A 10-year-old girl and her mother got a lesson about the utility of voice assistants after Amazon's Alexa suggested the girl try the TikTok plug challenge. According to the girl's mother, Kristin Livdahl, the dangerous suggestion came after her daughter asked Alexa for a challenge to do.
(credit: Twitter)
"We were doing some physical challenges, like laying down and rolling over holding a shot on your foot, from a Phy Ed teacher on YouTube earlier," Livdahl explained in her Twitter thread. "She just wanted another one."
For the (blessedly) uninitiated, the plug challenge consists of partially plugging a phone charger into an electrical outlet and then dropping a penny onto the exposed prongs. Results can run the gamut from a small spark to a full-on electrical fire.
About the most republican thing around: whining because people vote.
It’s difficult to determine why Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Duke University School of Medicine grad, believed that legal voting by Democrats somehow equated to stealing elections, but according to a recent tweet by the senator, that’s exactly what he thought.
Good thing that wasn’t on a test to become a senator. Fail!
Referring to an article published in the uber-conservative Washington Examiner, Paul accused Democrats of “stealing” elections by persuading people to vote for them—of course, that is exactly how democracy works last time we checked.
Paul’s tweet read: “How to steal an election: ‘Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.’”
How to steal an election: “Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”https://t.co/LwE3MdeWeG
Georgetown University political scientist tweeted: “They really believe it’s a scandal to help legal voters who might oppose them to participate in democracy.”
They really believe it's a scandal to help legal voters who might oppose them to participate in democracy. https://t.co/B5u4waAHgY
But Paul’s tweets aside, as ridiculous as they are, address head-on the vital need for President Joe Biden’s administration to get the voting rights bills enacted ASAP.
Remember, Paul has denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and regularly hawked anti-election conspiracy theories.
Is it possible that Paul is unsure what “steal” means?
The article he referenced was simply American democracy at its best. Democrats target a battleground state, Wisconsin in the case of the article, a state that Dems have won in eight of the last nine presidential election cycles, using strategies to mobilize voters.
Meanwhile, both pieces of voting rights legislation (Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act ) have continued to be jammed by Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats have so far refused to change the rules requiring 60 votes for bills to move forward. The Senate is currently split at 50-50.
At least 19 states have enacted 33 laws to disenfranchise American citizens. And the GOP is laying the groundwork as we speak for more voting restrictions and blocks to the ballot in next year’s legislative sessions.
Winter storms sweeping parts of the Western U.S. and the Pacific Northwest have brought heavy snow and record low temperatures in some areas -- and there's more to come. From a report: A winter storm warning continues into Wednesday for parts of the border area of Northern California and Nevada. "We've had quite a series of storms that have impacted the area, especially impacted the Sierra, where we've had some very heavy snow amounts. That's impacted travel to an incredible degree," National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Kurth told The Associated Press. Snow showers blew in from the Gulf of Alaska and blanketed parts of Washington and Oregon, where state officials have declared an emergency. The Seattle area got up to 6 inches of snow. Weather shelters were opened in both Seattle and Portland. The NWS said Seattle's low of 20 degrees on Sunday broke the previous low for the day set in 1948. Bellingham, Wash., hit a low of 9 -- three degrees below the 1971 record for the day. Utilities in western Washington and Oregon reported about 5,000 customers without power Monday. Pacific Power reported early Tuesday that more than 2,000 customers in Oregon still had no electricity.
The right wing thinks the first amendment prohibits consequences...no, no it doesn't.
An Oregon man who took the opportunity to say “Let’s go, Brandon!” to President Joe Biden on Christmas Eve is now playing the victim, claiming he has received numerous threats since. The seemingly innocent phrase “Let’s go, Brandon!” is an offensive catchphrase commonly used by conservatives to tell Biden off. "And now I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech," the man told reporters.
Of course, while the man—identified as Jared Schmeck—argued there was nothing wrong with what he said, and claimed he was using his First Amendment right to say what he wants. That same rule didn't apply to those who opposed what he said, of course. He played the victim card and cried crocodile tears when people called him out online for using the vulgar term on the call with President Biden.
“I understand there is a vulgar meaning to ‘Let's go, Brandon,’ but I’m not that simple-minded, no matter how I feel about him,” Schmeck told The Oregonian. “He seems likes he’s a cordial guy. There’s no animosity or anything like that. It was merely just an innocent jest to also express my God-given right to express my frustrations in a joking manner. ... I love him just like I love any other brother or sister.”
He even tried to justify his statement by saying he had no “disrespect” for Biden.
"I have nothing against Mr. Biden, but I am frustrated because I think he can be doing a better job," he said. "I mean no disrespect to him."
But the catch? The same Jared Schmeck told Steve Bannon that the election was not only stolen but also that Trump was his president—only hours after he claimed he was not a “Trumper” but rather a “free-thinking American and follower of Jesus Christ.” That, too, while wearing a MAGA hat.
Schmeck, a former police officer and electric company worker from Central Point, Oregon, said the phrase during a call on Dec. 24 during which he called the NORAD Santa tracker. According to FOX News, he calls the hotline every Christmas Eve, but while the call is normally automated, this year the president and first lady Jill Biden were taking calls together.
The first couple of minutes of the call went really well in which Schmeck laughed with the president. But the call ended in a different way. After the first lady and president wished him a wonderful Christmas, Schmeck replied: "Yeah, I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas, as well. Merry Christmas and let's go, Brandon."
Biden, who I am sure understood what it meant, especially with how trending the catchphrase is, was not fazed. "Let's go, Brandon, I agree," he said.
Of course, though not everyone was unfazed as he was.
You can’t expect to be able to say that you are “using your First Amendment rights” to say what you want without letting others do the same. And, anyway, that’s not what “freedom of speech” means. The First Amendment grants Americans the right to criticize their government and institutions without fear of imprisonment. It doesn’t mean you’re free to say whatever you like and suffer no consequences whatsoever.
Yes, Twitter users are hating on Schmeck—but if he is allowed to call the president and use a slur, they are allowed to express how they feel on their social media. Besides, what did Schmeck expect? I mean, he even posted the video on YouTube with the hashtag #letsgobrandon. If he didn't want to trend, what did he want?
"Wow. #jaredschmeck is gonna trend for the first time in his life, and not in a good way," one Twitter user wrote.
Another Twitter user wrote, "Imagine being a grown man so infantile and disrespectful that you say the slur ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ to the president in front of your own kids and dozens of others. This is a sad time.”
"Frustration on policies doesn't make you use profanity at the POTUS in front of two of your children. You are no follower of Jesus Christ. You are an attention seeker who knew exactly what you were doing. Give him ALL the attention he was looking for," another said.
And the comments continued. If fame is what he wanted, well he sure got it—maybe just not the type he was hoping for. Even his wife, Amanda, posted the video to her Instagram page, in which she captioned the post, "My husband may or may not have just told joe and jill Biden ‘let’s go Brandon’ on the phone," with two laughing-crying face emojis.
Getting there...quarterly or even better, annual...but its a start
Apretude
FDA Approves Injectable PrEP Treatment
The FDA gave the green light to a new injectable form of the HIV treatment pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) last week. The injection, named Apretude, will be available for use by at-risk adults and teens that weigh a minimum 77 pounds and test negative for HIV prior to treatment.
the treatment’s approval comes after two double-blind studies found that patients that took Apretude were 90% less likely of contracting HIV as compared to study participants that took oral PrEP treatment Truvada. There is also hope that Apretude will boost adherence levels as well since it doesn’t have to be taken daily. Apretude is administered in two initial shots one month apart and subsequent injections every two months afterward.
“Today’s approval adds an important tool in the effort to end the HIV epidemic by providing the first option to prevent HIV that does not involve taking a daily pill,” said Debra Birnkrant, M.D., director of the Division of Antivirals in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “This injection, given every two months, will be critical to addressing the HIV epidemic in the U.S., including helping high-risk individuals and certain groups where adherence to daily medication has been a major challenge or not a realistic option.”
A statement from the FDA stressed that Apretude should only be prescribed to patients who have tested negative for HIV prior to treatment and before each shot to reduce the risk of developing drug-resistant HIV variants.
Qatar Seizes Rainbow Toys
Qatar’s ministry of commerce and industry seized a number of rainbow-colored toys from retail stores, deeming them “un-Islamic” due to their resemblance to the LGBTQ Pride flag. The government body announced the decision on Twitter, stating the move was part of an “inspection campaign” that deemed the children’s toys bore “slogans that go against Islamic values.”
A photo attached to the tweet shows a small collection of the toys in question. None of them bear any overt LGBTQ logos. According to AFP, the ministry also encouraged Qatar citizens to “report any product bearing logos or designs contrary to our traditions.”
#MOCIQATAR carried out inspection campaigns on several retail outlets in different regions across #Qatar, the campaigns resulted in the seizure and release of several violations, including the confiscation of children's toys bearing slogans that go against Islamic values.
The seizure comes as Qatar continues to field questions about LGBTQ acceptance in the nation ahead of hosting the World Cup in 2022. Out gay Australian soccer player Josh Cavallo expressed concern about the potential of playing in Qatar due to the nation’s criminalization of homosexuality.
“At the end of the day the World Cup is in Qatar and one of the greatest achievements as a professional footballer is to play for your country,” he said last month. “To know that this is in a country that doesn’t support gay people and puts us at risk of our own life, that does scare me and makes me re-evaluate: is my life more important than doing something really good in my career?”
Multi-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton wore a rainbow-colored helmet during the Qatar Grand Prix last month as well. The sport and we are duty bound to make sure we try to raise awareness for certain issues we have seen, particularly human rights in these countries that we are going to,” Hamilton told The Guardian.
Qatar’s World Cup organizers assured world soccer governing body FIFA that it would allow pro-LGBTQ displays at the 2022 World Cup despite the nation’s “conservative” stance on LGBTQ people last year, but the recent toy censure reignited concerns about how the nation will actually treat LGBTQ fans and players at next year’s premier soccer event.
“Banning rainbow images is a new low for the tyrant regime in Qatar. It is an absurd, over-the-top response by a paranoid regime,” said LGBTQ rights advocate Peter Tatchell. “This proves that Qatar remains viciously homophobic and that its self-proclaimed new liberal image is a fraud and mere PR spin,” he told Metro.
“In the light of this crackdown, LGBTQ+ footballers and fans will not be safe during the World Cup next November, despite Qatar’s assurances to FIFA,” he added. “The football authorities should cancel Qatar’s hosting rights and find a new host country that respects FIFA’s values of equality and inclusion.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene Thinks Kwanzaa is A “Fake Religion”
Qanon-supporting congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene fired another ill-advised shot in the fictional “war on Christmas” Sunday, decrying the celebration of Kwanzaa and incorrectly labeling it a “fake religion. The statement came in response to a tweet from the official account of the College Republicans wishing everyone a “happy and prosperous Kwanza,” misspelling and all.
