Dzaleznik

Nate Cohn: “The patterns in recent polling and election results are consistent with the trends in national surveys, which suggest that the demographic foundations of Mr. Trump’s Electoral College advantage might be fading. He’s faring unusually well among nonwhite voters, who represent a larger share of the electorate in noncompetitive than competitive states. As a consequence, Mr. Trump’s gains have probably done more to improve his standing in the national vote than in relatively white Northern states likeliest to decide the presidency, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”

“Midterm results typically don’t tell us much about the next general election. Polls taken 15 to 27 months out don’t necessarily augur much, either. But the possibility that Republicans’ Electoral College advantage is diminished is nonetheless worth taking seriously. It appears driven by forces that might persist until the next election, like Mr. Biden’s weakness among nonwhite voters and the growing importance of issues — abortion, crime, democracy and education — that play differently for blue and purple state voters.”

Earlier for members: Three Paths to Biden’s Re-Election

“The IRS is launching an initiative to crack down on 1,600 millionaires and 75 large businesses it says owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes,” The Hill reports.

“The program takes advantage of additional funding for the agency included in the Inflation Reduction Act, which added funding to hire and replace 87,000 employees.”

“Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio is telling Republican donors that Nikki Haley ‘has surged’ in Iowa since last week’s GOP presidential debate — and that she and Vivek Ramaswamy are essentially tied with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire,” Axios reports.

Arizona state Rep.-elect Liz Harris (R) said that she will not cast her vote on any bill unless the 2022 election is redone, KPNX reports.

Harris issued the statement on Instagram and her campaign website saying in part “it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately.”

She alleges that there were “clear signs of foul play” which necessitated her demands. There has been no evidence of this.

“Jenna Ellis, who was among the most high-profile attorneys involved in the Trump campaign’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, has joined Pennsylvania Republican Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign as a senior legal adviser,” Reuters reports.

North Carolina statewide results from early voting and mail-in voting will be delayed tonight by at least 45 minutes, until 8:15 p.m., the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

“The N.C. State Board of Elections voted to extend the deadline to vote at one precinct in Sampson County by 45 minutes, due to some technical glitches they had there this morning. They also extended voting deadlines at three other precincts by shorter amounts of time.”

“The vote was 3-2 with the board’s Democratic members in favor and the Republicans opposed.”

“With his call for the military to be deployed in U.S. cities gripped by protests over police brutality, Sen. Tom Cotton has found himself in a familiar position: Rallying conservatives, enraging Democrats and further raising his national profile amid growing speculation over his future ambitions,” the Washington Post reports.

“The Arkansas Republican has been minted as a political up-and-comer since he entered Congress in 2013, yet he cemented his status as a hero on the right when an op-ed he authored for the New York Times on using the military to deter looting and violent unrest amid the demonstrations provoked an unusual public furor among its journalists, who called it inflammatory. The uproar led to the ouster of the newspaper’s powerful opinions editor.”

“That turmoil at the Times has only emboldened Cotton, 43, a relatively junior senator who has nonetheless demonstrated his influence in the Trump era by having the president’s ear and embracing key tenets of Trumpism that have, at times, put the men at odds with some in their own party.”

Wall Street Journal: “Last time around, there was the Russian cyberattack of party emails that U.S. intelligence has said was designed to help Republican Donald Trump defeat nominee Hillary Clinton. The party also battled complaints that superdelegates—those free to back any candidate, regardless of election results in the primaries—amounted to a fixed outcome at the expense of Sen. Bernie Sanders.”

“Since then, the party has reduced the clout of superdelegates. Still, gripes about party management remain, this time from the handful of candidates left off the list of 20 candidates set for this week’s two primary debates in Miami, the first of the 2020 cycle.”

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Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) “says he’s going to attend his daughter’s wedding back home in Montana on Saturday regardless of a possible weekend Senate vote on embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh,” the Billings Gazette reports.

KTVQ: “Republicans could potentially be in a bind to confirm Kavanaugh if Daines is a no-show. With a 51-49 majority, the GOP can only afford to lose one vote, assuming all Democrats vote no. Vice President Mike Pence would cast the deciding vote in the case of a tie.”

