vox--2020-11-20--The mind-boggling end of Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise, explained

The Vox Book Club is linking to Bookshop.org to support local and independent booksellers .
The ending of Susan Choi ’ s Trust Exercise is hard to talk about .
It ’ s hard even to think about .
The first time I read it , I made an involuntary sound of shock that made a friend demand to know what was wrong .
In its subliminal , pulsing ambiguity , the ending seems to carry the key to the whole book — this vicious , knife-sharp book — but it ’ s so hard to figure out just what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three parts .
The first and most straightforward tells the story of an adolescent love affair gone wrong at a performing arts high school in the 1980s ; it ’ s a little bit Sally Rooney , a little bit Meg Wolitzer .
But the two parts that follow get increasingly more complex , and each one destabilizes the story we thought we were reading just a little bit more .
We can ’ t say Choi didn ’ t warn us .
It ’ s right there in the title .
Every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing a trust fall backward into the outstretched pages of a book , and Trust Exercise is designed to make us acutely aware of how vulnerable this action of reading is , and of how many different ways an author might play on that trust .
It ’ s also designed to examine less playful , more destructive betrayals of trust .
Every time Trust Exercise peels back another one of its layers , it becomes more clear that this is a book about young women being preyed on by older men who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devastating the trauma that ensues is .
To understand how Trust Exercise does this work — and how the ending fits into it — let ’ s go through the whole book , layer by layer and part by part .
We ’ ll see what each section is telling us , and how they all start to fit together with the revelations of the final section .
Trust Exercise starts off as a sweet teen love story .
Then it gets weird .
Part 1 of Trust Exercise is the most self-explanatory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s a detached , spiky little adolescent love story about two 15-year-olds , Sarah and David .
Sarah is a loner with aspirations toward punkdom ; David is a charismatic rich kid with a sensitive side .
Unlike the other two parts of Trust Exercise , this section is a dual point-of-view , with the narrator moving back and forth between the minds of both Sarah and David , although Sarah ’ s perspective dominates .
Both Sarah and David are theater majors at the local performing arts high school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mr. Kingsley .
Like cult leaders everywhere , he informs his students that he ’ ll first break them down ( Ego Deconstruction ) only to build them back up again ( Ego Reconstruction ) .
His classes are big on demented trust exercises , and it ’ s during one of these exercises that David and Sarah first connect .
Mr. Kingsley turns out all the lights and demands the students make their way through the darkness to touch each other .
David , recognizing Sarah by the feel of her bedazzled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mouth and kisses her .
The two are overcome by a deep and chemical connection .
After a series of tragically teenaged misunderstandings , the pair break up , and it ’ s here that Mr. Kingsley begins to take an interest in the heartbroken Sarah .
He begins to hold her after class for private chats , and this grants Sarah — as it does all of Mr. Kingsley ’ s pets — immediate social cachet .
She has been recognized as damaged , adult in a way none of her classmates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to violate the boundaries of normal student-teacher relationships .
She starts keeping a lot of secrets from her mother , an academic secretary .
Mr. Kingsley begins to force David and Sarah to do mirror exercises together in front of the rest of the class .
He wants them to mine their inner torment for stage work .
“ I won ’ t rest until you cry , ” he tells David .
When the two of them dig in stubbornly , refusing to react as Mr. Kingsley wants , he drops Sarah @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to suggesting that there is something perhaps improper about the way Mr. Kingsley treats his students — something perhaps even sexual .
Sarah notes after Mr. Kingsley begins to keep her after class that another teacher at the school once had a crush on her , but she always knew he would never touch her .
When Mr. Kingsley begins to take an interest in another student , a boy named Manuel , Sarah reacts with jealousy and fury .
She tells Manuel ’ s parents that he ’ s Mr. Kingsley ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ does the narrator go so far as to imply that Mr. Kingsley would ever sexually target Sarah herself .
There ’ s a sort of hole in the narrative where that possibility lies , a place that Sarah never quite brings herself to confront .
And anyway , she keeps noting defensively , he ’ s gay .
As Mr. Kingsley hovers on the verge of irredeemable creepiness , a new set of predatory older men comes to town .
The high school is hosting a traveling troupe of high school actors from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( handsome Liam , 24 ) , and their teacher , playwright , and director ( creepy Martin , 40 ) .
But there ’ s something that seems immediately off about The English People .
Everyone else speaks in easy naturalistic dialogue , but in contrast their speech is heightened and warped , like a parody of an English person ( “ Hasn ’ t old Lillian taught you to shave , you inveterate son of a smothering mother ?
” ) .
They seem to be not quite real .
Without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sarah finds herself on a double date : herself with Liam , who she finds weird and a little leering but tries to keep reminding herself is objectively handsome ; and her classmate Karen with Martin .
Sarah barely knows Karen , who seems a little standoffish , but Karen smirks when she assures Sarah that she and the much-older Martin are “ just hanging out.
” The quartet ends up at a party at the home of the absent Mr. Kingsley , and there Liam and Sarah have a sexual encounter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murky space between extremely bad sex and a sexual assault .
Everything is disgusting but appallingly pleasurable , and Sarah orgasms while moaning , “ Nooo , nooo , noooo.
” Afterward , desperate to escape and with no ride , Sarah throws herself on the mercy of Karen ’ s cool young mother , a secretary who wears lipstick late at night and is delighted to comfort a girl over her boy troubles .
She feeds Sarah supplements and tucks her into bed while Karen sleeps in the next room , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In its second act , Trust Exercise introduces us to the angriest of Karens Part 2 tells us immediately that we are not in Kansas anymore .
More accurately , we are no longer in Sarah ’ s head : We are in Karen ’ s instead .
Or at least we are with a narrator who calls herself “ Karen ” with pointed quote marks , and then drops them , assuring us that she is not petty .
Part 1 , we learn , was not the real and historical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Sarah about her adolescence , one that Karen considers to be exploitative and dangerously untrue .
Karen recognizes herself refracted into multiple characters throughout Sarah ’ s book .
Her adolescent Christianity has been projected onto two other characters — one nerdy , one cool — and her deep friendship with Sarah , which ended their junior year of high school , has been displaced onto a third .
The only characters who have not been kaleidoscoped out in this way , she informs us , are Sarah and David , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anyone else .
But Karen , good sport , will go ahead and agree to abide by the names that Sarah assigned everyone else , even though they ’ re fake .
Karen is angry .
Swinging back and forth between first- and third-person within the same sentence , she spits vitriol at Sarah , a mediocre actor in high school who only seems successful now because she chose a replacement talent that anyone could fake : writing fiction .
Karen herself went from acting to dance , which requires real commitment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ books , and she consults the dictionary and thesaurus for pleasure .
She ’ s been to therapy .
She ’ s built a consistent narrative out of her past .
She could have done what Sarah did , if she weren ’ t too principled to mine her past that way , she informs us .
But Karen has a plan .
Martin , the English drama teacher — the one she dated when she was 16 and he was 40 — has been fired from his high school for having sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is now a local theater director , is incensed .
Surely those girls consented ?
Surely this is a witch hunt ?
To make it up to Martin , he decides to direct Martin ’ s latest play .
Karen reads the play , and she concludes that it ’ s good .
Or at least she reads it quickly and keeps thinking about it afterward , which surely suggests that it ’ s good , she argues .
She is struck by the feeling that the play is “ stuffed full of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a silence of meaning , a refusal to spell out the facts.
” This is as good a description as any for Sarah ’ s book , which we just finished reading a few pages ago , in Part 1 , and was so strangely elliptical , refusing so strongly to spell out the facts .
But now we have Karen here , who , assuring us that she is not crazy , decides she ’ ll have to take control of things .
She feels “ a strong challenge to enter the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their meaning ” — and , by extension , she ’ s going to do the same for Sarah ’ s book .
Pointedly , she eyes those passages about Manuel and Mr. Kingsley ’ s inappropriate relationship with a raised eyebrow , informs us that there never was anyone like Manuel in high school , and makes a few cracks about projection .
Karen , who is now a professional organizer , organizes David ’ s production of Martin ’ s play .
She gets herself cast in the only woman ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flies out from England to play the male lead .
She gets Sarah to come to town for opening night and be her dresser , for old time ’ s sake .
She gets a gun that shoots blanks for the scene in which her character shoots Martin ’ s character , and makes many jokes about Chekhov ’ s gun .
And on opening night , instead of shooting a blank , she shoots Martin in the crotch .
She informs him that he ’ ll live .
He just won ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Karen shoots Martin , she fills us in on some of the backstory she says Sarah rewrote .
She and Sarah , she says , flew to England together the summer after sophomore year to visit Liam and Martin .
Liam , devoted to a disgusted Sarah , meets them at the airport , but Martin ghosts Karen .
Karen is heartbroken , especially because she is pregnant .
She flies straight back to the US , gives birth , and gives the baby up for adoption .
And as she grows up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Martin has changed her utterly , has warped her .
Because despite what she thought at 16 , their relationship was not romantic .
It was abuse .
He was an adult and she was a child , and he abused her .
There ’ s one more moment in this section I want to linger on before we move on to Part 3 .
When Sarah arrives on opening night , she ’ s furious to hear that David has invited Mr. Kingsley .
“ Mr .
Kingsley is part of what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Karen , who replies , “ And here I thought he was part of what happened to you.
” It ’ s as though there ’ s been a collapse in the two accounts of abuse we ’ ve heard so far .
