Even with legal protections, extreme heat and wildfire take a toll on farmworkers

Mass shootings at two California mushroom farms last month drew national attention to the dismal working and living conditions imposed on California farmworkers. Surveys of California Terra Garden and Concord Farms, where the assailant had worked, revealed families living in trailers and shipping containers, using makeshift kitchens and portable toilets. State and federal officials have opened investigations into the farms, where workers reported earning below minimum wage.

The conditions are “very typical images … for California and for the country,” Irene de Barraicua, director of operations at Lideres Campesinas, a network of female farmworker leaders, told the Washington Post after the shooting.

Now, the first comprehensive assessment of California farmworker health since 1999, released Friday, demonstrates just how typical those conditions are – and how climate change, and widening inequality, are exacerbating challenges for these workers, some of the most disenfranchised residents of the state.

The landmark study, by the University of California, Merced’s Community and Labor Center, in partnership with organizations that serve farmworkers across the state, and funded by the California Department of Public Health, surveyed over 1,200 workers about their health, well-being, and workplace conditions. It found widespread exposure to wildfire smoke and pesticides, rodents and cockroaches in rental units, inadequate safety training, and lack of access to clean drinking water. Half of all farmworkers surveyed reported going without health insurance, even when between one-third and one-half had at least one chronic health condition.

“Even through these major climate disasters the food supply has not been interrupted,” said Edward Flores, a professor of sociology at UC Merced and one of the report’s authors. “But the conditions that people work in have become riskier to their well-being. And they have fewer resources with which to weather a major event.”

Temperatures can already exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit in areas including the San Joaquin Valley, Imperial Valley, Coachella Valley, and Sacramento Valley, where much of the state’s farming happens, and the heat is only getting worse. Meanwhile, intense precipitation events cause damage to substandard rental units, and extreme fire weather days, which have doubled since the 1980s, increase the risk of respiratory illness.

More than one in three survey respondents, 92 percent of whom were renters, experienced problems keeping a house cool or warm. And about 15 percent encountered rotting wood, water damage, and leaks.

California’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety, or Cal/OSHA, has various standards in place to protect workers from extreme weather and other occupational hazards. For outdoor workers, for example, employers have to provide fresh water, access to shade, and cool-down rest breaks at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They also have to train employees and supervisors on the signs of heat illness and maintain a heat illness prevention plan, with written procedures for what to do in case of an emergency.

These standards are some of the strongest in the nation. Still, they often don’t protect farmworkers, who report widespread violations and non-compliance. Almost half the farmworkers surveyed had never been provided with a heat illness prevention plan. And 15 percent received no heat illness training at all.

During wildfire season, 13 percent had to work when smoke made it difficult to breathe, often without respiratory protective equipment as required by Cal/OSHA. While state law also requires pesticide safety training to be provided in a language that farmworkers understand, about half who had worked with the chemicals in the past year did so without receiving adequate training.

Even more concerning, when workplaces were out of compliance with labor laws, 36 percent of farmworkers said they would not be willing to file a complaint. Most of the time, that was for fear of employer retaliation. The fact that only 41 percent of the respondents had access to unemployment insurance suggests that 59 percent weren’t documented, said Edward Flores. “A very vulnerable person has to take the job that’s available to them, even if it’s not up to code.”

As climate change intensifies, challenges facing farmworkers, and especially undocumented workers, will only increase, the report warns. “Whether it’s record heat, catastrophic wildfires, or major floods, farmworkers either have to work in dangerous conditions or they’re unable to work,” said Flores. “They don’t have the same access to a safety net.”

The researchers hope that as California invests in reducing its emissions and helping agriculture adapt to a warming world, the data from the report will lead to more integrated climate, economic, and labor policy. “We should be thinking about a cohesive strategy so that, for example, investment in technology to improve the way that crops are produced might also be done with farmer organizations at the table, with input from health and safety advocates,” said Flores.

Trump gives “the real State of the Union” on Truth Social: “I’m a victim”

Seconds after President Joe Biden finished his State of the Union Address, his predecessor Donald Trump responded with a furious rant.

“Here’s the real State of the Union,” the former president wrote. “Over the past two years under Biden, millions and millions of illegal aliens from 160 different countries have stormed across our Southern border. Drug cartels are now raking in billions of dollars from smuggling poison to kill our people and to kill our children. Savage killers, rapists and violent criminals are being released from jail to continue their crime wave and under Biden the murder rate has reached the highest in the history of our country.”

Trump then attacked the Justice Department, baselessly claiming he is a target of political persecution.

“Joe Biden’s weaponized Justice Department, and I’m a victim of it, is persecuting his political opponents,” wrote Trump. “His administration is waging war on free speech. They’re trying to indoctrinate and mutilate our children. He’s leading us to the brink of World War III. And on top of all of that, he’s the most corrupt president in American history, and it’s not even close.”

He then vowed that “we are going to reverse every single crisis” because “I am running for President to end the destruction of our country and to complete the unfinished business of Making America Great Again.”

All of this comes as Trump remains under multiple federal and state investigations, both for his involvement in the 2020 plot to overturn the results of the presidential election, and his apparent efforts to conceal classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago complex in Palm Beach, Florida.

Conservative mocks Sarah Sanders’ “deep plunge into dystopian culture wars” in SOTU response

On Tuesday night, February 7, President Joe Biden was fired up when he gave his 2023 State of the Union address. Biden, with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy standing behind him, vigorously defended his economic record. The president took some shots at far-right MAGA extremists yet called for bipartisanship and made it clear that he wasn’t attacking all Republicans.

Biden’s SOTU was followed by a rebuttal from Republican Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House press secretary under former President Donald Trump. Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter compares Biden’s speech and Sanders’ rebuttal in an article published by The Bulwark on February 8, and she has nothing good to say about the rebuttal.

Biden’s speech, Carpenter explains, “boiled down to this: economy, economy, economy,” and “was a little raucous.”

“That’s not to say Biden didn’t stumble a little in his delivery,” Carpenter observes. “He did, as he typically fumbles somewhat over his remarks — a fact often attributed to his longtime stutter. But Biden — who, at 80, is older than any previous president — parried with the hecklers in the chamber during his hour-plus speech in what, at times, felt like an impromptu, interactive performance. He almost seemed to enjoy it, too…. Theatrics aside, Biden accomplished his biggest task: showing everyone he’s still got it.”

The conservative pundit adds, “He did it mainly by touting his record — ‘Unemployment rate at 3.4 percent, a fifty-year low’ — and exhorting Congress to help him ‘finish the job.'”

Carpenter goes on to say that while Biden focused heavily on “the economy and concrete issues,” Sanders’ rebuttal was a “deep plunge into dystopian culture wars.”

“These annual canned rebuttals usually come off as tone-deaf,” Carpenter argues, “but with Sanders, there was an additional, unexpected contrast with Biden. She spoke for a dreary 15 minutes — all scripted according to teleprompter, with no audience. Biden spoke for more than an hour, with a teleprompter in front of plenty of hostile Republicans. Biden, 80 years young, rolled with it, tackling every tough subject on his agenda, inviting Republicans to join him at every turn. Sanders, 40 years old, droned on, her entire speech devoted to demonizing Biden.”

Biden spotlights climate victories in State of the Union. But where do we go from here?

President Joe Biden took a victory lap on his climate record during last night’s State of the Union, touting his administration’s major investments in clean energy and resilient infrastructure.

He celebrated the passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as well as the Inflation Reduction Act, “the most significant investment ever to tackle the climate crisis,” Biden told a packed House Chamber. “[It is] lowering utility bills, creating American jobs, and leading the world to a clean energy future.”

Biden highlighted efforts to remove lead pipes from an estimated 10 million households, schools, and care centers where they are still used for drinking water, an epidemic that disproportionately harms Black, Latino, and low-income children. He also reiterated his administration’s pledge to install hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations, featured new tax credits for families to purchase electric vehicles and energy efficient appliances, and called out the record profits enjoyed by oil and gas companies last year as Americans struggled with high gas prices.

“The climate crisis doesn’t care if you are in a red or blue state,” Biden said. “It is an existential threat. We have an obligation, not to ourselves, but to our children and grandchildren to confront it. I’m proud of how America at last is stepping up to the challenge… But there’s so much more to do. We have got to finish the job.”

But Biden’s address failed to lay out exactly how he plans to do this beyond the roll out of these already-passed acts, particularly as he faces a newly elected Republican majority in the House.

Unlike his calls for tax reform and protections for Medicaid and Social Security, the State of the Union lacked a clear vision for how his administration hopes to tackle the many climate deadlines looming for the last two years of his term, from new emissions limits on coal-fired power plants and vehicles to efficiency standards for appliances and industry. There is also the issue of the delays and staffing shortages at the Environmental Protection Agency, and fear of a blockade on climate action within federal courts, spurred by a deep bench of conservative judges appointed during the Trump Administration.

Jamal Reed is the executive director of Evergreen Action, a climate change political advocacy organization based in Washington state. Ahead of Tuesday’s address, Reed told Grist that Biden’s investment has been monumental for the transition to a clean economy, but he agreed that there is a lot left on D.C.’s climate to-do list.

“The IRA and the current baseline do not get us where we need to honor climate commitments,” Reed said, referring to how the law is projected to reduce emissions by 42 percent by 2030 – 8 percent less than what the U.S. committed to in international agreements. “We need to push states to go further faster than they ever were before with these investments. We need to implement rapidly, equitably, and efficiently the Inflation Reduction Act and make sure we’re getting those dollars out the door.”

Similar to past speeches, Biden aligned his climate agenda with a goal of returning the country to its once former manufacturing glory. He announced a commitment to making all federally funded infrastructure projects use American made products. This Made-in-America campaign, however, has sparked criticism both within the U.S. and abroad, with some experts arguing it could slow down the transition to renewable energy as the country hunts for domestic supplies, such as minerals, and manufacturing facilities to support demand.

Opponents of the Biden Administration’s emphasis on clean energy haven’t been as welcoming to this vision. In response to last night’s address, Cathy Rodgers, a Republican Representative from Washington who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the president’s “radical rush-to-green agenda” has harmed U.S. energy production and American’s pocketbooks.

In what felt like a first, Biden criticized the record profits Big Oil companies brought in last year, generated amidst a global energy crisis spurred by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He lambasted companies for increasing investor profits instead of investing in domestic energy production, but made no mention of requiring investments in renewable energy sources or a commitment to reducing oil production. He also steered clear of assigning responsibility to the fossil fuel industry for causing and hiding the crisis.

Ad-libbing from the official speech, Biden made it a point to clarify that “we’re going to need oil for at least another decade.”

How Big Tech rewrote the nation’s first cell phone repair law

This article was copublished with The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society. Sign up for its newsletters here.

New York state took a historic step toward curbing the power of Big Tech when lawmakers passed the Digital Fair Repair Act, giving citizens the right to fix their phones, tablets, and computers. For years, advocates for the “right to repair” have pushed for such legislation in statehouses nationwide. They argue that making it easier to repair gadgets not only saves consumers money, but also reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing and electronic waste. Most of those bills have failed amid intense opposition from tech companies that want to dictate how and where their products are serviced.

The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act last June reportedly caught the tech industry off guard, but it had time to act before Governor Kathy Hochul would sign it into law. Corporate lobbyists went to work, pressing Albany for exemptions and changes that would water the bill down. They were largely successful: While the bill Hochul signed in late December remains a victory for the right-to-repair movement, the more corporate-friendly text gives consumers and independent repair shops less access to parts and tools than the original proposal called for. (The state Senate still has to vote to adopt the revised bill, but it’s widely expected to do so.)

The new version of the law applies only to devices built after mid-2023, so it won’t help people to fix stuff they currently own. It also exempts electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government. All those devices are likely to become electronic waste faster than they would have had Hochul, a Democrat, signed a tougher bill. And more greenhouse gases will be emitted manufacturing new devices to replace broken electronics.

Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization Repair.org reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by TechNet, a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assembly member and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist.

“We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,” Fahy told Grist. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.”

That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is “huge,” Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But “it could have been huger” if not for tech industry interference.

Reached for comment, the governor’s office sent Grist a copy of a statement that Hochul released when she signed the bill, outlining changes made to the text. Her staff declined to address questions about the potential negative impacts of those changes, or about the process behind them.

For years, consumer technology companies like Apple have effectively monopolized the repair of their devices by limiting access to parts, tools, and manuals to “authorized repair partners,” which often only perform a small number of manufacturer-sanctioned fixes. Those limited services often force consumers to choose between continuing to use a broken device or obtaining a brand-new one. The version of the Digital Fair Repair Act that passed New York’s Senate and Assembly last spring sought to level the playing field for independent shops by requiring that companies make parts, tools, and documents available to everyone on fair and reasonable terms.

A broad coalition of manufacturers opposed the bill in the spring, and its sponsors had to make significant compromises in order to pass it. “We made a lot of changes to get it over the finish line in the first day or two of June,” Fahy said.

Those changes included explicit exclusions for everything from home appliances to police radios to farm equipment. Fahy says she was willing to omit those devices because she thought focusing on small electronics would give consumers “the biggest bang for their buck.” Data from the repair guide site iFixit shows that eight of the top 10 devices New Yorkers attempted to repair in 2020 were small consumer electronics, with cell phones and laptops topping the list.

