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Gen Z workers aren’t feeling great. What’s the problem?

Fewer than one in three Gen Z workers with full-time jobs feel holistically healthy — from a social, mental, physical and financial standpoint — a figure that's 10% lower than their older colleagues. 

That’s according to a survey by MetLife, scheduled to be released in March. The insurance and employee benefit company surveyed 2,964 full-time workers aged 21 and older for its 2025 Employee Benefit Trends. 

The annual survey’s findings are partially framed as demonstrating what kinds of benefits employers can offer — like health insurance, student debt assistance, paid leave and childcare — to most acutely benefit their employees, and how educating employees on these benefits can boost their wellbeing. One finding, for instance, shows that when Gen Z employees clearly understand their workplace benefits, they’re 3.2 times "more holistically healthy."

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A closer look at the survey shows results beyond the workplace, suggesting that solutions to Gen Z’s mental health crisis likely exist both in and outside work environments. Questions were framed not solely about their mental health in the workplace; instead, the employees were asked to rank their overall sense of well-being across four spectrums: financial health, social health, mental health and physical health. 

"How healthy do you feel when it comes to the following aspects of your life?" the survey asked respondents, and found that 46% of Gen Z workers surveyed felt stressed, compared to 35% of other groups. When asked about depression, burnout and isolation, Gen Z reported heightened feelings across the board: 35% of Gen Zers vs. 20% of other demographic groups reported experiencing depression, while 44% of Gen Z vs. 34% of other demographics said they’re experiencing burnout. Thirty percent of Gen Z respondents said they were experiencing isolation, compared to 22% of respondents in other age groups.  

Traumatic events contribute to stress

Gen Z includes people born between 1997 and 2012. MetLife notes a span of traumatic events they have lived through as likely contributing to their higher reports of mental distress. 

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"Given what Gen Z has experienced in their lifetimes — beginning their careers during a global pandemic, growing up with social media, living with climate anxiety — their struggles are understandable, particularly with mental and social health," the report reads.

"HR and business leaders can adjust multiple levers within their employee care models and the overall employee experience in support of Gen Z. Social and supportive cultures are particularly important," the report reads.

Workplace improvements can have a meaningful impact on widespread mental health — as our bleary eyes can remind us, American workers spend more time working than we do with our families, sleeping, or enjoying any hobbies or activities.

Still, the insights on Gen Z’s mental health in the MetLife survey have been demonstrated for years, and likely have root causes outside of workplace benefits. Gen Z has been called "the loneliest generation" and struggles with higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. In 2023, The White House said the U.S. was experiencing "an unprecedented youth mental health crisis," and that it had invested $4 billion in funding for mental health care and substance use services. That year, a report from the American Psychological Association found that Gen Z and younger millennials were “completely overwhelmed by stress,” particularly suffering from financial stress and isolation.  

Members of Gen Z are more likely than other age groups to be diagnosed with a mental health condition, in part because of their relative openness to therapy and psychiatric care. 

"When employees feel financially unhealthy, this significantly impacts their mental wellbeing in stride"

There’s no shortage of possible explanations for Gen Z’s declining mental health, to say nothing of social media’s profound impact on it. Gen Z also has grown up in a time of gun violence, rising costs of living, a widening wage divide and once-in-a-lifetime weather events. In an American Psychological Association survey of members of Gen Z ages 15 to 21, 75% of respondents cited mass shootings as a "significant" source of stress. 

And in a survey of 16,000 younger Gen Z members conducted by The Lancet, a medical journal, 85% of respondents reported being significantly worried about climate change. 

"Very few people who are talking about the mental health crisis of young people are saying, 'Maybe there's something to do with the climate crisis, maybe there's something to do with the feeling of huge amounts of uncertainty that they face in their adult lives,'" researcher Sarah Jaquette Ray said on a recent episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast.  

The ever-increasing costs of everyday goods keeps members of Gen Z stressed — 67% of 18- to 34-year-old told the American Psychological Association they felt "consumed" by financial anxiety, compared to 13% of those 65 and older. That’s an anxiety shouldered by most generations: Nearly one in three Americans are "just getting by financially," and costs of "day to day expenses" were among the top financial stressors for 61% of U.S. adults in 2023. 

"Our research indicates that there is a particularly strong link between mental health and financial health — in other words, when employees feel financially unhealthy, this significantly impacts their mental wellbeing in stride," Todd Katz, head of U.S. group benefits at MetLife, told Salon.

Gen Z might put more pressure on itself than older coworkers. A survey conducted by Empower found that Gen Zers define financial success as earning an annual salary of $587,797 and possessing $9.47 million in assets — nearly twice as much as the salaries other generations consider financially successful.

Gen Z also struggles with money dysmorphia — an unrealistic and distorted view of finances. Credit Karma found that around 43% of Gen Zers feel behind financially even though they have above-average savings. Therapists attribute this to societal pressures and generational teachings about money, as well as social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram that are flooded with influencers of the same age flaunting luxury purchases and exotic trips.

Work-life balance could help

At least one workplace benefit could stand to materially benefit Gen Zers: better work-life balance. According to a report on Gen Z’s happiness by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, the "strongest predictor" of Gen Z's happiness is "whether an individual reports having enough time during the week to sleep and relax."

"These elements are even more influential in Gen Z’s happiness than physical or financial security," the report states. The Washington Post noted in 2024 that members of Gen Z have been "disproportionately pummeled by rising prices, higher housing costs, larger student loan balances and more overall debt" compared to millennials, with Gen Zers having to spend more on basic necessities than millennials did at their age. 

While a 40-hour workweek will no doubt remain for the foreseeable future, some Gen Z workers who can control how many hours they actually spend working — a graphic designer who works remotely, versus a bartender or tour guide — appear to be gradually chipping away at the number of hours devoted each week to working. 

A survey conducted by Fiverr, a freelance job marketplace, found that Gen Z is working slightly less than their peers, with Gen Z workers saying they’re productive 29 hours per 40-hour workweek, compared to 31 hours of weekly productivity reported by the average U.S. worker. To some younger workers, working fewer hours at their full-time jobs is a fitting response to stagnating wage growth, and how much less the money earned at work translates to real-world benefits.

Between 1979 and 2019, wages for the lowest tenth percentile of earners rose just 3% after inflation. And from 1979 to 2020, U.S. workers’ productivity went up 61.8% while wages grew by 17.5%.

One TikTok user put it like this in a recent video: "We need to stop expecting the same damn people who bought a four-bedroom home, and a brand new Cadillac convertible off of a $30,000 a year salary, to understand what it’s like to be working 40-plus hours a week with a master’s degree and still not being able to afford a 400-square-foot studio apartment in [expletive] Iowa." 

The sentiment seemed to resonate, as the post has been viewed more than 2 million times. 

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The high opportunity cost of Trump’s economy

President Donald Trump is returning to the White House with the strongest economy in the world; unemployment is low, inflation continues to trend downward and growth is accelerating. Yet, Trump is about to unravel our post-COVID recovery with an attempt to enact a toxic economic agenda of tariffs, mass deportations and tax cuts for the mega-rich. All paid for with cuts to programs that benefit working class Americans.

Latinos, as much as any group, are poised to bear the brunt of Trump's corrosive MAGA policies. This is particularly ironic given that Democrats lost ground this cycle with Latino voters because some believed Trump would improve their economic well-being. But that dynamic also gives Democrats an opening in 2026 to reclaim lost ground and flip control of the House. 

The cumulative effects of all of these policies will be terrible for Latinos, which could leave many feeling a sense of buyer's remorse for voting for Trump. To maximize that anger, Democrats must make the case directly to Latinos.

Democrats must aggressively show how Trump's economic policies immediately harmed Latino families and communities—increasing their hardships while decreasing access to the services on which many of them depend.

The nation’s affordability crisis has uniquely impacted Latinos. As reporter Jack Herrera notes, "80% of Latinos are working class. Their experience of the economy the past four years — COVID shutdowns, inflation, gas prices, housing costs — was rough. That put the incumbent Democrats at a disadvantage." 

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But Latinos were not an outlier. A recent Way to Win post-election battleground state survey noted that jobs and the economy were the most motivating issues across race and education. And Trump outperformed Harris across several key groups on 2024's top issue: jobs and the economy. To bring these voters back, Democrats must speak directly to their concerns, show that they are fighting for them and their interests while also highlighting what Republican economic policies do to devastate their communities. 

The truth is, despite systemic issues of inequality that exacerbated an affordability crisis, particularly for working class voters, Democrats had made progress over the past four years. As Peter Baker of the New York Times noted, employment is up, wages are growing, manufacturing jobs are higher than ever, and inflation has dropped significantly. 

According to Politico, that progress is at risk: House Republicans are eyeing more than $5 trillion in cuts to bankroll Trump's top priorities this year, including tax cuts for billionaires and mass deportations. The early list of potential spending offsets includes changes to Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and popular climate measures. These cuts alone would deeply hurt Latinos who live in climate change frontline communities and have benefited from the cost-saving energy rebates in the Clean Energy Plan. Worse yet, nine million Latinos are insured through the Affordable Care Act and 6.5 million Latinos use Medicare—roughly 10% of all enrollees.

Even without those cuts, Trump's economic policies promise to wreak havoc on the financial security of Latinos along with most Americans. 

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Trump has promised aggressive tariffs, which are taxes placed on imported goods. US companies will have to pay those tariffs to import goods, and businesses will almost surely pass those costs on to consumers. Economists agree on this point — consumers would likely see prices increase if Trump follows through with a plan to levy import tariffs. In fact, Trump himself has admitted that there is no 'guarantee' that prices won't rise with his tariff program.

Mass deportations, another Trump promise, will also prove costly because they will remove workers who are critical to powering our economy, according to a report from Unidos. Undocumented workers account for  22% of all U.S. agriculture jobs, 15% of all construction jobs, and 8% of all manufacturing jobs. Mass deportations could result in labor shortages—deeply impacting supply and driving up the cost of specific goods and services in these sectors. This is especially true of grocery prices, where inflation rattled consumers and remained stubbornly high during much of Biden’s presidency.  Deportations could also exacerbate another vexing problem, housing prices, by reducing the number of workers available to help construct new homes to address the nation’s housing shortage. 

Finally, Trump's tax policy changes, if enacted, will result in a tax cut for the wealthiest five percent of Americans while simultaneously being a tax increase for all other income groups. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, if these proposals were in effect in 2026, the wealthiest one percent would receive an average tax cut of about $36,300, and the lowest-income twenty percent of Americans would receive an increase of $800.

The cumulative effects of all of these policies will be terrible for Latinos, which could leave many feeling a sense of buyer's remorse for voting for Trump. To maximize that anger, Democrats must make the case directly to Latinos that we are on their side, tell them how we would make their lives better, and underscore precisely how toxic Trump’s policies are for our communities. If we do that, we stand a great chance of stanching the gains Trump made with Latinos in 2024, regaining control of the House in 2026, and making him a lame-duck president.

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What you need to know about Social Security changes

Millions of retired Americans are set to benefit from the Social Security Fairness Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden on Jan. 5. But there are worries it could worsen the insolvency of the government program and impact future generations.

The law eliminates two controversial provisions: the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. Both were designed to reduce Social Security benefits for employees with pensions from employers who weren’t required to withhold Social Security taxes. Both policies barred public-sector workers, such as public school teachers and firefighters, from collecting their full benefits under the federal retirement program. 

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For decades, these two federal laws have been condemned as unjust because they’ve deprived millions of public servants of the Social Security benefits they’ve earned. Critics say the two provisions penalized workers for having alternative pensions and have left many retirees struggling to make ends meet despite their years of service.

With the Social Security Fairness Act, over 2.1 million retirees are expected to receive an additional $360 extra per month, on average. And more than 700,000 surviving spouses will get an average increase of $700 to $1,190 in their monthly benefits. The benefits adjustments will go back to January 2024, so beneficiaries may also receive payments for the extra benefits they would have received last year.

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Insolvency concerns

Though the Social Security Fairness Act aims to bring equity to millions of retirees, critics have voiced concerns about the overall cost of repealing the two provisions and the financial strain it puts on Social Security Trust Funds.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office estimates that implementing the Social Security Fairness Act would cost around $195.7 billion over the next decade. And repealing the two provisions may accelerate Social Security’s insolvency date timeline, currently projected for 2033. That date could move up by six months. 

With the Social Security Trust Fund already running low, Congress will need to address the program’s funding shortfall as they implement the Social Security Fairness Act. 

What does this mean for you?

"For the nearly 3 million people who are currently receiving benefits and are affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, this is a win," said Devin Carroll, certified financial planner and owner and lead adviser at Carroll Advisory Group.

According to Carroll, if you had your benefit reduced by the Windfall Elimination Provision, the new law would make a difference of a few hundred dollars per month. And for those affected by the Government Pension Offset, the difference could be well over a thousand dollars per month.

"For those currently receiving a benefit, there will be a recalculation process," Carroll said. "This recalculation will not only consider the benefits payable moving forward but also a lump sum of benefits that should have been paid since the effective date of the legislation, December 2023."

The law could lead to people missing out on benefits simply because they aren’t aware of their eligibility

However, Carroll says the law could lead to people missing out on benefits simply because they aren’t aware of their eligibility. For example, someone receiving a pension from a non-covered service may have been told they weren’t eligible for spousal or survivor benefits because of the Government Pension Offset. However, with the repeal of this provision, they may now qualify for those benefits. 

"The challenge is that the Social Security Act doesn’t automatically review prior marriages to determine eligibility, and now, the responsibility lies with the individual to know the rules and present the necessary documentation and proof," he said. "And if someone misses the news or doesn’t understand how this change affects them, they could leave unclaimed benefits on the table."

What’s next? 

The Social Security Administration is still developing the process for implementation, so no immediate action is required on your part. The only thing you should do now is verify that the SSA has your correct mailing address and direct deposit information on file at ssa.gov/myaccount. If you hadn’t previously applied for Social Security benefits but think you might be eligible, you can apply here.  

