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Jan. 6 assault reflected a deep American division: Whose democracy is it?

The enemies of democracy who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, aiming to overturn a presidential election were in effect privileging their votes over those of the majority of voters. After their side had lost the election, as well as the various recounts and court challenges, these rioters followed the lead of the losing incumbent president in his attempt to overturn the election results by force and violence. That president has now been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution on a number of criminal charges, an unprecedented step taken by the House select committee investigating the insurrection, which is sure to be dissolved with the new Congress next month.

The actions of the lame-duck president’s supporters and those members of Congress who voted later that night not to certify the election of Joe Biden shared an evident belief that all people are not in fact equal, and that some are more deserving of rights than others. In defiance of the law and the Constitution, these Trumpist loyalists were in effect weaponizing citizenship, in the phrase of Michael Belleisles, by “claiming a determinative right as ‘real Americans,’ the embodiment of the ‘true America,’ to place themselves in a category of citizenship enjoying certain” inalienable rights that are denied to others.

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Criminal referral for Trump is coming — but it’s the Jan. 6 evidence that matters

Democracy, from its Greek roots kratia, means to rule by demos or the people. More precisely, democracy refers to a polity ruled by free, as contrasted with unfree (or enslaved), people. This concept of democracy, which always embodies concepts of privilege and inequality, has its roots in the historical distinction between citizens with the franchise to vote and subjects without it. From its inception, our nation has always been something other than a democracy, as initially most members of American society were subjects of the law, not citizens or rulers of the law. 

To this point, the United States has been a federal republic of states, ruled today by 51 constitutions. In its earliest years the nation was ruled by elected and appointed representatives dependent on the voting power of white male property owners. Over the course of its history, America has struggled over the expansion of the franchise as well as the contraction of privilege or inequality to become a more perfect union. 

The Jan. 6 rioters were “weaponizing democracy,” claiming that they signified the “true America,” and possessed certain inalienable rights of citizenship correctly denied to others.

The actions of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists were rooted in a traditional division established by the Naturalization Act of 1790 that viewed citizenship as limited by ethnicity, religion and gender. More than a half-century later, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared in the 1857 Dred Scott decision that Black people could never be citizens, since the Constitution had been written by and for white men. After the Civil War, the 14th Amendment created a uniform standard of citizenship that temporarily included all males born or naturalized under the full and equal protection of law. 

Subsequently, legislators, congressmen and judges “used the lesser citizenship status of women as an obvious justification for creating different legal castes” as in the imposition of segregation after the end of Reconstruction. Similarly, the Supreme Court stepped in to undermine the 14th Amendment as well, “allowing full citizenship to be used as a weapon by elites against those who failed to be born white men,” most notably in Plessy v. Ferguson.

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Even after the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, which was ratified in 1920, numerous efforts to deny women full citizenship remained in place, often preventing them from owning property, engaging in “men’s work” or barring married women from holding credit cards in their own names. Likewise, the denial of basic rights to Native Americans, convict laborers and interned Japanese-Americans — and, most recently, voter suppression laws or gerrymandering targeting Black and Latino voters in particular — have constituted a citizenship caste system. 

As presidential historian Michael Bellesiles, also quoted above, has written:

The concept of equality shapes definitions of citizenship. If we think that some people deserve more rights than others, then citizenship takes different forms for different groups. The January 6 insurrectionists expressed a certainty that their opinions mattered more, reflecting a heritage that has denied the full citizenship of non-whites. In some ways, their perspective is accurate, since the inequality of citizenship rights is built into our political system. The Senate and Electoral College ensure that some people always matter more than others. For instance, Wyoming’s 575,000 people have the same representation in the Senate as California’s 40 million … while the 700,000 residents of Washington, D.C., have no political citizenship in the Senate. 

Ideally, a democracy should be one person, one vote, at least on those things that impact the commonwealth and affect all of us. To this very day, the ongoing struggle to fulfill the ideals, if not truths, held by the authors of the Declaration of Independence that all people are equal and entitled to the same unalienable rights, is still a work in progress. Likewise, the ongoing struggles to establish local, state and national governments whose democratic powers are derived from the consent of all the governed is also a work in progress. The United States will remain an imperfect union until such time as all these political struggles are realized in full measure.  

Rule by equals is the keystone of democracies because of its “fundamental moral commitment” to the democratic idea that “I have no greater or lesser right to decide how we will live together than you have.” When decisions are made that are binding on all women and men, then the people must decide. Democratic majorities rather than representative minorities are the best stand-in for the people. Anchoring legitimate power to the people is not an end but only the means, or a prerequisite, for making democratic equality real in everyday life. As James Madison is credited for writing in Federalist Nos. 51 and 53, “You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

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about the Jan. 6 committee’s final hearing

Hey, Democrats: The Clinton era is finally over, and “triangulation” is dead at last

Now that the midterm elections are officially over, it’s abundantly clear that predictions about the death of Democratic political fortunes were, as the saying goes, greatly exaggerated. But there is a funeral of sorts that Democrats should be noting. Not a funeral for MAGA extremism, which, unfortunately, is very much still alive and kicking. This is a funeral for an old, destructive, morally bankrupt political philosophy. In the wake of the 2022 midterms, triangulation is dead.

As the mythology goes, it was strategist Dick Morris who birthed the political concept of triangulation. In 1994, after Democrats were trounced in the midterm elections — with Republicans winning control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 42 years — Morris slithered into the Oval Office and convinced then-President Bill Clinton that he should pursue a proverbial “third way”: a new course that would accommodate “the needs the Republicans address” while still hewing in some way, albeit vaguely, to liberal priorities and principles. A more honest description of triangulation would be Democrats betraying their base and trying to woo swing voters by embracing Republican policy positions and ideas. It was triangulation that led Democrats to push welfare reform, free trade agreements, school privatization and the expansion of the carceral state — all ideas birthed in conservative think tanks. This did not exactly lead to decades of unfettered Democratic political Valhalla, but it definitely led to increased pain and alienation on the part of Black and brown voters as well as many working-class whites. (It’s no coincidence that Morris, who once called himself a Democrat, is now a Republican.)  

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After the results of the 2022 midterms, can we agree now that triangulation is dead? Sen. Raphael Warnock’s win in the Georgia Senate runoff is a perfect case in point. As demographic changes fuel new, multiracial, multigenerational battlegrounds like Georgia, the Democratic coalition, and thus the necessary strategy, look a lot different. To win, Warnock needed high energy from a diverse base, as well as persuasion of voters who were more on the fence. He did that by embracing progressive American values like equality, freedom and justice, and by running on and defending Democratic ideas, not Republican ones. While he prides himself on getting things done for Georgians by working across the aisle, Warnock’s political strategy didn’t depend on embracing conservative ideas, but rather finding common ground on a core Democratic idea — government investment in everything from local infrastructure to education. He was a persuasive progressive.  

We saw this nationally in the 2022 midterms, as well. Even amid voter anger at Roe v. Wade being overturned and concerns about democracy, the political headwinds facing Democratic candidates were undeniably gale-force in this election. Pundits, including triangulation-infused political strategists like those at Third Way, predicted that concerns about economics and inflation would create a red wave that washed away Democratic majorities. In reality, they failed to understand the power of Dobbs and democracy together to overcome pundit predictions about major losses. A post-election poll released after the midterms by Way to Win shows that among Democrats and independents, the combination of Dobbs and democracy outweighed concerns over inflation.

Triangulation-infused strategists predicted that inflation would drive a red wave. They failed to understand the power of Dobbs and democracy — or the persuasive power of progressive ideas.

In case after case, persuasive progressive Democrats building coalitions based on core values outperformed not only MAGA extremists but also cautious neoconservative centrists. Another good example of this was in Pennsylvania. John Fetterman centered his U.S. Senate campaign around legalizing marijuana, reforming the criminal justice system, increasing the minimum wage and supporting labor unions. He attacked the filibuster and corporate tax giveaways. Fetterman was not the preferred candidate of the Democratic Party establishment — that was former Marine and prosecutor Conor Lamb, whom Fetterman defeated in the primary. And Fetterman wasn’t even able to run a full-fledged campaign in the general election, while recovering from a stroke. But Fetterman not only beat Republican Mehmet Oz, he beat even Joe Biden’s 2020 margins in almost every county in the state. Way to Win’s post-election poll found that abortion ranked nearly equal to jobs and the economy on Pennsylvania voters’ minds. Additionally, the poll found a gulf between moderates and conservatives in the Keystone State on all matters, from the economy and inflation (with 80% of conservatives and 44% of moderates citing concerns) to protecting democracy (with 17% of conservatives and 28% of moderates citing concerns) to abortion and reproductive freedoms (just 3% of conservatives but 27% of moderates cited concerns). On the other hand, there was very little daylight between moderates and self-described progressives on those same issues. All available evidence would suggest that Fetterman’s policy positioning was the opposite of a liability: It helped persuade a coalition of moderate to progressive voters to deliver his victory, whereas triangulating to the right to court moderates would surely have turned off some progressives. 

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We saw similar examples across the country. In the House of Representatives, Rep. Matt Cartwright (Pennsylvania’s 8th district) and Rep. Pat Ryan (New York’s 19th) embraced progressive messages, from economic arguments like supporting Medicare for All and fighting against utility monopolies to protecting our freedoms in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Statewide, Arizona cannot be overlooked, with candidates like Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs embracing the movements that have shifted her state over time — like the Dreamers in Arizona advocating for immigration reform. Hobbs forged a coalition with independent, moderate voters and progressives to reject MAGA Republicans, giving Democrats a chance to govern in an emergent Southwest state.

Pre-election, the political chattering class was awash in hand-wringing prognostication that Latino voters were turned off by progressive positions and thus slipping away from Democrats. Again, the opposite was true. Nationally Latinos still favor Democrats by a two to one margin. In Arizona, nearly two-thirds of Latino voters supported Democratic candidates, proving decisive in the U.S. Senate, governor’s and secretary of state’s races. In closely contested elections up and down the ticket, Latinos made the difference for Democrats. This is also, incidentally, why winning political strategy comes from grassroots organizations that understand the reality on the ground, not polls and pundits and national “strategists” (who keep getting showered with resources even though they keep losing).

It’s time we recognize that the goal of triangulation was never really to help Democrats. Triangulation was a strategy designed to prop up the status quo. It’s corporate conservative hegemony masquerading as ingenious political thinking when, in fact, what is actually effective strategy also turns out to be moral: standing up for principled positions of opportunity, justice and freedom that animate ordinary America’s hearts, desires and daily lives, and inspire people to vote.  Working people want a raise. Women and young people want abortion rights. Parents want quality public schools that teach the truth. And the American people will enthusiastically show up and fight for candidates who not only fight back against MAGA-GOP extremism but fight for the freedoms and rights that directly improve our lives.  

Triangulation is dead. Or if it isn’t yet, Democrats would be wise to put it out of its misery — for the sake of enduring electoral victory and real, meaningful change.

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on the aftermath of the 2022 midterms

The school that calls the police on students every other day

On the last street before leaving Jacksonville, there’s a dark brick one-story building that the locals know as the school for “bad” kids. It’s actually a tiny public school for children with disabilities. It sits across the street from farmland and is 2 miles from the Illinois city’s police department, which makes for a short trip when the school calls 911.

Administrators at the Garrison School call the police to report student misbehavior every other school day, on average. And because staff members regularly press charges against the children — some as young as 9 — officers have arrested students more than 100 times in the last five school years, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica found. That is an astounding number given that Garrison, the only school that is part of the Four Rivers Special Education District, has fewer than 65 students in most years.

No other school district — not just in Illinois, but in the entire country — had a higher student arrest rate than Four Rivers the last time data was collected nationwide. That school year, 2017-18, more than half of all Garrison students were arrested.

Officers typically handcuff students and take them to the police station, where they are fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a holding room. For at least a decade, the local newspaper has included the arrests in its daily police blotter for all to see.

The students enrolled each year at Garrison have severe emotional or behavioral disabilities that kept them from succeeding at previous schools. Some also have been diagnosed with autism, ADHD or other disorders. Many have experienced horrifying trauma, including sexual abuse, the death of parents and incarceration of family members, according to interviews with families and school employees.

Getting arrested for behavior at school is not inevitable for students with such challenges. There are about 60 similar public special education schools across Illinois, but none comes anywhere close to Garrison in their number of student arrests, the investigation found.

The ProPublica-Tribune investigation — built on hundreds of school reports and police records, as well as dozens of interviews with employees, students and parents — reveals how a public school intended to be a therapeutic option for students with severe emotional disabilities has instead subjected many of them to the justice system.

It is “just backwards if you are sending kids to a therapeutic day school and then locking them up. That is not what therapeutic day schools are for,” said Jessica Gingold, an attorney in the special education clinic at Equip for Equality, the state’s federally appointed watchdog for people with disabilities.

“If the school exists for young people who need support, to think of them as delinquents is basically the worst you could do. It’s counter to what should be happening,” Gingold said.

Because of the difficulties the students face in regulating their emotions, these specialized schools are tasked with recognizing what triggers their behavior, teaching calming strategies and reinforcing good behavior. But Garrison doesn’t even offer students the type of help many traditional schools have: a curriculum known as social emotional learning that is aimed at teaching students how to develop social skills, manage their emotions and show empathy toward others.

Tracey Fair, director of the Four Rivers Special Education District, said it is the only public school in this part of west central Illinois for students with severe behavioral disabilities, and there are few options for private placement. School workers deal with challenging behavior from Garrison students every day, she said.

“There are consequences to their behavior and this behavior would not be tolerated anywhere else in the community,” Fair said in written answers to reporters’ questions.

Fair, who has overseen Four Rivers since July 2020, said Garrison administrators call police only when students are being physically aggressive or in response to “ongoing” misbehavior. But records detail multiple instances when staff called police because students were being disobedient: spraying water, punching a desk or damaging a filing cabinet, for example.

“The students were still not calming down, so police arrested them,” wrote Fair, speaking on behalf of the district and the school.

This year, the Tribune and ProPublica have been exposing the consequences for students when their schools use police as disciplinarians. The investigation “The Price Kids Pay” uncovered the practice of Illinois schools working with local law enforcement to ticket students for minor misbehavior. Reporters documented nearly 12,000 tickets in dozens of school districts, and state officials moved quickly to denounce the practice.

This latest investigation further reveals the harm to children when schools abdicate student discipline to police. Arrested students miss time in the classroom and get entangled in the justice system. They come to view adults as hostile and school as prison-like, a place where they regularly are confined to classrooms when the school is “on restriction” because of police presence.

U.S. Department of Education and Illinois officials have reminded educators in recent months that if school officials fail to consider whether a student’s behavior is related to their disability, they risk running afoul of federal law.

But unlike some other states, Illinois does not require schools to report student arrest data to the state or direct its education department to monitor police involvement in school incidents. Legislative efforts to do so have stalled over the past few years.

In response to questions from reporters about Garrison, Illinois Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said the frequent arrests there were “concerning.” An Illinois State Board of Education spokesperson said a state team visited the school this month to examine “potential violations” raised through ProPublica and Tribune reporting.

The team confirmed an overreliance on police and, as a result, the state will provide training and other professional development, spokesperson Jackie Matthews said.

“It is not illegal to call the police, but there are tactics and strategies to use to keep it from getting to that point,” Matthews said.

Ayala said educators cannot ignore their responsibility to help students work through behavioral issues.

“Involving the police in any student issue can escalate the situation and lead to criminal justice involvement, so calling the police should be a last resort,” she said in a written statement.

In 2018, Jacksonville police arrested a student named Christian just a few weeks into his first year at Garrison, when he was 12 years old. His “disruptive” behavior earlier in the day — he had knocked on doors and bounced a ball in the hallway — had led to a warning: “One more thing” and he would be arrested, a school report said. He then removed items from an aide’s desk and was “being disrespectful,” so police were summoned. They took him into custody for disorderly conduct.

Christian has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. Now 16, he has been arrested at Garrison several more times and was sent to a detention center after at least one of the arrests, he and his mother said.

He stopped going to school in October; his mother said it’s heartbreaking that he’s not in class, but at Garrison, “it’s more hectic than productive. He’s more in trouble than learning anything.”

“If they call the police on you, you are going to jail,” Christian told reporters. “It is not just one coming to get you. It will be two or three of them. They handcuff you and walk you out, right out the door.”

Handcuffs and holding rooms

Just over an hour into the school day on Nov. 15, two police cars rushed into the Garrison school parking lot and stopped outside the front doors. Three more squad cars pulled in behind them but quickly moved on.

Principal Denise Waggener had called the Jacksonville police to report that a 14-year-old student had been spitting at staff members. When police arrived, one of the officers recognized the boy, because he had driven him to school that morning. The student had missed the bus and called police for help, according to a police report and 911 call.

School staff had placed the boy in one of Garrison’s small cinder-block seclusion rooms for “misbehavior,” police records show. A school worker told the officer she had been standing in the doorway of the seclusion room when the boy spit and it landed on her face, glasses and shirt.

The child “initially stated he did not spit at anyone, but then said he did spit,” according to the police report, “but instantly regretted doing so.” The report said the child “stated he knew right from wrong, but often had violent outbursts.”

The worker asked to press charges, and the officer arrested the boy for aggravated battery.

One officer told the child he was under arrest while another searched and handcuffed him. They put him in the back seat of a squad car, drove him to the police station, read him his rights and booked him. Officers told the boy the county’s probation department would contact him later, and then they dropped him off with a guardian, records show.

The Tribune and ProPublica documented and analyzed 415 of Garrison’s “police incident reports” dating to 2015 and found the school has called police, on average, once every two school days.

The reports, written by school staff and obtained through public records requests, describe in detail what happened up until the moment police were called. These narratives, along with recordings of 911 calls, show that school workers often summon police not amid an emergency but because someone at the school wants police to hold the child responsible for their behavior.

About half the calls were made for safety reasons because students had fled the school. Those students rarely were arrested. Students whom police did arrest were most often accused of aggravated battery and had been involved in physical interactions such as spitting or pushing; by state law, any physical interaction with a school employee elevates what would otherwise be a battery charge to aggravated battery. The next most common arrest reasons were disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and property damage.

