Spring Offer: Get 1 Year, Save 58%

Selena Gomez to play Linda Ronstadt in biopic of groundbreaking singer

Pop singer and actress Selena Gomez has been cast as singer Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic. The production team for the film, which is currently in pre-production, will be comprised of James Keach (who nabbed an Oscar for his efforts on the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line") and Ronstadt's manager, John Boylan. Keach also produced the 2019 documentary "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice."

Ronstadt shot to meteoric fame in the U.S. during the 1970s and '80s, embracing a sound that synthesized rock music with folk, country and Latin sounds. As The Guardian noted, Rondstadt was an anomaly of her time: the music industry was largely dominated by male rockstars. The songstress ultimately had six back-to-back platinum albums, 11 Grammys, as well as numerous chart-topping single hits. In 2011, Ronstadt retired from singing after being diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy. 

Gomez, like Ronstadt, is of Mexican descent. The "Only Murders In the Building" star is currently working on her fourth studio album. She teased her role in the biopic on Tuesday when she posted an image of Ronstadt's 2013 memoir, "Simple Dreams," to her Instagram Story. Ronstadt confirmed the casting when she reposted Variety's article about the news to her Instagram Story, writing, "It all started with a simple dream." Ronstadt subsequently reposted similar articles written by Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times. Further information about casting and a release date for the biopic is forthcoming. 

Secret recording: NRA treasurer plotted to conceal Wayne LaPierre’s extravagant expenses

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

At a meeting in June 2009, the treasurer of the National Rifle Association worked out a plan to conceal luxury expenses involving its chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, according to audio of the meeting obtained by The Trace and ProPublica. The recording was unknown to New York’s attorney general, who is pursuing the NRA and LaPierre over a range of alleged financial misdeeds. It shows, in real time, the NRA’s treasurer enlisting the group’s longtime public relations firm to obfuscate the extravagant costs.

Captured on tape is talk of LaPierre’s desire to avoid public disclosure of his use of private jets as well as concern about persistent spending at the Beverly Hills Hotel by a PR executive and close LaPierre adviser.

During the meeting, which took place in the Alexandria, Virginia, office of PR firm Ackerman McQueen, executives agreed that Ackerman would issue a Platinum American Express card to Tyler Schropp, the new head of the NRA’s nascent advancement division, which was responsible for bringing in high-dollar contributions from wealthy donors. Ackerman would then cover the card’s charges and bill them back to the NRA under nondescript invoices.

“It’s really the limo services and the hotels that I worry about,” William Winkler, Ackerman’s chief financial officer, said. “He’s going to need it for the hotels especially.”

The use of the Ackerman American Express card, according to a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ expert witness on nonprofits, skirted internal controls that existed to ensure proper disclosure and regulatory compliance and to prevent “fraud and abuse” at the nonprofit. As a result, outside of a tiny group of NRA insiders, everyone was in the dark about years of charges by Schropp — who is still the head of the nonprofit’s advancement division — for luxury accommodations, including regular sojourns to the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. The NRA, in response, said the report was “rife with inadmissible factual narratives, impermissible interpretations and inferences, and improper factual and legal conclusions.”

James’ investigation into the NRA began in 2019, after The Trace, in partnership with The New Yorker, and later with ProPublica, reported on internal accounting documents that indicated a culture of self-dealing at the gun-rights group. In 2020, James sued the NRA and LaPierre, who presided over the organization for three decades, over claims of using nonprofit resources for personal enrichment, luxury travel and bloated contracts for insiders, allegations that the parties deny. The attorney general is seeking financial restitution from the defendants and was until last week petitioning for LaPierre’s removal, which was preempted on Friday when LaPierre announced he would resign at the end of January.

The attorney general’s office was unaware of the audio until it was contacted by The Trace and ProPublica and did not respond to a request for comment.

Ackerman McQueen and Winkler declined to comment. None of the other individuals mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment. The gun-rights group’s attorney, William A. Brewer III, said in an email: “The tape has not been authenticated by the NRA but, if real, we are shocked by its content. The suggested contents would confirm what the NRA has said all along: there were certain ‘insiders’ and vendors who took advantage of the Association. If true, it is an example of a shadowy business arrangement — one that was not brought to the attention of the NRA board.”

In the recording, Woody Phillips, who was the NRA’s top financial official from 1993 to 2018 and is also a defendant in James’ suit, did not say why the unusual credit card arrangement was necessary. But at one point, he indicated that LaPierre — whose public persona was that of a populist firebrand — had concerns about the optics of using NRA funds for travel on a private jet.

“We just have to be careful because Wayne wants to get through this whole year saying he hasn’t used private aircraft,” Phillips said. In that year’s tax filings, he explained, nonprofits, for the first time, would be required to disclose whether they paid for chartered flights for any of the numerous executives and officials listed in the documents. LaPierre, Phillips explained, “just doesn’t want to be seen getting off the plane — anywhere.”

In the opening statement by Phillips’ attorney on Jan. 9, he said that the NRA’s political activities caused “real and serious” security concerns. To that end, his client always “acted in good faith,” he said, and the questionable arrangements Phillips helped devise were not due to “a desire for secrecy” or “to keep information from the NRA and its board. But for confidentiality.”

LaPierre’s attorney spoke of his client’s unflagging devotion to the NRA and dedication to his job. “Was his thinking always right?” he asked. “No. Is perfection a standard for leading a not-for-profit? No.”

James’ complaint states that LaPierre “spent millions of dollars of the NRA’s charitable assets for private plane trips for himself and his family.” In a 2021 deposition, LaPierre said that “NRA security has a policy against me flying commercial because of threats,” and that the requirement had been in place for a decade or more.

In 2009, the NRA did indeed check the box on its tax filing indicating it had used “first-class or chartered travel.” The NRA’s explanation, which the Internal Revenue Service requires nonprofits to provide, was that “charter travel was used on occasions involving multiple events when reduced airline schedules precluded other options.” The description became the NRA’s standard template going forward. Other nonprofits, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, disclose the names of executives who use the luxury service.

At the meeting, according to a source who asked not to be named for fear of professional retribution, Phillips, the NRA’s sole representative in attendance, was joined by Melanie Montgomery, an executive vice president at Ackerman McQueen, and Hillary Farrell, then the company’s chief operating officer. Winkler, from Ackerman, attended via videoconference.

The recording shows how the NRA used Ackerman, which devised the nonprofit’s most prominent messaging campaigns, as an extension of itself. The decadeslong relationship ended in acrimony and lawsuits. After evidence of the NRA’s self-dealing became public in 2019, the NRA and Ackerman accused each other of financial misconduct, with the gun-rights group claiming that the firm filed fraudulent invoices. In 2022, the two entities reached a settlement in which the NRA paid Ackerman $12 million.

In the recording of the 2009 meeting, Winkler said he was told that Phillips wanted to route Schropp’s pricey expenses through Ackerman McQueen, filing them as a “travel job,” which was billed to clients with an invoice that was devoid of detail.

“Well that’s easy,” Winkler announced. “As far as I’m concerned, we can give Tyler an Ackerman Amex. And do it that way.”

“Oh well that’s the way to do it then,” Montgomery replied.

“Yeah,” Phillips agreed. “That’s the easiest way to do it, and for the most part, it’s going to be stuff that Gayle books because it’s stuff with Wayne.” (Gayle Stanford was a consultant who handled LaPierre’s travel.)

“That aspect of it’s very easy,” Winkler said.

Phillips later said of Schropp, “Most of what he’ll do, he’ll do like he does here, where it’ll just be he’ll fill out an expense report for us, he’ll have cards for that too.”

Montgomery responded: “Woody just asked him, ‘Can you do some, you know, that goes through the NRA system, then just your high, well, the stuff you do with Wayne, do through Ackerman.’”

Before Schropp took over the NRA’s advancement division in 2009, he was a vice president at Ackerman, where he worked directly with LaPierre, who recruited him to the NRA. “We were great, great friends and spent a lot of time together,” Schropp later said in a deposition. “And I think we had a mutual respect for each other.”

At the meeting, there was some confusion about whether Schropp already had an Ackerman American Express card. Winkler settled the matter by calling a colleague.

“Does Tyler Schropp have an Amex?” Winkler asked. “Get him one.” He added that it should be a “Platinum.”

Schropp would use the card extensively in the years to come. The lawsuit alleges, “He routinely stayed in suites costing over $1,500 a night.” In addition to the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton, he was partial to the Beverly Hills Hotel and the St. Regis.

In a 2021 deposition, Schropp said that he had the card for “donor privacy reasons, and Wayne LaPierre privacy and security reasons.” Phillips has not addressed the matter in unsealed testimony, while LaPierre, for his part, said in a 2019 deposition, “I was aware that — from our treasurer’s office that the advancement expenses, some of them, were — were under Ackerman McQueen,” a practice that was stopped a decade later, when, he said, the NRA “self-corrected under New York state law.”

At another point during the 2009 meeting, Phillips brought up Tony Makris, an Ackerman executive who worked closely with LaPierre as an adviser. The two were good friends. Makris had served as the actor Charlton Heston’s personal and political adviser while Heston was president of the NRA in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

“In the case of Tony, now that he’s married, does anyone know what he’s doing about the Beverly Hills Hotel?” asked Phillips, who was looking for ways to save cash. “Because that would cut out a lot of this cost if he’s not doing that. I think without it being a special occasion, we’d have a hard time paying for that.”

Makris was responsible for recruiting conservative celebrities, like Tom Selleck, into the NRA’s fold.

Phillips then mentioned Rick Tedrick, the NRA’s managing director of finance, a job he still holds.

“And I know Rick’s going to be watching that,” Phillips continued, “not that he’d say anything or do anything.”

Winkler chimed in: “What you guys need to do is give me the guidance with Tony. Because you know what will happen. It will go full circle, right back to Wayne.”

Max’s heartfelt dramedy “Julia” has been canceled following a two-season run

Max is saying farewell to “Julia,” the feel-good dramedy about the life of legendary chef and television personality Julia Child. The announcement comes just a few weeks after the series wrapped up its second season on Dec. 21.

“We are so honored to have partnered with Chris Keyser, Daniel Goldfarb and their masterful creative team and dynamic cast, led by Sarah Lancashire, as they cooked up ‘Julia,’” a Max spokesperson told Variety in a statement. “Thanks to their beautiful work over two seasons of this heartful, sensual, and inspiring show, we can forever celebrate the incredible legacy of Julia Child.”

“Julia” followed the life of Julia Child in 1960s Cambridge, Massachusetts, amid the production of her esteemed television show “The French Chef.” The series originally debuted on Max in March 2022. Its second season premiered in November 2023. Both seasons consisted of eight episodes each. 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Max did not own the show and “instead paid a licensing fee to producers Lionsgate Television, which is in the midst of spinning off from premium cable network Starz.”

Alongside Lancashire — who played the series’ titular character — “Julia” starred Bebe Neuwirth, Fran Kranz, Fiona Glascott, Brittany Bradford and Robert Joy. The show earned favorable reviews from many critics. "Julia" is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 93% score among critics and a 91% rating among audience members.

Judge “gets under Trump’s skin” after dismissing “expert” testimony: report

The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's civil fraud trial seems to have had it with the former president's defense, interrupting Trump lawyer Chris Kise to correct some of his assertions during closing arguments Thursday. In one instance, while Kise argued that no rebuttal had been put forth to counter the expert testimony for Trump's defense, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron interjected to ask the attorney general's prosecutors if he has to accept "unrebutted" testimony, The Messenger's Adam Klasfeld reported.

