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Jimmy Kimmel threatens Aaron Rodgers over “reckless” Epstein allegations

Jimmy Kimmel and Aaron Rodgers are battling out their differences.

The New York Jets quarterback accused the late-night show host of being one of the men who traveled to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's private island. The island is said to be where people took advantage of the underage girls that Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked. The unredacted list of people who allegedly visited the island will be released soon.

On ESPN's “The Pat McAfee Show,” Rodgers said, “A lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn’t come out.” He added, “I’ll tell you what, if that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle.”

But then Kimmel took to X to refute the allegation. The post, which has been viewed 59 million times reads, "Dear Aa**hole: for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any 'list' other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality."

He continued, "Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court."

The pair are not without their personal history. In the past, Kimmel criticized Rodgers over his comments on Epstein, saying he is a "tin foil hatter" and joking that Rodgers should consider that it “might be time to revisit that concussion protocol.”

“Fargo” exposes why America is in love with “Toxic” men like Roy Tillman

No “Fargo” character was built for romance, but if one were pressed to name names in an FMK scenario, Lamorne Morris’ Witt Farr would be the most solid choice to “marry.” Instinct and determination fuel the North Dakota state trooper’s sense of what’s right, along with an inherent goodness, all of which comes into play at the beginning of “Blanket” when Witt crosses paths with Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm).

Until that moment in the season’s eighth episode Witt hasn’t faced Roy himself — only his agents, including his reckless son Gator (Joe Keery) and Roy’s other deputies, all devoted to propping up Roy’s power instead of enforcing the commonly agreed upon state and federal laws.

Longtime viewers understand that every thread making up each season’s string of crimes captured is fiction.

Witt and Roy would not otherwise be familiar with each other if not for their shared interest in Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple), the Minnesota housewife whose kidnapping Witt interrupted, and who he assisted in a gas station convenience store shootout. But the two happen to meet in a hospital check-in area as Roy is forcing Dot to leave with him.

To Roy, Dorothy is his ex-wife Nadine and his property. He is the reason she was almost taken, twice, succeeding a third time quite literally by accident. Halfway through “Blanket” it’s insinuated that, contrary to what the previous episode depicts, Dorothy fell asleep at the wheel while driving, ending up unconscious in a hospital on Roy’s turf. Once she’s well enough to sign herself out, Roy threatens to murder everyone around them unless she pretends to be acting of her free will.

Witt, though, recognizes what’s happening. But all the keen intelligence and noble intentions in the world offer zero protection against a brute with guns and no impulse control. Witt knows he’s outnumbered and would be killed before he can call for backup. Dorothy knows all this too, so she trades her safety for Witt’s, telling Roy she’ll only go with him if he leaves the state deputy unharmed.

“Fargo” creator Noah Hawley uses each season to examine what we know to be true about the American story. This is the spirit behind the claim opening each episode that “This is a true story…At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

Longtime viewers understand that every thread making up each season’s string of crimes captured is fiction, making those opening words dishonest, albeit of a type we’re primed to accept. Americans love our movies and TV shows, and we reserve a special embrace for theatrical crime stories.

Dorothy’s claw-and-tooth battle to stay free of Roy is the hero’s journey at the center of a whirl of other crimes – some legal, like the predatory debt that made her mother-in-law Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a billionaire, and others extremely extralegal.

But the lash driving all the season’s worst figures and those who desire to be braids ambition with shamelessness and ruthlessness, a combo that’s proven wildly successful in modern culture, exponentially so in the United States.

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This fifth season meets Roy as he’s up for reelection and secure enough in his hold over his fiefdom to shoot another abusive man in his home in front of his wife. It’s not quite the middle of Fifth Avenue, but the point is made. Roy knows the woman will say nothing about his homicide, not because her dead spouse had it coming but because if she does, Roy will kill her, too. Forcing such deals on the powerless keeps Roy on his throne. He even has something on the hospital staffer handling Dot’s hospital checkout documentation, making the “HELP ME” she enters in her signature field useless.

But Roy is charismatic, wearing the cowboy hat and rancher’s shearling coat of the “Hard Man for Hard Times” he claims to be on his campaign billboards. It’s not for nothing that the nurse attending Dot describes him as “easy on the eyes” when she thinks Roy is Dot’s devoted husband, waiting for her to wake up.

The people who bring us “Fargo” stress that the stories aren’t meant to be political commentaries but psychological, allegories examining how evil manifests in places presumed to be bastions of stalwart niceness. Season 5 provides multiple views of independence starting with Dot, who escaped from a violent marriage to Roy she was coerced into at the age of 15. Every move she’s made since has been to protect the life she’s created with her husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) and daughter Scotty (Sienna King).

Wayne, however, is fundamentally useless without his mother’s viciousness backing him. That doesn’t matter to Dot, who prizes Wayne’s gentleness with her and Scotty above all. He’s Roy’s opposite in every way, which is why she chose him to marry. In “Blanket” she promises Roy she’s going to kill him.

Since she tells him this after Roy’s chained her up in an outbuilding on his ranch, it doesn’t hold much menace. Imprisoning her is merely another quick task to complete before he heads off to the televised local debate where he’s not just the beloved incumbent, he’s the star.

Villains who get away with their crimes can become heroes, their sins remade to reflect the independent streak that burnishes our identity. A recent poll conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland confirms this, finding that three years after anti-democratic rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, Republicans are less likely than ever to believe its participants were violent or that Donald Trump was responsible for instigating the violence.

That’s why a major party’s presumed nominee in the 2024 presidential race is proudly bragging that he’s been indicted more times than “the great Alphonse Capone,” a mobster responsible for who knows how many murders, none of which stuck to him. Only a tax evasion conviction ended up putting Capone behind bars.

That’s why Roy Tillman, a sheriff who murders with impunity and crows about his godly ways, is such a horror.

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Roy loves reminding any who question him, including and especially federal agents, that he was duly elected by the local citizens to “protect and serve.” At the debate hall, scores of those citizens cheer Roy as he takes the stage, smiling but confused at what awaits him.

See, while Roy was antagonizing Dot, he also awoke Lorraine’s ire by threatening a local banker with whom she wants to do business, simply because Roy can’t live with losing to a woman. And the Queen of Debt does not lose. Roy compels local vigilantes to secure his business. Lorraine has access to an array of federal government entities. Handling Roy is an in-house job though, accomplished by her fixer Danish Graves (Dave Foley).

In a move worthy of a camera prank show, at the top of the episode we witness Danish getting three men who it is implied are contending with crushing debt to agree to legally change their names to the same one. It is only when Roy gets to the debate that we see which name Danish chose for them: Roy Tillman. Roy takes the stage flanked by his actual challenger and three men with his name who are dressed like him and who repeat what he says verbatim, making the audience break into laughter.

This enrages Roy, who pushes over the podium and storms offstage with the other Roy Tillmans following him, aping his every gesture and statement. He’s so infuriated that when the beloved local newscaster moderating the event places her hand on his shoulder to coax him into staying, he turns around and punches her in the face. All of this is captured on multiple cameras.

While Roy drives home with his tail between his legs, Witt, who was driven from the gates of Tillman Ranch by an emasculated Gator, happens into another chance encounter — this one with Danish, fresh from slicing into the thin skin protecting Roy’s fragile ego. Witt is unsuccessful in trying to get to Dorothy by asking for proof of her wellbeing, but recognizes that someone skilled in bending the law to his will might have a better shot.

Danish, fresh from politically gelding Roy in public, recognizes this advantage too. What he doesn’t is that having a legal and financial upper hand doesn’t matter to men like Roy.

In previous episodes, Dorothy makes oblique references to Roy’s weakness, not his machismo, saying that men like him get off on pinning down smaller things to make themselves feel big. We see this when the shorter Witt stares Roy down. We see it when he returns to his ranch and, after his wife and father-in-law belittle him, the camera locks onto Roy’s menacing mug as he strides purposefully toward the shack where he’s holding Dot.

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Director Sylvain White employs the perfect needle drop at this moment, by the way – a sinister verse and refrain snippet from Jeff Russo’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” the cadence decelerated to a painful languor, matching Roy’s slow, steady gait toward the act we and Dot fear and know to be inevitable.

We see him enter the shack and hear Dot’s screams from a distance. When she comes to, she fights him and has the upper hand for a moment, nearly strangling him with her chain. Before he can retaliate with his full fury, he’s interrupted by one of his men telling him Danish is at his door.

Unlike Witt, Danish is allowed an audience with Roy and confidently offers to buy the sheriff’s political resurrection in exchange for Dot’s release. He wields Lorraine’s endless money and influence, virtually unassailable assets in any other confrontation. What he doesn’t have is a gun. Roy counters Danish’s proposal by shooting two holes in him and having his henchmen dump Danish in a hole at the base of a windmill Dot recognizes as the one from which she believes she retrieved a postcard from Linda.

Dot’s saga is a fantasy, a fiction written in chapters by Hawley and others, but that outcome feels disconcertingly truthful. We’ve seen true crime versions of it and feel hints in the atmosphere as we enter an election year. As Britney’s hit explains, America has gotten too many tastes of poison paradise not to be in love with men like Roy Tillman, selling a vision of might and fortitude and death to his enemies. We’d slide him into the “F” category of the game in a heartbeat.

Many of us also hope that what Witt tells Gator moments after he refuses to recognize his authority is also accurate. “I know you don’t think they’re coming – consequences – but they’re almost here.”

New episodes of “Fargo” air 10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX and stream the next day on Hulu.

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Legal scholar calls out “deeply flawed” arguments against Colorado and Maine rulings barring Trump

Arguments criticizing the Colorado Supreme Court and Maine secretary of state's rulings that Donald Trump be removed from the 2024 presidential primary ballot are "deeply flawed," a legal scholar says. Following the former president's Tuesday lawsuit in Maine requesting Secretary of State Shenna Bellow's ruling be vacated and his name restored to the ballot, University of Baltimore Law Professor Kim Wehle argued that commentators' declarations that both rulings are anti-democratic lack merit. 

Voters don't have a "'democratic' right to pick whomever they want for president under our system of laws," Wehle wrote in The Bulwark, an anti-Trump conservative news site, pointing to the Constitution's age and residency requirements for any potential candidate and individual states' laws governing ballot eligibility. Further complaints that Trump was denied due process are also moot, Wehle explains. In the Colorado case, Trump received due process through the multi-day evidentiary hearing, while Maine law's process authorizing the secretary of state to decide ballot qualifications and the Superior Court to hear appeals "is due process at work," she said.

Wehle also highlighted the Maine official's point in the ruling that Trump's lawyers did "not meaningfully dispute" his role in the attack, which Bellows ruled includes incitement of insurrection. "The point of a trial—which critics claim he’s constitutionally entitled to before being kept off any ballot across the country—is to resolve factual disputes," Wehle writes. Bellows' ballot ruling came last week, just nine days after the Colorado Supreme Court delivered a similar decision. She received death threats after Trump supporters posted her personal information online, and was swatted, incidents Wehle called a "terrible foretaste of the lawlessness we might see in the months ahead, as Donald Trump’s supporters act in service of his lies and ambition."

“Uh-oh”: Fox News hosted a psychic to predict Trump’s 2024 fate — and it didn’t go well

Fox News host Jesse Watters rounded out his first show of the year with a look toward the political futures of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, forgoing featuring a political authority in favor of a psychic and self-described "ghost hunter" who foresaw "a sense of loss" for the former president, The Daily Beast reports. On Tuesday's "Jesse Watters Primetime," the host spoke with Paula Roberts, "The English Psychic," who, per her website, is also a clairvoyant and handwriting analyst. Watters prefaced the conversation with claims that another fortune teller he'd asked about Trump's 2024 fate told him “there would be a grave injustice this fall.”

“We may not even have an election,” Watters recalled, voicing some of Trump supporters’ anxieties. “Therefore, we need a second opinion.” After Watters asked for Roberts' reading on the former president, who is slated to face four criminal trials in the coming months, the psychic drew one card from her tarot deck. Both she and the right-wing host let out an "Uh-oh" as she unveiled a figure cloaked in black looking down at three overturned cups with two standing upright behind it. “I do recognize I’m on Fox TV,” Roberts began. “A sense of loss. A sense of loss, but it’s very specific… It’s as if he may be thinking more about what he’s lost, and not still taking full advantage of what he still has.”

“That’s a great interpretation, Paula,” Watters responded. He then asked about Biden's 2024, which Roberts predicted would see “lots and lots and lots and lots of money" after drawing another card. "You mean from China?” Watters asked, later joking that he'd connect her with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., whose impeachment inquiry into the Biden family has failed to yield any evidence and gain traction. 

