The GOP turns against the League of Women Voters

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For decades, the League of Women Voters played a vital but largely practical role in American politics: tending to the information needs of voters by hosting debates and conducting candidate surveys. While it wouldn’t endorse specific politicians, it quietly supported progressive causes.

The group was known for clipboards, not confrontation; for being respected, not reviled.

But those quiet days are now over, a casualty of the volatile political climate of the last few years and the league’s goal of being relevant to a new generation.

In 2018, the league’s CEO was arrested, along with hundreds of other protesters, for crowding a Senate office building to demand lawmakers reject Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative accused of sexual harassment.

Two years later, the league dissolved its chapter in Nevada after the state president penned an op-ed in July 2020 accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy for opposing gerrymandering in red states while “harassing” the league in Nevada over its activism on the issue.

And two days after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the league’s board of directors called then-President Donald Trump a “tyrannical despot” and blamed him for inciting the violence and for threatening democracy. The league demanded his removal from office “via any legal means.”

As a result, the league is calling attention to itself and drawing criticism in ways that are extraordinary for the once-staid group. Republicans are increasingly pushing back hard against the league, casting it as a collection of angry leftists rather than friendly do-gooders.

And with more right-leaning candidates snubbing the league, voters are less likely to hear directly from those candidates in unscripted and unfiltered forums where their views can receive greater visibility and scrutiny. That pushback sidelines the league at a time when misinformation has become a significant force in elections at every level.

“The League of Women Voters, while that sounds like a nice organization, they don’t do a lot of nice work,” Catalina Lauf, a Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois, said in a video posted in May on Instagram, explaining her reasoning for refusing to participate in a league-sponsored debate.

The league, she claimed, “peddles Marxist ideology” and is “anti-American.” In an interview with ProPublica, Lauf cited the league’s support for the rights of transgender student athletes as one reason she is suspicous of the group. She also claimed the league has endorsed the defunding of police departments, though that is inaccurate. The league has, however, taken stands in favor of sweeping police reforms that would address brutality and racial profiling.

“They need to switch their brand fast,” Lauf said. “Because their hyperpartisanship is turning off a lot of women who just want common sense.”

Conservative candidates for school board and county supervisor in Wisconsin have fired similar broadsides when declining to participate in league debates. And in Pennsylvania this year, only 30% of Republican candidates completed the league’s VOTE411.org informational guide for the primaries, compared with 70% of Democrats, according to the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. The guide gives voters the candidates’ unedited answers to questions about their qualifications, priorities and stances on certain issues.

Elsewhere, Republican-led policies make it harder for groups like the league to add people to the voting rolls. In Kansas, because of a change in law, the league no longer registers voters — a task that has long been central to its mission.

Under its bylaws, the league does not endorse candidates. And by policy, board members can’t run for or hold any partisan elected office. Nor can they chair a political campaign, or fundraise or actively work for any candidate for a partisan office.

Just as its founders were crusaders, however, the league itself is outspoken on a multitude of issues, including supporting universal health care, abortion rights, affordable child care and clean water. The league has pushed for gun control measures since 1990. And it has been a strong voice nationally for campaign finance reform. In some communities, the league has even weighed in on zoning decisions.

Its viewpoints have long branded the league as a progressive organization. “They’re very fine, but they tend to be a little bit liberal,” the late Sen. Bob Dole, a Republican from Kansas, said of the league during a televised 1976 vice presidential debate in Houston.

Those liberal leanings have been harder to ignore in recent years, forcing the league to defend itself against claims of partisanship.

After its CEO was arrested at the Kavanaugh protest in 2018, the league admitted in a statement that openly opposing a Supreme Court nominee was “an extraordinary step for the League,” but said it believed the action was warranted.

“This situation is too important to sit silently while the independence of our judiciary is threatened.” CEO Virginia Kase Solomón closed her legal case by paying a $50 fine.

The league’s chief communications officer, Sarah Courtney, told ProPublica in a written statement: “Organizations always need to change with the times and current events in order to stay relevant.”

She noted: “The League has been a force in American democracy for more than a century, and we expect to be around in another hundred years. We haven’t gotten this far by doing things the same way we did them in 1920.”

UCLA professor Richard L. Hasen, an election law expert, said that while it’s clear that the league has been more aggressive in taking on controversial issues, it’s the group’s core mission that puts it at odds with some politicians. Supporting voting rights, he said, can be seen as an attack on the Republican Party, which has pushed for laws that make it more difficult to register and to vote. (Republicans say they are doing so to protect the integrity of elections, though there is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud.)

“It’s hard to be seen as neutral when you have the political parties dividing over questions like voting rights,” said Hasen, who directs the law school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, which is aimed at researching election integrity.

To Hasen, the league’s evolution is notable. “Generally, there’s kind of a caricature of the league as kind of a group of old women coming together for tea,” he said. “Whereas, I think the league has become much more of a powerhouse in terms of advocating for strong voting rights.”

“Dare to Fight”

It took women more than 70 years of agitating, organizing and marching to convince men to give them the right to vote in 1920. Once the 19th Amendment was ratified, these activist women were wary of the political parties, which wanted their votes but not necessarily their input.

“Women in the parties must be more independent than men,” the league’s founder, suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, wrote, according to papers kept by the Library of Congress. “They must dare to fight for what they believe is right.”

Catt worried that some women would come to believe that all virtue or all wisdom was held by the party, paralyzing their judgment.

The league, which was formed the same year women nationwide were finally granted the right to vote, dedicated itself not to political parties, or the men running them, but to specific causes. One cause helped forge its identity: educating league members and other voters at election time.

Its first political agenda was long, numbering 69 items, and was called a “kettle of eels” by the league’s own president. Many of those items, such as child welfare and access to quality education, have remained league priorities for decades — as has its commitment to voter education. In 2018 and 2020, the league and ProPublica worked together to produce a guide sharing basic, nonpartisan information to help citizens choose among candidates and obtain ballots.

For nearly a century, the league itself seemed to change little, but by 2018 it found itself at a crossroads.

Leadership hired consultants and began to look for ways to reach disillusioned voters, combat misinformation in elections and effectively respond to society’s escalating racial issues, including the disenfranchisement of people of color.

“Although it remains a trusted household name, many stakeholders cannot describe clearly the purpose of the organization and are unclear about its relevance,” a league consultant wrote in a 2018 report. “The membership is much older and whiter than the population at large, and League membership has steadily declined by almost a third over the past few decades.”

Membership plunged from 72,657 in 1994 to 53,284 in 2017, according to the report. (It has since climbed back up to over 70,000, the league said.)

The organization also faced greater competition. Dozens of new nonprofits had emerged to protect voting rights, including Indivisible, NextGen America, Color of Change and Hip Hop Caucus.

According to the consultant’s report, league members long knew that its homogenous membership limited its effectiveness and its appeal to a broader audience. So, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, the league issued a formal mea culpa.

In an August 2018 blog post, the league’s president and its CEO admitted that “our organization was not welcoming to women of color through most of our existence” and vowed to build “a stronger, more inclusive democracy.” Many of the early suffragists were also abolitionists, but after the Civil War, they were divided over whether to support the 15th Amendment, which at the time gave Black men, but not women, the right to vote. The fissure persisted for decades and had lasting consequences for the league.

“Even during the Civil Rights movement, the League was not as present as we should have been,” the post said. “While activists risked life and limb to register black voters in the South, the League’s work and our leaders were late in joining to help protect all voters at the polls.”

In recent years, the league has been more visible in advocating for racial equity and fairness. It particularly focused on reducing barriers to voting in marginalized communities. The league has fought, for instance, against reductions in the number of polling places or voting hours in minority communities.

After a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd by kneeling on the Black man’s neck in May 2020, the league announced the next month that it would strongly push for reforms in the justice system, including changes aimed at preventing excessive force and brutality by law enforcement.

“The League of Women Voters of Minneapolis is not your grandmother’s League,” Anita Newhouse, the city chapter’s league president at the time, wrote in the MinnPost, a nonprofit news outlet, in August 2020. “We are still the nonpartisan education and advocacy group committed to empowering voters, but with a commitment to identifying racism and dismantling policies that suppress non-white votes.”

Advocates, Progressives or Democrats?

Even within the league, not everyone feels the group applies its principles evenly.

For five years, Sondra Cosgrove, a College of Southern Nevada history professor specializing in multicultural issues, ran the league in Nevada as it took on issues such as gerrymandering.

But she’s no longer part of the organization, and she wonders whether that’s because she was not always clearly in the Democrats’ corner.

In 2019, the league launched a 50-state Fair Maps strategy to combat racial and political gerrymandering. As league president in Nevada, Cosgrove began pushing for a ballot initiative that would create an independent commission to draw legislative district boundaries. The move would have taken power away from the Democrats, who controlled the statehouse and the governor’s office.

Cosgrove soon found the league’s ballot initiative challenged unsuccessfully in court by a Black activist and, later, by the Democratic governor, who did not allow petition signatures to be collected electronically during the pandemic.

About a week after her July 2020 op-ed accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy and “harassing” the league in Nevada, officials from the national league office emailed Cosgrove, instructing her to “stop making public statements online and in the media accusing the Democratic party of attacking the League of Women Voters.” The officials clarified that their position would be no different if Cosgrove was criticizing Republicans.

Cosgrove, however, said she told the league’s national office she wouldn’t seek its input on public statements. The league dissolved the state chapter not long afterward, in December 2020. Cosgrove and others quit the national organization and now are with another voting group.

“There was always the feeling the league was run by the Democrats,” said former Nevada league Treasurer Ann Marie Smith. “We tried to fight that to a large degree, but in my opinion the national league has gone down that road much further than they should have.”

Executives in the league’s national organization told ProPublica that the decision to shut down the state chapter was not an easy one and was made “after multiple attempts to resolve policy violations” that went beyond just the clash with the governor.

“Ultimately, the board had no choice but to disband the Nevada league to protect the entire organization,” Courtney, the league spokesperson, said. “Our northern Nevada local league has remained active with a dedicated group of members who are committed to rebuilding the league’s presence in the state.”

The league does sometimes call out Democrats.

In late July of this year, the league released an update on its Fair Maps initiative, saying it had organized public hearings in 24 states, used apps and software to test draw fairer maps in 38 states, and joined 11 state lawsuits and six federal cases challenging maps in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin. Two of those states feature Democrats in control of the state legislative chambers and the governor’s office. Five of them have Republican control. In the rest, control is split.

But, going forward, the league may find it more difficult to do the work it’s always done.

The league chapter in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, for instance, has faced what one member there called sustained opposition in recent years.

Complaints from a parent, who is also a Republican on the borough council, derailed the league’s annual Running and Winning high school program in 2019, which was to feature female speakers from both parties as a way to encourage young women to pursue careers in politics. The parent argued that the league had a political agenda and was excluding high school boys and male politicians.

Ultimately, the school district canceled the event.

Political tensions only got worse in the months that followed. When the newly created Laker Republican Club emailed an unsolicited mass membership appeal throughout the community, a league board member replied with an email questioning the morals, courage and patriotism of Trump and his supporters. The league defended her, saying she was speaking as a private citizen and she did not reference her role with the league.

Local Republicans running for borough council responded by refusing to participate in league debates in 2020. Former Mountain Lakes Mayor Blair Schleicher Wilson wrote in a local publication that she had been a member of the league for 25 years but now supported the candidates who shunned the league.

Wilson, a Republican, wrote that the local league chapter “has sadly lost their way.” In an interview with ProPublica, she added that she loved being involved with the league but believes it should stick only to voter advocacy. “I always thought their focus should be more on voter services,” she said. “That’s a perfect place for them.”

The chapter lost about 30 members because of the community tensions and is trying to rebuild, said former Mountain Lakes league President Mary Alosio-Joelsson, now the organization’s events leader.

She believes conservatives in Mountain Lakes have changed, not the league. “Many have moved so far to the right that anybody who is walking down the middle of the road looks like they’re on the left,” she said.

The shift in the country’s political climate also has far-reaching implications for what the league considers some of its most essential work. In Kansas, the organization halted registration work a year ago after a measure enacted by a Republican-led legislature made it a felony to engage “in conduct that would cause another person to believe a person … is an election official.”

The league worried its volunteers could be prosecuted if someone mistakenly believed them to be election officials while registering voters. Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez, a Democrat, agreed there were problems with the law and said she wouldn’t pursue cases of alleged violations.

“This law criminalizes essential efforts by trusted nonpartisan groups like the League of Women Voters to engage Kansans on participation in accessible, accountable and fair elections,” she said in a statement.

But Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican, quickly retorted that his office would, indeed, prosecute alleged violators.

The league asked the Kansas Court of Appeals for an injunction that would temporarily prevent the law from being enforced, but the group lost and is now requesting a review from the state Supreme Court.

Despite the setback, Jacqueline Lightcap, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas, said the league intends to continue to work to defend democracy and empower voters. But she said the mission has become harder. Even seeking dialogue with legislators on the ramifications of the registration law is difficult.

“We are not getting much traction,” she said.

Louie Gohmert leaves Congress having passed 1 law and spread countless falsehoods

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WASHINGTON — In 2010, U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert warned the nation from the floor of the House of Representatives about a looming threat: terrorist babies. He described — without providing evidence — a diabolical and far-fetched scheme in which foreign enemies were sending pregnant women to the U.S. to birth babies that would emerge decades later as terrorists.

He found out about it, he said, from a conversation with a retired FBI agent on a flight, even as the FBI said it had no information about any such plot.

He would go on to fight with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in an interview that went viral as he for nearly 10 minutes refused to answer questions or provide evidence of the claim, while yelling at Cooper for “attacking the messenger.”

It was a breakout moment for the Republican congressman from East Texas, who had been in office for about five years at the time and whose profile was growing as a member of the newly founded Tea Party. He was something of an outlier in Congress for the ease with which he was willing to make unfounded and offensive pronouncements. But it would prove to be a harbinger of what was yet to come.

This January, Gohmert, who turned 69 on Thursday, leaves office having defined his 17-year congressional career with conspiracy, conflict and fomenting anger.

Some of his most memorable controversies include the time he compared homosexuality to bestiality. Or when he said Hillary Clinton was “mentally impaired.” Or when he speculated that wearing a mask is what caused him to catch COVID-19. Or when he compared former President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. Or when he said the canceling of a television show for homophobic remarks by its hosts was on par with Nazism. Or when he said he was grieving over the arrests of rioters involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Gohmert was a precursor to former President Donald Trump’s brand of populist, establishment-bucking conservatism that delights in offending progressives and makes no apologies for spreading misinformation.

“He fostered angry, finger-pointing, conspiracy-theory-laden politics that now defines American politics,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “He was the original congressional antagonist.”

Now he’s leaving Congress because he opted to run for Texas attorney general instead of reelection for his seat — which he presumably would have won easily.

He entered the Republican primary for attorney general last November — months after the other candidates, including incumbent Ken Paxton — and raised by far the least amount of money. He came in last place.

He exits office as Texas’ ninth most senior member of Congress, having made a mark — but not legislatively. In nine congressional terms, he’s passed just one bill into law, a measure in 2017 that simplified the process for calling 911.