After the state's lawyers replied that he did not, Engoron indicated he disagreed that the testimony is unrefuted, noting that, even if it were, he still maintained the authority to determine it isn't credible. The judge also cut the attorney off to dispute Kise's claim that Trump is an industry expert, according to CNN's Paula Reid. Trump, Kise asserted, has been part of the "fabric of commercial real estate in this state and around the world," Reid reported in a clip flagged by Raw Story. But Engoron stopped him to state that Trump hasn't been qualified as an expert. "When you bring in an expert, they have to be qualified," he said, according to Reid. 

Moves like this, Reid told host John Berman, "get under Trump's skin. Trump is sitting in there because this case is so personal; this is about everything he's sold himself to be. It's likely this exchange did not please Kise's client." The former president had previously railed against the judge ahead of Thursday's proceedings, complaining outside the courtroom about Engoron's revocation of his permission to speak during closing arguments. Though initially open to Trump delivering his own summation, Engoron revoked the atypical privilege after Trump's lawyers refused to comply with restrictions he sought to impose. 

How the ex-marketing whiz behind Crocs helped turn Stanley into the “it” cup

Since developing the all-steel vacuum flask in 1913, the Stanley company has cultivated a particularly rugged, if not decidedly masculine, image. Per a 2012 release from the company, which was originally founded by William Stanley Jr., an American physicist born in Brooklyn, their thermoses appeal to “a 30-year-career veteran policeman” and “a retired Army soldier” just as much as they did to the B-17 pilots who used them during World War II. 

There are reports that Stanley bottles have been used by ranchers to collect and transport bull semen, by members of Everest expeditions to keep tea warm, and by medical professionals who needed a portable, temperature-controlled option for delivering human organs in times of crises. If we’re dealing in clichés, these thermoses belong in the lunchbox of a guy taking a break from the assembly line or in the hands of a construction worker. 

Perhaps this is why it’s all the more fascinating that the Stanley bottles’ sister product, a pastel 40-ounce tumbler, has become a social media darling among millennial and Gen Z women — and that it’s the marketing whiz behind Crocs who helped make it so. 

Related

As Crocs turn 20, here's a look back at how they became a beloved kitchen shoe

In 2020, Stanley hired Terrence Reilly, the former chief marketing officer of Crocs, as their new president. This was four years after the company had debuted their “Stanley Cup” called the Quencher. 

“I joined as president in 2020 after a fantastic experience at Crocs where I helped Andrew Rees turn Crocs around,” Reilly said in a Wednesday interview on Creator IQ’s “Earned” podcast. “I like to think I had a hand in reshaping the brand, and that had granted me the opportunity to become president of Stanley in 2020. And we were a $70 million brand that appealed to guys with a green bottle that was 107 years old, and is one of the greatest products in history.” 

He continued: “It's an iconic brand, iconic product, but there was a big opportunity to reposition the brand and appeal to new consumers, and that's just what we set out to do in 2020.” 

One of the key changes to the company under Reilly’s leadership is that they began focusing marketing efforts towards reaching women, especially younger women. (If you take a look at the Stanley Brand Instagram, this is already apparent, as the grid features more and more photos of their brightly colored tumblers in the manicured hands of women baking, paddle boating and heading to the pumpkin patch— a real departure from war-time trenches). 

The company partnered with Linley Hutchinson, Ashlee LeSueur and Taylor Cannon — the founders of The Buy Guide, an online shopping blog, who were early supporters of the brand. As Caroline Jansen of RetailDive reported in November, Stanley leadership flew the three women out to Colorado where they were attending the Outdoor Retailer conference. 

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

“We can show them what it would look like if women could market it to women,” LeSueur told the publication. “Stanley had been a company only producing occasional-use items. They were making items for people’s camping trips or tailgating. We told them that this cup was a daily-use item. It was an everyday, all-day item. And that it needed to look good in people’s homes and kitchens, with their outfits, and not just in the great outdoors.”

According to LaSueur, brands that elect to ignore 25- to 50-year-old women in their marketing are thinking too small. 

“Even if you are a men’s clothing line — no matter what you are — if you are not finding a way to speak to this 25-to-50-year-old female, you’re missing the mark because those are the buyers of our economy. They buy for their families, they buy for their husbands, they buy for their businesses,” LaSueur said. 

The decision to broaden Stanley’s reach came at an opportune time. 

We’ve reached “peak hydration culture,” as some media outlets have termed it. In her assessment, Salon’s Nicole Karlis spoke with medical experts about the trend towards lugging around jumbo-water bottles. Some of them are skeptical that bottle companies themselves are behind the recent push towards drinking more water (as one nephrologist pointedly told Karlis, “I might point out that the human species has done quite well without a 40 ounce bottle for a very long time”) but that hasn’t stopped customers from flocking to buy Hydro flasks, Starbucks cups, Hydro Jugs and now Stanleys in their pursuit to stay hydrated. 

However, Stanley saw this cultural undercurrent and, with the insight of The Buy Guide team, upped the game by starting to expand the colors and patterns in which they offered the Quencher, focusing on seasonal releases and merch drops — it’s worth noting Crocs excelled at this strategy during Reilly’s tenure — thereby rendering the bottles collectible. Enough so that Stanley's annual sales rose from $75 million a year to $750 million a year in 2023. 

The fervor behind these figures was vividly illustrated in December when Stanley released a special-edition cup, rendered in a delicate baby pink, in collaboration with Target and Starbucks. Social media was flooded with videos of lines of shivering, yet hopeful customers, mostly women, waiting for hours for participating locations to open. When the doors were finally unlocked, it was met with an almost Black Friday-like enthusiasm. There were reports of fights and tramplings and empty shelves within just a few minutes. 

As with all things that become immensely popular, we’re starting to see some of the darker edges of commercial success: the loud dissenters, the counterfeits, the sometimes-sketchy resale market. However, Reilly remains optimistic about the next chapter of Stanley. 

“The financial success and all that is great, we are a business, but it's magic that we have countless TikTok videos of fit checks saying ‘here's my Stanley’ before they're even talking about their fit,” Reilly said on “Earned.” “It's really a remarkable thing.”

Read more

about this topic

“Control your client!”: Judge shuts down Trump’s courtroom outburst

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday launched into an extended tirade during the closing arguments in his New York fraud trial.

Trump attorney Chris Kise asked Judge Arthur Engoron to allow Trump to speak on his own behalf after the judge rescinded permission for the former president to deliver part of his closing argument because Kise objected to preconditions that Trump keep to “relevant” matters.

Engoron asked Trump if he would be willing to stick to the facts and the law but Trump launched into a rant without agreeing to the terms.

"Well I think, your honor, this case goes outside the facts," Trump said, according to ABC News. "The financial statements were perfect. The banks got all their money back. They were as happy as can be."

Related

Experts: Trump’s closing argument rejected because he made it clear he "would abuse the privilege"

Trump ignored the judge’s instruction, claiming that the case is a “political witch hunt that should be set aside.”

“We should receive damages for what we've gone through,” he declared.

Trump also went after New York Attorney General Letitia James.

"I'm an innocent man. I've been persecuted by someone running for office," Trump said. "This statute is vicious. It doesn't give me a jury. It takes away my rights."

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Trump referred to a key allegation in the lawsuit, that he tripled the square footage of his Trump Tower penthouse, calling it “an honest mistake.”

"This is a fraud on me. What's happened here sir is a fraud on me,” Trump claimed.

“They found nothing and now she comes in and says she wants to make a $250 million fine a [$370 million], for what!?” he continued, adding that Engoron has his own agenda.

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

“Haven't you been sued before? Isn’t that a problem?” Engoron asked Trump, according to NBC News.

“They should pay me for what we’ve gone through — reputation and else,” Trump said.

“Mr. Kise, please control your client,” Engoron begged, according to NBC News’ Lisa Rubin.

“But it’s too late,” Rubin tweeted. “Everything Trump wanted to say was said. And now, having said it, he has left the courtroom after insisting James should pay him for the havoc she’s wreaked on his company.”

Engoron kept his head down for the duration of Trump's outburst, according to ABC News, which added that the judge "then held up his phone screen to signal to Trump that he had run out of time for his remarks, then the judge called for a break."

Read more

about the Trump fraud trial

“At least I can sleep at night”: Why Busy Philipps speaks out about abortion

Coming forward about her abortion was an easy decision for Busy Philipps, who shared with “Busy Tonight” viewers in 2019 that she had gotten the procedure when she was 15. As an actor and talk show host, Philipps was known for her roles in “Cougar Town” and “Freaks and Geeks,” but at the time, she said she wasn’t worried about broaching the politicized subject. 

“I was thinking about all of the women who were being affected by these extreme abortion bans that had started to be passed across the country who didn't have the luxury that I have, the luxury of privilege, of money, of access,” she said about her decision to speak up. Philipps talked about her abortion publicly on the same day Governor Brian Kemp signed a six-week abortion ban in Georgia in May 2019. By the end of that year, 25 new laws challenging abortion rights were passed, and today, 14 states have abortion bans while 43 have bans after a certain point in pregnancy. 

Related

"Daily Show" co-creator on how Trump isn't funny and comedy could help save abortion

In the years and Supreme Court nominations and harmful extremist rhetoric that have followed, Philipps has not stopped advocating for reproductive rights. On Wednesday, she announced that she is the American Civil Liberties Union’s newest Artist Ambassador for Reproductive Freedom. She talked to Salon about the role of artists in a battle often fought in state legislatures and the courts, her message to those needing an abortion in a state with restrictions — and also, her role in the new “Mean Girls” film. 

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Congratulations on your new role with the ACLU. I know you're a longtime supporter of theirs. What does the ACLU mean to you? 

The ACLU has been there, historically speaking, standing up for all of our civil liberties and making sure that people are represented and that their voices are heard and that we're protected. For a period of time, a lot of Americans really took our rights for granted, but they've been at the forefront of – especially the work that I've done in the last several years now – dealing with abortion rights and bodily autonomy throughout the country, and then, certainly after Dobbs was overturned, that was cranked up on the state level. We've seen that when the issue of abortion is put on the ballot, Americans overwhelmingly turn out to vote for bodily autonomy, for choice, for abortion, which is vital healthcare for so many. 

"For a period of time, a lot of Americans really took our rights for granted."

We're seeing just the fallout now, and we will continue to in places like Texas, and it's devastating. My work with the ACLU is so important to me, and one of the things that I think is part of having a platform, is that I'm able to be in contact with so many women across this country who are like-minded. Caissie St. Onge, who I do my podcast with, we both have heard from people who listen to us that they're overwhelmed, that they don't know what to do. And one thing that I personally have always turned to the ACLU for is information and actionable items. I think that they're so incredibly adept at being able to help point us, as concerned Americans, in the right direction, whether it's voting rights or whether it's showing up for abortion being on the ballot or making your voice heard about care for trans youth. It can feel really overwhelming, and the ACLU is able to distill it into actionable items, and it really helps me to feel less overwhelmed.

You're an Artist Ambassador for them, joining a long line of other great artists and activists. As you were talking about, these days, the courts and state legislatures are where so much of the battle for reproductive rights goes down. Can you speak to the importance of artists speaking out on this issue as well?

Historically speaking, and I think that it's true today, the stories that we tell are the way that you change people's hearts and minds. For the first time on such a major platform, a major stage, when I spoke about my own experience having an abortion when I was a teenager on my late night talk show, that was really the first time that I saw firsthand the impact that my being vocal about that issue in particular impacted so many, and not just the people that watched my talk show and were fans of mine, but women across, honestly, the world. The impact that artists are able to have is not to be underestimated. I think the impetus is put on us as artists to remember that and to remember to stay informed so that we can have an impact in the ways that we want to.

