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The world’s insurance bill from natural disasters this year: $115 billion

Extreme weather events have caused an estimated $115 billion in insured financial losses around the world this year according to Swiss Re, the Zurich-based reinsurance giant. That’s 42 percent higher than the 10-year average of $81 billion.

The firm estimates that $50 billion to $65 billion of the total losses are a result of Hurricane Ian, the category 4 storm that pummeled parts of Florida’s west coast in late September with torrential rain, a 10-foot storm storm surge, and winds topping 140 miles per hour. Swiss Re ranks Ian as the second costliest natural disaster ever, in terms of insurance losses, after Hurricane Katrina struck south Louisiana in 2005. 

It’s not just severe storms causing the damage. In February and March, torrential downpour inundated vast swaths of northeastern Australia and racked up an estimated 4 billion in financial damages, more than any other natural disaster in the country’s history. In June, a series of fierce thunderstorms in France sent large hailstones tearing through roofs and destroyed miles of vineyards. The total insured losses were estimated to be around $5 billion. All of them combined to pushed losses above $100 billion for the second year in a row.

Swiss Re conducts this analysis as part of providing reinsurance, a type of financial protection for insurance companies hoping to shield themselves from absorbing all the risk in their portfolios. Climate change has begun to pose major challenges to the industry, as increasingly frequent and severe storms generate unprecedented financial losses. 

In a press release announcing the findings, Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophe perils at Swiss Re, noted the steady increase in extreme weather events over the past several decades, and underscored the importance of using updated models so the industry can more accurately predict damages in a given year. 

“When Hurricane Andrew struck 30 years ago, a USD 20 billion loss event had never occurred before,” Bertogg said. “Now there have been seven such hurricanes in just the past six years.”

Approximately 33 million homes on the U.S. Gulf Coast and the eastern seaboard are at risk of hurricane damage, according to the property intelligence firm CoreLogic, with a total estimated replacement cost of $10.5 trillion. The country’s coastal communities tend to be underinsured, and chronically outdated federal flood maps fail to capture the risk to many flood-prone homes. Though uninsured homeowners can apply for federal funding after natural disasters, they are typically only able to recover a small fraction of their total losses. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that climate change will cause the size of areas with a high flood risk to increase by 55 percent along U.S. coastlines and up to 45 percent along major river systems by the end of the century.

In Elon Musk’s chaotic Twitter reign, right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists are back

“The best thing right now is for Twitter to just burn,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University professor whose research focuses on propaganda and social media. Many people with fewer academic qualifications clearly feel the same way.

Shortly after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk posted, “The bird is freed.” But what did that mean in practice? The platform saw nearly a fivefold increase in the use of the n-word within 12 hours after the shift of ownership. The most engaged tweets were overtly antisemitic. The site was flooded with anonymous trolls spewing racist slurs and Nazi memes. 

But, the surge in overt racism and bigotry wasn’t the only sign of how drastically, and how rapidly, Twitter changed under Musk’s ownership. The billionaire went on to restructure the company — firing top executives, laying off 50 percent of the company’s staff, revamping the Twitter subscription service and reinstating numerous accounts that had been banned under the previous regime for violating the site’s posted guidelines.

Related

Elon Musk must be stopped! If Twitter is to be a true “town square,” it’s time to socialize it

Many such accounts with a history of spreading conspiracy theories and hate speech subsequently purchased “blue checks” for $8 a month through the on-again, off-again Twitter Blue subscription and continue to spread misinformation and extreme content on the app, according to Media Matters.

Anti-LGBTQ accounts like Libs of TikTok and Gays Against Groomers had been suspended from Twitter several times for hateful conduct and spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric targeting Pride events and individuals. Both accounts have now been reinstated and carry the blue checkmark. 

Within 12 hours of Musk’s Twitter takeover, there was a fivefold increase in use of the N-word and the most engaged tweets were overtly antisemitic.

White supremacists Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer, who had their verifications revoked some time ago, have gotten them back under Musk. Kessler was a principal organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and Spencer for a time was the most prominent neo-Nazi and overt white supremacist in America. (At least until the rise of Nick Fuentes.)

With previously suspended accounts returning to Twitter and continuing to spread conspiracy theories online, more ordinary users will inevitably encounter content that otherwise only existed on fringe platforms like 4chan and 8chan, said Gianluca Stringhini, assistant professor at Boston University, who studies cybersecurity and online safety.

Conspiracy theories and other forms of false information “make their way into Twitter and Facebook and mainstream platforms and that’s when regular people see them and they suddenly become viral,” Stringhini said. Hate speech and intolerance toward marginalized communities follow, he added, which can have multiple real-world effects, up to and including violence.

Musk is planning to launch a revised verification feature soon that will have different-colored check marks for businesses, government agencies and individuals, the Washington Post has reported. 

Musk’s earlier version of Twitter Blue, which offered users a blue check (but no significant form of verification) for $8/month, failed after accounts impersonating large corporations, political figures and other celebrities (including Musk himself) ran rampant on the site. Infamously, an account impersonating the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly caused the real company’s stock to dropping by more than 4%.

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Twitter has recently disabled new sign-ups for that service and Musk tweeted on Nov. 25 that the company was “tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week.” That presumably meant Dec. 2, which has now come and gone with no launch announcement

The platform’s “legacy” blue checks from the pre-Musk era were predominantly used by large companies, journalists, politicians, celebrities and other public figures, who had to apply to Twitter and provide extensive identifying information. (Most staff members at Salon, for example, have blue checks that predate Musk’s purchase.) 

Essentially, the blue check has traditionally served as a strong indication that an account legitimately belonged to a named individual or identity with a reputation to uphold, Stringhini said. But what concerns him is now is the apparent absence of content moderation under Musk’s greatly reduced staff. 

“In my work, I try to automate content moderation and the texture of speech, but it is a very, very challenging problem, a nuanced problem,” he said. “Even if you try and automate it as much as possible, you will always need to have a human making the final decision based on context.”

Twitter’s algorithm prioritizes tweets that attract the most engagement, whether or not the content is overtly inflammatory or hateful, Stringhini said. But the platform can always make the decision to demote the most noxious tweets and prevent them from going viral. Without a moderation team of actual humans tracking users, he noted, that is nearly impossible to do. 

White supremacists are using the appearance of respectability offered by forums like Twitter to infiltrate public conversations, said Libby Hemphill, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and the Institute for Social Research.

“They try to look presentable: If you think about the Unite the Right rally [in Charlottesville], you’re looking at clean-cut white boys,” Hemphill said. They use “similar strategies linguistically online” to appear “polite,” avoiding overt racial slurs and profanity.

Elon Musk did society a favor, says Jennifer Grygiel. “He showed us the vulnerability of the public’s access to information and how flawed it was. It’s never been about free speech.”

Previously banned white supremacists who are returning to Twitter have existing audiences, she said, which makes them “more dangerous than a new person trying to come up with an audience,” since amplification on social media is largely a function of audience and reach. 

“Right now, the cost of being hateful doesn’t outweigh the benefits,” Hemphill said. “I don’t just mean the financial costs — there aren’t enough social consequences for being hateful.”

Elon Musk has himself contributed to the problem, Hemphill added, by “spreading anti-trans right-wing nonsense.” She speculated that “losing $44 billion” — Musk’s purchase price in taking Twitter private — “might be enough to get him to change his behavior. But he can afford it, so maybe not.”

Even before Musk’s takeover, Twitter served as a tool for spreading propaganda, said Grygiel, the Syracuse professor, saying that in a sense Musk had offered society a gift. “He showed us the vulnerability of the public’s access to information and how flawed it was,” Grygiel added. “Fundamentally, Twitter’s model is flawed when it comes to public discourse. It’s never been about free speech. It’s always been about the speech of whoever owns it.”

The platform continues to elevate powerful actors, including corporations and governments, and functions as a tool for enabling propagandists, Grygiel added. “This isn’t a place where, essentially, we’re getting social movements and the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter. This is where you’re going to see government voices lifted up over those of the free press.”

Musk appears to run Twitter as a sovereign individual, in charge of who gets assigned what labels, Grygiel added, which changed the fundamental nature of Twitter. “He shifted it away from journalism and pointed it toward himself, and he dangles that in front of the government as a leverage point.”

Academics and journalists, Grygiel suggested, need to consider “life post-Twitter” and congregateon a platform that doesn’t get to decide “who is verified and worthy and who isn’t.” 

Beyond examining the dangers that conspiracy theorists pose to Twitter and the widespread impact of misinformation, “we need to look at what is central to society and helping it function,” Grygiel said, offering an answer. “News — and I’m talking free press-style news, free of the government. How can we get there in a social media world?”

Read more

about Twitter in the Elon era

The mysterious fourth guest at Trump’s ill-fated dinner party has a story to tell

Former President Donald Trump ignited a firestorm of controversy when he took a dinner meeting at his Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida, with Kanye “Ye” West, a far-right rapper who subsequently professed admiration for Adolf Hitler, and Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi livestreamer who has called for creating a white, Christian theocracy that strips Jews of political power.

What has been less widely reported is that there was actually a fourth person at that meeting — and the Huffington Post got in touch with him to get his account of what happened.

“NBC News reported only that the other person in Ye’s group was the parent of a student at Donda Academy, the rapper’s private school in California,” reported Matt Shuham. “But while speaking about the dinner this week, Ye briefly referred to a man named Jamar Montgomery during a livestream with far-right influencer Tim Pool. Ye identified him as a ‘Boeing engineer.'”

“HuffPost tracked Montgomery down and spoke with him Thursday night,” said the report. “He is indeed a Boeing employee, though he did not confirm any connection with Donda Academy. Montgomery told a wild tale about how an invitation from Ye, whom he says he barely knew, quickly led to a dinner with the former leader of the free world. Montgomery shared some details from the evening, including some insight into why a mysterious phone call suddenly darkened Trump’s mood, after which he began treating Ye with open hostility.”

Montgomery, who told HuffPost he is appalled at Fuentes’ views and “fight[s] Nazis” as a civil rights activist, said Ye got in touch with him to discuss education, as he works as a tutor, and the whole thing rapidly escalated: “Montgomery flew from California to Florida, where Karen Giorno, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, drove the crew to Trump’s resort and home. A campaign adviser for Ye’s 2024 presidential bid, far-right influencer Milo Yiannopoulos, organized the dinner but did not attend, Montgomery said. ‘Next thing you know, we’re having dinner on the patio at Mar-a-Lago.'”

According to Montgomery, Trump was “very excited” to see Ye, while Fuentes was “fawning over Trump and some of his speeches,” but then, “All of the sudden, he gets a phone call, and the whole mood switches.” In the subsequent InfoWars show where Ye praised Hitler, Fuentes claimed that this call came from Ye’s lawyer Nick Gravantes, telling Trump the dinner was a “set up,” although Gravantes denies any such conversation took place.

Sandy Hook attorney calls Alex Jones “cowardly” for filing bankruptcy

Infowars host Alex Jones has filed for personal bankruptcy following the verdict handed down in the defamation lawsuit filed against him by the families of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims.

According to HuffPost, court documents indicate that Jones’ legal team filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas’ Southern District.

Jones’ filing comes after months of unfavorable court rulings in connection with the massive lawsuit.

Per the news outlet, a Texas court indicated that the conspiracy theorist owed more than $45 million back in August. Then, in October, a Connecticut court hit Jones with a staggering $965 million in punitive damages, followed another Connecticut court ruling where he was ordered to pay an additional $473 million.

Altogether, Jones is facing more than $1 billion in damages after circulating disturbing conspiracy theories questioning the legitimacy of the shooting and whether it actually happened.

To make matters worse, many families of the victims were trolled by Jones’ InfoWars followers who also echoed his baseless claims. As a result of the conspiracy theories, the Sandy Hook families argued that Jones managed to capitalize on their misfortunes.

In wake of the latest reports about Jones’ bankruptcy filing, Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys representing the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, weighed in with a critical reaction to the legal tactic.

In a new statement, Mattei described Jones’ latest action as “cowardly.”

“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” Mattei said.

He added, “The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in intentional and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did. The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict.”

Biden’s Holiday Express delivers for 21st-century robber barons at rail workers’ expense

Two and a half months ago President Biden patted himself on the back for closing a rail labor pact that was a landmark “win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic” that had avoided a strike just before Christmas. This week, almost three weeks after the midterms, he had to turn to Congress to impose that same pact on 115,000 workers to avert “a potentially crippling national rail shutdown” just before Christmas.

What happened?

How did it come to pass President Biden, who describes himself as the “most pro-union president in U.S. history”, choose to resort to such a heavy-handed tactic to head off a strike he just told us he had prevented? While President Biden did describe the deal as “tentative” in that Sept. 15 ‘we saved Christmas’ statement, he made no mention that the agreement was totally contingent on the pending ratification of the 12 unions that represent the industry’s workers. And while eight of the unions signed off on the deal, four of the unions, including some of the largest rejected it, with 55 percent of the workforce giving it a thumbs down primarily because it lacked paid sick days during AN ONGOING PANDEMIC.

Yikes. This was off brand by a freight train mile. We sure don’t want any pot banging on this chapter.

The same avuncular guy that went around the country before the midterms proclaiming how that election was all about preserving democracy, had no trouble ignoring it when it applied to the actual workplace of essential workers. Of course, Biden was now in a real jam because he evidently believed his own puffed-up press release, which had failed to educate Americans on the only real power unions have, to reject a contract and to withhold their labor.

Unless of course, the President turns to a Congress, to compel workers to work under terms they rejected. If it seems coercive—it is, but thanks to the National Railway Labor Act, passed in 1926, the president can enlist Congress to do just that.

Ironically, back in 1992, the last time it was invoked, was by President George H. Bush when a much younger Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) was one of just a few stalwart pro-labor Democrats to vote NO.

By the time both the House and Senate signed off on Biden’s PATCO like moment, progressive Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) found themselves voting WITH ultra-conservative Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to oppose the imposition of the pact on rail workers. That vote was 80 to 15 with four Senators not voting and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) voting present.

ALL ABOARD THE UNSTOPPABLE

As destiny would have it, this 21st century train wreck fell into the lap of New Jersey’s own Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-10th) who chairs the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials. This week it would be up to Payne to try a real hat trick, get the House to sign off on Biden’s defective rail deal and in the next breadth pass a bill to grant the rail workers seven of the 15 sick days they had been stiffed out of by the rail robber barons.

