Since moving to Italy from the U.S., I’ve noticed how much more spontaneous social interactions are here. It’s common for me to run into someone I know and have them invite me to coffee on the spot. Instead of receiving a text, I’m more likely to get a voice message or a phone call from someone I just met. But this is only true of the friends I’ve made here. When communicating with friends back home, I text them or send voice messages. But mostly, I do the dance of having to schedule a catch-up like it’s a work meeting. So when The Cut writer Kathleen Walsh published an essay recently about feeling like she should be able to cold call her friends, it resonated with me deeply. “In the past 20 years, a new social boundary seems to have calcified among people my age,” Walsh wrote. “It is no longer appropriate to pick up your phone and call your friend whenever you feel like it.”

In February 2026, a YouGov survey found that 68% of surveyed Americans said text messaging had replaced at least some of the phone calls they used to make. More than one-third of those surveyed said text messaging had replaced most of their calls. While there isn’t any data to quantify its frequency, as Walsh pointed out, if a phone call does happen, it’s becoming increasingly more common to text before you call. But in a time when loneliness has been declared a public health crisis, Americans are saying fewer words to each other, and it’s trendy to be nostalgic for the ’90s – why isn’t the friendly cold call making a comeback? 

There are a few reasons. Despite all the public discourse around loneliness and the need to connect, the cold call violates some of the communication norms we’ve spent decades developing. Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas, said one reason is simply that phone calls are sometimes disruptive to people’s lives. “There are lots of reasons people shouldn’t or normatively don’t take phone calls, and they’re totally valid,” he said. For example, when someone is at work or in a public setting. In fact, Hall added, when mobile phones first became more widespread, there was a backlash against taking private calls in public. Texting first, to arrange a phone call, is now seen as the more polite approach. 

Adding to the phone-calls-may-be-disruptive argument, Hall said in today’s digital-heavy world, people are constantly being bombarded by notifications on their phones. A friendly cold call could be viewed as yet another interruption, and a demanding one. Then there’s another reason at play: humans love to screen phone calls. From the invention of the answering machine to caller ID, Hall said people “really enjoy” having the ability to control when, and whether, they answer the phone. 

“I think that the politeness norm is actually a sign of good relational practice to say that I’m respecting the fact that there are lots of times not to take a call, and I’m also going to show this person some respect by doing so,” Hall said. “But when we use texting to replace important, meaningful conversations, or long catch-ups, because we do not want to put the effort of time into maintaining our relationships, that I think, is the big loss.”

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That doesn’t necessarily mean this new social norm of having to text before you call has serious consequences, or that phone calls are the only way to maintain friendships. Throughout history, every new form of communication has generated some type of anxiety. The rise of phone calls once led people to worry about in-person interactions. However, Hall says he believes phone calls are better than texting when it comes to connecting meaningfully with people. But is there something lost when they no longer feel spontaneous?

“Most of our communication is spontaneous,” Matt Abrahams, a professor and author of “Think Faster, Talk Smarter: How to Speak Successfully When You’re Put on the Spot,” said. “And good things happen in spontaneous communication.” He used small talk as an example, which can lead to a deeper understanding, deeper trust, and connection for people. “I do believe we miss out on things when we’re not allowing ourselves to have some of these spontaneous interactions.”

But for many people, a cold call from a friend or family member has become synonymous with an emergency. “A ringing phone now reads as an emergency, and most of us have been conditioned to meet surprise with a small spike of alarm,” Christa Smith, a psychologist in Georgia, said. Smith agreed, a pre-arranged call is “courteous,” but it has also turned connection into an appointment. “And appointments get postponed.” 

“Spontaneity is how a relationship says ‘I thought of you for no reason,’” she said. 

Beyond experts in communication, the trend of having to text before you call is also divisive. Melanie Tornroth, a 45-year-old working mom, said she absolutely expects people to text before calling first. “Receiving cold calls from friends and family is now a huge pet peeve of mine,” she said. “The only person I will cold call is my mom because I know she prefers it and will always answer the phone.” When someone calls her out of the blue, it can feel intrusive and give her a lot of anxiety. “I have so much on my plate on a daily basis,” she said. “If a family member or friend calls, I feel pressure to answer, but I am rarely just sitting around doing nothing with time to chat.”

Conversely, Jackie Domanus, a 44-year-old mom of three in California, prefers spontaneous phone calls. In fact, she is known for cold calling her friends. “I just call,” she told me. “I’ve stopped sending or answering texts for the most part; I’m just over it,” she added. Domanus emphasized that she works alone and misses people and their voices, which could be part of her don’t-text-just-call stance. “Call me, or it’s not that important,” she said.

 

Mary Westheimer, a 71-year-old in Phoenix, Arizona, also prefers phone calls over texts.  “Please do not text me to ask if you can call me,” she said.

For people who are tired of having to schedule calls with their friends, Smith suggested agreeing with two or three of your closest people that a text before a call is never needed. “Some people are anecdotally growing tired of having to schedule calls with friends,” she said. 

Kissy Black, a 50-something in Nashville, was one of those people. She said she and her daughter got into a habit of texting to schedule a call, which “created some perceived hurdles to keeping in touch.” But recently, they instituted a “cold call rule” allowing them to call each other anytime, day or night, without texting first.

“Now, when one of us calls, we just say ‘cold call, cold call,’ which immediately makes us both laugh and kicks off our conversation,” Black said. “As a result, we are talking at least 300% more than we used to.”

As for me, any friends or family reading this can expect more cold calls. And if you can’t answer, no problem. I am personally team bring the friendly cold call back.

The post The quiet cost of scheduling every conversation appeared first on Salon.com.

It was a bit tense watching Jack Smith get grilled before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. During his testimony, the former special counsel defended himself against accusations of partisanship in his failed effort to prosecute President Donald Trump two years ago. The chaos of the current era has made the 2024 presidential campaign feel like it was a decade ago, but it’s important to recall that Smith secured indictments on Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and the other on his alleged mishandling of government records, including the classified documents he had stored at Mar-a-Lago. Both cases fell apart as Trump was elected to a second term.

Now Republicans, including Trump, are pushing for Smith himself to be prosecuted. This wasn’t the first time he has been dragged before Congress so lawmakers could get the soundbites needed for Fox News hits. But to his credit, Smith doubled down and said he would prosecute the president all over again.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith said during the hearing, adding, “If asked whether to prosecute a former president today, based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans took the opportunity to lob insults and accusations at Smith for hours. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz accused him of bringing “the Department of Justice into disrepute,” while Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy was more graphic, telling Smith “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri claimed Smith “will go down as a total dirtbag” and also attempted to corner the former special prosecutor into possible perjury, accusing him of attending an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 as a pretext for meeting with Fani Willis, the local district attorney who prosecuted Trump in Georgia. But Schmitt — or some staffers who will soon be looking for employment — apparently confused the Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes — which are different teams, as it turns out. Smith had watched the Hawkeyes play in Maryland. (As a non-sports person, I confess I might have made the same mistake, except I check my facts.) Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., did Schmitt the favor of pointing out his error, quipping “Perhaps you should have looked at it more carefully.” 

This only seemed to further anger Schmitt, who is reportedly angling to be Vice President JD Vance’s running mate in 2028.

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The whole bit, including a poster board of Smith’s blown-up text messages, was amazingly lazy, even for this Congress. It seemed as if some aide suffering from conspiracy-brain didn’t bother to check the details, or maybe they asked ChatGPT for help. Still, getting the facts wrong probably won’t hurt Schmitt. He got in the abusive remarks that will earn him MAGA’s seal of approval.

Not surprisingly, Democrats also defended Smith. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith nonstop are petty, personal and political,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said. Cory Booker of New Jersey claimed “This is gaslighting of the American people,” telling Smith, “I am so sorry that they’re attempting to put investigators on trial while ignoring the extraordinary conduct that that they are duty bound to really investigate.”

Maybe this all seems like theatrics, more fodder for the cable news spectacle. But the stakes for Smith are real, and this charade could also carry severe consequences for Americans. Since the moment he returned to office, Trump has worked overtime to take down his enemies. That hasn’t been too successful yet — emphasis on yet — but this is about much more than potentially putting Smith behind bars. By playing the victim, the president benefits from controlling the narrative, and perhaps rewriting history, which becomes even more critical as we approach the midterms and he continues promoting the lie he won the 2020 election. So Smith continuing to give the president and his MAGA trolls the proverbial finger isn’t just satisfying — it’s necessary. 

I’m not a Smith fanboy, though I certainly admire him for serving as a specialist prosecutor investigating war crimes in the Kosovo War. It feels misguided to turn public figures like Dr. Anthony Fauci or Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., into heroes or thirst traps just for doing their jobs. Still, it’s worth noticing when someone in the hot seat does more than pay lip service to the idea of a just and accountable society, knowing that the consequences extend much further than their own personal freedom.

The post We all need Jack Smith’s defiance right now appeared first on Salon.com.

In “Primetime” — Lance Oppenheim’s psychological crime thriller about the rapid ascent and swift fall of the “Dateline NBC” segment “To Catch a Predator,” and its host, Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) — television is a complex ecosystem where hyperawareness is paramount to survival. To prosper in this broadcast biome, close surveillance is key. Attack too early and risk being mauled; retreat and risk going hungry, growing weaker and becoming the prey. 

Though a skilled hunter, even a reporter like Hansen can’t go up against an apex animal like ABC’s “Lost” when it comes to ratings and audience share. To assert dominance and secure his spot on the food chain, Hansen needs to observe the waters and hook a big fish. His cohort Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) — the founder of Perverted-Justice, the vigilante group in charge of luring the “Dateline” prey — believes he’s found just that in an internet chat room.

“This is big, the biggest,” Erck says. “A whale.” Oppenheim douses their conversation in blue, with the eerie artificial light of a computer illuminating both men from below. The effect erases the color from Pattinson’s eyes, fusing his iris and pupil into a black circle, like a shark that’s caught the scent of fresh blood. Emboldened by his animalistic observation, Hansen decides to weaponize Erck’s information and go in for the kill.

To anyone who’s spent even a modicum of time online in the last 20 years, this attack pattern looks familiar. In the World Wide Web’s wilderness, casual users, corporations and government intelligence alike collect data about everyone and everything, building digital footprints and algorithmic profiles that sit hidden just behind our newsfeeds. Gen Z and digital natives grew up in this extreme surveillance state, emboldened by controversial legislation like the Patriot Act and USA Freedom Act, which allowed unprecedented surveillance as a post-9/11 counter-terrorism measure. And while younger people have been raised in a vigilantly monitored world, that doesn’t make the lack of privacy any less disconcerting.

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Certainly, that’s why Gen Z has taken to “Primetime,” a film set in an era most of the generation is too young to remember firsthand, but one that has had a critical impact on their lives and well-being. In 2006, “To Catch a Predator” sat at the intersection of the surveillance state, militaristic nationalism motivated by the backdrop of the Iraq War, and digital culture proliferated by cellphones that were affordable and could accompany us anywhere. By the time Gen Z bled into Gen Alpha, all of these things morphed into one well-oiled machine, a self-regulating ouroboros. Though we may all be steeped in this reality, it’s unsurprising Gen Z would feel cheated out of a life where surveillance wasn’t constant — where they didn’t have to wonder whether a person on the train is scrolling on their phone or covertly taking a photo. 

Naturally, “Primetime” has become a point of fascination for zoomers, who made up 69% of the film’s opening weekend audience. While younger viewers adore Pattinson and the movie’s distributor, A24, alike, it’s the film’s subject matter that’s driving their conversations. “Primetime” traces a straight line from today back to the mid-aughts, clarifying the connection between pivotal historical events and their contemporary consequences. And though I didn’t find that the film actually said much about those events, it’s easy to see why so many people under 30 argue otherwise. Buzzy new films like “Primetime” rarely reflect the modern surveillance state’s inflection points as well as older media like “To Catch a Predator” can. But if Gen Z is really interested in retracing history’s steps to learn about surveillance culture, “Primetime” is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Whether or not that tip feels sharp depends largely on one’s relationship to our everyday insanity. Most zoomers likely grew up perceiving “To Catch a Predator” and Hansen through memes — chat logs removed from their disturbing context, or compilation videos of the show’s “funniest” moments. That perception in itself is upsetting, not only because it trivializes survivors’ experiences, but confirms just how much the show succeeded in turning criminal intent toward minors into entertainment. For those who already understood these inherent problems, “Primetime” doesn’t pose many new questions, which gives one the sickly feeling that the film is repeating some of Hansen and the show’s mistakes. For others, who are only beginning to understand “To Catch a Predator” as a planet that orbited the surveillance state’s blinding sun, Oppenheim’s film may be rife with new threads to pull. 

The film’s strongest narrative aspect in this regard is how accurately it reflects Perverted-Justice’s sting tactics, which made many “To Catch a Predator” cases unprosecutable or their evidence inadmissible by wading into entrapment. The team would hunt down potential predators in chat rooms and, in many instances, encourage prey to do things they were initially reticent to do or flat-out didn’t want to engage in. Occasionally, when the alleged predators would express their reluctance, the Perverted-Justice decoys would play mad or upset.

To build out a profile on their prey, the decoys would use chats to draw personal information out of their subjects. Furthermore, the on-camera interventions and arrests were largely faulty, too. Hansen wasn’t a cop; he never read anyone their rights. And the police lying in wait would greet the predator with unnecessary aggressive, martial force. The surveillance state is the primal wilderness, where anything goes, and “To Catch a Predator” employed the laws of the jungle: Identify, lure, attack, kill.

The methods are strangely akin to those employed in the concrete jungle, where badly behaved teens act with as much life-altering, brutal force as the characters in “Primetime.” If “To Catch a Predator” is the paradigm of reality television’s reflection of the surveillance state, the original “Gossip Girl” — which aired concurrently, however briefly, with Hansen’s show — is the prototype for the insidious ways surveillance is weaponized. That might sound like an offbeat comparison, but just because a teen soap is, well, a teen soap, doesn’t mean it has no cultural merit. 

“Gossip Girl” is an especially ideal time capsule for understanding how cellphones and all digital technology became useful tools for constant civilian monitoring. For anyone unfamiliar, the series follows a group of privileged teenagers living in New York’s Upper East Side, whose lives are chronicled by the anonymous titular blogger. Gossip Girl knows all of their desires and vices, their wins and their foibles. “She” walks among these spoiled brats, yes, but also relies on a steady stream of tips from readers. Photos, videos, intimate details; any hearsay is fair game, and Gossip Girl will go to the ends of the Earth to prove it— right up to the point where it’s revealed that Gossip Girl was actually not a “she” at all, but a male classmate.

This is all deliciously compelling on its own, but the series’ writers do a great job of emphasizing that these takedowns are products of the world we live in now. Gossip is currency, and anyone looking to climb the social ladder can use it to pay their way to the top — at the cost of their soul, of course. Characters blackmail one another left and right, sometimes with criminal intent. And while it’s entertaining to watch, the real marvel is how prescient the series is today.

 

“Gossip Girl” burst onto the scene in 2007 just as the cellphone was becoming the staple accessory for every teenager in America. The iPhone was four months old when the show premiered, and the series’ writers keenly understood the technology’s wicked possibilities. Surveillance was no longer a military or government tactic; it was for everyone with a wireless connection.