Something seems to have happened between Sarah and Mr. Kingsley , sure , you can get that from all those jokes Karen makes about Manuel and projection — but what does he have to do with Karen ?
What is Karen not telling us , after her pointed fury that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either ?
The final act of Trust Exercise is the shortest and most confusing Part 3 is the most enigmatic section of Trust Exercise .
It features a woman named Claire — ironic , another character tells us , because Claire means “ clear , ” and yet this Claire fails to make anything quite clear .
She ’ s the baby Karen gave up in Part 2 , and she ’ s looking for her birth mother .
All Claire has to go on is that her bio mom attended a particular @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Claire goes to the high school and meets with the drama teacher , a Mr. Lord .
At first he says he can ’ t tell her anything , but then he invites her to his house to see what he can figure out .
He tells her about his divorce from his ex-wife , his two adult sons .
He plies her with wine .
Eventually he tries to force himself on her , and Claire runs away .
Years later , she recalls that when she left the high school @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the secretaries seemed to recognize her , to know that she looked just like some former student , who must have been her mother .
“ But by then , ” Choi writes , in the final line of the novel , “ it was too late to go back and say , ‘ Tell me her name.
’ ” So what are we to make of this ?
There ’ s strong evidence that Mr. Lord is an analogue for the character Sarah named Mr. Kingsley in her book .
( Karen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but kept using it . )
He ’ s an institution at the high school , just as Mr. Kingsley was — its king , Claire tells us .
In Part 1 , Sarah makes a point of noting that Mr. Kingsley ’ s name is apt , because he ’ s the king of the school .
And there ’ s a congruence between the names Kingsley and Lord , both suggestive of male aristocracy .
But the Mr. Kingsley of Sarah ’ s book was gay and childless .
And his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appropriate student-teacher relationship , was never sexual .
Martin and Liam were the sexual predators of the stories we heard earlier — except for that strange exchange between Sarah and Karen toward the end of Part 2 , when they both identify Mr. Kingsley as being instrumental to the other ’ s assault .
Yet Martin and Liam were both so artificial , both so fictional in a way that none of the other characters in this novel are .
Part 3 gives us an explanation for that weird off-note of Martin and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not real .
What Karen and Sarah told us happened with them did not happen : It happened with Mr. Kingsley instead .
It ’ s as though all of the trauma inflicted by a beloved teacher has been projected off onto these weirdos with the British slang , characters it is safe to loathe and be viscerally disgusted by .
They allow Mr. Kingsley to remain innocent in the background , an admittedly eccentric but ultimately benevolent source of mentorship and approval .
But Part 3 reveals that Mr. Kingsley was fictional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lord , and Martin and Liam are also Mr. Lord .
They ’ re all the same person , fragmented into different fictional characters in the same way that Karen saw herself fragmented in Sarah ’ s book , so that their victims can bear to hate the predator without hating the celebrated teacher .
But what about that bizarre ambiguity about who Claire ’ s mother is ?
Why is that where the novel ends ?
Don ’ t we know who Claire ’ s mother is ?
It ’ s Karen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be ?
In this book of multiple identities , this book where individuals are refracted onto a cast of different characters so that their true selves can only resolve in the final pages — are we all that sure that Karen and Sarah are different people ?
Or could they be different characteristics of the same person : someone who is half desperate to hold onto fond memories of her high school romance , to cling to the legacy of the teacher who changed her life , and half spitting mad at all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for blood ?
What if all these elliptical , circuitous stories we ’ ve been reading about boundaries transgressed , trust betrayed , and sex that becomes ever more clearly an act of violence in each progressive scene — what if all of those stories are about the same two people ?
A young girl , and the teacher she trusted who used his power to prey on her ?
On one level , of course it ’ s meaningless to say that Sarah and Karen are the same person .
Trust Exercise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sarah and Karen are fictional characters .
Neither one has any “ real ” stable identity .
But on another level , of course they are the same person .
They are the girl who was betrayed by her teacher .
They are the woman whose life was ruined by a man who was trusted with too much power .
They are the woman whose story we have been telling , over and over and over again .
Add your thoughts in the comments below , and RSVP to join us on November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ live event with Susan Choi .
To make sure you don ’ t miss anything , subscribe to the Vox Book Club newsletter !

The Vox Book Club is linking to Bookshop.org to support local and independent booksellers.
The ending of Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise is hard to talk about. It’s hard even to think about. The first time I read it, I made an involuntary sound of shock that made a friend demand to know what was wrong. In its subliminal, pulsing ambiguity, the ending seems to carry the key to the whole book — this vicious, knife-sharp book — but it’s so hard to figure out just what that key is.
Trust Exercise has three parts. The first and most straightforward tells the story of an adolescent love affair gone wrong at a performing arts high school in the 1980s; it’s a little bit Sally Rooney, a little bit Meg Wolitzer. But the two parts that follow get increasingly more complex, and each one destabilizes the story we thought we were reading just a little bit more.
We can’t say Choi didn’t warn us. It’s right there in the title. Every time we read, we’re doing a trust fall backward into the outstretched pages of a book, and Trust Exercise is designed to make us acutely aware of how vulnerable this action of reading is, and of how many different ways an author might play on that trust.
It’s also designed to examine less playful, more destructive betrayals of trust. Every time Trust Exercise peels back another one of its layers, it becomes more clear that this is a book about young women being preyed on by older men who hold power over them, and how devastating the trauma that ensues is.
To understand how Trust Exercise does this work — and how the ending fits into it — let’s go through the whole book, layer by layer and part by part. We’ll see what each section is telling us, and how they all start to fit together with the revelations of the final section.
Spoilers and discussion of sexual assault follow.
Trust Exercise starts off as a sweet teen love story. Then it gets weird.
Part 1 of Trust Exercise is the most self-explanatory of the book’s three parts. It’s a detached, spiky little adolescent love story about two 15-year-olds, Sarah and David. Sarah is a loner with aspirations toward punkdom; David is a charismatic rich kid with a sensitive side. Unlike the other two parts of Trust Exercise, this section is a dual point-of-view, with the narrator moving back and forth between the minds of both Sarah and David, although Sarah’s perspective dominates.
Both Sarah and David are theater majors at the local performing arts high school, where they study under the domineering Mr. Kingsley. Like cult leaders everywhere, he informs his students that he’ll first break them down (Ego Deconstruction) only to build them back up again (Ego Reconstruction). His classes are big on demented trust exercises, and it’s during one of these exercises that David and Sarah first connect.
Mr. Kingsley turns out all the lights and demands the students make their way through the darkness to touch each other. David, recognizing Sarah by the feel of her bedazzled jeans, takes her thumb into his mouth and kisses her. The two are overcome by a deep and chemical connection.
After a series of tragically teenaged misunderstandings, the pair break up, and it’s here that Mr. Kingsley begins to take an interest in the heartbroken Sarah. He begins to hold her after class for private chats, and this grants Sarah — as it does all of Mr. Kingsley’s pets — immediate social cachet. She has been recognized as damaged, adult in a way none of her classmates are, worthy of treatment that seems to violate the boundaries of normal student-teacher relationships. She starts keeping a lot of secrets from her mother, an academic secretary.
Mr. Kingsley begins to force David and Sarah to do mirror exercises together in front of the rest of the class. He wants them to mine their inner torment for stage work. “I won’t rest until you cry,” he tells David. When the two of them dig in stubbornly, refusing to react as Mr. Kingsley wants, he drops Sarah.
The narrator here walks right up to suggesting that there is something perhaps improper about the way Mr. Kingsley treats his students — something perhaps even sexual. Sarah notes after Mr. Kingsley begins to keep her after class that another teacher at the school once had a crush on her, but she always knew he would never touch her. When Mr. Kingsley begins to take an interest in another student, a boy named Manuel, Sarah reacts with jealousy and fury. She tells Manuel’s parents that he’s Mr. Kingsley’s boyfriend.
But at no point does the narrator go so far as to imply that Mr. Kingsley would ever sexually target Sarah herself. There’s a sort of hole in the narrative where that possibility lies, a place that Sarah never quite brings herself to confront. And anyway, she keeps noting defensively, he’s gay.
As Mr. Kingsley hovers on the verge of irredeemable creepiness, a new set of predatory older men comes to town. The high school is hosting a traveling troupe of high school actors from England, including their most distinguished alum (handsome Liam, 24), and their teacher, playwright, and director (creepy Martin, 40).
But there’s something that seems immediately off about The English People. Everyone else speaks in easy naturalistic dialogue, but in contrast their speech is heightened and warped, like a parody of an English person (“Hasn’t old Lillian taught you to shave, you inveterate son of a smothering mother?”). They seem to be not quite real.
Without quite understanding how it’s happened, Sarah finds herself on a double date: herself with Liam, who she finds weird and a little leering but tries to keep reminding herself is objectively handsome; and her classmate Karen with Martin. Sarah barely knows Karen, who seems a little standoffish, but Karen smirks when she assures Sarah that she and the much-older Martin are “just hanging out.”
The quartet ends up at a party at the home of the absent Mr. Kingsley, and there Liam and Sarah have a sexual encounter that falls right into the dark and murky space between extremely bad sex and a sexual assault. Everything is disgusting but appallingly pleasurable, and Sarah orgasms while moaning, “Nooo, nooo, noooo.”