More soul (and soup) in 2024: A restaurant critic looks back and ahead

A few buzzwords could fairly easily sum up 2023 from a restaurant trend perspective: maximalism, nostalgia and martinis; inflation pricing, Food- (and Drink) Tok trend-chasing, and the never-say-die QR code menu. I saw each play out in some form or another in a year that marked my return to my hometown of Chicago and to my post as Time Out’s restaurant critic. Yet I also couldn’t shake a prevailing unease that continues to infuse this joyous diversion of dining out.

Moving home from New Mexico in April as the pandemic waned, I saw a city still reeling and forever changed, with higher living costs and more (visible) inequity. Many iconic restaurants closed or morphed into unrecognizable places — for better and worse. Restaurant owners universally lamented staff shortages; soaring labor, fuel and ingredient costs; and lingering supply-chain logjams exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, seemingly everyone I know has had some choice words on how pricey it’s gotten to dine out. Everybody feels pinched yet desperate for normalcy — and unable to let go of the feeling that we might never get back to whatever normal was. 

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Does this explain why one could reasonably label 2023 as the Year of Grandiosity and Wanton Escapism? Every new opening this year seemed bigger and more luxe than the last, with head-turning prices and over-the-top food and drink to match. Let’s heap glistening blobs of caviar and fresh shaved truffles on everything! Let’s light the room with neon, turn the music up a little too loud and turn everything into a martini! The latter was already wearing on me the day two unforgettable concoctions landed in my inbox this year: a giardiniera-flavored dirty martini and a tomato basil-infusion mimicking caprese salad. And if the parmesan espresso martini and MSG martini are any indication, I don't think we’ve seen the last of cocktails and booze infusions that taste like food.

Even as we try to put the pandemic behind us, one stubborn holdover remains: the QR code menu. Nothing says gathering over a meal like everyone immediately shoving their noses into their phones. Some restaurants are even leveraging point of sale systems to implement ordering and paying at the table, infusing the dining-out experience with an awkward, airport-Maggiano’s vibe. I understand the financial and staffing challenges that compel restaurants to try these tactics, but it casts a chill over the hospitality aspect of dining out, and places too much of our focus on settling up when the experience should be about catching up.

The price of dining out, regardless of cuisine or vibe, is a topic that’s already top of mind for most. In April 2023 prices for food away from home increased 8.6% compared to the year-earlier period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Then again, prices for food at home climbed 7.1% during the same period. That’s right, everything costs more.) What’s different from the Great Recession era, at least so far, is that people don’t seem to be trading down to fast-casual, but staying home instead. Dining out was down 3.5% in April compared to the year-earlier period, per the BLS. 

Let’s heap glistening blobs of caviar and fresh shaved truffles on everything! Let’s light the room with neon, turn the music up a little too loud and turn everything into a martini!

Just as restaurants are forced to examine how they spend every penny, belt-tightening diners can and should eat out with more intention than ever — seeking out and returning to the places that reflect the diversity of our neighborhoods, that feed our region’s microeconomies, that care for their workforces and our shrinking natural resources, and that make the kind of food that nourishes and thrills us in equal measure. After all, repeat customers are what get our favorite independent restaurants through storms like this one.    

I’ve eaten more soulful, deeply personal food this year than any in memory — most often in cozy, next-generation mom and pops born out of passion. In October, I was magnetized by glossy alkaline spaghetti with sesame, Taiwanese black vinegar and umami-rich Lao Gan Ma (chile crisp) at Xiao Ye (Mandarin for late-night snack) in Portland, Oregon. First-generation American owners Jolyn Chen and chef Louis Lin stitch together their personal and professional histories with inventiveness and heart through the theme of midnight snacks shared in the intimate wee hours of a home kitchen. 

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In July at Filipino restaurant Boonie’s, I fell hard for a sizzling platter of sisig, a textural, citrus-scented pork belly hash with caramelized sweet onions bound with a raw egg that’s stirred in tableside. Chef/owner Joseph Fontelera’s inviting restaurant honors his Philippines-born grandmother with boldly charred, umami-rich and satisfying food, including the best damn garlic rice I’ve ever tasted. 

Then a few weeks ago, I had all my preconceived notions about borscht upended by the gently sour, campfire-sweet version with charcoal-dried pears and duck at the modern Ukrainian restaurant Anelya in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. Anelya, named for chef/co-owner Johnny Clark’s Ukrainian-born grandmother, was born of urgency and a desire to preserve the cuisine of a place and people in the throes of war. Its kitchen staff comprises eight Ukrainian refugees, who, alongside Clark and chef/co-owner Beverly Kim, cook traditional and contemporary dishes representing the diverse regions of the world’s breadbasket. Despite this solemn, weighty mission, the food is joyous and the atmosphere warm. It’s one of the best restaurant openings of the year.

For me, these places match this uncertain moment with welcomed hope and honesty. They liberate the notion of what constitutes American cooking, even if we still don’t know what on earth to call it. They don’t gate-keep; rather they draw inventively from our motley American larder that spans fast food and chain restaurant nostalgia; regional, seasonal and cultural influences. They narrate the challenge of straddling identities and cultures, and carve space for those who need delicious reminders that they’re not alone. 

And at least one of them makes a hell of an argument for deeming 2024 The Year of Soup. Watch out, espresso martini and fancy faux fish. 

2023 Food Writer’s Wordbank

Words I probably overused:

  • Thrilling
  • Oozing 
  • Funky
  • Sensual
  • Briny
  • Neon 
  • Maximalist

Words I never want to see again:

  • Extra 
  • Fire (as in, "This food is fire")
  • Slap (as in, "This food slaps")
  • Clubstaurant
  • ‘Tini 
  • Flex

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Outrage after Harvard president resigns amid “attacks and threats fueled by racial animus”

Harvard University President Claudine Gay's resignation following weeks of conservative outcry and intense scrutiny is an attack on Black leaders and particularly Black women, civil rights activists say.

Gay resigned Tuesday after weeks of outrage and criticism over her responses to antisemitism on campus and accusations of plagiarism. She was the first Black woman to head the Ivy League school and had the shortest tenure of a Harvard president in the institution's history. 

"This will be used by the very worst people to make higher education worse, not better."

Despite the widespread outcry, Harvard's governing board along with hundreds of alumni and faculty had rallied behind her and advocated for her retention. Her Tuesday resignation letter, and a statement from Harvard's board, described her experience of the backlash as being “subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” according to Politico. 

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The sustained pressure campaign came amid a broader nationwide conservative effort to thwart campus diversity initiatives meant to bolster support for underrepresented students, and the Supreme Court's 2023 decision to ban race-conscious admissions only added to the political right's push to tank diversity programming. Critics of the outcry against Gay have argued that the conservative alumni, donors and lawmakers fueling the backlash are out to accomplish the same thing.

Janai Nelson, the director-counsel and president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, criticized the scrutiny of the college leader leading up to her resignation, writing on X that the “attacks against Claudine Gay have been unrelenting & the biases unmasked.”

“Her resignation on the heels of Liz Magill’s set dangerous precedent in the academy for political witch hunts,” Nelson wrote on X, referring to the former president of the University of Pennsylvania, who in December stepped down amid outrage over her performance at a House hearing investigating how college leaders were responding to antisemitism on their campuses. “The project isn’t to thwart hate but to foment it thru vicious takedowns. This protects no one.”

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Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, a supporter of Gay, called her resignation “an assault on the health, strength and future of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

He also directly called out on Tuesday one of Gay's critics, Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alum who had led calls for her to step down and suggested she was only elevated to the position because of her race. Ackman penned an open letter to the university criticizing Gay's failure to condemn the deadly October Hamas attacks on Israel in her initial statement and used his platform on X, formerly Twitter, to further critique the former college leader.

“President Gay’s resignation is about more than a person or a single incident,” Sharpton said in a statement. “This is an attack on every Black woman in this country who’s put a crack in the glass ceiling … Most of all, this was the result of Bill Ackman’s relentless campaign against President Gay, not because of her leadership or credentials but because he felt she was a DEI hire.”

Those sentiments toward DEI are held by other conservatives, including GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who wrote on X Tuesday that “it was a thinly veiled exercise in race & gender when they selected Claudine Gay” to lead Harvard.

“Here’s a radical idea for the future: select leadership based on *merit.* It’s a great approach, actually,” Ramaswamy wrote following Gay's resignation.

Ackman, for his part, pushed back on the criticism lobbed his way, writing on X Tuesday that “President Gay resigned because she lost the confidence of the University at large due to her actions and inactions and other failures of leadership."

"Gay resigned because it was untenable for her to remain President of Harvard due to her failings of leadership,” he added.

Sharpton said that his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, is planning to hold a protest outside of Ackman's office in New York for Thursday.

“If he doesn’t think Black Americans belong in the C-Suite, the Ivy League, or any other hallowed halls, we’ll make ourselves at home outside his office,” the reverend said. 

Last month, Morehouse College President David Thomas lambasted Ackman for comments on X that claimed Harvard's presidential search committee "would not consider a candidate who did not meet the DEI office’s criteria.”

“Mr. Ackman and others are right to call attention to issues of antisemitism at his alma mater where he attended as a Jewish student,” Thomas said in a LinkedIn post. “To turn the question to the legitimacy of President Gay’s selection because she is a black woman is a dog whistle we have heard before: black and female, equal not qualified. We must call it out.”

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PEN America expressed similar concerns last month about the risk of "undue" influence in higher education after Magill stepped down.

“We should not hold university leaders to impossible standards, nor reward combative approaches by campus constituencies that overlook the genuine challenges involved,” said Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, in a December statement. “We hope that this development does not serve as an invitation for politicians or donors to try to exert undue control over our higher education institutions.”

Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who spearheaded the charge against Gay, Magill and MIT president Sally Kornbluth over their testimonies at the House hearing, declared Gay's resignation a victory. 

"TWO DOWN," Stefanik, N.Y., wrote in a post to X. "Harvard knows that this long-overdue forced resignation of the antisemitic plagiarist president is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history,"

During the December congressional hearing, Stefanik questioned the then-three university leaders on whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" violates their schools' rules prohibiting bullying and harassment.

Gay answered that it "depends on the context" and said, "Antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, it amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation."

"That is actionable conduct," Gay continued, "and we do take action."

While Republicans and far-right activists erupted over Gay's testimony, critics of the outrage, including the former executive director of Harvard Hillel, have argued that right-wing forces are weaponizing antisemitism in an effort to further their attacks on higher education and provide cover for Israel's "deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine," according to Common Dreams. 

Far-right activist Christopher Rufo and conservative news outlets further fueled the backlash by reporting and amplifying allegations of plagiarism against Gay. 

"On December 12, in a statement backing Gay as president, the Corporation acknowledged findings of improper citation," The Harvard Crimson, the university's student newspaper, reported last week. "The statement also indicated Gay would make corrections to two articles, which she submitted on December 14. One week later, Harvard announced Gay would also submit corrections to her dissertation."

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Gay, whose tenure as Harvard's president lasted six months, wrote that she decided to step down "after consultation with members" of the Harvard Corporation. 

David Austin Walsh, a historian and postdoctoral associate at the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, wrote in response to Gay's resignation that while he has "no particular love for Claudine Gay… this is a major victory for reactionary donors and the far-right's campaign to dismantle American higher education."

Others echoed that sentiment, arguing that Gay's decision to step down would embolden the right and have reverberating effects on U.S. higher education. 

"Claudine Gay didn't do herself any favors," wrote Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, "but I'll say what I said when Penn's Magill resigned: This will be used by the very worst people to make higher education worse, not better. It will be used to cut funding, end diversity, stifle academic freedom."

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Bernie Sanders: No more US money for “grossly disproportionate” Israeli war on Gaza

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government another $10 billion in unconditional aid to continue waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip.

In a statement echoing his remarks on the Senate floor and a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden last month, Sanders, I-Vt., argued that "the issue we face with Israel-Gaza is not complicated. While we recognize that Hamas' barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we must also recognize that Israel's military response has been grossly disproportionate, immoral, and in violation of international law."

"And, most importantly for Americans, we must understand that Israel's war against the Palestinian people has been significantly waged with U.S. bombs, artillery shells, and other forms of weaponry," he continued. "And the results have been catastrophic."

Sanders—who briefly lived in Israel in the 1960s and has said that he is "proud to be Jewish" but "not actively involved in organized religion"—has been criticized by many progressives for refusing to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. However, he has also been vocally opposed to Netanyahu's far-right government and the mass killing of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces.

The senator noted Tuesday that since Hamas led the October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed over 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza—the majority of them women and children—and injured another 57,000, according to local officials. Legal scholars and other critics around the world have increasingly accused Israel of genocide, including at the International Court of Justice.

