James.galbraith

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The Google-backed firm taught a reinforcement learning algorithm to control the fiery plasma inside a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor. From a report: The inside of a tokamak -- the doughnut-shaped vessel designed to contain a nuclear fusion reaction -- presents a special kind of chaos. Hydrogen atoms are smashed together at unfathomably high temperatures, creating a whirling, roiling plasma that's hotter than the surface of the sun. Finding smart ways to control and confine that plasma will be key to unlocking the potential of nuclear fusion, which has been mooted as the clean energy source of the future for decades. At this point, the science underlying fusion seems sound, so what remains is an engineering challenge. That's where DeepMind comes in. The artificial intelligence firm, backed by Google parent company Alphabet, has previously turned its hand to video games and protein folding, and has been working on a joint research project with the Swiss Plasma Center to develop an AI for controlling a nuclear fusion reaction. In stars, which are also powered by fusion, the sheer gravitational mass is enough to pull hydrogen atoms together and overcome their opposing charges. On Earth, scientists instead use powerful magnetic coils to confine the nuclear fusion reaction, nudging it into the desired position and shaping it like a potter manipulating clay on a wheel. The coils have to be carefully controlled to prevent the plasma from touching the sides of the vessel: this can damage the walls and slow down the fusion reaction. (There's little risk of an explosion as the fusion reaction cannot survive without magnetic confinement). But every time researchers want to change the configuration of the plasma and try out different shapes that may yield more power or a cleaner plasma, it necessitates a huge amount of engineering and design work. Conventional systems are computer-controlled and based on models and careful simulations, but they are, Ambrogio Fasoli, director of the Swiss Plasma Center at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. says, "complex and not always necessarily optimized." DeepMind has developed an AI that can control the plasma autonomously. A paper published in the journal Nature describes how researchers from the two groups taught a deep reinforcement learning system to control the 19 magnetic coils inside TCV, the variable-configuration tokamak at the Swiss Plasma Center, which is used to carry out research that will inform the design of bigger fusion reactors in the future.

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According to Senate Bill 1164, medical officials who conduct abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy could lose their medical licenses or face up to a year in state prison.

“The state has an obligation to protect life, and that is what this bill is about,” one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Nancy Barto, said during the debate. “A 15-week-old baby in the womb has a fully formed nose, lips, eyelids, they suck their thumbs. They feel pain. That’s what this bill is about.”

All state Democrats opposed the bill, noting it does not make exceptions for rape or incest.

"Until we find a way to completely stop rape and incest, we cannot put barriers in place for those survivors to have the freedom to dictate their own futures,'' Sen. Christine Marsh said.

Despite the trauma it induces for survivors, Barto said she doesn’t see any problem with the new bill or its lack of exemptions.

"The baby inside of a woman is a separate life and needs to be protected," she said in a statement. "All life is sacred."

While the bill is currently unconditional, legislators like Barto said they are counting on the Supreme Court’s challenge of the Mississippi law to overturn precedent of Roe v. Wade and enable abortion to be up to the discretion of individual states, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

“A ruling in that case is expected in June. This measure makes Arizona ready to enforce that law if and when that decision is made,” Barto said.

The debate also brought up the issue of whether the Arizona law banning abortion would create two classes of pregnant women, meaning a divide between those who could afford to travel for an abortion and those who cannot. Those who are able to afford to leave the state have an ability to avoid the law by traveling to states like California and Nevada that have protections for abortion rights in place. The Arizona law does not bar women from traveling to other states for the procedure.

"This bill will not stop the ones with money from continuing to access that care,'' Sen. Martin Quezada said.

"It will only add unnecessary financial obstacles to obtaining an abortion and therefore force those who do not have their funds to continue a government-mandated pregnancy against their will," he added.

According to the Associated Press, the latest data from the Arizona Department of Health Services found that of the 13,186 abortions performed in Arizona in 2020, 636 were after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The bill passed Tuesday is not the only jab at reproductive rights Arizona legislators have taken. The state is known to have some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, including one that would "automatically outlaw it" if the Supreme Court were to fully overturn Roe v. Wade, according to Axios.

“Arizona politicians are banking on the Supreme Court upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban so they can quickly strip Arizonians of their rights and begin enforcement,” Planned Parenthood Arizona CEO Brittany Fonteno said in a statement. “It’s a cowardly path to a cruel end — denying Arizonians the right to make their own health care decisions.”

The legislation will now go to the House, where approval is likely. Gov. Doug Ducey has already expressed his agenda for new limits in the state and has signed every abortion restriction that has reached his desk since taking office.

Reproductive rights are fundamental human rights. No one should be coerced or gaslit into making a decision that may not be what they want for their body and health. Additionally, policies that ban or limit abortion do not decrease the number of abortions, as some GOP officials believe. Instead, they restrict a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy and increase the number of unsafe abortions and maternal health problems that occur.

How Trump and his allies will try to game media coverage of his insurrection attempt.

Turley began by saying the move to use emergency powers was “quite excessive.” Then, without a smirk, without even a smidgen of self-conscious reflection on what a true sociopath he sounds like, Jonathan Turley said this: "By this rationale, they could have cracked down on the civil rights movement. They could have arrested Martin Luther King."

That’s an amazing statement coming from the media outlet that truly hates Black civil disobedience (see: Black Lives Matter protests). It’s also deeply offensive, since it is complete make-believe. 

For one, one of the most famous essays written in American history was written in a Birmingham, Alabama, jail on April 16, 1963—by Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. was in jail for “demonstrating without a permit.” He had been in jail for four days before he wrote his essay. Unlike the Canadian trucker convoy, King’s law-breaking had to do with a racist judge, in a racist state, saying that Black people couldn’t hold a protest.

If Jonathan Turley wants to speak to the history of “excessive” use and abuse of state powers, Turley need only look to the at least 28 other times Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and jailed. Blackhistory.com has some of America’s lowlights:

January 26, 1956 -- He was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama as part of a “Get Tough” campaign to intimidate the bus boycotters. Four days later, on January 30, his home was bombed.

March 22, 1956 -- King, Rosa Parks and more than 100 others were arrested on charges of organizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott in protest of Parks' treatment.

September 3, 1958 -- While attempting to attend the arraignment of a man accused of assaulting Abernathy, King is arrested outside Montgomery’s Recorder’s Court and charged with loitering. He is released a short time later on $100 bond.

[...]

October 19, 1960 -- He was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia during a sit-in while waiting to be served at a restaurant. He was sentenced to four months in jail, but after intervention by then presidential candidate John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, he was released.

[...]

July 27, 1962 -- He was arrested again and jailed for holding a prayer vigil in Albany, Georgia.

[...]

February 2, 1965 -- He was arrested in Selma, Alabama during a voting rights demonstration, but the demonstrations continued leading to demonstrators being beaten at the Pettus Bridge by state highway patrolmen and sheriff’s deputies.

Those ellipses above skip over other frivolous arrests of a man fighting for the right to be treated like a person, not a bunch of dunderheads who want the right to be shitheads because they’re afraid of medicine.

Here’s a fun response.