A chili oil–style condiment packed with chilies, Sichuan peppercorns, spices, roasted soy nuts, fried onion, and fried garlic, this homemade chili crisp truly has everything you could ever need to complete just about any dish. Read More

“Shannon Edwards (R), whose affair with Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) ended his congressional career, announced Wednesday in Pittsburgh she’s running for Congress,” the Washington Examiner reports.

“Murphy, a staunch pro-life Republican, resigned in the face of a scandal last October when it was revealed the married lawmaker had an affair with Edwards and then urged her to have an abortion during a pregnancy scare.”

Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus confirms to Vanity Fair the media’s portrayal of a White House in disarray and riven by conflict: “Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50.”

Here’s how he describes the aftermath of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey:

While Priebus and Bannon watched the fiasco explode as the pundits excoriated the Trump White House on every cable news show, Kushner did a slow burn. He was livid, furious that the communications team could not defend Comey’s firing. Bannon blew his stack. “There’s not a fucking thing you can do to sell this!,” he shouted at Kushner. “Nobody can sell this! P. T. Barnum couldn’t sell this! People aren’t stupid! This is a terrible, stupid decision that’s going to have massive implications. It may have shortened Trump’s presidency—and it’s because of you, Jared Kushner!”

The screaming matches and white-knuckle showdowns continued. Eight days later, Priebus got an unexpected visit from the White House counsel—a story he has not told publicly before. “Don McGahn came in my office pretty hot, red, out of breath, and said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’ I responded, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Well, we just got a special counsel, and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions just resigned.’ I said, ‘What!? What the hell are you talking about?’ ”

The piece is an adaptation from the forthcoming paperback edition of The Gatekeepers by Chris Whipple.

White House speechwriter David Sorensen resigned “after his former wife claimed that he was violent and emotionally abusive during their turbulent two-and-a-half-year marriage — allegations that he vehemently denied, saying she was the one who victimized him,” the Washington Post reports.

Once thought of by many (and still viewed by some) as primarily a punishment food, beets are enjoying a new period of vogue. They're terrific roasted, as many home cooks already know, but can work just as well served in crunchy raw slices or steamed. Already in love with beets and want to get a little crazy? Try making beet green pesto for pasta, or experiment with beet juice in refreshing, vegetal cocktails. Here are 11 recipes to get you fully into the spirit. Read More

Today in ‘Donald Trump’s campaign is a garbage fire.’

Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the Zika virus has begun to transmit locally in Florida. The mosquito-borne and sexually transmitted virus has, up to now, only entered the continental United States via travelers.

This announcement is based off four cases around Miami-Dade County. And as Vox’s Julia Belluz explains, it’s not a surprise. Health officials have for months been anticipating a small, local outbreak somewhere in the southeastern United States. Tom Frieden, the CDC’s director, predicted it in May: "We do expect there will be some spread — through mosquitos — in [these] parts of the continental US," he said.

But there’s a place in the United States where the Zika outbreak has already reached epidemic proportions: Puerto Rico. In the case of Puerto Rico, health officials are dealing with a major outbreak that is much more difficult to control.

CDC: The spread of Zika is “substantial and increasing” in Puerto Rico

As of July 7, some 5,582 people — including 672 pregnant women — have been diagnosed with the virus, the CDC said Friday in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

And most worryingly, for pregnant women, diagnoses of suspected cases in Puerto Rico are up to 41 percent from 8 percent in February.

“This could lead to hundreds of infants being born with microcephaly or other birth defects in the coming year,” Lyle Peterson, a member of the CDC’s Zika Response team, said in a statement. “We must do all we can to protect pregnant women from Zika and to prepare to care for infants born with microcephaly.”

In June, the CDC confirmed one case of Zika-related microcephaly on the island. The report did not list any new birth defect cases, though it said the CDC and the Puerto Rico Department of Health would continue to monitor all women with confirmed or presumed cases of Zika.

CDC

The CDC also noticed a small association between Zika and Guillain-Barré syndrome — an autoimmune disorder that’s suspected to be trigged by Zika. Of 36 cases of Guillain-Barré in Puerto Rico, 21 were associated with Zika or a similar mosquito-borne disease.

What precautions is Puerto Rico taking?

The peak mosquito season in Puerto Rico stretches deep into September, and the CDC is clear that this outbreak is far from over. The agency is calling for increased mosquito control – insecticide spraying and the dissemination of bug repellent and bed nets.

