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Mark Meadows and Kevin McCarthy: Where do Republicans get these worms?

In politics, it’s an axiom if not a flat-out rule that you should have, if not a soul, at least a brain. What, then, to make of a political party that elevates from its ranks to positions of power people who have neither? Dear readers, I give you Mark Meadows and Kevin McCarthy, two slithering dwellers of the political underground that has swallowed the entire Republican Party. 

Just for fun, let’s begin our examination of the question of Meadows with the courageous Cassidy Hutchinson. You remember her, don’t you? At 25 years of age, she was a White House aide and assistant to Meadows when he was Trump’s chief of staff in the White House. Her name would have disappeared into the deep shadows of history like other minor White House officials had she not been called to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee last year and sat there before the committee and live television cameras and delivered what turned out to be earth shattering testimony about Trump’s fight with the Secret Service agent driving his armored SUV, trying to get him to drive to the Capitol so Trump could join the riot that he had fomented. Hutchinson delivered a few other nuggets, like finding a broken plate and ketchup on the walls of the private presidential dining room after Bill Barr, Trump’s attorney general, had told the Associated Press that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud large enough to change the outcome of the election. 

But it was Hutchinson’s testimony, delivered in a flat, unemotional voice, about Meadows’ inaction in the White House on Jan. 6 that was most chilling, at least to me. Here was Meadows, who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, who rose to the powerful position of ranking member on the House Oversight Committee and chair of the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and caught the attention of Donald Trump, who appointed him to White House Chief of Staff. 

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Hutchinson described the day of Jan. 6 in the White House as calm after Trump returned from inciting the crowd with his speech on the Ellipse, just outside of the White House. Televisions were on in the Oval Office, the president’s pocket dining room, and in the offices of Meadows and Tony Ornado, whom Trump had elevated from the head of his Secret Service detail to deputy chief of staff, with an office in the West Wing, the first time in history any member of the Secret Service had been appointed to a political job in the White House. 

Two miles away down Pennsylvania Avenue, the seat of the government of the United States was under assault by a mob that was beating police officers and breaking windows and invading the Capitol building and holding up the business of the government, which at that moment was certifying the electoral results of the 2020 election. As images of the bloody violence at the Capitol appeared on TV screens, Hutchinson found herself astonished at the lack of action in the White House. Trump was cloistered in his private dining room with the television on making phone calls.  Meadows, whom you would expect to be closely monitoring the assault on the Capitol, and, uh…let’s see, doing something about it, was sequestered in his West Wing office, often in the company of Ornato, peering at the screen of his cell phone, according to Hutchinson. 

Look at these two guys. They were put into positions of power by a Republican Party – and a nominally Republican president – to do exactly this and only this: anything and everything they are told to do.

“She described an eerily nonchalant reaction by Meadows as he learned details of the escalating violence at the Capitol,” Politico reported on the day of Hutchinson’s Jan. 6 Committee testimony. “I remember distinctly Mark not looking up from his phone,” Hutchinson told the committee and the stunned audience in the hearing room at the Capitol. 

Now, we have learned since that day that Mark Meadows had been very busy doing stuff in the weeks after Trump lost the presidential election in November. He arranged meetings Trump held with battleground state legislators, attempting to get them to help him overturn the results of the election in their states. He was on phone calls Trump made to state officials such as Rusty Bowers, the Arizona Speaker of the House, trying to convince him to do the same thing, and to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, when Trump asked to “find 11,780 votes” awarding him “one more than what we have” so he would be declared winner in Georgia and be entitled to its electoral votes. Meadows sat in on multiple Oval Office meetings when the fake electors plot was being hatched and put into action. Busy, busy, busy, was Mark Meadows.

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Fani Willis’ case against Meadows to move forward after federal court ruling

But not on Jan. 6 when the shit hit the fan at the Capitol. He was staring at the screen of his cell phone in his office at the White House. When Hutchinson spoke to Meadows that day, asking him to talk to Trump about the violence at the Capitol, specifically mentioning the threats on Vice President Pence’s life, Meadows calmly told her, referring to Trump, “He thinks Mike deserves it; he doesn’t think they are doing anything wrong.” Meadows did not get up from his desk chair in his office and walk down the West Wing hall to Trump’s private dining room. He just sat there. Later, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone entered Meadows’ office to tell him that rioters had breached the Capitol and were now inside, some of them in the Senate chamber. Hutchinson testified that Cipollone told Meadows, “Mark, something needs to be done or blood is going to be on your effing hands.” Meadows sat there staring at his phone.

The other subterranean slitherer is, of course, the deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives – a brand new position – Kevin McCarthy. The actual Speaker of the House is either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or perhaps some genetically engineered melding of the two House backbenchers who are now evidently running the House Republican Caucus, because so-called Speaker McCarthy sure isn’t. He lost control of that body the night he signed an as-yet-to-be-acknowledged-much-less-revealed secret document yielding most of his powers as Speaker so he could win the votes necessary to attain that heretofore exalted position, with its grand office in the Capitol building overlooking the Mall. 

McCarthy somehow managed to make a deal on the budget with President Joe Biden that was intended to cap spending at 2022 levels and guarantee that there would be no chance of a government shutdown at the end of this month, thus infuriating the right-wing of his Republican Caucus in the House, and you know where that deal went, don’t you? To the same ignominious underground bunker McCarthy has been occupying ever since he grabbed the gavel, and only the gavel, the night he sold what was left of his shriveled soul to Gaetz and Greene and the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth members of the House Freedom Caucus. You will remember that exalted faction as the one Mark Meadows chaired for a year, affording himself enough of an illusion of power that Trump tapped him to be his final chief of staff.

Now McCarthy finds himself with just two weeks to go before the annual spending bills expire at the end of September, which will cause the U.S. government to shut down for only the fourth time in history if some sort of deal for a stopgap measure isn’t reached, an eventuality that his budget deal with Biden was supposed to make moot.  What leverage does the Republican Speaker have with his out-of-control caucus? I don’t know how to put this other than to form a rhetorical circle with my thumb and forefinger signaling a big fat goose egg.

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Over the summer, the far-right fringe in the House generated a couple of letters to McCarthy setting the stage for what the New York Times this week called a “feud” with him, which is a gigantic misnomer. What’s actually going on in McCarthy’s House is cowardice-generated chaos. McCarthy’s right-wing announced they wouldn’t pass anything in the fall without a bevy of concessions from their so-called leader: huge spending cuts, a cut-off in aid to Ukraine, defunding the FBI and the Department of Justice (and the IRS, if you asked some of the leaders of the drooling caucus). They threatened to load up spending bills with culture war poison pill amendments that will never pass the Senate, and finally, they made clear their intention to shut down the government if their demands aren’t met.

Oh, I almost forgot:  impeach Joe Biden. Did they attach any reasons for the demand to impeach Biden, and I’m not talking about evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors here, just reasons? 

For the answer to that question, look no further than any one of about a dozen statements from James Comer, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who ever since he took his committee gavel has been promising whistles that don’t blow and witnesses who either don’t exist or don’t show up to testify about the alleged crimes of what Donald Trump likes to call “the Biden crime family.” 

So where does that leave our cowering, quivering, quaking so-called Speaker McCarthy? Well let’s hear one of the two Republicans who is actually running the House, Matt “I Can’t Seem to Shake These Sex Charges” Gaetz: “If we have to begin every single day in Congress with the prayer, the pledge and the motion to vacate, then so be it,” the Florida Republican announced this week. A motion to vacate the chair, if you have trouble remembering this arcane maneuver from the 14-hour struggle McCarthy endured to “earn” his Speakership, is, in effect, a vote to fire the Speaker of the House, made much easier in the Super Secret deal McCarthy made with Gaetz, among others, the night they voted to make him Speaker.

So, who’s holding the reins of power on the House side of the Capitol these days? I’ll answer that question with one that is more to the point: Where do Republicans come up with these worms? Look at these two guys. They were put into positions of power by a Republican Party – and a nominally Republican president – to do exactly this and only this:  anything and everything they are told to do. That’s not leadership.  It’s cowardice.

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“Bolder and more aggressive”: Elon Musk’s X placing major brand names next to antisemitic content

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has been placing brand advertising on an account linked to a white nationalist streamer known for promoting violence against politicians and LGBTQ advocates, according to Media Matters. 

Big-name brands like Major League Baseball, Bayer, Tyson Foods and eBay have had their advertising placed next to Stew Peters’ X account, which has more than 400,000 followers. Peters, who reportedly lives in Minnesota, has been associated with spreading far-right conspiracy theories, including false claims about COVID vaccines and racist, antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ  tropes on his podcast.

Despite CEO Linda Yaccarino’s reassurances that X “opposes antisemitism in all its forms,” many critics say the platform has consistently demonstrated a lack of action against antisemitic content, and that X owner Elon Musk has engaging with such content on multiple occasions. 

“I expect more from leaders than we’re seeing from Musk, for sure,” Libby Hemphill, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and the Institute for Social Research, told Salon. “He’s made it clear that he doesn’t find extremism as dangerous or antisocial as many of us do.”

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Several major brands have had their ads appear adjacent to accounts associated with white nationalist, neo-Nazi and even Holocaust-denial content, including the accounts of extremists recently restored to the platform under Musk, according to Media Matters. Some of the content being promoted includes long-discredited conspiracy theories linking Jewish people to the 9/11 attacks.

At least two companies suspended ad campaigns on the social media website after their ads appeared next to an account promoting Nazism, CNN reported. X suspended that account once the problem was brought to the company’s attention, saying that ad impressions on those pages had been minimal.

Several major brands have had ads appear adjacent to accounts associated with white nationalism, neo-Nazism and even Holocaust denial, according to Media Matters.

“Public backlash can be a powerful motivator to get brands to pressure ad platforms to change their policies or restrict the types of ad content allowed near a brand,” Hemphill said. “Of course, the ad contracts are pretty one-sided. Brands would have to be willing to push platforms to change their terms, and platforms would have to be willing to enforce more policies.”

While most leaders “normally respond to incentives” like public pressure and regulation to get them to step up, those strategies may be less effective with someone like Musk, Hemphill added.

Before Musk acquired Twitter, Peters had been banned from the platform. He has a history of promoting conspiracy theories and produced two films, “Watch the Water” and “Died Suddenly,” that claim to uncover sinister conspiracies involving the novel coronavirus and alleged “bioweapon” vaccines.

Peters has also encouraged violence, recently calling for the death of Hunter Biden as well as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Peters said should “hang from a length of thick rope until he is dead,” Rolling Stone reported. 

On X, he has attacked people for being Jewish and promoted white nationalist views and content. He once posted a picture of Adolf Hitler, tweeting: “Say what you will about Hitler, but people turned out for his rallies.” 

In its safety policies section, X asserts that it prohibits “hateful conduct,” stating that users are not permitted to “directly attack” other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or religion, among other things. In several instances, Peters would appear to have engaged in exactly that behavior. 

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Media Matters cited two examples of Peters promoting violence and found ads for major brands directly on those posts. Peters shared an image of a flier calling for the murder of pro-LGBTQ advocates, which included the Target retail chain and the anti-bullying organization GLSEN, because of their support for transgender rights. 

 “It seems that certain individuals are distributing literature at their nearby Target store,” he wrote. 

Brand ads that appeared next to this post included those for Bayer, Motley Fool, Outback Steakhouse, Puck News, the Philadelphia Inquirer and New Jersey tourism, according to Media Matters.

Peters has written that drug companies engaged in vaccine manufacturing should receive “the death penalty,” a sentiment unlikely to appeal to Bayer, a pharmaceutical multinational that played a role in producing one COVID-19 vaccine

Peters once shared a video featuring politicians and reporters expressing support for COVID-19 vaccines, and commenting: “Every single one of these people deserve the rope.”

He has also commented about pop singer Sam Smith, who identifies as nonbinary, saying, “Any serious society would give this demon the Old Yeller treatment.” 