The Israeli assault has devastated civilian infrastructure, displacing about 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million residents. Roughly 70% of homes have been damaged or destroyed, and many hospitals have had to shut down. Disease and hunger are rapidly spreading.

As Sanders highlighted, Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, told The New York Times on Monday that the worsening humanitarian disaster in the besieged enclave was historically horrific, with 20% of the population facing an extreme lack of food.

"I've been doing this for about 20 years," said Husain. "I've been to pretty much any conflict, whether Yemen, whether it was South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Ethiopia, you name it. And I have never seen anything like this, both in terms of its scale, its magnitude, but also at the pace that this has unfolded."

As Israeli forces have killed civilians in Gaza with American weaponry amid mounting fears of a broader regional conflict, Biden has pushed for a $14.3 billion package for Israel that includes $10.6 billion for assistance through the Pentagon, $3.5 billion for foreign military financing, and $200 million to help protect U.S. embassies and personnel.

"Congress is working to pass a supplemental funding bill that includes $10 billion of unconditional military aid for the right-wing Netanyahu government to continue its brutal war against the Palestinian people," Sanders said Tuesday. "Enough is enough."

"Congress must reject that funding," the senator asserted. "The taxpayers of the United States must no longer be complicit in destroying the lives of innocent men, women, and children in Gaza."

Court says Texas can ban emergency life-saving abortions despite federal guidance

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Federal regulations do not require emergency rooms to perform life-saving abortions if it would run afoul of state law, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sent hospitals guidance, reminding them of their obligation to offer stabilizing care, including medically necessary abortions, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).

“When a state law prohibits abortion and does not include an exception for the life of the pregnant person — or draws the exception more narrowly than EMTALA’s emergency medical condition definition — that state law is preempted,” the guidance said.

Texas sued, saying this was tantamount to a “nationwide mandate that every hospital and emergency-room physician perform abortions.” Several anti-abortion medical associations joined the lawsuit as well.

Since summer 2022, all abortions have been banned in Texas, except to save the life of the pregnant patient. But doctors, and their patients with medically complex pregnancies, have struggled with implementing the medical exception, reportedly delaying or denying abortion care rather than risk up to life in prison and the loss of their license.

At a hearing in November, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice said that while Texas law might not prohibit medically necessary abortions, the guidance was intended “to ensure that the care is offered when it is required under the statute.”

“Individuals [are] presenting to emergency rooms, suffering from these emergency medical conditions,” McKaye Neumeister said. “Right now, HHS can’t ensure that the hospitals are following their obligations in offering the care that’s required.”

In August 2022, a federal district judge in Lubbock agreed with Texas, saying this guidance amounted to a new interpretation of EMTALA and granting a temporary injunction that was later extended. The 5th Circuit heard arguments in November, and the judges seemed prepared to uphold the injunction.

Judge Leslie Southwick said there were several “extraordinary things, it seems to me, about this guidance,” and said it seemed HHS was trying to use EMTALA to expand abortion access in Texas to include “broader categories of things, mental health or whatever else HHS would say an abortion is required for.”

Tuesday’s ruling, authored by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, said the court “decline[d] to expand the scope of EMTALA.”

“We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child,” Englehardt wrote. “EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt Texas law.”

 

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/02/texas-abortion-fifth-circuit/.

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

“Disgrace”: Bob Menendez faces fresh calls to resign over Qatar claims in superseding indictment

U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez endured new demands for his resignation on Tuesday after federal prosecutors accused him of taking bribes related to the government of Qatar, building on previous calls for the New Jersey Democrat to step down.

"Sen. Menendez should resign out of respect for the people of New Jersey and Americans everywhere," declared Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif. "These new allegations are the definition of political corruption, and people should be able to trust that their elected officials are working for them, not foreign entities."

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health and a former congressional candidate, also called for his resignation, saying that "too many in Congress are treating corruption as the goal, not the problem that needs to be addressed."

Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen said Menendez "is a disgrace and a distraction, and he should resign immediately," adding that there is "no room in the Democratic Party for such abject corruption."

The senator and his wife were charged in September for allegedly engaging in "a corrupt relationship" with New Jersey businessmen Wael "Will" Hana, Jose Uribe, and Fred Daibes, and accepting bribes in the form of "cash, gold, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low-or-no-show job, a luxury vehicle, and other things of value."

Menendez—who is up for reelection this year—swiftly stepped down as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee but remains on the panel. In October, prosecutors accused him of acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Egypt.

The new superseding indictment doesn't add any charges but claims that the 70-year-old senator also publicly praised the government of Qatar to help Daibes with a multimillion-dollar real estate deal involving a member of the Qatari royal family.

While Tim Donohue, an attorney for Daibes, told The Associated Press Tuesday that he had no comment, Menendez lawyer Adam Fee claimed that the latest allegations "stink of desperation."

"Despite what they've touted in press releases, the government does not have the proof to back up any of the old or new allegations against Sen. Menendez," Fee said. "What they have instead is a string of baseless assumptions and bizarre conjectures based on routine, lawful contacts between a Senator and his constituents or foreign officials. They are turning this into a persecution, not a prosecution."

"At all times, Sen. Menendez acted entirely appropriately with respect to Qatar, Egypt, and the many other countries he routinely interacts with," he added. "Those interactions were always based on his professional judgment as to the best interests of the United States because he is, and always has been, a patriot. This latest indictment only exposes the lengths to which these hostile prosecutors will go to poison the public before a trial even begins. But these new allegations don't change a thing, and their theories won't survive the scrutiny of the court or a jury."

The senator, his wife, and the businesses have pleaded not guilty to all charges. A federal just last week denied Menendez's request to push the start of jury selection from May to July.

Legal experts highlight “lurid” Jack Smith warning that may hint at “scandalous Trump crimes”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s hypotheticals in recent court filings have caught the eye of legal analysts who think he may be telegraphing “seriously scandalous Trump crimes,” according to The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery.

Smith’s team in an 82-page filing over the weekend warned an appellate court against granting former President Donald Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution because his post-election crusade was an official part of his presidential duties.

“That approach would grant immunity from criminal prosecution to a President who accepts a bribe in exchange for directing a lucrative government contract to the payer; a President who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy; a President who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics; or a President who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary,” the filing said.

Related

“The whole story of Jan. 6”: Legal experts say Jack Smith filing hints at “very powerful evidence”

“In each of these scenarios, the president could assert that he was simply executing the laws; or communicating with the Department of Justice; or discharging his powers as commander-in-chief; or engaging in foreign diplomacy,” the special counsel’s team argued.

Prosecutors used similar hypotheticals in a filing to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this year, arguing against Trump’s immunity claim.  

Smith’s team warned over the weekend that Trump’s argument is “sobering.”

“In his view, a court should treat a President’s criminal conduct as immune from prosecution as long as it takes the form of correspondence with a state official about a matter in which there is a federal interest, a meeting with a member of the executive branch, or a statement on a matter of public concern,” they wrote.

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"They go directly to the intent": Experts say new tapes give Jack Smith "powerful" Trump evidence

Legal experts have highlighted the strange examples found in Smith’s filings.

Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti called attention to the part that warns against immunity for a president “who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy [or] a president who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics.”

“Interesting choice of hypotheticals…” replied conservative lawyer and frequent Trump critic George Conway. “It took quite an imagination,” he quipped later.

Trump’s lawyers have complained about the use of hypotheticals.

“Ignoring actual lessons from history, the government provides a list of lurid hypotheticals that have never happened—including treason and murder,” Trump’s legal team wrote in an October 26 filing.

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Trump’s lawyers sought to draw a distinction between the hypothetical and Trump’s actions after the election, claiming he was acting in his official capacity when he sought to overturn President Joe Biden’s win.

But the attorneys “also cornered themselves — making clear that if Trump actually did any of Smith’s ‘lurid’ hypotheticals, there’s no way his official position could save him,” Pagliery wrote on Wednesday.

“Some or all of these hypotheticals, depending on the facts, would likely involve purely private conduct, rendering them irrelevant here,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear oral arguments on Trump’s immunity claim on Jan. 9 after it was rejected by Chutkan. The Supreme Court declined Smith’s request to fast-track the matter before the appeals court rules, though it may still take the case if the appellate court ruling is ultimately appealed.

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Legal experts widely expect the court to uphold Chutkan’s ruling.

“Whatever immunities a sitting president may enjoy, the United States has only one chief executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass. Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability. Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office,” Chutkan wrote last month.

“Defendant’s four-year service as commander in chief, she added, “did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”

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Trump’s GOP primary strategy is also his courtroom defense

The new year is off to a strong start. With only two weeks before the first presidential caucuses, yet another debate for second place is in the offing and legal filings are dropping in one of Donald Trump's several civil and criminal cases day and night. And we're only three days into 2024. I hope everyone got themselves a good rest over the holidays because there's going to be no time to catch your breath between now and Election Day next November. The games have officially begun.

Trump wants to get the primary race out of the way so that he can legitimately claim to be the presumptive nominee and use that argument to back up his fatuous assertion that this is a political prosecution.

The Republicans primaries look to be gelling exactly as predicted. The weak and tepid Trump opposition hasn't been able to get any real traction despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent. The race for second place is between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley but it's clear that Trump is still the leader of the party and, as predicted, will almost certainly get the nomination.

There have been a number of articles in recent days taking a look at his campaign. The Washington Post published a long piece about how he "reignited his base and took control of the Republican primary" which ends up concluding that he never really lost the base in the first place. In fact, according to a new poll by the same paper with the University of Maryland, MAGA has not only stuck with Trump on the questions of January 6, a few who believed that he might have done something wrong at the time have now come back to his side. Still, they aren't many. Republicans loved Trump then and they love him now.

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GOP's Biggest Losers of 2023: Donald "Smells Like A Butt" Trump and his fellow insurrectionists

The good news is that according to that same poll, the majority of Americans are not so enamored. 55% believe that January 6 was an attack on democracy and 56% believe that Trump is definitely or probably guilty of a crime. Only 11% of Republicans are among them but that's just par for the course. That majority may not be huge but it could obviously make a difference. The New York Times looked at polling over the last six months which asked if a conviction would change voters' minds about voting for Trump and the numbers were substantial enough to change the outcome. Citing their own findings should Trump be convicted:

[T]he poll found the race in these six [swing] states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points. The same poll also provides insights into the effect a Trump conviction would have on independent and young voters, which are both pivotal demographics. Independents now go for Mr. Trump, 45 percent to 44 percent. However, if he is convicted, 53 percent of them choose Mr. Biden and only 32 percent Mr. Trump.

The movement for voters ages 18 to 29 was even greater. Mr. Biden holds a slight edge, 47 percent to 46 percent, in the poll. But after a potential conviction, Mr. Biden holds a commanding lead, 63 percent to 31 percent.

These findings were backed up by several others as well.

Acknowledging the general uselessness of these early polls to predict the outcome of the election, I think it's fair to say that this response may actually be a pretty good gauge of the public's attitude on this issue. Sure, Republicans don't care. They're even starting to warm to the idea of Trump serving from a jail cell. But a majority of Americans still cling to the idea that the president of the United States should not be a convicted criminal.

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This explains one bizarre aspect of the Trump strategy: his push to wrap up the primary quickly. Yes, he rants daily about "deranged Jack Smith" and the other prosecutors, claiming he's being persecuted by the deep state and whining about the unfairness of it all. That's just him. But there is a method to his madness. NBC News reports that Trump's campaign believes the Jan. 6 trial was specifically timed to take him off the trail at a crucial stage so they think they're outsmarting the prosecutors by wrapping up the primary early. (That sounds like something they told their client to make him happy…)

But Trump also wants to get the primary race out of the way so that he can legitimately claim to be the presumptive nominee and use that argument to back up his fatuous assertion that this is a political prosecution and he cannot be put on trial before the election. That's not going to work but I suspect he thinks it will be politically useful. For the same reason, he's been strong-arming all the elected Republicans to publicly endorse him and according to Politico, they are being good little MAGA sycophants even though it's obvious that many of them really don't want to. Trump believes that this will strengthen his argument that the criminal charges he faces are all witch trials.

There are many pending legal issues before the courts that will have to be decided, not the least of which is Trump inane claim that staging a coup was part of his official duties and therefore he has immunity from prosecution. If the courts decide in his favor, it's all over for the January 6 case and it's unlikely any of the others will come before the election. But if Trump truly believed that argument was going to prevail it's unlikely that his campaign would have adopted this current strategy to end the traditional campaign early so that he can wage a different one in court.

