Far-right “constitutional sheriffs” now turn to hunting “fraud” in midterm elections

A controversial group of right-wing sheriffs that has spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and propagated Donald Trump’s Big Lie is now vowing to monitor this year’s midterm elections through surveillance of drop boxes and a hotline for reporting purported election fraud.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) supports the far-right fringe belief that under the U.S. Constitution county sheriffs have extensive power that supersedes all other federal, state or local authorities. It has recently partnered up with a Texas nonprofit called True the Vote, which has peddled conspiracy theories about voter fraud. Now the two groups are promising to keep on investigating allegations about a “stolen election” in 2020 and also to police future voting. For election authorities and voting rights advocates, the combination is ominous.

This partnership provides an insight into the role the “constitutional sheriff” movement is playing in sowing doubts about the election process and monitoring how voters cast their ballots. Such efforts amount to voter intimidation and voter suppression in many cases, advocates say.

How the Big Lie poison continues to spread — and why it’s getting worse

Having county elected officials spreading conspiracy theories “makes it more difficult to break down the walls of voters that we’re talking to,” said Natali Bock, co-executive director of Rural Arizona Action. “There is a cynicism that takes root when you have these outlandish stories.” That kind of “misinformation spreads like wildfire,” she continued, “and instead of just being able to present facts, now we are have to do a lot of relationship building.”

Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, Arizona, has emerged as a prominent figure in the movement that is lending law enforcement credibility to false election fraud claims. He helped found Protect America Now, a coalition of almost 70 sheriffs from different parts of the country who say they are working together to protect America against “an overreaching government.” In partnership with True the Vote, the coalition has raised more than $100,000 toward a goal of $1 million for grants to fund sheriffs surveillance of ballot drop boxes and an anonymous hotline for tips about voter fraud. Lamb’s office did not respond to Salon’s request for comment.

“Sheriff Lamb is the continuation of every other [form of] voter suppression that has happened,” Bock said, “only now it’s the more dangerous form because he carries a badge and a gun and is seated at an elected position of power.” Bock’s organization does advocacy and outreach work in Pinal County (which is south and east of Phoenix) as well as other parts of rural Arizona.

Lamb’s rhetoric is dangerous, Bock adds, because it may embolden other far-right extremists to the point of violence, which can endanger voters and election workers. There’s also the danger of perpetuating a “cycle of cynicism” among historically marginalized communities that have faced voter suppression, which may prevent them from participating in the democratic process.

“Communities of color are experiencing apathy around voting and the democratic process,” she said, before asking: “Is it apathy? Or is it the conclusion of generations of oppression?”

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Lamb promoted his coalition’s partnership at a July rally in Prescott, Arizona, saying that “sheriffs are going to enforce the law… We will not let happen what happened in 2020.” A fervent Trump supporter, Lamb also endorsed a slate of election-denying candidates backed by the former president. Lamb continues to recruit sheriffs from counties across the United States, and has published ads defining his coalition’s mission as “fighting back against a liberal takeover.”

County sheriffs in at least three states have launched their own supposed investigations of election fraud, fueled by the right-wing conspiracy theories in circulation since the 2020 election. In Michigan, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf has been under state investigation for allegedly tampering with voting machines. Last year, Leaf seized a Dominion voting tabulator from Irving Township and allegedly “tore it apart,” later returning it with a broken security seal, the county clerk told News 8.

Leaf’s lengthy investigation into election fraud has been fruitless, with the Barry County prosecutor finding no evidence of any wrongdoing. His is just one example among dozens of others launched by election deniers across the country. These efforts have failed to expose any instances of voter fraud, but voting rights advocates say they are negatively impacting voter turnout.

Law enforcement’s role in policing the election can dissuade voters from casting their ballots, said Sharon Dolente, a senior adviser at Promote the Vote Michigan. That “chilling effect” won’t just impact individual voters, but also entire communities, especially those that have historically been disenfranchised.

“Individuals who were questioning the [2020] result were only questioning the results specifically in Black and brown communities in Michigan. I don’t think that’s an accident, right?”

“There were many instances after the 2020 election where individuals who were questioning the result were only questioning the results specifically in Black and brown communities in the state of Michigan,” Dolente said. “I don’t think that’s an accident, right? I think that is a response to the political power and will those communities expressed, and it’s an effort to dampen that.”

Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, has played a pivotal role in recruiting sheriffs, lawyers and conservative activists to the purported crusade against voter fraud movement. When federal and state law enforcement dismissed her group’s claims, she turned to county sheriffs for help.

Engelbrecht was featured in “2000 Mules,” a documentary by right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza that claimed to provide new evidence that the 2020 election had been stolen. In it, Engelbrecht made unfounded allegations about the widespread abuse of ballot drop boxes, charges she has repeated many times on right-wing media.

In July, Engelbrecht joined CSPOA founder Richard Mack, a former Arizona county sheriff, to announce their partnership at a training event in Las Vegas. Mack said that investigating election fraud was his group’s top priority, referring to it as a “holy cause.” He has also served on the board of Oath Keepers, the militia group some of whose members now face seditious conspiracy charges for their role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

An extensive 2021 report by the Anti-Defamation League describes the CSPOA as an “anti-government extremist group” and outlines Mack’s extensive ties to “militia and sovereign citizen movements” and his associations with white supremacists. (He has said he does not share their views.) He has led training sessions on many occasions that the ADL says are meant to indoctrinate law enforcement officers into extremist movements. Some of those have been led by KrisAnne Hall, a far-right activist who believes that the 14th, 15th and 19th amendments are unconstitutional.

Although it’s too early to gauge the effects of this new far-right movement, Florida and Georgia have passed restrictive laws on absentee voting and the use of ballot drop boxes, two principal targets of Trump’s false claims about widespread voting fraud.

A 2021 report by the Anti-Defamation League describes Richard Mack’s sheriffs’ association as an “anti-government extremist group” and outlines Mack’s extensive ties to “militia and sovereign citizen movements.”

In Georgia, where Black and brown voters came out in record numbers, Joe Biden won by about 12,000 votes, and Democrats later won two narrow runoff elections for U.S. Senate seats. Even though Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has repeatedly said there was no widespread fraud in the state’s elections, lawmakers enacted sweeping changes to its voting law that advocates say are likely to harm minority voters.

“By creating these new bureaucracies and this new red tape,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, lawmakers are “creating a cycle of voter intimidation.” This is “a relic of the past”, she went on, and too close to “what we saw in Jim Crow, with folks coming to people’s doors with guns and pitchforks, trying to ask, ‘Are you the registered voter here?'”

Her group has developed an election protection program meant to help dispel any doubts voters have about the election process and to ensure they don’t encounter barriers while casting their ballots. But Dennis says Georgia’s new law, SB 441, which authorizes state police to launch a probe into any allegations of voter fraud, worries her. Such unfounded allegations, she says, can create a “domino effect,” damaging voters “who are not in areas that are inundated with news and disempowering their voices at the ballot box,” Dennis said. “I think in Georgia particularly, [there] is a coordinated effort to purposely do that.”

Dolente, who has been doing voting rights work in Michigan for 20 years, strikes a similar note. Alongside efforts to restrict voting access for people from historically disenfranchised communities, she says there is also a coordinated effort to spread misinformation in these communities. But despite dozens of lawsuits launched in 2020 and 2021 to look for election fraud in her state, she said, authorities couldn’t find any.

“The system is safe and secure and the voters of Michigan know that,” Dolente said. “They can concoct as many investigations as they like and it’s never going to come up with a different result.”

on voting rights and the 2022 midterms

Alabama’s death-row debacle: The state wanted to kill a man this week. But how?

The state of Alabama wants to kill Alan Miller. But it is having a hard time getting its act together to do so.

On Sept. 12, Alabama made headlines when it announced that it would use nitrogen hypoxia to put Miller to death. It had added this method to its execution arsenal in 2018, making Alabama one of just three states (along with Mississippi and Oklahoma) to authorize it. But none of them has yet to use it in an execution.

Nitrogen hypoxia is a new and so far hypothetical method of administering capital punishment in which the air someone breathes is replaced with 100 percent nitrogen. As a CBC report explains, this will “deprive the person of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions,” presumably leading to a rapid and painless death.

Three days after that announcement, Alabama abruptly reversed course and said it would use lethal injection to execute Miller. If it goes through with this plan, Miller, who was convicted of a triple homicide in 1999, will be the 71st person the state has put to death in the last half-century. (Miller’s execution was originally scheduled for Sept. 22, but a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction halting that process until the confusion surrounding Alabama’s handling of inmate requests regarding the method of execution can be cleared up.)

“I executed 62 people. I’m sorry”: An executioner turned death-penalty opponent tells all

Given Alabama’s long experience with capital punishment, one might think that its executions would go off like clockwork. A look at the bureaucratic ineptitude and confusion in the run-up to Miller’s execution, however, strongly suggests otherwise.

The problems plaguing Alabama’s death penalty system and its plan to execute Miller are not just its own problems. They are frequent occurrences in other death penalty states as well. Those problems show how far short this country has fallen from fulfilling the spirit of “super due process” and scrupulousness which the Supreme Court once promised to all people who are accused or convicted of capital crimes.

The story of the snafus in the Miller case actually started four years ago, when Alabama changed its death penalty law to permit execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Like many other death penalty states, Alabama has had difficulty securing reliable supplies of lethal injection drugs.

Alabama’s new law gave death-row inmates 30 days to decide if they wanted to die by nitrogen hypoxia, but failed to specify exactly how they could exercise that choice.

The new law gave death row inmates 30 days to decide if they wanted the state to use nitrogen hypoxia as their execution method. But it failed to specify exactly how a death row inmate could exercise their choice, beyond noting that they could opt in by informing the prison warden “in writing.” If they did not do so, they would be executed by lethal injection.

Trouble began almost immediately because Alabama officials refused to take any clear steps to inform death row inmates about what they had to do if they wanted to choose nitrogen hypoxia.

They finally distributed information and a form for inmates to fill out which had been created by a group of federal defense attorneys, who have many clients on Alabama’s death row.

Miller says he remembers completing the form and returning it soon after he received it. He indicated that he preferred execution by nitrogen hypoxia rather than lethal injection. As he put it, “I did not want to be stabbed with a needle.”

Since its first use in 1982, lethal injection has proven to be America’s least reliable execution method. With its dismal track record, who could blame Miller for preferring to die in some other way?

Miller chose nitrogen gas because it reminded him of the nitrous oxide gas that is used in dentist offices. At least in theory, breathing pure nitrogen will lead to unconsciousness within a few seconds, followed by death.

But in a truly Kafkaesque situation, the state now says it never received Miller’s form. If that were an isolated case it would be bad enough, but as the Montgomery Advertiser notes, “Miller is not the first person on death row to say the state lost their election form.”

Fearing that the lost form would mean that the state would execute him by lethal injection, Miller sued in federal court, claiming, among other things, that lethal injection violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Alabama’s mixed signals about execution methods began to unfold when James Houts, a deputy state attorney general — who had resisted Miller’s desire to die by nitrogen hypoxia for several years — unexpectedly informed U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. that Alabama was “very likely” to use nitrogen hypoxia for Miller’s execution.

Preparations then proceeded to the point where the state wanted to fit Miller for the mask that would be used to administer the pure nitrogen.

Houts told the court that the “protocol” for using nitrogen hypoxia existed, “but I won’t say it’s final.” The last step was to make sure it was “nested” into the state’s existing execution protocol. Giving the final go-ahead, Houts said, would be up to the state’s corrections commissioner.

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Last-minute changes to a state’s execution plans, like the kind that Alabama announced in the Miller case, often lead to mishaps. Unfortunately, they have been a part of this country’s death penalty system for a long time.

Last Thursday, Alabama changed course yet again when Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm told Judge Huffaker that his department could not “carry out an execution by nitrogen hypoxia” on Sept. 22.

While officials had “completed many of the preparations necessary for conducting executions by nitrogen hypoxia,” Hamm said, the full protocol needed was “not yet complete.”

So Miller again faces execution by lethal injection. Given Alabama’s own troubled history with that method, this is indeed a grim prospect.

It was only last July that Alabama took more than three hours to kill Joe Nathan James. During that time, the execution team made repeated attempts to insert the IV needed to carry the lethal chemicals before it was finally able to do so.

Last July, Alabama took more than three hours to kill Joe Nathan James. Four years earlier, it gave up on executing Doyle Hamm after two and a half hours, leaving him with puncture wounds in his groin, bladder and femoral artery.

The results of an independent autopsy indicated that James suffered greatly during what turned out to be the longest botched lethal injection ever.

Four years earlier, Alabama officials tried for two and a half hours to find a usable vein in Doyle Hamm. By the time they gave up and Hamm’s execution was halted, he was left with 12 puncture marks, including six in his groin and others in his bladder and his femoral artery.

These executions give the lie to the promise that lethal injection would, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said, ensure an “enviable” and “quiet death.”

It is time to give up such illusions and to acknowledge the death penalty’s many failures.

Another late Supreme Court justice, William Brennan, once expressed the hope that Americans would “one day accept that when the state punishes with death, it denies the humanity and dignity of the [condemned] and transgresses the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.” That day, Brennan said, “will be a great day for our country… [and] for our Constitution.”

about capital punishment

Advocates worry about librarian arrests after right-wing groups try to ban 1,650 books in one year

Right-wing attempts to ban books are showing no sign of slowing down, according to a report released Friday by the American Library Association—and in fact have reached an unprecedented level, with libraries and bookstores increasingly facing legal threats over the materials on their shelves.

The organization, which has been tracking book-banning efforts for more than 20 years, found that so far in 2022, parents and other community members have “challenged” 1,651 different books and have issued 681 complaints across the country.

681 challenges to books in the first eight months of this year, involving 1,651 different titles. #UniteAgainstBookBans #BannedBooksWeek https://t.co/0K4rmd13F7

— American Library Association (@ALALibrary) September 16, 2022

In 2021, 1,597 individual books were the subject of challenges, which can include written complaints, forms provided by and submitted to a library, or social media posts in which people demand books be removed from a library’s collection.

Friday’s report showed that right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty have escalated their attacks on library patrons’ right to access certain books, with 27 police reports having been filed so far this year over accusations that librarians are providing inappropriate or “pornographic” material to children.

“We’re truly fearful that at some point we will see a librarian arrested for providing constitutionally protected books on disfavored topics,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom at ALA, told The New York Times.

Book challenges this year have mainly focused on titles that center Black or LGBTQ+ characters, according to the Times.

The graphic novel Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, a memoir about the author’s coming of age as a nonbinary person, has been the most frequently targeted book so far this year.

The book was at the center of a vote in Jamestown Township, Michigan last month in which residents rejected essential funding for the town’s library, prompting concerns that the library will be forced to close within the next year.

