With these 4 expert tips, you’ll never fear cutting onions (or any other allium) again

Ever since I started cooking “back in the day,” something about the tactile nature of preparing produce has always been a highlight for me.

There’s something meditative and grounding about the tangibility of working with various fruits and vegetables, peeling and chopping and coaxing them into some form that will eventually lend itself to a composed dish of sorts. I appreciate the sounds, the smells and touch; I like the garlic aroma that lingers on your hands, I like the crumple of the skins and peels, I like the inherent freshness of just-picked produce.

Clearly, I’m a fan of the whole shebang.

Say farewell to soggy bread and beef stock: Upgrade your French onion soup with these expert tips

When I was in middle school, I was hanging out with a pal of mine, messing around on AIM, watching syndicated 90s sitcoms or “TRL” (and probably making a prank call or two.) At some point, my friend ventured into the kitchen, where we inevitably discussed ordering a pizza or perhaps heating up some frozen treat.

As my friend perused the freezer and the takeout menus, I spotted a head of garlic on the table and — inexplicably — decided to treat my friend to a lesson in how to properly separate the cloves, peel and mince them.

We were 12 years old and I was insistent upon demonstrating this to her (sorry, Dana).

I hope this anecdote shows you just how much I love mise en place.

After the garlic adventures of the early 2000s, I soon moved to onions. To this day, preparing onions is a joy. When I developed this French onion recipe, I was in my glory, peeling and slicing a surplus of onions with a smile on my face (and some tears in my eyes).

While some are big proponents of wearing sunglasses, bread-in-your-mouth, or other inane “no tears” tricks, I…just go for it? Rarely do I ever have some sort of issue in which I need to dramatically turn my face away from my cutting board in order to wipe away the rivulets of tears cascading down my cheeks.

If anything, there’s a bit of a sting, but because I love working with produce so much, I just keep cutting.

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For some, though, this can cause lots of issues: over-reliance on onion powder to get away with not using any actual onions, absurd contraptions that supposedly help you cut, mince, or dice (but really just take up space in your cabinet), or a complete abandonment of using onions — or alliums at large — in your cooking. This mustn’t continue!

Onions are a true stalwart of the cooking world and they have such an important place in dish upon dish. (If it is really that bad and you’re that opposed, you an always opt for bagged, pre-chopped frozen onions).

So, to do my piece to reduce this aversion to alliums and encourage you all to cook with more onions, I wanted to write up this explainer. Please disregard if I get too myopic; I want to be as detailed as possible be here in order to give you as thorough of a walkthrough as possible.

Without further ado, here’s some tips and tricks on working with onions:

Cut your allium in half

No matter the type of allium with which you are working (yes, even shallot), it’s always best to being by cutting it in half. This will reveal more of the “flesh” and give you a good starting point for peeling the onion, shallot or other allium. If you’re working with multiple onions, I’d recommend cutting and peeling all of them right off the bat.

Also, be sure to use your heaviest, sharpest knife for this, as well as your heaviest cutting board. If necessary, stabilize your cutting board by placing some dampened paper towels underneath so that the board itself won’t go sliding all across the counter or table. Of course, be sure to work on the flattest, most even surface you can find.

From here, you’ll follow a different path depending on how you’re cutting …

Chopping or dicing

Ensure you have a good amount of room on your cutting board: throw out all of the peels and skins, wipe or brush off any of those little “whiskers” found at the end of the bulb and then rinse off your knife.

To start, you’ll want to position the “hairy” end away from you, with the cut-side of the onion down, which allows the onion to lay flat, stabilizing it before you start cutting.

Holding your knife firmly, begin making slices through the onion; it’s up to you in which way you’d like to do this. One option is making horizontal slices through the onion widthwise; I like to opt for 3 slices through. You want to cut entirely through, but stop just before the root. The other option is to make vertical slices first, which might be 5 or 6 cuts across. Same thing here: cut all the way through, but stop just before the root.

At this point, use your hand to compress the onion together, then begin to firmly and sharply make full cuts through the onion, long-ways, which will produce a relatively small “dice” as you chop. Continue, firmly and decisively, holding the onion and curling or bending your fingers (the point of this is so that if you do happen to nick yourself, you’ll make a slight cut on your knuckle as opposed to lobbing off your nail or something equally heinous).

As you get closer to your fingers (and the root!) begin to be more careful, or take your hand off the onion altogether. I sometimes like to stand the onion up once it’s been cut beyond halfway and continue to slice or cut until I almost reach the root. Discard the root and you’re all set!

If you’d like to go even finer, make a few passes through the diced or chopped onion with your knife, cutting the pieces even smaller.

Slicing

Again, clear your cutting board of any errant detritus and make sure your knife is good to go.

From here, begin in the same manner, with the furry root away from you, your hand firmly on the onion and a good, strong grip on your knife. Begin to slice longways, directly down, depending on the thickness you’re looking for. I like to go for pretty thin when I’m slicing onions. Repeat the process, again, until you’re about halfway through, in which case you can then “stand” the onion up, move your hand back and continue to slice until you’re about to reach the root. Discard the root and use your perfectly sliced onion as you wish.

If you have a mandoline on hand, feel free to use that! Just be super careful; mandolines are one of the most notoriously dangerous kitchen tools imaginable when used without care.

How to cut into rings

If your goal is making a pile of hot, crispy onion rings, here’s the way to do it:

Cut your onion in half, peel it and cut off both the stem and root ends. Make a small cut on one end so that the onion can lay flat on the cutting board. Grip the stem-cut end with your hand and, with your other hand grasping your knife, begin to make slices (the width is up to you).

Continue to cut through, letting the “rings” fall, until you’ve cut through the entire onion. Be super careful towards the end, especially since you don’t have a root to “hold onto” in this case.

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Justice Department likely to hit Trump with Jan. 6 charge that is “appeal-proof”: reporter

After the convictions of additional Oath Keepers on seditious conspiracy charges, calls have grown louder to prosecute former president Donald Trump for the same alleged crime for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The House select committee referred the ex-president to the Department of Justice for prosecution on four charges, but The Guardian correspondent Hugo Lowell explained to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that federal prosecutors will most likely attempt to make a narrow, and appeal-proof, case against Trump.

“The Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy verdicts really come about because the government had concrete evidence that the leaders of the Oath Keepers effectively engaged in political violence to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and because it was presented in that way and because, you know, the Oath Keepers had a quick reaction force across the river in Virginia,” Lowell said. “They had weapons and ammunition, and they were texting about we can come to the Capitol, and, you know, bring fire support if you really need it. I think that’s the kind of evidence that’s convincing for a jury.”

“It’s the kind of evidence that we’re missing as of yet with Trump, and that’s why I think that the Justice Department is looking more at an obstruction of an official proceeding kind of thing for Trump, as opposed to, you know, seditious conspiracy,” Lowell continued. “I don’t think it materially makes any difference because they are still really serious felonies and they carry lengthy prison terms, and the Justice Department doesn’t like to score big home runs, they like to score single hits, and if they can find one charge that sticks with Trump, they would much prefer that.”

They want a sustained conviction, they just don’t want a conviction, they want to sustain it upon appeal,” he added, “and I think he was talking about how you want to make sure it follows through all the way. They’re much more likely to take a lesser charge that is more likely to be sustained than the big charge.”

Watch the segment below or at this link.

Sorry Starbucks lovers, the rewards program is changing for the worse on Feb. 13

Starbucks Rewards — the coffeehouse chain’s esteemed loyalty program — is slated to change on Feb. 13 as more new items are added to the Starbucks menu. For years, the Starbucks rewards program has been hailed as “one of the best rewards programs” that coffee lovers can sign up for, but the forthcoming changes seem to only make it worse.

The rewards system operates via a barcode in the Starbucks app that allows customers to earn points — also known as “Stars” — when they make a purchase. Customers will earn one Star per dollar spent if they scan the barcode and then pay in store using cash or a card. But if customers make their purchases through the Starbucks app’s “Starbucks card” and then use the barcode to pay (whether it’s a mobile or an in store purchase), they will earn two Stars per dollar spent.

Leaked internal memo: Starbucks reportedly planning to deny paid leave benefits to union workers

Per The Takeout, here are the rewards that are currently available:

25 Stars: Free drink customization (extra shot, alternative milk, flavor syrup, etc.)
50 Stars: Free hot coffee, a pastry, or a hot tea (note that this is “plain” coffee and tea, not lattes, cappuccinos, etc.)
150 Stars: Free “handcrafted drink” (such as lattes, macchiatos, etc.), hot breakfast item (such as the Impossible breakfast sandwich), or yogurt parfait
200 Stars: Free lunch sandwich, protein box, or salad
400 Stars: Free merchandise (specific items) or bagged coffee for at-home use

Starting February 13, here’s how customers will be able to redeem Stars, also per The Takeout:

100 Stars may be redeemed for one (1) of the following items: hot brewed coffee or hot steeped tea, iced brewed coffee or iced brewed tea, OR a bakery item (such as a cake pop or cookie), OR a packaged snack (such as popcorn or potato chips) OR one (1) Cold Siren Logo Plastic To-Go Cup (24 oz only) or one (1) Siren Logo Plastic Hot Cup (16 oz only).
200 Stars may be redeemed for one (1) of the following items: any handcrafted beverage (such as a latte or Frappuccino blended beverage) OR any hot breakfast item (such as a breakfast sandwich or oatmeal).
300 Stars may be redeemed for one (1) packaged salad or lunch sandwich OR one (1) packaged protein box, OR one (1) packaged coffee item (such as whole bean coffee). Packaged coffee availability may vary by store location.

The biggest change is that most of the rewards will cost twice as many Stars under the new program. A free hot coffee, pastry, or hot tea will no longer be 50 Stars but, rather, 100. A free “handcrafted drink” or hot breakfast item will soon be worth 50 Stars more. And a free lunch sandwich, protein box, or salad will be worth an additional 100 Stars.

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Despite these changes, Starbucks outlined in its new terms of use that the same amount of Stars can be earned for each purchase, meaning customers will still earn 1 Star per $1 spent or 2 Stars per $1 spent using a Starbucks card on their account.

Starbucks will also add several new items that customers can get with either 100 or 300 stars. Here’s a complete list of the items along with their necessary Stars:

100 Stars ($50 or $100 Spent): Iced coffee (reg. $4.45), iced tea (reg. $3.45), ham & cheese croissant (reg. $4.45), packaged snack (reg. $2.35), Siren Plastic To-Go Cup (reg. $3), or Siren Plastic Hot Cup (reg. $2)
300 Stars ($150 or $300 Spent): Packaged coffee (reg. $13.95)

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“Ping pong zoonosis”: COVID is spreading from humans to animals and back again

There are a few signs that the COVID pandemic is waning in the U.S., with this January 2023 being less severe than January 2022. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all slightly dropping, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But our baselines have shifted, changing our definition of normal. These metrics, especially deaths, are still much higher than we’ve tolerated historically. And while things aren’t as bad as they were a year ago, as we’ve seen many, many times throughout the pandemic, it has a way of roaring back when we drop our guard.

Experts are especially concerned with the virus jumping from humans to animals and then back again, each time presenting new opportunities for novel mutations in different creatures. And many experts are worried that we aren’t doing enough to monitor the situation, meaning a nasty and surprising new variant could emerge from this viral game of human-to-animal-to-human ping-pong.

Certainly, things have changed a lot since the initial 2020 outbreak. We have excellent vaccines for the virus and we know that high-quality masks are effective at mitigating the spread. We also have many drugs and therapies to fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

But, as viruses do, SARS-CoV-2 keeps mutating. Viruses are pathogenic microorganisms that may or may not be alive (scientists still actively debate this question). When they infect us, they hijack the genetic code of our cells to make copies of themselves. These viral Xeroxes can be kind of sloppy and the mistakes can either make the virus more destructive or less. This is normal and even expected.

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The less concerning viruses tend to fizzle out. But the more concerning variants — think alpha, delta or the many off-shoots of omicron — can spread global illness, disability and death. As immunity wanes — also a normal and expected problem with coronaviruses — slightly different variants of the virus can evade our bodily defenses and whatever therapies we throw at it, though vaccines remain effective against severe illness and death.

Experts have been carefully monitoring for problematic mutations since SARS-CoV-2 was first sequenced in January 2020. A new paper in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology attempts to summarize some of these recent changes and help public health experts attempt to handle them.

It won’t be easy. The authors, which include Prof. David Robertson, a virologist at the University of Glasgow, detail the many ways in which the has virus mutated to evade our immunity, both from vaccines and recovering from sickness. (Getting a shot in this case is less likely to prevent you from getting sick, but vaccines still broadly protect against dying and hospitalization.) There are a couple of “unpredictable implications,” they observe, that are especially concerning.

The first is the virus could spread from humans to animals and back again. The second is that we’re not doing enough to monitor for these mutations by doing less sequencing, which is a method of studying the contrasting genetic makeup of organisms — sort of playing a very complex, tiny version of spot-the-difference.

“There are many countries with low sequencing capacity, or places with previously good surveillance that are decreasing or phasing out sequencing altogether,” Robertson and his colleagues wrote. “This is troublesome as a lack of genomic surveillance will mean future variants will be detected much later or could be circulating at low levels before eventual detection. There is, thus, a need for widespread and equitable surveillance coverage to rapidly detect potential new [variants of concern] among these individuals and communities before they spread more widely.”

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When a virus jumps from animals to humans, it’s called zoonosis, from the Greek zōon “animal” and nosos “disease.” So far, there isn’t much evidence that animals are spreading COVID to us, even though we’ve done it to them multiple times. (Of course, the prevailing theory on SARS-CoV-2’s origin is that it came from bats.) Once COVID went global, humans shared it with deer, dogs, hamsters, zoo animals and many other mammalian species. But no creature has absorbed more virus from us than mink, a species in the weasel family which are farmed for their fur.

