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NJ governor wants to cut taxes for big corporations — while slashing aid to 157 school districts

For decades pollsters have documented a decline in the public’s trust of the federal government and in recent years there’s been some slippage for state and local governments that historically fared much better than Washington.

What erodes voters’ confidence is the suspicion their elected leaders are all too often acting in their self-interest and not theirs. Alarm bells start to go often when something that a president or governor says doesn’t ring true. The wider the gap between what a politician says and reality, the deeper the cynicism becomes.

It can be subtle as in the case of Gov. Phil Murphy’s budget address in which he crowed about his 2024 spending plan as if it was going to cure cancer and transform life on the planet as we know it. “It is a budget designed with a singular purpose – to continue building the Next New Jersey. A New Jersey where every family can afford to make their American Dream come true,” he declared.

Ever the salesman, Murphy’s rhetorical riff spiraled ever higher.

“A New Jersey where every child can see their opportunity in our common future. A New Jersey where our seniors can afford to retire and live with dignity. A New Jersey that leads the nation in responsible, commonsense, and far-reaching solutions to the economic, social, and environmental challenges we currently face and is prepared to take on those not yet identified.”

He proclaimed that his budget would “provide an additional $830 million in direct aid to our K-12 public school classrooms, for a total of almost $11 billion. Making this investment will mean that in our six years of working together we will have increased overall K-12 support to our schools by more than $2.6 billion. That’s a more than 30 percent increase.”

But what he failed to disclose was that the flood of state aid coming out of Trenton would not lift all boats despite his flowery rhetoric. There would be winners AND losers that would likely be faced with layoffs and program cuts because of their zip code.

Two days after Murphy’s budget address, when the details on the actual state school aid numbers were released, the truth was that there would be “big increases for some districts and big cuts for others.” All totaled, 157 local school districts had their state aid cut, NJ Spotlight reported.

For Jersey City that meant a $50 million hit. Seaside Heights Borough saw a 32.7 percent decline. Riverton in Burlington County got whacked 42.5 percent while Wildwood City in Cape May County is looking at a hefty 52.8 percent drop off.

Meanwhile, more than 400 districts will see “increases ranging from a few thousand dollars in small communities like Bay Head and Byram to $114 million in Newark and $46 million in Elizabeth,” according to NJ Spotlight.

“It’s extremely concerning that more than half the school districts we represent are losing state aid this year under Governor Murphy’s budget proposal, even as overall spending on education is set to increase by nearly $1 billion,” Senate Republican Leader Steven Oroho, (R-Sussex), told 101.5 FM.

“It is almost like the bean counters in Trenton are throwing darts at a map of New Jersey to figure out which districts get more versus who gets cut,” Assemblyman Hal Wirths, R-Sussex, old the radio station. “We need a better way to distribute this money, dare I say, in a more equitable way.”

“Under Governor Murphy’s proposal, total funding to schools in District 10 would decline by nearly 20 percent,” said Sen. Jim Holzapfel, R-Ocean, said in a statement. “That’s unconscionable when we are not only facing a school staffing shortage but trying to give our students some sense of normalcy coming out of Murphy’s masking and lockdown orders.”

“The problem is Murphy’s funding formula, it’s a slap in the face to every resident in Ocean County,” added Assemblymen Greg McGuckin, R-Ocean, “How can a town with a median income of $85,000 lose $14 million while a town like Edison, with a median income of $111,000, receive a $26 million increase? Gov. Murphy is building a $10 billion budget surplus and putting $1 billion into schools in other parts of the state. There’s absolutely no reason why he can’t properly fund schools in Ocean County.”

In a response to an InsiderNJ query, Christie Peace, Gov. Murphy’s deputy press secretary said the state aid appropriations were linked to enrollment levels.

“The FY24 budget proposal includes historic levels of aid for K-12 schools to help provide the highest quality of education to New Jersey students,” Peace wrote. “State aid is determined by the school funding formula enacted in 2018 (P.L. 2018, c. 67), which is designed to meet the needs of growing districts. Per the School Funding Reform Act, a variety of factors are considered when calculating the necessary State aid per district, with changes in enrollment serving as one of the considerations for funding increases or decreases.”

In the same budget that dozens of local school districts saw their state aid cut, Governor Murphy’s spending plan provided a $5 million windfall for some of the world’s largest corporations that post $100 million in annual profits when he called for ending the state’s Corporate Business Tax Surcharge (CBT), according to New Jersey Policy Perspectives, a non-partisan think tank.

New Jersey’s forgoing of the estimated $600 million in CBT revenue comes as the state’s local school districts are struggling with runaway inflation and a huge spike in health insurance costs to cover their workforces.

During a Feb. 22 NJPP virtual press conference Shelia Reynerston, a senior policy analyst with NJPP, told reporters that only two percent of all businesses in New Jersey were paying the Corporate Business Tax Surcharge and that sunsetting it would come as the very same corporations continue to enjoy the Trump era tax cuts as well as the lowest business tax rates since 1946.

“We are talking about Amazon, Verizon, Prudential — Wells Fargo,” Reynerston said. “By targeting these mega-corporations that make millions, if not billions in profits every year the surcharge is a sustainable revenue stream paid only by those that can afford it.”

We shouldn’t be surprised. After all, it’s behemoths like Amazon and Verizon that can afford to spread money around and win influence with Gov. Murphy’s National Governor Association as a platinum or gold partner.

As for all the kids from towns like Wildwood City, better luck next year.

The myth of “liberal” news: How the media does the work of fascists

There is no such thing as the so-called liberal news media. In reality, there is a corporate news media that polices the limits of approved public discourse and privileges the voices and agenda of the powerful over those of everyday Americans. And in a time of ascendant neofascism, that is a great betrayal of the American people and the sacred responsibility that the Fourth Estate has in a democracy.

“The liberal media” (and its conjoined twin “liberal media bias”) is language that was invented by the American right-wing in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of training and bullying the American news media into serving its agenda – or at a minimum a much more friendly and uncritical space through which to distribute right-wing talking points, dogma, and misinformation.  

The myth of the liberal news media is disproved by other evidence as well.

The media in the “news media” means business and profit – this is especially true of the few large corporations that dominate the market. Those corporations are inherently conservative. The so-called liberal news media also values access to the powerful – because they are members of the same social class – above all else.

Take, for instance, the recent example of an Axios reported fired this week after dismissing what he described as “propaganda” fed to him by the office of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “This is propaganda, not a press release,” Ben Montgomery wrote in response to a DeSantis press release attacking diversity and inclusion efforts in the state. Hours later, the Pulitzer Prize finalist was questioned about the email and ultimately let go from his position as a local reporter for the national media outlet. 

“This sort of thing has a chilling effect,” Montgomery told Talking Points Memos’ Hunter Walker. “I’m sad, honestly, for the profession.” He continued: “In a difficult news environment, you need that sort of support. So, at a minimum, don’t fire your reporters in a knee-jerk fashion.”

“We can’t be sheepish right now.” 

Media critic and scholar Eric Boehlert summarized the myth of the liberal media in this way:

Why does the press behave the way it does? Why does it engage in Both Sides nonsense in an effort to water down irresponsible GOP behavior? Why does it view so many news cycles through the prism of Republican talking points? Without question, the overriding cultural reason is the fear of being hit with the Liberal Media Bias label.

I don’t mean that’s what’s driving journalists on an hourly, granular level, or that before filing a story or going on the air they consciously think about GOP attacks. But it does remain the dominant ethos and it’s been ingrained in newsrooms for decades. (Being the target of right-wing smear campaigns is no fun and it can damage journalism careers.) Consequently, the press spends an inordinate amount of time trying to prove it’s not guilty of Liberal Media Bias.

That institutional fear helps explain the inexplicable, like why so many news organizations refused to call Trump a liar for four years, even as they documented his thousands of lies. That was a deliberate decision to turn away from the truth —and from accurate language — while covering the most dangerous president in American history. Afraid that calling Trump a “liar” in straight news reports would spark cries of Liberal Media Bias, the press capitulated. In the process, Trump used his avalanche of untruths to chip away at our democratic institutions.

Eric Alterman wrote an entire, must-read book in 2003 expertly debunking the bias myth, “What Liberal Media?” Conservatives “know mau-mauing the other side is just a good way to get their own ideas across–or perhaps prevent the other side from getting a fair hearing for theirs,” he wrote. I made a similar effort with my book, “Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush,” where I focused on the media’s failure during the run-up to the Iraq War: “To oppose the invasion vocally was to be outside the media mainstream and to invite scorn. Like some nervous Democratic members of Congress right before the war, mainstream media journalists seemed to scramble for political cover so as to not subject themselves to conservative catcalls.”

Still, the Liberal Media Bias myth persists and remains a driving engine of the conservative movement. It’s arguably more potent today because Trump made it a centerpiece of his political appeal to hate the press.

A recent story in the New York Times, “House G.O.P. Prepares to Slash Federal Programs in Coming Budget Showdown,” offers a powerful example of how even in the midst of an escalating crisis where Republicans are naked and unapologetic in their attempt to end multiracial pluralistic democracy, the myth of the liberal media still endures and is doing great harm to how the American people make sense of the forces that are pummeling them. The Times begins with:

Hard-right House Republicans are readying a plan to gut the nation’s foreign aid budget and make deep cuts to health care, food assistance and housing programs for poor Americans in their drive to balance the federal budget, as the party toils to coalesce around a blueprint that will deliver on their promise to slash spending.

The first word is “hard-right”. Immediately the Times positions the Republicans as being on a reasonable continuum of political ideology (opposite of “liberals” and the non-existent “hard left” in Congress) instead of as being neofascists, insurrectionists, and supporters of Trump’s coup plot.

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This is no culture war: Republicans are waging a war on democracy

As is common in the Times and other leading news media outlets, there is a focus on the political horse race and competition and the “winners” and “losers” of a given “clash.” Responsible reporting that is in the public interest would emphasize and focus on concrete examples of how the Republican Party’s policies and proposals, as they have for decades, will literally hurt the lives of real people in the United States and around the world. Instead, the Times uncritically presents the Republicans’ claim that they are attempting to cut and end federal “entitlement” programs and “wasteful spending” as part of an effort to “balance the federal budget.” In reality, the Republican Party has been attempting to eliminate the country’s threadbare safety net for decades going back to at least FDR and the New Deal. Their hostility to social democracy is ideological and has little to do with so-called budget deficits.

What would a real liberal news media look like?

Moreover, the Republican Party wants to eliminate government programs so that those monies can be transferred to the very rich and corporations in the form of more tax subsidies and other transfer payments. Yet the Times also echoes Republicans’ insincere and consistently disproved promises and pledges to not cut entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Media critic and journalist Dan Froomkin has repeatedly called attention to how the New York Times is not some agent of “liberal media bias” but instead serves the status quo and elite opinion – which means deferring to the Republican Party and right-wing:

And like everyone else in the news business, the Times has become addicted to getting attention on social media. Reliably restating and exploring obvious truths may be the best way to build and maintain a loyal audience – but it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as a hot, contrarian take, either on social media or with the top brass….

Some New York Times articles about outrageous things the right-wing is doing are obviously written with the expectation that the readers will understand how outrageous those things are, without the authors having to actually express their own outrage.

The twin myth of liberal media and liberal news bias has become so accepted as a type of common sense and conventional wisdom that the following question and intervention is rarely asked or made by those of us with a public voice and platform.

What would a real liberal news media look like?

A real liberal news media would not create a false equivalence or balance between the Republican fascists and “conservatives” on one side and the Democratic Party and liberals and progressives on the other. The former are now enemies of multiracial democracy and pluralism. The latter, whatever the differences ideologically and policy-wise among them (and the failings of the corporate Democrats being duly noted), still believe in and are committed to basic norms and principles of democracy, civil rights, the rule of law, and the Constitution.

On this, the media watchdog group FAIR explains:

The traditional model of “objectivity” followed by corporate media uses the two major parties as the two poles that journalists are expected to drive their stories straight between. This “both sides” approach often leaves out several other sides — either to the left or right of the two big parties, or looking at politics from a different angle entirely.