“Stop. It’s a fake religion created by a psychopath,” Greene responded. “You aren’t bringing in new voters, you are turning them away. People are tired of pandering and BS.”
Stop. It’s a fake religion created by a psychopath. You aren’t bringing in new voters, you are turning them away. People are tired of pandering and BS. https://t.co/NrhE6O6BG5
Unlike Greene claims, Kwanzaa itself isn’t a religion nor is it commonly characterized as a religious celebration. Created in 1966 by California State University, Long Beach African Studies department chair Maulana Karenga, Kwanzaa is a holiday festival that encourages Black individuals to celebrate African traditions and heritage.
Greene expectedly didn’t cry “pandering” when Donald Trump posted “Happy Kwanzaa” messages during his presidency.
Then-President Donald Trump greets Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch ahead of the State of the Union address in the chamber of the US House of Representatives on February 4, 2020, in Washington, DC. | Mario Tama/Getty Images
More than a year after Trump’s defeat, Biden is forced to share power with increasingly partisan judges.
No one has ever elected Matthew Kacsmaryk to anything.
Kacsmaryk, whom former President Donald Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2019, was previously a lawyer for a Christian right law firm. He once claimed being transgender is a “mental disorder” and that gay people are “disordered.” He’s also one of the most powerful immigration officials in the country, having successfully wrested control of much of America’s border policy away from the man Americans elected president in 2020.
With the Supreme Court’s blessing, Kacsmaryk ordered President Joe Biden’s administration to reinstate Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires many asylum seekers who arrive at the United States’ southern border to stay in Mexico while they await a hearing.
Even if you ignore the moral implications of reinstating such a policy, there are good reasons to doubt that the policy is a good use of America’s limited border security resources. And Kacsmaryk’s decision is also unlawful for numerous reasons.
One of the most important reasons is that it upends the balance of power between the president and unelected judges. Reinstating the Remain in Mexico program requires the Mexican government’s cooperation — which means that Kacsmaryk ordered the United States to change its diplomatic stance toward Mexico. And that’s despite decades of warnings from the Supreme Court that judges should be “particularly wary of impinging on the discretion of the Legislative and Executive Branches in managing foreign affairs.”
Kacsmaryk’s decision, and the Supreme Court’s decision to stand with Kacsmaryk against President Joe Biden, is one of the most dramatic examples of the Republican-controlled federal judiciary's many conflicts with America’s Democratic president. But it’s hardly an isolated incident.
In just four years as president, Trump remade the federal judiciary — all with a big assist from a Senate Republican leader willing to break any norm in order to ensure GOP control of the courts. Trump appointed a third of the Supreme Court and nearly a third of all active appeals court judges. He also peppered federal trial courts with conservative activists like Kacsmaryk, who are eager to overturn some of the most fundamental assumptions of US law.
Nearly one year into Biden’s time in office, the result hasn’t exactly been a bloodbath for his policies — in contrast to the seemingly never-ending array of lawsuits seeking to repeal Obamacare, no federal judge has yet tried to repeal Biden’s major legislative accomplishments such as the American Rescue Plan or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But in two areas in particular, immigration and public health, the courts have been unusually aggressive.
Meanwhile, the judiciary has done more than virtually any other institution in America to frustrate efforts to control the Covid-19 pandemic. Almost immediately after the Biden administration announced new rules encouraging most workers to get vaccinated, for example, a right-wing panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit raced to hand down a procedurally improper order blocking those rules (although that order has since been lifted by a more centrist panel). Trump-appointed judges handed down similar orders blocking a more modest rule requiring many health care workers to be vaccinated.
So, while right-wing judges have not yet launched a wholesale assault on the Biden presidency, they’ve handed down a raft of decisions that endanger the public health and that force some of the most vulnerable people on the planet to live in squalid, often dangerous conditions. And these judges could get even more aggressive in the future.
While judicial sabotage of the Biden administration’s policies has thus far been limited in scope, it’s likely to expand rapidly, and soon. The Supreme Court announced in late October that it will hear West Virginia v. EPA, a case that, at its most extreme, could potentially give the judiciary veto power over every regulation pushed out by any federal agency.
Such a decision would only embolden judges who wish to hobble Biden’s presidency.
Right-wing judges are testing the limits of their power
The federal courts are hierarchical, and they are supposed to be creatures of precedent. If a higher court hands down a legal rule that governs future cases, lower court judges are supposed to be bound by that rule for as long as it is in place — even if the judge disagrees with the rule, and even if the judge thinks that the higher court is likely to overrule it in the future.
Republicans did not gain their current supermajority on the Supreme Court until about a week before Biden was elected president. So even if the Court’s new majority is inclined to ignore stare decisis (the principle that courts should be reluctant to overrule previous decisions), it simply hasn’t had time to overrule every precedent that is out of favor within conservative legal circles.
That means that, at least for now, the most aggressive decisions undercutting President Biden are being handed down by judges who do not feel constrained by precedent, or who want to nudge the Supreme Court into overruling past opinions by handing down decisions that are inconsistent with those opinions and that need to be reviewed on appeal.
As mentioned above, these most aggressive decisions are concentrated in two policy areas — immigration and public health — so let’s take a quick look at some of the more legally dubious decisions in these two policy spaces.
Tipton v. Biden
Consider both of Judge Tipton’s orders blocking the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Both of these decisions are flawed in the exact same way.
On January 20, 2021, the first day of the Biden presidency, acting Secretary of Homeland Security David Pekoske issued a brief memorandum announcing two temporary immigration policies. Pekoske’s memo ordered a 100-day pause on most deportations, to give the new administration time to “ensure that our removal resources are directed to the Department’s highest enforcement priorities.” It also laid out new interim priorities that should govern immigration enforcement.
Under these interim priorities, immigration enforcement officers were instructed to target non-citizens who pose a threat to national security; undocumented immigrants who entered or attempted to enter the United States on November 1, 2020, or later; and immigrants convicted of an “aggravated felony” who “are determined to pose a threat to public safety.” The memo was explicit that it did not prohibit “the apprehension or detention” of other people unlawfully in the United States, but the Biden administration wanted to shift enforcement resources to the three identified groups.
The legal basis for both of these temporary policy shifts is a doctrine known as “prosecutorial discretion,” which permits law enforcement to set enforcement priorities and even to decide not to enforce a particular law against a specific individual. If you’ve ever been pulled over by a cop and then let off with a warning, you’ve benefited from this kind of discretion.
Under the Supreme Court’s current precedents, moreover, executive branch officials who oversee entire law enforcement agencies also have broad authority to exercise such discretion, and especially in the immigration context. As the Court explained in Arizona v. United States (2012), “a principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials.” Similarly, the Court held in Heckler v. Chaney(1985) that “an agency’s decision not to take enforcement action should be presumed immune from judicial review.”
One important reason why executive branch officials have such discretion is that law enforcement agencies do not have infinite resources. As the Obama administration explained in a 2014 memo, “there are approximately 11.3 million undocumented aliens in the country,” but the Department of Homeland Security only “has the resources to remove fewer than 400,000 such aliens each year.” So it is inevitable that senior law enforcement leaders will have to make decisions about what kinds of enforcement to prioritize.
The Biden administration wanted to focus these limited resources primarily on immigrants who could threaten public safety. Tipton’s orders ensure that immigration enforcement will be much more arbitrary.
Just as importantly, Tipton’s orders show contempt, not just for the principles announced in decisions like Arizona and Heckler, but for the very idea that, as a lower court judge, he is bound by Supreme Court precedent. But they also reflect a kind of regressive optimism that infuses so many Republican appointees to the federal bench. Sure, the law may permit Biden to liberalize immigration policy today. But, by denying Biden his lawful authority, judges like Tipton might accelerate the day when the Supreme Court strips Biden of a power that was enjoyed by every recent president.
The Fifth Circuit v. Biden
Tipton is an unusually aggressive ideological innovator within the judiciary, but he’s hardly an isolated case. Take the Fifth Circuit’s opinion in BST Holdings v. OSHA, the decision blocking the Biden administration’s rule requiring most workers to either get vaccinated against Covid-19 or be tested weekly for the disease. As I’ve written, there are plausible arguments that this rule exceeds the Department of Labor’s statutory authority, but Judge Kurt Engelhardt’s opinion in BST Holdings largely bypasses these arguments in favor of others that range from implausible to ridiculous.
Engelhardt’s opinion relies heavily on arguments the Trump administration made in mid-2020 that it should not impose additional requirements on workplaces in order to stop the spread of Covid-19. But these arguments are completely irrelevant to the issues at stake in BST Holdings. Whatever their merits might have been in the middle of 2020, vaccines were not available until the final days of the Trump administration, and then only to a select group of people. So the Trump administration never even considered whether to issue a rule encouraging workers to vaccinate.
Similarly, Engelhardt’s opinion interprets federal law in ways that would baffle any reasonably fluent English speaker. At one point, he claims that the Covid-19 virus does not qualify as a “substance” or “agent” that is “toxic or physically harmful” (the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 permits the federal government to issue an “emergency temporary standard” to protect against such dangers in the workplace).
Engelhardt’s most aggressive argument suggests that Congress itself lacks the authority to pass a new law requiring workplace vaccination. “The Mandate likely exceeds the federal government’s authority under the Commerce Clause because it regulates noneconomic inactivity,” he writes, adding that “a person’s choice to remain unvaccinated and forgo regular testing is noneconomic inactivity.” To justify this argument, Engelhardt cites the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius (2012), which held that Congress could not order people to purchase health insurance (although it could impose higher taxes on the uninsured).
But Engelhardt massively overreads NFIB. That decision limited Congress’s power to “compel individuals not engaged in commerce” to take a particular action. But the Biden administration’s workplace vaccine mandate doesn’t target people who are “not engaged in commerce.” It targets workers and their employers. Performing labor, in return for pay — and hiring others to do so — is a form of commerce.
So, at the very least, Engelhardt’s opinion endangers workers and frustrates efforts to quell the Covid-19 pandemic. And the most radical parts of that opinion could endanger very basic protections for workers and children.
More broadly, lower court judges are playing with ideas that are not the law and that are soundly rejected by all but the most reactionary elements of the legal profession. And yet, with the judiciary now led by the most conservative Supreme Court since the early years of the Franklin Roosevelt administration, there’s no guarantee that the federal judiciary as a whole will not embrace at least some of these ideas.
