A tweet four hours ago.

And one hour ago.

Ok but why?

… according to Sarah Posner, the author of Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Donald Trump, Falwell’s influence has been overestimated.

“His fall does not change anything. Trump has built relationships with the evangelical base and the religious right leadership in Washington, and they see him as their saviour – God’s hand is on him, he has come to save America at this critical juncture,” she said.

But why? Why? Even if you accept the God thing and the hand thing and the saving thing, why would God put the hand on Trump? Of all people? As some kind of sadistic joke? Because that’s about the only way it makes any sense.

Why wouldn’t god put the hand on a good person?

What can possibly be the point of a god putting the hand on a monster of selfishness and cruelty and sheer vulgarity like Trump? I can certainly see a point to putting the hand on someone outwardly insignificant or even repellent, but I fail to see the point of doing it to someone who is evil and monstrous in every way and all the way down.

Also he’s filthy rich, also he’s filthy rich via corruption and theft and not paying workers, so…? What’s the lesson here?

I know, there’s some perverse prodigal son type formula according to which the worse he is the bigger the redemption or some such shit, but I spit on it. At that rate god’s hand must have been on Hitler and Stalin, so I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

Pompeo is evil.

News from Congress, where the House foreign affairs committee has announced the opening of contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s secretary of state who, as it happens, gave a hugely controversial speech to the Republican national convention from Israel on Wednesday night.

The battle between the Democratic-controlled committee and Pompeo is a long one, as the secretary of state refuses to co-operate with the panel as it investigates his conduct in office, including regarding administration approaches to Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, the approaches which led to Trump’s impeachment.

He has no right to refuse. It’s outrageoous.

In a statement, committee chair Eliot Engel said: “From Mr Pompeo’s refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry to his willingness to bolster a Senate Republican-led smear against the president’s political rivals to his speech to the RNC which defied his own guidance and possibly the law, he has demonstrated alarming disregard for the laws and rules governing his own conduct and for the tools the constitution provides to prevent government corruption.

“He seems to think the office he holds, the Department he runs, the personnel he oversees, and the taxpayer dollars that pay for all of it are there for his personal and political benefit.”

Just like Trump.

Pompeo doesn’t care.

There is a general sense among former foreign service officials that the secretary of state, who was a stickler for congressional oversight when he was in the House of Representatives, does not care about it at all, and is increasingly focused on a presidential run in 2024.

Rori Kramer, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the bureau of legislative affairs, said of Engel’s announcement: “That’s wonderful but there’s not as much teeth as there used to be with congressional oversight.

“It’s really shocking. Four years ago, it would have been completely bizarro Twilight Zone that Congress could subpoena you and hold you in contempt, and the answer of the administration would be: I don’t care.

“The people who work for the people who say we don’t care about oversight and then his senior leadership and/or political appointees also don’t follow the rules and then authoritarian dictators and other countries also see that, and continue not to follow the rules. And it’s a race to the bottom.”

Evil in all directions.

The Guardian reports on Rowling v Kennedy more reasonably than it usually reports on trans issues, but it still can’t keep its thumb entirely off the scale.

JK Rowling is returning the Ripple of Hope award given to her last year by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) organisation after its president, Kennedy’s daughter, criticised her views on transgender issues.

The award, which is for people who have shown a “commitment to social change”, was presented to Rowling in December for her work with her children’s charity, Lumos…

But earlier this month, Kerry Kennedy, a lawyer and president of RFKHR, put out a statement describing her “dismay” over what “deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements” made by the Harry Potter author.

In early June, the author wrote a series of comments on Twitter laying out her views on gender identity, including one that said: “If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.” These comments were condemned by LGBT charities, as well as several actors who have worked in the Harry Potter franchise. Rowling then wrote a highly personal essay revealing her experience of domestic abuse and sexual assault, in which she argued that trans women who have not undergone hormone therapy or surgical transition should not have access to single-sex spaces.

See? There’s the thumb on the scale. “These comments were condemned by LGBT charities” and so on – but they were welcomed by others. But the Guardian somehow can’t be bothered to mention that.

However they do then quote Rowling’s response to Kennedy for four paragraphs, giving her the last word, so…they’re improving. It’s quite possible that this is because of Rowling.