The Digital Fair Repair Act passed the Assembly by a vote of 145 to 1, after clearing the Senate 59 to 4. Despite that overwhelming support, the tech industry was surprised by its passage, said Democratic state Senator Neil Breslin, who sponsored the bill. “There’s a number of people who were advocating on the parts of the [manufacturers] who really, in private chats, were not expecting it would be passed,” Breslin told Grist.

At that point, the bill’s opponents approached Hochul seeking concessions. In particular, state lobbying records show TechNet held frequent meetings with the governor between June and December, when she signed the bill. Lobbyists representing Apple, Google, and Microsoft also met with the governor, state records show.

All of these organizations have lobbied against right-to-repair bills in other states, often citing intellectual property and cybersecurity concerns. But some, most notably Microsoft, have softened their stance in recent years. Fahy said Microsoft “constantly tried to reach out” to her office to cooperate on the bill. In a letter sent to the governor in November, the company requested several edits but did not ask for a veto. (Microsoft, Google, and Apple declined to comment.)

In letters sent to Hochul in July and August, Apple, IBM and TechNet all asked the governor to veto the bill. (IBM also declined to comment.) When a veto didn’t immediately happen, TechNet sent Hochul a trimmed-down version with edits attributed to David Edmonson, the trade organization’s vice president of state policy and government relations. Among other things, TechNet requested that the law apply only to future products sold in the state, that it exclude products sold only through business-to-business or government contracts, and that it exclude printed circuit boards on the grounds that they could be used to counterfeit devices. It also sought a stipulation allowing manufacturers to offer consumers and independent fixers assemblies, such as a battery pre-assembled with other components, if selling individual parts could create a “safety risk.” Additionally, TechNet wanted a requirement that independent repair shops provide customers with a written notice of U.S. warranty laws before conducting repairs.

Hochul’s office sent TechNet’s revised draft to repair advocates to get their reaction. Those advocates shared the TechNet-edited version of the bill with Fahy’s staff, which gave it to the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, the agency charged with protecting American consumers. Documents that Repair.org shared with Grist show that FTC staff were highly critical of many of the changes. The parts assembly provision, one commission staffer wrote in response to TechNet’s edits, “could be easily abused by a manufacturer” to create a two-tiered system in which individual components like batteries are available only to authorized repair partners. Another of TechNet’s proposed changes — deleting a requirement that manufacturers give owners and independent shops the ability to reset security locks in order to conduct repairs — could result in a “hollow right to repair” in which security systems thwart people from fixing their stuff, the staffer wrote.

“These particular TechNet edits all have a common theme — ensuring that manufacturers retain control over the market for the repair of their products,” Dan Salsburg, a chief counsel for the FTC’s Office of Technology, Research and Investigation, wrote in an email to Fahy’s office.

Despite the agency’s stern warning, all of the changes described above, and numerous other edits TechNet proposed, appeared in the bill Hochul signed — many of them verbatim.

The version of the Digital Fair Repair Act that passed the New York Legislature last spring defined “digital electronic equipment” broadly.

In the proposed edits that TechNet sent to Governor Kathy Hochul’s office, the industry group proposed excluding devices sold under business-to-business or government contracts from the definition of “digital electronic equipment.” Elsewhere, TechNet asked for the law to apply only to devices manufactured or sold after the law went into effect, instead of applying to devices that consumers already owned.

The version of the bill that Hochul signed in December adopted TechNet’s suggestions with minor rewordings.

Chris Gilrein, TechNet’s executive director for the Northeast, told Grist in an emailed statement that the bill the Legislature passed “presented unacceptable risks to consumer data privacy and safety,” and that his organization’s recommended changes “addressed the most egregious security issues.” Manufacturers often cite cybersecurity as a reason to restrict access to repair, an argument the FTC found “scant evidence” to support in a report to Congress published in 2021.

Gilrein disputed the notion that the final version of the bill favored the tech industry. “At its core, the law remains a state-mandated transfer of intellectual property that is unwarranted at a time when consumers have access to more repair options than ever before,” he said.

Todd Bone, the president of XS International, a company that maintains and repairs network and data center IT equipment for corporations and the federal government, says the law offers “nothing” to his business because of the governor’s carveout for devices sold under business-to-business or government contracts.

“It was very disheartening,” Bone told Grist, “to see the governor working with TechNet and not paying attention to the votes from the Congress and the Senate in the state of New York, [and] what the consumers of the state of New York wanted.”

Jessa Jones, who founded iPad Rehab, an independent repair shop in Honeoye Falls, about 20 miles south of Rochester, New York, says the original bill included provisions that would have made it far easier for independent shops like hers to get the tools, parts, and know-how needed to make repairs. She pointed to changes that allow manufacturers to release repair tools that only work with spare parts they make, while at the same time controlling how those spare parts are used, both of which were requested by TechNet.

“If you keep going down this road, allowing manufacturers to force us to use their branded parts and service, where they’re allowed to tie the function of the device to their branded parts and service, that’s not repair,” Jones said. “That’s authoritarian control.”

After repair advocates shared TechNet’s draft with Fahy’s office, they collaborated on a counterproposal that pushed back against many of the proposed changes. The last-minute negotiations with the governor’s office were “frustrating,” Fahy said, although she still ultimately wants to see the bill become law.

Fahy hopes the New York Department of State will clarify aspects of the bill that got muddied by industry influence. The agency, which plays a role in consumer protection, will craft regulations dictating how the law will be implemented. Ultimately, Fahy says the bill will still help consumers save money and keep old devices out of landfills. And every little bit counts: In New York state alone, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group estimates that Americans discard roughly 23,600 cell phones per day.

Fahy also believes the law — imperfect though it may be — will have a ripple effect beyond the state’s borders. It could give momentum to the efforts to pass similar laws in dozens of other states. Eventually, the passage of state bills could lead to a national agreement between electronics manufacturers and the independent repair community, similar to what happened in the car industry after Massachusetts passed an auto right-to-repair law in 2012.

Other lawmakers agree that New York has provided a welcome starting point.

“When you’re the first state, sometimes you have to pass something very small to get across the finish line,” Washington state representative Mia Gregerson, a Democrat who is sponsoring a digital right-to-repair bill in her state’s house, told Grist. New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, Gregerson said, “gives us something to work from.”

“We’re going to take that now and try to do a better piece of legislation,” Gregerson said.

Heckler Marjorie Taylor Greene’s complaint about “yelling” during State of the Union badly backfires

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., repeatedly heckled President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday — and then complained that it was hard to understand because he was “yelling.”

“Liar!” Greene, donned in a white fur coat that drew comparisons to cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, shouted at Biden after he called out a Republican proposal to sunset Medicare and Social Security.

“Anyone who doubts me, contact my office … I’ll give you a copy of the proposal,” Biden shot back as he battled Republican hecklers throughout the night.

Greene, who repeatedly stood and shouted throughout the speech, later posted a video on social media complaining that Biden was “yelling” during the address.

State of the Union: Biden faces hecklers on a rough night for Kevin McCarthy

“I just got back to my office after listening to the State of the Union with Joe Biden” she said. “Part of the time we couldn’t really understand what he was saying because he was yelling at people—yelling through the applause, and mumbling through his words.”

This is the state of our union. pic.twitter.com/ZApDN7mYMT

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 8, 2023

But Greene’s antics appear to have backfired as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., repeatedly visibly shushed her throughout the speech.

Interesting exchange between Pres Biden and House GOP members after Pres Biden said some Republicans want to "sunset" Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up and called him a liar. Speaker McCarthy shushed his caucus from the podium. #sotu2023 pic.twitter.com/A3py7v5ahR

— Norah O'Donnell 🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) February 8, 2023

Kevin McCarthy shakes his head at Marjorie Taylor Greene as she interrupts Joe Biden while Biden is talking about China. pic.twitter.com/ABqAp83fdM

— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) February 8, 2023

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., called for the House Republicans to “censure” Greene for her behavior at the speech.

“My fellow Republicans… you really want this as a role model for your kids? Do you really think the next generation will want to be part of this? I don’t,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t know the difference between the State of the Union Address and the Rocky Horror Picture Show,” tweeted Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who sits on the House Oversight Committee with Greene. “She just showed everyone how ridiculous MAGA is. And why did she keep yelling ‘liar’ at George Santos? That wasn’t nice,” he quipped.

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“It’s amazing how far our politics have fallen. When Joe Wilson shouted at Obama ‘You lie!’ in 2009, the House passed a resolution of disapproval and it was a huge deal,” wrote The Daily Beast’s Matt Fuller. “Tonight, a bunch of Republicans were yelling at Biden. MTG called him a ‘Liar!’ It won’t even register.”

Greene and other Republicans were particularly incensed when Biden called out the GOP proposal to sunset Social Security and Medicare amid wider Republican calls to reform the programs as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a catastrophic default.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who has called to end the programs entirely, was caught on camera feigning shock at Biden’s comments.

On the left, Republican Senator Mike Lee feigns outrage during the State of the Union when President Biden suggests that some Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

On the right, Mike Lee says he wants to get rid of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. pic.twitter.com/vi6pYQmhZX

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) February 8, 2023

Biden acknowledged while sparring with the hecklers that it was “not a majority” of Republicans who support such a plan and probably not “even a significant” portion of the party.

“Then don’t say it,” a Republican shouted.

“I enjoy conversion,” Biden quipped.

Biden was referring to a plan proposed by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., the former head of the National Republican Senate Committee. The plan does not explicitly call to end Social Security and Medicare but calls to “sunset” all federal programs after five years.

Though Republicans fumed at Biden for his description of the plan, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., characterized it in a similar way when he denounced Scott’s plan last year.

“We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half of the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years,” the Republican leader told reporters last spring.

But Biden turned the raucous moment into a rare show of bipartisanship as he appeared to goad the GOP away from targeting Social Security and Medicare in debt ceiling negotiations.

“Social Security and Medicare is off the books! We got unanimity!” Biden said after the hecklers died down.

“So tonight, let’s all agree — and apparently we are — and stand up for seniors,” Biden said, as both sides of the chamber stood and applauded. “Stand up and show them! We will not cut Social Security! We will not cut Medicare! Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it. … If anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it … But apparently it’s not going to be a problem.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene calls Biden a liar as he accurately states that some Republicans want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. Republicans say no, so Biden responds, "So we all agree, Social Security and Medicare are off the books." pic.twitter.com/N83YSFc7eN

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 8, 2023

about Rick Scott’s proposal

On order from Trump, Republicans throw a hissy fit during Biden’s State of the Union

Last weekend Donald Trump gave a speech in South Carolina where he announced his state leadership team. Among them was Republican Congressman Joe Wilson, whom he introduced by saying:

A friend of mine — that voice, that voice was so beautiful as he called it out in Congress, Congressman Joe Wilson. That was done from the heart, that was — I don’t know if you know or not but at the time people loved you for that because it showed honesty, dedication and the love of your country, right?

He was referring to Wilson’s notorious outburst at the 2009 State of the Union address in which he shouted “you lie” at Barack Obama when the former president denied that his health care plan would cover undocumented immigrants. (It was not a lie.) The pundits all called for the smelling salts and Wilson was later reprimanded by Congress and subsequently issued an apology. At the time, it was a shocking breach of decorum that stunned the nation.

Fourteen years later, Republican Marjorie Taylor Green told Wilson to hold her beer and went on a screaming tirade during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union. And the Georgia representative was not alone in repeatedly screaming “liar” and “you lie” during Biden’s address last night. Many of the Republican House members behaved like they were at a WWE wrestling match instead of a joint session of Congress. They simply ignored previous admonitions from narrowly-elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who also pursed his lips and mouthed “not true” from the dais, even as he tried to shush his members as they grew increasingly obnoxious.

This is par for the course in the “extreme ultra-MAGA” GOP (a phrase McCarthy asked Biden not to use in his speech because it apparently hurts the feelings of the sensitive extreme ultra-MAGAs.) After all, their Dear Leader told Joe Wilson just a week ago that calling the president a liar in the State of the Union is a patriotic act so, of course, they were going to do it.

Many of the Republican House members behaved like they were at a WWE wrestling match instead of a joint session of Congress.

The Republicans heckled and booed Biden over a number of issues but they completely lost their minds when Biden suggested they were planning to cut Social Security and Medicare. How dare he suggest we would ever do such a monstrous thing!

President Biden: "Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: "Liar!" pic.twitter.com/OFUglFuBxC

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 8, 2023

State of the Union: Biden faces hecklers on a rough night for Kevin McCarthy

Wherever did Biden get this idea do you think?

Rep. Michael Waltz on the possibility of military spending cuts: "I agree with Jim Jordan that we are going to carve out woke policies out of the military … [but] if we really want to talk about the debt and spending, it's the entitlements program." pic.twitter.com/5Nhv5fel0i

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 9, 2023

The Republican Study Committee, a powerful group of right-wing policymakers in the House, proposed a budget last summer that, you guessed it, raised the Social Security retirement age and lowered benefits. Meanwhile, the chair of the Senate Campaign Committee for the 2022 election, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fl., put out an agenda for Senate candidates to run on that included a draconian provision to have all government spending sunset every five years. None other than Mitch McConnell, now Senate minority leader, repudiated this plan confirming that Scott was proposing that Social Security and Medicare would be on the chopping block. Sen Ron Johnson, R. Wis., said during his campaign that Social Security “was set up improperly” and that it would have been better to invest the money in the stock market. He then went even further than Scott, floating the idea of turning Social Security and Medicare into annual “discretionary” spending items. Imagine having to rely on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to decide whether to fund your retirement or pay your hospital bills every year.