Gohmert will perhaps be better remembered for his penchant for going against the majority. He was the only member in the House to vote against a bill last month to suspend tariffs on baby formula imports during a national shortage. (He said the bill was rushed.) He single-handedly delayed for a day the passage of an emergency coronavirus relief package that funded free COVID-19 tests, two weeks of paid sick leave and a billion dollars in food aid. (He later withdrew his objection to allow the bill to pass with unanimous consent.) And he was one of four members to vote against making lynching a federal hate crime. (He said the bill’s maximum sentence was not harsh enough.)

His retirement will be less of the end of an era, and more of a changing of the guard — as the House is attracting a new, younger class of like-minded firebrands who similarly seek conflict over policymaking and who came into office during Trump’s presidency. In recent years, Gohmert’s found allies in the House Freedom Caucus including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Last year, they attempted to visit a Washington, D.C., jail where rioters from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are being imprisoned. Greene recently urged the GOP to become the party of Christian nationalism and has made comments supportive of QAnon, an unfounded conspiracy theory and far-right political movement that claims Trump is waging a secret war against Satanic pedophiles.

“He’s gone from something of an outlier that people chalked up to some combination of region and personality, to someone who is more representative of a big faction of a big share of Republican voters and even Republican elites,” said Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Gohmert repeatedly declined to be interviewed for this story and did not answer questions sent to his office via email.

Asked in a brief exchange on Capitol Hill last month about his time in Congress, he said: “I got a lot done, wish it would have been more, but I didn’t care who got the credit. Got a lot of things passed on, changed, amended, fixed behind the scenes.” He did not answer a question about what he considers his signature achievement.

In his deep-red congressional district, voters have rewarded Gohmert for his combative reputation. He’s never faced a serious electoral challenge, and in his bid for attorney general, he placed first in the 17 counties near his hometown, despite placing last statewide. His supporters say he’s never wavered in his principles — unlike other Republicans they say care too much about appeasing party leadership.

“He has always been true to who he is. He has been uncompromising … in his faith and his love for East Texas, for his community, for his country,” said David Stein, chair of the Smith County GOP.

The lackluster policymaker

Gohmert entered Congress in 2005, unseating a Democrat incumbent a year earlier. He was previously a U.S. Army captain and state district judge in Smith County. In 1996, Gohmert raised eyebrows in his role as a district judge when he ordered an auto thief who was HIV-positive to seek written consent from any future sexual partners. Former Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to be chief justice of Texas’ 12th Court of Appeals in 2002.

Bills on which Gohmert has been the lead sponsor have passed the House six times. Only one was ever signed into law. Of the 118 House members still in office who started before 2010, just 10 have passed fewer bills in the House than Gohmert — three Republicans and seven Democrats — according to a Texas Tribune analysis. None of those members were Texans. Six members have passed the same number of bills.

Unlike other longtime members of Congress from Texas — like Reps. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands; Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas; and Michael McCaul, R-Austin — Gohmert has never chaired a congressional committee. However, he once chaired a subcommittee that provided natural resources oversight.

“I’m not sure what he was able to accomplish, I really have no idea,” said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, who serves with Gohmert on the judiciary committee.

His supporters in Texas are unbothered by his lack of a policy record. Matt Long, president of the Fredericksburg Tea Party, which endorsed Gohmert for attorney general, acknowledged Gohmert’s ability to pass bills has been compromised because of his reputation for standing up to his own party leadership.

“If they don’t toe the line immediately with the establishment Republicans, then they don’t have a chance,” Long said.

Texas state Rep. Kyle Biedermann, R-Fredericksburg, also backed Gohmert for attorney general and said passing bills doesn’t make someone a successful politician.

“Effectiveness has nothing to do with bills,” Biedermann said. “Effectiveness is speaking out for the people, being the voice of the people.”

That has become a growing mantra of today’s Republican Party. More Republicans are focusing on fighting for their constituents and party loyalty, while villainizing efforts to negotiate across the aisle to pass laws.

“It’s been very alarming to see the Republican Party become more about performance,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said. “It is becoming more and more like Louie Gohmert and less and less serious about legislation and public policy and solving real solutions.”

The provocateur

Gohmert started making waves in 2009, when he and 11 other Republican members of Congress cosponsored the so-called “birther” bill that would have required presidential candidates to produce a copy of their birth certificate — pressing a false narrative that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be president. (Obama was born in Hawaii, and his father was born in Kenya.)

The birther saga was among the first of several instances in which Gohmert leaned into racist conspiracy theories and took on the role of an instigator. He co-led an effort in 2012 calling for the State Department to investigate the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Huma Abedin, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton.

After Obama’s 2015 State of the Union speech that addressed nationwide instances of police brutality, Gohmert condemned the president for dividing the country, adding that the president should be more like his former basketball coach, another Black man.

“But unlike my favorite coach in high school, who happened to be Black, he has been more divisive,” Gohmert told reporters.

Gohmert was also just as likely to agitate his own party leadership. In 2014, Gohmert brought up his famously tense relationship with then-House Speaker John Boehner while speaking to the Upshur County Republican Executive Committee.

“If there was one more Louie Gohmert, John Boehner would have a heart attack,” Gohmert said. Boehner was a staunch Republican but faced pressure from hardline conservatives who felt he wasn’t doing enough to stand up to Democrats.

In 2015, Gohmert would launch a quixotic bid to unseat Boehner as House speaker.

Later that year, when Boehner announced his resignation, Gohmert took a victory lap.

“So often, after being elected to Congress, members have the goal drilled into their head that there is nothing nobler than being a ‘team player,'” he said. “For an appropriate use of the sports metaphor, too often ‘being a team player’ has disguised the fact that a play has been called that has us running toward the wrong goal line.”

The feeling was mutual. In “American Carnage,” a book about the modern Republican Party, Boehner told author Tim Alberta, “Louie Gohmert is insane. There’s not a functional brain in there.”

Gaetz, the Florida congressman and Gohmert ally, commended Gohmert for bucking the party.

“He warned against bad decisions Republicans made that lost them majorities and he inspired some of our best moments,” Gaetz said in an interview.

The talker

In 2015, Boehner cut Gohmert from two congressional diplomacy trips — to the Middle East and Africa — in retaliation after Gohmert had challenged him for House speaker.

But Gohmert didn’t mind.

“Because he canceled my trip this weekend, I’m going to be on Fox News, so thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Gohmert taunted.

He would in fact go on to become a fixture on right-wing media networks. He’s a regular guest on Newsmax and One America News, networks that have served as a farther-right alternative to Fox News and have become more popular in recent years as Trump’s popularity ascended. He’s recently had segments focusing on what he considers the abhorrent treatment of Jan. 6 rioters, whom he has called political prisoners.

Brady, the representative from The Woodlands who is also retiring this year, said Gohmert’s legacy will be defined as “an outspoken conservative who was in the media trenches every day.”

“His strengths are in the messaging and the communication and in really the social media space there. I think that’s where he feels most comfortable,” Brady said.

He added that he thinks “social media has in some ways driven politics to the extremes,” which has overshadowed some of the more “substantive work and solutions that are so important to run the country.”

When Gohmert’s not appearing on a conservative news network, he can often be found doing what he calls “Gohmert Hour,” one-hour speeches on the House floor where he speaks in front of a near-empty chamber. A speech in June claimed there were no school shootings before prayer was eliminated in schools. Since entering Congress, he has spent 286 hours speaking on the House floor, according to C-SPAN data.

Rep. August Pfluger, R-San Angelo, said “I love listening to him. I love his passion.” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, called Gohmert “one of the best we have” and “one of the true characters of the House.”

It’s unknown if Gohmert’s successor will be a policymaker or bomb thrower. Nathaniel Moran won the Republican nomination earlier this year and is all but ensured to win the general election in the deep-red district.

Moran is a longtime fixture in Republican politics and is currently the Smith County Judge. He did not respond to multiple requests for an interview but has said that he wants to be a policymaker and “loves to be part of a team,” according to an interview with The Washington Post.

“They hold similar values, no question about it,” said Stein, the Smith County GOP chair who knows Gohmert and Moran personally. “To quote Judge Moran, he may go about it tactically in a different way. And that’s just a matter of preferential style. But he is a strong conservative.”

The insurrection

Since the 2020 election, Gohmert has joined the chorus of Trump acolytes who have spread the falsehood that the election was stolen. The claim has been repeatedly debunked by courts and election audits, and many of the former president’s own top aides have testified that the election was fair.

As he prepares to leave office, Gohmert’s role spreading that misinformation and how it may have contributed to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection is being scrutinized by congressional investigators.

During the hearings this summer held by the House committee investigating the attack, he was mentioned frequently for his rhetoric ahead of the riot and for taking part in a December 2020 meeting to discuss former Vice President Mike Pence’s role in overturning the election results.

A Republican staffer who worked for Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows said Gohmert was among a group of Republicans who asked Trump for a pardon after the insurrection. Gohmert has emphatically denied doing so.

Gohmert’s appearances in the hearings weren’t a surprise. Days before the insurrection, U.S. Capitol Police flagged comments from Gohmert as potentially inciting violence. In an interview on Newsmax, Gohmert said letting President Joe Biden’s electoral victory stand would be “the end of our republic, the end of the experiment in self-government.”

“You got to go to the streets and be as violent as Antifa and [Black Lives Matter],” said Gohmert five days before the Capitol attack. He later said he was not advocating for violence.

In December 2020, Gohmert led a lawsuit that attempted to give the vice president the power to unilaterally name the next president. A federal judge dismissed the suit for lack of standing.

Gohmert, who objected to the electoral results in Arizona and Pennsylvania, would later downplay the insurrection. He sponsored a bill to award congressional gold medals to Capitol Police officers but made no mention of the Jan. 6 attack. He later voted against a bill to honor the officers that made an explicit reference to the attack.

Gohmert said the bill “does not honor anyone, but rather seeks to drive a narrative that isn’t substantiated by known facts.”

Last month on Newsmax, Gohmert said it “grieves me to see the vendettas” against the Capitol rioters who have been imprisoned. He said he’d have no problem imprisoning some of the rioters, but that “most of them committed misdemeanors.” He tried to visit the imprisoned rioters last year at a Washington, D.C., jail but was not allowed a tour without receiving prior approval.

Gohmert leaves office less of an outlier than he once was, during a time when his ideas are becoming more pervasive in the mainstream of the party.

A Monmouth University poll in June found 61% of Republicans considered the Jan. 6 attack a “legitimate protest,” up from 47% a year earlier. Only 13% of Republicans considered the attack an “insurrection” and 45% called it a “riot.”

As of Tuesday, Trump-endorsed candidates for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate and statewide offices had won 42 out of 54 of their primaries this year, according to Axios.

“Until the American public says they’ve had enough of it, my suspicion is that you’re gonna have more people like Louie Gohmert,” said Sean Theriault, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has researched Congress.

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

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/louie-gohmert-texas-congress/.

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The Liz Cheney effect: Brian Kemp gets cold feet over testifying against Trump

Tuesday night, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming lost the Republican primary by 37 points to Harriet Hageman. Cheney has drawn relentless fire from Donald Trump for being one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Hageman, on the other hand, ran on a platform of advocating Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and denouncing efforts to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Late Tuesday, Trump gloated about Cheney’s loss, posting that “Cheney should be ashamed of herself” for standing up against Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The very next day, Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, filed a 121-page motion asking a judge to reject a subpoena to testify in a case investigating Trump’s efforts to steal the state’s electoral votes from President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

On the surface, these two events may seem unrelated. The timing, however, is likely not a coincidence.

Kemp has gained an undeserved reputation as a “moderate” since Trump’s failed coup efforts in 2020, largely because he refused to void out Biden’s win in Georgia in 2020 and declare Trump the winner instead. But Kemp’s resistance to Trump’s anti-democracy efforts has been reluctant, at best. Cheney’s primary defeat was expected, but there can be no doubt that the size of it sent a chilling message to the rest of the party: Stand by Trump or else. With his refusal to testify against Trump, it seems Kemp got the message loud and clear.

Donald Trump gets his revenge on Liz Cheney — but it may be short-lived

The Georgia case is being conducted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is looking into Trump’s extensive efforts to steal the election in Georgia. Kemp was subjected to quite a bit of pressure from Trump during this time. In early December 2020, the Washington Post reported that Trump personally called Kemp to demand that the governor “call a special session of the state legislature for lawmakers to override the results and appoint electors who would back the president at the electoral college.” Kemp refused.

Cheney’s primary defeat was expected, but there can be no doubt that the size of it sent a chilling message to the rest of the party: Stand by Trump or else. With his refusal to testify against Trump, it seems Kemp got the message loud and clear.

In the months since, Kemp has been subjected to a lot of hagiography in the political press over this, casting him as a staunch defender of democracy. The likelier story, however, is that Kemp simply didn’t think he had the power to do Trump’s bidding. His concerns about the legal consequences have been subsequently validated by the existence of Willis’ grand jury investigation. Throughout the entire attempted coup, Kemp’s communications strategy was to portray himself as reluctant and hamstrung, not actually resistant to Trump.

As I told the President this morning, I’ve publicly called for a signature audit three times (11/20, 11/24, 12/3) to restore confidence in our election process and to ensure that only legal votes are counted in Georgia. #gapol https://t.co/xdXrhf1vI2

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) December 5, 2020

His official statement when he did certify the election results is emblematic of this: It focused almost entirely on the repeated efforts to “audit” the election, announced yet another slate of efforts to make it harder to vote, and validated Trump’s lies with language about the supposed “discrepancies” in the election. Only in the final paragraph did he say, “I have the solemn responsibility to follow the law” to explain why he certified the election.

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Despite Kemp’s efforts to portray his stance as “I would if I could,” he’s been subjected to months of public bullying from Trump. While Kemp, unlike Cheney, beat back his Trump-endorsed primary challenger, it appears he still has concerns that attracting more Trump abuse ahead of the November election could drive down voter turnout and make it easier for Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams to win. Kemp’s court documents heavily focus on his election fears if he actually answers the grand jury’s subpoena. The filing accuses the district attorney of engineering “the Governor’s interaction with the investigation to reach crescendo in the middle of an election cycle” and arguing that the testimony could be put off until after the election. Kemp’s team is so worried that this subpoena could impact his re-election, in fact, he openly accuses Willis of “election interference.”

Kemp is smart to worry. Republican leadership believes, with good reason, that the surprise victories of Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia on January 5, 2021 were due in large part to Trump’s Big Lie. That election happened while Trump was all over the news, falsely declaring that elections were “rigged,” which Republicans feared would drive down turnout among their own voters, who might actually believe Trump’s lies. A similar situation could happen to Kemp. If he testifies against Trump, it’s near-certain that Trump will explode with public vitriol, causing some Republican voters to stay at home rather than vote for someone Trump deems a traitor.

Trump is giving the FBI the January 6 treatment

Willis has not pulled her punches in reaction to Kemp’s stonewalling, writing, “You repeatedly referring to it as a politically motivated investigation does not make it so. In fact, you repeating it so many times only proves you have become very comfortable being dishonest.” She reminded him that the testimony he gives would not be public.