Even just storytelling, like the movies that we watch, the TV shows. You think about “Maude” from the '70s, or “Archie Bunker,” or “Scandal,” Olivia Pope dealing with abortion on that show. There are ways to tell these stories and bring issues to the forefront of storytelling without it seeming preachy or hitting people over the head with it. The truth is, sometimes things are conflicting for people, and I think it is in part the job of artists to help all of us make sense of it. And by it, I mean all of it.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

You started to talk about telling your own story. Talking about things like abortion or other politicized issues as a public figure isn't always well received, and it's something that a lot of people in the public eye shy away from. I'm wondering what made you feel like you needed to speak up then, and how being outspoken since has changed you?

The truth of the matter is that at the time, I was closely examining my own privilege as a white woman living in this country. I was reconciling my own ability, if I had wanted to, to stay silent. I was thinking about all of the women who were being affected by these extreme abortion bans that had started to be passed across the country who didn't have the luxury that I have. The luxury of privilege, of money, of access. Honestly, I just realized that I have no choice. Isn't that interesting? There was no choice for me. I needed to talk about my choice to have an abortion. 

I also was at a place too where I was like, “Look, if all of this goes away because of it, first of all, that I didn't want it to begin with.” Secondly, then at least I can raise my kids and sleep at night. So that was what motivated me. 

"We need to all be really paying attention and as active as we can be."

In acknowledging my privilege, I also acknowledge that not everyone has the luxury of feeling comfortable speaking out. Even people in the public eye, for whatever reason. There are lots of reasons why people don't, and I'm not a person who ever is bemoaning someone else's decision to not wade into any number of issues if they're feeling, for whatever reason, uncomfortable. Just for me, it isn't an option.

Since you started speaking up about this, has your understanding of abortion and reproductive rights changed at all? Are there any misconceptions that you had about abortion that you'd like to set the record straight about?

I've learned so many things, and there's so much good information out there that ACLU provides such great information. The Guttmacher Institute provides incredible information. But at the end of the day, I think it is so vital that people finally really understand that a lot of the messaging that has been perpetrated by these extremist politicians over the last 20 years is incorrect. It's incorrect what a 13-week fetus looks like according to these politicians. Quite frankly, the states that have passed these laws have left hospitals and caregivers confused and rightfully concerned about their own safety and have put doctors, nurses and caregivers in just unimaginable positions. It's unconscionable what's happened. 

I have learned that you have to listen to what these extremist people are saying because they have made good on all of it. They're saying now that they're going for birth control next, and I'm going to tell you they're going to go for birth control next, so all of us should be concerned. All of these issues are intersecting, whether it's gerrymandering and voting rights and trying to strip people of voting rights or deny access to polling places or strip people off of ballots, or it's denying healthcare professionals the ability to make the right decisions for their patients in terms of transgender youth and gender-affirming care for them. Or whether it's denying abortion care, whether it's very wanted babies with horrific fetal abnormalities or putting the mother's life at risk, or simply a person who is not prepared or cannot have a child in that moment. We need to all be really paying attention and as active as we can be.

What's your message to people who are making the decision to get an abortion in an extremely hostile climate for them to get one?

We're not in the pre-Roe world in the '50s. We're not in that world anymore. Abortion is accessible even if you live in one of these places, and there are lots of resources online and there are abortion funds that can help with travel, and you deserve and are able to get the care that you need. 

While it may be scary, and it has obviously been designed to be difficult in this moment for people in many of these places, it doesn't need to be dangerous. It doesn't need to be impossible. There are tons of organizations, both grassroots and larger organizations that are doing everything they can to help and those resources are there.

Switching gears a little bit, you have another very exciting thing going on right now. You’re Mrs. George in “Mean Girls.” What was it like taking on this iconic role for Amy Poehler?

"I have definitely met a few moms that have a little bit of Mrs. George tendencies."

It is such an iconic role, and Amy is literally the greatest. It was a little nerve-racking, but truthfully, I was so thrilled. I've worked with Tina Fey and her husband, Jeff Richmond and Eric Gurian, who's their producing partner for many, many years now, so when Tina called and asked me to be Mrs. George, I knew that I would be very well protected by them. Tina said, "Amy's so excited about this and thinks that you're going to be so fantastic as Mrs. George." 

For us, it was a just a question of trying to figure out who Mrs. George is in 2024. Who that woman is, who that mom, who thinks that she's her daughter's best friend, what she looks like, what she wears, how she acts. I feel like we really nailed it, I got to say.

I know from the trailer that “this is not your mother's 'Mean Girls,'” it's updated for Gen Z, and you're a parent to Gen Z Kids. How did that help you put your spin on Ms. George?

I have one Gen Alpha, and then Birdie's Gen Z. It was certainly helpful. I have in-house research, and especially with my teenager, with my 15-year-old. It also was super informing in terms of the character of Mrs. George because I'm around a lot of different types of moms and I have definitely met a few moms that have a little bit of Mrs. George tendencies in my time as a mom. I think the movie really nails it in so many ways, and I mean, in all the ways. But I also just was a big fan of the musical on Broadway, so I was thrilled that they were going to be making the musical version of “Mean Girls” because I just think it's so fantastic.

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

To you, what does it mean to be a “cool mom”?

Oh, well, no mom is cool. Just FYI. To your children, you should never be cool. If your children really think you're cool, you're doing something wrong. Because to me, you're not there to be your kid's best friend. You're there to be their parent and to help them and guide them and be supportive of them, but not to share all the secrets and talk about your own life in the same way that you allow them to talk about their life. They need to be their own autonomous people.

My kids do not think I'm cool. I just want to say for the record, although Birdie was like, "I see that you've been saying in all these interviews that we don't think you're cool. You're making us sound mean." And I'm like, "No, no, no. It's not that. I'm just saying that you guys don't, I'm not cool to you." And she's like, "Well, no, you're not." But it's not a bad thing to be not cool to your kids. It means that I'm doing at least something a little right.

I've had this conversation as well; I'm not a regular mom, that's for sure. My career is wild because of what I do. My kids have had the opportunity to meet Olivia Rodrigo. It gives with both hands, I guess, being in the spotlight, at times they get sort of overwhelmed, and I understand that because they have to share me with a lot of people, and people online have their own thoughts and feelings about me. But also, then they get to meet Olivia Rodrigo.

I love that. You're not a regular mom or a cool mom. It's a new take on Poehler's famous line.

Me personally, I am not. I'm something else. I don't know exactly what that is, but I am something else.

Read more

about "Mean Girls"

“No one is spared”: South Africa presents genocide case against Israel at international court

South African representatives argued before the International Court of Justice on Thursday that Israel is engaged in a genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, subjecting the enclave to "merciless" bombing with the clear intent to wipe out the Palestinian population.

"They have deplored anyone feeling sorry for the uninvolved Gazans, asserting repeatedly that there are no uninvolved, that there are no innocents in Gaza, that the killers of the women and the children should not be separated from the citizens of Gaza, and that the children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves," South African attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi said during his presentation.

Thursday's hearing also featured remarks from South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusimuzi Madonsela, lawyer Adila Hassim, and international law professor John Dugard, each of whom laid out an aspect of South Africa's case against the Israeli government.

Hassim argued that Israel's "first genocidal act" is the "mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza," pointing to the U.S.-armed military's use of 2,000-pound bombs in southern Gaza—the region to which Israeli forces ordered Gazans to move earlier in the war.

"No one is spared. Not even newborns," said Hassim, displaying photos of mass graves in the Gaza Strip. "U.N. chiefs have described it as a graveyard for children."

Hassim made the case that Israel is guilty of violating articles 2a, 2b, 2c, and 2d of the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as harm inflicted "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group."

"Israel has deliberately imposed conditions on Gaza that cannot sustain life and are calculated to bring about its physical destruction," said Hassim. "Israel has forced—forced—the displacement of about 85% of Palestinians in Gaza. There is nowhere safe for them to flee to."

South Africa's presenters sought to demonstrate genocidal intent in part by directly quoting high-ranking Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Ngcukaitobi pointed to Netanyahu's repeated invocation of biblical passages to paint Gazans as modern-day Amalekites.

The attorney also played footage of Israeli soldiers chanting that they will "wipe off the seed of Amalek" and that there are "no uninvolved civilians" in Gaza.

"Israel's political leaders, military commanders, and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent," said Ngcukaitobi. "These statements are then repeated by soldiers on the ground in Gaza as they engage in the destruction of Palestinians and the physical infrastructure of Gaza."

South Africa's legal team decided against sharing highly graphic videos and photos during its presentations, saying it did not want to turn the court's proceedings "into a theatre for spectacle."

"South Africa's application in this court today is built on a foundation of clear legal rights, not images," the legal team said Thursday.

South Africa is asking the ICJ to adopt "provisional measures" to halt Israel's mass killing and displacement of Gazans, many of whom are starving and being stalked by disease.

Israel is set to offer its counter to South Africa's case on Friday, which will mark the first time Israel has defended itself in person at the United Nations' highest court.

In the days ahead of the ICJ's public hearings, Israeli officials pressured governments around the world to publicly denounce South Africa's case. The United States, Israel's top ally and leading arms supplier, has dismissed South Africa's arguments as "meritless."

But a growing number of national governments are backing South Africa, including Brazil, Malaysia, Bolivia, and Pakistan. South Africa's ICJ effort has also drawn massive support from grassroots organizations across the globe.

"Israel's killing, injuring, traumatizing, and displacing large numbers of Palestinians and denying water, food, medicine, and fuel to an occupied population meet the criteria for the crime of genocide," reads an open letter signed by more than 1,000 unions, popular movements, and other groups. "If a majority of the world's nations call for a cease-fire, yet fail to press for prosecution of Israel—what is to stop Israel from ethnically cleansing all Palestinians?"

Bottled water has up to 100 times more plastic particles than previously thought

At this point, it’s common knowledge that bottled water contains microplastics — fragments of the insidious material that can be as small as a bacterial cell. But the problem is much worse than previously known: It turns out that bottled water harbors hundreds of thousands of even tinier pieces of the stuff.

A paper published Monday used a novel technique to analyze one-liter samples of bottled water for plastic granules, going down to just 50 to 100 nanometers in length — roughly the width of a virus. They found nearly a quarter of a million of these tiny particles per liter, about 10 to 100 times more than previously published estimates.

“We’ve opened up a whole new world,” Wei Min, one of the paper’s authors and a chemistry professor at Columbia University, told Grist. Until now, scientists lacked a quick and efficient way to identify nanoplastics, hindering research on their health and environmental impacts. 

To conduct their analysis, researchers at Columbia and Rutgers universities filtered bottled water from three different brands through an ultrafine membrane. They then shone two lasers, calibrated to recognize the chemical bonds binding the nanoplastic particles, onto the membrane. Then it was a simple matter of counting all the different particles of plastic. They estimated that a typical one-liter bottle contains 240,000 of them.

Sherri Mason, an associate research professor at Penn State Erie who studies microplastics but was not involved in the new research, called the technique “groundbreaking.”

”I was blown away,” she told Grist. “It’s just really good.”

What’s more, the researchers were able to differentiate between types of nanoplastic. To their surprise, most of the particles were not polyethylene terephthalate, or PET — the material most water bottles are made of. Rather, they found more particles of polyamide (a type of nylon) and polystyrene, suggesting that the pollutants are, in a bit of irony, getting into bottled water as a result of the filling and purification process. 

Polyamide also made up the bulk of the contamination by mass for two of the bottled water brands; the third brand showed a higher level of PET.

The findings have significant implications for human health, since nanoplastics are small enough to pass through the gastrointestinal tract and lungs. After entering the bloodstream, they can lodge in the heart and brain and can even cross through the placenta to infiltrate unborn babies. It’s not yet clear how the particles impact the body, but toxicologists worry that they could leach chemicals or release pathogens that they picked up while floating around in the environment. Some research suggests potential damage to DNA and the brain, as well as to the immune, reproductive and nervous systems.

