“If they shout at me, I’ll shout back”: Eddie Izzard talks comedy, transphobia and taking a stand

“I’m trying to stay on the edge forever,” says Eddie Izzard. And in a career that’s encompassed multiple stand-up specials, numerous television and film roles, a Tony Award nomination and seemingly indefatigable activism, fundraising and political campaigning, she’s doing a healthy job of it. Now, she’s once again trying something new — by trying something a little older.

In her current comedy tour The Remix, launching in Nashville in September, Izzard revisits and reimagines the classic routines from her 35 year career. “In stand-up, we quite often don’t ever go to the old hits,” she told me on “Salon Talks.” “It’s almost a little bit biographical. This is me going back and doing some of the things that people may not know so well, but also remixing them.” For example, she explained, “Death Star Canteen” will be in there, but Darth Vader has to say different things. Otherwise, I just lose it.”

Izzard also opened about what it was like coming out in the mid-’80s, recalling, “It was tough then. I had realized that being trans, we didn’t even have the word. It was just like, if you were trans, you were a non-person, you were a toxic person.” Today, Izzard told me she remains a hopeful, “glass is two thirds full” person. Watch the “Salon Talks” episode with Eddie Izzard here, where she discussed why she also now answers to Suzy and how as she’s journeying through our politically divided country, “I’m not fighting any wars. They’re fighting wars. I’m just doing gigs.”

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

This tour that you’re doing is very Taylor Swift with the Eras Tour. You’re doing the hits.

Most bands do this. From the [Rolling] Stones and the Beatles on, they do go to the old hits when they tour. In stand-up, we quite often don’t ever go to the old hits, so this is me going back and doing some of the things that people may not know so well, but also remixing them. Remember when Madonna did “Like a Virgin,” and she did it very much in a Berlin kind of style, slowed the speed right down? Just remixing the stuff, that makes it more interesting for me.

I’m coming out of drama, Tony-nominated. “Great Expectations,” the show that I’ve been doing most recently in New York and London, to very good reviews, I must say. I’m very happy with those from New York and London. That was drama, and now it’s back to comedy. Politics looms in the future. It’s a busy last two years.

Yes, you did a one-person show where you played 21 characters. You ran for office. You’ve said you’re going to keep running until you win.

Yeah. It’s selection as opposed to office. Running for office in America, you would say that you went for election, and it didn’t happen. This is just selection, like your primaries. I did one primary, and that didn’t happen. I came second in that, but that was good. Good to do that, get that into your bones. Now I’m running for Brighton Pavilion, which is in the south of our country and a very groovy seat. I’m going for selection in that, and if I win that, then I can run for election. Then I can run for office, or become a member of Parliament for that. But that’s later. That’s next year. Right now it’s the tour.

One big theme in your life and your career is things that come around again. It feels like this is really about a dialogue with your fans and with your audiences. I’ve never heard of anyone doing something quite like this in comedy.

“It was very positive for my mental health to be honest rather than to lie.”

I think I articulated it more like, the humanity goes circle, the world, the eternity, the universe. That’s the big thing of the circular nature. We start off as small children and we end up as older people and the actions of both are kind of similar, and then they return to the earth and become stardust. And then it goes back round again and comes out as a different view. I don’t believe in reincarnation. Maybe that happens. I had a show called “Circle” that was supposed to be all about that, but in the end it didn’t quite end up articulating that.

I always go back to my roots. Mum died when I was six, and I’m always trying to go back and maybe restart, have another life where Mum didn’t disappear from the earth, and that’s never going to happen. But I do find myself going back. In that way, that’s circling around.

Some of these pieces that I’ve done before, these scenes, these sketches, have become sort of beloved by people that know them. I will be going through them and going through the earliest jokes I ever did. It’s almost a little bit biographical what I’m doing. That’s what I found interesting. It wasn’t designed as that way, but here’s I think the first joke and the second gig I ever did; this was the first one that got laughs. I can show things as they developed. It’s quite curious.

I hope the people will like it, because one thing I’ve refused to do, is do old material. This is a whole. Bands are doing it, they’re taking albums they love, saying, “This is just this album.” I could have done just “Dress To Kill,” but decided to go through the first 35 years of my career. That’s what I’m trawling through. And I can go anywhere and I might change it night to night, as well.

It’s returning to this person you were 35 years ago.

I don’t think I’ve changed much. It’s interesting, this thing of, “Can you stay on the edge as you get older?” There’s this thing, particularly with bands, that they do their best work in their 20s and then that’s it. But Picasso was doing great stuff late in his life. There are some scientists, creative people doing stuff as they get older. You don’t have to have lost it all in your early years.

I’ve been doing “Great Expectations,” and I’ve got “Hamlet” coming up later in January in New York, so I’m trying to stay on the edge forever so that I’m never going, “Ah, let’s just do some beer commercials and phone this stuff in.” That’s why I’m remixing all the early stuff instead of just saying, “This is how I did it exactly, back then.” I’m trying to refine new stuff.

“They’re fighting wars. I’m just doing gigs.”

“Death Star Canteen” will be in there, but Darth Vader has to say different things. Otherwise, I just lose it. Otherwise it becomes a prayer. I’m not a religious person and I know America’s more wrapped up in religion, but we aren’t in Europe because we had that second World War on our landmass. I think that’s the difference.

I find that prayers in religion, people say them, but they don’t mean them. They don’t think about what they’re saying. You have to actually take the words apart and say it in your own words, and then you’d mean it. I find this even with stand-up, or with music, if you’re singing the same thing or if you’re saying the same sketch, the same piece that you did before, you can just go through the motion as opposed to the delight of when you first found it, so that’s why I have to remix it.

You’ve also remixed your name this year.

Yeah.

You’ve added something else to your identity, Suzy. You’ve said this was something that you’d been thinking about since you were a child.

When I was 10 there was a great Sidney Poitier film called “To Sir, with Love.” It’s a great film of teaching people to find their own self-respect. One of the other teachers is played by Suzy Kendall, and I just liked the name, the spelling of it, because Suzy could be spelt in about four or five different ways. I thought that was a name that I liked, and I knew I was trans. I didn’t have the word for trans or transgender back then when I was 10, so I’d already worked it out when I was four or five that something was different with me.

“I thought, I’d like to have that name if I could be a girl, but I’m not a girl it seems.”

I thought, I’d like to have that name if I could be a girl, but I’m not a girl it seems. Later on, I adjusted my pronouns. I prefer she/her, but I don’t mind being him, so no one can make a mistake with me. I thought, well, I’ll just add in this name into my name, so that it’ll be Suzy or Eddie. My brother’s staying with Eddie, my director, she wants to stay with Eddie. Other people are going with Suzy, and some people are delighting. I get an extra Z as well. I’ve got all these Z’s, as you would say in America. I have three Z’s, and it’s Suzy Izzard.

I experienced this in Britain, I could experience this on tour in America as well, people shouting, “Eddie, Suzy, Suzy, Eddie,” shouting both names at me, which is fun. I’m trying to avoid the mistake thing, the problem thing. “Oh, have I gone wrong there?” No one can go wrong with me, unless they call me Arthur or Sabrina or something, and then that’s when it’s going wrong.

The public name is saying Eddie Izzard. I thought I’d do that, and I’m trying to take some of the problems out of being open and being positive about yourself and simply, “Oh, I shouldn’t say this, I should say this.” With me, I am gender-fluid. I’ve always said I’m gender-fluid, and I’ve been out almost 40 years now, so it’s a long time.

You came out, in the mid-’80s when there was a lot of conversation about gender and what it looked like artistically. What was it like coming out then?

It was tough then. I had realized that being trans, we didn’t even have the word. Transgender was obviously a word, but no one was really using it. TV and TS were the letters for transverse and transsexual. But the identity, the language has changed as it has. For a number of different communities over the years, they’ve changed their language, time has moved on, but there were no discussions. It was just like, if you were trans, you were a non-person, you were a toxic person.

“I prefer she/her, but I don’t mind being him, so no one can make a mistake with me.”

Even though there’s a lot of discussions, heated discussions, it’s in a better place. There were no discussions before, so now more and more trans people have said, “Actually, that is me.” As anyone knows who’s got a sensible mind, there have been many LGBTQ+ people over millennia who have not come out because they felt or they knew that the society that they were in were just going to frown upon it, be very aggressive against it, and they would be treated as a non-person or a toxic person. So I will just lie about this.

In this world of Trump lies, the right-wing lies, they just found they could lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and get a long way on that one. Trump particularly, and Boris Johnson in our country, just make stuff up. That’s a crazy thing. Actually coming out and being honest about your situation, it must be very scary to the right wing.

Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, they were happy to lie about the things. And then they had to pay, was it half a billion fine, for the lying? And then just they didn’t apologize. They just carried on. They’re happy to lie, and we’re happy to tell the truth. I think that’s the difference.

For my transgender daughter, there are only 18 States of America

I think also what’s threatening to certain people on the right is the idea that there can be more than one truth, or that truth can evolve. You’ve said that sometimes you lean more into the masculine and at other times you’ve leaned more into the feminine, that who you are truthfully can be fluid.

I wouldn’t say that the truth has moved, it’s just that I try to articulate it more clearly for myself. It seems that the truth is that everyone’s somewhere on the spectrum. If you’re dealing with the right wing, you’re dealing out-and-out made up stuff if you go through what Trump said. Lie after lie, piles of lies. Huge pile of lies. We’re just trying to express the truth as openly and as clearly as possible.

Instead of leaning one way, I’d say more that sometimes I feel I wanted to express one side more than the other side. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to get to a place where it’s really not going to matter. People, if they came from another planet, they’d say, well, you’re just humans, aren’t you? You’d say, “No, some of us are straight, some of us are gay. Some of these are men; these are women.”

We know that everyone’s a girl in the fetus. Then some get coded men, some get coded women, or boys or girls. There’s a lot of things in an XX and XY already with the chromosomes, already mixed. As we go more towards the more enlightened center and left, we say, “Just live and let live. It’s my own personal life.”

These are right-wing culture wars. They want people hating each other. That’s what they feed off because then people get scared and they say, “Wow, we’ll vote right wing and we will clamp down on everything.” This is the thing that the right wing tends to do. There is no war going on. It’s just people trying to be truthful, trying to be open and honest.

You are starting this tour in the American South, in a place in the world where rights for trans people have been rolled back, where the divisiveness is really front and center in a unique way. Was that intentional about starting the conversation there, about starting this new phase?

No, I’m not fighting any wars. They’re fighting wars. I’m just doing gigs. I realize that it’s been politicized and the right wing wants to have a war because it works for them, gets people scared. They’ll only be scared. I’m just doing my comedy. I’m talking about existence and humanity in 38 billion years. I talk about from the beginning of the Big Bang and whether that’s endless. I think time is circular.

“The truth is that everyone’s somewhere on the spectrum.”

Nashville was chosen and that’s just where we’re starting. It was availability. A lot of people are touring after COVID, so the actual where to start, where to go, it’s much simpler than that. It’s just like, “That one’s free. We’ll start there, then we’ll go there and then we’ll go there.”

I have played all 50 states in America. I’ve played 45 countries, and I’m performing in four languages. I’m just trying to be myself, open, honest, upfront, talk about things. The comedy, it’s not political really. The politics is political, that I do. The comedy is more surreal, humanist, talking about life and how we get on, and haircuts and anything I want to talk about. Darth Vader going into the Death Star Cantina. These are just observations I have made.

I heard you say in an interview that you like challenging yourself and you like amazing yourself. That is a really interesting bar when so many of us are trying to seek validation from strangers on the internet. How do you that? How do you keep amazing, challenging and impressing yourself?

It might seem that I just want to do challenges, but in fact I’m raising money for Make Humanity Great Again, which is the fund that I raise money for. It’s humanity as opposed to just America, so it’s slightly more inclusive to the 8 billion people. I just try and do things which punch above their weight so that people go, “Oh, that’s weird.” You have to be kind of audacious. You have to do stuff that’s unusual.

In lockdown I was running a marathon on a treadmill, and talking to people because it was so boring on the treadmill. Then I was doing a virtual gig that anyone in the world could link up with, and we were selling tickets for that. All the profits went to charities in the UK and around the world, so that was just a nice thing to do. I keep trying to do that. Doing a one woman show of “Great Expectations,” that was the chance to play all those characters. That’s great, using technique that came from Richard Pryor that I use in my stand-up. “Hamlet” is going to be like that when that happens.