And while, like “To Catch a Predator,” one might argue that “Gossip Girl” encouraged this phenomenon by turning surveillance into entertainment, I’d say the show more often depicts its awful consequences. While the teenage characters already see the amateur espionage as part of their lives, the show’s adults are horrified by Gossip Girl and “her” web of tipsters. With age comes sagacity, and that transition sits parallel to the zoomers’ fervent response to “Primetime.” 

The surveillance state perseveres by making itself invisible, an incontrovertible part of everyday life, especially for those who have grown up inside it. Sometimes, it’s much easier to see the boundary lines between the material and the intangible when someone or something points them out. “To Catch a Predator” and “Gossip Girl” are two sides of the same coin; the former an arm of dystopia, the latter a critic. “Primetime” may try to play both of these sides to its detriment. But what it lacks in searing critique of its subject matter, “Primetime” makes up for by showing viewers of all ages where older media and younger generations collide. Often, the best way to understand the world now is by revisiting its past, warts and all.

The post Why Gen Z sees itself in “Primetime” appeared first on Salon.com.

Donald Trump has never been one for subtlety, so it follows that his taxpayer-funded “public service announcement” instructing Americans to love him would literally feature a gospel choir singing the words “Love Me.” Along with many of his closest allies, the president is a fan of pseudo-science, so perhaps he believes the repetition will have a hypnotic effect on viewers, reversing through pop psychology trickery the free-fall that has beset his approval ratings.

This is just one of three separate ads, totaling $1.5 million so far, that feel less like a sincere effort to persuade voters and more like an expensive effort by the White House to soothe the temperamental 80-year-old. Either way, what’s indisputable is that Trump is becoming increasingly frustrated that the chicanery he has used throughout his life no longer seems to be working.

The president has perhaps the most staggering track record of defrauding Americans of any hustler in the country’s 250-year history. His glib assertions of being the greatest genius who knows more than any other person about any subject under the sun have served him well for decades, and his 34 felony fraud convictions and civil fraud cases paint a picture of a man who always seems to find marks who will believe his transparent, self-aggrandizing lies.

Before he won the White House in 2016, “The Apprentice” managed to convince millions of viewers that a man who managed to lose nearly a billion dollars was some great businessman. Even when Trump argued that he, unlike medical experts, understood the salutary effects of household cleaners to treat Covid-19 patients, his followers stayed by his side, some of them putting their trust in MAGA quackery over science-based healthcare like vaccines. The cult of personality built around his persona of presidential greatness remains a puzzling swindle. 

But on Monday in the Oval Office, Trump did what he usually does these days when presented with a microphone: He whined at length at how he isn’t getting the love he believes he deserves. 

“Nobody talks about all the incredible things,” the president complained, saying America has “the best economy we’ve ever had.” He added, laughably, that people are “twice as wealthy” as they were as two years ago under the Biden administration. Then he repeated his false promise that, if Republicans win the November midterms, the government would issue a “dividend” check of $5,000 to every adult American. 

It may be easy to laugh at this stuff, but it’s worth taking a moment to remember that Trump has always been this way. Polls, however, suggest that Americans are finally waking up. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found his approval rating at a dismal 32% — hitting, in other words, the very bedrock of his MAGA base. Worse for him, only 13% of Americans, according to an analysis by G. Elliott Morris, are willing to tell a pollster they buy the president’s $5,000 check lie, showing that even people who claim to approve of him can’t be bothered to trust him any longer. 

People could be learning from experience. As Catherine Rampell of the Bulwark detailed, the $5,000 check promise is only the latest in a long list of false second-term promises that Americans would be receiving fat checks from the government. Her “partial list” includes these examples:

• $5,000 stimulus checks via a “DOGE dividend” (February 2025)
• $2,000 stimulus checks via a “rebate” or tariff “dividend” (July 2025, August 2025, November 2025, December 2025, February 2026)
• Checks of indeterminate value that would redirect money that would have been spent on Affordable Care Act subsidies (November 2025)
• $500 Obamacare “rebate” checks (September 2026)
• $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans win the midterms (yesterday) 

Thankfully, there now appears to be a limit to the number of times a fraudster can promise the check is in mail before even some MAGA voters start to wonder if they’re being had. Most clung to two big reasons to justify their vote in 2024: the president’s promises to lower prices and end foreign wars. Trump broke both in a dramatic fashion, starting a war with Iran and a trade war with, well, much of the world, both of which have escalated inflation, particularly of fuel prices. Even his most ardent followers are reminded of his lies every time they buy groceries or gas. Running ads that repeat his failed promises only serve to remind people of the broken trust. 

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Beyond bigger propaganda, Trump has no other ideas for how to change the situation. On top of the ads, last week the White House launched “Trump TV,” which was billed as an alternative to cable news but mostly runs pro-Trump content so poorly produced that it makes AI slop seem compelling. As Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye chronicled, the viewership started at a paltry 8,000 people and, by the next day, had faded to fewer than 1,000. It would have likely been even lower if it weren’t for journalists watching it to report on the emptiness of the enterprise. 

Perhaps the surest sign that these efforts are more about placating Trump than persuading voters is the his travel schedule. The president is avoiding visiting states with close congressional races, where he risks being shunned by Republican candidates trying to distance themselves from his unpopularity. Instead, he is mostly sticking to deep red states like Alabama and Oklahoma, where they can still scare up enough MAGA diehards to fill stadiums and, crucially, give Trump hours of reassurance that he’s still got fans. On Tuesday, he spoke at an event heralding our era as a “golden age” due to AI. As a political maneuver, his words were baffling, as most Americans deplore the economy and loathe AI. But being surrounded by billionaires while applauding himself with gold-related talk is Trump’s happy zone, and keeping the president there appears to be all that matters to his West Wing staff. 

For the worrywarts of the left, there remains plenty to be concerned about. Ahead of the midterms, Democrats are facing intense gerrymandering and voter suppression, which could blunt the wins currently projected by the polls. Even if the party were to take both the Senate and the House, Trump will still occupy the Oval Office for two more years. Armed with the criminal immunity granted him by the Supreme Court, he has no reason to stop blatantly flouting the law in a myriad of ways, ranging from his attacks on the Kennedy Center and prosecuting the Iran war without congressional approval to his own mysterious swelling wealth. 

Still, even though it’s almost certainly illegal, there is an upside to Trump using taxpayer money for ego-gratifying TV ads and propaganda. The more time he spends on his futile efforts to restore the glory days when only half of Americans opposed him, the less energy he has for the work of actually governing. Everything he’s done in that arena has been an unmitigated disaster. Keeping Trump distracted from making serious decisions is a good thing for us all.

The post Trump can’t trick Americans into loving him appeared first on Salon.com.

The Merikins are the descendants of formerly enslaved African Americans who fought alongside the British during the War of 1812. At the war’s end, the British granted these fighters and their families land in Trinidad and Tobago as part of their freedom.

The third verse of the “Star-Spangled Banner” served as a threat to African Americans who sought liberation — particularly those fighting against the United States like the Merikins — from Francis Scott Key, an unabashed racist whose racism influenced his professional legacy.

After years of playing it at sporting events out of choice or paid patriotism, Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for it:

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color . . . There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview following his now-infamous kneel.

Following a lengthy and seemingly self-imposed silence, as others sought to narrate his protest and commitment to social justice, Kaepernick has reemerged in the public square on an impressive press run promoting his book, “The Perilous Fight,” to whoever will listen, including the platforms of Karen Hunter, Katie Couric, Van Lathan, Trevor Noah, and “The View.”

Kaepernick’s book discusses his life up to this point, from his childhood and adolescence to his current justice activities and life with his wife, Nessa Diab, and daughter. He takes time to explain the multifaceted origins of his activism, from the challenges of being a Black boy raised by white parents, to his experiences as a Black athlete in a space predicated on controlling Black bodies, to his awakening through literature by Black scholars and activists.

But like many Black people who were awakened by the murders of Black people by the police, Kaepernick was alarmed by the December 2015 murder of Mario Woods by San Francisco police. For refusing to drop his knife, Woods was shot twenty times by police. Police justified the killing, saying they feared for their safety, but the body camera footage said otherwise.

Kaepernick watched the Mario Woods video at his parents’ home, as his mother questioned Woods’ role in his murder. Upon reflecting on his attempt to explain to her the gravity of the situation and her lack of response, Kaepernick gained clarity:

“. . . the encounter helped bring even more clarity to the last twenty-eight years of my life, and why I was always frustrated and unsatisfied during my childhood when issues concerning race arose,” Kaepernick writes. “It was obvious my parents loved me as their son, but accepting their son was Black and dealing with that reality was not of much concern. Hell, I had white boys call me ni**er and try to tie me to a tree, yet I never told my parents. Even my mother told me I looked like a thug when I wore cornrows.”

Woods’ murder, followed by the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the not-guilty judgment for the officer who murdered Freddie Gray, compelled Kaepernick into protest at the start of the 2016 NFL season. While Kaepernick’s protest garnered acknowledgment and some support, it also led to his banishment from the NFL and the hijacking and appropriation of his protest, along with critique and ridicule of perceived inaction. 

But Kaepernick pursued racial justice work: from the Know Your Rights Camps (KYRC) to the KYRC Autopsy Initiative, both founded with his wife and partner, radio personality Nessa Diab:

“I was hearing criticisms accusing me of just being an angry Black man without a plan. I wanted to buttress my protests on the field with action on the ground, to build an infrastructure that could start effective change where it might make a difference . . . I didn’t want to look back on this time and agonize that I should have and could have done more.”

Equally fascinating was his pulling back the curtain, so to speak, on the culture of football, particularly the NFL, where the expectation for players is to follow orders and “shut up and play.” He explained this by detailing various interactions with teammates, coaches, team executives, and even sports agents.

“Football breeds a culture of obedience. On the field, these guys were major alpha males — the biggest, baddest, most dominant dudes on the planet. But once they stepped off the field, they were just employees waiting for the boss to tell them what to do.”

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But the culture of the league also forced him to examine the implicit racism as early as his participation in the NFL Combine, asking himself, “Do all of those A’s over sixteen years of schooling plus the 3rd highest grade on the Wonderlic not mean anything? Is their stated concern over my intelligence genuine, or is there something . . . having to do with racist stereotypes?”

While all his experiences up to 2016 were instructive, they couldn’t buffer the shock and disgust of the backlash to his protest. While he did receive support, he couldn’t anticipate Nate Boyer’s attempts to profit from the protest and steal credit from Kaepernick teammate Eric Reid for the idea to kneel. Kaepernick couldn’t anticipate the Islamophobia and misogyny aimed at his wife. Nor could he anticipate the president of the United States calling him and his colleagues “sons of bit*hes.”

Who could possibly be prepared for any of that? Then again, maybe Kaepernick should have been.

His two near-death experiences made him fearless. Overcoming numerous challenges in his football career made him steadfast. Welcoming his wife into his life, and the growth that came with it, grounded him. His childhood experiences with whiteness shaped him. Therefore, when it was time to take a stand for Black people, he didn’t ask for permission, because he was already empowered to do so. And a Black athlete empowered to stand for Black people is an athlete who should expect to be persecuted, like Curt Flood, whom Kaepernick mentioned.

His protest didn’t make white people comfortable. There were no performative photo-ops with politicians or any ride-alongs with police. There was confrontation. I suspect he anticipated some of the whitelash. After all, Kaepernick didn’t appear shocked that his white family was embarrassed by his protest, with his mother calling it “disgraceful.” What he may not have anticipated was the extent of the cover Black players and notable Black folks gave the NFL.

 

I wonder if Kaepernick anticipated hearing a player tell him he needed “to go ask my owner if it’s okay to protest.” Did he anticipate Dr. Harry Edwards being co-opted by the 49ers, Ray Lewis by the Ravens, and the players’ coalition by team owners? Did he anticipate Michael Vick suggesting that he cut his hair to get a job in the NFL? Did he anticipate being sold out by Jay-Z for personal gain, followed by hit pieces and being dissed in a freestyle many years later?

The truth is that all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk, and if he wasn’t aware before the protest, he certainly is now. 

But Kaepernick doesn’t leave readers feeling that his work was in vain, or that he is without hope. He shares that his family, his wife and daughter, provide him with a newfound motivation to make justice a reality for Black people and all other people of color. He closed his book saying, with a Clarion call of sorts to his readers:

“Our children can’t develop to their full potential if they are constantly worried about what awaits them outside the doors of their home, or if they are on edge because of the fear of ICE agents invading their schoolyard or playground . . . What are we doing to our nation’s children when we are constantly undeserving their needs and sending them into schools that feel like war zones? They can never reach their peak in such circumstances. We must consider these factors when we think about how we are policing our communities and educational environments. We all want the same things for our children.”

But it begs the question that we all must answer: We all want the same things for our children, but do we all want the same things for each other? Colin Kaepernick has decided to move forward in hope. He’s asking us to do the same.

The post Colin Kaepernick knows what kneeling cost — and he’d do it again appeared first on Salon.com.

When prolific filmmaker Werner Herzog first met the Chaplin twins, Freda and Greta, the internet as we know it did not exist. If it had, it’s likely that the mystifying story of these sisters — who had a brief flash of fame in the ’80s when their neighbor sought a restraining order against them after a sexual dalliance with the two of them turned hostile — would have already run its course. According to reports, Freda and Greta not only looked and dressed alike, but spoke in unison, as if they shared a single brain. No doubt the TikTok amateur detectives would’ve momentarily shifted from true crime to the Chaplin twins, trying their damnedest to debunk what only the sisters could truly understand. One can’t possibly grasp the closeness two people share until they’ve experienced firsthand the joy and indescribable pain that come with the kind of enmeshment written in fate’s codex.

Though to his credit, Herzog tried his best. In his memoir, “Every Man for Himself and God Against All,” he describes tracking down the Chaplin twins with a newspaper photograph of the building they lived in. “You could have folded a picture of them, and the two halves would’ve matched,” Herzog writes. He watched them vacuum together, walking side by side with four hands on the machine at once until they got stuck between two chairs, sending them into a tizzy. Trying to open a can of sardines could’ve gravely injured them had the twins not gotten into a screaming match in the process. Ever the humanist, fascinated by ordinary people taking on otherwise herculean tasks to the point of obsession, Herzog resolved decades ago to make a film inspired by the sisters. He even had a title.

“Bucking Fastard,” Herzog’s long-gestating, extraordinary feature born from his time with the Chaplin twins, takes its name from an obscenity they shouted in court while on trial for the restraining order — a slip of the tongue allegedly uttered at the same time. History contends whether or not this really happened. But Herzog’s film makes it, and everything else, seem entirely possible. Screening at this year’s New York Film Festival, “Bucking Fastard” is a loaded cannon, currently waiting for a distributor to light the fuse to send Jean and Joan Holbrooke (Kate and Rooney Mara, respectively) soaring hand in hand into a world desperately in need of their peculiar wisdom. 

Playing versions of the Chaplins, the Holbrooke sisters share shades of classic Herzog characters while being quite unlike any of the eccentrics he’s brought to life before. Set in the present day, the sisters feel out of step with time, as if a glitch in the system spawned them here, letting them observe the world without understanding what it’s like to really live in it. As such, Jean and Joan are the only people who truly understand one another. But having a companion who sees everything the same way we do does not necessarily equate to love. Either sister’s sense of self is fundamentally rooted in the other. Their crippling codependence is alienating, as if there really were only one of them.