She added that the investigation “will not be derailed by anyone’s antics.”

Kemp’s team has been cooperative in the past, turning over 138,000 pages of information, most of it voluntarily. Indeed, he had been scheduled for a voluntary interview in July, before he pulled out. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had testified publicly before the House committee investigating January 6 just weeks prior. While Raffensperger seems to have escaped the political black hole that is Trump’s rage, the same cannot be said of Republican Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who also testified against Trump that day. Bowers then lost his primary at the beginning of August.

Trump’s public gloating over Cheney’s primary loss isn’t just a reaction from a man who is famous for his emotional incontinence. It’s a signal to anyone else in the Republican party who is facing down a choice between defending democracy or standing by Trump: If you do the former, he will do everything in his power to destroy you. Kemp, as one of the main targets of Trump’s ire in the past year and a half, no doubt knows Trump’s love of making threats. Few in the GOP want Cheney’s fate, and Trump is using that to control them.

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Trump-backed Republican launches false attack on Fox News — but Liz Cheney fires back with receipts

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., is pushing back against Trump-backed Harriet Hageman who claimed the Republican incumbent did not fully concede after losing the Wyoming primary.

Hageman appeared on Fox News where she shared details about her conversation with Cheney, reports Politico. According to Hageman, Cheney “left a very brief two-second message on my cell phone” Tuesday night after the election results were in and insisted that she did not address “any kind of concession or anything else.”

However, the Republican lawmaker released an audio clip of the same conversation, refuting Hageman’s claims. The audio Cheney’s campaign submitted to Politico appears to confirm that she did concede at 8:13 p.m. on Tuesday, August 16.

In fact, the Wyoming lawmaker made it a point to include the date and time of her concession during the call. “Hi, Harriet, it is Liz Cheney calling,” Cheney could be heard saying in the audio clip. “It is about 8:13 on Tuesday the 16th, I’m calling to concede the election and congratulate you on the win. Thanks.”

Cheney’s audio contradicts the claim Hageman made during her appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity.

“I haven’t had any other contact with Liz Cheney. She made the one effort and all she said was ‘Hello, Harriet.’ And then that was the end of it,” Hageman said. When Hannity attempted to gain clarity on Cheney having called to just say “Hello, Harriet’ and then hung up,” Hageman doubled down saying, “That was the end of the call, yes.”

After the report was released about Cheney’s recording, a spokesperson from Hageman’s campaign team also released a response.

Per Politico: “A Hageman spokesperson provided a video to bolster the GOP nominee’s depiction of events. It shows a phone ostensibly belonging to Hageman playing a message identified as coming from Cheney’s number. The message as played on-screen contains only Cheney’s two-word greeting before sound cuts off for more than 10 more seconds.”

However, Cheney also had a response to that. Speaking to Politico on Wednesday, August 17, “Cheney said she had tried to call Hageman three times, but ultimately left a voicemail before she took the stage at her election night party. Cheney added that she never heard back from Hageman.”

Trump unleashes late-night Truth Social tirade as Georgia DA closes in

Former President Donald Trump is posting vintage rants attacking investigators on his Truth Social platform.

In a late-night tirade, the former president lashed out against the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office just hours after Rudy Giuliani testified before a special grand jury that’s probing the Trump campaign’s efforts to illegally remain in power despite losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

“So, let me get this straight!” Trump’s rant began. “In the Great State of Georgia, if you want to challenge or protest Election results in any way, shape, or form (despite the fact that in Atlanta, murders and crime are the highest in the Nation, with many people dying each month – at numbers never seen before), they will charge you and put you in jail. But if you kill people, you will quickly be set free to murder again. Isn’t there something ‘slightly’ wrong with this scenario? A PERFECT PHONE CALL!”

In fact, the grand jury is not proving Trump’s efforts to challenge the election results, but is rather investigating incidents such as his phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pushed for Raffensperger to “find” 12,000 votes and “recalculate” the final vote tally.

In a separate post, the former president attacked the Washington Post for reporting that he was having trouble finding top-notch legal representation, as he is currently relying in part on a lawyer who previously worked as general counsel for a parking garage company.

“The WAPO story that ‘Trump is scrambling to add seasoned lawyers’ to the Mar-a-Lago Raid case is, as usual, FAKE NEWS,” he wrote. “I already have excellent and experienced lawyers – am very happy with them. This is highly political prosecutorial misconduct, I have not been charged with anything and, most importantly, I did nothing wrong. Thank you!”

Alex Jones dumps Trump to back Ron DeSantis: “We have someone who is way better than Trump”

InfoWars host Alex Jones has publicly announced that he will no longer “pigheadedly” support former President Donald Trump. Instead, he is now throwing his support behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).

Jones made the announcement this week during an InfoWars broadcast as he recalled a number of the former president’s political initiatives he now claims to have disagreed with.

According to Business Insider, Jones “said he disagreed with Trump over Operation Warp Speed — the former president’s initiative launched in May 2020 to produce COVID-19 vaccines — but backed him anyway.”

The far-right host also insisted that he believed Trump should have remained in the White House to “prevent the ‘nightmare scenario’ of Joe Biden being elected president.”

He went on to declare his support for the Florida governor. “That said, I am supporting DeSantis. DeSantis has just gone from being awesome to being unbelievably good,” Jones said.

He also insisted he believes there is “‘real sincerity’ in DeSantis’ eyes” when viewing footage of the Republican governor.

“We have someone who is better than Trump. Way better than Trump,” Jones said, as he suggested that DeSantis is who Trump “should be like.”

Although Jones has been known as a fierce supporter of Trump, he was also one of the far-right individuals who pushed back against the former president’s efforts encouraging Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Jones remarks come just days after Fox News’ Laura Ingraham also suggested that it may be time to move on from Trump.

This week, Ingraham said that it appears Americans are “exhausted” by Trump’s ongoing legal woes and other challenges and that it may be “time to turn the page.”

“Why did the agency wait two days?”: Secret Service withheld Pelosi threat until after Jan. 6 riot

Amid heightened scrutiny of the U.S. Secret Service over missing text messages related to the January 6, 2021 attack, an independent watchdog revealed Wednesday that the agency waited until after the insurrection to notify Capitol Police of a threat against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That revelation comes from a batch of documents obtained by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

At roughly noon on the day of the attack, then-President Donald Trump began a speech in Washington, D.C. that included his “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Democrats, according to an NPR timeline published earlier this year.

About an hour later, Pelosi, D-Calif., kicked off a joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election results. Right-wing rioters breached the Capitol around 2:00 pm. Over the next half-hour, then-Vice President Mike Pence and Pelosi were ushered to more secure locations and the building went into lockdown.

The CREW documents reveal that the Secret Service—which came across the threat against Pelosi on January 4, 2021—didn’t send an email notifying Capitol Police of online threats against Pelosi until two days later, at 5:55 pm, around when police had started to clear rioters from the building.

CREW’s Jordan Libowitz and Sara Wiatrak highlighted in a blog post Wednesday that “while the Secret Service downplayed threats posed by right-wing extremist groups and Trump’s supporters leading up to January 6, the newly obtained documents reveal just how grave and explicit the threats had actually been.”

NEW DOCS: The Secret Service knew that Trump’s supporters would be demonstrating around Freedom Plaza and the Capitol with the intent to cause violence, but the agency does not appear to have taken the threat seriously. https://t.co/B92jrXlxDZ

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) August 17, 2022

In a separate blog post focusing specifically on the Pelosi discovery, Libowitz and Lauren White pointed out that “in the past month, we’ve learned that the Secret Service failed to prepare for violence on January 6 despite receiving explicit warnings, then deleted key evidence from the day, likely breaking the law.”

“The delay in notifying Capitol Police about the threat to the speaker of the House only adds to the impression that the agency failed to do its job, and leads to more questions,” they wrote. “Why did the agency wait two days, until after the Capitol had been breached and congressional leaders were in hiding, to pass it along?”

Sharing the second blog post in a tweet Wednesday, Joyce Vance, a University of Alabama law professor and MSNBC legal commentator, said that “this is deeply disturbing and requires a full investigation.”

This is deeply disturbing & requires a full investigation. The Capitol Police are responsible for protecting the Speaker. If true that USSS failed to pass on intelligence about threats, that's very alarming. https://t.co/3qis38jLQM

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) August 17, 2022

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, confirmed that the email was authentic. He noted that Pelosi, D-San Francisco, is not a protectee of the Secret Service, which oversees security for the president. The messages were sent to Capitol Police out of “an abundance of caution” even though they did not contain “a specific threat of violence to her on that evening,” he said.

The Secret Service flagged the account because it had posted a specific threat of harm to Biden. U.S. Capitol Police conduct their own surveillance of similar threats against members of Congress and were likely following the same information the Secret Service had, Guglielmi said.

The newspaper noted that “staffers in Pelosi’s office also did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.”

Donald Trump gets his revenge on Liz Cheney — but it may be short-lived

Liz Cheney is gone, at least from Congress. Her bid for re-election was thwarted in Wyoming by a Republican candidate whose lips are permanently sewn onto Donald Trump’s backside — making her part of an all-too-real human centipede.

But it remains to be seen whether striking down Cheney destroys her, or makes her more powerful than we can imagine.

That’s right: To some who swear the old Republican Party still exists, she is their Obi-Wan, struck down by the minions of Darth Trump.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has delivered again this week, but he’ll never get the credit for making the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs. Every time Biden does something of note, he’ll crow for an hour and then someone in the family comes down with COVID or someone on his communications team fumbles the ball, and we’re back to square one. Biden has had more victories in Congress than Trump, and has presided over a country in peril with the countenance of a stoic scholar and the intestinal fortitude of a grunt crawling up Normandy Beach on D-Day. Yet his poll numbers are still incredibly low.

Watching his administration stumble through the minefield of the incredibly obtuse media landscape is like watching “The Bad News Bears” on acid — and yet, because of the horrifying nature of Trump and his troglodyte zombies, there is hope for a New Republic.

Less than three months before the midterm elections, the Democrats have some renewed energy, even though most of the conversation is still about Donald Trump. This is entirely by Trump’s design. He craves attention and can’t get enough of it, good, bad or — in most cases — extremely ugly. For those who remain concerned about the threat he continues to represent to the ideals of our democracy, concern about this attention is understandable. We’d like him to go away.

No exit: After Mar-a-Lago raid, Trump is trapped — and his fear is palpable

But like the drunken uncle at a neighborhood barbecue who exposes himself and vomits on the grill after downing too many beers, Trump is better at making a mess than at disappearing.

When it comes to those at the barbecue who still believe Trump to be a savior, instead of a menace or a nuisance, you have to wonder if they’ll ever understand why hw is a mockery of the system and not the one preserving it.

For the Christians among us, you can point to the Ten Commandments and, with a variety of salient facts, produce a scorecard showing that Trump has broken those commandments more prolifically than any American politician of this century or the last one. That won’t be enough. It never has been. The Christians still love him — he’s doing their bidding. They’ll never budge.

Still, there has been some movement, and a growing number of people, including Fox News celebrity Laura Ingraham, say that America is “ready to turn the page on Trump,” believing the Don’s con is past its prime. At this point, those who don’t get it are mocked and ridiculed by those who do, even if some of us prefer a different approach.

I want to know why you don’t see. I want to know what it would take for you to believe differently. How is it that a rich man is able to more easily manipulate the criminal justice system than your average Midwest family farmer or inner-city homeless person — and why would you support that? I confess that I’m still curious about why exactly people feel so attracted to a living cancer.

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If we are truly a nation of laws, then the justice system has to work equally well for everyone. We all know it has not done so for a long time. But Donald Trump has put into stark relief the divide between those who wield power and those who have no power. He not only openly mocks the system and cheers his ability to avoid responsibility, but he has — in some circles — successfully deflected his sins and placed the blame on those who investigate and oppose him.

Trump isn’t upset because the Justice Department is going on a witch hunt. He’s upset because the Justice Department isn’t treating him with the deference he believes his social and economic position entitles him to. Viewed one way, Donald Trump is receiving true justice. Viewed another way (at least by some on the left), the continuing investigation is just the rich and powerful turning on their own, which is why some believe he will never be brought to justice: The rich and powerful simply won’t allow it.

But the truth is even more complicated. The investigation against Donald Trump is the ultimate test of the maxim that no one is above the law. It is why the investigation must continue, and will ultimately lead to the first state and/or federal indictment of a former president — at least according to former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

Trump’s attempt to parlay with Merrick Garland was nothing more than a veiled threat — from a man already known to be willing to turn to violence to achieve his ends.

He isn’t the only one who sees the writing on the wall. Trump can see it too, and cryptically tried to contact Attorney General Merrick Garland recently to negotiate a truce, claiming that he didn’t want something bad to happen to this country. If that’s truly the case, Trump should walk into Garland’s office and sign a confession concerning his many crimes against the state and its people.

But that will never happen. Trump’s attempt to parlay with Garland was nothing more than a veiled threat from a man already known to be willing to turn to violence to achieve his ends. After the FBI served a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property recently and found classified documents that Trump had previously claimed weren’t there, you can bet Don is steamed.

It didn’t stop him from using the raid to raise funds — so we also know that some part of the Donald loved the opportunity to bleed his supporters a little more. But what really worries Trump is the question: “Who snitched?” Who broke the Cosa Nostra oath of omertà?

Cohen and Mary Trump, the niece of his former boss, find themselves in agreement this week about who tipped off the federal government. Both have said publicly they believe it to be Jared Kushner.

But it isn’t who tipped off the government, no doubt in order to save their own skin, that really matters, though that is no doubt driving Trump crazier than Vecna of “Stranger Things” mainlining fear and regret. What is more important is why Trump had classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago, after having an attorney tell the DOJ in June that he had no such documents.

Knowing Trump’s previously documented propensity to use whatever he can to his advantage, one has to wonder if the documents he kept seemed to offer possible profit, possible leverage or both. We all know the way of Trump’s madness; if he thinks something can benefit him, then he will grasp it tightly and use it at his whim.

But Trump has no overriding big plan, and never did. It’s always been about survival by the seat of his pants, day after day, for a lifetime. His life is riddled with and dominated by fear; the fear of loneliness, while alone with his innermost demons and doing battle with a world he can’t stand and doesn’t understand. Hence his need to make everyone else fearful. He doesn’t want to be alone. His status and privilege have given him an immense ability to affect others, which he does to suit his needs. If these were the actions of a six-year-old, we would tolerate the behavior — while trying to correct it before the child grows up to be another Donald Trump.

Trump’s lack of parenting is, now unfortunately, a problem for all of us — proving once again that the privilege afforded the rich in this country is a bitter poison that we all end up having to swallow.

In Trump’s case, the spoiled-rotten little shit has grown up to not only break every commandment but to become a pestilence, the seven deadly sins sprung to life in one morbidly obese and moribund robber baron.

When you think of Trump, think of Jabba the Hutt, but without Jabba’s more endearing qualities.

George Conway likened Trump to a self-loathing and denying Cookie Monster this week, and he’s not far from wrong. The temptation to lampoon such moronic behavior is powerful and, more importantly, accurate.