Dr. Rajendram Rajnarayanan, an assistant dean of research and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology campus in Jonesboro, Arkansas, has been following these reverse zoonotic transfers for a while. He’s counted 133 cases in cats, 323 in deer and 1,320 in mink. In general, mink farms are a bad idea, with some also spreading avian flu recently.

Animal reservoirs are why smallpox was able to be eradicated in the ’80s through a global vaccination campaign — because, quite simply, there aren’t any animal reservoirs for smallpox.

“This back-and-forth transmission is also called ‘ping pong zoonosis’ or ‘zooanthroponosis’ too, as in the case of a circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants like BQ.1.1 or BF.7 getting passed on from humans to mammals,” Rajnarayanan told Salon in an email. When this happens, it creates a “reservoir” for the virus, a place for it to always hide and potentially spring back. We see this with the occasional bubonic plague outbreak, which is caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis and lives in wild rodents like groundhogs. Thankfully, while plague killed millions in the Middle Ages, today it is treatable with antibiotics.

We aren’t always so lucky. To use one example, the H1N1 influenza virus that caused the 2009 pandemic is sometimes called a “quadruple reassortant” virus, because segments of the virus originated from humans, birds and two species of pigs, North American and Eurasian. This is an example of reverse zoonosis that the CDC estimates killed more than half a million people globally.

Animal reservoirs are why smallpox was able to be eradicated in the ’80s through a global vaccination campaign — because, quite simply, there aren’t any animal reservoirs for smallpox. Animals can’t spread smallpox, therefore they can’t hold onto it and give it to us. That’s not the case with COVID or other viruses, like Ebola or mpox. As with bubonic plague, it is unlikely we’ll ever totally eradicate any virus, bacteria or pathogen that naturally occurs in animals.

“Animal reservoirs also keep a lineage in circulation and potentially reintroduce it back into circulation at an opportune moment,” Rajnarayanan said.

“Just as many pathogens can move from non-humans to humans, some can also move from humans to non-humans,” Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, an evolutionary and genome biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, told Salon in an email. “The result could be that even if we manage to eliminate the pathogen from human populations, it could show up again later and cause an outbreak by jumping back into humans from another species. [Additionally], if a pathogen is circulating in another species, then it will be evolving under the conditions of that species’ immunity, which is likely to be different from ours. This could result in a variant that is quite different and against which we would not have strong immunity if it moved back to humans.”

As we approach the third anniversary of COVID stay-at-home orders and the initial (justified) panic of the pandemic, so many people are so exhausted they’ve declared that the pandemic is over. On January 17th, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY) introduced the “Pandemic is Over Act,” a bill sponsored by more than a dozen other House Republicans, with the aim of overturning the public health emergency Americans entered in spring 2020. But President Joseph Biden said essentially the same thing a few months ago, though his quote that the pandemic is “over” was mostly taken out of context.

Yet, the pandemic is not over. Not only are thousands of people still dying per week, China is currently undergoing one of its worst outbreaks yet, with an estimated 80 percent of the population (some 1.12 billion people) getting infected in the latest wave. Each infection is a new opportunity for the virus to mutate into something our defenses will struggle against. While there’s no guarantee China’s outbreak will create huge problems for the rest of the world, we did see omicron and delta emerge from similar waves in South Africa and India respectively.

Meanwhile, as the Nature Reviews Microbiology paper noted, many countries are dialing back the surveillance precisely when we should be monitoring for new variants to emerge, from animals or otherwise. Right now, we have about 700 sub-lineages from omicron, according to Rajnarayanan, which is sometimes called a “variant soup.” It’s worth noting that climate change is a big reason for all the recent pandemics and viral illnesses are predicted to worsen as the planet warms.

“Variant evolution is becoming increasingly complex, and it is as important as ever to detect, characterize, and track variants as they evolve and spread,” Gregory said. “Wastewater is especially useful in identifying the presence of ‘cryptic’ variants, meaning ones that are not in wide circulation but are still potentially important.”

Unfortunately, some conspiracy theorists want to blame this whole mess on vaccines, even though that’s not how vaccination works. While immunity from either vaccines or past infection do create an important selective pressure, according to Gregory, it is overwhelmingly infections that are driving variant evolution.

“Ultimately, it’s having a lot of virus circulating, mutating, and being subject to natural selection that is the biggest issue,” Gregory said. “That’s why mitigation is also important. Vaccines do a good job at preventing severe acute illness, but they aren’t stopping transmission and thus we need other measures. Fortunately, the ones we have available such as wearing high quality (N95) masks, ventilation, air filtration, and reducing indoor crowd sizes are all variant-proof.”

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Rachel Maddow obtains footage of George Santos claiming he survived assassination attempt

Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., who has a history of fabricating his own resume and lying about critical parts of his biography, claimed in an interview last month that he had been the target of an assassination attempt.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on her show Monday night played a video of an interview the New York congressman did with Brazilian podcast Rádio Novelo Apresenta.

In the clip from Dec. 7, Santos claimed that he was also a victim of alleged vandalism, which occurred while he and his husband were at a New Year’s Eve Party.

“It was vandalized because we were at a Republican Party in Florida in December 2020. So that’s it. I’ve experienced vandalism,” Santos said. “We have already suffered an attempt on my life, an assassination attempt, a threatening letter, having to have the police — a police escort standing in front of our house.”

Maddow reached out to Santos’ office for comment but didn’t receive a response.

While he didn’t go into much detail about the alleged assassination attempt, Santos described another act of violence that allegedly took place on Fifth Avenue in the summer of 2021.

“I was mugged by two men,” Santos said. “Before asking any questions, they weren’t Black, they were even white, but they robbed me, took my briefcase, took my shoes and my watch. And that was in broad daylight. It was 3 p.m. I was leaving my office, going to the garage, getting my car, and I was mugged,” he claimed, adding later: “The fear is real. It’s surreal what we live through here.”

The podcast hosts, who asked Santos for a police report documenting what happened, still haven’t received a response, Maddow added.

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In the same interview, the New York Republican explained his stance on immigration and specified that he is against undocumented immigrants because he is “assiduously critical of people who want to start their American Dream” the “wrong way”.

He added, “Imagine starting a relationship with a lie or someone doing something wrong, right?”

But Santos himself has been dishonest about his professional and educational background, and continues to add more falsehoods to his ever-expanding list.

A Brazilian drag artist who says she knew Santos when he dressed in drag in Brazil recalled that the Republican congressman was a supporter of the country’s progressive president during his younger years.

Eula Rochard made headlines for circulating a photo she claims is of Santos dressed in a red dress, Insider reported.

George Santos denies report that he was a drag queen — despite his ex-friend releasing photos

Santos, she said, went from backing left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to turning into “this crazy thing” after coming to the United States.

The New York Republican now embraces anti-LGBTQ policies and has accused the left of trying to “groom” kids – a conservative talking point that falsely equates sexual orientation and gender identity with pedophilia.

But prior to his incarnation, Santos supported Lula in the 2000s, who is a progressive.

“Lula promised to make laws to help us gays,” Rochard said. “They were all Lulistas and Anthony was too because he hung out with us,” Rochard told Insider, adding that “Anthony” was the name Santos used in Brazil.

Santos first denied performing as a drag queen, but later backtracked and told reporters, “I was young and I had fun at a festival. Sue me for having a life.”

More videos have since emerged, revealing that it was more than a one-time thing.

Santos has increasingly become the subject of late-night mockery, prompting him to lash out on Monday.

“I have now been enshrined in late night TV history with all these impersonations, but they are all TERRIBLE so far,” Santos tweeted. “Jon Lovitz is supposed to be one of the greatest comedians of all time and that was embarrassing— for him not me! These comedians need to step their game up.”

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Mike Pompeo uses his book to criticize Jamal Khashoggi and “faux outrage” over his brutal killing

The widow of murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Monday denounced former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his comments about her husband in Pompeo’s upcoming memoir, in which he questions Khashoggi’s journalism credentials and his allegiances.

As excerpts from Pompeo’s book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, became public a day before its publication date, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi told NBC News she wishes she were able “to silence all of these people who publish books, disparage my husband, and collect money from it.”

Elatr Khashoggi fired back after NBC News reported that in Pompeo’s book, he writes of Jamal Khashoggi, “He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was—and too many in the media were not.”

“He didn’t deserve to die, but we need to be clear about who he was," writes Mike Pompeo about Jamal Khashoggi.

Astonishing use of "but" that enables the efforts of the Saudi regime to blame Khashoggi for his own murderhttps://t.co/gX72GEIN8H

— Sasha Chavkin (@sashachavkin) January 23, 2023

The book contains accusations that Khashoggi “was cozy with the terrorist-supporting Muslim Brotherhood,” alludes to his coverage of and friendship with Osama bin Laden when both were young, and says he was an “activist” rather than a journalist.

Elatr Khashoggi, whom the Saudi national married in 2018 in an Islamic ceremony, told NBC that “Jamal Kashoggi is not part of the Muslim Brotherhood” and that he “always condemned” the September 11, 2001 attacks masterminded by bin Laden.

“Whatever Mike Pompeo mentions about my husband Jamal Khashoggi, he doesn’t know my husband,” Elatr Khashoggi tweeted.

Whatever @mikepompeo mentions about my husband @JKhashoggi he doesn’t know my husband. He should be silent and shut up the lies about my husband. It is such bad information and the wrong information. This is not acceptable. #justiceforjamal

— Mrs Hanan Elatr Khashoggiحنان العتر خاشقجى (@hananelatr) January 23, 2023

Khashoggi, who wrote critically of the Saudi government, was killed in October 2018 by a group of assassins in Istanbul. Khashoggi’s family sued Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and accused him of personally ordering the execution in 2020, and a United Nations report found that “high-level officials” in Saudi Arabia were responsible for the murder, but last year the Biden administration recommended that bin Salman, as prime minister, be shielded from U.S. lawsuits regarding the case.

While attacking Khashoggi for his loyalties, Pompeo, a Republican who has said he is considering a 2024 presidential run, notes in the book that the U.S. has a “strategic” relationship with the Saudis to consider.

“Shame on you, Mike Pompeo, HarperCollins, and Broadside Books for publishing these lies about my husband,” tweeted Elatr Khashoggi.

Hidden women of history: How “Lady” Williams founded a great Australian apple

On Boronia Farm, just outside Donnybrook in Western Australia, stands an 80-something-year-old apple tree (Malus domestica) that is at the heart of a global industry.

This tree produced an apple no one had seen or tasted before, now called the Lady Williams. Without the Lady Williams, there could be no Sundowner, no Pink Lady, no Bravo — apple varieties that, along with the Lady Williams, have made an enormous contribution to the global apple industry.

Boronia Farm’s apple tree is now listed in the register of the National Trust, but the woman behind the Lady Williams is not well known. Yet, as her son Bob remembered, Maud Williams was crucial to the story of this tree and the apple it produced.

A remarkable chance seedling

From the 1930s, Maud, her husband Arthur and their two boys Bob and Ron worked their 12 acres of orchard, with its apples and stone fruit, and 40 cows.

Maud collected ideas for plants to grow, from catalogs and women’s magazines, experimenting with her taste for the unusual, remembers her son Ron. Not content with roses and petunias, Maud was instead growing feijoas and hydrangeas.

With her eye for horticultural novelty, it was perhaps not surprising that she identified the very special qualities of the tree with the bright red apples that had sprung up unexpectedly next to the tank stand beside the house.

The fruit was firm and crisp and showed great suitability for long storage, ideal for Australia’s export market. The Williams family gathered a good price for their cases of apples grown from this tree, and over time, the family propagated new trees from the original one.

This tree was a chance seedling, a spontaneous creation whose likely parent cultivars were Granny Smith and Rokewood.

Some of our most common apple varieties began as chance seedlings, but chance seedlings do not reach our supermarkets as a matter of course.

Lady Williams apples would not have become a popular variety without Maud Williams’ keen eye for the unusual. Nadiatalent/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Apples frequently produce chance seedlings. But for a chance seedling to be put into production and become known as a variety, many factors are involved, not least people who recognize distinctive apples that will have value in their contemporary context.

Only a select few chance seedlings are ever turned into varieties with impact in the orchard industry. For that to happen, there need to be people who make the necessary investment of care, time or funding — just as Maud did.

In its inconvenient location, the unfamiliar apple tree was almost cut down many a time, but it survived thanks to Maud’s protection and care. On one occasion, when he almost destroyed it, Bob recalled getting a severe telling-off from his mum, who “stood it up again, bandaged it up and it took off again.”

Reflecting Maud’s importance in the creation of this new variety, the apple was given the name Lady Williams. This was the name that the little girl, Lynette Green, who lived on a neighboring farm, used for Maud.

Maud’s recognition of the qualities of the fruit from this tree — and her initiatives to protect it — were about to enable a remarkable new phase of the Australian apple industry.

Lady Williams, parent of the Pink Lady

Lady Williams apples were introduced commercially in 1968, the same year Maud died. By the early 1970s, the Lady Williams was the subject of attention at the WA Department of Agriculture and its new apple-breeding program. There, a team led by the horticulturalist John Cripps was experimenting with combinations of Lady Williams and Golden Delicious.

In an interview conducted as part of the Apples and Pears Oral History Project in 2010, Cripps reflected that the cross-breeding process involved intensive manual labor, high degrees of dexterity and immense patience, a set of qualities Cripps identified in women technicians.

In 1984, one of the more than 100,000 experimental seedlings produced an attractive fruit; it was bright pink, crisp, flavorsome and long-storing. Cripps had a hand in both its names: the Cripps Pink, and its commercial name, Pink Lady. It was the first apple variety ever to be trademarked.

The Pink Lady apple, a variant of the Lady Williams, was the first apple variety to be trademarked. Kerry Raymond/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

From the same breeding program emerged the Sundowner and more recently, in 1992, the Bravo.