Biden couldn’t have handled the fracas any better if he’d planned it.

Republicans also recently floated the idea of setting up a commission to study increasing the eligibility age or adding means-testing to federal programs. Just the other day, Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Ok., chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said “I wouldn’t think it’d be off the table.”

Hannity: Not a single Republican has ever said they want to take away your Social Security..
Mike Lee: It will be my objective to phase out Social Security. To pull it up by the roots and get rid of it. pic.twitter.com/j0EQOyKM2q

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 3, 2022

As I noted a while back, Republicans have been trying to cut these programs from the day they were enacted, always under the rationale that it’s “socialism,” a charge which has made a big comeback in the last couple of years. It’s in the GOP DNA and they aren’t going to stop now. But the fact that they had a full-blown hissy fit in the middle of the State of the Union tells you that they are more aware than ever of just how politically lethal it is to be seen doing it at the moment, which tells you something. (Not to mention that Donald Trump has issued an edict that they are not to be touched.)

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Biden couldn’t have handled the fracas any better if he’d planned it. He engaged with the Republicans right there on the floor with a back-and-forth that ended up with the Republicans all rising to their feet to promise that no cuts would be made to the programs. He was not intimidated by their antics in the least and clearly enjoyed putting them in their places. He was in his element, jousting with political opponents — the picture of a happy warrior:

After Biden's claim that some Republicans want to end Medicare and Social Security provoked GOP anger, the president responds, "I'm glad to see it, I enjoy conversion."

"Social Security and its bookend, Medicare, are off the books now, right?," Biden adds. "We have unanimity!" pic.twitter.com/3aymKQlf1d

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 8, 2023

This State of the Union speech was one of Biden’s best moments as president. He hit all the expected notes of empathy and concern that we’ve come to expect, particularly when he introduced the parents of Tyre Nichols and proposed new plans for police reform. He pulled no punches when he spoke of the erosion of democracy, harking back to January 6th, 2021 as Kevin McCarthy sulked behind him looking as if he’d just sucked on a kumquat. His speech was a well-written recitation of the major accomplishments achieved by the administration in the last two years, delivered with a sense of confidence that he will be able to “finish the job” — the theme of the address and a clear indication that he is going to run for another term. The economic news is good, even if it hasn’t yet hit home to a majority of the country.

State of the Union: Americans are exhausted — and more vulnerable to a fascist takeover than ever

The fact is that there is always a lag between the economic numbers turning around and the public’s perception of that in their own lives, largely because all they hear is gloom and doom from much of the media. Getting them to break out of that rut may be the best consequence of this successful speech.

The press has been relentlessly hammering him for months, sensing weakness and using that as an opening to demonstrate they are unbiased. As Salon’s Chauncey DeVega writes today, “The news media has engaged in endless false equivalency and “bothsidesism” where Biden’s failures have been amplified while Trump and the Republican fascists’ lawbreaking, criminality, and existential danger to American democracy and society have, in many ways, been downplayed.” Biden’s confident performance, thinking quickly on his feet, and engaging with the opposition may just give the media the motivation to reset a bit and start reporting the good news about the economy and giving Biden a little credit for a change.

When all was said and done, without a shred of self-awareness, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered the GOP rebuttal to Biden’s address and said, “it’s not about right or left, it’s about normal and crazy.” She’s right, of course. The country has seen the new GOP House MAGA majority in action twice in the last month, first when they spent days and days acting like spoiled children trying to elect a speaker almost culminating in physical violence on the House floor, and now this juvenile display at the State of the Union. It’s clear as day who is normal and who the crazies are.

The difference between relapsing and “lapsing,” according to addiction experts

Many recovering drug addicts (myself included) have a recurring nightmare: You wake up one morning and suddenly all of the work you have put into staying sober is gone. Maybe you’re returning to prescription medications; perhaps it is fentanyl, or an addiction as ancient as alcoholism. Regardless, the underlying fear expressed in that bad dream is that one day a person who has remained sober will again start abusing drugs. If that happens, does that mean you should give up hope about remaining in recovery?

Experts agree: Absolutely not. Indeed, a “lapse” may not even mean that you have “relapsed.”

“If a person is abstaining from alcohol, and they’re choosing to abstain, and they have an episode where they drink some amount, that’s usually considered a ‘lapse.'”

“We tend to think about lapses and then relapses,” explained Dr. Kenneth E. Leonard, the director of the University of Buffalo’s Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions. As Leonard noted to Salon, there is a crucial difference between lapsing and relapsing. A person can engage in addictive behavior on one occasion and, if they make sure it never happens again, avoid serious long-term damage.

“If a person is abstaining from alcohol, and they’re choosing to abstain, and they have an episode where they drink some amount, that’s usually considered a ‘lapse,'” Leonard told Salon. “Then the key is preventing that from turning into a ‘relapse,’ which is where they return to their previous levels of excessive drinking. You can apply that same kind of concept to other substances as well.”

Why some cannabis advocates say we should stop infusing weed into candy

Distinguishing between “lapses” and “relapses” matters, according to Leonard, because it puts the phenomenon of breaking sobriety into a healthier context. While lapsing should never be taken lightly, it is common, and therefore a recovering addict should not feel ashamed. Most recovering addicts will lapse at one point or another. If they emotionally batter themselves over “failing” and decide to give up altogether, they will have made a terrible mistake — and will have held themselves to an unrealistically high standard.

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“My advice would be to try again!” Leonard said when asked about a hypothetical lapsing addict. “Most people who achieve stable recovery have some number of lapses. They make a number of serious attempts, and we know that some for some people that can be two or three, but it could be as many as five or six or ten. People who get back into a recovery mode can go on to achieve, valuable outcomes in their lives.”

“If a person is abstaining from alcohol, and they’re choosing to abstain, and they have an episode where they drink some amount, that’s usually considered a ‘lapse.’ Then the key is preventing that from turning into a ‘relapse,’ which is where they return to their previous levels of excessive drinking.

Yet why does the lapse happen in the first place? As it turns out, there are complex neurochemical reasons underlying why addicts may return to their substance of choice.

“One thing is clear: Addictions set up long-term changes in the brain that promote drug-seeking behavior,” explains Dr. Steve Maren, who studies how highly valence memories (whether for aversive stimuli or drugs) are suppressed, and how individuals relapse, at Texas A & M. “There are important psychological variables that interact with those brain changes. The context in which drugs are taken, and the stimuli-associated with drug taking, are key variables in the maintenance of drug use and abuse.”

When an addict decides to abstain from drug-seeking and drug-use, the changes circuits in their brain that supported the addictive behavior are reactivated. This is particularly true when a recovering addict is an environment which reminds them of why they became addicted.

“The reactivation of those circuits are essentially reminders of drug-taking and that experience,” Maren explained. “And so I think that’s one of the major factors that can drive relapse, the sort of memories that are associated with drug-taking and that caused the drug seeking behavior to kind of reappear after it’s been silent for some period of time.”

Harvard University physician and addiction specialist Dr. Peter Grinspoon writes that one should view a lapse as the final step in a larger breakdown of the recovery process. If a recovering addict has fulfilling relationships and overall is satisfied with their current life, it is far less likely that they will slip back into addictive behavior. Lapsing and relapsing addicts behave as they do because there has been a larger deterioration in their life. The decision to abuse a substance is simply the final step before they hit the bottom.

“It is often said that when a person relapses, the act of taking the drug or the drink is the final manifestation of the breakdown in their recovery process,” Grinspoon explains. “That is, people lose sight of — and stop practicing — the positive ways of being and interacting that have supplanted their drug use. The drug or the drink is left to fill the vacuum, and to erase the pain.”

While there is no quick and easy way to snap out of a spiral that might lead to lapses, there are some techniques that can be helpful. First and foremost, see if your HALT needs are being met — that is, are you hungry, angry, lonely or tired? If there are problems in those areas of your life, try to fix those immediate physical and emotional health concerns, as addressing them early can nip a potential lapse in the bud. It also helps to exercise, as physical fitness releases endorphins in the brain, which help you feel good. There is also nothing wrong with distracting yourself with sedentary and harmless escapism like watching TV, reading a book or playing a video game. Finally you should never feel like a burden for reaching out to your support network. Recovering addicts are there for each other.

about drugs and sobriety

Bless their hearts! The Christian right attempts to mount a revival

After a banner year for pop music, Sunday’s Grammy award show was quite the barnburner for pop culture discourse. Beyoncé fans decried the failure to award her groundbreaking “Renaissance” album the top award, while Harry Styles fans defended their man’s acceptance speech. Twitter gossips enjoyed Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez quarreling. Taylor Swift won something and, more importantly, had truly astounding earrings.

Oh yeah, and conservatives absolutely lost their minds in what may or may not be a sincere panic over a “Satanic ritual” performed by Sam Smith and Kim Petras, which was, in reality, a heavily stagecrafted performance of their hit song “Unholy.”

'Beautifully Unholy' Transgender Satanic Grammy Performance Brought To You By Pfizer

Is it beginning to make sense yet? pic.twitter.com/Q4uLhOjmcb

— RVM News (@redvoicenews) February 6, 2023

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Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but when people like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweet stuff like, “The Grammy’s featured Sam Smith’s demonic performance and was sponsored by Pfizer,” I’m disinclined to think the motivation is literal fear of the Prince of Darkness. After all, she made sure to include a grammatical mistake to maximize retweets and dunks from liberals. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., was definitely trolling in bad faith when he tweeted, “This…is…evil,” while amplifying some right-wing pundit disingenuously claiming that “demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan.” (If only it was incest porn, Cruz would be popping a “like” on it instead.) That said, it was funny watching Daily Wire host Matt Walsh screeching about how “leftism is Satanism,” before going down a weird rabbit hole about “theological Satanism” and his totally imaginary taxonomy of Satanism.

As an attention-getting device, performative panic about Satan is always a winner.

As demonstrated by the hysterics over the Grammys, religious right leaders think they have an angle that will make them popular again: Playing the victim.

The Satanic panickers were rewarded this time with lots of reposting and amplification, though mostly from people laughing at these fools. (Still, in the right’s trolling economy, negative attention is a valued asset.) But the whole display can’t be written off only as a bunch of attention whores grabbing anything they can for engagement. For one thing, as is generally the case with any kind of Satanic panic, it’s a cover for a deeper and more sinister agenda — in this case, stirring up right-wing hatred towards trans and nonbinary people like Petras and Smith. Even more, Republicans are going all out on this Satan nonsense as part of a larger and more serious effort by the religious right to make themselves relevant again.

Sam Smith’s “full-on Satan worship” Grammys number puts conservatives in an anti-vax Satanic panic

Yep, the fundamentalists seem to think now is their chance to revive not just their political but their cultural power. They seem to believe they can revive their halcyon days of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush years when their magical thinking about everything from creationism to Satanic messages in heavy metal music had real cultural sway.

Make no mistake: In many ways, the Christian right is as powerful as they ever were, having captured both the Republican Party and much of the federal judiciary. The overturn of Roe v. Wade last June and the onslaught of draconian abortion bans at the state level is a testament to how decades of organizing gave the Christian right a level of political power far beyond their numbers in the larger American population.

Republicans are going all out on this Satan nonsense as part of a larger and more serious effort by the religious right to make themselves relevant again.

Still, the Roe overturn has also exposed a very real weakness in the religious right’s future grip on power: Most Americans hate them.

In election after election, voters turn out — even in deep red states — to vote down abortion bans. Post-election data shows that a major reason Republicans underperformed expectations in the midterms is their association with religious right. Most Americans support reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. They oppose the religion-driven efforts to ban books in school. It’s arguable that one major reason Donald Trump won the 2016 election is that his personal lack of interest in Christianity lulled some voters into thinking he wouldn’t be a big friend to fundamentalists. Instead, he gave the Christian right everything they wanted, including three Supreme Court judges. He then went on to lose the 2020 election.

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As demonstrated by the hysterics over the Grammys, however, religious right leaders think they have an angle that will make them popular again: Playing the victim. So they increasingly rely on false claims that having to live in the country with people who aren’t like them makes conservative Christians an oppressed minority. The war on education being led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., for example, heavily relies on this narrative. He and his supporters routinely frame modern books as a direct assault on their supposed right to live in a world unexposed to people or ideas they don’t like. The right’s protest movement against drag shows is more of the same, an attempt to flip the script and portray LGBTQ people as somehow an “invasive” force harming Christian conservatives.

In 2018, the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) tried this “Christians are the real victims” argument before the Supreme Court, in Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The ADF argued that a baker who broke the law by refusing service to a gay couple was the “real” victim of discrimination, but failed to sway the court’s majority. Now with three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court, they are trying again with a similar case arguing that “religious freedom” is under attack by anti-discrimination legislation. This time, the more conservative tilt to the court likely means they’ll get a legal victory — but it certainly doesn’t mean the plaintiffs will be seen as anything but mean-spirited homophobes by the public.

It’s not just Trump: Midterms show the religious right is an albatross around the GOP’s neck

This whole “Christian conservatives are the real victims” argument is also about to get a big boost from House Republicans. Under the leadership of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the House Judiciary Committee plans to use subpoena power to push a conspiracy theory accusing the Joe Biden administration of “persecuting” conservative Christians. The main strategy will be amplifying false accusations that the Justice Department has been “spying” on Christian right activists who are pushing a pro-censorship agenda in schools.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post argues, however, this “woe is us” stance is unlikely to work as well as Christian conservatives hope. It’s not just that most Americans reject the notion that federal agencies are biased against conservatives, he argues. It’s that most people are repulsed by the “toxic atmosphere of threats and violence toward educators” that is being fueled by the religious right’s book banning campaign. So Sargent recommends that Democrats lean into this, using Jordan’s antics to remind voters of why they reject the war on teachers and librarians.

