Bizarre study finds men who owned cats as children are more likely to have psychosis as adults

Typically, pet ownership has positive psychological effects on children. But according to a new study, physical effects — particularly on the brain — may not always be positive.

Specifically, a new research paper finds that owning a cat as a child is linked to psychosis in adulthood — but only among men, curiously. Psychosis is a condition in which its sufferers lose touch with reality, and often hallucinate things that aren’t there or see things that are not real.

“Ownership of cats in childhood has been inconsistently associated with psychosis in adulthood,” the authors explained in their study, which was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. “Parasitic exposure, the putative mechanism of this association, may be more common with rodent-hunting cats, and its association with psychosis may depend on other environmental exposures.”

In other words, male children whose families owned outdoor cats were more likely to experience psychotic episodes as adults than those who either did not own a cat or whose cats stayed indoors. The statistical difference was small, but still significant.

Why would rodent-hunting cats be more likely to cause psychotic experiences? The complicated reason may relate to a type of parasite that is found in cats and rats, and sometimes humans.

It’s called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), and it is a nasty protozoan best known for causing the disease toxoplasmosis. It is commonly found on rodents and therefore, not surprisingly, in cat feces. The parasite has a complex life cycle, and in terms of their relationship with people often begins when a cat will develop an infection after eating raw meat, rodents or wild birds. Because the parasites live in feline feces, people who make any kind of contact with the feces and then touch their own orifices can ingest the parasite themselves. From there, mental health issues can ensue.

Though the idea of a mind-altering protozoan transmitted via cats is alarming, it is not necessarily harmful: roughly 30 percent of the human population is infected with the T gondii parasite.

From feline feces, scientists believe it can enter the bodies of humans, and is suspected to be linked to the mental health problems that often arise during their adulthoods if they had cats as children. Exposure to the parasite has been previously linked to disorders like schizophrenia and other cognitive impairments. The disease toxoplasmosis itself causes symptoms including fever, fatigue, muscle ache and inflammation. It can be fatal in both people and animals with weaker immune systems, and scientists have long suspected a link between the parasite and a plethora of mental health ailments.

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“These are small pieces of evidence but it’s interesting to consider that there might be combinations of risk factors at play,” McGill University psychiatry resident Vincent Paquin, MD, the lead author on the paper, told Medscape Medical News.

He added, “And even if the magnitude of the risk is small at the individual level, cats and Toxoplasma gondii are so present in our society that if we add up all these small potential effects then it becomes a potential public health question.”

Though the idea of a mind-altering protozoan transmitted via cats is alarming, it is not necessarily harmful: roughly 30 percent of the human population is infected with the T gondii parasite. In addition, as the study noted, there were other factors associated with a higher risk of adult psychosis such as a history of smoking, past head trauma and moving houses more than three times as a child. Additionally, the study had design limitations, such as relying on self-reporting for assessing psychosis diagnoses, and other studies have yielded different conclusions on the subject. The authors themselves acknowledge that their findings will need to be replicated by other scientists before they can be considered definitive.

“If you’re generally healthy, not pregnant, and have been diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, you probably won’t need any treatment other than conservative management,” the Mayo Clinic explains on its website about toxoplasmosis. “If you’re pregnant or have lowered immunity, you may need medical management to avoid severe complications. The best approach, though, is prevention.”

In 2019, 11 Hawaiian monk seal deaths were linked to the T gondii parasite. As Hawaii has a large feral cat population, feral cats’ feces infected the Hawaiian monk seals with the parasite.

The study also leaves at least one big question unanswered: Why did cat ownership as a child seem to have an effect on human males, but not human females?

“One possible explanation based on the animal model literature is that the neurobiological effects of parasitic exposure may be greater with male sex,” senior author and psychiatry professor Suzanne King, PhD told Medscape Medical News.

This is not the first study to draw attention to the dreaded parasite and its ability to wreak havoc through cat feces. In 2019, Salon reported on how there had been 11 Hawaiian monk seal deaths linked to the T gondii parasite. As Hawaii has a large feral cat population, feral cats’ feces infected the Hawaiian monk seals with the parasite. It can be fatal in the pinnipeds, hence the large death toll.

“We have 11 that have died, eight of which are female — and that is the scariest aspect of it, because they are the contributors to increasing the population,” Angela Amlia, Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Coordinator at NOAA Fisheries Pacific Islands Regional Office, told Salon at the time. She added that “there may have been other[s] that have died” and that “it is possible — and we don’t know for certain — that it has to due with immunosuppression due to reproduction.”

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Jared Leto pretended to be disabled between takes on “Morbius”

“Morbius” is out now in theaters, and the reviews for the film are less than stellar. Starring Jared Leto as Morbius the Living Vampire, an obscure villain from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery, the film ranges from entertaining to incomprehensible depending on the scene. After being delayed six times (filming ended on the project in 2019) and facing backlash over how its end credits scenes duped moviegoers, we shouldn’t be too surprised. The odds were always against “Morbius” and the odds proved right.

Which isn’t to say that “Morbius” is all bad; it’s actually one of those movies that’s so bad it becomes entertaining again. (In our latest episode of the “Take the Black” podcast, I called it “‘The Room’ of superhero movies.”) But there were some genuinely good things to come out of the film, such as the chaotically fun performance of Matt Smith. Jared Leto, who plays Michael Morbius himself, also did a pretty solid job.

Leto has gained a reputation over the year for his intense method acting, aka when an actor tries to immerse themself in a character’s life and mental state both on screen and off. Leto famously caused a bit of controversy while working on “Suicide Squad” for sending costars anal beads, Playboy magazines, and even a dead rat to try and better understand the mind of the Joker. With “Morbius” things are a bit less extreme, but still intense.

Jared Leto pretended to be disabled on the set of “Morbius”

During an interview with Uproxx, “Morbius” director Daniel Espinosa confirmed a rumor that Leto was so committed to inhabiting the lived experience of Dr. Michael Morbius that he used his crutches to get around even off camera. Apparently, Leto went so far as to force himself to use the crutches to limp to the bathroom between takes. Things got to the point where the actor’s long trips to the bathroom began slowing down production, so he had to be convinced to allow himself to be brought there in a wheelchair.

“Because I think that what Jared thinks, what Jared believes, is that somehow the pain of those movements, even when he was playing normal Michael Morbius, he needed, because he’s been having this pain his whole life,” Espinosa said. “Even though, as he’s alive and strong, it has to be a difference. Hey, man, it’s people’s processes.”

All of the actors believe in processes. And you, as director, you support whatever makes it as good as you can be. I think it’s really mysterious, what they do. Almost all actors, in general, have their own reputation of being an interesting person how he works with their characters. I think that all of them have these traits. If you want a completely normal person that does only things that you understand, then you’re in the wrong business. Because what’s different is what makes them tick. It’s very hard to be able to say, ‘I can take this part away and I will still get the same stuff from him.’ I don’t do that. I’m more to see like, ‘Hey, if you’re doing this, we have to do this.’

While these types of delays might have frustrated other directors, Espinosa remains in Leto’s corner. In another interview with MovieMaker.com, he said that Leto showed up to set acting like “a fully disabled person,” and that it would sometimes slow down filming.

It would take him like 20 minutes to come to the front of the camera, because it was so hard [to walk]. This would also create pains in his body, to twist himself like that. But it was for him to remember the pain that the character had.

Part of Espinosa’s patience stems from the deep kinship he feels with actors. “I love the craft and I love their dedication. I always feel like they’re suicide bombers that explore their emotions, and we are the guys that are dressed in black, hiding and waiting for them to explode. And when they’ve done that, we have to appreciate that. We have to appreciate the sacrifice that they do.”

At what point does method acting become too much of a strain on a production? We can’t say, although it’s funny to imagine this stuff. Hiring actors with real disabilities requires totally reasonable accommodations to be made, but to have an able-bodied actor make demands that strain a film’s crew (who are notoriously overworked in many Hollywood productions) feels a bit off.

But hey, who are we to say too much is too much? “Morbius” speaks for itself . . .

“Morbius” director has “a lot of self-hatred” but is still proud of the film

Espinosa has been pretty busy these past few weeks promoting the film. Speaking to Insider (via The A.V. Club), he opened up a bit about the difficulties of modern filmmaking, and finding the parts of the work he was proud of amidst the dross.

“When I did my first feature, it was a small movie called ‘Babylon Disease,'” Espinosa said. “I remember one day going home on the subway and I had a few drinks so I was a bit drunk. Someone nudged me on the train and said, ‘I have to tell you what’s wrong with the second scene in your feature,’ and I was like, ‘Well, okay.'”

The point I’m making is that it’s a strange thing to make something that is so public. Look, I have a lot of self-hatred so I have a lot of criticism of my own work. I’m always trying to focus on being better. But I am also proud of what I do. There are parts in all of my movies that I’m really proud of.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember films are made by real people with real feelings. While “Morbius” might be a bit of a hot mess, there’s no doubt that a lot of people put a lot of hard work into the thing. It’s good that there are parts of the film that Espinosa is proud of and can stand behind, and he deserves a lot of credit for being willing to openly engage with the level of criticism the film is receiving.

Michael Showalter on American con artists: “We really are screwed if there’s no such thing as truth”

Michael Showalter is having a career-defining moment. The writer, director, actor and producer has been gaining a steady following in the entertainment industry for nearly 30 years, thanks to the beloved MTV sketch comedy show “The State” and the cult classic “Wet Hot American Summer.” But more recently, he’s carved a reputation as one of the surest hands with stories that skate the line of drama and comedy — especially if they happen to be true. After directing “The Big Sick,” in the past year, he’s directed “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and has been a director on “The Shrink Next Door” and “The Dropout.”

Showalter, whose upcoming projects include the adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s memoir “Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies,” stopped by to appear on “Salon Talks” recently to talk to me about why we’re fascinated with the cult of personality, and the true Hollywood story he’d still like to get his hands on.

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Most of us remember you from your beginnings in the world of comedy. Over the last few years, your career’s taken a different direction. You’ve gone more dramatic and dark. It feels like to me “Hello, My Name Is Doris” is a turning point in your career. Talk to me about what’s changed and how you’ve evolved as a storyteller.

As a consumer of television or movies or theater, or even podcasts or books, I gravitate more towards those kinds of subjects. It became this thing of wanting to work on the kind of projects that I, as a viewer, like. I obviously love the comedic work that I’ve done. I grew up loving “Airplane!” movies and Woody Allen comedies and what have you, and really loved that part of my life. But as I got a little older, my interest did start to diversify. It became a question of, how can I do that? This industry likes to label you, and likes to keep you where you are. Which isn’t criticism, it just is how it is. So, that was both as an actor, wanting to feel like I could be seen as not just an actor, but also as a writer and a director or a producer.

It really was “Doris” that changed that. I was living in New York, teaching screenwriting at NYU Graduate Film School. I was helping my students work on their own scripts, giving them advice that I wasn’t necessarily taking myself, about how to push characters further and to go deeper into character. In a sense, it gave me a little bit of a boost, and some courage to take those risks with my own work and my own writing. That’s what “Hello, My Name Is Doris” really is, that first big experience where I was trying something that was really funny, but there are some really heartbreaking dramatic scenes.

Working with Sally Field was instrumental in helping me, pushing me and really encouraging me in that direction, giving me a sense of some confidence about that. People really responded to that film, and then “The Big Sick” happened. All of a sudden, there I was doing the kind of the work that I’ve been wanting to do.

Sally Field, who you’re working with again now in a new film, was known as a very lighthearted figure, was not necessarily thought of as a very “serious” performer. And then obviously had that exact same shift.

I definitely think there was simpatico about that. When you work with her, get to know her a little bit, that drive to prove herself is always there. Part of her felt that way that I feel, which is wanting to feel like you’re more than just something you did a long time ago. Jim Parsons, who I’m doing this movie with now, said something similar to that. He’s obviously really well known for his incredible work that he’s done in television, but really wants to show other sides of himself. And I like supporting people, I like working with people like that. Whether it’s Jim, or Kumail in “The Big Sick,” where he was the leading man, and the romantic leading man. Even Jessica Chastain. You see her as this very serious actress, but I feel like there are sides to Jessica that she really got to show in “Tammy Faye.”

I gravitate towards people that are looking to step outside their box, even Amanda Seyfried in “The Dropout.” I’m really interested in working with people who I get this sense of, there’s something more there that they have to show the world. I love being a part of that.

Throughout the projects you’ve done, the actors who have starred in them have often come from the world of comedy, whether it’s Will Ferrell, Louie Anderson, Kathy Griffin, Stephen Fry. You have these comedy heavyweights doing pretty dark material. What do you think that people who come from that comedy background bring to that darkness?

I feel like comedians, or at least the kind of comedians that I got to know and work with, it goes without saying, aren’t the happiest people in the world. Everyone has pain, and comedians use comedy to process that, or communicate that.

I’ve noticed over the years that comedians, just like musicians, or just like anybody, have a shared language. There’s a way that comedians communicate with each other that is usually through the lens of comedy. There’s riffing, doing bits, that kind of thing. Comedians often can’t help but be funny, they can’t help but bring humor to what they’re doing. I’m a little bit like that, in that even when I’m working with dramatic material, I tend to find ways to find humor in it, even if it’s not on the page.

I think comedians are like that too. They inherently find something funny in what they’re doing, that’s not necessarily about telling a joke or yukking it up or trying even for a laugh. There’s just some sense of levity or humor that made me speak to some way in which comedians see the world. There’s a way of seeing the absurdity of all of this folly of life. I like that. I like the lightness that a comedian may bring to something that is inherently dark.

When I am watching “The Dropout,” and I think of some of your earlier work like “Wet Hot American Summer,” I see the farce. I see the physicality in it, just the absolute hijinks of it. Things are going on in the background while something very serious is happening in the foreground. It feels very much like you couldn’t do that without that comedy element.

For me, it’s also it’s theater. What I really love and I feel like I’ve connected with the most is theater. Think of even something like “Angels in America,” which is a hilariously funny play. Most of my favorite plays, the first two-thirds are really funny, no matter how heartbreaking it gets and then how heavy the themes are and how dark the material is. A lot of really great plays are funny for a while, before they get serious. That’s a little bit of the formula that I’ve gravitated towards.

You have fun for a little a while and you have humor. And then things tend to go there, in the last third. There are many great examples of that in both film and theater. For me, the way I love going to see a play, is that experience of you laugh and laugh and laugh, and then at the very end, all of a sudden it hits you, what it’s all about.

Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in “The Dropout” (Beth Dubber/Hulu)

That’s what really stings. You’ve done a lot of work that is based on true stories. I’m thinking particularly of “The Dropout,” because it’s a story many of us became obsessed with. I want to know what drew to this particularly, and what surprised you going along into investigating it.

What drew me to it, was just what you said. I’m fascinated by this story, really fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes as a protagonist. She’s an incredibly unique and enigmatic character, in that she’s not as easy to define in terms of her motivations as say, Bernie Madoff, who seems to have just been really greedy. I shouldn’t speak out of turn, I don’t know a whole lot about him. But there’s something very ambiguous about Elizabeth Holmes in terms of the why. The enormity of the deception, the people who are involved, what it says about our culture that someone like that is able to succeed to that extent. These are all things that really interest me, like the cult of personality. Our predilection towards investing in false idols feels very uniquely American.

Those were all things that really drew me to it. Then when I read the scripts, I was so excited because Liz Meriwether wrote such fantastic scripts. In terms of what I learned, I think seeing Amanda’s performance. A lot of times, what I get excited about directorially is, I just want to be in that world. I’m excited to live within that reality.