People on Twitter are praising Rowling’s integrity and courage for returning the RFK award after Kerry Kennedy saw fit to issue a statement calling her transphobic.

I think Rowling has bags of integrity and courage but I don’t think integrity and courage were required to return that award in the circumstances. I think the difficulty was in not telling Kerry Kennedy that she should have the award dropped on her from a great height.

Or maybe that’s just me.

But I doubt it. I think when people publicly call you an evil person, on grounds that you know to be deeply mistaken and deluded and in fact destructive, it doesn’t take a whole lot of will power or integrity or courage to tell them to go fuck themselves.

A new consignment of evil crap. Kerry Kennedy is president of a human rights outfit named after her father Robert Kennedy, the nepotistic Attorney General in his brother’s administration. Earlier this month she issued A Statement on…JK Rowling. You know what it says.

Writer J.K. Rowling is best known as the author of the Harry Potter books. In 2005, she founded Lumos, an international nonprofit NGO with a mission to move children worldwide out of orphanages and institutions and into loving family care by 2050. For her dedicated work on behalf of children, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award in December 2019.

But! But, sisters and brothers – she committed wrongthink! She must be SHUNNED. She must be shunned especially by anyone who has made the mistake of bestowing an honor on her in the past.

So Kerry Kennedy proceeds to talk shit about JK Rowling.

Over the course of June 2020—LGBTQ Pride Month—and much to my dismay, J.K. Rowling posted deeply troubling transphobic tweets and statements… Almost a week later, she wrote a series of tweets that had the effect of degrading trans people’s lived experiences…I have spoken with J.K. Rowling to express my profound disappointment that she has chosen to use her remarkable gifts to create a narrative that diminishes the identity of trans and nonbinary people, undermining the validity and integrity of the entire transgender community—one that disproportionately suffers from violence, discrimination, harassment, and exclusion and, as a result, experiences high rates of suicide, suicide attempts, homelessness, and mental and bodily harm

And much more in the same stale mindless formulaic vein.

So naturally Rowling had no choice but to give the medal and award back. She too issued a statement.

Kerry Kennedy, President of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, recently felt it necessary to publish a statement denouncing my views on RFKHR’s website.  The statement incorrectly implied that I was transphobic, and that I am responsible for harm to trans people.  As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans people’s right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community.

…

RFKHR has stated that there is no conflict between the current radical trans rights movement and the rights of women. The thousands of women who’ve got in touch with me disagree, and, like me, believe this clash of rights can only be resolved if more nuance is permitted in the debate.

In solidarity with those who have contacted me but who are struggling to make their voices heard, and because of the very serious conflict of views between myself and RFKHR, I feel I have no option but to return the Ripple of Hope Award bestowed upon me last year.  I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience.

What an absolutely filthy thing for Kennedy to do.

The White House is plastered with campaign signs at this moment.

Via Jane Clare Jones, a truly fancy piece of academic thinkery.

The Trans*-Ness of Blackness, the Blackness of Trans*-Ness

The essay thinks radically differently about the concepts of black and trans*. Trans* and black thus denote poetic, para-ontological forces that are only tangentially, and ultimately arbitrarily, related to bodies said to be black or transgender. That is to say, they are differently inflected names for an an original lawlessness that marks an escape from confinement and a besidedness to ontology. Manifesting in the modern world differently as race and gender fugitivity, black and trans*, though pointed at by bodies that identify as black or trans*, precede and provide the foundational condition for those fugitive identificatory demarcations. The author seeks to demonstrate the ways in which trans* is black and black is trans*. In what ways, and to what extent, is there a “blackness” present within “trans*-ness,” and vice versa? What is the effect of these analytics? This essay hopes to address these questions but also leave them suspended in black/trans* liminality.

Para-ontological, you see – that means no one can say it’s bullshit, or wrong, or badly argued, or evidence-free, or a joke. It’s para-ontological, you unsophisticated fools.

These here “poetic, para-ontological forces” are only tangentially and arbitrarily related to bodies said to be black or transgender, which also means that no one can say this is a crock of shit. This is how you do scholarship: you say it’s nonsense right at the outset but you say it in pseudo-academic language, and if the journal is fatuous enough to take that at face value, hey presto! You can just blather for 20 pages and the job is done.

… they are differently inflected names for an an original lawlessness that marks an escape from confinement and a besidedness to ontology.