He is right. While the religious right had a surge of popularity during the George W. Bush years — remember the “purity ring” trend? — it’s been in a dramatic decline for the past decade and a half. White Christians are now a minority of Americans, in no small part because right-wing politics and anti-science attitudes caused huge numbers of younger people to give up on organized religion entirely. Christian conservatives cry about how they’re so oppressed, but it’s unlikely to fool anyone. Abortion bans and protests against drag shows are just a reminder that the Christian right is the same as it always was: A bunch of busybodies and prudes who want to impose their sexual hang-ups on the rest of us.

The Grammys tantrum is more of the same. Republicans can yell about Satan until they’re red in the face, but all most people will hear is a bunch of jerks who using religion as a cover to steal your joy. Uptight prigs have never been less popular, and whining will not change that for the Christian right.

State of the Union: Americans are exhausted — and more vulnerable to a fascist takeover than ever

When I think about President Biden and Donald Trump, I see two aging boxers.

Donald Trump was once a promoter with mob connections who always wanted to be a boxer. Trump understood the sport and knew that he had just one shot to win it all. He spent years learning how to exploit the rules, work the commissioner(s), and figure out which referees and judges were weak. Trump would use all of his money and nefarious connections to his advantage.

He pounced at just the right moment to announce that he was challenging the world heavyweight champion for the belt. The public, mostly, laughed at him. The news media thought he was a joke, and it was all a stunt. Trump had no experience they proclaimed. How could he be taken seriously?

Well, Trump got his title shot and won.

He is a dirty fighter who tears at and bites his opponent. Trump used rabbit punches and other illegal moves — including punching his opponent in the groin and biting his ear — to win. Trump paid off the referee and judges. When Trump feared that he was losing the championship fight he fell to one knee and screamed that his opponent is cheating. Of course, this was all a lie. When Trump is in trouble his cornermen throw salt in the eyes of the opponent or poke and grab at him.

Trump’s fans are ecstatic and utterly devoted to him. He is the ultimate heel champion, combining boxing with professional wrestling — and he has the fame, the beautiful women, the money, and the big gold world championship belt. The American people and the boxing establishment, however, are disgusted with Trump and his antics.

The news media has engaged in endless false equivalency and “bothsidesism” where Biden’s failures have been amplified while Trump and the Republican fascists’ lawbreaking, criminality, and existential danger to American democracy and society have, in many ways, been downplayed.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a respected boxer who, until Trump, never got his shot at the world heavyweight title. Biden won all the other championships that mattered but never THAT ONE. Something or someone always stopped that from happening. He is technically sound but uninspiring in the ring. Boxing experts and insiders sing Biden’s praises, but the fans and media never really warmed to him. Biden lacks Muhammad Ali’s charisma and of course skill. He doesn’t carry himself or cut a promo like the recently deceased Jay Briscoe or professional wrestling legends such as Ric Flair or The Rock. Still, there is something about Biden and his dutifulness, craft, intelligence, and quiet way of taking care of business that convinced the American people that he could be the one to dethrone the reigning champion.

As expected and hoped, in a methodical workman-like fashion, Biden would soundly defeat Trump, who claimed that he never lost and the whole thing was rigged. Trump even had his fans run into the ring and riot. Trump continues to hold rallies around the country where he proclaims that he is the real champion of the world and that he is going to beat Biden into a pulp when they fight again next year. Biden has now been champion for two years — and has done much to restore dignity to the sport — while Trump and his followers are continuing to cause mayhem and trouble across the country.

Yet the public appears to have grown tired of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

New survey data suggests that people think that both are too old. They want new champions to cheer and boo in 2024. As is true in politics and sports, novelty and generational change are inexorable forces that push people on and off the grand stage. A new public opinion poll from the Washington Post and ABC News puts that truism in stark relief:

President Biden and former president Donald Trump may have each drawn a record number of votes in 2020, but at this early stage in the 2024 election cycle, Americans show little enthusiasm for a rematch between the two well-known yet unpopular leaders, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Neither Biden nor Trump generates broad excitement within their own party, and most Americans overall say they would feel dissatisfied or angry if either wins the general election.

Biden, who has said he intends to seek reelection, has no current opposition for the Democratic nomination. Trump is likely to face at least several challengers in his bid to lead his party for a third consecutive election.

Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, the Post-ABC poll finds 58 percent say they would prefer someone other than Biden as their nominee in 2024 — almost double the 31 percent who support Biden. That is statistically unchanged since last September.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 49 percent say they prefer someone other than Trump as their nominee in 2024, compared with 44 percent who favor the former president. That too is statistically unchanged from last September.

More than 6 in 10 Americans (62 percent) say they would be “dissatisfied” or “angry” if Biden were reelected in 2024, while 56 percent say the same about the prospect of Trump returning to the White House for a second time.

…

But negative sentiment is also notable. More than one-third (36 percent) say they would be angry if Trump wins while 30 percent say that about a Biden victory. Fewer than 2 in 10 are enthusiastic about Trump (17 percent), and just 7 percent are enthusiastic about Biden.

The new Washington Post – ABC News poll is one of many that have recently shown how many Americans want to move on from Biden and Trump.

Sorry, Joe Biden, Kevin McCarthy is not a “decent man”: Today’s GOP are fascists, not your friends

And quite predictably, the mainstream news media and the pundits and the Church of the Savvy will continue with their obsolete and inadequate approaches for explaining and analyzing the deeper meaning of this poll and what it reveals about America’s democracy crisis and the ongoing neofascist disaster. So the mainstream news media will focus on the poll and horserace politics. Why? Because it is an easy and familiar story to write. They will frame this poll and its results in the context of rival political personalities and a struggle between various factions in the Republican and Democratic parties for control. Again, this is an easy and familiar story to write that does not really reveal anything new, but readers will likely read, click, and share it. The “media” in the “news media,” after all, translates as money and business.

To this point, the news media has engaged in endless false equivalency and “bothsidesism” where Biden’s failures have been amplified while Trump and the Republican fascists’ lawbreaking, criminality, and existential danger to American democracy and society have, in many ways, been downplayed. In essence, the news media as an institution has reasoned that “they were not hard enough on Trump” so, for reasons of “fairness” they must be equally, if not more hard on Biden – even it means manufacturing “scandals.” The mainstream news media must also for reasons of “balance” and “fairness” allow former Trump regime members a platform (and employment) to launder their befouled reputations.

On this, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her newsletter Letters from an American that “A poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News, written up today in the Washington Post, shows that 62% of Americans think Biden has not accomplished much in his two years in office. In fact, his administration ranks as one of the most consequential since the New Deal in the 1930s. Whether you love what he’s done or hate it, to think nothing has happened suggests a terrible disconnect between image and reality.” As Richardson suggests, there is no equivalent between Trump, a coup plotter and fascist, and Biden, a man who has shown that he sincerely loves and cares about the nation and is doing his best, however imperfectly, to be a positively transformative president who leaves things much better than when he entered office.

Republicans know that exhaustion is one of their most powerful weapons.

The deeper and much more important story that the mainstream news media should be focusing on in response to the new poll is how it is just another indicator of how America’s governing institutions are experiencing a legitimacy crisis. Polling and other research have repeatedly shown that the American people increasingly view the parties, the courts, Congress, and other political and social institutions with suspicion, and a lack of trust if not outright disdain. There is a deep feeling that the country has been going in the wrong direction for some time and that its leaders and other elites are disconnected from the real concerns, needs, pain, and experiences of the “average American.” In all, the American people know that something is terribly wrong and broken in American society. Albeit for different reasons (and driven by divergent motivations and priors), this is true on both the left and the right.

Fascists and authoritarians, especially fake right-wing populists, are fueled by such feelings and emotions. Political leaders and movements of that ilk represent change, a break from normal and something exciting through destruction and tearing down the old to build something new. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political advisor, summarized that agenda when he infamously said in 2013, “I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Ultimately, the more “the system” is perceived to be broken and dysfunctional – today’s Republican Party and “conservatives” spent decades gutting it from within – the easier it is for malign actors to grow their anti-democracy and anti-human revolutionary movement. Republicans know that exhaustion is one of their most powerful weapons. Thus, the Washington Post – ABC News poll about how Democrats and Republicans are both tired of their respective leaders is actually a win for the Republican fascists and their forces.

For all of the happy pill talk about how the Democrats “won” the midterms, Trump is supposedly in trouble and is (finally) going to jail, and the “red tide” didn’t materialize, a broken and spent people are increasingly ready to accept the neofascist and other hateful poison(s). Meanwhile, the mainstream political class, news media and other elites are largely at a loss as to what to do about it.

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While reading the new Washington Post – ABC News poll, I was reminded of a moment that has stuck with me for two years. On Nov 7, 2020, I was woken up by the sounds of car horns, loud music, and cheering. Like most Americans, I was anxiously waiting for President Biden to be declared the next president of the United States and hopeful that our long national nightmare would finally be over. I knew what the horns and cheers and other jubilant sounds meant. Donald Trump was beaten. I quickly showered and dressed and ran outside. I put on my favorite jacket and good service boots and went to Trump Tower here in downtown Chicago to watch the celebrations. People were dancing. There was a group of teenagers and other young people playing YG & Nipsey Hussle’s song “FDT (Fuck Donald Trump)”. I most certainly will never forget the man on his classic motorcycle repeatedly driving by Trump Tower on Michigan Ave. with an adult-sized teddy bear wearing a helmet and scarf riding in the sidecar as people cheered them on.

I let a tear of relief and momentary joy stream down my cheek as I looked up at Trump Tower, that damned monstrosity. I laughed and uttered a few choice profanities and curses at him and that building and all that he and it and the MAGA movement represent.

I then came back to my senses.

In the film Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, Bane tells Batman: “Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.”

Bane was right.

The American people have sacrificed so much in these last few years — and they are broken and tired by Trump and what he has wrought and unleashed. America’s democracy crisis is so far from over and most of the country’s leaders and everyday people don’t even realize it. Behold a tragedy in slow motion.

about this topic

Ron DeSantis’ war against free speech is really all about abortion

On the eve of what would have been Roe v. Wade’s 50th anniversary, a federal judge handed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a victory that could further imperil abortion access nationally.

Last month, federal district court judge Robert L. Hinkle ruled that the Republican governor had violated both the U.S. and Florida constitutions when he removed twice-elected Tampa prosecutor Andrew Warren last August after Warren signed a coalition statement affirming support for abortion access and opposing the Dobbs decision. It was a direct attack on the independence of local prosecutors who publicly affirm their support for reproductive rights. Nevertheless, Warren remains without a job. He has vowed to continue his fight for reinstatement, but if the ruling remains undisturbed, other state leaders like DeSantis will be emboldened to go after prosecutors like Warren — and they, too, might get away with it. In fact, we’re already seeing these attacks in other states.

So while the decision was not about the constitutionality of yet another state abortion ban, Warren’s case is a bellwether.

Florida is officially a laboratory for fascism in the U.S.

The facts around Warren’s removal came out during a trial in December when Warren put on a convincing case that showed DeSantis was motivated by a familiar mix of factors that include demonstrating his power over a political opponent and gaining public attention for doing so. The governor’s team had even calculated the value of earned media he received as a result of removing Warren at $2.4 million.

Warren initially drew DeSantis’s ire for implementing policy changes after an independent analysis found racial differences in who was being stopped for bike and pedestrian violations by local police. Warren then became the subject of DeSantis’ ire for exercising his prosecutorial discretion in other ways — like forgiving low-level offenses in response to court backlogs created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ultimately, public statements signed by Warren about both abortion and gender-affirming healthcare apparently pushed DeSantis over the edge.

This fight is not just about Andrew Warren, and its impact is not confined to Florida.

Judge Hinkle was clearly swayed by the evidence against DeSantis. In the 59-page decision, he concluded that DeSantis disagreed with Warren politically and ideologically, and planned to take down someone he perceived as a “woke,” George Soros-backed, reform prosecutor. Warren’s public statements were held against him — a violation of his constitutional rights.

The judge also said that DeSantis abused his removal power under the Florida constitution by falsely asserting that Warren had neglected his duties as a prosecutor. In removing Warren last August, DeSantis issued a lengthy public proclamation asserting that Warren was derelict by issuing blanket non-prosecution positions on a variety of issues, including abortion care. The evidence showed that this was untrue: “The assertion that Mr. Warren neglected his duty or was incompetent is incorrect,” Judge Hinkle wrote. “This factual issue is not close.”

Call the “woke busters”: Ron DeSantis sends volunteer army to snatch books from students’ hands

Nevertheless, while the judge found that DeSantis did in fact violate the First Amendment, he could not reinstate Warren.

On the First Amendment issue, Judge Hinkle concluded that the public statements themselves — including those supporting abortion rights — were not enough of DeSantis’ motivation for Warren’s removal, a necessary component of the proof, but still decided that the question “is close and could reasonably be decided either way.” On the abuse of power, DeSantis won on a technicality. An arcane legal concept called sovereign immunity — that you can’t sue the king — barred the federal judge from ordering a state official to follow his own state’s law.