When I’m there on set, I’m really excited to be in those offices. It’s all very like play time, it’s very make-believe. What would it be like to have been in the Theranos offices when all this was happening? Let’s try to recreate that and let’s see what we find out. I credit Liz and her writing staff with this, because they found a narrative about what might have been that motivation, that I think for all of us who have been on the outside looking in, haven’t. I haven’t anyway, really been able to pinpoint what that is.

It’s some trauma, it’s some garden variety naivete, and a kind of pluckiness that we all can, I think, identify with. That “fake it until you make it” thing that we’ve all done. How many times has someone said, “Hey, how’s that script coming?” I’m like, “It’s great. It’s great,” and I haven’t even started it yet. Her love story between her and Sunny. I felt like we really started to understand. For Sunny anyway, it seems he was just in love with her, and was willing to do anything for her, which is so old-fashioned, Shakespearean kind of thing.

And then Amanda’s performance. She found this deeply conflicted, extremely driven character who was coming to crossroads over and over again, and seemingly always making the wrong choice. It’s not clear, again. What’s hard for a lot of people to understand is that it doesn’t seem like she was motivated by a monetary greed. Maybe power. I don’t know.

I’m thinking of Tammy Faye and Elizabeth. Such different people, such different personalities, such different motivations. And yet they both created these personas that they hid behind. It was the eyes, it was the black turtlenecks. I’m wondering about how you, as someone who has performing experience, has writing experience, were you thinking about that going into these projects. These are real people who created characters.

No, but I should have. I love that and yes, you’re so right and I never thought about it. I think what I’m drawn to in both cases initially is the phenomenon of the cult of personality. What sucks me in is the way in which, in the case of Tammy Faye, the way in which people create a persona that then other people follow.

That’s what fascinates me. It gets to questions about truth and authenticity, that are really interesting to me. Like a quest for authenticity — what is authentic? The way in which the truth has lost value, which is very upsetting to me. I don’t want to think about it, so I like to just talk about it in the abstract. We really are screwed, if there’s no such thing as truth, and it feels like in both of those cases, and with “The Shrink Next Door,” if you want to include that, there’s a kind of gaslighting that happens in all of these stories, that I think is terrifying. So I’m drawn, but, weirdly, it’s an attraction-revulsion thing. I can’t take my eyes off it, but it’s terrifying. That’s what it is for me, that manipulation of the truth.

Jessica Chastain as “Tammy Faye Bakker” in the film “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye” (Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures/20th Century Studios)

You are part of this zeitgeist that will be remembered as a cultural moment, where we were collectively obsessed with those phenomena. With Tammy Faye, and with Elizabeth, and with Anna Delvey, with WeWork.

For me, it is to the other. It’s to He Who Shall not be Named. That’s what it is for me. What it really goes to is, He Who Shall not be Named in our country. And us, as a people. I know that there is this trend of the Anna Delveys, but all those Anna Delveys and Liz Holmeses and WeWorks, they’re all stand-ins for He Who Shall Not be Named, and for this whole country, that’s still in thrall to this two-bit con artist. In a lot of cases, that’s what they are too, when you step back from it and you go, there’s no paradigm. There’s literally nothing there.

Five years later, we’re now looking at it through this different prism of con artists.

Con artist, but I would like to it to be about us, more than that. What’s so interesting about Liz Holmes is, Mattis and Kissinger and the Stanford professor that got it all started. These powerful, successful, well-educated people who she had wrapped around her finger. The con artists are a dime a dozen. They’re going to keep coming. It’s us who keep falling for it. I do think this is an American problem. At least that’s how I want to look at it. Why do we keep wanting to buy into this?

It’s all about the personality. It’s not about the data. It’s not about the proof. I have it in my own life too. We all have people in our own lives that we go, “How did that happen? How did I let myself get so manipulated by that person?” It’s traumatic. I like to try to work through some of that by talking about it around another story. Everyone has, and everybody can relate to, “There was someone in my life who . . . ” Everybody has that story of that person that seemed to have a little bit of mind control over them. And how did I let that happen?

You’ve done so much in the realm of stories that are about real people. You have another one coming out based on a real person and a real story. Is there a figure either historical or contemporary that you think, “I would love to get my hands on their story”?

This is what jumps to mind, only because it’s a story I’ve wanted to tell, but it’s not really the right answer. It’s about the making of “Heaven’s Gate,” which was the first blockbuster flop. There’s this brilliant book called “Final Cut.” I would love to tell that story. It too has a very central theme about a cult of personality. That cult of personality was the concept of the auteur filmmaker, and the way in which in that moment, the auteur filmmaker became a tyrannical presence and ends up hijacking the entire studio. And ultimately that studio is no longe. It’s an incredible story.

At the root of it is, to me, a question about art and filmmaking and the corporate side of it, and the end of the studio era and stuff like that. There is a central theme there about Michael Cimino, the director, and the way in which they all believed him to be the next Orson Welles, or for instance, Francis Ford Coppola, and whether purposefully or not, how he abused [that belief]. That’s how I see the story.

But let’s say, both Orson Welles and Coppola also abused.

They did, and that’s the thing about Elizabeth Holmes. She really wasn’t doing anything any different than what all those other guys have done. It’s just that they got lucky. I guess the clock didn’t run out for them. Unfortunately, the clock ran out for Elizabeth.

Mary Elizabeth Williams (left) and Michael Showalter (right) at Salon in New York. (Salon)

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Fox News’ Jesse Watters makes curious confession about how he met his wife

Fox News host Jesse Watters is now facing criticism after admitting to deflating the tires of a producer fourteen years his junior in order to offer her a ride so he could begin courting her.

The unsettling admission came last week during a broadcast of “The Five,” where Watters apparently felt compelled to divulge a downright unnerving story behind how he and his second wife’s met.

Jesse Watters jokes about how he courted a woman 14 years his junior. He let the air out of her tires so he could offer her a ride home. He leaves out that he was married at the time. This is some stalker nonsense. She also worked for him. It's a Fox News love story pic.twitter.com/ge9zZ2vMMH

— Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) April 16, 2022

“When I was trying to get [my wife Emma] to date me, first thing I did, uh, I let the air out of her tires,” Watters claimed, pleased with himself . “She couldn’t go anywhere, she needed a lift. I said, ‘Hey, you need a lift?’ She hopped right in the car.”

One of his co-hosts asks whether his wife knows this story.

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“Now she does,” Watters quipped, laughing.

“You’re basically the Zodiac killer,” said host Greg Gutfeld.

But Waters suggested that the disturbing ruse was worth it. “It has a happy ending!” he said. “We’re married.”

“Is that the first time you did it or did you use that before?” asked Jeanine Pirro.

“Ah, it works like a charm,” Watters responded.

The exchange drew immediate concern over Twitter, with many users claiming that Watters’ conduct was predatory, especially in light of the fact that he was his wife’s boss at the time.

“Jesse Watters jokes about how he courted a woman 14 years his junior. He let the air out of her tires so he could offer her a ride home,” tweeted journalist Juliet Jeske. “He leaves out that he was married at the time. This is some stalker nonsense. She also worked for him. It’s a Fox News love story.”

“To no one’s surprise, Fox News host Jesse Watters reveals he is a creepy stalker. He says to get a woman to date him, he let the air out of her tires so he could offer her a ride home,” echoed NBC executive Mike Sington. “It gets worse: the woman worked for him, and he was married at the time.

Trump-appointed judge striking down CDC’s mask mandate is “an assault on public health,” says expert

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended its public transportation mask mandate. Despite the extension, on Monday, news broke that a federal judge in Florida struck down the mandate that’s been in effect for 14 months, calling it “unlawful.” The ruling was made in response to a lawsuit filed in 2021 by two plaintiffs and the Health Freedom Defense Fund, which has a history of challenging mandates during the pandemic.

This means that the federal order is no longer in effect, and citizens are no longer required to wear masks on public transportation — at least, according to federal guidelines. (Local laws and businesses’ individual rules can supersede that.) In airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will, until further notice, no longer enforce the mask mandate.

Some airline companies may choose to issue company-wide mask requirements, similar to what happened under the Trump Administration in 2020. However, not many are choosing to do so. Airlines such as Delta, United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and Alaska Air said they would make mask-wearing optional at U.S. airports and on domestic flights, following the reversal. Uber and Lyft said riders can keep their masks off if they want, and Amtrak said Monday evening that masks are no longer required for riders.

The news comes at a time when the BA.2 variant of the coronavirus, which research has shown to be more transmissible than BA.1, is the dominant strain in the U.S. — and, as a result, COVID-19 cases are on a slow rise. However, hospitalizations and deaths still remain low.

Yet the ruling by this federal judge is not a judgment on the effectiveness of masking, but rather a challenge to the notion that the CDC has the authority to implement a health mandate in a public health crisis in the first place. In the 59-page ruling, the judge argues that the public health agency only has the authority to issue regulations related to “sanitation,” which the judge interpreted to mean “measures that clean something.”

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“Wearing a mask cleans nothing,” the judge argued. “At most, it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.”

The judge compared the effects of the mandate to “detention and quarantine,” noting that travelers who did not comply were “forcibly removed from their airplane seats, denied board at the bus steps, and turned away at the train station doors.”

“As a result, the Mask Mandate is best understood not as sanitation, but as an exercise of the CDC’s power to conditionally release individuals to travel despite concerns that they may spread a communicable disease (and to detain or partially quarantine those who refuse),” the judge wrote. “But the power to conditionally release and detain is ordinarily limited to individuals entering the United States from a foreign country.”

The judge also argued the mandate was illegal because the CDC didn’t seek public notice and comment on the policy.

“I see this more as a political act than a real, careful assessment of public health.”

However, public health experts disagree with the judge’s interpretation and argue that the CDC does have the authority to implement a mask mandate on public transportation. Some believe the move is strictly political, and worry about what precedent this ruling might set.

“In my mind, the ruling itself is an assault on public health; it’s very one-sided,” Leonard Marcus, co-director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University’s Harvard School of Public Health, told Salon. “I see this more as a political act than a real, careful assessment of public health.”

Notably, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle — who wrote the ruling — was appointed by former President Trump.

William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells Salon, agreed that the justification was more “legal” than a “public health” one.

“It seemed a very narrow, a very, very, narrow and stretched rationale, at least, to this doctor who’s interested in public health,” Scaffner told Salon. “And I found that unfortunate.”

Marcus said he hopes that the White House appeals this ruling.

“I do hope that the White House will appeal it in due time,” Marcus said. “Simply because I think it’s important to establish that the CDC, for all of our benefit, has this authority and should exercise the authority, in the middle of a public health emergency.”

It’s unclear if the reversal of the mandate will be temporary or not, but Biden administration officials said they are looking into next steps.

“The agencies are reviewing the decision and assessing potential next steps,” the Biden administration said Monday night. “In the meantime, today’s court decision means CDC’s public transportation masking order is not in effect at this time.”

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Democrats move to crack down on consultants after Amazon union busting activity

The Democratic Party is prohibiting its consultants from providing clients with anti-union guidance following a report that a top Democratic consultancy firm provided Amazon with unsuccessful guidance on how to quash a union drive.

The new restriction will come in the form of an addendum between any Democratic Party political committee and a consultant, according to Politico. The provision explicitly establishes that consultants cannot be used for “union-busting, aiding an employer in a labor dispute or lobbying against union-backed legislation.”

It will also prohibit assisting clients to “advance legislation, ballot measures or other public policies that are opposed by the labor movement or to defeat legislation, ballot measure or other public policies that are supported by the labor movement.” Politico notes that this provision could have an especially negative impact on ride-sharing giants like Uber and Lyft, which have lobbied the federal government to ensure that their drivers remain private contractors, excluding them from the suite of benefits generally conferred to full-time employees.

The move comes just weeks after CNBC reported that Amazon, whose warehouses employees in the company’s State Island Facility just voted to unionize, solicited union avoidance expertise from Global Strategy Group (GSG), a polling partner for President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

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According to CNBC, GSG played an instrumental role in shaping the company’s union avoidance tactics, which included an anti-union website (www.unpackjfk8.com) featuring slogans like “One team, working together” and “Unpack it: Get the facts about unions.” The site also touts all of the company’s benefits, like vacation time and professional development, suggesting that if employees unionize, those benefits might disappear.

GSG representatives also reportedly made appearances at numerous captive audiences meetings, in which Amazon managers forced warehouse workers to learn about the apparent ills of unionization.

News of GSG’s involvement in the campaign provoked an immediate backlash from some of the company’s clients, including the American Federation of Teachers and the Service Employees International Union.

According to the Indypendent, Amazon did not disclose its enlistment of GSG as mandated by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMDRA).

“I have no idea — if what they’re doing is legitimate — that they just don’t go through the process, like everybody else,” Seth Goldstein, pro-bono attorney for the Amazon Labor Union, told the outlet. “This is why we need administrative reform.”

Take notes: Here’s Kamala Harris’ winning Wordle strategy

Turns out Kamala Harris is just like us and loves tackling the daily Wordle.

The vice president recently spoke with The Ringer about her love for the New York Times acquired internet sensation, which forces players to guess a specific five-letter word in exactly six tries, and shared her go-to strategy for maintaining her impressive 48-game winning streak.

“I think that you have to have a healthy mix of consonants and vowels, and a lot of words come with an ‘s,'” Harris said in an interview published Monday. Her method also includes starting off with the same word every time: “Notes. N-O-T-E-S.”

Harris employs a very common opening word strategy, repeatedly using an opening word that has a frequently used letters with the variety that she noted. It’s why TONES and STONE, both anagrams of NOTES is also popular. Others use words like AUDIO and ADIEU for their wealth of vowels. And of course, one can always switch it up and choose chaos with a random opening guess each day. (CHAOS is also a good opener!)

So far, Harris’ strategy has been successful — she’s able to solve each puzzle in four tries, which is her current average. And although she’s never been able to guess the correct word on the first try, she’s been able to guess six words in just two tries.

RELATED: Wordle was fun while it lasted

Harris also enjoys playing the mini New York Times crossword and sudoku. But for her, Wordle is “like a brain cleanser” that she plays in the middle of long work days or in between “back-to-back meetings on a lot of intense issues.”

“If I have a break, let’s say that people are running late or my little 25 minutes for lunch, sometimes while I’m eating I’ll figure out Wordle,” she explained.

“It is at nighttime, too. It just depends on the day, right? If I was able to get to it during the day— if not, definitely in bed at night,” Harris continued. “When I can’t sleep it’s the New York Times mini. And also the New York Times Spelling Bee.”

As many Wordle fanatics know, the greatest aspect of the game is its share feature, which allows players to broadcast their assemblage of green, yellow and grey squares on social media or via text message. Harris, however, can’t partake in the fun due to security limitations placed on her phone.

“No, because my phone does not let me do that. My phone doesn’t let me text anybody, which is sad,” she revealed.

But that hasn’t stopped her from encouraging her staff to also try their hands at the game.

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“Some of them know it. Some of them laugh about it, because they didn’t know that I know it and that I play it,” Harris said. “So that was really funny. And then there are others that I have, you know, in a moment of stress said, ‘Maybe you should learn how to play Wordle.’

“You know, what I love about my team is that they don’t tell on each other,” she continued. “But they’re all very competitive because they’re all super smart. And they love games, when you can play and have fun with each other.” The vice president added that she frequently compares her streaks and successes with her husband, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff.

Harris also praised the game’s design and concept.