As the Social Security Act is ironing out the details, you’ll want to regularly check the Social Security Administration’s updates page to stay informed about the progress on implementation and if any additional action is needed.

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Roadside reflections: Where to stay, eat and fix your car across the U.S.

In 2024, I traveled a lot — but that travel looked very different from prior years. I started the year with a plan: to organize and embark on a 16-city national book tour to celebrate the release of my book, “Mechanic Shop Femme’s Guide to Car Ownership,” all in just 28 days.

This book tour was different for a lot of reasons, but primarily because instead of signing books at libraries or bookstores, I held events in women-, queer- and POC-owned mechanic shops across the United States.

It was a whirlwind. I crisscrossed the country, starting on the West Coast, then heading to the East Coast, and finally finishing the tour at home in the Midwest. Along the way, I visited cities for the first time, returned to old favorites and saw a side of the country I never expected.

Here are my favorite hotels from the tour, a few restaurants that stood out and nearby mechanic shops in case you're ever in the area — or road-tripping and need car help.

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New England highlights

The Inn at Woodstock Hill
Woodstock, Connecticut
In the era of Airbnb and spare-room rentals, you might think the charm of a true bed-and-breakfast has been lost—but the Inn at Woodstock Hill proves otherwise. Located in Woodstock, Connecticut, just outside of Massachusetts, the inn features 21 guest rooms, six of which have four-poster beds, and is set on a sprawling lot with trees and walking paths.

Breakfast is served daily, and the warm, cozy atmosphere makes this the perfect spot for a romantic getaway not far from Boston, Providence, and Hartford. Just make sure to drive or rent a car — rideshare services are rare here.

Mechanic Shop: Santora Automotives, North Oxford, Massachusetts

Palmer House Inn
Falmouth, Massachusetts
I only spent one night at the Palmer House Inn, but I still can’t stop thinking about this charming Victorian-style bed-and-breakfast. Located on Cape Cod, it’s within walking distance of almost everything you’d want to enjoy during a getaway.

The inn features 12 individually decorated rooms in the main house, four rooms in the guest house, and a private two-bedroom cottage. The guest house and cottage are pet-friendly, so you can bring your pup along for a romantic escape or a girls' weekend.

The breakfast here is truly special—the menu changes daily and includes homemade fruit dishes, pastries, and a main dish, all served in the dining room or outdoors.

Mechanic Shop: I visited Andrea’s Auto, Martha’s Vineyard (which is now closed)

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The Essex Resort & Spa

Essex, Vermont

Although I had never been to Vermont before my book tour, the Essex Resort & Spa instantly struck me as quintessentially New England. Spanning 18 acres in Essex, Vermont, this property truly has it all: a roaring fire to enjoy in the evenings, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools, a golf course, a full-service spa, and two restaurants. There are even goats on the premises for a charming touch.

The hotel also offers bikes for rent, all the essentials for making s’mores, and a staff that goes above and beyond to guide you if you (like me) find yourself a little lost exploring the grounds.

Mechanic Shop – Girlington Garage in Burlington, Vermont

 

***

New York adventures

Martinique New York on Broadway
Manhattan, New York
Where you stay in Manhattan makes a big difference in your experience. Martinique New York on Broadway is centrally located — just blocks from the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and Koreatown — but somehow doesn’t feel overwhelming. The historic 18-floor building features comfortable beds, excellent service and great views.

Tempo by Hilton Times Square
Manhattan, New York
If you want to be right in the middle of the chaos, Tempo by Hilton Times Square is a fantastic option. Opened in August 2023, this modern hotel has 661 rooms with contemporary furnishings, large floor-to-ceiling windows and an outdoor terrace offering panoramic views of Times Square.

Restaurant: Yoon Haeundae Galbi is an incredible Korean BBQ spot less than a mile from both hotels. It’s perfect for a celebration-worthy meal with delicious food and a hands-on dining experience.

Mechanic Shop: Great Bear Auto Repair, Flushing, Queens

***

Southern comfort

Ellis Tribute Hotel
Atlanta, Georgia
I had a wild adventure the day I visited Atlanta. We started our morning in Burlington, Vermont, flew to Atlanta, and had a flight that evening to Sarasota. The only way to make this work was to get a hotel room as a home base, but most hotels have check-in after 3 p.m. and check-out by noon.

Instead of booking two nights just to use a room for a few hours, I found the Ellis Tribute Hotel through Daypass, a service that lets you book rooms during daytime hours. It worked perfectly! The hotel was comfortable, centrally located, and the staff went above and beyond to make our brief stay exceptional.

Restaurant: Busy Bee Cafe is a must every time I visit Atlanta. Their fried chicken, mac and cheese and candied yams are consistently spectacular. They’re takeout-only now, so order ahead to avoid a long wait.

Mechanic Shop: Georgia Auto Solutions (aka Rob the Blonde Mechanic), Conyers, Georgia

The Sarasota Modern
Sarasota, Florida
I’ve stayed in a lot of nice hotels, but The Sarasota Modern took my breath away. This stunning modern hotel features multiple outdoor pools, contemporary furnishings, and balconies with soaking tubs. We stayed in a sprawling residential suite with a full kitchen, dining table, massive bathroom, and a balcony with ocean views just a few blocks away.

The hotel also offers bikes, games like giant Jenga, and a ping-pong table for guests to enjoy. Don’t miss the carrot cake at Wink Wink Food and Drink, the onsite restaurant and bar.

Mechanic Shop: Xpertech Auto Repair, Englewood, Florida

The Crescent Hotel Fort Worth

Forth Worth, Texas

The Crescent Hotel makes an impression the moment you step through its doors. The grand lobby, with its fireplace, marble reception desk, and elegant decor, sets a welcoming tone that is reinforced by the excellent customer service. The rooms echo this sophistication, featuring marble accents, plush, comfortable beds, and select patios with seating for added relaxation.

A standout feature of the hotel is the Canyon Ranch Wellness Club and Spa, offering a range of wellness experiences to complement any stay. While the pace of my book tour didn’t allow time to enjoy the spa, it’s at the top of my list for a future visit to Fort Worth.

For dinner, head to the fine dining restaurant inside Emilia’s, known as The Blue Room. It offers an exceptional tasting menu experience, complete with outstanding service and stunning (blue-themed) decor.

Mechanic Shop – Kwik Kar Lube and Auto Repair in Carrollton, Texas

***

West Coast wonders

Hotel 1000
Seattle, Washington
Hotel 1000 is luxury meets convenience. The rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Pike Place Market and Puget Sound, large soaking tubs, fireplaces, and contemporary Pacific Northwest decor. It’s walking distance from restaurants, shops, and Pike Place Market itself, making it a perfect home base for exploring Seattle.

Restaurant: Seattle is one of my favorite American cities for sushi. Sushi Kashiba is a high-end sushi restaurant with melt-in-your-mouth fish and perfectly seasoned rice just a 9-minute walk from Hotel 1000. They offer omakase and à la carte sushi. If you haven’t sat at a sushi counter and enjoyed your sushi bite by bite, this is a great place to get omakase. 

Mechanic Shop: Repair Revolution, Seattle, Washington

***

Midwest gems

Hilton Columbus Downtown
Columbus, Ohio
This hotel served as an excellent home base for my time in Columbus. It’s situated in the heart of the city, across from the convention center, and features over 400 pieces of Ohio-made art. The rooms are spacious, with fabulous beds and great views of the city.

The customer service here was exceptional. I misplaced my wedding ring during my stay, and the staff acted quickly to recover it and send it to me via FedEx within hours — a sharp contrast to some other hotels’ policies.

Restaurant: The Pearl Short North offers a nostalgic atmosphere, oysters, seafood, and handcrafted cocktails in dimly lit, cozy surroundings.

Mechanic Shop: Alternative Auto Care, Columbus, Ohio

JW Marriott Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids, Michigan

If you book a JW Marriott, you can usually count on a consistently good experience: comfortable beds, excellent service, and thoughtful amenities. The JW Marriott in Grand Rapids lives up to this reputation. It’s located in a highly walkable downtown area, surrounded by restaurants and activities, making it a great home base for exploring the city.

That said, be cautious about leaving anything important behind. The hotel has unusual lost-and-found policies. My wife forgot her driver’s license there, and we realized it barely an hour after checking out. While they initially promised to overnight it to us (at our expense), days passed with no action. Multiple follow-up calls later, they claimed their policy prohibited mailing valuables and insisted only she could pick it up in person—a challenge since we’d already left town. Strangely, the ID eventually arrived in the mail months later—long after we’d replaced it.

Mechanic Shop: Grand Rapids Hybrid, Grand Rapids, Michigan

***

I hope these recommendations inspire your next road trip or getaway! Whether you’re searching for a great hotel, a memorable meal or a trustworthy mechanic, these spots made my book tour truly special.

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“Just the beginning”: Trump announces tariffs after Colombia turns away deportees

President Donald Trump announced a series of retaliatory measures against Colombia after the country refused two flights of deportees from the United States. 

The president has asked his administration to impose tariffs on Colombian goods, travel bans on Colombian government officials and financial sanctions, he shared in a post to Truth Social on Sunday. 

"I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia. This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people," Trump wrote. "Petro’s denial of these flights has jeopardized the National Security and Public Safety of the United States."

Trump promised that 25% tariffs on all Colombian goods would rise to 50% after one week. He also indicated that he had further sanctions in store. 

"These measures are just the beginning," he wrote. "We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!"

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In a statement posted to X, Petro demanded that Colombian migrants be treated with "the dignity that a human being deserves."

"A migrant is not a criminal," he wrote. "I cannot allow migrants to remain in a country that does not want them; but if that country sends them back, it must be with dignity and respect for them and for our country. We will receive our fellow citizens on civilian planes, without treating them like criminals."

Trump has announced plans to impose similar tariffs on several of the United States' biggest trading partners. 

“We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada, because they’re allowing vast numbers of people [into the country],” he said earlier this month.

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As Snoop Dogg and other hip-hop artists cozy up to Donald Trump, is hip-hop moving to the right?

Eight years ago, in his West Coast marijuana haze, Snoop Dogg ardently sang along to YG and Nipsey Hussle’s anti-Trump protest song, "FDT," which stands for "F**k Donald Trump."

“We ain’t voting for your punk a**,” Snoop stated to his followers, taking a hit of his blunt. 

Flash forward to Jan. 18., the rapper, who called people "stupid motherf**kers" for voting for Trump, headlined an inauguration event called the Crypto Ball where he, along with Rick Ross and Soulja Boy, rubbed shoulders with crypto-bro billionaires — posting videos to Instagram flashing their connections to high-powered places and people.

There is a growing trend with some of hip-hop's influential stars aligning themselves with conservative politics.

Dressed in their black designer suits, three of the biggest names in hip-hop took the stage and performed their hits for some of Washington D.C's crypto executives at the event honoring Trump, which dubbed him "America's first crypto president."

Snoop's Trump-sympathizing pivot did not go unnoticed by people online who were quick to highlight that the rapper had previously skewered anyone who had performed for Trump in the past. "I'm gonna roast the f*** outta you," Snoop Dogg said before Trump's 2017 inauguration, calling artists who would perform for the president "Uncle Toms."

While Snoop hasn't commented on the heated criticisms against him, Soulja Boy took to Instagram to clarify why he chose to perform at the ball: "They paid me a bag."

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The lucrative business of hip-hop has created billionaires like the disgraced hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs and Roc Nation CEO and rapper, Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, emphasizing progress in Black entrepreneurship and capitalism. However, there is a growing trend with some of hip-hop's influential stars aligning themselves with conservative politics — starting with Kanye West and Lil Wayne, and now, figures like former vocal anti-Trumper, Snoop Dogg.

Salon talked to Derrick Darby, a philosophy professor at Rutgers University specializing in hip-hop and political philosophy, to try and make sense of this shift. Darby broke down the ever-changing and nuanced politics and identity attached to Trumpism in Black communities — especially in hip-hop.

"Cash rules everything around me . . . [Get the money] dollar, dollar bill, y'all," Darby said, summarizing the situation using Wu-Tang Clan lyrics.

Read our interview below to understand why, as Darby puts it, "our community, much like many other communities, is not monolithic."

The following transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. 

When hip-hop was first created, how did the genre showcase the Black experience and how did the Black experience relate to politics?

When it was first created — going back to the early '70s in the South Bronx, where hip-hop had its origins — the area was severely neglected in many ways by the government. It was plagued by extreme poverty, limited job opportunities, a poor public education system, and widespread street violence. Young people, however, responded by creating a powerful art form that initially served as a way to get kids off the streets and out of gangs, channeling their energy into more productive directions.

At its inception, hip-hop was born out of the creativity of young people from the ghettos, who had very limited resources. With great ingenuity, they transformed the raw elements of DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti into a cohesive culture. This not only engaged kids in creative expression but also led to increased political awareness. Hip-hop began to shine a light on their circumstances, highlighting what was wrong and how to improve it.

One of the first significant rap songs to address these issues was "The Message." Melle Mel delivered that unforgettable line: "Now, if a child is born with no state of mind / Blind to the ways of mankind." That lyric was a powerful call to consciousness, embodying the political awareness that hip-hop embraced from its birth. Melle Mel’s verse in "The Message" remains a foundational piece of hip-hop’s political consciousness.

How have people like Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, Nelly and Soulja Boy contributed to the genre in this way? 

All the people you just mentioned are clearly very important hip-hop pioneers, innovators, and creatives. One thing we must underscore when thinking about these individuals is their independence and their genius. That’s the key aspect we truly need to appreciate, and it accounts for why many of them have had long careers and remain household names in some sense. Their music has endured, and they’ve found ways to continue influencing popular culture. So it’s important to emphasize their independence and creativity.

"I believe we must respect the fact that they have the freedom to make those choices."