We’ve got lawlessness here! We’re escaping confinement! We’re settling down beside ontology.

I especially love the final sentence.

This essay hopes to address these questions but also leave them suspended in black/trans* liminality.

Aw yeah don’t we all. This piece of writing hopes to say something true and interesting, but in case it fails, it also wants to dangle over an abyss of whatwhatwhatwhat?

Fox takes the next step:

Amid a quasi-fascist rant Wednesday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson responded to murder charges against a pro-Trump teenager who crossed state lines and shot to death two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by asking, “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Several other Fox personalities have similarly downplayed or seemingly excused the deadly Tuesday night confrontation. 

Carlson says it:

Fox’s turn toward advocating violent right-wing vigilantism is a horrifying but natural evolution for the network. Its personalities have spent the last several months recklessly issuing dire warnings to their viewers, telling them that their lives are in jeopardy from racial justice protesters and that the Democratic leaders of cities facing civil unrest are refusing to protect them. This fearmongering has repeatedly inspired President Donald Trump, an avid Fox viewer, to dump more fuel on the fires.

Trump is an avid Fox viewer to the exclusion of everything else. Fox is his only source, his only entertainment, his only daily briefing, his only education, his only “information.” His ignorance is infinite, and all there is other than the void, is Fox.

That’s bad.

Throughout this period, Fox has been laser-focused on finding instances of violence, blaming them on the protesters, and castigating Democratic mayors and governors for failing to stop them. The network has bombarded its viewers — including the president — with images of burning buildings and civil unrest. At times using weeks-old footage and other misinformation tactics, Fox personalities have inflated the scope of the damage to depict a nation on the brink, denouncing the supposed threat posed by “antifa” agitators, Black Lives Matter activists, and statue-toppling vigilantes — even demanding that violent protesters be treated as “domestic terrorists.” And they have sought to use that demagoguery to shore up Trump’s faltering campaign, warning that civilization itself will be on the ballot in November.

…

The president, whose administration is heavily influenced by Carlson’s show, has been watching. He has triggered escalating violence by trying to push Fox’s narratives for his own political benefit, first with angry Fox live tweets lashing out at protesters and the Democratic officeholders he claimed were coddling them, then with a speech at Mount Rushmore attacking “the violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats,” and finally with a “law and order” strategy that went around those officeholders by sending heavily armed federal paramilitaries into an American city. 

We’re being governed by the corpse of Rupert Murdoch.

Speaking of clueless privilege and entitlement and disdain for everyone not-self – Jared Kushner steps up.

Jared Kushner, the son of a billionaire whose only professional achievements have been handed to him by members of his family, has taken a bold swipe at NBA players for their wealth and privilege. In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box Thursday morning, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser was asked about NBA players’ decision to boycott playoff games in protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. “The NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially,” said Kushner, whose family wealth has been estimated at well over $1.5 billion. “They have that luxury, so that’s great.”

This is Jared Kushner talking – a guy who, as the Daily Beast points out, has no perceptible talents or skills or accomplishments or intelligence, sneering at people who do. This is colossal nepotist and grifter Jared Kushner, bad landlord, calling other people “very fortunate” to be able to make a political statement.

Man opens up about using woman as baby-gestating machine during COVID-19: ‘different hiccups.’

Sweet touching photo of baby-wanting couple:

Awww, one daddy is cuddling other daddy’s non-existent bump, how sweet.

Lance Bass has shared a heartbreaking update about his road to fatherhood with husband Michael Turchin, noting that it’s been a journey full of setbacks. 

“We’re two-and-a-half-years in and we keep running into a lot of different hiccups,” Bass told TooFab last week. While the pair have embryos “ready to go”, the coronavirus pandemic has made their search for a surrogate more difficult.

Their search for a what? Oh they mean their search for a woman to spend nine months gestating their baby for them and then x number of hours pushing it painfully out of her body. They mean a living breathing thinking feeling human being, not a 3-D printer.

“Unfortunately, we just lost our surrogate that we’ve had for over two years,” he said. “And so now, now begins the process of finding a replacement surrogate, which is hard … because a lot of surrogates really don’t want to get pregnant during a time like this.”

Selfish bitches. Why aren’t women rushing to do this tiny favor for this nice caring generous man who refers to them as “surrogates” as one might refer to toasters or immersion blenders?