By Maxwell Yezpitelok Published: February 16th, 2022

By Maxwell Yezpitelok Published: February 16th, 2022

The House passed a U.S. Postal Service reform bill last week with a huge vote, 342-92, with 120 Republican votes. Yay, bipartisanship, right? Here’s how much Republicans care about bipartisanship: “Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, objected to a unanimous consent request from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to make a technical fix to the bill. Scott argued that there are issues with the legislation and that the Senate should slow down and work to improve it.”

That’s your Republican answer to Democrats’ calls for bipartisanship. A bill that 120 House Republicans voted for, that has 14 Republican cosponsors in the Senate, that even Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy supports, is getting held up over a clerical error. And don’t for one minute believe that this is just Sen. Rick Scott going rogue. This has Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s stamp all over it.

There aren’t issues with the bill. It’s a simple clerical error Schumer was trying to fix. Last Thursday, Schumer moved to advance a version of the bill that was incorrect. The House clerk had sent over a version of it that didn’t have all the amendments. Once the error was discovered, the House moved quickly to correct it, and the Senate could have done the same with a simple unanimous consent vote—nobody would have even had to vote or come to the floor. But the Republican who is in charge of getting more Republicans elected to the Senate said no. No simple fix. He doesn’t care how many Republicans voted for it in the House, nor how many Republican senators support it—enough to pass it easily.

Schumer knew this was coming. Over the weekend, his staff released a statement from a spokesperson about it. “Senate Republicans keep saying they want bipartisanship but one of their leaders is standing in the way of the Senate from taking action this week on historic, bipartisan Postal Service Reform.

“Now, Senator Rick Scott is threatening to block the same fix by Unanimous Consent on Monday in the Senate,” the statement continued. “It is time for Senate Republicans practice what they preach and rein in reckless Rick Scott’s political games so we can pass bipartisan legislation.”

How about it’s time to stop fixating on “bipartisan” and start calling out Republicans for being assholes? How about Democrats don’t spend the rest of this election year chasing the bipartisan unicorn?

And how about Democrats really stop doing this:

If you’re really going to try to trash Republicans over their failure to get the job for America done, don’t give them credit for the Democrats’ hard work at the same time!

The new law has a perfectly good name: the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.” Why in the world are Democrats giving Republicans any credit for it? Particularly when the majority of them—206 in the House and 30 in the Senate—voted against that bill.

Chasing bipartisanship has been a fool’s game for years. Because Republicans don’t give a damn about it unless they can somehow twist it to screw Democrats, like Sen. Susan Collins has been doing for years. The Democrats’ bipartisanship fetish is what has given Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema the power to destroy President Biden’s agenda. It’s stopped filibuster reform, which has in turn killed efforts by all the other Democrats to save democracy. 

Meanwhile, Republicans are threatening to shut down government over ridiculous conspiracy theories and taking extreme measures to block Biden’s critical nominees, in this case to the Federal Reserve, which is kind of important right now. 

The Postal Service reform bill will pass, no thanks to Republicans and probably not for at least another two weeks. The government will not shut down Friday, no thanks to Republicans. But the spending bill they pass will only last three weeks and it will continue to force government to function under Trump spending levels. It’s 2022 and the Biden administration is still operating with budgets passed in 2020 because that’s what Republicans want.

It’s about time Democrats stop trying to plead with Republicans to play nice and work with them, then whine about hypocrisy when they don’t. It’s about time Democrats start labeling them what they are: insurrectionist obstructionist assholes who want the nation to fail.

And is it too much to ask that Democrats call the damned infrastructure bill by its name?

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Trying to drain the emotion out of politics is a one-way train to defeat.

Republicans get their dream nominees, while Democrats struggle to confirm moderates.

When Donald Trump was president, reading through his Supreme Court nominees’ records felt like attending a dinner party at the unseelie court. The rules were unclear and constantly shifting. Menace lurked behind every corner. And, especially if you are a Democrat, there was an unsettling sense that you would be the dessert.

We are now two weeks from Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement, which means that I have now had sufficient time to explore the records of three of the most likely replacements — federal Judges Ketanji Brown Jackson and Michelle Childs, and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger — and the experience could not be more unlike studying the records of Republican contenders.

Say what you will about Trump’s justices, but before they got on the Court, they were quite open about just how eager they are to abolish foundational principles of American law.

Justice Neil Gorsuch reportedly got his current job because Trump’s advisers admired his plans to gut federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also a scourge of the EPA, who went out of his way to criticize Roe v. Wade months before his Supreme Court nomination. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was an outspoken opponent of abortion and same-sex marriage. She also called for an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment, and criticized two Supreme Court decisions that largely rejected efforts to sabotage Obamacare.

Biden’s top candidates aren’t just very different people ideologically, they are temperamentally nothing like Trump’s evangelists for movement conservatism. If you want to discover their views on abortion, guns, or affirmative action — to take three issues that are currently pending before the Supreme Court — you’d be hard-pressed to find much in their judicial opinions or their public speeches.

So why are Biden’s possible nominees so cautious, while Trump’s were so open about just how eager they are to burn things to the ground?

One possible explanation is that Biden, like nearly every other human being who has ever drawn breath, is a more cautious person than Donald Trump. Another is that, with a Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court, liberal judges have little incentive to write bold opinions. It’s not like this Court is going to embrace such an opinion.

But an important answer to this question can be found in this Daily Kos chart by Stephen Wolf:

Stephen Wolf/Daily Kos Elections

The fact that each state gets two senators, regardless of population, has a massive distorting effect on American politics — especially because Republicans are more likely to control low-population states. Thanks to this malapportionment, every voter in red Wyoming has 68 times more impact on the makeup of the Senate than each voter in blue California.

In the current Senate, Democrats and Republicans each control the same number of seats, but Democratic senators represent nearly 42 million more people than their Republican counterparts. Indeed, if the United States chose senators in free and fair elections where every citizen’s vote counts equally, Republicans would not have controlled the Senate since the late 1990s.

Because every federal judge must be confirmed by the Senate, Senate malapportionment is the primary reason why conservative Republicans dominate the Supreme Court — although the Electoral College, which allowed both George W. Bush and Donald Trump to occupy the White House after losing the popular vote, sure didn’t help. If the United States were governed by the principle of one person, one vote, President Barack Obama would have filled the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat in 2016, and none of Trump’s justices would have been confirmed.

Indeed, Republicans have enjoyed an unfair advantage in the Senate for so long that it is possible that Democrats might have succeeded in blocking Justice Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed by a 52-48 vote in 1991, if they were fairly represented in the Senate. Chief Justice John Roberts, who won confirmation in a lopsided 78-22 vote in 2005, likely would have still been confirmed in a Democratic Senate. But President Bush might have picked a more moderate nominee than the GOP partisan Samuel Alito if Republicans did not enjoy a structural advantage in the Senate.

The result of this imbalance, in other words, isn’t simply that Republicans now control at least two or three Supreme Court seats that they would not control if the Senate were fairly apportioned. Senate malapportionment means that Republican presidents can nominate the most strident Republican partisans and the most outspoken conservative ideologues, and still expect those nominees to be confirmed.

Democratic presidents, meanwhile, risk having their nominees blocked, Merrick Garland-style, even when the president enjoys majority support from the nation as a whole. And even when Democrats do control the Senate, their majority frequently depends on conservative Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), each of whom could potentially veto a nominee they deem too liberal.

This structural imbalance, more than anything, explains why Republicans get to appoint their fantasy nominees to the Supreme Court, while Biden’s potential nominees range from dully moderate liberals to humdrum centrists.