The school once called police after a student was told he couldn’t use the restroom because he “had done nothing all morning,” records show. The boy got upset, left the classroom anyway and broke a desk in the hallway.

The school called police on a 12-year-old who was “running the halls, cussing staff.”

And the school called the police when a 15-year-old boy who was made to eat lunch inside one of the school’s seclusion rooms threw his applesauce and milk against the wall.

Police arrested them all.

“These students, I would imagine, feel like potential criminals under threat,” said Aaron Kupchik, a sociologist at the University of Delaware who studies punishment and policing in schools.

“We are taking the actions of young people, and, rather than trying to invest in solving real behavioral problems that are very difficult, we are just exposing them to the legal system and legal system consequences.”

Jacksonville Chief of Police Adam Mefford said officers respond to every 911 call from Garrison on the assumption it’s an emergency, and as many as five squad cars can respond. Police often find a child in a seclusion room, Mefford said.

Officers determine whether a law has been broken but leave the decision whether to press charges to the school staff, he said. Police sometimes issue tickets to Garrison students for violating local ordinances, though arrests are far more common.

“The school errs on the side of pressing charges,” Mefford said. “They typically have the student arrested.”

He wondered whether school administrators call police so frequently because it’s become a habit that’s difficult to stop. “The school has gotten used to us handling some of these problems,” Mefford said.

Once arrested, the students are taken to the police station until parents pick them up or an officer takes them home. One mother told reporters that her 10-year-old son, who has autism and ADHD, was “bawling, freaking out,” when she picked him up after he was booked at the jail.

Mefford said he tried to make the experience less traumatic by moving the booking process from the county detention facility to the police station in 2021. He also said police refer students and their families to services in the community, such as counseling or substance abuse help.

After they are booked, students are screened to determine if they should be sent to a juvenile detention facility. Most are assigned to an informal alternative to juvenile court that Morgan County court officials regularly use, said Tod Dillard, director of the county’s probation department.

These young people avoid going to juvenile court, but the “probation adjustment” process also requires them to admit guilt and denies them a public defender. Students must periodically report to a probation officer, typically for a year.

Violating the probation terms, such as by skipping school or getting arrested again, could lead to juvenile delinquency charges. In a juvenile court case, a student’s record of previous informal probation can be used when considering bail or sentencing.

Garrison has some students who are 18 and older, and they can be charged as adults. In 2020, an 18-year-old Garrison student was arrested for disorderly conduct after he “caused a disturbance” when he threw a cup of water and punched a pencil sharpener, court records show. That student spent four days in jail and was held on $3,000 bail. He pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $439 in court costs and $10 a month in probation fees.

Even for younger students, juvenile charges related to Garrison can later have consequences in adult court. If they are arrested again after they turn 18, prior cases can be used to illustrate that they have a police record.

The boy who spit in anger this fall at Garrison now has an aggravated battery arrest on his record. Even Fair, the school’s director, found the decision to arrest the child troubling.

The day after the boy was taken into custody, Fair told reporters she knew the child had been arrested but said she did not know why school administrators had called police. Reporters told her it had been for spitting on one of her employees.

“That’s not arrestworthy. That is not what we should be about,” Fair said. In a later interview, after learning more about the incident, Fair said staff considered the student aggressive and said, “I guess they did what they thought was right.”

From empathy to “coercive babysitting”

Bev Johns, a local educator, founded Garrison in 1981 with just two students — and a belief that with a caring staff and the right support, they could be successful.

The children had exhibited such disruptive behavior that staffers at their home schools felt ill-equipped to teach them. Her solution: Open a school designed to teach students not just academic subjects but how to manage their behavior. It became part of the Four Rivers Special Education District, a regional cooperative that today provides services to students in school districts across eight mostly rural counties.

The school was considered groundbreaking, and many of the techniques that Johns implemented at Garrison are still widely considered best practice for managing challenging behavior: giving students space when they’re upset, teaching them ways to manage their emotions and giving them choices rather than shouting demands.

Those techniques often involve trying to understand what’s driving a student’s behavior. A student shoving papers off their desk may feel overwhelmed and need assignments in smaller increments. A student struggling to sit still may need classwork that involves them moving around the room.

Taking the students’ disabilities into account when they misbehave is now a firmly entrenched concept in education. In fact, it’s federal law.

“There’s a requirement both in the law — and just morally — that kids with disabilities are not supposed to be punished for behaviors that are related to their disability, or caused by it, or caused by the school’s failure to meet their needs,” said Dan Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Johns, who led Garrison until 2003, has dedicated her career to these ideas. She published research about “the Garrison method” to help other educators, taught at a nearby college and continues to speak regularly at conferences.

“Choice is such a powerful strategy. It’s such an easy intervention,” Johns recently told a standing-room-only crowd at an Illinois special education convention in Naperville. And schools should look welcoming too, she said. “I see some schools that look like prisons. Why would a child want to go there?”

The Garrison of today isn’t a prison, but it relies on rules and methods meant to manage students.

In recent years, staffers sometimes took away students’ shoes to discourage them from fleeing, though Fair said that has not happened under her watch. Before a recent Illinois law banned locked seclusion in schools, Garrison workers used to shut students inside one of the school’s several seclusion rooms — staff members would stand outside and press a button to engage a magnetic lock. The doors have since been removed, but the “crisis rooms” are still used. The Four Rivers district reported to ISBE that workers had restrained or secluded students 155 times in the 2021-2022 school year — three times as many incidents as students.

“They would lock me in a concrete room and then close the door on me and lock it. I would freak out even worse,” said an 18-year-old named Max, who left the school in 2020.

Some of the school’s aides are assigned to one of two “crisis teams” of four employees each that respond to classrooms and can remove students who are upset, disobedient or aggressive.

Employees’ handwritten records describe several incidents where they confined a child to a small area inside the classroom. In one case, the crisis team made a “human wall” around a 14-year-old student who was wandering in the classroom, swearing and being disruptive. A 16-year-old student told reporters that school employees drew a box around his desk in chalk and told him not to leave the area or there would be consequences.

Charles Cropp, who has worked as part of crisis teams at Garrison on and off since 2009, said he and his colleagues try to help students learn how to calm down when they are upset. He said teams aim to help students learn how to manage their emotions but that sometimes the young people also need to be held “accountable” when they are physical or disruptive.

“I was one that never really cared to watch kids get escorted out in handcuffs,” said Cropp, who returned to the school full time in late November. “I never liked it but in the same sense, they have to learn when you graduate and you are an adult in the public, you can’t do those things.”

Jen Frakes, a board-certified behavior analyst who worked at Garrison in 2015-16, described the culture at Garrison as “coercive babysitting.” She said she never saw a situation that warranted arresting a student.

“It seemed more of a power dynamic of ‘You’ll either follow my rules or I will show you who’s in charge,'” said Frakes, who runs a Springfield business that helps schools and families learn to work through challenging behavior. “When I saw a kid get arrested, he was sitting underneath his desk calm and quiet, and they came in and arrested him.”

This isn’t how other schools similar to Garrison are handling difficult student behavior.

Reporters identified 57 other public schools throughout Illinois that also exclusively serve students with severe behavioral disabilities. To determine how often police were involved at those schools and why, reporters made public records requests to all of the schools and to the police or sheriff’s departments that serve each one. Reporters were able to examine police records for 50 schools.

The two schools with the most arrests during the last four school years had 16 and 18, respectively. At 23 of the schools, no students were arrested in that period; six schools had only one arrest.

By comparison, five students were arrested at Garrison by mid-November of this school year alone, according to school and police records.

John McKenna, an assistant professor specializing in special education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said arresting students not only criminalizes them but also takes them out of the classroom.

“Kids are supposed to be receiving instruction and support and not opportunities to enter the school-to-prison pipeline,” he said.

“If you don’t provide kids with academic instruction, particularly those with behavior and emotional needs, the gaps between their performance and the peers who don’t have disabilities grows exponentially and sets them up for failure,” McKenna said.

The fact that Garrison students have disabilities that may explain some of their behavior appears to be lost on many of the officials who encounter them in the justice system; some described Garrison as a school for delinquents, not disabled children. A public defender tasked with representing students in juvenile court described the children as having been “kicked out” of their regular schools. An assistant state’s attorney thought students at Garrison had been “expelled” from traditional schools. Neither of those descriptions is accurate.

Rhea Welch, who worked under Johns and retired in 2016, said that during her 26 years as a teacher at Garrison it was not a place that relied heavily on police. “You don’t want your kids arrested, for heaven’s sake. You want to be able to work with them so that doesn’t happen, so they’re more in control,” she said.

For Johns, Garrison is no longer the school she remembers. Students need positive feedback, she said, not constant reprimands from and clashes with the adults they are supposed to trust.

“I always say when you’re having trouble with a child, the first place you look is yourself,” she said.

Johns read some of the school’s recent police incident reports and said she found them “bothersome,” adding, “It’s obviously hard for me to watch what’s happened.”

“I did everything I could to get him out”

Gabe, a 12-year-old boy with autism, likes to share with anyone who will listen all the details of his Pokemon collection and has gotten good at using online translators to read the cards with Japanese lettering on them. His stepmother, Lena, said that over the years Gabe has learned to ask for what he needs. When he gets overstimulated at home, he asks for space by saying: “I need you to back up.”

(When using the last name of a parent would identify the student —– and in doing so, create a publicly available record of the student’s arrest —– ProPublica and the Tribune are referring to the parent by first name only.)

Gabe ended up at Garrison in 2019 after having difficulty in traditional schools. He will sometimes yell and lash out when frustrated.

Lena said school officials asked her to pick up Gabe if he got upset. “I would hear Gabe screaming, and then heard them screaming back at him,” she said. “He’d say, ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ And they’d still get up in his face.”

And then one day, Gabe and Lena said, school workers barricaded him at his desk by pushing filing cabinets around it. He pushed over one of the cabinets while trying to get away, and the school called the police, Lena said.

“We had to pick up our 10-year-old at the police station,” Lena said. “I would freak out if I got boxed in with filing cabinets.”

It got so that Gabe would wake up angry and not want to go to school.

“That school is at the bottom of the food chain. If you got all the schools in the world, they would be at the bottom of the food chain. The workers there are mean,” said Gabe.

Other parents described their children becoming angrier, more withdrawn; the students dreaded going to school at Garrison. Some families begged their home districts to find another school for them.

“It was like hell,” said one mother, who said her son was miserable while he was a student there. “I did everything I could to get him out.” Her son attended Garrison for about five years before she got him returned to his home school. He is in his first year of college now.

Michelle Prather, whose daughter Destiny attended Garrison from fifth grade until she graduated in 2021, said school employees threatened to call police over minor missteps: throwing a piece of paper, or pushing a desk.

“She would walk out of a room and they’d say, ‘We’re going to call police,'” Prather said. Destiny was arrested at least once after she shoved an aide while trying to leave a classroom.

Prather and other caregivers said watching their children be arrested over and over was troubling, but it was also upsetting to realize that the school wasn’t providing the support services the students needed.

Destiny has intellectual disabilities and ADHD as well as acute spina bifida, a defect of the spine. Because of her medical condition, Destiny had difficulty sensing when she needed to use the restroom. She would sometimes get up from her desk and tell staff that she urgently needed to go.

“They would say, ‘No you don’t,'” said her mother. “She would have accidents. I would have to bring her clothes.”

Madisen Hohimer, who is now 22 and working as a bartender, said she transferred to Garrison in sixth grade when her home school recommended it. She remembers Garrison as a place that failed to help her. Hohimer said she frequently ran away from the school and employees took her shoes to try to keep her from fleeing.

“I was never involved with the police before Garrison. I started mostly acting out when I got sent over there because I felt like I had nobody,” she said. One time, she said, she swung and kicked at staff after they cornered her in a seclusion room. She wound up being arrested for aggravated battery.

Just weeks before Hohimer was set to graduate, she left for good. “I wish they would have found a way to help me,” she said.

After Gabe’s filing cabinet incident, his parents kept him home until he could be placed at a private therapeutic school three counties away. He’s been going there since last year.

“It’s an hour and a half ride and he’d rather do that than go to Garrison,” said Lena, a nursing student. He’s thriving there, she said, and noted that the school has never called police about Gabe’s behavior.

But one of Lena’s other children, Nathan, remained at Garrison.

Then one morning in late September, she got a text from her son:

“I’M AT THE POLICE STATION THERE GOING TO GET MY FINGERPRINTS AND TAKE A PICTURE OF ME AND BRING ME BACK TO THE HOUSE.”

Nathan, who was 14 at the time, had been arrested after he hit a classmate and then shoved an aide who was trying to physically keep him in the classroom, according to a school report. He then left the school. In a 911 call, a school administrator asked police to find Nathan and also to come to the school “because a staff member will probably press charges.”

Nathan’s family decided not to send him back to Garrison. He’s taking classes online instead.

“That was my worst mistake, putting either of my kids in Garrison,” Lena said. “If I could take it back, I would.”

No one watching

Warning signs that Garrison was punishing students with policing have been there for years, waiting for someone to take notice.

Since as far back as 2011, the federal government has published data online about police involvement and arrests at schools. That year, the data showed, Garrison called police on 54% of its students and 14% were arrested. Three subsequent publications of similar data show the arrest rate climbing each time — until, in 2017-18, more than half of Garrison’s students were arrested.

Though the federal data could have raised red flags, Illinois does not collect data on police involvement in schools and does not require that the state education board monitor it. The state does monitor other punitive practices in schools, such as their numbers of suspensions and expulsions, and requires schools to make improvements when the data shows excessive use.

Illinois legislation that would have required ISBE to collect data annually on school-related arrests and other discipline stalled last year.

The state board, however, has issued guidance about involving police in school discipline. Earlier this year, ISBE and the state attorney general’s office told school districts across the state to use social workers, mental health professionals and counselors — not police — to create a “positive and safe school climate.”

Before last week, no one from ISBE had been to Garrison for at least the last seven school years. There had been no complaints that would have triggered a monitoring visit, said Matthews, the state board spokesperson.

Garrison has its own school board, and it — not the state board — is responsible for monitoring the school, including police activity, ISBE officials said. The school board is made up of representatives from some of the 18 school districts that rely on Four Rivers for special education staffing and placements at Garrison.

The board president, Linda Eades, said after a November board meeting that she couldn’t answer questions about the police involvement at Garrison and described the board as hands-off. “We don’t get down in the trenches,” she said.

Fair, the district’s director, said she is trying to understand the scope of police involvement at Garrison and is “digging into” school reports. “I’m trying so hard. It’s a lot of stuff to change,” she said in an interview. “There are a lot of things that need to improve.”

Earlier this year, Garrison was awarded a $635,000 “Community Partnership Grant” through ISBE for training to help students with their behavioral and mental health needs and help schools reduce their reliance on punitive discipline. ​

Some of the grant money has been used to pay for training in Ukeru, a method of addressing physical aggression that doesn’t involve physically restraining a child.

The Ukeru method focuses on training workers in how to prevent challenging behavior from becoming a crisis and uses soft blue pads to block kicks and punches if necessary. Garrison workers were trained in the method in October; blue pads are now propped up in the hallways in the building.

Starting two weeks ago, Fair said, the school began using its two social workers and a social work intern in a new way. One of the social workers is now available to go into a classroom when a student needs help, providing a way to intervene before behavior escalates into a crisis. Fair said she also plans to incorporate social emotional learning into the curriculum.

School administrators mentioned the Ukeru training and some of Garrison’s latest efforts at the November board meeting, which lasted about 20 minutes. Fair said the school had begun to monitor police involvement and arrests and said she is trying to “boost up some of the supports for the kids.”

Her priority now, she assured them, is to “really help make it a therapeutic place for the kids.”

That’s what it was always supposed to be.

The far-right is crazy — like a fox: The code behind the far-right’s success

Arizona is ground zero for the wackiest theories and craziest political candidates.

Exhibit A: Kari Lake, the Republican who ran for governor in the recent midterm elections. Though she lost in November, she’s still campaigning — on social media, in the courts, and in her own beclouded imagination. She refuses to accept that Katie Hobbs, her Democratic opponent, won by 0.6% of the vote. It’s a delusion she shares with Donald Trump who tweeted that Lake should be “installed” in the position anyway, like a triumphant coup leader. Lake, Trump, and all-too-many Americans now believe that any election in which a MAGA extremist doesn’t achieve a pre-ordained victory is, by definition, “stolen.”

Then there’s Blake Masters, the losing Arizona Republican Senate candidate, who accused the Biden administration of encouraging millions of immigrants to enter the United States “to change the demographics of our country.” That’s a clear reference to the “great replacement” theory according to which outsiders (foreigners, non-Whites, Muslims), abetted by liberals and globalists, are using immigration and higher birthrates to replace “indigenous” White majorities. It has become ever more popular among White nationalists, alt-right activists, and mass murderers from El Paso to New Zealand who cite it in their manifestos.

Perhaps the craziest of that crew is Ron Watkins, the leading proponent of the QAnon cult of misinformation, who moved to Arizona to run for Congress. According to QAnon, an international cabal of Satanic pedophiles extract and consume a mysterious substance found in the bodies of trafficked children. Oh, and these well-connected devil-worshippers also control the United Nations, the global economy, and even the Oscars.

Watkins never made it out of the primaries, but Lake and Masters ran very close races, while other conspiracy theorists did win seats in the Arizona state senate, including election-denier Wendy Rogers, January 6th insurrection attendee Anthony Kern, and QAnon supporter David Farnsworth. Don’t be fooled by their campaign literature. Those Arizona Republicans and others like them across the country are not conservatives. Rather than preserve the status quo, they want to overturn democratic institutions, as well as elections.

Their success should come as no surprise. A large number of Arizonans believe that the government lies about everything from the Covid pandemic to the availability of water, and paramilitary groups like the Patriot movement have made inroads into that state’s politics. The three most widespread and demonstrably false far-right narratives — globalist-Satanists control the economy, elections are being “stolen,” and foreigners are out to “replace” Whites — flourish in a state that, long, long ago, gave the world Barry Goldwater, the original radical right-wing politician.

