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Martha Stewart’s best and most comforting Thanksgiving sides

Many have relied on fellow New Jersey native Martha Stewart's advice and recommendations for years and years. Thanksgiving — and the holidays in general — are a prime time to bring Martha's input into your home, from food to decor and everything in between.

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While some focus on the turkey itself (or perhaps get caught up on the libations, appetizers or the desserts) the sides are the place in which creativity and tradition can meld most seamlessly. 

So, as you finalize your Thanksgiving menu and plans, look to Martha for a way to help organize and pinpoint precisely the sides that might decorate your table. 

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01
Hatch Chile Corn Pudding
Corn is often a staple of the Thanksgiving side repertoire, but the corn pudding is not as ubiquitous as some other sides. This recipe uses frozen corn flavored with scallions, Monterey Jack cheese, eggs, cream, butter — and of course — Hatch green chiles, which add color, texture and a hint of heat to the dish. Thanksgiving is often devoid of much spice, but this dish adds a certain kick. 
02
Roasted Carrots with Oat Dukkah
A fresh take on carrots, this charred variation topped with an amazing flavorful dukkah containing oats, pistachios, sesame seeds and a slew of spices and seasonings will really appeal to your taste buds. The recipe also calls for honey and an egg white. Everyone will be fond of this dish. 

 

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03

Sweet Potato Casserole

A classic! Smooth and rich with tons of marshmallows atop a buttery, nutmeg-scented sweet potato mash, this side is sure to be a smash hit. This version has no nuts, but feel free to toss some pecans (or even cinnamon) into the mix to gussy it up all the more. 
04
Chestnut Stuffing
Stuffing is a Thanksgiving non-negotiable, but adding festive, meaty chestnuts to the classic elevates it to new heights. The other suspects are all present, rom bread and butter to onions, celery and sage. Cook it in a sheet tray for lots of crispy, craggy bits. 
05

Green Bean Casserole

This version is akin to the many truly "homemade" green bean casseroles that opt or a from-scratch mushroom sauce and just-fried shallots. This may seem like it calls for lots of oil, but it's important to have enough to properly fry the shallots. Otherwise, the recipe calls for green beans, mushrooms, butter, broth and milk . . . that's all!
 
It's sure to be a favorite.

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“That is not the law”: Legal experts torch Trump lawyer for trying to “stonewall” gag order judges

A federal appeals court on Monday appeared poised to uphold but limit a gag order on former President Donald Trump in his D.C. election interference case.

The three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel questioned Trump’s lawyers and special counsel Jack Smith’s team on the scope of the gag order imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan, raising concerns about how it restricts the presidential candidate from pushing back on public criticism, according to Politico.

Trump attorney John Sauer argued that the gag order is “unconstitutional” and set a "terrible precedent" for "restrictions against core political speech."

The judges pressed Sauer on prosecutors’ argument that Trump’s attacks have led to officials being “threatened and harassed.”

"That's all based on evidence that's three years old,” Sauer argued, adding that Trump had commented on the D.C. case “incessantly” and that there was of anyone involved being threatened.

“Why does the district court have to wait and see, and wait for the threats to come, rather than taking a reasonable action in advance?” Judge Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, asked the lawyer.

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Judge Patricia Millet, an Obama appointee, questioned whether the First Amendment would protect Trump’s right to call witnesses and tell them to be loyal. Sauer said that could be a violation of his bail restrictions and likely would not violate his constitutional rights.

The judge then asked whether it would be the same if Trump posted the message on social media or at a campaign rally.

“If he’s communicating with the American electorate?” Sauer replied. “I’d have to know more about the context.”

Pressed on whether there was any need for Trump to take concerns over threats into account, Sauer said Trump should be entitled “absolute freedom” to speak his mind.

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Though the judges also pressed the special counsel’s team on the broad restrictions in the gag order, legal experts panned Trump’s attorney’s performance.

“Trump's lawyer sounded like an anarchist First Amendment freak. Like First Amendment over anything,” former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. "That is not the law. It can't be the law, for the reason that Judge Millett pointed out, which is, 'Look, we need to have fair trials.' You can't just have a criminal defendant going in and threatening witnesses, threatening the prosecution, threatening the judges and say 'free speech, free speech.' That's insane.”

Katyal said courts have to balance a defendant’s “free speech rights” but “it’s not the only issue.”

“This case, Lawrence, is about a criminal defendant who has a history of threatening other people, including when in trials, and that's what the judge last week in Colorado found, it's a person who talks and double talks so that it's threats that — if you just read the internal threat, it just doesn't seem like a threat,” he said. “You have to read it in context. And Trump always has some sort of explanation, the way a mob boss does of how it's not actually a threat.”

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Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, said that it makes sense for Trump’s lawyer to “essentially stonewall” if “you think you are going to lose.”

“Look, it's a given that every defendant, when they are released, they are told ‘do not commit a crime.’ That includes: ‘Do not threaten a witness.’ That's not a gag order. That's just — you can't commit a criminal act while on bail,” he told MSNBC.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele mocked Trump’s lawyer’s argument and expressed disbelief at the way “we’re setting a whole new standard” for Trump.

“We’re contorting ourselves in ways that we ordinarily wouldn’t have,” he said. “I mean, when did we have this conversation? When did we have to do this? Even when… others were prosecuting high-profile mobsters, you didn’t have to deal with this level of crap. And I hate to put it in that context, but that’s how a lot of us Americans are looking at this and saying, “What are we doing here? The guy needs to shut his mouth up! He needs to obey what the judge tells them to do and do it!”

Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb on Monday reiterated his prediction that Trump would eventually be jailed for violating the gag order.

“I don’t think his first or second violation of the gag order will find him sent to jail,” he told CNN. “But I think ultimately, you know, his narcissism will get the best of him, and he will violate it until he finds out what the limits of Judge Chutkan’s patience are.”

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Astronomers gain new understanding of how galaxies age and form into spiral shapes

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is known for its famous, sparkly, spiral. 

But we aren’t the only ones with a glittery arm. Known as spiral galaxies, this class of galaxy is known to make up an estimated 60 percent of all galaxies in the universe. Found in low-density regions of the universe, spiral galaxies aren't common in every corner of the universe. In fact, they are rare in the middle of galaxy clusters.

And it turns out there is a part of the universe called a Supergalactic Plane, which is an enormous flattened structure that extends nearly a billion light years across, that’s teeming with bright elliptical and bright disk galaxies —but curiously, no spiral galaxies. An international team of researchers wanted to know: why are spiral galaxies like our very own Milky Way missing from the Supergalactic Plane? And what can that tell us about the evolution of our galaxy?

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They might have found an answer. New research in the journal Nature Astronomy reports spiral galaxies are scarce in the Supergalactic Plane because in this region, galaxies are frequently merging with other galaxies.

Think of it like a very populated city, or a very busy highway. Through these mergers, spiral galaxies turn into elliptical galaxies, egg-shaped galaxies without the spiral arms, which leads to the growth of supermassive black holes. (These black holes live up to their name, sometimes billions of times more massive than our sun.) In contrast, spiral galaxies that don’t populate the Supergalactic Plane evolve in isolation, allowing them to keep their picture-perfect spiral.

"Our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers."

The team of researchers landed on their conclusion using the SIBELIUS (Simulations Beyond the Local Universe) supercomputer simulation. Through this simulation they tracked the evolution of the universe over 13.8 billion years, from the early universe to today. The researchers said the final simulation was consistent with observations of our universe through telescopes.

“It is rare but not a complete anomaly: our simulation reveals the intimate details of the formation of galaxies such as the transformation of spirals into ellipticals through galaxy mergers,” co-author Professor Carlos Frenk said in a media statement. “Further, the simulation shows that our standard model of the Universe, based on the idea that most of its mass is cold dark matter, can reproduce the most remarkable structures in the Universe, including the spectacular structure of which the Milky Way is part.”

hammer-comparison-large-blackDistribution of the brightest galaxies in the Local Universe, observed in the 2MASS survey (left panel) and reproduced in the SIBELIUS simulation (right panel). (Dr Till Sawala)Astronomers believe the Milky Way is an estimated 13.51 billion years old. However, what happened during each stage of its evolution, and how long those phases lasted to get to its current form today, remains unclear. A leading theory is that the Milky Way's collision with a dwarf galaxy nearly 10 billion years ago was a turning point, setting in motion the changes that amounted to our modern galaxy. Others believe that our galaxy might have matured earlier than previously thought. Either way, just like humans, galaxies go through different stages of maturation.

A separate study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters highlights unexpected observations in “teenage galaxies,” meaning galaxies that formed two-to-three billion years after the Big Bang. 

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In the study, a group of scientists at Northwestern University analyzed the results from the CECILIA (Chemical Evolution Constrained using Ionized Lines in Interstellar Aurorae) Survey, which used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study the chemistry of faraway galaxies. The results showed that these so-called teenage galaxies go through an uncomfortable growth spurt during their teenage years, similar to humans. 

“Using the JWST, our program targets teenage galaxies when they were going through a messy time of growth spurts and change,” Northwestern’s Allison Strom, who led the study, said in a media statement. “Teenagers often have experiences that determine their trajectories into adulthood. For galaxies, it’s the same.” 

In order to make these discoveries, Strom and her collaborators used the JWST to observe 33 distant teenaged galaxies for 30 straight hours. Then, they combined spectra from 23 of those galaxies. Strom emphasized that the biggest surprises were the observations of nickel and finding that the teenage galaxies were extremely hot. 

“This is just additional evidence of how different galaxies likely were when they were younger,” Strom said. “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine we would see nickel.”

Light from 23 distant galaxies infographicLight from 23 distant galaxies, identified with red rectangles in the Hubble Space Telescope image at the top, were combined to capture incredibly faint emission from eight different elements, which are labelled in the JWST spectrum at the bottom. (Aaron M. Geller, Northwestern, CIERA + IT-RCDS)

Dr. Gwen Rudie, a staff astronomer at Carnegie Observatories, clarified to Salon via email that the elements existing in these galaxies is not a surprise, but the ability measure their light is "unprecedented" and underscores the power of JWST. 

"The pattern we see in the light from these different elements (how brightly the signatures of each element glow) is very different from what we see in local galaxies – and our own galaxy," Rudie said. "So explaining why the pattern in their spectra is different and what it means for these early galaxies is the next big puzzle."

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Rudie added that astronomers have a pretty good idea of how galaxies like the Milky Way formed, but there are "very important clues missing." The most important one, she said, is the chemistry makeup of the galaxy.

Strom further elaborated that the most growth for a galaxy occurs during this period, making the case for why it’s an important timespan to study. It also could hold clues to why the Milky Way has its spiral arm. 

“By studying this, we can begin exploring the physics that caused the Milky Way to look like the Milky Way,” she said. “And why it might look different from its neighboring galaxies.”

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Worry less about TikTok and Bin Laden — fret more that Mike Johnson shares the terrorist’s view

In the surest sign yet that Twitter's relevance is swiftly disappearing, it became the locus of a particularly silly "kids these days" moral panic last week. It started when Twitter personality Yashar Ali decided to rile up his over 700,000 followers on the platform now called X by posting a video purporting to show that it had suddenly become trendy on TikTok for young people to read quotes from Osama bin Laden's 2002 "Letter to America" and exclaim how much they agreed with the now-deceased terrorist leader.