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Rolling Stone reports that they're planning to turn the January 6 trial into a "MAGA freak show" based on the infamous Chicago 7 disruption strategy. Apparently, "his legal team — who largely view the Jan. 6 case as a “suicide mission” anyway, and have their eyes on the appeal — are gearing up to turn the volume up to 11 at trial."

The special prosecutors office must have gotten wind of this because over the holidays they filed a brief with the court asking that the judge preclude any such shenanigans. Despite the shrieking from the right about this being an attempt to prevent him from defending himself, lawyers say that it's perfectly normal for the prosecution to ask for the judge to lay out the boundaries of what the defense is allowed to present to the jury. Most believe that Trump's plan to call Nancy Pelosi to the stand to grill her about why she allegedly allowed the insurrection to happen or his attempt to "prove" the election was stolen will likely be forbidden by the presiding judge, Tanya Chutkan. She won't want this trial to devolve into another episode of the Trump Show.

Trump doesn't want this trial to happen and he really doesn't want to be convicted, despite his lawyers' assurances about an appeal. Obviously, if he wins the election, he will simply pardon himself and be done with it. What he's worried about are those numbers that say if he's convicted his chances of losing the election go up substantially. Evidently, the rule of law and the Constitution still hold some meaning in our political culture after all and he knows that could spell the end for him.

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about the year that was for Republicans

Men who feel threatened by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Barbie deserve to feel bad

Let's get one thing out of the way first. There is one reason that women like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift dominated pop culture in 2023: They are excellent at what they do. There was no feminist conspiracy to put women at the top of the charts. Nor was some mysterious matriarchy forcing movie-goers to pack theaters for showings of "Barbie." Women just happened to make the best pop culture of the year so they were rewarded for it with money, as per the traditions of our capitalist system. It turns out that if you take away sexist constraints on their creativity, a lot of women are very good at producing art that the masses enjoy. There's nothing sinister going on, beyond artists creating and audiences loving them for it. 

If men need women to be small in order to feel big, that's men's problem to solve, not women's.

Last year, women made music and movies, and even more women opened their wallets to show appreciation. To some, 2023 was a sure sign that we must be facing the male apocalypse. And the "What about men" whining isn't just coming from the usual right-wing grifters, like Ben Shapiro or Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., who peddle "war on men" lies for profit and political power. Christine Emba of the Washington Post ended out 2023 with an op-ed framing the success of female-centric pop culture in 2023 as a "danger" to the men of America. 

"[T]here are consequences to ignoring the other sex," Emba warns, lamenting how many women "rejoiced in caring much less about male desires." If women are going to be so independent, she asks, "where, then, do those men end up?" 

"What should they be doing in the meantime?" she pleads on behalf of those allegedly abandoned men. 

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The answer should be obvious: Men should take care of themselves. Men should not need women to be submissive in order to feel good. Adult men should survive without requiring women to forsake our own goals and desires in order to serve them. This may come as a shock to hear, but men can and often do learn how to clean up after themselves. 

Emba, however, remains concerned about the fate of all those lost boys, who can find neither identity nor a future without women's necks to step on. "But even as we celebrate women being on top, it would be a shame — and a danger — to forget that someone else might end up on bottom," she concludes as if being an independent adult is a zero-sum game where men cannot thrive if women are doing well. 

Emba drew a great deal of backlash to her concern trolling, and it's hard to feel too sorry about it. The faux-feminist framing of her column is infuriating, as is her "just asking questions" posture. Plus, the whole thing is sloppily argued, to the point where you wonder if the Washington Post editors are too busy laying off good columnists in order to do basic editing work on the ones they're keeping around. 

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Taylor Swift gets it: Cats are better than (some) men

She offers no evidence that men are harmed by women enjoying music or movies. Instead, Emba radically mischaracterizes the work of the various female artists she references to make her "men left behind" argument work. She argues that 2023 pop culture was "girl-coded," which she uses to disparage a message celebrating independence.

And adopting the aesthetics of “girl culture” helped to define that independent role: Girls don’t get married, don’t have children and aren’t yet tasked with perpetuating society. They don’t pair up with men, and aren’t responsible for supporting them; they leave men out altogether.

Okay, except almost none of the work she discusses in the column is "girl-coded." It's mostly about the lives of fully adult women. Beyoncé literally has a song called "Grown Woman." The "Eras" tour was structured as a retrospective of over a decade of Swift's career and evolution as an artist, which is to say it was about her maturity and experience. Emba mentions Britney Spears had a bestselling memoir — a genre that is inherently adult — which is literally titled "The Woman In Me." We are seeing adult women who aggressively reject society's efforts to infantilize them. Only "Barbie" was about girlhood, because Barbie is literally a toy. And even then, the movie is about Barbie's journey in putting away childish things, literally ending (spoiler!) with her trip to the gynecologist. 

(Even male creators are getting in on this action, by the way. The new Emma Stone movie, "Poor Things" was written and directed by men, but it is a satirical takedown of men who want women who are dependent and childlike, instead of fully realized adults.) 

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Nor is it fair to say that any of these creators "leave men out altogether," especially with the two musical juggernauts that are Swift and Beyoncé. If anything, what infuriates sexists about Swift is she rebuts the idea that a woman must choose between career ambitions and romantic entanglements. Her songs are notoriously boy-crazy, and her personal life is an enviable list of sexual conquests that would make her a Lothario if she were a man. She doesn't let it get in the way of being a successful musician, and that's what infuriates her sexist critics.

As for Beyoncé, well, she is famously a married mother and, her husband and children are definitely not excised from her public persona. She collaborates with her husband, rapper Jay-Z, all the time. Her daughter, Blue Ivy, performed on-stage for the "Renaissance" tour as a dancer. To quote a Beyoncé song, "Run the World," she presents an image of women who are "Strong enough to bear the children/Then get back to business." She offers a holistic view of "woman" as an identity that contains multitudes. You know, the same way men have always been allowed to be both a father and a creator, both a husband and a worker.

There is no doubt that Beyoncé and Swift currently shine more brightly than the men in their lives. But that is not the same as men being "left behind." Jay-Z is doing just fine as the richest rapper in the world, having branched out into the business world. Swift's current beau, Travis Kelce, won the frigging Super Bowl last year and is a beloved tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Both men seem content to have female partners who have accomplished so much. In this, they reflect how plenty of non-famous men live in an era of rising equality: By respecting their partners as full human beings, instead of appedages of themselves. It would be churlish to begrudge a friend their success. It's even worse to do it to the person you are supposed to be in love with.

If men need women to be small in order to feel big, that's men's problem to solve, not women's. Therapy could help, but really, it's just a matter of basic empathy. Just imagine the shoe on the other foot. If a woman's happiness depended on her husband or boyfriend tamping down his talents, we'd all think she was an evil harpy. It's no better if men do it to women. This really gets to the crux of the difference between a healthy masculinity and a toxic masculinity. Healthy men draw their self-esteem from inside, by cultivating their own talents and good qualities. Men who can't feel good unless they're putting women down are toxic bullies. Bullies suck, and don't deserve to feel good about themselves. 

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about male loneliness and 2023

“It would not surprise me”: Experts on how Supreme Court may bail out Trump in Colorado and Maine

Former President Donald Trump's expected legal challenges to rulings in Maine and Colorado disqualifying him from the Republican primary ballot under the 14th Amendment are likely to end up before the Supreme Court, legal experts say.

Maine on Thursday became the second state to bar Trump under a rarely used Constitutional ban on “insurrectionists” holding public office for his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a ruling removing him from the ballot.

These developments mark a notable win for Trump's critics, who argue that they are upholding a constitutional provision designed to protect the country from anti-democratic insurrectionists. 

“Every state is different,” Maine’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows said Friday morning. “I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. I fulfilled my duty.”

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“This is unacceptable”: Maine’s secretary of state stands defiant in the face of doxxing, “non-stop threats” from Trump

At the “heart of this issue” is the inherent tension between Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which arguably prohibits the president from engaging in “insurrection", and the right each state has to make “autonomous decisions” about their state’s respective electoral process, trial attorney Tom Bosworth told Salon.

“Whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take up this case will likely depend upon its resolution of this tension,” Bosworth said. “In a sense, this stuff touches upon federalism and the core power struggle between the states and the federal government that underlies much of our democratic process.”

For now, both of the decisions in Colorado and Maine are on hold. The Colorado Republican Party has asked the Supreme Court to look at the state’s decision, and Trump is expected to repeat this request in Maine, The Guardian reported. 

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MAGA meltdown as Trump sics Truth Social fans on Maine secretary of state who booted him off ballot

As the Supreme Court faces mounting pressure to rule on whether the former president’s actions on Jan. 6 constitutionally bar him from seeking a second term in the White House, legal experts are relying on the highest court to resolve this issue considering its significant public interest. 

“It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court would decline to take up the case of Trump‘s eligibility for president,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, told Salon. “Interpreting the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment is squarely in the wheelhouse of the US Supreme Court.”

Failing to resolve this issue would be an “abdication of its duties,” McQuade said. It would also seem to be fair to Trump that the court decides before the first primaries later this month. Otherwise, voters may be “disinclined” to vote for him, fearing that their vote could be considered “wasted” if a decision is reached later.

“Were the Court to take the case, it is more likely than not it will overturn the Colorado and Maine cases unless it concludes that there is something unique in the state laws that prevents them from ruling,” David Schultz, professor of political science at Hamline University, told Salon. “I think this is a slim possibility but it could happen.”

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Assuming the court takes the case, it will not rule on the “merits” regarding whether Trump engaged in insurrection, Schultz said. The court is “not equipped” to make this type of “fact-finding decision” and is only supposed to rule on matters of law. This begs the question of how then would the court overturn the decisions in Colorado and Maine.

One way is that the Supreme Court could overturn the state decisions and say that the Insurrection Clause bars a person from serving as president and not running for office or from appearing on the ballot in a primary, Schultz pointed out. “Hence, this constitutional provision does not apply, at least not yet.”

Additionally, the court could “confine” its decision to the two states, opting for a minimalist approach, or it could broaden its decision to apply to all states, presenting a more maximal stance asserting that the clause “does not apply to the presidency or that it is not self-executing.”

Another way is that the court could rule that the Insurrection Clause is not self-executing and that it requires some enabling legislation by Congress for it to take effect, he continued. 

“Third, it could rule that the Insurrection clause does not apply to the president since the presidency is not one of the offices named in the clause,” Schultz added. “There has been a lot of debate surrounding this clause, with some arguing that the clause effectively amends the qualification to be president or that of course the president is an officer of the US.”

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But what has so far been “missed” in terms of this last argument are two major points, he said. The Supreme Court could argue that the Insurrection clause does not apply to the president and that there is “no indication” that the authors of the 14th Amendment meant to change the basic qualifications for the president.

“How then would we check to prevent a person who engaged in insurrection from becoming president,” Schultz questioned. “The answer is the electoral college.”

Take note of how the Insurrection Clause mentions electors for the Electoral College, he explained. The framers of the 14th Amendment wanted to “prevent insurrectionists from picking the president.”  

Given the significant role the Electoral College and electors played in selecting the president,  the framers assumed electors would not choose an “unqualified or insurrectionist” person to be president, Schultz said.  

It’s unclear yet how the Supreme Court may rule on the matter considering it has not issued a decision on the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause since it was ratified in 1868.

“On one hand, the Supreme Court may view the issues here as ones reserved for each state to decide, as Colorado and Maine have already done,” Bosworth said. “On the other hand, it would not surprise me if the U.S. Supreme Court sought to wade into the thorns here, particularly given the lack of precedent for any situation like this and the direct applicability of a core constitutional issue under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

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about the Trump ballot challenges

As abortion access shrinks, people are stockpiling pills. But it’s not always those who need it most

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people rushed to stockpile toilet paper, hand sanitizer and other goods. When the infant formula shortage happened, many parents hoarded what was left of baby formula in their local supermarkets. It shouldn't come as a surprise that in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, many women in abortion ban states stockpiled on abortion pills.

In a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers looked at the data on requests for mifepristone and misoprostol from people who weren’t pregnant, but still seeking abortion pills from an online telemedicine service called Aid Access located in Europe. In the U.S., a medication abortion is usually prescribed when a woman is pregnant. However, the idea of a so-called “advance provision,” which is akin to keeping Tylenol around for a fever but instead keeping abortion pills nearby for pregnancy, has been discussed as a potential abortion care model in a post-Roe world.

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According to the study, Aid Access received about 48,400 requests from across the U.S. between September 2021 and April 2023. Specifically, researchers found that requests were at their highest right after news leaked in May 2022 that the Supreme Court was set to overturn Roe v. Wade. Before the leak, the average number of daily requests was at 25. After the leak, requests increased nearly tenfold to 247 a day. In states where abortion bans were inevitable due to the ruling, the average weekly request rate increased ninefold.