Now, the other thing we know is that hip-hop artists, like other artists, can choose to use their significant platforms in different ways — some ways we might not like, and others we might applaud. We remember, during the first Trump presidency, when Kanye decided to use his platform in ways that many people found appalling. We also remember when Ice Cube was open to engaging in conversation with the Trump administration because he thought it could be productive in securing needed resources for the community. Hip-hop artists make these choices about how to use their significant platforms, and they can do so in ways that are politically significant. Then, we must decide what we think about that. However, I believe we must respect the fact that they have the freedom to make those choices.

What is Snoop’s role as a figurehead of hip-hop in the past? What is his significance as a figure now?

Snoop is such an important figure. In our imagination, we picture the young Snoop and Dr. Dre teaming up to deliver what many consider one of the greatest hip-hop collaborations of all time — music that has had a profound impact on hip-hop as a whole. That music was defiant, deeply critical of the nation, and graphic in its depiction of life in the hood and the challenges people faced. That’s the Snoop we grew up on. That’s the Snoop who cemented his reputation as a hip-hop icon.

But now, we turn around and see Snoop everywhere. We see him at the Super Bowl. We see him at the Olympics. We see him on "The Voice." We see him in countless product endorsements. And now, we see Snoop at the Trump Ball. This reflects another reality of hip-hop that we need to emphasize: hip-hop is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It has made a lot of people rich, though much of that wealth has gone to corporations rather than the artists themselves. However, we’re now witnessing a time when artists like Snoop — and a select few others — have strategically leveraged their brand to enrich themselves.

At the same time, Snoop has given back to his community. He has remained deeply invested in South Central Los Angeles, supporting community programs and helping kids. Snoop is not just about himself; he has accumulated great wealth, but he has also reinvested it in the community.

The point is that there is money in hip-hop, and someone like Snoop is not afraid to embrace that reality. The other truth — whether we like it or not — is that Donald Trump is good for business. This is part of why he’s back in office; people see opportunities to make money. And here we have it: a hip-hop icon who was once associated with some of the most powerful and progressive music has now evolved into a figure who has fully embraced hip-hop’s profitability, using it to elevate himself even further in popular culture.

There is this conflicting nature of Snoop Dogg's recent support of Trump because there has been a record of his seemingly anti-Trump opinions. What has happened to lead up to this shift?

People don’t really remember this, but back in the day, hip-hop culture — people on the street — loved Trump. Trump was at all the Mike Tyson fights. He represented something that a lot of aspirational people wanted to be: someone with money, power, and influence. At the time, you found a lot of rap music referencing Trump as a symbol of those aspirations. Now, Trump is a political figure who is controversial in all kinds of ways, but he still represents something that some people aspire to.

"People don’t really remember this, but back in the day, hip-hop culture — people on the street — loved Trump."

One of the things we need to grapple with is how many young Black and brown men supported Trump this time around, including people we know personally. Part of that support ties into this imagery of hyper-masculinity: “I can do what I want, I can be rich, I can flaunt it, and I have power.” There’s something there. I don’t know what part of that resonates with Snoop, and I don’t think we can attribute any of this to him specifically. Snoop, at this point, is very opportunistic. He recognizes the value of his brand and has positioned himself in circles where he can continue to elevate himself.

We always have to navigate this delicate balance of considering how artists express themselves through their art versus how they live their lives. We can’t always put the burden on them to live as we imagine they should, based on what we hear in their music.

Are the wealthy hip-hop figures at the Crypto Ball purely in it for the financial incentive of cozying up with billionaires?

You remember what Wu-Tang taught us? "Cash rules everything around me . . . [Get the money] dollar, dollar bill, y'all."

I think people are fundamentally interested in providing for themselves and their families. Whether you’re a Hollywood actor, a rock-and-roll star, a country music star, or a hip-hop artist, the goal is often the same: to provide for loved ones. People want to donate to causes they believe in — whether it’s hurricane relief or helping those affected by the devastating fires on the West Coast.

People also want the means to pass down wealth to their kids and grandkids. The thing about celebrity, though, is that it’s often not something you can count on lasting forever. Another notable aspect of Snoop’s story is his age — and the fact that he’s likely richer now than he’s ever been. That’s thanks, in part, to the team around him that has kept him at the forefront of public attention. You see him on TV; he comes across as personable and likable. And he’s turning that likability into financial success.

Nelly’s performance at the Liberty Ball also received pushback from people but he said his decision to perform was not based on politics as an independent. How could someone’s apoliticalness at this time be more dangerous or fuel Trump’s agenda further?

People can interpret this sort of apolitical stance as a quiet endorsement, and that’s one danger you have. Think about all those years, just to make a comparison, when Michael Jordan avoided touching political issues during his basketball career. People always wanted Michael Jordan to weigh in on the events of the day, but he stayed quiet. He didn’t say anything. Some people assumed all kinds of things: “Are you endorsing something by staying silent? You have this powerful platform. People listen to you. Kids look up to you. You’ve got money and power—why don’t you say something, Michael?”

Michael responded, “No, I’m not speaking up. I’m playing basketball.” It’s a similar situation, right? Silence could be interpreted as a quiet endorsement. On the other hand, failing to use that powerful voice could be viewed as letting down the people you could help — not using your power to support causes that need attention. It’s a missed opportunity, and you could even be seen as culpable.

So, those are two ways Nelly could get caught up in this. One, his silence might be interpreted as a political endorsement. Two, people might argue that he should use his platform to speak out against injustice, condemn wrongdoing, or support meaningful causes.

This isn’t the first time high-profile, wealthy Black men in hip-hop have aligned themselves with Trump. First was Kayne and then Lil Wayne. Last year, Kodak Black, Rod Wave and Sexyy Redd all endorsed Trump. How does this sympathy for Trump highlight a potentially troubling, growing pattern within the community?

I just published a book called "Boxed In: Making Identities Safe for Democracy." One premise of this book is that our community, like many others, is not monolithic. It’s very heterogeneous. People have different views about politics, wealth, education, relationships, and economics. It’s always important to understand that you’re going to run into trouble if you try to put Black people in a box. We saw that with Kanye, when people thought, “Are you Black? Are you down? How can you be supporting Trump?” We might ask the same thing about some of these other figures.

"We can find ourselves in situations where we assume our condemnation of artists who align with conservatives is clearly justified, but we forget that our own community can be quite conservative too."

For example, if you believe Trump is good for business, that there’s too much regulation hurting entrepreneurs, and that Trump’s pro-deregulation stance will help entrepreneurs make more money, then you’re going to applaud that — even if you dislike some of the other things he stands for. Many Black people I know believe we shouldn’t be spending so much money in Ukraine when we have communities here at home that need help. If Trump says we need to stop sending all this money overseas, some people will find value in that.

You have to understand that our community is not monolithic in its thinking, even though people like to put us in a box. If you say you’re a Black woman, people think they’ve got you all figured out. One major thing Trump is doing now is targeting the transgender community. While we have transgender people in our community, we also have those who buy into this sort of macho mentality. Some valorize Africa, and many African nations are implementing laws that harshly punish — even execute — people who are gay.

Our community is very diverse, and I think we don’t always pay enough attention to that. We can find ourselves in situations where we assume our condemnation of artists who align with conservatives is clearly justified, but we forget that our own community can be quite conservative too. Just think about how religion shapes our views or the differences between being Black and raised in the South versus being Black and raised in a city in the North — sometimes it’s a completely different political outlook.

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Some of this condemnation has been spreading online, and people have circulated a clip of Malcolm X talking about Black leaders or celebrities becoming puppets for the white establishment. They're drawing this comparison between these hip-hop stars who have become very wealthy and are now cozying up to these people. Why are people making this connection?

There could be a lot of things going on here, but one thing I’d suggest is referring to one of our great hip-hop artists who continues to be productive and has also made himself a billionaire: Nas. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Nas — Queensbridge public housing projects. Nas’ music is very dear to me. If you look at one joint he made on his "Street’s Disciple" album, there’s a cut called “These Are Our Heroes.”

In that song, he’s talking about Kobe [Bryant], but the broader point he’s making is about the people we put on platforms and pedestals, the ones we look up to. He’s also saying, “Look, sometimes we just have to see people for who they are, and we can’t keep putting them on these pedestals.” We need to think critically about who we choose to make heroes.

Some of these artists don’t always want to be seen as role models. They want to say, “Look, this is my music. I’m an artist. I’m a creator. I can make a good living doing this, and that’s what I’m doing. But don’t project your morals and views onto me. I don’t want to bear that responsibility.” I think this is another thing we need to wrestle with — the ways in which we put these artists on pedestals and see them as heroes.

We have made these artists pillars of the industry, and if they are aligning themselves with billionaires who support Trump and just Trump in general, could this shift the hip-hop industry? Could it fall in line with Trumpism?

What do we mean by conservative ideology? It depends on what you’re talking about. Are you talking about locking people up? Are you talking about making it easier for entrepreneurs to make money? Are you talking about shutting down the border? Are you talking about taking away trans rights? Are you talking about what we teach our kids in school or what textbooks should say?

You can go into different churches and hear some of the same things you hear from Trump. In some Black churches, we hear preachers say there are two sexes: male and female. They don’t want to talk about gender or bathrooms for boys who are now girls. This rhetoric exists in these Black churches. When we talk about conservatism, it’s not just something we’re seeing because Trump is on the scene now. It’s been around for a long time. Trump is on everyone’s mind because he’s Trump — he’s famous. That’s how he set it all up. But these ideas have been around and have been part of Black culture for a very long time.

Black entrepreneurship has also been a significant part of Black culture. We’ve had Black millionaires for a long time, and like other millionaires, they are concerned about their money. This is part of what we’ve always had to navigate. I don’t think we can single hip-hop out as uniquely problematic in this way. If we have a problem with this, then we have a problem with a lot more than hip-hop.

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“A mistake”: Graham breaks with Trump on Jan. 6 pardons

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., broke with President Donald Trump on his pardons of accused Jan. 6 rioters. 

During an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Graham called the pardons of 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants "a mistake," adding that it sent the wrong message to supporters about violence and the rule of law.

“He had the legal authority to do it,” Graham said. "Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an okay thing to do."

Graham noted that law enforcement groups were against the Trump pardons, which freed the leadership of several far-right militias. Still, Graham said that Trump's pardons were one more promise kept by the president.

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"Law enforcement didn’t like this. But he said it during the campaign, he’s not tricking people. You know, Biden promised not to pardon his family; he did. Trump said, ‘I’m going to pardon these people.’ So the fact that he did it is no surprise," Graham shared. "But I’ll be consistent here. I don’t like the idea of bailing people out of jail or pardoning people who burn down cities and beat up cops, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat."

Graham said the J6 pardons and Biden's pardons of his family members, might lead Congress to consider placing limits on presidential pardon power.

"I think most Americans, if this continues, to see this as an abuse of the pardon power, that we’ll revisit the pardon power of the president if this continues," he said. 

Watch Graham speak on the pardons below:

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How to reduce food waste in 2025: Save money and reduce frustration after grocery shopping

In addition to incorporating more fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet and streamlining your grocery budget, another critical aspect of food shopping is proper storage and maximizing shelf life. Few things are more frustrating — and wasteful —  than bringing home a beautiful melon or a delicious baked good, only to discover the next day that it’s already spoiled.

To avoid moments like these, it’s helpful to take a strategic and creative approach to managing the food you bring home (or have delivered). Consider where each item should be stored and which foods need to be enjoyed sooner rather than later.

For some items, storage is straightforward — no one needs a reminder to keep ice cream in the freezer. But with others, like hot sauce, vinegar, or even dry goods, the rules can be less clear. When in doubt, a quick search can clarify the best way to store any items you’re unsure about.

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To learn more about proper food storage and extending shelf life, Salon spoke with Anya Obrez, Advocacy Associate for Food Waste and Nature at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She shared expert tips to help you reduce food waste, save money, and enjoy delicious meals without sacrificing convenience or flavor.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Aside from holiday food prep and waste, what are some great year-round tips for avoiding food waste, from weeknight meals and lunches to snacks and Sunday dinners? 

There are many ways to reduce food waste at home throughout the year and adopting small steps into our daily lives — from the grocery store to the kitchen — can add up to significant savings.

When grocery shopping, stick to a list and buy only what you know you’ll eat. Plan your meals ahead of time, store food properly and one of my favorite tips: Get creative in the kitchen! Make sure to cook with all your scraps and food that is almost past its prime.

For example, I love freezing carrots and beet greens, leftover celery and overripe apples to turn them into a healthy breakfast smoothie. Getting creative with what you have and experimenting with new recipes or substitutes is fun. Savethefood.com offers plenty of recipes to help you make the most of everything in your kitchen. 

Do you recommend always making a shopping list?

Yes, making a shopping list is a great strategy to ensure you buy everything you need, preventing both overbuying and underbuying of food. However, even with a list grocery shopping can be exhausting and once we get home, we often don’t give much thought to how to store everything properly.

One key to maximizing your food’s shelf life is knowing how to optimally store your food so that it lasts longer. While it is obvious that leaving milk on the counter speeds up spoilage, there are many subtle strategies for keeping food fresh longer — like storing eggs and milk closer to the middle of the fridge where it's cooler or using airtight containers to maintain freshness.

These small steps can make a big difference in reducing waste and extending the life of your groceries.

When it comes to produce — with its ends, cores, peels, seeds and random detritus — is there a helpful guide to know what is or isn't edible? 

In 2016, we launched a campaign to help folks understand our roles in fighting food waste. We created SaveTheFood.com to help arm consumers with the tools to change those wasteful behaviors. The website has great information and resources including shopping guidelines, deciphering dates on products and a guide to demystifying the fridge.

One of my favorite resources is the produce storage guide which shows you what fruit and vegetables are in season, how to store them properly and the best ways to use or revive them. Check out the winter and fall produce guide here.

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What exactly is compost? How should you get started with it? 

Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as leaves and food scraps, into a valuable fertilizer that can enrich soil and plants. There are lots of ways to get set up with composting.