Public education could also play a big role in curbing the outbreak.

“Since February 2016, approximately 21,000 pregnant women ... have been counseled about Zika virus prevention,” the CDC reports. “In addition, to reduce the risk for unintended pregnancies, the public health response includes community outreach and education about sexual transmission of Zika virus, distribution of male and female condoms, and an increase in the availability of the full range of voluntary contraceptive methods, including long acting reversible contraceptives.”

The CDC also reports that all public schools in Puerto Rico will be sprayed with Deltamethrin, an insecticide, to further prevent spread. (The Puerto Rican government has rejected aerial spraying for mosquitos, however.)

Further reading:

• Zika is in Florida. Here are 9 facts to calm you down.
• What Zika means for the Olympics
• The best health advice for women who may come in contact with Zika

This is not a recipe for eggplant caviar, but caught up in an adoration of July eggplants too lovely to roast just to grind up, it is loosely inspired by it. If you're unfamiliar with eggplant caviar, well, you need to come over to my in-law's where it is never not on the table, or basically anywhere else my mother in-law goes, because she's not allowed to show up without it. Just to confuse you, there's also caviar on the table and they have nothing to do with each other, although this is a matter of argument. The Joy of Cooking and others liken eggplant caviar to a "poor man's caviar," a tasty substitute for those who could not afford the real stuff, but actual Russians will tell you that caviar was affordable in the Soviet Union and everyone was poor. Originally from the Caucasus, versions exist today everywhere from Russia to Greece because it's delicious although I don't think you'll ever find two that are alike. Not for the faint of heart, my mother in-laws version [recipe over here] is aggressively zingy with garlic and vinegar; it should come with a warning, but it's too much fun to watch newbies arrive at the table and ladle it on, not realizing it was going to taste almost as much like a pickle as it does eggplant.

Pokémon Go, the massively successful location-based augmented reality game, has barely been out a week, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign is already using it as a campaigning tool:

The game, which came out on July 6, encourages users to walk around and visit PokéStops where they can acquire items for the game like Poké Balls, and "gyms" where they can fight against other players. PokéStops and gyms are real locations in the real world. For instance, there’s a gym on a small traffic island by the Vox DC offices, and the Embassy of Iraq is a PokéStop and a reliable source of Poké Balls.

So campaign organizers for Clinton, like her Ohio organizing director Jennifer Friedmann, started showing up at PokéStops and gyms to register Pokémon Go players to vote:

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Mallorie Sullivan reports that Clinton's Ohio staff spent the past weekend going "from Cuyahoga to Athens to seek out players in their communities to register them to vote."

There’s even an official Hillary event scheduled in Lakewood, Ohio, pegged to the game. "Join us as we go to the Pokestop in Madison Park and put up a lure module, get free pokemon, & battle each other while you register voters and learn more about Sec. Hillary Clinton!!!" the event description says. "Kids welcome!"

Lure modules, for context, are items in the game that attract a large number of Pokémon to a given area. You can acquire them for free, but to use them for any length of time usually requires shelling out for additional lures, meaning the Clinton campaign could be spending funds on attracting Pokémon (and players) to its events.

Pokémon Go is the perfect campaign app

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The ease with which Clinton’s campaign flocked to Pokémon Go is partially an indication of how perfect the app is as a campaign tool. Campaigns have invested considerable time and money into mastering social media platforms like Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook, but the payoff is uncertain. If you send a funny tweet, that might win your campaign a good press cycle — but does it actually sway public opinion? Does it actually increase your odds of victory? The path to impact is so windy and indirect that evaluating whether your strategy is actually working is extraordinarily difficult.

That’s largely because those apps are not well-positioned to spur action outside their confines. Liking a tweet or sharing a Facebook post shows up as progress on the campaign’s metrics, but whether it translates into more votes is uncertain. Indeed, some experimental evidence suggests Facebook ads are ineffective at changing voters’ favorability ratings of candidates.

Pokémon Go, by contrast, is explicitly designed to move players to action in real life. You have to walk to PokéStops to get supplies. You have to walk around to run into Pokémon you can catch. That makes it a great way to lure people into robbery traps, but it also makes it a great way to lure people into voter registration drives. That intrinsic connection to physical activity makes it much easier to assess its impacts on concrete electoral outcomes.