One of the biggest biases we find in political coverage is toward seeing politics as a spectator sport.

A real liberal news media would not defer to corporations, the monied classes and other powerful interests. Instead, the voices and needs of the poor, working class, unions, and those other individuals and groups who are being exploited by late capitalism, and hurt by the types of extreme social inequality it has created would be elevated.

A real liberal news media would have to find a way to escape and operate more independently from advertisers and a profit motive. A real liberal news media would challenge power and ask difficult questions about society, its dominant institutions, and taken-for-granted norms. Voices and perspectives outside of the established political norms and lanes would be given equal time and presented as viable alternatives to the “conventional wisdom.” A real liberal news media would positively contribute to the public’s understanding of politics and society by featuring serious conversations between real experts about real issues of public concern instead of amplifying sound bites, hot takes, and a combative tone that offers lots of heat and entertainment but little insight.

In all, instead of being the Fourth Estate that speaks truth to power and informs the public so that they can hold their leaders accountable, today’s news media too often plays the American people and what has been described as “the attention economy” like it is some casino. In the end, the American news media is experiencing a legitimacy crisis because it has abandoned bold truth-telling and consistently speaking truth to power.

Americans across the ideological divide feel and know this to be true.

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Imprisoned “Tiger King” star, Joe Exotic, is running for president

Joseph Allen Maldonado, who is best known as Joe Exotic from the 2020 Netflix true crime documentary, “Tiger King,” announced last week that he’s running for president. And he’s serious.

Currently serving a 21-year federal prison sentence in Fort Worth, Texas after being found guilty of crimes related to a murder-for-hire plot against wildlife activist Carol Baskin, as well as a string of violations of the Endangered Species Act, Maldonado has tapped former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as his running mate saying “the woman has guts.”

According to New York Post, the controversial reality TV star will be running as a Libertarian, which is something he’ll have to work around when it comes to his pick for VP.

“I mean, obviously she’s a Republican and I’m a Libertarian, so we’d have to discuss some items,” Maldonado said in an interview with NYP from prison.

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After gaining notoriety from “Tiger King,” Maldonado caught the attention of the Trump family in 2020, resulting in buzz of a possible pardon, which ended up being more of a joke than anything else.

“I think Melania may have shown him [Trump] one of the memes that I had posted,” Trump Jr. said during a question-and-answer session on Facebook. “It was like Donald Trump’s face with a Tiger King mullet, which was pretty epic.”

Per NYP’s reporting, this “joke” put false hope in Maldonado’s mind and after he was unable to convince the president to actually set him free, he came up with the decision to run himself.

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“I am going to have a voice this time, whether it’s with the Libertarian Party or if I have to change it at the last minute to a different party, Maldonado said. “I’m going to make America listen to what’s really going on in this country.” 

“Vote Joe Exotic. Let’s fix this s**t,” he says in a campaign clip posted to Twitter. 

“What this country needs is a president that’s gonna say, f**k this s**t, we’re not gonna take this anymore,” he says in another clip.

A lengthy announcement was posted to Maldonado’s campaign website, a portion of which can be read here:

“Thank you for your interest in my Campaign. Yes, I know I am in Federal Prison and you might think this is a joke but it’s not. It is my Constitutional right to do this even from here.

I have been put here only because of the corruption in the Department of Justice, three felons that were told how to lie under oath to further this agenda, two corrupt Assistant U.S. Attorneys, two corrupt FBI Agents. and one corrupt Federal Wildlife Agent.

As seen by the evidence at www.joeexoticusa.com/evidence, you can see that they have admitted to perjury and they even had a plot to kill me before they set me up. I hope that you would take the time to educate yourself before judging me any further than most of you already have, because during this campaign and my life, I have not, and will not, judge you. That is why I am doing this, to finally give you a voice and your freedom back without fear of living in a country that thinks they own you and can tell you how to live your life.

The only thing I did was put five very old, crippled tigers to sleep in the most humane way possible and it was approved by my USDA Inspector, so it’s time to get over it. PeTA kills thousands of animals a year. Carole has killed over 226 big cats and most of you eat some kind of animal everyday, so it’s time to move past this issue.

I am here because I have a world platform to make these politicians listen to your and my concerns and give us some answers for once because all they do is lie to all of us, take our hard earned money calling it taxes, and give it away to foreign countries without them giving us anything back.”

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“Also called a coup”: Trump quietly calls for “regime change” in US

In a questionnaire response he sent to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former President Donald Trump indicated that he felt “regime change” — in other words, a coup d’etat — was presently needed in the United States.

In a segment that aired on Monday evening, Carlson told his viewers that he had sent a questionnaire to several announced and speculated candidates that are (or could soon be) running for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. Within his survey, Carlson asked individuals to share their views on the conflict that was started by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine, and whether the U.S. should be involved in the matter.

Rather than discuss that matter alone, a number of respondents to Carlson’s questionnaire volunteered, without apparent prompting from the Fox News host, their thoughts on regime change in Russia — and whether the U.S. should try to influence a change in leadership in a covert manner. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, who described the war between the two nations as a mere “territorial dispute,” said it would be a mistake to do so, fearing that a leader “even more ruthless” than Putin could take charge.

DeSantis also expressed his desire to stop supporting Ukraine in the conflict between the two nations, leading many media outlets to focus on his answers to the questionnaire the following morning. But David Badash, author at The New Civil Rights Movement, said in a column he published after Carlson’s segment that it was Trump’s answer that should have been given more attention.

Trump discussed regime change in Russia, answering that he didn’t want to see the U.S. take part in any attempt to try and oust Putin from power, fearing the repercussions of doing so. But Trump also added that a change in leadership should be sought in this country, through the removal of President Joe Biden.

“We should support regime change in the United States, that’s far more important,” Trump said in his answer, according to Carlson, who read it out loud on his program.

To emphasize the importance of what Trump was calling for, Badash highlighted what the definition of “regime change” meant in his opinion piece that was published on Tuesday.

“‘Regime change,’ as most know, is the removal of a current government, often by force, which could also be called a coup,” Badash wrote. “If you google the definition of ‘regime change,’ you’ll find this: ‘the replacement of one administration or government by another, especially by means of military force.'”

Trump has, at many times since his departure from the White House (following his legitimate election loss to Biden in the 2020 presidential race), suggested that he should be reinstated as president, a move that would defy the rules of the Constitution as well as the will of voters. In the months after Biden was sworn in, for example, many of Trump’s loyalists continued to believe, wrongly, that he’d be reinstated as president, with Trump doing nothing at the time to correct their erroneous assumptions.

Trump has since been more overt in his desire to illegally have himself placed back in the White House — just a few months ago, in December, he called for the temporary “termination” of the Constitution in order to have Biden removed.

Trump’s most infamous example of supporting an attempted usurpation of U.S. democracy is arguably one that he’s currently being investigated for by the Department of Justice — the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building during the certification of Biden’s win. That attack lasted for several hours during which Trump did nothing to quell the violence instigated by him and perpetrated by a mob of his loyalists. As the January 6 committee has suggested, Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to remain in office, including his campaign attempting to coordinate and use fake electors in the Electoral College in order to disrupt the certification process.

According to the committee’s final report, Trump had summoned his supporters to Washington D.C. that day, and, despite knowing some of them to be armed, instructed them to march to the Capitol, to “take back” their country with “strength.”

Trump is continuing to use rhetoric urging his followers to engage in violent actions in order to get him back into the White House. In February, he amplified a user on Truth Social, sharing their post that called on people to “physically fight” for him to win the GOP nomination in 2024.

Republicans who rolled back bank regulations got donations from SVB — now they “want to go further”

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, came just years after a Republican-led bill rolled back bank regulations imposed after the 2008 financial crisis — raising criticism of the role Republicans played in weakening the Dodd-Frank regulation, which could have prevented the tumbledown, according to a new report released by the left-leaning government watchdog group Accountable.US.

Former President Donald Trump in 2018 signed into law the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which severely watered down risk-assessment rules put in place in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to try to stop banks from crumbling.

Dodd-Frank, a 2010 law signed by former President Barack Obama, created stricter regulations for banks with at least $50 billion in assets. These banks were required to undergo an annual Federal Reserve “stress test,” which assesses whether banks were capable of absorbing losses during stressful conditions while still meeting obligations to creditors and counterparties and continuing to be able to lend to households and businesses.

But Trump’s regulatory rollback raised the threshold for enhanced regulatory standards from $50 billion to $250 billion, exempting 25 of the 38 largest banks in the country from stronger capital and liquidity rules, enhanced risk management standards, living-will requirements and some stress testing requirements, according to the Center for American Progress.

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Republicans falsely blame “woke” ideology for SVB collapse — that’s linked to Trump-era deregulation

SVB might have managed its interest rate risks better had parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory package not been rolled back under Trump, some banking experts told the New York Times. But even during the passage of Dodd-Frank, Republicans “fought tooth and nail to try to block any kind of Wall Street reform even in the aftermath of the biggest financial crisis in a generation,” said Jeremy Funk, a spokesperson for Accountable.US.

“The reason why is because the Republicans largely take tens and millions of dollars from Wall Street interests, big banks,[the] financial industry generally, and they don’t want any kind of oversight whatsoever,” Funk said. 

Leading up to the passage of the rollback, the banking industry aggressively lobbied to water down Dodd-Frank. SVB CEO and President Greg Becker “personally led” the bank’s $500,000 lobbying efforts to reduce financial regulations on capital requirements and stress tests, according to the Accountable.US report. 

Congressional Republicans, who pushed to pass the bill, even received payments from SVB’s Political Action Committee.

House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry, who called the bill “a win for consumers” and “an important first step to undo Dodd Frank,” received at least $10,000 from SVB’s PAC from 2015 to 2022.

Upon the bill’s passage, McHenry said Dodd-Frank created “onerous regulatory burden[s]” on regional banks “that were not part of the financial crisis and did not need the new level of regulation.”

His efforts to push back against common sense regulation within the Dodd-Frank bill are still ongoing, noted Liz Zelnick, director of economic security and corporate power at Accountable.US.

McHenry has pushed back against “any kind of federal oversight of the financial system,” she added, referring to his efforts to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and railing against capital requirements.

During a March 2023 House Financial Services hearing with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, several Republicans, including McHenry, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas, suggested that increased Fed oversight would “increase borrowing costs,” citing concerns that Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr was unfairly looking at capital requirement tests. 

“These are the very things that if SVB and Signature Bank had in place could have prevented this kind of meltdown,” Zelnick said. 

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Other lawmakers like Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who worked to pass the bill, also received donations from SVB’s PAC.

In May 2018, Luetkemeyer said the legislation would “provide relief to community financial institutions and American borrowers.” He collected $3,000 in donations from SVB’s PAC. 

Scott, who is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs and an original cosponsor of the bill, received $3,700 from SVB’s PAC.

“Despite what’s just happened, the dust is still settling here, [Republicans] want to go further,” Funk said. “They want to continue to defang and get rid of Dodd-Frank… and let the financial industry write their own rules with no oversight. It is scary that even amid a crisis right now, they are completely undeterred and want to keep pushing for more deregulation. And again, that is because they’re so deep in the pocket of the financial industry, they don’t care what the consequences are for consumers and the economy at large.”

In the lead-up to the collapses of SVB and Signature Bank, Republican lawmakers continued railing against capital requirements and the Dodd-Frank regulatory framework enforced on banks, the Accountable.US report pointed out.

Republican senators led by Scott sent a letter to the Federal Reserve urging it to be mindful in reviewing bank capital requirements that could “have a chilling effect” on the banking sector.

Following SVB’s collapse, Republicans doubled down on their views that their regulation bill was still appropriate.

McHenry blamed Twitter for “fuel[ing]” Silicon Valley’s bank run.

“At this time, it is important to remain levelheaded and look at the facts—not speculation—when assessing the right path forward,” he said.  

Sen. Kevin Cramer, who signed onto the Senate letter to the Fed, also defended the rollback, saying that he doesn’t think “smaller banks need more oversight and regulation.” 

Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., said “‘this is not a systemic issue and I have confidence in our banking and financial system,'” telling The Kansas City Star she was working with regulators and industry, including the Missouri Bankers Association.

