How to reheat leftover pizza at home like a pro

So you’ve managed — by some divine grace — not to finish your entire pizza. That alone is accomplishment enough, and you should be proud of your noble restraint. You know what they say: Good things come to those that wait, and the good thing coming to you is the ultimate leftover pizza lunch.

What has not been studied enough, however, is the best way to reheat these glorious leftovers. The microwave, technical marvel that it is, will render your slice a soggy mess, with a crust that’s way too hot and mushy. (Really, if you’re going to burn your mouth on anything, it should be the cheese.) The oven, while it restores that crispness that made you fall in love at first bite, will also dry out your cheese and toppings. No amount of crunchy base is going to make up for that failure.

So we polled several experts, and the recommendation was almost unanimous: Use a skillet.

How to reheat pizza

Anthony Falco, Roberta’s head pizza maestro, recommends putting your slice in a non-stick skillet on medium-low for a couple minutes. Once the bottom is crisp, add a couple drops of water to the pan, turn the heat to low, and cover with a lid. In about a minute, you’ll have fluffy crust and melted cheese. He even shared a super-helpful illustration that he drew himself — a true Renaissance man!

One of our editors prefers to use a cast-iron skillet (as opposed to non-stick) to reheat his pizza. We tested this with a slice of Roberta’s Motorino’s Margherita and it was a melty-cheesy success. He then finishes it off in the oven, just for a minute — not long enough to let it dry out.

Mark Bello, the founder and head pizza instructor at Pizza a Casa Pizza School, likes to tamp down a piece of foil over the pizza, to create a “moisture-crispness canopy.” The bonus with this technique? Lifting up the foil for the big reveal gives off a blast of delicious warm pizza smell.

If you’ve been wondering how to reheat pizza in an air fryer, there’s a setting for that. Most air fryers have a “reheat” button that will automatically set your temperature for you — all you need to do is set the time. Our assistant editor Madison Trapkin swears by a 4-minute air fryer reheat for giving her leftover pizza that fresh-from-the-oven texture.

Of course, there’s also the toaster oven method. Pop your slices of ‘za in the toaster oven at 350°F for about five minutes. Feel free to snack on one of the cold slices while you wait because after all, leftovers are all about easy eating.

Our go-to pizza recipes

1. Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Pizza Dough + Margherita Pie

Pulling off a totally homemade pizza — fresh dough and all — doesn’t get much easier than this, thanks to Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough and a few fresh, simple ingredients.

2. Glazed Shallot, Walnut, Sage, and Goat Cheese Pizza

If you’re in the mood for something other than tomatoes and mozzarella, give this tangy-herby goat cheese pizza a go.

3. Margherita Naan Pizza

Classic margherita pizza gets a few twists from Nik Sharma — fresh naan (instead of your typical pizza dough), coriander and nigella seeds, and chopped chives — or a slice that’s packed with bold flavors.

4. Broccoli Rabe, Potato, and Rosemary Pizza

Broccoli rabe adds a nice bitterness to this no-sauce pizza, which gets its balancing flavors from creamy mozzarella, starchy potatoes, and earthy rosemary.

5. Beer Pizza

If drinking an ice-cold beer with your pizza isn’t quite enough, try making this can’t-have-just-one-slice pizza that calls for beer in the dough.

6. Deep Dish Sausage, Prosciutto, and Onion Pizza

Complete with sausage, prosciutto, and red onion, this deep-dish pizza has everything you could possibly want in a meaty, extra-melty slice.

7. White Clam Pizza

Made famous by a Connecticut pizzeria, this white clam pizza is crispy, light enough to have a couple of slices, and has all the just-right clammy flavors.

Do accents disappear?

In Boston, there are reports of people pronouncing the letter “r.” Down in Tennessee, people are noticing a lack of a Southern drawl. And Texans have long worried about losing their distinctive twang.

Indeed, around the United States, communities are voicing a common anxiety: Are Americans losing their accents?

The fear of accent loss often emerges within communities that face demographic and technological changes. But on an individual level “losing one’s accent” is also part of a profit-driven industry, with accent reduction services promising professional and personal benefits to clients who change their speech by ironing out any regionalisms or foreign pronunciations.

But is it really possible to lose one’s accent? Linguistic researchers like us suggest the answer is complicated — no one becomes truly “accentless,” but accents can and do change over time.

To us, what’s more interesting is why so many people believe they can lose their accent – and why there are such differing opinions about why this may be a good or bad thing.

Is there a “standard” accent?

It’s best to think of an accent as a distinct, systematic, rule-governed way of speaking, including sound features such as intonation, stress and pronunciation.

Accent is not a synonym for dialect, but it’s related. Dialect is an umbrella term for the way a community pronounces words (phonology), creates words (morphology), and orders words (syntax).

Accent is the phonological part of a dialect. For example, when it comes to the Boston dialect, a key feature of its accent is r-deletion, or r-dropping. This occurs most frequently after certain vowels, so that a phrase like “far apart” could be pronounced like “fah apaht,” with the “r” sound vocalizing, or turning into a vowel. This results in a longer vowel pronunciation in each word.

Many people believe that there is a single standard way of speaking in each country, and that this perceived standard is inherently the best form of speech. However, linguists often point out that the concept of a standard accent is better understood as an idealization rather than a reality. In other words, no one speaks “standard English”; rather, it is an imagined way of using language that exists only in grammar and style books.

One reason linguists agree there is no one true standard is that, through the years, there have been multiple supposed standards, such as Received Pronunciation in the U.K. and Network Standard in the U.S. – think of a newsreader’s cadence in a 1950s BBC newsreel, or Kent Brockman’s on “The Simpsons.”

The idea of a standard changes over time and place. There has never been a single standard that’s been fully agreed upon – and broadcast outlets across the spectrum have never consistently held to those standards anyway.

Even so, this idea of a standard accent is powerful. An episode of NPR’s podcast “Code Switch” tells the story of Deion Broxton, who in recent years applied for jobs as a broadcasting reporter but was repeatedly turned down because of his Baltimore accent.

Many other workplace and educational environments similarly perpetuate the idea that nonstandard accents are less appropriate, or even inappropriate, in certain professional spaces. Scholars have found that Southern U.S. accent features are more accepted in government, law and service-oriented workplaces than in the technology sector. The acceptability of nonstandard accents may correlate with differences in class and culture, with newer or higher-prestige industries expecting more standard speech in the workplace.

What is accent leveling?

The pressure to sound standard is one force that can lead to what linguists describe as “dialect leveling” or “accent leveling.” This occurs when there is a loss of diverse features among regional language varieties. For example, if a U.S. Southerner feels social or economic pressure to shift from pronouncing the word “right” with one vowel – sounding like “raht” – to make it sound like “ra-eeyt” with a diphthong (two vowel sounds), they may be diminishing their use of a common marker for Southern speech. This is technically not accent loss, but rather accent change.

But accent leveling can also be motivated by language contact, when people with multiple dialects come into regular interaction because of migration and other demographic mobility. Areas that have in recent decades experienced high levels of immigration have often pointed to the mixing of different languages and accents as driving the loss of traditional, distinctive speech patterns.

Although modern conveniences such as cars, highway systems and the internet make moving and interacting across distances easier than ever before, accent leveling due to human geography is not new. As the U.S. South became more industrial in the late 19th century, and people moved into bigger communities, an accent leveling occurred, resulting in some of the features we now say are distinctly Southern. We see this in, for example, the pin/pen merger. Before 1875, vowels before nasal sounds like “m” and “n” in words such as “pin” and “pen” were pronounced differently. But some Southern speakers in the late 19th century began to pronounce “pen” and “pin” identically, with this merger generally spreading throughout Southern American English in the first half of the 20th century.

A similar trajectory occurred with other Southern accent features, such as the shifting of the diphthong in “right” to a single vowel sound closer to “raht” and the spread of Southern drawl – with lengthening of vowels, in which words such as “that” are pronounced more like “thaa-uht.”

As long as humans continue moving and time keeps passing, accent change will continue happening, too.

Why people fear accent loss

Many people fear accent loss because language is intimately tied to identity. But when considering the connection between language and identity, it is worth distinguishing genuine concerns about dialect loss from more irrational fears about language change.

In a broader sense, the spread of American English on a global scale, and its economic and social effects, can lead to the loss of local identities, traditions and languages. There are similar concerns about loss of regional accents in the U.S.

Linguists argue that dialect death should be taken seriously. It results in the loss of diverse cultures and intellectual traditions. Because language is so important to identity, some communities around the world have made deliberate efforts to revitalize dialects that have been dying, such as the rural Valdres dialect of Norwegian. This variety experienced a resurgence thanks to a dialect popularity contest held by a radio network in Norway.

Similarly, in the U.S. there have been efforts to revitalize particular dialects of Indigenous languages, such as the Skiri and South Band dialects of the Pawnee language in Oklahoma, and to embrace varieties such as African American English.

The successes of language revitalization and maintenance can be applauded without suggesting that all types of language change must be resisted. There is a difference between powerful social and economic forces compelling a shift in one’s accent and the natural shifting of language due to regular interactions among people from different backgrounds and regions.

Embracing accents, embracing change

When people talk of “accent loss,” it is always good to explore the shifting demographics of the area to question whether the accent is truly being lost, whether it is changing or whether it is being maintained alongside many other accents new to the region.

For example, when students at our school, Kennesaw State University in Georgia, were recently asked why the Southern accent was changing, several noted the number of people from the North who are moving to the Atlanta metro area.

When people move from one region to another, our desire to communicate effectively can lead to accommodating one another’s accent, producing slight shifts in how we speak and at times even adopting features of one another’s accents.

With time, these shifts become normalized, and new accent features can emerge.

But such accent evolution isn’t something that should cause concern.

Linguistic accommodation allows for better communication among individuals and groups from different geographic locations and across different spaces and cultures – a thing to celebrate and not automatically fear.

Chris C. Palmer, Professor of English, Kennesaw State University and Michelle Devereaux, Associate Professor of English Education, Kennesaw State University

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

Making excuses for dictators is nothing new: “Mr. Republican” and the Nazis

Readers may be familiar with Rachel Maddow’s explosive new podcast, “Ultra.” It tells the incredible story of a German spy who infiltrated Congress in 1940-41, inducing two dozen congressmen and senators to spread Nazi propaganda in floor speeches, op-ed columns and constituent mailings. Simultaneously, armed extremist groups began training for a violent takeover of the country. In many ways, the eight-decades-old story is a disturbing forerunner of the Trump era.

Contrary to our nostalgic memories of unity, America was deeply divided over the war in Europe, military aid to Britain, and whether fascism was the wave of the future that we might as well submit to. While political division on the eve of entry into the war was not uniformly partisan (some prominent Democrats supported isolationism), the GOP was by far the party that stood for America First and strict noninvolvement in foreign conflict.

That members of Congress would willingly become conduits for Nazi propaganda shows that for some, sincere concern to stay out of war was not their only motivation. There was surprisingly strong domestic sympathy for Hitler and the fascist powers. Those who actively worked for Germany crossed the line into subversion and treason, but even mainstream proponents of isolationism showed a tolerant understanding for fascism that, decades later, seems either shockingly naïve or disgracefully callous.

It is easy enough to write off Father Coughlin or Charles Lindbergh for their overt antisemitism and admiration of totalitarian regimes. But there is one America Firster who to this day is almost universally celebrated by the GOP as a statesman exemplifying pure, principled conservatism: three-time aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Robert A. Taft. He was such a pillar of the GOP that he was dubbed Mr. Republican.

Jesus, endless war and the irresistible rise of American fascism

He has neither Lindbergh’s Nazi sympathizer reputation, nor the still-lingering stench of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunting a decade later. Mainstream historians, even while deprecating his politics and calling his opposition to aiding Britain misguided, nevertheless give him points for principle and integrity. Conservative think tanks churn out mini-hagiographies of Taft; National Review recently proclaimed him as Middle America’s sorely needed answer to “wokeism,” whatever that may be.

Taft’s Senate career spanned from 1939 to 1953. He came to Washington as America was recovering from a shattering depression, and then had to confront fascist militarism. After World War II, the country faced challenges from two former allies, the Soviet Union and Communist China, with the stakes raised by the existence of nuclear weapons. How did Taft respond to this decade of existential crisis?

From the moment he entered office, he campaigned relentlessly against the New Deal, cleaving to Herbert Hoover’s futile notion that rugged individualism and private charity would end the worst depression in modern history. In 1940 Taft wrote, “There is a good deal more danger of the infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington than there will ever be from any activities of . . . the Nazi bund.”

While asserting the need for a strong military Taft nevertheless fought tooth and nail against preparing that military. He opposed both the destroyers-for-bases deal with Britain and repealing the Neutrality Act. He also voted against the Selective Service Act at a time when the German Army, fresh from a lightning conquest of Western Europe, had 4.5 million soldiers when the U.S. Army numbered only 269,000.

In early 1941, he opposed the Lend-Lease Act, saying “an invasion of the United States by the German Army is as fantastic as would be an invasion of Germany by the American Army.” The German Army didn’t reach America, but within a year, U-boats were prowling the eastern seaboard, sinking tankers and freighters almost at will. The rest of Taft’s statement was also bunk: less than four years after his speech, the U.S. Army was advancing towards the Rhine.

In 1940, Taft suggested that “totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle” were more dangerous than the Nazis. Eight months before Pearl Harbor, he said it was “simply fantastic” to believe that Japan might attack the U.S.

Eight months prior to Pearl Harbor, Taft stated, “It is simply fantastic to suppose there is any danger of an attack on the United States by Japan.” On Sept. 22, 1941, he said, “There is much less danger to this country today than there was two years ago; certainly much less than there was one year ago.” At the moment he spoke, the Wehrmacht was driving towards Moscow, Rommel’s Afrika Korps ruled the North African littoral, and Admiral Yamamoto was refining his Pearl Harbor attack plan.

Many of us would be embarrassed to see our predictions read back to us later. But few deserve to be embarrassed as much as Taft. The man was a walking compendium of error. Even entry into the war did not cure his penchant for being wrong: wrong in a way that tended to absolve the enemy while condemning the U.S. government.

Four months after Pearl Harbor, he stated, “We need not have become involved in the present war,” and even a year later, he publicly asserted that U.S. entry into the war was “debatable,” which it was not: Japan attacked U.S. territory and Hitler declared war on the United States, not the other way around. Taft, like Republicans then and now, attempted to make political hay over wartime inflation. At the same time, though, he was a relentless opponent of the Office of Price Administration, tasked with dampening price rises. That, he said, would rob the businessman or the farmer of their liberty of setting prices as high as they wanted.

Taft questioned Henry Stimson’s “competence” to run the Department of the Army and voted against confirmation — even though Stimson had previously been a secretary of war under Taft’s own father, President William Howard Taft, and was to prove an effective leader in World War II. Moreover, Stimson was a Republican, nominated by Roosevelt as a gesture of bipartisanship. Taft opposed him out of knee-jerk obstinacy.

