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We’re at the climate crisis. We’re at the coronavirus pandemic. We’re at the combination climate crisis and coronavirus pandemic, and frankly? We are ready to leave whenever.
- Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday as a Category 4 storm, one of the strongest to ever hit the region. The hurricane killed at least one person outside of Baton Rouge, and cut off power to more than one-million households and businesses (including just about all of New Orleans) before weakening to a tropical storm. The good news: The flood-protection system built around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina seems to have worked, preventing the most catastrophic flooding.
- The bad news: Flooding isn’t the only threat that extreme weather poses to Louisiana these days. Crowded hospitals in Ida’s path were unable to evacuate their hundreds of COVID-19 patients who require ventilators, due to a lack of available beds at other nearby facilities. “We don’t have any place to bring those patients. Not in state, not out of state,” Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) said on Friday. Four Louisiana hospitals were damaged in the storm; nurses at one hospital where a generator failed have had to manually ventilate patients to keep them alive.
- The consequences of the Delta surge look grim enough without throwing supercharged hurricanes into the mix. More than 100,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with coronavirus, and over 1,000 people are dying each day. The U.S. is now projected to see nearly 100,000 more coronavirus deaths before December 1—a toll that could still be averted if all eligible Americans would get vaccinated, or even if everyone wore a mask in public spaces. If one whole party hadn’t linked arms with coronavirus against Joe Biden, that might be conceivable! Meanwhile, the U.S. is in rough enough shape that the E.U. has dropped us off its “safe list” (merde), and recommended that its member countries place new travel restrictions on unvaxxed Americans.
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As in every prior phase of the pandemic, it won’t only be the people eschewing safety measures who suffer the consequences.
- In Marin County, CA, an unvaccinated teacher with COVID-19 symptoms waltzed into her elementary school classroom without a mask, infecting half of her students and igniting a larger outbreak in the community. The wave of infections will also impact people who never become infected at all: Army veteran Daniel Wilkinson—who earned a Purple Heart in Afghanistan—died of a treatable illness last week outside of Houston, TX, after waiting hours for an available ICU bed in a region where hospitals were overwhelmed with unvaccinated coronavirus patients.
- None of that seems to bother Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who on Monday vowed to appeal a court decision blocking his ban on school mask requirements. Even if he gets the decision overturned, he’ll likely have to contend with the Biden administration: The Education Department has opened civil-rights investigations of five GOP-led states over their policies banning schools from implementing mask mandates, starting with Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
Everything you need to know about GOP governance is encompassed in the story of this weekend: The climate crisis that Republicans have chosen to ignore compounded the pandemic that Republicans have chosen to exacerbate. We can save lives by preventing the GOP from regaining power in 2022, and that work starts today.
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The first episode of Crooked's brand new podcast X-Ray Vision is out now! In this episode, host Jason Concepcion's spidey-senses are tingling! Jason and rotating co-host Cody Ziglar talk about the excitement surrounding the upcoming Disney+ Star Wars: Visions anthology series and dissect the mind-blowing Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer. Don't forget to Hulk smash the subscribe button and listen to X-Ray Vision wherever you get your podcasts.
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The 20-year war in Afghanistan officially ended Monday when the U.S. military completed its final evacuation flight out of Kabul. While the military’s involvement is over, the Biden administration will continue working to help Americans and Afghan allies who didn’t depart on the airlift through diplomatic means. The U.S. evacuated more than 122,300 people from Afghanistan since the end of July, including 5,400 American citizens, according to the Pentagon—an extraordinary success, despite a devastating terrorist attack in the effort’s final days. The U.S. killed two ISIS-K militants and wounded a third in a retaliatory airstrike on Friday night, and blew up a vehicle full of explosives in a Sunday drone strike. The Sunday strike averted another planned attack on the Kabul airport, but seems to have taken a heartbreaking civilian toll: ten members of one family, including seven children, who lived near the targeted vehicle were reportedly killed. President Biden will address the nation on the Afghanistan withdrawal on Tuesday.