A spokesperson for Scott stood by the letter Scott wrote and said in a statement to Yahoo Finance on Monday that “capital must continuously be scrutinized to ensure it is risk based and is tailored to the bank’s size, scope, and activities. What’s happening with Silicon Valley Bank highlights why we cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Despite receiving warnings from consumer advocates, including Accountable.US, that removing Dodd-Frank safeguards would invite the same kind of risky behavior that led to the financial crisis, the rollback still passed with unanimous Republican support after several members collected donations from the financial industry.

“What we just saw last week was the predictable result of the rollback in 2018,” Funk said. “You remove the critical piece of oversight and it slipped through the cracks and it caused this collapse.”

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The joy of achar butter and tiny cooking wins

It’s crucial that we savor the small wins in this grueling, life-long marathon we call home cooking. Say, for instance, you’ve fried up a couple of perfectly serviceable eggs with greens and garlic for lunch. If you take another minute (and one more small pan) to melt a few pats of butter till foamy with a sprinkling of kashmiri chili powder and lemon zest, then drizzle that over everything, lunch suddenly catapults into the realm of extraordinary.

I couldn’t help but brag about this recent, small feat of dish bedazzling to my Instagram town square, whereupon Yoshi Yamada, chef and owner of the fun-loving Indian restaurant Superkhana International in Chicago, replied: “Achar butter will give it a run for its money.”

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When I sat down to lunch at his restaurant a few months later, Yamada placed a tiny bowl of this tangy, spicy compound butter in front of me, into which I dabbed a crisp-edged dosa.

“Darn it,” I said. “You were right.”

An essential Indian condiment, achar (also spelled achaar) is a pungent combination of pickled fruit and vegetables and spices preserved in oil. It’s complex, tangy, fiery and brackish — meaning a spoonful of it will enliven everything from flaky fish and scrambled eggs to soups and plain white rice. Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to sit down to a meal in an Indian home without a little bowl or jar of achar in reach.

Achar butter is a huge tiny cooking win. (Courtesy Maggie Hennessy)Like all beloved foods, achar assumes different forms and heat levels depending on where you find yourself on this diverse subcontinent. Spicier pickles abound in the southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, where unripe mango or tamarind join garlic, ginger, and green or red chilies — often with sesame oil, the preferred oil variety for achar in the south.

In the north, where the pickles are more often preserved in mustard oil, you may come across a mixed pickle that first became popular in Pakistan in the 1930s called pachranga. Meaning “five colors,” it comprises raw mangoes, chickpeas, lotus stem, karonda and amlas (limes) pickled with whole spices, including fenugreek and nigella seeds. Spicy green mango is a staple of achar throughout India, though you’ll also find achars made from carrots, gooseberries, lemons and limes while scouring the country’s infinite, technicolor markets.

“Achar makes everything so delicious, I want to put it in just about everything. And I do.”

Achar is time-consuming to make at home (not to mention finicky for those of us who are preserves-averse), though mass-manufactured versions tend toward overly salty. My favorite achar comes from New York-based Brooklyn Delhi, a small-batch condiment company from Chitra Agrawal, cookbook author and creator of the popular blog ABCD’s of Cooking. Agrawal’s nuanced achars — available in roasted garlic and tomato — are sweet, savory, tangy and impeccably spiced.

Superkhana has always reserved some of its housemade achar in puréed form in the refrigerator since opening almost four years ago. “I can’t recommend this enough as a protocol,” Yamada said. One day while workshopping the brunch menu, someone on the kitchen team suggested they make a compound butter with it.

“Honestly, we were kinda surprised we hadn’t done it before,” Yamada said. “Achar makes everything so delicious, I want to put it in just about everything. And I do.”

Superkhana’s preferred butter ratio is a pound of softened, unsalted butter to 170 grams (about 6 ounces or 3/4 cup) puréed achar, though Yamada recommends increasing or dialing back the pickle levels to your own tastes. When it comes to how to use this tangy elixir, sub it in it wherever you’d use butter, meaning the sky’s the limit (or in this case, Yamada’s imagination).

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“Slick it on noodles, make a butter sauce for noodles, make achar butter grilled cheese — all of which we’ve done,” he said. “I’ve also used it to baste with. It makes pan-seared chicken sing, and basting scallops with it (produces) flavor insanity. Garlic bread is explosive with a smear of achar butter. And, of course, buttered toast, before or after griddling.”

He could keep going, you know. “Could you imagine slathering it under the skin of roasted chicken?” he gushed. “Or a dollop on a clam with bread crumbs? Or Steamed mussels? Gah.”

Gah, indeed. Suddenly, the oft-tedious prospect of getting another meal on the table feels a little less so. Simply add a generous smear of achar butter.

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Who knew? The origins of “food influencers” may have actually begun in 1950s Australia

Our food choices are being influenced every day. On social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, food and eating consistently appear on lists of trending topics.

Food has eye-catching appeal and is a universal experience. Everyone has to eat. In recent years, viral recipes like feta pasta, dalgona coffee and butter boards have taken the world by storm.

Yet food influencing is not a new trend.

Australia’s first food influencer appeared in the pages of Australia’s most popular women’s magazine nearly 70 years ago. Just like today’s creators on Instagram and TikTok, this teenage cook advised her audience what was good to eat and how to make it.

Meet Debbie, our teenage chef

Debbie commenced her decade-long tenure at the Australian Women’s Weekly in July 1954. We don’t know exactly who played the role of Debbie, which was a pseudonym. Readers were never shown her full face or body – just a set of disembodied hands making various recipes and, eventually, a cartoon portrait.

A short blurb on Debbie, and two photos of hands cooking.

Debbie’s first appearance in 1954.
Trove

Like many food influencers today, Debbie was not an “expert” – she was a teenager herself. She taught teenage girls simple yet fashionable recipes they could cook to impress their family and friends, especially boys.

She shared recipes for tangy apricot Bavarian whip, fried rice medley and bombe Alaska. Debbie also often taught her readers the basics, like how to boil an egg.

Just like today, many of her recipes showed the readers step-by-step instructions through images.

An unappetising bowl of rice.

Debbie’s fried rice medley from 1958.
Trove

Teaching girls to cook (and be ‘good’ women)

Debbie’s recipes first appeared in the For Teenagers section, which would go on to become the Teenagers Weekly lift-out in 1959.

These lift-outs reflected a major change taking place in wider society: The idea of “teenagers” being their own group with specific interests and behaviors had entered the popular imagination.

Debbie was speaking directly to teenage girls. Adolescents are still forming both their culinary and cultural tastes. They are forming their identities.

Some tips from Debbie in 1960.
Trove

For the Women’s Weekly and for Debbie, cooking was deemed an essential attribute for women. Girls were seen to be “failures” if they couldn’t at least “cook a baked dinner”, “make real coffee”, “grill a steak to perfection”, “scramble and fry eggs” and “make a salad (with dressing)”.

In addition to teaching girls how to cook, Debbie also taught girls how to catch a husband and become a good wife, a reflection of cultural expectations for women at the time.

Her macaroon trifle, the Women’s Weekly said, was sure to place girls at the top of their male friends’ “matrimony prospect” list!

Food fads and fashions

Food fads usually reflect something important about the world around us. During global COVID lockdowns, we saw a rise in sourdough bread-making as people embraced carbohydrate-driven nostalgia in the face of anxiety.

A peek at Debbie’s culinary repertoire can reveal some of the cultural phenomena that impacted Australian teenagers in the 1950s and ’60s.

Debbie embraced teenage interest in rock’n’roll culture from the early 1960s, the pinnacle of which came at the height of Beatlemania.

The Beatles toured Australia in June 1964. To help her teenage readers celebrate their visit, Debbie wrote an editorial on how to host a Beatles party.

She suggested the party host impress their friends by making “Beatle lollipops”, “Ringo Starrs” (decorated biscuits) and terrifying-looking “Beatle mop-heads” (cakes with chocolate hair).

The terrifying mop-heads.
Trove

A few months later, she also shared recipes for “jam butties” (or sandwiches, apparently a “Mersey food with a Mersey name”) and a “Beatle burger”.

We can also see the introduction of one of Australia’s most beloved dishes in Debbie’s recipes.

In 1957, she showed her teen readers how to make a new dish – spaghetti bolognaise – which had first appeared in the magazine five years prior.

Debbie was influencing the youth of Australia to enthusiastically adopt (and adapt) Italian-style cuisine. It stuck. While the recipe may have evolved, in 2012, Meat and Livestock Australia reported that 38% of Australian homes ate “spag bol” at least once a week.

Our food influences today may come from social media, but we shouldn’t forget the impact early influencers such as Debbie had on young people in the past.

Debbie’s take on the now Aussie favourite, spag bol, in 1957.
Trove

Lauren Samuelsson, Honorary Fellow, University of Wollongong

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

“Threatening our entire economy”: Warren introduces bill to repeal “Trump’s bank law”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katie Porter unveiled legislation Tuesday to repeal the section of a Trump-era law that weakened regulations for banks with between $50 billion to $250 billion in assets, a move that experts and lawmakers have blamed for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the resulting turmoil.

“In 2018, I rang the alarm bell about what would happen if Congress rolled back critical Dodd-Frank protections: banks would load up on risk to boost their profits and collapse, threatening our entire economy—and that is precisely what happened,” Warren, D-Mass., said in a statement. “President Biden called on Congress to strengthen the rules for banks, and I’m proposing legislation to do just that by repealing the core of Trump’s bank law.”

That law, authored by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and backed by dozens of Democrats, raised the asset threshold for more stringent regulations to $250 billion or higher, exempting firms such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)—a major venture capital lender that controlled around $212 billion—from enhanced liquidity requirements and more frequent federal stress tests imposed on banks considered “systemically important.”

SVB’s leadership specifically lobbied for the higher threshold, insisting the tougher regulations were unnecessary even as experts and lawmakers raised concerns that gutting them would increase the risk of bank failures and cascading effects on the financial system.

“Americans deserve to know their money is safe when they deposit it in the bank,” Porter, D-Calif., said Tuesday. “In 2018, politicians rolled back critical regulations protecting Americans’ deposits—ignoring warnings from financial experts in favor of Wall Street special interests. I’m calling on Congress to restore commonsense guardrails that keep corporate greed in check and restore confidence in our financial system.”

Titled the Secure Viable Banking (SVB) Act, Warren and Porter’s legislation would place more stringent regulations on institutions like Silicon Valley Bank by reviving safeguards for firms with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets.

Facing backlash from Warren and others for glaring oversight failures, the Federal Reserve is considering stronger regulations for banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets, Reuters reported late Tuesday.

Warren and Porter introduced their bill with the support of 31 Democrats in the House and 17 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Ed Markey, D-Mass.

“Taxpayers should not have to pay for the mistakes and mismanagement of big bank executives,” Markey said in a statement. “The American people should have confidence in their financial institutions, and that starts with undoing Trump-era deregulation so that we can ensure a collapse like we saw last week never happens again.”

Notably absent from the list of co-sponsors were the Democrats who helped Republicans usher the bill through Congress in 2018, often misleadingly arguing that the measure was chiefly about providing relief for “community banks.”

In the Senate, 16 Democrats and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, supported the bill, giving Republicans the votes they needed to overcome the chamber’s legislative filibuster.

One of the Democratic supporters, Mark Warner of Virginia, defended the 2018 law over the weekend, telling ABC News that he believes it “put in place an appropriate level of regulation on mid-sized banks” and that “these mid-sized banks needed some regulatory relief.”

The Lever reported last week that SVB chief Greg Becker held a fundraiser for Warner in 2016.

“The bank’s political action committee also donated a total of $10,000 to Warner’s campaigns in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles,” the outlet noted.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., another major backer of the 2018 law, held a fundraiser in Silicon Valley earlier this week, just days after SVB collapsed.

Dennis Quaid on his Hollywood long game: “I never cared about having a Tom Cruise-type of career”

Dennis Quaid has a supporting role as Frank Mitchell, a golf coach in the new film, “The Long Game,” which just had its world premiere at SXSW. This inspirational sports drama recounts real-life efforts of a Mexican American high school golf team that went on to win the Texas State Championship in 1957. Because of racism, these youths could caddy and work as grounds crew at an elite (i.e., all-white) country club, but it was impossible for them — or the team’s founder JB (Jay Hernandez) — to become members. 

