Donald Trump Jr. defends his father, boasts that troubling revelations are actually good

In former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s new memoir, he details times how former President Donald Trump would suggest launching missiles targeting drug labs into Mexico and shooting protesters. In response to media backlash to this revelation, Donald Trump Jr. defended his father and claimed he didn’t understand the problem with the violent suggestions.

I’m still trying to figure out the recent media outrage about my father possibly wanting to target Mexican drug cartel manufacturing facilities in Mexico… Is that supposed to be a bad thing???

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 6, 2022

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing???” Trump Jr. tweeted Friday.

Esper describes Trump wanting not only to aim missiles at these drug labs, but also to hide the fact that the U.S. had fired them.

“We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly … no one would know it was us,” Trump is quoted as saying in the memoir.

Former DHS aide Elizabeth Neumann also responded to the missile information from Esper’s memoir, which was released in a New York Times article Thursday.

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“I’m grateful Esper received clearance to tell the public,” Neumann tweeted Thursday evening. “It’s incomprehensible how bad it was on a near hourly basis.”

Esper has received some backlash for withholding this information until now. These details were released in news articles by Axios and The New York Times, as promotion for his memoir “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times,” which will be released May 10.

“Mark Esper, secretary of the defense, who sits with the president of the United States, who proves by his utterances, as quoted in Mr. Esper’s book, that he is unstable,” analyst Mike Barnicle said on an MSNBC segment. “What does Mark Esper do as secretary of defense? He goes back and shuts up about it until Random House or whatever the publisher was, he hands him a check. These people ought to be banned from coming on and promoting these books.”

Morning Joe rips “cowardly” Lindsey Graham after new tapes show him trashing Trump in private

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough ripped Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for privately criticizing Donald Trump and publicly defending his actions ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

New recordings emerged of Graham predicting Americans would rally against Trumpism — “we are better than this,” he said — but the “Morning Joe” host said the South Carolina Republican had proved over and over that he was not, in fact, better than that.

“This is a funny thing with Trumpers, why do you change?” Scarborough said. “Why do you want — you know, I heard it from Republicans, in general, for years, why have you changed? You know, the party’s gotten crazy as hell, and the party changed, but here you have Liz Cheney. I’m like, Liz — the same, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.”

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy also blamed Trump for the insurrection, both publicly and privately, before jetting to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the twice-impeached former president’s ring.

“You’ve got Kevin going like this, he’s all over the place — ‘Oh, I love Donald, I hate Donald, this is Donald Trump’s fault!'” Scarborough said, paraphrasing McCarthy’s conflicting positions. “‘Yeah, Liz, let’s figure out how — I’m going to go talk to Donald and tell him to resign to get out.’ You know, and Liz is saying, okay, and Liz stays the same, and these poor, feckless, weak, cowardly guys go down and shine Donald Trump’s shoes. It’s just — it’s unbelievable. Liz hasn’t changed, Lindsey’s changed and Kevin’s changed and the Republican Party has changed since Jan. 6.”

However, he said, one thing has remained the same for Republicans since Trump entered the scene.

“The one thing that is constant that, Willie, you and I have said, for five, six years now, is Republicans say one thing about Donald Trump on the air, and off the air, even people who have worked with him trash him — they can’t stand him,” Scarborough said. “And that’s why earlier this morning, we talked about the Ricketts said to hell with Donald Trump, we’re going to run him over politically. The fact that the Ricketts aren’t scared of Donald Trump, and they humiliated Donald Trump in Nebraska sends a message to a lot of other Republicans that you can take this guy on, and you can beat him.”

Companies can soon start paying the Bahamas to store carbon in the ocean

Seagrass beds and mangrove trees in the Bahamas’ crystal-clear waters may soon be drafted into the fight against climate change.

The Caribbean country plans to offer “blue carbon” credits this year as a way for companies internationally to offset their emissions, the country’s prime minister announced last week. The island nation will be one of the first to sell ocean-based credits, and hopes to use the proceeds to invest in climate resilience projects.

Coastal ecosystems, such as seagrass meadows and mangrove forests, are some of the world’s most powerful carbon sinks, storing three to five times more carbon per hectare than tropical forests. They do so mainly by storing dead and decaying plant matter in the ocean floor, as well as sequestering carbon by pulling it straight from the air and water. Last year, an international team of researchers found that these marine habitats already store up to 30 billion tons of carbon — nearly as much as the world emitted in 2021 from fossil fuel burning alone.

The Bahamas is home to more than 1,600 square miles of mangrove forests and other marine ecosystems that serve as valuable carbon sinks — at least $300 million worth, according to Prime Minister Philip Davis. But they’re threatened by damage from hurricanes and coastal development, issues that he said the revenues from the carbon credit sales would help address.

“I want to see a Caribbean that is not dumped on any further,” Davis said at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Conference in Miami, according to Bloomberg. “We are a major carbon sink for the world, and we need to benefit from cleaning the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Carbon offsets work in two ways: Companies can pay to preserve already-existing ecosystems, preventing new carbon from being released into the atmosphere. Or they can finance the rehabilitation of degraded or destroyed habitats, which then go on to absorb additional carbon dioxide. Both methods allow corporations and individuals buying credits to continue polluting, as long as their emissions are equal to the carbon being stored by the project they support — the basis for claims to “carbon neutrality.” In theory, these methods can be an important tool to combat climate change, and conservationists are now promoting blue carbon projects as a way to preserve threatened marine habitats.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ major climate body, has promoted blue carbon as a way for nations to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement, and countries like the United States, Australia, and Kenya have already begun including marine habitats in their carbon accounting. Corporations have also seen an opportunity in blue carbon; Apple and Gucci have both invested in projects that preserve mangrove forests in Central and South America.

But similar carbon offset programs targeting forests and grasslands have been plagued with accusations of fraud; developers have been caught inflating the amount of carbon sequestered by forests or preserving land that was already protected. And some ecosystems have been destroyed by wildfires even after they were claimed for credits.

They’ve also been criticized as a form of “greenwashing,” excusing companies and countries from the work of actually transitioning to carbon-free energy sources — a possibility that some experts fear could be repeated with “blue carbon” credits.

These issues, however, haven’t slowed the rapid expansion of carbon markets, which are expected to be worth as much as $546 billion by 2050, according to BloombergNEF, a clean energy research firm.

“You shouldn’t let anybody convince you or say that this is the silver bullet to solve climate change, because it’s not. The opportunity is actually quite limited,” Cath Lovelock, a coastal ecology researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia, told China Dialogue Ocean. “And it might allow polluters to keep polluting. It’s like: ‘Watch my beautiful blue carbon project over here, while I’m not doing anything about my emissions over there.'”

As overdoses soar, more states decriminalize fentanyl testing strips

With time running out in the 2022 legislative session, Georgia lawmakers took up a bill to regulate raw milk.

An amendment suddenly got tacked onto the House version of the bill, although the new wording had nothing to do with dairy. The language called for legalizing the use of strips that test drugs for fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid fueling a wave of fatal overdoses across Georgia and the U.S.

The amendment, said Sen. Jen Jordan, an Atlanta Democrat who sponsored it, was “a commonsense solution to save lives.”

The revised milk bill passed overwhelmingly on the last day of the General Assembly session. If the bill doesn’t draw a veto from Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia will join a growing list of states decriminalizing the use of fentanyl testing strips as the drug’s scourge has spread across the nation.

Governors in New Mexico and Wisconsin this year signed bills allowing test strips in those states, and legislatures in Tennessee and Alabama recently passed similar legislation. In Pennsylvania, although a state law prohibits test strips, the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have ordered bans on prosecuting people possessing them. The state’s attorney general said he won’t charge people for having the test strips. Alaska state health officials, horrified by a surge of overdose deaths, have started giving out free test strips. A vending machine in Ohio offers the fentanyl-detecting devices alongside naloxone, a medication for reversing overdoses.

But the Florida legislature balked this year at a bill that would decriminalize the testing strips. Fentanyl test devices — prohibited under drug paraphernalia laws adopted decades ago — remain illegal in about half of states, drug policy experts say.

Many public health and addiction experts, though, promote the rapid testing devices as what’s known as a “harm reduction” tactic to help prevent overdose deaths from illicit drugs that users may not know are laced with fentanyl.

“We hope all the states would come to realize the dangers of contamination are so high and that fentanyl test strips empower a person taking drugs to know whether they have fentanyl,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health.

Street versions of fentanyl, an approved painkiller that’s being produced illegally, largely come into the U.S. from Mexico. Fentanyl is up to 100 times as powerful as morphine. It is commonly found in what is sold as heroin — often taking its place entirely. It also can be mixed into cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit street pills sold as opioid medications — substances that many buyers are not expecting to contain fentanyl.

The spread of fentanyl has helped lead to a stunning rise in drug overdose deaths. Synthetic opioids — including fentanyl — were involved in about two-thirds of U.S. drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period that ended in November 2021. And three-quarters of overdose deaths from cocaine last year were associated with fentanyl, Volkow said.

“Fentanyl is so potent that it can stop your breathing at very low doses,” she said.

The fentanyl epidemic also “has exacerbated racial inequities,” Volkow added. From 2019 to 2021, fentanyl overdose deaths more than tripled among teenagers — and surged fivefold among Black teens, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data produced by the advocacy group Families Against Fentanyl.

Last month, the Drug Enforcement Administration sent a letter to federal, state, and local law enforcement officials warning of a nationwide spike in fentanyl-related mass-overdose events. “Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “Already this year, numerous mass-overdose events have resulted in dozens of overdoses and deaths.”

The testing strips are inexpensive, costing about $1. A drug user can take a small quantity of the substance, add water, and dip a strip briefly into the solution. If one red stripe appears on the strip, fentanyl is present; two stripes mean none of that drug is found.

A downside is that the test strips don’t gauge the amount of fentanyl in the drug.

Still, the strips are effective in detecting “very small amounts of fentanyl,” said Brown University epidemiologist Brandon Marshall, part of a team that has studied illicit drug users and the devices in Rhode Island. Many of the participants who tried the strips, Marshall said, discarded the substance if fentanyl was present, used the drug with someone else present, or had naloxone available during use.

A similar study of North Carolina intravenous drug users found 3 in 4 people indicated that fentanyl strips made them feel better able to protect themselves from overdose.

In South Carolina, which has made fentanyl test strips available, the state sends an anonymous survey to anyone who receives them. Sara Goldsby, director of the South Carolina Department of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services, said survey responses indicate that people who use the strips report using fewer drugs, with some choosing not to use the drugs altogether, and that they feel safer in preventing overdoses.

The testing strips, Brown’s Marshall added, “are not going to be a silver bullet to address the overdose crisis, but they can be an important tool to help people stay safe.”

In Georgia, where the testing bill awaits the governor’s approval, public health officials said fentanyl-related overdose deaths jumped after the start of the covid-19 pandemic, doubling between May 1, 2020, and April 30, 2021, compared with the same span in 2019 and 2020.

And fentanyl-related overdoses recently spiked in Savannah, Georgia, according to Dr. Jay Goldstein, medical director of the emergency department at Memorial Health. He said that many overdose patients said they were surprised at the potency of the drug they had consumed, but he fears that giving them strips won’t stem its use.

“Sad to say, but some users want fentanyl in their drugs because it gives them a more intense high, though the risk of crashing and burning is much worse,” he said.

Current drug paraphernalia laws may discourage states or organizations from applying for grants to buy test strips or creating programs to distribute them, said Jon Woodruff, senior legislative attorney for the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. But in many states that haven’t decriminalized the strips, people who possess the papers aren’t being prosecuted.

In Georgia, “people can be charged, but it’s generally not prosecuted, particularly if it’s these testing strips,” said Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which supported the testing strips amendment.

Despite the current Georgia prohibition, the Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalitionorganization said it distributes the strips to individual drug users and other community members.

Meanwhile, families in Georgia who have seen loved ones die from fentanyl overdoses support making the testing strips more available.

Doreen Barr of Fayette County in suburban Atlanta lost a son to a combination dose of heroin and fentanyl seven years ago. She has set up a nonprofit foundation in Ryan Barr’s name to educate people about addiction.

Barr said she believes testing strips can save lives.

“Why not have the fentanyl strips?” she said. “Cocaine or a fake pill can have fentanyl in it. One time could kill you. If they had a test strip, maybe they wouldn’t take it.”

KHN South Carolina correspondent Lauren Sausser contributed to this article.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s version of Christianity is a massive betrayal of the teachings of Jesus

“God grant it was not an apparition of the devil,” Hans Luther reportedly responded to his son Martin’s claim that a voice from heaven had called Martin to be a monk. Luther’s father proposed an alternative scenario: Satan, not God, was responsible for Martin’s (poor) decision.

That story sprang to mind when I read that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had argued in a recent interview, and then clumsily tried to explain away in an official statement, that “Satan’s controlling the church.” The evidence she gave for such satanic control? Christian groups who provide aid to undocumented immigrants.

Greene argued that these humanitarian efforts mean the church “is not doing its job, and it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ and it’s not adhering to what the Word of God says we’re supposed to do.” She went on to argue, “What they’re doing by saying ‘Oh, we have to love these people and take care of these migrants and love one another. . .’ Yes, we’re supposed to love one another, but their definition of what love one another means, it means destroying our laws.”