But for those who still believe, the criticism falls on deaf ears. So again I ask them: What is it that draws you to Donald Trump? He constantly demonstrates anything but Christian actions. Still, many conservative Christians openly mock the First Commandment in worshiping him. He’s not poor, yet there are poor people who support him against their own self-interest. The same goes for some members of the LBGTQ+ community as well as women and minorities.

As more and more evidence falls into place, it becomes clearer than ever that Trump is a master of pride, greed, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth. He is a turgid garbage can of fear, always on the run — and most fearful of being caught and left alone out of the limelight. Mary Trump has said on several occasions that if Donald Trump were left in a room alone he would cease to exist. She’s not wrong either.

There will be no Trump “Civil War.” All we saw was half a dozen overfed protesters outside Mar-a-Lago: fans of mac & cheese, Ron DeSantis and the Confederate flag.

I’ve often said that the best fate for Trump would be to become a blip in the road, forgotten by history, his name excised from public consciousness. But that’s folly. Trump will gain a level of infamy due to his unique criminality that will, in some sense, give him the public recognition he so desperately craves. He will, unfortunately, be remembered by history, if perhaps in the same manner as Benedict Arnold (or more so), and that will ultimately be OK with Trump, because he so desperately needs to be remembered.

At the end of the day, whether he is praised or debased, he will be like Jack Sparrow: “You have heard of me.” Sparrow, however, was a fictional parody. Trump is bad parody, made real.

With Cheney’s ouster in Wyoming — losing her seat to a Trump acolyte by 37 points — the bad parody continues. For the moment, Donald Trump can cheer as he continues to grip the remnants of the Republican Party in his pudgy little fist, like a toddler who holds onto a chocolate bar until it melts. It’s messy, it’s sticky and ultimately it’s gone.

Donald Trump wished for Cheney’s downfall and actively plotted it, even though she sided with him in Congress more than 90% of the time. Trump needs to be careful what he wishes for, because Cheney, who is now eyeing a run for the presidency in 2024, could be more devastating as a GOP outsider than Trump can fathom.

Of course Trump continues to believe that he controls the Republican Party, and that those who don’t follow him can be threatened, browbeaten and, if necessary, physically beaten. By God, according to Trump, there will be “Civil War.”

Bullshit. There will be no Trump Civil War.

There will be sporadic outbreaks of violence. But if there was going to be a civil war, after the Mar-a-Lago search we would have seen protests and riots outside the White House and the Capitol. Instead, there were a half a dozen protesters outside Mar-a-Lago, most of them overfed locals who worship mac and cheese and Ron DeSantis and own at least one Confederate flag, perhaps tattooed in public or private places on their body.

That’s what’s left of the Trump legions: People who wear thongs and are mocked on social media when they go to Walmart.

It’s still a scam — and if you don’t get it, you’re still the mark.

But make no mistake: Donald Trump cannot win. While his dwindling cadre of sycophants believe he can, a growing number of Americans perceive the truth.

As Elvis Costello told us, Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish ‘n’ chips paper. Or, if you prefer the Star Wars treatment, Donald Trump isn’t Obi-Wan. He’s just Darth Maul. He looks scary, right up to the moment he gets cut in two.

from Brian Karem on Biden, Trump and what lies ahead

“Devastating blow”: Weisselberg’s agreement to testify could mean “death penalty” for Trump Org.

Former Trump Organization financial chief Allen Weisselberg is expected to admit to a 15-year tax fraud scheme on Thursday and is willing to testify against former President Donald Trump’s companies, according to multiple reports.

Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization and a longtime Trump confidant going back to his days working for Fred Trump, is expected to admit to 15 felonies, according to The New York Times. Under the deal, he would agree to testify at trial against the Trump Organization if the company does not reach its own settlement, but not against Trump himself or any of his family members.

Under the terms, Weisselberg would receive a five-month prison sentence but only serve about 100 days, according to CNN. He faced up to 15 years at trial. He would also be required to pay about $2 million in restitution, back taxes, penalties and interest, according to the Associated Press.

The deal would be a “devastating blow to the Trump Organization,” Daniel Alonso, a former federal and state prosecutor, told The New York Daily News. “It would make it a relatively easy case to prove if you have a high managerial agent on the stand saying, ‘I’m guilty.’ That’s enormously helpful to the prosecution.”

Ex-Mueller prosecutor: “Once Allen Weisselberg pleads guilty, it’s over for the Trump Organization”

Weisselberg was charged with 15 felony counts and the Trump Organization was charged with 10 counts of tax fraud last year. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office alleged that the company compensated Weisselberg and other executives “off the books” and that Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on $1.7 million in income, including a free apartment, two Mercedes-Benz cars, and private school tuition for his grandchildren.

Under the deal, Weisselberg would testify against the Trump Corporation and the Trump Payroll Corporation at trial, which is scheduled to begin in October, according to Rolling Stone. Weisselberg is reportedly willing to provide testimony admitting to the same crimes as in his trial but would not cooperate with the investigation into the company.

A source told Rolling Stone that Weisselberg’s agreement to testify does not mean that prosecutors will necessarily call him to testify. But his potential testimony would “pose a severe threat to Trump’s companies,” the outlet reported, potentially securing a conviction against his business and “potentially leading to its demise.”

Whether or not Trump was directly involved with the tax scheme, the guilty plea is “serious and significant,” Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor, told Rolling Stone. Though Trump is not currently facing charges, the testimony could have “direct consequences on his business and his work and his business’ ability to continue in New York,” she said.

“Criminal liability is usually a pretty big deal for a corporation— it’s often a death sentence,” she explained. “The penalties could be so significant that the organization cannot survive past it. The penalties can be so high the company just doesn’t exist, and it could ultimately end in the dissolution of the company.”

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Though Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has not charged Trump, the former president could still face liability in other investigations, including a civil probe led by New York Attorney General Letitia James into his businesses. The Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney’s Office is also investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn his election in the state. And the Justice Department is investigating Trump under the Espionage Act after he refused to turn over classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago home, leading to an unprecedented FBI raid earlier this month. The DOJ has also questioned witnesses before a grand jury about Trump’s role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump at a deposition in James’ investigation last week invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

James is expected to issue a “massive, long-threatened ‘enforcement action'” against Trump’s family and companies in the probe, Insider reported last week. While the company may face fines and back taxes, “James has signaled she will also seek the dissolution of the business itself under New York’s so-called corporate death penalty — a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate ‘in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.'”

about the Trump probes

Researchers ask: Does enforcing civility stifle online debate?

In poll after poll, Americans say they are deeply concerned about rising incivility online. And extensive social media research has focused on how to counteract online incivility. But with Civic Signals, a project of the National Conference on Citizenship and the Center for Media Engagement, researchers took a different approach: If you started from scratch, they asked, what would a flourishing, healthy digital space look like?

They quickly realized that it wouldn’t always be civil.

The Civic Signals project, which began about four years ago, initially involved conducting a thorough literature review and expert interviews in the U.S. and four other countries to identify the values — or “signals” — people want reflected in the design of online spaces. The team then conducted focus groups and polled more than 22,000 people in 20 countries who were frequent users of social, search, and messaging platforms. Gina Masullo, a professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, brought an expertise in incivility research to the group. But “pretty early on in the process,” she said, the team concluded that if one of the goals was to support productive political discourse, civility alone was insufficient.

“It’s not really that we are advocating for incivility,” said Masullo. “But if you are going to have passionate discussion about politics, which we want in a democracy, I would argue, people are not always going to talk perfectly about it.” In her book “Nasty Talk: Online Incivility and Public Debate,” she points out that “perfect” speech can be so sanitized that we wind up saying nothing.

No one is arguing that social media companies shouldn’t combat the most harmful forms of speech — violent threats, targeted harassment, racism, incitement to violence. But the artificial intelligence programs that the companies use for screening, trained using squishy and arguably naive notions of civility, miss some of the worst forms of hate. For example, research led by Libby Hemphill, a professor in the University of Michigan’s School of Information and the Institute for Social Research, demonstrated how white supremacists evade moderation by donning a cloak of superficial politeness.

“We need to understand more than just civility to understand the spread of hatred,” she said.

Even if platforms get better at hate Whac-A-Mole, if the goal is not just to profit, but also to create a digital space for productive discourse, they will need to retool how algorithms prioritize content. Research suggests that companies incentivize posts that elicit strong emotion, especially anger and outrage, because, like a wreck on the highway, these draw attention, and, crucially, more eyeballs to paid advertising. Engagement-hungry folks have upped their game accordingly, creating the toxicity that has social media users so concerned.

What people really want, the Civic Signals project found, is a digital space where they feel welcome, connected, informed, and empowered to act on the issues that affect them. In a social media world optimized for clicks, such positive experiences happen almost despite the environment’s design, said Masullo. “Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with making money for the platforms,” she said. “But maybe you can do both, like you could also make money but as well not destroy democracy.”

As toxic as political discourse has become, it seems almost quaint that a little over a decade ago, many social scientists were hopeful that by allowing political leaders and citizens to talk directly to one another, nascent social media platforms would improve a relationship tarnished by distrust. That directness, said Yannis Theocharis, Professor of Digital Governance at the Technical University of Munich “was something that made people optimistic, like me, and think that this is exactly what’s going to refresh our understanding of democracy and democratic participation.”

So, what happened?

Social media brought politicians and their constituents together to some extent, said Theocharis, but it also gave voice to people on the margins whose intent is to vent or attack. Human nature being what it is, we tend to gravitate towards the sensational. “Louder people usually tend to get a lot of attention on social media,” said Theocharis. His research suggests that people respond more positively to information when it has a bit of a nasty edge, especially if it jibes with their political views.

And politicians have grown savvy to the rules of game. Since 2009, tweets by members of the U.S. Congress have become increasingly uncivil according to an April study that used artificial intelligence to analyze 1.3 million posts. Results also revealed a plausible reason why: Nastiness pays. The rudest, most disrespectful tweets garner eight times as many likes and ten times as many retweets as civil ones.

By and large, social media users don’t approve of the uncivil posts, the researchers found, but pass them along for entertainment value. Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business, has noted that the simple design choice about a decade ago to “like” and “share” features changed the way that people provide social feedback to one another. “The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves,” he wrote this past May in The Atlantic. “The volume of outrage was shocking.”

One solution to rising incivility is to run platforms like a fifth-grade classroom and force everyone to be nice. But enforcing civility in the digital public square is a fool’s errand, Masullo and her Civic Signals colleagues argue in a commentary published in the journal Social Media + Society in 2019. For starters, incivility turns out to be really hard to define. Social scientists use standardized artificial intelligence programs trained by humans to classify speech as uncivil based on factors such as profanity, hate speech, ALL CAPS, name calling, or humiliation. But those tools aren’t nuanced enough to moderate speech in the real world.

Profanity is the easiest way to define incivility because you can just create a search for certain words, said Masullo. But only a small percentage of potentially uncivil language contains profanity, and, she added, “sexist or homophobic or racist speech is way worse than dropping an F bomb here and there.”

Plus, heated conversations aren’t necessarily bad, said Masullo. “In a democracy you want people to discuss things,” she said. “Sometimes they’re going to dip into, maybe, some incivility and you don’t want to chill robust debate at the risk of making it sanitized.” Finally, she said, when you focus on civility as the end goal, it tends to privilege those in power who get to define what’s “appropriate.”

Furthermore, civility policing arguably isn’t working particularly well. Hemphill’s research as a Belfer Fellow for the Anti-Defamation League shows that moderation algorithms miss some of the worst forms of hate. Because hate speech represents such a small fraction of the vast amount of language online, machine learning systems trained on large samples of general speech typically don’t recognize it. To get around that problem, Hemphill and her team trained algorithms on posts from the far-right white-nationalist website Stormfront, comparing it to alt-right posts on Twitter and a compendium of discussions on Reddit.

In her report Very Fine People, Hemphill details findings showing that platforms frequently overlook discussions of conspiracy theories about white genocide and malicious grievances against Jews and people of color. White supremacists evade moderation by avoiding profanity or direct attacks — but use distinctive speech to signal their identity to others in ways that are apparent to humans, if not algorithms. They center their whiteness by appending “white” to many terms such as “power” and dehumanize racial and ethnic groups by using plural nouns such as Blacks, Jews, and gays.

A civil rights audit of Facebook published in 2020 concluded that the company doesn’t do enough to remove organized hate. And last October, former Facebook product manager Frances Haughen testified before a U.S. Senate Committee that the company catches 3 to 5 percent of hateful content.

But Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, disagrees. In an email, Meta spokesperson Irma Palmer wrote: “In the last quarter alone, the prevalence of hate speech was at 0.02 percent on Facebook, down from 0.06-0.05 percent, or 6 to 5 views of hate speech per 10,000 views of content from the same quarter the year before.” Even so, she wrote, Meta knows that it will make mistakes, so it continues to invest in refining its policies, enforcement, and the tools it gives users. The company is testing strategies such as granting administrators of Facebook Groups more latitude to consider context when deciding what is and isn’t allowed in their space.

Another solution to the problem of hate and harassment online is regulation. As I covered in a previous column, a handful of giant for-profit companies control the digital world. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed about the efforts of Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and world’s richest person, to purchase Twitter, Safiya Noble, professor of Gender Studies at the University of California in Los Angeles, and Rashad Robinson, president of the racial justice organization Color of Change, pointed out that a select few people control the technology companies that affect an untold number of lives and our democracy.

“The issue is not just that rich people have influence over the public square, it’s that they can dominate and control a wholly privatized square — they’ve created it, they own it, they shape it around how they can profit from it,” wrote Noble and Robinson. They advocate for regulations like those for the television and telecommunications industries that establish frameworks for fairness and accountability for harm.

In the absence of stricter laws, social media companies could do much more to create a space that allows people to speak their mind without devolving into harassment and hate.

In the Very Fine People report, Hemphill recommends several steps that companies could take to reduce hate speech on their platforms. First, they could consistently and transparently enforce existing rules. A broad swath of the civil rights community has criticized Facebook for not enforcing policies against hate speech, especially content targeted at African Americans, Jews, and Muslims.

Social media companies may take an economic hit and even face legal challenges when they don’t allow far-right extremists to speak, Hemphill acknowledges. Texas state law HB 20 would have made it nearly impossible for social media companies to ban toxic content and misinformation. But the U.S. Supreme Court recently put that law on hold while lawsuits against the legislation work their way through the courts. If the Texas law is overturned, going forward, platforms could argue more forcefully for their own rights to moderate speech.

In the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which expanded corporations’ rights to free speech under the First Amendment, tech companies “can remind people that they have the right to do what they want on their platforms,” said Hemphill. “Once they do that, they can start to prioritize social health metrics instead of only eyeballs.”

Like Hemphill, many social scientists are making the case for platforms to create a healthier space by tweaking algorithms to de-emphasize potentially uncivil content. Companies already have tools to do this, said Theocharis. They can block the sharing of a post identified as uncivil or downgrade it in users’ feeds so that fewer will people see and share it. Or as Twitter has tried, they could nudge users to rethink posting something hurtful. Theocharis’ team is exploring whether such interventions work to reduce incivility.