Check to see if your city has free drop-off food scrap collection services — most of these collection points are located in farmers’ markets or community recreation centers. There are also many resources online including NRDC Composting 101 that explains lots of options for at-home composting.

What's the best way to know where and how to store certain items?

One of the tools that's useful to home cooks is knowing how to optimally store your food so that it lasts longer. We have lots of tips for how to store various kinds of foods both in and outside of the fridge at Savethefood.com.

Some useful hacks:

1. Start by ensuring that it's set to 40'F. If it's too warm, your leftovers and perishables won't last as long as they should. But if it's too cold, you'll be wasting money on your energy bill and you could be over-chilling some of the more fragile items like peppers and dairy.

2. The door is the warmest part of your fridge. So it's best to reserve this portion for the longer-lasting items like condiments or juice.

3. Another hidden secret of the refrigerator is those little levers on the produce drawers for many of our refrigerators. Before I learned about this, I just set them to the middle level and hoped I was close to the right setting. It is important to play around with these until you find the best setting because some fruits and vegetables thrive in varying conditions.

How often should you be using your freezer? 

Freezing food is like hitting a pause button, it might be one of the most useful tools in your kitchen!

As the shelf life of your leftovers and surplus ingredients comes close to an end, consider popping them in the freezer before it’s too late. Nearly anything can be frozen and rediscovered for a dark winter weeknight when you don’t have the energy to cook.

What are some examples of how to salvage items that some would assume have exceeded their shelf life? 

Understanding if the food is still safe to eat is important if it seems to be past its shelf life. Those date labels you see on your food actually have very little to do with food safety. With the exception of infant formula, most of the date labels are generally indicators of when food will be at its peak quality and is still perfectly good to eat.

My go-to strategy for deciphering whether food is safe to eat — if I have stored it safely and I don’t see any mold, I rely on the sniff or taste test.

How closely should you adhere to best by/sell by dates?

People tend to think that date labels indicate when food is no longer safe to eat, but in reality, these dates are just the food manufacturer's best estimate of when the food will be at its peak quality. The dates usually reflect when the item will be at its freshest, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad or unsafe to eat a few days or even weeks later — just that is no longer at its prime.

Trust your senses, if it smells fine and tastes okay, it is probably still good to eat!

Want more great food writing and recipes? Subscribe to Salon Food's newsletter, The Bite.

Where is the line between saving food and avoiding food waste and the question of food safety? How do you know when something really has nowhere to go but the garbage? 

Trust your senses! If it looks okay, tastes okay and smells okay — it probably is A-OK to eat.

Our ancestors understood this and it works just as well today. This is one of the key reasons humans have these senses — to keep us safe from ingesting things that might hurt us. And that’s the best way to determine if something is safe to eat.

Any other go-to tips? Favorite uses? Smart ways to 'save' certain foods? 

I love cooking with herbs, but unfortunately, they’re often the first to wilt if not stored properly. I’ve recently learned that wrapping herbs like basil or cilantro in a damp paper towel and placing them in the lowest drawer in my fridge or keeping them in a jar of water to ensure they stay hydrated has helped me keep my herbs fresh for almost two weeks after purchasing them!

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“Clean out that whole thing”: Trump wants to relocate Gazans to Egypt, Jordan

Donald Trump advocated for resettling Palestinians outside of Gaza on Saturday, breaking with decades of U.S. policy advocating for a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Trump said on Saturday that he spoke with the king of Jordan, floating a plan for Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees from the Gaza Strip.

"You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. "Something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations."

Trump said that relocated Palestinians could live "in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change."

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Hamas leadership rejected the notion that Palestinians living in Gaza should be resettled. 

"The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have endured death and destruction over 15 months in one of humanity’s greatest crimes of the 21st century, simply to stay on their land and homeland," Hamas' Basem Naim told the New York Times. "Therefore, they will not accept any proposals or solutions, even if seemingly well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction, as proposed by U.S. President Trump."

More than 2 million Palestinian refugees already live in Jordan. The Jordanian state news agency admitted that King Abdullah II spoke with Trump earlier this week but did not mention Trump's plans.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the far-right Religious Zionism party, lauded Trump's resettlement idea.

"After 76 years in which most of the Gaza population was forcibly held in difficult conditions in order to preserve the ambition to destroy the State of Israel, the idea of ​​helping them find other places to start a new good life is a great idea," said Smotrich.

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“I’m in my king era”: Trump crashes “Hamilton,” teases Lin-Manuel Miranda on “SNL”

Lin-Manuel Miranda was a surprise guest on this week's episode of "Saturday Night Live," appearing as Alexander Hamilton in a sketch about the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

The "Hamilton" star had barely begun a rap about the founding of America before he was interrupted by James Austin Johnson's Donald Trump. The cast froze immediately after Miranda declared the United States "will never have a king" to let Trump monologue to the crowd. 

"Never say never! Kidding, of course, though in many ways I’m not," the faux-Trump said. "I’m in my king era, but just like the founding fathers, I am creating a new country as well. And just like them, we’re doing it very whitely!”

Trump poked fun at the outfits of the Founding Fathers ("a little zesty") before taking some time to discuss his Cabinet picks. 

"We're filling my Cabinet with some of the best people," he said. "They're all very good, except for most of them."

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After discussing the accomplishments of his first week in office and touching on Elon Musk's arguable Nazi salute ("I think he did it a little bit"), Trump turned to teasing a frozen Miranda. Inching close to the actor and composer, he played free associative word games with his name and pointed out the absurdity of the situation. 

"He's in sniffing distance of an EGOT and he's got to stand there 'til I'm done," Johnson said, before prodding Miranda with a claim that he donated $1 million to the Trump campaign.

Watch the entire segment below: 

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Perilous landscape: California’s 250-year struggle to prepare for natural disasters

After 250 years of European settlement and the advanced scientific knowledge of the 21st century, California is still not fully prepared for the earthquakes and wildfires that are an integral part of its dramatic landscape.

The very first European settlers to the state, Spanish missionaries, were confronted by damaging earthquakes. Between 1769 and 1833, the Spanish constructed 21 missions in total, eight founded by Fr. Junípero Serra. In 1812, a powerful quake — today, estimated at a magnitude of 7.5 and believed to have been caused by the San Andreas Fault — shook Southern California and immediately destroyed seven missions. Forty Native Americans died in the San Gabriel Arcángel mission when the roof collapsed. Lacking understanding of what caused earthquakes or how buildings could be protected, the missions were rebuilt using the traditional materials of mud bricks, wooden planks and tiles.

By 1848, California was a U.S. territory, though with few Mexican or American residents. In January of that year, gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill near Sacramento, and within 12 months, more than 300,000 immigrants from across the world had poured into the region. By 1850, California was admitted as a free state into the union, and San Francisco was now an important international port and the largest city west of the Mississippi.

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By 1906, San Francisco had 400,000 residents, and it was still growing. The city had adopted a few rudimentary building codes, though none addressing earthquakes. At 5:12 a.m. on April 6, 300 miles of the San Andreas fault ripped apart, causing a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. The huge shock collapsed hundreds of buildings in downtown San Francisco; water and gas mains tore open, causing a huge fire. The combined disaster killed 3,000 people and left 200,000 homeless.

In the days following, civic leaders pressured newspaper publishers to label the disaster a fire — not an earthquake. While many insurance policies covered fires, none mentioned earthquakes. Leading business figures reassured investors from New York and Europe that the quake was a rare, "one-time" event. To assuage public concern, the city mounted a major effort to improve fire response, including the construction of dozens of large cisterns at strategic points, and linked them to a new system of mains and hydrants. With civic leaders reluctant to acknowledge earthquake danger, no new building codes addressing quake safety were implemented. In fact, existing building codes were suspended for many months to encourage rebuilding.

It took another major disaster, the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, to spur the state legislature into quake safety. The temblor, estimated at magnitude 6.4, struck on March 10 along the Newport-Inglewood fault, causing 120 deaths, 500 injuries and widespread destruction, including the collapse of 70 schools. It soon was dubbed the "Lucky Quake," having struck at 5:56 p.m. on a Friday, when schools had already closed and many residents had already left work.

While earthquakes have caused disasters since early California, death and building destruction from wildfires is a modern phenomenon.

The possibility that thousands of schoolchildren could be crushed in future quakes spurred the state legislature into action. It soon passed the Field Act, which tightened the codes for new school buildings and banned the construction of unreinforced masonry buildings (e.g., brick). The 1933 temblor also prompted the state to authorize research into seismology and how structures could be constructed to resist shaking.

Over the following decades, scientists made major advances in understanding earthquake dynamics and new construction techniques to protect structures.

Two major earthquakes in 1971 and 1989 prompted additional legislation. The February 1971 Sylmar earthquake, centered in the San Fernando Valley, destroyed two hospitals, killing 65 and injuring 2,000. The state legislature soon restricted construction of high occupancy buildings in active fault zones.

On October 17, 1989, millions of Americans witnessed an earthquake in progress as the Loma Prieta quake interrupted the beginning of a World Series game at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. The temblor, magnitude 6.9, destroyed some 1,000 homes, caused 64 deaths, collapsed freeways and a portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The state implemented more seismic safety rules, including "infrastructure resilience," spurring reinforcement of bridges and freeway overpasses and retrofitting of "soft story" buildings (e.g., apartments built atop first floor garages).

As of 2025, California has the most advanced earthquake safety building codes in the country. While engineers are confident that recently constructed structures, including downtown high rises, will do well in future quakes, many thousands of buildings erected before the new, tighter codes went into effect, remain vulnerable.

Wildfires, a modern phenomenon of destruction

While earthquakes have caused disasters since early California, death and building destruction from wildfires is a modern phenomenon. With California's population near 40 million, the need for housing has prompted builders to tempt fate by erecting homes in fire-prone areas.

The terrible Los Angeles fires of early January 2025 have made the nation aware of Southern California's infamous Santa Ana winds. These powerful winds begin when a high-pressure system is stalled over the Southwest, and air is forced down through the Santa Mountain's narrow canyons, potentially reaching 100 miles per hour.

Before 1940, few homes were built in the region's canyons and hillsides. In 1940, the Rindge family, which owned 17,000 acres of Malibu coastline, faced bankruptcy and began selling off parcels.

Within a decade, more than 5,000 residents lived in Malibu. Architects warned of the danger of building in the area, known to be fire-prone, but local government declined to act. On Dec. 27, 1956, a wildfire broke out near Zuma Beach, eventually charring 26,000 acres and destroying 100 homes.

This event marked a turning point. The Eisenhower administration, busy building a civil defense network in the middle of the Cold War, worked with Congress to pass new disaster relief laws. The Malibu fire area was declared a "disaster zone," and homeowners who lost buildings became eligible for disaster relief.

One fire historian remarked that the government had subsidized a "lethal mixture of homeowners and brush." Local governments, pressured by real estate interests, still declined to restrict building in fire-prone areas.

In 1961, however, the Bel Air fire tore through one of Los Angeles' wealthy neighborhoods. Powered by fierce Santa Ana winds, the fire destroyed 500 houses, including the homes of many celebrities, including actors Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joan Fontaine and Joe E. Brown.

The fire attracted nationwide attention, with Life magazine's headline declaring "A Tragedy Trimmed in Mink." The publicity forced local leaders to confront the problem. Initially, the city prohibited the construction of new homes with wood shingles and called for homeowners in fire regions to clear brush from their properties.

Facing opposition from builders and the timber industry, the state continued to allow wood shingle roofs until 2001. Finally, in 2012, the state required all wooden roofs to be replaced with fire resistant materials such as metal or ceramic tile. The city of Los Angeles has also tightened building laws on new homes and requires homeowners to clear the brush in their backyards.

Will the hugely destructive Pacific Palisades and Altadena fires of January lead to tougher building codes or restrictions on building in known fire zones? A debate is now underway. Some architects have called for tough new codes that would require new homes in wildfire zones to be "hardened," built of concrete with metal roofs and devoid of any nearby trees and bushes. Citing the state's longstanding housing shortage, other pro-growth interests advocate loosening building codes to allow for faster rebuilding.

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MAGA’s true believers don’t understand capitalism — Trump will teach them a hard lesson

America is a nation at war with its mythologies.

For all the electoral postmortems about the desire for economic change, what’s unsurprisingly absent is what seems, to me, an obvious omission: an all-enveloping misunderstanding of American capitalism. 

I’m not dismissing the importance of anxiety about solvency, about the challenges that small businesses face (I’m a proprietor of one myself) and about the cost of future entitlements. (We’ll get to the problems of liberalism in a bit). Most of us in this country will worry about money for the duration of our lives.

One delusional mythology about American capitalism that has been instilled in We the People is that we somehow have a guaranteed right to prosperity; this imaginary right has been deployed by politicians who are afraid of educating their constituents about how our model of commerce actually works. Our national press has largely been lazy on this score as well. 

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Trumponomics is back: Tech-bros are delighted, but the price of eggs is soaring

With due respect to the many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, their overwhelming sense of entitlement dwarfs that of the hard-working immigrants who cut their grass, scrub pots and pans in the restaurants they frequent, and care for their kids and elderly loved ones. Too many Americans have come to believe they are owed financial comfort and material abundance, not to mention eggs and gasoline at predictable prices.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Frankly, it’s an illogical question in a capitalist nation. Some people are of course worse off, and I don’t mean to make light of that. But in fact, many millions are better off; Joe Biden’s administration oversaw the recovery of millions of jobs lost during the COVID pandemic and the creation of millions more. Some people out there will be worse off by the time they finish this article than when they commenced reading it. I’m not being flippant; that’s reality. 

Welcome to capitalism, a system whose proponents always cite unequal outcomes as a reason for extolling it.

So eggs are expensive? Eat fewer of them. Cut down on egg whites. Let them eat yolks. 

Are gas prices high? Is insurance for health care, real estate and vehicles increasing? Are supply chain constraints harming your livelihood, or your quality of life? The person in the White House has very little to do with that. Let’s recall that gas prices steadily increased during George W. Bush’s second term. 

