Spring Sale: Get 1 Year, Save 58%

As red states push strident abortion bans, other restrictions suddenly look less extreme

What is the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement? It might be surprising.

To the casual observer, the obvious answer is that abortion opponents want to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. Before Roe, states decided whether and when abortion should be legal.

It’s possible opponents of abortion will see that wish granted. Based on comments made by six conservative justices during arguments, the high court this year is expected to either weaken significantly or throw out the nearly 50-year-old precedent of Roe by upholding a Mississippi law banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

In the meantime, state legislatures are scrambling to prepare for that likelihood — either by shoring up laws protecting the procedure (in a few states), by proposing new restrictions, or by ensuring that pre-Roe bans or restrictions could be reinstated if and when the Supreme Court acts. According to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights think tank, 519 abortion restriction bills were introduced in 41 states from Jan. 1 through March 15, including 82 proposed abortion bans in 30 states.

Just last week, West Virginia’s governor signed a law banning abortion for reasons of fetal disability, and Idaho’s governor approved a bill that mirrors a Texas ban on abortion after six weeks. The Supreme Court has so far failed to block the Texas law, even though it clearly violates Roe, which, until the justices rule, remains binding precedent.

But it is important to remember that overturning Roe — and tossing abortion decisions back to individual states — is only a way station toward opponents’ ultimate destination: ending abortion entirely. “We would like to see every abortion gone, because we know that there are two people in every abortion choice,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, told KHN’s “What the Health?”in January.

But anti-abortion forces disagree on two fundamental points: what ending abortion actually means, and how fast to try to achieve it.

To settle the first major disagreement, there first must be consensus on what constitutes an abortion, or, to put it another way, when life begins. The “personhood” movement, which has pushed (so far) unsuccessful ballot measures in several states, argues that because human life begins from the moment sperm and egg unite to form a zygote, fertilization should mark the start of protections for human life. That would, in practice, bar many forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization, and give embryos property rights, among other things.

Other abortion opponents suggest banning forms of birth control they consider “abortifacients” (methods they say cause abortions, such as most intrauterine devices and the “morning-after” pill), while not banning in vitro fertilization. Still others would continue to support most forms of birth control but not the abortion pill mifepristone, which, unlike the morning-after pill, works after a fetus has begun to develop in the womb.

The second, and more public, disagreement is over how quickly to pursue a zero-abortion strategy, assuming the Supreme Court returns that power to the states. This is where some of the more extreme anti-abortion bills are starting to consume the debate’s oxygen. For example, in Missouri, legislators have proposed bills that would ban abortions even in cases of ectopic pregnancies, which are not only nonviable but also life-threatening for the pregnant person, and criminalize helping someone travel out of state for an abortion. In Idaho, the new law would allow the family members of some rapists to sue doctors who perform abortions on rape victims.

The problem with these measures, say analysts from Guttmacher, is that “often they are not the main focus of anti-abortion policymakers, but pull attention away from other abortion restrictions and bans that are moving quickly through some state legislatures. Moreover, these types of headline-baiting restrictions can make other devastating provisions, such as Texas-style bans or gestational age bans, seem less radical and harmful than they really are.”

“There was a time when passing blatantly unconstitutional laws was considered un-American,” said Emily Wales of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes in a statement about a bill passed by the Oklahoma House on March 22 that would ban virtually all abortions — making it potentially the strictest ban in the U.S. “The proposed ban is intended to shame, stigmatize, and create fear among vulnerable Oklahomans.”

Which raises the idea of the “Overton Window.” Named for Joseph Overton, who helped run a public policy institute in Michigan, the concept is that only policies within a range of acceptance to the public are considered viable. However, by pushing policies that may be outside that window — in other words, extreme — the window can be nudged to make previously unthinkable policies politically acceptable.

Some suggest that’s what is happening with the recent slew of abortion legislation — that anti-abortion forces, whether accidentally or on purpose, are pushing extreme proposals to make formerly radical proposals — like a Texas-style ban on abortion after six weeks, enforced by civil lawsuits rather than state officials — seem moderate by comparison.

Will the strategy work? It’s too early to tell. But things are likely to become clearer in a hurry when the Supreme Court issues its decision, expected sometime before July 4. Fireworks, indeed.

Everybody blames Mitch: McConnell scrambles to avoid blame for end of popular school lunch extension

Thirty million – that’s the number of children who have been receiving free meals as part of a federal plan to ensure universal school lunches for every kid in America’s public school system. But with virtually no congressional plan to extend the policy into next year, 30 million are now at risk of losing a guaranteed meal for five days a week.

This stunning development – which has sparked the ire of parents, administrators, and teachers alike – spans back to April 2020, when thousands of public schools issued sweeping closures over COVID-19 concerns. In response, then-president Donald Trump allowed the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to waive a slew of restrictions on free and reduced-price meals for school kids. 

At the time, it was a vital executive action that granted students reliable access to food through school programs like grab-and-go meals and classroom lunches. Last year President Joe Biden extended the USDA’s waivers through the Spring of 2022 as part of a federal plan to buoy the nation’s public school system against the lingering effects of the pandemic.

But now, Republicans are angling to nix the waivers from Biden’s federal budget for 2023, flouting the guidance of child nutrition advocates who argue that schools arent ready for the waivers to be lifted, largely because they remain steeped in a global pandemic that’s seen an unprecedented surge in food prices.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell is on a mission to end expanded free school lunches

“This has not been the recovery year that we thought it would be. School nutrition programs are still struggling families, and kids are still struggling. We’re still transitioning back,” Crystal FitzSimons, Director of School and Out-of-School Time Programs at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), told Salon in an interview. “Providing another year of these waivers will be critical to support kids and families, to support education, and to support the school nutrition operations.”

Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, FitzSimons said, the National School Lunch Program was often a dizzying mess of bureaucracy. Parents were expected to fill out forms used to determine whether their children qualified for free or reduced-price meals. Lunch staff had to account for every student’s daily payments, logging their meal debt, which has been known to eat into school budgets. Not to mention, kids often forgot their lunch money, sometimes forcing them to go hungry or borrow from friends. 

RELATED: 5 quick tricks to make school lunches so much better

And yet, all of these problems completely vanished after the USDA announced the rollout of free meals, said Yooli O’Brien, a mother of two boys attending the Grand Rapids Christian Schools system in Grand Rapid, Michigan. Even though O’Brien was able to pay for both her boys’ lunches before the COVID crisis, the program, she said, took a massive logistical weight off of her shoulders.

“All of these problems completely vanished after the USDA announced the rollout of free meals”

“Universal school lunch is still fantastic because there’s nothing I need to do. I don’t have to sit there and figure out if I’ve remembered to load in enough money on my kids’ lunch accounts,” O’Brien told Salon in an interview. “And the schools are the same way, where administratively there’s so much less burden. They don’t have to walk parents through how to fill out the forms. They don’t have to feel like a gatekeeper.”

O’Brien noted that many parents share her concerns: “I just feel like parents are just stretched so thin right now that, even if you don’t need [universal school lunches] from a financial standpoint, the fact that [they’re] there is just so easy.”

Unsurprisingly, that sentiment is hardly anecdotal. According to a Data for Progress poll from last year, roughly three-quarters of all voters support or somewhat support making school lunch and breakfast free for every kid in America. Even the vast majority of Republicans backed free meals, with just 30% opposed.

But for reasons that remain hazy, public opinion on free lunches is now being flatly ignored by a broad swath of federal lawmakers, even though the program has passed with flying colors over the last two years.

According to the Post, the Biden administration repeatedly advocated for extending free meals into next year. But his efforts were reportedly thwarted as result of fierce pushback from Senate Republicans arguing that universal lunch was always meant to be a temporary measure whose extension might add billions of dollars to the nation’s rising deficit.

RELATED: Marco Rubio, GOP call massively popular child tax credit “welfare”; Democrats vow to keep it 

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

Chief among this Republican cohort, the Post reported, is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a notorious deficit hawk who last year also adamantly opposed Biden’s plan to expand the child tax credit. 

As of this writing, McConnell has not publicly come out against extending universal lunches, so Salon asked the senator’s office to elucidate his position. McConnell’s press secretary, Doug Andres, suggested that the White House was to blame for the program’s impending cancellation.

“You may want to check in with the White House since they never requested an extension of this program in their supplemental request – or even in their most recent budget,” Andres told Salon over email. 

“GOP leadership would ‘prefer to let our kids go hungry.'”

But according to the Post, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack aggressively pushed for the program’s re-extension during the drawing up of Biden’s budget, saying that he “made a request to speak to Leader McConnell and Leader McCarthy. Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has likewise blamed Republicans for the program’s disintegration, claiming that the GOP leadership would “prefer to let our kids go hungry.”

According to POLITICO, which spoke to half a dozen aides on both sides of the aisle, there are still “intense disagreements” around how and why the pandemic-era universal lunch program will not be renewed. But in the meantime, there doesn’t appear to be anything that the USDA can do to avert the expiration of the waivers.

“The long story short is [Vilsack] does not have the power to renew waivers that are currently in place,” Kate Waters, Press Secretary for the USDA, explained to Salon. “That power rests solely with the Congress.”

RELATED: Egg price-gouging accusations, a pandemic cheese “roller coaster”: Why food costs are still in flux

Needless to say, the exact scope of the crisis is hard to assess for certain, but there’s little doubt among experts that it will prove to be devastating. 

Right now, USDA’s waivers grant free lunch meals to 30 million kids, up 10 million from prior to the pandemic. For schools, these meals have been fully reimbursed by the SNA. But once the waivers are lifted, experts expect those reimbursements to cover just 40% of each lunch. And in a nation where roughly 1 and 7 children are considered food insecure, the impact will be especially acute on families who are already struggling to put food on the table.

In Burke County, Georgia, for instance, where roughly 20% residents live in poverty, two-thirds of the district’s 4,100 students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (i.e., their families’ incomes fall below 185% of the federal poverty line), according to The Washington Monthly. Donna Martin, the county’s nutrition director, told the outlet that she worries about half of her students will not be able to eat this summer if waivers are lifted. “If we don’t get these waivers,” she said, “it is just going to be a catastrophe.”

Dr. Marlene Schwartz, Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, affirmed Martin’s concerns in an interview with Salon, saying that the discontinuation of universal lunches is going to “make the job of the food service director much, much harder.”

“They’re dealing with supply chain issues. They’re dealing with labor shortages,” Schwartz explained. “Food service directors are exhausted. It’s been an incredibly arduous year for them. So I think [no waivers would be] adding a huge amount of stress to their jobs.”

RELATED: School lunches and the cult of free-market capitalism: America’s destructive faith

In addition, Schwartz said, lifting the waivers will have an especially negative impact on families who are just on the cusp of qualifying for reduced meals. “I think that the families that were right on the edge, are the ones that are going to suffer the most, because now they are going to have to go back to paying for the meals,” she added.