The Civic Signals team recommends that companies focus on optimizing feeds for how valuable content is for users and not just clicks. If companies changed their algorithms to prioritize so-called connective posts — that is, posts that make an argument, even using strong language, without directly attacking other people — then uncivil posts would be seen less and, therefore, shared less and would eventually fade from view, said Masullo.

As for profit, Masullo pointed out that people are unhappy with the current social media environment. If you cleaned up a public park full of rotting garbage and dog poop, she said, more people would use it.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

U.S. v. Donald Trump: What comes after FBI raid? I know one thing: Be afraid

The Department of Justice is now formally investigating Donald Trump for serious alleged crimes including violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice in connection to his unlawful possession of top secret and highly classified materials.

During a court-ordered search of his Mar-a-Lago resort and home last week, the FBI retrieved 11 sets of classified documents that, according to some reports, may include information about “nuclear weapons.” Donald Trump had more than a year to return these documents and did not do so. One of his attorneys apparently misrepresented the facts when informing the Justice Department that all the classified documents in Donald Trump’s possession had been returned in June.

This is the first time in American history that a former president has been under criminal investigation, let alone for serious federal crimes. That is to be expected, given that Trump represents a unique and singular danger to American democracy and society.

Predictably, Trump has made numerous false or misleading statements about the FBI investigation, claiming that he is innocent, that evidence was “planted” to incriminate him, that his home was “raided” and “under siege” by the FBI and that he is being victimized as part of a “conspiracy” by the “deep state” and other sinister forces who are desperate to stop his return to power.

We won’t be the first civilization to collapse — but we may well be the last

Will Donald Trump finally face something approximating justice for his five decades or more of apparent and aggressive lawlessness, culminating in a criminal presidency and an attempted coup, with the possibility of treason and criminal espionage? Will the American people finally be rid of this meddlesome would be tyrant-king with millions of followers, leader of a neofascist movement that is literally threatening to uproot and destroy American democracy? Do these recent events change everything? Nothing? Something in between?

For those of us with public voice on more or less mainstream platforms, there are certain norms and rules one is expected to follow in order to succeed.

Priests in the Church of the Savvy and members of the commentariat are largely expected to assume a “rational” and detached demeanor, and often to channel what media critic Jay Rosen has famously called the “view from nowhere.” A central part of this performance is being resolute in one’s conclusions even if those are demonstrably and repeatedly wrong. One is also expected to tell the target audience what it wants to hear, for the most part, and not to seriously challenge their expectations. The norm is to lead readers or viewers or listeners toward the truth gently instead of presenting it to them plainly and clearly.

I have no idea what will happen if Trump is prosecuted — still less if he is tried and convicted. But I think there are good reasons to be afraid.

In the digital age there is also significant pressure to produce more “content” more quickly, to be fast and first with the “hot take” and not to appear uncertain. A more substantive and deeper truth is often the victim of such conventions. My answer in this context breaks most of these rules: I do not know what will happen if and when Donald Trump is finally prosecuted for his crimes. I certainly do not know what will happen if he is convicted.

I say this as someone who can reasonably be described as an expert on Donald Trump, American fascism and our worsening democracy crisis. The current state of America is confusing, and not easily deciphered. We will have to grapple with and muddle through the moments ahead, both as individuals and a society, without anything like full clarity about the way forward through this nightmarish fog. The meaning of this period will come in hindsight, if it comes at all.

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

In an essay from the Conversation, republished at Salon, Joseph Ferguson and Thomas Dirkin offer this important context on the nature of the documents involved and the ambiguity surrounding them, observing that cases involving classified information “are nearly impossible to referee from the cheap seats,” since “[n]one of us will get to see the documents at issue, nor should we”:

Even if we did, we would not be able to make an informed judgment of their significance because what they relate to is likely itself classified — we’d be making judgments in a void.

And even if a judge in an Espionage Act case had access to all the information needed to evaluate the nature and risks of the materials, it wouldn’t matter. The fact that documents are classified or otherwise regulated as sensitive defense information is all that matters….

The Espionage Act is serious and politically loaded business. Its breadth, the potential grave national security risks involved and the lengthy potential prison term have long sparked political conflict. These cases are controversial and complicated in ways that counsel patience and caution before reaching conclusions.

Writing at Bloomberg, Timothy L. O’Brien asks the most basic and fundamental forensic question: Why would Donald Trump even have these classified and top secret documents in his possession? One reason, he suggests, is relatively innocent: “Trump is a seven-year-old grown old, and he liked some of the cool doodads you get your hands on as president.” But the next two reasons are “deeply damaging and troubling”:

So, Reason Two: Money. Unfettered greed has motivated Trump his entire life. He didn’t get into the casino business to beautify Atlantic City. He didn’t propose a mega-development on Manhattan’s West Side because it would have made New York more livable. He didn’t start Trump University to educate students, and he didn’t host “The Apprentice” to tutor entrepreneurs. He didn’t originally run for president to revitalize democracy. Money, money, money….

Reason Three: Reputational damage. Trump reportedly held on to letters he exchanged with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un. Perhaps vanity inspired that move because Trump has referred to such correspondence as “love letters.” But what other communications are contained in the documents Trump kept? Anything with Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping? How about documents pertaining to Trump’s phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy from that time when Trump was trying to strong-arm Zelenskiy into digging up dirt on his political opponent, Joe Biden. Those communications led to the first of Trump’s two impeachment proceedings….

The frenetic pace at which Trump has seeded the ground with lies in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search certainly suggests that he has something to hide and that he’s worried about the investigation.

Would convicting Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and mishandling official documents save the country from the possibility of his becoming president again, as some have suggested? That’s not entirely clear, but Amy Sherman explores that issue at Poynter:

Federal statute says it is a crime to willfully and intentionally remove official records and that such a crime would disqualify the defendant from “holding any office under the United States.” But some legal scholars say that statute can’t be used to bar Trump from a 2024 presidential bid. The Constitution’s list of criteria to run for president mentions only age, citizenship and residency — there is no mention of criminal charges or convictions….

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he doesn’t see a conviction for violating 18 U.S. Code 2071 preventing Trump from running for office.

“That statute cannot trump the Constitution, which sets the exclusive qualifications for President,” Hasen wrote on his election law blog. “So this is not a path to making Trump legally ineligible to run for office.”

The U.S. Constitution upholds the principle that voters decide who shall represent them. The Constitution says only natural born citizens or U.S. citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years can run for president.

Previous Supreme Court rulings hold that a state cannot prohibit indicted or convicted felons from running for federal office, and Congress cannot add qualifications to the office of president, said Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.

Someone could use the records statute to attempt to challenge Trump’s potential run for office, and the courts would then rule on the constitutionality of his bid, said Georgetown law professor Victoria Nourse.

Here’s one thing I am absolutely certain about regarding Donald Trump and these imminent questions of crime and punishment. I am deeply afraid of what comes next. Trump followers are already threatening more right-wing terrorism and political violence, potentially on a massive scale if he is punished or faces significant consequences for his crimes.

Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported last week on the escalation of right-wing rhetoric and the increasing threat of political violence:

According to the FBI, there are now about 2,700 open domestic terrorism investigations — a number that has doubled since the spring of 2020 — and that does not include lesser but still serious incidents that do not rise to the level of federal inquiry. Last year, threats against members of Congress reached a record high of 9,600, according to data provided by the Capitol Police.

Nonetheless, it is exceptionally rare for most adults to willfully inflict harm on other people, especially for political reasons, said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the democracy, conflict and governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Still, Kleinfeld said, there are ways of lowering the average person’s tolerance for violence.

If political aggression is set in the context of a war, she suggested, ordinary people with no prior history of violence are more likely to accept it. Political violence can also be made more palatable by couching it as defensive action against a belligerent enemy. That is particularly true if an adversary is persistently described as irredeemably evil or less than human.

“The right, at this point, is doing all three of these things at once,” Kleinfeld said.

There is little evidence that Republicans and right-wing media figures have tempered their rhetoric, even as Congress and the Justice Department investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. …

Even before the search at Mar-a-Lago, some of Trump’s most vocal supporters had been casting the political stakes as existential, suggesting that the country was already embroiled in an end-of-times clash between irreconcilable foes.

Throughout the Trump era, we have seen considerable evidence that some of Donald Trump’s political cult followers are willing to kill and die at his command. Alyssa Rosenberg explored this issue recently in a powerful essay for the Washington Post:

The absurdity and maliciousness of the cause for which these people have died only compounds the horror of their deaths. How is it that no one, no institution, could offer something more substantive than the manifest hollowness of Trump and Trumpism?

An essential part of Trump’s malign magic is its impermeability.

Suggest that his followers deserve better — whether that is an actual infrastructure package or a leader who appeals to their best qualities rather than their basest — and you’re accused of exhibiting the very contempt that made Trump attractive in the first place. Suggest Trump is scamming his followers, and you’re a tool of the deep state. According to Trump and his many enablers, there is no evidence that isn’t planted or manufactured, no moral act that is disqualifying, no act for which Trump himself can be held responsible.

Even the people who seek to martyr themselves in Trump’s defense can be redefined and reinterpreted through this corrupt logic: On social media, Trump fans aren’t celebrating [the man who attacked an FBI office in Ohio] as a Trumpist patriot. They’re dismissing him as a false flag planted to paint the FBI in a flattering light.

Those of us who live outside the boundaries of this mad realm may be tempted to count ourselves lucky. Still, we should be concerned for the residents of Trumpland for their own safety. And if that’s not enough, we should care because the people who die for Donald Trump may someday take others with them.

David Klepper of the Associated Press reports on a “joint intelligence bulletin from the FBI and Homeland Security [that] warns about an increase in violent online threats targeting federal officials and government facilities”:

Those include “a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI headquarters,” along with calls for “civil war” and “rebellion,” according to a copy of the document obtained by The Associated Press.

Mentions of “civil war” on platforms including Facebook and Twitter increased tenfold in the hours immediately after last week’s search of Mar-a-Lago, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a firm that analyzes social media content.

Many of the posts contained false claims suggesting President Joe Biden ordered the FBI to search Trump’s home, or that the FBI planted evidence to incriminate Trump.

“Biden sending the FBI to raid a former President, Mr. Donald Trump’s home is a declaration of WAR against him and his supporters,” wrote one poster on the Telegram platform.

The intelligence bulletin also noted federal law enforcement officials have identified multiple threats against government officials involved in the Mar-a-Lago search, including calls to kill the magistrate judge who signed the search warrant.

The names and home addresses of FBI agents and other officials have been posted online, along with references to family members who could be additional targets, according to the intelligence documents.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, has described these threats as “ominously similar to the online rhetoric that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Klepper reports.

* * *

In November of 2019, I spoke with Dr. Jerrold Post, formerly the CIA’s head psychological profiler and the founding director of its Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. Of the hundreds of interviews I’ve done for Salon, on my podcasts and elsewhere about Trump and America’s crisis, that conversation lingers with me the most. Post sounded tired but energetic, and spoke with both clarity and gravity. He struck me as a deeply serious man who had seen a great deal, and who held secrets he could not share with me or virtually anyone else. Yet within those limitations he wanted me — and, more important, the American people — to understand the extreme danger that Donald Trump and his movement represent to the country and the world.

We had a long phone conversation one evening, and it all felt like a scene from a spy thriller or an issue of the graphic novel “The Department of Truth,” in which some great and terrible secret is being imparted to the main character. In this case, that character was eager to know that truth, yet also frightened and terrified of it and uncertain that he was worthy of such knowledge and awareness.

In 2019, I interviewed the former lead psychological profiler for the CIA about Donald Trump. It felt like a scene from a spy thriller — and that conversation lingers with me.

As I listened to Dr. Post talk, I kept thinking about my father, who was a maintenance man and janitor, and my mother, who was a home health care worker and private duty nurse. This distinguished person with a high-level intelligence clearance, who had advised presidents, was sharing his knowledge with a working class Black man. America is a bizarre and wonderful place, where such things can happen. I love this country and its strange ways; I am also frustrated by it and worried for it because of all the self-inflicted wounds that limit its full potential for greatness and have done so since before the founding. America is a hot mess; no one loves or hates like family does.

When I asked Dr. Post what would happens with Donald Trump, a man so malevolent and dangerous, if he were to lose the upcoming presidential election, he told me this:

In the last chapter of my new book, I quote one of my favorite poems, which is, “Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage, rage at the dying of the light.” I do not believe that Donald Trump will go gentle into that good night. In a close election, there is a very real hazard in terms of both potential outcomes. Should Trump win, as he did in 2016, he will make it a much bigger win and talking about the fraudulent election support on the Democratic side. But should Trump lose narrowly, I think we can be assured that he will not concede early. Trump may not even recognize the legitimacy of the election.

As we saw on Jan. 6, 2021, that warning was correct. As we look ahead, it may be helpful to remember the truism that courage is not the absence of fear but the strength to persist and do the right thing despite it.

If Donald Trump is indicted — and even more so if he is tried and convicted — those Americans who believe in real democracy and are willing to fight for it will be tested even more. Will they pass or fail that test? We will soon find out, but a happy ending is not guaranteed. The American people must write that next chapter boldly and with courage. If they are not afraid of what that will require, they should be.

about Donald Trump and the American future

A new holy war rises in America, Israel and Europe — people of faith must stand against it

On Aug. 7 — the day that Jews around the world celebrated Tisha B’Av, the traditional day of mourning for the disasters that have occurred throughout Jewish history — the state of Israel brutally slaughtered at least 44 people, including 15 children, in the besieged Gaza Strip. Beyond the horrible irony of this massacre, it is difficult for me not to see it as part of a larger global holy war.

Not in the sense of the Crusades of history or American and European fears of Islamic jihad. We don’t have a name yet for this holy war, but its variants stretch far beyond Gaza into the American heartland. We refuse to recognize it because it would require us to look in the mirror. It is a holy war based on fantasies of power and “chosenness.” Most troubling of all is how these fears and fantasies are grounded in a poisonous distortion of sacred scripture and religious tradition.

Don’t be hoodwinked by Trump’s UAE-Israel “peace deal”: It’s a sham

As a veteran peace activist, a person of Jewish faith and the former co-director of CODEPINK, I’ve spent most of my life working to end U.S. wars and militarism and for freedom and justice for Palestinians. As I begin my tenure as the executive director of our nation’s oldest interfaith peace and justice organization, the Fellowship of Reconciliation USA (FOR-USA), the dimensions of this holy war are impossible to ignore.

Closer to home, the ideological underpinnings of this conflict were on display recently at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who rails against race mixing and same-sex relationships, advocating instead for “Christian democracy,” was the opening speaker.

After the 2020 election, right-wing pro-Trump activists planned and carried out a series of “Jericho Marches” to invoke the bloody biblical story of the siege of Jericho as a call to action to keep Trump in office. As Jan. 6 neared, Proud Boys members could be seen praying near the Washington Monument, comparing the “sacrifice” they were preparing to make to the crucifixion of Jesus. The next evening, they rampaged through town, attacking African-American churches and other houses where Black Lives Matter signs were displayed. Tennessee pastor Greg Locke praised the Proud Boys and lauded America as “the last bastion of Christian freedom.”