Gas was cheap in 2020 because — hello! — tens of millions of drivers weren’t driving. In fact, Trump threatened the Saudis, in the early days of the pandemic: Cut oil production, or lose U.S. military support. Why? More oil flooding the market would have driven prices still lower, and “cheap gas” does not sound like “ka-ching.” 

Are gas prices high? Insurance going up for health care, real estate and vehicles? Are supply chain constraints harming your livelihood, or your quality of life? The person in the White House has very little to do with that.

Welcome to the “laws” of supply and demand, which all of us must navigate on a daily basis. If you don’t know or don’t remember these details, ask yourself why you don’t. If you’re a Trump voter, then ask yourself whether you might have voted differently in November had you been aware. 

Meanwhile, we have endless debates about whether needs — access to medical care, food, affordable housing — should be rights, or should be left to the exigencies of good luck and near-perfect health.

Jeremiads about grocery prices are now an acceptable element of political discourse and, per GOP logic, we have a right to complain about them. Feeding the hungry, though? That edges too close to pinko communism. But the point our fellow countrymen and women should grasp is that presidents, whoever they are, have very little control over inflation.   

You know what my wife and I did when household costs became too onerous last year? We reduced our expenses, and adjusted our quality of life. 

That’s, you know, fiscal conservatism: Tightening the belts, practicing austerity, living within our means, limiting debt. We didn’t literally pull ourselves up by the bootstraps or walk to school through the snow without shoes. But isn’t that the American mythos? 

Deep-state capitalism 

In 2015 and 2016, even though I was doing better financially than at any time in my life, Donald Trump’s populist campaign resonated with me. I knew others who had lost their jobs and contracts to offshoring. Years before he ran for office, Trump talked about the dangers of competition with low-wage Asian nations, in particular; when I’d heard him speak, I nodded in concurrence. 

But here’s what I never thought about at the time: I and other angry Americans hadn’t grasped that offshoring to increase profits was a central feature of capitalism, as advocated by both parties — but in particular by the mythologizers of capitalism on the Republican side. 

So I’ll pose almost the same question nearly a decade later: What do Trump voters, and especially true believers in the MAGA community, of which I was once a full member, think capitalism is? 

We legislate against some of the baser traits of our nature: incitement, theft, violence. Our laws aren’t entirely devoid of protections against avarice (such as antitrust regulations), but Americans, collectively and historically, have a high tolerance for greed. 

There’s the mythology of capitalist meritocracy at work, which is still championed by many people who’ve been failed by both major political parties. Their concerns have been exploited and manipulated by Republicans who have traumatized them into believing that liberalism, rather than capitalism, is the source of their ills; that because of the evil policies of liberals, they keep working harder and harder but never seem to break even, much less get ahead. 

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Lest there be any confusion: I support capitalism. Entrepreneurship and innovation best advance in free markets. 

But still: The rage I felt, even more acutely experienced today among the MAGA faithful, was perhaps warranted but rooted in ignorance. Trump was not wrong when he lamented the once-thriving communities ravaged and hollowed out by outsourcing. But his solution was no solution at all.

Now he has persuaded millions into believing that only he can successfully stymie the global and domestic capitalist forces that he did essentially nothing about during his first administration. 

Why didn’t he do anything? Because Trump understands, in his own pedestrian way, that capitalism operates less on merit the higher one moves up in the hierarchy. 

Trump is the most devoted “deep state” capitalist in American history, given the millions his businesses have earned in foreign payments. So much for thwarting the globalists. Want an argument for why the über-wealthy should pay more in taxes? If these money-hoarders could have gotten so rich in another country, they most certainly would have. Do we really believe this doesn’t apply to Trump? 

In 2016, I was doing better financially than at any time in my life. But Donald Trump's message resonated with me. I hadn't grasped that offshoring was a central feature of capitalism.

Broadly speaking, the two core ideological dogmas within MAGA are: 1) liberalism is almost solely culpable for our national ills (second come the RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, although it’s not close); and 2) Trump is the greatest fixer God ever created. 

Most people who voted for Trump — especially the MAGA faithful — want and expect him, and by extension the federal government, to intervene in commerce. According to the classical definition, that would be socialism — or Marxism or communism, whichever epithet we are using today. The confusion is general, because it’s all mythological.

I cannot entirely fault those who are still looking for a hero or a superman who cuts through the noise and nonsense. The 2008 financial crisis and its brutal aftermath placed the ills of capitalism front and center, and begat an understandable skepticism in banks, government and other major institutions. What made that episode particularly deleterious, however, was not that we had too much regulation but too little; that laissez-faire ethos is rooted in the importance of land ownership, a central basis of American capitalism.  

In fact, the notion that a singular person can serve as an economic savior and, in messianic fashion, usher in utopia, is much closer to a socialist-communist notion than a capitalist one. That surely does not mean the government should play no role in our economy; as mentioned above, the Biden administration oversaw remarkable growth. Trump and the Republicans, however, didn't actually campaign on any policy ideas aimed to increase economic mobility and opportunity. They benefited instead from the profoundly human delusion known as nostalgia. 

People are looking for reasons why they seem to work more but keep falling behind. I sympathize; this resonates with me.  

The answer is in front of us, and it is called capitalism, or at least the romantic mythology of capitalism. Our species makes sense of the world, in large part, through the stories we tell, and no country in world history is more defined by myths than the United States of America. All kinds of emotions inform those myths. MAGA believers like to tell their foes, “F**k your feelings,” but as someone who spent seven years within the MAGA movement, I can attest it is almost entirely driven by feelings. There is no logic that determines the tides and currents within the MAGA community; it took me an entire year to come to that epiphany. 

Many on the political right choose to ignore that they already depend, or very soon will, on “socialist” safety-net programs such as Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Some part of the MAGA community is aware that the reforms brought by liberalism help to keep them alive. 

In short, almost everyone is a liberal, when they need to be. Everyone is also a capitalist, or a socialist, when they need to be. 

So what now? 

There’s a lot of disbelief among liberals and Democrats about how so many Americans could simply overlook or ignore the public health crisis of gun violence, the loss of reproductive freedom (which affects men’s lives as well), the attacks on public education, and the marginalization and demonization of our LGBTQ+ population. 

I have a slightly nuanced take here: I do think most Americans really do care about these issues — but they were all perceived in competition with the mythology of capitalism as the always-most-important American doctrine.

Mythology tends to be more persuasive than discussion of policy, which brings me to something the Democratic Party should post in all their workplaces: Americans don’t vote based on policy. Sure, some liberals do, given what we know about their news and information consumption. Information bubbles exist on the Democratic side, too, but liberal voters are far more likely to encounter a diversity of sources. 

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MAGA culture, on the other hand, likes to espouse rugged individualism, but is wholly conformist: Anything that even remotely seems to refute the mythologies that permeate the MAGA congregation is shunned. I had a term, during my time as a MAGA pundit, for much of what we maligned as propaganda: It was the Democrat Media Industrial Complex. The lie we told ourselves, central to our myth, was that we were independent-minded, not susceptible to being influenced. 

MAGA’s ethos includes trauma, desperation, panic, despair, hopelessness and nihilism. What I want MAGA’s opponents to understand is that no one in the Trump movement came to imbibe that toxic mixture all on their own. I implore you to resist saying, “I told you so,” when Trump’s benefits are handed out exclusively to his rich buddies. 

I am helping to build a new community for those who leave MAGA. When many such people have their Road to Damascus moment about the betrayal of Trump, as I did, we want to offer them an exit ramp out of MAGA. Blaming or castigating them only offers more incentive to remain within the MAGA circle. It may feel gratifying in the short term, but only creates more damage. 

Trump and the Republicans didn't actually campaign on any policy ideas aimed at improving the economy. They benefited instead from the profoundly human delusion known as nostalgia. 

One of our biggest civic crises in America is that so many of our citizens lack basic comprehension of the governmental and economic model they live under, or, perhaps, they willfully deny it. This does not reflect a dearth of intelligence, and I would argue that it’s not even primarily a failure in education, although that’s part of it. More than anything, it reflects the fact that our actual elected representatives, at all levels, are petrified of their constituents and reluctant to have candid conversations about capitalism, for fear of losing their positions and being primaried out as communists, socialists, liberals and Marxists, or otherwise victimized by the toxic stew of GOP lies. 

The inherent flaw of mythology is that it offers its own evidence and its own truth to the believer, and anything that contradicts it is denied.

As he did in 2017,  Trump has been bequeathed a relatively stable economy, for now. Once he begins to destabilize it, which will adversely affect the working class, the middle class and small business owners, the falsehoods will only ramp up: Somehow, it was all Joe Biden’s fault. We can only hope the Democrats are ready for the onslaught of shameless absurdities.

I certainly don’t think that government can solve every problem, nor should try to. Perversely enough, Trump voters want it to try, although most would deny that or are not cognizant of it. The question we can keep posing to Trump voters is this: How much time does he get to fix your economic problems, and when will you understand that he never will? Expect no good answers; there aren’t any.

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Trump’s opening assault shows that Republicans want trans people “out of public life entirely”

In less than one week, Republicans have advanced legislation restricting transgender Americans' participation in sports and declared a federal definition of gender that excludes those who do not conform with their sex assigned at birth, setting the stage for policy attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms unlike anything the nation has seen before. 

Almost immediately after taking office Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order hinging sex on biology and limiting it to male and female with respect to government documents and federal policy, fulfilling a campaign promise to restrict the rights of transgender Americans. Meanwhile, the House last Tuesday passed legislation banning transgender athletes from participating in women's and girls' sports. That bill, which is one of the first standalone anti-trans bills that a chamber of Congress has been able to advance since 2023, also established a definition of sex based solely on someone's "reproductive biology and genetics at birth." 

With Trump back in office, Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights advocates told Salon they're watching to see what — and how many — anti-trans bills and provisions they'll have to fend off this legislative session. The passage of the anti-transgender sports bill, coupled with the president's executive order, signals that the federal government will wage an unprecedented assault on transgender Americans for at least the next two years — and this week's moves are only the beginning. 

"All of this is part and parcel of the same overall effort: this anti-trans extremism among many on the right that is really coming from a desire to force transgender people out of our communities, out of our schools — out of public life entirely," Ian Thompson, a senior legislative advocate at the ACLU handling LGBTQ rights, said in a phone interview. 

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The so-called Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 passed largely along party lines last Tuesday in a 218-206 vote and has since moved to the Senate for consideration.

The bill, which gained the support of just two Democrats, requires the Comptroller General to conduct a study that purports to document "the adverse psychological, developmental, participatory, and sociological results to girls of allowing males to compete, be members of a sports team, or participants in athletic programs, that are designed for girls."

While the majority of anti-trans legislation — and anti-LGBTQ legislation more broadly — arises at the state level, David Stacy, the vice president of government affairs for the Human Rights Campaign, told Salon that he anticipates an increasing number of anti-trans bills to originate at the federal level. 

"We saw them attack trans and LGB rights at unprecedented levels for the last two years in the House, so I fully expect we will see a similar behavior — and they've given every indication — for this two years of Congress," Stacy said in a phone interview.

In the last 24 months, Congress has seen an increasing number of anti-trans bills introduced, with 87 proposals in 2024 and 53 the year before. All but two failed, Trans Legislation Tracker data showed. 

Those successful anti-trans efforts were provisions included as riders in federal authorization or appropriations legislation. A provision that passed in December 2024, which eliminated coverage of gender-affirming care and hormone therapy from military insurance, for example, was a rider on a sprawling national defense authorization law for fiscal year 2025. 

Advocates are expecting a flurry of anti-LGBTQ legislation in the coming months, with provisions like gender-affirming care bans and prohibitions around workplace discrimination protections for queer and gender-expansive Americans tucked into larger authorizations and spending bills.

The riders "that have been particularly concerning from our vantage point, are those that are designed to strip away federal funding for healthcare for the transgender community," Thompson said.

Both advocates said that they're also closely watching for proposals targeting healthcare access and funding. Prohibitions on Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, as proposed in House Bill 498, which was introduced this session, would have "devastating" consequences for trans people, who disproportionately rely on the government-funded healthcare program, Thompson said. 

Eight total anti-trans bills have been introduced in Congress since the most recent legislative session began in early January, most of which take aim at transgender students' participation in school sports or restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare.

Andrew Bales, the founder of the Trans Legislation Tracker, said they're anticipating nearly all other anti-trans bills introduced at the federal level to similarly focus on "reproductive biology and genetics at birth" and stoke "fear," as evidenced by the titles of 2024 bills like the "Stop the Invasion of Women’s Spaces Act" and "Stopping the Mutilation of Children Act of 2024."

"Whether they target sports, bathrooms, or education, the bills lead with fear and uncertainty as they seek to define trans people out of public life," Bales told Salon in an email. "They do this by offering new definitions for terms like "man", "woman", "mother", and "father," as well as replacing the term "gender" with "sex." 

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Trump's latest executive order, which claims to defend "women from gender ideology extremism," follows a similar model. It recognizes only two "immutable" sexes, male and female, and defines them, "at conception," as a person who belongs to the sex that produces sperm and a person who belongs to the sex that produces eggs, respectively.

In addition to a slew of other provisions, Trump's order requires the federal government to only issue identification documents — like visas and passports — that reflect one's sex as assigned at birth. It also punts the Biden administration's allowance of access to single-sex spaces based on gender identity under the Supreme Court's Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which outlawed workplace discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. 

Stacy said that Trump's executive order poses a "very serious threat," surpassing "anything we've ever seen before as far as scope."

It's unclear, however, how much of it the administration will be able to and willing to implement through the administrative rule process, he added, noting that the rule-making requirement "tripped up" the first Trump administration. 

The partisan split in support of passing the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 also makes it unclear whether these anti-trans bills will ever become law given the need for Democratic support to make it out of the Senate.