“We know we’re getting exposed, but we don’t know the toxicity of the exposures,” said Beizhan Yan, another of the paper’s co-authors and an environmental chemist at Columbia University. He called for further collaboration with toxicologists and public health researchers to better characterize the risks. For now, he said he opts for tap water whenever possible; it tends to have less plastic contamination.

Wei sees a handful of promising directions for further research. First, his team could expand the number of plastic polymers it can identify using the laser-microscope technique; their most recent paper only looked at seven. They could also look for nanoplastics in other places, like packaged food or wastewater from washing machines and improve the technology to detect even smaller particles.

“Fifty to 100 nanometers is our current detection limit, but that’s not a hard stop,” Wei said. 

Mason said the research should inspire action from U.S. policymakers, who have the power to limit plastic production by supporting the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act — a federal bill that was reintroduced in Congress for the third time last October — or by endorsing plastic reduction as part of the United Nations’ global plastics treaty.

“I don’t want a plasticized world,” she said. “We need to make it clear to our representatives that we need to chart a new path forward.”

“I have no rights!”: Trump falsely whines outside courtroom — and gets instantly fact-checked

Ahead of closing arguments in his New York civil fraud trial Thursday, former President Donald Trump bemoaned presiding Judge Arthur Engoron rescinding permission for him to speak during the proceedings, crying foul and dubbing the case unconstitutional. “It’s election interference at the highest level," Trump said, claiming the case is "in coordination with the White House and Joe Biden cause he can’t win a campaign fairly." He added: "I have no jury, I really have no rights, and it’s sad."

Trump went on to claim he was disallowed from making the summation because he'll discuss matters the judge "doesn't want to hear." He repeated his frequent complaint about the case not having a jury, which Engoron made clear early in the trial that no one had requested, and further defended his financial statements. Trump also took aim at New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the case against him and accused him of inflating his assets to obtain better loan terms.

CNN anchor John Berman and chief legal analyst Paula Reid quickly fact-checked the former president's claims on the courthouse steps, with Berman dubbing the rant a "political speech filled with some legal inaccuracies," according to Mediaite. Trump's claims against James are "trying to misconstrue" her attendance at public White House events "as secret meetings to engage in a conspiracy" against him, Reid began. For his part, the judge was also open to allowing Trump to speak during closing arguments but wanted to impose some restrictions, a measure Trump's lawyers refused, Reid added, citing correspondence CNN obtained between the judge and Trump's team. "It’s not about the law, really. It’s about the politics," Berman concluded. "It’s about the campaign. And that was very obvious as he was walking into that courtroom."

Trump says he got money from China and Saudi Arabia because he was “doing services” for them

Former President Donald Trump defended his businesses accepting payments from foreign governments during a Fox News town hall on Wednesday. The comments came in response to a Jan. 4 report from House Oversight Committee Democrats finding that the former president had received at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, and their controlled entities while in office. 

"That's a small amount of money. You know, it sounds like a lot of money. That's small," Trump said during the event. He went on to explain that the governments paid for accommodations at his hotels and clubs. "I was doing services for them. People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels," Trump said, adding, "I don't get $8 million for doing nothing." Oversight Committee Democrats reported that Trump's businesses had raked in money from at least 20 countries, ranging "from the People's Republic of China to Saudi Arabia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Malaysia to Albania to Kosovo," which spent "often lavishly" for stays at his hotels in Washington, Las Vegas and New York or his apartments.

Receiving those payments violated the Constitution, according to the lawmakers. "President Trump never sought or received Congress's approval to keep these foreign payments, as the Constitution requires," the report said. Trump, the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination, was indicted on a total of 91 criminal charges, including falsifying business records and election interference, across two state and two federal cases.

“Could blow up Fani Willis”: Trump hunts for “dirt” on Fulton DA after “improper relationship” claim

Close allies of Donald Trump, his attorneys and the former president himself are digging into unverified allegations of Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis partaking in an "improper relationship" with a special prosecutor on her team to wield them against the election interference case she brought against Trump. Though it is unclear if any truth lies in the claims, Trump and his circle are discussing ideas for ways they could find more salacious information on Willis' "sex life and… her money," among other matters, with the goal of using it to tank her criminal case against the former president, an attorney close to him told Rolling Stone. “Donald Trump wants more dirt on her,” a lawyer close to Trump told the outlet. “And it doesn’t hurt that this really could blow up Fani Willis, if the allegations are true.”

Two sources with knowledge of the internal conversations told the outlet that Trump's attorneys have floated hopping onto the co-defendant's motion. Some legal and political advisors to the former president have also considered devoting a team to further investigate Willis' alleged impropriety and dig up other potential conflicts or secrets, they added. House Republicans are similarly mulling over whether to broaden their investigation into the Georgia D.A/ to include the alleged relationship as well as other matters connected to the special prosecutor, another source familiar with the situation told Rolling Stone. Willis hasn't yet responded to any of the allegations against her.

The effort comes after Trump co-defendant Michael Roman's lawyer accused Willis in a court filing Monday of hiring an alleged romantic partner — Nathan Wade — to serve as her office's special prosecutor and illegally reaping financial benefit; Wade's work on the case since January 2022 has earned him $654,000. The attorney argued that Willis and Wade should be removed from the case, citing “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney.” Willis was also subpoenaed on Monday to testify in Wade's divorce case, which remains under seal. 

Bomb threat at Judge Arthur Engoron’s home believed to be intended to delay closing argument: report

Police rushed to New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s home after a bomb threat on Thursday — hours before closing arguments in former President Donald Trump’s fraud trial were set to begin.

More than a half-dozen police cars and a bomb squad rushed to Engoron’s home on Long Island Thursday morning, according to The Daily Beast. The move was “perceived as a blatant attempt to delay the trial’s closing arguments,” the outlet added, citing a person briefed on the matter.

A spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department told the outlet that there is an “active investigation” but did not provide any further details.

It’s not clear whether the threat would delay Thursday’s proceedings, The New York Times reported.

Related

Experts: Trump’s closing argument rejected because he made it clear he "would abuse the privilege"

The threat came after Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Engoron and his principal law clerk Allison Greenfield, lashed out at the judge ahead of Thursday’s hearing, accusing him on Truth Social of “working closely together” with New York Attorney General Letitia James to “screw me.”

Trump’s complaints came after emails released by the court showed that Engoron rejected Trump’s plan to give his own closing argument after he balked at the judge’s preconditions. The judge initially approved the plan but reversed course after Trump’s lawyers objected to his insistence that the former president stick to “relevant” matters and “not deliver a campaign speech.”

Emails show Trump’s attorney Chris Kise complained that the restrictions were “very unfair” and “fraught with ambiguities, creating the substantial likelihood for misinterpretation or unintended violation.”

“You are not allowing President Trump, who has been wrongfully demeaned and belittled by an out of control, politically motivated attorney general, to speak about the things that must be spoken about,” the attorney wrote.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

“I won’t debate this yet again. Take it or leave it,” Engoron replied in all-caps.

Trump shared the email on Truth Social, calling it “MEAN & NASTY.”

The bomb threat at Engoron’s home came just days after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Trump’s D.C. election subversion case, was the victim of an apparent “swatting” call after someone called police to falsely report that “multiple people were shot” at her home.

“As long as the GOP continues to pander to Trump we remain on this path of domestic terror, heading into political violence,” warned former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. “Every reporter who talks to Trump must ask & insist on an answer to whether he condemns this & same for every Republican who doesn't voluntarily speak out.”

Former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Agnifilo called on Trump to “please tell” his supporters to “stop the violence.”

“Enough is enough,” she tweeted.

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

Trump is expected to attend Thursday’s closing arguments despite being barred from speaking. James’ team is expected to highlight evidence from the trial, including internal emails and testimony from former employees. James is seeking a $370 million fine against Trump and his companies, a lifetime ban on Trump and two of his former executives from the real estate industry, and five-year bans on Trump sons Donald Jr. and Eric.

Engoron issued a summary judgment before the trial began, holding Trump, his company and former executives liable for persistent fraud.

Trump’s lawyers plan to argue that James failed to show that Trump orchestrated fraud in his annual financial statements and that the statements themselves were irrelevant, according to The Times.

“No bank or underwriter was, or would have been, materially misled by the alleged misstatements,” Trump’s lawyers argued in a brief.

Read more

about Trump's NY fraud trial

The GOP sends in the cowards

In the past, Iowa has been a presidential proving ground that separates the cowards from the courageous. Januaries in the Hawkeye State can turn any campaign into a grueling, exasperating experience. One day it’s merely cold and crisp and a candidate has to deal with wrangling pigs, walking through thick mud and talking to people individually that they will never have to face if they are elevated to the presidency. The next day they are driving into a white out (stop drooling coke heads, it means something else in this context) to deliver a speech before the Sunday men/ladies gathering of the local amalgamated groupof those unattached to other organizations meeting.

It will be a cold day in Iowa that will test the courage of the American democracy and the cowardice of its politicians.

Vivek Ramaswamy choked this week, delaying campaign stops due to weather, while Donald Trump decided to avoid Iowa in order to show up and campaign in Washington D.C. before a panel of judges who will rule on whether or not Trump has immunity from prosecution for crimes he may have committed before, during and after his presidency. Meanwhile, after he refused to say that he’d stick to the facts of the case and not engage in ad hominem attacks, Judge Arthur Engoron in Trump’s New York civil fraud case denied the former president the ability to deliver part of his closing arguments himself.

So that apparently left Trump free to go to Des Moines to stage a televised town hall meeting on Fox News, while Ramaswamy was free to livestream a town hall with a right-wing podcaster. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trolled each other in a debate on CNN during which neither one had the courage to take on Trump. And former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie? Well, he said a few choice words about both Haley and DeSantis on an open mic before he dropped it and cowardly left the race to run home to New Jersey. Maybe he’ll work on his tan.

Ramaswamy is a coward. The snowstorm that struck Des Moines in the last few days is not unheard of in an election year and canceling a campaign stop for an average Des Moines wintry day is a telltale sign you can’t handle the pressure of the presidency. If you can’t battle an average snowfall in Iowa, how can you handle the international stage? Trump is not only a coward, but a craven coward, who wants to retire knowing he can break the law with impunity while his latest gas-bag lawyers argue he could use Seal Team 6 to take out political rivals.

Related

Why Trump is making his lawyers look like fools in court

Meanwhile, on Monday Biden crisscrossed the U.S. talking about issues from the economy to infrastructure and ended up back at the White House Monday night. He’s recently traveled to Valley Forge, South Carolina and Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre promised from the Brady Briefing room on Wednesday that we will “see a lot more of this president” on the campaign trail soon. Republicans have called Biden a coward for not being more available to the public and the press. That statement may have some validity to it, but it’s hard to swallow the hypocrisy of a political party that won’t admit it lost the last election, still clings to the “Big Lie” and is so cowardly that it falls on its knees in fealty to Donald Trump. Face it; The GOP is no more. You’re either a Trumplican or you’re sitting on the sidelines like Liz Cheney because you had the courage to challenge Trump.

The biggest problem Biden actually has right now is the legitimate “Where’s Waldo?” question of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who went missing for four days before it was found out he was being treated for prostate cancer. He kept his illness hidden and was incommunicado during key moments in the Ukrainian and Middle-East conflicts. While the administration has defended him, with both NSC spokesman John Kirby and White House press secretary Jean-Pierre speaking to the issue, it isn’t far-fetched to understand why Biden would be upset. It was a cowardly move.