“If people are trying to punch me, I will punch back. If they shout at me, I’ll shout back. I will stand up for myself, and that’s what I want to do.”

And then politics. Brighton Pavilion where I’m standing in down the south coast, it’s a very positive city. I just want to be there, try and help, use my energy. I seem to have energy. I seem to be able to see a more positive future than a negative future. I just look at it that way.

I’m a “glass is two-thirds full” person, which is even better than being a glass is half full person. I’d better be. Coming out back 38 years ago was tough. It’s easier now, even though a number of states in America are trying to pass legislation and be very transphobic. They’re against them being honest, against positivity, and that is not a great thing for them to do in Europe or in America or anywhere in the world. We’ve got to be live and let live in this world, otherwise we’re not going to make it a species.

You’re always thinking about those challenges and about the things that might scare you. What is the thing that’s scaring you now, that you want to do next?

It’s not really that I find scary things to do. It’s that I will, if I think it’s positive, like coming out as being trans. That was honest. That’s true. I’ve known since I was a kid. I don’t want to lie for the rest of my life. I now look back at it and think it was very positive for my mental health to be honest rather than to lie. That scared me, but I thought, “Go out.” Even if in the streets, if people are trying to punch me, I will punch back. If they shout at me, I’ll shout back. I will stand up for myself, and that’s what I want to do. It’s not particularly looking for things that scare me, but if something seems positive but it scares me, I’ll go towards it.

There’s a book, “Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway.” As long as it’s positive, I think that’s great. Some people head in a negative direction. That doesn’t work because sometimes great ideas can be recycled and go in a negative direction. But I’m positive. I’m a live and let live person. I can get on with most people in the world except for the people that encourage people to hate and to fear, and that tends to be the right wing. I always worried about them, because without the right wing, we’d all get on fine, it seems.

Watch more

“Salon Talks” with comedians

“I literally am furious”: MTG and Don Jr. rage after Fox News “blocked” them from debate spin room

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., raged on Wednesday after Fox News prevented her from taking part in a post-GOP debate event on behalf of former President Donald Trump. The right-winger told Right Side Broadcast host Brian Glenn, who is also her boyfriend, that the network denied her entry to the spin room as a surrogate for Trump because he had decided to skip the debate, accusing the network of “censorship.” Fox News “just blocked us out,” she complained in a clip flagged by Raw Story. “They would not allow myself, Matt Gaetz, any other Trump surrogates to go into the spin room… So this is censorship from Fox News. This is censorship, not allowing surrogates for President Trump to go into the spin room… I’m still so mad that we just were blocked out. I literally am furious.”

Donald Trump Jr. also told reporters he was banned from the room after initially being told he could enter. The former president’s eldest son later echoed Greene’s complaint in an early Thursday social media post, accusing Fox of “trying to censor and silence Trump supporters to protect their hand-picked establishment candidates,” calling it a “big reason why their ratings are dying.”

Fox News had previously informed campaigns that only surrogates of candidates attending the debate would be allowed entry, according to a copy of the memo obtained earlier this week by The Hill. It also noted that surrogates of non-participating candidates were able to attend as a guest of one of the cleared media organizations, using their credentials. Several other Trump surrogates, including Gaetz, were able to gain access to the spin room, according to on-the-ground reports from Semafor.

“Sounds like ChatGPT”: Vivek Ramaswamy accused of plagiarizing Obama line at GOP debate

Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called out his fellow hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, during the first GOP debate Wednesday night after Ramaswamy recycled an old line of former President Barack Obama. “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name, and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?” Ramaswamy said during his opening at the Fox News-hosted event. He ripped the line, “a skinny kid with a funny name,” from the then-Illinois state senator’s keynote speech vying for a seat in the U.S. Senate at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Christie noted the reference and fired back moments later. “I’ve had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” he began. “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur.” Ramaswamy responded with a joking call to Christie to “come over and give me a hug” — a reference to Christie hugging Obama in 2012 when he promised quick emergency aid to New Jersey in the wake of Superstorm Sandy — but the audience’s cheers drowned him out. Viewers of the debate also noticed the lifted line with many making the connection online. “‘Skinny guy with a funny name’ sounds very….Obamaesque,” MSNBC host Jen Psaki tweeted.

Yup, sounds familiar. pic.twitter.com/2G6QEVmBFn

— The Recount (@therecount) August 24, 2023

Helen Mirren’s Jewish casting controversy reignited with release of Golda Meir biopic

Helen Mirren – who is not Jewish – is in the news again, this time for playing a Jewish icon.

The release of the Oscar winner’s latest film “Golda,” in which she plays Israel’s only female Prime Minster Golda Meir, has reignited the casting controversy, which she already last year. The Guy Nattiv-directed biopic is hitting theaters on Friday, Aug. 25.

For the record, Mirren initially had questioned Nattiv’s desire to cast her.

“[Meir] is a very important person in Israeli history,” Mirren initially told Daily Mail’s showbiz columnist Baz Bamigboye in early 2022. “I said, ‘Look Guy, I’m not Jewish, and if you want to think about that, and decide to go in a different direction, no hard feelings. I will absolutely understand.’ But he very much wanted me to play the role, and off we went.”

Therefore, she acknowledges that the controversy is “utterly legitimate.” The sentiment might be a balm to those who decried Bradley Cooper’s “Jewface” for wearing a prosthetic nose to play Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein in Netflix’s upcoming biopic “Maestro.”

In an interview with Dujour, Mirren revealed that she spends upwards of three hours in the chair for the makeup and prosthetics needed to transform into Meir. “I got so used to being that person in the daytime that when the makeup all came off and I saw myself as I am, I’d forgotten that was what I looked like,” she confessed.

The latest controversy is all part of the bigger conversation about who gets to play Jewish people, especially when the ethnicity of the character drives the role, which should be taken into account writes actor Maureen Lipman in an op-ed letter in The Guardian.

“Golda” opens in theaters Aug. 25. Watch a trailer via YouTube below.

“Criminal motivations”: Experts say Fani Willis just “skillfully” used Meadows’ words against him

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis laid out her case against former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in a filing to a federal judge who shot down the ex-Trump aide’s attempt to avoid arrest this week.

Willis’ filing came after U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones on Wednesday rejected Meadows’ and former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s bids to halt Fulton criminal proceedings, ensuring they will face arrest this week.

Meadows and Clark both filed to move their cases to federal court, arguing that they were acting under their official duties as federal officials and that they have immunity from charges stemming from those actions.

Mark Meadows runs to federal judge after Fani Willis brutally rejects his attempt to delay arrest

Jones, an Obama appointee, explained that a federal court cannot block their state-level arrest unless it “assumes jurisdiction over a state criminal case.”

“The clear statutory language for removing a criminal prosecution … does not support an injunction or temporary stay prohibiting District Attorney Willis’s enforcement or execution of the arrest warrant,” Jones wrote, adding that defendants can even stand state trial while their motions to move the cases to federal court are pending.

Willis pushed back on Meadows’ bid to halt his arrest, noting that even Trump himself “voluntarily agreed to surrender himself to state authorities, while other defendants have already surrendered.”

Jones has set a hearing for Monday on Meadows’ bid to move the case to federal court.

“The Karen of criminal defendants”: Experts trash indicted Trump co-defendant’s “entitled” demand

Willis in a 22-page filing on Wednesday rejected Meadows’ claim that his efforts to help former President Donald Trump overturn his election loss were part of his official duties.

“He has demonstrated no basis for an objectively reasonable belief that his actions were necessary and proper to perform his duties while evidence demonstrates that he had personal or criminal motivations for acting,” Willis wrote.

Meadows’ attorneys argued in their filing that the Fulton case is “precisely the kind of state interference in a federal official’s duties that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits, and that the removal statute shields against.”

But Willis argued that Meadows’ “criminal intent” undercut his argument.

“Federal removal is designed to protect federal functions from State interference, but that was not a risk in 2020 or 2021 and is not a risk now,” Willis wrote. “Instead, this case concerns attempts to interfere in State functions by federal officials without any authority of their own.”

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The filing argues that the charges against Meadows are specifically focused on actions he took outside of the scope of his job, including his attendance at a “clearly political” November 20, 2020 White House meeting with Michigan lawmakers in which Trump peppered them with false claims of election fraud. The next day, Meadows sought to connect Trump with two Pennsylvania lawmakers, which Willis said was also “clearly political activity.”

Willis argued that these actions violated the Hatch Act, a federal law barring government employees from using their official roles to influence the outcome of an election.

Willis argued that Meadows’ actions focused on the election results in Georgia, including his trip to observe Georgia’s election audit on December 22, 2020 and subsequent request to a state official offering campaign funds to ensure the audit was completed by Jan. 6, 2021 were not part of his official duties.

“The defendant thus explicitly contacted a Georgia official on behalf of the Trump campaign, which is political activity prohibited by the Hatch Act,” Willis wrote.

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

The prosecutor added that Meadows’ participation in Trump’s infamous phone call demanding Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” enough votes to overturn his loss was also prohibited activity.

“Since the defendant was forbidden by law to use his authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election or otherwise participate in activity directed toward the success of Mr. Trump as a candidate for the presidency, every single one of these activities fell outside the scope of his duties,” Willis wrote.

Willis cited a federal investigation into the Trump administration’s Hatch Act violations, quoting Meadows telling investigators at the time that “nobody outside the Beltway really cares” about the Hatch Act violations.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, praised Willis for “skillfully” using Meadows’ own statement against him.

“The court will care, I think,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Fani skillfully uses this Meadows statement to investigators admitting he cavalierly performed prohibited campaign work while at the White House: "nobody outside the Beltway really cares about Trump administration officials violating the Hatch Act."
The court will care, I think. https://t.co/PfrXJ9xxla

— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads/Insta)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) August 24, 2023

“This is an exceptionally strong argument from the Fulton County DA’s office against removal of Meadows’ case to federal court: Meadows was doing political work as Chief of Staff contrary to federal law (the Hatch Act) and therefore he can’t claim the shield of federal law,” wrote Georgia State Law Prof. Anthony Michael Kreis.

“This was always an uphill battle for Meadows,” added former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “I can understand why he made the argument but it’s apparent the DA was ready to litigate this issue.”

about Mark Meadows

Trump is a compromised candidate — and skipping debates won’t save him from a reckoning

At the end of the day, the Donald said it was all about him, and he wasn’t wrong.

But he still isn’t happy. The world will go on without Donald Trump.

The cast of eight also-rans engaged in the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee Wednesday night cast a slim, pale shadow across the stage compared to the no-show former President Donald Trump – even as they backed his vice president, Mike Pence, for honoring his oath of office and refusing to tip the election to Donald Trump. “He asked me to put him ahead of the Constitution,” Pence said. And he wouldn’t do it.

How do you “boo” that? Some did.

Still, Nikki Haley said the GOP cannot win with Trump as a candidate. “He’s the most disliked politician in America,” she said. That didn’t stop most of the candidates who said they’d support Trump if he was the candidate.

It was all about the dark times in America. Ron DeSantis said only he can get it done. Vivek Ramaswamy said it wasn’t “Morning in America” and we’re in dark times. Of course, he wants to hand Ukraine over to Russia, and Haley ate him up for that. Pence just wanted to get a government as good as the people, while Doug Burgum wants us to embrace small-town America. They all sounded small town.

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But give them a break. After all, they haven’t been charged in four different jurisdictions on 91 felony charges. Trump has an edge over his nearest GOP competitors. He’s the leader of a cult. And, with the weight of the world resting on his slight, demure shoulders, placed there by his own ineptitude, Donald Trump still commands fealty from millions who, according to a recent poll, say they trust him before they trust their own family.

People say they don’t understand this cult-like mentality, but I’ve seen it before. I saw it with the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas, in Mount Carmel. Trump is just another David Koresh. He found people in the dark, lonely and in the minority for their extremist views. They felt shunned. Trump took them, embraced them, showered them in a false light of attention, and made them feel important as he showed them they weren’t alone. They found each other, and Trump took them for their money and souls to pursue his narcissistic agenda while making them feel best about their darkest nature.

What does the average die-hard Trump fan gain by their devotion? A false sense of righteousness. Trump hears them. Trump understands them. The mistake the cult makes is believing Trump cares anything about them.