Republicans were joined by only two politically vulnerable Democrats — Reps. Vincente Gonzales and Henry Cuellar of Texas — in advancing the bill. Both represent districts that supported Trump in last year's election. Gonzales, in particular, has said that Republicans accusing him of supporting transitions for children during the 2024 election cycle took a toll on him politically, according to the Texas Tribune.

Democrats in Congress dubbed the bill the "Child Predator Empowerment Act," arguing that it places school children's safety and privacy at risk and could expose them to possible inspection of their bodies. 

Thompson said that limited Democrat support for the bill gives him hope that it won't make it past the Senate. Republican lawmakers were likely hoping the vote would have strayed more from party lines with Democrats breaking more significantly on issues of trans rights and freedoms — and that wasn't the case, he argued.

Because Republican's Senate majority is nowhere close to the 60 votes needed to advance the bill, "they're going to require at least seven Democratic senators to vote for this legislation in order to successfully pass it," Thompson said. "I think that the fact that Democrats in the House were so united in opposing the bill is a strong indication that we can probably expect the same from Democrats in the Senate."

Even then, Stacy said, the threats posed are "very real" even if they're not immediate. He called on Americans to express their opposition to their representatives and senators in Congress and submit comments on rules as the administrative rule-making process progresses as a means of slowing down the process.  

"People really need to weigh in. Now is the time to take action, and not just stand idly by," he said, adding: "We have been successful in blocking a lot of these things in the past. I think we will be successful again but not without effort and not without engagement of everyday people who are concerned."

This piece has been updated to correct the name of the Trans Legislation Tracker, which was previously identified as the Anti-Trans Legislation Tracker.

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The war on fake news has backfired

Brian Stelter, CNN's chief media analyst, recently tweeted that “fact-check” had become a dirty word. Stelter’s assessment followed Meta’s announcement that it would scrap its fact-checking processes—once central to the post-2016 response to the proliferation of so-called fake news. Now, with Donald Trump preparing for a second term, many former critics of fake news have curiously dropped their concerns over disinformation and aligned with him. This shift exposes Big Tech and legacy media’s anti-fake-news campaigns as, at best, PR fluff, and at worst, efforts to outright silence dissent. 

These fake news flip-floppers include a self-described Democrat, Elon Musk, who endorsed Trump and donated a staggering $250 million to his campaign. By allying himself with Trump, Musk reaped the rewards with an appointment to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In 2022, Musk claimed he acquired Twitter – which he renamed X – in order to protect and promote free speech by ending what he saw as Twitter’s suppression of truth. Instead, Musk seems poised to use his platform as a tool of propaganda that promotes a positive image of Trump's presidency. After Trump was elected, Musk announced that he would change his platform’s algorithm to promote "positive, beautiful content,” suggesting that since Trump is president, Musk sees no need for negative content on X.

The shift reveals an uncomfortable truth: content moderation was never about eradicating fake news. Rather, it’s a tool wielded by those in power to shape narratives and consolidate influence. This is why it is somewhat concerning that other Trump-friendly billionaires have also expressed an interest in taking control over social media platforms, like Kevin O’Leary, a Trump ally of “Shark Tank” fame who is now attempting to purchase TikTok. Social media platforms often resist moderation for business purposes, but under political pressure, they will act upon moderation marching orders from whoever is in power. What this means for users is that the platform is always biased, showing you what they want you to see, nothing more, and nothing less.

The concerns about fake news and its impact on democracy were and remain well-founded. Disinformation erodes public trust, distorts reality, and weakens democratic systems. Yet the post-2016 solutions offered to combat it, largely centered around entrusting billionaires with the reins of information dissemination. This approach not only failed to mitigate the spread of fake news but also emboldened a small group of elites to expand their wealth and influence globally.

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Since Trump’s emergence as a political figure in 2015, the media’s warnings about his attacks on journalists as purveyors of "fake news" were loud and persistent. These warnings were not baseless. Trump’s rhetoric undermined the press and raised fears about threats to a free media—especially when he floated ideas like revoking broadcasting licenses. These concerns escalated during the pandemic, with misinformation about COVID-19 spreading like wildfire. The World Health Organization even labeled the crisis an "infodemic."

In response, liberals and media personalities pushed for increased content moderation on Big-Tech platforms. Congressional hearings pressured tech giants to act and companies capitulated by minimizing the reach of conservative and progressive news outlets (referred to as the ‘adpocalypse”), banning controversial users, and taking part in developing tools such as NewsGuard—a tool promising to identify fake news, but often criticized for having an establishment bias. Post-January 6, 2021, as violence erupted at the U.S. Capitol, tech platforms were urged to clamp down further, leading to Trump’s ban and the suppression of controversial topics like election fraud claims.

President Joe Biden continued the crusade with measures like banning the social media platform TikTok (allegedly in part to curb disinformation) and proposing a Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board, which was ultimately scrapped after public outcry. Media platforms aligned with these efforts by removing content from Russia Today, which is owned by the Russian government, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After Trump was elected in 2024, everything changed. Big Tech companies, which had previously moderated Trump or content he favored, now faced a president who could potentially push for regulations, increased taxes, or the cancelation of government contracts they relied on. In response, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company would abandon fact-checking entirely in 2025. It was the final blow to those who lived under the delusion that billionaire tech firms would marginalize disinformation and promote truth. Instead, Meta pledged to work with the Trump administration on combating foreign threats and promoting "civil content.” In addition, Dana White, the CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a Trump supporter, was added to Meta’s board, and Meta moved some of its content moderators from California to Texas. 

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Meta’s attempt to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration reveals that power and profits, not a concern for truth or democracy, is what motivated billionaires to signal they were fighting fake news. In the process, the very strategies designed to combat misinformation have strengthened the systems that perpetuate it. Indeed, a handful of powerful people, often allied with the incoming administration, control the flow of information in the US, and they interact with a public that has been conditioned to believe that the way to save democracy and eradicate fake news is by pleading with billionaires. This approach is not only anti-democratic, but it is also a fool’s errand. Fake news cannot be eradicated; it is a byproduct of human creativity and imagination. Attempts to eliminate it often result in greater censorship and concentration of power, leaving societies more susceptible to manipulation.

The only effective solution is critical media literacy. Critical media literacy teaches people how to think, not what to think. It aims to give students the skills, terms, questions, and knowledge necessary to not only determine the veracity of information, but be empowered and autonomous users who can negotiate their relationship with media. In order to make the nation more critically media literate, schools, communities and homes will need to treat media literacy with the same seriousness that they treat a citizen’s need to be able to read, write, and perform mathematics. 

The lessons of the last decade are sobering. Trusting billionaires and tech companies to act as gatekeepers of truth has not protected democracy; it has endangered it. Instead of empowering the public to critically engage with information, these efforts have built stronger tools for controlling and distorting narratives. The war on fake news has backfired, entrenching the systems it sought to dismantle and deepening public skepticism of information. The lesson is clear: in a democracy, real resistance to fake news comes from a critically media literate citizenry, not the power of billionaire gatekeepers.

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What makes the psychedelic experience so healing? It could be “awe”

Everyday before leaving for work, Danny Brown would set up a time-lapse in front of his window to capture the day outside while he was in the office. When he got home, he could witness all that he missed while he was locked into the computer during the work day. 

“It was a grand shift in perspective that created a need to change my way of thinking,” Brown told Salon in a phone interview. “For me, that change was from a daily experience to this almost overview effect — like nature kept going today, while I was focused on the expense report … or this cold front moved in and I didn’t even notice.”

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Eventually, Brown left his office job so that he could return to school to study that feeling, where it came from, and whether it has the power to heal the body and mind. 

“I realized the feeling I was getting from the time-lapse and what I was tapping into was awe,” Brown said. 

The feeling of awe can wash over you when watching the sunset or standing next to a gigantic redwood tree. It can arise when watching your child take their first steps or even when holding a loved one’s hand as they pass. Defined as “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder,” awe is not inherently positive or negative but a complex emotion associated with meaningful experiences by everyone at some point in their lives.

"You have to attend to the experience — it has to matter to you in some way."

Awe occurs when we experience vastness, which could be triggered by something perceptual like walking through the Grand Canyon, or something conceptual like understanding a big idea with widespread implications, said Dr. David Yaden, a Johns Hopkins associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, who studies altered states of consciousness. Experiencing that vastness is ultimately about recognition: recognizing our own smallness to the world around us or, perhaps, recognizing ourselves in another. 

“Then there’s a need to understand or accommodate that experience into your existing psychological schema,” Yaden told Salon in a phone interview. “Basically, you have to attend to the experience — it has to matter to you in some way.”

Experiencing awe has been shown to have an impact neurologically. In one 2019 study, experiencing awe was associated with reductions in activity in the brain’s default mode network, which is associated with self-reflective thought and also helps you identify where your body’s boundaries are relative to the external world. 

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“There are often feelings of connectedness related to awe, and this is a bit of a speculation, but you can imagine that these alterations to your bodily boundaries may lend themselves to feelings of enhanced connectedness,” Yaden said. 

This also might be why awe could be a useful tool in promoting mental wellness. Self-focus and rumination are the root of many mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, and experiencing awe can, in a way, free the mind from some of those invasive thoughts, said Dr. Dacher Keltner, the faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center and a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, who has written a book about awe.

Awe could also reduce feelings of isolation or loneliness by promoting a sense of interconnectedness, said Dr. Alice Chirico, the director of the Experience Lab at the Catholic University of Milan, who studies awe.

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"[Awe] helps us experience the so-called sense of 'small self,' where individuals feel part of something greater, which naturally reduces self-referential thinking and rumination — key drivers of depression​," Chirico told Salon in an email.

This self-transcendence is also at the heart of psychedelic research. A large portion of people who undergo psychedelic therapy report experiencing mystical experiences, which often include feelings of awe. Although mystical experiences may bring to mind religious or spiritual connotations that inherently conflict with the scientific paradigm, these experiences — whether reached through psychedelics or something like meditation — have been objectively tested and shown to have lasting impacts on psychological functioning.

Nevertheless, some psychedelic researchers have suggested that the therapeutic effects of psychedelics could still take place without the “trip” or “experience” part of the psychedelic experience. But this idea is debated within the field, with others saying this self-transcendent experience is central to the benefits that psychedelics provide and that they are likely far more effective if the experience element is integrated in addition to the medicine. 

“I think [the awe effect] is necessary for the full and enduring therapeutic effects,” Yaden said “I think to lock in long, lasting, persisting changes, you need shifts in your emotions, attitudes and beliefs about yourself in the world.”

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In other studies, experiencing awe has been shown to reduce stress, soften feelings of grief after a loss, and reduce feelings of hopelessness. Experiencing awe also activates the vagus nerve, which can reduce the body’s inflammation, and releases oxytocin, which is typically associated with connection and building relationships, Keltner said. 

“Awe helps you think creatively, it helps you be rigorous in your thought, it calms your body and makes it receptive to the world,” Keltner told Salon in a phone interview. “Awe reduces stress, makes you feel connected, and reduces loneliness.”

Millions of U.S. adults suffer from depression, anxiety and loneliness, with long-term physical health effects. However, fewer than half of people experiencing these mental health problems receive the care they need. As a result, it is particularly critical to continue studying something like awe, which anyone can access, Keltner said. 

“It helps you understand the meaning of your life, and this is what it’s all about,” Keltner said. “We are in a lot of crises right now, and we need a reorientation.”

Brown intends to study whether the feeling of awe can invoke some of the mental health effects that psychedelics do given its similarities. The idea is to explore whether any of the same neurological biomarkers are identified when people experience awe as when they use psychedelics. 

“A huge piece of the psychedelic experience is this oneness with the universe, this ability to connect with other people,” Brown said. “I just see that as so important to the human condition, and given how many people have depression and anxiety, there is a public health case for this research for sure.”

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I asked ChatGPT for financial advice. Here’s how it went.

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since OpenAI released it to the public in November 2022. Today, people use it for literally everything — from planning their trips around the globe and debugging code to creating dinner recipes, scripting social media posts and customizing cover letters. But how reliable and accurate is ChatGPT when it comes to providing financial advice? And should you trust this AI chatbot to help you make high-stake money decisions? 

According to the Survey of Consumer Finances, 46% of American households accumulated credit card debt in 2022. So I decided to put the AI chatbot to the test: Could it help me create a practical plan to tackle credit card debt? Here’s the scenario I plugged into the AI chatbot: 

'"I want to pay off $16,260 in credit card debt across three credit cards in 12 months. The first card has a $4,505 balance with a 17% APR. The second card has a $9,529 balance with a 19% APR, and the third card has a $2,226 balance with an 18% APR. Can you help me create a debt payoff plan?"

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TikTok is Gen Z's "risky" financial coach

In under a second, ChatGPT responded with a pretty straightforward answer: 

"Here’s a step-by-step, 12-month debt payoff plan based on your balances and interest rates. I'll prioritize the debt avalanche method, where you focus on paying off the card with the highest interest rate first while making minimum payments on the others. This method saves you the most money on interest."

Step 1: Calculate monthly minimum payments

Assume minimum payments are about 2% of each card’s balance:

  • Card 1: $4,505 × 2% = $90.10
  • Card 2: $9,529 × 2% = $190.58
  • Card 3: $2,226 × 2% = $44.52

Step 2: Determine total monthly payment

To pay off $16,260 in 12 months, you need to pay around $1,500 per month ($16,260 ÷ 12). This amount will cover minimum payments plus additional payments toward the debt.

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Step 3: Focus on high-interest debt first

  • Card 2 (19% APR, $9,529 balance): Pay as much as possible after minimum payments.
  • Card 3 (18% APR, $2,226 balance): Once Card 2 is paid off, focus on this card.
  • Card 1 (17% APR, $4,505 balance): Pay off last.

Step 4: Allocate payments

Here’s how to break down your $1,500 monthly payment:

Month 1-8: Focus on Card 2

  • Card 2: Pay $1,184.80 ($1,500 – $325.20 minimum payments).
  • Card 1 & Card 3: Continue minimum payments ($90.10 + $44.52).