People took it seriously. Multiple news outlets rushed outraged responses. Even the White House fell for it. But there should have been more skepticism. Ali, after all, was exposed in a 2021 Los Angeles Magazine as a shady character who makes money and gains status with untrustworthy social media content meant to manipulate less-than-savvy internet users. So it's no surprise the story was swiftly debunked by tech journalists who pointed out that the trend amounted to just a few trolls.

The main difference of opinion between the two religious radicals is what flavor of far-right religious oppression they prefer: Christian or Muslim?

Yes, the videos had gotten a solid number of views and comments, but only after people like Ali sent a huge amount of hate traffic towards them. As John Herrman of New York pointed out, this is more a story about how Twitter operates these days. The platform susbists by ginning up outrage with an aging and increasingly out-of-touch crowd, through false or misleading content. There are lots of problems with TikTok, for sure — it also has a serious disinformation problem — but no, there's no real reason to believe it's radicalizing the youth into sympathy with Islamic terrorists. 

No, what's frustrating is that, while people were winding themselves up over a not-really-true story about young people and Al Qaeda, a much more serious story has yet to gain similar traction: How the newly elected Republican Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, has a habit of expressing America-hating rhetoric that sounds like it could have come straight out of Osama bin Laden's mouth. 

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In a video recorded just weeks before he ascended to his role as the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Johnson filmed a video for the World Prayer Network with rabidly homophobic pastor Jim Garlow. As Frederick Clarkson has chronicled for Salon, Garlow is part of an apocalyptic Christian movement that wishes to end secular democracy and replace it with "a utopian biblical kingdom where only God's laws are enforced." (Which, of course, sounds much like bin Laden's hope for an Islamic caliphate.) Garlow asked Johnson if he felt that it was finally "a time of judgment for our collective sins."

To this, Johnson replied, "The culture is so dark and depraved that it almost seems irredeemable." As evidence, he noted how many young people identify as something other than straight.

Johnson's words echo those of bin Laden's "Letter to America: "We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest."

It says a lot about the failures of our media that a few random attention-seekers on TikTok have caused more of a freakout than this lengthy list of commonalities between bin Laden and Johnson, a man who actually has the power to put his anti-American vision into action.

The similarities don't end there. As Fred Kaplan at Slate noted in his condemnation of the (way overblown) TikTok videos, the "Letter to America" is "an attack on the modern secular world," in which bin Laden demands "complete submission" to his version of Islam and "the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict" it. Bin Laden was especially angry that Americans "separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator."

Johnson, like bin Laden, rejects American secularism, saying it's a "misnomer" to believe in the separation of church and state. His career has been devoted to forcing his brand of Christianity on all Americans, from taxpayer funding for exhibits that claim dinosaurs rode Noah's ark to laws prohibiting sexual behavior that doesn't adhere to his rigid fundamentalist rules. He repeatedly insists that, despite their words to the contrary, the Founding Fathers wanted religion to guide government policy. The main difference of opinion between the two religious radicals is what flavor of far-right religious oppression they prefer: Christian or Muslim?

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One can, of course, point out that bin Laden was a violent terrorist who funded a deadly attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001, which Johnson has not done. But it's also true that Johnson has signaled sympathy towards that other terrorist attack on American democracy, Donald Trump's insurrection of January 6, 2021. Johnson was one of the leaders of Trump's coup effort, heading the coalition of House Republicans demanding that electoral votes for President Joe Biden be thrown out. This week, he authorized the release of security footage from the Capitol riot, so that MAGA propagandists can cherry-pick and distort the contents to create a false narrative valorizing the insurrectionists. 

For certain, January 6 wasn't as deadly as September 11. But it's also true that Johnson has a far better shot than bin Laden ever did of ending American democracy and replacing it with a theocratic government.

As Tim Miller of the Bulwark writes, by calling American culture "depraved" and saying God is "going to have to bring people to their knees," Johnson is not only being hateful to his fellow Americans. His rhetoric also reflects the way Trump talks about the majority of Americans who oppose him as "the vermin and the enemy within." Both are highly reminiscent of how bin Laden talked about Americans as a dissolute people who "have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you." 

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It says a lot about the failures of our media that a few random attention-seekers on TikTok have caused more of a freakout than this lengthy list of commonalities between bin Laden and Johnson, a man who actually has the power to put his anti-American vision into action. It's just much easier to sell a story about wayward youth than it is to explain why the nerdy-looking politician with the good hair is actually plotting our collective destruction. "Kids these days" stories allow older people a chance to vent their anxieties about aging and mortality under the veneer of self-righteousness. A story about how the second person in line for the presidency wishes for an American apocalypse is just depressing. 

There is one reason, however, to be sympathetic to the people who were freaked out when they saw misleading headlines about "viral TikTok videos" allegedly celebrating bin Laden. As I've written about extensively, there is no doubt that far-right propaganda and disinformation, spread through social media, are undermining our democracy. TikTok has absolutely become a locus of fascist recruiting, as evidenced by the popularity of Andrew Tate and other such far-right influencers on the platform. It's just that, in this particular case, the "bin Laden had a point" argument was so idiotic that even relatively credulous people saw through it. 

Crucially, the biggest, most dangerous source of disinformation is not randos on TikTok. It's the same people we've been dealing with for years now: Trump and his right-wing acolytes like Johnson. They're the ones who are pumping out a steady stream of lies meant to destabilize American democracy so they can seize power. Worse, they use official government powers, like the ability to hold House hearings or release security video footage, in order to do it. A few dumb kids experimentally saying ignorant stuff they soon regret is not a story. What does matter is that an entire political party, the GOP, is attempting to finish the job bin Laden started by decimating our democracy. 

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Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe blasts “preposterous” Trump exemption in “insurrection” ruling

A Colorado judge ruled that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection during the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, but decided that this would not prevent the former president from appearing on the state's primary ballot.

The lawsuit, which was brought by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of a group of Republican and independent voters, sought to disqualify Trump from Colorado’s 2024 ballot under the 14th Amendment’s “insurrection clause.” The plaintiffs argued that Trump is ineligible to hold office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. 

While Denver District Judge Sarah Wallace found that Trump “acted with the specific intent to disrupt the Electoral College certification of President Biden’s electoral victory through unlawful means,” and found that “Trump incited an insurrection on January 6, 2021,” she ruled his efforts wouldn’t keep him off the state’s primary ballot. 

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Wallace determined that Section 3 does not apply to Trump because, although it mentions individuals who are an "officer of the United States," it does not explicitly include the presidency. Instead, the clause refers to “elector of President and Vice President,” along with civil and military offices.

The judge wrote those who wrote Section 3 “did not intend to include the President as ‘an officer of the United States’” although she acknowledged that the amendment’s provision technically applied to those who swear an oath to “support” the Constitution. Notably, the oath Trump took after his election in 2016 was to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution, The Washington Post reported.

“Section 3 by its terms covers every ‘Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President,’ and ‘any office, civil or military, under the United States,’” longtime Harvard constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe told Salon. “In my view, and that of nearly every other expert in this field, ‘any’ means ANY, and there is no genuine ambiguity about the presidency being an ‘office . . . under the United States,’ as the Constitution elsewhere makes clear and as Mr. Trump has himself conceded in other courts on other occasions.”

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So there is no “genuine ambiguity,” but instead an opportunity for lawyers to “make mischief” by “exploiting” the oversight of the Fourteenth Amendment's authors who assumed certain principles would be universally understood, he argued.

“As Judge Wallace herself conceded in footnote 18 of her opinion, excluding the president would seem to be ‘preposterous,’” Tribe said. “The reason it would seem preposterous is that is exactly that. To exempt the one office that most clearly needs to be included if the Constitution is to be protected against attempted insurrections and rebellions by those with the potential to succeed is, of course, the highest office in the land and the one in which the greatest power is reposed.”

Wallace issued the ruling a week and a half after the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled Trump could not be removed from the primary ballot in that state. In Michigan, a judge arrived at a similar conclusion just three days prior to Wallace's ruling.

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CREW celebrated the ruling for determining Trump incited the insurrection and said they would appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

“The court’s decision affirms what our clients alleged in this lawsuit: that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection based on his role in January 6th,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “We are proud to have brought this historic case and know we are right on the facts and right on the law.”

If the Colorado Supreme Court agrees with the insurrection aspect but disagrees with the trial court's exception for the presidency, Trump may be removed from the Colorado primary ballot unless he persuades the U.S. Supreme Court to grant discretionary review, or “certiorari,” which it would likely do, Tribe explained.  

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“Whichever way the U.S. Supreme Court rules will set a national precedent binding throughout the country,” Tribe said. “If, on the other hand, the Colorado Supreme Court upholds the trial court’s exemption of the presidency, then the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to disregard whatever the Colorado Supreme Court says about the trial court’s ruling as to insurrection because any such statement by the highest court of Colorado won’t affect its bottom line if it ends up agreeing with the somewhat bizarre ruling of the trial court that Mr. Trump gets an exemption from the Disqualification Clause on the theory that the presidency isn’t an ‘office under the United States’ or that, if it is, the slightly different wording of the presidential oath takes it outside the ambit of the Disqualification Clause, an equally preposterous supposition.”

The recent ruling by the Colorado district court is the “first fully reasoned judicial examination” of the Disqualification Clause, exploring its meaning and scope, he added. It delves into whether Trump violated his oath to the Constitution by inciting a “violent insurrection,” and did so in a way that was not protected by the First Amendment.

“[The ruling] is bound to reshape the broader conversation around the legal consequences not just of the events of January 6 but of the entire plot to overturn the election’s lawful results, a plot that is central both to the four-count federal indictment of Mr. Trump in DC and the multi-count RICO indictment of Mr. Trump and numerous co-conspirators in Atlanta,” Tribe said.

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Pollster sees hope for Biden: “Republicans are in far greater trouble than is generally understood”

With the 2024 election less than one year away, the general consensus is that President Joe Biden’s political fortunes are in decline. He is tied with or behind presumed 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump in the polls, including in key battleground states that Biden won in 2020. He is also facing a lack of enthusiasm and declining levels of support among essential members of the Democratic Party’s base, such as African Americans, Latinos, and younger voters. Biden’s steadfast support of Israel in its war against Hamas is also threatening to fracture the Democratic Party’s coalition. And third-party candidates are in a position to siphon away much-needed votes from Biden in what will almost certainly be a very close election.

To be clear, Biden’s legislative and other successes across a range of issues including the economy, infrastructure, student loan relief, and restoring the country’s leadership role in the world are noteworthy and impressive – unfortunately, however, and for a variety of reasons, these successes are not (yet) translating into public support. Joe Biden is polling at near historic lows for an incumbent this close to an upcoming election.

Even more frustrating and troubling for the Democrats and other pro-democracy Americans who correctly see that the 2024 election represents an existential choice regarding the future of the country, is that Donald Trump, an apparent sociopath if not full-on psychopath, neofascist, dictator in waiting who is channeling Hitler and the Nazis, coup plotter and a man who has been determined by a court of law to have committed sexual assault (and who is now facing hundreds of years in prison for his many crimes), is somehow still tied with President Biden in the early polls. America’s political culture is that sick.