But it’s a mistake to attribute the strong showing of those far-right candidates solely to such crazy talk. Exit poll data from the last election suggests that Arizona Republican voters prioritized very real bread-and-butter issues like inflation, which was causing them significant hardship. No matter what you think of rising prices, they’re real, unlike the macabre fictions of QAnon. And it wasn’t only White nationalists who supported such candidates. Kari Lake, for instance, picked up 47% of the Latino vote. 

Sure, the far right attracts plenty of “deplorables” from outright racists and homophobes to QAnon crackpots. But far more of those who support candidates like Kari Lake and her global counterparts — Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Narendra Modi in India, among others — are actually “persuadables,” voting in their perceived self-interest based on perfectly real economic and political needs. By courting such voters, the far right has managed to pivot from the fringe to the mainstream.

And those same persuadables may now hold the key to the future of democracy.

What motivates far-right voters

Not so long ago, Sweden would have been considered the un-Arizona. In the post-World War II era, that Scandinavian state became the symbol of democratic socialism. Yet even there, the far right has gained ground, precisely by reaching those persuadables.

For one thing, though Sweden is still far more equitable than the United States, it’s no longer quite so socially democratic. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of center-left governments cut back on barriers to the free flow of capital and trade, helping to globalize that country’s economy, and paving the way, in 2006, for a center-right government that implemented neoliberal tax cuts and rolled back welfare programs.

The result: a marked increase in economic inequality. From 1980 to 2019, the transfer of wealth to the richest one percent of Swedes was on a par with Thatcherite England and so, by 2017, that country had a greater per-capita concentration of billionaires than any other in Europe, except Switzerland. In 2019, The Economist reported approvingly on the sheer number of Swedish super-rich and also their apparent popularity.

But not with all Swedes, it turns out. The neoliberal globalization of that economy also produced lots of “losers,” who now support the Swedish Democrats. Founded in 1988 and led by neo-Nazis, that party held early meetings that, according to Le Monde, featured “brown shirts and party members performing the Nazi salute, and their security was provided by skinheads.” After new leaders jettisoned the Nazi trappings and focused instead on the immigrant “threat,” the party began to climb in the polls, coming in second in last September’s elections with 20.5% of the vote and so helping a new right-wing government take over.

To break into the mainstream, that previously marginal party increasingly relied on its populist economic platform, offering to increase government handouts and cut some taxes to appeal to working-class voters and the unemployed. Racism and Islamophobia have certainly played a role in boosting support for it, but the party has benefited most from a surge of anger at the economic austerity policies that have made Sweden one of the least equal countries in Europe.

Across that continent, the far-right has relied on anti-globalization messages, effectively raising a middle finger to both the European Union and world financial institutions. In the east, such parties have won power in both Poland and Hungary, while, in the west, they have siphoned off votes from Communist parties in France, Italy, and elsewhere.

If opposition to austerity politics has been the meat and potatoes of such far-right parties, the special sauce has been social messaging, especially about immigration. When it comes to ginning up fear and resentment, border-crossers are the perfect scapegoats. The Sweden Democrats, for instance, have promised to deport immigrants who have committed crimes or are simply “asocial” and they don’t want to accept more migrants unless they come from neighboring (in other words, White) countries.

The far right is obsessed with those who cross not just territorial borders, but also the more conceptual borders of gender, sex, and race. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán changed the constitution to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman, while effectively banning adoption by same-sex couples. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni declared that her party says “yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology.” Jair Bolsonaro spent his term as Brazilian president denying the existence of racism in his country while undermining the rights of indigenous communities.

At the heart of such far-right social policies is an effort to assuage the anxieties of dominant groups — Whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians — over the erosion of their economic status and reassure them that they won’t suffer a decline in social position as well. In the process, left and liberal parties, which might once have appealed to voters left behind by globalization and neoliberalism, have lost out on what should have been “their” issues.

Crafted to appeal to voter interests, the far-right agenda can often seem far indeed from the universe of conspiracy theories in which Jews control the world through financier George Soros or leaders of the Democratic Party run a child trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. Still, a major reason for the far right’s success has been its ability to toggle between pragmatic policies and extremist messaging.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

A month before the Italian elections, Giorgia Meloni released a curious six-minute video in which she managed to effortlessly switch from English to French to Spanish. In the process, she denounced Nazism and anti-Semitism, while pledging her support for NATO and Ukraine.

In those six minutes, Meloni introduced herself to the rest of Europe as a multilingual cosmopolitan who rejects the fascist roots of her own party. Inside Italy, the video appealed to those appalled by the far right’s flirtation with Vladimir Putin and concerned that its rise to power might jeopardize the European Union’s financial support. Precisely because Meloni didn’t deliver those remarks in Italian, the speech was less likely to alienate her core nationalist supporters.

The Meloni video is a perfect case of code-switching: speaking in different ways to different audiences. Far-right politicians around the world are often remarkably adept at switching the crazy on and off, depending on their audience. Viktor Orbán has typically been careful to keep his anti-immigration views couched in race-neutral terms. Only when talking to ethnic Hungarians in Romania did he frankly admit that Hungarians don’t want to become a “mixed race.” Pauline Hansen, leader of a far-right Australian party, thought she was addressing a gun lobbyist when she floated the outlandish notion that the country’s worst mass shooting in 1996 was a false-flag operation to boost gun control. Running for the Senate in Ohio, J.D. Vance typically voiced many conspiracy-laden views — the 2020 election was stolen, discredited radio host Alex Jones was “a far more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow” — that he would never have defended before more liberal audiences.

“Dog-whistling” is just another version of this phenomenon, where politicians embed coded language in their speeches to address different audiences simultaneously. References to “law and order,” “family values,” or “globalists” can mean different things to different people. Only the in-crowd will understand the Pepe the Frog image in a right-wing politician’s tweet. Attendees at a Trump rally might hear a catchy tune without realizing that it sounds a lot like the QAnon anthem.

What makes this code-switching and dog-whistling so dangerous is the proximity of the crazy and sane parts of the far right’s discourse. In fact, the three most prominent false narratives just happen to map neatly onto the far right’s three most prominent mainstream appeals.

So, for instance, the economic policies of globalization and neoliberalism have indeed created hardships for certain communities like blue-collar workers, rural residents, and older voters. And while such policies are pushed by powerful institutions like transnational corporations and banks, they are not the result of a Jewish conspiracy, a cabal of Satanists, or a group of globalists with a shadowy “great reset” plan to use Covid to destroy the sovereignty of nations.

Mainstream parties the world over are indeed full of corrupt politicians who often do their damnedest to game the system. Still, the notion that liberals and leftists have “stolen” elections in the United States or Brazil by hacking electronic voting systems or fabricating thousands of ballots has been debunked over and over again.

War, civil unrest, and climate change have indeed created one of the largest waves of refugees and immigrants since World War II. Those poor souls are desperate to find shelter and safety in other countries. But they have no plan to “replace” the majority White populations of Europe, the United States, or Australia. In truth, many would return home if only it were possible.

By their very proximity, the illegitimate arguments borrow a veneer of credibility from the legitimate ones, while the latter derive some raw power from the former. It’s just one short step, for instance, from acknowledging the corruption of political parties to believing they’ve stolen elections. Ironically enough, if anyone’s trying to rig elections, it’s far-right parties — Republicans using voter suppression tactics or Hungary’s Fidesz party controlling the media landscape to reduce the public voice of the opposition. The far-right frequently projects onto its adversaries the very sins it routinely commits behind the scenes.

Worst case, best case

In his September 30th speech announcing the annexation of four provinces of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in his now-familiar uber-nationalism to justify the abrogation of international law. But he also took several bizarre detours. Western countries, he argued, were advancing toward “outright Satanism.” Moreover, the West “is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder the world.” Finally, he decried all those who tell children “that there are various supposed genders besides women and men” and offer them “a sex-change operation.”

These were odd assertions in what should have been a speech focused on geopolitics, but Putin was dog-whistling like crazy. He was sending a message to his far-right supporters at home and abroad that he, too, believed Satanic liberals controlled the world and were indeed “grooming” children to change their sexuality and gender.

Unlike Giorgia Meloni, Putin doesn’t need to move to the center to reassure European allies or win over independent voters. The invasion of Ukraine severed his ties to Europe — even to the European far right — and he’s rigged elections in his own favor for years. His unfettered use of false narratives offers a nightmarish look at what would likely happen if far-right politicians around the world were to win ever more elections, rewire democracies to ensure their future dominance, and begin to take over international institutions like the European Union or even the World Bank. Untethered from the compromises of electoral politics, the far right will forget about those persuadables and, like Putin, let its freak flag fly.

It’s still possible to head off the next set of Putins, Melonis, and Trumps at the pass. But that means avoiding the false temptation to promote comparably crazy stuff or appealing to true deplorables. Instead, a coalition of the sane must try to understand the real political and economic reasons why those persuadables vote for Kari Lake and her brethren — and then craft arguments and policies to win them over.

It can be done. Even as Italy turned to the far right, just enough voters rejected Kari Lake and Jair Bolsonaro at the polls. Despite Trump-driven Republican politics and an Elon Musk-driven Twitter, the crazy can be constrained and the radical right rolled back. But that means engaging citizens where it matters most: their heads, their hearts, and above all their pocketbooks.

Farmworkers’ working and living conditions take a mental health toll

After interviewing hundreds of farmworkers in three states for a study of the impact of COVID-19 on farmworkers and their families, Bonnie Bade, a medical anthropologist at Cal State University San Marcos, still remembers one case in particular: the suicide of a 14-year-old in the San Joaquin Valley.

“We were doing some interviews, and a family member told us about this case,” said Bade. “She killed herself after her family was diagnosed with COVID.”

The teen’s story is described in phase two of the COVID Farmworker Study (COFS), published in 2021, conducted by a wide group of community based organizations, researchers and policy advocates, and facilitated by the California Institute for Rural Studies. The tragedy wasn’t even in the news.

The story, as told by Maricela, a 49-year-old farmworker (only her first name was cited in the study), was that her brother’s family got sick with COVID: mom, dad and three girls. They were all shut down in the house for a month, “which made the girls very sad and depressed,” the farmworkers said in the report. 

When they got better, school started, and the 14-year-old realized she would still take classes online. 

“And this girl [the suicide victim] sent my niece a message, both of them were 14. So, she told my niece, ‘You know what? I can’t take it anymore. I thought that with getting better, we could leave [the house], but I would prefer to die.'”

The girl hanged herself. 

It is a shocking story of the pandemic’s mental health impact on farmworker families, but hardly the only one. Almost every concern expressed by farmworkers for the survey “had a mental health impact,” said Bade. 

In the COFS study, the concerns shared by farmworkers about losing income or employment in the case of infection, infecting family members because they live in crowded housing conditions, and lack of access to medical care were all tinged with  fear and anxiety. 

“Mental health is a big issue among farmworkers, and it got exacerbated during COVID,” she said. 

Bade and other researchers work hand in hand with advocates, policymakers and community-based organizations to evaluate how to provide mental health services, an issue that is generally not talked about in mainstream society, let alone in the fields of California.

They are slowly making strides in access to care and understanding the needs of one of the most vulnerable populations in the state and the nation. 

COVID made a bad situation worse

The pandemic hit California’s Latino farmworkers hard. During the first year of the pandemic, they experienced among the state’s highest rates of excess mortality. When a lot of other people were isolating at home, farmworkers were among the essential workforce that continued working, often without the vital protection of masks and disinfectants, which in rural areas were hard to come by at the beginning and, in many cases, not provided by employers. 

The barriers to care didn’t start with COVID-19. Still, the pandemic made them worse for farmworkers, said Dr. Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, professor of clinical internal medicine and founding director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at UC Davis. 

“Lack of transportation is often a big barrier, and time to seek medical services is another,” said Aguilar-Gaxiola.

“When are the services available? If they are only Monday through Friday from 8 to 5, they won’t use them. They can’t because that would prevent them from earning a full day of salary, and they are living day to day,” added the scholar, who is from Mexico and has researched the health disparities and mental health of farmworkers for decades.

The uncertainty of daily life as a low income farmworker in isolated areas worsened quite a bit with the fear of COVID-19. A study by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health published in the summer of 2020 found that 58% of farmworkers who had symptoms associated with COVID-19 and later tested positive had gone to work while feeling sick. 

“When COVID started, they didn’t say that employers were obligated to pay sick leave and people could stay home, so people went to work sick, and they would work and infect many others,” said Luis Lopez, a farmworker in Santa Maria, a city in northern Santa Barbara County. 

According to Father Rolando Sierra, pastor of St. John Neumann Catholic Church in Santa Maria, the resulting health impacts were not merely physical but mental and spiritual as well. 

“It was terrible, it was hard, there were many deaths in the family, and they were significantly affected, but they always kept working,” said Sierra. 

“They are very accustomed to this limit between life and death that for us is very alarming,” said the priest. “But they would come to the church, and they wanted us to listen to them; we had to tend to their spiritual health.”

“They just don’t access services”

Both researchers and advocates have documented worsening mental health impacts among farmworkers during COVID; mental health issues were already severe because of working conditions prior to a spike in uncertainty about the future during the Trump administration, particularly for undocumented farmworkers.  

“We recently did a survey and found farmworkers were apprehensive about inflation. They will say: ‘The price of food and gas is going up, and our salaries stay the same,'” said Alondra Santiago, a researcher with the California Institute for Rural Studies. 

For years, experts have found elevated depression symptoms among farmworkers. Still, new research found a more significant impact in the last two years: increased substance use and signs of depression and anxiety, particularly after being infected with COVID. 

“It wasn’t just the pandemic; you are talking about four years of a terrible administration [threatening arrest and deportation] that put families in survival mode,” said Cristel Jensen, a staff member of the California Institute of Rural Studies. She she said the two presidents before Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, also conducted raids and a high number of deportations. 

“Farmworkers weren’t sure if they would show up to work and would be taken away from their families,” she said.  

It all adds up over time. 

Estela Chamu, a volunteer community health worker (who are also known as promotores) with Vista Community Clinic in North San Diego County, tells of seeing farmworkers looking sad and despondent when she visits the fields and vegetable packing sites. 

“They start with stress, and then they get into depression,” she said. “But they don’t talk about it; they walk around sad. In those fields, there are a lot of depressed people and sad people. And often, you don’t dare to ask them how [they] you feel. You try to talk to them, hang with them, chat with them and make them laugh.” 

And yet, they rarely access mental health services. According to Aguilar-Gaxiola, research over the years shows that farmworkers are among the populations that seek mental health services the least, even as they often report similar or higher incidences of depression, anxiety and other ailments compared to others. 

“They underutilize services; they don’t access care,” said Aguilar-Gaxiola.  

Researchers at UC Merced recently shared data from their Farmworker Health Study, which surveyed over 1,100 workers and studied health care access and utilization, among other things. 

The results show that only 3% of farmworkers surveyed sought professional help for mental health issues. 

Female farmworkers and those between 18 to 45 years of age describe “a higher likelihood of feeling anxious or depressed,” said the study. 

“However, nearly half of them did not report being diagnosed by a health care provider, and less than 6% reported [getting] any mental health services,” the study found. 

Language and cultural differences add to the pile of reasons to delay or not access care.

“There’s a huge stigma among Latinos in general in seeking help for mental issues,” said Jensen of the California Institute for Rural Studies. She said that Mexican families can sometimes use “not very healthy coping mechanisms like alcohol, like substance abuse, overworking themselves because of not knowing what to do if they don’t work or if they don’t feel productive.”

Esmeralda Garza, program coordinator for community health in Yolo County, says mental health is not seen as a priority for farmworkers. 

“There are things like rent, utilities, car insurance that you do need to have, and that causes stress for farmers who don’t have the income to have a longer and healthier life,” said Garza. “Income is related to health.”

Addressing basic needs first

For farmworkers, generally low income earners, stress and anxiety often have to do with their socioeconomic situation, what experts call “social determinants of health.” 

This knowledge shapes the efforts to present solutions, apart from medical treatment or therapies, which are not always readily available to these workers. 

Deysi Merino, supervisor of the migrant health program at Vista Community Clinic in northern San Diego County, says that her office connects farmworkers, through outreach and trusted messengers, to programs that can improve their mental health. 

“For us, that means to start by addressing those issues that influence their mental health, such as their financial situation, food insecurity and housing insecurity,” said Merino.

Promotores and health educators go into farming communities and provide access to services, including medical care, vaccinations and basic needs such as food distribution. 

During the pandemic, the clinic offered financial help thanks to donations from foundations, added Nannette Stamm, chief community health officer at Vista Community Clinic. 

Merino sees this help as the first step in addressing mental health issues. The clinic also has two health educators who “are the boots on the ground in farmworker areas,” connecting them to services. 

Estela Chamu, a promotora at the clinic, said the program brings information tables to areas frequented by farmworkers. It also provides check-ups for skin cancer, teeth cleanings, vaccinations and provisions such as water, bags, sunglasses and long sleeve T-shirts. 

“We offer health information, and if necessary, the health care educators sometimes offer transportation for screening and therapy sessions,” said Chamu. 

Farmworkers sometimes reject attempts to address mental health issues if the solutions don’t speak to other fundamental problems, said Bade, the Cal State San Marcos professor. 

Some years ago, Bade said, she was working with North County Health Services, and a clinic wanted to use a grant to get a van to deliver mental health services. Clinic leaders ran the idea through an advisory board whose membership was Mixtec and Zapotec, the indigenous groups from Mexico most often found among farmworkers in some areas of California. 

“They were like: We don’t have water, we don’t have toilets, of course we have mental health issues. That was their first reaction,” said Bade.

Reaching parents through their children

In Stockton, a community-based organization has its own approach to improving mental health: providing education, child care and a wide array of professional therapy services. 

Rocio Villafuerte, 38, is the mother of two children and the wife of a farmworker. The family lives in Lodi, a small community in San Joaquin County. She credits the programs at Stockton’s El Concilio Behavioral and Recovery Center with helping the family overcome difficult times during the pandemic. 

“I had my baby girl in July 2019; the boy was only 2 years old. When the pandemic hit, my husband, who works in the fields, was the only one that would go out. I really felt like I was falling into depression at that time,” she said. 

A few years before, the family had moved from Portland, Oregon, to this small Central Valley town looking for farm work. “It was a drastic change,” she said.

Then came the pandemic, and isolation became even greater. Her husband would go to work; she would stay locked in the house with the two small children. Visits from a preschool teacher helped tremendously. 