The demographic data on who is stockpiling is at odds with the demographic data of who is most likely to get an abortion.

When asked why people were ordering the pills, 74 percent of customers said "to ensure personal health and choice," and 73 percent said "to prepare for possible abortion restrictions." Taking a deeper look at who was requesting the pills, researchers found that white women made up 70 percent of Aid Access' advance provision requests and a majority of requests came from women who live at or above the national poverty rate. More requests also came from urban regions than rural ones. The average age was 27; notably, 74 percent of those who requested advance provisions did not have children. 

Researchers say that stockpiling is a normal response to a crisis. However, it can lead to artificial shortages and inflated costs, overall leading to less access to the treatment. Notably, the demographic data on who is stockpiling is at odds with the demographic data of who is most likely to get an abortion. While the typical abortion patient isn’t a monolith, data has found a patient is more likely to already be a parent and is below the poverty line. Could this trend of stockpiling among wealthier, white women have an adverse effect on access for marginalized groups?

Daniel Grossman, director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California-San Francisco, told Salon via email he isn’t concerned that stockpiling could restrict access because there isn’t a shortage of mifepristone or misoprostol at the moment.

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“I’m not concerned that advance provision of these pills will reduce the supply for those needing medication abortion care,” he said, adding that he is nonetheless concerned for different reasons. “This care model is not yet reaching those who face the greatest barriers to abortion care.”

Grossman said more research is needed to understand why people of color and people living in low income areas are less likely to rely on advance provision.

“Is it that they don’t know about the service, can’t afford it, face barriers to using telemedicine, are ineligible or don’t prefer it?” he said. “My other concern about advance provision of abortion pills for people living in states with bans is the risk of criminalization.”

According to a report by the reproductive justice group If/When/How, 61 people in the U.S. between 2000 and 2020 were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly ending their own pregnancies or helping someone else. David S. Cohen, a professor of law at Drexel Kline's School of Law, emphasized in a phone interview that the potential legal consequences like criminalization of stockpiling truly depends on the state a person resides. However, there is likely a common gray area. 

“A lot of state abortion laws require that someone has a diagnosable pregnancy and since there is no diagnosable pregnancy, you're not violating the abortion laws,” he said. In other words, stockpiling while not pregnant or distributing the pills to someone who you don’t know is pregnant could be a legal “loophole,” which Cohen used in quotes, in more restrictive states. “I put a loophole in quotes, because it's not a loophole, it’s the way the law is written, that you need to have a diagnosable pregnancy and if you don't, you're not violating the abortion laws.” 

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Then there’s the idea that those who are stockpiling aren’t necessarily keeping it all for themselves, but instead could be distributors. However, depending on the state, that person could be held criminally responsible if they live in a state that specifically targets “providers.” 

“You would have to look at certain state laws around who's allowed to distribute medicine and I can't speak to those,” he said. “But they will not be violating the abortion laws unless they know that the person is pregnant, if that's the case for that state's law.”

Overall, Cohen and Grossman said they think advance provision could be an effective abortion care method in abortion-ban states for those who currently aren't relying on it.

“These pills are safe, they're effective, they are not complicated to use,” Cohen said. “There's plenty of information out there for people.”

Indeed, medication abortions are safe and effective. The process first requires taking a mifepristone pill, then a second pill containing misoprostol 24 to 48 hours later. Medication abortion works up to 70 days after the first day of a person's last period — usually when a person is 10 weeks pregnant. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medication abortions account for an estimated 42 percent of all abortions in the United States. However, this spring, the Supreme Court is expected to hear a case that could block mail-order access to mifepristone and impose restrictions on its use.

Grossman said the biggest take away from this research is that there is “considerable demand for advance provision of medication abortion pills, especially in states with bans.”

“It highlights the need for more research to better understand why people of color and those living on low incomes are not yet accessing the service as much as would be expected,” he said.

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Drug patent monopolies are not the “free” market

It is incredible how ideology can be so thick that it prevents even highly educated people from thinking clearly. We saw this fact on display in a Washington Post piece on prescription drug prices by its columnist, Bina Venkataraman.

Venkataraman points out that we are seeing significant advances in developing new drugs and treatments, but many of these innovations are selling for ridiculous prices. Her lead example is Casgevy, a treatment that can cure sickle cell anemia. The developer of this treatment is charging $2.2 million for it.

She argues that the price could be radically reduced if the research was funded at least in part by non-profits, governments, or companies willing to accept lower rates of return. This is, of course, true, but her ideology prevents her from seeing clearly the issues involved.

In fact, government and foundations already pay for about 30% of the research and development costs for new drugs,  which Venkataraman neglects to point out. These benefactors only rarely share in royalties for the medicines whose development they helped finance.

After arguing for developing drugs in ways that allow for lower prices, she asserts in the last paragraph:

“But there are steep costs to letting the market determine what’s best for a society’s well-being.”

The whole point is that we are not letting the market determine what’s best for a society’s well-being. We, or our politicians, have decided to grant lengthy and strong patent monopolies to encourage companies to innovate. There are other, and less expensive, ways to achieve this.

This is not just a point of semantics. Granting patent monopolies is a policy choice, not a natural market feature. These patent drug monopolies are just how the government has chosen to finance innovation. If we argue against patent monopolies, we are not arguing against letting the market decide how resources should be allocated. Instead, we are arguing against using this specific government mechanism to determine the allocation of resources.

Imagine Patented Water

An excellent argument exists against the patent monopoly system for financing prescription drug development. The obvious one, as Venkataraman points out, is that these monopolies can lead to ridiculously high prices for drugs and treatments.

This is for the obvious reason that people with the resources, either their own money or access to good insurance, are willing to pay huge amounts to preserve their health or save their own life. But these high prices are almost entirely due to the patent monopoly. Water is also necessary for our life and health. Still, it is usually reasonably cheap since there are no monopolies on the water itself, and distribution systems are either public services or charge regulated prices.

In the case of prescription drugs, it is almost always cheap to manufacture and distribute them. In a free market, they would generally sell for less than ten percent of the price of drugs subject to patent monopolies and often less than one percent. Paying for drugs would not be a significant problem, provided they were available in a free market without patent monopolies.

While the world’s poor find even generic prices expensive, if drugs were sold at free market prices, aid agencies and private charities could realistically look to cover the cost, as has been the case with AIDS drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa. In some cases, as with Casgevy, the price involves paying trained medical professionals to provide this treatment. This cost would still be faced even without the patent monopolies, but the total expense would be far more manageable.

Incentives to Lie

When drug companies can sell their products for mark-ups of several hundred percent, or even several thousand percent, they have enormous incentives to push their drugs as widely as possible. This means exaggerating the potential benefits while minimizing the side effects and risks associated with their drugs.

The extreme case of this lying was the opioid crisis, where drug manufacturers knew that their drugs were highly addictive and pushed them with the claim that they were not. This led to far more abuse, which ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

From 1999 through 2021 at least 645,000 Americans died from opioids. In 2022, almost 80,000 people died. If the 2023 death toll is roughly the same, the butcher bill to date will exceed 800,000 American lives.

Legal Bribery

While opioids are an extreme case, drug companies routinely pay doctors to promote their products and lobby politicians and government agencies to have their drugs used as widely as possible. To take a prominent recent example, through intensive lobbying, Biogen got the Food and Drug Administration to approve its Alzheimer’s drug, Aduhelm, over the objections of an independent FDA advisory panel.

The drug’s trials showed little evidence of effectiveness and severe side effects. The decision was later reversed. Biogen planned to sell Aduhelm for $55,000 for a year’s dosage. However, if sold as a low-cost generic, there would have been little incentive to push a drug in this situation, where the evidence did not show it to be an effective treatment.

Secrecy Encouraged

The quest for monopoly control over a new drug or technology encourages secrecy in research rather than an open exchange of knowledge among scientists.

A drug company wants to maximize its ability to gain the fruits of its research spending and minimize the extent to which competitors could benefit. For this reason, they are likely to closely guard their research findings and limit the ability of researchers to share information by requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Such secrecy almost certainly impedes the development of technology since science advances most rapidly when research is freely shared. The Human Genome Project provided a great example of such sharing, where the Bermuda Principles required that results be posted on the web as quickly as possible.

If we relied on direct public funding for research, expanding on the $50 billion a year we now spend through NIH and other government agencies, we could impose comparable rules, requiring that all research findings be quickly available on the web. This would allow researchers everywhere to benefit swiftly from any breakthroughs. It would also steer them off dead ends uncovered by other researchers.

In addition, if the focus is on public health rather than creating a patentable product, this route of direct funding would also encourage research into dietary or environmental factors that could significantly impact health. The patent system provides no incentive to research these issues.

Serious Discussion Required

Our system for developing new drugs is a disaster. While we can point to great successes, these come at enormous cost. This year, we will spend over $600 billion on prescription and non-prescription drugs. This comes to almost $5,000 per family. This is real money.

We would almost certainly be spending less than $100 billion if these drugs were sold in a free market without patent monopolies or related protections. And, even when people get third parties, either private insurers or the government, to pick up the tab, the high price requires them to jump through all sorts of hoops to get the necessary approvals. This bureaucratic nonsense would be a pain for anyone, but it is tough on people in bad health.

Discussing alternative systems seriously is much more challenging if we work under the illusion that government-granted patent monopolies are somehow the free market. They are a government policy, just like direct research funding would be a government policy. We need to have a serious debate on which policy provides the best mechanism for supporting the development of new drugs and not be saying nonsense things about interfering with the market determination of outcomes.

Nearly 7,000 pounds of ground beef products have been recalled over possible E. Coli contamination

Valley Meats, LLC has recalled approximately 6,768 pounds of raw ground beef products due to possible E. Coli contamination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Sunday.

A recall was issued after samples of the ground beef products tested positive for E. coli during a microbiological analysis. The products were produced on Dec. 22, 2023, and include establishment number “EST. 5712” inside the USDA mark of inspection. They were shipped to distributors in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan for further distribution to restaurants and other food institutions.

At this time, there have been no confirmed reports of “adverse reactions” due to consumption of these products. The USDA urged those who are concerned about any injuries or illnesses to contact their healthcare providers as soon as possible. Food institutions and restaurants are advised to discard the recalled products or return them to their place of purchase.

The recent recall came just a few days after Scanga Meat Company, a Colorado-based establishment, recalled 563 pounds of raw ground beef produced on Dec. 11. The products were sold at Scanga Meat Company’s retail location and shipped to restaurant locations in Colorado, per the USDA. 

The science of the ideal salad dressing

Summer means salads. And salads are even more delicious with a good dressing.

Most salad dressings are temporarily stable mixtures of oil and water known as emulsions.

But how do salad dressing emulsions form? And how can we enhance our emulsions for better salads and more?

 

Oil and water don't mix

It's accepted wisdom that oil and water don't mix. The water and oil molecules have distinct chemical properties that don't interact well together.

You may have seen this if you've attempted to make a salad dressing by shaking together oil and vinegar (which is mostly water), which gives a temporary suspension that quickly separates.

There is a large energy cost to breaking apart and mixing the water and oil layers. The secret to blending them together is to add an extra ingredient known as a "surfactant" or emulsifier.

The name surfactant is derived from "surface active". It highlights that these molecules work at the surface or interface to bridge the interactions between the oil and water. This is similar to how detergents are able to remove grease from your dishes.

Many vinaigrette recipes call for emulsifiers without specifically mentioning their crucial emulsifying role.

Key examples are mustard and garlic, which contain "mucilage" — a mix of carbohydrates — that can act as emulsifiers.

So if your vinegar/oil salad dressings are separating, make sure you're adding enough of these ingredients (which also contain wonderful flavor chemicals).

Commercial salad dressings also contain naturally sourced emulsifying carbohydrates. These will often be listed on the ingredients as generic "vegetable gum" or similar and you may need to read the label and delve a little deeper into the food additive number to find out the source.

Researchers have raised questions about synthetic emulsifiers used in processed food, as studies in mice suggest they have health risks. It's too early to say exactly what this means for humans.

 

Shake it 'til you make it

Mixing is key to dispersing oil in water. While shaking a jar is convenient, a whisk or food processor will give a more complete emulsion. The white (or opaque) color of many emulsions is due to the formation of microdroplets that scatter light.

These mechanical mixing methods are even more essential for the formation of so-called "permanent emulsions" such as mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise is an emulsion of oil in water, but egg yolk is the key emulsifier. Egg yolks contain long molecules called phospholipids that are able to interact with both the oil layer and the water. Mayonnaise is an impressively stable emulsion, which is why is can be sold in a shelf-stable form.