“I mean, I think that the design of Wordle is genius. First of all, five letters, but also only one word a day, right? It’s really genius,” she said. “Because, you know, some other games over the years where you could then just get kind of hooked and really spend far too much time. I think it’s really a smart design.”

The vice president first announced her love for Wordle last week during a Democratic National Committee fundraiser. Since then, Harris has been determined to maintain her streak, even if it means solving the puzzle on the sixth and final attempt.

“Because I have 100 percent, and I intend to keep it that way,” she said.

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Manchin meets Trump mega-donors who want him to run for president as Republican at ritzy fundraiser

Supporters of former President Donald Trump who attended a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that they hoped the lawmaker would switch parties and challenge President Joe Biden in 2024.

CNBC reported that buzz about a possible party switch was overheard at a fundraiser for Manchin hosted by billionaire Nelson Peltz in Florida. Attendees paid $5,000 a plate to see Manchin speak.

According to the report, “several top executives said they privately hoped the conservative Democrat would switch parties and run against President Joe Biden in the 2024 elections.”

“Although Manchin told the group he plans to run for reelection to the Senate as a Democrat, a small group of donors at the event privately said they hope he changes parties and runs for president as a Republican against Biden in 2024 instead,” the report said.

Some attendees of the event were said to have “once supported Trump” and look at Manchin “as someone who could successfully run in a Republican primary and then possibly defeat Biden,” CNBC noted.

Bullying Mickey Mouse: Rejected by the public, Republicans take their anger out on Disney

There’s no surer sign that Republicans have given up on trying to appeal to moderates and swing voters than declaring war on Disney. Things were already getting dicey when GOP leaders and Fox News pundits went all-in on this strategy of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of being child molesters. Flinging such risible and obviously false accusations at innocent people tends to backfire on the accusers, as demonstrated by the way Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saw her approval ratings rise after enduring three days of charisma-free Republican politicians falsely implying she had some affection for pedophiles. But you know they’ve lost the plot when they’re running around trying to argue that Disney, which most Americans view as the gold standard in family-friendly entertainment, is covertly converting the nation’s children into perverts.

I’m just saying: If your idea of championing “family values” is delaying parents who are trying to get their kids into Disney World, you need some remedial classes on how to win friends and allies.

As most folks who follow the news know by now, the reason that Republicans are melting down at Disney — and even threatening to take away tax breaks and regulation exemptions from the mammoth corporation — is because of the company’s dollar-short condemnation of the “don’t say gay” law that Trumpian Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed last month. The bill is part of a larger — and also incredibly unpopular — war on free speech and public schools being waged by a GOP that is reacting to President Joe Biden’s election by doubling down on their most fascistic impulses.

They are creating a lot of pointless trouble, but in the process, end up reminding most people of how awful conservatives truly are.

But for all the chest-thumping and threats that DeSantis and his fellow Republicans are making at Disney, this meltdown is actually telling a different story: Republicans believe they are losing the culture war.

The GOP is the party that spent decades extolling the alleged virtues of free markets, criminally low tax rates, deregulation, and other policies meant to give corporations near-total power over American life. The only reason they’d turn their backs on that mission, even slightly, is because they know they’re losing the public debate over this “don’t say gay” bill and are reacting out of clawing desperation.

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The Disney hate is but one example of how Republicans, in their efforts to score points in the culture war, are messing with the business interests that have long been their real source of funding and power.

As Sophia Tesfaye explained last week at Salon, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also recently made the mistake of offending his corporate benefactors with his ill-advised and pointless blockade of the border, which resulted in major economic losses for companies who depend heavily on goods that are shipped in from Mexico. Abbott’s goal here was Trumpian fascist theater, where he deliberately caused traffic snarls in some convoluted effort to make some point about how much he hates Latino immigrants. But all most people saw were trucks full of stuff they want to buy and sell getting stuck in a deliberately induced traffic jam, with much of the perishable goods simply going to waste. Texas Republicans, however, seemed to have learned no lessons from that debacle.

In response to Citigroup announcing that its insurance plan would cover travel expenses for employees who need to travel out of state to get abortions, state Rep. Briscoe Cain threatened the bank with economic retaliation by barring them from doing any business with local governments.

Republicans try to justify these ridiculous political battles by telling a little fairy tale about the “woke” corporation. In this telling, the majority of everyday working Americans shared the cultural values of far-right Christian nationalists. But then these “woke” corporations came along and started shoving “Hollywood” values on unwilling Americans. So exacting economic punishment on companies for supporting LGBTQ and female employees is the only way to bring those companies in line with what Americans supposedly want.

In reality, of course, the opposite is true.

What we’re seeing from Republicans is panic in the face of what they perceive, in many ways correctly, as their lack of power to force their hateful, reactionary views on the larger public.

Strong majorities of Americans support LGBTQ rights and legal abortion. Meanwhile, most of these corporations have long offered heavy financial support to Republicans. Most of these companies flat out don’t care either way about the human rights issues — they just have their eye trained on the bottom line. After all, these corporations were willing to fund Republican culture warriors so long as those same Republicans backed low taxes and deregulation.

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Corporations like Disney and Citigroup now find themselves on the right side of these culture war issues for the same bottom line reasons. The popularity of LGBTQ rights and reproductive health care is evident and companies don’t want to offend their customer base. Just as importantly, it hurts their businesses when some of their employees don’t have basic rights to safety and health care access. Disney doesn’t want to lose LGBTQ employees who need to flee Florida so their kids can go to an accepting school. Citigroup doesn’t want to pay for maternity leave for employees who didn’t even want to be pregnant. These companies aren’t imposing “woke” values on a community. They’re responding to the fact that they operate in communities that have “woke” values.

What we’re seeing from Republicans is panic in the face of what they perceive, in many ways correctly, as their lack of power to force their hateful, reactionary views on the larger public. It’s not like DeSantis is unaware that Disney’s pro-LGBTQ stance is reactive, not proactive. But he has a limited ability to force everyday Americans to share his belief that gay people need to be forced back into the closet. His attacks on Disney are coming from a place of weakness, an effort to attack the symptoms, and not the cause of the backlash against his overt abuse of LGBTQ students and teachers.

There’s a similar whiff of desperation when it comes to the ongoing Republican book banning efforts. Absolutely, it’s alarming that Republicans are censoring books in schools and pulling them off library shelves in a bid to keep people from reading about how racism is real and LGBTQ people are normal. But it’s also pathetic, as school and library books simply aren’t the main source of that information. More people probably learned about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre because of the HBO show “Watchmen” than from a public school history class. Most discussions about systematic racism — which Republicans slur as “critical race theory” — are happening online or at kitchen tables, in response to events like the George Floyd murder and the subsequent protests. The shift in public support towards LGBTQ rights happened because of debates that were happening largely outside of classrooms. Republicans forced abstinence-only programs on public schools for years, and it did nothing to convince the majority of young Americans to avoid premarital sex.

To be certain, Republicans can do a ton of damage with their culture war. We see that in the sheer economic losses from Abbott’s border stunt. They will be able to successfully ruin the lives of teachers and students with frivolous “don’t say gay” lawsuits. Women will be forced to give birth or end up maiming themselves, due to abortion bans. Libraries are in danger of being shuttered and authors of books demonized as “woke” are facing death threats. All these impacts are very real and alarming.

But what Republicans can’t do is the one thing they desperately want: Get the public to agree with their theocratic, backwards views. In that sense, the Disney blockade was the perfect symbol of modern conservatism. They are creating a lot of pointless trouble, but in the process, end up reminding most people of how awful conservatives truly are.

On Twitter, “Libs of TikTok” stokes culture wars outrage

A Washington Post article unmasking the identity behind “Libs of TikTok” – a right-wing TikTok turned Twitter account known for lobbing accusations of “grooming” at LGBTQ+ teachers – has outraged conservatives, many of whom are claiming that the article’s author “doxxed” the woman running the profile.

The social media firestorm played out on Tuesday, after Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, published an investigation into “Libs of TikTok,” calling the profiles influence “deep and far-reaching.”

“The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right,” Lorenz wrote. “Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”

The account, reportedly run by Brooklyn-based real estate saleswoman Chaya Raichik, began as an obscure platform – operating under the handle “@shaya69830552” – for right-wing disinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 election. By April of last year, after going through a series of rebrands, the account landed on “Libs of TikTok,” cashing in on the right-wing outrage cycle around LGBTQ+ identity in schools. The profile reportedly got its “big break” just four months later, after podcast Joe Rogan called it “one of the greatest f***ing accounts of all time.”

At present, Libs of TikTok has roughly 617,000 followers on Twitter. The account is most known for posting videos, submitted by fans, of teachers engaging in what conservatives have claimed is “grooming” of their own students. One such video reportedly depicted a teacher covering sex education. Another showed an LGBTQ+ educator telling his LGBTQ+ students he was “proud of them” and loved them. Numerous teachers have been fired as a result of being featured on Raichik’s account.

Raichik’s conservative activism hasn’t just been confined to the web, according to the Post. In January 2020, the ex-real estate agent reportedly attended the Capitol riot, tweeting “play-by-play” updates while on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she wrote on the day of in a since-deleted tweet.

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By this year, the Post reported, Libs of TikTok had become such a political powerhouse that it was influencing state legislation. Christina Pushaw, the press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has praised the account for single-handedly “opening her eyes” to the alleged indoctrination in Florida’s public school system.

The Bezos Post’s internet hall monitor is so excited to “expose” @libsoftiktok. Here is my comment: 🤡 pic.twitter.com/SodXls9NV7

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 19, 2022

Immediately after the article’s release, a horde of conservatives accused Lorenz of hypocrisy for “doxxing” Raichik, pointing out that Lorenz previously cast herself as the victim of online abuse in the past.

“Taylor Lorenz just last week was crying about being traumatized from people on the internet criticizing her,” tweeted right-wing commentator Matt Walsh. “Now she’s doxxing an anonymous account. Lorenz is a typical crybully scumbag. She deserves all the backlash coming her way after this. I hope it makes her cry again.”

“Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post have incentivized others doxxing individuals they don’t like,” echoed conservative blogger Erick Erickson. “They’re not going to like where this leads. Unfortunately, it is predictable and obvious and someone as emotionally unstable as Lorenz probably should have considered that.”

Lorenz, for her part, fired back at critics, writing: “Lots of convo about the “harm” of covering a powerful online figure, but not much abt the harm done to the average LGBTQ+ ppl the acct seeks to drive out of schools and public life. I hope people read this whole story and understand this account’s impact.”

“https://twitter.com/TaylorLorenz/status/1516422153067024385”

“You’re not a doctor”: Jen Psaki calls out Fox News reporter Peter Doocy over mask mandate ruling

Fox correspondent Peter Doocy frequently faces off against White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, whom he routinely asks combative questions.

On Monday, Doocy asked about the mask mandates on planes and the recent ruling by a conservative judge to eliminate the mask mandate while traveling.

Doocy asked why the White House doesn’t need to have masks on while masks are necessary on a plane.

“Well, Peter, I’m not a doctor and you’re not a doctor, that I’m aware of,” Psaki said. “If you’re a doctor I wasn’t aware of that until today.”

“I’m not,” Doocy conceeded.

“Ok, well, not a doctor. Just making sure,” Psaki said. “I don’t know.”

“Or do you play one on TV?” the reporter to Doocy’s right asked.

“Nor does he play one on TV,” said Psaki. “There you go. Most days.”

She went on to explain to him how the masking guidance works with the color-coded system “green, yellow and red.” Washington, D.C. is in a green zone.

See the video below:

For the second time in recent weeks, Jen Psaki explains CDC guidance to Peter Doocy like he's a child pic.twitter.com/W8okaDIqgJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2022

Kushner touts his ties to Saudi Arabia, Russia to sell Wall Street investors on new fund: report

Former Trump official Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald Trump, is using his past work in the White House as an asset for investors in his new Affinity Partners investment fund.

The Intercept has obtained a slide deck from Affinity Partners that pitches Kushner’s experience cutting deals with the governments of Russia and Saudi Arabia as something that should give investors confidence that their money will be well spent.

In particular, the slide deck touts Kushner’s role in negotiating an oil production cut with those two nations in the spring of 2020 in a bid to stabilize rapidly collapsing oil prices at the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Affinity’s unique network and experience makes us a differentiated partner for companies navigating the rapidly evolving global political and economic environment,” reads one slide obtained by The Intercept.

Kushner has come under scrutiny after the Saudi government invested $2 billion with Affinity Partners, despite the fact that a panel screening the prospective investment warned that Kushner did not have sufficient experience in this particular field.

A Kushner spokesperson defended his dealings with the Saudis in an email sent to The Intercept.

“Jared’s track record in government was unprecedented,” the spokesperson said. “His leadership and efforts led to the historic Abraham Accords, the [U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement] which was the largest trade deal in history, life changing criminal justice reform, Operation Warp Speed among many other achievements.”

Trump’s “coup memo” lawyer tries to hide 37,000 pages of emails from Jan. 6 investigators

On Monday, April 18, far-right attorney John C. Eastman — who is infamous for a memo outlining a plan for former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election results — revealed that he has asserted attorney-client privilege with 37,000 pages of e-mails that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on January 6, 2021 has been seeking.

According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, “The January 6 select committee has objected to ‘every claim’ over those pages, which now sends the gargantuan dispute to U.S. District Court Judge David Carter for a case-by-case review. Eastman revealed the scope of the dispute in a status report to Carter, concluding a three-month review that Carter demanded he undertake. Since January, Eastman has been reviewing 1000 to 1500 pages per day.”

NEWS: John Eastman has claimed privilege over 37,000 pages of emails related to his work for Donald Trump, he revealed in a court filing tonight.

The Jan. 6 select committee has objected to "every claim."https://t.co/TyWPI0TJDF

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) April 19, 2022

Carter, in a recent ruling, was highly critical of Trump and Eastman’s actions following the 2020 presidential election. The federal judge ruled that they “more likely than not” engaged in a criminal conspiracy to obstruct the joint session of Congress held on January 6, 2021, when now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory was certified. And Carter described efforts to overturn the election results as a “coup in search of a legal theory.”

Carter, Cheney notes, “has described the select committee’s work as urgent” but “must now determine how to parse these 37,000 pages” of e-mails “in time for the committee to employ them in its ongoing investigation of Trump’s effort to subvert the transfer of power.”

“The e-mails are all drawn from Chapman University, where Eastman was employed until shortly after January 6,” Cheney explains. “The committee subpoenaed Chapman to obtain the e-mails, but Eastman sued the school and the select committee to slow the process. Carter then ordered the review that Eastman undertook.”

Cheney adds, “The select committee urged Carter to prioritize documents sent from January 4 to January 7, 2021, the key period of the panel’s review. That narrower review resulted in Carter’s bombshell ruling about likely criminality by Trump. But now, Carter must turn to the broader review of Eastman’s e-mails stretching back to November 3, 2020, the date of the presidential election.”

The January 6 select committee, Cheney notes, has “raised doubts about whether Eastman was legitimately acting as Trump’s lawyer prior to January 6.”

“Eastman, under an order from Carter, produced a retainer agreement dated December 6, 2020,” Cheney writes, “but it was unsigned. And it’s not clear when it was effectuated…. Carter also ruled that Eastman did, eventually, become Trump’s attorney, noting that he filed court papers on Trump’s behalf in late December and communicated with top White House aides and other officials while representing himself as Trump’s lawyer.”

Cheney adds, “Of the 90,000 pages of e-mails subject to the select committee subpoena, about 30,000 were immediately ruled out as irrelevant mass e-mails. Eastman made no privilege claims over an additional 25,000 pages of records.”

