An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, the University of Naples Federico II, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences has found that making food from air would be far more efficient than growing crops. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis and comparison of the efficiency of growing crops (soybeans) and using a food-from-air technique. [...] To make their comparisons, the researchers used a food-from-air system that uses solar energy panels to make electricity, which is combined with carbon dioxide from the air to produce food for microbes grown in a bioreactor. The protein the microbes produce is then treated to remove nucleic acids and then dried to produce a powder suitable for consumption by humans and animals.
They compared the efficiency of the system with a 10-square-kilometer soybean field. Their analysis showed that growing food from air was 10 times as efficient as growing soybeans in the ground. Put another way, they suggested that a 10-square-kilometer piece of land in the Amazon used to grow soybeans could be converted to a one-square-kilometer piece of land for growing food from the air, with the other nine square kilometers turned back to wild forest growth. They also note that the protein produced using the food-from-air approach had twice the caloric value as most other crops such as corn, wheat and rice.
Last week, the warmblooded vertebrates among us—and a few Republicans, too—shed a tear or three after hearing that the Bidens’ longtime canine companion, Champ, had passed on to the land of eternal treats and belly scratches. (I don’t actually believe in an afterlife, but I carve out an admittedly irrational exception for dogs.)
Most people who have dogs treat them as members of the family in good standing—though, for the most part, we still can’t get them to do chores. Since my dogs’ job is barking at ghosts and begging for treats (I may eventually conscript them into peeing on Donald Trump’s grave, but I’ll never expect them to run the Iditarod), they’ve had no trouble meeting my expectations, and then some.
Unfortunately, not everyone treats dogs like members of the family. Some treat them horribly, with cruelty and neglect. A bill passed by the Texas legislature was supposed to address that—but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who apparently thinks every conceivable problem, from power outages to animal cruelty, has a free-market solution—has vetoed the legislation. Because he’s fucking awful.
Abbott called Senate Bill 474, known as the Safe Outdoor Dogs Act, “micro-managing” and said, “Texas is no place for this kind of over-criminalization.”
The bipartisan act would have made it a Class C misdemeanor if someone knowingly leaves a dog outside unattended while restrained unless the owner can provide:
Adequate shelter
An area that allows the dog to stay away from standing water, urine or feces or otherwise cause harm to the dog
Shade from direct sunlight
Potable water
The act goes on to say owners couldn’t use a chain to restrain the dog, or a tether that has weights attached or is shorter than 10 feet or five times the length of the dog measured from nose to tail. It also stipulates that the dog’s collar or harness “fit properly.”
If you’re not convinced these laws are necessary, here’s an explainer from the Humane Society of the United States. In short, there are a lot of people in this country who either don’t know, or don’t care, about the harsh conditions many dogs endure when they’re chained outside for hours and hours on end, often in brutal weather conditions. If you have the stomach for it, you can also do a Google image search on “chained dogs,” though I don’t necessarily recommend it.
Requiring adequate shelter, water, shade, and a relatively clean area is essential—and literally the least our elected representatives can compel we humans to do.
In fact, most members of the Texas legislature—which is hardly a hotbed of bleeding-heart animal rights activism—thought this was an important bill. The bipartisan legislation passed the state Senate 28-3 and the House 83-32.
But Abbott? He doesn’t care. And now his indifference has earned him the hashtag #AbbottHatesDogs. Maybe if enough liberals invade Texans’ backyards to teach their dogs critical race theory, Abbott will sign a bill requiring them to stay inside. But since that’s unlikely to happen, this bill was dogs’—and dog lovers’—best hope.
Those hopes are now crushed, thanks to this slobbery St. Bernard sphincter who’s cosplaying as a statesman.
“This bill—which was carried with active support from sheriffs, law enforcement and animal control [officers]—would have clarified the vague language that makes the statute completely unenforceable,” Texas Humane Legislative Network Executive Director Shelby Bobosky told the Austin American-Statesman. “All the elements Gov. Abbott cited as 'micromanagement' were carefully negotiated compromises that addressed concerns from lawmakers in both parties to strike the right balance for our diverse state.”
Of course, Abbott didn’t confine his awfulness to animal welfare issues. He also vetoed a bill that would have required middle schools and high schools to provide lessons on preventing child abuse and other forms of family violence. His reasoning? Because it “fails to recognize the right of parents to opt their children out of the instruction.”
Holy shit.
He also vetoed a bill that would have decreased penalties for criminal trespassing because it would have “hurt tools to arrest homeless people and immigrants at the border,” according to The Week. Abbott also nixed a section of the Texas budget that funds the state legislature, to spite Democrats who walked out of the last legislative session in order to block the state’s anti-democratic elections bill.
Say, maybe Abbott should be more concerned that Texas’ conservative hegemony has made it all but impossible for his state to keep its fucking lights on.
Or he could just torment a few dogs and call it a day. His choice.
Should be interesting. And avoiding memory leak/overflow errors more broadly would go a long way to tighten up security.
mrflash818 writes: The Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) -- parent organization of the better-known Let's Encrypt project -- has provided prominent developer Miguel Ojeda with a one-year contract to work on Rust in Linux and other security efforts on a full-time basis. Rust is a low-level programming language offering most of the flexibility and performance of C -- the language used for kernels in Unix and Unix-like operating systems since the 1970s -- in a safer way. Efforts to make Rust a viable language for Linux kernel development began at the 2020 Linux Plumbers conference, with acceptance for the idea coming from Linus Torvalds himself. Torvalds specifically requested Rust compiler availability in the default kernel build environment to support such efforts -- not to replace the entire source code of the Linux kernel with Rust-developed equivalents, but to make it possible for new development to work properly. Using Rust for new code in the kernel -- which might mean new hardware drivers or even replacement of GNU Coreutils -- potentially decreases the number of bugs lurking in the kernel. Rust simply won't allow a developer to leak memory or create the potential for buffer overflows -- significant sources of performance and security issues in complex C-language code.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat—who apparently has decided that securing the legacy of mavericky John McCain for herself is … doing Sen. Mitch McConnell's work?—chose the eve of the procedural vote on the most consequential legislation for restoring our democracy to double down on her support for the Jim Crow filibuster with an op-ed in The Washington Post. In it she exposes just how unserious she is about this job she has taken on, ignoring history, oblivious to reality, and yet glibly triumphant in declaring principles that are absolute bunk.
It mostly boils down to one idea: Democrats shouldn’t pass things because Republicans might rescind them. What that translates into in practice with the For the People Act is that the rights of the Senate minority are more important than the voting rights of millions of Americans. The Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to debate on the bill Tuesday afternoon.
"Arizonans expect me to do what I promised when I ran for the House and the Senate: to be independent—like Arizona—and to work with anyone to achieve lasting results," she writes. (They probably also expected her to look out for their economic interests, but look where that got them.) "Lasting results," she continues, "rather than temporary victories, destined to be reversed, undermining the certainty that America’s families and employers depend on." The way to achieve "lasting results," she apparently believes, is gridlock. "The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles," she says.
To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to pass the For the People Act (voting-rights legislation I support and have co-sponsored), I would ask: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to see that legislation rescinded a few years from now and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law or restrictions on voting by mail in federal elections, over the objections of the minority?
See how she works in the part where she's co-sponsoring the bill to restore voting rights, while she's working as Mitch McConnell's tool to make sure it doesn't become law? Nice. We can't do good things for the country, she says, because that might make bad things happen. Her argument is really that flimsy. It's also ignoring the reality that Republicans legislatures all over the country—and in some cases gerrymandered majorities—are enacting voter suppression laws with completely partisan votes, shutting the minority Democrats out of the process entirely. But Democrats should stop that from happening now because a theoretical future Republican majority might do what those states are already doing.
To those who want to eliminate the legislative filibuster to expand health-care access or retirement benefits: Would it be good for our country if we did, only to later see that legislation replaced by legislation dividing Medicaid into block grants, slashing earned Social Security and Medicare benefits, or defunding women's reproductive health services?
She's forgetting that Medicare, Medicaid and other spending programs can be completely eliminated with just 51 votes with a budget reconciliation. And that Republicans used budget reconciliation to jam a repeal of the Affordable Care Act through with a simple majority. Who stopped that? Who stood up against McConnell? John McCain, whose mantle she's trying to assume.
The fundamental incoherence here is mind-boggling. The argument goes something like this: Democrats should give the minority Republicans a veto over very popular legislation because it's possible that the new law will be unpopular and elect more Republicans who will reverse the law. So by letting the minority veto bill is preventing them hypothetically repealing that law later.
She's arguing that the gridlocked status quo is better than allowing the majority—that was elected by huge majorities in the popular vote—to do what voters elected them to do. That hypothetically any majority shouldn't be able to enact its policies and then stand or fall with the electorate in future elections on the basis of that work. In that, she's disenfranchising voters as much as the Republican legislatures. The voters chose President Joe Biden. The voters chose a Democratic House and Senate—again, with huge popular vote margins. She's nullifying every single vote every Democratic senator received, handing them over to McConnell and the Republicans because . . . bipartisanship. No, really.
But bipartisan policies that stand the test of time could help heal our country's divisions and strengthen Americans' confidence that our government is working for all of us and is worthy of all of us.
You answer violent insurrectionists and a Republican juggernaut running through the states working to make sure no Democrat ever wins an election again by . . . letting them do it so Republicans like you and let you sit with them at lunch.
Sinema has done herself no favors with this effort. She sounds desperately out of touch with the reality of the Trump Republican Party. Like, just clueless. She says she wants to be the next McCain. She can't even touch that. McCain, after all, stood up to McConnell.
Republicans in Georgia are moving swiftly to capitalize on their election-law power grab by removing anyone in local election posts who might interfere with their efforts to suppress Democratic voters and manipulate election outcomes.
Lonnie Hollis is exactly that type of troublemaker, which is why Republicans will be ousting her this year from the Troup County election board in West Georgia, according to The New York Times.
“I speak out and I know the laws,” said Hollis, a Black woman who has served on the board since 2013. “The bottom line is they don’t like people that have some type of intelligence and know what they’re doing, because they know they can’t influence them.”
Hollis and election board members in at least 10 other counties across the state are victims of the Georgia GOP’s new power grabs. In Troup County, a local law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp handed over full control of the county election board to Republicans. The GOP-led county commission can now run the table on whatever changes it wants to make to the board, whereas election board members used to be chosen by county commissioners in conjunction with both political parties and the county's three biggest cities. Of the local election board members across Georgia who will likely either be replaced or eliminated, most are Democrats and five are people of color, according to the Times, but all of their seats will most likely be filled by Republicans.