All the world’s Lady Williams, Pink Lady, Sundowner and Bravo trees share DNA with the original tree Maud Williams had nurtured many years before.

Writing women’s agricultural contributions

Women’s contributions to the agricultural sector have often occurred, just as Maud’s did, outside of professional roles. They do not always fit easily in conventional profiles for innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture nor into standard narratives of Australia’s agricultural development.

Documenting Australian women’s activities in agricultural innovation faces considerable challenges. Remarkably, only 30 years ago, women were not able to be recognized as farmers in their own right on Australian census forms.

Making women’s activities and innovation visible in this domain is key to providing role models for the future. It will also increase the diversity of participation in Australia’s future decision-making about the lands we live and work on.

We may have to look and listen in different places for the histories of these women. What we know so far of Maud’s role has been gathered from interviews with her family and members of the local community of which she was part. We can also consider how our histories could become more inclusive by thinking about what constitutes participation and contribution to agricultural innovation more expansively.

There are many women working in the southwest orchard industry today, running the farm businesses, packing apples, testing for new varieties, leading the industry’s peak body. They are the inheritors of a dynamic industry that Maud Williams helped to create.

A new podcast for the State Library of Western Australia delves into women’s roles in the Western Australian apple industry.

Susan Broomhall, Director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University

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

“Must be within one yard of a woman”: Proud Boys trial reveals group’s strict “no wanks” rules

The trial of several members of the Proud Boys on seditious conspiracy charges turned into what one reporter described as a “cringey” spectacle on Monday.

According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, the “cringey” testimony occurred when attorney Carmen Hernandez, who is representing Proud Boy Zach Rehl, asked a witness about the group’s “no wanks” policy that is outlined in the group’s handbook that places strict conditions on the act of masturbation.

“A Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more often than once every thirty days,” the manual states. “That means he must abstain from pornography during that time and if he needs to ejaculate it must be within one yard of a woman with her consent. The woman may not be a prostitute.”

The rule goes on to state that Proud Boys are not even allowed to have Zoom calls with their wives as “a way around the one-yard rule.”

The decision to question witnesses about masturbation wasn’t only questioned by legal reporters, but also by attorney Norm Pattis, who is representing Proud Boy Joe Biggs.

“Did we really talk about masturbation in Proud Boys trial today?” he asked on Twitter.

Abortion debate ramps up in states as Congress deadlocks

Anti-abortion advocates are pressing for expanded abortion bans and tighter restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion. But with the debate mostly deadlocked in Washington, the focus is shifting to states convening their first full legislative sessions since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Although some state GOP lawmakers have filed bills to ban abortion pills or make it more difficult for women to travel out of state for an abortion, others seem split about what their next steps should be. Some are even considering measures to ease their states’ existing bans somewhat, particularly after Republicans’ less-than-stellar showing in the 2022 midterm elections and voters’ widespread support for abortion on state ballot measures.

Meanwhile, Democratic-led states are looking to shore up abortion protections, including Minnesota and Michigan, where Democrats sewed up legislative majorities in the November elections.

Anti-abortion groups said their goal in overturning Roe v. Wade was to turn the decision back to the states, but now they are making clear that what they want is an encompassing national abortion ban.

“Legislation at the state and federal levels should provide the most generous protections possible to life in the womb,” says the “Post-Roe Blueprint” of the anti-abortion group Students for Life.

The new Republican-led House showed its anti-abortion bona fides on its first day of formal legislating, Jan. 11, passing two pieces of anti-abortion legislation that are unlikely to become law with a Senate still controlled by Democrats and President Joe Biden in the White House.

So at the federal level, the fight is taking shape in the courts over the abortion pill mifepristone, which has been used as part of a two-drug regimen for more than two decades, and recently became the way a majority of abortions in the U.S. are conducted.

The Biden administration has moved to make mifepristone more widely available by allowing it to be distributed by pharmacies, as well as clarifying that it is legal to distribute the pills via the U.S. mail. But the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, on behalf of several anti-abortion groups, filed a federal lawsuit in Texas in November, charging that the FDA never had the authority to approve the drug in the first place.

In Texas, some lawmakers are exploring new ways to chip away at Texans’ remaining sliver of access to abortions. For example, one proposal would prevent local governments from using tax dollars to help people access abortion services out of state, while another would prohibit tax subsidies for businesses that help their local employees obtain abortions out of state.

Those measures could get lost in the shuffle of the state’s frantic 140-day, every-other-year session, if legislative leaders don’t consider them a priority. The state’s trigger law banning almost all abortions that went into effect last year “appears to be working very well,” said Joe Pojman, founder and executive director of Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion group. In August 2022, three abortions were documented in the state, down from more 5,700 reported during the same month a year earlier, according to the most recent state data.

The top state House Republican said his priority is boosting support for new moms, for example, by extending postpartum Medicaid coverage to 12 months.

It’s “an opportunity for the Texas House to focus more than ever on supporting mothers and children,” said Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, struck a similar theme in a Jan. 10 speech, saying she will introduce bills to expand a program for nurses to visit new mothers at home and help state employees pay for adoptions. Previously, Noem said South Dakota needs to focus “on taking care of mothers in crisis and getting them the resources that they need for both them and their child to be successful.”

Some Texas GOP lawmakers indicated they may be open to carving out exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape and incest. And a Republican lawmaker plans to attempt to modify South Dakota’s ban, which allows abortions only for life-threatening pregnancies, to clarify when abortions are medically necessary.

“Part of the issue right now is that doctors and providers just don’t know what that line is,” said state Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt, a nurse who has experienced miscarriages and high-risk pregnancies herself.

Rehfeldt wants to reinstate a former law that allows abortions for pregnancies that could cause serious, irreversible physical harm to a “major bodily function.” Rehfeldt said she is also working on bills to allow abortions for people carrying non-viable fetuses, or who became pregnant after rape or incest.

Some anti-abortion activists in Georgia are pushing lawmakers to go further than the state’s ban on most abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy. They want a law to ban telehealth prescriptions of abortion pills and a state constitutional amendment declaring that an embryo or a fetus has all the legal rights of a person at any stage of development.

“Roe is out of the way,” said Zemmie Fleck, executive director of Georgia Right to Life. “There’s no more roadblock to what we can do in our state.”

Republican leaders, however, are biding their time while Georgia’s high court weighs a legal challenge of the six-week ban. “Our focus remains on the case before the Georgia Supreme Court and seeing it across the finish line,” said Andrew Isenhour, spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

Abortion rights lawmakers and advocates have few options to advance their initiatives in these Republican-controlled statehouses.

A Georgia Democrat filed a bill that would make the state compensate women who are unable to terminate pregnancies because of the state’s abortion ban. State Rep. Dar’shun Kendrick acknowledged her bill likely won’t go far, but she said she hopes it keeps attention on the issue and forces GOP lawmakers to “put their money where their mouth is” in supporting families.

In Missouri, where nearly all abortions are now banned, abortion rights advocates are mulling the idea of circumventing the state’s Republican-dominated legislature by asking voters in 2024 to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution.

But those efforts could be upended by a slew of bills filed by Republican lawmakers seeking to make it more difficult to place constitutional initiatives on the ballot, and for those measures that do make it on the ballot, by requiring the approval of at least 60% of voters for passage.

Democrats in Michigan and Minnesota are likely to use their newfound control of both legislative chambers and the governors’ office to protect abortion access. While Michigan voters already passed a ballot measure in November that enshrines the right to abortions in the state constitution, Democrats are trying to repeal a 1931 abortion law from the books.

In Illinois, Democrats in control of the legislature recently bolstered abortion protections amid increased demand from out-of-state residents. New York lawmakers this year may send voters a proposed state constitutional amendment to protect abortion, while New Jersey lawmakers decided against a similar proposal.

The November elections brought divided government to Arizona and Nevada, with Arizona now having a Democratic governor and Nevada having a Republican one. Any abortion-related bills that pass the legislatures in those states could be vetoed.

Some Republican-controlled legislatures, including those in Montana, Florida, and Alaska, also are limited in passing sweeping abortion bans because of court rulings that tie abortion access to right-to-privacy provisions in those states’ constitutions.

In Montana, a state judge blocked three anti-abortion laws passed in 2021 on that basis. State government attorneys have asked the Montana Supreme Court to reverse the precedent, and a decision is pending.

In the meantime, Republican state Sen. Keith Regier has filed a bill there seeking to exclude abortion from the state’s definition of a right to privacy. Regier said he believes an individual’s right to privacy should not apply to abortion because an unborn child also is involved.

Democratic leaders said Republicans are out of sync with the people they represent on this issue. In November, Montana voters rejected a “born alive” ballot initiative that would have required doctors to apply medical care to newborns who draw breath or have a heartbeat after a failed abortion or any other birth.

“Montanans said so clearly that they do not want government overreach in their health care decisions,” said Democratic state Rep. Alice Buckley.

KHN correspondents Renuka Rayasam and Sam Whitehead in Atlanta; Arielle Zionts in Rapid City, South Dakota; Bram Sable-Smith in St. Louis; and Katheryn Houghton in Missoula, Montana, contributed to this report.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

In a new Spanish film, solar power threatens a family farm

The film Alcarràs opens with three young children playing in a decrepit sedan abandoned in an open field in the Catalan countryside, the car offering them shelter from the hot summer sun. So when a crew of construction workers comes to tow the junker away, the outraged children run home to share their misfortune with their parents, only to be quickly rebuffed. The adults, after all, have more important matters to deal with, namely the encroachment of a solar panel development on their peach farm. But the themes introduced in that first scene — transition, ownership, and the unintended consequences of “progress” — continue to haunt the characters throughout this strikingly beautiful film.

Alcarràs follows the Solé family, who have been working the same plot of land for generations. The property, however, is technically not theirs: It was gifted to them long ago by word of mouth. Without a legal document to prove their ownership, the peach orchards will be torn down by the end of the summer — and with them the only way of life that the family has ever known.

The film, which won the Golden Bear award at the Berlinale and was selected to be Spain’s 2023 Academy Awards submission, has the organic, unhurried quality for which director Carla Simón is known. Like her 2017 debut feature Summer, 1993, it is set in the Catalan region of Spain where she was raised and is powered by a particular sense of local knowledge, an understanding of both the pleasures and anxieties of rural life.

Played by a cast of non-professional actors, many of them from local farming families themselves, the film’s unvarnished style closely resembles that of a documentary, transporting the audience into the fields right alongside the characters. The result is so compelling you can almost smell the fruit and the yellow earth of the doomed peach orchard. This naturalistic storytelling approach offers a refreshing perspective on small-scale farm life at a time when the internet is brimming with idealized photos of sun-drenched solar developments promising a clean energy future.

At just around two hours, Alcarràs does not follow a straightforward narrative, which can make some scenes feel redundant, but there is something to appreciate in the way the film’s pacing mirrors agrarian life. At times, it passes slowly, with each day built around the rise and fall of the sun and the unrelenting task of picking the harvest.

Despite the painful uncertainty of what lies beyond those long days of field work, the film achieves a sort of levity, buoyed by the games of children and small moments of tenderness: the father, Quimet, drunkenly laughing at his sister for claiming to have spotted a UFO, the young cousins putting on a musical number at home, the teenage son and daughter playing a prank on the landowner who plans to tear down the farm.

Although Alcarràs is much more about loss and unwelcome change than the actual clean energy transition, Simón reminds us that things aren’t always so rosy for the people living on the front lines of alternative energy development. As the film progresses, solar panels begin to appear on the border of the family farm, contrasting with the lush, green rows of peach trees. In one particularly memorable shot, the grandfather pauses on a night stroll to gaze at the moonlight pooling on the surface of a hulking panel.

Simón does not linger on the significance of renewable energy as the force of change in the family’s life: Solar is just a new way of making money, of extracting more profit from the land. Nonetheless, the fictional film prompts consideration of how the renewable energy industry’s demand for vast open spaces is destabilizing small-scale farmers in the real world.

The rapid industrialization of agriculture over the past several decades has seen the decline of family farming globally, particularly in countries such as the U.S., the U.K., and Brazil. According to the International Labor Organization, the percentage of the global population that works in agriculture declined from 44 to 26 percent between 1991 and 2020, a trend that has coincided with massive demographic shifts to population centers. Today, cities are home to 70 percent of the world’s population, and that share is only expected to grow.

While it remains to be seen how much the transition to renewable energy will influence these trends, the story in Alcarràs focuses on the challenges associated with life in those shrinking rural communities. It reflects a conflict that is beginning to play out across the globe, as governments incentivize alternative forms of energy. Clean energy production will require far more land than fossil fuels, at least ten times more per unit of power according to one estimate. Since those renewable resources tend to be concentrated in remote areas, rural communities are disproportionately impacted by the growing industry.

While some farmers have sought to profit from large-scale solar and wind projects, others are beginning to push back. Last spring, for example, residents in rural Ohio protested a proposed solar project which would cover more than 1,800 acres of prime farmland. Small-scale farmers in upstate New York that lease their land from larger landowners have argued that they will be pushed out by energy companies who can afford to pay more per parcel of land. In Chile’s Atacama desert, local farmers are struggling with water shortages precipitated by lithium mining, an industry that will be vital for producing batteries to power electric vehicles.

In Catalonia, the threat of alternative energy is less direct. A recurring theme in Alcarràs is the weekly protests over federal wholesale pricing measures that diminish profits for farmers in the village. It’s an issue that is playing out in real towns; Simón met the man who plays Quimet, Jordi Pujol Dolcet, at one such protest. Consistently low prices are making small-scale agriculture less economically viable, forcing many Catalan farmers to sell their land or pursue other forms of profit.

While solar panels could offer some of these farmers a new path to eke out a living, Simón’s script makes clear that it is not the livelihood that many of them truly desire. To the characters in the film, the farm that will be razed at the end of the summer is more than a piece of land; it is a broker of their relationships with one another. If the story levies a critique against any system, it’s the engine of capitalism, which incentivizes the endless consumption of resources at the expense of communities at the points of extraction.

