An even mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/Getty
From a Tennessee school board banning Maus to a proposed Florida law that would prohibit teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin,” the moral panic over critical race theory shows no sign of abating.
It can feel hard to understand what the hell is going on. But for activist and author Kimberly Latrice Jones, it’s not all that complicated. She cut through the bullshit when she appeared on The Breakfast Club podcast on Monday, offering what she thinks is the real reason why the anti-CRT craze has taken hold: White parents want to avoid having difficult conversations with their children about race.
"The truth is, Ruby Bridges, who integrated school, is only in her sixties," says @kimlatricejones. "We want to be convinced that it was so long ago. It was last night. It’s today." pic.twitter.com/SdkQnq7RBE
“The truth is, Ruby Bridges, who integrated school, is only in her sixties,” Jones, who co-authored the 2019 book I’m Not Dying With You Tonight, said. “So what it is is that you don’t want your kids, your grandkids, to know that you spit at her. You don’t want your grandkids to know that you witnessed lynching. You don’t want your grandkids to know that some of those family heirlooms that’s in the will are things from atrocities that happened to Black people.”
“We want to be convinced that it was so long ago,” she concluded. “It was last night. It’s today.”
Rand Paul does not like Dr. Anthony Fauci. During Senate hearings on the coronavirus over the past two years, the Republican senator from Kentucky has beenobsessedwith hounding the nation’s top public health official over his handling of the pandemic.
Now, Paul has promised will formalize that fight if Republicans win back the Senate in the midterms.
“If we win in November, if I’m chairman of a committee, if I have subpoena power, we’ll go after every one of his records,” Paul said in an interview with podcaster Lisa Boothe. “We’ll have an investigator go through this piece-by-piece because we don’t need this to happen again.”
Paul’s gripes aren’t completely insane. He is a politician doing his duty to question those within the government who hold power. And Fauci, as the head of pandemic response, has immense power. But his particular gripe seems to mostly home in on the idea that Fauci is hiding evidence of the lab leak theory.
Paul’s contention, outlined in this Fox News opinion piece, is that Fauci authorized, and then covered up, research in a Wuhan lab that could have led to the creation and leak of the novel coronavirus. “I do not know whether COVID-19 originated in a lab,” Paul writes. “My point is that our government’s bureaucrats brutally squashed any attempt to discover the truth of the origins of the virus because doing so conflicted with their self-interests.”
The problem here isn’t Paul’s espousal of the lab leak hypothesis, which, while unlikely and unconfirmed, is one possible explanation for the virus’s origins—as Fauci’s leaked emails show. It’s that Paul’s attacks on Fauci are more of a political game than an attempt to hold him to account. (As Fauci has pointed out, Paul has tried to fundraise on the “Fire Fauci” slogan.) Public record requests have already uncovered thousands of pages of Fauci’s emails from the early days of the pandemic, and they broadly paint a picture of an at time deeply flawed but well-intentioned man faced with the impossible task of navigating the public health system’s response to a new and deadly virus.
If Republicans win back Congress in 2022, they’ve made the plan clear: They’ll investigate everything. In preparation for the next presidential election, there will be an “onslaught of Biden probes.” And, in the drip-drip of paperwork, memos, and legalese, they hope to catch Democrats looking foolish. That’s no way to hold Fauci to task. It runs the risk of delegitimizing the urgent need of these committees to look into those like Fauci (who should be questioned) in the name of scoring points by beating up a new boogeyman.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference about an executive order establishing K through 12 lab schools at the Capitol Thursday Jan. 27, 2022, in Richmond, Va.Steve Helber/AP
It’s only been a week since Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched a tip line that allows parents to report any teachers or school administrators teaching “divisive” subjects, like critical race theory, in Virginia schools. Within days, the tip line was spoofed on Saturday Night Live and flooded with fake tips. And now the governor’s office is refusing to make the complaints public.
Its reasoning? All the emails sent to this tip line are “working papers and correspondences” for Youngkin’s “personal or deliberative” use.
On January 26, Margaret Thornton, a post-doctoral scholar at Princeton whose research focuses on segregation in schools, filed a public records request to see the emails. Five business days later, her request was denied. The governor’s office cited Section 2.2-3705.7, which basically means that the records are protected under executive privilege.
Turns out that @GovernorVA is claiming all the emails sent to helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov are his own correspondence. pic.twitter.com/sMP4xYUduQ
— Margaret Thornton, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) (@MaggieEThornton) February 2, 2022
As a native Virginian, Thornton wanted to see what parents were saying and it how it could affect Virginia’s teachers and students. “I was a high school teacher in Virginia for many years. I graduated here in Virginia,” Thornton told me. “I care so much about education in our commonwealth. And I’m concerned that this tip line is going to have a chilling affect on teachers and teaching. I’m an educational researcher, so of course I support teacher accountability, but I don’t think an anonymous tip line is the way to go about it.”
And she wasn’t the only one whose request was denied: Several local publications, like the Daily Progress and the Virginian Pilot, received either the same response or no response at all. (I filed a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on February 1 and have not heard anything back.) Under Virginia law, the governor’s office has up to five business days to respond to such requests.