“At that time, we had a teacher who came to our house and taught us how to set early education homework for the children, and it helped them to work with their hands on the colors and to learn the vowels,” said Villafuerte. 

While her husband worked in the fields, the young mother got involved in her children’s activities and started painting with them and playing educational games. 

“The programs really helped,” she said. “I have met a lot of women that lose their hair and cry all the time; they are depressed. But we Latinos don’t talk about these things; we are afraid of being told we are crazy.” 

El Concilio offered therapy, but also what it calls “Migrant Head Start,” which is preschool classes for the kids of farmworkers as well as monthly presentations or workshops for the parents, said Alex Largaespada, who directs the counseling programs at El Concilio.

The migrant head start program is government funded and administered by counties. Workshops and therapy sessions are available to farmworkers whose kids are in the head start program in El Concilio’s centers in Stockton, Lodi, Escalon and Brentwood, all agriculture-rich cities in the area serviced by the organization.

“Farmworkers have a lot of trauma. They suffer trauma when crossing the border, doing their jobs, being assaulted or having accidents at work,” said Largaespada. “Not to mention sexual assault suffered by women farmworkers [at the hands of] supervisors.” 

Every month, Largaespada teaches workshops for the parents on mental health, starting with how to deal with kids and their mental and psychological health, and also offers services for the parents, as well as referrals to no-cost therapy sessions. 

“Parents receive free services; the government pays for between six to 12 free sessions, and we also have a program for those who have no documents or access to coverage,” he added. El Concilio runs 10 mental health programs, each serving about 100 people per year, he said.

Is mental health care accessible and adequate?

Medi-Cal, the public health service for low income residents in California, covers mental health services as well. Now that the program is expanding its reach to the state’s undocumented population, policymakers hope it will make these services easier to access. Medi-Cal currently covers children, young adults up to 25 years old and people 50 and older regardless of immigration status (workers between 26 and 49 will not be covered until a further expansion scheduled for 2024). 

“I spent 10 years in an emergency room in Selma, south of Fresno,” said Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a medical doctor representing Fresno and the surrounding rural areas. 

“Patients frequently had nowhere else to turn in moments of crisis. That’s why it was important to work on ending the exclusion [of the undocumented workers],” said the assemblymember. 

It is also essential to reach out to vulnerable Californians, including farmworkers, to let them know that the services exist and are covered, said Monika Lee from the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.

“We researched the issue, and we found out that even many doctors in the state don’t know Medi-Cal covers mental health services, that they could refer people out for that as you would for a specialist, like a dermatologist,” said Lee. 

California just passed a law (SB 1019), sponsored by state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, mandating that Medi-Cal managed care plans distribute outreach materials “that are linguistically and culturally relevant” to inform people of mental health coverage. 

“During the pandemic, I realized, through my therapist, who is a Latina, that she started to see more clients who were Spanish speakers and that the need was growing, and that people did not know where to go,” said Sen. Gonzalez. “It is personal to me that communities get this message.” 

However, many farmworkers will still face multiple barriers to accessing care, including the lack of providers who speak their language or know how to provide culturally relevant support, he and others said. 

“There’s a tiny percentage of therapists of color who can support families of color, let alone farmworker families,” said Crystel Jensen from CIRS. 

In order to address this deficit, CIRS helped create ExpresArte Cultural Wellness Collective, headed by Kelly Baker, a licensed marriage and family therapist. Baker, who is African American, was already working in her private practice on how to “grow our culturally sensitive therapists.” 

The organization offers a “Homegrown Fellowship” program to support therapists of color in the Central Valley. 

“We find that [when] people have access to therapists who look like them, they also have a lot of shared experiences,” said Baker. “We find that the people have access to therapists who look like them, they are indeed open to therapy.” 

Jeremy Clarkson slammed for wishing Meghan Markle meets a misogynistic “Game of Thrones” fate

Contentious TV personality Jeremy Clarkson is in hot water for what many consider his “dangerous” and “deeply misogynistic” comments about the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. 

Clarkson, best known as the host of the British motoring series “Top Gear,” detailed his hatred for Meghan in a Friday article published by the British tabloid newspaper The Sun. The piece was subsequently taken down from the site on Monday, after it received more than 6,000 complaints made to Ipso, the independent regulator of the U.K.’s newspaper and magazine industry. Per People, the organization explained, “In light of Jeremy Clarkson’s tweet he has asked us to take last week’s column down.”

Writing in his column, Clarkson hoped for Meghan’s walk of atonement, similar to the infamous scene in “Game of Thrones” in which Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), who confessed to adultery, is made to walk through the town naked, with her hair chopped off as Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham) accompanies her, ringing a bell and intoning “Shame!” as onlookers jeer.

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Howard Stern is over “whiny” Harry and Meghan, but has a choice 4-letter word to describe Charles

“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her,” he wrote.

“Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way. But what makes me despair is that younger people, especially girls, think she’s pretty cool. They think she was a prisoner of Buckingham Palace, forced to talk about nothing but embroidery and kittens.”

He also asserted that he hated Meghan more than First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon and Rose West, an English serial killer who — with her husband, Fred West — tortured and murdered several young women along with her eight-year-old stepdaughter between 1973 and 1987.

Sturgeon condemned Clarkson’s article, saying, “I think what he said about Meghan Markle was deeply misogynist and just downright awful and horrible. My overwhelming emotion about guys like Jeremy Clarkson is pity,” per The Times. 

“I mean, what is it that makes somebody so distorted by hate that they end up writing these things? I think that possibly gives an insight into Jeremy Clarkson and the kind of person he is. So maybe he just needs to take a step back from things and just think about life a bit more.”

In the same vein as Sturgeon, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan took to Twitter to criticize the article: “As Jeremy Clarkson should well know – words have consequences. The words in his piece are no joke – they’re dangerous and inexcusable. We are in an epidemic of violence against women and girls and men with powerful voices must do better than this.”

Clarkson’s daughter, Emily Clarkson, also spoke out against her father in an Instagram story, saying, “My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media. I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle, and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.”

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The inflammatory column was published amid the release of the second half of Meghan and Prince Harry’s tell-all Netflix series “Harry & Meghan.” In response to the backlash, Clarkson issued an apology on Monday:

“Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it,” he wrote. “In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in ‘Game of Thrones’ and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”

Read more

about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex: 

In West Virginia, an HIV outbreak persists as officials push back against containment efforts

 

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Brooke Parker has spent the past two years combing riverside homeless encampments, abandoned houses, and less traveled roads to help contain a lingering HIV outbreak that has disproportionately affected those who live on society’s margins.

She shows up to build trust with those she encounters and offers water, condoms, referrals to services, and opportunities to be tested for HIV — anything she can muster that might be useful to someone in need.

She has seen firsthand how being proactive can combat an HIV outbreak that has persisted in the city and nearby areas since 2018. She also has witnessed the cost of political pullback on the effort.

Parker, 38, is a care coordinator for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, a federal initiative that provides HIV-related services nationwide. Her work has helped build pathways into a difficult-to-reach community for which times have been particularly hard. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find a place to sleep for the night without being rousted by police. And many in this close-knit group of unhoused individuals and families remain shaken by the recent death, from complications of AIDS, of a woman Parker knew well.

The woman was barely in her 30s. Parker had encouraged her to seek medical care, but she was living in an alley; each day brought new challenges. If she could have gotten basic needs met, a few nights’ decent sleep to clear her head, Parker said, she would have more likely been open to receiving care.

Such losses, Parker and a cadre of experts believe, will continue, and maybe worsen, as political winds in the state blow against efforts to control an expanding HIV outbreak.

In August 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded its investigation of an HIV outbreak in Kanawha County, home to Charleston, where people who inject opioids and methamphetamine are at highest risk. The CDC’s HIV prevention chief had called it “the most concerning HIV outbreak in the United States” and warned that the number of reported diagnoses could be just “the tip of the iceberg.”

HIV spreads easily through contaminated needles; the CDC reports the virus can survive in a used syringe for up to 42 days. Research shows offering clean syringes to people who use IV drugs is effective in combating the spread of HIV.

Following its probe, the CDC issued recommendations to expand and improve access to sterile syringes, testing, and treatment. It urged officials to co-locate services for easier access.

But amid this crisis, state and local government officials have enacted laws and ordinances that make clean syringes harder to get. In April 2021, the state legislature passed a bill limiting the number of syringes people could exchange and required that they present an ID. Charleston’s City Council added an ordinance imposing criminal charges for violations.

As a result, advocates say, a substantial number of those at highest risk of contracting HIV remain vulnerable and untested.

Public health experts also worry that HIV infections are gaining a foothold in nearby rural areas, where sterile syringes and testing are harder to come by.

Joe Solomon is co-director of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response, an organization that previously offered clean syringes in exchange for contaminated ones in Kanawha County. Solomon said the CDC’s recommendations were precisely what SOAR once provided: co-location of essential services. But SOAR has ceased exchanging syringes in the face of the efforts to criminalize such work.

Solomon, who was recently elected to the Charleston City Council on a platform that includes measures to counter the region’s drug crisis, said the backlash against what’s known as harm reduction is “a public attack on public health.”

Epidemiologists agree: They contend sidelining syringe exchanges and the HIV testing they help catalyze may be exacerbating the HIV outbreak.

Fifty-six new cases of HIV were reported in 2021 in Kanawha County — which has a population of just under 180,000 — with 46 of those cases attributed to injection drug use. By the end of November, 27 new cases had been reported this year, 20 related to drug injection.

But the CDC’s “tip of the iceberg” assessment resonates with researchers and advocates. Robin Pollini, a West Virginia epidemiologist, has interviewed people in the county with injection-related HIV. “All of them are saying that syringe sharing is rampant,” she said. She believes it’s reasonable to infer there are far more than 20 people in the county who’ve contracted HIV this year from contaminated needles.

Pollini is among those concerned that testing initiatives aren’t reaching the people most at risk: those who use illicit drugs, many of whom are transient, and who may have reason to be wary of authority figures.

“I think that you can’t really know how many cases there are unless you have a very savvy testing strategy and very strong outreach,” she said.

Research shows sustained, well-targeted testing paired with access to clean syringes can effectively slow or stop an HIV outbreak.

In late 2015, the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department launched a syringe exchange, but in 2018 shuttered it after the city imposed restrictions on the number of syringes that could be exchanged and who could receive them. Then-Mayor Danny Jones called it a “mini-mall for junkies and drug dealers.”

When officials abandoned the effort, SOAR began hosting health fairs where it exchanged clean syringes for used ones. It also distributed the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone; offered treatment, referrals, and fellowship; and provided HIV testing.

But when the new state restrictions and local criminal ordinance took effect, SOAR ceased exchanging syringes, and attendance at its fairs plummeted.

“It’s indisputable and well established. It’s comprehensive; it’s inclusive,” Pollini said of research supporting syringe exchange. “You can’t even get funding to study the effectiveness of syringe service programs anymore because it’s established science that they work.”

Syringe exchanges are credited with tamping down an HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana, in 2015, after infections spread to more than 200 intravenous drug users. At that time, then-Gov. Mike Pence — after initially being resistant — approved the state’s first syringe service.

A team of epidemiologists worked with the Scott County Health Department on a study that determined that discontinuing the program would result in an increase in HIV infections of nearly 60%. But in June 2021, local officials voted to shut it down.

In Kanawha County, SOAR was making inroads. Interviews with numerous clients underscore that people felt safe at its health fairs. They could seek services anonymously. But most acknowledge that the promise of clean syringes was what brought them in.

Charleston-based West Virginia Health Right operates a syringe exchange that Dr. Steven Eshenaur, executive director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, credits with helping reduce the number of new HIV diagnoses. But advocates say the imposed constraints — particularly the requirement to present an ID, which many potential clients don’t have — inhibit its success.

HIV diagnoses are up this year in nearby Cabell County and Pollini worries that without more aggressive action, an HIV epidemic could take root statewide. As of Dec. 1, 24 of West Virginia’s 55 counties had reported at least one positive diagnosis this year.

HIV is preventable. It’s also treatable, but treatment is expensive. The average cost of an antiretroviral regimen ranges from $36,000 to $48,000 a year. “If you’re 20 years old, you could live to be 70 or 80,” said Christine Teague, director of the Ryan White program in Charleston. That’s a cost of more than $2 million.

Saving lives and money, Pollini said, requires being both proactive — ongoing, comprehensive testing — and reactive — ramping up efforts when cases rise.

It also requires “meeting people where they are,” as it’s commonly put — building trust, which opens the door to education about what HIV is, how it’s spread, and how to combat it.

Teague said it also requires something more: addressing the fundamental needs of those on the margins; foremost, housing.

Parker agrees: “Low-barrier and transitional housing would be a godsend.”

But Teague questions whether the political will exists to confront HIV full force among those most at risk in West Virginia.

“I hate to say it, but it’s like people think that this is a group of people that are beyond help,” she said.

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

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

After tuition, books, and room and board, colleges’ rising health fees hit a nerve

 

You’ve compared tuition. Reviewed on-campus housing costs. Even digested student meal plan prices.

But have you thought about how much your son’s or daughter’s dream school will charge for health coverage?

You might be in for a shock.

Hawley Montgomery-Downs was thrilled when daughter Bryn Tronco earned a scholarship that pays half the $63,000 annual tuition at the University of Southern California. But just as school was starting in August, she was stunned to receive a bill from USC for $3,000 to cover both a student health insurance premium and a fee that allows students to access on-campus clinics and other services. At home in West Virginia, she had paid nothing for her daughter’s health insurance, through the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, which serves lower- and middle-class families.

Montgomery-Downs, who lives in Morgantown, West Virginia, was especially upset that USC not only billed her for health insurance but a $1,050 annual health fee. “It would be nice for her to go to the student health center, but with buying insurance to go to a primary care provider, it feels like I am paying twice,” she said.

Mandatory medical insurance and health service fees are common at colleges as a condition of enrollment, said Stephen Beckley, a Fort Collins, Colorado, health and benefits consultant to colleges. While the health fee can help reduce students’ insurance premiums, parents may feel as though they are paying double. “That’s a big conundrum for our field,” he said.

For parents, these big payments might come as a surprise, making a barely affordable education feel even less so. After all, students can economize by choosing a skimpy meal plan and cooking their own dinners or buying used textbooks, but there is no way around the mandatory health fees.

The costs vary by school but often can amount to several thousand dollars a year — costs that health care advocates say should be carefully reviewed by parents and students to ensure they understand their options while also meeting university requirements.

Students can seek a waiver to university health insurance by showing they have their own insurance or are covered by their parent’s insurance that meets specific university criteria. Schools typically want to see that a student’s own insurance covers local doctors and hospitals for little out-of-pocket cost. Student health fees, however, generally can’t be waived.

USC, a private college, charges $2,273 a year for its Aetna student health insurance plan. The average for public colleges is $2,712 and $3,540 at private universities, according to a 2022 survey by Beckley’s firm, Hodgkins Beckley & Lyon.

Other prominent colleges charge much more, such as $6,768 at Stanford and $4,163 at Dartmouth College.

The University of Montana charges $4,700, and most services at its school health clinic are fully covered by its health plan. The University of Colorado charges $3,976.

At Harvard, students buying the school’s insurance pay $4,080 annually and $1,304 for the student health fee.

The easiest solution to avoid these charges would be for students to stay on a parent’s health policy — which the Affordable Care Act allows until they turn 26. But that works only if the student’s parent has a policy that meets the school’s comprehensive requirements and offers in-network coverage where the college is located.

Otherwise, parents may want to shop among ACA marketplace plans to see if they can find a bargain. If their incomes are low enough, students can sometimes enroll in Medicaid or a CHIP plan in states where they go to school. But this strategy has limitations as well. Students must meet state residency requirements where they go to school, and parents cannot claim them as a dependent on tax returns. CHIP coverage also expires once a student turns 19.

Schools that charge a student health fee and require insurance coverage say the funding helps cover services at campus health clinics, which otherwise would cost students hundreds of dollars a year or more.

The USC student health fee — which covers primary and preventive health services — also helps the school pay for services not typically covered by insurance, such as monitoring disease outbreaks on campus.

Dr. Sarah Van Orman, chief health officer of USC Student Health, noted that the student health fee provides funding for additional mental health providers on campus and a team focused on sexual assault prevention and education — services available to students without any copayments. She said these additions are vital because, even with insurance, students could face challenges finding private counselors to provide timely help and, if they do, students would have cost-sharing expenses.

“The student health fee supports our public health infrastructure on campus,” Van Orman said.

Because students can get primary health services on campus at the student health center, fewer of them seek care paid for by the insurance, she said, and that helps keep the monthly premium on the Aetna student health insurance plan lower. “These things are working together and are not at all duplicative,” Van Orman said.

USC’s student health insurance has an in-network annual deductible of $450 and a $20 copay for physician office visits. It also provides comprehensive services nationwide, so students are covered when at school and back at home — even if that’s across the country. About half the USC students buy the Aetna student insurance, according to Van Orman.

Other colleges have a different strategy. For instance, George Washington University‘s mandatory health insurance covers health center services on campus. Unless they get a waiver, undergraduates must enroll in the student health insurance plan — costing $2,700 a year — unless they prove they have another insurance plan that meets the school’s criteria. The health plan premium allows students to get many free services at the student health center, including medical office visits, some prescriptions, and routine screenings for sexually transmitted infections.

Beckley said college rules vary on whether they allow students to choose insurance plans other than what the school offers.

USC allows students to buy an alternative insurance policy through their parents’ plan or on the ACA marketplace as long as it meets the school’s requirements that include comprehensive health coverage in the Los Angeles area and covering preventive care with zero cost sharing. Out-of-state Medicaid or CHIP plans don’t meet the university’s criteria because they don’t have provider networks for routine care in California.

That was unwelcome news to Montgomery-Downs.

“This is not something we budgeted for,” she said of USC’s health costs.

Montgomery-Downs, a former associate professor at West Virginia University who now works as a freelance editor, said she wasn’t sure what to do when she got the USC health bill. She had thought Bryn, who turned 19 last week, would be covered initially because her CHIP plan provided coverage for treatment at emergency rooms and urgent care centers out of state. And Montgomery-Downs wanted to make sure her daughter had health coverage on summer and holiday breaks when home.

