When Trump won the 2016 election—while losing the popular vote—the New York Times seemed obsessed with running features about what Trump voters were feeling and thinking. These pieces treated them as both an exotic species and people it was our job to understand, understand being that word that means both to comprehend and to grant some sort of indulgence to. Now that Trump has lost the 2020 election, the Los Angeles Times has given their editorial page over to letters from Trump voters, who had exactly the sort of predictable things to say we have been hearing for far more than four years, thanks to the New York Times and what came to seem like about 11,000 other news outlets hanging on the every word of every white supremacist they could convince to go on the record. The letters editor headed this section with, “In my decade editing this page, there has never been a period when quarreling readers have seemed so implacably at odds with each other, as if they get their facts and values from different universes. As one small attempt to bridge the divide, we are providing today a page full of letters from Trump supporters.” The implication is the usual one: we—urban multiethnic liberal-to-radical only-partly-Christian America—need to spend more time understanding MAGA America. The demands do not go the other way. Fox and Ted Cruz and the Federalist have not chastised their audiences, I feel pretty confident, with urgings to enter into discourse with, say, Black Lives Matter activists, rabbis, imams, abortion providers, undocumented valedictorians, or tenured lesbians. When only half the divide is being tasked with making the peace, there is no peace to be made, but there is a unilateral surrender on offer. We are told to consider this bipartisanship, but the very word means both sides abandon their partisanship, and Mitch McConnell and company have absolutely no interest in doing that. Paul Waldman wrote a valuable column in the Washington Post a few years ago, in which he pointed out that this discord is valuable fuel to right-wing operatives: “The assumption is that if Democrats simply choose to deploy this powerful tool of respect, then minds will be changed and votes will follow. This belief, widespread though it may be, is stunningly naive.” He notes that the sense of being disrespected “doesn’t come from the policies advocated by the Democratic Party, and it doesn’t come from the things Democratic politicians say. Where does it come from? An entire industry that’s devoted to convincing white people that liberal elitists look down on them. The right has a gigantic media apparatus that is devoted to convincing people that liberals disrespect them, plus a political party whose leaders all understand that that idea is key to their political project and so join in the chorus at every opportunity.” There’s also often a devil’s bargain buried in all this, that you flatter and, yeah, respect these white people who think this country is theirs by throwing other people under the bus—by disrespecting immigrants and queer people and feminists and their rights and views. And you reinforce that constituency’s sense that they matter more than other people when you pander like this, and pretty much all the problems we’ve faced over the past four years, to say nothing of the last five hundred, come from this sense of white people being more important than nonwhites, Christians than non-Christians, native-born than immigrant, male than female, straight than queer, cis-gender than trans.

The science left a sliver of doubt when the question went viral earlier this year, so I decided to run one final experiment

Here’s the problem: the townships and precincts listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 of the affidavit are not in Michigan. They are in Minnesota. Monticello, Albertville, Lake Lillian, Houston, Brownsville, Runeberg, Wolf Lake, Height of Land, Detroit Lakes, Frazee, Kandiyohi–these are all towns in Minnesota. I haven’t checked them all, but I checked a lot of them, and all locations listed in paragraphs 11 and 17 that I looked up are in Minnesota, with no corresponding township in Michigan. This would have been obvious to someone from this state, but Mr. Ramsland is a Texan and the lawyers are probably not natives of either Minnesota or Michigan.

The embattled royal’s friendship with financier David Rowland lent cachet to Banque Havilland.

The living legend on his life, legacy, and Motown.

At first, President Donald Trump's refusal to concede an election he clearly lost appeared to many of his allies a temporary stage of grief. Give it a few days, some shrugged. A week, tops. Now, thirteen days have passed since Joe Biden was declared the President-elect.