Greene accuses the very people who strive to follow the teachings of Jesus as being directed by forces of evil. Perhaps it is too much to expect anything better from someone who, because of her recent court testimony, some have started calling “Perjury Taylor Greene,” but I would argue, as they say in horror movies, that the call is coming from inside the house. Evil — or “Satan,” if you prefer — is present in such words of hatred, fear and deception.

Unlike Greene, I claim no knowledge of Satan’s activities — or existence — but as a scholar of the teachings of Jesus, I am certain that his teachings are diametrically opposed to what Greene claims they are, and that groups who provide humanitarian relief to marginalized communities, including refugees and undocumented immigrants, are following Jesus’ commands to the letter.

The real hounds of hell: Fear, deception, hypocrisy and hate

Greene’s example would not be significant if it were an outlier. But her words and actions are paradigmatic of how “Christian” nationalists, primarily driven by white evangelicals, use their power and influence to dominate media narratives and political processes. It also illustrates how messages of fear, deception, hypocrisy and hate — what Howard Thurman, best known for being a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., appropriately called the “hounds of hell” — can often triumph over Jesus’ message of love, his teachings about reconciliation, restoration of community, and resulting humanitarian actions toward all people. Adam Serwer’s article for the Atlantic, “The Cruelty is the Point,” has repeatedly been proven true. Greene, along with Donald Trump and his other supporters, thrive on viciousness against people they deem “outsiders” and use as scapegoats. This cruelty binds Trump and his supporters — especially conservative white evangelical Christians — into a “community” of “real Americans” fueled by the fear, deception and hatred that celebrates punitive actions against marginalized people.

Christian nationalism’s betrayal of Jesus

Thurman’s 1949 classic book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” still provides one of the best analyses of how the religion of Jesus opposes and indeed condemns the perversion of Christianity that Greene represents. Thurman argues that Jesus’ religion and ethical vision are embedded in his historical context: Jesus, a poor 1st-century Jew, spoke to others who, like him, were poor, disinherited and dispossessed — those with their “backs constantly against the wall” as members of a minority group suffering oppression from a dominant, controlling group, the Romans.

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Ironically, in contrast to the religion of Jesus, Christianity became “a religion of the powerful and dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression.” Christian nationalists strive to be — or remain — a similar dominant, controlling group, and pervert the teachings of Jesus into a cudgel against the very types of people to whom Jesus primarily proclaimed his message, those with their backs against the wall. Such victimization of marginalized groups, Thurman argues, is a “betrayal of [Jesus’] faith,” and, in fact, by constructing barriers between human beings, “American Christianity has betrayed the religion of Jesus almost beyond redemption.”

The real Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed, for those with “ears to hear,” good news to the poor and liberation of the oppressed, blessings on the poor, woes on the rich and parables such as the rich fool and the rich man and Lazarus that also condemn wealth, power and neglect of the poor.

Jesus’ teachings about how one should treat immigrants (often translated as “strangers” or “aliens”) are even more devastating to Greene’s fatuous statements. Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan dramatically affirms two key aspects of Jewish law: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” and “you shall love the alien as yourself” by demolishing any distinction between neighbor and the “other.” In his parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus even teaches that one’s eternal salvation ultimately depends on such humanitarian actions as feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, visiting incarcerated persons and welcoming the immigrant: Greene might be distressed to hear that the ones who do not welcome the stranger are condemned at the Last Judgment to spend eternity with Satan.

Must the wicked prosper?

I cannot say for sure how Greene and similar Christian nationalists will fare even in this world, much less in any potential next world, but Thurman argues that although hatred and other “hounds of hell” can give people a false sense of significance, purpose and community, they ultimately destroy the hater from within. Likewise, as Heather McGhee brilliantly demonstrates in her book “The Sum of Us,” the very systems exploiting those with their backs against the wall often expand to exploit other groups as well. Those supporting such oppression because it only hurts the “other” thus ultimately find themselves similarly oppressed by the powerful. Just as McGhee argues that a functioning society depends on a “web of mutuality,” of social solidarity, Jesus says that true community is built by working actively for the well-being of all other human beings — loving all our “neighbors” — which ultimately includes our own well-being.

Our current landscape appears bleak, and the hounds of hell seemingly are winning. But Thurman remained optimistic that these “contradictions in life” are not final, a message of hope reminiscent of theologian Theodore Parker’s admonition: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Thurman believed that love, reconciliation and community can ultimately overcome fear, deception, hypocrisy and hate, and perhaps that hope can provide us renewed strength to live our lives working to help bend that arc towards justice. As Thurman urged, we can “try it and see.”

Read more on the collision of faith and politics:

Right-wing Twitter is obsessed with the Supreme Court leak — but there’s a human cost

With last week’s leak of the draft Supreme Court decision effectively overturning Roe v. Wade, the public reaction — especially on social media — has been swift and impassioned. On one side, it has been substantive: women sharing their abortion stories and pleading for bodily autonomy, and doctors expressing concern about potential criminal penalties for performing the procedure. On the other side, including conservative #LawTwitter, it has been entirely consumed by the leak — and specifically by the identity of the leaker.

There have been several Twitter threads, viewed by millions of eyes, purporting to suggest (but allegedly not to “dox”) the identity of the leaker. The authors of these threads have been predominantly conservative, middle-aged white men, many with law degrees. They have been retweeted by popular voices supportive of Donald Trump, with large MAGA followings. They have (mostly) named female clerks and male clerks of color, included their pictures, their full names and their educational histories. The evidence offered includes the topic of a clerk’s master’s thesis, where the individual went to school and their major and — it seems — their personal identities as nonwhite and/or female. Most of the threads have included legalistic caveats that they are not intended as accusations and that they are effectively researched speculation. The clerks identified in their widely read threads are those who work for the court’s three “liberal” justices.

To call this attenuated would be generous.

Twitter is often described as the internet’s town square. What we tweet is profoundly public — it’s replicable and potentially weaponizable. Regardless of the preamble to these threads (stating that this is educated conjecture, not accusation), identifying these clerks as “suspicious” to huge audiences could do palpable damage to their well-being and careers. Some of the clerks subject to this speculation may reasonably feel that their personal safety is endangered by their identification.

In fact, if you Google the names of the clerks accused in these viral threads, instead of actual information about them, you will now find pages and pages of aggregator websites saying things like “X is Justice Sotomayor’s clerk who is accused of releasing the Supreme Court’s draft” and “Y, a Supreme Court Clerk, is accused of putting his/her job in jeopardy in order to uncover the truth about the abortion draft.” This is solely based on these tweets.

As a partner at the biggest legal recruiting company in the world, I have placed hundreds of law firm associates. I have represented extremely well-credentialed associates (including clerks) who are “internet famous” in a similarly negative light, and that is, without a doubt, an impediment to employment. When one has been exposed in this way, and has been tethered (despite caveats) to something as momentous as this leak, it can seriously impede one’s career options going forward.

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Supreme Court clerks are, in general, private people who avoid the limelight. To clerk at the highest court in the land, one must present a thoroughly unblemished résumé — which includes not speaking out in public on controversial topics. Plainly, the clerks didn’t leave these web sleuths much to work with, so what has largely been employed is identity, along with perceived political affiliation. It’s ugly.

Despite whatever caveats these Twitter users are appending to their deep dives into speculation about the identity of the leaker, these are unfounded allegations — nothing more. The optics of a bunch of white men pointing their fingers at female clerks and clerks of color are extremely difficult to stomach. The ramifications for these clerks’ careers and personal lives won’t be known in full for years. It is irresponsible for conservative #LawTwitter to claim to unmask the leaker in the internet public square, regardless of their proof, degree of confidence or lack thereof. An official investigation is underway, as ordered by Chief Justice John Roberts. Until then, the high road would be to let the clerks continue to do their jobs, as quietly as ever.

Read more on the aftermath of the leaked Roe v. Wade opinion:

Republicans’ “pro-life” pivot: GOP suddenly outraged by baby formula shortage

When it comes to the issue of abortion, “pro-life” Republicans have always been bedeviled by accusations of blatant hypocrisy. After all, the party routinely shuts down political efforts – like the child tax credit, universal school lunches, and tax-payer-supported childcare – that would make child-rearing much easier for the vast majority of Americans. But now, with the Supreme Court on the precipice of overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling enshrining America’s constitutional right to abortion, Republicans have identified a new opportunity to signal their self-professed “pro-life” status: baby formula shortages.

As USA Today recently reported, nearly 40% of all popular baby food brands have been out-of-stock since late April. Stores like Target and CVS have reportedly already begun limiting customers to two formula purchases to prevent panic buying. In states like Texas, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri, shortages have reached as high as 50% in recent weeks, according to CNN, which cited data from DataAssembly.

The shortage appears to have its roots in the COVID-19-induced supply chain crisis as well as a recent product recall by Abbott Nutrition, one of the largest manufacturers of baby food in America. That recall, according to The Guardian, has had a disproportionately negative impact on low-income families, largely because Abott was the exclusive formula provider for over half of the federal agencies administering a special supplemental nutrition program for infants and children (WIC).

“The unprecedented scope of this infant formula recall has serious consequences for babies and new parents,” Brian Dittmeier, the senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association, told The New York Times. “Every day, we hear from parents who are hurt, angry, anxious and scared,” he said. “The lives of their infants are on the line.”

Now seeing an opportunity to critique the Biden economy, Republicans, for their part, have been vocal about these shortages, despite having blocked numerous Democratic-backed attempts to improve child nutrition in the past.

Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., called the formula shortage a “national crisis” that’s “hitting poor moms and kids the hardest.”

“The FDA needs to immediately step up, be transparent, explain how it will get production restarted, and give parents a timeline. And the Biden Administration needs to take this seriously,” he added.

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“Has a single Biden administration official addressed the worsening baby formula shortage?” echoed Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind. “Nearly a year after the @WhiteHouse announced their Supply Chain Taskforce,” parents can’t even find food for their children. This is another growing crisis!”

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Steve Scalise, R-La., also joined the choir, noting that parents are already buckling under the rising cost of food and gas.

Parents already have to worry about higher gas prices, expensive groceries, and higher utility bills.

And now?

No baby formula on the shelves.

Thanks, Biden. https://t.co/9NeNzlTBpC

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) May 7, 2022

1. The baby formula shortage is another terrifying example of the fragile state America is in.

Farmers are in serious trouble too.

Food security IS national security.

More big gov bailouts are only bandaids that can’t stop the hemorrhaging of our critically injured economy.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 7, 2022

“Parents already have to worry about higher gas prices, expensive groceries, and higher utility bills,” tweeted Scalise. “And now? No baby formula on the shelves. Thanks, Biden.”

Last year, however, Scalise, Greene, and Banks all opposed expanding Biden’s child tax credit, which briefly lifted millions of American children out of poverty after it was increased as part of the American Rescue Plan in March 2021.

Back in November, Scalise accused the credit of being “for illegal immigrants.”

“The bill strips current law preventing them from getting the credit—making them eligible for ~$3,000 per child in 2022,” he tweeted. “And American citizens are footing the bill.”

Months earlier, Cotton parroted a similar talking point, alleging that the Democrats “turned the Child Tax Credit into a monthly payment without any requirement that able-bodied adults be required to work. Now Democrats want to go further and no longer require that the children eligible for these monthly payments be US citizens.”

After Republicans blocked the child tax credit, child poverty soared by 41%, according to a study by Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. That was after the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned in December that “an estimated 9.9 million children are at risk of slipping back below the poverty line or deeper into poverty if the expansion is not extended.”

And while Republicans have argued that their anti-abortion agenda is “pro-life,” the evidence does not bear that claim to be true.

Brookings found that low-income women are five times more likely than their affluent counterparts to experience an unintended pregnancy, which has been known to limit their occupational and personal agency. Unplanned pregnancy, Brookings wrote back in 2016, “is associated with higher rates of poverty, less family stability, and worse outcomes for children.”

On Tuesday, Secretary of the Treasury Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen argued that abortion access has a “favorable impact on the well-being and earnings of children.”

Yellen added: ‘There are many research studies that have been done over the years looking at the economic impacts of access or lack thereof to abortion, and it makes clear that denying women access to abortion increases their odds of living in poverty or need for public assistance.”

Astronomers see a big boom when a black hole’s magnetic field suddenly flips over

Two hundred thirty-six million light-years away, and hence 236 million years ago, a strange and intense light erupted from a distant astronomical object. The intergalactic rumble was detected here on Earth, where astronomers rapidly ascertained that the flare originated around a supermassive black hole. A spontaneous reversal of the black hole’s magnetic poles could be the culprit, according to the latest hypothesis, but the debate is far from settled.

Referred to simply as 1ES 1927+654, the galaxy causing a big stir spins around a supermassive black hole millions or billions of times more massive than our sun. This is true of most larger galaxies including our own, the Milky Way, which has its own supermassive black hole at its center and around which the solar systems of the galaxy revolve. Black holes have mind-bogglingly large masses, which causes space and time to distort around them. Light itself can not escape the intense gravitational pull beyond a point of no return called the event horizon, making direct observation essentially impossible. What astronomers can “observe” are emissions from various forms of radiation, including the visible light from black holes’ surrounding accretion disks, as well as gravitational waves that they might emit.