Republicans don’t really have a credible case against any of the three most likely nominees

Ketanji Brown Jackson has had a high judicial profile for a pretty long time.

In 2016, Jackson was one of a handful of candidates President Obama interviewed for the doomed Supreme Court nomination that eventually went to Garland. She was also Biden’s very first judicial appointment — Biden promoted her from a powerful trial court in Washington, DC to an even more powerful appeals court. And Jackson is Black, which is relevant to her chances because Biden promised to name a Black woman to the nation’s highest Court.

So anyone who knows anything about judicial politics could tell that Jackson was a leading contender for a Supreme Court nomination under Biden. When Jackson faced a confirmation hearing last April, Senate Republicans had a prime opportunity to unload any dirt they’d uncovered on her, and potentially soften her up for a future Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Yet her hearing was a stodgy, entirely forgettable affair. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), a hardline conservative who once claimed that federal child labors laws are unconstitutional, spent much of his question time asking about sentencing policy. A few senators spent her hearing attacking Demand Justice, a left-leaning advocacy group whose only apparent connection to Jackson is that it supported her nomination. Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spent the bulk of his time asking how she understands vague terms like “judicial activism.”

It was obvious, in other words, that Republican opposition researchers had uncovered nothing in Jackson’s record that could be used to build a persuasive case against her, even to other Republicans.

Similar things can be said about Kruger and Childs. Profiles of Kruger bear headlines like “Potential Biden Supreme Court pick Leondra Kruger known as moderate in California,” and “Potential Supreme Court nominee Kruger is described as a moderately liberal justice on California’s top court.” And Childs has even earned some tepid praise from Senate Republicans — Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) described her as a “strong candidate” for the Supreme Court, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described Childs as a “quality person” and “somebody I can see myself supporting.”

Jackson, Kruger, and Childs all have pretty boring records

Even when Jackson, Kruger, and Childs hear politically charged cases, they typically dispose of them in fairly narrow opinions.

After a criminal defendant challenged a California law requiring police to collect a DNA sample from people arrested on felony charges, for example, Kruger got rid of the case in an opinion arguing that this defendant was the wrong person to challenge the law. When Childs was assigned a case asking her to strike down South Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage, she sat on the case until the appeals court that oversees federal trial judges in her region ruled that states may not deny marriage rights to such a couple. Then Childs struck down South Carolina’s law on the grounds that she was bound by the appeals court’s decision.

Even when these potential justices do reach decisions that might upset Republicans, moreover, those decisions are often highly caveated. In Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn, for example, Jackson rejected the Trump administration’s argument that “a President’s senior-level aides have absolute testimonial immunity” from a congressional subpoena, after a House committee subpoenaed former Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn.

While this was a loss for the Trump administration, it was a minor one. Jackson also wrote that “the specific information that high-level presidential aides may be asked to provide in the context of such questioning can be withheld from the committee on the basis of a valid privilege.” So, while she would have required McGahn to physically present himself to the committee, he could have still refused to answer questions that are subject to executive privilege. (Jackson’s McGahn opinion sparked a partisan food fight in the appeals court, and a panel dominated by Republican judges eventually ordered the case to be dismissed in a party-line vote.)

Similarly, in Middleton v. Andino — a decision handed down at the height of the pandemic — Childs temporarily halted a South Carolina law requiring absentee voters to have a witness sign their ballots, reasoning that such a requirement increases the risk that voters could transmit Covid-19 to such witnesses, or vice versa. That decision was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court in an unsigned, two-paragraph order.

But Childs’s full opinion in Middleton is also quite modest. It rejected other voting rights claims brought by the same plaintiffs, including an argument that the state’s ban on campaign workers assisting voters with their absentee ballots violates the Constitution. And, in any event, Childs can hardly be faulted because she failed to anticipate how a Supreme Court, that frequently ignores the text of federal laws and of the Constitution in voting rights cases, would have approached the novel legal questions that arise when an election is held during a historic public health crisis.

The overarching picture that emerges from all three women’s records is that they are cautious, disinclined towards expansive decisions, and more interested in deciding the narrow legal issues that are directly before them than in sparking a revolution that overturns decades of well-established precedents.

Those are all very positive traits in anyone who aspires to lead an unelected branch of government that is not supposed to set US policy. But Democrats who hoped that Biden’s nominee might provide a proudly liberal counterbalance to Trump’s movement conservative reactionaries are likely to be disappointed.

If Republicans continue to appoint their most fervent partisans and ideologues, while Democrats struggle to appoint cautious moderates, the law will continue its march further and further to the right.

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"Facebook is threatening it will simply pull out of Europe altogether if it is no longer able to share data about European users with its U.S. operations, applications, and data centres," reports ITWire. It's customary for regulatory filings to preemptively declare a wide variety of possible future hazards, and in that spirit a recently-filed Meta financial statement cites a ruling by the EU's Court of Justice (in July of 2020) voiding a U.S. law called the Privacy Shield (which Meta calls one legal basis for its current dara-transferring practices). Though courts are now determining the ruling's ramifications, ITWire notes that "with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) well in force, the U.S. Privacy Shield principles were found non-compliant and consequently invalid." So while that ruling affects every American company, including cloud companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, it's Facebook/Meta that "says stopping transatlantic data transfers will have a devastating impact on its targeted online advertisements capabilities." Read it yourself, in Meta's own words: "If a new transatlantic data transfer framework is not adopted and we are unable to continue to rely on Standard Contractual Clauses [now also subject to new judical scrutiny] or rely upon other alternative means of data transfers from Europe to the United States, we will likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe, which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations." Of course, the filing also cites other hazards like the possibility of new legislation restricting Facebook's ability to collect data about minors, complaining that such legislation "may also result in limitations on our advertising services or our ability to offer products and services to minors in certain jurisdictions." And in addition, "We are, and expect to continue to be, the subject of investigations, inquiries, data requests, requests for information, actions, and audits by government authorities and regulators in the United States, Europe, and around the world, particularly in the areas of privacy, data protection, law enforcement, consumer protection, civil rights, content moderation, and competition..." "Orders issued by, or inquiries or enforcement actions initiated by, government or regulatory authorities could cause us to incur substantial costs, expose us to unanticipated civil and criminal liability or penalties (including substantial monetary remedies), interrupt or require us to change our business practices in a manner materially adverse to our business, result in negative publicity and reputational harm, divert resources and the time and attention of management from our business, or subject us to other structural or behavioral remedies that adversely affect our business." (Thanks to Slashdot reader juul_advocate for sharing the story!)

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Really you should never share any art with anyone.

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Kelly thought this one was too mean. Well, she'll get hers in the end.

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Here’s what to do if you regularly wish you could hire someone to make all your choices for you.

Life is a neverending series of decisions: Who to play with at recess, who to take to the school dance, what to major in, where to go for happy hour, where to live, whether to end a relationship. Some of these decisions bear little weight on the rest of your life, but others can have huge consequences. Choosing to relocate across the country for a job, for example, has a ripple effect, impacting finances, routines, and, ultimately, happiness.