In March, the couple’s surrogate experienced a miscarriage at eight weeks. It followed nine rounds of IVF.

That is, a woman who was gestating a baby for this entitled pair but who does not belong to them had a miscarriage. She’s not “the couple’s surrogate,” she’s a human being who belongs to herself. If you find yourself talking about people this way it’s a sign that you’re dehumanizing them.

Despite experiencing “way more downs than ups” on their journey to parenthood, Bass said it’s brought the couple, who married in 2014, closer together.”

It puts you on this different level of relationship — it’s beyond being in love with him; you’re this partner now, and you’re creating this life that now it’s no longer about yourselves, it’s no longer about you as a couple. It’s about someone else.”

Except that you’re not. You’re not “creating this life.” It’s the woman who is doing that, the woman you refer to as “the surrogate.”

There’s just no end to the ways men will belittle and ignore and exploit women.

Why did Melania Trump wear that thing?

Trump is loving his new Covid advisor.

Dr. Scott Atlas warns against coronavirus overreaction and hysteria, pushes for the reopening of schools and sports leagues, and downplays the need for broader testing to root out the virus.

Don’t be hysterical, it will be fabulous to reopen everything, shut up about testing. What could go wrong?

With the virus showing no sign of letting up — the U.S. has recorded roughly 5.4 million Covid-19 cases and 170,000 deaths — and with less than three months to go in an uphill reelection battle, the president is betting that a telegenic physician with a positive outlook, but no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology, can change his fortunes.

And his fortunes are the important thing. Not ours – not anyone else’s at all – just his.

Where school superintendents and football conference officials see a risk of the virus’ spread this fall, Atlas cautions against too-strict measures. During Fox News appearances, he has downplayed the need for students to wear face coverings or practice social distancing if schools do reopen.

“It is proven children have no significant risk,” he said during a July 15 TV appearance. It’s a line that Trump has parroted but that hasn’t been borne out in districts where in-person learning has resumed: Schools in Georgia, North Carolina and Indiana have had to shut down shortly after starting the year because of positive cases.

Also remember the “no expertise in infectious diseases or epidemiology” part – that’s important.

In private meetings at the White House, Atlas has irritated other aides by arguing against expanded Covid-19 testing. He opposed a proposal championed by Dr. Deborah Birx, the response coordinator for the White House coronavirus task force, to scale up home testing through methods such as saliva tests. And recently, in a task force meeting, he told Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, that science does not definitively support government mandates on wearing masks.

Critics, including other conservatives and health officials, say he is shading science and facts with a partisan lens to elevate himself and gain power in Republican circles.

…

Atlas first came to the attention of the Trump administration the way it finds so many top officials: through his appearances on Fox News. His comments on the coronavirus lockdown and the need to reopen the economy and schools caught the attention of the president and several top aides, including Jared Kushner, according to a second senior administration official.

Excellent system for finding the best people.

Atlas frequently questions or spars with other administration officials about data on the spread of the virus, or the efficacy of the government’s requiring people to wear masks, or the merits of broadening testing among the wider population — all of which other health professionals consider key planks in combating the virus, a sort of Pandemic 101.

Meanwhile –

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its COVID-19 testing guidelines this week to exclude people without symptoms of coronavirus, even if they’ve recently been in contact with infected individuals. Studies, meanwhile, find nearly half of infections are from asymptomatic transmissions.

That’s insane. It reads like a response to Trump’s idiotic yelps that if we tested less we wouldn’t have so many cases. And guess who wasn’t there at the time.

Amid reports that the sudden change in guidelines came from the “top” of the Trump administration, CNN reported on Wednesday that top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci was incapacitated when the decision was made.

“He said, ‘I was under general anesthesia in the operating room,’” CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said, reading comments from Fauci, who had surgery last week to remove a polyp on his vocal cord. “‘Last Thursday was not part of any discussion or deliberation regarding these new testing recommendations… I’m concerned about the interpretation of these recommendations. I’m worried it will give people the incorrect assumption that asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact, it is.’”

He also said he didn’t think it was a sneaky trick, but I’m gonna disagree with him on that one.

On Wednesday, The New York Times and CNN reported that “pressure” for the change to the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines came from top officials of the Trump administration.