It is a huge health concern for Austin, but it gives the impression that a vital member of the administration was out of the loop at the worst time imaginable in the last three years. “Reckless and Irresponsible,” was the headline in Politico. Like Biden needs that scandal around his neck. It’s the only legitimate beef the GOP has with the president, so you can imagine how far they’ll try to run with this little nugget. Then again, James Comer and the rest of what passes for Trumplican leadership in Congress (except for Mitch McConnell) seem intent on sticking to fiction – as they are all cowards.

It also begs the question as to how Biden should go forward with his campaign. While trailing, or in some cases leading, Trump in the polls, the energy for “Ridin’ with Biden” appears lackluster at best.  

Alice Stewart, a prominent Republican strategist said on the podcast “Just Ask The Question,” the Democrats are missing the boat. Biden began his campaign reminding everyone of the cowardice of Republicans and the horror show of Jan. 6. Instead of campaigning on that, Stewart says the Democrats should have the courage to push abortion rights to the head of their campaign efforts. Though a strong pro-life advocate, Stewart acknowledges that “pro-life candidates do not win at the ballot.” And she suggested to reach more people Biden should elevate abortion over the Jan. 6 insurrection “knowing full well how horrible and criminal” the actions were to concentrate on an issue that would get them elected.

Seems everyone’s helping the Democrats and you have to hope that soon they’ll have the courage to help themselves. They do have a decisive issue upon which to run. 

And that would be Donald Trump.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Nothing drives home the cowardice of Trump more than his posts on social media and his lawyers’ arguments in court about immunity. Trump seeks immunity from prosecution for the laws he may or may not have broken while president. (Remember he faces 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions). But his lawyers tried to argue Trump could use Seal Team 6 to take out a political rival and without immunity it would be “very hard for a president to enjoy his or her ‘Golden Years’ of retirement. Imagine having to be responsible for your actions like everyone else? Trump’s cowardice knows no bounds. He lies and says most Americans support unlimited immunity even as most polls show that, overwhelmingly, most Americans do not. 

Imagine being able to kill political rivals and then resting comfortably at the end of the day. That’s all Don wants. He’s a simple man.

Of course we all know that a president isn’t immune from prosecution. Trump’s lawyers argued former presidents can only face prosecution if they are first impeached and then convicted by the Senate. Make no mistake, this bitter gambit is made only to benefit Trump. The argument has been labeled “obscene”, “insane” and is the rant of a cowardly would-be tyrant who seeks legal cover for illegal activities. If Presidents enjoyed unlimited immunity, why did Gerald Ford Pardon Richard Nixon? I’ll wait for the answer. 

The argument is nonsense of course, and the judges during the hearing Tuesday echoed that sentiment. But it makes no difference. Donald Trump doesn’t actually think he’s going to win this argument – he just wants to string it out as long as he can in the courts to avoid prosecution. It’s an oldy and goldy from the Trump tent – delay, delay and delay again. A man who has cowardly never faced accountability for his actions isn’t going to let a little thing like the rule of law or the U.S. Constitution stand in his way of running away.

He is the lowest of craven cowards among a bucketful of political scum. 

 “At this hour our democracy is under an unprecedented assault,” President Biden said at the time of the insurrection. He’s always had the courage to call it for what it was, and he continues to do so, even as his re-election campaign takes on the taint of cowardice from those who should know better.

Courage is sorely lacking in the United States. The almighty dollar and fear of losing it has crippled anyone in the GOP as Trump presses Republican politicians to back him prior to the Iowa caucuses. It has also exposed our politicians for the greatest crime of cowardice: hypocrisy.

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

Jim Jordan can scream about Hunter Biden and demand he be held in contempt of Congress for not answering a subpoena – though he has cowardly avoided one for close to two years.

The cowardice of the GOP is compounded by its stupidity – especially when it comes to Donald Trump. Or, as Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin pointed out Wednesday, “I don’t even know why you stick with him. He was a Democrat longer than he was a Republican. You guys have been taken over by an absolute conman and now you’re acting like members of a religious cult who don’t even remember how you got in in the first place.”

Ultimately, if we want courage in government, we have to have courage from the voters.

The first act of courage this campaign season will be with the voters in Iowa. Who will show up for the caucus votes? According to the Des Moines Register, “Temperatures during the day Monday are expected to hover in the single digits to zero degrees but wind chills will make it feel even colder, said meteorologist Brad Small.”By 6 p.m., Monday, when people will be lining up to check-in before caucusing starts at 7 p.m., temperatures are expected to be minus 1 to minus 5 degrees, depending on what part of the state you're in.

It will be a cold day in Iowa that will test the courage of the American democracy and the cowardice of its politicians.

Don’t expect to see Trump out in the cold shaking hands.

Like the rest of the cowardly hypocrites, he’ll be inside where it’s warm, denouncing his enemies and asking you for more money.

Read more

about the cowardice on Capitol Hill

Ring in the new year with Korean rice cakes

Lunar New Year is celebrated with a variety of flavorful, unique foods in Asian culture.For Koreans, dduk-guk (rice cake soup) is a mainstay on the New Year’s table. I grew up eating this iconic dish every New Year’s Day, like many Korean Americans who observe the holiday on January 1 rather than on Lunar New Year, which lands sometime in lateJanuary or early February (this year, it starts on February 10).

Regardless of the date the New Year is celebrated, dduk-guk remains a traditional and comforting dish that Koreans around the world enjoy with loved ones. The rice cake soup is made with a base of either beef broth or anchovy broth, seasoned and boiled with flat, oval-shaped rice cakes that become soft and chewy in the soup. Sometimes dumplings are added to the mix, making itdduk-mandu-guk. Dduk-guk is usually topped with some combination of chopped green onions, strips of seaweed, thinly sliced fried egg and shredded beef (if beef broth is used). The soup is equal parts hearty, nourishing and satisfying: the perfect way to kick off a new year

Dduk-guk, however, is just one of many ways that Koreans incorporate rice cakes into our cuisine. On the savory end of the spectrum, a well-known dish istteokbokki (spicystir-fried rice cakes). One of my favorite Korean comfort foods, tteokbokki consists of long, cylindrical rice cakes, fish cake strips (odeng), boiled eggs and vegetables like sliced onions, carrots and cabbage. The ingredients are cooked together in a spicy and slightly sweet gochujang-based sauce that can lean soupy or a bit thicker, depending on the recipe.

Chefs in New York are readily showcasing rice cakes in their restaurants’ savory dishes, both in traditional applications and more avant-garde interpretations. Chef Sohui Kim offers tteokbokki at her restaurant, Insa, in Brooklyn–dubbing it “OG street-style spicy rice cakes” and adding soft-boiled egg and puffed rice to the dish. Her take on tteok-mandu guk (rice cake and dumpling soup) is particularly fascinating, with chicken dumplings served in a smoked chicken dashi with rice cakes, egg and nori.

Departing from the savory side of things, sweet rice cakes are a world of their own, coming in a range of shapes, colors and fillings. They’re often part of celebrations, holidays and special occasions, like a baby’s 100th day or first birthday (both important milestones in Korean culture). Here's a small sampling of sweet rice cakes:

  • Injeolmi are soft, sticky balls of rice cake dusted in a nutty, roasted soybean powder and made from steaming and pounding soaked sweet rice. Sometimes mugwort powder is added during the process to yield dark green-hued and earthy-tasting injeolmi.
  • Mujigae-dduk, which translates to “rainbow rice cake,”is a rice cake with a slightly cakey texture made from short-grain rice flour. It is named such because three to five layers are dyed different colors; this rice cake often makes an appearance at events like weddings.
  • Songpyeon are small, chewy rice cake balls made from wet rice flour (short-grain rice flour), filled with a crushed sesame seed-honey/brown sugar mixture or a sweetened mungbean mixture (among other filling options) prior to steaming. Songpyeon were originally steamed atop a pine needle layer, and are often seen in white, pink or green hues and commonly eaten during Chuseok(“Korean Thanksgiving” around the fall).

As you can see, there is a vast assortment of rice cakes in Korean cuisine, and depending on the application, they can be a casual snack, part of a meal, a dessert, gift or special occasion food (not to mention other cuisines that incorporate rice cakes into their cooking and snacking!). Because of the technique and effort required, people tend to buy frozen rice cakes or order from specialty rice cake bakeries rather than regularly make them at home. But whether as part of a weeknight dinner or a national holiday, and regardless of where you source them, it’s easy to see why rice cakes are so widely eaten and enjoyed in Korean culture: They’re extremely versatile, texturally interesting, and most of all, delicious in their many sweet and savory forms.

The Proud Boys are collapsing: Surprise! Legal consequences do hurt authoritarian movements

In the two years after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, it seemed that the Proud Boys — the far-right militia that had been the vanguard for storming the Capitol — were just getting stronger. While they had failed to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 election, the group gained prominence and seemed to be growing in size. As Kathryn Joyce reported for Salon, the Proud Boys refocused on harassing LGBTQ people at public events, glomming onto the Moms for Liberty-led assault on school boards, and presenting themselves as shock troops for Christian nationalism. By putting themselves at the center of the culture war, the group was able to keep getting attention and, seemingly, new members. 

Republicans bet big into 2022 on far-right groups, but instead, the GOP underperformed in the 2022 and 2023 elections.

In 2023, however, the Proud Boys appeared to be "circling the drain," reports Tess Owen of Vice, who has covered the Proud Boys for years. While warning that the group is still a violent threat, especially to LGBTQ people, there is little doubt that they've seen a dramatic decline in activity. There were "just 36 uniformed appearances by one or more Proud Boys across 17 states last year, compared to the 63 appearances across 21 states that we logged in 2022," Owens writes. The events they did have had relatively low turnout, as well. 

There's a few things going on. As Owens notes, it's common for extremist groups to fall apart fairly quickly.  They are composed of nasty people who seek conflict, so it's inevitable that they fight and splinter over time. There's evidence some Proud Boys are decamping to neo-Nazi groups. I'd argue that the Proud Boys are impacted by the same forces that are causing Moms for Liberty to falter. Republicans bet big into 2022 on far-right groups, but instead, the GOP underperformed in the 2022 and 2023 elections. The backfire effect is reducing enthusiasm for this new breed of culture warriors. 

But there's one big factor that cannot be overlooked that made 2023 very different from 2022: Proud Boys finally started going to prison for their role in January 6. 

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

In May 2023, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four of his top lieutenants were found guilty of crimes committed during the Capitol insurrection. The verdicts were very serious. Four of them were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, while a fifth was convicted for assaulting a police officer.  The shortest sentence was 10 years. Tarrio got 22 years, and will likely serve most, if not all of it. 

That was the most prominent case, but there's been a steady drip-drip of stories about Proud Boys receiving legal consequences. A sampling in recent months of Proud Boys facing justice in the court system: Charles Donohoe pled guilty and was sentenced to 40 months in December for his role in the insurrection. The same month, Anthony Sargent got 5 years after a guilty plea. Christopher Worrell was sentenced to 10 years  in January, despite faking a drug overdose to escape his hearing. 

Data from The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project shows that while there was a gradual decline in Proud Boys activity in the first half of 2023, there was a preciptious drop-off in the mid-summer, dwindling to nearly nothing by the end of the year. This concides with the convictions and sentencing of Tarrio and other top Proud Boys. It's highly unlikely that's a coincidence. Instead, it suggests strongly that these high-profile punishments have successfully scared other Proud Boys into retreat. 

To many people, this would seem an obvious outcome. Our prison system is supposed to work as deterrence, and certainly the prosecutors argued that's why they sought lengthy sentences that would garner a lot of attention. But there's also no end of pundits these days who are ready to warn that efforts to hold authoritarians to account will only backfire. They declare that the MAGA movement will only grow stronger if the legal system enforces the law as it is written. 