In its best moments, Alcarràs gives viewers a deep sense of what it’s like to inhabit this family’s world in the moment before it changes irreparably, an appreciation for the immensity of what is to be lost.

What’s so hard about making movies accessible?

It’s kind of a requirement for me. If we’re watching TV, we have to have the captions on. Seeing a film in the theater is a little more complicated.

On Friday, the U.S. Dramatic Competition jurors at the Sundance Film Festival walked out of the theatrical screening of “Magazine Dreams” because a captioning device provided to one of the jurors, Marlee Matlin, didn’t work. Matlin is Deaf. Other jurors Jeremy O. Harris and Eliza Hittman collectively walked out with Matlin in support. According to Variety, the device was repaired “hours later,” but too late for the jurors to see the premiere.

One of the simplest ways films can be more accessible, through streaming as well as having a theatrical release, is still not consistently profitable enough for studios. And a way to bring captions to all, open captions, which Variety reported the Sundance jurors called for, is not standard. When it comes to accessibility, it can feel like a gamble every time a disabled person like me leaves the house, including the simple act of trying to go to a film.

Why your brain loves closed captioning

The device that didn’t work at Sundance was likely similar to the captioning device I ask for every time my family goes to a movie theater. It’s heavy and cumbersome, a rectangular viewer with metal blinders attached at the end of a long, flexible metal pole. The pole screws or fastens into the drink holder of a theater armrest. Yes, this means I and other people who use these devices can’t have our own drink. I frequently bruise my elbow banging into the awkward device which hangs over the seat, there’s no way to get up until the device is removed, and my non-disabled partner has become an expert at trying to adjust the finicky thing. They’re often old and squeaky. Once, one broke in half as we sat there.

In theory, captions appear on the device’s viewer screen when the film begins, which means looking quickly between the big screen in front of you and the small screen near your lap to follow the action and dialogue. At least, captions are supposed to appear.

I really miss getting my popcorn and drink and consuming most of them while waiting for the movie to start, and then the caption device doesn’t work so I leave and get a refund and don’t get to see a movie but hey the popcorn was free in the end https://t.co/OrFeH2x9qn

— 🌒 ronan 🌘 (@thegreyhunt) February 11, 2021

Not all theaters have these devices. Not all films have them. When I took my son to see “The Last Unicorn,” a hugely influential film from my childhood, I was devasted that the captioning device didn’t work. As someone who is half deaf, that decreases the enjoyability and comprehension of a film exponentially for me and for the millions of Americans like me. As filmmaker Alison O’Daniel writes, “I finally understood why I sleep through so many movies. I am d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing. I do a lot of tuning out when I don’t have access.”

We always get strange and dirty looks from fellow movie-goers when we bring the large, top-heavy captioning device into the theater.

But devices aren’t the only or perhaps best way to provide access. O’Daniel is the writer/director of “The Tuba Thieves,” a feature film, also playing at Sundance, with open captions: a type of captioning which appear on the big screen alongside the film. Both the dialogue and descriptions of sound are written out in text accompanying the visuals.

As O’Daniel writes, “You can’t turn them off. This makes the film fully accessible, as the captions are woven into the fabric of the narrative of the film. They were constructed in tandem with the sound and the images and the story.”

A different type of captioning appears on TV screens and streaming services: closed captioning, which means you can turn them on or off. In contrast, open captions automatically run with a film. They’re always on, and more than that, are an integral part of the movie. O’Daniel has a section of her website that explains clearly how to write these captions. It’s an opportunity to be descriptive, another level of creativity in the creative process of filmmaking.

According to Variety, “Several filmmakers have declined the request to provide open captions onscreen, citing the costs and time associated with making another print.” Variety, which used an outdated term in their article no longer accepted by most in the Deaf community, also claimed unnamed sources “say that some buyers even suggested that including captions onscreen could somehow hurt the film’s asking prices on the market as they try to land distribution.”

But along with adding another creative layer to the story of a film, open captions are much more dependable than closed. Not every person understands how to turn closed captions on and off via increasingly complicated remotes, not to mention on glitchy in-theater devices. Open captions also include everyone, which doesn’t require an individual to disclose anything about their body. It takes time and can be embarrassing to have to declare my disability every time I go to the movies. We always get strange and dirty looks from fellow movie-goers when we bring the large, top-heavy captioning device into the theater (my son has learned to ignore the looks or give them right back).

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of accessibility is how random it all seems, how much it depends on chance.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing people aren’t the only ones who want and benefit from captions. In a poll conducted this month by Vox, 57% of respondents said they feel they “can’t understand what anyone is saying” on TV or streaming films and use subtitles, while only 2% of subtitle-using respondents said they were deaf/Deaf or Hard of Hearing. Vox attributes the increased need for captions to technological “advances” in filmmaking, including smaller mics, digital recording, mixing for surround sound and more naturalistic performances from actors (i.e., lots of mumbling).

Some places have responded to the need for accessibility better than others. Dodger Stadium has closed captioning devices available for events — but if you have a phone, there’s also the MLB Ballpark app, which you can download for free and view closed captioning via your phone at that stadium and at others. It still doesn’t solve the problem of having to look between a small and large screen (or stage) which often leads to terrible headaches, but at least you can have a drink.

Venues have also answered the need for other types of accessibility. Many theaters offer low sensory performances now, including the Alamo Drafthouse which has regular “sensory friendly” screenings where “the house lights are left a little brighter and the sound is turned down a little lower.” Movie goers who are blind or low vision can use audio description receivers at AMC and other theaters, which feed through headphones a description track of the movie created by the studio. So . . . studios can write out a description track but not open captions?

Maybe your film isn’t ready for Sundance — or anywhere — until it’s ready for all.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of accessibility is how random it all seems, how much it depends on chance and the whims of non-disabled people. Will the captioning device work? Will the employee know how to or bother to fix it? Will the one-night only screening with open captions be cancelled?

Eight films at Sundance offered a screening with open captions this year; only two had them with every screening (O’Daniel’s film and “Is There Anybody Out There?” by disabled filmmaker Ella Glendining). Due to a new requirement that started in 2022, New York City movie theaters “must provide open captions in some of their movie showings,” according to the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Why some? Which some? Why not all? The Mayor’s Office itself admits, “In addition to moviegoers who are D/deaf and hard of hearing, captions benefit almost everyone, especially people watching movies in their non-native language, and children and adults learning to read.” Everyone in my life who started watching captions because of me still watches them today whether I’m beside them on the couch or not. There is a need and there is a want.

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We’re still a long way from movies being accessible. Most advanced screeners of films and TV provided to critics do not have even closed captions available as an option (which ensures critics are all the same kind of people: overwhelmingly non-disabled). And as films still fail to have universal open captions for their theatrical releases, studios are leaving out whole, ticket-buying swaths of the population. Maybe your film isn’t ready for Sundance — or anywhere — until it’s ready for all.

about captions

Newsom calls out Fox News — as his meeting with shooting victims is interrupted by another massacre

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday was pulled away to be briefed on the state’s second mass killing in three days while meeting with victims of the first one.

Newsom met with victims of a weekend mass shooting at a ballroom dance hall in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park, where police say 72-year-old Huu Can Tran killed 11 people and injured nine others before he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Newsom’s meeting was interrupted by shootings in Half Moon Bay, a coastal town more than 350 miles to the north, where seven Chinese farmworkers were killed in two separate locations, according to NBC Bay Area. Half Moon Bay resident Chunli Zhao, a 67-year-old worker at one of the facilities who apparently knew at least some of the victims, was arrested after the shooting, according to the Associated Press.

While Newsom was meeting with victims of the Monterey Park shooting, he specifically criticized the coverage on Fox News, accusing the right-wing network of “not doing a damn thing about gun safety, not a damn thing for decades.”

“It’s a disgrace what they say, what these people say every single night,” Newsom told reporters.

The governor accused the network of perpetuating “crime and violence in this country” through “xenophobia” and “scapegoating.”

Doubling down on “great replacement” paranoia: How the right is reacting to the Buffalo shooting

“‘It’s not the right time, not the right time, not the right time.’ Rinse, repeat,” he said. “‘Not the right time, rinse repeat, Sandy Hook, not the right time, rinse, repeat. Uvalde.’ Remember Uvalde? Remember? Rinse, repeat. You don’t remember the Borderline here, 13 people, that was a few years ago, you’ll have to look that one up. Rinse, repeat. Not a damn thing they do. And we know it. And we allow them to get away with that.”

During his visit at the hospital, Newsom tweeted that he was “pulled away to be briefed on another shooting,” referring to Half Moon Bay.

“Tragedy upon tragedy,” he wrote.

At the hospital meeting with victims of a mass shooting when I get pulled away to be briefed about another shooting. This time in Half Moon Bay.

Tragedy upon tragedy.

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 24, 2023

Newsom also told CBS News that the Second Amendment is “becoming a suicide pact.”

“Nothing about this is surprising,” the governor said. “Everything about this is infuriating.”

He added that he has “great respect” for the Second Amendment and “no ideological opposition to someone reasonably and responsibly owning firearms and getting background checks and being trained,” but said that mental health issues alone cannot explain America’s gun violence.

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California has among the strictest gun laws in the country. The Monterey Park suspect used a modified 9mm submachine gun-style semi-automatic weapon, according to the AP, which is illegal in California. The Half Moon Bay suspect used a semiautomatic handgun, but it remains unclear whether it was a legal firearm, according to police.

Newsom said he would continue to press for additional gun control measures in California, which has a 37% lower gun death rate than the national average, according to the Giffords Law Center. The governor told CBS News that only Democrats have led the push to tighten gun laws to prevent similar tragedies.

“With all that evidence, no one on the other side seems to give a damn,” he said. “They can’t get anything done in Congress.”

The Half Moon Bay massacre marked the country’s 37th mass shooting — meaning an incident in which four or more people are shot — and sixth mass murder this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The U.S. is already outpacing last year’s rate, when there were 27 mass shootings and one mass murder in the first 23 days of January.

“Half Moon Bay is a beautiful community just south of SF. It’s now part of the tidal wave of gun violence suffocating our country,” tweeted state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco. “34 mass shootings in 23 days isn’t normal. If doesn’t have to be this way. There are too many guns. Our country needs the will to say enough.”

about the gun violence epidemic

Libs of TikTok owner Chaya Raichik ramps up her anti-LGBTQ crusade

Chaya Raichik, owner of the far-right Twitter account Libs of TikTok, is currently on a right-wing media tour of sorts, continuing her attacks on the LGBTQ community and appearing on shows hosted by QAnon adherents and other conspiracy theorists, as well as figures linked to neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology, according to Media Matters.

Raichik and her Twitter account have become super-spreaders of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, which experts warn can embolden extremists, heighten political and social conflict and in some cases even lead to violence.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a warning last year that “[l]one offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland.”

Beneath that neutral-sounding language, it appears clear that DHS is primarily concerned about the danger of right-wing violence. Potential targets could include public gatherings, faith-based institutions, the LGBTQ community, schools and perceived ideological opponents, DHS said.

Libs of TikTok: The Twitter troll who took Trump’s place

Some extremists have even shared their plans on social media and posted content indicating potential for violence.

Last year, an Arizona man posted to his Telegram account saying he was “leading the war” against Target for its Pride Month merchandise and children’s clothing line. He promised to “hunt LGBT supporters” at the stores and encouraged others to do the same.

With society in general becoming more accepting of LGBTQ rights, alienated young men who hold more “traditional” beliefs around relationships and marriage are being dangerously triggered by this process of transformation, according to Mia Bloom, a communications professor at Georgia State University.

Bloom told the Associated Press that such young men can be vulnerable to “radical belief systems,” in response to the sense that “the beliefs that they grew up with, that they held rather firmly, are being shaken. That’s where it becomes an opportunity for these [far-right] groups: They’re lashing out and they’re picking on things that are very different.”

Social media influencers like Raichik, who has an enormous online following, can pose a particular threat to marginalized groups, experts say, since they push out a flood of disinformation that is shared widely and creates more hostility toward minorities and marginalized communities.

“When you have a person with a very large audience abusing a community, that person is putting that community at risk, either for online harassment or for intimidation in real life and violence in real life,” said Wendy Via, co-founder and president of Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

In Via’s view, influencers like Raichik provide “fodder” to extremist political figures like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which can translate to real-world legislation like that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

“Folks that are being radicalized online, they’re looking for solutions,” Via said. “They’re angry. They see that the LGBTQ community is what is wrong with the world, what is wrong with America, and they decide to do something about it.”

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Raichik has risen to fame in less than two years, gaining roughly 1.7 million followers for the Libs of TikTok account. At this point she has become a prominent right-wing figure, adjacent to the conservative mainstream, who has appeared several times on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News primetime show.

While she started building her brand anonymously, Raichik’s identity was revealed by the Washington Post in April. She then showed her face for the first time on Carlson’s Fox News show at the end of last year.

The Post story observed that Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse and also played a role in influencing legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ community.

Before Libs of TikTok, Raichik experimented with different usernames when constructing her online persona. She tried @cuomomustgo, calling for the resignation of then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who was indeed forced to resign, but not because of Raichik), and then went for @houseplantpotus, a parody of President Joe Biden.

Although those accounts were less successful, Raichik began interacting with right-wing figures, spread falsehoods about the coronavirus and pushed out conspiracy theories about election results.

It wasn’t until April 2021 that she changed her Twitter handle to @libsoftiktok, debuting the account by promising “your daily dose of cringe.”

That account rapidly settled on a theme: Raichik began spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, often by reposting content from users in the LGBTQ community, with mocking captions attached.

That approach started getting traction and she quickly gained status after attracting attention and support from Carlson, podcaster Joe Rogan, Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, among other right-wing social media stars.

When Raichik rolled out @libsoftiktok, she promised “your daily dose of cringe.” Then she found the killer formula: Mock LGBTQ people and harass teachers over sex education.