Unsure of which marketplace coverage options would meet the school’s rules and deadlines, she decided to go with the Aetna student plan USC offered.

A look at marketplace options on Covered California shows the $2,200 for the USC Aetna student plan is a competitive rate. The lowest-priced comparable PPO plan offered by California Blue Cross that would provide Bryn a national network of providers costs about $2,400 a year factoring in a government subsidy based on their family income. PPOs provide some coverage for out-of-network doctors and hospitals.

Montgomery-Downs gets her coverage on the marketplace and said she will shop for a marketplace plan for Bryn for the next school year. She said she wishes they had been aware of all the health costs at the time of admission rather than just before classes began.

“It’s all nightmarish, even for someone with the privilege of time and some understanding of these bureaucracies — higher education and medical insurance,” Montgomery-Downs said.

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

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

The Jan. 6 committee makes their final plea: Prosecuting Trump will be hard, but morally necessary

“There is one factor I believe is most important in preventing another January 6: Accountability,” committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said during the final public meeting of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. “Accountability that can only be found in the criminal justice system.” 

Related

Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to DOJ for prosecution — and moves to sanction 4 House Republicans

Monday’s hearing may feel a bit muted to those who have been carefully following the coverage and knew that criminal referrals of Donald Trump were coming. Still, it’s important to zoom out a bit and remember what a big deal this is. Never before in history has Congress asked the Department of Justice to prosecute a former president. But then again, never before in history has there been made public so much evidence that a president incited an insurrection in hopes of seizing the White House illegally.  

The committee meeting was conducted much like a prosecutor’s closing statements, with members again walking viewers through the timeline of Trump’s attempted coup and highlighting some of the most damning evidence previously presented. Here are the four proposed charges: Obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and, crucially, inciting or assisting an insurrection.

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“President Trump was directly responsible for summoning what became a violent mob to Washington, DC, urging them to march to the Capitol, and then further provoking the already violent and lawless crowd with his 2:24p.m. tweet about the Vice President,” the report summary released by the committee Monday reads.

For those who have watched all of the hearings, today could feel a bit like a retread, but it was an important exercise. The committee was sending a signal to the Department of Justice: The amount of evidence to prosecute Trump is overwhelming and prosecuting is a moral necessity. As they laid out in their presentation, they believe that unless something is done to stop Trump, he will try again — and next time the violence could be worse.

There is no doubt that prosecuting Trump will be hard. Attorney General Merrick Garland has for months been reluctant to deal with Trump’s insurrection-related crimes. It’s widely believed his main reason is fear that securing a conviction could be difficult. Republican voters on a jury might behave as Senate Republicans did during the impeachment and ignore the evidence and vote to acquit Trump anyway. Trump was careful to keep his distance from the actual Capitol rioters, letting surrogates do most of the actual organizing, and communicating his wishes through implication instead of direct orders. This mafioso style of communication is one that expert criminals have used for decades because it often works to evade legal consequences. 

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January 6 hearing makes it clear: MAGA is a cult

Monday’s hearing, however, was a reminder that it might be easier to convict Trump than initially assumed. Garland has appointed a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, to look into charging Trump for his January 6-related crimes. Smith appears to be moving quickly already. The stunning amount of evidence amassed by the January 6 committee — including more than 1,000 interviews and a million documents — will make his job much easier. The committee plans to release not just a summary of their findings, but the bulk of this evidence. If that evidence weren’t incredibly strong, it’s unlikely they would make these referrals. 

It’s not enough to hope the political system will fix this on its own. Yes, the 2022 midterms were a rebuke to Trump and his fascist movement, with election deniers losing key races that Trump really needed in order to pull off his main strategy for stealing the White House in 2024. However, when fascists lose their path toward seizing power through faux-legalistic rationales, they often shift toward violence.

That’s exactly how January 6 went down, as the committee made clear in their hearings over the summer. On December 18, Trump and his supporters had a confrontation with White House lawyers. When the latter made it clear there were no remaining legal avenues to overturn the election, Trump pivoted immediately to calling on a mob, sending out his infamous tweet calling the MAGA loyalists to the Capitol for a “wild” event on January 6. 

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Since the midterms, we’ve seen the same pattern. Instead of accepting their losses gracefully, there’s been a perceptible shift once again toward open Trumpist longing for bloodshed. Earlier this month, the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala — where GOP movers and shakers turn out to rub shoulders — devolved fairly quickly into ugliness. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia bragged, “If Steve Bannon and I had organized [January 6], we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

Similarly, the group’s president Gavin Wax insisted, “We want total war,” saying it’s important to fight the left “in the streets.”

Just last weekend, the Republican loser in the Arizona governor’s race held out insurrectionist sentiment as a point of pride. “I know that right now we can identify as anything we want to identify, but I want you to know that I identify as a proud election-denying deplorable!” Such rhetoric is inherently violent — the underlying assumption is that neither the law nor the will of the people should stand between Republicans and power. 

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More than one coup: Jan. 6 committee draws a direct line to Donald Trump

The swiftness of the pivot to violence is not surprising. Brute force is not just a tool in the fascist mentality, but an end in itself. The country was reminded of this in September, after the release of a video of close Trump associate Roger Stone, from the days before the 2020 election. “F**k the voting, let’s get right to the violence,” Stone can be heard ranting. Stone later said he was “only kidding.” Indeed, a standard Republican deflection is to claim such rhetoric is simply hyperbole or jokes. As long as Trump remains unprosecuted for inciting the Capitol riot, this shaky argument has some public justification. The committee’s point was clear: Trump and other Republicans will continue to use such language, so long as they are confident that the DOJ is afraid to hold elected or high-level officials accountable. 

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It’s worth remembering that Oath Keepers used the “just jokes” defense of their pre-January 6 conspirings. Despite myriad warnings from legal experts that such excuses make it hard to prosecute seditious conspiracy, at the end of the day, the jury didn’t buy it. Certainly, it’s hard to argue “just joking” when people armed with flagpoles and bear spray are beating cops and breaking windows. 

Trump himself has indicated pride in how January 6 unfolded and has suggested he would issue pardons for convicted insurrectionists if reelected. Mark Meadows’ aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that Trump was “furious” that rally-goers had to pass through magnetometers and that he said “something to the effect of, ‘I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me.'” After Trump was dissuaded from going to the Capitol with his supporters, he reportedly reveled in the riot on TV from the safety of the White House and refused multiple requests to call the mob off.

“Ours is not a system of justice where foot soldiers go to jail and the masterminds and ringleaders get a free pass,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said during Monday’s hearing. At this point in time, that’s still an aspirational statement. Trump and his top-level lieutenants remain unindicted. The January 6 committee’s actions are unprecedented, but their concerns are crystal clear: If the Justice Department doesn’t step up to hold Trump accountable, American democracy will remain in serious trouble. 

Why Republicans are coughing up billions of dollars to save Florida’s insurance market

In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, more than any disaster in U.S. history other than Hurricane Katrina. It also dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

In recognition of this crisis, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis convened the state’s Republican-controlled legislature last week for a special session devoted to stabilizing the insurance market. In a matter of days, lawmakers passed a package of bills aimed at doing so. The package includes bills that will cut down on litigation and fraudulent claims that raise costs for insurers, but it also provides insurance companies with a $1 billion public subsidy to help them stay afloat next year. That’s on top of another $2 billion the legislature rolled out earlier this year.

One might think that this handout would be opposed by a legislature where Republicans enjoy supermajorities in both chambers — and by a governor who has styled himself a future leader of the Republican Party — but the state’s lawmakers don’t have many other options. DeSantis may trumpet Florida as a free-market success story, but the insurance market has all but abandoned it. 

The problem is that taxpayers will end up footing the bill for all this, even if they don’t own homes that are at significant risk — or don’t own homes at all. 

“If the state has to step in every year to help insurers stay in the market, that’s a problem, unless everyone in Florida is willing to keep paying more and more as these events occur,” said Patricia Born, an academic at Florida State University who studies risk management. DeSantis and his allies in the legislature can shift the cost burden from risky insurance customers to taxpayers or vice versa, but they can’t get rid of that burden altogether.

In a typical market, property insurance companies take in money from all their customers’ premiums and pay out to the subset of customers whose homes suffer damage. The revenue from premiums is supposed to guarantee that a company can pay out customers even under the most catastrophic circumstances. But that has become impossible for most Florida insurers to do: A huge share of homes in the state are vulnerable to hurricanes, which leave insurers liable for massive payouts — and the specter of climate-change-driven effects like “rapid intensification” means that storms that might once have petered out before landfall can suddenly become devastating. Insurers in the state have also seen a surge of costly litigation over roof damages thanks to a Florida-specific legal loophole. 

In theory, companies could raise prices to account for these costs, but in practice those prices would be too high for most customers to afford. Instead, many nationwide companies like State Farm have fled Florida altogether, leaving behind only small local carriers. When the crisis began after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the state government created a public insurance company called Citizens that now serves as a provider of last resort to people who can’t get coverage from private companies. Citizens has doubled in size over the past four years as more of these companies collapse, and in some parts of the state it controls more than half of the insurance market.

In the weeks since Hurricane Ian, the biggest concern for the surviving private insurers has been the cost of reinsurance, which is insurance purchased by insurance companies. Just as a bank requires a homeowner to buy an insurance policy so she can cover sudden damages to her home, Florida requires insurers to buy their own insurance policies so they can afford to make big payouts after a storm.

Unlike the Florida-specific companies that currently sell home insurance to state residents, reinsurance companies are global corporations, many headquartered in Bermuda. These companies backstop the insurance markets in the world’s riskiest places, but the devastation from Ian is making many of the largest reinsurance providers cagey about operating in Florida. Industry analysts expect that these companies will pull as much as $100 billion of coverage off the Florida market next year, which could cause reinsurance rates in the state to rise by 10 percent or more.

When reinsurance gets more expensive, it spells trouble for small insurance companies like the ones that dominate Florida, said Sridhar Manyem, a researcher at the credit rating agency AM Best and the co-author of a recent report on the Florida market.

“They might have to drop some customers, they might have to raise rates, they might have to borrow more money at a pretty atrocious cost to buy reinsurance,” Manyem told Grist. 

This situation could get out of hand fast. Florida’s property insurance premiums are already about three times higher than the national average, and analysts expect them to rise another 20 or 30 percent next year. Companies that can’t raise more money through loans or price hikes will collapse, forcing more people to join Citizens. As that public insurance program keeps growing, it will get more vulnerable to a big storm, potentially putting the state on the hook for billions of dollars that it will have to raise from taxes.

The state legislature approved a few measures last week that are designed to stop this downward spiral. One measure eliminates the unusual attorney’s fees that are driving the surge of roof litigation, a change lawmakers hope will help tempt insurers back to the market. Another measure would force every Citizens customer to buy flood insurance (even if they aren’t in a flood zone), and a third will slow down the growth of Citizens by requiring some potential customers to buy private insurance instead, even if it means they pay more. (Democrats in the legislature decried the lack of financial assistance for residents who face these new mandates.)

But the elephant in the room is the looming rise in reinsurance prices, which will make it even harder for Florida insurers to turn a profit next year. Reinsurance costs account for about half of the actual premiums that Florida homeowners pay, and that number is likely to rise.

“Right now that doesn’t look really good for any major carriers that might be thinking about writing in Florida, or even carriers that have been writing and might be thinking about leaving,” said Born. 

Florida’s government has been propping up the primary home insurance market for decades, but the toll of weather disasters is forcing the state’s conservative government to go even further by propping up the reinsurance market as well. The state already maintains a $17 billion reinsurance fund that helps insurers cover the largest hurricane claims, but Ian will just about wipe that fund clean. Refilling it before next hurricane season will not be easy. Earlier this year the state created an additional $2 billion reinsurance fund, and lawmakers added another $1 billion fund last week, pumping more money into the languishing market to protect the remaining private carriers.

Top Republicans in the state have tried to frame the public funding as a stopgap measure.

“It would be temporary, and it has to be contingent on getting major reforms so we actually fix the situation,” Paul Renner, the incoming speaker of the state House of Representatives, told reporters last month before the special session. “I do not want to be in a situation where we make any kind of new long-term taxpayer commitment to underwrite insurance.”

But funding a long-term solution to the insurance gap may be easier said than done. Even if the new package of bills does solve the litigation issue, hurricane risk is only going to increase as more people move to coastal cities and warm oceans make landfalling storms more powerful. As long as that trend continues, it will be difficult if not impossible for lawmakers to engineer a functioning private market.

That means that the state government, and by extension state residents, will foot the bill for protecting billions of dollars in vulnerable property. Unless something changes, a “long-term taxpayer commitment” is all but a certainty, and that burden will fall hardest on the Floridians with the least resources.

Jan. 6 committee refers Trump to DOJ for prosecution — and moves to sanction 4 House Republicans

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack announced on Monday four criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department, including inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress and conspiracy to make a false statement.

Monday’s vote by the panel marked the first time in U.S. history that Congress has referred a former president to the DOJ for criminal prosecution — the result of an extensive 18-month investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the presidential election. 

The panel also referred five other Trump allies for potential prosecution, including former chief of staff Mark Meadow and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro, who assisted Trump’s efforts to illegally hold on to power.

The committee’s referrals are not a legal action, nor do they compel any action by the Justice Department — which is carrying out its own investigation into Jan. 6 — but they do send a significant message that a bipartisan committee of Congress believes that Trump engaged in criminal behavior. Fifteen of the report’s 17 findings related to Trump’s role in plotting the Capitol attack. 

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The document identifies co-conspirators who helped Trump but holds the former president responsible for being the primary cause of the mob violence.

“That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of Jan. 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the report states. “None of the events of Jan. 6th would have happened without him.”

“Every president in our history has defended this orderly transfer of authority, except one,” Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the vice chairwoman of the committee, said at the start of the hearing on Monday.

The committee also announced that they are referring four House Republicans for sanctions by the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. They include GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.

“We asked multiple members of Congress to speak with us about issues critical to our understanding of this attack on the 2020 election and our system of constitutional democracy. None agreed to provide that essential information,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md during the hearing. 

“As a result we took the significant step of issuing them subpoenas based on the volume of information particular members possessed about one or more parts of President Trump’s plans to overturn the election,” he added. “None of the subpoenaed members complied, and we are now referring four members of Congress for appropriate sanction by the House Ethics Committee for failure to comply with lawful subpoenas”

Raskin called to hold the four Republicans accountable.

“We understand the gravity of each and every referral we are making today just as we understand the magnitude of the crime against democracy that we describe in our report,” he said. “But we have gone where the facts and the law lead us and inescapably, they lead us here.”

Read the committee’s introductory report below:

Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee by Igor Derysh on Scribd

Read more

about the Jan. 6 probe

The Medea Hypothesis: Why some experts say life on Earth sows the seeds of its own destruction

To quote a famous fictional lion, the Earth is a beautiful circle of life — predators and prey, plants and animals keeping each other in perfect balance. This idea — of Earth’s lifeforms as epitomizing a collective, life-cultivating system — has a long history: the ancient Greeks called Earth “Gaia,” the mother of all life. In the 1970s, two scientists hypothesized that planet Earth is really one giant super-organism, with all animals, plants, fungi and other life actively influencing (and encouraging) one another’s evolution; Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist, and James Lovelock, a scientist, environmentalist and futurist, accordingly called their theory the Gaia hypothesis.

“Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth,” Lovelock told Salon in an interview from 2000. “It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.”

It is a nice idea, to think that life begets life — or that life on Earth works towards a larger purpose of self-perpetuation. The only problem is that this isn’t a universally accepted proposition among scientists. Indeed, some believe the opposite is true: life on Earth doesn’t have a larger goal, but rather, could accidentally and at any moment evolve in a way that would kill off great masses of life — or even all life. 

Evidence for this much more cynical theory about life on Earth includes, for one, the numerous mass extinctions that have occurred throughout Earth’s 4.5 billion year history, some of which extinguished 99 percent of all life. Some of these extinctions were caused not by asteroids, but by life itself behaving in its own self-interest. 

Thus, some scientists say that Gaia, the mother of life, is a poor choice of deity to serve as a metonym for Earth. A better one might be Medea, an enchantress in Greek myth who murdered her own children.

“This name thus seems appropriate for an interpretation of Earth life … to be inherently selfish and ultimately biocidal.”

In the late 2000s, Peter Douglas Ward, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Washington in the geology, biology and astronomy departments, coined the term “Medea hypothesis” to describe the ways that complex life eventually generate the circumstances to drive their own extinction. The term was meant to evoke the Gaia hypothesis, the Medea hypothesis being somewhat of an opposite. 

We see Medea’s handiwork all around us in the fossil record. The Great Oxidation Event, some 2.45 billion years ago, is a prime example. Back then, the planet was all but devoid of oxygen, and microbial life metabolized just fine without it. But then cyanobacteria hopped on the scene, which evolved photosynthesis. That ended up spitting out tons of oxygen over millions of years, which was toxic to most life on earth, causing widespread death that shows up in the fossil record.

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We also see Medea in the present, as the Earth undergoes its Sixth Mass Extinction, this one caused in large part by human activity. It’s why we see billions of Alaskan snow crabs suddenly disappearing or thousands of other examples of ecosystem collapse. It’s why climate change is so threatening to our continued way of life and why humanity may even join the dinosaurs in the dustbin of natural history.

“Why I started thinking about Medea [is that] I really disliked the Gaia hypothesis. Gaia is not even a theory to me, it’s just New Age nonsense.”

“This name thus seems appropriate for an interpretation of Earth life, which collectively has shown itself through many past episodes in deep time to the recent past, as well as in current behavior, to be inherently selfish and ultimately biocidal,” Ward wrote in his 2009 book, “The Medea Hypothesis.” “A result of this bad mothering, I propose, will be a shortening of the time that life will exist on our planet. Life will do this to itself by unconsciously changing environmental conditions to a point where there can no longer be plant life or, ultimately, any kind of life.”

The Medea Hypothesis might be epitomized by the story of photosynthetic life on Earth. As Ward explained in our interview, plant life on Earth has a repeated tendency to evolve in a way that it removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then freezes the entire planet, killing the majority of life that depends on Earth being, well, not frozen. This has happened many times in the fossil record.