The question is how did we get here? As a suburban kid in the ’70s I related as much to “Good Times” as I did “One Day at a Time.” Now our divisions seem too extreme, and our politicians, praying upon the differences, feed into and benefit from our fears and prejudices.

“They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” is heard far more often than, “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us.”

Who still likes Donald Trump? Lots of Republicans — but we looked for specifics

Donald Trump certainly knows the eyes of all people are upon him. Well, he at least clings to that belief with a fevered tenacity. He wants the eyes on him. So even though he didn’t show up at the debate, and his campaign was banned from being in the Spin Room after the fact, he sent his surrogates out to preach his gospel on the same television news shows he often accuses of being “fake news.”

What we got on CBS and other networks was Trump’s propaganda minister Jason Miller who proceeded to insult President Biden and Trump’s GOP competitors while simultaneously praising Donald Trump as the savior of humanity. You know, a regular Wednesday night in Trumpland. Miller couldn’t act like an adult, and CBS anchor Major Garrett finally admonished Miller after he accused President Biden of only being awake four hours a day.

As much as he wants to scream in the court of public opinion like the other eight candidates, as much as he could dominate them, and as much as he did dominate the narrative even though he wasn’t there, Donald Trump cannot outrun this reckoning in a court of law.

Meanwhile, after Wednesday night it is apparent that Donald Trump is in danger of losing control of the GOP he largely built. The eight also-rans mimicked Trump on a variety of issues and sounded more sane than Trump doing so.

That is until the candidates were asked specifically about Trump. Chris Christie, as expected, went after Trump. “Someone has got to stop normalizing this conduct,” he said. “The conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States.”

Either way, the Donald’s grift remains the same. “President Trump has already won this evening’s debate because everything is going to be about him,” Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Chris LaCivita said. “In fact, tonight’s Republican undercard event really shouldn’t even be called a debate, but rather an audition to be a part of President Trump’s team in his second term.”

Former GOP presidential candidate Joe Walsh agreed with Trump. “Debate? What debate?” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. “We all know who the nominee is going to be. Everybody up on that stage tonight knows who the nominee is going to be. Everybody up on that stage tonight surrendered to him. Long ago. Sure, privately they all hope for a jail cell or a heart attack for him. But up on that stage tonight they’ll praise him, bow to him, & defend him. Because they know he’s the cult leader. And they fear the cult. And they know, barring a jail cell or a heart attack, he’s the nominee.”

For his part, Trump may see himself as a modern-day Winston Churchill, if he only knew who that was and how he might take some of Churchill’s money. “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself,” Churchill said.

Trump’s attempt to upstage GOP debate with Tucker Carlson interview falls flat

Trump’s mental wet dream includes tailoring the past, present and future to suit his every monetary, legislative, judicial and other personal want or need. Since he doesn’t have the stature of Churchill and would struggle in a tic-tac-toe game with a grade-schooler (and that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt) Donald Trump certainly has no more a chance of writing his own history than Churchill had. Churchill failed to do it. Trump can expect far less.

However, Trump also believes that the only thing worse than being mentioned with menace is not being mentioned at all. That’s probably what bothered him most about Wednesday night. He wanted to own his competition in person. The fact is Donald Trump is singularly adept at securing every bit of negative public relations available and converting it to fuel with which to run for office. He wouldn’t care what was said about him, as long as something was said about him.

Anyone who covered Trump for four years in the White House knew five minutes after getting there that was Trump’s MO. Still, we seemed too slow to understand this as we have been giving Trump the oxygen he wants for years now by talking about him and feeding his media addiction.

He knows every minute you’re not in front of the camera, you risk becoming irrelevant. People learn to forget you.

Like the gathering crowd around a craps table when the degenerate gambler is on a roll, we’ve been there watching Donny, partly in revulsion and partly in awe.

And that underscores a reality that the Republicans cannot confront. Donald Trump has given safe haven to the crazies and most extreme of Americans. He’s found millions of them who have found safety in numbers, who’ve constructed a tyranny of the minority and will support Trump come hell or high water.

In the end, they may mean nothing. That is their fear. That is why they rage at the dying of the Trump light.

Donald Trump is headed for a reckoning. As much as he wants to scream in the court of public opinion like the other eight candidates, as much as he could dominate them, and as much as he did dominate the narrative even though he wasn’t there, Donald Trump cannot outrun this reckoning in a court of law. He is facing a world of hurt, and Wednesday night was the first of many likely no-shows by the leading candidate — and that absence can only make the heartfelt grow fondless and can only help others find an audience.

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Wednesday night proved that though most of the candidates — especially DeSantis — have the appeal of day-old roadkill, someone on that stage could fill Trump’s clown shoes, and ultimately someone will.

Though many still drink the Donald Trump Kool-Aid, the pitcher is running dry. The Republicans had a spirited debate Wednesday night and Trump’s no-show only hurt him; the debate underscored Donald Trump’s fading appeal. He may still be the front-runner, and Joe Walsh may be right, but I do not think so.

Because of his tremendous legal problems, Trump is a compromised candidate who cannot dare show up much in public for fear of shooting off his mouth and risking further self-incrimination. He wasn’t in the public eye Wednesday and we all know how much that kills him.

He knows every minute you’re not in front of the camera, you risk becoming irrelevant. People learn to forget you.

That has to hurt Donald Trump as much as the possibility of facing at least the next five years of his life in prison.

about Donald Trump’s campaign

Why do Republicans even bother with this whole farce?

Going into Wednesday night, there were some valiant efforts from the Beltway media to hype the first debate of the Republican presidential primary. More honest pundits, however, reflected the actual consensus feeling: It is pointless without Donald Trump.

The GOP frontrunner is facing 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions. He's also leading his nearest 2024 opponent by 40 percentage points in the polls. The only question then, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote, "is which of the contenders will be most unctuous and self-abasing in defense of Donald Trump?" Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic pointed out that the point "of a political debate is to try to persuade voters to support your campaign instead of the other candidates," but that "presupposes a constituency of voters who can be persuaded." Trump's MAGA stalwarts, the biggest faction of the party, make a joke out of that idea.

As last night's debate demonstrated, however, the insignificance of a Republican debate isn't just due to Trump's skill at sucking the oxygen out of any room — even one he's not in — Trump's power is entirely due to the vacuum created by the vapidity of Republican leaders. Watching this non-debate was mainly a reminder that none of these politicians possess anything resembling substance. Despite all the chatter from the punditry about "policy," the voters these candidates are trying to reach could not care less about the nuts and bolts of governance. The GOP exists mainly as a vehicle for the endless parade of unwarranted, incoherent grievances of the Republican base.

When whining and playing the victim are all that the voters want from their leaders, of course Trump rises to the top. Even Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is so egotistical he put out an ad declaring he was handpicked by God, cannot compete with Trump's off-the-charts level of narcissism. For a base that just wants to hear how they're the real victims here, Trump's "woe is me" messaging and retribution-oriented rhetoric is political heroin straight into their MAGA veins.

Wednesday night's debate was a painful illustration of this.

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The more candidates, like former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, actually tried to talk about policy — albeit from a traditional "gut social spending" Republican point of view — the more you could feel the audience fall asleep. But when businessman-turned-professional troll Vivek Ramaswamy hollered the slogan, "Drill, frack, burn coal and embrace nuclear," the audience went nuts. Not because this is a serious policy proposal, mind you. Because, as his impish grin suggested, the joy was in knowing how much liberals would be triggered by this answer. (Though even this audience struggled to enjoy Ramaswamy declaring that climate change is a "hoax.") Similarly, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got some of his biggest cheers threatening to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, even though the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases retired last year.

There was some actual criticism of Trump, from Chris Christie. But boy, it was pathetic.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has been getting glowing (and misleading) coverage painting him as a "moderate," but even he could not resist tickling the lizard brain impulses of the Republican audience. His attack on Ramaswamy was unsubtle race-baiting: "The last guy who stood up here and said he's a skinny guy with a funny last name was Barack Obama, and I think we're dealing with the same type of amateur." (Though you have to give it to Christie for saying Ramaswamy "sounds like ChatGPT.") Indeed, there was far more hostility to Ramaswamy than to Trump all night. Not because he's an empty-headed troll — so is their party leader — but because as a dark-skinned relatively young man, he's perceived as an easy hate object for the Fox News crowd.

"The elephant not in the room": Fox News moderators booed with mention of Trump at first GOP debate

When forced away from inchoate culture war raging towards policy specifics, things quickly fell apart. Nowhere was this more evident than the dithering refusal of the candidates to admit out loud that they would sign federal abortion bans. Instead, it was all deflection, either with outright lies or vague, non-commital rhetoric.

It was the same story with climate change: total unwillingness to engage.

DeSantis claims he wants to "have the debate" but, of course, only said that to avoid actually having the debate.

After a question on climate change, DeSantis responds: "We're not schoolchildren, let's have the debate."

Fitting, since Florida schoolchildren and teachers are banned from discussing controversial issues. pic.twitter.com/tMjkLq9ibr

— CAP Action (@CAPAction) August 24, 2023

There was some actual criticism of Trump, from Chris Christie. But boy, it was pathetic. Christie wouldn't commit to voting or not voting for Trump, making an ambiguous gesture when the candidates were asked if they would support Trump as nominee.

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He wouldn't even agree that the charges against Trump are legitimate (which Christie is only too happy to say in other venues.) Instead, all we got from the supposed "fighter" and "truth teller": "Whether or not you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of the president." Yet even that weak sauce received boos from the MAGA crowd, which demands to be fed a steady diet of flattering lies.

The crowd's boos only serve to reinforce the futility of even having a GOP debate.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson had a little more spine, arguing that Trump is disqualified because of the constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding federal office. He was met with a chorus of boos, as well. The crowd's boos only serve to reinforce the futility of even having a GOP debate. The party's base actively repels any discourse with real meaning. To say a true or important thing about Donald Trump to a Republican audience is to render yourself irrelevant to their political ecosystem.

Everyone else was even worse, competing with each other to float ridiculous conspiracy theories accusing the Justice Department of targeting conservatives for political beliefs. Needless to say, there's no such thing as "policy discourse" in a world built entirely around conspiracy theories.

How to debate a missing Donald Trump: Go after his family business

Anyone who has been a political observer long enough knows that the exploding number of primary candidates, especially among Republicans, is a somewhat recent development. The field got so crowded in the 2016 race, in fact, that the GOP had 17 people spread over two debates. A few of the candidates this time around have a legitimate belief they can win the nomination. But the ugly truth is that running for president is not about trying to actually win an election for most "candidates." It's a marketing campaign for their "brand," using someone else's ill-advised donations.

My guess is that only DeSantis and former vice president Mike Pence are legitimately delusional enough to think have a real shot. Everyone else on stage seems more interested in the opportunity to raise their profile, if only to command higher speaking fees at conservative events. There's a prevailing assumption in the mainstream media that Nikki Haley and fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott are both angling for a running mate spot on the Trump ticket. It's doubtful either of them is dim enough to believe Trump would deign to reach outside the white male community for that role. My guess is their eyes are more on snagging lucrative deals writing the treacly "My Walk with Christ" tomes that sell well at Christian bookstores during the holidays. Christie, for his part, seems mostly focused on fatter paychecks as one of the beloved never-Trump Republicans who don't seem to exist outside the world of cable news.

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But nowhere is the grift more blatant than with Ramaswamy, who is using his "presidential campaign" as an audition to be the next Candace Owens, except with an alarmingly long forehead. (Though I do give him credit for leaning into that odd feature with an accentuating haircut. Own it, don't try to hide it.) Ramaswamy has garnered a lot of attention in recent weeks for his Trump-style trolling and giddy disdain for facts or truth. He changes what he claims to "believe" every 5 minutes, pushes outrageous conspiracy theories, and, to underscore how cynical and shameless he is, hypes Christian nationalism despite being Hindu.

Ramaswamy's grinning insincerity was on full display Wednesday. But, of course, that's why he's getting so much buzz among MAGA voters, despite the best efforts of the other also-rans to make Ramaswamy a stand-in for the audience's hatred of the younger, more diverse American generations. What Ramaswamy gets, however, is he can make a killing grifting GOP voters who want a racial minority out there validating their prejudices for them. True, racism means he'll never be the nominee, but why would he want to be? It's profitable and easy to be a troll. Actually running for president is hard.