Parents in a town in Washington also filed police reports against the school district for including Gender Queer in a school library’s collection, and a Republican lawmaker sued Barnes & Noble to prohibit it from selling the book to minors—a lawsuit that was dismissed last month.

ALA president Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada said the group’s report “reflects coordinated, national efforts to silence marginalized or historically underrepresented voices and deprive all of us—young people, in particular—of the chance to explore a world beyond the confines of personal experience.”

Banning books that discuss racial inequality or LGBTQ+ issues “denies young people resources that can help them deal with the challenges that confront them,” added Pelayo-Lozada. “Efforts to censor entire categories of books reflecting certain voices and views shows that the moral panic isn’t about kids: It’s about politics.”

Giorgia Meloni: Political provocateur set to become Italy’s first far-right leader since Mussolini

In the autumn of 1922, Benito Mussolini, the ambitious and charismatic founder of the Fascist Party, became Italy’s youngest prime minister – seizing power in a march on Rome that ushered in a dark period of totalitarian rule.

A century on, Italy looks set to get its first far-right leader since Mussolini’s body was strung up for all to see at the end of World War II. On Sept. 25, 2022, voters are widely expected to elect as prime minister Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy – a party whose lineage traces back to the rump of Mussolini’s fascists.

Many Italians and Europeans are understandably worried. Her likely ascent comes at a time of national fragility for Italy, which is wracked by economic woes, spiraling inflation and an immigration crisis. It also poses uncomfortable questions over the idea of European identity and unity. Moreover, it is a symptom of the political malaise in Italy and of the winds that have seen populist right-wing leaders gain support around the world.

Who is Giorgia Meloni?

Meloni has been accused of being a political provocateur. A proud nationalist, her policy stances stress anti-immigration positions and the protection of Italy from “Islamization.” In contrast, she presents herself as the defender of traditional family values, politicizing Christianity and motherhood as the cornerstones of the authentic Italian national identity. In a 2019 speech, she explained: “I am Giorgia. I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” – a rhetorical flourish that went viral, even being turned into a disco remix.

But Meloni is also a political chameleon. She changes strategy when it is politically advantageous to do so. In her youth, she openly admired Mussolini and considered him a good politician. But asked in the run-up to the election if she agreed that the fascist leader was bad for Italy, she said “yes.”

Over the years, she has courted leaders deemed by many to be ultra nationalist, such as Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Marine Le Pen of France. Yet she has also tried to position herself as aligned with the conservatism of the British Conservative Party and the Republican Party in the U.S.

She has of late tried to distance herself from prior support for the strongmen of Russia and China and to reemphasize her willingness to patriotically serve her country.

Fratelli d’Italia’s rise to power

The ploy has seemingly worked.

The far-right alliance of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and like-minded parties Lega and Forza Italia are on course to win an absolute majority in the Parliament. But it is Meloni’s party that has stood out, with polls showing it is set to win around a quarter of all votes.

It marks a remarkable rise to power for Fratelli d’Italia. In the course of the past four years, the party’s polling numbers have been steadily growing from a little over 4% in 2018 to over 25% in 2022. The trajectory suggests that the party has either shrugged off its historical links to fascism or that many Italians simply don’t care.

Fratelli d’Italia is a descendant of the Italian Social Movement party, formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II. Meloni has tried to put distance between the lineage, declaring that the Italian right considers fascism to be confined to Italy’s history.

Brothers of Italy’s emblem contains the flame symbol of the neofascist Italian Social Movement. Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Images

Meloni has also exploited national sentiments of insecurity and anxiety, caused by the multiple crises the country has faced in the last couple of years. These include the COVID-19 pandemic that hit Italy particularly hard and the still-unresolved major humanitarian crises caused by mass migration across the Mediterranean, with Italy being the main receiving country of migrants heading to Europe. Italy is also facing rising inflation and an ongoing energy crisis, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine and Putin’s strategy of weaponizing Russia’s gas supply to the European Union.

Faced with these crises, Meloni has positioned herself as the person to “rescue” Italy. History has proved that in times of precarity, charismatic ultra nationalists leaders tend to do well.

With a familiar formula of putting Italy “first,” Meloni’s euroskepticism, xenophobia and Islamophobia – repackaged as patriotism – has gained popularity among Italians.

Out of the chaos of coalition collapse

But the success of Fratelli d’Italia is not all about Meloni. The flip side of her success is the failure of other parties and the chaos of a government collapse that affected many of the parties running against her.

The snap election in Italy followed the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, an internationally admired economist nicknamed “Super Mario” for his impressive handling of the eurozone crisis as the head of the European Central Bank.

Draghi presided over a wide coalition but was forced to resign in July 2022, amid a worsening economic and political crisis that saw some coalition partners turn against the prime minister.

Italy has often struggled with its political leadership. The country’s political system all but ensures government by coalition. But that often means rule by a group of parties, whose agendas and visions may be drastically different – sometimes almost mutually exclusive. And the collapse of Draghi’s wide coalition has tainted many parties across the political spectrum, including the once-popular 5-Star Movement.

On top of this, there has been the individual failures of the parties challenging Meloni in the election. This has included cases of corruption, with the former leader of the Democratic Party – and later the centrist Italia Viva – Matteo Renzi being charged with illegal party financing.

Meanwhile, failed attempts to forge a successful center-left coalition to challenge the right-wing bloc have failed, with an alliance falling apart just days after being formed.

Ready to govern?

The political parties gaining from this political mess have largely been on the right. In alliance with Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia are the euroskeptic, anti-immigrant Lega and Forza Italia – the party of 85-year-old former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

But while Forza Italia and Lega had been part of Draghi’s coalition, Meloni has been able to run on a campaign that is unblemished by association to that failed government.

Meloni is also symptomatic of an emerging European political climate that has seen growth in support for hard-right politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

Meloni has run under a campaign slogan of “Pronta a governare” or “Ready to govern!“

The big question now is whether Italy is ready for Meloni as prime minister.

Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager, Associate Professor of Critical Cultural & International Studies, Colorado State University and Evgeniya Pyatovskaya, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, University of South Florida

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

Georgia GOPer Herschel Walker downplays expectations ahead of major debate: “I’m not that smart”

Although incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker — the main candidates in Georgia’s 2022 U.S. Senate race — have exchanged plenty of barbs, they haven’t had a formal debate. But that will change on Friday, October 14, when Warnock and Walker have agreed to debate one another.

Warnock, often described as a great public speaker, is expected to outperform Walker in the debate. But Walker may have a trick up his sleeve: setting expectations low and then overperforming.

In an interview with the Savannah Morning News, Walker admitted that Warnock is a better speaker — and he wasn’t shy about making self-deprecating comments.

“I am getting out talking to people and talking to you (referring to the media),” Walker told the Morning News. “I’m a country boy. I’m not that smart. He’s a preacher. (Warnock) is smart and wears these nice suits. So, he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate October 14, and I’m just waiting to show up. And I will do my best.”

Although Walker has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, his “I’m not that smart” rhetoric during that interview is the opposite of the approach that Trump is known for. Trump’s approach is to brag endlessly in the hope of intimidating his opponents; Walker, during that interview, seemed to be making a point of setting the bar low — which can be an effective tool in politics. In other words, lower expectations, try to sound humble, overperform and benefit from it.

But at the same time, Walker’s comments during that interview didn’t sound like someone who was throwing in the towel. And he seemed to be saying that while Warnock is a better speaker, he would be better in the U.S. Senate from a policy standpoint.

Walker told the Morning News, “The race is neck and neck. And what I have to do is continue to get out and meet people, which is what I’m doing here. I’m more than just a football player. What I’m doing now is moving forward by talking to the voters, because that’s what really counts, and let them know what I stand for. I was a great football player, but I will be a better senator because I represent the people.”

Polls released in September indicate that Georgia’s 2022 U.S. Senate race could be a major nail-biter between now and Election Day. A Quinnipiac poll released on September 14 showed Walker trailing Warnock by 6 percent, yet a Fox 5 Atlanta/Insider Advantage poll released earlier in the month showed Walker ahead by 3 percent.

7 details you may have missed from Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral

For the average American, viewing the funeral proceedings for Queen Elizabeth II, who died last week at the age of 96, could be a perplexing experience. It’s an unusual one, however, for the United Kingdom, as well. The last state funeral for a monarch was held for King George VI, Elizabeth’s father, in 1952. The previous state funeral not for a monarch was Winston Churchill’s in 1965.

The queen’s funeral was a larger affair than the former prime minister’s. Churchill laid in state for three days, while the queen laid in state for four, during which time thousands of people waited hours — sometimes, days — for the chance to pay their respects. The event was also live-streamed. More mourners may have been able to attend Churchill’s funeral, with about 3,000 people fitting into St. Paul’s Cathedral, where it was held, but attendees of the queen’s funeral included, as The Washington Post reported, “approximately 90 presidents and prime ministers.”

From corgis to currency, 7 things to know now that the queen is dead

The name Emma started trending Monday morning because of a small black pony.

Politicians weren’t the only notables at the queen’s funeral. Fans were surprised to see Sandra Oh, the “Killing Eve” star, attending as a part of the Canadian delegation. But a mourner who attracted the most attention wasn’t even human. Salon breaks down that and other details you may have missed from the queen’s funeral.

Emma the pony

Emma, the monarch's fell pony stands by, as the Procession following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II

Emma, Queen Elizabeth II’s favorite pony stands by, as the Procession following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels up The Long Walk in Windsor on September 19, 2022 (ANDREW MATTHEWS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The name Emma began trending Monday morning because of a small black pony. Emma — full name: Carlton Lima Emma, according to People — is a Fell pony who was reportedly the queen’s favorite. Fell ponies are a type of working pony from the Fells of northern England. With her shiny coat and long black mane, Emma stood out and stood at attention, posted stalwartly on a cleared path between flower tributes, witnessing the queen’s coffin make its final journey to St. George’s Chapel on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Emma, the Queen's fell pony, stands as the Ceremonial Procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II arrives at Windsor Castle for the Committal Service at St George's Chapel 💔💔 #queensfuneral #QueenElizabethII 📸@PA pic.twitter.com/rBvOqPNoUl

— Derek Momodu (@DelMody) September 19, 2022

The queen was a noted animal lover who kept a series of dogs and horses. Two of those dogs, her beloved corgis, were also brought out by pages to witness her final arrival at Windsor Castle. The queen rode horses well into her ninth decade. At the funeral, her great-granddaughter, Princess Charlotte, wore a horseshoe pin on her black dress in honor of the queen.

Little Princess Charlotte of Wales is wearing her first ever piece of jewellery today in honour of her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth: an horseshoe brooch, for Elizabeth’s love for horses 💎 pic.twitter.com/ULEus7e8cy

— CoutureAndRoyals (@CoutureRoyals) September 19, 2022

The Necklace

Catherine, Princess of Wales, during the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on September 19, 2022 in London, England. (Samir Hussein/WireImage/Getty Images)

The small diamond horseshoe brooch was not the only jewelry of significance at the funeral. Charlotte’s mother, the Princess of Wales, wore a choker that once belonged to the queen. According to the BBC, the queen commissioned the design “using cultured pearls from the Japanese government.” Kate wore the pearl choker on the queen and Prince Philip’s 70th wedding anniversary, and again at his funeral four years later. Many photos exist of the late Princess Diana also wearing the necklace, which was first loaned to her by the queen in 1982.

Kate, now known as The Princess of Wales, is wearing one of the Queen's pearl chokers at today's state funeral.

Diana, her late mother in law, wore the necklace in 1982. pic.twitter.com/B57SkPZg3W

— Jennifer Hassan (@GuinnessKebab) September 19, 2022

The meaning of the flowers

Pall bearers carry the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II into St. George’s Chapel on September 19, 2022 in Windsor, England. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The wreath for the funeral also held significance. As the BBC writes, “It included foliage chosen for its symbolism: rosemary for remembrance.” Along with rosemary, the wreath contained myrtle, which had been grown from a cutting from the queen’s 1947 wedding bouquet. Leaves of English oak and pink roses were also woven into the wreath, the plants cut from the grounds of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Highgrove House at the request of the queen’s son, King Charles III, who also placed a handwritten card amid the blooms.

The music

The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II is carried by Pall bearers from the Queen’s Company during the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on September 19, 2022 in Windsor, England. (Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The queen’s wedding was a theme throughout the funeral, present not only in the wreath but also in the music. A hymn sung by the mourners, “The Lord’s My Shepherd,” was reportedly a favorite of the queen’s and also sung at her wedding.

Wand of office

King Charles III watches as the Lord Chamberlain breaks his Wand of Office at the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II on September 19, 2022 in Windsor, England. (Ben Birchall – WPA Pool/Getty Images))

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the Lord Chamberlain, which is the most senior officer role appointed by the royal household, currently occupied by Lord Parker of Minsmere, the former head of MI5, broke a wand over the queen’s coffin. That was the wand of office, and his snapping it was symbolic, as People reported, “signify[ing] the end of his service to the queen as sovereign. The wand was then placed above the Queen’s coffin and will be buried with the monarch.” The queen’s funeral marks the first time this wand ceremony has been televised and as such, witnessed by the public.

The lead coffin

The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II is carried into The Palace of Westminster by guardsmen from The Queen’s Company on September 14, 2022 in London, England. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images).

English oak also ran through the theme of the funeral, as the queen’s coffin was made from English oak wood, which has a notable grain pattern and is now quite rare and pricey. Preparations for the queen’s funeral were made well in advance, including the coffin, which was constructed 30 years ago. Andrew Leverton, funeral director for Leverton & Sons, which serves the royal family, told The Times, “Oak coffins are now made from American oak. I don’t think we could use English oak for a coffin now.”

In keeping with another antiquated tradition, the queen’s coffin was lined with lead, a tradition that can be traced back to the Victorian era when such airtight protection was necessary for coffins that rested above ground in mausoleums, for example. Lead is also extremely heavy, and as People reported, eight military pallbearers were needed to carry the coffin.

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Tight security

Armed police patrol before the Committal Service for Queen Elizabeth II held at St George’s Chapel on September 19, 2022 in Windsor, England. (Aaron Chown – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

With all attention on the ceremony, viewers streaming on TV or online may not have been aware of the tight security behind the scenes that gripped the country in advance of the funeral. London is already, as Wired wrote, “one of the most surveilled cities in the world,” with approximately 1 million CCTV cameras. A huge operations room was set up to gather surveillance of the funeral proceedings with input from intelligence officers, police and emergency services. In advance of the funeral, manhole covers were checked for explosives, drones were banned from zooming over central London (air traffic in general was decreased) and snipers were positioned on top of nearby buildings.