Democratic Party strategist and commentator Simon Rosenberg rejects the consensus view that President Biden is already done for. Rosenberg’s insights merit very careful consideration: He was one of the few experts who predicted that the so-called Republican “red wave” was actually a chimera.   

Joe Biden is polling at near historic lows for an incumbent this close to an upcoming election.

In this conversation, Rosenberg explains why President Biden and the Democrats are in a much stronger position than Donald Trump and the Republicans heading into the 2024 election and why he thinks so many of the early 2024 election polls are incorrect.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

How are you feeling given Trump and the Republican fascists' escalating threats to democracy? 

I'm tired. But I'm also exhilarated by our continued strong electoral performances all across the country going back to 2017. In particular, the Democrats have been winning elections since the [Supreme Court's] Dobbs decision in Spring 2022. We are winning across the country, in every kind of race — mayoral races, school board races, in governor's races in red states, and on ballot initiatives. It leaves me deeply optimistic about 2024.

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What does “winning” mean for the Democrats and the American people in the context of this democracy crisis?

Winning in a democracy matters, and for now, we're still operating largely under the rules of the old system. What's important about winning an election requires many different things to happen. That includes good candidates, strong arguments, the ability to raise money, and the ability to tactically execute one's plans. As shown by how the Democrats have been winning in every type of race across the country now for a year and a half, that is a sign of institutional and organizational strength. The Democratic Party is very strong right now. By comparison, the Republican Party is very weak institutionally.

It's divided. It's tactically behind the Democrats right now. Some of the state parties around the country are falling apart. Their candidates are having problems raising money. They're getting crushed on abortion. Abortion has become an enormous electoral and political albatross around the Republican Party's neck.

"It just gives me hope that people have been voting against MAGA and the Republicans repeatedly, especially, in the battleground states."

I believe that the central driving force of our politics, and it really has been since 2018, has been fear and opposition to the MAGA movement. The Republican Party's presidential candidate in 2024 is Mr. Super MAGA. That means that there is no way to scrub Trump, to put lipstick on the Trump pig, or to dress him up and make him something other than the most dangerous candidate in the history of American politics. And it just gives me hope that people have been voting against MAGA and the Republicans repeatedly, especially, in the battleground states. If we have a normal election the Democrats should win next year — even with Joe Biden and all of his limitations. But at the end of the day, he's been a good president. And he's got a strong case for reelection. I take your concern about whether this is going to be a straight-up election seriously. But if the Democrats win the election by eight to 10 points, none of the chicanery and trickery by the Republicans is going to matter. But we must win by a big margin.

When I look at the polling for Biden — especially the recent NY Times-Siena poll where he is behind Trump in key battleground states — it is not very positive for him and the Democrats, even allowing for all the qualifiers. Trump is also riding the wave if not getting stronger because of his trials and escalating fascism and other threats of violence and chaos.

I don't agree.

The Democrats have been winning in off-year elections. We won in the red wave midterm that we weren't supposed to win last year. We won in the general election. This idea that as the electorate gets bigger, it gets more Republican is false. The Democrats have won more votes in the last seven out of eight elections than the Republicans. No political party has done that in American history. In the last four elections, we've beaten the Republicans on average by 51 to 46 by five points.

In addition, there is a big anti-MAGA majority in this country and it continues to show up to give the Democrats big electoral victories when nobody expects it. I also have no idea how Donald Trump is going to pick up a single new vote beyond the voters who voted for him in 2020. And it's far more likely that he gets 45% of the vote than he does 49% of the vote. Trump is not a strong candidate. He's only getting 60% of the Republican field right now. That means 40% of Republicans are not supporting him right now. Trump needs 95% of Republicans to even have a remote chance of winning. He is very far away from that. Trump is actually showing a lot of structural weakness, not strength.

I know the polls have shown what they've shown. First of all, the election is a year away. Not to be overlooked, there are polls showing Biden up by between two and five points nationally over Trump. There is contradictory data out there — which is what happened with the non-existent red wave in 2022. For Trump to be in the high 40s, or even ahead of Biden, it would put Trump in a place that no Republican candidate has been in 20 years. I just don't buy that given the fact that when actual Democrats and Republicans go vote, we do well, and they don't. I'm not going to tell you we're going to win. I can't predict that. But I would much rather be us than them given everything I know about politics.

"We have to we have to recognize that with Donald Trump it's always the worst-case scenario."

The Republicans are in far greater trouble than is generally understood. Consider these facts: Trump has been convicted of sexual assault, he was involved in one of the largest financial scandals in American history, he will have been probably responsible for the greatest security breach in the history of potentially the United States and even the West, he will have overseen a party-wide conspiracy to overturn an election and to end American democracy, and he is more responsible for ending Roe v. Wade and taking away women's reproductive rights than any other single person in the country. When you add all that up, I just don't know how Donald Trump, the worst candidate in American history, wins.

Very few if any Trump – Republican voters will support Biden or any other Democrat. The hostility and hatred and cult loyalty are that intense. More broadly, I have little faith in the American people at this point to be civically engaged and responsible citizens.

Trump gets 45% of the vote if he gets hit by a bus. But the ceiling for Trump may also be 45%.

The average American is not tuned into what is going on. That's one of the reasons why Trump's numbers are better than they will be. He's like a car wreck. They don't want to look at the car wreck anymore. It's so dark and negative and people are just worrying about other things. That having been said, Trump is only at 60%. 40% of Republican primary voters are not with him. That's a huge problem. Trump can't lose any Republicans. He's the weak candidate. Trump is struggling to pull his coalition back together.

Here is the likely scenario: By March, Biden will be up by four or five points. Trump's coalition will come back, and he will be at 45 or 46%. Biden will be up in the high 40s, because he got 51 and a half percent of the vote last time. Biden's coalition will take a while to come back together. And I think he'll get back 50 to 60 to maybe even 70% of his voters. Yes, some of the Democratic Party coalition is wandering right now but it is very unlikely that it's going to wander over to the Republican camp. Trump has nothing to offer them. Can we even go get people who are wandering away from Trump? As for third-party candidates, I actually think that some of them are drawing support away from Republicans. In fact, right now, Robert Kennedy is pulling more from Trump voters than he is from Biden voters.

Would you rather have the Democratic Party's base right now or the Republican Party's?

There are more Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats also have more "episodic voters" than the Republicans. Our coalition is younger for example. Younger voters of color in particular have wandered away from the party. Let's say 10% of Biden's support has wandered. It's not really surprising a year out when we are not in a primary. In terms of motivation, the Democrats are the motivated party.  Our victories at the polls show this. Again, when real voting takes place, the Democrats are bringing the heightened intensity. I think we can do better with Hispanics. I think the issues around abortion, as we've seen, are creating openings with Republican and independent women that are unprecedented. The Republicans have no way now to mitigate the political damage that abortion has done to them or will do to them again in 2024.

The Republicans and the "conservatives" and the MAGA people do not care about real democracy. Their strategists as seen with Agenda 47, Project 2025, the "Red Caesar" scenario, and the parallel institutions they have created to end multiracial pluralistic democracy are not stupid. These are very serious and very dangerous people — who have lots of money and other resources at their command.

I don't know if they're smart. The Republican Party has been overtaken by extremism and extremists. Do not assume that the Republicans have a plan and that it is coherent and makes sense. Why are they losing election after election, even in places like Kentucky and Ohio? Today's Republicans are operating out of a place of faith and craziness and beyond reason that there is no place for strategy and politics. They're contemptuous of polling and data. To your point about if we are going to have a legitimate election. All I can do in my work is operate as though this is going to be okay. Of course, we have to be vigilant. Right now, that we have Democratic governors in key battleground states does an enormous amount to mitigate the Republicans' ability to interfere in a free and fair election. The Democrats are in control of their own destiny in 2024. But they and we must go and do the work. Millions of Americans are getting up and they've decided that they are not going to let their democracy slip away. There are millions of us who are fighting every day to prevent our democracy from slipping away.

If President Biden and the Democratic Party's fundamentals are so strong, then why is he behind in the polls? Yes, the popular vote matters. But what about the Electoral College and other structural features of American democracy that dilute and subvert the popular vote?

Reform is long overdue. The Age of Trump has shown us how our democracy is based on norms and not the law or even the explicit rules. Those norms have been penetrated and violated and abused and trampled repeatedly. Healing and reform need to be done. There are flaws in our democracy that are significant. I have been for the national popular vote and getting rid of the Electoral College for 20 years. This is an opportunity for Biden to introduce an ambitious and bold reform agenda.

So, is this widespread concern about Biden's weak polling just a function of media framing? Something else?

I'm not worried about the polling. In my opinion, part of what's happening with polling is that because of low response rates, where people just aren't responding to polls in the way they used to, the quality of polling has deteriorated. It's harder for polling to capture the current moment in the way that it used to. Our country's more diverse; it's a very big and complicated country. The polling industrial complex oversells the predictive capacity of polling. Polling can't predict anything; all it can do is tell you what's happening today. There is usually three to four points of margin of error. That means if Trump is ahead 46 to 44 percent in Wisconsin due to margin of error, then Biden could actually be ahead by two points. Because of low response rates and different techniques and people not answering phones, it means that polling is struggling to capture the moment. Other data is necessary to capture what is really happening with the electorate. In total, polling is much more of a sketch than a detailed painting. 

What happens if you're wrong and Trump and the Republican Party win the 2024 Election?

We're screwed. I've written Trump's campaign slogan: I tried to end American democracy in the last election, I failed. And if you elect me this time, I'll finish the job. We have to we have to recognize that with Donald Trump it's always the worst-case scenario. This effort by many in the news media and elsewhere to normalize Trump is foolish; anyone who has spent time normalizing Trump is a fool. 

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AI deepfakes, women, and the liberating imagery of feminist sexual vengeance

In 1968, performance artist Valie Export put on a pair of crotchless pants and strolled into a Munich cinema. Legend has it she was wielding a machine gun, pointing it at the heads of male viewers as she stalked the aisles of the pornographic theater. Without firing a shot, she bared her hairy genitals at eye level, moving row by row and asking if anyone wanted the real thing, as the men began scrambling out of their seats toward the door.

Export’s legendary performance piece, “Action Pants: Genital Panic,” came to mind this week when 404 Media reported that yet another internet forum has popped up for guys who create AI-generated deepfake porn. And how this one actually offers bounties for deepfake porn of ordinary women.

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I imagine those men in the theater, sweating and stunned into silent panic. I imagine the heft of metal in Export’s hands, her face shape-shifting into those of a thousand women.

“It’s a nice story but it wasn’t a pornographic cinema. I don’t think I’d be sitting here now if I had gone into a porn cinema with a machine gun,” Export said in a 2019 interview when asked about her performance.

Alas.

“‘Genital Panic’ was not violent,” she said in another interview. “I walked through the rows of cinema chairs, but the visitors were afraid to see female genitals; to see the vulva and be too close to it. The fear of the vulva is present in mythology, where it is depicted devouring man. I don't know if this fear has changed.” 

