MoJo Wire

Quick hits from the Mother Jones newsroom

  • The Pope’s Playlist Is Pretty Decent! And, Honestly, Weirdly Romantic.

    February 2, 2022

    Mother Jones illustration; Zuma; Unsplash

    In early January a reporter 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!

  • David Perdue’s First Campaign Ad Is Just a Video of Trump

    February 1, 2022

    Zach Gibson/Zuma

    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.

  • There’s an Asshole in This Photo. There’s Also a Dog.

    January 28, 2022

    Chris Dorst/AP

    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.

  • The January 6 Committee’s Next Target? Bogus Trump Electors.

    January 28, 2022

    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.

    “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.”

    Let’s see what happens next.

  • Gas Stoves Leak Greenhouse Gases, Even When Turned Off

    January 27, 2022

    plus49/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images

    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. 

  • Sarah Palin, Covid-Positive and Unmasked, Hits the Town

    January 27, 2022

    Brynn Anderson/AP

    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 Side at 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.

    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.

  • The Mad Dash to Replace Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Begins

    January 26, 2022

    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.)

    Political analysts have already floated the names of several potential nominees: Ketanji Brown Jackson, a US appeals court judge in Washington, DC; Leondra Kruger, an associate justice on California’s Supreme Court; J. Michelle Childs, a South Carolina appeals court judge; and Sherrilyn Ifill, an activist and director-counsel of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund.

    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.”

    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.

  • Will This Court Case End the “Subminimum Wage”?

    January 25, 2022

    Mother Jones illustration; Gettu

    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 Sure Sounds Like He Wants January 6 Committee Members Jailed

    January 24, 2022

    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.

    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:

    As for the very real federal investigation into child sex trafficking he faces, Gaetz angrily dismissed it as nothing but Deep State nonsense.

  • A New Document Suggests Trump Considered Ordering Soldiers to Seize Voting Machines

    January 21, 2022

    Andrew Harnik/AP

    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.

    There’s a lot more to learn from the committee’s investigation, but one thing is clear: Trump’s coup attempt could have been even scarier.

  • “Pull Down the Pickets”: After a 10 Day Strike, Colorado Grocery Store Workers Make a Deal With King Soopers

    January 21, 2022

    David Zalubowski/AP

    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 own unfair 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 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.

  • Politics Is Fun, Actually: City Council Edition

    January 18, 2022

    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.

  • The GOP Is Hammering the NBA Over China. Again.

    January 18, 2022

    Steve Dykes/Getty

    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 worth caring about 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 out anti-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.” 

  • Trump’s First 2022 Rally Pushes Allies Who Could Help Him Steal the White House

    January 16, 2022

    Nathan Howard/AP

    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. 

    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.

  • An Undersea Volcano Erupted Near Tonga, and the World Is Still Feeling the Aftereffects

    January 15, 2022

    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.

    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. 

    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.

    Tsunami waves did come ashore on the United States’ West Coast on Sunday morning, although they were relatively minor. 

    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. 

  • Student Loan Company Navient Settles a Lawsuit for $1.85 Billion

    January 13, 2022

    Picture of Navient logo.

    Kristoffer Tripplaar/Sipa USA via AP

    Navient, a student loan company that had been accused in a nationwide lawsuit of misleading borrowers about the availability of cheaper repayment plans, has reached a $1.85 billion settlement with 39 state attorneys general. Per the terms of the settlement, Navient will pay 350,000 federal loan borrowers approximately $260 each. Navient will also cancel $1.7 billion worth of private student loans made to students at for-profit colleges.

    The lawsuit accused Navient of misleading federal student loan borrowers about alternatives to what is know as forbearance. When student borrowers are unable to make payments on their loans, they are supposed to have multiple options, including switching to income-driven repayment plans, which set payments based on a borrower’s income and can be more affordable. Forbearance, by contrast, can be more expensive, because while borrowers are temporarily able to stop making payments, interest continues to accrue. Navient announced in September that it would exit the federal student loan servicing business.

    Navient was also accused of improperly originating private loans to for-profit colleges with low graduation rates, resulting in borrowers being unable to pay off their debts. Navient allegedly did this so that it could gain access to the more profitable business of originating federal loans for these for-profit colleges, according to the lawsuit. Navient has denied the allegations, and it did not admit to wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

    “Navient repeatedly and deliberately put profits ahead of its borrowers—it engaged in deceptive and abusive practices,” said Pennsylvania state Attorney General Josh Shapiro in a statement Thursday. “Today’s settlement corrects Navient’s past behavior, provides much needed relief to Pennsylvania borrowers, and puts in place safeguards to ensure this company never preys on student loan borrowers again.”

  • These Youth Activists Are Hunger Striking for Voting Rights, Again

    January 13, 2022

    Un-PAC members during their December hunger strikeAiden Duffy/Un-PAC

    A group of youth activists did not eat for 15 days last month to get Congress to push voting rights reform to the top of its agenda. Now, they’re forgoing food once again in a last-ditch effort pressure the Senate to enact rules reform and pass the Freedom to Vote Act with a simple majority by January 17, Martin L. King, Jr. Day.