Afterward, desperate to escape and with no ride, Sarah throws herself on the mercy of Karen’s cool young mother, a secretary who wears lipstick late at night and is delighted to comfort a girl over her boy troubles. She feeds Sarah supplements and tucks her into bed while Karen sleeps in the next room, and that’s where Part 1 ends.
In its second act, Trust Exercise introduces us to the angriest of Karens
Part 2 tells us immediately that we are not in Kansas anymore. More accurately, we are no longer in Sarah’s head: We are in Karen’s instead. Or at least we are with a narrator who calls herself “Karen” with pointed quote marks, and then drops them, assuring us that she is not petty.
Part 1, we learn, was not the real and historical truth. It was a novel written by Sarah about her adolescence, one that Karen considers to be exploitative and dangerously untrue.
Karen recognizes herself refracted into multiple characters throughout Sarah’s book. Her adolescent Christianity has been projected onto two other characters — one nerdy, one cool — and her deep friendship with Sarah, which ended their junior year of high school, has been displaced onto a third. The only characters who have not been kaleidoscoped out in this way, she informs us, are Sarah and David, who were always too self-absorbed to care about anyone else. But Karen, good sport, will go ahead and agree to abide by the names that Sarah assigned everyone else, even though they’re fake.
Karen is angry. Swinging back and forth between first- and third-person within the same sentence, she spits vitriol at Sarah, a mediocre actor in high school who only seems successful now because she chose a replacement talent that anyone could fake: writing fiction. Karen herself went from acting to dance, which requires real commitment. Also she reads a lot of self-help books, and she consults the dictionary and thesaurus for pleasure. She’s been to therapy. She’s built a consistent narrative out of her past. She could have done what Sarah did, if she weren’t too principled to mine her past that way, she informs us.
But Karen has a plan. Martin, the English drama teacher — the one she dated when she was 16 and he was 40 — has been fired from his high school for having sexual relationships with students. David, who is now a local theater director, is incensed. Surely those girls consented? Surely this is a witch hunt? To make it up to Martin, he decides to direct Martin’s latest play.
Karen reads the play, and she concludes that it’s good. Or at least she reads it quickly and keeps thinking about it afterward, which surely suggests that it’s good, she argues. She is struck by the feeling that the play is “stuffed full of invisible silence,” and specifically “a silence of meaning, a refusal to spell out the facts.”
This is as good a description as any for Sarah’s book, which we just finished reading a few pages ago, in Part 1, and was so strangely elliptical, refusing so strongly to spell out the facts. But now we have Karen here, who, assuring us that she is not crazy, decides she’ll have to take control of things. She feels “a strong challenge to enter the play’s silences and to utter their meaning” — and, by extension, she’s going to do the same for Sarah’s book. Pointedly, she eyes those passages about Manuel and Mr. Kingsley’s inappropriate relationship with a raised eyebrow, informs us that there never was anyone like Manuel in high school, and makes a few cracks about projection.
Karen, who is now a professional organizer, organizes David’s production of Martin’s play. She gets herself cast in the only woman’s part, opposite Martin, who flies out from England to play the male lead. She gets Sarah to come to town for opening night and be her dresser, for old time’s sake. She gets a gun that shoots blanks for the scene in which her character shoots Martin’s character, and makes many jokes about Chekhov’s gun.
And on opening night, instead of shooting a blank, she shoots Martin in the crotch. She informs him that he’ll live. He just won’t be the same.
But before Karen shoots Martin, she fills us in on some of the backstory she says Sarah rewrote. She and Sarah, she says, flew to England together the summer after sophomore year to visit Liam and Martin. Liam, devoted to a disgusted Sarah, meets them at the airport, but Martin ghosts Karen. Karen is heartbroken, especially because she is pregnant. She flies straight back to the US, gives birth, and gives the baby up for adoption.
And as she grows up, Karen finds that her experience with Martin has changed her utterly, has warped her. Because despite what she thought at 16, their relationship was not romantic. It was abuse. He was an adult and she was a child, and he abused her.
There’s one more moment in this section I want to linger on before we move on to Part 3. When Sarah arrives on opening night, she’s furious to hear that David has invited Mr. Kingsley. “Mr. Kingsley is part of what happened to you,” Sarah tells Karen, who replies, “And here I thought he was part of what happened to you.”
It’s as though there’s been a collapse in the two accounts of abuse we’ve heard so far. Something seems to have happened between Sarah and Mr. Kingsley, sure, you can get that from all those jokes Karen makes about Manuel and projection — but what does he have to do with Karen? What is Karen not telling us, after her pointed fury that Sarah didn’t tell us everything either?
The final act of Trust Exercise is the shortest and most confusing
Part 3 is the most enigmatic section of Trust Exercise. It features a woman named Claire — ironic, another character tells us, because Claire means “clear,” and yet this Claire fails to make anything quite clear. She’s the baby Karen gave up in Part 2, and she’s looking for her birth mother. All Claire has to go on is that her bio mom attended a particular performing arts high school in the 1980s.
Claire goes to the high school and meets with the drama teacher, a Mr. Lord. At first he says he can’t tell her anything, but then he invites her to his house to see what he can figure out. He tells her about his divorce from his ex-wife, his two adult sons. He plies her with wine. Eventually he tries to force himself on her, and Claire runs away.
Years later, she recalls that when she left the high school on her lone visit, one of the secretaries seemed to recognize her, to know that she looked just like some former student, who must have been her mother. “But by then,” Choi writes, in the final line of the novel, “it was too late to go back and say, ‘Tell me her name.’”
So what are we to make of this?
There’s strong evidence that Mr. Lord is an analogue for the character Sarah named Mr. Kingsley in her book. (Karen told us that was a false name but kept using it.) He’s an institution at the high school, just as Mr. Kingsley was — its king, Claire tells us. In Part 1, Sarah makes a point of noting that Mr. Kingsley’s name is apt, because he’s the king of the school. And there’s a congruence between the names Kingsley and Lord, both suggestive of male aristocracy.
But the Mr. Kingsley of Sarah’s book was gay and childless. And his relationship with Sarah, while not an appropriate student-teacher relationship, was never sexual. Martin and Liam were the sexual predators of the stories we heard earlier — except for that strange exchange between Sarah and Karen toward the end of Part 2, when they both identify Mr. Kingsley as being instrumental to the other’s assault. Yet Martin and Liam were both so artificial, both so fictional in a way that none of the other characters in this novel are.
Part 3 gives us an explanation for that weird off-note of Martin and Liam. It suggests that they were not real. What Karen and Sarah told us happened with them did not happen: It happened with Mr. Kingsley instead.
It’s as though all of the trauma inflicted by a beloved teacher has been projected off onto these weirdos with the British slang, characters it is safe to loathe and be viscerally disgusted by. They allow Mr. Kingsley to remain innocent in the background, an admittedly eccentric but ultimately benevolent source of mentorship and approval.
But Part 3 reveals that Mr. Kingsley was fictional, too. He’s Mr. Lord, and Martin and Liam are also Mr. Lord. They’re all the same person, fragmented into different fictional characters in the same way that Karen saw herself fragmented in Sarah’s book, so that their victims can bear to hate the predator without hating the celebrated teacher.
But what about that bizarre ambiguity about who Claire’s mother is? Why is that where the novel ends? Don’t we know who Claire’s mother is? It’s Karen, right? Who else could it be?
In this book of multiple identities, this book where individuals are refracted onto a cast of different characters so that their true selves can only resolve in the final pages — are we all that sure that Karen and Sarah are different people? Or could they be different characteristics of the same person: someone who is half desperate to hold onto fond memories of her high school romance, to cling to the legacy of the teacher who changed her life, and half spitting mad at all that was done to her and out for blood?
What if all these elliptical, circuitous stories we’ve been reading about boundaries transgressed, trust betrayed, and sex that becomes ever more clearly an act of violence in each progressive scene — what if all of those stories are about the same two people? A young girl, and the teacher she trusted who used his power to prey on her?
On one level, of course it’s meaningless to say that Sarah and Karen are the same person. Trust Exercise is a work of fiction, and Sarah and Karen are fictional characters. Neither one has any “real” stable identity.
But on another level, of course they are the same person. They are the girl who was betrayed by her teacher. They are the woman whose life was ruined by a man who was trusted with too much power.
They are the woman whose story we have been telling, over and over and over again.
Add your thoughts in the comments below, and RSVP to join us on November 30 at 5 pm Eastern for a live event with Susan Choi. To make sure you don’t miss anything, subscribe to the Vox Book Club newsletter!


vox--2020-11-20--Supernatural’s bonkers series finale marked the end of an era of fandom

Thursday night saw the end of an era : the series finale of the CW ’ s cult hit and longest-running show , Supernatural .
After 15 seasons , over 300 episodes , and innumerable character deaths and revivals , the show that was synonymous with internet fandom culture finally let its demon-hunting brothers , Sam and Dean Winchester ( Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles ) , drive the Impala into the sunset .
After the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted its final season in the spring , Supernatural rounded out its last few episodes throughout November .
And as it headed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ caught unexpected mainstream buzz for something barely related to the show itself .
The sudden attention was due in part to the total accident of the show ’ s most popular fandom ship , Destiel ( Dean and his guardian angel Castiel ) , becoming canon during the 2020 presidential election ’ s lengthy waiting period for results .
The coincidence spawned endless jokes and memes across social media .
But less tangentially , the show ’ s second wind was also due to pandemic-driven emotion over the rare departure of a show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , many of its fans had literally grown up with it .