Raichik’s content has also earned her accounts multiple temporary suspensions from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and even a permanent suspension from TikTok. But on the other side of the ledger, Raichik’s influence has led to some teachers losing their jobs after she reposted content related to teaching sex education.

In an interview with the New York Post, Raichik said it was “not easy” to be responsible for teachers being fired, but she had few regrets.

“I really do feel bad,” she said. “Sometimes it breaks my heart, but it has to be done. These kids are so innocent, and they don’t deserve to go to school to get groomed and indoctrinated.”

Raichik has repeatedly described the LGBTQ community as a “cult” and even likened its members to “groomers,” a widespread right-wing slur that falsely equates sexual orientation and gender identity with pedophilia.

She has repeatedly criticized drag performers who interact with children, and has posted the locations of several all-ages drag shows around the country. One such event was invaded by members of the Proud Boys within hours of her post.

“Various Proud Boy chapters are devoted Libs of Tiktok followers and show up at the drag shows,” Via said. “When you start having that happening, there is always the chance for violence.”

Since revealing her identity, Raichik has been interviewed by several right-wing hosts and continued to attack the LGBTQ+ community. In an interview with YouTuber and conspiracy theorist Tim Pool, for instance, she baselessly claimed that “the point of drag is to queer kids.”

“They admit they’re grooming, but they need people, these activists in the media to cover it up,” Pool responded.

Raichik also went on QAnon conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine’s show, which is streamed on Rumble, a video-sharing platform favored by far-right figures.

Raichik and Lorraine spent most of the interview smearing LGBTQ people as pedophiles and groomers, with Raichik claiming that people on the left want to normalize pedophilia by using the euphemism “minor-attracted persons.”

She also made the baseless allegation that pedophilia is “much more common” in schools. “It’s crazy that they allow kids to decide to be transgender or nonbinary. A child is not old enough to make that decision,” Raichik said.

“This radical transgender movement also is a slippery slope to pedophilia,” Lorraine replied. Although that talking point has become commonplace on the far right in the last couple of years, there is no data to support it. Studies suggest that the vast majority of sex offenders who prey on children are cisgender.

Raichik has also appeared with right-wing radio host Sebastian Gorka, a former aide to Donald Trump and supporter of the Jan. 6 insurrection who has been associated with the Nazi-aligned group Vitézi Rend in Hungary.

“I have a moral obligation to continue exposing this stuff and to protect innocence of children and I’m never gonna stop,” she said during her interview with Gorka.

The net affect of Raichik’s media stardom, Via suggests, is a worsening environment of hostility toward the LGBTQ community that can spill over into other forms of prejudice.

“When you have a person, who is vehemently anti-LGBT, it is inevitable that they are going to be anti-Black, that they’re going to be anti-immigrant,” Via said. “All of these bigotries overlap.”

on the rise of right-wing online trolls

How pesticides intensify global warming

A new study shows that pesticides are a key contributor to climate change, from their manufacturing, transportation, and application, all the way to their degradation and disposal. That’s according to researchers at the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), who say that while pesticides have been critical tools in agricultural production, their efficacy is on the decline while climate change exacerbates the need to use more.

According to PANNA, the pesticide-climate change connection is a loop: Pesticides add emissions to the atmosphere that accelerate climate change, warming climates stress agricultural systems and increase the number of pests and insects, requiring more pesticides.

Compared to agriculture chemicals like nitrogen fertilizer, with well-known negative environmental impacts, greenhouse gas emissions from pesticides are understudied and underestimated. Producing one kilogram of pesticide requires, on average, 10 times more energy than one kilogram of nitrogen fertilizer. Some pesticides, like sulfuryl fluoride, used on insects like termites and beetles, are themselves greenhouse gases: emitting one ton of sulfuryl fluoride is the equivalent of emitting nearly 5,000 tons of CO2. Researchers also say that oil and gas companies add to the issue and profit from it: 99 percent of synthetic pesticides are derived from petroleum.

California uses nearly 20% of the pesticides applied annually across the United States. The state grows fewer commodity crops than other regions, but supplies a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts. Because fruits and vegetables have such high value any losses would be significant and expensive – causing California farmers to use nearly five times more pesticides than the national average to avoid losses.

“Over the years, billions of pounds of pesticides have been used in California alone, which can spike greenhouse gas emissions, especially when synthetically made,” said Asha Sharma, Organizing Co-Director at PANNA and co-author of the report. “Nearly all – 95% – of California farmers are farming conventionally. Only 5% is organically farmed. With pesticides, this scale is important.”

Rising temperatures have led to a drop in crop resilience: heat stress, changing rainfall patterns, and more insect pests in more places creating higher demand for synthetic chemicals and pesticides. Some research reports that less than .01% of pesticides reach target pests, which means the excess chemicals end up on other plants or in the soil, water, and air. Hotter temperatures make this problem worse, vaporizing pesticides into a toxic gas, poisoning those exposed.

Researchers say the solution is agroecology. Agroecological farming emphasizes conservation agriculture, ecological processes that adapt to local conditions, and practices like intercropping, where two or more crops grow together to increase biodiversity and promote plant health. It also prioritizes the health and decision-making power of farmers and agricultural workers, which has been shown to improve crop yields, profitability, and resilience against climate impacts.

The report says agroecology leads to better public health, improved food security and sovereignty, and enhanced biodiversity and social benefits, such as better cooperation between farmers and communities. Researchers add that a shift across the entire food production system would be costly, but that there are ways to incentivize the transition through subsidies, similar to support for adopting green technology.

“Conventional farming methods don’t account for environmental externalities and health costs. Organic food is more expensive because it accounts for those things,” Sharma said. “A different system would cost more, yes, but the critical role of government is to make sure that people, regardless of income level, can afford food without pesticides.”

What 5,000-year-old skeletons tell us about living with climate change

What can old bones teach us about adapting to climate change? More than you’d think.

In a new paper published in the journal PNAS last week, 25 archaeologists and anthropologists analyzed thousands of years’ worth of human remains from nearly every continent to learn how ancient people responded to rapid shifts in the climate. They studied the health of the people during hard times, comparing characteristics between societies to see what made a difference.

Wherever they looked, they found that some cultures adapted to drought, changing rainfall patterns, and fluctuating temperatures better than others. In general, when people lived in rigid, hierarchical societies, depended too much on agriculture, and lived in close quarters, they faced the most destruction from these challenges. In Europe, for instance, the Little Ice Age coincided with the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War. On the other hand, people who lived in more mobile societies with diverse food sources and more flexible social structures fared better, cooperating with each other to survive.

Contrary to the story that often gets told, migration, violence, and civilizational collapse are not inevitable responses to environmental stress, said Gwen Robbins Schug, the lead author of the paper and a professor of biology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While relocation is often a solution for coping with shifts in the climate, it’s not the only way, and doesn’t necessarily lead to conflict and violence. “There are many times in history where people successfully navigated climate and environmental change and they didn’t migrate,” Robbins Schug said.

Recent research has countered the idea that abrupt shifts in the climate unavoidably led to the breakdown of ancient civilizations. Sure, environmental shifts caused serious problems — and sometimes catastrophe — but pop-science books have tended to focus on the most dramatic tales, such as the collapse of Easter Island or the Mayan civilization, sometimes fudging the facts to fit a particular narrative. They also tend to ignore how many groups managed to survive, responding and reorganizing without losing their core identity. This preoccupation with crumbling societies has resulted in a warped picture of the past, one report published in Nature argued.

It has also fueled a fatalistic view, sometimes called “doomism,” about our ability to survive the alarming rise in temperatures today. Misconceptions about collapse, migration, and violence in the face of climate change could end up shaping modern-day policy decisions, with serious consequences, Robbins Schug argues. “What should actually be driving policy is the notion that cooperation is much more common in human evolution,” she said. “We would not be where we are today without cooperation.”

Robbins Schug and the other researchers assessed dozens of studies looking at societies stretching back 5,000 years through the Middle Ages, pulling out common themes in how they responded to environmental stress. They studied societies hailing from locations in present-day North America, Argentina, Chile, China, Ecuador, England, India, Japan, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, and Vietnam.

What they found was a divide between large, rigid societies and smaller ones that were more nimble and cooperative. Consider the megadrought that hit Asia around 2200 B.C., one of the most severe climate events in the last 10,000 years. Prior to the drought, the Indus Valley civilization in contemporary Pakistan and northwest India had grown rapidly, building dense, complex cities and trade routes. But diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis thrived in tight quarters and spread through trade, economic opportunities started drying up, and unpredictable monsoon rainfall made the situation worse. Violence spread; Indus cities were largely abandoned within 200 years.

By comparison, the drought didn’t do as much damage to hunting-and-gathering communities in Japan, China, and the United Arab Emirates, less hierarchical societies with more dietary diversity. In Japan, people in Jomon cultures ate lots of chestnuts that they cultivated in addition to what they hunted, gathered, and fished.

The modern-day Four Corners region in the American Southwest offers another example of how to cope with environmental stresses. From the years 800 to 1350, temperatures swung from one extreme to the other, and the area oscillated between drought and floods. But at Black Mesa in northern Arizona, the desert-farming population grew slowly and steadily thanks to a series of adaptations. People moved around as water sources shifted, created “eco-niches” to attract rabbits to supplement their diet, and built widespread cooperative networks to trade resources across a large area.

Frost Fair on the Thames at London, 1683. Winters in Britain were often particularly cold in the 17th and 18th centuries, a period known as the “Little Ice Age.” Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector / Getty Images

The new paper suggests that a preoccupation with climate-driven violence might come, in part, from a focus on European history. The Little Ice Age that started in 1300 was marked by widespread famine, epidemics like the Black Death, and wars. The increase in violence seen during this time wasn’t an inevitable outcome of a changing climate, the study’s authors argue, but an example of how a specific historical and cultural context created “an atmosphere conducive to violence as a response to stress,” with deep economic inequality, endemic warfare, and religious fundamentalism as backdrop.

The study also suggests that migration may be a healthy adaptation to a changing world. While migration is often painted as a scary, unnatural force, some say it might be time to reframe the phenomenon, envisioning it as a way to move out of harm’s way and actively seek better living conditions. For instance, during times of high aridity in sub-Saharan Africa, migration offered “a successful strategy for dwindling local resources,” the study says.

It’s a reminder that, even though the scale of modern-day climate change today is unprecedented and frightening, people have dealt with environmental problems before. You could say that some lessons for how to deal with climate change are written in their bones.

Hopelessly devoted: Kevin McCarthy’s dedication to Marjorie Taylor Greene is a dangerous sign

Throughout the fight over the Speaker of the House seat earlier this month, the Beltway press kept up this weird pretense that Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who eventually secured the leadership role, is somehow at odds with the looniest members of the Republican caucus. The assumption that McCarthy is secretly sane and just trying to manage the far-right fringe persisted throughout his shepherding of the loudest conspiracy theorists into committees, like the House Oversight Committee, where their bizarre lies will get dramatically amplified. The assumption is that McCarthy is a reluctant handmaiden to the far right, a man boxed in by the outsized power the worst actors have in his slim majority.

That was always a dumb assumption, however, especially considering that McCarthy voted to support Donald Trump’s attempted coup in 2021. The likeliest explanation for his behavior has always been that McCarthy is a member of the insurrectionist caucus in good standing and that the “rebel” faction that refused to vote for his Speakership was only acting out of a desire for media attention, not sincere disagreement with him on the issues.

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Hopefully, this new bit of reporting from I-95 mainstays Jonathan Swan and Catie Edmondson at the New York Times will finally counter this myth of McCarthy’s covert normalcy. Starting with a delicious headline, “How Kevin McCarthy Forged an Ironclad Bond With Marjorie Taylor Greene,” the article delves into how politically infatuated McCarthy is with Greene, a loudmouthed bigot who has endorsed every conspiracy theory under the sun, including that the Sandy Hook shooting was a “false flag” and that an international Jewish conspiracy starts wildfires with space lasers. “I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy is quoted as saying about a person who equated temporary mask mandates with the Holocaust.

McCarthy’s nauseating adoration for Greene continues throughout the article, leaving it impossible to believe there’s anything resembling reluctance on either side of this alliance. It should also end all doubt about what Republicanism is about these days: Anger at the rest of America for rejecting the GOP’s backward ways, and a desire to enact revenge. Greene is the nihilistic soul of the modern Republican Party, the living symbol of how the party would rather destroy this country than accept social progress.

Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to be a mainstream Republican now. Sadly, the media will let it happen

Greene gets a lot of attention for her kooky beliefs, including her fascination with the QAnon conspiracy theories. But what’s even more important is what’s fueling those conspiracy theories and those who believe them. Both Republican politicians and voters increasingly embrace conspiratorial thinking to justify what otherwise is unjustifiable, which is an unhinged rage at the majority of Americans, who have rejected GOP views on everything from abortion to LGTQ rights to taxation rates. The close alliance of McCarthy and Greene shows this rage is hardly confined to the fringes of the Republican Party. It has become the GOP’s defining feature.

“I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy is quoted as saying about a person who equated temporary mask mandates with the Holocaust.

McCarthy’s contempt for the Americans he supposedly was elected to serve was on full display in his committee assignment strategy. This was most in-your-face when it came to giving committee assignments to Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., who has been in the news for weeks not just for lying about his entire life, but for reports of truly evil behavior like allegedly stealing $3,000 that was raised to pay for surgery for a disabled veteran’s dog. (The dog, unsurprisingly, died.) Across the board, however, the main message of McCarthy’s committee choices is, “I have absolutely no respect for the legitimate work of government.”

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As the Washington Post reported last week, “Four of former president Donald Trump’s staunchest and most controversial allies — Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.) — appear headed to the House Oversight Committee.” Meanwhile, “Republicans are also angling to deny Democratic Reps. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.) seats on the House Intelligence Committee and to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

None of these choices are about good governance, but the opposite.