    As I wrote last month:

    The bill, an updated version of the For the People Act, would institute automatic and Election Day voter registration, make Election Day a federal holiday, and ban partisan gerrymandering, among other measures. It is a centerpiece of the Democratic agenda, but it has been stalled by Senate rules that effectively require a 60-vote supermajority to pass legislation.

    I know what you’re thinking. If the bill has no realistic chance of passing—thanks to opposition to Senate rules reform from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va,), and others—what’s the point in striking?

    “It’s a desperate moment that we’re in, for sure,” said Shana Gallagher, co-founder and executive director of Un-PAC, the group leading the strike. “If that doesn’t work, then we hope that our hunger strike will grow so big that it can’t be ignored.”

    The organization has already joined forces with a group of faith leaders and doubled its ranks of DC hunger strikers from 20 to 40. Gallagher said that more than 150 people from across the country joined a virtual organizing call last night—many of them inspired by TikTok—and that more than 100 have signed up to take part in the strike in D.C. if the vote fails. 

    “We’re not going to let this campaign fade into the night,” Gallagher said. “We really feel that this is an existential moment, so we are committed to continuing to strike until the bill passes.”

  • Dr. Fauci Says Rand Paul’s Personal Attacks “Kindle the Crazies”

    January 11, 2022

    J. Scott Applewhite/AP/Pool

    Another Senate hearing on Covid, another spat between Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases. But, this time, the nation’s top infectious disease expert wanted the senator to see the human toll of his personal attacks.

    Paul used his time at the hearing to hit on his usual talking points, accusing Fauci of conspiring with other scientists to shut down the lab leak theory—which posits that the virus originated not in an animal but in a research lab—and tarnish the careers of those who disagreed with him. “It’s the epitome of cheap politics,” Paul said, “and it’s reprehensible.”

    Fauci retorted that Paul’s false accusations not only distracted from the pandemic response, but led to attacks on his life. “What happens when he gets out and accuses me of things that are completely untrue is that all of a sudden that kindles the crazies out there,” he said, “and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children with obscene phone calls because people are lying about me.” (Police recently arrested a man at a traffic stop who had a hit list of government officials and politicians, including Dr. Fauci. The man also had an AR-15 style rifle and ammunition in his car.)

    Fauci came prepared with a printout of Rand Paul’s website, which showed donation buttons next to an invocation to “Fire Dr. Fauci.” Fauci told Paul that he was using “a catastrophic epidemic for your own political gain.”

    To me, though, the most striking part of the exchange isn’t Fauci’s slick rebuke of the Kentucky senator, but the baselessness of Paul’s argument in the first place. Paul brought up a series of recently released emails between Fauci and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins over the Great Barrington Declaration, an October 2020 statement from epidemiologists at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford arguing that people at low risk for the coronavirus ought to go on with their lives as normal until society reaches herd immunity. (Read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the debacle if you dare.)

    Paul, brimming with sarcasm, said at Tuesday’s hearing, “Apparently, there’s a lot of fringe epidemiologists at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.”

    Uh, yeah?

    Elite institutions can and do foster fringe ideas—and the fact that the professors who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration continue to be employed at their prestigious universities is evidence against the cancel culture Paul so frequently decries. The Great Barrington Declaration was sponsored by a libertarian think tank and has been criticized as scientifically unsound by the World Health Organization and by a group of scientists including scholars from, yes, Harvard and Oxford. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t opine on the merits of one Covid response over the other. But I can say for certain that wasting the Senate’s time to bicker over the response to a widely discredited statement made by a small minority of epidemiologists isn’t getting us any closer to ending this pandemic for good.

  • Trump Adviser: Getting Kicked Off Twitter Has Actually Helped Trump

    January 9, 2022

    Chip Somodevilla/Getty

    Roughly a year ago, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and most other social media apps, including YouTube and Facebook. In the wake, there’s been cries of tech censorship. Some of it is worth considering; other times—like when Richard Grenell said that the real attack on our democracy wasn’t people storming the Capitol but Trump’s ban—it’s pablum.

    But an interesting note, tucked into a piece on the anniversary within the Wall Street Journal, is those within Trump’s orbit have appreciated the ban. “I don’t know a single person in Trump world who regrets that this has happened—not a single one,” a Trump adviser told the Wall Street Journal.

    It’s pretty simple why: The more time Trump is on Twitter, the more journalists (also, let’s be honest, way too much on Twitter) report on the crazy things he says on Twitter. It makes him look bad. The numbers show this. At the time Trump was kicked off social media, which followed his role in inciting the January 6 insurrection, Trump’s approval rating hovered around 38.6 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Now 43.3 percent of Americans view him favorably, a bounce-back his advisers attribute to the social media ban. Take that causality with a grain of salt, but it’s not nothing.

    The thing is it is not as if Trump has truly ceded power. The lack of a social media footprint has not dented Trump’s fundraising or his influence over the Republican Party, which still de facto controls as the presumptive frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024. 

    Trump’s main asset is a massive email list, which the Journal pegs at “about 50 million emails.” Trump has tapped that list repeatedly for donations. (In just the past two days, I’ve received no less than eight emails from Trump and his political action committee.)