Salon spoke with Ward about the basis for this theory and what it means for life on Earth — but also the implications for finding life on other planets, including Mars.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

What got you interested in extinction events?

Peter Ward: What really struck me and why I started thinking about Medea, is I really disliked the Gaia hypothesis. Gaia is not even a theory to me, it’s just New Age nonsense. So much good came out of it. Lovelock was no fool. But this idea has been bastardized to the point of thinking that life knows that we humans are putzes and will clean up our mess.

One of the really driving definitions of life is that, given a chance, any species will do anything it can to have all the resources. There’s no altruism in nature. Take everything you can, reproduce to the point that you control everything. This is what humans have done. Other species have tried it in the past, they’ve just never had the ability technologically. But where does that drive come from? I think it’s so innate within the structure of DNA and how cells are constructed, this dominance principle. Altruism is nonsense.

When I first encountered this idea of the Gaia hypothesis, I found it very seductive. It’s very cute. It’s a nice little narrative and there’s some evidence for it, I can sort of see that. If you zoom out and you look at the planet, it’s like this shelled organism that has a system, just like a microscopic cell. Like, it has a bunch of different components in it, that are all working together, that all evolved independently and then assembled. So maybe you can apply that same sort of lens to the entire planet. But in the Medea hypothesis, what are some of the most pointed examples?

Carbon dioxide has to be the most powerful molecule in all biological systems. We’re going from 360 parts-per-million CO2 molecules [in the atmosphere] among a million other molecules… all we have to do is go up to 450 or 500 [parts-per-million]… I mean, you’re adding another 100 out of a million, and the world goes from benign to completely insane. I mean, completely ends of the world, adding just 100 more [per] million molecules. When you think about the power, that is unbelievable.

CO2 runs the world. And we’re on such a knife’s edge. Long-term climate stability is partly plate tectonics, but an awful lot of is the carbonate feedback system. When you have CO2, it gets warmer. When it’s warmer, chemical weathering increases in rate and therefore it gets colder and colder till now, chemical weathering isn’t working as fast. Then you have more volcanoes pumping out CO2. So the balance is up, down, up, down. Three billion years of balance, then along come plants. And photosynthesis kicks in and CO2 is ripped out of the atmosphere, more and more of these plants grow. And then boom, the whole world freezes. Well, the first time plants get roots, boom. Life makes these innovations into very narrowly controlled systems. And it all goes to hell. It’s not like life’s mean, it’s just the bad puppy idea. It f**ks up and knocks things over. Gaia would never do that.

It’s embarrassing to admit, but I used to not really believe in climate change, like over a decade ago, until I started looking into the science. And that statistic was one of the things I used to dismiss it. Like there’s only 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere? How could this have any influence? But it’s amazing how even that small change is so impactful.

It’s scary. The nice thing about deep time is you really get to relive this stuff. You asked, why am I wrapped up in death? Well, it fascinates and horrifies me. But there’s such powerful lessons that you can see. The fossil record doesn’t just tell us about the past. It predicts the future.

And usually after a mass extinction, I don’t know how long, probably a long time, but there’s sometimes an explosion of life. The Cambrian Explosion came after a mass extinction, right?

Yeah. But I had this argument with the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Life] dudes, back in the day, Seth Shostak and I used to go back and forth. Someone said, “mass extinctions are good things. And in fact, if we hadn’t had the critical number we did, we probably wouldn’t have the diversity we do.” It’s equivalent to thinning out the garden to get your other stuff to grow. But I had to point out that following the Permian mass extinction, it took 2 million years to get anything close to what was there before. I personally don’t think I want to wait that long. It’s a long dead period.

“If there’s life on Venus it’s up in the clouds. But I’ve never liked that idea. I think there’s a much better chance around Jupiter’s moons.”

When teaching my undergrad class, I started really looking at how bad ice ages are for planets. I’ve been to Antarctica four times. What struck me was how little life there was down there.

And if you go all the way back to the snowball Earth — we had one [event] at 2.1 billion years ago and we had one 700 to 600 million, where the planet froze over. You can see it in carbon isotopes. Carbon isotopes are really a meter of the quantity of life on the planet. And every time we have ice ages, the amount of life on this planet drops. Why do we have these cold periods? Why is it the longest Ice Age in Earth history followed [by] the first forests? Plants did it every time.

Every time roots figure out how to go deeper, they break up more rock below them. More minerals with silicate minerals in them get exposed to CO2, they turn into clay, they pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere. Boom, Earth becomes cold. It’s life that does it every single time. Every one of the mass extinctions, it’s life that kills itself off.

It’s like a stupid puppy. It runs amok. It doesn’t have evil intentions — that’s not possible. This is not some guiding principle. I just have the sense that life is just this clumsy oaf.

What does the Medea hypothesis tell us about the search for life on exoplanets?

There’s only a few ways you could make life. Life is probably going to always be affected by natural selection, it’s going to have to metabolize, it’s gonna have to reproduce. And this is what NASA says. The three parts, if that’s how it works, then it is going to be this blunt instrument. Once you start introducing these little chemical factories — that’s what a bacterium is, a tiny, little chemical factory — there’s only three morphologies.

Bacteria are a little spheres, little rods or little spirals. That’s all they can do. Three things. Not a lot of body plans. So when their environment gets f**ked up, they build new chemicals. I can’t change this. I can’t change myself physically. But I’ll change where I’m living chemically. I will make it chemically different. I can make it chemically warmer, chemically colder, I can change the toxins. All I can do is build chemicals. That’s profoundly different.

There’s probably no life on Mars. But if there’s bacteria — if Mars ever had life down deep in the rocks, you’re probably gonna find it [there]. 

Could Mars life have killed itself off in the way that Medea tries to kill itself off here? Of course it could. Same principles are going to apply. Life does some blunderbuss thing on a system that’s less forgiving than Earth was. Smaller planet, gas is thinner, you don’t have many minerals. You’ve got a much smaller toolkit to build yourself with. So the margin of error is probably narrower. Surely, blundering life [on Mars] could easily knock itself off.

What about life on Venus or Jupiter’s moon Europa?

Well, in the early Earth history, the sun was way less energetic. So Venus wouldn’t have been as nasty as it is now. But Venus is the bad case history for too much CO2. It just got hotter and hotter. And then sooner or later, it lost its surface water. And once you do that, you’ve got a runaway greenhouse [effect].

If there’s life on Venus it’s up in the clouds. But I’ve never liked that idea. I think there’s a much better chance around Jupiter’s moons. The cool thing about Jupiter’s moons is that you’ve got oceans down there. And if you look at Europa, you see all these craters in it. Well, those craters would punch right through. Any asteroid punching through is going to throw a whole bunch of seawater up into space. Those moons are being orbited by frozen water that was blasted out of them. If there was life there, you don’t have to go [down] into it. You’re gonna find it in orbit around it. So the joke among us is, let’s just get a scoop and go fish up the fish frozen in orbit around Europa.

Read more

about the history of life on Earth

5 historical hot cocktails that are perfect for cold weather

It is cold outside, and there’s nothing quite like a hot drink to warm the cockles. In the history of British mixed concoctions, there are arguably more hot drinks than cold for one simple reason: Central heating was not ubiquitous in the U.K. until the late 20th century. Before that, cold drinks were something of a novelty unless you frequented American bars, which specialized in iced drinks.

Here are five historical warming sips from Britain to see you through the bright lights of the holidays and the dark days of winter.

1. Tom and Jerry

Sportswriter Pierce Egan is credited with this precursor to the modern egg nog. It appeared in 1821 in his monthly serial “Life in London: Or, the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq., and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom,” which was adapted for the stage that same year.

The drink seemed to follow the play’s success as it traversed from London’s West End to New York’s Broadway in 1823. It was recognized as a Christmas classic in 1843, when it was revered in “The Symbol, and Odd Fellow’s Magazine” as a more refined version of “a long concocted beverage,” the Flip. It might seem a bit fiddly to make, but the result is worth the extra effort.

Ingredients for batter mix (makes about 40 servings):
3 eggs (whites and yolks separated)
15 ml rum
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground clove
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp creme of tartar
1/8 tsp vanilla extract
120 ml caster sugar

Method: In one bowl, beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. In another bowl, beat the yolks until they are as thin as water.

Mix yolks and whites and add the rum and spices. Thicken with sugar until the mixture attains the consistence of a light batter.

Ingredients for one serving:
60ml of Irish whiskey
Milk of choice
Grated nutmeg

To make one serving: Combine one tablespoonful of Tom and Jerry batter with Irish whiskey in a coffee mug. Fill the mug with hot milk. Garnish with a little grated nutmeg.

2. Gin Twist

Among the most popular gin drinks during London’s severe winter of 1822, the Gin Twist was immortalized in several poems published in London newspapers. One such poem comprised 149 lines with each stanza comparing the tipple with other popular drinks at the time, such as this one about rum:

Ye Bailies of Glasgow! Wise men of the West!
Without your rum bowls, you’d look certainly tristes; Yet I laugh when I’m told, that liquor so cold Is as good as a foaming hot jug of gin-twist.

It is a remarkably simple drink made with gin, sugar, water and lemon juice, plus a lemon twist garnish to prove the concoction was made with fresh lemon juice — a true luxury back then. The Gin Twist still offers a superior drink today.

Ingredients:
50 ml gin
25 ml simple syrup (or a tablespoon of white sugar)
25 ml fresh lemon juice
75-100ml boiling water

Method: Combine ingredients in a teacup or Irish coffee mug. Stir. Garnish with a lemon twist.

3. Dog’s Nose

This might seem an odd combination to a modern palate more accustomed to sugary mixers, such as cola or tonic water, but the blend of porter or stout, gin, and brown sugar or dark treacle makes for a remarkably good winter sip. The Dog’s Nose first emerged in Charles Dickens’s 1836 book “The Pickwick Papers.”

Thereafter, the potion was frequently mentioned in newspapers and magazines for nearly a century before its popularity waned. Served at Victorian-era room temperature or heated with a loggerhead (a red-hot poker heated in the fireplace), this drink warms both the heart and soul as the wintry snows settle on the ground.

Ingredients:
25 ml gin 100 ml porter or stout 10 ml dark treacle

Method: Combine gin and treacle in a rocks glass or tumbler. Stir to dissolve the treacle. Add the porter and stir gently once more. Warm in a microwave if you want to make the heated version.

4. Smoking Bishop

When Ebenezer Scrooge finally came to his senses in Dickens’s 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol,” he said to Bob Cratchit with a smile:

We will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!

There is a bit of mystery to this drink’s origins. While Dickens appears to have added the “smoking” to the name, the English literary critic George Saintsbury hypothesized in his 1920 “Notes on a Cellar-Book” that it was born at Oxford University.

Its earliest mention is in the 1827 edition of Oxford Nightcaps, the first British book devoted to drink recipes. That book calls it a traditional drink and cites its origins in antiquity — and its rich, spicy tones and imported ingredients may have indeed made it a favorite among the elite in late medieval England.

Ingredients:
6 Seville oranges
115 g caster sugar
1 bottle Portuguese red wine
1 bottle port
whole cloves

Method: Stud the oranges with cloves and roast them in a small metal bowl or baking tray until they are golden brown. Deglaze the roasting pan with wine. Combine the remaining ingredients with the roasted oranges in a pot and simmer covered on a low heat for about 20 minutes. Optionally, you can also press the oranges in the pot and sieve the liquid before serving.

5. Brandy Toddy

To heat drinks before microwaves, many landlords opted for a loggerhead, which took a Toddy from a cold drink to a boiling hot one in five seconds. Heated with a loggerhead, the Toddy acquires a distinctive taste since the heat from the loggerhead is so intense it caramelizes the sugars in the drink and fills the room with the aroma of toasting marshmallows.

You can occasionally find a loggerhead on Etsy or eBay mislabelled as a “fire poker.” The dramatic effect of heating a Toddy with this antique device is a holiday visual treat, but they are quite dangerous so I advise caution. Here we recommend making this warming winter nightcap the modern way.

Ingredients:
1 tsp caster sugar
60 ml brandy or cognac
60 ml boiling water

Method: Pour brandy or cognac into a coffee mug. Add sugar and water. Stir to dissolve.

Anistatia Renard Miller, PhD in History, University of Bristol

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

Jan. 6 committee discovered Trump witness got offer to make her “financially very comfortable”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., revealed on Monday that witnesses for the Jan. 6 investigation were contacted by associates of former President Donald Trump in an effort to influence their testimony.

“We have also obtained evidence of efforts to provide or offer employment to witnesses,” Lofgren said in the hearing. “For example, one lawyer told a witness the witness could, in certain circumstances, tell the committee that she didn’t recall facts when she actually did recall them. That lawyer also did not disclose who is paying for the lawyer’s representation despite questions from the client seeking that information. He told her ‘We’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now.'”

Lofgren also said that the committee learned that “a client was offered potential employment that would make her ‘financially very comfortable’ as the date of her testimony approached by entities that were apparently linked to Donald Trump and his associates.”

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“These offers were withdrawn or didn’t materialize as reports of the content of her testimony circulated,” she added. “The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony and we are concerned that these efforts may have been a strategy to prevent the committee from finding the truth.”

Concerns about Trump’s influence on witnesses have increased since late June, when Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in his White House, provided damning testimony in front of the House panel about Trump’s actions and statements on Jan. 6. 

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

Before giving her testimony, Hutchinson fired a lawyer that was recommended to her by two of Trump’s former aides and was paid for by his political action committee. She then hired a new lawyer, Jody Hunt, and sat for a fourth interview with the committee in which she agreed to come forward publicly to testify. 

The committee also shared testimony from key witnesses in July, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who said that they believed the election wasn’t stolen, as Trump has adamantly claimed, and that it was time for him to concede. 

Read more

about Trump and the Capitol riot

Poached or painted: A closer look at how eggs became a complex motif in countless works of art

Eggs, albeit simple, are a versatile ingredient both in and out of the kitchen. They’re a tasty breakfast staple that can be enjoyed poached, scrambled, soft-boiled or hard-boiled. They’re at the center of the age-old question, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” and the classic idiom, “Egg someone on.” And, most fascinatingly, they’re the subjects of art, music, film and fashion.

From Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s 1756 painting “Broken Eggs” and Claude Monet’s 1907 painting “Still Life with Eggs” to Giovanni Battista Recco’s “Still Life with Chickens and Eggs” and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ cover art for their 2009 studio album “It’s Blitz!,” there’s no shortage of egg iconography. Within the realm of art, eggs are a complex motif due to their significance in both Christian cultures and international mythology.

Simply put, an egg is more than just food — it is “a symbol and a shape-shifter… an industry and an inspiration, a millennia old, cross-cultural expression of rebirth, fertility and potential,” per a forthcoming book called “The Gourmand’s Egg. A Collection of Stories and Recipes.”

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Written by David Lane and Marina Tweed of the London-based contemporary food and culture journal “The Gourmand,” the latest publication explores this phenomenon through a collection of images, stories and recipes focused on eggs. There’s also a section devoted to egg accessories, further illustrating how a single object became so prominent in various sectors of culture.  

Perhaps the earliest mythological motif of eggs is the cosmic, or world egg, which deems that the universe came into existence via a hatched supreme egg. The idea was first documented around 1500 BCE in Sanskrit scriptures, and in myths from Australia, China and Greece — just to name a few. Eggs then became a symbol of celebration, specifically amongst the Persian Empire who decorated, shared and ate eggs amid the spring equinox. This eventually became the basis of classic Easter traditions. Today, eggs at Easter are commonly painted and dyed; then shared, via egg hunts and egg rolls; and later enjoyed, oftentimes as chocolate molds and, in some regions, as marzipan.

Egg references are also frequent in the Bible (notably in Job 6:6, Luke 11:12 and Isaiah 10:14), Eastern Orthodox traditions and Jewish traditions, both in stories and food.        

“Given that an egg’s meaning is as varied as the ways in which it can be cooked, it’s unsurprising that it has featured so frequently in art history, and not only as a subject,” the book noted. Egg tempura, a concoction of pigment, egg yolk and vinegar, was a popular — although putrid — medium amongst painters across Europe. And egg whites mixed with salt was a common method of producing photographs until the early 20th century, when silver gelatin prints became the go-to.

Eggs were first showcased in art during the Renaissance, when various paintings inserted the food in religious, historical and domestic scenes. Take for example Piero della Francesca’s Brera Madonna (1472–1474), in which an ostrich egg hangs above a group of saints and angels who surround the Virgin Mary and the sleeping Christ Child on her lap. Here, the egg is a symbol of both creation and purity.

“There is an egg hanging at the centre of the Brera Madonna that represents Mary’s fecundity as well as the promise of immortality and regeneration,” explained TheHistoryOfArt.org, an online website covering art history. “The child is wearing a necklace of red coral beads, which is a colour that alludes to blood. The deep red coral beads [are] a symbol of death and life as well as the redemption that was brought by Jesus Christ.”

There’s also Hieronymous Bosch’s triptych oil painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (c.1490–1510), which portrays yet another floating unhatched egg that is “a symbol of unrealised hope, or potential, in the midst of riotous human folly.”

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Years later, eggs took on more erotic meanings. In Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s aforementioned painting “Broken Eggs” (1756), a glum, young servant girl sits next to a basket of broken eggs, which many critics interpreted as an allegory about the loss of virginity and innocence. Egg yolks have also been portrayed as breasts, notably in Vicki Hodgetts’s “Eggs to Breasts” and Sarah Lucas’ “Self Portrait with Fried Eggs.”

Such representations and motifs are also common in recent artwork and cinema. Onscreen eggs have been spotted in Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread.”

As “The Gourmand’s Egg” wrote, “The egg is a cinematic chameleon. In its many filmic incarnations, it has been a token of brotherly love, a Freudian red flag, a portent of a ghoulish presence, a symbol of life or, simply, a hangover cure.”

Additionally, “as in so many pictures, the egg often features not only as an everyday foodstuff but as a container of myriad meanings. To paint an egg is to fuse simplicity of form and shape with the resonances around mortality that lurk at the heart of still life.”