That fear hasn’t changed, only the medium by which men now seek to control the power of that image. Last month, Wired reported deepfake porn is “out of control,” with at least 244,625 videos uploaded to the top 35 sites for this garbage, and 113,000-plus uploaded in the first nine months of 2023. That’s 54% more than 2022’s total 73,000 videos.

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A 2019 report by deepfake monitoring firm Sensity AI found 96% of deepfake images were non-consensual pornography. 99% of those targeted women. The hype we all fell for was that AI deepfakes would target political races. Maybe someday. But Sensity AI only found 35 images of politicians, and 2020’s election-deepfake scare turned into a nothingburger. 

US and South Korean female celebrities account for a big chunk of deepfakes found by Sensity, but experts note more men now target young girls. One New York man was caught running a depraved sex scheme targeting 14 women. Many said their stolen and manipulated photos were from middle school and high school. And high school boys are learning to do the same — like those who deepfaked 34 female classmates. 

But who needs homemade deepfakes when you’ve got bots? An investigation into deepfake porn on Telegram found guys distributing manipulated stolen images of more than 680,000 women and girls. The most common user request? “Familiar girls.” 

The master’s tools 

We’ve been inundated with coverage about how pervasive and destructive deepfake porn is, and now we’ve even got documentaries about it. Tech news has tracked the rise of this digital sewage for the last several years, and the increasing ease of its circulation with stupid-simple software. Since 2014, we’ve seen the kinds of believable faces that could be created with AI GANs (generative adversarial networks, the tech that makes deepfakes so convincing). By 2017 Nvidia’s first deepfake videos emerged, and so did the first deepfake porn. We’ve known from the start that this is what it would be used for. 

Samantha Cole’s 2017 coverage for Motherboard was among the early signal flares on open-source deepfake AI porn. Her reporting on porn sites using facial recognition software to detect and root out deepfakes likewise remains a prescient rebuke to those who propose letting the fox guard the henhouse; just look at all the good it for us when Google banned “involuntary synthetic pornographic imagery” back in 2018. And remember when top AI researchers were “racing” to detect deepfakes in 2019? Or how about when Facebook’s deepfake detection showed “promising results” in 2020?  

In 2024, it’ll be 10 years since deepfake images hit the scene, seven years since deepfake porn emerged. And op-eds keep coming, each describing some new humiliation or psychological devastation endured by this sexual harassment. The Centre for International Governance Innovation calls this doxxing, Zoom-bombing and deepfaking of women the “shadow pandemic.” 

Women steering violence we can’t outrun by offering anticipatory compliance is a survival strategy that obviously precedes current western tech-capitalism, but never has it been more conveniently and profitably exploited by more men

We’re not likely to see a sudden feminist revolution in AI tech, either. In 2019, women only accounted for 25% of the tech industry worldwide. You and I will never have enough cash to strongarm Google or Amazon Web Services into removing deepfake porn content with as much gusto as they do DMCA-protected .mp3 files. Let’s face it: If the internet’s corporate giants and Congress actually wanted to stop deepfake porn, they have the power and would have already done so. 

States can’t do this alone either. Vigorously enforced state laws make a difference in setting privacy standards (thank you, Illinois) — but that’s mainly for corporations. Miring Facebook’s legal department in compliance paperwork isn’t stopping deepfake porn. Already, 46 US states have laws banning revenge porn, and I’d love to see judges take those for a test drive. But only Virginia and California laws include deepfakes, and none have stopped the rising tide.

In his recent executive order, President Joe Biden included clauses that flirt with regulating AI-generated deepfakes. The political concern has largely been couched in language about how AI could be weaponized for attacks against the US’ critical infrastructure, or lead to nuclear war. But Biden’s directive to have the Commerce Department study deepfake identification does absolutely nothing to slow the pace of this fake-flesh industry, and barely constitutes more than a nod at the problem. It also misses the point entirely: It’s not just the medium of AI.

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Pimpin’ ain’t easy

Before AI, it was Photoshop and airbrushing. In the 1980s, it was the Hustler magazine dillholes who patched together fake nudes of female readers (and were subsequently slapped with lawsuits). Every high school girl who’s seen a boy’s crude drawing of her passed around a class knows what I’m talking about.

“This is the point I kept coming back to: We have to pay attention to the spirit of deepfakes as it started,” Cole wrote in 2018. “We can….talk at length about ethical uses of artificial intelligence, fake news literacy, and who has access to powerful tools like machine learning. But we must first acknowledge that the technology that could start a nuclear war was born as a way for men to have their full, fantastical way with women’s bodies.”

She’s right. She’s so right, in fact, that it’s boring how right she is. It’s boring because it’s so painfully predictable. 

I wouldn’t hang Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Halofernes” in the living room, but I could stare at Janina Baranowska’s “Acteon Devoured by His Hounds” every evening over dinner

The historical problem of media which extends the male gaze is at the heart of deepfake porn: it’s a male reduction of women to passive parts, an assertion of the viewers’ relational and psychological power over the subject being viewed. And it doesn’t take a genius to know that wherever women have historically faced a choice between enduring patriarchal sexual humiliation or taking radical and potentially dangerous political action, a delusional reformist with counterrevolutionary commercial aims is never far behind to offer a less-lethal third option. 

It won’t be long until a misguided liberal-feminist proposes some commerce app as capitulation, promising “consensual” deepfake sales as “empowerment.” An iron fist demanding surrender will be wrapped in the velvet glove of its coercive premise: you can fight men about this and they’ll do it to you anyway while you go unpaid, or you can comply with men’s demands for it and maybe some of them will throw you a few bucks for the convenience of your voluntary submission. (Of course, we’ll be expected to make sure daddy-app gets his cut. Pimpin’ ain’t easy, after all.) 

That’s the choice we’re headed toward because that’s the choice they always lay on us: one whose core assumption is that our sex-class won’t meet the threat of male violence with an equally lethal reply. And when we arrive at the next iteration of this choice, no amount of misappropriated feminist language about body-positive girl-boss empowerment will transmute our coerced participation in sexual self-subjugation into the material reality of our liberation. They aren’t going to suddenly clear the rape-kit backlog, promote us to CEOs and put pockets on our jeans if we concede politely and let them cut-and-paste our kids’ faces onto their porn. 

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They aren’t going to suddenly clear the rape-kit backlog, promote us to CEOs and put pockets on our jeans if we concede politely and let them cut-and-paste our kids’ faces onto their porn. 

Ladies, let’s remember what our therapists have told us about honoring outdated survival mechanisms so we can let them go and escape abuse cycles: We survived patriarchal violence (both physical and psychological) by grasping onto any tiny thread of relational-social power we could find and adjusting the trajectory of that violence — even if only via the slightest, life-saving margin — by using our trauma-heightened pattern-recognition skills to anticipate its rhythms, and our ingenious subversion of socialized gender roles to soften its blows. 

Women steering violence that we can’t outrun by offering anticipatory compliance is a survival strategy that obviously precedes current western tech-capitalism, but never has this self-preservation instinct and strategy of ours been more conveniently and profitably exploited by more men, more quickly, and at grander scale for the sake of male mass-surveillance and sexual voyeurism. 

We taught our daughters what we learned from our mothers: lean into his punches so they don’t hurt as much and so you don’t die from them. I love us for that. But now it’s time to teach our daughters a strategy once attributed to Andrea Dworkin: "Harden your hearts and learn to kill."

Get some

I wouldn’t be the first to describe Export’s arthouse performance as a brilliant and defiantly apotropaic act of anasyrma; to look at her 1969 photo series is to be stared down by a leather-clad punk rock sheela-na-gig with a machine gun. As the Tate notes, the keystone wasn’t just Export’s unapologetic ownership of a fetishized body — but occupying a public space of mostly men.

“It was important for me to present my works to the public, in the public space and not within an art-conservative space,” Export said. “But also aggression was part of my intention. I wanted to provoke, because I sought to change the people’s way of seeing and thinking.”

I wouldn’t hang Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes” in the living room, but I could stare at Janina Baranowska’s “Actaeon Devoured by His Hounds” every evening over dinner. And I could watch women creators today birth from the screaming AI abyss a thousand deepfake revenge fantasies against the same men whose fearful masturbatory obsessions run unchecked over our daughters.

I’m not saying we should stalk data centers with machine guns and crotchless pants (though if ever executive-ordered to, I’d lock and load). But we’d be wrong to deprive male deepfakers the consequence of their actions, including our anger. That begins by reclaiming public space, arming ourselves with digital weapons wielded against us — and, in our own way, asking viewers “Who wants a piece?”

An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Salon's Lab Notes, a weekly newsletter from our Science & Health team.

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Vets sound alarm about mysterious and sometimes fatal illness spreading among dogs nationwide

As many pet owners gear up to board their dogs for the holidays, some veterinarians are sounding the alarm about a mysterious respiratory illness spreading among dogs. Experts say the illness at hand presents like “kennel cough,” a common canine condition, but appears to last longer and even be fatal in some cases. Veterinary laboratories in Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon and Rhode Island, are investigating the illness that has been spreading since the middle of August, according to AP News. Most recently, the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) stated in a news release that it received more than 200 case reports from veterinarians since mid-August.

Vets advise pet owners that if your dog shows signs of respiratory disease, isolate them in the home, call your vet, and get them checked out. Kurt Williams, director of the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University, told AP News while dogs have died, pet owners shouldn’t panic just yet, but instead consult with your vet and take preventative measures as vets figure out what’s going on. Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian in Colorado who has treated  35 dogs, told the New York Times one commonality among the sick dogs was that they spent time in spaces with a lot of other dogs — like doggy daycares, dog parks or boarding facilities. 

“We’re really hoping just with getting the word out there that people are less inclined to do that,” she said. “The veterinary community as a whole is kind of scared.”

 

Ridley Scott bashes French critics who dislike “Napoleon”: “The French don’t even like themselves”

Ridley Scott couldn't care less if French critics aren’t fans of his newly released biographical war drama “Napoleon.” The film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon Bonaparte and Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon’s first wife, Empress Joséphine, has been attacked by several French publications for its historical inaccuracies and casting. 

French GQ, for example, called it “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally funny” for the showcase to have French characters speaking in American accents. In the same vein, the daily morning newspaper Le Figaro suggested the film should instead be titled “Barbie and Ken Under the Empire.” And Napoleon biographer Patrice Gueniffey told Le Point magazine that Scott made a “very anti-French and very pro-British” rewrite of history.

“The French don’t even like themselves,” Scott told the BBC when asked about the negative reviews. “The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”

“Napoleon” premiered at Salle Pleyel in Paris on Nov. 14, and is scheduled to be released in the United States and the United Kingdom on Nov. 22. Earlier this month, Scott went viral for his rather blunt response to TV historian Dan Snow, who called out the film’s factual errors in a TikTok post.

“Get a life,” Scott told Snow and other history experts in an interview with The New Yorker.

We should’ve known about Diddy: A history of violence

In the year hip-hop turned 50, one of the genre's leading figures, Sean "Diddy" Combs was accused by long-time ex-partner Cassie of a decade of continued and pervasive sexual abuse including allegations of sex trafficking and rape in a bombshell lawsuit.