On June 30, universal lunches are set to officially expire. But in the meantime, the impending deadline hasn’t stopped some states from bracing for the impact. 

Last year, both California and Maine mandated that free lunches be served to every school within state borders. And Colorado is currently weighing a bill that would do just the same.

“A lot of times, if you think back to getting vending machines out of schools, getting soda out of schools, and getting snacks and other junk out of schools, it happens at the state level first, and then eventually, the federal government catches up,” Schwartz said. “This may work out that as states start to do it, it’ll provide more pressure for the federal government to reinstate the waivers but not as a waiver but to actually change the policy.”

House passes bill to legalize marijuana

The United States House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill that would legalize marijuana nationwide and put an end to unnecessary arrests of users of the medicinal plant.

The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, first introduced in 2021 by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), has 114 co-sponsors. All but one – Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida – are Democrats.

The MORE Act was approved with a narrowly bipartisan 220-204 margin nearly along party lines. Two Democrats – Henry Cuellar (Texas) and Chris Pappas (New Hampshire) – defected from their party’s majority. Meanwhile, a trio of GOP lawmakers – Gaetz, Brian Mast (Florida), and Tom McClintock (California) – voted in favor of the legislation, which faces a challenging path forward in the evenly divided Senate.

The MORE Act, or House Resolution 3617, “removes marijuana from the list of scheduled substances under the Controlled Substances Act and eliminates criminal penalties for an individual who manufactures, distributes, or possesses marijuana.”

It also:

  • replaces statutory references to marijuana and marihuana with cannabis,
  • requires the Bureau of Labor Statistics to regularly publish demographic data on cannabis business owners and employees,
  • establishes a trust fund to support various programs and services for individuals and businesses in communities impacted by the war on drugs,
  • imposes an excise tax on cannabis products produced in or imported into the United States and an occupational tax on cannabis production facilities and export warehouses,
  • makes Small Business Administration loans and services available to entities that are cannabis-related legitimate businesses or service providers,
  • prohibits the denial of federal public benefits to a person on the basis of certain cannabis-related conduct or convictions,
  • prohibits the denial of benefits and protections under immigration laws on the basis of a cannabis-related event (e.g., conduct or a conviction),
  • establishes a process to expunge convictions and conduct sentencing review hearings related to federal cannabis offenses, and
  • directs the Government Accountability Office to study the societal impact of cannabis legalization.

Advocates for progress lauded the bill’s passage as a great leap forward toward a more equitable society.

“For far too long, we have treated marijuana as a criminal justice problem instead of as a matter of personal choice and public health. If states are the laboratories of democracy, it is long past time for the federal government to recognize that legalization has been a resounding success and the conflict with federal law has become untenable,” Nadler said.

“I was a supporter of the War on Drugs — I’ve been here a long time,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said in a statement. “This bill is a matter of justice and equal opportunity… so that Americans and America can become a better, stronger, more fair, and more just America.”

Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), a co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, called the MORE Act “a major criminal justice reform bill.” She then blasted Republican detractors for their opposition to much-needed reform, accusing them of “negotiating that away” and choosing to “leave [affected communities] behind — that to me is just immoral.”

Thirty-seven states along with Washington, the District of Columbia, have already legalized medical marijuana. Of those, 18 have green-lighted its recreational consumption.

On Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said that the “time for the federal government to follow suit” is upon us.

“This landmark legislation is one of the most important criminal justice reform bills in recent history,” she remarked on the House floor. “Now it is time for the federal government to follow suit.”

Unexpectedly chunky: Metal fragments from equipment prompts Skippy recall

If your Skippy peanut butter has an extra crunch, heed with caution. On Thursday, Skippy Foods announced a recall of more than 9000 cases of peanut butter after a manufacturing facility’s internal detection system identified the possibility of, “a small fragment of stainless steel from a piece of manufacturing equipment” being mixed into several varieties of their peanut butter. So far, there have been no reports of customer concerns or illness related to the incident.

The varieties included are Skippy Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter Spread, Skippy Reduced Fat Chunky Peanut Butter Spread and Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter Blended With Plant Protein. 

In a release issued by Skippy, the company said: “Skippy Foods, LLC, out of an abundance of caution and with an emphasis on the quality of its products, is issuing the recall to ensure that consumers are made aware of the issue. The manufacturing facility’s internal detection systems identified the concern.” 

Those are the only varieties included in the recall, and the batch can be identified by its “Best If Used By” date ranging around May 2023, with the specifics included on the recall website. If you have one of the affected jars, you can take it to the retailer you purchased it from for an exchange, or contact Skippy customer service. If you don’t, try out one of these peanut butter related recipes, or make your own.

This recall follows several other high-profile recalls, including a cut-fruit recall that impacted Wegmans stores, as well as a bagel recall that spanned several supermarket chains across the country.

Skipping PB&J’s for now? Try one of our other favorite lunch recipes: 

“Moon Knight” hired Oscar Isaac’s brother to play his other personality

Marvel waits for no man; the next Marvel TV show, “Moon Knight,” comes out March 30, and it looks a little different from what we’re used to. Oscar Isaac plays mild-mannered gift shop employee Steven Grant . . . as well as Marc Spector, a hardened mercenary with whom Grant shares a body. He has dissociative identity disorder, a first for a Marvel hero. The whole show looks darker and weirder than what we’ve seen before in the MCU.

Isaac himself talked about this new direction at a press conference covered by Collider. “When I looked at it and I talked with [producer Grant Curtis], Kevin [Feige] and [director Mohamed Diab], it just seemed like there was a real opportunity to do something completely different, particularly in the MCU, and to really focus on this internal struggle of this character and to use Egyptian iconography and the superhero genre and this language to talk about this real internal struggle that this person is having,” the actor said. “Also, we could create an indelible, unusual character, particularly with Steven Grant. Once I got a real take on how I wanted to play Steven and I brought that to everyone, and they welcomed that with open arms, I also realized I had real incredible collaborators and it was gonna be a creative adventure.”

I think the story is so point of view. You’re in the skin of this guy and you’re seeing things happen and you’re experiencing it, just as he’s experiencing it. There’s something terrifying about that. I think with Steven, in particular, there’s a sense of humor in there that’s different from what we’ve seen. Marvel, in particular, has done such an amazing job at combining action and comedy in such a great way. I thought with Steven, there was a chance to do different comedy than we’ve seen. He’s someone that doesn’t know he’s being funny. That was really exciting. And then, we got to find the counterpoint of that with Marc, in some ways leaning into a bit of the stereotype of the tortured, dark vigilante guy, but what makes him so special is that he has this Englishman living inside of him.

That said, for all the times Isaac and his collaborators talk about “Moon Knight” forging new ground for the MCU, cutting drama and action with comedy is a pretty standard move for Marvel. We can see for ourselves how fresh “Moon Knight” feels when it premieres on Disney+ on March 30.

Oscar Isaac’s brother Michael Hernández works on “Moon Knight”

Playing two characters creates some issues; for instance, how do you handle scenes where the two men are talking to each other? “The first thing was that we hired my brother, Michael Hernández, to come in and be the other me,” Isaac said. “It’s the closest thing to me there is on Earth. He came in, and he would play other Steven or Marc. He even did the accent and everything. That was really helpful, to have someone who’s not only a great actor, but who shares my DNA, to play off of.”

Something I didn’t anticipate was how technically demanding that was gonna be, having to show up and decide which character I was gonna play first, and then try to block that out, give my brother notes, do the scene, and then switch characters. One of the fun things about acting, if not the most fun thing, is acting opposite somebody and letting something spontaneous happen that you didn’t expect. There wasn’t really an opportunity to do that and still try to find what makes it feel spontaneous and not all planned out. That was challenging.

And yes, we can’t ignore Isaac’s much-talked about British accent as Steven. “It was set in London and when I asked why, the answer was that, ‘We just have too many characters in New York,’ so they made him an ex-pat in London,” Isaac revealed. “I love English humor, like ‘The Office’ and ‘Stath Lets Flats.’ There’s just so much of that humor that I find so funny, and I thought, ‘There’s an opportunity here. What if we make him English? What if Peter Sellers was approached with a Marvel project? What would he do?'”

So, I started thinking about that, and that led me to Karl Pilkington from ‘An Idiot Abroad, ‘not so much for the accent, but for his sense of humor, where you can’t tell if he knows he’s being funny. And then, I thought about the Jewish community in London and where a lot of that community is from. I started listening to accents from Northeast London. And then, I just committed to that and found this guy. It wasn’t just about accents. It was also about his timidness and wanting to connect with people, but not quite knowing how.

I have a feeling I’m going to be talking in that accent a lot when the show comes out.

Ethan Hawke’s “Moon Knight” villain “thinks he’s gonna be part of a great solution”

Of course, every superhero story has to have a good villain. For “Moon Knight,” that’s Arthur Harrow, a cult leader played by Ethan Hawke.

“The history of movies is paved with storytellers using mental illness as a building block for the villain,” Hawke said at the press conference. “There are countless stories of mentally ill villains, but we have a mentally ill hero, and that’s fascinating because we’ve now inverted the whole process. As the antagonist, I can’t be crazy because the hero is crazy, so I have to find a sane lunatic, or a sane malevolent force.”

That was an interesting riddle for me, to figure out how to be in dynamics with what Oscar was doing. Mohamed was really embracing his mental illness as a way to create an unreliable narrator. Once you’ve broken the prism of reality, you realize that everything the audience is seeing is from a skewed point of view, and that’s really interesting for the villain. That was our riddle. We came up with somebody who was trying to save the world and who, in his mind, is Saint Harrow. He thinks he’s gonna be part of the great solution.

Oscar Isaac had some “comments” about the original “Moon Knight”suit

Overall, it sounds like the actors had a lot of input on this show, not just on the performances but even on the costumes. For instance, Isaac had strong opinions about Moon Knight’s superhero outfit, as director Mohamed Diab explained:

Even before Oscar came, there was a suit and we all felt it was the best suit in the world. And then, Oscar came and he had some comments. The suit is beautiful and it reminds me of the power of collaboration. Why work with one mind when you can work with 50, and it really shows in that suit. Everyone loves how different it is from all the other Marvel shows.

We’ll see whether all that collaboration pays off.

Trump tells gay supporter they don’t “look gay”

During a fundraiser held at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday to benefit congressional candidate John Gibbs, Trump crossed the line with the LGBTQ community once again.

According to The Advocate, Trump was at the podium when someone shouted out “Gays for Trump” from the crowd. In response to this Trump bantered back “Where’s Gays for Trump?” When the person who called out to start the exchange identified themselves Trump was clearly heard replying “you don’t look gay.” 