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- Before you do anything else: Read this delightful profile of Larry Elder, the GOP frontrunner in California’s recall election who hopes Stephen Miller becomes president one day, vote no (Californians), and then sign up for a phone bank (everybody).
- An Ohio judge has ordered a Cincinnati hospital to treat a coronavirus patient with Ivermectin, in spite of the CDC’s warnings about how Ivermectin is not a safe and effective coronavirus treatment for humans, but rather a horse dewormer, for horses.
- Texas abortion providers have asked the Supreme Court to block the state’s new near-total abortion ban, which calls for private citizens to enforce the measure. The law will otherwise take effect on Wednesday.
- Peter Thiel-backed Senate candidate and All-Around Creep J.D. Vance founded a nonprofit in 2017 that was supposed to fight Ohio’s opioid epidemic, but which has instead done nothing at all.
- Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) now says he spoke with Donald Trump more than once on January 6. Apropos of nothing, here’s an astoundingly thorough timeline of Jordan’s role in spreading election lies in the leadup to January 6, and rewriting the history of the attack in the aftermath.
- Meanwhile, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) called jailed insurrectionists “political hostages” at a Macon County GOP event on Sunday. When an attendee asked, “When are you gonna call us to Washington again,” Cawthorne replied, “We are actively working on that one.”
- Jury selection in the fraud trial of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will begin Tuesday. Holmes may claim that she was in an abusive relationship with former Theranos President Sunny Balwani, and helplessly under his control.
- A California parole board panel has voted in favor of releasing Sirhan Sirhan more than 50 years after he assassinated Robert F. Kennedy, after two of RFK’s sons broke with the rest of the family and supported releasing him from prison. California’s governor (Gavin Newsom, if there is any mercy left in this world) will make the final decision.
- Ed Asner, who played Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Show, died on Sunday. He was 91.
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Election-security experts have warned that GOP-fueled breaches of voting systems pose a threat to the integrity of future elections. MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell’s Fake Fraud Symposium in South Dakota this month included party favors that could pave the way for real fraud: Copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software that counties in some 30 states use to manage elections. It’s unclear how the copies wound up at the event, but they came from voting equipment in Mesa County, CO, and Antrim County, MI, where Trump allies challenged the election results last fall. They provide hackers with a “practice environment” to hunt for vulnerabilities, according to election security expert Harri Hursti, who was at the event. Hackers would then just need physical access to the systems to be able to sabotage them, alter ballots, or change the results. “This disclosure increases both the likelihood that something happens and the impact of what would happen if it does,” said election technology expert Kevin Skoglund.
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In 2021 mental health is finally a thing, especially as people are not feeling like their normal selves. Let’s support one another and talk openly. Whether or not therapy is your thing, knowing it’s available and affordable is important, for you or perhaps a loved one.
Millions of people are trying and loving online therapy. It doesn’t have to be sitting around just talking about your feelings.
So, what is therapy, exactly? It’s whatever you want it to be.
You can privately talk to someone if your stress is too much to manage, you’re battling a temper, having relationship issues, anxiety, depression, etc… Whatever you need, there’s no more shame in these normal human struggles. We take care of our bodies, why not our minds, too? Without a healthy mind, being truly happy and at peace is HARD.
BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don’t have to see anyone on camera if you don’t want to. It’s much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can start communicating with your therapist in under 48 hours.
It’s always a good time to invest in yourself, because you are your greatest asset. See if online therapy is for you by heading to BetterHelp.com/crooked for 10% off your first month.
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The expanded child tax credit has already kept three million children out of poverty in just the first round of payments, according to new research from Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy.
The Biden administration announced it will create an Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, the first federal office to focus on the health consequences of global warming.
The Life Pieces to Masterpieces after-school program has successfully encouraged young adults in an under-vaccinated Black DC neighborhood to get their shots by building trust before and throughout the pandemic.
After the last Jew in Afghanistan—Zabulon Simentov, who annoyed the Taliban so much they let him go—refused to leave the country, his would-be rescuers helped dozens of Afghan women escape instead.
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