Ramaswamy epitomizes the malignant incentive structures of the modern Republican Party: competence in governance is sneered at, the biggest bully in the room is applauded and it's lucrative to repackage the hate and resentment of the GOP base and sell it back to them with an inflated price tag. In such an environment, a skilled lifetime fraudster like Trump will always be the top dog. The rest of this field is either delusional about that fact or working lesser rackets of their own.

about the GOP presidential primary

“Trump is in the final stage of cult leadership”: Fulton County arrest elevates his MAGA “martyrdom”

Donald Trump continues to be at the center of America’s political universe. His gravity and pull are that powerful.

Later today, Trump, the twice impeached four-time indicted ex-president traitor who attempted a coup on Jan. 6 and who is facing hundreds of years in prison for his political crime spree will surrender to law enforcement authorities in Fulton County, Georgia. Last night, Trump participated in an “interview” with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, where he was allowed an unrestricted platform to lie, spread other misinformation and distortions, and attack his “enemies” and other imagined foes.

The Republican Party’s first 2024 presidential primary debate also aired last night. Trump was not there but his presence hung over the event.

In all, this week has been a spectacle of the worst sort. At CNN, Stephen Collinson accurately described it as, “No other GOP leader could confidently snub a prime-time television debate and turn his no-show into an argument for his inevitability. But Trump – as with his attempt to use criminal indictments to advance a political career that has always prospered amid perceptions that he’s being unfairly treated – is changing all the rules of campaigning once again.”

The American news media, political class, and general public will do their best (and will largely fail) to navigate these “historic” events with the goal of finding some sense of balance, normalcy, and clarity in unprecedented times. Unfortunately, it is those same bad habits and norms that helped to create the disaster that is the Age of Trump and ascendant American neofascism in the first place.

So, in an attempt to make sense of what comes next in this truly historic and unprecedented moment with Donald Trump and his criminal indictment(s) in Georgia, wishcasting and other forms of denial by the news media and political elites about the true depth of the country’s democracy crisis, and what potentially comes next, I recently asked a range of experts for their thoughts and insights.

The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity:

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and author of “Criminology on Trump.”

As Trump is about to be booked in Atlanta, Georgia for orchestrating a criminal enterprise that spanned seven battleground states and involved at least 50 indictable people, and as the GOP is holding its first presidential debate in Milwaukee — whether Trump is present or not. I am feeling very optimistic about the looming legal and political demise of the former president who currently faces 91 criminal charges. I am also feeling optimistic about the likelihood of Boss Trump taking down the GOP with him in 2024 unless the party abandons him starting Wednesday night which seems unlikely even though his poll numbers after the fourth criminal indictment are now plummeting with the general electorate. Meanwhile, while his legal fees have become astronomical — $40 million and counting — his fundraising has been declining since its peak after his first criminal indictment in Manhattan on April 4.

The danger of Trump taking the other Republican candidates and the Republicans off the proverbial cliff with him has to do with how overly invested they are in Trump’s lawlessness and corruption. In short, the Republicans and the GOP have become trapped by their endorsing the Big Lie, by their habitual shielding of Trump from the indefensible, and by their kowtowing to the MAGA base.

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This Trumpian dilemma coupled with the former Racketeer-in-Chief’s anti-democratic and authoritarian agenda will certainly be a losing formula up and down the ballots across America, the same as they were in the 2022 midterms only it will be much worse in 2024. Think of landslide elections like Barry Goldwater losing to President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 or President Jimmy Carter’s loss to the former governor of California Ronald Reagan in 1980.

I am looking forward to each of these criminal trials especially because they are “slam dunks” for the prosecution regardless of what Trump or his attorneys and supporters have been saying up to now. Reality check: There are simply no legal defenses for Trump’s criminal behavior other than trying to procedurally dissolve these cases by denying that they were crimes in the first place or to simply make motion after motion in the hopes of delaying these trials from beginning for as long as possible.

With respect to the January 6 and Georgia election fraud and conspiracy cases, neither one has anything to do with free speech or with the weaponization of the Justice Department (DOJ) by either President Joe Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland. While both of these political talking points may continue to thrive in the Trumpian alternative universe, I believe that their powers of persuasion are already starting to fade or decline as a byproduct of the powerful RICO indictments in Georgia. No matter though, these arguments may have had or have value in the court of public opinion, they will have no value whatsoever in the federal or state criminal courts of law where Trump should ultimately be tried will also be convicted.

I am especially looking forward to these trials as they converge with Trump’s campaigns during the GOP primaries like Super Tuesday in March and in the runup to the general election as well. Although Trump could probably stop campaigning altogether and still win the GOP nomination he won’t have to. Instead of taking to the expensive campaign trail week after week, he will simply transfer what passes for political campaigning, or more accurately, his staged and unhinged tirades of doom, gloom, and bada-bing bada-boom to the courthouse steps each and every day of those first two federal criminal trials that will probably not be televised.

I am looking most forward to the RICO trial and to Trump’s Court TV reality show because it will be televised, and its star defendant Donald Trump won’t say one word because he will never take the stand. More importantly, the trial of Trump’s criminal enterprise will be a most illuminating and entertaining criminal trial. If it materializes, this trial will captivate viewers and audiences like never before and that includes the 9-month-long criminal trial of OJ. Simpson. Watched literally by the whole world, this fairly complex yet easily understood criminal trial will witness the prosecution methodologically taking us through those 161 acts that furthered the conspiracy of their criminal enterprise. When Trump leaves the Fulton County criminal trial daily for perhaps as long as nine months he will uncharacteristically no longer be talking about his innocence or his persecution. Instead, with his tail tucked firmly between his legs Trump will be demonstrating that he is quite capable of keeping his gaslighting mouth shut when it better serves his interests or when his talking will only make a fool of himself even to his sycophantic MAGA base.

Regardless of the facts or the law, people often interpret events like January 6 as they want to see them as opposed to how they actually were. So, while I agree that there are a lot of Republicans, and many more Democrats, as well as people in the news media, the political class, and so on who want to turn the page on Trump, I think it is important to ascertain the different reasons or motives as to why they want to move on.

In the case of Republicans who want to move on from Trump, most of these folks like the other candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination who don’t have a chance of defeating Trump for the nomination want to do so only because they know Trump will be defeated once again and that he has become a terrible election liability for the party. In other words, their distancing themselves from Trump has nothing to do with Trump’s ideology of authoritarianism or his assault on democracy and the rule of law.

With respect to the right-wing political class and Fox News or Newsmax, they fully understand the big picture and what is at stake in the 2024 election but that so far has been okay with them. On the other hand, the true-believing MAGA folks for the most part are rather clueless about politics, crime, and the administration of justice. As for most of the other Republicans at large with the exception of the Never Trumpers, these folks are either deeply confused or they have simply drank the “Kool Aid” or succumbed to Trumpian disinformation, gaslighting, and/or propagandistic brainwashing.

Donald Sherman serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Counsel of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Nobody goes into government ethics work unless they trend towards optimism, but this is an especially important and optimistic time. After more than seven years of egregious and unprecedented ethics abuses in the campaign, in government, and in his post-presidency, Donald Trump is finally facing real accountability that can’t be undermined by his sycophants in Congress and other parts of the government.

The only way that our nation can move forward and repair our democracy in the wake of the January 6 insurrection is for there to be accountability. More than 1,000 participants in the mob have been charged by DOJ for their role in the insurrection, and now Donald Trump is finally facing charges. The complex and damning indictment brought in Georgia by Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, makes clear that you can’t reach into states to try to overturn their election. With the Georgia grand jury’s indictment of Trump, we also have the potential for a conviction that can’t be pardoned by Trump, or some other Republican president. Not even Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, can pardon Trump under Georgia law. Several elements of the Georgia indictment are especially important for accountability including that being charged with his co-conspirators increases the likelihood of cooperation and that if this matter eventually goes to trial, there are likely to be cameras in the courtroom.

“The Constitution makes clear that insurrectionists like Trump should not and do not get a second chance to violate their oaths.”

These cases also strengthen the public case made by CREW, and scholars across the ideological spectrum that Trump is legally disqualified from serving in office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Last year, CREW brought and won the first successful case in more than 150 years to remove an official from office for violating the Disqualification Clause – which bars a state or federal officer who takes an oath to defend the Constitution from engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Although a criminal conviction of any kind is not necessary to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against Trump, it certainly bolsters the public and legal case for his disqualification. As conservative academics William Baude and Michael Pauslen wrote: “On the basis of the public record, former President Donald J. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from again being President (or holding any other covered office) because of his role in the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election and the events leading to the January 6 attack.”

A lot of the pundit class went from claiming that Donald Trump was an “existential threat” to our democracy to writing him off or telling us to move on. Funnily enough, we saw similar rhetoric in 2016 as well. CREW is a non-partisan organization, so Trump’s electoral prospects are inconsequential to the need for accountability, but it is important to note that the last time that Trump was on a ballot, he was rejected by the voters and responded by inciting a violent insurrection to overturn our election and steal the presidency from the American people. The Constitution makes clear that insurrectionists like Trump should not and do not get a second chance to violate their oaths. I understand that people are exhausted by Trump and want to reject him at the ballot box. However, his actions make him ineligible to be on the ballot in the first place. Just like the American public can’t elect George W. Bush or Barack Obama in 2024 because of the 22nd Amendment, Trump is also ineligible to serve as president pursuant to the Constitution.

How to debate a missing Donald Trump: Go after his family business

Existential threats don’t disappear in a single election cycle. If the Constitution is not enforced against Donald Trump and other insurrectionists, then our democracy will remain at risk of this kind of attack for the foreseeable future. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was built precisely for this moment in history, and that’s what is at stake. If our country finds itself in a similar place, 50 or 100 years from now, there will need to be a public record of accountability and legal precedent addressing Trump’s egregious conduct. The multiple indictments filed over the summer are a great start. Litigation CREW plans to bring to enforce the Disqualification Clause against Trump is another necessary step. Thankfully the drafters of the 14th Amendment had the foresight to ratify this tool for a future insurrection that they could not entirely predict. We cannot afford to leave any tools of accountability on the table, lest we expose ourselves to an even greater threat to democracy than Trump.

Brynn Tannehill is a journalist and author of “American Fascism: How the GOP is Subverting Democracy.”

This is every 20th Century historian’s worst nightmare come to life. Demagogue unsuccessfully tries to overthrow the government, goes to jail for it, and then goes on to be elected supreme leader on the backs of promises to eradicate communists, degenerates, and his political enemies while restoring power to the herrenvolk.

“I think that only the people who are deep down in the weeds, who have read things like the Mandate for Leadership understand the hellscape that awaits us if Trump is elected again”

The worst part is, the polls say things are tied, they have consistently underestimated his strength in elections, and the electoral college gives him a 3.5-4 point advantage (i.e. Biden needs to win the popular vote by 3.5-4 points to have a 50-50 shot of winning the Electoral College). It’s bad for most people with a sense of history, and even worse for me, since I’m considered to be one of the people who need to be eradicated according to the conservative Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership”, which is effectively the GOP playbook for ending democracy and civil rights in the US. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

There are a lot of people who are saying “Trump can’t win,” when fundamentally, NOTHING has changed since 2016 or 2020, except that President Biden has gotten less popular. The indictments don’t move the needle much. The vast majority of Republicans will still vote for him no matter what. It even feeds into the persecution and lost cause narratives popular with his white evangelical base. If you look at conservative media, they’re speculating that it might make him more popular and help “Get Out the Vote” (GOTV) by the base. The sad part is, they might be right: it’s a plausible theory. Independents are swinging a little away from Trump, but they’re not happy with Biden either. If they sit out the election, and Democrats don’t bother voting the way they did in 2016, we’re very much headed for a repeat there.

I think that only the people who are deep down in the weeds, who have read things like the Mandate for Leadership understand the hellscape that awaits us if Trump is elected again. This is going to be orders of magnitude worse than his first term, especially with a fully weaponized Department of Justice and federal bureaucracy via Schedule F.

Rich Logis, a former member of the Republican Party and right-wing pundit, is the founder of Perfect Our Union, an organization dedicated to healing political traumatization, building diverse pro-democracy alliances and perfecting our union.

Trump is in the final stage of cult leadership: martyrdom.