Related: Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill is just the beginning: Republicans want to claw back all gay rights

Watch the moment here:

Following the exchange, which was met with laughter from the Mar-a-Lago crowd, Trump chattered back again with “We did great with the gay population.”

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

Following the event Peter Boykin, the founder of Gays for Trump, gave a quote to Newsweek regarding the incident saying the group “probably wouldn’t ‘look gay’ because it’s a stereotype that fits more with the typical ‘look’ of leftist LGBT. Not saying some of us might look fabulous and ‘gay.'”

“…It was a suit and tie event, so unless one of us was wearing a joker suit, meh,” Boykin said to Newsweek. “Gays For Trump is a nationwide movement full of various types of gays and the gay community has a lot of diversity—the difference is the Gays for Trump lean right.”

Florida has been an uneasy setting for the LGBTQ community in recent months, spanning outside the confines of a Trump event. In early March a student named Jack Petocz was suspended from Flagler Palm Coast High School for organizing a walk-out in protest of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill which passed in a 69-47 vote in the Florida House in February. 

“The bill that liberals inaccurately call ‘Don’t Say Gay’ would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill,” Christina Pushaw, longtime press secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, said via Twitter following the passing of the bill.

The purpose of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is to forbid discussion of LGBTQ issues for kindergarten through third grade. Beyond the third grade LGBTQ issues can be brought up at the discretion of the teacher.

Read more:

It’s hard to be Catwoman: a beloved, problematic character

There’s a lot resting on your shoulders (and your pointed ears) when you’re Catwoman. 

For one, there is the legacy. First appearing in print in the 1940 comic “Batman” No. 1, Catwoman, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, was initially known simply as “the Cat.” A cat burglar adversary to Batman, the role has shifted over the years to love interest and love interest/adversary. Whoever steps in Catwoman’s high-heeled boots must walk that line between sexy and scary, bad and beloved. 

Whoever steps in Catwoman’s high-heeled boots must walk that line between sexy and scary, bad and beloved.

Julie Newmar originally portrayed Catwoman on the small screen in the 1960s “Batman” series, and Lee Meriwether first played the character on the big screen. The character has also been dramatized in animation.  

The latest actor to take on the cat mantle is Zoe Kravitz, appearing in the 2022 film “The Batman.” Kravitz previously voiced Catwoman in “The LEGO Batman Movie.” Catwoman, alias Selina Kyle, is a fan favorite-role with leather costumes and acrobatic fight scenes. But it’s not without its scratches. 

Related: Robert Pattinson as “The Batman” tells Hollywood stars: Choose your directors first

In “The Batman,” a Matt Reeves-directed reboot of the franchise, billionaire Bruce Wayne in disguise as the vigilante who will become Batman (Robert Pattinson), works with the Gotham City police department to investigate a series of murders of high-profile men who seem to be connected to corruption. Clues on the murder scenes include cards addressed to the Batman, which are cryptic messages from a figure known as the Riddler (Paul Dano).

Catwoman first enters the story as Selina, a cocktail waitress, who happens to be living with a mysterious woman Batman has noticed in photos of the city mayor, shortly before his murder. 

In casting Kravitz, “The Batman” continues a tradition of Catwoman being played by a woman of color. One of the most famous Catwomen was Eartha Kitt, who took over the role from Newmar on the ’60s “Batman” TV show. Though Kitt was stunning as Catwoman, her casting, as described in the book “Wonder Woman: 80 Years Later” was “slightly self-congratulatory” – and slightly fetishizing at the time. Producer Charles Fitzsimons called casting a Black woman as Catwoman: “a very provocative idea … [Kitt] had a cat-like style. Her eyes were cat-like and her singing was like a meow. This came as a wonderful off-beat idea to do it with a black woman.”

Though Kitt’s Catwoman was portrayed as very sexual, because it was the 1960s, there could be no real relationship without risking public outrage between Catwoman, a Black woman, and Batman, a white man, on the show (that job fell to Batgirl). The 2022 Batman film doesn’t have that problem, though the sparks between Batman and Catwoman simply fizzle, faint as if extinguished by the constantly falling rain. 

“The Batman” also continues the thread of Catwoman being kinda bad, kinda dangerous to know, but with a heart of gold. She’s not simply a burglar. The guys she robs are bad guys and she has a personal reason for stealing money: It’s owed to her. 

The BatmanZoe Kravitz  in “The Batman” (Warner Bros. Pictures)What’s new about this portrayal of Catwoman? Kravitz said in interviews her character is bisexual

“The Batman” wants to have its bisexual cake and eat it too (without offending anyone).

(which is true in the comics). The only real nods to this in the film are a couple of times when Catwoman refers to the woman she lives with as “baby.” But all other times, she and the other characters call her Selina’s “friend” and “roommate.” And when violence befalls the woman, Catwoman’s reaction seems muted, at best, not the devastation you’d feel about a lover. “The Batman” wants to have its bisexual cake and eat it too (without offending anyone).

Having a bisexual sheen is another way to make the character seem sexily dangerous. That’s one of the stereotypes of bisexuality, especially a bisexual woman: shiftlessness, trickiness. It’s troubling that traits of untrustworthiness and animalistic sexuality continue to be assigned to a woman character of color.

My movie-going companion, who is a man, pointed out that Catwoman in “The Batman” feels like a female role written by men (it was). Her power comes from her sexuality and from her damage. She cries prettily. She wears very tight leather. She heads to the secret basement club-within-a-club. And naturally, like all damaged, sexy “cool girls,” she has Daddy issues. 

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

A screenwriter friend said that “The Batman” reminded him, not in a positive way, of “Se7en.” It recalls “Dick Tracy” too in the “mob moll,” which is, on one level, a lot of what Catwoman is. 

She’s a gangster’s girl, athletic, sullen and not much else.

She’s a gangster’s girl, athletic, sullen and not much else. Kravitz does the best she can with a role as shallow as a bowl of milk left out for the cats. She needs more — a desire, an actual motive, a hobby? As Mashable wrote, “Kravitz’s natural charisma is suffocated in a role that asks her chiefly to sneer and hip swivel while wearing leather.”

“The Batman” minimizes the actual cats swirling around Catwoman’s ankles, which is probably a good thing (no one could out-cat Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman). She tells Batman she likes strays, and there’s a cute, brief moment of a calico placed in a motorcycle saddlebag. But overall, it’s more the suggestion of cats than the actual creatures.

Sadly, Catwoman is also more of a suggestion of a character than a fleshed-out one. With a whole bunch of history and beloved fans behind her, some movies need to give this cat more of a reason to pounce.

More stories like this:

The bizarre politics of radical anti-abortion activists

On Thursday, Lauren Handy, a 28-year old anti-abortion activist currently under a federal indictment for blockading an abortion clinic two years ago, was found to be in possession of five fetuses in her Washington home after her residence was raided by the D.C. police. The grisly development, which comes amid a national Republican-led assault on abortion access, provides a startling glimpse into the depths of anti-abortion extremism. As reporting reveals, Handy’s affiliations   — although ostensibly left-wing — appear to be in associated with more traditional right-wing anti-abortion organizations.

A self-described “leftist,” Handy served as Director of Activism at the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a group of self-professed “grassroots activists dismantling the abortion industrial complex & standing in solidarity with the unborn victims killed by abortion violence.” Handy also apparently founded Mercy Missions, an anti-abortion group that uses “non-carceral solutions in the struggle towards our collective liberation which is the freedom to thrive in safe & sustainable communities from conception to natural death.”

Interestingly, these groups appear to use the language of the left, employing a variety of progressive buzzwords – like “non-carceral”, “industrial complex”, and “collective liberation” – not typically used in anti-abortion rhetoric. And yet, on seemingly religious grounds, these groups adamantly oppose the practice of abortion, a practice that has been shown to reduce poverty, reduce crime, and improve the socioeconomic status of women. 

RELATED: The next phase of anti-abortion cruelty: Jail for ending your own pregnancy

While this bizarre spin on anti-abortion organizing might appear to be somewhat novel, anti-abortion activists have long tried to dress their cause in the verbiage and discourse of feminism, co-opting the notion of “women’s liberation” to fit their political agenda. 

In 2010, for instance, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told a group of anti-abortion activists that they stood for an “emerging, conservative, feminist identity.” And during the 2016 presidential election, as Jezebel’s Kyle Cheung noted, candidate Carly Fiorina repeatedly sold herself as being a feminist in her sensationalized crusade against Planned Parenthood. 

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

But “for all the anti-abortion movement tries to sell its commitment to the well-being of women,” as The Intelligencer’s Sarah Jones wrote last year, “its beliefs, when reduced to their most basic elements, are undeniably misogynistic.”

In Handy’s case, anti-abortion activists are alleging that the fetal remains found in her house are part of a “direct action” effort against apparent human rights abuses. As PAAU wrote in a press release, the fetuses’ “gestational ages as well as their apparent sustained injuries potentially show violations of the Partial Birth Abortion Act as well as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which are federal crimes.” Even by her own account, Handy at one point said she was inspired to “liberate the bodies of aborted babies from med waste companies and give them a proper burial.”

RELATED: Even if the U.S. did support mothers — and it doesn’t — there will always be a need for abortion

Though shocking, it isn’t the first time Handy’s demonstrations have gone beyond the pale.

In 2017, Rewire News reported, the activist led a throng of anti-abortion demonstrators, called the “Red Rose Rescuers,” into an abortion clinic in Alexandria, Virginia, where they “tried hand roses to patients in the waiting room, as clinic staff ushered patients to another room, trying to avoid the protesters.”

“The activists prayed out loud, begging women to cancel their appointments, and refused to leave,” the outlet further reported. “When police arrived to arrest them for trespassing, they went limp, forcing officers to carry them out in wheelchairs or on stretchers.”

RELATED: When human life begins is a question of politics — not biology

This tactic, in which demonstrators physically blockade doors to prevent staff from operating, stretches as far back as the 1980s, when incidentally, stealing fetal material was a much more common practice. At the time, anti-abortion were known to scare-monger over the notion of fetal remains being discarded in dumpsters, Robin Marty, Communications Director for the West Alabama Women’s Center, wrote over Twitter. 

“We need to pay a lot of attention to how anti-abortion actions and prosecution/defense can be used against abortion seeking people in the long run,” Marty wrote. “Because abortion opponents are ALWAYS playing the long game, and this is no doubt part of it.

An “alien-like” creature washed up on a beach in Australia

Alex Tan was walking on a beach in Queensland, Australia last week when he chanced upon something that caused many people to become quite puzzled. 

Tan, a pastor at History Maker Church, first thought the creature he was nearing was a flathead fish (or “three-meter flatty” as they’re called in Australia) until he got closer and was able to take it all in.