Hollis, for instance, was clearly a problem—for which Republicans now have a solution. She has pushed for making voting more accessible by doing things like opening polls on Sunday and adding a new polling location at a Black church, for instance.
Georgia's statewide voter suppression law is one of 24 new election laws that Republican-led legislatures have enacted in more than a dozen states, with more likely to come. Some of those laws have included both front-end and back-end manipulations to protect against outcomes that Republicans don't like. So alongside restricting who can vote, Republican lawmakers have also taken power away from elected officials, put a stranglehold on state election boards, and empowered themselves to overturn any unfortunate election results.
But these early moves in Georgia suggest the fears of many voting rights advocates are already afoot. If partisan Republicans are already taking action to remove any Democratic and Republican local election board members who threaten to act in good faith in a disputed contest, then it's clear that they are already stacking the decks to get the results they want, regardless of who Georgia voters choose to represent them.
“It’s a thinly veiled attempt to wrest control from officials who oversaw one of the most secure elections in our history and put it in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, chairwoman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State and the current Colorado secretary of state. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.”
As election law expert and founder of Democracy Docket tweeted, "This is not normal. It is wrong. It is dangerous. And, it is happening."
“I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks—it’s always Jared telling me to do this,” Trump said to one confidante on Father’s Day. “And they all f------ hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.”
Jared Kushner leaned in:
“I’m just going to stop you,” he said. “There is going to be one story that dominates absolutely everything for the foreseeable future. I’m already hearing from African American leaders about the death of George Floyd in Minnesota.”
Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, brushed it off.
“Nobody is going to care about that,” Meadows told him, according to officials in the room. Meadows disputed this version of events.
The story, which deserves to be read in Politico, shows how, behind the scenes, the Trump administration was everything you always thought it was about. A bunch of petty, self-centered egotists.
Trump wanted people to believe he invented Juneteenth. Sorry, Donald. It was never about you.
In our interview, one year ago this week, Trump tried to put a spin on the controversy. He told me that he had made Juneteenth a day to remember.
In November 2018, The Washington Post published a disturbing headline: “‘They Were Threatening Me and My Family’: Tucker Carlson’s Home Targeted by Protesters.”
The Post story quoted the prime-time Fox News host at length. “Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door,” Carlson claimed. “It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat … They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said. They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation … They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”
Even more alarming, according to the Post, “A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to ‘bring a pipe bomb’ to his house, [Carlson] said.”
Other prestige media sources echoed the Post’s story. NBC headlined its article: “Antifa Group Chants Outside, Vandalizes Fox Commentator Tucker Carlson’s Home.” The CNN communications team, NPR’s Scott Simon, and the CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert all condemned the reported home invasion. “Fighting Tucker Carlson’s ideas is an American right. Targeting his home and terrorizing his family is an act of monstrous cowardice. Obviously don’t do this, but also, take no pleasure in it happening. Feeding monsters just makes more monsters,” Colbert wrote on Twitter.
Over the next week, further reporting cast significant doubt on Carlson’s version of events. The police report mentioned nothing about a cracked front door—and photographs showed the door entirely undamaged. The police report did not mention a pipe bomb, either. The writer Alan Pyke, who watched the event, published an account of a considerably less exciting incident that lasted only 10 minutes before the protesters departed. You can read that account here.
There’s an old saying in reporting: “If your mother says she loves you, check it.” Apparently there’s also a codicil: “But if one of America’s most notorious spreaders of conspiracy theories and racist fantasies says his home was attacked by violent agitators, print it.”
Why did Carlson’s exaggerations—if exaggerations is the right word—gain such instant credence? Carlson’s own lawyers have argued in court that he regularly speaks in ways that are “loose, figurative, or hyperbolic.” Carlson’s descriptions of events—including outright accusations of criminal conduct by named individuals “would not have been taken by reasonable listeners as factual pronouncements but simply as instances in which [people like Carlson] expressed their views over the air in the crude and hyperbolic manner that has, over the years, become their verbal stock in trade.”
Yet when this flagrantly unreliable narrator narrated his own story, people across the media spectrum responded as if his personal narratives could be relied upon. Again, why?
A story yesterday by The New York Times’ Ben Smith pulls back the curtain on part of the answer: One of America’s leading racial provocateurs is also one of the media world’s preferred sources of gossip from inside pro-Trump world. “I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him,” Smith writes. “But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, ‘a great source.’” Smith indicates that The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender and CNN’s Brian Stelter are two of those 16. And, despite Smith’s demurral, the story clearly conveys that he himself was a 17th.
As Smith makes clear, transactions between journalists and sources occur because they benefit both parties. Smith emphasizes one such benefit: protection. He quotes a “Washington journalist in [Carlson’s] orbit” as saying, “‘If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.’”
One way to read the Ben Smith story is as a remorseful decision by one of the journalists who did business with Carlson to yank some of the protection bestowed by the transaction. But such transactions provide another benefit too, and this one cuts across the story Smith tells: Carlson’s “information” also buys him credulity. When reporters call Carlson for uncheckable anecdotes about his conversations with former President Trump, they make the following calculation: I know he regularly lies to his fans on television, but he would not lie to me on the telephone.
The evidence of that November 2018 incident at Carlson’s D.C. house suggests that the calculation is radically wrong.
Almost two years later, Carlson again tried to score points by claiming that he was being endangered in his own home. TheNew York Times, he said on television, was planning to report his home address—with the deliberate intention of exposing his family to harm. “If one of my children gets hurt because of a story they wrote, they won’t consider it collateral damage. They know it’s the whole point of the exercise: to inflict pain on our family, to terrorize us, to control what we say. That’s the kind of people they are.” Then he named the supposed reporter of the supposed story on air, showing a photograph of that reporter, and also named a New York Times photographer and editor as accomplices to the paper’s hurtful plans.
The Times replied from its Twitter account that it had never intended to publish Carlson’s address(es)—and that Carlson had known that fact before he went to air. Carlson also knew that his fan base has a high propensity to harass and threaten people he names as his enemies. (He did not respond to a request for comment.)
And yet even now, reporters pretend they are in control of this dangerous game. They are not. People who turn to an untrustworthy narrator for fabulous anecdotes get … untrustworthy anecdotes. The door was not cracked. No one threatened Carlson with a pipe bomb. The Times did not plot to terrorize Carlson’s children. And the self-aggrandizing, self-exculpating story just dispensed to the journalist looking to add a splash of color to the otherwise sinister record? If you can’t check the story, check the source.
There's a first time for everything, but I actually agree with Kavanaugh. The NCAA should be shitting itself right now.
["Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses' income in order to create a 'purer' form of helping the sick. News organizations cannot join forces to curtail pay to reporters to preserve a 'tradition' of public-minded journalism."]
An interesting and, I expect, important broad concurrence by Justice Kavanaugh in today's NCAA v. Alston(itself a narrow unanimous decision). I'm not an expert on antitrust law, but this struck me as worth passing along; I'd be glad to also pass along contrary views:
The NCAA has long restricted the compensation and benefits that student athletes may receive. And with surprising success, the NCAA has long shielded its compensation rules from ordinary antitrust scrutiny. Today, however, the Court holds that the NCAA has violated the antitrust laws. The Court's decision marks an important and overdue course correction, and I join the Court's excellent opinion in full.
But this case involves only a narrow subset of the NCAA's compensation rules—namely, the rules restricting the education-related benefits that student athletes may receive, such as post-eligibility scholarships at graduate or vocational schools. The rest of the NCAA's compensation rules are not at issue here and therefore remain on the books. Those remaining compensation rules generally restrict student athletes from receiving compensation or benefits from their colleges for playing sports. And those rules have also historically restricted student athletes from receiving money from endorsement deals and the like.
I add this concurring opinion to underscore that the NCAA's remaining compensation rules also raise serious questions under the antitrust laws. Three points warrant emphasis.
First, the Court does not address the legality of the NCAA's remaining compensation rules. As the Court says, "the student-athletes do not renew their across-the-board challenge to the NCAA's compensation restrictions. Accordingly, we do not pass on the rules that remain in place or the district court's judgment upholding them. Our review is confined to those restrictions now enjoined."
Second, although the Court does not weigh in on the ultimate legality of the NCAA's remaining compensation rules, the Court's decision establishes how any such rules should be analyzed going forward. After today's decision, the NCAA's remaining compensation rules should receive ordinary "rule of reason" scrutiny under the antitrust laws. The Court makes clear that the decades-old "stray comments" about college sports and amateurism made in National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., 468 U. S. 85 (1984), were dicta and have no bearing on whether the NCAA's current compensation rules are lawful. And the Court stresses that the NCAA is not otherwise entitled to an exemption from the antitrust laws. As a result, absent legislation or a negotiated agreement between the NCAA and the student athletes, the NCAA's remaining compensation rules should be subject to ordinary rule of reason scrutiny.
Third, there are serious questions whether the NCAA's remaining compensation rules can pass muster under ordinary rule of reason scrutiny. Under the rule of reason, the NCAA must supply a legally valid procompetitive justification for its remaining compensation rules. As I see it, however, the NCAA may lack such a justification.
The NCAA acknowledges that it controls the market for college athletes. The NCAA concedes that its compensation rules set the price of student athlete labor at a below-market rate. And the NCAA recognizes that student athletes currently have no meaningful ability to negotiate with the NCAA over the compensation rules.
The NCAA nonetheless asserts that its compensation rules are procompetitive because those rules help define the product of college sports. Specifically, the NCAA says that colleges may decline to pay student athletes because the defining feature of college sports, according to the NCAA, is that the student athletes are not paid.
In my view, that argument is circular and unpersuasive. The NCAA couches its arguments for not paying student athletes in innocuous labels. But the labels cannot disguise the reality: The NCAA's business model would be flatly illegal in almost any other industry in America. All of the restaurants in a region cannot come together to cut cooks' wages on the theory that "customers prefer" to eat food from low-paid cooks. Law firms cannot conspire to cabin lawyers' salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a "love of the law." Hospitals cannot agree to cap nurses' income in order to create a "purer" form of helping the sick. News organizations cannot join forces to curtail pay to reporters to preserve a "tradition" of public-minded journalism. Movie studios cannot collude to slash benefits to camera crews to kindle a "spirit of amateurism" in Hollywood.
Price-fixing labor is price-fixing labor. And price-fixing labor is ordinarily a textbook antitrust problem because it extinguishes the free market in which individuals can otherwise obtain fair compensation for their work. Businesses like the NCAA cannot avoid the consequences of price-fixing labor by incorporating price-fixed labor into the definition of the product. Or to put it in more doctrinal terms, a monopsony cannot launder its price-fixing of labor by calling it product definition.