Much of this decision-making is difficult. Weighing options is especially hard due to certain biases that can lead you astray, says Katy Milkman, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of the podcast Choiceology, and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

These biases can include over- or underestimating the likelihood of something happening to you (like getting ripped off on a big purchase, or being the victim of a crime) based on whether your friends have experienced something similar or how much you see it covered in the media. Another reason why decision-making is hard, Milkman says, is the propensity to overweigh the instant gratification or the instant pain of a decision over the long-term consequences. (Who hasn’t gone food shopping hungry only to later realize nothing they purchased could pass for an actual meal?)

The fact is, people make a ton of choices a day, from the micro (what should I wear today?) to the life-changing (do I buy this house?). The sheer number of decisions that require attention can be taxing. Decision-making “is made harder when we have more choices, and that can feel overwhelming,” Milkman says. “It can be hard to actually do the work necessary to cut through the noise and get to the information when we have a large number of choices to make. It’s that much more exhausting.”

Rest assured, none of these challenges are insurmountable, and you can learn to make smarter decisions. Vox spoke with three experts who explain how.

Zero in on what you really want

Without clear objectives for what you want to achieve with a decision, you might focus on the wrong things, says Ralph Keeney, a decision-making consultant and the author of Give Yourself a Nudge: Helping Smart People Make Smarter Personal and Business Decisions.

Keeney advises asking yourself, “What do I hope to achieve by addressing this choice?” and focus on aspects that aren’t easily quantifiable. This can even be applied to smaller decisions, like where to grab dinner with friends. If your goal is to have a meaningful conversation, you should choose a quieter setting. If one of your friends needs to get home early to relieve the babysitter, you should opt for a spot near their home that takes reservations.

When it comes to the bigger things, this approach still works. For example, when weighing multiple job offers, think about what aspects of a new job would make your life better, aside from salary: work-life balance, commute time, benefits.

Don’t dwell on small choices

While it’s worth taking time to settle larger decisions, don’t expend too much time and energy on the small stuff, Milkman says. “People can get freaked out by thinking, ‘I have to take all these approaches, I’ll never get through the day,’” Milkman says. “What to make for lunch or what to wear in the morning or who to have drinks with — it’s reasonable to not worry about this stuff.”

And don’t stress about the quality of your decision-making on these small choices either. Although the term decision fatigue — i.e., the more decisions you make during the day, the more likely you are to make bad ones — is buzzworthy, Milkman says research doesn’t support its supposed effects. “Having to make 10 choices a day versus two choices doesn’t mean your 10th choice will be worse,” she says. “There’s no evidence of that.” So don’t spend too much time thinking about what ice cream flavor to get after a long day: It won’t be the wrong choice.

Decide as much as you can in advance

In some instances, making a decision before you’re actually in a specific scenario can help you avoid being swayed by outside forces, or ending up overwhelmed by the number of choices available. Going to the grocery store armed with a list can help you get everything you need and not just three cucumbers and some cheese. Choosing how much money you’re comfortable spending ahead of a night out, or opting to use protection before having sex, are other decisions worth making in advance, Milkman says. “There’s all sorts of situations when, in the heat of the moment, you might make a decision you later regret,” she says. “Pre-committing to a plan can prevent you from giving into those urges that could be bad.”

Get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion for the big stuff

Don’t make a major decision in a vacuum, Milkman says. Get a handful of opinions — ideally from people with prior experience in the topic at hand. “The more expertise they have, the less likely they are to base their evaluations on a bias, and they’re more likely to come up with something that’s reasonable,” Milkman says.

If you’re thinking about adopting a puppy, ask friends and family with pets about the biggest challenges of animal parenthood, and whether they think you’re cut out for the job. Talk to each person individually, Milkman says, so you’ll get their opinions without any outside influence.

Be mindful of your emotions

Emotions get a bad rap for negatively influencing decision-making. However, Leonard Mlodinow, author of Emotional: How Feelings Shape Our Thinking, says it’s impossible to divorce emotions from logic. The key is to understand how emotions are impacting your choices. For example, it’s not a good idea to make big decisions when you’re grieving, or after you’ve just gotten into a fight with your partner, since you’re not going to be in the best headspace. Understanding that, for example, anger makes us take more risks can help crystallize why you may want to aggressively tailgate the car that just cut you off on the highway.

Realizing your emotions are pulling you in a certain direction can make you better equipped to accept these feelings for what they are, Mlodinow says, and to eventually regulate them. “Do not try to suppress your emotions,” he says. “You’re not really successful at overcoming emotions, and all it does is put stress into your life.” Instead, regulate the emotion through a process called reappraisal, where you create new contexts for a situation. For instance, instead of seething in rage because your boss left you off a meeting invite, reappraise it, and tell yourself that they were in a big hurry and didn’t realize they forgot to add you. Another tactic is called expression, which could look like getting all your emotions out by journaling. From a decision-making perspective, this might look like venting to a friend about your frustrating day at work, and then revisiting the idea of whether you actually want to quit your job.

Be thoughtful about how you use pros and cons lists

Mlodinow isn’t a huge fan of pros and cons lists. “What you really want is not that simple,” he says. “It’s based on very complex and very subtle beliefs, memories.”

However, Milkman thinks they can still be a useful tool. When you force yourself to spell out the good and the bad in each choice, you have to slow down and think about your priorities and values. For example, when deciding whether to skip a friend’s upcoming wedding due to the high cost of attending multiple nuptials in a year, a pros and cons list would push you to think about how highly you value this friendship versus your goal of putting more money into savings. Your actions should be authentic representations of your needs — and a pros and cons list can be a helpful way of zeroing in on what you really want.

Think of decisions as opportunities

Don’t think of decisions just as protective measures meant to prevent you from making your life worse. You can make choices that make a good situation even better, Keeney says. Deciding to take a pottery course or to form a book club can be net positives that enrich your life. “What decision can I make to make my life more interesting in the future?” Keeney says. “If you think of some alternatives and you pursue one, your life didn’t get worse because you decided to think of that.”

The mayor’s “fishgate” debacle highlights the need for more nuanced food politics.

Vegans are often caricatured as ascetic zealots, ready to spill paint on the first person they see wearing a fur coat, or ruin the next dinner party they attend by sharing graphic details about how animals are turned into meat.

But as with many social movements, a vocal minority has come to represent the whole, while the data tells a very different story of who is and isn’t a vegan.

For most people who try it, veganism is short-lived. A study in 2014 by animal advocacy group Faunalytics found that 84 percent of self-defined vegetarians and vegans eventually go back to eating meat. One survey of 1,789 vegetarian Brits found that over one-third of them “cheat” when they’re drunk, and only one-fifth said they rarely drop their dietary standards. In fact, Faunalytics’ research found that a leading reason for people quitting vegetarianism and veganism was because it was too hard to maintain a “pure diet.”

In a recently published follow-up study, Faunalytics found that even among those who generally stick with veganism or vegetarianism months into their journey, a little over half still ate a small amount of animal products.

Knowing the average self-defined vegetarian eats meat now and then, and that most vegans quit, the news that New York City Mayor Eric Adams occasionally eats fish while saying he eats a strict plant-based diet came as no surprise to me — nor did the finger-pointing backlash in the media and on Twitter. (Disclosure: Mayor Adams’s senior assistant is a friend of mine.)

