D.C. sues chemical manufacturer over decades of contaminating waterways

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine said Velsicol knew its chlordane pesticide was toxic no later than 1959, but it continued to market the product, including in 1961 when it produced this advertisement. Image courtesy of Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine/Lawsuit

Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Washington, D.C., has filed a lawsuit against Velsicol, accusing the major chemical manufacturer of contaminating local waterways and natural resources for decades with toxic, cancer-causing chemicals.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday by Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine, who said they are going after the company as it made profits for decades while polluting the district's water supplies.

"The damage that Velsicol caused will continue to impact the health of communities in the District of Columbia far into the future, particularly Black and brown community members, as these chemicals persist in our environment and continue to wreak havoc on our natural resources," Racine said in a statement.

The lawsuit centers on Velsicol's pesticide known as chlordane, which was banned nationwide by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1988 over the threat it poses to human life. The EPA has classified chlordane as a Group B2, probable human carcinogen.

Velsicol was the sole manufacturer of the pesticide, which at one point accounted for more than two-thirds of its annual sales.

It began to manufacture the chemical in 1945, and the lawsuit states that Velsicol knew it was associated with cancer no later than 1959.

Until it was banned, Velsicol sold the pesticide while conducting a lengthy "campaign of misinformation and deception to prolong reaping the financial rewards of selling its chlordane products" in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, the lawsuit said

"This campaign included targeted advertisements for dangerous household use of chlordane and resisting the EPA's efforts to ban continued sales of chlordane long after Velsicol know about the chemical's toxic effects," the court document continued.

The lawsuit states that a year after the ban on chlordane was put in place, the district warned residents not to eat certain fish from the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers due to contamination. In 2016, the district found that 21 of its 38 miles of rivers and streams were not in compliance with water quality standards for chlordane.

The district said that has "devoted considerable time and funds" to ensure its watersheds meet the chlordane guidelines, including placing filters in some 15,700 catch basins and 575 outfall storm systems to reduce the amount of chlordane that is discharging to streams it inspects.

According to the lawsuit, it has so far spent nearly $30 million on this effort and expects to spend $1.2 million annually for the foreseeable future. It has also spent close to $7 million to investigate chlordane contamination at Poplar Point, which is adjacent to the Anacostia River. The district also expects to spend another $35 million to address contaminated sediment, it said.

"Because chlordane is environmentally persistent, it will continue to circulate in the district's surface water, sediment, fish, wildlife, marine resources and other natural resources," the lawsuit states. "Widespread contamination continues, posing current and future threats to human health and the well-being of the district's environment and economy."

D.C. is suing for damages for injury to its natural resources, including its economic impact from loss of ecological services and other injuries, as well as for past, present and future costs to investigate, assess, analyze, monitor and remediate the contamination.

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Our Synthetic Environment. Murray Bookchin. 1962. Table of contents. Chapter 1: THE PROBLEM. Chapter 2: AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH.

HE'S BAAAACK NO FINE CAN STOP HIM

Alex Jones mocks $965M Sandy Hook verdict: ‘We’re not scared and we’re not going to stop’

By Sarah Do Couto 

 Global News
Posted October 13, 2022 



As a Connecticut jury on Wednesday ordered Alex Jones to pay nearly US$1 billion in compensatory damages to the families of several Sandy Hook victims, Jones went live in an “emergency” broadcast on his Infowars website.


Jones, who was not present in the courtroom, cracked jokes as he lost track of the $965 million verdict, which was announced case-by-case. During the Infowars livestream, Jones, 48, claimed he had no real intention of paying the damages owed to the Sandy Hook families.

READ MORE: Alex Jones says he’s ‘done saying sorry’ for Sandy Hook lies in courtroom outburst

“Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” Jones asked, according to NBC reporter Brandy Zadrozny.

In a short clip Zadrozny shared to Twitter, Jones is seen mocking the families as several parents weep in the courtroom.

The $965-million verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the massacre never happened and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

The verdict came in a defamation lawsuit filed by the relatives of five children and three educators killed in the 2012 shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50 million to the parents of another slain child.
“This must be what hell’s like, they just read out the damages. Even though you don’t got [sic] the money,” Jones said during the livestream, as per NBC reporter Ben Collins. (Jones filed for bankruptcy protection in July.)

“Why not make it trillions?” Jones also joked during the livestream.

READ MORE: Lawyer for Alex Jones takes the Fifth Amendment during Sandy Hook hearing

Jones claimed the jury had reached the astronomical figure to deter him and his followers from openly questioning the legitimacy of other mass shootings.

“They want to scare everybody away from freedom and scare us away from questioning Uvalde and what really happened there, or Parkland or any other event,” he said during the livestream. “And guess what? We’re not scared, and we’re not going away and we’re not going to stop.”

Jones claimed for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” he could keep the families of the Sandy Hook victims “in court for years.”

“I can appeal this stuff. We can stand up against this travesty,” Jones said during the livestream.

As he called the trial a “joke,” Jones asked his followers to purchase his vitamins and supplements from the Infowars store to support him and the website.

READ MORE: Alex Jones may pay less in punitive damages to Sandy Hook family. Why?

Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer representing the Sandy Hook families, said he and the families are prepared “to chase Alex Jones to the ends of the Earth” in order for him to pay the damages.

Koskoff said the Sandy Hook families, “who never asked for any of this,” have lost all form of safety and sanctuary in their lives because of Jones.

During the trial, several family members provided harrowing testimony about the threats of physical violence from Jones’ staunch followers. One parent testified the grave of their seven-year-old son had been desecrated by one of Jones’ fans, who allegedly urinated on the plot and threatened to dig up the child’s coffin.

“These families have been patient and they will make Alex Jones pay every last dollar that he has,” Koskoff said.

— With files from the Associated Press

Alex Jones calls for mass executions over Covid 'bio-attacks'

Raw Story - October 13, 2022 
By Bob Brigham

InfoWars host Alex Jones marches with protesters at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas. (Mark Felix/AFP)© provided by RawStory

Shortly after Alex Jones was hit with a $965 million verdict by a Connecticut jury for spreading lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, the InfoWars host was calling for mass executions in another conspiracy theory.

Jones responded to the verdict with a fist bump as part of his "extended emergency broadcast" as he pushed InfoWars' store and asked for personal donations.

The call for mass executions was based on Jones' debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 vaccines have killed tens of millions of people.

Related video: Attorney analyzes Alex Jones' verdict

Duration 1:31

View on Watch

"If you're going to bio-attack people, with a virus and then the vaccine that's even worse — it's not a vaccine — you've got to have a story of how you messed up," Jones said.

Jones said, "they intended this to break the social contract and make everyone hate the government and cause civil war worldwide, but if people know it's a master plan to create the civil war, we don't blow up our government, we don't burn things down, we politically take control and then prosecute and then execute the war criminals — after they've had a trial, after they've been given appeals, everything — but yes, obviously, the people that launched these bio-attacks need to be arrested, need to be tried, and need to be executed."

"My God, if there's a death penalty out there, it's for these people as an example to other criminals like them, you want to kill tens of millions of us, you want to maim billions of people, we're going to hang your a** on international television, there will be seven billion viewers when you're swinging at the end of a rope," Jones said. "And yes, I'm saying it, they need to be executed."

"They're murderers, they're psychopaths, they're killers. So when I get up here and talk about how they need to get executed, I don't sit up here and say that to act tough," Jones said. "Indicted. Arrested. Tried. Public execution, public execution. These people make Hitler blush and they must be brought to justice."

Fledgling union efforts at Amazon, Starbucks dig in for long fight

Agence France-Presse
October 13, 2022

Starbucks workers, including Will Westlake (4R), in December 2021 as the first cafes voted to unionize(AFP)

Recent unionization drives at Starbucks and Amazon have lifted morale in the US labor movement, but organizers have yet to transform election victories into material change.

Moreover, some union backers such as Will Westlake have paid a price for their activism.

Formerly a Starbucks barista in Buffalo, New York, where the initial union votes took place in December 2021, Westlake was fired earlier this month -- ostensibly for not removing a suicide prevention badge from his apron, which he has viewed as an expression of his solidarity with the movement.

But Westlake thinks his firing was payback for his union activism.

"I was number 123" on the list of Starbucks employees to lose their jobs as the campaign has spread to some 250 cafes nationwide, said Westlake.

Starbucks declined to comment on allegations from Starbucks Workers United that the company fired workers for union activism.

But such reprisals at US companies are "pretty routine in this country," said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist at CUNY in New York.

Young activists

Milkman counts herself among the experts in labor relations who have been surprised at the spread of the union drives to a growing slate of corporations, including Apple, REI, Chipotle and Trader Joe's -- companies that union organizers have not in the past viewed as fertile to their efforts.

"This was kind of a different moment," said Milkman of a period defined by a labor shortage, the pandemic and "a young labor force frustrated by their limited labor market options."

US officials have seen a 53 percent jump in the number of union elections over the last year, according to the National Labor Relations Board.

But that increase takes place against the backdrop of a longtime decline in organized labor since the 1980s, with fewer than 10 percent of private-sector employees now unionized.

While union backers have won some high-profile election victories over the last year, in many cases, the successful votes have taken place at small establishments, such as an individual Starbucks cafe.

What's more, "winning the election is actually the easy part," said Cedric de Leon, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

"The hard part is to negotiate the contract," he said. "And there is nothing the government can really do to force the employers to negotiate in good faith."

While two Starbucks cafes in Buffalo voted to unionize last December, the first meeting with management on the contract will take place only this month.

The outlook is even murkier at the Staten Island, New York warehouse that in April became the first Amazon site in the United States to unionize.

But Amazon is contesting the vote, alleging improprieties.

Commenting on a union election now taking place at an upstate New York warehouse, an Amazon spokesman said this week that the company will continue to fight the Staten Island election outcome because "we don't believe it represents what the majority of our team wants."

Culture of intimidation

Under the Biden administration, the NLRB has for its part cracked down on some anti-union conduct by big corporations, as with a complaint earlier this month against Apple after the company prevented the distribution of union fliers in a break room.

In August, a US judge ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven employees that the NLRB found were unlawfully fired by the coffee giant.

Such moves by companies represent an effort to instill in workers "a culture of fear and intimidation," said de Leon, noting that support from President Joe Biden and other political leaders will not be enough to make real change.

But "250 Starbucks going out on a nationwide strike, that could be decisive," he said.

The recent wave of union campaigns has come amid a tight labor market in a period of elevated consumer demand. A recession would alter some of those dynamics, although de Leon notes that previous economically weak periods such as the 1930s and 1970s have boosted unions.

Westlake said he is determined to hold companies like Starbucks to account.

"They are hoping that the public won't care enough and that in two or three years, they will be able to fire all the union leaders and crush the union," said Westlake, who has filed a complaint with the NLRB over his dismissal.

© Agence France-Presse

Supreme deceit: How Alito snuck medieval state Christianity into the Dobbs opinion

David Boyle, 

Salon
October 13, 2022

Samuel Alito (Photo by Nicholkas Kamm for AFP)

The Supreme Court's June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the half-century-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, occasioned worldwide rage, enough that Justice Samuel Alito — author of the majority opinion in Dobbs — mocked the outraged Prince Harry and other luminaries. Jewish advocacy groups, among others, have filed suits argued that laws restricting abortion may violate religious freedom, but ironically enough, the widespread rage may have prevented people from noticing what may be the most outrageous feature of Dobbs.

Alito's opinion sneaks in a 12th-century religious penalty for abortion — not a criminal statute — citing it in a section meant to support the history of criminal punishment, and with its ecclesiastical origins neatly excised. Those who are outraged by this are now free to mock Alito, unless they'd rather have him impeached — along with the whole Dobbs majority, perhaps — for deceiving America and violating the separation of church and state.

Page 17 of the Dobbs slip opinion, in footnote 25, cites the legal treatise "Leges Henrici Primi" (or "Laws of Henry I"), which dates to around 1115 A.D.:
Even before Bracton's time, English law imposed punishment for the killing of a fetus. See Leges Henrici Primi 222–223 (L. Downer ed. 1972) (imposing penalty for any abortion and treating a woman who aborted a "quick" child "as if she were a murderess").

Legal historian Leslie John Downer's translation of the original 12th-century Latin text, however, reads, "[I]f she does this [intentionally destroys her embryo] after it is quick [animate], she shall do penance for seven years as if she were a murderess." Alito carefully clipped out the words "she shall do penance for seven years" from the quotation, between "quick" and "as."

Why hide those words? Unless he was sleepwalking, Alito understood perfectly well that he was committing a gross material omission, obscuring the fact that the "penalty" in this medieval text was merely religious and penitential, not civil or criminal. Religious "crimes" are not crimes at all, by our modern legal standards. (The Leges Henrici, at pages 222-223, mentions paying "wergeld" and "manbot," or reparations, including compensation for loss of a pregnancy, if a pregnant woman is slain by any means. But that's not "punishment for abortion," which is merely penance in the Leges.)

To say this is "just a footnote" is no excuse. If footnote 25 had used undisclosed material that was atheist, Islamist or Satanist in origin, people would be outraged; given the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which bans any state religion, they may be equally outraged by the court's deliberate concealment of the Christian prehistory to Dobbs. The court's majority has no right to inflict state religion on Americans, in even the slightest dose.

But wait, there's more. On pages 16 and 17, the Dobbs opinion bookends footnote 25 with, "We begin with the common law, under which abortion was a crime at least after 'quickening'," before moving on to common-law sources like Henry de Bracton and the statement, "English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises' statements that abortion was a crime." This all misleadingly implies that the Leges, which is certainly a treatise, criminalizes abortion under common law.

Then Alito crosses the Rubicon, proclaiming on page 25 that "an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973." This is fraudulent, by any analysis. If the Leges Henrici is common law, as Alito presents it, mixed in with common-law sources like Bracton, it's dishonest to say that common law has always criminalized abortion. But if Alito then wishes to backpedal and claim that the Leges, with its penance-penalty, is really canon law (i.e., church law), not common law, then two things follow: Alito falsified his argument by categorizing the Leges with common law, and he more flagrantly snuck Christian state religion into the Dobbs decision. Falsehood, either way.

Finally, English common law is normally understood to begin after 1066 (with the Norman Conquest) and no later than the 12th century, since King Henry II (1133-1189) is often called "Father of the Common Law." But Bracton, Alito's earliest legitimate citation for criminalizing abortion, wasn't born until around the year 1210. In short, Alito provides doctored evidence, or none at all, for his conclusory statement that the "earliest days of the common law" criminalized abortion, and creates a kind of fake history — the fiction of an ancient, continuous Anglo-American pedigree of criminalizing abortion — which supposedly supports overturning Roe.

Was this an unintentional mistake? That's unlikely, especially since the present author told the court, in a brief filed May 21, after the Dobbs draft leak, that the opinion failed to explain that the penalty in Leges was purely ecclesiastical. The justices paid no attention, and the error was repeated in the final June opinion.

Alito creates a kind of fake history — the fiction of an ancient, continuous Anglo-American pedigree of criminalizing abortion — which supposedly supports overturning Roe.

Oddly, the three dissenters in Dobbs failed to catch the Leges problem, and even committed a minor error on page 13 of the dissent: "Of course, the majority opinion refers [to] earlier history[;] it goes back as far as the 13th (the 13th!) century." In fact, the Leges is even older, from early in the 12th century. Their anger, perhaps, made them "miss the trees for the forest": Hyper-focused on the big-picture loss of Roe, the liberal justices missed crucial details about the Leges and state religion. Whether one is "pro-choice" or "pro-life," the truth is important.

What can Americans do, now that they know about "Leges-gate"? (In HBO's "House of the Dragon," Aemma Arryn learns the hard way how reproductive freedom fares when women are kept uninformed.) First, the religious freedom lawsuits contesting abortion restrictions may now seem a lot less frivolous. Second, Americans may be interested, on Election Day or otherwise (e.g., by complaining to Congress' judiciary committees), in letting the Supreme Court know how they feel about Dobbs' deceitful, smuggled-in religious doctrine.

Ironically, Alito recently dissented from an order compelling Yeshiva University to recognize an LGBTQ group (at least for now) by arguing, "The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from enforcing its own preferred interpretation of Holy Scripture."

From him, that seems especially hollow, even ridiculous, given the sub rosa state religion Alito slipped into Dobbs. True friends of religious liberty, and other liberties as well, may want to act.

How Donald Trump learned how to manipulate white rage

Chauncey Devega,

 Salon
October 13, 2022

Trump supporters and protesters gather outside a campaign rally (and accompanying anti-Trump protest) for President Trump and US Senate candidate Martha McSally. (Eric Rosenwald / Shutterstock.com)

American democracy is in peril, teetering between democracy and authoritarianism and under siege by Donald Trump, the Republican Party and the larger white right. To call them "conservative" is an insult to language.

In a recent Salon essay, historian Robert McElvaine addressed this directly, calling out "the media's ingrained tendency to aid and abet the enemies of democracy through the careless use of language," and especially "the ubiquitous use of the word 'conservative' to describe extreme right-wing radicals and their beliefs, which only seek to conserve white supremacy — and more specifically the class or caste supremacy of a small minority of wealthy and nominally Christian white men."

Even President Biden, a career politician and a conflict-averse lifelong moderate who still yearns to "unite" America, has publicly warned that the "MAGA Republicans" — which at this point means nearly all Republicans — are the greatest internal threat to the country since the civil war.

America's democracy crisis is a drama of raw political power, and a nationwide campaign by the Republican fascists to end America's multiracial democracy. If they prevail, Black and brown people, most women, LGBTQ people, those with disabilities, non-Christians (or liberal Christians), immigrants, poor people and anyone else targeted as the Other more generally (and thus deemed "un-American") will literally become second-class citizens both under the law and in daily life.

Many Americans who believe they are safe from American fascism because of the color of their skin, their money or other forms of privilege will rapidly learn that their freedom, safety and quality of life will be greatly diminished as well. In a recent Salon interview, author and activist Brynn Tannehill summarized this harsh reality:

Everybody who watches a zombie movie assumes that they're going to be part of the resistance and not part of the shambling, undead brain-eating horde. All these people assume that under a fascist system they are going to be among the winners. There are many more losers in a fascist system than winners. The winners make sure that their people get taken care of first, and if you're not near the front of the line for the goodies you aren't going to get them. The vast majority of Americans are not going to be rewarded by fascism.

American fascism is not a foreign import or unimaginably alien. It is in our soil, and in many ways a continuation of this continent's long history of white supremacy and racism going back to the 17th century. Trump and the other neofascists are like political necromancers: They summoned up these dark, lingering energies and are now using them for their own purposes.



Trumpism, like other forms of neofascism and fake right-wing populism, is based on a cult of personality and pathological feelings of shared identity between the leader and the follower. Any criticism of the leader is experienced as an attack on the follower, and an existential threat to one's racial identity and core sense of self.

Trump's anger is rooted in the assumption that a rich white man is above the law — and that it's a violation of the natural order for a Black woman to have any power over him.

As Donald Trump faces the real possibility of finally being held accountable for his many obvious crimes, whether those be fraud, seditious conspiracy or violations of the Espionage Act, he will incite and channel even more white rage and white tribalism. He will urge his acolytes and followers to tear the country down rather than see him face justice. He will urge them to do so again if he or his party are somehow defeated at the polls in the upcoming midterms or the 2024 presidential election.

Words presage action; depending on the context, words and language can be a type of violence. Donald Trump has repeatedly said that the prosecutors who are investigating him for alleged crimes in New York and Georgia — all three happen to be Black — are "racist," "horrible" and "mentally sick" people who are unfairly targeting him, and by extension his overwhelmingly white followers.

The assumption here is that white people, especially rich white men, are above the law and moreover that it is a violation of the natural order of things, or American "tradition," that Black people (and Black women in particular) could in any way potentially have so much power.

AP reporter Bobby Calvan interviewed a communications scholar about how "Trump's rhetoric has escalated, perhaps because he recognizes that some among his base are receptive to more overt racism":

"It intensifies that discourse and makes it explicitly racial," said Casey Kelly, a communications professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who for years has pored over transcripts of Trump's speeches.
At a recent rally in Arizona, he said — falsely — that white people in New York were being sent to the back of line for antiviral treatments.

And now Trump is using the investigations against him — and the prosecutors behind them — as "evidence of a larger systemic pattern that white people don't have a place in the future of America and he's the only one that can fight on their behalf," Kelly said.

Michael Steele, who more than a decade ago was the first African American to chair the Republican National Committee, said Trump was being Trump.

"If he can race bait it, he will. These prosecutors, these Black people are coming after me — the white man," Steele said….

Trump is questioning their legitimacy, said Diana Becton, another Black district attorney who serves in Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area.

"His accusations are certainly not subtle. They're frightening," Becton said. "It's like saying, we are out of our place, that we're being uppity and we are going to be put back in our place by people who look like him."

At the National Hispanic Leadership Conference last Wednesday in Miami, Trump continued with his racist victimology, telling attendees that "No other president has been harassed and persecuted like we have." He also attempted to compare the FBI search of his redoubt at Mar-a-Lago for classified documents with the compounds of drug cartels in Mexico:

They raided Mar-a-Lago, but the cartels, they have their own Mar-a-Lagos — those are fine….Leave them alone. Let them continue to destroy our country.

Think how sick it is — what's happening in this country….We're a country of investigations. We don't talk about greatness anymore. Everybody gets investigated. … The cartels — nothing's happening to them. But they go after politicians!

Trump's fundraising and other political emails repeatedly emphasize the fictional narrative that his supporters and other "real Americans" are being victimized and are under attack by "Democrats" and their supporters, including Black Lives Matter activists and "elites" who want to destroy American heritage, values, culture and traditions. (All of which are understood as white by default.)

Trump's fundraising repeatedly emphasizes the narrative that his supporters are under attack from "elites" who want to destroy American heritage, values, culture and traditions.

Such language is not a racial dog whistle or coded appeal. These are blaring sirens. Public opinion polls and other research have consistently shown that a high percentage of white Republicans believe that white people are the real "victims" of racism in America and are somehow oppressed or otherwise discriminated against because of their skin color, religion or cultural values and beliefs. There is no evidence to support such delusional fantasies.

In reality, American society from before the founding and through to the present is based upon the creation, protection, perpetuation and expansion of white privilege and other unearned advantages for those deemed to be white by birth or otherwise identified with whiteness and white power. Yet the compulsion toward white victimology and white grievance-mongering is so powerful in the Age of Trump that a majority of Republicans and Trump supporters now believe in some version of the antisemitic "great replacement" conspiracy theory.

In a previous essay for Salon, I wrote:

Did Republicans and Trump supporters feel shame and disgust about themselves when they learned that the terrorist who killed 10 black people in Buffalo shared their delusional beliefs about white people being "replaced" or "oppressed" in America? Of course not. If anything, the Buffalo attack appears to have reinforced their commitment to protecting white privilege and white power by any means necessary.

A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted ... only days after the Buffalo killings found that 61% of Trump voters believed in the central claim of the "great replacement" theory that "a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants and people of color who share their political views." ...

According to this poll, almost three-fourths of Trump voters and more than 60% of Republicans believed the fantastical claim that "discrimination against white people has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black people in the U.S." ...

Another new poll, this one conducted in April by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Tulchin Research, found that while a plurality of Americans had "a positive view of the country's changing demographics," that was not true for Republicans, "a majority of whom viewed those changes not only negatively, but as a threat to white Americans."

The white supremacist mass shooting earlier this year in Buffalo represents a much larger trend in American history: White racial paranoia and feelings of white grievance and victimhood have been the fuel for massive acts of violence against Black and brown Americans. Notable examples include the end of Reconstruction and the Red Summer. Indeed, Donald Trump's coup attempt and the assault on the Capitol by his followers on Jan. 6, 2021, was a textbook white-rage attack against the very idea of multiracial democracy.

In his new book "American Midnight," historian Adam Hochschild describes these historical continuities of white supremacy and white rage:

On Memorial Day 1917, a march of some 1,000 Klansmen though the New York City borough of Queens turned into a brawl with the police. Several people wearing Klan hoods were arrested, one of them a young real estate developer named Fred Trump. Ninety years later, his sone, with similar feelings towards people of color, would enter the White House.

During Donald Trump's presidency, the forces that had blighted the America of a century earlier would be dramatically visible yet again: rage against immigrants and refugees, racism, Red-baiting, fear of subversive ideas in schools, and much more. And, of course, behind all of them is the appeal of simple solutions: deport aliens, forbid critical journalism, lock people up, blame everything on those of a different color or religion.

In his book "On the Pleasures of Owning Persons: The Hidden Face of American Slavery," anthropologist and psychiatrist Volney Gay explains how ethnic violence entrepreneurs such as Donald Trump use fear, anxiety and feelings of group victimization and aggrievement as a way to expand their power:

Because splitting is a universal form of thinking, savvy political leaders use it when necessary to advance their agenda. In this sense, many politicians are canny. They recognize their subjects' anxieties and then exploit them to increase panic, anxiety, and regression to primitive solutions…. These appeals to group solidarity and to a mythic past are identical. In each instance, a dominant group fears annihilation of its way of life and its identity (or at least manufactures those anxieties in its subjects).

With the rising neofascist tide, both here and around the world, the American people are at a crossroads. They are experiencing two countervailing forces where a fascist reactionary force is pushing back — with great success — against centuries of positive revolutionary struggle whose aim was to create a better, more inclusive, multiracial pluralistic democracy in the United States. The American people, and white Americans in particular, now have to decide what type of nation this will be. Do we move backward into some of the worst parts of our history, or do we move forward along that long, often broken arc of progress to a better tomorrow?

TAX THE CHURCH

How Republicans conspire with churches for social and political control

Thom Hartmann
October 11, 2022

Franklin Graham attends UN global call to protect religious freedom meeting at UN Headquarters in 2019. (Shutterstock.com)

For Republicans, the purpose of religion is — as it has been for authoritarians since Old Testament days — political and social control. It’s not about spirituality: it’s all about raw, naked, taxpayer-subsidized power and the wealth associated with it.

A Michigan county Republican Party just posted a video showing picture after picture of that state’s Democratic politicians, starting with Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who right-wing terrorists have already tried to kidnap and murder.

Under each picture — including a picture of George Soros representing, presumably, the “International Jews” who Republican politicians suggest wield space lasers and secretly are trying to control the world — reads the death threat, in bold, all-caps:

“GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN!”

The wealthy pastors of at least four Republican-aligned megachurches in Georgia have invited Hershel Walker to campaign, in clear violation of their tax-exempt status.

Across the nation, white evangelical churches brazenly push their parishioners to vote for Republican candidates: they’ve been getting away with breaking the law since the 1980s and don’t show any inclination to stop now.

As the University of Chicago Divinity School noted five months ago:

“In January, Walker spoke at Free Chapel in Gainesville, the congregation led by former Trump evangelical advisor Jentezen Franklin. In late February, Walker spoke during a worship service at First Baptist Atlanta. And in March, he spoke at Sugar Hill Baptist Church, where he made controversial comments questioning evolution. In each sanctuary, the pastors interviewed Walker on stage and offered their support for his candidacy in ways that appear to violate IRS rules prohibiting 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofits from engaging in partisan campaign activity.”

It’s time for average Americans to stop being forced to subsidize politically radical religious leaders and their institutions.

Back during Trump’s second impeachment trial, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and heir to the multimillion-dollar Graham fortune, publicly said that the 10 Republicans voting to impeach Donald Trump in the US House of Representatives were like Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.

“And these ten, from [Trump’s] own party, joined in the feeding frenzy,” he wrote. “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”

Franklin Graham is a multimillionaire in large part because neither he nor his family have to pay any taxes on their family’s business’ income or even pay property taxes on the land and buildings their business owns and in which they live.

Instead, you and I and the taxpayers of his town and state pay extra taxes to subsidize Graham and his “ministry,” as we do thousands of other politically active “preachers.”

There’s a history to this political-religious-financial complex.

Back in the 1950s, the John Birch Society put up billboards all across America demanding that Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren be impeached because he’d signed off on the Brown v Board decision that required schools be racially integrated.

White churches across the country, along with wealthy industrialists like Fred Koch, helped fund the effort, arguing that school integration was the first step to full-blown communism in America and was against “God’s will.”

Preachers ranted from the pulpit about the dangers of school integration: the issue birthed the modern “religious right.” Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell and others started all-white schools to defy the decision, often claiming that because their schools were “Christian” they were exempt from federal oversight and thus didn’t have to comply with the Supreme Court’s dictum.


Into this firestorm stepped Senator Lyndon Johnson, who proposed in 1954 that it was fine if churches wanted to engage in politics or argue that Jesus would have been against racial integration, but if they chose to preach and practice racism and politics the rest of America shouldn’t be forced to subsidize them.

It passed Congress that year and was signed into law by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Since the Reagan era, however, the law has been largely ignored. As The Washington Post noted in a 2016 editorial:

“Indeed, more than 2,000 mainly evangelical Christian clergy have deliberately violated the law since 2008 as a form of protest against it; only one has been audited by the IRS, and none punished…”

When preachers push politics instead of religion on Sunday morning, the so-called Johnson Amendment said, their church should lose its tax-exempt status.

As the IRS notes:

“Under the Internal Revenue Code, all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Churches could still participate in non-partisan political activities like a voter registration drive or organizing buses to take people to polling places, but when they took a position on candidates or political issues they lost their right to force all the rest of us pay for their roads, police, fire, and all the other public services that taxes fund.

But ever since George HW Bush brought his son George W. Bush into his 1988 campaign to reach out to white evangelical churches, many evangelists, televangelists, and churches across America have been ignoring this law.

They not only regularly preach rightwing hate, completely inconsistent with Jesus‘s message, but they raise hundreds of millions of dollars — all tax exempt — to inject into political campaigns.

This is not how the Framers of our Constitution thought America should operate.

At the founding of our republic, “Father of the Constitution” James Madison was worried about government influencing and corrupting churches as had happened in Massachusetts before the Revolution.

On the other hand, his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, was worried that churches and their religious leaders could corrupt politicians and government itself.

It turns out both were right.

Their solution was written into Article VI of the Constitution, which says:

“[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

They doubled-down on it with the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Thomas Jefferson later referred to this as a “wall of separation between church and state” that would keep both our republic and our churches independent of each other.

When he became our fourth President, James Madison’s first veto was to reject a piece of legislation that would’ve given a federal subsidy to a church in Washington DC to feed needy people.

No American government should be giving money to churches, he said, regardless of purpose, and the proposed law he vetoed would “be a precedent for giving to religious societies as such a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

Sadly, and particularly since the Reagan Revolution, we’ve badly backslid on this principle. Churches have figured out hundreds of ways to get their hands on government money, and deeply embedded themselves in the business of lobbying and politics.

It’s hard to find a successful televangelist or major evangelical pastor who is not now a multimillionaire, presiding over a multi-million or even billion-dollar empire within America’s multi-billion-dollar-a-year religious industry. And they got there, in part, because you and I are subsidizing them.

Modern history, particularly since 1954, proves the wisdom of Madison and Jefferson‘s concern.

If rightwing religious leaders want to tell their followers how to believe, how to behave, and how to vote, that’s fine. That’s their right in a nation that celebrates both free speech and freedom of — and freedom from — religion.

Churches, after all, have been telling their members how to behave since the beginning of organized religion. Social and political control exercised through religion is nothing new: it’s at least as old as the Bible.

But you and I shouldn’t be forced to subsidize their political control over their followers through our tax dollars.

It’s time for the IRS to tighten up their enforcement and cut these freeloaders off their free lunch of tax exemption when they engage in politics.

Joe Biden's cannabis pardons matter — but the war on drugs' racist legacy lingers

Mia Brett
October 12, 2022

J. Edgar Hoover -- (History Channel)

Last week President Biden announced he would pardon people convicted of simple marijuana possession. This mass pardon could help over 6,000 people but it’s still a drop in the bucket in our fight to end the criminalization of marijuana use and the outsized harm to Black and brown communities from that criminalization.

This mass pardon doesn’t free one person from prison, because there are currently no federal prisoners in jail for simple possession.

However, the pardons aren’t meaningless.

READ MORE: 'Legalize it': Advocates cheer presidential pardons of federal cannabis convictions

People who have felony convictions on their records face obstacles in finding jobs, getting housing, receiving loans, voting or serving on juries. Despite the conviction being from a federal charge, many of these rights are dependent on state law. In some states, a federal felony conviction is an obstacle to voting while in others, it isn’t.

Prison time isn’t the only harmful consequence to a felony conviction (state or federal). In states that have legalized marijuana, you can only sell it legally or open a dispensary if you don’t have a previous felony marijuana conviction. Even without jail time, felony convictions can have disastrous effects on people’s lives. Pardoning over 6,000 people will remove major obstacles to those people fully participating in society.

So it's very clear the mass pardon is positive no matter how you look at it – but it’s nowhere near enough. Pardoning 6,500 people helps those 6,500 people, but without additional steps, these pardons mean nothing to the larger issue. The executive order was clear that it didn’t apply to future charges and certainly doesn’t address the longstanding harm to Black and brown communities from the decades-long criminalization of marijuana.

In order to address future charges, marijuana needs to be reclassified. Biden ordered HHS Secretary Becerra and Attorney General Garland to speed up their review of marijuana classification but it's a complicated process and could still take a significant amount of time. Even reclassifying marijuana as a schedule 2 narcotic (a substance that’s harmful but with medicinal purposes) could still result in significant criminalization particularly for marginalized communities without access to legitimate medicalized use.

READ MORE: 'Reefer madness': Fox News freaks out after Joe Biden pardons thousands of federal cannabis convictions

Rescheduling marijuana as a schedule 2 narcotic would open up avenues for research and likely provide the option for prescribed marijuana, but that does not go nearly far enough in actually decriminalizing the substance.

While the majority of marijuana felony convictions are at the state level, federal charges disproportionately target indigenous people who live on reservations. Arrest for marijuana possession in the District of Columbia, a majority Black city, can also result in federal charges.

Undocumented immigrants are also more likely to face federal charges for marijuana possession. Unfortunately, the pardon does not address marijuana convictions for undocumented immigrants. Why would a non-citizen face punishment for something that citizens aren’t punished for?

If the pardon is supposed to be a first step in decriminalization (which I think it clearly is) then there must be significant movement to pardon people not only of simple possession but also of possession with intent to distribute.

States across the country are legalizing marijuana distribution but rhetoric often focuses solely on the criminalization of possession. White people with resources are beginning to open dispensaries while Black people remain in jail for the same actions. Charging someone with intent to distribute is often based on the quantity of marijuana one has. Intent is assumed if one possesses too much.

Our focus cannot solely be on decriminalizing marijuana but also on actually repairing the significant harm done to Brown and black communities. The war on drugs and mass incarceration were policies that came directly out of the civil rights movement as a backlash to ending segregation and Jim Crow. Before the civil rights movement, Black people were criminalized with blatantly racist laws criminalizing loitering or not having a job. After, criminalization had to become race neutral in the law and only racist in the application.

The answer was the war on drugs and the extreme disparate treatment of Black and white drug users.

During Jim Crow, criminalization of Black people was used to deny voting rights, jobs, jury participation and fulfill labor needs after the end of slavery. The war on drugs similarly has denied voting rights, jury participation, jobs, government benefits and more to those with felony drug convictions. Arguably prisoners are still fulfilling labor needs through prison labor programs.

To address this harm, we need to do a lot more than pardon those with felony possession charges. People with possession or possession with intent to distribute must all be pardoned.

Marijuana must be reclassified in such a way that it is not deemed harmful and so it is legal. Those who have been convicted of possession must have access to licenses for dispensaries.

US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has been working on this issue for years and has proposed expunging the records of non-violent marijuana offenses (presumably including those convicted of intent to distribute). His proposal also includes “a fund to reinvest in the communities that were hurt by the war on drugs and provide restorative justice to communities of color.”

President Biden’s pardon will materially affect people’s lives for the better. A major obstacle to voting, employment, housing, government benefits and more will be removed. However, unless it is followed by continued action on decriminalization and redress to harmed communities it will only help those 6,500 people.

The language of Biden’s executive order suggests this is meant as a first step so we have reason to hope he will address the larger issues.

We can only hope he follows through.

READ MORE: Legalizing cannabis is a great way to 'defund the police'

Mia Brett, PhD, is a legal historian. She lives with her gorgeous dog, Tchotchke. You can find her @queenmab87.

MEN ARE SNOWFLAKES; PILL MUST BE 100% SAFE
Male birth control options are in development, but a number of barriers still stand in the way

The Conversation
October 13, 2022

Illustration of sperm and egg (Shutterstock)

In the wake of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, developing more contraception options for everyone becomes even more important.

Women and people who can become pregnant have a number of effective birth control methods available, including oral pills, patches, injections, implants, vaginal rings, IUDs and sterilization. But for men and people who produce sperm, options have been limited. Two options, withdrawal and condoms, both have high failure rates. Withdrawal has a failure rate of about 20%. Condoms have a failure rate of only 2% when used correctly, but that rate rises to 13% based on how people typically use them. Vasectomies have a failure rate of less than 1%, but they require minimally invasive surgery and are seen as a permanent method of contraception. Neither vasectomies nor withdrawal protect against sexually transmitted infections.

There has not been a new form of male birth control since the introduction of the “no-scalpel vasectomy” in the 1980s. I, along with my team, have been developing male contraception methods since the 1970s. I believe that new safe, reversible and affordable contraception options can help men participate and share contraceptive responsibilities with their partners, and reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies.

Taking responsibility for family planning

A 2017 survey of 1,500 men ages 18 to 44 found that over 80% wanted to prevent their partner from getting pregnant and felt that they had shared or sole responsibility for birth control.

Men who are dissatisfied with condoms are more likely to either use withdrawal as a form of birth control or never use contraception. Of those dissatisfied with condoms, however, 87% percent are interested in new methods for male contraception. This translates to an estimated 17 million men in the U.S. who are looking for new methods of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies.

Similarly, a 2002 survey of over 9,000 men in nine countries over four continents found that over 55% would be willing to use a new method of male birth control. Importantly, a 2000 survey across three continents found that 98% of women would trust their partner to use a male birth control method.


The onus of birth control has largely fallen on women and people who can become pregnant.
Peter Dazeley/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Barriers to male contraception

Strong interest in a new male contraceptive raises the question of why there haven’t been any new male birth control methods since the ‘80s.

Male contraception development has primarily been supported by governmental and nongovernmental organizations, including the World Health Organization working with academic medical centers. However, these agencies frequently do not have a drug development infrastructure comparable to pharmaceutical companies, with programs typically run by only a handful of personnel assisted by clinical research organizations. Limited financial resources further slow down development.

Lack of interest from pharmaceutical companies may also play a role in deterring male contraception development, and there are a number of possible reasons the drug industry shies away from male birth control. One reason includes weighing the cost of development with uncertainties about the potential market. Other reasons include uncertainties about who would dispense these drugs and unclear regulatory requirements for male contraceptive methods to receive FDA approval. Companies may also be concerned about liability if pregnancy occurs.

New methods currently in development

Researchers are currently looking into several different methods of male contraception.

Hormonal methods are usually taken as a gel applied to the skin, injection to the muscle or oral pill. These methods typically contain testosterone and a progestin. The progestin suppresses two pituitary hormones that control the testes, the organs that produce sperm. While the testes require high concentrations of testosterone to make sperm, testosterone is typically included in hormonal methods to ensure that there is an adequate level of the hormone for other bodily functions. Counterintuitively, taking testosterone may also help suppress sperm production, because increasing circulating testosterone levels above a certain level suppresses the same two pituitary hormones. The addition of a progestin further enhances the suppression of sperm production.

The hormonal contraceptive candidate furthest along in development is currently in an ongoing second stage clinical study that has recruited over 400 couples across four continents. I served as the principal investigator of this trial at the Lundquist Institute. The results of the study, sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Population Council, have so far been promising with minimal side effects, and the couples have found the gel acceptable to use.

My team and I are also developing drugs that function like both testosterone and progestin, but in a single compound. These drugs are currently undergoing early testing in people as a daily oral pill or a long-acting injection.


Scientists have been trying to develop male birth control pills for decades.

Nonhormonal methods typically involve drugs that specifically target sperm-producing organs to decrease sperm concentration or function. Nonhormonal drugs show efficacy in animal models, but preclinical toxicology results are needed before clinical studies to demonstrate safety, tolerability and efficacy in people can begin. A few of these methods are working toward first-stage clinical trials.

Another nonhormonal method involves reversibly blocking the vas deferens, an organ that transports sperm for ejaculation. Studies sponsored by the Male Contraceptive Initiative and Parsemus Foundation are testing hydrogels, a type of polymer that retains water, that block sperm from traveling through the vas deferens.

People are ready for new contraceptive methods. I believe that collaboration across academic, government, nonprofit and pharmaceutical sectors can help deliver new birth control methods that are safe, reversible, acceptable and accessible to all.

Christina Chung-Lun Wang, Physician/Investigator at Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

AN ALL AMERICAN CRIME

Bill O'Reilly-endorsed investment group slapped with federal charges for Ponzi scheme

Matthew Chapman
October 13, 2022

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly on Jan. 21, 2015 [YouTube]

On Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that National Realty Investment Advisors, an upscale real estate investment firm with celebrity backing from disgraced former Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, has been busted by federal investigators as a Ponzi scheme.

"After investing a few thousand dollars, the New Jersey-based group focused on high-end real estate in gentrifying neighborhoods claimed, clients might see returns of at least 12 percent. The message was repeated in thousands of emails, on huge billboards at the Lincoln and Holland tunnel, and even radio ads featuring the former Fox News host and ex-NFL star," reported Pilar Melendez. "But on Thursday, prosecutors alleged that the investment company’s president and an associate were in fact participating in a brazen $650 million Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors."

"The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey announced an 18-count indictment, including charges of securities and wire fraud, against Thomas Nicholas Salzano and Rey E. Grabato II for their role in the almost four-year-long alleged scheme. The pair also allegedly tried to evade $26 million in taxes," said the report. The founders allegedly scammed almost 400 retirees out of savings, and used them “to pay distributions to other investors, to fund an executive’s family’s personal and luxury purchases, and to pay reputation management firms to thwart investors’ due diligence of the executives.”

O'Reilly himself is not charged with any crimes in relation to NRIA, nor are any of the other celebrity endorsers.

“These defendants schemed to create a high-pressure, fraudulent marketing campaign to hoodwink investors into believing that their bogus real estate venture generated substantial profits,” said U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger in a statement. “In reality, their criminal tactics were straight out of the Ponzi scheme playbook so that they could cheat their investors and line their own pockets.”

PLAYING WITH TOY SOLDIERS
Trump knew he'd lost 2020 — and that's when he ordered abrupt military withdrawals around the globe: Jan. 6 hearing

Sarah K. Burris
October 13, 2022




Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Thursday during a hearing held by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that former President Donald Trump knew full-well that he lost the 2020 election. Meanwhile, he was acting on that loss, and trying to quickly withdraw troops from around the globe even though the Department of Defense urged him not to.

Kinzinger showed videos of several defense officials who testified that it was young staffer Johnny McEntee, who did nothing more than run the staffing office of the White House, and who penned the directive ordering all troops out of Afghanistan and Somalia.

"Knowing that he had a lost and had only weeks in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business," said Kinzinger. "One key example is this: President Trump issued an order for a U.S. troop withdrawal."

"He disregarded concerns about the consequences for the fragile government on the front line of the fight against ISIS and terrorists. Knowing he was leaving office, he acted immediately and signed the order on November 11, which would have required the withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan all to be complete before the Biden administration on January 20."

RELATED: Trump’s ‘false’ victory speech was a ‘premeditated plan’ to stay in office: Jan. 6 hearing

He showed clip after clip of high-ranking military and security officials revealing that Trump wanted the "immediate" withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan. Military leaders told him it would be a disaster, but Trump didn't care. When Joe Biden entered office, it was the mess that he was forced to clean up and for which he was blamed. The implication is that it was what Trump wanted.

Watch video below or at this link.



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Former Trump official: He 'wanted people to die' in the riot so he could declare martial law and stay in power

Matthew Chapman
October 13, 2022

Capitol rioters (Photo by Saul Loeb for AFP)


On Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," during a discussion about the final January 6 Committee hearing, former Trump administration Homeland Security official Miles Taylor said he believes the former president wanted members of Congress to be killed on January 6.

Taylor, a Trump-skeptic who wrote the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed describing himself as part of a "resistance" within the executive branch, argued the former president would have used such deaths as a pretext to declare martial law and remain in office in perpetuity.

"It made my heart race to watch today's hearing, really, because they brought up Trump's mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset?" Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace. "I'm going to demystify that for America right now. I've spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House situation room, and Air Force One. I'll tell you what his mindset was on January 6th."

"I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die," said Taylor. "He wanted people to die who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That's not a conspiracy theory. In fact, in hindsight, it's pretty damn clear to me this is what he had in mind from day one in office."

This plan from Trump, said Taylor, explains something that had mystified himself and other national security officials about the former president from day one: why he continually refused to condemn right-wing domestic terrorist groups every time there was a violent incident. "Why did he make excuses for domestic terrorist groups? Because he was on their side."

"We saw in testimony the other week in courts that the January 6th plotters knew they were engaging in an insurrection, an armed insurrection. That's what they intended," said Taylor. "And we have people, extremists ... two hops away from the president of the United States who were planning on making that happen. He wanted people to die on January 6th so that he could use those presidential powers to prevent our democracy from transitioning to a new president. And I think the committee presented that in extremely powerful passion."

Watch below or at this link.

Miles Taylor says Trump "wanted people to die" on January 6

Feeling “schadenfreude” about Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis may have impacted people’s views on the election

2022/10/12


A recent study examined Americans’ feelings of schadenfreude and sympathy toward Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis in 2020. The findings, published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology, revealed that Democrats expressed more schadenfreude and less sympathy toward Trump’s diagnosis compared to Republicans. Democrats were also more likely to think that the diagnosis would sway people’s votes in the upcoming election.

Schadenfreude, a German word that has been adopted by the English language, describes a feeling of pleasure at another person’s misfortune. This emotion tends to occur within competitive environments, often when there is a conflict between two groups. Study author Joanna Peplak and her co-authors wanted to explore the role of schadenfreude within a particularly heated intergroup context — the latest U.S. presidential election.

“I have been interested in schadenfreude (i.e., feeling pleasure in others’ misfortunes) for some time now and have been primarily conducting research on individual and development differences in children’s and adolescents’ experiences of schadenfreude in social interactions,” explained Peplak, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California-Irvine.

“My primary research questions include: When and why do individuals experience schadenfreude? Do frequent experiences of schadenfreude influence how we treat others? Although schadenfreude is primarily thought to be immoral, can it reflect moral facets as well?”

“For this paper, I was interested in investigating similar questions except in the political context—specifically in response to former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis within weeks of the Presidential Election. My goal was to shed light on the emotions that contribute to partisanship and voting behavior,” Peplak said.

In October 2020, it was announced that then president Donald Trump had contracted COVID-19. The 2020 election campaign was particularly competitive given Trump’s controversial politics and the ongoing pandemic. Because Trump was perceived by many to have mishandled the COVID crisis, some Americans may have felt that he deserved his diagnosis, particularly Democrats.

Peplak and her colleagues opted to investigate feelings of schadenfreude (and its opposite, sympathy) among the American public in response to Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. The researchers also explored whether these feelings influenced citizens’ voting intentions.

About a week after Trump’s diagnosis was announced, 506 Americans answered an online questionnaire. With both open-ended questions and scale items, the survey assessed participants’ levels of schadenfreude and sympathy concerning Trump’s diagnosis. Participants were next asked whether they thought the diagnosis would affect their and other Americans’ voting intentions in the upcoming election.

In general, the respondents reported slightly more sympathy than schadenfreude. As expected, Democrats demonstrated more schadenfreude than toward Trump compared to Republicans. But even among Democrats, the levels of schadenfreude were not high (about 3 on average on a 5-point scale).

“Given the political climate prior to the 2020 Presidential Election and the influx of media responses that displayed individuals’ schadenfreude, I was surprised that feelings of schadenfreude in the sample of Democrats we surveyed for this study were relatively low,” Peplak told PsyPost. “This may be because our participants took COVID-19 diagnoses seriously. That is, even though Democrats may not have liked and/or agreed with former President Trump, their feelings of schadenfreude following his diagnosis may have been tempered by the relative severity of the diagnosis.”

The researchers next assessed the nature of participants’ feelings of schadenfreude and sympathy. There are said to be different subtypes of schadenfreude depending on the cognitions behind the emotion — deservingness-based schadenfreude, competition-based schadenfreude, and malice-based schadenfreude.

By coding participants’ responses to the open-ended questions, the researchers ascertained that the higher schadenfreude and lower sympathy among Democrats was motivated by deservingness beliefs and very little malice. For example, of the total sample, 43% indicated that they felt Trump deserved his diagnosis, 16% expressed care for his well-being, and only 5% expressed malice. These themes were associated with participants’ level of schadenfreude — Americans who expressed that Trump deserved the diagnosis or expressed malice toward him demonstrated higher schadenfreude.

Interestingly, respondents felt that Trump’s diagnosis would impact others’ voting intentions more than their own. Democrats were especially likely to anticipate a shift in votes. Across the sample, of those who thought votes would change, most (76%) thought it would sway more votes toward the Democrats. When they expressed why they thought this, most felt that Trump’s diagnosis would help voters recognize Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic.

Neither schadenfreude nor sympathy was linked to anticipated shifts in voting intentions. However, feeling that Trump deserved his diagnosis was. The authors report, “Those who believed then-President Trump’s diagnosis was deserved (cognition strongly associated with schadenfreude) were four times more likely to believe the public would change their vote to the Democratic Party.”

Peplak said the study provided three important takeaways:

“1. The groups that you belong to and associate with shape your emotional reactions. We found that schadenfreude was higher in Democrats and sympathy was higher in Republicans following former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis.”

“2. Schadenfreude might not always reflect hatred or malice. We found that many participants experienced schadenfreude following former President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis because they believed it reflected deservingness or justice following his mismanaged response to the pandemic.”

“3. Experiencing schadenfreude in response to a political event may (indirectly) influence voting behavior. We found that the more Americans believed Trump’s diagnosis was deserved (a belief strongly related to experiences of schadenfreude), the more likely they were to think others would change their vote to the Democratic Party in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Overall, the study shed light on how emotionally charged political events may influence the public’s thoughts about an upcoming election. But the authors noted that their study only examined voting intentions and not voting behavior. It would be interesting for future research to explore whether emotions like schadenfreude might actually change voting behavior and influence election results.

“There is still much to be learned about schadenfreude in the political arena and whether and how feeling schadenfreude might change behavior,” Peplak said. “For example, future work should seek to answer questions such as: Does expressed schadenfreude (e.g., via social media) expand political party divided? Does schadenfreude based in correcting injustice motivate us to correct our own injustices?”

The study, “Schadenfreude and Sympathy Following President Trump’s COVID-19 Diagnosis: Influence on Pre-Election Voting Intentions”, was authored by Joanna Peplak, J. Zoe Klemfuss, and Peter H. Ditto.