The Governor’s office seems to think it is above well-established Virginia laws, including VA FOIA. It is not. pic.twitter.com/oj93TrRxFH
Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats have jumped all over Youngkin for the tip line and the denied records requests. “This is now how FOIA works,” tweeted Democratic state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. “If the Governor wants to set up a tip line to report teachers who mention Black History, he shouldn’t be hiding what he ‘finds.'”
And it doesn’t appear that the controversy will go away anytime soon: On Thursday, seven Virginia organizations representing educators released a statement calling for Youngkin to scrap the tip line entirely.
INBOX: Pretty much every education group in the state is calling on Youngkin to rescind EO 1 and shut down the tip line. pic.twitter.com/u4k38m8qYm
If parents are genuinely curious about what’s being taught in their children’s classrooms, Princeton’s Thornton recommends they talk to their children’s teachers directly through a phone call or email, not through the hotline. “Reaching out and having that dialogue can do wonders. When I was a classroom teacher, I loved to hear from parents,” she said. “Even if they were disagreeing with something that went on the classroom, just knowing that they are invested in their students’ education was really helpful.”
Iowa just took “done with Covid” to a whole new level. On Thursday, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announced her plan to end the state’s disaster declaration and shut down its case count and vaccination websites later this month, the Des Moines Register reports.
“We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely,” Reynolds said in a statement. “After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly.”
Still, in a state where less than two-thirds of the population 5 and above are fully vaccinated, it boggles the mind that the government would shut down a website aimed at making it easier for people to get their shots. No one knows what the next phase of the pandemic will look like—whether the virus will fizzle out entirely, or return with a vengeance in the form of another variant. But if the last year has taught us anything, it’s that it’s in our best interest to make it as easy as possible to vaccinate as many people as possible.
The reasoning for ending the emergency declaration makes more sense. Many states have already discontinued theirs, and as Omicron case counts plummet maybe there is a chance to reallocate resources to other purposes (though it’s not clear what those may be).
For Iowans looking for it, the Covid data will still be accessible through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid Data Tracker. But Iowa’s Covid case counts won’t be displayed on a convenient dashboard that makes it easy to see that there are almost 800 Covid patients currently hospitalized in the state.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden came to New York City to meet with Mayor Eric Adams—former cop, current crypto influencer, vegan, and potential “future” of the Democratic Party—to make clear that the administration is cracking down on violent crime.
Gun violence has increased across the country over the past year. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the factors that can make communities more susceptible to gun violence, including poverty, access to mental health care, and housing insecurity, and also distanced at-risk individuals from social networks that can help prevent them from resorting to violence. In 2021, the number of shootings in New York City climbed to 1,562, the highest in 15 years.
This has led to legitimate concern for a need to curtail violence. But the discussion has also been dogged by an outsize, and reactionary, idea that crime is at an all-time high. (It’s not.) And that Biden is doing nothing to stop crime—or that he is in favor of defunding the police. (He has, in fact, consistently pushed back on the idea of defunding police departments and even encouraged state and local officials to use stimulus money to hire more officers.)
Biden used his trip to New York City today to align himself clearly with Adams, who has no trouble convincing people he likes the police. Adams, for his part, spoke about a crackdown.
A former police officer who has publicly disavowed stop and frisk, Adams called today for a “9/11-type response.”
But what does that mean exactly?
NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) calls for a "9/11-type response to address the domestic terror that is pervasive in this city and country."
"He is here," Adams says of Biden in NYC today, to "give New Yorkers the backup we need." pic.twitter.com/wbybOVx9Ba
The answer can be found in a gun violence prevention plan that Adams unveiled last week, which mixes aggressive policing policies and rollbacks to criminal justice reform with programs designed to invest in communities and build up neighborhood institutions.
“Over the longer term, it will require a transformation of our city: growing economic opportunities, improving the education of every child, providing more access to mental health support, and so much more,” the plan reads. “Yet immediately…we must address the crisis of guns on our streets.”
The blueprint contained some important proposals that would help empower communities to combat gun violence, including a plan to expand the use of violence interrupters—community members, often with criminal histories, who keep an eye to developing conflicts and attempt to dissuade people from resorting to violence. The plan would also expand the city’s mental health infrastructure and establish a summer youth employment and engagement program partnered with New York City businesses and corporations, which would provide youth with paid internships to occupy them during the summer months, when rates of gun violence tend to spike.
However, the blueprint also reverses a series of police reforms implemented in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests and contains a series of controversial proposals that could easily lead to police abuse, including a plan to expand the use of “new technologies and software to identify dangerous individuals and those carrying weapons,” a plan to roll back bail reform, and a plan to charge 16- and 17-year-olds who commit gun offenses in criminal rather than family court.