On Jan. 6 itself, the Jericho Marchers traveled with shofars (Jewish ritual instruments, made from rams’ horns and meant to evoke freedom, holiness and a call to be in the service of God) and American flags to Washington.

The fusing of violence with a blasphemous interpretation of Christianity in the U.S. has roots in the concept of Christian duty that animated the era of lynchings. Today it takes the form of simple marketing copy. A Florida gun manufacturer, Spike’s Tactical, markets AR-15 style rifles with Psalm 144:1 — “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle” — emblazoned on them.

The fusion of lethal violence and a blasphemous interpretation of Christianity has a long and ugly history, including the era of lynchings.

The weapon used in the mass murder of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, was manufactured by the Georgia-based company Daniel Defense, whose social media that day included a picture of a toddler with a rifle in his lap and the text of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

The U.S. far right movement largely trends older, but American neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups are making vigorous efforts to recruit youth. The Israeli ultranationalist movement, however, already contains a large number of teenagers.

On the morning of July 20, the Israeli front of this holy war saw thousands of largely young Jewish extremists belonging to the Nachala settler movement flock to seven uninhabited sites in the occupied West Bank. With religious fringes dangling from their waists, blue and white flags in their hands and M16 rifles slung across their backs, they set up tents and makeshift kitchens and yeshivas. One outpost even included a bouncy castle and cotton candy machine.

They were praised as “inspired,” “dedicated” and “wonderful,” by Israel’s Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, and criticized by the ultra-religious Jewish-Israeli Hilltop Youth movement for not being militant enough. Israeli soldiers and police ultimately dismantled the encampments, but the Nachala group has pledged to return and rebuild. That is neither surprising — they claim the Jewish people “were promised the Land of Israel in the Bible” — nor is it an idle threat, given the history of violent settler attacks.

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

Regardless of your political or religious outlook or how deep the divisions among us currently are, I have to believe that all people of conscience are sickened by this perversion of sacred texts to justify white and Christian supremacy or, in Israel’s case, Jewish supremacy.

In the spirit of those members and leaders of FOR-USA who preceded me — Martin Luther King Jr., A.J. Muste, Jane Addams and more — it is time to engage the full moral force of our combined faith traditions in condemning these forms of supremacy and violence that co-opt and pervert religious scripture. It is time to say clearly and unequivocally that the manipulation of the divine in the service of lethal political goals and human rights abuses, whether orchestrated by Christian, Jewish, Islamic or Hindu fundamentalists, is unconscionable.

As an interfaith peace and justice organization, FOR-USA believes this message must be spread through houses of worship across the country. In memory of Dr. King’s voice telling us, “It’s not the violence of the few that scares me, it’s the silence of the many,” we call on faith leaders and congregants from every faith tradition and political persuasion to break their silence on this distortion of the divine and do what communities of faith do best: preach, pray and pay attention.

We implore them to preach from the pulpit about the God of peace, love, justice and mercy.
We ask them to pray for healing and reconciliation amid great division, and to use their institutional religious platforms and influence to call for freedom and safety; from lifting Israel’s strangling blockade of Gaza to no longer sending U.S. police to trainings sponsored by weapons manufacturers.
We need them to pay attention to where the spirit is moving among us, and to call out this obvious deformation of the sacred wherever it occurs —and to respond to a world of violence in the only logical way possible, with love and nonviolence.

from Ariel Gold on Israel and the Middle East

After Biden’s climate bill: Three big steps toward America’s energy transition

With the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Supreme Court’s decision to curb but not block EPA action on climate, the architecture of Joe Biden’s first-term climate policy is set. The administration can use executive power to limit greenhouse pollution from individual power plants, cars and trucks, oil and gas fields, coal mines and pipelines. These standards will be supplemented with generous tax credits for wind and solar generation, carbon capture, nuclear power and electricity storage.

That’s nothing fancy in legal terms — but it’s potentially very ambitious. A wide variety of clean energy innovations and development will receive Department of Energy loans and guarantees. Federal grants will support charging networks for electric cars and retrofitting buildings with efficiency and clean energy. Federal lands will be leased both to clean-energy developers and oil and gas producers — but the standards and royalties paid for fossil fuels will rise, and there will be tougher environmental constraints. The U.S. will continue to be a major exporter of oil and gas, for now, to help Europe back away from Russian fuel.

It’s the perfect moment for a clean-energy future: But war and greed are getting in the way

That’s the blueprint. What remains up for grabs, and is most crucial, is the question of how fast these new structures will be erected. Are we going 24/7 full speed ahead, or falling back on an eight-hour-day energy transition?

That’s where a presidential declaration of a national climate emergency could help most. This administration needs to act like there’s a climate emergency, whether or not Biden formally declares one. The president needs to tell a broad swath of agencies — EPA and the Department of Energy, but also HUD, the Transportation, Commerce and Interior departments and others — “At least double your pace, and the nation’s. Don’t walk, run!”

The list of available climate priorities that must be accelerated is staggering. Here’s my partial and necessarily incomplete list of three crucial agenda items. Many will require collaborative action by multiple agencies.

First: Recapture fugitive methane, amounting to more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s one-fifth of total U.S. emissions, and doing this is virtually free.

How? You can’t manage what you can’t find. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should double its capacity to identify and methane leaks within two years.

The second part of this is to stop methane leaks on public lands. Collaborating with NOAA and states like California, New Mexico and Colorado, the Interior Department should be able to cut methane emission from public lands by 75% in four years.

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Next, recover and sell methane from gas wells on private lands. EPA should ban non-emergency flaring and venting, monitor methane leaks from all wells and require properly monitored shutdowns. Estimates suggest it may be possible to recover enough methane from U.S. oil and gas fields, very inexpensively, to cover half the U.S. commitment of gas exports meant to replace Russian supplies in Europe.

Second: Leapfrog over 100 gigawatts of unneeded, polluting gas power plants. Replace coal-burning plants with more solar and wind instead. Eliminating 84% of U.S. power sector greenhouse gas emissions during Biden’s first term is possible, and so is using cheap renewables to restart American industry.

Again, urgency requires coordination. We need to shorten the transmission queue. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should Identify and unsnarl the 10 highest-priority long-distance corridors required to unleash wind and solar power. Reducing the transmission waits for renewables should become FERC’s highest priority.

We need zero-emission standards for new gas projects. EPA should require new gas-fired power plants to install 100% carbon capture technology. Fund both renewables and gas with full carbon capture and let communities choose whichever is cheapest — which will almost always be renewables.

Wind and solar require space: Let’s invest in Native American country. The Interior Department should facilitate — and the Energy Department should finance — a $10 billion, tribally-owned renewable power grid. Native nations can then leverage their core economic advantages: some of the best solar and wind resources in the nation. Then make this power available for the nation’s highest-priority national industrial needs, such as smelting clean aluminum.

Know which way the wind is blowing: NOAA should achieve the president’s 30-gigawatt offshore wind goal in five years, then get to 60 gigawatts in 10 years. This would power 20 million homes and create 150,000 jobs.

Stop importing Russian aluminum; resume smelting it in the U.S. With all this new, low-cost renewable electricity, Interior should guarantee power to restart aluminum smelters until the tribal renewables grid can reliably produce long-term clean energy.

Third: Electrify cars and trucks, and make electric vehicles a cleaner and more reliable option in every zip code. EPA and the Department of Transportation have told automakers to electrify. There are much more generous purchase rebates now. But will the customers come? Biden can still do much more.

You shouldn’t have to worry about recharging on an interstate. The Department of Transportation should accelerate EV charging networks and spend its appropriated $5 billion over three years, not five. Consumers will create demand after that. It’s only the first part of building this infrastructure that could slow us down.

It’s time to electrify the Pentagon: All civilian vehicles purchased by the Department of Defense should be electrified from now on.

There’s a lot more, and I’ve left out most of it. Homeland Security can invest in low-carbon microgrids in Hurricane Alley along the Gulf Coast. HUD is encouraging towns and cities to streamline rooftop solar permits. The USDA is helping rural electric cooperatives dump expensive and dirty coal for clean and affordable wind and solar. The U.S. Postal Service is moving toward an all-electric fleet of delivery vehicles.

There’s a big difference between a climate plan done with an eight-hour-day rhythm, and a climate emergency, even if the same steps toward decarbonization are implemented. Faster cuts in emission will also lower cumulative emissions, which which will drive positive climate change over time.

What about the politics of all this? Here are some less obvious aspects of a 24/7 climate-emergency commitment: Creating twice as many jobs, mostly in red states, a healthy share of which will replace fading fossil fuel employment. Federal financing means that the average job will pay more, and provide more security, than jobs on the open market, and the energy these jobs deliver will be much cheaper than sticking with coal, oil and gas.

So this isn’t just vital to addressing the climate crisis — it’s the key to an extended economic boom that can redeem Joe Biden’s presidency.

about energy and the climate crisis

Trump is being urged not to release footage of Mar-a-Lago raid

On Wednesday, CNN reported that former President Donald Trump is considering releasing surveillance footage from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, depicting the FBI executing their search warrant. However, his associates are divided on whether this is actually a good idea.

“Some of Trump’s aides and allies have encouraged the former President to make some of the footage available to the public, believing it could send a jolt of energy through the Republican Party’s base,” reported Gabby Orr, Sara Murray, Kaitlan Collins, and Katelyn Polantz.

“One person familiar with the conversations said there have been discussions about featuring the August footage in campaign-style ads, believing the footage could bolster Trump’s claims of political persecution. Another person close to Trump said it’s not a matter of if the former President and his team release any of the footage, but when, noting it could be released before he makes a campaign announcement.”

“Others in Trump’s orbit have warned of the potential risks to the former President if he does release the tapes. A second person close to Trump cautioned that releasing the footage could backfire by providing people with a visual understanding of the sheer volume of materials that federal agents seized from his oceanfront residence, including classified materials,” said the report.

“It’s one thing to read a bunch of numbers on an inventory list, it’s another to see law enforcement agents actually carrying a dozen-plus boxes out of President Trump’s home knowing they probably contain sensitive documents. I don’t see how that helps him,’ said this person, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity in order the speak candidly.”

According to previous reports, FBI agents were searching for large amounts of highly classified information at Mar-a-Lago — including secrets pertaining to nuclear weapons.

Trump has claimed the entire thing is a “witch hunt” and has aggressively fundraised off of attacking the FBI — even though the agency is headed by his own appointed director Christopher Wray, and even though far-right activists have been threatening or actually engaging in violent attacks on the FBI.

“While it is unclear exactly what the surveillance footage could show, Trump and his attorneys say they taped the August 8 search by federal investigators even after agents asked them to turn off the security cameras,” said the report. “Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence and export control section at the Justice Department who visited Mar-a-Lago in June, was the official who made the specific ask the day of the search, a source familiar tells CNN. The Justice Department had previously subpoenaed surveillance footage from the club as part of its ongoing investigation, including outside the room where documents were kept.”

Jared Kushner’s memoir called “soulless” in New York Times review

Jared Kushner’s new memoir was met with a scathing review from the New York Times, which panned the former White House adviser’s book as “soulless” and lacking in self-awareness.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser describes his four years in the White House, but Times book critic Dwight Garner lambastes the memoir as dull, superficial and self-serving in a strongly negative review of Breaking History, published last week by HarperCollins.

“Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one,” Garner writes. “Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering … with issues he was interested in.”

Garner compares the tone to a college admissions essay, speckled with “every drop of praise he’s ever received,” larded with clichés and glossed with selective biographical background, and he said the overall effect was off-putting and slightly disgusting.

“This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox,” Garner writes. “Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.”

It’s not clear who the intended audience is supposed to be, Garner writes, because Trump’s base never liked him and Kushner’s career in politics was entirely dependent on his marriage to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump.

“What a queasy-making book to have in your hands,” Garner writes. “Once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?”

“People right now would crawl over broken glass for Donald Trump,” says Eric Trump

Eric Trump made an appearance on Newsmax Wednesday evening to sing his dad’s praises during a segment of “Eric Bolling The Balance” in which he celebrated his family’s “killing” of another legacy.

Speaking to host Eric Bolling, Trump said “Last night my father killed another political dynasty, and that’s the Cheneys. He first killed the Bushes, then he killed the Clintons, and last night he killed the Cheneys. He’s been rino hunting ever since he got into politics, and last night he was successful again.”

Eric: “Last night, my father killed another political dynasty, and that’s the Cheneys. He first killed the Bushes, then he killed the Clintons.” pic.twitter.com/3hB7sUykCz

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 18, 2022

Eric Trump tries to slam Biden for trip, gets schooled on dad’s travel history instead

In another portion of the interview, Trump painted a picture of how the American public views his family favorably, going so far as to offer to pay for a recent dinner he shared with his wife, Lara, while out at a restaurant.

“Lara and I were at dinner the other night, and there were two tables that started arguing about paying for our bill,” Trump said. “It was a little casual place. They wanted to pay for our bill to say sorry for what the country was doing to my father, to our family. People right now would crawl over broken glass for Donald Trump.”

Eric Trump: Lara and I were at dinner the other night and there were two tables that started arguing about paying for our bill… They wanted to pay for our bill to say sorry for what the country was doing to my father… pic.twitter.com/CDFhARzyEl

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 18, 2022

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“They [the American people] see the most inept president this country has ever had in Joe Biden, all the problems we have as a nation; and conversely you go back to Donald Trump which had the fastest growing economy, the best stock markets, the lowest unemployment in history, perfect inflation numbers . . . the lowest gas prices ever . . . we were respected around the world.”

Watch the full interview here:

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“I don’t want to date you,” says Ted Cruz to Al Franken after being roasted on “Jimmy Kimmel Live”

During a guest host spot on Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” comedian and former Democratic Senator Al Franken had a few choice words for Texas Senator, Ted Cruz.

“I really think one of the most serious issues facing our country today is just how big a dick Ted Cruz is,” Franken said during his opening monologue. “I’ve said it before, but I probably liked Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues liked Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is probably one of the most famous senators because, as I mentioned, he’s a huge dick.”

Ted Cruz says his pronoun is “kiss my ass”

In response to the comments made by Franken against him, Cruz fired back on Twitter saying “Serial groper and disgraced, unemployed socialist is now guest hosting on national television and fantasizing about my genitalia. Stop catcalling me, Al. I don’t want date you.”

Serial groper…

& disgraced, unemployed socialist…

is now guest hosting on national television and fantasizing about my genitalia.

Stop catcalling me, Al.
I don’t want date you. https://t.co/FJMiREMwC3

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 17, 2022

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The comment made by Cruz calling Franken a “groper” relates to an incident that came to light in 2017 in which Franken was accused of “forcibly kissing and groping” a radio news anchor with KABC in Los Angeles a decade prior, according to NBC News. During this time, Franken was still primarily known for his work on “Saturday Night Live,” and the alleged offense against the news anchor was said to have taken place while rehearsing a skit Franken wrote for a USO show while they were both overseas entertaining U.S. troops.

“He said to me, ‘We need to rehearse the kiss.’ I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL. … We don’t need to rehearse the kiss’,” the announcer, Leeann Tweeden, said in a statement posted to KABC’s website following the incident. “He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.”

