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Despite video evidence, Republicans rush to defend GOP lawmaker who gave Capitol tour on eve of riot

On Wednesday, the January 6 committee released bombshell footage revealing that Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., may have provided a Capitol tour just ahead of the insurrection to a man who appears to have participated in that very insurrection, lending more credence to the Democratic-backed claim that the GOP lawmakers led reconnaissance tours before the insurgency was carried out. 

The footage, as reported by CNN, appears to show Loudermilk allowing a man to take pictures of various tunnels, hallways and staircases throughout the complex on January 5. That man, the panel has said, was later seen storming the Capitol the following day. He also appears to have taken a picture of the office sign of Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., whom the rioter in question later threatened in a video. 

“Surveillance footage shows a tour of approximately ten individuals led by you to areas in the Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon House Office Buildings, as well as the entrances to tunnels leading to the U.S. Capitol,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thomas, D-Miss., wrote in a Wednesday letter to Loudermilk. “Individuals on the tour photographed and recorded areas of the complex not typically of interest to tourists, including hallways, staircases, and security checkpoints.”

Thompson’s claims directly contradict those made this week by the Capitol Police, which insisted that there was nothing “suspicious” about the footage. According to Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, Loudermilk’s apparent tours did not cover the tunnels that would have led rioters into the Capitol complex. 

RELATED: GOPer’s Capitol tour group threatened Pelosi, recorded areas “not typically of interest to tourists”

Loudermilk, for his part, has alleged that he never gave a tour of the building and had instead hosted an informal meeting with constituents – none of whom, he alleged, were granted access to the tunnels.

“The truth will always prevail,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “As I’ve said since the Jan. 6 Committee made their baseless accusation about me to the media, I never gave a tour of the Capitol on Jan 5, 2021.”

The next day, the Republican waxed more philosophical in his defense, claiming that there is a “war on truth” in America. “What the Capitol Police said doesn’t fit the narrative that the January 6 committee wants to come up with,” he said in a Fox News interview. “We have to stand for truth and right if we’re going to save this country.”

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Immediately following the lawmaker’s denial, numerous House Republicans rushed to Loudermilk’s defense. 

“Defamation of character is a serious issue,” tweeted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who reportedly corresponded with organizers of the “Stop the Steal” really. “Perhaps if Democrats keep lying about Republicans like @RepLoudermilk and others, they should be taken to court.”

RELATED: Lauren Boebert says her late-night Capitol mystery tour was “totally legit.” Except it wasn’t

Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tx., similarly downplayed Loudermilk’s alleged tour, saying, “There are some stairwells that are worth taking pictures of … because of their historic nature.”

“Democrats continue to spread falsehoods about the Jan. 5 Loudermilk tour,” echoed conservative journalist John Solomon, who linked an article suggesting that the Democrats are attempting to wage a smear campaign against the Republican lawmaker.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial team wrote that “the Republican was vindicated this week,” before the committee released its footage of Loudermilk. Still, the editors argued, “If the Jan. 6 select committee wants to have more bipartisan credibility, how about apologizing to Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk?”

Thus far, the January 6 committee has not formally accused Loudermilk of hosting a reconnaissance visit. The committee asked for Loudermilk’s testimony in May and this week renewed their request for an interview. Loudermilk was among six members of Congress representing Georgia—and 147 House Republicans—who voted to overturn the election results. Two days after the House select committee requested Loudermilk to voluntarily cooperate with its probe last month, Donald Trump endorsed his re-election bid. 

Numerous commentators have suggested that Loudermilk’s story around the possible reconnaissance tours has evolved over the past year.

Shortly after the riot, the lawmaker adamantly claimed that there were “no tours” led by any GOP members of Congress. But last month, Loudermilk acknowledged that he held a visit with a “constituent family” the day before the insurrection. More recently, last week, the Republican noted that this visit also included unnamed “guests,” whom the committee has suggested name-checked Nadler, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during the tour.

RELATED: Newly-elected GOP members deny giving “reconnaissance” tours before Capitol attack. So who did

Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said less than a week after the insurrection that Republicans may have led rioters on “reconnaissance tours.” On Jan. 12, 2021, Sherrill alleged that she’d seen “members of Congress who had groups coming through the Capitol that I saw on Jan. 5 for reconnaissance for the next day.”

“The video evidence released today by the bipartisan January 6th Committee, combined with the constantly shifting narrative and misdirection from Representatives Barry Loudermilk and Rodney Davis, calls into question their dedication to our common oath as members of Congress,” Sherrill said in a statement.

After Loudermilk’s denial on Wednesday, Sherill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that his “is not the only group that I saw. I saw groups down there, and I think what we’ve asked the Jan. 6 committee to do is understand what those people were doing in the Capitol complex.”

Trump lawyers hoped Jan. 6 “chaos” could pressure SCOTUS on election amid Ginni Thomas talks: report

Attorneys involved in former President Donald Trump’s failed effort to overturn his election discussed how the “wild chaos” of Jan. 6 could pressure the Supreme Court to take up an election case — and may have had inside information about the court’s deliberations, according to The New York Times.

Attorney John Eastman, who crafted Trump’s strategy to use the Jan. 6 election certification to try to overturn his loss, said in an email exchange with other pro-Trump lawyers and campaign officials that he had learned of a “heated fight” among the justices about whether to hear an election case from Wisconsin.

“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” wrote Eastman, two sources briefed on the email obtained by the House Jan. 6 committee told the Times. “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”

Kenneth Chesebro, another attorney involved in the effort who said he did not have the “personal insight that John has into the four justices likely to be most upset,” replied that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”

“Though that factor could go against us on the merits. Easiest way to quell chaos would be to rule against us — our side would accept that result as legitimate,” he continued, before adding, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. A campaign that believes it really won the election would file a petition as long as it’s plausible and the resource constraints aren’t too great.”

RELATED: Judge orders John Eastman to give Jan. 6 committee email that contains evidence of likely “crime”

The exchange came five days after Trump urged his supporters to “protest” at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 during the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

“Be there. Will be wild!” Trump wrote.

The Supreme Court at that point had already rejected several other election-related lawsuits.

The committee is also looking at emails exchanged between Eastman, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Ginni Thomas, the justice’s wife who was heavily involved in efforts to reverse Trump’s loss, according to The Washington Post. It’s unclear when the exchanges with Thomas occurred but they show that Thomas’ “efforts to overturn the election were more extensive than previously known,” two sources involved in the investigation told the outlet.

Thomas also discussed efforts to overturn the election with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and dozens of Arizona lawmakers. Thomas told Meadows she was “disgusted” with then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had refused to block the certification of Biden’s win. And she pressured Arizona Republicans to set aside Biden’s win in the state and “choose” their own alternate electors — which were key to Eastman’s legally-dubious strategy to reinstalling Trump.

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Thomas has insisted that her husband was not involved in her efforts but critics argue that Justice Thomas should recuse himself from election-related cases given his wife’s heavy involvement. The Supreme Court in January rejected Trump’s request to block his White House records from the Jan. 6 committee with Thomas the only justice dissenting in the case.

The committee is now discussing whether to spend more time probing Thomas’ role after previously deciding not to interview her, according to the report.

Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told NBC News last week that Thomas was “not the focus of this investigation.”

The emails were obtained after a federal judge ordered Eastman to turn over documents to the Jan. 6 committee, writing that Eastman and Trump “more likely than not” committed two felonies in their effort to overturn the election, including conspiracy to defraud the American people.

District Court Judge David Carter last week ordered Eastman to release another set of 150 emails, including one that he said contained evidence of a likely crime. Some of the emails also referred to three December 2020 meetings that Eastman had with “civic minded citizens of a conservative viewpoint,” including messages from a person described as a “high-profile leader” inviting Eastman to speak at a December 8 meeting. The agenda for the meeting said that Eastman planned to discuss “State legislative actions that can reverse the media-called election for Joe Biden.”

“The Select Committee has a substantial interest in these three meetings because the presentations furthered a critical objective of the January 6 plan,” Judge Carter wrote, “to have contested states certify alternate slates of electors for President Trump.”

Read more:

As a heat wave grips the U.S., lessons from the hottest city in America

Summer is not something to look forward to in Phoenix, Arizona. For many in the hottest city in America, summer is something to survive.

Masavi Perea, 47, knows this well. A former construction worker, he’s now the organizing director of Chispa Arizona, a grassroots group that fights for clean air and water, healthy neighborhoods, and climate action in Latino communities. One of his top priorities is to protect the people in West and South Phoenix who are most likely to suffer, get sick, and even die from extreme heat.

Heat is the number one weather-related killer in the U.S. Last year, there were 338 heat-related deaths in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located — the most of any county in Arizona. Like many other aspects of climate change, extreme heat highlights inequities, such as who lives in a neighborhood with plenty of shade and green space, and who lives in a neighborhood with more pavement than parks.

In a recent study, Dr. Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University, analyzed temperatures in 108 different urban areas. He found that areas that underwent redlining — the government’s practice of excluding people of color from federally-insured mortgages — were consistently hotter than other areas. “For communities of color, immigrant communities, and lower income communities living in those historically redlined areas, disinvestment brought lots of concrete, asphalt in the form of highways and freeways, big box stores, industrial facilities,” said Shandas. The areas that were redlined are still the hottest areas within cities — sometimes by 18 degrees Fahrenheit, Shandas found.

And that’s outdoors. Within homes, the difference is often greater. On the same day during a heat wave, a home in a wealthy neighborhood with tree-lined streets and access to air conditioning might be 75 degrees, while a home a few miles away in a low-income neighborhood with lots of pavement and no access to air conditioning might be over 120 degrees. “That’s where we run into some pretty big disparities in terms of health outcomes,” Shandas said. “They end up getting exposed to temperatures that are lethal in terms of human health and wellbeing.” 

In Phoenix and in other cities across the country, Perea and countless others have been working to help those who are the most vulnerable keep safe from the rising temperatures. “Phoenix is a bellwether,” said Dr. Melissa Guardaro, a research professor at Arizona State University. “People are still dying, and every heat death is an unnecessary death,” she said. But in many ways, the city is better prepared than others that are experiencing more and more extreme heat due to climate change. While more needs to be done, Phoenix does have protocols in place for when extreme heat hits, and was the first city in the country to fund an office of heat response and mitigation. These steps offer an example for other cities throughout the country that are grappling with deadly heat. “Right now it’s happening in Phoenix, but soon, it’s going to be happening everywhere,” Perea said.

Though it may sound basic, Perea says that the first step towards adapting to the heat is to talk with the people who are most at risk. Too often, Perea has seen government officials and nonprofit organizations come into neighborhoods like West Phoenix to try to tell people what to do without bothering to listen. “When people from the outside come to these communities, they already have the solutions. So people, community members, they don’t buy it. They don’t feel part of it,” he said. When outsiders try to communicate with them “from the top down,” it goes nowhere.

A few years ago, Perea participated in a project that took a different approach. A coalition of community based organizations, including Chispa, researchers from Arizona State University and the Nature Conservancy, and city and county officials came together to create hyper-local heat plans for the three neighborhoods most at risk in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

At first, people were distrustful. They could look around their neighborhoods and see streets and parks that had been neglected for years. “People were not expecting the government to do anything,” Perea said. But he and others with roots in the community were able to bring people into face-to-face meetings with local government officials and researchers. Once the people in power started listening to the community, “that’s when many solutions came up, many solutions from our own people,” he said. 

At an individual level, people can keep their homes cooler by taking simple, low-budget steps, like using foam tape to seal gaps around doors, or making larger renovations, like installing insulation. At a community level, neighbors can check in on one another, paying particular attention to the elderly or those who might not have as many social connections. At a city level, governments can reverse decades of disinvestment by adding and maintaining green spaces and tree cover and targeting upgrades, like pavement that reflects the sun’s heat, to certain areas. Finally, at a state and federal level, policymakers can make electricity more affordable and offer assistance programs for people who struggle to pay their utility bills.

In the West Phoenix neighborhood that Perea worked with, some of the solutions people proposed included: adding shaded walkways for common routes (along with water fountains), expanding the warning system that lets residents know extreme heat is imminent, and offering first aid training so they could recognize the signs of heat exhaustion and heat stroke to help each other.

Jan. 6 miniseries unfolds plot: Barr calls bulls**t, Rudy was drunk and Trump’s in trouble

On the first day of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings — a primetime spectacular produced by prosecutors, politicians and television executives and pooh-poohed by poltroons — Donald Trump chose the moment to send emails to his followers encouraging them to buy “Limited Edition” Trump commemorative golf balls.

What was the former president commemorating? Why, the alleged hole-in-one Trump claimed in a recent golf outing, of course.