No one is providing adult supervision of the most reactionary judges
Of course, if the Supreme Court wanted lower-court judges to stop ignoring precedents that permit President Biden to govern, it could intervene to stop them from doing so. Instead, it has rewarded many of the most aggressive conservative innovators within the judiciary.
Recall Judge Kacsmaryk’s order requiring the Biden administration to reinstate Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy. There are many flaws in that order, but the most significant is that it runs roughshod over many decades of Supreme Court opinions warning against “the danger of unwarranted judicial interference in the conduct of foreign policy.”
When foreign nations negotiate with the United States, they need to know that America’s bargaining position won’t change abruptly because just one of the 1,392 men and women currently sitting as federal judges decides to take issue with that position. And when American diplomats make a promise on behalf of their country, they need to be able to keep that promise.
And yet, in siding with Kacsmaryk over Biden, the Supreme Court effectively abandoned its longstanding practice of deference to the executive on questions of foreign relations. That decision to abandon one of the fundamentals of US separation of powers will only embolden other judges who are trying to decide whether they can get away with ignoring the Court’s precedents.
If anything, the justices are sending loud signals that they want lower court judges to innovate in ways that shift power from the executive to the judiciary. In a few months, the Court plans to hear the West Virginia case, which asks it to revive a long-defunct doctrine known as “nondelegation.” The idea behind this dead-but-dreaming doctrine is that the Constitution places strict limits on Congress’s power to delegate power to agencies. In practice, nondelegation could allow the judiciary to veto any regulation promulgated by any federal agency.
Given these signals from the Supreme Court, some lower court judges are behaving as though the Court has already fully embraced nondelegation. Judge Engelhardt named nondelegation as one of the myriad reasons why he objects to the workplace vaccination rules (that case was transferred to the Sixth Circuit, which dissolved Engelhardt’s order. The case is now pending before the Supreme Court). One judge relied on nondelegation in an opinion blocking federal rules intended to prevent the spread of Covid-19 on cruise ships (that opinion is still in effect, after an appeals court decided not to block it). A panel of two Trump judges and one Reagan judge cited nondelegation as a reason to strike down an eviction moratorium (that the Supreme Court eventually rejected for other reasons).
Yet, if the justices are telling conservative judges that they will suffer no embarrassment if they ignore longstanding Supreme Court precedents, the Biden administration is also doing very little to stand up for itself.
The Biden administration has taken some steps to try to dissolve Kacsmaryk’s order. When the Supreme Court sided with Kacsmaryk over Biden, it claimed to be doing so because the Biden administration didn’t adequately explain why it wanted to end Remain in Mexico. So the administration released a new memo last October giving a more fleshed-out explanation, and it asked the Fifth Circuit to issue a ruling that would allow it to escape Kacsmaryk’s injunction (a right-wing panel of the Fifth Circuit that includes Judge Engelhardt rejected that request in a 117-page opinion dripping with contempt for the Biden administration).
Yet, even as it seeks mercy from hostile Republican appointees, the Biden administration has hardly acted as though it wants to regain its lawful authority over immigration policy. Earlier this month, the administration reached an agreement with Mexico to reinstate Trump’s policy, and it even plans to expand it. Under Trump, the Remain in Mexico policy applied only to Spanish speakers; now it applies to many migrants who don’t even speak the same language spoken by most Mexicans.
Both the Supreme Court and the Biden administration are signaling that there are no consequences — and there won’t even be significant pushback — when revanchist judges defy the law.
If you were a right-wing judge who loathes Joe Biden but who also tends to be more careful than judicial arsonists like Engelhardt, Tipton, and Kacsmaryk, how would you react to this series of events?
Yeah, Donald Trump also said we’d never see him again if he lost to Joe Biden. We all know how that turned out. After all, Trump is never really gone—as long we remember him. We see his eternal light and essence in every irregular, half-priced Grocery Outlet yam. Every time a bully farts on a weaker kid’s head, he is there—in spirit—gently guiding the bully’s sphincter. You see him in the wide, wonderstruck eyes of every tender moppet who stumbles off the Tilt-A-Whirl vomiting circus peanuts and orange Fanta on his sister’s brand-new Chucks.
But the fucker never actually left, so there’s no need to rely on any of those reminders.
This seems to be a pattern. Conservatives love to talk shit and set ultimatums, but when their “sincerely held beliefs” run up against their “careers,” they somehow find the moral wiggle room to show up for work.
Two months ago, Dan Bongino sounded ready to give up one of the best slots in conservative talk radio over his objection to his employer’s coronavirus vaccine mandate.
A lot has happened since then, but not much has changed for Bongino and his bosses. He is still hosting the same show, even though Cumulus Media does not appear to have changed its mandate. That’s led some radio hosts and industry observers to question Bongino’s commitment to his ultimatum. Talk radio historian Brian Rosenwald said “there was a stunt element to it.”
A conservative media figure involved in a performative stunt? Nooooooooo! You don’t say!
Of course, much as pro-COVID crusader Tucker Carlson almost certainly is, Bongino is definitely vaccinated. He received the shot on advice from his doctor after a battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. But he stands tall in his commitment to preserving every American’s sacred, God-given right to die for silly reasons—or no reason at all.
After telling his listeners in October that he was going to fight on behalf of his Cumulus colleagues who have not fully slaked their thirst for gruesome, unnecessary death, he took a week and a half off and returned in early November.
“I’m not going to let this go,” he said before his hiatus. “Cumulus is going to have to make a decision with me if they want to continue this partnership, or they don’t. I want something to change, and I’m giving them an opportunity to do it. But if they don’t, this is going to be an entirely untenable situation going forward.”
Well, we’ve gone forward, and this preening peacock is still on the air talking shit, so …
At least one key industry observer The Post talked to thinks Bongino may have overplayed his hand.
Talkers magazine publisher Michael Harrison said Bongino “painted himself into a corner and threatened to leave and then didn’t make good on that threat.” He added, “With all due respect to Dan Bongino, who is extremely talented and appears to have a potentially bright future in talk radio ahead of him, I think he miscalculated the level of his clout as a talk-show host and employee of Cumulus Media. Platform usually wins in these spaces, and Cumulus Media is a very large and powerful platform.”
Of course, this sort of thing is a problem for a lot of right-wing hosts who want to keep their jobs. Fox News has done some Leni Riefenstahl-worthy work on behalf of rampant, preventable death, but the suits at the company have decided an office full of disease vectors is nevertheless bad for business. In fact, Fox recently tightened up its already strict vaccine mandates, requiring all its New York City employees to get the jab in lieu of opting for daily tests. (Bongino also hosts a show on Fox.)
So the very corporations allowing poisonous rhetoric to proliferate unchecked on their airwaves also know what it takes to stop this pandemic. They just don't care. As long as they can squeeze enough outrage and cash out of the viewers who remain after the culling, they won’t worry so much about their dead audience members. They’re just marks, after all.
Of course, Tucker Carlson should have been fired months ago for his anti-vaxxer agitating, and Cumulus should have told Bongino to pound sand, but they’ll just keep letting their highest-profile hosts destroy lives as they cover their own asses.
Riiiiiiiiiight, so this is the time that rural voters suddenly become finely attuned to policy? Bullshit. You don't get to have both "biden policies massively help rural america and produce no polling benefit" and "biden going to get slaughtered by rural policies"
A Biden administration plan to claw back billions of dollars in unused rental aid has sparked an outcry from Democratic lawmakers and from housing groups who warn that struggling rural tenants will lose a lifeline just as the virus surges again.
About half of the $46.5 billion in federal rental aid made available during the pandemic is expected to be spent by the end of this year, and the Treasury Department is planning to reallocate funding to areas that have seen the greatest demand, or at least have been the most efficient at delivering funds.
The shift means that rural parts of the U.S. — including Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas — are poised to see some of their available funding pulled back. It’s triggered protests from Democrats on Capitol Hill and from housing advocates who say that tenants in those areas are still suffering from Covid-19’s economic fallout but may have missed out on the funds because local aid programs failed to reach them. Experts also say rural renters may be flying under the radar because of inadequate data on who is in most need of assistance.
“If you’re living in rural America, you’re getting hit pretty hard,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who chairs a subcommittee on housing policy. “We’ve got millions of residents who are now, today, experiencing acute housing problems that frankly are oftentimes overlooked because the attention is on big-city housing issues.”
The pushback is the latest tension to emerge from the federal government’s renter rescue, which was intended to keep Americans housed and landlords whole during Covid-19. States and cities responsible for doling out the funds have strained to execute distribution programs over the past year. They had distributed less than 30 percent of the money as of the end of October, according to the latest figures made available by the Treasury Department. Congress required Treasury to reallocate “excess funds” from jurisdictions with low disbursement rates to those that need additional funding.
Rural America accounts for 5.1 million of the nation’s renter households, according to the Urban Institute, with nearly 20 percent paying more than half their incomes on rent. An analysis of government data by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies found that 48 percent of renters living in rural areas and small towns had incomes below $25,000 in 2016.
The most densely populated cities — such as New York — were slow in distributing rental aid at the beginning of the year. Rural areas are still scrambling to get the money out the door.
Rural counties and states in many cases lack infrastructure — in terms of both government agency staff and broadband access — to find tenants in need and enroll them in hastily built new assistance programs.
“The need is there,” said Sarah Kackar, director of rural initiatives at affordable housing group NeighborWorks America, which has 118 rural member affiliates around the country. “The geographic isolation and information gap are two really large struggles.”
Corianne Payton Scally, a researcher at the Urban Institute who has studied rural housing, said a lack of reliable Internet and cell phone service has impeded aid applications, as have transportation barriers that have prevented people from filling out paper applications.
The difficulties connecting with rural residents who may benefit from the aid has made it harder to assess who needs help.
“Not having great data is definitely hampering,” said Elizabeth Glidden, deputy executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership. “We’re concerned that some rural renters are remote, hard to reach and then not getting connected to the benefits that they should be qualified for and need.”
It’s also unclear based on available data the extent to which rural tenants have been affected by the Supreme Court’s decision in August to block the federal eviction ban.
Carl Gershenson, who tracks evictions as project director of Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, said financial hardships in rural areas don’t always result in people losing their homes but tend to lead to overcrowding or individuals living in “extremely low-quality” housing. Eviction Lab, one of the most widely cited sources for such data, largely focuses on urban areas.
“These are places that are not going to show up in our eviction statistics, but they need money badly,” Gershenson said.
Cleaver — whose home state of Missouri is nearly 40 percent rural and had spent just 23 percent of its first round of rental funds as of Oct. 31 — said in an interview that big cities have organizations that exist solely to stir activism around high-quality rental housing.
