Sophie B. Hawkins on why fans still trust the Beatles: “They didn’t exploit us”

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Sophie B. Hawkins joined host Kenneth Womack to talk about the “beautiful space” that the Beatles create, the intimacy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” her new album and much more on the season 5 finale of “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Hawkins, the artist behind such ’90s hits as “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover,” “As I Lay Me Down” and “Right Beside You,” says her grandmother was a pianist who wanted to take her to lessons when she was a child, but her parents wouldn’t allow it. As she explained to Womack, it wasn’t because they didn’t want her to play music, but because “they listened to the Beatles and the Stones, and they wanted me to be free — without the confines of lessons.”

“Sadness is such a common language”: Madison Cunningham on songwriting, sorrow and the Beatles

She credits her parents with “playing all the great songwriters in our house via the record player. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, but I absorbed it … the Beatles became part of my family. I grew up with them as if they were the food I was eating.” And to this day, she says when she and her son and daughter “turn on the Beatles, that’s when we dance and smile and be together. We forget all the world.”

Growing up in Manhattan (and realizing “John Lennon lived just down the street!”), Hawkins spent “all her time” in Central Park, where she took an interest in the street musicians there and in particular, African drums. At 14, she began working with a multi-instrumentalist instructor and learned to play. “I didn’t want to just be a singer,” she said. “I wanted to be a song. And I felt the drums were the best way to express that.”

LISTEN:

Subscribe today through Spotify, Apple Podcasts, GooglePodcasts, Stitcher, RadioPublic, Breaker, Player.FM, Pocket Casts or wherever you’re listening.

As she expanded into writing her own music, as is evident on her new album “Free Myself” as much as her well-known hits, Hawkins told Womack, “Until I hit that point of magic in a song, I don’t want to let it go. … Songwriting is all in the way you let someone in. We humans have let the Beatles into the purest part of us. We don’t trust everyone, but we trust them. You know you can trust them and you just let them in.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Sophie B. Hawkins on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you’re listening. “Everything Fab Four” is distributed by Salon.

Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His latest project is the authorized biography and archives of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, due out in November 2023.

Listen to more

“Everything Fab Four” interviews:

Groups sue to overturn Idaho “abortion trafficking” law targeting teens

Advocates who counsel and aid Idaho teenagers seeking abortion care filed suit Tuesday against Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador in a bid to overturn the state’s abortion travel ban.

The travel ban, which took effect May 5, created the crime of “abortion trafficking,” punishable by a minimum of two years in prison. It forbids helping a person under 18 years old obtain abortion pills or leave the state for abortion care without parental permission.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Boise, Idaho, says the ban infringes on the right to interstate travel and on First Amendment rights to speak about abortion and “engage in expressive conduct, including providing monies and transportation (and other support) for pregnant minors traveling within and outside of Idaho.”

Idaho drops panel investigating pregnancy-related deaths as U.S. maternal mortality surges

The suit also says the travel ban “lacks clarity” and “invites arbitrary enforcement,” raising the specter of traffic stops of girls of reproductive age, and infringes on the right of people to cross the border into neighboring states, including Washington, where minors can legally obtain abortion care without parental consent.

Wendy Heipt, senior reproductive health and justice counsel at Legal Voice, an advocacy group representing the plaintiffs, said Idaho’s law prohibits “recruiting or harboring a minor, but what constitutes recruiting? Giving information? You can’t stop [my clients] from providing information about conduct that is legal in another state.”

She added, “If we want to give money to a minor to go to another state, we should be able to do that.”

In a statement, Idaho’s Office of the Attorney General said, “While we don’t comment on pending litigation, our office is always prepared to vigorously defend the constitutionality of statutes duly passed by the legislature.”

Legal experts say the ban, based on a model bill written by National Right to Life, one of the country’s largest anti-abortion groups, is drafted to sidestep implied constitutional protections for interstate travel.

“This National Right to Life proposal was designed to chip away at travel in a way that is less politically and legally risky,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at the University of California-Davis and an abortion historian. “It’s easier to package this as a Republican parental rights initiative, and it’s easier legally because courts have been willing to countenance limits on minor rights that they wouldn’t countenance on adults.”

She added, “The idea is to stop people from traveling to other states,” and teen travel bans “could be a steppingstone to limit an adult’s right to travel.”

The plaintiffs include the Indigenous Idaho Alliance, a nonprofit that has helped pregnant minors access abortion care outside the state; the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which provided financial assistance to 166 Idahoans in 2022, including 18 minors; and Lourdes Matsumoto, an attorney who works with victims of domestic and sexual violence, many of whom are minors.

Strict abortion laws are driving an exodus of women’s health specialists

Domestic violence advocates “don’t know what advice they can give people,” Matsumoto said. “In the shelters, they are confused about what information they can and cannot give out without putting themselves in legal jeopardy.” She said the teen travel ban has had a chilling effect on her work with teenagers dealing with the trauma of sexual assault.

Idaho’s law, the first in the nation to describe “abortion trafficking,” requires a minimum two-year prison sentence for any adult who acts “with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor.”

But Matsumoto, who has two teenage nieces, said the law fails to detail what constitutes parental consent. “If my niece comes to me and says, ‘My mom says this is OK; can you take me to Oregon?’ — is that enough that the mom consented? Am I going to have to come back, get arrested, lose my law license, then go to court and say, ‘The mom said it’s OK’? Is it a nod? A thumbs-up in a text message?”

Courts are usually suspicious of laws that are overbroad and vague, said I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor. But he said abortion bans around the country, including Idaho’s teen travel ban, have been written in a “fuzzy” way so that they “will deter ever more conduct because people don’t know where the line is.”

The lawsuit cites a legal opinion dated March 27 from Labrador that “stated that medical professionals who refer pregnant patients across state lines for either medical or chemical abortions violate Idaho’s Total Abortion Ban,” a separate law that went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Labrador withdrew the opinion on April 7, facing a legal challenge over constitutional rights of speech and movement.

“It is unconstitutional to forbid citizens from traveling because you disapprove of the reasons they are driving to another state,” Heipt said. “Idahoans, like all people, should be free to travel within and between states without the specter of prison, even if they are traveling for a reason other people disagree with.”

Idaho patients, including teenagers, have long crossed into Washington state to legally end their pregnancies. But fewer than 5% of patients at Planned Parenthood clinics in Washington who come for abortion care are minors, according to Karl Eastlund, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho.

Most of those patients, he said, do involve their parents in the process, even though parental consent is not mandatory in Washington. Those who don’t, Eastlund said, have good reason not to. Some are in dangerous, abusive situations in which disclosing a pregnancy could put them at risk of further harm.

The lawsuit in Idaho cites Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, in which he claimed states could not bar residents from going to other states for abortions.

“May a State bar a resident of that State from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion?” Kavanaugh wrote. “In my view, the answer is no based on the constitutional right to interstate travel.”

But Kavanaugh represents only one vote on the court, Cohen said, and “it remains to be seen what the other justices have to say on the matter.”

Rather than settle the question of whether states can prohibit traveling for an abortion, Heipt said, “Dobbs unleashed chaos. What’s next?”

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

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

about abortion and reproductive healthcare

How Barbie influenced our real-world Dreamhouse goals

Barbie's first dreamhouse had no kitchen. The one-room, single-story 1962 home contained everything a teenager requires for fun, including a Hi-Fi TV console with a record player, a bed, a simple couch, and the obligatory closet. But there are also books, LPs and pennants identifying her as a college graduate.

By HGTV standards, Ms. Barbie Millicent Roberts' starter palace was dinky. It was also indisputably her own, popping in toy stores a full year before the Equal Pay Act was passed to protect women against pay discrimination in the workplace. More than a decade later, in 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act opened up access to loans and credit for women, enabling more unmarried women to purchase property without a male co-signer.

The natural next statement should be along the lines of the real world catching up to Barbie's make-believe one, and that's true to a degree. The Barbie aficionado's response to accusations of the doll's anti-feminist bent might cite the inaugural dreamhouse's relationship to history.

"You can really tell that each dreamhouse is representative of what's popular in architecture and design in that period," explains Barbie historian Whitney Mallett in an Architectural Digest video breakdown of the Dreamhouse's evolution over time. "And it also tells kind of a cultural narrative of what's going on."

It's true. Where classic dollhouses were intended to prepare girls for a life of domesticity Barbie's den prioritized good times.

Plus, her space was entirely hers and affordable, retailing for between $4.44 and $8, or between $31 and $81 in 2023 dollars.

Our Barbies, ourselves

The Santa Clarita, Calif. house transformed for HGTV's "Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" reflects the doll's modern digs – multiple rooms on multiple floors. A prominent staircase in the entryway. A fireplace. A closet large enough to live in. The now-obligatory pool. And pink, many shades of it, everywhere.

"Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" host Ashley Graham in the entry (HGTV)

There's also a kitchen. But that suits the needs of Food Network star and "Top Chef" competitor Antonia Lofaso, who is among the TV pros – mainly HGTV rehab show stars — tasked with inflicting their creative interpretations of era-specific Barbie design on assigned sections.

HGTV's real estate makeover shows have sold luxuries as commonplace amenities for years. The "Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" simply amplifies that illusion.

The show will end after four episodes. But one lesson that may linger is a nagging sensation of how sneakily Mattel's iconic toy houses influenced America's design expectations. Mattel originally conceived of the Dreamhouse for entirely capitalistic reasons, correctly deducing that kids lucky enough to get one would bother their parents to buy more Barbies for the original homeowner to play with. No doll is an island, after all.

But the fascination revolving around this particular dollhouse is a product of the give-and-take between an era's cultural climate and the story told by the material produced in that time. The enlargement of the Dreamhouse would seem to reflect that Barbie's dreams grew with the possibilities available to women but in hindsight, and a lot of HGTV viewing, the product's stealthiest influence may be the way it instills in us early on a connection between success and excess.

Don't misinterpret this as blaming Barbie for out-of-control real estate prices or the sprawl of McMansions jammed into exurban subdivisions. That would have happened regardless of whether some Mattel executive dreamed up the idea to turn a shoebox into a miniature pre-Helen Gurley Brown bachelorette pad.

The expansion of the Barbie Dreamhouse through the decades, however, reflects our changing notion of what constitutes a status symbol, including the toy itself, which now retails for $199. Barbie moved from modest midcentury digs to a place in Malibu, and as she excelled in her various careers, her life necessitated the addition of multicar garages, en suite bathroom jetted tubs and elevators.

Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge": Mika and Brian Kleinschmidt, Jasmine Roth, Antonia Lofaso, Anthony Elle Williams, Michel Smith Boyd, Kristina Crestin, Jonathan Knight, Ashley Graham, Alison Victoria, Ty Pennington, James Bender, Evan Thomas, Keith Bynum, Mike Jackson and Egypt Sherrod (HGTV)

HGTV's real estate makeover shows have sold such luxuries as commonplace amenities for years, making them seem as easy to obtain and install as the compressed time it takes between demolition and reveal. The "Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" simply amplifies that illusion.

"Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" is part of the full-court promotional press for Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie, for which the studio has been fluffing the audience's excitement like a marabou feather boa for what feels like a year.

Each team's room must contain a "playetic," i.e. those over-the-top fancy features that we expect to come standard in smart homes and Kardashian caves. The "Dreamhouse Challenge" crib holds a compartment that rises out of the countertop at the touch of a button, a light-up dancefloor and stained-glass windows featuring her silhouette.

But even if you aren't among the superfans for whom the HGTV teams are competing, or if you haven't thought about Barbie for . . . never . . . the array of deep dives into the film's design aesthetic announce this as a project to be taken seriously.

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

Architectural Digest also released a seven-and-a-half-minute video feature in which the movie's star Margot Robbie walks viewers through the movie's version of the Dreamhouse that functions as an appetite-whetting preview and a home tour. It's also an explainer that reveals the logistical reason behind every stylistic choice, down to why the Barbie world's homes have no walls.

The real world's approximations of the Dreamhouse have no intellectual rationale for the items you find in them. Instead they revert to the original point of their ridiculous opulence – it's all about living inside of rose-colored fun.

It's all about living inside of rose-colored fun.

Also thanks to the "Barbie" movie, Airbnb is offering a room's worth of that experience for rent – Ken's, according to the listing. The HGTV competition series' winning team earned the Barbie fans who they championed a four-day, three-night stay inside the home.

The rest of us can rent which, though I'm sure will be about as tough to do as scoring tickets to a Taylor Swift concert once booking officially opens (Monday, July 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, in case you're interested) has to be more affordable than purchasing a life-sized Dream.

Ken's Malibu Barbie DreamHouse on AirBnb (Hogwash Studios/Mattel)

Since there's no official address to pull into a county property records database we can only conservatively Zestimate (har har) what a place like this would cost. By checking the "must have pool" box on that famous real estate site and eliminating the modest choices that popped up (two bedrooms? As if!) this network-rehabbed project might fetch somewhere around $1.5 million. Yes, in this economy.

Alternatively, a living doll can opt to buy some paint, thrift a few frills, and tap into their imagination. Like the classic jingle once assured kids, we girls (and Kens) can do anything. If we can afford it.

"Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge" premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday, July 16 on HGTV.

about Barbie

Philippines to ban "Barbie" movie, too?
Barbie's Ken goes Millennial
Who's a bad influence?

We’ve gotten the “teenage mental health crisis” dangerously wrong

The rise in depression, anxiety and suicidal behaviors among adolescents has generated thousands of commentaries blaming social media while calls for restrictions on teens’ online access many states and Congress are advancing.

However, leaders, authorities, and commentators on the issue uniformly ignore the Centers for Disease Control’s 116-question, 7,800-subject Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey that documented teen’s “mental health crisis” in the first place.

More school counselors could turn the tide on the youth mental health crisis

The CDC survey found 11% of 12-18-year-olds reporting violent abuses and a shocking 55% reporting emotional abuses by household grownups – levels two and four times higher, respectively, than those of similar 2014 survey. Teens are several times more likely to be bullied and injured at home by parents than at school or from online encounters – surprising, since the CDC’s definition of peer bullying is broader than for parents’ emotional abuse.

The CDC’s abuse finding, highlighted in its survey summary, should have set off loud alarms in America’s mental health and institutional communities

Increased domestic abuse, including shootings (at least eight times more children and youth are shot to death by household grownups than at school), relate to the stresses of rising substance use disorder and the pandemic. Parents who lost their jobs are twice as likely to be abusive, the CDC finds.

Given more beating, hitting, kicking, abusive swearing and name-calling inflicted by parents and household adults that exceed normal family disagreements, it’s understandable that more teens are depressed and anxious.