While critics say Musk has taken little or no direct action to address antisemitism on X, he has threatened to file lawsuits against organizations that have reported on the increase in antisemitic content on the platform since he acquired it.

Musk ​​sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate in July, claiming that its research into hate speech was false or misleading, which the center denies. More recently, he threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League, claiming that its allegations about increased antisemitic content on X have resulted in significant revenue losses.

The tech billionaire has justified the spread of hate speech and antisemitism on his platform by claiming to defend free speech, while he has also “regurgitated the central tenets” of some widespread antisemitic conspiracy theories, Jill Garvey, chief of staff at Western States Center, an anti-extremism watchdog group, told Salon.

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Garvey said that many individuals, especially disaffected young white men, can be drawn to antisemitic language online. They come across the “great replacement” theory or claims that a secret “Jewish cabal” wields immense influence in world affairs, she said.  

Such ideas come from “a long line of white nationalist ideology,” Garvey observed. “What I think is so problematic about this is [Musk] really gesturing at those antisemitic tropes. He’s using a lot of coded language, but I think he’s becoming more bold and more aggressive in trafficking some of this language that does lead to real-world violence.”

Hemphill, of the University of Michigan, has researched this issue but says there is no clear consensus about what true accountability might mean for social media platforms. Advertisers could demand more control over the types of content that appear in ads near their brands, for instance, which would require more work from both advertisers and platforms.

“Brands and advertisers have more power than users right now, because users are the product rather than the client for platforms,” Hemphill said. “Users can, in turn, pressure advertisers and platforms by not clicking on ads, writing to brands, recruiting their friends to do the same. Users can also pressure their representatives to pass legislation changing the rules about who is accountable.”

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Footage shows Boebert and her date fiddling with each other’s privates at “Beetlejuice” musical

As more and more details are being revealed about Rep. Lauren Boebert‘s wild night out in Denver last weekend — having been kicked out of “Beetlejuice” the musical for vaping and just generally being a public nuisance with her male companion — a full picture is coming together of what the other theater patrons around her that night had to endure.

Newly released footage of the night in question appears to show Boebert’s exposed breasts being fondled by her date for an extended period of time while she, in turn, dawdles around in his lap with her hand. As many have pointed out on social media, having seen this footage, children were seated all around the couple that night, within viewing range of what they were up to.

“Lauren Boebert was jerking her date off in public while he gropes her in a theater where children were present and yet she continues to attack LGBTQ people as ‘threats to children,'” writes journalist and clinical instructor Alejandra Caraballo on X, sharing the footage of Boebert in the act. 

 

Four disappointing revelations about Hasan Minhaj’s “emotional truths”

Hasan Minhaj is a cool, funny guy. He is supposed to be your approachable brown comedian. His lived experiences as a Muslim American and an Asian American comic are supposed to draw us in as an audience and contextualize what xenophobia and racism look like in the life of an average, charismatic American man.

But in The New Yorker profile, Minhaj’s golden-boy image is tainted by fabrications or what he calls “emotional truths” in his comedy. Basically, the comedian is not really concerned with relating faked events that he claims are true in his sets as long as the emotional truth is what is genuine and lands for the audience. Not only does the profile accuse him of fabricating stories for his stand-up specials but it addresses whisperings of a toxic and misogynistic workplace environment behind the scenes of his now-canceled Netflix commentary show “Patriot Act.” This echoes the recent revelations about peer and late-night show host friend Jimmy Fallon, who is also facing backlash due to an exposé on toxic workplace culture.

Here are four of the most disappointing revelations about Hasan Minhaj’s “emotional truths” profile:

01
Fabricating emotional truths
In Minhaj’s 2022 Netflix standup special, “The King’s Jester” he tells the story of an FBI informant who infiltrated his family’s mosque in 2002. Minhaj paints the picture of an athletic white man named Brother Eric who converted to Islam to gain the trust of and embed himself in the Sacramento Muslim community. Minhaj supposedly had Brother Eric pegged as a fraud from the start and even told him a tale to take back to the FBI, which supposedly led Minhaj to be roughed up by the police against the hood of a car. But all of these claims were fake.
 
It turns out that Brother Eric was indeed an FBI informant in Muslim communities pretending to be a personal trainer. His real name was Craig Monteilh, and he told The New Yorker that Minhaj’s claims aren’t true. “I have no idea why he would do that,” said Monteilh, who was in prison in 2002, and didn’t begin to work for the FBI on counterterrorism measures until 2006. Furthermore, he said he had only worked in Southern California, not in the Sacramento area.
 
Another fabrication from Minhaj’s comedy is one about baby anthrax. After the comedian did a reported segment on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalism — someone sent a letter to his home which was filled with white powder. He then claims the powder spilled on his young daughter and she was rushed to the hospital. While it turned out not to be anthrax, Minhaj claimed that the point was that he had received such a threat in the first place for his powerful work.
 
Except . . . Minhaj admitted to The New Yorker that his daughter had never been exposed to a white powder at all nor had she been hospitalized. But he insisted, “The punch line is worth the fictionalized premise.”
02
Doxing his high school crush
In Minhaj’s first stand-up special “Homecoming King,” he relates a high school story of getting rejected by a white girl whom he had a crush on and who also accepted his invitation to prom but later pulled a bait and switch. When he tried to pick her up on the night of the dance, he claims she had another date because her parents didn’t want their daughter to take pictures with a brown boy.
 
The high school crush counters his narrative though, saying that she turned down Minhaj before the dance in person, which Minhaj also confirmed. He added that the two of them “had long carried different understandings of her rejection.” However, this fabrication is only part of the issue.
 
The woman also claimed that her family had experienced doxing for years because Minhaj failed to disguise her identity, including the she was engaged to an Indian American man in his stand-up. Allegedly, a source told The New Yorker that during the Off-Broadway performances, Minhaj used real photos of the woman and her partner with their faces blurred out . . . but insufficiently. When she confronted Minhaj about the online threats that the special brought her family, she said Minhaj ignored her concerns. He claims he doesn’t recall that interaction.
03
Fabricating “truths” about the Saudis and Jared Kushner
Minhaj’s comedy hinges on interviews with famous figures like former President Obama so it comes to no surprise he attempted to interview the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018. Minhaj claims he attended a meeting at the Saudi Embassy in D.C. to plan a potential sit-down interview with the prince, but the Saudis told him they didn’t want to be made fun of by a comedian and that they’d be watching him. Minhaj said when he was headed back home, news had broken about the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Everyone supposedly had been worried about Minhaj, knowing about his planned Saudi meeting that day.
 
Of course, though that was not true. A producer with access to Minhaj’s schedule said that the meeting at the Saudi Embassy happened at least a month before Khashoggi’s murder. Minhaj admitted that he shortened the timelines as a storytelling device to “make it feel the way it felt.”
 
Meanwhile, Minhaj was invited to the Time 100 Gala, where he said he watched former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner enter the room and sit in a seat that had been purposefully left empty for an imprisoned Saudi activist. The truth is that while he did criticize Kushner at the event for the Trump administration’s weak response to Saudi human-rights violations, there was no ceremonial seat set aside for an activist, and therefore Kushner never was told off by Minhaj for sitting in it.
04
Allegations of workplace toxicity and misogyny
The most serious revelations from the profile are allegations of a toxic workplace environment from female staffers of color. There had been rumblings online after the cancellation of “Patriot Act” that the environment was potentially poor for many women who worked behind the scenes. The New Yorker reviewed a document that showed that three women had hired an attorney and threatened to sue Netflix and “Patriot Act’s” production company alleging gender discrimination, sex-based harassment, and retaliation. The legal matter was settled out of court.
 
According to former “Patriot Act” employees, members of the research team for the show felt that Minhaj was sometimes dismissive of the fact-checking process. “[Minhaj] just assembled people around him to make him appear different and much smarter and more thoughtful,” a female researcher said. “But those people — the smart people and hardworking people — were treated poorly for bringing the perspective that he is celebrated for.”
 
In one incident, Minhaj was frustrated that the fact-checking overtook the creative aspects of the scripts. A pair of female researchers were then asked to leave the writers’ room. They sat in the hall for more than an hour and listened to the meeting continue without them. Researchers were no longer allowed in the rooms for rewrites on episodes — only the male head of the research department was allowed in. Women researchers said that they felt alienated.

 

Prosecutors seek limited gag order after Trump’s election case statements lead to harassment

Donald Trump may soon be hit with a limited gag order requested by federal prosecutors to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, expressing concern that the former president’s targeted rants on social media have led to several people receiving threats — including special counsel, Jack Smith.

“Since the indictment in this case, the defendant has spread disparaging and inflammatory public posts on Truth Social on a near-daily basis regarding the citizens of the District of Columbia, the court, prosecutors and prospective witnesses,” prosecutors wrote. “Like his previous public disinformation campaign regarding the 2020 presidential election, the defendant’s recent extrajudicial statements are intended to undermine public confidence in an institution — the judicial system — and to undermine confidence in and intimidate individuals — the court, the jury pool, witnesses and prosecutors.”

The New York Times highlights in their coverage of the gag order that, “last month, at a public hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Chutkan sent an open shot across Mr. Trump’s bow, telling his lawyers that she would not tolerate any remarks from the former president that might ‘intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors.’ This gag order will solidify that she meant what she said.

On Friday evening, Trump responded to Smith’s request by doing the thing he’s being asked not to do. In a statement made on Truth Social, he wrote, “Biden Prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, has asked the Court to limit 45th President, and leading Republican Nominee (by more than 50 points, & beating Dems!) DONALD J. TRUMP’S, PUBLIC STATEMENTS. So, I’m campaigning for President against an incompetent person who has WEAPONIZED the DOJ & FBI to go after his Political Opponent, & I am not allowed to COMMENT? They Leak, Lie, & Sue, & they won’t allow me to SPEAK? How else would I explain that Jack Smith is DERANGED, or Crooked Joe is INCOMPETENT?”

 

Ashton Kutcher resigns from anti-child abuse org after Danny Masterson support: “I am deeply sorry”

The fallout from Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’ letters of support for convicted rapist Danny Masterson continues.

Kutcher has formally resigned from Thorn, an anti-human trafficking organization, working to eliminate the sexual exploitation of children. The actor started the organization with his ex-wife and actress Demi Moore. Kutcher served as Thorn’s chairman of the board, while his wife, Kunis, was an observer on the organization’s board. She will step down as well, Time reported.

In a statement posted to Thorn’s website on Sept. 14, Kutcher said, “After my wife and I spent days of listening, personal reflection, learning, and conversations with survivors and the employees and leadership at Thorn, I have determined the responsible thing for me to do is resign as Chairman of the Board, effectively immediately.” He continued, “I cannot allow my error in judgment to distract from our efforts and the children we serve.”  

Kutcher stated he has worked 15 years to amplify the voices of victims of sexual assault and “the character statement I submitted is yet another painful instance of questioning victims who are brave enough to share their experiences. This is precisely what we have all worked to reverse over the last decade.”

“I want to offer my heartfelt apology to all victims of sexual violence and everyone at Thorn who I hurt by what I did. And to the broader advocacy community, I am deeply sorry,” Kutcher said. 

The backlash against Kutcher and Kunis began after the couple’s letters of support for Masterson were made public during the convicted rapist’s sentencing. ​​Chrissie Bixler, one of three of Masterson’s ex-girlfriends who accused him of rape, blasted Kunis and Kutcher on Instagram for their letters of support, saying Kutcher was “just as sick as his mentor.”

Melania will return to campaign trail “when it’s appropriate,” Trump says

Last week, during a Iowa–Iowa State college-football game attended by Donald Trump, a plane flew overhead with a banner trailing behind it reading, “Where’s Melania?” Noticeably absent from her husband’s 2024 campaign events, this question has been circulating over the past few months, and it’s one that Trump addresses himself in his upcoming “Meet the Press” interview, set to air this Sunday. 