Around the country, police were brought into London, and more than ever, some of them were armed. Historically, most British police do not carry firearms. But according to Wired, in advance of the funeral and the potential security risk of a huge amount of world leaders gathering together, “officers authorized to carry firearms have been called in from around the UK. Overall, the UK has 6,192 armed police officers.” That’s a little over 4% of the country’s total officers.

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The United States’ invasive species crisis, in pictures

Like many of my fellow animal-lovers, it pains me to think of killing an insect. There are videos of me as an infant staring in awe at creepy-crawlies as they scuttle past me; as an adult, I’ve retained that habit.

Yet like millions of other Americans, I make an exception for the spotted lanternfly. That is because I live in Pennsylvania, where the Asian insect is widely perceived as a threat to existing ecosystems — and, consequently, of local economic interests. In other places, people are warned of venomous spiders or so-called “murder hornets.” The only common theme is that, in the United States, we have a tendency to live alongside species that were brought here rather than initially coming from here.

The spotted lanternfly is invading the Northeast. The consequences will be dire if they take over

Indeed, globalization and mass migration of people — and goods — has accidentally sent all kinds of different critters and plants to parts of the world where they shouldn’t be. This has resulted in the spread of “invasive species,” meaning an animal or plant that is both not native to an ecosystem where it currently lives, and also either causes or is likely to cause significant harm to local wildlife or to the nearby humans.

Harm, in the latter case, can be physical, economic or both.

Invasive species are introduced by any number of means. Most of them are accidental, such as when ballast water spreads aquatic species from one continent to another, or when insects burrow into wood that is transported from region to region. Others are deliberate, such as irresponsible exotic pet owners abandoning their former companions or even acts of misguided idealism (including one, seen below, inspired by William Shakespeare).

Sometimes humanity and wildlife luck out and the introduction of these species proves relatively harmless. On other occasions, however, we’re not so lucky. These invasive species may look cute (in some cases), but they are scourges on American ecosystems — which is why conservationists are trying to eradicate them, sometimes with help from citizens.

Burmese pythons

Burmese Python (Getty Images/Hillary Kladke)

First reported in the United States in 2000, Burmese pythons are among the largest snakes in the world. They are voracious carnivores, wolfing down a wide range of prey from birds and reptiles to amphibians and insects. Thanks to the exotic pets trade, Burmese pythons were introduced to the South Florida ecosystem at the turn of the century. They compete for food with native fauna, at least when they aren’t actively eating the hapless critters. A 2012 survey found that the South Florida raccoon population had dropped by 99.3 percent and the opossums population by 98.9 percent. Quite often, raccoons and opossums were found in the pythons’ stomachs.

Zebra mussels

Zebra Mussel (Getty Images/Ed Reschke)

Mussels look tasty, and indeed can be prepared in a number of delicious ways — yet Zebra mussels, aside from not tasting good, are filter feeders. This means that they accumulate pollution in their tiny bodies and are not safe to consume.

Nor is that the worst thing about Zebra mussels (if it was, they wouldn’t appear on this list). The bigger problem is that, ever since Zebra mussels were introduced to the Great Lakes region in the 1980s (likely by European commercial ships), they’ve been clogging pipes in ways that cost businesses millions. They also compete with native wildlife for food sources, particularly algae.

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Spotted lanternflies

Spotted Lanternflies (Getty Images/arlutz73)

First seen in Pennsylvania in 2014, the spotted lanternfly is an attractive insect, with its moth-like wings and bright red body. Yet the spotted lanternfly has had a devastating effect on the northeast, gobbling up vineyards and damaging the stock of Christmas tree growers. The tourism industry has also taken a hit: after all, nobody wants their wedding to be crashed by swarms of winged insects.

Even casual homeowners and pedestrians aren’t safe. The spotted lanternfly is wont to spit out what one entomologist described to Salon as a “sticky honeydew.” Black sooty mold will grow on this, which is both dangerous if accidentally ingested and quite slippery if you’re unfortunate enough to walk on it.

Joro spiders

Joro Spider (Getty Images/David Hansche)

We are often told not to judge others by their appearance, and yet humans often don’t follow those words of wisdom.

This is evident in our reaction to the next invasive species on this list, the Jorō spider. One might assume that they are a major threat given that the spider is (a) venomous, (b) as big as your hand and (c) contains a dizzying array of exotic colors on its shell.

Yet this is simply not true. The spiders rarely attack humans and, if they do, their fangs are too short to penetrate our skin. They do not seem to be harming local ecosystems in any major way. Their biggest “threat” is that they create large webs which are easy to accidentally walk into.

Expert opinion? If you see a Jorō spider, leave it alone.

Asian Giant Hornets

Asian giant hornets (Getty Images/kororokerokero)

When singer-comedian Weird Al Yankovic wrote a song about 2020 appropriately titled “We’re All Doomed,” he referenced “murder hornets coming from across the sea.” In the pandemic-addled zeitgeist, the public imagined waves of killer stinging insects threatening them even as they stayed indoors to avoid COVID-19 infections.

While this nightmare scenario never came to pass, the so-called “murder hornets” still pose a threat to humans. Their sting has been described as “like a hot nail” and kills an estimated 50 people every year in Japan, where they are common. First detected in the United States’ Pacific Northwest in 2019, the bigger problem with Asian Giant Hornets is that they target bee colonies. Bees are already declining at a perilous rate, and Asian Giant Hornets are making that situation worse.

European Starlings

European Starling (Getty Images/Susan Walker)

In William Shakespeare’s play “Henry IV, Part 1,” Hotspur famously proclaims that he will give a European Starling as a gift because it “shall be taught to speak.”

This literary reference has had a major ecological impact. Inspired by Shakespeare’s love of starlings, in 1890 German expat Eugene Schieffelin released 60 starlings into New York City’s Central Park. Flash forward more than a century, and more than 220 million starlings live in the United States. They are major pests, and as of 2007 were estimated to cause $800 million worth of damage to America’s agricultural sector every year. They also spread diseases, with their feces carrying parasites and microorganisms like E. coli.

Great Lakes lampreys

Sea Lamprey (Getty Images/Jramosmi)

Great Lake lampreys are one of the oldest of America’s invasive species, as they were first detected in the Great Lakes in 1835. Yet do not feel sympathy for them just because of their longevity. Whenever sea lamprey populations spike in the Great Lakes, the local fishing industries get hit extremely hard. Entire species of fish are wiped out by the voracious bloodsuckers.

The pandemic only made this worse, as longstanding programs that existed to control the sea lamprey population had to be suspended due to the lockdown. Sea lampreys are definitely flourishing in the Great Lakes area today, although it remains to be seen whether the problem is as severe as it was in the 1940s and 1950s.

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A “House of the Dragon” wedding celebration turns into a crime scene, mainly due to the dancing

Weddings in George R. R. Martin’s Westeros and Essos are rarely remembered for their flowers and cake. Sansa Stark’s marriage to Tyrion Lannister began with her being walked down the aisle by the sadistic boy who had her father murdered. Her second espousal to Ramsay Bolton, another psychopath, took place in the dead of night and was festivity-free.

Other weddings are marked by death. Joffrey Lannister’s extravagant nuptial celebration to Margaery Tyrell features an array of entertainments, the main event being his purple-face collapse and demise from poisoning. The Red Wedding joined House Tully and House Frey and ignobly ended Catelyn and Robb Stark.

Heck, the very first episode of “Game of Thrones” shows us that a Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull affair by having one guest disembowel another, the result of a disagreement over whose turn it is to hump a random lady.

By those standards, the wedding between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock) and Ser Laenor Velaryon (Theo Nate) in the fifth “House of the Dragon” episode, “We Light the Way,” is in keeping with tradition. Their betrothal feast climaxes with a gory braining, delivered at the hands of a crazed Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).

How to groom your dragon, Targaryen style

One element makes this hang stand apart from the others, though: the party’s terrible dancing.

Paddy Considine and Milly Alcock in “House of the Dragon” (Ollie Upton / HBO)

If one of the Seven gods is known for being responsible for music and choreography, he or she neglected to bless this reception hall or the couple, who kick off the bash with ritualistic flailing. There are raised arms, as if to evoke dragon wings, followed by a variation on the classic “fishing reel” move, except with what looks like imaginary swords.

Wedding reception choreography is not supposed to be cool.

It closes with an awkward bow, commencing the “all skate” portion. The lords and ladies in attendance rise from the banquet tables and pair up, sort of. There’s more milling about, along with a coordinated lift-and-hop move as the men gently toss the women away from them, or the women jump away; it’s hard to say which.

The episode’s party-fouling crime of passion happens during a confusing galumph that’s occasionally punctuated by everyone throwing up a hand while yelling, “Hey!” Alas, it is not in the manner of Ye Olde Hip-Hop Hooray.

Wedding reception choreography is not supposed to be cool. But the Electric Slide, the Chicken Dance, and the Wobble qualify as dances. Then again, in the days when leeches were the medical equivalent of Robitussin, the simple act of placing one foot in front of the other must have been a small miracle. Maybe that’s why medieval-style hoofing amounts to little more than variations on slowly walking, spiced up with risky hops and ankle bouncing.

Paddy Considine, Milly Alcock and Theo Nate in “House of the Dragon” (Ollie Upton / HBO)

Therefore, let us be merciful. The Europeans who came up with popular dances such as the basse or the carole could not conceive of Megan Thee Stallion’s heroic twerking, the whole mood that is Beyonce, or Kendrick Lamar blessing a reception by crashing it. Hell, if somebody managed to clap on the twos and fours, they were probably accused of witchcraft.

I mean no disrespect to the dance consultant who worked with the production. (HBO kindly tried to track down the U.K.-based person on our behalf, but it was impossible to connect before press time.) Based on what we know about medieval moves, the ones busted in “We Light the Way” are authentic to the spirit of the age.

What is dead may never die. That as true for lackluster prancing as it is for loveless unions

There isn’t much in the way of instructional documentation for dances from these times. Robert Mullally, one of the few historians to write extensively on the carole, explains that no such manuals or treatises exist that are dated before the 15th century.

Whatever is known about them has been gleaned from artwork and references sprinkled throughout literature from the era. One example comes courtesy of another historian, Otto Schneider, who described the carole as “a medieval foredance for couples, which is normally walked.”

There’s also a 15th-century French poem Mullally references in his work that reads, “Girls, when you are in a carole, dance modestly and with decorum, for, when a girl behaves without decorum, there will be some who think her wanton.” So if the so-called dancing at Rhaenyra and Laenor’s rager wasn’t high-spirited or sexy, that may have been intentional.

Emily Carey in “House of the Dragon” (Ollie Upton / HBO)

Acts of wantonness were not what doomed the shindig, however. Their problems pre-dated the event. Ser Criston, distraught over the twin slights of his soiled honor and Rhaenyra rejecting his marriage proposal, becomes enraged by a whisper from Laenor’s lover Ser Joffrey Lonmouth (Solly McLeod) celebrating that they each get to keep on dancing in the sheets with their respective paramours.

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This aggravates Ser Criston’s guilt over Rhaenyra pushing him to violate his oath of chastity, despoiling his honor, and stealing his heart at the same time. The only other person who knows about his sexual trysts with Rhaenyra is Queen Alicent (Emily Carey). And she is infuriated that Rhaenyra lied to her face and caused her father, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), to be fired from his gig as the King’s Hand. Criston is at the Queen’s mercy, but he can’t tolerate the thought of another man knowing his secret shame.

Hence, “House of the Dragon” gave us a murder on the dance floor. But we mustn’t blame Ser Criston for killing the groove, DJ, or Rhaenyra for wanting to burn this goddamn house right down. As the saying goes, what is dead may never die. That is true for lackluster prancing as it is for loveless unions. Rhaenyra and Laenor get hitched anyway after the guests have left — a hop, step, and a “HEY” away from a puddle of Joffrey’s blood.

Maybe that’s why we don’t see dancing at the weddings that take place almost two centuries after this one. The realm can get over bloodshed at major events, but bad dancing is a crime nobody soon forgets.

New episodes of “House of the Dragon” air Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

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Cooking for a crowd? Chicken and charred mushroom larb is the flavor-packed answer

Hosting dinner parties out of my sad grad school apartment kitchen taught me a lot about the art of entertaining. I learned about the importance of not pinning all your hopes on an oven that doesn’t heat uniformly and that a (freshly-cleaned, ice-filled) bathtub works just fine as a drinks cooler. I learned that people don’t care if all your plates match, though they definitely do care if there aren’t enough chairs.

I also learned that nothing beats a “choose-your-own-adventure” spread, especially when cooking for a group of people with a variety of dining preferences or restrictions.

Meet the cookbook author who’s bringing Taiwanese-American flavors to cannabis edibles

By “choose-your-own-adventure” spread, I mean the types of meals where everyone starts out with a similar base and can add or avoid certain toppings. Think of a loaded baked potato bar or a taco bar. Avoiding dairy? Skip over the cheese and sour cream. Vegan? Let me direct you to the platter of spicy, delicious soyrizo, which is the ideal vehicle for wedges of avocado and a squeeze of lime.

If you’re looking for something that is a little more friendly — and incredibly flavorful — for weeknight entertaining, I really like setting out a platter or two of larb, a traditional Lao dish. Larb is typically made with ground or minced meat — such as chicken or pork — that has been flavored with thick fish sauce, lime juice, chili, mint and assorted vegetables. Often, it’s served with white rice and lettuce, enabling eaters to make their own lettuce cups. It’s a light, refreshing meal that is also really nuanced.

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There’s the added bonus that the flavors incorporated into the larb also happen to make minced, slightly charred mushrooms shine, giving the vegetarians or vegans at the table a solid dinner option.

For a group of six, I’ll typically prepare1/2 pound of minced meat and 1/2 pound of mushrooms using the same marinade, but different pans. While fish sauce has an incredibly distinctive flavor, it’s unfortunately not vegan. That said, Ocean’s Halo makes a pretty stupendous plant-based dupe, or you can opt for an equal portion of coconut aminos. This will give the mushrooms a sweeter, less funky flavor.

Chicken and Mushroom Larb

Yields

4-6 servings

Prep Time

15 minutes

Cook Time

20 minutes

Ingredients

8 ounces ground chicken
8 ounces mushrooms
Neutral oil
5 tablespoons lime juice
4 teaspoons hot chile powder (See Cook’s Note)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons brown sugar
1/2 cup minced red onion
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro
4 tablespoons sliced scallions
Salt to taste

For serving

White rice
Lettuce leaves
Bean sprouts
Mint leaves

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the lime juice, chile powder, minced garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar, red onion and sliced scallions. Combine and season with salt to taste. Set aside.
Add a glug of neutral oil to a large pan and begin to brown the ground chicken over medium-low heat. Once mostly cooked-through, add 1/2 the marinade to the pan and increase the heat to medium. Cook until the chicken is fully cooked and the marinade has been absorbed, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
Using either a knife or a small food processor, mince the mushrooms to a size that is similar to the ground chicken. Add them to a clean pan alongside a glug of neutral oil and a hearty pinch of salt. You’ll want to start on medium-high heat and sauté the mushrooms until the edges start to brown a bit, about 5 minutes.
Add the remaining half of the marinade to the mushrooms and cook until the marinade has been fully absorbed, about another 2 minutes. Remove from the heat.
Serve the chicken and mushroom larb with white rice, lettuce leaves, bean sprouts and mint.