The CDC’s abuse finding, highlighted in its survey summary, should have set off loud alarms in America’s mental health and institutional communities well aware of decades of consistent research linking childhood abuses to adolescents’ poor mental health and tragic outcomes.

Instead, a curious silence ensued. The Surgeon General’s report on youth mental health mentioned abuse only obliquely — and his second report not at all. Instead, the nation’s top health official touted dubious social-media studies about which reviews warn of “considerable caveats due to the methodological limitations.” Getting scant response beyond a few scattered news squibs, the CDC dropped the abuse issue entirely in its follow-up 2023 report.

This is unconscionable. Full analysis of the CDC’s massive survey data conclusively shows social media is a trivial issue. Parents’ and household grownups’ abuses are the major factor closely associated with every serious teenage trouble — a reality institutional America clearly does not want to engage.

The correlation is a reverse one: depression drives social media use, not the other way around

Compared to non-abused teenagers, the most abused teens report 3.5 times more sadness, 4.5 times more depression, nine times more suicide contemplation, and 24 times more suicide attempts. Teens abused at home were four times more likely to be bullied at school or online. They reported four times more alcohol and drug use, six times more dating violence and school fights and a dozen times more weapons-carrying.

LGBTQ+ girls report more than three-quarters of the abuse by household grownups (76%). Of their abused cohort, 65% reported frequent depression and 27% reported suicide attempts. At the “low” end, 46% of heterosexual boys reported abuses, and of their non-abused fraction, just 10% reported frequent depression and 1% attempted suicide.

Authorities evaded these disturbing findings and stampeded to scapegoat social media. The CDC numbers do show a correlation between more social media use and more sadness and depression. The reason, however, reinforces the Statistics 101 caution against assuming correlation proves causation – especially when a gigantic factor like abuse is omitted.

The complication – glaring when parental abuse, social media use, depression, and suicide attempts are compared directly – is that abused teens report both more depression and more social media use. The correlation is a reverse one: depression drives social media use, not the other way around.

The CDC’s and Pew’s real findings should derail Congress’s and legislatures’ stampede to ban or restrict teen social media use

The most abused teenagers are two to four times more likely than non-abused teens to obtain medical and mental health services online. These connections help explain why youths who use social media one to five or more hours per day report many fewer suicide attempts than teens who never or rarely use social media.

The Pew Research Center study of 1,300 13-17-year-olds similarly found that, “80% said social media gives them some level of connection to what is going on in their friends’ lives”, “67% said social media reassures them that they have people to support them during tough times, and 58% said it makes them feel more accepted.” LGBTQ teens were the most likely to use social media to find support. Pew found very few teens think social media harms them personally, but many more imagine it must harm others.

The CDC’s and Pew’s real findings should derail Congress’s and legislatures’ stampede to ban or restrict teen social media use.

Along with failing to incorporate abuses by grownups into discussions of teenage mental health, authorities and commentators rarely contextualize distressing real-life trends. For example, deaths from suicides, homicides, unintentional drug overdoses and gunshots among teens ages 12-19 rose from 4,500 in 2000 and 4,800 in 2010 to 7,400 in 2022, a rate increase of 60%, generating understandable alarms.

Not understandable is the official and media silence surrounding the three-fold larger increase in such deaths among adults of ages to be parents of teenagers (30 to 59), from 35,000 in 2000 and 54,000 in 2010 to 109,000 in 2022, a rate increase of 175% to a level four times higher than among teens. Troubling, undiscussed trends among parent-aged adults accompany large increases in adult depression over the period.

The best information examined in full context shows we don’t have a “teenage mental health crisis.” We don’t even understand what that is, given massive youthful improvements in behaviors (led by supposedly depressed girls) that shouldn’t be happening if young people were seriously mentally disturbed. Social media moguls, though no angels, are not the problem.

Rather, we face a crisis of more troubled and abusive grownups – themselves stressed by untreated substance use disorders and pandemic-related troubles – and oblivious authorities. More depression and anxiety are normal responses to the self-aggrandizement of America’s institutional professionals and leadership seeking easy culture-war scapegoats instead of confronting – or even acknowledging – disturbing real crises.

about mental health

How a more ethical “faux” gras could change fine dining and vegan cuisine

Foie gras, one of the most controversial foods for animal activists and ethical eaters alike, is possibly entering its meatless era.

"The key to a healthy, animal-free diet," according to a nutrition expert

The traditional foie gras process involves force feeding duck or geese until their livers expand; the engorged liver is actually what actually becomes the foie gras itself, which is then often sold in various fine dining establishments. Reuters notes that "foie gras was officially classified as part of the 'cultural and gastronomic heritage' of France but some countries and U.S. states such as California and New York have considered banning it because of on animal welfare concerns." Beyond losing ground in fine dining because of ethical implications, the production foie gras has also been diminished by the devastating bird flu throughout Europe.

But thanks to a new crop of plant-based alternatives, a new-and-updated version of the dish may end up back on restaurant menus and in grocery stores in the coming years.

As Luke Gralia of The Takeout reported earlier this week, one version of "faux" gras — as it has come to be called — was designed by French chef Fabien Borgel. Borgel, who manages 42 Degres restaurant in Paris, sells "foie" containing cashews, sunflowers and coconut oil, as reported by Reuters. He originally created the product two years ago.

Demetrius Simms at Robb Report also published an article about Borgel's faux gras in December 2022, stating that "the combined result appears similar to traditional foie gras, but has a creamier texture." Simms also argues that there is a health benefit in the trade-off, as the vegan alternative contains less fat. He further reports that Gourmey, a French start-up specializing in plant-based foods and cultivated meat, is also presently "working on a lab-grown version [of foie gras]."

Beyond Borgel's restaurant iteration, Spanish company Hello Plant Food sells a vegan foie called "Fuah!" in grocery stores in both spreadable and sliceable iterations. It has sold incredibly well since its released at the end of 2022, as reported by Ashifa Kassam of the The Guardian.

For a while now, the internet has been littered with countless recipes for homemade "faux gras" — sometimes also called vegan or lentil pâté — but it becoming increasingly commercialized points to a shift in the overall meatless industry. Given its association with fine dining, vegan foie could be the thing that convinces some who have been hesitant to try plant-based alternatives to give them a try. The price for these products will be also lower than foie gras, which could render this elite dish both more morally palatable and perhaps even weeknight-friendly.

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

Foie is just one arena, though. The market for plant-based or vegan items has positively exploded in recent years; even just five years ago, a stroll through the grocery store, or even a perusing of local restaurant menus, yielded much fewer vegan-friendly offerings. From plant-based cheeses to Impossible Burgers to "animal-free" ice creams and even ribs, the sheer breadth is something to witness.

According to this State of the Marketplace report from Plant Based Foods, "plant-based foods have been catapulted into the spotlight, powering considerable success, rapid evolution, and incredible innovation in a short period of time." To put a number on it, plant-base foods reached a "record $8 billion in U.S retail sales," while "plant-based foods captured 6.4% of total online sales, compared to a steady 4.5% share in grocery retail."

Furthermore, nearly half of U.S restaurants now feature plant-based foods, "a percentage that has grown steadily, without decline, over the past decade."

As reported by Anna Starostinetskaya in VegNews last month, this isn't just a game for small, up-and-coming vegan food start-ups. Even giants like Kraft are getting into the game. The company is now selling three different flavors of vegan cheese single slices in retailers across the country.

"The Kraft NotCheese Slices first debuted last fall in a limited-run test market in Cleveland," Starostinetskaya notes, and performed well enough that they announced national distribution.

Clearly, moving into the plant-based or "animal-free" food space is not meant for just niche companies anymore, further evidenced by the fact that, according to The Takeout's Gralia, Nestle is also currently tinkering with a vegan foie option called "Voie Gras," containing soy, miso and truffle.

It remains to be seen how quickly restaurants will pick up "faux gras," but its potential proliferation seems like a positive — especially the ducks and geese.

about this topic

Sex and the cinema girl: Karina Longworth dives into ’80s and ’90s erotic films, revealing herself

In the last days of Twitter, one thing is constant: there’s barely a week that goes by before someone stirs the sex scenes in movies discourse pot. It is a confusing time, augmented by both the normalization and proliferation of internet pornography, meaningful progress on conversations about sex, gender, identity and power, and a Hollywood film industry that has seemingly eliminated sexuality from a cinematic ecosystem that primarily courts comic book fans and children. Perhaps to understand the present we have to summon the past. And there’s no better person to do that than Karina Longworth. But, the “You Must Remember This” host, who has guided listeners through Hollywood’s first century for over eight years, is more than just a soothsayer of cinema’s history.

Most articles about Longworth and her podcast start with something ethereal. They ruminate on the film historian’s uncanny ability to access Hollywood’s past, its specters, the things that haunt the industry, leaving orb like traces on our current entertainment landscape. Longworth has come to be known for her cinematic clairvoyance, or at least her ability to channel this on the podcast, her voice often described as dreamy. For almost a decade, she has excavated the stories of the film industry’s first century, from the Manson murders to Joan Crawford, and deconstructed, demystified and reflected on the sociocultural contexts of both their time and ours. And her season on “Song of the South” examined how a film as racist as it is has stayed, even subconsciously, within the American pop cultural lexicon through re-releases and theme park rides.

For the past two seasons, however, Longworth has been considering the era of when sex and sexuality were so saturated in mainstream popular culture that strings of films like “Fatal Attraction,” “Pretty Woman” and “Showgirls” could convey a shifting, excited, anxious, unpredictable and uncertain feeling about sex, power and capital in the country. If something feels slightly different about the “Erotic ’80s” and “Erotic ’90s” seasons compared to previous entries of “You Must Remember This,” it is perhaps because our collective temporal proximity isn’t as distant as it has been to, say, stories about the Hollywood Blacklist or Kenneth Anger’s deranged mythologies of early Hollywood.

“The casting couch is real”: Author Karina Longworth on Hollywood’s long history of power abuse

“Erotic ’80s” starts at the birth of the ratings system and the brief heyday of porno chic (think the zeitgeist’s love affair “Deep Throat”) and goes on to interrogate the working conditions on “9 ½ Weeks” and the conservative politics and sexual anxieties of “Fatal Attraction” and “Dirty Dancing,” and dovetails into the new world of the home video market, the proliferation of sex tapes and Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies, and videotape.”

“Erotic ’90s” mirrors the previous season’s opener with discussions on the climate of feminist politics and the failure of the NC-17 rating to make space within the marketplace for sexually explicit, but sophisticated adult (as in not for children, but not pornography either) ventures. It also goes into the changing attitudes about sex work on film in “Pretty Woman” and its implication in “Indecent Proposal” and ends midseason with analyses on the work of unbelievably successful Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of hits like “Flashdance” “Basic Instinct” and finale capper “Showgirls.”

“I think growing up without a mom and being raised by a single father shaped everything about me … I would never be a normal person.”

And over the course of the series, Longworth, who appears to value a lack of intense scrutiny of herself, has allowed herself to make the show, if not diaristic or prone to solipsism, then at least more personal. Rather than just remaining the velvety voice of the show, she’s doled out tiny nuggets hinting at the significance her subjects have to her.

“If [these seasons are] mostly about the last two decades of the 20th, then [they are] also about the first two decades of my life,” Longworth says at the beginning of “Erotic ’80s.” And while the podcaster has referenced in the past to who she is off mic, like recounting her experience seeing “Song of the South” in theaters with her mother during a release, Longworth finds a way to be franker about her life and experiences through the material, all the while preserving an aspect of her privacy. She gets closer and closer to a level of unprecedented vulnerability for the show, which has been fascinating to listen to over the years, and despite her own disinclination towards fame, she does not find it difficult to do this.

You Must Remember This podcast title card (Courtesy of You Must Remember This podcast)“I really can’t envision what the experience of listening to it is,” she tells me over Zoom, surrounded by movie posters in her office. “And so I have no self-consciousness about what I do on the podcast because it’s just so unfathomable to me that people listen to it. I know it’s not true. I see the download numbers. I know we sell a lot of ads. People are listening to the podcast. But when I’m writing it and when I’m performing it, I just don’t think about that at all. I just really approach it like no one’s listening.”

Even though there’s a temptation to illustrate what she does using the kind of woo-woo language people are reflexively drawn to, due, in no small part, to the show’s old radio atmosphere, Longworth’s project has an amusing contradiction about it. It is a show about untangling and making more tangible the (once?) larger-than-life myths that Hollywood rolled out on a conveyor belt. And the podcast’s style is woven together in what sounds somewhat like the fugue state one lands in at a cocktail party deep into the night, where there is and is not an audience. Where there exists a liminal plane, where the difference between incantation and recitation is hazy.

I asked her early on in the conversation about going to see movies with her mother (“[I remember] her taking me to see every Disney animated re-release, probably from the time I was two,” she says), and she responded that her mother died when she was 11 and that her father was also dead. I perked up knowing I was speaking to another movie-obsessed person of dead parent experience (my father died when I was 14), and I think she smirked, too.

“I think growing up without a mom and being raised by a single father shaped everything about me. I don’t know if it’s the grief so much as it was like having a chip on my shoulder and feeling like I was unlike everybody else,” she said. I knew exactly what she was talking about. “And feeling almost like the rules that everybody else was playing by couldn’t apply to me because I would never be a normal person like them. Maybe to some extent movies were an escape from all the things that I felt excluded from.”

A bloodied Glenn Close is tended to by Michael Douglas in a scene from the film “Fatal Attraction,” 1987 (Paramount/Getty Images)

It makes her analyses of the movies this season feel particularly incisive, such as when she describes “Fatal Attraction” through the imagined economic precarity of the white middle-class family man during Reagan. “Dan clearly doesn’t have enough of a margin to pay Alex off to go away; he can barely afford to keep his current family in the lifestyle to which they aspire […],” she says on the podcast. “A progressive read of ‘Fatal Attraction’ could see it as gesturing to men who, deep down, felt cheated by Reaganomics.” In such breakdowns, the film historian is brilliant in her ability to rhetorically diagram both the critical and emotional components of these movies’ relationship to the family writ large in society.

“I’m kind of proud of myself that I’m sexually liberated and that I wasn’t afraid.”

As these cultural artifacts reflect and refract a precarity of social mores and the evolving (and paradoxical notion) of family values, Longworth is the best sleeper agent, perhaps an outsider looking in. At least that is what I detect and why I have long been attracted to her work and writing.

“I think there’s still a lot of things that I feel really alienated from in terms of family and that experience that other people have had,” she says. “To some extent I guess I can access those experiences through movies, but I feel like watching movies has made me a better observer of human nature. And so it’s more the other way around. It’s less that life has taught me how to watch movies, and it’s more that movies have taught me how to interpret life.”