He hasn’t been defrauded and persecuted, he tells his supporters—YOU have been cheated and persecuted. This leitmotif has been present since 2015, but Trump has significantly ramped up the rhetoric, recently. Some of his primary opponents are now mustering up faux courage, saying that, yes, Trump did lose; these opponents have always believed Trump lost, however, and I will continue to posit that candidates such as Pence, Scott and DeSantis are angling for the nomination via a brokered convention. They, and those running the GOP, know that every indictment strengthens Trump’s standing amongst those who matter most to Republican candidates: their primary voters, who are, overwhelmingly, MAGA devotees.

Even having said all this, however, the lower the voter turnout next year, the more likely it could result in a Trump/MAGA victory. The time to begin emphasizing the importance of registering to vote, and turnout, is now. We must leave nothing to chance: Voters of differing political beliefs must form unlikely, but necessary, alliances, to ensure that Republicans suffer electoral losses, next year, up and down the ballot; such alliances have been formed many times in our history, and our current epoch—one in which threats to democracy and democratic institutions are real and prevalent—demands another such alliance.

Right on cue, after yet another Trump indictment, America’s national centrist and center-left press continued rolling out their achingly yearning op-eds and columns wishing, hoping, and praying for a Republican to save the GOP. At this point, I’ve accepted that the press will remain in its well-meaning, but delusional, enchantment of making the GOP great again; it is now self-parody. If our national press devoted less time to a seemingly mythological Republican savior who will never come, and more to highlighting those who left behind the politically traumatic world of MAGA/Trump, I suspect they’d be more bearish on the prospects of repairing the irreparable GOP. I just wish our media recognized that; but, since they don’t, the onus falls on we the people to disabuse Americans, of all political beliefs, that the GOP will finally move on from Trump.

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Some cautious optimism: Yes, the GOP is irredeemable. But just as I had my own Road to Damascus epiphany, renouncing my support for MAGA/Trump, let’s pay close attention to those in our lives who remain in the thrall of MAGA abuse and trauma; I anticipate that some may start to doubt their allegiance to Trump. There is, very much, an abuser/abused dynamic with MAGA supporters and Trump. Those who might question their past political choices and votes need to see and hear the stories of those who severed from MAGA; the regretful, understandably, will be ambivalent about publicizing the errors of their ways. They will have fewer qualms, though, if they see living examples of former MAGA/Trump/DeSantis/GOP voters.

MAGA voters are undeserving of being dehumanized, and had some valid motivations for supporting Trump, even though, yes, Trump exploited those concerns and fears. We must, as a nation, build a broad consensus that electing Trump was one of the most egregious mistakes in our history. Admitting when we’re wrong is an unnatural act, but it is possible—and liberating. When I look back at my MAGA time, I remain stunned at the level of political trauma I put upon myself; my hope is that others will begin to recognize their own trauma, which has been, to some extent, self-inflicted.

Joe Walsh was a Republican congressman and a leading Tea Party conservative. He is now a prominent conservative voice against Donald Trump and the host of the podcast “White Flag with Joe Walsh.”

I’ll be blunt. The vast majority of Americans have no clue where this country is at right now. Way too many in the media, commentary, and political world cling to this notion that this is just kind of an extreme political time, that it’s a game that’s gotten a little crazy, but that we’re still playing in the general boundaries of normal society and politics. Bull**it!

This country is on the precipice of sustained violence we haven’t seen in 150-160 years, we are on the verge of complete institutional breakdown, we’re on a path that, if continued, will lead to democracy’s end here.

I have a different perspective than virtually everyone in the political commentariat. I come from the populist Republican Party base, I left that base, and I still engage with that base every day. That base is the animating force of one of our two major political parties. Trump radicalized that base. By radicalized, I mean – they no longer believe in basic truths, they’ve given up on democracy, they eagerly embrace authoritarianism, and they don’t want to simply defeat their political opponents, they want their political opponents destroyed & killed.

This is the stuff I hear from them. Every day for the past 5-6 years. How are we doing? I just described the status of one of our two major political parties. It’s now fully anti-democracy. This isn’t tenable.

So, with all that as context, where are we with Trump? How am I feeling? As concerned and frightened as ever. The media treats this like some game. I was actually on CNN a couple of weeks ago and two reporters on the panel with me talked about the GOP race for president as if it was actually some kind of contest. Still a contest? Bull**it. It never was. The guy leading the anti-democracy cult was always going to be the nominee. It’s no contest. Barring death or a jail cell, Trump will be the nominee, and he has a better than 50/50 shot at getting elected. You heard me right. Assuming Trump is the nominee, he’d be the odds-on favorite against Biden. I know everyone says he can never win a general election. Again, bull**it! Large swaths of independents are privately dying for an excuse to vote for him again. An underappreciated segment of Americans wants that entertaining buffoon in the White House. They’ll never say that publicly.

Trump has moved beyond cult leader. He’s a full-on martyr with his base. I hear it every day. Each new indictment has strengthened his support among “non MAGA” Republicans & conservatives who’ve told me it really seems like they’re piling on him now and he’s being unfairly targeted by the justice system. That’s a powerful narrative.

The chatter about violence that I hear now is greater than what I heard before January 6th. We’re in for 14-15 months of danger this country just doesn’t understand. And danger the media refuses to discuss.

So yes, I’m feeling pretty damned despondent. And angry. We’re only a few years into this storm and so many people still don’t understand the gravity of the approaching storm. We’ve entered a revolutionary period in America. A revolution that will determine whether this great democracy stays united or not. And having most of the country in denial about where we are scares me even more.

about Trump’s and America’s trials

Dracula may have wept blood on tear-stained letters, chemical analysis reveals

New research published this month in the journal Analytical Chemistry details how an innovative protein analysis technique has uncovered a rich bevvy of biochemical evidence about the life and health of the most famous (alleged) vampire in history — indeed, the inspiration for Count Dracula himself.

His sweating fist cantering across the surface of Romanian rag paper in swooping lines of 15th Century Latin as steadily as his armies swept through the Carpathian mountains, we know for certain that Vlad Drăculea — merciless defender of Wallachia, harbinger of an estimated 80,000 deaths — wept and bled into the very ink of his hand-written letters. But now it seems that Vlad the Impaler, namesake of Bram Stoker’s 1897 epistolary horror, may have even wept literal tears of blood, as described in the oldest stories about him.

“To our reckoning,” writes a team of researchers led by chemist Maria Gaetana Giovanna Pittalà of Italy’s University of Catania, “this is the first time such research has been carried out and has helped to bring to the limelight the health status of Vlad Dracula the Impaler.”

Archaeologists may have solved Polish vampire mystery

It’s no silver bullet. But, by analyzing the makeup of three carefully preserved letters from Dracula — two written in 1457 and one in 1475 — the scientists discovered peptides indicating tears and blood, along with proteins linked to an inflammatory disease and a genetic respiratory disorder known for chronic lung and sinus infections.

“He probably suffered, at least in the last years of his life, from a pathological condition called hemolacria, that is, he could shed tears admixed with blood. Additionally, he also probably suffered from inflammatory processes of the respiratory tract and/or of the skin,” the researchers wrote.

Hemolacria can be caused by multiple disorders, including vascular lesions and trauma, such as cataract surgery. But while it is a very rare condition, it (obviously) isn’t true vampirism. Folks in the 15th Century may not have realized this, however, which may have inspired the legends about Dracula.

We know for certain that Vlad Drăculea — merciless defender of Wallachia, harbinger of an estimated 80,000 deaths — wept and bled into the very ink of his hand-written letters.

Being able to parse these ancient proteins allowed researchers to accomplish two remarkable things. First, the peptides fleshed out the intimately sanguine humor of Dracula himself — even as the researchers account for the accumulation of their historical handling.

“It is worth noting that more medieval people may have touched these documents, which cannot be denied, but it is also presumable that the most prominent ancient proteins should be related to Prince Vlad the Impaler, who wrote and signed these letters,” the team wrote.

The peptides also allowed Pittalá’s team to explore the wider context of Dracula’s life as the environmental conditions of latter-year 15th century Wallachia. Under mass spectroscopy, a milieu of tell-tale peptides came into focus, revealing a biochemical story of the area’s blend of merchant traders, soldiers and migrants, travelers mingling from as far away as Persia and Mongolia. Thousands of peptides were found in the investigation from plants and insects, to fungi and bacteria — even traces of the Black Death.

Using Croc plastic to rewrite history

Sophisticated, precise use of mass spectrometry in World Cultural Heritage artifacts has been a boon to researchers and conservationists alike. The research team reviewing Dracula’s letter applied a non-damaging, extremely thin film of ethylene-vinyl acetate. (This versatile polymer, also known as EVA, is the same material used in shoes like Crocs and some yoga mats.) Then they used special augmented reality software to map out the high-concentration hot spots for proteins, allowing them to light up their digital copies and apply different fluorescence levels of pseudo-color in green, yellow and red.

Prior to taking on Dracula’s handwriting, Righetti and the Zilbersteins went on a historical cultural spree of discovery.

It’s not the first time this technique has been used. Nor even the first time Dracula’s hand-writing was given the spectrometry treatment by two of the new study’s co-authors, Svetlana and Gleb Zilberstein. The married couple began studying the ancient remnants of Vlad’s literal blood, sweat and tears in 2022.

The story actually began when Gleb reached out to then-81-year-old Italian chemist and protein-spectrometry pioneer Pier Giorgio Righetti. As Righetti tells it in Smithsonian Magazine, Gleb called Righetti up with an exciting idea about how to study the delicate artifacts without damaging them.

“I know how we could do it without needing to take a sample,” Gleb told him.

Prior to taking on Dracula’s handwriting, Righetti and the Zilbersteins went on a historical cultural spree of discovery.

They found tuberculosis in the blood stains of the shirt Anton Checkov was wearing when he died and evidence the playwright’s final blow may have been a stroke. In letters from George Orwell, they impressively sussed out tuberculosis in the typically protein-barren landscape of a typewritten letter. In the original manuscript of The Master and Margarita, the duo discovered evidence that Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov may have been self-medicating with morphine while writing. And in the notebooks of 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler, the appearance of silver, gold, arsenic and lead revealed that Kepler may have been a practicing alchemist.

But this time something was different about the Zilbersteins’ meticulously careful work. The night air took on a mysterious quality as the scientists emerged from the Romanian archive, as strange occurrences materialized suddenly and dramatically. In an interview with the Guardian, Gleb described the unsettling events that started after nightfall.

“It was mystical that we were extracting Dracula’s molecules on the day that Bram Stoker’s novel was published 125 years ago,” he said. “We did not specifically plan this date. All night, after the extraction of Dracula’s molecules, it rained, dogs howled and lightning flashed. It was really a very magical atmosphere. Count Dracula blessed his release from the Romanian archive.”

Death, taxes and Dracula

The Zilbersteins were admittedly less interested in the letter’s writing than their biochemical landscape. But what did Dracula actually have to say in the missives? Timeless confessions of transcendent undying love for some Englishman’s bride? Instructions to a beleaguered assistant on the transport of his coffin? Tragically, the letters’ contents contain no such smudge of romance.

Alas, academic work in the humanities doesn’t always deliver adventures of the Indiana Jones variety. Rather, the letters are filled with the prince’s rather dry administrative concerns. It would seem that the letter further proves that life’s only two certainties are death and taxes — and not even Dracula could escape the latter.

“We, Vladislav Dracul, voivode of the Transalpine regions, publicly notify and recognize by the present witnesses, who are all responsible, that the illustrious master Thomas Altemberger, master of the people of the town of Sibiu, for himself and the other people of said town and of the town of Braşov, in order to pay the twentieth-part [tax] as by written command of our gracious lord and king, effectively gave and allotted to us two hundred Hungarian florins. About those two hundred florins, we free the said master and the consuls of the aforementioned towns, making them unencumbered and entirely released by the power and testimony of this document. Written in Bălcaciu, in the day of St. Coloman martyr, in the year of the lord 1475.”

The Zilbersteins and Righetti have gone onto start a business proffering the unique protein-analyzing tech, called SpringStyle Tech Design. They plan to make it available for public use by offering it to government archives, museums and libraries.