Related: Thousands of UFO-related government files to be released

According to CBS News Tan recorded video of his discovery, which he described as having “humanlike hands, long lizard tail, nose like a possum and patches of black fur.” 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CbyBoTFPHxj/ 

“I’ve stumbled across something weird,” he said in one of the videos. “This is like one of those things you see when people claim that they’ve found aliens.” 

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbr1F0ljeK2/

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

Since posting footage of the creature, many people have weighed in on what they think it could possibly be. Guesses on the true genus ranged from a deerhead possum, mini-chupacabra, or extinct marsupial but the most likely answer, which was landed upon just a day ago, is far less fun. 

“After consultation with my colleague Heather Janetzki from the Queensland Museum we are pretty sure that it is a swollen, waterlogged brushtail possum who has lost its fur,” University of Queensland associate professor Stephen Johnston said to The Courier Mail. “The skull and hindlimb give the clues. The animal was probably washed down into the ocean during the floods,” he added.

According to The Daily Mail, the brushtail possum is common in Australia, and has also been spotted in New Zealand, but are most widely found along the east coast.

Even with the logical explanation from Johnston and Janetzki, “pretty sure” isn’t a definite, which very much leaves alien on the table.

Read more:

Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, leaving White House for MSNBC: report

President Joe Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki is ditching the White House for MSNBC, Axios reports. Psaki is in the advanced stage of talks with the network to host a show for Peacock and regularly appear on MSNBC’s slate of shows. 

Though MSNBC and the White House declined to comment on Psaki’s transition, the press secretary is expected to remain in the Biden White House through April 30’s White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner. 

“We don’t have anything to confirm about Jen’s length of planned service or any consideration about future plans,” a White House official wrote to CNBC. “Jen is here and working hard every day on behalf of the President to get you the answers to the questions that you have, and that’s where her focus is.”

There have already been headlines about Psaki as a potential replacement for longtime MSNBC star Rachel Maddow. 

Psaki is hardly the first White House communications official to join network news. Symone Sanders, former senior spokesperson under Kamala Harris, left her position to take an MSNBC hosting job premiering in May. Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined Fox News as a commentator. And George Stephanopoulos transitioned from his communications director role in Bill Clinton’s White House to ABC as a news host. 

Psaki, who has also entertained talks with a variety of news outlets (including CNN, where she formerly worked as a political analyst), spoke with The Cut in January about “knowing when to leave a job.”

“I have always been very open about the fact that I couldn’t stay forever, even if I wanted to. What I always tell members of my team is that, if you still have the fire in your belly, stay and figure out what your next challenge is,” Psaki said. “Be open, basically.”

Tilda Swinton moves through the dreamy and confounding “Memoria” at her own frequency

In Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” the Thai filmmaker shows how he’s a practitioner of “slow cinema,” which features many long takes and more silence than dialogue. His films rely on tone to generate feeling and emotion, and many of his features, which include the gay romance, “Tropical Malady,” can put viewers in a trance-like state. 

Set in Colombia, “Memoria” is firmly rooted in this style, as indicated by the stillness of the opening shot. Jessica (Tilda Swinton) hears a “bang” that she cannot understand. A slow pan in a parking lot shows the car alarms all go off creating a kind of musicality, but they shut off as mysteriously as they sounded. These moments of unexplained phenomena cause Jessica to wonder what is going on. 

She visits her sister Karen (Agnes Brekke) in the hospital, and Karen recounts a dream about a dog and talks of a curse. Later, while crossing the street, another loud noise causes Jessica along with other people to wonder what exactly has occurred. 

RELATED: Tilda Swinton mesmerizes as a woman possessed in Pedro Almodóvar striking take on “The Human Voice”

“Memoria” is a mystery and yet its unhurried pace does not create much urgency for it to be resolved. Jessica meets with Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego), a young sound engineer, who tries to recreate the bang for her. Jessica claims, “It is like a big ball of concrete falling into a metal wall surrounded by seaweed.” As he tries to replicate the noise, Jessica tells him it sounds, “earthier . . . rounder.” A few scenes later, they meet again, and she hears what he has recorded, and it seems to be right. But what is making this sound remains unidentified.

MemoriaMemoria (Neon)

Weerasethakul does reveal the source of the bang by the film’s end, but it is the journey not the solution that provides the film with its many pleasures. There is a terrific episode where Jessica walks through Bogotá with the camera, and perhaps a dog, following her. In another episode, she stumbles upon a group of musicians performing, and “Memoria” captures her face — as well as other listeners — as the song plays on, eventually showing the musicians at work. It is a lengthy scene that just allows viewers to bask in the enjoyable music, like Jessica. 

At dinner with Karen, her husband Juan (Daniel Giménez Cacho), and their son Mateo (Jerónimo Barón), Jessica hears the bang three more times. But does anyone else? Her sister’s comments about the aforementioned dog at dinner confound her, and there is a discussion about spells and invisible people in the jungle and colonization. When Jessica later visits Doctor Constanza (Constanza Gutierrez), about her trouble sleeping, the doctor prefers not to prescribe Xanax so Jessica can “continue to be moved by beauty” and feel sadness. 

… the images are mesmerizing.

“Memoria” wants viewers to experience all the beauty it offers. There are many scenes, such as one featuring a glass enclosed patch of land and high dark walls with sunlight reflecting off its sides that is gorgeous. A sequence at the end of the film showing scenes of the sky and Colombian mountains is hypnotic. Weeraseethakul lulls viewers with this beauty. Even if the plot is sparse, the images are mesmerizing. (That said, this arty, experimental film will not be for everyone, and some viewers are likely to become drowsy and nod off.) 

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

Swinton, however, is perfectly cast as the appropriately curious heroine. She moves through the film at her own frequency. Perhaps too little is explained about her character, but her expressions and body language often reveal what she is thinking. 

As Jessica heads out into the jungle, she wanders around an area by a river and soon meets a older man scaling fish. He is also Hernán (Elkin Díaz), and their exchanges form some of the most interesting sections of “Memoria,” but also the slowest. One take of Hernán lying on the grass lasts several unblinking minutes, and a conversation between Jessica and Hernán address issues of memory as well as reincarnation and past lives. (This is theme explored throughout Weeraseethakul’s work, from “Tropical Malady” to his Cannes prizewinner “Uncle Boomee Who Can Recall His Past Lives“). 

“Memoria” plays out almost like a hallucination. Viewers may not process what is shown, or understand

“Memoria” plays out almost like a hallucination.

everything that has been said, but the film benefits from repeat viewings (and being seen on the big screen).

As Jessica has a curious exchange with Agnes Cerkinsky (Jeanne Balibar), an anthropologist, about a 6,000-year-old skeleton, and a discussion about space with older Hernán, the past, present, and future, all collide. Weeraseethakul is exploring various possibilities and connections, addressing issues of communication, memory, and loss. His enigmatic film is more attuned to mood than narrative. But even if “Memoria” is perplexing, it is also incredibly provocative and quietly powerful.

“Memoria” releases in theaters, screening week by week on a “national tour” starting April 1. Check the official “Memoria” website for dates and locations. Watch a trailer for it below, via YouTube.

More stories to read:

Public health experts are horrified at the rift between red and blue states on COVID

In this (hopefully permanent) lull to the pandemic, the public has an opportunity to look back and reflect on the massive toll COVID-19 took on us. In terms of loss, the death toll in the United States is more than 970,000 at the time of this writing; meanwhile, the political rift widened by the pandemic is visible in other slightly more subtle ways — especially by differences in vaccination rates and, accordingly, death tolls. 

Indeed, the numbers continue to reveal that Americans in red states who refuse to follow public health measures are suffering from COVID-19 in far excess of their blue state counterparts. Back in 2021, President Joe Biden was already referring to the pandemic as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”; the data backed him up at the time, and remains true now, as the pandemic is perhaps poised to enter an endemic phase. 

“Unquestionably vaccination is now the most important determinant of medically significant rates of infection, and as the populations of ‘red states’ are much less likely to be vaccinated they are at greatest risk of medically significant infection,” Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Salon by email. He emphasized that these are not the only variables which make a difference — implementation of masking and social distancing guidelines, income differences, population density, underlying health conditions, age and many others.

“The unvaccinated have a 9-fold risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to those vaccinated and a 21-[fold] risk of dying compared to those vaccinated and boosted.”

Yet those variables, while significant in many ways, do not reveal anything about people who deliberately make their COVID-related lifestyle choices based around their political philosophy. Breaking down COVID statistics based on red states and blue states, on the other hand, does precisely that.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon’s weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist.

“The scientific and public health data is clear and irrefutable: from the CDC as of January 2022, the unvaccinated have a 9-fold risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to those vaccinated and a 21 [fold] risk of dying compared to those vaccinated and boosted,” Dr. Russell Medford, Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, wrote to Salon. He pointed to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study which revealed that 65% of people in pro-Biden counties were vaccinated compared to 52% of people in pro-Trump counties.

“Importantly, this 13% gap has grown from less than 9% in June, 2021,” Medford explained. “Tragically and not surprisingly, disparities in the death rate due to COVID inversely follows this pattern as well.”

Public health authorities are aware that politicization has become a serious problem. They hope that education efforts can reduce distrust in scientific authorities.

“The public health community is working diligently to depoliticize the various aspects of people’s perspectives in the pandemic and our national response,” Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Salon by email. “So, the data and information we collect is for health and public health purposes only. It has become quite apparent however, that in communities where misinformation and disinformation has flourished; where leaders and the media have not followed the science and have given false information, the outcomes in terms of illness, hospitalizations and deaths have been increased over communities where the leaders, media and health professionals have followed the science and implemented science-based policies.”

RELATED: Today’s anti-mask activists have much in common with anti-handwashing doctors of the 1840s

Benjamin identified a number of public health measures that have been definitively linked to improved COVID-19 outcomes: Up-to-date vaccinations, early therapeutic interventions after initial diagnosis, appropriately regular COVID testing, proper hand hygiene, wearing masks in areas where infection can easily spread, and many others. He noted that people in low income and underserved communities need additional support so they can have fair access to vaccines and other public health resources.

“It is a paradox,” Medford said, that “the vast majority” of Americans depend on medical science for the treatment of most diseases; yet many Americans have been “swayed by non-scientific, non-factual, oftentimes politically motivated, messages designed to contradict and sow distrust in these same, otherwise trusted, medical authorities” in the case of COVID-19.

“High quality masks (such as N95) are a highly effective and readily available public health measure,” Medford told Salon when asked the same question posed to Benjamin. “For example, a recent real-world study by the California COVID-19 Case-Control Study Team demonstrates that using a face mask or respirator in indoor public settings markedly reduces the risk of SARS-Cov2 infection by up to 83%.”

Like Benjamin, Medford argued for more effective public education efforts as the antidote to the red state/blue state public health divide.