The Clinton campaign already has actual people it’s registered to vote as a result of its Pokémon strategy. That’s a specific, important metric that you can’t measure the same way on, say, Snapchat.

The Clinton campaign’s eagerness to use an app to organize the same week it comes out is also an indication of the importance of on-the-ground field organizing. This sort of thing only works if you have field staffers on the ground to organize it, and who can do so without reducing the campaign’s ability to canvass, phone-bank, and engage in the other routine, necessary field activities. And Clinton had almost 700 people on staff already as of May's Federal Election Commission filing.

Trump, by contrast, has only 70, many of them national staff. He’s at a big, big disadvantage when it comes to field work. It’s not just Pokémon Go: Trump’s staffing disadvantage means less contact with voters, and less registration, through any number of mechanisms. And at least when it comes to registration drives and get-out-the-vote operations, there’s good experimental research showing that well-done canvassing really does work.

That disadvantage of Trump’s may or may not be reflected in his current polling deficits, but unless he staffs up dramatically, and quickly, it’ll make a big difference in November.

Everyone is suddenly catching Pokémon fever again. Here’s what’s going on.

You may have heard stories of people hunting down Pokémon on their office desks, in hospital rooms, and even in bathrooms. One teenage girl even found a dead body while looking for Pokémon. And police in Missouri claimed that four suspected robbers lured in victims with a chance of catching Pokémon in a new game called Pokémon Go.

What the hell is going on? What is Pokémon Go?

Well, after a few years lying relatively low, the Nintendo-owned Pokémon, which exploded in popularity in the late 1990s, is again taking the world by storm. This time, through Pokémon Go: the series’s biggest entry into the mobile space, now available for a free download on Android and iOS. It’s so popular that it’s now competing with Twitter in terms of daily active users on Android.

In simple terms, Pokémon Go is a game that uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon "appear" around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and catch them. As you move around, different and more types of Pokémon will appear depending on where you are and what time it is. The idea is to encourage you to travel around the real world to catch Pokémon in the game. (This mix of a game and the real world interacting is known as "augmented reality." More on that later.)

So why are people seeking out virtual creatures while at work and as they go to the bathroom? Part of the reason Pokémon Go is popular is that it’s free, so it’s easy to download and play. But more importantly, Pokémon Go fulfills a fantasy Pokémon fans have had since the games first came out: What if Pokémon were real and inhabited our world? But to understand why people are so enthusiastic about the idea, we first need to go back to the late 1990s — to the original Pokémon games.

What is Pokémon Go? It’s an attempt at realizing what fans always wanted from Pokémon.

The Pokémon games take place in a world populated by exotic, powerful monsters — they can look like rats, snakes, dragons, dinosaurs, birds, eggs, trees, and even swords. In this world, people called "trainers" travel around the globe to tame these creatures and, in an ethically questionable manner, use them to fight against each other.

Based on the premise of bug catching — a popular hobby in Japan, where the games originated — the big goal in the Pokémon games, from the original Pokémon Red and Blue to the upcoming Pokémon Sun and Moon, is to collect all of these virtual creatures.

The first generation of Pokémon games began with 151 creatures, but the catalog has since expanded to more than 720. In Pokémon Go, only the original 151 are available — although some of the originals are apparently locked behind special events.

The games took the world by storm in the late 1990s — a big fad widely known as "Pokémania." The original handheld games, Pokémon Red and Blue, came out in 1998 in America, followed by Yellow in 1999 and Gold and Silver in 2000. With the games came spinoffs like Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Pinball in 1999, a popular TV show, movies, trading cards, and a lot of other merchandise. For a few years, Pokémon was on top of the world. (The franchise is still fairly big; it’s just not the cultural phenomenon that it once was.)

But since the games came out for Nintendo’s handheld consoles, fans all around the world have shared a dream: What if Pokémon weren’t limited to the games’ world? What if they were real and inhabited our world? What if we could all be Ash Ketchum, the TV show’s star trainer, who wanders the world in his quest to catch them all and earn his honors by defeating all the gym leaders? I want a Pikachu in real life, dammit!