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The Zilbersteins’ next project is something of an American dream. Using the same methods to investigate the logbook of slave ships, the duo want to reveal and restore the bodily history of African people brought to America by white slave-traders. These scientific techniques and tools, the duo believe, can be used to enrich our cultural understanding of historical figures through the genetic bread-crumb trail they leave behind — as long as we tender the fragments of their legacy with an eye toward the immortality of their stories.

about vampires and folklore

Trump’s attempt to upstage GOP debate with Tucker Carlson interview falls flat

Despite drawing tens of millions of viewers — at least for some portion of his 46-minute conversation with fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson — Donald Trump’s efforts to counterprogram the first Republican debate on Wednesday appears to be a dud — at least according to Trump’s own post-debate reaction.

After his low-energy interview with Carlson aired on X, formerly known as Twitter, Trump took to his social media site, Truth Social, to lash out at the network which hosted eight Republican presidential hopefuls on a debate stage in Milwaukee, taking particular aim at his longtime friend and Fox News host Sean Hannity.

DeSanctimonious was a “BOMB” tonight, especially with his softball interview with Sean Hannity. This guy has totally forgotten his past. Who cares!?!?

That’s it? That’s all ya got? pic.twitter.com/m2J3XVNTJx

— DanRiehl (@DanRiehl) August 24, 2023

“I’m loyal to my family, the Constitution and the Lord, our God,” DeSantis told Hannity after the debate. “I work with other politicians to advance a common agenda, but nobody’s entitled to be endorsed or supported. You’ve got to earn that.”

“The elephant not in the room”: Fox News moderators booed with mention of Trump at first GOP debate

Carlson posted the interview to his more than 9 million followers just minutes before the Fox News debate began. During the much-hyped conversation, pre-recorded at his Bedminster, N.J. golf course, Trump lashed out at what was once his favorite network.

“Do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people that shouldn’t even be running for president? Should I be doing that?” Trump said of his decision to turn down the debate. “And a network that isn’t particularly friendly to me.”

“I think it was a terrible move getting rid of you,” he told Carlson, who remains under contract with Fox News. “You’re No. 1 on television and all of a sudden we’re doing this interview, but we’ll get bigger ratings doing this crazy forum that you’re using than probably the debate.” According to statistics on the platform, the interview drew upwards of 75 million viewers.

But for all of the pair’s talk of the death of television, their social media stunt felt like a stale re-run. Meant to draw attention away from Trump’s rivals, the standard rehash of Trump grievances fell flat opposite a dynamic debate with eager candidates taking swipes at one another.

By contrast, Carlson and Trump commiserated over their shared disdain for former Fox News host Chris Wallace (“Bitchy little man,” Carlson said of Wallace. “He wanted to be his father, but he didn’t have the talent of his. His father was great,” Trump added. “Little fussy man,” Carlson continued.) A tried and true MAGA complaint.

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In his first post following the debut GOP debate, Trump again took aim at his former vice president, denying that he asked Mike Pence to violate the Consitution in an effort to overturn the 2020 election results.

I never asked Mike Pence to put me above the Constitution. Who would say such a thing? A FAKE STORY!

“Do you believe Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6?” moderator Martha MacCallum asked the eight candidates on Wednesday.

Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said, “deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal, political and unfair pressure.”

At the end of the day, little of Wednesday’s antics will matter when Trump, who is leading by more than 20 points in the early voting state of Iowa, will have to surrender to authorities at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta on Thursday for charges relating to Jan. 6.

about the Fulton County indictment

India is now the fourth country to land on the Moon, Chandrayaan-3 mission a major success

On Wednesday India joined the United States, Russia and China as one of the only nations on Earth to navigate its technology onto the surface of the Moon. Perhaps even more impressive, the Indian mission known as Chandrayaan-3 managed to land its rover in the southern polar region, the first country to do so without crashing. Indeed that’s exactly what happened with Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, the mission previous to this one. It was the second lunar space mission in the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan programme, which lost control and destroyed itself on the Moon following a software glitch.

The successful Chandrayaan-3 mission included two spacecrafts: A lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan. In addition to being an important accomplishment for the Indian scientific community, the mission also moves humanity closer to its goal of creating a lunar colony.

“Landing on the south pole, or near it, is really important because it’s the sort of area we’d be looking for a lunar base,” Ian Whittaker, a senior lecturer in physics at Nottingham Trent University, told Al Jazeera. “There’s water there, which was one of the findings of Chandrayaan-1. This water can be used for a lot of things. We could also look for building materials.”

Chandrayaan-3’s success occurs shortly after a less successful moment in Moon science news. Earlier this month Luna-25, the first Russian spacecraft to be sent to the Moon in decades, crashed into the lunar surface after the scientists controlling it lost communication. Although never directly landing anything on the Moon, Israel once had a spacecraft filled with microscopic organisms called tardigrades explode near the Moon, potentially showering it with them. The United States famously put the first human being, Neil Armstrong, onto the Moon.

“The elephant not in the room”: Fox News moderators booed with mention of Trump at first GOP debate

One hour into the first Republican debate of the 2024 GOP primary season, the candidates finally addressed what Fox News moderator called “the elephant not in the room” — Donald Trump — for which he was promptly booed by the audience.

“Do you believe Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan. 6?” moderator Martha MacCallum asked the eight candidates on the Milwaukee stage Wednesday, who include Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy.

Asked directly at the debate if they’d support Donald Trump if he is convicted of a felony, 6 out of 8 Republican presidential candidates raise their hand. pic.twitter.com/GbciS9sF6f

— The Recount (@therecount) August 24, 2023

“This election is not about 2021,” responded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, “it is about 2024.”

“You did not answer the question,” MaCallum snapped back. Co-moderator Bret Baier later explained to DeSantis that “it is a factor because the former president is beating you by 40 points in the poll.”

“Mike did his duty; I’ve got no beef with him,” DeSantis relented after further prodding from Pence.

Trump, for his part, rejected an invitation to debate, instead sitting for a pre-taped interview with fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Former land of BTK Killer searched for cold case connections

Property in Park City, Kansas once belonging to Dennis Rader — AKA, the “BTK Killer” — is the location of a new investigation into possible connections to cold cases. Now just an empty field, The Wichita Eagle reports that two concrete blocks were moved near the killer’s former home on Tuesday to allow investigators to dig. “The theory is he could have placed evidence of cases under stone pavers under the metal shed he built in the early to mid-90s. Like drivers licenses in jars,” Rader’s estranged daughter Kerri Rawson told Fox News.

“Our investigation has led to additional unsolved murders and missing persons that are possibly connected to BTK,” Osage County Undersheriff Gary Upston told NBC News on Wednesday; adding that there may be a “possible connection” to the disappearance of Cynthia Kinney, who was reported missing from Oklahoma in 1976.

Rader was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in 2005 for the murder of at least ten people during a killing spree that took place between 1974 and 1991. The name he’s most commonly referred to as (“BTK”) stands for “bind, torture and kill,” a description of the brutal means in which his enacted his crimes. Between 1974 and 1988, he worked at the Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services, installing security systems for homeowners looking to protect themselves — unknowingly — from the very man installing them. Now 78-years-old, he’s currently held at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas, where he’ll remain until he dies.

Why is everyone leaving this celebrity manager? Here’s who ditched him, and here’s who’s left

Big changes are happening in the music industry, all thanks to one celebrity manager who may have some beef with a few of his high-profile clients. We’re talking about Scooter Braun, whose name continues to pop up in recent reports and across social media.

Some may know Braun in association with pop star Taylor Swift. Others may know him in connection to Schoolboy Records, the major record label that enjoyed successes with Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” along with Psy’s hit “Gangnam Style.” And a few may even know him for his eponymous entertainment and media company, Scooter Braun Projects, better known as SB Projects. The 42-year-old music exec and entrepreneur launched his company in 2007, after dropping out of college and working as an executive director of marketing for producer Jermaine Dupri’s record label So So Def.

Braun’s early successes in the entertainment industry — which include brokering Ludacris and Pontiac in a $12 million deal campaign — contributed to the overall success of his profitable talent management business. Many of his clients hold the same level of prestige that his company boasts. But now, it seems like Braun is losing those clients just as quickly as he attained them.

Taylor Swift vs. Scooter Braun and Big Machine: Who’s the victim?

There’s currently very little information as to why some celebrities are parting ways with Braun. The drama is also pretty unclear as some sources claim one reason and others say the opposite, thus creating a murky narrative. At this time, a source told NBC News that Braun is cutting a few ties to focus on his new role as CEO of Hybe America. The recent splits are all supposedly amicable in nature, and those who say otherwise are “spreading rumors,” they added.

“All of Scooter Braun’s clients are under contract, and negotiations have been going on for several months as Scooter steps into his larger role as Hybe America CEO,” the source shared. “People are spreading rumors based on what they know but they are off.”

The recent events are being called a mass exodus from Braun’s company. And many Netizens suspect there’s something more shady happening, especially as reports of additional clients leaving Braun’s management stable are on the horizon.

Here’s a closer look at who ditched Braun so far, and who is still under his management:

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift (Kevin Winter/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

Swift and Braun’s lengthy feud reached its peak in June 2019, when Braun acquired Swift’s old record label, Big Machine Records, for a whopping $300 million. As part of the deal, Braun became the new owner of Swift’s first six albums with Big Machine Records: her self-titled debut, “Fearless,” “Speak Now,” “Red,” “1989” and “Reputation.”

Swift later took to Tumblr to slam the business deal and Braun, who she had bad blood with since 2016, in a lengthy post:

“I learned about Scooter Braun’s purchase of my masters as it was announced to the world,” she wrote. “All I could think about was the incessant, manipulative bullying I’ve received at his hands for years.” She continued, mentioning her bitter fight with Braun, Kanye West and West’s then wife Kim Kardashian.

Known as the “Famous” scandal, Swift suffered a hit to her public image after Kardashian leaked a portion of a phone call in which Swift gave West (who was managed by Scooter at the time) permission to release his song, “Famous.” In it, West raps, “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that b***h famous.” The inflammatory single was enough to label Swift a “snake” and fuel a series of online jabs, from celebrities and fans alike, against the singer.

In November 2019, Swift claimed Braun had told her she wasn’t allowed to perform any music from her first six albums during her American Music Awards performance. Then, a year later, Swift said she was kept in the dark when Braun sold her master rights to Shamrock Holdings for over $300 million.

Braun spoke out about the tense relationship in June 2021, saying in an interview for a Variety cover story, “I regret, and it makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal.” He continued, asserting that Swift’s side of the story was “not based on anything factual.” Braun also expressed hurt over Swift calling him a bully.

“I’m firmly against anyone ever being bullied. I always try to lead with appreciation and understanding,” he said. “The one thing I’m proudest of in that moment was that my artists and team stood by me. They know my character and my truth. That meant a lot to me.”

Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc for Homecoming Weekend/Getty Images)

Last week, Puck News reported that Bieber “has been poking around for a new agency or manager,” and that he hasn’t talked to Braun in months.

“It’s tough because Bieber signed a new management deal right before Braun sold his Ithaca Holdings to South Korean giant Hybe in 2021, and Bieber still has time left on that,” wrote Puck’s Matthew Belloni. “So neither side is confirming a split, but I’m told they’re headed separate ways, and their lawyers are involved.”

Although the shocking revelation has been denied by reps for both stars, many are now wondering if there’s truth to it as several other stars announced their recent departure from Braun.

Bieber’s rise to stardom can be credited to Braun, who discovered the then-rising star via a YouTube video back in 2007, when Bieber was just 13 years of age.

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

Lovato parted ways with Braun and is currently seeking new management as she gears up to release her new album, “Revamped,” sources told Variety. They emphasized that the decision was mutual and amicable.

Lovato and Braun had worked together since 2019. At the time, Lovato announced their partnership in an Instagram post, writing: “Dreams came true for me. I officially have a NEW MANAGER. And not just any manager but the one and only Scooter Braun. Couldn’t be happier, inspired and excited to begin this next chapter. Thank you for believing in me and for being a part of this new journey.” Braun also posted that Lovato “is a special person and a special talent. I’m . . . we . . . are honored.”

Under Braun’s management, Lovato released two albums: “Holy Fvck” and “Dancing with the Devil . . . the Art of Starting Over.” She previously shared that Braun has been incredibly supportive amid her struggles with substance abuse and mental health.

Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartMedia)

Shortly after news of Lovato’s split with Braun broke, Puck’s Matthew Belloni announced that Grande had also cut ties with Braun after 10 years together. Billboard later confirmed the news, saying, “It is unclear whether Grande is severing all business ties with Braun outside of management.”