On the flight back from the USO show, Franken had his photo taken seemingly groping the breasts of Tweeden while she slept. These offenses, and several similar ones that other women stepped forward with while Franken was in office led to him resigning in 2018.

“Al Franken was a comedian (pretty funny compared to you) and his picture was a joke. Was it in bad taste? Sure. At least he had the decency to resign. You should look into that Mr. Cancun,” one person said in response to the tweet Cruz directed towards Franken.

“Your takeaway from this was him asking you on date? Oh you’re trying to be cool in the most Ted Cruz cringeworthy way,” another person said in a reply.

Watch Franken’s full monologue here:

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Trader Joe’s 7 best baked goods to add to your cart right now

One of the great joys of shopping at Trader Joe’s is taking in all of the bakery items. Whether you’re on the hunt for bagels for breakfast or the sweet stuff, it seems as though there’s always something new for shoppers to discover.

Unlike Costco, which has a dedicated bakery section, TJ’s displays its impressive assortment of baked goods across its supermarkets, which may make it difficult to spot the best product to try first.

Whether you’re a newcomer to the California-based retailer or simply looking to break out of your dessert rut, here are the top 7 baked goods to try from Trader Joe’s right now, according to Redditors who shop at the store.

This list adds to Salon Food’s growing library of supermarket guides. If you’re looking to cool off with something sweet, check out the 3 best frozen desserts at Trader Joe’s right now.

Dark Chocolate Ganache Mini Sheet Cake

Dark Chocolate Ganache Mini Sheet Cake (Photo Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)

Fans of this decadent, chocolate sheet cake say it’s superior to its vanilla-flavored cousin, which we’ll take a closer look at below. The 18-ounce dessert pairs moist, spongy chocolate sheet cake with a generous amount of ganache cream cheese frosting. Each cake serves up to six lucky people, making it the perfect dessert to enjoy solo throughout the work week, as well as when family or friends join you for a small dinner gathering.

“I bought the dark chocolate ganache mini sheet cake. I thought it would be ok but it’s literally the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had,” user u/Jennerlady writes on Reddit. Another fellow lover of the choco cake, u/Some1getmeablanket, says they’d “fight anybody that says the vanilla bean one is better.”

Coconut Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons (Photo Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)

These bite-size macaroons (not to be confused with “macarons“) are slightly crunchy on the outside and deliciously soft on the inside. Each biscuit is made with shredded coconut, sugar, ground almonds and egg whites.

According to u/ trial_error_repeat, Trader Joe’s macaroons are “SO GOOD! I’m obsessed with them, definitely worth trying if you enjoy coconut.” I don’t know about you, but I’m likely picking up a pack (or two) during my next shopping trip!

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Chantilly Cream Vanilla Bean Mini Sheet Cake

Chantilly Cream Vanilla Bean Mini Sheet Cake (Photo Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)

Similar to the chocolate ganache sheet cake, this vanilla version consists of a moist, spongy cake covered in smooth vanilla bean buttercream frosting. It also has six servings, which makes it another great treat to enjoy with (or without) company.

“Just got this today and I’m in love! My only issue is that I already suck at cutting up cakes and I can’t get the bottom out of the tray without looking like an ogre was just there,” user u/toyheartattack writes. A separate user, u/Chicasayshi, says the cake is their “literal fav.”

“I’m planning a picnic for this Saturday with my sister and this is on my buy list.”

Brookie

Brookie (Photo Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)

This signature dessert, made by an Ohio baker with “a reputation for brownie brilliance,” is the lovechild of a brownie and a cookie. While the bottom layer is purely brownie, the top layer is a chewy chocolate-chip cookie. Each package includes eight pre-cut brookies, which make them as equally easy to enjoy on the go as at home.

“They’re incredible!” ” user u/yeahnothx13 says. “I just recently tried them and I’m so sad for all those lost months/years I could have been eating these delicious treats.”

On a similar note, user u/FatalBlossom81 adds, “I love the brookies so much, I don’t even buy them anymore lol. Brownies in general are my favorite dessert of all time and I have no self control around them.”

Chocolate Croissants

Chocolate Croissants (Photo Courtesy of Trader Joe’s)

Made with an all-butter croissant dough and two semisweet bars of chocolate, Trader Joe’s packaged chocolate croissants are a fun take on a French classic that is perfect for breakfast or snacktime alike. TJ’s also sells packs of frozen chocolate croissants, which must be proofed overnight before baking in the oven. They’re best enjoyed warm, along with a piping hot cup of coffee.

Glazed Sour Cream Donuts

Glazed Sour Cream Donuts (Photo Courtesy of Joseph Neese)

Despite their name, Trader Joe’s Glazed Sour Cream Donuts don’t actually taste like sour cream. Rather, they’re deliciously sweet — but not too sweet, according to a few Redditors — and incredibly moist. Thanks to the addition of sour cream, these doughnuts are more buttery and cakey than the ones typically sold at chains like Dunkin’ or Krispy Kreme.

“We love the sour cream donuts….,” user u/myfavoritemorgan says. User u/AliOversteel agrees, adding, “The sour cream donuts are some of the best cake donuts I’ve ever had! Super dangerous.”

Sea Salt Brownie Bites

Sea Salt Brownie Bites (Photo Courtesy of Joseph Neese)

These kosher-certified brownie bites are fudgy and loaded with semi-sweet chocolate morsels. Each one is also topped with a sprinkle of finishing sea salt, which balances out the sweetness and heightens the rich chocolate flavors.

TJ’s Sea Salt Brownie Bites can be enjoyed on their own or with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream. According to the product listing, these brownies can also be blended into a warm-weather milkshake “with a salty twist.”

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“Only Murders in the Building” goes shockingly dark in the making of a villain

“Only Murders in the Building,” despite its homicidal title, has never been big on the scares. We watch it for the amazing rapport between stars Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short. We watch it for the jokes. We watch it for the surprises, puzzles opening up like those secret passageways — not to be genuinely scared.

Enter Det. Kreps. With the deepening of this minor new character and with the return of a star, “Only Murders” goes dark this week, darker than that blackout that dimmed the Tri-State area, and just as chilling and sudden.

“Only Murders in the Building” star on the collaborative creation of Theo, the show’s conscience

How do you make a villain? With the season’s penultimate episode “Sparring Partners,” the Hulu show presents two paths to developing a rogue. One is Detective Kreps. His name looks like “creeps,” though it’s pronounced differently, and Kreps, played by Michael Rapaport, lives up to the title. A lead detective on Bunny’s murder case, Kreps is tall, dour and indifferent. Kreps is taking over for Det. Williams, who’s on maternity leave.

Season 1 introduced us to Williams, who has the tough exterior necessary for her job, but as played by the incredible Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“High Fidelity“), Williams has hidden warmth, excellent instincts, and stunning vocal prowess too. She genuinely wants to solve the case. She does not want to put innocent people behind bars. She’s really good at singing.

“Only Murders” gave us a good cop. Read the room. Now it’s time for a bad one.

Lucy (Zoe Margaret Colletti) and Detective Kreps (Michael Rapaport) in “Only Murders In The Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)Amateur sleuths Charles (Martin), Mabel (Gomez) and Oliver (Short) won’t find in Kreps the sympathetic, though initially suspicious, listener they had in Det. Williams. Sure, Kreps wants to solve the case. Does he want to solve it correctly? That’s not really his priority.

“People go away for things they didn’t do all the time,” Kreps tells Mabel when she comes to his gym and ends up sparring in the boxing ring with him in a metaphor gone wild.

Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Detective Kreps (Michael Rapaport) in “Only Murders In The Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)Mabel gets some good barbs in. But overall, it’s a tense, extended moment of Kreps threatening Mabel and calling her profanities repeatedly in a low voice, close to her space. It’s a testament to Gomez’s enormous talents as an actor that she raises her chin and tries to look defiant, but her eyes water, her smile is forced and pretend. She stays silent to stay safe. You can imagine her heart beating hard in her chest.

Mabel is on to him immediately, homing in on a predator in the way of someone who’s had to keep herself safe from them her whole life.

Kreps’ villainy feels real. He seems like any number of creepy, older white dudes, which is part of his problem. Anyone who pretends to lunge at a much younger, much smaller woman has issues with inferiority. Mabel is also a woman of color. Kreps’ power over her is real, yet he keeps bragging about himself (“How come I’m able to do a better podcast than you idiots in two seconds flat?”), which only underlines his poor sense of self-worth. Kreps doesn’t make enough money as a New York City cop, or thinks he doesn’t, so he’s taken freelance gigs. He uses financial reasons as an excuse for shady, illegal behavior. But that’s not it. Kreps just wants to feel special. He wants superiority, especially over women.

One of his brags is that he “landed the smartest woman on the planet.” Odd for an aggressive, simple character to boast about that and not his conquest’s physical beauty, but Kreps falls into the category of men who say they want an intelligent woman so they can possess her, best her. In the lyrics of the immortal Kacey Musgraves: “He wants your shimmer/To make him feel bigger/Until he starts feeling insecure.”

The scariest part of the villain known as Kreps is predatory. Earlier, we learned he keeps a photograph of Charles’ sort-of stepdaughter, Lucy (Zoe Margaret Colletti), who is only a teenager. Mabel is on to him immediately, homing in on a predator in the way of someone who’s had to keep herself safe from them her whole life. When she asks him why he’s in their building, “interrogating teenage girls,” Kreps leans in and says chillingly: “That’s just one part of the job I happen to like.”

There’s nothing funny about that.

Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Oliver (Martin Short) in “Only Murders In The Building” (Patrick Harbron/Hulu)

Fey’s portrayal of malevolent flippancy approaches Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Speaking of smart women, “Sparring Partners” marks the return of Cinda Canning, a kind of Terry Gross for the true crime murder podcast. Host and producer Cinda is the standard, according to the Arconia trio (and the Horticulture Homies), but how she got on top is more twisted than Oliver only eating dips. And as played by Tina Fey, Canning is the ultimate white woman feminist. She means well, sort of.

Actually, she doesn’t and she will manipulate, exploit and connive anyone without giving it a second thought if it serves her best interests. Mabel is sarcastic when she asks Cinda’s assistant, Poppy (Adina Verson), if she’s “that terrified of a Peabody Award-winning podcaster.” But Poppy is.

Poppy (Adina Verson) and Cinda (Tina Fey) in “Only Murders In The Building” (Patrick Harbron/Hulu)It goes beyond the thoughtlessness Cinda shows to her employees, rudeness bordering on malice. Cinda doesn’t even notice people beneath her, and Fey’s portrayal of malevolent flippancy approaches Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” (turkey sandwich with no sandwich, please), the over-the-top boss from hell who seems, at times, to be a parody of some of the other characters Fey has played. Even Fey herself. But spilling a bottle of pills all over your assistant is one (terrible) thing, possibly exploiting sexual favors for career advancement is another.

Jan gave us one fictional example of a female psychopath, a poisoner and murderer who lacks empathy or a conscience. In a way, Cinda Canning gives us another. She’s more cartoonish than Jan or Kreps — Cinda is so narcissistic, she only works with people who look like her, literally — but her intelligence and conventional appearance have allowed her to get away with a lot. How much exactly remains to be seen.

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All is not OK in Oklahoma. And all is not OK with characters Kreps and Cinda, who give us two ways to be bad. Things have gotten real on “Only Murders” — at least, two more potential suspects have.

The finale for “Only Murders in the Building” Season 2 streams Tuesday, Aug. 23 on Hulu.

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Feeling burnt out? Scientists now know what’s going on inside your brain when this happens

Feeling burned out, mentally exhausted, or brain-fried are all colloquial ways of talking about what neurologists formally refer to as “cognitive fatigue.” It’s a common feeling that nearly all of us suffer at some point, and can arise from such quotidian things as taking an all-day exam or just being overworked at a mentally taxing job.

Now, a new study suggests that there is actually something physically happening inside the brain that leads to cognitive fatigue. Indeed, the scientists behind a new paper in the journal Current Biology have shed some light on what is actually going on inside our heads. And it doesn’t sound pleasant: “potentially toxic by-products” can build up in one’s brain when one is cognitively fatigued.

“We find some evidence in the direction that when intense cognitive work is prolonged for several hours, some potentially toxic by-products of neural activity accumulate in the prefrontal cortex,” Dr. Antonius Wiehler, a professor at the Paris Brain Institute and one of the paper’s corresponding authors, told Salon by email. Wiehler noted that the study provides evidence for this, they haven’t “definitively proven” what is happening just yet.

Depression may not stem from a “chemical imbalance” after all — suggesting the problem is social

The prefrontal cortex constitutes lobes near the front of the brain. If you look at someone’s eyes and gaze up, the prefrontal cortex would be the blood-rich gray matter right behind their forehead. It is responsible for a number of cognitive functions including prospective memory, focus and impulse inhibition. Many neurotransmitters are used in this section of the brain — including glutamate, which plays a significant role in memory and learning.

That build-up of glutamate can be a bad thing for your brain because, if it has to focus on regulating glutamate, the brain then has less control over decision-making.

Yet glutamate can build up in one’s brain, for reasons ranging from traumatic stress to physical illness — and often for reasons that remain mysterious. That build-up of glutamate can be a bad thing for your brain because, if it has to focus on regulating glutamate, the brain then has less control over decision-making. Glutamate build-up is directly linked to preferring low-effort actions with short-term rewards.

“This alters the control over decisions, which are shifted towards low-cost actions (no effort, no wait), as cognitive fatigue emerges (note that we are talking mental exhaustion here, not drowsiness),” Wiehler explained.

If you have ever experienced cognitive fatigue, the symptoms are likely familiar. Depression feels inevitable. The mere thought of exertion is exhausting. You struggle to pay attention. Often your limbs feel heavy, as if they are being held down by weights. Your heart may feel like it’s sinking inside your chest. Even the inside of your head can seem out of sorts, like the gears inside just aren’t able to work properly.

The Current Biology paper is not the first one in recent years to examine cognitive fatigue from a physical as well as psychological perspective. In 2020, a systematic review study published in the journal Psychophysiology linked cognitive fatigue to elevated electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. Electroencephalographs are tests that measure electrical activity in your brain by attaching electrodes to your scalp.

Similarly, a systematic review of medical literature as of 2017 and published in the journal Sports Medicine found that people who are mentally exhausted have lower endurance. Moreover, the study emphasized that cognitive fatigue has a harsher effect on one’s ability to work when the physical task is likewise more challenging.

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“The duration and intensity of the physical task appear to be important factors in the decrease in physical performance due to mental fatigue,” the authors explained. “The most important factor responsible for the negative impact of mental fatigue on endurance performance is a higher perceived exertion.”

The new Current Biology study, while revelatory, does not paint the whole picture of what happens inside the brain when we feel cognitive fatigue. For that answer, more research will be needed.

If your brain has to focus on regulating glutamate, you have less control over your decision-making.

“It’s very good to start looking into this aspect,” behavioral neuroscientist Carmen Sandi at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne told Nature Magazine. “But for now this is an observation, which is a correlation.”

Wiehler himself acknowledged to Nature that more research is needed.

“It would be great to find out more about how glutamate levels are restored,” Wiehler explained. “Is sleep helpful? How long do breaks need to be to have a positive effect?”