In 1944, Taft opposed an administration proposal to enable voting by the millions of GIs overseas. As David Brinkley writes in “Washington Goes to War,” he offered obstructionist amendments to make the plan impossible to implement, but they were voted down. Brinkley relates that the senator complained that servicemen would be marched to the polling places and ordered to vote for FDR, presaging the current GOP’s obsessive psychological projection about vote fraud.

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At war’s end, he criticized the Bretton Woods conference, from which emerged the financial institutions that laid the foundation for unprecedented prosperity in Europe and America. Almost 80 years later, a majority of congressional Republicans emulate Taft in opposing international organizations like the International Monetary Fund that have reinforced America’s status as the world’s leading financial power. Republicans are even now hinting that they might hold the country hostage over the debt ceiling increase, potentially plunging the world into financial crisis and triggering a sovereign debt default that could end the dollar’s reign as the world reserve currency.

Then came Taft’s most controversial stand. He attacked the Nuremberg Tribunal for unjustly applying ex post facto law (the crime of aggression), and for being victors’ justice:

I question whether the hanging of those, who, however despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the 11 men convicted will be a blot on the American record, which we shall long regret.

In the trial, 11 defendants were indeed sentenced to hang, but seven others were given lesser sentences and three acquitted. As for the claim of ex post facto justice, Robert Jackson — the American prosecutor who believed aggression enabled all the other war crimes that followed — summed up the charge:

And let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law, if it is to serve a useful purpose must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of their own people only when we make all men answerable to the law.

While the charge of aggression was unprecedented (all precedent must begin somewhere), the convicted defendants were also found guilty of ordering or committing acts against military and civilian victims which were already proscribed by law. According to Kim Priemel’s “The Betrayal: The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence,” the judges demonstrated independence from their governments, and the defendants (who were allowed counsel and able to present defenses) were seen as receiving due process. The evidence of their guilt was overwhelming.

By that point, Taft’s positions were backfiring on him. His condemnation of the Nuremberg trials and opposition to military voting, in particular, may have torpedoed his chances for the Republican nomination in 1948. He may also have doomed the nominee, Tom Dewey, who was heavily favored to win the presidency. When President Harry Truman called Congress into extraordinary session in 1948, Taft blocked even innocuous bills, angering voters and inadvertently contributing to Truman’s upset re-election.

As might be expected, he voted against confirmation of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, saying it was “a waste of money” that was “more likely to incite war than to deter it.”

As for standing on principle, however wrongheaded, a quality that qualified him for grudging admiration even from critics, that trait was sometimes malleable. In 1950 Taft blamed the UN for not averting the Korean war, saying, “We were sucked into the Korean war, as representatives of the UN, by a delusion as to a power which has never existed under the Charter.”

Yet Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s reckless pursuit of the North Koreans to the Yalu River, which brought Chinese intervention and a wider war, worked a change of heart in Taft. Now he was not only for the war, but when MacArthur insubordinately attacked President Truman’s policy and advocated use of nuclear weapons, Taft stated this on the Senate floor after Truman made the correct decision to fire the general:

President Truman must be impeached and convicted. His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of series of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office. The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves.

That the legendary anti-interventionist Taft supported a vain martinet whose tirades included lobbying for nuclear war suggests he might have been less than a rock-solid man of principle. The fact that the 1952 presidential campaign was nearing makes us suspect that he may have sought to exploit MacArthur’s popularity to get the presidential nomination. But it was not to be: His record was too blemished.

Why dredge up this ancient history? It tells us not only that some political golden age of ur-Republicanism, just like all retrospective utopias, never existed, but that the icons of those myths were flawed, sometimes badly so. It also suggests that the Republican Party, apart from intermittent post-World War II periods of bipartisanship, never really changed.

This history tells us that some political golden age of ur-Republicanism never existed. The Republican Party, apart from intermittent post-World War II bipartisanship, never really changed. Robert Taft was the larval stage of what exists today.

It is true that today’s GOP has sunk to unprecedented depths, crossing the threshold from a quasi-normal political party to an authoritarian movement and leader cult. On Jan. 6, 2021, a majority of House Republicans defended violent insurrection against constitutional order. The party’s reliance on reflexive negativity rather than constructive alternatives and its knee-jerk propensity to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted have been features ever since the onset of the Great Depression. Robert A. Taft is not an alternative to the current GOP; Mr. Republican was simply the larval stage of what exists today.

The negativity and obstructionism that we witness daily from the GOP is straight out of their old playbook for contesting the New Deal and crucial areas of World War II policy. The positioning on issues is also much the same: Taft decried Roosevelt and Truman as warmongers, but turned on a dime to extol MacArthur, a general so imperious he was called the American Caesar. Likewise, current GOP issue positioning largely depends on whether a Democrat or a Republican is president.

Sentimental constructs like the “Greatest Generation” paint a false picture of unity during World War II. It is often hard to distinguish where the bitter-end isolationism of the highly influential press moguls William Randolph Hearst and Robert McCormick ended and sympathy for fascism began. It requires no speculation about Henry Ford, one of the richest and most influential Americans of the time: he was awarded (and happily accepted) a medal from Hitler.

There also are grounds for questioning whether, beneath the posturing about liberty and the Constitution, Taft had a sneaking sympathy for fascists, albeit not as overt as Lindbergh’s. Denouncing the Nuremberg Trials as a gross miscarriage of justice fairly begs for explanation, since in more recent decades the leading critics of that tribunal have been outright neo-Nazis like Harry Elmer Barnes or David Irving. This tarnishes his reputation and makes one wonder if he deserves inclusion in the Senate reception room’s “famous five” collection of portraits of great senators, perhaps the Senate’s greatest honor.

Likewise, did Taft really believe the New Deal was a bigger threat than Nazism, or was that a hollow rationale to camouflage a belief that Germany might as well rule Europe? We can similarly suspect that when Republican opponents of aid to Ukraine say they vote no for the absurd reason that helping Ukraine against Russia somehow means appeasing China (an ally of Russia), sympathy for an authoritarian dictatorship might be their real motivation.

That Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the keynote speaker at the recent CPAC convention only heightens the suspicion. A substantial overlap between Republican opponents of aid to Ukraine and those defending an attempted overthrow of constitutional government on Jan. 6 is hardly coincidental. Republicans have signaled the possibility of cutting off aid to Ukraine, an act which would have grave implications not only for Europe but would indicate U.S. unreliability throughout the world. If Republicans abandon Ukraine, it would sabotage the deterrent effect of any security guarantees to Taiwan against China, the country the GOP claims to take seriously as a threat.

The substantial overlap between Republican opponents of aid to Ukraine and those defending an attempted overthrow of constitutional government on Jan. 6 is hardly coincidental.

Republicans’ willingness to hold hostage America’s full faith and credit in 2023 is based on their alleged concern about the deficit — but only when a Democrat holds the presidency, a reflex that goes back to Taft. The goal is to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare, arguably the country’s two most successful anti-poverty measures, one of which was proposed by FDR almost 90 years ago. In a sense, the GOP has never ceased running against Roosevelt and the New Deal.

As this is being written, our country is without a functioning House of Representatives. Twenty legislative terrorists from the GOP are holding their own leader, Kevin McCarthy, hostage in order to receive plenary powers to run the institution according to their whims. The overlap between these members and supporters of both the Jan. 6 insurrection and a Ukraine aid cutoff only increases fears that they would abandon Ukraine and destroy the full faith and credit of the United States from no deeper principle than the nihilistic urge to break things.

In 1940, the Wall Street Journal asserted that “our job today is not to stop Hitler,” the dictator whom the editorial claimed had “already determined the broad lines of our national life at least for another generation.” Note that the Journal, then as now the flagship of “respectable” conservatism, not only consigned Europe to Hitler’s domination, but America as well, and for the following 30 years. The title of the editorial, “A Plea for Realism,” is a reminder that in some quarters, “realism” means abandoning democracy and submitting to force.

As the Second World War passes from living memory, it is apparent that democracies on both sides of the Atlantic have forgotten its frightful lessons. Right-wing political parties in Europe and America have lurched towards racial populism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism, and have even tried to push antisemitism back into the realm of acceptable views. It is hardly coincidental that, once again, there is a major war in Europe.

If someone who had followed the debate over aid to Britain in 1940 were magically transported to the present, he would have little difficulty getting oriented to the global situation, both in its military precariousness and in the threat of advancing dictatorship. And if he heard Josh Hawley or Rand Paul proclaiming “America First” on the floor of the Senate, he could be forgiven for hearing the voice of Robert Taft.

about the GOP and the Ukraine war

Barbara Walters knew we wanted the juice

Barbara Walters, who died on Dec. 30 at the age of 93, understood a conversation’s most valuable nutrients were in “the juice.” That’s how she described the texture of an interview, the details that didn’t necessarily relate to harder questions we expected her to pose to famous people but told us a lot about them.

Only Walters knew how to obtain that nectar in a way that made consuming her interviews feel essential in a broadcast news industry dominated and ruled by men. “‘The most important thing is only the hard news question,'” she recalls her colleagues insisting in a 2014 “Oprah Winfrey’s Master Class” video. “I don’t think so. I think it’s important to know what’s important to them.”

In this context, she’s referring to the American presidents she’s interviewed, which includes every single one starting with Richard Nixon and ending with Barack Obama. She also interviewed Donald Trump in a 1990 episode of “20/20” as part of a promotional tour for his book “Surviving At The Top,” before he entered political life.

Relative to other men whose reputations Walters caved in on national TV, Trump was easy game.

Sometimes, Walters would leap right to the squeeze. Trump likely assumed prime time’s queen of the Gaussian blurred focus would buy the illusion of opulence and success he was selling. Who was Barbara Walters, after all, other than a woman albeit one famous enough to pay attention to but, in the end, a mark like all the rest? Maybe that’s why he opened their 1990 interview with a babbling brook of bilge about how dishonest the press is.

“Well, as a member of the press, let me try to clear up some of the things which you say aren’t true,” she calmly responds, cracking open his book. “‘My bankers and I worked out a terrific deal that allows me to come out stronger than ever. I see the deal as a great victory,'” she reads. Then she looks up from the page. “Being on the verge of bankruptcy, being bailed out by the banks –” she says.

“Well, you don’t have to say it like that,” Trump weakly blurts before Walters holds up her hand and continues the savaging: “Skating on thin ice, and almost drowning? That’s a businessman to be admired?”

Trump trying to maintain his cool, says, “You say ‘on the verge of bankruptcy,’ Barbara, and you talk on the verge, and you listen to what people are saying –”

“I talked to your bankers,” she shoots back, rendering him momentarily mute. A beat or two later she adds for good measure, “Several.”

Barbara Walters’ friends and colleagues react to the news of her death at 93

Relative to other men whose reputations Walters caved in on national TV, Trump was easy game. In her time and when she was at the height of her powers, Walters coaxed murderers to bare their inner darkness, using similar finesse to lower the guarded egos of celebrities finding themselves in the news for reasons other than their work.

She’s chatted with rulers and revolutionaries, beloved legends like Christopher Reeve (for which she won a Peabody) and icons in moments of trouble, like Mike Tyson and Robin Givens, who filed for divorce from Tyson shortly after admitting to Walters, in front of millions, that her husband’s temper frightened her. Walters’ 1999 one-on-one with Monica Lewinsky at the apex of the sex scandal involving then-president Bill Clinton drew a record-setting 74 million viewers, the most for a TV news telecast on a single network.

TV Personality Barbara Walters (Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Ralph Lauren)

Walters’ biggest prime time interviews and end-of-the-year lists of “Most Fascinating People,” were appointment television because the audience knew Walters would be able to pry details out of them that no other journalists could. And she owed that to her devotion to exploring and exposing something about the personalities of subjects.

Personality-driven coverage is the bane of the hard-news reporter’s existence, as it should be, but long before it permeated the industry and made journalists indistinguishable from hosts and fans in the minds of the audience, Walters demonstrated its value.

“You have to find out, if you can, what makes someone tick,” she explains in that OWN video, “Because personality does affect history. There has to be ambition there. It can’t just be pragmatic. There has to be some idealism.”

“Personality does affect history,” said Walters

As many colleagues look back on her career in the wake of her death, they’ve marveled at the fact that her entry into the TV news game was dismissed by her peers as a novelty. This turned to resentment when she began scoring highly sought-after interviews with world leaders, resulting in historic footage of her crossing the Bay of Pigs with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or delivering the first joint TV interview with Egypt’s third president Anwar Sadat and Israel’s sixth prime minister Menachem Begin.

Fidel Castro speaks during an interview with Barbara Walters of ABC in the State Council October 7, 2000 in Havana, Cuba (Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photography/Getty Image)Summing up Walters’ impact by listing the who’s who of the greatest interviews in her career doesn’t entirely appreciate the fullness of her legacy. It’s somewhat akin to spelling out all the firsts she achieved: though they weren’t easy for her to accomplish, it tells us little about the reason she scored those victories. She began on “Today” show writing staff in 1961, becoming the first female co-host of a U.S. news program 13 years later.

When she accepted a five-year contract with ABC in 1976 worth $5 million, that made her the highest-paid person in news. She became the first woman to co-anchor the evening news with Harry Reasoner; famously, they did not get along. So she staked out her territory in the probative interview space, wagering that people wanted to feel a familiarity with public figures instead of simply hearing them answer questions.

In 1985, Walters admitted that she chafed at the memories of watching long, substantive conversations with heads of state boiled down to four or five minutes. “What you get is the news,” she said. “But you wouldn’t get any of the stuff that made the person a person, or that qualified the statement, or explained it.”

That comes from an archived interview by video producer Skip Blumberg fellow critic Matt Zoller Seitz unearthed and draws from throughout his thoughtful remembrance of Walters, in which he points to her fairness as one of her defining strengths.

But Blumberg’s film (charmingly titled “Interviews with Interviewers . . . About Interviewing“) provides valuable insight into the way she polished the art of the interview, deconstructing how she penetrates the facades of the famous and circumspect. Her preferred tactic was to ask her subjects questions about their childhood, a time of life she observed people speak about with great sensitivity. She found such recollections would open up the people she interviewed. That combination of hard journalism with velvet tactics created an architectural layout for generations of journalists who came after her to follow, for better or worse.

“The View” paid tribute to Barbara Walters – here’s what they said and didn’t say

As we were reminded on her final episode of “The View” in 2014, every woman who works or worked in TV journalism owes their career to the barriers and ceilings Walters shattered. In that episode, Winfrey surprised her by appearing on that set and gathering 29 journalists who came in her wake to embrace the retiring pioneer, including Connie Chung, Robin Roberts, Deborah Norville, Meredith Vieira, Tamron Hall, Gayle King, Katie Couric, Savannah Guthrie, Elizabeth Vargas and Diane Sawyer.

All of these women have at some point or another occupied a network anchor chair. But only some ply the style Walters created with some semblance of her skill, if not always or often with the sharp points and jabs with which she used to joust.