The bottom line is that the NCAA and its member colleges are suppressing the pay of student athletes who collectively generate billions of dollars in revenues for colleges every year. Those enormous sums of money flow to seemingly everyone except the student athletes. College presidents, athletic directors, coaches, conference commissioners, and NCAA executives take in sixand seven-figure salaries. Colleges build lavish new facilities. But the student athletes who generate the revenues, many of whom are African American and from lower-income backgrounds, end up with little or nothing.
Everyone agrees that the NCAA can require student athletes to be enrolled students in good standing. But the NCAA's business model of using unpaid student athletes to generate billions of dollars in revenue for the colleges raises serious questions under the antitrust laws. In particular, it is highly questionable whether the NCAA and its member colleges can justify not paying student athletes a fair share of the revenues on the circular theory that the defining characteristic of college sports is that the colleges do not pay student athletes. And if that asserted justification is unavailing, it is not clear how the NCAA can legally defend its remaining compensation rules.
If it turns out that some or all of the NCAA's remaining compensation rules violate the antitrust laws, some difficult policy and practical questions would undoubtedly ensue. Among them: How would paying greater compensation to student athletes affect non-revenue-raising sports? Could student athletes in some sports but not others receive compensation? How would any compensation regime comply with Title IX? If paying student athletes requires something like a salary cap in some sports in order to preserve competitive balance, how would that cap be administered? And given that there are now about 180,000 Division I student athletes, what is a financially sustainable way of fairly compensating some or all of those student athletes?
Of course, those difficult questions could be resolved in ways other than litigation. Legislation would be one option. Or colleges and student athletes could potentially engage in collective bargaining (or seek some other negotiated agreement) to provide student athletes a fairer share of the revenues that they generate for their colleges, akin to how professional football and basketball players have negotiated for a share of league revenues. Regardless of how those issues ultimately would be resolved, however, the NCAA's current compensation regime raises serious questions under the antitrust laws.
To be sure, the NCAA and its member colleges maintain important traditions that have become part of the fabric of America—game days in Tuscaloosa and South Bend; the packed gyms in Storrs and Durham; the women's and men's lacrosse championships on Memorial Day weekend; track and field meets in Eugene; the spring softball and baseball World Series in Oklahoma City and Omaha; the list goes on.
But those traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA's decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated. Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate. And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.
It is a really fun hike, but the value of quick drying clothes cannot be overstated ;)
After nearly a year and half in my home because of COVID-19, I developed a serious travel itch that simply had to be scratched. With the first dose in my arm and with the second dose on the horizon, I realized there just might be a way to travel this year and set out to plan an adventure.
What started as a three-day weekend to Sedona turned into a national park adventure hitting six of America’s scenic parks: Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Sequoia, King’s Canyon, and last but certainly not least, Yosemite National Park. And for the record, we never even made it to Sedona. We’ll be saving that for another day. The call to the parks just too strong and so off we went.
The Grand Canyon was our first stop and that was more of a Chevy Chase-styled Vacation visit, briefly enjoying the majestic vistas and car turnouts before driving into the Navajo Nation and north toward Utah. We didn’t hike at the Grand Canyon, so I won’t be dwelling on those details and will instead move onto Zion National Park, one of the most interesting and beautiful parks in the world.
If you are one of the anticipated record-breaking 6 million visitors to hit Zion National Park in 2021 or beyond, here are insights and tips for your adventure.
In 1858, Mormon settler Nephi Johnson arrived in the Southern Paiute territory in southern Utah now known as Zion National Park. It did not take long for the Mormon settlers to end the Paiute way of life, killing or chasing off 90% of the Paiute in just 25 years. Even worse, in 1954, the U.S. government, led by Utah Sen. Arthur V. Watkins, stripped the Piaute Tribe of their tribal status, taking the tribe’s 15,000 acres of land. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed an order recognizing the tribe again and restored 4,800 acres of land to the tribe. A fraction of their original land.
The influence of the the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be felt inside and outside the park in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The most obvious influence is around alcohol service, which is forbidden in the Mormon church. In Utah, you are required to order food if you order an alcoholic drink. You cannot simply sidle up to bar after a day of adventuring to order a drink. You are going to get a side of chips and salsa or stick with water. And if you decide you’d rather get packaged alcohol and relax in and around your hotel or lodge, be prepared to go in search of those libations. The only places I’m aware of that sell packaged liquor are the Sol Foods Supermarket and the Switchback Liquor Store, which is oddly located in the back of a gift shop in a strip mall with scant signage. You must be prepared to pay heavily. For instance, if you want a six-pack of beer, that is available, but each overpriced beer is rung up individually and that adds up fast. If you want a wine opener, mixers or other alcohol-related items, you’ll have to find those elsewhere because they are not sold in liquor stores.
Elsewhere in southern Utah, it is not unusual for the liquor store to be located directly next door to a police station. I mean, practically attached. Exhibit A in Kanab, one of the last stops before the Mt. Carmel Highway entrance to Zion.
Liquor store on the left, police on the right.
Should you stay inside the park at Zion Lodge or in nearby Springdale, Utah?
This is a difficult choice because both have pros and cons. On this particular trip, we stayed two nights at the Zion Lodge and two nights at a hotel in town, so let’s run down the differences.
The Zion Lodge’s primary feature is location, location, location. Like most or all of the lodges in national parks, the rooms are hard to come by, overpriced, and slightly outdated. Having said that, it’s still a fantastic experience. The lodge is located in a prime spot inside the park with 360-degree views of the rocks that make Zion famous. Even better, you can hop on an early morning shuttle and beat the masses to the most well-known sites in the park. This is by far the main benefit of staying inside the park. Conversely, on weekends or holidays, you can expect this kind of wait to enter the park via the main gate in Springdale, Utah.
It's the busiest weekend of the year! Wait times as of this morning: Zion Canyon Shuttle - 2 hours wait to board. Angels Landing - 4 hours wait to begin hike. Parking in Zion Canyon is currently full. Parking may be available in the town of Springdale, just outside the park. pic.twitter.com/DGKqrcYOt2
Indeed, we rented e-bikes to explore the park one day (more on that below) and had to use the pedestrian entrance to the park. The line to walk or bike into the park was approximately 45 minutes.
Guests of the Zion Lodge get a pass that allows them to drive into the main park, which is closed to all other traffic with the exception of bicycles and park shuttle buses. But once you arrive at the lodge, it’s time to park the car and use the shuttles or bikes to get around. You cannot park at the trailheads anymore because of the volume of visitors.
Another key benefit of staying in the park is the night sky. In early June 2021, Zion National Park was certified as an International Dark Sky Park. The lighting around the lodge and in nearby Springdale has been changed in recent years to eliminate as much light pollution as possible, making it possible on clear nights to see the vastness of the Milky Way. It is an extraordinary view and one that comes with a caution: If you venture out of the hotel at night to see the twinkling galaxy, you must bring a light source with you (a headlamp or flashlight, not a phone) because it is pitch black outside and people can easily get lost in the darkness. The animals in Zion tend to come out at night as well, so venture out with caution. As it says in the Zion brochure, your safety is your responsibility and that is no joke.
The winner of our Zion Dark Sky photo contest is Joe Braun Photography's photo of the Milky Way above the Kolob Terrace! Congrats on taking such an awesome shot that truly showcases the beauty our of Dark Skies. Remember to tag us in your night sky shots using #ZionNightSkiespic.twitter.com/IRWeLJA0Tk
Not to dissuade you from trying to stay at the Zion Lodge because it has positives, I will note you need to be aggressive in trying to get a reservation. We overheard one park ranger telling a visitor they were anticipating 6 million visitors in 2021, which would beat the previous record by nearly 1.5 million visitors. In our case, I created a tab and refreshed several times a day in search of a reservation. I eventually hit the jackpot, but ended up having to rearrange our travel schedule to grab the only days available. If you want to stay in the park, be determined and be flexible.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exasperated the park experience with staffing shortages and closures of dining services and more. In the case of Zion, the lodge restaurant was open, but the quest to get food was a challenge. It started by waiting in a long, almost impossibly slow line to order your food at the front door of the restaurant. After ordering, you were allowed to enter the restaurant to find a table and the food was dropped at the table. If you were thinking of having a second glass of wine or a cocktail, forget it. That means going back to the entrance and getting back in the line.
And that leads us to Springdale, the quaint little town at the base of Zion National Park. Unlike many of the small towns on the edges of national parks, Springdale is unique in that you can walk or bike directly into the park. The town is nearly an extension of the park.
After a long hike, it is nice to have a bigger array of food and drink options and when those afternoon temperatures spike up to 100 degrees and beyond in the afternoon, the promise of a pool with a view is hard to beat. The Springdale hotels don’t have the amazing views of the lodge, but they aren’t lacking in views either as the town is in the canyon, surrounded by canyon views and rock formations.
Springdale has more amenities all around, including bike and e-bike rentals, along with canyoneering equipment rentals for Zion’s famous Narrows hike, which runs through the canyons of Zion, largely trekking through the waters of the Zion River, sometimes waist- or even chest-deep. The city of Springdale also provides a free shuttle bus that runs the main drag, connecting all the hotels and restaurants to the main entrance of the park. For this reason, many recurring visitors prefer to stay in Springdale, even with the longer waits to enter the park.
How can you beat the crowds and still see the best of Zion?
The famous rock formations throughout the park are created by sedimentary rock layers, which look different depending on where you are in the park. Entering the park from the east entrance is popular because the Mt. Carmel Highway sends visitors down twisting, winding switchback roads, eventually connecting to the park’s southern entrance and the town of Springdale, Utah. This highway also runs through the Zion-Mt. Carmel tunnel, which is an astonishing long tunnel at 1.1 miles. It is dark and small, but has several large windows carved into the side of the mountain for breathtaking glimpses, teasing what is to come at the end of the tunnel. Completed in 1930, it was not designed for today’s massive RVs and travel trailers. As such, there are now specific times these types of vehicles can enter, they require a permit and the road must be closed in one direction to allow them to make it through the tunnel. In other words, be prepared to wait because this system does cause traffic backups in and out of the park. Take this into consideration if you are leaving the park to catch a flight in Las Vegas or Salt Lake City.
The Narrows trail alongside the Virgin River.