It is not only that these films were released during her lifetime that makes these seasons significant, but that they telegraphed particular things about sex, death, sexuality, gender and power. She remembers seeing “Sliver,” the 1993 erotic thriller film with Sharon Stone and William Baldwin, in the theater as an adolescent, and, during this period, the culture was suffused with mixed messages about these subjects it was depicting, especially as it related to how people were socialized differently and how those gendered expectations could take a toll. Drew Barrymore and Alicia Silverstone, who are the subject of an episode pertaining to “Poison Ivy” and “The Crush,” were both objects of the media’s obsessive gaze and infantilization, and, as Longworth says on the podcast, “The industry has historically relied on making actresses feel as though their only route to power lies in their looks, while constantly telling them that they can’t accrue more power, or don’t deserve the power that they have, because they don’t look good enough.”

Longworth tells me, “I didn’t really have anybody giving me any kind of guidance. But if I was to give myself guidance, I don’t really know what I tell myself because I think I approach things in the way that I wish more people would approach things, which was that I was just really excited to become sexual, and I was probably too sexually aggressive for 16-year-old boys to handle. I think I didn’t really understand that it’s preferred in straight culture for women to be a little bit more demure.

“I guess I could have given 13-year-old through 21-year-old me some kind of road map that would have made me sort of more successful and have less pain,” she continues. “But I don’t know that I would want to do that because I’m kind of proud of myself that I’m sexually liberated and that I wasn’t afraid, until people made me feel afraid and made me feel shame.”

The great miracle of “You Must Remember This” is not only its ability to make the past a necessary element to understanding the present, even beyond the confines of the entertainment industry in its sharp ability to examine the political and economic contexts of a given moment, but Longworth’s skill in bringing the gods down to earth. We need an, as she calls it, interpreter.

Demi Moore riding public transportation while dressed in formal wear in a scene from the film “Indecent Proposal,” 1993 (Paramount Pictures/Getty Images)

The trajectory of “Erotic ’90s” is heavily shaped by a kind of backlash to the feminist politics of the ’80s, characterized by “Indecent Proposal,” “The Last Seduction” and “Disclosure,” the latter two of which fall into movies about, as Longworth terms them, fear of the female boss: “Both [movies] seemed to reflect a trend described by Tad Friend in the Feb 1994 of Esquire [ . . .] as ‘do me feminism.’ More than once he invokes Lorena Bobbitt . . . The implication is, if we let women have control, aren’t we running the risk that they will cut off our penises and throw them in a field? Both [movies] could be considered dramatizations of that fear, to very different ends.”

“In 2023, mainstream Hollywood film does not reflect the depth and variety of the discourse around sexuality.”

It’s useful, as Longworth posits, to have cultural artifacts that articulate these real fears, rational or otherwise, that a portion of the culture has. What films will be written about in the future that convey the current gender, sexual and queer panic that is pervading our increasingly unhinged and divided political and cultural discourse? As Hollywood continues to neuter itself, will movies like “No Hard Feelings” or “Deep Water” make the cut, or will they get sidelined by the IP-saturated marketplace where sex barely exists in Marvel movies? One wonders if Hollywood still have the kinds of Greek gods whose libidinal histories shaped whole cultures, or if we just have action figures with smooth, nothing nether regions now.

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

“I think it’s fair to say that in 2023, mainstream Hollywood film does not reflect the depth and variety of the discourse around sexuality, and I think that largely has to do with the ever-increasing corporatization of the film industry,” she tells me. “If ‘Erotic ’80s’ and ‘Erotic ’90s’ speak to anything going on today, it does so by attempting to understand the last two decades when sex really was on the table as a subject for mainstream, commercial cinema. I write about the past and do my best to convey what it was like to be alive in a long-ago moment, and largely feel like it’s up to the listener to make the connections about what they recognize and how it relates to the time they live in.”

Perhaps it’s Longworth’s calling to live somewhere between the realm of the deities we worship and the real world. “I know that when I’ve taken really long breaks from doing a podcast, I get depressed. Maybe if I had other projects I was working on, I wouldn’t feel that way. I think I just need to kind of always have a project that I’m working on, and I have these visions of retiring. But [then] I know that I’m always going to want to do something.” As she plays seer to Hollywood’s blithe and berserk spirits, Karina Longworth is allowing herself to become more mortal.

about this topic

RFK Jr. does damage control on alleged claims that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted”

During a press dinner on Tuesday, 2024 Democratic presidential candidate and COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. allegedly made comments stating his belief that “COVID-19 may have been deliberately created as an ‘ethnically targeted’ bioweapon designed to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews,” according to New York Post.

Engaged in a back and forth while seated at the restaurant Tony’s Di Napoli on East 63d Street in NYC, Kennedy is said to have backed up his claims saying, “We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” going on to warn of “more dire biological weapons in the pipeline with a ‘50% infection fatality rate’ that would make COVID-19 ‘look like a walk in the park.'”

Here’s RFK Jr. suggesting that COVID was “ethnically targeted” to spare Chinese and Jews. This kind of bullshit is toxic to our society. Responsible media would write this guy off now. pic.twitter.com/X5C8iuEfr8

— Pro-Democracy (@ProDemocracyRTs) July 15, 2023

On Saturday, Kennedy took to Twitter for some damage control, writing “The @nypost story is mistaken. I have never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews. I accurately pointed out — during an off-the-record conversation — that the U.S. and other governments are developing ethnically targeted bioweapons and that a 2021 study of the COVID-19 virus shows that COVID-19 appears to disproportionately affect certain races since the furin cleave docking site is most compatible with Blacks and Caucasians and least compatible with ethnic Chinese, Finns, and Ashkenazi Jews. In that sense, it serves as a kind of proof of concept for ethnically targeted bioweapons. I do not believe and never implied that the ethnic effect was deliberately engineered.”

AI versus AI: Human extinction might just be collateral damage

A world in which machines governed by artificial intelligence (AI) systematically replace human beings in most business, industrial and professional functions is horrifying to imagine. After all, as prominent computer scientists have been warning us, AI-governed systems are prone to critical errors and inexplicable “hallucinations,” resulting in potentially catastrophic outcomes. But there’s an even more dangerous scenario imaginable from the proliferation of super-intelligent machines: the possibility that those nonhuman entities could end up fighting one another, obliterating all human life in the process.

The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film “WarGames,” a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response and, not surprisingly, pronounced “whopper”) nearly provokes a catastrophic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union before being disabled by a teenage hacker (played by Matthew Broderick). The “Terminator” movie franchise, beginning with the original 1984 film, similarly envisioned a self-aware supercomputer called Skynet that, like WOPR, was designed to control U.S. nuclear weapons but chooses instead to wipe out humanity, viewing us as a threat to its existence.

Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility in the very real world of the near future. In addition to developing a wide variety of “autonomous” or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called “robot generals.” In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In some scenarios, robot decision-makers could even end up exercising control over America’s atomic weapons, potentially allowing them to ignite a nuclear war resulting in humanity’s demise.

The Ukraine war and ICBMs: An accidental launch that could end the world is closer than ever

Now take a breath for a moment. The installation of an AI-powered command-and-control (C2) system like this may seem a distant possibility. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Defense is working hard to develop the required hardware and software in a systematic, increasingly rapid fashion. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the Air Force requested $231 million to develop the Advanced Battlefield Management System (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to collect and interpret data on enemy operations and provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As the technology advances, the system will be capable of sending “fire” instructions directly to “shooters,” largely bypassing human control.

In addition to developing a wide variety of “autonomous” or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or “robot generals.”

“A machine-to-machine data exchange tool that provides options for deterrence, or for on-ramp [a military show-of-force] or early engagement,” was how Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, described the ABMS system in a 2020 interview. Suggesting that “we do need to change the name” as the system evolves, Roper added, “I think Skynet is out, as much as I would love doing that as a sci-fi thing. I just don’t think we can go there.”

And while he can’t go there, that’s just where the rest of us may, indeed, be going.

Mind you, that’s only the start. In fact, the Air Force’s ABMS is intended to constitute the nucleus of a larger constellation of sensors and computers that will connect all U.S. combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced “Jad-C-two”). “JADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon… to engage the target,” the Congressional Research Service reported in 2022.

AI and the nuclear trigger

Initially, JADC2 will be designed to coordinate combat operations among “conventional” or non-nuclear American forces. Eventually, however, it is expected to link up with the Pentagon’s nuclear command-control-and-communications systems (NC3), potentially giving computers significant control over the use of the American nuclear arsenal. “JADC2 and NC3 are intertwined,” Gen. John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated in a 2020 interview. As a result, he added in typical Pentagonese, “NC3 has to inform JADC2 and JADC2 has to inform NC3.”

It doesn’t require great imagination to picture a time in the not-too-distant future when a crisis of some sort — say a U.S.-China military clash in the South China Sea or near Taiwan — prompts ever more intense fighting between opposing air and naval forces. Imagine then the JADC2 ordering the intense bombardment of enemy bases and command systems in China itself, triggering reciprocal attacks on U.S. facilities and a lightning decision by JADC2 to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons, igniting a long-feared nuclear holocaust.

The possibility that nightmare scenarios of this sort could result in the accidental or unintended onset of nuclear war has long troubled analysts in the arms control community. But the growing automation of military C2 systems has generated anxiety not just among them but among senior national security officials as well.

It doesn’t require great imagination to picture a crisis of some sort — a U.S.-China military clash near Taiwan — that prompts ever more intense fighting between opposing air and naval forces, leading to a lightning decision to attack with tactical nuclear weapons.

As early as 2019, when I questioned Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, then director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, about such a risky possibility, he responded, “You will find no stronger proponent of integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense, but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.” This “is the ultimate human decision that needs to be made” and so “we have to be very careful.” Given the technology’s “immaturity,” he added, we need “a lot of time to test and evaluate [before applying AI to NC3].”

In the years since, despite such warnings, the Pentagon has been racing ahead with the development of automated C2 systems. In its budget submission for 2024, the Department of Defense requested $1.4 billion for the JADC2 in order “to transform warfighting capability by delivering information advantage at the speed of relevance across all domains and partners.” Uh-oh! And then it requested another $1.8 billion for other kinds of military-related AI research.

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

Pentagon officials acknowledge that it will be some time before robot generals will be commanding vast numbers of U.S. troops (and autonomous weapons) in battle, but they have already launched several projects intended to test and perfect just such linkages. One example is the Army’s Project Convergence, involving a series of field exercises designed to validate ABMS and JADC2 component systems. In a test held in August 2020 at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, for example, the Army used a variety of air- and ground-based sensors to track simulated enemy forces and then process that data using AI-enabled computers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. Those computers, in turn, issued fire instructions to ground-based artillery at Yuma. “This entire sequence was supposedly accomplished within 20 seconds,” the Congressional Research Service later reported.

Less is known about the Navy’s AI equivalent, “Project Overmatch,” as many aspects of its programming have been kept secret. According to Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, Overmatch is intended “to enable a Navy that swarms the sea, delivering synchronized lethal and nonlethal effects from near-and-far, every axis and every domain.” Little else has been revealed about the project.

“Flash wars” and human extinction

Despite all the secrecy surrounding these projects, you can think of ABMS, JADC2, Convergence and Overmatch as building blocks for a future Skynet-like mega-network of supercomputers designed to command all U.S. forces, including its nuclear ones, in armed combat. The more the Pentagon moves in that direction, the closer we’ll come to a time when AI possesses life-or-death power over all American soldiers along with opposing forces and any civilians caught in the crossfire.

Such a prospect should be ample cause for concern. To start with, consider the risk of errors and miscalculations by the algorithms at the heart of such systems. As top computer scientists have warned us, those algorithms are capable of remarkably inexplicable mistakes and, to use the AI term of the moment, “hallucinations” — that is, seemingly reasonable results that are entirely illusionary. Under the circumstances, it’s not hard to imagine such computers “hallucinating” an imminent enemy attack and launching a war that might otherwise have been avoided.

As computer scientists have warned us, the algorithms behind AI systems are capable of inexplicable mistakes and “hallucinations” — seemingly reasonable results that are entirely illusionary.

And that’s not the worst of the dangers to consider. After all, there’s the obvious likelihood that America’s adversaries will similarly equip their forces with robot generals. In other words, future wars are likely to be fought by one set of AI systems against another, both linked to nuclear weaponry, with entirely unpredictable — but potentially catastrophic — results.

Not much is known (from public sources at least) about Russian and Chinese efforts to automate their military command-and-control systems, but both countries are thought to be developing networks comparable to the Pentagon’s JADC2. As early as 2014, in fact, Russia inaugurated a National Defense Control Center (NDCC) in Moscow, a centralized command post for assessing global threats and initiating whatever military action is deemed necessary, whether of a non-nuclear or nuclear nature. Like JADC2, the NDCC is designed to collect information on enemy moves from multiple sources and provide senior officers with guidance on possible responses.

China is said to be pursuing an even more elaborate, if similar, enterprise under the rubric of “Multi-Domain Precision Warfare” (MDPW). According to the Pentagon’s 2022 report on Chinese military developments, its military, the People’s Liberation Army, is being trained and equipped to use AI-enabled sensors and computer networks to “rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the U.S. operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes against those vulnerabilities.”

Picture, then, a future war between the U.S. and Russia or China (or both) in which the JADC2 commands all U.S. forces, while Russia’s NDCC and China’s MDPW command those countries’ forces. Consider, as well, that all three systems are likely to experience errors and hallucinations. How safe will humans be when robot generals decide that it’s time to “win” the war by nuking their enemies?

If this strikes you as an outlandish scenario, think again, at least according to the leadership of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a congressionally mandated enterprise that was chaired by Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Robert Work, former deputy secretary of defense. “While the Commission believes that properly designed, tested, and utilized AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems will bring substantial military and even humanitarian benefit, the unchecked global use of such systems potentially risks unintended conflict escalation and crisis instability,” it affirmed in its final report. Such dangers could arise, it stated, “because of challenging and untested complexities of interaction between AI-enabled and autonomous weapon systems on the battlefield” — when, that is, AI fights AI.

Though this may seem an extreme scenario, it’s entirely possible that opposing AI systems could trigger a catastrophic “flash war” — the military equivalent of a “flash crash” on Wall Street, when huge transactions by super-sophisticated trading algorithms spark panic selling before human operators can restore order. In the infamous “Flash Crash” of May 6, 2010, computer-driven trading precipitated a 10% fall in the stock market’s value. According to Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security, who first studied the phenomenon, “the military equivalent of such crises” on Wall Street would arise when the automated command systems of opposing forces “become trapped in a cascade of escalating engagements.” In such a situation, he noted, “autonomous weapons could lead to accidental death and destruction at catastrophic scales in an instant.”