Barbara Walters, 44, accepts “good-bye” flower from cohost Jim Hartz of the Today Show during her last appearance on the NBC-TV program on June 3. Walters is expected to move to ABC-TV this fall as co-anchorperson with Harry Reasoner on that network’s evening news. Her salary is reported to be $1 million a year for five years (Bettmann / Getty)People may think of Winfrey as Walters’ standard bearer at this point, along with Gayle King. But the most significant interviews the former scores come to Winfrey in recognition that she’ll be on their side and help them present the story they want to tell. This was true even in conversations when a celebrity had fallen from grace and came to Winfrey for absolution.

Every woman who works or worked in TV journalism owes their career to the barriers and ceilings Walters shattered.

King, meanwhile, employs a similar unflappability and sobriety as Walters did in the face of hostile subjects. Then again, it’s one matter to ply that when interviewing politicians or other public figures and another to wield it in the face of strongmen in prime time on broadcast TV, as Walters did with Vladimir Putin in 2001 when asking him to his face if he’d ever had anyone killed.

But NBC’s Keir Simmons sparred with Putin in 2021 – not Savannah Guthrie, who proved to be an able match for Trump during his 2020 pre-election Town Hall, where she applied a type of verbal jiujitsu similar to the artful attack Walters used 30 years before. More men are assigned juicy political prime time broadcast interviews these days than women.

Then again, it could be that Putin demanded a male interviewer following Megyn Kelly’s match with the Russian authoritarian in 2017 at an International Economic Forum presentation in St. Petersburg. Kelly came at Putin with blunt force, questioning him about the war in Syria and allegations about hacking, leading him to eventually quip, “Maybe someone has a pill that will stop this.”

Walters had ways of avoiding such confrontations, explaining to Blumberg that there are smoother ways into obtaining answers to abrasive questions. “I’m sure you’re aware that it’s been said that . . .” was a favorite side door into hard questions. But if that art became diluted or lost down the road, we can assign many reasons to that with only a few of them connected to Walters’ late-career culture-shifting creation, “The View.”

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In her hard news interviews, she prided herself on conveying a sense of impartiality about her subjects, although off-camera she was notoriously too cozy with politicians and world leaders including, controversially, mass-murdering Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.

The success of “The View,” however, only served to conflate straight information and opinion in the audience’s mind, and create a gendered delineation in the news and information space.

Mind you, that is not a sin to be laid expressly at Walters’ feet but, rather, a drop in a stream redirecting audiences away from traditional news into partisan cable shows, documentary series, and controlled hybrids of news and entertainment. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s stateside media debut, which began with Winfrey’s CBS interview – the type of “get” Walters once would have taken for granted – is the prime example of this. That begat their Netflix series and Prince Harry’s media parade, starting with his upcoming interview with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes.”

If a person wanted to, they might observe and listen for echoes of Walters’ style in Harry’s Sunday interview and the others that happen in its wake. But I also hope that instead of merely appreciating the ways that Walters’ contributions to the art of conversation will continue, people gauge their success by the bar she set for herself.

“How could you hope to get to know somebody in just an hour?” Blumberg asked her in 1985. Walters confidently replies, “I guess the proof is in what I’ve done. If you see the interviews, don’t you think that you know the people?”

about Barbara Walters

Calling Deion Sanders a sellout ignores the growing role of clout-chasing in college sports

For most college football coaches, the move from a mid-major conference to a Power Five conference would be met with widespread praise.

Not so for Deion Sanders.

When the Pro Football Hall of Famer announced he would be leaving Jackson State University, where he has coached the football team since 2020, to become head coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, many ardent fans and supporters reacted with dismay and disbelief – particularly his fans and supporters from the Black community.

Jackson State is one of 107 historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. Some HBCU alumni and supporters saw Sanders as betraying the cause of rejuvenating HBCU sports and returning them to a time when football greats such as Jerry Rice, Walter Payton and Steve McNair attended HBCUs as a stepping stone to professional stardom.

Debates about whether he was a “sellout,” a “traitor” and a “hypocrite” quickly surfaced on social media and in major media outlets.

As a scholar who specializes in Black culture, I was struck by the ways in which this Sanders story was tied to a concept I write about called clout-chasing. It’s a process in which cultural capital is harnessed on social media to attract media attention, likes, followers and fame. You’ll often see young people looking to launch careers as content creators described as clout chasers.

Institutions, however, can also chase clout. And I saw Jackson State doing just that when it hired Deion Sanders.

Black Schools Matter

Over the past decade – after the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the spread of national anthem protests and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor – HBCUs have received more attention and investment as places for the revitalization and advancement of the Black community.

In 2019, Black billionaire Robert Smith promised to pay the student loan debt of that year’s entire graduating class at Morehouse College. In the summer of 2021, the Department of Education awarded more than $500 million in grants to HBCUs. Finally, President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan and other forms of pandemic relief have provided nearly $3.7 billion in relief funding to HBCUs.

HBCU athletic departments have also received increased visibility. Though HBCU programs have always been overshadowed by schools in conferences like the Big Ten and SEC – what are known as Power Five conferences – HBCU sports have started to receive more national television coverage. Top recruits have started taking official visits to HBCUs as they weigh which school to commit to.

In the summer of 2020, after star basketball recruit Makur Maker spurned offers from the University of Kentucky and UCLA to attend Howard University, The New York Times proclaimed that a movement of top Black athletes attending HBCUs was underway.

A star with staying power

Like many, I grew up watching Deion Sanders play professional football and baseball. I idolized him. He wore gold chains, danced his way to the end zone, wore expensive suits and – most importantly – he was a celebrity who fully embraced Black popular culture. He was also one of the first athletes to understand that he was a brand off the field.

His appeal transcended race, gender and class, putting him in a rarefied group that includes Michael Jordan, Serena Williams and LeBron James.

Even after his playing career ended in 2005, Sanders’ star never dimmed. He had his own reality show produced by Oprah, has served as a regular analyst on the NFL Network, and has acted as a pitchman for companies like Nike, Under Armour, American Airlines and Aflac.

Sanders has also seamlessly adapted to the social media era, regularly posting videos on Instagram to an audience of 3 million followers.

Simply put, he is still one of the most famous people in the world. Like his younger counterparts with huge online followings – digital natives like Odell Beckham Jr. and LaMelo Ball – Sanders possesses an immense amount of digital clout.

Coach Prime joins the HBCU ranks

I was hardly surprised when Sanders made a quick splash in Jackson.

Fueled by the talents of his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, and former top high school recruit Travis Hunter, Jackson State quickly attracted national attention as a HBCU powerhouse.

After a COVID-shortened 2020 season, Sanders, whose players affectionately call him Coach Prime, led the school to two consecutive appearances at the Celebration Bowl, an annual game in which the champions of the two prominent HBCU conferences face off.

While boosting Jackson State’s profile, Sanders also presented himself as someone scholars like Brandon J. Manning have termed a “race man,” or a loyal member of the Black race who dedicates their life to directly contributing to the betterment of Black people.

Under the pretense of looking out for the future of HBCU athletics, Sanders said he would be better positioned than anybody to protect the legacy of HBCUs. Black student athletes, he argued, should choose to go to Jackson State because their association with him would not only give them clout, but also the kind of attention and encouragement that they could expect to receive from a Power Five program.

Yet it was always going to be close to impossible to keep Sanders at Jackson State if he consistently won.

Many suspected that Sanders eventually wanted to compete against top-tier programs like the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. In fact, during an October 2022 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Sanders talked openly about listening to offers from bigger schools.

Despite these realities, many Black folk wanted to believe Sanders would be in it for the long haul. Now they’re dismayed, believing the momentum Sanders gave to HBCU athletics could come to a screeching halt.

God changes his mind

But unlike some prominent Black cultural critics who derided Sanders’ decision, I don’t think he’s a sellout.

Jackson State was arguably chasing some clout of its own when it hired Deion in the first place. At the time, Sanders was a coach with no experience beyond the high school level. He did, however, have plenty of experience performing – and winning – in the brightest of spotlights. Jackson State probably knew that taking a flier on an untested celebrity coach would be worth it: It would attract attention and, with it, money.

On the flip side, I also believe Sanders knew that he could build his coaching clout further at Jackson State by appealing to what sociologist Saida Grundy calls the Black respectability politics and Christian values of HBCU campuses. You could see this when he said that God told him “to even the playing field” for those who attend Black schools.

It was a symbiotic arrangement all along: Sanders leveraged his clout to grow the program that embraced him, but he was also hoping to attract the attention of an even bigger program.

I believe Sanders ultimately did more good than harm in terms of raising the profile of HBCU athletics. Furthermore, one person was never going to catapult HBCUs to the prominence of Power Five programs.

Sanders is part of a bigger group of former professional players and coaches leading HBCU programs. Former NFL head coach Hue Jackson now heads the football program at Grambling State University; NFL Pro Bowler Eddie George currently mans the sidelines at Tennessee State University; and Olympic gold medalist Cynthia Cooper-Dyke coaches the women’s basketball team at Texas Southern University.

If Sanders was a sellout, it was only in one sense: Jackson State football games routinely sold out during his tenure, shattering attendance records for the program.

Jabari M. Evans, Assistant Professor of Race and Media, University of South Carolina

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

How the Internet was created by government — not private — innovation

Residents of the United States are raised to hold two seemingly paradoxical beliefs: That the American nation’s greatest contribution to humanity is its supposedly free form of government — and that this same free government stifles innovation. Similarly, Americans are taught to believe that so-called rugged individualists (often white men) are the great creators and inventors who change our lives. These ideas are especially ubiquitous online, where conservative commentators have influenced elections by popularizing right-wing political ideas.

Yet ironically, the same Internet which is used to propagate conservative assumptions is proof of their historical inaccuracy. The Internet as we know it would not exist if not for generous investments from the United States government. Hundreds of years from now, long after the United States of America no longer exists, it may be that the Internet is a far more important American contribution to humanity than the American government itself.

How a little-known computer network system changed the history of the internet

Ignoring its social merits for a moment, the economic activity generated by the Internet is staggering. While it is notoriously difficult to attach an exact monetary value to the Internet (one of the Internet’s pioneers, David D. Clark, balked at even trying to ballpark a figure when asked by Salon), a 2014 study by the Internet Association (a trade group that represents, among other companies, Google, Facebook and Amazon) estimated that businesses involved in the Internet generated $966 billion that year. The Internet has only grown more lucrative ever since; industry research organization IBISWorld estimates that in 2023, the percentage of business conducted online will be at roughly 28%. These financial estimates are, of course, only one part of the picture. It is impossible to calculate how the Internet has transformed music, food, cinema, television, video games, transportation, politics, dating, communication, science and almost every other sphere of human existence.

“Ironically, AT&T chose not to pursue the enormous potential of computer networks that was evident in those early days.”

And it all exists because, during the heyday of the Cold War, the government decided to listen to — and financially back — a group of passionate intellectuals with a vision. That said, it is not as simple as saying that cyberspace exists solely because of the government; in reality, despite popular misconceptions about “inventors,” there was no single person who “created” the Internet. The Internet as we know it exists not because of rugged individualists, but rather a group of visionaries working together with the help of a complex system of creative and financial support from both public and private sources.

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“One way to think about this is to recognize that early on there were at least three independent threads that were responsible for the creation of the Internet,” computer scientist and UCLA professor Dr. Leonard Kleinrock told Salon by email. Kleinrock is in a strong position to know: His pioneering work in the 1970s in developing packet switching, a process through which data is transmitted across digital networks in so-called “packets,” was critical in creating ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. As he recalled the story of the Internet’s creation to Salon, it begins in the early 1960s when a group of researchers “developed the underlying theory and design principles that laid the foundation for the Internet.” In addition to Kleinrock’s own achievements (as he describes them, “creating the mathematical theory of data networks while a PhD student at MIT”), there was also engineer Paul Baran from the Rand Corporation — a nonprofit that receives both state and private financing — and computer scientist Donald Davies at an organization for the United Kingdom’s government, the National Physical Laboratory.

“Ironically, AT&T chose not to pursue the enormous potential of computer networks that was evident in those early days,” Kleinrock recalled. That said, there was a “second” thread of innovators that did emerge from academia and industry. In addition, though, there was also the “third” thread which came from the government after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957. In response, President Dwight Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (the “ARPA” in “ARPANET”) which was intended to make sure Americans never again fell behind the Soviets in scientific competitions.

“ARPA began funding heroic research projects that supported many of the innovations that emerged within the digital technology thread,” Kleinrock told Salon. “Indeed, it was in the mid-1960’s that ARPA recognized the need for, and the potential of, computer networks and decided to fund and implement the ARPANET which was launched from my laboratory at UCLA in 1969. This was the birth of the technology that grew into today’s Internet.”

Computer scientist David D. Clark, another early Internet pioneer, elaborated on why the military-industrial complex took such an interest in the Internet. In addition to the work by people like Kleinrock, Baran and Davies, there were also individuals like computer scientist J. C. R. “Lick” Licklider and Robert Taylor, who founded and later managed Xerox PARC’s Computer Science Laboratory. Lick and Taylor both saw the immense potential in creating an interconnected series of computers that could transmit data through packet switching. They also saw that private businesses would not be willing to fund this on their own because companies like Xerox failed to recognize its commercial value. They were instrumental in convincing Pentagon leaders that the idea of an interconnected computer network would strengthen American national security, even as they had their own more noble vision for the technology.

“These people who understood it saw the breadth of the vision, but to get the military to pay for it, they had to sort of disguise the full breadth of their vision.”

“These people who understood it saw the breadth of the vision, but to get the military to pay for it, they had to sort of disguise the full breadth of their vision,” Clark recalled. When ARPANET was initiated in 1966, the main goal was to give Americans a technological edge over the Soviet Union. Yet if you talked to other early Internet pioneers like computer scientist Vint Cerf and engineer Bob Kahn, there was also a more ambitious goal.

“Their vision was much broader,” Clark told Salon. “It was a societal vision. And the best articulation of this is not anything they wrote, but the thing that Lick wrote.”

Flash forward to the late 1980s and Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn., comes into the picture. After running for president in 1988 on a platform that was ahead of its time in recognizing the dangers of climate change, Gore hoped to stake a future campaign on a reputation as an insightful technocrat. To help make this into a reality, he pushed for the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, which played an instrumental role in commercializing the Internet.

“He had the vision, just totally,” Clark told Salon. “He gets credit for that.”

Perhaps the best way of summing up the Internet’s legacy is to refer to a quote from economist Mariana Mazzucato.

“Consider Apple’s iPhone and Google’s search engine. In both cases these extremely popular consumer products benefitted mightily from state intervention,” Mazzucato wrote. “For the iPhone, many of the revolutionary technologies that make it and similar devices ‘smart’ were funded by the U.S. government, such as the global positioning system (or GPS), the touchscreen display, and the voice-activated personal assistant, Siri.”

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Musical chairs and rock’em sock’em: Kevin McCarthy claimed a hard-won victory as speaker

After returning from adjournment late Friday night, House Republicans were dead set on putting an end to the days long voting sessions that had yet to tally in favor of Kevin McCarthy, or anyone else for that matter, as Speaker of the House — so much so that a brawl nearly broke out.

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, an opponent of McCarthy throughout the duration of the voting sessions, positioned himself in the roll call lineup on Friday in such a way as to ensure that his vote would be the deciding factor on whether McCarthy would spend his first morning as the newly appointed speaker on Saturday, or end the night with another adjournment.