A ball of superheated gas particles, known as a corona, was identified as the source of the violent eruption of ultraviolet and visible light. Located in the black hole’s accretion disk — the assortment of normal matter that spins rapidly around black holes on the safe side of the event horizon — the corona would emit higher energy X-ray particles under normal circumstances. As the rare event unfolded from 2017 to 2021, X-rays from the black hole disappeared entirely while UV and visible light emissions reached levels astronomically higher than they normally would.

An inversion of magnetic fields, in which the north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa, is presumed to be relatively common in the universe. Earth’s own magnetic fields flip every million years or so, though these events are thoroughly unpredictable.

“Rapid changes in visible and ultraviolet light have been seen in a few dozen galaxies similar to this one,” Dr. Sibasish Laha stated in a NASA press release. “But this event marks the first time we’ve seen X-rays dropping out completely while the other wavelengths brighten.”

Understanding why has been a matter of contention ever since. A research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Laha and an international team of experts offer one possible explanation. They linked the unusual changes in the accretion disk to a magnetic reversal in a paper recently accepted into The Astrophysical Journal. Another author on the study, Dr. Mitchell Begeleman, explained the rationale behind their conclusion.

“A magnetic reversal, where the north pole becomes south and vice versa, seems to best fit the observations,” Begelman stated in the press release. “The field initially weakens at the outskirts of the accretion disk, leading to greater heating and brightening in visible and UV light.”

Such inversion of magnetic fields, in which the north pole becomes the south pole and vice versa, is presumed to be relatively common in the universe. Earth’s own magnetic fields flip every million years or so, though these events are thoroughly unpredictable.

Within the ever-expanding cosmos, few celestial bodies elude our grasp as thoroughly as black holes. We know black holes have angular momentum, mass, and charge, but it is unknown if any other properties are discernible. Physicist Stephen Hawking held a decades-long bet with a duo of physicists over whether or not black holes could leak any other information regarding their internal workings. In other words, the specifics of how a black hole’s internal magnetic field might flip are hard to figure out due to the dearth of physical evidence available to predict how such an event would unfold inside a black hole. Their properties often confound scientists, lending intrigue to representations in popular culture and media.

An alert from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae in March 2018 is what prompted the discovery of this latest black hole oddity. Visible light 100 times brighter than normal from the distant galaxy warranted a closer look. Earlier data from the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System showed the radical shift began in late 2017. Promptly trained on the galaxy, satellites soon revealed the origin of the flare at the center of the galaxy.

The cause of the disruption sparked a myriad of conclusions. One working hypothesis suggested that a star may have drifted just a little bit too close to the black hole.

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“An earlier interpretation of the eruption suggested that it was triggered by a star that passed so close to the black hole it was torn apart, disrupting the flow of gas,” co-author Dr. Josefa Becerra González stated, adding that the length of the event does not align with that previous conclusion.

As farfetched as it may sound, scientists are not just wildly spitballing. (Indeed, it would not be the first time a star crossed a black hole’s point of no return.) Yet while the referenced paper from 2019 predates a return to homeostasis in the distant galaxy, new findings had the benefit of a wider breadth of available data. NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and ESA’s (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton satellite provided ample data to supported new analysis of UV and X-ray frequencies from the source of the disturbance, which supported the magnetic field flip theory.

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“The View”: Ted Cruz is “despicable” for comparing Roe demonstrators to Jan. 6 insurrectionists

Following the Supreme Court leak of a draft majority opinion planning to overturn Roe v. Wade, a group of approximately 100 protesters assembled outside the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and later, Justice Samuel Alito to object to the decision. The recent protests were peaceful as a whole. But in the eyes of Sen. Ted Cruz, the assembly was something akin to the Jan. 6 insurrection, which left five people dead.

In an appearance on Fox News Monday, Cruz called out Democrats and the media and compared the abortion protesters to Capitol rioters.

“On January 6 of 2021, you had tens of thousands of people peacefully protesting, and yet the corporate media and Democrats slander them with the made-up term ‘insurrectionist,'” he told host Sean Hannity. “And yet in this instance, they are not willing to call off their goons [abortion protestors] even now as this has the potential to escalate and escalate further.”

First of all, “insurrectionist” is an actual word. Dictionaries, they exist! And as for how “peacefully” those insurrectionists were protesting, “The View” had plenty to say about the Texas Senator’s fantastical spin.

“I’m actually going to point something out to you, Mr. Cruz. No one outside of any of the Justices’ houses built a scaffold with nooses on them,” Whoopi Goldberg says in a segment on Tuesday’s show. “No one came there with zip-ties to scare them. They are doing what we all know is legal in this country, which is to protest peacefully. That’s how you peacefully protest. That’s how we know the difference between Jan. 6 and what you’re seeing now.”

Goldberg doesn’t stop there, however. She has one last message for Cruz: “The next woman you call ‘a goon,’ don’t do it to her face.”

Guest co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who previously served as the White House Director of Strategic Communications for Trump, notes that Cruz previously called the insurrectionists “terrorists” but is now siding with them. Griffin, however, states that the abortion demonstration should have taken place on the steps of the Supreme Court rather than in front of the Justices’ homes, which she claims may have sent a message of “intimidation.”

“It also shows Alito what it feels like to lose your freedom of choice,” Joy Behar argues. “He cannot leave the house easily, so maybe that’s a good lesson for them.”

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Fellow co-host Sunny Hostin calls out the hypocrisy amongst Republicans, noting that the GOP likes to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they will abide by.

“What’s interesting is you have Republicans always talking about the Constitution and we have to think about the Constitution and our Constitutional rights,” she says. “Yet, when we are talking about the right to protest — which is a constitutional right — when we are talking about our freedom of speech — which is just ingrained in the constitution — Republicans don’t want to hear about it, Republicans like Ted Cruz who calls himself the consummate Constitutionalist. And I just think the hypocrisy there is so despicable.”

“People who are protesting know how to do this, they know how they’re doing it,” Goldberg concludes.

Watch the full discussion below, via YouTube:

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“You couldn’t buy your way in”: Anna Wintour biographer on her power, from the Met Gala to Wimbledon

Upstaging the recent Met Gala, even more so than Kim Kardashian apparently wearing a priceless Marilyn Monroe gown some thought should be preserved, was the news that broke during the opulent event: the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that could mean the reversal of Roe V. Wade, ending safe and legal abortion. The evening of the ball, social media became an upsetting checkerboard of flippant posts about expensive outfits and emotional posts calling for justice.

Who knows what Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue since 1988 and honorary co-chair of the Met’s Costume Institute Gala, thought of the upstaging, breaking news, though Wintour has worn a button in support of Planned Parenthood to New York Fashion Week in the past. But the complex portrait of the fashion icon that emerges from Amy Odell’s new book “Anna: The Biography” is one of a person more concerned with service than seasonal trends, someone who hopes to be remembered for her work for various charities more than her discerning eye and potent pen.

“It’s one thing to get to the top and it’s some other thing to stay there.”

Wintour has a reputation for being coolly powerful, a reputation no doubt cemented by the novel “The Devil Wears Prada,” adapted into a popular movie starring Meryl Streep as a Wintour-like fashion boss who is cold as ice. But is that reputation deserved, or even accurate?

Odell, who started her book when she said she believed Wintour might be losing power, traces the rise of Wintour from swinging London to her magazine empire. Though the book is not officially authorized by Wintour (and the writer does not know if she has read it), hundreds of Wintour collaborators and friends from Tom Ford to Serena Williams, talked to Odell for the book, which is hefty enough to weigh down your blanket for a beach read.

Salon talked to Odell about her new biography “Anna.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What surprised you most about writing this book? We see a more vulnerable side of Anna here — there are scenes of her crying in the book, for example — which surprised me.

When I started the project and I started reaching out to people requesting interviews, I got a lot of no’s, so many no’s that I had doubts about whether or not I was going to be able to even do it. What does that say? That says that this person has a lot of loyalty out there in the world. It was people who felt like they just didn’t want to talk unless she felt OK with it.

I thought [Anna’s] power had just really weakened a good deal because you don’t really need Vogue anymore to keep up with fashion. You can follow fashion on Instagram, on TikTok, on any number of websites. You can look at runway slideshows all over the internet. You don’t have to have Vogue anymore.

“The Hilton sisters would call and try to get in and they never could go. Anna would just sort of make a decision based on who she thought was worthy.”

It used to be that you did need Vogue. In the ’80s and ’90s, when Anna started at Vogue, you had to either look at Vogue or a magazine like it if you wanted to keep up with that world. What I learned is that there was kind of a disconnect between some of the negative press that she was getting around diversity and how people behind the scenes felt about her, powerful people in the fashion industry and in the entertainment industry, and even in politics as well.

Why Anna? Why were you drawn to her personally as a subject matter and why did you decide to do a book on her now?

The idea actually originated at my publisher, and they brought it to me . . . I thought that it was just a great idea. I’ve always found Anna to be fascinating and I’m personally interested in women and positions of power. It sort of gave me chills, just hearing that this idea was being discussed . . . You know, the interesting thing about Anna is that she’s had such success, not only in fashion, but she transcends fashion. She is influential in entertainment. She’s influential in politics, even sports. She has this immense influence and she’s had this public position; she’s been the Editor in Chief of Vogue for 34 years, which is such a long time for any business leader. Jeff Bezos, for instance, ran Amazon for 27. She’s had this extraordinary success and this maybe even more remarkable longevity.

It’s one thing to get to the top and it’s some other thing to stay there.

Although you were not granted access to Anna herself, you interviewed an enormous amount of people for the book. It was something like 250 people. How did you approach that?

It was more than 250. I stopped counting after that point. One of the first things I did was make a list of sources and I tracked . . . It was just using a spreadsheet and being very careful and making notes also about where they might fit into the story. I did realize actually when I was writing it up, I had just an overwhelming amount of materials. You might imagine, just so many transcripts, just so, so much stuff. It was a challenge to go through all of it and whittle it down. The good thing about having that volume of research is that you can really pull the most essential and most interesting stuff.

We just had the Met Gala, and you talk about that in the book, the secrecy around it and the enormous work to put it together. What are some of the things that would go into Anna’s planning of the Met Gala?

I spoke to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff who planned the gala for more than 10 years . . . It became something at that time that celebrities were clamoring to get into. Kim Kardashian, who was, I think probably the biggest star of the red carpet [at the last gala], was one of those people.

The Hilton sisters would call and try to get in and they never could go. Anna would just sort of make a decision based on who she thought was worthy of being in that room. You couldn’t buy your way in to that room. Anna would decide based on, “What was your connection to fashion? What was your personal style like?” She also liked people who were involved in some way with charity.

I was fascinated to learn this: she herself wants to be remembered as the great philanthropist versus any of her magazine editing work. I thought that was so surprising. She really grew [the Met Gala] from this sleepy society event. She started planning in 1995, but she grew it from this more like New York Manhattan society event into the Super Bowl of red carpet. I think that the Met now surpasses the Oscars in terms of cultural significance, in terms of a fashion and a red carpet event. She did that through this excruciating attention to detail that she has in all aspects of her work.

“What Anna told her enabled her to win Wimbledon.”

As I say in the book, she was so consumed with things like what was in the food. She banned garlic, chives, parsley and onions because she thought that they made your breath smell and get stuck in your teeth. Tom Ford, when he co-chaired in 2003 for the goddess theme, he was concerned about how the food on the plate looked. He wanted it to be the right colors.

This attention to detail, I think, really enabled her to grow [the gala] into this massive important cultural event that we saw the other night. The people who go, they go because Anna has decided that they should be there. They walk up those steps. They get to the top; they shake her hand. Many of them, I was told by numerous people, are nervous.

These celebrities are nervous because it’s so nerve-wracking to have the spotlight on you going up the carpet – and many of them are wearing cumbersome, over-the-top gowns that are hard to walk in. They have to go up the stairs and then they have to shake Anna Wintour’s hand. If they take too long greeting her, she has a habit of giving a look to someone on her staff like, “Move this person along.”

Anna Wintour attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Theo Wargo/WireImage/Getty Images)You also write about Anna’s reaction to the movie version of “The Devil Wears Prada” where Meryl Streep played a character allegedly based on her. What did Anna think of the film and did perceptions of her change after its release?

When she found out about the book that Lauren Weisberger was going to publish, she said she couldn’t remember who Lauren Weisberger was. She read the book when it came out . . . I’ve seen things written that she was so bothered by it. People who were close to her at the time that it came out, told me that she was not bothered by the book. When the film came out, I spoke to the director, and he told me that the fashion industry was really afraid to help him. He wanted to talk to people. The production wanted to talk to people in the fashion industry about how it worked to gain an understanding and be able to do a good film.

Isaac Mizrahi is one designer who they approached and he asked Anna if it was OK. He had said that she told him that it was. Then she went to a screening of the film in New York. He invited her, and she showed up wearing Prada. The director overheard her daughter lean over at the end of the film and say to her, “Mom, they really got you.”

I think that may be an instance where there is a disconnect between what was said in the press about her reactions to the film and the book and what it really was. I found that often to be the case with her, that there was a disconnect between what was reported and what people told me what’s really going on behind the scenes.

Do you know if Anna has seen your book yet?

I’m not sure. You would have to ask her. I do know, and as I say in the book, she’s a voracious reader. Many of her friends were impressed with the volume of things that she reads and how quickly she reads them so it’s quite possible. I don’t know. I’m generally just as curious as anyone else as to what she thinks about it.

If we’re not in fashion or the beauty industry, can we take lessons from her? What can we all learn from Anna?