The parties quickly came to a settlement a day after the lawsuit was filed and made public. This has posed the question of Diddy's liability in the alleged abuse against Cassie, also known as Cassandra Ventura. And for those following his career, this had raised questions about a history of violence that people have ignored until now because of his role in hip-hop.

The creator of Bad Boy Records built his career from the ground up from being a young radio intern to a hip-hop billionaire mogel name-checked in songs like Kesha's classic "Tik Tok." During a recent performance, Kesha removed Diddy from her most infamous line "wake up in the morning feeling like P.Diddy."

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Considering the pop singer's traumatic battle with alleged abuser Dr. Luke and how it parallels the lawsuit Cassie filed against Diddy, removing the mention of his name plays a larger role in understanding how Diddy's public persona has now become radioactive and toxic to the touch. But before the lawsuit, Diddy spent years dodging a history of public displays of violence and hints of alleged criminal activities. Even though the music mogul has been able to shapeshift his image to his liking, his reputation has never been free of controversy.

A young Diddy started his music career as a radio intern who co-hosted a celebrity basketball game that led to a stampede and a crowd surge that killed nine people in the City College of New York gym. He was critiqued by the then Mayor David Dinkins for letting inexperienced people plan the event and oversell tickets. A start into a fast music life riddled with potential complicity in death and violence, which frankly may not have been his fault but nevertheless could have indicated a more capitalist interest that trumped human welfare.

After a stint at Uptown Records, the rising hip-hop mogul launched his record label Bad Boy Records in 1993. His first major success was releasing Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ready to Die." He most famously cultivated the careers of Foxy Brown, Faith Evans and Mary J. Blige.

But Diddy was most well known for his involvement in the West Coast versus East Coast rivalry, fueling the world's fascination and intrigue with '90s hip-hop and gangster rap. Biggie and Diddy were at the center of the conflict with Death Row Records' Suge Knight and rapper Tupac Shakur, which ultimately led to the violent shooting deaths of Biggie and rival Tupac. While Diddy was never implicated in either death, there has always been speculation, rumor, and conspiracy theories that continue to fuel the discourse surrounding Biggie's and Tupac's puzzling deaths.

After that, Diddy's career only took off. But the rapper and executive found himself in a firestorm again, leading to an assault charge. In his music video for the song "Hate Me Now" featuring Nas, the two men were crucified on a cross. Diddy thought the scene was sacrilegious and wanted it cut from the video. But the unedited version was aired so the rapper and music executive went to the president of Interscope Records and assaulted him with “a chair, a telephone and a champagne bottle.” Diddy pled guilty to a lesser charge resulting in one day of court-order anger management.

That's not where it ends though with Diddy's displays of violence. In a moment of hip-hop history, Diddy and then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez were at a New York nightclub where a shooting took place after a heated altercation led to three people being injured. The couple were arrested and charged with battery and gun possession. While Lopez's charges were dropped, Diddy went to trial, claiming he was a victim of the criminal justice system's vendetta against criminalizing Black men. He was acquitted of his involvement in the shooting. But his protegé Shyne served nine years for the assault and gun possession. Shyne claimed that Diddy sold him out.

Moreover, Diddy's most troubling public altercation has come full circle post-Cassie lawsuit. In 2012, gossip blogs rumored that Cassie's then-boyfriend rapper Kid Cudi and Diddy had an altercation in a club. In a deeply disturbing turn of events, in the lawsuit, Cassie stated that Diddy "blew up a man's car after he learned that he was romantically interested in Ventura." The New York Times said through a spokesperson that Kid Cudi confirmed Cassie's account that his car exploded in his driveway. “This is all true,” he said.

The documented history exists, and it's almost impossible to ignore. As Diddy commercialized and commodified hip-hop, the money he cashed in worked as armor shielding him from any real accountability. He was recently awarded a global icon award at the VMAs for his efforts in building the genre. But in the same breath, his efforts in building the genre and profiting massively off of it as one of the few hip-hop billionaires are the reasons why it's been a breeding ground for pervasive abuse and violence against women and Black women. The type of abuse he has allegedly perpetrated on Cassie and countless others in the industry.

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If we put aside the documented violence, Diddy seemed to have this impenetrable reputation in the Black and hip-hop community because of his pioneering efforts. But Cassie's bravery and refusal to take silencing, hush money upwards of eight figures, and instead file the lawsuit, has undone all the relentless work he's put into controlling her and his public persona.

In the settlement statement, she said, “I have decided to resolve this matter amicably on terms that I have some level of control." 

Even though the lawsuit will not go to trial, Cassie has exposed Diddy's alleged long-standing abuse. A trial would only sensationalize her trauma for tabloid fodder — recent examples of women who've had to endure this treatment like rapper Megan Thee Stallion and actress Amber Heard come to mind. But the lawsuit's claims have already done enough for the public to question and realize that Diddy's trailblazing efforts in hip-hop aren't merely enough to justify and excuse a long history of violence breeding more violence in a genre that at its worst is riddled with misogyny and abuse.

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Joe Biden mixes up Taylor Swift and Britney Spears while speaking at turkey pardoning ceremony

Joe Biden confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears while speaking at the White House’s annual turkey pardoning ceremony, which also took place on the president’s 81st birthday. While pardoning two turkeys, Liberty and Bell, Biden erroneously named Spears while referencing Swift’s ongoing Era’s tour. 

“Just to get here, Liberty and Bell had to beat some tough odds and competition. They had to work hard, to show patience, and be willing to travel over 1,000 miles,” Biden said Monday.  “You could say it’s even harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or, or Britney’s tour. She’s down, it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.”

Swift recently postponed one of her tour concerts in Rio de Janeiro due to the extreme temperatures, which may have also contributed to the death of one of her fans before her Brazil concert.

Biden’s mix-up comes in the wake of growing skepticism from voters regarding his age and capability as president. According to a Nov. 7 poll from Reuters, 56% of Americans disapprove of Biden as the president's popularity slipped this month to its lowest level since April.

In addition to offending several diehard Swift fans, Biden may have offended the aforementioned turkeys, who seem to love Swift, per NBC News. According to National Turkey Federation Chairman Steve Lykken, Liberty and Bell had been listening to some of Swift’s tunes prior to their pardoning.

“I can confirm they are, in fact, Swifties,” Lykken told the outlet.

Philadelphia Moms for Liberty organizer is a registered sex offender: report

A prominent figure of the Philadelphia chapter of Moms for Liberty is a registered sex offender, according to a new report from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Phillip Fisher Jr. is a pastor at the Center for Universal Divinity and a Republican ward leader responsible for coordinating faith-based outreach for the group, which is a well-endowed organization that aims to align American education with a number of the GOP's far-right ideals. 

While living in Chicago at age 25, Fisher was convicted in 2012 of aggravated sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, a conviction Fisher has claimed to be the result of a "railroad job" created by the political action committee for Lyndon LaRouche, a serial fringe presidential candidate and known conspiracist. Fisher, who once worked for LaRouche's committee, referred to it as a "cult," saying he was set up by the organization as he was trying to distance himself from it.

Per a file updated in July, Fisher is listed on Pennsylvania’s “Megan’s Law” website for registered sex offenders, which is maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police. Vince Fenerty, chair of Philadelphia's GOP City Committee, called for Fisher's resignation as the leader of the 42nd Ward — which includes Olney, Feltonville, and Juniata Park — on Friday. Sheila Armstrong, another Republican ward leader who chairs the local Moms for Liberty chapter, expressed surprise at the news, saying she had recently received a "child abuse history certification" from the State Department of Human Services in Fisher's name so that he could partake in upcoming holiday volunteering. The certificate indicated that “no records exist” in the state’s database, and named Fisher “as a perpetrator of an indicated or founded report of child abuse.”

“God help us all”: Alarm after far-right “Trump of Argentina” wins presidential election

Javier Milei—a far-right admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump who says that climate change is a "socialist lie" and who pledged to take a "chainsaw" to social programs—will be Argentina's next president after winning a decisive victory in Sunday's runoff.

Sergio Massa, Argentina's Peronist economy minister, conceded defeat Sunday evening to the 53-year-old Milei, a radical libertarian economist often called the "Trump of Argentina" who will take office amid a looming recession, triple-digit inflation, and a nearly 40% poverty rate in Latin America's third-largest economy.

Following Massa's concession speech, Argentinian election officials said that with nearly 87% of votes tallied, Milei had 56% and Massa 44%.

Gone Sunday were the baseless allegations of voter fraud that Milei supporters said cost him the first round of the presidential contest, as well as the chainsaw he often used as a prop to show how he would eviscerate social programs.

"No one so extremist on economic issues has been elected president of a South American country," economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, warned Friday.

In addition to deploring socialism for "stealing the fruits of one person's labor and giving it to someone else," Milei has asserted that "all the policies that blame humans for climate change are false" and has called abortion—which has only been legal in Argentina since 2021—"murder."

Milei, a self-described "anarcho-capitalist" libertarian, is also an advocate of same-sex marriage, transgender rights, and drug legalization.

Referring to former center-right Argentinian President Mauricio Macri—a Milei supporter—Weisbrot said that "much of the current crisis in Argentina is a result of what happened during [his] administration, including unsustainable borrowing combined with large-scale capital flight, as well as an inflation-depreciation spiral that takes on a momentum of its own."

"But a crazed, economically suicidal approach would only make things worse—and as Argentina has experienced, things can get a lot worse," he added. "Milei displays a callous disregard for most people's living standards, values, and well-being, as well as a commitment to widely discredited economic policies, that is unprecedented."

Human rights defenders have also sounded the alarm over Milei and his running mate Victoria Villarruel's open admiration for Argentina's former U.S.-backed military dictatorship, whose reign of terror and repression spanned from 1976 to 1983.

Massa unsuccessfully tried to distance himself from intensely unpopular outgoing President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a former president who was convicted last year of fraud.

And so now the next president of Argentina will be a man who wants to legalize the sale of children and human organs, renounce his country's monetary sovereignty in favor of the U.S. dollar, and says he receives political advice from his dead dog.

"God help us all," wrote one anti-Trump Republican group on social media.

“Last Week Tonight”: John Oliver has choice words for Fabio’s take on Hamas that praises the Nazis

On Sunday's “Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver took the opportunity to slam Fabio Lanzoni (better known as Fabio) over his absurd and inappropriate take on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Specifically, Oliver took issue with Fabio’s recent appearance on Fox Business Network, in which the infamous romance book cover model denounced Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“These people find so much pleasure to kill, it’s the worst — 10,000 times worse than the Nazi,” Fabio told anchor Neil Cavuto, adding that Hamas seems to take pride in gloating about how many Israelis they’ve killed thus far. 

“At least the Nazi, they kept it kind of quiet.”

“Hold on Fabio,” a flabbergasted Oliver commented after playing the Fox clip. “Far be it for me to contradict a noted geopolitical expert and former ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ spokesperson, but ‘at least the Nazis kept it kind of quiet'?!