According to The Washington Post, when it came time for Gaetz’s vote to be heard, he offered “present” instead of a name, leaving McCarthy one vote short of where he needed to be in order to declare victory, which caused quite a fracas.

The danger to democracy revealed by dysfunction in the House

Alabama’s Mike D. Rogers, who is expected to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, rushed forth to exchange heated words with Gaetz regarding his vote, and when the confrontation threatened to get physical, was then restrained by Richard Hudson (R-N.C.).

As reporter Alejandra Caraballo points out in a tweet sharing video of the moment, this was the “first physical altercation on the floor of the House since 1985.”

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In The Washington Post’s coverage of the upset, they mention that Marjorie Taylor Green was seen waving her cellphone about with the letters DT visible on the call screen, presumably offering Trump on the line to weigh in on the matter, but no one was interested in speaking with him.

It was the perfect phone call. pic.twitter.com/aRpf5pefoU

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) January 7, 2023

With many on the House floor huddling to reason with Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, who also voted “present” on Friday, a move was made to kill another motion to adjourn and a final vote took place, resulting in McCarthy’s win.

"SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY" pic.twitter.com/punGZV4IM3

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) January 7, 2023

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The shutdown caucus really wins: The House power grab was always bigger than Kevin McCarthy

They did it two years ago on Jan. 6. They did it this week on Jan. 3. They succeeded in shutting down the government twice in two years. On Friday evening, it was still shut down after a 13th vote to elect a Speaker of the House and get the government going again. [Note: Early Saturday, Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker of the House on the 15th vote.]

I’m talking here about the part of the government that governs, not the nuts and bolts part that does stuff like enforcing the laws and regulating the airlines and banks and issuing passports and helping people if and when they suffer the ravages of hurricanes or even manmade disasters which can include forest fires. The administrative part of the government has been shut down repeatedly in recent years — in 2013 over the Affordable Care Act, in 2018 over immigration, and again in 2018 over funding the wall. That shutdown lasted 35 days and continued into the new Congress seated on Jan. 3, 2019.

See what I mean about those shutdowns? The Congress caused them, because the Congress was in session for all three of them and had disagreements over the budget and whether it would include money for things either Republicans or Democrats didn’t want funded.

The danger to democracy revealed by dysfunction in the House

But these shutdowns are different. The Capitol was shut down when it was assaulted by a mob of insurrectionists in 2021, halting the business of certifying the election of 2020. This year, the House of Representatives was effectively been put out of the business of governing for as long as it failed to elect a Speaker. This is what is meant by the word “governing.” Under the Constitution, it is the job of the Congress to certify elections, and it is the job of the House to hold a vote and elect a Speaker and swear in members so it can proceed to the rest of the business of governing. Under the Constitution, Congress is the only place that can write and pass laws. It is the only place that can declare war. The House of Representatives is the only place that can levy taxes and pass budgets allocating the expenditure of those taxes in order to fund the rest of the government. When one of the houses of Congress is not in existence, governing cannot happen. For the past four days, persons who have been elected to Congress have been there in the Capitol building, but a gaggle of well-dressed persons does not a Congress make, so governing has not been happening.

The President must sign the laws passed by Congress, but unless those laws are passed, he or she has nothing to sign into existence so they can be used or enforced. So, shutting down Congress, by shutting down the House of Representatives, is a very big deal. It could be looked upon as shutting down parts of the Constitution itself. Article One establishes the Congress and gives it certain powers, including the famous “power of the purse” in Section 7: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”

Without a Speaker, there is no House. Without the House, there is no Congress and without the Congress, there is no functioning government.

What good is Article One if there is no House of Representatives? Without the House, that part of the Constitution has been canceled. Do you see what is going on here? The insurrectionists who got themselves elected as representatives to this putative “Congress” have for the past few days been using the Constitution against itself. Words written in that document are negated if they have no meaning. A Congress that is not in existence is not a Congress; it is merely a gathering of people in a big fancy room in a big fancy building.

As I write this on Friday afternoon, we do not have a House of Representatives because the House has not lived up to its commandment under Section 2 of Article One: “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” Without a Speaker, there is no House. Without the House, there is no Congress and without the Congress, there is no functioning government.

The fight this week in the House of Representatives is over the Speaker election, but it’s much larger than that. What it’s really about is who will have the power to shut down the rest of the government, because what these people have done is what they want to be able to do more of in the future. Nearly every member who has opposed McCarthy for Speaker cast voted against certifying the election in the early hours of Jan. 7, 2021, after rioters had shut down the process on the afternoon of Jan. 6. See if any of these names are familiar: Boebert, Gaetz, Biggs, Cloud, Good, Bishop, Gosar, Perry, Rosendale, Miller, Harris, Donalds, Norman. One of the gang opposing McCarthy, up until the 13th ballot, is Eli Crane of Arizona, a freshman just elected who has proudly attended rallies celebrating the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

On Friday, McCarthy was able to switch the votes of 15 members opposing him. It was reported during the four days they voted that he was able to get these members to change their votes by granting certain concessions. At least two of the concessions — allowing only one House member to make a motion to “vacate the chair,” effectively firing the Speaker, and giving the insurrection caucus power over seating at least a third of the members of the powerful Rules Committee — would have the effect of making it far easier for these far-right loons to shut down the government in the future. The reasons for this are arcane but mainly involve tying the hands of the Speaker and limiting his ability to negotiate with Democrats to prevent government shutdowns or votes not to lift the debt ceiling, which amounts to the same thing.

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This was never about who would become Speaker and lead a Republican caucus that doesn’t want to govern anyway. The Republican Party was good enough over the last few days to treat us to speeches that revealed just what they thought the qualifications were to hold the Speakership. “He’s a good family man,” was one. “He worked hard to get here,” was another. “He is living the American dream,” was particularly revealing. I mean, with those qualities, who didn’t qualify? I guess you could say being a female would be disqualifying, since “he” is the operative pronoun in each qualification.

But you get my meaning. Whether McCarthy would be elected Speaker has been the question, but it’s never been the issue, the lack of any Republican alternative being obvious proof. The issue has always been who will hold the power in the Republican-led 118th Congress, and that’s not going to be McCarthy under the conditions he has agreed to. At this point, he has sold off so many parts of himself, not to mention his Constitutional powers, that all he amounts to is a torso and a head without its contents — meaning, of course, a brain.

There is a famous quote by Grover Norquist, who has run the right-wing but innocuously named Americans for Tax Reform for decades: “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” What we have learned over the last few days is that right-wing Republican plan has outlived its usefulness, which was mostly as rhetoric anyway. This crowd wants to take the government apart, piece by piece, and kill it. They’ve been using and abusing the Constitution to do it. This time, they didn’t even have to employ a mob to shut themselves down, and they’re winning.

about Kevin McCarthy’s fight for Speaker votes

Many families with unaffordable employer coverage now eligible for Covered California subsidies

If having the family on your employer-sponsored health plan has been a financial hardship, or outright impossible to afford, help may be on the way.

The federal government recently fixed a controversial Treasury Department rule tied to the Affordable Care Act that denied assistance to many families whose workplace coverage busted their budgets.

Because of the so-called family glitch, if a worker had access to employee-only coverage deemed affordable under federal guidelines, a spouse or dependents could not get help to buy a health plan through Covered California, the state’s ACA insurance marketplace, even if it was not affordable to put them on the employer plan.

This affected an estimated 5.1 million people nationally, more than half of them children, since employers often contribute only to an employee’s premium, leaving workers to pay full fare for other family members.

Under a new rule that took effect Dec. 12, if the cost of having you and your family on a workplace plan exceeds an affordability threshold — set at 9.12% of household income for 2023 — your spouse and dependents could qualify for financial aid to purchase insurance through Covered California. Affordability will be determined by how much you would have to pay to have them — and you — on your employer’s cheapest health plan.

ACA insurance subsidies come in the form of federal tax credits that can be taken upfront or settled with the IRS when you file your taxes the following year.

Estimates from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the UC Berkeley Labor Center show that 391,000 Californians previously excluded from subsidies in Covered California would be eligible for them under the new rule. Of those, an estimated 149,000 would likely enroll in a Covered California plan. Those switching from an employer-sponsored plan would save an average of $1,478 per person this year, according to the two centers.

“Fixing the family glitch is a critical step in really delivering on the promise of the ACA,” says Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California. “If you don’t have affordable coverage from another source, the marketplace is where you should be able to come for affordable coverage.”

So, if you are paying too much to cover your family members on your employer’s health plan, it is definitely worth finding out whether you can get a tax credit to help pay their premiums on a Covered California plan. But finding the answer is complicated and will take considerable legwork.

If you have steady employment, last year’s income will probably be a good proxy for 2023, adding any pay raise you expect in the coming year. You’ll also need to calculate how much you would pay for your employer’s lowest-cost health plan — both for employee-only coverage and for family coverage. If the cost for you alone is under the 9.12% threshold, you will not qualify for a subsidized Covered California plan, even if your spouse and dependents do. That means a family could be split between two policies, with separate deductibles and different provider networks.

You also need to determine whether the lowest-cost plan offered by your employer meets the minimum coverage standard under the ACA. That means it must cover at least 60% of your total allowed medical expenses during the year and provide sufficient coverage for hospital and physician services. If it does not meet those requirements, you and your family might be able to get a subsidized plan through Covered California, depending on your income.

If two spouses have access to employer coverage, you’ll need to perform this exercise for both options.

Is your head spinning yet? You’re not alone.

“This stuff is just really complicated,” says Kevin Knauss, an insurance agent in Granite Bay. “And how can we possibly expect families that are doing all kinds of different things — kids, Christmas — to really focus on this stuff?”

But don’t ignore the new rule, because you could be leaving money on the table. Covered California has a worksheet to help calculate your eligibility for subsidies. Your human resources department might be willing to help you fill it out. Or you could seek professional help, whether an insurance agent or other certified enroller. You wouldn’t need to pay a penny for either.

To find an insurance agent or certified enroller, log on to Covered California’s website (www.coveredca.com) and click on the “Support” tab. Or call 800-300-1506. Covered California has a very useful FAQ all about the fix to the family glitch.

The enrollment period for 2023 coverage started on Nov. 1 and runs through Jan. 31. If you buy coverage this month, it will start on Feb. 1.

The family glitch fix isn’t the only new thing with Covered California. Starting this year, you can put a dependent parent or stepparent on your health plan, as long as they are not eligible for or enrolled in Medicare.

And, in case you missed it, Congress extended through 2025 the supplemental tax credits that increase aid to people who were already getting some before and are available to many middle-class households that did not previously qualify for financial assistance.

The idea behind the expanded financial help is to limit the amount people spend on health care premiums to no more than 8.5% of household income, no matter how much money they make.

Knauss said he talked to a man in Marin County who was seeking a Covered California health plan for his family of four and qualified for a monthly subsidy of $1,400, even though he makes $200,000 a year. Being over 60 and living in Northern California, an expensive region, pushed his family’s premium to a level that opened the door for significant financial assistance, Knauss said.

If you are already enrolled in Covered California, don’t simply renew coverage for this year. Prices and provider networks can change from year to year, and there might be a new, cheaper option in your region. So shop around.

And whether you are new or returning to Covered California, know what your medical needs are likely to be. If you have a condition that requires intensive services, you might consider paying a higher premium in exchange for lower deductibles and coinsurance when you seek care.

Happy hunting.

Jessica Altman is the daughter of Drew Altman, who is president and CEO of KFF. KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

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.

Can NATO and the Pentagon find a diplomatic off-ramp from the Ukraine war?

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, known for his staunch support for Ukraine, recently revealed his greatest fear for this winter to a TV interviewer in his native Norway: that the fighting in Ukraine could spin out of control and become a major war between NATO and Russia. “If things go wrong,” he cautioned solemnly, “they can go horribly wrong.”

It was a rare admission from someone so involved in the war and reflects the dichotomy in recent statements between U.S. and NATO political leaders on one hand and military officials on the other. Civilian leaders still appear committed to waging a long, open-ended war in Ukraine, while military leaders, such as the U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, have spoken out and urged Ukraine to “seize the moment” for peace talks.

Retired Admiral Michael Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, spoke out first, maybe testing the waters for Milley, telling ABC News that the United States should “do everything we possibly can to try to get to the table to resolve this thing.”

Asia Times reported that other NATO military leaders share Milley’s view that neither Russia nor Ukraine can achieve an outright military victory, while French and German military assessments conclude that the stronger negotiating position Ukraine has gained through its recent military successes will be short-lived if it fails to heed Milley’s advice.

Ukraine crisis is a classic “security dilemma” — and it’s urgent we find a solution

So why are U.S. and NATO military leaders speaking out so urgently to reject the perpetuation of their own central role in the war in Ukraine? And why do they see such danger in the offing if their political bosses miss or ignore their cues for the shift to diplomacy?

A Pentagon-commissioned Rand Corporation study published in December, titled Responding to a Russian Attack on NATO During the Ukraine War, provides clues as to what Milley and his military colleagues find so alarming. The study examines U.S. options for responding to four scenarios in which Russia attacks a range of NATO targets, from a U.S. intelligence satellite or a NATO arms depot in Poland to larger-scale missile attacks on NATO air bases and ports, including Ramstein U.S. Air Base and the port of Rotterdam.

These four scenarios are all hypothetical and premised on a Russian escalation beyond the borders of Ukraine. But the authors’ analysis reveals just how fine and precarious the line is between limited and proportionate military responses to Russian escalation and a spiral of escalation that can spin out of control and lead to nuclear war.

The final sentence of the study’s conclusion reads: “The potential for nuclear use adds weight to the U.S. goal of avoiding further escalation, a goal which might seem increasingly critical in the aftermath of a limited Russian conventional attack.” Yet other parts of the study argue against de-escalation or less-than-proportionate responses to Russian escalations, based on the same concerns with U.S. “credibility” that drove devastating but ultimately futile rounds of escalation in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other lost wars.

U.S. political leaders are always afraid that if they do not respond forcefully enough to enemy actions, their enemies (now including China) will conclude that their military moves can decisively impact U.S. policy and force the United States and its allies to retreat. But escalations driven by such fears have consistently led only to even more decisive and humiliating U.S. defeats.

In Ukraine, U.S. concerns about “credibility” are compounded by the need to demonstrate to its allies that NATO’s Article 5—which says that an attack on one NATO member will be considered an attack on all—is a truly watertight commitment to defend them.

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So U.S. policy in Ukraine is caught between the reputational need to intimidate its enemies and support its allies on the one hand, and the unthinkable real-world dangers of escalation on the other. If U.S. leaders continue to act as they have in the past, favoring escalation over the loss of “credibility,” they will be flirting with nuclear war, and the danger will only increase with each twist of the escalatory spiral.