It was an empty vindication for Warren, who remains in the same position as the day he was forcibly removed from his Tampa office. For his part, Warren has said he will continue to fight Desantis’ decision, and he has options both in state and federal court available to further pursue his case. But this fight is not just about Andrew Warren, and its impact is not confined to Florida.

As this case shows, the Dobbs decision has put prosecutors at the center of the abortion fight once again. Wade in the famed Supreme Court case was the Dallas prosecutor, after all. Many prosecutors like Warren have expressed their support for reproductive justice, in spite of (and often because of) the growing criminalization of abortion and reproductive health more generally.

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Now that state legislative sessions have begun, several chambers across the country, including in Texas and Missouri, are already considering bills that would limit the jurisdiction, authorities, and discretion of local prosecutors. These bills take aim at, or are motivated by, authority relating to abortion prosecution. In other states, governors already have the power to remove or begin removal efforts against local prosecutors, based on their perception of job performance. As district attorneys and prosecutors use their inherent authority to implement reforms on charging decisions, bail, and sentencing — all steps that Warren lawfully and legitimately took — reactive state legislators and executives are taking aim at their powers.

Last month’s ruling concluded that laws had been violated but no remedy could be implemented. For now, Andrew Warren and the thousands of Floridians who elected him into office feel the brunt. The people’s will has been displaced by an abuse of power — documented and decided by a court of law. Yet the wrong has not been made right. For the future of reproductive justice in our country, it is a troubling precedent that needs prompt correction.

Biden White House blasts Manchin-GOP push for Social Security “death panel”

The Biden White House made clear on Monday that it opposes the creation of commissions to devise changes—and possible cuts—to Social Security and other U.S. trust funds, rejecting an idea embraced by Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin amid a dangerous standoff over the nation’s debt ceiling.

In a statement to Bloomberg Government, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates called the proposed commissions a “death panel for Medicare and Social Security,” repurposing a term that GOP lawmakers used frequently in their attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

Bates said the GOP’s renewed push for Social Security and Medicare commissions represents the “latest in a long line of ultimatums about how they’ll act to kill jobs, businesses, and retirement accounts if they can’t cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.”

The commissions in question are central to legislation known as the TRUST Act, which Sens. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Manchin, D-W.Va., and other lawmakers reintroduced in 2021 and have frequently touted as a potential path to a bipartisan compromise on Social Security and Medicare.

But advocates warn that the commissions—modeled after the infamous Obama-era Bowles-Simpson initiative—are an attempt to fast-track cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Under the TRUST Act, bipartisan panels of lawmakers would be established with a mandate to craft “legislation that restores solvency and otherwise improves” the programs—a vague and highly subjective standard.

The legislation would then receive expedited consideration in Congress, with no amendments permitted.

As recently as last month, Manchin floated the TRUST Act as a possible way to reach a deal with the House GOP to avert a debt ceiling disaster. Republicans have demanded steep cuts and changes to Social Security, Medicare, and discretionary spending—which includes education, healthcare, and climate outlays—as part of any deal to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit.

Bloomberg Law reported Monday that House Republican committee and caucus chairs have gotten behind the idea of forming Social Security and Medicare commissions in recent days.

“I don’t believe we’re going to do what is necessary and right, which is save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare, without having a bipartisan mechanism,” Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, chair of the House Budget Committee and a co-sponsor of the TRUST Act, told the outlet.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group that has been a vocal opponent of the TRUST Act, applauded the White House’s stated opposition to the TRUST Act.

“They are absolutely right—the TRUST Act is a ploy to gut Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors,” the group tweeted late Monday. “We need to expand Social Security’s modest benefits, never cut them.”

Will California take a hard look at tax breaks for wealthy and businesses amid growing deficit?

Every year, state financial analysts offer up a dutiful tally of the billions of dollars that California forgoes in revenue due to the tax breaks it offers cable companies, timber companies, the oil and gas industry, homeowners, renters, parents of young children and lottery winners, to name a few who reap such rewards.

All told, these so-called tax expenditures total nearly $70 billion, with many of the benefits going to higher income households and to businesses, according to the Sacramento-based California Budget and Policy Project. Unlike the budget, none of the tax breaks are subject to annual review. That, says Alissa Anderson, senior policy analyst at the Budget Center, is a problem.

“They just sort of live on year after year in the tax code. They’re not part of the budget conversation,” she said. While it requires only a majority vote of the Legislature to adopt a tax break, it requires a two-thirds vote to eliminate one.

California now faces a $24 billion budget shortfall. That’s assuming there is no recession. Gov. Gavin Newsom says he will maintain current spending levels for social programs, but advocates say the safety net needs shoring up. Wage growth is not keeping up with inflation, and $500 million in monthly pandemic-related federal food assistance is disappearing at the end of March.

“The need has not gone back down to pre-pandemic levels by any stretch of the imagination,” says Claudia Bonilla Keller, CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank, which serves working families, college students, seniors and homeless people in Orange County. Keller estimates that her food pantry network serves 370,000 people a month, up from 249,000 per month in 2019.

Those circumstances may explain why the California State Assembly’s Revenue and Taxation Committee is holding a hearing on tax expenditures on Feb. 22 entitled “Spending on Autopilot.”

California, as it turns out, trails other states, including Texas and Florida, when it comes to evaluating its tax incentives, according to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Former state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson attempted to remedy this in 2019 and then again in 2020 with bills that would have required an evaluation of some of the state’s largest corporate tax breaks.

The bill Jackson introduced in 2019 would have created a board to review major tax expenditures and make recommendations to the legislature. It was approved by state lawmakers but vetoed by Gov. Newsom after 57 businesses, trade associations, and taxpayer groups rallied in opposition, including the California Taxpayers’ Association. “That always makes me chuckle because they pretend like they really care about the taxpayer,” said Jackson, who now runs a strategic consulting firm in Santa Barbara.

The bill’s opponents said it would have created a “new and potentially costly bureaucracy” to carry out the oversight function. Newsom’s veto message said he believed tax expenditures should be “scrutinized periodically to justify their overall cost to the state’s revenue base.” However, he opposed the creation of a new board and said the state’s existing reporting requirements were adequate.

Another bill Jackson introduced in 2020 that would have put University of California researchers in charge of assessing large corporate tax breaks did not make it to the governor’s desk. “The public deserves to know whether the benefits are worth their costs or whether that funding could be put to better use, for example, for our schools,” Jackson said.

In the absence of the kind of review that Jackson pushed, it’s still possible to learn a few things about the state’s tax breaks from published reports:

Homeowners will receive $3.9 billion in tax breaks the 2022-23 fiscal year from the home mortgage interest deduction, about 24 times more than renters receive through the renters’ credit.
The state’s largest corporate tax break — valued at $4.4 billion — is called the “water’s edge” election. It allows multinational companies to exclude from their reportable earnings business conducted in foreign countries. The tax break may have an unintended consequence: allowing corporations to shield income in offshore tax havens, according to a 2016 state auditor’s report. The cost to the state of this tax break has increased sixfold since 2012 when it was valued at $700 million.
The second largest corporate tax break, a credit for research and development, mostly benefits companies with revenues of greater than a billion dollars. There was “insufficient evidence” to determine whether the R&D tax credit had fulfilled its purpose, according to the auditor’s report. That credit is estimated to cost the state $2.3 billion during this fiscal year.

Meanwhile, California corporations are contributing about half as much of their profits in state taxes than they did a generation ago due to reductions in the tax rate in the 1980s and 1990s. The tax breaks have also contributed to the reduction in California corporations’ tax burden, according to the Budget Center.

The Budget Center calculates that had California’s corporations been paying the same share of their income that they did in the early 1980s, the state would have had $14.4 billion more in its coffers in 2019, “more than the state spends on the University of California, the California State University, and student aid combined.”

Jackson says some of the tax incentives may be providing benefits. She just wants to know if they are fulfilling their purpose.

One tax credit that does come up for periodic review is the film and television tax credit program. Newsom proposes to extend that credit and expand it to $330 million per year for five years, beginning in 2025-26. Jackson counts the tax credit’s periodic review as “good governance.” It has broad support from the film and television industry and the labor unions that represent its workers.

But the Budget Center’s Jonathan Kaplan, who has authored recent reports on tax expenditures, is skeptical that the credit represents a good return on investment for California’s taxpayers, especially in a difficult budget year. “Don’t pass more tax credits at the very time that you are losing revenue unless you can clearly demonstrate that it’s achieving your objective,” Kaplan said.

A Legislative Analyst Office’s report found that the costs of the film and television tax break program exceeded its benefits. “While the credit probably caused some film and television projects to be made here, many other similar projects also were made here without receiving any financial incentive,” according to the LAO.

One of the major challenges facing policymakers who want to throttle back on corporate tax breaks is that states are in competition with one another, creating what critics say is a race to the bottom. “California is doing what it’s doing defensively,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a nonpartisan research organization based in Washington, D.C., that monitors corporate tax breaks and subsidies.

Tax breaks can go away. LeRoy noted that “a political rainbow of actors” came together to roll back a multibillion dollar tax incentive program benefiting energy companies in Texas as a way to fund schools. A decade ago, at the height of the Great Recession, California abolished its enterprise zone program, which was aimed at creating jobs in economically distressed parts of the state but was deemed an ineffective giveaway to large corporations.

For tax expenditure programs to end, “There has to be a campaign, maybe a horror story,” LeRoy said.

State of the Union: Biden faces hecklers on a rough night for Kevin McCarthy

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made vague efforts to control the raucous outbursts by members of his Republican caucus during President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address Tuesday. But lured into the fray by Biden’s surprisingly punchy delivery, fringe members of the GOP herd let loose an array of howls and heckles that the speaker couldn’t hold back. So much for “institutional norms” and the comeback of politics as usual.

In the days before the SOTU, reporters nudged McCarthy about whether he would indulge himself by ripping up his paper copy of Biden’s speech at its conclusion, mimicking then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s theatrical gesture at the conclusion of Donald Trump’s 2020 speech.

McCarthy didn’t take the bait. In a Tuesday tweet and accompanying video, the speaker tried to strike a statesmanlike pose — something of a stretch, perhaps, for this man and this moment.

“I don’t believe in the theatrics of tearing up speeches,” McCarthy said. I respect the other side, I can disagree on policy. But I want to make sure this country is stronger, economically sound, energy independent, secure and accountable.”

McCarthy even issued a veiled warning to his caucus, not that it accomplished much.

“We’re members of Congress,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju. “We have a code of ethics of how we should portray ourselves, that’s exactly what we’ll do. We’re not going to be doing childish games.”

But we’re a long way from 2009, when Rep. Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, was slapped with a formal rebuke by members of his own party after interrupting Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “You lie!”

And McCarthy’s efforts to prevent a repeat of last year’s infamously sloppy State of the Union did absolutely nothing to lower the temperature, suggesting that partisan jeering and heckling have become the new normal.

Lauren Boebert disrupts Joe Biden’s first State of the Union as he discusses his son’s death

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., never exactly a shrinking violet, was among the star hecklers last year (along with her then-friend Rep. Lauren Boebert, who barely survived the 2022 midterms.) At first, Greene’s 2023 efforts seemed focused on tweeting about Twitter.

Reading material at #SOTU pic.twitter.com/4CFgHXboWx

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 8, 2023

That didn’t last long. By the time Biden addressed calls by some Republicans to cut Medicare — like those from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — Greene was on her feet again, in a startling white outfit with a fur-trimmed collar.

“Lots of booing, finger waving on GOP side as Biden says GOP wants to cut Medicare, Social Security. [Greene] — wearing a huge fur coat — standing up and shouting from back of chamber ‘Liar!'” Politico’s Sarah Ferris tweeted.

Biden displayed unusual agility in his responses, although he had some of his customary problems with mispronunciation and slightly slurred speech. (The president rehearses his speeches carefully to correct for a lifelong speech impediment.) He landed a number of jokes and on several occasions commanded a standing ovation from both parties, as when he announced new standards that “all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects” must be manufactured in the U.S.

But the Kumbaya moments were short-lived, and soon Biden was back to fielding jeers.

“End the mandates!” shouted Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., when Biden spoke on COVID-19 recovery efforts.

Several Republicans began jeering when Biden discussed plans to slow the flow of fentanyl into the country. “Close the border!” Greene shouted during the rumbling. “It’s coming from China!” (The U.S. and China are not bordering nations, but perhaps those were discrete thoughts.)

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Politico’s Rachel Bade caught a rare break in McCarthy’s otherwise stony facade when he “visibly shushed his members to pipe down.”

That came after Biden’s somber anecdote about a young woman’s fentanyl overdose death, when Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., called out, “It’s your fault!”

In an interview with Politico’s Olivia Beavers shortly thereafter, Ogles did not retreat. “He has left our border wide open and allowed our streets to be flooded with drugs,” the Tennessee Republican said. “Meanwhile 60% of women and children are raped trying to cross. Yes, it’s his fault.” (No source for that rape claim was cited.)

After appearing to glare in Ogles’ direction and mouthing for others to shush, McCarthy rose from his seat, lips pursed, to join Vice President Kamala Harris in applauding Biden.

Some of the political drama on Tuesday night was virtually silent.

Before Biden’s speech began, as the procession of officials from all three branches of government filled the House chamber, all eyes were on Rep. George Santos, the embattled New York Republican with a largely fictional résumé, as he apparently had a tense exchange with Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

“Looks like Mitt Romney just said something to George Santos that Santos did not like,” tweeted Ben Jacobs.