Cook’s Notes

Look for Thai chile powder at your local Asian grocery store, though cayenne will work in a pinch.

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A drug that can kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria could stave off the coming superbug crisis

For years, human civilization has been embroiled in a quiet public health crisis: Some of our antibiotic drugs have stopped working. The over-prescription of antibiotics has turned the bugs we could once easily defeat into super-pathogens capable of evading even our best defenses, as they have evolved faster than we can design drugs to defeat them. By some estimates, antibiotic resistance could kill as many as 10 million people annually by 2050. Already, around 1.27 million people die every year from infections for which drugs do little to nothing.

To make matters worse, new drugs that address this problem aren’t being developed fast enough, as there isn’t much profit in developing new antibiotics. As Salon has previously reported, Big Pharma has mostly abandoned antibiotics development. The problem seems to be getting worse, leading to the rise of new sexually transmitted infections that don’t respond to standard antibiotics. Worse, climate change may also be making drug-resistant superbugs even deadlier.

However, researchers may have recently made a breakthrough with a new drug called PLG0206, which has been demonstrated to be extremely potent against more than 1200 different drug-resistant bacteria. The results were published in PLOS One on September 16th, with much of the research conducted by scientists at Peptilogics, a biopharma company based in Pennsylvania. The discovery marks a rare and much-needed human victory in the ongoing war against antibacterial resistance.

PLG0206 is an antimicrobial peptide made up of a chain of amino acids, or organic compounds that appear in all living creatures. If you string enough amino acids together, you make what’s called a protein. Peptides are the same thing, only smaller, and are widely used in medicine, with insulin being the best example.

As Big Pharma loses interest in new antibiotics, infections are only growing stronger

Some peptides have toxic properties that can be weaponized against other microbes. Think of them as TNT against a tank. Our bodies generate tons of peptides to fight infections, but in the arms race between our immune systems and invaders — such as bacteria, viruses, fungi or parasites — sometimes the “tanks” can develop better defenses than the “bombs” we use. The result can mean serious illness or death.

Biologists have been developing antimicrobial peptides for years, but they come with some limitations. Some can be toxic to humans or are metabolized too quickly by the liver and kidneys to be effective.

But PLG0206 may be able to solve some of these problems and more. It’s not only seemingly well-tolerated in humans, it also attacks biofilms, a slimy matrix of sugars that some bacteria produce to wall themselves off from attack. Best of all, PLG0206 seems unlikely to drive resistant mutations in the bacteria sampled, which means it may be an effective tool that won’t wear out with use.

To test how effective PLG0206 may be, the researchers used multiple types of experiments. First, they put dozens of different strains of drug-resistant pathogens onto agar plates containing 5 percent sheep blood and incubated them overnight.

One quarter of one millionth of a gram was enough to knock out the bacteria, meaning that PLG0206 is extremely potent.

Then they added the peptide and took measurements at different intervals to see how fast and effective PLG0206 was at destroying infections. They also repeated the experiment with more than a dozen common antibiotics, including colistin, considered a “drug of last resort” because it has terrible side effects and is typically used only when all other medications fail. As a control, they also included microbial growths without drugs.

The peptide demonstrated rapid bacteria-killing activity against nearly 1300 different drug-resistant pathogens, sometimes in concentrations as low as 0.25 micrograms per milliliter. That means just one quarter of one millionth of a gram was enough to knock out the bacteria, meaning that PLG0206 is extremely potent.

But the researchers wanted to see how PLG0206 did in animal models as well, so they purposefully gave infections to rabbits and mice to see how well the peptide did at fighting certain illnesses.

The rabbits that received cefazolin alone all died within two weeks. But 75 percent of the rabbits treated with PLG0206 had no bacteria cultures on their implants, suggesting this peptide could make surgeries in humans a lot less likely to go wrong.

The rabbits were given surgery, which involved installing stainless steel wires on their legs and then injecting a strain of bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus into the injury. This model simulates one of the most common and most serious complications of joint surgery in humans.

When doctors want to restore the function of a joint, they may perform a type of surgery called an arthroplasty and install a metal implant. However, such implants are tantalizing surfaces for bacterial colonies to form and often cause difficult-to-treat infections.

After two days, giving time for an infection to form in the rabbits, the researchers injected PLG0206 into the joints, as well as cefazolin, a common antibiotic. The rabbits that received cefazolin alone all died within two weeks. But 75 percent of the rabbits treated with PLG0206 had no bacteria cultures on their implants, suggesting this peptide could make surgeries in humans a lot less likely to go wrong.

The researchers also gave urinary tract infections (UTIs) to several mice using E. coli, a bacteria notorious for causing food poisoning and UTIs. Mice were then administered with either PLG0206 or gentamicin, another common antibiotic. After 24 hours, the mice were euthanized with CO2, their kidneys and bladders were harvested, then ground up into a homogenous mixture. This slurry of mouse organs was diluted, then placed on a Petri dish and the level of bacteria growth was measured.

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In most of the mice treated with PLG0206, even a low dose rendered E. coli cultures almost undetectable, around the same levels as the gentamicin group. This suggests PLG0206 could be another tool to fight UTIs, which is good news given that some UTIs involve E. coli strains that are resistant to gentamicin.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearly sees big potential for PLG0206, as last July it granted Peptilogics “Fast Track” designation for treatment of arthroplasty infections. This designation speeds up the FDA’s development and review process of new drugs that address unmet medical needs.

Not all drugs under the Fast Track program get approved, and it’s not always “fast” either. Some fast-tracked drugs later turn out to not work as well as originally thought. These results should also be taken with a grain of salt, given that many of the researchers involved are financially invested in the drug’s success. Nonetheless, all of this is a good indication that PLG0206 at least warrants a closer look.

In the last 60 years, only two new classes of antibiotics have entered the market, compared to more than 20 novel classes of antibiotics developed between 1930 and 1962. It doesn’t take long for pathogens to evolve resistance to even our most powerful tools, meaning the so-called “Golden Age of Antibiotics” could be quickly waning. If such a thing were to happen, it would set modern medicine back to the 19th century, making minor injuries, chemotherapy or even childbirth life-threatening. We can’t develop new and better tools for fighting infections fast enough.

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Ken Burns on asking yourself “the toughest questions” and how the Beatles influenced his filmmaking

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, who says, “I’ve always loved the Beatles,” joined host Kenneth Womack to explain what the band means to him and his work on the season 4 premiere of “Everything Fab Four,” a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.

Burns, widely known for his documentary series such as “The Civil War,” “Baseball,” “Jazz” and “The Vietnam War,” among others (including his latest, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” which premieres this week on PBS) tells Womack that he grew up with music, but wasn’t “fully invested” until the Beatles came out with “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Later, as a teen, he worked in a record store in Ann Arbor, MI, and says by far the shop’s biggest-selling title at that time was “Abbey Road.”

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Citing the pre-“Her Majesty” closing line on that album, “The love you take is equal to the love you make,” as “the greatest line in all of rock and roll,” Burns says that is exactly the reason the Beatles’ music has endured. Living in an age of “extreme divisiveness” is tempered, he explains, by “a four-letter word that FCC will let us say on the radio….love. And the Beatles say that in the most important way. There is no ‘them.’ There is only ‘us.'”

In terms of his filmmaking, Burns credits the Beatles with “giving us permission to bite off more than we could chew,” having spread their art form and technique across many genres of music in a “style that is still genuine and authentically theirs.” He says he aims to do the same thing in his films, that “each time you start out, you’re reinventing,” calling his latest documentary his most important. Having spent seven years on the new miniseries “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” about the “nadir of civilization,” he says it’s heartbreaking to think about how much good in the world never got to see the light of day due to the atrocities that were committed to millions of people.

And jarred by the violence and racism that is still around today, Burns believes we are “obligated as human beings to make things better…. In order to be exceptional, you have to ask yourself the toughest questions. And this is exemplified in popular music by the Beatles.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Ken Burns on “Everything Fab Four” and subscribe via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, or wherever you’re listening.

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Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books “Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles” and “John Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.” His newest project is the authorized biography and archives of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, due out in 2023.

“Everything Fab Four” conversations:

Mike Lindell says he “prayed” for GOP to lose because it would prove him right about voter fraud

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell revealed over the weekend that he was secretly praying for Democrats to win two Senate elections in Georgia in early 2021 on the grounds that it would lend credence to his false claims about the 2020 election being stolen.

The Macon Telegraph reports that Lindell told a crowd of Trump supporters over the weekend that he asked God to help Sens. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Jon Ossoff win their races against two incumbent Republicans so that people would take his claims about voter fraud seriously.

“All of a sudden, I started praying,” said Lindell. “I go, ‘God, please let them take both of these [Senate seats].'”

Lindell said it would have been smart for Democrats to win only one of the Senate races to throw Republicans off their scent, but he said they got greedy by taking both, which made all Republicans believe the election was rigged.

“You all know exactly where you were when they stole them both,” Lindell said. “And everyone’s going ‘what are we going to do? Maybe there was election crime.'”

In fact, many Republican strategists blame former President Donald Trump for costing the party both Senate seats by repeating his baseless allegations of voter fraud, thus discouraging many of his own voters from taking part in the election.

The 4 best soups to try from Trader Joe’s right now, according to Reddit

Soup is a widely loved comfort meal, especially as the season transitions to cooler temperatures. There’s nothing more satisfying than curling up with a blanket and enjoying a hearty bowl (or two) of fresh, warm soup.

Although soup is both tasty and nutritious, it can be quite tedious to make from scratch. Luckily, Trader Joe’s has an assortment of soups to choose from (all you have to do is warm them up!) for easy autumnal meals. Whether you like your soup smooth or chunky, here’s four soups that you need to pick up from TJ’s right now, per recommendations from loyal shoppers on Reddit.

Trader Joe’s 6 best items for easy school lunches

This list adds to Salon Food’s growing library of supermarket guides. If you’re mourning the loss of your favorite snacks and treats, check out the 6 items that have been recently discontinued by Trader Joe’s.

Tomato Feta Soup

Trader Joe’s Tomato Feta Soup (Photo courtesy of Joseph Neese)

Per TJ’s official website, this fan-favorite soup is a fun take on classic tomato soup. The Tomato Feta Soup is made with slow simmered, vine-ripened tomatoes that are then mixed with tomato paste, onions, light cream and an assortment of spices, like sea salt, garlic, parsley, basil, bay leaves and oregano. The star ingredient, however, is the crumbs of feta which add a tangy kick to each spoonful of soup.

Multiple users on Reddit raved about the delicious taste of TJ’s Tomato Feta Soup. “So good, I’m a crew member and it’s my favorite soup by far,” wrote user u/poppymoooo.

The soup can be enjoyed on its own or alongside toasted slices of baguette, a Jalapeño popper grilled cheese or oyster crackers.

Pumpkin Butternut Squash Bisque

Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Butternut Squash Bisque (Photo courtesy of Joseph Neese)

This fall-themed delicacy is a step above ordinary squash soup. The bisque — which is a thick and creamy type of soup — includes puréed pumpkin, butternut squash, onions, carrots, honey, brown butter and fresh sage leaves seasoned with salt, garlic, black pepper and nutmeg. The final concoction is a sweet and salty meal that celebrates fall’s most staple flavors.

To elevate TJ’s Pumpkin Butternut Squash Bisque, garnish it with a drizzle of cream, chives, dried herbs or shredded cheese, preferably gouda or gruyere.

Organic Creamy Tomato Soup

Trader Joe’s Organic Creamy Tomato Soup (Photo courtesy of Joseph Neese)

Another tomato soup option is TJ’s Organic Creamy Tomato Soup, which adds a splash of dairy for a creamier and slightly sweeter base. Per Reddit user u/-Odi-Et-Amo-, the soup pairs nicely with plain white rice for a complete weeknight meal.

“I add a couple of garlic cubes, basil and a little bit of heavy cream and then eat it with bacon grilled cheese on sour dough!” recommended another user, u/Pupperito615. “Soooo good!”

If you’re craving extra dairy, try enjoying the soup with TJ’s Sharp Cheddar Sourdough Cheese Sticks.

Organic Tomato & Roasted Pepper Soup

Trader Joe’s Organic Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup (Photo courtesy of Joseph Neese)

TJ’s Organic Tomato & Roasted Pepper Soup touts a subtle smoky flavor, which comes from the blended roasted red bell peppers. It tastes great with a dollop of sour cream, shredded cheese or crème fraiche or a side of Chimichurri rice.

“This product is a staple for me! I love anything that goes into the pantry, aka can sit for a while as I forget it exists,” wrote user u/mrs_traderjoes. “There is definitely a little hint of red pepper, but it’s a tomato based soup. The sodium doesn’t blow my skirt up, but I can eat half a carton as a meal and be content! I always switch off between this one and the original tomato soup carton.”

Trader Joe’s shopping lists:

Trump team picked special master they think is a “deep skeptic of FBI” due to Russia probe: report

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week appointed Judge Raymond J. Dearie as a special master to review records the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers recommended Dearie, a former chief judge of the federal court in the Eastern District of New York, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan.

Dearie, who’s overseen cases involving organized crime and authorized warrants in highly classified investigations, is now taking on a new role. As special master, Dearie will sift through more than 11,000 documents, identifying which documents are protected by attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.

He will determine if any material was improperly taken during last month’s search and make recommendations and suggestions for Cannon to either accept or reject.

“She is totally in the tank”: Legal experts rip judge’s “profoundly partisan” pro-Trump ruling

Dearie served seven years on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which examines applications from the U.S. government “requesting warrants for electronic surveillance, physical searches and other investigative efforts related to foreign intelligence”, according to its website.

In October 2016, when Dearie was a FISA judge, the court approved a wiretap of a foreign policy adviser on Trump’s presidential campaign. The Justice Department requested the surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page as part of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation, which looked into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Two of the four warrants approved to surveil Page were later deemed invalid after the Justice Department’s inspector general found misstatements and omissions in FBI paperwork to get the warrant.

Two anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the deliberations told Axios that lawyers and advisers of Trump believe Dearie’s role on the secretive court made him a deep skeptic of the FBI after its surveillance of Page, which influenced Trump’s legal team’s decision to suggest him.