“You won’t find that anywhere in rural America,” said Cleaver, who has been pressing Treasury on the issue.
The concerns of Cleaver and other lawmakers have become more urgent following a Nov. 30 deadline for states and cities that had spent most of their first round of rental aid to apply for additional funds that will be clawed back from other areas. Treasury is sorting through the applications and expects to announce reallocations this month, according to a senior Treasury official who declined to be named to discuss the process.
The senior official said the department is aware that states with rural areas have had a harder time connecting with vulnerable tenants and that it can be difficult to accurately assess need as a result.
Any state or local program that failed by mid-November to obligate at least 65 percent or spend 15 percent of their share from the first $25 billion approved by Congress stands to lose money. Treasury spokesperson Dayanara Ramirez emphasized they will still have access to a second $21.6 billion batch of funds that lawmakers authorized in March.
A few rural states are obvious candidates to see funds taken away. As of Oct. 31, South Dakota had spent 4 percent of its first round of funds; Wyoming, 5 percent; North Dakota, 6 percent; and Montana, 11 percent. None of those states have separate county or city programs within their borders to which they can redirect money.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) says his state — led by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte — has imposed “severe red tape” on the aid distribution process. Aid applicants must provide income documentation, a copy of their lease and documents demonstrating their need, such as a past-due rent notice or utility shutoff bill, according to the state program’s website. Treasury has encouraged program operators to rely on applicants' self-attestations of need and income.
“It’s going to cost many Montana renters the roofs over their heads if these resources disappear due to the negligence of state government,” Tester said.
Gianforte’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
State programs in Nebraska, Idaho and Tennessee also appear to be at risk, but their unused funds could go to city programs within their borders that have high expenditure rates.
Gershenson said he was most concerned about rural Southeast counties with large Black populations that tend to have higher eviction rates.
The state rental aid programs in South Carolina and Georgia had spent less than 15 percent of their first round of federal funding by Oct. 31. Their money could be moved to metro areas such as Charleston County, S.C., and Atlanta, which had each spent all of their first round funds.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) — whose state consistently posts some of the highest urban and rural eviction rates in the country — said rural tenants often go overlooked in the larger political discussion about the shortage of affordable housing
“When most people think about this crisis, they think about urban areas,” Clyburn said at a rural housing conference this month. “This picture is incomplete. … We must bring down eviction rates everywhere, but we have the most work to do in rural communities.”
In an ideal world, COVID-19 tests would be so frequent and ubiquitous that it would be possible to identify all active cases, isolate them for a few days, and snuff out the pandemic like a candle at the end of a long, dark night. However, the fact that we just lived through four years of Donald Trump occupying the White House is a pretty good indicator where this world falls on the “ideal” scale. Suffice to say it’s not exactly a 10.
From the start of the pandemic, governments in the U.S. and elsewhere have looked for ways to detect COVID-19 in a situation where either it’s not possible to do enough testing or where the person in charge is deliberately suppressing the rate of testing. That’s included testing the level of viral particles in sewage, which has repeatedly resulted in wildly inaccurate claims about the percentage of the population infected.
In the pursuit of more and better ways to track the impact and scale of COVID-19, podcaster Drewtoothpastenoticed a potentially significant clue that came along with the wave of omicron cases: a “fresh wave of bad reviews for Yankee Candles.”
For the blissfully unfamiliar, Yankee Candles are a line of highly scented candles usually contained in a jar and sold on a number of large retail sites, including Amazon. It’s not surprising that the reviews of these candles would contain some single-star responses, such as this one from 2018: “Smelled Bad. Both my aunt and her caregiver remarked that all three of the candles smelled ‘cheap,’ they said that ‘they smell like Lysol’ and they're reminiscent of ‘dollar store quality candles.’ Now my aunt is stuck with three terrible smelling candles that she won't use.” The aunt in question had recently had a colostomy, and the review finishes with: “I think we can all agree that the situation must be bad if you prefer the smell of human waste to a product designed to freshen the air.”
That is a bad review. It’s also the second time that poop has made an appearance in this story.
But the recent reviews are somewhat different. Rather than complaining about the overwhelming semi-medicinal scent of these candles, the recent one stars include several that note “no scent” or “didn’t give off much smell.”
In response, political science professor Nick Beauchamp took the dates of recent reviews that rated the candles poorly because they lacked smell and placed them on a graph.
Plot of ‘no smell’ complaints for the top three Yankee Candles on Amazon.
If that chart looks vaguely familiar, it could be because of a resemblance to this one.
COVID-19 daily case rates in the United States.
Beauchamp also looked at the data another way, producing this graph showing the percentage of “no smell” reviews when compared to all reviews. This should help eliminate spikes caused by there simply being more candle purchases around the holidays as people seek innocuous gifts for relatives they barely know.
‘No smell’ reviews for the top three Yankee Candles at Amazon as a percentage of total reviews.
That graph may seem like a less than perfect match to the spikes in daily cases. However, there’s also another set of data to compare.
Active cases of COVID-19 in the United States
That seems … pretty remarkable. But remember, only about 40% of those with symptomatic COVID-19 report a loss of smell or taste. Also, complaints about Yankee Candle not smelling enough are a trailing indicator. And possibly one of the few benefits of the disease.
Perhaps it will come as no surprise to you that despite the fact that Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene rails against the COVID-19 vaccine, she doesn’t mind making money from it.
In fact, the infamously unvaccinated congresswoman holds stock in three of the major vaccine-making pharmaceutical companies—AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson.
According to financial disclosure filings analyzed by Insider, each of Greene’s stocks are worth about $1,000 and $15,000 to $50,000 respectively as of her Aug. 14, 2020 filings.
In a November town hall, Greene claimed she wasn’t vaccinated because “the government has no business to tell Americans that they should take the COVID vaccine or not,” CNN reported.
Jennifer Strahan, a Georgia entrepreneur who announced plans to run against Greene in the 2022 Republican primary alerted the Times Free Press of Greene’s holdings.
Strahan is running on a platform of "bringing competent leadership back" to Georgia's 14th congressional district.
Strahan posted a poll on her Twitter account asking which COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Greene owns stock in, then posted the results.
For those of you wondering, the correct answer is D! Our current representative rails against the vaccine, but owns stock in 3 of the 4 major vaccine manufacturers. https://t.co/Zrxv39k3JQ
— Jennifer Strahan for Congress (@StrahanJennifer) December 18, 2021
Congresswoman Greene’s office told Indy100 that she “does not handle her investments. A third-party advisor maintains her investment portfolio.”
On Sunday, Greene spoke at the Americafest conference, a far-right conservative event organized by Turning Point USA, vowing never to get vaccinated. “And they’re going to have a hell of a time if they want to hold me down and give me a vaccine,” she said.
Marge Greene today: “I’m not vaccinated. And they’re going to have a hell of a time if they want to hold me down and give me a vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/xvX4QD2zOI
On Nov. 2, the representative appeared as a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, where she said “vaccine Nazis” are “ruining our country.”
So, I guess getting the vaccine is one thing, but making money from them is a totally different issue.
Greene also used her time onstage at the Americafest to call out the diversity of the attendees, the “Black people, brown people, white people, and yellow people” only to highlight that the event can’t possibly be racist.
Oh, okay. Who uses the words “yellow people?” Racists. That’s who, you QAnon-believing, anti-vaxxing, gun-toting blockhead racist.
Republicanism is now fully a fascist movement. The hoax claims that our current elections have been "rigged" against Republicans—claims that continue to be provably false—continue to be used to stoke the convenient fear and outrage of a base that now increasingly believes the party is justified in taking control of the government through the erasure of future election results or, as happened on Jan. 6, through violence. The party is not just anti-democracy: It is demanding adherence to a lie that has already resulted in deaths and will result in more, and purging anyone unwilling to go along.
This is the behavior of a cult. It is also the behavior of fascist movements throughout history, movements in which false propaganda is used to rally support for the violent "remaking" of nations.
That is the context in which this CNN report on Republican candidates' near-universal adoption of the Big Lie should be considered. CNN does well enough in identifying the absolute falseness of the Republican claims, and a Republican pollster provides the grotesque context: If a Republican candidate openly admits that Donald Trump was beaten not by fraud, but legitimately, "the consequences are probably that you are going to lose" your Republican primary.
"This is a deeply held value by Republicans," the pollster says. And "logic just doesn't work" here.
That, of course, is a product of the hoax. It is self-fulfilling. If at any point Republican officeholders pushed aside their cowardice and told the base that Trump was lying to them, the lie would have evaporated. Donald Trump himself is a delusional, decompensating narcissist who has claimed "fraud" every single time one of his schemes hasn't worked out throughout his business, entertainment, and political "careers." It is his go-to excuse for his own failures; he not only openly broadcast that he would be using it again in the months before the election, there are plenty of quotes from the bumbling oaf over the decades to show that the gutless preener responds to countless defeats by claiming his plans only didn't work out because everyone else was working against him. It is what he does.
At any point during Trump's new delusional claims, Republicans could have taken the decent, noncrooked, patriotic path of cutting him loose to wallow in his failed authoritarian dreams by himself. Instead, the party went with him. From raised-fist Josh Hawley to the co-conspiring Lindsey Graham's efforts to throw Georgia, the party decided to boost Trump's delusions as a new party platform, seek to overturn the election results based on provable fictions, and assist in—or at least overlook—an attempted coup.
That is the context CNN is missing. It is very interesting, to be sure, to tick down the list of Republican candidates for state and national office and see that nearly to a person, all of them are either loudly promoting the Big Lie that led to an insurrection or are attempting to toe the line of neither overtly endorsing the hoax nor objecting to it. But it is not a campaign question. It is an ongoing act of sedition.
The Republican Party goaded their base into so believing false conspiracies about why Republicans lost a handful of races that they would have preferred to win, during a year in which American voters were presented with an incompetent, bumbling, buffoonish response to national emergency and death, that they were able to rally a crowd to violently attempt to erase the next government outright.
If they are still pursuing the same hoax, almost to a person, then it is intended as sedition. Stoking violence, seeding contempt for democratic elections, urging the base to reject those elections and replace them with new versions the party can be more sure of winning—these are the acts of traitors. The Republican candidates, from Josh Mandel to J.D. Vance to Dean Heller, are keeping the seeds of violent insurrection in their back pockets. Not to use, necessarily, but to keep the base occupied. And paranoid. And ready to accept other lies, if the future requires it.
The only reason to demand fealty to an abject hoax even after it has been proven, proven for all the world to see, that the hoax has resulted in violence and an attempted coup is because you believe the same violence and sedition may prove useful in the future. It would have cost the party not a damn thing to reject Trump's criminal farce after violent insurrection proved the party could not serve both his whims and their country, but they did not. Across the country, they repeat it. They endorse it. They look to use it in their own campaigns.