“It is a paradox,” Medford said, that “the vast majority” of Americans depend on medical science for the treatment of most diseases; yet many Americans have been “swayed by non-scientific, non-factual, oftentimes politically motivated, messages designed to contradict and sow distrust in these same, otherwise trusted, medical authorities” in the case of COVID-19.

He continued with a plea for reason: “How we make oftentimes complex and difficult decisions as a society to grapple with the health, economic and social challenges of COVID-19 must be based on a shared foundation of facts. This argues strongly for a broad-based, bi-partisan effort to regaining trust in our scientific, medical and public institutions.”

If nothing else, future historians will be able to spend years studying the COVID-19 data pertaining to pandemics and politics, just as they have done with many other periods in history.

“This will be a verdant field of investigation for years to come!” Sommer told Salon.

Read more on pandemics and politics:

Joe Manchin speaks out against Biden’s lifting of Trump-era border policy

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin expressed his disdain for the Biden administration’s plan to scrap the Trump-era border restrictions put in place as an emergency measure during the pandemic. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Friday 

Manchin told reporters the day before that he thinks the administration should abandon its plans to lift the policy. When asked why he’s opposed lifting the restrictions, he said, “Oh my goodness. Just watch the news y’all put out every day — what’s coming across.”

In recent weeks, several right-wing cable outlets, like Fox News, have ramped up their coverage at the U.S. – Mexico border.

On Friday, Manchin furthered his criticism in response to the announcement. 

“Today’s announcement by the [Centers for Disease Control] and the Biden administration is a frightening decision,” he said in a statement. 

Title 42 is a measure put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020 which allows U.S. immigration authorities to quickly expel migrants and asylum-seekers. 

 The CDC has been reassessing Title 42 every 60 days since August 2021 in order to determine whether the measure is still necessary. The most recent review was due Wednesday, but CDC spokesperson Kristen Nordlund said the agency was still working on the review and would “release more information later this week,” according to CBS News.

In an open letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Manchin expressed his concerns about lifting the policy, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and particularly the new strain of the virus.  

“With encounters along our southern border surging and the highly-transmissible Omicron BA.2 subvariant emerging as the dominate strain in the United States, now is not the time to throw caution to the wind,” Manchin wrote. “I urge you to again renew this commonsense policy that has been in effect—under both Republican and Democratic Administrations—since March 2020.”

Manchin is not the only Senate Democrat to speak out against the decision. 

“This is the wrong decision. It’s unacceptable to end Title 42 without a plan and coordination in place to ensure a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border,” Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema wrote in a joint statement with Arizona’s other Democratic senator, Mark Kelly. 

Previously, the Biden administration had plans to overturn many immigration policies put in place by the Trump administration, though some of these were prevented by federal court rulings. A federal court ordered the Biden administration to restart the “Return to Mexico” policy until it increases its capacity to hold migrants inside the U.S.

However, Biden has been fighting to keep Title 42 in place; in fact, 70% of migrant expulsions under Title 42 have taken place under the Biden administration. But two federal lawsuits in March put some limitations on the measure: the administration cannot expel immigrants to a country where they could be persecuted due to their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion'” or to a country where they will “likely be tortured.” 

The Republican party and various media outlets, particularly Fox News, are pushing the idea that there is a high volume of border crossings as a result of Biden’s loose restrictions. But this is untrue; there are more individuals being apprehended for unauthorized crossings each month than there were two years ago, prior to the pandemic. 

Georgia GOP civil war erupts over Herschel Walker’s domestic violence history: “He can’t win”

According to a report from Politico, Republicans in Georgia are frantic that former football star Hershel Walker will be their candidate in November for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock believing that he has no chance of winning.

With that in mind, conservative candidates and opponents of Walker — who has received Donald Trump’s endorsement — are preparing to launch a multi-million dollar ad blitz against him in the hope that he won’t get the needed 50 percent of the primary vote which would force him into a run-off.

As Politico’s Natalie Allison wrote, “In the eight weeks running up to the May 24 primary, two super PACs supporting Walker’s GOP rivals plan to drop millions of dollars in ads attacking Walker, according to people familiar with their spending plans — ad buys that stand to alter the shape of a race that could decide control of the Senate,” adding that they are concerned about his general election electability because of his history of domestic violence.

Adding that Democrats would likely focus on his history of threatening and abusing women with attack ads leading up to the November midterms, Republicans in the state want to derail his campaign and replace him with someone without his spotty history.

According to Politico, “At a meeting of the Putnam County Republican Party on Monday night, Walker’s leading challenger, state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, closed his stump speech with an impassioned appeal for the crowd to do their research on Walker.”

“Folks, he can’t win in November,” Black told the crowd. “The baggage is too heavy. It’ll never happen. Let the Democrats pour $140 million on top of domestic violence and threatening shootouts with police. Let that happen. That discussion is going to be had right now. I’m pretty passionate about that.”

According to Tyler Foote, a Republican consultant who is supporting one of Walker’s rivals, the former football star has been spared attack ads from rivals so far and that is why his poll numbers are so high.

“Everybody seems to feel like Herschel is kind of inevitable,” Foote explained. “None of the surveys, at least that I’ve seen so far, are actually testing the negative hits against Herschel. They’re just doing the horse race.”

Foote claimed his internal polling shows that Walker is beatable in November.

The report continues, “… a memo sent March 18 to Black’s donors, obtained by POLITICO, says Black’s campaign hired Meeting Street Insights to conduct internal polling in late February and found Walker’s support dropped to 38 percent after Republican primary voters were informed about past allegations and his support for granting a pathway to citizenship to some immigrants living in the country illegally. The pollster interviewed 500 primary voters on landlines and cellphones with a margin of error of 4.4 percent.”

“Polling last summer and in January showed Warnock beating Black by at least 5 percentage points in a general election, though more surveys have tested a match-up between Warnock and Walker, showing an even tighter race,” Politco’s Allison added.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out after Amazon workers win historic first union vote

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is in hot water for promoting an employee-led organizing effort at Amazon after critics noted that she backed out of a speaking engagement with those same employees during a union rally last summer. 

The spat played out over Twitter on Thursday, when the Amazon Labor Union, which recently held a successful union vote at an Amazon facility in New York City’s Staten Island, revealed that it was winning by 400-vote margin.

About an hour later, Ocasio-Cortez expressed solidarity with the union. But that comment did not sit well with some leftist commentators, including most notably, Krystal Ball, a host of the “Breaking Points” podcast. 

“Here’s the guy who organized the union drive talking about how you left them high and dry,” Ball responded, tweeting a video of her interview with Amazon labor organizer Christian Smalls. “These are your constituents and you couldn’t be bothered to show up until they’re on the cusp of victory.”

For his part, Smalls also piled on Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx. 

“So what exactly is the insinuation here?” the progressive lawmaker shot back. “That we are secretly in the tank for Amazon? That we’re ‘sellouts’ despite leading congressional investigations into Amazon, taking huge blowback to call out the scam HQ2 deal, meeting with workers in our district warehouses? It’s reaching.”

RELATED: Biden just backed a union drive in Alabama but didn’t mention Amazon. Here’s why that’s a good thing

The exchange appears to stem from an incident last August when Ocasio-Cortez was slated to appear for a speech at a rally held by the Amazon Labor Union. Before the event, however, the progressive lawmaker unexpectedly canceled her appearance over “scheduling conflicts” and “security concerns.”

“Security was an issue as well. 2021 included a lot of high level threats on my life, which limited what activities I was able to do, especially those outside,” as Ocasio-Cortez explained over Twitter. “The combination of that + when we are able to get resources/time to secure them creates scheduling + logistical conflicts.”

On Friday, the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island officially voted to unionize, marking one of the biggest labor victories in modern American history. According to the National Labor Relations Board, the union vote won by more than 10 percentage points with 2,654 votes for the Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against. The Staten Island facility, which employs roughly 6,000 workers, is now the first Amazon facility in the company’s history to join a union.

During the leadup to the union drive, Amazon aggressively fought to stamp out the organizing effort, posting anti-union signage in its facility, holding mandatory weekly meetings about the alleged ills of unionization, and hiring a Democratic consultancy to advise them on various union avoidance tactics.

RELATED: Amazon election: Why union votes are so tough for labor to win

The Amazon Labor Union was led by Smalls, a former Staten Island Amazon worker who alleges he was fired back in 2020 for organizing protests against the company’s non-observance of social distancing amid the spread of COVID-19. 

“I say what I say and that’s what got me here,” Smalls told Bloomberg before the election. “The same thing with the union: It represents what the workers want to say.”

On Friday, the House of Representatives opened a federal probe into Amazon’s unfair labor practices. Leaders of the inquiry, which includes Ocasio-Cortez, have demanded that the company hand over documents related to its labor policies and procedures, particularly when it comes to severe weather events like the Illinois tornado that ripped through an Amazon warehouse back in January, killing six workers who were told to stay despite fearing for their safety. She also joined Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., in a letter to Amazon demanding more information about its worker safety protocols. 

RELATED: Feds open investigation into Amazon warehouse practices following deadly tornadoes

Everything you need to make Georgian cheesy bread

Georgian food may not have had its moment in the sun yet, but the country’s signature bread is starting to make its rounds on social media, shining a spotlight on the former Soviet Socialist Republic’s cuisine and culture.

Perhaps it’s that money shot of the bright orange, runny yolks blended into a pool of cheese, that has promoted one of the most addictive and unique bread variations in recent [social media] memory. But there’s more to the story of khachapuri than what you see in those crave-inducing photos.

Khachapuri is a combination of two Georgian words: khacho, meaning cheese curds, and puri, meaning bread. Each region in Georgia has its own iteration of khachapuri, and the Adjaruli version is gaining popularity in American food cities like Los Angeles where there is a large population from Georgia’s neighboring country, Armenia. The Adjaruli hails from the Black Sea region of Adjara and is boat-shaped given the maritime culture. The bread is served as a precursor to any meal with the exception of dinner.

Elmira Avetian, an instructor with The League of Kitchens — a collective of immigrant cooks in New York and Los Angeles — was born in Georgia’s capital city of Tbilisi and lived in Armenia before moving to Los Angeles. Elmira visited the Los Angeles campus of the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) and shared khachapuri with students, saying the cheesy bread is the centerpiece at Georgian gatherings as it is customarily served to welcome friends and family into one’s home.

ICE students making khachapuriICE students making khachapuri. (Image courtesy of the Institute of Culinary Education)

After baking the raw cheese enveloped in the dough in a steam-filled oven, it’s a real crowd-pleaser with its tableside theatrics of eggs cracked on top of the cheese. Then the bread is returned to the oven for a few minutes to set while still runny. Next, cold butter is added and stirred very quickly with a fork to create an ocean of ooey gooey cheese mixture. The boat-shaped bread is cut into small pieces around the perimeter to pull and dip — khachapuri is best eaten with your hands.