Time is of the essence for Pelosi’s select committee, as Democrats may lose their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms — and many House Republicans don’t even believe the committee should exist. Pelosi has included two non-MAGA Republicans on the bipartisan committee: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, but the majority of House Republicans are loyal Trumpistas and resent Cheney and Kinzinger deeply for their participation.

Author Colin Clarke on Russia’s disaster in Ukraine — and what happens next

It has been almost two months since Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian military to begin a war of aggression against Ukraine. A great deal has happened in those 50 or so days, and despite what some observers and commentators would like to believe, the first draft of that history is still being written.

Like every other armed conflict, Ukraine has offered stories about heroes and villains, bravery and cowardice, human tragedy and loss, the best of humankind and the worst, great leaders and failed ones, surprises and disappointment, good fortune and bad luck. As military historians and others have long observed, warfare changes over time, but the human experience of war remains a constant.

What do we know to this point? The Ukrainian armed forces have performed well, beyond most expectations. By comparison, Russia’s supposedly fearsome military machine has been shown to be poorly organized, strategically deficient and low on morale. Russia has suffered great losses in men and material — including the spectacular sinking of the Moskva, its flagship naval cruiser — and to this point in the war has failed to achieve its basic tactical and strategic goals.

The Ukrainian military appears to have a qualitative advantage over their Russian adversaries in terms of training, leadership and morale. But as has been true throughout history, the Russian advantage in sheer numbers and brute forces should not be underestimated. The Ukrainian military will need continued support from the U.S. and NATO if it hopes to drive the Russian invaders out of the country. Continued Western assistance will be essential if Ukraine is to protect its future existence as a genuinely independent nation.

The situation remains dynamic: Russia’s forces have failed to secure the capital of Kyiv and other major objectives, but as of this week, they are apparently launching a major assault on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. This attack appears to be timed to coincide with May 9, the anniversary of Russia’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. If the Ukrainians can hold off this new Russian assault, that could decide the outcome of the entire war. On the other hand, if the Russians can gain major territory in the east, they will have regained the momentum and shifted the battlespace in their favor.

Russia’s military has apparently committed crimes against humanity — including genocidal killings in the city of Mariupol, the town of Bucha and elsewhere. There are lingering or growing concerns that Putin may order the use of chemical or battlefield nuclear weapons, in defiance of international law.

Events in Ukraine are being mediated, amplified and all too often distorted by a 24/7 news machine, social media, digital technology and an information and propaganda war being waged by both the Russia and Ukraine (and other factions allied with both sides). In this context, it’s difficult for the global public to separate fact from fiction. In an attempt to understand the Ukraine conflict, I recently spoke with Colin P. Clarke, an expert on international security, geopolitics, and terrorism.

Clarke is currently a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center and was previously a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He is the author of several books, including “Terrorism, Inc.: The Financing of Terrorism, Insurgency, and Irregular Warfare” and “After the Caliphate: The Islamic State and the Terrorist Diaspora,” and the editor of “Terrorism: The Essential Reference Guide.” His essays and other writing have been featured in in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic and elsewhere.

Western observers have been so deeply wrong about Russia that it calls into question how well they understand other potential adversaries, including China.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Clarke argues the war in Ukraine has revealed that Russia’s global power and military capabilities have been grossly exaggerated, and that Russia should no longer be viewed as one of the world’s great powers. American and other Western military observers were so deeply wrong in their evaluations of Russia’s capabilities, he says, that it calls into question how well they understand other potential adversary nations, such as China.

Clarke cautions against prematurely grand conclusions about the war in Ukraine, which he says is still in its early stages, and explains how white supremacists and other members of the global right from the U.S. and Europe are journeying to Ukraine to gain combat experience and training (on both sides of the conflict). As we have seen in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, such people pose a risk to their home countries once they return. Clarke shares his dismay about the Republican attraction to Putin and Russia and the related tendency to disparage the U.S. military as somehow being “woke” or “progressive” and therefore “weak.”

Despite Putin’s setbacks in Ukraine and the crippling impact of Western sanctions, Clarke argues that the Russian leader will likely survive this crisis, and that his time as a figure on the world stage is not ending anytime soon.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How do you evaluate the current situation in Ukraine?

The Russians thought that this would be over in two weeks. They’ve now retreated from Kyiv. The Ukrainians have fought fiercely, courageously and effectively. The Russians have resorted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, which is the way the Russians fight. We saw this in Syria, Chechnya and Georgia in 2008. This is their style. It is scorched earth, collateral damage, and deliberately killing civilians.

One of the big stories I see, in terms of international relations and diplomacy and statecraft, is the concept of great power competition. With that language we are thinking about the United States, China and Russia. The war in Ukraine shows us that Russia does not belong in that conversation anymore. Russia is not a great power, it’s essentially a gas station with nuclear weapons. The Russian military has performed so poorly, dar worse than anyone could have expected, including many defense planners in the United States, who built the Russians up to be 10 feet tall.

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The other aspect that is striking about this situation is the sense of unity among NATO countries, the West, the comprehensive nature of the sanctions and how quickly that all came together. Even Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov came out and admitted that they did not expect the swiftness of the sanctions or how comprehensive and crushing that would be. This is not something that Moscow will recover from easily.

There is so much noise and distraction around the actual information. Much of the dominant narrative, in terms of Ukraine’s dramatic success, seems too good to be true.

There is definitely a lot of cheerleading that is happening in the West, because so many people feel sympathy for Ukraine. One of the behind-the-scenes stories is all the support that NATO was given Ukraine. This is not minor support; it comes from some of the wealthiest countries in the world, supplying very lethal weaponry. Russian armor hasn’t been up to the task. Their logistics have been terrible. Turkish drones have also made a big difference.

There is definitely a lot of cheerleading happening in the West. … Some things we’re hearing may well be the stuff of Ukrainian information operations.

In all, there is a tendency to root for the little guy, especially given how the Russians have been acting in Ukraine. Russia is a nation that sends operatives onto European soil to assassinate people with poison. When doctors in Russia started questioning the country’s COVID response, they were mysteriously falling out of windows. It is easy to root against the Russians. We should not overlook that Russia is a longtime Cold War adversary. Our reaction to the war in Ukraine is kind of baked into the American DNA, for all the old Cold Warriors who now feel like Russia is getting its comeuppance.

Yes, people hear about the “Ghost of Kyiv” and where the Ukrainians told the Russian navy, “Go fuck yourself” before they were attacked by that ship. Such things may well be the stuff of Ukrainian information operations.

Much of the analysis and commentary we see in the mainstream media and from talking-head commentators is often subpar.

We live in a 24/7 news media cycle environment. The constant need for talking heads tends to bring in folks of varying quality. You have to be prudent where you get your information from, who you’re listening to and how these events are being analyzed. It’s very early in what could be a long conflict, so it’s like judging a football game by the first five minutes. We’ve got two halves here. We’re nowhere near the end of what we’re likely to see.

There are clearly a lot of conscripts that are fighting in Ukraine. These kids are young. The fact that they’re getting captured and they look frightened, as we are seeing on these videos, indicates that they probably weren’t prepared for what they got into. There’s also reporting that some of these soldiers thought they were on a training exercise and didn’t even realize what the mission was. That would account for some of the low morale.

The Russian Spetsnaz are structured as elite special forces. To the extent that they’re involved, it’s probably not as much as some would have expected. We’re hearing reporting about the Wagner Group pulling back forces from Bolivia, the Central African Republic, Mali and elsewhere to the Ukrainian battlefield. That could suggest that Moscow has a manpower issue, but there’s a whole host of reasons why the Russians could be doing what they’re doing.

One thing that analysts have pointed out is how weak Russian command and control is. The Russians don’t use what the U.S. military has, which is “mission command,” where autonomy is delegated down to tactical levels. The Russian military is far more vertically structured and hierarchal, and that accounts for some of the issues that we’re seeing on the battlefield, particularly when the Ukrainians can sever lines of communication.

The American media seems to be obsessed with these “wonder weapons” stories. The Javelin ATGM is the most obvious example. In this narrative these super-weapons are a game changer and will win the war. What insights or context do you have to offer?

The individuals deploying these weapons so effectively are not just guys off the street. Watching what is happening in a superficial way may embolden other countries to say, “Oh, it’s that easy to put up resistance or to wage an insurgency.” But the Ukrainians have been training for a really long time. The battle-hardened folks have been over in the Donbas and eastern Ukraine. They have been getting world-class training from Western militaries — the same militaries that supplied these weapons and trained them on these weapons. They have been envisioning this exact scenario.

Ukrainians have been envisioning this exact scenario for a long time. They are getting exquisite intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well. All of that serves as a force multiplier.

The Ukrainians are getting exquisite intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well. There’s a lot of support that’s going on in the background of this war that is serving as a force multiplier for their defense against Russia.

How much of what we are seeing in terms of warfare in Ukraine is revolutionary, and how much of it is iterative? For example, there is this narrative from some that the Javelin and other ATGM systems herald the end of the tank and large formations of armor. Folks have been saying that about tanks and other armor for 70 years and it still has not come true.

It’s too early to draw such grand, sweeping conclusions. We’re going to be studying this conflict for a long time. Very often we end up studying what doesn’t work, looking for lessons learned from failures, learning the best practices. To draw these conclusions — “Armor is dead! The tank is dead! Long live the Javelin!” — is premature. Ukraine is a small sample size. We’ve got to look at a longer period of time, we’ve got to compare this to other conflicts. Every future conflict is not going to be Ukraine. The natural inclination is to compare this to China and Taiwan, but I believe there are probably more differences than similarities with those two scenarios.

Looking at what has happened so far, how do we balance the narratives? Is it about leadership and morale? Is it training? Is it equipment and material support? Why have the Ukrainians been able to fight so effectively?

It is all of the above. It’s combined arms. It’s also the will to fight, which is something that is really difficult to measure. I spent 10 years at the RAND Corporation, where I was a political scientist studying insurgency and conflict. Those kinds of intangibles and those hard-to-measure variables can account for quite a bit on the battlefield.

What do we know about Vladimir Putin’s relationship to the global right, including neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups?

They fetishize Vladimir Putin. They adore him, and see him as a symbol of masculinity and of white Christendom. Those members of the global right who want to establish a white “ethnostate” look at Russia and the way that Putin comports himself with all the antisemitism and anti-LGBTQ policies and see him as a strong leader.

There are people in the United States, including members of Congress, who have denounced “wokeism” and who fawn over videos of the Russian military. Ted Cruz is one of them. They embarrass themselves on a regular basis. They are always talking about how “masculine” the Russians are, while denigrating our own military, which they see as overly “woke.” But the United States has the world’s strongest combat forces. For all the videos of Russians wrestling grizzly bears, it hasn’t done them a whole lot of good on the battlefield in Ukraine.

What are the facts regarding Putin’s claims about Nazis and Ukraine?

Like any good misinformation, there’s a kernel of truth there. There are elements of the far right fighting on the Ukrainian side. Experts on Ukraine will tell you that. However, there are many neo-Nazis fighting on the Russian side. In fact, by most estimates, far more than on the Ukrainian side.

There’s a kernel of truth to Putin’s misinformation: There are elements of the far right fighting on the Ukrainian side. But by most estimates, there are far more fighting on the Russian side.

Over the last eight years, the Ukrainians have actually made earnest efforts to minimize the influence of the far right within their ranks. The Russians have done the opposite: They’ve courted it. These claims about Ukraine and Nazis are so much typical gaslighting from the Kremlin. They Russians and Putin are accusing the other side of doing exactly what they’re doing. This is their MO. It is straight out of the Kremlin playbook.

What is actually happening with neo-Nazis, white supremacists and right-wing extremist groups going to Ukraine to get combat experience and training?

There are Americans and other Westerners who have gone to fight on both sides of the conflict. It’s important for governments to keep track of these people, where they’re going, when they come back and who they’re in touch with, because we could very well have a situation where an individual returns to their country of origin and looks to plot some kind of terrorist attack using the training and motivated by ideology that they’ve fostered in Ukraine.

What is the chatter like among these right-wing groups about the Ukraine war and who to support?

There are a range of narratives developing. Some are refusing to take a side and saying that this is a “brother war,” that these are white Slavs fighting each other and that they are not the enemy: The enemy should be Jews or Blacks or the LGBTQ+ community, and this war in Ukraine is shedding unnecessary blood. There are others who take a more concerted stand, one that is pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian. It’s really a mixed bag so far.

If you were to craft a narrative about the events in Ukraine, what would the main points be?

For me, the story is a basic one. It’s that this country, which Putin says doesn’t exist, was attacked unjustly, and they’re fighting for their lives. This is existential for them. It’s clearly a country that does exist, because Ukraine is fighting like a united country that doesn’t want to remain under Russia’s imperial control. The overwhelming story for me is that I didn’t hear any experts, across the board, especially military analysts, saying that this is where we would be two months into this conflict.

What went into that analysis that proved to be inaccurate? Where else are we getting it wrong in our assessment of China or Pakistan or North Korea? It really makes me concerned for what else we’re getting wrong as we look across the world.

What do we know about the Russian military and the apparent war crimes being committed in Ukraine?

It’s clear that war crimes are being committed by the Russian military. That seems quite obvious. Now it’s a question of documenting them. If you look at the history of who actually gets charged with war crimes, it very rarely happens. But even those like Slobodan Milošević who are ultimately brought to the Hague don’t face justice in the end. He died before he could really face justice.

It’s hard, especially in an age where digital images and videos can be manipulated in the way that they can, to collect this evidence with a degree of fidelity that would pass muster in court. It’s not going to be easy. But we have more open-source intelligence tools and places like Bellingcat that do an amazing job of documenting all the things we’re seeing and working to separate fact from fiction.

Ultimately, I think we’ll be able to move closer to the truth [about war crimes] in this conflict than in previous conflicts, because so many people are involved in documenting what is taking place.

It will take a while, but I think ultimately we’ll be able to move closer to the truth in this conflict than we have in previous conflicts because we have so many people involved in documenting what is taking place and trying to keep accurate records. The question becomes, are they doing it for the right reason? How do we weed out those with more nefarious intentions and others who are attempting to deliberately sow disinformation?

What are the implications for military budgets across the West in response to the Ukraine war?

The U.S. budget is so vast that talking about a “budget” per se does not really mean anything. The United States can buy anything and make anything. That’s not an issue. What we’ve had issues with is trying to convince our allies in Europe to spend more for their own defense. With the war in Ukraine, that has finally happened. One of the biggest stories of this entire conflict so far is German foreign policy, which has done a total 180 under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Germans have pledged to spend an extra 100 billion euros just this year alone on security and defense. It’s a real revolution in German foreign policy. In many ways, the United States is relieved by that change, but we do have to think of the second- and third-order consequences.

As countries spend more on their own self-defense, they’re also going to have a greater say in shaping their own foreign policy. They’re no longer as reliant on the United States to do things. They may make big decisions that the U.S. does not agree with. The U.S. may not be able to influence these countries in the way that we were in the past.

The U.S. military may also need to transition, in strategic and tactical terms, from counterinsurgency operations back to potentially fighting conventional land wars in Europe and elsewhere. Where are we with that?

The focus for the past 20 years has been on Central Command and, exactly as you said, on counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a totally different type of fight than a conventional land war in Europe. European Command (EUCOM) felt that they were being neglected and that they weren’t getting the attention and the resources they needed.