This is a party that has chosen itself over democracy, over America, and over reality itself. These are candidates willing to betray their country—candidates who are betraying their country every time they whimper out their cowardly excuses. That is the context CNN is missing here. That this is not an effort to soothe one wealthy but gutless man's ego. That man attempted violence. That man sat in the White House after rallying a crowd to assault lawmakers rather than abide by our democracy, sat and waited to see what effect it might have, sat and ignored even allies calling for help while he waited to see if his gambit would win.
The candidates who back him now back him over their own country. They stand in silent—or not so silent—alliance with the first attempt to overthrow American democracy since the Civil War. It is an act of ongoing sedition. They are lying about our elections explicitly so to make it easier to nullify them, and are saying that out loud, and are writing the state laws to do it.
That is the context. A fascist coup. It is not a coup "in slow motion"—it is being carried out with the same speed that past versions were. A first attempt, an evaluation of what didn't work, a purge of those unwilling to go along, new laws passed wherever the coup supporters have enough power to do it, in order to dismantle the specific roadblocks that held things up, an absolutely rabid demonization campaign against whichever public officials foiled the attempt, and an unrelenting campaign to drill the same pro-coup hoaxes even deeper into the public brain. This is how it's done.
These candidates are promoting a proven hoax, even after it led to violence, even after members of their party specifically used it to incite violence. There is no innocuous explanation. They are using a hoax intended to discredit democracy and replace it with something else. This is propagandism. It is specifically crafted to deceive.
Call these candidates what they are: anti-American. Enemies of our Constitution. Cowards. Corrupt.
There is no excuse for promoting, defending, or even staying silent on a hoax of this magnitude. The only reason to do it is a belief that your own political career is of more value than the peaceful transfers of power that America once held sacrosanct. Not a goddamn one of those people has any business in a position of power, and there is no version of journalism that should present spreading a dangerous anti-democratic hoax intended to mislead an entire nation as anything but the acts of corrupt, dangerous thugs.
December has been a rough month for Amazon—at least for Amazon Web Services. The massively popular cloud computing platform suffered its third outage of the month Wednesday, affecting Slack, the Epic Games Store, and several other services.
The AWS Service Health Dashboard shows the problem lies within a data center in northern Virginia and affects customers in the US-EAST-1 Availability Zone. The first outage was reported at 7:35 am EST.
Slack users began seeing problems shortly after the outage, and the Epic Games Store noted that the AWS outage was causing problems "affecting logins, library, purchases, etc."
Considering its out-competing Delta, this should be raising huge alarms with the unvaccinated crowd...but good riddance
The rate at which the omicron variant has spread is astounding. Bolstered by what appears to be a much higher rate of reproduction in the respiratory system, and what also appears to be a shortened period of incubation, omicron is spreading at a rate that’s difficult to believe. Numbers published last week set the percentage of new cases in the United States that could be attributed to omicron at 19%. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set that number at 73%. In a cluster of Northwest states—Oregon, Washington, and Idaho—omicron accounted for 96% percent of new cases in the last week.
The rate of expansion in the U.S. mirrors what happened a week earlier in the U.K., where omicron went from a tiny percentage to the dominant strain in a matter of days. Both of these trends follow that of South Africa, where omicron now accounts for 96% of new cases.
Omicron spreads more readily than previous variants. It spreads more quickly than previous variants. It is far more likely to reinfect those who have been ill from previous variants. It is more evasive of vaccines than previous variants. There is still no evidence it is milder than previous variants.
On Tuesday, the National Hockey League announced a “pause” in its schedule, delaying all games until next week as it considers appropriate action to take in addressing the rising number of cases. This follows on a series of growing cancellations that stretch from Broadway to college basketball.
The U.S. has been riding on a wave of delta variant cases since July. That first wave peaked around Sept. 1, but it never really settled back to anything like the level of cases that preceded delta’s appearance. Instead, following a pattern seen in the U.K. and elsewhere, the number of cases in the U.S. never fell below an average of 70,000 new cases a day, and the number of daily deaths barely dipped below 1,000 before both numbers began moving up again in November.
The U.S. was already involved in a winter surge, one that was likely to see case counts back to close to where they were in the winter of 2020 before omicron appeared. How the new, fast-spreading, highly infectious variant will affect the ultimate shape of the pandemic over the winter isn’t clear. However, across the nation and around the world, hospitals are bracing for an influx of COVID-19 patients that could well exceed the worst horrors of 2020.
When it comes to the percentage of people who develop symptomatic illness after exposure to omicron, the numbers are not significantly different than with delta. When it comes to the percentage of those people with symptomatic illness who need to be hospitalized, the numbers are not significantly different. Right now, the percentage of people dying is considerably less, but then, one of the most frequently used measures of case fatality is deaths within 28 days of infection, and it hasn’t even been 28 days since omicron was first identified. Hopeful claims that deaths from omicron are lower than they are with delta are just that: hopeful claims. We’re still weeks away from knowing the truth.
What we do know is that vaccination rates are closely aligned to outcome. That was true with delta. It appears to be unchanged with omicron. The latest CDC data puts the rate of deaths among confirmed COVID-19 cases at 6.1 deaths out of 100,000 cases for the unvaccinated. For the vaccinated, the number is 0.5 deaths out of 100,000 cases. For those who have become infected after receiving a booster, the rate is 0.1 deaths out of 100,000 cases.
That close alignment between vaccination and survival means that small differences in vaccination rates can make a huge difference in serious cases of COVID-19, the burdens on ICUs, and the number of deaths. At the end of 2020, the cumulative rate of deaths in the United States was 1.9%. Over the first half of 2021, the cumulative rate of deaths 1.6%. Over the last six months the rate has been 1.1%. Almost all of that difference is in vaccination. The unvaccinated have died from COVID-19 over the last six months at almost the same rate that people were dying in the second half of 2020. The limited availability of monoclonal antibodies and the limited effectiveness of other treatments means that vaccines, and vaccines alone, are the greatest determining factor in reducing COVID-19 deaths.
For all that the U.K. has done wrong—a long list of criminally negligent behavior that includes dropping most social distancing measures even though the delta wave had already begun—data from that nation indicates that they are doing three things right: a higher level of testing; a higher level of sequencing to detect the variant; and most of all, a higher level of vaccination.
The direct result of these measures is that the U.K. is seeing a higher rate of confirmed cases—in part because it is doing better testing. But it is seeing a much lower rate of deaths. In fact, the rate of deaths in the U.K. is less than half of that in the U.S.
The U.K. is seeing a far higher rate of cases, but a much lower rate of deaths.
Note that this rate of deaths is not a rate against cases, where the higher level of case reporting might be giving the U.K. an edge in percentage of deaths. These numbers show COVID-19 deaths per 1 million people in the population overall. People in the United States are simply dying from COVID-19 much more frequently than in the U.K.
That difference is largely the difference in the percentage of the population that is vaccinated. With deaths for the unvaccinated running 60 times lower that of the vaccinated and boosted, every percentage point of the unvaccinated population makes a big difference to the overall rate.
However, there are nations where the vaccination rate is almost identical to the U.S., but which still manage to have a much lower rate of deaths. Israel, for example, has just 1% more of its population fully vaccinated, but has a rate of deaths at just 0.34 per million—literally over 10 times better than in the U.S.
How is that happening? It’s happening using the tools that made South Korea and other nations so successful in the first stages of the pandemic: effective widespread testing and case management. In addition, Israel has adopted a “Green Pass” system of vaccination passports, maintained limits on large gatherings, and required masks across a whole range of settings. They are now stepping up their requirements and expected to add both vaccine mandates and an expanded use of the Green Pass.
Unfortunately, in spite of everything, omicron doesn’t seem to be moving the U.S. toward closing the gap on vaccination. In a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, news on omicron seriously worried a majority of Americans who have already been vaccinated, and increased the determination of those who hadn’t yet received a booster to do so. But then …
“On the other hand, unvaccinated adults remain relatively unmoved by the recent news of the omicron variant with a large majority of unvaccinated adults (87%) saying the news about the omicron variant does not make them more likely to get vaccinated.”
Despite warnings of a tsunami of omicron about to crash down on the nation, and the data that shows being vaccinated means up to a 60 times reduced chance of dying, the unvaccinated are determined to stay unvaccinated. Don’t expect those U.S. death numbers to decline any time soon.
Sen. Joe Manchin reportedly doesn’t like the expanded child tax credit because parents might use the money to buy drugs. But in reality, he’s getting in the way of parents buying their kids food. That’s the primary way families have been spending the monthly checks, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The expanded child tax credit, included in the American Rescue Plan, gives all but the highest-income families a $250-a-month payment for children aged six to 17, and $300 for children five and under. According to the Census data, 59% of families bought food with the money, 52% made utility payments, 45% paid the rent or the mortgage, 44% bought clothing, and 40% paid education costs. Nine out of 10 families spent money on at least one of those things. Paying down debt has been another widespread use.
Another poll previously found that building emergency savings was a top plan for the money, while routine expenses, essential items for children, and food were runners-up.
Either way, the use of the money for food shows up in data finding a significant drop in food insecurity in households with kids—from 11% before the checks started going out to 8.4% after. And while people are unlikely to tell a pollster that they’re going to use the money on drugs, Manchin’s insistence that this was likely is a longtime right-wing trope that’s been disproven again and again. When Florida imposed drug testing for welfare benefits, so few people tested positive that the cost of the testing was higher than the amount of benefits not distributed. Then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was caught in a false claim that half of unemployed people were testing positive for drugs, when in fact, of the people tested, less than 1% failed.
Many families in this country are hanging on by their fingernails. They don’t have enough or good enough food, they’re behind on the rent or the mortgage, their kids are outgrowing their clothes and there’s no money for replacements. That can be just as true of families with members working at the poverty-level federal minimum wage—which Manchin worries about raising too much—or of families with members laid-off or unable to work in the still-ongoing pandemic. For these families, the child tax credit has been a lifeline. Manchin has cut off that lifeline based on a lie.
Enlarge / A man walks by the building entrance of Israeli cyber company NSO Group at one of its branches in the Arava Desert on November 11, 2021, in Sapir, Israel. (credit: Amir Levy | Getty Images)
In February 2019, an Israeli woman sat across from the son of Uganda’s president and made an audacious pitch—would he want to secretly hack any phone in the world?
Lt. General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, in charge of his father’s security and a long-whispered successor to Yoweri Museveni, was keen, said two people familiar with the sales pitch.