She is known obviously as the most powerful person in the fashion world, but she transcends the industry. She is someone who advises people in the film business on their movies. Two examples I give in the book are Bradley Cooper, sending over his script for “A Star Is Born” before he had cast Lady Gaga to get Anna’s opinion. Another one was Hugh Jackman working on “The Greatest Showman,” how he had a meeting with Anna and Vogue editors at the Soho house just to get their awesome ideas. I didn’t realize that was going on behind the scenes. I thought that was just surprising. She’s a major fundraiser for Democratic candidates. I discussed that in the book as well and the work that she did for the Obama Campaign and all of the ambassador stuff that ended up stemming from that.

She’s an advisor also to Serena Williams. I don’t know that advisor is exactly the right word, but they’re friends, and Serena Williams seeks her advice. She told me when she was struggling at one point, she talked to Anna. What Anna told her enabled her to win Wimbledon. I thought that was so surprising. Anna’s of course a tennis player herself, but I never would’ve guessed before that Serena Williams would be calling her.

“She can’t edit Vogue forever. She is a human being.”

I think the book is something that people in any industry can enjoy if they’re curious about success, what it takes to become as successful as Anna and what it takes to stay there. My takeaway in doing all this research on her and thinking about her success and her power is that she’s very good at corporate politics. Conde Nast is of course a corporation. It has the burden of bureaucracy and she navigates that all very well.

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That said, it was really fun in researching the book to learn about her early years of a fashion editor beginning in the late ’60s in London . . . She can also work with creatives. I think that’s really the challenge that an Editor in Chief of a magazine like Vogue faces. How do you bridge the creative editorial side of the business with the publishing ad sales side of the business? I think that she does that very well.

Is there a next Anna or can there ever be another Anna Wintour?

That’s such a good question. I think about this myself all the time, and I thought about it so much as I was working on the book. In some ways I would say, no. She’s so unique and she’s been so mysterious for all of these years, so enigmatic, that it seems like it would be hard for someone else to replicate that sort of image and iconography.

However, she can’t edit Vogue forever. She is a human being, and editors of Vogue in the past like Grace Mirabella who preceded Anna or Diana Vreeland who preceded Grace Mirabella, they were also kind of the de facto leaders of the fashion industry.

The editor of Vogue has historically occupied that space. Anna, I think, has expanded the power of that position enormously. It’s hard to say if another person will be able to exactly replicate her power, but the industry has in the past been willing to accept a new leader in that role. It happened when Grace Mirabella took over from Diana Vreeland. It happened when Anna Wintour took over from Grace Mirabella, and I believe that it will happen again when someone takes over from Anna Wintour.

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Britney Spears’ nude photos spark a disturbing and sexist overreaction

Britney Spears, the iconic princess of pop, created an uproar on Monday after she took to Instagram to post a dozen delicately censored nude photos across three separate posts. The photos all showcased Spears in the same pose, covering her breasts with her hands and her nether regions with a strategically placed heart emoji.

According to the singer, the series of pictures were taken during her vacation in Mexico and meant to celebrate her pre-pregnancy body.

“Photo dump of the last time I was in Mexico BEFORE there was a baby inside me . . . why the heck do I look 10 years younger on vacation???” reads one caption.

“Don’t underestimate the power of doing it myself and shooting with a selfie stick!!! Photo dump before there was a child inside me!!!” reads the second post’s caption.

That celebration, however, turned into controversy. Many of Spears’ followers along with media outlets quickly pushed forth a different narrative and lambasted Spears for being “crazy” and “ridiculous.”

“Starting to think those who were in control perhaps should have stayed in control,” one user commented, suggesting that Spears’ 13-year-long conservatorship be reinstated.

“Her dad definitely doesn’t need to be in control of her but somebody does before she loses her damn mind again there’s no reason to keep taking naked pictures of yourself and posting them online it’s time to grow up Britney do it for your boys,” another user simply wrote.

“‘She is crying for help’: Britney Spears sparks concern after posting NINE full frontal naked pictures on Instagram as worried fans beg her to stop,” reads a bold headline from the Daily Mail. Another headline from The International News reads, “Britney Spears fans think she is ‘crying for help’ as she ditches clothes.”

The overreactions and flood of negativity are not only overtly disgusting but also harmful as many call for Spears to once again be placed under a binding agreement and be stripped of her individual autonomy. Just last November, Spears was finally freed from the conservatorship of her father Jamie Spears, who had controlled everything from her life to her finances and medical decisions for over a decade. Fast forward a few months later, Spears is now engaged to Sam Asghari — her boyfriend of five years — expecting her first child with him and, most importantly, leading the life she was robbed of for years. Still, even after the widespread #FreeBritney movement, the public deems it acceptable to criticize and shame a woman for celebrating herself.

It’s also all very Victorian era-esque considering that during that time period, women were devoid of any rights — their entire being was governed by their husbands or other male authority figures — and overall, seen as objects to be conquered rather than actual individuals. Not to mention that women’s bodies and sexuality were both politicized and policed — a reality that sadly exists today — and women were also thrown into asylums for demonstrating “abnormal behavior,” basically any action or emotion that was not desirable to men, who again, controlled what happened to women.

And of course, we’re still letting men call the shots and decide what women do with their bodies, judging by the danger that Roe v. Wade is in. The recent spate of online hate toward Spears just supports that patriarchal mindset.

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Spears’ nude photos hullabaloo also made headlines alongside Jesse Williams’ nude photos and video leak, which took place hours after Williams was nominated for a Tony Award for best performance by a featured actor in a play. The “Grey’s Anatomy” actor appears fully nude in the Broadway play “Take Me Out,” in which he plays a gay baseball player. But unlike Spears, Williams became the newfound star of horny Twitter memes, thirsty comments and online praise.

“It’s a body, once you see it, you realize it’s whatever, it’s a boy!” he said on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live After Show.” “I just have to make it not that big of a deal.”

“Then I noted that that was what I asked God for. I asked to be terrified,” Williams continued. “I asked to do something that was scary and challenging and made me earn it and made me feel alive and not comfortable.”

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The many, many ways to get rid of pesky flies

One thing I wasn’t prepared for when I moved from a nice, modern apartment into an old farmhouse were the bugs. There are just So. Many. Bugs. In our first year of homeownership alone, we were unlucky enough to deal with drain flies, stink bugs, the occasional house centipede, and big black flies that invaded our windows during the summer.

The latter is a common pest during the warmer months of the year, as they often sneak into your home looking for a place to lay eggs. That whole “house flies only live for 24 hours” concept is a total myth, by the way — in fact, these pesky bugs can live up to a month, according to Orkin, giving them plenty of time to pester your pets and slowly drive you to the brink of despair. (Don’t even get me started on fruit flies, which can live even longer and produce hundreds of offspring!) If you need to get rid of flies quickly, here are all the ways you can trap them, repel them, and ultimately just keep them away from your home.

Get rid of what attracts them

To successfully get rid of flies, you have to think like a fly. Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but it does help to understand why they’re in your home to begin with.

You see, house flies are looking for places to lay their eggs, and they’re attracted to decaying organic material and waste, such as garbage, dirty drains, old produce, sugary spills, and even pet food. They’re also attracted to heat and light, which is why you can often find them hanging out in your windows.

To make your home less attractive to flies, Ehrlich Pest Control recommends cleaning up food waste immediately — aka, no leaving half-eaten sandwiches on the counter all day — as well as investing in a covered trash can and cleaning up pet food and waste regularly. By removing these breeding areas, you can prevent flies from reproducing in your home.

While somewhat gross, it’s also worth mentioning that flies will happily lay their eggs in the bodies of dead rodents — something I learned the hard way last summer. We had a mouse that dragged a trap away in our attic, only to die in a secluded corner, and we didn’t realize what happened until it was too late. We had big, ugly flies zooming around the house for a week, and now I’m extra diligent about keeping track of all our traps. In fact, now I put them in shoeboxes with a little hole in the side so mice can’t drag the traps away.

Make DIY fly traps

But what about the pesky fellas that are already inside? There are a few ways to make DIY fly traps to capture and dispose of house flies, the easiest of which involves a soda bottle.

You’ll want to clean out a 1- or 2-liter plastic soda bottle, then cut off the top one-third of the bottle — basically from the label up. Fill the bottom of the bottle with a few inches of sweet liquid, such as soda or sugar water, then flip the top upside down and place it in the base, creating a funnel. Flies will be attracted to the sugar, and once they crawl down into the bottle, they won’t be able to find their way out again.

Another option is to fill a shallow dish with apple cider vinegar, a tablespoon of sugar, and a generous squirt of dish soap. Place the dish near where your flies hang out, and they’ll get stuck in the sweet mixture. This is also a tried-and-true method for capturing fruit flies.

Additionally, you can use clear fly traps to capture the bugs who hang out in your windows, and when in doubt, a fly swatter will do the trick — you just have to be quick! (Rhyme not intended.)

Other ways to kill flies

I’m guilty of chasing flies around the house with my handheld vacuum, trying to suck them out of the air, but it’s definitely one of the least-effective methods of killing the pesky insects. For an inexpensive yet effective solution, you may want to invest in a pack of fly swatters, which are ideal for smacking down flies mid-flight.

Or, if you want to feel like a fly-fighting ninja, check out the Bug-A-Salt, which was recommended by one of our readers. This unique device actually shoots table salt at bugs — yes, really — effectively using the little pellets as high-speed projectiles to kill flying insects. It sounds crazy, but just take a look at all its rave reviews.

Other options to exterminate flies in your home include window sticky traps, a zapper racket, or even a pet-safe aerosol spray.

Use plants to keep flies away

Once you’ve gotten rid of the flies in your home, you may want to take steps to keep them from coming back, and luckily, you generally don’t need to use pesticides. There are a number of plants that naturally repel flies, including:

Basil
Bay leaf
Lavender
Nasturtiums
Mint
Marigolds

By planting the flowers near your doors or as herbs in window boxes, you can keep flies away from the places where they commonly get into your house. Plus, you’ll also have lovely blooms and fresh herbs to cook with. Win-win!

Keep flies out of your home

If you want to do everything possible to keep flies and other bugs out of your home during the summer, there are a few more steps you can take.

Start by inspecting your screens and patching any holes. If the screen is in bad shape, you may want to replace the whole thing. You can also add weather stripping to your doors and windows to seal off any cracks through which bugs can gain entry.
You’ll also want to clean up dead leaves and other yard waste, including pet waste, and if you have an outdoor compost pile, place it at least 20 feet away from your home.

When you take these steps, you’ll finally be able to enjoy a fly-free home all summer.

This post contains products independently chosen (and loved) by our editors and writers. Food52 earns a commission on qualifying purchases of the products we link to.

What is sambal oelek?

Hot sauce enthusiasts tend to cycle through their obsessions like brief yet meaningful romances. In the past, they’ve “put Sriracha on their Sriracha,” and swarmed McDonald’s to hoard Rick & Morty’s-inspired Szechuan chili sauce. The next spicy condiment that may get the Sriracha treatment is one that’s not new to you if you’re familiar with Indonesian food: It’s sambal oelek.

What is sambal?

Sambal is an aromatic condiment comprised of dry and fresh ground spices and herbs. Like chutney in India and salsa in Mexico, the world of sambals is vast. There are countless sambals from all over Indonesia, each tweaked to local ingredients, regional specialties, and individual preference

Indonesians swear by sambal, demanding its necessity to accompany and complete national favorites like Nasi Goreng and Gado Gado. Australian-Indonesian chef Lara Lee emphasizes how crucial sambal is in her cookbook “Coconut & Sambal,” sharing that “Indonesians can get quite nostalgic about sambal — it reminds them of home.” Above all, they are essential to bringing out the most complex flavors in a dish, as well as achieving a symphonic balance.

In Indonesia, sambal is usually made from scratch. That means that they require the hard work of hand grinding the ingredients into the chili pasta. Lee explains the process of grinding a sambal, which is typically done with mortar and pestle-esque tools called the cobek and the ulekan. “That’s when you’re finding these grandmas making sambals in the family of 50 that are coming for the wedding,” she says. “They’re grinding it, they’re putting their back into it . . . In Indonesia it’s often prepared on the floor, it’s just easier. You can be cross-legged, you can be on all fours, it just depends what your preference is.”

She continues to explain the methods of sambal preparation, emphasizing the versatility of it: “You can have raw sambals, you can fry them and add oil. There’s no one kind of way, and all of the different sambals have different characteristics and identifiers.”

The choice of ingredients for sambal vary from region to region, but some of the most common items that end up in sambals include red chilis, shrimp paste, garlic, lemongrass, shallots, and makrut limes. Sambals like the Balinese raw matah typically accompany meat and seafood dishes, while the Western-influenced sambal kacang becomes a creamy and addicting choice to drizzle atop salads and dip satay into. While most are served as condiments, they can also transcend into marinades.

What is sambal oelek?

In American grocery stores, the sambal you’re most likely to run into is Sambal Oelek. Typically tucked into the shelves of the Asian foods aisle, it appears crimson red and packaged in a round squat jar with a bright green lid. While the range of flavors and spices within sambals are never ending, sambal oelek in particular is very paired down in comparison. A mix of ground chili peppers, salt, and occasionally vinegar and oil, it may be considered the antithesis to the rest, driven by simplicity rather than complexity. The phrase sambal oelek in particular translates to ground chili sauce, but the word “oelek” is actually a Dutch spelling of the Indonesian word ulek, which means to grind in a mortar.