By the second hearing, Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California took center stage to speak about Trump’s continuing “Big Lie” and then outlined his “Big Ripoff,” highlighting how Trump bilked his supporters for cash in a quest to challenge the results of the 2020 election. 

RELATED: Jan. 6 committee makes the case clear for Merrick Garland: Failure to prosecute Trump is political

Lofgren also disclosed on Monday how Turning Point Action, a conservative pro-Trump organization, had paid Kimberly Guilfoyle $60,000 to introduce her fiancé, Donald Trump Jr., in a speech that lasted less than three minutes at the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Lofgren also told Jake Tapper of CNN that the House select committee investigation into the insurrection has uncovered evidence that Trump’s family members personally benefited from money raised based on Trump’s “Big Lie.”

The Trump campaign, Lofgren said, “used these false claims of election fraud to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters who were told their donations were for the legal fight in the courts. But the Trump campaign didn’t use the money for that. The Big Lie was also a big ripoff.”

As if to underscore Trump’s continued grifting, even as Lofgren spoke at the hearing, the ex-president was busy reminding everyone about his upcoming birthday: for a small donation of $75, he would gladly provide an autographed smiling photo of himself as president.

Lofgren’s pointed presentation was meant to open the door to criminal fraud charges against Trump, his company and members of his family. But wait, there’s more. During the Monday hearing we were also introduced to  “Drunk Rudy” and Trump’s claims about “massive dumps” — of supposedly illegal votes, of course. This was fodder for the talk-show circuit, with Stephen Colbert taking a razor-edged approach to those “massive dumps” and describing Trump’s answer to my September 2020 question about a peaceful transfer of power as “Exhibit A-hole.”

Trump is consistent in his hustle. Give the guy that. He’s got the energy and imagination of a Tony Montana — but fewer and fewer want to say hello to his “little friend.”

In case anyone missed the overall story arc of the first two hearings, here it is: Trump planned and executed the insurrection — and took advantage of the chaos to try and remain in office.

This isn’t new information. When Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, testified before Congress in February 2019  he warned the world: “I fear that if he loses the presidential election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

We heard the very same thing from Donald Trump himself on Sept. 23, 2020, just six weeks before the election, when he declared that if you just stop counting ballots (when they favor him, of course), “there’d be no transition.” He did not commit to a peaceful transfer of power when I asked him directly. That wasn’t supposition. That was the president speaking for himself, laying the groundwork for the insurrection, telling us for the very first time – live – that he had no respect for democracy and intended to stay until he wanted to leave.

But now it’s 2022 and many of us apparently have forgotten those events. I suppose that’s why the early hearings have dedicated so much time to going over territory many of us have already traveled Yet, that trip has had its surprises.

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Jason Miller showed up as the “masked witness,” a side character in the second episode. A longtime Trump confidant, Miller testified that Rudy Giuliani was acting inebriated on election night. It was then, Miller and others testified, that Giuliani began spreading the seeds of the Big Lie. 

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien went so far as to outline two camps in Trump’s inner circle: “Team Normal,” headed by Stepien and . . . you know, Team Drunk Rudy.

Bill Stepien tried to outline two camps in Trump’s inner circle: Team Normal (led by him) and Team Drunk Rudy. But there was nothing normal about the Trump White House.

 

Trump, Stepien and Miller’s close professional relationship stands as testimony that Trump probably knew everything both men intended to say. After all, they are still with him, in various capacities. So the question is: Did Trump suggest their testimony regarding Giuliani? It matters little in the end because Trump will certainly exploit it. Rudy is destined to be the next Michael Cohen. He’ll be ground under the bus; either indicted or forced into surrendering for a mental inquest that will reveal the hallucinogenic chemicals in his hair treatment. 

Time after time in Monday’s hearing, the questioning circled back around to Giuliani. He’s going to be Trump’s last-gasp defense before the Donald is finally cornered with nowhere to run. Trump’s daughter has “checked out” and Rudy was drunk. Bill Barr, according to Trump, is a big RINO loser and everyone, I mean everyone, who has turned on Trump is a big-old poopy-pants. Only he can save us.

Barr is certainly singing a different tune these days, calling Trump’s claims of voter fraud complete “bullshit.” As recently as several weeks ago, Barr said he’d vote for Trump again. But apparently there is no one in Trump’s inner circle who supports the claim that the election was stolen — except Donald Trump.  

Team Normal? How could there be a Team Normal inside the Trump White House?

That isn’t a rhetorical question, as Homelander of “The Boys” might say.

But as “Jan. 6: The Limited Series” unfolds, it is becoming increasingly apparent where the narrative is leading us. Trump is a traitor, and it seems that Rep. Liz Cheney has him squarely in her sights. Hopefully she’s a better shot. metaphorically speaking, than her father was in reality.

It is also obvious that the hearings are meant to point toward the prosecution of Trump on a variety of criminal charges, including fraud. 

Trump will use Rudy Giuliani to take the fall for everything. Michael Cohen knows how this works. “Of course he’ll throw Giuliani under the bus,” he told me.

 

And as I suggested earlier, it’s also clear that Trump will use Giuliani to take the fall for everything. The precedent is already established. Trump threw Michael Cohen under the bus successfully; both Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and Trump himself continue to blame Cohen for the ongoing investigation into Trump’s privately held company.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has denied that, saying in a recent filing: “Indeed, the claim that [Cohen] sparked this Investigation as part of a vendetta resulting from Weisselberg’s immunized testimony is incorrect.” 

Cohen recently told me that there’s little doubt what the Trump plan is. “He never accepts responsibility for anything that he does,” Cohen said. “Of course he’ll throw Giuliani under the bus. He’ll throw anyone under the bus to save himself.”

Trump’s actions over the years offer ample proof of that. So it’s bitterly funny to see Trump fail dramatically in throwing Bill Barr under the bus.

It’s Barr, instead, who has thrown Trump under the bus — completely and effectively. For some, that makes Barr look like the newest hero among Trump defectors. But Barr’s no hero, only a savvier version of Trump. He’s a cold-blooded politician who used Trump to get what he wanted, and then washed his hands before they were dirtied with an orange stain he couldn’t wash off.

Barr’s videotaped testimony to the committee shows the former AG scolding Trump on trying to use the Justice Department as his personal attorney — but that’s exactly how Barr acted when Trump wanted him to crush Michael Cohen. It’s just that Barr knew enough to back out when he saw the writing on the wall. He’s a veteran of D.C. corruption, an alumnus of the Iran-Contra scandal, a man who has spent his professional life dodging legal stilettos aimed at his heart.

Bill Barr has been called arrogant, corrupt and incompetent. But no one has ever said he doesn’t know how to survive in Washington.

He’s been called arrogant, corrupt and incompetent. But he’s a survivor, and he definitely understands the Washington scene better than Trump could ever hope to. That’s why Barr will survive — and Trump may not. Barr has more cunning and greater survival skills — and as his testimony shows, he can bend the truth better than Trump could ever hope to do.

Trump’s supporters, of course, will tell you never to count him out.That’s also what they said about John Gotti before he ended up wearing orange.

These hearings are shaping up as a solid roadmap toward wiping away this human stain and pestilence from our national psyche. It is no mistake that Lofgren brought up the “Big Ripoff.” That’s aimed directly at those who still support Trump. These hearings are aimed at cutting Trump off from what he values most – money. The committee intends to politically kneecap him and then deliver indictments, once he has been humiliated and exposed to his supporters for the grifter that the rest of the world knows him to be.

At that point, even his most loyal supporters will likely follow the example of Bill Barr, refusing Trump succor and happily watching him fall.

At that point, you could maybe get 75 cents for a Trump photo – unless it’s used as a dart board. The sad part is, Trump and his family wouldn’t even care about that, as long as they got the money.

Read more on the Jan. 6 committee hearings:

Bill Stepien pimped for the Big Lie — now he claims to be “Team Normal”

It’s hard to reconcile the sworn testimony offered by former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien before the House Jan. 6 select committee with what I heard from him as the headliner on a hastily convened fundraising teleconference about a week after the 2020 election. 

Before the House committee, Stepien presented himself as the earnest, sober and honest campaign professional, proud to be labeled as “Team Normal” as opposed to Rudy Giuliani’s team, which generated one outlandish false claim after another. Stepien told the panel he chose to step away at an unspecified time after the election because Trump’s campaign of disinformation wasn’t “necessarily honest or professional.”

RELATED: Jan. 6 committee chair says they won’t refer Trump to DOJ — Liz Cheney is not happy

Well, he was still on the job back on Nov. 11, 2020, and sounded like a true believer in the Big Lie about widespread voting fraud that Trump had been spouting as early as April of that year, months before the election.  

“You know the things with bundling and all of the things that are happening with votes by mail where thousands of votes are gathered,” Trump said in April. “And I’m not going to say which party does it, but thousands of votes are gathered and they come in and they’re dumped in a location. And then all of a sudden, you lose elections that you think you’re going to win.”

Trump continued with an infamous phrase: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. So remember that. It’s the only way we’re going to lose this election. This is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen. Did you see what’s going on? Take a look at West Virginia. Mailmen selling the ballots. They’re being sold.”

Stepien was certainly aware of Trump’s strategy when he came to the rescue of the president’s floundering campaign in July. And he certainly projected a sense of legitimacy to Trump’s claims during that teleconference eight days after the election. It would be up to the donors on the call, he suggested, to help Trump protect his historic win.

“Please join us for an IMPORTANT New Jersey Trump Campaign Update with NJGOP Chairman Doug Steinhardt, Campaign Manager Bill Stepien, Deputy Campaign Manager Justin Clark, and Director of Battleground Strategy Nick Trainer,” wrote Paul Valenziano on the broadcast email sent out around 1 p.m. on Nov. 10. There were links to donate to the New Jersey Republican State Committee.

I remember dialing in that night and being struck by the tone of the call. It felt like a crusade, a call to arms, aimed at bending the arc of history. 

Steinhardt defiantly declared it wasn’t up to the news media to determine who won the election.  My InsiderNJ colleague Fred Snowflack was monitoring the call and reported how those who dialed in were told there was a Trump campaign war room with 50 staffers following up on alleged voting irregularities. 

“Stepien reiterated some of the complaints we have heard since Nov. 3 – namely that Republican observers were not allowed to oversee the ballot count and a suspicion that mail-in ballots may not have been handled properly. There was talk about ballots being counted in the ‘dead of night,'” reported Snowflack. 

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“That’s why we’re staying in the fight,” Stepien declared on Nov. 11. 

Stepien testified before the House select committee, however, that as “each day that wore on” after the election, “we paid attention to those numbers every single — multiple times a day, you know. Internally, you know, I — I was feeling less confident, for sure.”

As it turns out, the post-election fundraising hosted by the New Jersey GOP was just one part of the massive effort that helped to fund the Jan. 6 organizing effort and rally, before many of the attendees stormed the U.S. Capitol. 

“The claims that the election was stolen were so successful President Trump and his allies raised $250 million, nearly $100 million in the first week after the election,” said Amanda Wick, the committee’s senior investigative counsel, in a videotaped segment played on Monday. “On Nov. 9, 2020, President Trump created a separate entity called the Save America PAC. Most of the money raised went to this newly created PAC, not to election-related litigation.”

Wick continued. “The Select Committee discovered that the Save America PAC made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations, including $1 million to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ charitable foundation, $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, a conservative organization which employs several former Trump administration officials, $204,857 to the Trump Hotel Collection and over $5 million to Event Strategies Inc, the company that ran President Trump’s Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse.”

So far, it appears that Stepien, who took the Fifth Amendment during the New Jersey legislature’s Bridgegate probe, is still benefiting from his time  in the Trump vortex priming the pump of the Big Lie.

Stepien’s firm is still being paid $10,000 a month by Trump’s Save America committee, and has collected $1.2 million “from an all-star cast of pro-Trump election liars.”

 

“Stepien’s National Public Affairs firm is currently paid $10,000 a month from Trump’s Save America committee, receiving a total of $130,000 since last May, and taking in another $90,562 from Trump’s reconfigured presidential campaign,” according to a HuffPost analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. “He has also collected an additional $1.2 million from an all-star cast of pro-Trump election liars, including $190,488 from Harriet Hageman, who is trying to unseat Wyoming congresswoman and Jan. 6 committee vice chair Liz Cheney in the August Republican primary.”

Would Jan. 6 have happened the way it did if Stepien had come forward before that day? We will never know.