After all, the woman, who had ties to Israeli intelligence, was pitching him Pegasus, a piece of spyware so powerful that Middle East dictators and autocratic regimes had been paying tens of millions for it for years.
They got the memo for "everyone sue and plead the 5th"...gee it's like there's a problem
Pro-Trump broadcaster and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is suing the Jan. 6 select committee to block the panel from obtaining his phone records and compelling his testimony at a deposition next month.
In the suit, Jones says he intends to assert his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination — confirming a statement he made on his show — and that the committee rejected his offer to provide “written responses” to their questions.
The panel, he says, has asked him to appear for a deposition on Jan. 10 and has suggested it is considering offering immunity to compel his testimony. He also says he doesn’t intend to produce documents, claiming his “journalistic activity” is protected under the First Amendment.
“With respect to his deposition subpoena, Jones has informed the Select Committee that he will assert his First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights to decline to produce the documents requested by the Select Committee, asserting that he engaged in constitutionally protected political and journalistic activity under the First Amendment, that the Fourth Amendment guarantees him a right of privacy in his papers, and that he is entitled to due process and the right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment,” he argues.
The panel is seeking Jones’ phone records from his carrier, AT&T.
Jones’ lawsuit is the latest in a flood of litigation by targets of the Jan. 6 committee seeking to prevent them from enforcing its subpoenas and obtaining phone records from private carriers. Several organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the violent attack at the Capitol have jointly sued the panel. John Eastman, the attorney who helped Trump develop plans to pressure Mike Pence to overturn the results of last year's presidential election, has sued to protect his phone records, as well. Ali Alexander, the founder of the “Stop the Steal” movement, has sued, as has Amy Harris, a freelance photographer who was working on a project about the Proud Boys.
On Monday afternoon, Cleta Mitchell, a prominent conservative attorney who joined Trump's early January call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, sued to quash a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee for her private phone records, calling it an "unwarranted intrusion" on her privacy and privileged communications.
Notably, Mitchell indicated she doesn't dispute the "legitimacy" of the Jan. 6 committee probe — which she pointed out was recently supported by a federal appeals court panel — but she said the subpoena itself was too broad. Mitchell said she spent months performing legal work on Trump's behalf, with a focus on Georgia, which led to a Dec. 4 lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed.
Jones led hundreds of supporters on a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He’s not accused of any crimes related to the attack on the Capitol. One of his close associates, however, Owen Shroyer, who accompanied Jones for most of the day, is facing misdemeanor charges for breaching police lines at the Capitol.
Shroyer was in court via video Monday afternoon seeking to dismiss the case against him. In an hour-long hearing, his attorney made the case to U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly that the charges against Shroyer amount to “vindictive” prosecution of Shroyer for his political views. But Kelly seemed skeptical of that position, noting that prosecutors have charged hundreds of people in connection with the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
"They've been charging a heck of a lot of people," Kelly said. While more than 700 people have been charged, the vast majority of charges have been brought against those accused of entering the Capitol or battling with police. Very few, besides Shroyer, are charged only with minor offenses on Capitol grounds.
Shroyer is facing a series of misdemeanor charges that he crossed police lines, refused directions to leave the restricted grounds and exacerbated the situation by chanting “1776” near the top of the steps on the Capitol’s east side.
Shroyer had previously entered a “deferred prosecution agreement” with the government for his disruption of impeachment proceedings in 2019. At the time, he stood up and shouted at the impeachment investigators during a public hearing. The agreement prohibited Shroyer from future disruptive acts on Capitol grounds.
Shroyer has claimed he was with Jones during the attack and circled the Capitol looking for places Jones could use to calm the crowd and urge participants to leave. Shroyer's attorney, Norman Pattis, said video supports that claim, showing a security aide to Jones asking police officers if Jones could climb up on a pedestal to address the crowd. At one point, according to lawyers involved in the case, an officer replied: "If you can get him up there, go for it.“
"We view that as condonation," Pattis said. "I’m not sure that the magistrate who authorized the arrest warrant would have signed the warrant had that comment been highlighted."
However, prosecutors contend that an officer's remark amid an unfolding crisis didn't amount to permission to cross the police lines. "Even if this were permission, it’s not permission for Owen Shroyer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards Jr. said.
Edwards insisted that prosecutors were not targeting Shroyer over his speech. "These charges target his conduct," the prosecutor said.
But Pattis said that claim was absurd. "I found that shocking. There's no evidence that he did anything other than speak," the defense attorney said. "I don't think this court can ignore the speech-drenched character of this ... It is our contention that Mr. Shroyer was doing nothing other than petitioning for redress of grievances."
Kelly did not rule immediately on the defense's motions to toss out the charges. He suggested at the outset that some of Pattis' claims might be useful defenses at trial, but didn't seem to be sufficient to have a judge throw out the case. However, shortly before the hearing recessed, Kelly added: "The parties have given me little more to chew on than I had thought."
Jones' new lawsuit indicates that the committee offered him a chance to speak “informally” about a limited set of topics but he refused, contending that the panel “has not treated others that it has offered the same deal to fairly and with respect.”
“Jones has good and substantial reason to fear that the Select Committee may cite him for contempt of Congress if he refuses to answer its questions on grounds of constitutional privilege,” his suit argues.
New York-based firm Pliant Energy Systems is building a marine system reminiscent of the cuttlefish with its rippling underwater motion, a report from The Economist reveals. The company's biomimetic machine, called Velox, is based on the principle that propellers are nowhere near as efficient as the fins of sea creatures that are prevalent in nature. Interesting Engineering reports: Unlike propellers, fins and flippers can extend around a sea creature, meaning more propulsion without the need for a large protruding propeller that could get caught or damaged by hitting the seabed. Fins are also flexible, meaning that if they do come in contact with any other object in the sea, they are less likely to get damaged. In an interview with The Economist, an ex-marine biologist and founder of Pliant Energy Systems, Benjamin Pietro Filardo, explained how he is designing submersible machines that are propelled using flexible fin-like materials. He said Velox will produce approximately three times as much thrust per unit energy as the average propeller of a small boat. The system can travel underwater and even come out onto land, using its fins almost like robotic legs. The video below shows Velox skating on ice and swimming in a pool.
Filardo showed his new design to America's Office of Naval Research, leading them to commission a new iteration, called C-Ray, that will be faster and lighter than Velox. C-Ray also won't be tethered, unlike Velox, which is currently controlled via a cable. Autonomous swarms of the machine could eventually be used for missions such as undersea patrols, mine removal, and deepsea exploration and monitoring. [...] Filardo said the system has great potential for scalability, giving the blue whale as an example of a massive sea mammal that uses fins for propulsion. Impressively, he also revealed that he is also working on a concept that would allow his system to moor itself, and then use the undulations of its fins, thanks to the sea current, to recharge. A lot of testing is still needed, but if Filardo's system delivers on its promise, we might eventually see giant mechanical sea beasts silently gliding through the oceans.
Moderna announced Monday that its booster provides protection against COVID-19 variant omicron. In its testing, Moderna found a 50-microgram dose resulted in a 37-fold increase of antibodies compared to vaccinated, unboosted individuals.
A 100 µg dose, which is the same amount used in the first two vaccine doses, provided even more protection, increasing antibody levels 83-fold. But that increased immune response was paired with slightly worse side effects than with the smaller dose.
Moderna's data is preliminary and has not been reviewed, but CEO Stéphane Bancel said the results are "reassuring" all the same and touted the company's work on a booster targeted specifically at omicron. “To respond to this highly transmissible variant, Moderna will continue to rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate into clinical testing in case it becomes necessary in the future. We will also continue to generate and share data across our booster strategies with public health authorities to help them make evidence-based decisions on the best vaccination strategies against SARS-CoV-2.”
Seriously...a lot of companies are in for a very large shock
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Months have gone by, and the great resignation keeps rolling along. Some people thought that people would come flocking back to the office once generous unemployment benefits ended. Nope. Wrong. Months after Republican states cut the $300-a-week Federal benefit and other benefits expired, there has been no rush to return to the workforce. There are many reasons for this. People don't want to catch COVID-19; people are sick of bad jobs; early retirement; and the one I care about today, bosses still think they can force skilled workers to return to offices. I've said it before; I'll say it again. That's not going to happen. People with talent and high-value skills, like most technology workers, aren't returning to traditional offices. You don't have to believe me, though. Look at the numbers being reported.
A Hackajob survey of 2,000 UK tech workers and employers found not quite three-quarters (72%) of tech workers said having the ability to do remote work was very important to them. All, and by the way, just over one in five were looking for new jobs with remote work. A more recent Microsoft survey found UK techies felt even stronger about the issue. In this survey, they found over half of the employees would consider quitting if you tried to force them back into the office. It's not just the UK. The Future Forum Pulse survey found IT workers in the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan all had one thing in common: Most want to work at least part of the time remotely. To be precise, 75% want flexibility in where they work, while 93% want flexibility in when they work. Why? The top reason: "Better work-life balance."
The problem? Many executives and owners haven't gotten the clue yet. 44% said they wanted to work from the office daily. Employees? 17%. Three-quarters of bosses said they at least wanted to work from the office 3-5 days a week, versus 34% of employees. Can we say disconnect? I can. And, here's the point. Today, for the first time in my lifetime, workers, not employers, are in the driver's seat. [...] But, that doesn't mean that you must give up the traditional office entirely. You don't. In the Dice State of Remote Work report, there's a remote work spectrum. Sure, some workers never want to cross the office transom again, but others like a flexible work schedule where they can work outside of the office a set number of days per week or month. By Dice's count, only one in five workers are bound and determined to never come into the office again. 75% would be fine with flex work. But, pay attention folks, only 3% want to go back to the old-school 9 to 5, every weekday at the office. I repeat a mere 3% want to return to the office as most of you knew it in the 2010s. Indeed, 7% of respondents said they would even take a 5% salary cut to work remotely.
Democratic senators represent 43 million more people than their Republican counterparts.
On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) appeared ready to kill the Build Back Better Act, a legislative package funding child care, early childhood education, health care, clean energy, and tax credits for parents, which is one of President Joe Biden’s top legislative priorities.
Regardless of how Manchin’s comments about Build Back Better should be read (he told Fox News that “this is a no — on this legislation”), the only reason why Manchin’s opinion of the legislation matters at all is that the United States Senate is a malapportioned trainwreck that gives each resident of Wyoming more than 68 times as much representation as each resident of California.
Because smaller states tend to be whiter and more conservative than larger states, the constitutional design of the Senate, which gives each state two senators regardless of its population, offers Republicans an enormous advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. Indeed, if the Senate were anything that could fairly be described as a democratic institution, Democrats would control closer to 56 or 57 seats, rather than only holding 50 seats in the Senate.