But it isn't infinitely stable; heating the mayonnaise emulsion will cause it to split. Perhaps you've hurriedly prepared a potato salad and added a mayonnaise-based dressing before the potatoes have cooled down?

Or toasted a sandwich spread with mayonnaise? (Incidentally, adding mayonnaise to the outside of a toasted sandwich is an excellent path to some delicious and crispy chemical reactions.)

The heat destabilizes the emulsion and the separate oil and water phases will reform. Depending on the mixture, split emulsions may be recovered by adding more emulsifier and re-whisking or re-mixing.

Hollandaise sauce is a notoriously difficult emulsion to prepare. The traditional hollandaise method involves whisking egg yolk, water, and lemon juice over a low heat, then slowly adding melted butter with further whisking. Not only can the emulsion split, but you can also overcook the added emulsifying egg yolk.

The key to a successful hollandaise emulsion is separating the butter into fine, dispersed droplets, giving a thick and opaque mixture, but without cooking the eggs. Adding the butter too quickly or without sufficient mixing can give a split sauce.

Using an immersion blender can help, as can controlling the temperature of the melted butter. You might get a more consistently emulsified sauce with far less strain on your wrists.

         

You've got me feeling emulsions

Emulsions are used in many more places than salads and sauces. Most medicated creams, cosmetics and lotions are emulsions of oils and water, which is why they look white.

Gardeners might be familiar with a mixture known as "white oil" — a mixture of vegetable oil and detergent. This brew, when diluted in water, is an inexpensive, effective, yet mild insecticide. Commercial versions often contain other pesticides, so make sure you read the label.

Modern acrylic paints use emulsions for both their manufacturing and application. The emulsions suspend the paint polymers in a water base.

The water from the paint evaporates, leaving a film of paint polymers that can't be re-dispersed into water. This clever chemical trick has saved huge quantities of oil-derived solvents from being used, inhaled and emitted into the environment from traditional oil-based paints.

Modern vaccines use emulsions to increase the immune systems response. Other common emulsions are inks, ice cream, margarine and hair products, to name just a few.

So next time you're making a salad, check your emulsions. Opposites don't attract, but mixing them with the right chemistry can give a delicious result.

Nathan Kilah, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, University of Tasmania

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

Switching to plant-based diets means cleaner air — and it could save more than 200,000 lives

Adopting a healthier diet will probably feature prominently in many of our new year's resolutions. But it's often challenging for people to live up to their intentions.

But there are good reasons to persist in making deliberate choices about what's on your plate. These choices not only impact your own health, they affect the health of the planet too.

Food systems represent one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. If left unchecked, these emissions would probably add enough extra warming to take Earth's average temperature beyond a 1.5°C rise in the 2060s.

Research is now also establishing air pollution on the list of problems caused by agriculture. Animal farming, in particular, is a major source of ammonia emissions. These emissions react with other pollutants to form fine particulate matter, which can cause health issues like cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and diabetes.

Our recent study reveals that shifting from current diets to healthier, more plant-based ones could prevent up to 236,000 premature deaths around the world and boost global GDP — simply by improving air quality.

 

Healthier diets, cleaner air

According to the World Health Organization, there were 4 million premature deaths linked to outdoor air pollution in 2019. Agriculture is responsible for roughly one-fifth of these deaths.

We studied what would happen to air quality if people around the world shifted towards diets that are healthier and better for the environment. This includes flexitarian diets with less meat, vegetarian diets with no meat and vegan diets with no animal products.

Our results show that shifting towards plant-based diets could significantly reduce air pollution. Areas with lots of livestock, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Italy, southern China and the mid-west US (in Iowa, there are eight pigs for every person), would see particularly pronounced reductions in the concentration of fine particulate matter.

Better air quality leads to better health. We found that over 100,000 premature deaths could be prevented globally by adopting flexitarian diets. The health gains from cleaner air add to the benefits obtained from eating a more balanced diet.

These health benefits increase as people eat fewer animal products. For example, if everyone went vegan, the number of premature deaths from air pollution could fall by more than 200,000. In Europe and North America, adopting vegan diets could reduce premature deaths from all air pollution by about 20%.

Clean air is an often overlooked but important aspect of the work environment. Research has found that air pollution lowers the productivity of workers in many different jobs, from farms to factories. For instance, studies have shown that air pollution affects the productivity of blueberry pickers and pear packers.

Our estimates suggest that cleaner air can have a positive impact on the economy. We found that a shift to vegan diets could increase global GDP by more than 1% — a gain of US$1.3 trillion.

 

Enabling change

Improving air quality is undoubtedly beneficial for our health and the economy. We argue that dietary changes should thus be placed firmly on the policy menu.

Embracing more plant-based diets is a cost-effective strategy for tackling emissions. But it also lowers the need for expensive investments in emission-reducing equipment for livestock systems, such as scrubbers that remove ammonia from the air.

Eating less meat would also diminish the need for other, more drastic, measures to curb pollution. For instance, researchers have previously suggested moving 10 billion animals away from southern and eastern China to reduce ammonia exposure for people in these regions.

Shifting to healthier and more plant-based diets offers a wide range of benefits beyond clean air. These benefits include a lower risk of diet-related diseases, bringing down greenhouse gas emissions and lowering the use of land, water and fertilisers for agriculture.

Achieving ambitious progress in all these areas at the same time will be challenging if we rely on technological solutions alone.

During the summer of 2023, the German supermarket chain Penny carried out a week-long experiment to raise awareness of the real cost of food products on people's health and the environment. The prices charged to customers factored in the impact of food products on soil, water use, health and the climate.

This concept could be applied more broadly. But to make this policy fair and acceptable, it needs to be coupled with ways to use tax revenues to ensure consumers are not left worse off, such as reducing VAT on fruit and vegetable products and compensating vulnerable households. In this way, overall food expenditure would be kept in check and low-income households would be protected.

Together with measures to guide farmers in the transition, our food systems can be steered towards sustainability, helping people deliver on their New Year's resolutions.

Toon Vandyck, Research Fellow in Economics, KU Leuven and Marco Springmann, Senior Researcher on Environment and Health, University of Oxford

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

“They’re saying it out loud”: Israeli minister backs mass eviction of Gazans

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Monday said the Netanyahu government should "encourage the migration" of Gazans out of the besieged Palestinian enclave, which has been devastated by a three-month bombing campaign that has internally displaced around 90% of the territory's population.

"This is a correct, just, moral, and humane solution," Ben-Gvir said during a meeting of his Jewish Power party in Jerusalem.

Ben-Gvir, who has previously been convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting racism, called Israel's current war on Gaza an "opportunity" to remove Palestinians from Gaza and secure the return of settlers who were withdrawn from the strip in 2005.

"Encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza will allow us to bring home the residents of the Outaf and the residents of Gush Katif," said the far-right minister.

Ben-Gvir's remarks followed similar comments by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said during a radio appearance on Sunday that "what needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration."

"If there are 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million Arabs, the entire discussion on the day after will be totally different," said Smotrich.

Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, AFP noted.

"This government must be stopped now, their aim is simple: to wipe out the Gazan population."

The comments by high-ranking Israeli officials came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said in private that he wants the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip but is having trouble finding "countries that are willing to absorb" the people displaced by Israel's assault.

A document from the Israeli Intelligence Ministry that leaked during the early stages of Israel's latest attack on Gaza proposes the forcible and permanent transfer of all of Gaza's 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Egyptian government has publicly opposed the forced transfer of Palestinians, which would be a war crime.

In recent days, United Nations officials and humanitarian groups have been increasingly vocal in warning about the Israeli government's apparent desire to force Palestinians out of Gaza, where around 70% of housing units have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombing since October 7.

Late last month, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons said that "as evacuation orders and military operations continue to expand and civilians are subjected to relentless attacks on a daily basis, the only logical conclusion is that Israel's military operation in Gaza aims to deport the majority of the civilian population en masse."

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir's remarks intensified such warnings. 

"Anyone defending or denying the clear motivations of Israel's political leaders is actively enabling the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza," Em Hilton, a Jewish anti-occupation activist, wrote on social media. "We have a duty to do everything we can to stop this horror and ensure that [the international] community holds Israel to account."

Ariel Bernstein, a researcher for the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, echoed that message, writing, "This government must be stopped now, their aim is simple: to wipe out the Gazan population."

Journalist Mehdi Hasan, whose MSNBC show was recently canceled, asked whether U.S. officials have "any comment" on the Israeli ministers' statements suggesting ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip.

"They're saying it out loud!" Hasan wrote.

U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed opposition to any "forced relocation" of Palestinians from Gaza but has continued to arm the Israeli army, bypassing Congress to transfer weaponry to the nation's military as it commits mass atrocities across the strip.

Retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told Jewish News Syndicate in late November that "all of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it's all from the U.S."

"The minute they turn off the tap, you can't keep fighting. You have no capability," Brick said. "Everyone understands that we can't fight this war without the United States. Period."

Men and their toys: “Ferrari” is just another biopic that takes women for a ride

While watching "Ferrari," a scene from the 1987 comedy/adventure classic, "The Princess Bride," kept popping into my mind like an intrusive thought. In that scene, a young boy (Fred Savage) is being read a book by his grandfather (Peter Falk). When the boy asks if the book has any sports in it, his grandfather says, "Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes," and then proceeds to read what the boy rightfully concludes is "a kissing book."

In biopics like this one … [the women] also shoulder the unfortunate burden of being symbols for what the film is about.

Much like this kid was duped into a tale that's very much 50% action and 50%romance, director Michael Mann's winter blockbuster, based on the 1991 biography "Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine," does a bait and switch, promising an epic telling of the ill-fated 1957 Mille Miglia race — which ended in the death of two drivers and ten spectators, many of whom were children — and delivering what is, in actuality, 30% car stuff and 70% what could be called romance, but that descriptor doesn't quite fit here. Unlike Buttercup (Robin Wright) in "The Princess Bride," a woman whose love is shown as the hard-won prize at the conclusion of the male hero's (Cary Elwes) adventurous and often dangerous trials and tribulations, the love of the two women in "Ferrari" – Penélope Cruz as Laura Ferrari and Shailene Woodley as Enzo's mistress Lina Lardi – is framed as a distraction at best and a career-ending obstacle at worst, just like in most other man-centered biopics where we're prodded to presume that the man whose story is being told was just too much of a genius, too all-caps important to ever have his full needs met by just one woman. 

Related

"Ferrari" delivers on style and speed but even Adam Driver can't fuel this biopic with passion

Less than halfway through my first watch of "Ferrari" (and my second watch didn't make me feel any different) my "wait, this is a kissing movie" alarm went off. Which led me to question why a movie that would have been better suited by focusing on what people are actually buying tickets to see — Adam Driver in close proximity to vroom vrooms and beep beeps — rammed in such a thick "love story" thread. But then it quickly dawned on me. What better way to portray women as being completely nuts than to roll out descriptive examples of the many ways in which their mere presence was an inconvenience to a man – just by making the foolish mistake of loving him and hoping for a love of equal value to be returned? 

FerrariShailene Woodley as Lina Lardi_in "Ferrari" (Photo credit Lorenzo Sisti/Neon)

In biopics like this one, as well as others of similar caliber — "Oppenheimer," "The Wolf of Wall Street," the list goes on and on — the women are too often tasked with an additional role outside of love interest. They also shoulder the unfortunate burden of being symbols for what the film is about — bombs, threatening to explode a man's entire life; currency, to be stacked and exchanged for something else; and cars, shiny, curvy and often hard to maneuver. Something that can either bring a man fame, or crash and send him into ruin. In "Ferrari," Enzo has two of these metaphorical cars. One he keeps in the garage (his mistress), and one that he drives hard and fast until the wheels come off and it's no longer of use to him (his wife.)

How would we ever know that a man was destined for something great if he didn't cheat on his wife and treat his mistresses like toys?

In one scene early in the film, Enzo is shown in front of the grave of his first son, Alfredo Ferrari, who died at 24 due to complications from muscular dystrophy, and he speaks to him saying, “There was once I time I loved your mother. Beyond reason. But she was a different creature then.” This sets the tone for what we're shown of his wife Laura, a woman who we're first introduced to as a haggard, tossed-aside ghost in her own home. Lurking about seeking evidence as to where her husband spent the night, as his bed is still the same as it was the day before. When the phone rings and someone asks for him, she lies and says he’s in the shower. When he finally gets home, she reminds him of their agreement – that she doesn’t care who he screws, or how many, so long as he’s home by the time the maid comes in to deliver his morning coffee. Our intended first impression of the woman who helped build the Ferrari company is that of a harpy. A nag. And not someone grieving the loss of her son, with no one by her side.