Read more on the Jan. 6 committee hearings:

How Wall Street speculation is driving inflation — and how the Democrats can fix it

A handful of congressional Democrats are turning their attention to an arcane loophole that, as TYT previously reported, is driving high prices for gas and food. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told TYT that he wants the Biden administration to close the loophole, which lets Wall Street speculators gamble on commodity prices, driving inflation.

The Biden administration could bring down gas prices as much as 25% just by acknowledging the problem, a former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) official said last week. Michael Greenberger, the CFTC’s former director of trading and markets, gave a virtual talk hosted by Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), during which other organizations indicated they’re launching new efforts to close the loophole.

During his remarks, Greenberger told participants that Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was aware of the issue and interested in pursuing it. Another participant, former Commodity Markets Oversight Coalition Chair Jim Collura, told TYT that he briefed Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., after Greenberger’s talk and Tonko expected to raise the matter with House leadership. (Neither Cantwell’s nor Tonko’s offices responded to requests for comment.)

RELATED: Why Joe Biden is afraid to blame big business for inflation

Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum has also voiced concerns about how the loophole is letting big financial firms overwhelm healthy price-setting with massive volumes of commodity-based swaps — essentially bets on commodity prices. The issue isn’t just gas and food; minerals and anything else traded on commodity exchanges are affected.

In healthy markets, buyers and sellers set prices by finding middle ground between them. One party wants low prices, the other wants high prices. But thanks to an obscure CFTC passage — Footnote 563, in regulatory guidance — buyers and sellers of oil and other commodities are outnumbered something like 10 to one by Wall Street traders, none of whom have a genuine buyer’s incentive to keep prices low, because few of them ever actually buy it; they mostly bet on it.

Deregulated traders dramatically outnumber genuine buyers and sellers — and as a result, price spikes caused by the Ukraine war are greatly amplified.

 

Because deregulated traders dramatically outnumber them, genuine buyers and sellers are virtually irrelevant now when it comes to setting prices. That, Greenberger says, is what’s causing Ukraine and other supply issues to create disproportionately large impacts on prices: Wall Street is amplifying spikes where a functioning futures market would cushion them.

The resulting, persistent inflation has dragged down the public economically and dragged down President Biden politically. On Sunday, for the first time ever, the national average for gas prices hit $5 a gallon. Biden’s polling, meanwhile, is carving out new lows.

As Axios noted, Biden’s policy responses so far “have failed to curb the upward climb of gas prices.” That’s because the Biden administration’s actions have mostly been responses to claims by the oil industry and its Republican allies that the issue is supply.

But that’s not the case, as Greenberger and others have been pointing out for months. If supply were the problem, prices would be easing.

The problem also isn’t corporate greed, as Democrats have suggested. Or, at least, it’s not the corporate greed Democrats have in mind.

In healthy markets, price gouging would inspire competitive undercutting. In theory, an opportunistic gas company could try to scoop up new customers by low-balling their price-gouging competitors. But even if some wholesalers did that — Russia, for instance — it wouldn’t move the market price, because gas company sales are a drop in the bucket compared to Wall Street’s bets.

As Greenberger said in his talk last week, oil companies may benefit from spiking prices, but they’re not the primary mover.

And Greenberger has more than a little experience with the issue. He played a similar role back in the aughts when gas topped $4 a gallon, pointing out a regulatory weakness called the “Enron loophole” that let Wall Street speculate on energy. In 2008, both presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama pledged to close the Enron loophole. Prices came down.

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As Greenberger, who now runs the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security, documented in a 2018 research paper, it took a while for the Obama administration to catch on to the newest loophole: Footnote 563. By October 2016, however, the Obama CFTC had found the loophole and had begun the process to close it before it could trigger a global financial crisis. As TYT reported, Donald Trump’s deregulatory crusade led first to the delay of that fix and then to its death.

Today, Greenberger says, the Democratic-dominated CFTC could take quick action to revive that fix. But despite Obama’s experience — when Biden was at his side — and despite the intense political pressure to address inflation, there’s no evidence Biden knows about Wall Street’s role, let alone what to do about it.

In fact, on Monday, the Washington Post reported that Biden is privately both frustrated and skeptical about his own administration’s work. White House chief of staff Ron Klain, the Post reported, has directed agencies to identify price-cutting measures they can take. (The White House did not respond to TYT’s requests for comment last month or for this story.)

The irony is that, according to Greenberger, the Biden administration doesn’t have to do much more than say a few words in public to have a dramatic impact on gas and other prices. In his talk, Greenberger said, “If they just [say], ‘Hey, this is going on, this is bad, we’re gonna look at it,’ I think the price of oil would go down at least 10% upon that acknowledgement, maybe 25%.”

That’s because just the prospect of regulatory attention could spook the banks and other big financial firms that are betting on gas prices. (Greenberger cites Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase; Slocum says private equity is also in the game.)

Until now, there’s been little evidence Congress sees the problem. Despite a long wait before the White House submitted its CFTC nominees, the Senate Agriculture Committee took additional months to vote on their confirmation. And even today, it’s not clear whether Biden’s new appointees at the CFTC have caught on, despite Klain’s request, and even though chair Rostin Behnam is a veteran of the past fights over Footnote 563.

As a member of the House Agriculture Committee, however, Khanna sits on the subcommittee that has CFTC oversight. And Khanna last week told TYT he’s backing Greenberger.

In a statement, Khanna said, “I’m concerned about the role Wall Street speculators are playing in driving the price of oil and food futures.”

“If they just say, ‘Hey, this is going on, this is bad, we’re gonna look at it,’ I think the price of oil would go down at least 10%, maybe 25%.”

 

And Khanna may not be alone. In an email, Collura wrote that, after the AFR call, he “had the opportunity to explain Footnote 563 to Congressman Paul Tonko.” Collura said that Tonko “was alarmed to say the least. … He promised to bring it to the attention of the Democratic leadership.” (Collura works for the New England Fuel Institute, which attended Greenberger’s talk, but was not speaking for the organization, which has taken no position on the issue.)

Khanna also endorsed Greenberger’s claim that deregulation of swaps is exacerbating inflation. As Khanna put it, “Lax regulation on swaps has been a windfall for banks and contributed to price spikes. I support reforms like the one proposed by the Obama administration in 2016 that would close this loophole.”

As Greenberger laid out in his 2018 paper, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association carved out the loophole for themselves as the CFTC was translating the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law into rules and regulations. The upshot: Wall Street’s biggest banks were able to escape regulation of virtually all their swaps by executing them through affiliates that they claimed were overseas and claimed weren’t backed up by their parent firms. Neither of those claims was true, and in some cases the affiliates themselves barely existed beyond a piece of paper.

Greenberger’s short-term remedy is for the administration to address the problem publicly. The long-term fix is to re-regulate those swaps. A number of advocacy groups told TYT they’re now looking at that.

A spokesperson for Accountable.US told TYT that their organization “was present on the [AFR] call and our team is exploring the deregulation angle.”

Dr. Steven Suppan, senior policy analyst for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), also participated in last week’s call. In an email afterward, he echoed Greenberger’s diagnosis, calling TYT’s report on it, which was shared during the call, “a public service to connect current commodity price levels and volatility to the failed Trump cross-border swaps rule.”

Suppan’s email noted past IATP engagement on this issue. In 2020, for instance, the IATP wrote to the CFTC warning that rules were needed to prevent the rise of “a system that amplifies the price responses to … shocks.” The letter, Suppan wrote at the time, was in response to Trump’s CFTC proposing new policy that would (and later did) kill the 2016 proposed Obama-era rule.

AFR’s call with Greenberger was titled “Deregulation Driving Inflation.” According to the invitation, “too little attention has been paid to how the Trump administration enabled Wall Street manipulation of commodity prices.”

The Footnote 563 loophole, the invitation said, “allows big banks to dodge U.S. regulations, making it possible to manipulate prices in some of the most volatile sectors that help drive inflation. Professor Greenberger will walk us through how we got here, what it means for inflation, and what we can do to fix it.”

After the call, AFR senior policy analyst Andrew Park told TYT, “For all the finger-pointing about the causes of inflation, both the commodities and banking regulators should be looking into how closing this critical loophole for commodity swaps could stamp out this unproductive speculation across several critical commodities, that in turn, have raised the prices billions of people pay for fuel and food across the world.”

Read more on rising inflation and the Biden presidency:

AOC claims NYC Council Leader is “punishing kids” to strike back at progressives

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram late Tuesday to denounce what she called “dirty politics” exemplified by New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, accusing the local leader of locking several progressive councilors out of funding that would have benefited their constituents.

The New York Democrat explained how six progressive city councilmembers—Tiffany Cabán, Kristin Richardson Jordan, Alexa Avilés, Sandy Nurse, Chi Ossé, and Charles Barron—were the only dissenters on Monday as the council passed a city budget which had “absolutely unconscionable cuts to education [and] housing services” while boosting funding for “really severe expansions in surveillance technology” and keeping the New York City Police Department’s $11 billion budget in place.

Just before the 44-6 vote passing the $101 billion budget weeks ahead of the city’s deadline and as disagreements over funding were still ongoing, budget documents showed that seven councilmembers—including the six who objected to the spending plan—were being locked out of the Speaker’s Initiative to Address Citywide Needs.

The $41.6 million program contains discretionary funds which Adams can give out to members to spend on projects in their neighborhoods.

All members will still receive $400,000 in discretionary funds from the newly-passed city budget.

But in Cabán’s case, the exclusion from the speaker’s initiative means a vital children’s center in Astoria, the Variety Boys & Girls Club, will lose $150,000 it needs to continue serving thousands of children in the neighborhood.

“This is just a very harsh cut,” CEO Costa Constantinides told Patch. “This definitely is a setback for us to carry out our mission.”

Ocasio-Cortez called the lockout and funding cut “an incredibly inappropriate line to get crossed,” considering children will be impacted by Adams’ decision.

“There are some things in politics that are fair game,” said the congresswoman on Instagram. “You may really want to be named to a committee, you may really want a certain one of your bills to come to the floor, and if you really make leadership angry, they will say no. And that’s a personal cost.”

“But who defunds after-school programming for underprivileged kids in public housing to score a political point?” she continued.

Adams denied to City & State that the decision to allocate funds from the speaker’s initiative was “about any single council member,” but Barron, who represents parts of Brooklyn including East New York, called the speaker an “insecure” leader who is “working against the people.”

“Alexa, Kristin, all of us, we represent hundreds of thousands of people,” Barron told City & State. “She’s not punishing us, she’s punishing the people.”

Barron, Cabán, and the other dissenters objected to $215 million in cuts to public schools and the budget’s failure to devote 1% of city spending to parks, rent relief, and affordable housing.

“Yesterday, I had principals calling me telling me that they had teachers crying because of a $1 million dollar cut their school was getting,” said Ossé. “I can’t live with that.”

Avilés noted that the city brought in high tax revenue this year and still has unspent federal stimulus funds.

“It is unconscionable to cut school budgets right now while we sit on unspent federal funds,” Avilés told the Brooklyn Paper. “How we spend money matters.”

Ocasio-Cortez expressed solidarity with the members who voted against the budget.

“Here’s where the hope lies,” she said in her Instagram video. “At the end of the day there were several extremely courageous councilmembers, almost all of whom we supported for election. I want to thank them because that kind of environment, having been in it myself, is not easy.”

Punitive actions like the one Ocasio-Cortez and others accused Adams of happen “everywhere,” said the congresswoman. “It happens on your city council whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”

While it can be difficult for councilmembers to fight against hostility from leadership without attracting more negative attention, added Ocasio-Cortez, “I’m gonna say, as the congresswoman for Astoria, do not mess with our kids, period.”

She also called on her supporters to help raise funds for Variety Boys & Girls Club to help bridge the center’s funding gap.

Ted Cruz called out for “doing nothing” about gun violence

During a United States Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday morning that was supposed to focus on exploring solutions to keep children safe from gun violence, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) delivered remarks that offered nothing of the sort.

Instead, Cruz – whom OpenSecrets.org pointed out last month “has received more funding from gun rights groups than any other politician since he was elected to Congress in 2012″ and “is the top recipient of political contributions from gun rights interests, drawing about $749,000 over his career” – boasted about having visited the scenes of firearm carnage.

“All of us are horrified at the mass murders we see unfolding across our country. Mass murders at schools. Mass murders at churches. Mass murders in large cities across our country. Day after day, week after week, and I believe everyone on this Committee wants to prevent those murders. In Texas, we’ve seen these horrific acts of evil. Repeatedly,” Cruz began, recalling his stopovers at multiple sites of massacres throughout the Lone Star State.