Make this Georgian staple at home to wow whomever you’re breaking bread with.

***

Recipe: Adjaruli Khachapuri (Boat-Shaped Georgian Cheese Bread)
Courtesy of Elmira Avetian and The League of Kitchens

Yields
2 khachapuri
Servings
4 

Ingredients

For the dough:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted, plus more for dusting
  • 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon rapid rise yeast
  • 3/4 cup warm water
  • 2 tablespoons sunflower oil

For the filling:

  • 8 ounces sulguni cheese or mozzarella (see Cook’s Note)
  • 8 ounces feta cheese
  • 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup whole milk
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

 

Directions

For the dough:

  1. Put the sifted flour in a mixing bowl and add the salt, sugar and yeast. Mix with your hands to combine.
  2. Slowly pour in the warm water and mix with a spoon until a shaggy dough forms, about 5 minutes.
  3. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set the dough aside in a warm spot, such as on top of the stove, to rise for 15 minutes.
  4. Uncover and drizzle oil. Mix the oil into the dough with your hands, folding it over to coat all sides. The dough should feel slick and look shiny.
  5. Re-cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot. Let rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour, kneading twice at 15-minute intervals. The dough has finished proofing when it has doubled in size.

For the filling:

  1. Use the large holes of a box grater to grate the sulguni* cheese into a bowl, you should have 2 cups of shredded cheese.
  2. Do the same with the feta.
  3. Sprinkle the flour over the cheese and toss with your hands to evenly distribute.
  4. Pour in the milk and mix with your hands, squeezing the cheese together. The cheese should have the look and consistency of ricotta.

To form and bake:

  1. Dust a work surface or cutting board with flour. Unwrap the dough, put it on your floured work surface and dust the top with flour. Knead the dough with the heel of your hand, turning and folding it over several times to press it flat. Turn the dough slightly, fold it in half and rock into it again with the heels of your hands. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes until it feels smooth and springy.
  2. Preheat the oven to 465˚F. Pour 1 cup of hot water into a small baking pan and set on the floor of the oven — this will create a moist oven environment.
  3. Line a nonstick baking pan with parchment paper.
  4. Cut the dough into two equal pieces, about 8 ounces each. Working with one piece at a time, roll the dough out with a floured rolling pin into an oblong shape, 9 inches long by 7 inches wide and a half-inch thick. You may also pull and stretch the dough with your hands.
  5. Carefully transfer the piece of dough to the prepared baking sheet.
  6. Spoon half of the cheese mixture on top of the dough, keeping a half-inch border all the way around. Spread the cheese evenly with the back of a tablespoon.
  7. Roll from the bottom up to enclose a portion of the filling and create a wall. Do the same thing on the top, rolling the dough down towards the center. Gently pinch and twist the left and right ends together to seal and pull outwards slightly to create a boat shape. Repeat with the remaining piece of dough and cheese.
  8. Beat 1 egg and brush it onto the dough.
  9. Place the khachapuri into the oven and bake until lightly golden, 15 to 20 minutes.
  10. Remove the khachapuri and the pan of water from the oven. Use a fork or spoon to make a small well in the center of each boat and crack one egg into each.
  11. Return the khachapuri to the oven and bake until the eggs have set, an additional 4 to 5 minutes. Lightly rub 1 tablespoon of the butter on and around the dough, and then drop the remaining into the melted cheese mixture.

    To serve:

     

    1. It is traditional to tear off pieces of the ends of the bread and mix the runny egg and melted cheese together for guests to dip the crust in the gooey mixture.​​

Cook’s Notes

Sulguni is a mild, semi-firm Georgian cheese that is similar to mozzarella with a bit saltier and more sour flavor. It is sold in round discs and is not only a key ingredient in khachapuri, but also commonly eaten as table cheese during a Georgian meal. Sulguni is available online and in Eastern European grocery stores. Whole-milk mozzarella may be substituted, however, avoid using fresh mozzarella packed in water as it makes the dough soggy.

By Kiri Tannenbaum, Institute of Culinary Education

Democrat calls out Kyrsten Sinema for “directly enabling” new GOP voter purge law in Arizona

Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema faced fresh backlash from civil rights groups on Wednesday after the Republican governor of her home state of Arizona signed into law a bill that could purge hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls.

Advocacy organizations argued the state-level GOP measure was able to advance because Sinema and fellow right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) joined with Republicans earlier this year to tank a proposed change to the Senate filibuster, an archaic rule standing in the way of federal voting rights legislation that would prohibit voter purges and other suppression tactics.

“History will judge Governor [Doug] Ducey and his enablers, who through their actions—or in Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s case, inaction—allowed for today’s attack on our freedom to vote,” Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said in a statement Wednesday.

Harvey warned that the new Arizona law, known as H.B. 2492, “threatens to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Arizona voters and silence the voices of older, minority, and low-income voters in particular.”

“Ducey’s animosity toward our fundamental rights comes as no surprise,” added Harvey, “but this attack on voting rights was completely avoidable.”

One of more than 250 voter suppression bills that Republican legislatures across the U.S. are pursuing, H.B. 2492 requires state residents—including those already registered to vote—to provide documentary proof of citizenship remain eligible to cast a ballot in state and federal elections in Arizona.

Experts and advocacy groups have warned that such a mandate could cause widespread confusion and push hundreds of thousands of eligible voters off the rolls.

“This bill will mean that some people who are clearly allowed to vote and are authorized to vote will not be able to exercise their right to vote,” Alex Gulotta, Arizona state director at All Voting Is Local, told NBC News on Wednesday.

“And it’s being done based on lies and conspiracy theories that have been completely debunked,” Gulotta added, referring to former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.

Democracy Docket explained that prior to the passage of H.B. 2492, Arizona voters who registered using state forms were required to provide proof of citizenship, but voters who registered using federal forms under the National Voter Registration Act did not, and were allowed to vote in federal elections held in the state.

“H.B. 2492 requires election officials to verify the citizenship of these ‘federal only’ voters,” Democracy Docket noted. “If officials are unable to verify citizenship, the voter will not be allowed to register or vote until they provide documentary proof.”

The new law is expected to face legal challenges, particularly given that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar proof of citizenship requirement in Arizona in 2013.

Even Jennifer Holder, the attorney for Arizona’s Republican-controlled House Rules Committee, said during a recent hearing the new measure would likely run afoul of federal law.

“As we see it,” Holder told lawmakers, “the Supreme Court case pretty much addressed this scenario.”

As NPR reported, one estimate indicates the law could affect around 192,000 voters, “the number of Arizonans who were issued a state driver’s license prior to 1996—when the state updated its credentialing process to ensure a driver’s lawful presence in the United States—and have not altered their license since.”

H.B. 2492 was one of several deeply regressive Republican-authored bills that Ducey signed into law on Wednesday. Among the others were a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and legislation restricting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

“The legislators who supported these bills know that their transphobic, anti-choice agenda is misaligned with the will of their constituents,” Darrell Hill, policy director for the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement Wednesday. “Simultaneously passing voting restrictions is an easy solution to carry on without answering to the people they are supposed to represent.”

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) argued in a scathing social media post on Wednesday that “the unconstitutional and overreaching bills signed by Gov. Ducey today were enabled by the U.S. Senate and their inability to abolish the filibuster preventing passage of federal laws for our LGBTQ members, enshrine our voting rights, and protect women’s reproductive health.”

“Senators Sinema and Manchin are directly enabling the erosion of civil rights and liberties by right-wing governors and legislatures across the country,” Grijalva added.

Georgia GOP lawmaker warns that party could turn on Trump if his endorsed candidates fail in 2022

As former President Donald Trump continues his revenge tour following his 2020 presidential election loss, it appears the former disgraced president is still falling short in the state of Georgia.

During his recent rally in Georgia, Trump made a typical promise to Republicans vowing that a victory would come during the midterm elections. However, according to NPR, he focused on one pressing issue first as he expressed concern about Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), whom he refers to as a RINO, a Republican in name only.

“‘We have a big primary coming up right here in your state. We’re going to throw out a very, very sad situation that took place, your RINO Gov. Brian Kemp,’ he said before calling Kemp a ‘turncoat,’ ‘coward,’ and ‘a complete and total disaster.'”

Most of the Georgia candidates Trump has endorsed are running against Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R).

“Let’s get one thing straight, let me be very clear – very clear: In the state of Georgia, thanks to Brian Kemp, our elections in 2020 were absolutely stolen,” said former Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), Kemp’s front-running opponent who also appeared at Trump’s rally.

Now, a Republican strategist is weighing in to assess the real impact of a Trump endorsement in 2022. Although Trump’s support has been known to carry significant weight for Republican political candidates, Brian Robinson, a Republican political strategist based in Georgia, believes Trump’s support may not carry as much weight as Kemp’s deeply conservative record and political platform.

“Georgia voters know that Kemp stood up against mask mandates, that he cut their taxes, that he’s strongly pro-life, that he’s passed gun rights expansions,” he said. “You can’t give them a half story – because they know the full story. It’s got to match up with what they already believe to some degree.”

John Ford, a conservative voter in Georgia, also weighed in with his thoughts about the upcoming midterm elections.

“He was the president, Brian Kemp is our governor,” Ford said. “He’s my governor, and he has my vote, and I feel like David Perdue running as a primary candidate is divisive to the cause. We need all the help we can get pulling in the same direction.”

Even Trump has echoed that his endorsements may not hold as much weight as they once did. During a recent appearance on “Real America’s Voice,” Trump offered his take. “These are not sure things,” he said. “And if I lose one along the way – and you have to, right? – they’re going to say, ‘This was a humiliating experience.'”

Georgia State Sen. Burt Jones (R), who is backed by Trump, also noted that he believes the midterms will set the tone for the 2024 election.

“It will set the stage for ’24, because all eyes will be on Georgia this year,” he said. “And if we don’t win big — if we don’t have a red wave — then it doesn’t play well for us to put Donald Trump back in the White House in 2024.”

Disney hysteria and litter boxes: Republicans’ deeply odd war on LGBTQ people escalates

The GOP’s choice to make QAnon-style hysterics the centerpiece of their 2022 midterm strategy is most heavily hurting LGBTQ Americans.

From Fox News to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans are embracing rhetoric that insinuates — and sometimes outright declares — that there’s a widespread conspiracy of Democrats, school teachers, liberal judges and Disney employees to “groom” children for sexual abuse. The primary victims of these lies are LGBTQ people, who are facing a renewed effort to roll back hard-won rights, all under the guise of “saving” children from imaginary “predators.”  Across the country, Republican state legislatures are passing bills and using executive orders to make life hell for LGBTQ kids by denying them medical care, forcing them to remain closeted at school, excluding them from extracurricular activities, and even taking them away from loving parents. All of this damage is done in the name of “saving” children. 