Related

Trump better beware! Proud Boys guilty verdict shows America wants Jan. 6 ringleaders to pay

Granted, most of those arguments are made not so much about Proud Boys, but about Donald Trump. Every time a lawyer or a judge tries to impose legally mandated consequences on Trump for his multitude of crimes, a chorus rises up to yowl that he will only get stronger for it. And it is true that, within the Republican party, voters rallied to support Trump after he was indicted on 91 felony charges across four jurisdictions. This has caused some observers, even ostensible liberals, to treat any effort to hold Trump accountable as a mistake that will inevitably backfire. The latest iteration is the bed-wetters arguing that removing Trump from the ballot, which is required by the 14th amendment, will lead to his victory in November. 

Trump himself, naturally, hypes this idea that the MAGA movement will only be emboldened by efforts to bring him to justice. After an appeals court hearing Tuesday, in which it seemed the judges are poised to shoot down his claims that he is "immune" to criminal prosecution, Trump returned to that well. "It’ll be bedlam in the country," if the courts permit him to be tried for his attempted coup, he warned. Really, however, it was a threat: That the MAGA movement would be outraged and rise up, with implied violence, to prevent any consequences for previous violence. 

This rhetoric scares many. And no doubt that MAGA is a grievance-fueled movement that will seize on this as an outrage to rally around. But most Americans already dislike Trump and the MAGA movement. The main result of legal consequences is to only reinforce that bad opinion. That's especially likely with swing voters, who will be reminded of what a bad guy Trump is, and won't be stoked to stand by a criminal convicted by a jury of his peers. 

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

But legal consequences for Trump may not be a boost of confidence in the MAGA movement some believe. MAGA is a fascist movement that worships what they perceive as strength. To them, "strength" is evading consequences for bad actions. When their leaders are held to account, however, that is demoralizing and, crucially, demobilizing for the right. 

The data on the Proud Boys, while incomplete, does a good job of showing how this works. Even while their leaders were under indictment, the Proud Boys could tell themselves a story about how they were a mighty force, able to commit crimes in broad daylight without paying the penalty for it. As soon as their leaders went to prison, however, their members beat a fast retreat. They may be yelling at each other on Telegram about all the liberals they want to "trigger," but they aren't as keen anymore on going out in public to start fights. Odds are high that something similar will happen if Trump's aura of invincibility is penetrated by serious consequences, like a criminal conviction. His supporters who currently worship him like a god will be reminded he's just a man — and a whiny one who smells like a butt, at that.

Even more importantly, we should not flinch from holding Trump accountable because otherwise, it's an invitation to fascists to go even further. As Brian Beutler wrote in a recent newsletter, "It’s necessary in the face of corrosive threats to jettison facts and turn all of politics and law into a contest of will to abuse power." Yes, perhaps we lose if we put up a fight against fascism. But we've already lost if we roll over and let the criminals run free.

Read more

about this topic

Experts on why so many Republicans accept that “God gave us Trump”

Donald Trump is now publicly proclaiming that he is some type of messiah, a man chosen by God and Jesus Christ to do their bidding on Earth. For Trump, this means becoming America’s first dictator.

If Trump were a private citizen and not a former president and leader of a right-wing fascist movement, his claims to divine power would be viewed as the ramblings of an unwell person and de facto cult leader. Unfortunately, public opinion and other research shows that many millions of Americans actually believe that Trump is some type of divine figure, a man with a mandate from God. This is more evidence that Trumpism, like other forms of fascism and fake populism, is a form of collective pathology and emotional and mental unwellness on a societal scale.

Trump’s claims that he has a mandate from God should not be a surprise or in any way shocking: it is the predictable next step in a years-long pattern of megalomania, fabulism, malignant narcissism and other such negative behavior where he has claimed to have secret knowledge and insights that no one else possesses, and that his followers should just believe what he says and reject the facts and empirical reality itself.

Last week, Donald Trump took an even bigger step forward in his claims to being God's leader on Earth, when he shared a campaign ad declaring that “God gave us Trump.”

Business Insider details how:

Former President Donald Trump shared a bizarre fan-made video on Truth Social, which declared that he was divinely chosen to lead the country.

"And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker.' So God gave us Trump," the video starts.

The narrator goes on to frame Trump as a messianic figure who was created by God to "fight the Marxists" and "call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpent's."

Trump has long had a solid base of support among evangelical Christians in the United States, and polls show that a high portion believes that God anointed him to rule — even though he has never suggested having any strong personal faith.

Trump's sharing of the video suggests that he fully embraces the role ahead of the 2024 election.

The video describes Trump's supposed strengths, including his "arms strong enough to rustle the Deep State and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild." It's not clear which of his grandchildren Trump is meant to have delivered.

The video also describes Trump as a workaholic who worked all hours of the night while president.

His work ethic was a source of debate during his time in office, particularly after his private schedules were leaked, showing that half of his scheduled time was unstructured.

The video also claimed that Trump attended church services every Sunday despite no evidence of this.

In all, Trump’s claims to a divine mandate are central to his attempt to become America’s first dictator because through that logic he, like other fascists, autocrats, and tyrants throughout history, is both above the laws of man and normal society while also being the personal embodiment of the law.

To that point, one of Trump’s attorneys went so far as to claim during a hearing before a federal appeals court on Tuesday that he is immune from prosecution for his many obvious crimes because a president supposedly has the “legal” authority to order his rivals killed and to issue pardons in exchange for money.

Related

Why Trump is making his lawyers look like fools in court

American presidents possess no such power under the law; as articulated by the Framers, the American democratic experiment is founded upon a rejection of such tyranny and what is in essence the divine right of kings.

In an attempt to better understand Trump’s claims of being God’s chosen candidate and a type of messiah, the implications for the country’s worsening democracy crisis, and what comes next with the ex-president and his neofascist movement’s rapidly escalating dangerousness, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and suggestions.

Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York. His most recent book is "A Brief History of Fascist Lies."

This is a new low in the ongoing sacralization of American politics. The idea, seemingly endorsed by Trump himself, that "God gave us Trump" is only viable presented to the followers of the cult, for the rest of the universe is obviously farfetched and pathetic and yet it deserves our attention. It represents how dangerous and fascist leaning the Trump cult is.

The Trump cult conflates faith with nationalism and extremist messianic ideology. In short, it reminds us of how irrational Hitlerism and other fascism had been vis-a-vis to democracy. The clip fuses images of the world (especially economic life) with the banal life of Trump, as God's representative on Earth. But this is intentional because the propaganda technique behind it is to fuse the ordinary with the extraordinary. Thus, Trump appears as a normal ordinary man (he is not) but also as God's envoy and messenger.

Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and the author of "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President."

Donald Trump feels like a broken record. Instead of taking the needle off of the record we seem to let him turn the volume up hoping that maybe the needle will stop skipping, which would allow the entire record to change. It just doesn’t happen that way. Trump must be incarcerated as soon as possible because he remains an ever-increasing danger to our nation. The record only gets louder. Now he’s announced that he just could be the new Jesus Christ. Lately, I think the problem is less Trump than it is the media for making him their headline event while leaving Biden on the cutting room floor. He also has the power of Fox News which clearly promotes his re-election.

But more than anything, Trump cannot change – he’s just becoming more the way he is. My question is why so many people love him and turn him into their Pied Piper. America has always worshipped stars; always wanted heroes. It comes from primitive yearnings for permanent idealized parents from childhood, or from replacements for disappointing parents. But whatever the source, Trump worship is not that different from Taylor Swift worship as far as the general public is concerned. It’s just more dangerous because his worshippers are armed and have already staged one insurrection.

Because of modern communication, however, there’s nothing that can be done to Trump other than put him away now. Even if we all turn off our TVs and stop reading the papers, we will never put down our phones. So, stopping him is hopeless. Period.  If he were my patient, I would have already hospitalized him in a closed psychiatric unit. If he refused to go voluntarily, I would call the police and have him hospitalized against his wishes for at least the 48 hours allowed in DC. During those 48 hours I would have to give him heavy doses of antipsychotic medication. But 48 hours will not stop him because he is who he is: he will never stop. Trump must be incarcerated now, before he even stands trial. He must have his phones confiscated as well as his access to “Truth Social.” And he cannot hold any more rallies until all the trials are finished. Trump must be incarcerated in the fullest sense of the word.

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Years earlier, political comic Mort Sahl described going to a Billy Graham rally. There, Sahl took two rolls of film. When he got home to develop them, they came out “blank.” Make of Sahl’s joke what you will, but all Trump’s promises – building a wall, having great infrastructure and a comprehensive health care program were “blanks” in his first term. Now that he admits he is Jesus, Trump hopes to do better in a second term. At least he can legitimize his angry paranoid stance: after all, Jesus Himself was betrayed.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and author of "Criminology on Trump." His sequel to that book, "Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy," will be published in April 2024.

Throughout US history the most successful con men have all relied on three characteristics of their marks—gullibility, absurdity, and believability—from Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II to Charles Ponzi to Bernard Madoff to Donald J. Trump. Ironically, when the “jig is up” and even months or years later with the exception of those who may have been financially or emotionally ruined because of the fraudulent experience, most of the other marks who have been deceived tend to excuse the fraudster rationalizing his behavior one way or the other and/or blaming themselves instead.

Upon seeing this latest propagandistic video by Trump and his “true believers” there have been at least three reactions. As the Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming and Founding Editor of Mediaite.com, Colby Hall, has written: This “creepy” and “messianic bit of messaging” will “cause many to cringe but others to fall to their knees in supplication.” Most people, however, will find the video to be comical, not to mention the product of pure irrationality or senselessness.   

So why would Trump and company post a satirical version of Paul Harvey’s famous “So God Made a Farmer” video in which Trump the lifelong atheist is playing the role of God’s son?

Because Trump who understands the polls perhaps better than most pollsters do also understands the gullibility, absurdity, and believability of the American voters, Republican or Democratic. He knows according to the latest polls that more Republicans say Trump is a person of faith compared to the Irish Catholic Biden who has worn religion on his sleeve for some eighty years.

With the assistance of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer and presently one of Trump’s leading antagonists, let me explain how we got here in as few words as possible.

It all goes back to 2015 when political pundits, social commentators, and just about everybody else for that matter were all surprised to learn that the lifelong amoral, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, and Democratic contributor had become the beloved favorite of the evangelical community.

This inversion of Trump’s personal biography involved a lot of hard effort and energy on the former president’s part, not to mention his promising to appoint conservative judges to low and high courts alike, and to do his best to fight against abortion, gender, and human rights for all. But ultimately it came down to arguably one of Trump’s greatest con jobs ever.

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

It all occurred on the 25th floor of Trump Tower in a meeting arranged by Cohen who had called in an IOU from Jerry and Becki Falwell. At this meeting Trump was able to play to the desires and vanities of some of the most famous evangelicals in the US, including Jerry Falwell Jr, Pastor Darrell Scott, and Reverend Robert Jeffress, convincing them that he had experienced a moment of true conversion.

As some of those in attendance such as Johnnie Moore, the unofficial leader of Trump’s evangelical advisory board has been quoted, “I absolutely believe he’s a born-again Christian” or as the Rev. Franklin Graham, faith advisor to Trump’s White House and son of the late Billy Graham stated, “I think there’s no question that he believes.”

As Cohen writes in his first book on Trump, Disloyal: A Memoir, a few minutes after all of the evangelical leaders had ritualistically laid their hands on Trump’s germophobic body and had left the 25th floor, Donald popped into Cohen’s office and had this to say, “Can you believe people believe that bullsh*t?”