In a snippet from the interview reported on by NBC News, moderator Kristen Welker asks if we’ll be seeing the former first lady on the trail anytime soon, to which Trump says, “Yes. Soon? Yeah, pretty soon. When it’s appropriate, but pretty soon. She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much.” He goes on to add that he prefers to keep her away from it all as “It’s so nasty and so mean.”

As NBC points out, her absence is not all that unusual as she “made limited appearances on the campaign trail in the past two election cycles when her husband ran for president.” That being said, she hasn’t popped up at any events since Trump announced his reelection campaign in November 2022.

“Foolishness”: Ken Paxton impeachment trial wraps in Texas House, Senate begins deliberations

The prosecution and defense made their closing arguments Friday morning in the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, telling wildly contrasting tales of the eight days of witness testimony.

The House impeachment managers insisted that they proved their claims of bribery and corruption, arguing that the jury of 30 senators had no choice but to convict.

“Unlike the public servants here today, he has no regard for the principles of honor and integrity,” said impeachment manager Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction. “He has betrayed us and the people of Texas, and if he is given the opportunity he will continue to abuse the power given to him.”

Paxton’s team said the prosecution’s case was full of holes, circumstantial evidence and misdirection. And they framed Paxton as the victim of a “witch hunt” orchestrated by Texas House leadership, “the Bush dynasty” and insubordinate former deputies-turned-whistleblowers in his office.

Acquittal was the only logical response, they said.

“All of this foolishness that they’ve accused this man of is false,” said Paxton’s attorney, Tony Buzbee. “The question I have in my mind is whether there is … courage in this room to vote the way you know the evidence requires. I think there is. I hope there is. I pray there is.”

The House case centers on Paxton’s relationship with Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, his friend and political donor. The prosecution alleges that Paxton repeatedly abused his office to help Paul investigate his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties, gain the upper hand in a lawsuit with a charity and obtain confidential files on the police investigating him.

The closing arguments ended a nine-day trial during which the House called 13 witnesses and the defense called four. The case is now in the hands of senators. Conviction on any of the 16 articles of impeachment would permanently remove Paxton from office.

Paxton attended the trial Friday for the first time since the first day, when he was required to answer to the charges. Even then, Buzbee entered not guilty pleas on his behalf.

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Murr criticized Paxton for skipping the proceedings in the interim.

“Clearly, he thinks he might just get away with this,” Murr told senators. “Had he been here, he would have seen the hundreds of exhibits and the thousands of pages that have been presented.”

Murr, chair of the House investigative committee that initiated the impeachment inquiry in the spring, praised the testimony of former deputies who recounted how they reported Paxton to the FBI in 2020 over concerns about his relationship with Paul.

Murr noted that each is a dedicated conservative ideologically aligned with Paxton who became disillusioned when the attorney general became obsessed with assisting his friend at the expense of the agency’s other priorities.

“The travesty is that Mr. Paxton’s desire to deliver results for Nate Paul eventually tore the office apart,” Murr said. “Ken Paxton abandoned and betrayed his trusted and knowledgeable staff, his conservative principles and his commitment to family values, the law and his oath of office.”

Murr acknowledged that impeachment is a severe step and acknowledged that more than 4 million voters had supported Paxton’s re-election 10 months ago. But he said the misconduct Paxton stands accused of is precisely the type of behavior the state’s impeachment process is designed to police.

In their own closing remarks, Paxton’s attorneys again argued that there was no evidence to support many of the articles of impeachment, and that the entire process was kickstarted after Paxton accused House Speaker Dade Phelan of being drunk while presiding over House business in May. After Paxton called on Phelan to resign, Buzbee argued, Phelan “sped up” the impeachment process — with help from the “Bush dynasty” and other of Paxton’s political opponents.

Forced to rush their case rather than examine all of the evidence, Buzbee said, House impeachment managers decided that Paxton was guilty and then relied on insinuations, hearsay and innuendos to make their case to the public.

“What we have seen is a bunch of suppositions — mights, maybes, could have beens,” Buzbee said. “That’s what we’ve seen in this trial.”

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Not just Trump: The trial of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton shows MAGA loves crooks as leaders

Echoing claims Paxton’s team made throughout the trial, Buzbee framed the attorney general as a sterling conservative who was merely doing his job when he asked that his former top deputies look into Paul’s claims. Buzbee also said that Paxton had good reason to be concerned about the FBI weaponizing and abusing its power because of his ongoing securities fraud indictment, which Paxton has said was politically motivated.

“This man did his job,” he said. “And he should still be doing his job.”

Instead of following directions, Buzbee argued, the deputies were insubordinate and decided to report Paxton to the FBI for bribery with “no evidence.” That alone justified firing them, he added.

“They took a long walk on a short pier,” Buzbee said.

Speaking for most of the hour allotted to them, Buzbee also repeatedly took aim at the claim that Paxton had allowed Paul to have “the keys” of the attorney general’s office and could force it to do his bidding. Paul, Buzbee said, was “pissed” that agency deputies wouldn’t proceed with investigations into his claims. He even threatened to sue.

“There was one person running the attorney general’s office, and that man is sitting right there, and that is the man that should be running the attorney general’s office at the end of this day,” Buzbee said.

Buzbee also said that he had debunked the House’s claims that Paul had paid for renovations of Paxton’s home, and that the attorney general had received nothing other than some lunches from Paul that were held in public. Touching briefly on Paxton’s affair, Buzbee framed the suspended attorney general as an imperfect man who had repented.

“We all have sinned and fallen short,” Buzbee said, adding that if infidelity warranted removal from public office, “we’re going to be doing a lot of impeaching in this city.”

In the final moments of their allotted time, Paxton attorney Dan Cogdell also attacked the case. He said House prosecutors included some of the “best of the best” — including legendary Houston lawyers Rusty Hardin and Dick DeGuerin — who nonetheless couldn’t make a “cogent” argument to support Paxton’s removal.

The House, with the opportunity to deliver the last word, called on impeachment manager Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, who had not previously spoken during the trial.

Leach, who like the attorney general is a deeply conservative, Christian former Baylor University student body president from Collin County, said he has loved Paxton for many years. He described Paxton as a mentor, a colleague and football watching buddy.

In an emotional speech, he nonetheless said Paxton is unfit for office and urged senators to convict him for the good of Texans. This came despite his description of a previously close relationship with Paxton and frequent talks about politics, policy and family.

“Members, I know as I look across this floor, many of you knew the same,” Leach said. “But a few years ago those calls stopped and that open door was closed and I became increasingly concerned and alarmed at what I saw.”

He added he was troubled that Paxton had rejected 12 invitations to appear before his House committee to answer questions about the $3.3 million whistleblower settlement he was asking the Legislature to fund.

“Not once did he answer questions, in public or in private, which is largely one of the reasons we’re here today,” Leach said. He requested that senators, “as painful as it might be, to sustain the articles of impeachment.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, serving as judge, handed the case to senators for deliberation just before noon. They could return to vote on the articles as soon as Friday afternoon.

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about Paxton’s impeachment trial

“I could have pardoned myself”: Legal experts laugh off Trump’s “especially funny” new claim

Former President Donald Trump insisted that he “could have pardoned” himself during his presidency in the four criminal cases now amounting to nearly 100 felony charges across the federal and state levels. The GOP frontrunner said he was “given the option” to do so before leaving office during an interview, set to be released Sunday, with NBC News anchor Kristen Welker after she asked whether he would absolve himself if he were re-elected in 2024.

“I was given an option to pardon myself. I could have pardoned myself when I left. People said, ‘Would you like to pardon yourself?’ I had a couple of attorneys that said, ‘You can do it if you want.’ I had some people that said, ‘It would look bad if you do’ — because I think it would look terrible,” Trump said.

“I said, ‘The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon.’… The last day, I could have had a pardon done that would have saved me all of these lawyers and all of these fake charges, these Biden indictments,” he added, repeating his frequent cry that his indictments are politically motivated. 

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Trump dubbed the prosecutors who have indicted him this year “thugs, horrible people” and “fascists” who have been after him “from the day I came down the escalator with Melania” before rattling off examples of his “great job as president.” All the while, he continued to reiterate that he could have pardoned himself but didn’t want to consider it.

“I never even wanted to think about it, and I could have done it,” he told Welker. “And all of these questions you’re asking me about the fake charges, you wouldn’t be asking me because it’s a very powerful thing for a president.”

Legal experts, however, have swiftly refuted the former president’s claim. Former White House Ethics Czar Norm Eisen, in a Thursday appearance with CNN, said that Trump pardoning himself would have likely been against the law taken with the foundational decision in Thomas Bonham v. College of Physicians, “one of the oldest precedents in Anglo-American law.”

“The principle of that case is that no person can be a judge in their own case,” Eisen told the panel after referencing a Washington Post opinion he co-authored on the issue of self-pardoning when it first arose during the Trump administration. 

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In the 1610 case, the Court of Common Pleas ruled that the College of Physicians could not act as a court and a litigant in the same case by receiving a fine it had the power to dole out despite the college’s royal charter authorizing it to punish individuals for practicing without a license as Bonham had.

“The Constitution embodies this broad precept against self-dealing in its rule that congressional pay increases cannot take effect during the Congress that enacted them, in its prohibition against using official power to gain favors from foreign states and even in its provision that the chief justice, not the vice president, is to preside when the Senate conducts an impeachment trial of the president,” Eisen, legal scholar Laurence Tribe and lawyer Richard Painter wrote in the article. 

“The Constitution’s pardon clause has its origins in the royal pardon granted by a sovereign to one of his or her subjects. We are aware of no precedent for a sovereign pardoning himself, then abdicating or being deposed but being immune from criminal process,” they continued. “If that were the rule, many a deposed king would have been spared instead of going to the chopping block.”

Though the principle in Dr. Bonham’s case is a piece of foundational jurisprudence, Eisen noted on the air Thursday that it has never been resolved as a legal matter but has been referenced in a federal memo.

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“Nixon’s office of legal counsel, four days before he resigned, issued an opinion: The lawyers — lawyers within the Department of Justice — know Richard Nixon could not pardon himself. So there is a federal opinion memo,” Eisen added during the CNN segment. “Probably if [Trump] tried, it would fail, but nobody really knows.”

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin also noted Trump’s “especially funny” declaration on self-pardoning in regards to the federal case regarding his retention of national security documents. 

“Trump’s insistence to @kwelkernbc that he could have but did not pardon himself during his last presidency is especially funny given that he could not have pardoned himself for the crimes charged in the classified docs case,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday. “Why? Because the charged conduct did not occur until after he was no longer president,” she added. “A president can charge uncharged crimes—but not ones that have not yet happened.”

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about Trump’s legal entanglements 

New Carly Simon compilation “These Are the Good Old Days” tells a wistful music industry story

The feel-good compilation of 2023 has just dropped, and its name is “These Are the Good Old Days: The Carly Simon & Jac Holzman Story.” The collection features highlights from Simon’s first trio of albums — “Carly Simon” (1971),
“Anticipation” (1971) and “No Secrets” (1972) — records that launched her as one of the bright lights of the singer-songwriter movement.

Carly Simon has enjoyed a long career as a hitmaker, with a dozen Top 40 singles to her name. Much of her success can be traced to Holzman’s careful nurturing of her career. Holzman famously founded Elektra Records in his college dorm room in 1950 with $600 to his name. After managing the company through lean years and mounting debts, he hit paydirt in the 1960s with acts like the Doors, while discovering timeless voices such as Judy Collins.

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Holzman’s association with Simon came into being after hearing her sing with her sister in a Greenwich Village club. A lunch meeting led to a demo tape, on the strength of which he signed her to an Elektra contract in 1970. One of the tape’s cuts, “Alone,” is featured on “These Are the Good Old Days” and affords listeners with Holtzman’s early glimpse into the singer’s hitmaking potential.

And what he heard on her demo was the makings of a new talent who would go toe-to-toe with the finest singer-songwriters of the day, from Carole King and James Taylor to Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. While much has been written about Simon’s racy spate of album covers, her songs themselves proved to be the making of her career, with wide-ranging themes about the nature of post-1960s womanhood during an era marked by women’s lib and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Simon’s songs didn’t merely embrace the change; they championed it with raw energy and power.

