Independent News

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Yes, yes, I know — obviously people on all sides of the ideological spectrum get angry about things. But the things right-wingers get performatively angry about are so contrived! And so dumb!

As always, if you enjoy this work, please help keep it sustainable by joining my weekly subscription newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can choose to have it delivered to your inbox or sign up via Patreon, the content is exactly the same! And since Fox News informs me that Joe Biden is going to cancel Christmas, it’s probably not too early to check out the store!

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David Frum/Atlantic:

Steve Bannon Knows Exactly What He’s Doing

The fight over January 6 is about much more than the law.

Does anyone still remember the Chicago Seven?

They were a disparate group of radicals—some who knew each other, some who didn’t—who went to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to spark trouble. Trouble did indeed erupt, although maybe not the exact trouble they had wanted. They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government.

The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules. The defendants decided that they would instead mount a new kind of media spectacle intended to show total contempt for the rules, and to propagandize the viewing public into sharing their contempt. The prosecution was doing law; the defense countered with politics.

The indictment of Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress is the opening bell of a similar kind of fight over law, justice, and authority. 

David Leonhardt/NY Times:

How Does This End?

Thinking about Covid and normalcy.

Among the Covid experts I regularly talk with, Dr. Robert Wachter is one of the more cautious. He worries about “long Covid,” and he believes that many people should receive booster shots. He says that he may wear a mask in supermarkets and on airplanes for the rest of his life.

Yet Wachter — the chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco — also worries about the downsides of organizing our lives around Covid. In recent weeks, he has begun to think about when most of life’s rhythms should start returning to normal. Increasingly, he believes the answer is: Now.

Not well received:

Joel Mathis/The week:

Biden’s bill isn’t a celebration of bipartisanship. It’s the funeral.

When President Biden signs the infrastructure bill into law on Monday, it will be pitched to the public as a bipartisan accomplishment. In fact, the bill is probably the dying gasp of cross-party cooperation for the foreseeable future.

The hints are already there. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) helped pass the bill, but he will skip the signing ceremony on Monday. The bill might bring some dollars home to Kentucky — and probably averted the destruction of the filibuster — but McConnell won’t allow himself to be seen on camera cooperating with a Democratic president. Politics is politics.

Steve Vladeck/MSNBC:

Steve Bannon’s indictment reveals a dangerous congressional dependency

Real reform requires more than just periodic indictments from the president of the moment.

But whatever happens in Bannon’s criminal case — he is reportedly expected to appear in court next week — what the indictment really underscores is how dependent Congress has become on the executive branch to carry out even the most basic aspects of its oversight function and how dangerous that dependency can be when the oversight is directed toward, or even near, the executive. If the Biden administration really wants to make congressional subpoenas effective broadly, it should not just indict in the obvious cases like Bannon’s; it should support statutory reforms like the Protect Our Democracy Act — which includes provisions to make it easier for Congress to enforce its own subpoenas.

Del Quentin Wilber/LA Times:

She helped her husband start a far-right militia group. Now the Oath Keeper’s wife says she has regrets

With congressional committees and federal investigators examining the threat posed by domestic extremists and their contribution to the insurrection, Adams has been conducting an exploration of her own life and culpability in the forming of the Oath Keepers. Her journey provides behind-the-scenes insights into how a Las Vegas car valet transformed into the leader of an organization that sought to overturn a presidential election.

Catharine Richert/MPR news:

A Twin Cities doctor spread misinformation about COVID-19. Then he died from it

The circumstances of Foley’s life and death reveal a problem that’s vexed the medical profession throughout the pandemic: some licensed practitioners are fueling COVID’s spread, seeding doubts about widely accepted research and medical practices, including vaccinations, that have been saving millions of lives for decades.

Doctors can be particularly potent sources of misinformation, said Rachel Moran, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

“Vocal opposition is especially damaging when it comes from these medical professionals because we ask the general public when they’re feeling hesitant about the vaccine to go and discuss their concerns with a doctor,” she said.

Patients, she said, trust their doctors with their lives.

John Harwood/CNN:

Can Biden revive his popularity in time for midterm elections?

Now the coronavirus has plateaued, job growth has picked up, Afghanistan has fallen from headlines and Congress has passed a major infrastructure bill. It all hasn’t boosted Biden’s standing yet, but political advisers predict it will in the next few months.

“When the bell rings for the 2022 election season,” says his pollster John Anzalone, “things are going to look a lot different than today.”

The kinds of voters who’ve grown disaffected give Biden some hope. Comparing CNN polls from April to November, his largest declines in approval came among Democrats and Democratic-leading independents.

But Democratic inclinations hardly guarantee those voters will swing back in Biden’s direction. Regaining the allegiance of former supporters may be tougher than winning them over in the first place; presidential approval ratings fall more easily than they rise.

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In the news today: It’s redistricting time, when politicians attempt to sabotage elections by crafting districts meant to ensure the people in power stay that way. As “critical race theory” becomes the new rallying cry for conservative racists who insist America’s actual racism is directed mostly towards them, you’ll note that Black parents aren’t being quoted with the same gusto as livid white ones. How mysterious. And Florida continues to be a case study in how to make everything worse for everybody out of, apparently, raw spite.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Virginia Supreme Court rejects GOP’s slate of redistricting experts, citing conflicts of interest

• Suburban moms of color in Virginia are left out of the critical race theory discussion

• In six minutes, Florida’s board of education destroyed opportunities for disabled students

Community Spotlight:

• “Detox the Vaxx” is the new anti-vaxxer grift on TikTok reacting to vaccine mandates

• Knowing what you know now, if you could go back …

• Maybe we are ready for Universal Healthcare?

Also trending from the community:

• There will be no “Confessions of a Misogynist” (Part One)

• Dawn Chorus: The Bald Eagles of California. A comeback story for the ages

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As the bipartisan panel to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continues gathering evidence, many in the GOP are starting to feel increasingly nervous—but there is no time to waste in getting to the bottom of what happened that day, as Daily Kos senior political writer Kerry Eleveld recently explained to Michelangelo Signorile on his radio show.

So much is at stake with the investigation into this violent attack, and so many Republicans are invested in hiding the truth of that day. Eleveld pressed upon the audience the urgency of moving this investigation along in a timely manner: “This Jan. 6 commission has to get it done. I mean, they have to get the truth out because if Republicans take over—if they win next November, and they take over in January, they are going to shut this down, right?”

As she elaborated, it’s clear GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy is desperate for the truth not to come out:

[He wants to cover up] any of what happened and any connections between the Republican Party, some GOP congressional members, and Trump’s involvement in potentially stoking a coup—an attack on the U.S. government. He’s so desperate for none of that information to come out. Mitch McConnell is, too, by the way.

Signorile added that GOP leadership is getting more and more nervous about the investigation because so many key witnesses are being called in to testify:

They’ve interviewed a lot of people who we know have information. They’re people who, either because they really finally got a conscience, or they’re worried about how it’s going to affect them, they’re people who were on the inside, they were, you know, former Trump officials. There’s the White House communications aide, Alyssa Farah, there’s former Trump Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, he was subpoenaed and he spoke today. And then Richard Donoghue, I think he voluntarily went, as well as with Jeffrey Rosen, the former acting attorney general, so they are probably spilling all kinds of information.

Eleveld noted that “[that congressional committee has] the benefit of an administration that has decided that they’re prioritizing the truth coming out over some sort of institutional ‘protect the White House’ mentality, which is oftentimes what you get with even a subsequent chief executive.”

She urged the Department of Justice to move forward with its criminal contempt complaint against Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

The “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from Trump continues to be dangerous as well, as conservatives are now running with it and using it to sow distrust in the electoral process. “They say it in every election unless their person wins,” Eleveld said, expressing exasperation with the boldfaced nature of their lie. “But [when] Republicans [win], nobody is crowing about dead people voting. So basically, what they’re going to keep doing is keep trumpeting this and keep putting this in peoples’ minds until a perfect storm happens … it happened on Jan. 6th, but it could happen again.”

The pair also discussed polling that shows low confidence among Republicans in the belief that their ballots will be counted if they vote, and how conservative lawmakers continue fomenting violence and advocating for the use of force to shore up their waning power.

You can listen to the full audio here:

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by Marie Kurose and Bob Giloth

This story was originally published at Prism.

A recent government report showed that job openings and hires are falling, which is not surprising given the delta variant’s rise. What is significant is that 4.3 million workers quit their jobs in just one month. But perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising either since many of these jobs often pay low wages and offer few workplace benefits or support. For many workers, these conditions are not worth it, especially if it means putting themselves at higher risk of exposure to COVID-19. The fact is that Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) workers disproportionately pay the high cost of low-wage labor.

Across economic booms and busts, BIPOC workers are persistently over-represented in low-wage, less stable, and often physically tasking jobs, while underrepresented in positions that offer higher wages, opportunities for upward mobility, and fewer physical risks. The inverse is true for white workers. White workers make higher hourly wages at every education level and have lower unemployment rates than the BIPOC workforce. The effects of COVID-19 exacerbated these gaps.

Last year’s uprisings against racism, anti-Blackness, and police brutality reignited calls for racial equity from scores of companies, boosting public understanding of the systemic obstacles facing BIPOC workers in the job market. And while corporate pledges may result in efforts to dismantle racial inequality within those companies, progress at a societal level requires meaningful policy change.

That means occupational segregation and labor market discrimination can’t be understood without internalizing the effects of systemic racism on BIPOC workers. Racial gaps in education and wealth are reflected in the laws, rules, and practices that maintain whiteness in our economic system. Despite growing recognition that racial bias has a structural basis, policy change must recognize the ways white supremacy in workforce development normalizes job training shaped to address the needs and perspectives of English-speaking white workers—and how BIPOC workers and workers for whom English isn’t their primary language are expected to conform to those needs instead of receiving training that integrates their experiences, as well.

The employment outcomes of the public workforce system illustrate how current laws privilege whiteness. In 2019, low-income adults earned around $29,000 before participating in public workforce programs. While some results were positive—around 70% who completed a program were employed, continued to hold a job, or earned a credential—we saw differential returns when race is considered. Where salaries barely moved for white workers, the average salary for Black workers dropped to $24,000.

In other words, when a job seeker completes a training program and earns a credential, they are likely no better off in the labor market, and in fact, BIPOC workers may end up worse off. Imposing a skills-based framework without also addressing racial disparities in education and employment in workforce policy has effectively kept people of color, including immigrant workers, churning in low-wage work. These sobering results show why the public workforce system must promote job quality.

Federal workforce policy is premised on a prevailing narrative that individuals don’t have jobs because they don’t have the skills that employers need. If they want to change jobs, then they need to get trained. Current workforce law is structured so that employers have most decision-making power over job training programs. It incentivizes the public workforce system to match job seekers to any high-demand job without equal consideration to the work conditions.

Policymakers can confront institutionalized white supremacy in workforce development with these three steps.

First, BIPOC communities should define solutions for themselves. For lawmakers, that means prioritizing funding for the direct participation of BIPOC communities in the policy process from program design to implementation. Codifying BIPOC engagement affords that community the same respect that for too long has been given to whiteness. Importantly, requiring local community engagement, especially among immigrant and refugee leaders and BIPOC-led organizations, ensures that community-specific needs are addressed and their strengths reflected in program design.

Second, racial equity should be the first and most important measurement. Just as the Department of Labor (DOL) promotes “[c]entering relief and recovery policies around the needs of Black women and other vulnerable workers,” it should standardize the employment outcomes of the BIPOC workforce as guiding performance metrics of the public workforce system.

DOL could also take a “multiple measures” approach and lead a new engagement initiative that enables the public workforce system to develop a shared definition of what job quality looks like in BIPOC communities. Linking workforce equity metrics to good job outcomes for BIPOC workers would create positive feedback loops that engage communities of color.

Third, do not simply do more of the same skills training. Spending more money alone will not promote equity. Instead, federal funding for job training should be conditioned on proven interventions such as targeted or local hire and community workforce agreements that place BIPOC workers into good jobs and work with employers to turn bad job conditions into good ones.

Labor-management partnerships (LMPs) are another specific example of a proven workforce model. LMPs offer skills training and raise employment standards across industries, especially in caregiving, where pay is low, and most of the workforce comprises women of color. Consider the SEIU 775 Benefits Group in Washington state, an LMP that provides over 45,000 long-term care workers with registered apprenticeship and creates better job conditions with access to higher wages, health and retirement benefits, safer working conditions, predictable work schedules, and the freedom for workers to voice concerns in the workplace.

Without equitable policy intervention, the labor market will perpetuate gaps between BIPOC and white workers, which will further weaken the economy. Many solutions to quality job creation go beyond workforce policy. Improving job quality is one piece of advancing equity, and a full accounting of whiteness in workforce development is required. But doing away with white supremacy in workforce development requires our institutions and leadership to acknowledge that it exists first.

Marie Kurose is CEO at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County and calls on decades of policy expertise and strategic partnerships across government, community, and philanthropy, including at the Port of Seattle, city of Seattle, and Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Bob Giloth is former vice president at the Center for Economic Opportunity and Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Prism is a BIPOC-led non-profit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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Welcome back to the weekly Nuts & Bolts Guide to small campaigns. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion regarding deep canvassing, with political scientists introducing studies and commenting on this “newly discovered” technique. Many political activists, especially those in the reddest districts in America, have come to understand deep canvassing, not through political theory but through life experience. They have no other choice. Is it possible to move the needle and change minds about complex issues through discussion? How exactly does deep canvassing work? Where and when is deep canvassing successful? What kind of tool is deep canvassing?

This week on Nuts & Bolts, I want to talk about deep canvassing and where Democratic efforts missed out on opportunities we have to reclaim.

Republicans own deep canvassing.

To understand deep canvassing, you have to recognize both the method and the end goal. The technique is straightforward: 

In a conducive, non-judgmental environment, you sit and listen openly as another person expresses their views, and then you find common ground.

That’s it.

The more common ground you find, the easier it is to reach an understanding of why your beliefs differ, so you can stop yelling at each other and begin to find ways to work together.

If your goal is to help someone be less transphobic or racist, long discussions over prolonged periods of time can open the door to lower discomfort and broader acceptance, and make people feel as though they are respected as part of the process. It is the method that lets them consider your viewpoint without feeling first that you are attacking theirs.

Frankly, Republicans have dominated this process in bright red states—and too often in contested state environments. The Republican practice of deep canvassing has made its home in church organizations, Rush Limbaugh-type radio hosts, the NRA, anti-choice organizations, and community groups; the culminating effect is that these subtle efforts over years and years are now seeing widespread reinforcement without prompting from the party itself.

In contrast, a big part of Democratic canvassing comes during last-minute pushes to get self-educated potential voters to show up on Election Day and vote accordingly. These efforts are not lacking in educational materials, of course; candidates provide overviews of their positions in speeches and printed materials, alongside website and media appearances, as well. But the Democratic canvass has essentially turned over deep canvassing to issue advocates entirely, and this gave Republicans a decades-long headstart on the conversations that must happen to attract new voters. 

With Democratic organizations playing catch-up, how do we instill this kind of discussion into the party itself and make understanding of complex issues an ongoing conversation that can open doors?

Opportunities for Deep Canvassing

I want you to choose a major issue you care about—an issue that has created a deep division in the country. I’m going to choose one, but you can choose any other issue you like; the way we talk about these issues should look the same.

I’m going to talk about guns.

In the Midwest, gun ownership is a huge issue. While we have several Democratic members in urban areas that would like to see some limits, in Republican areas of the state—the larger portion of all or nearly all Midwestern states—almost no issue flares voter intensity like the discussion over guns, gun safety, gun control, or (as the Republicans have branded this discussion) the Constitutional right to bear arms. 

Many Democratic candidates will wait until three or four months before an election to say, “I’m a gun owner, too!” I hate to tell you this, and apologies to support staff, but: That does not work.

The conversation has to begin a significant time before. While research talks about three months, I would tell you true deep canvassing revolves around an ongoing conversation that should be measured in years. Handling gun issues can be seen in that way. 

My father, as an example, collects guns—he has quite a few of them. I wouldn’t consider him a radical at risk. Most of the guns he owns would be laughable as defense weapons, but as artifacts or as objects with unique histories, they can be appreciated. Many Midwestern farmers will tell you the same. One could have a shotgun he received from his father when he passed away, or another might own a beloved hunting rifle they use for ducks. Another owner you meet is a range shooter who owns an AR-15 because he loves going to the range and target shooting.

Where is the common ground?

Even if you have positions against their beliefs in gun ownership, you can understand why someone would want to keep a family heirloom. You could have a discussion without judgment with the duck hunter about what duck hunting means to him, and what kind of skill it takes to be a duck hunter. With the person who owns an AR-15, you can talk about what it is they enjoy about shooting at the range. Be interested. Don’t make judgments and immediately walk away. There are often stories here that you can’t sum up in a simple stop at the door. 

Taking that conversation on gives you the chance to find the nuance that allows people to find ground that makes things OK. I know a large number of gun owners who want more sensible gun ownership. They take seriously the dangers of owning or having a gun available in a household. They’ve only been sold the idea of someone taking their guns away from them. Prepare for a long conversation that listens, learns, relates, and lets them talk. Explain your viewpoint in the same way with no judgments and no perceived superiority that just says: “I’m 100% right, you’re 100% wrong.” There may be some cases like that in practice (and unfortunately in elected officials that can be true), but in talking in communities, people are much more willing to listen and share the conversation. Even I’ve been out to shoot an AR-15 at a range in a controlled environment, and I will admit I enjoyed both. When I talk to gun owners, I say exactly that, and we can talk about the good and the bad. 

Complex issues deserve a complex conversation, an ongoing conversation, and a conversation that is far more about changing the view of Democratic ideology than about a specific candidate.

If you’re registered Democratic, show you CARE

One of the best ways to help keep that conversation going is by putting Democratic efforts into social groups that specifically work to care for a community. Local Kiwanas? Join it. An effort to clean up the city parks? Get your Democratic Party to be a part of it. If the local Republican party is part of it, go over, shake their hands, and say: we all want our town to look nice. Be the better person at times. The Republican deep canvass has gone on for years and at this point looks like indoctrination that self carries inside of families. Break that image by showing Democratic registered voters and future candidates can be good people, and that they care about the community.

In some districts, you may still lose your race, but you will begin that long conversation that helps change minds about what exactly the Democratic party stands for in their community. Keep it going. If you commit to it, show that this isn’t a once-off that occurs only immediately before an election and disappears right after; that reeks of being fake and will set you back, much farther back than where you originally started. 

The work in carrying that conversation can make a change to building the Democatic party possibilities for two years from now, four years from now, six years from now. We cannot just assume the future will be with the Democratic party on issues and ideas. We have to be role models for the generations that come, and for the communities who feel left out that we are here to talk to them and we can listen and we are big enough to talk about our issues and help everyone learn more about each other.

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Well, well, well. Looks like someone has wandered away from the Branch Covidian compound, and Dear Leader is none too pleased. Somewhere between running against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary and using the jaws of life to nestle inside Trump’s sigmoid colon like an overgrown baby wallaby, Chris Christie lost his Happy Meal toy of a soul. Of course, after Christie endorsed Trump in what was itself a humiliating spectacle, Trump missed few opportunities to further debase Christie, whose spastic genuflecting didn’t even earn him an administration job—thanks to the overweening influence of sentient Axe spray nebula/Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. 

But now Christie is once again on the outside looking in at the clown show, as he had the temerity to suggest the Republican Party should move past the 2020 election to focus on the future. Meaning, Donald Trump lost and he should just fucking get over it already. 

Christie, a former Trump ally, made the remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference in Las Vegas, during which he urged the GOP to present a “plan for tomorrow, not a grievance about yesterday.”

“Winning campaigns are always the campaigns that look forward, not backwards,” he said, warning that Republicans would pay a political price if they continue to dwell on the 2020 presidential election.

That’s a pretty bland statement, but judging by Trump’s reaction you’d think Christie had told him that Ivanka just isn’t that into him.

“Chris Christie, who just made a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in Las Vegas, was just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past, meaning the 2020 Election Fraud,” stable genius-man said in a statement. “Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating—a record low, and they didn’t want to hear this from him!”

Well, Christie is now counterpunching. In a teaser for a new interview with Axios’ Mike Allen, scheduled for Nov. 14 on HBO, Christie felt perfectly free to taunt Goofus. It was almost as if he wasn’t even afraid of him. Hmm. Watch:

ALLEN: “You said that the elections for Republicans need to be about the future, not the grievances of the past. Donald Trump put out a statement saying you’d gotten absolutely massacred.”

CHRISTIE: “Well, look. I’ve made the conscious decision, Mike, that I want to spend my time combating the policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and trying to help Republicans win governorships and the House and the Senate in 2022. This is not an argument that I’ll walk away from.”

ALLEN: “And then he went for it. He said, ‘Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating.’ What do you make of him, like, saying you had a less than 9% approval rating?”

CHRISTIE: “Mike, look, I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth with Donald Trump, but what I will say is this: When I ran for reelection in 2013, I got 60% of the vote. When he ran for reelection he lost to Joe Biden. I’m happy to have that comparison stand up, because that’s the one that really matters.”

Oh, snap. In other words, Trump is a bigger loser than Christie. And that’s saying something.

Of course, emancipation from the logorrheic mouth of Mar-a-Lago is available to all Republicans—and to all other Americans, for that matter. And unless you have an unnatural fear of unnecessary capitalization, there’s really no reason to worry about the big humid ape’s response. And yet he somehow still has most GOPsters by the short ones.

But not Christie. No more. Is this guy thinking of running for president again or something? Because that would be really entertaining.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

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by Ray Levy-Uyeda

This story was originally published at Prism.

Last week, voters in Virginia offered a sharp rebuke to the state’s Democratic administration by electing Republican Greg Youngkin for governor, a position held by Democrats since 2013. Post-election digests commented on one electoral faction that handed Youngkin the win: so-called “suburban moms.”

“Suburban moms” are concerned about their children’s welfare and troubled by what they think is a push to incorporate a theoretical framework known as critical race theory into public school education, several news outlets breathlessly reported. The term “suburban mom” has caught on, morphing into a dogmatic catch-all for the kind of voters who are both unthreatening to systemic power and coveted for their votes: white women.

Despite the concerns of white suburban mothers, critical race theory is not taught in elementary, middle, and high schools in Virginia or anywhere else in the U.S., and the current curriculum in Virginia is a far cry from deeply examining constructions of race and racialized experiences in America.

Suja Amir, a mother of two living in Henrico County, Virginia, said that the idea of the suburban mom was “funny because it’s [not used] when it comes to someone that looks like me.” And that’s by design, Amir explained. For the panic around what antagonists have called “critical race theory” to bloom, the fear needs to come from a white woman’s mouth to incite a political response. This is about sowing fear and racial division in service of enacting white supremacist policies, Amir said.

She said anti-critical race theory activists “went to the richest area and they went to the whitest area, [but] they didn’t talk to me—because I live here, too.” While Amir is a suburban mom, she’s not white. “And that is a problem, especially when you’re calling [them] the suburban mom. I mean, if you were in my neighborhood right now with the 30 homes here, I would have to say 28 of the moms look like me,” continued Amir, who is Muslim and South Asian.

While Henrico County, which borders the state capital of Richmond, has become more ethnically and racially diverse in her lifetime, Amir said life has gotten harder in some ways and worries for her younger child, who’s a sophomore in high school. She said the Trump administration catalyzed the culture of intolerance, but the foundation has always been there.

“I feel like there’s just been so much toxic stuff in the water for such a long time,” Amir said. “I personally believe that 9/11 allowed fear to be used as a policymaker. If we can scare people, we can create policies very quickly. We can elect officials very quickly.”

Latent fear also allows for parents to react to changes that are seen as threats to whiteness. Amir sees much of the critical race theory backlash and panic related to a school calendar change the county made this year when it added Diwali, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Eid al-Fitr as student holidays.

“In my opinion, that in and of itself is scary,” Amir said. “Because what we’re saying is, we are so intolerant that we can’t handle somebody else’s holiday. We can handle a Valentine’s Day card. We can handle all these other things, but [they’re saying] I can’t handle a day off if it’s for my Jewish friends, if it’s for my Muslim friends [or] if it’s for my Hindu friends.” Even though she’s a suburban mom, Amir’s concerns don’t get discussed in school board meetings or on the political stage.

The panic over critical race theory isn’t about child welfare. Instead, it’s about elections and mobilizing white women. Youngkin targeted “Peloton dads and soccer moms” living in the suburbs. “I want to make sure people are not supporting critical race theory,” the governor-elect said over the summer, deriding the field of study as akin to “anti-white racism.” At one point in a speech, he even quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his plea against it, saying, “[he] implored us to be better than ourselves, to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin … So, friends, on day one, I will ban critical race theory.”

Youngkin’s strategy worked.

“It was very clever messaging,” said Alsúin Creighton-Preis, acting chair of Henrico Democrats. “They knew exactly who they were talking to. Creighton-Preis, who is white, said that the swaths of white suburban women who cast ballots for Biden in 2020 did so for Youngkin this year. “They could come out for Youngkin because he wasn’t scary to them. Because he makes them feel safe again, because, you know, he looks like the dude that their husband has a drink with at the country club after a game of golf,” she said. “They felt safe again.”

But what makes white women feel safe can endanger the lives of women of color, as outlined thoroughly by scholars and activists like Ruby Hamad, author of White Tears/Brown Scars. The debates over critical race theory under the gloss of suburban motherhood erases the existences of Black moms and moms of color who live in the suburbs, serving both to silence their concerns and reinforce the racist trope that all people of color live in urban city areas.

For Amir, it comes back to fear. “Fear is incredibly emotional and powerful, and we’re not using our senses and our best thought processes when we’re basing everything off of fear,” she said. “And if we can fear each other, then we’re not doing right by each other.”

Ray Levy-Uyeda is a Bay Area-based freelance writer who covers justice and activism.

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RoJo the Clown is at it again. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who surfed into office on the derp wave of 2010, has been temporarily bounced from YouTube because he can’t distinguish reality from nonsense. 

Make no mistake. He is a stupid, stupid man. If you somehow linked Johnson’s, Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s, and Rep. Louie Gohmert’s brains together, you might attain the computing power of a Pong console. Or maybe an Etch-a-Sketch. In other words, they’re not exactly deep—or even shallow, for that matter—thinkers, and the latest news from Johnsonville confirms that.

The Hill:

Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) YouTube account was suspended for one week starting Friday for uploading content violating the platform’s policy against COVID-19 misinformation.

The video that triggered the suspension was a roundtable discussion in which the lawmaker falsely claimed that coronavirus vaccines are unsafe.

“The updated figures today are 17,619,” he said. “That is 225 times the number of deaths in just a 10-month period versus an annual figure for the flu vaccine. These vaccine injuries are real.”

What Johnson is referring to here is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System database (VAERS). Like Bazooka Joe comics or model airplane glue warning labels, Johnson has trouble reading this data correctly. 

Here’s the CDC’s own warning about interpreting the raw data in VAERS—a warning that Johnson seems determined to ignore at all costs.

VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of possible health problems—also called “adverse events”—after vaccination. As an early warning system, VAERS cannot prove that a vaccine caused a problem. Specifically, a report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event. But VAERS can give CDC and FDA important information. If it looks as though a vaccine might be causing a problem, FDA and CDC will investigate further and take action if needed.

Anyone can submit a report to VAERS — healthcare professionals, vaccine manufacturers, and the general public. VAERS welcomes all reports, regardless of seriousness, and regardless of how likely the vaccine may have been to have caused the adverse event.

See that part the CDC went out of its way to highlight? “[A] report to VAERS does not mean that a vaccine caused an adverse event.”

Anyone—and I mean anyone—can report an adverse reaction on the VAERS database. I could say the first shot gave me stigmata and the second one made me grow gills, and it would be on the database for any fool to interpret as they saw fit.

More importantly, just because someone died after getting a shot doesn’t mean they died because of the shot. To date, more than 225 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Some of them were bound to die. Indeed, the vast majority would have no doubt passed anyway. Because, you know, people fucking die. What would have truly been troubling is if there had been no fatalities in the wake of these vaccinations, because then we’d be looking at a drug that causes vampirism, and who wants that?

Ron Johnson, apparently.

The COVID-19 vaccines have not “caused” 17,619 deaths any more than Ron Johnson’s election “caused” me to move as far away from Wisconsin as I possibly could. (Scott Walker was the true inspiration for that.)

In response to his temporary ouster, Johnson predictably threw a fit. In a statement, he wrote, “Once again Big Tech is censoring the truth. Why won’t they let the vaccine injured tell their stories and medical experts give a second opinion? Why can’t we discuss the harmful effects of mandates? Apparently, the Biden administration and federal health agencies must not be questioned. How many more lives will be needlessly destroyed?”

That last one’s actually a very relevant question—only RoJo doesn’t understand why. How many more lives will be needlessly destroyed by Johnson’s, and others’, glitchy brains? A whole hell of a lot, it seems.

This is not the first time that Johnson has been suspended from YouTube. He lost his uploading privileges for a week back in June, after posting a video touting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. At the time, he also claimed that YouTube was engaged in “censorship,” even though its policies are posted for anyone to see.

“YouTube’s ongoing Covid censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power,” Johnson wrote in a statement at the time. “Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives. They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies.”

Hmm, is there an implicit threat in there from a powerful member of Congress? That doesn’t make me feel good.

Of course, this latest rebuke of Johnson is pretty sad, especially coming from a platform that’s kept this thing up for 13 years:

At least they’re not singing about injecting disinfectant or eating horse paste. Maybe if RoJo pitched his quackery through karaoke it would fly right under YouTube’s radar.

Or maybe it’s way past time that he leaves the Senate, and makes room for someone without his serious reading comprehension problem. 

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.