Unfortunately, Pokémon aren’t real — at least not yet. But technology has evolved to be able to simulate a world in which Pokémon are real. That’s essentially what Pokémon Go attempts to do: By using your phone’s ability to track the time and your location, the game imitates what it would be like if Pokémon really were roaming around you at all times, ready to be caught and collected. And given that many original Pokémon fans are now adults, this idea has the extra benefit of hitting a sweet spot of nostalgia, helping boost its popularity.

Pokémon Go doesn’t play exactly like a typical Pokémon game

Pokémon Go is based on the original handheld games, but it also takes some liberties with the franchise.

First, the similarities: There are Pokémon, and you do catch them. There are also gym leaders and other trainers whom you can fight for fame, glory, and loot. You can also customize your in-game character’s look and name. And there’s also a (rather sexy) professor who helps get you started, particularly by giving you your first Pokémon.

Pokémon Go via Polygon

Besides that, the game makes some big changes. For one, the way you navigate the world is obviously different. In the handheld games, you simply use a controller to move around the in-game world the developers have made. In Pokémon Go, you have to travel around the real word, and the game uses your GPS and clock to detect your location on the in-game map and decide which Pokémon appear around you.

What’s more, the game does a lot to make you explore your real-world environment at different times. For example, if you go out to a park, you’ll probably see more grass- or bug-type Pokémon. If you go near a lake or ocean, you’ll be able to pick up more water types. And if you go out at night, you'll see more nocturnal fairy and ghost types.

This is further enhanced by PokéStops, which are essentially notable locations in the real world marked on your in-game map. You can go to these to nab items, including Poké Balls and eggs that can hatch into full Pokémon. It’s also possible to install special items at PokéStops that lure extra Pokémon, which also make the stops glow pink on the map so players know that hanging around will attract extra Pokémon.

This need to travel is the game’s depth, essentially: To catch them all (and earn the medals attached to catching Pokémon), you’re going to have to explore far and wide, during the day and night — like Ash Ketchum does in the TV show. It’s the only way to become the very best, like no one ever was.

The game monetizes on this, too: You can buy items in the store with real money that help you lure Pokémon. Since Pokémon Go is free to download and play, this is how the developers are making money off the game. (They’ll also probably make money off all the data they’re collecting.)

Another huge change is the combat. When catching Pokémon, you don’t fight them with your own team of Pokémon. Instead, the battle is between you and the creature directly: You swipe to throw a Poké Ball — the device used to capture Pokémon — in their direction, which then catches them.

In fact, there’s no traditional Pokémon battles in the game at all. When you fight gym leaders and other trainers, you don’t set up your team of six with four moves each and select among those four moves to outsmart your opponent, as you do in the handheld games. Instead, battles are largely decided by your Pokémon’s combat power — a stat attached to each of your Pokémon — and you tap the screen to make your Pokémon attack the enemy while swiping to dodge enemy attacks. A lot of the strategy is gone.

Since the game lacks traditional battles, the only way to make your Pokémon stronger and evolve them (Pokémon can evolve into stronger forms) is with special items, which you can get by catching Pokémon and fighting gym leaders. These activities also boost your trainer level, which opens up content like gyms and raises your chances of finding rarer Pokémon.

The game currently has no significant multiplayer capability, meaning you can’t battle your real-life friends or trade with them — two functionalities that are very big in the handheld games. (There are even competitive Pokémon tournaments with cash prizes.)

The original trailer suggests that these multiplayer features could come eventually, though, since they were originally advertised:

The lack of robust multiplayer features and traditional battles has disappointed some Pokémon fans. As Allegra Frank said at Polygon after a week of playing Pokémon Go, "I don’t think I like it. Tell me if I’m being too harsh on this game, but when I’m pitched ‘Pokémon in the real world,’ I have a certain expectation that I’m going to be playing a classic Pokémon game, with the added bonus of seeing Pikachu and Charmander within my actual surroundings."

Another big downside is the battery usage. Having a game like this on at all times can really drain your phone’s battery — to the point that there are now several guides out there on how to preserve your battery life. For the most part, this is really just an early technological hurdle that augmented reality games will have to overcome over time.

Pokémon Go isn’t the first augmented reality game — and it won’t be the last

Pokemon.com

Beyond realizing childhood dreams, Pokémon Go is many people’s introduction into a new type of game that blends the real world with a virtual one — what’s known as "augmented reality."