Not since Denzel Washington starred in the 2010 thriller Unstoppable as a locomotive engineer who gains control of a runaway freight train, has there been such a daunting assignment. The Biden White House needed to get this done fast because they said the railroads would have no choice but to start shutting down the nation’s rail system, particularly for hazardous materials, days before the Dec. 9 deadline. Of course, the White House made it clear there was to be no slowing down for last minute fixes, COVID SMOVID.

This was Amtrak Joe’s Holiday Express. In asking Congress to step in, Biden paid lip service for paid sick leave but suggested that Congress should hold off on voting to impose it. “However well-intentioned, any changes would risk delay and a debilitating shutdown,” he wrote.

Biden continued. “As a proud pro-labor President, I am reluctant to override the ratification procedures and the views of those who voted against the agreement. But in this case – where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families – I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

At the outset of Tuesday’s House floor debate, which Payne was to lead, he seemed a little unsteady before he yielded to Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the floor to make the case that the Congress fix the rail deal Biden wanted imposed on the workers.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed for the sick time bill and the imposition of the deal. The outgoing Speaker blasted the rail industry ownership for making “obscene profits on the backs of workers” while it “slashed jobs and cut corners on safety” and demanded “more and more from the workers…Over the last decade they have given $150 billion dollars in handouts to their corporate executives and wealthiest investors.”

In short order, Payne was in command of the moment, doing his best on behalf of the labor constituency Biden was now abusing.

“Paid sick leave days are a right that for too long freight railroads have refused to provide to rail workers—that is the issue,” Payne told his colleagues. “This benefit will cost less than one percent of the profits the railroads reported last year. Our bill will guarantee that freight rail workers will have seven sick leave and I am pleased that we have seen bipartisan support for this idea in the Senate.”

Several minutes into the debate Payne picked up steam and from a debating standpoint ran circles around his GOP adversary, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO).  Graves was running on E for talking points that boiled down to how much better railroad workers had it than the rest of America’s workers and that Biden was turning to Congress to accomplish what he failed to do, resolve the rail labor dispute.

Payne provided the important backstory that correctly catalogued the intransigence of the railroads that are now captive to Wall Street. The industry has seen an unprecedented market consolidation with well over 40 Class One railroads now just seven giant conglomerates that have abused their increasing monopoly power to cash in on increased traffic volume even as they recklessly shrank their workforce by 30 percent. This maximizing of profits was accomplished by relying on what they call “precision scheduling railroading” that makes getting time off near impossible even during a once in a century mass death event.

“It [the measure granting seven paid sick days] will correct what the freight railroads have refused to do during three years of negotiations with their workers during a worldwide pandemic no less, despite the railroads earning tens of billions of dollars every year during the rise and height, and now the steadying of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Payne said. “They risked their health and that of their families to keep our nation’s freight moving. Rail workers cannot work remotely, and others work outdoors year-round, unlike 75 percent of private industry workers. I should note that the management at these vary same railroads has paid sick days.”

By a 290 to 137 bipartisan tally, the House voted to impose the rail pact without the paid sick day provisions just as President Biden had requested.

The vote in support of rail workers getting the paid sick days, passed by a far narrower 221 to 207 votes.  Just three Republicans, crossed over to support the measure that AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said before the vote would be a remedy for a pact that “fell short by not including provisions on paid sick leave or fair scheduling.”

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Eight House Democrats voted NO on President Biden’s request to impose the rail pact rejected by 55 percent of the aggregate rank and file including New Jersey’s Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1st), that body’s only union electrician.

“Today, I voted to keep a critical piece of American infrastructure running: our railways,” Norcross said in a statement. “I voted to ensure that the workers who operate that strategic asset are treated fairly, earn a decent wage, and get paid sick leave. These hardworking men and women kept food on the table during the pandemic and kept goods on the shelves of small businesses. Our nation needs these workers to be healthy and strong so we can continue to grow our economy and deliver for the American people.”

Norcross was joined by Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA), Rep. Jared Golden, Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WIS), Rep. Rashida Tliab (D-MICH.), and Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA).

Just three House Republicans split with their caucus on the vote to require railroads to provide the seven paid sick days. They were Rep. Don Bacon (R-NEB), Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Rep. John Katko (R-NY).

After the House acted, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) signed on a letter with his colleagues Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Tammy Baldwin (D-WIS), Sherrod Brown (D-OHIO), Ed Markey (D-MASS), Jeff Merkley (D-ORE), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Tina Smith (D-MINN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) urging their colleagues to support the sick day provision.

“Supply chain problems coupled with increased consumer spending and online shopping habits have put the freight rail industry under incredible strain,” the Senators wrote. “And as a result, train crews have been working around the clock often with inflexible and unpredictable work schedules to transport everything from food and fuel to medical supplies and cleaning products.”

The statement continued. “But even as the need for worker protections and workplace flexibility have grown, railroad companies provide zero days of paid sick leave to their workers. What this means is that if a rail worker comes down with COVID, the flu or some other illness and calls in sick, that worker will not only receive no pay, but will be penalized and, in some cases, fired. That is absolutely unacceptable.”

On the floor of the Senate Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) had already made the case for the paid sick time measure earlier.

“What the freight industry is saying to its workers is this ‘it doesn’t matter if you have COVID—It doesn’t matter if you are lying in a hospital bed because of a medical emergency—It doesn’t matter if your wife has just given birth—It just doesn’t matter.” Sanders said. “If you do not come into work, no matter what the reason, we have the right to punish you. We have the right to fire you.”

“Unfortunately, the ‘most labor-friendly president’ has opted to side with Big Business and call for a thwarting of railroad workers’ rights to strike,” said the Railroad Workers United, a national coalition of unionized railroad workers, in a statement. “On Monday, President Biden called upon Congress to adopt legislation that would mandate a contract and end the threat of any legally sanctioned rail strike from happening.”

The RWU continued. “This, although railroad workers have voiced a deep desire to strike in recent months. Rail unions representing more than 55 percent of railroad workers have voted down their respective tentative contracts with the rail carriers in recent weeks.”

The deal was rejected by the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and SMART-TD, one of the largest rail unions.

“The SMART Transportation Division does not support the notion of Congress intervening in our collective bargaining negotiations to prevent a strike,” SMART-TD said in a statement. “We firmly believe in the workers’ right to fight for their own best interests, as well as the best interests of their families. Unfortunately, threats to the economy have caused this Congress to believe that a strike aversion is the best course for this nation.”

SMART-TD’s statement continued. “Our members want and need sick leave, but even more so, they need relief from the damning effects of operational changes made by the railroads over the last five years. If Congress truly wants to take action to improve the industry for our members, then we recommend legislation that will work to reverse the devastation of Precision Scheduled Railroading.”

MAJORITY YES VICTORY NO

When the smoke cleared, the U.S. also rejected the sick leave fix 52 to 43, shy of the 60 needed to pass. Of course, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) voting NO, but six Republican Senators crossed the aisle to join all the other Democrats to support the labor position.

Not present for that vote were Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) whose run-off election is Tuesday.

America’s 21st century railroad robber barons were off the hook for sick days thanks to their bipartisan lock on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“The shackles [of regulation] have been removed and you have a bunch of irresponsible corporate leadership at the railroads who are abusing the monopoly power they have gained through mergers and acquisitions,” said Matt Parker, a Union Pacific engineer, with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, who is also affiliated with Railway Workers United. [Listen Here]

What’s tragically missed here is that there’s a dangerous through line between Trump’s tenure and Biden’s presidency in that what our nation’s leadership continues to miss is the link between how the lack of paid sick time, particularly in the TRANSPORT sector, promotes the spread of something as deadly as COVID.

Why you might even have a mass death event that could kill over a million people and disable millions more.

Lessons learned indeed.

Texas Republican election loser wants to “void” his defeat because it’s not the “true outcome”

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A losing Republican candidate for the Texas House of Representatives is challenging his defeat and asking the Legislature to void the results of the election.

Republican Mike May this week filed what’s known as an election contest with the Texas secretary of state’s office, citing reports of scattered paper ballot shortages at “numerous” polling places on Election Day. May lost to incumbent Democrat Jon Rosenthal by more than 6,000 votes in his bid to represent House District 135 in the Houston area.

The secretary of state’s office on Tuesday delivered May’s petition to House Speaker Dade Phelan, who can refer the contest to a committee for investigation and appoint another member of the House as a “master” to oversee discovery and evidence related to the contested election. If they side with May and void the results, another election would be required to decide the district’s representative. The House can also toss the contest by declaring it “frivolous.”

Election Day issues once again pushed Harris County’s election officials back under scrutiny, including from the state’s Republican leadership. Voting in Harris County was extended by court order for an extra hour after about a dozen polling places were delayed in opening. The county’s elections administrator Clifford Tatum has also acknowledged issues with insufficient paper ballots at some polling places, though he said election staff was dispatched to deliver additional ballots.

The fumbles prompted a lawsuit by the Harris County GOP, which alleged voters were disenfranchised by the paper shortages. The Harris County district attorney has since launched an investigation into allegations of “irregularities.” The Texas Election Code includes criminal penalties for various violations, including illegal voting, the unsolicited distribution of mail-in ballot applications by local election officials and the failure to distribute election supplies.

In his petition, May argued the results of the election were not the “true outcome” because election officials “prevented eligible voters from voting.” May did not immediately return a request for comment.

On Friday, Rosenthal’s camp framed May’s election contest as part of a national trend to “deny the outcome of an election when you lose.”

“This race demonstrated one of the largest percentage point differences in Harris County, it wasn’t even close,” Rosenthal’s campaign manager, Bailey Stober, said in a statement. “The opposition presented himself and his positions and was rejected by voters overwhelmingly. That is how democracy works.”

The statement came soon after Harris County Attorney Christian D. Menefee criticized the contest as an effort to “call into question the 2022 election in Harris County and lay the groundwork to force a redo.”

It’s unclear how Phelan will handle the contest. But Menefee said he was hopeful that Phelan would throw out the challenge.

“And I trust that he will ensure a fair process before impartial legislators, without interference from the state leaders and other elected officials who have a history of making baseless claims against Harris County elections,” Menefee said.

The House took on a similar exercise in 2011 following a challenge by Travis County Republican Dan Neil, who, after a recount, lost to state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, by 12 votes. The House eventually upheld Howard’s win. She remains in the Texas Legislature.

Up till then, the Legislature had seen 113 election contests since 1846, according to the Texas Legislative Council, an in-house legal and research arm of the Texas Legislature. The losing party, however, had not managed to turn the outcome of the election at least in the last 30 years. In the one case in which the House ordered a new election in 1981, the winner of the initial contest was again elected.

Harris County, the state’s largest, has in recent years been ground zero for partisan battles over election administration. Since losing control of the county, Republicans have regularly challenged new voting initiatives like the creation of countywide voting that allows voters to cast ballots at any polling place on Election Day as well as the county’s creation of an elections administrators office.

The county also drew the ire of state Republicans who, in sweeping legislation passed in 2021, banned initiatives it championed in the first major election during the pandemic — 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting. The county said those voting methods were disproportionately used by voters of color.

Harris County will already be the subject of a full post-election audit by the state. The secretary of state’s office previously selected the county for review as part of a new audit process put in place by the Republican legislation.

Disclosure: Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/12/02/texas-house-election-challenge/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

South Africa’s small-scale fishers have been marginalized since apartheid — what needs to change

South Africa is home to tens of thousands of small-scale fishers and fishing households. Some fish are purely for consumption and subsistence, while others make up a small commercial sector.

Small-scale fishers have long suffered discrimination in South Africa. Under the apartheid government’s segregation policies, many were forcibly removed from their homes and traditional fishing grounds. They were also unable to sell their catch.

Despite high hopes for reform under the post-apartheid government, policies did not favor the majority of small-scale fisheries. Instead, they emphasized privatization and economic growth.

As a result, small-scale fishers in the Western Cape province joined forces with prominent NGOs and academics. They fought for rights for the sector and a recognition of their way of life. This led to the creation of a regulatory framework that acknowledges their constitutional rights to equity, food security, livelihood and culture.

This Small-Scale Framework consists of a Small-Scale Policy (2012), amended Marine Living Resources Act (MLRA) (2014) and Small-Scale Regulations (2016). It provides fishing access rights to small-scale fishing communities and specifically recognizes vulnerable groups within the fishing sector (such as women, youth, the elderly and the disabled).

However, in a recent research paper, we argue that while the framework is progressive in some ways, it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t take sufficient account of the vulnerability and marginalization of small-scale fishers and fishing communities. Poor implementation of the framework has added to these concerns. So has the COVID pandemic.

The framework’s contribution to poverty reduction and development is thus undermined.

Vulnerabilities in the small-scale sector

The world over, small-scale fishers are subject to factors that make them vulnerable. These include resource depletion, geographical isolation, unsafe working conditions, market fluctuations, climate change, lack of access to healthcare and education, and social exclusion.

In South Africa, for example, stocks harvested by small-scale fishers — particularly high-value stocks such as abalone and West Coast rock lobster — are severely over-exploited. The harvestable amount of West Coast rock lobster is estimated to be around 2% of pre-exploitation levels.

Within small-scale communities, further inequalities may arise. Women, youth and those of different cultures and religions are often discriminated against. For instance, in South Africa, traditional practices mean that even though women are active in the sector, they are generally excluded from “fishing community” meetings with government actors.

Elite capture is a common problem when it comes to the allocation of fishing benefits. Bad actors (including criminals) co-opt processes to gain access to high-value resources. For example, a study in Cape Town exposed former government employees who demanded fees to help community members obtain fishing rights. This excluded many fishers who didn’t have the means to navigate the complicated processes to obtain these rights.

These issues can undermine the efficacy of social interventions designed to reduce poverty in small-scale fisheries. Such interventions may include fishing rights allocation or alternative livelihood programs to reduce dependence on marine and aquatic resources.

Somewhere between prevention and progress

The Small-Scale Framework falls short. It attempts to alleviate poverty by allocating fishing rights to the small-scale sector — but it imposes stringent conditions on allocation. Young people, foreign residents, fishers engaging in alternative livelihoods and any fisher who is not part of a designated community cannot obtain rights.

The framework also lacks ways of ensuring that rights are fairly distributed. It doesn’t have provisions that could help to reduce elite capture. Better community consultation and provision of information in understandable formats would be of assistance in this regard.

The academic community has called for an update to the Small-Scale Policy. The South African Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries has also indicated an intention to amend the Marine Living Resources Act.