“This experience drove the Trump team’s thinking in requesting him,” the outlet reported, adding that “Trump’s lawyers are betting that has made Dearie more skeptical of the FBI than an average judge — in a way that endures beyond the Page case.”

Cannon has issued a deadline of Nov. 30 for the documents review and issued interim reports and recommendations “as appropriate”. She said that Dearie should first look at the classified documents.

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Dearie has been regarded as an exemplary jurist and a straight-shooter, in the legal community.

Lawyers and litigants have described Dearie as an “independent, thorough and even-handed jurist who is fit to wrangle the dueling sides,” according to Politico. Despite the difficulties this role may present, he is equipped to handle it.

“He’s one of the few judges who both sides want to appear in front of. He is held in the highest regard by attorneys. He’s someone who actually listens to the lawyers and considers what they have to say before he makes a decision,” a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor Lindsay Gerdes told Politico.

The Justice Department has argued that a special master is legally unnecessary and, if appointed, should not be charged with reviewing any of the documents marked as classified. In several court filings, prosecutors have made the case that appointing a special master can delay the criminal investigation into Trump and due to the documents’ sensitive nature, could pose a national security risk.

The Trump team’s suggestion of Dearie as special master has puzzled legal observers due to the former president’s history of strictly placing loyalists in key roles. However, the DOJ has accepted the team’s suggestion due to Dearie’s “previous federal judicial experience and engagement in relevant areas of law.”

about the Mar-a-Lago raid

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

Starbucks management is reportedly planning to deny new paid leave benefits to unionized workers, another wrinkle in the company’s aggressive and unlawful campaign to stamp out organizing momentum nationwide.

According to an internal memo obtained by More Perfect Union, Starbucks is set to announce Monday that it is ending Covid-19 sick pay benefits that offered employees two five-day rounds of paid leave per quarter if they contracted the virus or were exposed to it.

The memo adds that Starbucks intends to unveil new paid leave benefits that include “faster sick time accrual.” However, the document states specifically that the company will attempt to exclude unionized workers from the new benefits, citing federal labor law requiring management to bargain with unions over any changes to wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Starbucks, currently led by billionaire CEO Howard Schultz, insists it is barred by federal law from “making or announcing unilateral changes,” even as it unilaterally moves to end Covid-19 benefits for both unionized and nonunion employees.

“The memo suggests that Starbucks is legally permitted to unilaterally strip unionized stores of the current Covid leave benefits, but banned from implementing the new benefits in those stores,” More Perfect Union notes.

Starbucks Workers United, the group leading the organizing campaign that has racked up more than 220 union wins across the U.S. since December, immediately slammed the memo as further evidence that company management “has no regard for the law.”

“We are demanding that Starbucks bargain over their attempts to end Covid pay and benefits,” the group wrote on Twitter. “Interesting how Starbucks claims to not legally be able to give us new benefits in THE SAME letter they unilaterally take away benefits.”

“If Starbucks actually believed they couldn’t give union stores new benefits unilaterally, they wouldn’t be unilaterally stripping us of our benefits now,” Starbucks Workers United continued. “Their goal is to retaliate against and punish union stores.”

Starbucks’ latest anti-union move comes as the company is facing a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint for illegally denying unionized workers wage and benefit boosts that it provided to nonunion employees. A hearing in the case is scheduled for October 25.

Bloomberg Law reported earlier this month that “Workers United International President Lynne Fox sent a letter to Starbucks on behalf of union stores waiving their right to bargain over the pay and benefit changes, and calling for the company to provide them to union stores as well.”

Robert Giolito, an attorney who represents Starbucks Workers United in California and Arizona, told the outlet that “Schultz’s stated reason for not affording wage increases and benefits to union stores was wiped out once the union presented its waiver.”

“The minute the union gave the waiver, he can give those wages and benefits,” Giolito added. “But if he did that, it would undercut the entire motivation of this policy, which is to discourage unionization.”

The coffee giant’s plan for new sick leave benefits was reported just days after the Biden White House facilitated a deal between rail carriers and unions that—at least temporarily—averted a nationwide railroad strike. At the center of the yearslong labor dispute was paid sick leave, which—unlike other wealthy countries—the U.S. government doesn’t guarantee to workers.

“This, as much as anything that has been written, emphasizes the need for the U.S. to guarantee sick workers some form of paid sick days and paid medical and family leave legislation,” Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a statement last week.

Of course DeSantis flouts the law and human decency — He’s just following Trump’s example

When the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in early August, looking for classified or top secret documents Donald Trump had stolen from the White House, many in the Republican commentariat openly longed for a new leader who could bring all the fascism (or the “semi-fascism,” if we must) without all the law-breaking. Fox News host Laura Ingraham complained that Americans were “exhausted” by Trump’s constant swirl of crimes and scandal, and plaintively asked for “someone who has all Trump’s policies, who’s not Trump.”

As I argued at the time, this fantasy about authoritarianism with clean hands is ridiculous: Corruption is an inseparable from fascism as golf carts from Palm Beach resorts. Nonetheless, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been dangled before the Republican faithful as the potential Boy Scout Mussolini, a man who can dish out all the bigotry and authoritarian crackdowns, without getting distracted by role-playing a mafioso. In large part, this is because DeSantis is perceived as having even less of an internal life than a pickle-brained sociopath like Trump. DeSantis has the look and feel of a prototype politician-robot, who doesn’t explode in angry tirades but has been programmed to think exclusively in right-wing grievances. Robots lack the complicated human motives that lead to criminal actions, after all, and DeSantis feels “safer” for those who dare to imagine a fascist regime free of corruption.

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After last week’s Martha’s Vineyard stunt, however, it’s time for Republicans to set aside their longings for an evil-but-lawful leader. As any sci-fi geek could tell you, those AI-powered robots invariably evolve to be worse than their creators. Most of Trump’s crimes are rooted in ordinary human impulses, like outright greed and ego gratification. But programming DeSantis to care only about right-wing trolling didn’t prevent him from playing Trump-like games with the law. In this case, he appears to have defrauded these immigrants not for financial gain, but solely to create a political spectacle that would play well on Fox News.

DeSantis used taxpayer funds to charter a plane carrying about 50 immigrants from Venezuela and Colombia to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, in what was effectively a proof of concept of a Stormfront-derived talking point about alleged liberal hypocrisy. He didn’t receive the “get off my lawn” response he was hoping for. Residents of the island instead rallied to help the new arrivals. (Which didn’t stop Fox News from simply pretending that locals responded with the racist reaction DeSantis was hoping for.) Because of the speedy help offered by the people of Martha’s Vineyard and the state of Massachusetts, in fact, lawyers brought in for pro bono assistance swiftly discovered the unbelievable levels of fraud that DeSantis’ people had employed to make this stunt happen.

!!! a fake brochure promising eight months cash assistance, food, job training/placement, help with housing + more was given to migrants who were lured by @GovRonDeSantis into boarding a flight to martha’s vineyard. @JuddLegum obtained a copy: https://t.co/nSIwWOE6Zh pic.twitter.com/RLtqoeLPC8

— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) September 19, 2022

Ron DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt is straight out of Stormfront and “border militia” rhetoric

In a statement released Saturday, Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) in Boston said that the migrants “were induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretenses,” such as promises “of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance.” That strategy is far too reminiscent of the ones used by human traffickers who force migrants into poorly-paid jobs in construction, janitorial services and even sex work against their will. As NPR reports, it’s possible that DeSantis’ stunt violated federal laws against human trafficking, and immigration lawyers are calling on government prosecutors to open an investigation. “There is absolutely the possibility of both civil and criminal liability,” lawyer Susan Church told Politico.

This is a legal gray area: Human trafficking laws are based on the assumption that such crimes are motivated by financial gain, not as a media spectacle created to own the libs. Still, DeSantis, who went to Harvard Law School, must have understood he was coloring outside the law with this appalling troll act. It appears that the Florida governor isn’t just aping Trump’s bad suits and third-grade vocabulary. He’s also absorbed the biggest lesson Trump taught Republicans about impunity: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

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In that particular case, Trump was talking about his perceived carte blanche to sexually assault women without facing legal repercussions, but that attitude imbues everything Trump does, from defrauding investors to stealing classified documents. Trump may pretend to believe in the Christian God, but his one true faith is that he can commit any crime he wants, and no one will stop him. Frankly, why shouldn’t he believe that? It’s been more than a year and a half since he literally attempted a coup and no charges have been filed against him or anyone in his inner circle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s facing a bazillion slow-moving investigations, but that’s been true basically throughout his entire adult life, and he’s never tasted real consequences. Even the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago came after months of the Department of Justice bending over backward to accommodate the whims of this lifelong criminal. No wonder the main lesson Trump (and his imitators) learned is that there are no penalties for reckless, lawless behavior.

So Ron DeSantis thought he could play chicken with the human trafficking laws for a political stunt. His mentor, after all, successfully beat the rap after getting impeached over his extortion scheme against the president of Ukraine, all in an attempt to create fake dirt on Joe Biden. There was no doubt that Senate Republicans would refuse to convict him in an impeachment trial, and the DOJ never even considered pursuing criminal charges.

“Evil and inhumane”: DeSantis trolls Martha’s Vineyard with planes of migrants — but locals step up

DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt comes on the heels of his all-out assault on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech. Court hearings began Monday morning in a suit filed against DeSantis by Andrew Warren, the former state attorney in Tampa who says that DeSantis fired him illegally after Warren signed a pledge not to prosecute people who seek abortion or gender-affirming care. DeSantis has also signed constitutionally questionable laws forbidding teachers from acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people and barring schools and companies from conducting diversity training. The latter law has already been overturned by a federal judge, though the DeSantis administration is appealing. When the Walt Disney Company’s leadership offered tepid criticism of DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” law, he moved to retaliate, threatening to repeal Florida’s pro-Disney laws on land use and zoning.

DeSantis is already aping Trump’s bad suits, bad posture and third-grade vocabulary. He’s also absorbed Trump’s biggest lesson: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

Sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard under false pretenses wasn’t even DeSantis’ first instance of defrauding or manipulating marginalized people. A few weeks ago, he staged another racist agitprop spectacle at taxpayer expense, ordering public arrests of 20 people, most of them Black, for alleged voting fraud. Reporters soon found out that those people had incorrectly been told by election officials that their voting rights had been restored after they had served felony sentences. Some of them may now be going to jail over a bureaucratic error that wasn’t their fault — but the important part was that DeSantis got to show the MAGA base images of Black people in handcuffs for “illegal” voting. As voting rights advocates point out, white people who knowingly committed voter fraud to vote for Trump multiple times are getting slaps on the wrists.

DeSantis’ legal impunity does have a different look and feel than Trump’s. Trump commits whatever crimes he wants, from sexual assault to extortion to theft to seditious conspiracy, and then rolls out a phalanx of lawyers, his political power and a strategy of constant counterattack to shield himself from consequences. DeSantis, as the Harvard-educated attorney he is, knows how to insulate himself from personal consequences by making his law-flouting part of his supposedly official duties as governor. The state of Florida is paying for the legal battles over his attacks on free speech, and if there is a criminal investigation or civil litigation resulting from the Martha’s Vineyard stunt, it will once again be the state and perhaps the people hired to do the dirty work who are on the hook, not the governor himself. Those differences matter, both legally and aesthetically, but the impulse driving Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump is exactly the same: They have no respect for the law, and they’re happy to trample it underfoot to get what they want.

about the Sunshine State’s governor

“Rapidly accelerating movement”: Texas has banned more books than any other state, report shows

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Texas banned more books from school libraries this past year than any other state in the nation, targeting titles centering on race, racism, abortion and LGBTQ representation and issues, according to a new analysis by PEN America, a nonprofit organization advocating for free speech.

The report released on Monday found that school administrators in Texas have banned 801 books across 22 school districts, and 174 titles were banned at least twice between July 2021 through June 2022. PEN America defines a ban as any action taken against a book based on its content after challenges from parents or lawmakers.

The most frequent books removed included “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which depicts Kobabe’s journey of gender identity and sexual orientation; “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison; “Roe v. Wade: A Woman’s Choice?” by Susan Dudley Gold; “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez, which follows a love story between a Mexican American teenage girl and a Black teen boy in 1930s East Texas; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, a personal account of growing up black and queer in Plainfield, New Jersey.

“This censorious movement is turning our public schools into political battlegrounds, driving wedges within communities, forcing teachers and librarians from their jobs, and casting a chill over the spirit of open inquiry and intellectual freedom that underpin a flourishing democracy,” Suzanne Nossel, PEN America’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Across the country, PEN America found that 1,648 unique titles had been banned by schools. Of these titles, 41% address LGBTQ themes or have protagonists or prominent secondary characters who are LGBTQ. Another 40% of these books contains protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color.

Summer Lopez, the chief program officer of free expression at PEN America, said what’s notable about these book bans is that most are on books that families and children can elect to read, not any required reading.

Florida and Pennsylvania followed Texas as the states with the most bans, respectively. Florida banned 566 books, and 457 titles were banned in Pennsylvania, where a majority of books were removed from one school district in York County, which is known as being more conservative.

Lopez said her organization could not recall a previous year with as many reported book bans.

“This rapidly accelerating movement has resulted in more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship,” Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s free expression and education programs and the lead author of the report, said in a statement.

Texas’ book challenges can be traced to last October, when state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, sent a list of some 850 books about race and sexuality — including Kobabe’s — to school districts asking for information about how many of those are available on their campuses. This one move spurred parents to challenge and successfully remove books they believe are not appropriate and “pornographic.”

The Keller Independent School District in Tarrant County was one of the first to successfully remove “Gender Queer” from school libraries after a group of moms complained it was “pornographic.”

This recent series of book bans has unfolded against the backdrop of a national debate over critical race theory, a college-level academic discipline that examines how racism is embedded in the country’s legal and structural systems. It is not taught in Texas’ public schools. However, some conservative politicians and parents have assigned the term “CRT” to dismiss efforts in public schools to incorporate a more comprehensive and inclusive public school curriculum, something they equate to indoctrination.

Conservatives in some school districts have used the book bans and rancor over social studies teachings to help bring rally support and attracted unprecedented money to win school board seats campaigning under the promise to clear out “critical race theory” and “pornographic” materials from schools. In the midst of continuing Republican-led political fights over how issues related to race, gender and sex are allowed to be taught in public schools, Gov. Greg Abbott has put a promise to increase parental rights at the center of his reelection platform.

However, Texas parents already have the right to remove their child temporarily from a class or activity that conflicts with their religious beliefs. They have the right to review all instructional materials, and state law guarantees them access to their student’s records and to a school principal or administrator. Also, school boards must establish a way to consider complaints from parents.