The sambal oelek we know today consists of chilis introduced to Indonesians by the Spanish and Portuguese during the 16th century. However, sambal ulek certainly existed before this time. “They did make sambal using native ingredients like andaliman pepper, which comes from the Szechuan pepper family,” Lee explains. “They would make sambal with that, native gingers, and a Bali spice called Long Pepper. That would provide this sultry taste that sambals were famous for.”

Lee reports that 352 versions of sambal have been created since this time, but sambal oelek in particular has remained unchanged across Indonesia. Rather than changing a dish, it adds a kick of spice to a meal that may have been fine without it — but for us spice lovers, it’s a necessary addition to an otherwise perfect meal.

Sambal oelek goes global

Sambal oelek’s simple yet versatile nature has allowed it to play a significant role in the cuisines of other Southeast Asian countries. It’s common practice to add sambal oelek to Vietnamese and Thai dipping sauces like nuoc mam and nam jim. Lately, it has also made slow yet steady progress as a condiment and cooking ingredient in more Western kitchens.

Given its history and proximity, Malaysian cooks have their own version of chili sauce similar to sambal oelek. However, it serves as a base ingredient for food rather than a standalone condiment. Their cili boh is a dried chili paste typically added to fried rice or noodle dishes. Sambal belacan, on the other hand, enhances the simplicity of sambal oelek with the additions of shrimp paste and calamansi lime juice.

“It has shrimp paste in it to add more flavor,” explains Malaysian restaurateur Norman Musa of sambal belacan. “Sambal oelek in general, I believe, has changed the way it has in Malaysia according to the region’s taste preferences. Unlike my current base in the United Kingdom, where we shape a dish based on the availability of local ingredients, that isn’t the case in Malaysia. Since we have so many of the same ingredients [as Indonesia] available and on hand, we work with our taste preferences. That’s where the shrimp paste comes in — through belacan.”

Currently, the availability of sambal and sambal oelek in a region is largely dependent upon the presence of an Indonesian population there. Areas like The Netherlands see an abundance of Indonesian food varieties, while the United Kingdom is still growing accustomed to spices outside of India’s influence.

Thanks to spice purveyors Huy Fong Foods, the United States has had plenty of access to its version of sambal oelek lately. Its ability to transcend as a condiment and a marinade makes it a favorite amongst chefs and hot sauce lovers; it may prove to be a reigning condiment that will prevail beyond countless hot sauce obsessions to come.

Everything we know about Dolly Parton’s “Mexican Pizza: The Musical”

There’s something distinctly American about the way in which celebrities and fast-food companies court each other. Consider how “Rick and Morty” superfans helped propel the relaunch of Szechuan Sauce or the revolving door of actors who have portrayed KFC’s Colonel Sanders, recently culminating in Mario Lopez starring as the bespectacled fried chicken mogul in Lifetime’s “Recipe for Seduction.”

Celebrities are also woven through the story of the highly-anticipated return of Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza. It was, after all, singer Doja Cat who was the first to publicly share the news. While on stage at Coachella, she stopped her set to exclaim to the crowd, “I brought back the Mexican Pizza, by the way!” Days later, Taco Bell HQ issued a full press release to confirm that the cult-favorite would be available May 19 at locations across the country.

And now, as the return date approaches, another Taco Bell-celebrity mashup is on the horizon.

On Monday, Dolly Parton posted an image of a script for “Mexican Pizza: The Musical,” written by Hannah Friedman, Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear.

As for the caption, Parton simply wrote: “I’m making #MexicanPizzaTheMusical with @TacoBell #tacobellpartner.”

While some Instagram commenters initially thought Parton’s announcement was a joke, Broadway World confirmed that there was a musical — albeit one that will only air on TikTok for now — in the works. It’s about the “‘harrowing’ story of those who fought to bring back the Mexican Pizza, featuring notable moments from Doja Cat’s triumphant journey.”

The musical, which is being produced by Live Más Productions, is based in part on a TikTok made by user Victor Kunda, whose video speculating about what a Taco Bell musical rehearsal could look like went viral late last week.

While the project is definitely satirical — and no further information has been released yet about the specific plot of the musical — the talent involved is no joke. Friedman is a writer and producer who has anchored projects for Amazon, CBS and Comedy Central, while Barlow and Bear are known for their Grammy-winning album “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical.”

And, of course, there’s the living legend that is Dolly Parton.

“Mexican Pizza: The Musical” will premiere exclusively on TikTok on May 26 and 8 p.m. EST.

Read more:

Trump will return: Elon Musk vows major change to Twitter under his ownership

Elon Musk is poised to reinstate Donald Trump to Twitter if his purchase goes through.

The Tesla mogul told FT Live’s Future of the Car conference that he believes the former president should not have been banned for promoting election conspiracy theories and motivating political violence, and Musk said he would allow Trump to return to the social media platform, reported CNBC.

“Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts… I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump,” Musk said. “I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk added. “I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not like a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter?”

Trump has said he would not return to Twitter, and instead started his own social media company Truth Social, and Musk said the ban was “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.”

“If there are tweets that are wrong and bad those should be deleted or made invisible, and a temporary suspension is appropriate, but not a permanent ban,” Musk said. “Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice. It amplified it among the Right.”

He added that the ban was “morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

How abortion “trigger laws” could inadvertently impede fertility treatments

Anti-abortion advocates justify abortion bans by saying they’re protecting life. Yet, in the likely event Roe v. Wade is overturned, it could affect one of the key procedures that helps families build a family and create life: in vitro fertilization (IVF).

A common procedure for families who have trouble conceiving, IVF involves fertilizing a human egg cell outside of the human body, then re-implanting it in one’s uterus and carrying it to term. IVF is a common procedure, and it is estimated that from 1987 to 2015, 1 million babies were born through IVF in the United States.

“There are a lot of different ways that these anti-abortion statutes and trigger laws could impact people that actually want a child through IVF,” Seema Mohapatra, a health law and bioethics expert at Southern Methodist University, told Salon. “In these really expansive definitions by states that are going to give fetal personhood to these embryos, there is a question about what you can do with them and whether destroying them is considered either a civil or even criminal penalty.”

In light of news about the leaked SCOTUS opinion, attention is fixating on an estimated 13 states that have “trigger laws,” meaning laws which would make abortion immediately illegal once Roe v. Wade is overturned. While the details of the trigger law abortion bans vary from state to state — details that generally regard exceptions like rape, incest, or preventing an injury or death of a pregnant person — abortion access in these states will become more difficult. And since the language of some trigger laws gives “personhood” to a fertilized egg, that could put some parts of the IVF process in a legal gray zone, potentially criminalizing those who seek IVF or those who perform it.

“In these really expansive definitions by states that are going to give fetal personhood to these embryos, there is a question about what you can do with them and whether destroying them is considered either a civil or even criminal penalty.”

As such, fertility experts are unsure what the future will hold for IVF treatments.

“I am concerned about many reproductive rights being impacted if Roe V Wade is overturned,” Dr. Lora Shahine, a reproductive endocrinologist at Pacific NW Fertility in Seattle and host of the Baby or Bust podcast, told Salon via email. “Although these laws may be intended to restrict termination of a pregnancy for certain reasons, this language could also be used to limit access to some birth control methods and access to in vitro fertilization (or assisted reproduction).”

The medical process of IVF has a few steps, and begins with removing eggs from a woman’s ovary. Each egg is fertilized by injecting a sperm into the egg, or mixing it with the egg in a petri dish. This fertilized egg is then transferred back to the uterus with the hope of creating a viable pregnancy. During this process, it is common for multiple eggs to be transferred or harvested and fertilized — but not all turn into viable pregnancies, for a variety of reasons. People then usually have a few options for their fertilized eggs: to discard them, donate them to research, donate them to another couple, or keep them for a future pregnancy.

In an article written by Neelam Patel for The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law, Patel brings to light that a potential impact of these trigger bans on IVF could mean that any destroyed embryos could be defined as abortions.

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“The distinguishing feature of these trigger bans is that they all ultimately define the beginning of pregnancy as the moment of fertilization,” Neelam Patel wrote. Patel pointed to the Arkansas trigger ban which defines an “abortion” as “the act of using, prescribing, administering, procuring, or selling of any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the purpose to terminate the pregnancy of a woman.” In the same statute, “unborn child” is defined as “an individual organism of the species homo sapiens from fertilization until live birth.” When this is the case, Patel explains that “the entire practice of in vitro fertilization could be seen as destroying ‘babies’ and thereby causing ‘abortions’ because there is always the significant possibility that all the embryos will not survive.”

This is essentially what is happening in Louisiana right now. Last week, lawmakers advanced a bill called HB813 that would classify abortions as homicide and defines a “person” as existing the moment an egg is fertilized. If passed, many fear this would inadvertently criminalize IVF treatments, as reported by The Hill.

Since the passage of an anti-abortion law in Texas in 2021, Senate Bill 8, selective reductions in the IVF process have stopped. Selective reductions occur when one or more embryos are removed from the womb of the pregnant person because of a health risk to them or the fetus.

“This bill would give those cells personhood,” Sarah Omojola, a New Orleans attorney, told The Hill. “Such that anything that happens to them after could give rise to criminal prosecution. This criminalizes IVF.”

IVF is a common treatment for infertility, and is an option for many women who can’t conceive because of a blocked or damaged fallopian tube; infertility affects at least 10-15 percent of couples who want to get pregnant. It’s also often used as a means to have children for people who are in same-sex relationships.

As Mohapatra explained to Salon, since the passage of an anti-abortion law in Texas in 2021, Senate Bill 8, which prohibited abortions as early as six week of pregnancy, selective reductions in the IVF process have stopped. Selective reductions occur when one or more embryos are removed from the womb of the pregnant person because of a health risk to them or the fetus.

“An example is a quadruplet pregnancy reduced to twins in order to decrease the risk of the pregnancy,” Shahine explained to Salon. “Higher numbers of gestations increase risk of the pregnancy including preterm birth, small birth weight, increased risk of NICU stay, cerebral palsy, maternal morbidity and death.”

Mohapatra said depending on the state, selective reduction can definitely fall under the “definition of abortion,” like it does in Texas.

Dr. Marcelle Cedars, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), issued a statement following the news of the leaked SCOTUS opinion voicing concerns about the effects of the trigger laws.

“Moreover, while the immediate target of these restrictions is abortion care, there is a clear and present danger that measures designed to restrict abortion could end up also curtailing access to the family building treatments upon which our infertility patients rely to build their families,” Cedars said. “In other words: not only does this draft decision threaten the health of pregnant people, it may also lead to fewer healthy babies being born to loving parents.”

So, what to do if you live in a state with trigger laws and plan to seek IVF?

“Although no laws are explicated in place to limit use or IVF or change practice, this is the time to act in order to not let it happen,” Shahine said. “Do not be reactive to limitations at stake — reach out to your local, state, and national representatives to let them know how you feel about what’s happening.”

Read more on the Supreme Court leak and the end of Roe v. Wade:

Rick Scott lashes out after Biden trashes his 11-point plan, calls for the president to resign

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., on Tuesday accused President Biden of being “unfit for office,” saying he’s consistently “incoherent, incapacitated and confused.”

“He doesn’t know where he is half the time. He’s incapable of leading and he’s incapable of carrying out his duties,” Scott said in a statement. “Period. Everyone knows it. No one is willing to say it. But we have to, for the sake of the country. Joe Biden can’t do the job.”

.@JoeBiden is unwell. He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated & confused.

If Biden wants to actually fix the inflation crisis he created, he should resign. https://t.co/KqrCqgheI2

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) May 10, 2022

Scott’s comment is emblematic of a broader GOP pattern of casting doubt on Biden’s mental faculties, a strategy that was consistently employed during the president’s 2020 campaign. Scott’s remark also appears to have been a pre-emptive offensive aimed at Biden’s remarks on inflation, which came just hours after the senator released his statement.

On Tuesday, Biden addressed the country’s unprecedented surge in food and gasoline prices, promising broad action “to fight inflation and lower costs for middle-class families.” Biden also said during his speech that the GOP has proffered no real plan to combat inflation, suggesting that Republicans are satisfied with the status quo. But some Republicans, like Scott, the president added, are even angling to make Americans suffer even more than they already are.

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During his speech, the president specifically tore into an 11-point plan proposed back in March by Scott, whose plan has called for both tax hikes on low-income Americans who do not currently pay any taxes as well as the discontinuation of federal programs like Medicare and Social Security, both of which are already severely underfunded.

“The Republican plan is to increase taxes on middle class families, let billionaires and large companies off the hook as they raise prices and reap profits in record amounts. And it’s really that simple,” Biden said. “My plan is to lower everyday costs for hardworking Americans and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.”

“I want every American to know that I’m taking inflation very seriously and it's my top domestic priority,” Pres. Biden says during remarks on the economy. https://t.co/SGS0GMIEkl pic.twitter.com/emlu8yyhjB

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 10, 2022

Scott’s plan, which has already supplied Democrats with endless political fodder, is not entirely popular amongst Senate Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said that the sole GOP agenda should be to critique the Democrats, has come out strongly against the proposal, saying, “We will not have as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, sunsets social security and Medicare within 5 years. That will not be a part of the Republican Senate majority agenda.”

