Trump.

As recently as December, Wolfe called for a Christian nationalist government in which sex education in schools would be abolished and gestational surrogacy and no-fault divorce would be banned.

Vought is also an adviser to Project 2025, led by the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation. The group aims to reshape the government by ousting federal employees who stand in the way of Trump's agenda — deploying "a wrecking ball for the administrative state," said Vought told The Associated Press last year.

The project goes hand-in-hand with the CRA's Christian nationalist agenda, Politico reported, with plans to repeal policies that "support LGBTQ+ rights, subsidize 'single-motherhood,' and penalize marriage … because subjective notions of 'gender identity' threaten 'Americans' fundamental liberties.'"

Amongst some of the proposals for a second Trump Admin:

– end surrogacy
– end no fault divorce
– invoke the insurrection act to stop protests
– end sex education in schools
– stop policies that “subsidize single motherhood” https://t.co/9F0H7O4EFG pic.twitter.com/C11Jh9zIpq

— McKenzie Wilson (@McKenzieAWilson) February 20, 2024

Supporters of Project 2025 also aim to increase surveillance of abortion and maternal mortality reporting, require the Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of drugs used for medication abortions, and protect employers who refuse to include contraceptive coverage in insurance plans.

Former New York state Sen. Anna Kaplan, a Democrat, said the proposals of Project 2025 and the CRA show that "reproductive rights in all 50 states are on the ballot in 2024."

Plans for a second Trump Administration include revocation of FDA approval of “chemical abortion drugs,” and defunding reproductive health care for low-income women.

Reproductive rights in all 50 states are on the ballot in 2024!https://t.co/DbAzIcYOrl

— Anna M. Kaplan (@AnnaMKaplan) February 20, 2024

The Biden campaign said the new reporting laid bare "the dystopian reality if Trump is reelected: an America governed by religious extremism where Americans have fewer rights."

The proposals of Trump's allies are "straight out of 'The Handmaid's Tale,'" said Lauren Hitt, senior spokesperson for President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. "Nationwide abortion bans, attacks on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on contraception— this is the horrifying reality being openly discussed by Team Trump and the likely architects of his second term agenda."

"Every day Donald Trump openly supports an agenda of restricting Americans' freedoms, dividing our country, and attacking our rights," said Hitt. "That's what he will do as president. It's not who we are as Americans."

Tired of salsa and hummus? Cowboy “caviar” is the ideal party food that comes together in no time

Some call it Texas Caviar — or Southern or Alabama or “L.A.” (lower Alabama) Caviar — but whatever the name, this marinated black eyed pea dish, served with sturdy tortilla chips, disappears faster than you can make it.

Trust me when I say, you should double, triple or even quadruple the recipe for even the smallest crowd because, like deviled eggs or anything with shrimp, folks cannot get enough of it.

This no-cook smoked almond dip is a rich, flavorful starter that's a definite crowd-pleaser

This "caviar" is more satisfying than salsa and much more interesting than hummus. It is endlessly variable, colorful and a great dip for any occasion. It is sweet and tangy and even works beautifully as a side. I am partial to this decades-old recipe of my sister’s, but the sky is the limit as to how you can tweak it to make it your own.

Although not common and definitely not my style, some people add sour cream to their Cowboy Caviar to make it a dippier-dip. Others add corn, black beans, hot peppers or halved cherry tomatoes. Preference dictates how sweet, salty or spicy you choose to go, and you can even alter this recipe to complement your best Mexican spread by including black beans and adding chopped poblano or jalapeño peppers, avocado and fresh cilantro. I like most every variation I have tried, but, like my sister, this is the one I go back to every time I make it myself.

You will notice this recipe calls for bottled Italian dressing, and with so many good ones available, you cannot go wrong — just use your favorite. But if you prefer to make your own, as I do, a basic vinaigrette is all that is required. I suggest using less oil than you might to dress a salad and I prefer red wine vinegar over balsamic. Check out the Cook’s Notes section for more specifics and options, but here again, feel free to toss together your favorite blend and pour it over. You are going to love Cowboy Caviar.

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

Black eyed peas are actually a legume — so they are a bean, not a pea. Originally from West Africa, they grow well in our warm climate, but canned is the way to go for this easy dish.

In terms of nutrition, there are few chip-and-dip combinations you can be as proud of as this one. For every cup of black eyed peas (and you will consume far more than one cup of this—I know from experience), you get over five grams of protein, and a quarter of their carbohydrate content is fiber! In that same cup, you get a huge hit towards your recommended daily amount of folate, vitamin A, manganese, vitamin K, copper, magnesium, calcium, zinc and iron.

By the time you add in all the vitamin C from the peppers, the good stuff in the onions and garlic, and swirl in some quality, polyphenol-rich olive oil, you have a dip that could just about double as a meal. And the vegetarians in your life will be extra delighted to have this delicious meat-free, dairy-free offering at your next get together.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Cowboy Caviar

Yields

4 cups

Prep Time

10 minutes

Refrigeration Time

Overnight

Ingredients

1 can black eyed peas, drained & rinsed (about 2 cups)

1 1/2 cups mixed red, green & yellow bell peppers, chopped small

1 small (or 1/2 of a medium to large) purple onion or Vidalia (sweet) onion, chopped small

3 green onions, chopped—white and green parts

1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1 to 2 ounce jar pimentos, drained and chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

8 ounces of your favorite Italian dressing

Salt & pepper, if desired

The most common additional/optional ingredients are as follows: fresh jalapeno or poblano, deseeded and chopped; and/or 1 tablespoon diced green chilis

Directions

Combine all, stir gently and refrigerate overnight before serving.
Serve with sturdy tortilla chips.

Cook's Notes

-Basic Vinaigrette (in lieu of bottled Italian dressing) for Cowboy Caviar:

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 to 1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 clove minced garlic

Chopped fresh parsley

Black pepper, if desired (This would be for one can (about 2 cups) of black eyed peas.)

Changing it up:

-Some like to add a little mustard to their vinaigrettes and adjust the sugar, salt and vinegar to accommodate.

-Others prefer balsamic vinegar for added depth and sweetness.

-I predict you will enjoy the journey if you choose to play around with the basic ingredients to find your favorite combinations.

about this topic