Amendments to the framework should focus on reducing vulnerability and marginalization in the sector in the following ways:

  • Livelihood diversification: Currently, to obtain fishing rights, a person must derive the majority of their livelihood from fishing. However, many small-scale fishers in South Africa diversify their livelihoods. The criterion for allocation of fishing rights should be whether a person relies on these resources for food and livelihood — not whether they obtain the majority of their livelihood from fishing.

  • Fishers who do not belong to a fishing community should be able to apply for individual permits. In particular, the subsistence fishers of KwaZulu-Natal have a tradition of fishing as individuals. Currently, many use recreational licenses. These only provide for limited catch and do not allow the fish to be sold or bartered.

  • Stronger procedures should be put in place to uplift marginalized groups within the sector. They need training in value chain development and sustainable harvesting practices. Collaborative activities, such as fish processor cooperatives, should be promoted. People must be appropriately included and consulted on the issues that affect them.

  • Elite capture should be addressed. This is a form of corruption where resources are “captured” by a few powerful individuals to the detriment of the wider community. Engaging the entire community in decision-making processes would help to prevent this corruption. And information must be presented in understandable formats — in the local language and orally through radio and television. There should also be simplified and inexpensive procedures to access government institutions, such as mobile apps. Apps are more accessible to small-scale fishers than, for example, procedures requiring access to a computer or printer.

  • Finally, eligibility criteria for obtaining fishing rights should be expanded to include a larger subset of the sector. Currently, the commercial sector is prioritized and the recreational sector remains largely unregulated. This is part of a larger equity problem in South African fisheries. Rights for the commercial and recreational sectors may need to be reduced to allow for equitable and sustainable development in the fisheries sector.

There are plenty of opportunities and challenges for small-scale fishing in South Africa and around the world. However, equitable distribution of resources and recognition of the lived realities of these fishers is vital to realize the potential of the sector. This will help to contribute to poverty reduction, sustainable livelihoods and development.

Kathleen Auld, Research Associate, World Maritime University and Loretta Feris, Professor of Environmental Law and Vice-Principal, University of Pretoria

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

Waivers for universal school meals expired. What does that mean for childhood nutrition?

Many nutrition and public health professionals started this current school year in a state of mourning. The object of their grief: universal school meals, a national initiative made possible by the pandemic. Waivers were granted to allow schools to provide free breakfasts, lunches and snacks to all children without asking for proof of need or requiring those meals to be eaten in congregate settings — meaning, kids could take home grab-and-go foods during COVID lockdowns. As a result, childhood food insecurity decreased from 2020 to 2021, according to USDA data; the waivers were allowed to expire this fall due to objections from Republican senators.

More than merely keeping kids fed, school meals “are the healthiest meals that kids are eating, because they are modeled after dietary guidelines where half of the plate is fruits and vegetables and they’re . . . offering a lot of whole grains and lean proteins,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association (SNA), which represents 50,000 public school nutrition professionals. “If we could get everyone eating school meals, we would see an improvement, not only in academic achievement of our students, but in their long-term health and wellness.”

While advocates continue to push for permanent, national universal school meals, Colorado passed a ballot initiative in the midterms, joining California and Maine in making universal school meals available to all in-state children; similar proposals are being considered in eight other states. A recent analysis by reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich and online monitoring company Impact Social found that public sentiment for universal school meals was “overwhelmingly positive,” she wrote.

But with or without universal school meals, pretty much anywhere you look across the country efforts are afoot to further improve the nutritional value of school meals and to make them available to a lot more children. The catch: there are big challenges that, ironically, would be mitigated if universal school meals for all had been allowed to continue.

Prioritizing scratch cooking

Scratch cooked meals rather than heat-and-serve options sourced from distributors are not only preferred by kids; they’re also healthier by a number of metrics (they’re generally lower in sodium, sugar, and fat and better at getting students to eat fresh fruits and veg, for example). But there are schools that aren’t able to provide scratch cooked meals because they lack full-service kitchens or the kitchens they do have are “operating with incredibly old equipment, insufficient equipment, or held together by duct tape,” says Pratt-Heavner.

In some cases, says Hilary Seligman, a food insecurity expert and professor at University of California, San Francisco, kitchens were actually removed from schools starting in the ’80s “in the interest of cost efficiency,” to stretch the limited money that USDA reimburses to schools for meals. Currently, the reimbursement is almost $4.50 per lunch for free-lunch students, 40 cents of which was authorized by the Keep Kids Fed Act that amended the earlier Families First Corona Virus Response Act to extend waivers and provide extra funding to budget-strapped nutrition departments. It will disappear at the end of the 2022-23 school year. Advocates say even the current top rate is not sufficient for some schools to purchase enough healthy foods for menus; the last raise came in 2010, under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which upped lunch reimbursements by 6 cents.

“We need to see more progress in how we think about rewriting the reimbursement rate and increasing access to what we think about as eligible foods for reimbursement,” says Robert S. Harvey, president of healthy school food nonprofit FoodCorps. “On one hand there’s the cash component, on the other hand, there’s the context component: nourishing, culturally affirming foods like buffalo if you’re in indigenous and native territories, wild rice, fresh salmon, that aren’t considered eligible for reimbursement” because of outdated (and Eurocentric) USDA guidelines .

This past July, Congress authorized USDA to give out $30 million in equipment grants to schools, which was then upped in October by an additional $50 million. Experts agree that $80 million to build, rebuild and refurbish school kitchens is important. But Seligman calls it “a drop in the bucket of what our schools probably need,” and a number of interrelated challenges stand in the way of that money going as far as it needs to, or anytime soon. For starters, says Pratt-Heavner, continuing supply chain issues are making it difficult for repair technicians to get their hands on necessary parts.

There’s also a labor shortage. “We hear time and time again that school nutrition programs are competing for many of the same workers as local fast-food restaurants,” Pratt-Heavner says. “It can be very difficult for school nutrition programs to compete.”

Universal school meals would help. That’s because each school’s nutrition program is expected to be self-sufficient, enrolling enough students in the meal plan so that reimbursements from USDA (as well as payments from full-price students) help cover things like salaries. But when kids opt out, perhaps because their families can’t afford to pay for meals or the paperwork is too onerous and confusing, enrollments and reimbursements suffer and so, too, do nutrition program revenues.

Increasing farm to school and local sourcing

Pratt-Heavner says there’s been a tremendous improvement in local sourcing over the last decade, thanks in no small part to USDA’s Farm to School program, funded by the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act during the Obama administration; this assists schools in procuring food from nearby farms, and establishing school gardens and other food-related education programs. Local sourcing actually got a boost during the pandemic. “One silver lining of all those supply chain issues is that some districts were able to establish new connections with local growers, when their traditional vendors and distributors were unable to meet the need,” Pratt-Heavner says.

Miguel Villareal, interim co-executive director of the National Farm to School Network, a nonprofit that serves as an information, advocacy, and networking hub, says that in 2018-’19, 72% of school food authorities reported participating in Farm to School programs. “That’s an average of over 43 million children that are being impacted,” he says — a huge uptick from when he began as a school nutrition director 20 years ago in Marin County when “we were serving highly processed foods even though we were surrounded by over 60 organic farms.” He notes another data point of significance: $1.26 billion dollars per year is currently being spent on Farm to School programs.

Here, too, there are hiccups to expansion. Pratt-Heavner points out that “really big school districts struggle to find local growers who can actually meet their demand and meet it consistently; your local farmer may only be able to provide enough asparagus for a quarter of the students you serve and you don’t want to be in the habit of only offering this fresh local produce to a select few elementary schools.”

Harvey says some help is on the way, via USDA’s Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program, which will provide states with $200 million for local food procurement. But again, universal meals could mitigate this issue. It would be a massive step to “remove the bureaucratic red tape of charging kids for meals and the amount of time that school nutrition directors and leaders spend on the application families have to fill out to determine their capacity for meals,” Harvey says.

“Nourishing futures”

Part of the broader farm to school movement, FoodCorps has a mission to equitably expand access to healthy meals and education for all schoolkids, with an emphasis on foods that are culturally relevant. At the recent White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, FoodCorps — an AmeriCorps program that’s partially funded by federal dollars — announced it would be stepping up its efforts heading towards 2030 with a $250 million investment into what it calls its Nourishing Futures initiative.

“We are committed to the idea of food education being critical to unlock to students’ experiencing nourishing meals in school and part of that narrative is that nourishment is not just about caloric intake or nutritious value; it’s also about ensuring that every meal that a child experiences on their plate affirms their sense of identity,” Harvey says. “How do we ensure that young people, regardless of race or place, experience a nourishing meal that deepens that sense of food equity?”

Over the next eight years, Nourishing Futures will be working to bring healthy school meals to another 500,000 school kids on top of the over 130,000 they already serve; educating 1,000 BIPOC food education service members to work in those understaffed school nutrition offices, “to inform menu creation and vendor selection, deepen the relationship with local farmers, and help to think about scratch cooking and kitchen modernization,” according to Harvey. He says there will be an emphasis less on “caloric intake and more about fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh meats, locally sourced, scratch-cooked in a kitchen [and] not processed, not packaged, not shipped in and held in the heat container for the school day.”

Unsurprisingly, the initiative will also push for a federal policy on universal school meals.

Trump releases video defending Jan. 6 Capitol rioters after pressure from Kanye West

Former President Donald Trump expressed his solidarity with the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in a video for a fundraising event on Thursday night hosted by the Patriot Freedom Project, which assists the families of those being prosecuted by the government.

“People have been treated unconstitutionally in my opinion and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said in the video, which appears to be shot in his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. He also complained about the “weaponization of the Department of Justice,” and claimed the nation was “going communist.”

In a September interview, Trump revealed he was “financially supporting” some of the Jan. 6 defendants and promised them pardons and a government apology if he is re-elected in 2024. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he told conservative radio host Wendy Bell. 

The Jan. 6 insurrection resulted in the deaths of four people and around 140 members of law enforcement were injured by rioter attacks, which included weapons such as flagpoles, baseball bats, stun guns, bear spray and pepper spray. One police officer, Brian Sicknick, suffered two strokes after being sprayed with a powerful chemical irritant and died the next day.

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“He tried to f**k me”: Kanye campaign chief says dinner was set up to “make Trump’s life miserable”

Trump’s video comes just days after far-right Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and his associate Kelly Meggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy for trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden. Rhodes, Meggs and three other associates were also convicted of obstructing Congress as it tried to count electoral votes — an offense that carries up to 20 years in prison.

More than 800 defendants from nearly every state and the District of Columbia have already been arrested and federally charged for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack. 

Trump’s statement of support was released after a controversial private dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort with rapper Kanye West, also known as Ye. 

West has made numerous antisemitic comments recently and attended the dinner with a guest: white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Trump has since claimed he didn’t know of Fuentes before their dinner — a statement that Fuentes confirmed — but the meeting brought forth harsh criticism from Republican rivals and allies of Trump alike, including former Vice President Mike Pence.

While Trump was likely expecting a photo-op with West to boost support for his third bid for president, he ended up on the receiving end of a lecture from the rapper, according to NBC News. West said that Trump was not doing enough for those arrested in the Capitol riots. West reportedly told Trump that he may run for president himself, and that Trump should be his running mate.

In a series of “Mar-a-Lago debrief” videos posted on Twitter, West said that Trump should have freed Jan. 6 prisoners when he “had the chance,” and added details about their dinner conversation.

“I think the thing that Trump was most perturbed about, me asking him to be my vice president,” West said in another video. “I think that was like lower on the list of things that caught him off-guard.”

West added that Trump “started basically screaming at me at the table telling me I was going to lose,” at which point West also lost his patience. “I’m like hold on, hold on, hold on, Trump, you’re talking to Ye,” he said in the video.

One longtime Trump adviser told NBC News that West only brought Fuentes to cause a media circus. “The master troll got trolled,” the adviser said. “Kanye punked Trump.”

Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right political adviser to West, confirmed this suspicion, claiming he was “the architect” of the plan to slip Fuentes into the private dinner in order to dissuade Trump from becoming an “establishment bore” by running for president again.  

“I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News of his plan. 

Yiannopoulos knew that news of the dinner would leak and Trump would inevitably mishandle it, so he arranged it “just to make Trump’s life miserable.”

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Trump was apparently “blindsided” by Fuentes’ presence, believing it was a set-up, according to one of Trump’s confidants who spoke to NBC News under the condition of anonymity.

“He tried to f— me. He’s crazy. He can’t beat me,” Trump said, according to the confidant.

In a series of statements on his Truth Social media platform, Trump admitted Fuentes was there but denied knowledge of his past hate speech.

“Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular ‘having to do with his business,'” Trump said in a statement about the dinner. “We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.’ Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”

Along with Fuentes, West has also publicly aligned himself with Jan. 6 organizer Ali Alexander. During a bizarre antisemitic rant on Alex Jones’ Infowars show, the rapper handed over his Twitter account with over 32 million followers to the “Stop the Steal” organizer who was banned on the platform.

“INVESTIGATE THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND DUE PROCESS VIOLATIONS OF THE J6 POLITICAL PRISONERS,” Alexander wrote on West’s account. “Why were the only people killed unarmed protestors that day? FREE ALEX, FREE NICHOLAS, FREE SPEECH, FREE ALI.” All three tweets have now been deleted as West’s account was suspended after posting a swastika.

West’s publicist was also involved in the efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. Chicago publicist Trevian Kutti traveled to the home of Ruby Freeman, a terrified temporary election worker in Georgia who had received death threats after being falsely accused by Trump of manipulating votes, Reuters reported earlier this year. 

Kutti arrived at Freeman’s doorstep offering help from a “high profile individual,” but neglected to mention that she worked for West. The message from that individual, as reported by Reuters, was simple: confess to the bogus voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours and she would be arrested. 

“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is heard saying in a video recording of the conversation. “I just know it will affect your freedom and the freedom of one or more of your family members,” she threatened.

“You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up,” Kutti added, claiming “federal people” were involved, without naming anyone.

Kutti also directly addressed the Cobb County police official who recorded the footage from her body camera, requesting her to keep the footage under wraps. “I do want the officer to know that this is, at this moment, a conversation between private citizens,” Kutti said. “I am hoping you are trusting that this information does not go any further.”

While representatives for West have claimed Kutti was not associated with him or his enterprises at the time of the interaction, she served as West’s director of operations.