Greene is the nihilistic soul of the modern Republican Party, the living symbol of how the party would rather destroy this country than accept social progress.

Turning the Oversight committee into a clown car of conspiracy theorists isn’t just about abusing government resources to generate Republican propaganda. It’s about expressing disdain for the very idea of oversight. They will, of course, be ignoring all real corruption in government in order to focus attention on fake scandals about President Joe Biden and his family. It’s rubbing our collective noses in the fact that Republicans don’t think corruption is a bad thing. Indeed, they clearly don’t believe Americans deserve anything better than being governed by corrupt, shameless people.

Call it the Conspiracy Theory Congress: Things are about to get dangerously weird on Capitol Hill

This attitude does help explain why, even after most of the country has mostly moved on, Republicans are still obsessed with the pandemic and with punishing anyone who tried to reduce the death rate from COVID-19. Right-wing media continues to peddle wild conspiracy theories accusing former Biden medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci of somehow causing the COVID-19 virus, and there’s little doubt House Republicans will abuse subpoena powers to harass him publicly. The only thing Dr. Fauci did to draw this much ire is become the face of efforts to curtail the pandemic’s impact. In the nihilistic GOP, there is no greater sin than trying to save American lives.

That’s why there’s good reason many fear that this time around, Republicans are going to shoot the hostage in their debt ceiling standoff antics. In the past, Republicans have threatened to tank the world economy, but have always stopped short of actually pulling the trigger. But that was in the pre-January 6 era before Republicans fully embraced the “burn it all down” mentality. To be certain, the goals of prior debt ceiling battles — defunding Medicare and Social Security, mainly — show that seething hatred for most Americans is at the heart of GOP politics, which is why they want to deprive people of a retirement nest most of us have paid into our entire adult lives. But the fact that this time, Republicans can’t even seem to articulate what they want in exchange for raising the debt ceiling is a worrisome development. It suggests they’re long past using this as a threat to get something in exchange, but that tanking the economy is an end in itself. They’re past economic hostage-taking and getting to the point of thrill-killing.

We’ll see if they get that far as to actually let the U.S. stop paying its debts. The GOP is still beholden to the wealthy corporate class of donors, who may not care if the party embraces pro-pandemic policies, but will draw the line if the party starts hurting their economic bottom lines for the sheer sick pleasure of it. But no one should mistake one minor check on right-wing excesses as anything resembling a party tethered to reality. Just as McCarthy seems to bear hug Greene every time he sees her, the GOP has wed itself to a politics of destruction.

The promise of the George Floyd uprisings and the persistence of police thuggery

The summer of protests in response to the video-recorded police murder of George Floyd in 2020 was one of the largest and most diverse in American history. It is estimated that between 15 and 26 million people took to the streets in America and participated in other protest activities and organizing to show their outrage and disapproval at the police murder of Floyd and the cultural problems of police brutality and anti-Black bias and white supremacy more broadly.

The protests took place in the midst of resurgent white supremacy, white rage, and the Trump regime’s war on democracy. These protests also embodied radical possibilities for reforming America’s police, the carceral society, and the larger culture of cruelty. In a 2020 essay that appeared in Jacobin, political scientist Douglas McAdam, who is one of the world’s leading experts on social movements, described the moment:

Put together, we appear to be experiencing a social change tipping point that is as rare as it is potentially consequential. However, notwithstanding all the energy and momentum generated by the protests, and what appears to be a related drop in Donald Trump’s poll numbers, his reelection in November remains a real threat, all the more so since the pandemic threatens the high-voter turnout that Democrats rely on, as well as enabling the kind of voter suppression that the Republicans favor.

The best we can hope for is to do everything we can to maintain the momentum, energy, and inclusive, pragmatic, and nonviolent character of the current protests. Our goal should be twofold: to capitalize on the possibilities for change inherent in this moment, and to begin to pivot toward forms of electoral mobilization crucial to success in the fall. The survival of American democracy will likely depend on how successfully we attend to this agenda.

So where are we now?

While it is certain that the summer was a highly influential and formative moment for the political identities of an entire generation of young people and others, unfortunately, the lasting movement necessary to create that better and more just America has not yet developed.

At the Brookings Institute, senior fellow Dana Fisher offers this insight:

The question that remains is how to translate such a diverse and prolonged mass mobilization into social change. Unfortunately, the effects of the protests in summer 2020 have been relatively disappointing so far, yielding mostly what Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor calls “the low-hanging fruit of symbolic transformation.” Systemic racism is one of a range of progressive priorities that have highlighted the vast distance that must be traveled between protest and legislation or other forms of policymaking. Once the masses are mobilized to participate in sustained activism, there is still much to learn about how to channel outrage in the streets into enduring social and political change. There is no question, however, that the opportunities are substantially increased when protests are large, persistent, and include crowds that are diverse enough to be representative of the general American public.

In 2022, America’s police killed at least 1,176 people. That is the highest number of people killed by police in the United States since experts started compiling that data on a nationwide scale in 2013. The Guardian reports:

The preliminary 2022 total – a possible undercount as more cases are catalogued – marks 31 additional fatalities than the year before. In 2021, police killed 1,145 people; 1,152 in 2020; 1,097 in 2019; 1,140 in 2018; and 1,089 in 2017. The earliest data goes back to 2013, when journalists and racial justice advocates began counting these fatal incidents on a national basis. A database run by the Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police, also shows 2022 as a year with record killings.

The data release comes two years after the murder of George Floyd sparked national uprisings calling for racial justice, police accountability and reductions in the funding and size of police forces. Despite the international attention and some local efforts to curb police brutality, there has been an intensifying backlash to criminal justice reform, and the overall number of killings has remained alarmingly high.

Police across the country killed an average of more than three people a day, or nearly 100 people every month last year according to Mapping Police Violence. The non-profit research group maintains a database of reported deaths at the hands of law enforcement, including people fatally shot, beaten, restrained and Tasered.

Public opinion polls, meanwhile, continue to show consistent divides across lines of race where white Americans — especially Republicans — are much more likely to believe that police abuse of the public is not a significant problem than are Black Americans and Democrats. As a 2021 essay at the Morning Consult highlights, polling information shows that “as Democrats and Black Americans increasingly cast police violence as a grave issue, the declining threat perception among the broader population is fueled by shifting views among white Republicans: 41 percent view police violence as a serious problem, down 18 points since 2016, while the share of white Democrats who said the same has increased slightly over that time frame to 88 percent. As a whole, Democrats and Black people are twice as likely as Republicans to see police violence as a serious problem, and the share of GOP adults who describe racial discrimination against Black people as “one of the biggest problems facing America today” has fallen 10 points from last summer.”

A month after Buffalo: Is white America ashamed — or has it already forgotten?

Public opinion polls and other research show that a majority of Republicans, Trumpists, white “conservatives” and right-leaning independents fantastically believe that white people are more likely to be “victims” of “racism” and “discriminated against” in American society than are Black people. A majority of Republicans also subscribe to the nonsense and delusional white supremacist conspiracy theory that white people are somehow going to be “replaced” by non-whites in America and Europe.

America’s modern police can trace their origins back to the slave-catching patrols of the antebellum era. Many white Americans are highly supportive of the country’s police and its abuse of Black and brown people because they are viewed as “defenders” of racial authoritarianism and white privilege in the form of “law and order.” As such, it is no surprise or coincidence then that white supremacists, neo-Nazis, right-wing militias, and neofascists have systematically infiltrated the country’s law enforcement agencies on the federal, state, and local levels. Contrary to the right-wing lie about how “liberals” and “Democrats” want to “defund the police”, both the Democratic and Republican Party continue to support aggressive policing that in turn leads to unnecessarily violent and often preventable lethal outcomes.

So while these discussions of data and institutions are critical, they should not be a substitute for the harsh and lethal reality that power in its many forms is enacted upon real human beings and their bodies.

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On the afternoon of Jan. 3, Los Angeles police detained and then repeatedly “tazed” (language that is corporate public relations and marketing-speak for severely shocking a person until they lose voluntary control of their muscles) a 31-year-old Black man named Keenan Anderson. One of the shocks lasted 30 seconds. Anderson would die several hours later at the hospital after experiencing a cardiac emergency.

He was a much beloved high school teacher and father.

The lethal encounter began when Anderson attempted to get help from the police following a car accident. Police body camera footage released to the public last Wednesday shows Anderson repeatedly pleading and begging for his life.

“Please, please, please, please, please….They’re trying to George Floyd me.”

These would be some of the last words Anderson would say before being shocked repeatedly and then dying several hours later.

Anderson’s cousin is Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. “My cousin was asking for help, and he didn’t receive it,” she told the Guardian. “He was killed….Nobody deserves to die in fear, panicking and scared for their life. My cousin was scared for his life. He spent the last 10 years witnessing a movement challenging the killing of Black people. He knew what was at stake and he was trying to protect himself. Nobody was willing to protect him.”

“They’re trying to George Floyd me.”

The Los Angeles police have a long and notorious history of racial profiling and other abuse of the Black and brown community. The death of Keenan Anderson is also part of a much larger pattern where police in California are much more likely to use force against Black and brown people than they are white people. Now the Los Angeles police are following a common script in the aftermath of such egregious acts of violence against unarmed Black people and members of other marginalized groups: publicly attacking the reputation of the victim in order to make them appear somehow responsible for their own deaths. The next likely step in their attacks on Anderson will be for the police to claim that he died of “excited delirium,” which is a nonsense medical “diagnosis” summoned up by police lobbyists, “copagandists” and other enablers or police thuggery and violence, most infamously after the killing of George Floyd.

As seen in the tragic example of Anderson and so many others, the type of institutional and systemic violence represented and channeled by America’s police and other law enforcement is killing Black and brown people both individually and as a group. This type of violence results in what physicians, mental health professionals, social scientists, and other experts have described as “racial battle fatigue,” a form of post-traumatic stress disorder where the victims of white supremacist and other racialized violence (both on an interpersonal and systemic/institutional level) manifest a range of negative mental, emotional, and physical health outcomes that result in higher rates of chronic illness and death as compared to white people and other socially dominant and privileged groups in America and elsewhere.

America is a society that is historically structured around white supremacy and racialized outcomes which privilege those deemed to be “white” and disadvantage and causes harm to those deemed to be non-white. In that way, racial battle fatigue is America’s racial hierarchy working precisely as designed and intended as opposed to something accidental or a function of happenstance or error. Ultimately, such a system persists because White America and many individual white people want it to.

Last Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Day. In his famed and much-misunderstood and (literally) now white-washed “I Have a Dream Speech” that was delivered at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Brother King said that “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality”.

That reality continues some 60 years later.

To be Black or brown in America is to exist in a state of terror and fear when encountering the country’s police and other law enforcement (as well as the white vigilantes and those allied with them who believe they are empowered to enact violence against non-white people with impunity). It will require a great amount of growth in white Americans’ capacity for empathy and human respect to step outside of the narcissism and self-centeredness of Whiteness and white privilege to allow themselves to accept the reality and truth of Black and brown people’s lived experiences.

As America continues to struggle against neofascism, Trumpism, and the other systems of cruelty and collective societal pathology that sustain and birthed such an evil political project, white Americans (and others) will need to realize that embodying real empathy and respect across lines of human difference is an integral part of the struggle for democracy. The violence and thuggery that is routinely visited upon innocent Black and brown people and other marginalized groups by America’s police and other law enforcement will (and to the surprise of many white Americans) soon be applied to all people deemed by the powerful to be “criminals” and “suspect” and “the enemy.” White Americans and others who believe themselves immune to that corrupt power will increasingly learn they are not in fact safe as the Republican fascists and their forces continue to grow in power.

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A federal court holds Trump accountable for his abuse of the law: Here’s why that matters

Yes, Virginia, amid the clouds over Washington, D.C., silver linings sometimes do appear. One shone through brightly last Thursday. A federal court held former President Donald Trump to account — serious account — for filing legally frivolous “revenge” lawsuits and congenitally abusing the judicial system.

True, silver linings don’t melt heavy clouds — for example, the White House’s ongoing mishandling of the classified documents found at President Joe Biden’s home and his think tank office; or the Supreme Court’s avoidance of serious investigation of the leak that may well have helped end Roe v. Wade.

Still, it’s important not to miss powerful pro-democracy decisions in the lower courts. They are where, in actuality, most cases get decided.

By one definition, “A frivolous lawsuit … is filed with the intent to harass, annoy, or disturb the opposite party.” Sanctions for filing such suits are not common.

Scene of the crime: Was there a conspiracy to keep Cassidy Hutchinson silent?

That is one reason why the $937,989 fine that the federal court in southern Florida imposed on Trump and his lawyer, Alina Habba, is so significant. The penalty appears to have registered on the former president: Within hours, he withdrew a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a suit that the court decision had identified as similarly frivolous and vengeful.

Accountability deters.

The court’s opinion offers more, however, than can meet the eye in a headline. In effect, federal Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks describes Trump as a “legalistic autocrat.” Political science scholars have coined that term to describe many 21st-century authoritarians who have strategically used and abused the law in service of their march toward antidemocratic power.

Judge Middlebrooks’ decision called out Trump for “repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries” and describes him as “the mastermind of strategic abuse” of the legal process.

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Abusing the law to intimidate and neutralize opponents and turning courts into playthings for heads of state are what “legalistic autocrats” do. They get elected and then, like woodworms, burrow into legal institutions and eat them away from within.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, darling of Tucker Carlson and the Trumpist right, is the outstanding example. To rid himself of institutional curbs on his power, he has packed courts with allies, removed opposition figures and “expanded the length of their successors’ terms of office so that they would carry his influence beyond the usual term of a democratic government.” He also changed “parliamentary procedure so that opposition MPs could not even speak on the floor” of the legislature.

Similarly, the autocratic Polish government has claimed itself entitled, through the legal process, “to rid [the] government of the ‘post communists,'” a term it uses for the center-left opposition.