Perhaps the most contested part of Adams’ program involves the reestablishment of plain-clothes anti-crime units under the new name “Neighborhood Safety Teams.” New York City plain-clothes units were disbanded during the George Floyd protests, because their aggressive tactics led to a series of highly controversial police killings. According to the Intercept, NYPD plain-clothes officers were responsible for almost a third of fatal police shootings despite making up only 6 percent of the police force. In 2014, Daniel Pantaleo, a plain clothes officer in an anti-crime unit, killed Eric Garner by placing him in an illegal chokehold. Garner’s death was captured in a viral video that helped build momentum for police reform.
Adams has been insistent about his intentions to improve the plain-clothes units rather than reconstitute them in their previous form, but the blueprint lacks details as to what will be different. In a press conference, Adams said the anti-crime units will wear body cameras and clothing identifying them as police officers, but it’s unlikely that this change will be broad enough to prevent any unjustified shootings from occurring.
In early January areporter spotted Pope Francis walking toward his Fiat 500 with Vatican plates. He was leaving an unexpected place: a Roman record store. The surprise visit turned into a sort of news event. Reporters flocked to the shop to learn that “the Holy Father,” as the record shop owner explained, “is passionate about music.” During his time as a cardinal, he would regularly visit to buy CDs.
Even better: Those of us wondering what Jorge Bergoglio might unwind with post-vespers over a nice glass of malbec or yerba mate are in luck. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, published a little taste and description of Il Papa’s collection of more than 2,000 CDs and 19 vinyl albums. While we yearn for more specifics, Ravasi told Italian reporters that the bishop of Rome enjoys a mix of mostly classical, interspersed with the greatest hits of Edith Piaf, gospel hymns performed by Elvis Presley, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tango music of his native Argentina.
With nothing else to do on a snowy weekend, I decided to cozy up and enjoy music a la Bergoglio. Would these jams be immaculate, or papal bull? I curated my playlist with the help of some media writers and my own sleuthing through Papa Frankie’s previous interviews. (If you want some pontifical tunes but don’t want to put in that kind of legwork, I suggest checking out America writer Keara Hanlon and her dope papal Spotify playlist.)
And I have to come to a weird conclusion: This music is overwhelming romantic. Forgive me Father if thinking so is a sin but…I can explain!
Classical Music
In the realm of classical music, Francis has been upfront about his love of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I, too, like Mozart. (I am always in the mood to watch Amadeus, always.) In 2013, Pope Francis revealed that he especially loves “Et Incarnatus Est,” from Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor (originally performed by Wolfgang’s fiancée, Constanze—adorable!). This music, according to Francis, “is matchless…it lifts you up to God.”
I can truly agree with the Holy Father here. There I was, running to the grocery store, so absorbed in the transcendent soprano that I’m crossing streets without a care, cars honking and swerving around me—this music almost had me literally lifted to God and removed from the US Census.
Another favorite is Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3.” Originally composed for his only opera, Fidelio, which the composer spent a decade writing, this overture was scrapped for being too dramatic. Beethoven’s piece explores the triumph of light over darkness and jubilation of freedom. It’s scary and sensual. I freaking loved it. Holy vibe!
Tango and Astor Piazzolla
Of course, an Argentine has to like tango, and Astor Piazzolla is specifically mentioned in the papal collection. A controversial tango legend, Piazzolla pushed the limits of the genre by incorporating elements of jazz, an influence the Argentine composer picked up as he grew up in New York. Maybe it makes sense that a somewhat unconventional pope would gravitate toward a rather unconventional musician.
When I first heard Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” I thought of Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull from the way the piano pounded and the staccato flute flew over the persistent percussion—no wonder Piazzolla is known for his influence on rock, pop, and funk.
This music was dramatic, erotic, mischievous, and everything you’d expect the tango to be.
Elvis Presley and Gospel Music
This was tough for me. Do I think the King had a sultry voice? Yeah. Do I get down to a little bit of “A Little Less Conversation” and “Hound Dog”? Hell yes. But while it’s debated the extent to which Presley appropriated or elevated Black music, and whether or not he groomed Priscilla before their marriage (who was just 14 when they met)…I also just wasn’t feeling it. When it comes to lifting my soul, give me some Mahalia Jackson or the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey instead. I smell some papal bull here.
Edith Piaf, Official Chanteuse of France
Oh, be still my heart! I speak no French, but does one need it for Piaf? With songs so lushly romantic and mournful, she has you missing a lover you’ve never met. Her enduring legacy comes through music that hints at a love that may never last and a world where beauty and sadness hold hands. I can imagine how, even after Francis undertook his vow of celibacy, Piaf might still resonate. And as I sat there drinking my tea and dreaming, I couldn’t help but wonder: Does the pope pine for a lost lover when he hears “La Vie en Rose”?
Overall: Immaculate Vibes!
All in all, the Holy Father has some great musical taste.
Honestly, the one word that comes to mind when thinking about this music is “sensual.” Maybe that’s unexpected for a celibate octogenarian! But, as the saying goes, it takes all types. It was triumphant, mournful, and erotic—all over the course of an hour. The pope may have been critical of people who choose to have pets instead of children but maybe he should just do less talking, bump his music, and see if that helps with the Catholic procreation issue. Turn up, DJ Frankie!