This isn’t like virtual reality, in which you put on glasses or a headset to fully immerse yourself in a virtual world. Instead, augmented reality games tap into technology to enhance the world around you — by, for example, putting an Abra on your toilet.

Imgur via Polygon

Why would somebody want this? Well, everyday living can get boring. So why not spice it up with some Pokémon?

Pokémon Go is perhaps the biggest augmented reality game to date. But it wasn’t the first and won’t be the last: This is a concept that game developers are looking to tap into more, as they build on the concept established in existing games like Ingress, Life Is Crime, and, yes, Pokémon Go.

Google even spoofed the idea for Pokémon Go for April Fools’ Day in 2014 (although it may have been a secret early preview, given that Niantic, which made Pokémon Go, began at Google):

Ingress, however, exposes a potential problem with augmented reality games. In Ingress, players can take over each other’s "portals," which require that players go to real-world locations to take. So players can potentially run into each other in the real world while they’re competing for a portal in the game.

The problem: When people get competitive, they can get aggressive. And there have been some reports of people getting into real-life arguments over the game. This is very tricky ground for future augmented reality game developers to tread, because they definitely don’t want real-world violence attached to their products.

Pokémon Go has already revealed some issues, too. Not only did four robbery suspects allegedly set up lure beacons on PokéStops to attract victims, but there are reports of injuries due to the game, and police have had to warn players about going into places they’re not supposed to. Chances are most players will be responsible and won’t run into these issues, but these are notable risks with directly attaching a video game to the real world.

Still, if executed correctly, these games can tap into a sense of childhood imagination and wonder that most other games can’t. Remember when you used to run around the playground imagining you’re Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, James Bond, or, maybe, Ash Ketchum, Pokémon master? I do! But I don’t have time for that anymore. (And I would probably get the police called on me if I tried.) These games do the imagining for you — by augmenting the world around you, either with Pokémon or portals you can hack.

It’s also a bit of an escape. While that certainly applies more to virtual reality, which can immerse you entirely in another world, Pokémon Go gives you the opportunity to for once forget about all the terrible shit happening out there, explore the beauty of the world, and catch some Pokémon along the way.

---

Watch: The Oculus Rift, reviewed

I don’t know when it happened, but I’m actually glad that it did. Within the past ten days, four different citrus-infused IPAs, from four well-regarded breweries, have made their way into my awareness. You see them above, starting at the left:

• Citradelic from New Belgium, whose operative citrus fruit is the tangerine;
• Rebel Grapefruit IPA from Sam Adams, obviously featuring our friend the grapefruit;
• “Enjoy By 5.30.16” Tangerine IPA from Stone, its fruit heritage self-explanatory, as part of Stone’s set-date “enjoy by” series;
• Hop Slice Session IPA from Deschutes, featuring the Meyer lemon.

I say that I “actually” enjoyed these beers, because I start out being highly skeptical of any beer you could classify as fruity. But these, which are different but all worthwhile from my POV, make vivid something I’d heard a million times but not really reflected on: that hops themselves, a powerful element of the IPA taste, bring a varying range of citrus flavors and smells to a brew.

And so I find in an authoritative piece on Citrus IPAs (which lists a number of other entries) on CraftBeer.com:

Cascade hops, of course, are redolent of grapefruit pith, and stylish Citra hops live up to their tangy namesake. Increasingly, brewers embellish these already citrusy IPAs with actual zest, peel or juice from grapefruits, oranges, lemons, and/or limes to create complementary flavor profiles ideal for both hopheads and lovers of fruit beer.

Worth checking out. Larger theme: America already becoming great again.

Jeb Bush finished a fiery riff about protecting the country as commander in chief but was met with total silence, the New York Times reports.

Sounding defeated, Bush said, “Please clap.”

"In America, you don't get what you don't ask for," says chef-restaurateur, Top Chef contestant, and cookbook author Dale Talde. "You have to punch and kick and scream to get what you want." On this week's episode of Special Sauce, I talk to Talde—one of the truly original, provocative thinkers in the food world today—about the foods he was raised on and the struggles he's faced. Read More

Celebrities love eliminating very specific foods from their diet and then claiming they've figured out the holy grail of health — despite limited scientific backing.

Now it seems athletes do it too.