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“Catastrophic failure”: DOJ tried to hide report warning private border wall in Texas could collapse

A private border wall built along the Rio Grande in South Texas could collapse during extreme flooding, according to a federally commissioned inspection report that the government sought to keep secret for more than a year.

The 404-page report, produced by the global engineering firm Arcadis, confirms previous reporting from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. It also shows for the first time that the federal government independently found structural problems with the border fencing before reaching a settlement agreement with the builder, Fisher Industries, in May.

Under the agreement, which ended a nearly three-year legal battle between the International Boundary and Water Commission and Fisher Industries, the company must inspect the fence quarterly, remove bollards and maintain a gate that would allow for the release of floodwaters. It must also keep a $3 million bond, a type of insurance, to cover any expenses in case the structure fails.

Engineering and hydrology experts told the news organizations the bond is inadequate to cover the kind of catastrophic failure described by Arcadis and raised concerns that the federal government’s decision to settle the case cuts against the report’s findings.

The company modeled different scenarios using the extreme weather conditions caused by Hurricane Beulah, a 1967 storm that dumped about 30 inches of rain in some areas of the border region and caused the banks of the Rio Grande to overflow. The modeling showed that the fence “would effectively slide and/or overturn” during major flooding, and that it starts to become unstable during much smaller and more frequent floods.

According to the report, the fencing doesn’t meet basic international building code and industry standards and has a foundation far shallower than border barriers built by the federal government.

“Every single conclusion in the report points to it not needing to be there and shows it is actually negatively affecting the area,” said Adriana E. Martinez, a professor and geomorphologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. (She was not involved with the report.)

Martinez, who studies the impact of border barriers in South Texas, questioned how much more evidence the state and federal governments need to take down the fencing and prevent future construction along the Rio Grande.

Arcadis referred questions about its assessment to the Department of Justice, which represented the IBWC in the lawsuit, arguing the fence violated a treaty with Mexico that requires both countries to approve any development that can affect the international boundary. A DOJ spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about the settlement or about why the government fought the release of the report.

The news organizations obtained the report on Nov. 15 after multiple Freedom of Information Act requests and 15 months of back-and-forth with the federal government, which initially denied the request. The DOJ reversed course and released the report after ProPublica attorneys threatened legal action.

As part of the settlement, federal officials ordered that Fisher Industries and its subsidiaries destroy all copies of the Arcadis report, alleging that it contained “proprietary information.”

“Reading this and seeing the settlement that came out of this, it’s as though they completely disregarded the Arcadis report,” said Amy Patrick, a Houston forensic structural and civil engineer and court-recognized expert on wall construction. “I can see why they were dragging their heels so much on letting it get out because (the report) basically completely dismantled this idea that the fence will be OK.”

Mark Courtois, an attorney for Fisher Industries, said that the construction company “strongly disagreed with the opinions in the Arcadis report and refuted those opinions to the satisfaction of the IBWC.” He said the company worked with the IBWC, which is charged with oversight of the international treaty, to “reach a mutually agreeable resolution of all matters pertaining to the fence, including any issues raised by the Arcadis report.”

“Construction of the fence was completed nearly three years ago, and we continue to be confident in its design and construction,” Courtois said.

Sally Spener, a spokesperson for the IBWC, denied that Fisher was able to counter the conclusions in the Arcadis report to the agency’s satisfaction.

In an email to the news organizations, Spener said that the agency accepted the report’s findings, which showed a far greater impact on the flow of the Rio Grande than the builder had claimed. Despite that, she added, the settlement agreement’s requirements address the agency’s concerns that the barrier would violate the treaty.

But the settlement agreement won’t address the report’s findings that the fence was built on a flawed design and featured construction shortcomings that could contribute to its collapse, said Alex Mayer, a civil engineering professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“It just shows the shoddiness of the whole effort. It worries me even more,” Mayer said.

Tommy Fisher, president of Fisher Industries, started to construct the fence in 2019 with financial support from the online fundraising campaign We Build the Wall. The nonprofit was set up to help former President Donald Trump build his “big, beautiful wall” along the length of the border. In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme.

Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021. But in September, Bannon was indicted on state charges in New York. Bannon called the charges “nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system.”

The three other men, including Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran who led the organization, face sentencing on Jan. 31 in federal court on various fraud and tax-related charges. Kolfage and another man pleaded guilty in April. The third man was convicted in October.

Soon after construction of the fence began, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in federal court to try to halt the work, claiming that Fisher Industries was violating the treaty with Mexico. A state district judge in Hidalgo County granted the government a temporary restraining order to stop construction, but a federal judge later reversed it.

During a January 2020 court hearing, Fisher claimed that his bollard wall design would bring security to the actual border by addressing the flooding and erosion concerns that previously prevented the federal government from building near the river’s edge.

The 3-mile project was completed in February 2020, making it the first border fence built directly on the riverbank in South Texas. We Build the Wall contributed about $1.5 million of the $42 million total cost, with the rest coming from Fisher, according to court testimony.

The areas around the private border fence soon started to show signs of erosion. Six hydrologists and engineers told ProPublica and the Tribune in July 2020 that the foundation of the fence was too shallow and that a series of gashes and gullies where rainwater runoff had scoured the sandy loam beneath the foundation raised stability concerns.

Following the organization’s news articles, Trump tried to distance himself from the project, saying on Twitter that it had been constructed to make him look bad.

Fisher called the news organizations’ reporting on engineering concerns “absolute nonsense” during a 2020 podcast interview hosted by Bannon.

“I would invite any of these engineers that so-called said this was gonna fall over, I’ll meet ’em there next week. … If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you probably shouldn’t start talking,” he said. “It’s working unbelievably well. There’s a little erosion maintenance we have to maintain.”

As climate change contributes to more extreme weather, better understanding the erosion that is occurring is critical, Martinez said.

“We know that there are more extreme hurricane seasons that are occurring due to climate change, so we know that it’s more likely that the fence is going to get flooded out in the Rio Grande,” Martinez said. “It’s just a matter of time before something happens.”

The fence outside Mission is one of two private border barriers built using private funds, but it may not be the last.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has embarked on an effort to build fencing along the state’s 1,200-mile border using a mixture of state funds and crowdsourced private dollars. And Trump said he would continue border wall construction while announcing last month that he would again run for the country’s highest office.

Ryan Patrick, a former U.S. attorney whose office first filed the lawsuit against Fisher, said that by settling the case and requiring a bond, the government limits the risk of losing at trial. Patrick left office before the settlement was negotiated. He continues to believe that the judge should not have allowed Fisher to build the fence.

The settlement doesn’t prevent someone from constructing on the floodplain in the future, he said, but it shows that the government will not give unrestricted authority to potential builders. “You are going to have long-term care and custody of that thing,” he said.

Amy Patrick, who is not related to Ryan Patrick, offered a different perspective.

The structural engineer said that the government’s handling of the legal case, and what she sees as an apparent indifference to its own engineering report, could set “a precedent that credible engineering will be disregarded in similar projects in the future.”

“Strange World” is a box office flop, but not for the reasons the right is claiming

Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Strange World” tells the story of three generations of Clade men, starting with brash adventurer Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) who drags his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal) along on his expeditions. Jaeger is a celebrated hero dedicated to a lifelong quest to be the first to pass over the mountain range that has kept their homeland, Avalonia, isolated from the rest of the world.

Searcher is more concerned with the natural wonders in their backyard, including an electricity-generating plant they encounter on their arduous trek through the mountains. Searcher believes the plant is enough of a discovery, declaring he wants to go return home to study it. The stubborn father abandons his son instead.

Flashing forward 25 years, we see that Searcher has cultivated the plant’s incandescent grape-like fruit into an energy resource called pando, transforming Avalonia from a horse-and-buggy backwater into a utopia of flying cars and technological innovation. He’s also a father to a teenage son, Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), who shockingly enough, does not want to follow in Searcher’s footsteps.  This worries Searcher, especially since Ethan shows signs of having more in common with Jaeger.

When Avalonia’s president Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu) alerts Searcher to a mysterious affliction that’s killing pando crops and enlists him to join a team on a journey into the Earth to figure out what’s happening to the plant’s root system, his fears are realized. Ethan tags along as a stowaway along with their dog, Legend. In pursuing Ethan, Searcher’s wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) also gets dragged along, which is a good thing since she’s a pilot, and the ship they’re flying eventually requires her skills.

Strange WorldStrange World (Disney)

Anyway, that’s the gist of Disney’s latest animated release, which, as you may have heard, had a stunningly poor box office showing across Thanksgiving weekend. The trailer contains no hints about its plot, or any other defining descriptions about those characters, which may not matter since odds are most people never saw it.

“Strange World” is predicted to go down as one of Disney’s biggest-ever financial failures, with its losses projected to be in the $100 million-plus range. Right-wing culture war spectators are hooting with pleasure at what they see as evidence of diversity and inclusion efforts ruining Hollywood, specifically blaming director Don Hall and his co-director and screenwriter Qui Nguyen’s choice to make Ethan gay.

The Clade’s interracial marriage doesn’t thrill those bigots either, but given Disney corporate’s messy response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, Young-White’s animated avatar is a more convenient target.

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This probably doesn’t need to be said, but these claims have little basis in the reality of why “Strange World” tanked, other than the easily observable fact that the studio did the bare minimum to promote it.

Most people probably never saw the trailer for “Strange World.”

What little advertising it did featured the gorgeous animation and little else. In a pandemic age dominated by vast streaming options and shorter exclusivity windows between theatrical releases and video-on-demand debuts, that is not enough to lure people to their local multiplexes. But as a thought experiment, let’s say the preview marketing provided specific information about “Strange World.” It probably would’ve faced an uphill battle anyway, and for reasons having nothing to do with the characters’ complexions or sexual orientation.

Here are a few educated guesses as to why that is.

Original Disney animated titles don’t perform as well as sequels to or updates of established hits

With entertainment corporations mining existing I.P. to their dregs, audiences can be sold more easily on sequels to movies they already know and love than taking a chance on unknown stories. This is especially true of Thanksgiving releases.

The last original Disney titles to make a substantial mark over that valuable five-day holiday gateway period were “Moana” in 2016 and Pixar’s “Coco” in 2017. Each were successes, but their worldwide take was dwarfed by the Thanksgiving weekend earnings of “Frozen II,” which hit $123.7 million. The sequel would go on to rake in $1.45 billion at the global box office.

Even last year’s award-season darling “Encanto” had a relatively wan Thanksgiving opening weekend gross of $40 million, blamed in part on Disney’s decision to make it available to its streaming service subscribers a month after it hit theaters. That said, it still went on to make $256 million in worldwide ticket sales, owing much of its success to its appeal to markets across the Spanish-speaking diaspora.

The homophobic Disney haters are going to hate it regardless of what it does.

Disney has a poor track record with animated adaptations of classic sci-fi

 “Strange World” is an ode to 1930s pulp comics and the stories of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson whose stories have been adapted before in classic Disney live-action movies. But the mediocre box office performance of the Verne-inspired “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” in 2001 resulted in a planned TV spinoff and a theme park ride being nixed.

That was nothing compared to Disney’s 2002 animated space-age update of Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” “Treasure Planet” which became the most expensive flop of its time.  Hey, do you remember 2011’s “Mars Needs Moms”? No? That’s why it grossed $39 million against a budget of $150 million.

“Strange World” isn’t a musical

 Granted, not every successful Disney film relies on catchy scores and Broadway-style compositions, but even if you’ve never seen “Encanto,” you know that we don’t talk about Bruno. Everybody knows that.

 A catchy song can turn a mediocre movie into a repeat player in homes with young children; “Encanto,” thankfully, happens to be an excellent movie blessed with an addictive soundtrack, and a tune that became a phenomenon.

“We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the latest in a long line of catchy soundtrack singles that generate publicity for their movies separate from the feature. Without such a draw, a movie is left to count on the appeal of its main characters, either in the form of what they symbolize or how they look in the trailer or on a poster.

Strange WorldStrange World (Disney)

“Strange World” doesn’t feature a charismatic heroine

There have been successful Disney animated movies about male characters, “Wreck-It Ralph” being a robust recent example. Hall helmed another: 2014’s “Big Hero 6.”

Overall, though, Disney will now and forever be a princess-centric brand, whether that’s interpreted as fairy tale royalty or a warrior like Raya from “Raya and the Last Dragon,” whose screenplay Nguyen wrote). Either way, that figure becomes the face of the movie, lighting up the pester power of every kid who glimpses them.

“Strange World,” in contrast, lacks such a magnet in its ensemble because . . . there isn’t one. While there’s nothing unattractive about the Clades – the story doesn’t designate any as a hero figure or comedic core around which an ad campaign can be built.

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“Strange World” lacks a cute mascot

Not every Disney classic features some adorable figure drawn for the dual purpose of being the main character’s adorable friend and as a model for plush toy manufacturers, but it’s no accident that all the biggest ones do. And despite the eye-popping color palette and psychedelic rendering of its subterranean plateaus and horizons, one drawback of the “Strange World” premise is that none of the “beasties” are huggable. Ethan would claim otherwise since he befriends an amoeba-like being he nicknames Splat. “I want to merchandise this!” a character coos upon seeing it for the first time, as if to subconsciously give us the impression that its shapeshifting, squeaking form is cute. But it is tough to imagine any parent clamoring to have their kid cuddle up to such a thing since Splat resembles a love stain.

Strange WorldStrange World (Disney)

Lastly, and sadly . . .

“Strange World” is a middling movie

And that’s the biggest disappointment. To be honest, if one were to fully describe the Clades and Avalonia, it would sound like the walk-up to a terrible joke someone’s Fox News-addicted uncle revs up at the holiday table: “An interracial couple, their biracial gay son and their three-legged dog drive their vegan-fueled vehicle into a subterranean cave . . .”

These are merely the cosmetics of a story that means well but is narratively flaccid. Hall and Nguyen deserve credit for conceptualizing an environmental tale with a twist, one that makes a statement about our overreliance on fossil fuels while resisting the urge to insert a two-dimensional antagonist in the name of manufacturing conflict.

But instead of employing that classic story casting, the film’s only tension is an outgrowth of the intergenerational bickering between Jaeger, the story’s Boomer representation; Searcher, the crunchy Gen Xer, and Ethan, the Gen Z voice who simply wants to be left in peace.

Surely adults can relate to this insofar as it’s a fictional representation of the very family dynamics that we try to escape by going to the movies. This forgets that tales like this are mainly made to thrill children; if adults also love them, that’s a bonus.