At present, there are virtually no measures in place to prevent a future catastrophe of this sort or even talks among the major powers to devise such measures. Yet, as the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence noted, such crisis-control measures are urgently needed to integrate “automated escalation tripwires” into such systems “that would prevent the automated escalation of conflict.” Otherwise, some catastrophic version of World War III seems all too possible. Given the dangerous immaturity of such technology and the reluctance of Beijing, Moscow and Washington to impose any restraints on the weaponization of AI, the day when machines could choose to annihilate us might arrive far sooner than we imagine and the extinction of humanity could be the collateral damage of such a future war.

from Michael Klare on war, geopolitics and power

Twitter’s new revenue-sharing program benefits blue check trolls

On Thursday, Elon Musk‘s Twitter officially launched a new “Creator Ads Revenue Sharing program” as both an effort to push back against immediate competitors — Bluesky creator Jay Graber and Threads creator Mark Zuckerberg — and also incentivize people to purchase (and keep) blue check accounts on the Twitter platform.

“We’re expanding our creator monetization offering to include ads revenue sharing for creators,” the announcement specified. “This means that creators can get a share in ad revenue, starting in the replies to their posts. This is part of our effort to help people earn a living directly on Twitter. We’re rolling out the program more broadly later this month and all eligible creators will be able to apply. Go get yourself something nice!”

This new program has been pay dirt for right-wing trolls who use the site as their own personal thought toilet. According to Insider, “Andrew Tate, an influencer with more than seven million followers who is facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, said he was being paid $20,397. The right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong said Twitter would be paying him $16,259, and Benny Johnson, a right-wing YouTuber involved in Turning Point USA, said he’d be getting $9,546.”

“Past Lives” and my family know the true role of that almost mythological first love

When I ask her about her first love, my grandmother speaks wistfully about her chut sarang, a handsome law student at a neighboring university. “We would meet during breaks between our classes,” she recalls. “We just sat and talked for hours.”

“One never truly forgets their first love.”

My aunt, who was so striking in her youth that celebrities asked her on dates, says she had her heart broken by a model who was her chut sarang. And when I probe my mother for details about her first love, she scoffs. “My chut sarang? I’m not telling you.”

In “Past Lives,” the debut feature from Korean Canadian American writer-director Celine Song, Nora (Greta Lee) explains the concept of inyeon to a fellow writer, Arthur (John Magaro), upon meeting him at an artists’ residency. “There’s a word in Korean. Inyeon. It means providence or fate. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been 8,000 layers of inyeon over 8,000 lifetimes.”

Nora’s chut sarang, Hae-sung (Teo Yoo), is a continent away in Seoul. After 11-year-old Nora immigrates from Korea to Canada, Hae-sung finds her on Facebook 12 years later.

“I missed you,” Hae-sung says over Skype from Seoul, and she responds, “Me too. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Connected through inyeon”: Teo Yoo reflects on the fate that guided his career and to “Past Lives”

Growing up, the idea of chut sarang was present in almost every Korean drama I watched. First loves occupy almost a mythological status in the Korean romantic imagination. “One never truly forgets their first love,” is a common Korean adage I heard repeatedly.

Reuniting with a chut sarang is a well-loved trope in popular Korean films and dramas like “Our Beloved Summer,” “Start Up” and “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim.” In these stories, the younger leads are separated in childhood as life pulls them apart, only to reunite when they’re older. For example, in “What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim,” the leads are kidnapped as children, and they both suppress the traumatic memory until they recognize each other in a work setting decades later.

Because romance viewers are always hungry for a happy ending, in many stories like “My First First Love,” “My ID is Gangnam Beauty” and “My Sassy Girl,” lovers overcome obstacles and disprove reality to stay together. Hallyu classic “My Sassy Girl” shows the leads meeting at a train station en route to their respective appointments. Their lives entangle as they skip those appointments, start to date and break up only to realize that the initial appointment they had both missed was a blind date where they would have been introduced to one another.

Inyeon as powerful as the one in “My Sassy Girl” was always what brought lovers back together. The pull of fate’s threads were too magnetic to keep them apart.

Past Lives (A24)Before watching “Past Lives,” I expected another typical chut sarang storyline: Nora and Hae-sung reunite, and they end up together against all odds. But while certain elements of “Past Lives” did remind me of the K-dramas I’d seen, Song’s incorporation of her personal story as a diasporic Korean filmmaker added another layer to the chut sarang trope.

Nora eventually meets Hae-sung in person in New York City, but time, geography and experiences have created a divide too far to bridge. By this time, Nora has already married Arthur, the writer she met at the residency. She complains to him about Hae-sung, “He’s so Korean . . . he has all these Korean views on everything, and I just feel really not Korean with him. I mean I have Korean friends, but he’s like, not Korean American, you know? He’s a Korean Korean.”

I chuckled aloud at how much I related to her words: the subtle hints that arise in Nora and Hae-sung’s conversation reveals the differences in their cultural values and perspectives. It’s a dynamic that feels familiar to immigrants who reconnect with family and friends back in the motherland.

“What if you had never left? If you hadn’t left like that, and we just grew up together, would I still have looked for you? Would we have dated? Broken up? Gotten married?” Hae-sung muses aloud. It’s difficult to deny the allure of his question and not imagine an alternate life for Nora where she and Hae-sung might have been in love in Korea.

As a little girl in Seoul, I fully absorbed the myth of chut sarang from the K-dramas I watched with my aunt and my grandmother.

Not all K-dramas and films have satisfying endings for first loves. In some, like “Twenty-Five Twenty-One” and “Architecture 101,” first love is thwarted by the realities that the main characters face, ultimately sending them on diverging paths.

It’s also clear by the end of “Past Lives” that though Hae-sung is Nora’s first love, Arthur may be Nora’s fate. “In this life, you and Arthur . . . have the 8,000 layers of inyeon,” Hae-sung tells Nora.

Past Lives (A24)As a little girl in Seoul, I fully absorbed the myth of chut sarang from the K-dramas I watched with my aunt and my grandmother. I daydreamed about who my first love would be. The older Korean oppa from church? The debater from the all-boys prep school nearby? Or like the K-dramas and my aunt’s stories, the handsome star who spotted me from across the street? I was taught by romantic films to believe that the only possible ending for me would be a happily ever after.

But I later learned another common Korean saying about first loves: “Chut sarangs are never realized.” If this is true, perhaps there’s an irreplaceable beauty when first loves are left unfulfilled. If a chut sarang remains a first love and nothing more, it allows for the memory of youth to stay intact and pure, unsullied by the inevitable pain, heartbreak and grief felt in lived relationships.

To be clear: my grandmother, my aunt and my mother did not end up with their chut sarangs. The point of reminiscing about chut sarangs is that you rarely do.

“Don’t you ever miss your first loves?” I ask all three women.

They cite fate as an excuse for moving on. “Everyone has their own inyeon,” they cluck back.

In “Past Lives,” Hae-sung represents more than just Nora’s first love. By reuniting with him, she also reunites with the 11-year old girl she left behind in Korea many years ago. And, in saying goodbye, she bids both Hae-sung and her younger self from a past life farewell.

According to the women in my family, inyeon explains the life you are actually living, while chut sarang represents a fond nostalgia for the past. Both chut sarang and inyeon, then, may be the stories we tell ourselves in order to embrace the lives we lead, both past and present.

about this topic

For some, this anti-anxiety herb is a godsend. For others, it’s a nightmare. What gives?

In 2020, Savior Minaya noticed a change in his behavior. While he had previously been clinically diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) he found himself sometimes pacing around his room and acting more impulsively than before. The behavior worried him, as he sometimes bumped up against feelings of defeat. There were days when he felt like he couldn’t get out of bed.

To alleviate these issues, he decided to make some lifestyle changes. He got sober. He bought a bike to get some exercise. He started prioritizing sleep. And then on Facebook he saw an acquaintance ask about anxiety relief, to which a commenter responded “ashwagandha.”

“I’m usually turned off whenever I see those people suggest anything like that. People usually go off with a whole bunch of myths, nothing ever has a scientific backing,” Minaya told Salon, But then when he went to his girlfriend’s house, he saw she already had it. He decided to try it himself.

What to know about magnesium

“I took maybe like 600 milligrams, and it almost reminded me like if I took a very low dose of Xanax and I was like, wow, this is insane that this even exists.”

“It almost reminded me like if I took a very low dose of Xanax.”

Ashwagandha, one of the common names for Withania somnifera, is an evergreen shrub that is a mainstay of Ayurvedic medicine, in which it is a “revered herb.” Its name comes from the Sanskrit word for “horse smell,” referring to its apparent equine fragrance. Its leaves and roots contain a wealth of different chemicals, some of which act on GABA receptors in the body, the same as benzodiazepine depressants like Xanax (alprazolam.)

The plant is included in the nightshade family, which features a host of toxic and beneficial species, from tomatoes and eggplant to tobacco and belladonna. While ashwagandha has been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, only recently has it become more popular in the United States, where it is marketed as a so-called “adaptogen” for enhancing one’s life.

On TikTok, #ashwagandha has over 900 million views and many videos visually document peoples’ experiences taking the herb — the good and the bad. Some people claim it helps relieve their stress and anxiety and improves their sleep. Others have reported negative side effects, like experiencing anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure.

Many are left wondering if the botanical supplement is safe to take — and does it actually work to relieve stress, anxiety and lack of sleep?

Amala Soumyanath, a professor of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University and Director of BENFRA (Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Center), told Salon ashwagandha is widely researched, at least for being an herb, particularly in preclinical models where testing is done on either animals or cells.

“We’re still trying to get to the bottom of all the potential effects of this herb, but based on existing evidence, it does seem that it affects a number of systems within the body,” Soumyanath said.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

For example, research has shown that ashwagandha has an effect on the hypothalamus pituitary axis, which is responsible for the secretion of cortisol, a hormone released when a person is stressed. In a 60 day, randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study, researchers found that people who took ashwagandha scored lower on the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). They also found that peoples’ cortisol levels were lower in the morning compared to people who didn’t take ashwagandha. There’s even evidence that serotonin levels are affected, with some antiinflammatory and antioxidant effects as well.

“There’s a wide variety of effects that have been ascribed to this botanical, and that might sound odd, because when you look at conventional drugs very often you don’t have a long laundry list of activities, you just have a few,” Soumyanath said, adding this isn’t surprising though given botanical extracts usually contain a whole “mishmash of different phytochemicals that are found in the herb.”

“We’re still trying to get to the bottom of all the potential effects of this herb.”

Ashwagandha can be taken in supplement or powder forms. So far, the trials that have been done ruled out placebo effect for sleep and stress, Soumyanath said. That being said, she is also aware of TikTok videos and anecdotes detailing negative ashwagandha experiences.

When he first started taking it, Minaya told Salon he underwent an increase in appetite and increased fatigue. Then, he took a break. When he started taking ashwagandha again, he said he felt emotionally numb and “didn’t care about anything.” Minaya attributes the change in mood to taking too much, but once he lowered his intake, he felt better.

Soumyanath said that the loss of pleasure has been anecdotally documented, but it hasn’t been noted in any clinical or preclinical studies.

“That has not been reported in any of the clinical trials,” Soumyanath said. “I’ve seen some of the TikTok videos and stuff associated with that, and all I can say is that there’s no real evidence or reports of that being found in any of the trials that have been done and reported.”

That being said, Soumyanath said that the ashwagandha being sold on store shelves are “highly variable.” In the United States, the FDA classifies ashwagandha as a “botanical dietary supplement,” which means that the quality and safety of the product isn’t monitored to the same degree as FDA-approved medications and treatments.

“When a study is done, it’s done with a particular product, that is true for that product. But that doesn’t mean that every single other product on the shelf made from that botanical will have the same effect,” Soumyanath said. “That makes the whole picture a little bit more complicated.”

That complication has rolled over to other countries, too. In 2022, the Danish Technical University found in a safety risk assessment that ashwagandha has a potentially harmful effect on thyroid and sex hormones. Some Swedish products with high levels of ashwagandha were banned in Denmark.

The quality and safety of the product isn’t monitored to the same degree as FDA-approved medications and treatments.

Yet there are many people who swear by ashwagandha. Jeff Johnson has been growing ashwagandha in Oregon since 2009. He said he’s seen ashwagandha help people, especially with sleep issues, and that the rise in negative experiences is something “new,” in his opinion.

“It’s really interesting hearing people with negative experiences, because that’s something that we aren’t used to,” Johnson said. “So it was surprising when I stumbled onto Reddit.”

Indeed, in the subreddit r/ashwagandha, some peoples’ experiences are far from great. One person, for example, reported feeling anhedonia even five months after ceasing to take the supplement, while another claimed ashwagandha made them “question reality.”

Overall, Soumyanath said, she believes that ashwagandha is a “really promising botanical.”

“The research done so far really does support that it has very beneficial effects, particularly in areas of stress, insomnia, even anxiety,” Soumyanath said. “But we really need to do more studies in these areas, particularly anxiety and depression. And I think we need to get the word out that any results that are there really relate to the specific product that was tested.”

Soumyanath added there’s still a lot to learn in regards to how it works as well.

“Once we have an understanding of how the herb is working, and what components are providing these different activities, then we can have a better handle on saying, ‘Well if a product is made like this, and it contains these specific components, then we can be sure that it has, an effect on on this particular condition,'” she said. “Unfortunately, we’re not quite there yet.”

about anxiety

NATO summit was a success: Even without Ukraine’s entrance, European unity strikes a blow to Putin

War footing. Those are the two words I heard from sources in Washington D.C. as President Joe Biden returned from Helsinki, Finland on Friday. Member states of NATO are described as being on a war footing following the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, this week. Although the news out of the NATO summit all week was dominated by a squabble with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over when his country will be invited to join Europe’s military alliance, the news shifted dramatically on Thursday when the Pentagon announced that Biden had authorized a call-up of 3,000 reservists to active duty to support U.S. military operations in Europe. The reservists will be put on full active duty status with full pay and support from the active duty military. The Pentagon also announced that families and dependents will receive support if any of the 3,000 reservists end up being deployed overseas. So far, however, there are not yet plans to have the newly-activated reserves join the 20,000 American troops who were speedily deployed to European stations after Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.

Speaking on the latest commitment from U.S. forces, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “This reaffirms the unwavering support and commitment to the defense of NATO’s eastern flank in the wake of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked war on Ukraine.” Sims said the 3,000 reservists called to active duty will give “greater flexibility” to the Pentagon’s European Command, even though it will not change the overall force structure of U.S. troops in Europe.