“These Are the Good Old Days” is exceedingly well-curated, including such standout selections from Simon’s first three LPs as her breakthrough hit “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” the future Heinz ketchup anthem “Anticipation” and the global mega-smash “You’re So Vain.” But the real story behind the compilation involves Holzman’s shrewd development of Simon’s career. His impact upon her life and work is no mystery to Simon, who recently remarked that “there was never more care given to me. Never more respect, and I can surely say that I would never have become a performer had it not been for that first call from Jac after listening to my first little demo cassette.”

As for Holzman, the label head looks back wistfully at their collaboration, saying, “Carly and I created a lifelong friendship born from our ’70s music collaboration. I think the good and positive effect we had on each other resulted in records that were gifts for Carly fans and music lovers the world over.”

But no matter how you couch it, Holzman’s careful attention to shaping Simon’s career seems like a relic from a different age, when labels astutely invested in their artists over a period of years and several albums. With Simon, the big payoff arrived with “No Secrets.” Those early days with Holzman and Elektra is a story that contemporary popular music would do well to reflect on — and even emulate.

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about iconic women in music

In the Who’s massive and majestic “Who’s Next” box set, Pete Townshend’s full vision finally emerges

With the rock opera “Tommy” (1969), Pete Townshend transformed the Who from a raucous live act into long-form storytellers for the ages. The songwriter had big plans up his sleeve when it came to the LP’s follow-up effort, a dystopian epic to be entitled “Lifehouse,” which told the story of a world beset by rampant pollution and the precipitous loss of personal freedom. For the record, Townshend ambitiously staged a series of concerts at London’s Young Vic to bring his vision to fruition but grew frustrated when the band’s audiences didn’t connect with the new material.

For Townshend, the band’s inability to make “Lifehouse” a reality proved to be a terrible blow, leaving him in the throes of a nervous breakdown and nearly leading to the Who’s dissolution. He was emotionally and intellectually invested in the project, which emerged from his belief in popular music’s power to effect change. The narrative at the heart of “Lifehouse” was a masterwork of future-thinking, with explicit references to an Internet-like “grid” that would dominate a consumerist world seemingly bent on environmental destruction and creating its own impending doom. In the story, civilization’s only hope involves the shared creation of a single musical note that would establish unity in the face of so much interpersonal loss and destruction.

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With a new box set devoted to “Who’s Next” (1971), the epic rock LP that developed from the ashes of “Lifehouse,” music lovers can finally enjoy the full, unfettered experience of Townshend’s original vision. The weighty compilation is not for the faint of heart, clocking in with 155 tracks, including an incredible 89 previously unreleased songs. The box set pointedly features Townshend’s original demos, along with a graphic novel that brings “Lifehouse” vividly to life.

And when it comes to “Who’s Next,” the album’s tunes have never shone brighter with a fresh spate of remixed tracks. When it was originally released, the LP offered a bravura showcase of the band’s inimitable talents. It was a muscular album that bespoke the heights of 1970s power rock. Even now, 50 years later, it’s truly dazzling to hear the Who in full thrash, with Roger Daltrey’s throaty vocals, Townshend’s searing guitar work, John Entwistle’s kinetic bass and the primal thunder inherent in Keith Moon’s unruly drums. There’s simply nothing else like it in the annals of rock history.

“Who’s Next” marked the birth of two of the band’s concert staples in “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” songs that crackle with energy and abandon in the box set’s embarrassment of remixed riches. In many ways, the 10-CD collection finally provides closure for Townshend’s self-described “audacious” plans for “Lifehouse.” Looking back, he admits that “the fiction and the experiment were both flawed, and neither were properly realized. But some wonderful music came from the project,” he adds, “and the idea has always held me in thrall, partly because so many of the strands of the fiction seem to be coming true.”

For Who fans in particular and rock music lovers in general, the “Who’s Next” box set is required listening.

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classic rock box set reviews

UAW goes on strike at three plants: Historic CEO-worker pay gap gets a national spotlight

Forty percent.

It’s a figure that United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain cited repeatedly in the run-up to the union’s historic strike against the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers as he called attention to the exorbitant compensation of the companies’ top executives.

Over the past four years, the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis have seen their total pay jump by 40% while the wages of the companies’ ordinary employees have risen by just 6%. The Economic Policy Institute observed earlier this week that autoworker wages across the U.S. have fallen by 19.3% since 2008.

Last year, the CEOs of the Big Three automakers received staggering pay packages, fueling workers’ ongoing push for better wages and benefits. Ford’s Jim Farley took home around $21 million, Stellantis’ Carlos Tavares pocketed nearly $25 million, and General Motors’ Mary Barra—the highest-paid of the group—brought in roughly $29 million.

Barra has received more than $200 million in compensation since becoming GM’s CEO in 2014.

“We’ve went backwards in the last 16 years—backwards—while the CEOs gave themselves 40% pay increases in the last four years alone,” Fain said from a picket line in Michigan early Friday. “And they want to call us greedy.”

“UAW members see the CEO pay disparity as a measurement of how they are undervalued.”

The contrast between CEO and worker pay at the large, profitable automakers is striking.

The shareholder advocacy nonprofit As You Sow, which tracks CEO-to-worker pay gaps at U.S. companies, noted Friday that Ford’s chief executive made 281 times as much as the company’s median worker last year.

The gap was even larger at General Motors, where Barra was paid 362 times more than the automaker’s median employee in 2022.

In a CNN interview on Friday, Barra insisted it is fair that General Motors is only offering its workers a 20% pay increase over the course of a four-year contract after she got a 34% compensation boost over the past four years.

Rosanna Landis Weaver, director of wage justice and executive compensation at As You Sow, said in a statement Friday that “as a consequence of out-of-control executive compensation, shareholders are now faced with striking workers at a critical juncture as these companies transition to EV production.”

“UAW members see the CEO pay disparity as a measurement of how they are undervalued,” said Weaver. “Skyrocketing CEO pay is linked to worker dissatisfaction and lower profits, making excessive pay a distinct material risk that shareholders must take seriously.”

Progressive lawmakers who have expressed solidarity with the UAW’s fight for a fair contract have also condemned runaway executive compensation and declining worker wages.

“The Big Three auto companies have already raked in $20 billion in profits this year. Their CEOs make millions. They can afford to pay their employees a living wage,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) wrote on social media Friday. “I’m standing with UAW as they start their strike. We got you!”

In an appearance on MSNBC Thursday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted that “over the last 20 years, real wages for automobile workers have gone down by 30% when you account for inflation” as CEO pay has risen.

“I really applaud the courage of Shawn Fain and the workers at the UAW for standing up and saying: ‘You know what? Enough is enough,'” Sanders added. “No one thinks that three people on top should own more wealth than the bottom half of American society. That CEOs are making 400 times more than their workers—that’s not what this country is supposed to be about. That’s what the UAW is telling the American people, and I think there’s massive support for what they’re trying to do.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation at the top publicly traded companies in the U.S. grew by 1,460% between 1978 and 2021 while typical worker pay grew by just 18.1%.

Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, argued in a blog post Thursday that the combination of “humongous executive pay packages,” massive automaker profits, low wages for hourly employees, and tiered pay systems that harm newer workers have increased “the likelihood of a long strike.”

“CEO pay at the Big Three is out of sight,” Reich noted. “Overall, CEO pay rose 40% over the last four years. And that’s not counting all the other executive salaries under the CEOs that have been ratcheted upward as CEO pay has gone through the roof.”

“Completely self-destructive”: Legal expert ridicules Trump’s “extraordinarily dangerous” new scheme

Former President Donald Trump vowed to testify under oath about the allegation that he tried to have evidence in his classified documents case deleted — a courtroom maneuver one legal expert panned as "extraordinarily dangerous."

In a Friday preview of his forthcoming interview with new "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker, the former president took aim at special counsel Jack Smith, who in July filed three additional charges against Trump in the case, including two new obstruction counts based on allegations that his two co-defendants attempted to scrub surveillance video at Mar-a-Lago. When Welker asked about one of the new charges, Trump vehemently denied the allegation as "false" and said he'd testify under oath that it was.

"Look, It's a fake charge by this deranged lunatic prosecutor who lost in the Supreme Court nine to nothing, and he tried to destroy lots of lives. He's a lunatic. So it's a fake charge," he continued. "But more importantly, the tapes weren't deleted. In other words, there was nothing done to them. And, they were my tapes. I could have fought them. I didn't even have to give them the tapes, I don't think."

After NBC rolled the preview, co-anchor Savannah Guthrie noted that Trump is not accused of deleting surveillance footage but of asking for the footage to be canned.

In response to the preview during a CNN appearance Friday, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig argued that the only way for Trump to make his claim of false charges hold legal weight is to "take the stand," adding that his lawyers would advise Trump against doing so.

"Taking the stand in any defendant's own defense is rare and very risky," Honig said. "Here I think it would be completely self-destructive. I know Donald Trump has been saying he wants to testify. I assure you his lawyers are saying, 'Please do not do that. It would be extraordinarily dangerous for you to take the stand and testify in your own defense.'"

“Queer Eye” star Bobby Berk empowers you to design for wellness: “Your home is like a phone charger”

Bobby Berk is just as warm as he appears to be on Netflix's Emmy-winning hit "Queer Eye." When you meet him in person, he greets you with a hug and hums to John Mayer. He buzzes with gentle enthusiasm.

In our conversation for "Salon Talks," the longtime design expert shares how he has spent his life refining his design principles which are really just the guidelines he uses every day in his personal life — principles that are the focus of his new interior design book "Right At Home." Berk's passion for design manifested in his life at a very young age just from simply knowing what he disliked and from there on out he has transformed countless homes for people. And he's not done quite yet because he wants to help all of us figure out what amplifies our happiness in our living environments.

"A home is a safe space," Berk told me on "Salon Talks," "so it had a big effect on my life and the way I designed because I realize how important that feeling is when you haven't had a home. It's why I work really hard to make sure that people know that they can make it very personal." Berk's personal struggles and triumphs are the reason why he keenly understands and sees what people need from their living spaces. It's why so many of the featured heroes on "Queer Eye" have such a visceral reaction to his home makeovers. He always listens, and that's a sign of an all-knowing interiors expert but also a good human.

Watch Bobby Berk's "Salon Talk" interview here or read a transcript below. He discusses how interior design is deeply rooted in our mental wellness and happiness, how to really make your own personal space perfect for you and most of all how life's complicated ebbs and flows can affect how we see ourselves and the space we inhabit. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

This book really emphasizes how good design is good for the mind. How did you discover that there was a link between our homes and mental wellness?

I think the first time I put that together, even though I didn't even realize it, was when I was five or six years old. My mom had decorated my room all red — red curtains, red bedspread, red rug, red pillows — and I just knew it did not make me feel good. At the time, as a six-year-old kid, I couldn't articulate that it gave me anxiety, but I knew there was just something about it. I didn't love the way it made me feel. So I saved up all my little $20 birthday checks from my grandma and my aunts and uncles, and I had my mom take me to the store and I got a blue bedspread and blue curtains, a blue rug and pillows, and this dinosaur poster with blues and greens and yellows in it because something made me feel that this made me feel good, that it was kind of zen, that it was relaxing.

Right then and there, I started putting together that your surroundings obviously have a really huge effect on your mental health and because of that you are able to make your mental health better. You're able to achieve better mental wellness when you really do think about the things that you're surrounding yourself with.

What does that really mean to you, "mental wellness"? 

Just being the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. Of course, everybody would put a bit of a different definition on what that means for them, but for me personally, it means being the best person and version of myself that I can be. That means [being] less frustrated because my home is not in disarray or getting more feelings of achievement that helped me achieve other things by making my bed in the morning like I say I'm going to. 

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Why did you feel like it was important to draw that conclusion between our mental health and our homes specifically?