Thinking of doing the hike to Angel’s Landing or trekking through The Narrows? The early bird gets the worm. The best way to beat the crowds in Zion, and all national parks, is simply to set your alarm and get up at the crack of dawn, or even beforehand. It might be painful to get up so early on vacation, but the payoff will be worth it. Speaking of rising early, if you are staying at the lodge and want a taste of coffee before you head out, I’d suggest bringing your own. The lodge rooms have a coffee maker, but good luck finding caffeinated coffee. While decaffeinated coffee was bountiful, we were told the regular coffee hadn’t yet been ordered for the year.
Whether you are staying inside or outside the park, getting up early and getting on the shuttle will give you a leg up on the sleepier travelers and families that have a hard time getting out the door so early. It’s also a safety issue in the summertime as the temperatures in and around the park regularly exceed 100 degrees. It’s one thing to start a hike at 7 AM with temps in the 70s and entirely another thing to end the hike with 100 degree temps by early afternoon. Each day we made our way back to hotel room around 2 PM to escape the hottest parts of the day with the most intense sun.
On a related note, you should never leave your hotel room without a notable supply of water. You should be drinking a lot of water throughout the day. Zion is a desert environment and you will feel it, especially if you are active. Fortunately, the lodge, hotels, and the park itself do a great job of providing water bottle refill stations. Best thing you can do for yourself, the environment, and park management is to bring your own refillable water bottle. In recent years, I’ve started bringing my own travel utensils and reusable straws to cut down on the need for plastic cutlery. It’s not easy for the average traveler to make their way to Zion and the same can be said of every piece of plastic that makes its way into the park and needs to be packed out. We all have to do our part and these are simple ways to contribute to park sustainability.
Back to getting around the park: Aside from the shuttles, there are a handful of private tour operators who are permitted to operate inside the park, including the scenic drive connecting the park’s most popular destinations. If you have the money to spend, these private tour operators can pick you up at your hotel and drive you directly to a trailhead, oftentimes returning in the afternoon to pick you back up at a time when the shuttle buses are typically standing room only. It’s a perk, but it has a price.
For less than $20, you can get a ticket to a narrated open-air tram ride that is a little more than an hour long.
For us, the best way to see the park turned out to be e-bikes. I’m already an e-bike user at home so I was enthusiastic about trying this out in the park. As much as I disliked the former occupant of the White House, one positive change made during that administration was allowing e-bikes in national parks. I explored Teton National Park via e-bike last fall and can definitively say this is my favorite way to see the parks now. As someone who isn’t physically able to ride a regular bike through high altitude or for long distances, e-bikes have truly opened up a whole new world for me and many others.
The scenic road inside the park is 8 miles long, making it easily explored on bikes. While there is some uphill climbing on the way to the last stop of the scenic drive, the famous Temple of Sinawava where the trailhead to the Narrows begins, the ride back down to town is just plain fun, cruising almost the entire way. The one caveat about cycling this road is the park has one strict rule: Shuttles have the right-of-way and you must pull over. That means you must pull over to the side of the road and have at least one foot on the ground before a shuttle will pass you. This only happened to us a few times and was a minor inconvenience at best.
What makes this best way to see the park is the fact the scenic drive is closed to all traffic except lodge guests (who are not permitted past the lodge), park shuttle buses, and bike traffic. Most of the time it felt like we were in the park by ourselves, a far cry from our experiences at the crowded shuttle stops and trails. We were able to stop at places formerly reserved for car parking and we were entirely alone with the beauty of the park.
The magic happens through preparation and perspiration
As I said before, the Zion park guide contains one little sentence that is important to remember: Your personal safety is your responsibility. That starts with knowing the weather forecast. Zion is a canyon and while the popular months of June and July are not known for heavy rains, they can still happen. If a storm comes in, it is not advisable to do many of the popular hikes because of flash flooding in the canyon and lightning strikes on the trails. One study over a nine-year period indicated there were 20,000 lightning strikes in Zion park. The park does provide some weather indicators at trailheads, but at the end of the day, it is up to you to know what is happening and consider whether you should or should not head out on a trail. Rescue efforts inside the park are time-consuming, slow, and dangerous for the rescuers as well.
Many of the guests who need to be rescued were ill-prepared, suffering from dehydration and/or overexertion. The best thing you can do before coming to a place like Zion is to get out and hike around your own neighborhood or city ahead of time. If you plan to wear water shoes, trail shoes, or hiking shoes, get out and wear those a lot before your trip to break them in before you hit the park trails. Even then, I highly recommend bringing a small travel first aid kit, with Band-Aids, Neosporin, ibuprofen, etc. If you are on a trail with miles to go and need to dress a blister, you’ll be so thankful to have that in your daypack.
Along these lines, make sure you have reservations in advance. Given the popularity of the parks, hotels are often completely sold out and restaurants have long waits. Take the time to plan in advance and you’ll be glad you did when you take your exhausted self to dinner and don't have to wait for one to two hours just to get seated. Plan B is stocking your hotel fridge with sandwich supplies, which will also come in handy and are highly recommended for trail hikes, where frequent stops are recommended for food and water to keep you going.
What to see and wear for adventuring in Zion
Sunscreen. That’s the top thing to put on your body. As mentioned above, the sun can be brutal in the southwest.
As far as clothing, make sure you are wearing breathable fabrics that can dry quickly. Whether you are hiking in the Virgin River through The Narrows or summiting the peak at Angel’s Landing, you’ll need lightweight clothes than can whisk away water and dry quickly. You do not want to find yourself in soaking wet pants or shorts after wading through the river; that would make the hike back miserable due to chafing and the extra weight.
If you head out in the early morning, you might need an extra layer. While there are often excessive heat warnings during the day, the temps do drop down to around 50 degrees overnight and can be a chilly start to the day.
If you plan to do The Narrows hike, aside from the quick-drying clothes, you should have three things: proper shoes, trekking poles or a hiking stick, and a waterproof pouch or drybag for your phone or other items you don’t want to get wet. You can do the primary hike and not be fully submerged in water, but as my travel companion discovered the hard way, falls in the river are not uncommon. Here is a glimpse of what the “trail” looks like on the hike.
Hiked the Narrows at Zion today and it was magical. Now I'm off for ibuprofen. It's a rough one hiking through the Virgin rivers pic.twitter.com/JBF1YrP5UD
I’ve done The Narrows hike twice, both times in Keen water shoes, with mixed results. On the most recent trip I hiked in a newer pair of Keens and truly paid the price in the form of blisters. You are in the water for much of the route, cautiously stepping on and around rocks and boulders. Your toes are gripping and straining to keep balance, the perfect storm for blisters. Shoes with rubber toes are highly recommended, as are shoes with ankle support.
The water of the Virgin River is quite cold and all the outfitters in Springdale rent and sell neoprene socks, as well as special canyoneering boots and wooden hiking sticks. I’ve navigated the river in June and July and while the water was cold, I had no problem adjusting without the neoprene socks.
The canyoneering boots are hiking boots that allow water to drain out. The problem with wearing traditional waterproof hiking boots is they don’t exactly keep water out and they will most certainly keep water in once it gets in the boot. I did see several people wearing regular boots for this adventure but I cannot recommend it, nor would I recommend regular trail shoes, although I did see people wearing them. If you are wearing flip-flops, please turn yourself right around and get back on the shuttle.
The morning moon near the Temple of Sinawava on the trail to The Narrows.
The great thing about Narrows hike is you can go as far as you want, to a point. There is an approximately 1-mile walk to the entrance to the river. This is a lovely walk with views of the canyon, filled with hanging gardens clinging to the canyon walls. Once you enter the water, you can take it to the famous Wall Street portion of the narrows. Once you reach that point, you’ll need a permit to go further as the technical difficulty of the hike increases dramatically from that point forward (or backward as many people go “top-down,” getting dropped at the top and hiking their way to the main river entrance).
A word of caution about The Narrows: This is a more difficult hike than it appears! Like all hikes in the parks, it depends on your fitness level. We saw folks scampering past us all day long. As someone who is turning 50 this year and has had some health challenges, this was a challenge for me. I wanted to make it to the Orderville Canyon turnaround and I did, but I paid the price later! This is the kind of hike where I recommend you have a side of ibuprofen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Orderville Canyon in The Narrows.
If you aren’t sure about making it all the way to Wall Street, just wade into the river and turn back before you start feeling it. In my experience, the real pain set in on the way back. You are hiking upstream on the way in, which adds to the fatigue factor and muscle soreness. And remember, that lovely 1-mile walk through the canyon is not nearly as fun on the way back, when the sun is more intense, the temps are climbing, the crowds increase, and it is uphill back to the shuttle stop, where you are most certainly going to have to wait in line for the bathrooms and the shuttle. On that note, make sure you hit the restrooms before you start down the trail because there are no restrooms anywhere on the river hike.
If you plan to do the strenuous and white-knuckled Angels Landing hike, it’s best to get an early start to avoid the heat. This roughly 5-mile trail is not only strenuous uphill hike, with a portion of the trail containing 21 switchbacks that quickly and intensely climb in elevation, it culminates at Scouts Lookout, a heart-pumping narrow trail with a metal chain to help hikers ascend to the top. If, like me, you are afraid of heights, this trail is not recommended. At all. Falls are the No. 1 cause of death in Zion and indeed, three hikers have already fallen to their deaths in Zion in 2021 alone, including a 26-year-old woman who went missing in June. I’m certainly not trying to talk anyone of doing this very popular climb, but do understand what you are getting in before you go. Here is a preview:
In summary, Zion National Park is simply a magical place and well worth the visit. With preparation and planning, you’ll be making memories for a lifetime.
Do you have Zion pics and advice? Drop them below!
Do you have any questions? Hit me below and I’ll do my best to answer.
WILTON MANORS, Fla. — A driver slammed into spectators Saturday evening at the start of a Pride parade in South Florida, and an official says one person was killed and another seriously injured.
The pickup driver acted like he was part of the Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride Parade but then suddenly accelerated when he was told he was next, crashing into the victims, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said, according to WSVN-TV. Wilton Manors is just north of Fort Lauderdale.
One of the victims later succumbed to their injuries, Trantalis said.
News outlets reported that the driver of the pickup truck was taken into custody. Authorities did not immediately give details about the victims or say whether they believe the crash was intentional.
“This is a terrorist attack against the LGBT community,” Trantalis told reporters. “This is exactly what it is. Hardly an accident.”
Photos and video from the scene showed Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz in tears while in a convertible at the parade. A spokesperson for Wasserman Schultz did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
Spectator Christina Currie told the South Florida SunSentinel that she was with her family at the start of the parade.
