newrepublic--2020-10-08--No, Regeneron Did Not Cure Donald Trump of Covid-19

On Wednesday afternoon , President Trump tweeted a nearly five-minute video in which he directly attributed his progress recovering from Covid-19 to a monoclonal antibodies treatment from Regeneron , a company in which he has previously invested .
In the video , Trump implied that we no longer need to worry about the coronavirus because there is a “ cure.
” There are many reasons to object to the president of the United States advertising the efficacy of an experimental drug and promoting , by name , a company he has links to and whose executive is a member of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ front of the White House .
But there ’ s one in particular that doctors identified in this bizarre episode : The president ’ s own health updates cast a shadow of uncertainty on the treatment ’ s effectiveness .
Earlier that day , Dr. Sean Conley , Trump ’ s doctor , released a letter that didn ’ t itself provide much new information .
Trump , it said , was reportedly symptom-free for 24 hours .
( That isn ’ t surprising if he ’ s still on medications like aspirin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump hadn ’ t needed any supplemental oxygen since he was hospitalized , Conley wrote .
He also wrote that Trump had detectable levels of what are known as IgG antibodies for the coronavirus .
More telling was what the letter didn ’ t say .
One detail that would indicate how well Trump is fighting the virus would be a decline in his viral load , i.e.
, the amount of virus in his body .
In preliminary results on the monoclonal antibody treatment REGN-COV2 , announced by Regeneron in a press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lower the viral loads of patients with mild illness .
If the treatment is working , Trump might expect to see such a decline .
But that detail was noticeably absent from this and other updates on his health .
In addition , Conley ’ s letter noted that Trump is showing levels of IgG antibodies—but he didn ’ t specify if those antibodies came from the Regeneron treatment itself , which usually lingers in the body for four weeks , or whether Trump is producing any of his own antibodies .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s health , experts say these omissions paint a startling picture .
Based on previous updates , if Trump ’ s medical team were seeing any positive indications , they would have shared them .
With that in mind , Trump ’ s pronouncement that he ’ s confident the REGN-COV2 is responsible for his miracle “ cure ” could be rather reckless .
Not only is it experimental , he also has no actual evidence that it ’ s working—and he may have evidence that it ’ s not .

“There is zero evidence that he is ‘cured,’ and even if he’s getting better, there is nothing to prove it was (or wasn’t) the Regeneron treatment,” Dr. Megan Ranney, an associate professor of emergency medicine and public health at Brown University, told me. “Moreover, claiming ‘miracle cures’ already got people in trouble with hydroxychloroquine and bleach; I wish the president had learned to wait before making these hyperbolic statements.”
She said Conley’s mention of the president having IgG antibodies was “bizarre.” It implies that he doesn’t have IgM antibodies, a type of antibody the human immune system naturally produces before or at the same time as the IgG antibodies the treatment contains. Natural IgM and IgG antibodies would suggest that the body is mounting its own response to the virus, and they usually provide immunity for a few months. If Trump only has antibodies provided by the treatment, Ranney said, “then he likely does not have innate immunity, and when the Regeneron wears off, he will once again be susceptible to the virus.” To make matters more complicated, Trump is also taking dexamethasone, a powerful steroid that, when taken early in the course of Covid-19, could actually suppress the body from mounting its own immune response to the virus.
“I wish the president had learned to wait before making these hyperbolic statements.”
Ranney is taking Trump’s health updates with a hefty grain of salt. “I have to take these guesses because I can’t trust what is being told us,” she said. “All week long, the administration has provided incomplete or half-truthful press data about the president’s course. We are therefore forced to read between the lines.” Ranney said randomized controlled trials, not politicians’ statements, are the best way to know whether and how monoclonal antibody treatments work. “I do believe that this treatment is promising—it has good biologic plausibility for working—but it is just too early to say whether it is effective or not,” she said.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--North Carolina’s Labyrinthine Voting Nightmare

Guilford County , the third most populous in North Carolina , is currently facing something of an electoral crisis .
Earlier this month , data provided by the U.S .
Elections Project at the University of Florida found that Guilford ranked first in the nation for the number of absentee ballots being marked as Not Accepted by the county board , at 4.8 percent .
Of those voters whose ballots remain in limbo , Black voters have been overrepresented among the pulled ballots : As of this writing , while white voters saw their mail-in ballots set aside at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were being marked at 9.7 percent .
A number of factors have led us here—some of them active voter suppression efforts , some of them having to do with the pandemic and the increase in absentee ballot requests by first-time users , and some with a stagnant Democratic Party that for years has failed to proactively embrace mail-in voting and educate voters on the process .
Laws like the Voter ID bill , first passed in 2013 by the General Assembly , as well as its 2010 redistricting plan , are , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost surgically precise ” in their desire to disenfranchise Black voters .
But as North Carolina has proved during this election cycle , it is that end effect , rather than the intent , that matters most .
The pandemic has fundamentally altered the voting process , forcing many voters to fill out their ballots at home for the first time in their lives .
Rather than come together to make a complicated process more accessible and streamlined , conservative politicians—still hoping to see through their years-long project of disenfranchising nonwhite , non-Republican @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagined voter fraud and muck up the courts with lawsuits that stand in the way of a commonsense solution .
It ’ s petty and racist , but it ’ s also working .
The county boards of elections , like the one in Guilford County , are following the orders of the State Board of Elections , which is following the orders of state and federal courts , which are responding to the lawsuits by conservative officials .
These institutions do not necessarily share the same goals as Republican politicians , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the conservatives ’ advantage : Black voters in North Carolina are being disproportionately denied the right to vote in the 2020 general election .
From the outset of the pandemic , it was apparent that there was no chance that the 2020 general election would run normally .
Due to the need for social distancing , vote-by-mail rates have skyrocketed among the voting population .
As of this writing , more than 420,000 voters have had their absentee ballots approved in North Carolina—twice the number of mailed ballots that the state received @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Part of this is due to inexperience with absentee voting. “Voting by mail, or voting by absentee ballot, is new to a lot of people—this is my first election voting by mail,” Kaiser said. The majority of these ballots are being pulled for having what is known as deficiencies. “Deficiencies can be something like the voter forgot to sign the ballot or forgot to sign the envelope,” Kaiser told me. In other words, a minor mistake. Speaking with Triad City Beat, Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer said that the disproportionate rate of discrepancies can be attributed to the fact that mail-in voting has long skewed toward white voters. “People whose first time it is to vote by mail may not fully understand the instructions,” Bitzer said. “In previous research, voting by mail is an overwhelmingly white method. Black voters are traditionally in-person voters.”
What the state board initially wanted to do, and what it instructed the county boards to do via four memos, was allow for these ballots to be “cured,” or fixed, by the voter. That meant contacting the voter and informing them of the deficiencies, or allowing the voter to fill out an affidavit confirming that the ballot is theirs. But a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina in early October, in reaction to the case N.C. Alliance v. State Board, instructed the state board to put a halt to all absentee ballot curing. The North Carolina state board then issued a memo that told the county boards to press pause on the easy-fix options, instructing them to “take no action” on ballots with errors until all lawsuits on the issue had been settled. It’s important to note that these ballots aren’t being thrown out or rejected by the county, Kaiser said—they’re just sitting around in secured locations, waiting for the courts to tell the state to tell the counties what they’re allowed to do. Like I said: a mess.
While the ability to vote has not been entirely stripped from these voters, in places like Guilford County, the rates are high enough to cause concern. The end result of complex processes of malicious disenfranchisement and bureaucratic ineptitude remains the same: Black voters having their ballots temporarily on hold with a potential rejection without due process.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--Why Are Democrats So Afraid to Say Fracking Is Bad?

If you ’ re freaked out about the climate crisis , it might be nice to live in Mike Pence ’ s imaginary world .
There , the Paris Climate Agreement is a muscular international treaty capable of shaping trade flows and investment decisions through binding rules .
The Democratic Party and its presidential ticket are in lock-step behind a wide-ranging Green New Deal , pledging to ban fracking and stop burning fossil fuels as it spends vast sums of public money to take on the greatest existential threat humanity has ever known .
In reality , of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ platform , articulated at Wednesday ’ s vice presidential debate , is vastly more ambitious than the one Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are actually pursuing .
The planet and its people deserve a climate program resembling the one the GOP has spent this election fearmongering about .
Thanks to efforts from the likes of the Sunrise Movement and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , Biden ’ s climate plan is much closer to that vision than it might otherwise be .
Biden ’ s plan would invest $ 2 trillion in a green recovery aimed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might even create a new White House office on climate .
It ’ s no exaggeration to say that it ’ s the most ambitious climate plan a presidential candidate has ever run on .
As Kamala Harris pointed out last night , though , contrary to Pence ’ s insistence , the Biden climate plan would not ban fracking along any timeline .
And despite Trump ’ s , Pence ’ s , and the Republican Party ’ s repeated attempts to link the candidate to the Green New Deal , Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s debate that he does not support a Green New Deal , portraying his plan as a more reasonable alternative .
The DNC platform committee couldn ’ t even agree to officially withdraw the party ’ s support for fossil fuel subsidies .
Democrats don ’ t have some ingenious political reason for swallowing the fossil fuel industry ’ s and its GOP allies ’ framings on these issues .
Their reluctance to ban fracking , despite its prolific contributions to the climate crisis , is clearly an attempt to woo Pennsylvanians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ban on fracking than oppose it , according to a January 2020 Franklin & Marshall poll .
As David Sirota pointed out today , another YouGov poll in August found that 62 percent of self-identified moderate voters in that state support a fracking ban , along with 55 percent of its registered Independents .
Meanwhile , although it ’ s been lambasted by the right for nearly two years , an expansive Green New Deal and its various components remain popular among undecided voters and those in swing districts , who both care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t trust Trump to deal with it .
As bankruptcies and layoffs rise in the oil and gas sector , there ’ s also a strong case to be made that Medicare for All , a federal job guarantee , and the other Green New Deal ideas Biden ’ s team left out of his platform would do more to protect fossil fuel workers and their communities than the golden parachutes industry executives are currently sewing themselves .