I felt it was very important because I think a lot of people put their home on their back burner and they think, "Oh, I should just not even worry about my home. I'm not a designer. I don't know what I'm doing," or, "I can't afford a designer, so I'm just going to let it be or I'm just going to copy something I've seen in a magazine," but I really want this book to help people, to give them permission to design their home exactly the way they want to. 

"We're all great designers. We all have taste. We've just allowed other people in the world to tell us that maybe our taste isn't good."

We're all great designers. We all have taste. We've just allowed other people in the world to tell us that maybe our taste isn't good, but you know what? Other people aren't living in your house. Your friends aren't living in your house. You are, and your home is like a phone charger. If you don't get that phone on the charger at night, if it's got a short in the cord, it's not going to make it through the day because you need a good charger. Your home is your good charger, and it needs to get you through the day by charging you. The way it does that is by doing things in your home that make you thrive, that give you passion, that make you happy, not what me or anybody else says.

This book is really about what makes you happy in your home and there was a page specifically linked to grief. Why was it important to you to address the more complicated sides of mental health issues and how it affects our space?

There was an episode of my show once where we helped a hero who had just lost his wife to cancer and he had two little boys. He was moving into a new home and he was trying to start over, but obviously, his wife was his everything, and he did not want to lose those memories. He didn't want to erase her from the home, but he knew that he couldn't be confronted with the memories of her every single moment he looked around or he would never be whole again. Through helping him through that process, it really made me decide I wanted to put something in the book that would help people get a game plan of how to not move on, but to get better. 

When you're confronted with the same wounds every single day, by seeing memories of a person every single day, it really takes longer to heal. I wanted to give somebody permission, and I didn't think writing this chapter would be so close to home until I lost my father a few weeks ago and I brought this book home.

I'm so sorry.

Thank you. 

I brought this book home a couple of weeks ago, and I just had it sitting on the counter because I wanted to show my mom my new book, and I came down the next morning and she was sitting there reading that chapter crying. When I wrote it, I had no idea that this would be something that would be helping somebody so close to me, but I'm really glad I did. So this book, it's a design book, yes, but it's more of a self-help book, a mental wellness book that just happens to use design to help you to improve your life.

I truly realized that when I was reading it myself. How did you come up with that happiness gut checklist? That's one of the ways to improve your mental wellness.

There's a lot of checklists, if you notice in there, little work pages, because again, this book is all about me giving you permission to be you, to think about what makes you happy, to think about what makes you tick in your home. I really wanted you to have that actionable moment of writing out what you feel and what makes you happy. 

So when was the last time you felt safe? I felt this the last time I saw this. The last time I was happiest was in blank environment. When you really start to think about, "Oh, maybe I was the happiest on this hiking trail" or this and that. You're like, "Wait, so nature, nature actually makes me feel really good. Nature actually really clears my mind." You need more plants. Maybe you need some photographs of those wonderful places that make you happy. 

I think that gut checklist really makes you think about things that have nothing to do with design. That's what this book is about, is thinking about things that have nothing to do with design to help you with design. I think that checklist really makes you have an actionable moment of, "Huh, I never thought about why I felt safe in this specific environment, but yeah, why wouldn't I want some of that translated into my home?"

You did not have a home for a period of your life. How did that translate into how you design them for other people now? 

It kind of goes back to that checklist of, I believe the exact one is, "When was the last time you felt safe?" It's one of the first questions I ask because to me, first and foremost, a home is a safe space. It's that space where you can laugh, you can cry. It's supposed to be like your womb, your cocoon. So it had a big effect on my life and the way I designed because I realize how important that feeling is when you haven't had a home. It's why I work really hard to make sure that people know that they can make it very personal. They can make it a space that is all about them.

You talk about this feeling of safety. How do you make your home feel safe, calm, inspired, purposeful, like you listed in your book?

Everybody's journey on this is different, but I definitely give a lot of tips on how I would and how I could recommend doing so. A lot of it really is organization, lighting, color. There's a whole chapter in the book about color and teaching you what colors are calming, what colors are energizing. If you have a work from home space, don't do a dark color, do an energizing color like blues or yellows or oranges. Orange is a statement, but there's a whole list of colors in there that'll teach you what different colors do and light as well.

"When I wrote it, I had no idea that this would be something that would be helping somebody so close to me, but I'm really glad I did."

A lot of times people are like, "Oh, I kind of feel so tired when I'm in this room." Well, light on the more blue spectrum, the sun emits blue light, we don't really realize it, but the sun emits a blue light that is the most energizing light. So, if you're in a space where you need to be energized, if it's a work from home space, use a blue light. 

My main important thing about this book was there's a lot of design books out there, and this is not knocking any of them. I love them all. Anything that cultivates design makes me happy. But sometimes I'll look at these beautiful coffee table books and I'm like, "God, this book is making me even feel bad about my space. I feel like my space is inadequate and I'm a designer." Luckily I'm a designer, so I realized that behind this beautiful photo is a team of a half a dozen people and piles of stuff that they've made this shot look exactly perfect, and no one can actually live like that.

I wanted to write a book that gave people permission to feel amazing about their space, but just to learn how to zhuzh it up or to edit it a bit to where it really is functional first. Function is the mother of design for me. When I walk into a room, the first thing I think about is how I make it functional, and then I worry about how to make it pretty because it can be the most beautiful room in the world, but if it's dysfunctional, it's going to cause frustration, it's going to cause annoyance, it's going to cause anger, and that's going to spread into every aspect of your life.

I mean, you bring up work from home. I work from home. I live in a tiny Brooklyn apartment.

I've been there.

I would say it's really hard for me to separate my room and the space for work. What advice do you have for people who are still working from home and any tips and tricks that could help maintain that work-life balance?

I really feel like even if you have a small space, you still need to define your space. That definition can even be a tray, that when you have your laptop on it, you have whatever you need, and that's what you work on. When work is over, you take that tray and you slide it under a bed or you slide it under a sofa and your work is out of view. Because there's a lot of great things about working from home now that we've all discovered, but one of the things it can cause is you're always working. You're just like, "Yeah, it's 9:00, but I'll respond to that email." No, we really need to define our work time and space. That can be just as small as I have a tray that I put my laptop on, or I literally hide my laptop at 5:00 p.m. or whenever you decide to start working. 

I know it's New York, so it's definitely later than 5:00 p.m., but even if you don't have a really full separate space, you need to remove the things that are of work because your home really should be that place where you're recharging, and if you're constantly thinking about work at home, it's not happening.

How do we make use of that small space? How do we make it optimal for us?

Organization is key in a small space. I always say make sure you're utilizing your real estate from top to bottom, not just from side to side. A lot of times we just think about our floor space as a one dimensional box, but think about how things go up. Make that bed a little higher so you can get a dresser underneath, go up with shelves higher, do curtains higher. Really think about your space from top to bottom, not just side to side.

How would you say that you personalized your space in your first apartment? 

I mean, my first apartment in New York, I was just happy to use my tax return to get a mattress. Back then, I had no way to personalize my space. I was literally getting an air mattress that I'd have to return and exchange every other week because they would get a hole in it, and I'd have to go to that Kmart down at Astor Place to get a new one. But I think one of the most important things back then was just keeping my space organized because it had such an effect on my mental health. I didn't have money for a dresser. I didn't have money for hangers. I was so poor when I first moved here. I literally got free cardboard boxes and I would use those, I'd stack them to make shelves, to have places to fold my clothes. I think even if you don't have the money to really fully personalize your space, keeping it organized is a really, really important thing for your mental health.

If you want an entirely fresh start, where do you even begin? Let's say you're moving into an apartment. How do you find and define what your personal style is? 

"I realize how important that feeling is when you haven't had a home."

You know what? For me, it's about asking questions about things that have nothing to do with design. Years ago, we had a hero on "Queer Eye," Remy. He had inherited his home from his grandma, and she was so stylish. Her place was so cool, but it was not the home of a 27-year-old bachelor. I asked him, "What's your design aesthetic?" And he's like, "I have no idea." He's like, "That's never been a question I've even thought about because I've never been in a position to decorate a home before. I lived with my mom or I was in college, or I had roommates. So this is the first time I'm thinking about it." I'm like, "You're right, you're right. I've got to stop asking people what your design aesthetic is." 

There's actually a headline of book that says, "Let's normalize not asking somebody what their design aesthetic is. Let's ask them about the things that make them happy." So I'm like, "What's your favorite TV show?" He's like, "Oh, Mad Men." I'm like, "'50s, mid-century." Like, "What's your dream vacation or the favorite vacation you've ever taken?" He's like, "Cuba." And I'm like, "Also in the '50s." And I was like, "All right." So I did his home in mid-century furniture. I did a cool mural on the living room wall that's a picture of a cafe in Havana. I did banana leaf wallpaper in the breakfast nook. He walked in and he was like, "This feels like my home, but not my home at all. Everything in here, I'm like, oh my God, that's what I would put. Yeah, this is my dream vacation. Oh my God, this furniture." He is like, "How did you get in my head like that?" I'm like, "I just asked you about things that made you happy." Because again, things that make you happy are what you should infuse into your home, because that's really what's going to fill your cup.

How do you want people to feel after they finish reading this book?

I want them to feel empowered. I want them to feel empowered that they can be a designer too. Their taste is fine. Their taste is perfect for exactly who they are because they know themselves best. Don't listen to other people's opinions, don't listen to magazine's opinions. It's fine to get ideas from that, but I really want this book to empower people to know that they are the master of their own destiny and their own space, and only they know their true loves and their true desires.

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Lauren Boebert’s vaping denial goes up in smoke with new video

After Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a performance of "Beetlejuice The Musical" at a Denver theater last weekend for "vaping, singing, causing a disturbance," a spokesperson for Boebert confirmed the representative was "guilty" of "singing along, laughing and enjoying herself" but denied that the far-right Republican had been vaping. Newly released footage, however, shows Boebert was, in fact, hitting a vape.

As seen in surveillance footage from inside the theater, first obtained by 9News Denver, before she was removed from the theater, Boebert is seen with the vape. A pregnant woman sitting behind the representative told The Denver Post that when she asked Boebert to stop vaping, the congresswoman plainly responded, "No."

The woman, who spoke to the outlet under the condition of anonymity, also said that Boebert had called her a "sad and miserable person" upon seeing her and her husband leave and return to their seats. "At intermission, I asked, 'Are there any other seats available? Can we sit somewhere else?' The usher said, 'You're not the first complaint we had,' the woman said, adding, "The guy [Boebert] was with offered to buy me and my husband cocktails. I'm pregnant!" 

The newly revealed footage also shows Boebert taking several photos with flash and raising her arms to dance during the performance before being ejected. The congresswoman seemingly boasted about the incident, telling The Daily Beast "[t]here's nothing new about me having an overtly animated personality." She added, "After the twirl I said 'omg, I was just Beetlejuice'd from Beetlejuice' and started laughing hysterically."

Trump’s core strategy is to spread chaos and confusion — duh! Is it working?

It’s never easy, or necessarily possible, to figure out who’s winning in Donald Trump’s tangles with the law. That’s because the rule of law is based on the principle that everyone follows the rules — which may be ungainly, flawed, unfairly and unevenly enforced and all the rest of it, but in theory apply to all parties equally — and the rule of Trump is based on the principle that there are no rules, or at least that he gets to pick and choose which rules to follow, which to ignore and which to reverse-engineer to suit his own interests.

Consider this week — well, consider any given week of the last few hundred, honestly. But in this particular week, Trump appeared to worsen his legal troubles by way of an unasked-for confession in what was supposed to be a friendly interview with onetime Fox News star Megyn Kelly (how does one describe her now?), and also launched a vigorous counterattack against not one but two of the judges slated to preside over major Trump-centric court cases.

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“Could spell doom for Trump”: Experts on why Fani Willis’ first trial is a big deal

Of course it’s exceedingly unlikely that Trump will get both U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan (who is overseeing Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump) and New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron (in charge of the New York civil trial that could destroy Trump’s business empire) disqualified or ousted or subjected to whatever gothic punishments the ex-president’s mind may devise. But in both directions Trump is following a strategy — although that’s really not the right word — that has served him well innumerable times in the past: Divert the media’s attention by saying outrageous things that make him look dangerous or unhinged but are probably unprosecutable, while also deploying teams of unlikely-to-be-paid attorneys to sniff out and exploit every possible legal loophole that can delay the hour of reckoning by another few days (or months, or years). 