Trump has always turned to the courts to accomplish his nefarious aims. By one count, he was involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits before he became president.

After he took office, his autocratic attitude toward the law came into even sharper focus. With the help of his U.S. Senate enabler, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Trump “stacked” the Supreme Court with enough reactionaries to create a revanchist majority.

Trump’s other primary legalistic enabler, then-Attorney General William Barr, appointed John Durham as a special counsel to go after those who had investigated Trump’s collaboration with Russia in 2016 to help elect him president. Fortunately, juries have defeated Durham’s efforts in the only two cases he brought to trial.

Broadly speaking, the Trump-Barr-Durham attempts to weaponize law with fear and favor have fizzled spectacularly, even as Durham continues to work within the Justice Department.

The voters’ 2020 rejection of Trump did not change his stripes. He remains a “legalistic autocrat” in exile, trying to use the cover of law to enhance himself at his opponents’ expense.

The real significance of Judge Middlebrooks’ sanction of Trump is the signal it sends: The judiciary is willing to resist an autocratic personality’s attempts to weaponize the law.

Trump’s frivolous lawsuit, for which Judge Middlebrooks just sanctioned him, targeted the same opponents that Trump wanted Durham to prosecute: Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey and Acting Director Andrew McCabe, FBI agent Peter Strzok and others. Trump’s suit made the spurious allegation that all those people had “orchestrated a malicious conspiracy … in the hope of … rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.”

Which brings us back to the real significance of Judge Middlebrooks’ order sanctioning Trump. It reflects the willingness and ability of the judiciary to resist an autocratic personality’s attempts to use law to harass and destroy his opponents and dismantle limitations on his own power.

Robust judicial constraints on would-be strongmen are crucial to a democracy’s resilience, according to a team of political scientists who studied 59 examples of autocratization in the last 30 years. “[J]udicial institutions can act as the ‘last bulwark’ against democratic breakdown,” the authors found.

That is exactly what the federal court did on Thursday when it resisted Trump’s abuse of the legal process, an institution so vital to our constitutional republic.

on the rule of law and the fight for democracy

Big corporations are buying up homes and “eroding the American dream of homeownership”

It’s a bit dystopian to contemplate.

What are we to make of a world where we are increasingly reliant on the latest technology, but our socioeconomics have come to resemble something more Medieval where our planet is increasingly dominated by a relatively small coterie of extraordinarily wealthy individuals?

Over the arc of the first two years of the pandemic the world’s richest one percent pocketed two thirds of the new wealth generated from December 2019 to December 2021, according to an analysis put out by Oxfam, the anti-poverty non-profit. That means that for every dollar of new wealth being made by a worker in the bottom 90 percent, a billionaire realized $1. 7 million.

“Although billionaire fortunes have fallen slightly since their peak in 2021, they remain trillions of dollars higher than before the pandemic,” Oxfam said in its report timed for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “This crisis-driven bonanza for the super-rich has come on top of many years of dramatically growing fortunes at the top, and growing wealth inequality.”

How does the 21^st century wealth pyramid building work? How does this global trend manifest itself here in New Jersey? Brick by brick.

LARGESE FOR THE ALREADY LARGE

Consider Gov. Murphy’s decision to let the state’s Corporate Business Tax Surcharge expire at the end of the year. The CBT is only paid by the most massive and profitable corporations and zeroing it out delivers these behemoths like Amazon a $600 million recurring windfall.

“This is a tax cut for some of the biggest businesses in the world, plain and simple,” wrote Nicole Rodriguez, president of New Jersey Policy Perspectives, a non-profit progressive think tank. “With corporate profits at record levels and millions of New Jersey families struggling to keep up with rising costs, this represents the absolute worst of trickle-down economics.”

Need proof of just just how Medieval Murphynomics are?

Consider that his recurring $600 million windfall for anti-union giants likes Amazon is six times the $100 million the NJ AFL-CIO and its constituent unions like 32 BJ SEIU and HPAE, the state’s largest healthcare union, asked for to cover hazard pay for the tens of thousands of essential workers who put themselves and their families lives at risk during COVID.

Like any macroeconomic trend, this epoch transfer of all wealth to the top Murphy facilitates plays out in the landscape all around us as the security of home ownership gives way to the predations of terminal tenancy.

Across the country, anonymous LLCs are buying up single family homes at such an alarming rate that housing activists are warning the trend is increasingly putting home ownership out of the reach of first-time buyers particularly in communities of color.

“Investors bought 24 percent of all single-family houses sold nationwide last year, up from 15 percent to 16 percent annually going back to 2012,” according to a Stateline analysis of data provided by CoreLogic, a California-based data analytics firm. “That share dipped only slightly in the first five months of 2022 to 22 percent.”

BLEEDING OUT

In Newark, New Jersey’s most populous city, researchers at the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME) documented that between 2017 and 2020, such purchases accounted for 47 percent of all home closings, more than twice the current national rate.

“This is a threefold increase in investor purchases since 2010, when less than 20 percent of all residential sales were to institutional buyers,” according to CLiME’s report. “Who Owns Newark-Transferring Wealth from Newark Homeowners to Corporate Buyers. “These trends are part of a national pattern. Limited liability companies, often backed by largescale equity investment, became active in residential real estate during the Great Recession and foreclosure crisis.”

CLiME’s analysis continues. “Yet these trends demonstrate the strong probability of rapidly rising rents, lower homeownership rates, a diminished Black middle class, market challenges to building affordable homes, even more housing instability for low- and moderate-income Newarkers and displacement. What has happened in other cities and neighborhoods has been happening in Newark—but on a scale unmatched anywhere in the country.”

Luckily for the residents of Brick City, aka Newark, the administration of Mayor Ras J. Baraka and the City Council are both paying attention. Last week, the Newark Municipal Council gave final approval to an ordinance promoted by Baraka requiring deed restrictions on sales of up to 50 percent of city-owned properties, requiring them to remain affordable for 30 years.

“The deed restrictions apply to the sale of vacant lots as well as homes and to the sale of properties by the Newark Land Bank as well as direct sales by the City of Newark,” according to city’s press release. “The measure also gives certified non-profit housing developers the right of first refusal in the purchase of city-owned properties.”

The ordinance was a recommendation contained in CLiME’s “Who Owns Newark,” research report authored by David D. Troutt, Distinguished Professor of Law, Director of the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity and a member of the City’s Equitable Growth Advisory Commission.”

A RADICAL RESOLVE

“In cities and even suburbs across America, LLCs are eroding the American dream of homeownership as they convert owner-occupied homes into corporately owned rental units,” Mayor Baraka said. “In Newark, where we have worked hard to expand homeownership, we have created a strategy to do everything possible to fight this dangerous trend. The CLiME report is proof that Newark must enact and enforce stronger and more equitable laws, regulations, and policies to ensure that all residents share in the growth of our city.”

This latest initiative follows up a 2022 municipal ordinance designed to pierce the corporate veil of secrecy that shrouds limited liability companies (LLCs) that are gobbling up Newark’s limited housing stock by compelling they register as a responsible agent in the State of New Jersey.

“Our report shows that the national trend of investor buying of one-to-four-unit homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods is acute in Newark where almost half of all real estate sales were made by institutional buyers,” Dr. Troutt said in the City Hall press release. “This trend grew out of the foreclosure crisis that wiped out significant middle-class wealth in Newark. Mayor Baraka’s actions are important steps toward maintaining affordability of rents and homeownership, discouraging speculation and demanding transparency of ownership.”

The stakes are high.

“Sadly, this reality continues a long pattern of economic threat to predominantly Black and increasingly Latino neighborhoods in a state whose communities are among the most segregated in the country,” Dr. Troutt’s seminal report states. “From racial exclusion to predatory lending, from foreclosure to the extraction of rents, Newark’s experience demonstrates what can happen when local economies ignore equity…These trends demonstrate the strong probability of rapidly rising rents, lower homeownership rates, a diminished Black middle class, market challenges to building affordable homes, and even more housing instability for low- and moderate-income Newarkers and displacement.”

The gap between White and Black homeownership rates is wider now than it was in 1960, when housing discrimination was rampant and legal, U.S. Census Bureau data shows. In 2022, 74.6 percent of White households owned their homes, compared with 45.3 percent of Black households — a gap of more than 29 points.

In 1960, the White homeownership rate was 65 percent, and the Black rate was 38 percent, a 27-point gap.

Don’t be fooled by State of the State happy talk. We’re moving backwards brick by brick.

What gun control studies tell us about how to stop violence, according to experts

Yesterday’s mass shooting in Half Moon Bay and Saturday’s mass shooting in Monterey Park, both California cities, are a sad attestation that the depressing American trend of gun-related violence is far from over. Previously last week, Solomon Peña, a former Republican state legislature candidate in New Mexico, was arrested for allegedly firing shots at the homes of various other lawmakers — and conspiring with would-be hitmen to do much worse — having been motivated by his conviction that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged.

Studies prove a correlation between lowered violent crime rates and laws like mandatory waiting periods.

As with all mass shootings in the United States, all of this news was predictably followed by public calls — from activists and politicians alike — for gun control legislation that could curb future gun violence. To many, that seems like a sensible response: American mass shootings have not only become more frequent in the past 40 years, they are also becoming deadlier, according to an analysis from the LA Times. Shouldn’t something be done?

Obviously, Second Amendment absolutists and the gun lobby will fight gun control laws tooth and nail. But isn’t there hard evidence from research studies that show that gun control regulations work to stop mass shootings?

Salon spoke to researchers who study gun violence and regulation to stop such violence. In turn, the researchers explained what kinds of laws seem more or less effective at stopping gun violence, according to research papers.

The fact that many research studies do suggest that certain laws stop gun violence might seem like a regulatory slam dunk. But experts also warned that there’s an enormous caveat: First, that there are many different ways in which firearms can be used to commit crimes; and second, as fervent gun rights absolutists might point out, the studies which analyze firearm control legislation by their nature study correlation rather than causation.

Counties with more slaves in 1860 have higher gun ownership rates today, study finds

“Studying these laws are difficult compared to say studying the impact of a single law related to child booster seats, or bicycle helmets, or seat belt laws,” Dr. Eric Fleegler, who has extensively written about firearms legislation and teaches pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Salon. The reason is simple: these kinds of studies are “ecological studies,” not in the sense that they pertain to environmental science but rather that they examine how variables will appear linked to outcomes within large groups of people.

“They’re using, ‘Hey, we had a change in something, a law, and we look to see if there’s a change in something, some outcome fatalities, and we say, ‘Yes, these things correlate with each other,'” Fleegler observed. “The causation is a much more challenging thing.”

Similarly, it is difficult to say definitively whether “firearm control works” in all scenarios because there are so many different types of firearms and so many different types of situations where they can be involved with crime and/or violence.

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“First, there is not just one firearm law,” Fleegler explained. In fact, when it comes to firearm legislation, there are hundreds of different types of laws.

“These laws can roughly be categorized into 20 or more different types of legislation based around how firearms are sold, based around background checks, based specifically around automatic weapons, based around child access prevention laws, based around domestic violence, etc.,” Fleegler added. “Beyond the laws there are other elements at play that affect firearm fatalities including differences in firearm ownership rates across our country, concentrated areas of poverty and other factors.”

According to the RAND Corporation, an American nonprofit global policy think tank, the voluminous studies done on firearm legislation have yielded a hefty number of conclusions. In terms of decreasing violent crime, studies prove a correlation between lowered violent crime rates and laws like mandatory waiting periods, prohibiting firearms to those associated with domestic violence, imposing child-access prevention laws, and forcing those banned from owning firearms to surrender them. Child-access prevention laws and waiting periods also were linked to drops in suicide rates, as were minimum age requirements. By contrast, concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground laws were both linked to increased rates of violent crime.

“New York and California were restrictive on guns and benefited; Texas went the other way and has paid a price.”

Again, all of this is correlation, meaning that none of the studies directly prove that the policies in question actually caused the outcomes in question. Yet according to Dr. John J. Donohue, a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the National Bureau of Economic Research, it is possible to look at various studies and arrive at certain definite conclusions.

“I think these papers all show that permissive laws around carrying of guns promote more gun violence than they stop and restrictions on assault weapons and high capacity magazines dampen mass shootings,” Donohue told Salon writing, citing his own extensive research into the subject. As one example of this, Donohue pointed out how Texas banned gun carrying from 1870 to 1995 before taking “a very sharp pro gun turn” in 1996. The results?

“In 1995 Texas had about the same level of homicide as New York, and California had a 25 percent higher murder rate than Texas,” Donohue told Salon by email. “Today Texas has a 57.4 percent higher murder rate than New York and about an 18% higher murder rate than California. That is an astonishing turn around in 25 years compared to the two other large states. New York and California were restrictive on guns and benefited; Texas went the other way and has paid a price.”

“Studying these laws are difficult compared to say studying the impact of a single law related to child booster seats, or bicycle helmets, or seat belt laws.”

Donohue added, “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court will probably equalize things now since they want all states to be more like Texas (via aggrandized [Second Amendment] rulings).”

There may be other ways, though, in which legislation can be used to remediate gun violence.

“I think a better question to ask is, how do you prevent people who should not be able to fire a given gun (such as children, a non-authorized individual, a burglar who steals a gun) – and that is through regulations about the manufacture of guns that require them to have safety built into the gun,” Fleegler suggested. “These guns, frequently called ‘smart guns,’ have been available outside of the US for 20 years. These are guns that have biometrics that recognize fingerprints, or RFIDs that recognize a bracelet or ring of an authorized user. Guns are the only commercially available good sold in the US that is not regulated for safety and that is a travesty.”

about gun control

“Simple profiteering”: FTC urged to crack down on egg industry’s “organized theft”

As U.S. egg producers rake in record profits amid soaring prices, a farmer-led advocacy group focused on building a just and sustainable food system on Thursday implored the Federal Trade Commission to “promptly open an investigation into the egg industry, prosecute any violations of the antitrust laws it finds within, and ultimately, get the American people their money back.”