Grub Street called allegations over his fish-eating “explosive,” and Eater reported Adams was “under fire” for repeatedly ordering fish. When a Politico reporter asked an Adams spokesperson about the fish allegation on Saturday, the official denied it. When pressed by reporters, days later, Adams replied, “Let me be clear: Changing to a plant-based diet saved my life, and I aspire to be plant-based 100 percent of the time. I want to be a role model for people who are following or aspire to follow a plant-based diet, but as I said, I am perfectly imperfect, and have occasionally eaten fish.”

Adams’s spokesperson shouldn’t have lied in the first place, especially when some suspect the mayor has stretched the truth on other matters. But the initial denial wasn’t surprising: When high-profile vegans bend the rules, the public reaction can get ugly.

Critics are often quick to judge veganism as a strict ideology and lifestyle that demands far too much of its adherents, but when its adherents fail to meet those demands, those critics swiftly brand them as hypocrites. You just can’t win if you’re an imperfect human who is also concerned about animal agriculture’s enormous contribution to any number of problems — from climate change to animal cruelty to personal and public health crises — and wants to adjust their diet accordingly, though maybe not completely.

It’s tempting to chalk up the melee over Adams’s food choices to the cynical Twitter mob and political media set on scoring easy points against a politician unpopular with much of the Democratic Party’s left-of-center contingent (even if that unpopularity isn’t necessarily shared with New York voters as a whole). But I think there’s something bigger to be learned from it: our glaring inability to have a nuanced conversation about food choices and food politics.

The case for loosening the rules of veganism

You could say that Adams just shouldn’t call himself a vegan or strictly plant-based if he eats any amount of animal products, but there’s value to normalizing being an imperfect vegan — which is exactly what many vegans are.

Vox’s Jerusalem Demsas put it well in a tweet: “It’s bad that being 90% vegan or vegetarian means that you’re no longer in the club. Would be a lot more valuable if 50% of people were vegan half the time than if just 2% of the population were vegan 100% of the time.”

The more purist sect of the vegan movement would disagree with that idea and disapprove of Adams’s occasional fish consumption, arguing that any support of America’s cruel and polluting factory farm system is unjust. But most who advocate for veganism long enough begin to lower their expectations of people and institutions after learning just how difficult it is to influence one person’s diet, let alone the corporate and public policies that shape how people eat.

Loosening the rules of veganism, perhaps by elevating the fuzzy term “plant-based,” which Adams is more fond of using to describe himself than “vegan,” is a way to welcome more people into the club — hopefully inspiring more people to eat more vegan food even if not 100 percent of the time. Imagine how much smaller the climate movement would be if, to join, members could never travel by plane or buy new clothes (or eat a burger, for that matter).

From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, the US vegan movement did primarily focus on a 100 percent, all-or-nothing approach to eating. That approach generated more attention for the cause, but didn’t have much of an effect on broader food politics: Meat consumption continued to rise while the share of vegans and vegetarians went largely unchanged.

Even though Americans tell pollsters they don’t want animals abused for food, it’s simply too hard for most people to become and stay vegan in a world not built for veganism. And most people are unwilling to pay a premium for the tiny sliver of animal products produced in higher-welfare conditions — that is, if such animal welfare claims can even be trusted.

So, over the last decade, much of the vegan movement embraced less-meat campaigns like Meatless Monday, Vegan Before 6 pm, Reducetarianism, and Weekday Vegetarianism. One group simply advocates that people stop eating chickens, since they suffer disproportionately compared to cattle and pigs — and make up 95 percent of land animals raised for food. In other words, a no-chicken diet has nearly the same impact on animal welfare as a vegetarian diet.

That fact should call into question the utility of labels like “vegetarian” and “vegan,” since they fail to fully capture the real-world impact of food choices. Rather, thinking more about the animal welfare, environmental, and health effects of different animal products, and the quantity in which they’re consumed, is more useful — though this approach doesn’t slot nicely into a simple label.

Amanda Northrop/Vox

Whether this shift to more nuanced less-meat messaging has had a significant effect is also up for debate — Americans continue to eat record amounts of meat, though they’re also eating record amounts of plant-based alternatives (and tofu).

But the “less meat, more plants” messaging certainly helped make the conversation more palatable to Americans, only about 5 percent of whom identify as vegetarian but around a quarter of whom say they are cutting back on meat.

Aside from messaging, there’s no shortage of changes that could be easily made in grocery stores, restaurants, and other places where people eat that would influence them to consume more plant-based food, whether or not they think of themselves as vegetarian or vegan. Those changes include notes on restaurant menus that explain the environmental impact of meat, selling meat and dairy alternatives next to animal products in grocery stores, placing vegetarian dishes next to meat-based dishes on menus, and making plant-based food more affordable.

But to really move the needle on reducing meat consumption — something humanity must do if we’re to get anywhere close to reaching Paris climate agreement targets — we need to focus on politicians’ platforms more than their own food choices. That means implementing policies to modify meat-heavy menus with more plant-based foods, something Adams is bent on accomplishing.

How Adams is trying to change the way New Yorkers eat

Both progressives and animal welfare supporters have serious gripes with some of Adams’s policy proposals, such as bringing back solitary confinement to Rikers Island, rolling back cash bail reform, and installing machines that drown city rats in an alcohol and vinegar solution. (Notably, Adams has spoken more about going vegan for his health and the environment, rather than for animal welfare.)

At the same time, it’s difficult to find another politician who’s as willing to challenge America’s unsustainable meat habit that other politicians, including many of his fellow Democrats, help perpetuate.

As Brooklyn borough president, Adams advocated for Meatless Monday in 15 Brooklyn public schools (which was implemented), and worked with then-Mayor de Blasio to bring it to all 1,700 New York City public schools.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

He also advocated for Meatless Monday at 11 public hospitals, a plant-based nutrition program at Bellevue Hospital (which was also implemented and is now expanding city-wide), and committed $1 million to urban agriculture. Now as mayor he’s phasing in “Vegan Fridays” for the city’s school lunch program.

Of course, Vegan Fridays was criticized, too. Some noted that meals weren’t totally vegan, or they weren’t sufficiently healthy. Implementing city-wide changes to how citizens eat can be just as tough as change at the individual level, but I hope more of us give it a try — even if we do it imperfectly.

We knew that former unlawfully appointed acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf was corruptly campaigning for the insurrectionist president while on the taxpayer dime, dispatched to campaign stops in states including Arizona and Texas before the 2020 election. DHS basically operated as the former president’s taxpayer-funded super PAC, and Unlawful Chad ran it.

What we didn’t know was exactly how much taxpayers were forking over for Unlawful Chad’s coiffed rear to get shuttled around in government aircraft to lie and tout that stupid border wall. The latter was just five days before Election Day, by the way. But we do have a number now, thanks to watchdog organization American Oversight: nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

“Four trips taken by Wolf to the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Texas cost $223,652, roughly $221,300 of which was spent on government planes, according to the documents, which were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,” TIME reports. The outlet notes that a video posted to DHS social media accounts touting the wall “was indistinguishable from a campaign ad.”

The Washington Post noted at the time that Unlawful Chad intentionally didn’t say then-candidate Joe Biden’s name during that southern border visit, like that somehow didn’t make it a campaign stop. Oh, but it was exactly that—and it wasn’t the only time, either.

It was just this past November when the Office of Special Counsel named Unlawful Chad among the at least 13 former officials who violated the Hatch Act, “illegally mixing campaign and government events,” Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner reported. Remember how Unlawful Chad held that horrific naturalization stunt during the RNC? The administration had been warned repeatedly that such an event would be unlawful. The stunt went on anyway.