According to some legal observers, Trump turned up the heat beneath his own cauldron of hot water in his interview with Megyn Kelly this week, repeatedly claiming that he was “allowed to take” classified documents from the White House and that through some mystical process “they become unclassified” once he touches them or beholds them or stashes them in a decommissioned bathroom at Mar-a-Lago. 

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Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance described the ex-president’s remarks as a “good confession,” and national security lawyer Bradley Moss predicted that Kelly’s interview with Trump would be “played at trial by the government.”

Meanwhile, according to a Daily Beast report, Trump scored a minor technical coup in New York on Thursday, convincing an appellate court to hit the pause button on state Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case while it considers Trump’s extraordinary last-minute lawsuit against Justice Engoron, which accuses him of violating an appellate court’s earlier ruling on the scope of fraud allegations against the Trump business empire. It’s a technical or procedural question, not a deeply substantive one, but that’s not the point. The idea here, of course, is simply to delay, to create confusion and if possible to lend more credence to the deeply-held MAGA belief that Trump is being persecuted or prosecuted for being the leader of a political movement, rather than for an entire career of likely or probable criminal actions.

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While Trump appears to have a mathematical chance of throwing that New York case into disarray, his superficially similar effort to force Judge Chutkan to recuse herself from the federal case in Washington is singularly unlikely to go anywhere. Jack Smith’s office responded to the Trump defense team’s request on Thursday by saying that the ex-president “has relied on suggestion and innuendo to insinuate something sinister in the court simply doing its job.” As usual, Smith’s legal prose is remarkably concise and precise — especially compared to Fani Willis’ fulsome, almost novelistic overreach — but one might reply: Yes, and?

Insinuating sinister motivations from the normal operations of his legal and political adversaries, as the thinnest possible veneer for his own motivations, is of course the Trumpian method in a nutshell. The important question is not whether any of his claims have merit; even Trump doesn’t actually care about that. It’s about whether this strategy of chaos and confusion will work for him one more time, as it has so many times in the past.

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“I made it very clear at the outset”: Judge stops Eastman trial to slam Steve Bannon for live stream

The judge presiding over John Eastman’s disbarment trial in California stopped a hearing on Thursday to call out Steve Bannon’s podcast for livestreaming from the courtroom. 

“I’m going to take just a minute to inform everyone about something that I just learned about,” Judge Yvette Roland interjected during witness testimony, Raw Story reported. “I’ve been informed that the Bannon War Room is live-streaming this proceeding.”

The former White House strategist under Donald Trump began his far-right podcast shortly after leaving the administration. It has since been flagged by researchers as the top purveyor of misinformation among podcasts. 

“But live streaming is not allowed,” Judge Roland made clear. “And that goes for any and everyone.”

Eastman, the conservative lawyer who devised a strategy to help maintain former President Donald Trump’s hold on power, is also facing criminal charges in Georgia for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. 

Climate change “undoubtedly” played a role in Libyan floods that killed over 11,000 people: experts

A devastating flood that tore through eastern Libya has left at least 11,300 people dead and thousands more still missing. The deadly downpour began over the weekend when torrential downpours from Cyclone Daniel caused two upstream river dams to burst. The nearby city of Derna was overwhelmed, and reporters describe miles upon miles filed with distraught survivors and debris. It is reportedly Africa’s deadliest storm in recorded history and the most lethal natural disaster so far this year.

The storm began over the Ionian Sea and damaged a few other countries on its way to Libya, including Bulgaria and Turkey. In Greece, Daniel killed 16 people and swamped the country’s agricultural center, the effects of which will be felt of years to come, Politico reported, putting additional strain on a region already struggling under climate change. But Libya has by far taken the worst damage from the storm, with an estimated 30 million cubic metres of water released when the dams gave way.

“Hundreds of body bags now line Derna’s mud-caked streets, awaiting mass burials, as traumatised and grieving residents search mangled buildings for missing loved ones and bulldozers clear streets of debris and mountains of sand,” France 24 reported. The death toll is could rise as high as 20,000, according to Derna’s mayor.

“Warmer air can hold more moisture, so there is an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and can result in more extreme precipitation events.”

There are many factors that contributed to this devastation — and experts agree climate change was likely the primary catalyst.

To know for sure, a direct study of the Libyan floods would be required, climate scientist Dr. Stephanie Herring pointed out, noting that “increases in heavy rainfall (or extreme precipitation) such as observed in Libya are consistent with what we expect in a warmer world, and consistent with what we are already observing in many regions across the planet including regions here in the U.S.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist then broke down the process which causes this to happen.

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We now know how badly our cities will be flooded due to climate change

“In general, as the Earth’s temperature rises, more water evaporates from the surface into the atmosphere,” Herring explained. “Warmer air can hold more moisture, so there is an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and can result in more extreme precipitation events.”

Other scientists agree. According to Dr. Michael E. Mann, a professor of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, “the atmosphere has on average about 7% more water vapor because of the warming that has occurred so far. That means that every rainfall event is on average about 7% greater, but modeling studies have shown that the effect can be even greater than that (sometimes 20% or 30%) because stronger storms entrain more moisture into them.”

Unfortunately, climate change is not only making the storms more intense; it makes them last longer.

“In summer, as our own research has shown, human-caused climate change is favoring stalled weather systems that remain in place for longer periods of time, leading to more persistent heat and flooding events,” Mann explained.

Like Herring and Mann, Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth — a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who has written about water vapor and extreme weather — told Salon by email that climate change was “undoubtedly” a component in heavy rains that bombarded the Libyan dams. Yet he emphasized another variable, one that is highly specific to the context of the Libyan flood: Poor implementation of effective emergency policies by Libyan government authorities.

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“Stronger storms entrain more moisture into them.”

Trenberth attributed the disaster in no small part to those factors, pointing to “failing infrastructure (2 dams) and its management.” His views were echoed by Petteri Taalas, head of the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization, who told reporters that government officials “could have issued the warnings and the emergency management forces would have been able to carry out the evacuation of the people, and we could have avoided most of the human casualties.”

Michael Wehner, a senior scientist in the Computational Research Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, connected the question of climate change’s impact on the floods very specifically to those dams. Until scientists know more about how those dams broke down and why, they cannot deduce the extent to which climate change was a factor as opposed to more immediate forms of human error.

“It is considered ‘established fact’ that some extremes are changing in a warmer world.”

“As the flood was caused by the two dam breaks, the critical question is whether those dams would have failed in a less severe storm without climate change,” Wehner explained. “This is an extremely difficult question that may or may not be answerable depending on how much is known about the dams. Hence such an analysis would require experts on these particular dams.”

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Herring also concluded that the next step for scientists trying to piece together the horrors of the flood is actually examining other drivers of the event, such as the atmospheric circulation patterns. Yet even though it is impossible to predict exactly how much climate change contributed to this specific event, none of the scientists deny that our warmer planet now has more atmospheric water vapor, and that this will ultimately cause more extreme weather.

“Not specific to the Libya event, but I’ll add that NOAA and the scientific community have collected a robust body of evidence such that now, per the IPCC, it is considered ‘established fact’ that some extremes are changing in a warmer world,” Herring said. “While we do have the ability to answer your first question of ‘to what extent’, the scientific community still struggles to do this in a timely manner for a broad range of events. It takes a great deal of scientific investment to perform these studies, and there isn’t the capacity to do this rapidly for every event.”

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about climate change:

The case against Hunter Biden: Republicans dissatisfied because it isn’t political — it’s personal

On Thursday, NBC News reported that the FBI has created a stand-alone unit to investigate all the threats being made against FBI agents and federal prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden. You will be forgiven for thinking that this must mean there has been a spate of left-wing terrorism we haven’t heard about but, in fact, the threats are coming from right-wingers who are convinced that these federal officials have been too soft on the younger Biden. Apparently, there has been “a dramatic uptick in threats against FBI agents that has coincided with attacks on the FBI and the Justice Department by congressional Republicans and former President Donald Trump.” 

And let’s not forget the right-wing media which has been hammering this for months, and in the process encouraging their febrile audience to believe that everything coming out of the FBI and the Justice Department is being manipulated by the White House and the career FBI officials and prosecutors are all Democratic operatives. It is the only way they can explain the fact that their Dear Leader, Donald Trump, has been credibly accused of more crimes, corruption and malfeasance than any president in American history. If they were to admit that all these law enforcement personnel and judicial officers have had ample reason to believe that Trump is guilty, they would have to admit that they are blithering fools. 

You would think that they would feel just a bit chagrined however, to learn yesterday that Hunter Biden has now been indicted on three federal felony charges for lying on a form to obtain a gun and is on the verge of going to trial to potentially face many years in prison if he is convicted. After all, they have been demanding that Hunter Biden be charged with a crime and now he has been. But no. It’s not good enough. Not good enough at all. Let’s just say that this news is unlikely to result in fewer threats against the FBI and the prosecutors. Let’s hope they are all well protected.

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House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said that it’s a “small start” but is fit to be tied that they’ve only charged a crime that no one can say had anything to do with Joe Biden. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz quipped, “Getting Hunter Biden on the gun charge is like getting Jeffrey Dahmer on littering.” They want special counsel David Weiss to indict Hunter Biden on all the crimes they’ve fabricated in their fever dreams, particularly the fantasies about President Joe Biden running an international influence peddling operation and human trafficking ring.

The sad truth of the matter is that in this case there really is a two-tiered system: Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes would never be prosecuted if he weren’t the president’s son.

It doesn’t appear that Weiss is going to do that, largely because there is no evidence of any such thing. But most legal observers believe that the special counsel may be on the verge of indicting Hunter Biden on the tax charges he previously pleaded guilty to, in which he admitted that he had filed his returns late for two years. (He has paid them in full.) And that too will leave the right-wingers unsatisfied. They suspect that Hunter Biden’s taxes are a treasure trove of evidence that he and his supposedly senile father are criminal masterminds if only someone would look hard enough to find it.

In other words, their preposterous crusade to have Hunter Biden and Joe Biden put behind bars in order to prove that Donald Trump is an innocent man isn’t going away. 

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The sad truth of the matter is that in this case there really is a two-tiered system: Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes would never be prosecuted if he weren’t the president’s son. Filing taxes late in and of itself is usually a civil crime, as demonstrated by the Justice Department’s treatment of Trump crony Roger Stone. And virtually no one with a clean criminal record who never even shot the gun or used it in the commission of a crime (he only had it for about 11 days) would ever see the inside of a courtroom. According to the New York Times, even Weiss confided that no other American would not be prosecuted on the evidence against Hunter.

Mr. Weiss told an associate that he preferred not to bring any charges, even misdemeanors, against Mr. Biden because the average American would not be prosecuted for similar offenses. (A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.)

But then the politics kicked in:

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.

Ah yes, the vaunted whistleblowers who claim that the Justice Department stopped them from getting at the truth about Joe and Hunter’s suspected nefarious criminal tax crimes. This claim has been denied by the DOJ, Weiss and others who were present at the meetings the whistleblowers say proved their allegations. 

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Despite the political pressure to throw the book at Biden, Weiss’ office didn’t really have the goods so they settled on a plea deal that blew up in court on the day it was to be settled. That agreement had Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges (those late filings) and agreeing to a so-called “diversion” program in which he agreed to never try to purchase a gun again and would not use any controlled substance or drink alcohol for two years. But the judge called into question the constitutionality of the diversion terms and it also became clear that while Biden’s lawyers had logically assumed that this agreement represented the conclusion of the case, the prosecution had decided they weren’t closing it after all. 

So now, irony of ironies, Hunter Biden is facing a felony gun charge in federal court and right-wingers who insist that the right to bear arms is so unfettered that even terrorists can’t be denied their constitutional right to own them are cheering it on. 