As Herzog moves the sisters between reality and film’s dreamy latter half, he plunges into the fizzy static that comprises their cosmic connection, examining their solitude as only he can. “Bucking Fastard” is a remarkable exploration of loneliness that only decades of tender rumination and appreciation could provide. For the wistful, lovelorn loner, it’s an imperative reminder that being attached at the hip can still be isolating, no matter how much two people think alike.

Herzog impresses this notion from the very beginning: A dream shared by Joan and Jean, in which the sisters stand in a corridor flanked by caged birds. “We could not be sure we saw the same birds,” they recall. “Only that there were cages on both sides.” The introduction sits right between poetic and blunt, and this same small, temporal crevice is where the Holbrooke sisters spend their time. Jean and Joan’s shared existence would otherwise make their days dull and predictable, but their bizarre circumstances let them see beyond their own purview and into someone else’s, even if only for a blip. They revel in the fascination they stir. Still, other people’s reactions to their similarity only remind the sisters of the bond they can’t break. Their gift is a curse. That’s the funny thing about love: No matter how perfect it is — no matter how much it seems like it’s written in the stars — there will always be the suspicion, somewhere in the back of your mind, that life might have something else to offer.

I’m at a point in my own life where much of my time is consumed by this very thought, facing forks in the road that feel more like cliffs. At 32, I like to feel fairly confident that, when it comes to relationships, I know the difference between love and comfort. But then something will happen that reminds me of life’s sheer unpredictability, and that matters of the heart are purely unknowable. After years of certainty, I’m no longer sure that true love is someone who knows you to the point of an echo. Is such sheer, universal familiarity the root of love — the kind of connection that everyone from Keats to Keaton wrote about — or does it trap you in one place, stunting your growth? How can anyone live like this, so doubtful about what is right and wrong? This is what leaps of faith are for, sure. But eventually, you reach an age where you put more emphasis on faith than the leap itself. If pleasant contentment is guaranteed if you just stay put, why take the risk?

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So much of Herzog’s career has been about weighing the hazards of happiness. Whether he’s challenging Fitzcarraldo (and himself) to lift a 320-ton steamship over a mountain, revealing the tragedy of Nosferatu’s immortality, or illuminating the perils of a life in nature, Herzog has dedicated his life’s work to pondering what we’ll do for our passions. In this way, “Bucking Fastard” feels like the culmination of it all. As the film progresses, Herzog intimately considers humanity’s relationship to the insurmountable. Could there be a place, somewhere in this vast Earth, where Joan and Jean don’t have to sacrifice their codependent sisterly bond to enjoy life’s pleasures?

As soon as they begin to wonder, the Holbrooke sisters — almost imperceptibly — begin to drift apart before snapping back in place. But maybe that’s progress. It could be enough. Perhaps this existence is more about riding the ebb and flow than it is mapping the course.

I’d be remiss not to heap praise on the sisters Mara, who bring something to the screen that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Their bond is, no surprise, electric. But it’s their palpable trust in one another that’s staggering. Always in the same frame, they exude a preternatural comfort that extends beyond familial ties and speaks to their shared life paths. Both Rooney and Kate are keenly aware of how petrifying it can be to be perceived, and how galvanizing it can be as well, and they bring both senses to their shared performance. It’s a sight to behold. For what “Bucking Fastard” lacks in Herzog’s early directorial style, it makes up for by focusing its lens on the magic happening in front of it. It’s like watching stars being sewn into the fabric of the universe.

 

Naturally, the Mara connection is the selling point here. But it’s also what grounds Herzog’s very airy, funny film. Every time the filmmaker’s typically unconventional ideas threaten to tilt the movie too far askew, the sisters bring “Bucking Fastard” back on the straight and narrow. (Well, as straight and narrow as a film about two horny, completely in-sync sisters can be.) They beautifully elucidate Herzog’s complex notions of loneliness, reminding us that the heart’s desire to cling to something familiar and safe can also be its undoing. Such closeness is inherently limiting, even when it’s ideal, too. “Bucking Fastard” relishes those contradictions, supposing that there might be some version of life where they can coexist in harmony. Herzog doesn’t have the answer to that question, and he doesn’t pretend to. He only knows that it’s enough to wonder.

“Bucking Fastard” screens from Wednesday, September 30, at the New York Film Festival. The film is currently seeking distribution.

The post In Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” two can be as lonely as one appeared first on Salon.com.

Certain obvious questions arise from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington this past week, a spectacle that one observer has described as “diplotainment” rather than actual diplomacy. Exactly how much did Donald Trump abase himself in service to a temporary and transactional friendship with the dictatorial leader of a nation that is, at least by conventional standards, America’s principal strategic enemy? 

No one knows; I am tempted to surmise that Trump doesn’t know himself. The man who in sunnier times for his regime enjoyed calling himself “your favorite president” does not seem to be his own favorite president these days. Trump almost visibly glowed with delight when Xi praised the quality of service and attention to detail of his White House visit. “Everything is done to the highest order of perfection, and there is thought in every little detail,” the Chinese president said through a translator. “And it’s greatly appreciated.”

You could describe that as the meaningless courtesies of routine statecraft, but it also suggested a high-flying hotel guest offering his compliments to the concierge: The eggs this morning were entirely delicious. And the way your people turn down the sheets at night: exquisite!

If we could somehow remove ourselves from the anguish and destruction caused by Trump’s improvised policies (which resemble comic-book versions of Big Brother’s “Two Minutes Hate” from the film version of “1984”) and his aggressively stupid public persona, we might be able to perceive some pathos in his predicament. He cannot escape from a situation he believed he had created and felt he could control: He is the massively unpopular elected leader of a rapidly collapsing superpower, whose downward slide he promised to reverse but has only accelerated, perhaps to the point of terminal velocity.

Trump visibly and hungrily longs for things he cannot have: the alleged greatness of the mythological American past, rendered as white supremacist schlock inherited third hand from the more vigorous fascist movements of the last century; the enforced adulation and obligatory public spectacle of a totalitarian regime such as Xi’s China or Kim Jong-un’s North Korea; most of all, perhaps, his own youth as a brash Manhattan philanderer and unstoppable political renegade, when he didn’t fall asleep in public or stumble around awkwardly with an unexplained contraption under his clothing.

To consider such matters is not a distraction; it begins to point us toward the larger and more painful questions behind the Xi-Trump pseudo-summit. It surprised literally no one that the two leaders negotiated no new agreements on regulating A.I. (or “Super Intelligence,” in Trump’s self-parodying rebrand), the status of Taiwan, the sporadic trade war between the two nations or ending the war with Iran and restarting the global flow of Middle East oil. No mention was made of Trump’s vaporware claims last May that the Chinese had agreed to buy hundreds of Boeing aircraft and $10 billion worth of U.S. beef and soybeans, but Xi promised to send two pandas from China’s breeding facility to the Atlanta zoo. So much winning. It’s impossible to calculate.

In large part, the absolute nothingness of this summit reflects the fact that China is already winning across the board and Xi needed nothing from Trump beyond the legitimation provided by a diplotainment spectacle “to the highest order of perfection.” As China scholars Nicholas Bequelin and Yaqiu Wang write in a Foreign Policy analysis published before the summit, over the first 19 months of Trump’s second term, the geopolitical “balance of power has shifted in Beijing’s favor”:

China has weathered the trade war, narrowed the technology gap, tightened its leverage over critical supply chains, increased pressure on Taiwan, and deepened ties with Russia and much of the global south.

Contrary to more Sinophobic commentators, they argue that China’s ruthlessly pragmatic leadership is not interested in dominating the world, or at least not in the same way postwar America did. But it does have a long-term agenda, they write, which includes breaking the global dependence on U.S.-centric financial institutions, discrediting democracy and furthering a historical process Xi has described as “the rise of the East and the decline of the West.”

I don’t disagree with any of that, but the most important aspect of Bequelin and Wang’s analysis gets a little buried beneath a forest of impeccably organized policy details. Xi has no need to strike an overtly aggressive posture and can afford to cosplay friendship with Trump because “the West,” or at least its greatest military and economic power, is doing a terrific job of declining all on its own. To borrow the nostrum attributed to Napoleon, the Chinese president is smart enough not to interrupt an opponent while he’s making a mistake. 

It may take generations — if there are any future generations — to measure the scale of America’s self-inflicted damage, which goes well beyond material issues into the realm of psychology or perhaps spirit. (If it’s pretentious to use the Hegelian term Geist, it still fits.) It remains astonishing, not to mention upsetting and enraging, that in the face of a global climate crisis that has already caused millions of deaths and is obvious to nearly everyone on the planet, the U.S. has deliberately chosen to double down on fossil fuels while “China is consolidating its worldwide dominance in batteries, solar, and EVs,” as Bequelin and Wang write. 

Chinese solar panels and batteries, often offered at steeply discounted prices, are revolutionizing transit and energy issues in many poorer countries, beginning to break the expensive and damaging addiction to foreign oil. Meanwhile, the U.S. has largely abandoned or dismantled its foreign aid programs aimed at fostering economic development, public health and education, while doing its level best to destroy its own reputation as a multiracial secular republic rooted in the rule of law. Faced with America’s spectacular self-own (which didn’t start with Trump, to be clear), who can blame people in the Global South for beginning to suspect that the tradeoff between “democracy” and “authoritarianism” was never as straightforward as they were led to believe?

Despite the widespread anger and disillusionment of Trump’s second term — an encouraging trend, to be clear — it’s still too easy for Americans to duck the biggest and most glaring question of all: To paraphrase one of the greatest works of postmodern angst, how did we get here? It no longer feels remotely adequate (if it ever did) to suggest that angry, vicious people accidentally elected an angry, vicious president who is pursuing a self-destructive and nihilistic agenda, and that at some future date our national sanity and our “indispensable” role in world affairs will be reasserted. 

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We tried that, remember? It didn’t work. Perhaps, from some great historical remove, Joe Biden’s presidency will appear noble and tragic. But it was also doomed, trapped in a vision of the past every bit as delusional as the MAGA fantasy, and nearly as damaging. The Biden regime’s self-appointed mission of enforcing a “rules-based order” involved pretending that the world had not changed, that America was still widely beloved and admired, that our so-called republic had not bred and nurtured Donald Trump and that he did not embody its bottomless greed, its gleeful ignorance, its wounded and flatulent national pride.

And so we arrive at the final conundrum of the Trump-Xi summit, and our president’s stopped-clock tendency to stumble upon hard truths. In his inimitable ass-backward fashion, Trump has discerned that the “free world” has become a meaningless abstraction and liberal democracy is in a state of systemic failure. He is correct about that, at least to a point. But he can provide no answer beyond prostrating himself before dictators and building monuments to himself in imitation of their grandiosity. If China’s repressive techno-state makes a distinctly unappealing candidate to lead the world into the future, America can only offer competing versions of an imaginary past. Hey, at least we got those pandas. 

The post Trump rolls over for China’s panda gift appeared first on Salon.com.

How hard is it to enjoy your husband’s company? According to content made for Christian conservative women, the heaviest cross they may bear is learning to feel affection for their spouses — or at least fake it well enough to buy some peace at home. That’s what I learned perusing the growing field of influencers offering would-be tradwives advice on how to make MAGA marriages work. 

“Normalize liking your husband,” reads a T-shirt sold by Savanna Stone, a 21-year-old self-proclaimed marriage expert who has been selling content preaching marital submission with the backing of shady far-right funders. At first blush, that may seem like a trifling concept. But, as Stone makes clear in her video content, her definition of liking or even loving a husband is both laborious and ascetic to an extreme. 

“Submission isn’t earned, it is given through the covenant of marriage,” Stone argued in one video. If a husband makes bad decisions, she said, it’s his wife’s fault because she isn’t submitting enough to give him the “confidence” to “take on the masculine role.” At her speech at the 2026 Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Conference, Stone encouraged women to marry young, as she did at 18. If they don’t, the risk is that they will “build their own life,” which she defined as “the death of marriage” because “two separate lives do not easily merge.”

Stone attracts a lot of attention for her tender age and lavishly produced content. But she’s just one of a burgeoning group of Christian influencers, most of them fairly young, who hold themselves out as experts on marriage. Some dress in fashionable and sexy clothes, like Stone, while others favor prairie-style dresses. Some are podcasters or video hosts; others offer online courses with names like “Wife School” or “Wife Academy.” But the message remains the same: They’re all speaking to the deep disappointment and frustration that many Christian women apparently feel in their husbands. The solution, though, only ever seems to be that wives must suck it up and submit even more to their men. 

Recently, Alex Clark, the host of TPUSA’s “Culture Apothecary” podcast, married another Christian influencer after what appears to have been a whirlwind engagement of only a few months. (As recently as May, she was lamenting her lack of viable marital prospects.) In the run-up to her nuptials, Clark presented her own “wife school” series that made marriage sound so miserable that a reasonable viewer’s only conclusion was to avoid being a wife altogether. 

Her first guest, Tilly Dillehay, got right down to business by scolding women who are “picky” because they want something from a husband beyond just a man who is “active in his faith” and makes enough money to “support a family.” Dillehay held herself out as an example of a woman who failed; she said she had dated men who were “flippant,” which appears to be her code word for fun. Instead, while she was “not immediately attracted” to her husband and he was not attracted to her, Dillehay married him anyway because he is a “steady man,” “serious” and not prone like she is to “joke around.” 

If that sounds like a formula for a miserable sex life, well, Dillehay didn’t seem to be concerned. “God has commanded you to participate” in sex with your husband, she said. An added incentive is that it’s “a way that you protect each other from infidelity.” 

“Half of the time,” she said, “it’s only in getting started that you even start to be in the mood.” What happens the other half of the time, she didn’t say. 

“Remember that there are a lot of women out there whose husbands are at the bar tonight and they’re not coming home,” Dillehay said. “There are a lot of women whose husbands are not going to work today.” It should be “enough,” she added, to have a husband who works and goes to church. 

Dillehay’s view is especially chilling in light of a recent Netflix documentary “The Death of the Pastor’s Wife,” which chronicled the suicide of Mica Miller, who spent years of trying to please the ever-escalating sexual demands of her minister husband. This expectation doesn’t appear to be the exception. As Dillehay showed in her interview with Clark, the view of sex as a wife’s duty is deeply ingrained in conservative Christian culture.

Stone has drawn attention by saying consent isn’t part of marriage. “Because when you say, ‘I do,’ you are committing to a lifetime of sex,” she explained in an interview earlier this year. “‘You didn’t fold your laundry. I’m not going to have sex with you. You didn’t unload the dishwasher. I’m not going to have sex with you.'” In citing these scenarios, Stone mocked women who withdraw from husbands sexually, calling it “manipulation,” or even a “sin,” to feel this way. 

Feminists might argue it’s hard to get in the mood with someone who doesn’t respect you. That opinion, though, carries no weight in MAGA circles. Still, there’s clearly a lot of resentment among some Christian conservative women about husbands who don’t do chores. Trying to stifle anger over this may be the single most common topic in Christian marital advice content.