I’ve always been very partial to the whole genre of Moog music. Late 60s and early 70s Moog records sound like white molded plastic chairs look. Fifty years on and those albums still sound futuristic. And totally artificial. To my mind, the sound of analog synthesizers make the perfect soundtrack for one’s aesthetic life, or at least mine. No really, if I go into a record store that has a selection of vintage Moog and exotica albums, I’m drawn to that first. It’s not like there’s many Moog albums I don’t already have,but hope springs eternal that I will find a “Switched On” something or other that I didn’t know existed. My Moog bonafides are deep. Given an opportunity to do a compilation via Sony 20 years ago, I pitched a CD titled Best of Moog and they went for it. (Sadly six of what I considered absolute must-have key...

by Erin Brockovich The president-elect has tapped a former DuPont consultant to join his Environmental Protection Agency transition board

Rudy Giuliani started quoting My Cousin Vinny at a press conference today as hair dye leaked through his sweat, forcing the film's director to respond.

What is Barack Obama Book? As Nelson tweeted, it’s not a book, exactly. It’s an SEO ploy by a shadowy company that has scores of $2.99 knockoffs ready to be downloaded, from quickie biographies of au courant figures like Obama, Harris, and Dolly Parton, to obvious bestseller ripoffs like Caste: A Brief History and Ready Player 3, 2, 1: A Brief History (?). But it’s also not not a book, in the sense that it is words on pages, bound by covers or delivered to your Kindle. I know, because I read every word on every page of Barack Obama Book. It took about 20 minutes. I don’t think Barack Obama Book was written by a human being, but I do think the AI that excreted it made some decent points about Barack Obama.

Following a review of engineering assessments that found damage to the Arecibo Observatory cannot be stabilized without risk to construction workers and staff at the facility, the U.S. National Science Foundation will begin plans to decommission the 305-meter telescope, which for 57 years has served as a world-class resource for radio astronomy, planetary, solar system and geospace research. The decision comes after NSF evaluated multiple assessments by independent engineering companies that found the telescope structure is in danger of a catastrophic failure and its cables may no longer be capable of carrying the loads they were designed to support. Furthermore, several assessments stated that any attempts at repairs could put workers in potentially life-threatening danger. Even in the event of repairs going forward, engineers found that the structure would likely present long-term stability issues. "NSF prioritizes the safety of workers, Arecibo Observatory’s staff and visitors, which makes this decision necessary, although unfortunate," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "For nearly six decades, the Arecibo Observatory has served as a beacon for breakthrough science and what a partnership with a community can look like. While this is a profound change, we will be looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain that strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico."

The need for strong, independent local journalism is more urgent than ever. However, the economic downturn caused by COVID-19 continues to makethis a very challenging time. Please support the city we loveby joining Friends of Willamette Week.

About halfway through her Election Night shift at DJ’s Dugout, an Omaha-area sports bar, Karina Montanez looked up to see Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts smiling and laughing with a group of half a dozen women. Just one person was wearing a mask—and it wasn’t the governor, who six days later would be forced to quarantine after, he said, he was exposed to the virus at a small, outdoor dinner party. So Montanez took out her phone and started recording. At one point in the video, Ricketts—a Republican who furiously resisted a coronavirus lockdown last spring and has steadfastly refused to issue a mask mandate since—wipes his nose before reaching over and taking an infant from one of the women. “I was completely disgusted,” Montanez told The Daily Beast, referring to the moment with the infant. She later uploaded the clip to her personal Twitter account. “I have medical conditions that cause me to be high risk if I were to get COVID,” Montanez told The Daily Beast. “So seeing Ricketts come in like he was a celebrity really rubbed me the wrong way… I don’t understand why it’s so hard for him to understand what he’s doing is hypocrisy and puts everyone at risk.” But this stance had severe repercussions for the server. On Tuesday afternoon, Montanez said, her manager called her and told her upper management had seen the video and asked that she be fired. Montanez, who is a single mom, said the job, which she’s had for over two years, was her only source of income.

Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, has privately hinted that President Trump would drop his objection to stripping Confederate leaders’ names from military bases, which is threatening to derail the annual military policy bill, if Democrats agreed to repeal an important legal shield for social media companies. Mr. Trump has threatened to veto the legislation, which authorizes pay raises for American troops, if it contains the base-renaming requirement, which drew bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Mr. Meadows, according to the people, said that adding a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, considered the most consequential law governing speech on the internet, would help.

A lawsuit filed this week by a deceased Tyson employee's son claims managers at the business had bet money on how many employees would test positive for COVID-19. The company responded to the accusations Thursday, saying the employees allegedly involved have been suspended without pay and the company has hired a legal team to conduct an investigation. Isidro Fernandez was an employee at Tyson Foods' Waterloo facility. He died from COVID-19 complications on April 26. The lawsuit claims "fraudulent misrepresentations, gross negligence and incorrigible, willful and wanton disregard for worker safety." The defendants include Tyson Foods, Chairman John Tyson, CEO Noel White, President Dean Banks, President Stephen Stouffer, Vice President Tom Brower, Manager Tom Hart, Safety Lead Bret Tapken, and Managers Cody Brustkern and John Casey. Court records show that Sheriff Thompson advised the company to shut down the Tyson plant in Waterloo, but they didn't. Thompson said that the working conditions "shook him to the core" at the Waterloo facility, according to the documents.

Madison Cawthorn is 25, far right, and already plagued with allegations of racism and sexual misconduct. And he’s headed to Congress.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday announced that the State Department will ban funding for any organization it determines participates in the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, labeling such activity as anti-Semitic. The announcement was expected for several weeks and had earlier drawn pushback from civil and human rights groups that warned the effort politicized the fight against anti-Semitism and could delegitimize the work human rights organizations conduct around the world. The secretary made the announcement alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while on travel in Jerusalem and said the State Department would work quickly to identify and label organizations it views are anti-Semitic.

Nearly 2,000 communities in the U.S. and elsewhere encourage landlords to evict or exclude tenants who have had some interaction with law enforcement. [...] Some cities have taken a strict approach, adopting laws requiring the eviction of tenants accused of breaking the law. Others provide police training for landlords on criminal background checks and anticrime lease provisions.

resident Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on Thursday dropped an election-related lawsuit in Michigan, the latest development in the multi-state effort to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s projected electoral victory. In a court filing, a lawyer for the Trump campaign said the lawsuit, which had sought to stop the certification of ballots in Wayne County, Michigan, was being withdrawn because the county’s board of canvassers “met and declined to certify the results of the presidential election.” But that statement is false: The board voted to certify the results, after an outcry over Republican members who initially voted not to certify. Those two GOP members now say they want to rescind their votes. But state officials say that is not possible, and that the certification is official.

The White House drew criticism from a prominent Jewish group on Wednesday, a day after it appointed a speechwriter it fired for attending a gathering with white nationalists to a commission that helps preserve sites related to the Holocaust. Darren Beattie, who was fired in 2018, was appointed to the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad for a three-year term that will last into the next administration. Mr. Beattie’s dismissal followed the revelation that two years earlier he had appeared on a panel with Peter Brimelow, the founder of the anti-immigrant site VDare, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled a “hate website.” The commission, founded in 1985, is tasked with identifying and preserving cemeteries and historic buildings in Europe, including sites used to kill primarily Jews during the Holocaust. Mr. Beattie’s appointment was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League. “It is absolutely outrageous that someone who has consorted with racists would even be considered for a position on a commission devoted to preserving Holocaust memorials in Europe,” said the group’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt. “We urge the administration to rescind his appointment immediately.” Asked for comment, Mr. Beattie said of the group: “The ADL pretends to be an organization that protects Jews, but it really exists to protect Democrats. As a Jewish Trump supporter, I consider it an honor to be attacked by the far-left ADL and its disgraced leader, Jonathan Greenblatt.” A White House spokesman declined to comment. Mr. Beattie’s dismissal from the White House followed years of criticism that the Trump administration has fostered anti-immigrant sentiment and ties to white nationalists.