American Oversight had also previously reported that another political visit by Unlawful Chad, to Portland in summer 2020, may have cost taxpayers more than $90,000.

“It wasn’t just DHS,” TIME reporter Vera Bergengruen tweeted. “Education Sec. Betsy DeVos hosted a ‘Moms for Trump’ event in Michigan. Agriculture Sec. Sonny Perdue’s speech in NC led the crowd to chant ‘four more years.’ Sec Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Israel to the RNC while on a diplomatic trip.” Bergengruen noted a Pennsylvania stop by acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Tony Pham touting taxpayer-funded billboards demonizing immigrants.

“A reminder that the Nazis would publish lists of ‘Criminal Jews’ as part of their attempts to smear entire population groups as evil and worthy of state oppression,” American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted at the time.

So what happens to Unlawful Chad? The same thing that’s happened to top former officials with that administration so far: nothing (but I would love to be proved wrong in the future). He’ll continue to spew anti-immigrant rhetoric in Heritage Foundation blog posts calling Black and Latino asylum-seekers “illegal” despite the fact that asylum is legal immigration. He’s continued baselessly accusing asylum-seekers of being lawbreakers, despite the fact that his claim to national fame, heading DHS, was itself unlawful. It’s always, always projection with these guys.

RELATED: Chad Wolf's naturalization stunt was slammed as 'illegal.' The Office of Special Counsel agrees

RELATED: Chad Wolf, totally not a campaign surrogate, adds another stop to what's totally not a campaign tour

RELATED: Legislators demand resignations after GAO finds DHS leaders were unlawfully appointed to positions

Mayor Eric Adams is casting about for a new position for a controversial pastor and former politician who has made anti-gay comments, after LGBTQ advocates revolted when he tried to name him head of a mental health office.

Fernando Cabrera, who represented the Bronx as a Democrat in the City Council, has been showing up at a municipal building across the street from City Hall while he awaits his assignment in the Adams administration, three people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

An Adams spokesperson confirmed Cabrera would not be appointed to lead the Office of Community Mental Health as originally planned, but did not address whether he would be tapped for another job.

“While we do not typically comment on pending appointments, as stated previously, Mr. Cabrera is not under consideration for the critical role of leading the Office of Community Mental Health,” spokesperson Jonah Allon said. He would not say whether Cabrera has been earning pay while in limbo.

Cabrera walked into City Hall Thursday afternoon and sat for nearly an hour on a bench outside a suite of mayoral offices. He did not respond to several requests for comment.

His likely appointment to the mental health office, formerly known as ThriveNYC, was scuttled after a flood of criticism over his stances on same-sex marriage and abortion that were captured in a video posted to YouTube in 2014. POLITICO first reported on news of his potential job Feb. 3.

In the video, Cabrera praised the Ugandan government for withstanding pressure from the United States of America to “allow gay marriage.”

“And they have stood in their place. Why? Because the Christians have assumed the place of decision-making for the nation. Abortions are illegal here — things that Christians really stand for. Why? Because the Christians here took the opportunity to take their rightful place,” Cabrera says in the short video from a visit to the East African country.

As a result of Uganda’s actions, he said, the nation’s rate of HIV fell dramatically.

News that Cabrera is still in contention for a job angered Allen Roskoff, a gay rights activist and president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, who likened the pastor to white supremacist David Duke.

“Why is it okay to hire a well-known homophobe to be part of your administration anywhere, anywhere in this city? No matter what the job is, you shouldn't be hiring bigots — I don't care if he's going to work in a stock room,” Roskoff said in an interview Thursday. “The gay community does not feel that this administration has its back.”

“It's an insult and a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community,” he added.

Among those who have urged Adams to reconsider the Cabrera appointment are staffers within his own administration and former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, several people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

A GOP Senate candidate who was among the 11 Arizona Republicans who signed a forged electors document has released a violent campaign ad where he shoots at actors representing President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Mark Kelly, whose wife—former Rep. Gabby Giffords—survived a brutal assassination attempt in 2011.

“The good people of Arizona have had enough of you,” Jim Lamon says before aiming at the figure representing the president and shooting a gun out of his hands. Lamon is not alone in the ad. Immigrant right advocacy group America’s Voice noted Border Patrol Union President Brandon Judd is among Lamon’s “deputies” in the background.

America’s Voice was among those issuing swift condemnations of the violent ad, which comes just weeks after the 10th anniversary of Giffords’ resignation from Congress after being shot in the head. Frank Sharry, the organization’s executive director, called the ad “dangerous.”

“Lamon’s ad has the Arizona Republican candidate for Senator firing a gun at characters depicting President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Mark Kelly. The ad depicts violence against elected leaders and should be taken down immediately. It should be denounced by one and all, especially by his fellow Republicans.”

But Lamon instead reveled in the outrage, tweeting he “might single handedly solve the Arizona drought with all the snow flakes that are melting over my Super Bowl ad.” Of course he wanted the attention, because when Republicans aren’t busy trying to overturn democracy, they live to troll liberals. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t forcefully speak out when we see vile acts by sick fucks like Jim Lamon.

“And then there is Border Patrol union chief Brandon Judd,” Sharry continued, asking if the union president has “no shame.” That’s an affirmative “no.”

Recall that Judd once complained that border agents were being “pointed at with this broad brush” after forcibly separating children from their families at the southern border. More than 1,200 families remain separated to this day. The Border Patrol union records its podcast out of racist rag Breitbart’s studio. News reports have also indicated that both the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement unions have worked to sabotage the Biden administration agenda.

As of Friday Lamon’s ad remains on Twitter, and will apparently run in Arizona during the Super Bowl, Phoenix New Times reported. “The advertisement package cost the campaign ‘upwards of six figures,’ according to the campaign's manager Stephen Puetz. It is expected to run on Tucson's NBC station on Sunday during the football game and then would be broadcast statewide on Sunday night.”

Giffords was shot in a Tucson suburb. The decision to run this violent ad is on NBC, the same network that in 2015 decided that allowing the insurrectionist former president to host its trademark show was a swell idea. It’s about money and ratings. But at what cost?

“Violence, insurrection and conspiracy might be the future of many in the Republican Party, but it cannot be the future of America,” Sharry continued in a statement. “Unless idiots like Lamon are held accountable, it will just get worse. As a nation, we should do all we can to keep from finding out where such outrageous behavior will lead.”

As a congressional watchdog calls for a new probe into allegations that former President Donald Trump regularly destroyed presidential records, the Jan. 6 committee has simultaneously discovered on Thursday that a series of critical gaps exist in White House call logs secured from the National Archives. 

First reported by The New York Times, the gaps in the official White House telephone logs from Jan. 6, 2021, are not a complete surprise—Trump was well known to use his private cell phone or his staff’s cell phones when conducting affairs or speaking to aides, legislators, and others.

The Jan. 6 committee has not yet suggested that the omissions in the call logs are the result of any tampering on behalf of the former president. A committee spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment to confirm whether the logs it has received are all of the logs requested are just a portion of those records. 

White House call logs itemize who has telephoned the White House or who called out and will also include, generally, the date, time, and length of a call.