To anyone familiar with Supernatural ’ s long history of putting its characters through the narrative wringer , Thursday ’ s finale — titled “ Carry On ” in homage to the show ’ s unofficial theme song , which we heard repeatedly throughout the episode — was both bittersweet and baffling , simultaneously surprising and predictable .
We ’ ll spoil specific details further down , but suffice it to say that there ’ s a reason that Jensen Ackles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year ago that he ’ d had “ so much trouble ” with the ending .
The end of Supernatural , however , was arguably much bigger than the resolution of its plot .
Alongside older monster-of-the-week dramas Buffy and Angel , Supernatural arguably helped spawn a whole legacy of low-key ensemble fantasy series .
The show ’ s fandom was perhaps one of the first to help usher in the modern era of geek culture : an environment in which creative teams cojexist with its series ’ fans , evolving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in spite of or in direct opposition to them .
This is a lesson plenty of newer franchises have failed to learn , to their ultimate detriment , but that many others have also taken in stride .
At the same time , Supernatural and its fandom spent years locked in a delicate love-hate tangle , From 2005 to 2020 , Supernatural wrestled with its own regressive tendencies and a pattern of flagrant misogyny .
Throughout the series ’ many memorable meta-episodes , Supernatural originally kept portraying its own female fans as creepy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its female characters as cannon fodder .
Over its first decade , however , this gradually changed , shifting from open derision to open celebration .
The result of all this was an ending to the plot that fans could be satisfied with — though the final episode arguably wasn ’ t the story ’ s proper ending , which actually came in the episode right before the finale .
The series finale itself was — well , it was a lot , and it clearly wasn ’ t designed to make every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just said about how the show evolved its depiction of women over time , the finale didn ’ t feature a single recurring female character .
“ Carry On ” was a bonkers look at what a “ happily ever after ” might be for the Winchesters .
It lasted about a day .
Prior to the premiere of “ Carry On , ” the CW aired an hour-long documentary commemorating Supernatural ’ s 15 seasons and giving members of the large ensemble cast a chance to bid the show farewell .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everyone fondly reminisce and jerking fans ’ tears ; by the time the documentary ’ s recap reached the 300th episode , which showed the Winchesters having a loving family meal together for the first and only time , I was a little verklempt myself .
Supernatural actually resolved its big final season story arc in the penultimate episode , which drew praise from both media and fans for being a satisfying wrap-up of the themes of the season and the series as a whole .
We ’ d followed the efforts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ God — who , in this universe , is an egocentric writer named Chuck — and deliver free will to the universe once and for all .
In what might be considered a twist , that story wrapped up before the finale , leaving Sam and Dean free at last to live happily ever after .
Of course , this being Sam and Dean , they keep right on fighting monsters — and it ’ s a random monster fight , not long after their big win , that finishes Dean off once @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right : Dean actually dies , not nobly or epically , but in an inconsequential baddie-of-the-week fight , after he gets randomly impaled on the butt of a giant knife .
That very weird injury allows him just enough time to bid a teary goodbye to Sam , and allows Sam enough time to come to terms with the fact that it ’ s really the final goodbye .
We marked this section for spoilers , but really , if you thought Dean , with his perpetual death wish , was going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ ve been watching a different show .
At its heart , Supernatural has always had one core conflict : Sam ’ s wish to be able to live his own free life , away from Dean and the monster-hunting business .
Meanwhile , Dean has always dreamt of the kind of peaceful existence that the show has repeatedly hinted to us that he was only ever going to find in heaven .
As Dean himself tells Sam in the episode as he ’ s dying , “ You knew it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me.
” The second half of the series finale focuses on Dean ’ s arrival in heaven as Sam moves on with his life back on Earth .
We get a montage of Sam living his own life through the years , including fathering a son whom he names Dean .
All the while , Dean enjoys a long quiet joyride through the heavenly countryside in his beloved car .
In the final moments , Sam passes away on Earth , with his son at his side , and rejoins Dean in heaven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few minutes for Dean .
As the two brothers embrace in an idyllic spot in the countryside — because even heaven still looks like America ’ s heartland — we ’ re treated to a flyaway shot and a final shot of the cast and crew , standing there with Jared and Jensen , thanking us and waving goodbye .
The rapid pace of all this is jarring — but it ’ s also exactly how I predicted that the show would end .
Because of the quick pacing and the randomness of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practically ignominious , with Dean getting randomly impaled , and with barely any chance for him to enjoy his freedom — it was destined to be controversial .
Still , fans were mainly baffled at both Dean ’ s manner of death and the many unresolved plot lines or absent elements from the episode .
One of these — Castiel — is a glum footnote that many fans will have a hard time accepting .
Cas , an angel whose fourth-season arrival involved personally dragging Dean out of hell , had always been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the series ended , he confessed that “ the one thing I want is something I know I can ’ t have , ” before going on to tell a shocked Dean that he loves him .
Cas then promptly yanked himself into another dimension in a sacrificial attempt to save Dean ’ s life , but eh , this is Supernatural .
We know death is never that permanent — and hey , there were still two episodes left .
But Cas , though he somehow made it back to heaven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finale .
Whether or not you think Dean himself is queer , as many fans do , having Cas declare his love for Dean and never getting a response is a large plot thread for the show to leave dangling .
Perhaps the creative team decided to leave the confession of love for the fans to play around with on their own .
Yet given that the show ’ s mantra has always been “ family don ’ t end with blood , ” and that Sam and Dean ’ s “ family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a sad thing to see actor Misha Collins left completely out of the final episode .
Also missing were the women : Not one still-living female character made an appearance .
The show obviously intended the finale to be all about Sam and Dean , but it brought their surrogate father Bobby back ; why not a few more friends ?
The other longtime characters don ’ t even get to bid Dean goodbye — Sam builds a private funeral pyre for his brother , and mourns alone .
All in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even alienating finale .
But then again , ending the series by being totally at odds with its fanbase is a classic Supernatural move .
Supernatural ’ s fandom was always more progressive than the show itself During election week 2020 , an unexpected source of entertaining counter-programming emerged : the sudden social media noise generated when Supernatural kinda made Destiel canon .
The revelation immediately revived the show ’ s fandom , as many previous fans of the show who ’ d stopped paying attention in recent years abruptly tuned in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was doing .
The jokes flew that an unpredictable election week had generated the unlikeliest possible outcome of the show — a ship that most fans considered too taboo for its famously regressive canon suddenly becoming textual , and before the election results were announced to boot .
( Additionally , an unconfirmed rumor that Vladimir Putin might resign hit the internet at the same time the Destiel news did , turning many of the memes into an even weirder spin on Destiel somehow spawning Putin ’ s resignation . )
But all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s overtly queer reveal , particularly as it seemed to come mainly from fans who supported democratic candidate Joe Biden , wasn ’ t without a certain amount of irony .
After all , Supernatural spent most of its 15-year run delivering regressively conservative themes , despite having a large , relatively progressive female fanbase .
It took a long time for the show itself to acknowledge its own core demographics , though .
Throughout the series ’ early and middle seasons , the writers consistently seemed to be writing for ( and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ audience of mostly male viewers .
The show catered to the idea that Supernatural fans were akin to archetypal superhero or comic-book fans , geeky men driven by fantasies of becoming the hunky Winchester bros , rather than geeky women ( and queer people ) driven by fantasies of — well , you can fill in your own blanks .
At the same time , Supernatural ’ s omnipresent American heartland aesthetic wasn ’ t exactly easy to align with its weird fangirl demographic .
Its heroes sported a family name synonymous with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ urban fantasy themes — first made popular by its CW ( then-The WB ) predecessor Buffy the Vampire Slayer — with the denim-clad , muscle car-driving character tropes of Dukes of Hazzard .
In keeping with the theme of Sam and Dean as “ good old boys , ” the show clung to regressive views of gender , race , and sexuality .
Over its long run , it became notorious for killing off scores of its female characters , most of whom had been introduced as brief love interests for the heroes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — plenty of other characters also died to provide more ongoing angst for Sam and Dean — but that storytelling approach left the show little room to evolve in the directions that many of its fans desperately wanted it to .
It didn ’ t help that a romantic relationship between Dean and Castiel headed up the list of unlikely possibilities that the show ’ s most loyal fans wanted to see the most — or that the show had a tendency to queerbait those fans instead of truly taking the idea seriously @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conflict was an ever-widening disparity between the imaginary fanbase that Supernatural writers thought they had , and the imaginary progressive show that many fans were recreating for themselves on Tumblr , AO3 , and other fandom social platforms .
But over time , all of this conflict began to settle .
It helped that around 2012 , in conjunction with the rise of Tumblr as a fandom platform , and the subsequent rise of interest in both SuperWhoLock ( the notorious mega-fandom combining Supernatural , Doctor Who , and Sherlock ) and Destiel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ started to increase .
In 2013 , the show ’ s viewership jumped from the previous season by a full 33 percent among women age 18–34 — something almost unheard of for a show then nearly 10 seasons into its run .
That ratings increase made it much harder for the creative team to dismiss the women ensuring that it continued to air , and this new Tumblr-driven audience began to rapidly shift the relationship between Supernatural and its fanbase .
By the time the 200th episode , “ Fan Fiction , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come around swiftly to a full embrace of its fandom as being full of geeky , passionate women .