Also this week, Biden ordered Operation Atlantic Resolve, the formal designation for the U.S. strategy in Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to become a contingency operation. This change in designation will allow the Pentagon to activate reserve forces without a new order from the White House. It will also “speed up acquisition authorities to supply those troops with equipment,” according to a report in Politico on ThursdayThe U.S. now has a total of 100,000 troops on duty at a spectrum of stations across Europe, including Navy, Air Force, and Army bases in places like Germany, Lithuania, Italy, Great Britain, and Poland. Many U.S. forces have been involved over the past six months in training Ukrainian battalions headed for the front lines. 10,000 American troops are currently stationed on a rotating basis in Poland to provide logistic support and training for the Ukrainian military.

Ukraine’s counteroffensive begins in earnest

The Pentagon announcement of the 3,000 troop reserve call-up follows a pledge by NATO allies to have a total of 300,000 soldiers ready for rapid deployment within 30 days. This, rather than the squabble over the timing of Ukrainian NATO membership should have been the headline out of the summit in Lithuania. This is the first time in decades that the 31 nations belonging to NATO have made a similar commitment involving force readiness across the entire membership. The commitment by all member states of NATO to a Europe-wide ready reaction force is what accounts for the use of the term war footing to describe what is going on not only in Europe but here at home.

The United States has not formally raised its DEFCON level since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It may be that the Pentagon simply doesn’t want to show its hand to Russia when it comes to the readiness of our forces, but the deployment of 20,000 additional troops to Europe last year and the activation of 3,000 reservists this week certainly indicates a raised state of readiness by U.S. forces. By all appearances, U.S. forces appear to be at the DEFCON 3 level at present. DEFCON 5 is the lowest state of readiness, with all forces at home and abroad deployed at normal stations with no increase in alert status. DEFCON 2 increases force readiness above normal. DEFCON 3 indicates an increase in readiness above normal with a concomitant increase in intelligence gathering, including a requirement that the Air Force be ready to mobilize in 15 minutes. The increased readiness for the Air Force probably indicates not only being ready for deployment in combat overseas, but readiness on the ground in the U.S. to transport troops and equipment rapidly overseas if an additional deployment of U.S. troops becomes necessary.

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

With or without a change in DEFCON status, what happened at the White House and Pentagon on Thursday, and what happened at the NATO summit earlier in the week with a 31-nation promise to achieve ready reaction military status within 30 days, is, to be blunt, big stuff. Ukraine was never going to be invited into NATO while a war is going on with Russia or anybody else. Article Five of NATO’s founding treaty obligates every nation in the NATO alliance to come to the military aid of any NATO nation that is attacked by a country outside of the alliance. Russia has already attacked Ukraine, mooting any sort of invitation to join the NATO alliance while that war is going on.

A push by the U.S. for Ukraine to join NATO has happened before. In 2008, before the NATO summit in Bucharest, then President George W. Bush visited Kyiv with a proposal for Ukraine to join NATO that he was willing to put before the NATO nations at the upcoming summit. For one reason or another, most probably not wanting to “poke the bear” as the saying goes about provoking the Kremlin, Ukraine did not go along with the U.S.-proposed NATO membership, a decision 15 years later is no doubt regretted in Kyiv, although there have been at least two changes in the government of Ukraine since then. Whether Ukrainian membership in NATO would have prevented Russia from seizing parts of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014 is impossible to know. But there seems little doubt at this point that Russia would have been far more wary of a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022 if the country was backed up by 31 NATO states and a treaty committing them to come to the aid of Ukraine militarily if that country was attacked.

Joe Biden says the right things — in Lithuania. But does that even count?

The one thing the D.C. pundits did get right about the NATO summit this week is the complete unity of the alliance. It isn’t unprecedented, but it is at least very unusual for 31 sovereign nations to come to an agreement over a three-day period about anything as extraordinary as the commitment to make their military forces ready to deploy on a moment’s notice within 30 days of the summit. Not only will this commitment cost NATO states a lot of money, it will probably necessitate at least some of them calling up their military reserves, much as President Biden did on Thursday. NATO states have already spent serious amounts of money sending arms and other military equipment to Ukraine, and the alliance doubled down on that commitment this week.

Also on Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives shot down two looney tunes proposed amendments to the Defense bill from arch-conservative Republicans: One was a proposal by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia that the U.S. pull out of NATO completely. The other was a proposal by another character from the Republican fringe, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, to cancel all military aid to Ukraine. Although on Friday the House passed the Defense bill loaded up with so-called poison pill amendments, such as canceling the policy of providing leave and travel expenses for military women seeking abortions if they are stationed in a state that has outlawed abortion, and canceling medical care associated with the gender status of transgender troops, America’s commitment to both NATO and Ukraine survived —for this Congress at least. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayip Eroğan dropped his longstanding opposition to Sweden’s NATO candidacy this week.

But who knows what lies in the future for our NATO commitments? Trump did what he could to defenestrate NATO while he was in office. (Remember the Helsinki summit and his prostrating before Russia’s Vladimir Putin after a private no-notes-taken meeting between Defendant Trump and his erstwhile benefactor?) Former National Security Adviser John Bolton delivered another reminder of Trump’s perfidy this week when he told an interviewer that Trump had wanted to pull out of NATO and said so out loud at a White House meeting while he was president. That sort of roll-over-and-play-deadism thrown about by Putin’s best buddy is a far cry from the powerful statements backing NATO by President Biden after his own visit to Helsinki on Thursday, including the fact that he made his statements from the soil of one of NATO’s newest members.

The problem with international summits like the one this week in Vilnius is that the real purpose of the meeting of national leaders can get lost in the political fallout that invariably accompanies such summits. NATO is a military alliance of Western nations pledged to defend each other against the kind of aggression Russia proved to the world it is still capable of in Ukraine. At the end of the summit, NATO proved more strongly than ever before that the alliance is strong, its member states are prepared for the worst, and their commitment to Ukraine is unbending.

about NATO and Russia’s aggression in Ukraine

Clarence Thomas and the price of feigned originalism

The Associated Press just released an in-depth study on how access to the Supreme Court has been bought over the years. On one end, deep-pocket donors are invited to public speaking engagements with ideologically aligned justices, but the collection plate is tastefully hidden until after the fact. On the other end, public events morph into exclusive junkets with prolonged, personal access extended over days. No justice has benefitted from the symbiosis — or the luxury — more than Clarence Thomas.

Gifts lavished on Thomas and his crusading wife Ginni taste, feel, and smell uber lux: island hopping on staffed superyachts; pampered vacations worth millions over two decades; bougie boarding school tuition; a free refurbished home for mom; disguised provocateur ‘fees’ for Ginni; and exclusive travel on private aircraft meant for heads of state.

The Thomases have luxuriated in conservative donor Harlan Crow’s extreme wealth for decades, while most federal judges won’t even accept a free lunch. Clarence and Ginni show us how it’s done: not just the lunch, but also the chef, the estate he toils in, and a private jet and yacht to get to the secluded island it sits on.

The Supreme Court’s new “separate but equal” doctrine

Bringing the past to life

These modern-day ermine furs have been bestowed on a Supreme Court justice who, in return, grafts unyielding conservatism onto a 230-year-old founding text that was never meant to be static.

From his perch on the High Court, Thomas has advanced putative ‘originalist’ 1791 values — as he sees them — from an era when women had no vote or voice and humans were legal chattel.

According to Thomas and his federalist friends, the meaning of the U.S. Constitution must be fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it. Where advancements in science or technology over 200 years interject pesky ambiguity — as they will — Thomas meets the moment by spinning history, pronouncing his own views as ‘original’ to the founders.

Cherry-picking history to put a gun in every hand

Thomas’ selective historical spin is on acute display in the 2021 Bruen decision, which struck down New York’s limit on concealed handguns. Thomas instructed that the only periods of legal relevance were 1791 and 1868, when the 2nd and 14th Amendments, respectively, were ratified.

Working within Thomas’ restriction, New York presented historical evidence that weapons were, in fact, legally regulated during colonial times. New York presented the Court with three distinct types of weapon carry restrictions adopted after the 2nd Amendment was ratified in 1791, but Thomas deemed three colonial-era weapons regulations insufficient to show a supporting “pattern.”

Query how many regulations during that narrow window of time would suffice to teach Thomas that our founders had the common sense to regulate guns.

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

Marriage for me but not for thee

Thomas’ originalist ruse isn’t limited to guns. In Dobbs, the Court’s results-driven departure from Roe v. Wade, Thomas wrote a concurring opinion that questioned the entire right of privacy, saying he would go further — much further — than the majority.

Thomas suggested that the Court ‘reconsider’ its prior substantive due process cases because the right to privacy, he says, is not supported by the Constitution. Specifically targeting Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell, Thomas says citizens have no protected privacy right to contraceptives, same-sex sex, or same-sex marriage.

Analysis supporting the Constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell flowed from Loving v. Virginia, the landmark case that struck down anti-miscegenation laws under the 14th Amendment. Thomas saved for another day how he would protect his own mixed-race marriage under Loving while outlawing marriage for others under the same analysis.

Decisions from a poisoned tree

Thomas’ conservative benefactor, Harlan Crow, has poured billions of dollars into funding cases before the court, as well as political campaigns to block or seat certain justices on the court. Thomas, in appreciative lockstep, has repeatedly ruled against donor disclosure. Even Citizens United, which gave corporations a blank check to influence elections, didn’t go far enough for Thomas, who issued a blistering lone dissent to rail against donor disclosure requirements.

In a criminal trial, evidence that is illicitly obtained is excluded from the jury. As the ‘poisonous tree doctrine’ goes, if the evidentiary tree is tainted, so must be its fruit.

Relatedly, in a civil trial, the best way to cast doubt on an opponent’s expert is to tell the jury exactly how much he was paid to reach his conclusions. Knowing who paid for what, and how much, is key to weighing just outcomes.

Thomas’ selective originalism falls from a tree so gilded by years of opulence that it is rotten. Worse, his federalism charade offends the original originalist:

(L)aws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed… institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

– Thomas Jefferson

Clarence Thomas would keep America stuffed in an ill-fitting coat to serve his benefactors, the coat makers. Doubtless, he’s relieved “quid pro quo” isn’t in the Constitution. But then, neither is “judicial review.”

about Clarence Thomas

Rev. Jesse Jackson retires from Rainbow PUSH Coalition

Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Baptist minister, civil rights activist and protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. who founded People United to Save Humanity (Operation PUSH) in 1971 and organized the Rainbow Coalition in 1984, has announced that he’s retiring as president of Rainbow PUSH Coalition — a merger of the two which he’s led since 1996.

Jackson made mention of this move during a live stream on July 8 saying, “I’m going to make a transition pretty soon,” and news of his official departure circulated on Friday. “I’ve been doing this stuff for 64 years. I was 18 years old,” Jackson said in a quote obtained from CNN, adding that he’ll find a replacement to carry on from here.

“I’m going to work along with the new president and our board, and we’ll have a new president who will, in fact, be working here day to day,” Jackson said. “I want to see us grow and prosper. We have the ability to build on what we’ve established over the years.” In a statement from the Rainbow PUSH coalition, they honor Jackson’s work saying, “His commitment is unwavering, and he will elevate his life’s work by teaching ministers how to fight for social justice and continue the freedom movement. Rev. Jackson’s global impact and civil rights career will be celebrated this weekend at the 57th annual Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention, where his successor will be introduced.”

Kari Lake’s attorneys responsible for cost of bogus election lawsuit

A federal judge has ordered the attorneys for failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and ex-Arizona Rep. Mark Finchem to reimburse Maricopa County for the $122,200 in taxpayers money that was wasted in their 2022 lawsuit, in which they called for the use of paper ballots over electronic voting machines in the midterm election.

Finding Lake and Finchem to have violated the law by “pursuing frivolous constitutional claims,” in which they insisted that voting machines produced inaccurate results, U.S. District Court John J. Tuchi quashed their suit back in August and awarded sanctions to the county in December, per request. Now their bill has come due.

“Plaintiffs lacked an adequate factual or legal basis to support the wide ranging constitutional claims they raised or the extraordinary relief they requested,” Tuchi wrote in a quote obtained from Azcentral. “Plaintiffs filled the gaps between their factual assertions, claimed injuries, and requested relief with false, misleading, and speculative allegations.” To attorneys Kurt Olsen, Andrew Parker and Alan Dershowitz, he hammered down that “Attorneys must be reminded that their duties are not qualified in the way he suggests and that courts are entitled to rely on their signatures as certifications their filings are well-founded.”

RFK Jr. compares Trump’s debate skills to those of Abraham Lincoln

During a “Fox & Friends” segment on Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke on the importance of debates leading up to an election, finding several opportunities to sing Donald Trump’s praises — even going so far as to compare his debating chops to those of Abraham Lincoln.

“Trump is probably the most successful debater in this country since Lincoln-Douglas in the way he dispatched sixteen Republican opponents, one after the other, in 2016. It was really quite extraordinary,” Kennedy said. On the topic of it not being likely that he’ll have the opportunity to debate Biden, as incumbent presidents historically refrain, Kennedy said, “We’re gonna try to get the president to debate, we think it’s really important. It is important for the Democratic party because ultimately the president will have to debate a Republican, and likely, we don’t know, but it’s gonna be Trump.”

“He has his own technique that people like, and it is like going to a prize fight and you need practice. And that usually happens during a primary, and asking the president not to debate during the primary is like asking a prize fighter to practice for his big bout by sitting on the couch and eating Chick-Fil-A,” Kennedy said.

Hockey “has always been diverse”: Uncovering the unsung history and racism in Canada’s beloved sport

“Black Ice” tackles the thorny issue of racism in Canadian hockey, a sport that features very few Black athletes. The film’s numerous talking heads include NHL players Anthony Duclair, P.K. Subban, cousins Sarah and Darnell Nurse, as well as many other Black men and women who have experienced discrimination in the sport.

“The one thing that Canadians generally try to explain is that there isn’t a racism problem in Canada … That’s not true. It’s everywhere.”

Director Hubert Davis explores this topic through interviews with the athletes and their families to show the impact racism has in hockey. In addition, he reveals the little-known history of the Colored Hockey League, which was formed in Nova Scotia before 1900 — CHL players developed the slap shot years before it was adapted by white athletes in the NHL.

Davis also features players like Craig Smith, who talk about how they “didn’t see anyone like themselves” playing the game. Athlete Saroya Tinker explains how her father looks for Black history when he enters a rink, and how she changed to try to fit in as the only Black player on her team. Other stories recall incidents where epithets were used against a player, such as Mark Connors, or a banana was thrown on the ice to protest against a Black player. Akim Aliu publicly called out a coach for racist remarks, which created some controversy.