EUCOM started to get more attention and resources in the non-kinetic space to respond to Russian disinformation. I think we’re going to see a lot of change for EUCOM, and potentially a greater role for Special Operations Command Europe. I believe we are also going to see closer training and integration with our partners in Europe, including Poland, Romania and other countries. The United States is likely to continue to do more actually high-profile, big-ticket type training with them on various weapons systems.

As the U.S. extricates itself from these counterinsurgencies and withdraws from Afghanistan and Iraq, it is somewhat similar to what happened after Vietnam. We kind of washed our hands of it and said, “We don’t want to do that anymore” — until we were back in that fight. And I think we’re going to do that again. The United States is like, “I don’t really want to fight insurgencies. They’re really messy. Let me go back to what I’m comfortable with which is conventional military operations.” But the enemy gets a vote too. So I hope we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I hope we learn from 20 years of counterinsurgency: What we did right, what we did wrong and how to avoid that.

What are some of the lessons the Chinese are learning from Russia’s war in Ukraine?

One lesson is the reaction of the West. Could or would the West mount a similar reaction as we have seen with Russia in terms of sanctions? As a starting point, the answer is likely no, because China is so much more economically integrated with the rest of the world. Frankly, China has leverage there, so it’s just not possible. The Chinese are probably feeling pretty good about that.

Does Putin survive this?

I think he does, because he is a survivor. I hope he doesn’t, although I’m worried about the devil you know versus the devil you don’t. Who comes after him? Is it someone even more extreme? But it’s hard for me to see a way where Putin is forced out. Nobody thought Assad would survive in Syria, and he did. And Russia is far more integral to the international system than Syria is. Russia still has a seat on the UN Security Council.

As much as we’d like to say that we’re going to toss Russia aside and make it the equivalent of North Korea, it’s not that easy. This is a country with vast energy reserves and nuclear weapons. It spans 11 time zones. I think Putin does survive this, unfortunately. But again, Russia is greatly hobbled. It’s going to go backward, and that’s going to really constrain Russian foreign policy for the foreseeable future.

Is Putin a great man of history?

He is a great man of history in the same way that the Time Magazine Person of the Year could be a really terrible person. Putin’s impact on history is significant. It’s not for the better, obviously. He’s going to go down as the Butcher of Bucha, amongst any other monikers. Clearly, his role has been outsized in world affairs. Putin has played an important role in history, but unfortunately, it’s one that will primarily be remembered for suffering.

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Federal judge greenlights challenge to disqualify Marjorie Taylor Greene from re-election

A federal judge on Monday rejected Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s, R-Ga., attempt to block an effort seeking to disqualify her from running for re-election, allowing the challenge to move forward.

A group of Georgia voters earlier this year launched an effort to disqualify Greene from running based on a post-Civil War constitutional provision that banned members of the Confederacy from holding office. The 14th Amendment bars from office anyone who took an oath to defend the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The progressive group Free Speech for People has cited the provision to target numerous Republicans who played key roles in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Greene sought a temporary injunction and temporary restraining order to halt the effort, arguing that the case was unlikely to be resolved before Georgia’s May primaries.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg on Monday rejected Greene’s effort, writing in a 73-page ruling that she failed to meet the “burden of persuasion with respect to this important and essential prerequisite to [Greene’s] demonstration of an entitlement to injunctive relief.”

“This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” wrote Totenberg, an Obama appointee. “The novelty of the factual and historical posture of this case — especially when assessed in the context of a preliminary injunction motion reviewed on a fast track — has made resolution of the complex legal issues at stake here particularly demanding.”

Totenberg wrote that Greene failed to show that there was a strong likelihood that she would win the case on the merits. A state judge is scheduled to hear the case on Friday. If the state judge disqualifies Greene, she could appeal and extend the process beyond the state’s May 25 primaries.

“Judge Totenberg’s well-reasoned opinion explains why the Georgia voters who filed this challenge against Greene have the right to have their challenge heard, and why none of Greene’s objections to the Georgia state challenge have any merit,” Ron Fein, legal director for Free Speech for People, told The New York Times. “At the hearing on Friday, we look forward to questioning Greene under oath about her involvement in the events of Jan. 6, and to demonstrating how her facilitation of the insurrection disqualifies her from public office under the United States Constitution.”

Greene lawyer James Bopp Jr. criticized the ruling and told the outlet that the judge’s decision minimized the effect the disqualification effort is having on Greene’s right to run for office.

“This is fundamentally antidemocratic,” he said, adding that Greene “publicly and vigorously condemned the attack on the Capitol.” He argued that the effort to disqualify Republican lawmakers from the ballot would strip voters of their right to choose their candidate and create elections determined by “bureaucrats, judges, lawyers and clever legal arguments.”

Greene ahead of the riot called the effort to challenge the election results “our 1776 moment,” which the legal challenge cited as code for inciting violence. The group argued in a filing last month that Greene helped plan the storming of the Capitol or was aware that the pro-Trump demonstration ahead of the riot would escalate to violence. Two organizers that are cooperating with the House Jan. 6 committee last year told Rolling Stone that Greene was among “close to a dozen” Republican members of Congress who participated in numerous planning briefings ahead of the riot.

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The effort to disqualify Republicans involved in the Capitol riot has targeted numerous Trump allies. Free Speech for People filed a similar effort seeking to bar Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., arguing that he “urged his followers to threaten and intimidate” members of Congress and that he or his staff were also “in close contact with rally organizers.”

U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee, blocked the challenge, ruling that the Amnesty Act of 1872, which effectively gave Confederate soldiers and supporters immunity from the 14th Amendment provision, applied to Cawthorn as well. The ruling drew pushback as legal experts argued that the 150-year-old law only applied to Civil War confederates, not future insurrectionists.

“According to this court ruling, the 1872 amnesty law, by a trick of wording that — although no one noticed it at the time, or in the 150 years since — completely undermined Congress’s careful decision to write the insurrectionist disqualification clause to apply to future insurrections,” Fein told the Times last month. “This is patently absurd.”

Similar challenges have been filed against Reps. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who were accused of helping to plan the pre-riot rally but have denied wrongdoing. Activists have also targeted state Rep. Mark Finchem, who attended the rally and is now running for secretary of state with Trump’s backing. A separate effort by a Democratic super PAC is targeting Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and state Reps. Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald.

Bopp, who is representing Cawthorn, Greene, and other Republicans against the challenges, told the Times earlier this month that as many as two dozen Republican lawmakers may be targeted in an effort to establish legal precedent to block Trump from running for office.

With enough test cases, at least one challenge could succeed. “Judges do make a difference,” he said.

Free Speech for the People has said they would urge state administrators and lawmakers to ban Trump from future elections.

“This isn’t just about the voters” of a certain district, Fein told The Guardian earlier this year. “The insurrection threatened our country’s entire democratic system and putting insurrectionists from any state into the halls of Congress threatens the entire country.”

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Five years after Hurricane Harvey, many in Houston are still waiting for help

In Billy Guevara’s neighborhood on the northeast side of Houston, people get nervous when it rains. Old ditches strain under the deluge of a Gulf storm, and mud and water fill the streets. Guevara, a writer who is blind, once had a seeing-eye dog that would navigate around the ankle-deep puddles and lingering muck. “It became unsafe because I ended up having to walk almost in the middle of the street,” he said. “It stays there for days.”

Guevara is a member of the Northeast Action Collective, a community group pushing the city and Harris County for equitable investments in flood control. He says drainage in his neighborhood of Lakewood is outdated: “It cannot handle the type of rain that we see now.” When Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, homes across many of northeast Houston’s Black and Hispanic neighborhoods flooded, swamped under 30 inches of rain in what was the country’s costliest disaster that year. Under the rush of water, one of the walls in Guevara’s home began to bulge out.

Years after Harvey, little aid has made it to the people of Houston. The federal government budgeted some $9.3 billion so that communities could not only rebuild, but also better prepare for the next storm. But city and regional governments have delivered little of those funds, and a state agency’s “competition” has held back aid that the Department of Housing and Urban Development designated for post-Harvey mitigation, money which would have helped upgrade drainage systems. As a result, low-income communities like Guevara’s have been left out of much-needed infrastructure improvements.

Without their fair share of aid, communities struggling to rebuild will be just as vulnerable when the next storm comes, advocates say. These obstacles also expose weaknesses in HUD’s recently created mitigation program, which aims to help reduce risks from future climate disasters.

Hurricane Harvey flooded nearly 100,000 homes in Houston, inflicting $16 billion in residential damage. Guevara had growing mold, damaged floors, and a leaking pipe. With a small FEMA grant and the help of local nonprofits, he was eventually able to repair his home.

But today, thousands in Houston still wait for funds to rebuild. Disaster recovery aid through HUD often comes with significant delays since the program is ad hoc, requiring Congress to approve spending for each disaster. In 2018, HUD allocated $5 billion to Texas through its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, which is designed to help with long-term rebuilding.

HUD had sent the money to the Texas General Land Office, or GLO, the state agency run by George P. Bush, grandson of former President George H.W. Bush, which is responsible for public lands, mineral rights, and the Alamo historical site, as well as disaster recovery. In turn, the state agency gave Houston’s share to the city, but didn’t entirely relinquish control, continuing to oversee how funds were doled out. The city and state agency squabbled over how to run things, and when HUD began an audit of the program, the fight escalated, eventually making its way to the Texas Supreme Court. In October 2020, the feud ended with the state seizing control of the program.

All the while, many residents remained in dangerous living conditions, stuck in homes with leaking roofs and mold-filled walls, said Becky Selle, a co-director at the grassroots group West Street Recovery. It’s unclear whether those waiting will ever get assistance. In January, when HUD published its audit, only 297 of nearly 8,800 applicants had received funds. (The state has until August 2025 to use the money.)

The struggle to access federal aid extended far beyond homeowner’s assistance. Harvey was among the first disasters for which HUD’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program made money available for mitigation projects like widening bayous, upgrading water and sewer systems, or buying out flood-prone homes. This marked a major shift: While disaster recovery funds had to be tied to damage from a specific disaster, the $4.3 billion mitigation fund could be used to improve conditions, making communities safer.

Houston and Harris County accounted for more than half of Texas’ damage from Hurricane Harvey, but when the GLO released its spending plan in December 2019, city officials feared Houston wouldn’t get its fair share.

Because there weren’t enough funds for every proposed project, the state’s land office set up a competition in which jurisdictions would apply for a slice of the $1 billion in the initial round. HUD identified 20 mainly coastal counties, including Harris County, that were most distressed by Hurricane Harvey and would be eligible for funds. The land office then expanded the list, adding counties that fell under the umbrella of the original FEMA disaster declaration in 2017. That more than doubled the list with more rural, inland counties like Milam, 200 miles from the coast.

When results from the competition came out last May, Houston didn’t get a cent. The city’s requests for $470 million worth of projects, like flood control in the majority-Black neighborhoods Sunnyside and Kashmere Gardens, were rejected. So was the $200 million watershed improvement plan for the flood-prone Halls Bayou, which is surrounded by some of Houston’s poorest neighborhoods. “For the State GLO not to give one dime in the initial distribution to the city and a very small portion to Harris County shows a callous disregard to the people of Houston and Harris County,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a statement at the time.

Instead, funds largely went to smaller, whiter, inland towns. They went to drainage upgrades in Rockdale, a two-hour drive northwest of Houston, and sewage improvements in Nixon, a small town outside San Antonio that emerged from Harvey unscathed and sheltered evacuees fleeing the storm. “The more that we’re giving this money to inland counties and jurisdictions, we are actually taking away from where we truly need the money and where the money was originally intended to assist communities,” said Julia Orduña, the southeast Texas regional director at Texas Housers, a low-income housing group.

After the snub, the city of Houston hoped for a second chance when the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a regional council spanning 13 counties, planned to deal out its own pool of the funds. But in February, the council granted just 2 percent of its $488 million to the city, which represents around 30 percent of the council’s population.

According to the council, Houston and Harris County didn’t need much more than that because the GLO planned to grant the county a direct payment of $750 million — a promise only made after the first competition received intense criticism. But that wasn’t a fair consideration, according to Mayor Turner, since that grant had yet to be approved.

Last June, the Northeast Action Collective and Texas Housers filed a civil rights complaint with HUD, alleging that the GLO discriminated against Black and Hispanic residents. In a recent letter sharing the findings of its investigation, the federal agency sided with the organizations, saying the competition “substantially and predictably disadvantaged minority residents, with particularly disparate outcomes for Black residents.”

A major issue, according to HUD, was that the state agency split the competition in two. Half the funds were reserved for counties that the federal government had identified as hardest hit by Harvey — where Black and Hispanic residents were most likely to live — while the other half went to more rural, inland counties included on the state’s expanded list, which tended to be whiter.

At minimum, HUD required that half of the funds would go to communities on its list of hardest-hit counties. While the state agency met that requirement, dividing the competition in two also meant awards to those counties would be capped at 50 percent. But those counties represented 90 percent of the population in the entire competition, amounting to much less money available for Black and Hispanic residents.

After the winners were announced in May 2021, GLO spokeswoman Brittany Eck backed the results in a statement to the Houston Chronicle. “It is important that Texas inland counties are resilient as they provide vital assistance to our coastal communities during events such as asset staging, evacuations, sheltering, and emergency response/recovery,” she said.

The competition favored smaller communities. A flood control project in Houston’s mostly Black and Hispanic neighborhood of Kashmere Gardens, HUD’s letter explained, would have helped 8,845 residents. But Houston’s total population is 2.3 million, so the project scored less than 1 out of 10 points because it would help only a small percentage of residents. On the other hand, the city of Iola applied for a wastewater project that all 379 of its residents would gain from. It scored 10 out of 10, and the project was funded.

In an email to Grist, Eck accused the federal agency of “blatant political theater.” She said GLO has complied with HUD’s requirements, and now it’s being faulted for not “going above and beyond” to benefit even more minority residents than it already has. Eck said the land office is appealing HUD’s findings.

“GLO did not engage in discrimination, and HUD’s allegations amount to nothing more than unlawful attempts to ‘second-guess’ GLO’s open and transparent competition process, which was approved by HUD,” Eck said.

When the state agency’s spending plan was still a draft, Madison Sloan, director of the disaster recovery and fair housing project at Texas Appleseed, a public interest justice center, sent a letter detailing concerns that its scoring system would divert money from the hardest-hit areas. “I don’t want to deny that communities all over the state need mitigation,” she said. “But when you look at where the damage was, where people are most vulnerable, it is the coast. What this represents is a missed opportunity to do some really large-scale, meaningful mitigation on the coast that’s going to protect a lot of people.”

These problems aren’t limited to Houston. Along the coast, other cities hit hard by Hurricane Harvey, like Beaumont, Corpus Christi, and Port Arthur, lost out in the competition. In Port Arthur, where the poverty rate is twice the national average, floods propelled by nearly 50 inches of rain devastated the housing stock. Decades of underinvestment have eroded residents’ ability to recover from disasters, said Michelle Smith, marketing director at the Community In-Power and Development Association, Inc., an environmental justice group in the city. Some decided to leave Port Arthur entirely because “they had nothing to come back to,” she said. So it stung when the city’s proposal for a $97 million drainage project was rejected.

Without these funds, communities that were poorly equipped for Harvey are just as vulnerable to the next storm. “This is an ongoing thing,” Smith said. “With each hurricane, we continue to suffer because we’re not able to recover. The little bit that we can salvage is then taken away again and again and again.”

Sloan thinks the whole situation exposes fissures in HUD’s mitigation program. It’s largely up to states to decide how to divvy up funds, but studies are needed in advance to ensure fair distribution, she said. That doesn’t just benefit the vulnerable; it could make the coast, as a whole, more resilient.