No shit – Trump’s only been screaming about it for months.

In a statement issued Wednesday evening, HHS said the guidelines had been updated “to reflect current evidence and best public health practices, and to further emphasize using CDC-approved prevention strategies to protect yourself, your family, and the most vulnerable of all ages.”

Blah blah blah but we don’t belieeeeeeeeeeeve you.

This happened.

It’s just moronic. What can possibly be the point in trying to shout people into making a particular gesture?

Maybe what was in her was an awareness of the difference between solidarity and bullying. The joke is she is one of them, but she didn’t love the bullying.

So that went well.

Oh gee whaddya know.

On Monday morning, members of the Yale Law School faculty received a terse message from their provost informing them that Professor Jed Rubenfeld “will leave his position as a member of the YLS faculty for a two-year period, effective immediately,” and that upon his return, Rubenfeld would be barred from teaching “small group or required courses. He will be restricted in social gatherings with students.” As of Tuesday morning, he was no longer listed on the Yale Law faculty site.

Why? A pattern of sexual harassment. He denies it. Yale says it did in fact look into the matter as opposed to just making it up.

Multiple women told me that a whisper network about Rubenfeld operated on campus, and that as law-school students, they were warned by peers to be careful around him. One said she was told by a male alum, “You’ve not scraped the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Rubenfeld’s behavior. Stay away.”

Sounds familiar. Sounds like Michael Shermer and Lawrence Krauss.

Rubenfeld is married to fellow Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and both wield power in the high-stakes race for judicial clerkships. In the summer of 2018, it was Chua who took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to vouch for then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “mentor for young lawyers, particularly women.” (That was before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh were made public.) The op-ed noted that the couple’s daughter had been about to clerk for Kavanaugh on the appeals court, and a year later, the Supreme Court acknowledged Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld would clerk for Justice Kavanaugh on the Court instead.

Ohhhh that guy.

Female students also said that Rubenfeld and Chua discussed with students hoping to work for Kavanaugh the importance of their physical appearance. Chua denied telling students that Kavanaugh preferred attractive female clerks or coaching them on how to dress in “outgoing” fashion for interviews, though a Slate story subsequently reported it had “confirmed the Guardian’s reporting with students who were present at the time.”

Fun couple.

H/t Screechy Monkey

And another thing.

Who is Tom Barringer? Besides chair of Queen Mary’s Staff LGBTQ+ Network? JL told us more about him at Glinner.co last September:

Why do so many left-wing men hate women in general, and left-wing women in particular?

This week, feminist campaign group, Woman’s Place UK, held a meeting in Brighton to coincide with the Labour Party Conference.

…

This meeting was disrupted by a mob which gathered outside the venue. The protesters, some of them masked, intimidated attendees by crowding and shouting at them and, in some cases, hurling projectiles. They then hammered on the windows and shouted abuse for the duration of the event.

We remember.

The day after the WPUK meeting, Tom Barringer of Tottenham CLP strode to the conference podium not, as one might hope, to decry the thuggish tactics of those disrupting a feminist meeting with such aggression and scant regard for democracy, but to condemn the meeting itself.

And here he is doing it, with much righteous venom. He’s a horror.

We do believe in magic, we do we do we do believe in magic. Yes we’re a university, yes we’re a university in the 21st century not the 12th, but we do believe in magic.

Also we recognize that witches are witches, wizards are wizards, and demons exist.

Sarcasm aside, they sound as if they’re being held captive by angry men with guns. “Recite the formula or we pull the trigger.” There’s no thought in that statement, no explanation, no argument – there’s not even any new wording. It’s a literal formula, as rigid as the catechism, and as meaningless. We “recognize” these claims that are not true. We “recognize” that men are women if they say so. We “recognize” that “non-binary people” exist – but we have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. Also we know we have to use the phrases “trans people’s identities,” “significant harm,” and “an already marginalised community.” We know that if we don’t the bullets will fly.

What is an actual university doing issuing idiotic “statements” of this kind? It’s embarrassing as well as destructive.

It turns out that nobody cares about ethics in government.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday dismissed accusations that Trump administration officials violated federal law by speaking at the Republican National Convention, arguing that critics have overstretched the bounds of the Hatch Act.