Ron Bonjean, a former Senate GOP leadership aide, told NBC News that is “quite unusual to have the campaign chairman [Scott] frame an agenda that is not endorsed by the entirety of the leadership.”

Bonjean added: “The question many Republicans are asking is, ‘Why take a shovel away from Democrats who are digging their own grave right now?'”

Why is the Supreme Court using religious belief to alter secular law?

Democrats are generally disinclined to discuss religion, much less debate it.

They like to point out that Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin were famously atheist, Thomas Jefferson and dozens of other high-profile people in the founding generation were deists (a close cousin to atheists and certainly not Christians), and that in two different places the Constitution explicitly rejects religion interfering with government or vice versa.

But it’s time to discuss religion whether we like it or not, because it’s no longer knocking on our door: Sam Alito just sent it into the house with a no-knock warrant and stun grenades that threaten to catch the place on fire.

Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson draft opinion rests on two main premises.

The first is that the Supreme Court has no business recognizing a “right” that isn’t rooted in the nation’s “history and tradition.”

This right-wing canard has been around for years, and has been used to argue against pretty much ever form of modernity from integrated public schools to, more recently, same-sex marriage. It’s a convenient pole around which you can twist pretty much any argument you want, because American history and tradition have been all over the map during the past roughly 240 years.

For example, Alito could just as easily have pointed out that there were no federal or state laws regulating abortion at all at the founding of our republic, and they didn’t really start showing up until the 1800s as physicians were clamoring for licensure to lock midwives out of birth-related medical practice (which included abortion).

Alito neglected to mention that there were no state or federal laws regulating abortion at the time of the founding — and some states didn’t regulate the procedure until after the Civil War.

The year Virginia got an abortion-regulating law, for example, was the same year — 1847 — that the American Medical Association was founded. Ben Franklin had been dead more than a half-century and not a single signer of the Declaration of Independence was still alive.

So much for Alito’s “history and tradition” in the early republic and at the time the Constitution was written.

The first antiabortion law in Mississippi — the state whose lawsuit provoked this decision — was put on the books in 1839. George Washington had drawn his last breath a full 40 years earlier.

South Dakota got its law regulating abortion in 1899; Delaware, Tennessee and South Carolina got theirs in 1883. In North Carolina it 1881, in Kentucky 1879, in North Dakota 1877, in Utah and Georgia 1876 in Oklahoma 1875.

The earliest state to get an anti-abortion law was Massachusetts — the state so overwhelmed by Puritan religious fanatics that the founders nearly rejected them for admission into the union — in 1812.

It was so bad there that Ben Franklin fled Massachusetts for Philadelphia in 1723 when he was 17 years old, specifically, as he noted at length in his autobiography, to get away from the religious fanatics who ran the state.

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Which brings us to Alito’s second position and the nub of the issue: religion.

Alito’s main argument about “unborn human beings” (a phrase he repeats over and over in his decision) merely represents one point on a broad spectrum of religious belief.

He dressed it up as law, with a healthy dose of pseudoscientific grumbling about fingernails and heartbeats thrown in, but it’s really all about Alito’s religious belief that “human life” begins at conception.

When should a zygote, an embryo or even a fetus be acknowledged as a human being? At fertilization? At quickening? At viability? At birth? All have been both legal and religious standards at various times and places throughout our history.

Science could suggest that humanity begins when a baby is born or delivered through C-section: in that moment it acquires independent agency, is its own “self.” Prior to that, the nascent life is part of the mother; the fetus is an appendage to her body, after all, and is entirely dependent on her for its blood supply, oxygen, and nutrition. If she dies, it dies.

Morality could argue that human rights of sorts should appear around the time of viability, when a fetus can survive as a baby outside the womb if forced to do so; that was the basis of the original Roe v. Wade decision. But morality, like religion, varies from era to era, country to country, culture to culture.

Some religious people argue, for example, that human life begins the moment their God decides a baby should be born, even before fertilization. God informs the couple of this moment by making them horny and ready for sex, so birth control devices that prevent the preordained outcome of pregnancy are verboten.

Other religions throughout history have recognized life as starting with the first breath, as implied in Genesis 2.7 and 7.21-22.

All these decision points amount to the question “When does a soul inhabit a human body?” presented as law. There has never been any theological consensus on that question.

In between are a plethora of decision points that are really the question “When does a soul inhabit a human body?” presented as law. Does “human” life begin at “intent,” when a couple prepares to have sex without birth control? At six weeks, when a bundle of cells that will become a heart start twitching? When an actual heartbeat is detectable? At “quickening,” when the fetus’ movement is detectable? At birth?

As recently as the 1960s, theologians were hotly debating this very issue in the pages of Christianity Today and Christian Life magazines. There was no consensus, and (outside of single religions) there never has been.

As Jennifer Rubin notes in this week’s Washington Post: “In assuming life begins at conception (thereby giving the states unfettered leeway to ban abortion), Alito and his right-wing colleagues would impose a faith-based regimen shredding a half-century of legal and social change.”

The vast majority of politicians who loudly proclaim the “sanctity of human life” in the “pre-born” or “unborn” stage also argue against ensuring that every child has adequate food, housing, education and medical care.

Seriously, if these folks cared one whit for “the innocent children” they’d stop school shootings by getting guns under control in this country. But they don’t. It’s just a lot easier to “love” a fetus that doesn’t talk back, doesn’t need health care or education, and doesn’t have a particular immigration status. Once it’s born, all bets are off.

That simple reality pretty much proves the cynicism of Alito’s charge that the state must be able to step in with the force of guns and prison bars to “protect” a zygote or fetus. This is all religious performance art, with women as its victims.

“There is ample evidence that the passage of [anti-abortion] laws was,” Alito writes, “spurred by a sincere belief that abortion kills a human being.”

Yes, it’s a belief. Period.

Tragically, this isn’t the first time this court’s fundamentalists have used its majority’s religious beliefs to alter what should be secular law.

Last year in Tandon v. Newsom, the same five justices again went too far even for John Roberts, ruling 5-4 that a person’s religion was a legitimate basis for refusing to go along with COVID lockdowns. The year before that, they ruled in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo that churches could ignore public health orders and subject their parishioners to a deadly disease because of the church leaders’ personal beliefs.

The court picked up steam down this long and dangerous road with Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which let employers violate federal employment law around insurance coverage because of their religious beliefs, even when those beliefs were not shared by the employees who were directly impacted by their decisions.

And with Masterpiece Cake, the Court even ruled that businesses can discriminate against their customers based on the business owners’ religious belief that gay people are hated by God.

Now “religious people” are free to claim a wide variety of exceptions from American law, from conditions of employment and even from common decency simply by shouting, “I believe!”

Under Roe v. Wade, people who believed abortion was wrong were free to not get one. They didn’t ever have to pull into the parking lot of an abortion clinic.

Under this draft Dobbs decision, however, women’s bodies have legally become the property of the state, arguably from the moment of intercourse.

Will Mike Pence’s menstrual-period registry be revived to keep track of pregnant women? Will the state mandate that the remains of miscarriages must be collected and preserved for burial, as Pence tried to do in Indiana?

If a woman uses or abuses drugs or alcohol, for example, even if she doesn’t know she’s pregnant, you can easily see where this logic could lead to her being charged with a crime and imprisoned. Exotic diets, fasting, experimenting with psychedelics, extreme exercise: all could lead a zealous prosecutor armed with this decision to a charge of child endangerment.

Will Mike Pence’s menstrual-period registry be revived so women can be tracked to identify abortions? Will the government mandate that women must collect and preserve the remains of miscarriages for burial with a licensed funeral home, as Pence tried to put into law when he was governor of Indiana?

Alito’s decision is an open assault on the right of bodily autonomy, the right to make one’s own medical decisions, and the right to choose to have or not have children.

And it’s all based on his personal religious belief — shared with four fundamentalist colleagues and now about to be imposed on the rest of us — that human life legally begins at the moment a sperm meets an egg.

Law in the United States should be based on a secular consensus and the most recent science; it should not become a flag that flutters in the winds of whichever religious perspective is majority-represented on the Supreme Court at any particular time.

Every single member of this court who appears to have ruled to outlaw abortion was put on the court by a president who did not win a majority of the vote, and was confirmed by a group of senators representing far fewer than half of Americans.

Their appearance on the court was engineered by wealthy right-wingers who proudly proclaim their belief that America should be run along religious lines.

Only an informed and politically active majority in America can right this wrong and establish majority rule in the world’s most important democracy.

Read more on the apparent fall of Roe v. Wade:

“Clean up your mess”: Cops called to home of Sen. Susan Collins over chalk protest

Police were called on Saturday to investigate a pro-choice abortion message written outside the home of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who commentators on the left say is partly responsible for the Supreme Court’s impending recession of America’s constitutional right to abortion.

Authorities arrived at Collins’ home at 9:20 AM to investigate a message written on the sidewalk just outside the senator’s house, according to The Bangor Daily News. “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the message reportedly read.

Police said that the message was “not overtly threatening” and was erased by Monday.

i was already laughing then i saw the actual thing she called the cops about and lost it lmao https://t.co/neQWGYy5eR pic.twitter.com/4Y9JOGSPEq

— Brandy Jensen (@BrandyLJensen) May 10, 2022

“We are grateful to the Bangor police officers and the City public works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” Collins said.

The message comes just a week after a bombshell report by Politico, which obtained a leaked majority draft opinion revealing that the Supreme Court has already informally voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling establishing America’s constitutional right to abortion. That report, published last Monday, drew immediate condemnation from Democrats, progressives, and abortion advocates alike.

After the ruling, many left-leaning commentators specifically rebuked Collins for her past support of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who Collins said promised to not overturn Roe during his confirmation process. Collins, who is now under fire over that claim, has since said that the report is “completely inconsistent” with what Kavanaugh said “in our meetings in my office.”

This past weekend, in protest of the court’s impending reversal of Roe, hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators gathered outside the homes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Kavanaugh in protest of the report. Conservative pundits and politicians dubiously accused the gatherings of being violent and illegal, citing the 18 U.S.C. 1507, which states that anyone “with the intent of influencing any judge … in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

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On Monday, the Senate quickly passed a bipartisan bill to shore up security for the Supreme Court in light of the demonstrations. The bill, approved by unanimous consent, provides the court and its family members with an around-the-clock security detail.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who co-sponsored the measure, said in a statement that he was “glad to see this bipartisan bill unanimously pass the Senate in order to extend security protection to the families of Supreme Court members.”

Virginia’s GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin hit by conservatives for failing to crack down on SCOTUS protests

Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is getting pummeled over his apparent failure to respond to the recent pro-choice protests outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

The protests first sparked this past weekend, just days after Politico revealed that the Supreme Court informally voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the watershed 1973 ruling that enshrined America’s constitutional right to abortion. On Monday, a group of around 150 demonstrators marched from a strip mall in Fairfax Virginia to Alito’s home, hoisting signs and chanting slogans like “When mothers’ lives are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back” and “Keep abortion safe and legal,” according to NBC News.

Youngkin said that his office has been “coordinating” with the Fairfax County Police Department and the Virginia State Police, to “ensure that there isn’t violence.”

“Virginia State Police were closely monitoring, fully coordinated with Fairfax County and near the protests,” he added.

We have been coordinating with @FairfaxCountyPD, @VSPPIO, and federal authorities to ensure that there isn’t violence. Virginia State Police were closely monitoring, fully coordinated with Fairfax County and near the protests. https://t.co/SZMhbuzKFN

— Governor Glenn Youngkin (@GovernorVA) May 10, 2022

But that posture did not sit well with conservative commentators, many of whom argued that Youngkin should have swept the protesters for what they felt was a clear violation of federal law.

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“The protest itself – without violence – is illegal,” tweeted Yossi Gestetner, the founder of Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council. “What level of illegality is ok for you before moving from “monitoring” the intimidation to stepping in?”

“Antifa just crossed into a Republican-lead state and were allowed to target Alito’s family home. Glenn Youngkin did nothing,” echoed right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec.

Will Chamberlain, Senior Counsel at the Internet Accountability Project, suggested that the demonstrators should be imprisoned. “You know what will stop leftists from protesting at people’s private homes and intimidating their families?” he asked. “JAIL.”

Right-wing lawyer Matthew Kolken even claimed that the protests constituted a form of “terrorism.”

“Democrats use terrorism as a tool, and Youngkin failed to send a clear message that it won’t be tolerated in Virginia,” Kolken tweeted.

Democrats use terrorism as a tool, and Youngkin failed to send a clear message that it won’t be tolerated in Virginia.

— Matthew Kolken (@mkolken) May 10, 2022

In arguing the protests are illegal, numerous right-wing commentators have adduced 18 U.S.C. 1507, which states that anyone “with the intent of influencing any judge … in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Has Russia been beaten? This military expert says that moment is coming soon

When Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to invade Ukraine more than two months ago, he no doubt expected an easy victory from a lightning-fast assault intended to crush the smaller opposing force. This spectacular victory was meant to advance the Russian president’s vision of a new manifest destiny, bringing his country closer to re-establishing itself as an imperial power on the global stage. But Putin’s gambit failed in grand fashion. Instead of celebrating a victory on May 9 — the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II — the Russian military is trying to reorganize itself after a series of stunning defeats and great losses in both materiel and personnel.