On Tuesday, TMZ reported that Grande was still under contract with SB Projects. Belloni, however, pointed out that Braun was close to TMZ’s Harvey Levin.

“Oh no, this is embarrassing for TMZ,” Belloni wrote on X. “Harvey and Scooter are BFFs but Harvey man, the brand has gotta come first . . .”

Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)

The Broadway star signed with Braun in 2019 and left him in January, a source close to Menzel told The Hollywood Reporter. Neither the source nor the outlet disclosed the reason why Menzel chose to find new management. At this time, Menzel, along with Lovato, Grande and Bieber, are all still listed as music clients on the Scooter Braun Projects website.

Braun’s current clients (for now)

Kelly Rowland (Gus Stewart/Redferns/Getty Images)

Despite the lost clients, Braun is still managing several notable celebrities . . . for now. His current clients include Ava Max, Carly Rae Jepsen, Black Eyed Peas, David Guetta, Ashley Graham, Hilary Duff, Kelly Rowland, Ozuna, Quavo, Psy, The Knocks, Lil Dicky, The Kid Laroi and Tori Kelly.

about music:

We need to talk about Jennifer Aniston’s misguided take on cancel culture

Jennifer Aniston is one of those celebrities who has remained a constant cultural figure in entertainment through her decades-long career as a ’90s girl next door. From her iconic role as Rachel Green in “Friends” and now her award-winning portrayal of TV show anchor Alex on “The Morning Show,” Hollywood’s favorite A-lister is perpetually on our screens but we never really know what she thinks. Or maybe nobody really cares to know what she thinks. But that has changed in her press tour promoting the new season of Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show.”

Her privilege shields her from being at risk of the same cancellation she’s seemingly minimizing.

In a recent interview with Wall Street Journal Magazine, the actress said she had a gripe with the fictional boogeyman steeped at the center of America’s culture wars: cancel culture. “I’m so over cancel culture,” she said. “I probably just got canceled by saying that. I just don’t understand what it means . . . Is there no redemption? I don’t know. I don’t put everybody in the Harvey Weinstein basket.”

The actress isn’t really known for her nuanced opinions and takes on culture, and it may be jarring to see her have such a strong stance one way or another on something as trivial as so-called cancel culture. Aniston’s appeal in Hollywood isn’t because people look to her for thoughtful commentary. Her appeal is that she is the approachable woman. She’s been in numerous rom-coms. She’s always in a buddy comedy with pal Adam Sandler. She is the nepotism daughter of a longtime “Days of Our Lives” actor, John Aniston. She is truly an image of a privileged white leading woman in the industry.

“The Morning Show” and making sense of Mitch and Alex’s wild ride in Italy

That’s why this comment sounded like a fundamental misunderstanding of what her role and placement in the industry represent. It sounds like to me, Aniston may not understand the utmost privilege and access that she has as his figurehead in the industry. She seems to not grasp the role her personal success has in the conversations surrounding social awareness and consciousness. Luckily for her, her privilege shields her from being at risk of the same cancellation she’s seemingly minimizing in that interview.

Aniston’s inability to decipher the nuances of accountability culture are also similar to the shortcomings of Aniston’s character on “The Morning Show.”

If we break down what the actress thinks about cancel culture we can start with her questioning if there’s redemption anymore. I think, there will always be redemption for people who seek it. Everyone who has ever been canceled of course isn’t as horrific of an offender as disgraced and convicted sexual predator and abuser Harvey Weinstein. It’s absurd and almost alarmist to mention and compare smaller infractions that can be corrected through character development and education to an abuser like Weinstein in the same conversation. Cancel culture does not count for abusers because they deserve repercussions larger and more significant than public condemnation and alienation. Their actions are usually punishable by the law because they are committing crimes.

Aniston’s inability to decipher the nuances of accountability culture are also similar to the shortcomings of Aniston’s character on “The Morning Show.” Alex is a jaded, veteran broadcast journalist working for a show similar to “Good Morning America.” The Apple TV+ series explores what the network and show look like after Alex’s co-anchor (Steve Carrell) is accused of sexual misconduct and is fired and literally dives into the multiple perspectives on #MeToo, cancel culture, and redemption for abusers post-allegations.

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Through the first two seasons of the show, Alex struggles to recognize how insidious and deep the abuse Mitch perpetuated on the women who worked on the show is. She admits that she turned a blind eye because she also was romantically involved with Mitch for years. She reluctantly takes a stance against him because of his toxicity and what it means for the larger implications in the industry (#MeToo movement). But if Alex was not pressured by other women to step forward and expose Mitch, she would have never done it to protect her own skin.

Salon’s previous coverage discusses how the show’s self-victimizing narrative misrepresents that “most movements for survivor justice and accountability are fighting for systemic changes and protections for victims.” It paints “those who seek justice and accountability for abusers as the aggressors, and abusers like Mitch as their victims.”

Alex is much more of an enabler of bad behavior compared to Aniston but I think it is something to keep in mind when we assign importance to celebrities and longtime shapers of the industry that they are capable of this kind of behavior too. Their weak stances and conservative framing of cancel culture as this army of unforgiving, spiteful keyboard warriors diminish the urgent need for an equitable, safe industry that doesn’t just protect and uplift daytime soap nepotism babies.

about cancel culture

Mark Meadows’ request to avoid arrest rejected by judge

In two six-page rulings by Atlanta-based U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows‘ request to prohibit District Attorney Fani Willis from arresting him by Friday’s deadline has been denied.

According to Politico, both Meadows and Jeffrey Clark were looking to “derail the criminal proceedings against them in Fulton County, where they’re charged alongside Donald Trump with a sprawling racketeering conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 election,” on the basis that “both men say their cases should be handled — and ultimately dismissed — by federal courts because of their work for the Trump administration.”

“Until the federal court assumes jurisdiction over a state criminal case, the state court retains jurisdiction over the prosecution and the proceedings continue,” Jones wrote in his ruling, noting that “this provision of federal law can mean that defendants are not only arrested, but sometimes even put on trial while motions to move their cases to federal court are pending,” per the outlet’s reporting. This ensures that Meadows will, along with the other co-defendants, face arrest this week.

Rudy Giuliani released on $150,000 bond after turning himself in at Georgia jail

Two of the main defendants in the election subversion case against former president Donald Trump turned themselves in at the Fulton County Jail for processing on Wednesday — Former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. According to court records reported on by ABC News, Giuliani was released on $150,000 bond and Powell’s was set at $100,000. The trickle of defendants began earlier in the week, with The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office additionally processing and releasing mug shots for John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, former Georgia GOP chair David Shafer, former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham, Georgia lawyer Ray Smith III, Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall and Trump attorney Jenna Ellis – rounding out a good portion of the 18 co-defendants in the case. Trump himself is expected to surrender on Thursday and his bond has been set at $200,000.

Giuliani — charged with 13 crimes, including breaking the state’s racketeering act, engaging in various criminal conspiracies, and soliciting a public officer in the state to violate their oath — spoke to reporters following his booking saying, “If they can do this to me they can do this to you.” In a post to Truth Social, Trump came to his defense writing, “The greatest Mayor in the history of New York City was just ARRESTED in Atlanta, Georgia, because he fought for Election Integrity. THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED & STOLLEN. HOW SAD FOR OUR COUNTRY. MAGA!”

INBOX: Mugshots for Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. pic.twitter.com/x466UOnz4j

— Ella Lee (@ByEllaLee) August 23, 2023

Goldman Sachs enters the $9 billion bidding war for Subway

Final bids to acquire the sandwich chain Subway were made yesterday and it looks like the predicted frontrunner Roark Capital Group — which already controls Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’ Donuts, Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Jimmy John’s and Sonic — may have some steep competition following news that Goldman Sachs has thrown their weight behind competitor TDR Capital.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Roark is considered the favorite to acquire Subway for more than $9 billion. However, the TDR is still trying to come out on top by bringing in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset management arm, as well as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Per Reuters, both bids include earnout provisions for members of the chain’s founding family.

Following a very public lawsuit over the contents of Subway’s tuna salad, the chain has been focusing on updating its image in recent months. There is a renewed emphasis on freshness, bolstered by new menu items and a corporate decision to install deli-slicers at every restaurant instead of relying on pre-cut cold cuts.

A decision regarding the acquisition could come as soon as this evening.

Ex-U.S. attorney: John Eastman statement “can be used against him” after he doubles down on Big Lie

John Eastman, the conservative lawyer who devised a strategy to help maintain former President Donald Trump’s hold on power, doubled down on his false claims of election fraud after being booked at the Fulton County jail on Tuesday.

In a statement issued by his lawyers, Eastman said that his surrender was prompted by an indictment that, in his view, “should never have been brought.”

Eastman told a reporter that there was “no question” in his mind that the 2020 election had been stolen from the former president.

“I am confident that, when the law is faithfully applied in this proceeding, all of my co-defendants and I will be fully vindicated,” Eastman said.

Vitali: Do you still think the election was stolen?

Eastman: Absolutely. No question pic.twitter.com/nxy02FuXIV

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 22, 2023

“The Karen of criminal defendants”: Experts trash indicted Trump co-defendant’s “entitled” demand

Eastman was indicted last week alongside 18 other other co-conspirators in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling racketeering investigation. He turned himself in to Georgia authorities on Tuesday on charges linked to his attempts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election.

“John Eastman is previewing his defense, which appears to be a good faith belief that the election was stolen,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, told Salon. “The prosecution will have the burden of proving either that he knew that statement was false, or that he used means he knew to be illegal to overturn the election results. His public statements can be used against him a trial if he should take an inconsistent position.”

Eastman served as a close adviser to Trump leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by the president’s supporters, who aimed to disrupt the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral win.

As the mastermind behind a plot to undermine the certification of the Electoral College vote, Eastman wrote a memo outlining a series of actions that then-Vice President Mike Pence could potentially take during his role overseeing the joint session of Congress on that day to prevent the tallying of electoral votes and extend Trump’s tenure in office.

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He and fellow co-defendant Rudy Giuliani provided remote testimony before Georgia lawmakers in late 2020. During this session, they asserted that there existed substantial evidence of extensive fraud in the 2020 election held in Georgia.

Despite facing nine charges including Violation of the State’s RICO Act, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer and conspiracy to commit filing false documents, Eastman has maintained that the 2020 election was stolen.

“Of course, many defendants are publicly defiant at the time they are charged, and ultimately enter guilty pleas and cooperate once they review the discovery material and understand the likelihood of conviction,” McQuade said.

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Eastman also criticized the indictment for targeting “attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients” and said each of the defendants was entitled to rely on the advice of lawyers and past legal precedent to challenge the results of the election.

“There is no more fundamental ethical obligation for a lawyer than that of upholding the constitution,” James Sample, a Hofstra University constitutional law professor, told Salon. “John Eastman asserting that legal ethics required him to subvert the constitution is the height of hypocrisy.”

Trump’s attorneys also met with Fulton County prosecutors on Tuesday to establish the terms of his bail arrangement.

As part of the agreement, the ex-president will need to post a $200,000 bond, commit to not partake in any additional criminal activities, attend court appearances as mandated and abstain from issuing any form of “explicit or implied threat” against his co-defendant, unindicted co-conspirators, witnesses or victims.

Earlier this week, Trump posted to Truth Social that he plans to surrender on Thursday afternoon writing: “Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED by a Radical Left District Attorney, Fani Willis, who is overseeing one of the greatest Murder and Violent Crime DISASTERS in American History. In my case, the trip to Atlanta is not for “Murder,” but for making a PERFECT PHONE CALL! She campaigned, and is continuing to campaign, and raise money on, this WITCH HUNT. This is in strict coordination with Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ. It is all about ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

about the Fulton indictment

Melissa Joan Hart says she was nearly fired from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” over Maxim shoot

During an appearance on the Pod Meets World podcast, Melissa Joan Hart revealed that she was almost fired from “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” after she did a photo shoot for Maxim magazine. Hart recalled what she said was the “worst day of my life” after hosts Danielle Fishel, Will Friedle and Rider Strong showed a photo of Hart with Britney Spears at the 1999 premiere of “Drive Me Crazy.” Following the event, Hart went straight to the airport to film “Scary Movie,” her upcoming project at the time. But she soon received word that she had been fired from the production after producers “flipped out” over her posing in her underwear.