The Democratic “half” of the Senate represents 186,902,361 individuals. Meanwhile, the Republican “half” represents only 143,857,375 people — a gap of 43,044,986. That means that Democrats represent nearly 57 percent of the population, but only control half of the Senate’s seats.
I derived this number by using the United States Census Bureau’s population counts from the 2020 census. In each state where both senators belong to the same party, I allocated the state’s entire population to that party. In states with split delegations, I allocated half of the state’s population to each party. (I coded Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-ME) as Democrats. Although both identify as independents, they caucus with the Democratic Party.)
It’s worth highlighting just how much of an advantage Republicans derive from Senate malapportionment. In the 25 most populous states, Democratic senators hold a 29-21 seat majority. Republicans, meanwhile, have an identical 29-21 majority in the 25 least populous states.
The 25 most populous states contain nearly 84 percent of the 50 states’ total population. So 16 percent of the country controls half of the seats in the United States Senate (and that’s not accounting for the fact that Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and several other US territories have no real representation in Congress).
Admittedly, Democrats would have a stronger hand in the current Senate if they hadn’t lost winnable races in places like North Carolina and Maine, but unexpected losses and weaker-than-expected candidates are a normal part of any democratic system. Senate malapportionment forces Democrats to pitch a perfect game over multiple election cycles if they want a chance to enact their legislative agenda. Republicans, meanwhile, can tank elections they were expected to win and still wind up with enough votes to block legislation.
It’s hard to exaggerate just how much damage Senate malapportionment has done to American democracy. For much of the pre-Civil War era, slave states counted on their disproportionate representation in the Senate to frustrate anti-slavery legislation. Beginning in the Lincoln administration, Republicans admitted several underpopulated territories as states in order to maximize their chances of winning the Senate.
Yet, while Lincoln’s support for sparsely populated GOP states might be justifiable as an effort to keep Confederate sympathizers from capturing the Senate, the Republican Party’s statehood policies soon devolved into a purely partisan power grab. The reason there are two Dakotas, for example, is Republicans split Dakota territory in 1888 so that they would receive four senators instead of just two.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court would almost certainly not be controlled by right-wing Republican appointees, and might very well have a Democratic majority. All three of former President Donald Trump’s appointees to the Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a bloc of senators who represent less than half of the country.
The American people elected Biden by a comfortable margin in 2020, and they also voted to give him a Senate majority that is large enough to enact his agenda. That agenda is now on the ropes, not because the American people voted against it, but because the results in Senate elections bear little resemblance to the will of the people.
Because they're fucking idiots that gave up their leverage. The only people that's surprised are the untrustworthy shitheads who came up with this strategy then abandoned it halfway through. Ineffective morons just fell off the turnip truck, so of course they're surprised.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) speaks to reporters as she leaves a meeting with progressive House Democrats at the Capitol on October 28. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
There’s a reason they wanted the social spending bill tied to infrastructure.
For members of “the Squad,” a group of staunch progressives in the House, Sen. Joe Manchin’s statement opposing the Build Back Better Act didn’t come as a surprise. They’d long warned it was just a matter of time before Manchin derailed the bill if a vote on infrastructure legislation, which he supported, was held first.
It turns out they were right.
Manchin has previously voiced a variety of concerns about the massive climate and social spending bill, and has repeatedly demanded it be trimmed down. In an attempt to pressure the moderate senator to support the measure, progressives lobbied Democratic leaders to keep it linked to a vote on a massive infrastructure package known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, as that latter bill was seen as a priority for Manchin.
The bills were coupled for weeks but were eventually separated due to pressure from House moderates and an assurance from President Joe Biden that he’d secure a yes vote from Manchin on the Build Back Better Act. Most House progressives voted in favor of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework; in the end, the six House members in “the Squad” were the only ones within the Congressional Progressive Caucus who voted against it. At the time, they reiterated fears that passing the infrastructure bill first would give up any leverage they had to pressure moderate lawmakers like Manchin to consider the Build Back Better Act.
“We have been saying this for weeks that this would happen,” Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) said in an MSNBC interview on Sunday. “Having [the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better] coupled together was the only leverage we had. And what did the caucus do? We tossed it.”
Bush’s stance was echoed by other Squad members, like Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and it’s now clear these progressives were correct to be worried. Although it’s uncertain how open Manchin might be to a different version of the Build Back Better Act, his position has effectively doomed the current version.
Democrats are attempting to pass Build Back Better via a process known as budget reconciliation, which allows legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority. They need all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus on board to approve it — a fragile unity that’s impossible to achieve without Manchin’s vote. That fact has given Manchin, the bill’s largest detractor in the Senate, a lot of say over its fate. Over the past few months, he’s shown he’s more than willing to make full use of that influence. He did so again Sunday, shaking what little faith many progressives had left in him.
“Maybe they’ll believe us next time. Or maybe people will just keep calling us naive,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted on Sunday.
When a handful of us in the House warned this would happen if Dem leaders gave Manchin everything he wanted 1st by moving BIF before BBB instead of passing together, many ridiculed our position.
Maybe they’ll believe us next time. Or maybe people will just keep calling us naïve. https://t.co/TtKW6VOOCF
Progressives have long feared that moderates would abandon Build Back Better without the infrastructure bill
For months, the Congressional Progressive Caucus emphasized that it wouldn’t move along the bipartisan infrastructure bill without a concurrent vote on the Build Back Better Act. Members worried that moderates including Manchin would potentially abandon the social spending legislation once infrastructure passed. They were able to issue this ultimatum because the House also has a thin Democratic majority and the Congressional Progressive Caucus has the numbers to keep any bill without Republican support from passing.
At the start of November, however, as pressure to pass the infrastructure bill grew from both the White House and impatient moderates, most members in the progressive caucus agreed to a compromise. Armed with a written agreement from House moderates agreeing to consider the Build Back Better Act once the Congressional Budget Office released a cost estimate, as well as Biden’s promise that he would get Manchin’s support, progressives allowed the infrastructure vote to move forward.
“The president’s word is on the line here, and I do still believe that he is going to do what he told me and what he told our caucus and what he told the country he would do,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the chair of the Progressive Caucus, said in an MSNBC interview last week. Manchin “made a commitment to the president, the president made a commitment to us, and I believe we’re going to get it done.”
The White House said Manchin was still participating in negotiations as recently as Tuesday, and that Manchin had brought the president a more limited version of the bill he could support. (As Vox’s Andrew Prokop has explained, Manchin’s statements do not explicitly indicate whether he’s closed the door to negotiating on a different version of the Build Back Better plan.)
“If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki wrote in a statement Sunday.
Jayapal, in the MSNBC interview last week, said she did not regret the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s decision to vote for the infrastructure bill when it did.
“I don’t regret it because I think our leverage was at the maximum point,” Jayapal said. “Had we not done that, I think we would have lost even more on Build Back Better.”
Me: "Do you feel Joe Biden let you down? And do you feel you got played by Joe Manchin?"@RepJayapal: "No and no."
I pushed @RepJayapal on whether she and the progressives gave up leverage too soon by voting for BIF before BBB.
It’s impossible to say exactly what would have happened had progressives not chosen to put their trust in the president’s ability to seal a deal.
On one hand, questions have been raised about how much leverage progressives actually had throughout this process. Although Manchin helped negotiate the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, it was never clear whether he wanted it to pass so badly that he’d be willing to overlook his concerns about the size of the Build Back Better Act and many of its programs. It’s possible he would have been willing to vote down the social spending legislation even if that meant jeopardizing infrastructure legislation, too.
On the other hand, it did appear that the infrastructure legislation was a proposal that Manchin was invested in. He has long emphasized his support of bipartisanship and commitment to a measure addressing much-needed funding for roads and bridges that could garner both Democratic and Republican support. For that reason, the Squad is among those who now believe Democrats made a major miscalculation — one that not only potentially squandered a chance to pass Build Back Better quickly, but that has also put Democrats in a position in which further negotiation will be exponentially more difficult.
Manchin’s statement has damaged trust
Democrats are where they are now because of trust.
Progressives made a number of concessions on the Build Back Better Act, agreeing to a $3.5 trillion framework after initially proposing a $6 trillion option. Then they agreed to winnow it down further to $1.75 trillion, cutting some of their key priorities, including Medicare expansion of dental and vision coverage.
Throughout this process, willingness to move forward has relied on a sense that Manchin was participating in talks in good faith. And there was a sense that Biden, who has often touted the power of his personal relationship with Manchin, could find a way to get the senator to vote yes. For the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Manchin’s new statement seems to have shattered that trust.
“Today, Senator Manchin has betrayed his commitment not only to the President and Democrats in Congress but most importantly, to the American people,” caucus chair Jayapal said in a Sunday statement. “He routinely touts that he is a man of his word, but he can no longer say that.”
Now it will be more difficult to move forward. Progressives may feel less willing to compromise on provisions that remain outstanding in the bill, like drug pricing and Medicaid expansion, feeling that further compromise won’t net them anything from Manchin.
Manchin has also created confusion about what he wants, making it difficult for Democratic leaders to know where they should restart negotiations. It’s unclear if he simply doesn’t like the current shape of the Build Back Better Act and would be willing to vote for the proposal he brought to Biden recently, or if he’s now a no on any more spending.
The senator has placed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a tough position as well. Schumer is under increasing pressure from his caucus to simply bring a vote on the Build Back Better Act to the floor of the Senate, in hopes of forcing Manchin to vote yes.
The weeks to come will reveal if Manchin is willing to consider a version of the legislation that takes his concerns into consideration, or if he’s willing to walk away from it altogether. In both respects, however, his statement has made it tougher for progressives to trust that he will engage with this legislation seriously moving forward.
Then-President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice Brett Kavanaugh before delivering the State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on February 5, 2019. | MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Trump is no longer president. Will the Supreme Court keep bending the law to protect him?
Unless the Supreme Court intervenes on former President Donald Trump’s behalf, a US House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will soon know a lot more about the Trump White House’s involvement in this attack.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court held that the January 6 committee may obtain records that Trump wants to keep away from this investigation. That leaves the Supreme Court, where a third of the seats are occupied by Trump’s own appointees, as Trump’s last recourse in his bid to keep whatever is in these records secret.
The appeals court panel that rejected Trump’s request to keep the documents secret in Trump v. Thompson was made up entirely of Democratic appointees, so their opinion offers no real insight into how a Supreme Court dominated by conservative Republican appointees will approach this case. Although the Thompson opinion accurately describes the current state of federal law governing congressional investigations, the Supreme Court may very well change that law to accommodate Trump — after all, it already did so once when Trump was president.