Despite what the far right may claim, the percentage of people who would be offended by a queer cartoon of color starring in a story with a multi-ethnic cast is lower than the number of people who aren’t. But if one chooses to be upset by anything, maybe it should be that Ethan and his crush Diazo weren’t introduced in a stronger story. The homophobic Disney haters are going to hate it regardless of what it does. Knowing this, it’s a shame that Disney didn’t ever try to advertise this trip for the rest of us, let alone make it irrefutably worth the price of admission.

“Strange World” is playing in theaters nationwide.

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House launches probe into Samuel Alito’s alleged leak and “collusion” with right-wingers

U.S. Supreme Court watchdogs on Thursday applauded the House Judiciary Committee for announcing it will hold a hearing next week regarding allegations that Justice Samuel Alito leaked at least one of the court’s rulings to right-wing activists—and called on the Senate to follow suit in the next Congress.

The committee, which is led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and will be handed over to Republicans after they take control of the House on January 3, is set to open its investigation into the allegations on December 8.

The news of the hearing follows a bombshell New York Times report last month, in which Rev. Rob Schenck, the former head of religious right-wing group Faith & Action, said he had led a lobbying campaign targeting Supreme Court justices.

After Schenck directed his associates to donate to the Supreme Court Historical Society and attend events with the justices, Alito allegedly told two of them that the court would rule in favor of craft retailer Hobby Lobby in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby several weeks before the ruling was officially announced.

“House Judiciary is right to move quickly to investigate, and Senate Democrats should plan to take up the mantle in the new year,” Brian Fallon, president of court reform group Demand Justice, told HuffPost Thursday.

After the Times report was published last month, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.,—who chair the House and Senate Judiciary committees’ panels on the courts, respectively—wrote to the Supreme Court’s legal counsel asking a number of questions about ethics at the high court, which unlike other federal courts does not abide by a binding ethics code.

The legal counsel denied any wrongdoing by Alito but did not answer the lawmakers’ questions, prompting more than 60 progressive groups including Demand Justice to demand congressional hearings, including testimony by Schenck.

Whitehouse and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and will maintain his position after the new year, have not yet announced their own investigation.

“We will continue to pursue oversight, including oversight into these latest troubling allegations,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The people of the country deserve real answers from justices we trust to wield the power of the highest court in the country.”

Sarah Lipton-Lubet, executive director of Take Back the Court Action Fund, called the House hearings “a good first step” in demanding accountability from the court.

“We applaud the House Judiciary Committee for holding a hearing on the rampant collusion between the Republican Supreme Court justices and right-wing special interests,” said Lipton-Lubet. “It’s clear that some of these justices are simply incapable of behaving ethically or putting the law before politics, and the court is unwilling or unable to police itself.”

10,000 freed mink roaming the Ohio countryside now pose a threat to ecology and public health

The North American Animal Liberation Press Office says they do not know the identity of the vandals who illegally released 40,000 mink into a populated area, but they definitely see the act as a righteous one. As Joseph Buddenberg told Salon, the fur industry’s end “can not come soon enough.” Buddenberg, who has been convicted of illegally releasing mink from commercial farms, and who identifies as a press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and a former member of the Animal Liberation Front, said that “laws and the corporate state have failed these animals. The Animal Liberation Front will continue to break the law until the fur industry is eradicated.”

“The Animal Liberation Front will continue to break the law until the fur industry is eradicated.”

On Nov. 15, currently unknown culprits attacked a mink farm known as Lion Farms USA in Van Wert County, Ohio. In addition to sending the aforementioned waves of mink into the rural Midwestern region, the culprits left graffiti with the initials ALF (seemingly for “Animal Liberation Front”) and “We’ll be back.” While most of the mink were corralled back into their pens soon thereafter, roughly 10,000 remained unaccounted for over the subsequent weeks, and authorities have had to warn residents not to approach the bite-prone animals. Ohioans have reported running over mink in traffic or shooting groups of them, and local farmer Kirsten Barnhart wrote an editorial announcing a class action lawsuit against the nearby fur farms. In addition to losing a number of her birds, Barnhart reports how her “very sweet rooster” Jack was maimed by one of the escaped animals (which she had to kill).

“I’m heartbroken for the trauma Jack has suffered,” Barnhart writes of the shaken bird, whose face remained swollen after its near-death encounter. Barnhart also noted that the escaped mink more broadly had created “ecological damage” by attacking local animals like Jack the rooster. At the time of this writing, the crime remains unsolved; Sheriff Thomas Riggenbach told Salon the case is still being investigated.

Despite her animals being killed or hurt due to the mink running amok, Barnhart was unequivocal in denouncing mink farms and other fur farms, which have become a political flashpoint in recent years. Animals at these facilities are killed by bludgeoning, gassing and even anal electrocution. Prior to those painful and terrifying deaths, livestock like mink will be kept in cramped, dirty cages while living in close quarters to each other. For a species that naturally enjoys a solitary lifestyle and avoids socializing with its own species, this existence is likely psychologically as well as physically painful.

Living in confinement also means domesticated mink are riddled with disease, a problem that does not exist for their wild counterparts. In the words of Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, “these naturally solitary animals are often maintained in extreme confinement and unhygienic cages, circumstances that facilitate the spread of disease among the animals and, as we saw with COVID-19, can facilitate the spread of disease back and forth between the confined mink and humans.” This has long been a cause of concern from a public health standpoint, and quite obviously “if released into the wild, diseased farmed mink can pose a threat to public health and native wildlife.”

“The clearest way to prevent those threats is to stop the industrial farming of these animals for their fur,” Connor said.

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While the practice of mink farming is itself unhygienic and cruel, releasing them into the wild is far from an ideal solution from a public health standpoint. If anything, it could precipitate a public health crisis, as the North American Animal Liberation Press Office acknowledged to Salon. Press Officer Jerry Vlasak initially claimed that the public health risk posed by releasing the mink was “essentially none,” but later admitted that “there has always been some risk of infectious disease from animals kept in close and unnatural confinement.”

“Mink are the only species known to have the ability to catch COVID-19 from humans and transmit it back to humans in a mutated variant form.”

Vlasak also observed that factory farms (including, of course, mink farms) are vectors for infectious diseases, and pointed out to Salon that “COVID-19 is itself a zoonotic virus that jumped to humans due to animal abuse, captivity and killing in animal markets.”

Yet even though the unnatural living condition in torturous mink farms are at least partially responsible for the animals carrying diseases upon being released, doesn’t that very fact reinforce the criticism that releasing them in populated areas poses a public health risk?

“The North American Animal Liberation Press Office supports fully the liberation of captive mink, all who were destined to die at the hands of their captors within the next few weeks,” Vlasak replied when asked about this. “We fully condemn the exploitation, imprisonment and murder of innocent beings so that rich, arrogant humans can make a fashion statement.”

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Many people who formerly associated with the mink farming industry feel the same way about the last part of Vlasak’s statement, although he is in the minority about the former part. Scott Beckstead is intimately familiar with mink farms and has been since his childhood, when his grandfather had a mink farm. Beckstead says he loves his grandfather, though he vehemently opposes mink farming as cruel. Today, Beckstead is the director of campaigns for Animal Wellness Action at the Center for a Humane Economy, and recalls to Salon how the male mink on his grandfather’s farm “were killed with cyanide gas,” while the females “were killed by having their necks broken with a tool that looked like an oversized bottle opener. I believe many and perhaps most farms these days use carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.”

In addition to opposing mink farms, however, Beckstead also opposes the release of the mink from the Ohio farm. He cited many reasons, among them the fact that mink are prone to spreading diseases like COVID-19.

“Mink are the only species known to have the ability to catch COVID-19 from humans and transmit it back to humans in a mutated variant form,” Beckstead observed, citing incidents from Denmark and Michigan to Oregon and Utah. “As someone who grew up on and around mink farms, I can attest that mink are accomplished escape artists, and escapes are a routine occurrence on every mink farm I’ve ever known. The very real danger is that infected farmed mink will infect any human who comes in contact with them, or that they will infect wild mink that may infect a human, such as a trapper or field biologist.”

“When nature is totally turned on its head by thousands of mink suddenly flooding an area, then it causes all kinds of chaos. The mink end up killing and eating each other, in addition to every unfortunate animal they can catch for miles around.”

Dr. James Keen, an expert on zoonotic diseases who studied outbreaks as a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, disagreed with the North American Animal Liberation Press Office’s claim that the risk of a mink-caused disease outbreak was “essentially none.”

“There are several worldwide reports of escaped farmed mink infecting wild carnivores, especially Mustelids (mink & skunk carnivore family),” Keen wrote to Salon, ticking off cases from Canada and France to the United States and Spain. “The risk is far from zero.”

Connor echoed Vlasak’s observation about mink farms cultivating disease outbreaks by having cramped, unhealthy environments. “The zoological risk of diseases being able to be spread from mink in fur farming operations to human populations has been known for some time, and roots in the exploitation and treatment of the animals on these facilities,” Connor explained.

Connor does not endorse the release of the mink, adding that she does not “have any further knowledge beyond news reports about what happened at this 40,000+ mink facility.” Both she and the Center for Biological Diversity, however, support “a just phase-out and closure of operations like this that dangerously confine thousands to sometimes hundreds of thousands of these solitary, curious animals for the mere purpose of producing high-end fashion or furniture.”

A very different kind of mink expert also had strong opinions about the Ohio incident — YouTube star Joseph Carter the Mink Man, who has performed the exceptionally difficult task of training mink, an animal that is characteristically stubborn, smart and sassy. Carter uses his so-called minkenry to help eliminate urban river banks and canals of pests in an ecologically friendly way. Carter is as knowledgeable about mink as any equestrian might be exceptionally familiar with horses or any falconer can feel entirely comfortable with raptors.

Carter told Salon that he admires mink as “extremely efficient predators,” but that this is part of the reason why releasing them in the wild is dangerous to local ecosystems.

“Thanks to their highly antisocial ways, in their natural state mink obviously don’t harm the environment because they are almost never overpopulated, not even a little bit,” Carter explained. “They also move around a lot, so they aren’t prone to over hunting any given area, since they are very spread out, and constantly moving. But when nature is totally turned on its head by thousands of mink suddenly flooding an area, then it causes all kinds of chaos. The mink end up killing and eating each other, in addition to every unfortunate animal they can catch for miles around.”

“What was done in Ohio is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The animal rights activists are sacrificing these poor mink to make a political point.”

Keen was even more blunt, describing the newly-feral mink as an invasive species. Notably, the mink used for mink farming, the American mink (Neogale vison), is carnivorous and indigenous to most of North America. This means that, like domesticated pigs who breed with and commingle with wild boars, the former mink livestock that are released will both interact with and steal food from wild mink — all at the expense of the other wildlife in that area.

“Feral American mink pose a particular risk to island biodiversity, especially to ground-nesting birds and small mammals which in certain circumstances they may have the potential to extirpate,” Keen explained. “In Canada, wild mink numbers have declined over the past several decades based on trapping records. It is believed that escaped feral American mink are a primary cause of this wild mink decline.” Although the exact impact of feral “domesticated” mink on wildlife remains understudied, Keen noted four trends in how those mink impact their ecosystem: They physically dominate smaller animals like wild mink, hybridize with wild mink and thereby reduce their genetic fitness for their environment, spread mink-specific diseases and can spread zoonotic SARS-CoV-2.

In addition to being bad for wild animals like other mink, releasing the mink is also bad for the mink themselves.

“Mass mink releases are one of the most horrifically cruel things a person can do to the mink,” Carter told Salon. “What was done in Ohio is nothing short of domestic terrorism. The animal rights activists are sacrificing these poor mink to make a political point.”

In addition to being aggressive toward other animals, mink are prone to fighting with each other. “According to [conservationist] Paul Errington, more wild mink die from fighting with other mink, than every other natural predator combined. So you can imagine the mass carnage that results from thousands of anti-social animals being released in the same area. Everyone loses when these releases happen.”

Beckstead likewise predicted that “most of the released mink will likely die terrible deaths due to their inability to survive,” although “some may adapt to the wild environment and have an impact.” Keen told Salon that “the escaped [Ohio] mink will be starving and will kill or eat whatever they can to survive, including each other and pets or wildlife they may encounter.” That includes beloved animal companions like Barnhart’s rooster. 

While there are valid questions about the ecological crisis — and possibly public health crisis, too — precipitated by the mink release, all the scientists interviews agreed that mink farming is cruel and should probably end. If mink farming did not exist, there would not be so much cruelty involving millions of mink being condemned to agonizing lives and painful deaths. In addition to helping the mink, the risk of mink-caused pandemics and mink-caused ecological problems would significantly decline.

“To that end, revealingly, so many countries outside of the United States have taken reasonable action to prevent the spread of disease and cruelty from these operations by phasing out existing operations and banning the breeding of animals for fur farming purposes,” Connor told Salon. “Just this September, for example, the Parliament of Latvia, known as Saeima, supported a complete ban on the breeding of fur animals in Latvia.” That ban will go into effect in 2028. 

The United States could ban mink farming soon, too. The US House has already passed a ban on mink farming, although it is unlikely to get out of conference in 2022. Even so, Beckstead took pride in the fact that the House was on record opposing mink farming.

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Robert Downey Jr. reconnects with his filmmaker dad in Netflix’s poignant documentary “Sr.”

“Sr.” is “sweetly narcissistic,” as father and son play in the sandbox together.

“Fine by me,” or “That ain’t bad,” is what filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr. said if he really liked something. His casual appraisal masked both his appreciation for an image, a performance, or an event — in life or one of his films — that was weird, banal and profound all at once. Netflix’s “Sr.” is the affectionate documentary about the groundbreaking, underground, counterculture filmmaker, who is also Robert Downey, Jr.‘s father. And it ain’t bad. In fact, it is quite wonderful — understated, revealing, poignant, and funny.

Sr. is highly charismatic. Jr. is too; the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The value of director Chris Smith‘s documentary is that viewers come to admire and cherish Sr. that it is quite moving when he passes. (Sr. died in July 2021; the documentary was filmed over a three-year period.) Sr. had Parkinson’s — “Charlie Parkinson’s disease,” he called it, presciently, in one of his films. The scenes of Sr. immobile and having episodes of memory loss are painful to watch. 

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“Sr.” is “sweetly narcissistic,” as father and son play in the sandbox together, making the documentary as well as a side project where Sr. films his own movie. The opening moments show Sr., who always seems to be directing, staging a shot for Smith. 