“Colin in Black & White” writer on Kaepernick’s parents & awakening: “They didn’t see him as Black”

Why does hockey have a race problem, and why are they not doing anything to combat it? Salon spoke to Hubert Davis about “Black Ice” to find out.

What stories did you hear that prompted you to tackle this topic of systemic racism in hockey for a documentary?

I heard Akim [Aliu]’s story — he was the first to come out and open the floodgates. Before then, it wasn’t public knowledge that there were issues in hockey for Black players. Once I heard his story, and talked to him, and watched some roundtables of other players, and the Hockey Diversity Alliance started coming forward and telling their stories, I realized this was a common experience these players are having. Once you see that, you see there are issues. I went back to different players from different eras and heard stories. They kept piling up and I realized there is a problem here.

Why did you focus on Canadian players? Isn’t the issue league-wide?

The one thing that Canadians generally try to explain is that there isn’t a racism problem in Canada. The U.S. has the problem. I found that’s not true. It’s everywhere. There was an incident when we were filming, in the Czech Republic, an American player who is Black had an incident happened to him. It’s not just Canada or the U.S.; it’s in Europe, too. That was a big part of it — taking down the veil so that Canadians do not see it as their problem. Hopefully you see it is a problem with hockey itself. Wayne Simmonds had an incident when he was playing in Europe. We try to put racism in geographical areas. “It happens in the South or in Virginia, because that’s a racist place.” But it’s actually everywhere, and we have to look at it as a bigger thing. It’s such an insidious thing. It continues to be there if you don’t address it.

Akim Aliu struggles with reporting an incident because he had to decide to “suck it up” or fight against someone who controls his fate in the game. Can you talk about the toll that racism takes on the mental health of these athletes who internalize so much pain just trying to play a game they love?

There is a cost attached to speaking up and that is something very specific in hockey, because it is a closed sport. There is this idea of silence in the locker room — keep your head down. The economic cost for players who speak up is that they are seen as troublemakers as Akim was. “You’re not a team guy.” Until Akim spoke up, players didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. P.K. Subban explains it: What was the benefit for him speaking up? He is trying to get his next contract. Why we are able to have player speak openly and honestly in the film is because a lot of them are at the tail end of career, so there is little economic consequence. The reason they come out and say it happened because they want a smoother path for younger players. They have made money and are comfortable, and that is the reason they have come forward.

Right, like a player coming out, at the end or after their career so they don’t jeopardize things. I also think it was important that Akim’s story was about the use of a certain unacceptable racial epithet.

When we are talking about something like systemic racism, I start with the blatant stuff because it’s something we all understand. You are not supposed to use the N-word. But what’s the source of where that comes from, and what are all the different ways that manifests itself? Sometimes it was a coach, sometimes it was another player, sometimes it was another team. But it wasn’t the incident of what was said, but it was the reaction to it — that is where players really felt let down. This happened and there was zero accountability to say, “This is unacceptable in this space.” It was usually dealt with on an individual basis. Something happens, they have “an investigation” and what that leads to is a strange situation where you take it on a case-to-case basis, rather than we have a problem in general and we need to work on policy of antiracism training through every level. That doesn’t exist, so it’s whack-a-mole. You’re trying to catch up with something and never be able to solve it. That’s a fundamental problem.

Yes, I was incensed by the story of a coach’s kid who said racist things and cursed at a Black player and refused to write an apology, nor was he sufficiently punished for his actions. He wasn’t held accountable in part because he was the coach’s son.

Where is teaching for that coach? What they are saying as an organization is “We don’t care.” We know these things are going to happen and it doesn’t matter. This is not just in hockey but at the world we are looking at.

Canadian hockey player Sarah Nurse in “Black Ice” (Roadside Attractions)With the emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, why is hockey not holding folks more accountable? Was there a suitable punishment for a racist incident? Your film didn’t show it.

“If you are the only Black person in that space, who do you feel you have to be in that space in order to thrive or be accepted?”

Generally, it would be after the fact. Mark Connors was a recent story, and one case, inside the arena, the kids were punished and suspended, but a second case outside the arena, they said there wasn’t enough evidence. I don’t think they were looking for punishment so much as change to policy for future things. He wasn’t looking for punitive damage, it was more why does this keep happening? Mark Connors’ white father was frustrated with the process. Why is there a long investigation, and that’s more important. The problem with saying OK, stricter punishment for the kids who are doing it, is that they say it never happened, lawyers get involved, and parents get involved. They try to backtrack on the incident rather than this space, and this is what is acceptable. Training at the beginning is the key. Do they want to change it at the highest level? The answer is obviously no. If you don’t implement those things, it shows you don’t want to change it, and that’s part of the problem.

Several subjects in the film talk about feeling alone or like they don’t belong or have to change to fit in to prove themselves. Can you talk about the impact of these Black athletes trying to integrate into a predominantly white space? There are some very heartening scenes of Black coaches encouraging young kids that they have the right to play and that this is “our game.” They have to codeswitch to belong.

It was interesting that Saroya talks about having to hide parts of herself and identity to fit in socially with teams she was on. That was more powerful than the other things we’re talking about because she is understanding “this is what’s acceptable,” and “I will be accepted in this space if I act and talk like this.” The internal part of how that works is interesting because we are talking about that in the locker room, but we could be talking about the board room. If you are the only Black person in that space, who do you feel you have to be in that space in order to thrive or be accepted? For most of the players, they were the only person of color on their team. The difference when they weren’t the only ones, at Yale, when there was another Black player on Saroya’s team, that was different because she felt she had someone to go to, and talk to, and share. She wasn’t as isolated. She didn’t have to be the one person who stands up if something was said. Is one person supposed to speak for everyone? That is not a healthy position for them to be in.

“Black Ice” uncovers the Colored Hockey League and its contributions to the sport, which includes aspects of the game that were adopted by white athletes years later. You also recount the history of Africville, which was a Black town where the league started and was later demolished. Can you talk about including this story in your film?

It’s interesting how this idea of innovation that wasn’t given the credit it was due was because it wasn’t part of narrative of the hockey origin story. It didn’t quite fit into the box. People like Kirk Brooks, a coach we talked to, knew about it, and he grew up knowing about it. It wasn’t a secret in the community. Here was this League and this legacy of Black players that have played since the beginning of hockey, and they never got their due. This film can bring this into the light and give them exposure. That goes against this idea that it is just about diversity now. The sport has always been diverse, beyond the Black experience, the Indigenous and Asian communities have had teams that go back during the same time. It recontextualizes this idea of diversity being a recent thing. These [players of color] don’t just want to join the league now, they have been there the whole time, they just haven’t been seen or celebrated.

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

The racism in the film extends to both male and female players, professional and younger athletes. One subject in the film says they are “perceived to be un-coachable.” Is it easier for men than women? Do NHL stars have to work twice as hard to prove their worth? Who do you think suffers the most and why?

It was happening at all different levels, all different times, and all different places; it was a collective experience. What people were facing was different. In the beginning we talked about blatant uses of racist language, but as film progressed, you see a professional player said he didn’t have any crazy things said to him when he was younger, but professionally, his management and coaches were giving him mixed compliments like, “You’re so articulate,” or they were surprised at how good his hockey IQ was. It showed how it wasn’t blatant, but that to him was the stumbling block at professional career. With women versus men, a lot of it was economics. Saroya was going through the same thing with less money, whereas Akim was afraid to call people out because he knows how much money he can make later on. That was a differential where she was able to come forward because there wasn’t so much money on the line. It affected people in different ways, and I didn’t want it to feel like it was one-note. It actually all comes from the same source but is manifested in a lot of different ways. That’s why you have to dissect it.

“Black Ice” opens theatrically in AMC theaters nationwide on July 14.

about racism in sports

Look to the Logan Roys to understand who’s causing the Hollywood “double strike”

Every movement needs a face.

As SAG-AFTRA, the guild that represents film and TV actors, joins the Writers Guild of America in its labor strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) there will be some debate over who’s right for that job. In the short term Fran Drescher, the actors guild’s president, leapt to the fore with her fiery strike announcement on Thursday.

“I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things,” Drescher said at the guild’s press conference. “How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment.”

Drescher is not exaggerating. The labor movement is experiencing a resurgence the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades. Los Angeles alone has been impacted by teachers, dock workers and hotel employees organizing work stoppages in recent months. Unionizing efforts continue at major companies, including Starbucks and Amazon.

Friday marks the first day that SAG-AFTRA hits the sidewalks, combining their 160,000-strong membership with striking WGA writers on the picket lines. Such a historic “double strike” with actors and writers walking out together hasn’t occurred since 1960. The last time SAG-AFTRA went on strike was 43 years ago. (Salon’s unionized employees are represented by the WGA East. The WGA represents 11,500 television and screenwriters.)

“It is disgusting”: Fran Drescher calls out “greedy” Hollywood execs in heated, viral strike speech

This also means that picket lines will turn into more of a spectacle than they already were. On the red carpet for the London premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge both confirmed that they would be walking out. “I believe in unions. I believe in labor. I believe in representation, all of those things,” Ford told a reporter. “If my union votes to go out, I’ll go out.”

That was in June. Much closer to the deadline the cast of the “Oppenheimer” walked that film’s London step-and-repeat an hour earlier than originally scheduled, fully aware that it would be the last press event they’d be authorized to participate in for the foreseeable future. Strike rules prohibit actors from promoting any shows or films that have been produced or are in production under the guild’s expired contract with the AMPTP.

That also all but guarantees that the Emmys will be postponed from its originally scheduled Sept.18 airdate.

If any A-listers walk the picket line they’ll be late to a writer-stocked battlefront that’s already been supported by stars such as Bob Odenkirk, Mandy Patinkin and the cast of “Ted Lasso.”

Actor Bob Odenkirk seen marching in solidarity with the WGA. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Such visible support from beloved celebrities is potent. It can also be turned against the people who are striking for better working conditions and more equitable compensation, which the AMPTP – an alliance representing studios and media conglomerates – is counting on. Drescher’s fiery call to arms resonates with the common worker whose wages haven’t kept up with inflation, but scored highly among those who still view her with no shortage of fondness as the star of “The Nanny.”

But as the combined strike rolls on and photographers capture actors wearing pieces of clothing worth more than the average person makes in a week, their demands for better pay might not land as solidly.

So allow me to suggest that Florence Pugh or Matt Damon aren’t the best front-facing representatives of the striking guilds’ determination. What this walkout needs, however, is a villain the people intimately understand. Give them “Succession” mogul Logan Roy.

“Shame on them. They stand on the wrong side of history at this very moment,” said SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher.

The AMPTP has not trotted out a representative at whom we might might target our proverbial rotten tomatoes, only statements such as this : “A strike is certainly not the outcome we hoped for as studios cannot operate without the performers that bring our TV shows and films to life,” the alliance declared Thursday. “The Union has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.”

This certainly makes it sound like this small group of very wealthy executives is very concerned about the little guy. Major media corporations’ PR teams are experts at saying what they believe the little people want to hear. In this moment, however, that message is about a decade out of date.

But “Succession” gets it. References to the drama showed up on picket signs early in the WGA strike when writers humorously threatened to spoil its ending. In May, when the writers began picketing, the Roys were all anyone who watched TV could talk about. This week the show was nominated for 27 Emmys including best drama and acting nods for its four leads including Brian Cox, who plays Logan.

James Cromwell in “Succession” (Macall Polay/HBO)

Lest we miss one of the central messages of the show, its creator and WGA member Jesse Armstrong spells out who Logan Roy was in the eulogy delivered by this brother Ewan, played by James Cromwell.

Logan, Ewan says, “fed that dark flame in men, the hard, mean, hard-relenting flame that keeps their heart warm while another grows cold. Their grain stashed while another goes hungry. And even has the temerity to tell that hard but funny joke about the man in the cold. You can get a little high, a little mighty when you’re warm.”

Now, imagine a small group of Logans working together against tens of thousands of writers and actors, most of whom simply want to pay their rent and buy groceries (or fresh pizza!) by plying their craft. Or, you know, don’t imagine. Turn on your TV for a rewatch. Better yet, simply wait for someone like Disney CEO Bob Iger to open his mouth in front of a microphone.

On Thursday’s episode of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Iger assured viewers that he takes the writers and actors guilds’ concerns about equitable compensation seriously. Nevertheless, “There is a level of expectation they have that is just not realistic,” he said after bemoaning all the disruptive forces hitting the business, which hasn’t entirely recovered from COVID.

“This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption,” he said, with the postcard-perfect mountains looming in the background. CNBC caught up with Iger at the famous Allen & Company Sun Valley conference, a retreat colloquially known as “summer camp for billionaires.” You know, like “Argestes.”

"There is a level of expectations that [the writers and actors] have that is just not realistic," says $DIS CEO @RobertIger on the @sagaftra and WGA strike. "They are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing and that is very disruptive." pic.twitter.com/ySYvfQBYA5

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) July 13, 2023

The day before that interview, Iger signed a contract extension with Disney that bumps up his annual target salary from $27 million to $31 million, provided he remains with the company through 2026 instead of 2024 and meets certain goals. Like, say, “cost-cutting.”

This places him in the ballpark of Netflix‘s co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos, whose 2022 compensation plan is valued at around $50 million, according to a recent Los Angeles Times analysis of data provided by Equilar, Inc. factoring in stock options, base salaries and bonuses. His co-CEO, company chairman Reed Hastings, pulled around $51 million that same year.

Warner Bros. Discover chief David Zaslav only made around $39 million in 2022, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. But in 2021 he famously pocketed a $246.6 million compensation package that included stock options worth $201 million. Between 2018 and 2022, Zaslav – one guy – made $498,915,318, according to that L.A. Times report.

Imagine a small group of Logan Roys working together against tens of thousands of writers and actors.

Two months ago at a party Zaslav hosted at Cannes, a guest was overheard saying, according to the Wall Street Journal, “This is what a recession looks like,” while gesturing at two megayachts in the distance. “There used to be 20 of these.”

Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch pulled lower salaries than any of these men in 2022 – technically – which is important to note since Logan Roy is largely based on Rupert.

Meanwhile the WGA says the median screenwriter pay has dropped 14% when adjusted for inflation over the last five years, while the L.A. Times report indicates that the average pay for top studio executives rose 53% from 2018, roughly 108 times the average writer’s pay.

Among other key issues, both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are striking for better wages and residuals, along with a more equitable compensation structure related to streaming content. Placing safeguards around the user of artificial intelligence to generate scripts or digitize and use performers’ likenesses without payment or approval is also an existential issue.

These gains would help mainly writers and actors who once made a living that qualified them as middle class, so if you’re worried about how Tom Cruise will manage these difficult days, don’t.