“The Nazis kept it many things,” Oliver continued. “They kept it punctual. They kept it blond. They kept it humorless. And yes, they kept it tight. They were well-tailored pieces of shit, but subtlety was famously very much not their calling card, Fabio!”

In his interview, Fabio also slammed the so-called “antisemitism wave that’s raged out of Hollywood” and suggested nuclear war as an appropriate solution to end the conflict for good. 

“Israel is just trying to defend itself. If anything would have happened in the United States like it happened on Oct. 7, the United States would have nuked the border country,” he said.

“Not going well”: Legal experts say Trump lawyer “frustrated” judges in hearing to fight gag order

A three-judge appellate court panel appeared likely to uphold but limit a D.C. judge's gag order on former President Donald Trump during a hearing on Monday, legal experts say.

Trump's legal team was pressed on their appeal of the gag order, which was imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in his criminal D.C. election interference case. Chutkan issued the order in October, barring the ex-president from targeting court staff, special counsel Jack Smith's staff and potential witnesses in the case. She temporarily paused the order while the former president's legal team appealed; however, she ultimately reimposed it after Smith's team raised concerns that Trump was using the pause to target witnesses like former chief of staff Mark Meadows in Truth Social posts. 

“As the court has explained, the First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice—a principle reflected in Supreme Court precedent, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Local Criminal Rules,” Chutkan wrote. “And contrary to Defendant’s argument, the right to a fair trial is not his alone, but belongs also to the government and the public.”

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Experts: Trump already "in violation" of D.C. gag order — and may “spend a night or weekend in jail"

Trump's attorneys have maintained that Chutkan's order infringes upon the former president's First Amendment rights, claiming it acts as “muzzle the core political speech of the leading candidate for President at the height of his reelection campaign,” while allowing “purported witnesses” to “routinely attack him.” Smith's team of prosecutors countered by observing Trump's social media activity since the gag order was put in place, claiming that “criticisms of this prosecution” without “targeting witnesses and public servants like court staff and career prosecutors, and even their families, with inflammatory language likely to result in harassment, intimidation, and threats.”

MAGA lawyer John Sauer on Monday claimed that the gag order “sets a terrible precedent” and is “categorically unconstitutional," and alleged that it is founded upon speculation, according to The Washington Post. “All the evidence” of harassment “goes back three years ago to a totally different dynamic," he said." There must be imminently impending danger. We are nowhere near that in this case."

“What’s described as threat here is core political speech, I cannot emphasize that enough,” Sauer said. “It is rough and tumble. It is hard-hitting in many situations, but it absolutely is core political speech.”

“A year ago, we would be in the middle of the campaign,” Sauer said.

“When are we not in the middle of a campaign?” appeals court judge Patricia Millett asked. “If it was last November, would he still be engaged in political speech?”

“I think the gag order would be unconstitutional,” Sauer replied.

Sauer also argued that the government and Chutkan may not use a “heckler’s veto” against a defendant to quell his speech. “If you engage in any scrutiny at all in a heckler’s veto context, you’re going to shut down every speaker that ever speaks," the lawyer said. As the Washington Post noted, a heckler's veto is "shorthand for someone shutting down, or shouting down, someone else’s speech without proper consideration," and has cropped up during free speech disruptions on college campuses. 

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Politico's Kyle Cheney reported after the questioning that it seemed "pretty clear the panel is not thrilled with Trump's position on the gag order."

"Trump's position is basically that he must commit criminal witness intimidation/tampering to become subject to a gag order, a position the judges say is not tenable," he wrote, later adding that the judges appeared inclined to narrow but uphold Chutkan's gag order.

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal tweeted that the arguments were "not going well for criminal defendant Donald Trump" and that Sauer was "struggling" to answer the judges' questions.

"Can’t give an example of a statement that would ever meet his standard. His argument makes nonsense of everything the Supreme Court has said about gag orders," he wrote.

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Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti argued that Sauer was "deliberately taking an extreme position."

"The judges are considering whether to modify Judge Chutkan’s gag order or if she could make factual findings to support her order," Mariotti wrote on X/Twitter. "Trump’s lawyer doesn’t want the order modified. He wants to fight the order as-is."

"Trump’s lawyer relentlessly fighting the court’s hypotheticals and leaving the judges plainly frustrated," former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman tweeted during the questioning. "Not going well for [him]."

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about Trump's D.C. case

Gates, Musk, Bezos and nine other billionaires pollute more than 2 million homes: report

Although climate change activists encourage everyone to reduce their carbon footprint, it is objectively true that some individuals contribute more to global warming than others. Specifically, the ultra-rich far outweigh regular people when it comes to climate impacts, a fact supported by much scientific research. A new exclusive report by The Guardian revealed that the world's top twelve richest individuals, all billionaires, contribute as much to climate change as 2.1 million households.

The dozen billionaires in question are Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, French fashion billionaire Bernard Arnault, tech billionaire Michael Dell, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovitch, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. According to The Guardian, these twelve people combined pour almost 17 million tonnes of CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gases into Earth's atmosphere every year. They do so both through their direct business activities, such as financial investments and shareholdings, and through their opulent lifestyles that include massive yachts and private jets.

“Billionaires generate obscene amounts of carbon pollution with their yachts and private jets – but this is dwarfed by the pollution caused by their investments,” Oxfam International’s inequality policy adviser Alex Maitland told The Guardian. “Through the corporations they own, billionaires emit a million times more carbon than the average person."

This is not the first study to connect extreme wealth with extreme involvement in polluting the planet. A study last year in the journal Cleaner Production Letters studied carbon budgets and determined wealthy people spew more greenhouse gases per person than poor individuals.

It’s not your imagination: Why Brussels sprouts taste better than when you were a kid

I didn’t grow up in a brussels sprouts family, yet through the powerful force of cultural osmosis, I somehow grew up believing that they were always just a little gross. It’s not really a surprise why: Much like cafeteria lunches or liver and onions, brussels became a popular culinary punchline among the jungle gym set. Just the name evoked images of emotionless housewives boiling them over high-heat, rendering the little cruciferous vegetables bloated, soft and gaseous, destined to be scraped into the trashcan or offered to a family dog under the table. 

But then sometime in the 2010s, alongside the explosion of New American and New Southern cuisine, brussels sprouts underwent some reputational repair. Chefs moved away from straight boiling them and started to slow-roast them in halves or quarters, coaxing out a really appealing caramelized sweetness that masked the vegetable’s inherent bitterness. They coated them in butter and bacon and maple syrup. And this happened over and over and over again until overpriced maple-glazed brussels were as much a cliché of hipster gastropub dining as Mason jar cocktails and food served on wooden planks. And the thing is — I loved them. 

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Two chefs shared their secrets to the perfect brussels sprouts side dish

Whenever I’d go out to eat, I’d always order brussels sprouts if they were on the menu. I bugged chefs I knew about how they made theirs so good; at Fat Lamb, in Louisville, Ky., for instance, they glazed their brussels in a gochujang hoisin sauce, while Asheville’s former Gan Shan Station made Dan Dan-flavored brussels sprouts, inspired by the Dan Dan noodles recipe in the chef’s well-loved copy of “Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook.” 

I didn’t think much of my newfound love for the vegetable. If I had, I probably would have just chalked it up to changing tastes and better preparation — but it turns out it’s something deeper. 

The brussels sprouts themselves are actually biologically different than when I was eating them (or avoiding eating them) as a kid. There was also a scientific reason that the vegetable came to be abhorred  by many whose parents and grandparents had loved the vegetable. 

“In the late 1960s, our industry switched over to mechanized harvesting, which required a plant that would mature fairly evenly over the entire stem,” Steve Bontadelli, a Brussels sprouts farmer, told MEL Magazine in 2021. “The Sakata seed company developed the first plants that would mature evenly, and they were beautiful and green with lots of production, but they were horribly bitter, and we turned off an entire generation,” 

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A few decades passed and then, in the early 1990s, a Dutch scientist named Hans van Doorn, who worked at a seed and chemical company called Novartis, was determined to figure out what chemical compounds made brussels sprouts so bitter. 

As NPR reported in 2019, there were only a small handful of companies selling brussels sprouts seeds in the Netherlands, one of which was called Bejo Zaden. It held a key to solving van Doorn’s puzzle. "We have a whole gene bank here in our cellars, with all the possible Brussels sprouts varieties that were available from the past," Cees Sintenie, a plant breeder at Bejo Zaden, told the publication. 

Researchers determined that some of the older varieties — hundreds of them, actually — stored in the “gene bank” had lower levels of two glucosinolates called sinigrin and progoitrin, the chemicals that made brussels sprouts so acrid. 

In 1999, the scientists published their findings. Soon, plants grown from the old seeds were cross-pollinated with modern, high-yielding varieties, but it took years for any perceptible changes to really take hold. 

"From then on, the taste was much better. It really improved," Sintenie said. 

As the flavor has improved, so have sales. According to the Organic Produce Network, brussels sprouts sales increased by a staggering 47% from July 2018 to July 2019, , making brussels sprouts the third-fastest-growing organic produce item during that time, according to a research report by 210 Analytics commissioned by the Southeastern Produce Council. 

So that’s how brussels sprouts have managed to make it back onto restaurant and family dining room tables all across the country. Maybe they’ll serve as a side dish for your holiday gatherings this year, too?

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New York City will force some chain restaurants to disclose “added sugar” in menu items

The Sweet Truth Act, signed into law on Friday by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, requires "chain restaurants with 15 or more locations overall to put 'added sugar' labels on their food and drinks if they exceed the FDA's recommended amounts," according to Kristie Keleshian of CBS News.

The FDA recommends a daily limit of no more than 50 grams of sugar a day. However, a 2021 study from the Center for Science in the Public Interest found that most chain restaurant soda fountain drinks exceed a day’s worth of added sugars, with some large varieties containing up to 109 grams. New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan praised the initiative, saying that "most chronic metabolic, cardiometabolic, diseases are about your dinner, not your DNA." 

Meanwhile, Dr. Caroline Messer told CBS News, "forty-five grams a day is perfect because a lot of us are waling around with pre-diabetes without realizing it . . .  patients just do not realize how much sugar they're getting in their foods, especially at these chain restaurants."

Of course, this is not only limited to foods: Many drinks from chain restaurants also have excessive amounts of sugar. This change may displease some, but for those being vigilant about their health and would like more transparency about the food they are eating, it's a welcome change. Keleshian reports that "if businesses don't comply by next December, they could face $200 to $500 fines."

“Blatant disinformation”: Mike Lee gets slapped down for pushing Jan. 6 conspiracy theory

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, peddled a baseless conspiracy theory that federal agents or informants were among the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and that one may have flashed a law enforcement badge — which in actuality was a vape — during the attack in two posts to X/Twitter over the weekend, Rolling Stone reports.   

Lee, who was involved in efforts to help former President Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results, quoted a tweet from former House Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney with footage of the Capitol attack, saying, "Liz, we’ve seen footage like that a million times. You made sure we saw that—and nothing else. It’s the other stuff—what you deliberately hid from us—that we find so upsetting. Nice try.”

"P.S. How many of these guys are feds? (As if you’d ever tell us),” he added.

Lee had also called for an investigation into the Jan. 6 committee in an earlier tweet. 