In her “wife school” series, Clark interviewed her new sister-in-law, Katie Voetberg, a prairie dress-clad podcast host and mother of six, about how to avoid being a “nagging wife” and a “constant dripping faucet.” Voetberg’s heartwarming advice? Abandon all hope of having a responsible husband. If your husband forgets to pay the electric bill, she said, don’t remind him or hold him accountable. Instead, “light a candle” and hope that he learns from the “embarrassment” of his failure. Presumably, wives in these relationships don’t control the money, or they could pay it themselves. In cases where women do have a little more power, Voetberg recommended simply doing every chore a husband can’t be bothered with.

“He hates going to the dentist” or the doctor, she explained, so “I just put it on my to-do list” to make his appointment. Even when a husband won’t do “the stereotypical husband duties,” like mowing the lawn or taking out the trash, she continued, the wife should handle it and say, “it’s never going to hit [the husband’s] radar.”

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Other influencers agree. Millicent Sedra, a rising Christian-right influencer who serves as pastor at Echo Church in Sydney, Australia, recently preached that wives should “[s]top complaining about having to help your husband when our God-given role is to do exactly that.” Another of her sermons centered on Proverbs 21:9, which reads, “Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a nagging wife.” 

Laura Zachary, the creator of “Wife Academy,” which is billed as “a program that allows women to rebuild their marriages from the inside out, explained in a video why all household chores should fall to wives: “Women were created for a man. So a woman without a man to take care of, she becomes very empty, very soulless, very bitter.” But Zachary’s logic is flawed: If scrubbing toilets and washing dishes while their husbands kicked back on the couch was, in fact, women’s natural inclination, then she wouldn’t be able to charge women thousands of dollars for courses that reportedly teach them how to love a life of submission.

Often, these lessons in denial are framed for Christian women as a rebuttal to feminists. As a marketing ploy, that’s smart, but it’s not entirely honest. Feminists aren’t listening to this content, and even if they were to stumble across it, they would simply move on. It is not sparking “debate.” 

The real audience for these messages are Christian women, a fact that is itself telling. That these classes exist in the first place shows that, despite being told it’s their “natural” role, Christian women do not actually enjoy submitting to their husbands. If women were eager to have sex in their conservative Christian marriages, they wouldn’t need to be told it’s their duty to have it, like it or not. Clearly, many Christian women resent domestic inequality, or else they wouldn’t have to be told to suck it up.

Why is there “wife school” but no apparent equivalent “husband school”? Men in this situation are perfectly fine; they are benefitting from a system set up to serve them at a woman’s expense. As long as that’s true, it’s inevitable that women will feel frustrated and resentful. “Wife school” can’t actually make women happier, since it reinforces the very male dominance that is causing their pain. But it sure can make men’s lives easier, if the teachers are successful at getting women to stop complaining and learn instead to serve their husband-masters in silence. 

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Recently, I learned about a concept called atomic change. The term’s meaning depends on who’s employing it. One professional coach’s website describes it, in so many words, as making discrete adjustments to a business that, over time, lead to its significant transformation.

An engineering professor defines it as “a change applied to a class definition (i.e., its source code) such that a) it is minimal (cannot be decomposed into other atomic changes) and b) the program compiles and builds after the change.”

Then we tumble into the realm of inspirational gurus and thought leaders, where breathwork and manifesting meet motivational speak, popping with familiar verbal kernels like “sparking joy” and “habit formation.” It all reduces to the promise of small daily actions that, over time, build into the conquest of your wildest dreams.

Notice how similar the programming instructions are for computers, systems and people. Atomic change suggests that the soul, like the mind, can be reconfigured as gradually as we might update a laptop one key and chip at a time. That premise — that people can be gradually reconfigured — is one Oprah Winfrey discovered four decades ago when she launched the syndicated talk show that would change daytime TV, “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” on Sept. 8, 1986.

Who and what we read is shaped in no small part by Winfrey. Somewhere in your house probably lurks a book, an accessory or an appliance you may not have bought if Winfrey hadn’t given it her seal of approval.

Even if that isn’t the case, the ramifications of two Oprah Winfrey endorsements touch every American: It’s unlikely the names of Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Phil McGraw would have floated into Donald Trump’s orbit otherwise. Since Winfrey anointed them as her go-to experts on wellness and behavioral health, Trump added them to his ineffectual celebrity governing cabinet. Dr. Oz leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Dr. Phil, America’s pro bono therapist, is now the celebrity face of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. In 2025, after previously embedding with Immigration and Customs Enforcement during raids in Chicago, his MeritTV crews were on the ground during ICE operations in Los Angeles. Merit Street Media, the television network he launched around MeritTV, later filed for bankruptcy protection.

This is what it means to spend 40 years being America’s original influencer.

 

 

Some may take issue with likening Oprah Winfrey to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. If this is the only way you view him, I suppose that’s fair. But remember that before Oppenheimer tossed us into the nuclear age, he pioneered modern theoretical physics in the United States. Some of his initial investigations contributed to our understanding of neutron stars and black holes.

We often associate him with the scriptural quote from the Bhagavad Gita that reads, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” Not many recall his reported invocation of another work of Sanskrit poetry that reads, “In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame/The good deeds a man has done before defend him.”

A similar tension shadows how we reconcile what Winfrey means to American culture. 

Over the years, Winfrey gave us many nice things. She was the first daytime host to bring New Age, self-help philosophies to a massive audience under the rubric of “Change Your Life TV” while also making literacy fashionable via “Oprah’s Book Club” and promoting feel-good consumerism.

Through her encouragement, reading became a social, communal activity and positively relating to one another part of a purpose-driven existence. Along those lines, “Oprah” raised the profiles of many figures, including life-fixer Iyanla Vanzant and interior designer Nate Berkus, who reframed homekeeping as house pride. Even Winfrey’s movie career is largely comprised of roles that originated in books and ideas that spoke to her on a deep level, including her turns in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple.”

But if it feels like “The Oprah Winfrey Show” remains a present force despite Winfrey ending her show 15 years ago, that is because it lives on through hundreds of self-made influencers.  Instagram and TikTok are awash in smiling people reminding their followers that they are worthy and loved; that they do not have to put up with abuse or maltreatment; and that they deserve to treat themselves to subscriptions of life-changing supplements, beauty products and meal kits of their choice. Link in bio!

A few, such as Jay Shetty and Alex Cooper, have amassed enough of an audience to build media companies around themselves and their brands – which are essentially one and the same. Of course, they are not billionaires like Oprah or celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow or Reese Witherspoon, who leveraged their pre-existing stardom into profitable imprimaturs in wellness and publishing.

 

But as Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil continue to embarrass themselves publicly, some wonder what responsibility Winfrey feels for making them famous. A recent interview with veteran critic Eric Deggans in Emmy magazine answered that question definitively.

“Everybody has their own path in life, and it has not one thing to do with me, and I don’t have one thing to do with them,” she said. On its own, that may read like spiritual bypassing. In the context of what she stated before that, however, it makes sense: Winfrey said McGraw helped her through a challenging time when, in 1998, she was accused of defaming the beef industry and sued by Texas ranchers. She found that Oz had a gift for explaining preventive medicine to ordinary people. 

“At the time, the reason and intention behind me giving them their breaks was I thought they had valuable information to share that had been meaningful to me,” she explained.

Thus, the conundrum of Winfrey’s terribly consequential influence. 

Long before Oz entered politics, for example, he’d been discredited for dispensing a vast array of scientifically unsound medical advice on “The Dr. Oz Show,” which Winfrey’s Harpo Productions co-produced. Nobody forced viewers to follow his unsound prescriptions.

The fact that many did makes one wonder how much sway Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil would have if our healthcare system didn’t relegate women to second-class status — and women of color even lower still — and placed behavioral and psychological wellness on par with other preventative care.

Let’s not discount America’s addiction to purchasing shortcuts for happiness either, which Winfrey also knows very well. Nine years ago, she included a Gratitude Jar on her annual Oprah’s Favorite Things list, which included nothing but 365 blank cards and vibes. It quickly sold out. That’s right: Oprah Winfrey persuaded her followers to buy a cylindrical glass container holding paper and air, for $45.

But I get it now. Winfrey was the first TV personality to invite a loyal audience primarily made up of harried women to put themselves and their care first. Over 25 years and 4,561 episodes, each of her small suggestions compounded into massive cultural shifts — significant transformation, from which there’s no going back.

 

 

 

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The big story coming out of the 2024 election was how Donald Trump orchestrated a realignment of American politics, bringing demographic groups that had long eschewed the Republican Party into the tent. Latinos, Black voters and young people, mostly males, had voted for him and the GOP in larger numbers than anyone could remember, and it was seen in some quarters as a sign that the party was embarking on a thousand-year reign. Conventional wisdom held that Trump was something of a magical figure who had defied the odds, defeated the majority of the legal and political efforts to hold him accountable, and triumphantly returned to power. 

Many attributed the president’s success to a new political power on the block — the so-called manosphere, consisting of male podcasters with millions of followers who had enthusiastically endorsed Trump. Many pundits said that Kamala Harris lost the race because she didn’t try hard enough to appeal to these influencers, even though many are heavily misogynistic and wouldn’t have been open to her candidacy in any case. Their juvenile humor and oppositional defiance also happened, incidentally, to be perfectly matched to Trump’s sophomoric style. 

However, like transgressive boys everywhere, they have a short attention span; Trump has not turned out to be as fun as they thought he would be. Although anecdotal evidence suggests they have been less fervent followers of the president for several months now, The Wall Street Journal analyzed nearly 70,000 hours of podcasts to see if it was true. What they found was revealing: “Mentions of Trump’s name per hour on conservative podcasts have fallen nearly 70% from their peak in the run-up to the 2024 election.” Many are publicly unhappy with the economy and the war, both of which are seen as broken promises and could account for the decline in mentions, but the hosts are mostly spending their time trashing Democrats like James Talarico, the Texas state representative who is running for the Senate and may just win. (Significantly, the king of the manosphere, podcaster Joe Rogan, is actually a fan of Talarico.) 

There are some other big names in the podcasting world, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, who are now openly antagonistic toward Trump, mostly for opportunistic reasons. The pair are among the early crowd jostling for power within the post-Trump right-wing ecosystem. Kelly has railed against the Trump family’s alleged corruption, while Carlson appears to be positioning himself as a presidential candidate, with his iconoclastic takes on a number of issues and increasing talk of a third-party bid. He recently told NPR that Trump should be removed from office. 

But mainstream conservative media is still largely on board the Trump train, although Fox News’ firing of Maria Bartiromo for coordinating with the White House — hilarious as the network’s outrage is, considering the cozy relationships between the president and Fox hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — and its decision to stand against Trump in support of CNN, MS NOW and POLITICO has revealed a schism. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has also been pulling no punches throughout the second term. 

But what of the Republican establishment? Since Trump’s exultant victory in 2024, they have behaved as if he were ordained by God to be America’s reigning monarch, omnipotent and infallible. Republican governors have largely abdicated their own roles as one of the Constitution’s checks and balances, agreeing to give up their own sovereignty to serve his agenda, while the GOP majorities in Congress have proven to be nothing more than trained seals happily signing on to the president’s usurpation of their own power. 

But you can’t really blame them. Until quite recently, there was no shaking the hold Trump had on the GOP base. They were willing to believe that everything wrong in the country was the fault of former president Joe Biden, and that Trump was left with a massive disaster he had to clean up. The truth, of course, was the opposite. He actually inherited a recovering economy — dubbed “the envy of the world” in 2024 by The Economist — and newfound global respect. If Trump had done nothing and simply continued the policies that were already in place — and then taken credit for them, as he is wont to do — he would be in a different position today. But he surrounded himself with radicals and sycophants, and he believed his own hype. The results have been a disaster.

As Republicans prepare to face the voters in the November midterms, they are finding out that the “magical” Trump mystique was actually luck and hot air. Reality still exists, and it bites. Hard. 

As we head into the final month before the election, the polls appear very bad for Republicans. The House majority is almost certainly gone, and the Senate is increasingly in play, something that wasn’t seriously contemplated six months ago. The president’s approval ratings are in the low to mid-30s, and his ratings on the most important issues of the economy and the Iran war are even worse. Gasoline and diesel prices have turned the two big promises Trump made — to lower prices and keep the nation out of wars — into epic failures, and voters are livid. 

Suddenly, GOP candidates are running for the hills. Candidates in tight races in battleground and red states — including Mike Rogers, who is running for the Senate in Michigan against Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who faces Josh Turek, a Democrat, in Iowa — are saying the Iran war must end. (As the New York Times pointed out, Hinson was among seven House Republicans who recently supported a resolution calling on the president to stop or seek congressional approval for military action in Iran.) Others are scrubbing or downplaying endorsements by or mentions of the presidents on their campaign websites. According to The Washington Post, Mike Beltran, the Republican nominee running against Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., touted on his website earlier this year how he had “stood with President Trump every step of the way.” That language has now vanished, along with photos of Trump and references to “America First.” At least seven other GOP congressional candidates, reported the Post, are doing the same. One Florida Republican. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, has even publicly condemned the president for elements of his radical deportation policy.

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Historically, this is common. Midterms are notoriously hard on the party in power, and presidents usually take the blame. Often, the approved strategy is for candidates to go ahead and distance themselves from the president, and try to win their races by portraying themselves as independent thinkers who will not rubber-stamp the unpopular majority’s agenda. Whether it’s Bush in 2006 or Obama in 2014, close midterm races almost always feature some version of that same sales pitch. The only exception in recent years I can think of is 1998, when the GOP’s threats to impeach President Bill Clinton over the findings of the Starr Report with regard to his relationship with Monica Lewinsky blew back on them, costing them seats and resulting in the resignation of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich in disgrace. 

But this time it is especially jarring considering the fealty Republicans have been required to show their leader — and have willingly given him — until now. That loyalty ended up not helping Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who lost his primary just a few months ago when Trump endorsed his opponent in retribution after Cornyn waited too long to endorse him in 2024. As the midterm campaign has unfolded, it’s belatedly become clear to many Republicans that standing with Trump may be riskier, even among the party’s base, than standing against him.

But they have a problem. The president won’t shut up. To the chagrin of most of his own party, he is insisting on making the midterms all about him. A narcissist to the core, Trump believes that the only way Republicans win in November is if he is out there bragging and blaming and lying as he always does, because that has been the secret sauce that brings out MAGA voters. He has even released a taxpayer-funded propaganda ad — which is illegal — touting his alleged accomplishments. 

No one should mistake the Republican retreat from Trump as a full-scale rebellion. Instead, it’s a tepid, last-minute attempt on the part of some desperate candidates to show independence, knowing they may lose anyway — and that the president will say it’s because they didn’t support him enough anyway. The Republican Senate had a chance to take a stand on one of the biggest issues in the campaign, and the one that’s causing the most pain for average voters: Iran. On Thursday they voted down a resolution to end the war. The tally was 50-49. When it comes to putting their votes where their mouths are, it’s clear they will default to Trump as always. Voters, though, are finally seeing through them.

The post Republican candidates are running for the hills appeared first on Salon.com.

Despite everything, I sometimes find it hard not to sympathize with Donald Trump. 

Like Trump, I also chose to make the site of a future climate catastrophe my permanent home. Like Trump, I live in a home more than a century old and spend each day disgusted with the handiwork of the previous inhabitants. Like Trump, I’m fighting a losing battle against decay.