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"Maestro," the newly released biopic that tells the story of composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre, starring Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan, is an example of an effective opposition to this trend. In this one, Bernstein's wife is depicted as a whole woman, all her own, whose love and support benefitted and enriched her husband through all aspects of his career. Mulligan, who plays such a wife, even gets to be on the poster for the film. Imagine that?? On the flip side, although Cruz and Woodley have almost as much screen time as Driver does in "Ferrari," and join him for the vast majority of media events surrounding the film, they are absent from the poster, which shows only Driver as Enzo, lurking moodily in front of one of his cars: his true love above all else. Maybe we're to assume that they're in the trunk? Next to the spare tire and greasy bag of factory line tools?

For whatever reason, in biopics like "Ferrari," a man's ambitious nature is shown to us via scenes in which he's passionately and unapologetically treating women like trash. I mean, how would we ever know that a man was destined for something great if he didn't cheat on his wife and treat his mistresses like toys? Putting them up on the shelf when he's done, to wait patiently for him to return and dust them off. If Enzo Ferrari was so great that he deserved a pass for acting this way, we aren't shown it. The movie trips over itself so much in focusing on his mistreatment of women that it fails to deliver on the part where we're supposed to see what led him to behave that way, racing the line of cars that the son he had with his mistress, Piero Lardi Ferrari, is currently the vice chairman of, gaining the Ferrari name after Enzo's wife Laura died, and ownership of the company after Enzo died. 

In Deadline's review of the film, written after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the critic touches upon "a moment in which Cruz gets, finally, to do some acting, having played a crazy, sour-faced b***h for two hours." Meaning this to be complimentary in his reference of the scene in question, in which Cruz as Laura Ferrari cashes a post-dated check for $500,000, her payment for handing over her share of the company so that her husband can regain full control while organizing a business deal with Henry Ford. But it's an interesting choice of words when describing a woman who helped make Ferrari what it is and only ever lived to regret it. Her cashing of that check early, going against her husband's request to wait until the Mille Miglia race was won and/or the deal with Ford went through was not only a blow to the company, but to her husband's ego. But it's clear why she did it. This much we do get to see.

Having lost her husband's love and no longer the recipient of his affections of convenience, she had one big shot to hit him where it hurt, so she did. That's not being a sour-faced b***h, that's learning by example. Just like the review mentioned above is an example of the damage that biopics like this can do.

"Ferrari" is a movie that tells the story of three real lives lived: A man, his wife and his mistress. What we'll remember from it, years down the line, is what we're supposed to, that an important man made cars that are still driven to this day, and that the women in his life got in the way of that. But that's not the real story. The real story is that these women were just as much a part of making Ferrari a thing as the man whose name is on the logo. Were they to be given biopics of their own, I'm sure that would be made clearer. But, as time has shown, that seems unlikely.

"Ferrari" is currently in theaters. "Maestro" is streaming on Netflix.

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Paula Abdul sues former “American Idol” producer Nigel Lythgoe for sexual assault: report

Paula Abdul, who starred as a judge on “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” has sued the executive producer of both shows, Nigel Lythgoe, accusing him of sexual assault and harassment, The Washington Post reported. Abdul also sued the production companies behind the programs for gender violence and negligence, per court documents filed Friday.

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, outlines two separate incidents: the first took place in the early 2000s, when Abdul was on “American Idol,” and the second took place in 2015, when Abdul was on “So You Think You Can Dance.” 

According to the complaint, Abdul alleges that after a day of regional auditions for “American Idol,” she got into an elevator with Lythgoe, who “shoved” her against the wall, “grabbed her genitals and breasts, and began shoving his tongue down her throat.”

“Abdul attempted to push Lythgoe away from her and let him know that his behavior was not acceptable,” the complaint says.

Abdul further alleges that during a business dinner at Lythgoe’s home in 2015, Lythgoe “forced himself” on top of her while she was seated on his couch and “attempted to kiss her while proclaiming that the two would make an excellent ‘power couple.’” Per the complaint, “Abdul pushed Lythgoe off of her, explaining that she was not interested in his advances, and immediately left Lythgoe’s home.”

Abdul says she chose not to speak out about both incidents at the time because she “feared professional retaliation,” CNN explained. Abdul was a judge on “American Idol” for eight seasons.

In a statement to TMZ, Lythgoe denied the allegations, calling them “false” and “deeply offensive.”

“This is unacceptable”: Maine’s secretary of state stands defiant in the face of “non-stop threats”

PORTLAND, MAINE — The morning after deciding former President Donald Trump is not eligible to appear on Maine’s presidential primary ballot this year, Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows began receiving a barrage of violent threats. By the time a swatting incident targeting Bellows’ home occurred last Friday night, her office phones had been ringing off the hook all day.

“What was concerning on Friday was the level of vitriol and just abusive communications directed at my staff and furthermore the threatening communications targeting not only me but my family and people around me,” Bellows said in an interview.

She was doxxed. Her home address and personal cell phone — called constantly — were posted online. Trump’s Truth Social directed his followers to her official website.   

“The volume of calls seems to have been larger than the volume of emails,” Bellows said. “Civil servants working in state government shouldn't be on the receiving end of communications ranging from profanity to worse.”

Depending who you talk to in Maine, Bellows is either a courageous hero or a political hack for becoming the first state election official to ever disqualify a candidate for federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

"I made this decision based on the facts, the evidence, the law, and the Constitution, as presented in the hearing”

And there is very limited time — less than three weeks — to reverse her decision, for those that desire that outcome.

The Trump campaign has until this Friday, January 5, to appeal the Bellows decision to Maine Superior Court and plans to do so.

“Of course, I’m concerned for my safety,” said Bellows, who has police protection. “This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable that any elected official should be targeted just because people are angry or disagree with their views.”

Over the New Year’s holiday weekend, Bellows revealed in a Facebook post one of the “non-stop” threats had targeted her and her husband, Brandon, in the swatting incident — a phony emergency call to provoke an urgent police response — at their home in Manchester, Maine, four miles outside the capital of Augusta. They were not home.

After receiving an emergency call shortly after 8:00 p.m. Friday from an unknown man claiming to have broken into the home, Maine State Police searched it and the grounds but found no one or anything suspicious. 

Bellows wrote on Facebook the swatting and threats were “designed to scare not only me but also others into silence, to send a message.”

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“Please encourage those whom you influence to de-escalate the rhetoric,” Bellows continued on Facebook. “Dehumanizing a person is the first step in paving the way for attacks and violence against them.”

The Maine Democratic Party called the threats “deeply alarming,” noting that Bellows is “required to determine the eligibility and validity of petitions for public office,” including President, and did so for multiple candidates for the upcoming primary.

Bellows added in our interview, “For anyone who’s upset with the law that requires the Secretary of State to hold a hearing and issue a ruling on the eligibility of a presidential candidate, there’s a mechanism for changing the law. But to attack me for doing my job, and to attack, more importantly, my staff, the people around me, and my family, is wrong, and it needs to stop. It’s incredibly dangerous. It’s symptomatic of what’s happening right now in our country.  We need to stand up and urge everyone, our friends and family members, to bring civility and respect to these conversations.”

A CONTROVERSIAL DECISION

Bellows, a Democrat who denied Trump access to the state’s March 5 ballot as he seeks to secure the Republican presidential nomination in his third run for the White House, insists partisanship had nothing to do with her decision.

“My oath to the Constitution is my utmost and sole obligation in this matter. My political affiliation and political views of January 6, 2021, did not play a role in this decision,” Bellows said in our interview.

Her 34-page decision on December 28 found Trump’s declaration on his candidate consent form was false, because he is not qualified to hold the office of the President under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which forbids anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after taking an oath to uphold it, unless forgiven in by two-thirds majority votes in the U.S. House and Senate.

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred,” Bellows wrote in her decision.

Primaries and caucuses awarding delegates to the summer nomination conventions begin this month in Iowa and New Hampshire. 

Maine’s presidential primary is scheduled for March 5, along with 15 other states, which is why it’s called Super Tuesday. The list includes Colorado, where the State Supreme Court decided on December 19 Trump is ineligible for its primary ballot.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who was not a party to the decision, expressed solidarity with Bellows over the holiday weekend and revealed that she too has received threats.

“Within three weeks of the lawsuit being filed, I received 64 death threats. I stopped counting after that,” Griswold said on X. “I will not be intimidated. Democracy and peace will triumph over tyranny and violence.” 

Bellows, 48, is the first woman to serve as Maine’s Secretary of State. 

The Democratic-controlled State Legislature chose her, not the voters, in December 2020, as it also does for the state’s attorney general and treasurer under the Maine constitution. 

Bellows concluded a pair of Maine statutes governing ballot petition review grant her the authority to disqualify Trump.

Candidates must collect 2,000 signatures from voters registered in their party voters by December 1, and fill out a candidate consent form affirming, “I meet the qualifications to hold this office as listed above” — at least 35 years-old, a natural born U.S. citizen, and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years — as defined by the Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

JANUARY 6 IN MAINE

The January 6 Capitol riot happened on Bellows’ third day on the job.

At the Maine State House on January 6, there were concerns of a potential copycat siege, as 85 to 100 Trump supporters gathered outside. But they dispersed without incident.

“In America, the voters pick our leaders. Not Congress, not an armed mob can overturn an election,” Bellows told me in an interview in her office on the State House grounds that day. 

She had been one of the four Maine electors who ratified the results the month before, casting her vote for Joe Biden. 

“These elections were some of the most secure we have seen in this country. The results were crystal clear. The Electoral College upheld the will of the people,” Bellows said on January 6.

Related

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows "swatted" after removing Trump from ballot

For a story broadcast on the first anniversary of the Capitol attack, I interviewed Bellows about two bills she advocated for in order to protect election workers and voting machines. Both were passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Janet Mills. One made it a felony in Maine to threaten election workers or obstruct their duties. The other banned out-of-state groups from conducting post-election audits, as happened in Arizona after the 2020 presidential race. 

In a tweet linking to that story, Bellows wrote, “One year after the violent insurrection, it’s important to do all we can to safeguard our elections.” Trump’s lawyers flagged that tweet and other old social media posts by Bellows, on the eve of her ballot eligibility decision, to argue she was biased and should recuse herself. Bellows rejected the motion as untimely. It was past the deadline for evidentiary briefs and submissions.

Trump speeches and tweets were shown at the day-long December 19 public hearing that Bellows presided over at the State House.

“I made this decision based on the facts, the evidence, the law, and the Constitution, as presented in the hearing,” she told me.

Her decision disqualifying Trump bluntly assigned blame for the riot to the former president as the election-denier-in-chief and rejected the notion that the riot that stopped the Electoral College certification was a spontaneous event.

“The central question,” Bellows wrote in her decision, “is whether Mr. Trump’s statements and other conduct leading up to and including January 6…constitute incitement of insurrection.” 

Trump had sowed seeds of distrust in the election results months before Election Day by demonizing the demand for mail-in ballots that soared that year due to the coronavirus pandemic. Two-thirds of Maine voters cast absentee ballots in the 2020 general election.

“The record establishes that Mr. Trump, over the course of several months and culminating on January 6, 2021, used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters and direct them to the Capitol to prevent certification of the 2020 election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Bellows wrote in the decision. “Mr. Trump was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”

Threats to poll workers and election officials in Maine and around the country arose as Trump created a crisis of confidence in election integrity even before he refused to accept losing five swing states to Joe Biden that he had won in 2020 — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.

In the end, Biden won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Biden won 51.3% of the national popular vote and 7 million more votes than Trump’s 46.9%. The elections of 2000, 2004, and 2016 were closer.

Around 10 Mainers have been prosecuted for participating in the Capitol riot, including Kyle Fitzsimons, who is now serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison primarily for assaulting law enforcement officers protecting the West Terrace entrance to the building.

In her decision, Bellows blamed Trump’s “stop the steal” and “fight like hell” rhetoric for the Capitol riot and found his limited comments as the violence unfolded insufficient at quelling the mob.

She concluded, “Mr. Trump’s occasional requests that rioters be peaceful and support law enforcement do not immunize his actions. A brief call to obey the law does not erase conduct over the course of months, culminating in his speech on the Ellipse. The weight of the evidence makes clear that Mr. Trump was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”

MAINE REACTIONS

The Maine challengers to Trump’s candidacy said Bellows’ decision showed “great courage” and “stood on the side of democracy and our constitution.”

“President Trump violated his presidential oath when he attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power by inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021. For that act, as affirmed by both the Colorado Supreme Court and Secretary Bellows, our constitution bars him from forever again holding office in the United States,” former state legislators Ethan Strimiling, Tom Saviello, and Kim Rosen said in a written statement.  “We look forward to helping her defend her judicious and correct decision in court. No elected official is above the law or our constitution.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chueng called Bellows, a former state senator, U.S. Senate candidate, and executive director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union, “a virulent leftist and a hyper-partisan Biden-supporting Democrat” and described her decision as an “attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter.”