A Trump endorsement for former Sen. David Perdue didn’t sway Georgia voters in 2021, when the incumbent Republican lost to Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff election that helped hand control of the Senate to Democrats.
But second time’s the charm?
Perdue is now campaigning for governor against incumbent Republican Brian Kemp, whom Trump has disavowed ever since he refused to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. And Perdue, unlike Kemp, has Trump’s “complete and total endorsement.”
To prove it, Perdue’s first campaign ad is Trump bashing Kemp and extolling Perdue’s virtues. “David Perdue is an outstanding man,” he says. “He’s tough, he’s smart, he has my complete and total endorsement.” Meanwhile, a series of imperatives flashes on the screen: “STOP STACEY. SAVE GEORGIA. VOTE PERDUE.”
Yes, this ad is literally just a video of Trump talking at a camera. Perdue is included only as stock photo.
I guess that’s one way to prove you’re a leader.
It’s unclear how far a Trump endorsement will take Perdue, but Trump is certainly confident in his campaign-boosting abilities. In a statement released today, Trump said, “The Failing New York Times refuses to acknowledge that the power of the Trump endorsement is far stronger today than ever before—it is virtually unblemished!”
It remains to be seen whether a fairly popular incumbent or a Trump-backed former senator would fare better against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic candidate who narrowly lost to Kemp in 2018. One thing’s certain: This is going to be an essential race to keep on eye on in the 2022 election cycle.
A feud with Bette Midler, in which the actress was forced to apologize for calling West Virginia “backward” as she condemned Joe Manchin last month, has landed in just the place such dumb, non-controversies deserve: the humiliation of a dog and her butthole on official state grounds.
That’s what happened Thursday when Republican Gov. Jim Justice pushed back on Midler during his second state of the state address, telling critics of West Virginians to kiss his bulldog’s “hiney.”
“They told every bad joke in the world about us,” Justice said. “So from that standpoint, Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there, kiss her hiney!”
He then held up Babydog’s rear end for emphasis, sending cameras flashing as photographers captured snaps of the bulldog’s butthole.
The crowd seemed to love it, though it’s unclear how wielding his dog’s butt will earn West Virginians the respect Justice says they deserve. But I guess that was never the end he desired.
.@WVGovernor Jim Justice closes his state of the state address: "Babydog tells Bette Middler, and all those out there, 'kiss her hiney.'" pic.twitter.com/eVsSRt004c
A real electoral ballot preparing to be certified on January 6, 2021Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/AP
Shortly after former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani came up with a harebrained scheme: hijack the Electoral College by having fake electors sign fake election certificates, and then convince former Vice President Mike Pence to throw out authentic Biden-voting electors and replace them with Trump-voting alternates.
The plan was patently absurd, and Pence refused to go along with it. But that’s not the end of the story. Now, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol is subpoenaing 14 of those illegitimate “electors,” including the chairmen of the Nevada and Georgia GOP and several Republican National Committee members, in hopes that they’ll give more information about exactly how the plan went down.
The panel subpoened two of pro-Trump "electors" from each state. They include some prominent GOP officials, including NV GOP chairman Michael McDonald and GA GOP chairman David Shafer. pic.twitter.com/V0TIUCHKCL
“We believe the individuals we have subpoenaed today have information about how these so-called alternate electors met and who was behind that scheme,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement. “We encourage them to cooperate with the Select Committee’s investigation to get answers about January 6th for the American people and help ensure nothing like that day ever happens again.”
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: your gas stove is harming you and the planet.
Here’s a new wrinkle though: A just published study out of Stanford University found that gas cooking stoves leak methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide, even when they’re turned off.
To arrive at their results, researchers measured the amount of unburned methane released by 18 brands of gas stoves in 53 homes. The results were staggering. All stoves, regardless of price or age, leaked methane whether or not they were in use. “Annual methane emissions from all gas stoves in U.S. homes have a climate impact comparable to the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 500,000 cars,” the researchers wrote.
The Stanford study is one of the first to indicate that stoves continue to leak greenhouse gases even when turned off. It adds to the already clear and convincing evidence that these appliances drastically worsen emissions and flood homes with pollutants.
In June 2021, Rebecca Leber reported on the gas industry’s efforts to make gas stoves a ubiquitous part of American life for Mother Jones:
Over the last hundred years, gas companies have engaged an all-out campaign to convince Americans that cooking with a gas flame is superior to using electric heat. At the same time, they’ve urged us not to think too hard—if at all—about what it means to combust a fossil fuel in our homes.