“All of a sudden there was a loud revving of a truck and a crash through a fence,” Currie said. “It was definitely an intentional act right across the lanes of traffic.”
Wilton Manors police tweeted Saturday night that the public is not in danger.
“A tragic incident occurred at today’s Stonewall event,” Wilton Manors Mayor Scott Newton said in a statement, according to WPLG-TV. “Out of respect for everyone involved, the parade has been canceled and a thorough investigation is being conducted.”
June is Pride Month, commemorating the June 1969 police raid targeting gay patrons at the Stonewall Inn in New York that led to an uprising of LGBTQ Americans and served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement.
Because to the extent that the GOP has a policy platform, it's to turn public resources into private profits.
Ohio has at least 90 things going against it: Gov. Mike DeWine, 25 state senators, and 64 state representatives are Republican officials with a majority control of the state. That isn’t simply a facetious bit of business. These legislators seem hell-bent on hurting Ohio citizens’ health and pocketbooks. The public health experts GOP representatives bring into chambers to speak are snake-oil charlatans, and even the former Republican speaker has been expelled for outrageous levels of apparent corruption. The corruption in question led to an unpopular $170 million bailout of failing nuclear and coal power plants, at the expense of renewable energy initiatives.
On June 9, a new $75 billion budget passed through the GOP-led Ohio Senate. Members of the Ohio House have criticized the Senate’s handling of the budget, saying it was done haphazardly, without taking into account all of the work and negotiations done by the House. Senate Democrats say that the House plan, created by a still-majority GOP body of state reps, was considerably more acceptable. With cuts to education, Medicaid administration, and rural broadband grants, the Ohio Senate bill cuts $874 million from the budget while the House bill cut $380 million. But “tucked inside” of the Senate bill are all kinds of predictably screwed up things like backdoor women’s health restrictions on abortion, and doing away with municipal-created broadband infrastructure.
Cleveland.com reports that these “Ohio Republican lawmakers” are proposing to put the brakes on a $190 million state-funded expansion of high-speed internet that would help underserved areas of the Buckeye state. The bill would in essence kill “the 30 or so municipal broadband programs in Ohio—including in cities such as Fairlawn, Hudson, Medina, and Wadsworth—would not be allowed to operate so long as there is a private-sector company operating in the area, as there are in most, if not all of the cities.” The proposed GOP budget would also stop municipalities from accepting federal money for the same purpose. This is a we won’t pay for it and no one else can pay for it either proposition being promoted by the Republican party. How about that for “policy?”
ArsTechnica explains that the trick here is an amendment in the Senate budget that changes the definition of the term “unserved.” The law would define areas with access to speeds of 10Mbps and upload speeds of 1Mbps to be considered “served.” Changing this standard would suddenly create a spreadsheet that posits more than 98% of Ohio households covered by acceptable internet access, and as such, there is no need for municipal broadband networks.
According to law firm Ice Miller, the language of the bill would also put existing programs in need in jeopardy: “Certain existing and already capitalized multi-jurisdiction/agency combined networks being used throughout Ohio for public safety, remote health care, regional economic development, and transportation initiatives would be required to cease operation due to the fact that all or many of the existing participating jurisdictions will be required to abandon their individual system components.”
The places where municipalities have gone ahead, fought years of litigation against big telecoms, and created broadband networks all seem to have miraculously forced telecoms to magically offer up more affordable high speed internet options. These are the affordable options at high speeds that companies like Spectrum, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and others have always said were pipe dreams. They only seem to be pipe dreams when telecoms have monopoly or duopoly control over areas.
Fairlawn Mayor William Roth told the Akron Beacon Journal that the city’s successful municipal broadband FairlawnGig, (one of the fastest internet providers in the entire country) which was developed for only $10 million, is jeopardized by this secret piece of GOP work. "This isn't a partisan issue. This is for the good of the whole. ... This will be devastating, not just for now, for the U.S. in the future." Roth is a Republican, by the way. Roth also says that if passed, there will be litigation and he is confident that the courts will see it as an overreach by the state legislators. And why does big telecom want programs like FairlawnGig to get shut down? From the municipal broadband’s public statement on the matter:
Today, FairlawnGig delivers blazing fast Internet access –incredible performance, unmatched reliability, and exceptional value. Gigabit Internet access is delivered to businesses and residences over FairlawnGig’s 100% fiber network. There are no equipment fees and no long-term contracts. And while the pandemic has increased demand and led traditional ISPs to employ data caps and overage surcharges for heavy users, FairlawnGig has never raised its prices or limited data use, and more importantly, never will.
Slashdot reader quonset writes:
With the heat wave gripping Texas, and in an effort to prevent another collapse of the power grid as happened in February during cold weather, Texas is, for the third day in a row, asking residents to conserve electricity. Some people in the Houston area have come home to find the temperatures in their homes are still warm (in the high 70s to low 80s) despite their air conditioning running all day!
A local Texas reporter tells the tale:
The family's smart thermostat was installed a few years ago as part of a new home security package. Many smart thermostats can be enrolled in a program called "Smart Savers Texas." It's operated by a company called EnergyHub. The agreement states that in exchange for an entry into sweepstakes, electric customers allow them to control their thermostats during periods of high energy demand. EnergyHub's list of its clients include TXU Energy, CenterPoint and ERCOT.
They spoke to one Texas resident who obviously wasn't even aware of what he'd agreed to when the smart thermostat was installed. As soon as he found out, he immediately unenrolled from the program, complaining "If somebody else can manipulate this, I'm not for it."
The Republican Party’s war on democracy knows no bounds. With no policies and no meaningful solutions to the country’s problems to offer, conservatives have continued their efforts at retelling our white supremacist history in such a way as to deny not only the racism of white landowners in the construction of our country’s white supremacist system but also to deny the rights of all people who don’t own land, and all people who aren’t white citizens of our country. Part of this manipulation is to frame the discussion about history inside of a hysterics-producing culture war that argues against a more robust analysis of the history as it denies and whitewashes entire sections of how and why things happened the way they happened.
In an attempt to act like they are doing something proactive while also figuring out ways to hypocritically rewrite history, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas signed House Bill 2497. The bill is supposed to appeal to critical race theory ‘fraidy cats by promoting the “patriotic education” of Texans. Called “The 1836 Project,” the legislation will set up a commission to figure out what to write on pamphlets given to Texas constituents receiving their drivers’ licenses. 1836 marks the year that Texas received independence from Mexico. Of course, only certain Texans received “independence,” and the rest of those folks were Black and brown and Indigenous nations.
Here’s Abbott and a crew of sycophants selling Texas a slice of history devoid of context or … most of the history.
To keep Texas the best state in the nation, we can never forget WHY our state is so exceptional. I signed a law establishing the 1836 project, which promotes patriotic education & ensures future generations understand TX values. Together, we'll keep our rich history alive. pic.twitter.com/4yZuygS2yX
This move comes at the same time that Abbott and Republican legislators are moving to restrict discussions of critical race theory throughout schools. The above bill also requires that the 1836 Project promote “the Christian heritage of this state.” Unless that “Christian heritage” simply means talking about the Texas Christian community’s use of Paul’s Epistle to Philemon and other such bastardizations of the Old and New Testaments to support slavery, I doubt this has anything to do with teaching history.
Texas’ fight to become independent from Mexico heightened right around the time that Mexico banned the import of slaves into the territory. In fact, Mexico and Anglo-Texan landowners were at odds over slavery from the moment Mexico concluded its own war of independence in 1821. After various restrictions on the expansion of slavery in their Texas territory, Mexico banned slavery in 1829, with then-president of the Republic of Mexico, Vincente Guerrero, declaring all enslaved people emancipated. Anglo-Texan landowners worked on loopholes that allowed them to continue holding slaves and importing them into the territory for years.
Texians developed a scheme with which new settlers could evade Mexico’s ban on slavery. According to historical records, before leaving the United States and crossing into Mexican Texas, slave owners would meet with a notary public and draft a document in which slaves were given a specific value. The contract stipulated that though they would gain their freedom when they stepped on Texas soil, they would enter into a period of internment, in which they would work to pay off the debt of their value that they now owed to their previous master. Any costs for clothing or food or housing would be deducted from their “wages,” which were around $20 a year. Any sum not paid off by the time they died would be assumed by their children. Any of the former slaves’ children who were born after their parents passed into Texas would begin paying off their debts when they reached adulthood, presumably being considered property of the master until that point. Cheap labor from enslaved Black people was so central to the success of the early Texian colonies that settlers worked very hard to maintain it.
Texas gained its independence from Mexico in 1836. Texas subsequently applied for and became a state in our United States of America in 1845. At the time of the Texas Revolution in 1836 there were estimated to be around 5,000 slaves in Texas. By the time Texas was annexed into the United States there were an estimated 30,000 slaves in Texas, and by 1860 “the census found 182,566 slaves—over 30% of the total population of the state.” I guess that’s just a coincidence?
Let’s go to the other video tape! Texas’ ”Declaration of causes: February 2, 1861: This is the Lone Star State’s “declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.”* Here are some highlights [Note: The “she” spoken of in the Declaration is Texas]:
“She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. ”
“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slave-holding States.”
”In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.”
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
It turns out that Texas isn’t exceptional. At all. In fact, Texas’ history of slavery, slavery dependence, Christian hypocrisy, and white supremacy is pretty predictable and sadly pedestrian in comparison to the rest of the United States. One of the more unique aspects of Texas’ history is how little Texans and white supremacists like Abbott understand it. Texas was such a “shit-hole” Republic that thousands of Black slaves fled the state for Mexico in the two-plus decades of independence the Lone Star State had before the Civil War. The only thing “exceptional” about Texas is that it was so behind the times, it took until June 19, 1865 for Texans to realize they had had their asses handed to them in the American Civil War, and had lost.
Abbott has one aspect of Texas history and heritage correct: white supremacist attempts to drag human progress backwards, using racism, in the interests of big business power and profits. The problem with the snowflake crews across our country is that they are unwilling to face reality: While our country was founded with a sense of independence from authoritarian forms of government, much of it was built on the backs of African slaves. In fact, white Anglo-Saxon dominance in the wealth of our country was built on the backs of new immigrants from all over the world, with dehumanizing practices of murder and torture and rape visited most frequently upon people who weren’t white Americans. Our railroads and gold mines and cotton fields were all built, dug, and tilled by cheap labor in the service of a white supremacist system.
Happy Juneteenth!
*Fun Fact: There are 21 mentions of slavery in the 24 paragraphs of this bit of history—and about 10 of those paragraphs are single sentences!