Yet while it’s easy to tell people to cool off when they’re at risk of overexerting themselves physically, is there any advice that applies when their cognitive fatigue is solely due to cognitive work? Does the research in the latest paper lend itself to advice which the authors of the latest study would have for, say, a college student who is cramming for an exam?

“Not really, I’m afraid,” Wiehler told Salon. “I would employ good old recipes: rest and sleep. There is good evidence that glutamate is eliminated from synapses during sleep.”

Wiehler added this piece of advice: “Check that you’re not too tired before making important decisions!”

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Restaurants start to adopt reusable serviceware

In 2011, the television show Portlandia offered up two characters seeking to learn the provenance of their restaurant dinner by tracing the chicken back to its farm and, in the process, offering absurdist commentary on peak foodie culture. A decade later, the bit feels less like parody than earnest baseline to consumers’ expanding concerns about the origins of their food and the outcomes of its production. It’s no longer enough to know that a chicken named Colin led a happy pastured life eating acorns; restaurant-goers also want assurances that it — and its accompanying side dishes — were raised in ecologically sustainable ways.

To that end, fast casual outlets like Panera and Just Salad are producing carbon scorecards to inform customers about menu options that edge toward climate-friendly, which, according to new research, actually encourages them to order vegetarian. The Good Food Media Network started releasing an annual list of 100 eco-friendly restaurants — rated for “how good [they are] for every link of the food chain” and based on things like local food purchases and operating out of LEED certified buildings — in 2017 (although it’s currently on hold).

Increasingly, as a recent survey by the National Restaurant Association found, consumers are also concerned about waste, not just as it pertains to food itself but also to the disposable dishes, utensils, napkins, straws, and condiment packets some of that food is served on and with, collectively known as food serviceware. Some restaurants are seeking to address that concern by switching, at least partly, to reusables.

Tackling monumental waste

Every year in the US, 840 billion pieces of disposable food serviceware are used by restaurants and food-related businesses like corporate cafeterias and large-scale sporting events where food and beverages are served. One organization angling to make a dent in this monumental waste stream, which costs municipalities $6 billion to manage and is estimated to have up to 10 times greater carbon impact than multi-use serviceware, is zero-waste nonprofit Upstream. Collaborating with local governments, other nonprofits and corporations, it’s been working to help the food service industry move away from disposables — away even from so-called “better” compostables that can be lined with toxic PFAS “forever” chemicals or made with other environmentally costly (and non-compostable or -recyclable) substances.

“Consumers are demanding better,” says Upstream director of business innovation Samantha Sommer. And “businesses wholeheartedly want to do better; they care about the waste they’re generating. The heart of the problem is behavior.”

Changing it, though, is a multi-tiered process. It starts, on the one hand, with convincing consumers, especially in pandemic times, that “you can’t get COVID from drinking from a [reusable] cup,” Sommer says. “The dishwasher it goes through is high-test and super-soapy and that’s going to kill bacteria of any kind; it took us a solid year to start to dispel this myth.”

Just Salad has had a popular reusable “MyBowl” incentive program since it opened in 2006 —opt for a reusable bowl for in-store ordering, get a free topping; the company says this kept 3 tons of packaging out of landfills in 2021. More recently it’s launched a Bring Your Own Cup program to address the whopping 120 billion disposable cups Americans use a year, according to ReThink Disposable; Starbucks is bringing back a reusable cup option at all its outposts, too.

Just Salad has also adopted a broader reusable dine-in bowl program at most of its 50-plus US stores that have in-store seating. Since they already “use steel mixing bowls all day long, we are set up to wash so throwing in extra bowls doesn’t affect us in terms of washing infrastructure,” says chief sustainability officer Sandra Noonan. The challenge: getting customers to throw the bowls into the bus tub and not the trash, which has led the company to design bowls too wide to fit in the trash slots. Just Salad is also experiencing “pain points” with a two-store pilot of reusables for takeout. “The struggle is that customers don’t want to slip that bowl into their briefcase or purse, or they just don’t want to wash it,” Noonan says.

In some cases, it’s the restaurants that need behavior incentives. Says John Charles Meyer, who founded nonprofit Plastic Free Restaurants in 2020 to help restaurants and schools — 57 of them to date — replace plastic disposables, “When I started the organization, it seemed like the main barrier to making these switches was monetary; if you eliminated the financial hurdle, then everybody would just do it right. Turns out change is difficult, whether it’s because of dishwasher infrastructure, or training people to do new things, or storage and inventory, or just, We’ve been doing this for 25 years and I don’t want to do it differently.”

Some restaurants need proof that switching to reusables will save them money. “When you [get] down to brass tacks you say, You’re spending [this] much money to purchase thousands of these 27 disposable items to run your business every week, and you’re spending this much money on your waste hauling bill downstream to just throw all that crap away — that’s a huge amount of cost impact to your bottom line,” Sommer says.

There is cost involved in purchasing reusables and infrastructure like bus tubs and rolling carts; and “fear about, Oh the customers will hate it and we’ll lose all the forks,” Sommer says. But return on investment — usually for swapping out some disposables for on-site dining — can happen in a few months. (Although Noonan says Just Salad’s toppings incentive renders its MyBowl program cost neutral rather than generating savings.) By which point restaurants might also realize that another fear — of water wasted by running a dishwasher upwards of a dozen times a day — is similarly unfounded. New industrial dishwashers, Sommer points out, run on very short cycles that use water extremely efficiently.

The role government can play

A number of cities and Washington State have passed zero food-service waste legislation, although these, too, require multiple tiers and stages: starting with a Styrofoam and/or straw ban such as in Washington, DC, for example, or a ban on plastic utensils and condiment packets for takeout unless a customer expressly asks for them, as both New York City and State are now trying to do. Berkeley, California has banned single-use plastic serviceware for all on-site dining, forcing even mega-chains like Taco Bell and McDonald’s to figure out how to reuse dishes and flatware.

These kinds of targeted initiatives could have ripple effects, according to Eric Goldstein, New York City environmental director for Natural Resources Defense Coalition (NRDC). Seeing how much savings such a switch could engender might convince big brands to roll out reusables in other markets. “Places like Berkeley are often proving grounds for strategies that at first blush seem unworkable but [eventually] prove just to have been ahead of their time,” Goldstein says

For smaller restaurants, some cities and counties in California provide a little funding and in-person consultations on how to swap out single-use items. “You may have to give a longer lead time for small businesses because you want to be sensitive to the short-term economics and tight budgets a lot of them work on,” says Goldstein. “But over time it will have broad-ranging societal benefits in terms of addressing the climate crisis. Ninety-nine percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels so we’re going to have to find ways of producing less throw away plastics.” Restaurants, he says, “are a great place to start.”

Sommer now focuses much of her work on getting the likes of large corporations, which may serve tens of thousands of employees in a day, to switch to reusables in their cafeterias, snack bars, and elsewhere. More challenging is figuring out how to do the same at big outdoor events, where enormous numbers of beer cups and to-go food containers are used and tossed in an evening.

“It’s really complicated because you have to work with each individual food truck to train them and get them on board and maybe not everybody’s food menu item fits in a [paper-lined] reusable basket,” Sommer says. There also needs to be some sort of easily accessible hub where reusable dishes can be washed, and a waste hauler who can transport vast amounts of dishes — and infrastructure to do this still needs to be built. But to scale, money needs to be forthcoming from public/private partnerships. And municipalities need to keep the ball rolling on single-use bans.

“Governments can do 1,000 times what we’re going to accomplish with the stroke of a pen,” says Meyer. “I hope every [municipal] government figures out how to outlaw single-use plastic in the next five years and then I can close up shop. But until that time, we’re here to help around the edges where we can.”

4 tips for buying wild salmon

In an episode of our podcast, “What You’re Eating,” we talked to experts all about salmon, wild and farmed. In the episode, we get into the details of fish farming — of salmon, and other fish, too — and how it replicates some of the environmental problems we see in land-based factory farms for animals like chickens and pigs. In short, for most fish and crustaceans (there are exceptions!), wild is preferable to farmed. This is definitely true for salmon.

On the show we ask the experts where you can buy wild salmon and how to make it more affordable. Here are their top tips for buying wild salmon.

Head to the freezer section

Unless you live in a place where wild salmon thrives — Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California — your best bet is to find wild salmon in the freezer case. You might be drawn to the pretty filets and steaks on beds of ice at the fishmonger’s case, but those were frozen once, too. Now they’ve been defrosted and sitting around for a bit.

As seafood writer Paul Greenberg told us in the episode, “Often, weirdly, they’ll mark up the price, because it sort of has this air of freshness and people think, oh, that’s really, that’s what I want. And they’ll pay the top dollar for it. And it’s, frankly, an inferior piece of fish. So what I always do is I go to the frozen counter. What you want are those individually vacuum sealed, frozen portions, that were frozen literally seaside as they came out of the water.”

Buy canned salmon

Paul Greenberg also advised that the pink salmon used for canned salmon is a delicious, sustainable and fairly affordable alternative to canned tuna.

“It’s almost always wild. There’s no canned farmed salmon to my knowledge. And to me, that’s a pretty nice switch because you get higher omega 3s than tuna, you get low to non-existent mercury and you’re buying from a largely sustainable fishery. So, canned tuna is usually a buck fifty, two bucks. Canned salmon is more like $3, $3.50, but it’s not that big a difference and you’re stretching it out anyway with celery and onion and mayo.”

Buy direct from fisherpeople

Buying direct is always a good idea, and this is especially true with wild seafood, where complicated supply chains can throw the origin and sustainability of your fish into doubt. Thankfully, it’s increasingly easy to buy salmon directly from sustainability-minded fishers, even if you live far from them.

Direct sales are especially important for Indigenous tribes that have been managing their fisheries sustainability for millenia. One of our podcast guests, Buck Jones, is the salmon marketing specialist for the tribes who fish on the Columbia River in Oregon; his organization has information about how to buy directly from Indigenous fishers on the Columbia River, for example. Some local websites have guidance on how to buy locally and sustainably in specific regions, including this excellent tourism-based page about buying local Oregon salmon when on the coast.

For more general guidance on which salmon species, in which locations, are better to avoid, see Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. For some ideas of direct sales of Alaskan salmon, see this marketplace page from nonprofit Salmon State.

Avoid overfished populations

Not all wild salmon populations are good, sustainable choices right now. Some salmon populations are overfished and should be avoided. As she explains on the podcast, Chef Renee Erickson of Seattle hasn’t been serving local king (Chinook) salmon at her restaurants for nearly five years because its population is low in her area and she wants to support the other wildlife who rely on those fish.

Right now — though it’s always good to pay attention as these situations evolve — Bristol Bay Alaskan sockeye salmon is plentiful, so it’s a good choice. For guidance on other sustainable choices, refer to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s seafood buying guide, Seafood Watch.

Republican tears up after teen nearly loses her uterus because of anti-abortion law he voted for

A South Carolina lawmaker became emotional on Tuesday after explaining that an anti-abortion law that he voted for could have resulted in the death of a young woman.

Republican state Rep. Neal Collins told South Carolina’s House Judiciary Committee that he would not be voting on a ban that only has exceptions for saving the life of the mother. The bill provides no provisions for victims of rape or incest.

Collins revealed that he had sleepless nights after learning that doctors refused to extract the fetus from a 19-year-old woman whose water broke at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Doctors told Collins there was a “greater than 50% chance that she’s going to lose her uterus.”

He said there was also a 10% chance that the woman could die of sepsis.

“That weighs on me,” Collins remarked. “I voted for that bill. These are affecting people and we’re having a meeting about this. That whole week I did not sleep.”

The lawmaker’s voice cracked as he explained that the woman had to wait two weeks before the fetus could be extracted without a beating heart.

“What we do matters,” Collins said, pausing to collect himself. “Out of respect for the process, I’m not voting today. But I want it to be clear that myself and many others are not in a position to vote for this bill without significant changes to the bill.”

At that point, the committee chair cut off Collins and asked for a vote on the bill, which the committee approved.

Watch the video below or at this link.

“Chilling”: GOP has introduced 136 “educational gag order” bills in 37 states just this year

The GOP’s nationwide war on public education—specifically the teaching of race, U.S. history, and LGBTQ+ identities—has led to a 250% spike in state-level “educational gag order” bills this year, according to a report published Wednesday by the free expression group PEN America.

Titled America’s Censored Classrooms, the new report finds that lawmakers in 36 different U.S. states have introduced 137 gag order measures in 2022, up from 54 such bills last year. With the exception of a single Democratic bill in Arizona, all of the gag order proposals unveiled this year have been led by Republican legislators.

The analysis defines educational gag orders as “state legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities in K–12 and higher education.”

“Our report documents in alarming detail the threats to how young people learn and are taught in American schools,” said PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel. “Lawmakers are undermining the role of our public schools as a unifying force above politics and turning them instead into a culture war battleground.”

“By seeking to silence critical perspectives and stifle debate,” Nossel added, “they are depriving students of the tools they need to navigate a diverse and complex world.”

NEW: State legislative proposals to restrict the freedom to learn and teach ⬆️ 250% in 2022, reports PEN America. Educational gag orders now law in 19 states home to 122M Americans, underscoring fast escalating threats to #StudentsRights.

More at https://t.co/oKOlNJQwZK #EdScare pic.twitter.com/pZtkA7ypkg

— PEN America (@PENamerica) August 17, 2022

PEN’s research shows that seven gag order proposals have become law this year, including the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida that more than a dozen Republican-led states are attempting to mimic amid growing pushback nationwide from students, teachers, librarians, and others in local communities.

The Associated Press reported Monday that “some Florida schools have moved library books and debated changing textbooks in response [to the law]—and some teachers have worried that family pictures on their desks could get them in trouble.”

“As students return from summer break,” the outlet noted, “educators are cautiously adjusting and waiting to see how the new law governing lessons on gender and sexual orientation will be interpreted and enforced.”

Such impacts bolster PEN’s argument that gag order laws “create a broad chilling effect among teachers and professors both by their pervasiveness and by the censorious discourse they inspire—part of a nationwide campaign of classroom censorship that shows no signs of abating.”

PEN notes that while fewer gag order measures have become law this year compared to 2021, “this year’s bills have been strikingly more punitive.”

“In 2022, proposed gag orders have been more likely to include punishments, and those punishments have more frequently been harsh: heavy fines or loss of state funding for institutions, termination, or even criminal charges for teachers,” the report states. “In 2023, we anticipate that the assault on education will continue.”

“More gag order bills will be filed in states where they failed narrowly this year,” the report continues. “Based on current trends, we predict that other legislative attacks on education, such as ‘curriculum transparency’ bills, anti-LGBTQ+ bills, and bills that mandate or facilitate book banning are also likely to increase.”

Jeremy Young, senior manager of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education Program and the lead author of the new report, warned in a statement Wednesday that “educators are under attack from legislators bent on depriving our children of an education that is open to a breadth of perspectives.”

“Vibrant learning opportunities are essential for democratic citizenship to flourish,” said Young. “But this report confirms a grim reality: some elected leaders are marching schools backward, and trampling on students’ free expression in the process.”