Had Trump been convicted in his second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate — in February 2021, for inciting the Capitol riot — he might have been barred from holding office again. 

Maine Senator Susan Collins was one of seven Republicans, along with all 50 Democrats and Independents, to vote for a guilty verdict, but 10 more Republicans were needed for the required two-thirds majority to convict. Collins, who opposes Trump’s candidacy in 2024, co-authored the Electoral Count Reform Act to make another January 6 scenario impossible by clarifying the limited, ministerial role of the vice president in the election ratification process. But Collins was quick to reject Bellows’ decision, posting on X, “Maine voters should decide who wins the election – not a Secretary of State chosen by the legislature. The Secretary of State’s decision would deny thousands of Mainers the opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choice, and it should be overturned.”

Democratic Representative Jared Golden, who represents the conservative-leaning 2nd Congressional District, which Trump carried in 2016 and 2020, securing one electoral vote each time, also disagreed with Bellows. Golden posted on X, “I voted to impeach Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection. I do not believe he should be re-elected President of the United States. However, we are a nation of laws, and therefore, until he is actually found guilty of the crime of insurrection, he should be allowed on the ballot.” 

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Maine Independent Senator Angus King, who is running for a third term in 2024, said he respected Bellows’ “careful process” but “absent a final judicial determination of a violation of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause, I believe the decision as to whether or not Mr. Trump should again be considered for the presidency should rest with the people as expressed in free and fair elections.”

The only member of the congressional delegation to back Bellows is Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree, who represents the liberal 1st Congressional District, encompassing Portland and Southern Maine.

“Donald Trump incited a violent mob to block Congress from certifying the Electoral College + overturn the 2020 presidential election,” Pingree posted on X. “The text of the Fourteenth Amendment is clear. No person who engaged in an insurrection against the government can ever again serve in elected office.”

The U.S. Supreme Court appears destined to consider the Maine and Colorado decisions and others barring Trump from the ballot.

So far, courts and election officials in California, Michigan, Minneota, Oregon, and other states have declined to block Trump from their 2024 ballots. GOP Senator Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, who called the Bellows decision “an egregious abuse of power,”plans to introduce a bill to impound federal election administration funds for states "misusing the 14th Amendment for political purposes."

NEXT STEPS

Bellows suspended her decision until the Maine Superior Court, the Maine Supreme Court, and other venues, as necessary, have an opportunity to weigh in on appeals. 

But the timetable remains compressed. Maine’s presidential primary ballots, under state law, must be printed and sent to military and overseas voters 45 days before the election, or by January 20.

Bellows, whose term expires in 2025, ran for statewide elective office before, losing the 2014 U.S. Senate race against Collins. Governor Mills is serving her second and final term, and the next Maine gubernatorial election is in 2026.

When I asked Bellows if she considered the impact of her decision on any future political aspirations, she replied, “No.”

No consideration of the personal or political consequences?  “None.”

She’s told me she’s not worried about being impeached or losing the trust of voters as being a reliable source of election information.

Bellows, who is not a lawyer, is receiving legal counsel from the office of Maine’s Attorney General. 

“This is my decision,” Bellows said in our interview. “My decision was based exclusively on the facts presented to me at the hearing and my obligations under the law and the Constitution."

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Legal experts: Jack Smith’s “tour de force” filing “slyly” takes a hammer to Trump immunity defense

Donald Trump is poised to lose his presidential immunity appeal in his election interference case, an ex-associate White House lawyer in the former president's administration says.

Trump is accused of four felonies related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. His lawyers have tried to invoke presidential immunity in an effort to have the federal case thrown out, claiming he has "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for actions he took while in office.

"So, [special counsel] Jack Smith has a winner on this one, right?" Jim Schultz said during an interview with CNN on Monday, noting that the case will appear before the D.C. Circuit Court, which he added is widely understood among the legal community to be the "the warm-up act for the Supreme Court." 

Smith, in a rare move, last month petitioned the Supreme Court to circumvent the D.C. Circuit and deliver an expedited ruling on the immunity question. The high court, however, rejected the request, offering no explanation for the decision. 

The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit will hear arguments in the case on Jan. 9 after receiving the briefs filed by both parties. 

"I think in this instance, the D.C. Circuit Court is going to act swiftly, and I think they’re going to knock down this immunity claim, you know, very swiftly," Schultz said in his interview.

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"Extreme sabotage": Trump rants about new "10,000 soldiers" conspiracy theory on Truth Social

In a court filing Saturday, Smith's office urged the federal appellate court to reject Trump's immunity claim, arguing that it "threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office," according to The Messenger.

The 82-page brief asserts that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was right in upholding the charges in an early December decision, and argued Trump's appeal should be dismissed. It responds to a filing submitted to the D.C. Circuit by Trump's legal team last week, which argued that the charges against the former president are "unlawful and unconstitutional" and called on the appellate court to return the case to Chutkan "with instructions to dismiss the indictment with prejudice."

The former president is "wrong" in claiming he must be "cloaked with absolute immunity from criminal prosecution" for illicit behavior while serving as president, the federal prosecutors declared. 

"Separation of powers principals, constitutional text, and precedent all make clear that a former President may be prosecuted for criminal acts he committed while in office — including, most critically here, illegal acts to remain in power despite losing an election," they wrote in the brief.

Trump's "sweeping immunity claim threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to stay in office," prosecutors added. "The Founders did not intend and would never have countenanced such a result."

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CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen argued that the brief was a strong move against Trump's efforts to delay the criminal proceedings by putting forth the immunity argument. 

"Jack Smith hammers him with all the weaknesses of that claim in this new filing," Eisen said. "There's nothing in the Constitution. Not its text, its structure, its history. There's no precedent, there's no case law for this kind of absolute immunity."

Eisen believes that Smith's filing will not only extinguish the presidential immunity claim but hasten the debate so his federal election interference case against Trump, which is stayed until the question is resolved, can progress.

"Trump knows he's going to lose," Eisen explains. "He's playing for delay, trying to push this out as long as possible."  

If Trump were to succeed in delaying the trial past November and reclaiming the White House, he could order the Justice Department to throw out the case. Eisen, however, believes Smith "has the upper hand" in the matter.

"Smith is telling the D.C. Circuit, 'Hurry up, decide fast,'" he said, later noting that the case could begin early this year if the Supreme Court refuses to consider the case after the federal appellate court's decision.

The Supreme Court has "very often refused to consider…Trump's request for relief on Democracy-related issues," Eisen said. "If that happens, and it's wrapped up, then this trial, I don't think it can go March 5, but it can go in March."

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Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissman called Smith's Saturday filing a "classic Dreeben," referencing former Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, another Mueller investigation alum that Smith brought on his team to press the top court, and noted that the brief was meant to be read by the Supreme Court justices.

"Let's just say this brief is classic Dreeben (ie a tour de force, and VERY geared to S Ct review)," Weissman wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

"Smith slyly notes that Trump himself previously told the [Supreme Court] in a case where he sought (unsuccessfully) immunity from a state grand jury subpoena that he [would] NOT be immune post-Presidency and [would] not be thereafter 'above the law,' Weissmann added in a second post.  

Conservative attorney George Conway took note of another phrase in Smith's filing. 

"Also: 'a president who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary,'" Conway tweeted, quoting the brief. "Interesting choice of hypotheticals." 

MSNBC legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner is also confident that Smith will add co-defendants to his election interference case against Trump.

During an appearance on Brian Tyler Cohen's YouTube show "The Legal Breakdown" in late December, Kirschner predicted that Smith will "absolutely" charge the six, currently unindicted co-conspirators in the case, which includes "people like Mark Meadows, and Rudy Giuliani, and Sidney Powell, and John Eastman, and Kenneth Chesebro."

Former White House Chief of Staff Meadows, ex-New York City Mayor Giuliani and attorneys Powell, Eastman and Chesebro are also among the co-defendants in Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis' sweeping racketeering case, which charges its 19 defendants for actions related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Powell and Chesebro have brokered plea deals with Fulton County prosecutors, skirting prison and agreeing to fully cooperate with Willis and her team. Meadows, Giuliani and Eastman, however, have not made plea deals in the case.

"You have heard me say before, I am not a betting man. I am not a high roller; one dollar is my betting limit," Kirschner told Cohen. "I would bet the full buck on those six unindicted co-conspirators being indicted…. [Smith] will absolutely, in my opinion, indict those six, though perhaps, he's waiting for Donald Trump's trial to run its course first."

Cohen mentioned that no members of Congress have been criminally indicted for their efforts to help Trump's alleged bid to subvert his electoral defeat. Kirschner believes that they should be.

"I think the Department of Justice is falling down on the job…. There are insurrectionists in Congress who have not been held accountable for their crimes," Kirschner said. "Some of them are still in Congress trying to kill us from within, kill our democracy. And I wish I had an answer to the question: Why haven't they been dealt with."

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When Taco Bell met Kiran Palace: Finding flavor in Indian buffet tacos

Twenty minutes down the road, we arrived at a strip mall. At first sight, you wouldn’t even know there was an Indian buffet at the center, stuffed between an Irish pub and a Chinese laundromat. When you entered the little sliver that was Kiran Palace, it was like walking into a Hindu shrine built hundreds of years ago, equipped with gold-accented molding along the ceilings and brass statues of gods sitting on window sills and floor corners. The scent of incense drifted into my nostrils while sitar music played over the loudspeakers. Arriving there, I always felt like it was like being teleported to ancient Delhi, or that I’d died and this was one of three potential afterlives.

We took our seats at a round table as a basket of garlic naan was placed at the center.

“Let’s get to it,” Mom declared. She and my grandma were aficionados when it came to buffeting. They frequented every one within a twenty-five-mile radius at least once a week, from Sizzler two towns over to the Good Taste Chinese’s lunch special in Mayfair Shopping Center on Jericho Turnpike. For these two ladies, buffets weren’t just an opportunity to not cook; they represented an adventure to taste any and every dish available, maybe discovering something delicious to try cooking at home.

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Strolling along the line, gazing at each copper serving tray holding a heap of texture and hue, glistening meat or vegetables lying on a bed or floating to the surface, aromas shifting in front of my face as my feet moved sideways toward the right, I couldn’t help losing myself in its process. And yet, though I did still enjoy eating Indian food, I was still fixated on Taco Bell. But rather than refuse to partake or run out of the door, I decided to get creative and compile my own version using the elements bestowed before me.

I rested one full triangular-shaped naan on my plate, just like a taco. Starting with forage, I added lettuce and tomato on top as a foundation. Rather than beans, I took a generous scoop of chana masala (chickpea curry), the same kind my mom cooked every Wednesday night at home, and the only Indian dish my grandma had proudly learned to cook (deliciously), and distributed it across the cold vegetables. Next came a few chunks of boneless chicken tikka, accompanied by sautéed onions. To top it off, I drizzled a little raita yogurt, then green chutney using the tips of their ladles. Back at our table, I delicately folded the naan in half and shoved the bow of my mash-up into my mouth, generating a spice-induced super-flavor my taste buds had never before encountered.

“Papa, you’re making a mess of yourself,” commented Mom, as she, Nani, and Ravi looked on, neatly eating their helpings with forks. I wasn’t trying to curry favor with them. In fact, I laughed as curry squeezed out from the other end, some residue leaking along the side of my arm. I knew I was being absurd, a slob, a partial embarrassment, but I didn’t care.

“Oh, Raji,” my grandma chuckled. “Where do you think you are?”

Honestly, in that very moment, I didn’t know anymore, but it was delicious.

Raj's Indian Buffet Taco 

Directions

  1. Place 1 piece of naan on your plate. 

  2. Grab a generous amount of lettuce and tomato (salad is usually available at the beginning of the buffet line) using tongs, and lay it on top of the naan.

  3. Take 1 scoop of chana masala and spread a thick layer over the lettuce and tomato.

  4. Using tongs, grab 5 to 7 chunks of chicken tikka and distribute the pieces over the chana masala. Then, pick up the glazed onion garnish and sprinkle it over the chicken.

  5. Using a ladle, generously drizzle green chutney over the chicken. Repeat this step with raita yogurt, usually available at the same sauce station.

  6.  Once back at your seat, fold the naan over the ingredients, so it evenly holds sturdily in your hand, then eat as quickly as possible.

If you enjoyed this essay and recipe, consider ordering and reading the rest of Raj Tawney's  "Colorful Palate: A Flavorful Journey through a Mixed American Experience." 

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