According to his personal chef, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady eats a highly restrictive, plant-based diet that centers on what he deems "anti-inflammatory" foods. Other foods, chef Allen Campbell explains, are off the table:

No white sugar. No white flour. No MSG. I’ll use raw olive oil, but I never cook with olive oil. I only cook with coconut oil. Fats like canola oil turn into trans fats.... I use Himalayan pink salt as the sodium. I never use iodized salt.

[Tom] doesn’t eat nightshades, because they’re not anti-inflammatory. So no tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, or eggplants. Tomatoes trickle in every now and then, but just maybe once a month. I’m very cautious about tomatoes. They cause inflammation.

What else? No coffee. No caffeine. No fungus. No dairy.

Is this a good idea? On the one hand, there's plenty of evidence that diets rich in fruits and vegetables deliver important nutrients, reduce the risk for disease, and help people manage their bodyweight. So that part seems fine. Eating fresh food and cutting back on processed ingredients and sugar are always good ideas too.

Without getting into the obvious woo here — like why iodized salt and health oils are demonized — let's focus on the anti-inflammatory core of the diet. According to the best evidence we have, eliminating all sorts of specific foods in the name of "reducing inflammation" is absolutely unnecessary. And since these diets have gained a following in recent years (Gwyneth Paltrow has promoted one, as have Channing Tatum and Penelope Cruz), it's worth taking a closer look at the trend.

What's the point of an anti-inflammatory diet?

You can think about inflammation in the body in two ways.

There's helpful inflammation, as with your body's immune response to an attack by a foreign invader — your skin reddens and heats up to fight off bacteria in a cut.

There's also harmful inflammation: when your body's inflammatory response goes into overdrive, hampering its ability to fight off viruses and disease. One measure of inflammation is a blood marker called C-reactive protein (CRP). Researchers have found associations between higher levels of CRP and various chronic illnesses, including cancer, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. People who are inactive or obese or who eat an unhealthy diet seem to have higher levels of CRP in their systems too.

There are many ways to control chronic inflammation. A good amount of exercise, weight management, and medications can all help, as can diet. The idea behind anti-inflammatory diets is they focus on foods that reduce harmful inflammation in the body, promote healing, and stave off illnesses like cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Is there any science to back up these diets?

There's some evidence that following an anti-inflammatory diet can have benefits. But there's little reason to think you have to get anywhere near as specific or restrictive as Brady does. Cutting out junk food tends to be enough to do the trick.

Many of the popular diets out there — Mediterranean, low-carb, low-fat — all help reduce inflammation, explains Harvard cardiologist Christopher Cannon. "In any of these diets, people are cutting out saturated fat, doughnuts, french fries, all the bad things that promote inflammation. So that helps reduce inflammation very quickly."

So what about nightshade vegetables, like peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants? "That’s one level of specificity that goes beyond what would likely have a big influence," Cannon said.

Dr. Gerry Mullin, a Johns Hopkins gastroenterologist, thought much the same: He didn't know of any science to back up eliminating these vegetables to reduce inflammation. (I couldn't find any good research on this either.) Plus, he added, "Tomatoes are a staple of an anti-inflammatory diet. They have properties that attenuate the inflammatory response." So why Brady and others chose to shun them is unclear.

Eating an anti-inflammatory diet is basically eating a diet heavy in plants and low in junk food

Cannon noted that Mediterranean-style eating is a good example of an anti-inflammation diet: lots of fruits and vegetables, lean meat and fish, and whole grains. In his book The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Anti-Inflammation Diet, he also outlines a few basic principles:

1. Eat a well­-balanced variety of wholesome foods.

2. Eat only unsaturated fats.

3. Eat one good source of omega­-3 fatty acids every day.

4. Eat a lot of whole grains.

5. Eat lean sources of protein.

6. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.

7. Eliminate processed and refined foods as much as possible.

You'll notice that this is basically a healthy diet with no serious demands on cutting out whole food groups or certain vegetables. And that's about as far as the science goes. Anything more is overkill.

Wonk Wire: Philosophy majors actually earn more than welders.

As Cinderella stories go, the tale of how Brussels sprouts got so popular has to be even more impressive than that of kale—you can see it in the proliferation of sprout-based offerings on upscale menus everywhere. Whether you're on the Brussels sprout bandwagon or still on the fence, we've gathered 11 irresistible treatments for the humble sprouts—roasted, seared, deep-fried, au gratin, even layered in lasagna. Read More

The Obama administration has released the full, final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. There are 30 lengthy chapters, not including the annexes, procedural documents, or some special issues related to Japan.