The frustrating part about Democrats’ decision to cede ground to the right on climate policy is that this is precisely what yesteryear’s climate-denying lobbyists—and today’s Trump supporters—want them to do. Among the fossil fuel industry and conservative funders, straight-up climate denial has mostly fallen out of fashion. But polluters sent dozens of lobbyists last year to stop a non-binding resolution on the Green New Deal, H.R. 109., and a Koch-funded front group bought up a billboard in Times Square against Ocasio-Cortez, who introduced it. At the Heartland Institute’s deflated annual conference last year, I asked Caleb Rossiter—head of the CO2 Coalition, essentially a pro-carbon dioxide propaganda group—what his donors said they wanted out of him. In recent years, those have included the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust and the Mercer Family Foundation, whose principals have been enthusiastic Trump supporters. “Some of them are no longer interested in climate science but are much more interested in what it will cost” to deal with it, he told me. “Clearly they’re trying to stop a Green New Deal… That’s what they want to do. They want to kill the Green New Deal. I agree!”
Harris, on Wednesday, didn’t debate Mike Pence about the extent of humans’ contribution to warming or whether the sun was to blame for higher temperatures—the kind of debate that was common on cable news until just a few years ago. Science and the climate crisis, she insisted, are real. Yet Democrats are still getting duped by disinformation tactics that have only been slightly dressed up since the heyday of outright climate denial.
Whereas the strategy of an older generation of deniers was to cast doubt on the existence of the problem, they’ve now mostly trained their guns on solutions that might actually pose a threat to the corporations fueling it. All the old hallmarks are there—from bogus, corporate-funded studies to redbaiting to throwing a thousand discordant talking points at Fox News and seeing what sticks. If right-wing propaganda made an earlier generation of establishment Democrats fear being called climate alarmists, today’s politicians fear being called Green New Dealers for the same reasons. Bowing to that means having a debate about climate solutions on the GOP’s—in other words, the fossil fuel industry’s—terms.


newrepublic--2020-10-08--A Petulant Trump Squanders His Best Chance for a Breakthrough

On Thursday morning , Donald Trump , the king of real estate bankruptcy , declared political bankruptcy .
Trailing Joe Biden by double-digit margins in recent national polls , the Covid-stricken president did what he does best—he had a self-destructive temper tantrum .
After the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that next week ’ s face-off with Biden would be held virtually because of concerns about the coronavirus , Trump said in an interview on the Fox Business Network , “ I ’ m not going to waste my time with a virtual debate.
” Trump , of course , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and binge-watching Fox News .
But normally , candidates in his dire position relish any debate as a chance to reset the race—especially if their opponent is as uneven a debater as Joe Biden , who has had enough shaky debate performances to make many Democrats nervous .
Instead , just as he did earlier this week in loudly rejecting the last chance for an economic stimulus package before the election , Trump reverted to his unique negotiating strategy : the Art of the Squeal .
By screaming about something—whether it is unfairness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days , the astrological charts—Trump expects his opponents to beg for a chance to renegotiate .
Yes , there remains a chance that Republicans in Congress , hoping to save some of their most endangered members , will agree to provide more economic relief for those suffering from the pandemic .
Trump , in fact , is now trumpeting that the stimulus talks are back on , which seems to be his latest attempt to negotiate with himself .
But it is impossible to envision how Trump recovers from being a debate refusenik @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the debate commission is not about to say , “ We were wrong .
We do indeed want a superspreader debate in person.
” Nor is Biden about to show up at the White House gates in a chicken suit , begging Trump to reconsider and debate .

By repeatedly talking over both Page and Kamala Harris, Pence must have alienated female voters, who already support the Democratic ticket by a historic margin of 2 to 1, according to some recent polls. There may have been a few swing-state male voters who would have relished the latest example of Republican disdain for women in politics, but my guess is that most of those men are already wearing MAGA hats and proudly going maskless. The rest of them could probably squeeze into a dive bar somewhere.
Both Pence and Harris are disciplined candidates who obviously memorized their briefing books and rehearsed with mock debates. Pence, in fact, probably did more debate preparation in a single afternoon than Trump has done in a lifetime. As a result, the debate provided a revealing look at the internal polling on both sides as the candidates recited their prepared talking points.
Harris, who had a strong debate, though one devoid of any transcendent moments, used her time to provide viewers with a handy rundown of some of the recent revelations about Trump’s leadership style. She highlighted the New York Times story that our business-genius president paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017. She picked up on an Atlantic story that Trump had called the war dead “suckers.” And the California senator reminded voters that Trump—in his taped interview with Bob Woodward—knew how lethal the coronavirus was in late January. As Harris pointed out, “They knew, and they covered it up. The president said it was a hoax.”


newrepublic--2020-10-08--The Social Dilemma and the Rise of the Clickbait Documentary

The Social Dilemma , director Jeff Orlowski ’ s buzzworthy Netflix documentary about Big Tech , starts casually , with the interviewees settling down in their chairs , taking their last sips of coffee , and making small talk with faint voices off-screen .
It ’ s the part of the movie that is supposed to get cut in editing , but this is the film ’ s version of breaking the fourth wall , nudging us to see its subjects not as powerful and wealthy corporate leaders but as normal guys getting jitters before appearing on camera .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media platforms that the movie dissects , but they aren ’ t the villains .
In fact , the only villain of the film is fictional—a personification of an AI algorithm in a story line about a typical family ’ s struggles with social media , played by Mad Men actor Vincent Kartheiser .
Throughout the film , he and his two evil sidekicks use a cartoonish console to manipulate an awkward high schooler , the idea being that all of us are being controlled in the same way .
It seems like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ actor to play the “ algorithm guy ” when there are actual algorithm creators being interviewed in the film .
But The Social Dilemma is loath to assign responsibility for the collective illness that is the internet , other than to go on about the big and bad and powerful “ system.
” As a result , the movie is less an indictment of Silicon Valley and its creators than a primary example of the way the profit-driven algorithm has come to govern not just our social lives but also our relationship to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information in the film is particularly new .
Most of us know about targeted ads and have noticed predictive algorithms reflecting our search history back at us .
We have read about fake news and Cambridge Analytica .
Social media is addictive , obviously , which is one of the film ’ s central themes .
What ’ s new is the purveyors of this information : the remorseful , self-aware warriors turned conscientious objectors of Silicon Valley .
The film ’ s interviewees take turns lamenting the way their utopian dream of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and explaining , to an increasingly eerie musical score , how social media instead became an extractive , addictive , psychologically damaging , and politically dangerous force .
The problem is clear : Tech companies get their money from ads , making our online behavior their currency .
This leads them to carelessly feed us cocktails of clickable posts , full of cute animals and family members , but also far-right conspiracies and dysmorphia-inspiring images of beauty .

It’s not that The Social Dilemma, to borrow from its own alarmist tone, is secretly implanting us with some evil neoliberal agenda (though it does at times seem like an elaborate commercial for the Center for Humane Technology, a think tank founded by a handful of the interviewees). It’s that, for all its trappings of a liberal exposé, it lacks any substantive political message other than a nod at “regulation.” As Facebook and Google veteran Justin Rosenstein lamely concludes, “By having these conversations … we can start to change the conversation.”
The titular “dilemma,” then, isn’t Facebook or Twitter or Instagram’s to solve. It’s ours. Turn off your notifications! Delete some apps! Follow people you disagree with on Twitter! These are the solutions hastily fired off as the credits roll. The film’s website continues this list of inane suggestions on a page optimistically titled “TAKE ACTION,” including taking a “tech detox” and sharing the film on, yes, social media.
Under the thin veneer of an informative and activist message, The Social Dilemma betrays a reliance on emotional intensity, shock, and entertainment value to attract its viewers. The documentary genre fits awkwardly into this logic. Documentaries that aim to simply educate are decidedly not fun, and documentaries that reveal their main purpose to be a political agenda garner suspicion rather than large audiences. And yet, documentary’s proximity to reality has burdened it with these responsibilities, with the expectation that it can bring us closer to truth, to reveal something crucial that we hadn’t known before. If a film simply fulfills the need for immediate pleasure, is it still a documentary? Shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Real Housewives certainly film “reality,” but we wouldn’t call them documentaries.