I can’t get too mad when Trump smoothes out the columns of the White House or paves over the Rose Garden when I look at my closet shelves shoved through  drywall or my mirrors held in place with blue-tack putty. When I see the sloppily applied makeup on his hands or the AI edits that transform his doughy octogenarian body into a superhero physique, I try not to think about the cobwebs of spliced knob-and-tube wiring in my attic that became outmoded around the time of Thomas Edison’s death.    

Trump’s poll numbers are in free fall, presaging a brutal midterm election that might make him a premature lame duck. The Big Lie of 2020 has gone stale. His promise to keep America out of new wars has fallen apart in the dumbest and most expensive way imaginable. His foundation is cracking, with at least some longtime MAGA boosters turning on him. His public rambling and late-night Truth Social screeds suggest there may be termites in the rafters. Overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work he’d have to do to actually set things right, Trump has opted for a fresh coat of paint.

The president launched Trump TV on YouTube earlier this week, and once again I can see the logic. The 24-hour propaganda stream allows him to crow about his accomplishments while avoiding the pesky questions that even sympathetic news networks have started tossing at him lately. At a moment when former supporters are visibly backing away from Trump’s moldy message and trying to seal themselves off from the toxic reputational effects of his second term, Trump is creating a safe space for his lead-poisoned die-hards. It’s almost an act of love, or about as close as someone as self-obsessed as the president can get. 

There’s no tension on Trump TV and precious little in the way of explanation. The streaming channel acts as a firehose of Trump news, meant to be met with unquestioning applause from the most devoted members of Trump’s shrinking and increasingly elderly  base. It’s an endless stream of nothing, meant to fill time more than entertain, like the brainrotted AI slop that pollutes TikTok streams, except many leagues less interesting. The lack of conflict that might have been created on a conventional news channel renders his impromptu network interminably boring. 

As the Bulwark puts it,  the channel has “no purpose.”

“It’s simply Trump’s staff trying to fix a problem Trump created — all in an ad hoc way but while trying to give the misimpression that there’s a plan.” the outlet’s Brendan Hartnett wrote. “It’s political ephemera — the sort of content that arguably isn’t even meant to be watched the first time, let alone replayed later.”

Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye agrees, calling  the self-evident desperation “excruciating”:

When a clown’s only trick is shouting into a live microphone, the absolute worst thing that can happen is for the cameras to simply turn off. It’s clear by this week’s spectacle that Trump cannot survive the possibility that America has finally changed the channel.

Away from his glorified YouTube playlist, a pro-Trump ad aired recently on Fox News, pushing back hard against the nonexistent danger of communism in America. Proudly displaying the probably-illegal fact that it was paid for the U.S. government, the commercial uses a visual language deeply familiar to denizens of the online right. A pulsing mix of photos of Trump looking maximally presidential flies past as slogans flash across the screen. UFC president Dana White crows about Trump’s toughness over phrases like “DEFEND LAW AND ORDER” and “AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY.”

It’s the stuff of AI conserva-slop and gooner Discord channels. It’s unclear whether the TikTok-y style will land with the older, couch-bound Fox News audience, but the purpose is easy to discern. Like Trump TV, it’s meant to boost confidence in the president among an ever-diminishing group of supporters, to create belief in an alternate reality where the White House isn’t falling down around him. 

Let’s be clear that the rot didn’t start with Trump. He was ushered into office by a pre-existing coalition of racists, the tax-cut-seeking wealthy and millions of Americans who got left behind in the unequal recovery from the Great Financial Crisis.  If the whole experiment hadn’t been decaying in the first place, it never would have embraced a bigoted, silver-spoon game show host. Again, I can sympathize. If my own house weren’t in a state where examining anything too closely costs $200, if there weren’t cracks in the porcelain and popcorn shedding from the ceiling, I’d never have been able to buy it. 

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Like Trump, I’m no expert at the job I’ve been handed. I meet each new crisis with little more than a desire to muddle through, to patch it up well enough that I can forget about it. In that light, it’s easy to forgive Trump TV its shoddiness and his advertisements for their questionable legality. The right way to fix the holes in the floor is kind of abstract, while the screws and plates in my utility closet are right there. Trump can’t fix the core problems of an increasingly unequal America or stop the slide of the country’s global esteem. So, why not slather on another coat of bull and hope no one notices?  

Trump’s term will end soon. He will visibly grow older – pretty fast, I suspect — and then he’ll die. Trumpism just has to hold on until he can sell it off to some other sucker. 

The post Trump TV’s intentional brainrot appeared first on Salon.com.

In the mid-2000s, “Dateline NBC” correspondent Chris Hansen became a national sensation for his hidden-camera sting show, “To Catch a Predator.” Shortly after, he became a meme. 

Given the nature of “To Catch a Predator” — where Hansen applied his stern, lilting newscaster intonation to horrific online chat logs between grown men and what they assumed were teenagers — this blur between revulsion and comedy was practically inevitable. Hansen, along with the entire “To Catch a Predator” production, had a way of making the off-putting internet shorthand that men used in these archaic web chats to describe their sexual proclivities seem comical. As repulsive as the correspondence was, chat typos and ludicrous fetishes often made the predators look like bumbling fools, desensitizing viewers to their alleged crimes and downplaying the severity of their actions. As a form of ritual humiliation for its subjects, who were subsequently arrested and detained after being interrogated by Hansen in Tuscan décor kitchens around America, the show gave viewers the thumbs-up to turn its investigations into online fodder. Who were they hurting by making a joke out of those trying to hurt others?

Lance Oppenheim’s new film “Primetime,” in which Robert Pattinson assumes Hansen’s enigmatic role, reveals the answer — sort of. Pattinson portrays Hansen as a caricature of himself, accentuating the journalist’s unmistakable vocal cadence to remove any distance between “To Catch a Predator” and the man behind the show. The effect is something like uncanny sketch comedy, dredging laughs from Hansen’s stilted expressions and intense demeanor, regardless of a scene’s emotional gravity. 

When the film’s second trailer dropped, Pattinson’s delivery of the notable Hansen-ism, “You see how this looks, right?” instantly became a reaction video itself; a meme of a meme of a meme. Soon after, the film’s distributor, A24, posted a production photo of Pattinson styled to look like Hansen’s headshot, the source of innumerable jokes during the aughts when memes were just two blocks of text in Impact font. At a pop-up event, A24 sold “Primetime” merch featuring another Hansen quote: “What would’ve happened if I wasn’t here?” For a film ostensibly about how “To Catch a Predator” self-destructed by catering to people tuning in for laughs and entertainment, it’s disconcerting that the movie’s marketing would play into the exact culture it’s commenting on.

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But perhaps that’s the point. “Primetime” presents itself as a story about Hansen’s callous quest for ratings and notoriety at the expense of his tact, but the portrait is unfinished. Not even “Predators” — the 2025 documentary on this very subject that not only beat “Primetime” to the punch but has far more to say about Hansen’s effect on culture — can complete the image. We, the audience, are the final piece of the puzzle, the culpable players who not only ate up the original “To Catch a Predator,” but all the media and memes that spun off it. 

Now, “Primetime” (and its marketing) exposes itself as a continuation of that culpability, turning “To Catch a Predator” back into a spectacle for the viewer to gawk at, spoon-feeding them shallow bromides between handfuls of popcorn. The film poses no questions about Hansen’s ethics that haven’t already been asked, making the entire affair feel guilty of the same sensationalism as Hansen’s original show. “Primetime” isn’t a film so much as it is a final exam testing what we’ve learned over the last 20 years. The answer? Not much.

Set in late 2006, “Primetime” takes place in the shadow of Saddam Hussein’s collapsing regime, a context the film repeatedly emphasizes by reminding the audience that Hansen — though darting between Florida condos and Jersey Shore houses — is first and foremost a telejournalist. He senses the world changing in real time and doesn’t want to get left behind, lest his reporting and notoriety succumb to oblivion. With “To Catch a Predator” already a hit, NBC execs decide to move the show to a primetime slot to capitalize on its success. All Hansen has to do is deliver the high-impact predators: prominent pedophiles who can prove the show has a reach beyond the creeps who linger too long outside schoolyards. To do it, Hansen forges forward with all the ardent conviction of an American soldier, clinging to the belief that his definition of good is the greater good, too.

This is where “To Catch a Predator” divides. Some view the show as a public service; others see it as an illegitimate operation that lures creeps into a sting, allowing audiences to see the moment subjects realize their lives as they knew them are essentially over. On “To Catch a Predator,” there is no differentiation between the levels of danger the men pose; no mercy for those who understand they’re sick and desperately plead for rehabilitation. The show makes the final judgment call, with Hansen serving as executioner. 

This total lack of regulation begets unchecked power. And it’s this scarcity of restrictions that contributed to the suicide of Bill Conradt, a former Texas district attorney who shot himself in November 2006 when police and NBC cameras forcibly entered his home. Eager to catch his biggest fish yet and keep the show highly rated, Hansen made the fatal mistake of pursuing the predator, rather than trapping him. Hence the film’s clunky equivalence of Hansen’s dogged chase to that of the American army.

These cultural comparisons would and should be interesting, if not for screenwriter Ajon Singh’s frustratingly shallow screenplay and Oppenheim’s stylish yet one-note direction. Whenever “Primetime” comes close to a deeper truth, the film backs off entirely, deferring to Pattinson to deliver the intended magnitude. And though his impersonation is spot-on, even a stellar character actor like Pattinson can’t voice his way out of platitudinous dialogue. “There used to be a pillory in every civilized town,” Pattinson’s Hansen remarks about the state of justice. “Now there’s a television with me on it.” Oh, brother.

But though “Primetime” fails to be a deservedly introspective analysis of its subject matter, it does tee up fair questions about its own existence. At one point, Hansen tells a “Predator” decoy, Dan (Skyler Gisondo), about a reporting trip to India, where he observed villages searching for a string of missing children. With no leads, the residents turned on each other to enact justice by their own hands. Hansen uses this as a metaphor for the “To Catch a Predator” conceit. But it’s a far better analogy for how viewers rallied behind the show, making Hansen and his questionable methods a sensation that could be replicated after their mutual cancellation.

 

Discussing his India trip, the “Primetime” version of Hansen remembers an alleged witness to the kidnappings, who describes the perpetrator as a monstrous ancient evil lurking in the dark. Hansen believes that by targeting predators, he is helping rid the world of such an entity. Later in the film, Oppenheim depicts a brief glimpse of said figure, lurking in the bushes outside of Conradt’s home in the wake of his suicide. The image is at once hokey and compelling, suggesting in unwieldy terms that the monster Hansen has been chasing is like a Hydra: cut off its head, and it’ll regenerate with two more. 

Peering back at Hansen from the shrubbery, the film seems to suggest that we — the audience to this specious display of white-knighting nobility — are monsters who can act just as heinous as the criminals. After all, the public drove up the “To Catch a Predator” ratings; they turned Hansen into both a hero and a joke. Perhaps we’re just as responsible for trivializing the show’s subject matter as the show itself, and the fact that anyone is eager to see this movie points to the unfortunate truth that we haven’t learned from our actions in the last two decades.

And while that is true to some degree, the curious viewer can’t shoulder the blame for the film’s shortcomings. All the memes and merch exist on the movie’s fringes. If the movie had more to offer than frivolous musings about the fame machine and its sickly products — complex ideas that warrant real digging instead of ironically superficial investigation akin to Hansen’s — it might successfully catch us in its trap. But unlike the show it’s scrutinizing, “Primetime” lets its prey walk free.

The post “Primetime” isn’t Chris Hansen’s story — it’s ours appeared first on Salon.com.

It’s time to vote in one of the most consequential elections of the year, one only slightly less important than the November midterms. Of course I’m talking about Fat Bear Week, the annual event in which people elect — well, yes, the fattest bear. The candidates are bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska, who are currently busy devouring as many calories as possible to fatten up for winter hibernation. Voting officially opened Sept. 22, continuing a tradition started in 2014 to select which bears are the best and most fat using a March Madness-style bracket. You can learn more and vote here, plus read some delightful bios on the bears in the running or peruse its hall of champions.

Something like a million people vote in this event every year, according to the daytime news segment that I caught at the dentist the other afternoon while getting a tooth cleaning. Do I need to fact-check that? Sometimes information just comes at you when you have your mouth wide open and people are prodding their fingers around inside. (It remains a mystery, however, why my dentist has a TV on in every room.)

My point is, everyone is talking about Fat Bear Week, and I encourage it. Growing up, I was one of those reflexively contrarian teenagers who hated anything popular and found value in almost anything obscure, independent or weird. These days I’m much less anti-mainstream, especially when it’s something that brings us closer to our true human nature, which is reflected to some degree in the seasonal behaviors of other species. I, too, will fatten up this winter, whether I want to or not. 

I wish Fat Bear Week could be every week. Some people are trying. There’s now a Fat Marmot Week, a similar event inaugurated this year. But I must add that a family of marmots devastated my garden in April and destroyed my precious stargazer lilies (I am not joking about this; it was brutal and saddening), so I’m having a hard time jumping on that bandwagon. But I’ll try! Go fat marmots, go! Plump yourself on the spoils of would-be gardeners. I was a big fan when succulents became a dumb little trend, because at least that was boosting an interest in plants rather than mass-produced ugly dolls from China or something. I can’t stand all this plastic trash we elevate above the natural world. Maybe I have retained my anti-establishment roots after all. 

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This would be the point in the essay where I introduce some sad facts about falling grizzly population levels or remind everyone that climate change is going to make it harder for bears to exist or something. I definitely need to fact-check that, but I don’t want to. Even coming across news this week that a mining project is being fast-tracked at Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, which neighbors Katmai National Park and could impact bear populations, is not what I need to hear right now. Sometimes we all need some joy in life, such as contemplating the fattest bears without all the other gloomy stuff in the world. I do find plenty of things to be grateful for and optimistic about, even if it doesn’t always come through in my published writing. While I don’t want to ignore all the very important chaos — facts that barely register on the news cycle, like how we keep breaching the planetary boundaries necessary for the flourishing of life — I try not to wallow in it either. That’s what Fat Bear Week means to me, and I think we could all use more stuff like it. Ping me when there’s a Sleekest Dolphin Week, Plumpest Mushroom Monday or the Most Insane Octopus of the Month. Give me the “American Idol” version of meadowlark songs.

I am always humbled and delighted whenever the internet explodes over some recently indexed cat species or a shiny new NASA artifact, like the first images of a black hole or the recent trip around the moon, maybe because the collective awe inspired by stuff like that reminds me that people do feel connected to something larger and more mysterious, whether it’s little red dots in the early universe or bears munching on berries in Alaska. From there, maybe people will take more responsibility for the home we share. There’s not much I can do about grizzly bear populations — which are indeed at greater risk under the Trump administration — but I can show my solidarity; I can vote, not just in fun online elections but in the real, super serious one coming up. And I can dream of — no, demand — a better world for all species. Oh, and by the way, I’m rooting for unnamed bear 909. Read her bio. She’s been through a lot of grief, and I admire her resilience. 

The post Fat Bear Week should be every week appeared first on Salon.com.

Confession: I was never a Beatles girl. Put away your pitchforks, people – a lack of love doesn’t preclude appreciation. After all, without The Beatles, The Monkees wouldn’t exist. And in one of those head-to-head, “One has to go” challenges the internet is so fond of, I’d tell Ringo and the rest to kick rocks every time.