…

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares. They expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” he continued. “So listen, this is a lot of hoopla that’s being made about things, mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

The issue isn’t “promoting political values.” The issue is exploiting a government job to promote a party candidate.

Trump administration officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Economic Director Larry Kudlow and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, have come under scrutiny for accepting speaking roles at the RNC, positions which critics claim violate federal law banning most executive branch employees from political activity. The White House has largely ignored those concerns.

Because the White House is in the hands of Trump who is an outright criminal as well as a dedicated sleaze.

Pompeo’s speech, delivered from Jerusalem during an official trip to the Middle East by the secretary, has been the subject of particular criticism. Pompeo has insisted that his speech was delivered in his personal capacity and on his own time, away from his official duties as the nation’s top diplomat. But critics have complained that the secretary’s speech came while he was on taxpayer-funded official travel and that it broke with State Department guidance barring employees from publicly backing political candidates.

The claim is ludicrous, insultingly so. He wasn’t there on his own time and away from professional duties. He was there as Secretary of State, on our dime. He can make the “timeout” sign with his hands all he wants, he’s still there as Secretary of State and on our dime.

Meadows echoed Pompeo’s reasoning and also defended the president’s decision to deliver his RNC speech from the White House, a step that breaks with decades of precedent dictating that the trappings of the executive mansion are reserved for official government business, not politics.

Rules and precedents are for the little people, not for Giants of Sleaze.

The ancient redwoods in Big Basin state park are not gone.

…an Associated Press reporter and photographer hiked the renowned Redwood Trail at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on Monday and confirmed most of the ancient redwoods had withstood the blaze. Among the survivors is one dubbed Mother of the Forest.

“That is such good news, I can’t tell you how much that gives me peace of mind,” said Laura McLendon, conservation director for the Sempervirens Fund, an environmental group dedicated to the protection of redwoods and their habitats.

The infrastructure is destroyed.

“But the forest is not gone,” McLendon said. “It will regrow. Every old growth redwood I’ve ever seen, in Big Basin and other parks, has fire scars on them. They’ve been through multiple fires, possibly worse than this.”

When forest fires, windstorms and lightning hit redwood trees, those that don’t topple can resprout. Mother of the Forest, for example, used to be 329 feet tall, the tallest tree in the park. After the top broke off in a storm, a new trunk sprouted where the old growth had been.

Trees that fall feed the forest floor and become nurse trees from which new redwoods grow. Forest critters, from banana slugs to insects, thrive under logs.

They’re called semper virens for a reason.

They have their priorities.

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has doubled down on its refusal to let schools serve free meals to all students this fall—despite rising food insecurity and pleas from anti-hunger advocates, school nutrition officials, and lawmakers.

…

The announcement was prompted by a request from Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Representative Robert Scott of Virginia. On August 14, the lawmakers asked the agency to extend crucial regulatory waivers that would allow schools nationwide to serve meals at no cost to all children, regardless of whether they were enrolled students, and regardless of whether they technically qualified for free lunch.

Before the pandemic, students had to meet specific criteria in order to qualify for USDA’s free and reduced price lunch program. Households whose annual income fell within 130 percent of the federal poverty threshold were eligible for free meals, while those that made between 130 and 185 percent of the federal poverty threshold received discounted ones. In areas where at least half of a school’s student body qualified for free lunch, officials could offer lunch at no cost to all kids. In all these cases, USDA would reimburse schools for the bulk of the costs of providing free meals.

Then in March, as the economy contracted and unemployment soared, USDA issued regulatory waivers permitting all schools to serve free breakfast and lunch to all children, including those not of school-age or enrolled in private institutions. School nutrition officials welcomed the move, which allowed many districts to serve as de facto hunger relief organizations within their communities. USDA said that initial waivers were possible thanks to a boost in funding from the Families First coronavirus relief bill, but that it needed another infusion of cash to extend them.

This means that schools will soon have to begin charging for meals again and tracking meal debt among kids who can’t pay.

Because we can pay for Trump’s endless golf trips and secret service protection for all his kids including when they take business trips abroad, but we can’t pay for universal school lunch.

“This is a basic need for all people,” says Michelle Hammond, food services director of the Roaring Forks School District in Colorado, which will no longer be able to provide free meals to all kids under the age of 18 in the coming school year. “[Money] should not be a hindrance for our kids.”

Let them eat brioche.