newrepublic--2020-10-09--Donald Trump Will Kill Us All

Donald Trump Will Kill Us All

Donald Trump has , for most of the pandemic , merely abetted the spread of the coronavirus—through what has alternately been called “ misinformation , ” incompetence , and “ stupidity.
” His indoor rally in Tulsa , Oklahoma led to the death of former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain , and an outdoor fete for Supreme Court appointee Amy Coney Barrett appears to have infected dozens of Republican senators and administration officials .
Now , with one month to go before the election , he seems intent on becoming a superspreader himself .
Since returning to the White House @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was laid up for four days , the president has violated every safety protocol imaginable .
He took off his mask almost immediately after entering the White House and has , seemingly , not put it on again since .
He has insisted on returning to the Oval Office—what he actually does there is anyone ’ s guess , but it certainly isn ’ t work—despite the fact that he is likely still contagious , possibly highly so .
His administration has barely coordinated with local officials in Washington D.C. , leading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beyond the White House and Capitol Hill .
And on Thursday , when the Commission on Presidential Debates ’ announced it would hold the next debate virtually to prevent transmission , Trump insisted that he would not “ do a virtual debate , ” preferring to debate Joe Biden in person .
Some of this can be explained by Trump ’ s signature mix of machismo and desperation .
Since March , he has hawked a series of miracle cures for Covid-19 , in an attempt to falsely convince Americans that the pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment .
Having contracted Covid-19 , been hospitalized for apparently serious symptoms , and subsequently released , Trump and his allies are now attempting to make the case that his recovery was a kind of miracle .
Over the last two days , Trump has starred in two videos that are essentially infomercials for Regeneron , a company whose experimental treatment Trump claims has cured him completely .
He “ felt good immediately ” after taking the drug , which he says will be available for free “ especially if you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , an infectious disease expert , told The New York Times that there is “ one million percent no ” chance that the company ’ s antibody cocktail cured the president in less than a week . )
The case Trump is making is simple and completely fraudulent : Since Regeneron ’ s monoclonal antibody treatment—which is still undergoing clinical trials and has yet to be brought to market—according to him works wonders and can cure anybody , there is simply no need to worry about Covid-19 anymore .
The economy can come @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president by voting for him ( and against the radical socialists who would lock you in your home ) in November .
Perhaps the foremost disciple of Norman Vincent Peale ’ s school of positive thinking , it ’ s possible that Trump believes his own bullshit—though his hoarseness and apparent shortness of breath in videos hardly suggest full health .
For months , as Covid-19 spread across the country , Trump tried to pretend that the country itself was , essentially , fine—that what was happening was no worse than the flu @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In April , he was already promising “ phenomenal growth ” and an amazing “ comeback.
” That hasn ’ t happened , but his message hasn ’ t changed .
Having contracted the virus himself , Trump is now trying to will this kind of transformation , arguing that because he did not die or get put on a ventilator , the country itself is rocketing forward , that the drugs that allegedly worked for him will work for everyone .

What this means in practice, however, is that Donald Trump is doing a lot of things that risk getting a lot of people very sick. The White House’s lax safety protocols have already infected the president, his wife, his campaign manager, several senior administration officials, three United States senators, and many others. Trump has sent a loud, clear message since his diagnosis: He has learned nothing. Instead, the White House is less safe than it was two weeks ago. After Wednesday’s vice presidential debate, Mike Pence was joined onstage by his wife who was, seemingly, the event’s only unmasked nonparticipant. President Trump, meanwhile, also appears to be wandering around maskless, insisting that he work as normal. It’s unclear who is doing the president’s makeup—a seemingly dangerous job given his condition—though the president’s recent appearance suggests he might be applying it himself. “What White House staffer would still wanna go to work tomorrow???” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist with the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted on Monday. “Epidemiologists just wanna vomit.”
Trump’s insistence on an in-person debate is the culmination of his absurd and dangerous Covid-19 approach. It could be a tacit admission that he is still ill—that he is bluffing, hoping to postpone debates to conceal symptoms that he has been able to hide from the public since returning to the White House on Monday. It could also be part of his strategy of trying to will a return to “normalcy,” of refusing to acknowledge that life has changed in innumerable ways since March. But in practice, it only underscores the fact that the president is a coronavirus superspreader. First, his administration failed to act, creating one of the worst outbreaks in the world. Now, with the president himself infected, he is personally exposing others to the virus—first in the White House and Washington, D.C., and next, if he has his way, at the second presidential debate.


The Anti-Social Novelist

A man writes a book .
It is , he feels , “ a kind of outpouring , ” written from the same impulse “ that makes him sing or try to go to bed with all beautiful ladies.
” But then the critics blame the book for not being great .
You didn ’ t want to be great .
You just wanted to write a book and have people read it ... .
I don ’ t think I am ill tempered about adverse criticism ... .
But , do you know , you never get over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deliberately cruel and destructive attacks .
Even if you know why the attack was made , it still hurts .
These words come from a 1953 letter of gratitude that John Steinbeck , aged 51 , sent an undergraduate who ’ d written an enthusiastic paper on The Grapes of Wrath , the book that in 1939 made Steinbeck an international celebrity ; the truth of the matter , however , was a bit more complicated .
At the very moment the letter was written , adverse criticism could still send Steinbeck into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same time , positive criticism did little or nothing for him .
Over the course of a long writing life , Steinbeck had won many prizes , among them the Pulitzer and then , remarkably enough , the Nobel , but no matter how many hundreds of critics and millions of readers declared him a national treasure , he not only raged at those who refused to extend him the accolades he hungered for , he scorned those very accolades when they came his way .
As his newest biographer , William Souder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ World , he hated his fame , he hated public appearances , but mostly he hated the fans who , like his critics , “ praised his work but didn ’ t understand it.
” Steinbeck ’ s was a soul profoundly ill at ease with itself : The ability to take praise as well as blame in his stride eluded him throughout the years .
Angst was his middle name .
Two of the most painful sentences in Souder ’ s biography tell us that “ when he finished a book and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wasn ’ t what bothered him .
What bothered him was knowing that he couldn ’ t have made it better.
” “ Tormented ” may be a better word than “ bothered.
” Very nearly a classic depressive , Steinbeck endured “ a ceaseless struggle between contentment and despair that grew more pronounced as he got older , ” driving him repeatedly to succumb to a black need to retreat from human connection “ that would come to border on obsession.
” In short : Steinbeck , in the flesh , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the page , where the narrator ’ s underlying plea , almost invariably , is that all human beings recognize themselves in one another .
Do such self-divisions between the artist and the art come as a surprise ?
How many thousands of people have met the writer of a book they ’ ve admired , only to come away thinking , “ He ’ s nothing like his writing.
” A writer hardly ever is .
It ’ s simply that in most cases the best of the writer—that is , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the writing , while the rest of him—that is , the ordinary everyday self—acts out all the meanness and confusion inherent in the unresolved conflicts that dog us all .
With John Steinbeck , the discrepancies were larger than life .

John Steinbeck was born in 1902, at the mouth of one of the most agriculturally fertile valleys in the world, in the town of Salinas, California, some 19 miles inland from the Pacific Coast city of Monterey. He grew up in modest circumstances (his father was a local civil servant), and was expected to achieve a life two or three notches up the middle-class ladder. But, when he enrolled after high school at Stanford University, it soon became clear that he would never stay the academic course. He’d arrived at school with 50 stories under his arm, and all he wanted to do was write. For years, he bounced in and out of school, returning in 1925 to Southern California, where he began working at odd jobs—tour guide, manual laborer, estate caretaker, anything that would put food and writing paper on the table—while he wrote stories that for the most part went undistinguished and unpublished, but nonetheless got written. In 1930, he married Carol Henning, a twentysomething fellow spirit who believed passionately in him from the moment they met, and together they embarked on a semi-bohemian existence, mainly in and around Monterey, mutually devoted—Carol proved a gifted editor—to the flowering of John’s talent.
From the start, Steinbeck knew where his raw material was to be found and how he was to respond to it. As a boy, living in the Salinas Valley and working summers beside the migrants who performed the backbreaking labor of picking fruit and vegetables in season, he had seen firsthand the social and economic exploitation to which their lives were yoked, and the starkness of their condition seemed to penetrate him. “As an adult,” Souder tells us, “John would say that the one thing he could not bear was another human being oppressed, abused, or taken advantage of by anyone more powerful, especially if the motive was greed.” Once the Great Depression overwhelmed the country, people of almost every stripe and condition began to feel haunted by the astonishing multiplication of the human sacrifice that Steinbeck had observed at home in ordinary times, and were drawn to the bitter realities of the migrants’ lives. Then came the Dust Bowl disaster, and the spectacle of thousands of dispossessed sharecroppers on the road, streaming west across Route 66 like refugees fleeing a foreign invasion. Steinbeck’s moment had come.
He was a regional writer with a bent toward social realism, but at the height of his literary powers in the mid-’30s, the work Steinbeck produced—and this is what has saved him from literary oblivion—was so thoroughly encased in a kind of narrative tenderness for its subject that it often seemed to rise above the limitations of the genre writing with which he was associated. There’s a scene in The Grapes of Wrath that is pure Steinbeck. The Joads and their friends are being expelled from one of the migrant camps by the local police, but one of their number is a dying woman whose husband refuses to go on without her. The woman asks the Preacher to say a prayer over her, and when he hesitates (because he is excommunicated), she reassures him:


newrepublic--2020-10-09--The Sweet Fantasy of the Female Pop Star

The first time Mariah Carey sang on television in her whistle register—the very tippy-top of the human vocal range , higher than a falsetto—was during a performance of “ America the Beautiful ” at Game One of the 1990 NBA finals , around the time she released her first single , “ Vision of Love.
” When a singer sings this high , the epiglottis closes over the larynx , making the mechanics impossible to film with a medical camera and therefore beyond scientific study .
The sound is a little otherworldly , and no one in the arena was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the skinny girl in a black dress introduced as “ Columbia recording artist Mariah Carey.
” When Carey vaults up to a top C , the camera cuts to a couple of Detroit Pistons laughing and grasping each other ’ s forearms in shock .
Mariah ’ s face breaks into a smile as the song ends , her dark eyes full of triumph .
As she recalls in her new memoir , The Meaning of Mariah Carey , “ None of the players , none of the fans knew who I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would remember me when I walked out.
” The book ’ s release comes as part of a broader celebration of Carey ’ s 30 years as a famous singer , dubbed “ MC30 , ” which has also included a lost-gems album , The Rarities ; a drip feed of old remixes ; and the revelation that Carey recorded a grunge album in the 1990s .
The Meaning of Mariah Carey feels pieced together from interviews , so it ’ s not a work whose style you can delight in at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tells feels genuine and timely .
Mariah Carey has become one of the most enduring stars of our time , laying the blueprint for a generation of young singers , but her massive celebrity and commercial success have , ironically , meant that she hasn ’ t always been taken seriously as a songwriter .
It ’ s a direct side effect of her success , and a trap that ensnares new artists to this day .
She ’ s too gracious to acknowledge her critics in the book , but the story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ implicit riposte to the idea that she ’ s not an “ authentic ” musician .
In truth , she has been an industrious vocalist with perfectionist tendencies since childhood .
Singing was a connection to her mother , an Irish , Juilliard-trained opera singer who married a Black military man she was deeply incompatible with .
Carey recalls in the book the moment when , at “ maybe three years old , ” she corrected , in perfect Italian , her mother ’ s rehearsal of an aria from Rigoletto .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ world of music , she never combed her daughter ’ s hair and often left her unfed .
Amid her older brother throwing furniture , her mother ’ s neglect , and her neighbors ’ racism , music became a comfort : “ I was always so scared as a little girl , and music was my escape.
” She describes her Long Island home as “ heavy , weighed down with yelling and chaos.
” The whisper-voice that Carey increasingly used during her turn to hip hop and R & B in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this pain : “ When I sang , in a whispery tone , ” she writes , “ it calmed me down .
I discovered a quiet , soft , light place inside my voice—a vibration in me that brought me sweet relief .
My whisper-singing was my secret lullaby to myself.
” Carey ’ s teen years combined a tall boyfriend ( to defend her from bullies ) , physical hunger , and a fanatical devotion to building her craft as a singer , songwriter , and producer .
Her efforts culminated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ album , Mariah Carey , following that basketball game and an astounding performance on Arsenio Hall .
She wrote the entire album , and co-produced it .
The culture ’ s reaction to Carey ’ s undeniable whistle-voice ( best exemplified in another Arsenio Hall performance , this time of 1991 ’ s “ Emotions ” ) was double : The dollar signs flashed in the music industry ’ s eyes , but the critics assumed she was a corporate puppet whose Olympic-talent voice was devoid of soul .
With her voice , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ backing of Sony executive and future husband Tony Mottola ( they met at a party , Carey writes : “ Tommy said to Brenda , ‘ Who ’ s your friend ?
’ —the most intense three words I ’ d ever heard ” ) , she seemed almost too primed for success , as if her abilities were somehow an unfair genetic advantage rather than the product of an intense emotional engagement with singing stretching back to her infancy .
In her review of Carey ’ s third album Music Box for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deborah Frost wrote that Carey ’ s “ career has been chiefly remarkable for its packaging.
” Though she acknowledges that Carey wrote and co-produced most of the record , Frost then writes that “ the power she wields in the studio is at odds with the message of submissiveness now manifest in her songs.
” She cited the lyrics to “ Dreamlover ” — “ Now that I know you want me for me / I can be what you want ” —as proof that Carey was not really in control .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ her Unplugged album of the same year took issue with Carey ’ s perfection .
“ On albums , Ms. Carey ’ s singing often sounds narcissistic , ” Pareles wrote , “ as if she has to cram every phrase with virtuosity.
” This level of judgment is just one sharp edge of the same knife we still apply to female musicians .
It ’ s a feature of the business that women musicians have to be celebrities , and their haircuts and relationships and outfits become fair game once a record @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the tense push-pull of today ’ s reactive , socially-driven media , because otherwise nobody will listen to their music .
And then they are criticized for playing the game at all .
Because we treat women musicians as celebrities first and foremost , we require an impossible standard of integration between their art and their identity as a human being .
In Carey ’ s case , she was able to fuse the two on her own terms , dramatizing her escape from the abusive Mottola in the emancipation-themed video for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commemorated Carey ’ s new identity as a sexy , independent musician with an agenda to push at the place where hip hop and R & B met .
It ’ s a mark of progress , perhaps , that the relationship between fantasy , gender , and music is also the subject of Lana Del Rey ’ s debut poetry collection , Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass .
It ’ s already available as a spoken-word , musically-accompanied album , and will be available as a book in October .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ filled by Del Rey ’ s breathy voice , and is very much a part of the universe styled by her seven albums to date .
Los Angeles , love , and misunderstood femininity are among her themes .
In “ L.A .
Who Am I to Love You , ” she describes L.A. as “ not quite the city who sleeps / Not quite the city who wakes , / But the city who dreams.
” Speaking to an unknowable “ you , ” Del Rey establishes a beseeching style of address @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listener , the city , the lover , the universe , and the self .
In the second poem , “ Land of 1000 Fires ” she reworks that theme of California ’ s landscape as the literal space of her gender : “ My feet aren ’ t even on the ground , ” she writes , “ I need your body to stand on / Your name to define me , ” turning the codependency of heterosexual romance into a dangerously flammable terrain .
It ’ s in a bitter poem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s book connects to Carey ’ s .
She recites the lines in urgent , plaintive tones in the audiobook : It seems like a contradiction in terms , at first , to declare oneself a poet who has nothing in their head , or to frame something as fleeting as “ lovemaking ” a “ legacy.
” But it ’ s actually a very good self-portrait of her music : Del Rey sings about doomed love and pretty dresses and other old clichés , but it ’ s the way she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The form of her thoughts is musical , and beautiful , and made only more beautiful because they are about nothingness ; specifically , the void that Hollywood distracts us from with stage makeup and artificial sets , which of course have their own beauty .
Del Rey has been accused of “ inauthenticity ” from the beginning of her career , just like Carey .
In 2012 , Paul Harris published a feature in The Guardian styled as an investigation into the true identity of Lana Del Rey .
“ You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ online , ” it says , referring to LDR ’ s given name , noting that there exists video footage of the singer with—horror—blonde hair , wearing a green t-shirt .
After presenting his findings , Harris concludes that the internet has “ allowed figures like her to come rapidly to the fore of the cultural landscape , whether or not their emergence is planned by a record executive or happens spontaneously from someone ’ s bedroom.
” He weakly notes that the situation seems unfair , but the existence of his investigative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s exactly the point that Deborah Frost missed in her Music Box review , when she treated as mutually exclusive possibilities Mariah Carey as a soulful and autonomous artist and Mariah Carey as a popular singer of love songs .
Whether drawing on new inspiration or old memories , these two singers use their books to circle the same subject : the relationship between the economy of female celebrity and the woman musician ’ s privately inspired work .
The ultimate lesson is that the only way forward is , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