Not long ago some music purists would have called that sacrilege. Some still would, I’m sure. Bear in mind that I didn’t grow up in a household where a Beatles album ever graced a record or CD player. But we had TVs in the kitchen, the family room, and my parents’ bedroom, and that meant that on any given weekday after school, you could find me in one of those places hanging out with Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones.

I’ve had The Monkees on my mind recently because yellow buses are rolling through my neighborhood again, and because this month marks the 60th anniversary of their show’s 1966 series premiere. But I was also reminded of their cultural impact all these years later by a Rolling Stone story that came out this week titled “Seven Reasons Why You Should See Harry Styles Right Now.”

Styles is one of the 21st century’s pop supernovas whose musicianship and charisma evolve with the times – “the kind of pop spectacle that leaves feathers all over the floor and hysteria lingering in the air,” gushed the magazine’s Rob Sheffield in his May review of the performer’s tour-launching show in Amsterdam. He’s also the most successful member of One Direction, a boy band created by and for the British edition of “The X Factor.”

That show didn’t magically endow Styles with talent, but it gave him one of the world’s biggest stages to showcase his gifts. That’s similar to the way producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson brought together four unknowns and accidentally formed one of the last century’s most influential pop bands.

 

 

Nobody expected that, though. Schneider and Rafelson initially sought to build a show around Jones – the Harry Styles of his generation – and recruited the rest of the band with a Hollywood Reporter ad that read, “Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running Parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

Tork, Nesmith and Dolenz were among the 437 who responded. They also happened to be talented musicians.

The once-in-a-century specialness of The Monkees, a made-for-TV creation that became a pop culture force, cannot be overstated. For example, years after “The Monkees,” NBC tried to capture some of The New Kids on the Block’s audience share with the short-lived sitcom “The Guys Next Door.”  It only takes listening to a few of their songs to realize why most people don’t remember they ever existed, which probably suits recording artist Damon Sharpe just fine. Before he became a Grammy- and ASCAP award-winning producer, songwriter and DJ, he paid the rent with this short-lived gig.

That’s nothing to be ashamed of. Many boy bands are created by enterprising producers looking to manufacture stardom using renditions of a well-worn formula of dreamboat archetypes. They are live performers first, though.  

In Schneider and Rafelson’s initial vision, Peter, Mike, Micky and Davy were simply characters living out whimsical two-dimensional adventures built around musical interludes. Ask me to describe any episode’s plot off the top of my head, and I couldn’t. But their music is forever.

“The Monkees” ran for only two seasons, from 1966 to 1968. During that period, the quartet disparagingly nicknamed the Pre-Fab Four made music history, even influencing movies with their post-TV series feature “Head,” the Jack Nicholson-written and produced film that eventually achieved minor cult status.

People still sing along to the Neil Diamond-penned “I’m a Believer,” “The Last Train to Clarksville” and “Daydream Believer,” all of which shot to No. 1 on the charts. Those interludes also foreshadow the music videos that defined the 1980s.

But the musical cuts that earned them cred as stealthy proto-punkers are “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” and Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git,” thrashers that had grade school kids leaping off their parents’ couches for reasons they may not have understood until many years later.

These details are crumbs of the fascinating lore surrounding The Monkees. What impresses me most is their ripple effect on TV and music. Without them, “The Partridge Family” may never have rolled out of their driveway. The Archies and Josie and the Pussycats may never have become American animation classics, with the former snagging a radio hit with 1969’s “Sugar, Sugar.”  

Much of the appeal of “The Monkees” was that its live-action stars were as animated as every other show in the after-school TV blocks that programmed it. They were eternal cool kids, which people celebrated and mourned when Jones’ sudden death in 2012 sparked a multitude of ruminations on what he and the band meant to a generation.  Tork died in 2019, followed by Nesmith in 2021, leaving Dolenz to carry the band’s legacy to this day. He’s still touring.

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However, in a recent interview with AARP, Dolenz emphasized that The Monkees were never a group in the conventional sense. “It was a musical comedy television series about these four guys that wanted to be a band,” he said.

He noted that on the TV show, the band never actually became famous.  “It was the struggle for success that was important, and I think helped endear it to all these kids around the world,” he said, “which does, of course, beg the question of how we could afford a Malibu beach house. But that’s Hollywood.”

Pre-Fab, but still fabulous.

 

The post The Monkees was our first boy band appeared first on Salon.com.

Early morning chaos reigned at the White House on Thursday.

In the pre-dawn hours, federal District Court Judge Timothy Kelly granted CNN, Politico and MS NOW a temporary restraining order allowing them to regain access to the White House after Donald Trump had unceremoniously yanked their press passes last Friday.

But the Secret Service and White House officials initially refused access to those reporters as the work day began, even as Trump allowed entry to Chinese state media, telling them they were friendlier than the independent Washington press corps.

Sitting In evident defiance of a court order, (he never stands for anything, unless it’s to bow to an authoritarian leader) Trump appeared ready to risk an acute constitutional crisis.

By noon he had backed down. 

So by my count that leaves First Amendment attorney Ted Boutrous, who represented the news organizations, 5–0 when pitching against Donald Trump. That’s one hell of a legacy.

If I leave a legacy, I hope it’s for something as well done. 

I imagine Donald Trump wishes the same thing. But I don’t think the president and I agree on the meaning of “well done.” That’s just the way he likes his burgers.

Trump is mired in the muck of his own making — enraged that he can’t get his way, so scared of the midterm elections that he had his supporters take an oath to “cheat like hell” and so ignorant of history that he seems condemned to repeat all its worst parts.

A source of mine from the George W. Bush administration, reflecting on Trump, told me this week, “People? They ain’t no damn good. You can’t trust ’em and can’t love ’em. No good deed goes unpunished.”

“Quoting Mellencamp?” I replied. “Lighten up, brother.” 

I understand the epic frustration Trump causes and inflicts. Some of us have been documenting his dictatorial, disruptive, divisive, dangerous and delusional escapades for more than a decade. This past week, I was forced to relive an experience covering Trump to which, until now, only one other person on the planet could relate. 

On Wednesday, Judge Kelly held a half-hour hearing on CNN, Politico and MS NOW’s request for a temporary restraining order against Trump’s snatch-and-grab of their press passes. To me, this was a case of déjà-vu all over again. Or as my longtime White House colleague Jim Acosta told me on his show Wednesday afternoon, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” Jim and I had a particular reason to trade Yogi Berra quips; we empathize with the reporters’ plight. We’re the only two reporters who’ve been through this before.

Of course, this time there was a new Trumpian twist on the narrative. On Friday, Trump simply said he didn’t like those media companies and resented their negative coverage, and then shooed the reporters away with a wave of his hand. By Monday, after Boutrous filed suit, Trump’s lawyers were making the ridiculous claim that the aforementioned media outlets were compromising national security. 

He’s used that all-purpose catchphrase before to try to get his way with the big, beautiful ballroom and his proposed massive arch. Excuse me? Why would we need snipers on the George Washington Memorial Parkway? Or drones? Or a massive arsenal of weapons and ammunition? OK, Dr. Strangelove, what’s next?

Trump based his national security claim on the actions of a handful of reporters who don’t even hold White House passes, along with one who does. He claimed that a few routine stories — some of them five months old — had somehow compromised national security. The funny thing is that until he made that claim in court, he’d never even cleared his throat on those stories. And the one reporter who holds White House credentials? She recently got them renewed after the stories were published.

Geez, is it possible that Trump was just making stuff up? Judge Kelly’s hearing was a particularly acute memory for Acosta, since Kelly was the judge in his case too.  For me it was unnerving to hear the judge, the plaintiff and the defense attorney mention “Karem v. Trump” about three dozen times in their arguments. My ears were burning, but I tried to remember that in this particular case, having my name mentioned in court was a good thing. Nobody was standing by with handcuffs. Kelly ended the hearing by promising a decision as soon as possible, and issued a 14-day restraining order in a matter of hours.

Too bad I didn’t draw Kelly in my case. Not that I didn’t like its outcome, since U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras and later a federal appeals court ruled that the loss of my press credentials violated due process, setting that as the precedent for all future cases in the D.C. Circuit. It’s just that I was without my press pass for nearly three weeks. Kelly worked more quickly.

Trump of course isn’t fond of Kelly. When he found out who was handling the current case, the president weighed in on Truth Social, calling Kelly “totally disloyal” and “not a particularly fair judge.”

Naturally it was Trump who appointed Kelly to the bench.

I ran afoul of Trump on July 11, 2019, during a meeting in Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, before Trump turned it into a tawdry Miami Beach patio reminiscent of cheap hotels from the 1960s. Trump hosted an event for his favorite media influencers. They sat in seats in the Rose Garden. The rest of us stood, as usual, behind a rope line. 

Trump made a few perfunctory statements and turned to leave. I was about 10 feet away and asked him if he would stay and take a few questions. Someone who was sitting down turned and literally hissed at me: “He’s already talked to the real press.”

I chuckled and said, in my best Rodney Dangerfield voice, “Ooh, here’s a group eager for demonic possession.” That got a few laughs, but when I reviewed the tape later I was disappointed with myself. I usually do a much better Rodney impression. Ask anyone.  

Sebastian Gorka, a Trump underling who speaks like one of those beings who don’t rise until after sunset, approached me from the far side of the Rose Garden after that. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit and resembled the kid who peaked in eighth grade because he was big for his age and could grow a beard. Gorka went on to later infamy selling fish oil in commercials. He’s now back working for Trump, who hires only the best people.

He came at me stomping and yelling: I wasn’t a reporter, Gorka said, I was a punk. I replied that we could either talk here in the Rose Garden or go outside and talk all day. Nothing happened. When the ruckus, of which we were only a part, died down, we found ourselves standing nearly shoulder to shoulder as we left and went our separate ways. Without the cameras on, everything was different.

More than a month passed, and nothing more happened. Then, on Aug.16, 2019, Trump gathered at the rope line for a “chopper talk” session before leaving the White House on Marine One. He answered two of my questions, calling me “Playboy” (my previous longtime employer) as often as he called me “fake news.” I left that afternoon and two hours later, while at dinner with my wife, I got a call from my editor. My credentials had been suspended because I had been rude, crude, unruly and socially unacceptable in my earlier encounter with Gorka. Trump apparently wasn’t upset that on that particular day I had asked him if he was delusional. 

When we got to court, the Trump attorneys said that if they couldn’t throw me out of the White House for what I’d done, then how could they keep reporters from mooning the first lady. They didn’t mention mooning other reporters. Would that compromise national security? No? I guess directly mooning the president might qualify.

Judge Contreras said in his judgment, “This event was also one where jocular insults had been flying from all directions.There is no indication in the record that other offenders were reprimanded or even told to stop.”

As Kelly said from the beginning of the Wednesday hearing, the decision in Karem v. Trump affirmed and fleshed out due process, and he had to apply it as precedent, meaning the government was screwed from the outset. The reasons for pulling my pass were ridiculous, but the importance of the decision cannot be forgotten. 

While it is a privilege to get a White House press pass, that’s not the point. It cannot be confiscated without a well-defined cause. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning — as the President did here,” Boutrous argued. Accordingly, the loss of those credentials and the “White House access” that accompanies them without due process is unconstitutional. 

I’d like to personally thank Donald Trump for his actions. By going after media organizations this time around instead of individual reporters, as you did with me and Acosta, you finally got the press to work together again — though I’m quite sure that wasn’t your intention. Still, it warms the cockles of my heart to see pool reporters finally refusing to cover the president until and unless he stops acting like an ass.

Had the press worked together so diligently when Acosta and I had our passes confiscated, or when Trump took over assigning reporters to the press pool, or when the AP ran afoul of the president over the “Gulf of America,” or when he kicked reporters out of the upper press area, then we might have avoided the latest dust-up. The only way to stand up to a bully is to push back and defend our rights. I applaud everyone who is now in the fight. As Bruce Willis put it in “Die Hard,” “Welcome to the party, pal.” I’m just pointing out that the party was sparsely populated before you got here. 

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Maybe Karem v. Trump is all the legacy I will ever get. Beating Trump three times in court? I will claim it. I leave it to history to judge its importance to the First Amendment. 

I’d prefer my legacy to be my family. That, plus a five-minute black-and-white short film of a man and a woman meeting, dancing to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and then walking away from each other. But you can’t have everything. I’m not picky. I’m just listening to jazz.

Ted Boutrous’ legacy will be his historic defense of free speech and due process by defeating the hackish clowns from Trump’s Justice Department who tried to peddle lies a fool could pry apart. He’s beaten Trump three times representing me, once more defending Acosta and now he’s won again.Trump will leave an unparalleled legacy of the attempted destruction of the U.S. Constitution. He too will be long remembered – though not for anything good. 

Wednesday’s decision by Judge Kelly shows that the power in the White House remains with “We the people.” Trump is just a hired hand, a temp employee whose stewardship of the republic has failed miserably. 

We’d better not forget that, because remembering and acting on it should be everyone’s shared legacy.

 

The post Years before his CNN and Politico ban, Trump yanked my press pass appeared first on Salon.com.

It wasn’t long after Braden Peters, better known as “Clavicular,” was arrested on suspicion of raping a 17-year-old girl at his family’s home in Massachusetts that his fellow MAGA influencers started complaining that he was the real victim. 

“Now we live in a climate where a 19-year-old can’t even sleep with a 16-year-old with a little alcohol involved. Absolutely insane,” said Nick Fuentes, the popular white nationalist podcaster, ignoring the fact that it has long been considered rape to have sex with someone unconscious and unable to consent, as alleged by the criminal complaint against Peters.  

Others floated conspiracy theories accusing the mysterious “they” of trying to “control” Clavicular, or claiming he is besieged with “women trying to ruin his life with rumors.” Brian Atlas of the “Whatever” podcast posted a video of the alleged victim drinking with Peters, as if it were exonerating evidence instead of bolstering the criminal case against him. Clavicular himself has been accusing the girl of fabricating her claims to get revenge for being rejected by him, an accusation echoed online by many of his fans. Right-wing commentator Richard Hanania, whose claims of reforming his racist views have drawn laudatory profiles in Vox and The Atlantic, struck out against the accuser, apparently because she didn’t cut off immediate contact with Peters after the alleged rape. (Research shows that victims often maintain contact with their assailants, especially if they’re still in denial or processing the trauma.) 

Such reactions are entirely predictable. MAGA hysteria over “cancel culture” has long provided an excuse to recast bigots as free speech martyrs on the specious grounds that being criticized for saying ugly things is a violation of their First Amendment rights. This was always pretzel logic, but the halos granted to the canceled by right-wingers has expanded beyond those who are mad because people yelled at them on social media. Actual crimes, especially violence against women, are now being excused and justified by redefining perpetrators as victims of cancel culture. As long as what you do makes progressives and feminists angry, it appears, there is no limit to how some on the right will protect and even canonize you. 

“MAGA and the right-wing have really lost the thread when it comes to their anger at cancel culture and are now just angrily fighting on the side of anyone who does like a crime,” Cody Johnston of “Some More News” noted in a recent episode. “Especially, it seems a crime against women.”