But there is one very important distinction between Thompson and Trump v. Mazars (2020), the Trump-era Supreme Court decision that effectively allowed Trump to keep his financial records secret from Congress until after the 2020 election. Trump was president when Mazarsrewrote much of the law governing congressional investigations, at least when those investigations target a sitting president. Now, Trump is merely a private citizen.
Thompson, in other words, will reveal whether the Supreme Court is willing to create another carve-out to Congress’s investigatory powers — this time to benefit a Republican political leader who holds no public office.
Thompson specifically concerns hundreds of pages of records from the Trump White House, which the January 6 committee seeks as part of its investigation and that are currently held in a federal archive. Trump claims that these records should not be disclosed to the committee, and his most salient argument is that they are protected by executive privilege.
The Supreme Court did hold in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (GSA) (1977) that this privilege, which protects the secrecy of certain internal White House deliberations, “survives the individual President’s tenure.” But a former president’s power to keep such deliberations secret is much weaker than the power of a sitting president to do the same, and it is especially weak when the current president believes that a former administration’s documents should not remain secret.
As the Court held in the GSA case, the fact that neither President Gerald Ford nor President Jimmy Carter supported former President Richard Nixon’s claim that certain documents should remain confidential “detracts from the weight” of Nixon’s claim.
In Thompson, President Joe Biden determined that the documents at issue in that case should not remain secret because they “shed light on events within the White House on and about January 6 and bear on the Select Committee’s need to understand the facts underlying the most serious attack on the operations of the Federal Government since the Civil War.”
It’s now up to the justices to decide if those documents should nonetheless remain hidden.
What the law currently says about congressional investigations
According to the appeals court that upheld the January 6 committee's request, the committee seeks documents and other Trump White House communications “generated within the White House on January 6, 2021, that relate to . . . the violence at the Capitol” and the pro-Trump rallies that took place earlier in the day. It also seeks “calendars and schedules documenting meetings or events attended by President Trump, White House visitor records, and call logs and telephone records from January 6,” and a range of other documents concerning Capitol security, the transfer of power from Trump to Biden, and Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election.
Trump raises several arguments attacking these requests, two of which can be disposed of in a few sentences.
The former president’s lawyers claim, for example, that the courts should apply a special rule announced in Mazars, which governs congressional investigations into a sitting president. But Mazars is quite clear that this rule applies only to the nation’s current president because “the President is the only person who alone composes a branch of government.” The key words here are “only person” and “alone.” Only one person at a time is entitled to the special solicitude the courts sometimes apply to a sitting president. And right now that person is Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.
Similarly, Trump claims that the contested records are beyond Congress’s power to conduct investigations. But this argument borders on frivolous. The Supreme Court has long held that Congress may investigate any subject matter “on which legislation could be had.” And the January 6 investigation could inform all sorts of potential legislation, including laws governing the certification of a presidential election, laws governing police resources at the Capitol, and laws shaping the government’s response to domestic terrorism.
That leaves Trump’s claim that the documents are protected by executive privilege. As the Court explained in United States v. Nixon (1974), such a privilege exists to ensure that presidents receive candid advice from staffers who may be more circumspect if they fear that their communications will become public. “Those who expect public dissemination of their remarks,” the 1974 Nixon case explained, “may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decisionmaking process.”
For this reason, GSA’s holding that executive privilege does not evaporate completely when a president leaves office makes sense. A presidential adviser might be reluctant to offer unpopular advice in 2020 if they fear that this advice could become widely known in 2021.
Still, as mentioned above, executive privilege is weaker for a former president. And it is especially weak when the sitting president disagrees with their predecessor’s decision to assert executive privilege. “It must be presumed that the incumbent President is vitally concerned with and in the best position to assess the present and future needs of the Executive Branch,” the Court explained in GSA, including the executive branch’s need to keep the advice offered by past presidential advisers secret.
So how strong is Trump’s executive privilege claim?
Even if Trump were still the incumbent president, the House committee seeks to investigate a matter of transcendent importance — a mob that breached the Capitol and that sought to undermine the duly elected government of the United States of America. So it’s unlikely that, at least under current law, Trump could keep the documents the January 6 committee seeks secret even if he were still in office.
In Nixon, the Court ordered then-sitting President Richard Nixon to turn over tape recordings that incriminated him and led to his resignation from office. As the Court explained, executive privilege is neither “absolute” nor “unqualified.” Thus, “absent a claim of need to protect military, diplomatic, or sensitive national security secrets,” the justice system’s need to conduct a full investigation into the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down Nixon, and to prosecute anyone who committed a crime, overcame the White House’s interest in keeping Nixon’s communications secret.
As the Court would later hold in GSA, executive privilege “is not for the benefit of the President as an individual, but for the benefit of the Republic.” It, accordingly, should not be used to bolster efforts to harm the Republic itself.
That said, there is one important distinction between the Nixon case and the January 6 investigation at issue in Thompson. While Nixon involved a special prosecutor’s investigation — and the Nixon opinion speaks of the need to preserve “the primary constitutional duty of the Judicial Branch to do justice in criminal prosecutions” — Thompson involves a congressional investigation. So Trump could argue that Congress’s investigatory power is less expansive than the authority of a federal prosecutor and the courts that enforce that prosecutor’s subpoenas.
But this argument is undercut by GSA, which upheld a federal statute that required the federal government to take custody of Nixon’s presidential records after Nixon left office. Nixon held that a “generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specified need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.” GSA held that an assertion of privilege similarly must yield to “substantial public interests”, such as “Congress’ need to understand” how the executive branch behaved during Watergate.
Read together, in other words, Nixon and GSA stand for several important propositions. One is that executive privilege is not absolute. A second is that it must yield to an investigation into matters that potentially endanger the country itself. A third is that a former president’s power to assert the privilege is much weaker than an incumbent’s. A fourth is that this power is especially weak when the incumbent president believes that the privilege should not be asserted in a particular case.
In light of these four propositions, Trump’s claim that the documents sought by the January 6 committee should be shielded by executive privilege is exceedingly weak — at least if the Supreme Court decides not to change the law.
Delay is Trump’s best friend
Read outside its political context, the Court’s mid-2020 decision in Mazars could be read as a defeat for Trump. Although the Court announced a new rule that governs investigations into a sitting president, it did not immediately shut down the House investigation into Trump’s financial records. In theory, Mazars still permitted the House to seek those records in subsequent litigation.
A similar dynamic could play out in the Thompson case. Although the appeals court ruled against Trump in Thompson, it blocked its own order until December 23 to give Trump enough time to seek review of this case in the Supreme Court. In the overwhelmingly likely event that Trump’s lawyers do seek Supreme Court review, the appeals court order will not take effect until after the justices decide whether to act on the case.
If the Court agrees to hear the case, Trump’s records will almost certainly remain secret while the case is pending before the justices — and, depending on when the justices schedule the oral argument in Thompson and when they hand down their decision, the Court could potentially delay its own ruling until after a newly elected Congress takes office in January 2023.
In part because of gerrymandering and in part because the party that controls the White House tends to lose seats in midterm elections, Republicans are favored to regain control of Congress in the next election. If they do, they can shut down the January 6 committee and quash any of its ongoing efforts to obtain Trump’s documents.
The Supreme Court, in other words, doesn’t even need to overrule any existing precedents in order to carry Trump’s water in the Thompson case. All it has to do is run out the clock.
Variety argues that young men — the key audience for comic book and science-fiction films "have been fueling attendance for pandemic-era hits..."
But even with that, this weekend Spider-Man: No Way Home "crushed box office expectations, generating a mammoth $253 million from 4,336 theaters in North America."
It was easily the best domestic opening weekend turnout of any movie in pandemic times. Prior to this weekend, no other COVID-era film had been able to cross even $100 million in a single weekend. The biggest domestic debut previously belonged to another Sony comic book sequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which generated $90 million in its initial release. And after only three days in cinemas, Spider-Man: No Way Home is already the highest-grossing film of this year (and last). Overseas, the latest Spidey outing has collected $334.2 million from 60 international markets for a global tally of $587.2 million.
It ranks as the third-biggest worldwide opening weekend ever....
The film is experiencing the kind of demand that hasn't been witnessed in theaters since Disney's every-hero-but-the-kitchen-sink mashup Avengers: Endgame, which collected a historic $357 million in its 2018 debut. Spider-Man: No Way Home isn't quite reaching those (basically unattainable) heights, but the movie has been a formidable force, zooming past opening weekend tickets sales for box office behemoths like 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($247 million), 2017's Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($220 million), 2015's Jurassic World ($208 million), 2012's The Avengers ($207 million) and 2018's Black Panther ($202 million). It stands behind Avengers: Endgame, and 2017's Avengers: Infinity War ($257 million debut) to land the third-best opening weekend in history. Counting No Way Home, only eight films have ever crossed $200 million in ticket sales in a single weekend....
The film's remarkable box office revenues coincide with the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, which is already leading to restaurant, concert and live-theater closures in New York City....
Box office experts believe there's one reason why "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is turbo-charging the box office: superheroes sell. In other words, the comic book adventure's performance doesn't reverse fortunes for the beleaguered movie theater business. Rather, industry insiders believe it punctuates the reality that multiplexes have been — and will continue to be — more reliant than ever on big-budget spectacles, particularly of the superhero variety.
The same weekend Guillermo del Toro's $60-million movie Nightmare Alley brought in $3 million.
"Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world," writes a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
"But to see price hikes of as much as 675% being imposed in real time, automatically, by a hospital's computer system still takes your breath away."
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes their report:
I got to view this for myself after a former operating-room nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas shared with me screenshots of the facility's electronic health record system.... What they show are price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital's software. The eye-popping increases are so routine, apparently, the software even displays the formula it uses to convert reasonable medical costs to billed amounts that are much, much higher. For example, one screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps' system put the basic "cost per unit" at $19.30. But the system said the "computed charge per unit" was $149.58. This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.
The system helpfully included a formula for reaching this amount: "$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%)."
You read that right. Scripps' automated system took the actual cost of sutures, imposed an apparently preset 675% markup and produced a billed amount that was orders of magnitude higher than the true price. This is separate from any additional charges for the doctor, anesthesiologist, X-rays or hospital facilities.
Call it institutionalized price gouging. And it's apparently widespread because the same or similar software is used by other hospitals nationwide, including UCLA, and around the world... Healthcare providers routinely ignore the actual cost of treatment when calculating bills and instead cook up nonsensical figures to push reimbursement from insurers higher. For the millions of people without health insurance, those sky-high prices are what they're stuck with (although most hospitals, including Scripps, typically will offer discounts in such circumstances).
(@mtgreenee) 