PEN America’s analysis also found that these bans have been largely driven by organized groups formed over the last year to combat “pornographic” and “CRT” materials in school.

“The work of groups organizing and advocating to ban books in schools is especially harmful to students from historically marginalized backgrounds, who are forced to experience stories that validate their lives vanishing from classrooms and library shelves,” Friedman said.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/19/texas-book-bans/.

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Trump fumes that Ron DeSantis stole his idea to ship migrants and became a Fox News star: report

Rolling Stone reported Sunday that former President Donald Trump is not happy with Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who some say will use his 2022 win to propel himself to the Republican nomination for president in 2024. DeSantis tried to throw himself into the same stunt that Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, was doing, shipping immigrants and refugees off to other cities around the country and politicizing it with Fox.

It put DeSantis in a difficult position, commentators said, so he went to Texas to ship their immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard instead of immigrants in Florida. One of those was a one-year-old baby. It has become the major news story for the past several days, with immigrant rights groups revealing that the migrants were lied to about where they were going and what was happening. Some were told they were being taken to Boston, others had appointments to appear in immigration courts in Seattle but were shipped to the northeast instead.

Trump is furious, not because of the stunt using human beings as political pawns, but because DeSantis has become a Fox News star, Rolling Stone reported.

“Trump has fumed over all the praise DeSantis’ action has been receiving in influential conservative circles lately,” the report said. He “has privately accused DeSantis of doing this largely to generate a 2024 polling boost for himself among GOP voters.”

Trump has been trying to use the search warrant executed at his country club in Florida to raise money for a “legal defense fund” and paint himself as a victim. He was also said to be fuming that the whole idea was his and not DeSantis’ or Abbott’s.

The move by the GOP governors has eliminated the coverage Trump is getting on conservative outlets, which dramatically cuts into his fundraising. It comes at a time that those inside TrumpWorld say the former president thinks he should be dominating the news. While neither Trump nor DeSantis has declared they’re running for president, Trump has indicated he’s all in. Trump’s biggest ploy to get rid of DeSantis in 2024 could be stopping him this year, but Trump has been unwilling to go that far and it may be to his own detriment as many GOP voters see DeSantis as a more intelligent version of Trump.

According to the reports about 50 Venezuelans and Columbian migrants were tricked into the Martha’s Vineyard flight. Most were fleeing socialism and communism, policies that Republicans once opposed at all costs. In the past, Republicans have been eager to accept those fleeing such leaders, but that has changed.

On Sunday, Trump announced he was returning to Florida after being away for several months.

Read the full report at Rolling Stone.

Could steam-powered cars decrease the CO2 in the atmosphere?

With the growing severity and frequency of storms, heat waves and wildfires, and the other dangers from climate change, there are many reasons to be concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists have shown that humanity’s addiction to burning fossil fuels is causing this problem, which means it’s time to kick that habit.

Because transportation generates more than one-fourth of the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, slashing CO2 emissions requires phasing out vehicles powered by gasoline, diesel and natural gas.

Steam powered many of the early automobiles sold around 1900. Could the same technology play a role again?

The ‘Stanley Steamer’

The steam-powered car became possible once gasoline and diesel oil replaced wood and coal for the powering of engines.

Inventors Francis and Freelan Stanley, twin brothers, became automaking pioneers after they improved photographic technology. In 1898 and 1899 they were selling more vehicles than any other early automaker, and their steam-powered “Rocket Racer” set a speed record in 1906.

All along, cars powered by internal combustion engines – the kind most in use today – were competing with steam cars and winning the technology war. Starting in 1912, electric starters made them safer and more convenient by replacing dangerous hand cranks. By 1920, when its assembly lines started producing the Model T with an electric starter, Ford was selling hundreds of thousands of cars per year.

In contrast, early steam cars were heavy and expensive, and it took a long time to make enough steam to get them rolling. Doble Steam Motors, another early automaker, eventually solved this last problem and many others, but the cars remained pricey, and it was too late: The noisy and polluting but much cheaper internal combustion engine had won out. The Stanley Motor Carriage Co. ceased operating in 1924.

To be clear, because the heat to boil water to make steam has to come from somewhere, these steam-powered vehicles burned fossil fuels to heat their water anyway.

A 1970s comeback

Steam power had something of a comeback in the 1970s, but not because of climate concerns. Back then, air pollution spewed by vehicles had become a serious problem filling cities with smog.

Steam boilers can burn fuel more thoroughly than a standard internal combustion engine, leading to cleaner exhaust that is mostly water and carbon dioxide.

At the time, that was seen as an improvement.

Some of the cities battling pollution from automobile exhaust added steam-powered buses to their fleets. This resurgence was short-lived because of the arrival of new technologies that could curb pollution from internal combustion engines.

Steam’s drawback and electricity’s advantages

The biggest obstacle for steam-powered vehicles is that steam isn’t a source of energy. Rather, it is a source of power for the wheels.

While getting around in steam-powered vehicles might make the air cleaner in the drivers’ own communities, switching to steam-powered engines that continue to burn gasoline and diesel wouldn’t reduce CO2 emissions.

A different approach can potentially eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels for transportation: replacing gasoline tanks with batteries to provide the energy, along with swapping out internal combustion engines for electric motors to turn the wheels.

The reduction in carbon emissions will be far greater if vehicles run on electricity generated by wind turbines, solar panels or other energy sources that don’t emit carbon dioxide.

As it happens, some of the first cars ever made were electric. Manufacturers stopped making those models because the need to recharge their batteries after short distances rendered those vehicles less convenient than those powered by fossil fuels.

Battery technology is so much better now that some electric vehicles can travel 400 miles (640 kilometers) without needing to recharge. Instead of switching to steam as a source of power to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions, we recommend electricity generated from renewable sources.

Brian Stewart, Professor of Physics, Wesleyan University and Gary W. Yohe, Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, Wesleyan University

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

New abortion laws jeopardize cancer treatment for pregnant patients

As abortion bans go into effect across a contiguous swath of the South, cancer physicians are wrestling with how new state laws will influence their discussions with pregnant patients about what treatment options they can offer.

Cancer coincides with roughly 1 in 1,000 pregnancies, most frequently breast cancer, melanoma, cervical cancer, lymphomas, and leukemias. But medications and other treatments can be toxic to the developing fetus or cause birth defects. In some cases, hormones that are supercharged during pregnancy fuel the cancer’s growth, putting the patient at greater risk.

Although new abortion restrictions often allow exceptions based on “medical emergency” or a “life-threatening physical condition,” cancer physicians describe the legal terms as unclear. They fear misinterpreting the laws and being left in the lurch.

For instance, brain cancer patients have traditionally been offered the option of abortion if a pregnancy might limit or delay surgery, radiation, or other treatment, said Dr. Edjah Nduom, a brain cancer surgeon at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta.

“Is that a medical emergency that necessitates the abortion? I don’t know,” Nduom asked, trying to parse the medical emergency exception in the new Georgia law. “Then you end up in a situation where you have an overzealous prosecutor who is saying, ‘Hey, this patient had a medical abortion; why did you need to do that?'” he said.

Pregnant patients with cancer should be treated similarly to non-pregnant patients when feasible, though sometimes adjustments are made in the timing of surgery and other care, according to a research overview, published in 2020 in Current Oncology Reports.

With breast cancer patients, surgery could be performed early on as part of the treatment, pushing chemotherapy to later in the pregnancy, according to the research. Cancer experts typically recommend avoiding radiation therapy throughout pregnancy, and most chemotherapy drugs during the first trimester.

But with some cancers, such as acute leukemia, the recommended drugs have known toxic risks to the fetus, and time is not on the patient’s side, said Dr. Gwen Nichols, chief medical officer of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

“You need treatment urgently,” she said. “You can’t wait three months or six months to complete a pregnancy.”

Another life-threatening scenario involves a patient early in her pregnancy who has been diagnosed with breast cancer that’s spreading, and tests show that the cancer’s growth is spurred by the hormone estrogen, said Dr. Debra Patt, an oncologist in Austin, Texas, who estimated she has cared for more than two dozen pregnant patients with breast cancer.

“Pregnancy is a state where you have increased levels of estrogen. It’s actually actively at every moment causing the cancer to grow more. So I would consider that an emergency,” said Patt, who is also executive vice president over policy and strategic initiatives at Texas Oncology, a statewide practice with more than 500 physicians.

When cancer strikes individuals of child-bearing age, one challenge is that malignancies tend to be more aggressive, said Dr. Miriam Atkins, an oncologist in Augusta, Georgia. Another is that it’s unknown whether some of the newer cancer drugs will affect the fetus, she said.

While hospital ethics committees might be consulted about a particular treatment dilemma, it’s the facility’s legal interpretation of a state’s abortion law that will likely prevail, said Micah Hester, an expert on ethics committees who chairs the department of medical humanities and bioethics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Medicine in Little Rock.

“Let’s be honest,” he said. “The legal landscape sets pretty strong parameters in many states on what you can and cannot do.”

It’s difficult to fully assess how physicians plan to handle such dilemmas and discussions in states with near-total abortion bans. Several large medical centers contacted for this article said their physicians were not interested or not available to speak on the subject.

Other physicians, including Nduom and Atkins, said the new laws won’t alter their discussions with patients about the best treatment approach, the potential impact of pregnancy, or whether abortion is an option.

“I’m going to always be honest with patients,” Atkins said. “Oncology drugs are dangerous. There are some drugs that you can give to [pregnant] cancer patients; there are many that you cannot.”

The bottom line, maintain some, is that termination remains a critical and legal part of care when cancer threatens someone’s life.

Patients “are counseled on the best treatment options for them, and the potential impacts on their pregnancies and future fertility,” Dr. Joseph Biggio Jr., chair of maternal-fetal medicine at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, wrote in an email. “Under state laws, pregnancy termination to save the life of the mother is legal.”

Similarly, Patt said that physicians in Texas can counsel pregnant patients with cancer about the procedure if, for instance, treatments carry documented risks of birth defects. Thus, physicians can’t recommend them, and abortion can be offered, she said.

“I don’t think it’s controversial in any way,” Patt said. “Cancer left unabated can pose serious risks to life.”

Patt has been educating physicians at Texas Oncology on the new state law, as well as sharing a JAMA Internal Medicine editorial that provides details about abortion care resources. “I feel pretty strongly about this, that knowledge is power,” she said.

Still, the Texas law’s vague terminology complicates physicians’ ability to determine what’s legally permissible care, said Joanna Grossman, a professor at SMU Dedman School of Law. She said nothing in the statute tells a doctor “how much risk there needs to be before we label this legally ‘life-threatening.'”

And if a woman can’t obtain an abortion through legal means, she has “grim options,” according to Hester, the medical ethicist. She’ll have to sort through questions like: “Is it best for her to get the cancer treatment on the time scale recommended by medicine,” he said, “or to delay that cancer treatment in order to maximize the health benefits to the fetus?”

Getting an abortion outside Georgia might not be possible for patients with limited cash or no backup child care or who share one car with an extended family, Atkins said. “I have many patients who can barely travel to get their chemotherapy.”

Dr. Charles Brown, a maternal-fetal medicine physician in Austin who retired this year, said he can speak more freely than practicing colleagues. The scenarios and related unanswered questions are almost too numerous to count, said Brown, who has cared for pregnant women with cancer.

Take as another example, he said, a potential situation in a state that incorporates “fetal personhood” in its law, such as Georgia. What if a patient with cancer can’t get an abortion, Brown asked, and the treatment has known toxic effects?

“What if she says, ‘Well, I don’t want to delay my treatment — give me the medicine anyway,'” Brown said. “And we know that medicine can harm the fetus. Am I now liable for harm to the fetus because it’s a person?”

Whenever possible, physicians have always strived to treat the patient’s cancer and preserve the pregnancy, Brown said. When those goals conflict, he said, “these are gut-wrenching trade-offs that these pregnant women have to make.” If termination is off the table, “you’ve removed one of the options to manage her disease.”

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

Trump goes on late-night Truth Social rant in first return to Mar-a-Lago after FBI raid

Former President Donald Trump on Monday accused the FBI of “ransacking” his home during their August search for classified documents after returning to his Mar-a-Lago residence for the first time since the raid.

Trump announced on Sunday that he would fly back to Mar-a-Lago for the first time since the Justice Department recovered hundreds of classified documents and found dozens of empty folders marked classified last month. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the search was unwarranted even though a federal judge signed off on the search after being presented with evidence that a crime had occurred.

“I’ll soon be heading to the scene of the unwarranted, unjust, and illegal Raid and Break-In of my home in Florida, Mar-a-Lago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I’ll be able to see for myself the results of the unnecessary ransacking of rooms and other areas of the house. It has already been proven that so much has been wrongfully taken, it is not a ‘pretty thing.’ So sad! The 4th Amendment, and much more, has been totally violated, a grave invasion of privacy.”

The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unlawful search and seizure, not against searches executed in response to a lawful federal warrant. The search was executed after the DOJ learned that Trump’s team falsely certified that they had returned all classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago earlier this year, including from inside sources.

Trump returned to his Palm Beach resort on Sunday after spending most of the last five weeks at his properties in New Jersey, New York and Virginia. Trump took to Truth Social again after 1 am to complain that the FBI agents did not take off their shoes while searching his room.

“Arrived in Florida last night and had a long and detailed chance to check out the scene of yet another government ‘crime,’ the FBI’s Raid and Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote. “I guess they don’t think there is a Fourth Amendment anymore, and to them, there isn’t. In any event, after what they have done, the place will never be the same. It was ‘ransacked,’ and in far different condition than the way I left it. Many Agents – And they didn’t even take off their shoes in my bedroom. Nice!!!”

“Lordy there are pics”: Legal experts say Trump lawyers may need their own lawyers after DOJ filing

Trump previously groused about the FBI agents after the DOJ publicized a photo showing top-secret document covers found during the raid.

“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Thought they wanted them kept Secret?”

Trump during a rally earlier this month also claimed that the FBI searched the room of his 16-year-old son Barron, though legal experts have cast doubt on his allegation.

“They rifled through the first lady’s closet drawers, and everything else,” he claimed. “And even did a deep and ugly search of the room of my 16-year-old son — leaving everything they touched in far different condition than it was when they started. Can you believe it?”

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Trump’s comments come amid a legal battle with the Justice Department over the documents. Trump, weeks after the search, filed a motion requesting a special master to review whether any of the documents were privileged even though an FBI “filter team” had already reviewed the documents for potentially privileged materials and planned to return them, according to the DOJ. A Trump-appointed federal judge last week ordered the review sought by Trump and blocked the DOJ from continuing its criminal investigation during the review, prompting criticism from legal experts.

The Justice Department on Friday asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to lift the judge’s order barring them from accessing about 100 documents with national security classification markings, warning that the order “irreparably harms” the criminal probe and “needlessly” requires the “disclosure of highly sensitive records” to Trump’s lawyers.