“Funding to areas where vulnerable people of color live is going to benefit plenty of white people, plenty of higher-income people who also live in those areas,” she said. “In this case, in general, equity means everyone wins.”

After backlash followed the first competition, the state’s land office announced that it would give the remaining funds to regional bodies like the Houston-Galveston Area Council to distribute — the same entity that offered Houston a minuscule amount of federal aid. “The GLO’s solution to not doing a second competition was pushing the responsibility to local jurisdictions,” said Orduña, who felt the new plan does not rectify HUD’s allegations of discrimination.

There will be other storms to come, and Congress will eventually allocate more money to rebuild from them. When that happens, Billy Guevara, of the Northeast Action Collective, worries all the talk and reports will have been just that. “That’s our biggest fear,” he said. “Being overlooked again.”

CO2 pipelines are coming. A pipeline safety expert says we’re not ready

A year ago, a different kind of pipeline project was announced in the Midwest. Most pipelines pick up oil or gas from a well and deliver it to customers who burn it, emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This one would run almost in reverse. A company called Summit Climate Solutions planned to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol refineries in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, and then transport it via the proposed pipeline to a site in North Dakota where the CO2 would be buried deep underground.

In the months since, two more companies have proposed similar CO2 pipeline projects in the Midwest, and another wants to expand an existing pipeline in the South. The sudden boom is being driven by federal and state incentives for carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as well as a new low-interest loan program for CO2 pipelines passed by Congress last year and general support from the Biden administration to grow the “carbon management” industry in an effort to reduce carbon emissions.

But as the number of pipeline proposals multiplies, a new report commissioned by the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, warns that CO2 pipeline regulations aren’t up to the task of keeping communities safe.

“The country is ill prepared for the increase of CO2 pipeline mileage being driven by federal CCS policy,” writes report author Richard Kuprewicz, an independent pipeline safety consultant hired by the Pipeline Safety Trust. “Federal pipeline safety regulations need to be quickly changed to rise to this new challenge, and to assure that the public has confidence in the federal pipeline safety regulations.”

Pipeline safety is overseen by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The agency began regulating carbon dioxide pipelines in 1991. Today, there are just over 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S., most of which deliver CO2 to oil fields, where companies pump it underground to stimulate oil production. But researchers assert that capturing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and sucking CO2 directly from the air will be essential tools to tackle climate change. In order to deliver that CO2 to sites where it can be permanently sequestered underground, they estimate the U.S. could need between 30,000and 65,000 miles of pipeline.

The most concerning finding in the new report, according to Bill Caram, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, is that regulations for assessing the potential impacts of a CO2 pipeline rupture were not developed specifically for CO2. Every pipeline developer has to identify potential “high consequence areas” where an accidental release would have significant negative impacts on human health or the environment. High consequence areas for oil and gas pipelines are well defined, but the report notes that CO2 has different considerations and likely a much larger radius of concern. CO2 is heavier than air, and a plume of CO2 can travel for miles, depending on wind and terrain, and settle into low-lying areas. The report warns that such an event would be difficult for people in the vicinity and first responders to detect, since CO2 is colorless, odorless, and nonflammable.

“If I had to pick one finding of the report that would keep me up at night as a public safety advocate, it’s that one,” said Caram.

The residents of Satartia, Mississippi, learned this the hard way in 2020 when a CO2 pipeline ruptured and a plume of CO2 settled over the town, causing people to feel dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. Many passed out. Forty-nine people went to the hospital. PHMSA has yet to release an incident report detailing the cause of the rupture.

“That incident happened over two years ago,” said Caram. “It’s crazy that communities are being asked to bear the burden of the risk of these pipelines when this report sits unreleased with all these unanswered questions.”

In addition to urging PHMSA to update how potential impact areas are assessed, the Kuprewicz report recommends that PHMSA require pipeline operators to inject an odorant into CO2 pipelines, as is standard for natural gas pipelines, to help alert the public to potentially dangerous leaks. It proposes new requirements for informing and training local officials and emergency responders on the unique dangers posed by a CO2 release. It also recommends setting purity standards for the CO2 transported by pipelines, as impurities can introduce additional risks.

A spokesperson for PHMSA did not comment on the missing Satartia report or the concerns raised in Kuprewicz’s report. But the agency did say it was reviewing his findings and working on new measures to strengthen safety standards for CO2 pipelines, as the White House instructed PHMSA and other agencies that oversee CCS projects to do in interim guidance put out in February.

Similar to Kuprewicz, the White House guidance calls for CO2 pipeline-specific emergency planning and training. It cites a need for new tools to monitor and improve safety but stops short of describing which tools are needed. It also notes that the impacts of climate change, like flooding and storms, should be taken into account in the design, construction, and maintenance of CO2 pipelines.

Lee Beck, global director for carbon capture at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit that advocates for CCS deployment, said the Pipeline Safety Trust report “provides important insights and raises really important questions.” But from her perspective the Biden administration’s guidance document shows it “is well aware of what needs to be done to ensure regulatory safety.” Beck also noted that since 2010, there have only been 66 reported CO2 pipeline incidents and no reported fatalities. According to PHMSA data, the incident rate per mile of CO2 pipeline in 2020 was about half that of crude oil pipelines.

But Caram is concerned that PHMSA does not have the funding or capacity to effectively make new rules. “I would consider them a notoriously underfunded and understaffed agency,” he said.

Rory Jacobson, the deputy director of policy at the nonprofit Carbon180, also raised this issue. “Ultimately, PHMSA will need Congress to enhance its regulatory capacity, funding, and jurisdiction to effectively and lawfully oversee the implementation of newly-passed carbon management policies,” he said in an email. Carbon180 advocates for policy to support carbon removal, a category of climate solutions designed to suck carbon directly out of the atmosphere, some of which would utilize CO2 pipelines.

Other pipeline proponents emphasized the industry’s track record on safety. “PHMSA and the natural gas and oil industry have decades of experience ensuring the safe transportation of CO2,” said Robin Rorick, the vice president of midstream policy at the American Petroleum Institute, in a statement. The oil and gas industry group has been a key player in developing regulations for CO2 pipelines, since oil companies buy CO2 for enhanced oil recovery. Rorick did not comment on the report’s findings.

Jesse Harris, a spokesperson for Summit Carbon Solutions, the company that is developing the Midwest carbon dioxide pipeline, said that PHMSA “clearly specifies multiple layers of protection for CO2 pipeline operations to ensure public safety.” He added, “We look forward to continuing to meet and in many cases exceeding all local, state, and federal requirements.”

Rick Scott’s loony-tunes 11-point plan: Classic GOP projection, and a roadmap to theocracy

Why do I consider Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the wealthiest person in the U.S. Senate, so thoroughly dreadful? Is it his background in defrauding the American taxpayer? His penchant for spreading disinformation? His smarmy habit of getting all Jesus-y, even in the face of a public health crisis?

It was indeed very Christian of Scott to release his new plan to “save” America — but I don’t mean that as praise. At least he’s honest: The gentleman from the Sunshine State openly advocates for dismantling the federal government, undoing all federal laws and regulations and effectively transforming our democracy into a white male Christian theocracy.

OK, not in so many words, but that’s the idea. For some reason Scott dispensed with a hyphen in the title of his “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” — is punctuation “woke” now? It’s so hard to keep up — which might better be described as a Christian-right reboot of the Ten Commandments (plus one).

Before we discuss Scott’s plan to save the country, it’s worth mentioning that as founder of Columbia Healthcare and then CEO of the merged hospital corporations Columbia/HCA, Scott was in charge in 1997 when the company was fined $1.7 billion for overbilling and defrauding Medicare and Medicaid, at the time the largest health care fraud in U.S. history. He was forced to resign and said he took “responsibility” for the fraud, said responsibility apparently requiring him to invoke the Fifth Amendment some 75 times while under oath.

Scott kept his chin up, however, and walked away with a huge financial package, including some $300 million in stock. An earlier excursion in business at Solantic, a Florida chain of walk-in urgent care clinics, resulted in several lawsuits around discriminatory hiring practices. Randy Schultz, in an opinion piece for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, wrote that Scott “built his political career with a fortune based on fraud.

Florida voters, in their wisdom, elected this guy twice as governor and then sent him to the Senate in 2018. Lately he’s been given to calling Democrats “the enemy within,” and now he wants to tell us how the country can be “saved.”

Salon’s Heather Digby Parton thinks that Democrats should shine as much light as possible on Scott’s plan, since it is “batshit lunacy” yet has been embraced by many Republicans. As she recently put it:

Much of it is the usual right-wing cant about work and family and law and order. But there is some stuff in this thing that will make for some beautiful ads if the Democrats can find it in themselves to get off the defensive and tell the American people about it.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was apparently horrified that Scott’s plan was published (remember, the Republican Party refused to have platform for the 2020 presidential campaign), but Scott himself fearlessly and correctly observes that “Americans deserve to know what we will do when given the chance to govern.”

One might note here that Republicans always have a chance to govern — every single day — by choosing to work with members of the other party to find suitable compromises, rather than by employing scorched-earth tactics against their “enemies”— but, you know, whatever The oddly cherubic yet spiteful Newt Gingrich — who long ago took Rush Limbaugh’s admonition to treat the opposition as your enemy and ran with it — is smiling somewhere in the opulence that negative life work too often brings. He very much likes the plan.

I’m tempted to winnow these down to a few highlights, the way comedian George Carlin famously did with the Ten Commandments, which he got down to just two (along with a third he added himself).

On Scott’s Point 1, “Education”: I have no problem with the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, even if it’s a bit odd, given their insurrectionist bent and love for foreign despots, for Trumpists to demand that children prove their loyalty to the country. Let’s compromise: We’ll leave in the mention of God, which was added to the pledge in 1954 in an attempt to thwart “godless communism,” and then we outlaw the use of the U.S. flag as an advertising vehicle, flying enormously over used-car lots and the like. To avoid making the flag meaningless (if not noxious) with overuse, let’s fly it only over public buildings, like the public schools you are trying to destroy with your “classical” charter schools, and, as desired, on private residences.

Scott’s Point 7, “Fair Fraud-Free Elections,” is just out-and-out projection. With these guys, every accusation is an admission (which is deeply troubling when it comes to their recent focus on pedophilia). In this Toddler Nation of ours, even senators — men and women who are said to cool the passions of House members — are given to the schoolyard taunt: “No, you!” One thinks of candidate Trump’s “No puppet, no puppet! You’re the puppet!” when Hillary Clinton said that if he were elected, he’d be cavorting at the end of Vladimir Putin’s strings. We know how that worked out.

Scott’s Point 10, “Religious Liberty and Big Tech,” clearly has a special resonance for the evangelical component of his audience. “Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives” is in boldface type, and OK, that appears reasonable enough. As always, the devil is in the detail. Scott goes on to reveal that what he means by “all aspects” is that the personal religious beliefs of people like him should be pushed into public policies that affect all of us, which is a form of government known as theocracy. What he means, but does not quite say, is that certain Americans will be free to welcome their idea of God into all aspects of other Americans’ lives.

Last, but perhaps not best, comes Point 11, “America First,” where Scott informs us, “We are Americans, not globalists.” Yeah, OK — but so what? Who says that being American and having a global consciousness are incompatible? Most of us can walk and chew gum at the same time, and the world is proving to be a surprisingly small place.

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Enough with my sniping. (Scott cleverly anticipates how his plan will be mocked by “the wokes.”) If you read it for yourself, be sure to delve into the details. No matter what Mitch McConnell says, this appears to be an accurate reflection of what the GOP wants to do if or when they take full control in Washington again: Dismantle the federal government and its “deep state” of experts; have a do-over on all federal laws and regulations (someone seems to be still smarting from that federal charge of fraud); force all Americans to pay taxes, even the poor (so they have “skin in the game”); end all public discussion of race and gender; and force schoolchildren to pledge their allegiance to a nation whose history has been whitewashed and sanitized by right-wing Christians.

In an opinion piece in the Orlando Weekly, Jeffrey C. Billman notes that the plan is “Scott’s attempt to marry the anti-tax, pro-austerity wing [of the GOP] with Trump’s populist, authoritarian wing.” Billman writes that the plan is largely a familiar litany of grievances from white male conservatives who are worried about losing their leg-up in society:

From start to finish, this is an authoritarian document dressed up in the language of freedom. Like all variants of right-wing populism, it focuses the grievances of its target demo (a loss of cultural primacy) at scapegoats (the wokes).

I will mention again that Scott, supposedly a devout Christian, has taken to calling his political opponents the enemy, which, it hardly needs to be pointed out, is a precursor to violence and even genocide. When it comes to a holy war against the secular, socialistic, “woke” enemies of America, I guess all bets are off. It’s disturbingly similar to the language of Putin and his official mouthpieces in describing Ukrainians and Russian dissenters as “scum” and “traitors,” likening them to gnats that must be spat out of one’s mouth.

In Carlin’s famous Ten Commandments routine, he holds off a while from commenting on the Fifth Commandment. Those who call themselves religious, he observes, have never had that much of a problem with murder: “More people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason….The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable.”

Scott’s Point 10, which attempts to pit religious liberty against the “wokeness” of big tech, ends with an implicit threat of violence: “Remember – the Second Amendment was established in order to protect the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.”

That’s like killing two birds with one stone tablet: Scott is willing to encourage violence against his political opponents while simultaneously grossly misrepresenting the meaning of the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Honestly, we owe Scott a debt of thanks for setting this out in plain type. Let me try to repay that with my own 11-point plan to save America, in a spirit of give-and-take and constructive debate, which is sometimes necessary even with one’s “enemies”:

In a democracy, you should not lie or spread misinformation — or trust anyone who does. Democracy depends on reality-based information and the best reporting of what is known right now. Let’s make it illegal for any corporate entity to willfully disseminate false information.
You should not treat people who are different from you — in race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or anything else — as second-class citizens. America’s not-so-secret strength has always been in its diversity.
Your religious freedom is not a license to harass others with your personal beliefs. Your faith is no doubt a strength for you; hold it close and know that many of us envy the solace you derive from it. But keep your faith out of our bodies, our relationships, our libraries and our critical scientific research. As historian Garry Wills put it, the separation of church and state is the one unique, genius thing in our Constitution.
You likely have your hands full with your own love life. Don’t pass judgment on the consenting activities of other adults. Get your business out of everyone else’s business (see #3). In a world reeling with hate, why would anyone attack love?
You should not ban books (unless you want to see them on the bestseller list). You say you believe in the free market and in free speech. Stop being outrageous flaming hypocrites on this stuff.
You should be careful in picking your populist pals. The “elite” are not always who you think they are. Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton all went to Ivy League schools, no matter what dialect they affect when they sidle up to you to talk self-serving nonsense.
Your culture wars are an attempt to divide and distract Americans. They are pushed down your throats by unscrupulous politicians and true enemies of America, like Vladimir Putin and his lapdog Donald Trump. They should be ignored.
Your freedom of speech is not under attack. You can say pretty much anything you want, at home as well as in the public square. But other people have every right to respond, and even to challenge what you say. Threatening the lives of election administrators, public health officials or school board members, however, is a crime, and goes way beyond what you call “cancel culture.” Banning novels and the teaching of real history makes it seem like you are canceling culture for real.
You should not elect obvious grifters to public office. America does best when it is not led by sociopaths and criminals.
You should bear in mind that we need each other. When Americans come together in mutual effort — supporting each other after natural disasters, or coming to the aid of Ukraine — it’s a beautiful, powerful thing. We have far more in common than we are led to believe.
We all need to get out more often — to walk in nature, see a play, hear some music and, most of all, stop thinking about our political disagreements. We could all stand to gain some perspective on the world and each other. What Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg about the “unfinished work” of American democracy will always be true. To continue that work, we could use a break. People of good faith are not relentless, but we need to show endurance against the unceasing attack on democracy.