One of the surest signs that this is a Satanic panic-style frenzy is how downright weird the situation is getting, with right-wingers whipping themselves up with urban legends and lurid fantasies.

Have you heard that schools are putting litter boxes in the bathrooms to indulge students who “identify” as cats? If not, well, if you’re on Facebook, you will soon enough. Earlier this week, Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman went off during a recent legislative session about how kids “meow and they bark ” and “now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools.”

Needless to say, none of this is true.

“One of the surest signs that this is a Satanic panic-style frenzy is how downright weird the situation is getting”

The video went viral because Bostelman, who is (no shock here) a Republican, speaks in tones of high dudgeon that really adds a campy flair to all this talk about litter boxes. So viral, in fact, that Bostelman got embarrassed and backed off his ridiculous story. But if he had actually cared about whether this was true, he would have bothered to do a quick Google search before his epic rant. There are plenty of news reports about schools across the country having to debunk this urban legend due to its rapid spread. 

RELATED: Conservatives conjure up a 21st-century Satanic panic. Will it work?

But Bostelman repeated this urban legend for the same reason it’s spreading on Facebook, despite all the earnest attempts from news organizations and school boards to shut it down: Right-wingers find it a useful lie to wield against LGBTQ kids — and trans kids in particular. 

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

It’s easy to see how such a bizarre tale is connected to Tucker Carlson of Fox News claiming, falsely, that “the trans thing” didn’t exist “say, four years ago.” The idea here is that no one is “really” trans and that it’s a trend being “put” into people’s heads. The next step, the suggestion goes, is people imagining they are cats and dogs. 

The entire GOP assault on LGBTQ rights depends heavily on this tendency of right-wingers to value urban legends and lurid myths over concrete, reality-based information. This was evident when this entire moral panic over trans kids started, which was fueled by urban legends of men pretending to be trans so they could lurk in bathrooms and rape women. (Real sexual predators don’t bother with such theatrics. They tend to be like Donald Trump, who recommended just “grab them by the pussy”.) And now the new thing is an elaborate and headache-inducing conspiracy theory accusing Disney — yes, that Disney — of being behind a plot to funnel children into the arms of pedophiles. 

As Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times notes, the thin gruel they’re basing this conspiracy theory on is a tape of a Disney executive, in a meeting, highlighting extremely family-friendly fare she’s produced that just happens to have a gay teenage character and a family with two dads at the helm. From this, Fox News has run a dizzying number of segments accusing the company of “sexualizing children” and creating “propaganda for grooming.” This is unhinged QAnon stuff, designed to give credence to the conspiracy theories of the growing right-wing cult that believes Democrats run a secret conspiracy of blood-drinking pedophiles. 

RELATED: Florida Republicans revive deadly “queers recruit” myth with passage of “don’t say gay” bill

It’s genuinely hard not to laugh at these people who have been so consumed by paranoid fantasies that they’re talking about litter boxes and Disney being a secret pedophile organization. Unfortunately, all this is being used to justify very real violence against LGBTQ people, as well as state-sanctioned child abuse. 

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

In Idaho, an anti-trans bill signed by the governor in 2020 would require female students who want to be on sports teams to “prove” their gender by submitting to a genital exam or getting an expensive hormonal or DNA test. In Mississippi, a Republican candidate for governor tweeted that “those who want to groom our children and pretend men are women” should be executed by “firing squad.” (“Groomer” has become an all-purpose slur on the right to demonize anyone who supports LGBTQ rights, a category that now includes about 70% of Americans.) This week, Turning Point USA president Charlie Kirk called on men to “show up to the sporting event” and physically intervene to stop trans women from playing. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene bragged on Alex Jones’s show that her husband would commit criminal assault against trans and non-binary people who worked at a summer camp “that I paid money to send my child to.” She later expanded the aperture of people she feels deserve such violent assault to cis gay men. At a recent Donald Trump rally, she implied that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband lurk in women’s rooms to sexually assault women. 

“This is being used to justify very real violence against LGBTQ people, as well as state-sanctioned child abuse. “

Voltaire is often quoted (perhaps wrongly?) as saying that,” Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Whatever the vintage of that quote, however, it echoes through our culture for a reason: It’s absolutely true.

Whatever the political motives driving this, what we’re witnessing is right-wingers whipping themselves up with false stories about pedophiles, rapists in bathrooms, and, uh litter boxes. They then use claims as justification for both state-based oppression of LGBTQ people and physical violence against them. To make it all worse, the people targeted are mostly children and teens. Going after children is pure laziness and cowardice on the GOP’s part, of course. Kids don’t have a lot of power, making them easy targets. To do all this under the guise of “saving children” is, once again, pure right-wing projection. As usual, the predators are pretending to be the prey. 

RELATED: D.C.’s house of horror: Multiple fetuses found at home of anti-abortion activist indicted by DOJ

17 best margarita recipes because it’s 5 o’clock somewhere

Margaritas — especially fruit-forward frozen margaritas — get a bad rap for being hangover-inducing cocktails after one sip. And sure, with cheap tequila, too much sugar, and a lot of artificial fruit syrups that is absolutely true. But a good margarita made with smooth tequila, triple sec, fresh limes, and homemade simple syrup will taste good and not leave you feeling wrecked before the glass is done. (We can make no guarantees about no hangovers after more than one, however.) Pull up a cocktail shaker or a blender and try some of these riffs on the classic cocktail.

1. Margarita

If you need me, I’ll be wasting away again in Margaritaville with this absolute classic margarita made with tequila, Cointreau, freshly squeezed lime juice, and agave syrup.

2. Spicy Mango Margarita

Bring a little bit of heat with this margarita recipe made with hot sauce and mango shrub (ripe mango, apple cider vinegar, cumin seeds, pink peppercorns, agave nectar, and fresh pineapple).

3. Hibiscus Margarita

This pretty-in-pink cocktail gets its raspberry hue and floral flavor from dried hibiscus flowers, which are heated with a spiced simple syrup to bring the spirit of Charleston to the glass.

4. Strawberry Margarita on the Rocks

“I love fruit margaritas, but often the frozen kind are made with fruit-flavored syrups instead of real fruit. This strawberry margarita on the rocks calls for whole strawberries and absolutely zero of the sweet and sour mix that can make for a cloyingly sweet, artificial-tasting drink,” writes recipe developer Marshmallows&Margaritas.

5. Spiced Pecan Margarita

Margaritas aren’t just for hot summer days. This spiced version features a homemade pecan and tea orgeat.

6. Rosemary-Grapefruit Margarita

Grapefruit juice and tequila work in tandem for this not-too-sweet margarita. You know what it tastes like? Another one!

7. Lemon Lime Margaritas

Equal parts of tequila, Cointreau, lemon juice, and lime juice are stirred together (not shaken) to create this extra-refreshing margarita, which is served over crushed ice.

8. Honey Apple Margarita

“This drink is inspired by my time living in Seattle,” says bar director Natasha David. “Washington state is of course well known for all of its beautiful apples,” she adds, so it’s no surprise that they’re the star of this margarita.

9. Spicy Apple Cider Margarita

When you can’t decide between a hot toddy, Old Fashioned, and margarita, try this autumn-approved margarita.

10. Italian Margarita

Food52’s resident drink expert John DeBary developed this recipe inspired by one of his favorites found at Olive Garden (yes, THAT Olive Garden). Amaretto liqueur is used in place of the usual orange liqueur, which brings a lovely almond flavor to this tequila-forward cocktail.

11. Charred Red Pepper and Strawberry Margarita

Pretty much every margarita qualifies as a super summery drink, but this one takes the cake, thanks to the juicy berries and smoky bell peppers, which are blended to form a smooth purée.

12. Session Margarita

Margaritas are strong. Like, very strong. Have a few too many on a cruise ship once and you won’t be able to tell if it’s the boat that’s rocking or you. If you want to tone it down a bit, make this low-ABV version, which cuts back on the tequila and introduces some sherry for a drink that’s less likely to make your head hurt the next morning.

13. Count to 4 (Basic) Margarita

If you’re exercising your bartending skills for the first time in a while, this is a great margarita recipe to start with. It calls for one ounce Cointreau, two teaspoons of simple syrup, three ounces of añejo tequila, and 4 tablespoons of lime juice — see, 1, 2, 3, 4.

14. Mid-Winter Margarita

What makes this margarita apt for serving during winter is neither the use of hot cocoa mix nor the use of fresh snow. Rather, we take advantage of the abundance of juicy citrus fruits like grapefruit and limes, which are at their peak during this time of year.

15. Sage-Infused Classic Margarita

Sage is a gentle, earthy herb that we normally would pair with turkey or roasted butternut squash. But it also goes so well with a margarita. Yes, really! Make your own sage-infused tequila a few days in advance and then shake up this cocktail.

16. The Project Gemini (Spicy Basil Margarita with Cointreau)

We love a margarita made with Cointreau and this one delivers. And we really love when the margarita is a little spicy — here, basil leaves and sliced jalapeño peppers are muddled together to bring a little heat to this classic tequila cocktail.

17. Shio Kosho Margarita

“Starring Patrón Silver Tequila, a lemongrass syrup spiced with ginger and yuzu kosho (a Japanese condiment made from yuzu zest, chiles, and salt), and fresh grapefruit juice, this margarita hits sweet, spicy, and bright citrusy notes,” writes recipe developer Masahiro Urushido. “A rim of flaky Maldon salt, crushed white peppercorns, and fragrant grapefruit zest tie all of these elements together, teasing out flavors with each sip.”

“Awkward”: GOPers reportedly mocked Madison Cawthorn at fundraiser after his orgy and cocaine claims

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who is already reeling from a public rebuke from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) over his tales of cocaine-fueled orgies among Beltway conservatives, is now reportedly being mocked behind his back by some of his GOP colleagues.

According to a report from Politico, the freshman lawmaker has already alienated Republicans in his home state by jumping from district to district in an effort to get re-elected and now, after he made his orgy claims, has few defenders in Congress.

As Politico’s Olivia Beavers wrote, Cawthorn showed up at a fundraiser on Wednesday night for Harriet Hageman, who is opposing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for the GOP nomination for Wyoming’s one House seat after being endorsed by Donald Trump.

As the Republican congressman mixed with the crowd, Beavers reports, “Cawthorn’s own GOP colleagues spent some of the fundraiser, feet away, quietly joking at his expense, according to people in the room.”

“The uncomfortable moment illustrates the awkward position Cawthorn now finds himself in. After riding out multiple waves of mini-controversies over past comments and behavior, he now seems doused by a political tsunami after alleging on a podcast that some of his colleagues attend orgies and use cocaine,” the Politico report continued.