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

Instead, keep a close eye on how this strike progresses after this week’s injection of star power. With the actors in the fight, the likelihood of this strike’s outcome influencing future labor negotiations has increased substantially. History proves this by way of former SAG-AFTRA president Ronald Reagan, who led his guild on strike shoulder to shoulder with writers in 1960.

However, the Reagan I’m referencing is his August 1981 version, when he was serving his first term as President of the United States. One of Reagan’s earliest presidential acts was to publicly and swiftly crush a strike called by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers union. Those workers sought across-the-board raises of at least 10%. The government offered 5%, which the union did not accept.

Reagan declared the strike to be unlawful, announcing that air traffic controllers who walked off their jobs had 48 hours to return to their jobs or lose them. And he was true to his word. The people who returned to work kept the planes in the air and ensured travel continued without interruptions. Those who remained on the picket line were fired.

Succession (HBO)

As Reagan’s head of employees Donald Devine told NPR’s Planet Money in 2019, other industries’ executives took note. “Businessmen would come up to me and say, you know, when your guy, Reagan, stood firm with those guys, I started getting tougher with my unions, too; I realized I was giving away the store,” Devine said.

With this single blow Reagan transformed striking workers from heroes to troublemakers messing up the system for good, reliable employees.

Unions have been gaining momentum in recent years, but this strike’s visibility could be a decisive swing in the opposite direction of what Reagan set in motion 42 years ago.

“Eventually, the people break down the gates of Versailles, and then it’s over,” Drescher warned on Thursday. “We’re at that moment right now.” Her battle cry was pitch perfect, and it looks like everyday people tuned in.

But if movies and TV have taught us anything, if you want to hold people’s attention you must show them a villain worth defeating. Cox and “Succession” served up a brilliant one, available any time we nine-to-fivers (if only!) forget why these labor walkouts need to happen.

about this topic

“There is no basis in law for this”: Experts trash Trump’s “desperate” bid to disqualify Fani Willis

Former President Donald Trump on Friday filed a petition to Georgia’s Supreme Court seeking to squash the final report of a special purpose grand jury recommending people for indictments and disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from continuing to investigate him for attempting to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results — ahead of his widely expected indictment this summer.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Trump’s lawyers also requested the court prohibit Willis from using any evidence obtained by the investigative jury, which heard testimony between May 2022 and January 2023 from 75 witnesses.

The petition also asks the court to block any ongoing proceedings “related to and flowing from the special purpose grand jury’s investigation until this matter can be resolved.” These proceedings would include the two regular grand juries seated Tuesday, one of which is expected to be asked to hand up indictments for the alleged scheme to upend Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

Georgia probe expands after Trump handed DA “new piece of evidence and tied a bow on it”: report

Though Trump’s attorneys recognized that such a motion would typically be frowned upon, they said “extraordinary circumstances” now justify the filing.

“Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time,” the document said. “But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

Trump’s legal team also filed a separate but similar motion in the Fulton Superior Court out of what they said is an abundance of caution. They also noted that Judge Robert McBurney, the supervising judge of the special grand jury, has yet to rule on a motion they filed in March requesting Willis’ disqualification and that Willis has notified local law enforcement that she is likely to make a charging decision between July 31 and Aug. 18.

“Stranded between the supervising judge’s protracted passivity and the district attorney’s looming indictment, (Trump) has no meaningful option other than to seek this court’s intervention,” the motion said.

Willis’ office has previously countered Trump’s arguments for dismissal on the grounds that they lack merit, were untimely and had other procedural flaws. Prosecutors said that the former president’s efforts were premature because no charges have been filed yet.

“If an investigation results in actual criminal charges against (Trump), the justice system ensures they will have no shortage of available remedies to pursue,” the D.A.’s May response said.

“Red-alert”: Legal experts say Georgia DA letter signals she’s likely getting ready to indict Trump

Trump’s petition also assailed Willis’ investigation, arguing that Willis and McBurney have mowed down the procedural safeguards and rights of those under investigation “at every turn,” and that the Georgia statute allowing for special grand juries to operate is unconstitutionally vague.

“The whole of the process is now incurably infected,” the motion said. “And nothing that follows could be legally sound or publicly respectable.”

The document also claimed that publishing excerpts of the final report would infringe upon Trump’s rights to fairness and due process, which could cause “irremediable injury” to his reputation as he pines for the Republican party nomination and another shot at the presidency.

The GOP frontrunner’s attorneys also repeated arguments previously made by Willis’ opponents — and rejected by several judges — that the special grand jury’s case was civil, not criminal, and therefore allowed Willis to access evidence she would have otherwise been barred from. They also said that Willis should have been disqualified from the entire investigation rather than just the portion involving Lt. Gov. Burt Jones over the fundraiser she held last summer for Jones’ Democratic opponent.

National security attorney Bradley Moss called the motion “desperate.”

“This petition is a political screed, not a realistic legal filing. It is beneath our profession to have lawyers write things like this with such overblown rhetoric,” he tweeted.

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

“There’s no basis in law for this. Zero,” Georgia State Law Professor Anthony Michael Kreis wrote on Twitter Friday before breaking down the questionability of the motion in a separate thread.

Kreis explained that the special purpose grand jury Trump’s attorneys are levying a complaint against is an investigative body that Trump can’t skirt “simply because he doesn’t like the ordinary operations provided by Georgia law for public corruption crimes.”

“The complaint is essentially that the SPGJ is not a regular grand jury and the safeguards of a regular grand jury are undermined because the SPGJ is not a regular grand jury. This is just circular drivel. Ga. is a little more transparent than other places. But them’s the breaks,” Kreis continued.

“Trump’s team is attacking the credibility of the process through a strange assertion of the rights of third parties and that the DA can’t use the statutory authority on the books to investigate— nowhere has Trump alleged that *his* rights have been violated by the SPGJ’s work,” he concluded.

He went on to describe his confusion surrounding the Trump attorneys’ decision to file the motion in the first place because of the capabilities of the former president’s Georgia representation.

“Trump’s Georgia lawyer is the best he’s got. Truly, he’s good,” Kreis wrote. “So, I’m perplexed that team Trump continues to hammer the same claims of procedural deficiencies without any connection to Trump and a constitutional due process claim that boils down to the DA can’t investigate.”

about the Fulton probe

Greener oceans due to climate change, new study suggests

A new study in the journal Nature suggests that the color of our oceans is changing due to climate change. Over the past 20 years, low-latitude oceans have become greener. It’s well established that rising global temperatures, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, are making dramatic changes to our oceans, from increasing sea levels and intensifying storms to acidifying the water itself.

A NASA satellite known as Aqua just celebrated its 21st birthday in May, making it one of the longest still-running space probes. In that time, it has collected a lot of data on the color of our oceans, which is actually an essential climate variable and can reflect changes in ocean ecosystems. After analyzing this data, researchers from the National Oceanography Centre, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oregon State University found that, on average, our oceans are becoming greener, with significant shifts in about 56% of the ocean surface. The reason for this can be related to algae and phytoplankton blooms and how nutrients spread in the ocean in response to heat. The increasing shift from blue to green corresponded with the steep rise in global temperatures and atmospheric greenhouse gases.

“Altogether, these results suggest that the effects of climate change are already being felt in surface marine microbial ecosystems, but have not yet been detected,” the authors write. “Our findings therefore might be of relevance for ocean conservation and governance. For instance, knowledge of where the surface-ocean microbial ecosystem is changing might be useful for identifying regions of the open ocean in which to establish marine protected areas.”

Legal experts: Second Trump aide may be charged after Jack Smith says he may have “perjured himself”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents is intensifying as he takes new steps to examine Trump’s alleged obstruction of government attempts to receive documents, including threatening a former Trump Organization staffer suspected of lying to prosecutors with potential charges, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

Smith in recent weeks sent a target letter to the employee indicating that he may have “perjured himself” during a May appearance before the federal grand jury, the sources told the outlet.

“Remember the unnamed guy who helped Walt Nauta move the boxes in and out of the storage room? He’s gotten a target letter from Jack Smith for obstruction, meaning he’s in serious criminal jeopardy and unless he’s lost his senses, will soon tell all he knows about Nauta and Trump,” former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman wrote on Twitter in response to the report.

Remember the unnamed guy who helped Walt Nauta move the boxes in and out of the storage room? He's gotten a target letter from Jack Smith for obstruction, meaning he's in serious criminal jeopardy and unless he's lost his senses, will soon tell all he knows about Nauta and Trump

— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) July 14, 2023

“Borders on frivolous”: Legal experts say special counsel filing “embarrasses” Trump’s lawyers

“Looks like indictment of second Trump Org employee in classified docs case may be coming,” tweeted New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman, former special counsel for the Department of Defense.

The target letter, which was described to ABC News by sources but not obtained or reviewed by the outlet, indicates Smith is taking a stronger interest in the Trump Organization’s management of surveillance footage and potential attempts to keep it from the eyes of investigators.

“Indictment 2.0”: Experts say Smith may be preparing new Trump charges as grand jury probe resumes

When reached by the outlet Thursday, the staffer declined to answer its questions about a potential target letter or his discussions with investigators, saying only, “It’s none of your business.”

A lawyer who has represented the employee and several other Trump advisers, Stanley Woodward, also declined ABC News request for comment.

Investigators have been analyzing the employee’s role in the handling of surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort club that federal prosecutors subpoenaed last summer, the sources said. The prosecutors have also looked into any subsequent conversations the staffer had with other employees, including Trump aide Walt Nauta, who was indicted alongside his boss in June on obstruction charges, among others.

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

Like Trump, who was indicted on 37 felony counts last month, Nauta pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The Trump Organization maintains that it did not delete or destroy any surveillance footage, according to sources familiar with its thinking. The government, however, is not endeavoring to argue that footage was tampered with, but rather is homing in on potential efforts to obstruct the investigation, the sources added.

“Jack Smith told a Trump Org employee he’s a target for obstruction of the documents prosecution, explaining, at least in part, the Florida grand jury’s continued work after the indictment of Trump & Nauta,” former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance tweeted. “He’ll have to pick cooperation or indictment.”

1/ Jack Smith told a Trump Org employee he's a target for obstruction of the documents prosecution, explaining, at least in part, the Florida grand jury's continued work after the indictment of Trump & Nauta. He'll have to pick cooperation or indictment. https://t.co/gMUawKY12T

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) July 14, 2023

about the Mar-a-Lago probe

Meet the “Autocado,” Chipotle’s guacamole-preparing robot

As reported by CNN Business, Chipotle has now launched the “Autocado,” a robot “designed to perform the more tedious tasks involved in creating the chain’s guacamole, including cutting, coring and peeling avocados.” The goal is to automate some back-of-house labor, although Chipotle says that the Autocado “will not eliminate jobs, but instead employees will work with the robot to speed up guacamole production,” as per CNN. The Autocado works in bulk, prepping about 25 pounds of avocados at once.

The human employee will still be tasked with making the actual guacamole once the robot prepares the avocados, though. Curt Garner, Chief Customer and Technology Officer of Chipotle said that “the device was designed specifically for Chipotle with the goal of easing identified pain points for restaurant employees.” The aim is that the Autocado will cut guacamole production time in half. Chipotle worked with Vebu Labs in order to design the Autocado; “automated avocado peeling machines already exist,” according to CNN, but Autocado is “specifically designed” for Chipotle.

It should be noted, though, that Autocado is not the first fast-casual food production robot. That title goes to “Flippy 2,” an automatic robot who operates the fry station at White Castle.

Trump “very upset” that Jared Kushner is cooperating as Jack Smith pierces his inner circle: report

Prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election results have in recent weeks asked Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, among other witnesses, about whether the 2024 Republican frontrunner had privately acknowledged that he had lost the election, four sources briefed on the matter told the New York Times.

Kushner testified before the Washington grand jury in the case last month, where a source briefed on the matter said he maintained it was his understanding that Trump truly believed the election had been stolen from him.

“The questioning of Mr. Kushner shows that the federal investigation being led by the special counsel Jack Smith continues to pierce the layers closest to Mr. Trump as prosecutors weigh whether to bring charges against the former president in connection with the efforts to promote baseless assertions of widespread voter fraud and block or delay congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s Electoral College victory,” the Times reported.

Ex-DOJ official: Michigan interview shows Jack Smith targeting pro-Trump “broad national conspiracy”

The subject of the questions also indicates prosecutors may be trying to establish whether Trump knowingly based his efforts on a false claim as he strove to stay in office, which is evidence that could boost any case prosecutors may decide to bring against him.

Neither a spokesperson for Kushner or a spokesperson for Trump responded to the Times’ email request for comment.

Others within Trump’s circle who interacted with him following the 2020 election — and have potentially more incriminating accounts of the former president’s conduct — have also been questioned by federal prosecutors recently. Repeating the account she shared before the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 last year, Alyssa Farah Griffin, the White House communications director in the days following the 2020 election, told prosecutors this spring that Trump had asked her at the time, “Can you believe I lost to Joe Biden?”

“In that moment I think he knew he lost,” Griffin told the House committee.

According to Times correspondent Maggie Haberman, Trump was “very upset” that both Kushner and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who has not yet been questioned before the grand jury but did testify before the Jan. 6 committee, had cooperated with federal investigators in cases against him.

“A straightforward crime”: Experts expect charges after “extraordinarily significant” J6 testimony

Haberman told CNN’s Jake Tapper Thursday afternoon that Ivanka Trump’s testimony put a “strain” on her relationship with her father.

“When the testimony was aired showing both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump being interviewed by the House Select Committee during those live hearings was that Trump was very upset, particularly about Ivanka Trump,” Haberman said. “He was not happy about these video clips showing her suggesting that she had believed what Bill Barr was saying and Bill Barr, the former attorney general, of course, said that there was no widespread fraud and told Trump that and he testified to all of that. My understanding is things have improved them, but it definitely brought a strain to the relationship.”

Some legal experts said Kushner’s testimony signals a direct link between the former Trump senior advisor and efforts to use the claims about a stolen election to fundraise. MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin noted that the testimony “suggests the fundraising prong of the 1/6 investigation is very much live.”

“[Trump campaign ad maker Larry] Weitzner also revealed that the one time he spoke to Trump about post-election ads, it was because Trump and Jared called him together on speakerphone to convey ‘what they felt was wrong about the election process that might be considered for some ads,’ Rubin wrote on Twitter.

In response to the Times’ report, Timothy Heaphy, the former lead investigator to the Jan. 6 committee, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Thursday that, as facts developed around the 2020 election, Trump’s rhetoric became “increasingly inconsistent with the facts,” which can lead to mindful criminal intent.

“It’s fraudulent, to bilk people out of their money because it’s an effective fund-raising scheme,” Heaphy said. “All of it is important. There’s a disconnect between the rhetoric and the facts.”