    The Trump team’s effort to flood the zone has paid off to the tune of “more than $56 million in online donations during the first half of 2021, and about as much in the second half,” according to sources who spoke to the Journal. 

    For Trump, the disgrace of being exiled from social media may have been what it is for any of us brave enough to leave Twitter: a blessing in disguise. He not only is more popular and reaching his followers on a massive scale, but the specter of Big Tech censorship can remain a useful political cudgel as he continues to raise money. (Already, in July, Trump sued major tech companies alleging censorship.)

    And even though his short-lived attempt at starting a blog went up in flames, he still is planning to roll out his own social media network, Truth Social. The latest listing has its launch date as February 21, which in case you have forgotten, is Presidents Day. 2024 gets closer and closer. 

  • Amid the Omicron Surge, We Know Startlingly Little About Who’s Getting Boosted

    January 7, 2022

    Eduardo Parra/Contacto/Zuma

    We know that there’s no better way to prevent severe illness and death from the rapidly spreading Omicron variant than getting boosted. Receiving a booster after being fully vaccinated for five months, according to one study, reduced mortality by 90 percent.

    Yet booster shot outreach efforts are facing a big problem: We don’t know exactly who is getting boosted. The data is, frankly, a mess. And that stops public health workers on the state and local level from taking the actions they need to combat the coronavirus.

    One of the most glaring issues is that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t publicly report racial and ethnic information on booster shot recipients under age 65, even though it does so for people fully vaccinated people and those who have received at least one dose. No word yet from the CDC on why that is. But for a disease that has killed and infected Black, Indigenous, and Latino people at higher rates than Asian and white people, this lack of granular data is particularly glaring.

    Good data allows states to use targeted outreach to address disparities in vaccine access. Take, for example, Michigan, which collects detailed demographic data on vaccine uptake. It then uses that information to close the gap between Black and white vaccine access by placing testing and vaccination sites in vulnerable communities and engaging trusted messengers, like faith leaders, to spread the word about the benefits of vaccines. “We’ve really been able to look at who are trusted community leaders and how can they message to populations where we’re seeing lower vaccine uptake,” Alexis D. Travis, from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, explained.

    Eleven other states are recording racial and ethnic data for booster recipients under age 65, but their racial categories aren’t standardized—Mississippi, for example, has a distinct category for Pacific Islanders, while Michigan groups Pacific Islanders in with Asians and Native Hawaiians. “That makes it challenging to compare the data across states,” Samantha Artiga, director of the Racial Equity and Health Policy Program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said, “in addition to only having a limited universe of states reporting the data.”

    The lack of data isn’t a new problem: Even for initial doses of the vaccine, the CDC has not linked ethnic data to age, as my colleague Edwin Rios has reported, making it difficult to single out specific groups like Black kids or Latino adults. But the addition of a third (or, for Johnson & Johnson recipients, second) shot to the vaccine regime has further muddied already murky water. Someone who became fully vaccinated last week wouldn’t be eligible for a booster, so while states can estimate the amount of fully vaccinated people who have been boosted, it’s harder for them to asses booster uptake among fully vaccinated people who are eligible for additional doses.

    Without this sort of data, the job of outreach becomes increasingly difficult, and measuring success becomes a guessing game. Worse, sometimes the data we do collect gets it wrong.

    The CDC has been grappling with its own booster-related data issues. In some cases, the agency has accidentally recorded people’s booster shots as initial doses and consequently skewed estimates of initial doses higher. “We currently are still seeing a lot of gaps and limitations in the data that prevents us from being able to assess whether there is equity in receipt of the booster doses and also in vaccination uptake among children,” Artiga said. In other words, we can barely get accurate numbers on booster doses for different age groups, which we’re trying to collect nationally, let alone ethnicities, which we are not.

    So, what do we know?

    Booster uptake among white people age 65 and older at the national level is generally similar to prior vaccine uptake, according to a December analysis by KFF. The shares of Black and Hispanic booster dose recipients age 65 and older are smaller than their shares of fully vaccinated people, but there has been an uptick in recent weeks.

    Unsurprisingly, older Americans are more likely to have gotten boosters than younger ones, with 59.1 percent of adults 65 and older boosted, compared to 49.5 percent of the population 50 and over, and 37.7 percent of the population 18 and over, according to the CDC.

    Michigan, for its part, is still seeing disparities in booster uptake, but they’re “not unexpected,” Travis said. Statewide, 46.2 percent of fully vaccinated people have gotten a booster, Joe Coyle, director of the state’s Bureau of Infectious Disease Prevention, said. Among non-Hispanic Blacks, it’s 35.5 percent, and for Hispanics, it’s 33.2 percent.

    But all ethnicities see increasing booster uptake with age. “They had a little bit longer to get vaccinated,” Travis said, “but they also understand they’re one of the highest risk groups for complications and deaths related to Covid-19. And what we’ve seen is that risk perception doesn’t necessarily translate to the younger age groups.”

    That’s handy information at the state level. But for the nation as a whole, “given the limitations in the data, it’s really difficult to draw any strong conclusions about whether there are any disparities in take up a booster doses so far,” Artiga said.