As the absence of a “military solution” slowly dawns on the armchair warriors in Washington and NATO capitals, they are quietly slipping more conciliatory positions into their public statements. Most notably, they are replacing their previous insistence that Ukraine must be restored to its pre-2014 borders, meaning a return of all the Donbas and Crimea, with a call for Russia to withdraw only to pre-February 24, 2022, positions, which Russia had previously agreed to in negotiations in Turkey in March.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told The Wall Street Journal on December 5th that the goal of the war is now “to take back territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th.” The WSJ reported that “Two European diplomats… said [U.S. National Security Adviser Jake] Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelenskyy’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.”

In another article, The Wall Street Journal quoted German officials saying, “they believe it is unrealistic to expect the Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories,” while British officials defined the minimum basis for negotiations as Russia’s willingness to “withdraw to positions it occupied on February 23rd.”

One of Rishi Sunak’s first actions as U.K. prime minister at the end of October was to have Defense Minister Ben Wallace call Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for the first time since the Russian invasion in February. Wallace told Shoigu the U.K. wanted to de-escalate the conflict, a significant shift from the policies of former Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

A major stumbling block holding Western diplomats back from the peace table is the maximalist rhetoric and negotiating positions of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government, which has insisted since April that it will not settle for anything short of full sovereignty over every inch of territory that Ukraine possessed before 2014.

But that maximalist position was itself a remarkable reversal from the position Ukraine took at cease-fire talks in Turkey in March, when it agreed to give up its ambition to join NATO and not to host foreign military bases in exchange for a Russian withdrawal to its pre-invasion positions. At those talks, Ukraine agreed to negotiate the future of Donbas and to postpone a final decision on the future of Crimea for up to 15 years.

The Financial Times broke the story of that 15-point peace plan on March 16, and Zelenskyy explained the “neutrality agreement” to his people in a national TV broadcast on March 27, promising to submit it to a national referendum before it could take effect.

But then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened on April 9 to quash that agreement. He told Zelenskyy that the U.K. and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back Ukraine to fight a long war, but would not sign on to any agreements Ukraine made with Russia.

This helps to explain why Zelenskyy is now so offended by Western suggestions that he should return to the negotiating table. Johnson has since resigned in disgrace, but he left Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine hanging on his promises.

In April, Johnson claimed to be speaking for the “collective West,” but only the United States publicly took a similar position, while France, Germany and Italy all called for new cease-fire negotiations in May. Now Johnson himself has done an about-face, writing in an Op-Ed for The Wall Street Journal on December 9 only that “Russian forces must be pushed back to the de facto boundary of February 24th.”

Johnson and Biden have made a shambles of Western policy on Ukraine, politically gluing themselves to a policy of unconditional, endless war that NATO military advisers reject for the soundest of reasons: to avoid the world-ending World War III that Biden himself promised to avoid.

U.S. and NATO leaders are finally taking baby steps toward negotiations, but the critical question facing the world in 2023 is whether the warring parties will get to the negotiating table before the spiral of escalation spins catastrophically out of control.

about the Ukraine war

NY GOP eyes replacements for Santos

The Republican Party in New York is staring reality in the face as they are already looking for replacements for Representative-elect George Santos, who has not even been sworn in yet as a Congressman.

Santos is under heavy scrutiny for a plethora of lies he has told about his personal, professional and social backgrounds.

In a Washington Times story, an unnamed Republican official with access to the situation said, “The wheels are already spinning,” they continued. “People are getting ready to start primaries.”

The unnamed Republican official said the list of possible candidates to replace Santos includes Assemblyman Mike Durso, former Assemblyman Mike LiPetri and Nassau County Comptroller Elaine Phillips.

Hot mic catches CNN’s Dana Bash reacting to McCarthy’s victory boasts

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has so far failed in his bid to become House Speaker on 13 straight ballots — but he believes he finally has secured enough to win in a vote later tonight.

While talking to reporters on Friday afternoon, a confident sounding McCarthy outlined why he believed his own party was finally ready to give him enough votes to get him across the finish line.

“I believe at that time we’ll have the votes to finish this once and for all,” McCarthy said. “It just reminds me of what my father always told me: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And now we have to finish for the American public.”

At this point in the CNN broadcast, a voice that sounded like CNN’s Dana Bash interjected and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

In subsequent coverage of the upcoming 14th House Speaker vote, Bash would ridicule the notion that McCarthy had showed that he’d gotten his caucus in order and she suggested that he only showed them how they could effectively blackmail him during future negotiations.

Watch the video below.

Here’s everything we know about the investigation into the University of Idaho murders

Four University of Idaho students were found brutally murdered in November 2022, rocking the relatively peaceful community. But it wasn’t long before a suspect was found who was eventually apprehended.

Bryan Christopher Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, was arrested on Dec. 30 for the fatal stabbings of 20-year-old Ethan Chapin, 21-year-old Madison Mogen, 20-year-old Xana Kernodle and 21-year-old Kaylee Goncalves. Kohberger currently faces four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary. He appeared in court on Thursday.

Former FBI profiler says Idaho killer planned for a “mass casualty event”

Despite the arrest, much of the case still remains a mystery, including the suspect’s relationship to the victims, his motives and why he was taken into custody seven weeks after the crime. Law enforcement refrained from elaborating further, asserting that more details in the case would be provided throughout Kohberger’s court appearances.

Here’s what we know about the case so far, from a timeline of events to findings from court documents:

The November crimes

Per police reports obtained by ABC News, the murders took place between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. on Nov. 13. in a house near the Moscow, Idaho, campus, where Mogen, Kernodle and Goncalves all lived with two other roommates — whom survived the attacks.

Around 1:45 a.m., best friends Goncalves and Mogen returned home after going out to the Corner Club bar in Moscow. At about the same time, Chapin and Kernodle, who were dating, also returned. Chapin did not live at the house but was sleeping over with his girlfriend.

According to the affidavit — also obtained by ABC News — Kernodle received a DoorDash order at the house at about 4 a.m. One of the surviving roommates also woke up around 4 a.m. after hearing what she thought was Goncalves playing with her dog. The roommate claimed “she heard someone she thought was Goncalves say something to the effect of ‘there’s someone here.'” But that may have also been Kernodle on her phone as records showed she was on TikTok at about 4:12 a.m.

The roommate said that “she looked out of her bedroom but did not see anything when she heard the comment about someone being in the house,” per court documents. She also heard “what she thought was crying coming from Kernodle’s room” followed by a male voice saying “something to the effect of ‘it’s OK, I’m going to help you.'”

When she opened her bedroom door, the roommate said she heard crying and saw a masked man in black clothes walking past her. The court documents said she stood “frozen” and in “shock.” The documents also mentioned that a security camera, located less than 50 feet from Kernodle’s room, picked up sounds of a barking dog and “distorted audio of what sounded like voices or a whimper followed by a loud thud” around 4:17 a.m.

Police said the two roommates called friends over to their house a few hours later because they found one of the victims unconscious. In response to a 9-1-1 call made at 11:58 a.m., police found the four victims. Autopsies conducted on Nov. 17 revealed the victims were all stabbed multiple times.

The suspect

After reviewing surveillance video, police saw Kohberger’s white Hyundai Elantra pass the victims’ house three times and then enter after the fourth time at 4:04 a.m. Location data from Kohberger’s phone also revealed that “he had traveled to the area of the victims’ residence at least a dozen times between late June and the night of the killings,” authorities said per CBS News.

Kohberger’s car was also traced that night to his place of residence in Pullman, Washington. Police eventually arrested Kohberger on Friday, Dec. 30 at his parents’ home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, on a fugitive from justice warrant. Kohberger was also charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary.

Bryan Christopher Kohberger (AKA “The Idaho Killer”) (Monroe County Correctional Facility via Getty Images)

Per CBS News, “Kohberger was arraigned in Pennsylvania in front of a district judge, where bail was denied, and remanded to Monroe County Correctional Facility.” He reportedly did not fight being returned to Idaho during an extradition hearing on Jan. 3. Kohberger arrived in Idaho the following day and was picked up by local authorities following a flight from Pennsylvania. He is being held at Latah County Jail.

Kohberger was a Ph.D. criminology student and teaching assistant at Washington State University’s Pullman campus. He received a bachelor’s degree from DeSales University in 2020 and did his graduate studies at the university until June 2022, per a statement from DeSales.

Following Kohberger’s arrest, Washington State University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology released a brief statement: “The Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University is aggrieved by the alleged horrendous acts of one of its graduate students. We are relieved that justice will be carried out. Our hearts are with the victims’ families.”

In a statement obtained by CBS News, Kohberger’s family said they “will continue to let the legal process unfold” and that they “have fully cooperated with law enforcement agencies in an attempt to seek the truth and promote his presumption of innocence.

“First and foremost we care deeply for the four families who have lost their precious children. There are no words that can adequately express the sadness we feel, and we pray each day for them,” they added.

Revelations from Kohberger’s initial hearing

Kohberger made his initial appearance in court at 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday.

Washington state licensing records and court documents obtained by CNN revealed that Kohberger received a new license plate for his white Hyundai Elantra five days after the November murders.

Trash from the Kohberger family’s residence also helped investigators identify Kohberger as the suspect in the murders. The trash samples were recovered by Pennsylvania law enforcement and then sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing.

“On December 27, 2022, Pennsylvania Agents recovered the trash from the Kohberger family residence located in Albrightsville, PA,” court documents said. “That evidence was sent to the Idaho State Lab for testing.”

The following day, the lab found that “a DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a DNA profile from the tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims.

“On December 28, 2022, the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash and the DNA profile obtained from the sheath, identified a male as not being excluded as the biological father of Suspect Profile,” the document continued.

Kohberger’s phone records revealed that his phone was used at least a dozen times near the victims’ residence since June 2022. His phone was also near the scene of the crime hours after the murders, according to court documents.

Court documents also disclosed that Kohberger applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in Washington in fall 2022.

Kohberger is slated to be back in court for a preliminary hearing on Jan. 12, 2023.

recent true crime stories:

Trader Joe’s sued for selling dark chocolate allegedly containing lead and cadmium

As reported by Jonathan Stempel at Reuters, a lawsuit was filed by a New York man earlier this week against Trader Joe’s, alleging that the company sold dark chocolate products that contained potentially harmful amounts of heavy metals. Furthermore, Trader Joe’s isn’t the first to incur a lawsuit lately; this lawsuit comes just a week after a similar lawsuit against Hershey’s.

Florida woman sues Kraft Heinz over microwave time for single-serving mac and cheese

These class action filings come after a December 2022 Consumer Reports article, in which Kevin Loria reported that “23 out of the 28 dark chocolate bars … tested contained potentially harmful levels of lead, cadmium or both heavy metals for people who eat more than one ounce of chocolate a day,” according to Stempel. Of course, chocolate is consumed in so many different capacities, but the bulk of most chocolate bars or candies are most definitely more than just one ounce.

According to Consumer Reports, the Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate 72% Cacao was high in lead, while the Trader Joe’s The Dark Chocolate Lover’s Chocolate 85% Cacao was high in both lead and cadmium. As noted by Reuters, “plaintiff Thomas Ferrante said he bought both products after reading their labels, and would not have done so or would have paid less had he known their contents.”

Consumer Reports states that out of all 28 dark chocolate bars tested, every single one contained lead and cadmium: “For 23 of the bars, eating just an ounce a day would put an adult over a level that public health authorities and CR’s experts say may be harmful for at least one of those heavy metals.”

As stated by Consumer Reports, the “safer” options come from the companies Mast, Ghiardeli, Taza and Valrhona. The site also points out that children and pregnant people should be especially careful about heavy metal consumption.

According to this Harvard report, dark chocolate has more flavanols than milk chocolate, which can help boost heart health, as well as help “relax the blood vessels and improve blood flow, thereby lowering blood pressure.” Dark chocolate is also said to help lower diabetes risk. It’s unsure how the presence of lead, cadmium, or both might adversely affect these positive health proponents.

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As stated by Dartmouth Heavy Metals, cadmium can “accumulate in the kidneys, and some scientists believe that damage to kidney tissue may lead to kidney disease, high blood pressure, and heart disease.” In addition, it can cause a host of other issues, including lung cancer, immune system weakening, prostate enlargement and more.

Cadmium is also generally present in other foods like sweet potatoes, spinach and carrots, and according to Consumer Reports “small amounts from multiple sources can add up to dangerous levels” over time.

Consumer Reports writes that in contrast with some prevailing and persistent “common thought,” milk chocolate may be a preferable option to dark when it comes to attempting to avoid these harmful metals (although the sugar or dairy content in milk chocolate may generally be higher)

The FDA states that “while it is not possible to prevent or remove lead entirely from foods, the levels in food can be reduced.”

As reported by Reuters, “both lawsuits seek at least $5 million of damages, including at least $500 per transaction under New York law.”

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Intermittent fasting can boost your health, but how and when to restrict food consumption is crucial

On top of kickstarting a new exercise regime, the new year is traditionally a period when many people reconsider their eating habits. In recent years, intermittent fasting has become a popular habit — and has been credited with some health benefits, be it to manage excess weight, chronic illnesses or flagging energy levels. But what exactly is intermittent fasting? And does all the hype around it stand up to scientific scrutiny?

The term intermittent fasting covers several approaches, each based on different principles. It is important to note that no matter which method is used, the restrictions only affect food — never water — intake.

The “Eat Stop Eat” method: Put forward by Brad Pilon in his book of the same name, the principle is to alternate days of normal eating and fasting, including two non-consecutive fasting days in a week.
The 5:2 method: Developed in the 2000s by the doctors Michelle Harvie and Tony Howell, this alternates between five days of normal eating and two days (which can be consecutive) of 70-75% calorie reduction during the week.
Time-restricted eating (also called time-restricted feeding): This is currently the most popular and most studied method. It consists of narrowing the food intake window to between six and 10 hours per day, and therefore fasting between 14 and 18 hours during the day.

Summary of the different intermittent fasting methods. Anouk Charlot

Science’s verdict?

Outcomes vary depending on the adopted strategy.

With the “Eat Stop Eat” and 5:2 approaches, relatively few scientific studies have been conducted. The little data we have available has shown they can effectively help us lose weight and improve certain metabolic parameters such as fasting blood glucose. For example, the nutritionist Surabhi Bhutani showed the use of the 5:2 method for three months resulted in a weight loss of 3-6 kilograms in participants.

However, both methods are very restrictive and can cause side effects on days of total fasting or severe caloric restriction — hunger, negative effects on mood and risk of hypoglycaemia.

In the longer term, restriction also increases the risk of developing or worsening eating disorders, as well as yo-yo dieting. These patterns often appear after the individual has attempted to lose weight by restricting themselves: despite initial progress, the deprivation is likely to generate frustrations that will encourage the return of old eating habits.

The most studied method is the one with a daily food intake but limited in time. Two “time slots” are often observed:

when food intake starts with breakfast and ends in the late afternoon, known as “early time-restricted feeding,”
when food intake starts with lunch, known as “late time-restricted feeding.”

This approach appears to improve metabolic regulation and slash the risk of metabolic diseases. However, these benefits vary according to the chosen time slot. When food intake starts in the morning, studies have observed weight loss and improvements in insulin sensitivity.