“I was in Uvalde the day after the shooting. I’ve seen the agony of the parents, the teachers, the school officials, of law enforcement, the grandparents of the entire community torn to pieces,” said Cruz, who attended a National Rifle Association convention in Houston the following weekend. “I was in Santa Fe within about an hour of that horrific mass murder. I was in Southerland Springs the day after that horrific shooting. I stood in that beautiful sanctuary and saw the chaos, saw the pews thrown to the side, saw the blood still pooled where innocent people had been murdered – innocent people down to an 18-month-old toddler shot and killed. I saw shattered cell phones covered in blood. I was in El Paso. I was in Midland-Odessa. I was in Dallas.”

Continuing on, Cruz noted that “over and over again we have seen these horrific crimes, and whenever they happen, there is a cry that predictably comes out – a call of ‘do something.'”

He claimed to “agree with that call,” adding that “I agree we should do something. But I also believe that we need to do something that actually will work, that will stop the next mass murderer, that will keep people safe.”

The NRA-A+-rated Cruz posted the clip to Twitter – where he reiterated his “belief” that “we need to do something” – without proposing anything, aside from previous suggestions of limiting schools to only one door and arming teachers.

“I’ve been in Uvalde, Dallas, Sutherland Springs, Midland-Odessa, Santa Fe, & El Paso following mass shootings,” he wrote. “After these horrific crimes, there is a predictable cry of ‘do something.’ We need to do something that will actually work – something that will stop the mass murderers.”

Watch below:

Cruz was subsequently inundated with a barrage of criticism for having never put forth a viable fix, and, notably, for not once mentioning the word “gun.”

Enduring love and fear: 5 surprising takeaways from Amber Heard’s “Today” show interview

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Amber Heard made her first television appearances following the conclusion of a contentious defamation lawsuit brought by her former husband Johnny Depp.

In a two-part “Today” show interview Heard sat down with Savannah Guthrie to discuss the aftermath of the trial and its impact on her personal life. In a shocking moment, the actor also opened up about her endless adoration for Depp and revealed her looming fear post-trial.

“I’m scared that no matter what I do…every step I take will present another opportunity, for this sort of silencing, which is what, I guess, a defamation lawsuit is meant to do,” Heard said. “It’s meant to take your voice.”

RELATED: As Johnny Depp wins his defamation suit, “believe all women” loses

The former couple’s six-week-long trial came to a dramatic end earlier this month after a seven-person jury determined that Heard had acted with “malice” in her 2018 op-ed published for The Washington Post. Per the jury, Heard’s written accounts of domestic abuse were enough to qualify as defamation and subsequently tainted Depp’s own career and reputation. Heard was ultimately awarded $2 million in compensatory damages for her counterclaim while Depp was awarded $10 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages.

“I think no matter what, it will mean something,” she added. “I did the right thing. I did everything I could to stand up for myself and the truth.”

Here are the biggest takeaways from the interview:

1 Heard believes “unfair” social media attention during trial biased jurors

The actor criticized the damaging coverage she received across social media, where she became a subject of mockery while Depp was hailed as a hero. 

“I don’t care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home, in my marriage, behind closed doors,” Heard told Guthrie. “I don’t presume the average person should know those things. And so I don’t take it personally.

“But even somebody who is sure I’m deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I’m lying, you still couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media there’s been a fair representation,” she continued. “You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair.”

Heard and Depp’s treatment on platforms like TikTok and Twitter have been startingly different. Many fans of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor launched a “Justice for Johnny” movement on behalf of Depp while also poking fun at Heard’s testimony in an attempt to diminish her abuse allegations.
   
“I think even the most well-intentioned juror . . . it would have been impossible to avoid this,” Heard said of the blatant hate she received both online and in person. “Every single day I passed three, four, sometimes six city blocks lined with people holding signs saying, ‘Burn the Witch,’ ‘Death to Amber.’ After three and a half weeks, I took the stand and saw a courtroom packed full of Captain Jack Sparrow fans who were vocal, energized.”

2  Heard slammed Depp’s legal team for suggesting she was acting in her testimony 

“Says the lawyer for the man who convinced the world he had scissors for fingers? I’m the performer?” Heard responded when asked about the accusations from members of the court. “I had listened to weeks of testimony insinuating or saying quite directly that I’m a terrible actress, so I’m a bit confused how I could be both.”

The actor also said she “stand[s] by every word of my testimony” and maintained her own innocence, asserting that the abuse allegations made against Depp were all true. 

“I made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve always told the truth.”

3 Heard claims the audio tapes, in which she spoke of starting fights with Depp, were edited and therefore inaccurate

When talking about the abuse she endured throughout her relationship with Depp, Heard said she never “had to instigate” violence but instead, “responded to it.”
 
“When you’re living in violence and it becomes normal, as I testified to, you have to adapt,” she explained.
 
Heard also revealed that the audio recordings where she admitted to “hitting” and abusing Depp were edited and essentially, not evidence of what was actually taking place behind closed doors.

“I know much has been made of these audiotapes. They were first leaked online after being edited,” she said. “What you would hear in those clips are not evidence of what was happening. It was evidence of a negotiation of how to talk about that with your abuser.

“As I testified on the stand about this, when your life is at risk, not only will you take the blame for things that you shouldn’t take the blame for, but when you’re in an abusive dynamic psychologically, emotionally and physically, you don’t have the resources that, say, you or I do with the luxury of saying, ‘Hey, this is black and white,'” Heard added. “Because it’s anything but when you’re living in it.”

4  Heard claims to still love Depp 

Heard told Guthrie that she has nothing but love for her ex-partner, even after their long history of legal battles. 

“I love him. I loved him with all my heart,” she said. “And I tried the best I could to make a deeply broken relationship work. I couldn’t. No bad feelings or ill will towards him at all. I know that might be hard to understand or it might be really easy to understand. If you’ve ever loved anyone it should be easy.”

5   Heard fears Depp may sue her for defamation … again

“I’m scared that no matter what I do, no matter what I say or how I say it, every step that I take will present another opportunity for this sort of silencing,” Heard revealed.

Throughout the interview, she frequently described the trial as “the most humiliating and horrible thing I’ve ever been through.” As Guthrie mentioned, Heard also previously texted Depp that she would suffer “total global humiliation” during the case’s hearing.  

“I testified to this. I’m not a good victim, I get it. I’m not a likable victim. I’m not a perfect victim,” she continued. “But when I testified I asked the jury to just see me as human and hear his [Depp] own words, which is a promise to do this. It feels as though he has.”

The actor also claimed that her Washington Post op-ed was not about Depp and that she had no intention of “cancelling” him. 

“The op-ed wasn’t about my relationship with Johnny,” Heard explained. “What the op-ed was about was me loaning my voice to a bigger cultural conversation that we were having at the time.”

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John Hinckley Jr. is officially a free man

On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan in an effort to gain the attention of Jodie Foster, who was only a teenager at the time. Today, after a lengthy stay in a Washington mental hospital, and an expanse of court supervision, Hinckley Jr. is officially a free man.

According to a report from AP News, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington stated back in September that he would free Hinckley Jr. on this date "if he continued to remain mentally stable in the community in Virginia where he has lived since 2016." 

"After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!," Hinckley Jr. wrote on Twitter this morning.

RELATED: Would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. granted conditional release

Hinckley Jr. became obsessed with Jodie Foster after seeing her role as 12-year-old Iris in the 1976 film, "Taxi Driver." He fixated on her to such a degree that his attempts to get her attention escalated from love letters and phone calls to relocating to New Haven, Connecticut so he could stalk her while she attended Yale University. When none of that worked, he made plans to kill President Jimmy Carter, but got caught up on a weapons charge in Nashville, Tennessee. When Reagan landed in office, Hinckley Jr. went at it again, shooting at him with a .22 caliber as the newly elected president was exiting the Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Along with Reagan; who was not hit directly, but wounded from a  ricocheted bullet; Hinckley Jr. also wounded a police officer, a secret service agent, and critically wounded press secretary James Brady. When Brady died in 2014, his death was ruled a homicide as a result of the gunshot from Hinckley Jr. 33-years prior.

Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity for these crimes, and was held in a mental institution for over 30 years before being released to the care of his mother until her death in 2021. 

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"It didn't have anything to do with me. I was kind of a hapless bystander. But… what a scarring, strange moment in history for me, to be 17 years old, 18 years old, and to be caught up in a drama like that," Foster wrote of her link to the event in a 1982 essay for Esquire titled "Why Me?" 

Hinckley Jr., who writes and performs his own music, often posting it to YouTube, was scheduled to play a show at Brooklyn's Market Hotel on July 8, but it was canceled after the venue received backlash for wanting to host the would-be killer.

"If Hinckley had succeeded in killing Reagan, then he would have been a pivotal historical figure," H.W. Brands, a historian and Reagan biographer, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "As it is, he is a misguided soul whom history has already forgotten."

Read more:

No, a Chinese telescope didn’t just detect aliens. Here’s what actually happened

The astronomy world was abuzz after a report came out that China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), also nicknamed the “Sky Eye Telescope,” may have detected a radio signal originating from an alien civilization.

News of the possibility of such a signal detection by the massive radio telescope was reported in multiple media outlets — including Business Insider and USA Today — and stemmed from a report that was published by Science and Technology Daily, which is the official newspaper of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China.

According to a translated version of the report republished on Chinese web portal Tencent QQ, the chief scientist of the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group at Beijing Normal University, Professor Zhang Tongjie, told his team that the FAST telescope has discovered several cases of technological traces from alien civilizations. These traces allegedly came from narrow-band electromagnetic signals that were picked up by the telescope. The report stated that more evidence is needed to better understand the source of these signals. 

“The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed and ruled out. This may be a long process,” Zhang Tongjie said. “‘China Sky Eye’ will repeat the observation of suspicious signals that have been discovered to further identify and detect new signals.”

RELATED: Scientists think we could find extraterrestrial intelligence by searching for pollutants

However, after news broke about the report, it appeared to be deleted from Science and Technology Daily, as reported by Time and Bloomberg News; links to the article resulted in an error page. Fortunately, there are American researchers who work with Chinese radio telescopes who had insight into what was going on. Salon spoke with Dan Werthimer, chief scientist of the Berkeley SETI Research Center, who works with researchers in China and clarified the news about signals. 

“I can’t speak to exactly what happens in Science and Technology Daily or why it was deleted, but I can tell you that I’m familiar with these signals, and they don’t have anything to do with extraterrestrials,” Werthimer said. “They’re interference, they’re what we call radio frequency interference (RFI),  due to transmitters on Earth, satellites, cell phones, computers and things that transmit weak signals that get into the antenna.”

Werthimer emphasized that they know these specific signals are from Earthlings and not aliens because when you point the telescope, they “come and go.”

The signals that were detected “come and go no matter where you’re pointed,” meaning that “we know they’re locally generated interference.”

“What you’d expect from an extraterrestrial is that when you point the telescope at a particular planet, you see something then you move the telescope away, it goes away, and then you move it back to the planet, and you only see it when the telescope points to that particular star,” Werthimer explained. Whereas the signals that were detected “come and go no matter where you’re pointed,” meaning that “we know they’re locally generated interference.”

Despite splashing headlines, the news initially drew skepticism from many in the astronomy world. 

“I saw the news, but the report is sketchy on important details,” Avi Loeb, the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University, told Salon via email. “It is difficult to assess whether the signal is terrestrial or extraterrestrial without knowing its detailed properties, including the suggested source star.”

Indeed, Loeb said, a technical report about the findings would give astronomers a better chance at finding the original source of such signals. 

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Werthimer said he and his colleagues occasionally come across signals they are excited about, as they are hoping to one day find that extraterrestrial life is trying to make contact with us through various radio signals. 

“Everything we’ve always tracked down has turned out to be interference,” Werthimer said. “So even though I think it’s likely that the universe is teeming with life and there’s a trillion planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, a lot of them are little dinky planets like ours with liquid water, I think the universe has intelligent life, communicative life, but there’s no evidence of it — it’s only a statistical argument.” 

Ironically, these interference signals could actually hinder our search for life in the universe. 

“This is the big bugaboo,” said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. “It’s like looking for Bigfoot in a forest that has a lot of campers.” 

More stories on search for ET:

Scientists say Yellowstone flood is a climate change red flag

Last year scientists found that climate change is melting the snow atop the majestic mountains in Yellowstone National Park and its neighbor, Grand Teton. This was not the first dire update involving climate change destroying iconic natural landmarks — among other things, the same year brought the news that Africa will lose all three of its glaciers — but it touched a special nerve because Yellowstone is so important to Americans. It is perhaps the nation’s most famous national park; and it is, without question, one of the most beautiful, especially as it enters its 150th anniversary.