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“This will end badly”: New texts reveal Mike Lee played key role in Trump’s Jan. 6 election scheme

In a late Saturday post, Lee quoted another tweet pertaining to Jan. 6 from ex-West Virginia Republican lawmaker Derrick Evans, who pleaded guilty to a civil disorder charge after live-streaming himself participating in the riot, asking if an image from a video of the attack inside the Capitol shows a rioter "flashing a badge" and claiming that if it did, it "would prove there were undercover federal agents disguised as MAGA."

“I can’t wait to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about this at our next oversight hearing," Lee said in his post. "I predict that, as always, his answers will be 97% information-free.”

The man pictured with the alleged badge was Kevin Lyons, a Trump supporter who is shown in another photo carrying a vape in his hand. Twitter users added two fact-checks to the tweet, including a post from NBC News justice reporter Ryan J. Reilly, and wrote that Lyons “is not a police officer and is not holding a badge. He is carrying a vape and a photograph and wallet stolen from Pelosi’s office.”

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Republican goes on wild rant to push FBI Jan. 6 "ghost buses" conspiracy theory at hearing

Lyons is currently in prison on a four-year sentence for his actions in the Capitol, which include stealing a wallet and a framed photo of late civil rights activist and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., from then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. 

“I’m an idiot, I realize that. I was stupid. I don’t know what came over me. … I apologize to you, the country and my family," Lyons told the judge ahead of his sentencing.

Quoting Reilly's tweet, Politico's Kyle Cheney promptly called out the claims as "another example [of] disinfo from the tapes" and chastized Lee for parroting them.

"It’s been rare for US senators to parrot such blatant disinformation, but here we are," he wrote.

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Reilly followed his initial fact-check with a thread, showing a clearer image of Lyons holding the vape and sharing an NBC News report with video the Trump supporter filmed from inside the Capitol. 

"The reason Kevin Lyons quickly flashes his palms… is that there’s a tactical team coming into the Capitol as he leaves? Seems like a good instinct!" Reilly wrote in another post. "I have to check the time, but that’s also the same spot where law enforcement was trying to revive Ashli Babbitt."

Evans later acknowledged that the question he posed and Lee responded to may have been incorrect. 

"There’s enough fishy stuff going on that we don’t need to discredit ourselves by making false claims, which is why I was wondering before I commented on it," Evans replied to a user who informed him that Lyons was holding a vape.

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Fox News host Maria Bartiromo discussed the conspiracy theory about FBI informants' participation in Jan. 6 on the Sunday edition of her show, asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., about the rumor that federal assets were involved and if he had any insights into the FBI's role. McCarthy said he wasn't aware of it.

“I personally don’t. That’s the committee. I would make sure to look at that and see all that and get more information,” he told Bartiromo. “I know the director of the FBI has been asked this question numerous times. [Republican Rep.] Thomas Massey is the one working on this, and I think he’d have greater insight for you.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Friday that he plans to release all 44,000 house of Jan. 6 footage publicly, fulfilling a promise he made to appease his right-wing colleagues as he campaigned for the speakership. Ninety hours of footage was posted to the House Administration Committee's website by Friday afternoon.

GOP Rep. Clay Higgins questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray about the conspiracy theory during a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee last week. Wray had frequently denied that federal agents were involved in the insurrection or its planning.

“If you’re asking whether the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources and/or agents… the answer is an emphatic no,” Wray said.

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In creating a villain in Diana’s death “The Crown” does a disservice to the crash’s other victim

Our ongoing captivation with “The Crown” and the Windsors can be ascribed to our affection for unreliable narrators. If the spin is entertaining enough, we appreciate the deception. Verbal Kint’s seamless transition from a limping crumbled man into a strutting demon at the end of “The Usual Suspects” made us love being duped. Midway through “Gone Girl” Gillian Flynn reveals both her narrators to be liars – the namesake victim is a vicious aggressor, and her hangdog husband is no angel either.

Peter Morgan isn’t anywhere as sinister as that, but he tipped his hand long ago when he told reporters that he views “The Crown” as his “love letter” to Queen Elizabeth II. That doesn’t mean his queen is necessarily warmer than the real one; in the first four episodes of the sixth and final season, Imelda Staunton’s Elizabeth is colder than ever. For reasons.

This is a series that refuses to allow the British royals to look inhumane.

Several times Elizabeth points to Prince Charles (Dominic West) choosing Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) instead of remaining married to Diana (Elizabeth Debicki), to explain her froideur.

In the second episode, “Two Photographs,” Elizabeth laments Diana’s budding romance with Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla), the son of flamboyant Egyptian billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed (Salim Daw), by icily saying, “One would almost feel sorry for her if one weren’t so cross with her.”

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A matter of character: How "The Crown" squares Charles with our longstanding villain edit

This is in reaction to the worldwide release of candid paparazzi photographs of Diana and Dodi kissing on a yacht off the coast of Sardinia. They thought they were alone, and they should have been. But Mohamed, or Mou Mou as Diana affectionately calls her patron, makes other plans.

Morgan’s version of events casts the overbearing patriarch as engineering the romance between Diana and Dodi – which is a prevailing theory but, as with many details in “The Crown,” disputed by al-Fayed’s former spokesperson Michael Cole.

More incriminating, however, is the implication that Mohamed tipped off renowned paparazzo Mario Brenna (Enzo Cilenti) that Diana and Dodi were together, providing his yacht’s location so Brenna could capture those famous photos on Aug. 4, 1997. Brenna syndicated those shots to publications around the world, making him a millionaire several times over.

Their value also launched a feeding frenzy, guaranteeing Diana and Dodi would be hunted anywhere they went. Weeks later in Paris, Dodi and Diana’s driver sped into a tunnel trying to evade photographers chasing their car, where it crashed and killed the driver and Dodi instantly; Diana died later of her injuries.

The CrownElizabeth Debicki and Diana and Khalid Abdalla as Dodi Fayed in "The Crown" (Daniel Escale/Netflix)In effect, “The Crown” blames the ambitious social climber of a father for releasing the hounds that would eventually run down his son and the People’s Princess when the real tipster's identity remains a mystery.

In her 2022 book “The Palace Papers,” Tina Brown writes that Diana was the one who let Brenna know where to find her. But both Elizabeth and Morgan know the audience’s allegiance lies with the Princes of Wales. That was true in Diana's day, and much fiercer now that one of her sons exited the royal family and affirmed in a book and a couple of documentaries that his mother was right to run from the institution.

“The Crown” is invested in Diana as a tragic angel rather than a canny architect of her public image, and the best way to protect that portrait is to create a villain. But this is a series that refuses to allow the British royals to look inhumane. Even at his worst, when Josh O’Connor depicted Charles as an envious and verbally abusive husband, we’re made to understand Charles’ spite as a side effect of being denied any agency in his life choices beyond those prescribed by tradition and duty.  

But Morgan can get away with making Mohamed al-Fayed play the heel, rendering the Egyptian tycoon as venal, loathsome and willing to do anything to win British society’s approval. His colonialist worship has deep roots, established in the fifth season’s third episode, “Mou Mou.” A young Mohamed hawking Cokes in his hardscrabble Alexandria neighborhood when suddenly he’s beguiled by the appearance of Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, and Wallis Simpson – you know, the Nazi sympathizers in the family.

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That night over dinner his schoolteacher father chastises him for worshipping the British. “Since 1882, they have occupied us. Dominated us. Made a mockery of our laws. Trampled on our freedoms. Our dignity. But I don’t save my greatest contempt for them. My greatest contempt is for the Egyptians that look up to the British as gods.”

Later, Mohamed tells his brothers, that these are “strong words from a weak man… I want to match them. I want to be like them. Have power like them. And if we look up to their kings and queens as gods, it’s because they are.”

Years later Mohamed is true to his word when during a lavish black-tie celebration to mark his purchase of the Ritz hotel in Paris, he haughtily orders a younger Dodi to fire the Black waiter in the room – only to reconsider when Dodi tells his father that the man, a Bahamian named Sydney Johnson (Jude Akuwudike), used to be Edward and Wallis’ personal valet.

So Mohamed hired Sydney not only to serve him but to teach him how to be a British gentleman and curry Elizabeth’s favor. To review: Sydney, a Black man, learned everything about what it means to be British from the royals who were fans of Adolf Hitler. He in turn passes those teachings on to Mohamed, an Arab who would do anything to get Elizabeth’s approval.

Even if the details are somewhat accurate, the show’s charming presentation of colonialist endorsement is mind-bending, to put it mildly, but consistent.

The CrownJude Akuwudike as Sydney Johnson and Salim Daw as Mohamed Al-Fayed in "The Crown" (Ana Blumenkron/Netflix)Al-Fayed died in August of this year, and to know a sliver of his history is to realize Morgan does him plenty of favors. None of the many accusations al-Fayed faced related to corruption, shady business deals, or his alleged creation of a false origin story come up in the series. The smaller details acknowledge the discrimination he faced, such as the headline announcing his purchase of London's most renowned department store that reads, “A Tiny sell out gives the Arabs Harrods.”

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But to trace the unleashing of the ravenous public back to Mohamed and his notorious obsession to obtain British citizenship and be seen as fully equal in society is a vigorous laundering of history.  Such forceful insertions prevent Dodi from being a fully realized person instead of a two-dimensional puppet regardless of how tenderly Abdalla plays him.

The show’s charming presentation of colonialist endorsement is mind-bending, to put it mildly, but consistent.

Morgan had an opportunity to rectify one of the great wrongs in this story by filling in the vast blank of Dodi’s history and personality decoupled from Mohamed’s. Instead, Morgan’s invention of Dodi proposing to Diana and her turning him down are more of a comforting indicator of her will to protect her independence than telling us anything about him.  

After the fatal accident, Mohamed mourns that the world has erased his son as it mourns Diana. But “The Crown” does little leading up to that terrible crash to make Dodi more indelible than a detail in her tragic end. He may have captured the princess’ heart or simply been a wealthy friend who showed her a good time. Our unreliable narrator ensures he enters and leaves the same way – as a passenger in a story about more powerful people accustomed to emerging from the wrecks unscathed.

Four episodes of the sixth and final season of "The Crown" are currently streaming on Netflix.  Episodes 5-10 debut Thursday, Dec.14.

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“Unforced error”: Legal expert warns judge risks having ruling reversed if he falls for Trump stunts

The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's civil fraud trial in New York should be wary of the former president's efforts to elicit a strong reaction from him, former U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsel Michael Conway warned in a column for MSNBC. Conway cited the trial of the "Chicago Seven" to alert Engoron to a potential legal strategy from team MAGA: In the Chicago case, the defendants made a point to chafe Judge Julius Hoffman and jury convictions were ultimately overturned on appeal. As Conway noted, Trump's legal team last week filed a motion for a mistrial that alleged misconduct on Engoron's behalf. Though other legal experts have panned the motion as a "terrible strategy," Conway argued that "if judges do take this bait and make errors, an appellate court could potentially conclude that the trial was unfair and reverse the judgment."