As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes likes to say, after seeing these charges he’s decided not to vote for Hunter Biden for president or any other office — which is exactly the point. Hunter Biden is a messed up man who ran a sleazy business in which he traded on his daddy’s name, like generations of offspring of powerful men. But he is not running for anything so there’s really no need for all this hype. And according to a 538 analysis of the polling, all the nervousness that it’s going to hurt the president politically is overblown. Mainly it’s serving the purpose of hurting Joe Biden personally which is part of the plan.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said the other day that she wants to make the impeachment inquiry “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden” so I’m sure nothing makes her and her fellow GOP sadists happier than for his troubled surviving son to be put through the legal wringer. If they could make it bad enough for Hunter to crack under pressure and lose his sobriety, it would make their year. It doesn’t even have to have any political purpose. They just want to see Joe Biden suffer. 

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about the GOP’s anti-Biden efforts

Why the CDC has recommended new COVID boosters for all

Everyone over the age of 6 months should get the latest covid-19 booster, a federal expert panel recommended Tuesday after hearing an estimate that universal vaccination could prevent 100,000 more hospitalizations each year than if only the elderly were vaccinated.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 13-1 for the motion after months of debate about whether to limit its recommendation to high-risk groups. A day earlier, the FDA approved the new booster, stating it was safe and effective at protecting against the covid variants currently circulating in the U.S.

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Long COVID is devastating and far from rare. As infections rise again, why are we still ignoring it?

After the last booster was released, in 2022, only 17% of the U.S. population got it — compared with the roughly half of the nation who got the first booster after it became available in fall 2021. Broader uptake was hurt by pandemic weariness and evidence the shots don’t always prevent covid infections. But those who did get the shot were far less likely to get very sick or die, according to data presented at Tuesday’s meeting.

The virus sometimes causes severe illness even in those without underlying conditions, causing more deaths in children than other vaccine-preventable diseases, as chickenpox did before vaccines against those pathogens were universally recommended.

The number of hospitalized patients with covid has ticked up modestly in recent weeks, CDC data shows, and infectious disease experts anticipate a surge in the late fall and winter.

The shots are made by Moderna and by Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, which have decided to charge up to $130 a shot. They have launched national marketing campaigns to encourage vaccination. The advisory committee deferred a decision on a third booster, produced by Novavax, because the FDA hasn’t yet approved it. Here’s what to know:

Who should get the covid booster?

The CDC advises that everyone over 6 months old should, for the broader benefit of all. Those at highest risk of serious disease include babies and toddlers, the elderly, pregnant women, and people with chronic health conditions including obesity. The risks are lower — though not zero — for everyone else. The vaccines, we’ve learned, tend to prevent infection in most people for only a few months. But they do a good job of preventing hospitalization and death, and by at least diminishing infections they may slow spread of the disease to the vulnerable, whose immune systems may be too weak to generate a good response to the vaccine.

Pablo Sánchez, a pediatrics professor at The Ohio State University who was the lone dissenter on the CDC panel, said he was worried the boosters hadn’t been tested enough, especially in kids. The vaccine strain in the new boosters was approved only in June, so nearly all the tests were done in mice or monkeys. However, nearly identical vaccines have been given safely to billions of people worldwide.

When should you get it?

The vaccine makers say they’ll begin rolling out the vaccine this week. If you’re in a high-risk group and haven’t been vaccinated or been sick with covid in the past two months, you could get it right away, says John Moore, an immunology expert at Weill Cornell Medical College. If you plan to travel this holiday season, as he does, Moore said, it would make sense to push your shot to late October or early November, to maximize the period in which protection induced by the vaccine is still high.

Who will pay for it?

When the ACIP recommends a vaccine for children, the government is legally obligated to guarantee kids free coverage, and the same holds for commercial insurance coverage of adult vaccines. For the 25 to 30 million uninsured adults, the federal government created the Bridge Access Program. It will pay for rural and community health centers, as well as Walgreens, CVS, and some independent pharmacies, to provide covid shots for free. Manufacturers have agreed to donate some of the doses, CDC officials said.

Will this new booster work against the current variants of covid?

It should. More than 90% of currently circulating strains are closely related to the variant selected for the booster earlier this year, and studies showed the vaccines produced ample antibodies against most of them. The shots also appeared to produce a good immune response against a divergent strain that initially worried people, called BA.2.86. That strain represents fewer than 1% of cases currently. Moore calls it a “nothingburger.”

Why are some doctors not gung-ho about the booster?

Experience with the covid vaccines has shown that their protection against hospitalization and death lasts longer than their protection against illness, which wanes relatively quickly, and this has created widespread skepticism. Most people in the U.S. have been ill with covid and most have been vaccinated at least once, which together are generally enough to prevent grave illness, if not infection — in most people. Many doctors think the focus should be on vaccinating those truly at risk.

With new covid boosters, plus flu and RSV vaccines, how many shots should I expect to get this fall?

People tend to get sick in the late fall because they’re inside more and may be traveling and gathering in large family groups. This fall, for the first time, there’s a vaccine — for older adults — against respiratory syncytial virus. Kathryn Edwards, a 75-year-old Vanderbilt University pediatrician, plans to get all three shots but “probably won’t get them all together,” she said. Covid “can have a punch” and some of the RSV vaccines and the flu shot that’s recommended for people 65 and older also can cause sore arms and, sometimes, fever or other symptoms. A hint emerged from data earlier this year that people who got flu and covid shots together might be at slightly higher risk of stroke. That linkage seems to have faded after further study, but it still might be safer not to get them together.

Pfizer and Moderna are both testing combination vaccines, with the first flu-covid shot to be available as early as next year.

Has this booster version been used elsewhere in the world?

Nope, although Pfizer’s shot has been approved in the European Union, Japan, and South Korea, and Moderna has won approval in Japan and Canada. Rollouts will start in the U.S. and other countries this week.

Unlike in earlier periods of the pandemic, mandates for the booster are unlikely. But “it’s important for people to have access to the vaccine if they want it,” said panel member Beth Bell, a professor of public health at the University of Washington.

“Having said that, it’s clear the risk is not equal, and the messaging needs to clarify that a lot of older people and people with underlying conditions are dying, and they really need to get a booster,” she said.

ACIP member Sarah Long, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, voted for a universal recommendation but said she worried it was not enough. “I think we’ll recommend it and nobody will get it,” she said. “The people who need it most won’t get it.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Enough with the Mitt Romney adulation! The GOP hasn’t been a serious “policy” party in decades

The Beltway press’ longing for a stern-but-loving Republican daddy, who will bring our naughty nation in line, has always had an erotic tinge to it. In a widely shared Atlantic piece, drawn from his upcoming biography of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, McKay Coppins allowed the subtext to edge alarmingly close to the text.  “[O]ne can’t help but become a little suspicious of his handsomeness,” Coppins gushes. “The jowl-free jawline. The all-seasons tan. The just-so gray at the temples of that thick black coif.”

It seems Georgia politician Stacey Abrams isn’t the only one moonlighting as a steamy romance author. I rolled my eyes throughout Coppins’ piece, except for the parts where Romney dropped the daddy act to share bitchy gossip about his fellow senators. But, as far as mainstream pundits are concerned, Romney can totally get it. Coppins’ article was released simultaneously with Romney’s announcement that he’s retiring from the Senate, and the reception Romney got was fawning. 

“Romney bows out, leaving a legacy that would make his father proud,” read the Washington Post headline of a Karen Tumulty column. She went so far as to credit Romney with “paving the way for national health-care reform,” ignoring the fact that Romney ran for president in 2012 on a promise to repeal Obamacare. Tumulty’s take was typical, as the press drowned Romney in words like “noble,” “principled,” and “courageous.” The hosannas on the “liberal” MSNBC grew to deafening levels.

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All of this adulation is due mainly to the fact that Romney is the rare Republican holding elected office who is willing to state the obvious: That Donald Trump is a monster and a criminal who has no business in elected office.

But the problem with all of this Romney love is not that I personally feel sexually harassed by it. It’s that it fails to account for how Romney and other “traditional” Republicans are responsible for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement. And not just because Romney and his ilk were only too happy to play along with Trump, even as he was pushing the racist “birther” conspiracy theory during the 2012 election cycle. It’s because they spent decades married to policy views that range from wildly unpopular to bat guano terrible, making it easy for a demagogue to come in with a platform of “who cares about policy, let’s just be super-racist.” 

Romney obviously disagrees, praising himself for supposedly being the sober-minded policy guy:

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But he won’t acknowledge that the rampant policy failures of Republicans are why the party has no path forward, except to become a fascist cult focused on settling imaginary scores. So let’s review some of the greatest hits of the pre-Trump era of traditional Republican “ideas.” 

All this adulation is due mainly to the fact that Romney is the rare Republican holding elected office who is willing to state the obvious: That Donald Trump is a monster and a criminal who has no business in elected office.

Cutting taxes for the rich: This has been the number one Republican priority for decades, even though the first George Bush admitted it was “voodoo economics.” After decades of rising income inequality, no one believes the money will “trickle down” to everyone else. It has no real support outside of the wealthy people who benefit. Eight in 10 Americans disapprove of this policy. Even 43% of Republican voters don’t like it. 

“Family values.” It’s not just that most Americans now support abortion rights and same-sex marriage. People are souring on the religious right and even abandoning religion altogether in record numbers. 

Invading Iraq: I won’t belabor how terrible this was. I will just remind readers that it was the signature “achievement” of the last Republican president before Trump. 

Health care: As far as I can tell, the GOP view of health care policy amounts to, “Have you considered just dying?” As with many issues, their own voters reject the party’s views, and will routinely vote to give themselves Medicaid even as party leaders try to stop them. 

Climate change denialism. Not talked about much in the press, but there’s good reason to believe that decades of flat-out denying basic scientific facts did serious damage to the GOP in the eyes of younger voters. Trump may be a gold medal-level Olympian in the sport of lying, but he is building on a legacy of Republicans who would lie about the existence of gravity, if it pleases their corporate masters.

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One could go on forever, but the bigger picture is this: On policy, Republicans simply have nothing to offer. They won’t improve people’s lives or fix existing problems. They only survived as long as they did because of gerrymandering and a tilted electoral map, backed by an unbelievable amount of money spent on right-wing propaganda like Fox News. 

Trump understands the power of cynicism in politics all too well, and so was able to exploit this situation. He just sidestepped the policy issue altogether and instead offered something different: Naked hatred. Bigotry. Exciting conspiracy theories. And, crucially, a desire to destroy democracy altogether. After all, debating policy only matters if you’re trying to persuade people. If your goal is to crush them under your boot, there is no need to worry overmuch if they like your policies or not. 

Again, Trump wouldn’t have gone this far without traditional Republicans like Romney laying the groundwork for decades. Republicans have long known that their policy views are unpopular and won’t win them elections, and so they’ve increasingly looked for ways to get power through cheating. Mainly, that was by passing laws that restricted voting access for people of color and young people, who tend to lean more Democratic. Romney is one of the guilty parties in this, even going so far as to compare President Joe Biden’s efforts to protect voting rights with Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

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Romney whined that voting rights advocates accuse their opponents of having “racist inclinations.” But what matters here is not what is in anyone’s heart. It’s totally possible, likely even, that many Republicans back voter suppression not because they hate Black people, but because they hate losing elections. But the effect of these laws and this rhetoric is the same: It implanted and reinforced the idea, with Republican voters, that there is something tawdry and illegitimate about Black people voting. Trump exploited that sensibility with his Big Lie, which rested on accusations that votes from racially diverse cities are necessarily “frauds.” 

There were many opportunities over the years for Republicans to forge another path. They could have moderated their views on social issues.  They could have gone the route of Richard Nixon, conceding that environmental concerns should trump a mindless anti-regulatory stance. They could have raised taxes on the rich with the pro-capitalist argument that it increases business investment. Considering that they still got nearly half of the votes with their unpopular policies, they really didn’t have to change much at all to be successful. Just be slightly less terrible on some issue, any issue. 