Yet since the start of the week, Yellowstone has been ravaged by historic flooding caused by record rainfall and snowmelt. Park officials on Tuesday night announced that the northern portion of the park, which has been most affected by the flooding, will have to stay closed for months. While there have been no confirmed deaths or injuries as of Tuesday night, there has been severe damage to the region’s infrastructure, and all five entrances to the park have been closed. More than 10,000 visitors had to be evacuated and 87 so far have needed to be rescued. With roads flooded and power down, thousands of people in adjacent communities in southern Montana have been left effectively stranded.

RELATED: We now know how badly our cities will be flooded due to climate change

Nor is this bad news limited to Yellowstone. Salon reached out to a number of scientists who agreed that, while it is unclear exactly to what extent the Yellowstone flood was exacerbated by climate change, it is certain that climate change is going to increase the frequency and severity of floods all over the world, making Yellowstone-like events increasingly common. To understand why, one must first understand the dynamics at play in the Yellowstone flood.

“Although I am not aware of any rapid attribution studies, it is highly likely that there is a human influence on this flooding due to global warming,” Michael Wehner, a senior scientist in the Computational Research Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who extensively studies climate change data, told Salon by email. He noted that climate change increases extreme precipitation because warmer air holds more water vapor, and the Yellowstone floods appear to have been a rain-on-snow event, although he added that “it is difficult to put a number on either of these two effects without a detailed attribution study.”

“Every flooding event is unique and it can be difficult to relate trends in flooding to trends in extreme precipitation,” Wehner pointed out, citing as one example how some rivers have been engineered to control floods while others have not. “That being said, it is clear to me that the ‘100 year flood maps’ based on historical data and often used for insurance mandates are generally out of date if they do not take climate change into account.”

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Dr. Karen Ryberg, a research statistician for the Dakota Water Science Center at the United States Geological Survey (USGS), explained to Salon in writing that the agency has been monitoring Yellowstone River flooding in Corwin Springs, Montana since 1911 and has historical flood documentation going back to the 1890s.

“Those data shows that the previous highest peak streamflow at the Corwin Springs streamgage was 32,200 cubic feet per second in 1996 and 1997,” Ryberg explained. “The continuously monitored streamgage data shows an unofficial peak of 49,400 the afternoon of June 13th.” (Ryberg emphasized that “this estimate is considered preliminary until USGS review and approval of the record post flooding.”) It is normal for the Yellowstone River to flood in May and June due to snowpack runoff, Ryberg added, telling Salon that “the current flooding is cause by rain-on-snow, heavy rain while the snowpack had yet to fully melt. Such rain on snow events are not a new phenomena,” but “higher elevations such as the High Sierra and northern Rocky Mountains are predicted to see increased ROS [rain on snow] events.”

“It is clear to me that the ‘100 year flood maps’ based on historical data and often used for insurance mandates are generally out of date if they do not take climate change into account.”

In general, as Ryberg put it, “rain-on-snow events are generally climate (cold enough to still get substantial snowpack) and elevation dependent.” That is why rain on snow events are expected to diminish in frequency and severity in areas where there is less snow at lower elevations but increase where there is more snow, such as the High Sierra and northern Rocky Mountains.

“The climate and elevation dependence would suggest that other mountainous areas, such as the Andes and Alps would be sensitive to similar changes, but I am not familiar with the research in those areas,” Ryberg added, also pointing out that you can sometimes have [rain on snow] events in areas with low elevation (as happened in the Red River of the North Basin of North Dakota, Minnesota, and Manitoba during the spring).

As rain on snow events and other climate change-fueled phenomena increase the number of floods, communities will be left to struggle with one of the most common hardships caused by flooding —having no water that is safe to drink. Indeed, many Montanans have already been left without drinkable water due to the flood.

“Unusual precipitation patterns, which have become more common in recent years and are not likely to abate, put water quality at risk in a number of ways,” Dr. Alissa Cox, Program Director of the New England Onsite Wastewater Training Program in the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island, told Salon by email. To illustrate how this is the case, Cox referred to the widely-circulated photographs of water moving swiftly all over the Yellowstone landscape.

“We have all seen images and footage of the power of water when there is lots of it moving swiftly — the destruction evident in the aftermath of flooding, based on damage to structures is astounding,” Cox explained. “However, we cannot see below-ground, and so we often forget about some of our buried infrastructure that can also have major impacts on ground and surface waters during and after flooding events.” Buried tanks can be damaged due to the flooding, from underground oil tanks to gas station tanks, as well as septic systems; likewise, drinking wells can be fatally compromised by these floods. Breaching these tanks can pollute drinking water supplies, which are then further contaminated by the sediments and other debris washed around by rampaging flood waters.

Dr. Alex K. Manda, an associate professor of geology at East Carolina University, elaborated to Salon in writing about other ways that water quality can be undermined during a flood.

“In general, flood waters may entrain chemicals and/or microbes that may be harmful to human health,” Manda explained, observing that “if the frequency and/or magnitude of flood events increases, then the potential to entrain chemicals and/or microbes that may be harmful to human health might also increase.” Manda said that floods can change the temperatures in water, helping pathogenic organisms thrive in unexpected ways. Similarly, pathogenic organisms may breed due to “changes to water temperature, atmospheric pressure, and the amount of dissolved salts present in the water” as these “may affect how much dissolved oxygen is present in the water column.” Manda also pointed out that “in coastal areas, salt water intrusion would be a concern.”

Finally, experts agree that some communities — particularly those that are historically more vulnerable to marginalization — will be disproportionately impacted by this aspect of climate change.”It’s important that folks are aware of these hazards during flood events (flood water can carry many pathogens and compounds that could be dangerous to people’s health), as well as after the flood appears to recede,” Cox told Salon. “Sometimes it takes a long time for groundwater tables to drop down to pre-flood levels, which means there may not be enough dry soil below your septic system’s drainfield infrastructure to properly treat the wastewater moving through the system if a property is being actively used and the occupants are generating wastewater. Anyone relying on a private drinking water well should also have their well water tested to make sure the water is safe to drink, and talk to a professional about whether/how to decontaminate the well if it has been compromised.”

“It’s likely to be the same populations already bearing heavy burdens from intersections of severe floods, inadequate protective infrastructure, and insufficient disaster recovery resources,” Dr. Eric Tate, associate professor of geographical and sustainability sciences at the University of Iowa, told Salon when asked who was more likely to be “left behind” by climate change-caused flooding. “These include households living in poverty, renters, racial minorities, and residents of mobile homes. But as a nation, we know a lot more about how floods develop and the damage inflicted to physical assets than who is left behind and how.”

For more Salon articles about climate change:

Have we hit peak canned cocktail? A ready-to-drink Jack & Coke is here to usher in Low-Effort Summer

I vividly remember my very first mixed drink. It was somebody’s 19th birthday, and some friends and I made our way to a local dive bar — complete with scuffed pool tables, dart boards and the unshakable scent of fry oil and spilled beers. It was also well-known for being lax when it came to carding.

“Just walk in like you belong,” one of the over-21 members of the group said with a shrug. “You’ve got to be confident.” 

My confidence got me through the door, but it quickly dissipated once I was face-to-face with the bartender. Despite living in bourbon country, my parents were basically teetotalers. Drinking had been, up to that point, primarily confined to the occasional Blue Moon snagged from my ex-boyfriend’s parents’ fridge. 

“What can I get ya?” the bartender asked, before hollering at a drunk guy who was messing around with the karaoke machine. He turned back to me expectantly. “Uh . . . I’ll take a . . . um,” I stammered. I could watch his impatience grow, almost like a kettle boiling before hissing steam. 

RELATED: 8 best light and refreshing cocktails for cookouts and picnics

However, instead of blowing his top, he took a breath and said, “Let me just make you something simple, yeah?” 

A few seconds later, he presented me with a short glass packed with ice and a dark drink that looked almost cherry-colored under the red-tinted Christmas lights strung over the bar.

“It’s a Jack and Coke,” he said, before giving me a wink. “Strong, sweet and easy.” 

Easy enough that when I saw the news on Tuesday night that Brown Forman and Coca-Cola had partnered up to release a canned, ready-to-drink (or RTD) Jack and Coke, I had to laugh. It’s a two-ingredient cocktail: Do you really need it pre-mixed?

The laughter very quickly dissipated when I remembered that my dinner that night had been kettle chips, pre-cut vegetables and dip because I simply couldn’t be bothered — due to the oppressive heat, a nagging migraine and, well, just life — to do more. 

Forget Hot Girl Summer. I’m personally in the midst of my Low-Effort Summer, and RTD cocktails are a benchmark of its success. And I’m not alone: We’re in the midst of a ready-to-drink canned cocktail boom. 

Year-over-year off-premise dollar sales of RTD cocktails increased by 126%, according to data compiled by NielsenIQ. That triple-digit growth can be attributed to several factors, industry experts say.

“Canned cocktails are a convenient and quality solution for cocktail lovers,” Earl Kight, the co-founder and chief sales and marketing officer for Cutwater Spirits, told BevAlc Insights for its 2022 RTD cocktail forecast. “No ingredients, no prep or clean-up. They offer controlled ABVs and consistently taste delicious.” 

Andi Morrison, a Chicago-based bartender-turned-beverage consultant, told Salon Food that their liquor store clients posit that the meteoric rise in RTDs popularity really started amid the pandemic. 

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“People missed going to an actual bar and having a drink made for them,” Morrison said. “But then they’d go to a liquor store and get overwhelmed by everything they’d have to buy to make a bar-quality cocktail — bitters, different spirits, simple syrups, garnishes. That’s when a lot of companies really started focusing on real cocktails — just served in cans.” 

According to Morrison, RTD cocktails have come a long way from their predecessors like canned wine coolers or hard lemonades. They point to drinks like Crafthouse Cocktails’ Gold Rush, which is made with “bourbon whiskey, honey, real lemon and aromatic bitters,” or De Soi’s non-alcoholic aperitif, which is made with “reishi mushroom, passion flower and L-theanine derived from green tea.” 

And while many bars have reopened across the country in some capacity, the popularity of RTD cocktails remains strong as the summer peaks. Canned beverages are allowed in many places — like beaches, festivals, pools and public parks — where glass bottles are forbidden and a drink might be otherwise hard to come by (affordably, at least). 

All you have to do is crack open that little metal tab, and your drink is ready. Whether that drink is made up of 17 highly curated artisan ingredients or two simple ones — Jack and Coke — is up to you. 

Not a cocktail person? Check out these stories about beer:

In defense of little Leia, the believable, bratty child on “Obi-Wan Kenobi”

I started acting young, landing the first role in community theater I auditioned for at 9 years old: Amaryllis in “The Music Man,” which had lines and a singing solo, to my horror. The first rehearsal, I was cautioned by the adult actors: Careful, the director doesn’t like kids. 

Was it W.C. Fields who said, “Never work with children or animals”? It makes sense. Children steal the scenes, chew the scenery. In the case of dogs, they might eat it. Later in my illustrious community theater career, I did a production of “The Wizard of Oz” where the dog, Toto, would simply wander off stage to be petted by the audience. The animal actor was replaced by the director’s daughter, who played . . . a dog. Community theater in rural Ohio in the ’90s was wild. 

But having a child in your production, especially a young one, can mean a host of issues, especially if the story is riding on their success, as it is in the Disney+ show “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The Baby Yoda of this “Star Wars” ship is a little Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair), whose appearance was the surprise in the show’s premiere.  

RELATED: “Obi-Wan Kenobi” reminds us that the Force is not always with us – and that’s fine!

Social media has been quick to judge the tiny princess. She’s too mouthy. She’s too smart. “Too precocious, too clever for her age,” writes Forbes. I’m sensing lots of too muchness here for a female character. She doesn’t behave like a “real” kid, say critics. As a parent, let me tell you: the only thing not real about this child is that her hair mostly stays in place and she’s not totally filthy. She’s also classic Leia. This kid is a kid and she’s canon. 

Leia is cute, likely essential for most kids onscreen, and seems small for her age (perhaps Blair was younger than her character’s 10 while filming). When Leia puts her hand in Obi-Wan’s, my own near-10-year-old gasped at the tininess. But her half-pint size makes Leia more vulnerable, which is likely a good thing for the character. Otherwise, she’s so capable she might not seem to be in danger, even when kidnapped.

Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Lucasfilm/Disney+)“Obi-Wan” finds our titular hero in “retirement” on the planet Tatooine, hiding out and trying to keep an eye on Luke, the young son of his former protégé Anakin Skywalker, who, as we know, went to the dark side. (It can make you doubt yourself as a teacher.) The show is set a decade after 2005’s “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” which saw the Jedi destroyed and Anakin, who lost all his limbs thanks to Obi-Wan, ascending to the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Obi-Wan is in disguise on the dusty planet, working in a sort of a fish cannery in scenes that recall David Cronenberg’s 1999 film “eXistenZ.”

Obi-Wan KenobiPrincess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Disney+/Lucasfilm)Meanwhile, on one of our favorite lush and doomed planets, Luke’s twin, Leia, the adopted daughter of Senator Organa (Jimmy Smits, who awesomely seems not to have aged — or is a time traveler) is kidnapped by Inquisitors, who hunt Jedi, like witch-hunters from New England. Organa comes to Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) for help.

Leia doesn’t listen. She’s not extremely grateful about being rescued. 

As the show’s head writer and executive producer, Joby Harold, told SYFY WIRE, young Leia in danger was “the call to action for Obi-Wan . . . Her presence was one of the few things — if not the only thing — that could pull Obi-Wan away from Luke.” It’s rather upsetting and unremarked upon that Obi-Wan would be more concerned for the male child of his former pupil and not the girl, which seems to speak less to the Organa’s capable parenting and incapable guards and more to sexism. But anyway, out of his cave, away from his cannery and back into Jedi business Obi-Wan goes. 

Obi-Wan KenobiObi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Disney+/Lucasfilm)As a Jedi, Obi-Wan cannot turn away from an innocent life in need. Especially not this life. But this child is, as they say, more than he bargains for. Leia doesn’t listen. She’s not extremely grateful about being rescued (recalling Leia later in life during another kidnapping, when she tells a disguised Luke, hellbent on saving her, he’s “a little short for a stormtrooper“). One gets the impression she could have rescued herself (she certainly tries). She’s willful, sassy and mouthy. She talks back to everyone, from her bullying, jerk older cousin to her kidnappers to Obi-Wan (“It’s just, you seem kinda old and beat up”).

Would the famously outspoken and fierce Fisher have wanted a meek, personality-less, not smart character — some people’s apparent idea of a child — playing her? 

Leia is not just a princess. She’s a “cool princess” and as the “cool girl” trope dictates, she’s a lovable tomboy. She doesn’t conform to her role, which she says mostly consists of waving. She runs away into the forest to play, shirking her official duties and her annoying fancy clothes. Like her mother before her, Leia has a lady in waiting pose as a kind of decoy.

Princess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Lucasfilm/Disney+)Something the “Star Wars” universe is so good at is always coming up with some new adorable droid (I’m still not over D-O). So, Leia has Lola (L0-LA59), a pocket-sized, ladybug-like toy droid to which she’s terribly attached, perhaps in part due to the isolation of being a princess, like many children cling to a stuffed animal or favorite toy. Lola also gives Leia the chance to display the extraordinary empathy inherent in her character. She is as kind and gracious to droids as she is to people. Remember adult Leia and the Ewoks? She shares her snack.

Obi-Wan KenobiPrincess Leia Organa (Vivien Lyra Blair) holding L0-LA59 (Lola) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” (Disney+/Lucasfilm)In the show, Obi-Wan is rusty at the Force, to the point of uncharacteristic incompetence, according to some critics. Not so Leia, who, being Force-sensitive, may be evading bad guys that way. Or perhaps, it’s less-than magical bad editing or directing that finds no adult able to catch the tiny girl.

But Leia’s realistic kid skills include lying once she and Obi-Wan go on the lam, reminiscent of a little Drew Barrymore as Charlie in “Firestarter” (who Blair resembles, more than a little, in demeanor and confident acting chops). She remembers their cover, even when Obi-Wan does not. Try getting a child to forget a dessert you’ve promised them.

It’s past time for Leia’s story, for the fiction to give the feminist leader the epic backstory she deserves.

Kids aren’t always sweet. They lie, manipulate, scam. They also adapt. Leia is resilient, as the toughest kids often have to be. And her outspokenness does children right. She also does the character— and Carrie Fisher, who immortalizes Leia as an adult— proud. Would the famously outspoken and fierce Fisher have wanted a meek, personality-less, not smart character — some people’s apparent idea of a child — playing her? She would not. The sparks of the powerful leader Leia will grow up to be are here: independent, unconforming, defiant but loyal.

So are the sparks of the bond between Obi-Wan and Leia. Grown-up Leia and Han, after all, name their child Ben. Perhaps this is why.

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Little Leia marks an important shift for the story. When Obi-Wan gazes at a young Luke from afar, checking in on him as the boy plays on his aunt and uncle’s moisture farm, you might think the show is going to focus on the boy. Thankfully and importantly, it does not. It’s past time for Leia’s story, for the fiction to give the feminist leader the epic backstory she deserves.

And for those who say this little Leia doesn’t act like a child, let me introduce you to my child, outspoken and so precocious one of his babysitters used to keep massive lists of his sayings. A common reply to parents, especially women on the internet, relating stories about their own children is that it didn’t happen. (To which I would say: tell me you don’t have any experience with children without telling me you don’t have any experience with children.) “Obi-Wan” and the capable Blair get it right: right for children and right for this character at the very beginning of her journey.

More stories like this

“The View” erupts into chaos after Alyssa Farah Griffin claims, “The red wave is coming”

“The View” had a lot to say after Donald Trump and his followers enjoyed a key victory following Tuesday’s South Carolina GOP primary.

Trump-backed candidate Russell Fry defeated Congressman Tom Rice, the five-term incumbent who voted to impeach the ex-President after the Jan. 6 riot. Fry’s recent victory “marks the first time this election cycle that a pro-impeachment Republican has lost at the ballot box,” NBC News reports. It also highlights Trump’s unwavering efforts to push forward his array of loyalists and seek revenge on Republicans who have condemned his presidency.

During Wednesday’s “The View,” the hosts discuss what the future possibly holds, and tensions quickly run high between guest co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sunny Hostin.

RELATED: “The View” hosts tickled by “Trump minions” at Fox News who are split over Dr. Oz Senate endorsement

Griffin, who is a self-declared conservative and Republican, notes that Fry’s overall triumph is “scary” because he believes that his allegiance to Trump is enough to qualify himself as the only “real” conservative in the race. In comparison, she says Rice has an American Conservative Union score of over 90%, which makes him “a true conservative.”

The former White House director of strategic communications under Trump then issues a warning for her fellow panelists: “The red wave is coming. Republicans are going to win the midterm, short of something unforeseen that I cannot predict now.”

The other hosts erupt, with Joy Behar questioning Griffin’s expertise and Whoopi Goldberg reminding viewers that voters have the power to decide who can and can’t hold office.  

Sunny Hostin, however, takes the most offense to Griffin’s statement and slams both the “red wave” along with the Republican party’s failure to vote against critical, nationwide problems.

“We don’t know that a red wave is coming because that red wave is based on a big lie,” Hostin says.

“The other thing is, you’re talking about inflation and you’re talking about the baby formula shortage and gas prices and people are going to be upset at Biden for that,” she adds, referring to a few issues that Griffin previously brought up when explaining why a Republican majority is on the horizon. “But the bottom line is there are solutions to that, and Biden has been pushing solutions, the Senate Democrats have been pushing solutions, the House Democrats have been pushing solutions.”

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“Republicans at every single turn have been voting against those solutions so that they can campaign on the problems that you are talking about,” Hostin continues, now directing her full attention on Griffin. “They’ve been voting against it so that we can’t solve those problems that are affecting everyday Americans, and I think that’s disgusting!”

Goldberg urges viewers to cast their votes both carefully and strategically in the midterm elections: “We are the only thing between total ridiculousness in this country and getting our lives back in some sort of order. And it’s up to each and every one of us.”

Watch the full discussion below, via YouTube:

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What to do with that empty space above your kitchen cabinets

did a lot of apartment hopping in my 20s, and while my temporary homes often varied significantly in terms of location and style, most had a few things in common: tiny bathrooms, limited storage space, and a big ol’ gap over the kitchen cabinets. I understand why the latter is often necessary, especially in apartments — if you installed standard-size cabinets flush with the ceiling, there’s no way you’d ever be able to reach inside them — but that didn’t make the gaping space any less awkward.

Most of the time, I just let the space above my cabinets go to waste, but there are ways you can make better use of it — as a display for decorations, extra storage space, or a combination of both. The internet has plenty of ideas for decorating above kitchen cabinets, and these are a few of my favorites.

The tips

1. Use a sign as your focal point

One of the problems I always had when decorating above cabinets is that a lot of decorative items seem dwarfed by the large opening. If you want the space to seem “full,” you’re going to have to really pack it with decor. However, an easy solution is to use a sign as a focal point above your cabinets. You can find cute options on Etsy, Amazon, or even at stores like Michaels, and from there, you can simply place a few decorative items, like faux flowers, on each side for a balanced design.

2. Call in the baskets

When in doubt, baskets are always a good choice. This kitchen has an impressive collection of baskets on top of the cabinets — the different shapes and sizes help create visual interest, but the consistent color offers a cohesive look. Plus, you can always add a few decorative vases or faux plants to break up the display.

3. Pack in some plants

Plants can make any space feel more homey, and I love the eclectic array of greenery on top of these kitchen counters. However, I’ll be the first to admit that putting plants up that high would require a lot of upkeep (assuming you’re using real ones). You’d have to climb up there on a regular basis to water them all, which is almost certainly too much effort for a lazy gardener such as myself. You could create a similar look using fake plants, though, which you’d only have to dust occasionally.

4. Get creative with flea market finds

Brand new decorations can be quite pricey, but if you don’t mind a more rustic look, you can definitely find budget-friendly options at your local flea market, thrift store, or even just neighborhood yard sales. This person has used old window frames to create a cool farmhouse-style display, breaking it up with an oversized cutting board.

5. Create extra storage

If you have a smaller kitchen, why not use the space above your cabinets for extra storage? With the help of a few baskets or bins, you’ll have the perfect spot to stash infrequently used kitchen items, such as specialty baking pans or even extra pantry supplies. (Just make sure any food items are stored in airtight containers to prevent pests from moving in.)

6. Expand your cabinets

If you truly hate the empty space above your cabinets, you can always get rid of it. (Assuming you own and aren’t renting, that is.) With a few pieces of plywood, the right power tools, and a can-do attitude, you can expand your cabinets upward, creating an enclosed space that makes your kitchen feel more cohesive.

7. Create a seasonal display

You can keep your kitchen feeling fresh by changing up your above-the-cabinet displays each season. I love the idea of having pumpkins and orange foliage up there in the fall, and this winter-themed display with miniature Christmas trees is just too cute! Plus, if you’re switching out the decor on a semi-regular basis, you’ll also remember to dust up there.

8. Show off your special china 

If you don’t have a china cabinet, you can put your favorite dishes on display above your kitchen cabinets. All you need is a few plate stands to safely prop up your fine china — and this person actually put charger plates behind the dishes to create more dimension. Smart!

9. Display your favorite art 

Your kitchen cabinets might not be the first spot you think to display artwork, but here’s proof that it actually works quite well. This kitchen has a collection of complementary oil paintings arranged in the large space over the kitchen cabinets, but I could totally see a large family portrait on a canvas or an oversized piece of statement art work just as well.

10. Use greenery in tight spaces 

Sometimes the gap over your cabinets might be just a few inches tall, which doesn’t leave you very many options for decorating. In these instances, I love the idea of using some faux greenery to brighten up the space. A few meticulously draped garlands will help make your kitchen feel more homey, and it’s also a low-maintenance decor option, which is always a plus.

11. Add an extra shelf 

Show off your collection of milk glass or vintage Pyrex by adding an extra shelf on top of your kitchen cabinets. While you could install a shelf, this particular design simply uses three sturdy wine racks to prop up a piece of wood — an ingenious idea that’s ideal for renters and homeowners alike! As an added bonus, you’ll also have a new spot to stash your favorite bottles of wine.

This post contains products independently chosen (and loved) by our editors and writers. As an Amazon Associate, Food52 earns an affiliate commission on qualifying purchases of the products we link to.

19 creamiest, dreamiest ricotta cheese recipes

Ricotta cheese is a necessary part of life, by which I mean it is a necessary ingredient in lasagna, and lasagna is life. But rarely do we sing the praises of ricotta the way college students do about burrata after studying abroad in Italy for three months, or the way we obsessed over blocks of feta on TikTok.

Now is ricotta’s long overdue chance to step in the spotlight. We have 19 recipes — starting with two homemade ricotta recipes (one for the stovetop and the other for your Instant Pot), moving all the way to ricotta toasts, pasta, pizza, and pancakes.