Read more on the current state of the Grand Old Party:

“Unprecedented”: Oregon Dems angry after Pelosi PAC and crypto-bro backed newcomer

Oregon gained a new House seat after the 2020 census, which offers Democrats one of their clearest pickup opportunities anywhere in the nation. But this week, Democratic candidates in the new district — along with progressive and Latino members of Congress — condemned a super PAC affiliated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading national Democrats for trying to pick favorites in a rare competitive primary.

Six of the nine Democratic candidates running in Oregon’s 6th congressional district issued a joint statement on Tuesday slamming House Majority PAC over a $1 million ad buy promoting Carrick Flynn, a little-known first-time candidate who has already received about $5 million in backing from cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.

“We strongly condemn House Majority PAC’s unprecedented and inappropriate decision to spend nearly a million dollars in this Democratic primary,” Democratic candidates Andrea Salinas, Kathleen Harder, Teresa Alonso Leon, Loretta Smith, Cody Reynolds and Matt West said in the statement. The House Majority PAC normally helps fund Democrats in competitive races against Republicans, and the six candidates said it “should not be spending resources to divide Democrats. We call on House Majority PAC to actually stand by our party’s values and let the voters of Oregon decide who their Democratic nominee will be.”

The PAC spent hundreds of thousands on ad buys in Portland, although some of the total $1 million spend was allocated for the general election, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Flynn’s campaign said he was “honored” to have the PAC’s support. “We feel this is a clear indication that Carrick’s focus on family wage jobs, support for small and rural communities, and pandemic preparedness is the best fit for this critical district,” Flynn campaign manager Avital Balwit said in a statement to Salon. “Carrick is proud to have the backing from a broad coalition of supporters from throughout Oregon’s 6th congressional district, across the state and from all over the country. The path to keeping the House in Democratic hands starts right here in Oregon’s 6th.”

House Majority PAC defended the ad buy when asked about the Democratic pushback.

“House Majority PAC is dedicated to doing whatever it takes to secure a Democratic House Majority in 2022, and we believe supporting Carrick Flynn is a step towards accomplishing that goal,” said CJ Warnke, the group’s communications director, in a statement to Salon that also described Flynn as “a strong, forward-looking son of Oregon.”

Flynn’s campaign site describes him as a candidate from humble beginnings, whose family was poor and left homeless by a flood that destroyed their home. After attending the University of Oregon on a scholarship and and later going to Yale Law School, he worked on research projects involving national security and pandemic preparedness at Oxford and Georgetown. He moved back to Oregon from Washington, D.C., in 2020, according to the Salem Statesman Journal. Flynn’s campaign told Salon that his background in pandemic preparedness motivated him to run for Congress and that he had written part of the Biden administration’s pandemic prevention plan.

Flynn’s campaign largely focuses on creating more high-tech and green jobs, improving health care access, and implementing pandemic prevention measures. But it’s his wealthy backers from far outside Oregon that have drawn the most local attention. Although he’s a political newcomer, Flynn has become one of the more visible candidates in the race after the Protect Our Future PAC, a group funded by Bankman-Fried, founder of the crypto exchange FTX, sunk nearly $5 million into ads supporting him. Another group called Justice Unites Us PAC reported spending $850,000 to back Flynn. Sources of funding for that PAC were not immediately clear.

Bankman-Fried, a 30-year-old billionaire who founded FTX in 2019, made a big splash in 2020 with more than $5 million in donations to super PACs backing Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Since then, however, Bankman-Fried has contributed extensively to numerous Republican senators, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, according to Politico. In that article, Bankman-Fried said his campaign donations were not necessarily tied to his policy aims for a “cryptocurrency ecosystem,” although his company has circulated a “regulatory wish list” that would allow trading platforms to choose their own regulators, according to the report.

In an interview with the Statesman Journal, Flynn, the congressional candidate, insisted that he has “no background in crypto” and no “interest in crypto.”

Flynn’s campaign sought to distance the candidate from Bankman-Fried’s business objectives. “Protect Our Future chose to support Carrick because of his hands-on work on pandemic prevention, and policy,” Balwit told Salon. “If you look at the PAC’s goals on their website, they care about pandemic preparedness and prevention. They are also backing other candidates, including some elected officials, who have strong stances on pandemic preparedness and prevention. As for Sam Bankman-Fried, while it appears that he does do advocacy around crypto, his primary focus is an advocacy project around pandemics.”

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Five of the six Democrats who condemned the House Majority PAC for trying to tip the primary scale toward Flynn held a joint press conference on Tuesday, where candidate Kathleen Harder, a physician, called Flynn a “phantom candidate” who has largely been absent from the campaign trail.

“We’ve seen him nowhere in the district, he doesn’t show up to any events in person,” agreed fellow candidate Cody Reynolds, an Army veteran.

Matt West, another primary contender, called out Flynn’s financial backers. “This candidate is the preferred candidate of billionaires, clearly,” he said.

According to his Democratic opponents, crypto-funded Carrick Flynn is a “phantom candidate.” One said, “We’ve seen him nowhere in the district.” Another called him “the preferred candidate of billionaires.”

The out-of-state millions backing Flynn have frustrated the other candidates. State Rep. Andrea Salinas, who has the most in-state support in the field, has raised just $520,000 by comparison, according to Willamette Week.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is supporting Salinas, currently the No. 3 Democrat in the state House, in the new district southwest of Portland, where more than 20% of residents are Latino. Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., the chairman of the caucus’ fundraising arm BOLD PAC, slammed the House Majority PAC for “spending critical resources against a woman who has spent decades fighting for progressive causes and who will excite Democratic voters in November.”

In a statement, Gallego said that Democrats should focus on “investments to empower Latino and Latina candidates like Andrea who are running strong campaigns focused on issues that matter to communities of color and working families.” Oregon has never had a Latino representative in Congress, he noted, “and the 6th district … has the opportunity to make history this year.” He added that the big ad buy in support of Flynn “stands in contrast” to Salinas’ endorsements from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, a BOLD PAC board member, warned that Democrats who take the Latino vote for granted “do so at their own peril.”

“At a time when reproductive rights are at stake, Democrats should be moving mountains to ensure that there are more women at the table — especially women of color — instead of actively trying to tip the scales against an exceptionally experienced Latina,” she said in a statement.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., has not backed a candidate in the district but joined a growing number of national Democrats critical of the House Majority PAC decision.

“I haven’t endorsed in this race,” he tweeted, “but it’s flat-out wrong for House Majority PAC to be weighing in when we have multiple strong candidates vying for the nomination.”

Read more:

Why everyone on the internet suddenly hates seed oil

I’ve been slowly poisoning my family. And myself, apparently. Sorry, I just found out.

Maybe it’s because I avoid social media, but I somehow only recently learned there was an entire anti-seed oil discourse. I can barely keep track of whether grains are good or bad today, or if protein is overrated.

I didn’t even know what “seed oil” was. “Is that, like… sesame oil?” I naively asked a colleague. And then I promptly flung myself down a Google rabbit hole of memes, Joe Rogan references, words like “evil” and “toxic,” and a lot of absolutely wild YouTube videos. And now I know, if you want something to blame for everything from cancer to heart disease, dementia to age spots, there are a whole lot of people out there who will tell you the culprit is lurking in your pantry, ready to fry your dinner in sizzling malevolence.

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The term “seed oil” usually refers to the refined cooking oils like corn and canola that many of us keep on hand in our kitchens. They also frequently show up in products like salad dressings and fast food. As Andrew Zaleski explained in GQ last year, they’re a relatively modern creation, a product of 20th century processing innovation that generations of us grew up referring to as “vegetable oil” and associated with the lighter, healthier connotations of those words.

Today, you can find #seedoilfree memes and recipes, often from self-proclaimed seed oil “disrespecters,” all over social media.

That image has, in recent years, undergone a shift, thanks in no small part to a 2020 appearance on Joe Rogan’s show by Dr. Paul Saladino. Saladino — who, despite having the word “salad” in his name, goes by “Carnivore MD” — told Rogan that there were “negative effects of eating too many plants.” Saladino uses highly technical language in his discourse with Rogan: “the Nrf2 system,” “environmental hormesis,” and other ten-dollar words, which I had to Google to try to figure out what any of this has to do with Wesson oil.

In any case, the interview with Saladino resonated with Rogan’s curious, hungry, and enormous audience. Today, you can find #seedoilfree memes and recipes, often from self-proclaimed seed oil “disrespecters,” all over social media. In my research, I stumbled upon a seemingly miraculous before and after photo of a woman emancipated from her seed oils, to which one blunt Redditor commented, “Girl you just lost weight because you stopped eating fried dogsh**t.”

There seems to be overlap between the seed oil disrespecting community and the COVID vaccine-skeptical one.

Yet you can also find plenty of anti-seed oil traction on more conspiracy-minded corners of the internet — there seems to be overlap between the seed oil disrespecting community and the COVID vaccine-skeptical one. Recently, Vice also pointed out the surprising connections it also has to, of all things, Bitcoin influencers. I honestly can’t tell how much among any of this is irony versus sincere crackpottery (or, perhaps, legitimate health research).

What’s truth and what’s hype here? Maybe we start by agreeing that eating lots of fried, processed foods is never going to be good for you, regardless of which oil you’re frying it in. Beyond that, though, there are compelling reasons to think twice about commercial oils, most notably those with an abundance of omega-6 fatty acids in them.

As Jesse Feder, a personal trainer and registered dietitian with StrengthWarehouse USA, explains: “When it comes to all seed oils, they get a bad reputation for the high amounts of omega-6 fatty acids compared to omega-3 fatty acids. A lot of the processed foods we eat have high amounts of these oils, which usually gives us way more omega-6 than we need. When you have a diet high in omega-6 and low in omega-3, inflammation and increased cholesterol can occur. However,” he adds, “this does not mean seed oils are bad. We still need omega-6 fatty acids in our diets.”

The reason omega 6 fatty acids have been linked to inflammation is that one omega-6 fatty acid, called omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid arachidonic acid (ARA), is a “precursor” to other compounds that promote inflammation. A 2018 research study noted that this relationship is why it is “commonly believed” that eating more omega-6 fatty acids will increase inflammation. Yet they caution that studies in humans have not found that increasing consumption of such compounds leads to an increase in inflammation. “The interaction of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids […] in the context of inflammation is complex and still not properly understood,” that study, which was published in the journal “Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes and Essential Fatty Acids,” concluded.

The lack of clear science here hints that the bigger picture — overall oil consumption — is more telling when it comes to health. “The main component of seed oils, like many other oils,” Feder explains, “is fat. The most important thing is the type of fat and the quantity that is being consumed when determining if an oil is good or bad for you.”

“Using the highest quality, virgin, cold-pressed oils you can find will ensure you are getting the most nutrition per teaspoon possible for that kind of oil.”

That seems logical. I recently saw a social media post with the hashtag #seedoilfree — it was was a photo of a sausage pizza. Then there was another one, of a bag of olive oil potato chips. I’m not a food scientist, but I’m pretty sure a diet rich in these kinds of foods isn’t the best plan.

Some cooks say that the devil is in the details of how the oil is processed, which is perhaps more crucial than the type of oil. Sylvia Fountaine, a Spokane chef and CEO of Feasting at Home, said she was cognizant of the “debate over the dangers and benefits of seed oils,” and suggested looking for oils that had been processed in specific ways. “Using the highest quality, virgin, cold pressed oils you can find will ensure you are getting the most nutrition per teaspoon possible for that kind of oil,” she said. “Using each oil appropriately so it doesn’t burn, and in moderation, is probably the best choice if you want to consume oils consciously. Be intentional about your sources of oil . . . Local oils that are organic and cold pressed will usually have a better nutrient profile than the bulk jug of vegetable oil you can find at Costco.”

And Dr Ritesh Jain, a consultant respiratory and sleep medicine physician at WhatASleep, offers a similar perspective, noting, “One truth is that the nature of the oil depends on the way it is processed.” Jain worried about polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in oils like sunflower and sesame, warning that they would cause “inflammation and toxin accumulation,” yet I could find no scientific literature that seemed to confirm this statement. If anything, polyunsaturated fatty acids seem to be relatively benign.

As in all things, common sense, moderation, and a skeptical but not paranoid attitude are a pretty healthy, livable approach to life and food. The majority of my everyday cooking requires modest portions of my favorite olive oils and butter, so I’m probably not actually poisoning anybody. I do still like to fry up some hush puppies or churros now and then, and knowing what I know now, I’ll probably in the future splurge for a quality unrefined vegetable oil with a higher smoke point to do the job. But I’m definitely not going to stress out, or demonize any one category of foods I consume. Maybe that just makes me a seed oil disrespecter disrespecter.

More diet and nutrition coverage:

“Ugly betrayal”: Activists say Biden resuming oil, gas leases on public lands broke campaign promise

Activists condemned Friday’s announcement by the Biden administration that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management will resume oil and gas lease sales on public lands as yet another betrayal of President Joe Biden’s promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle the climate emergency.

The U.S. Interior Department explained Friday afternoon that the lease sale resumption is in compliance with a 2021 federal injunction blocking the Biden administration from enforcing a temporary pause on new leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters.

The department described the onshore oil and gas lease sales as “significantly reformed,” while announcing a “first-ever increase in the royalty rate for new competitive leases to 18.75%,” up from the 12.5% minimum rate required by law.

While the progressive watchdog Accountable.US applauded the administration’s decision to raise the royalty rate, most climate campaigners decried the resumption of the fossil fuel lease sales amid a worsening planetary emergency.

“It is never a good sign when the president announces something at 5:00 pm on a Friday. But President Biden can’t get away with this disastrous climate decision,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement. “The fact of the matter is that more drilling won’t solve high gas prices right now—so why is Biden breaking his campaign promise to stop drilling on public lands?”

The Western Environmental Law Center noted that “the communities most at risk from new fossil fuel extraction are primarily Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples, people of the global majority, and those on the frontlines of fossil fuel industry expansion. These are the same communities that turned out in record numbers to get Biden elected in 2020 and who have since been urging Biden to use his executive authority to fulfill his campaign promise and ban new federal fossil fuel projects.”

Randi Spivak, public lands director at the Center for Biological Diversity, argued that “the Biden administration’s claim that it must hold these lease sales is pure fiction and a reckless failure of climate leadership.”

“It’s as if they’re ignoring the horror of firestorms, floods, and megadroughts, and accepting climate catastrophes as business as usual,” she added. “These so-called reforms are 20 years too late and will only continue to fuel the climate emergency. These lease sales should be shelved and the climate-destroying federal fossil fuel programs brought to an end.”

Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, asserted that “in the midst of a climate emergency and a fossil-fueled war that has exposed the dangers of fossil fuel dependency, President Biden’s decision to double down on leasing new public lands for fossil fuel development is a disastrous choice.”

NEW: Joe Biden is doubling down on a failed strategy of oil + gas expansion.@collinrees: "This is an ugly betrayal of Biden’s campaign promises amid a climate emergency + fossil-fueled war exposing the dangers of fossil fuel dependency."