The report notes that a few GOP lawmakers are sympathetic to Cawthorn, with Beavers writing, “Some Republican colleagues privately express sympathy for a younger man they believe is beginning to crack, citing his recent divorce and personal struggles, including the car accident that left him using a wheelchair,” before adding that none of them seem inclined to come to his defense with the Politico report adding, “The GOP consensus is that Cawthorn’s behavior, no matter his age or position, remains unacceptable.”

Why you should sprinkle queso fresco on literally everything

Inspired by conversations on the Food52 Hotline, we’re sharing tips and tricks that make navigating all of our kitchens easier and more fun. This article was brought to you by our friends at Real California Milk.

Today: Get to know the Fresh Prince of Mexico.

You see queso fresco in so many Mexican dishes — a glorious sprinkling of snow atop a mountain of meat and rice or thick slices mingled with grilled vegetables. But how much do you really know about it?

Spanish for “fresh cheese,” queso fresco is the most commonly used cheese in Mexican cooking. This white cheese is to Mexico as feta is to Greece; if that’s not reason enough to get to know it, we don’t know what is.

The cheese is traditionally made with raw cow milk or a combination of goat and cow milk. Since it’s a mild cheese, it’s very versatile: Its milkiness offsets the heat from chiles and spices typically found in Mexican food, and its bright, slightly sour taste complements fresh salads and balances the richness of heartier dishes. You’re going to want to put it on everything — or use it as a replacement for feta, goat cheese, and ricotta.

Before you head to the grocery store, here’s a quick Mexican cheese primer. How does queso fresco stack up against other Mexican cheeses like cotija or oaxaca cheese? Cotija is an aged cheese that is harder and saltier than queso fresco. It is still sprinkled with abundance on salads, enchiladas, and more, but it doesn’t have the same tangy flavor as queso fresco. Oaxaca, on the other hand, most closely resembles mozzarella cheese; it’s super stringy and meltable, making it the best filling for grilled cheese or a quesadilla. Queso Blanco is another type of white cheese but unlike queso fresco, it doesn’t crumble. Quite the opposite in fact — queso blanco holds its shape beautifully. Like halloumi, it’s generally served in its whole form grilled or fried.

But back to what you really came to learn about — queso fresco. 

How to store it

Queso fresco is traditionally consumed fresh, but if you have leftovers, tightly wrap them in plastic wrap and store them in the refrigerator, where they will keep for about two weeks. Because queso fresco is a fresh cheese, it’s more likely to develop mold or a sour, off-putting flavor than a hard, aged cheese like Parmigiano-Reggiano. 

Use it as a topping

Once you’ve acquired queso fresco, how do you use it? It’s most commonly used as a topping (but the good kind of garnish, not the kind that’s just an afterthought).  

  • Toss it into a salad: Grill and cube watermelon, rip up mint into small pieces (no need to be too precise), and throw in some queso fresco instead of the usual feta option. It’s a bright addition to any summer spread, especially alongside grilled meats
  • Use it as a garnish for soup: Queso fresco doesn’t care about temperature. It works beautifully atop a cold summer soup, like gazpacho, or warmer varieties, like tortilla soup and black bean soup. It won’t exactly melt, but the heat from a hot soup will make it just a little bit warmer. 
  • In the summer, roll it onto corn: Once you’ve lathered your corn with butter, roll it on a plate of queso fresco to cover every kernel. Finish with salt, ground chile, and a squeeze of lime juice for a homemade take on elote, or Mexican street corn. 
  • Crumble it atop a classic Mexican dish. Mellow out the heat in dishes like chilaquiles verdes, huevos rancheros, tacos, or enchiladas with a sprinkle of queso fresco. The more, the merrier.

Use it as a filling

Queso fresco gets soft when heated, but it’s difficult to melt. You can melt it over low heat for a while in order to make a cheesy dip or sauce, but it may remain chunky. In its soft state, it is commonly used as part of a filling for chiles relleños (stuffed chiles), quesadillas, and burritos.

Ginni Thomas gave Trump “insane and unworkable” lists of officials to “purge” and hire: report

When Ronald Reagan was president during the 1980s, part of his big-tent view of conservatism was what he called “the 11th Commandment” — which was “never speak ill of any fellow Republican.” But Donald Trump, as president, had a totally different approach: insult, belittle, bully and threaten any Republican who dared to disagree with him about anything. And according to Daily Beast reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, one of Trump’s worst enablers during his four years in the White House was far-right GOP activist and conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas — who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

In contrast to Reagan’s view that there was room for a variety of Republicans in his 1980s coalition — from Goldwater Republicans to Rockefeller Republicans, from secular libertarians to theocratic Christian fundamentalists — Trump demanded unquestioning loyalty from fellow Republicans. Ginni Thomas, Suebsaeng and Rawnsley emphasize in an article published by the Beast on April 1, encouraged that type of behavior and offered lists of people she recommended hiring or firing.

The Beast reporters explain, “Years before she became one of then-President Donald Trump’s most prominent coup supporters, Ginni Thomas was already notorious in his West Wing for, among other things, ruining staffers’ afternoons by working Trump into fits of vengeful rage…. Ever since she became a welcome guest at Trump’s residences, Thomas — an influential and long-time conservative activist, and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — had perfected a proven formula of enthralling and manipulating the president’s emotions and mood.”

Suebsaeng and Rawnsley continue, “On multiple occasions throughout the Trump era, Thomas would show up in the White House, sometimes for a private meeting or a luncheon with the president. She often came armed with written memos of who she and her allies believed Trump should hire for plum jobs — and who she thought Trump should promptly purge — that she distributed to Trump and other high-ranking government officials. The fire lists were particularly problematic, as they were frequently based on pure conjecture, rumor, or score-settling, where even steadfastly MAGA aides were targeted for being part of the ‘Deep State’ or some other supposedly anti-Trump coalition, according to people who saw them during the Trump Administration.”

During his years in the White House, Trump fired a long list of right-wing Republicans who he decided weren’t MAGA enough — from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to former National Security Adviser John Bolton. And eventually, he even turned against former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr when they refused to go along with his efforts to steal the 2020 presidential election. Ginni Thomas, according to the Washington Post and CBS News, aggressively promoted the Big Lie, urging former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

One of the reasons Trump was a failure as president was the fact that he wanted to be surrounded by yes-men, and according to the Beast’s article, Ginni Thomas did everything she could to encourage him.

A former senior Trump Administration official, presumably interviewed on condition of anonymity, told the Beast, “We all knew that within minutes after Ginni left her meeting with the president, he would start yelling about firing people for being disloyal. When Ginni Thomas showed up, you knew your day was wrecked.”

Trump wasn’t shy about hiring extremists if he thought they would be loyalists, and Thomas had plenty of recommendations. According to Suebsaeng and Rawnsley, her recommendations included “Fox News personality Dan Bongino, and the Trump-adulating Sheriff David Clarke” as well as Frank Gaffney — the former Pentagon official and conspiracy theorist who “accused conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist of being a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

A former Trump White House official told the Beast, “These fucking lists were so insane and unworkable. A lot of them were dripping with paranoia and read like they were written by a disturbed person.”

The Beast also interviewed former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who recalled, “Trump loved talking to Ginni so much because he loved hearing about who was a Never Trumper, or allegedly one. He loved people who would flatter him, (as Ginni would do). But also, his obsession with loyalty aside, he just loved to gossip — all the time. That’s something else he got out of his series of meetings at the White House with Ginni Thomas.”

DeJoy may have violated conflict of interest law by profiting off USPS Covid tests: watchdog group

A watchdog investigation published Thursday revealed that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy owns stock in the manufacturer of rapid coronavirus tests that the U.S. Postal Service has been delivering to households as part of the Biden administration’s pandemic response.

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) discovered DeJoy’s Abbott Laboratories holding in an examination of the scandal-plagued postmaster general’s financial filings, which the group notes “show no evidence of him having fully divested that stock,” leaving him positioned to profit off Abbott’s partnership with the White House.

Abbott, an Illinois-based company that makes the popular BinaxNOW at-home coronavirus test, was one of the companies that the Biden White House tapped to take part in an initiative that has allowed people across the U.S. to order free coronavirus test kits through a government website.

The Postal Service said earlier this month that it has delivered more than 270 million Covid-19 tests to U.S. households thus far.

POGO argued that by failing to relinquish his Abbott stock while participating in the test-delivery project, “DeJoy may have violated a federal conflict-of-interest law.”

“DeJoy not only owned Abbott Laboratories stock, he appears to have traded the stock after the White House announced on January 7 that the Covid-19 test kits the administration had purchased would be ‘sent out through the mail,'” POGO noted.

According to Washington Post reporting from January, DeJoy—a former logistics executive—was “intensely involved” in planning for the testing effort.

POGO went on to detail DeJoy’s suspiciously timed trades:

On January 11, two days before the federal government formally announced that it had awarded Abbott Laboratories a $306 million contract for the test kits, DeJoy engaged in two transactions involving Abbott. In a disclosure he filed on February 2, DeJoy described one of the transactions, which he valued at $1,001-$15,000, as an “opened written call option position.” He described the second transaction, which he valued at $15,001-$50,000, as a “closed written call option position”…

On March 24, the federal government awarded a contract modification to Abbott Laboratories worth over $1 billion for test kits.

Walter Shaub, a senior ethics fellow at POGO and one of the new report’s authors, wrote on Twitter that “criminal conflict of interest law prohibits participation in particular matters in which a federal official has a financial interest.”

Shaub, who previously served as head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, called on the Biden Justice Department to launch an investigation into DeJoy’s stock transactions.

“Calling DOJ!” he tweeted.

POGO pointed out in its new report that “a federal conflict-of-interest law bars officials like the postmaster general from participating personally and substantially in certain government matters affecting their own financial interests.”

“The law doesn’t cover every government undertaking, but it does cover programs that, like the free Covid-19 test project, are focused on the interests of individual companies or a specific industry,” the group observed. “Under the conflict-of-interest law, it doesn’t matter if another government official, or even another federal agency, negotiated the deal with the test manufacturers. It also doesn’t matter if the official ultimately never makes a profit from the conflict of interest.”

DeJoy, a Trump megadonor who took charge of the USPS in June 2020 and almost immediately moved to slow mail delivery, is already reportedly under FBI investigation for potential violations of campaign finance laws during his time as CEO of New Breed Logistics.

Democratic members of Congress have repeatedly called for DeJoy’s removal as postmaster general, citing his numerous alleged conflicts of interest and ongoing push to degrade the Postal Service’s delivery performance.

But DeJoy can only be fired by the USPS Board of Governors, where former President Donald Trump’s nominees currently have a majority. Far from moving to oust DeJoy, top board members have praised the postmaster general throughout his tenure.

“Will this obvious conflict of interest finally prompt the postal board of governors to take a hard look at DeJoy’s misconduct,” Shaub asked Thursday, “or will they ignore this like they ignored his partisan efforts to slow the mail before the election?”