In recent years, as climate change has moved from a long- to near-term to present threat, the industry has only escalated its efforts to keep Americans burning gas that could be harmful to them. Over the years, gas companies orchestrated a series of local campaigns designed to prevent lawmakers from imposing new regulations on natural gas use. Some of the tactics they used are reminiscent of Big Tobacco’s attempt to resist attempts to regulate the sale of cigarettes and other nicotine products. As Leber reported:
To ward off a municipal vote in San Luis Obispo, California, a union representing gas utility workers threatened to bus in “hundreds” of protesters during the pandemic with no social distancing in place. In Santa Barbara, residents have received robotexts warning that a gas ban would dramatically increase their bills. The Pacific Northwest group Partnership for Energy Progress, funded in part by Washington state’s largest gas utility, Puget Sound Energy, has spent at least $1 million opposing electrification mandates in Bellingham and Seattle, including $91,000 on bus ads showing a happy family cooking with gas next to the slogan “Reliable. Affordable. Natural Gas. Here for You.”
Fortunately, the tides have begun to shift due to the efforts of environmentalists. Powerful regulators have published unequivocal statements proclaiming that gas stoves cause indoor air pollution, and during his presidential campaign, no less than Joe Biden himself declared that new appliances and construction should be held to a stricter standard.
The fight to regulate gas stoves may not be over, but at least the industry seems to have been put on the defensive.
One would think that after making headlines for testing positive for Covid—which both delayed her own defamation case against the New York Times and sparked fears of potential exposure, given that she was seen dining out in a crowded restaurant days before—that Sarah Palin would simply lay low.
But common decency, or sense, has never really been a trait attributed to the former Alaskan governor. Instead, Palin, who, according to the judge presiding over her long-awaited trial, is unvaccinated, reportedly hit up restaurants in the Upper East Sideat least twice since testing positive. She even returned to Elio’s, the Italian restaurant where she had been spotted eating indoors this past weekend before she tested positive.
#HappeningNow Sarah Palin seen dining at a Manhattan restaurant. She is in the city for a trial against the NYT @nytimes, which was reportedly delayed due to her testing positive for Covid19, 2 days ago, according to Forbes pic.twitter.com/npJaQDf110
By opting to eat outdoors, it doesn’t appear as though Palin has broken any of New York’s rules for Covid dining. (The city is declining to investigate Elio’s for allowing Palin to dine indoors before her diagnosis, despite her reported vaccination status.) Still, the gall of Palin’s decision to parade around town just days after testing positive can’t be overstated. Of course, that’s trademark Palin for you, a forever political troll who would rather earn the ire of New Yorkers and potentially endanger them with Covid exposure than simply go away for a moment.
When asked why she insisted on dining out, the Gothamist reports that Palin answered that she simply “loved” the city. It’s safe to say the adoration is not reciprocated.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of Biden's potential Supreme Court nomineesTom Williams/Pool/CNP/Zuma
It’s official: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring. The question now is who will replace him.
President Biden appears poised to make good on his campaign-trail promise to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that plan at today’s White House press conference, saying, “The President has stated and reiterated his commitment to nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court and certainly stands by that.” Biden has already nominated eight Black women to the US Court of Appeals, five of whom have been confirmed. (Before Biden, only eight Black women had ever served on federal appeals courts.)
In just 1 year, President Biden has nominated as many Black women to serve on federal appeals courts as there were in the entirety of American history when he first took office.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) January 26, 2022
Whoever it ends up being, the process will likely be fast. Democrats, faced with the possibility of losing the Senate majority in November, are planning to push Biden’s nominee through confirmation hearings on a timetable comparable to the one former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pursued for Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. Just one month passed between Barrett’s nomination and confirmation. (Having qualms about such speed? Don’t forget that six states with Republican governors are represented by Democratic senators over the age of 70.)
“President Biden’s nominee will receive a prompt hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and will be considered and confirmed by the full United States Senate with all deliberate speed,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.
Not everyone agrees. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is 88, says that the Senate Judiciary Committee “will have ample time to hold hearings on President Biden’s nominee.” Feinstein stepped down from her position as the committee’s ranking member after she took a bipartisan approach to Barrett’s rushed confirmation, thanking the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman at the time, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and concluding, “This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in.”
.@SenFeinstein doesn't see a rush to confirm a Breyer replacement: “With six months until Justice Breyer departs the court, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have ample time to hold hearings on President Biden’s nominee."
Biden is expected to formally announce Breyer’s retirement tomorrow, the New York Times reports.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the amount of time between Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and confirmation. It was one month, not 35 days.
The average tipped food-service worker clocks well over 40 hours a week, including weekends and holidays, for an average of $24,000 a year. Benefits are practically non-existent, and there’s no disputing that the pay is low: many employers, including some of the most profitable food firms in the country, aren’t required to pay tipped staff more than $2.13 an hour out of pocket. What is in question, according to a brief filed last week by the organization One Fair Wage, is whether those rates are constitutional.
Restaurant worker advocates One Fair Wage first filed suit in September, arguing that the wage policies of Darden Restaurants—the world’s largest dining conglomerate outside the fast-food industry, the single biggest employer of tipped workers in the US, and the owner of chains like Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse—drive sexual harassment and race-based pay inequity among female and nonwhite tipped staff. Those disparities, the group says, violate the “disparate impact” clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The suit was dismissed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits one rung below the Supreme Court on the judicial ladder, on the basis that One Fair Wage wasn’t employed by Darden or directly harmed by its pay policies. But if that’s the case, One Fair Wage argued in Friday’s brief, then no one can sue Darden at all: the company requires workers to sign arbitration agreements that bar them from suing their employer in federal court, effectively exempting them from class-action lawsuits. Anyone “aggrieved” by the policies, the group says, has standing to sue under the letter of the law.