To its credit , Supernatural kept evolving from there : It took notable pains to expand its world-building , add more female characters , and give more depth to the few female characters it hadn ’ t killed off at that point .
There were definite setback moments , including two painful season 10 character deaths , a spinoff pilot attempt that no one liked , and another spinoff pilot attempt that everyone did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ win a series pickup .
Still , it ’ s incredibly revealing that the second spinoff attempt , “ Wayward Sisters , ” was centered entirely around a group of female demon hunters , rather than being another recycled dude fest .
Ultimately , “ Wayward Sisters ” ’ failed spinoff attempt embodied the Supernatural producers ’ shortcomings rather than its creative evolution .
Producers couldn ’ t embrace a full story-verse built around women , and the show continued to uphold a dudebro-centric worldview .
While Thursday night ’ s controversial series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the amount of nuance and evolution Supernatural showed over time was a testament both to how much love went into crafting the story , and how much mutual respect the production and its audience came to share .
How much of that consideration ultimately went into the finale is difficult to say .
While there ’ s still no Supernatural spinoff series currently on air or in the works , fans who ’ ve stuck with the show for 15 seasons undoubtedly still want more .
Wherever Supernatural ’ s legacy goes from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clearly been a unique one — and the fans who ’ ve walked it this far will make sure it ’ s not over yet .

Thursday night saw the end of an era: the series finale of the CW’s cult hit and longest-running show, Supernatural. After 15 seasons, over 300 episodes, and innumerable character deaths and revivals, the show that was synonymous with internet fandom culture finally let its demon-hunting brothers, Sam and Dean Winchester (Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles), drive the Impala into the sunset.
After the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted its final season in the spring, Supernatural rounded out its last few episodes throughout November. And as it headed into the home stretch, the show caught unexpected mainstream buzz for something barely related to the show itself. The sudden attention was due in part to the total accident of the show’s most popular fandom ship, Destiel (Dean and his guardian angel Castiel), becoming canon during the 2020 presidential election’s lengthy waiting period for results.
The coincidence spawned endless jokes and memes across social media. But less tangentially, the show’s second wind was also due to pandemic-driven emotion over the rare departure of a show that had been around for so long, many of its fans had literally grown up with it.
Presidential election:
Destiel turning canon in the middle of it: pic.twitter.com/rZOresyTFP — coochiecore ✨ (@CarlSlitty) November 6, 2020
y'all realise how big this is? spn finally making destiel canon on their final season? breaking twitter and tumblr? the longest slow burn to ever slow burn??? the old fans returning??? the old accounts reviving??? in the middle of a pandemic?? in the middle of THE US ELECTION???? — nethmi (spn spoilers!!) (@lwtsvelvet) November 6, 2020
To anyone familiar with Supernatural’s long history of putting its characters through the narrative wringer, Thursday’s finale — titled “Carry On” in homage to the show’s unofficial theme song, which we heard repeatedly throughout the episode — was both bittersweet and baffling, simultaneously surprising and predictable. We’ll spoil specific details further down, but suffice it to say that there’s a reason that Jensen Ackles, who plays Dean, said over a year ago that he’d had “so much trouble” with the ending.
The end of Supernatural, however, was arguably much bigger than the resolution of its plot. Alongside older monster-of-the-week dramas Buffy and Angel, Supernatural arguably helped spawn a whole legacy of low-key ensemble fantasy series. The show’s fandom was perhaps one of the first to help usher in the modern era of geek culture: an environment in which creative teams cojexist with its series’ fans, evolving the show in harmony with them rather than in spite of or in direct opposition to them. This is a lesson plenty of newer franchises have failed to learn, to their ultimate detriment, but that many others have also taken in stride.
At the same time, Supernatural and its fandom spent years locked in a delicate love-hate tangle, From 2005 to 2020, Supernatural wrestled with its own regressive tendencies and a pattern of flagrant misogyny. Throughout the series’ many memorable meta-episodes, Supernatural originally kept portraying its own female fans as creepy, embarrassing stalkers, while perpetually treating its female characters as cannon fodder. Over its first decade, however, this gradually changed, shifting from open derision to open celebration.
The result of all this was an ending to the plot that fans could be satisfied with — though the final episode arguably wasn’t the story’s proper ending, which actually came in the episode right before the finale. The series finale itself was — well, it was a lot, and it clearly wasn’t designed to make every fan happy. And despite everything I just said about how the show evolved its depiction of women over time, the finale didn’t feature a single recurring female character.
“Carry On” was a bonkers look at what a “happily ever after” might be for the Winchesters. It lasted about a day.
Prior to the premiere of “Carry On,” the CW aired an hour-long documentary commemorating Supernatural’s 15 seasons and giving members of the large ensemble cast a chance to bid the show farewell. The special served the dual purpose of letting everyone fondly reminisce and jerking fans’ tears; by the time the documentary’s recap reached the 300th episode, which showed the Winchesters having a loving family meal together for the first and only time, I was a little verklempt myself.
Supernatural actually resolved its big final season story arc in the penultimate episode, which drew praise from both media and fans for being a satisfying wrap-up of the themes of the season and the series as a whole. We’d followed the efforts of Sam and Dean to oust a corrupt God — who, in this universe, is an egocentric writer named Chuck — and deliver free will to the universe once and for all. In what might be considered a twist, that story wrapped up before the finale, leaving Sam and Dean free at last to live happily ever after.
Of course, this being Sam and Dean, they keep right on fighting monsters — and it’s a random monster fight, not long after their big win, that finishes Dean off once and for all. That’s right: Dean actually dies, not nobly or epically, but in an inconsequential baddie-of-the-week fight, after he gets randomly impaled on the butt of a giant knife. That very weird injury allows him just enough time to bid a teary goodbye to Sam, and allows Sam enough time to come to terms with the fact that it’s really the final goodbye.
We marked this section for spoilers, but really, if you thought Dean, with his perpetual death wish, was going to make it through the series finale, you’ve been watching a different show. At its heart, Supernatural has always had one core conflict: Sam’s wish to be able to live his own free life, away from Dean and the monster-hunting business. Meanwhile, Dean has always dreamt of the kind of peaceful existence that the show has repeatedly hinted to us that he was only ever going to find in heaven. As Dean himself tells Sam in the episode as he’s dying, “You knew it was always going to end like this for me.”
The second half of the series finale focuses on Dean’s arrival in heaven as Sam moves on with his life back on Earth. We get a montage of Sam living his own life through the years, including fathering a son whom he names Dean. All the while, Dean enjoys a long quiet joyride through the heavenly countryside in his beloved car.
In the final moments, Sam passes away on Earth, with his son at his side, and rejoins Dean in heaven after what’s been only a few minutes for Dean. As the two brothers embrace in an idyllic spot in the countryside — because even heaven still looks like America’s heartland — we’re treated to a flyaway shot and a final shot of the cast and crew, standing there with Jared and Jensen, thanking us and waving goodbye.
The rapid pace of all this is jarring — but it’s also exactly how I predicted that the show would end. Because of the quick pacing and the randomness of Dean’s death, however — practically ignominious, with Dean getting randomly impaled, and with barely any chance for him to enjoy his freedom — it was destined to be controversial.
Still, fans were mainly baffled at both Dean’s manner of death and the many unresolved plot lines or absent elements from the episode. One of these — Castiel — is a glum footnote that many fans will have a hard time accepting. Cas, an angel whose fourth-season arrival involved personally dragging Dean out of hell, had always been particularly fond of Dean. Two episodes before the series ended, he confessed that “the one thing I want is something I know I can’t have,” before going on to tell a shocked Dean that he loves him. Cas then promptly yanked himself into another dimension in a sacrificial attempt to save Dean’s life, but eh, this is Supernatural. We know death is never that permanent — and hey, there were still two episodes left.
But Cas, though he somehow made it back to heaven, didn’t reappear in the finale. Whether or not you think Dean himself is queer, as many fans do, having Cas declare his love for Dean and never getting a response is a large plot thread for the show to leave dangling. Perhaps the creative team decided to leave the confession of love for the fans to play around with on their own. Yet given that the show’s mantra has always been “family don’t end with blood,” and that Sam and Dean’s “family” has always included Castiel, it’s a sad thing to see actor Misha Collins left completely out of the final episode.
Also missing were the women: Not one still-living female character made an appearance. The show obviously intended the finale to be all about Sam and Dean, but it brought their surrogate father Bobby back; why not a few more friends? The other longtime characters don’t even get to bid Dean goodbye — Sam builds a private funeral pyre for his brother, and mourns alone.
All in all, this was an extremely strange, even alienating finale. But then again, ending the series by being totally at odds with its fanbase is a classic Supernatural move.
Supernatural’s fandom was always more progressive than the show itself
During election week 2020, an unexpected source of entertaining counter-programming emerged: the sudden social media noise generated when Supernatural kinda made Destiel canon. The revelation immediately revived the show’s fandom, as many previous fans of the show who’d stopped paying attention in recent years abruptly tuned in again to see how their beloved ship was doing.
The jokes flew that an unpredictable election week had generated the unlikeliest possible outcome of the show — a ship that most fans considered too taboo for its famously regressive canon suddenly becoming textual, and before the election results were announced to boot. (Additionally, an unconfirmed rumor that Vladimir Putin might resign hit the internet at the same time the Destiel news did, turning many of the memes into an even weirder spin on Destiel somehow spawning Putin’s resignation.)