The first time Mariah Carey sang on television in her whistle register—the very tippy-top of the human vocal range, higher than a falsetto—was during a performance of “America the Beautiful” at Game One of the 1990 NBA finals, around the time she released her first single, “Vision of Love.” When a singer sings this high, the epiglottis closes over the larynx, making the mechanics impossible to film with a medical camera and therefore beyond scientific study. The sound is a little otherworldly, and no one in the arena was really prepared for what came out of the skinny girl in a black dress introduced as “Columbia recording artist Mariah Carey.”
When Carey vaults up to a top C, the camera cuts to a couple of Detroit Pistons laughing and grasping each other’s forearms in shock. Mariah’s face breaks into a smile as the song ends, her dark eyes full of triumph. As she recalls in her new memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, “None of the players, none of the fans knew who I was when I walked in, but they would remember me when I walked out.”
The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey and Michaela Angela Davis Buy on Bookshop
The book’s release comes as part of a broader celebration of Carey’s 30 years as a famous singer dubbed “MC30,” which has also included a lost-gems album, The Rarities; a drip feed of old remixes; and the revelation that Carey recorded a grunge album in the 1990s. The Meaning of Mariah Carey feels pieced together from interviews, so it’s not a work whose style you can delight in at the sentence level. But the story it tells feels genuine and timely. Mariah Carey has become one of the most enduring stars of our time, laying the blueprint for a generation of young singers, but her massive celebrity and commercial success have, ironically, meant that she hasn’t always been taken seriously as a songwriter. It’s a direct side effect of her success, and a trap that ensnares new artists to this day.
She’s too gracious to acknowledge her critics in the book, but the story of Carey’s childhood is an implicit riposte to the idea that she’s not an “authentic” musician. In truth, she has been an industrious vocalist with perfectionist tendencies since childhood. Singing was a connection to her mother, an Irish, Juilliard-trained opera singer who married a Black military man she was deeply incompatible with. Carey recalls in the book the moment when, at “maybe three years old,” she corrected, in perfect Italian, her mother’s rehearsal of an aria from Rigoletto.
But if her mother immersed her in the world of music, she never combed her daughter’s hair and often left her unfed. Amid her older brother throwing furniture, her mother’s neglect, and her neighbors’ racism, music became a comfort: “I was always so scared as a little girl, and music was my escape.” She describes her Long Island home as “heavy, weighed down with yelling and chaos.” The whisper-voice that Carey increasingly used during her turn to hip-hop and R&B in the later 1990s has its roots in this pain: “When I sang, in a whispery tone,” she writes, “it calmed me down. I discovered a quiet, soft, light place inside my voice—a vibration in me that brought me sweet relief. My whisper-singing was my secret lullaby to myself.”
Carey’s teen years combined a tall boyfriend (to defend her from bullies), physical hunger, and a fanatical devotion to building her craft as a singer, songwriter, and producer. Her efforts culminated in the whirlwind success of her debut album, Mariah Carey, following that basketball game and an astounding performance on Arsenio Hall. She wrote the entire album and co-produced it.
The culture’s reaction to Carey’s undeniable whistle-voice (best exemplified in another Arsenio Hall performance, this time of 1991’s “Emotions”) was double: The dollar signs flashed in the music industry’s eyes, but the critics assumed she was a corporate puppet whose Olympic-talent voice was devoid of soul. With her voice, youth, songwriting ability, and the backing of Sony executive and future husband Tommy Mottola (they met at a party, Carey writes: “Tommy said to Brenda, ‘Who’s your friend?’—the most intense three words I’d ever heard”), she seemed almost too primed for success, as if her abilities were somehow an unfair genetic advantage rather than the product of an intense emotional engagement with singing stretching back to her infancy.
In her review of Carey’s third album, Music Box, for The New York Times in 1993, Deborah Frost wrote that Carey’s “career has been chiefly remarkable for its packaging.” Though she acknowledges that Carey wrote and co-produced most of the record, Frost then writes that “the power she wields in the studio is at odds with the message of submissiveness now manifest in her songs.” She cited the lyrics to “Now That I Know”—“Now that I know you want me for me / I can be what you want”—as proof that Carey was not really in control. Even John Pareles’s rave for her Unplugged album of the same year took issue with Carey’s perfection. “On albums, Ms. Carey’s singing often sounds narcissistic,” Pareles wrote, “as if she has to cram every phrase with virtuosity.”
This level of judgment is just one sharp edge of the same knife we still apply to female musicians. It’s a feature of the business that women musicians have to be celebrities, and their haircuts and relationships and outfits become fair game once a record is released. The celebrity must engage in the tense push-pull of today’s reactive, socially driven media, because otherwise nobody will listen to their music. And then they are criticized for playing the game at all.
Because we treat women musicians as celebrities first and foremost, we require an impossible standard of integration between their art and their identity as a human being. In Carey’s case, she was able to fuse the two on her own terms, dramatizing her escape from the abusive Mottola in the emancipation-themed video for “Honey” in 1997, which commemorated Carey’s new identity as a sexy, independent musician with an agenda to push at the place where hip-hop and R&B met.
It’s a mark of progress, perhaps, that the relationship between fantasy, gender, and music is also the subject of Lana Del Rey’s debut poetry collection, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. It’s already available as a spoken-word, musically accompanied album, and will be available as a book in October.
Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass by Lana Del Rey Buy on Bookshop
The audiobook is a 14-track, Beat-style soundscape filled by Del Rey’s breathy voice, and is very much a part of the universe styled by her seven albums to date. Los Angeles, love, and misunderstood femininity are among her themes. In “L.A. Who Am I to Love You,” she describes L.A. as “not quite the city who sleeps / Not quite the city who wakes, / But the city who dreams.” Speaking to an unknowable “you,” Del Rey establishes a beseeching style of address whose object is at various stages the listener, the city, the lover, the universe, and the self. In the second poem, “Land of 1000 Fires” she reworks that theme of California’s landscape as the literal space of her gender: “My feet aren’t even on the ground,” she writes, “I need your body to stand on / Your name to define me,” turning the co-dependency of heterosexual romance into a dangerously flammable terrain.
It’s in a bitter poem called “Salamander” that Del Rey’s book connects to Carey’s. She recites the lines in urgent, plaintive tones in the audiobook:
You see I’m a real poet My life is my poetry My lovemaking is my legacy My thoughts are not for sale They’re about nothing and beautiful and for free
It seems like a contradiction in terms, at first, to declare oneself a poet who has nothing in their head, or to frame something as fleeting as “lovemaking” a “legacy.” But it’s actually a very good self-portrait of her music: Del Rey sings about doomed love and pretty dresses and other old clichés, but it’s the way she does it that makes her an artist. The form of her thoughts is musical, and beautiful, and made only more beautiful because they are about nothingness: specifically, the void that Hollywood distracts us from with stage makeup and artificial sets, which of course have their own beauty.
Del Rey has been accused of “inauthenticity” from the beginning of her career, just like Carey. In 2012, Paul Harris published a feature in The Guardian styled as an investigation into the true identity of Lana Del Rey. “You can still find traces of Lizzy Grant online,” it says, referring to LDR’s given name, noting that there exists video footage of the singer with—horror—blonde hair, wearing a green T-shirt. After presenting his findings, Harris concludes that the internet has “allowed figures like her to come rapidly to the fore of the cultural landscape, whether or not their emergence is planned by a record executive or happens spontaneously from someone’s bedroom.” He weakly notes that the situation seems unfair, but the existence of his investigative article rather gives the game away.
It’s exactly the point that Deborah Frost missed in her Music Box review, when she treated as mutually exclusive possibilities Mariah Carey as a soulful and autonomous artist and Mariah Carey as a popular singer of love songs. Whether drawing on new inspiration or old memories, these two singers use their books to circle the same subject: the relationship between the economy of female celebrity and the woman musician’s privately inspired work. The ultimate lesson is that the only way forward is, as in so many cases, more work.


newrepublic--2020-10-09--A Thrilling Week Inside Trump’s Flailing Masculinity Death Cult

It ’ s been a week since we learned that the president and first lady both tested positive for Covid-19 , right after appearing at a series of possible superspreader events , including the largely mask-free feting of Amy Coney Barrett in the White House Rose Garden and a high-dollar fundraiser at Trump ’ s Bedminster , New Jersey , golf club .
While Melania sequestered in the White House to wait out her quarantine ( and conveniently avoid a burgeoning scandal over some leaked audiotapes ) , Donald began what was to be a weeklong parade of increasingly unhinged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hospital .
Though in the past Trump ’ s absurd displays of his supposed brawn—making a show of his own ability to drink water , for instance—have mostly had the unintended effect of undermining his strength , the last seven days have been a particularly explicit expression of what I can only describe as Death Drive Masculinity , a real commitment to the bit of being extremely manly while also possibly dying and putting others at real risk .
If illness is weakness , then Trump , in a series of increasingly farcical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prove to the country just how strong he really was .
Just hours before announcing that he and Melania had tested positive , he suggested in a call to Sean Hannity ’ s show that his disregard for social distancing guidelines was simply a function of his overwhelming popularity among law enforcement .
If he was sick , it was only because cops loved him too much .
Military and police , he claimed , “ come over to you and they want to hug you and kiss you because we really have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He then added , “ You get close , and things happen , ” which , incidentally , could have also described any number of the nondistanced events he had attended before his test results were made public .
( Since last week , 11 other attendees of the Rose Garden event have also tested positive . )
On Friday night , after he was admitted to Walter Reed and pumped full of drugs , Trump wasted no time in issuing a flurry of dispatches intended to communicate that he was in exceptional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , perhaps , the healthiest man alive to have ever been put on oxygen and hospitalized for a round of antivirals and powerful steroids .
The stunts mostly served to put others in harm ’ s way while only baffling the public : On Saturday , the president arranged for the staging and release of a series of photos in which he appeared to be signing blank sheets of paper from his hospital confinement .
( “ Nothing can stop him from working for the American people .
RELENTLESS !
” tweeted Ivanka @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefit from Trump ’ s poring over blank paper remains unclear . )
The next day , he went for a casual spin in a limo with some Secret Service agents in order to wave to a group of fans posted outside the hospital and , it should be said , potentially spread Covid-19 to his security detail .
“ The virus didn ’ t really slow him down , ” Tucker Carlson recently marveled , as if scribbling with markers and riding in the back of an armored vehicle were feats of @ @ @

And Carlson, of course, is just one of several people who reliably indulges the president in his delusions of hypermasculinity. After news broke that Trump would be leaving the hospital, his doctor, Sean Conley, fawned over the president’s good health (only after several days, naturally, of obfuscating his actual conditions). “He’s met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria,” Conley said, echoing Trump’s previous and similarly sycophantic doctor, Harold Bornstein, who wrote in a now-infamous Trump-dictated letter that his “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.”
On Monday, in a tweet announcing his departure from the hospital, the president declared that he’d actually never felt better—“better than I did 20 years ago!” Following his release, Trump lurched onto the White House balcony, preened there for a minute in a vaguely Axis Powers fashion, then tore off his mask for no apparent reason other than to give a double thumbs-up and seemingly struggle for air. His decision to leave the hospital predictably threw the White House into disarray; the cleaning crew that remains is now forced to wear hazmat suits, and more than two dozen staffers have tested positive for Covid-19 to date. And yet Trump’s incredible flouting of Covid best practices appears to have permanently seeped into his entourage. “None of the handful of staffers spotted around the West Wing on Monday morning had on masks, except for cleaning staff and the Secret Service agents who still stood at their posts along hallways,” NBC reported.
Then, on Wednesday, just before the vice presidential debate, Trump issued yet another video communiqué from the lawn outside the Oval Office, in which he bellowed about the curative properties of Regeneron, a drug cocktail he had received during his hospital stay. The treatment, however, remains in clinical trial and could potentially cost civilian patients nearly $100,000. As it turns out, Renegeron’s CEO is an “acquaintance” of Trump’s and a member of his golf club; Trump furthermore owned shares of the company as recently as 2017. And though the president promised at some point during his five-minute dispatch to make the drug free, there’s zero indication, as Melody Schreiber recently wrote, of how he plans to go about making that happen.