The filing said that the judge’s order could harm national security and enable efforts to obstruct the probe.

“The government’s need to proceed apace is heightened where, as here, it has reason to believe that obstructive acts may impede its investigation,” the filing said, adding that the order may also prevent the FBI from identifying “other records still missing.”

President Joe Biden on Sunday told CBS News that he has not spoken to officials about the documents because “I don’t want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they could take.”

But Biden recalled his shock at seeing the FBI photo of top-secret documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

“How that could possibly happen?” Biden recalled thinking. “How anyone could be that irresponsible? And I thought, ‘What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?'”

about the Mar-a-Lago raid

Toxic effects of the Big Lie: Will any Republican, anywhere, ever concede defeat?

Days before the 2016 election, candidate Donald Trump stood before a throng of ecstatic followers and said, “I would like to promise and pledge to all of my voters and supporters and to all of the people of the United States that I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election — if I win.” Indeed he did pull out a narrow electoral victory, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. There was plenty of carping. There were street protests. But nobody stormed the U.S. Capitol or enlisted Democratic officials in various states to sign fraudulent elector statements in the hopes of getting Congress to overturn the result in defiance of the Constitution. Clinton conceded the next day, although no one’s pretending she was happy about it. Democrats grumbled about the antiquated system that elected the last two Republican presidents with a minority of the popular vote, but everyone moved on.

There’s no need to recapitulate what happened in 2020. We are all too aware of it, mostly because Trump and his allies won’t let anyone forget it. He made it clear from the beginning that it was simply not possible for him to lose and now we can see that he’s convinced a large number of candidates for office, as well as their voters, that it holds true for them too. The Big Lie is alive and well.

How the Big Lie poison continues to spread — and why it’s getting worse

According to FiveThirtyEight, 60% of American voters have an election denier on the ballot where they live. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported over the weekend about election deniers running for office around the country who have refused to say whether they will accept the results of their own upcoming elections. The Post surveyed 19 important statewide races, and only seven Republican candidates said they would accept the results while 18 of the 19 Democrats said they would. (The other Democrat didn’t respond.) The Times noted that a few of those GOP candidates seem to be posturing in order to appeal to Trump voters who’ve bought into the big lie, quoting an aide who said on background that their candidate would certainly accept the results but just couldn’t say so in public. That’s what passes for integrity in Republican politics these days.

Amusingly, a number of defeated Republicans in this year’s primary elections have claimed that the votes were rigged, proving just how deep this conspiracy goes. Axios reports that losing GOP candidates in Michigan, Colorado, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Florida have all claimed their elections were tainted. Even some winners complained. Arizona’s GOP nominee for secretary of state, state Rep. Mark Finchem, a hardcore 2020 election denier, claimed that “people all over the state [are] saying, ‘I’ve gotten ballots that I didn’t ask for.'” Presumably he doesn’t believe his own primary win was dubious, but these people are so far down the rabbit hole that you never know.

Political number-crunchers keep warning that Democratic momentum could be a mirage. Are there still “shy” GOP voters out there who don’t have MAGA flags on their pickup but feel deeply wounded by Joe Biden?

There has also been a recent spate of articles from various political number-crunchers warning that Democrats should be wary of getting it into their heads that they can win this midterm election. The momentum certainly seems to be moving their way, but these observers suggest that’s a mirage: Polling in both 2016 and 2020 failed to capture Republican voters, who showed up in greater numbers than expected. (In the 2018 midterms the polls were pretty accurate. But because historically the party in power loses seats in midterm elections, somehow that doesn’t count.)

Data analysts don’t know what’s going on with these invisible or “shy” Republican voters, but at least one pollster — who is generally considered right-leaning — says it’s because GOP voters are sensitive to what strangers who call them on the phone might think of them:

In 2016 Trump supporters were called “Deplorables” and other unflattering names. This was a major contributor to the “shy Trump voter” phenomenon that “most” polling missed which resulted in a major loss in public confidence for polling flowing the election.

— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) September 17, 2022

Now that the Biden administration has essentially classified “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to democracy marshaling federal law enforcement to focus on them. This move has created a new type of voter that will be even harder to poll or even estimate.

— Robert C. Cahaly (@RobertCahaly) September 17, 2022

He claims that Joe Biden’s comments have created an “army” of these hidden voters who are impossible to poll, “even for us.” These shy voters aren’t like the MAGA fans who put Trump flags on their pickup trucks, but according to this theory they are so traumatized on behalf of the good folks who wear “Fuck your feelings” T-shirts in public and worship a man who calls Democrats, “disgusting,” “depraved,” “treasonous” and every other gross insult known to man that they won’t even admit to a pollster who they are going to vote for.

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This pollster’s data may be valid, but his analysis is just an personal opinion. In my opinion, it’s highly doubtful that GOP voters aren’t responding to pollsters because their feelings got hurt. Trump voters don’t strike me as shrinking violets. I would guess they don’t respond because Trump has told them that you can’t trust anyone but him and his designated associates. Since he says any poll that shows he isn’t winning by a landslide is in the tank, and all polls, even the right-leaning ones, do show that from time to time, his followers are required to discount and distrust all polling. They have swallowed Trump’s belief that the only way Democrats can win is by cheating and that any polls which show Republicans losing are by definition rigged. Why participate in a rigged game?

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight threw some cold water on this whole thing anyway, noting that none of this is quite as predictable as one might think:

People’s concerns about the polls stem mostly from a sample of exactly two elections, 2020 and 2016. You can point out that polls also had a Democratic bias in 2014. But, of course, they had a Republican bias in 2012, were largely unbiased in 2018, and have either tended to be unbiased or had a Republican bias in recent special elections.

True, in 2020 and 2016, polls were off the mark in a large number of races and states. But the whole notion of a systematic polling error is that it’s, well, systematic: It affects nearly all races, or at least the large majority of them. There just isn’t a meaningful sample size to work with here, or anything close to it.

The consequences of this belief that the polls are definitely wrong, however, could be profound. It feeds into the idea that if Democrats do manage to hold onto one or both houses of Congress — even Silver’s site forecasts that it’s fairly likely they will win the Senate — it cannot be legitimate. It will give all those election deniers still more fodder for the belief that they’re being cheated, and we’ll see yet more lies by cynical GOP politicians who see an upside to losing: It’s a chance to delegitimize a Democratic majority and nurse the grievance and delusions of their Trump-crazed base. OK, it’s not quite as good as winning, but it pays the bills — and our already fragile democracy frays just a little bit more.

about the choices facing America

Former federal prosecutor: A “day of reckoning” is coming for Trump — but he’s not going to jail

America’s democracy crisis will not end anytime soon. Donald Trump and his acolytes in the Republican-fascist party continue to incite acts of right-wing violence, including terrorism, on a nationwide scale as part of their plan to end American democracy and replace it with authoritarianism and one-party rule.

The Big Lie continues to spread across the United States. A majority of Republicans now subscribe to the repeatedly disproven theory that the 2020 Election was somehow illegitimate, that Trump is the “real” president and Joe Biden is a pretender and usurper. “MAGA” is American neofascism; it has fully conquered the Republican Party.

How the Big Lie poison continues to spread — and why it’s getting worse

Even President Biden — who is committed to political moderation and remains eager to find “unity” with “traditional” Republicans for the good of the country — is finally issuing public warnings that today’s Republican Party and the MAGA movement are basically enemy agents working to undermine America from within.

This moment of crisis demands bold, immediate leadership and collective action, not just from Biden and other leading Democrats but from rank-and file-Americans as well. But the urgency of stopping Trump and his forces is hamstrung by how the rule of law in a democracy operates slowly and justice often takes a very long time — if it ever does arrive.

Will Donald Trump eventually be prosecuted, convicted and then imprisoned for his apparent high crimes, which may include violating the Espionage Act? Attorney and author Kenneth Foard McCallion believes that the answer is probably no.

McCallion is a former Justice Department prosecutor who also worked for the New York State Attorney General’s office as a prosecutor on Trump racketeering cases. As an assistant U.S. attorney and special assistant U.S. attorney, he focused on international fraud and counterintelligence cases that often involved Russian organized crime.

McCallion is also the author of several books, including “Profiles in Cowardice in the Trump Era” and “Treason & Betrayal: The Rise and Fall of Individual-1.”

In this wide-ranging conversation, he offers his view that Donald Trump, along with his inner circle and his businesses, operate like an organized crime family. McCallion says these attributes and behavior help to explain Trump’s affinity for foreign demagogues and other corrupt elements, including Eastern European and Russian criminal organizations.

McCallion reflects on his personal experience prosecuting Trump and his organizations, and the challenges of going up against a man he describes as a likely sociopath and a skilled pathological liar.

McCallion explains the approach that Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice will likely take in prosecuting Trump for the government documents he stored at Mar-a-Lago and the events of Jan. 6. Any such prosecution will require both overwhelming irrefutable evidence and a simple and direct story to tell a jury about Trump’s misdeeds. McCallion also says that contrary to some media reports, Trump can definitely still be prosecuted even if he announces he is running for president.

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Toward the end of this conversation, McCallion outlines a likely scenario for the final disposition of such a prosecution. He believes that Trump may be brought down by a litany of civil lawsuits that will cripple him financially, not by a high-profile criminal case in which the former president is “perp-walked” in handcuffs and then sent to prison.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How are you feeling, given everything that’s happening? With your expertise and experience, how do you process all these events? What are you seeing?

The next book I’m working on is actually titled “Civil War II,” but the ending is yet to be written. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been shocked at the extent of what we are learning about the Espionage Act and the hiding of secret government documents by Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Why did he do that? I don’t know. But I do believe that kind of hubris, and that inability to really let go of the mantel of the presidency, may in the end be his undoing. Trump has certainly left himself open for being prosecuted for serious crimes related to espionage and various other things.

That kind of hubris, and that inability to really let go of the mantel of the presidency, may in the end be Donald Trump’s undoing.

There are encouraging signs. I was quite delighted that a friend and former mentor of mine, Raymond Dearie, who is a retired district judge from the Eastern District of New York, where I was in the U.S. attorney’s office, will most likely be the special master [reviewing the Mar-a-Lago documents]. I was worried that the Justice Department and the attorney general had dozed off and napped for several months, but it appears they are hard at work now.

The Jan. 6 committee really gave the Department of Justice a lot of impetus and momentum. There are also good indications that justice may actually be done with the New York attorney general’s [civil] case, and perhaps the Manhattan DA’s [criminal] case too.

Is there actually anything shocking about any of the things Trump and his allies have done? Donald Trump has been a public criminal for decades. Jan. 6 was in many ways a predictable event and was announced beforehand. My point of view is pretty simple. We know who Donald Trump is. There is a long pattern of his evil behavior. What is “shocking” about any of this? He is utterly predictable.

Those of us who know Donald Trump also understand that he is probably beyond reformation and may actually be psychopathic. However, I think it’s important to say that Donald Trump’s behavior and presidency, and what he continues to do, has been a shock to the democratic system. We cannot lose the capacity to be outraged at Trump’s behavior. We need to have that sense of outrage in order to protect the country’s democratic institutions, which are under attack right now.

Where are the consequences for Donald Trump and his apparent criminal acts and other wrongdoing?

I do believe that the Justice Department probably should have moved much faster with the Mar-a-Lago documents, given that we are entering an election season. However, we need to uphold the principle that no man is above the law no matter what time of year it may be, political happenings or not.

It’s never a convenient season for the rich and powerful to be held accountable. It’s almost a perfect storm at this point between the Department of Justice investigation, the New York attorney general’s investigation and various civil suits against Trump. The pot is boiling now in several different respects. One or more of these investigations will almost certainly lead to the undoing of the Trump Organization.

There is also significant personal liability for Donald Trump for the obstruction of justice and for a long list of crimes that are now being investigated. Attorney General Garland and the Justice Department really have to follow through this investigation to its logical conclusion. The evidence is overwhelming. Any honest prosecutor is not going to want to say, “I pulled my punches,” or, “I let Donald Trump go just because he’s the former president.”

You have a lot of experience with Donald Trump. You faced him and his organization as a prosecutor. When you saw his candidacy in 2016 and then saw him win the election, what were you most afraid of?

I worked with the organized crime section of the Justice Department when I went up against Donald Trump and his lawyer, Roy Cohn. We were primarily investigating labor racketeering, involving unions that were dominated by various organized crime families, including the Teamsters and others. In our investigation, we found that Donald Trump and some other developers used their connections with organized crime to get immunity from strikes by entering into corrupt contracts — promising “no-show” jobs, for example. These corrupt contracts gave Trump and others a competitive advantage.

It quickly occurred to us, and I think it’s apparent to all of us now, that Trump and his organization are just another organized crime family. They try to maintain the code of silence, but that hasn’t been entirely successful. There is a complete disregard for the law. In terms of fraudulent intent, even if they could have made money honestly, Trump and his people — like many organized crime-controlled companies — try to cut corners.

It quickly occurred to us [in the DOJ], and I think it’s apparent to all of us now, that Trump and his organization are just another organized crime family.

They take advantage of their connections with organized crime and their connections with corrupt foreign leaders, such as Putin. Russian organized crime always had a very close connection with the Trump organization. After Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City went under and the banks started pulling back their financing, Trump and his organization and his development projects have been financed through shady money from Eastern Europe and Russia, from the oligarchs.

They have been Trump’s lifeblood for his financing. His worldview has always been oriented towards the countries where oligarchs and dirty money are prevalent. Donald Trump was dead set on attempting to convert the United States into a replica, to some extent, of the antidemocratic, authoritarian, oligarchical systems we see in Hungary, Russia and various other parts of Eastern Europe.

Given your experience with Trump, what did the news media and the American public fail to understand about this man? Or perhaps, what were they afraid to acknowledge?

Many people naively thought that Trump, despite his outlandish behavior, was just being hyperbolic and not seriously intentioned. What they didn’t realize is that Trump bought into his own nonsensical worldview. Millions of adoring people worship Donald Trump — as he has said, he really could walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and his followers would still love him.

Did Trump really believe that the election was stolen from him in 2020? The frightening thing is that Trump has not only convinced many of his followers of that, he has probably convinced himself of that, which makes him the most dangerous kind of dictator or autocrat. He has lost all sense of any ability to pull back from the brink. Donald Trump is not restrained by any of the guardrails of our normal democratic processes. He and Steve Bannon and the rest of that inner circle have brought the United States to somewhere quite different than this country’s ever been before.

But in the end, I do believe that the pendulum will swing back, much as it did with, for example, Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s with his Red scare. I truly think the wheel will turn and we’re not going to go over the cliff.

Where does that hope and belief come from? Trump has escaped responsibility for decades.