But all of this celebration over the show’s overtly queer reveal, particularly as it seemed to come mainly from fans who supported democratic candidate Joe Biden, wasn’t without a certain amount of irony. After all, Supernatural spent most of its 15-year run delivering regressively conservative themes, despite having a large, relatively progressive female fanbase.
It took a long time for the show itself to acknowledge its own core demographics, though. Throughout the series’ early and middle seasons, the writers consistently seemed to be writing for (and in some instances about) an imaginary audience of mostly male viewers. The show catered to the idea that Supernatural fans were akin to archetypal superhero or comic-book fans, geeky men driven by fantasies of becoming the hunky Winchester bros, rather than geeky women (and queer people) driven by fantasies of — well, you can fill in your own blanks.
At the same time, Supernatural’s omnipresent American heartland aesthetic wasn’t exactly easy to align with its weird fangirl demographic. Its heroes sported a family name synonymous with “gun.” The show combined the urban fantasy themes — first made popular by its CW (then-The WB) predecessor Buffy the Vampire Slayer — with the denim-clad, muscle car-driving character tropes of Dukes of Hazzard.
In keeping with the theme of Sam and Dean as “good old boys,” the show clung to regressive views of gender, race, and sexuality. Over its long run, it became notorious for killing off scores of its female characters, most of whom had been introduced as brief love interests for the heroes.
That wasn’t necessarily misogynistic — plenty of other characters also died to provide more ongoing angst for Sam and Dean — but that storytelling approach left the show little room to evolve in the directions that many of its fans desperately wanted it to. It didn’t help that a romantic relationship between Dean and Castiel headed up the list of unlikely possibilities that the show’s most loyal fans wanted to see the most — or that the show had a tendency to queerbait those fans instead of truly taking the idea seriously.
The result of this core aesthetic conflict was an ever-widening disparity between the imaginary fanbase that Supernatural writers thought they had, and the imaginary progressive show that many fans were recreating for themselves on Tumblr, AO3, and other fandom social platforms.
But over time, all of this conflict began to settle. It helped that around 2012, in conjunction with the rise of Tumblr as a fandom platform, and the subsequent rise of interest in both SuperWhoLock (the notorious mega-fandom combining Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock) and Destiel, the show’s ratings miraculously started to increase. In 2013, the show’s viewership jumped from the previous season by a full 33 percent among women age 18–34 — something almost unheard of for a show then nearly 10 seasons into its run.
That ratings increase made it much harder for the creative team to dismiss the women ensuring that it continued to air, and this new Tumblr-driven audience began to rapidly shift the relationship between Supernatural and its fanbase. By the time the 200th episode, “Fan Fiction,” aired in 2014, the show had come around swiftly to a full embrace of its fandom as being full of geeky, passionate women.
To its credit, Supernatural kept evolving from there: It took notable pains to expand its world-building, add more female characters, and give more depth to the few female characters it hadn’t killed off at that point. There were definite setback moments, including two painful season 10 character deaths, a spinoff pilot attempt that no one liked, and another spinoff pilot attempt that everyone did like — but which still failed to win a series pickup.
Still, it’s incredibly revealing that the second spinoff attempt, “Wayward Sisters,” was centered entirely around a group of female demon hunters, rather than being another recycled dude fest. Ultimately, “Wayward Sisters”’ failed spinoff attempt embodied the Supernatural producers’ shortcomings rather than its creative evolution. Producers couldn’t embrace a full story-verse built around women, and the show continued to uphold a dudebro-centric worldview.
While Thursday night’s controversial series finale may have left fans consternated, the amount of nuance and evolution Supernatural showed over time was a testament both to how much love went into crafting the story, and how much mutual respect the production and its audience came to share.
How much of that consideration ultimately went into the finale is difficult to say. While there’s still no Supernatural spinoff series currently on air or in the works, fans who’ve stuck with the show for 15 seasons undoubtedly still want more. Wherever Supernatural’s legacy goes from here, the road so far has clearly been a unique one — and the fans who’ve walked it this far will make sure it’s not over yet.


vox--2020-11-20--Natural disasters are increasing. The world’s poorest are left to fend for themselves.

More than 100 disasters — many of which were climate- and weather-related — have affected more than 50 million people around the world since March , when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic .
And though the money needed to protect against these disasters in the countries at risk exists , it ’ s not getting to those who need it most .
Those are the key findings of a new report from the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies ( IFRC ) released Tuesday .
In it , the authors make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focused on the coronavirus pandemic — for good reason — the climate crisis and the resulting disasters facing communities around the world are just as catastrophic .
“ Unfortunately , there is no vaccine for climate change ” “ It ’ s a very , very serious crisis the world is facing currently , ” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said of the Covid-19 pandemic , speaking at a virtual news conference on November 17 .
But he noted that while there is some good news regarding the possibility of a vaccine for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no vaccine for climate change.
” The IFRC report , titled “ World Disasters Report 2020 : Come Heat or High Water , ” uses what ’ s known as “ extreme event attribution ” to show that over the past 10 years , climate- and weather-related disasters such as storms , floods , and heat waves have impacted 1.7 billion people .
Over that same period , an additional 410,000 lives were lost , the majority of which were in lower- or middle-income countries .
Extreme event attribution is an emerging scientific @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how human-induced climate change is connected to extreme weather events .
As Vox ’ s Umair Irfan explains , in this field , “ scientists construct models to evaluate the counterfactual of what would have happened in a certain event without climate change and compare it to observed results.
” And they have found that although global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions does not directly cause hurricanes or droughts , it is magnifying the risks and frequency of such events .
The authors of the IFRC report found that such catastrophes have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and that a sharp increase of 35 percent has been recorded since the 1990s .
The proportion of all disasters that can be attributed to climate change has also grown , from 76 percent in the 2000s to 83 percent in the 2010s .
Making matters worse , the report found that the world ’ s most vulnerable people aren ’ t getting the financial assistance they need to withstand such disasters , even though the funds they require exist .
The report ’ s authors argue that the speed at which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stimulus packages is proof that funds can be assembled rapidly to meet existential threats .
And they want to see governments mirror that energy when it comes to addressing the climate emergency .
A recent study , for instance , found that the money pledged globally for pandemic recovery thus far has surpassed $ 12 trillion .
According to the IFRC , the stimulus model created during the pandemic would be a good model for governments to generate the $ 50 billion needed each year over the next 10 years to help 50 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of climate change .
But they also warn that any money raised in the future can ’ t be distributed as aid has been to date : The report found that when it comes to receiving funding , the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are being left behind .
Why the countries most in need of climate change aid money aren ’ t getting it Of the 20 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change and associated disasters , the IFRC found that none were in the top 20 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , vulnerability generally describes the likelihood that a country will experience negative impacts from storms and other extreme weather events .
A community ’ s or country ’ s vulnerability can be measured in the long or short term , but it basically involves sensitivity to harm like natural disasters and the ability to adapt , or cope through processes like evacuation plans .
It ’ s also an issue of social protection .
If homes are damaged , do people have funding available to make repairs ?
Do people have savings ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ selling livestock and then have no means to make a living ?
Somalia was ranked as the most vulnerable country in the IFRC ’ s report due to high levels of food insecurity and drought , but it only ranked 71st in per-person funding disbursements .
None of the countries with the five highest disbursements had high or very high vulnerability scores , suggesting that more can be done to reach those most in need .
The main reason money isn ’ t flowing to where it is most needed is that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humanitarian policy and project coordinator Kirsten Hagon told me , there is no framework for giving climate-related aid to countries that are seen as being unable to manage large influxes of capital .
Donor countries give aid mostly to governments .
This means that to receive assistance , countries must have governments able and willing to meet criteria set by donors , such as putting forth funding proposals and showing financial capability .
People living in some of the most affected countries often do not have governments that can meet these criteria , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eligible to get international help .
The result , as Hagon told me , is that “ the vast majority [ of donor countries ] think they will invest in safe countries and someone else will in the ones that are trickier and nobody does .
And so you see examples like the Central African Republic where nothing ’ s being invested there.
” Although the outlook for disaster preparedness looks bleak , there are ways to save lives According to the report , a few things can be done immediately to help @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extreme events and prevent the loss of lives .
One of the biggest is to focus on disaster preparedness plans at the local , rather than national , level — ensuring that communities have individually tailored plans that include designated signals to communicate when it is time to evacuate and transportation to shelters that can keep them safe .
Because , as Hagon told me , “ without those basic things that have to happen at the community level , that have to be designed with and by the community , then you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Donors must also work together to identify which countries are being left behind and then find a way to fill the gaps .
They should also consider more flexible criteria that different countries can meet and be able to apply for funding .
The IFRC has also called on organizations and governments to examine their own practices — and says it will begin with itself , in order to make sure its work is “ climate smart , ” taking climate change impacts like warmer temperatures and sea level rise into account @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to scale up all of the things we already know , but we have to take them to another level because this is a crisis like none that ’ s ever really faced humanity before ” The coronavirus pandemic has shown how international solidarity can actually work to address global crises and how massive amounts of money can be generated to save lives and invest in solutions .
Now , climate experts hope a similar effort can be applied in a global mission to save lives and prevent deaths from climate-related disasters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We have to scale up all of the things that we already know , but we have to take them to another level because this is a crisis like none that ’ s ever really faced humanity before , ” Hagon said .