When Jr. interviews Sr. and his wife, Rosemary, it goes like this:

“How long have you been married?” Jr. asks. 

“1,500 years,” Rosemary responds in a deadpan moment right out of one of Sr.’s absurdist films. 

“Sr.” lovingly recounts Robert Downey’s career behind the camera, featuring “Chafed Elbows,” his 1966 feature about a man (George Morgan) who marries his mother (Elsie Downey, Sr.’s then wife and Jr.’s mother) to get welfare checks. It received critical praise and drew audiences, even as Sr. observes, “We didn’t know what we were doing, but suddenly, the films were getting better — and weirder.”

Eventually, Sr. has his breakout success with “Putney Swope,” (1969), an irreverent and wickedly funny satire about a white ad agency that is taken over by a Black man (Arnold Johnson) after the chairman dies. If “Sr.” does nothing else, hopefully it will prompt viewers to watch or rewatch “Putney Swope.” (This classic is available on the Criterion Channel along with a few other Sr. films.)

The toughest conversations are the ones Sr. does not want to have.

“Sr.” is shot mostly in black and white like the early Sr. films, which infuses it with a kind of nostalgia. Sr. often comments about gray days being the best for filming. The moodiness is also reflective of the melancholy of watching a loved one fade away. 

Smith’s documentary is also loosely structured, like many of Sr.’s films. There are a few scenes where Norman Lear, Alan Arkin and Lawrence Wolf (one of the members of Sr.’s stock company of actors) reflect on their friend. Paul Thomas Anderson, whom Jr. says, “Is the son my dad wishes he had,” is seen effusing about Sr. in various clips, and accompanies his hero on a train ride. (Sr. appeared in Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” as well as “Magnolia.”)

The most revealing moments are the conversations Jr. has as he interviews his father about his life and career to better understand him. These segments are often shot in split screen which allows viewers to see the action/reaction between father and son, which is appealing. Sr. recalls he started writing when he was in the stockade during the army. (He was always a troublemaker.) He explains that because he couldn’t find a babysitter, he gave Jr. his first film role in “Pound,” Sr.’s 1970 film in which 18 actors play dogs. Jr.’s debut has him asking a Mexican Hairless (Wolf), “Have any hair on your balls?” — a line he didn’t understand, but it generates a laugh. (A star is born!) Jr. explains that making films with his father was a way they could spend time together. 

The toughest conversations are the ones Sr. does not want to have. They concern Los Angeles — Sr. spent 15 soulless years in LA, which included his making his only studio film, “Up the Academy,” a disaster for him professionally. Sr. lost a fight to make the teenage cast younger, and lost interest in the project because of studio interference. He was fine not getting final cut as long as he got final cut on the cocaine, he says. “Sr.” briefly addresses both Downeys’ drug use, from Sr.’s regret at letting his son partake in drug culture and Jr.’s difficulties with addiction, illustrated with clips from his role in “Less Than Zero.” 

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“Sr.” feature many scenes of art imitating life especially as Sr.’s second wife, Laura Ernst, suffered from ALS. The dual topics of illness and addiction formed the basis for Sr.’s 1997 film, “Hugo Pool,” which prompts Jr., like a therapist, to ask his dad about processing the grief and pain he felt in his life into his art. A later scene of Jr. talking with his therapist about watching his father slipping away is quite touching.

But there are several comic moments in the film, from asides Sr. has witnessing things in New York City, to Sr. requesting that Jr. perform a German folksong for him. Jr. is accompanied by Sean Hayes on piano in a wonderfully silly episode that even allows them to riff and perform Billy Joel‘s “My Life.” 

Throughout “Sr.” its subject emphasizes how the best things often happen spontaneously. Smith’s film, a love story between father and son, reflects this salient point beautifully.

“Sr.” is now streaming on Netflix.

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Kanye banned by Musk’s Twitter, loses Parler deal amid pro-Hitler spiral

Rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was suspended from Twitter yet again after posting a Jewish Star of David with a swastika in the middle. 

His account had previously been restricted in October after he posted an antisemitic tweet. His account was restored after new owner Elon Musk took over the social media platform. Ye’s account lasted just two weeks before being banned again.

“I tried my best,” Musk tweeted. “Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

Following the ban, Ye started posting screenshots to Truth Social revealing the text exchanges between him and Musk.

“Sorry, but you have gone too far,” Musk wrote. “This is not love.”

Ye responded: “Who made you the judge.”

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Musk then quoted the first part of the Lord’s Prayer, to which Ye replied, “I’m Jesus name,” and posted a screenshot of a notice that showed his account being suspended for 12 hours.

The feud ended with Ye posting an unflattering topless photo of Musk being hosed down by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. 

“Let’s always remember this as my final tweet,” he wrote. “That is fine,” Musk replied, adding “this is not,” in response to the swastika post.

Musk’s tweet came after made a big show of reinstating former President Donald Trump’s account and other users that had been suspended for violating content moderation policies.

Hours before the incident occurred, Ye appeared on the far-right conspiracy-theory outlet InfoWars, where he praised Adolf Hitler and defended the Nazis.

When InfoWars host Alex Jones tried to steer the conversation in a different direction, Ye continued to highlight his support for Nazis. 

“They did good things too,” Ye said. “We’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”

He continued to make other antisemitic remarks and attacks on Jewish people. When discussing the genocidal German dictator, he said he saw “good things about Hitler.”

“Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler,” Ye said.

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The Republican Jewish Coalition released a statement while Ye was still being interviewed on the show.

“Given his praise of Hitler, it can’t be overstated that Kanye West is a vile, repellent bigot who has targeted the Jewish community with threats and Nazi-style defamation,” the statement said.  “Conservatives who have mistakenly indulged Kanye West must make it clear that he is a pariah. Enough is enough.”

His campaign aide and white supremacist Nick Fuentes also accompanied him on the show and joined Ye last week when the rapper dined at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump. 

Trump received an avalanche of criticism for dining with the Holocaust denier, who participated in the 2017 Charlottesville rally. Several Republicans even denounced their dinner together.

After Ye’s appearance on the show, the conservative social media site Parler announced that the rapper’s deal to purchase the platform was quietly killed last month.

“In response to numerous media inquiries, Parlement Technologies would like to confirm that the company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler,” the company said on Twitter. “This decision was made in the interest of both parties in mid-November.”

A Parler spokeswoman told The Washington Post that Ye’s deal had been terminated “mainly due to his recent and well-publicized business difficulties.”

In recent months, Ye has lost several lucrative deals, including partnerships with Gap and Adidas, for making a series of antisemitic comments. He was also banned from Instagram for similar reasons. 

Ye had agreed to buy Parler for an undisclosed amount, the company announced in October.

The right-leaning social app gained popularity after the 2020 presidential election but faced criticism for its involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer, also the husband of conservative commentator Candace Owens, previously said the company needed Ye’s “marketing power,” The Post reported.

“Ye is very concerned about Big Tech censorship,” Farmer said.”He has the means and wherewithal to obviously move into this space quite aggressively.” 

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“False, misleading”: Judge sanctions Kari Lake lawyers for “baseless” election lawsuit

A federal judge in Arizona on Thursday ordered sanctions against lawyers representing failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem over their baseless lawsuit against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and two county government boards.

While the attorneys being sanctioned were not named in Thursday’s order, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz is listed as Lake’s lead attorney, according to the court docket. Attorneys Andrew Parker, Jesse Hersch Kibort, and Joseph Alan Pull of Minneapolis, as well as Kurt Olsen of Washington, D.C. also make up Lake’s legal team.

The cosigners of the original complaint — which has now been amended — include Paker, Olsen and Dershowitz who have also signed an opposition to the request for sanctions. They are presumed to be the attorneys who were sanctioned on Thursday.

“I have not challenged the results of any Arizona elections,” Dershowitz told Law&Crime about the judge’s order. “I have given legal advice about the future use of machine counting by companies that refuse to disclose the inner workings of their machines. I support transparency in elections.”

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The lawsuit brought by Lake and Finchem sought to question the electronic ballot-counting devices in Arizona to stoke doubt about the results of the 2022 midterm election. However, as Dershowitz stated, the case was filed back in April, long before any ballots were counted.

The lawsuit also alleged that there are “glaring failures with electronic voting systems,” and that most of them are “over a decade old, have critical components manufactured overseas in countries, some of which are hostile to the United States, and use software that is woefully outdated and vulnerable to catastrophic cyberattacks.”

Hobbs, who defeated Lake in the gubernatorial race, is a defendant in the case and is being sued in her role as Arizona’s secretary of state and chief election officer. The suit also lists individual members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and the Pima County Board of Supervisors as defendants.

U.S. District Judge John Tuchi threw out the lawsuit in August, months before the midterm elections, and this week ordered sanctions.

“Before a single vote is cast, Arizona’s election equipment undergoes thorough testing by independent, neutral experts,” Tuchi noted in August. “Electronic voting equipment must be tested by both the Secretary’s Certification Committee and an Election Assistance Commission (“EAC”) accredited testing laboratory before it may be used in an Arizona election.” 

Tuchi also cited various state laws as evidence and referenced the firms who do indeed run independent tests to show the lawsuit is unwarranted.

“In addition to the equipment certification process, Arizona’s vote tabulation results are subject to four independent audits — two audits occur before the election, and two audits after,” he said. 

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Lake’s claims were seen as “too speculative to establish an injury in fact” and Tuchi ruled that the 11th Amendment prevents the plaintiff’s claims from being heard because the issue is rooted in Arizona state law, and thus did not belong in a federal court. 

“Because the Constitution charges states with administering elections, Plaintiffs’ claims can only stem from an argument that Defendants are violating state law by using what Plaintiffs allege are insecure or inaccurate voting systems,” Tuchi wrote in August.

In a 30-page order on Thursday, Tuchi addressed the request for sanctions:

The Court concludes that sanctions are warranted under Rule 11 and 28 U.S.C. § 1927. It finds that Plaintiffs made false, misleading, and unsupported factual assertions in their FAC and MPI and that their claims for relief did not have an adequate factual or legal basis grounded in a reasonable pre-filing inquiry, in violation of Rules 11(b)(2) and (b)(3). The Court further finds that Plaintiffs’ counsel acted at least recklessly in unreasonably and vexatiously multiplying the proceedings by seeking a preliminary injunction based on Plaintiffs’ frivolous claims, in violation of Section 1927.

While Tuchi noted that the plaintiffs behaved “far from appropriately,” by attaching themselves to poor litigation, he confirmed that only the attorneys would be sanctioned.

Here, while there are reasons to believe that Plaintiffs themselves contributed to the violations of Rule 11(b)(3) in this case — including that they themselves apparently have voted on paper ballots, contradicting allegations and representations in their pleadings about Arizona’s use of paper ballots — there is not a sufficient record that compels the Court to exercise its discretion to sanction Plaintiffs under that part of the rule.

Tuchi did not denounce the plaintiffs and did not agree with government officials who alleged that Lake and Finchem only brought the case when it became “politically profitable” to further their political campaigns following the same tactics as former President Donald Trump in 2020.

However, Tuchi did criticize the growing trend of candidates using federal courts to challenge elections they deemed “stolen.”

“The Court shares the concerns expressed by other federal courts about misuse of the judicial system to baselessly cast doubt on the electoral process in a manner that is conspicuously consistent with the plaintiffs’ political ends,” he wrote. Tuchi also referenced Trump’s 2020 presidential contest and his failed racketeering lawsuit against his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.

Under the sanction, Lake’s attorneys must pay back the “Maricopa County Defendants’ reasonable attorneys’ fees” which will be calculated and settled within no later than 14 days from Thursday’s order.

Tuchi explained that the defendants and their legal team must be reimbursed because they were forced “to spend time and resources defending this frivolous lawsuit rather than preparing for the elections over which Plaintiffs’ claims baselessly kicked up a cloud of dust.”

In his conclusion, Tuchi added a warning to anyone seeking to bring forward the same issue in the future: “Imposing sanctions in this case is not to ignore the importance of putting in place procedures to ensure that our elections are secure and reliable. It is to make clear that the Court will not condone litigants ignoring the steps that Arizona has already taken toward this end and furthering false narratives that baselessly undermine public trust at a time of increasing disinformation about, and distrust in, the democratic process. It is to send a message to those who might file similarly baseless suits in the future.”

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about Kari Lake

“Issues of great importance”: Obama mocks Herschel Walker for saying he wants to be a “werewolf”

Former President Barack Obama offered a blistering assessment of Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker. During a campaign event on Thursday, December 1, Obama delivered a speech in support of Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.

The former president also used the moment to address some of the controversial gaffes Walker has made over the last several weeks. “Every day he comes up with something. Every day,” Obama began.

He joked, “Since the last time I was here, Mr. Walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people of Georgia.”

Obama went on to discuss Walker’s gaffe about vampires and werewolves. “Like whether it’s better to be a vampire or a werewolf,” the former president said.

“This is a debate that I must confess I once had myself. When I was seven. Then I grew up,” he continued, adding:

“In case you’re wondering, by the way, Mr. Walker decided he wanted to be a werewolf, which is great. As far as I’m concerned. He can be anything he wants to be except for a United States senator.

Apparently, he also claimed that he used to let me beat him at basketball, but then he admitted that we’ve never actually met. So I guess this was more of an imaginary whooping that I laid on him. Now, listen this would be funny if he weren’t running for Senate. We all know some folks in our lives who we don’t wish them ill. Will they say crazy stuff? We’re all like, well, you know, Uncle Joe, you know what happened to him? You know, it’s okay that they’re part of the family, but you don’t give them serious responsibilities.”

According to Obama, Walker’s focus on vampires and werewolves appears to suggest that the Senate hopeful’s priorities are not in order. He also criticized Walker for spewing what he describes as “bald-faced lies.”

“When you spend more time thinking about horror movie fantasies than you do thinking about the people you want to represent that says something about your priorities. When again and again you serve up bald-faced lies,” he said. “Just make stuff up. That says something about the kind of person you are and the kind of leader you would be if you were in the United States Senate,”

He concluded with a word of advice for Georgia voters. “So, Georgia, look,” Obama said. “I’m not telling you something you don’t know. You deserve a senator you can be proud of.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

No, COVID is not “airborne AIDS.” But what it does to your immune system is still scary

From a biological standpoint, it’s remarkable how an unassuming virus like SARS-CoV-2 conquered the globe. In just three years, it’s caused roughly 640 million COVID infections internationally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), although this is almost certainly a stark underestimate.