Trump has lost all sense of any ability to pull back from the brink. He is not restrained by any of the guardrails of our normal democratic processes.

As bad as things are now, and as divided as the country is, there have been other times in our past where we have faced great difficulties. Yet somehow we survived the turmoil and the storms and got to a better place. I think it’s a constant struggle. We are in the midst of one of those fundamental struggles, with Trump and his movement and the assault on democracy and the rule of law.

As you said, Merrick Garland could have moved earlier. I’m one of the people who wondered what the hell he was waiting for: Lock him up! Help me understand what the law requires, versus what political expediency demands.

The Department of Justice has to be thorough here. When I was with the Department of Justice, as a young prosecutor, I’d be anxious to bring organized crime figures to trial. But like Trump, many heads of crime families delegate the dirty work to other people. So to nail Trump and hold him responsible beyond a reasonable doubt, you really don’t want to leave anything to chance. You need overwhelming evidence.

I think we’re really getting to the point where we have that critical mass, especially after the Mar-a-Lago search and the documents obtained there. That was a fumble by Trump on the five-yard line. He might well have gotten away with not facing a criminal indictment for all he had done before that, but he had the audacity and the hubris to take top secret government documents with him after leaving office.

People of ambition and of monumental ego, like Donald Trump, have blind spots. Trump is bringing himself down. What I really fear is that a smarter Trump-like figure, maybe like Ron DeSantis, could actually do a lot more damage than Donald Trump.

In my view, Trump is a criminal genius. When you go up against somebody like that in court, how do you prepare?

When I did my cases, it was much like building a brick house. You have to do it from the foundation up, but there’s always a moment when a prosecutor has butterflies in his stomach. When you have to cross-examine a Trump-like figure or the head of an organized crime family or someone of that type more generally, there is anxiety even when you have overwhelming evidence against them

Remember, these people are pathological liars. I’m sure that Donald Trump, if he was given a polygraph, would pass with flying colors. It’s a matter of experience, plus a natural sociopathic ability to lie.

Trump’s had a lot of experience with lying and the courts. He has some pretty good counsel, but I think over the next few months that most of the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago are going to be turned back over to the Justice Department. We’ll see the wheels of justice continue at that point. Letitia James, the attorney general in New York, will get a very solid result against the Trump Organization, as will the DA in Manhattan, Alvin Bragg. Those cases are not against Trump personally, but against his organization. His chief lieutenants will be brought down and face very substantial fines for their economic and financial sleight of hand.

What do you think the approach to prosecuting Trump will be? The evidence seems overwhelming, but nothing’s decided until you’re in court.

It has to be laid out very simply for the jurors. It’s basically two plus two equals four. You have Trump with these documents, some of them in a basement, but some of these top-secret documents were found by the FBI next to his passport in a private part of his desk. These documents were close to him every day. Trump certainly had knowledge and awareness of the documents; he knew they were top secret. He knew they had been taken from the White House. I think that you would just put it to a jury that you don’t leave your common sense and good reason at the door when you are sworn in as a juror.

It’s basically two plus two equals four. … Trump certainly had knowledge and awareness of the documents; he knew they were top secret. He knew they had been taken from the White House.

We spend our entire lives evaluating people, separating truths from falsehoods and connecting the dots. It’s much the same way that organized crime figures were brought down. Al Capone, for example, was put in prison not for the many murders he committed, but for tax fraud. With Trump, it will be the same thing. It’s a very simple story you can tell. With top secret documents, the story tells itself.

What do you think Trump was doing with the top secret and other highly classified documents?

Actually, on this point, I give Trump somewhat the benefit of the doubt. I think his ego would not let him leave all the trappings of power back in the White House. In his mind, he had to take something. Now, did he foreclose the issue of selling the documents for money if necessary, or using them for political purposes? Those avenues were available to him as well, but I doubt Trump had a clear-cut plan. He knew they were top secret documents and he took them. It is not a requirement that the prosecution establish his intent, other than an intent and a willfulness to keep top secret documents out of the government archives and in his own personal possession. Mar-a-Lago is a place that is crawling with potential spies, Chinese and otherwise.

Donald Trump engaged in a flagrant violation of his national duty. That willfulness and intent and recklessness is, I believe, sufficient for a criminal conviction.

So how do you approach finding a jury where you won’t have one person who is going to nullify in Trump’s favor. That’s the practical problem. Is it possible to find an honest jury that is not tainted by Trumpists?

In jury selection, I always tell a client: You’re never going to get the jury that you want, but you want a jury that’s going to call the balls and strikes the way they really are. You don’t want jurors who are dead set against you and supporting the opposition. Through your jury challenges, you can just weed out those people as best you can. You have to keep in mind that a lot of people underestimate jurors. For example, in the Paul Manafort trial some of those jurors were actually predisposed to be favorable to Donald Trump’s worldview. Yet they found that Paul Manafort had violated the law on several counts and should be held liable under the criminal laws.

The jury system is a risky one. It’s somewhat of a mystery, even to me, with all my decades of experience. But by and large, the guilty are convicted and the innocent can go free in our system, with some notable exceptions of course. Some jurors are reached by external forces, organized crime, political or otherwise. But by and large, I think the system is more or less equitable. It will be a great day for the justice system when Trump and some of his chief lieutenants are held accountable.

How do you explain to the average person what a RICO case is? How would you approach that type of prosecution in the case of Trump?

The racketeering laws are extremely flexible. It is much like describing an organized crime family that has a certain structure. The person at the top is calling the shots and the other members may not know what each of the others are doing. However, they subscribe to and agree with the overarching principles and goals of the organized crime family. In this case, that is to keep Donald Trump and his minions in power, to hold onto the White House through means fair and foul — primarily foul. Trump and his minions reject the basic norms of democracy.

They’ve used mail and wire fraud and engaged in various other violations of federal and state law over an extended period of time as well. That is really the informal definition of a racketeering conspiracy. Trump and his minions have engaged in that behavior.

But I think that Garland and the Justice Department may well steer clear of an extremely complex RICO-type case and just go with some very pointed, targeted violations. These violations are clear: espionage and various other laws. There are the facts and evidence to support racketeering and conspiracy charges. But the problem is that the more you complexify a case, the more likely it is to run on for weeks. Jurors are human beings; you can start losing some of them.

In my opinion, the Garland Justice Department learned a lot from the Jan. 6 committee hearings. It’s probably going to follow that more simplified, direct, powerful route in bringing its prosecutions.

What can the Department of Justice prove conclusively about Donald Trump in order to hold him criminally accountable? It is easy to list all of Trump’s acts of perfidy, immortality and wrongdoing, but that may not be enough to prosecute and convict him. It may all be wrong, but is it clearly illegal?

I think the Justice Department is going to focus on two scenarios. One will be the events leading up to Jan. 6. The coordinating and fundraising, the attack on the Capitol, the attempted election subversion and related happenings. The Justice Department has built a pretty strong case that Trump was the lead instigator of that demonstration and the assault on Congress. The other focus will be on the Espionage Act and related charges regarding the documents at Mar-a-Lago.

What does the Department of Justice do if and when Trump announces that he is running for president? Do they have to hold off for another four years if he wins?

It is conceivable that Donald Trump might do some time. But I would not put the odds on him being handcuffed and perp-walked, with the press photographing him.

If the Department of Justice gets an indictment, it should happen sometime later this year. They wouldn’t do it in the window from now to November, the political season, but maybe the end of this year or early next year. One of the things people don’t realize, and maybe Trump doesn’t realize, is that once he declares for the presidency he will not have the Republican National Committee and other groups paying for his legal defense at that particular point. Trump is an extremely cheap individual who will have to pay out of pocket for millions of dollars in legal fees.

The Justice Department will not stop or pause, except for the political season in the midterms. They will not stand down just because Trump is a presidential candidate. Whether he is a presidential candidate or not, Trump and his supporters are still going to say it’s a political prosecution.

The best defense for Trump is to attack the prosecutors. The prosecutors have to take a few punches and be vilified in the press, as they were after the Mar-a-Lago search. Although he waited too long, Merrick Garland did hold a press conference, as well he should have. The Justice Department is not a punching bag. It’s entitled to protect itself and its reputation.

Many observers are claiming that if Trump announces his candidacy, the Department of Justice will not proceed with prosecuting him because of some type of informal rule or guideline. Garland and the DOJ will pause everything at that point, and perhaps drop it entirely, because to prosecute a presidential candidate would look too “political.”

Absolutely not. If they did such a thing, they would be violating their oaths and professional ethics. The rest of the country would be wondering why there’s one set of laws for us and another set of law for Trump and his kind.

What happens if Donald Trump is prosecuted and not convicted? What are the next steps, as a legal matter?

I can see the O.J. Simpson scenario playing out here. O.J. beat the criminal rap, but he was done in by the civil cases. Although there’s a focus on the Department of Justice investigation, there are a host of civil cases out there against Trump. Trump will be involved in litigation for years, whether or not he beats a criminal rap.

Many people with public platforms keep proclaiming that Donald Trump is going to jail. That it’s inevitable and we are eventually going to see Trump do a perp walk. Is he going to jail, in any version of this universe? What are the real range of practical or realistic consequences for him?

If I were a betting man, I would not put the odds on Donald Trump being handcuffed and perp-walked with the press photographing him on the way to a jail cell. The Justice Department has to pursue the investigation to an indictment and then prosecute it. As you know, not every case reaches trial. There is always the possibility of plea deals. Yes, it is conceivable that Donald Trump might do some time. But it’s more likely that there would be some sort of plea deal to some of these offenses, in order for Trump to avoid a jail sentence. Trump would have to allow himself to actually admit guilt for some of these crimes.

In the real world, yes, some of the guilty do escape justice. But with the focus on Trump and the evidence that’s available, I believe there will be a day of reckoning. Exactly what the consequences are after that is anybody’s guess.

Here is my best-case scenario. Donald Trump takes a plea offer. There are some fines and he agrees to not run for public office again. But he then continues to be a public menace, agitating for right-wing terrorism, threatening democracy, repeating Jan. 6 and inciting other unrest. But what message is sent if the Department of Justice makes a deal with him? If Trump is not convicted and put in jail, what does that mean for the future of the country?

Keeping Trump from the White House again is a real benefit to the country. He’d have to agree to that in any plea deal. Trump would have to explicitly promise not to run for public office again. Will he continue to agitate and attempt to grab press headlines? Of course, but the Republican Party and his followers, at some point, have to move on. Donald Trump has had his moment. In the end, the country will get past Donald Trump.

about the endless Trump drama

“Inhumane and illegal”: Migrants confirm they were misled on Martha’s Vineyard flight

As Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas continued over the weekend to defend their plot to put refugees and migrants from Latin America on planes and buses to northern cities and communities, critics of the “cruel” and “immoral” actions have said the two should face investigation and ultimately criminal prosecution for misleading and mistreating the people at the center of their political gamesmanship.

Ron DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt is straight out of Stormfront and “border militia” rhetoric

Amid confirmed reports that many of the migrants sent to Martha’s Vineyard last week by DeSantis had been misled by officials in Florida about the nature of their trip, immigration rights legal aides have said they intend to push for legal action to stop such abuses. As the New York Times reports:

The lawyers said they would seek an injunction in federal court early next week to stop the flights of migrants to cities around the country, alleging that the Republican governor had violated due process and the civil rights of the migrants flown from Texas to the small island off the coast of Massachusetts.

“They were told, ‘You have a hearing in San Antonio, but don’t worry, we’ll take you to Boston'” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director for Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) Boston. He said dozens of the migrants had told his team they only had been informed midair that they were going to land in tony Martha’s Vineyard rather than Boston.

Representing more than 30 of those people brought to Martha’s Vineyard with free legal assistance, LCR said in a statement Saturday that it has “called upon U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to formally open criminal investigations into the political stunt that brought two planeloads of immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard earlier this week.”

Detailing “how its clients were induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretenses,” the legal aid group said that only after the planes landed did the immigrants “learn that the offers of assistance had all been a ruse to exploit them for political purposes.”

“Particularly given the deliberate, intentional, and concerted nature of the interference by State actors into federal immigration enforcement,” LCR said “a strong and coordinated federal response is required.”

On Saturday, a second bus from Texas loaded with migrants arrived at Vice President Kamala’s Harris’ residence in Washington. According to the Texas Tribune:

The bus arrived before daylight outside the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.; a video shared by an NBC News journalist showed migrants wearing masks and carrying pillows walking off the bus and into a city that has declared a public health emergency due to the influx of migrants. A spokesperson for Abbott confirmed that the bus came from Texas.

On Friday, Abbott’s office said it had sent 8,000 migrants to the nation’s capital since announcing his busing policy in the spring. The state has also sent 2,500 migrants to New York City and 600 to Chicago. Abbott began targeting the vice president’s residency this week after she appeared on Meet the Press and said the border was secure, stoking conservative anger.

In an interview with VICE on Friday, Harris said the behavior of Abbott and DeSantis was a “dereliction of duty” as elected public servants.

“They’re playing games,” she said. “These are political stunts with real human beings who are fleeing harm.”

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While some legal experts contend that Abbott and DeSantis have acted within their authority when shipping refugees and vulnerable immigrants across the country to score political points, demands for prosecution or at least a criminal probe by the Department of Justice have come from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and others.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) slams DeSantis sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard: "What Ron DeSantis is doing is a disgrace. It's almost monstrous… It's disgraceful. He's a disgrace." pic.twitter.com/myfvY3T2g9

— Forbes (@Forbes) September 16, 2022

Writing in Jacobin magazine, former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign manager Jeff Weaver argued that DeSantis should be prosecuted for his unlawful conduct and that the American people — especially given the Florida Republican’s presidential ambitions — should recognize just how abhorrent this behavior is.

“Like Donald Trump’s family separation policy, this issue runs much deeper” than any particular position a lawmaker or politician has on immigration policy, Weaver wrote. “It’s about inhumane and illegal conduct toward vulnerable people that is an affront to the values of every decent human being.” He continued:

Progressives owe the country — which endured four years of lawlessness under Trump — to tell the truth about Ron DeSantis — an aspirant to the highest office in the land. He has demonstrated that, like Trump, he is willing to break the law to achieve political power.

What DeSantis did is not a political “stunt.” It’s a clear warning that, as president, he, like his Republican predecessor, would view the rule of law as a principle that is expendable when political expediency calls. And it’s a crime. He should be prosecuted for it.

In an opinion column that appeared at Common Dreams on Saturday, progressive radio host and author Thom Hartmann said the behavior of Abbott and DeSantis harkens back to previous racist episodes in the nation’s past and that the two Republican governors “should be looking at jail time or serious civil fines for engaging in this heartless, racist sport.”

about Ron DeSantis