For much of 2020, Donald Trump kept up the pretense that hydroxychloroquine offered a treatment for COVID-19. But when Trump himself came down with the disease, he pointedly did not get any of the snake oil that he had been pushing. Among the treatments that Trump did receive was Regeneron’s synthetic antibodies. In fact, despite the rarity and expense of this treatment, Trump got four times the amount usually provided to COVID-19 patients in dire condition.
Following his return to the White House, Trump promised to provide free antibody treatments for every COVID-19 patient. That would be quite a challenge, as the manufacture of this treatment is difficult, production levels are low, and the market price of the drug is running at over $200 per dose. It’s also worth noting, for all those currently concerned about using vaccines that were made available through an emergency use authorization, that the treatment Trump took wasn’t even at that level. It hadn’t even completed Phase 2 trials.
Not that any of it mattered, because Trump never even tried to follow through on his promise. His final score card was: one dose of false hope, one dose of empty promises. Shake well, and good luck, sucker.
But as the Associated Press reports, this is about to change. On Thursday, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared at a White House briefing to announce a $3.2 billion investment in an “antiviral program for pandemics” with a focus on creating drugs that can not just fight the virus behind this pandemic, but help prepare the nation for future threats.
Antibiotics are effective against bacteria, but (despite claims over the last year) don’t work to stop viruses. There are a number of antiviral drugs. However many of those, like Tamiflu, are good against only a very small number of viruses. Others have marginal benefit. Remdesivir, the antiviral that the FDA approved for use against COVID-19, has a significant benefit in most studies, but certainly isn’t a game changer in offering universal treatment. Not only does the drug not prevent many severe effects of COVID-19, it has to be administered by IV in a medical setting. It’s also not without side effects. The benefits vs. the cost are so questionable that the World Health Organization has actually recommended against using the drug.
The ideal antiviral would be one that is as simple to administer as most antibiotics—a pill that could be taken at home, for a limited time, until the disease was eliminated. It should be something that can be taken with few side effects. And it should be shelf-stable over a long period without requiring special handling. Such an ideal and widely applicable antiviral is exactly what the new funding is hoping to generate.
There are already strong indications that such a drug is possible. Companies such as vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and AstraZeneca are testing a new generation of antivirals.
In particular, many drug companies are looking at a technology called “short interfering RNA” (siRNA). As an NIH review showed back in 2018, siRNA offers the potential for treatments that are “easy to design, and can be directed against multiple strains of a virus.” Research in the area has proceeded rapidly over the last two decades. Also generating excitement are “micro RNA” (miRNA) and “short hairpin RNA” (shRNA) which could potentially offer a more potent defense against viruses. All of these offer ways to create targeted antivirals quickly that could be far more effective than previous generations of treatments.
With the increased confidence generated by how messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines like those from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna were created just hours after the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was released, and the safety and efficacy those vaccines have demonstrated in practice, the willingness to invest in these new technologies has gotten a big boost. Though there are millions of varieties of viruses and bacteria, when it comes to those which infect humans there are only around 100 disease-causing bacteria and 219 known disease-causes viruses. The new generation of antivirals could represent a revolution as great as when Alexander Fleming checked his Petri dish.
Even before these new drugs arrive, the BBC reported on Wednesday that results from the global RECOVERY trial show that a cocktail of intravenous infusion of antibodies—not so different from those given to Trump—can help to neutralize the virus. Like remdesivir, results are far from perfect, and this is an IV product to be administered in a hospital, but it could help to save lives for those who have severe COVID-19.
However, the goal of a pill-based, effective treatment is within grasp. The drugs from Pfizer and AstraZeneca began trials this spring. Rather than being based on the many xxRNA next generation techs that hold the potential to revolutionize antivirals, these two drugs are both protease inhibitors, the same class of drugs as many of the antivirals used to treat HIV. First results of those trials should be available within the next two months, and one or both of these drugs could be available under emergency use by the end of the year.
Considering how many people have still resisted taking the COVID-19 vaccine, having an effective treatment may be the only means of dealing with an infection that is likely to become endemic in America and elsewhere. But the investment in antivirals goes beyond these immediate treatments, and the results could be drugs that are effective in treating COVID-19, more effective against HIV, able to stop Ebola, and capable of dealing with the next virus that appears.
And yes, just as with bacteria, all these drugs have the potential for sparking drug resistance as evolution does its thing. Hopefully we will be smarter this time around, and people will not be getting antiviral drugs in situations where they’re not warranted or effective. It would also be nice if we could limit their use in treating cattle or pigs. Someone should get on that.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will bring a cloture vote on the voting rights and election reforms bill on Tuesday of next week, he told reporters Thursday. Senate Democrats met Thursday to discuss strategy and hear out Sen. Joe Manchin on the changes he wants to see in the sweeping reform bill.
Manchin is the only Democrat who opposes the bill. He told reporters after the meeting that "he spoke a lot," so it must have been a success in his eyes."It was a very good constructive dialogue," Manchin said, adding that his colleagues were "very receptive" to his ideas. Senate Democrats are cautiously optimistic about these developments. "We're all constructively engaged on the substance. It was a serious and constructive conversation," progressive Sen. Brian Schatz, from Hawaii, said. Manchin's willingness to talk it out and work constructively has made him more "optimistic."
.@SenSchumer just FILED CLOTURE on the motion to proceed to S.2093, the For the People Act.
— U.S. Senate Majority Floor Updates (@DSenFloor) June 17, 2021
That's all well and good, but as long as Manchin, Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, and recently, Californian Dianne Feinstein are opposed to filibuster reform, that optimism gets them nuthin.' That's because Mitch McConnell has declared war on the bill, and his troops are falling in line.
McConnell held a press conference Thursday, declaring Manchin's proposal "equally unacceptable” to the original For the People Act and "totally inappropriate." Flanked by a number of fellow Republicans, he promised total opposition from his side. "All Republicans, I think, will oppose that as well if that were to be surfaced on the floor," he said of Manchin's proposal. "That's not what we anticipate the cloture motion to be on."
Manchin's "10 good people" on the Republican side are failing to materialize on this bill. They're all siding with McConnell, including "moderate" Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah). To Schumer's suggesting that the bill would be amended to include Manchin's changes on the floor, Romney said that strategy "doesn't make a lot of sense to me" and he won't support it. Murkowski said "Joe hasn’t briefed me on any of this," so she'll probably join the filibuster.
Then there's Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who praised Manchin last week for "saving our country" by working with Republicans. This bill, even with Manchin's changes, "needs to be blocked," he said. "I’m not optimistic that they could make enough changes to that to make it a fair bill. It would usurp the rights of the states."
Then there's Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who Manchin thought could be pressured to work with Democrats on things like the Jan. 6 commission. He told a group of major donors on a private call Monday, obtained by The Intercept, that "Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that'd be nice and it'd help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote."
Maybe Blunt heard about that, because when it comes to voting rights, he's pulling out all the racist and misogynistic stops, just so everyone knows where he really stands. Blunt said Thursday that when "Stacey Abrams immediately endorsed Sen. Manchin's proposal, it became the Stacey Abram's substitute, not the Joe Manchin substitute."
Manchin is getting to see very clearly, where his friends truly are in the Senate on this.
Amy Klobuchar and Warnock both spoke positively about Manchin’s proposal to the caucus. “The atmosphere in there was nothing” but positive, Klobuchar said, adding that they are still negotiating on some of Manchin’s provisions, including voter ID. Manchin says he “spoke a lot”
On Thursday morning, Bloomberg published an article showing vaccine information from the new data tracker website at the CDC. It’s an interesting article, showing that there are hundreds of counties in the United States where the rate of vaccination is less than 25% of the population. Not only is that number far too low to represent any sort of collective immunity, it’s so low that it effectively means that COVID-19 is unrestrained in these counties. The disease can still spread through these counties unrestricted, the rate of transmission essentially unaffected by this anemic rate of vaccination.
These counties, and low-vaccine communities in other counties, represent a genuine, ongoing, long-term threat to the nation. In these counties, so long as the vaccination rates remain low, COVID-19 will remain endemic. It will simmer and flare, create local outbreaks and die back to a low level, only to do it again. And as new variants appear, like the Delta variant which is now becoming dominant in many areas, these counties will provide both an incubator for these variants, and a test tube in which even more aggressive and destructive variants may appear.
But while Bloomberg’s article does a service in pointing out the widespread nature of low-vaccination areas, and giving some suggestion of the threat they represent, that same article is also an example of reporting so cowardly that it is actively harmful in its own right. Because, in the entire article, there is an abject refusal to acknowledge the source of vaccine hesitancy. Not only that, there is a misdirection so blatant, it’s hard to believe it’s not intentional.
Bloomberg blames low vaccination rates on “rural population and more people of color.” That’s not just bullshit, it’s dangerous bullshit. Not only does it fail to acknowledge the real cause, it doubles-down on a claim that, just as talk of the “China virus” led to violence against Asian Americans, makes it possible to blame continued COVID-19 outbreaks on “those @#$@ Blacks.” And that’s completely, completely, untrue.
The idea that vaccine hesitancy is highest among communities of color had been repeated over, and over, and over. It fits a convenient narrative, one that says Blacks are so fearful of government health care because of events like Tuskegee, that they will refuse that health care when it’s offered. That narrative has appeared repeatedly in reporting on COVID-19 vaccines.
In fact, according to Civiqs data, this was never true. While 25% of Black Americans said they would not be vaccinated in December when vaccines first appeared, 29% of white Americans gave the same answer. Over time, vaccine hesitancy dropped faster among Blacks and Latinos than among whites. Currently, only 10% of Blacks continue to say they will not take a vaccine, while the number of whites has barely budged at 27%. The number saying no to the vaccine among Latino Americans is just 15%.
People of color have never had more vaccine hesitancy than white Americans. But the unfounded assumption that Blacks would refuse the vaccine has already had consequences. In states like Georgia and Missouri, vaccines were first offered to predominantly white rural counties, and vaccine availability was delayed in cities like St. Louis or Atlanta. The idea that Blacks would refuse the vaccine anyway was used to justify those decisions.
Continuing to push this fallacy at this point presents a new threat. Because low vaccination rates will continue to generate COVID-19 cases. Even though there has been an enormous fall in the number of cases since the January peaks, since the beginning of June cases in the U.S. have been essentially flat. In some counties, there has actually been a flare up in the last three weeks that has driven case counts, hospitalizations, and ICU use to record levels.