But they didn’t do that and increasingly had nothing positive to offer to voters. That opened the door for an authoritarian demagogue, who built his power not on policy ideas, but on a promise he would hurt all the folks that conservative white people don’t like. Romney doesn’t deserve an ounce of credit. He may be unhappy with what his own failure of imagination helped usher in, but ultimately, this is still largely the fault of him and other “traditional” Republicans. 

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about Republican decay

GOP’s phony impeachment will backfire — Trump and McCarthy will pay the price

On Tuesday, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and their Freedom Caucus allies, along with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announced an evidence-free impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. They were doing what members of the MAGA cult do — taking their marching orders from Donald Trump.

They are not motivated by a devotion to their public duty or by a desire to protect the Republic. Instead, as Greene admitted, they only want to make the impeachment inquiry  “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” 

In two significant respects, this has every prospect of backfiring. 

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It may well ensure that Republicans lose control of the House in 2024, as already looks likely. And it could also give Joe Biden a boost as he runs for re-election, presumably against Donald Trump himself or, hypothetically, some MAGA-infused successor.

The framers of the U.S. Constitution intended impeachment as the most serious charge the legislative branch could launch against a member of another branch. It was meant only for “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” not for charges based on smoke, mirrors and a desire for  political retaliation. 

As Alexander Hamilton wrote, if the impeachment power is misused it can “agitate the passions of the whole community, and … divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.” Hamilton called on those who wield this power to act with due regard for its “delicacy and magnitude.” 

But there is nothing delicate about what the Republicans are now doing. 

Having been through two serious and substantive impeachments of Donald Trump, one for trying to overturn the Constitution after the 2020 election, and another for trying to extort an investigation of Joe Biden relating to Ukraine, the fact-based American majority understands all this. 

Having been through two serious and substantive impeachments of Donald Trump, the fact-based American majority understands this impeachment inquiry is political theater.

Retiring Sen. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, stated in a book excerpt published this week in The Atlantic: “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.” Exhibit A is the Republican House impeachment “inquiry.”

With hard-right MAGA activists pushing for and publicizing attempts to trivialize the impeachment power, most Americans are unlikely to accept Republican attempts to destroy the ultimate constitutional check placed on the presidency.

Let’s look at the two potential prospects for backfire.

First, the Republican majority in the House is razor thin, with only five seats to spare. Eighteen Republican members come from districts won by Joe Biden in 2022. Few, if any, of those can afford to be seen as supporting impeachment in the absence of any evidence of serious wrongdoing. 

Astonishingly, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the House Oversight Committee chair — who, along with Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, has run point on anti-Biden hearings — has admitted that after a year and a half of investigating, Republicans have produced no evidence of any crime or misbehavior by the president. 

On Fox News last month, Rep. Nick Langworthy, a Republican from upstate New York, said that GOP investigators had “never claimed that we have direct money going to the president.” 

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In other words, the MAGA crew wants us to believe that it’s OK for them to proceed against Biden without evidence of wrongdoing because they never claimed to have any in the first place. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who represents one of the 18 Biden-friendly districts, observed that “to do an inquiry, you need direct evidence.”

The lack of any supporting evidence of “High Crimes or Misdemeanors” helps explain why McCarthy announced an “inquiry” without calling for a vote by the full House. Republicans in Biden districts don’t want to be on the record supporting a fact-free impeachment. 

Instead, they want to keep their seats, and the people they represent know what is really going on. According to MSNBC, a poll of voters in those 18 districts found that a clear majority “said an impeachment inquiry would be “a partisan political stunt,” and the same majority “said an inquiry would be more about helping former President Donald Trump.” 

For irony, it’s hard to beat Tuesday’s reporting from Politico: In January 2020, Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department issued a memorandum saying that “impeachment inquiries by the House are invalid unless the chamber takes formal votes to authorize them.” 

McCarthy himself was for that idea, before he was against it. 

On Sept. 1 he told Breitbart News, “[I]f we move forward with an impeachment inquiry, it would occur through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person.”

His flip-flop this week followed intense pressure from his right flank, which may be a new low for McCarthy’s impotent speakership. As former Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN on Wednesday, “it isn’t worth it to be speaker to abdicate that much jurisdiction over the House.”

For now, that abdication may allow McCarthy to hold on to his job. But it won’t help Republicans retain control of the House next year.

There’s a parallel opportunity for Joe Biden. That’s largely thanks to Donald Trump, the obvious puller of the strings in this impeachment puppet show. He has proven to be a master at creating electoral blowback for Republicans.

After winning the presidency in 2016 (thanks to a near-flukish Electoral College outcome), Trump led his party to the “blue wave” of the 2018 midterms and defeat in the 2020 presidential election. He then helped prevent the expected Republican wave election of 2022 by recruiting and backing extremist candidates in competitive districts.

Democrats’ overperformance in state elections has been impressive so far in 2023, according to Brent Peabody of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security. The party’s candidates have outpaced Biden’s 2020 performance by an average of 8%. 

Similarly, recent state and national polling cited by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn supports the idea that Biden has increased his likely margins in key battleground states.

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The point here is that independents, whose votes decide national American elections, see through the lies of the MAGA House to the reality of the pain it has inflicted on America. Those voters want the government to address real problems, like increasing wages, improving infrastructure, reducing prescription costs and dealing with other issues that help everyone. They see clearly that impeaching Biden and shutting down the government are nothing but political theater. 

As the Washington Post put it, McCarthy and his caucus have thrown “impeachment chum into the waters” because they are struggling to “accomplish the basic tasks of governance.”

Impeachment without evidence in 2023 is much like the 2016 Republican-led Benghazi hearings which produced no serious evidence of wrongdoing. At the time, McCarthy himself said the quiet part out loud when he admitted that those hearings were not about facts but were about destroying trust in Hillary Clinton.

House Republicans today are offering a rerun of that politically motivated abuse of congressional power. Trump himself has acknowledged that this year’s impeachment effort is pure vengeance: “Either impeach the bum, or fade into oblivion,” he posted on social media. “They did it to us!” 

As Jonathan Chait wrote on Wednesday, “Republicans have been threatening a revenge impeachment against the next Democratic president literally since Trump’s first impeachment.”

Sensible Americans have seen what having Trump in power has meant for them and this country. In 2016, he won in part because Democrats failed to respond adequately to Benghazi. 

When asked on Wednesday about the impeachment “inquiry,” Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania responded sarcastically, “Oh my gosh. It’s devastating. Please don’t do it.”

In 2022, activists organized what is effectively a “war room” operating to counter the phony Jordan-Comer “investigations.” Just this week, they launched ads targeting the 18 Biden district Republicans. Biden, too, has a team focused on answering the fabricated charges. 

Fortunately, he has some history on his side, namely the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998. Although based on actual evidence of the president’s perjury, it ultimately backfired and increased Clinton’s popularity.

Sen. John Fetterman, the famously plain-spoken Pennsylvania Democrat, understands the potential benefit for Biden. When asked on Wednesday about the impeachment “inquiry,” he responded sarcastically, “Oh my gosh. It’s devastating.”

“Don’t do it. Please don’t do it,” he added in mock horror. 

But the current House majority doesn’t have a great record of picking up on such warnings or heeding the dictates of political reason.

They are showing, as Hamilton warned, that impeachment can be misused by “leaders or … tools of the most cunning faction … and on this account, can hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.” 

But the judgment that Trump, McCarthy and company should fear is not just the judgment of history. Long before that, millions of American voters will deliver their verdict on Election Day.

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from Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut

“Could spell doom for Trump”: Experts on why Fani Willis’ first trial is a big deal

Judge Scott McAfee on Thursday approved an expedited trial for two of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, attorneys Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, severing their case from those of the other 17 defendants.

Trump and 18 co-defendants were charged last month over their efforts to reverse the ex-president’s defeat in the 2020 election in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis used Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to have all 19 defendants in the case stand trial together.

But Judge McAfee said that severing the remaining 17 defendants was “a procedural and logistical inevitability” and said the courthouse “simply contained no courtroom adequately large enough to hold all 19 defendants,” as ABC News reported.

This ruling “was a big win for Trump and the other defendants,” Neama Rahmani, former federal prosecutor, told Salon. “They’ll get a preview of the witness testimony before they are tried and will be able to more effectively prepare for cross-examination and rebutting the prosecution’s arguments.” Rahmani also said it was a loss for federal special counsel Jack Smith as well as for Willis, and speculated that Smith might wonder “why Willis took a ‘kitchen sink’ approach instead of the more targeted strategy that he did, charging only Trump.”

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Severing the two defendants’ cases will have a “series of ramifications,” including increasing the workload on the Georgia prosecutors and creating more strain on the state’s judicial resources, said Temidayo Aganga-Williams, a white-collar partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and a former investigator for the House Jan. 6 select committee.

Chesebro and Powell, who are now set to go to trial Oct. 23, appeared in court on Thursday to request that all transcripts of the Georgia special grand jury be unsealed, and that they be allowed to speak to the grand jurors who indicted them in August on charges related to the 2020 election. They appear to be suggesting that perhaps not all the grand jurors had thoroughly reviewed the entire 98-page indictment, which is not entirely implausible given that the jury appeared to reach a decision after meeting for just one day. 

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“Their legal strategy is clearly to leave no stone unturned,” Aganga-Williams said, adding that in a case of this importance that’s actually how it should be” “With a prosecutor’s office handling 19 defendants that include a former president, defendants aggressively filing every defensible motion is certainly to be expected.” This case will be an “epic legal battle,” Aganga-Williams added, and “it is only just beginning.”

Judge McAfee suggested that he might allow Chesebro and Powell’s defense team to speak to the grand jury, but likely not the defendants themselves. That was the best way, he said, to “accommodate the case law” governing grand jury secrecy while still allowing the defense “to make sure that the grand jury fulfilled its duty in a manner recognized by law,” as reported by The Messenger.

Since grand jury proceedings are typically kept confidential, even this concession would be highly unusual. “Chesebro and Powell are likely asking for this information to find shortcomings in how the Fulton County district attorney obtained the indictment,” Aganga-Williams said. Even a minor procedural failure on Willis’ part could lead to a defense motion to dismissall charges. “This would be a long shot,” Aganga-Williams said, but “any effort that forces Willis to start from scratch will surely be worth a try for these defendants.”

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McAfee has not yet ruled on Chesebro’s motion to unseal transcripts from the special grand jury, which is not the same jury that the defense team hopes to address. This would be the first Fulton County panel convened by Willis, which conducted investigations and recommended charges but did not have the power to indict anyone.  

Although this trial will not include Donald Trump, Aganga-Williams said the former president will be at great legal risk. “If Willis can successfully handle this first trial, it could spell doom for Trump,” Aganga-Williams said, and potential convictions of both Chesebro and Powell could “lead to a cascade of cooperation that only strengthens the state’s case” as more co-defendants turn against their leader.

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about the endless Trump drama

Conan O’Brien says that Trump “hurting comedy” is his biggest crime

During a recent appearance on New York Magazine journalist Kara Swisher’s podcast, Conan O’Brien made a joke out of Trump by saying that Trump jokes just aren’t funny.

Explaining why he never really went in hard on Trump material like many of his fellow comedians have, O’Brien broke it down with, “So I always thought when Trump came along, what a lot of people have to revert to is: ‘Doesn’t he suck? I hate that guy. He’s an a**hole . . . And those aren’t jokes.”

Trying it out for himself a bit, he made mention of Trump’s legal woes, quipping, “I think the January 6 thing is a blip compared to how much he’s hurt comedy.”

Comparing making jokes about Trump to parodying The National Enquirer, he further explained why Trump material doesn’t bring the LOLs, saying, “If you go and buy a real National Enquirer, it says, ‘Elvis sighted in UFO; he has tentacles for arms. Ghost baby turns into vampire and attacks Michael Jackson’s ghost. There’s no way to parody that. You can’t parody something that already has that crazy irregular shape. It’s not possible.”