In the brief, the group also argues that, since Darden pays all its servers and bartenders the lowest wage allowed by local law—a “subminimum” wage filled out with customer tips, sparing the employer a huge chunk of labor costs—workers of color tend to make less than their white counterparts, a claim backed by both academic research and surveys specific to Darden restaurants. That pay disparity, One Fair Wage says, is so inequitable as to violate marginalized workers’ civil rights.
“In essence, this means that Darden… requires its customers to directly set the wage levels…and they can bring conscious and unconscious racial and other biases with them when they dine out,” Jason Harrow, an attorney representing One Fair Wage, said in an email. And the corporation’s tipping policy, he said, “means that managers have an incentive to ignore, indulge, or even encourage sexual harassment.”
If the appeal is denied, Harrow told food and agriculture outlet Civil Eats, Darden will essentially have “written itself out of federal law.” Instead, One Fair Wage, which backs the elimination of sub-minimum wages, argues that Darden could take relatively simple measures to pool and share tips, or charge a service fee that would be used to alleviate the financial impacts of harassment and discrimination.
Darden Restaurants did not respond to a request for comment.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker, raised quite a few eyebrows on Sunday after raising the prospect of jail time for members of the congressional special committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Gingrich’s logic, which predicted that the GOP would take back the House this November, was based on the false notion that somehow, the committee was guilty of criminal wrongdoing.
“I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down,” Gingrich warned on Fox News. “The wolves are going to find out that they’re now sheep and they’re the ones who are in fact, I think, face a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking.”
Gingrich’s suggestion is a spectacular escalation of the concern that should Democrats lose the House, Republicans will start launching various efforts, including investigations, aimed at impeaching President Joe Biden. The remarks were roundly condemned. “I think Newt has really lost it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on CNN.
Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee also blasted Gingrich, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) invoking the classic Chris Farley gif of a crazed bus driver in “Billy Madison” to mock Gingrich.
A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution.
But, rather unsurprisingly, the suggestion that committee members could face jail time does appear to have landed with some of the more colorful members of the GOP. Here’s Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on Monday getting extremely amped up by Gingrich’s comments:
Matt Gaetz to Steve Bannon: "You know what, Newt's right! We are going to take power. And when we do, it's not going to be the days of Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy where the Republicans go limp-wristed, where they lose their backbone, and they fail to send a single subpoena." pic.twitter.com/tqA7Z0fUf3
Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied Donald Trump’s attempt to withhold White House documents from Congress’s January 6 committee. Today, new records are already coming to light—and illuminating the extreme steps the Trump administration considered when seeking to maintain power.
Among the documents now in committee hands is a draft executive order which, had it been issued, would have directed the secretary of defense to seize voting machines. According to Politico, which broke this news, the draft, dated December 16, 2020, reflects advice given to Trump by attorney Sidney Powell.
On Dec. 18, 2020, Powell, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump administration lawyer Emily Newman, and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne met with Trump in the Oval Office.
In that meeting, Powell urged Trump to seize voting machines and to appoint her as a special counsel to investigate the election, according to Axios.
Citing conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines, the order directs the nation’s top military leader to “seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information.” The order called for a special counsel to bring charges based on the seized information and authorized the defense secretary to use the national guard.
Reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan, who broke the story, notes that the order may have been part of a plan to keep Trump in office after January 20, 2021.
The draft executive order would have given the SecDef up to 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election. That suggests it may have been an attempt by the EO's unnamed author to keep Trump in power til at least mid-February 2021https://t.co/UPyNL5w736
After a 10-day strike involving more than 8,000 Colorado grocery store workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 has reached a tentative agreement with the King Soopers grocery store chain.
The strikers, who picketed outside nearly 80 Kroger-owned King Soopers locations in and around the Denver area, were demanding higher pay and better benefits. While the details of the agreement have not yet been made public, the union president, Kim Cordova, says that it “ensures that our members will receive the respect, pay and protection they warrant.”
The strike had been ongoing since January 12, after a near-unanimous vote early in the new year to authorize it. The union members, many of whom are food insecure, demanded $6-an-hour raises for workers at every wage rate. In previous negotiations, the supermarket said it has offered “up to” $4.50-an-hour raises. Union representatives told Dave Jamieson, HuffPost’s labor reporter, that that number was misleading, and that most workers would receive raises of $1.50 or less. The company had touted its offer of a $16-an-hour wage floor, but the union pointed out that that’s just 13 cents above the $15.87 minimum wage in Denver.
Until the agreement, the fight was contentious. Earlier this month, the union filed an unfair labor practices lawsuit against the company for allegedly hiring temporary workers at a higher wage than union employees, in violation of the collective bargaining contract. It gets messier: King Soopers filed its ownunfair labor practices lawsuit against the union, arguing that it refused to bargain in good faith when it rejected the supermarket’s request for intervention from a federal mediator. Then, after the union went on strike, King Soopers accused strikers of intimidating people attempting to cross the picket line, leading a judge to grant a temporary restraining order limiting the number of picketers who can demonstrate in front of a store at a given time.