“Life is not fair, and neither is golf.”

Quaid and his wife Laura produced the film as part of their newly formed production company, Bonniedale. It is the latest development in the actor’s  decades-long career, which has included appearances in high profile films (“The Right Stuff,” “Any Given Sunday“), Hollywood hits (“The Day After Tomorrow,”) misses (“The Alamo”), indies (“Far from Heaven“), remakes (“D.O.A,” “The Parent Trap,” “Footloose”) and family films (“The Rookie,” and “A Dog’s Purpose”). He also had worked in almost every genre including Westerns (“The Long Riders,” “Wyatt Earp”) to sci-fi (“Enemy Mine,” “Pandorum”). 

Quaid is best when he is being affable or wily on screen as his turn as Remy McSwain in “The Big Easy” attests. The actor is irresistibly charismatic, charming, and slightly devious as he flashes his megawatt smile and emphasizes his aw-shucks demeanor. He also received strong notices for his portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis in “Great Balls of Fire!” and playing another slippery character, Henry Whipple, in Ramin Bahrani‘s “At Any Price,” a mannered performance polarized audiences and critics.  

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In recent years, Quaid has become reliable in supporting roles such as his baddie in “The Intruder,” or as Coach Dick Vermeil in “American Underdog.” He also appeared in “Blue Miracle,” which was directed by Julio Quintana, who helmed “The Long Game.”

Quaid chatted with Salon from SXSW about his new film and about the long game that has been his career.

I understand you are an avid golfer. What is the appeal of the sport? Is it fitness, is it meditative, mental or more stress relief?

It’s all of that. I only play it once a day. It’s something you’ll never conquer. You can always get better at. You will never reach the end of it. It is so ephemeral. You can be hitting the ball great and then right in the middle of the round it will leave you. It can be very brutal at times. It’s like life. Life is not fair, and neither is golf. 

You have trended to making sports films throughout your career. In addition to “The Long Game,” there is “Any Given Sunday,” “Everybody’s All-American,” “The Rookie,” “American Underdogs,” “The Express.” Why do you have such an affinity for those parts and stories?

I don’t know! In high school, I never made the football team, which in Texas, is a rite of passage. So, I wound up in the drama club. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s and 40s when I started playing sports people. I like sports films. In “The Rookie,” Jay Hernandez played one of my character’s student-players, and now in “The Long Game,” he’s the coach. It has come full circle. 

Frank gives a speech in “The Long Game” about playing by the rules, and how he regrets following them. Can you describe a situation when you felt it was right to break the rules?  

“I break the rules — then I question authority.”

I’m not a very good rule follower in life, I must admit. There is something about rules that rankles me. I have rules in my house with my kids. There are some principles in life to live by. Trying to do the best you can, find something you love to do and figure out a way to get paid for it. Scream against the dying of the light. [Laughs]

I like to say that I follow the rules, but question authority.

That’s a great way to put it. I break the rules — then I question authority.

You first came to prominence in the late ’70s with two back-to-back ensemble films “Breaking Away,” and “The Long Riders,” the latter costarring your brother, Randy. You also received strong notices playing astronaut Gordon Cooper in “The Right Stuff.” These were ensemble films. Can you talk about trying to find your footing as a leading man in Hollywood? 

It was always because of story. “The Right Stuff” is my favorite movie I have ever done. I grew up in Houston with the astronauts, and I wanted so much to be a part of that film. I like doing ensemble films. It feels good. I like doing leads too. I tried not to pigeonhole myself or get typecast in my career. I think I’ve been fairly successful at it. I just want to have a great time. 

I think you are great in modest films, “The Big Easy,” which is being rereleased on DVD soon, as well as “At Any Price” and “Smart People.” You made the underseen war film, “Savior,” which I expect was a passion project. What observations do you have about your smaller film choices?

I’m really glad that I made them. They paid off career-wise sometimes, but that’s not the reason I do them. It’s about being a part of something, a story I want to tell that in the mainstream you just can’t do, which is what independent film used to be. Now, indie film is more for streaming which has become boutique like that.

You had what might be called a comeback with “The Rookie,” which was followed by a performance in “Far from Heaven” that generated Oscar buzz . . .

“Far from Heaven” paid off coming out in the same year as “The Rookie” which was about second chances in life. I was kind of living that at the time. 

You followed these by the underperforming “The Alamo” and a blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow.” What are your thoughts about the ups and downs of your career? 

“Phil Kaufman took nine months to shoot ‘The Right Stuff,’ and I never wanted it to end.”

I never cared about having a Tom Cruise-type of career. And I wanted to do the things that interested me. And certainly, I wanted everyone in the world to see the films when they come out — that’s a natural way to be — but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The only time that I really enjoy what I do is when I actually am doing it. Working with good people and not thinking about how it’s going to do. The older I get, the more I enjoy it because I’m not trying to get anywhere. It might seem like ups and down from the outside, if you look at box office, or even critics, but I had my reasons for doing them. For me, the experience of making a film is completely different from everyone else. If I see myself in a film I did when I am channel surfing, I remember what I was doing that day. That’s what it’s about for me.

You made a lot of remakes. I remember “D.O.A.,” and “Flight of the Phoenix” . . .

“D.O.A.” was a film without a rudder. It didn’t know exactly what it wanted to be other than neo-gothic. But “Flight of the Phoenix,” it was great to be in Africa.

You have also shifted to playing in more family-oriented films. “Yours, Mine & Ours,” “Soul Surfer,” “Footloose,” “A Dog’s Purpose” and even “The Long Game.” Was that a conscious career move? 

Kinda, sorta, in a way. I was the bad boy in the ’80s, and I grew older, and got sober, and had kids, and I got “The Parent Trap.” Kids grew up watching “The Parent Trap” on their VHS 40-50 times and they would show it to their kids. It’s a great way to keep your career going. I didn’t make that film for my children. It was a classic, and a remake. I remember the effect it had on me as a kid. I really like that movie. 

You are a musician and have performed in “Great Balls of Fire!” “The Big Easy” and other films, like “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Do you still have musical aspirations?  

Yeah, I’m still playing. I toured last year. I live in Nashville now and I just made a gospel record that is coming out. I did it with Johnny Cash‘s last band. It’s called “Fallen.” It’s a gospel record for sinners. I am going to do an Americana record this year. 

What is the appeal of producing now? Are you looking to do more behind-the-scenes work at this stage in your career?

My wife Laura and I and our partner Ben Howard started Bonniedale about a year and a half ago, and “The Long Game” is our first film out of the box. And it’s exciting to be here at SXSW. I like the idea of producing because I am good at putting people together, and I’ve learned a lot about the business for as long as I’ve been doing it. Producing is not so day to day. Directing is the hardest job there is because you are the first one there and the last one out, and all you do is worry about weather. I like producing, and I love working with Laura and Ben. We’re working towards getting things made. I don’t need to direct. I love to work with directors, but I’d rather produce. We have the Charley Pride story on the burner. We got the rights from Charley and knew him during the last years of his life. We got a few other things going on, such as this book “Talking to the Sky,” by Aimee Mayo, a songwriter in Nashville. She was one of the first women songwriters to come along in an age that totally belonged to men. 

Producing is really exciting. You want to hand a project off to a director you trust. It’s like birthing them and giving the films their start. You work on story, the writer, the director, and the casting, even the marketing. We don’t have a distributor for “The Long Game” yet. But being here at SWSX, we just might! 

Yes, I hope folks can see “The Long Game” . . .

It’s hard to believe this story happened in 1956. These kids were caddying in a country club where they could not play, and they really did win the state championship in their first year. One of the players, who is now in his 80s, came to the set and really brought it home. The home movies in the film are the real guys back then. It’s authentic to its time. It was a time of segregation. We see how far we’ve come, and where we are now.

What are your criteria for taking on a project?

I mainly take films because the story makes you feel something. When I read a script, it’s the only time that I’m ever going to have a first-time experience of that story as an audience member. I’ve done enough movies that I can tell whether the story holds up and how it affects me. I don’t have to be the lead in it; that’s one great thing about ensembles. 

Do you have a particular favorite film or films, or directors?

Phil Kaufman took nine months to shoot “The Right Stuff,” and I never wanted it to end. I learned to fly. I still fly airplanes and jets. “The Rookie,” “The Big Easy.” “Breaking Away,” for sure, “The Parent Trap.” I’ve had a couple of films in each decade that I really love. That’s a pretty good track record. Better than batting percentage in baseball. [Laughs]

Is there a film you wish that did better?

A bunch of them for sure were right there, but it just didn’t strike. I won’t go into those. What can I do about it now? “The Right Stuff” was a bomb when it came out, but then it became a classic. That’s why to get any satisfaction, you have to focus on the enjoyment of doing it rather than on how it does at the box office and all these things I can’t control.

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Manchin now says bank deregulation isn’t great despite “yes” vote on 2018 repeal

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., suddenly isn’t so sure whether it’s such a great idea to repeal bank regulations.

On Tuesday, Manchin reportedly said that in the wake of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, he wouldn’t vote again on the sweeping bill that got rid of Dodd-Frank regulations implemented after the Great Recession to prevent major bank failures and corruption — marking a reversal from the stance he took just years ago.

In 2018, Manchin was one of 17 conservative Democrats in the Senate who voted “yes” on the deregulatory actions now blamed for the second-largest bank collapse in U.S. history. When asked by CNN‘s Manu Raju this week if he’d do the same today, however, Manchin said: “Oh, no, you look at it differently now. You’d never thought this would have happened in the smaller banks.”

Notably, Silicon Valley Bank isn’t strictly a small bank. Though widespread bank consolidation over the past decades has allowed just five huge banks to control nearly half of the banking industry, Silicon Valley Bank was, at the time of its collapse, the 16th largest bank in the U.S., out of thousands. It had $209 billion in assets at the end of last year.

Thus, it is significant that Manchin would say that the 2018 bill was supposed to only deregulate “small” banks; by that, he means basically every bank except for the largest 11 banks, as the bill “only” affected banks that control less than $250 billion. And, even though Silicon Valley Bank was “small” by Manchin’s standards, its collapse is sending shockwaves across industries and world economies and will place a strain on the federal government as it rushes to contain the fallout.

Still, Manchin managed to rail against regulation of banks even as he said that deregulation isn’t a good idea.

“I’m open to making adjustments that still allow the small community and rural areas to still function without overregulating to the standpoint where they can’t participate or they go out of business. You make an overregulation to the point where they just can’t function,” he said, ignoring the fact that it was not overregulation, but deregulation that experts say was a major contributor to the bank that’s now having to be shut down.

Despite saying that he wouldn’t support deregulation now, he still doubled down on his “yes” vote from 2018.

This is plainly contradictory. If Manchin hadn’t voted for the bill in 2018, and it failed to pass, then the Silicon Valley Bank collapse may not have happened, some experts suggest, as the bank would have been subject to more regulatory oversight. It’s only in hindsight, it appears, that Manchin realized that that vote may have caused a fiasco like this one — though perhaps his vote at the time was heavily influenced by institutions like Silicon Valley Bank, who lobbied against the regulation.

But even feigned ignorance isn’t much of a cover for the coal baron. Back before the bill was passed, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned members of Congress of the risk that, indeed, a mid-sized bank “with assets of between $100 billion and $250 billion would fail” under the legislation. On the Senate floor, lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders,I-Vt., reprimanded their coworkers for learning nothing from the 2008 recession. With knowledge of the risk, however, members of Congress passed it anyway.

Now, Sanders and other Democrats and progressives are calling for the 2018 legislation to be overturned and for Dodd-Frank protections to be reinstated — and for it to be done immediately to avoid further disasters.

“Congress, the White House‌ and banking regulators should reverse the dangerous bank deregulation of the Trump era. Repealing the 2018 legislation that weakened the rules for banks like S.V.B. must be an immediate priority for Congress,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in an op-ed for The New York Times on Monday.