Conversely, there are fewer or no benefits to starting meals at midday and ending them in the evening. Ram Babu Singh’s team (Halberg Hospital and Research Institute, India) also showed positive results in participants who ate only in the morning — and not in those who ate in the evening after 8 p.m.

Why such a difference?

Research suggests our internal clock and circadian rhythms may have something to do with it. Indeed, the benefit to only eating in the morning is that the periods of food intake and fasting coincide with our biological clock.

In our previous article, we explained that in response to light cycles, our body produces hormones in a cyclical way to adapt our food intake to the body’s energy needs: The optimal period for eating is therefore from around 8 or 9 a.m. (when the sun rises) to 7 p.m. (when the sun starts to set, depending on the season).

Not eating breakfast and eating after 7 p.m. upsets circadian rhythms and increases the risk of developing metabolic diseases.

However, while time-limited eating seems to be a good approach to metabolic health, much remains to be understood about how it works and how to optimize its effects. Work in 2022 showed no difference in terms of weight loss between opting for early- or late-morning eating. It did, however, have an effect on appetite during the day — this time to the advantage of the former.

And beyond the time of day when it seems preferable to eat, other factors may be at work that are not always measured in the studies carried out: quality and quantity of food absorbed, duration of the fasting period (which can extend from 12 to 20 hours per day), etc. It is also worth remembering every individual has his or her own metabolism and may respond differently to fasting. New, better controlled and more comprehensive studies are therefore needed to confirm the potential benefits of these methods and to understand the mechanisms involved in their effects

In practice, what to do?

The most suitable method to avoid disrupting one’s circadian clock (and thereby limiting the risk of frustration or eating disorders) appears to be time-limited food intake by synchronizing meals with circadian rhythms.

Thus, a typical day could be organized with a hearty breakfast in the morning taking place between 6 and 8 a.m., a lunch around midday and finally bringing dinner forward so that it takes place between 4 and 6 p.m., depending on the season.

This is not necessarily easy to reconcile with one’s social life. It can be complicated to practice intermittent fasting for a family, when one practices a sporting activity in the early evening or when one works in the evening until 7 or 8 p.m.

One solution would be to opt for a big breakfast and not too caloric a meal in the evening — preferably without carbs or sugars, so as not to risk shifting one’s biological clock.

Typical day and foods to be favored for practicing time-limited eating. Anouk Charlot

Chrono-nutrition

Chrono-nutrition is increasingly popular and intermittent fasting appears to effectively boost metabolic health. That said, we have seen it is not a panacea. And we must ensure that the periods of fasting and food intake are consistent with our biological clock.

In the face of many existing methods, and potential risks, patients and health professionals still face a lack of information. Further research is essential to better understand their effects. Currently, there is not yet a general consensus on the ideal time to eat/fast or on the optimal duration of each period. Moreover, these parameters may differ from one person to another, depending on their genetic make-up, history and lifestyle. It is therefore important to consider the use of this dietary strategy with qualified health professionals, with the view of setting up a healthy and balanced diet that will limit the risk of complications.

Anouk Charlot, Doctorante, Université de Strasbourg and Joffrey Zoll, MCU-PH en physiologie, faculté de médecine, Université de Strasbourg

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

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish”: Kevin McCarthy thinks tonight’s the night

After yet another voting session on Friday afternoon, Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy is optimistic that once the House returns from their 10 p.m. adjournment he will emerge victorious as the new Speaker of the House.

In a statement given from Capitol Hill, McCarthy appeared to be in good spirits after this four day voting ordeal, quoting his father in a pep talk to himself.

“We’ll have the votes to finish this once and for all,” McCarthy said. “It just reminds me of what my father always told me; It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And now we have to finish for the American public.”

Reporter: "How do you expect to govern this way? It’s been taking this long –"

Kevin McCarthy: "See, this is the great part. Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern. So now we'll be able to get the job done." pic.twitter.com/ND1u113bTn

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 6, 2023

Does it even matter who the next Speaker of the House is, if insurrectionists are running the show?

Responding to a reporter’s inquiry on what the breaking point in negotiations was, McCarthy said that getting together and finding the ability to work together provided the shakeup needed, which presumably helped him to land the additional 15 votes he received during Friday’s session.

“I think at the end of the day we’re gonna be more effective, more efficient, and definitely government’s gonna be more accountable,” McCarthy furthered in his statement from the Capitol.

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Asked to weigh in on the time it’s taken for this voting to come to an end, McCarthy’s optimism didn’t falter.

“See, this is the great part,” he said. “Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”

As CNBC highlights in their coverage of Friday’s session, McCarthy “received 213 and 214 ballots in the 12th and 13th rounds of votes on Friday, but he needs at least 217 to win. At least two members of Congress were out of town, lowering the number of votes he needed to win Friday.”

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“Profound danger”: Two years after Jan. 6, the insurrection is still ongoing

Two years after a violent mob stormed the Capitol to try and disrupt the certification of the 2020 Presidential election, just twenty Republican House members have successfully stymied the swearing-in of the 118th Congress and the election of the Speaker of the House for four days with no sign of relenting.

The nation is at a standstill with the People’s House stymied by narcissism.

This dysfunction should come as no surprise considering that 14 of the 15 members of the incumbents in the so-called Freedom Caucus voted not to certify the legitimate 2020 election results even after the Capitol was breached by rioters who physically attacked the police with fatal consequences for New Jersey native Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick who died of injuries sustained defending the U.S. Capitol.

On Jan. 6 President Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor posthumously to Officer Sicknick, whose estate has filed a wrongful death case against Donald Trump who summoned and dispatched the mob that stormed the Capitol.

Back in September, Julian Khater, pled guilty to assaulting Sicknick with a deadly weapon. Months earlier his co-defendant in the attack, George Tanios pled guilty to a pair of misdemeanors. Hundreds of other rioters have been arrested with dozens tried and convicted for their role in the country’s first violent insurrection that targeted the peaceful transition of power. Yet, there’s been no accountability for the eight Republican U.S. Senators and the 139 members of the House, including New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who even after the riot, voted to overturn the will of the voters at the behest of Donald Trump.

By choosing to walk through the trashed and blood-stained corridors of the Capitol to vote to upend the expressed will of the people after the tear gas cleared, they were validating the violent attack and a paralyzing politics of grievance they cynically use to raise campaign cash.

Almost a month before Trump’s mob breached the Capitol and erected gallows, it should be noted that it was New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell who fully grasped the threat at hand.

On Dec. 11, 2020, Pascrell wrote Speaker Pelosi to point out that 126 House Republicans had signed on “a malignant lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This suit demands the will of the voters of these states be overturned and the Electoral College votes be stolen and awarded to Donald Trump.”

Pascrell urged a close reading of the Constitution’s 14th amendment, passed after the trauma of the Civil War which gave Congress the power to not seat members that “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”

“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress,” Pascrell wrote. “These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend, as well as violate the Rules of our House of Representatives, which explicitly forbid Members from committing unbecoming acts that reflect poorly on our chamber.”

Pascrell continued. “Consequently, I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.”

The reality is the insurrection has really been ongoing in a sense for as long as the political architects of the attempted coup have eluded accountability and are poised to take back control of the very chamber their minions desecrated.

“If there’s a real emergency, we couldn’t respond,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told the New York Times. “Either the Republicans don’t understand that, or they do understand that, and they don’t care. I don’t know which is worse, but it is a profound danger to the country as long as it lasts.”

What could happen?

“This film is Poe’s origin story”: “The Pale Blue Eye” director on his gothic whodunit at West Point

Netflix’s “The Pale Blue Eye” is an intriguing mystery set at West Point in 1830. Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is asked by Captain Hitchcock (Simon McBurney) to investigate the death of a cadet named Frye, who has hanged himself. The odd thing is, however, that his corpse was violated — the cadet’s heart was stolen. The U.S. Military Academy would like this matter, which could possibly be murder, resolved before things get out of hand.

“It’s quite tricky to make a film about Edgar Allen Poe at this time in his life, because most readers have him in mind as someone who is very dark and deeply invested in the trappings of macabre.”

Landor is aided by a most unlikely assistant, that of Cadet E. A. Poe (Harry Melling), a poet who has a keen sense of observation. Poe helps Landor decipher a scrap of a letter found on Frye’s corpse, hoping it will provide a clue to his death. As the mystery deepens, Landor and Poe encounter some uncanny things best left for viewers to discover.

Writer/Director Scott Cooper films this adaptation of Louis Bayard’s novel as a slow burn that features some interesting twists and gothic elements. He reteams with Bale for a third time after “Out of the Furnace” and “Hostiles.” Cooper spoke with Salon about his atmospheric new film, his love of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as creating a mystery about the ambiguous line between life and death.

Cozy up to “Glass Onion,” the droll “Knives Out” sequel that delivers all the murder mystery goods

Let’s start with a question about Poe and your interest in him, as well as the gothic genre. What is the appeal of this poet, and by extension, this work?

There was lots of Poe in my house. And at a young age, I liked how Poe transported me to places both geographically and psychologically that were very different than my home in Virginia. After my first film, “Crazy Heart,” my father turned me on to Louis Bayard’s novel, “The Pale Blue Eye,” and he said I think this is so clever that Edgar Allen Poe is at the center of a detective story. It was meant to be read for pleasure, but I thought it would make a really interesting film. I wrote a screenplay that laid fallow for 10-11 years while I went off to make five other movies. Christian Bale and I had worked together several times, and I thought Bale is aging perfectly into Augustus Landor. He read the screenplay and off we went. My love for Poe goes back to my youth, but I will say it’s quite tricky to make a film about Edgar Allen Poe at this time in his life, because most readers have him in mind as someone who is very dark and deeply invested in the trappings of macabre. He is obsessed with the occult and the satanic and where life ends, and death begins, grief and loss, ideas that course through our narrative. It is dangerous because people have an idea of Poe based on his later works, and not who he is as young man. He was witty and warm, and generous and this film is Poe’s origin story. The events that took place in this narrative lead him to become the godfather of detective and horror fiction.

What were you aims in telling this story, which has many different elements?

“No one in the story is who they appear to be.”

When I set out to make the movie, which kind of departs from Bayard’s novel, I wanted it to be a whodunit. I wanted it to be a father/son love story of this aging constable who has suffered a great deal of loss and is living on the margins of society as well as a young cadet who is poetic and romantic and, unlike the other cadets, lived by a code and a rigorous lifestyle set by the military, and of course, I wanted it to be a Poe origin story all wrapped into something that hopefully feels gothic and transportive.

Can you talk about how you approach telling a mystery, dropping clues visually, or creating tension between the characters or misdirection as information is revealed or withheld?

The idea is that no one in the story is who they appear to be. Most everyone is living behind this veil, and they aren’t showing who they truly are. Poe ends up being the most sincere of all of them. He’s vulnerable, open and giving, and cares for Landor and cares for Landor’s missing daughter and deceased wife. He falls in love with Lea (Lucy Boynton). He has a lot to give. There is sincerity in Melling’s portrayal. That has to be parsed out carefully, like the clues of the whodunit. Landor and the Marquis family — the doctor (Toby Jones) and his wife (Gillian Anderson) — these are eccentric people. Upon a second viewing, you can see we lay out all the breadcrumbs.

The film considers themes of revenge and justice. What do you think a work of historical fiction like this says to contemporary society?

If you look at the film “Payback” and the “Taken” series, these are men avenging the loss of loved ones. If you can apply that to the 1830 and Edgar Allan Poe, it’s quite delicious. Here you have a man who is meting out justice and who has solved some of the most unsolvable and grisly crimes. But I think people can see avenging the death of a loved one as motivation. Christian says our three movies together are about ethical revenge.

Christian Bale as Augustus Landor and Harry Melling as Edgar Allen Poe in “The Pale Blue Eye” (Scott Garfield/Netflix)

A theme in much of your work is how characters push themselves to the limit in a quest for truth and in many cases confront difficult truths in the process. What are your thoughts on that topic?

“I think people can see avenging the death of a loved one as motivation. Christian says our three movies together are about ethical revenge.”

I think those themes coursing through my work now is more relevant than ever, given the society we find ourselves in unfortunately. We are living in quite fraught times. Post-pandemic — if we can call it that, I’m not sure we can — we are in fraught times and there is a great deal of animosity toward the other, whoever the other is, and that is not just political, and not just in the United States. We’re seeing it in Iran and in the Ukraine. When I set out to make a film, I think of putting ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances.

Most of the film is a slow burn, but there are a few moments of suspense. Can you talk about how you made a “horror” film that has very little bloodletting, maybe one jump scare, but still a very intense scene involving fire? This is far more of a psychological thriller than a film about a psycho killer.

One thing I want the audience to know is that it’s not a horror film. Even though Poe bequeathed to us detective and horror fiction, it’s the events placed upon character that are horrific. Four characters meet their death far too young. There is a missing daughter. Poe is having near-death experiences. It’s not jump scares and ghouls and goblins and vampires meting out justice or horrific events. It’s horror in terms of what happens in the internal struggle of the characters. Its horrific in that way and in the way that Poe approaches his work, whether it is “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” or one of my favorite short stories, “The Premature Burial,” or “The Tell-Tale Heart.” It’s much more psychological and revealed more slowly, which appeals to me. It is also really character-driven; the characters ultimately have horrific episodes that play out in their lives. If you are going to see this movie as a horror film, you will be disappointed.

The film has a steely look and is very heavy on the blue and gray palette. How did you create the film’s tone, which is chilly and at times quite foreboding and atmospheric?

That was really important. We were shooting in incredibly inhospitable conditions. It was -8 or -4 degrees Fahrenheit. When I first set out to talk about the film visually with my cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and my production designer Stefania Cella we talked about Caspar David Friedrich, the great German artist who allowed nature to come into his frames in quite imposing ways. We also talked about the interiors feeling like “Barry Lyndon,” all lit by natural candlelight. We wanted a controlled palette of blue and gray and black and tried to remove any green. We wanted the film to feel like something that Poe knows well, which is death. The landscape doesn’t feel alive. The cold, gray of West Point, the blue of their uniforms, all of these tones hopefully transports the audience along with the atmospherics, back to 1830 in a way that doesn’t feel artificial. When I often watch period pictures, I feel I am seeing actors playing dress up. I like to remove the production design and costume and camera, so character, location, and atmosphere come to fore and in this instance, I wanted to feel suffocating. Almost a color film in black and white. Monochromatic tone serves the gothic in a way that isn’t heavy-handed.

The film opens with a quote about the ambiguous line between life and death. Not to spoil things, but there is an element of the supernatural at work in the story. Do you believe in the uncanny and the occult?

I believe that there are inexplicable things that inform our lives in ways that we might not want to face. That particular quote comes from Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” and it sets the tone for our film where we are not quite sure where life ends and death begins. And that is something he wrote about quite often. I like to think when one passes on to the next frontier that there is something else. I like to keep alive this notion of the inexplicable. In 1830, they believe in the occult because there were so many things science had not caught up with and they didn’t know how to explain these events and occurrences. They could only chalk it up to something that was inexplicable, or the supernatural. I don’t believe it as much as Poe or the people in the narrative do, but I like to think that which remains unexplained is mysterious, and interesting, and certainly requires further experimentation.