SARS-2 is also extremely contagious, especially the newer variants from the omicron tree. The “variant soup” of new evolutionary branches is spawning strains like BQ.1.1, which emerging research suggests is the best virus version so far at evading antibody immunity, the body’s primary defense against invaders. Meanwhile, one person infected with the omicron variant BF.7 will infect another 10 to 18 people on average if they ignore any preventative factors like masks or isolating.

Many of COVID-19’s symptoms are similar to cold or influenza viruses, which typically involve fever, sinus, and respiratory issues. Yet SARS-CoV-2 is a very different virus from those in the way that it seems to affect our immune systems. Some have even compared its effects to other, far more serious immune system-destroying diseases. That’s becauase when people contract COVID, especially in severe cases, it seems to do something devastating to their immune system memory. This is the body’s primary way of identifying outsider microbes that pose a threat to our health. A critical part of this recall system are T cells, a type of white blood cell that helps the body recognize an infection, among many other functions.

Severe cases of COVID can trigger a hyperinflammatory response called a “cytokine storm” so intense that it seems to exhaust the T cells and decrease their number. Though researchers are still uncovering to what extent this is a problem, there is evidence this can create serious problems with fighting infections in the future — and not just COVID, but other diseases as well.

Related

As the virus mutates, the most common COVID symptoms appear to be changing, too

But despite how devastating SARS-2 can be to the immune system, many people on social media, especially Twitter, have begun describing COVID as “airborne AIDS” or “airborne HIV.” AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome while HIV is the sexually-transmitted Human Immunodeficiency Virus, that weakens the immune system, increasing the risk of fatal diseases and cancers.

One professor tweeted that “airborne AIDS” might “just be what makes humanity go extinct,” while others have echoed various levels of fear that a muted government response to COVID is going to sicken and kill everyone in an avalanche of illness. This label has existed since early 2020, but more and more people now seem to be adopting it.

Salon spoke with epidemiologists and immunologists about these theories about what COVID does to the immune system, and the “airborne AIDS” label. All of them said that calling SARS-2 “airborne AIDS” is deeply inaccurate, stigmatizing and just flat-out wrong. Yet they also cautioned that understanding what this virus actually does to the immune system is critical for developing protective therapies and keeping people safe as cases rise going into winter. And some researchers argue that not enough attention is being paid to how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with T cells.

Arjee Restar, a social epidemiologist, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, and a research faculty affiliate at Yale School of Public Health, said referring to COVID by this term is “scientifically inaccurate, incredibly irresponsible, and deeply insensitive to people with HIV.”

“For years, I’ve been saying these repeat infections have the potential to harm our immune systems,” Leonardi said. “I anticipated a cumulative effect.”

“While they both target immunological responses, they are largely different in their epidemiological and socioecological aspects, and therefore, highly problematic to conceptualize as such,” Restar told Salon in an email. “Not only that both viruses are different in terms of transmission and acquisition, which scientifically sets them apart to begin with, but also both carry two very different contexts: one is heavily stigmatized and weaponized for anti-Asian hate, and the other for homophobia and transphobia.”

“It also further perpetuates HIV stigma, which people living with HIV and many other community leaders have long fought hard to destigmatize,” Restar added.

Dr. Anthony Leonardi, an immunologist specializing in T cells and a master of public health student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that describing SARS-CoV-2 as “airborne AIDS” is “extremely hyperbolic and emotionally evocative.”

Leonardi was one of the first experts to recognize how SARS-CoV-2 damages T cells, which worsens with repeat infections. In late 2020, he and Rui Proenca, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, published research in Frontiers in Immunology describing SARS-CoV-2 as a “lympho-manipulative pathogen,” meaning it alters the immune organs called lymph nodes, and “distorts T cell function, numbers, and death, and creates a dysfunctional immune response.”

“When you use so much hyperbole, you actually do a disservice to true and real statements that SARS-CoV-2 actually can be harming the immune system,” Leonardi told Salon.

“For years, I’ve been saying these repeat infections have the potential to harm our immune systems,” Leonardi said. “I anticipated a cumulative effect.”

But Leonardi argues that this is no reason to compare COVID to AIDS.

“When you use so much hyperbole, you actually do a disservice to true and real statements that SARS-CoV-2 actually can be harming the immune system,” Leonardi told Salon. He emphasized that just because a virus can harm the immune system or even deplete T cells like SARS-CoV-2 does not make it analogous to HIV. Measles, for example, can delete immune memory by destroying T cells, which can take two to three years to recover. But no one calls measles “airborne AIDS.”

Another example is Ebola, a virus with a fatality rate between 25 to 90 percent. “Ebola is one of the most efficient murderers of T cells,” Leonardi said. “If someone gets an Ebola infection, their blood is a T cell graveyard. It’s a site of cremation. It’s just chaos, it’s insane. But we don’t call Ebola ‘airborne HIV’ or ‘airborne AIDS.”

It’s true HIV creates immunodeficiency by slowly depleting T cells, but it can take two to six weeks to develop symptoms and about a decade to develop into AIDS. In contrast, SARS-CoV-2 can damage the immune system in a few days.

“I feel like cavalier comparisons between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses has been a problem throughout [the pandemic.] So it’s just a cold, it’s just flu. And the other extreme is it’s basically ‘airborne AIDs.” 

Both viruses are different species with entirely unique mechanisms for entering host cells. HIV is a retrovirus, meaning it can insert itself into the DNA of a host and lay dormant there until something stirs it out. There is some evidence that SARS-COV-2 can lay dormant in reservoirs in the body, but it does this a different way.

Unlike the early days of the HIV pandemic, there are now very effective medications for HIV. No vaccines yet exist for HIV, but that may change in the near future. In contrast, there are many COVID vaccines and they are all pretty effective, even against some of the newer variants. And though COVID infection can last for years, many, many people recover. That isn’t the case for HIV, which is incurable except in the case of a few experimental patients. 

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Epidemiologists have long agreed that if HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, were to become airborne, then it would be an extreme disaster. Some medical experts have gamed out this scenario, predicting infections across the planet could reach 100 percent as quarantine became useless. The long latency of the virus would make it almost impossible to avoid. That is, if SARS-2 really were like an airborne AIDS, it would be a serious problem, one capable of crumbling global society. Fortunately, reality is much different.

“What does concern me, though, is in a lot of cases, especially in cases of long COVID, the virus seems to have persistence,” Leonardi said. “They can look in the blood, they can still see spike protein, and they can look at the immune system and the immune system is still churning.”

“I feel like cavalier comparisons between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses has been a problem throughout [the pandemic.] So it’s just a cold, it’s just flu. And the other extreme is it’s basically ‘airborne AIDs,'” Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, an evolutionary and genome biologist at the University of Guelph in Canada, told Salon. “It’s a very stigmatizing term. And I think it’s not particularly helpful to get people to understand the main point of saying it. It’s not a useful analogy.”

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Trump Org lawyers throw Allen Weisselberg under the bus after he spilled the beans at trial

On Thursday, The Guardian reported that lawyers representing the Trump Organization are going all-out against the company’s longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, claiming that the company’s shady tax behavior was all engineered by him alone, for his own benefit.

“Susan Necheles, representing one unit of the Trump Organization, pointed the finger at Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer, in her closing argument to the 12-member jury in New York state court in Manhattan,” said the report. “‘We are here today because of one reason and one reason only — the greed of Allen Weisselberg,’ Necheles said. ‘The purpose of Mr Weisselberg’s crimes was to benefit Mr Weisselberg.'”

“Necheles also pinned blame on Donald Bender, an accountant with Mazars USA, for turning a blind eye to Weisselberg’s wrongdoing,” said the report. “‘President Trump relied on Mazars, he relied on Donald Bender to be the watchdog,’ Necheles said. ‘Bender failed.'”

The Trump Organization is accused by New York prosecutors of manipulating the value of its assets, keeping two sets of books and giving the lower value to the IRS to avoid paying taxes, even as they gave higher estimates to banks and insurance companies.

Weisselberg, one of the architects of the scheme, was a key prosecution witness. During the trial, he has made many claims against his longtime employer, including that Trump “authorized” the tax scheme, and that the organization only pretended to fire him to reduce their legal liability.

A recent report indicated that prosecutors are considering another set of charges against Weisselberg, in an attempt to secure further cooperation against the former president directly.

Alex Jones claims he’s broke and can’t pay after shifting money out reach of Sandy Hook families

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections, according to new court filings revealed on Friday.

According to Reuters, Jones’ filing claims that he has up to $10 million in assets, while also claiming liabilities that total in the billions of dollars.

Jones’ filing comes in the wake of the massive defamation verdict leveled against him for his false claims that families of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School students were “crisis actors” who were lying about their dead children.

However, a report from the Washington Post published earlier this fall indicated that Jones may be moving money around in a manner designed to exaggerate his purported poverty and avoid paying out the money owed to the Sandy Hook families.

“As the potential for damages mounted, Jones began moving millions of dollars out of his company, Free Speech Systems, and into companies controlled by himself, friends or relatives,” the paper reports. “The transfers potentially put those funds out of reach of the Sandy Hook plaintiffs.”

Among other things, the Post found that Jones “started paying his personal trainer $100,000 a week to help ship supplements and other merchandise” and that “a company managed by Jones’s sister and listed as a ‘supplier or vendor’ was paid $240,000” for its services.

Montana’s new sex ed law ensnares English and history lessons, too

A Montana law requiring public schools to notify parents of lessons that mention human sexuality — and allowing parents to pull their children from those lessons — has reached further and been more cumbersome than anticipated, according to two school district leaders.

School districts across the state have spent months consulting with attorneys and retooling their policies to ensure they are in compliance with the law passed in 2021. Senate Bill 99 requires parents to be notified at least 48 hours in advance about lessons related to sexual education, as well as other topics, including anatomy, intimate relationships, sexual orientation, gender identity, contraception, and reproductive rights.

Because of the law’s broad scope, some schools have decided to notify parents about topics that may not be obviously related to human sexuality. In Billings, for example, school administrators sent a notice to parents of high school students at the beginning of the school year that flagged literary works such as “The Great Gatsby” and “Romeo and Juliet” because they describe intimate relationships. History and U.S. government lessons involving civil rights and certain U.S. Supreme Court cases are on the list. So, too, are biology classes that involve sexual reproduction — even nonhuman reproduction.

“Frankly, it’s a pain to have to send out notices to parents of students in courses like biology where there may be a lesson taught on genetics because the lesson mentions testes, ovaries, sperm, egg, fertilization, etc.,” said Micah Hill, superintendent of the Kalispell school district.

State Sen. Cary Smith (R-Billings), who sponsored the bill, did not respond to requests for comment on how the law was affecting schools. Before the state Senate voted on the bill in 2021, Smith said the law was needed because today’s comprehensive sexual education encompasses much more than just biology and anatomy.

“This type of sex education deals with a lot of other issues, such as feelings, what’s normal, what isn’t normal, and a lot of times those teachings conflict with what we try to teach our children at home and in our churches,” he said.

The Kalispell school district determined that the law applied to health classes; science lessons that involve anatomy, genetics, or reproduction; advanced psychology courses whose curriculum includes human development; certain social sciences classes; and many more.

“There really is no end to what might be considered given the broad definition that came out of the state legislature,” Hill said.

Hill said that Kalispell schools and teachers send the notifications and that he did not have the number sent so far this school year. “I don’t track where teachers are at in their curriculum pacing, so if it hasn’t happened, it is probably a matter of time,” he said.

No school district has announced changes to their curricula as a result of SB 99. Local school boards generally set school curricula through a public process in which community members are invited to offer feedback. Schools also rely heavily on the grade-level content standards set by the statewide education agency, the Montana Office of Public Instruction.

Also in response to SB 99, schools are consulting with attorneys and combing through material for any mention of the topics that fall under the law’s definition of human sexuality.

Teachers must not only work with administrators and legal teams to determine which lessons might trigger notification under SB 99 but must also be careful that classroom discussions don’t stray into areas that require notification if none has been given.

“On the teacher side of this, it feels like an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and overreach by the state to insert itself into locally controlled and elected school boards,” Hill said.

Smith said during the 2021 debate that the measure does not tell schools what they can teach. “We’re just telling them to let us know as parents and grandparents what is being taught so we can decide if we want our children to participate in those courses,” he said.

Missoula County Public Schools Interim Superintendent Russ Lodge said the district has sent parental notifications since the beginning of the school year. But he could not say how many or provide examples because he is not directly involved in the individual schools’ process. He said he wants his district, like Billings, to eventually include all subject matter that falls under SB 99’s notification requirement in a district-wide letter sent out every August.

“Whoever wrote it obviously broadened the definition out on purpose, and it covers a lot of ground,” he said.

Aside from the law’s effects on seemingly tangential subjects, critics said SB 99 threatens to stifle important classroom discussions on sexual health, gender identity, and personal development. Critics also said it could reduce the number of students who learn about contraception — knowledge that has been shown to help reduce rates of teen pregnancy — and about LGBTQ+ rights. The law could also discourage teachers from including certain subjects in their lessons or hinder their ability to respond freely to questions or comments from students, the critics said.

Montana’s education department mandates that schools’ sexual education programs “reflect the values of the community” and be abstinence-based and age-appropriate.

Pamela Kohler, an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington, said that the evidence “overwhelmingly shows that abstinence-only education is not effective at preventing sexual activity or pregnancy” and that “many of those at highest risk for unwanted pregnancy and STDs receive no or inadequate sex education.”

More than 40% of Montana high schoolers have had sex, according to the 2021 Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and just under half of them are not using condoms regularly, which raises their risk of becoming pregnant and developing sexually transmitted diseases. A study from the University of Montana released in 2017 found that more than 80% of students did not know basic information about HIV transmission and prevention.

Failing to teach about gender identity, sexual health, intimacy, and other elements of human sexuality means young people may have trouble finding accurate information, said Michelle Slaybaugh, director of social impact and strategic communications for SIECUS, an organization that advocates for comprehensive sexual education. And it makes students grappling with their sexual or gender identity more vulnerable, Slaybaugh added.

“Relationships and sexuality education has been proven to keep young people safer from bullying, help manage their feelings, concentrate in school, and develop the long-lasting skills they need to have healthy, strong relationships,” Slaybaugh said.