Our best ricotta cheese recipes

1. Creamy Homemade Ricotta

Let’s start with the basics — homemade ricotta cheese. Think back to your nursery school rhymes: three kinds of dairy — whole milk, heavy cream, and buttermilk — cook together to create curds (aka fresh ricotta!). Strain the curds over cheesecloth to remove the whey — the longer you let it drain, the firmer and lumpier it’ll be (for creamier ricotta, leave more whey). Food Editor Emma Laperruque recommends drinking the whey over ice!

2. Ricotta Toast

Now that you’ve made fresh ricotta, it’s time to taste it. Sure, you could eat it by the spoonful, but spreading it over thick slices of brioche is even better. If the ricotta is too thick, mix it with a little bit of heavy cream so that it’s even more spreadable.

3. Super-Fluffy Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

Wondering how to get fluffy, cloudlike pancakes? Ricotta, of course. “The tang from the cheese and lemon means they are less sweet, so that you can pile on all your favorite toppings (like maple syrup, fresh berries, and powdered sugar),” writes recipe developer Elaine Lemm.

4. Ricotta Spoonable

The idea of ricotta spoonable is that you can, at any point, grab it from the fridge, put it on the table, and instantly have a snackable dip. Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan (who hardly needs an introduction) mixes whole-milk ricotta with lots of chopped herbs based on whatever’s in season, freshly grated lemon zest, olive oil, and lots of salt and pepper.

5. Cheesy, Meaty Lasagna

You can’t have lasagna without ricotta cheese (sorry not sorry). Whisk fresh ricotta with an entire cup of grated Parmesan, finely chopped garlic, and salt, then spread it over homemade ragù and no-cook noodles.

6. Personal White Pizza with No-Yeast Dough

My new go-to weeknight dinner is this 10-minute pizza (yes, only 10 minutes, thanks to the yeast-free dough) topped with a cheesy trio of mozzarella, Parmesan, and ricotta, plus garlic and red pepper flakes for good measure.

7. Grandma DiLaura’s Italian Ricotta Gnocchi

Here’s the thing about gnocchi — if the potatoes aren’t cooked exactly right or the dough is overworked, the gnocchi will taste tough and chewy, rather than melting in your mouth. Leave it to ricotta to make everything, including these gnocchi, taste lighter and brighter.

8. Chocolate-Flecked Ricotta-Mascarpone Cheesecake

I am asking you to bake a cheesecake with ricotta. And mascarpone. And cream cheese. This chocolate-studded cheesecake is, in the words of Food52’s resident baking BFF Erin Jeanne McDowell, “sophisticated and comforting.”

9. Bucatini with Ricotta and Sumac

A little bit of ricotta cheese makes this lemony pasta recipe so creamy (as does a little bit of the starchy pasta water).

10. Ivy Manning’s Instant Pot Homemade Ricotta

We’ve gone over how to make homemade ricotta cheese in a pot on the stove, but did you know  that you can also make it using everyone’s favorite multicooker, the Instant Pot? The yogurt setting will transform three basic ingredients into creamy ricotta.

11. Pasta with Ricotta and Saffron

Saffron — the world’s most expensive spice — obviously deserves to be called out here but we can’t take our eyes off of the ricotta either, which creates a ridiculously creamy “sauce” for the pasta.

12. Roasted Grape + Ricotta + Thyme Toast

Go beyond basics with this upgraded ricotta toast that’s topped with halved grapes and olive oil, and broiled in the oven until the fruit is blistered and the cheese is a little melty.

13. No-Bake Cheesecake with a Pretzel Crust

Homemade cheesecakes are always a treat, but sometimes they’re too intimidating. This no-bake recipe gets its luscious creamy filling from a combination of ricotta and cream cheese, plus sugar.

14. Spicy Scallion Pasta with Ricotta

Even when you don’t have time to cook or go grocery shopping, you can quickly put together this two-serving pasta dish that tastes like it took far longer to cook than it did.

15. Toast with Buttered Raisins and Ricotta

“Not quite jammy, yet no longer tough and chewy, the raisins become a whole new condiment something like a conserve, but far less work,” writes recipe developer Rebecca Firkser. Warm fruit,creamy ricotta, and crunchy toast is a satisfying snack at any hour of the day.

16. Pasta alla Norma (Eggplant and Tomato Pasta)

This classic Italian dish doesn’t call for fresh ricotta, but rather ricotta salata, which is a hard cheese that is pressed, salted, and aged for at least three months.

17. Smoky Eggplant with Whipped Ricotta and Pistachios

Start the party with this grilled appetizer, and no one will ever want to leave.

18. Cheesy Stuffed Shells with Kale Pesto

Instead of a meaty bolognese sauce, these vegetarian shells are stuffed with ricotta cheese and smothered with a kale-based pesto.

19. Kale and Italian Sausage Lasagna with Pumpkin Béchamel

When the temperature drops below 60, I would like someone to immediately hand me a personal tray of lasagna. This autumnal one features layers of kale, Italian sausage, pumpkin béchamel, herby ricotta, and fresh mozzarella.

Election expert pours cold water on Trump endorsement hype: His candidates were already going to win

Over the past few months, many journalists and pundits have credited the power of Donald Trump’s endorsements with determining the winners of Republican primaries.

Trump has made 203 candidate endorsements in the 2022 election cycle so far, targeting state, congressional, gubernatorial and even local races.

Based on the numbers alone, receiving a “Trump bump” seems like a surefire way to win an election. So far, 94% of Trump’s favored candidates have won their Republican primaries.

But as a political scientist who studies voting and public opinion, I have my doubts about the true power of Trump’s endorsements. Instead, it is more likely that most of the candidates Trump has chosen to endorse were already on track to win their respective races.

Political science says that endorsements do occasionally matter for determining election outcomes. But in most cases, their effects are far less potent than commentators might expect.

This is because endorsements are not made in a vacuum. Much like the endorsements of interest groups and political parties, the so-called “Trump bump” is mostly a reflection of the attributes a candidate already had before the endorsement.

Backing the winners

Candidates’ electoral fortunes mostly stem from whether they’re incumbents, which political party they belong to, their ideology and their political savvy. In turn, these attributes also determine who gets endorsed by prominent groups and people.

For this reason, Trump’s endorsements are an excellent lesson in what scholars call “reverse causality.” This is what happens when people mistake a phenomenon’s effects for its cause, like thinking that people holding umbrellas have caused it to rain. In this case, reverse causality implies that Trump’s favorite candidates are not more likely to win because of his endorsement.

To be sure, candidate endorsements can act as valuable cues for voters seeking to make informed decisions. Voters might think to themselves, “If this person, whom I trust and like, supports a candidate, then I should trust and like the candidate too.” This is especially true in elections in which little is known about the contenders.

Such mental shortcuts allow voters with limited knowledge of the candidates to vote according to their preferences. But in most cases, endorsements do little to persuade voters to shift their support from one candidate to another.

The real sources of the ‘Trump bump’

There are at least three other reasons that many of Trump’s favored candidates are finding success in 2022.

First, most of Trump’s endorsed candidates already hold office. This gives them a distinct electoral advantage. Only one of the congressional incumbents whom Trump endorsed lost in the primary. That candidate, Rep. Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina, chose to run in a new congressional district, partially scuttling his incumbency advantage.

The stellar performance of Trump-backed incumbents is unsurprising, because incumbents already have a nearly 100% chance of winning primaries. The rare primary upset of an incumbent, like the one that elected New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, normally sends shock waves through the political landscape.

Of course, Trump has also endorsed some challengers. Research shows that challengers raise more money if they receive high-profile endorsements. Trump’s endorsement might have had a similar effect.

But longtime incumbents often have even deeper pockets, making them difficult for challengers to defeat. The record reflects this reality: Of the nine Trump-endorsed challengers who have gone up against incumbents in primaries thus far, only three have managed to win.

Trump endorsements are also likely determined by a candidate’s quality, which can be defined as the extent to which a candidate possesses the skills, reputation and resources – including money – to win elections. High-quality candidates normally contest only those elections they know they can win. Key endorsers like Trump stake their reputation on their support for candidates, meaning they are probably choosy about whom to endorse. This helps to explain why not all vocally pro-Trump candidates have received his official blessing.

Finally, a candidate’s ideology plays an important role in determining winners, losers and support from endorsers. Trump is likely to endorse conservative candidates who align with his policy preferences – though not always. Successful conservative candidates run in districts and states with many conservative voters. Trump’s endorsement will merely clarify these voters’ affinity for the candidate, while reaffirming others’ decision to vote for someone else.

Two people, a man and a woman, voting at booths with a lot of writing on them.

Many elements influence how a person votes, and an endorsement is not usually decisive. Here, voters in Atlanta, Ga., on primary election day, May 24, 2022. Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

No endorsement, no problem for Republicans in ’22

Before assigning Trump the credit for boosting candidates in the upcoming 2022 general election, observers should recognize the notorious difficulty of proving causation in the realm of electoral politics. 2022 is primed to be a banner year for Republican candidates, whether they receive a nod from Trump or not.

Midterm election years are almost always tough contests for the party of the incumbent president. Voters associate candidates down the ballot with the president’s performance in office. After an early honeymoon phase, presidential approval often slumps as midterm elections near, damaging the chances of congressional candidates.

A volatile economy is also bad news for the party of the incumbent. While presidents’ actions might not have much effect on national and global economic conditions, many voters blame the incumbent party anyway.

These factors combine to heavily favor Republican candidates this year. Trump’s endorsements are far less important for voting behavior than the political and economic context of this year’s elections.

Hopefully, when it comes time to discuss the reasons that some candidates won and others lost, commentators will keep these lessons from voting behavior research in mind.

 

Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

South Dakota voters overwhelmingly reject amendment that would make it harder to expand Medicaid

South Dakota voters overwhelmingly shut down a measure that would have made it a requirement for ballot proposals, like expanding Medicaid, to garner support from 60% of the state’s electorate as opposed to a simple majority. 

The Republican-backed measure, dubbed “Constitutional Amendment C,” was defeated by a two-to-one margin. It comes ahead of a Democratic-led state referendum to expand Medicaid coverage for the state’s residents, as Forbes notes. 

According to MSNBC, South Dakota is one of twelve states that have recently refused to expand Medicaid. But The Washington Post reports that it has the highest chance of passing the provision out of any of them. The move would provide roughly health coverage to roughly 42,000 South Dakotans. 

“Today, the people of South Dakota have preserved their right to use direct democracy,” Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, said, according to Forbes. “This victory will benefit tens of thousands of South Dakotans who will choose to use the ballot measure process to increase access to health care for their families and neighbors, raise wages, and more policies that improve lives,” she added. “We look forward to what’s next in South Dakota: an aggressive campaign to expand Medicaid in the state.”

RELATED: Republicans’ refusal to expand Medicaid had a cost: 15,000 deaths

If passed, Constitutional Amendment C would have applied only to measures that “raise taxes or require $10 million or more from the state over the next five years,” as the Post reports. 

To that point, Republican state Rep. Jon Hansen, who helped write the amendment, has claimed that it would help taxpayers gain “some control over that out-of-control tax and spending that we see nationwide.”

“Here in South Dakota, we can put a little more protection in place for taxpayers,” he reportedly said at a recent town hall. 

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South Dakota would not be the first state to bypass its GOP-led legislature or Republican governor on the issue of health insurance. Back in 2018, voters in Nebraska, Idaho and Utah passed ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid’s coverage. And in 2017, Maine did just the same thing.

RELATED: Utah GOP rolls back Medicaid expansion approved by voters, denying health care to thousands

Several polls show that voters in states with GOP governors and Republican-led legislatures support Medicaid. Just this February, for instance, a poll revealed that seven out of ten voters in Alabama support the program’s expansion. Another poll from 2021 found that 54% of the Florida electorate feels the same.

Last year, the Biden administration provided states with added incentives to expand Medicaid as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which allowed states to benefit from a revamped federal matching program. 

“In addition to the 90% federal matching funds available under the [Affordable Care Act] for the expansion population, states also can receive a 5 percentage point increase in their regular federal matching rate for 2 years after expansion takes effect,” the Kaiser Family Foundation says in a 2021 analysis. “The additional incentive applies whenever a state newly expands Medicaid and does not expire. The new incentive is available to the 12 states that have not yet adopted the expansion as well as Missouri and Oklahoma.

Newsmax host pushes conspiracy theory that Pelosi part of plot to assassinate Kavanaugh to GOP rep

Newsmax host Chris Salcedo recently laid out a bizarre theory suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was part of a plot to have U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh killed so President Joe Biden could nominate a replacement.