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Congress just passed $858B military budget — but GOP is blocking $12B to fight child poverty

Congressional Republicans happily teamed up with Democrats this month to authorize $858 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year, but the GOP is refusing to even consider proposals to revive the Child Tax Credit expansion that lifted millions of kids out of poverty last year—even though bringing the program back would cost a fraction of the Pentagon outlay.

A spokesperson for Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told HuffPost earlier this week that Republicans have thus far been unwilling to negotiate over the Child Tax Credit (CTC) boost, which they unanimously opposed when it was enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan last year.

“Republicans have refused to engage at all on the Child Tax Credit,” said Ashley Schapitl. “In fact they made clear they would not negotiate on any deal that includes the child tax credit.”

Leading Republicans readily confirmed their refusal to consider the CTC boost as part of an end-of-year tax package. With the 60-vote Senate filibuster intact, Democrats need the support of at least 10 Republicans to revive the expanded CTC in some form.

“As of right now there’s no support for that on the Republican side,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told HuffPost.

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, one of the 176 House Republicans who voted in favor of the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act last week, declared that “the country frankly doesn’t have the time or the money for the partisan, expensive provisions such as [the] Child Tax Credit.”

The 2021 program, which expanded the existing CTC to include the poorest families and sent out payments of up to $3,600 per child in monthly increments, spurred a historic drop in the obscenely high U.S. child poverty rate before it expired at the end of last year, thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and the GOP’s opposition to extending the benefit.

The boosted CTC’s expiration has pushed millions of children back into poverty and caused a significant jump in hunger, heightening the sense of urgency among campaigners and many Democratic lawmakers seeking to reinstate the program.

“The expanded Child Tax Credit reduced child poverty by more than 40%. It cut child hunger by a third,” said the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Working-class families need this relief now, and Congress has a chance to bring it back before the end of this year. Progressives will keep fighting to get this done.”

In an attempt to jumpstart negotiations, Democrats have said they would be willing to entertain a slate of corporate tax cuts that the GOP wants to enact before the end of the year.

But even the prospect of delivering another major windfall to large companies hasn’t proved sufficiently enticing for Republicans to suspend their longstanding opposition to government anti-poverty programs.

Congressional Democrats and the Biden White House have also suggested they would accept a more limited version of the 2021 CTC boost, potentially including more strict work requirements and other eligibility limits—which progressives oppose. Such concessions have apparently failed to sway Republicans.

Following the lapse of the expanded program in December 2021, the CTC reverted back to its previous form, which includes smaller payments and a regressive phase-in that prevents the poorest families from obtaining the benefit.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that eliminating the phase-in and allowing the low-income families that are ineligible under current law to receive the full CTC benefit would cost roughly $12 billion a year.

By comparison, the House and Senate voted this month to increase U.S. military spending by $90 billion dollars over Fiscal Year 2022 levels.

“This isn’t using our taxpayer dollars wisely. It’s robbing programs that we need, like the discontinued Child Tax Credit expansion that cut child poverty by half,” Lindsay Koshgarian, director of the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote in a recent blog post. “The only winners here are the military contractors who commandeer roughly half of the Pentagon’s budget in any given year.”

Congress has until next week to approve a funding package to avert a government shutdown, meaning time is running out for a last-ditch CTC push.

The stakes are massive. As CBPP noted earlier this month, “Without an expansion of the Child Tax Credit (and with the expiration of various other relief measures), child poverty is likely to return to about the same level as it was pre-pandemic—pushing millions of children back into poverty.

“Policymakers can expand the Child Tax Credit, or they can fail to act and see the Rescue Plan’s historic gains against child poverty evaporate,” the think tank warned.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said Tuesday that he’s “fighting to get the expanded Child Tax Credit passed before the end of the year.”

“It reduced child poverty and helped families make ends meet,” the senator added. “We must get it done.”

A history of Yorkshire puddings — and why traditionalists say it’s not a Christmas dinner staple

Christmas dinner is considered by many to be the best meal of the year, and yet when it comes to deciding what this meal should consist of, people’s opinions often differ.

For some, there will never be a centerpiece that can replace the turkey, although often there are additional meats included, such as roast ham, beef or pork, alongside roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, pigs in blankets, bread sauce and stuffing. And of course, there are those who are vegetarian or vegan and prefer a nut roast.

Then there’s the Yorkshire pudding. For some, a must-have on Christmas day, while for other more traditionalists, it seems a Yorkshire pudding should go nowhere near a Christmas dinner.

To understand the origins of the Yorkshire pudding Christmas dinner debate, we need to turn the clock back to the time when the original pudding was first created.

The origin story

Prior to being given the prefix of Yorkshire in 1747 in the bestselling cookbook “The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple” by English cookery writer Hannah Glasse, a Yorkshire Pudding was simply known as a “batter” or “dripping pudding.”

The original serving of the Yorkshire pudding was as an appetizer to a main meal, usually with gravy. This was because it would fill you up, meaning you wouldn’t eat as much meat, which was expensive. It was originally cooked in northern England over a fire with the meat roasting above it. The fats and juices from the meat would drip into the pudding and provide flavor and color.

Traditionally, the word “pudding” referred to homely and rustic desserts that were commonly eaten by the lower classes. These could be either sweet or salty. Pudding dishes are mainly made with flour and have a cake-like consistency. Other savory puddings include steak and kidney pudding and suet pudding.

The Yorkshire Pudding is a baked pudding made from a batter of eggs, flour and milk or water. It has become a common British side dish, which is versatile and can be served in many different ways — although mainly recognized as an accompaniment to a roast dinner. Yorkshire puddings were originally made by tipping the batter into the fat around the roasting meat but progressed over the years to be given their own square dish.

The smaller circular puddings we are more familiar with today date back to Hannah Glasse’s original recipe, in which spoonfuls of batter were dropped into fat surrounding the meat — and often referred to as Yorkshire puffs.

It has been suggested the pudding was given the name “Yorkshire” due to the region’s association with coal and the high temperatures this produced that helped to make crispy batter.

Healthy or pure indulgence?

When you look at the individual ingredients that make up a Yorkshire pudding, they are quite healthy. But the way they are cooked is another matter.

Eggs, for example, are considered one of the most nutritious foods on the planet and contain protein, vitamins B2, B6, B12, zinc, iron and selenium. Milk is also nutrient-rich in both protein and fat along with calcium, while flour can provide you with micronutrients. For example, one cup of flour includes one gram of thiamin (vitamin B1), which is 85% of your recommended daily intake.

Traditionally, Yorkshire Puddings are cooked in fat or dripping. A small amount of fat is essential in our diets, as it’s a source of essential fatty acids, which the body cannot make itself. But too much fat can lead to weight gain.

Vegetable oils, such as sunflower, can also be used as they reach very high temperatures. There has also been debate as to whether olive oil can be used; however, as long as it’s a good quality, true olive oil, it’s fine.

Recipes and ideas

As well as being a roast dinner side dish, these humble puddings are ideal for a cheap and filling family supper. The batter can be turned into puffy pizza bases, fluffy wraps and impressive toad in the holes.

It would also appear that Yorkshire pudding-style dishes are now eaten all over the world. Japan serves them with anything from cheese to jam and with soup. The popover is the U.S. version of the Yorkshire pudding, which dates back to 1850, while Germany and the Netherlands make Dutch Babies, which is a flat Yorkshire pudding with berries and sugar on top.

Back to the original debate then — should we or should we not have a Yorkie with our Christmas dinner? If you are a strict traditionalist, then technically you should steer clear. It’s unlikely that Yorkshire puddings were included in the first traditional Christmas dinners because they had not yet been invented. Though it should also be noted that neither would one have expected to see pigs in blankets on an early Christmas dinner plate. Despite often being considered a Christmas staple, they’ve only been around since the 1950s.

So I would say, why not include the Yorkshire pudding, food trends are always changing and modernizing. Indeed, Christmas dinner dates back to medieval times and has been evolving ever since.

You could even dress these puddings up for the Christmas table — Yorkshire Pudding canapes anyone? While any leftover batter could also be used to make a toad in the hole with turkey and gravy — or even topped with cranberries and ice cream — it is Christmas after all.The Conversation

Hazel Flight, Programme Lead Nutrition and Health, Edge Hill University

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

Trump aide follows him on golf course with a printer to boost ego with “uplifting articles”: report

More than 23 people close to the inner workings of former President Donald Trump’s life painted a picture of his post-presidential psyche in interviews with The Washington Post. 

Some of the people interviewed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, shared that Trump needed constant reassurance and ego boosts from his staff on a daily basis. 

Natalie Harp, a former host on the conservative cable network One America News, is now a Trump employee who accompanies him on his daily golf trips with a laptop and sometimes a printer to show him “uplifting” news articles and social media posts that might lift his spirits. Trump’s White House assistant and current aide Molly Michael also sometimes calls his network of allies to ask them to call the former president with “positive affirmations.”

Former Trump adviser-turned-critic David Urban told the Post that the former president does not want constructive criticism from his employees.

“He needs someone there to say, ‘Here’s a really bad idea, and this is why,'” he said. “I don’t think he has that kind of crowd around him right now. Nor does the president want anybody like that.”

Another longtime Trump confidant described his post-presidential life in Florida as “sad,” as he tries to recreate his life at the White House.

“It’s like a Barbie Dream House miniature,” the confidant said. 

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Trump aides were stunned by his ignorance on key issues: “He knew nothing about so many things”

Other observers say that the constant reassurance Trump received from his staff after leaving office led to irresponsible conduct that may result in a criminal indictment, like the mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. 

“I think it’s pretty obvious, when there was no one around to tell you that, ‘No, Mr. President, you cannot do that,’ it just leads inevitably to this kind of problem,” said author Chris Whipple, who writes on the inner workings of the White House. He added that the current environment in Florida “looks almost like the Trump Presidency 2.0,” but with “no guard rails, on steroids.”

In response to the reports from staff, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung claimed in a statement to the Post that Trump “spent the last two years continuing to build up the MAGA movement and helping elect America First candidates across the country, to the tune of a 98.6% endorsement record in primary elections.” He added that “there is nobody who has worked harder to advance the conservative movement” than Trump. 

“After years of biased media coverage and Big Tech meddling in an election to help Joe Biden and the Democrats, President Trump continues to be the single, most dominant force in politics and people — especially unnamed sources who purport to be close to him — should never doubt his ability to win in a decisive and commanding fashion,” Cheung wrote.

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It appears that Trump’s staff had to begin showering him with positive affirmations from the moment he left office. In early 2021, Trump requested his team of advisers to summon a press pool — like the reporters and photographers that traveled with him during his presidency — for an event at Mar-a-Lago. However, he didn’t understand that since he was no longer president, there was no press pool on call. 

“We had to explain to him that he didn’t have a group standing around waiting for him anymore,” one former aide shared with The Post.

Advisers also shared that he was angry about being banned from social media sites, especially Twitter, which he used constantly during his presidency. His account was suspended for spreading misinformation and inciting violence on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the attack on the Capitol. Sources told the Post he barely focused on anything but his election loss, and spreading conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

“It was a really dark, dark time,” the aide told The Post, recalling that his team would ask “are you going to set up a library? What’s your post-presidential foundation?” He added that Trump “wasn’t interested in any of that at all.”

Now that he has lost the press coverage that comes with the presidency, Trump has sought out admiration from club members who pay for access to his Mar-a-Lago and New Jersey clubs where he is almost always present. 

“The appetite for attention hasn’t waned, but that’s where he gets it now,” a Trump confidant told the Post. “The networks don’t carry his rallies. He doesn’t get interviews anymore. He can’t stand under the wing of Air Force One and gaggle [with reporters] for an hour.”

If Trump doesn’t get enough attention from Mar-a-Lago members, he can rely on constant praise from Harp, who some longtime aides are wary of. While some advisers have warned Trump to check his statements on Truth Social before posting them, Harp is known to be willing to post whatever he wants without review. 

Harp is also said to be attached to Trump all day, including sitting outside his office and following him around during his golf games. “Like other staffers, I do spend time with him,” Harp wrote. “He is extremely popular with the people,” she said. “I see that by being with him.”

However, some are not happy about her influence.

“She is indicative of the people around him who just love him,” one adviser said. “Love him too much.”

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Newly elected House Republican busted as a fraud — weeks after winning his race: report

George Santos, who flipped the House seat in New York’s 3rd Congressional District last month, made history as the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent, but his résumé appears to be filled with falsehoods, according to a deep dive by The New York Times.

Santos campaigned on being the “full embodiment of the American dream,” and painted himself as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with an animal rescue charity that saved over 2,500 cats and dogs, The Times reported.

But his portfolio fails to hold up the fictions he sold to voters while on the campaign trail.

Santos’ work history listed on his campaign biography mentions that he worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but both of the Wall Street firms told the Times “they had no record of his ever working there.”

Similarly, officials at Baruch College found no record of Santos or anyone with a matching name and date of birth graduating from the college in 2010 despite Santos claiming he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance.

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Voter fraud crusader Mark Meadows may be charged with voter fraud after registering at mobile home

The Internal Revenue Service also could not locate any record of a registered charity with the name Friends of Pets United – Santos’ animal rescue group, which he claimed to run for five years. 

He cited the group as proof of a history of philanthropic work while running for the seat. The group held a fundraiser with a New Jersey animal rescue group in 2017, charging $50 for entry. But the event’s beneficiary never received any of the funds, according to the report.

The incoming congressman has also claimed to have a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties, but The Times found no records of such properties.

Santos’ history also has the potential to pose ethical and even potential legal challenges once he takes office.

Santos omitted key information on his personal financial disclosures and was charged with check fraud in Brazil, according to The Times. 

Santos, whose parents emigrated from Brazil, spent some time there in 2008. When he was 19 years old, he stole the checkbook of a man his mother was caring for, according to Brazilian court records uncovered by The Times. 

He then used the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases and bought a pair of shoes. Santos confessed to the crime two years later and was ultimately charged, police and court records revealed. But the case remains unresolved, the court and local prosecutor in Brazil confirmed to The Times. Santos did not respond to an official summons, and a court representative could not find him at his given address.

The time period overlapped with when Santos claims he attended Baruch College, but no evidence confirms this to be true. 

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The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the House Republicans’ campaign arm, claims that Santos attended New York University, but an NYU spokesman found no attendance records matching his name and birth date, The Times reported. 

If his resume wasn’t enough of a mystery, Santos has also added other fictional tales to his portfolio, claiming that his company “lost four employees” at the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016.

But none of the 49 victims appear to have worked at any of the firms named in his biography, according to a Times review of news coverage and obituaries.

Santos did not provide any documentation to refute The Times’ reporting, but his lawyer Joe Murray did provide a brief statement accusing the company of “attempting to smear his good name with these defamatory allegations.”

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Trump NFT images are based on freely available photos, but his fans bought them anyway

In Donald Trump’s long career of licensing his name to seemingly random products like steaks, airlines, and online courses, his launch of an online art series is surely the strangest yet.

Posting what he called a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” to his “Truth Social” website on Thursday, the disgraced ex-president urged supporters to buy “digital trading cards” of crudely made memes of himself which can be traded on cryptocurrency markets as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Some of the images, which were offered at a $99 initial price, appear to be based on copyrighted photos which may not be properly licensed.

Trump’s embrace of NFTs is a dramatic change in his attitude toward digital assets. In 2019, he derided cryptocurrencies as being “highly volatile and based on thin air” and being likely to “facilitate unlawful behavior.”

On the official website to purchase the images, the company offering them, NFT INT LLC, disclosed that Trump had only licensed his name for the product and was not affiliated with its operations. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the contact address listed on the site was for a private mailbox in Park City, Utah. The owner of the box claimed to be unaffiliated with Trump or the NFT sales in an interview with the newspaper.

In a recorded video message to supporters, Trump hailed the artistic quality of the images, which appear to be assembled randomly and automatically by a computer program from a pre-defined collection of backgrounds, costumes, and heads, according to listings on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. According to the Collect Trump Cards website, the NFT graphics were designed by an illustrator named Clark Mitchell.

“These cards feature some of the really incredible artwork pertaining to my life and career, it’s been very exciting,” Trump said in the video, also noting that only a limited number of the virtual cards would be released. He also offered several sweepstakes incentives to people who purchased, including a dinner and a chance to speak to him on the Zoom video conference service.

Several of the paper doll-style images used in the cards appear to be barely modified copies of widely available photos seen on clothing retailer and stock photo websites.

One image of the ex-president wearing a formal tuxedo appears to have been constructed from an oversized Trump head superimposed onto a body of a model featured on the website of the clothing retailer Men’s Wearhouse.

Another image depicting Trump as a cowboy sheriff seems to be based almost entirely on a photo of a model wearing duster-style jacket made by Scully Leather that is currently available for sale at Walmart and Amazon.

A third Trump NFT showing an imaginary scene of the ex-president as a fighter pilot standing on a globe appears to be derived from an image offered for sale by the stock photo company Shutterstock. On Twitter, several users discovered that the some of the NFTs were using background images that were freely available.

NFT INT LLC did not specify whether it had paid to license the images featured in the digital cards. Trump’s campaign operations have attracted controversy in the music business several times for using songs without permission or payment at events.

Despite the low quality of the images, the initial offering of the Trump NFTs sold out, according to data viewable on OpenSea. As of this writing, 8% of the cards were listed as for re-sale, most with a price above the original $99 offering, even though a number of initial buyers said on Twitter that they were unable to access their assets.

With a limited production of 45,000 and a $99 sale price, the creators of the NFT managed to net just under $4.5 million for their efforts. Under the images’ license agreement, the creators receive 10% in perpetuity of any future secondary sales as well. Neither Trump nor NFT INT LLC has disclosed the terms of his compensation to promote the images. The company will not be offering any refunds on initial purchases, according to its website.

Mocking Trump’s virtual trading cards proved to be remarkably unifying across the political spectrum as even some of the bilious billionaire’s staunchest supporters condemned him for selling them and hyping them as a “major announcement.”

“I can’t do this anymore,” far-right podcaster and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on his Thursday program. “He’s one of the greatest presidents in history, but I gotta tell you: whoever–what business partner and anybody on the comms team and anybody at Mar-a-Lago – and I love the folks down there – but we’re at war. They oughta be fired today.”