SB 99 also prohibits people who work at a clinic or organization that provides abortions from speaking or teaching at schools across the state, even if their lesson has nothing to do with abortion. That stipulation may have led to the termination of at least one long-standing relationship between a school district and a provider.

Bridgercare, a nonprofit reproductive health organization based in Bozeman that this year beat out the state health department to administer the state’s Title X program funding for family planning, had partnered with Bozeman Public Schools for 25 years to provide comprehensive sexual education to students. The organization, which does not provide abortions, has not been invited to provide instruction to Bozeman campuses this school year, according to Bridgercare officials.

The Bozeman school district’s superintendent, Casey Bertram, declined to be interviewed about the law and Bridgercare’s ties to the district.

“Whether parents like it or not, teens are navigating the challenges of adolescence and all of the emotional challenges that can bring,” said Cami Armijo-Grover, Bridgercare’s education director. “The best thing we can do for our kids is to educate them on how their bodies work and give them tools to navigate the feelings and challenges that come with puberty and relationships.”

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.

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Joe Pesci was burned on “Home Alone 2,” adding to a history of injured actors toughing it out on set

It’s an iconic moment. In the 1992 film “Home Alone 2,” a children’s classic despite its often downright violent antics, a thief called Harry, played by Joe Pesci, has escaped from prison with his associate Marv (Daniel Stern) and is determined to get revenge on the kid who sent the two to the slammer, our intrepid Kevin (Macaulay Culkin). Holed up in his uncle’s empty, gutted townhouse, Kevin sets traps for the men.

In the most memorable one of the film, a sequel to the 1990 blockbuster “Home Alone,” Harry pulls a light switch only to trigger a booby trap which ignites his winter hat on fire. 

Harry spends the rest of the film with a half-burned hat and a very red, bald scalp. And Pesci spent part of the filming in pain.

Related

25 fun facts about “Home Alone”

In a new interview with People, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of “Home Alone 2,” Pesci admits he did suffer “serious burns to the top of my head during the scene where Harry’s hat is set on fire.” 

As an adult rewatching “Home Alone 2,” you realize the robbers would never survive. 

In the film, Pesci as Harry doesn’t notice his burning head at first. He looks around, curious, exploring, as the flames shoot from the top of him like a human Roman candle. When he finally realizes, he turns the taps of a nearby sink only to find the water shut off. He sees a toilet bowl full of what appears to be water and does a handstand to dunk his burning head. It’s not water, but kerosene Kevin has planted there. Harry goes boom — but also, in the universe of the film, is somehow totally fine. 

As an adult rewatching “Home Alone 2,” you realize the robbers would never survive. 

Pesci told People he did have stuntpeople for “the real heavy stunts,” but still dealt with “bumps, bruises, and general pains.” This is the first time Pesci has publicly spoken of being burned by the flaming hat gag.

He’s far from the only actor to be injured while filming, but he’s also not the only one to stay silent (or be silenced about it) for a time. 

Tom Hanks got a staph infection, which could have turned deadly, from a cut on “Cast Away.” Halle Berry broke two ribs filming “Bruised” when kicked by her co-star, a real MMA fighter. Natalie Portman dislocated a rib during “Black Swan.” Isla Fisher nearly drowned in a scene for “Now You See Me,” in part because everyone on set thought she was just acting. 

In many cases, as when Berry was injured or when Tom Cruise broke his ankle on “Mission Impossible 6,” the actors kept going, hiding their injures, not wanting to break character or require everyone to stop for treatment or another take. Berry told Sports Illustrated, “I was so in that zone, in that world of being a fighter, mentally and emotionally. The fighter in me stood up and said: ‘You just have to keep going, take some Advil and tough your way through it.'” Pesci said, aside from the burns, he felt most of his injuries on “Home Alone 2” were “expected . . . [ones] that you would associate with that particular type of physical humor.”

In other cases, like Portman’s, directors pushed actors on. Buzzfeed wrote, “director Darren Aronofsky made [Portman] finish the scene in pain.” She told SFGate, “Darren was like, ‘Film it! Film it! Stay in character, talk in your character’s voice!’ “

The rigging was pulled extra hard on purpose, after an exchange between the director and crew to “really give it to her.” 

Both stars Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn were seriously injured during the filming of “The Exorcist” (1973). Blair, a child at the time, was hurt when the rigging attaching her to a mechanical bed broke: “It fractured my lower spine. No, they didn’t send me to the doctor, it is the footage that’s in the movie.” Burstyn suffered a permanent injury to her spine when rigging was yanked too hard, pulling her off of her feet and onto her back on a wooden floor. She also struck her head against a wall. The rigging was pulled extra hard on purpose, after an exchange between the director and crew to really “give it to her this time.” Burstyn said, “I couldn’t stand that he was willing to just get a quick shot of it before he called the ambulance.” 

In 2018, when Uma Thurman told The New York Times that Harvey Weinstein had sexually assaulted her, she also alleged abuse of another sort, manipulative and controlling, by director Quentin Tarantino who forced her to do dangerous stunts on the set of “Kill Bill,” including driving a car into a tree. She said he told her, “‘Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won’t blow the right way and I’ll make you do it again.'” The crash resulted in a concussion for Thurman, and Insider wrote that the injury “shows what happens when a director’s power goes too far.”

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It’s unclear why exactly Pesci’s injury happened or why it wasn’t spoken about for three decades, but the history of Hollywood (just like some other professions, perhaps especially now in the pandemic) is littered with people who hid injury and illness in order not to lose their jobs. Actors might feel the pressure to keep the fiction going at all costs. But a pattern of disregard of performers’ safety from the ones in charge, like Tarantino exhibits, could be part of a larger pattern: that of a disregard of other people in general. 

“It was way beyond what someone needs to do to make a movie,” Burstyn said of “The Exorcist.”

And though we laugh at the antics of the bumbling Harry and Marv, and marvel at their bodies somehow surviving all the abuse doled out by a conniving Kevin, this Christmas, it will be hard to look at the burning hat of “Home Alone 2” exactly the same way again.

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Ron DeSantis stays silent on the Trump-Ye fiasco. Now why could that be?

The days-long spectacle of  Kanye West’s final descent into ignominy reached an odious new low on Thursday when the antisemitic rapper (who now styles himself simply as Ye) appeared on Alex Jones’ “Infowars” show with his new entourage led by white supremacist Nick Fuentes to declare that he was a big fan of Hitler and “we got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.” He ended the day by posting an image of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David to his recently restored Twitter account, which was later suspended (again). Elon Musk tweeted that he had tried his best to keep Ye on the platform but the rapper finally “went too far.”

Really, Elon? Ya think?

It took most Republicans more than a week to say a peep about Ye and Fuentes’ dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week and most of their comments were along the lines of “Trump should show better judgment in his dinner companions.” A handful, notably House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, eventually announced that the GOP “has no place” for antisemitism or white supremacy. Over the course of this week, most prominent members of the party found some way to say they disapproved of all this unpleasantness, even if it those words had to be dragged out of them. The controversy is simply too offensive to avoid altogether.

Related

Kanye’s tragicomic, antisemitic Alex Jones meltdown: Absurdism in the service of fascism

But there is one very prominent Republican who has not said a word: the other Florida superstar, Gov. Ron DeSantis. For a man who has never seen a culture-war issue he didn’t want to jump into with both feet, this seems odd, especially since he’s being widely touted as the answer to the party’s “Trump problem.” That would assume that the Trump problem has something to do with his embrace of white supremacy and bigotry in general, and there’s not much reason to think DeSantis sees that as a problem.

Rolling Stone reports that the Florida governor and his team have made a calculated decision to say nothing on this issue that’s roiling the political world:

“In ongoing discussions following his reelection, including this week, I’ve been asked to keep my powder dry,” says Dan Eberhart, a longtime GOP donor — and former big Trump donor — recalling his conversations with Team DeSantis. (Eberhart is now backing DeSantis for 2024). “My understanding is that the DeSantis team doesn’t see upside in kicking off the fight with Trump this early, even if it may be inevitable. Wading into the Fuentes fiasco just isn’t worth it for them. The media will harpoon Trump without Team DeSantis lifting a finger.”

This explanation is all about political positioning relative to Trump. It doesn’t sound as if “Team DeSantis” has even given a passing thought to the question of whether this issue should be addressed on the merits. There’s a good reason for that. DeSantis and his crew, much like Trump, understand perfectly well that to win the Republican nomination they will need to cater to the large and growing faction of base voters who see no problem in Trump consorting with antisemites and white supremacists and bigots of all varieties, and even openly approve of it.

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There have been several antisemitic demonstrations in Florida in recent months that had nothing to do with Donald Trump and DeSantis made no move to denounce any of it. As the headliner at the Turning Point Conference in Tampa last summer, he refused to disavow a group of Nazis who demonstrated outside the convention center with swastikas and flags that said “DeSantis Country.” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., condemned the neo-Nazis, tweeting, “This is a disgusting act of hateful anti-Semitism and doesn’t belong in Florida, our nation or anywhere across the world,” but the governor himself stayed silent, leading the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald to call him out.

An earlier Nazi rally in Orlando last spring had DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw suggesting that the demonstrators were Democratic plants. She later deleted the tweet but an earlier post (for which she also had to apologize) about Georgia Republicans being manipulated by the Rothschild family — an ancient antisemitic trope — suggested Pushaw’s true inclinations. Whether that reflected yet more cynical political strategy or heartfelt belief is unclear, not that it makes any difference.

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DeSantis never responded directly, although he ultimately called the Nazi demonstrators “jackasses,” as if they were just a few youthful pranksters who’d gotten out of hand. Instead he blamed the “Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to smear me, as if I had something to do with it,” insisting, “We’re not playing their game.” As with the current Trump-Kanye controversy, he reduced it to a question of political advantage instead of addressing the issue itself.

It’s not just about Nazis. DeSantis has the same reaction to non-swastika white supremacists as well. Over this past weekend a plane flew over the football stadium in Jacksonville with a Confederate flag and the unambiguous message “PUT MONUMENTS BACK.” When asked about it, the Sunshine State’s leader once again refused to directly confront the issue:

This is the man that Jim Geraghty extolled in the Washington Post as a “return to normal,” claiming that “DeSantis would be a Republican nominee without Donald Trump’s worst and most destructive impulses and habits.” Apparently, coddling neo-Nazis and other white supremacists as valued members of the GOP base is not among those destructive impulses, because there is no visible daylight between Ron and Don on that score.

Ron DeSantis is also an election denier, an anti-vaxxer and a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist. As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait reported, he marked the first anniversary of the insurrection “by wooing right-wing social-media personalities with an invitation to his office, dinner at the governor’s mansion, and rooftop drinks.” No one should fool themselves into believing that because DeSantis doesn’t have Trump’s specific personality defects he doesn’t share Trump’s deplorable political instincts.

We are seeing in real time the revival of overt antisemitism and racism on a level we have not seen for decades. It is the primary source of energy on the right and it’s fueling the campaigns of the top two candidates for the 2024 Republican nomination for president. in 2024. In that respect, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.  

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“Bench slap”: Legal experts say court “eviscerated” Trump judge for “interfering” in Mar-a-Lago case

A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s order appointing a special master to review secret government documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

A three-member panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which included two judges appointed by Trump, issued a 21-page opinion blasting the decision by Cannon, another Trump appointee, to block the FBI from using thousands of documents until they are reviewed by a special master. The unanimous ruling said Cannon never had jurisdiction to order the review or to prohibit the FBI from using documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its criminal investigation. The court also rejected the idea that Trump should be treated differently than any other target of a search warrant.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the ruling said. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank,'” it continued.

Cannon’s special master order riled legal experts, who noted that there is no precedent for a former president to invoke executive privilege after leaving office and to prevent the Justice Department, another part of the executive branch, from viewing executive branch documents.

“The law is clear,” the judges added. “We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance called the ruling a “bench slap” of Cannon’s decision to “interfere” with the criminal investigation.

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“In a rather painful dismantling of Cannon and Trump’s lawyers, the Court points out that they read the law wrong, badly wrong, in an effort to serve Trump,” she wrote on Substack. “In fact, the Court notes that even Trump’s lawyers don’t use the badly wrong theory Judge Cannon used to decide she had jurisdiction over the matter.”

“This is a smackdown,” Palm Beach County Attorney Dave Aronberg told MSNBC. “It says that Judge Cannon should never have exercised jurisdiction over this matter. Remember, Judge Cannon is in a county, two counties away, 68 miles from West Palm Beach. She inserted herself into this case when it was in the hands of Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhardt. That’s what Trump’s team wanted. She took jurisdiction and then she gave them everything they wanted.”

Other legal experts agreed that the ruling was a strong repudiation of Cannon, who was appointed to the bench in 2020.

“To say that the court of appeals today completely eviscerated Judge Cannon’s ruling and Trump’s arguments is an understatement,” wrote conservative attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic.

“The Circuit Court’s stinging rebuke of the loose Cannon means she has fully earned that title,” Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe wrote on Post.

“This Eleventh Circuit ruling is just dripping with venom for how stupid Judge Cannon’s ruling was and it’s beautiful,” tweeted attorney Ken White.

“It is a complete takedown. Eviscerates the garbage fire arguments put forward by Trump’s legal team and the clearly erroneous judicial analysis by Judge Cannon,” agreed national security attorney Bradley Moss. “Trump did get one thing out of this: delay. Three months of it.”

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The 11th Circuit panel also took issue with Trump’s arguments that he needs to protect documents that he designated as personal property, noting that the status of the document is irrelevant to whether the government can seize it during a legally authorized search.

“All these arguments are a sideshow,” the ruling said, adding that Trump did not show that his rights had been violated in the search. “If there has been no constitutional violation—much less a serious one—then there is no harm to be remediated in the first place,” the judges wrote.

“The 11th Circuit’s ruling isn’t just a stinging rebuke of Judge Cannon’s special master order,” wrote Norm Eisen, who served as Democratic counsel during Trump’s first impeachment. “It’s also a rebuke of Trump & his lawyers.”

Trump could still appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, which already rejected his bid to overturn another 11th Circuit ruling knocking down part of Cannon’s order that prevented the FBI from using about 100 documents marked classified.

“Trump can appeal this to SCOTUS, but I see about a 0% chance of even *this* court taking it up,” tweeted Steve Vladeck, a Supreme Court expert at the University of Texas School of Law.

“This Trump maneuver backfired spectacularly,” added former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal. “Like all he touches.”

Read the full 21-page ruling below:

Trump Ruling 11th Circuit by Igor Derysh

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