More than 100 disasters — many of which were climate- and weather-related — have affected more than 50 million people around the world since March, when the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And though the money needed to protect against these disasters in the countries at risk exists, it’s not getting to those who need it most.
Those are the key findings of a new report from the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) released Tuesday. In it, the authors make clear that while global attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic — for good reason — the climate crisis and the resulting disasters facing communities around the world are just as catastrophic.
“Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for climate change”
“It’s a very, very serious crisis the world is facing currently,” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said of the Covid-19 pandemic, speaking at a virtual news conference on November 17. But he noted that while there is some good news regarding the possibility of a vaccine for Covid-19, “unfortunately, there is no vaccine for climate change.”
The IFRC report, titled “World Disasters Report 2020: Come Heat or High Water,” uses what’s known as “extreme event attribution” to show that over the past 10 years, climate- and weather-related disasters such as storms, floods, and heat waves have impacted 1.7 billion people. Over that same period, an additional 410,000 lives were lost, the majority of which were in lower- or middle-income countries.
Extreme event attribution is an emerging scientific field that has allowed scientists to study how human-induced climate change is connected to extreme weather events. As Vox’s Umair Irfan explains, in this field, “scientists construct models to evaluate the counterfactual of what would have happened in a certain event without climate change and compare it to observed results.”
And they have found that although global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions does not directly cause hurricanes or droughts, it is magnifying the risks and frequency of such events.
The authors of the IFRC report found that such catastrophes have been rising in number since the 1960s — and that a sharp increase of 35 percent has been recorded since the 1990s. The proportion of all disasters that can be attributed to climate change has also grown, from 76 percent in the 2000s to 83 percent in the 2010s.
Making matters worse, the report found that the world’s most vulnerable people aren’t getting the financial assistance they need to withstand such disasters, even though the funds they require exist.
The report’s authors argue that the speed at which governments and banks worldwide have developed economic stimulus packages is proof that funds can be assembled rapidly to meet existential threats. And they want to see governments mirror that energy when it comes to addressing the climate emergency.
A recent study, for instance, found that the money pledged globally for pandemic recovery thus far has surpassed $12 trillion. According to the IFRC, the stimulus model created during the pandemic would be a good model for governments to generate the $50 billion needed each year over the next 10 years to help 50 developing nations adjust to the worst impacts of climate change.
But they also warn that any money raised in the future can’t be distributed as aid has been to date: The report found that when it comes to receiving funding, the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are being left behind.
Why the countries most in need of climate change aid money aren’t getting it
Of the 20 countries considered most vulnerable to climate change and associated disasters, the IFRC found that none were in the top 20 countries receiving funding.
In climate science, vulnerability generally describes the likelihood that a country will experience negative impacts from storms and other extreme weather events. A community’s or country’s vulnerability can be measured in the long or short term, but it basically involves sensitivity to harm like natural disasters and the ability to adapt, or cope through processes like evacuation plans.
It’s also an issue of social protection. If homes are damaged, do people have funding available to make repairs? Do people have savings? Or do they need to rely on selling livestock and then have no means to make a living?
Somalia was ranked as the most vulnerable country in the IFRC’s report due to high levels of food insecurity and drought, but it only ranked 71st in per-person funding disbursements. None of the countries with the five highest disbursements had high or very high vulnerability scores, suggesting that more can be done to reach those most in need.
The main reason money isn’t flowing to where it is most needed is that, as IFRC’s senior analyst of humanitarian policy and project coordinator Kirsten Hagon told me, there is no framework for giving climate-related aid to countries that are seen as being unable to manage large influxes of capital.
Donor countries give aid mostly to governments. This means that to receive assistance, countries must have governments able and willing to meet criteria set by donors, such as putting forth funding proposals and showing financial capability. People living in some of the most affected countries often do not have governments that can meet these criteria, making it difficult for them to be eligible to get international help.
The result, as Hagon told me, is that “the vast majority [of donor countries] think they will invest in safe countries and someone else will in the ones that are trickier and nobody does. And so you see examples like the Central African Republic where nothing’s being invested there.”
Although the outlook for disaster preparedness looks bleak, there are ways to save lives
According to the report, a few things can be done immediately to help people prepare for the increasing frequency of extreme events and prevent the loss of lives.
One of the biggest is to focus on disaster preparedness plans at the local, rather than national, level — ensuring that communities have individually tailored plans that include designated signals to communicate when it is time to evacuate and transportation to shelters that can keep them safe.
Because, as Hagon told me, “without those basic things that have to happen at the community level, that have to be designed with and by the community, then you’re not going to save lives.”
Donors must also work together to identify which countries are being left behind and then find a way to fill the gaps. They should also consider more flexible criteria that different countries can meet and be able to apply for funding.
The IFRC has also called on organizations and governments to examine their own practices — and says it will begin with itself, in order to make sure its work is “climate smart,” taking climate change impacts like warmer temperatures and sea level rise into account when doing its work.
“We have to scale up all of the things we already know, but we have to take them to another level because this is a crisis like none that’s ever really faced humanity before”
The coronavirus pandemic has shown how international solidarity can actually work to address global crises and how massive amounts of money can be generated to save lives and invest in solutions. Now, climate experts hope a similar effort can be applied in a global mission to save lives and prevent deaths from climate-related disasters in the most vulnerable communities.
“We have to scale up all of the things that we already know, but we have to take them to another level because this is a crisis like none that’s ever really faced humanity before,” Hagon said.


vox--2020-11-20--President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team is one of the most diverse ever

President-elect Joe Biden is now in the process of staffing his administration and he ’ s highlighted a key priority : Building a team that “ looks like America.
” According to data he ’ s shared , Biden ’ s transition team is one of the most diverse ever — representation that advocates hope they ’ ll continue to see as the administration works on broader White House staffing and Cabinet picks .
Thus far , 46 percent of Biden ’ s transition staff are people of color and 41 percent of senior staff are people of color .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ — 52 percent — are women , and 53 percent of senior staff are women .
When it comes to the Agency Review Teams ( ART ) — individuals who are focused on the transfer of power at individual agencies — a majority of the roughly 500 people on them are also women , and about 40 percent are members of groups underrepresented in the federal government , including people of color , members of the LGBTQ community , and people with disabilities .
As the Associated Press reported , Black men and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ART teams .
Biden and his team have repeatedly emphasized that diversity is a major priority for them as they prepare for the change in administration .
And America supports this move : According to a Vox/Data for Progress poll , 49 percent of all likely voters and 72 percent of Democrats believe his Cabinet should reflect the gender and racial diversity of the country .
Previously , the Obama administration was heralded as one of the most diverse in history , while the Trump administration ’ s Cabinet was far more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wide range of perspectives on staff , the Biden administration will be able to capitalize on a broad set of expertise and lived experiences that people can bring to these roles .
“ As he did during the campaign to his transition , Joe Biden will be intentional in finding diverse voices to develop and implement his policy vision to tackle our nation ’ s toughest challenges , ” Cameron French , a spokesperson for the Biden transition , told Vox .
Advocates say they welcome the administration ’ s focus on representation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but note that this is just a first step .
They emphasize that they ’ ll be keeping a close eye on how Biden ’ s staffing continues and what policy proposals focus on .
“ How that representation translates into what they deliver is what ’ s most important to me , ” Rashad Robinson , the president of Color of Change , an advocacy group aimed at combating racial injustice , told Vox .
Advocacy groups including Color of Change , Democracy For America , and UltraViolet note that growing representation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re interested to see what comes next .
Robinson said he will keep a close eye on how Biden ’ s staff and Cabinet hold corporations accountable , and wanted staffers to bring a depth of expertise on racial justice to policy areas , including tech regulation and criminal justice reform .
“ We are going to look for who ’ s going to stand up to corporate power , ” he told Vox .
As Bloomberg reported , Biden has chosen multiple experts on systemic racism among those who will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve , signaling a major focus on racial inequities .
This includes law professor Mehrsa Baradaran , known for her research on the racial wealth gap and disparities in banking , and economics professor Lisa Cook , known for her work examining how racial inequities in wages and education affect underrepresented groups and the broader economy .
While Biden has yet to announce any Cabinet picks , advocates have also noted that they ’ re interested to see what ongoing engagement from the Biden administration looks like , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ input of activists from underrepresented groups — and promote progressive voices — as it develops new policy proposals .
Economic policies including next steps on stimulus and measures to address racial disparities in aid are among the areas where they ’ d like to be involved .
“ I would like to make sure the Biden administration has the ear of all the amazing on-the-ground activists and organizers , ” says UltraViolet communications director Bridget Todd .
Robinson notes that he ’ s appreciative of the outreach the transition team has conducted so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personnel .
For now , the Biden team has said that it ’ s focused on tracking and measuring weekly staffing progress and reaching out to an extensive slate of candidates .
And as Biden weighs his selections , in addition to his policy priorities , advocates will be closely watching how he continues to follow through on pledges about diversity .

President-elect Joe Biden is now in the process of staffing his administration and he’s highlighted a key priority: Building a team that “looks like America.”
According to data he’s shared, Biden’s transition team is one of the most diverse ever — representation that advocates hope they’ll continue to see as the administration works on broader White House staffing and Cabinet picks.
Thus far, 46 percent of Biden’s transition staff are people of color and 41 percent of senior staff are people of color. More than half of the transition staff — 52 percent — are women, and 53 percent of senior staff are women.