Democrat: Lobbyists “bought Sinema’s vote” on bill that led to bank collapse

Democratic Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego on Tuesday accused Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—who he hopes to oust from the U.S. Senate next year—of playing a major role in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse by taking campaign contributions from lobbyists that represented the bank and then voting to deregulate it.

Politico reports that Sinema, I-Ariz., was one of numerous members of Congress to take campaign donations from Franklin Square Group, which once counted Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) among its clients. In 2018, Sinema—then a Democrat serving in the U.S. House of Representatives—received more than $8,000 from the lobbyists before she voted for Sen. Mike Crapo’s, R-Idaho, Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act.

“Before voting to loosen bank safeguards, Sinema received over $100,000 from big banks. And among those who bought Sinema’s vote were three Silicon Valley Bank lobbyists that maxed out,” Ruben said in a campaign email. “Simply put, she voted to give the banks free rein. And I did not.”

Dubbed the Bank Lobbyist Act by critics, the law rolled back the Dodd-Frank Act—which was passed in the wake of the 2007-08 global financial meltdown—and exempted banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets from rigorous stress-testing and capital requirements. Both SVB and Signature Bank, which are both now under federal government control, qualified for the “medium-sized bank” exemption.

Sinema argued at the time that “these important reforms will help protect the financial security of Arizonans young and old as they plan for homeownership, a college education, or a stable retirement.”

Gallego asked Monday: “What’s the difference between Sen. Sinema and me? When bank lobbyists asked me to weaken bank regulations, I said no. When they asked Sen. Sinema, she asked how much—and voted yes. Now we are all going to pay for her mistake.”

On Twitter Tuesday, Gallego wrote that “the SVB collapse is a direct result of Kyrsten Sinema’s choice to side with big banks over everyday Arizonans.”

“FEC records and public lobbying reports show that three SVB lobbyists maxed out donations to Sinema ahead of 2018 Dodd-Frank rollback which led to the collapse,” Gallego continued, referring to the Federal Election Commission. “Sinema is in the pocket of Wall Street and her vote put hardworking Arizonans, their families, and their small business, at risk of another 2008-like meltdown.”

“Arizonans deserve a leader in the Senate who will fight for them, not Wall Street,” he added. “Sinema is not that person and Arizonans know it.”

Sinema was far from alone in taking campaign cash from SVB’s lobbyists and political action committee.

As Politico‘s Hailey Fuchs, Jessica Piper, and Holly Otterbein noted:

Between 2017 and 2022, Silicon Valley Bank’s PAC gave more than $50,000 to the campaigns of nearly two dozen senators and representatives, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. The donations largely went to members—Republicans and Democrats—who served on relevant committees including the House Financial Services Committee or Senate Finance Committee. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) received the most from the PAC, each bringing in $7,500 over the six-year period.

SVB CEO Greg Becker “also made maximum individual donations to the campaigns of Warner and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., during the 2022 cycle,” the reporters added, citing FEC records.

Sinema—who has been accused of “cartoonish-level corruption” for coziness with corporations and lobbyists—was excoriated in a Tuesday Daily Beast article by Michael Daly, who called the senator “a wolf for Wall Street.”

Daly took aim at Sinema’s Sunday statement asserting that “the federal government must now ensure those responsible [for the SVB collapse] are held accountable, while maintaining stability for all Americans who rely on our banking system.”

“Sinema need only step in front of a mirror to find a prime suspect,” wrote Daly. “Whether she’s calling herself a Democrat or an independent, her voting record is the same. And it marks her a shill for the banking industry.”

“His defense is a confession”: Ex-prosecutor says Trump’s cover story is actually an “admission”

Former President Donald Trump’s defense in the investigation into a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels may not be as strong as his lawyers think it is, legal experts say.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office are nearing a potential indictment of the former president in connection with the 2016 payment, which may have run afoul of state campaign finance laws. Trump attorney Joe Tacopina on Monday argued that “there was no campaign law violation at all” because Trump is an “extortion victim in the case.”

“By the way, it is regardless of whether he did or didn’t [have an affair], he said he didn’t and I believe him, and the evidence I think is very powerful that he never had an affair with her,” Tacopina told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “But more importantly, he is a victim of extortion because she came out right before the election and said, unless you pay me, I am going to make a public story about something he says is completely untrue.”

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Trump lawyer floats “Melania defense” in Stormy Daniels case — and claims he’s the real “victim”

Tacopina argued that the payment was intended to “prevent personal embarrassment and prevent embarrassment to his family.”

“That takes it out of the realm of exclusively campaign finance,” Tacopina said. “This is not a campaign finance law case at all.”

But the explanation still does “not constitute a defense,” argued conservative attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic.

“Even if you assume (ridiculously) that he paid $130K to a porn star who extorted (but didn’t screw) him, the ‘extortion’ payment would still have been an illegal, undisclosed campaign contribution under federal (and maybe state) law and still have been unlawfully recorded as a legal fee in the books and records of Trump’s business in violation of state law,” he wrote on Twitter.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team and led the successful prosecution of Paul Manafort, agreed that Trump’s defense is actually an “admission” that he paid the money, which he previously denied, and that it was not for legal fees, as was his “cover story.”

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“Because the NY criminal case reportedly focuses on the crime of making false business records — his ‘defense’ is [a] confession,” Weissmann tweeted.

Weissmann later discussed Trump’s propensity to incriminate himself, recalling his brags that he could commit murder and sexual assault and get away with it during an interview with MSNBC.

“Let’s just remember, for Donald Trump, there haven’t been consequences,” he said. “There have been civil lawsuits and so far no criminal consequences. So, for somebody who is at that age, who realized that he can say whatever he wants and there are no consequences. I think that’s what we get. We get these things that, obviously, from a prosecutor’s perspective, are potentially very incriminating. I totally agree with the take on his statements that they can be used against him, in the same way he is now embracing the idea that he was an extortion victim and thinks that’s going to be a defense in a Manhattan criminal case when it’s actually an admission.”

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This is one of the internet’s favorite Ina Garten recipes

It should come as no surprise that Skillet-Roasted Lemon Chicken is our most popular Ina Garten recipe of all time. But if we had to guess why, it would probably start with the fact that it’s delicious, simple and cost effective.

The recipe calls for a butterflied chicken to be lacquered in a mixture of thyme, black pepper, fennel seed and olive oil, then roasted with garlic, onions, lemon and white wine. After about 40 minutes in the oven, you’ll have a moist bird with crisp skin and lemony, garlic-forward goodness.

As is the case with many of Ina’s greatest hits, this recipe lets you create complex flavors with simple techniques. Other than hitting the “pulse” button on your food processor and then slicing some garlic, onion and lemon, there isn’t much work to be done — you’ll need to open the oven a few times, but that’s manageable. With big flavor and little preparation, this is one of the rare recipes that succeeds as the star of a dinner party or as a last-minute weeknight meal.

My favorite part of this recipe is that it stretches your dollar by using an entire, butterflied chicken instead of individual breasts or thighs. When buying a bird, do as Ina says and ask your butcher to butterfly the chicken for you (they’ll usually do it for free). If you already have a chicken but it needs to be butterflied, you can refer to our tutorial here.

Don’t just take my word for it: If you scroll down on the recipe page, you’ll find a sea of comments lauding Ina’s chicken. Some of my favorites include Eric sharing that it “was a huge Sunday night hit,” Sue proudly announcing she “has made this more times than [she] can count!” and David labeling Ina’s creation as “perfection.” What more reason do you need to make this your dinner tonight?

Click here for the recipe. 

Right-winger rails against “woke” — then struggles when asked to define what it means

Conservative author Bethany Mandel in an interview on Tuesday struggled to define the term “woke” despite the fact that she ostensibly wrote a book about the term, which has been co-opted by the right to refer to all types of things deemed to be liberal. 

Briahna Joy Gay, the co-host of The Hill’s “Rising,” pressed Mandel to provide a definition for the word “woke” but the author floundered and was unable to provide a clear answer. 

The discussion was focused on Mandel’s new book, “Stolen Youth.” Co-written with fellow right-wing New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz, the Daily Beast reported that the book speaks to the “indoctrination” of children and erasure of innocence by Democrats with critical race theory, “victimhood” culture, and “gender madness.”

Gray, a former spokesperson for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, spoke about a “cultural cache that’s emerged of hierarchies of oppression” in America’s education system. “Because framing it that way when I think this is a broad concern that a lot of folks have a problem does also recreate this kind of victim paradigm, where you have people saying we’re being under attack by the left instead of kind of coming together and trying to resolve what I think is a broadly understood phenomenon,” she said. 

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Mandel asserted that “this is sort of a woke reimagining that is very, very, far-left,” adding that “only 7 percent of Americans consider themselves very liberal, and probably fewer of them consider themselves woke.”

Gray pushed Mandel to elaborate on the term.

“What does that mean to you? Would you mind defining woke?” she said. “It’s come up a couple of times. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

Mandel stumbled as she tried to define it.

“So, I mean, woke is sort of the idea that, um,” she stammered, before acknowledging her blunder.

“This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral,” she said.

“I mean, woke is something that’s very hard to define, and we’ve spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and reduce society in order to create hierarchies of oppression,” Mandel said. “Um, sorry, I—it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite.”

“Take your time,” Gray told Mandel, before her co-host Robby Soave, a libertarian, stepped in.

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“I mean, everybody is weighing in against wokeness,” Soave said. “Like we do some of it on this show as well. It’s definitely something you know what it is when you see it.”

Soave went on to define “wokeness” as ” the tendency to punish people formally or often informally for expressing ideas using language that is very new that no one would have objected to like five seconds ago.”

Republicans have long waged war on “wokeness”, broadly applying the term to anything considered too leftist or simply as a scapegoat for societal misfortune. Most recently, several outspoken members of the GOP have falsely blamed the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on “woke” ideology. 

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about the GOP war on “woke”

Tracing water’s path through a young star system could provide clues as to how alien life might form

For decades astronomers have typically searched for extraterrestrial life by looking for biosignatures — compounds that suggest the presence of life — in other solar systems. The logic behind looking for biosignatures is that life on Earth has existed for approximately 3.7 billion years, and has been reliant on the presence of the same ingredients since its inception: carbon, water, and carbon dioxide, to name a few.

The findings hint at how life forms in the universe, and may provide scientists with the types of clues that will help them find alien life one day.

But just as astronomers are intrigued by the search for life elsewhere in the universe, they are also working on understanding the origins of Earth’s necessities for life — especially water, which is a vital component of all living organisms on our planet. Now, according to a new study published in Nature, new observations by astronomers that suggest water in our Solar System formed billions of years before the sun. The findings hint at how life forms in the universe, and may provide scientists with the types of clues that will help them find alien life one day.

“We can now link to water that we find in comets in our own solar system, with water that is found toward even younger protostars and the interstellar medium,” John Tobin, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the lead author on the new paper, told Salon in an interview. Protostars are very young stars that are still growing in mass via its parent molecular cloud; such objects may have yet to absorb or expel the remaining gas and dust in their planetary nebulae. 

Tobin said that astronomers are essentially creating a map of “water’s evolutionary history.” Comets, which are icy, “may have provided water on Earth,” Tobin said, though we also see water extending back to “protostars and the interstellar medium.”

Prior to this study, as Tobin said, astronomers could connect Earth’s water to comets, but they couldn’t connect protostars to comets. The new observations were made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) by looking at the protostar V883 Orionis, which is located roughly 1,305 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.

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Protostars are often surrounded by circumstellar disks, vast ring-shaped accumulations of gas and dust that will eventually coalesce into planets and moons when the solar system reaches a later stage of evolution. Typically, observing the circumstellar disks around protostars is a challenge for telescopes, because of the interfering presence of water in the form of ice.

For this reason, astronomers usually looking for the “ice line,” which is point where the water transitions from ice to gas. Since V883 Orionis’ circumstellar disk is hot enough that the water in it has turned into gas, astronomers saw an opportunity to study it to help understand the evolution of water in solar systems. Astronomers measured its composition and found that it was relatively unchanged between each stage of solar system formation, which suggested that the water in Ori’s protoplanetary disk went through the same process as the water in our Solar System.