The Jan. 6 committee has received a plethora of documents and testimony already confirming that Trump spoke to several key officials throughout Jan. 6, including one call made to then-Vice President Mike Pence and legislators like Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. 

The call to Lee was meant for Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. Lee passed his mobile phone to Tuberville and the Alabama lawmaker spoke to Trump for just under 10 minutes. Their discussion unfolded as the president’s supporters were storming the Capitol. 

That entire exchange, however, did not occur on an official White House telephone, making the committee’s findings on Thursday all the more concerning. 

CNN reported that sources who have reviewed a presidential diary from Jan. 6—also obtained by the Archives and shared with the committee—noted that it has “scant information and no record of phone calls for several hours” after Trump returned to the Oval Office up until he recorded a national address in the Rose Garden. 

In addition to calls to Pence and Senator Lee, Trump also had a tense phone call with House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy on Jan. 6.

During Trump’s second impeachment, McCarthy told a fellow Republican lawmaker that when he finally reached Trump by phone during the assault, Trump was insistent that “antifa” had breached the complex.

McCarthy told Trump it was his supporters and Trump hung up in a huff.

Since then, McCarthy has aligned himself completely with the former president, refusing to cooperate with a voluntary request from Jan. 6 investigators issued weeks ago. The probe is now weighing whether to officially subpoena the House leader.

Doing so would be a historic move and an outcome the California Republican has arguably long courted. McCarthy was opposed to the formation of a Jan. 6 commission from the outset unless it promised to review other, unrelated external security threats posed to lawmakers and focused on intelligence failures of the U.S. Capitol Police.

He later refused to negotiate with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over the committee’s membership. After his proposal to seat two staunch Trump allies on the committee, including Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio—who was, even then, considered to be a potential material witness to the overall probe—McCarthy took his ball and went home.

With negotiations killed, the House went forward and the committee was formed. The House Republican has since regularly opposed the committee’s work and has taken up keen alliances with the uber-conservative, pro-Trump, anti-Jan. 6 investigation House Freedom Caucus.  

Though the gaps in the White House call logs obtained so far may correlate to Trump’s prolific use of unofficial cell phones, sources who reviewed the logs did say Thursday that at least one entry positively confirms Trump attempted to call Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 before the siege.

The official record does not reportedly show Pence answering, and the source said, according to CNN, that there is also no record showing Pence returned Trump’s call. 

Interestingly, Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser at the time, informed the committee during recent closed-door testimony that Pence and Trump spoke on the phone on Jan. 6 and further, that the president’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, witnessed the call. 

This was the call in which Trump pressured Pence to stop or delay the certification. If the White House call records obtained Thursday show that a call was made to Pence but Pence did not pick up, then Kellogg’s testimony would seem to suggest that the pressure call to the vice president happened on another phone, and not an official White House telephone. 

Like the select committee, the Archives did not immediately return request for comment Thursday about whether all of the White House call logs have been remitted to the panel in full or if others are still on the way. 

The Jan. 6 committee has issued sweeping orders to telecommunications companies, including Verizon and T-Mobile, for the phone records of other Trump White House officials, family members, and orbiters. More than 100 people have been part of those requests; the companies have largely cooperated thus far, according to court records. 

Select committee chairman Bennie Thompson has aired his concerns about Trump’s prolific unofficial cell phone use in the past. 

Norm Eisen, a legal analyst for CNN, said Thursday that the gap of records in the White House call logs and related diaries “raises a set of very serious concerns, including questions of whether there was an intentional effort to circumvent the usual system and, if so, who directed it and for what purpose.” 

On Tuesday, the National Archives announced that it had located 15 boxes full of documents that should have gone to the archives for evaluation, but instead ended up parked at Donald Trump’s south Florida tribute to tackiness, Mar-a-Lago. On Wednesday evening, The New York Times reported that the boxes have been found to contain possible classified information, which is serving to accelerate calls for an investigation of how all this material ended up traveling in Trump’s luggage, and was never turned over as the law requires.

However, on Thursday morning, Trump put out another of his statements—this one repeating long-exhausted lies that the Clintons had stolen White House furniture and also going on about Hillary Clinton’s emails. In his statement, Trump claims that the Archives “willingly arranged” for the transport of the materials found at Mar-a-Lago, which should be easy to prove. The Presidential Records Act calls for each document to be be submitted to the Archives, evaluated, and released only with written permission of the Archives. So if Trump had permission, he must also have the receipts.

Unless, that is, Trump gave those receipts the treatment that he apparently gave so many other documents. It was already known that Trump had a habit of tearing up documents to leave them in shreds—on his office floor, scattered around Air Force One, and shoved into whatever trash can was closest—a habit that required White House staff to gather up the pieces and officials at the National Archives to tape the documents back together. Now, based on an excerpt from an upcoming book by Times reporter Maggie Haberman as reported by Axios, it seems that Trump also made a habit of attempting to flush his shredded documents down the toilet.

Now we finally know why Trump complained about how hard it was to flush an American toilet. When Trump said, “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once,” it didn’t make a lot of sense. But then, most people aren’t flushing their conversations with Vladimir Putin.

On obtaining the boxes, the National Archives reached out to the Justice Department for instructions on how to handle what was clearly already a breach of the Presidential Records Act. The Justice Department instructed the Archives to place an inspector general in charge of evaluating the material. That inspector general has now taken the case back to the Department of Justice—a likely indicator that the contents contained classified documents, or evidence of some other egregious violation.

The revelation that Haberman was told by White House staff that they had “periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet” is an interesting addition to the already well-established trend of Donald Trump attempted to hide the evidence of his actions. It’s also a significant contribution in the burgeoning field of Reporters Who Sat On Top of Criminal Evidence So They Could Monetize It in Their Books. One might think that Haberman doesn’t have a job in which she is paid to tell the public what’s going on in these situations.

It’s also somewhat illuminating to visit The New York Times webpage on the morning after they reported that Trump illegally held onto classified information. Because a quick Where’s Waldo of that page would find … no Waldo. To be fair, the story does get one small headline far down the screen below reporting on the latest Olympics, a piece about worn-down pharmacists, and the “real cost of cheap chicken.” To be even more fair, the day after it learned that some of Hillary Clinton’s emails might be found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, every single inch went to that one story.

What almost every media outlet seems to be ignoring is that this isn’t a whoopsie, it’s a crime. Every time Donald Trump ripped up a document, that was a crime. Every time he tried to flush one down the sadly not gold White House crapper, that was a crime. Everything he boxed up and carted off to Mar-a-Lago, that was a crime.

In the “statement” on Thursday morning—the one where Trump is still raging about Hillary Clinton “acid-washing” her emails—Trump claims that there are “two legal standards, one for Republicans and one for Democrats.” Trump is absolutely right.

Both the Department of Justice and the major media treated Hillary Clinton’s handling of emails as if they were major crimes. They greeted even the possibility that she had mishandled a classified document as if it were a disqualifying action. Hillary Clinton would have been president of the United States had not both the FBI and The New York Times spent the last days before the 2016 election hammering the idea that there might—might—be a mishandled email from Clinton on a laptop they had already examined. There wasn’t.