The Daily Wire, a right-wing production company founded by Ben Shapiro, openly brags how it hires actors and other talent shunned by mainstream Hollywood studios. “Thank you to the purple hairs. Please ‘cancel’ more creative geniuses,” a representative for the company said in a May 2025 press release that touted the hiring of former “Jeopardy!” producer Mike Richards as the new CEO. Richards had been slated to take over as host of “Jeopardy!” in 2021 — until The Ringer published an exposé containing accusations that he had been abusive toward female employees and “repeatedly used offensive language and disparaged women’s bodies” on his short-lived podcast. His hiring by The Daily Wire followed other prominent contracts between the outlet and canceled actors such as Gina Carano, who was fired from Disney after she equated liberals mocking her right-wing views to Nazis murdering Jews. 

The Daily Wire’s glorification of the canceled quickly expanded beyond those who had experienced consequences for hate speech, however. After coming aboard, Richards soon hired Jonathan Majors, who had been fired from the Marvel franchise years earlier, to star in an action film called “Run Hide Fight: Infidels,” a movie reportedly so terrible that even critics struggled to take its vicious Islamophobia seriously. Unlike previous high-profile hires of canceled celebrities, though, Majors wasn’t just guilty of saying terrible things. He was convicted of domestic violence in 2024. 

As Johnston notes, MAGA leaders like Tesla CEO Elon Musk have also been championing “Citizen Vigilante,” an independently produced and intensely racist film starring Armie Hammer as a former Army officer on a killing spree against immigrants. Hammer has been accused by multiple women of sexual and emotional abuse, with at least one woman claiming he raped her. Although he has consistently denied the charges, he did admit in an interview with Air Mail in 2023 to having “used people.”

“They could have been happy to just be with me and would have said yes to things that maybe they wouldn’t have said yes to on their own,” he said. Hammer was dropped by his agency and lost acting jobs, and he now contends he had no idea “Citizen Vigilante” would be so “disgusting.”

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Even the right-wing influencer Andrew Tate, who has twice been arrested on charges of rape and sex trafficking, has long benefited from the glow-up one gets in MAGA circles after claiming status as a victim of cancel culture. The laundry list of allegations against him grew so long that the Trump administration, after seeming to help him escape justice in Romania, finally acceded to the United Kingdom’s request to extradite him and his brother Tristan. Still, it took years before powerful people on the right finally started to inch away from the Tates. Their close relationship with MAGA influencers — and with Trump’s son Barron — have reportedly left the brothers with hope that the administration will intervene on their behalf. 

In retrospect, the shift from exalting those canceled for words to championing those canceled for alleged criminal behavior was inevitable. The First Amendment prevents government censorship, but one reason there are social penalties, including criticism, shunning and firing for hateful rhetoric, is that it is not, in fact, harmless. The discourse around so-called cancel culture has itself been warped, coming to imply that the problem is not bigoted language but liberal reactions to it. The insinuation is that such statements are “just words,” and to have any strong reaction to them is hysterical and overblown.

In fact, there is a direct line between misogynist rhetoric and violence against women. Men who listen to and repeat the idea that women exist to serve them — and should be punished if they reject that duty — are often likely to attempt to enforce that belief with violence. Degrading language aimed at women online often becomes the justification for vile behavior toward them in the real world. Creating social accountability for men who say misogynist things isn’t about feminists being overly sensitive; it’s about preventing those words from turning to action.

Clavicular’s arrest is a perfect example of this issue. He rose to fame as a “looksmaxxer,” which is a spin-off of the larger incel community. Incels believe that men are entitled to women’s sexual attention, and that feminism is an aberration because it allows women to live independently of men, instead of having to trade sex for survival. Looksmaxxers like Clavicular take it a step further, trying to game out strategies to reassert sexual dominance over women. Like Andrew Tate, a lot of the looksmaxxer discourse skirts the law by focusing on manipulating and tricking women into sex. But the implication of overt coercion is always bubbling beneath the surface. After all, if you feel that you are owed sex by women, rape becomes less like a crime and more like recompense. 

To be fair, conservatives aren’t the only ones who have fueled years of panic over “cancel culture.” The hysteria has normalized and promoted by centrist pundits in publications like The Atlantic and The New York Times, helping to obscure what should have been obvious: that bad words lead to bad actions.

Bigoted chatter online isn’t just trolling or trying to get a rise out of liberals. It’s dehumanizing actual people, and it makes violence against them easier to justify. By all accounts, Clavicular was enjoying his rising fame, engaging in laudatory interviews in popular venues like Barstool Sports and the “All In” podcast, outlet that treated his misogyny as mere theatrics. The rape charges against him should be a reminder to us all: Sometimes people actually act on their beliefs. 

The post Clavicular’s charges shows the real danger of MAGA manhood appeared first on Salon.com.

Elizabeth Warren’s job doesn’t need to be this hard.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts is leading a cadre of largely left-of-center lawmakers in reviving the Stop Wall Street Looting Act, legislation that would curtail the worst tendencies of private equity firms. These investment firms frequently buy struggling companies in leveraged buyouts, foisting the debt of the purchase back onto the business being bought. The firms downsize staff and sell off parts of the purchased company to create dividends, all while charging the purchased corporation management fees for their trouble. When the companies frequently fail to service all this new debt, they are forced into bankruptcies that allow the private equity ownership group to walk away. 

Warren has been fighting for a while to hold private equity firms responsible for the well-being of the companies they own. In fact, this is her third attempt at pushing the legislation, which she first introduced in 2019. The act would close loopholes that shield these investment companies from the debts of the newspapers, hospitals and department stores they purchase, and would also limit the amount that could be extracted from a private equity-owned company. 

“Private equity takeovers are legal looting that make a handful of Wall Street executives very rich while costing thousands of people their jobs, putting valuable companies out of ­business, and in the case of health care, is literally a matter of life and death,” Warren said in a statement of an earlier version of the bill. 

Facing one of the most money-friendly presidencies in history and Republican control of the White House and Congress, the bill starts to look like a hard sell. Add in the public’s aversion to barring businesses from doing anything, along with the fond feelings many Americans have for the words “private” and “equity,” and it’s easy to feel hopeless. 

But there is a way to shape public opinion on this issue: Warren and her allies in Congress could simply point Americans toward an iconic redhead with pigtails. In recent years, Wendy’s has taken heat for an alleged decline in food quality. The flood of negative reviews of the fast-food chain, coupled with widespread closures of its restaurants, led Slate to ask in April “What the Hell Happened to Wendy’s?”

The logic behind connecting fast food to private equity takeovers is straightforward. Citizens who aren’t likely to notice when their local newspaper becomes a bit more bare-bones, or that the already byzantine healthcare system becomes slightly harder to navigate, will definitely notice when their lunch gets worse — and could well inspire widespread pushback against murky financial operators.

At least that’s what Stavros Halkias believes. The comedian and actor who made his name on an unprintable dirtbag-left-adjacent podcast made the case for tying private equity to bad sandwiches during a recent interview with sports journalist Pablo Torre.

“I think it’s clear that what’s f**king us up is private equity . . . taking over products that are awesome,” he said. “The one that I’ve actually latched onto recently . . . is fast food.”

Halkias pointed to the fast food chain’s recent adoption of shredded lettuce on its chicken sandwiches as a cost-slashing maneuver typical of private equity-owned restaurants.

“Everybody understands that Wendy’s has gotten s**ttier,” he said. “The spicy chicken sandwich now uses shredded lettuce. Right there, that is private equity. That is someone saying ‘We don’t want a fresh head of lettuce that costs more money. So, we’re going to give you bagged sh**ty lettuce. I know in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deal, but people will notice.”

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Wendy’s is not fully owned by a private equity fund, but Trian Fund Management and its CEO, Nelson Peltz, own nearly a quarter of the chain restaurant’s stock. Peltz has launched multiple bids to take over the chain, most recently in February and August, before deciding he would wait to see if Wendy’s newest CEO, Bob Wright, could turn the flagging operation around. Still, with a buyout looming over the company’s head and its largest investor grumbling, it’s hard to see cost-cutting measures as entirely free from the influence of private equity firms.

Another fast-food chain, Jersey Mike’s, offers a more straightforward example. After the sandwich company was purchased by Blackstone in January 2025, customer complaints about declining quality and rising prices have dogged it ever since. 

“Some f**khead who’s never spread mayo in his life decided instead of a sandwich this is now a commodity,” Halkias said. “By turning the consumer experience shittier, some d**khead who’s never made a sandwich gets a billion extra dollars.”

Halkias sees fast food and professional sports as the two arenas most likely to turn opinion against private equity and investment firms more generally. “I do think if one of these billionaires ruins a franchise, you might have goombah football fans reading Karl Marx,” he said. “If they destroy the Lakers, guys with Kobe back tattoos are going to start the proletariat revolution. I think that the closest we’re getting to class consciousness is fast food and sports teams.”

Halkias gets paid to be funny, and his stand-up career was boosted by a YouTube algorithm that appreciated his talent for crowd work. While Warren and the bill’s co-sponsors shouldn’t lean too hard on an extemporaneous riff from a podcaster, the germ of a promising strategy is there. 

Private equity is abstract by design; the role of these firms is hard to figure for anyone outside of the C-suite. To draw the line between funds with boring names and the everyday services that have been eviscerated by bean-counters, Warren and the supporters of the Stop Wall Street Looting Act will first have to first meet people where they are. And where they are is eating lunch in their cars.

The post The private equity backlash could start at the drive-thru appeared first on Salon.com.

Five episodes into Netflix’s “A Different World” sequel, Hillman gets a bomb threat. This is a very real part of life for students at historically black colleges and universities, but that doesn’t make it any less frightening. Everyone gathers at The Pit, including Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Freddie Brooks (Cree Summer) — who are Hillman faculty now  — to talk it out. One student expresses shock at being targeted at a place they chose because they thought they’d feel safe. Another wonders if it’s an inside job.

The person who best sums up the moment is Dwayne’s daughter, Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon), when she says, “It’s all so exhausting. We go to their institutions, they punish us. We try to build our own; they destroy it. We mess up, they use it against us. What is even the point of trying?”

Right now, that statement could and will be read any number of ways.

There’s the threat itself, which echoes similar ones against HBCUs in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting last September. It also recalls 2022, when more than 30 HBCUs were hit with comparable incidents between January and mid-March.

Deborah could just as easily be critiquing the Trump administration’s vacillation between defunding educational opportunities for minority students, citing the DEI boogeyman, and infusing HBCUs and tribal colleges with millions in cash. Great for those higher-learning institutions, but targeting minority grant funding elsewhere ensures, particularly at the Ivies and Big 10 schools, less diverse undergraduate populations at places that weren’t racially or economically diverse in the first place.

To know “A Different World” as it was is to anticipate that this 2026 visit to Hillman, a fictional HBCU, must contend with these real-world concerns. But, returning to the episode in question, what’s just as vital is how its students deal with this crisis. When the waiting becomes almost too much, Deborah starts humming a few bars of a familiar song. More join in, and soon everybody is singing along, dropping the tension enough to relax a little.

A few breaths later, the lockdown ends. Everyone resumes their business, carrying with them the lesson of never sacrificing their spirit even while living in a state of constant vigilance.

 

 

Expecting the modern, single-camera version of “A Different World” to recapture the multi-camera original’s magic is unreasonable. Read the title, read the room. The 2026 version of “A Different World” comes to us not on a traditional broadcast network, but on a streaming service, where Norman Lear’s return to “One Day at a Time” became a loving chronicle of a Cuban American family’s life. It also adapted Justin Simien’s indie flick “Dear White People” into an in-your-face comedy revolving around the Black experience at an Ivy League college.

But that show relied on the specter of white ignorance to serve as a cultural contrast, whereas “A Different World” is, as the title promises, almost entirely centered on Blackness – and with it, Black joy.

(Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix © 2026)

To those wondering what this show has to contribute 39 years after its 1987 premiere, and following the returns of “Roseanne” and “Will & Grace,” “Full House,” and “That ‘70s Show” (reborn as “That ’90s Show“), that should be enough.

Presumably, explaining Black college life to an audience that almost elected Howard graduate Kamala Harris to our nation’s highest office — and that views her fellow alumnus Ta-Nehisi Coates as one of Black America’s representative voices — is less of a requirement these days. 

Even so, “A Different World,” being a spinoff of “The Cosby Show,” faced different backroom hurdles before its executive producer Debbie Allen got her long-sought greenlight. The holdup is precisely what you think it is. Although Allen and the original series’ head writer, Susan Fales-Hill, shaped the show into the version considered a sitcom classic, Bill Cosby’s creator credit tainted its reputation. The comedian is accused of sexually assaulting dozens of women and was convicted in 2018. That conviction was overturned in 2021 because of a non-prosecution agreement struck with a previous prosecutor. (Cosby continues to maintain his innocence.)

Now that it’s back and under the guidance of “Grey’s Anatomy” alumna Felicia Pride, I can almost guarantee there will be right-wing media commentators crowing, “Who’s they?” while trying to paint this sequel as an extra-woke version of the original.

Doing that would betray their ignorance of the show’s legacy, especially the five seasons that Allen captained. At a time when other sitcoms occasionally tackled social issues in “very special” episodes and “The Cosby Show” hewed to its namesake star’s dedication to respectability politics, “A Different World” regularly confronted harder topics.

Author and professor Brittney Cooper explains what that means in a 2013 Salon story, where she remembers Dr. Huxtable’s eldest daughter Sondra naming her adorable twins Winnie and Nelson after anti-apartheid revolutionaries Winnie and Nelson Mandela in 1988, when they were mainstream political celebrities. Two years later, Hillman student Kimberly Reese (Charnele Brown) agonized over whether to reject a scholarship funded by a company linked to South Africa’s apartheid regime, which was a political act.

None of it felt forced to anyone who sees the college experience as one of political and social awakening. But even “A Different World” hit its limits when it plunged the audience inside the Black folks’ shock and despair after the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. That decision likely led NBC to yank the plug despite its high ratings, Fales-Hill admitted to Vanity Fair. It’s easy to say that was a different time, except we know that isn’t true.

On the contrary, this return to “A Different World” simultaneously reminds us of how far TV has regressed since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The original’s success paved the way for a surge in shows centering Black life in America, including “Living Single,” “Moesha” and “Martin.” It also brought HBCU culture and traditions like step competitions into Middle America’s living rooms.

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Still, this generation of “A Different World” viewers needs to be spoken to in ways beyond the cultural lingua franca of online posting and situationships, which the first season does well. Deborah Wayne and Ron’s son Shaquille (Cornell Young IV) are in one of those, following in the footsteps of Dwayne and Whitley. But under the constant watch of phone cameras and gossip that travels at the speed of social media feeds, they face greater pressures.

(Daniel Delgado Jr/Netflix © 2026)

Within that on-again-off-again tension crackles an exuberance reflected in the whole ensemble, an array of determined smiles and easy joking that momentarily pushes aside those ever-present societal shadows — including the very real possibility that Hillman might close. 

But as Freddie points out to her students, that cliff has always been there. “Black learning spaces have always been seen as dangerous,” she tells her students, “not just because of what students do, but because of who you might become.” Maintaining their joy, then, is seen as both an educational priority and an act of resistance. That’s worth reviving, too.

“A Different World” is streaming on Netflix.

 

The post A homecoming for “A Different World” appeared first on Salon.com.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly to give a speech in which he made it clear that the United States has now fully abandoned its last remaining fig leaf of decency and morality on the world stage, and has embarked on an imperialist model not seen since the 19th century. Since this was a Trump speech, filled with his usual bombast and braggadocio, it didn’t have quite the shock value it might have carried in the past. But there was a new atmosphere in the room. The world sees America as a threat now, and countries are making new arrangements.