“What we didn’t know was whether the water that was formed in interstellar clouds is actually passed relatively unchanged, through the phases of star formation and to proto-planetary disks, comets, and planets,” Tobin said. “And so we’ve now established the path of water to get to planets, and comets, from the interstellar medium.”

“We’ve now established that path of water to get to planets, and comets, from the interstellar medium.”

Tobin added that at least a portion of the water on Earth comes from interstellar space, “which was then incorporated into comets as our solar system was forming — and some of that made it to Earth.”

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, who was not affiliated with the study, told Salon our own solar system is considered to be a “late bloomer” since it formed 4.6 billion years ago.

“Most stars formed billions of years earlier and produced oxygen that combined with primordial hydrogen to make water,” Loeb said. “When did water start to form? In a paper I wrote in 2015  we found that water could have formed as early as hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, about 9 billion years before the sun.”

Loeb emphasized: “The chemistry of life-as-we-know-it could have started then on planets around stars that formed long before the sun.”

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What does this all mean for the search for life aside from what we know exists on planet Earth?

“The way water gets to planets is still not fully understood, but it obviously does happen because we see that we see tons of water on Earth, we see water in other places in our solar systems,” Tobin said. “So I think what we see is that the water is going to be available and so it’s probably going to be able to end up on some planetary bodies in the other forming solar systems. I think assuming that all life needs water, I think there’s going to be a lot of it out there for for the planets to have.”

From a philosophical perspective, Tobin said his study gives us a greater understanding of where human life originated from in the universe.

“Carl Sagan said that ‘we are star stuff’ because all of the heavier atoms in our body had to be formed in stars,” Tobin explained. He said that this means that much of the water in our bodies originated in “an interstellar gas cloud.”

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about astronomy

Texas Republicans propose drag ban modeled after anti-abortion “bounty hunter” law

Republican lawmakers in Texas have introduced a bill that would allow individuals to sue drag performers and the venues that host them if a child is in attendance at a performance— an enforcement mechanism that LGBTQ and abortion advocates have compared to that of Texas’s 2021 abortion ban, which effectively encourages bounty hunting.

House Bill 4378 is one of six anti-drag bills introduced by Republicans in Texas, and comes days after Tennessee became the first state in the U.S. to criminalize drag performances. Fourteen other states have introduced similar legislation this year.

While Texas has not yet outlawed drag performances, a Dallas restaurant that has hosted drag brunches in the past recently received a letter from the Texas Comptroller’s Office announcing that the agency had launched an investigation into the business to determine if the establishment should be considered “sexually oriented.”

LGBTQ advocates have warned that Texas’s latest anti-drag bill could have dangerous consequences — specifically for transgender people, who have been the target of legislative attacks in the state for months.

On February 18, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion defining gender-affirming care for minors as an act of child abuse after the legislature failed to pass a ban on gender-affirming care. Four days later, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a widespread ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth and ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the families of trans kids. While civil rights groups sued to block Abbott’s directive, leading to an issuance of a temporary restraining order by a district judge, many families of trans children have been forced to leave the state.

In 2022, transgender activist and civil rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo wrote that the Texas legislature was organizing an “all-out war on trans people’s existence.” In November 2022, lawmakers had introduced two bills that would classify venues that host drag shows as “sexually oriented businesses,” legally similar to strip clubs. The bills’ definition of drag “would encompass every trans person who so much as sings or dances in any public venue,” Caraballo warned.

While these bills have not moved since being referred to State Affairs, 45 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced this session in Texas. Advancing bills include legislation that would make providing gender-affirming care a felony offense; a bill that would define gender-affirming care for transgender youth as “child abuse,” which would lead to the criminalization of parents of trans children; legislation to ban gender marker changes on birth certificates for minors; and a “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Texas has also introduced a bill that would ban trans children from participating in sports, although a sports ban was already signed into law in the state in 2021.

Most notoriously, Texas lawmakers have advanced Senate Bill 1029, which would effectively end trans adults’ access to gender-affirming care. This bill would ban public funding for gender-affirming care, bar some health plans from providing “coverage for a gender modification procedure,” and expand legal liability for providers that offer gender-affirming care.

“Texas has become one of the most dangerous and hostile places for transgender youth and transgender people and their families in America,” said Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy adviser of the Transgender Education Network of Texas.

Trump lawyer lunges to grab documents from MSNBC host after he’s called out over “lie”

MSNBC host Ari Melber and Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, got into a heated exchange during a Tuesday interview while discussing whether Trump lied about a $130,000 wire payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“I want to get the benefit of your response,” Melber, who is also a former attorney, said to Tacopina. Armed with a New York Times report, Melber quoted, “‘Prosecutors could argue that $130,000 became a donation to Trump’s campaign under the theory the money was silencing Daniels.'”

“So, two-part question,” Melber continued. “Why lie about this and why misidentify the payment if it was legal? And second, your response to that theory of the case?”

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“This is Donald Trump paying with his own money,” Tacopina responded. “First of all, there’s a crucial distinction between separating campaign funds from personal funds, right? And on personal fund usage, here’s the bright line test. And it ends this case. It ends any case regarding Stormy Daniels. If the spending or the fulfillment of a commitment or the expenditure would exist irrespective of a campaign, it’s not a campaign law violation. End of story. This would’ve existed irrespective of the campaign.”

Tacopina during the segment tried to nab some of Melber’s documents, which contained Trump’s denial of the payments. 

“Ari, that is–if that’s what you’re gonna consider a lie, a lie to me is something material under oath in a proceeding,” Tacopina said. 

“I didn’t say perjury. I said a lie,” Melber retorted.

“Yeah, but that’s not a lie,” Tacopina said.  an incredulous Melber replied, 

“That’s not a lie?!” an incredulous Melber pressed.

“Could you put the paper down, put the paper down, we don’t need that,” the lawyer told Melber.

“Here’s why it’s not a lie,” Tacopina said. “Because it was a confidential settlement. So, if he acknowledged that, he would be violating the confidential settlement. So, is it the truth? Of course not it’s not the truth! Was he supposed to tell the truth? He would be in violation of the agreement if he told the truth. So, by him doing that, by him doing that he was abiding by, not only his rights but Stormy Daniels’ rights.”

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“It seems like we’re drawing some blood here because you’re having a strong reaction,” Melber said in response. “He did lie about it and in a confidential settlement you can easily say, ‘No comment’ or ‘I’m not getting into it.'”

A Manhattan investigation into Trump’s role in hush money payments to Daniels has spanned five years and is swiftly coming to a close, with many experts predicting that the ex-president’s indictment is imminent. 

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

“I did nothing wrong,” he wrote in a drawn-out Truth Social post last week.

Watch Tacopina’s full interview below:

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about Stormy Daniels case

Trump Media probed for possible Russia-linked money laundering over loan approved by Don Jr.: report

Federal prosecutors in New York investigating former President Donald Trump’s social media company “examined” whether it violated money laundering laws by accenting $8 million in loans with suspected Russia ties, according to The Guardian.

Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, came under a criminal investigation last year in connection to its planned merger with a blank check company called Digital World (DWAC). Towards the end of the year, prosecutors began looking at two loans totaling $8 million sent to Trump Media through the Caribbean from two obscure entities that appear to be “controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin,” according to the report.

The first loan, a $2 million wire transfer, appears to have been approved by Donald Trump Jr., who sits on the company’s board, according to the report.

“Just want to keep you in the loop – no guaranty that these will get signed and funded, but we remain hopeful,” John Haley, a lawyer for Trump Media, wrote in a December 2021 email.

“Thanks john much appreciated,” Trump Jr. replied.

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Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell explained on MSNBC that prosecutors “got a tip” at the end of last year over the loans that came at a time when Trump’s company was “cash poor.”

“They went and got bridge financing from first a bank, then in February 2022 they got a second loan of $6 million from two different companies,” Lowell said. “As it turned out, they’re pretty much one and the same company, and if you trace the beneficiaries back you get to the nephew of a Putin ally who was the first deputy justice minister in Russia and previously served in Putin’s executive office.”

The first $2 million loan was wired in December 2021 by a company called Paxum Bank, which has a history of providing banking sources for pornography and sex worker industries, though the promissory note identified an entity called ES Family Trust as the lender. Trump Media then received an “unexpected” second $6 million payment from the ES Family Trust, according to receipts reviewed by The Guardian.

Will Wilkerson, a former co-founder of Trump Media, told The Guardian that DWAC CEO Patrick Orlando, who sourced the first loan, declined to provide details about the true identity of the lenders or where the money came from.

Prosecutors examined the “Russia connection,” according to the report, focusing on Anton Postolnikov, the nephew of Putin ally Aleksandr Smirnov, who served in Putin’s administration.

Wilkerson told The Guardian that former Trump Media CFO Philip Juhan weighed returning the money but it was never sent back, in part because losing $8 million of about $12 million the company had in its account would have strained its finances.

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Prosecutors began investigating the payments after Wilkerson alerted the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to the payments in October 2022. Trump was the chairman of the company at the time, though it’s unclear if he was aware of the nature of the loans and did not seem interested in the day-to-day operations, Wilkerson told the outlet.

The report stressed that the extent of the exposure for Trump Media and its officers is unclear, though legal experts told the outlet that money laundering prosecutions are frequently based on circumstantial evidence.

“Even if Trump Media and its officers face no criminal exposure for the transactions,” Lowell wrote, “the optics of borrowing money from potentially unsavory sources through opaque conduits could cloud Trump’s image as he seeks to recapture the White House in 2024.”

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Ron DeSantis is caught between MAGA and Donald Trump

You know the presidential primary campaigns have begun in earnest when political reporters start trudging around Iowa and hanging out in diners to find out what the Real Americans are thinking. This week we got our first dose of this quadrennial ritual when both Donald Trump and his closest rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis showed up to give speeches and mingle with the hoi polloi.

According to the Washington Post, Trump remains his “freewheeling” self while DeSantis is tightly scripted, which is not exactly news. But there are some subtle changes. For instance, Trump is making a point of showing up unannounced at some local businesses to pretend to be a regular guy in order to contrast himself with DeSantis who is known to be cold and off-putting. DeSantis, meanwhile, is sticking to his prepared speeches in order to appeal to Republicans who are sick of Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and want to hear a normal political speech. In other words, it’s all about style because when it comes to policy, they are clones of each other, furiously pandering to the base, each of them trying to out MAGA the other. Their need to get to the right of each other has them both vying for the most extreme elements of the party.

Trump went after DeSantis in his speech for the first time in detail, slamming the Florida governor for being a loser who couldn’t have won without him. Trump said DeSantis was taking credit for Florida doing well when it was really Sen. Rick Scott, a former Republican governor, and even former Democratic Governor Charlie Crist (!), who made Florida great again. Trump also called DeSantis a Paul Ryan acolyte and compared him to Mitt Romney, which is the lowest of blows among the MAGA faithful. And he hit him hard for his past votes to cut Social Security and Medicare. Trump is trying to portray DeSantis as an opportunist who doesn’t really believe what he’s saying and therefore, shouldn’t be trusted. It’s actually a pretty honest critique.

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For his part, Desantis talked about woke stuff and then said a little bit more about wokeness and wokery and bragged again that Florida is where woke goes to die. He didn’t go after Trump directly but merely hinted around it by saying that his administration doesn’t leak and suggesting that he’s not a drama king. According to the reports, audiences were satisfied with both candidates and want to hear more.

At this point, it seems that the only reason anyone would choose DeSantis over Trump is because they think he’s more electable. He is hewing as close to Trump on policy as he can get. In fact, this week he finally decided to take a position on foreign policy and rather than stick with his former more traditional conservative stance, he went with MAGA, proving that his makeover from the hard right, Tea Party conservative he was when he was in Congress to the Trump-style culture warrior he is today is total.

Ron DeSantis has clearly decided that his road to the nomination runs right through Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

Responding to a questionnaire sent out by the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Tucker Carlson, DeSantis came out against supporting the war in Ukraine, declaring that it is not an American vital interest and that there must be “peace” apparently at the price of Ukraine becoming a Russian vassal state.

While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them…Without question, peace should be the objective.