After 8 months, Card 2 will be paid off (approx. $9,529 + interest).

Month 9-10: Focus on Card 3

  • Card 3: Pay $1,365.38 ($1,500 – $134.62 minimum for Card 1).
  • Card 1: Continue minimum payment ($90.10).

After 2 months, Card 3 will be paid off (approx. $2,226 + interest).

Month 11-12: Focus on Card 1

  • Card 1: Pay $1,500/month.

Card 1 will be fully paid off by the end of month 12.

The verdict

ChatGPT did a pretty decent job generating a debt repayment plan. However, it may only work for someone who’s making enough money each month to comfortably pay their minimum payments and allocate extra cash toward repayment. For a more tailored plan, you’ll have to fine-tune your prompts and provide specific details about your financial situation — and it might take a few tries and some back-and-forth to get it right. 

Where ChatGPT falls short is in explaining the math behind its calculations. For instance, in the example above, the chatbot suggested paying $1,500 per month to pay off $16,260 in 12 months, even though $16,260 divided by 12 months is actually $1,355 per month. It was only when I asked to clarify the discrepancy that it provided a more detailed breakdown:

Final adjusted calculation:

  • Total debt: $16,260
  • Total interest: ~$739
  • Total to pay: $16,260 + $739 = $17,000 (approximately).
  • Monthly payment: $17,000/12=$1,416
  • By rounding up to $1,500/month, you’ll ensure the debt is paid off even if there are slight variations in interest accrual.

This shows one of ChatGPT’s limitations: Though it’s a helpful tool, you’ll have to play around with it and double check the calculations since its explanations aren’t always clear at first. And ChatGPT can make mistakes, so you have to be extra careful when it comes to financial planning since a tiny error could lead to costly decisions that steer you away from your goals. If you aren’t familiar with personal finance and all its jargon, it’s best to consult a professional. 

Where ChatGPT shines and where it doesn’t

Since ChatGPT is trained on large amounts of existing data and information, such as text, images, audio or video, it doesn’t have access to real-time market updates and current regulations. In other words, it’s unreliable for investment advice or decisions that depend on up-to-the-minute information. 

"Financial planning isn’t just about crunching numbers; it’s about understanding the human side of money"

Even for more general financial topics like retirement planning, the advice can be oversimplified or, in some cases, inaccurate. That’s why Steven Kibbel, a certified financial planner and senior editor at InternationalMoneyTransfer.com, believes that while ChatGPT is a helpful guide for general concepts, it’s not a replacement for professional financial advice.

"Financial planning isn’t just about crunching numbers; it’s about understanding the human side of money. Your emotional relationship with saving, your dreams for the future, and your tolerance for risk all play a role." Kibbel said. At least for now, ChatGPT just isn’t equipped to offer holistic and personalized money advice that accounts for these deeply personal factors.

Instead, ChatGPT is better for basic research. "For example, If you want to learn the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA, it can explain it in plain English," he said. "It’s also useful for learning about budgeting methods, financial planning basics or broad investment principles."

Is AI the answer to your money problems?

Well, yes and no. 

"You can ask ChatGPT basic questions, learn from it, and treat it as a helpful assistant," Kibbel said. "But when it’s time to make serious decisions with your money, I suggest leaning on the expertise of a professional who can look you in the eye, ask the right questions and give you advice tailored just for you."

For example, if you’re struggling to understand certain financial concepts and need help defining terms, ChatGPT can function as an interactive dictionary or even help you come up with basic budgeting plans. (Just make sure never to share sensitive financial information, like your bank account number or Social Security number, since ChatGPT isn’t a secure platform for personal data.) But if you’re facing a complicated financial situation — like estate planning or help making major investment decisions in the stock market, you’ll want help from a real professional. 

ChatGPT is a great starting point for tackling your money problems, but it’s just that — a starting point. So use it only as a supplemental tool, not a substitute for professional advice.

"Unlike ChatGPT, real financial advisers don’t just analyze your accounts — they listen to you," Kibbel said. "They weigh factors that go beyond what AI can calculate. ChatGPT, for all its usefulness, can’t do that. At least, not yet."

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“It’s OK to be proud to be German”: Musk speaks at far-right AfD campaign event

Billionaire and Trump administration insider Elon Musk spoke virtually to a crowd of supporters of the far-right AfD party in Halle, Germany on Saturday, telling Germans to let go of “past guilt” in his strongest endorsement of the party yet.

"It's okay to be proud to be German, this is a very important principle,” Musk said on Saturday, drawing cheers from the crowd. “It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”

The phrase was a near-direct quotation of the neo-Nazi NDP party’s former slogan, “Ich bin stolz, ein Deutscher zu sein.” ("I’m proud to be German.”)

The rally, reportedly attended by more than 4,500, comes weeks ahead of a national election that could deliver the far-right its best electoral performance since the 1930s.

During his speech, Musk told rallygoers their party was “the best hope for the future of Germany.” He also suggested that voters shouldn’t feel guilty about the Holocaust or other “sins” in the nation’s past.

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“I think there is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that,” Musk, who was born in apartheid South Africa, added. “Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents, or their great-grandparents even.”

The sly reference to the NDP wasn’t the first trollish neo-Nazi dogwhistle Musk has made this week. At an Inauguration Day rally, the X owner twice threw a gesture that fascism experts identified as a “Nazi salute.”

European leaders have been sounding alarm bells over Musk’s recent attempts to influence elections on the continent. While Musk's meddling has almost exclusively focused on far-right movements, leaders suspect the billionaire's ultimate goal is creating a less-regulated Europe where he can more easily make money.

“Musk is strengthening those who are weakening Europe,” German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said earlier this month. "A weak Europe is in the interest of those for whom regulation is an inappropriate limitation of their power." 

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“I’m going to hit him back”: Ontario Premier Ford lays out plan to fight Trump in trade war

Doug Ford isn't going to take President Donald Trump's promised 25% tariffs on Canadian goods on the chin.

The top official in Ontario told Politico he's ready to hit back “twice as hard” if Trump starts a trade war with the country's largest trading partner. The right-wing populist premier explained that he was ready to pull his own economic levers against American consumers in an interview published on Saturday. 

“I’m a street fighter in politics,” Ford told Politico. “If someone throws a punch at me, I’m going to hit him back twice as hard.”

Ford, who has taken to wearing a MAGA-esque, deep-blue “Canada is not for sale” hat in recent weeks, called for early elections in the province on Friday. Ford is seeking a strengthened majority to “fight with Donald Trump to make sure we stop the tariffs.” 

In a Canadian political atmosphere with few clear leaders following Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s resignation announcement, the leader of the center-right Ontario Progressive Conservative Party has made headline-grabbing moves to counter Trump’s economic aggression. 

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In December, Ford warned he could cut off electricity exports to Michigan, Minnesota and New York as a “last resort” to a bout of high tariffs. He’s also suggested cutting off American liquor imports in his province.

But Ford, a staunch conservative who endorsed Trump’s first stint in the White House, says he would much rather play ball. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Monday, Ford shared that more synergy between the North American nations was his preferred way forward.

“Canada and the U.S. must remain united and focused on the threats that risk undermining our success. A costly trade and tariff war between the U.S. and Canada would benefit only China,” the premier wrote.

Still, he's making a bet that Trump will respond better to cut-throat deals-manship than weak-kneed obeying in advance. He agreed that his grumbling had quite a bit in common with pro wrestling promos, a world that Trump knows well.

Speaking to Politico, Ford made it clear that his pledged retaliation is “the last thing I want to do.”

“I want to work with President Trump,” he said. “There’s no one that loves the U.S. up here in Canada more than I do.”

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Kristi Noem confirmed as homeland security secretary

The Senate confirmed Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday morning, solidifying a crucial staffing post in President Donald Trump's Cabinet as he plans to carry out mass deportations.

Seven Democrats — including John Fetterman, Tim Kaine and Andy Kim — joined 52 Republicans to confirm Noem. She will lead the agency that oversees ICE, FEMA, Border Patrol and other security organizations. The former South Dakota Governor will take a prominent role in leading Trump’s mass deportation efforts alongside Tom Homan, whom Trump appointed as “border czar.”

Noem, once a favorite to be Trump’s vice presidential nominee before she bizarrely admitted to killing her dog in her memoir, told senators during her confirmation hearing that she requested the DHS job because she "knew it was the president's number one priority."

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Noem told Senators she was eager to pursue Trump's plans for mass deportations during her confirmation hearing, brushing off concerns from Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., that such schemes could send massive shockwaves throughout the country.

Noem said the priority was removing “those who have broken our laws and perpetuated violence,” but didn’t directly address removal efforts for law-abiding undocumented Americans.

“Getting criminal aliens off of our streets and out of the country will help American communities be safer again,” Noem told senators last week. “The number one priority of the president is to secure the border and to deport these criminal actors immediately.”

Noem has also indicated that she supports Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship.

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David Lynch’s films pull back the red curtain on our shared reality

A car drives down a road at night. As far as we can tell, it’s the only vehicle on the road, a lonely wayfarer ripping through the darkness. The night is so consuming that the headlights reveal only what’s in the car’s immediate path. We can see the twists and turns in the road as they come into view, but nothing further ahead than a few feet. There’s no way to know what’s coming. We could turn back now, but what might we find if we drive a little further?

Intimidation is the enemy of curiosity, and anyone Lynch’s work has touched knows that all it takes is a little nudge over the threshold to fall headfirst into his world.

That question occurs again and again in David Lynch’s filmography. It’s one of the millions of queries one might have watching his films, which are all distinctly different in tone and genre, yet bleed into one another, falling under that ever-cryptic umbrella term, “Lynchian.” The expression was born from a desire to designate an intangible feeling, similar to the sense one gets deep in one's stomach watching something Lynch made. But funnily enough, a good chunk of Lynch’s films aren’t so difficult to dissect; all one needs are the right tools.

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One of the loveliest things about the community that David Lynch’s work has forged is that, if you ask for a key to begin unlocking it, any given Lynch fan will tell you a different theme, stylistic motif or scene that they feel best represents his artistic ethos in a condensed, easily digestible form. Lynch’s works — his films, paintings and drawings, his groundbreaking television show or even his advertising spots — are famously obtuse. That can be intimidating for an outsider. But intimidation is the enemy of curiosity, and anyone Lynch’s work has deeply touched knows that all it takes is a little nudge over the threshold to fall headfirst into his world. As soon as you’re immersed in his canon, all you’ll want is to go deeper. 

For me, both Lynch’s personal philosophy and cyclical thematic interests are best exemplified by the road, specifically his affection for depicting the road at night. The shadows of trees in a car’s headlights; a stoplight swaying softly in the wind while it changes color; the sensation that something peculiar will inevitably appear the longer a car stays in motion. Those images are what I remember most about watching “Twin Peaks” for the first time at 15 years old. There were plenty of other things about Lynch’s radical, soapy mystery to captivate me. But unlike The Log Lady’s enigmatic messages or Bobby Briggs' dreamy gaze, I was not just entranced by these visions of the road at twilight, I was terrified.

As someone who has always had a masochistic streak, finding out that these sequences of cars speeding down darkened paths recurred in Lynch’s other works both delighted and horrified me. While they made me feel a particularly nauseating dread, they also made me feel alive, teeming with speculation about what they meant to Lynch and why I loved being steeped in their ambiguity. A car driving down a road at night is not innately evil. Rather, it simply produces a straightforward picture of our world’s vast unknowability. The feeling these scenes conjure might be difficult to parse, but their metaphor isn’t. 

Uncertainty is an emotional crossroads at which we choose to either sit and suffer in our anxieties about all we do not know about the world we exist in, or allow ourselves to be curious enough to pursue knowledge of the strange and obscure. The latter path is, of course, a more difficult one to traverse, adorned with obstacles and covered in black night. But it’s an edifying experience, hurtling forward with only the mighty light of intrepid wonder to guide us. With each new experience we have on that road, the path ahead is gradually illuminated. The aperture of the mind’s eye expands. We can see the detours and the mile markers and all of the other people in their own cars, traveling down the very same path. Even as we speed forward in the void, we are never alone.

From the start of his film career, Lynch took isolation by the collar to turn it inside out. In his debut feature “Eraserhead,” Lynch established a thematic foundation to build upon, a tale of detachment and involuntary solitude that burns deep within the core of the soul. “Eraserhead” is a picture of sex not as something that results in joint pleasure between both parties, but as a means to a new, alienated end. Lynch follows Jack Nance’s Henry Spencer as he tries to care for his newborn child, while the droning industrial noise of Henry’s urban surroundings only magnifies his loneliness. This continued into 1980’s “The Elephant Man,” where Lynch acutely criticized separation and othering, touting empathy as the ultimate virtue among humankind. 

With 1986’s “Blue Velvet,” Lynch refined the balance between his message of compassion and his fixation on the surreality of everyday life. To shoot the film, he returned to Middle America, where he spent a vast portion of his childhood being shuttled to different states depending on where his father, a USDA researcher, was assigned. In that part of the country, Lynch learned the difference between picturesque Americana and the reality of what goes on inside it. 

In “David Lynch: The Art Life,” a 2016 documentary where Lynch speaks freely about his childhood and early career, Lynch describes a moment when his father, Donald, called him inside one evening. Shortly after, a nude woman with a bloodied mouth slowly approached him. “Something was bad wrong with her,” Lynch says in the film, before admitting that’s the last thing about the moment he remembers. 

A similar scene to the one Lynch describes in his childhood appears in “Blue Velvet,” when Isabella Rossellini’s character, the lounge singer Dorothy, appears naked and beaten to Kyle MacLachlan’s out-of-his-depth Jeffrey Beaumont. Sometimes, this is all we get in Lynch’s films: abstract glimpses of a tragedy already in motion. But instead of ogling violence to exploit its evil and nauseate the audience, Lynch calls attention to the systems that propagate it. How do we respond when someone tells us they’re in pain and that they need help, and where is the line between our natural curiosity and involuntarily escalating existing trauma? Elucidating the harsh truths of day-to-day life without capitalizing on them is no simple feat. Seeing the world with an unvarnished eye takes consistent practice, and for Lynch, filmmaking was that practice. 