Putnam County in Missouri became semi-famous back in early March when a planned mass vaccination event fizzled out and thousands of vaccine doses went unused. At the same time, both Kansas City and St. Louis were begging for vaccine, but no mass vaccination events were planned there. Now Putnam County has a overall vaccination rate of just 26% and new case rate of 47 people per 100,000. St. Louis and Kansas City both have vaccination rates over 40% and new case rates below 6 per 100,000.
The reason for this is not that Putnam County is rural. Or that it has a high level of people of color (it does not). The reason can be stated in one word: Republicans.
That word doesn’t appear in Bloomberg’s article. But there is no other demographic factor that comes close to matching the rates of vaccine hesitancy. Republicans have rejected the vaccine from the outset, and they are doing so still.
Republican vaccine hesitancy has remained essentially flat since vaccines first became available.
Likewise, then it comes to counties where vaccination rates are extremely high, there’s a single demographic factor that can account for this fact.
Democratic vaccine acceptance accounts for regions with high vaccination levels.
In leaving out this factor, Bloomberg isn’t making their article nonpartisan; they’re making it inaccurate. Worse, they are continuing a false narrative that invites placing the blame for the continued presence of COVID-19, including hundreds of deaths each day, on people of color. Right now 74% of Blacks say they have been vaccinated and another 9% say they will get vaccinated. And 72% of Latinos say they have been vaccinated and another 7% say they will get vaccinated. All of those numbers are far above the values for whites.
When America fails to achieve the target of hitting 70% of the nation vaccinated by July 4, as now seems likely, the blame will not lie with people of color. It will be white Americans pulling down the numbers. And the single demographic within white Americans that predicts who will refuse the vaccine is equally simple—are they Republicans. Refusing to admit that, is refusing to address the issue in a way that is either meaningful or honest.
Patrick Stewart returns as Jean-Luc Picard in the second season of Picard, coming to Paramount+ in 2022.
We aren't getting a second season of Picard until next year due to the pandemic delaying production, but Paramount+ has been dribbling out images and short teasers in the meantime. The latest teaser gives us our first look at the return of fan-favorite Q (John de Lancie), an extradimensional being with power over time, space, the laws of physics, and reality itself.
(Spoilers for season 1 below.)
As I wrote in my review last year, the series is set 20 years after the events of Star Trek: Nemesis. The first season opened with Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) having retired to the family vineyard. His bucolic existence was interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious woman named Dahj (Isa Briones) who pleaded for his help. Alas, Picard failed to save her. She was killed in front of him by Romulan assassins belonging to a radical sect known as the Zhat Vash, who is dedicated to eradicating all artificial life forms. Picard discovered that Dahj was actually a synthetic—technically Data's "daughter"—and she had a twin sister, Soji, who was also in danger.
According to a source familiar with the situation, the department has also closed the related criminal investigation into whether Bolton’s memoir illegally disclosed classified information.
While criminal cases against high-level officials over such disclosures are notoriously rare, the decision by Biden appointees at the Justice Department to drop the lawsuit was more surprising since the judge in the case had made clear he disapproved of Bolton’s decision to move forward with publication of his book without final approval from the White House.
Bolton’s best-selling book, “The Room Where It Happened,” generated harsh press for then-President Donald Trump during a reelection year. Released in June 2020,the book depicted Trump as a corrupt leader who cared only about getting reelected, “even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.”
The Justice Department sued Bolton in June 2020, aiming to stop the publication and regain profits he made from it. A federal judge denied the administration’s request to block the release, noting that the book had already been “printed, bound and shipped across the country” at the time.
The legal action against Bolton began after Trump publicly and privately pressured White House aides and Justice officials to stop the publishing of the national security adviser’s tell-all book.
Bolton scored a victory earlier this year when a federal judgeruled that he could seek evidence that Trump or his aides sought to block his book’s publication for political reasons. Wednesday’s dismissal ends that discovery process, which was expected to include depositions of current and former national security officials involved in the review.
Justice Department officials declined to comment on the decision to drop the suit, but POLITICO obtaineda six-page settlement agreementthat hints that the review process in Bolton’s case was not handled appropriately, echoing longstanding concerns by former officials that such reviews can be unreasonably drawn out and sometimes delve into matters that pose no national security risk.
“The Parties … agree that the pre-publication review process must be conducted in an impartial manner and should not be used by the Government to delay or block publication of information that is not covered by the terms of applicable non-disclosure agreements out of concern that it could be embarrassing to or critical of the Government,” the agreement says. “While the pre-publication review process is ongoing, the Government should engage with the author actively and transparently regarding further steps in the review process and the time expected to be needed for its completion. … Under this process, an author may not unilaterally disseminate or publish the work before the pre-publication review process concludes.”
In the agreement, Bolton does not concede that he violated any law or rule, and attorneys for the Government acknowledged that “Bolton, in accordance with his prepublication review obligations, worked closely over several months with government officials to revise his manuscript before publication.”
In February, the Justice Department dropped another suit filed over a book written by a former Trump White House aide. Last October, the government filed suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former communications aide to first lady Melania Trump, seeking profits from Winston Wolkoff’s tell-all book, “Melania & Me.”
The suit said publication of the book violated a nondisclosure agreement Winston Wolkoff signed when she took the unpaid post. But outside lawyers and former Justice officials said it was highly unusual and perhaps unprecedented for the government to sue over information that had no national security interest and wasn’t restricted by some law or regulation.
The department offeredonly a vague statement on why the suit against Winston Wolkoff was dropped, less than three weeks after President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Donald Trump spent four years twisting the federal government to his own purposes, and nowhere was that more evident than in the Department of Justice. The urgency of cleaning house at Justice cannot be overstated—but Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t seem to feel that urgency, to the increasing concern of some Democrats.
The Revolving Door Project has spent months warning of ways Trump could have politicized the federal bureaucracy, where, for all Trump’s disdain of George W. Bush, the Bush administration provided a road map to increasing the power of political appointees and politicizing the hiring of career civil servants. At the Justice Department, Team Trump ultimately got seven political appointees hired to career civil service positions.
The house needs cleaning. But Garland isn’t rushing to do that. In fact, it’s worse.
Under Garland, the Justice Department has followed the policy instituted under William Barr of helping Trump fend off a defamation lawsuit stemming from Trump’s denials of writer E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegation. That’s the tip of the iceberg as Garland apparently tries to show his independence from partisan concerns by … continuing the partisan agenda of his predecessors. “Garland has quietly emerged as Donald Trump’s unwitting hatchet man, doing almost everything in his power to protect the lawless former president’s legacy,” the Revolving Door Project’s Jeff Hauser and Max Moran recently wrote at The New Republic.
The list of such actions is long: “He has committed the DOJ to defending a Trump-era policy slashing the number of legal immigrants who qualify for green cards. He’s hiring dozens of new immigration court judges who received their initial offers during the Trump era, and codified Trump-era rules restricting immigrants’ options to prevent their own deportations,” Hauser and Moran wrote. Additionally, “Meanwhile, Garland’s DOJ is actively defending a new oil project in Alaska that was cleared under Trump’s shams of environmental tests and may generate new oil for 30 years. In its filing, the DOJ explicitly said that the Trump administration adequately considered the new site’s effect on wildlife and greenhouse gas emissions. Garland is also maintaining support for a new oil pipeline in New Jersey and isn’t rescinding Trump-era briefs that made it harder for states to sue Big Oil over downplaying the risks of climate change.” (There’s more. Read that whole article.)
“I spoke with [Garland] yesterday and urged that we do a broader review than just the issues affecting the committee and the press, but the entire degree to which the department leadership was politicized by his predecessor,” Rep. Adam Schiff, one of the Democrats whose records were subpoenaed by Trump, said on Tuesday. “And I’m confident that he will.”
Others sound less confident.
”I want to give [Garland] the benefit of the doubt. He comes out of the judiciary and may not have all that great situational awareness about the malevolent political forces around him,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. “He’s also still filling out his team. So I’m willing to be patient for a bit.”
“But,” Whitehouse added, “if it doesn’t get better, as time moves on, I’m going to get pretty impatient.”
Yeah, maybe get impatient now. About both investigations of Team Trump’s wrongdoing and the priorities that will move the country forward.
“The Department of Justice has a very long to-do list,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren told The Daily Beast. “I would strongly urge the Department to prioritize the civil rights work, voting protection, antitrust, and not the initiatives begun during the Trump era that undermine justice in this country.”
And that work needs to be started, Warren noted, with the recognition that “limited time, limited resources, mean that this Justice department needs to be focused on the protection of our democracy and our economy, not on the protection of Donald Trump.”
An independent Justice Department is a great thing. But right now, Garland seems to be more intent on showing that it’s independent of the current presidency than the previous one. It’s past time for that to change.
Of course, the white supremacists are losing their shit
On Tuesday, Rep. Paul Gosar directed a series of questions at FBI Director Christopher Wray in which he accused Capitol Police of “lying in wait” for the Jan. 6 insurgents and “executing” Ashli Babbitt “without warning.” Gosar’s description of the situation may seem to be 180 degrees away from the videos that have been publicly available, and directing these questions at the FBI director, who had absolutely no connection to the officer involved, may seem pointless. However, there’s definitely a reason Gosar is pushing this line, and a reason why he’s pushing it at Wray.
Because the rising conspiracy theory on the right has named the people behind the violence on Jan. 6. They’re not blaming it on the Oath Keepers militia, multiple members of which have been arrested and charged with conspiracy for their role in the insurgency. It’s not the Proud Boys, who helped to form a “nexus” linking other white supremacist militias together for the assault. It’s not the III Percent militia, who are still engaged in planning more violent assaults. It’s not a militia group at all. Republicans are now claiming that the source of violence on Jan. 6 was … the FBI.
Based on a conspiracy theory circulating through the same sites that originally boosted QAnon, and now being widely broadcast on right-wing media, including Fox News, Republicans are claiming that the FBI operatives both “organized and participated in” the insurgency. More than that, Fox is now pushing a narrative that the FBI set up the Jan. 6 insurgency as an excuse to take down Republican members of Congress.
Even in a nation where a significant percentage claim to believe in a scheme to sell children using pizza parlors connected by underground tubes, this immensely destructive conspiracy theory would seem to be way, way over the line.
Of course, the leaders of the Republican Party—Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz—are all over it. Gaetz has been retweeting a “breakdown of the involvement of FBI operatives who organized and participated in January 6 Capitol riot.” Greene has tweeted a demand for the names of ”the FBI operatives, who were involved in organizing and carrying out the Jan 6th Capitol riot.” She then goes on to claim that this was a “deep state” attack by the same people behind the Russia investigation.