Full response: https://t.co/ZG7Aauruee

— Oil Change International (@PriceofOil) April 15, 2022

Rees continued:

There’s no amount of regulation that can change the facts—”significantly reformed” oil and gas lease sales will still result in selling off our public lands for deadly extraction that’s hurting communities and driving the climate crisis. Increasing royalty rates may even result in furthering state and federal reliance on oil and gas leasing revenue, just as the science is clear that we need to be stopping all expansion of fossil fuel extraction.

This is an ugly betrayal of Joe Biden’s campaign promises and his administration’s rhetoric on environmental justice and climate action. Biden is choosing to stand with polluters over people at the expense of frontline communities and the future of the planet.

True energy independence means rejecting fossil fuel expansion and ending Big Oil’s greed while rapidly building out renewable energy on public lands and beyond.

Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth, recalled that as a presidential candidate, “Biden promised to end new oil and gas leasing on public lands,” but now he is “prioritizing oil executive profits over future generations.”

BREAKING: Biden just violated his campaign promise and climate pledges by reopening our public lands to new oil & gas leasing.

His admin approved more drilling permits last year than Trump did in his first year…https://t.co/q7bOijmDbj

— Friends of the Earth (Action) (@foe_us) April 15, 2022

“Biden’s Interior Department has even issued permits to drill at a rate faster than the Trump administration,” she added. “Now, the Bureau of Land Management is preparing to hold its first public lands lease sale, despite having no legal obligation to do so. If Biden wants to be a climate leader, he must stop auctioning off our public lands to Big Oil.”

Sunrise Movement’s Prakash warned of electoral consequences for Biden’s failure to fulfill his climate promises, which included a pledge that there would be “no more drilling on federal lands, period, period, period, period.”

The president has already come under fire from climate and environmental campaigners for his plan to auction more than 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to fossil fuel companies—an effort that was blocked by a federal judge in January.

“This is why young people are doubting the political process altogether,” she said. “If Biden wants to solve for voter turnout in 2022, he should actually deliver on the things he promised, not move farther away from them. On November 8, 2022 we don’t want to hear anyone asking why young people didn’t vote. Biden is actively turning voters away. If we’re going to combat fascism and win in 2022, he must be a leader and course-correct. This election and our futures depend on it.”

Russia faces first foreign default in a century – which could complicate Putin’s war in Ukraine

Russia may be on the cusp of its first default on its foreign debt since the Bolsheviks ousted Czar Nicholas II a century ago.

On April 14, 2022, Moody’s Investors Service warned the country’s decision to make payments on dollar-issued debt in rubles would constitute a default because it violates the terms of the contract. A 30-day grace period allows Russia until May 4 to convert the payments to dollars to avoid default.

A default is one of the clearest signals that the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries are having their intended effect on the Russian economy. But will it have any impact on Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine?

We asked Michael Allen and Matthew DiGiuseppe, both experts on political economy and conflict, to explain the consequences of default and what it would mean for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.

Why did Russia default on its debt?

The Russian government has a total of US$40 billion worth of debt in dollars and euros, half of which is owned by foreign investors. Russia had an April 4 deadline to pay about $650 million in interest and principle to the holders of two bonds issued in dollars.

Russia has plenty of cash – it collects the equivalent of over $1 billion a day from its oil and gas deliveries alone – but has limited access to dollars because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. The Biden administration had been allowing Russia to use some of the foreign reserves it had previously frozen to make debt payments. The U.S. changed course on April 5, when it blocked Russia from using dollar reserves held at American banks to make the debt payments.

That gave Russia little choice but to try to make the payments in rubles, whose value has been very volatile since the invasion. If Russia doesn’t switch the payments to dollars by May 4, the government will be in default on its foreign obligations for the first time since 1918, when the Bolshevik revolutionaries took over Russia and refused to pay the country’s international creditors. Russia also defaulted in 1998 but only on its domestic debt.

What are the consequences of default?

When a country defaults on a foreign loan, international investors typically become unwilling or unable to lend more money to it. Or they demand much higher interest rates.

Whether because of higher interest costs or an inability to borrow, this forces a country to cut spending. Less government spending reduces economic activity, increases unemployment and slows growth. While some of these effects, like weaker economic growth, are often short-lived, other consequences can haunt a country for years. Trade with other countries remains below normal for an average of 15 years after a default, while full exclusion from capital markets typically lasts just over eight years.

For example, when Argentina defaulted in 2001, the peso plunged, the economy shrank and inflation soared. Riots over food broke out all over the country, leading to the president’s resignation. Although Argentina’s economy had recovered by 2007, the country remained unable to borrow from foreign investors, which led to default again in 2014.

What does this mean for Russia? The country was already locked out of international borrowing markets because of sanctions. A government official recently said Russia would also avoid borrowing domestically, because a default would lead to “cosmic” interest rates.

But its significant revenue from sometimes-discounted sales of oil and gas may help offset the need for borrowing in the short term, especially if it can continue to find willing buyers like India and China. On April 14, 2022, Putin acknowledged sanctions were disrupting exports and raising costs.

Does Russia care if it defaults?

The Russian government has been trying hard to avoid default.

Until April 5, it was using its precious dollars to stay current on its bond payments. And before its invasion it had built up a significant reserve of foreign currency, in large part to allow it to continue to pay back debt borrowed in dollars and euros even amid sanctions. Russia has even threatened to take legal action if sanctions force it into default.

As it odd as it may sound, Russia is likely worried about its reputation – at least among bond investors.

A default by a sovereign borrower establishes a bad reputation that can take years to rehabilitate, as Argentina’s experience shows.

And the long-term impact could be worse for Russia. The reason Russia is in this bind is because it chose to invade Ukraine, despite repeated warnings that doing so would result in severe economic and financial sanctions.

So creditors might wonder if Russia will always prioritize its foreign policy interests over the interests of creditors and raise borrowing costs permanently. If so, they may find it difficult to borrow for years to come.

Another risk is that a default may enable creditors to seize Russia’s overseas assets as a form of repayment. International sanctions have already enabled countries to seize or freeze Russian assets, which could be used to pay off outstanding debts.

One count suggests that 50% of creditors in recent sovereign debt cases have attempted to seize assets as an alternative to payment.

What does this mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine?

As long as there has been debt, governments have waged wars with other people’s money. In fact, debt has become so vital as a source of power that countries rarely fight without it.

Around 88% of wars from 1823 through 2003 have been at least partly financed with funds borrowed from banks and other investors. This reality even bleeds into fantasy worlds, like “Game of Thrones,” in which financing from the Iron Bank of Braavos is vital to financing the wars of Westeros.

Our own research has shown that countries that have defaulted on their debts or have poor credit ratings find it difficult to build military capacity and, consequently, are more reluctant to take up arms against other nations. Related work has found that countries with lower borrowing costs tend to win wars – though this effect is stronger for democracies.

One reason is that borrowing allows countries to overcome the guns-versus-butter trade-off: More money spent on the military means less for its citizens’ welfare, which can hurt a government’s ability to stay in power. Foreign loans can help overcome this problem, but losing access to credit forces a government to choose.
In the short term, however, a default is not likely to alter the outcome of Russia’s war – or force Putin to make any unpopular trade-offs – especially if Russia is able to achieve its new and more limited military objectives in the eastern Donbas region quickly.

This will change the longer the war goes on. The war was expected to last only a few days, but a stronger-than-expected Ukrainian defense has pushed the conflict into its eighth week. Early estimates found that a prolonged war could end up costing Russia over $20 billion a day, including both direct and indirect expenses, like loss of economic output.

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If Ukraine becomes a lengthy war of attrition, as some analysts expect, then Russia’s inability to borrow money will weaken its ability to sustain, supply and reinforce its position in Ukraine – especially if oil prices fall or the European Union boycotts or reduces its dependence on Russian fuel.

Roman statesman Cicero wrote: “Nervos belli, infinitam pecuniam,” which loosely translates as “Successful war-waging capacity requires unlimited cash.”

And that means borrowed money. Wars usually end quickly without it.

Michael A. Allen, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University and Matthew DiGiuseppe, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Leiden University

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

“I am not for sale,” says Nina Turner as billionaire-funded super PAC backs opponent

Congressional candidate Nina Turner declared Friday that she is “not for sale” and suggested her primary opponent, Democratic Rep. Shontel Brown, is after federal filings revealed that a billionaire-funded super PAC has spent more than $1 million in support of the incumbent in Ohio’s 11th District.

“See, there is a clear difference in this race. One of the candidates in this primary is for sale,” Turner, a former Ohio state senator, wrote on Twitter. “I am not for sale. Cleveland is not for sale.”

Turner, who has pledged to reject campaign cash from lobbyists and corporate PACs, was responding to reporting from The Intercept spotlighting the financial support Brown has received from Protect Our Future, a super PAC launched this year with the backing of cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) disclosures show that Protect Our Future—which reportedly plans to pour $10 million into Democratic primaries this cycle—has spent more than $1 million over just the past week on ads in support of Brown’s campaign.

In a statement on Thursday, Turner’s campaign accused Brown of failing to “bring a single penny home” to Cleveland—part of Ohio’s 11th Congressional District and the poorest big city in the U.S.—but managing to “flag down dark money that will be used to attack Nina Turner.”

“All over the country, the flood of corporate money into electoral politics is corrupting our democracy,” said Kara Turrentine, Turner’s campaign manager. “Sadly, right here in Ohio 11, those same corrupt interests are pumping money into campaigns and super PACs because they know Nina Turner and progressives like her aren’t going to Washington to be a partner with them.”

“Let’s be clear, those corporate interests don’t make donations, they make investments,” Turrentine added. “And they expect a return on those investments.”

RELEASE: Our statement on Shontel Brown’s $1,000,000 Super PAC buy. pic.twitter.com/bcKhoymZPz

— Team Turner (@TeamTurner2022) April 14, 2022

The May 3 Democratic primary in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District is a rematch of a heated special election that took place less than a year ago. Brown, backed by a torrent of corporate cash and prominent members of the Democratic establishment, defeated Turner by around 6%.

At the time of the 2021 race, the largest donor to Democratic Majority for Israel—a super PAC that spent big against Turner—was an oil and gas executive.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) PAC stirred outrage by endorsing Brown, a member of both the CPC and the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the CPC, endorsed Turner over Brown in last year’s special election.

The CPC PAC’s endorsement of Brown came just a day after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.,—the lone Senate member of the CPC—formally endorsed Turner, praising her as “a real leader who fights for higher wages, Medicare for All, and affordable prescription drugs.”

“With Nina, we know that she will not be afraid to take on the corporate interests that are driving up the price of gas, food, and just about everything else,” Sanders said in a statement. “Nina knows the job is more than just voting the right way. It’s about leadership.”

The world’s most ambitious climate goal is essentially out of reach

When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the consortium of scientists responsible for summarizing the world’s climate knowledge and releasing it in roughly decadal, 3,000-plus-page installments — published its latest report on Monday, the findings were just as grim as usual. The report warned that greenhouse gas emissions are now higher than at any point in human history and continue to grow, despite countries’ weak efforts at diplomacy. Every year, nations spew 59 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. For the world to have even a sliver of a chance to meet its goals under the Paris Agreement, the scientists warned, emissions must peak no later than 2025 and then enter a precipitously steep decline.

But hidden on page 25 of the “Summary for Policymakers” was an even grimmer note: That even in the IPCC’s most optimistic models, the chances of holding global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — compared to the pre-industrial average — is only around 38 percent. In short, even if countries were to defy their history of delay and act heroically quickly to boost clean energy, the odds are that it won’t be enough. For all intents and purposes, the 1.5-degree threshold has already passed. We just don’t know it yet.

“The real message of the IPCC report is that 1.5 is now essentially a meaningless goal,” said David Victor, a professor of public policy at the University of California, San Diego and a former lead author for the IPCC. “And I think that’s been true for a long time.”

So how did the world end up with a 1.5-degree target in the first place? And if it’s now meaningless — why is everyone still talking about it?

The 1.5 degree goal was added into the Paris Agreement as a kind of afterthought. When nations gathered in France in 2015, they initially were aiming to keep global temperatures “well below 2 degrees Celsius.” But a group of nations led by the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a low-lying island nation at risk of being swallowed up by sea-level rise if the world warms by 2 degrees — formed a “High Ambition Coalition” which sought to enshrine a lower, more ambitious temperature target. Eventually, all 196 nations agreed: They would hold temperatures well below 2 degrees and “pursue efforts” to hold them to below 1.5 degrees. Even then, it was an aspirational goal: One writer referred to it as both “necessary and inaccessible.”

But three years later, the IPCC released a special report on the new target. Contrary to popular belief, it didn’t identify 1.5 degrees C as a magical threshold of warming, beyond which climate impacts would get much worse; but it did demonstrate, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a world with 2 degrees of warming would be hotter, drier, and deadlier than one with 1.5 degrees. That extra half-degree, the report said, would mean the demise of coral reefs around the world, the end of many small-island nations, and millions more people exposed to extreme heat.

The report galvanized the world. It sparked Greta Thunberg’s school strike and the Britain-based protest movement known as the Extinction Rebellion. “1.5 to stay alive” — a motto first adopted by the Marshall Islands — became a regular refrain at climate protests and international negotiations alike.

In 2018, when the special report was released, holding warming to 1.5 degrees C — without any of what scientists delicately call “overshoot” — was barely possible. Today, after four more years of essentially constant emissions, the chances are slim to none. (As of 2020, the planet had already warmed by 1.2 degrees.)

“It doesn’t contradict the laws of chemistry and physics to get to 1.5 degrees,” said Oliver Geden, a lead author for the IPCC and a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “It just contradicts everything we know about how the world works.”

Why does 1.5 degrees continue to attract so much fervor? Diplomatically, Victor said, the goal still retains “massive support.” Policymakers don’t want to admit defeat — and because the goal is global, the responsibility for reaching it doesn’t fall on any one particular country. If John Kerry, Biden’s chief international climate negotiator, were to announce that the goal should be abandoned, he would be skewered by small-island nations and developed nations alike. “Nobody can blink first,” Victor added.

Zeke Hausfather, a senior fellow at the Oakland-based Breakthrough Institute and the climate research lead at the payments company Stripe, adds that “there’s a lot of inertia in the system” around 1.5. “People don’t want to rain on the parade of everyone by saying that we don’t have a chance to achieve these most ambitious goals,” he added.

All this doesn’t mean that the 1.5-degree goal has been — or will be — useless. Far from it. It has galvanized climate activism and pushed countries to ratchet up their still-feeble climate plans. The ambitiousness of the goal has likely moved the Overton window, or the metaphorical window of what policies are considered acceptable to support. Now, previously impossible policies — like phasing out the use of natural gas or halting the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure — seem not only possible but necessary.

Luckily for humanity, 1.5 degrees was never the end-all be-all of climate policy. Every tenth of a degree matters; every hundredth of a degree matters. Limiting warming to 1.6 degrees will be better than 1.7, which will be better than 1.8, which will in turn be much better than 2 degrees. Temperature goals are always arbitrary constructions, designed to give urgency and structure to the messy, complex, and socially difficult work of decarbonizing.

The IPCC now predicts that the world will pass 1.5 degrees in the early 2030s (depending on our emissions and a few other climate factors, it could happen even earlier). When that happens, there may be confusion, frustration, and despair. Small-island states will be teetering on the brink of destruction; heat waves in the Middle East and Africa will be lasting and intense. But the definitive loss of this target won’t mean that all is lost: It will just mean that, then as now, we need to cut emissions as quickly as possible.

“Somebody asked me, ‘What does it mean it’s “now or never”?'” Geden said. He paused. “When is the ‘now’ over?”