Kroger’s profits have soared during the pandemic, nearing $2.6 billion in 2020, but, according to strikers, the money hasn’t trickled down to employees. (King Soopers accounts for about five percent of Kroger’s sales.) The strike attracted the support of politicians like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who have made local fights over union power part of a larger political campaign to push national companies like Kroger to treat their workers better.
The strike has been effective. For the past 10 days, King Soopers parking lots have sat empty, and rival supermarkets have seen long lines and bare shelves thanks to increased demand from former King Soopers shoppers choosing not to cross the picket line.
The King Soopers strike is already having an effect.@Denver_PSL recorded empty shelves and registers at one store on day 3 of the strike.
Over 8400 King Soopers workers are now on day 7 of their strike for livable wages and better working conditions. pic.twitter.com/px1IY1DQ9k
The strike had the support of many Denverites, including the mayor—but you wouldn’t know it to look at local news coverage. CBS Denver reported that union members were getting paid to strike, as if this were news: Strike pay is a standard part of many union contracts to ensure that workers can afford to participate, and the money comes from their own union dues. Meanwhile, KDVR, the local Fox affiliate, routinely acted as a mouthpiece for King Soopers.
Union members will start to return to work as soon as Friday, with votes on the deal starting next week.
Stein, who also goes by "Prime Time #99 Alex Stein," raps his delightfully weird heart out.City of Dallas
Let’s face it: Everybody’s brain is broken. Spending two years in a pandemic, with no end in sight, has made everyone—on all sides of the political spectrum—act a little…out of pocket. Nowhere is this more true than the public comment portions of City Council meetings, the closest thing to a wildlife refuge for the American weirdo.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the Dallas City Council, the people of Dallas were greeted with perhaps the most perplexing public comment yet: a man dressed in blue surgical scrubs, shouting a pro-vaccination song.
Alex Stein, a YouTube comedian, hit the podium and performed a rap to the tune of Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady,” with lyrics including “vaccinate me in my thong” and “Dr. Fauci, give me that ouchie.” His audience: some two dozen council members in a largely empty and silent conference room.
This isn’t the first time ordinary people have trolled City Council meetings (nor will it be the last). In December, as it deliberated whether to extend a local Covid emergency order, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors was met with this Santa hat–wearing anti-vaxxer:
A woman identifying herself as Bridget fielded her own (botched) take on Mariah Carey’s record-breaking “All I Want for Christmas Is You”: I don’t want a lot for Christmas, just body autonomy / I don’t care about the variants, because of natural immunity. She promoted ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, drugs supported by anti-vaxxers, and argued for keeping schools open. (She starts spreading the holiday cheer at 2:03:50).
Or take June 2020, when dozens of upset citizens called in to a public meeting of the Los Angeles Police Department Commission to dunk on the city’s police chief. One viewer, Jeremy Frisch, entered legend with his takedown of LAPD Chief Michel Moore: “I refuse to call you an officer or a chief because you don’t deserve those titles. You are a disgrace. Suck my dick and choke on it. I yield my time. FUCK YOU,” Frisch said. He later told Jezebel he’d practiced his sermon for six hours.
Blessed be public comment for making the mundanity of city governance a little more thrilling.
There are few things the NBA enjoys less than finding itself in the crosshairs of a culture war squabble, but that is exactly what it got over the weekend when Chamath Palihapitiya, a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors, took to his podcast to say, “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs.”
Palihapitiya, a billionaire entrepreneur and former Facebook executive, said he cares about climate change, the economic implications of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and other issues that more directly affect Americans. But as for the forced imprisonment and torture of Uyghur Muslims in China, “it is below my line,” he said.
It did not take long for his comments to ricochet around the NBA, which has long adopted a cautious tone toward the Chinese government. On Monday, the Warriors released a one-sentence statement saying Palihapitiya’s views “certainly don’t reflect those of our organization” without specifying what he said. In his own statement, Palihapitiya acknowledged that he came across in the podcast “as lacking empathy” and said “human rights matter, whether in China, the United States, or elsewhere.”
Palihapitiya is far from an NBA figurehead—most fans are probably hearing his name for the first time now—but he has already become a target for Republican China hawks. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said NBA commissioner Adam Silver must force “woke billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya to sell his share” of the Warriors or “be exposed” as “hypocrites supporting religious genocide.” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said a failure to oust Palihapitiya would show “complicity for Communist China and their crimes against humanity.”
What the Chinese government is doing to the Uyghurs is a crime against humanity and worthcaringabout whether you are a twentysomething NBA fan or the billionaire co-owner of a team. But Republican lawmakers like Cotton obviously relish the opportunity to pick a fight with the NBA, whose players have long called outanti-Black racism and been critical of Republican policies. (When Donald Trump was in office, NBA star LeBron James called him a “bum” on Twitter, adding, “Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!”)