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

Heaphy also argued that investigators questioning Kushner, despite his being the former president’s son-in-law, is fair because Trump involved him in White House affairs.

“He’s part of the president’s family,” Heaphy continued. He “was involved in discussions soon after the election in which the president was told directly that he lost. He was present for this meeting where the pollster, the data guy from the campaign, actually presented the numbers and went through the sort of explanation of the decreased margins in the suburban areas, and he was already starting to move to Florida.”

Kushner, during his Jan. 6 committee testimony, explained he was overseas handling his Abraham Accords project during the Capitol attacks, adding that he returned the evening of the riots and held a dinner party at his home the following day. The testimony implied that Kushner was minimally involved with Jan. 6 efforts, but experts discussing the report on MSNBC said Kushner had a lot to do with the financial side of the rally that day.

Rubin also noted on Twitter that besides Jason Miller, Trump and Kushner, “no one was more involved in post-election fundraising and related messaging than Jared.”

“Asked to recall details about the conversation, Weitzner remembered Jared initiating the call and Trump insisting that they characterize the election as ‘stolen’ in ‘very aggressive’ terms Weitzner himself later described as ‘fire breathing’ in an email to others,” Rubin added.

Other than Trump & Jason Miller, no one was more involved in post-election fundraising and related messaging than Jared. As ad guru Larry Weitzner told the 1/6 committee, the small circle working on post-election ads included Miller, Newt Gingrich,Trump's pollster & Jared. 2/ pic.twitter.com/fP4RPkiHbD

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) July 13, 2023

Asked to recall details about the conversation, Weitzner remembered Jared initiating the call and Trump insisting that they characterize the election as "stolen" in "very aggressive" terms Weitzner himself later described as "fire breathing" in an email to others. 4/ pic.twitter.com/4o3EZbocoB

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) July 13, 2023

During the MSNBC appearance, Heaphy also described how deeply Kushner was involved in the fundraising process.

“He was directly involved in the campaign fundraising that then became the stop the steal fundraising. He was directly personally briefed almost daily about the cash machine, veritable, hand-over-fist money-making machine it was, the Stop the Steal,” he said.

“The Trump campaign pivoted to a fundraising operation, and Jared Kushner was right in the center of the strategy of mining the false narrative for repeated cash contributions of up to $250 million after the election,” Heaphy continued. “So, to the extent Jack Smith is looking into campaign fund-raising based on these false statements of election fraud, Jared Kushner would have information about that as well.”

about the Jan. 6 probe

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

Facing hours of partisan attacks and personal insults Thursday from the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan remained unflappable. Members of the panel — who have reportedly received up to $400,000 in campaign contributions from Big Tech employees and PACs — lambasted the former Columbia Law School professor for her adherence to ethics laws and her agency’s attempts to enforce antitrust regulations in a rapidly conglomerating industry.

Republican men called her a “bully,” called her leadership “a disaster,” accused her of “misleading” the committee, and said her efforts to uphold anti-monopoly rules are “going to fail.” Committee chair and Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan — who reportedly received $76,000 from employees and PACs of Big Tech companies over the course of his career — even accused Khan, a Biden appointee, of “harassing” the company Twitter.

Congress is finally taking AI seriously. Here’s what future regulation of this tech could look like

Using the classic ask-and-interrupt tactic of interrogation, Jordan repeatedly peppered Khan with questions that he refused to let her answer.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan repeatedly cuts off FTC Chair Lina Khan as she tries to answer after he asks why the FTC is “harassing Twitter.”

Khan: “Twitter’s lax privacy policies allowed unauthorized users to co-opt Twitter accounts, including that of Fox News.” pic.twitter.com/ZjSXfSW6Vg

— The Recount (@therecount) July 13, 2023

Khan never flinched. Unwavering, cooperative, calm — her adroit responses seemed to only further infuriate some GOP members, whose increasingly hostile remarks sparked a fierce backlash from Khan’s Democratic defenders on the panel.

Resolve and regulation

Khan’s poise shouldn’t come as a surprise. The legal scholar from Yale has been on the other side of the Judiciary Committee’s dais, after all, having served as a council to the panel in 2019 and 2020, shaping its antitrust investigation of Amazon. Her reputation for investigative tenacity is just one reason she’s become a prime target for anti-regulation lobbyists in her first two years in the chair.

“You don’t talk about rope in a house where a man’s been hung. You don’t talk about membership in the Bar Association on a judiciary committee where there are members who never passed the bar”

“(The) FTC is firing on all cylinders,” Khan told the committee in her opening statement.

“We’ve brought actions to protect consumers from Made in USA [label] fraud, protect military families from predatory financing, and protect addiction recovery patients from deception. We are fighting to protect the security of people’s sensitive personal data and have obtained record monetary judgments—including the largest-ever judgment to protect children’s privacy,” Khan said.

In further tweets after the hearing, Khan said the “FTC’s work is materially helping people in their daily lives. We’re tackling noncompetes, high drug prices, undue repair restrictions, junk fees, subscription traps, and more.”

In my opening statement before the House Judiciary Committee, I laid out how @FTC's work is materially helping people in their daily lives. We're tackling noncompetes, high drug prices, undue repair restrictions, junk fees, subscription traps, and more:https://t.co/OfGLiGIT4q

— Lina Khan (@linamkhan) July 13, 2023

Khan’s appearance came just two days after the FTC suffered a courtroom setback in its attempt to rein in engorged market titan Microsoft. The company’s looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision-Blizzard prompted FTC staff to try and halt the deal — which would be the single largest merger in the history of the technology industry.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

Despite concerns that such an overwhelmingly massive mega-corporation could critically threaten fair market competition, US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said the FTC hadn’t shown how it would cause harm. The FTC has already begun its appeal.

Microsoft isn’t the only company that has led the FTC on a courthouse chase. Earlier this year, the agency was defeated in its attempt to stop Facebook parent company Meta from gobbling up virtual reality fitness company Within Unlimited. The agency has also sued Amazon for enrolling customers in Prime without their consent, and has plans to go after companies that use artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT in harmful business practices.

The mixed results of the cases offer a glimpse at Khan’s character — a healthy balance of wins and losses in one’s track record is the calling card of a lawyer with more spine than vanity.

Working on behalf of the public instead of a for-profit law firm also gives Khan the freedom few corporate attorneys ever get to enjoy: pursuing cases of merit through all legally available channels because it’s the ethical thing to do, win or lose, without regard for whether her personal batting average makes a boutique firm’s quarterly numbers look good.

But GOP panel members targeted Khan’s ethics with seething, bitterly personal digs. California Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley even alleged Khan “made up case law” in the FTC’s anti-monopoly complaint against the Microsoft-Activision merger.

“Are you bringing cases that you expect to lose?” asked Kiley.

“Absolutely not,” Khan said.

FTC Chair Lina Khan responds to US House questions over the commission's handling of the Xbox/Microsoft-ABK merger, and its pending appeal. pic.twitter.com/HXCyiPGYwN

— Jez (@JezCorden) July 13, 2023

In fact, the FTC’s growing tally of formidable victories against tech titans is partly a credit to the agency’s legislative tools. It has, for example, frequently leaned on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to bring actions against data-harvesting tech companies who either fail to protect kids’ private details from outside visibility, or has silently collected them. Ubiquitous video game Fortnite got slammed with a $275 million FTC fine under the law — and its parent company was hit with a second, related $245 million fine.

Some GOP members were open with their insults.

“Shame on you,” said California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, chiding Khan for attempting to regulate Microsoft — a company that enjoys a $1 trillion market cap as the GOP weighs a 25% FTC budget cut.

“My problem is that you’re a bully,” said Issa, who vowed not to support the FTC’s requested $160 million budget increase, telling Khan to “stick to the things you do well.”

“You run this organization and its left turn came when you took over,” Issa said. “I would contend that you have overstepped your boundaries and your half-billion dollar budget is being wasted.”

Khan sat through more Republican finger-wagging because she didn’t recuse herself from a case involving Meta. In past statements, she’d made remarks opposing corporate acquisitions by Meta. The company petitioned the FTC to have Khan remove herself from a recent case. Then, in an August 2022 memo, designated FTC ethics official Lorielle Pankey cited Khan’s previous comments and recommended Khan recuse herself.

One GOP member, however, wasn’t having any of this. Rep. Ken Buck, of Colorado, brought the hearing to a halt when he ripped into Republicans and exposed Pankey for owning between $15,001 and $50,000 in Meta stock as revealed by The Revolving Door Project.

Watch: @RepKenBuck asks Lina Khan if she owns stock in Big Tech.

She doesn't, but as Buck points out, the ethics official who asked Khan to recuse from the Meta does. pic.twitter.com/BbTsmEkeOw

— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoorDC) July 13, 2023

“You know how much it costs to buy Congress?,” Buck asked wryly. “Big Tech does. They spent $250 million against the bills that passed out of this committee last Congress. They spent money lobbying. They spent money on advertising in members’ districts. They spent money with 3rd part think tanks.”

Buck fired through a list of each company’s overall lobbying spend to drive home his point. Meta: $20,070,000. Amazon: $19,320,000. Google parent company Alphabet: $11,770,000. Apple: $6,500,000

Buck wasn’t the only Republican who defended Khan while staking out bipartisan ground.

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, a staunch advocate for data privacy reform, praised Khan and pointed to the FTC’s recent privacy enforcement action against Amazon Ring security cameras.

Among Democrats, New York Rep. Jerry Nadler delivered a verbal smack to the committee in Khan’s defense.

“Today, it is the chair of the Federal Trade Commission’s turn to step into the alternate universe that is the House Judiciary Committee under MAGA Republican leadership,” he said.

“Ultimately, today you’ll face attacks because you’re doing your job, and that is what threatens Republicans the most.”

"So let me be clear, there is nothing unethical about standing up for workers, consumers, and small businesses."@RepCori calls out the corporate shills that take issue with Lina Khan's willingness to fight monopolies. pic.twitter.com/PS8Q0H8odL

— Revolving Door Project (@revolvingdoorDC) July 13, 2023

Khan’s defenders, like Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, rallied, championing her for bringing the fight back to her agency.

“You have done what few before you have dared to do… take on big corporations who use their endless lobbying money to hurt Americans with more fees, less transparency, and higher costs,” Jayapal said.

“I think it is precisely because of your success, your courage and your integrity that you are receiving all these baseless attacks on your character.”

“You have done what few before you have dared to do…take on big corporations who use their endless lobbying money to hurt Americans with more fees, less transparency, and higher costs.”

– @RepJayapal to Lina Khan pic.twitter.com/8raXHYHwZC

— Fight Corporate Monopolies (@fightmonopolies) July 13, 2023

Tiring of Republican members’ disruptive henpecking of Khan, some Democrats spit bullets back at their colleagues as tempers flared.

“Mr. Chairman, if you would ask whoever that is to shut up,” Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, of Tennessee, said when interrupted.

🔥 COHEN: “Mr. Chairman, if you would ask whoever that is to SHUT UP.”@RepCohen blasts the “amazing hypocrisy” of Republicans in congress who “participated in the overthrow of our government” questioning the patriotism of FBI director Chris Wray & FTC chair Lina Khan. pic.twitter.com/wzbsev0ris

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) July 13, 2023

Democrats also swung back when Wyoming attorney and Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman attacked Khan for not renewing her biennial Bar registration.

“I find this situation to be stunning and a reflection on your ethics,” Hagerman chided.

Hagerman’s one to talk. As late as last fall, she was the subject of formal complaints to the Wyoming Bar, and more than 50 attorneys collectively called her to the carpet because she wouldn’t stop parroting fanatical claims of a “rigged” 2020 presidential election — even after more than 60 US courts ruled the election fair.

The absurdity of the attacks on Khan’s Bar standing were pointed out by Cohen who noted that Jordan himself — despite chairing the House Judiciary Committee with a Juris Doctor from Ohio’s Capital University Law School — had never even sat for a bar exam, much less passed one.

The GOP set up an entire committee on "weaponization of government"—but they nuclearized government on #Jan6 to try and steal an election.

They fuss over #LinaKhan's relationship with the Bar Association—but the GOP Judiciary Chair never passed the bar.

Tired of the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/ItPPaGsgan

— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) July 13, 2023

More support came from outside the committee room during the hearing when White House Spokesman Michael Kikukawa issued a statement from the Biden administration.

“Chair Khan has delivered results for families, consumers, workers, small businesses and entrepreneurs,” he said.

Kikukawa pointed to Khan’s bipartisan successes “on everything from protecting our kids from unlawful use of their personal data, to making it cheaper and easier for consumers to repair items they own, to moving to ban non-competes that hurt workers, to stopping bad mergers like a semiconductor megamerger that would’ve stifled innovation.”

Notch by notch, Khan’s belt has quickly grown long with wins against Big Tech in the past two years. Among those notches, she’s carved out as many for Republicans as she has for Democrats — even if it does take Republicans a bit of vicious grandstanding in a committee room before they realize it. And that, more than anything else about Khan, should scare the titans of Big Tech and their fleet of lobbyists.

“All those in the Big Tech world hoping for fireworks in today’s judiciary hearing are probably so disappointed with how it’s going,” tweeted Sacha Haworth, executive director for advocacy group The Tech Oversight Project. “Unity from Dems, bipartisan agreement on reining in monopolies hand-in-hand (with the) FTC. Generally not the attack on Lina Khan they were anticipating.”

She cut her teeth on Amazon’s antitrust scandals, and refused to back down when Meta tried to elbow her into recusing herself. She refused to let Twitter wriggle out of consent orders, and now has Elon Musk panic-tweeting his GOP-coded pleas. She walked into a lion’s den of well-lobbied elected officials Thursday without a dime of tech stock to her name and fresh off a courtroom defeat, never lost her grace under partisan fire — and walked out with both Republicans and Democrats agreeing on more than a few regulatory goals for her agency.

FTC watchdogs set loose on Facebook for “repeatedly” violating kids’ privacy for profit

Undaunted by her office’s share of losses and counting no win too small to collect, Khan’s pursuit of incremental victories has been ceaseless. Over the past few decades, the FTC has developed a (partly justified) reputation for trafficking in little more than wrist-slap fines, self-congratulatory press releases, and feigned helplessness in the face of tech-industry conglomeration.

But atop a regulatory agency that has been at times defanged by both Congress and revolving-door lobbying, Khan seems hellbent on proving that public watchdogs still have teeth. And that, under her watch, Big Tech will escape neither Democrats’ nor Republicans’ bite.

So who is this seemingly unstoppable ethics powerhouse? She’s Lina Khan — and she’s Big Tech’s worst nightmare.

about tech and politics