newrepublic--2020-10-09--Joe Biden Doesn’t Have to Answer Your Court-Packing Question

This has probably been Joe Biden ’ s best week since Super Tuesday .
Donald Trump ’ s reelection campaign is imploding , Biden ’ s lead is expanding ( by 10.2 percent , according to FiveThirtyEight ’ s poll of polls ) , and he appears to have a sizable advantage in key swing states .
Georgia and Texas may very well be in play .
Kamala Harris ’ s performance in Wednesday ’ s vice presidential debate , which was fine , has already been forgotten , subsumed by the usual flood of Trump news .
Biden can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opponent destroys himself—which is , more or less , exactly what Biden has been doing .
But campaign reporters have seized on one flaw : Biden ’ s refusal to answer questions about whether he would pack the Supreme Court if elected .
Hand-wringing about the campaign ’ s lack of clarity only increased after Harris dodged a question about it during Wednesday ’ s debate .
And it reached a fever pitch after Biden said he ’ d have an answer “ when the election is over.
” “ Can he really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ days ?
” The Washington Post ’ s fact-checker Glenn Kessler asked .
“ Not sure I ’ ve ever seen a politician explicitly say I ’ m not telling you what I think about an important issue until after you vote for me , ” tweeted Axios ’ s Jonathan Swan .
The Hill ’ s Joe Concha wrote , “ This question should continue to be asked until Biden commits one way or another .
A decision of this magnitude altering the course of the third branch of government forever can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden and Harris have answered the question—just not in a way that satisfies myopic campaign reporters .
Biden , to be fair , did himself no favors by playing coy .
“ You ’ ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over ” is not a satisfactory answer .
Still , it ’ s not exactly a dodge , either .
It is , in fact , a neat summation of his campaign ’ s actual position .
Republicans , right now , are racing to fill a Supreme Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bader Ginsburg ’ s death , only 45 days before the presidential election .
In contrast , in 2016 , they held a vacancy open for more than a year , rejecting Barack Obama ’ s nominee on specious historical grounds , and waiting until they regained the White House to confirm a conservative justice .
If Amy Coney Barrett ’ s nomination goes through , Biden can claim , with some authority , that the Republicans have stolen two Supreme Court seats since 2016 .

The Biden campaign’s position is that the next president should fill the current vacancy. “The American people are voting right now, and it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime,” Harris said in Wednesday’s debate. When Biden says that you’ll know his opinion after the election, he means that his position is dependent on whether or not the Senate confirms Barrett before the election or, should Biden win, during the lame duck. If Barrett’s nomination is for some reason abandoned and Biden wins, it’s safe to assume that judicial reform, let alone outright court-packing, will not be at the top of his agenda.
But if Barrett is confirmed and the court has a 6–3 supermajority of conservatives, two of whom were nominated under at best highly sketchy circumstances, Biden is keeping his options open. “You’ll know my opinion on court-packing when the election is over” is both Biden’s actual position and a perfectly reasonable one to take, given the circumstances. What a President Biden would do is dependent on what happens between now and his inauguration. By keeping the question open, Biden is also answering it: Everything, including court-packing, is on the table if Barrett goes through.
The Trump campaign keeps hounding Biden and Harris about this because it wants to paint the Democrats as radicals. Journalists, it seems, want the same thing. Instead of drilling down on Biden’s contingency plan for the court, they’re obsessing over the fact that he allegedly “didn’t answer the question,” which suggests some sort of underhandedness or lack of transparency. A more detailed understanding of Biden’s court reform options would be useful in the lead-up to the election, but the question of whether Biden supports “court-packing” has become a distraction from that.


newrepublic--2020-10-09--The Pandemic Has Been Great for the Health Insurance Industry

Much attention has rightly been paid to the millions of people whose loss of employment this year also meant a loss of health insurance , a terrible thing to happen at any time but especially during a pandemic .
The flip side of the story is that health insurance is often terrible and expensive even for those who do have it .
The Kaiser Family Foundation ’ s annual survey of employer-provided health insurance , published this week , found that premiums for family plans reached $ 21,342 this year , 4 percent higher than last year ; workers pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Things are roughly as bad as they were last year , when they clearly needed to get much better , very fast .
The situation is unsustainable—save for the fact that it is being sustained , by an enormous amount of pain .
But the pain is not being felt by health insurers .
Even as the nation has been plunged into immiseration , the titans of the health insurance industry have been absolutely rolling in it this year , in the style of Scrooge McDuck backstroking around his infinity pool on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you open a door at Blue Cross headquarters , a heavy pile of money falls on your head , and you have to spend all day fishing dollars out of your suit .
Since the pandemic began , health insurers have been the beneficiaries of a huge drop in the amount of medical care that people are seeking , while the premiums keep the good times coming : The New York Times reports that several major health insurers ’ second-quarter earnings were double last year ’ s .
Despite all the uncertainty of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ return unspent premiums to needy consumers , health insurance companies are eager to act as if we ’ re living in normal times .
In March , Cigna told investors that it might “ have the resources to take over rivals or buy back its own stock , ” according to ProPublica ; at the same time , the company was begging Congress for a bailout through its lobbying group .
Anthem , the third-largest health insurer in the United States , announced at the end of July that it had resumed its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the previous quarter , and expected to repurchase more than $ 1.5 billion in stock over the next year .
( Stock buybacks are often a huge financial boon to company executives , at the expense of long-term investors . )
Anthem ’ s CEO , Gail Boudreaux , was paid more than $ 15 million in 2019 .
Good thing no one else needs any money .
Health insurance companies may defend this unseemly situation by pointing to a rule called the medical loss ratio , or MLR .
Insurers are bound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least 80 percent of their premium revenue on actual medical claims , or 85 percent for large employer plans ; any profits over that amount must be returned to consumers .
Health insurers will have to rebate a percentage of the fat stacks they have continued to extract this year , from Americans who aren ’ t using the coverage they pay for , to employers or individuals who purchased policies .
If you buy your insurance on the ACA exchange , you may get a few hundred dollars from your insurer—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you meet your deductible .
( You also might not reap the full benefit until 2023 : Rebates are based on a three-year period . )
But this rule also means that health insurers are incentivized not to bother negotiating lower costs with providers , and so American health care will keep on resolutely getting more expensive .
Think of it this way : If you take in $ 100 in premiums and spend $ 80 on care , you keep $ 20 .
But if you take in $ 200 in premiums @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the care you provided now cost $ 160 , because you ’ d get to keep $ 40 for yourself .
This is especially true in areas where little competition between insurers reduces the pressure on premiums .
A 2017 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the MLR rule did not lower premiums , and , in fact , insurers complied with the standard through increases in “ claims costs , not premium reductions , ” likely “ from a combination of more comprehensive coverage and reduced cost-containment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ premiums to meet the ratio , they simply paid for more health care .
Premiums have increased dramatically since 2010 .
Health care kept getting more expensive—but 20 percent of a bigger number is still more money .
That doesn ’ t help consumers .

Regardless of the reason why, premiums keep going up, as evidenced by the KFF report. Health care costs keep increasing, and insurance companies are not able or willing to contain them. They have not stopped hospitals from charging inflated, arbitrary prices for procedures, or drug companies from charging thousands more for drugs in the U.S. than in other countries. Insulin costs nine times as much in the U.S. as it does in the United Kingdom, where every prescription, from ibuprofen to Humira, costs the patient £9, or $12. (Most prescriptions end up being filled for free in the U.K. because many groups of people, like the elderly and disabled, don’t have to pay. Even this low charge discourages low-income people from filling their prescriptions.)
Insurers are enjoying these boom times, but there is no guarantee that premiums will be lower next year.
Insurers are enjoying these boom times, but there is no guarantee that premiums will be lower next year. In some areas, they will likely be higher. In California, final rates will be approximately 0.6 percent higher next year. This is much lower than the average increase of 8.5 percent between 2015 and 2019, but it varies by region and plan: Rates for the Valley Health Plan, based in the Bay Area, where hospital concentration keeps prices high, will increase by 9 percent. In an August briefing, the Center for American Progress cheerfully reported that insurers expected to “increase premiums only modestly in 2021 coverage.” Great news: Your unaffordable health insurance that you haven’t even been able to use is only going to get slightly more unaffordable, instead of drastically more unaffordable.
Why should rates stay mostly the same when insurance companies are paying out so much less in claims? Health insurers have suggested this year that they simply cannot know what’s going to happen next year and that claims may increase in 2021 as people seek care they deferred this year, or as vaccines are administered. This is a fine argument for a profit-seeking corporation to make to shareholders and regulators: It is true that the future is unknowable, more so than ever with the pandemic, and that insurance companies’ existence depends on being able to semi-successfully predict the future. But this is equally a good argument for why health insurance companies should not exist.