Looks like Mitt Romney just said something to George Santos that Santos did not like

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) February 8, 2023

“I’m told Sen. Mitt Romney said to Rep. George Santos: ‘You don’t belong here,’ according to a member who witnessed the tense exchange,” CNN’s Melanie Zanoma reported.

Ben Siegel of ABC News engaged in a little amateur lip-reading:

“‘What an asshole,’ Rep. Santos appears to mouth to a colleague as a few senators — Manchin, Sinema, Romney — walk by him into the chamber.”

Bryan Metzger noted a frosty parade past Santos’ aisle seat as Vice President Harris, along with senators of both parties, including Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., all avoided shaking his hand.

As Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady, entered the chamber to bipartisan applause, Santos declined to clap and retreated, spending much of the president’s speech apparently tweeting on his cell phone. Possibly he was venting his spleen at Romney:

Hey @MittRomney just a reminder that you will NEVER be PRESIDENT! https://t.co/ANxiQPxAua

— Pants On Fire with George Santos (@MrSantosNY) February 8, 2023

Santos’ final faux pas came when Biden announced a policy to cap insulin prices at $35 for seniors on Medicare. It would be reasonable for a congressman from a largely suburban district with many older residents to stand and applaud, but Santos did so before realizing he was the odd man out — other Republicans weren’t clapping, as Matt Fuller of the Daily Beast tweeted. Then he sat back down, alone in a crowd.

Pennsylvania family “hell-bent on Trump winning” found dead in “suicide pact”

A Pennsylvania family who police say died as part of a suicide pact last week were described by a former acquaintance of being “hell-bent” on seeing former President Donald Trump reelected in 2020.

In an interview with NBC News, Pennsylvania man Bret Stabley said that the Daub family — 62-year-old James Daub, 59-year-old Deborah Daub, and 26-year-old Morgan Daub — were conservative Christians who were “very, very huge” Trump supporters.

“They were just so hell-bent on Trump winning, like this could be the end if he doesn’t,” said Stabley, who runs the pro shop at Bowlers Supply in York, Pennsylvania, where both Deborah Daub and Morgan Daub were longtime customers.

A neighbor of the Daubs, who spoke under condition of anonymity, confirmed their deep religious conviction and said that their front yard was “littered” with pro-Trump signs during election season.

There is no evidence to link the family’s suicide pact to the results of the 2020 presidential election, although police haven’t provided many additional details about their deaths beyond the fact that the decision to take their own lives appeared to be a “joint decision.”

“Police believe Deborah Daub shot and killed her husband and then was shot and killed by Morgan, who died by suicide,” writes NBC News. “Police said there were no signs of forced entry or struggle and no evidence that anyone else had been present. An investigation into the deaths has been closed.”

A note left by Deborah Daub makes reference to an unspecified “evil that has mounted against Morgan and the family.”

Elijah Wood slams AMC Theatres’ ticket price change, says it will “penalize people for lower income”

Elijah Wood has made it clear that he’s not a fan of AMC Theatres’ proposed plans to change ticket pricing.

The “Lord of the Rings” actor, who is slated to appear in the upcoming season of Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” criticized the theater chain’s new Sightline initiative, which assigns ticket prices based on a seat’s specific location. Under this new initiative, theatergoers in the same theater will all pay different prices for their seats rather than the standard ticket rates.

“The movie theater is and always has been a sacred democratic space for all,” Wood wrote. “This new initiative by AMC Theatres would essentially penalize people for lower income and reward for higher income.”

AMC Theaters set to challenge MoviePass with new $20 subscription plan

Announced Monday, AMC’s Sightline program will start Friday at select theaters in New York, Chicago and Kansas City, and slowly expand to all AMC locations across the country by the end of the year. Per Variety, the initiative features three seat-pricing options: Standard Sightline, which includes the most common seats in the theater that are available for the traditional cost of a ticket; Value Sightline, which includes seats in the front row and some wheelchair-accessible spots that are available for a lower price than Standard Sightline seats; and Preferred Sightline, which includes seats in the middle of the theater that are available for a higher price. AMC noted that theaters using Sightline must provide a detailed seat map that outlines each seating option and its corresponding ticket price.

Of course, AMC Stubs A-List members, who already have paid a monthly fee have an advantage; they can reserve seats in the Preferred Sightline Section at no additional cost and the Value Sightline Section for a discount.

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AMC Theatres executive Eliot Hamlisch explained the motive behind Sightline in a statement published by Entertainment Weekly:

“Sightline at AMC more closely aligns AMC’s seat pricing approach to that of many other entertainment venues, offering experienced-based pricing and another way for moviegoers to find value at the movies. While every seat at AMC delivers an amazing moviegoing experience, we know there are some moviegoers who prioritize their specific seat and others who prioritize value moviegoing. Sightline at AMC accommodates both sentiments to help ensure that our guests have more control over their experience, so that every trip to an AMC is a great one.”

AMC’s statement doesn’t seem to acknowledge that some moviegoers want both: a great experience and low cost. So far, there’s no indication what the price differences will be. For now, it does look like AMC’s new strategy could drive Stubs A-List membership sales, just to avoid the hassle of tiered seating prices, and its $5 Tuesday discount will still be in effect for everyone.

about movie theatres:

The 8 traits that can help you identify a psychopath, according to experts

In an era when serial killers are fetishized, gory horror movies continue to be popular and lacking a conscience gives one a competitive edge in politics, it is hardly surprising that our culture is fascinated by sociopaths. The clinical term for sociopathy is antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), a condition marked by lack of regard for right, wrong, and more generally the feelings of others. While the most conspicuous ASPD patients are those who make headlines — usually for all the wrong reasons — there are countless people you will meet in your everyday life who have ASPD and/or a similar neuropsychiatric disorder, psychopathy.

“People who associate with sociopaths are likely to become their victims, or to victimize other people while serving the sociopath’s interests.”

If that sounds unsettling, bear in mind that not everyone with ASPD goes on to commit “Dexter”-style killing sprees. Of course, most of us will probably aspire to avoid individuals with ASPD or psychopathy, both in terms of direct interactions and in terms of creating environments where they can flourish.

But this is easier said than done, unless you know what to look for. Those with ASPD might be charming, friendly and disarming at first blush. The key is to learn to identify red flags.

Why serial killers are drawn to politics

“Sociopathy is very consistent with the dark tetrad of narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and sadism,” explained Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a licensed clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, in an email to Salon. “In a word — these are your combative, blustery, reactive, thin-skinned bar brawlers, road ragers, and bullies. They are deeply manipulative, so if they do have a job, they will be workplace bullies or tyrants.”

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Dr. Robert Faris, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis, described the clinical traits associated with ASPD: “impulsivity, aggression, irritability, disregard for the wellbeing of others, violating rules, laws, and norms, deceitfulness, manipulativeness, and lack of remorse for one’s actions.”

Practically speaking, what does that mean? Here are eight red flags that will help you identify a sociopath, according to experts.

Lack of empathy

Durvasula told Salon that “lack of empathy” is a core characteristic possessed by sociopaths. Indeed, as Faris observed, “people who associate with sociopaths are likely to become their victims, or to victimize other people while serving the sociopath’s interests. At the very least, they will be thought of as doing so.”

Entitlement

As Durvasula elaborated to Salon, sociopaths perceive the world as owing them things and do not feel confined by moral codes when their sense of entitlement is denied. “If their belief of specialness or hypocritical belief that rules don’t apply to them isn’t honored, they will either become verbally or physically violent,” Durvasula warned. Not surprisingly, she noted that sociopaths tend to be “thin-skinned” and have trouble holding down jobs due to their “hot-headedness.”

Aggression

As a rule, people with mental illnesses are no more likely to be violent than anyone else in the population; in fact, they are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. This rule does not apply to people with ASPD, however, as multiple studies have linked ASPD and psychopathy with a tendency to commit violent crimes. A 2020 study in the journal PLOS One found that most criminal with ASPD act out impulsively, but those who score higher on psychopathic tests are more likely to commit premeditated offenses.

Recklessness

If you have ever shared the road with a driver who is going 30 miles over the speed limit, weaving between lines of traffic and with passengers in their car, you have just picked up on the essence of this trait. People with ASPD and psychopathy tend to behave, as Durvasula put it, in a way best described as “chronically irresponsible,” with a tendency to “put others at risk via their behavior (e.g. driving drunk with kids in a car, leaving children without adequate supervision).”

Controlling behavior

People with ASPD and psychopathy enjoy having power over other people. Independent filmmaker John Borowski, who has studied a number of serial killers, observed to Salon last year that “it comes down to their lust and desire for tension and power, domination and control.” Even if this does not manifest in acts of murder or criminality, it can still lead to horribly toxic and abusive relationships for those who interact with them on a professional or personal level.

Deceitfulness

Constant lying is another classic trait for psychopaths and people with ASPD. Even though people with these conditions can be charming, witty and even persuasive, they are also notoriously dishonest. Again, this is in no small part because of the lack of empathy or remorse, qualities that both keep healthy people from egregiously lying.

Insincere relationships

Sociopaths have “little capacity for close, mutually intimate relationships,” explains Durvasula. “Any relationships are superficial and transactional.” That said, this does not mean that sociopaths cannot fake close, mutually intimate relationships. After all, sociopaths can also be deftly manipulative. Tragically, many abuse victims find themselves in precisely that trap.

Violation of social norms

This quality has less to do with the sociopaths themselves than the milieu which cultivates them.

“You have no doubt encountered quite a few sociopaths in grocery stores and on airplanes, but if they stood out at all, it was probably for being rude or cutting in line,” Faris wrote to Salon. People with ASPD and psychopathy thrive in environments where they can act with impunity.

Faris noted that one’s respect for social norms affects this; environments with “soft rules” might be prime environments for sociopaths to thrive. Consider “the degree to which the context is governed by soft rules — either norms, or rules without enforcement teeth,” Faris said. “If we’ve learned anything from the past five years, it’s that even the most enduring, foundational traditions of our democracy can be tossed aside with impunity. It requires gumption and a certain bull-like force of personality, but norms often turn out to be the China shop.”

about mental health

Wildly popular “Yellowstone” is in danger of cancellation, thanks to star Kevin Costner

The beloved and long-running Western drama “Yellowstone” may be in danger of cancellation due to, of all things, star Kevin Costner’s schedule.

On Monday, Deadline and other outlets reported that co-creator and showrunner of “Yellowstone,” Taylor Sheridan, along with Paramount Global and Paramount Network, were allegedly planning to end the hugely popular show and were in the process of “plotting a potential franchise extension to continue the Dutton saga, a new show with Matthew McConaughey in talks to star.”

Costner stars as John Dutton in the Paramount + series, the patriarch of a powerful ranching family in the contemporary American West. For the second half of its fifth season, Costner only wanted to spend a week filming his scenes, apparently in order to give more time to his separate project, “Horizon,” a film series which Costner is co-writing, producing, directing and starring in. Paramount said no to the one-week-only filming, and released an official response which raised more questions than answers.

The “Yellowstone” effect: Welcome to the new era of TV Westerns

A spokesperson for Paramount said, “We have no news to report. Kevin Costner is a big part of ‘Yellowstone’ and we hope that’s the case for a long time to come. Thanks to the brilliant mind of Taylor Sheridan, we are always working on franchise expansions of this incredible world he has built.”

The spokesperson went on to say, “Matthew McConaughey is a phenomenal talent with whom we’d love to partner.”

Only this week, “1923,” a prequel for “Yellowstone” starring Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, was renewed for a second season. In 2022, “Yellowstone” reached over 12 million views for its fifth season premiere, making it the most popular scripted series of the television viewing season. The year previous, “Yellowstone” became the top-earning TV franchise, including both digital and Blu-ray sales.

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Like his popular “Yellowstone” series, Costner’s forthcoming “Horizon” is a Western, described by People and others as an “epic,” which is currently filming in Utah. The film is in four parts, and according to People, the story is “one that’s especially important to the actor.”

The second half of Season 5 of “Yellowstone” returns to Paramount + later this year. Watch a trailer for the season via YouTube below:

about “Yellowstone”

“Kill everyone you need to”: Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory about “foaming-at-the-mouth Black people”

Infowars host and chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned on Sunday’s show that “foaming-at-the-mouth Black people” would wage war on white populations after they flee “race-specific bioweapons” attacks in Africa later this decade. Jones issued these racist predictions while declaring himself a “vessel” of God.

“They intend on making the world so hellish in the build-up to 2030 that everybody will just ‘wink, wink’ when they release the race-specific bioweapons starting with Africa that are gonna wipe that continent absolutely out. And you’ll be under such invasion from the refugees of the economic warfare in Africa that you will quietly, while you’re playing cards with your buddies say, ‘well, it had to be done.’ And when you go along with that metaphysically, spiritually, culturally, the devil’s got your soul,” said Jones.

“So I don’t like the big giant African hordes being brainwashed against us and the left programming brown people to hate white people. It’s all part of a plan, folks. It’s all part of a very sophisticated plan and I don’t just study history. I don’t just study the New World Order,” Jones continued. “I have the Holy Spirit. Doesn’t mean I’m a perfect vessel, far from it. But I do have deep connection to God and God tells me that if I take part in wiping out the brown people, the Black people, that I will be cut off from God. We’re supposed to lift each other up.”

Jones then encouraged responding through violence.

“Now that doesn’t mean when a gang of racist, foaming-at-the-mouth Black people come to rape, rob, or kill you, which is just, it’s out of control right now, that you don’t defend yourself and kill every person you need to protect your family if they’re attacking you,” he suggested.