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There is a line “with enough patience, the suspect will interrogate himself.” What can you reveal about your methods?

That, of course, was not in the novel. But when I set out to write and direct and produce a film, I don’t want my fingerprints on the movie. Whether it is production design, camera, costumes and certainly performances, I don’t want it to feel like the director is leading with who he or she is. I want the audience to completely surrender to the story, and the moments that interplay between performers as the narrative is unfolding. At the end of the story, you say, “Oh, that was directed by Scott Cooper. What else has he done?” and you look that up. Ultimately, the film isn’t about me, it’s about my collaborators, and more importantly it’s about the audience. My sources and the way I reveal myself, hopefully, is quite subtle and invisible. If people recognize anything in my films, it’s a deep humanity. As long as people can see themselves in my work, then I will have done my job.

“The Pale Blue Eye” streams on Netflix beginning Friday, Jan. 6.

about Edgar Allan Poe

Expert details 4 ways Netanyahu’s new far-right government threatens Israeli democracy

Democracy is not just about holding elections. It is a set of institutions, ideas and practices that allow citizens a continuous, decisive voice in shaping their government and its policies.

The new Israeli government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and sworn in on Dec. 29, 2022, is a coalition of the most extreme right-wing and religious parties in the history of the state. This government presents a major threat to Israeli democracy, and it does so on multiple fronts.

Here are the four ways that Israel’s democratic institutions, customs and practices are endangered by the new government, based on policies and legislation that might be enacted or that are already in process.

1. Hostility to freedom of speech and dissent

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been working for years to consolidate his grip on Israeli media. The new government plans to accelerate the privatization of media in the hands of friendly interests and brand as anti-Israeli and treasonous media outlets its leaders deem hostile. The signs of this delegitimization are already here.

Ministers of Israel’s 37th government wait to have their group picture taken with the president and prime minister at the president’s residence in Jerusalem on Dec. 29, 2022. Photo by Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images

Even before the newly appointed minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, took office, the police briefly arrested and interrogated journalist Israel Frey after he posted a controversial tweet hinting that the Israeli military may be a legitimate target of Palestinian attacks. The police claimed the tweet incited terrorism, and the arrest showed journalists who favor an open and free press that they might face retaliation.

Ben-Gvir, the head of the Jewish Power party and now overseer of the police, was convicted in the past for supporting Jewish terrorism and for racist incitement against Israel’s Arab minority. In his inauguration speech on Jan. 1, the new minister branded “Jewish anarchists” – a code he often uses for leftists and human rights organizations – as threats that “needed to be dealt with.”

2. Diminishing equal rights

The Netanyahu government appears poised to allow discrimination against the LGBTQ community and women, thus undermining equality before the law, an important democratic principle.

Incoming National Missions Minister Orit Strock said in an interview in late December, “If a doctor is asked to give any type of treatment to someone that violates his religious faith, if there is another doctor who can do it, then you can’t force them to provide treatment.”

Netanyahu condemned Strock and other coalition members who stated that gay people could be denied service by businesses if serving them contradicts the business owner’s religious beliefs. Yet, journalists report that Likud and other coalition partners agreed in writing to amend the law against discrimination to allow exactly such a policy.

During early coalition negotiations, ultra-Orthodox parties demanded new legislation that would allow gender-based segregation in public spaces and events. Netanyahu has reportedly agreed, which means these laws are expected to pass the Knesset. Segregation in educational spheres, public transportation and public events is often translated into exclusion of women and weakening of women’s voices, and hence contradicts basic democratic principles such as freedom and equality.

3. West Bank annexation and apartheid

The new government’s intention to de facto annex the West Bank will turn hollow Israel’s claims of being the only democracy in the Middle East.

In a Dec. 28 tweet, Netanyahu announced that his government’s guidelines will include the principle that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel,” including the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967 and populated by a Palestinian majority.

These guidelines, combined with new nominations of far right politician Bezalel Smotrich as the minister responsible for Jewish settlements and Ben-Gvir as the minister in charge of the border police, could provide justification for annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Based on much of the rhetoric of right-wing leaders such as Smotrich, Palestinian residents of these lands will have neither equal rights nor voting rights. This means apartheid, not democracy.

4. Erasing the separation of powers

In the Israeli system, the executive and legislative branches are always controlled by the same coalition. The courts are the only institution that can check the power of the ruling parties and uphold the country’s Basic Laws, which provide rights in the absence of a formal constitution.

But the new government wants to erase this separation of power and explicitly aims at weakening the courts. On Jan. 4, after less than a week in his role, new Minister of Justice Yariv Levin announced the government’s plan for a radical judicial reform, which will include the “override clause.” That clause will allow a simple majority in the Knesset to re-enact any law struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

The new Israeli government plans to allow a simple majority in the Knesset to ignore any action by the Supreme Court to strike down a law as unconstitutional. Esther Hayut, pictured here, is the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

This would, in effect, remove all barriers placed upon the power of the majority. The coalition could legislate policies that are not only unconstitutional, but which clearly contradict ideas of human rights and equality that are enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

The government’s plan also includes reforms that would allow the coalition to control nomination of judges. In a small country that does not have a strong constitution and in which there is no separation of power between the executive and legislature, this move, again, would weaken the authority of the court and make judges beholden to politicians.

These so-called reforms “threaten to destroy the entire constitutional structure of the State of Israel,” said Yair Lapid, head of the opposition and former prime minister.

The danger of Netanyahu’s woes

All of these threats to Israeli democracy are more likely to materialize because of Netanyahu’s current personal problems.

Netanyahu is an experienced politician who in the past managed to quell the most extreme elements of his coalition partners, and his own Likud party, by paying them lip service while being more cautious on actual policies.

Many analysts do not believe this time will be the same.

The prime minister is facing corruption and fraud trials in three separate cases and is focused on protecting himself through whatever legislative and executive power he can muster. Netanyahu is beholden to his coalition for this task, which makes him vulnerable to their ultra-Orthodox agenda and demands for laws to perpetuate Jewish supremacy.

Any one of these changes present a serious democratic erosion. Together, they pose a clear danger to the existence of Israeli democracy.

Israel will continue to have elections in the future, but it’s an open question whether these will still be free and fair. With no judicial oversight, with constant disregard of human rights, with annexation of Palestinian lands and the disenfranchising of their people, and with a media that normalizes all of these processes, the answer is probably no.

As in Turkey, Hungary or even Russia, Israel could become a democracy in form only, devoid of all the ideas and institutions that underpin a government that is actually of the people and by the people.

Boaz Atzili, Associate Professor of International Relations, American University School of International Service

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

The danger to democracy revealed by dysfunction in the House

On Wednesday, the television split screen showed two contrasting pictures of today’s American government. One showed a legislative branch in disarray, the other offered an image of legislative-executive cooperation in the public interest.

On one side was Kevin McCarthy losing another vote for House speaker and being held hostage by a cabal of election-denying MAGA Republicans.

But they were also holding the House of Representatives hostage.

The potential rise of an American dictator is no longer a far-fetched notion. A weakened Congress could easily contribute to an end to our democracy.

On the other side, President Joe Biden and Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell in Covington, Kentucky celebrating the American Infrastructure Act – bridge building across the Ohio River and across the partisan divide.

It was more than a picture of contrasts between the internecine House warfare and White House-Senate bipartisanship. The Biden-McConnell message was that the American government is not failing even as one part is flailing.

Let’s be clear: We haven’t forgotten McConnell’s role in bringing dysfunction to Washington, D.C. An occasional foray into rational, public spirited legislation does not wash away that past.

But in history’s context, the message that government can deliver for the American people is more important than we may realize. More on that in a moment.

Desperate Kevin McCarthy caves to more MAGA concessions — including making it easier to fire him

It was obvious that the Biden-McConnell meeting was pure symbolism. There was no real event to celebrate, no ribbon-cutting on the new bridge to be built across the Ohio River and paid for by Biden’s 2022 infrastructure bill.

The president told us exactly what he wanted people to take away from the round of appearances and handshakes with McConnell and other prominent Republicans. The speaker-selection debacle, Biden said, “was not a good look” to “the rest of the world.” His focus was on “getting things done.”

That message was needed, even if for Biden it was nothing new.

The House follies reflect more than a political party that cannot unite. They are simply the latest sign of larger trends that American political leaders understand the need to resist — a gnawing sense that American political institutions may be in decline.

We can feel it in the underlying reasons why one of our two major parties is in not interested in governing.

First, there is Trumpism, the unleashing of the pursuit of power for its own sake. That has given the green light to factions like the 20 fringe-right “rebels” who seek to enhance their own standing at the cost of party unity and discipline. For them, a spot on Fox News is much more important than doing the hard work of actually legislating.

Second is rampant partisan gerrymandering. It has fueled extremism by segregating one party’s voters into Rorschach test-shaped Congressional districts, leaving the remaining districts filled with supermajorities of the other party. That results in representatives accountable for reelection only to one side of the political divide, and free to test the limits of extremism.

Third is the internet, with large tech company profits using algorithms that push citizens into hermetically sealed bubbles of political ideology.

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There are more, of course. But the cumulative effect is a country in the grips of institutional turmoil. We see it in a House unable for the first time in 100 years to immediately select a Speaker. And even when a Speaker is selected, we will continue to see dysfunction in this Congress’ inability to adopt legislation to help ordinary Americans and in the coming crisis over raising the debt ceiling, with potentially disastrous effects on the world economy and on kitchen tables across the country.

Citizens will throw up their hands in disgust at a Congress that will at best, be lame and at worst, a crippler of the country.

Which brings us back to history. The framers of our Constitution learned from England’s political past the importance of a strong legislature as a bulwark against the unconstrained power of a king.

In the tension between two strong branches, the framers understood, lies both freedom and stability for a citizenry. As James Madison wrote, “It is evident that each department should have a will of its own.”

The Constitution envisions a system in which curbs on each branch’s power plus shared authority would require cooperation for government to be effective and for elected leaders to maintain public support.

The danger arises when one side or the other fails. When that occurs, the desire for stability can result in citizens looking to an alternative source of power for order and forward movement.

That happened, as Yale historian Timothy Snyder reminded an MSNBC audience yesterday, in 1930-1932 Germany. The Weimar Republic’s parliament could not achieve a sustained majority. Government by emergency decree followed until a group of conservative politicians supported the naming of a populist leader in the hope of achieving stability and their own interest in conservative rule.

That did not work out well for Germany or the world.

Biden and McConnell may not have had that lesson in mind when they met on the banks of the Ohio River. Still, they both understand the importance of a working Congress to a functioning government and to our freedom.

The potential rise of an American dictator is no longer a far-fetched notion. A weakened Congress could easily contribute to an end to our democracy.

And so, amidst House dysfunction, the scene of the president with his rival party’s Senate leader provided important reassurance.

In January 2021, David Brooks correctly predicted: “The salient divisions in the Biden era . . . will be between the performers, the people who run for office to get on TV, and the builders, the people who want to achieve something.”

Wednesday’s split screen sent that message loud and clear.

about the House speaker debacle

“It’s a tool, it’s a Swiss Army knife”: Aimee Mann on how individuals deal with trauma through art

On Friday, Jan. 6, Aimee Mann kicks off the year by releasing an Audible Original, “Straw Into Gold.” She dubs the audio project a “one-off longform podcast,” which is an apt description.

“Art has a very specific function to me in that it is a language in which I can talk about things that I can’t talk about — or don’t have access to — in just normal language, in normal relationships.”

With actor-comedian Connor Ratliff as a co-host, Mann has conversations with multiple people — including playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman, comedian Maria Bamford, filmmaker Charlene deGuzman and musician and her bandmate Ted Leo — about the intersection of art and trauma. The interviews are often very moving and thought-provoking, as they delve into quite serious topics and illuminate the ways we cope with traumatic events.

Between these conversations, “Straw Into Gold” features songs from Mann’s career, including tunes from Mann’s latest studio album 2021’s “Queens of the Summer Hotel,” which double as music for an upcoming Broadway musical adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s novel “Girl, Interrupted.”

Aimee Mann: “I was under the impression that if I became well known, I would have to back up every line”

Right before the holidays, Mann Zoomed with Salon about recording “Straw Into Gold” and what she has in store for 2023.

How did you end up getting involved in recording this Audible Original?

It’s slightly convoluted. My last record, “Queens of the Summer Hotel,” was music that I wrote for a stage adaptation of “Girl, Interrupted,” which still has yet to be staged. That was commissioned by a team of producers. Somebody on that team was friendly with somebody at Audible and suggested it.

Backing up a bit, how did you end up getting involved with “Girl, Interrupted”?

The team of producers is Barbara Broccoli and Fred Zollo and their daughter Angelica. Angelica was a big fan of mine and was very familiar with [my] album before [“Queens of the Summer Hotel”], which is called “Mental Illness.” She felt like I would be really — which I can’t disagree [Laughs] — a good fit for a stage adaptation of a memoir about being in a mental institution.

I read that book when I was younger and, in hindsight, it’s unbelievable how groundbreaking it was. The book was on the forefront of talking about mental illness and things that we just weren’t talking about then.

Yeah, exactly. In this very frank way, too. [Kaysen is] taking the stance almost as an anthropologist and reporting on bare facts — this conversation, and then this happened, and we did this. But you don’t really know much about the writer herself, what’s going on. There’s not a lot of inner life. You have to sort of extrapolate. It was interesting writing music [for it].

When you were doing the Audible project, what did you want to do either differently from that — or the same?

Well, I had a podcast with my friend Ted Leo, who’s also on the Audible Original. It was called “The Art of Process,” because I had started to really get very interested in people’s artistic process and how that happens for them, and how an artistic endeavor becomes a language that you speak in.

From there I started to get interested in how the fact that so often art has a really interesting role in [certain] people . . . I mean, that trope of, “Art has to come from the tortured artist,” or “Genius and madness are so close,” and that kind of thing.

“For some people, art was a way to process. For some people, it was a mask. For some people, it was humor.”

And so I was interested in: What are the true parts of those tropes, and what are the untrue parts of those tropes? Art has a very specific function to me in that it is a language in which I can talk about things that I can’t talk about — or don’t have access to — in just normal language, in normal relationships.

I was really interested to see if it had the same function for people I knew or if it functioned differently. And it does function differently, but it definitely has a very specific function for the people I’ve talked to who have been traumatized. It’s definitely a part. Art and trauma have a relationship.

That’s what I liked in listening to the Audible project: Everybody you interviewed brought a different perspective to trauma and how they went through it, how they responded to it, how they’re going through it now, and how it affects their life. I really thought that that led to richer and deeper conversations. Because you’re friends with them — and knew them going into it — did you anticipate it would happen like that? What did you expect — and how did it differ from how it turned out?

It only differed . . . I mean, I did know Charlene deGuzman beforehand, and I know Maria Bamford, but not super well. Jonathan Marc Sherman I know really well, and Ted Leo I’m very close friends with.

What was interesting is nobody had the exact experience that I did. For some people, art was a way to process. For some people, it was a mask. For some people, it was humor — like a way to distance themselves from it, or process emotionally by distancing with humor, even the non-comedian. I don’t know, it’s really interesting to see how it functions. To me, it’s like this really magical thing.