The speech was the worst he’s given, and that’s saying something. Delivered with a bored, desultory tone, the obviously tired president spent 40 minutes rambling on and on with his usual litany of grievances and lies. He made it clear that he sees no limits on his power. Looking directly at the Iranian president, he mused aloud, “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival, and no hope of future greatness for generations?” It was outrageously provocative and insulting, and on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded in his own U.N. speech by describing the Islamic Republic as “victims of terrorism” at the hands of the U.S., while claiming “we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force.”

In many ways, this was familiar ground for the president. But there was one portion of his speech that brought home just how far gone American foreign policy is today. Speaking of his policy of murder on the high seas in the Caribbean, Trump claimed that drug traffickers, whom he calls “terrorists,” must be “killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing.” The Navy is routinely blowing up small boats and killing human beings based upon unproven claims that they are transporting drugs. No U.S. or international law sanctions such a thing. And according to a fact-check by the New York Times, Trump’s assertion that this operation has reduced the flow of drugs by 90% is a blatant lie. It has made no difference at all. The policy is an abomination, and it proves to the world that the United States has abandoned all fealty to the rule of law, not to mention common decency. 

But that wasn’t all. The president bragged about his actions in Venezuela, declaring that since his incursion in January, which deposed President Nicolás Maduro, Trump has now acquired “more than 60% of the oil in the world . . . it was a war, but it’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made. To the victor belong the spoils. You’ve all heard that.” (The number is actually about 23%, according to the Times.) We have certainly heard that before — from him. The saying is one of his favorite maxims, but it hasn’t been uttered by any other world leader for centuries. He went on to proclaim, “Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States.” What threat Venezuela posed to our “vital national interests” is unclear, unless it means simply having something we want to take.

To say this at the U.N., which was formed to prevent this very behavior, confirms every nation’s worst fears about what the United States has become under Trump. It is crude, antediluvian imperialism, and the assembled dignitaries did not applaud or even respond, although the Iranian and Cuban delegations did walk out when they were threatened. 

The U.S is obviously now seen by many as a rogue state, disrespected and disdained by allies and adversaries alike. All you had to do was look at the faces of those in attendance to see it. 

But many are realizing, even as Trump besmirched the U.S. and U.N. alike, there is a new “leader of the free world” on the scene. 

Mark Carney did not speak at the General Assembly, but he did hold bilateral meetings and a press conference. In the process, the Canadian prime minister gave some measure of hope to those — including many Americans themselves — who see the U.S. as a threat to world peace and yearn for something better. “This is, in many respects, a time that comes once or twice every century,” Carney told the media gathered in New York. “What comes ahead, it’s not wishful multilateralism, which defends only the status quo, nor a cold realpolitik that dismantles the status quo altogether. The alternative that Canada and many others are pursuing is values-based realism, an approach that’s both principled and pragmatic.”

The last few weeks have been productive for Carney, as he led a summit of big money investors and CEOs, partnering with former prime minister Steve Harper to make a bipartisan pitch for opportunities in manufacturing, natural gas, mining and ports on two oceans. Canada has a wealth of resources, including an educated workforce. You know, kind of like America — before it turned itself into a global pariah. 

Carney followed his U.N. appearance with a triumphant trip to Europe, where he was greeted like a rock star, obviously appreciated for his bold break with the U.S. that began with a visionary speech in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos that called for a new world order. On Sept. 16, at the meeting of the European Commission, President Ursula von der Leyen called for Canada to become the European Union’s first “associate member.” In making the case, she said, “We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies.” 

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In his speech, which was greeted ecstatically by E.U. members, Carney said “Put simply: we’re in a position where we need to pursue calibrated alliances, integrating deeply with those countries who share our values, remaining open-eyed with those who do not.” 

That vision was put into action this week in New York, when Carney and leaders from the European Union and six other nations announced “Partners for Multilateralism,” which he described as “a new forum that looks at universal institutions, practical coalitions and capacities that exist outside of governments to build trust and bring people together.” The prime minister explained that they do not see this as an attempt to form consensus among nations, an impossible task, but to instead create a new paradigm for countries “formed around problems rather than geography or size, not as an alternative to multilateralism, but as an instrument of it.”

I have written before that the post-World War II order has run its course. The end of the Cold War, and the burden of being the world’s policeman and guarantor of security, has warped America’s values. It was clearly time for something new, hopefully better, to emerge in the 21st century. But Trump’s bellicose “transactional” approach, aside from the clear corruption and immorality, exacerbates the problem at a time of serious global challenges that include nuclear threats, climate change and the emergence of artificial intelligence. These issues demand cooperation. But Trump prefers to blow everything up — and reap the financial rewards wherever he can find them.

Finally, someone is proposing something new to take its place. It’s still in the very nascent stages, and who knows where it will go? But it’s a serious proposal that seeks to find some stability and predictability in a modern, multi-polar world that requires both cooperation and flexibility. 

We can thank Carney for taking the president’s threats to Canadian sovereignty seriously and starting this overdue conversation. He is the man to whom those who believe in freedom and democracy now look for leadership, and we should all be grateful that he has willingly taken on the role. 

The post Donald Trump abdicates as leader of the free world appeared first on Salon.com.

There may only be one person in the world who thinks that a Democratic majority in Congress could actually roll back all of Trumpism in a matter of months. 

That’s Donald Trump.

“We gotta win this election,” he told the audience at a rally in North Carolina on Sept. 16. “If we don’t, all of those things that we got you . . . they’re all gonna go away. All of the things that we’ve done, the strongest border in the history of our country, it’s all gonna go away. If we lose, you’re going to lose your border, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your wealth, and our country is going to go through hell, and we’re going to be a laughingstock all over the world, just as we were two years ago.”

It’s almost like he doesn’t know he has a veto.

Back here in the real world, Democrats will likely flip the House in November, and maybe the Senate too. But if they want to have something to show for it two years from now, they’re going to have to find a way to get around Trump’s veto power. 

That will require the kind of aggression — the kind of fight — the current crop of Democratic party leaders has never shown.

Imagine, instead, a Democratic leadership with a to-do list in one hand — starting with a compelling affordability agenda — and a how-to list in the other hand, something like this:

• No more cowering from veto threats. Democrats should dare Trump to veto popular legislation and make him own the consequences if he does.
• Demand major concessions from Trump in return for passing a new debt limit and a defense spending bill, and shut down the government if necessary.
• Drive a wedge between Republican legislators and their increasingly unpopular and irrational leader.
• No more protecting “centrist” Democrats from tough votes.
• Tell the lobbyists to take a hike.
• Impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for malfeasance.
• Impeach Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought for violating congressional spending directives.
• Order the Capitol Police to arrest and jail administration officials if they refuse to honor congressional subpoenas.

Democrats in leadership and on the campaign trail talk a lot about their lofty legislative goals. But some of those goals are unattainable as long as Trump has the veto — and even more so if Republicans keep the Senate. Democrats need to be thinking and talking about what they can practically achieve — and how. And they need to have a battle plan so they can hit the ground running in January.

I raised questions about how they could do that in a Sept. 2 op-ed for MS NOW. As part of my hunt for answers, I turned to some wise left-leaning Washington veterans for their thoughts.

“This is going to be really tricky business,” Norman Ornstein, the longtime congressional analyst, told me.

“It would require a wholesale change in the DNA of House and Senate Democrats,” said Jim Manley, a political strategist who spent more than 20 years working in the Senate, including six years as spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Triumphant congressional Democrats “are going to be feeling feisty, they’re going to feel vindicated, and they’re going to feel like fighting like hell,” said Robert Kuttner, who co-founded the Economic Policy Institute and the American Prospect.

“If they aren’t assertive,” Ornstein warned, “they may not hold their majority for very long.” 

Each of these experts, with decades of experience between them, all agreed that whether Democrats control one of both chambers, they need to pass lots of popular bills and make it painful for Trump and Republicans to oppose them. If the legislation becomes law, it’s a huge victory. If it’s blocked, the public will know who to blame. 

“The old playbook says you’ve got to be concerned about the threat of a veto,” Manley said. “Why go through that exercise if it can’t get through the Senate and/or is going to be subject to the president’s veto? You’ve got to husband your resources.” 

But now, he said, “If the president wants to veto it, that’s fine. We’ve got to adopt a strategy that you never know until you try. You never know until you apply pressure. You never know until you force a vote. Trump is incredibly weakened already. He’s going to be even weaker next year. He’s losing juice on Capitol Hill. He’s losing altitude with the American people.”

Democrats are in general agreement about one starting point: an affordability agenda recently outlined by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. It calls for bringing down the cost of healthcare, groceries, gas and housing. Of those four areas, healthcare is approaching a major crisis, which sets the Democrats up for their first major battle: Restoring the devastating Medicaid cuts in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Republicans in 2025 intentionally postponed until after the 2026 midterms.

“Very few people appreciate the fact — except for the authors of the bill that did it — how much healthcare spending is going to be cut, and how many people are going to be hurt in the next year,” said Manley.

As Ornstein explained, “Medicaid money doesn’t go to the 10 million people who are going to lose their health insurance because they impose these new onerous work and reporting requirements. It goes to the providers.”

Hospitals and nursing homes will lose money and some will close, putting even more pressure on those that remain.

“So first,” Ornstein said, “you’re going to hold hearings pointing out why this is happening, and that it was the Big Beautiful Bill that did it. Two, you are going to pass bills that restore funding. And if Trump vetoes them then you’re going to hold a bunch of hearings on why he is undermining health care in America.”

Legislation to restore Medicaid cuts— and to restore the tax credits for the Affordable Care Act that Trump cut last year, throwing three million people off their insurance plans — “those are the kinds of things that are just very, very popular that are going to be hard for Republicans to oppose,” Kuttner said.

“There will be negotiations,” he said. “And the more Republicans [that] Democrats have siding with them, then the more pressure there is on Trump.”

Fissures are sure to keep growing between Trump and Republicans in Congress, Kuttner said. “If the Republicans have a wipeout in both houses — and it’s increasingly looking like that could well happen — and Trump is in his last two years and is a crazier and crazier lame duck, a lot of the loyalty starts dissipating.”

“It’s not like they’ll suddenly recover backbone or principle,” he said. “This is just a simple calculation of self-interest.”

“Will there be ways to try and exploit that and try and get stuff done?” Manley asked. “It’s possible, yes.”

When it comes to demanding that Trump do — or stop doing — something in particular, Democrats don’t have a lot of leverage. But they’ve got some.

“Trump’s got two things that he needs to do next year,” Manley said. “He needs to figure out a way to fund defense spending, and he needs to be a part of an effort to pass a debt limit increase. Beyond that, he doesn’t really need anything legislatively.”

That gives Democrats two big chances to refuse to go along with the president until their demands are met. “They should go to the mat,” Ornstein said, “and that might include government shutdowns, maybe even having extended government shutdowns.” 

While Manley cautioned that any leverage Democrats earn after the midterms “only goes so far,” he pointed out that “doesn’t mean they can’t try to use it.” Democratic leadership is also going to have to start getting tougher with the caucus, he said. 

Manley pointed out that two conservative Democrats cast the decisive votes on Sept. 1 advancing a Republican legislative package. “I just find that highly objectionable. The leadership’s going to have to figure out a strategy to not have people defect on key votes.”

Manley invoked his own history as a Senate staffer as evidence. “The old Jim — the guy who worked for Harry Reid — always looked out for the caucus as a whole, trying to protect the centrists. I get this. But there’s going to have to be some changes.”

Democrats will need to do a better job of resisting lobbyists. “You know, former members — and let’s be honest, there’s going to be former members, former staffers — they’re going to go up to the Hill and they’re going to try and plead with Democrats to cut their clients some slack,” Manley said. “And the leadership and the committee chairs are just simply going to have to say no.”

Oversight will be another important way to put Trump and Republicans on the defensive. Once Democrats have the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas that comes with being in the majority, there will be “so many incredible opportunities for investigation,” Kuttner said.

There will also be one major obstacle: Ever since 2019, shortly after the midterm elections during his first term that gave Democrats a majority in the House, Trump has simply refused to honor congressional subpoenas.

During Trump’s first administration, Democratic House members voted to issue criminal contempt citations to two Cabinet officials — Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — who denied them documents. But it didn’t work: Criminal contempt enforcement is up to the Department of Justice, and with Barr in charge, the department balked.

There is, however, a way Democrats can escalate: They can brush off their “inherent contempt” power, and enforce it themselves.

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“How far are you willing to go?” asked Ornstein. “Are you actually going to use your power, set up a little jail in the Capitol, and have the Capitol Police arrest them?” 

Ornstein’s answer: Yes. “I’d like to see that. If people are going to defy Congress, hold them accountable, knowing that this Justice Department won’t do so.”

If they win a majority in the Senate, of course, Democrats will also have the ability to confirm or reject Trump appointees, including judges. “You would hope that they would basically say: ‘no more radical lunatic judges, no more rattle radical lunatic Cabinet members or sub-Cabinet members,’” Ornstein said.

Trump could counter by putting those appointees — or even worse choices — in acting roles. But, as Ornstein put it, “You’re not going to have an opportunity to put in lifetime appointments — and you certainly will not have the opportunity with the Supreme Court.”

Finally, there’s impeachment. On the one hand, launching impeachment proceedings in the House is unlikely to result in removal, which requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. But they’re great for focusing the public’s attention. 

Ornstein supports the impeachment of some Trump Cabinet members — starting with Hegseth. Republicans are already so terrified of having to take a stand on Hegseth that after renegade Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against him on Sept. 16 and demanded a vote, Speaker Mike Johnson chose to call an early recess instead.

“For the vast majority of Americans who have no clue what horrors have been inflicted upon the country by these monstrous people, you’re going to actually be able to shine a light on them,” Ornstein said. “You can shine a light on what Pete Hagseth has done to get us into this disastrous war, to hollow out the military, to undermine American national security.” 

And, Ornstein said, “I would also, at minimum, make clear that there’s no statute of limitations for this” and that “we can promise you that [he] will be charged in 2029.”

Next on his list would be Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Collins, which would create yet more heartache for Republicans. “Are you going to side with people undermining food safety, people taking away Alzheimer’s research, and causing measles outbreaks and deaths? Or are you going to do the right thing?” Ornstein said.

If the administration keeps ignoring congressional budget appropriations, Manley said, “then Russell Vought goes to the top of the impeachment list.”

Impeachment hearings also force the media to pay attention. “You’re going to embarrass them and you’re going to highlight the fact that the terrible things happening to people are being caused by the Trump administration,” Ornstein said. “Which, mind you, the press should have been telling them very clearly over the last several years, but they haven’t, and with the hook of the Democrats conducting these hearings, they will.”

Ornstein said the future for a Democratic congressional majority is uncertain. “They’ve made these promises. But they don’t have the power to implement them. They’re on the firing line and people may blame them. And Trump and billionaires will put a lot of money into blaming them for everything bad that happens. And then the question becomes: Are they able to use tough leadership over the power of the purse to bring about some changes? And I don’t know the answer to that.”

The post After Democrats beat Trump in the midterms, here’s how they finish him appeared first on Salon.com.