Speed was the key element in the Russian plan, but surprisingly strong and effective resistance from the Ukrainian military, and the Ukrainian people as a whole, exposed the Russian military’s many weaknesses: Logistical capabilities were lacking, troops appear poorly trained and lack motivation, equipment has not been properly maintained. Russia’s military now appears to be running short of ammunition, fuel, spare parts and even soldiers.

The Russian military laid siege to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, but after after several weeks of intense battle was finally driven out. The Ukrainian city of Mariupol has become the site of savage up-close combat, with defenders still holding out inside the now-famous Azovstal steel plant.

The time bought with Ukrainian struggle and blood has meant that the U.S. and its NATO allies have continued to pour billions of dollars in weaponry and other critical supplies into the embattled country. These weapons, which include killer drones, heavy artillery, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, and other support are proving lethal to the Russian invaders. As reported by the New York Times last week, the U.S. is also providing critical military intelligence to the Ukrainian military, which has been used, for instance, to target and kill Russian generals and to sink the missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Black Sea fleet.

The Russian military has now pivoted away from Ukraine’s capital city and is largely focusing on the eastern and southern parts of the country, specifically the Donbas region and Odessa. To this point, even with reorganized forces and a new battle plan and leadership, the Russians continue to encounter fierce resistance in those parts of Ukraine.

Despite Ukraine’s spirited resistance, the international mood remains tense. Putin and his spokespeople have at times threatened the possibility of nuclear war if the U.S. and its allies continue to “interfere” in Ukraine. At other times, the Russian leadership has signaled being open to a diplomatic solution to end the Ukraine war. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently made clear that the strategic goal of the U.S. is not just to preserve Ukrainian sovereignty but to degrade Russia’s military capability such that it will not threaten its neighbors again.

To discuss the current perilous state of the war in Ukraine, I recently spoke with John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army major who is chair of urban warfare studies at the Madison Policy Forum. He also consults for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the UN and other military and national security organizations. Spencer’s essays and other writing have been featured by the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy and other leading publications. His new book is “Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War,” to be published in July.

In this conversation, Spencer assesses the Russian military’s performance in the war and offers his views on why the Ukrainians have been able to fight effectively against a far larger and more powerful force. He discusses the effect of Western military intelligence as a key variable in the Ukrainian success so far, and how the war is changing as the front shifts away from cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv into the wide-open terrain of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Spencer argues against believing these sensational claims that the war in Ukraine represents a significant change in the nature of warfare based on technological innovation, and ends by making a surprising prediction: While the longer struggle for Ukraine’s freedom from Russia may drag on for years, he says, this conflict in Ukraine is drawing near its conclusion.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How do you assess the performance of the Russian military in Ukraine? Are they as bad as most outside observers are suggesting?

Absolutely. The Russian military has shown that it is in fact that bad. At the beginning of this war, they probably began as the No. 2 or 3 military in the world in terms of combat power. The Russian military will probably leave the Ukraine war diminished down to No. 25 or 30 at least.

On paper, the Russian military should have been able to dominate the Ukrainian military and win in three days, based just on the size of the Ukraine military. The problem with that prediction is armed resistance, which is when citizens rise up. That can take many forms. It’s not just some of the images that we’ve seen of Ukrainian civilians with AK-47s. The Ukrainian government enacted a law right before the invasion that increased the territorial defenses from some 200,000 soldiers to about a million. That can’t be discredited as a factor. I believe many outside observers underestimated the Ukrainian military’s capabilities.

Russia’s plan of attack was not ridiculous. It was a solid plan, but they didn’t have the military strength they thought they had.

The impact of the weapons, supplies and support provided to the Ukrainians was also underestimated. They started getting the Javelin missiles, for example, around 2016. The Ukrainians didn’t just start getting Javelins two months ago. One of the first things that was given to Ukraine from the outside world was superior intelligence. That includes everything from satellite imagery to help with signals intelligence and other aspects as well. That translates into the ability for a smaller and weaker force to be at the right moment to stop the other guy from doing what he wants to do. The Russian plan of attack in the beginning was not ridiculous. It was actually a solid plan, but they didn’t have the military strength they thought they had to follow through on it.

It is now clear that the U.S. and NATO are providing intelligence information to Ukraine. The only question is what type of intelligence, how fast and in what detail. Once the war is over, what do you think some of those big stories will be?

The Ukrainians could not have sunk the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, without such intelligence information. It wasn’t a lucky shot to be able to hit that ship with the Neptune missiles. Superior intelligence information was required. I believe the same thing about all of these Russian generals being killed. Those aren’t all lucky shots either. The Ukrainians being able to hit a vital fuel dump inside Belarus by using helicopters was also not possible without superior intelligence capabilities.

What did the Russians reasonably believe they could achieve — and how did their plan go so wrong so quickly?

Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe. There is so much happening at the same time. One of the biggest risks that the Russians took was coming across seven different fronts. In the beginning, they had one objective, and that was to take Kyiv. All other Russian military operations were in support of that objective. In order to take Kyiv, they needed to use speed.

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Step one of invading a country is to take out the air defenses. The Russians failed there too, and that was a massive blunder. The airspace is contested to this day, in fact. Without that air superiority, their audacious plan to take the capital — which included special forces and other elite troops attacking the airport — did not go as planned. The Russians were also going to drive their most lethal mechanized unit down from Belarus, which is the fastest route. The plan was basically sound, but because the air defenses were not taken out the Russians got slowed down.

And if you get slower in this audacious plan of using surprise, audacity and speed, then everything starts to fall apart. That is part of war, of course, but you have to have the capability to respond. Because the Russians couldn’t adapt to the loss of their momentum, they slowed down and stalled out. And of course, there is the truism, and wisdom, that it is not fighting that wins war, but logistics.

Amateurs talk tactics; professionals talk logistics. Once Russia pushed their units fast — we saw units just driving through towns, trying to get where they were going — they extended their operational reach. That is an operational risk. Such a move is not unheard of, but the Russians couldn’t hold the lines to support everything they were pushing in at once. Those logistical lines are the lifeline. Once again, what wins wars, or loses them, are questions of logistics.

The Russian military’s senior leaders are obviously professionals, very serious people. How did they make such basic and fundamental errors in the execution of their war plan?

Throughout the Russian chain of command, they thought they had a force that they did not. The war in Ukraine has been the biggest test of the Russian military since World War II, and how much it has changed. The Russians tried a Western-style invasion. The plan was to topple the Ukrainian government and then put in their own. It was supposed to be a Western, modern, Desert Storm or Operation Iraqi Freedom-style “shock and awe” invasion. Russian military leaders believed they could accomplish this, based on what they believed they had.

The Russians tried to fight like a modern Western military with a greatly weakened Soviet-style force. They have been exposed as suffering from years of graft, decay and delusion.

But the training and preparation of the conscripts was poor, and the Russian military lacks professional enlisted soldiers. They were trying to fight like a modern Western military with a Soviet-style force that even wasn’t as strong as it was during the USSR. They failed, and have now been exposed as suffering from years of graft, decay and belief in a method of warfare that does not fit the strengths of their military.

What is going on other regions of Ukraine, such as the east and south? Some observers suggest that the Russians are in fact enjoying great success in those regions but that is being underreported by the Western media.

Kherson is an example where they’ve had success. They moved in and were able to secure it with a minimum number of forces. But as for Odessa, personally, I do not think they could ever take it. Mariupol, of course, the Russians had to take at great cost. The fact that the Russians had to fly in their top military officer, an adviser to Putin himself, to get control of the situation in Ukraine is the biggest sign one could ever have that things are not going the way the Russians want them to.

The fact that 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers held off 15,000 or more Russian troops in Mariupol is incredible. They didn’t just do that by the way — those Ukrainians kept those Russian forces engaged. That means they couldn’t go somewhere else for two months. I woudn’t even call Mariupol a win for Russia, to be honest.

We know a great deal more about Russian losses. As for Ukrainian losses, there hasn’t been public information about that, and we know a lot less. Clearly, the Ukrainians have lost a lot, and the fight is costing them greatly. As a military analyst, I see Russia making gains in some locations, but then I see them losing gains in other critical locations.

As the Russians move to the east and the Donbas region, they are shifting away from the urban warfare seen in Kyiv to what we describe as “maneuver warfare.” How would you explain that term? What will the Russians try to do where the terrain is more open?

Maneuver warfare, as we understand it today, came from finding a way to break out of trench warfare during World War I. That involved using a combination of massive artillery fire, tanks, airplanes and radios to break stalemates in trench lines by penetrating at some point, and then massing all your capabilities into that penetration and overwhelming your enemy. That’s the basis of maneuver warfare. In the eastern parts of Ukraine, the Russians are applying that doctrine. That is the most powerful form of open warfare across great distances.

In urban terrain, what we see is more what we call positional warfare. You have a piece of terrain that you’re holding, and it is much like trench warfare or akin to siege warfare around ancient castles. It is very hard to find a break-in point. We saw that in Kyiv.

In eastern Donbas, I believe that we will see a combination of both wide-area and long-distance battles, 20-mile fire engagements. But we’ll also see the closing in of formations where the Russians are trying to penetrate into critical areas including urban terrain. In the eastern Donbas, it’s everything from urban terrain to heavily wooded swamps. There will be all types of warfare, but the more open terrain allows two enemies to find, fix, and finish each other, much more so than in urban terrain.

The ultimate goal is to destroy the other military and control the field of battle. The outcome will be largely determined by which military, the Ukrainians or the Russians, can get to the key pieces of terrain and hold them, and then seek some type of negotiation or other strategy for a resolution.

There are the classic definitions of “war” and “warfare,” which are not the same thing. How is the experience of war and warfare similar in Ukraine to things we have seen in earlier time periods? How is it different? And what is the role of technology?

The biggest difference between “war” and “warfare” is that war is the overarching political function of armed fighting between two nations. That includes politics, economics and information. War is the pursuit of strategic objectives by the use of force by one nation versus another. Warfare is the simpler concept of armed fighting between two individuals, whether that’s a non-state actor, a terrorist force and a military or two militaries going against each other or a military fighting a bunch of irregular civilians. Warfare is the actual fighting. War is the pursuit of the political and strategic objectives.

This is a war for the nation of Ukraine. This includes how many nations are in support of Ukraine and all the way down to the individuals fighting versus Russia. That will decide the outcome of this war just as much as the warfare, which is the fighting where one person is killing another person.

The nature of war is based on principles that will never change. War is politics. War is human. Yes, the weapons change. Yes, the technologies may change. Even how you fight may change. Yes, we are seeing kamikaze drones and cyber warfare and the like. But to me, these are just continuations of the basics of war fighting. Yes, you can increase somebody’s range and you can reduce the cost to humans. If you can put a drone up, you can use intelligence differently.

But I have not seen anything, including the Ukraine war today, that proves to me that there is some radical aspect in which technology is changing the basic nature of fighting.

How do you make sense of the arguments some people have advanced that the war in Ukraine is a revolutionary event that represents a great transformation in warfare, such as with the fixation on the Javelin missile and how it has supposedly made tank warfare obsolete.

The tank, by its nature, is mobile protected firepower. From the start of warfare — from the days of moving up to the castle gates — that requirement to have mobile protected firepower is not going to change. Since the tank first appeared on the battlefield, there has been no replacement for it. There simply is no replacement for an armor-protected vehicle that allows you to get close to the thing you are trying to kill and then having the firepower to do it.

In urban terrain, no smart soldier goes into that type of fight without a tank. And only a dummy goes in sending a tank by itself, because everything in war is basically a chess match. Of course we have developed technologies that make a tank vulnerable, but a soldier on the battlefield is just as vulnerable. I’d rather be inside a vulnerable tank than standing out in the open wearing a Kevlar vest where basically anything can kill me.

These narratives about some revolutionary change in warfare from a given weapon are because people think that they’ve found something new, and they want everybody to believe them. You have to be a student of warfare to understand where history is rhyming and repeating itself or where there’s actually something new.

What does it feel like to be a Ukrainian soldier right now? And what does it feel like to be a Russian soldier in Ukraine?

There are some things about soldiering that don’t change. They’re having ups and downs in terms of morale and unit cohesion. War does that to people. You endure great things. War is also extreme violence mixed with periods of boredom, punctuated by extreme fear and violence.That’s normal life in combat, period.

War is a rollercoaster of emotion that is further impacted by the digital world we live in. Ukrainian soldiers have cell phones; Russian soldiers have cell phones. This fight for the narrative, even in the soldier’s brain, is a part of war now.

But now there is this aspect of being connected online. So now the Ukrainian soldiers are hearing from their president. They get the messages that 40 nations are behind them. In Russia, while they try to control information, there’s no controlling the fact that entire units are being taken off the battlefield and their equipment doesn’t work. All of this information is part of what gives an individual the will to fight. It’s a complex formula of personal motivations, their connections to their families, their belief in the cause, and how well the war’s going for them. Ultimately, it is a rollercoaster of emotion that is further impacted by the digital world we live in, which is constantly connected. Ukrainian soldiers have their cell phones. Russian soldiers have their cell phones. Information can bleed through. This fight for the narrative, even in the soldier’s brain, is there. That will be a part of war going forward forever.

Russian soldiers are committing war crimes in Ukraine. There are reports of Russian soldiers refusing to fight and sabotaging and abandoning their equipment. Officers have been attacked and killed. There is looting. Does this signal to a lack of proper non-commissioned officers in the Russian army?