But Trump … sure, he shredded documents in violation of the law. They treated that as a laughable habit. Sure, he tried to flush documents down the toilet—Maggie saved that one for her book. And sure, he carted off crates that now appear to have contained classified materials to his own home, where he may have been showing off nuclear codes to people in the all-you-can-eat shrimp line. A former White House aide even claims that Trump sometimes ate papers after meeting with his personal attorney (a well known habit of completely innocent people).

But hey, it’s not like he actually handled his email according to the instructions from the previous secretary of state, testified about it at length, and cooperated with every possible investigation into how those emails had been handled. Oh, no, he didn’t do anything that heinous.

Trump claims that he took all the documents because “some of this information will someday be displayed” at his presidential library. Emphases on “some” and “someday.”

However, among the materials found in the boxes from Mar-a-Lago was the map that Donald Trump marked up with a Sharpie to make it look as if a hurricane was going to hit Alabama only for the reason that he mistakenly said it would hit Alabama. The hurricane never hit Alabama. 

That’s really the only document that Trump’s library needs. When it’s finally opened in an abandoned phone booth, after Trump taps his followers for a billion or so in library building funds, that map should be it. Just that map. It tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump.

If you’re closely following news about anti-trans legislation, you might feel that stories are beginning to blur; is it really possible that yet another Republican is pushing yet another transphobic bill? Are people really trying to keep youth from using the correct bathroom? Somehow, yes. One recent example comes from Indiana, where an anti-trans sports bill passed from the House of Representatives last month. That bill, House Bill 1041, got almost full Republican support and none from Democrats, ultimately passing with a 66-30 vote.

From there, it’s been presented to the Senate and referred to the Committee on Education and Career Development. The bill is uniquely different from other anti-trans sports bills in that it would ban trans girls from kindergarten through 12th grade from participating in girls’ sports in public schools. Unlike other legislation, it does not explicitly include college and university-level games. It also does not explicitly prohibit trans boys from playing on boys’ sports teams. It’s still undoubtedly deeply discriminatory and exclusionary.

Like other anti-trans legislation, the person behind the bill (Republican Rep. Michelle Davis, in this case) argues that the bill protects (cisgender) girls when it comes to sports. Davis suggests that trans girls have an unfair advantage due to (allegedly innate) athletic ability. The bill also permits students (or the parents of a student) to submit a grievance to the school if the law isn’t followed. 

Like other exclusionary bills, this one suggests a student-athlete's gender should be determined by their “biological sex at birth in accordance with the student’s genetics and reproductive biology.” This means even if a student has, for example, updated their name and sex on their ID and birth certificate, they still wouldn’t be able to play on the team that aligns with their gender identity. This means students who have taken certain steps to transition would essentially be “outing” themselves as trans if they did still want to play the sport.

Nathaniel Clawson, the father of a young trans student-athlete in Indiana, spoke at the statehouse to appeal on behalf of his 9-year-old. In speaking to The Herald-Times, Clawson said there are “so many” life lessons kids learn through sports, including stronger friendships and bonds with classmates. “It’s those life lessons that I was worried most about my daughter missing out on,” he stated. 

We know trans youth struggle in school in terms of bullying, harassment, and abuse. Trying to target trans youth and keep them isolated from their peers is deeply cruel, and frankly, could be dangerous when it comes to mental health and keeping an already marginalized population safely in school and engaged.

Natalie Carter, a senior lecturer at Butler College, spoke to campus newspaper The Butler Collegian about the legislation, describing it as “completely repulsive” and “hate legislature.” Carter went on to say, “There’s a part of me that wishes if our anti-equality legislators were going to move bills like this forward, that they would just call them what they are … instead of trying to hide behind the shield of somehow protecting other students.”

This perspective really nails it. Moderates and even some progressives are falling into these discriminatory measures because they’re seeing it with the framing Republicans are hoping they will—what about (cisgender) female athletes? What about hormones? What about puberty? Is it really fair?

Trans people are people, and trans youth deserve every opportunity to be themselves, have experiences and opportunities, and discover themselves just like everyone else. Trans athletes are not disproportionately likely to win, get coveted scholarships, or send cisgender athletes packing. It’s simply not happening. Instead of conservatives just saying they hate trans folks, they’re covertly manipulating well-intentioned people into repeating transphobia. 

If passed, the bill would go into effect on July 1, 2022.

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

Conservatives truly cannot get enough when it comes to demonizing trans people, especially trans youth. Trans youth are particularly vulnerable when it comes to harassment, bullying, and both physical and verbal abuse while at school, and are also more likely to become homeless and leave high school without a diploma. Trans youth report higher rates of mental health issues like depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation. And yet Republicans can’t get enough of trying to isolate and disparage them even more.

A recent example comes to us from Shelley Luther out of Texas. Luther, you might remember, is the hair salon owner (and former teacher) who went to jail after defying pandemic orders to shut down her salon in Dallas in May 2020. Since then she’s gained some notoriety, fired off some racist tweets, and is running for a seat in the Texas House. As reported by the Houston Chronicle, Luther participated in a candidate forum on Saturday and used her time to let folks know she isn’t “comfortable with transgenders” and wishes kids were able to laugh at their transgender classmates. Yes, really.

As some background, Luther is running against fellow Republican Reggie Smith in the Republican primary for a state House seat in the 62nd District. That seat is in a heavily conservative district outside of Dallas. The primary is on March 1. After refusing to obey COVID-19 lockdown orders she served just a few days in jail, but she has become a favorite of Republicans since. 

“The kids that they brought in my classroom,” Luther recalled at Saturday’s candidate forum, according to the outlet. “When they said that this kid is transgendering into a different sex, that I couldn’t have kids laugh at them … like, the other kids got in trouble for having transgender kids in my class.”

Here’s that video.

It’s mean! It’s weird! Honestly, it’s disturbing—adults shouldn’t want to see literal children made fun of or laughed at for any reason, and especially not when there’s loads of research and personal anecdotes available affirming how marginalized these particular youth already are. Luther should be ashamed of herself.

But in an email to the outlet, Luther claimed she “respected and supported all students” in her classroom. She went on to say it was hard for her to teach because “the topic of gender transition became the top discussion” in her classroom on a daily basis, and the “center of focus” was on the student and not the lesson. 

“We should focus more on learning instead of arguing about which bathroom someone should use,” she told the outlet. “Bullying is never acceptable, and did not occur.”

It would be lovely if people were learning instead of arguing about bathroom use! That’s why trans youth should have fair, safe, and equal access to bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity. No need to argue about someone’s basic human rights and ability to perform an essential bodily function.

And if a teacher doesn’t feel able to balance discussions of real-world issues with prepared lesson plans, perhaps the students deserve better and the teacher in question can look into a different career path? Research shows teachers feel uniquely ill-equipped to handle anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools, but that’s a sign that more outreach, training, and education are needed—not that it should be free rein to make fun of vulnerable kids.

Between Luther’s comments and the TikTok video from an Oklahoma school board member fantasizing about trans-inclusive parents dying by suicide, it’s been an especially rough few days of news. Whether or not all anti-trans bills are actually signed into law, it’s obvious conservatives are jumping all over transphobia to get votes and push an already structurally vulnerable population into the shadows. It’s up to all of us to speak up and speak out in favor of trans inclusions, protections, and real equality. 

In an effort to educate folks about what we’re up against in this Texas primary, here’s Luther’s campaign announcement video from a few months ago.

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

What all these new GOP bills are really trying to accomplish.