Even President Joe Biden poked fun at his predecessor in a tweet in which he touted his own accomplishments in contrast to the imaginary feats depicted in the Trump NFTs.

The Good Liars, a progressive comedy duo, launched its own anti-Trump NFT called Honest Trump Cards which features equally fanciful images of the former president depicted as morbidly obese and evil.

Cleanup is underway for the US’s second-largest tar sands oil spill

The second-largest tar sands oil spill in the country — which left a black pockmark on Kansas grasslands a few weeks ago — will be harder to clean compared to past oil spills.

In early December, nearly 14,000 barrels of oil known as diluted bitumen spilled in north-central Kansas, three hours outside of Kansas City, Kansas. The cleanup is still underway, with at least 4,000 barrels now cleared from a waterway known as Mill Creek. But as time goes on, environmentalists and infrastructure experts worry about the oil that will be more difficult to clean.

According to TC Energy ,the Canadian operator of the Keystone Pipeline responsible for the spill, other sections of the pipeline have been restarted at reduced pressure. At the time of the spill, the pipeline was operating at 80 percent of the maximum recommended rate, which is allowed under a 2007 permit granted to the pipeline company by the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA. Normally, crude oil pipelines can’t operate above 72 percent of this rate. To be granted the exception, TC Energy had to “construct the pipeline using higher-grade steel,” according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

Diluted bitumen, or dilbit, is a natural oil sand found in sand deposits. It’s composed of sand, water, and bitumen, a sticky, black petroleum. According to an Inside Climate News analysis, dilbit is the heaviest of the crude oils used today and 50 to 70 percent of its composition is likely to sink in water, compared to the less than 10 percent of most crude oils. The oil inside the Keystone Pipeline is transported from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada — the globe’s third largest petroleum reserve — to refineries in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast. The leak occurred on a section of the Keystone Pipeline completed in 2011. 

“It is troubling to see so many failures and so much oil spilled from any pipeline, but it is especially troubling from such a relatively new pipeline,” Bill Caram, executive director of the nonprofit pipeline watchdog group Pipeline Safety Trust, said in a statement. 

According to a report from the National Academy of Sciences, dilbit is harder to clean, coats and adheres to landscapes and animals more than other crude oils, and has a smaller window of opportunity for proper cleanup. This study was commissioned by Congress after the infamous 2010 Kalamazoo, Michigan oil spill, where nearly 42,000 barrels of dilbit spilled into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River from an Enbridge-operated pipeline. This oil spill, which took four years and billions of dollars to clean up while also prompting the evacuation of hundreds of homes, was the worst tar sands oil spill in the nation’s history.

So far, 71 fish and four mammals have been confirmed killed in the Kansas oil spill, with one beaver saved by rescue crews, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. After the initial spill, TC Energy created two dams to prevent any continued spread and has since been working to remove the tar sands oil from surface water. According to the EPA, no drinking water wells were affected by the spill, but the federal agency and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment have urged people and animals to avoid the contaminated creek.

“We continue to prioritize the safety of people and the environment,” TC Energy said in a statement. “We are working with wildlife assessment crews including state and federal wildlife trustees and have trained professional responders onsite to identify any impacts to wildlife.”

The company has previously paid over $300,000 in fines related to damage caused by the Keystone Pipeline. 

The Keystone Pipeline, and its now-defunct offshoot Keystone XL, have sparked battles from local communities and Indigenous people in the nation’s prairie lands since its inception. In 2011, then-Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman urged the federal government to stop the expansion of the pipeline through his state to protect water. When the Keystone XL segment was announced, federal and local law enforcement began to strategize about how to stop Indigenous protests in Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska “by any means.” 

The ruptured Kansas segment of the pipeline remains closed during the cleanup process. In a statement, TC Energy said it continues to work with the PHMSA to determine the cause of the ruptured line. President Joseph Biden recently released 2 million barrels of oil from the nation’s strategic reserve to various refineries in hopes of preventing “potential supply disruptions” caused by the spill. 

*Correction

This story has been updated to describe Pipeline Safety Trust as a nonprofit public watchdog group.

Hallmark’s latest Jewish offering: An order of “Hanukkah on Rye” piled high with racial pandering

“It’s Chanukkah, Bubbe, I don’t have time for deep thoughts: just latkes, dreidels and menorahs.” – Molly (Yael Grobglas) in Hallmark’s “Hanukkah on Rye” 

I want to skip ahead for a second, because against everything I experienced previously while watching Hallmark’s nonsensically titled holiday movie “Hanukkah on Rye,” I cried at the end. There’s a moment where the romantic leads’ grandmothers realize they have a deeper connection than the plot contrivance of their respective deli behemoths, and I was, in spite of my better judgment, touched. Images of diasporic Jews finding each other after lifetimes apart will always carry with it a certain bittersweet resonance, even when it comes after 80 minutes of regressive vapidity. Ya got me. 

To watch “Hanukkah on Rye” is to experience a racial othering in real time.

Directed by Hallmark workhorse Peter DeLuise – whose CV includes the Lori Loughlin-starring “Garage Sale Mystery” series – “Hanukkah on Rye” seems inspired by “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940), that James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan comedy about two rival shopkeepers who fall for each other as anonymous pen pals. The often retold story also inspired 1949’s Judy Garland musical “In the Good Old Summertime” and Nora Ephron‘s 1998 update “You’ve Got Mail” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. But instead of a shop that sells leathergoods, music or books, with “Hanukkah on Rye” it’s Jewish delis.

I’m not sure if screenwriter Julie Sherman Wolfe, who has written 24 films for Hallmark, is making some kind of comment on the Jewish lineage of this surprisingly evergreen story, yet the connection is obvious enough: the original “Shop Around the Corner” story comes from a play by Miklós László, adapted by Samson Raphaelson and directed by Ernst Lubitsch – all Jews. Ripping apart a Hallmark film has become somewhat de rigueur and extremely easy, but I was genuinely interested in this latest attempt at a Jewish-centric story partly because of this lineage, and also because the channel has made honest and concerted efforts into inclusion of the “other” December holiday since 2019. All efforts to this point have been alarming, to say the least, but this one finds the channel really perfecting the art of racial pandering. 

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If “A Christmas … Present” shows what Candace Cameron Bure means by tradition, she can keep it

Like most Hallmark films, “Hanukkah on Rye” is about the inevitable romance of two people not looking for love. Molly (Yael Grobglas) is the heir-apparent to Gilbert’s deli in New York City’s Lower East Side. Gilbert’s is a classic Jewish deli that, to their detriment, refuses to stray from tradition, even as business is falling. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Jacob (Broadway star Jeremy Jordan) is getting marching orders from his grandmother Esther (Paula Shaw) as they prepare to open up a Zimmer’s location in . . . you guessed it, New York City’s Lower East Side. Unlike Gilbert’s, Zimmer’s business is booming thanks to a menu that mirrors America as a “melting pot,” with dishes like “fajitas and fettuccine alfredo,” and Esther is determined, for reasons that get revealed later, to open up her second location, down the street from Gilbert’s. Somehow. Down the street. From Gilbert’s. 

Hanukkah on RyeYael Grobglas and Jeremy Jordan in “Hanukkah on Rye” (Hallmark Media/Thomas Fricke)

Jacob goes to New York where he is subletting in a building where Molly happens to live (imagine that). Instead of meeting and immediately having a quarrel about their competing businesses, and about the wild coincidence that two Jewish deli proprietors are living in the same building, Jacob keeps mum about his purpose. Meanwhile, both characters’ grandmothers, anxious about their grandchildren’s lack of kids (because of course, because Jewish), sign them up for an old-school matchmaking service in which Molly and Jacob must write to each other without knowledge of either’s real name or profession. The two agree to do this out of love for their bubbes despite their repeated protestations against dating, and, while pen pal Molly and Jacob fall in love, so do in-person Molly and Jacob, unaware that either one is the same. 

Since Hanukkah is more or less a holiday about Jewish resilience in the face of forced assimilation, I was glad to see a mainstream film, even one as openly saccharine as this, get something fundamental so correctly. 

“Hanukkah on Rye” delivers on its basic promise: to be a Hanukkah movie. That may sound trite, but considering that Hallmark’s previous Hanukkah films for their “Countdown to Christmas” series, of which this film is a part, were really just Christmas movies where one of the romantic leads is a clueless Jew, there is something nominally refreshing about this year’s original. But I really mean that only in the most basic sense. “Hanukkah on Rye’s” central problem is that it never seems to want to let you forget that it’s about Jews. There are about a hundred signifiers a minute; for some reason this manifests frequently with interstitials of bagels, pastrami and matzoh ball soup over Klezmer music, none of which is customary on Hanukkah. Every character uses Yiddish with impunity, and the film’s running joke is that both families are exactly alike with only minute differences. Though this is played for a certain amount of charm, it only reinforces unfortunate antisemitic tropes. Jews are not a monolith; we exist in a variety of social classes and professional sectors with a (sometimes annoying) political variance. Yet, to watch “Hanukkah on Rye” is to experience a racial othering in real time, as if Jews are perennially stuck in some manufactured bubble in which we’re all badgered by overbearing parents, we all eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve while we watch a movie, and the only thing we disagree on is the proper way to dress up a bagel with lox and capers. 

Hanukkah on RyeLox and bagels in “Hanukkah on Rye” (Hallmark Media/Steven Ackerman)

Hallmark Media, formerly Crown Media, the producing company for the Hallmark Channel, started making “Hanukkah” movies in 2019. Lifetime swiftly announced its own contribution to the canon, and so, short as this period has been, it can basically be divided into two eras. One era is the 2019 trio of Lifetime’s “Mistletoe & Menorahs” and Hallmark’s “Holiday Date” and “Double Holiday”; the other is the era of “actually” Hanukkah films, which include “Love, Lights, Hanukkah!” (2020), “Eight Gifts of Hanukkah” (2021) and this year’s “Hanukkah on Rye,” which premiered Sunday. The former all feature interfaith couples where the two leads have an inexplicably constrained amount of time to learn the other’s holiday, an uncomfortably contrived scenario that has led to its fair share of criticism: namely that the films aren’t representing Jews so much as scapegoating them. The response, seemingly, has been to overload Hanukkah scripts with top-heavy iconography and reference points. 

I am pretty sure that “Hanukkah on Rye” only uses the word beshert as many times as it does just to prove its intentions.

Yet, a broken clock is right at least twice, as the saying goes; for example, many doors have a mezuzah on them, and, miraculously, no one seems to have to explain it. The film’s opening scene, in which Molly is making egg creams is a charming nod to a distinctly New York Jewish experience. But it is actually in a scene during the final act with which I was most taken aback. In a sharp contrast from previous Hallmark films, Wolfe and DeLuise allow Molly and Jacob to reflect on the Jewish immigrant experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Holocaust is never mentioned, but Grobglas’ character does speak to antisemitic treatment abroad and rough living conditions in New York; the kind of hard-knock life that paves the path for makeshift community centers, like Jewish delis, to provide comfort for those who’ve lost quite a bit. Since Hanukkah is more or less a holiday about Jewish resilience in the face of forced assimilation, I was glad to see a mainstream film, even one as openly saccharine as this, get something fundamental so correctly. 

Hanukkah on RyeJeremy Jordan in “Hanukkah on Rye” (Hallmark Media/Steven Ackerman)

But, it’s worth wondering why Hallmark insists on painting Jews with the broadest brush available. Christmas fare on the channel, by contrast, doesn’t feature interstitials of people singing church songs. The channel’s not-so-coded conservatism notwithstanding, Hallmark generally stays away from painting Christians as cultural monoliths. Yet, all of their Hanukkah films insist on racial stereotyping and religious othering, pulling Jews into a cavalcade of the most obvious iconography. I am pretty sure that “Hanukkah on Rye” only uses the word beshert as many times as it does just to prove its intentions, and not because Molly and Jacob have actually met their soulmate within the eight days of Hanukkah. The two leads have a pretend fight in one scene because Molly finds out that Jacob has never seen “Fiddler on the Roof,” and incredulously suggests that Jacob doesn’t have any Jewish blood, a bizarre joke that erroneously echoes the “Jewish gene” fallacy, and further ignores an entire population of Jews by choice. 

While it is tempting to dismiss Hallmark’s Hanukkah films as candy-coated pablum, Hanukkah representation is infamously slim, and the “Countdown to Christmas” series pulled in 80 million viewers last year; it is enormously popular. That popularity matters when Hallmark’s vast audience is made up of white, politically conservative households. The people who perceive Jews as empty stereotypes aren’t Jews, but white people with little exposure to modern American Jewry. All these films cast Jews as both hyper-assimilated and as perpetual Other, a paradoxical narrative that allows them to be scapegoated and ignored in equal measure. As Terri-Toles Patkin points out, in her excellent essay “Hallmarking Hanukkah,” which focuses on the interfaith films from 2019, these films neatly display the strange negotiation American media has had to consider over the last half century, as Hanukkah’s public presence has outgrown its religious significance. With an estimated 61% of reported Jewish marriages being between a Jewish and non-Jewish partner since 2020, a capitalist hole emerges in the form of Jewish consumerism during the Holiday season. 

Hanukkah on RyeLisa Loeb in “Hanukkah on Rye” (Hallmark Media/Steven Ackerman)

Ultimately I’m left wondering if Jewish inclusion in a consumerist and assimilated sector of the American zeitgeist is more harmful than helpful.

At the present rate, Hallmark is uncomfortably responsible for Jewish representation during the holiday season. Representation matters, since, according to recent FBI numbers, the prevelance of antisemitic hate crimes is at a rate of 57.1% of all religious-based attacks, and any kind of stereotype can and will inherently reduce a group of people to the level of an odd enemy. Further, Hallmark and Lifetime insist on an anachronistic application of Jewish identity through a rearview mirror, instead of considering what the modern American Jewish experience is actually like. It becomes increasingly important that Jewish films reflect an experience outside fantastical nostalgia, as more younger Jews look for identification outside of Zionism and a tacit support of Israel’s apartheid. Obviously no one expects a Hallmark film to tackle such thorny issues, but if the alternative is to saddle Jews with absurd and dated stereotypes, I’d rather have none at all. 

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“Hanukkah on Rye” ultimately lands on the heartwarming notion that diasporic Jews, forever scattered and reaching for material connections to the past, may find each other in the future. And that sunny optimism, though expected for Hallmark, is commendable. But ultimately I’m left wondering if Jewish inclusion in a consumerist and assimilated sector of the American zeitgeist is more harmful than helpful. Why should Jews, or any minority, strive to be enfolded into a tradition of cultural and religious erasure? Many people have wondered why so few Hanukkah films exist, but maybe the better route is to find our experience reflected in the eyes of American Jewish filmmakers. Perhaps a better Hanukkah program should include works by Chantal Akerman, whose opus “Jeanne Dielman” (1975) just topped Sight & Sound’s list of top films of all time. Or would the idiosyncratic work of the late, great Joan Micklin Silver, whose “Hester Street” (1975), with its completely Yiddish screenplay and themes of assimilation still ring true today? Just this year, Steven Spielberg and James Gray, both Jews, released autobiographical films in “The Fablemans” and “Armageddon Time,” respectively. Perhaps we are thinking about what constitutes representation all wrong, a slippery term that probably has more to do with complexly drawn characters and families than the mere presence of a menorah and sufganiyot. 

Hanukkah on RyePaula Shaw, Jeremy Jordan, Yael Grobglas and Linda Darlow in “Hanukkah on Rye” (Hallmark Media/Steven Ackerman)

When I cried at the final scene in “Hanukkah on Rye,” I also felt manipulated. The film projects a fantasy. Though that is admittedly the Hallmark mission, I wonder if, perhaps next time, Hallmark can make a film that feels grounded in reality. Perhaps I’m being naive. But, until then, I’ll look for my representation elsewhere.

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“Are you just winging it?”: Legal expert warns Musk just opened Twitter up to criminal liability

Twitter CEO Elon Musk stirred more controversy on Sunday with a new policy that will end rival platforms’ ability to give themselves “free promotion” on his social media site.

Specifically, the Twitter Support account stated that “we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post.”

In a tweet justifying the new policy, Musk argued that he could no longer allow “relentless free advertising of competitors” on his social media platform, while then adding that “no traditional publisher allows this and neither will Twitter.”

However, as former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti noted in a reply to Musk, Twitter and other social media platforms are not traditional publishers, as such publishers have civil and criminal legal liability for the things that they publish.

In other words, if Twitter decides to classify itself as a traditional publisher, it would be legally liable for every tweet that is posted on the website.

“It appears that you admit that you’re a publisher for purposes of Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code,” Mariotti explained to Musk. “Have you thought about the consequences of the positions you’re taking, or are you just winging it?”

Éric Freyssinet, the deputy director of France’s Cyberspace Gendarmerie Command, similarly warned Musk that his company could lose protections against both civil and criminal legal liabilities if it really enforces this policy.

“Any attempt to remove my tweets that link to my other social media accounts, not violating any law, would actually make Twitter an editorial media, and no longer a social media platform, with civil and criminal liability for *any* illegal content therein,” he explained.

“I would be looking at money trails”: Security expert sounds the alarm over Mar-a-Lago docs storage

A former National Counterterrorism Center recently expressed concern about the latest reports from The New York Times.

That report included photos of guests at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as they stood feet away from the storage closet that housed the classified documents at the center of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation.

Speaking with MSNBC’s Alex Witt, Oliva Troye —who served as an advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence— weighed in with her reaction.

During the discussion, Witt asked Troye, “How dangerous is this” in reference to what the NYT report suggests.

Troye said, “It’s completely reckless, and this is a complete slap in the face for every military intelligence officer that has ever served. It is a betrayal of our entire national security committee community to think that former commander-in-chief did this to us and, when I see these images, actually it pains me.”

She continued, “I get physically ill because I think of the potential damage for people out there on the field, potential damage to things that have been in the works for decades. Things that people give their lives for — Fathers, mothers, daughters, sons. I mean, people who have served. That is what I think about.”

She also offered a word of advice that might be beneficial for the ongoing investigation. “At this point, I would be looking at money trails here,” she advised. “Because how did people not know that this was there? Certainly, someone did. Where did those documents go, where does that lead to, why were they there, and who benefited from this?”

Watch the video below or at this link.