Just before testifying at an open meeting of the FTC, Farm Action sent a letter to agency chair Lina Khan detailing its “concerns over apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices by dominant producers of eggs such as Cal-Maine Foods, Rose Acre Farms, Versova Holdings, and Hillandale Farms, among others.”

As Farm Action explained, “Egg prices more than doubled for consumers last year—going from $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022 for a dozen large Grade A eggs.”

Major egg producers and their allies have blamed surging prices on a “supply disruption” triggered by the deadliest outbreak of avian influenza in U.S. history, calling it “‘act of God’ type stuff,” the letter notes.

Based on its analysis of publicly available industry data, however, Farm Action determined that while the avian flu outbreak killed roughly 43 million egg-laying hens nationwide in 2022, “its actual impact on the egg supply was minimal.”

According to the letter:

After accounting for chicks hatched during the year, the average size of the egg-laying flock in any given month of 2022 was never more than 7-8% lower than it was a year prior—and in all but two months was never more than 6% lower. Moreover, the effect of the loss of egg-laying hens on production was itself blunted by “record-high” lay rates observed among remaining hens throughout the year. With total flock size substantially unaffected by the avian flu and lay rates between 1-4% higher than the average rate observed between 2017 and 2021, the industry’s quarterly egg production experienced no substantial decline in 2022 compared to 2021.

Nevertheless, the “weekly wholesale price for shell eggs climbed from 173.5 cents per dozen at the end of February to 194.2 cents in the middle of March,” the letter continues. “By the first week of April, it had reached 298 cents per dozen. For two months after this point, the wholesale price of eggs appeared to stabilize at elevated levels slightly below this peak—but then it started increasing again. In July, it broke previous records and reached over 300 cents per dozen. After dipping briefly in August, the rally in wholesale egg prices continued, hitting 400 cents per dozen in October and almost 450 cents per dozen in the first weeks of December.”

According to Farm Action, major egg producers’ massive price hikes are unjustifiable. In addition to the avian flu outbreak, some have attributed skyrocketing egg prices to higher feed and fuel costs, but “the dominant producers’ course-of-business documents suggest these claims have little merit,” the letter states. “For example, in a presentation to investors just this month, Cal-Maine noted that total farm production and feed costs in 2022 were only 22% higher than they were in 2021.”

“The real culprit behind this 138% hike in the price of a carton of eggs,” says the letter, “appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40%.”

Max Bowman, the chief financial officer of Cal-Maine—the nation’s largest producer and distributor of eggs—has admitted as much, saying in a recent statement that “significantly higher selling prices, our enduring focus on cost control, and our ability to adapt to inflationary market pressures led to improved profitability overall.”

CNN reported last week that “there have been no positive tests” of avian flu at any of Cal-Maine’s facilities, and yet the company’s net average selling price per dozen conventional eggs more than doubled last year. The corporate giant, which controls roughly 20% of the egg market, is behind several popular brands, including Farmhouse Eggs, Sunups, Sunny Meadow, Egg-Land’s Best, and Land O’ Lakes eggs.

“Contrary to industry narratives, the increase in the price of eggs has not been an ‘act of God’—it has been simple profiteering,” Farm Action’s letter argues. “For the 26-week period ending on November 26, 2022, Cal-Maine reported a 10-fold year-over-year increase in gross profits—from $50.392 million to $535.339 million—and a five-fold increase in its gross margins.”

“Cal-Maine’s willingness to increase its prices—and profit margins—to such unprecedented levels suggests foul play. That Cal-Maine—the leader in a mostly commoditized industry with, presumably, the most efficient operations and the greatest financial power—will quintuple its profit margin in one year without any compelling business reason is plainly an indication of market power,” the letter continues. “It is also an invitation for rival egg producers to tacitly collude with Cal-Maine, forego price competition themselves, and maintain high prices for the entire industry. Fundamentally, Cal-Maine seems to be engaging in price leadership—using the avian flu outbreak and the inflationary conditions of the past year as cover to establish a new ‘focal point’ for egg prices.”

“This pattern of behavior by the dominant firms in the egg industry raises significant concerns about monopoly power and potential antitrust violations in this sector,” the letter adds. “It also presents exactly the kind of monopoly or oligopoly power that is entrenched in a market ‘with highly inelastic demand’ and that ‘imposes substantial costs on the public,’ which Chair Khan has previously argued enforcers should seek to challenge. We urge the FTC to exercise the full scope of its authorities—under the Sherman, Clayton, and FTC Acts—to identify, challenge, and uproot anti-competitive arrangements that suppress competition among egg producers and enable dominant firms like Cal-Maine to extort consumers for the eggs they need every day.”

In November, “antitrust trailblazer” Khan led the agency in issuing a new policy statement restoring its commitment to “rigorously enforcing” the FTC Act’s prohibition on “unfair methods of competition,” including what critics have called “predatory pricing.”

According to Farm Action: “What Cal-Maine Foods and the other large egg producers did last year—and seem to be intent on doing again this year—is extort billions of dollars from the pockets of ordinary Americans through what amounts to a tax on a staple we all need: eggs. They did so without any legitimate business justification. They did so because there is no ‘reasonable substitute’ for a carton of eggs. They did so because they had power and weren’t afraid to use it.”

“This kind of organized theft is exactly what Congress—and the public it represents—’empowered and directed’ the FTC to prevent,” the group concluded. “The FTC should do nothing less.”

In addition to regulatory action, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., argued last weekend that Cal-Maine’s “corporate greed” exemplifies why “we need a windfall profits tax.”

Corporate greed is the producer of Egg-Land's Best, Farmhouse Eggs & Land O'Lake Eggs, increasing its profits by 65% last quarter to a record-breaking $198 million while doubling the price of eggs & reporting no positive cases of avian flu. Yes. We need a windfall profits tax.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 15, 2023

Last March, Sanders introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which seeks to stamp out price gouging by imposing a 95% tax on the windfall profits of major companies.

Progressive economists have long urged Congress and the Biden administration to enact a windfall profits tax, strengthen antitrust enforcement, and impose temporary price controls, arguing that only these measures—and not the Federal Reserve’s unemployment-inducing interest rate hikes—can address the corporate profiteering underlying the cost-of-living crisis.

“This time it worked”: MAGA mayor pulled off a “coup” using Trump playbook to “reinstall” himself

In the Wichita, Kansas suburb of Goddard, Democrats accuse Mayor Hunter Larkin, a far-right MAGA Republican, of using the “Stop the Steal” tactics that Donald Trump employed after the 2020 presidential election. But the difference between Trump in 2020/early 2021 and Larkin in 2023, according to his critics, is the fact that Larkin’s “coup” succeeded.

Journalist Justin Rohrlich, in an article published by the Daily Beast on January 23, explains, “A small Kansas town is reeling after a baby-faced 23-year-old manipulated procedural technicalities to reinstall himself as mayor in one night, seemingly taking a page from the playbook used by former President Donald Trump after he was voted out of office. Only, this time, it worked.”

Rohrlich reveals how Larkin managed to snatch the position from Larry Zimmerman, who was a prior mayor of Goddard.

“Larkin’s improbable ascent to office can be traced back to August 2020, when the then-mayor of Goddard stepped down amid a fraud charge for counterfeiting tickets to the local zoo’s ‘Zoobilee’ charity fundraiser,” Rohrlich reports. “Then-21-year-old City Council President Hunter Larkin was appointed to the job. In November 2021, Larkin, who by day works as an accounting manager for a fiberglass oil field pipe manufacturer owned by a wealthy local family that has helped fund his political aspirations, was busted for DUI. He later pleaded guilty, receiving a sentence of probation and staying on as mayor until May 2022, when he resigned in the wake of a news report calling his ethics into question…. Vice-Mayor Larry Zimmerman was then appointed Goddard’s mayor, and has filled the position since — until last Tuesday night.”

Larkin became a member of the Goddard City Council. And during a Council meeting, according to Rohrlich, Larkin “swiftly proposed removing Zimmerman as mayor, a motion which was approved by all except Zimmerman himself.”

Larkin’s power grab worked, and one of his critics is Wichita Assistant District Attorney Brady Burge.

Burge told the Beast, “It is definitely troubling. The local level is where it all starts, and you definitely don’t like to see things like that happening in your own community…. (Larkin) has had trouble in the past building trust with our community, and it looks like it happened again.”

Pamela Anderson claims Tim Allen flashed her on the set of “Home Improvement” when she was 23

In her new memoir, “Love, Pamela,” Pamela Anderson recounts her disturbing first encounter with actor Tim Allen on the set of “Home Improvement.”

Anderson specifically writes about joining the sitcom’s cast as Lisa in 1991, when she was just 23 years of age, in an excerpt obtained by Variety before the book’s Jan. 31 release. While on set, Anderson met Allen, whom she alleges exposed himself to her:

“On the first day of filming, I walked out of my dressing room, and Tim was in the hallway in his robe. He opened his robe and flashed me quickly — completely naked underneath. He said it was only fair, because he had seen me naked,” Anderson states, seemingly referencing her previous modeling work for Playboy. “Now we’re even. I laughed uncomfortably.”

Pamela Anderson and the abused sex symbol myth

At the time of the incident, Allen was 37 years old. Following the allegation, Allen denied the wrongdoing in a brief statement sent to Variety.

“No, it never happened. I would never do such a thing,” Allen told the outlet.

In addition to Allen, Anderson mentions several famous men in her memoir and details her relationships with them, including Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, Jon Peters, Sylvester Stallone and, most notably, her ex-husband and long-term Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.

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Part of Anderson’s story was recently featured in Hulu’s hit series “Pam & Tommy,” in which Lily James played Anderson and Sebastian Stan played Lee. In a recent interview with “The Guardian,” Anderson said she felt “violated” by the series, which centered on her infamous sex tape with Lee that was leaked illegally.

“Holy cow. How did I get through all that? How did I make those choices?” Anderson recalled. “But I also have empathy for myself. I see that I just didn’t have the tools.”

Anderson will also share her personal story in Netflix’s upcoming documentary “Pamela, A Love Story,” which will also premiere on Jan. 31.

Watch a trailer for “Pamela, A Love Story” below, via YouTube.

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Love, betrayal and “Getting Smarter”: The story behind Barbara Feldon’s rise to fame as Agent 99

You know her as Agent 99, the sophisticated, velvet-tongued superspy from “Get Smart.” But long before actress Barbara Feldon landed that plum role in Mel Brooks and Buck Henry’s classic TV series, she was an aspiring model and dancer, fresh out of Pittsburgh. And in her latest book “Getting Smarter” (with a limited edition hardcover available exclusively via her website) Feldon shares the incredible story behind her rise to fame — a cautionary tale on one hand, and a remarkable narrative about love and perseverance on the other.

“Getting Smarter” is Feldon’s second book. In “Living Alone and Loving It: A Guide to Relishing the Solo Life” (2003), she explores the wisdom inherent in residing solo in a world in which marriage and family are heralded at every turn. Feldon’s story about the joys of living an unpartnered life may find its roots, at least in part, in the stunning tale of love and betrayal that exists at the heart of “Getting Smarter.”

The playful beauty — and overarching sadness — in Pattie Boyd’s life in pictures

Having come of age in Pittsburgh during the 1950s, Feldon notes that her transition into adulthood occurred prior to the new feminist zeitgeist that would characterize the 1960s. After training at the Pittsburgh Playhouse and studying drama at Carnegie Mellon University, she made headlines when she won the grand prize on the popular quiz show “The $64,000 Question,” where she showcased her knowledge about Shakespeare. In “Getting Smarter,” Feldon describes her victory as a “wow moment of triumph and euphoria. It wouldn’t be long before the aftermath turned complicated and far less joyous.”

That aftermath arrived in the very human and charming form of Lucien Feldon Verdeaux, a suave European with whom she falls into a whirlwind romance and, eventually, marriage. She first met him, of all places, outside of Carnegie Hall, where he asked her if he could borrow a dime to make a telephone call. Before she knew it, she was having coffee with the glamorous gentleman with the Belgian accent, an advertising man, he told her, who had become disenchanted with the ad biz.

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Within a year, Barbara and Lucien would be married. To his credit, the budding actress’s father sensed that something wasn’t quite right with the handsome new man in his daughter’s life, although he held his tongue. In the coming years, the newlyweds would enjoy the adventure of Feldon breaking into show business—first, as a showgirl before making her name as a fashion model at the height of the Mod era. In addition to a stint with George C. Scott on television’s “East Side/West Side,” her big break arrived courtesy of Top Brass, Revlon’s medicated hair treatment. In the popular commercial that ensued, she assumed an intimate posture, seductively daring the male “tigers” out in TV Land to try out Revlon’s concoction.

By the time that she secured the role of Agent 99 on Brooks and Henry’s award-winning “Get Smart,” Feldon had come to realize the extent of Lucien’s duplicity — that he wasn’t who he said he was at all, as much as he seemed to ooze with refinement and breeding. By 1967, they would be divorced.

With “Getting Smarter,” readers will revel in Feldon’s story as she makes her way in the world — both because and in spite of Lucien’s masquerade. In her finest moments, Feldon’s narrative reminds us that we don’t have to accept victimhood as our fate, that we can recast the past — even come to treasure it, no matter how painful our memories might feel in the cold light of the present.

Years later, Feldon found herself sitting next to Lucien on a city bus, and suddenly everything came flooding back. “How easy, how comfortable this felt,” she writes, “as if no time had passed since we’d parted, and an element that had been missing from my life seemed magically restored — that breezy sense of rightness I’d once felt with him.” As Feldon perceptively demonstrates in her astute memoir, part of “getting smarter” means coming to grips, even embracing our pasts, and all the while knowing better about the future.

about the 1960s