He blathered on about the Green New Deal and Biden allegedly depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (not true) and said that “regime change” is off the table because whoever replaced Putin would be much worse. It’s all very Trumpian and in stark contrast to his comments back in 2015 when Putin invaded Crimea:

May 21, 2015: I think if we had a policy which was firm and we armed Ukraine with defensive and offensive weapons so that they could defend themselves I think Putin would make different calculations so I think Obama’s policy of weakness is actually making a larger conflict more likely.

If a Democrat is doing it it must be wrong — no matter what it is.

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Just as revealing, DeSantis suggested that the money the U.S. is spending on arming Ukraine is needed to arm our own border with Mexico, which is rapidly becoming a major policy plank on the MAGA right:

We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted.”

We can’t send weapons to Ukraine because we need to defend our homeland at the border? That truly does sound ominous. I haven’t heard Trump say that explicitly, but he reportedly pushed the idea of bombing Mexico numerous times during his term so I’m sure he’s on board with this idea. He also believes that Ukraine is not a vital interest to America and prattled on about how Europe should be paying more as he always does when he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

DeSantis’ position on Ukraine is very Trumpian and in stark contrast to his comments back in 2015 when Putin invaded Crimea.

DeSantis’ position has opened up yet another schism in the GOP and it’s particularly galling to the establishment types who really want DeSantis to take out Trump for them. The majority of Republicans in Congress support NATO and Ukraine and are concerned about sending a message to the Russian president that if he just keeps going for a couple more years he’ll have an ally in the White House who will cut off Ukraine and basically give him the country. I’m sure there was plenty of cheering in the Kremlin to hear that the two front-runners for the GOP nomination are on the same page in that regard.

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Trump’s response to DeSantis on Ukraine was priceless:

“[He’s] following what I am saying. It is a flip-flop. He was totally different. Whatever I want, he wants.”

He’s not wrong. DeSantis has clearly decided that his road to the nomination runs right through Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and he’s not going to let even the slightest bit of daylight show between him and their idol. The question is how many of them will choose him when they can have the real thing? 

Ohio politicians found guilty in $60 million utilities bribery scandal

FBI agents arrested one of Ohio’s most recognizable politicians, then-state House of Representatives Speaker Larry Householder, in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme nearly three years ago. The 80-page criminal complaint against him and four collaborators reads like a John Grisham thriller. According to the complaint, Householder and the others controlled a slush fund that received millions of dollars from three utility companies in the state. Householder used this money to help elect like-minded legislators. In exchange, he helped pass House Bill 6, a bailout law that halved the amount of renewable power utilities were required to buy, eliminated energy efficiency measures, and provided billions of dollars to utilities that owned nuclear and coal power plants in the state. It was a classic pay-to-play scheme.

Yesterday, a federal jury largely affirmed those allegations, finding Householder and ex-Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Borges guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering. The two men face up to 20 years in prison and will be sentenced in the coming months. 

“Larry Householder illegally sold the statehouse, and thus he ultimately betrayed the great people of Ohio he was elected to serve,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker in a press release.

Borges and Householder plan to appeal the verdict. “This is just step one,” Householder told reporters after the verdict. “Stay tuned.”

The bribery scandal in Ohio is an extreme instance of a common practice of utilities wielding behind-the-scenes influence on state legislatures — often to soften renewable energy standards and subsidize the rising costs of operating old, polluting power plants. In 2020, a utility in Illinois admitted to bribing the state house speaker, and a power company in Arizona acknowledged it donated millions of dollars to dark-money groups — 501(c)(4) nonprofits that are allowed to pay for political advertising without revealing the source of the money — in an attempt to get utility-friendly candidates elected to a commission that sets electricity rates for the state.

“You don’t have to look far to see that the FirstEnergy scandal is part of a broader trend,” Dave Anderson, communications and policy manager of the nonprofit watchdog organization Energy and Policy Institute, told Grist in an email.

The Ohio corruption scandal began with a 2008 renewable energy law. The Ohio legislature, following in the footsteps of other states across the country, passed that law mandating wind and solar projects and creating programs to help residents and businesses use less energy. As these efforts materialized across the state, the utilities that primarily relied on nuclear and fossil fuel power began to see their profits dwindle. In response, they began lobbying the legislature and spending lavishly on allied politicians’ election campaigns. 

Some of those efforts succeeded, and the legislature repealed the renewable energy mandate in 2014. But relief came too late for one of the utilities, FirstEnergy, which found itself in the red. Simultaneously, Householder was considering returning to the state House (he had previously served in the early 2000s) and was looking for cash to mount a successful campaign as well as help like-minded politicians to run for office. After Householder was elected, his team set up a dark money group, and FirstEnergy began funneling money to it.  

What FirstEnergy and other utilities allegedly got in return was a $1.3 billion bailout. Soon after Householder took charge of the speaker’s podium in 2019, he proposed House Bill 6. It was touted as an effort to improve air quality, but it mostly included bailouts for coal and nuclear power. At the same time, it scaled back energy efficiency measures and added bureaucratic hurdles to prevent the growth of wind power. The bill was eventually signed into law. An independent analysis found that it would cost Ohioans $2 billion in excess utility bills and $7 billion in healthcare costs (due to worsening pollution) over nine years. 

Despite Householder’s 2020 arrest and widespread knowledge of the scandal, only parts of House Bill 6 have since been repealed. The ratepayer-funded bailout of two coal plants — which could eventually cost as much as $1.7 billion — still remains in effect, and the state’s energy efficiency requirements have not been restored. 

There are still additional loose ends in the scandal. During the course of Householder’s trial, FirstEnergy admitted to bribing Sam Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. (Neither Randazzo nor FirstEnergy employees have been charged with any wrongdoing, and Randazzo has maintained his innocence.) The Ohio state attorney general has also filed a civil lawsuit against Householder and others seeking damages for the scandal. Separately, the attorney general has filed a complaint against Householder for using campaign funds for his legal defense.

“The convictions provide new momentum for the ongoing federal criminal investigation into utility corruption in Ohio,” said Anderson with the Energy and Policy Institute. “Hopefully, the Department of Justice will follow the evidence wherever it leads.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/politics/ohio-bribery-scandal-larry-householder-verdict/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Chicago neighborhood groups sue US Army Corps of Engineers over expansion of a polluted dump

Activists from a Chicago neighborhood where protesters went on hunger strikes in 2021 to try and prevent more pollution from invading their community filed a lawsuit Monday against another growing toxic threat. 

The lawsuit filed in federal court by community groups, the Alliance of the Southeast and Friends of the Parks, alleges that plans to expand a lakefront dump filled with polluted sediment break national environmental laws. The group is suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating both the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the comprehensive law passed in 1970 that aims to regulate industries which impact nature.

The southeast section of Chicago is on the shores of Lake Michigan and sits on the border between Illinois and Indiana. It encompasses several neighborhoods that have been home to heavy industry for centuries.

“Our community is fighting back and saying ‘no more,'” said Amalia NietoGomez, executive director of Alliance for the Southeast.

The Southeast Side was the site of protests that garnered international attention in 2021, after a group of protestors went on a hunger strike to draw attention to the planned relocation of a metal scrapper to the Latino and Black neighborhood from Lincoln Park — a whiter, wealthier neighborhood on the city’s north side. The city’s Department of Public Health eventually denied the permit the scrapper needed to operate. 

“It came to be clear to us and to our many partners that without litigation, the [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers] was just going to march forward,” said Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Park. 

The area has struggled for centuries with toxic waste pollution and in recent years residents have had to deal with several contaminants including petcoke, a product of oil refining, manganese, an essential element to creating steel, and lead pollution. All of these pollutants are from various former industrial sites in the area.  

The dump is a repository of both polluted and unpolluted sediment that has been dredged from a series of rivers and canals that connect Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. In 1984, Illinois passed a law converting the land, submerged in Lake Michigan, into an in-water confined disposal facility where all of the dredged sediment would go. But the law stipulated that once the facility was full the land should be handed over to the Chicago Parks Department to be turned into a public park. But after decades, the plan to clean up the site and install a park has yet to be executed. 

The facility’s current location sits next to a park and a beach.

“You can sit in Calumet Park, along the fence under a sign that says ‘DANGER KEEP OUT,'” said Irizarry. “And then the dump is on the other side. It’s also real that swimmers in Calumet Beach are potentially being exposed to the toxins that are leaching out of this.” 

The health impacts of exposure to all of the cumulative toxins on the Southeast Side have stacked up. Residents there are disproportionately diagnosed with coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a 2021 study. They have also reported struggling with autoimmune disorders and cancer they believe is linked to the toxins in the neighborhood. 

The community has continued to deal with the impacts of being steps away from large industry and opposition to the dump and other projects are likely to continue. 

“The whole thing is within a larger, really important fight against environmental injustice,” said Irizarry. 

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/accountability/chicago-activists-sue-army-corps-engineers-dump/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

“I need a woman who looks like she got punched”: Republicans become more openly pro-abuse

“I need a woman who looks like she got punched.”

So sayeth a recent hire by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., Andrew Kloster. As Roger Sollenberger of the Daily Beast (and formerly Salon) reported, this self-proclaimed “raging misogynist” is hardly just some random troll the famously provocative Gaetz picked up off Twitter. Kloster denounced sexual consent as a “pernicious fetish” and argued “Natalie Portman should have stayed 11 years old.” Kloster is also a member of the Federalist Society, the GOP pipeline for their far-right federal court judges. He also worked for the Donald Trump administration and was once a clerk at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He’s worked with religious right groups like the Heritage Foundation, while also tweeting, “If you don’t defend child pornographers, we are only one step away from naziism.”

Kloster isn’t just some frat buddy of Gaetz’s, he’s a member of the Christian right and Republican Party in good standing.

The sadism that fuels the anti-choice movement is revealing itself more openly.

This should not be surprising. Despite all the self-congratulatory language of Christian conservatives about how they are “pro-life,” the movement is really just about old-fashioned misogyny (and homophobia and racism). It’s why “family values” don’t set back Trump, a thrice-married chronic adulterer who is still in a legal battle over illegal hush money payments paid to a porn star. In the world of Republican politics, a woman who has consensual sex with her husband should be punished by being denied medical care while she bleeds out from a miscarriage. But straight men have no real limits put on their sexual desires, or even on how gross they get about it on Twitter. 

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Kloster may be a little more outspoken about his misogynist attitudes than most Republicans. Still, he’s not really an outlier. It’s not just that Republicans are doubling and tripling down on attacks on reproductive rights. The real goal of the GOP has always been to inflict severe punishment on women who don’t conform to their rigid gender roles. The sadism that fuels the anti-choice movement is revealing itself more openly.

Last week, the Texas Tribune reported on one of the first major tests of the Texas “bounty hunter” abortion ban, which allows ordinary people to sue anyone suspected of “aiding or abetting” an abortion. When the law was first passed, feminists warned that it would be used by abusive men to control and punish their female partners. Sure enough, the plaintiff, in this case, sounds every inch the vindictive ex-husband. He is literally suing his ex-wife’s friends for helping her leave him. To make it worse, his lawyer is Jonathan Mitchell, a Republican operative who used to be the state solicitor general, and who helped write the abortion ban.

Republicans aren’t even pretending anymore. They are openly embracing the way these laws can be used to punish women for saying no to men. 

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The text messages being put into evidence tell the heartbreaking story of a woman trying to escape a bad marriage, and of her loyal friends who will move heaven and earth to help her. “I know either way he will use it against me,” the pregnant woman texted. Her friends warned he would “snake his way into your head” and advised, “Delete all conversations from today,” so her husband would not be able to spy on her. 

Republicans aren’t even pretending anymore. They are openly embracing the way these laws can be used to punish women for saying no to men. 

“If I told him before, which I’m not, he would use it as [a way to] try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision,” the woman fretted. 

Mind you, it’s Mitchell who submitted these texts into evidence.

Republicans do not see this story as most people would, like that of heroic friends helping someone in need. No, they see this as a tale of disobedient women who need to be punished. 