André Gagné, Professor and Chair of Theological Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and author of "American Evangelicals for Trump: Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times."

It’s clear to me that Trump's narcissistic and attention-seeking urge to constantly put himself at the center of attention is a typical manifestation of his personality. But Trump has not been the only recent politician to use a Paul Harvey-style of video as a promotional tool to garner the support of religious conservative voters. In 2022, Ron DeSantis had the same type of campaign ad video for his own re-election as governor of Florida in 2022.    

The video the former president posted called ‘God Gave Us Trump’ promotes the idea of ‘Making America Great Again.’ It suggests that only Trump can bring this vision to reality. The video portrays Trump as the answer to America’s economic prosperity and leadership role on the global stage. It claims that he will secure the U.S. borders, fight against the ‘deep state’, battle the Marxists and expose the propagators of ‘fake news.’ The video also depicts Trump as a loving husband and a devout Christian, who waits for the First Lady and attends church on Sundays. Furthermore, I noticed the use of a striking metaphor that describes Trump a shepherd who cares for his flock! It’s analogous to how Jesus is presented as the Good Shepherd in the Gospel of John (See John 10:11-16). 

To call Trump a ‘shepherd’ corresponds to the belief that he was divinely chosen to lead the country. This idea was popularized by Lance Wallnau, a Pentecostal Christian businessman, regarded as a prophet, an apostle, and a teacher. Wallnau believes that Trump was ‘Chosen by God,’ just like the 6th Century C.E. Persian King, Cyrus the Great (see Isaiah 44:28–45:4). In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God says of Cyrus: ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall carry out all my purpose’. Trump has skillfully woven this biblical language into his political career and actions, using it to legitimize his authority. However, this also feeds his narcissistic tendencies, and he is likely to continue exploiting it.

Marcel Danesi is Professor Emeritus of linguistic anthropology and semiotics at the University of Toronto. His new book is "Politics, Lies and Conspiracy Theories: A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective."

Trump’s performative abilities are truly second to none—he knows how to talk, act, and behave according to his specific audience of followers, putting on a veritable “show” for them. In the case of his evangelical followers he has always presented himself as the one chosen to save the world from atheistic secularism, which he claims is being imposed upon Americans by a radical left deep state. Trump has thus evolved into a Messianic figure among the primarily white religious right, who is fulfilling a divine mission—a conspiracy theory that he opportunistically promotes himself, portraying himself as an angry spiritual leader who alone can rid America of its deep state enemies.

The irony in all this is unmistakable since Trump is hardly a religious man. But this does not matter to his religious followers, who see him as a “savior sinner,” like other such sinners and martyrs in biblical history. Many on the religious right see Trump as a vessel who will adopt a moral agenda in office, no matter what opposition he faces.

Before Trump’s rise to power, the mass media hardly paid attention to the religious right, generating a perception among evangelicals of news reporters and Democrats as harboring a liberal secular agenda and worldview that they have been imposing on America for decades. The sense of exclusion that those who belong to Trump’s base felt before his leadership, allowed him to become their spiritual leader, no matter his philandering past and his shady business dealings. For such individuals the MAGA narrative is perceived to be a redemptive religious one, implying a restoration of America’s moral heritage, in opposition to the view of America as a culturally diverse society (religiously, ideologically, and ethnically).

Read more

about this topic

Abortion rights vs Big Tech: A major privacy win against “corporate surveillance”

In a significant victory for the privacy of people seeking abortion in the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission has issued a groundbreaking ban on the sale of individuals' medical location data. The FTC settlement announced on Tuesday is the first of its kind and concludes the agency’s investigation into the smartphone surveillance company Outlogic (formerly X-Mode Social), which bills itself as the “second largest U.S. data company” and tracks people through more than 100 smartphone apps. Outlogic is now prohibited from selling or sharing any person’s private location data that could be used to track someone to a health care facility, domestic abuse shelter or place of worship. 

The FTC accepted the consent agreement on a 3-0 vote. In a joint statement, FTC chair Lina Khan pointed at the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that constitutional protections against unchecked government surveillance extend to geolocation tracking “even when the data is originally collected by private companies.”

“The explosion of business models that monetize people’s personal information has resulted in routine trafficking and marketing of Americans’ location data. As the FTC has stated, openly selling a person’s location data to the highest bidder can expose people to harassment, stigma, discrimination or even physical violence,” Khan said Tuesday. 

Related

Who is Lina Khan? Meet the unshakeable FTC chair rattling Big Tech

Under its former name as X-Mode, Outlogic is also the company that was exposed in a 2020 investigation by Motherboard’s Joseph Cox for selling users’ personal data to the U.S. military. Notably, the company deployed a precise location-tracking app that also functioned as a Muslim prayer app. It was installed 98 million times. X-Mode CEO Joshua Anton told CNN at the time that the company was using its 400 or so apps to track 25 million devices inside the U.S. every month, along with 40 million devices elsewhere.

Although Outlogic didn’t directly sell abortion-specific data, the FTC complaint specifically mentioned how easy it would be to hunt down an abortion seeker with the highly specific location data the company sells. 

“The location data could be used to track consumers who have visited women’s reproductive health clinics and as a result, may have had or contemplated sensitive medical procedures such as an abortion or in vitro fertilization. Using the data X-Mode has made available, it is possible for third parties to target consumers visiting such healthcare facilities and trace that mobile device to a single-family residence,” the commission said in its filing. 

Related

High-tech surveillance in post-Roe America: Chilling new report outlines possible future

Khan’s remarks are no exaggeration. One of X-Mode/Outlogic's previous clients is a private intelligence firm called HYAS which has boasted about tracking people “down to their physical doorstep” using location data bought from X-Mode.

“X-Mode must also delete all the sensitive location data it unlawfully collected, as well as any model or algorithm derived from this unlawfully collected location data,” Khan said in a series of tweets, adding that the agency “will continue to use all our tools to safeguard Americans' sensitive data from unchecked corporate surveillance.”

As reported by Politico, an Outlogic spokesperson contended that the company had not misused user location data, saying it would comply with the FTC without making major changes. 

“Adherence to the FTC’s newly introduced policy will be ensured by implementing additional technical processes and will not require any significant changes to businesses or products,” the company said. 

The FTC order is also likely to have significant implications for advertising schemes on social media platforms, which often use users’ geolocation data to serve up strategically targeted ads. A pandemic-driven rise in virtual medical care, and the spread of unregulated video-conferencing and health-based apps — has also widened the doorway for patient privacy breaches. 

We need your help to stay independent

Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism

Meanwhile, data brokers are buying and selling patient mental health data with nearly zero oversight, putting user privacy at greater risk as AI-enabled tools outpace federal regulation and drive new and disturbing forms of online harassment. In the vacuum of federal regulation, websites and data brokers — especially social media companies — now face an increasingly complex obstacle course of state data privacy laws. Establishing protections for minors has become a rare bipartisan theme in many legislative debates on tech, sparked in large part by the ongoing teen mental health epidemic.

Related

The real social media crisis: Teen mental health, not Hunter Biden's laptop

Forty-one states are currently suing Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, alleging the company lured teens with addictive and harmful content, and then profited off data it collected from them, using geolocation and other sensitive personal data to serve targeted ads. In November, the social media giant filed a lawsuit against the FTC in a bid to dodge the $5 billion fine it has owed the government since 2019. 

Ahead of the FTC settlement on Tuesday morning, Meta debuted its latest effort to get ahead of regulation, rolling out some modest content restrictions for teens on its apps. Children’s advocacy group Fairplay called Meta’s last-minute move “desperate” and urged Congress to take action.

“Today’s announcement by Meta is yet another desperate attempt to avoid regulation and an incredible slap in the face to parents who have lost their kids to online harms on Instagram. If the company is capable of hiding pro-suicide and eating disorder content, why have they waited until 2024 to announce these changes?,” Fairplay executive director Josh Golin said in a statement. 

"While the FTC's action is encouraging, the agency should not have to play data broker Whack-a-Mole."

“The FTC and state AGs are doing their part to hold Meta accountable for their abuses of young people," he continued. "Now it’s Congress’s turn: toss Meta’s press release in the recycling bin and pass the Kids Online Safety Act and COPPA 2.0."

Facebook and Instagram aren’t the only platforms catching heat for how they collect and use kids’ data, however. TikTok, used by up to two-thirds of American teenagers, also ran afoul of ethics standards last year when its algorithm was caught serving extremist and violent content to 13-year-olds. 

The collection of kids’ geolocation data takes on even more alarming context in light of government contractors like Palantir — which helped Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection agents track and surveil immigrant families using a combination of biometric and non-public databases.

The throughline connecting the FTC’s X-Mode settlement and the weaponization of social media surveillance wasn’t lost on Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who lauded the FTC and echoed Fairplay’s calls for legislative action. 

"I commend the FTC for taking tough action to hold this shady location data broker responsible for its sale of Americans' location data,” Wyden said in a statement. 

“In 2020, I discovered that the company had sold Americans' location data to U.S. military customers through defense contractors. While the FTC's action is encouraging, the agency should not have to play data broker Whack-a-Mole. Congress needs to pass tough privacy legislation to protect Americans' personal information and prevent government agencies from going around the courts by buying our data from data brokers."

Read more

about the fight to protect abortion-seeker privacy

Is it OK that you snore? Experts agree: Definitely not

Dr. Colin Sullivan is a prominent sleep expert. He invented the continuous positive airway pressure machine, better known as the CPAP, which helps the millions of patients who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (or OSA) get a decent night's sleep. So when Sullivan shared his views about snoring with Salon during an interview last year, it was worthy of attention.

Many people may still think of snoring as a harmless element of the sleeping process — if frequently exasperating to spouses, partners and roommates — a distinctive buzzing, rattling sound often regarded cute in old people, babies and dogs while depicted with a string of comical Z's by cartoonists.

"Snoring isn't good for you. It damages the airway, it interrupts your sleep, just like sleep apnea does. It's part of the same spectrum."

Sullivan, however, said there is no such thing as "harmless" snoring. Sleep apnea, or related conditions in which a person temporarily stops breathing for 10 seconds or more while asleep, exists on a spectrum, he continued. When a person snores, that's a red flag that they're on this spectrum. It's not healthy, and it's not good news.

"Snoring is a forerunner of such disorders for so many people, probably the majority," Sullivan said. With many patients he has seen, he continued, "it's a typical story that they were OK and they started snoring at 30 or 35 or whatever, and then it kept going, and then they developed apnea after nine or 10 years. And I think snoring isn't good for you. It damages the airway, it interrupts your sleep, just like sleep apnea does."

To understand why this is the case, we first have to understand the mechanics of snoring. When a human being or another mammal snores, it's because air is flowing past the soft tissues in the pharyngeal airway, such as the tongue, soft palette and throat muscles. Instead of smoothly flowing into the subject's lungs, air is passing through a number of impediments along the way, leading to an array of unpleasant rattling, rasping, hacking, wheezing and honking noises typically associated with snoring.

Related

The human neck is a mistake of evolution

Because snoring has likely been around throughout humanity's existence, it is tempting to dismiss these sounds as mere annoyances. But it only takes a few anatomical quirks for the cacophony of snoring to lead to extended periods when the sleeping person  stops breathing — in other words, to full-fledged sleep apnea.

“Most simply, snoring can fragment sleep, robbing us of its full restorative benefits," Dr Shereen Lim, a dental specialist in airway health and author of "Breathe, Sleep, Thrive," told The Guardian last year. Lim added that snoring is also the most common symptom of OSA, observing that it is generally a sign of underlying health problems, and should not be dismissed or ignored

While modern health care "focuses on diagnosing and treating OSA," Lim said, that's akin to "treating coronary artery disease rather than focusing on prevention and promoting health. Snoring is a symptom of poor airway structure and function. It plays out during sleep because our muscles are more relaxed, we are lying down, and reflexes that normally keep our airway open during the day are not active during sleep.”