This means an end to one of the primary arguments against the deal: that it's secret and no one actually knows what's in it. Now anyone will be able to see what's in it, and the war over whether it's a good deal or a bad one will begin in earnest.

Will that change any minds? Probably not. Most of the deal's provisions are pretty well-known at this point. The giant dump of text was only a few hours old when the AFL-CIO released a statement saying, "We are deeply disappointed that our policy recommendations and those of our trade reform allies in the environmental, consumer, public health, global development, and business sectors were largely ignored."

The deal, interestingly, is being released on Medium, which has become the venue of choice for politicians putting out major information.

For many years, researchers believed red wine might be a magical elixir. This notion dated back to the 1990s and what's known as the "French paradox" — the observation that the French drank lots of wine and had lower rates of cardiovascular disease.

We now know this is likely wrong. Scientists have since discovered that drinking very small amounts of any type of alcohol — no more than one drink a day for women, two for men — may have some modest health and heart benefits. There's nothing special about red wine on this score. It could be white wine, or beer, or whiskey.

This week, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a new study on this question, and it mostly jibes with this understanding. The researchers recruited 224 patients — who all had Type 2 diabetes and did not drink alcohol before enrolling in the trial — and randomly assigned them to three groups: They had to drink 5 ounces of either red wine, white wine, or mineral water every night with their dinner for two years. They were also given instructions to follow a Mediterranean diet with no calorie restriction.

After two years, the researchers found that the wine drinkers seemed to have better health outcomes than those who had just stuck to water. The red wine drinkers had slightly better results, although the effect wasn't huge.

In particular, both red and white wine drinkers did better on glucose control tests, and the red wine drinkers also saw improvements in their HDL (or "good") cholesterol (an increase of 0.05 mmol/L). So, the study suggests, a bit of wine every day seemed to be linked with better lipid and glucose control compared with just water.

Past research has found benefits from alcohol — not just wine per se

Now, there are a few important limitations on this latest study. It involved only adults with Type 2 diabetes. This also wasn't a "blind" study —participants knew what they were drinking, which might have biased the outcomes.

What's more, the researchers studied wine only, without comparing the effects of other types of alcohol. That's a key omission, because other research seems to suggest a moderate amount of any type of alcohol has benefits for the heart, blood lipid levels, and longevity.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

In short-term studies, where scientists measure physiological effects in people who drink moderately, alcohol generally seems to raise the amount of HDL (or good) cholesterol in the blood and decrease clotting, essentially acting as a blood thinner. Again, this seems to be as true of beer or liquor as of red or white wine.

Meanwhile, in long-term observational studies that compare drinkers and non-drinkers, these findings translate pretty definitively to better health outcomes for the light to moderate drinkers. Overwhelmingly, they had lower rates of heart disease and heart attacks and longer lives. Moderate drinkers also had lower rates of diabetes, another important risk factor for heart disease (although this result is less definitive).

So researchers have come to believe that wine, even red wine, probably has no extra health benefits above and beyond those that come from drinking a moderate amount of alcohol, period.

That said, any potential benefit from drinking needs to be weighed against the risks: Too much alcohol can increase the risk of premature death and cause a host of other medical problems. And researchers find that all the health benefits come from very moderate intake — up to one serving a day for women and two for men. (See the chart above for a breakdown of what one serving looks like.) Anything more, and that benefit disappears.

To learn more about what we know and don't know about red wine, see our Show Me the Evidence review.

Regardless of the exact flavors I ended up using in my recipe, we can all agree on a few things here. Great carne asada should taste, first, of the beef. It should be buttery, rich, and juicy, with a charred, smoky flavor. It should be tender enough to fill a taco or burrito, but substantial enough to be served as a steak. Finally, the marinade should have a good balance of flavors, with no single ingredient overwhelming any other. Read More

We stuff this vegetarian twist on the iconic New Orleans sandwich with crispy, juicy, cornmeal-breaded shiitakes to substitute for the traditional fried seafood. A super-tangy remoulade sauce cuts through fat and inhibitions alike, getting you into the true, oops-one-too-many New Orleans spirit. Read More