One thing to note: when they’re blaming someone else, it’s a “riot.” When not blaming someone else, it’s a “visit.” Republicans have now moved past denial, never felt any guilt, and are fully marinated in anger. They’re ready to move on to the final stage—blaming the deep state for everything.
If what Gaetz and Greene are tweeting seems completely overboard and reckless, it’s not even a nit compared to what Tucker Carlson is already pushing on his Fox program. Here’s Carlson directly insisting that FBI operatives planned the insurgency, set up Trump supporters to take the fall, and are being protected by the DOJ.
Carlson: Strangely, some of the key people who participated on January 6 have not been charged. Look at the document. The government calls those people ‘unindicted co-conspirators.’ What does that mean? It means that in every single case they were potentially FBI officers. Really. In the Capitol on January 6.
If that seems an amazingly wrong-headed and dangerous statement, just wait. It gets worse.
Carlson: For example, one of those unindicted co-conspirators is someone government documents identify only as ‘person 2.’ According to those documents, person 2 stayed in the same hotel room as a man called Thomas Caldwell, in insurrectionist, a man alleged to be a member of the group the Oath Keepers. … person 2 and person 3 were organizers of the riot, the government knows who they are, but the government has not charged them. You know why. They were almost certainly working for the FBI.”
Person 2, who shared Caldwell’s hotel room and stormed the Capitol with him, was Caldwell’s wife.
What Carlson is purposely ignoring is that 1) many of those who are named but not indicted are those whose involvement was marginal and who have agreed to testify against the insurgents who were more violent or genuinely involved in conspiratorial planning, and 2) many more people are still to be indicted as the DOJ and local law enforcement complete their investigations. The investigation and prosecution of a criminal conspiracy involving an assault on the Capitol that involved literally thousands takes time to complete. Carlson is pushing a narrative that’s intended to short-circuit that investigation and delegitimatize the results.
As Dave Neiwert predicted, President Joe Biden has unveiled a reasonable plan to address right-wing white nationalist extremism, and for that reason everyone should “expect a Tucker meltdown.” What’s happening now with Carlson, with Gaetz, with Greene, and with Gosar is a direct response to the policies that Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Tuesday. Those policies show a dedicated focus to going after domestic terrorism forcefully, rather than giving it room to grow and the encouragement it received under Trump. In particular, this plan involves taking a hard look at how far-right extremists have infiltrated law enforcement and the military.
All of this is a direct threat to those who are actively supporting, and supported by, far-right white nationalists. That’s Gosar. That’s Greene. That’s Gaetz. That’s Carlson. That’s also Donald Trump.
Carlson’s actions are desperate. They’re also incredibly dangerous and destructive to the rule of law. What he is doing should be completely over the line for anyone. That Green and Gaetz are pushing this ugly claim should be enough to damn their political careers, at the very least. It won’t. Because Kevin McCarthy isn’t leading the Republican House; he’s barely even following. This—this claim that the FBI was behind the insurgency—is where the party of Trump is going. And it’s just the first step.
The second step is already in the portion of Carlson’s program that was tweeted by Gaetz. In that section, Carlson includes a snippet from an NBC appearance of former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi. In talking about dealing with the Jan. 6 events, Figliuzzi mentions that the people actually being arrested could be considered “low level” members of the conspiracy, and that to actually prevent further acts of domestic terrorism, “you’ve got to tackle the command and control element of the terrorist group, that may mean people sitting on Congress right now.”
The reference here is clearly to those members of Congress—from Sen. Josh Hawley to Rep. Lauren Boebert—who may have been involved in not just actively encouraging the insurgents, but could have had advanced knowledge about the attack, or even assisted in the planning. In response to the Figliuzzi clip, Carlson does his best imitation of slack-jawed astonishment, and proclaims it worse than anything Putin has done.
But it’s how Carlson phrases this that’s key. Carlson says that looking into how Republicans supported the insurgency amounts to “[rounding up] duly democratic elected members of Congress because they oppose the regime...” Which is, of course, not what anyone is saying.
Carlson is launching two overlapping narratives: that the FBI was actually behind the assault, and that any attempt to investigate involvement of Republican involvement in the insurgency represents President Biden going after political enemies rather than people engaged in criminal conspiracy. The net result of this is a claim that the FBI was setting up Republican members of Congress so that Biden could take them out—which is exactly in line with the claim Greene makes when she likens the investigation into the Russian “witch hunt.”
All of this is clearly a desperate ploy to make genuine investigation into Republicans in Congress and how they assisted the insurgency radioactive. And it should underscore why such investigations are urgent.
“Talk about rounding somebody up,” said Carlson, “why not round up the FBI operatives that rioted on January 6?” That’s where they are now. If this sounds like encouraging further violence, that’s because it is.
Yep and a fire in any of those locations drifts north and chokes us out for weeks. Yippee.
Wildfires have already ignited in states like Utah and burned tens of thousands of acres. The extreme drought and heat across the West is raising wildfire risks. | Chris Samuels/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP
Extreme heat and extreme drought are combining to drive up fire risks. But blazes aren’t guaranteed.
Summer has not officially started yet, but wildfire season has already arrived in the US. Now an intense heat wave coupled with extreme drought is threatening to make things worse.
Large wildfires have already burned 981,000 acres this year to date, more than the 766,000 acres burned by the same time last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
It’s poised to get worse as summer officially begins. While 2021 may not beat the record-setting 2020 season, experts say it will be severe. “It’s probably going to be above-average for sure, but it’s not going to be off-the-charts,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University.
It’s important to remember that wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems. They help clear decay, restore nutrients to the soil, and are even required for some plants to germinate. Regular fires are a feature of many healthy forests and grasslands. However, wildfires have been getting more destructive in recent years, and humans are to blame. From building in fire-prone regions to suppressing natural fires to igniting blazes to changing the climate, humanity is making wildfires more expansive, costly, and deadly.
Even so, there are a lot of complicated and surprising factors that contribute to massive infernos, so there is a lot of variability year to year. Here are some of the factors that forecasters are worrying about in the western US.
Why 2021 is expected to be a bad fire year for the West
To ignite, a wildfire needs fuel, favorable weather, and an ignition source. But whether the overall fire season will be particularly severe or mild depends on variables that interact in complicated and sometimes contradictory ways.
For instance, a wet winter can help encourage more vegetation to grow in the spring, which can then turn into fuel as summer heats up. But a dry winter can add to aridity from ongoing droughts, particularly in areas that already have a lot of flammable fuel, such as forests. “In California, if it’s a dry year, it’s a bad fire season. If it’s a wet year, it’s a bad fire season,” Clements said.
So depending on the particular ecosystem — coastal forest, mountain forest, grassland, chaparral — the same weather and climate conditions can shift fire risk in different directions. But right now, these are the biggest factors driving wildfire risk across the board in the West:
Massive drought Huge swaths of the western US are experiencing extreme dryness. About 72 percent of the region is considered to be in “severe” drought, while 26 percent is in the worst category of “exceptional” drought. Water levels in reservoirs like Lake Oroville in California and Lake Mead in Nevada have dropped to historic lows. Oregon just experienced its driest spring on record.
This dryness is a combination of both a 20-year drop in precipitation called a megadrought, as well as seasonal variation.
US Drought MonitorMuch of the West is experiencing extreme or exceptional drought.
Last summer brought extreme heat to the region, which caused more moisture in the soil to evaporate, leaving less water for plants. The following winter then failed to bring much snow and rain, driven in part by a cooling pattern in the Pacific Ocean known as a La Niña. The snow that did accumulate dissipated faster than average, leaving a zero percent snowpack in the Sierra Nevada in May.
Satellite images from space show how fast California's landscape has changed since late March. The Sierra Nevada snowpack is nearly gone, and vegetation across the state has dried rather dramatically (especially noticeable in the Central Valley). #CAwx#CAwaterpic.twitter.com/1ObGsTrFlR
Warm weather California was graced with some cool weather and light rainfall earlier this month, but now the temperature is starting to rise. The Southwest, meanwhile, is bracing for record heat this week. As many as 40 million Americans are poised to swelter as temperatures rise as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
High heat has a close relationship with fire risk. “If it’s really warm, we generally have a higher fire season,” Clements said. “If it’s cooler, it’ll be below average.”
Air can absorb about 7 percent more water for every degree Celsius the air warms. But if there isn’t much moisture to absorb to begin with, then there is a gap between what the air can fully absorb and what moisture is actually present. This gap is known as the vapor pressure deficit, and it’s a key warning signal of wildfire risk, indicating that there is little moisture moving through trees, shrubs, and grasses.
Lots of dry fuel The combination of heat and aridity has left vegetation parched and primed to ignite. “Fuel moisture content is a critical factor in understanding fire behavior and fire danger,” Clements said.
That exceptionally dry vegetation then causes fires to burn hotter, faster, and longer, which in turn hampers efforts to contain them. It creates a cycle that can end up driving massive, devastating wildfires.
Day-to-day conditions can mitigate some of the long-term wildfire trends
While the deck is stacked in favor of major wildfires again this year, it’s not a guarantee that they will be larger, more frequent, or more destructive. Blazes still require an ignition source, and they depend on wind and persistent dry conditions to spread. “Things are looking scary, but if there’s no ignition, it’s not so bad,” Clements said.
If there isn’t a major wind event as fires ignite, they could remain contained. Similarly, bouts of rainfall or lower temperatures could quench flames. These weather events can drastically change the dynamics of fires and it’s not clear yet what the coming weeks will hold.
And if there is nothing to spark the flames, then there will be few new fires. The majority of wildfires in the US, upward of 84 percent, are ignited by humans. That can come from arson, unattended campfires, downed power lines, or machinery. So taking steps to reduce ignition, like banning fires in forested areas or limiting routes open to cars in fire-prone chaparral, can go a long way in reducing wildfire risk. Power companies like Pacific Gas & Electric are readying plans to shut off power to their customers to prevent their hardware from lighting new blazes.
David McNew/Getty Images
The shoreline encroaches on Lake Isabella, California as water levels drop. The Western US is facing extreme drought, which in turn is increasing wildfire risks.
But nature can ignite fires too. A dry lightning storm last year triggered a wave of fires in California. July is the peak month for lightning strikes in the West, and that’s one thing humans can’t prevent.
Over time, it’s possible to reduce the destructiveness of wildfires — for example through controlled burns, regular thinning of trees and brush that build up, and relocating homes and businesses away from high-risk areas. But the current situation developed over more than a century of poor planning, and it won’t be fixed overnight. So wildfires in the West are likely to get worse before they get better.
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US Drought Monitor
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