While attending the “Drive Me Crazy” premiere party, Hart received a phone call from her lawyer who asked her if she had done a photoshoot for Maxim. “I’m like, ‘Yes, I did,'” Hart said. “They’re like, ‘Well, you’re being sued and fired from your show. So don’t talk to the press. Don’t do anything.'” Hart explained that her publicist had told her to do the shoot and because it was for Maxim, “of course you’re gonna be in your underwear.”

Most of the uproar was centered on the magazine’s cover line that read: “Sabrina, your favorite witch without a stitch.” Hart said she was ultimately allowed to stay on the show after it was shown that production legally had “no ground to stand on.”

“Nothing came of it,” she said on the podcast. “But of course, in the moment, I didn’t know what was going on.”

Man who verbally accosted Drew Barrymore, Reneé Rapp on stage allegedly stalked Amber Heard

The man who verbally accosted Drew Barrymore and Reneé Rapp on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City reportedly has a history with female celebrities, per an online investigation conducted by The Daily Beast. The incident took place Monday when Barrymore was leading a conversation with Rapp, the star of Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” about her latest album. Video footage from the event showed the man, who goes by the name Chad Michael Busto, screaming Barrymore’s name mid-interview before approaching her and shouting, “You know who I am. I need to see you at some point while you’re in New York.” Barrymore was then quickly escorted off the stage by Rapp.

A closer look at Busto’s internet presence and criminal records revealed that in addition to allegedly stalking Barrymore, he once joined an online forum devoted to a discussion related to Amber Heard. Busto was subsequently banned from the group for “sexual harassment,” “threats” and “stalking,” according to an account posted by one of the forum’s administrators.

However, that didn’t stop Busto’s continued interest in Heard. In the last few months, he began using X (formerly known as Twitter) to propose marriage to Heard and send her messages. “I am still waiting for a reply,” he told people at a Walmart about his proposal. “I would like everybody’s best wishes.” In another video posted in July, he addressed Heard directly, saying, “I hope we are going to see each other soon. And I love you very much.”

After Busto was removed from the venue, Barrymore praised Rapp’s quick thinking on stage, saying, “Well, I have a new definition of your sexiness — it’s that level of protectiveness. That went full ‘Bodyguard.’ You are my Kevin Costner!”

Baking with the beloved, unknown dead: How tombstone recipes connect us to food and family history

Kanelkakor are Swedish cinnamon butter cookies. Almost every year at Christmas, I make these round, brittle shortbreads rolled in a generous coating of cinnamon and sugar, along with a handful of other cookies my late mother-in-law Betsy was famous for. She’d bake astonishing quantities of cookies each holiday season, giving all but a few tins away to everyone she knew.

Whenever I take that first bite of Kanelkakor — its crunchy, caramelized exterior crumbling into buttery, cinnamon-tinged sweetness — I am briefly transported to Betsy’s carpeted living room with its pink upholstered couch and restored wood tables loaded with knick knacks. It’s Christmas Eve, and the house smells like roast something mixed with buttery pie crust. We sip champagne from highly elaborate flutes, dreading the midnight mass she’s goaded us into attending. I park myself in the upholstered rocker strategically in between the little bowl of sugared pecans and the cookie tin containing the most Kanelkakor. The light seems too low for a group who theoretically plan to stay awake into the wee hours.

Why do I cook like a Sicilian? Seeing myself in the food of Italy

This memory washed over me after I interviewed Rosie Grant, the Los Angeles-based, part-time librarian and TikToker who created the viral platform @GhostlyArchive, in which she recreates recipes etched into people’s gravestones. So far Grant has documented 25 recipes, which includes interviewing the families of the deceased and, in a handful of cases, recreating the recipes and taking them back to the graveyard to eat them in the presence of their creators. Many of the recipes have been desserts, and nearly all the graves, dating as far back as 1994, belong to women.

Spritz Cookies gravestone (Photo courtesy of Rosie Grant)“Food was obviously important to all of them; they were all good cooks who had their favorite recipes,” Grant told me. “Also with that, they were very giving — the matriarchs and food heads of their families. They hosted holidays and celebrations and fed everyone. When people think about big, important family memories, they’re at the center.”

Grant started the project just over two years ago, initially as a grad-school social-media assignment documenting cemetery life and upkeep at Washington D.C.’s Congressional Cemetery. But then she heard about the grave of Naomi Odessa Miller Dawson in Brooklyn, which was inscribed with a recipe for Dawson’s favorite spritz cookies. Grant decided to bake and document the gravestone recipe on TikTok. It went viral overnight, amassing a million likes. Soon she learned about other families who’d engraved their loved ones’ headstones with their favorite recipes, thanks in part to improvements in gravestone technology that enable more personalization. Now with 195,000 TikTok followers and over 8 million likes, Grant is considering turning the project into a cookbook.

Eating and dying are two things we human beings all share.

“What’s that phrase? Every time someone dies, it’s like a library dies,” Grant said. “There’s so much food knowledge and history in each person. That’s been such an interesting part of this project, the number of stories I’m getting about people. Looking through the comments on TikTok, everybody has a personal food story: ‘My mom, dad, or grandma makes this. My dad passed away and I never got his barbecue recipe. I wish I’d interviewed him.’ These food legacies and histories we might take for granted are so precious.”

Eating and dying are two things we human beings all share, though Americans in particular are squeamish about talking openly about the latter. Bridging the two by, say, talking about a recipe we’d put on our gravestones, can offer a more lighthearted entry point to the Death Positive Movement, which posits that people in society are healthier if they talk more openly about mortality and how they want to be memorialized.

“There’s this idea of what if we had conversations of like, how do we want to be remembered?” Grant said. “What do you want your memorial to look like? Food is such an easy lens for that.”

Kanelkakor (Photo courtesy of Maggie Hennessy )Grant, whose parents are graveyard tour operators and history lovers, grew up with a positive relationship to cemeteries as public memorials; she recalls visiting Arlington National Cemetery with her family. But the idea of death felt abstract, even taboo. It took the unexpected loss of a friend in college to make her reexamine her own fears and unpreparedness surrounding mortality.

Emerging from a global pandemic has no doubt brought death to the forefront of our collective consciousness as a culture, she said.

“We all experienced this collective, insane thing that we don’t know what to do with,” Grant said. “We went back to the ‘norm,’ whatever that is, but that’s still there! I think that’s why (@GhostlyArchives) is resonating. It uplifts the beautiful, lighter side of this huge, momentous thing like dying through food memories and cooking.”

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The most recent grave Grant visited belongs to Annabell Gunderson, who lived in Northern California and was active in the civil service, including as a volunteer firefighter with her husband. Her tombstone features her snickerdoodles recipe, the secret of which is to “keep dough fluffy!” it reads.

“Annabell’s daughter told me that she was a very giving person,” Grant said. “Her recipe makes, like, a thousand cookies — it calls for five and a half cups of flour — so it was meant to be shared. Annabell’s daughter told one story of the all-volunteer fire department coming to the house in the middle of the night and her mom was handing out food, including these cookies. So there was always that sense of giving. How beautiful that it continued in her death through sharing this recipe.”

“That’s how I see a gravestone recipe, a gift.”

I couldn’t help but find similarities to Betsy, a speech therapist who was active in her church and boundlessly generous until her untimely death from ovarian cancer, just before Christmas in 2009. For months thereafter, we felt swallowed by the immensity of our grief. Eventually, baking her cookies became a sensory conduit that ferried us back to our richest memories of her, flitting around her cramped, cluttered kitchen. Her recipe cards, written in loopy script and stained from use, are like little gifts.

“That’s how I see a gravestone recipe, a gift,” Grant said. “There’s another saying, that you die two times: first when you die and second the last time someone says your name. A cemetery is the last public memorial to someone you might not know otherwise. When you read the inscription on their gravestone, it is a public memory to different individuals who are normal people. It keeps their memory alive.”

Betsy was cremated and buried in the front yard of her church beneath a small memorial plaque. You won’t find a recipe for her Kanelkakor there, but I firmly believe she’d want you all to have it anyway.

Betsy’s Kanelkakor (Swedish Cinnamon Cookies)

Yields

24 servings

Prep Time

10 minutes

Cook Time

10-12 minutes

Ingredients

2 ½ cup flour
1 cup butter
½ cup sugar
1 egg, separated
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
3 Tablespoons sugar

Directions

Put flour on board. Add butter, sugar, egg yolk and blend with a fork or two knives. Work into smooth dough with hands.
Form into 2 logs about 10″ long. Brush rolls with beaten egg white, and dip in cinnamon and sugar mixture. Cut in ¼” slices.
Place on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375°F for 10-12 minutes.

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The best way to preserve summer produce

Late summer means preserving all the things, whether you grow your own food like I do at Catbird Cottage, or you’re one to fall into reverie, dazzled by the innumerable tables of colorful fruit and veg at the farmers’ market. Right now, my daily goals include preserving this bounty as much as possible. I make quick, vinegar, and fermented pickles, bottle up summer sauce and jams, infuse salt, sugar, oils, and vinegars with tender aromatics, and generally work on overdrive so when days are cold and short, I have the bursting bright flavors from warmer days to keep me company. Here are a few tried-and-true methods to capture the seasons, so when cold winter days hit again, you can reap the benefits and enjoy bottled sunshine.

Pickles

Pickled Peaches With Burrata Toasts: Pickling less-than-ripe peaches is a fun way to carry the season forward. Pair them with rich cheeses or meats, and keep a puckery token of summer close at hand.
Wheat Berry Salad With Radishes, Feta & Avocado: It doesn’t have to be summer to pickle red onions. This pretty pink condiment is universally beloved — and versatile — and takes just minutes to make.
Quinoa Bowl With Jammy Eggs & Pickled Shiso: Bright, floral shiso grows abundantly at my Hudson Valley cottage, and a way to manage it wholesale is to make this aromatic, punchy condiment. It pairs excellently with so many things, from eggs to roasted meats, to beans, to noodles.

Confit

Alex Raij’s Mushroom Confit (Setas Confitadas): A boatload of mushrooms becomes lush, meaty fare for your next brunch or lunch, and bonus, the recipe is vegan.
Confit Halibut With Tomatoes & Preserved Lemon: Toss together a few summer stars, some punchy aromatics, and a handsome piece of fish and make confit. Its low-lift / high-return combo makes for easy enticement, plus, the leftover infused oil creates the foundation for future stews, rice, and pasta.

Sauces

Crispy Potatoes with Garlic Mustard Pesto: Whether it’s basil, spinach, arugula, or garlic mustard, whip up a quick riff on pesto to manage a glut of greens.
Summer Squash Sauce with Pasta: An impressive volume of summer squash collapses after processing with a box grater, producing a lovely riff on summer sauce.
Michel Guérard’s Sauce Vierge: Throw together a quick, fresh tomato “sauce” with the best of summer’s herbs and tomatoes, and add it to everything.

Jams

Overnight Oats With Cherry Compote & Hazelnut Brittle: Got armfuls of fresh berries? Make compote, a rustic preserve that is perfect spooned onto ice cream, spread on toast, to top overnight oats or yogurt, and even stirred into cocktails.
Pickled Strawberry Jam: Combine puckery flavors used in pickling and fruity sweetness for a new take on jam. Voilå a surprising, delightful spread you’ll want to slather onto everything.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin killed in plane crash months after mutiny, according to Russian media

Russian state media on Wednesday reported that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group’s halted coup attempt earlier this year, was a passenger on a jet that crashed north of Moscow, according to NBC News, which was unable to confirm the report. The Russian Ministry of Emergency services reported that a private aircraft crashed in the Tver region northeast of Moscow while flying from the capital to St. Petersburg with “10 people on board, including three crew members.”

The ministry’s statement did not mention Prigozhin. However, the Tass state news agency quoted the Federal Air Transport Agency as saying that he was among the seven passengers on the plane. State-run RIA Novosti reported separately, “According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, an investigation has been launched into the Embraer crash. Among the passengers is the name and surname of Evgeny Prigozhin.”

Reports of the crash broke after Prigozhin appeared to have given his first address since the mutiny via video on Monday, in which he vowed to make Africa “more free” and “Russia even greater on every continent.” His whereabouts since the rebellion have been a mystery since his fighters captured the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don before starting to march to Moscow. The group had stopped some 120 miles from the capital after allegedly making a deal with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The coup attempt followed months of Prigozhin criticizing and mocking Russia’s military, accusing them of incompetence throughout the war with Ukraine.