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Voters hate abortion bans and vote them down at the ballot box even in very red states. Instead of moderating in response, however, many Republican leaders are dialing up the cruel, and frankly violent, stance towards women who seek abortions. In the South Carolina general assembly, Republicans introduced a bill that would allow the death penalty for any woman who aborted her pregnancy. This was not just the brainchild of a single fringe character, either. Twenty-one Republicans co-sponsored the bill. That is nearly a quarter of Republicans in the state’s House of Representatives. 

Most Republicans are a little more subtle about their yearnings to inflict pain and terror on pregnant women. Instead of threatening to kill women directly, the strategy is usually to deny them medical care and let nature do their dirty work for them. We’re already been subject to an overwhelming number of horror stories about miscarrying women being told they have to wait until they’re near death before a doctor can clean up the septic remains of a failed pregnancy. But Republicans in many states are now tightening the laws so that doctors are more afraid than ever of going to prison if they provide standard medical care in the event of a miscarriage. 

In Tennessee,for example, Republicans are finalizing a bill they claim creates an “exception” to their abortion ban for women in medical crisis. But, as Jessica Valenti of the Abortion, Every Day newsletter points out, the bill still bans miscarriage treatment if there’s an embryonic heart pulse. Miscarrying patients will still be denied medical care, even if they are bleeding through the sheets and sepsis is threatening to kill them. 

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Regular readers of Valenti’s newsletter know this is a pattern with Republicans. They know that forcing women to get sick because of miscarriages cut against false claims to be “pro-life.” But Republicans also don’t want to amend the laws to allow women to get treatment. After all, the actual purpose of abortion bans is to make women suffer. So Republicans will craft bad faith excuses and misleading legislative language, all so that they can maximize women’s pain while pretending to be “compassionate.” They will even play games blaming women for miscarriages, just for an excuse to arrest them. 

Ultimately, the tapdancing that Republicans do won’t amount to much. Miscarriage management is still banned in anti-choice states, so the drumbeat of horror stories about women being denied care while buckets of blood pour out of their bodies will still keep coming. And most Americans will know who to blame: The Republicans who invite proud sexual assailants like Trump and self-identified “raging misogynists” into the GOP.

The “Ted Lasso” way gets tested in the beloved show’s third season

“Ted Lasso” is as self-aware of a comedy as its hero struggles to be. At its best its ruminative efforts warmly bathe us in optimism and good feelings. Wherever and whenever it stumbles, disappointed fans react as if they’d been slammed in the face by a soccer ball. Either way, those who watch the show still care enough about Jason Sudeikis’ folksy coach to feel its two-year absence.

That may not necessarily make the heart grow fonder, but a little distance might incline us to be more open to what Sudeikis and his collaborators Brendan Hunt, Bill Lawrence, and Joe Kelly attempt in its third and possibly final season. Sudeikis has only hinted at this by telling several reporters that these episodes complete the story precisely as he envisioned, but neither he nor anyone else involved with the show has confirmed that this is it.

What it may acknowledge is that his character’s unpretentious charm and the cheerful familiarity of The Ted Lasso Way have limitations. The second season confirmed that when AFC Richmond’s irrepressible harmony during the first half of the season left viewers wondering where the tension was, clouding our vision to the point that the 11th-hour heel-turn of the team’s “Wonder Kid” Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) evoked the feeling of being unearned.

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A balanced third season of any show should answer or resolve whatever concerns were left by such a cliffhanger, and to a certain degree “Ted Lasso” achieves this by circling back to the start. Sometimes a show does this to remind an audience of why we fell in love with it in the first place. In other cases, this story included, the purpose is to investigate how these people we’ve gotten to know would answer the story’s initial questions now, and the ways that experience may have changed their outlook.

Since the “Ted Lasso” appeal is existential, either overtly or low-key, it makes sense for the Greyhounds to sit with their feelings and figure themselves out by asking who they are, what they want, and whether they’re meant to do what they’re doing.

To this extent the show’s third verse is very much like the first. Whether those queries filter through emotionally damaged but recovering people like Ted and Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) or through the tension between rising power player Keeley Jones (Juno Temple) and terse football legend Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), the show’s latest episodes gamely revisit old questions about empathy, emotional honesty and the means by which we fall short of our best intentions. Three seasons in, though, everyone is more open with each other and understanding of Ted, who can now admit he’s a mess without collapsing.

Since the “Ted Lasso” appeal is existential it makes sense for the Greyhounds to sit with their feelings and figure themselves out.

Picking up a few months after the events that closed Season 2, the end of Ted’s extended visit with his son leaves him wondering what he’s still doing in England. He came to the U.K. seeking distance from a failing marriage, a new challenge and – like that goldenrod locker room sign says – something to believe in.

A couple of seasons later, he still doesn’t know very much about the sport he’s coaching and falls back on insistent kindness to hide his panic attacks. Now, he’s dealing with the true professional danger resulting from Nate’s defection to rival team West Ham United, owned by Rebecca’s vindictive ex-husband Rupert (Anthony Head). Rebecca fell for Ted’s heartfelt optimism when she and the Greyhounds were at their emotional low.

This season, as she tells Ted time and again, she’s done being content with congeniality and team spirit. She wants to win.

Nick Mohammed, Anthony Head and Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+)

But so does Nate, and the difference between how he and Rupert define victory versus how Ted and Rebecca see it has to do with the public’s perception of power. Every season of “Ted Lasso” lands with a specific emotional calling card, or several. This one extend the second season’s wellness threads with Ted continuing his counseling with Dr. Sharon Fieldstone (Sarah Niles) via video sessions and resisting the Midwestern urge to stifle his true feelings to make everyone else comfortable.

That concept takes on different shapes in other corners of the pitch: Keeley is coming to terms with what it means to be the boss at her new public relations firm KJPR, what it means for a woman to wield power and how the two concepts don’t always match.  Rebecca endeavors to find the right blend between supporting Ted’s way of defeating mean-spiritedness with kindness and her desire for the team she owns to be seen as successful which, of course, is a reflection of her leadership ability.

Roy Kent still weakens the knees with each growl and roar while revealing gratifying new facets by way of a burgeoning alliance he cultivates with onetime rival Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster).

Through the team’s new adversarial relationship with Nate, the writers kick off the season with that tension viewers professed to want more of while commenting on the tendency to view unapologetic snideness as a sign of confidence and meanness as a virtue.

Cristo Fernández, Kola Bokinni, Toheeb Jimoh and Billy Harris in “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+)

Under Rupert’s eye,  Nate’s dark side is in full flower. He barks at well-wishers and calls his players dum-dums only to crumple into a stammering mess as Rupert lords his superiority over his pupil, discouraging any remaining impulses to be kind or remedy his guilt by defining a refusal to do so as a mark of strength.

Sudeikis and Hunt, who plays Coach Beard, previously hinted that “Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back” inspired the second season. To the degree that continues in the third season, it most clearly plays out in Nate. Despite his vituperative outbursts and assaults in the media, the apprentice can’t entirely shake that Lasso-nurtured lightness within. AFC Richmond also crosses paths with the football world’s equivalent of an ascended persona – a Jedi of sorts, minus the humility, whose narcissism buoys major themes that become more apparent in future episodes.

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It’s normal to enter the third season of any show with a swirl of expectation and doubt in our belly, and “Ted Lasso” meets that by progressing entirely as expected. The characters we adore don’t behave in ways that violate what we’ve come to expect of them, and their forward evolutions occur not by leaps but in small steps. Ted is finding a way to live with his panic attacks and, more importantly, contending with other inevitable changes by confronting them instead of smiling his way through.

The writers kick off the season with that tension viewers professed to want more of while commenting on the tendency to view meanness as a virtue.

Rebecca remains a wonder, and Waddingham is still one of the many best things about the show; along with Goldstein’s signature gruffness as Roy. Her good-natured elegance and assuredness carry every scene. (“Crying is the best, isn’t it?” she says with verve. “It’s like an orgasm with a soul!”) Only now she breaks open in scenarios that are not unambiguously traumatic or triggering. One pivotal scene allows Rebecca to confront the crumbs of imposter syndrome pressed into her by Rupert, proving that she, too, can go for the jugular without violating the core of who she is.

Juno Temple and Hannah Waddingham in “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+)

Roy is embracing his purpose as someone his teammates look up to while learning to give his emotions more room than he’s long afforded them. Even better, Jamie is not as much of a himbo as he once was. In one of the funnier exchanges between him and Roy, Jamie delightfully defies expectations by rattling off the correct definition of a term often applied to him in response to a malapropism.

These instances and others demonstrate the producers’ ability to make the most of the cast’s chemistry. They know we know these characters well enough to grow bored, so they keep challenging us, and them, by unearthing sides we haven’t seen or adequately considered.

There’s still plenty to love in this show even as one questions whether the first four installments merit their runtimes of nearly 50 minutes apiece.  For “Ted Lasso,” a comedy that thrives on crisp pacing and rapid-fire humor, it says something when we can feel some scenes stretching a tad longer than they should. And some of it seems expressly inserted to serve a throughline involving the return of Trent Crimm (James Lance), no longer of The Independent.

Nevertheless, we would be lucky if the punchy dialogue and wistful companionships we cherish, as well as the further development of unexpected relationships, eventually make us lament that our time with this show was too short after all. No reason to mourn yet, though. For all we know, the Greyhounds’ sprint away from underdog status may be the start of a marathon.

The third season premiere of “Ted Lasso” is now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes debut every Wednesday.

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Republicans aim to weaken ballot measure process after progressive victories

Already in 2023, Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have re-doubled their efforts to restrict the democratic process.

In Missouri, House Republicans passed a bill that would require 60% support to approve voter-initiated constitutional amendments, rather than a simple majority. Florida Republicans have introduced a bill to further raise the threshold to pass constitutional amendments from 60% to nearly 67%. And Ohio Republicans seek to not only require a 60% threshold to pass constitutional amendments, up from 50% — but also require petition signatures from all 88 Ohio counties instead of the current requirement of 44 counties.

The Republican assault on direct democracy is a predictable reaction to major progressive ballot measure victories across the country last year. Although activists have used the ballot measure process for decades, the 2022 elections showed that people across the country are beginning to realize its power. This was especially true for the reproductive rights movement.  

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In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, six states considered measures related to abortion rights. And, in all six — Kansas, California, Kentucky, Montana, Michigan, and Vermont — voters sided with the right to choose. Perhaps no state did so more defiantly than Kansas, where voters, by an 18-point margin, rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have eliminated the right to an abortion.

The Republican assault on direct democracy is a predictable reaction to major progressive ballot measure victories.

The progressive victories didn’t end there.

Voters approved a constitutional amendment in Massachusetts that taxes millionaires to fund public education and infrastructure. Nebraska voters adopted an initiative with nearly 60% support that raises the minimum wage (critically, the law includes a cost-of-living adjustment). And, in Colorado, voters approved a proposition that reduces income tax deductions for the wealthy to fund a school meals program. Moreover, voters in Connecticut and Michigan bolstered voting rights using the ballot measure process. 

Despite these successes, there is still so much opportunity for progressive change through the ballot measure process. Take Ohio — a state that shifted rightward in the last decade. In January, Republican legislators quietly passed a voter suppression bill that makes mail-in voting harder and imposes stringent new voter ID requirements. Yet, Ohio voters have the right to approve or reject recently passed laws through a citizen-led ballot referendum. Democrats, boxed out of legislative and executive power in the state, should refer this restrictive law to the voters of Ohio. Moreover, Democrats in Ohio and across the country should follow Michigan’s lead and put their energy behind passing popular pro-voting rights constitutional amendments that would supersede statutory voter suppression laws. 

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So, what is next?

Progressive measures are already planned for 2023 and 2024. From a pro-choice ballot initiative in Ohio to an $18 minimum wage initiative in California, voters across the country will have the opportunity to adopt progressive policies that will directly improve their lives. These progressive measures will be critical, if enacted, but they are not enough on their own. While there were huge progressive victories in 2022, conservatives won an anti-union measure in Tennessee and a tax measure in Arizona that will hamper the state’s ability to raise revenues for vital services. 

To preserve ballot measures for future generations, we must protect the ballot measure process itself — fighting for a more accessible process and lobbying against the restrictive legislation Republican politicians are eager to enact.

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