On Tuesday, June 14, Salcedo spoke with Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill., where he noted that the top-ranking Democratic lawmaker had been responsible for holding up the passing of legislation to enhance security measures for justices and members of their families.

“A lot of folks are starting to ask some questions out there, congressman,” Salcedo began. “They’re openly wondering why Nancy Pelosi sat on a bill that was passed by the Senate to protect Supreme Court justices. Now she’s moving after an assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh. Are Americans right to question if Pelosi was actually hoping for, or encouraging violence that could lead to Joe Biden appointing a new Supreme Court justice?”

Salcedo’s remarks come just days after an armed man was apprehended not far from Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. At the time, the man reportedly admitted that he wanted to kill the justice.

On Tuesday, House lawmakers also voted in favor of the bill. However, Davis appeared to pivot from the question.

“It’s certainly questions [sic] that Nancy Pelosi and others need to answer as to why she thought somehow Justice Kavanaugh – after having an assassin in his backyard – is somehow safe over the weekend. We could’ve gotten to this bill last week, but she chose to hold it up and she needs to answer as to why.”

Despite Salcedo’s baseless theory, the bill for enhanced security passed with a staggering vote of 396-27. Biden is expected to sign the bill into law sometime next week. The opposing votes all came from Democratic lawmakers.

DHS investigating “challenge coins” emblazoned with image of border patrol corralling migrants

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is investigating a coin memorializing an image of a border patrol agent on horseback violently corralling a Haitian migrant in Del Rio, Texas. 

The unofficial “challenge coin,” first reported by The Miami Herald, is inscribed with the sentences “Reining it in since May 28, 1924” and “Yesterday’s border is not today’s border.” Another sentence along the coin’s rim reads: “You will be returned.” The date on the coin, 1924, reportedly marks the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act, which formally established the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) in an effort to “drastically cut the total number of immigrants allowed in each year and effectively cut off all immigration from Asia,” as Smithsonian Magazine noted.

According to the Herald, at least 41 of the coins have been purchased through eBay at $15.19 apiece. Luis Miranda, the assistant commissioner of CPB, has said that anyone selling the memorabilia will face “appropriate action.” He added that the agency will “send a cease-and-desist letter to any vendor who produces unauthorized challenge coins using one of CBP’s trademarked brands.” 

RELATED: Special envoy to Haiti resigns in protest of Biden’s continuation of Trump immigration policy

“The images depicted on this coin are offensive, insensitive, and run counter to the core values of CBP,” Miranda said. “This is not an official CBP coin.”

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Guerline Jozef, co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which fights back against human rights violations of Haitian asylum-seekers, called the coins “outrageous” and “beyond inhumane.”

“The fact they have created merchandise depicting the likeness of people who suffered cruel and inhumane treatment should not be tolerated by DHS or the Biden administration,” Jozef told the Herald. 

The coin’s imagery dates back to last September when pictures surfaced of Border patrol agents on horseback aggressively handling some 15,000 Haitian migrants in Del Rio. The incident was immediately followed by the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, who called America’s policy approach to Haiti “deeply flawed.” At the time, he claimed that his “policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed.”

RELATED: Top State Dept. official rips Biden’s “illegal” and “inhumane” deportations on his way out

Since the photos appeared, the border agents in question have been prohibited from engaging with migrants any further. And According to Fox News, several of them will be charged with “administrative violations,” though they will not be held criminally liable for possible human rights violations.

Oath Keepers plotted to attack lawmakers in tunnels photographed by GOPer’s Capitol tour group

Right-wing extremists charged in the U.S. Capitol riot threatened to “gas” lawmakers in tunnels where Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., led a tour the previous day.

The Georgia Republican led a group of 15 individuals later identified by police as constituents on a tour of the Capitol complex, where one participant took photos of hallways, staircases and tunnels, and that same man was shown on video from Jan. 6 shouting threats against individual Democratic lawmakers.

“We’re coming to take you out and pull you out by your hairs,” the man says, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “When I get done with you, you’re going to need a shine on top of that bald head.”

Conspiracy charges filed shortly after the riot showed a group of three Oath Keepers were particularly interested in lawmakers’ movements in the tunnels underneath the Capitol complex, and one of them, Thomas Edward Caldwell, allegedly received a Facebook message about them.

“All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in,” reads the message. “Turn on gas.”

Caldwell also received another message on the topic, according to an affidavit that replicates spelling errors in the original statement.

“Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels 3 floors down,” the message reads. “Do like we had to do when I was in the core (sic) start tearing oit florrs go from top to bottom.”

The Jan. 6 committee noted on Wednesday that the tour had visited “entrances to Capitol tunnels.”

“Individuals on the tour photographed/recorded areas not typically of interest to tourists: hallways, staircases and security checkpoints,” the committee tweeted.

There is currently no evidence that the people who went on the tour were involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Congress may actually get somewhere on gun safety — but Republicans’ misogyny is getting in the way

Mea culpa time. In the latest edition of my newsletter, Standing Room Only, I was quite sour about reports about the bipartisan gun bill being negotiated by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. The reporting I’d read suggested the bill was primarily focused on funding for “red flag” laws and mental health spending, both of which are nice but will do little to actually stem the problem of gun violence, especially in red states. But more fleshed-out details since show that one under-discussed aspect of the bill may end up being the most important: A proposal to finally close the “boyfriend loophole” in the federal background check law. 

This is something that both feminists and gun control activists have been demanding for decades, only to have Republicans — no fans of either preventing gendered violence or gun deaths — get in the way. 

Republican opponents to closing the boyfriend loophole simply see hitting a girlfriend as a lesser crime than hitting a wife.

It’s doubly frustrating for how nonsensical the allowance is. Under the current background check system, a person with a domestic violence conviction should be flagged and prevented from purchasing a gun — but only if they married or lived with the person they assaulted. Someone who attacked a dating partner they hadn’t moved in with yet can buy all the guns they want. Half of domestic violence murders, however, are at the hands of someone who hasn’t lived with their victim. So it’s not like this is a minor problem. The ugly implication has been that the Republican opponents to closing the boyfriend loophole simply see hitting a girlfriend as a lesser crime than hitting a wife. 

And, well, most still do.

RELATED: Can we stop domestic violence before it turns to murder? 

The Republicans who are ever-so-tentatively signed onto Murphy’s compromise bill — and who, let’s face it, may bolt the first time an NRA lobbyist clears his throat — are a distinct minority in the GOP. Indeed, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., is already indicating that Republicans still refuse to believe beating your girlfriend is as bad as beating your wife.

If for some reason Republicans relent on this, it could save some lives, because it remains very true that people who commit domestic murders usually committed quite a bit of domestic violence beforehand — just not the lives of women who were able to leave their abuser before marrying them. That’s why this provision, if it remains intact, could go a long way toward preventing mass shootings. 

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The media loves to focus on age, race, motive, and other such factors when looking at commonalities between mass shooters. But ultimately, the biggest one is gender: Nearly all of them are male.

The second most common factor shared by mass shooters is domestic violence.

Statistics compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety show that, in more than half of mass shootings, the shooter killed a member of his family. Further research shows that in nearly 70% of mass shootings, the killer had a history of domestic violence or was targeting a family member in the shooting. And while there are outliers like the Uvalde shooting or the Sandy Hook shooting — where the very young perpetrators shot an older female relative — most of these shooters fit the typical pattern of a man who lashes out at a wife, girlfriend or dating partner. 

Indeed, the most deadly mass shooting in Texas — the 2017 church shooting in Sutherland Springs — was a direct result of an angry man seeking to hurt his ex-wife by shooting her family as they worshipped. America’s original school shooting, the infamous sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, started when the killer murdered his mother and his wife at home. 

RELATED: Texas church shooting and domestic violence: A large and disturbing pattern

It remains hard to get a domestic violence conviction, even when an abuser is guilty. Still, over 300,000 people have been denied the chance to buy a gun because of a domestic violence conviction, despite the boyfriend loophole. If that were closed, not only will thousands of domestic murders be prevented, but some mass shootings will probably be prevented, as well.  

There’s a point where things get so bad that even the tuned-out must tune back in.

That is, of course, if the law survives the Supreme Court.

On that front, there is reason to worry. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a recent dissent, this is a “restless and newly constituted Court.” With three Donald Trump appointees, this court is prepared to push through a fascist wishlist of decisions, unchecked by anything resembling a good faith reading of the Constitution. We know this not just by the leaked majority opinion in a recent Mississippi abortion case that indicates the court is about to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision Sotomayor was rightfully complaining about — which has gotten very little press attention — amounts to the court simply deciding the protections of the Fourth Amendment don’t apply to the nearly two-thirds of Americans who live within 100 miles of a border. 

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Among the many decisions where the court will likely go full Infowars is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to New York’s law requiring people seeking a concealed carry license to demonstrate “proper cause.” Unsurprisingly, the much-ballyhooed conservative commitment to “states’ rights” only applies when states pass laws that the far-right likes. State legislatures controlled by Democrats have no rights, it seems, to pass laws. It is widely expected that the court will lay waste to New York’s right to regulate guns more stringently than, say, Texas. 

Unfortunately for those committed to the prevention of mass murder, it’s already easy to see how the federal ban on convicted girlfriend-beaters getting guns could face a legal challenge leading directly to an overturn at the Supreme Court. As the Kansas City Star reported on Tuesday, Missouri just passed a law in 2021 preventing “local and state law enforcement from enforcing certain federal gun laws.” And Missouri wants to make sure every man who beats women can collect as much lady-killing firepower as he desires: “[S]tate legislators in 2016 voted to allow convicted domestic abusers to carry firearms.”

RELATED: Sotomayor: SCOTUS just “immunized” feds from liability “no matter how egregious the misconduct”

Never let anyone bamboozle you into thinking that GOP enthusiasm for abortion bans is about anything but hating women. It certainly isn’t about “life.” 

While it’s still a little unclear how this could end up in litigation, one should have little doubt about the dangers ahead. Regardless of who sues who, Missouri has set up a showdown over whose law-making power around guns matters more: Congress or the states? And they have a Supreme Court whose answer will likely be, “depends on which government makes it easier to shoot up a grocery store or elementary school.” 

Not that the situation is totally hopeless.

Right now, the biggest problem in American politics is too many voters are unaware of how far-right Republicans are or how corrupt the Supreme Court is. The main cure for our crumbling democracy would be for people to wake up already, and stop assuming Donald Trump was an anomaly. Already that process is happening with the Supreme Court, as increasing numbers of Americans are starting to realize how corrupt the court is. The Roe overturn will help speed up that waking up. A decision throwing out the right of Congress to pass even minimum gun laws would help slap people awake, as well. Unfortunately, many innocent people, including little kids, will die in the painfully slow waking-up process. But this situation should be rated as “bleak, but not hopeless.” There’s a point where things get so bad that even the tuned-out must tune back in. And gun violence is one of those issues where the public seems to be getting very fed up with the far-right minority that has unjust power over the rest of our lives. 

QAnon-linked Trumper claiming “decades” of votes illegitimate on verge of running Nevada elections

Republican voters in Nevada on Tuesday chose Jim Marchant, a former state legislator who continues to baselessly deny the 2020 presidential election was legitimate, as the party’s nominee for Nevada’s top election official.

Marchant has said he ran for secretary of state at the urging of Juan O. Savin, a QAnon influencer, and that if he had been in office in 2020 he would have refused to certify the presidential election results.

As a candidate, Marchant is pushing for a shift to hand-counting election ballots and decertifying voting machines that were used in 2020. Election experts warn hand-counting votes would open up the tallying process to far more errors. Marchant has also called for the elimination of voting-by-mail and early voting.

Ahead of the primary election, a column in The Nevada Independent called on voters to reject the “conspiracy theorist” running for one of the state’s most powerful positions.

“Marchant doesn’t want to institute substantive improvements so much as he wants to make it harder for Nevadans to vote and harder for people like him to lose,” wrote Hyla Winters, a former Republican. “There’s a word for this: rigging.”

Marchant also ran for Congress in 2020 and, like former President Donald Trump’s, claimed that his loss was fraudulent. He eventually lost a lawsuit challenging the election, which he lost by 16,000 votes.

In a debate during the primary, Marchant told the audience that the state’s and country’s entire election systems are illegitimate, asserting, “Your vote hasn’t counted for decades. You haven’t elected anybody.”

Marchant is the fourth so-called “America First” candidate to win a Republican primary; the slate of candidates includes supporters of QAnon and people who deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

“Election deniers are on the verge of winning offices that run elections,” tweeted New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo.