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Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor, believes fake news and partisan conspiracy theories

2016-11-19T16:32:42-05:00

Donald Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, doesn’t control the nation’s military, like the secretary of defense. He doesn’t tell America’s diplomats what messages to pass to foreign leaders, like the secretary of state. And he doesn’t tell US spies which governments to infiltrate or which terror leaders to target, like the director of the CIA.

Flynn’s powers are less tangible, but his role is critically important all the same. National security advisers help determine which foreign policy and national security questions reach the president and offer suggestions for how they should be resolved.

That means Flynn will spend more time with President-elect Trump than any other member of the administration’s national security team. He is already helping choose candidates for senior posts while vetoing others, which means Trump’s Cabinet will clearly reflect Flynn’s thinking.

Flynn will have one other responsibility — and this is where the retired general, despite his decades of generally exemplary military service, may be uniquely ill-suited to his role.

From his insistence that President Obama was born abroad to his lies about black-on-white violence, Trump has shown a consistent and troubling habit of absorbing information from semi-factual news sources and treating it as though it were true. That was bad enough when he was just a candidate; it could be disastrous when he’s president.

As Trump begins to slowly roll out picks for key Cabinet posts, it’s unclear whether he will fill his White House with aides willing to present him with information from reputable sources inside and outside of the government that may conflict with his general worldview or beliefs about a specific issue — or whether he will choose staffers who will shape the information flow to reinforce the new president’s existing views about issues like Russia and ISIS.

And that’s why there’s reason to worry about Flynn. A close look at his recently published book, public comments, and tweets reveal a man who swims in the same swamp of hyperpartisan, frequently fabricated, and disturbingly anti-Muslim rhetoric as Trump advisers like Steve Bannon, the white nationalist who was one of the first to receive a West Wing post.

This is apparent from a brief scan of Flynn’s Twitter feed. His tweets include a video that claims “Islam ... wants 80 percent of humanity enslaved or exterminated,” which he captioned “Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL,” and an article from a fake news site claiming that the NYPD was about to arrest Hillary Clinton for “sex crimes with minors,” among other charges.

Flynn is one of those who will most directly determine the new president’s information diet. Based on what he appears to believe, that isn’t reassuring.

How National Security Adviser Flynn could lead Trump astray

(Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Flynn’s official title will be assistant to the president for national security affairs, and in technical terms, his powers and responsibilities are fairly clear.

He staffs and runs the National Security Council, which exists to coordinate and synthesize the sometimes conflicting policy proposals that emerge from the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies. He communicates the president’s decisions to those agencies and works to ensure they’re implemented. And he presents the president with the strategic assessments of high-level officials like the secretaries of defense and state — and then offers his own thinking.

That would be the case for any national security adviser, and any president. But Flynn is likely to be unusually influential because Trump has never held elected office, served in the military, or dealt with even a fraction of the foreign challenges — from ISIS to a rising China and a revanchist Russia — that he will face. Trump has also made comments on foreign policy that are muddled and sometimes contradictory, like raising questions about America’s security commitments to Japan and South Korea, only to then reassure them that nothing would change. Flynn will need to help the new president decide which path to go down.

“A good national security adviser weighs in on debate to inform it but not sway it,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who formerly served as a top aide to Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser. “The truth is that’s incredibly difficult to pull off. Most people who hold that job wind up shading things, even if they’re not trying to.”

In practice, the national security adviser’s powers have been steadily expanding as presidents of both parties concentrate power in the White House. When President Obama was working to normalize ties to Cuba, he entrusted the secret talks to two members of the National Security Council, Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin Rhodes and then-Latin American director Ricardo Zuniga. Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Washington Post, wasn’t notified about the negotiations until a late stage. Rice had known about them for months.

One of the most successful recent national security advisers was Stephen Hadley, who held the post under then-President George W. Bush (and is rumored to be in the running for Trump’s defense secretary).

Hadley was a quiet operator whom both the Pentagon and State Department trusted to accurately relay their views to the president before giving Bush his own assessment. Working with his predecessor Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, Hadley successfully marginalized the more hawkish faction in the Bush administration led by Vice President Dick Cheney. He persuaded Bush to agree to the Iraq surge and curtail some of the CIA’s most brutal and controversial detainee interrogation programs.

But if his past record is any guide, Flynn is unlikely to be the type of “honest broker” that has historically made for a successful national security adviser. He was removed from his post running the Defense Intelligence Agency after losing a bureaucratic battle with the CIA and butting heads with his superiors in the Pentagon — one of the government organizations he will now help oversee from his White House post.

After retiring in 2014, Flynn has actively sought the limelight, often to express extreme views. During his speech at the Republican National Convention, he led the crowd in chants of, “Lock her up!” demanding Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment.

The tenor of Flynn’s comments has startled other retired officers. Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan when Flynn was running intelligence operations there, reached out to Flynn to urge him to tone down his rhetoric, according to a source familiar with the conversation. Two other retired officers told Vox in separate interviews that they considered Flynn to be “unhinged.”

This might be less of a problem if Flynn were predisposed to push back against some of Trump’s more conspiratorial, racially charged, and anti-Muslim views. The problem is that Flynn seems to share many of them.

He begins his 2016 book, The Field of Fight, by describing his reason for writing it: to expose an anti-American alliance between China, Cuba, and jihadist terrorists that the Obama administration is covering up. This is not an exaggeration; it is literally a defining feature of his worldview:

This administration has forbidden us to describe our enemies properly and clearly: they are Radical Islamists. They are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel. Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba, and Venezuela.

There is no evidence that these countries are “allied” with groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda in any meaningful sense of the word. They are not supplying them with weapons, or money, or safe haven. It just makes no sense to speak of an “alliance” between these states and jihadists. Both Russia and China, in fact, are also facing vicious campaigns of Islamist terrorism within their own borders.

Moreover, the idea that countries as diverse as North Korea and Venezuela present some kind of united anti-American foreign policy front is absurd. These countries all have had tense relations with the United States, but in wildly different ways and to varying degrees. They are not part of a united anti-American alliance with each other. Flynn’s construct is like the axis of evil on steroids.

What this speaks to is Flynn’s propensity for hyping up the threat from jihadist groups, and trying to make everything else to fit that frame.

This isn’t someone who’s well-positioned to look at, say, Chinese policy in the South China Sea and give President Trump a reasoned, detail-oriented assessment of Chinese thinking. He’s going to filter that information through his own monomaniacal lens and give Trump a deeply blinkered analysis of what’s going on.

“The rap on him in the intelligence world is that he is great tactically but clueless strategically,” seasoned defense reporter Tom Ricks writes at Foreign Policy. “Not what you want in this slot.”

To make matters worse, Flynn has a serious problem telling true information from false. He seems willing to believe anything that flatters his worldview and casts his opponents in a bad light, no matter how offensive or implausible the information may be. Other tweets alleged a Jewish conspiracy to help Clinton enter the White House (Flynn later deleted his tweet and apologized for it) and falsely accused Clinton of "wearing hijab in solidarity with islamic terrorists."

These aren’t cherry-picked examples. As CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski documents, broadcasting fringe ideas and fake news was pretty par for the course when it comes to Flynn’s Twitter activity.

This was a serious problem when he was chief of DIA. According to the New York Times’s Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman, he said so many questionable or false things during his time at the agency that his staff coined a term for them: “Flynn facts.”

Remember, now, that analyzing information is the national security adviser’s main job. Flynn’s principal task is going to be taking the information he gets from the military and intelligence agencies and sorting it in a fashion that helps President Trump get a sense of what’s going on in the world and how he should respond to it.

Yet Flynn, clearly, has a lot of difficulty figuring out what information is worthwhile. He seems willing to believe things as absurd as Clinton being involved in a child sex ring, based on a fake news article peppered with transparently silly quotes (one example: “‘What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,’ the NYPD Chief said.”)

Now, instead, imagine Flynn making hard judgment calls about what is and isn’t true. Imagine him in something like the runup to the Iraq War, where choosing to believe the wrong evidence helped push the United States into a disastrous military conflict. And further imagine that the president isn’t George W. Bush, who at least had some knowledge of world affairs and some good advisers, but Donald Trump.

Shortly after Flynn entered the political fray in earnest, he told Foreign Policy’s Sean Naylor that he’s “not going to be a general that just fades away.”

That’s proven true. Whether it’s good for the president he’s been chosen to serve — and the country itself — remains to be seen.

Donald Trump: I could have won the Trump University fraud lawsuit if I didn’t have to be president

2016-11-19T15:10:01-05:00

President-elect Donald Trump boasted for years — including on the campaign trail — about how he “never” settled lawsuits. That wasn’t always true. But the announcement Friday that he’d settled for $25 million the three lawsuits against Trump University, his ersatz university accused of defrauding students, was still a little out of character for a man who brags about never backing down.

And while Trump didn’t admit liability in the settlement, the facts about Trump’s real estate seminars that emerged during the proceedings were damning. Trump University wasn’t a “university” at all, but a series of real estate seminars. The main goal for instructors, the company’s playbooks showed, was to get as much money as possible out of students, talking them into upgrading to an annual “mentorship” that cost tens of thousands of dollars and didn’t deliver.

So on Twitter on Saturday morning, Trump tried to present another narrative, tweeting frantically about how he definitely, definitely would have won if it weren’t for the inconvenience of having to be president instead:

I settled the Trump University lawsuit for a small fraction of the potential award because as President I have to focus on our country.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

The ONLY bad thing about winning the Presidency is that I did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U. Too bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

The tweets show how poorly Trump deals with anything that isn’t a crushing victory.

Settling the lawsuits was the logical move for Trump. Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who oversaw the two class action lawsuits in California, had urged him and the plaintiffs to reach a settlement. One lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial November 28.

Taking the case to trial had few advantages and few drawbacks for Trump. Even if he won, he also would have devoted time and attention to on the cases while he’s supposed to be overseeing his transition to the presidency, which has been chaotic so far. He might have had to testify in court. And the whole process would have meant that the words “President-elect Trump” and “fraud trial” would have been paired in headlines for months before his presidency even started.

But Trump doesn’t like logical compromises. As his tweets about the settlement illustrate, he demands absolute victory and the humiliation of his opponent — a characteristic that could translate very poorly to the world of politics and international diplomacy.

Don’t let Donald Trump’s antics distract you from what’s really important

2016-11-19T12:50:01-05:00

He’s paying fraud fines and collecting bribes — and distracting you with Hamilton tweets.

Here are a few news stories that broke between the time I left work a little early on Friday afternoon and the time my toddler went down for his midday nap on Saturday:

Foreign diplomats are booking rooms at Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC because they believe that directly putting money in the pocket of the President-elect of the United States will serve as a bribe that helps them curry favor with him and influence foreign policy.
Congress’s phones got jammed by citizens calling in and asking members to do something about Donald Trump’s financial conflicts of interest.
Donald Trump paid $21 million to former students of his fake university who he allegedly defrauded.
Donald Trump got into a Twitter war with the cast of Hamilton.

The Hamilton blow-up — because it’s easy to understand, bizarre, and connects with a pop culture phenomenon — has naturally ended up getting the bulk of the news pickup. One potential reason is that Trump’s tweets are public, whereas it took diligent reporting by the Washington Post to get the hotel story. The idea is that other prestigious outlets may be disinclined to pay attention to a story the Post “owns” and to give due credit to its significance.

Meanwhile, a second-order controversy even broke out among the people I follow on Twitter as to whether the Hamilton audience booing Mike Pence in some sense played into Trump’s hands.

But the truth is that nothing about the Hamilton story — not Pence’s decision to attend, not the crowd booing him, not the cast of the musical directing some respectful criticism in the direction of I his boss, not Trump’s tweets about what happened, and not the subsequent second-order controversy — is in any way important to how he runs the country.

By contrast, foreign governments directly putting money into Donald Trump’s pocket is very important. The fact that these attempted bribes are being paid to a man who is also paying out millions of dollars to avoid standing trial for his corrupt business practices is very important. The fact that citizens are calling members of congress to ask them to do something about this is also very important.

Donald Trump’s conflicts of interest are staggering

The important thing to recognize, as I try to lay out in a longer piece on the risk of systematic corruption under Donald Trump, is that there is essentially no limit to the amount of corruption that can take place here. A foreign government can direct its diplomats to stay at Trump’s hotels. But a foreign government can also cut Trump sweetheart deals on acquiring land to build golf courses.

For that matter, Trump currently owes money to a bank that is owned by the Chinese government. That bank could renegotiate its loan on terms that are friendlier to Trump. Similarly, any bank in the United States can start offering loans to Trump-controlled businesses on generous terms. And indeed, I think any bank in the United States that was asked for a loan by a Trump-controlled business would be insane not to offer him a sweetheart deal. He wouldn’t need to explicitly threaten regulatory retaliation to make a prudent bank CEO decide that the balance of risks favors the sweetheart deal.

And so it goes. Airbnb is a privately owned company that frequently finds itself in various kinds of regulatory trouble. Trump is in the hotel business and might benefit from shutting down Airbnb. But what if Eric Trump or Donald Trump, Jr. or Jared Kushner or a Trump-owned holding company were to find itself purchasing a large stake in Airbnb at a discount price? Nothing would need to be disclosed. And the odds of favorable regulatory treatment would go up.

Checks and balances are still in place — if congress cares

It’s worth saying that on one level, the threat of abuse of regulatory discretion has always existed. But on another level, this is exactly the problem that America’s constitutional system is best-designed to solve. We have a system of multiple independently elected branches of government with shared powers. This system has a lot of problems, but in theory a corrupt executive is a problem it is well-designed to stop.

All of Donald Trump’s nominees need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Congressional committees have subpoena power and can oversee executive branch conduct.
Congress can pass new laws forcing the president to do more financial disclosure.

The problem is that in our current era of partisan polarization, most people simply assume that congress — which is controlled by Republicans — will choose not to do those things. Paul Ryan has an expansive legislative agenda that he would like to pass, heavily featuring tax cuts, reduced social services for the poor, deregulation of the banking industry, and possibly the privatization of Medicare. The calculation of Republican leaders in congress right now seems to be that they will agree to turn a blind eye to Trump’s corruption and in exchange he will sign their bills.

But they could change their minds on this. House Oversight Committee Chair Jason Chaffetz could announce tomorrow that he wants to do hearings on Trump’s financial conflicts of interest. It would only take two or three Republican senators to band together and put out a statement saying they need to see Trump’s conflicts of interest addressed before they can confirm key cabinet members, to bring the whole thing to a grinding halt.

These things probably won’t happen. But they could. And whether or not they happen is extremely important.

Watch: It’s on America’s institutions to check Trump

Hamilton’s cast reminded Pence that inclusivity is an American value. Trump wants an apology.

2016-11-19T12:20:01-05:00

This time it’s not Megyn Kelly, the bereaved father of an Army captain, or a former Miss Universe contestant. No, Donald Trump’s latest Twitter feud is with the cast of Hamilton — the Broadway musical that has taken the world by storm.

Hamilton’s cast delivered a personal message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was booed by the theater audience for attending the musical Friday night, making a case for diversity and inclusivity. But rather than hearing the plea, Trump demanded an apology:

Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

Trump’s response is not entirely out of character; the President-elect is known for taking to Twitter to punch back at any and all critiques (most recently he censured the “failing New York Times”). Nevertheless, it’s a notable escalation from what was perceived as a gracious plea from the musical’s cast.

As my colleague Caroline Framke explained, Brandon Victor Dixon, who’s playing Aaron Burr, addressed Pence from the stage on Friday, thanking him for attending the show and requesting that the audience film his message. He then gestured toward Hamilton’s diverse cast of mostly minority actors and expressed anxiety that the Trump-Pence administration “will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents.”

Here are Dixon’s remarks in full:

Vice-president elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do.

We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.

But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

We truly thank you for sharing this show — this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.

Dixon later responded to Trump’s tweet, noting that “conversation is not harassment”:

@realDonaldTrump conversation is not harassment sir. And I appreciate @mike_pence for stopping to listen.
— Brandon Victor Dixon (@BrandonVDixon) November 19, 2016

Nevertheless, the President-elect was not alone in taking offense. Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s close allies whose name was initially floated for Secretary of State, also responded to the show’s closing statement, calling the cast of Hamilton arrogant and hostile:

The arrogance and hostility of the Hamilton cast to the Vice President elect ( a guest at the theater) is a reminder the left still fights.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) November 19, 2016

Trump’s propensity for online feuds proved to be a campaign advertising tactic throughout the primaries and general election cycle. But now that he’s President-elect, many are speculating it is just another distraction technique, drawing attention away from Trump’s policy ideas and transition team appointments.

If anything, however, it signifies that Trump’s quick temper, and inability to let criticism slide, may very likely continue through his time in office.

Trump has been warned about his temperament — but there’s no sign he will change

President Barack Obama has already issued a not-so-subtle warning about Trump’s temperament — that it may not suit him well in the White House.

“Whatever you bring to this office, this office has a habit of magnifying and pointing out, and hopefully you correct for it,” Obama said at a press conference on November 16. “There are going to be certain elements to his temperament that are not going to serve him well unless he recognizes them and corrects for them.”

But that doesn’t seem to be having much influence on Trump’s Twitter presence. According to Vox’s Ezra Klein, there is a good reason for that: “Trump did win, and he did it against all odds, in spite of all predictions, and by doing things everyone told him not to do. Reality has proven him, and his instincts, right.”

Any prospect of Trump being shaped by an establishment administration, ready to rein him in, is dissolving as Trump’s loyalists and yes men egg him on — even when it comes to feuding with a popular musical.

Imagine if the media covered alcohol like other drugs

2016-11-19T12:20:00-05:00

What if the media covered alcohol like it does other drugs? This was a question that came up in my coverage of flakka, a synthetic drug that made headlines after law enforcement blamed it for people running in the streets naked in delusional paranoia. What follows is a satirical attempt at capturing that same type of alarmist reporting, but for a substance that really causes widespread and severe problems.

NEW ORLEANS — An ongoing drug epidemic has swept the US, killing hundreds and sickening thousands more on a daily basis.

The widespread use of a substance called "alcohol" — also known as "booze" — has been linked to erratic and even dangerous behavior, ranging from college students running naked down public streets to brutal attacks and robberies.

Federal officials suggest this drug has already been linked to 88,000 deaths each year across the country, including traffic accidents caused by drug-induced impairment, liver damage caused by excessive consumption, and violent behavior. Experts warn that it can also lead to nausea, vomiting, severe headaches, cognitive deficits among children and teens, and even fetal defects in pregnant women.

Excessive consumption of alcohol "is a leading cause of preventable deaths in the US," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention principal deputy director Ileana Arias said in a statement. "We need to implement effective programs and policies to prevent binge drinking and the many health and social harms that are related to it, including deaths from alcohol poisoning."

On the ground in America's alcohol epidemic capital

Here in New Orleans, the horror of the drug was particularly prominent in the city's French Quarter, where hundreds of young adults could be seen roiling from the effects of the drug. Some collapsed on the ground, dazed from alcohol's effects. Others could be seen vomiting in public — a common result of drinking alcohol. Many could be seen limping and clumsily walking down the street, showcasing the type of impairment that public health officials warn can lead to accidents, especially when someone is behind the wheel of a car.

What's worse, public use of this drug has become widely accepted in some circles. In New Orleans, several men and women in their 20s and 30s shouted that they're going to get "wasted" — a slang term for coming under the effects of alcohol. Some have even turned drinking alcohol into a game that involves ping pong balls and cups. One popular holiday, St. Patrick's Day, appears to celebrate the dangerous drug.

In other places, there have been similar reports of individuals engaging in bizarre, inexplicable behavior while under the effects of alcohol. Some reports found intoxicated college students exposing themselves to others or running the streets naked while shouting hysterically, particularly during spring time. Others report people urinating in public streets after a few alcoholic beverages. And at least one man who consumed alcohol tried to ride a crocodile and was seriously injured when the animal fought back.

"It actually starts to rewire the brain chemistry," one law enforcement official said. "They have no control over their thoughts. They can't control their actions. It's just a dangerous, dangerous drug."

Across the US, public health officials have linked alcohol to much graver effects, including domestic abuse, sexual assault on college campuses, 40 percent of violent crimes in the US, and more than 4.6 million emergency room visits in 2010.

According to federal data, alcohol is already the second deadliest drug in the country — topped only by another legal substance called "tobacco," which causes an astonishing 480,000 deaths each year by some estimates and 540,000 by others.

No other drug comes close to the staggering fatalities of these two. Heroin, which has consumed widespread media attention in the past few years, was linked to fewer than 9,000 deaths in 2013, and marijuana — another drug that federal lawmakers, including President Obama, have warned is dangerous — reportedly caused zero overdose deaths in the past few thousand years.

Public health experts demand action

Despite the heightened public health crisis, federal and state officials seem reluctant to do anything about the drug, which remains legal for adults 21 and older to possess and even sell in most of the US. Policymakers say that banning alcohol is out of the question, citing its importance to the economy and American culture.

Drug policy experts have suggested levying higher taxes on the drug or bringing its sales under state control, pointing to numerous studies that have shown these measures would reduce use. But lawmakers at the state and federal levels seem reluctant to take up even these milder measures, likely under the influence and lobbying of drug producers and dealers profiting from hundreds of billions in sales of alcohol each year.

Perhaps as a result, alcohol producers have felt free to advertise their product during major televised events such as the Super Bowl, which is viewed by millions of children each year. The marketing ploys tend to portray alcohol as cool and fun, seldom mentioning the risks and thousands of deaths linked to the drug.

As policymakers stand idly by, alcohol consumption has reached epidemic proportions. A recent Gallup survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans admitted to using alcohol — even as another survey by Gallup found more than one in three Americans blame alcohol for family problems.

For many public health officials, the startling numbers pose the question: What will it take to wake up the public and officials to this widening epidemic?

Combat political anxiety with In the Loop, a rip-roaring satire by the creator of Veep

2016-11-19T11:40:01-05:00

This week’s streaming pick has it all: government disarray, big egos, mixed messages, and more.

Every weekend, we pick a movie you can stream that dovetails with current events. Old, new, blockbuster, arthouse: They’re all fair game. What you can count on is a weekend watch that sheds new light on the week that was. The movie of the week for November 13 through 19 is In the Loop (2009), which is streaming on Netflix and Hulu and available to digitally rent on Amazon.

This week, most of the energy in news reporting and social media explosion went toward President-elect Trump’s transition, which has, by most accounts (except his own) hit a few snags. The last few paragraphs from a New York Times piece on Tuesday were startling, even by 2016 standards:

Teams throughout the federal government that have prepared briefing materials and reports for the incoming president’s team are on standby, waiting to begin passing the information to counterparts on Mr. Trump’s staff.

As of Tuesday afternoon, officials at key agencies including the Justice and Defense Departments said they had received no contact from the president-elect’s team.

All these high-stakes games of telephone, with people’s egos used as poker chips, are the meat and potatoes of In the Loop, a movie I love unreservedly. It’s a spin-off of the hysterical British show The Thick of It (which you can stream at Hulu), a comedy about the adventures of a minor government minister who can’t seem to catch a break — especially from the Prime Minister’s foul-mouthed “enforcer” — and his more or less competent aides. Think House of Cards, except nobody manages to get anything done and there’s a lot more profanity.

In the Loop preserves a number of cast members from the show — most importantly, Peter Capaldi as the PM’s enforcer — as well as its director and head writer, Armando Ianucci, who is also the creator and former showrunner of HBO’s Veep.

In the Loop satirizes the inefficiency of government by looping the American relationship with Britain into the story and making the stakes very high. Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) — the Minister for International Development and a man with a considerable inferiority complex — accidentally says during a radio interview that a war in the Middle East is “unforeseeable,” a baffling statement at any time but especially inconvenient during a period in which both the US and UK are considering intervention in the Middle East.

Things spiral quite drastically from there. Ministers and aides and generals and the United Nations all get involved, and personal relationships — friends, enemies, allies, and current and former sexual dalliances — get in the way. It’s a glorious mess, with Capaldi swearing a blue streak straight through it.

Whether it will make you feel better or worse about the US government and the Trump transition probably depends on your tolerance for very dark comedy. Depending on how dystopic your imagination is at this point, the film might seem like a throwback to kinder, gentler days. But perhaps, in some small measure, it’s good to remember that bureaucratic rigamarole is an old story. And maybe, in between all this flailing, it’s okay to laugh for a minute or two.

Watch the trailer for In the Loop:

Mike Pence went to see Hamilton. The audience booed — but the cast delivered a personal plea.

2016-11-19T11:15:33-05:00

“We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us.”

Mike Pence probably just thought he was doing dinner and a show. He almost certainly didn’t expect to get booed in the process, or to receive a personalized lecture during the curtain call, from the very cast he’d just seen perform.

But Mike Pence isn’t just any theatergoer, and Hamilton isn’t just any Broadway musical.

On Friday November 18, the vice-president elect — who joined Donald Trump’s campaign in July and pushed a platform rooted in anti-immigrant sentiment — attended a hit Broadway musical lauded for telling the Founding Fathers’ story with a deliberately multi-cultural cast and compassion for immigrants.

As you can imagine, the night turned out to be a memorable one.

It started with Pence trying to take his seat amid a wave of boos, (and yes, a few cheers, as per Variety). But the prevailing sentiment throughout the show — starring the openly gay and HIV positive actor Javier Muñoz as Hamilton — was reportedly hostile toward Pence, who has consistently opposed LGBTQ rights.

But even if there hadn’t been an audible outrage from his fellow theatergoers, you have to wonder what the man who backed a candidate calling for a Muslim registry and whose transition team efforts have so far yielded such contentious picks as Senator Jeff Sessions for Attorney General might’ve thought when he heard Hamilton lines like, “immigrants: we get the job done” or “history has its eyes on you.”

The booing would’ve been noteworthy on its own — but it was only the beginning. The real coup de grace came when the Hamilton cast itself remained onstage well past their curtain call to address Pence directly, even encouraging other audience members to record (and share) the moment:

Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show. pic.twitter.com/Jsg9Q1pMZs
— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) November 19, 2016

As Pence was walking out of the theater, Hamilton cast member Brandon Victor Dixon — who’s currently playing Aaron Burr — called out to him, asking him to stay and listen what they had to say. He then pulled out a piece of paper and delivered the following remarks, as the cast linked arms in solidarity behind him:

Vice-president elect Pence, we welcome you and we truly thank you for joining us at Hamilton: An American Musical. We really do.

We, sir, are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents — or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir.

But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.

We truly thank you for sharing this show — this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.

Will seeing this show and and hearing this speech cause Pence to change his viewpoints overnight? Probably not. But by confronting Pence to his face, passionately and personally, the cast of Hamilton made sure to give him plenty to think about the next time he forgets how much is at stake for his constituents — all of them.

Update: While Pence himself has not commented publicly on the experience, President-elect Trump was quick to weigh in on what happened, tweeting on Saturday morning that he found the Hamilton cast’s behavior to be “very rude” and demanding an apology.

Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016

As my colleague Tara Golshan explains, while Trump’s response wasn’t exactly surprising, it put the President-elect’s quick temper on full display, suggesting that “any prospect of Trump being shaped by an establishment administration, ready to rein him in, is dissolving.”

New trailers: Beauty and the Beast, Ghost in the Shell, Kong: Skull Island, and more

2016-11-19T11:00:01-05:00

The biggest trailer this week belonged to Disney’s live-action Beauty and The Beast.

As my colleague Caroline Framke has already pointed out, it looks like a shot-for-shot remake of the studio’s animated classic from 1991. That decision is an interesting and brave one considering how beloved the original film was, and how difficult it can be to translate the limitless possibility of animation to live-action and its three-dimensional, real-world restrictions.

No matter what, though, the trailer did remind me of how timeless the movie’s soundtrack is, and how integral Alan Menken’s score is to the experience.

And of course, Beauty and the Beast wasn’t the only trailer to come out this week. Natalie Portman’s Jackie got its first full-length trailer, as did Scarlett Johansson’s The Zookeeper’s Wife. And so did Lucas Till’s Monster Trucks, whose only things in common with the previous two movies are that it is allegedly a movie and it debuted a trailer this week.

Jackie (December 2)

One of the many signs that Oscars season is upon us is the arrival of the full-length trailer for Jackie, in which Natalie Portman portrays Jackie Kennedy during and in the days after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. According to early reviews, Portman’s performance is stunning and one of the best of the year. Though, fair warning: this probably isn’t the movie (or trailer) you’re going to want to see if you’ve been feeling sad lately.

Hidden Figures (January 7)

Hidden Figures (a cinematic adaptation of a book by the same name) is a true story about a group of black female mathematicians (led by a woman named Katherine Johnson) who worked at NASA during the Space Race, but never got the credit they deserved. It seems the trailer is trying to evoke more of a feel-good version of Remember the Titans rather than recalling the wonkiness of The Martian, which is totally fine by me, but I do hope it doesn’t shy away from showing us the actual important work these women achieved.

Monster Trucks (January 13)

There are two great mysteries when it comes to the film Monster Trucks: how does a movie about a monster who lives in a truck get greenlit, and how does Lucas Till — easily the worst part of the rebooted X-Men franchise — keep getting work? Yet here we are, with Till starring in a "monster" truck movie and no real answers.

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (January 13)

Netflix’s adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events looks like bright, Wes Anderson-esque fun. The books this TV series is based on — about a nefarious uncle who wants to inherit a fortune by adopting his nieces and nephew — have become a familiar cultural fascination of sorts; this new remake follows a 2004 movie that starred Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep. This time, Count Olaf is played by Neil Patrick Harris, who appears to be having a ball making the character every bit as ghoulishly hilarious as one can imagine.

Kong: Skull Island (March 10)

King Kong, the CGI’d undeniable star of Kong: Skull Island, looks very impressive. He’s every bit the colossal figure that so many imaginations have dreamt of over the years. But despite being full of great actors, the rest of the Skull Island’s cast — Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, and John Goodman, among others — seems to barely exist. Then again, focusing on the primate and keeping everyone else out of the way might be the point of a King Kong movie, right?

Ghost in the Shell (March 31)

This is our first real look at Ghost in the Shell, and it’s visually impressive. It looks like it could be the type of movie that redefines the aesthetics of special effects, just like The Matrix did. But it still faces an unshakeable controversy of Scarlett Johansson playing Motoko Kusanagi, the cyborg and lead character, and whether the role should have gone to an Asian or Asian-American actor since the story is inherently Japanese. This trailer, while gorgeous, doesn’t really have an answer.

The Zookeeper’s Wife (March 31)

The Zookeeper’s Wife sounds like it could very well be the combined sequel to the 2011 films We Bought a Zoo and Zookeeper, but it’s anything but. Adapted from a non-fiction book by Diane Ackerman, it tells the story of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, a Polish couple who used their zoo to hide and save Jewish people during WWII. The indomitable Jessica Chastain plays Antonina.

The Edge of Seventeen star Hailee Steinfeld and her director tell us how they made the best teen movie in years

2016-11-19T10:20:02-05:00

“People are so much more than the little bit of them you see.”

The Edge of Seventeen is one of the best teen movies in years.

Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig's perceptive script and skill in guiding her ensemble cast turn the story of prickly loner Nadine — who, naturally enough, learns to care about people other than herself — into the sort of perfect reflection of youth that will hopefully become a staple of teen culture and nostalgia for decades to come.

So how did the movie get to be so good? That was a question for both Craig and her star, Hailee Steinfeld, whom you might best know for her Oscar-nominated turn in 2010’s True Grit (when she was just 14) or for her burgeoning musical career.

The two sat down with me separately a few weeks before The Edge of Seventeen opened to talk about those kids today. Steinfeld’s interview follows, and Craig’s interview is after that.

The following conversations have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

STX Entertainment

Hailee Steinfeld (left) and Haley Lu Richardson star in The Edge of Seventeen.

Todd VanDerWerff

One thing I noticed is Nadine isn’t on her phone all the time. This movie feels sort of timeless in that sense, in that she’s kind of a throwback.

Hailee Steinfeld

Yeah, there was a discussion about that — the feeling of it looking sort of timeless. That feeling that we’re talking about, with the wardrobe, with this jacket that she wears, feeling like it’s a hand-me-down from somebody along the way. It has this '80s feel to it.

The music in the film is super timeless too. Not only does it make it feel cohesive, but I always feel like, if I see a movie with my parents, and there’s something they catch on to that I don’t, it’s either a specific reference from a different time or the music. So I feel like certain songs in this movie can bring our parents back to that certain situation.

Todd VanDerWerff

Even over just a few years, you’ve played such a wide range of characters. What do you look for in a role?

Hailee Steinfeld

Some sort of challenge that, once I overcome it, I can look back on it and feel like, "I initially thought this was something I couldn’t do, and now I’ve done it." A role that’s complex and meaningful, and has something to say.

Great people surrounding me. Great material. Scripts that you read where you’re like, "All I have to do is what’s on the paper." That feeling is the most exhilarating thing ever, when you’re placed in an environment with all these moving parts, and you jump on board, and you’re in it.

Todd VanDerWerff

What was the challenge with Edge of Seventeen? What scared you a little about taking this role?

Hailee Steinfeld

The idea of not doing this story justice! I read it, and I was like, "I don’t know if I’m ready to admit how much I am like this character!"

We’ve all felt those feelings, and I think a lot of us don’t know how to express that. I have this idea in my head that there are classic films, and timeless films, and they are called those two things for a reason.

I don’t want to make that what I’m striving for, but more the idea of, when my generation watches this, they can feel like this is theirs, and they can call this their own. That’s the kind of film I wanted to make and be a part of, and I am, which is insane.

Todd VanDerWerff

What does Hollywood get wrong about teenagers that you think this movie gets right?

Hailee Steinfeld

There’s a version of a teenager’s life that people constantly misperceive, in a way. There are more [teen] movies that we get to watch and wish our lives would look like that, [and then there are teen movies that] feel like, "That is actually what my life looks like!"

This really, truly is an honest interpretation of what life feels like as a teenager. I again wouldn’t say there’s necessarily anything wrong with [movies that function more as wish fulfillment]. I just think there’s a more realistic version of a teenager’s life that people don’t focus on as much.

Todd VanDerWerff

Was there something in the script that made you say, "Yeah, this is something I’ve gone through," or, "This is something my friends have gone through"?

Hailee Steinfeld

Between myself and friends and family members, I was able to piece together the exact emotions I imagined Nadine to be feeling in every moment.

I remember distinctly reading it the first time. Sometimes you’ll read something, and the first time, you’re like, "Oh, this is cool, I like it!" And the second time, you start to pick up on things. But the first time I read this, I picked up on so many things. I was able to identify with the character, and with so many situations.

Todd VanDerWerff

Did you look for inspiration in any other films or performances?

Hailee Steinfeld

There were films and characters I’ve related to in the past that I was reminded of, but I think I was able to just be a teenager, and freak out when I wasn’t able to freak out when it happened to me in real life, and feel absolutely everything in every moment. I was so focused on that, [rather] than referencing anything specifically.

Todd VanDerWerff

Would you say Nadine gets to be more demonstrative in her emotions than the average teenager would?

Hailee Steinfeld

To a certain degree, sure. But at the same time, I’m shocked watching this movie that I didn’t react to certain things that way, and I don’t know why I didn’t.

Maybe it’s because somebody was watching, and I was more self-conscious than she was. It’s honest! We have moments where anxiety kicks in, and everything is going wrong, and people are staring, and great! I’m going to give them a show! It comes over you, and you just let it go.

Todd VanDerWerff

Kelly’s script has a great ear for dialogue. What did you enjoy about that?

Hailee Steinfeld

Just talking the way [teenagers] talk!

Very early on, one of the first things Kelly said to me was if, at any point, something doesn’t feel right, correct it, or make it feel right to you. It was nice to have that freedom, and to have that trust, where you can say whatever is on your mind, and not even purposely go off script but really feel like you could make it as real as possible.

Todd VanDerWerff

Do you remember points when you stepped in to tweak it to be more realistic?

Hailee Steinfeld

From the auditioning process, we started to have conversations about the dialogue, and who this character is, and how we could develop her. Discoveries were made by the minute, from the auditioning process to the last take of the last reshoot day. There were a few moments where I would sort of question the meaning behind a couple of things, not with the intention of changing it but just to get a better understanding. For me, anyway.

Todd VanDerWerff

At the end of this movie, Nadine has been through a lot, but she still has a long way to go as well. What do you think she still needs to learn?

Hailee Steinfeld

How to deal with people! How to deal with herself!

She does have a beautiful transition, realizing that she does have this inner strength and it’s always been there. It was just a matter of time before she discovered it. She does have people who truly love her. Learning how to love, and learning how to be loved, is something equally as hard to learn. She needs to accept the fact that not having the answer to every question is okay.

Todd VanDerWerff

Your music career is going very well, too. What do these separate pursuits feed in you?

Hailee Steinfeld

I’m learning more and more, as I continue with the music, how one benefits the other. One of my favorite experiences so far has been in the studio writing, and to some extent, thanks to this movie, I was in that position once where I showed up at school and saw my best friend [dating] my brother [a plot point in the movie]. I’ve felt that now in a life of someone else’s, and I can talk about that.

STX

Hailee Steinfeld and Hayden Szeto star in The Edge of Seventeen.

Todd VanDerWerff

There are a lot of movies that don’t capture teenagers well at all. What did you see as your goal in trying to write about that age range?

Kelly Fremon Craig

I wanted to capture how complicated it is. The film is a comedy, and there's a lot about that age that's funny, but there's a lot that's painful. It's dark. It's ugly. It was important to me to try to capture it truthfully. To try to say, "Here it is, warts and all." To say, here is a real look at Nadine’s internal life, and some of it is hard to look at.

My experience has always been that if I see something, even if it's hard to look at, if I can recognize it as truth, I can recognize it in myself, and I can forgive it. That was part of the thinking — trying to say, "Here it all is. I'm not going to pretty this up for you."

Todd VanDerWerff

I was talking with Hailee earlier about how Nadine isn’t constantly on her phone, but the movie does take place in the present day. How did you decide how much modern technology to keep?

Kelly Fremon Craig

I really only wanted to use phones when it made sense for the story. I didn't want to have a film where there's a bunch of bubbles popping up all over the place, even though that may be the way things are now.

Having spent time in high schools researching all this, it is interesting to walk through the halls and see everybody going like this [looks down at imaginary phone] and how weird that is. It was important for me to use it where it made sense for the story. I never wanted to use it as, "Hey, this is what's happening right now, guys."

Todd VanDerWerff

What did you learn from going back to high schools for research?

Kelly Fremon Craig

How instantly you go back there emotionally. Showing up as a 30-something woman, I was, like, "Holy shit. I'm back to every vulnerable, insecure, awkward thing. Ugh. It's awful. It's icky." The feeling of it came back, which is a great place to write from.

The other thing was just how things that I worried about [as a teen] — it's exactly the same. Nothing has really changed. On some level, that was comforting. There is this certain rite of passage that everybody goes through.

Todd VanDerWerff

You don't have your moments of, "God, those kids today"?

Kelly Fremon Craig

Having spent a lot of time interviewing them, I felt like, "Oh, man. It's just so human." Everything they're talking about is stuff I deal with, but maybe it feels like the highs are higher and the lows are lower, because at that age, you don't know that it will pass. You don't have that sense of life goes on. So the stakes feel enormous.

Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Entertainment Weekly

James L. Brooks, Hailee Steinfeld (center), and Kelly Fremon Craig attend Entertainment Weekly’s Must List party.

Todd VanDerWerff

You have a twin set of challenges here. One is that as a director, this is a movie about relationships, where you want to show the actors in the same frame a lot, so they have time to grow and evolve those relationships. But the other is that you also have to keep Hailee sort of isolated, because Nadine is so often on an island. How did you navigate that?

Kelly Fremon Craig

There are actually a lot of things that were written into the script in terms of how to capture loneliness cinematically with lighting and framing and everything like that.

One of my favorite shots in the movie is when Nadine is sitting in the dark alone in the living room. You hear her mom with the hair dryer on, and it's shot at this odd, uncomfortable angle. She's just sitting in the chair. To me, I see it, and it just breaks my heart. It feels so lonely. The lighting is a little heavy and muddy. She feels tiny.

Also color. Everything she wears is a little louder, but it's got a dirt to it. It's worn down by life and by age.

Todd VanDerWerff

She does seem to wear her vintage clothes as a suit of armor. Hailee mentioned the jacket as being key.

Kelly Fremon Craig

It was important to me to give her a look that you couldn't nail. You couldn't say, "Oh, she's a ..." Something that felt all her own. With her jacket, I remember having certain things that felt like you can't leave the house without that. On some level, you feel cool in it, like, "This is the best version of me when I have this on." It was important to me to find what that was for her.

Todd VanDerWerff

This movie’s treatment of teen sexuality is really well done. It avoids that cliché of "the boys want to have sex, and the girls are a little scared of it." Here, everybody wants to have sex, and everybody is a little scared of it. How did you approach that element of the story?

Kelly Fremon Craig

One of the things that was important to me in that scene in the car when she's with Nick was that you saw his side. This is a guy who has just gotten a text that says, "Hey, you want to [have sex]?" Of course he's going to take her up on it! Of course he's going to do it. [And when she doesn’t want to go through with it], of course he's going to be like, "What? What the fuck?"

It was important to me that this wasn't a creepy guy. This was a guy who is just as confused. Everybody on some level is trying to make a connection and fumbling through it.

So much of that age is trying to find somebody who gets you and taking a lot of wrong stabs as you try to find that. There's a lot of fumbling as you try to find who your people are, who can really see you.

Todd VanDerWerff

There are so many moments in this movie when Nadine realizes one of the adults in her life is a human being, too, with their own wants and needs. What was interesting about that theme to you?

Kelly Fremon Craig

Something I experienced at that age and still experience to this day is you can look at somebody and get a snapshot and think you have them pegged and think you know all about them and make all sorts of assumptions about who they are and what your relationship to them will be. But when you have an opportunity to pull back the curtain, you see people are so much more than the little bit of them you see.

Whenever I've done that, I go, "Oh. Oh, God. We're all fucked up." I probably romanticize people's lives. I do it with writers a lot. My favorite writers, some of them are just so fucked up, and I'm like, "Yeah, but he really gets pain." The darkest stuff in the world I can romanticize. Nadine does it the other way. She assumes [her teacher] is this lonely bachelor and then finds out, "Oh, you actually have this warm life."

Todd VanDerWerff

When I’ve talked to people who’ve worked with your producer, James L. Brooks, in the past, they always have some story about how he made some suggestion that was absolutely perfect, just off the top of his head. What did you appreciate about having him in your corner?

Kelly Fremon Craig

When I first sat down and was starting the draft, he said, "The first and most important thing you have to figure out is, what do you want to say about life?" Having lived in the Hollywood experience of, "What happens on page 15? We need more set pieces, and for the trailer we're going to need ..." to have somebody say, "What is churning in you that you want to say?" I wanted to cry. It brought me back to why I wanted to be a writer and filmmaker in the first place.

Some of that can get beaten out of you over the process of working in this industry. To have somebody say, "Hey, remember that, and start there, and let that be the thing that pulls you through," was really a gift.

Todd VanDerWerff

We often think of writing and directing as two sides of the same coin, but they’re really different skills. What about your writing informs your directing, and vice versa?

Kelly Fremon Craig

So much of directing is about a couple different things. Number one is allowing incredibly talented people to take your work as an idea and then elevate it and put their own print on it. To me, it’s exciting to see how you have something in mind but someone else's talent makes it better. That's really cool, especially when you've lived in a world where all you have is your own echo.

I realized that so much of the process of directing is about creating an environment where actors feel safe to do their best work. I probably have a pretty touchy-feely approach, where I'm about making everybody feel safe to try stuff.

But I also recognize it's so vulnerable to get up in front of a camera. It's so scary to do that and try stuff that may not work. When you're given permission to do that and know, "It's okay. I don't care if you fuck up. Let's play. Let's find it together," to me, that's so fun. That's the best part of the process, that collaboration.

The Edge of Seventeen is playing in theaters nationwide.

Why Barack Obama thinks his legacy will survive Donald Trump

2016-11-19T09:20:01-05:00

Donald Trump vs. the Obama baseline.

The New Yorker’s David Remnick has a long, powerful piece entitled “Obama Reckons With A Trump Presidency.” It’s the most insight we’re going to get into Obama’s reaction to Donald Trump’s ascension, and it’s worth considering carefully.

Remnick was with President Obama before, during, and after the election, and you can tell the reporting began in a very different place than it ended. Remnick probably thought he would record Obama’s reflections as he prepared to turn power over to Hillary Clinton, his chosen successor. Instead, he found himself watching something very different: a president trying to convince himself, his staff, his party, his nation, and the world that Trump’s presidency is just a temporary, manageable zag as the arc of American history continues its long bend towards justice.

Much of the piece is Remnick asking over and over again if Obama is truly as calm as he looks. Obama swears he is. “I don’t believe in apocalyptic until the apocalypse comes,” he says. “I think nothing is the end of the world until the end of the world.”

There are arguments Obama makes in the piece that aren’t convincing. But there’s one argument he makes in particular that’s very convincing. Call it the Obama Baseline.

Remnick reminds Obama that he called Trump “uniquely unqualified,” “temperamentally unfit,” and warned Americans that Trump’s election would mean the destruction of all that Obama’s presidency had achieved. Did he still believe that?

“Now that the election is over, no, I don’t believe it,” Obama says. His argument is worth hearing — though it’s worth noting that Obama does not appear to try and rebut his warnings about Trump’s lack of qualifications or poor temperament:

“As a practical matter, what I’ve been saying to people, including my own staff, is that the federal government is an aircraft carrier, it’s not a speedboat. And, if you need any evidence of that, think about how hard we worked over the last eight years with a very clear progressive agenda, with a majority in the House and in the Senate, and we accomplished as much domestically as any President since Lyndon Johnson in those first two years. But it was really hard.” Obama said that he had accomplished “seventy or seventy-five per cent” of what he set out to do, and “maybe fifteen per cent of that gets rolled back, twenty per cent, but there’s still a lot of stuff that sticks.”

One way to think about this argument is to look at the Bush baseline that structured Obama’s administration. Obama ran against Bush’s two wars (Iraq in concept, Afghanistan in execution), and while both are technically over, neither has completely ended. Obama ran against the Guantanamo Bay prison, but it remains open. Obama ran against the Bush tax cuts, but he ultimately made most of them permanent. Liberals blasted both No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D in the 2008 election, but the Obama administration built on NCLB (while fixing some of its worst problems) and expanded Medicare Part D.

Trump and congressional Republicans will, similarly, find themselves working from the Obama baseline. Take Obamacare — as much as Republicans loathe it, they know it’s delivering insurance to more than 20 million people, and many of those people are their own constituents. They admit openly that they can’t repeal it without some kind of replacement.

The result has been some truly strange contortions, including a too-clever-by-half plan where Republicans will vote to repeal Obamacare, but the repeal won’t trigger for at least two years, theoretically giving the GOP time to craft and pass their replacement. It is worth stopping for a moment to appreciate the underlying theory here: Republicans will trigger a national health insurance crisis to try to force themselves to come up with the replacement plan that has long eluded them. After years in which Republicans tried to gain leverage on Obama by creating unnecessary crises, they are now, it seems, turning the same strategy on themselves.

This is not a wise approach, to say the least. Among other things, insurance markets will collapse during the interim. But this is the problem for Republicans: much like Obama with the Bush tax cuts, they need to take reality as it is, and that means coming to accommodation with the millions of people who depend on a program they don’t like.

The same is true of the Iran nuclear deal. As Zeeshan Aleem explains, Republicans who want to rip up the agreement will need to grapple with the reality that Tehran has already gotten its money back and seen the sanctions against it lifted, and we have no way to reimpose the international sanctions or take back most of the money. The result is that violating the agreement means Iran gets everything they wanted, and we get nothing we wanted.

Which isn’t to deny that much of Obama’s legacy is vulnerable. His executive action protecting DREAMers can simply be undone. The Paris climate agreement can be unsigned. Much of Dodd-Frank can be repealed, and the relevant regulatory agencies can be stocked with leaders who don’t believe in regulation.

But presidential administrations have limited time and political capital. The energy you spend undoing your predecessor’s work is energy you can’t spend accomplishing your own proactive goals. If Donald Trump wants to reform the tax code, a bitter, costly fight over repealing and replacing Obamacare will make that harder. If he wants to build a wall across the border with Mexico, that’s time he can’t spend revisiting Obama’s work on education.

Which is all to say that there will be much that sticks from the Obama baseline. I don’t know if it’s 80 percent or 50 percent. But my guess is it’ll prove to be more than people are expecting right now, just as was true for the Bush baseline.

A collection of reading lists to prepare for the age of Trump

2016-11-19T09:00:01-05:00

Happy weekend before Thanksgiving! I wish you only the calmest and pleasantest of election-related extended-family kerfuffles. To prepare yourself — or to escape from them for a little while — you might like something to read. We’ve got you covered. Here’s a selection of the best writing about books and related subjects on the internet for the week of November 14, 2016.

The New Yorker asked a number of writers to respond to Donald Trump’s election, including Toni Morrison, Junot Díaz, and Gary Shteyngart. It’s a long article, but it’s well worth reading. Here’s an excerpt from Díaz’s response:

I believe that, once the shock settles, faith and energy will return. Because let’s be real: we always knew this shit wasn’t going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future — all will be consumed. Those of us whose ancestors were owned and bred like animals know that future all too well, because it is, in part, our past. And we know that by fighting, against all odds, we who had nothing, not even our real names, transformed the universe. Our ancestors did this with very little, and we who have more must do the same. This is the joyous destiny of our people — to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice that it will never be undone.

Zadie Smith’s new book Swing Time came out this week! (We loved it.) She also did a “By the Book” interview with the New York Times, and it is a delight:

Q: If you could befriend any author, dead or alive, who would it be?

A: Zora Neale Hurston. Our thing would be striding into literary parties looking severe while wearing very fine hats, followed by getting drunk, followed by getting food in Chinatown at 2 in the morning.

Public Books has built a comprehensive 15-week syllabus to help us all understand Trump.
If you don’t have 15 weeks to devote to deconstructing Trumpism but would still like a reading list, you could do worse than to start with this week’s National Book Award winners, which examine America’s legacy of racism from all angles. Vulture has the winners’ acceptance speeches to give you a sense of their sensibilities:

I spent years looking at the absolute worst of America: its horrific history of racism. But in the end, I never lost faith. The terror of racism, I never lost faith that the terror of racism would one day end. I never lost faith because for every racist idea, there was an anti-racist idea. For every killer of the mind, for every killer of the mind there was a life saver of the mind. And in the midst of the human ugliness of racism, there was the human beauty, there is the human beauty in the resistance to racism.

And LitHub has a list of books you should read by and about Muslims:

It’s a small way to understand and empathize with a group of your fellow Americans who desperately need the understanding and empathy of their countrymen and women. (Consider giving them as holiday gifts to relatives who voted for Trump.) It is also important, whenever we can, to amplify the voices of the oppressed. (Consider buying them and donating them to schools.) Oh, and another thing? These books are just good. They are good books, and you will enjoy them, all politics aside.

If the worst comes, futurist Stewart Brand has compiled a list of all the books necessary to rebuild civilization after an apocalypse.
More frivolously, the Guardian has the shortlist for this year’s bad sex writing award.
Would you like to see something beautiful this week? The University of Aberdeen has digitized an illuminated medieval bestiary, so you can look at all kinds of gilded illustrations of bats and doves and hyenas.

Happy reading!

Vox Sentences: How racist is too racist to get confirmed to the Cabinet? We’re about to find out!

2016-11-18T20:00:01-05:00

Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what's happening in the world, curated by Dara Lind and Dylan Matthews. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Donald Trump nominates a slate of people we might euphemistically call "law and order"; the truth about the Ford plant Trump claims to have saved; wrapping up the successor to the Paris climate conference.

Remix to Transition

CQ Roll Call / Bill Clark

The Donald Trump administration-in-waiting has started to announce top policy officials. On Thursday night, word got out that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn would be named director of the National Security Agency, in a move likely to cement the Trump administration's less-than-hawkish stance toward Russia. [Vox / Yochi Dreazen]
(You might be less familiar with Flynn's worldview than with his tendency to share Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, and just plain fake news and memes on Twitter.) [CNN / Andrew Kaczynski]
On Friday, the Trump team announced it will nominate Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas (a notable defender of practices like waterboarding and rectal feeding) to head the CIA... [Vox / Jennifer Williams]
...and Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an early Trump loyalist and key adviser, to be attorney general. [Reuters / Steve Holland]
It's worth noting that if the Senate votes to confirm Sessions to AG, it will officially be less concerned with his views on race than the Senate of 1986 was. (It declined to recommend him for a federal judgeship; he was only the second nominee it had spurned in nearly 50 years.) [NYT / Matt Apuzzo]
This isn't a political correctness thing. As attorney general, Sessions would be in charge of enforcing federal civil rights law (something he wants to scale back wildly) and voting rights laws. (He once said that Shelby County, Mississippi, "never" discriminated against black voters, while prosecuting black voting rights activists for mail fraud when they tried to mail absentee ballots on behalf of the elderly.) [Vox / German Lopez]
If you're thinking this will make Sessions hard to confirm, though, forget it. Senators give deference to their own. Besides, Republicans have the majority, and none appear to have decided that this is the fight they want to pick. [Politico / Burgess Everett and Elana Schor]

Ford-ing the Rio Grande

Getty / Bill Pugliano

President-elect Donald Trump, you may have noticed, hasn't appointed anyone to any economic posts yet. But no worries: According to him (and as credulously reported by several news outlets), he's already prevented Ford from moving a plant from Kentucky to Mexico. [Vox / Brad Plumer]
Except there was never really a "plant" being moved. It was just a Lincoln line. And it wasn't going to cost any jobs. [Washington Post / Jim Tankersley]
Trump has done something like this before: Before his election, he claimed to have gotten Ford to agree not to move a plant from Ohio to Mexico. (It is still moving to Mexico.) [Washington Post / Jenna Johnson]
(Something similar could be happening with Apple manufacturing — the company appears to have made inquiries about moving iPhone manufacturing back to the US in June, but certain Trump-friendly outlets are preemptively extending credit for a hypothetical future move to the president-elect.) [Breitbart / Chriss W. Street]
On the surface, this seems like another iteration of the "fake news" problem — only the person spreading the fake news is the next president of the United States. [NY Mag / Max Read]
But the truth is a little trickier. Ford definitely did decide to shift the Lincoln line back to Kentucky because of Trump — as a way to give him an easy win to take credit for. [Forbes / David Kiley]
Depending on what Trump does now, that could be a very bad thing. Ford may have just set the precedent that Trump can bully individual US companies into doing what he wants — which would, in the long term, be bad for everyone involved. [Vox / Timothy B. Lee]

Turned around in Marrakech

AFP / Stephane de Sakutin via Getty

The COP22 UN conference on climate change wrapped up in Marrakech, Morocco, on Friday. But unlike last year's COP21, which resulted in the Paris climate agreement, it wasn't a climactic event. [The Guardian / Graham Redfearn]
In fairness, it wasn't supposed to be. When COP22 started on November 7, it was supposed to help secure commitments for countries to pass legislation that will help them meet the goals outlined in the Paris agreement. [Al Jazeera / Zoe Hu]
(Morocco was an interesting host country to demonstrate these dynamics; it's made progress on energy use, but at the cost of social discontent.) [Quartz / Sam Metz]
But between November 7 and November 18, Donald Trump got elected president of the United States. And among the very many ways in which President Donald J. "Climate Change Is a Chinese Hoax" Trump could be bad for the environment is that he's likely to back the US out of the Paris agreement, which would be disastrous for the agreement (and probably the planet). [Vox / David Roberts and Brad Plumer]
President Obama appears to be not so subtly begging his successor to stay on board with the agreement, but it's a desperate plea. [Vox / Brad Plumer]
(With Trump's election, the likely global leader on climate change policy could end up being ... China.) [Reuters / Valerie Volcovici and Sue-Lin Wong]
Trump's election totally changed the importance of the Marrakech conference. But though everyone was clearly thinking about it, no one actually talked about it. [Scientific American / Victoria Herrmann]
Indeed, American officials (including Secretary of State John Kerry) found themselves in the odd position of downplaying the role of the US government's leadership on climate change, pointing out that the US will continue to be a growing market for renewable energy. [Pacific Standard / Ted Scheinman]
Meanwhile, temperatures at the North Pole are 36 degrees warmer than normal right now. So, yeah, we're doomed. [Washington Post / Chris Mooney and Jason Samenow]

Miscellaneous

When pandas are born and raised in US zoos and then sent to China as adults, they don't respond to their handlers because they only recognize English commands. [Miami Herald / Greg Hadley]
Sean Brock is a chef in Charleston. He may be, literally, working himself blind. [GQ / Brett Martin]
Good news! The World Health Organization says Zika is no longer an international "public health emergency." [BuzzFeed News / Nidhi Subbaraman]
Santa Clara is being eaten by a foam blob. [Scripps via ABC15]
The US's president-elect just settled the fraud cases against Trump University for $25 million, by the way. [Vox / Libby Nelson]

Verbatim

"Let me put it to you in terms you can understand: If Megyn Kelly gets killed it is not going help your candidate." [Bill Shine (according to Megyn Kelly) via Slate / Jeremy Stahl]
"'Darkness is good,' says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. 'Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.'" [The Hollywood Reporter / Michael Wolff]
"One fic-reading friend counts how many times Olivia Pope or Martha Jones steps into a shower with no shower cap; another notes every time Iris pulls on a silk scarf before bed. Details matter." [BuzzFeed News / Bim Adewunmi]
"Does anybody know the definition of economics?" [Malik Obama via Foreign Policy / Benjamin Soloway]
"Where in the Bible did God damn America? Alternately, where in the Scripture had God blessed her?" [MTV / Doreen St. Felix]

Watch this: How zip codes helped organize America

[YouTube / Dion Lee and Mac Schneider]

Donald Trump is paying $21 million to students he allegedly defrauded at his fake university

2016-11-18T17:40:02-05:00

Donald Trump is settling all three fraud lawsuits against Trump University for a total of $25 million, ending a long legal battle against former students who said his real estate seminar business cheated them out of thousands of dollars.

Trump brags that he doesn’t settle lawsuits. But the three lawsuits against Trump University — two class-action suits in California and an attorney general–generated lawsuit in New York — threatened to follow him to the White House. One of the class-action suits was set to go to trial November 28, and Trump’s lawyers had initially said he planned to attend it even though he’s preparing for his inauguration in January.

Trump didn’t admit liability, according to the Los Angeles Times, although the $25 million he will pay includes $1 million in penalties to the state of New York and $21 million to former students.

The settlement, though, means that Trump will avoid the bizarre spectacle of serving as president-elect or even president while also facing a lawsuit for alleged fraud and racketeering — as well as the political fallout from any potential loss in court.

The two class-action lawsuits said Trump University was a fraud

The basic charge at the heart of two class-action lawsuits against Trump — Cohen v. Trump and Low v. Trump — is that Trump’s "university," a series of get-rich-quick investment seminars, was a fraud.

The presiding judge for both suits was Gonzalo Curiel, whom Trump famously insulted during the campaign by saying that his Mexican heritage should disqualify him from the cases because Trump wanted to build a wall on the Mexican border.

Documents disclosed in the suits revealed clearly that Trump University had two goals: to identify prospects with the money to spend on Trump's seminars, and to get them to spend as much of it as possible.

The first seminar was free. The second, which was three days long, cost $1,500. The crown jewel was the year-long partnership with an adviser hand-picked by Donald Trump, an experience that cost $35,000. Even after they paid tens of thousands of dollars, students would be pushed to buy even more products. Recruiters were trained in the art of the high-pressure scam and were told to toy with their prospects' emotions and urge them to run up their credit cards.

Then Trump University didn't deliver on its promises. "To my knowledge, not a single consumer who paid for a Trump University seminar program went on to successfully invest in real estate based upon the techniques that were taught," Ronald Schnackenberg, a former sales manager for Trump University, said in a deposition.

Cohen v. Trump makes essentially the same claims as Low v. Trump, but on behalf of anyone who purchased Trump University classes after January 1, 2007. Because it was brought under federal racketeering laws, it had the potential to be even more expensive by requiring Trump University to pay damages.

Cohen v. Trump also could have forced Trump to reveal one of his most closely guarded secrets: his net worth. In July 2015, Curiel ruled that Trump would have had to talk about how much he’s actually worth under penalty of perjury and respond to questions about how much money he'd put into, or made in profit from, Trump University.

The settlement means that information will stay secret. And the plaintiffs in the lawsuits will get $21 million in damages.

New York v. the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman also took on Trump

The other suit settled Friday was brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, known for his pursuit of high-profile cases. People of the State of New York v. the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, accused Trump University and Trump himself of fraud, deceptive practices, false advertising, violating state rules for educational institutions, operating an unlicensed school, and disregarding buyers' rights to cancel a transaction.

A trial court initially ruled that Schneiderman was filing his suit against Trump too late, throwing out most of the charges against him. But in March, a state appeals court decided the statute of limitation hadn't passed and that it could include evidence from up to six years ago about Trump University's deceptive practices.

Before the settlement, the lawsuit was being appealed to the state's highest court, with a hearing scheduled for December. Schneiderman had initially sought millions of dollars in penalties, but the settlement means Trump will pay only $1 million.

Settling is a rare move for Trump, who usually prefers to carry out a grinding legal battle. But he apparently thought $25 million was a fair price to make a problem that could cast a shadow over the beginning of his presidency go away.

Mike Pompeo, Trump's pick for CIA director, could take the agency back to its darkest days

2016-11-18T16:20:01-05:00

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas to head the Central Intelligence Agency, putting a hawkish lawmaker who favors brutally interrogating detainees and expanding the American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in charge of America’s premier spy agency.

Pompeo may be an unfamiliar name to many Americans, but he is well-known — and apparently generally well-respected — among intelligence professionals and well-liked by his colleagues on Capitol Hill.

The 52-year-old third-term Congress member serves on the House Intelligence Committee and played a prominent role the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which investigated Hillary Clinton for her role in the deaths of four Americans at the hands of Islamist terrorists in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Pompeo was particularly harsh on Clinton during the hearings, and in a report afterward accused her of having “put politics ahead of people” and “focusing more on spin and media narrative before an election than securing American lives under attack by terrorists.”

As a member of Congress with experience working closely with — and at times strongly defending — the intelligence community, Pompeo’s nomination as CIA chief could bode well for the future relationship between the CIA and Congress, which has deteriorated in recent years over the CIA’s detainee program and feuds with its nominal overseers on Capitol Hill.

But Pompeo’s extremely hawkish views on critical national security issues, such as his support for keeping open the US prison at Guantanamo Bay; his defense of brutal CIA interrogation practices like waterboarding and “rectal feeding”; and his overwhelming focus on the dire threat of “radical Islamic terrorism” — all positions closely aligned with those of President-elect Trump and his new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — suggest he is not likely to be a particularly sobering or restraining force on the president-elect, particularly when it comes to controversial policies like torture and drone strikes.

Pompeo’s hawkish stance toward Russia, on the other hand, could be a major source of tension between him and the president-elect, who, along Flynn, seeks to develop closer ties with Russia, particularly in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

Army officer, lawyer, businessman, and politician

Pompeo is a graduate of West Point and served as a cavalry officer in the US Army. After his military service, he attended Harvard Law School and worked for two and a half years as a lawyer doing mostly tax litigation at the Washington, DC, law firm of Williams & Connolly before going into the world of business.

Pompeo founded Thayer Aerospace in 1996, where he “served as CEO for more than a decade providing components for commercial and military aircraft,” according to his biography on his congressional website. After selling his stake in the company in 2006, he became president of Sentry International, which he describes on his website as an “oilfield equipment manufacturing, distribution, and service company.”

In 2010, Pompeo ran for a seat in the US House of Representatives representing Kansas's Fourth District, successfully defeating incumbent Todd Tiahrt with the backing of the Tea Party and the Koch Industries political action committee, KochPAC. Now in his third term, Pompeo serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees energy, health care, manufacturing, and telecommunications, in addition to the House Intelligence Committee.

Meet Trump’s new CIA, same as Bush’s old CIA

Trump said during the campaign that he would not only “bring back waterboarding,” which he considers a “minor form” of torture, but that he’d also bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

And as I’ve written elsewhere, that’s something Trump could theoretically do if he wanted to. One of the few things that could potentially prevent that from happening would be if the CIA director refused to carry out an order to reinstate practices like waterboarding and other forms of torture, which the CIA had previously used on detainees under President George W. Bush.

As current CIA Director John Brennan explained at an event at the Brookings Institution think tank back in April, “If a president were to order the agency to carry out waterboarding or something else, it’ll be up to the director of CIA and others within CIA to decide whether or not that direction and order is something that they can carry out in good conscience,” he said.

“As long as I’m director of CIA, irrespective of what the president says, I’m not going to be the director of CIA who gives that order. They’ll have to find another director,” Brennan added.

But Brennan isn’t going to be CIA director anymore; Pompeo is. And Pompeo strongly defended the CIA against its critics in Congress following the 2014 release of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, declaring, “These men and women are not torturers, they are patriots,” and, “The programs being used were within the law, within the constitution.”

Trump also said on the campaign trail that he would keep open the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and “load it up with bad guys.” President Obama's efforts to close down have been stymied by fierce Congressional opposition, and the prison still contained 60 detainees as of October 21, 2016, according to Human Rights First. The advocacy group says 56 of the detainees have been imprisoned there for more than 10 years without trial.

Here again, Trump will find a supporter in Pompeo. In a 2013 congressional hearing on whether to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Pompeo described the prison as “critical to national security” and said that closing it would create the “potential for endless litigation and rights expanded well beyond those afforded to enemy combatants.”

Pompeo has also criticized the Obama administration for its handling of the terrorism threat, which Pompeo, much like Trump and Flynn, sees as one of the most critical threats currently facing the United States.

“The challenge that this administration has refused to take on is that there is a very real call in the west to defeat and destroy the threat from radical Islamic terrorism, whether it fights under the name of Al Quaeda [sic] … or Boko Haram or ISIS or any of the other dozens of groups that are founded on the central principle of the destruction of the West and the imposition of Sharia law,” Pompeo said in an October interview with the Wichita Eagle newspaper.

“And this administration has refused to acknowledge that,” he added. “They have simply treated these as ordinary criminals and so they have attempted to apply a criminal law model to a threat, which is not that. And as a result the threat to the west is far greater today than it was seven and half years ago.”

The CIA under Obama and Brennan has also moved away from the Bush administration’s counterterrorism approach of capturing, detaining, and interrogating terrorist suspects, instead preferring to use targeted drone strikes to just kill the individuals outright.

But given both Trump and Pompeo’s statements about terrorism and Guantanamo — Pompeo once said that the prison “has been a goldmine of intelligence about radical Islamic terrorism” — it’s entirely possible that the CIA under the Trump administration may pivot back toward a policy of detaining and potentially even torturing suspected terrorists once again.

In other words, the CIA could be heading back toward a time that many Americans — including some within the CIA itself — believed to be some of the darkest days in CIA, and American, history.

But unlike Trump and Flynn, Pompeo is also hawkish on Russia, putting him much more in sync with most of the nation’s top military brass who see Russia as America’s top national security threat, but potentially at odds with his new boss.

Trump has expressed a desire to work with Russia in Syria to fight ISIS. But Pompeo has called the notion that Russia’s goal in Syria is to defeat ISIS “a fundamentally false narrative” and suggested that Russia’s real goal is trying to establish a foothold in the Middle East. Speaking at a foreign policy forum in Washington in October 2015, Pompeo said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “heck bent on changing the geopolitical future,” and criticized the Obama administration for not being tougher on Russia.

That Pompeo is now going to be working for a man the entire US intelligence community believes was elected in part thanks to Russian interference in the election is rather striking.

The Love Witch is a campy, ’60s-style horror fable of love in the 21st century

2016-11-18T16:10:01-05:00

The movie conjures love, magic, and a bit of death and destruction in a throwback to Technicolor exploitation films.

Anna Biller’s The Love Witch defies easy description. Some movies spring from a singular vision, and this is one of them: Biller wrote, directed, and designed the weird little film, and that last piece is important, because everything about this movie depends on its look.

Rating

3.5

The Love Witch is lit and shot to look like a 1960s Technicolor film, with costumes and sets designed by Biller to evoke a vaguely psychedelic fairy tale, slash lighthearted self-aware horror story, slash queasy feminist psychosexual dramedy.

If that bizarre combination appeals to you, you’re in luck. Because while The Love Witch leans heavily on its inspirations, it isn’t like anything you’ve seen before.

The Love Witch is a campy parable of feminism and witchery

The film opens on Elaine (Samantha Robinson) driving up the coast to a new life in a quaint California town after the end of a relationship. (Or so she says; in flashbacks it looks less like a breakup and more like a murder under questionable circumstances.) She’s pulled over by a hunky cop who will become important later in the story.

In the meantime, she moves into a rental house filled with kitschy paintings that draw on occult imagery and makes friends with Trish (Laura Waddell), with whom she has tea at an all-women’s tea shop that is the embodiment of pink frilliness.

Just having a low-key tea with a low-key hat.

Elaine wants nothing more than to attract a man who will love her devotedly, and to that end, she sets up a potion-concocting station in her house, having been trained in the ways of witchcraft already. She’s trained in the ways of attracting and keeping a man, too — remaking yourself to be what he wants, finding ways to fulfill all of his desires, no matter what they are.

Elaine does attract men easily, beginning with a genial hippie professor type named Wayne (Jeffrey Vincent Parise). However, when she conjures their everlasting devotion, which makes them feel depths of emotion that aren’t “natural” for a man, she tires of their clinginess. The consequences, for the men, at least, are dire.

I could go on describing the plot, but it’s profoundly beside the point. There are some scenes of conjuring (involving various states of undress from semi- to complete), some of death, a thread involving a few scenes in a police precinct in which the requisite jokes about coffee are made. There are tampon jokes. One sequence is set at something like a Renaissance Faire.

The plot is more or less a chronicle of Elaine snagging and then disposing of a man, mixed in with some witchcraft and outraged villagers. But the tale is less interesting than the aesthetic experiment.

The Love Witch evokes the 1960s, with a thoroughly 2010s flair

With tongue firmly planted in cheek, The Love Witch pays tribute to movies and pulpy novels from days gone by, and that is the source of its charm. The actors deliver their lines with stiffness and deliberation, and the film is edited in a deliberately awkward way — shots are held too long or not long enough, continuity takes a hit here and there — to evoke the qualities of a low-budget exploitation film.

But though The Love Witch mostly looks like it’s set in the 1960s, with cars and clothing belonging to the era, there are hints here and there that it’s meant to be a thoroughly modern story. (Sleekly contemporary cell phones exist in this world, for one.) So while Elaine’s fixation on attracting a man sounds retrograde — her new pal Trish says it sounds like she’s been “brainwashed by the patriarchy” — and is played with absolute sincerity, we are in on the joke, and so is this movie.

Pentagram and chill.

The Love Witch has been described as a story about the true price of the patriarchy — which is technically true, but makes the film sound much more serious than it is. The movie does call up the history of witchcraft (or a campy version of it, anyhow) as a revolt against male-dominated systems, especially the medieval marriage of the state and the church, that elevate female sexuality as a source of power.

But I’d wager the audience for a small, self-aware movie like The Love Witch already has strong feminist leanings. So the real fun of The Love Witch isn’t any message about feminism or the patriarchy (though it’s kind of clever to imagine it as a racy after-school special). It’s in Biller’s ability to evoke her influences with such spot-on accuracy that even someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time watching Technicolor horror from the 1960s can feel instinctive recognition. It’s deliciously campy, sometimes shocking, and totally unconventional.

Still, Biller’s choice to set her story in an ambiguous time and place is a canny one. Because even if we acknowledge movements around patriarchy and feminism from the 1960s to the 2010s, we also know that human nature doesn’t change all that much. And what heterosexual woman doesn’t on some level recall the feeling of pining after a man, only to regret it? The Love Witch knows exactly what it’s doing, and it’s best to just surrender to its spell.

The Love Witch launched in limited theaters on November 11.

The real problem with Trump's claim that he saved Ford jobs from going to Mexico

2016-11-18T15:20:02-05:00

Donald Trump campaigned for office promising to stop — possibly even reverse — the flood of jobs to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries. And many experts believed that Trump was setting his supporters up for disappointment.

“Announced in July 2015, the Nabisco layoffs in Chicago continued during the Illinois primary in March, despite jabs from Mr. Trump and both Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders,” the New York Times predicted in May. “United Technologies is similarly unlikely to rethink Carrier’s move out of Indianapolis.”

This article is part of New Money, a new section on economics, technology, and business.

The Times, and many other experts, didn’t think Trump would be able to make good on his promises to stop outsourcing for a simple reason: The law doesn’t give the president authority over factory relocations. And policy changes — even drastic ones like pulling out of NAFTA and jacking up tariffs on Mexican goods — are unlikely to neutralize the powerful economic forces that have driven the flow of jobs overseas.

But the experts are wrong: There is a way President Trump could stop the decline of manufacturing jobs. It’s just a strategy that would have terrifying implications for the long-term health of America’s economic and political institutions.

The strategy is simple: Trump would call up a CEO who is considering moving jobs to Mexico and threaten to throw the full weight of the federal government against him if he carries through with the plan. That would be a flagrant violation of the rule of law, of course. But given the vast powers of the modern administrative state, few CEOs could afford to take the risk of antagonizing a freshly-elected president.

To be clear, we don’t know if Trump is going to pursue a strategy like this. But Ford’s recent announcement that it is going to continue Lincoln production in Kentucky — instead of relocating it to Mexico — should raise red flags for anyone who cares about the rule of law.

Ford and Trump have been fighting over Mexican outsourcing all year

Photo by Bryan Thomas/Getty Images

Ford CEO Mark Fields.

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly blasted Ford for moving jobs to Mexico.

“It was just announced that Ford is moving all small car production — all of it — 100 percent to Mexico over the next two to three years,” Trump said in September. “We shouldn’t allow it to happen.”

Ford has been defiant, insisting that it would move forward with plans to build a new factory for small cars in Mexico regardless of the outcome of the election.

The plan to expand small car production in Mexico hasn’t changed. But this week Ford apparently decided to throw the president-elect a bone:

Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, who advised me that he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky - no Mexico
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2016

I worked hard with Bill Ford to keep the Lincoln plant in Kentucky. I owed it to the great State of Kentucky for their confidence in me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 18, 2016

The backstory here is that Ford has a plant in Louisville, Kentucky, that manufactures both the Ford Escape as well as the Lincoln MKC. There was no danger of that plant shutting down altogether, but Ford had been considering shifting production of Lincolns — the less popular of the two models — to Mexico, and using the extra manpower to build more Escapes. Keeping Lincoln production in Kentucky might ultimately mean more work for auto workers in Louisville. (Though it could also ultimately just push Escape production to other facilities.)

A lot of people have written about this as part of the “fake news” trend, arguing that Trump was just taking credit for preventing something that wasn’t going to happen in the first place. But Ford has said that Lincoln production really was slated to move to Mexico.

As the Wall Street Journal describes it: “Ford’s call represented a genuine change in direction for the automaker, not just a symbolic gesture, according to people close to the executive. The automaker has been in contact with Mr. Trump’s transition team over the past 10 days, and executives see the Lincoln move as a relatively painless but authentic way to give Mr. Trump a victory even before he moves into the White House.”

Whether this is benign or sinister depends on what Trump does next

It would be a mistake to portray this kind of negotiation as totally unprecedented. Sometimes companies and government officials have messy disputes that straddle the line between business and policy.

For example, when Comcast was trying to get its acquisition of NBC Universal approved by regulators in 2010, it offered to make a variety of concessions to get the merger approved. For example, Comcast promised to provide about 2.5 million low-income households with internet access for $10 per month, expand children’s programming, and provide more public access programming if they were allowed to acquire NBC Universal. These concessions had no apparent connection to the core issue in the merger — whether the merged firm posed a danger to competition — but they helped to make a controversial deal more politically palatable.

At low levels, this kind of quid pro quo is unseemly but relatively harmless. It’s possible Ford’s decision to keep Lincoln production in Kentucky will prove to be equally harmless — a one-off favor to a newly elected president.

The big worry is that it will instead prove to be a blueprint for a larger Trump policy of coercion, with Trump exerting more and more pressure on companies to maintain and even expand their US-based production facilities.

And the modern administrative state would give a president who was willing to flout the rule of law a lot of leverage. Federal agencies regulate cars for safety and environmental impacts. They review car companies’ patent applications. They decide how vigorously to pursue trade disputes with foreign carmakers. They buy cars for government employees to use. If Trump was able to appoint loyal cronies in these agencies who were willing to mete out vengeance at Trump’s behest, his threats could become very powerful.

Our system has checks and balances designed to prevent this kind of abuse. Key regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are supposed to operate independently. Most regulatory decisions are reviewable by the courts, and executive branch activities are overseen by congressional committees.

But in the past, these checks and balances have generally operated in concert with presidents who mostly respected conventional restraints on their power. Trump, in contrast, has repeatedly signaled a willingness to flout laws and conventions if they got in the ways of his objectives without having to make any specific threats— advocating, for example, targeting the families of suspected terrorists. Given Trump’s reputation for taking revenge on his enemies, it wouldn’t be very hard for him to convince companies that it would be a bad idea to make an enemy out of Trump.

Probably everything is going to turn out fine. Either Trump won’t push things that far, or America’s system of checks and balances will work the way they’re supposed to. But the fact that powerful American companies are already making business decisions in order to “give Mr. Trump a victory” before he’s even in the White House is not an encouraging sign.

Keeping jobs in the US could have a huge downside

There would also be a serious practical problem if Trump tried to keep jobs in the US at any cost. Most US companies — especially big ones like Apple and Ford — operate in a global market. That means they’re competing for market share with foreign competitors. And it also means that, at least if they’re successful, a lot of the products they produce are going to wind up being shipped overseas.

Ford is a good example here. They’re locked in competition with foreign competitors like Volkswagen and Toyota. Those companies locate factories all over the world, including in Mexico.

Advocates of keeping automaking jobs in the US imagine that it might mean slightly higher car prices, but that that’s worth it to save more jobs for US workers. But the larger danger is that keeping jobs in the US will put US automakers at a competitive disadvantage against foreign automakers who can’t easily be forced to locate production facilities in the US. The result could be that US car companies just lose global market share against foreign competitors who locate factories overseas, leaving US autoworkers no better off in the long run.

Manchester by the Sea is a comical, heartbreaking masterpiece

2016-11-18T15:00:02-05:00

Kenneth Lonergan’s latest film features a standout performance by Casey Affleck.

My father grew up in South Boston, and most of his family still lives near there. I grew up listening to my uncles and grandparents speak in thick accents about pahking the cah, about welding and wiring, about working on the Big Dig. Both of my dad’s brothers ride Harleys. His twin brother has a spider web tattooed on his elbow. We’re all die-hard Red Sox fans.

Rating

I love my father’s family. They are boisterous and tight-knit, even when they’re fighting. But you’d hardly call them emotionally open. They love each other, but they don’t go around talking about it a lot. That’s not their way.

So when my father died suddenly of complications from leukemia at 47, it was remarkable to watch them, especially my grandfather, a man of few words, process grief — with some anger and a few tears, but also with a series of uproarious jokes I can still remember 10 years later. Yet nobody’s really recovered. I don’t see the family as much these days, but I hear from them sometimes, and it’s always surprising to remember that we’re all still hurting and trying to heal.

That twisted rope of grief, depression, and humor is wrapped around Manchester by the Sea, Kenneth Lonergan’s masterful portrait of deep tragedy and emotion among men in a community that prizes stoicism.

That community is the titular Manchester-by-the-Sea, on the north shore of Boston — the other side of town from my family — an overwhelmingly white hamlet whose residents speak in thick accents. It’s a remarkable film in almost every respect, but its greatest achievement might be not just portraying but embodying the complicated inner lives of the men at its center.

It’s still rare to find American films that treat men, especially in rural or working-class areas, as emotionally complex; the other great one that springs to mind is Jeff Nichols’s exploration of masculine anxiety and dread in Take Shelter. In Manchester by the Sea, though, the deep tragedy is shot through with some truly excellent comedic writing. The result is hard to categorize: Is it drama? Melodrama? Tragedy? Comedy?

Manchester by the Sea is a remarkable portrayal of grief in ordinary life

All of those, yes, but something else besides. Lonergan writes his characters with emotion and affection, weaving their extraordinary circumstances in with the ordinary ones: two people trying to figure out what to eat for dinner, a bad blind date, a pair of amped-up teenage lovebirds.

Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea.

It helps that Manchester by the Sea boasts some of the strongest performances of the year — particularly Casey Affleck, who plays Lee Chandler, a man who has experienced deep loss. We don’t find out the details until midway through the film, but it’s obvious from the start, written all over his face and posture as he works as a janitor and handyman in a building in Quincy (pronounced kwinzee, if you’re in the know). Lee is in some kind of self-imposed exile, like a self-flagellating monk, and seems to want nothing more than to disappear entirely.

He’s called back to Manchester when his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies, leaving behind a 17-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), whose troubled mother took off a long while ago. Lee’s ex-wife, Randi (Michelle Williams), still lives nearby, and it’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and bumps into them all over town, even without a funeral to attend.

The film cuts back and forth between past and present, echoing the uncomfortable jolts to the past Lee experiences as he encounters rooms and people laced with memories and trauma. In the meantime, though, he has to keep it together, plan a funeral, and look after Patrick, who’s both worldly and endearingly naive, and who copes with his grief by going to band practice and hanging out with his girlfriends (both of them, but not at once).

Manchester by the Sea makes you feel the place it’s named for

The patter between Affleck and Hedges is the sort that only a skilled playwright could write, hilarious and affectionate and biting, with a lot going on below the surfaces of the words. The words flow freely until they actually have to talk about their feelings, when they become labored. Their uncle-nephew chemistry serves to build out both their characters and a long family history of trouble, hard work, and small mercies. There’s been much talk about Affleck’s performance in this film as a shoo-in for a Best Actor Oscar — and it would be richly deserved — but in a year of fantastic teenage breakout performances, Hedges might be the best, though the rest of the cast is also terrific.

Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea.

Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, one of the best in the business, shoots New England exactly the way it feels to its natives: sometimes so gloriously sunny and rich it can break a heart, and other times cold, gray, and mean, with a weather forecast that feels like an ongoing personal insult. It’s not just atmosphere — it’s mood, in the air, sticking to your skin.

But what’s most striking is how the whole film comes together. Lonergan never sits too long on any one scene or emotion, intuitively sensing exactly where each look and line is most effective. The result is breathtaking, in a literal sense: At some point I realized I’d stopped breathing, and so had the rest of the theater. Lonergan sidesteps sentimentality simply by treating characters with respect, as human beings with many dimensions, some of them contradictory.

I’ve found it really hard to write about Manchester by the Sea, because it sunk into my bones so deeply it’s hard to extract. Yet just thinking about it now, my heart is in my throat. Watching people go through the small banalities that follow a family member’s death is moving, and making them compelling takes deep powers of observation. Lonergan has given a great gift to American cinema, one that sees life as both funny and tragic. It’s not to be missed.

Manchester by the Sea opens in theaters on November 18.

Donald Trump's infrastructure plan wouldn't actually fix America's infrastructure problems

2016-11-18T14:43:39-05:00

Donald Trump loves the idea of infrastructure. He brings it up all the time. He wants to make an infrastructure bill a priority in his first 100 days as president. And Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said they’d love to work with him on this.

"We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump promised cheering supporters on election night. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."

The catch, though, is that Trump doesn’t really have a plan to do all this. At least not yet. Not in the conventional sense of the word.

What Trump has right now is an idiosyncratic proposal for Congress to offer some $137 billion in tax breaks to private investors who want to finance toll roads, toll bridges, or other projects that generate their own revenue streams. But this private financing scheme, experts across the political spectrum say, wouldn’t address many of America’s most pressing infrastructure needs — like repairing existing roads or replacing leaky water mains in poorer communities like Flint. It’s a narrow, inadequate policy.

For instance: “This is unlikely to do much for road and bridge maintenance,” notes Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. “And [economists] have long believed that the highest returns are for fixing existing infrastructure.”

Trump could, of course, propose to do much more. But that would put him in a political bind. Many Republicans in Congress are hostile toward the idea of spending billions more on public works. Back in September, when asked whether he would help Trump pass a $550 billion infrastructure program, House Speaker Paul Ryan initial response was a loud laugh. Infrastructure may be popular with Trump fans. But it’s not so easy to pull off in Washington.

How Trump’s proposal for private infrastructure financing would work

(Shutterstock)

Brought to you by … tax credits?

If you poke around Trump’s campaign website, you see vague promises to boost investment in “transportation, clean water, a modern and reliable electricity grid, telecommunications, security infrastructure, and other pressing domestic infrastructure needs.” But there aren’t many details on how to do this.

In fact, Trump’s only concrete proposal was this slim, 10-page white paper released October 27. In it, campaign advisers Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro proposed a set of tax breaks for private investors who want to finance infrastructure. These tax breaks, the campaign claims, could help finance $1 trillion worth of projects.

To understand how Trump’s proposal might work, let’s back up for a second and just think about how roads currently get built in America.

Traditionally, state and local governments fund roads directly, using some combination of their own revenues, federal highway aid, and public money borrowed from investors by issuing bonds that are ultimately repaid via taxes or tolls. Public agencies then oversee the design, construction, and maintenance of said roads.

In recent years, though, some states have been experimenting with bringing private investors directly into projects, via “public-private partnerships” (PPPs). The exact set-up varies, but here’s one example: Private firms might bid for a road project, and the winning bidder then raises money from outside investors to design, operate, build, and maintain the road for a set number of years. The firm recoups its costs through tolls or fixed state payments. Because the private company is on the hook for the whole thing, the theory goes, it has an incentive to keep costs low and finish on time.

To date, such set-ups are relatively rare. Over the last quarter-century, the US has only had 36 privately financed road projects, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Of those, 14 are complete, three have declared bankruptcy, and one required a public buyout. The rest are still in construction stage. (These arrangements don’t have to be for new roads or even tolled roads: Pennsylvania set up a PPP to refurbish old bridges.)

So that’s where Trump’s plan comes in. He’s proposing a large tax credit for private investors in such projects — equal to 82 percent of the equity amount in any deal. The hope is that this tax break will lower the cost of financing and spur more investors to pour more money into these projects.

In their white paper, Ross and Navarro argue that you’d need around $137 billion in federal tax breaks to attract $1 trillion in infrastructure finance. And, they claim, the government would recoup this lost money via new tax revenue from new construction jobs and profits. That is, the tax cuts would pay for themselves. (Neither Ross nor Navarro responded to a request for an interview.)

As we’ll see, however, these assumptions are debatable.

Why experts think that Trump’s plan falls short

(Shutterstock)

Privatizing infrastructure is a controversial idea, but it’s not crazy. Countries like Australia have lots of success with PPPs. The trouble here, according to outside experts, is that Trump’s proposed tax credits would only likely address a narrow slice of America’s infrastructure needs — if that.

Randal O’Toole is a transportation analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute and broadly in favor of privatizing infrastructure. But he sees a few problems with Trump’s plan. For one, there’s a lot of infrastructure that’s already profitable to invest in, like electrical grids. “He would be giving tax breaks to private owners who would be investing in that infrastructure anyway,” O’Toole notes.

Second, governments also fund lots of infrastructure that isn’t profitable, like rail transit. And here, “no amount of tax breaks would get private investors to spend money on infrastructure that doesn’t pay,” O’Toole says.

Other analysts zeroed in on that second point. If high user fees or tolls are needed to help private investors recoup their investments, then a lot of infrastructure in America may simply never get funded. Think of existing toll-free roads in poor shape, or urban bus systems, or aging water pipes in low-income cities like Flint where people can’t afford a big hike in their water bills. Many of these projects may be worthwhile, but they typically require public funding.

“If [we] only built projects that could cover their costs with user charges, we would have far fewer white elephant projects,” says Harvard’s Glaeser. “However, we would also miss good projects as well. In particular, we would miss projects that mainly serve the less advantaged. Asking buses to pay for themselves would be a mistake.”

“There are many tens of thousands of infrastructure projects out there across sectors that need to get done,” adds Kevin DeGood, the director of Infrastructure Policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. “Fixing 120-year-old water mains that break, interchange widenings, roads that need to be fixed, bridges that are deficient, runways that need to be expanded, levees that need to be repaired, ports that need to be deepened.”

“And this plan does essentially nothing for any of those,” DeGood says. “There are only a very, very small number of projects that would fit the parameters that would make them attractive in theory for tax credits. Because you have to be able to charge really high margin tolls and user fees. So the facility has to be big enough and have high demand that it’s going to generate revenue that you can go out and take on expensive private equity capital.”

Now, it’s possible for states to set up PPPs that don’t rely so heavily on tolls — the state can simply reimburse the private company using tax revenue (whether this saves money is debatable). However, David Levinson, a transportation analyst and professor at the University of Minnesota, brings up a number of other concerns about this plan. PPPs are complicated multi-decade financial arrangements, and not all states and localities are necessarily well-equipped to manage these deals in the public interest.

Meanwhile, these tax credits would do nothing to attract investors without any federal tax liability, such as pension funds, endowments, and international sovereign wealth funds. “That’s potentially important,” Levinson says. “If you look at the major investors in existing quasi-privatized US tolls roads, they tend to be international players and pensions funds.”

Finally, the Trump campaign’s claim that its tax breaks will pay for themselves by creating new tax-paying jobs looks dubious, Levinson notes. Right now, unemployment is extremely low. Anyone who works on these new privately financed infrastructure projects is likely to be employed already — this would just be shifting jobs around, not creating new jobs. (Levinson did add, though, that it might be worth trying out Trump’s tax credit scheme on a small scale — just to see how it worked.)

Ultimately, it’s hard to find anyone who thinks private financing alone can solve America’s pressing infrastructure needs. “There is no replacement for direct federal funding [of infrastructure],” said Richard Fierce, senior vice president at the engineering and construction firm Fluor Corp, at a congressional hearing two years ago. “And the number one priority for Congress should be to ensure there are long-term sustainable funding sources in place.”

Trump could propose more — but Republicans are very skeptical of that

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

So about that highway bill...

Trump, of course, isn’t limited to this tax plan. He could ditch it, or supplement it with a more detailed plan for the federal government to directly fund highway repairs, grid modernization, airport upgrades, school repairs, and the like. The latter is basically what Hillary Clinton proposed on the campaign trail.

Democrats have said they’d be receptive to working with Trump on an idea like this. “We can work together to quickly pass a robust infrastructure jobs bill,” Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, said after the election.

But the Republicans who control Congress seem much more divided on this idea. On the one hand, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said he’d consider it — as long as any new spending did not increase the deficit. “Infrastructure in America is lagging far behind,” he told the Hill. “I think this is going to be a priority, and I think it will be a bipartisan issue.”

The problem is that paying for infrastructure spending has been a sharply divisive idea among Republicans in the House. It took years of squabbling and knock-down fights before Congress finally agreed to a five-year, $305 billion transportation reauthorization bill last December that would fund highways, bridges, roads, and transit. Because no one in Congress wants to raise the federal gas tax, they had to scrape together funding from a variety of oddball sources — like raiding other trust funds or new custom fees.

Many Republicans aren’t eager to go through that process again. As Russell Berman notes at the Atlantic, in the week since Trump’s election, House Speaker Paul Ryan has spoken often about working with Trump on repealing Obamacare and cutting regulations. He’s said nothing on infrastructure.

In the Senate, meanwhile, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has shrugged off this infrastructure talk, calling it “not a top priority,” according to NPR. Right now, Republicans control the agenda in Congress. And infrastructure doesn’t seem high on that agenda.

Watch: It’s on America’s institutions to check Trump

Elon Musk claims Tesla’s solar roof will be competitive even without the energy it produces

2016-11-18T14:40:02-05:00

One of the unanswered questions after Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s solar roof tiles in October was: How much will they cost?

All Musk said was that they would be competitive with comparable roofing tiles, once the value of the electricity they generate is taken into account. That left the question pretty open, since the value of that electricity itself will vary widely from place to place.

This week, Musk made a more boastful claim.

At a shareholder meeting (in which shareholders approved the Tesla/SolarCity merger with an 85 percent vote), Musk said he had just come from a discussion with Tesla solar engineers.

"It’s looking quite promising that a solar roof actually costs less than normal roof," he said, "before you even take the value of electricity into account."

Tesla is reducing costs, he says, by squeezing inefficiencies out of the "incredibly inefficient" roofing supply chain. Tesla’s tiles weigh less than conventional tiles and are made of tempered glass, so they are much more resistant to damage and can be packed more tightly. Those savings offset the slightly higher upfront costs of materials and manufacturing.

Now, Musk’s assertion is still fairly vague — and perhaps a bit misleading. When he says "normal roof," he is almost certainly talking about slate, clay, or terra cotta roofing tiles, which are at the high end of the market and can cost up to 20 times as much as the dirt-cheap asphalt shingles that still adorn most American homes. Competing with asphalt shingles would be a different thing entirely.

Still, it’s a pretty striking claim.

For solar on buildings, shifting from why? to why not?

There’s no telling if Musk’s boast will prove out in practice. But say it does.

The question facing consumers, at least in that corner of the market, will have flipped. It will no longer be, do you want to pay extra up front and make it back by generating electricity? It will be, do you want a longer-lasting, nicer looking product, for less money? "And by the way," Musk adds, "[it] generates electricity?"

The question for high-end consumers flips from, why solar? to, why not? That flip is coming to more building markets soon, whether or not Tesla achieves it in this particular case.

Tesla wants to offer a suite of electricity products and services ranging from generation to storage to transportation — to become, in the words of Tesla CTO JB Straubel, a "one-stop sustainable lifestyle company." In all these market segments, the strategy is roughly the same: Break in on the upper end, with wealthier consumers first, and then scale up and drive costs down until there’s a product for the middle-income consumer and (one day) a product for the masses.

As solar gets cheaper and smaller, it will become a more routine part of the products and practices of the building trades, integrated into roofs and windows by default. Storage will be integrated into garages and basements by default. Homes will be built with energy management systems to economize the storage and use of self-generated power, by default.

It will start on the high end, but if things work out right, if Tesla can spark the growth of competitive markets around these kinds of products, it will move down the income scale and eventually become a normal part of building.

Or so we’d all better hope.

The 13 best movies in theaters right now

2016-11-18T14:40:00-05:00

Headed to the movie theater? These are the 13 best movies playing in theaters in the US right now.

This list is updated each Friday, as necessary, and organized alphabetically.

A movie is eligible if it's in wide release (meaning it's playing in theaters nationwide) or in limited release in a major market (typically New York and Los Angeles). Films that have screened at festivals are not eligible until they are released in theaters. Not all films are showing in all cities, so check IMDB for your local listings.

This list is curated by Alissa Wilkinson, who sees pretty much every film out there but can't review all of them. So we've also included Metacritic scores and other notable reviews.

The Hamilton Mixtape's “Wrote My Way Out” shows why Hamilton’s story is a hip-hop story

2016-11-18T14:20:01-05:00

When Lin-Manuel Miranda introduced the idea for Hamilton to the world at a White House event in 2009, he explained why he thought Alexander Hamilton’s life story “embodies hip-hop.” It’s because Hamilton was born poor and disenfranchised and rose to the highest levels of government, “all on the strength of his writing.”

"I was like, ‘Oh, he literally wrote his way out of his circumstances,’” Miranda later told Rolling Stone. “That's it! That's everything. … Jay Z, Eminem, Biggie. Lil Wayne writing about Katrina!”

For Miranda, Hamilton’s ability to write his way out of a problem is the archetypal story of hip-hop. And that’s the story Miranda is telling with Nas, Dave East, and Aloe Blacc in “Wrote My Way Out,” the latest sneak peek of the forthcoming Hamilton Mixtape.

Slated to come out December 2, The Hamilton Mixtape features various songs from the Broadway musical, as covered, remixed, and reimagined by various hip-hop and pop musicians. A few of the covers have already made it to Spotify, where “Wrote My Way Out” is now available to stream.

“Wrote My Way Out,” which remixes the Broadway musical’s song “Hurricane,” follows the same strategy as the already-released “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done),” a remix of the musical’s “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down).” “Hurricane” and “Yorktown” are both plot-driven, history-dense songs; they discuss Hamilton’s descent into a sleazy sex scandal and the end of the Revolutionary War, respectively. Consequently, they’re not suited to a straightforward pop cover the way the show’s ballads are. So instead, The Hamilton Mixtape remixes them, turning each song’s most resonant line into a recurring sample and then veering away from history, into the present day.

For “Hurricane,” that line is Hamilton’s refrain that “I wrote my way out” — out of the Caribbean, into revolution, into the president’s Cabinet, and now into a sex scandal — and in “Wrote My Way Out,” it becomes an evocation of Miranda’s original inspiration for Hamilton.

“I picked up the pen like Hamilton,” raps Nas, before he goes on to recount all of the things he wrote his way out of: systemic disenfranchisement, “rights and wrongs and bails bonds.”

In this song, the line “I wrote my way out” goes from an act specific to Hamilton to something universal. It becomes the archetypal hip-hop story.

Republicans’ plans to replace Obamacare, explained in 500 words

2016-11-18T14:10:01-05:00

If there’s one thing Republicans have been clear about for the past six years, it is that the top of their agenda includes repealing Obamacare.

But Obamacare repeal would leave 22 million Americans without coverage and wreak havoc on the individual insurance market. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Republicans can’t just repeal Obamacare — they need to replace it with something.

There are at least seven different replacement plans that Republican legislators and conservative think tanks have offered in recent years. I’ve spent the past week reading them, and this is a quick summary of what I learned (you can read a longer version here).

Yes, Republicans have replacement plans

It is true that the party has not coalesced around one plan — but there are real policy proposals coming from Republican legislators and conservative think tanks. There are two plans I think are most important to know about:

Better Way, a proposal from House Speaker Paul Ryan, would overhaul the individual market and Medicaid in a way that would generally benefit healthy, young people and disadvantage older, sick people.
The Patient CARE Act, from the Senate Finance Committee, is similar to Better Way but focuses more on helping low-income people.

Other plans that exist and could come into the debate include:

Two plans introduced as legislation in Congress: one from Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), who is in the running to become Trump’s health and human services secretary, and one from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
Two plans from conservative think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity
A bare-bones plan from President-Elect Donald Trump

There is significant variation in what the plans propose

On one end of the spectrum, you see plans from Trump and Cruz that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with virtually nothing. On the other end, there are plans from conservative think tanks that go as far as to keep the Affordable Care Act marketplaces and continue to give low-income Americans the most generous insurance subsidies.

If we can say one thing about most Republican plans, it is this: They are better for younger, healthy people and worse for older, sicker people

In general, conservative replacement plans offer less financial help to those who would use a lot of insurance. This will make their insurance subsidies significantly less expensive than Obamacare’s — but could hurt people who have high medical costs.

Most Republican plans don’t eliminate preexisting conditions

These plans generally require insurers to offer coverage to everyone, but they do not stop insurers from charging people more because they are sick. Those who have a break in coverage can face high premiums tethered to their health status.

Economic analyses estimate that these plans will reduce the number of Americans with insurance coverage

The actual amount varies significantly, from 3 million to 21 million, depending on the plan. They will near certainly provide more coverage than Americans had before Obamacare, but also less than what exists currently.

Trump’s win has sparked widespread anxiety among transgender Americans

2016-11-18T14:00:02-05:00

Calls to a transgender suicide hotline spiked in the wake of Trump’s election.

By 10 pm on election night, calls were already streaming in to Trans Lifeline, a peer-supported suicide prevention hotline catering to transgender people. Over the following three days, Trans Lifeline saw a 500 percent increase in call volume, said Greta Gustava Martela, the executive director. And that wasn’t a coincidence.

“As a trans person, my gender identity has been politicized in this election,” Martela explained. “And I think we all hoped that this election would have a different result, and we’d be able to have some rest after the election.”

But the prospects of this happening under President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence — one of the nation’s most consistently anti-LGBTQ lawmakers — look slim. The future Trump administration has plenty of LGBTQ people worried. Trans people, in particular, are facing the president-elect’s stated promise to overturn all executive orders issued under President Obama, including a crucial 2014 order that offered nondiscrimination protections for trans government employees and contractors.

The fears pegged to Trump seemed to have manifested when reports circulated among LGBTQ people and activists, via private Facebook groups, that several trans and gender-nonconforming youth had died by suicide in the hours following the presidential election.

Advocates seek balance between spreading awareness of LGBTQ suicides and inadvertently encouraging it

Debi Jackson is the mother of a trans person who moderates one of the aforementioned Facebook groups. Jackson told Mic on November 10 that the election results left many trans people feeling anxious to the point of “self-harm and desperation, including a few suicides and multiple suicide attempts.” Jackson declined further comment for this article.

Two people who spoke to Vox on condition of anonymity said they had seen these reports, and said they were in contact with family members of those who died by suicide. However, Vox and several LGBTQ advocacy groups have thus far been unable to independently confirm that these deaths took place. Still, with the spike in calls to Martela’s hotline, the post-election environment clearly still has trans people on edge.

Nick Adams, the director of GLAAD’s transgender media program, told Vox the reports have also not been confirmed to his organization. But, Adams says, spreading such information without accurate information on social media, for example, “can lead others to attempt self-harm.”

Adams is referring to suicide contagion, a phenomenon in which individuals exposed to concrete examples of suicide exhibit elevated signs of suicidal ideation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some anecdotal evidence suggests transgender people, in particular, are almost constantly surrounded by news of self-inflicted deaths, which can compound the contagion theory. Transgender people make up about 0.5 percent of the general population but have long been digitally connected, finding safe havens to communicate online. A recent study led by UCLA assistant professor Ian W. Holloway found that transgender people (especially women) frequently use digital social networks to find information about legal and medical transition and access health care, and to connect with geographically distant peers who can share experiences and wisdom.

While these digital connections can be a source of critical access to lifesaving information, it can also mean that trans people are more likely to hear reports of suicide when they occur in the broader trans community. Martela, the trans woman who founded Trans Lifeline, suspects that the enmeshed social and digital circles of many transgender people mean they are regularly exposed to reports about suicide, making contagion an almost constant factor in trans communities.

That reality makes it an ongoing struggle for Martela and other suicide prevention advocates to balance the competing interests of sharing important information with not contributing to the contagion effect. By being so well-connected to trans people and their loved ones around the country, Martela estimates that “every week and a half or so, in my extended social network, somebody faces suicide.”

But in times like these, Martela firmly believes the sharing of information about a community in distress outweighs the potential risk of contagion. She reported that she had personally been able to confirm at least three deaths since the election, though she declined to share identifying information about those individuals.

“I think it’s dangerous to just not report the deaths,” she said. “It allows people to ignore what’s happening to us. … When I balance whether to talk about suicides and how often to report them, I’m trying to decide if this is an important time for word to get out about what’s happening to this community.”

She continued: “And I think, with this election, this is absolutely a time when it might be more important to talk about what’s happening to us than to worry about triggering this contagion effect that probably can’t be any worse than it already is, to be completely honest.”

Regardless of how many trans people may have died — or not — since the election, Martela stresses that the community is clearly in severe distress.

“We know that if we’re seeing a 500 percent increase in calls, that everything else related to that is going to go up,” she explained. “We know that people are ideating at higher rates. … And so if people are ideating more, it just follows in scope that suicide rates are going to go up.”

She has a point — the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention reports that there are between 12 and 25 suicide attempts for every completion. It’s reasonable to conclude that if the number of people thinking about taking their life (and calling a suicide prevention hotline) has increased, so has the number of people who carried out their plans.

LGBTQ people are already at a greater risk of suicide than the general population, and trans people specifically have an alarmingly high suicide attempt rate. Forty-one percent of trans and gender-nonconforming adults in the US report having attempted suicide, according to the Williams Institute, a progressive think tank based at the University of California Los Angeles. For comparison, the average attempt rate for the general American population is 4.6 percent, and 10 percent among gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults.

Still, Trans Lifeline is not alone in experiencing an avalanche of calls since the election. Both CNN and the Washington Post have reported that suicide prevention hotlines across the country saw a sharp increase in calls beginning on election night. While elections are typically an anxiety-inducing time for Americans, experts across the board have said the panic this year’s election wrought has been unlike any other time in modern history.

“Never have such large groups of marginalized people — their civil rights, their human rights — been in such jeopardy.”

Despite claims that those panicked by the election are overreacting, mental health professionals who work with LGBTQ clients say they have never seen such a visceral reaction to an election.

“When people try to say, ‘Oh, this happens every election,’ that is just patently false,” said Emily Clark, a clinical counselor in private practice in Columbus, Ohio, who is straight but estimates 90 percent of her clientele are LGBTQ. “Never have such large groups of marginalized people — their civil rights, their human rights — been in such jeopardy.”

Christopher Torsiello, a gay psychotherapist and social worker based in New York City, agreed. He’s been in practice for eight years, and said he’s seen “little blips” where anxiety among clients spiked in response to a political shift. “But I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he explained. And the fear is universal among his LGBTQ clients.

“One hundred percent of my LGBT clients have felt anxious,” Torsiello adds. “For myriad reasons, but all of them have felt some anxiety around [the election].”

That anxiety is being informed and fed by “real despair,” Torsiello said. He’s witnessed some depression in his LGBTQ clients over the past week, but most of them are still in shock, he said. There was a pervasive belief that Trump could not possibly win the election, Torsiello explained. And the realization that millions of Americans “flat-out endorsed” and “legitimized all of the really horrific things that Donald Trump has said over the past year and a half” hit his clients hard.

“The outcome after the election has also been really dehumanizing to my LGBT clients, specifically my trans clients,” he said. “And my trans clients of color are just really blown over by this.”

While each person has distinct reasons for their specific fears, Torsiello said his trans clients’ post-election anxieties can be broadly summarized into three categories:

Discord and fractured relationships with family members who voted for Trump
Legal concerns about workplace and nondiscrimination protections, as well as obtaining updated legal identification reflecting one’s gender identity
Losing access to health care, compounded by the possibility of federal legislation that would allow health care providers and individuals to deny service and treatment to LGBTQ people. (That’s the First Amendment Defense Act, a beefed-up version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Vice President-elect Mike Pence signed into law in Indiana in 2014.)

Clark echoed the pervasiveness of anxiety among her clients. She said every single LGBTQ client she’s seen in the past week has wanted to “process” the election in some way.

“Fear is a huge theme of what I’m hearing,” she said. “The morning after the election, I opened up my email, and I had an email from one of my trans clients, and it just said, ‘I’m really sad and scared. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?’ And I thought that that just encapsulated perfectly what a lot of folks have been feeling.”

Like Torsiello, Clark has been working to help her clients through the stages of grief, but also with practical concerns. She’s heard from numerous former clients, who had ended their therapeutic relationship with her and were “functioning well and living their lives,” asking for her help navigating the often cumbersome process of updating legal identification.

Those documents become even more crucial in a red state like Ohio, where Clark said her clients are also worried about whether they will be able to safely move about the country, or even just the state.

“Columbus is this liberal, Democratic, mostly tolerant bubble from the rest of the state,” Clark explained. “And I think we often forget, being here, that most everybody else outside of our little city doesn’t necessarily have the same views, and that’s really scary for folks thinking about traveling anywhere outside of our outer belt — into the suburbs, even. People have certainly expressed fear of traveling.”

That fear can contribute to feelings of isolation, which in turn can contribute to the depression, hopelessness, and ostracism that increases a person’s risk of suicide, Clark said.

Even in the supposedly liberal bastion of Manhattan, Torsiello said his clients are feeling trapped. “There’s this idea of, I’m not allowed to ambulate around the country,” he said.

“It’s not that their communities ... are suddenly threatening to them; it’s this idea that federally there would be more protection, and federally things would keep expanding for them [under a Clinton presidency],” Torsiello added. “That there would be more places and spaces that they could go to. That seems to be eroding, and that is causing a lot of fear.”

Both therapists stressed their belief that clients were not “overreacting” to the results of the election. The threat a Trump administration poses, especially for trans people, is real, both Torsiello and Clark agreed. Clark balks at the criticism that people frightened by the election are being “sore losers” or “dramatic.”

“It wasn’t safe before,” she said of the national environment for trans people. “Of course, we tried to talk about building resilience, empowerment, trying to feel safe. But the reality of it is folks weren’t necessarily safe before, and they’re not now. ... I think it’s a very privileged stance to say that folks aren’t in danger in some way.”

Trans Lifeline’s Martela echoed that sentiment, though she did find some cause for optimism, particularly in the outpouring of financial support that is being directed to her organization and others that are now facing a potentially hostile future under a Trump-Pence administration. Martela foresees a necessary return to the grassroots organizing that marked the success of groups like ACT-UP in the 1980s. Her model for community support stems from LGBTQ activists who organized, protested, and held die-ins until the federal government — especially during the Reagan administration — was forced to address the issues facing the community.

“People haven’t had to fight for their rights in the street in a very long time,” Martela said. “And I think, to some degree, that’s what it’s going to take to get through this. I’m really heartened by all of the protests, and I just hope that we can keep it up.”

Note: Trans people struggling with thoughts of suicide can reach TransLifeline 24 hours a day at (877) 565-8860 in the U.S., and (877) 330-6366 in Canada. LGBT youth in need of support can contact The Trevor Project's Trevor Lifeline at (866) 488-7386. And people of all identities struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at any time by calling 1-800-273-8255.

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general pick, would be a massive setback for civil rights

2016-11-18T13:40:00-05:00

A man who once said the KKK “was okay until I found out they smoked pot” could guide the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions will be President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US attorney general.

If there was ever any doubt on where Trump will take the country on issues like civil rights, criminal justice, and immigration, Sessions’s nomination should put all of those doubts to an end. On all of these issues, Sessions has been extremely conservative — he has opposed reforms to reduce mass incarceration, proposed stringent crackdowns on immigration, and he even has a history of racist remarks that ended his hopes of a federal judgeship. And that’s not even getting to other issues, from voting rights to discrimination against LGBTQ people, where Sessions has been equally conservative.

As attorney general, Sessions wouldn’t be able to set law, but he would have a lot of power in guiding how the law is interpreted and enforced. Particularly on criminal justice and voting rights, this makes Sessions a big threat for reformers and civil rights advocates who made gains during President Barack Obama’s time in office — but will likely see many of those gains erased under Sessions.

But Sessions’s nomination is also not much of a surprise. On the campaign trail, Sessions’s very conservative views on immigration made him a close Trump ally. And since he previously served as a federal prosecutor and Alabama’s attorney general, he’s a natural fit, in terms of career qualifications, for the job of US attorney general.

Indeed, Trump’s team suggested as much in a statement on Thursday: “While nothing has been finalized and he is still talking with others as he forms his cabinet, the President-elect has been unbelievably impressed with Senator Sessions and his phenomenal record as Alabama’s Attorney General and U.S. Attorney. It is no wonder the people of Alabama re-elected him without opposition.”

Whatever Trump’s impressions of Sessions may be, the nomination may end up very controversial in the Senate. Not only is his record very much to the right, but it’s also mired by several controversies in which Sessions was accused of racism.

Sessions has a very conservative record on issues the Department of Justice oversees

Ramin Talaie/Getty Images

Sessions has a long conservative record, one that suggests he would move the Justice Department to the right on issues ranging from crime to immigration.

For one, Sessions has time and time again proven to be “tough on crime,” opposing efforts to roll back tough prison sentences that contributed to mass incarceration.

Over the past few years, a bipartisan group of senators has been working on legislation that would reduce mandatory minimum prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and give judges more sentencing discretion in cases involving low-level drug offenders. But the legislation never really got anywhere in the Senate, in large part because Sessions, along with Trump allies and Sens. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, opposed the bill.

Sessions used typical “tough on crime” rhetoric to justify his opposition, arguing that the legislation would send a signal to the courts and criminals that their punishments aren’t being taken seriously anymore. As he put it, it would “send a message to judges and prosecutors that we’re not interested in people serving sentences anymore” when “the crime rate is beginning to go up.” (The FBI shows the homicide rate ticked up in 2015, but it’s still at half of what it was at its peak in the 1990s.)

Sessions has shown some capacity for reform. He co-sponsored the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which raised the threshold for a five-year mandatory minimum for possession of crack cocaine from 5 grams to 28. That brought it a bit closer to the 500-gram threshold for powder cocaine, which is pharmacologically similar to crack. And it helped reduce one of the major drivers of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, because crack is more common in black communities than powder cocaine.

But when it came to bigger criminal justice reforms in the past couple years, Sessions helped kill the bill that would have undone the far broader criminal justice policies that contributed to mass incarceration.

On voting rights, Sessions has also toed the conservative line. In the 1980s, Sessions prosecuted Albert Turner for alleged voter fraud after Turner helped black voters register in Alabama — earning the nickname “Mr. Voter Registration.” The charges fell flat, with a jury deliberating for less than three hours before finding Turner not guilty of all counts of mail fraud, altering absentee ballots, and conspiracy to vote more than once. This moment is very telling: These kinds of court challenges would be tried time and time again by conservative lawmakers and prosecutors, even in 2016, to stop black voter registration efforts.

Then, when the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act and effectively allowed states with histories of racial discrimination to pass new voting restrictions, Sessions denied that Shelby County, Alabama — which brought the challenge to the Supreme Court — ever had a history of voter discrimination. “Shelby County has never had a history of denying voters and certainly not now,” he claimed.

Shelby County and Alabama have a long history of discrimination of all kinds. And the Supreme Court’s decision let Alabama pass a strict voter ID law in time for the 2016 election — a policy that makes it harder for minority voters in particular to cast a ballot. To deny all of this as a US attorney general is a bit like handling energy policy and denying the science on global warming.

But Sessions, in fact, previously admitted to calling the Voting Rights Act a “piece of intrusive legislation.” And after the Supreme Court’s ruling, he opposed efforts to update the law so the federal government could continue to oversee voting laws in places with histories of discrimination.

Sessions is also very conservative on immigration, which is one of the reasons he came around to supporting Trump (who based much of his campaign on being “tough” on immigration) fairly early in the Republican primary. Sessions, for one, helped shape Trump’s immigration plan, which cracks down on both illegal and legal immigration.

And when it comes to LGBTQ issues, the Human Rights Campaign recently gave Sessions a flat 0 percent score, in large part because he opposed every proposal to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace, housing, and other settings. And he also opposes same-sex marriage to this day, arguing that the US Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriages nationwide was “unconstitutional.”

Sessions also has a history of racist remarks

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Before he became a US senator in 1995, Sessions served as a federal prosecutor in the 1970s and 1980s. He was later elected attorney general of Alabama in the 1990s.

In between those two jobs, in 1986, then-President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions to serve as a federal judge in Southern Alabama. The nomination quickly turned controversial — and was rejected — as multiple witnesses testified that Sessions had made racist remarks.

A prosecutor, J. Gerald Hebert, told Sessions about the time a federal judge called a prominent white lawyer “a disgrace to his race.” Sessions replied, “Well, maybe he is.” Hebert also claimed that Sessions once said the ACLU and NAACP are “un-American” for “trying to force civil rights down the throats of people.”

Thomas Figures, a black prosecutor, said Sessions had called him “boy” and told him to be careful with what he said to “white folks.” Figures also claimed that Sessions said that the KKK “was okay until I found out they smoked pot.”

Sessions did not deny and even acknowledged most of the accusations, claiming that many of them were jokes and taken out of context. “I am loose with my tongue on occasion, and I may have said something similar to that or could be interpreted to that,” he testified. He also said that the KKK is “a force for hatred and bigotry.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee did not buy it — and rejected Sessions’s nomination.

Still, Sessions claims he did some promising civil rights work as a prosecutor. He told the National Journal in 2009, “I signed 10 pleadings attacking segregation or the remnants of segregation, where we as part of the Department of Justice, we sought desegregation remedies — the takeover of school systems, redrawing lines — all those things that I was allowed to participate in supporting.”

Sessions will likely shift the Justice Department sharply to the right

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

If Jeff Sessions’s nomination is accepted, he’ll replace US Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Based on this record, we can expect the Justice Department to move sharply to the right if the Senate accepts Sessions’s nomination.

One of Sessions’s biggest jobs as attorney general will be guiding the massive network of federal prosecutors, which sprawls all across the US. In that role, Sessions could try to double down on mass incarceration. He could, for example, rescind instructions to federal prosecutors to incarcerate fewer low-level drug offenders — something that his record suggests he’d be very willing to do.

If Sessions continues his “tough on crime” streak on policing issues, he also may stop investigations into police. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has carried out nearly two dozen investigations into local police departments — more than any of President Obama’s predecessors — typically in response to high-profile police shootings. The investigations uncovered all sorts of abuses and constitutional rights violations in cities ranging from Baltimore to Ferguson, Missouri. Sessions could bring an end to these investigations.

On voting rights, Sessions may not try to challenge Southern states’ voting restrictions in the same way the Obama administration was willing to. This may be a return to the Bush administration, which essentially treated civil rights enforcement as a joke and never took accusations of voter suppression or other civil rights violations very seriously. In fact, Sessions could guide the Justice Department to focus on voter fraud, which, even though it’s extremely rare, Republicans over the past few years have cited as part of an effort to make voting more difficult — typically in a way that disproportionately hurts minority voters.

On immigration, Sessions could make Trump’s deportation plans more likely. Since the Justice Department runs the immigrant court system, Sessions could make it easier — by staffing up the court, for example — to deport 2 to 3 million undocumented immigrants, as Trump proposed.

And on LGBTQ issues, Sessions wouldn’t have as much power as he would in other realms. But he could, for example, reverse the Justice Department’s LGBTQ-inclusive interpretation of federal civil rights laws and stop pushing for the courts to recognize that LGBTQ people are protected from discrimination in the workplace, housing, schools, and other settings.

Sessions’s nomination validates many critics’ fears of Trump

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

When you put this all together, Sessions’s nomination appears to validate many Trump critics’ greatest fears. His administration will go “tough on crime.” It won’t care much for the civil rights of minority Americans. It will try to be “tough” on immigration. And given Sessions’s history of racist remarks, it certainly doesn’t appear that Trump is too sorry about his own history of racist comments on the campaign trail and beforehand.

Indeed, some critics immediately voiced deep concerns. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat, quickly released a statement condemning Sessions’s nomination: “If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible, and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man. No senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions.”

There are some open questions. It’s unclear, for example, if Sessions will try to crack down on states that have legalized marijuana, since pot is still technically illegal under federal law. Trump said that pot legalization should be left to the states, but Sessions, an opponent of legalization, may take a hard-line stance — reversing President Obama’s hands-off approach to states legalizing. And it remains to be seen whether Sessions will let Trump use the Justice Department as a tool of the White House rather than keep it as a quasi-independent agency.

But even if Sessions doesn’t take a Trump-approved or conservative approach on every issue, it’s likely he would move the Justice Department sharply to the right — in a way that could affect anyone from federal prisoners to undocumented immigrants to minority voters.

Watch: Donald Trump and the rise of American authoritarianism

The Gilmore Girls reboot’s central flaw has nothing to do with the show itself

2016-11-18T13:10:01-05:00

The show’s greatest enemy turns out to be time.

When Gilmore Girls was on the air between 2000 and 2007, there were few bigger fans of the series than me. The series was sharp and funny, and it fell squarely within one of my favorite genres: the small-town show.

But I’ve been worried about the Netflix reboot Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life pretty much since it was announced. Some of this stems from my reflexive dislike of reboots and remakes of beloved TV shows; after so much time away, it’s difficult for a series to recapture its magic, because a lot of what makes a TV show successful relies on an alchemy that’s impossible to replicate.

The result is that TV reboots either fall flat from trying too hard to recapture said magic, as happened with the Veronica Mars movie, or they veer off in new, potentially fascinating creative directions that nonetheless bear little resemblance to the show that viewers loved in the first place. (See: Arrested Development season four.) I’ve written about how these TV reboots sometimes seem to be trapping the characters in purgatory for viewers’ entertainment.

Having now seen the first three installments of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, it does manage to hit many of the beats you’d hope a Gilmore Girls reboot would hit, and judging from other reviews, my initial reactions might be on the low end of critical reception. (I’ll post a full review closer to the revival’s November 25 release.) The "comfort food" factor the series always offered is mostly on display, and God knows we could all use a little comfort after a rough 2016.

But to my mind, there’s something fundamental to the appeal of Gilmore Girls — at least for me — that a reboot simply can’t recapture, thanks to how all humans are bound by the constraints of time.

Gilmore Girls is the type of show that doesn’t work well with a "10 years later" setup

Warner Bros. Television

The cast of Gilmore Girls, in the show’s heyday.

The series finale of Gilmore Girls is not how I would have chosen for that show to go out, not least because it wasn’t written by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. But it arrived at the endpoint the series always needed to get to: Gilmore daughter Rory beginning her career in journalism in earnest. (She headed off to cover the presidential campaign of a young senator named Barack Obama.)

As my colleague Constance Grady frequently points out in her ranking of all 153 episodes, Rory spends much of the original series longing to return to her idyllic hometown of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, while realizing that she never can. If she’s going to pursue her dreams, she has to leave her hometown in the rearview mirror. Her first, minor break comes in the pilot, when she is accepted into the private Chilton Academy, and the rest of the series bears witness as she unfurls her wings.

Thus, Gilmore Girls is a bit of an audience insertion fantasy. If you were closer in age to Rory when you watched it (as I was), you could imagine yourself living in a wonderful little small town where everybody was invested in your well-being, occasionally to an annoying degree.

But if you were closer in age to Rory’s mother, Lorelai, the insertion fantasy worked just as well. Here was a little town that would help you raise your kid, where you could find love and friendship around every corner, and where you could find the acceptance you may never have received from your own family. In short, Gilmore Girls is about finding ad hoc families wherever you can — and whether you are parent or child.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, by necessity, can’t really have this. Rory returns to Stars Hollow, yes, but she’s no longer the kid who needs a whole village to be her parent. She’s an adult, with experiences and water under the bridge. At times, it feels like Sherman-Palladino has simply taken the storyline she might have had in mind for Rory in season seven, the one she never got to write (the writer left the show at the end of season six in 2006) and grafted it onto a 10-years-older version of the character. It works sometimes — but it also underlines how hard it is to make this sort of audience insertion TV.

Now, obviously, if you grew up with Rory in some capacity, you, too, may long for an opportunity to return to an idyllic little town when life doesn’t seem to be working out. That aspect of Gilmore Girls’ insertion fantasy is alive and well. But the opposite side — Lorelai’s enjoyment of having a place where she and her kid can be protected and loved — falls a little flat.

This is not to say the new series is bad, or anything close. It’s simply to say that some sorts of shows struggle to adapt to new environments. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life can never be Gilmore Girls — and if you’re a big fan of the latter (as I am), it can be hard to make that adjustment. Some shows are just bound, inextricably, to the time in which they’re made — and by that I don’t mean the year or decade so much as the period in life the show is meant to represent.

Jon Stewart on America’s complexity: “The same country that elected Donald Trump elected Barack Obama”

2016-11-18T12:20:01-05:00

The former Daily Show host offered a measured take on Trump’s win in a new Charlie Rose interview.

After walking away from The Daily Show in August 2015, Jon Stewart popped up throughout the election like the ghost of political comedy past. He haunted his friends’ shows — Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the late Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore — with a newly gray beard and a hangdog expression that seemed equal parts exhausted by the news and relieved that he doesn’t have to cover it daily anymore.

Stewart had just participated in an aggressively silly bit with Colbert the night before the election — but his first public post-election thoughts were decidedly more measured and somber.

Talking to Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning’s November 17 show, Stewart chose his words carefully to describe how he felt after Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. While Rose tried to get him to say he might be afraid in this new reality, Stewart pushed back against the idea that we are now living in a “fundamentally different country” than we were before the election happened.

“The same country, with all its grace, and flaws, and volatility, and strength, and resilience exists today as existed two weeks ago,” Stewart said. “The same country that elected Donald Trump elected Barack Obama.”

Stewart went on to try and parse his feelings not just on how Trump became president-elect, but on how Republicans are now using his win to bolster their own agenda — even though, he said, Trump’s whole campaign was a rejection of their tendency toward governing via gridlock.

“Donald Trump isn’t just a reaction to Democrats but Republicans,” Stewart insisted. “He’s not a Republican. He’s a repudiation of Republicans, but they will reap the benefits of his victory.”

“I will guarantee you,” he continued, “Republicans are going to come to Jesus now about the power of government.”

Stewart also cautioned liberals against turning Trump voters into “a monolith,” or defining them all by the “worst of his rhetoric.” It wasn’t exactly a call to find empathy for Trump voters — which many liberals have called out as usually one-sided — but Stewart did flat-out call casting all Trump supporters as racist “hypocrisy.”

Then again, he said, there’s value in having some of the very real hate and racism that’s come out of this election out in the open. “I would rather have this conversation openly and honestly than in dog whistles,” he said, going on to point out that the country’s history brims over with racism, if you’d only care to look.

Maybe the most revealing part of the interview, though, came when Stewart mused that one thing that’s bothered him throughout this election is that “nobody asked Donald Trump what makes America great.”

Going off his own words, Stewart said, the impression he gets is that Trump believes America is great because “it’s a competition.” In Stewart’s eyes, America is a singular experiment of a “multiethnic democracy” — and Trump’s candidacy may have given breathing room to the idea that such a thing is impossible.

“America is not natural,” Stewart laughed, though grimly. “Natural is tribal. We’re fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history. ... That’s what’s exceptional about America. This ain’t easy.”

And in fact — as he said toward the top of the interview — “this fight has never been easy.”

So, no, this interview wasn’t exactly done in the sputtering “can you believe this shit?!” style Stewart made his signature at The Daily Show. But considering the extraordinary circumstances he was responding to, it makes sense that Stewart might exercise more caution in his response than he might’ve in front of a cheering studio audience.

Watch: It’s up to America’s institutions to check Trump

The US government is finally telling people that homeopathy is a sham

2016-11-18T12:10:01-05:00

Homeopathy is one of the most enduring forms of snake oil available to consumers; it has been duping people since 1814. But the United States government only recently decided to clamp down on these bogus treatments, with a new policy from the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC’s policy statement explains that the agency will now ask that the makers of homeopathic drugs present reliable scientific evidence for their health claims if they want to sell them to consumers on the US market.

Mustering that evidence is likely to be difficult given that homeopathy is a pseudoscience.

The main idea behind homeopathy is that an animal or plant extract that causes symptoms similar to the ones a person is suffering from can cure the symptoms. An example: Because onions make eyes tear and noses run, diluted onion extract is thought to cure cold and hay fever. So homeopathic remedies on the market are just extremely diluted versions of plant or animal extracts believed to bring relief to symptoms.

The trouble is that whenever researchers have looked at the homeopathic treatments, they find they do not actually contain traceable amounts of the original plant or animal material they were supposedly diluting.

The evidence is clear: Homeopathy is a sham

The scientific community is monolithically stacked against homeopathy. There have been many studies, books, and investigations demonstrating that this type of therapy is bogus. There's so much evidence on homeopathy's failure to help people, in fact, that some researchers have argued it’s time to stop investing government research funding on this alternative therapy in favor of putting it into treatments that might actually help people.

The most exhaustive review of the evidence for homeopathy yet came out of the Australian government. Its conclusion: The treatment doesn't work, and people should stop wasting their time, money, and potentially their health on what amounts to junk science.

The Australians found numerous problems with the research on homeopathy. To start, many of the studies were poorly designed: They didn't include enough participants to have meaningful results, or the researchers failed to limit bias and control for confounding factors.

But even the high-quality studies did not find that homeopathy performed better than a placebo or another available treatment for a range of health conditions, including asthma, anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, colds, and ulcers. The studies that reported homeopathy had some health benefit were so flawed and poorly designed that they were unreliable.

This means that not only did homeopathy treatments perform no better than other medicines, but they also failed to outdo sugar pills. This isn't entirely surprising, considering that most homeopathy tablets and potions are essentially sugar pills and drops.

This doesn’t mean homeopathic remedies will disappear

This FTC ruling is definitely a step in the right direction of raising awareness about the lack of evidence behind homeopathy.

"This is a real victory for reason, science, and the health of the American people," said Michael De Dora, public policy director for the Center for Inquiry, a science-based advocacy and education group that’s been pushing for more homeopathy oversight. "The FTC has made the right decision to hold manufacturers accountable for the absolutely baseless assertions they make about homeopathic products."

But it doesn’t mean these "medicines" will disappear from store shelves. The FTC only has the right to crack down on misleading marketing claims, and if the makers of homeopathic remedies clearly state that their products are based on no science, they can still sell them. As the FTC explains:

An [over-the-counter] homeopathic drug claim that is not substantiated by competent and reliable scientific evidence might not be deceptive if the advertisement or label where it appears effectively communicates that: 1) there is no scientific evidence that the product works; and 2) the product’s claims are based only on theories of homeopathy from the 1700s that are not accepted by most modern medical experts.

At that point, it’ll be buyer beware. Let’s just hope consumers are wise enough to read the packaging that will now tell them there’s no evidence behind the health claims on it. But considering homeopathic treatments have been around since the 19th century, they probably won’t disappear anytime soon.

"People like that are the only people here": political science and the new politics of shock

2016-11-18T11:20:01-05:00

As the world of political commentary puzzles over whether the polls were wrong or, as Sean Trende puts it, the pundits were, another question comes to mind: How would this moment be different if the conventional wisdom had not come up so decisively for a Hillary Clinton victory? Are we in a unique new politics of shock?

Immediately available examples of shocking politics are those that came after acts of violence — the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks. These kinds of events challenge how people think about their safety and place in the world, and rearrange priorities. But Donald Trump's election is different because it was a long, slow process that we observed unfolding, and yet it was also shocking.

As I've observed responses to the election, I keep thinking of Lorrie Moore's masterpiece short story, "People like that are the only people here," from her 1998 collection Birds of America. The story is about the children's cancer ward in a hospital, but a major theme of the story is the disbelief of parents who suddenly experience something that challenges everything they thought they knew about how life works.

They observe signs of their son's illness and initially find other causes to which to attribute them. They bargain with an seen interlocutor about how long their son's life will be, agreeing to lose him at 16 in a car crash if only they can keep him for that long. It's a story about sadness and about illness and healing and resilience. It's also a story about reordering not just priorities but fundamental assumptions about what you can expect from the world.

Just as the parents in Moore's story cannot initially take seriously the idea that their infant son has cancer, Trump's presidential bid struck many commentators as a joke. The joke was not so much that it was funny, but that it was absurd. The expectation — articulated many times by the writers on this blog and many other politics sites — was that the political world simply doesn't work that way. Something would protect our standards and values; something would ensure that the nominees for president would have conventional qualifications, respect rhetorical norms, and refrain from demeaning large groups of the population.

How can we — academics and other commentators who were taken aback by last week's result — make sense of it? How do we respond going forward? There are three ideas that I think inform where political scientists (and like-minded thinkers) can draw on our existing values, knowledge bases, and traditions to respond to a shocking, and major, political development.

Forecasts were right, but who cares?

There's good news and bad news here. Political science forecasting models based on the economy and the duration of party incumbency did a pretty good job telling us what the result would likely be, as Seth Masket describes here and as Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Sarah Kliff explained in last week's The Weeds podcast. For all the talk about what the result meant, as Nate Silver points out, not very many votes would need to change for us to be telling a much different story.

So political science did its job, but who cares? The causes of last week's election result are likely not very profound: incumbency, partisanship, and an electorate with some reservations about the Democratic candidate. But the impact of this election is likely to be very profound, for both parties, for the presidency, for American democracy as whole — and, most importantly, for the lives of many individuals who will live with those consequences.

When we asked why this surprised political scientists despite our own models, the question contains the answer. On some level, I think many of us still believed, deep down, in the intuition that candidates and campaigns matter, despite our research that suggests otherwise. This intuition was not wrong; rather, it was misapplied. The candidate and the campaign may not have changed the election result much, but they have already affected politics and society. And that will continue to be the case once the new administration begins.

The regularity of what we observe can conceal the volatility of what we do not observe. Political scientists will need to make new choices about what to study. As University of Illinois Chicago political scientist Alexandra Filindra said on Facebook over the weekend, political science doesn't need coefficients right now; it needs bold ideas.

Democracy is not fast, cheap, or easy

Political scientists are longstanding defenders of political parties. As I wrote last spring, I think we may have lost the battle for elite-centric parties. I haven't changed my mind, but the battle for robust parties now seems more critical than ever.

One of the lessons of this election is that substantive democracy cannot be done on the cheap. The diffusion of ideas through media — social and otherwise — can sustain partisanship, but it cannot sustain parties. Here I want to turn to the ideas that some of my colleagues here at Mischiefs of Faction have carefully research and written, and suggest that we think differently about their implications.

First, no one needs to pile on The Party Decides right now. But I think we do need to think very carefully about the way the theory is constructed. The theory assumes that parties select nominees who are electable and who will pursue the party's policy goals. A tacit assumption of this theory is that candidates who are patently unqualified to govern will not be electable. We now know this is not true.

Much has been said, and will be said, about the limitations of parties in controlling their nominees. This is important. But even more important is what we now know about the gatekeeping role that parties play; they have a responsibility to nominate individuals who can govern and not devolve that choice onto primary or general election voters.

The revitalization of party organizations seems essential at this moment. There's lots of conversation about how we don't really talk to people outside of our bubbles — and this means that people need to start talking across party lines. But we probably don't have enough face-to-face conversations within party lines either.

Practicing party politics — not just partisan politics — would require us to have conversations with those who share our larger vision and values but interpret them differently, or bring different experiences to the discussion. Research on polarization and partisanship that shows new levels of correlation and consistency between different issue positions among partisans tell us that our parties are distinct. But this is more of a starting point than a conclusion; despite these consistencies, partisan politics with weak parties is still centrifugal, diffuse, and subject to collective action problems.

Practicing partisan politics — sharing ideas remotely — contributes to the idea that the main thing is maintaining the purity of ideas. Ideas are not adequate glue to hold parties together. This was most evident for Republicans in the 2016 nomination season. But as Democrats enter a political season that is likely to involve recriminations and divisions, they would also do well to consider collective action.

For those of us who adopt a partisan label, there is no more "they" in party politics. It's time to get involved. And if academics can find the humility to listen to those who have been doing this work, we have a skill set that will be very valuable. We know how to build a slow, long-term project, how to envision the big picture and sustain incremental work over a long period.

Political science is an activist discipline

Many comparable social science disciplines — anthropology, sociology, history — have lefty activist agendas. Such agendas are less central to the mainstream of our discipline. There are some leftists activists, but we are also a discipline of Republicans and Democrats.

More importantly, though, we are a discipline that understands that democracy is complicated and requires institutions and norms. We understand that democracy is about both substance and process, that civil rights and liberties are not negotiable, that respecting outcomes is a necessary but not sufficient condition for democracy to survive. We don't consider ourselves an activist discipline because it has seemed that no activism was necessary to defend these values. We were wrong about many things, but this was perhaps the biggest one.

The title line of Moore's short story is a description of the people in the children's cancer ward — whose behavior seems bizarre to those outside this reluctant community, but who have adjusted to their shocking new reality. For those of us who thought Trump could never be elected, an adjustment is also in order. The source and nature of our shock is important and should inform how we think about politics from here. We need to alter our understanding of the world and our place in it.

This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system. See more Mischiefs of Faction posts here.

What data and polling often miss: how people feel

2016-11-18T11:05:01-05:00

Pollsters are obsessed with traditional demographics to a fault. Should they also study personality?

Ian Warren is sometimes referred to as the “British Nate Silver,” having made a lucrative career out of correctly forecasting election outcomes. And like a lot of people in the business of polling and election prediction, Warren was left feeling distressed by Hillary Clinton’s upset.

“What the fuck just happened?” he wrote on his blog Election Data. “First, the near-miss on Scottish independence, then the [UK] 2015 general election, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, Brexit, Corbyn’s re-election and now Donald Trump’s victory.”

Forecasters like him rely heavily on data, and lots of it. And yet Warren says that in the lead-up to the Brexit referendum, “It was very clear … that no matter what I punched into the model that I was working with, numbers coming back just didn’t match up to what I was feeling in the country.”

Data analysts like Warren usually don’t trust gut feelings. But it may actually be time to turn more feelings into data. His new mission is to study up on behavioral science and use its research methods to make election predictions work again.

The following conversation — conducted over the phone and some follow-up questions over email — has been edited for length and clarity.

Brian Resnick

In your blog posts, you sound pretty despondent. Do you feel like data has failed you and your colleagues?

Ian Warren

My whole political life has been using data. I do predictive modeling. I do demographic analysis. I work for national campaigns, local campaigns. And everything I do, up to this point, has been using numbers, maps, models, statistics, data.

So last year the referendum over here, the Brexit referendum, changed my thinking a little bit about the power of analytics and data.

And the US election has just confirmed this suspicion that I’ve had for a little while that data is not really getting us the complete picture.

Brian Resnick

So where do campaigns and pollsters fail in obtaining this “complete picture”?

Ian Warren

My starting point is with political parties and their analytical teams. They currently include what we know about a person in demographic terms — age, gender, etc. — and their voting history. They use those to identify who they target. They don't include the psychological/behavioral traits of the voters yet.

[Psychological data] is just not being collected … by any of the mainstream political parties — both in the US and in the UK.

In fact, they don’t get anywhere near telling you how that person is feeling and thinking about an election. So none of these emotional and behavioral psychological data points have been collected.

Brian Resnick

But political scientists and political psychologists have been collecting that sort of emotional and psychological data for years. Reports are published all the time. For instance, just before the election, there was a study on how anxiety about demographic change could influence support for Trump.

Ian Warren

My view is that pollsters have ignored psychological research, and mostly for very good reasons. For many of the bigger pollsters, their political arm is a relatively small part of their portfolio. [A lot of the pollsters will do market research for industry clients.] So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, they've operated very well for many years with the models they have always used.

Brian Resnick

What type of questions have pollsters ignored? Can you give an example?

Ian Warren

In the UK [Brexit] referendum, I did a very straightforward questionnaire survey of people in the UK. It was purely about trying to find out their psychological makeup, their behavioral characteristics, and what messages worked with them. What I found was that the people who are most likely to vote for leave were neurotic individuals.

I should emphasize here that I am not a behavioral psychologist; I don’t have a psychology background. So a lot of this is new to me; I'm learning as I go here.

But if you look at the research into neurotic archetypes, they are extremely sensitive to external threats on a number of different levels. And immigration is one example of a threat which they are extremely sensitive to.

It doesn’t have to be a real threat; there don’t have to be hundreds of immigrants coming in to where they live. It can be a perceived threat. But their sensitivity to it is so strong that it overrides every other decision they make in life about politics and about the referendum in particular.

Brian Resnick

What lesson did the psychology survey teach you?

Ian Warren

The [traditional demographic-based] model said one thing, the survey seemed to be saying another. Not universally, but with sufficient wiggle room to say there was potential for a miss, especially in such a close contest. That was when I sat back and did some thinking. Seemed clear to me that people were making emotional decisions sometimes at odds with what a traditional model would predict.

And at the moment all I can tell you is the predictive likelihood of that person voting for X, Y, and Z based on the demographic characteristics. I want to include the behavioral and psychological traits [personality traits like neuroticism, openness, etc.] to see if it makes a difference.

And then what I intend to do is just keep going back to people. If an issue comes to us one day, then I want to see what they feel about that issue emotionally. If they’ve even heard about the issue, if it’s important to them or not. I hope that I will get a picture of which issues resonate, which ones don’t.

Brian Resnick

And campaigns could use that type of psychological data to make better strategic decisions?

Ian Warren

My instinct would be that including that data point in the model would have two effects: a) change the segments targets [of the campaigns] and, b) impact the messaging required to hit those targets.

At least that's my hypothesis.

Brian Resnick

Okay, so that’s on the political strategy side of things. What about in predicting election outcomes? How could behavioral data help there?

Ian Warren

What I'm intending to do is to segment the population into emotional and psychological and behavioral segments — alongside the demographic characteristics of the population.

And then I can run a poll using the psychological segments, and I can run the poll using just raw data. And I can run it with both. And I can compare and contrast how powerful [the psychological data is for predicting] how people are going to vote.

Then I can come back and I can look at 2016 results. I can look at the referendum results, and see if there’s any trend. There might be nothing, I could do all this work and there’s nothing there, right? But I just, I just, I just I’ve felt for about a year and a half now that I'm missing something by just using data.

Brian Resnick

So let’s say the polling is showing one candidate is winning. But then, you find some very strong emotional resonance for the other candidate. Would that strong emotional resonance make you have less faith in the poll? Is that what you’re getting at?

Ian Warren

Yes, that’s what I'm working toward.

Brian Resnick

This reminds me of the debate in the media about the value of on-the-ground reporting. The traditional model was sending a reporter out to middle America to take the pulse of a community. Some would say that’s the best way to find out what the country is feeling. Other people would say it’s too costly and you could just write yourself in anecdotal traps.

And it sounds like what you’d like to do is take that emotional pulse that reporters would try to get and make it methodically rigorous.

Ian Warren

Yes, absolutely, yes. A key thing for me, like a bit of a break-free moment for me because I’ve been in my office for 10 to 15 years just doing models behind my computer screen.

So there’s this big disconnect between what data analysts and political parties believe cuts through and what actually does cut through.

A political science call to action

2016-11-18T11:00:04-05:00

A politically neutral academic discipline is perfectly poised to pass judgment on uncertain political times, but will it?

EDITORIAL: It's time for political science to update its disciplinary norms about public engagement. We can value neutrality, science, and objectivity while passing judgment against actions and proposals that jeopardize democratic institutions. These are not in conflict if we agree on basic values.

About a week before the election, several hundred political scientists signed a petition, I among them, that expressed concern over Donald Trump's actions and proposed actions that violate the most basic values of American democracy. This was a nonpartisan action taken in the interest of preserving the republic. The petition expressed judgment over shared values for the institutions that have most fundamentally contributed to the perseverance of our form of government.

For example, threats to lock up a political opponent violate the due process clause in the Fifth and 14th amendments; encouraging voter suppression and intimidation violates the democratic standard of universal suffrage; questioning the independence of the judiciary threatens the legitimacy of separation of powers and checks and balances; intimidating journalists violates the free speech and free press provisions of the First Amendment; calling for the proliferation of nuclear weapons threatens national security and our position in international treaties.

It's fair to say that a public petition of this sort strays from the norms of our discipline. Political science is based on applying the scientific method to questions and puzzles of politics. We seek evidence to falsify existing ideas, theories, and hypotheses. We use logic and evidence to make discoveries and progress. It is essential for this process that the scientist or observer is neutral, objective, and detached. In the academic discipline, these standards have appropriately translated into strong norms against political position taking of any kind.

And I find these norms to be proper. As a teacher and a scholar, I strive to be politically neutral and as objective as possible in my writing and speaking engagements. To show bias for a candidate, party, or ideology is equivalent to rejecting the objectivity that is the hallmark of scientific examination of questions.

However, it is possible to adhere to the scientific method while simultaneously expressing bias or judgment over particular matters. For example, is it biased for a nutritionist to show that malnutrition is bad? Is it biased for an economist to show that hyperinflation has negative consequences? Is it biased for a doctor to show that high blood pressure and high cholesterol lead to increased risk of heart disease? Perhaps so. Such statements express bias and a preference for a particular outcome.

When nutritionists, economists, or medical doctors express a normative judgment, they do so based on common values for human growth, broad economic health, and individual health. Political scientists may also have common values on which we can agree. It would be appropriate to make observations and express judgment when it appears political actors or institutions are violating those values.

There may not be widespread agreement about which policies to adopt in order to maintain civil liberties, civil rights, rule of law, national security, or economic prosperity. But I suspect most political scientists agree that constitutional, republican democracy in America is valuable. And if we agree that preservation of this form of government is a common value, then it is also appropriate to speak, write, and vocally object to actions or proposed actions that jeopardize the integrity of the institutions that support our favored form of government.

It is nonpartisan to judge actions, real and proposed, that would result in violations of the Constitution and the rule of law. To be fair, these judgments are not always straightforward. As Dara Lind explains, even a proposed registry of Muslims can be implemented in ways that may not violate the current rule of law or Constitution, despite the headline policy sounding rather totalitarian.

Unfortunately, the political actors in our current politics who have made proposals that threaten democratic norms and institutions are primarily in one political party. Therefore, voicing objection to radical policies may make many political scientists feel uncomfortable because it appears to be a partisan act. However, it behooves us to make the observation that policies, such as internment camps, are violations of the Constitution (in the form of denying due process).

It may show a lack of neutrality to publicly express opposition to proposed policies that violate the Constitution, and the disciplinary norms in favor of neutrality may seem in conflict with such public opposition; however, if we agree on common values associated with the preservation of democracy, then we can also agree that it is appropriate to be vocal about violations of the institutions that have contributed to the preservation of democracy.

Furthermore, it is our responsibility to do so. For we are the scholars who most lucidly understand the relationships between institutions, behaviors, and policy outcomes, and who can most clearly articulate how threats to disruptions in existing institutions may threaten the persistence of democracy.

So how do we maintain our credibility as a scientific discipline while engaging in the public sphere in a way that shows normative judgment? I have some advice:

A political scientist's guide to responsible public action:

When you observe or learn about proposals or actions that represent threats to democratic institutions or that violate the Constitution, point it out in public.

Write, speak, and post in a variety of venues in a way that uses the research and literature in our field to demonstrate the consequences of proposals that threaten basic institutions.
Be specific and matter-of-fact about how actions or proposals may weaken or violate basic American values and democratic norms.
Focus on the agreed upon values of American democracy (e.g., civil liberties, civil rights, due process, respect for the rule of law) rather than on partisan or ideological components of actions and proposals.
Engage with the media, public, and one another, on these matters; seek venues that provide broad exposure rather than speaking to a disciplinary audience, as is typical.
Focus on evidence-based and theoretically rigorous findings that shed light on, or provide appropriate context to, current events.

By being objective and scientific, we remain neutral, while showing how actions and proposals violate or threaten basic democratic institutions. Articulating and elucidating the public on these points is not only consistent with our academic mission; it is our responsibility.

This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system. See more Mischiefs of Faction posts here.

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