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

Furthermore, there are potentially serious health consequences along the snoring-sleep apnea spectrum. People with these sleep disorders are at a much higher risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's and a number of mental illnesses, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. They are more likely to feel tired and listless during the day and to struggle with concentration and memory skills. Sleep apnea is also linked to various other maladies ranging from headaches and dry mouth to weight gain. In fact, there are so many physical and mental health problems linked with sleep apnea that it's surprising more doctors don't routinely ask patients about their sleeping habits.

"I think snoring and sleep apnea put you at risk of getting a number of diseases," Sullivan told Salon. "I am astounded when I see patients with various cardiac conditions and no one's even asked them about what happens to them at nighttime in terms of sleep."

Perhaps snoring is often overlooked because we tend to assume that our bodies are intrinsically designed to perform optimally. We can understand health conditions that occur because a body is infected or damaged, but snoring results from flaws in our evolutionary design. As Allen J. Moses, Elizabeth T. Kalliath and Gloria Pacini wrote in the journal Dental Sleep Practice in 2022, humans experienced significant trade-offs in order to have large heads balance atop relatively narrow necks as we walk upright. Those same necks need not only to enable swallowing and breathing, but also the complex vocalizations necessary for speech. As a result, the authors wrote, humans are left with a "flat face, smaller chin, shorter oral cavity, changes in jaw function, repositioning of ears behind jaws, ascent of the uvula and descent of the epiglottis, right angle bend in tongue, creation of compliant, combined, flexible airway-footway, and speech."

Charles Darwin famously remarked on the ridiculousness of the fact that "every particle of food and drink we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea with some risk of falling into the lungs."

Even the foremost pioneer of evolutionary biology, Charles Darwin, famously remarked on the ridiculousness of the fact that "every particle of food and drink we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea with some risk of falling into the lungs."

It may be easiest to understand snoring not as an inoffensive quirk of human biology, but as something closer to a blinking red light. Because our necks are overstuffed with organs, millions of people struggle with breathing while they sleep. Numerous technologies, dental appliances and even surgical procedures can now alleviate this condition — but only when we grasp that snoring isn't necessarily humorous or harmless.

Read more

about sleep science:

“There’s room for a richer definition”: Astronomers debate rethinking what makes a planet habitable

When astronomers search for exoplanets, they’re not only trying to confirm if they exist — but they’re also trying to see if they can support life as we know it. That’s because identifying exoplanets is a fundamental part in the international search for extraterrestrial life. 

As explained by NASA, astronomers often look to see if planets are in the so-called “habitable zone.” This is defined by the distance between a star and an exoplanet where liquid water could hypothetically exist on an exoplanet’s surface. This is frequently also referred to as the Goldilocks’ zones, where conditions can’t be too hot nor too cold for life. As it stands, only 67 out of nearly 5,000 exoplanets are potentially habitable worlds. Of these exoplanets, only 28 are more likely to be rocky planets, which is an indicator that there could be water on its surface like Earth. 

Related

Scientists discover hidden population of stars that are the "bluest of blue"

However, a new discovery in our own solar system is nudging some astronomers to rethink how habitability should be defined. Last month, in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, astronomers said there is strong evidence on Saturn's moon Enceladus of the presence of hydrogen cyanide, which is an essential molecule in forming amino acids and therefore one of the most basic ingredients in life. In addition to hydrogen cyanide, the researchers found that many of the organic compounds in the plumes were oxidized, which suggests that there could be multiple pathways to sustain life in the moon’s subsurface ocean.

“Where I think we can do better is in championing a variety of methods.”

While researchers said they’re far from drawing a definitive conclusion on whether or not life exists on Enceladus, they are going to continue to probe. If Enceladus has life, it could throw habitability into flux because Saturn is outside of the currently defined habitable zone. Does that mean that when astronomers are looking for habitable planets outside of our own solar system, they’re missing habitable planets that could hypothetically exist outside of the habitable zone? Should habitability be redefined? 

Dr. Mark Simons, a professor of geophysics at the Seismological Laboratory at California Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper, told Salon it’s a hard question to answer because right now, astronomers make the measurements they can with the technology that’s available to them. When it comes to exploring habitable exoplanets, astronomers are limited in what they can do. The James Webb Space Telescope relies on infrared astronomy to interrogate points of light. Astronomers draw conclusions about these exoplanets with limited data. But within our own solar system, Simons said, “It’s a different ballgame.” Astronomers can send spacecraft to make observations by sampling the atmosphere directly or directly landing on a planet or moon. 

“They’re doing what they can with technology as we know it,” he said. “Where I think we can do better is in championing a variety of methods.”

David Catling, a professor of earth and space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, told Salon via email that he thinks right now defining habitability is also reliant on what is “detectable.”

“In the habitable zone, we expect planets that have liquid water on their surfaces, so these planets could have surface biospheres that emit gasses into their atmosphere in ways that we can detect in reflected or transmitted light from the parent star,” he said. “If there’s a moon beyond the habitable zone that has a subsurface biosphere beneath ice, that’s great, but it’s not detectable.” 

Even in our own solar system, he elaborated, scientists don't know definitively whether or not there is life in the subsurface ocean of Europa or Enceladus.

“There’s room for a richer definition” of habitability.

Simons elaborated that he thinks “there’s room for a richer definition” of habitability. In a recent study that Simons co-authored, Simons and his colleagues suggest that the concept of time as it pertains to geophysics could be included when determining habitability. Specifically, the duration or the trajectory of conditions over a period of time.

“If you were to find the conditions on the Earth as they are today, but they were only around for an hour, it wouldn’t even have time to develop life, right?” he posited. “Now, whether that magic number for the Earth was 10 million years or 100 million years or billion years, I think it's hard for people to answer.”

Simons isn’t the only scientist to suggest broadening the definition of habitability. Previously, a group of planetary scientists suggested that habitable planets could have atmospheres that are hydrogen-dominated. Another group of scientists once suggested looking for potentially habitable exoplanets around white dwarf stars. As I've previously reported for Salon, some astronomers are pushing for life to be focused on identifying technosignatures — such as radio waves, industrial pollution, light pollution or anything that would suggest advanced technology is being used — not only biosignatures. 

Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), told Salon he’s not sure if there is a “pressing need” to redefine habitability at the moment. In part because it’s so loosely defined now. Plus, planets are like people and “go through stages of life,” he said. If one starts out uninhabitable, that doesn’t mean it can’t sustain life in the future.  

“If you find a planet around some star, and it happens to be in that star's habitable zone, you can say, well, maybe it's in the habitable zone, but life has not sprung up on that planet yet because we're just too early,” he said. “We should come back a billion years from now and then maybe we'll find all sorts of interesting life, and maybe if we come back 4 billion years from now, maybe we'll find intelligent inhabitants to invite to our book club.”

Shostak emphasized that in the search for life, it’s reassuring that there are suspected to be nearly a trillion exoplanets in our own galaxy. He likened the situation to having a trillion lottery tickets. One is likely to be a winner.

“Some of them, most of them you're gonna throw away,” he said. “But some will be OK.”

Cattling also said the definition of habitability could change as technology advances. 

“There could be a lot of life on exoplanets that we simply can’t see,” he said. ”We don’t have the telescopes and technology in place that can look at the details of Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars.”

Read more

about astronomy

 

Extremely rare wild jaguar spotted in Arizona

Recently released trail camera footage has apparently identified a live wild jaguar in Arizona, indications that an exceedingly rare species may be making a comeback. This is only the eighth individual jaguar conclusively identified in the American Southwest in the last three decades. This particular cat was differentiated from others through its unique pattern of rosettes, the spots found on jaguars, leopards and other wild feline species. Just as fingerprints and DNA strands can identify an individual human within our species of billions, each jaguar has distinctive spots.

“Every new jaguar in Arizona is a moment to celebrate,” Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement announcing the discovery. “After being nearly wiped out these majestic felines continue to reestablish previously occupied territory despite border wall construction, new mines and other threats to their habitat. We’re extremely lucky to live near such magnificent creatures, and we’ve got to do everything we can to protect our shared landscape.”

The trail-cam footage was captured by wildlife videographer Jason Miller while the jaguar was roaming the Huachuca Mountains in southern Arizona. Now that researchers know a previously unidentified jaguar is out there, a new challenge awaits.

"Whether male or female, this new jaguar is going to need a mate," Megan Southern, jaguar recovery coordinator with the Rewilding Institute, told the Phoenix TV station KPNX. "Now is the time for us to have a serious conversation and take action to bring jaguars back."

Mariska Hargitay is candid about her experience with sexual assault in moving essay

In her iconic role as Captain Olivia Benson in the long-running TV series, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," actress Mariska Hargitay fights to bring justice to women who are the victims of sexual assault. This work has, through the years, been taken up off-screen, having founded the Joyful Heart Foundation, which provides support to people who have found themselves in similar situations depicted on her show and, as she reveals in a moving new essay written for People Magazine, in her own life.

Under the title "A Rape. A Reckoning. A Renewal," Hargitay is candid about a rape she experienced in her thirties by a man whom she'd believed to be a friend, writing:

It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control. 

He was a friend. Then he wasn’t. I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn’t want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body. 

Now almost 60, she goes on to write that while this is a painful part of her story, it does not define her, adding, "I’m so deeply grateful for where I am. I’m renewed and I’m flooded with compassion for all of us who have suffered. And I’m still proudly in process."

 

Chris Christie announces that he’s bowing out of his 2024 presidential campaign

Speaking to voters during his town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced that he's ending his 2024 presidential campaign, using the occasion to poke at Donald Trump on his way out. 

"I want to promise you this," Christie said. "I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again. And that’s more important than my own personal ambition."

On his reason for bowing out, he was solemn but realistic, saying, "It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination."

News of Christie's announcement bounced around the internet shortly before he confirmed it himself, with journalist Mark Halperin posting to his Substack that his campaign had reportedly briefed allies on the sudden change, and that he would not be making an endorsement, which ended up checking out. 

"I hear Chris Christie is dropping out of the race today — I might even get to like him again," Trump weighed in on Truth Social. 

 

“Critical loss”: “Anomaly” kills off commercial US moon mission

Peregrine Mission One — the first American moon-landing effort since Apollo — has failed, according to lead engineers at the NASA-chosen private company Astrobotics. As reported by the BBC and numerous other sources, the mission experienced a critical failure in the propulsion systems which will prevent the Peregrine lunar lander from touching down on the lunar surface. Difficulties adjusting the craft's solar panel array toward the sun are preventing the craft from generating electricity. The mission was the first attempted commercial moon landing under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The failure follows a successful launch of the Vulcan Centaur rocket by United Launch Alliance — a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

"Unfortunately, it appears the failure within the propulsion systems is causing a critical loss of propellant. The team is working to try and stabilize this loss, but given the situation, we have prioritized maximizing the science and data we can capture. We are currently assessing what alternative mission profiles may be feasible at this time," Astrobotic said in a statement just hours after it resolved a temporary communications loss with Peregrine, rooted in the same issue. The company said in a later update that the majority of its team "has been awake and working diligently for more than 24 hours." 

Six lunar rovers were also being carried on the rocket. Along with the lunar lander and science instruments, the Vulcan Centaur is carrying the DNA of legendary science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, as well as the remains of several "Star Trek" franchise figures. They include those of series creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry, and their son Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry. Also included are those of Nichelle Nichols, who famously portrayed Lt. Uhura in the original series, and her son Kyle Johnson.