Even if NBA players could be forgiven for not commenting on every human rights crisis in the world, Cotton is right that the NBA is loath to anger China, where the league has spent decades cultivating the country’s vast market of fans. That effort went up in flames when Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey, then with the Houston Rockets, tweeted a message of solidarity with Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters in October 2019. His comments sparked a series of reprisals in China, including removing Rockets games from its local streaming service, and led players like James to say Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand.” The NBA quickly apologized and tried to limit the damage, while some league leaders directly criticized Morey. Joe Tsai, the Taiwanese owner of the Brooklyn Nets, even echoed Chinese propaganda in a statement condemning Morey’s tweet, saying Chinese citizens “stand united when it comes to the territorial integrity of China and the country’s sovereignty over her homeland.”
This year, China is back in the spotlight because of Boston Celtics player Enes Freedom, who has spoken about Chinese human rights abuses in a public, frequently combative way. (In November, he called Tsai a “coward” and “puppet” of the Chinese government.) Freedom, who changed his surname from Kanter when he became a US citizen last year, appeared frequently on Fox News and started an account on Gettr, the social media platform started by former Trump official Jason Miller. It did not take him long to respond there to Palihapitiya’s comments: “When NBA says we stand for justice, don’t forget there are those who sell their soul for money & business like Chamath Palihapitiya.”
Donald Trump, the twice-impeached ex-president who has never won a majority of Americans’ votes, held his first rally of 2022 last night in Florence, Arizona.
Trump used the occasion to spout nonsense about the 2020 election, falsely claiming it had been “rigged and stolen.” He heavily leaned on a tendentious investigation by a now-defunct organization handpicked by his allies in the state, falsely suggesting it had identified enough fraudulent ballots to have given him a win.
The golf-course owner and former reality TV host, who remains the Republican party’s most popular figure, was joined on stage by a variety of politicians who have endorsed the Big Lie that Trump won the last presidential election, including candidates for Arizona governor and secretary of state. According to reporting from the scene, the 15,000 person audience included supporters who believe he could retake the White House before January 2025, the next scheduled presidential inauguration.
The morning of the event, Steve Bannon, the president’s former campaign manager and senior advisor, explained that the rally was intended to put pressure on Arizona’s elected officials to “decertify” the state’s 2020 electoral votes—part of a nationwide campaign targeting other swing states where President Joe Biden narrowly won.
Bannon this morning says the purpose of the Trump rally in AZ today is to pressure the AZ legis to decertify the 2020 Biden electors, then PA, WI, and GA will follow suit and make Biden an illegitimate president in the minds of swing voters heading into the 2022 elections. pic.twitter.com/DOj4N8QyS9
This week, it emerged that the National Archives received formal submissions from GOP officials in seven states—among them, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—falsely claiming Trump won their electoral votes. News of the documents prompted calls, including from Michigan’s attorney general, for federal investigators to undertake forgery or fraud inquiries.
While the Justice Department has launched hundreds of prosecutions targeting Trump supporters who engaged in acts of violence or illegally entered the Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riot, it has given no clear public indication that it is examining the actions of political figures who worked to create a false legal pretense to aid Trump’s efforts to hold on to power. Trump’s rally, the first of many he’s expected to hold in support of Republican candidates in the 2022 elections, is part of a plan to install allies in key positions ahead of a potential 2024 run—allies that could help him emerge on top, even if voters reject him once again.
A satellite image taken by a Japanese weather satellite shows the eruption Saturday.(Japan Meteorology Agency via AP)
A massive underwater volcano erupted near Tonga on Saturday, sending shockwaves and tsunamis around the globe. The eruption, viewed from space by satellites flying over the region, was violent and enormous, with a smoke and ash plume rapidly expanding across the region. The airwaves created by the eruption are so powerful they can be clearly seen spreading out through the atmosphere on satellite imagery.
Timelapse of Hunga Tonga #volcano eruption on Jan 15 2022. Created using the #streamlit web app 👇
#GOESWest captured another explosive eruption of #Tonga's (largely underwater) Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai #volcano in the south Pacific Ocean earlier today. Note the gravity waves rippling across the top of expanding ash cloud from the powerful ejection. https://t.co/csxvvIoM3vpic.twitter.com/vVojWCFcco
The volcano, known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, is located about 40 miles away from Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu, about 3,100 miles southwest of Hawaii and 1,500 miles north of New Zealand. The sound of the eruption could be heard several hundred miles away in Fiji, and the eruption immediately triggered tsunami warnings on both sides of the Pacific.
Around 5pm today in Ravitaki village, Fiji. Capturing the sound of volcano eruption from Tonga
The internet and power has been cut in Tonga so little information is available on damage, but initial video showed a tsunami as big as four feet flooding onto the island.
Scientists in New Zealand who have studied the volcano say that the type of ash and magma coming from the eruption is less toxic than other kinds, but predicted that the main Tongan island will likely be completely covered in a coating of ash. Some news reports described residents of the island having breathing problems.
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