“That said though, just because they’re brainwashed, some of them, and are being part of that doesn’t mean we have to fall into the brainwashing either,” the right-wing provocateur added. “And they tell you everything they’re doing in the movie, the ‘Kingsman,’ where they send out the program through the cell phones and cell phone towers to make everybody start killing each other. That’s what Klaus Schwab talks about, the angrier world, this is part of that plan. And so the Black people that have succumbed to this have succumbed to it through mind control. Doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”

Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.

“I watched ‘Night Court’ with my grandmother”: Melissa Rauch on reviving the comforting ’80s comedy

Landing a part on a popular sitcom that lasts for 12 seasons and 279 episodes is a stroke of luck most actors will never experience. Following that by starring in a new comedy that becomes its network’s biggest premiere in a half decade is a feat that “Night Court” star Melissa Rauch says she can’t get over.

“In this business, I feel like I’ve set myself up after some years of rejection to just expect the worst and hope for the best,” Rauch told Salon a week after the ratings came in for NBC’s revival of the beloved ’80s classic, just days before its no-brainer second season renewal. “We were just all very, very pleasantly, pleasantly surprised.”

Success shouldn’t necessarily be a strange feeling to Rauch, who had a career in stand-up comedy before she stepped into the role for which she’s still best remembered: Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz on “The Big Bang Theory.”

“The Big Bang Theory” ended its run as the most popular comedy on TV, reigning as the top-rated show in its 11th season. People loved each character – especially Bernadette, who joined in the third season and spent later episodes balancing being a wife to her “Howie” (Simon Helberg) and mother of two children with enjoying a fulfilling career.

Bernadette might have enjoyed “Night Court” Judge Abby Stone, the daughter of the Honorable Harold T. Stone, the late Harry Anderson’s character on the original Reinhold Weege-created series that aired from 1984 through 1992. Like her father, Abby is an optimist who believes in fairness, although she struggles in ways her father didn’t. She’s determined to honor her father’s name and reputation by taking up his old job.

Otherwise, there aren’t many familiar faces or names on the Manhattan court’s graveyard shift aside from John Larroquette’s return as Dan Fielding, who has switched from the prosecution’s side to the defense.

In a recent Television Critics Association press conference, Rauch and her fellow executive producers Winston Rauch, her husband, and Dan Rubin did not rule out future cameo appearances by Larroquette’s co-stars Marsha Warfield and Richard Moll. (Sadly both Markie Post, who played public defender Christine Sullivan, and Charles Robinson, known to audiences as court clerk Mac Robinson, died in 2021.)

Rauch is part of the generation that grew up watching Larroquette on the original show and has a profound love for the classic multi-camera sitcom’s timeless ability to bring people together. In our “Salon Talks” conversation, we also discuss the changes the revival has rolled into the “Night Court” formula to ensure its relevance in 2023.

Watch the “Salon Talks” episode here or read a transcript of our conversation below:

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You came from “Big Bang Theory,” which was the No. 1 comedy for a really long time. To follow that up with a strong premiere on another comedy is pretty rare, isn’t it?

You know what? I think it is. I think what makes me happy is that there seems to be an appetite for the multi-camera sitcom . . . I’m such a fan of an old-school sitcom, and to see that there’s an appetite for that just makes me so, so incredibly happy.

“The Big Bang Theory” of evolution: The show honored smart misfits and let them grow

“Big Bang” was filmed in front of a live studio audience. That was one of those studios that whenever you were there, you could feel the energy even coming from the crowd and then going back and forth during production during a taping. Was that important for “Night Court” to make sure that there was a live studio audience during each production?

Absolutely. I didn’t know if we were going to be able to have it because we started developing it during COVID lockdown. When we were talking about it, everything was very theoretical. If we get to do this, that would be our hope. That was something that was very exciting to all of us involved with John Larroquette and Dan Rubin, our executive producer, and Winston Rauch, my husband is also an executive producer. Like you were saying, that energy from the audience is so important and it really informs so much of the rhythm of comedy when you’re doing a multi-camera sitcom.

“I was a kid who really felt other than a lot growing up. Comedy and these shows, it felt like friendship.”

Of course, doing this continuation of “Night Court,” the OG, that was very built into the DNA of the show is this live studio audience. I really feel like you can’t do “Night Court” without that live audience aspect. It’s doing a multi-cam. It’s very much like doing a play every week, and having an audience when you do theater is so important. When we did the pilot, we had half an audience, because it was still in the height of the pandemic. Everyone was socially distanced and masked up. We didn’t even have risers. Everyone was on the ground floor. In many ways, it sort of felt like a hospital waiting room. But then by the time we got to series, we had the full stands. It was just really wonderful to have that experience and that connection with them.

There’s an aura of comfort about this revivalist continuation of “Night Court,” because this isn’t the previous format with all new characters. This is a continuation of the story mainly through John Larroquette’s Dan, but also through Abby. I think we’re seeing a few of these sitcoms that people loved from 20, 30, even 40 years ago coming back. “Frasier” and “That ’90s Show” are back now. What do you think it is about these revivals that has such appeal?

There’s a few different things. I know personally, as a fan of the original, even if I had nothing to do with this, I would be so interested to see where this character of Dan Fielding ended up all these years later. I think there’s just an interest in the same way that you sometimes will look on Facebook and be like, “What happened to that person that I knew at the time? What are they doing now?” I think there’s just that genuine curiosity to see this beloved character that you spent a lot of time with and see what they’re up to now.

Whenever we watch a show with anyone, with any member of our family, I know I watched “Night Court” with my grandmother, who’s no longer with us, and then when you get to revisit something like that, it feels like you’re laughing with that person again. I think, “Oh, she would’ve loved this.” Or I’ve heard from people who’ve tuned into this one — by the way, I know when I say tuned in, I really date myself — When I’ve spoken to people who’ve watched this, they’ll say, “I used to watch this with my father and my mother who’s no longer here,” and I think it’s a nice connection to a time in your life where you were creating memories with someone who may no longer be here. Going back to the very first sitcoms, that’s why they’re invented, first and foremost, to make you laugh. I also think there was something really special about the original “Night Court.”

Something that you really get to do in multi-cams, which I think is really special, but “Night Court” specifically, is you have this heightened comedy. You have almost these vaudevillian, even sometimes absurdist moments, and then you get to sandwich in these moments of heart. I really think that the best comedy comes from being able to make someone feel something alongside that laughter. That’s what I’m hoping we’re we’re able to do with this.

“Night Court” is in a very fundamental way a workplace comedy. At the same time . . . in the past couple of years, there have been a lot of cultural interrogations of how justice is portrayed in primetime television, and particularly that has to do with policing, mainly talking about “Law and Order.” I think courtroom dramas are a little bit different. But the reason I wanted to just bring this up is that as we are seeing “Night Court,” this version of it, was there any discussion about what types of cases would come in front of Abby and which ones you say like, “Ooh, we’re really going to avoid that?”

I think there’s conversations that really date back to the very beginning of the development process . . . If you look at some of the cases from the original, I mean, there’s ventriloquist dummies who are on trial. It’s the nocturnal judicial system. The cases that are coming in are all pretty much left to center. First and foremost, the cases are there to make everyone laugh. What Judge Abby Stone, the character I play, does is she’s going to treat every case as if they’re on the Supreme Court.

Everyone who’s coming through that door, no matter if they are a horse or a vampire or a female werewolf, those people are going to be treated with the utmost respect. That’s really the priority is making sure that these cases are fun and everyone’s having a good time. There is an episode coming up where we do delve in a little bit to the judicial system. I’m looking forward to everyone checking that out. We do lean into that a bit. There is, of course, the comedy around it, but we do spend some time talking about what’s happening in today’s day and age.

Why “Law & Order” has returned, even if you didn’t ask for it

That’s an interesting balance to take with a show like this. Because like you said, so many of the cases that come before Abby and even before Harry Stone were really focused on the absurdity. When you were discussing including that episode, what were some of the things that you wanted to focus on?

“I really think that the best comedy comes from being able to make someone feel something alongside that laughter.”

Well, we have Lacretta, who’s our wonderful bailiff, and it’s really through her eyes and talking about why she wanted to be a part of the judicial system. It’s a wonderful episode. I think our writers did a fantastic job with it. Azie Dungey was the credited writer on that and did an incredible job. It really focuses on why Gurgs, the role that Lacretta plays, wanted to be a part of the judicial system. She has a beautiful monologue, without giving too much away, that speaks to that. I think our writers did a really wonderful job with it, while also having a lot of fun throughout the episode.

There are things about “Night Court” that wouldn’t necessarily fly today, particularly with Dan. John Larroquette’s character Dan Fielding. . . . Now, his character is very mature and changed. I’m wondering, in terms of the discussions about bringing John’s character Dan back and in terms of what you wanted to bring to this new iteration, did that come into play when you were talking about how [to] maintain the balance, the formula of the classic “Night Court” and still make it . . . relevant to today?

Well, I think, first of all, there were definite conversations about how Dan Fielding exists today. When you look at the character in the original, there were small evolutions, very small, but seeds that were planted about who this new Dan Fielding is. There’s an episode, one of my favorites, and we even spoke about it in the pitch, the “Dan Operation” episode. It’s a beautiful, beautiful scene between him and Harry Stone, Harry Anderson who played him. He talks about how he’s been with all these women. Even though he’s had all these experiences with women, no one has ever said “I love you,” and that is truly what he wanted.

You see this through all the womanizing and all the flirtations and everything that we saw Dan Fielding do; at the end of the day, he was this insecure guy who just really wanted love. What it did is anytime you then saw him strike out with a woman or do something that was inappropriate, you maybe laughed a little harder because you saw where it was coming from. And then it was important to us that that evolution really be strengthened as we were going into the series. He found love. He lost love. He’s been humbled by life. I think as hopefully with anyone over time, they would mature and grow. That’s truly who he is now. He’s not without fault. He still thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, and he’s still very much a narcissist, but I think that love and loss has just really shaped him.

For so many years, people were so attached to Bernadette from “Big Bang Theory.” Very different character, same level of intelligence, I’d say, certainly emotional intelligence. But do you have any reaction with people saying, “Wow, for instance, I didn’t know that wasn’t your voice,” or things like that?

Yeah, I think there have been people who really did think I spoke that way, which I honestly love. The “Big Bang” fans have been just so wonderful over the years, and they’re a passionate group that I’m so grateful for. I’ve been getting, “Oh, that’s your voice? I didn’t know she talked like that.” Part of me was like, “Oh, I should have gradually introduced the voice on this show.” As a mother, I should have known that I should have weaned everyone off of it, like just maybe started the season like [high pitched voice] “You’re guilty!” And then as the season went on, just made my voice lower and lower until I spoke in this register.

“She’s actively choosing the light on a daily basis because she has no other choice. I’m excited about the layer that adds to her.”

That would be kind of tough to write in, I’d say.

It would. It would.

Here’s one aspect about Abby I wanted to talk about, and it’s the episode where it’s brought up that she is a recovering alcoholic. Can you talk about your decision to make that part of the character?

In talking about who we wanted Abby to be, I love the fact that she’s this eternal optimist. I love that she’s adopted her father’s philosophy in the courtroom, that she judges people based on who they are, not their crimes, and she really wants to get to know them. I loved all that groundwork that we laid for her in the pilot. I thought Dan Rubin, our executive producer and showrunner, who was really one of the reasons why I agreed to play this role in the first place because I loved his brilliant pilot script so much – when we were talking about where we wanted Abby to go, I think it was important to all of us that she wasn’t an optimist because she’s naive or she hasn’t experienced life in any way.

I didn’t want the optimism to come from this Pollyanna place of we can make the world better and I want to see the best in people. I think it’s coming from a place of darkness. It’s coming from a place of she’s been through some stuff. She’s been through it. She’s in recovery. She’s faced the dark roads of addiction, and she’s learned that the alternative, the darkness isn’t for her. She’s actively choosing the light on a daily basis because she has no other choice. I’m excited about the layer that adds to her, because I think it informs everything. When someone is on the stand and she’s trying to figure out what’s the best path for them, that’s informing everything. That second chance on life is informing how she weighs in on every case, even though no one knows that. And then there’s also the part that she lost so much time.

When you talk about addiction and what that does, they often say that whatever time your addiction started, you can freeze at that age until you get in recovery and you lose that chunk of time. And then when you add to that the grief of losing her father and she knows that this span of time with him was lost, and she doesn’t get a chance now to make that up. That’s a part of her coming back to “Night Court” is to connect with him and to make him proud, as she says in that monologue, that he had faith in her that she didn’t have in herself, and he was holding it for her until she had it again. This is a tribute to that. I think really when she speaks about her father with such reverence, I think it’s because of that belief that he had in her.

It seems to me with this character, it’s a great gateway into understanding her empathy in addition to her optimism.

Exactly. Exactly. I think you sometimes have to have been through darkness to understand darkness. When these people are coming before her, it’s not just talk of her saying, “I want to give them a second chance, and I want to figure out what’s underneath all this.” Because I think she’s often been judged by the surface and seeing like, “Oh OK, she’s this young girl with big hopes and dreams,” but there’s more to her than that. I think she wants to make sure that everyone who comes before her is given that same opportunity.