They have officers and they have conscripts and they have contracted soldiers. They don’t have the backbone of an army, which are the non-commissioned officers, the sergeants. When the rubber meets the road, he or she is there at the point of need, to motivate soldiers and take care of the health of soldiers. The non-commissioned officers can make decisions without instructions, and that’s really the glue of your army. That matters, because everything’s going to go bad in war. There’s fog and friction, and when bad things happen, the non-commissioned officer is your glue on the ground. He can say, “OK, that plan went really bad. I know what the overall goal is. I’m going to execute that.”

That is the power of any army. So when Russia doesn’t have that capability, those people, when the military is put under extreme stress it can’t make a decision. It can’t create smaller teams of motivated soldiers. It can’t keep soldiers from doing bad things. It basically falls apart. The Russians should have known that from history.

What do you think happens next in Ukraine?

You have to look for the “culmination points” when a military force takes so many losses that they will not be able to meet their goals. This is what we saw in Kyiv. They start to break down in their actual formation as an organized group.

This conflict, in a larger sense, won’t end for years. Russia will always contest the borders of Ukraine as a sovereign nation. But this war, the battle for Ukraine, will end within weeks or months. That is my opinion. We will see the Russian military in Ukraine reach its culmination point soon.

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Republicans are now targeting companies whose employees seek abortions

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a frequent critic of “corporate wokeness,” is attempting to lead the pack against Corporate America for its new company policies on abortion.

Last Tuesday, hours after a draft decision by the Supreme Court overturning the federal right to an abortion leakes, Rubio introduced the “No Tax Breaks for Radical Corporate Activism Act,” which would preclude employers from receiving tax breaks for providing abortion access or gender-affirming care to their employees. The bills comes as multiple major companies – including Amazon, Apple, Tinder – have announced plans to cover the travel costs of employees seeking an abortion.

Sen. Rubio introduced a bill to remove tax breaks for woke corporations that pay for employees’ abortion travel costs or so-called “gender affirming care” for young children of their employees.https://t.co/9BsHgMH2su

— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) May 4, 2022

Under current U.S. law, corporations can file for tax deductions if they cover their employees’ health expenses. Rubio’s law would prohibit these deductions in the case of abortion and gender-affirming care. The measure does, however, contain certain medical exceptions.

“Our tax code should be pro-family and promote a culture of life,” Rubio told Fox News. “Instead, too often our corporations find loopholes to subsidize the murder of unborn babies or horrific ‘medical’ treatments on kids.”

“My bill would make sure this does not happen,” Rubio added.

The legislation has virtually no chance of passing while Democrats control both chambers of Congress.

Still, it highlights a growing political rift between the GOP and Corporate America. Back in September, Rubio proposed a similar measure that would bar corporate executives from making “non-pecuniary” decisions to help the company’s “public image” or “employee morale,” establishing a cause of action for shareholders aggrieved with a company’s apparent “wokeness”

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10:51

That measure came largely in response to recent corporate rhetoric and policies on voting and racial justice.

After the Capitol riot on January 6, numerous companies vowed to suspend all political contributions to Republican lawmakers who voted to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. Later, in April of that year, companies like Coca-Cola and Georgia condemned Georgia’s restrictive voting bill, which is set to have a disproportionate impact on minorities. And just last month, Disney vowed to help repeal a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ recently enacted in Florida, earning the company scorn from Florida with Republicans.

The GOP’s and Corporate America’s lastest schism comes after Politico reported that the Supreme Court is gearing up to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that enshrined America’s constitutional right to abortion. While numerous corporations have issued statements and action plans to address concerns around abortion access, most of Corporate America has opted to stay mum on the topic

What killer whales need from humans

You can learn a lot from poop.

Deborah Giles would know. As the research director of the nonprofit Wild Orca and a research scientist at the University of Washington, Giles has worked for years on a project collecting scat from endangered Southern Resident killer whales to better understand their health.

And there’s reason for concern. Southern Residents are a distinct population of orcas — known as J, K and L pod — that make their home in the waters around the Pacific Northwest. For the past 20 years their populations have trended dangerously downward. In 2005, with just 88 individuals remaining, they were federally protected as endangered. Today their numbers have dropped to 73.

“The Revelator” spoke with Giles about the biggest threats facing these killer whales and what can be done to save them.

With the help of specially trained dogs, you’re able to find Southern Resident killer whale scat in the sea. What can you learn from it?

Scat is a great proxy for blood or blubber. In the past we would’ve had to have taken a blubber biopsy to understand things like how much toxicants are stored or circulating through the whale’s body. But an analysis of one fecal collection yields things like nutrition status, stress hormones, pregnancy hormones. We can tell if a female is pregnant — and how pregnant — based on sex hormones associated with different stages of pregnancy. We can tell things about the gut microbiome, fungus and bacteria. Pretty much anything you can imagine health-wise that can be learned from a biological sample, you can learn from feces.

One of our papers showed that 69% of pregnant females are losing their calves either before they’re viable, meaning they miscarry them or the calves are born and die right away. And one-third of those are females that were pregnant into the last stages of pregnancy, and yet their babies died. Those females are the ones that we were also able to show were nutritionally deprived.

In addition, we can look at things like microplastics. We haven’t done any actual analysis on that yet, but that’s going to be a big one going forward. And we’ll be able to go back and analyze our past samples.

Chinook salmon are the preferred source of food for these killer whales. Is a lack of Chinook what’s driving their health problems?

That’s the biggest problem. Chinook are decimated in quality and quantity throughout the whales’ entire range. We Washingtonians like to think of these whales as ours, but they’re really Oregon’s and California’s whales, too.

Fish declines from Monterey Bay to southeast Alaska are at fault here. What’s causing the declines in salmon? Overfishing, fishing in inappropriate ways and in inappropriate areas, and using inappropriate gear. There’s a massive amount of bycatch from other fisheries.

Dams on rivers are also making the lives of salmon that much harder. So is habitat destruction in estuarine places — in areas that are the interface between the fresh water and saltwater. We’re filling those in with concrete and building condos in those areas that are vitally important for out-migrating salmon.

We’re also creating more fish that are inferior in quality by throwing more hatchery salmon into the mix. Wild salmon have a greater ability to withstand oceanographic perturbations in a way that hatchery fish don’t.

Another problem is with fisheries management. Salmon from much of Oregon, and all of Washington and British Columbia, exit their natal rivers and go up to Alaska to spend anywhere from two to five years in the ocean getting big. Then they leave Alaska return to their natal rivers to spawn.

But often, before they can do that, the Alaskan fishery takes a tremendous amount of the fish. Around 97% of Chinook caught in Alaska are non-native to Alaska. Those fish are bound for these rivers [in Oregon, Washing and British Columbia] and come from a huge number of runs that are on the endangered species list.

What effect is climate change having on Southern Residents?

Climate change is the largest elephant in the room. It’s the one that’s overshadowing everything, because everything that’s impacting the natural world will ultimately find its way to direct impacts to the Southern Residents. Killer whales occur in all oceans of the world, the warmest to the coldest waters. A several-degree temperature change isn’t going to impact the killer whales themselves, but it’s going to affect the fish that they rely on.

That’s another reason some of us are pushing for the Snake River dams to be removed. Those four dams on the mainstem of the Columbia and four on the Snake block some of the highest elevation, coldest water habitat needed for salmon. If we could remove those dams that would give those fish the biggest access to cold water habitat.

The salmon that these whales coevolved with used to be over 100 pounds. It makes sense that you would have these large-bodied whales that can live into their 80s when they were able forage on these incredibly large fatty-rich, lipid-rich fish. A full-grown killer whale or a pregnant killer whale needs 300-400 pounds of food per day.

So back in the day, even 100 years ago, they would have to forage on three or four Chinook and they would have enough to eat and be healthy and thrive.

Now, when the average size of a Chinook in Washington state is 12.5 pounds, killer whales have to forage a lot more to find the same amount of food. And when the prey that they’re looking for is less quality, smaller and more widely dispersed, these whales are having to exert so much more energy to try and get their daily caloric needs met. So it’s no wonder we’re seeing that 69% of females that get pregnant are not able to bring their calf to term.

What else can we do to help them?

I think we need to be getting dams down that we can do without. That includes the Klamath dams in California and others. We need to be doing habitat restoration on rivers to return healthy riparian corridors so that there’s shade to keep waters cool for salmon, and woody debris to create different habitats within the river system. We need to stop farming right up to the river’s edge. We need to be mindful of the inputs into the river, including industrial toxicants and those associated with agriculture.

We need to stop decimating that interface between the saltwater and the freshwater realm, which is an area that people seem intent to just completely pave over everywhere. We need fisheries management that focuses on maximizing a fish’s potential to get all the way back to its natal river.

We also need to change when, where, and how we fish. We can utilize fishing techniques that can significantly reduce salmon bycatch, like nets with holes in the sides that other species of fish don’t even seem to see, but the Chinook can exit. We need to be very mindful about what is returning, what is moving through an area. Just because you’re out for a pollock or a hake or some other sort of fish, if there’s salmon in the area, I’m sorry, you don’t get to fish there.

In terms of research, I think we need to see what the emerging toxicants are that are impacting these whales, like PFAS. We do need to be looking at how healthy the whales are at different times of the year and to be able to couple that with a knowledge of fisheries abundance. When these whales are getting enough to eat, what’s happening with fisheries there? What are we doing right there? We need to be tracking this throughout the year to be able to see change over time.

What is it like to be studying these animals that are perilously close to extinction?

I know these whales as individuals. I’ve been following them since I was 18, and I’ve watched

the majority of them grow up. I’ve watched them have babies of their own. I’ve gotten a front row seat to see their interactions with each other. I see how tightly bonded they are.

We saw what happens when a whale loses her calf, like with J35 [who carried her dead calf for at least 17 days in 2018]. That was the world’s opportunity to see what we researchers get to see anytime we’re with them. We see that they’re incredibly socially bonded. They care for each other. They cooperatively hunt and share food, even when they themselves are starving.

And we see that they’re not giving up, they’re continuing to get pregnant. It’s not necessarily a conscious thing — it’s who they are, it’s what they do. But they’re still here and I want to give them as much of a fighting chance as possible.

By continuing the work that we do, by continuing to magnify and highlight what’s happening with them — both the positives and the negatives — it gives the public an opportunity to get engaged and stay engaged.

But is it heartbreaking? Absolutely. Every day it’s heartbreaking to think about what’s happening with them. I think about them every time I get in my car. I ask myself, “Do I really need to take this trip? How is this impacting the whales?”

That’s what I try to impart to people that I’m teaching or getting to visit with: It doesn’t matter where you’re from, the things that you do have an impact on not only these whales, but all the other species on the planet.

It comes down to education, people learning about something that they care about and not just leaving it at that but continuing their education and passing that information onto their friends and family.

Wherever you live, get involved in groups that are doing good work. Don’t just give a thumbs up — actually participate.

Republicans admit they’re trying to destroy Madison Cawthorn

Democrats hoping to see Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R) ousted from his seat representing North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives after just one term are getting an able assist from some unlikely allies — Republicans and former friends of the controversial lawmaker back in his home state.

According to a report from the Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey and Roger Sollenberger, Republicans and conservatives in North Carolina — with the support of outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) — are openly boasting that they want him gone and are connected to leaks of embarrassing photos and videos of Cawthorn that have reportedly even disgusted former president Donald Trump, who has nonetheless endorsed him.

As the report notes, Republicans tolerated Cawthorn’s antics — much like they have turned a blind eye to Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) — until he stated in a podcast that conservatives in Washington D.C. engage in drug-fueled orgies and, since that time, he has been on the receiving end of embarrassing disclosures.

Some of the disclosures, the report notes, have reportedly come from former friends and allies in North Carolina who have soured on him.

Labeling the flood of embarrassing disclosures an “ever-worsening public relations trainwreck,” as the May 17th primary approaches, the Beast report argues that “the sources of the coordinated stories seem clear: the attacks are coming from inside the house.”

One longtime GOP operative in the state admitted, “It’s definitely a hit job that I’m happy to be a party to. Most of the GOP universe has come around to align against this guy. You’re seeing a full-court, state-based, establishment pushback against him. Get this guy out. Take him out. We’re gonna see if we can pull it off in eight days.”

According to the Beast, “… the reality is Cawthorn has spent the last year making enemies, from Capitol Hill to the corner of North Carolina that he represents. The congressman’s string of unforced errors — from the coke-and-orgy comments to disparaging Ukraine’s president as a ‘thug’ — merely helped to consolidate a powerful coalition of longtime foes and former friends.”

David Wheeler, a North Carolina Democrat who runs the Fire Madison PAC, stated he and his partner have been happy to be the conduit for the attacks by Republicans on Cawthorn.

“Obviously, we have a target, we’re not afraid to take him on and put out the information his opponents wouldn’t—or the Democrats wouldn’t,” he said with the Beast report adding, “That included a video last week, released with many disclaimers and caveats, showing a naked Cawthorn mounting another man in bed… seemingly as a joke, but bizarre nonetheless. Cawthorn did not deny the video was authentic, but he dismissed it as horseplay, and said his foes were trying to ‘blackmail’ him by publishing it.”

“People think we’re under Kevin McCarthy’s finger, and that he’s telling us what to do because he wants to get back at Madison,” Wheeler claimed. “It’s not folks out of Washington that are sending this stuff. It’s folks who used to work with him, who were his supporters.”

You can read more here.