newrepublic--2020-10-11--The Martyrdom of Donald Trump

The Martyrdom of Donald Trump

The president is a sick man .
On its face , Trump ’ s appalling handling of his coronavirus diagnosis doesn ’ t seem to tell us much more than we already knew about him .
His inability to admit to any fault or vulnerability , his reckless disregard for others , and his brazen dishonesty are all too familiar to us now .
But our weariness shouldn ’ t obscure the fact that Trump ’ s departure from Walter Reed and premature return to the White House and campaign trail—a potentially life-threatening course of action—is , by a wide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ever done , a feat of personal daring that , of course , can ’ t really be construed as an act of personal sacrifice .
What is it all for ?
He isn ’ t the first president to downplay or obscure an illness and he probably won ’ t be the last .
But he may be the first to have risked worsening his condition without an obvious substantive rationale in mind .
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy hid and worked to overcome their illnesses because they had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not .
If re-elected , a cadre of conservative advisors and strategists will reassemble to foist their policy objectives on him again , but at this point for Trump , who has yet to offer the public a real sense of what his own second term priorities might be , victory is apparently its own end .
For reasons that are possibly obscure even to him , Trump would like to remain the widely loathed and beleaguered leader of a country whose mounting crises he has only deepened .
It ’ s clear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and normal routines partially because he believes a faux recovery might flatter his strength , maintain an image of control , minimize the virus ’ severity , and in so doing , revive his fading campaign .
It ’ s also clear , already , that this strategy has failed—Biden is now leading many national polls by double digits ; the latest state polls suggest even Texas and Georgia might be slipping away from Trump ’ s column .
But beyond strategy , Trump also seems intent on living out a particular principle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health at risk and return to business can be understood as an expression of the only real worldview he can really be assumed to hold—that the world should bend to his will and the will of men like him , all entitled to a life unencumbered by whatever claims society and good sense might make on them .
This is the thread that runs through so much of what people find most objectionable about him—from his crimes in office to the revelation at long last , in late September , that he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taxes for many years .
His boorishness , his authoritarian personality , his simple venality are all secondary traits , derivatives of a more fundamental aspect of his character and identity .
The idea at the bottom of it all is that Donald Trump can not justly be restrained or even inconvenienced by the mores and concerns of the common—that his position at the top of the imbricated hierarchies ordering American society will always immunize him morally and spiritually if not literally .
The word for this is conservatism .
Even now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a meaningful departure from it : Pundits committed to the idea that the right has cathected to something foreign and novel within him .
In truth , he ’ s simply embodied all they already were and all they already believed , without apology , obfuscation , or restraint .
In his illness , his appeal has become corporeal—he both spreads and manifests the gospel of personal liberty with his own straining lungs .
The word has been made flesh .

There are reminders anywhere one cares to look these days of how thoroughly the Tea Party succeeded in stripping conservative politics down to its essentials.
It’s perhaps fitting that the libertarian tenor of what might be Trump’s final weeks and months in office matches the tenor of the movement that made his rise possible 10 years ago. There are reminders anywhere one cares to look these days of how thoroughly the Tea Party succeeded in stripping conservative politics down to its essentials. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Mike Pence was, as one of the inaugural members of the Tea Party Caucus, among the early architects of the bridge between the party’s electrified base and its establishment that Trump would eventually cross. His role now is to establish continuity, not just in the morbid sense the last week has invited us to consider, but ideologically—win or lose in November, it will be his job to help ensure the GOP finds its way back to respectability in the eyes of Trump’s critics and the voters it’s lost.
His performance at this week’s vice presidential debate offered ample reason to suspect that he and all the others who will take up that project might succeed. Pence, while fully in lockstep with Trump, is now a banal enough figure to Trump’s mainstream critics, by comparison, that the most significant moment of his performance, if one believes the press and social media, came when a fly landed on his head.
This was bad news for those on the Trump campaign hoping for a bit of drama to turn the race around but ultimately good news for conservatives already thinking about the party’s future: a sign that the hood can be slipped back on, the alarms can be silenced, and liberals and centrists can find themselves comfortably bored again. “Last night’s vice-presidential debate, despite its limitations, felt like a breakthrough after the recent top-of-the-ticket atrocity,” Bloomberg’s Editorial Board wrote the morning after. “Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris let each other speak, for the most part. They exchanged some intelligible opinions. They were civil, even if they sometimes voiced their courtesy through gritted teeth. Many viewers must’ve felt nostalgic for what used to be normal politics. Perhaps, after all, it might one day resume.”


newrepublic--2020-10-12--How the Media Can Mount a War Against Voter Suppression

I get excited , a tiny blast of dopamine goes off in my head anytime a cable news host says , “ New swing-state poll numbers coming up after the break.
” Admittedly , the effect is enhanced when the numbers show Biden up by 13 points in Pennsylvania and tanks when he drops to four .
But over the years , it ’ s gotten so that I get a buzz from the very word poll , its letters for a moment spelling hope .
The anchors and panelists who dole out the numbers seem excited , too , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cross tabs , percentages and predictions .
But in the thrill of the horse race , it ’ s easy to forget that the stables are in flames .
Television , which is still Americans ’ preferred platform for getting the news , rarely mentions voter suppression within a 10-minute radius of a poll , despite the fact that it could render much of the polling meaningless .
It ’ s as if restrictive voter ID laws , roll purges , and Trump ’ s regular assaults on mail-in voting bear no relation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boldface numerals never quite touching the muddied facts on the ground .
It ’ s not that national news shows ignore voter suppression .
It ’ s that they report on it reactively , their impetus lacking the same fervor of their polling coverage , where there ’ s a passion for getting out in front of voter trends and analyzing every startling outlier .
When it comes to voter suppression , however , the media operates in fits and starts .
For days at a time , they ’ ll be all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like the outrageously long lines in Georgia ’ s April primaries or Trump ’ s postmaster general dismantling the post office .
But when the breaking ( and usually Trump-centric ) news subsides , coverage of the GOP ’ s ongoing , many-headed scheme to disenfranchise millions of voters goes quiet .
Network and cable news have picked up some of the slack of late , shining stronger spotlights on voting issues—and doing so more intensely since the pandemic began to expose the cracks and craters in the election system .
Over Labor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Watch , ” occasional , dedicated segments on the obstacles to voting .
CNN , CBS , and ABC are also beefing up their coverage .
But none are covering suppression where it could appear with the frequency it deserves : with the daily and , in cable ’ s case , hourly recitation of poll numbers .
Here ’ s an idea : Make coverage of voter suppression as central to TV ’ s election news as the polls .
Join them at the hip .
The addictive horse-race news could run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporting on voter disenfranchisement .
Polling data and voter suppression are inextricably linked , the latter serving as context and caveat to the former .
What ’ s the real margin of error if , more than ever , pollsters ’ “ likely voters ” are less likely to have their ballots counted or be able to vote in the first place ?

How might this work? After running down new numbers from Wisconsin, for instance, Norah O’Donnell or Don Lemon could brief viewers on recently restored, Republican-pushed voting restrictions, including slashing early in-person voting from six weeks to two, which could create longer lines at already congested urban polling places. Or they might follow a first-time voter jumping through a succession of hoops to vote absentee during the pandemic, such as getting a valid photo ID, which often means going in-person to a DMV with reduced hours and days of operation; requesting an absentee ballot by submitting a copy of the ID; or finding a witness to watch them fill out the ballot.
The press at large didn’t do well by Wisconsin and its contentious voter ID law in 2016. Hillary Clinton lost the state by just 23,000 votes, while the ID law, one of the most stringent in the nation, deterred between 17,000 and 23,000 eligible voters in the two most populous counties from casting ballots, according to a 2017 study. The study didn’t look at other counties or at how those surveyed might have voted, but its principal author told the Times, “it’s certainly possible that there were enough voters deterred that it flipped the election.”
Unsurprisingly, the study also found that the law “disproportionally” kept low-income and African-American citizens from voting. And yet, as voting rights expert Ari Berman has written, while “pundits on the right and left” blamed low Black turnout on Clinton’s inadequacies as a presidential candidate, “Voter suppression efforts were practically ignored, when they weren’t mocked.” While it’s impossible to prove whether Clinton lost the state because she didn’t visit it enough or because widespread voter suppression flipped the election to Trump, for the media to dismiss the evidence of major disenfranchisement is to foster its growth.


newrepublic--2020-10-12--The Amy Coney Barrett Hearings Are a Gut Check for Democrats

Washington hardly needed another spectacle to go along with the ongoing election season and the last fortnight of daily news about Covid-19 infiltrating President Donald Trump ’ s inner circle .
Monday will nonetheless mark the beginning of confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett .
This is in many ways the apotheosis of Trump ’ s first term in office , the moment that redeems all of the genuinely embarrassing things that he has put Republicans through over the past four years .
But on the surface , these hearings will likely resemble something familiar .
Barrett will open the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely highlight her personal story and attributes .
For the past three years , she served as a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals .
Before that , she was a law professor at the University of Notre Dame , where her scholarly output largely focused on originalism and precedent .
She served as a clerk for Antonin Scalia .
At 48 years old , she is among the youngest Supreme Court nominees in the modern era .
( Clarence Thomas was 43 years old when confirmed in 1991 . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as her predecessor Ruth Bader Ginsburg and does not retire , she would still be participating in cases in the year 2059 .
Barrett may also discuss her faith and how it shaped her life .
Poor questioning about her Catholic beliefs by California Senator Dianne Feinstein during Barrett ’ s 2017 confirmation hearing have turned the judge into a conservative cause célèbre .
The high-profile controversy arguably played a major role in her being nominated to the Supreme Court today .
Republicans are salivating at the prospect of a similar episode this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inappropriate questions by Democratic senators as an election-year cudgel to boost their flagging political fortunes .
While Democrats would be wise to not fall into the right-wing trap , some senators might not be able to help themselves and ask about her membership in People of Praise , an eclectic Christian community .
In fairness , there is no reason to think Barrett isn ’ t a collegial person or an intelligent jurist .
But if qualifications and temperament were all that mattered , Merrick Garland would be preparing to celebrate his fourth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barrett will likely downplay the real qualities that have brought her to this point .
Like the other conservative justices on the court today , Barrett is the product of a right-wing machine that scrutinizes would-be judicial nominees for their ideological commitment , then wields an impressive combination of personal connections and donor outreach to place them on the courts .
This week of hearings is the culmination of that movement ’ s work—and perhaps its high-water mark as well .
So what sort of questions will Barrett face ?
Democrats will signal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s opening session ; some routes are obvious .
At most Supreme Court hearings , the nominee and their defenders insist that their personal views on abortion rights are a Delphic mystery , unknown to all but the nominee and the gods .
Unlike most Supreme Court nominees , Barrett ’ s stance is unambiguous and indisputable .
In 2006 , she signed an open letter by an anti-abortion group in Indiana that was printed in local newspapers .
“ The Supreme Court ’ s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It ’ s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children.
” No mystery there .