One of the things I just wanted to circle back to the memories that you had watching the original “Night Court.” I think there’s something very special about watching a show when we’re young. We may not remember some of the details of it, but we remember the feeling of a lot of it. Of course, sitcoms we watch when we’re young teach us about comedy. You had a standup career before you came into television. What would you say that “Night Court” and shows like this may have taught you about comedy?

“I think there’s just that genuine curiosity to see this beloved character that you spent a lot of time with and see what they’re up to now.”

I think it really was about how it made me feel. I was a kid who really felt other than a lot growing up. Comedy and these shows, it felt like friendship. There was a connection there and it’s in your living room. In my case, it was in my childhood bedroom. There’s a part that even though I was watching it and there was a screen in between us, I felt welcome there. There was a self-acceptance within that because everyone on “Night Court” was a bit left to center, and that’s sort of how I’ve been. I felt there was just something very inviting about that. I think also these shows really laid the groundwork for how I feel about comedy in the sense that, as I mentioned before, the laughter, I love that that’s front and center, but I love the ability to flip that comedy mask, which, of course, on the other side is tragedy, and the fact that we get to feel a bit before we flip that mask again to the laughter. To me, I remember watching those moments, the Michael J. Fox episode of “Night Court” in the first season, which I remember when it was in reruns because I wasn’t old enough when it aired the first time to see it, but I would catch that when in syndication.

I remember seeing when it was going to come up in TV Guide and recording it on a VHS tape because I loved it so much and I wanted to study it, also because I love Michael J. Fox’s as Alex P. Keaton my mind was blown that he was going to be on “Night Court” too. But I remember watching that scene, it’s a beautiful scene between Harry Anderson and Michael J. Fox. I just remember there’s this beautiful hug between them. Michael J. Fox plays this teenage runaway. I think it was this lesson of, oh, if I’m feeling something and then there’s just a joke that slipped in there, that . . . Comedy, a lot of it is surprise. It lives in the unexpected. If you’re having this moment of heart and then all of a sudden you’re surprised with comedy, that laugh is going to be so much bigger and feel I think so good coming out of that moment of heart. It’s what we’re hoping to do and what Dan Rubin and I think the writers have done such a beautiful job with this season. Hopefully we’ll get to do it more.

“Night Court” airs at 8 p.m. Tuesdays on NBC.

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“His empire was built on lies”: Ex-prosecutor urges Manhattan DA to charge Trump

“We developed evidence convincing us that Donald Trump had committed serious crimes. As we put the facts together, many of us came to believe that we had enough evidence to convict him, and we could present a solid case in court that would lead to a guilty verdict.”

That’s what Mark Pomerantz—one of two prosecutors involved with the Manhattan district attorney’s probe into the former president who resigned in protest last year—wrote in his new book, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, set to be published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.

The Hill, which obtained a copy of the 304-page book, reported Monday on what Pomerantz had to say about Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s current district attorney, succeeding Cy Vance Jr.

“The district attorney agreed and authorized the new prosecution,” Pomerantz wrote of Vance. “But then the district attorney’s office went through one of its very infrequent regime changes. The new regime decided that Donald Trump should not be prosecuted, and the investigation faltered.”

According to The Hill:

Bragg in a statement said he didn’t read the book, but he criticized it for jeopardizing the office’s ongoing investigation. When reached for comment, his office also provided a copy of confidentiality rules in the employee handbook and a series of statements from prosecutor groups raising concerns.

“After closely reviewing all the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz’s investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case, and also those I brought on: more work was needed. Put another way, Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said in a statement.

“Our skilled and professional legal team continues to follow the facts of this case wherever they may lead, without fear or favor. Mr. Pomerantz decided to quit a year ago and sign a book deal,” he added.

The book is not the first time Pomerantz has made his argument that investigators had enough evidence to charge Trump, who is now seeking the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. Last March, The New York Timesreported on the ex-prosecutor’s resignation letter to Bragg the previous month.

“I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the penal law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual statements of financial condition,” Pomerantz wrote. “His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.”

Pomerantz—who spent a year poring over Trump’s financial statements and accounting documents from 2011-20—also outlined the case against the former president Sunday in a “60 Minutes” interview CBS News‘ Bill Whitaker:

Mark Pomerantz: And what the investigation determined was that the financial statements that were submitted to banks for those years were overstated in each case by literally billions of dollars.

Bill Whitaker: Billions—

Mark Pomerantz: Billions of dollars.

Bill Whitaker: How was his business empire dependent on, or influenced by these false statements?

Mark Pomerantz: The financial statements that he prepared were given to the banks, and had to be given to the banks, in order to get the loans that he got. So he got hundreds of millions of dollars of bank financing in connection with many of his properties.

Bill Whitaker: it sounds like you’re saying that his empire is built on lies.

Mark Pomerantz: His empire was built on lies. I am saying that.

[…]

Bill Whitaker: He paid off the loans. What’s the crime? 

Mark Pomerantz: The law is crystal clear that you don’t have to prove that a loan wasn’t repaid or that a bank lost money. It’s still a crime to lie to a bank to get a loan.

Asked what his message to Bragg is now, Pomerantz said: “This was a righteous case. You should bring it. It’s important. And if you made the wrong decision, make a better decision.”

Similar to his statement to The Hill, Bragg told “60 Minutes” that he believed that further investigation was needed and his office’s probe is ongoing.

Trump lashed out at Pomerantz and what he called the CBS “hit job” on his Truth Social platform, saying in part: “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, radically deranged Mark Pomerantz, led the fake investigation into me and my business at the Manhattan D.A.’s Office and quit because D.A. Bragg, rightfully, wanted to drop the ‘weak’ and ‘fatally flawed’ case. Now, Pomerantz got himself a book deal, and is obsessively spreading falsehoods about me. With all of this vicious disinformation being revealed by a ‘prosecutor,’ how can I ever be treated fairly in New York, or anywhere else? End the Witch Hunts!”

The former president faces a variety of legal issues related to his business, his handling of classified documents, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

The “60 Minutes” interview and The Hill‘s reporting followed multiple reports about the forthcoming book—including The Daily Beastrevealing Friday that Pomerantz wrote, “To rebut the claim that Trump believed his own ‘hype’… we would have to show, and stress, that Donald Trump was not legally insane.”

“Was Donald Trump suffering from some sort of mental condition that made it impossible for him to distinguish between fact and fiction?” he added, noting that lawyers advising the district attorney’s office “discussed whether Trump had been spewing bullshit for so many years about so many things that he could no longer process the difference between bullshit and reality.”

Tucker Carlson hit with fact-check after complaining that Biden is keeping white men off courts

Former Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Michael Steele recently shared a critical reaction to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s latest racist, on-air rant.

During his Monday evening segment of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the far-right conservative host took aim at President Joe Biden as he criticized his selection of judges and diversity within the courts.

“Out of 97 federal judges confirmed under Joe Biden, total number of white men: Five,” Carlson complained on Monday evening. “Twenty-two are Black women, so this is race-based hiring. It’s illegal!”

Carlson complained despite the court having a history of being comprised of predominantly white males. Per HuffPost: “The federal judiciary is overwhelmingly white and male. The American Bar Association said last year that 70 percent of all sitting Article III federal judges are male while 78 percent are white. In addition, the organization said 16 states have no federal trial judges of color at all.”

Shortly after the segment aired, Steele took to Twitter with statistics about the demographic makeup of the court and its judges.

“Tuckems, of 226 federal judges appointed by Trump the total number of Black people? 9!! (he says in that high-pitched voice of someone awaiting puberty),” Steele tweeted. “I guess those white judges were raced-based, illegal hiring that was not about looking like America but punishing people.”

Echoing Steele’s remarks, others also pushed back against Carlson’s assessment with facts about the court and mocked the Fox News host for his complaints.

“Currently sitting federal judges: 1,407 White men: 779 (55.4%) Black women: 63 (4.5%),” legal expert Max Kennerly tweeted.

Another user tweeted, “It’s the President’s prerogative to appoint whatever judge he or she wants on the bench, Tuck. I mean, Trump pretty much appointed unqualified white wingers.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Tucker: Out of 97 federal judges confirmed under Joe Biden, total number of white men.. five. Twenty two are Black women. pic.twitter.com/C9iMPYLiKT

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 7, 2023

“This is why church pews are emptying”: Boebert called out for seemingly “praying” for Biden’s death

Speaking to a church audience, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., told the crowd to pray for Joe Biden: “May his days be few and another take his office.”

It isn’t the first time she’s made such a “prayer.” She’s been using the line “may his days be few” since 2022, when she spoke to the Charis Christian Center Family Camp Meeting in Colorado.

It once again caused an uproar among those on social media who saw the video.

“THIS is the self-proclaimed party of Jesus Christ,” tweeted political commentator Lindy Li. “This is the self-appointed party of Christianity SHAME ON YOU! This is why church pews are emptying at a ferocious rate. Why increasing numbers of Americans now say they are religiously unaffiliated. Christianity in America has devolved into a rabid tribe of Talibangelicals and gun-totin Y’all Qaeda fanatics.”

Others noted that her so-called “sermon” included her promoting her legislation to impeach the president and argued that bringing politics into church pews is yet another reason that churches should lose their tax-exempt status.

Another called it a federal crime to threaten the president, which Boebert has gotten away with in the past because she’s not asking activists to actively kill, but rather praying for death.

See the video of the incident below or at the link here:

Certain foods increase your risk of ovarian cancer — but there’s a surprising way to prevent it

The past few years haven’t been good for people with ovaries. The end of Roe v. Wade, and the subsequent banning (or near-total banning) of abortion in many states, brought woe to those of us who desire control over our own reproductive organs.

Now, it seems this new year is bringing yet more dismal health news for people with a uterus.

For every 10 percent increase in ultra-processed food consumption, researchers estimated a 2 percent increase in developing any kind of cancer.

First, a study from researchers in the United Kingdom found a link between eating more junk food and a woman’s increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. As a refresher, the term “ultra-processed” foods used in studies like these refer to foods that undergo a process that changes the food from its natural state. Ultra-processed foods are often made from extractions from “real” foods, like added fats, sugars, and starches. They’re also a staple of the American diet: think microwave dinners, candy, chips and the like that you see on the snack aisle.

“They may also contain additives like artificial colors and flavors or stabilizers,” Kathy McManus, Director of the Department of Nutrition and Director of the Dietetic Internship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, explained. “Examples of these foods are frozen meals, soft drinks, hot dogs and cold cuts, fast food, packaged cookies, cakes, and salty snacks.”

Am I an ‘almond mom’?

As explained in the journal eClinicalMedicine, researchers examined the habit of eating ultra-processed foods and the deaths and diagnoses of 34 different types of cancer. Thanks to data from the UK Biobank, a biomedical database, researchers studied the amount of ultra-processed food consumed by over 197,000 people. There was a wide range of consumption: on the low-end, ultra-processed food made up 9.1 percent of a person’s diet. On the high end, it was estimated to make up 41.4 percent of their diet. Armed with this knowledge, researchers set out to look at different health outcomes for these two sides of the ultra-processed food consumption spectrum.

Researchers then compared eating habits with medical records that listed both diagnoses of cancer, and deaths by cancer. Through this analysis, they found a peculiar link: for every 10 percent increase in ultra-processed food consumption, researchers estimated a 2 percent increase in developing any kind of cancer.

But that percentage got worse for people with ovaries. In fact, researchers estimated a 19 percent increase in diagnoses of ovarian cancer for the same interval.

The heightened risk also applied to not only being diagnosed, but dying from both ovarian and breast cancer. For each 10 percent increase in ultra-processed food consumption, there was a 16 percent increased likelihood in dying from breast cancer deaths and a 30 percent increased chance of dying from ovarian cancer — compared to the overall 6 percent increased likelihood of dying from any kind of cancer.

“This study adds to the growing evidence that ultra-processed foods are likely to negatively impact our health including our risk for cancer,” said Dr Eszter Vamos, lead senior author for the study, from Imperial College London’s School of Public Health. “Although our study cannot prove causation, other available evidence shows that reducing ultra-processed foods in our diet could provide important health benefits.”

Indeed, similar studies have found that the more someone consumes ultra-processed food, the higher the risk is for cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death for women — next to cancer. Not to mention that the American consumption of ultra-processed food has increased over the last two decades.

But fret not, fellow ovary-possessors: there is a real, if invasive, means of reducing one’s risk of ovarian cancer: surgically removing your fallopian tubes.

Indeed, the second ovary jab last week came via a surprising recommendation from the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA).

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“As the fallopian tube is the origin of most high-grade serous cancers, fallopian tube removal has been shown to dramatically reduce risk for a later ovarian cancer diagnosis,” OCRA said in its statement. “This has been referred to as ‘opportunistic salpingectomy.'”

The recommendation came with a disheartening reality check: that despite efforts, a reliable, early ovarian cancer detection approach for average risk patients is still likely 10 to 20 years away. Currently, women can test to see if they have the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations which could indicate they have a very high risk for ovarian cancer. However, there are many other risk factors that aren’t visible with a genetic test.

Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), most women who get ovarian cancer aren’t considered “high risk.” Rather, there are several factors that can increase one’s risk, such as simply being middle-aged or older, having family history of ovarian cancer or endometriosis.

While the recommendation is certainly surprising, many doctors in the field are agreeing it makes sense — as most ovarian cancer starts in the fallopian tubes.

“Ovarian cancer is a relatively rare disease, and typically, we don’t message to the general population,” Audra Moran, president of the alliance, told The New York Times. “We want everyone with ovaries to know their risk level and know the actions they can take to help prevent ovarian cancer.”

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