"In New York, Engoron has used strident language in rejecting Trump’s legal positions, terming them 'pure sophistry, 'risible,' 'bogus arguments and 'egregious' in his summary judgment opinion," Conway wrote. "He sanctioned five Trump attorneys $7,500 each for the 'borderline frivolous' arguments in their briefs. Harsh language isn’t a problem if it’s justified. But the more Engoron pushes the envelope, the more he risks an appellate court disagreeing with his assessment. And Trump’s lawyers can and will argue the judge’s rhetoric is evidence of judicial bias." Conway also called attention to the "drama" surrounding Trump's targeting of his law clerk, which partially led to the judge's slapping the ex-president with a partial gag order.  "Engoron's interactions with his law clerk, and the drama that has surrounded them, are another area of concern," Conway said. "Trump has repeatedly criticized the clerk, making false statements about her that the court found had precipitated threats of violence. When Trump twice violated a gag order prohibiting such remarks, he was fined $15,000."

"Engoron’s issuance of gag orders barring Trump and his lawyers from commenting about his law clerk both publicly and in court sessions is also facing scrutiny by a higher court. On Thursday, a New York appellate judge temporarily halted Engoron’s gag orders, citing First Amendment protections," Conway continued. "An appellate court panel is scheduled to evaluate the issue on Nov. 27.  So here again we have Engoron committing a potentially unnecessary unforced error. Instead of trying to mitigate risk, he is clearly allowing emotion to color his responses. And there are other examples of Engoron seemingly overreacting in response to relentless complaining from Trump’s lawyers. Obviously, Trump’s civil trial is very different from the Chicago Seven trial, a criminal proceeding with a jury, in multiple important ways. And the appeals court cited multiple reasons to reverse the Chicago convictions. But Engoron would be wise to consider the lessons of that case nonetheless. He needs to take all necessary steps to ensure that a New York appellate court cannot overturn his decision. And that means not reacting to Trump’s hate-filled speech, or to his lawyers’ baiting and provocation. It’s simply not worth it." 

 

“In the bag for Trump”: Expert says Judge Cannon’s new order leaves other trials “in limbo”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the former president's Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in South Florida, last week pushed back a conference to meet with prosecutors until February and also denied a request from special counsel Jack Smith, a "one-two punch" that The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery warned has "created chaos that can spill over into his other legal battles ahead of the 2024 election."

Cannon in her order denied Smith's request to schedule a CIPA Section 5 hearing on what classified materials Trump plans to use at trial, noting that she would set all remaining deadlines in March 2024, when Trump's election subversion trial is slated to kick off in Washington, D.C.

“Not scheduling a CIPA section 5 hearing, which is routine, is a clear sign she is just as much in the bag for Trump as when she issued her horrendous pretrial rulings (both reversed in scathing language by the conservative 11th Circuit),” tweeted former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann. “What a piece of work is she.”

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“Now I’m concerned”: Legal experts alarmed over “Judge Cannon’s bias” in new order setting up delay

Pagliery compared Cannon's keeping of the currently scheduled May 2024 trial date in Florida to "booking a restaurant reservation one doesn't intend to keep," quoting former CIA lawyer Brian Greer, who said that the judge's choice effectively throws the judges presiding over the ex-president's cases in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and New York "in limbo."

"Another judge could schedule something for May but may not want to, because it’s possible trial will still go in May. If you’re a cynic—and I’m not—you might say she deliberately did this," said Greer. 

"So while these three other judges figure out how to keep their cases chugging along toward trial, they’re competing with a nebulous case in South Florida—one that could claim a huge block of time to figure out unprecedented constitutional issues," Pagliery wrote. "That’s especially true because the case is being overseen by a judge with less experience presiding over trials than the average municipal traffic court administrator," underscoring how a New York Times analysis determined that only four of the 224 criminal cases assigned to Cannon since assuming her position in 2020 had gone to trial. The four cases amounted to a mere 14 total days of trial.

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Some legal experts chalked up Cannon's latest antics to more than a mere lack of experience.

“She is a full fledged member of the Trump defense team," tweeted Norman J. Ornstein, a senior fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. "Aileen Cannon is utterly unfit for the bench. Someone should introduce an impeachment resolution against her. It will go nowhere but will highlight her outrageous conduct."

Pagliery noted that Cannon previously "stopped the FBI from sorting through the Top Secret records special agents recovered at his Florida mansion — until an appellate court reversed her at breakneck speed. She feigned an invasion-of-privacy crisis that never really posed any harm to the ex-president—and got caught. Then, in August, she questioned the Justice Department’s continued use of a secret grand jury far outside her district—perfectly positioning Trump’s lawyers to decry 'abuse' over what appeared to be a parallel investigation in Washington."

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“Put his a** in jail”: Former RNC chairman has a solution for Trump’s “enormously dangerous” attacks

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Sunday warned of the potential for harm posed by former President Donald Trump's persistent verbal attacks on the judges presiding over his criminal and civil trials, court staff and the prosecutors bringing the cases against him. "It's enormously dangerous. I am shocked that we've allowed this to get this far. I'm just going to use my best analysis that I can give you at this point on this situation with Trump, and the attacks on the judges," Steele told MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin.

"Put his a— in jail. That's how you end it," Steele said. "That's how it stops. Now, yeah, people will be mad, and they will be upset. But there is no other person on this planet, certainly not in this country, who would be given the kind of grace that Donald Trump has been given to run his mouth the way he has — attacking the clerks, attacking the judges, attacking the prosecutors personally, threatening them." Steele referenced the MAGA bases' response to Trump's attacks, which have previously led some to take up arms for his causes, and lamented how the legal system is being "pulverized from within" in its efforts to appease the former president. "If he wants to continue in this vein, then use the system the way the system would be used against all of us on the show right now," Steele said. "Because you know damn well, if any one of us said half of what Donald Trump said, we would not be on air tonight. We would be in a jail cell. We would be shut down."

Trump’s holy crusade: Christian evangelicals flock to his version of a “final solution”

The Iowa caucuses are right around the corner and even Donald Trump has deigned to appear in the state recently despite his obvious belief that it's beneath him to have to compete for the nomination he, and everyone else, knows is already his. But he does enjoy his rallies. So he's clearly decided that it's time to gather the flock just to make sure they all know what's expected of them. 

Here's a sample of what he's talking about on the campaign trail these days:

Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post reported from this weekend's rally:

Children wandered around in shirts and hats with the letters “FJB,” an abbreviation for an obscene jab at President Biden that other merchandise spelled out: “F—- Biden.” During his speech inside a high school gym in Fort Dodge, former president Trump called one GOP rival a “son of a b——,” referred to another as “birdbrain” and had the crowd shrieking with laughter at his comments on Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who he called “pencil neck” before asking, “How does he hold up that fat, ugly face?” 

He brought the house down while mocking Biden, at one point baselessly suggesting Biden is using drugs and can’t get offstage “by the time whatever it is he’s taken wears off.” … And outside the packed venue, vulgar slogans about Biden and Vice President Harris were splashed across T-shirts: “Biden Loves Minors.” “Joe and the Ho Gotta Go!” One referred to Biden and Harris performing sexual acts.

Yes, they're all just letting their freak flags fly, no holds barred. Not that this is entirely new. Republican gatherings like CPAC going back decades used to feature racist and misogynist merchandise, and there were many speakers who made crude comments about their Democratic rivals. But it is unprecedented for the candidate himself to wallow around in the gutter with them. 

Related

Donald Trump dreams of an American Fourth Reich — and he's not kidding

He's also been posting more Nazi-esque statements on his social media platform. This weekend he seemed to be proposing a "final solution" for his enemies:

Meanwhile, in another town in Iowa, Trump skipped out on what would have been required attendance in Iowa GOP presidential primaries in the past: A meeting with Christians to talk about the issues that are important to them. This one was called the Family Leader's Thanksgiving Family Forum. Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy were there to go through the motions and pretend that they might have a chance to win. (A recent Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll found 43% of likely Republican voters choose Trump compared with 16% each for Haley and DeSantis.) The forum convener, Bob Vander Plaats, was once considered an Iowa kingmaker but he's broken with Trump and it doesn't appear that he has the juice to bring anyone else over the line. He opened the forum by beseeching the candidates to "raise the bar" — and by comparison to Trump, they managed to do that.

Mostly, they talked about their faith and abortion with both Ramaswamy and DeSantis discussing their wives' miscarriages and Nikki Haley making news by saying that she would happily sign a 6-week abortion ban. (She issued her standard disclaimer that she doesn't think that's possible on a federal basis right now, as if that somehow qualifies as a moderate position.) It was all pretty standard Republican evangelical pandering. 

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But it's quite clear from the polling that most conservative evangelical Christians like the libertine, gutter-snipe Donald Trump even more than the rest of the Republican Party. They are the strongest pillar of his following. So attempting to pry them loose with appeals to decency is a waste of breath. There have been billions of pixels spent trying to figure out why they like him, and I suppose there are many reasons. But recent polling by the Public Religion Research Institute found that one-third of white evangelicals favor political violence so Trump's insurrection obviously holds major appeal to a lot of them. And no doubt they love his commentary about barring people who "don't like our religion" from entering the country:

“I will implement strong ideological screening of all immigrants. If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you don’t like our religion (which a lot of them don’t), if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don’t want you in our country and you are not getting in.”

And, as we know, Trump has lately taken to vowing to demolish, expel, drive out, cast out, and evict all the people they don't like from America as well. Apparently, it's all music to their ears. 

For Christians like Mike Johnson, Trump is just a blunt instrument to be used to advance his cause which he believes must be attained by any means necessary. Whatever else he represents is of no consequence. 

Trump's recently been getting some big endorsements from important office holders and there's one in particular who represents conservative evangelicals in an extremely powerful position. That would be the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, whose affiliation with the most extreme forms of Christian Nationalism is only now coming into focus. According to NPR, Johnson is a leading member of the far-right New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement, which seeks to dissolve the separation between church and state by “any means necessary.” Johnson has spent his entire career as a lawyer and an elected official in service of that goal.

Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, took a look at his litigation history to see what it says about how he applies these beliefs to the constitution and you won't be surprised to learn that his legal principles are entirely inconsistent. In fact, the only thing consistent about his position is the idea that America is meant to be a Christian theocracy. 

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For Christians like Johnson, Trump is just a blunt instrument to be used to advance his cause which he believes must be attained by any means necessary. Whatever else he represents is of no consequence. 

It's actually a little different for the MAGA rank and file. The Post's Knowles spoke with some of them at Trump's Iowa rally:

“Joe’s gotta go,” said Lori Carpenter, 59, as she left the Fort Dodge event.“And the ho shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” The “ho” was Harris, she clarified, before offering another nickname for Harris that was even more vulgar. “It doesn’t bother me,” she said of Trump’s insults and crudeness. 

Her relative, 71-year-old Marsha Crouthamel, agreed. "It doesn’t bother me either because his policies are strong,” she echoed, adding that Trump got a lot of laughs and added, “Sometimes you just gotta excite people a little bit.”

“We’re Christians, and we can look past that,” Carpenter said. “We see the good that he did our country when he was in.” 

To these Trump-loving evangelicals, being a Christian means never having to say you're sorry. And that's one thing they definitely have in common with their Dear Leader Donald Trump.

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