Some of Barrett’s interlocutors will likely try to sound out her views on how originalism, which claims to interpret the Constitution based on its original meaning or intent, interacts with precedent. Will Barrett be a pragmatist when it comes to the court’s prior rulings, and leave them intact, or a revolutionary who tries to overthrow them in favor of the one, true understanding of our nation’s fundamental law? Some of her academic writings indicate that she might favor the latter approach. “I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it,” she wrote in a 2013 law review article.
Supreme Court nominees are routinely quizzed on rulings they’ve handed down as lower-court judges. Neil Gorsuch was memorably questioned about a ruling he wrote that denied a truck driver’s claims against his employer after he was forced to abandon his cargo to survive life-threatening conditions in subzero temperatures. After Trump announced Barrett’s nomination last month, her dissent in a gun-rights case drew fresh scrutiny. A defendant argued that his mail-fraud conviction shouldn’t preclude him from owning a gun; she agreed and wrote that federal and state laws that forbid it are unconstitutional when applied to nonviolent felonies. The scope of the Second Amendment is still relatively unsettled after two landmark cases a decade ago; Barrett’s dissent indicated she would take an expansive view of that right.
In that same case, Barrett also obliquely argued that the right to vote, unlike the right to bear arms, is not an “individual right” and therefore may not deserve the same level of protection in the courts. That raises questions about how she would approach voting rights cases on the high court, which is already unfriendly to them in the Roberts era. Barrett is one of three Supreme Court justices who worked for George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore 20 years ago, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She will likely face questions about whether she would help Republicans throw another election their way this November—as some Republicans are openly hoping she will. “We need nine justices,” Trump recently said. “You need that, with the unsolicited millions of ballots that they’re sending.”


newrepublic--2020-10-12--Oligarch of the Month: Leonard Leo

Oligarch of the Month: Leonard Leo

Leonard Leo is on the brink of achieving the goal he has been working toward for decades : a lasting conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court .
Almost comically shadowy and conspiratorial , he can , at times , seem ripped from the pages of a Dan Brown novel .
A member of the Knights of Malta , an archconservative Roman Catholic secret society , who has a taste for fine wine and tailored suits , he is judicial consigliere to the oligarch class—an expert at manipulating campaign finance law to funnel millions of dollars into the conservative political project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Leo has been working to remake the judiciary , stocking it at every level with right-wing apparatchiks .
As one of his longtime allies told The Daily Beast two years ago , Leo knew that “ conservatives had lost the culture war .
Abortion , gay rights , contraception—conservatives didn ’ t have a chance if public opinion prevailed .
So they needed to stack the courts.
” He started working for the Federalist Society in 1991 , two years after graduating from Cornell ’ s law school , and led its efforts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the bench .
Since then , he has built a vast network of shady nonprofits that fund ads and woo journalists whenever there ’ s a court fight .
( Leo ’ s efforts aren ’ t strictly limited to the courts—he also has close ties to the firm behind the “ Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ” ads in 2004 . )
The Washington Post has estimated that between 2014 and 2017 alone , Leo brought in a quarter of a billion dollars for these groups .
It was Leo who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Donald Trump released in 2016 , promising to appoint one of them to the court if elected .
Neil Gorsuch was on it .
A year later , he ’ d suggest an old buddy , Brett Kavanaugh .
Leo ’ s power stems from his ability to raise money .
In 2016 , George Mason University announced that it would rename its law school for Antonin Scalia .
As it turned out , Leo had raised the money to secure the name himself .
Ten million dollars came from Charles Koch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shell corporation that lists Leo as its president .
It was only fitting—a law school was just the missing piece of an empire built around reshaping the American judiciary .

Leonard Leo is on the brink of achieving the goal he has been working toward for decades: a lasting conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court. Almost comically shadowy and conspiratorial, he can, at times, seem ripped from the pages of a Dan Brown novel. A member of the Knights of Malta, an archconservative Roman Catholic secret society, who has a taste for fine wine and tailored suits, he is judicial consigliere to the oligarch class—an expert at manipulating campaign finance law to funnel millions of dollars into the conservative political project.
For more than two decades, Leo has been working to remake the judiciary, stocking it at every level with right-wing apparatchiks. As one of his longtime allies told The Daily Beast two years ago, Leo knew that “conservatives had lost the culture war. Abortion, gay rights, contraception—conservatives didn’t have a chance if public opinion prevailed. So they needed to stack the courts.” He started working for the Federalist Society in 1991, two years after graduating from Cornell’s law school, and led its efforts to put John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the bench. Since then, he has built a vast network of shady nonprofits that fund ads and woo journalists whenever there’s a court fight. (Leo’s efforts aren’t strictly limited to the courts—he also has close ties to the firm behind the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” ads in 2004.) The Washington Post has estimated that between 2014 and 2017 alone, Leo brought in a quarter of a billion dollars for these groups. It was Leo who drew up the lists of conservative judges that Donald Trump released in 2016, promising to appoint one of them to the court if elected. Neil Gorsuch was on it. A year later, he’d suggest an old buddy, Brett Kavanaugh.


newrepublic--2020-10-12--Trumpism Ate Martha McSally’s Brain

Trumpism Ate Martha McSally’s Brain

The most prominent statue outside the Capitol building in Phoenix represents an icon who touches a nerve deep in the cultural consciousness of Arizona : a fighter pilot .
Frank Luke Jr. , a local boy bronzed in a leather jacket and cap , was an ace who came second only to Eddie Rickenbacker in the number of confirmed kills by an American pilot during World War I .
No protesters have tried to rip down Luke ’ s statue , nor has there been any interruption in Arizona ’ s habit of elevating its pilots to the realm of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ base named for him , he isn ’ t the most revered fighter pilot in state political lore : That honor goes , of course , to John McCain , the Vietnam War veteran who held one of Arizona ’ s U.S. Senate seats for six terms .
The race for McCain ’ s old seat this November now features a matchup between two retired military pilots who are both playing up their bona fides in the armed services .
The contest between Republican Air Force Colonel Martha McSally and Democratic Navy Captain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ It used to be that a well-funded Republican not prone to gaffes would run away with a statewide office , ” said GOP consultant Barrett Marson .
And if that candidate was a fighter pilot to boot , loyal to an incumbent Republican president ?
That would have been a dream candidate in Frank Luke ’ s twentieth-century Arizona .
But this is no ordinary time in a restive state , battered by a runaway coronavirus pandemic and leaning toward voting Democratic in a presidential race for only the second time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1948 .
Now Arizona is also poised to send two Democratic senators to Washington for the first time in almost as long , possibly helping tip control of the upper chamber to the Democrats .
Kelly has consistently led in polls since the spring .
At the end of July , one survey showed him up by a dominant 18 points .
Many weather patterns are involved : unhappiness over Republican Governor Doug Ducey ’ s inept response to the Covid-19 pandemic ; rising anti-Trump sentiment in the Phoenix suburbs ; renewed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the population .
But there are also fundamental problems that stem from McSally herself—particularly her calculated , if ham-fisted , embrace of the president ’ s toxic brand of politics .
At times , her fighter pilot credentials seem like her only political asset .
Her flailing campaign , as well as her embarrassment-riddled stint as McCain ’ s appointed successor in the Senate , are further evidence of the terminal decline that has gripped Donald Trump ’ s Republican Party , which has no answers to the problems plaguing Arizona specifically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s widow , Cindy McCain , has gone so far as to endorse Joe Biden for president .
When asked if she would support McSally , she responded , “ I have no interest in it .
”

The most prominent statue outside the Capitol building in Phoenix represents an icon who touches a nerve deep in the cultural consciousness of Arizona: a fighter pilot. Frank Luke Jr., a local boy bronzed in a leather jacket and cap, was an ace who came second only to Eddie Rickenbacker in the number of confirmed kills by an American pilot during World War I. No protesters have tried to rip down Luke’s statue, nor has there been any interruption in Arizona’s habit of elevating its pilots to the realm of government. Though Luke had an air base named for him, he isn’t the most revered fighter pilot in state political lore: That honor goes, of course, to John McCain, the Vietnam War veteran who held one of Arizona’s U.S. Senate seats for six terms.
The race for McCain’s old seat this November now features a matchup between two retired military pilots who are both playing up their bona fides in the armed services. The contest between Republican Air Force Colonel Martha McSally and Democratic Navy Captain Mark Kelly shouldn’t be close. “It used to be that a well-funded Republican not prone to gaffes would run away with a statewide office,” said GOP consultant Barrett Marson. And if that candidate was a fighter pilot to boot, loyal to an incumbent Republican president? That would have been a dream candidate in Frank Luke’s twentieth-century Arizona.
But this is no ordinary time in a restive state, battered by a runaway coronavirus pandemic and leaning toward voting Democratic in a presidential race for only the second time since Harry Truman’s win here in 1948. Now Arizona is also poised to send two Democratic senators to Washington for the first time in almost as long, possibly helping tip control of the upper chamber to the Democrats.