When discussing Lynch’s films, people often refer to his propensity for exposing society’s underbelly. Almost all of Lynch’s movies, in one way or another, seek to turn over some small subset of the world — white-picket-fence America, Hollywood, the nuclear family — to reveal the worms and dirt hidden beneath the shiny perfection on the surface. And while that’s true, Lynch wasn’t just fascinated by these communities, he was intent on illustrating how everyone who exists within them, good or bad, is on a desperate quest for some kind of peace to make sense of this life. If one is burdened by the suffering they’re made to endure, peace is achieved by sowing enough discord and pain to make everyone feel that same hurt. There is a wicked solidarity in shared grief. Anger is a disease that takes hold because the symptomatic violence is driven by one primary desire: not to feel alone. But if cruelty, like any disease, has no one to feed on, it dies.

Unlike the fickle, fleeting peace that can be derived from forcing pain onto others, true harmony comes from unity and the journey toward it. Lynch understood that it’s far easier to give up and give into the madness than to stay strong-willed and fight it; a great deal of his most beloved cinematic protagonists — Laura Palmer in “Fire Walk with Me,” Betty Elms in “Mulholland Drive” and Nikki Grace/Susan Blue in “Inland Empire” — must all survive these trials in their quest for serenity. That’s why Lynch’s films are often so sinister and surreal: You can’t tell stories about the pursuit of peace without depicting the everyday wars one has to fight to attain it. 

While Dern sunk into what is perhaps the most remarkable role of her long career in “Inland Empire,” she was carefully watched by a genius at work. You can’t lose your identity if there’s someone there to hold onto it.

But Lynch’s films weren’t interested in preordaining a character to their misery. Watching his movies, one can see that Lynch was compelled by all of the ways his characters might be able to extricate themselves from their horrendous situations. They aren’t doomed, necessarily, just fated to endure, or perhaps born for their nature. That conversation comes up in “Twin Peaks: The Return” as Lynch flat-out confirms Laura Palmer to be a cipher for unyielding good, intended to restore universal balance after humankind developed a new capacity for evil. Elsewhere, condemnation isn’t so certain. Lynch’s sole approved synopsis for “Inland Empire” was, simply, “A woman in trouble.”

That woman, an actress named Nikki Grace (played by Lynch’s longtime collaborator and friend Laura Dern, who also starred in “Blue Velvet,” “Wild at Heart,” and “Twin Peaks: The Return”) confronts what is arguably Lynch’s most surreal vision of the battle between good and evil, and how easily we can lose ourselves trying to fight it. Nikki has been cast in the role of a lifetime, a surefire legacy-maker. But the quality of her performance depends on how deeply she can sink into the role, and Nikki will do anything — consciously or otherwise — to achieve utter sublimation, and, in turn, total perfection. In that respect, it’s strangely poetic that “Inland Empire” is Lynch’s final feature. A role as demanding as Dern’s, with a narrative as dense as Lynch’s, innately means that its star won’t always have a completely vivid idea of what they’re performing at any given moment. It’s a film that works because of the complete faith between the filmmaker and his star, a trust that could only be developed through decades of genuine friendship both in front of the camera and away from it. While Dern sunk into what is perhaps the most remarkable role of her long career in “Inland Empire,” she was carefully watched by a genius at work. You can’t lose your identity if there’s someone there to hold onto it. 

In a letter written for Lynch after his passing, published in the Los Angeles Times, Dern reminisced on their relationship. She spoke about Lynch writing lengthy “Inland Empire” monologues over cappuccinos, and how he impressed her with his deep care for her “Twin Peaks: The Return” character, Diane, despite Diane being what some directors might consider tertiary. “The respect for character, the magic you brought to the story and the truth that you demanded we find in even the most extreme or absurd places opened my eyes,” Dern said. “Not to the surreal or even unique individualism in your art, but to your humanism.”

It’s Lynch’s humanism that started those cars (or, in the case of his literal road movie, “The Straight Story,” a riding lawnmower) down all of those dark roads, in “Twin Peaks” and in the opening credits of “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive.” They represent Lynch’s perennial curiosity and his hope that, somewhere down the line, things might look a little brighter for us if we keep trying, even if we can’t see that spot in the distance. 

In a clip from the documentary “Lynch (One),” — which was shot during the production of “Inland Empire” and made the rounds online after Lynch’s passing — Lynch gives first-time actor Helena Chase a quick pep talk before they film one of the movie’s most pivotal sequences. “You can’t mess up, you’re going to be so fantastic,” Lynch tells Chase. “I’m going to feed you lines. You hear me, you say the line…no problem. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Behind them, cars drive up and down Hollywood Boulevard. There’s the road again, still covered in the dark of the evening as vehicles move through the frame and out of sight. Each hurries forth into the night, headed somewhere we can’t possibly know in a world full of uncertainty. But there, in the foreground, is Lynch, encouraging Chase to be curious and looking directly into her eyes with supreme conviction. “You are going to be sensational!” he tells her. When Lynch reminded us that we weren’t alone in this life, it was impossible not to believe him.

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David Lynch's life and eternal work

“It’s a massacre”: Trump fires inspectors general in illegal overnight purge

President Donald Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general late on Friday night, axing nearly a significant portion of the civil servants tasked with the oversight of federal agencies.

Inspectors General are tasked with independent oversight and efficiency monitoring inside the federal government. According to Politico, the nonpartisan bureaucrats that Trump fired work in the departments of State, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Education, Labor and Defense, among others.

"It’s a widespread massacre," an unnamed inspector general who got the axe told the Washington Post. "Whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalists, and that undermines the entire system."

Federal law requires advance notice to Congress for such removals. Trump did not meet that requirement, a top Senate Republican confirmed on Saturday. 

Chuck Grassley of Iowa told the federal employee trade publication Government Executive that the Senate was not notified.

“I’d like further explanation from President Trump… The 30-day detailed notice of removal that the law demands was not provided to Congress,” Grassley said. 

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Hannibal Ware, chairman of the committee responsible for the inspectors general, told the White House on Friday that he didn’t believe the firings were valid based on the noncompliance with the law, in a letter obtained by Politico. Grassley worried that the move could be an early sign of a general disregard for oversight of the executive branch.

“It’s the case of whether he believes in congressional oversight, because I work closely with all the inspectors general and I think I’ve got a good reputation for defending them. And I intend to defend them,” the senator said.

Critics said the firings were a power grab by Trump, whose administrative actions could be stalled by bureaucratic oversight. Slate legal correspondent Mark Joseph Stern called the purge “bone-chilling and unprecedented” in a post to Bluesky.

“It’s straight out of the authoritarian’s playbook,” Stern said. “Inspectors general are a vital, independent check on misconduct and abuse within the executive branch. Trump is ousting them so he can break the law with zero oversight.”

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about Trump's plans to reduce the federal workforce

People are slathering beef tallow on their faces. But is the latest skincare trend really effective?

Even amid its legal and regulatory troubles, TikTok spurred a slew of skincare trends that promised tangible results, albeit with questionable methods. There’s the Kim Kardashian-approved salmon-sperm facial — which is exactly what its name suggests. The anti-aging beauty treatment involves injecting a DNA component extracted from salmon semen into the skin to stimulate new collagen production and achieve a more hydrated, plump look. There’s also the grotesque poo facial, which went viral after one influencer smeared feces on her face.

Such hacks underscore the great lengths people will go for a clear, glowing complexion. Kardashian herself told The New York Times in 2022, “If you told me that I literally had to eat poop every single day and I would look younger, I might.”The internet’s latest skincare craze doesn’t involve animal ejaculate or fecal matter, thankfully — but it’s still eyebrow-raising, to say the least.

Skinfluencers have turned their attention to beef tallow, a rendered form of beef or mutton suet typically used in cooking. Those who swear by the ingredient say it’s a natural moisturizer with several benefits, including fighting acne — asserting it has anti-inflammatory properties — and protecting the skin barrier to lock in hydration.

“Many advocates of this trend believe that beef tallow is rich in nutrients like vitamins A, D, E and K, which are beneficial for skin health,” Dr. Hannah Kopelman, a dermatologist at Kopelman Aesthetic Surgery, told Healthline. Beef tallow is balmy in consistency and similar in texture to softened butter or lard. It also closely resembles sebum, the oily substance that coats our skin and protects it from drying out.

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According to dermatologists and skincare experts alike, there’s very little scientific and clinical research to back up the claim that beef tallow is beneficial to use on our skin. Tallow is not currently FDA-approved for topical use and may come with risks, especially if it’s sourced from cows with certain health conditions and diseases, like mad cow disease. As of recently, a multistate outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1), better known as bird flu, continues to impact dairy cows nationwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 66 cases of bird flu in humans have been confirmed nationwide. Approximately two-thirds of those cases were linked to dairy herds.    

Many people who use unprocessed beef tallow on their skin say they get it from their local butcher shops. Others purchase grass-fed beef tallow from their local grocery stores. Some incorporate tallow with other emollient ingredients to make their own natural moisturizer. Nara Smith, for example, calls for beef tallow and beeswax in a recipe for her homemade moisturizer. 

“I appreciate the effort to use more naturally sourced ingredients, but given the lack of regulated sourcing, processing, and stability of the tallow, as well as the comedogenic properties of using tallow, I would recommend other methods of hydration,” Dr. Maya Thosani, a double board-certified dermatologist, told Allure.

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Beef tallow is highly comedogenic, meaning it can clog pores and worsen acne — despite claims from users who say it’s a powerful ingredient to combat active breakouts. Vogue columnist Daisy Jones wrote about her experience using beef tallow for a week. By day six, Jones said she “developed the sort of comedonal acne that I haven’t had since my early twenties and my cheeks had begun to actually feel a little inflamed.”

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“Every time I tried to treat one spot, a new one burst forth in its wake like some kind of nightmarish game of whack-a-mole,” she added. “There was only one thing for it: I had to throw this stuff away. Even looking at it was giving me pimples. I chucked it in the trash, relieved it was no longer in my house or part of my routine.”

Like many trendy skincare ingredients, beef tallow isn’t the perfect solution for everyone. Those with sensitive, acne-prone or oily skin may find tallow to be especially irritating. However, dermatologists say people with eczema-prone or extremely dry skin can try using small amounts of the ingredient on their elbows, knees and hands.

It’s also worth noting that beef tallow has a rather meaty scent that can be quite off-putting. If you’re not keen on slathering animal fat all over your face and reeking of beef, there are a few alternatives that promise similar results and smell much better. Shea butter is rich in fatty acids, vitamins and antioxidants to help boost skin moisture. Same with coconut oil, which has antibacterial properties that could help reduce dark spots and tighten skin.

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“This isn’t a casino!”: Maher loses it on Trump after he threatens to withhold LA wildfire aid

Bill Maher is flaming mad over Donald Trump's handling of the Los Angeles wildfires.

The "Real Time" host dedicated a good portion of his opening monologue on Friday to excoriating the president over his continued threats to withhold aid from California. 

"He’s quite an expert on what we should do here about the fires," Maher said, sarcastically. "He said, 'I don’t think we should give California anything, aid he’s talking about– until they let the water flow down.'"

At this point, the host had to collect himself. He stumbled briefly before launching into a rant about the president of the United States singling out citizens for punishment over political disagreements.

"I said I wasn’t going to lose it this year, but…You’re not giving us anything! We’re Americans!" he said. "This isn’t a casino when you’re comping a room."

Maher tried to explain several situations to the president before throwing up his hands. He gave in to the reality that Trump is playing a role for the cameras and needs to be seen as being tough on California as a sop to his hard-hearted base. 

"F**k it, just do your dance and get out," he said.

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Maher has been critical of California politicians' handling of the wildfires himself. Earlier this month, he called Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass the "Nero of American politics" and laid into his home state for failing to prepare for the fires. Bemoaning his "exorbitant" tax rate, Maher pointed toward long-stalled transit projects as an avatar of California's failure to make good on promises.

“California is a place that spends money and gets nothing, which is why you may have noticed when the fires broke out, no one escaped by high-speed rail,” he said at the time.

Watch Maher's message to Trump below:

“What promises did you keep?”: Stephen A. Smith shares brutal analysis of Dems loss on “Real Time”

Stephen A. Smith's blistering takes aren't just confined to ESPN. 

The sports broadcaster swung by "Real Time with Bill Maher" on Friday, turning his incisive invective on the Democratic Party. While granular campaign analysis and four years of soul-searching are in the future for the DNC's lanyard set, Smith says the reason Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump is simple: voters lost faith that the party could make any meaningful change. 

"What voter out there can look at the Democratic Party and say, 'There's a voice for us, somebody who speaks for us,' that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights the fights that we want them fighting on our behalf?" Smith wondered. "They didn't do that, and that's why their behinds are home, and that man is back in the White House."

Smith turned to the subject of Trump's executive order blitz. He said he was aware that many of Trump's first-week fiats would fail in the courts but noted how effective the quick movement is from a messaging perspective.

"He's saying, 'I kept my promise.' Then you turn around and look at the left and you say, 'What promises did you keep?'" Smith wondered.

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Elsewhere in the multi-minute monologue, Smith said that the Democrats focused too much on identity politics to the detriment of all other issues. Smith cited trans rights advocacy in particular as a campaign plank that required outsized energy.

"The Democratic party came across as if that was more of a priority than other issues," Smith said. 

Smith sang a slightly different tune during the show's "Overtime" segment, pointing to Republican animus toward DEI initiatives as misguided. He cited the NFL's Rooney Rule, which requires football teams to interview minority candidates for open coaching positions. 

"What the hell was the policy necessary for to begin with?" Smith asked, rhetorically. "We had a power structure in the United States of America that was inequitable. They didn't give a damn and somebody had to compel them to do the right thing."

Watch Smith's message to Democrats below:

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