When it comes to the Agency Review Teams (ART) — individuals who are focused on the transfer of power at individual agencies — a majority of the roughly 500 people on them are also women, and about 40 percent are members of groups underrepresented in the federal government, including people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and people with disabilities. As the Associated Press reported, Black men and women are leading over a quarter of the ART teams.
Biden and his team have repeatedly emphasized that diversity is a major priority for them as they prepare for the change in administration. And America supports this move: According to a Vox/Data for Progress poll, 49 percent of all likely voters and 72 percent of Democrats believe his Cabinet should reflect the gender and racial diversity of the country.
Previously, the Obama administration was heralded as one of the most diverse in history, while the Trump administration’s Cabinet was far more white and male. By including a wide range of perspectives on staff, the Biden administration will be able to capitalize on a broad set of expertise and lived experiences that people can bring to these roles.
“As he did during the campaign to his transition, Joe Biden will be intentional in finding diverse voices to develop and implement his policy vision to tackle our nation’s toughest challenges,” Cameron French, a spokesperson for the Biden transition, told Vox.
Advocates say they welcome the administration’s focus on representation and inclusion as part of the transition but note that this is just a first step. They emphasize that they’ll be keeping a close eye on how Biden’s staffing continues and what policy proposals focus on. “How that representation translates into what they deliver is what’s most important to me,” Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, an advocacy group aimed at combating racial injustice, told Vox.
Advocates say growing representation is a critical starting point
Advocacy groups including Color of Change, Democracy For America, and UltraViolet note that growing representation is a critical starting point — and they’re interested to see what comes next.
Robinson said he will keep a close eye on how Biden’s staff and Cabinet hold corporations accountable, and wanted staffers to bring a depth of expertise on racial justice to policy areas, including tech regulation and criminal justice reform. “We are going to look for who’s going to stand up to corporate power,” he told Vox.
As Bloomberg reported, Biden has chosen multiple experts on systemic racism among those who will be spearheading the transition efforts at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, signaling a major focus on racial inequities. This includes law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, known for her research on the racial wealth gap and disparities in banking, and economics professor Lisa Cook, known for her work examining how racial inequities in wages and education affect underrepresented groups and the broader economy.
While Biden has yet to announce any Cabinet picks, advocates have also noted that they’re interested to see what ongoing engagement from the Biden administration looks like, and if it will factor in the input of activists from underrepresented groups — and promote progressive voices — as it develops new policy proposals. Economic policies including next steps on stimulus and measures to address racial disparities in aid are among the areas where they’d like to be involved.
“I would like to make sure the Biden administration has the ear of all the amazing on-the-ground activists and organizers,” says UltraViolet communications director Bridget Todd. Robinson notes that he’s appreciative of the outreach the transition team has conducted so far, which has included conversations about personnel.
For now, the Biden team has said that it’s focused on tracking and measuring weekly staffing progress and reaching out to an extensive slate of candidates. And as Biden weighs his selections, in addition to his policy priorities, advocates will be closely watching how he continues to follow through on pledges about diversity.


vox--2020-11-20--A Trump official is still blocking Biden’s presidential transition. House Democrats want answers.

Top House Democrats want answers about the status of the presidential transition .
On Thursday , House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney ( D-NY ) and Appropriations Committee Chair Nita M. Lowey ( D-NY ) , along with two other senior Democrats , Gerald Connolly ( D-VA ) and Mike Quigley ( D-IL ) , demanded that General Services Administration ( GSA ) Administrator Emily Murphy brief them by Monday on the delay in declaring President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election .
The GSA must officially “ ascertain ” Biden as the next president in order for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a step that would release funds to the incoming president and allow his team access to federal agencies and briefings to prepare for the transfer of power .
In the past , most GSA administrators have made their judgments based on media projections , but Murphy has not done so yet , despite Biden being declared the winner by all major US media outlets and Trump ’ s legal challenges largely failing in court .
“ Your actions in blocking transition activities required under the law are having grave effects , including undermining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the incoming Administration ’ s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic , hampering its ability to address our nation ’ s dire economic crisis , and endangering our national security , ” the representatives wrote in a letter to Murphy on Thursday .
The White House has denied pressuring Murphy to withhold the ascertainment .
But House Democrats said in their letter that if that was indeed true , then Murphy should “ follow the law and make the ascertainment designation without any further delay.
” The briefing , they added , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other leaders at the GSA would be required to testify before Congress .
The GSA did not return Vox ’ s request for comment .
This push from House Democrats is the latest point of pressure on the GSA to initiate the transition .
Former national security officials have spoken out about how the delay in the transition — particularly the fact that President-elect Biden is not receiving intelligence briefings — could undermine America ’ s security .
Former public health officials and medical experts have also urged the GSA to begin the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could undermine the next administration ’ s Covid-19 response and preparations for vaccine distribution , which could endanger American lives .
Following most presidential elections — with the exception of the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore — GSA administrators have quickly ascertained the incoming president after news outlets called the race and the losing candidate conceded .
In 2016 , for instance , Trump was ascertained the day after the election , despite his lead being much smaller than Biden ’ s is in 2020 .
Trump hasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ legal challenges , but nothing in the ascertainment process precludes the GSA from declaring Biden the likely winner and starting the transition process while Trump continues to battle it out in court .
But while Democrats in Congress have demanded that the formal transition start , Republicans have been a little more wishy-washy .
Sen. Lamar Alexander ( R-TN ) , who is retiring this year , said in a statement Friday that “ if there is any chance whatsoever that Joe Biden will be the next president , and it looks like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Trump administration should provide the Biden team with all transition materials , resources and meetings necessary to ensure a smooth transition so that both sides are ready on day one.
” Sen. Jim Lankford ( R-OK ) , who said last week that he saw “ nothing wrong ” with Biden getting intelligence briefings , said this week that Biden should continue to get the briefings he got as the candidate , but not the high-level President ’ s Daily Brief .
He said he spoke to the GSA , but that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GSA could ascertain because the “ GSA is not the electors.
” But , again , the fact that the electors have not formally voted has not held up presidential transitions before , including in 2016 .
Biden ’ s transition team , meanwhile , has tried to forge ahead with preparations to take office in January even without the cooperation of the Trump administration .
This week , Biden held meetings with state leaders on how to better coordinate the federal and state response to Covid-19 .
He also received a national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s not quite the same thing as a threat briefing from US intelligence agencies .

Top House Democrats want answers about the status of the presidential transition.
On Thursday, House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-NY), along with two other senior Democrats, Reps. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Mike Quigley (D-IL), demanded that General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Emily Murphy brief them by Monday on the delay in declaring President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
The GSA must officially “ascertain” Biden as the next president in order for the transition to begin in earnest, a step that would release funds to the incoming president and allow his team access to federal agencies and briefings to prepare for the transfer of power.
In the past, most GSA administrators have made their judgments based on media projections, but Murphy has not done so yet, despite Biden being declared the winner by all major US media outlets and Trump’s legal challenges largely failing in court.
“Your actions in blocking transition activities required under the law are having grave effects, including undermining the orderly transfer of power, impairing the incoming Administration’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, hampering its ability to address our nation’s dire economic crisis, and endangering our national security,” the representatives wrote in a letter to Murphy on Thursday.
The White House has denied pressuring Murphy to withhold the ascertainment. But House Democrats said in their letter that if that was indeed true, then Murphy should “follow the law and make the ascertainment designation without any further delay.” The briefing, they added, would help them decide whether Murphy or other leaders at the GSA would be required to testify before Congress.
The GSA did not return Vox’s request for comment.
This push from House Democrats is the latest point of pressure on the GSA to initiate the transition. Former national security officials have spoken out about how the delay in the transition — particularly the fact that Biden is not receiving intelligence briefings — could undermine America’s security.
Former public health officials and medical experts have also urged the GSA to begin the transition, warning that a continued delay could undermine the next administration’s Covid-19 response and preparations for vaccine distribution, which could endanger American lives.
Following most presidential elections — with the exception of the contested 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore — GSA administrators have quickly ascertained the incoming president after news outlets called the race and the losing candidate conceded.
In 2016, for instance, Trump was ascertained the day after the election, despite his lead being much smaller than Biden’s is now. Trump hasn’t admitted defeat and is pursuing legal challenges, but nothing in the ascertainment process precludes the GSA from declaring Biden the likely winner and starting the transition process while Trump continues to battle it out in court.
But while Democrats in Congress have demanded that the formal transition start, Republicans have been a little more wishy-washy. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who is retiring this year, said in a statement Friday that “if there is any chance whatsoever that Joe Biden will be the next president, and it looks like he has a very good chance, the Trump administration should provide the Biden team with all transition materials, resources and meetings necessary to ensure a smooth transition so that both sides are ready on day one.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who said last week that he saw “nothing wrong” with Biden getting intelligence briefings, said this week that Biden should continue to get the briefings he got as the candidate, but not the high-level daily president’s brief. He said he spoke to the GSA, but that there was “no way” the GSA could ascertain because the “GSA is not the electors.”
But, again, the fact that the electors have not yet formally voted has not held up presidential transitions before, including in 2016.
Biden’s transition team, meanwhile, has tried to forge ahead with preparations to take office in January even without the cooperation of the Trump administration. This week, Biden held meetings with state leaders on how to better coordinate the federal and state Covid-19 response. He also received a national security briefing from former officials — though that’s not quite the same thing as a threat briefing from US intelligence agencies.