And, strangely enough, I had never really talked to Ted about it, even though he’s the person I’m closest to and had a podcast about artistic process with. I mean, I was really moved by hearing the almost life-saving function that it had in his life.

Aimee Mann’s “Straw Into Gold” (Audible)

Having the Audible project as mini podcasts lends itself to these conversations. You were able to get deep enough to get to that place, but each of their little vignettes felt very satisfying. And so I thought that format functioned especially well.

Doing a 90-minute podcast is very daunting, and so I was really glad to get Connor Ratliff to help me. Are you familiar with his podcast “Dead Eyes”?

I’m not, but I know his story about the concept of the word.

It’s so great. And what’s really interesting to me is within this story — which is professionally traumatic for an actor to have a job and then lose a job and then lose a job with this weird comment about, “You have dead eyes” . . .

. . . from Tom Hanks!

If somebody told me I had dead eyes when I was 20, that would probably haunt me for the rest of my life too.

I would always look in the mirror and think that. It would always be in the back of my mind. If I saw the person who said it to me, it would reopen that wound every time.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know how that is. Somebody makes some remark about your looks, and then that’s all you can see for the rest of your life.

Exactly.

“His own relationship to the bad experiences that he’s had make him feel invincible on stage.”

I mean, it’s interesting because it’s not not traumatic, but it’s not traumatic on the same scale. But there are experiences that he had that I know about that he didn’t really want to talk about that I absolutely would qualify as traumatic.

First of all, he has a great sense of narrative, so that’s why I wanted him to help me with this, to corral all these interviews, and to help with the interviews too. He’s very good at listening to people and then taking the conversation where it goes, where I’m very anxious about, “Are we staying on topic?”

He really added a lot. But his own relationship to the bad experiences that he’s had make him feel invincible on stage. If somebody yells something or something goes wrong or something breaks, he does not care. [Laughs.] He does not care. He’s like, “I’m going to go with it.” It gives him a kind of courage, which is a really interesting take on what trauma in your past can do for you.

I admire that, because I am not there if I have to get on stage. I could not do that. That’s such an admirable trait that he can do that.

Yeah. Same. Same. I feel confident on stage only in very controlled circumstances. [Laughs.]

I’m a Virgo, so I need to know what’s going on. If something messes up, we have problems. So yeah, I’m with you.

Exactly, same. [Laughs.]

The conversations were also so intense. Being the interviewer, what was that like for you then? Was that an intense process? I admire how vulnerable and honest people were being, but I know that from doing interviews that can be really draining and sometimes be a lot to take in.

It’s very sad. I really feel for people. Jonathan Marc Sherman, the two of us are working on a couple of projects, so we work together. I really feel for him on a very deep level. I really feel for Ted on a very deep level. It’s hard to not take it on and choke up, which I definitely did. Even though with Sherm you can tell that he has a way that he tells his story. He has a prepared paragraph and it’s still . . . even with a prepared paragraph, it never won’t be rough.

You really get a new respect for people who work as therapists, psychotherapists that deal with this. I have friends who are, and I admire them so greatly, because I would find that so difficult not to take that stuff home and internalize it when people are trying to work through things.

It’s a difficult line to toe of empathizing with somebody and then feeling it yourself. I agree. I admire somebody with the kind of boundaries where they can empathize but not . . . some of it just takes over and it’s like, if you’re feeling it, I’m feeling it. I can’t really differentiate.

“Everybody has their own individual relationship to art. It’s a tool, it’s a Swiss Army knife.”

After doing all these conversations you had about trauma, what takeaways did you have? Did you glean any new insights?

I mean, this is really trite, but just a self-criticism — I wish that I had just been able to listen to people. This is because doing a podcast and interviewing people is very difficult and it’s very difficult to . . . I want to make people feel at ease, but I’m also trying to think of the next question that I need to ask them. So it’s very difficult to listen and let the conversation go where it wants to go and not feel nervous that it’s getting off track.

In listening back to some of these interviews, I realized at the time I didn’t really hear what they were saying, to a certain extent. I don’t think it really hit me, which each person was saying, “This is the way art works for me, and this is how art has blossomed out of trauma,” or because of trauma or in spite of trauma.

So I wish I was more able to listen and ask more follow-up questions. But having Connor there I think made up for that because, once again, he’s really good at listening.

[And it was] realizing, OK, so the triteness is everybody reacts in their own way. Everybody has their own individual relationship to art. It’s a tool, it’s a Swiss Army knife. It’s a tool that can be used in a lot of different ways that people use in a lot of different ways which is endlessly interesting.

There are also different songs of yours in the broadcast. Some of them are from the “Girl, Interrupted” rerecording. Did you have new insights after taking them on, after being immersed in this trauma? And why did you choose those particular ones to appear in the Audible broadcast?

I knew a lot of those songs [from “Queens of the Summer Hotel”] would be appropriate. But I actually had Connor choose them. When I first started listening to his podcast, I loved the way they used music in there and I loved the way they created narratives sometimes out of interviews where you’re like, “This is just rambling.” And then they bring it together, and I was like, “Man, that’s an impressive feat.” So I love the way they did narrative and then they would use music to illustrate, to highlight, to wrap things up.

Very early on, I said, “Any music of mine you ever want to use, feel free.” And they used a song for every episode. And so I would listen to the episode and get to the end of it and go, “Man, that’s a great choice. I never would’ve . . .” [Laughs.] Because sometimes your own music, you remember why you wrote it or what was happening when you wrote it, and it’s very hard to see how it can sound, or certain lines can fit in a different way, or it can sound different to other people. So I asked him to choose the songs that he thought, given the topics and what we were going to be talking about, that he thought would work.

It’s so interesting to hear his perspective. I love that. It’s like when you have a movie that has really good music placement, or they use just the right song in a scene. There’s such an art to that and it’s so difficult to do that.

Yeah, the right song at the right time. It’s like placing songs in a musical. They have to work together as a string of beads, and they have to work with what’s come before them, the topic that’s come before them, or the dialogue that’s come before them.

You’ve also been doing a lot of really wonderful drawings and cartoons in the last few years. Did working in that medium influence the way you approached these interviews or the topic?

“Music immediately makes you feel something. There’s no lag and there’s not a lot of subtlety.”

Not really. What’s interesting to me is everything influences everything. The medium of doing cartoons, having a picture, figuring out what the picture should be, having the caption or having dialogue, having a short amount of time to make a point or to tell a little story, is very much like writing a song. You’re very limited. It’s by necessity very truncated. To me, there’s an interesting parallel. It’s harder for me to think in visual terms. So it’s been kind of an interesting exercise for my brain to try to do that, to have the picture be evocative in the way that music is evocative.

Music immediately makes you feel something. There’s no lag and there’s not a lot of subtlety. It’s almost like it forces you to feel the thing. As soon as you hear it, you can feel the thing that the person who wrote it felt, to a certain extent. If you hear Chopin’s funeral march [sings a bit of this], you’re like, “I feel a sense of dread.” [Laughs.] So music to me is a kind of sorcery because it’s so immediate, and then the mixing of language together with [it]. But the visual thing — cartoon is much more subtle, you get a little of that flavor, but not much.

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I saw someone recently post some Charles Schulz “Peanuts” strips and talking about the subtlety, and how he used three versus four panels and how it worked. When they spelled it out, I was like, that’s very true. I never even realized it. It is very, very subtle. The pacing is different, the beat’s different. It’s so interesting.

It’s really interesting. And then getting into a deeper thing, like a graphic novel, the way things are paced on the page, what direction things are facing to go from one panel to another.

At some point I’m going to write a graphic memoir, which is very daunting because it just isn’t my medium. And also because it’s so solitary. Once you’ve written music, you get to be in the studio with other people, you get to be on a stage with other people. I really like the community aspect of music. Cartooning is a weird, lonely, insular drive-yourself-crazy activity. [Laughs.] I’ve got to figure out a way to be able to continue to draw in Starbucks.

I was talking to the cartoonist Adrian Tomine, who’s so great, just to ask his advice. And he was like, “Listen, if I could change one thing, it would be, ‘Don’t chain yourself to one place.'” He was like, “I was always so concerned about, ‘I have to use this desk and this ink with this exact kind of lighting.’ And the consequence was I never got out of the house, I never did anything, I didn’t travel. He’s like, “Pick a method to do it that enables you to be a little bit more mobile.”

What do you have on deck for 2023?

Well, it’s funny because touring post-pandemic is really, really difficult. Every band and every act is trying to go out at the same time in the last year and a half. And so it is really hard to route a tour and get the venues you want and buses are twice as expensive. Financially, it’s really hard to figure out how to do it. So I don’t think I’ll be able to tour until the summer — and so I probably will start the book. I’ll start figuring out how to do my drawings at Starbucks. [Laughs.] Or just do a tour of all the coffee places in LA.

about Aimee Mann

“Don’t threaten us with a good time”: Matt Gaetz’s threat to “resign” from Congress badly backfires

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., is vowing to quit Congress if House Republicans reach a deal with Democratic lawmakers to elect a speaker of the House.

The bipartisan discussion comes as Gaetz and nearly two dozen other House Republicans, including Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and others, continue to block Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s, R-Calif., bid for speakership; a tactic they’ve used for 11 consecutive ballots.

During a recent appearance on Fox News, the Republican lawmaker shared his opinion of the proposed bipartisan effort with host Laura Ingraham.

At one point during the appearance, Ingraham asked the Florida lawmaker if he would support a bipartisan agreement with moderate Democrats.

He made it clear he would not as he declared, “If Democrats join up to elect a moderate Republican, I will resign from the House of Representatives.”

Following Gaetz’s appearance, Twitter users quickly began sharing their reactions in hopes of his declaration actually being a promise.

“Is this a promise??” one Twitter user asked while another tweeted, “Don’t threaten us with a good time!”

However, some are convinced that such a declaration would never come to fruition and one user tweeted, “Too bad he’s lying, because that would be a deal worth taking.”

Gaetz’s remarks come as far-right House Republicans continue to cause roadblocks as they take over control of the chamber.

Watch the video below or at this link.

"If Democrats join up to elect a moderate Republican, I will resign from the House of Representatives" — Matt Gaetz pic.twitter.com/PjbhyNpLpL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 6, 2023

Cardi B shares expletive-laced PSA about rising grocery prices

Cardi B is not a fan of the recent surges in grocery prices. And she’s certainly not afraid to voice her impassioned sentiments.

On Wednesday, the rapper took to Twitter to share an expletive-laced video PSA, in which she complained about food prices and explained why she’s angry despite being “rich” and “successful.”

4 tips for stretching your food dollars as prices continue to rise

“Let me tell you something when I be complaining about food prices and you motherf**kers be like ‘Ain’t you rich? Why are you complaining about lettuce? Why are you complaining about this?'” she said. “That just shows people that when you become successful when you got money, you’re going to go broke soon because y’all not budgeting.”

PSA!!!! pic.twitter.com/YpJmHmuT2D

— Cardi B (@iamcardib) January 5, 2023

“When I’m starting to see that groceries is tripling up it’s like ayo what the f**k is going on? I wanna see for myself what the f**k s**t is being spent on,” she continued.

Cardi B specifically called out the price of lettuce, which she said “was $2 a couple of months ago” and is now “f**king $7.” She added, “of course, I’m going to say something. The f**k? I think that sh** is crazy.”

Naaaaaa grocery shopping prices are ridiculous right now 😑You might as well eat outside !!

— Cardi B (@iamcardib) January 4, 2023

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Rising food prices are the result of “extreme weather, diseases impacting crops and livestock, supply chain complications and geopolitical unrest including the war in Ukraine,” CNN reported in December. Last year, grocery prices rose an astounding 12% and menu prices increased 8.5%, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall inflation also skyrocketed 7.1%.

Cardi B ended her video with one final message to her fanbase:

“I can only imagine what middle-class people or people in the hood is motherf**king thinking so yes I’m going to say something, the f**k? And I have a big platform so I do want anybody that is responsible of these f**king prices to put that s**t the f**k down. They going to see my s**t they might put it down so shut the…”

about rising food prices:

“This is a Republican mess”: Progressives warn Democrats not to cut a speaker deal with GOP

At least two progressive groups tell TYT that House Democrats shouldn’t make any deal with Republicans to help them elect a speaker, even a unity candidate.

The reason: Any guarantees Republicans offer may not stick, given the GOP’s inability to govern with a fractious caucus.

While no offer is currently known to be on the table, and likely won’t be made without a green light from Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., some Democrats, including progressives, reportedly have said they could see helping Republicans end their days-long stalemate, in return for some concessions by GOP leadership.

But the Center for Popular Democracy Action (CPDA) told TYT that Democrats shouldn’t take any deal. So did a spokesperson for another progressive organization that did not want to be identified weighing in publicly on the deliberations.

One Democratic strategist, Tim Hogan, agreed. Hogan told TYT that a promise from the Republican Party holds little weight given the leadership’s inability to control the actions of 20 members of their conference.

Hogan said, “[T]he point, I think, of all of this is [that] if there is not someone who can keep their Congress together on the Republican side, it is pretty futile to believe that you can cut deals with them in the future.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is just one progressive Democrat who reportedly has floated the idea of helping break the GOP impasse. Khanna suggested the possibility of some Democrats backing Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., or Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., both leading moderate Republicans, if Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s, R-Calif., bid for the top slot ultimately fails.

But as Hogan puts it, “[U]ltimately, this is a Republican mess, and they have to fix it.”

Michele Kilpatrick, co-director of advocacy and mobilization at the CPDA, echoes Hogan’s stance, saying, “there’s clearly a serious breakdown of trust.” She told TYT that in addition to trust, it would require a Republican negotiator capable of brokering a deal with Democrats, but says those kinds of lawmakers have long been purged from the party.

“It’s hard to imagine who would be on the Republican side to say, you know, here’s a list of what we can offer you in good faith that Democrats could trust,” says Kilpatrick. She says that for anything to really move, it would take “someone on the Republican side — or six someones on the Republican side — to actually take responsibility for themselves and for their…constituents, and actually try to do something.”

Other scenarios floated by the left include the hypothetical suggestion by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., to support a compromise speaker candidate in exchange for Democratic leadership positions on some House committees. But that’s also not enough, according to a source who spoke on behalf of a leading progressive organization but asked that the group not be named.

The source told TYT that for any deal to be worth it, House Democrats would have to get “parity on the Rules Committee.” In other words, there would have to be an equal number of Democrats and Republicans on the committee, which means no bill would go to the floor without the approval of both parties. In that scenario, the source said, whoever the speaker is would not be held hostage by their caucus.

That kind of power-sharing agreement was seen as highly unlikely as of Thursday night, but could net actual movement on popular legislation, the source said. “If House Democrats have a plausible chance of voting for something, it would take excuses off the table for Senate Democrats and encourage them to be a lot bolder with getting legislation passed,” the source said.

For now, Democrats have remained united in their support of Jeffries. And as TYT reported Wednesday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., said, “Jeffries is the unity candidate.”