Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 134

Mira Sorvino: “Women have less protection under the Constitution than gun owners”

Noreen Farrell; Mira Sorvino (Credit: Chuck Revell)

The revelations of sexual harassment and abuse that have exploded out of Hollywood — and then every other industry as well — over the past few months have led to some high-profile firings and a wealth of solidarity. But another critical part of the movement is assuring that workplaces now become safer environments for everybody. And that involves genuine change.

Given her own history of advocacy and her candid revelations of her experiences inside the industry machine, it’s not surprising to see that Oscar-winning actress Mira Sorvino, along with Equal Rights Advocates’ Executive Director Noreen Farrell, have teamed up with California senators Hannah Beth Jackson and Connie Leyva to enact specific legislation in their state to prevent harassment — and to make it easier for victims to have recourse when it happens. Salon spoke recently via phone with Farrell and Sorvino about how to fight abuse across all industries, and why the movement is just getting started.

Noreen, maybe you could start by telling me a little of the specifics about what’s being proposed in California, and how that can be an example to the rest of the country.

Noreen Farrell: We knew that we had to really leverage the power, the interest, the desire to combat sexual harassment and violence at this very moment with a slate of bills that would be the strongest in the nation to combat those things that are so disruptive to women’s lives and their livelihoods and their ability to support their families. We looked at every single gap that we have identified over our four decades of representing women workers. So we decided we wanted to develop bills to fill every one of those gaps and promote them and drive them, because now is the time.

The bills really reflect the actual needs of millions of women workers, not just here in California but elsewhere. We know that California is a progressive influencer. We’re the first state to pass paid leave law. Our California fair pay act was the strongest in the country, and after we passed that in 2015, 41 states introduced similar legislation. We really have our eye on influencing the rest of the nation with this package.

What do you think has been the biggest loophole, the biggest way that harassers have been able to slip through the cracks — and how does this legislation address that?

Farrell: We know that over 60 percent of women in the workplace experience sexual harassment, and of those, more than 75 percent never report it because they fear retaliation. Retaliation was a big theme in some of the bills that we are introducing now. There’s one bill that clarifies the current California law, which can hold a person who retaliates against someone who’s complaining of sexual harassment liable under state law. We think that will be a really powerful incentive to make sure that women are not targeted once they raise issues, not just about themselves but what they might see happening to others. Silence is a big issue that allows perpetrators to persist in the workplace.

We have a national helpline and we hear from women across the country. The reality is that most people don’t know their rights in time to file. The statute of limitation in California for sexual harassment claims — and in fact for all discrimination claims — is just one year. We have so many people call us with claims and once they’ve figured out what’s happened and they gather the emotional strength to take action, their statute has run out. We know that over 60 percent or 70 percent of the calls we get, we cannot proceed because they don’t have a legal foundation anymore. We have a bill that addresses that as well.

Also, we know that a lot of harassment happens outside traditional employment contacts. We decided to get very bold to make sure that these protections extend beyond traditional employment relationships. We have one bill, authored by Senator Jackson, that clarifies that sexual harassment is prohibited in a lot of different kinds of business relationships. There’s already a law on the books that has a catchall phrase [to include] doctors and physicians and loan officers. We are adding in investors. We have heard a lot from female entrepreneurs this year, elected officials, lobbyists, directors, and producers. We are really being clear about the kinds of business relationships that people have in which sexual harassment festers.

Mira Sorvino: Let me just jump in for a second with something specific. We held a briefing session on this slate of laws with Senator Jackson and Senator Connie Leyva the other day. It seems like one of the bills that Senator Jackson was proposing was talking about mandating anti-sexual harassment training at every level of every organization, so that every employer has to hold sessions with their employees.

Farrell: Yes. That’s Senate Bill 1300, and that’s an omnibus bill that aims to strengthen all existing protections of the Fair Employment and Housing Act. It radically beefs up training requirements so it’s not just supervisors or upper managers, but it’s everyone. It has a great component about how coworkers can be up to standards when they see harassment. That’s a great additional bill that covers a lot of pieces of what previously had been pretty weak parts of the law.

Sorvino: Here is what I think is so important about that. You were talking about people not having enough time and extending the statutes to three years instead of one. Once they’ve identified what’s happened to them, they have enough time to gather their materials and their courage and try and bring a suit.

I would say that many people out there don’t even know that what has happened to them qualifies as sexual harassment. I would say that for myself, with what occurred to me back in the day with Harvey Weinstein, but in even other circumstances throughout my career. There are many instances that — especially under the strengthened, more clarified definitions presented by these bills — I definitely had sexual harassment cases to press had I known that’s what it was. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. So it’s not even for other people to call out what they are seeing, but it’s for the individual victims to know that what they just experienced is actually illegal, and something that they should not stand for. It’s absolutely key.

For many of us who work in entertainment, who work in media, people who work in the restaurant industry, and in tech, there are a lot of blurred lines. I want to ask about how we deal with that. How do we change the script so we do identify these kinds of behaviors and we change them?

Sorvino: I feel like the entire system — like we’re talking about the entertainment, the media industry — has always put it on the young person entering it, whether it’s a woman or a man, to navigate the shoals of sexual harassment alone. The onus has been put on the individual to have to take it or to have to ignore it, or to have to somehow persevere through and rise above, get past it, and still try to pursue gainful employment that is truthful and satisfying and successful. That is so wrong. It’s so wrong that the current culture has made it all on the person who’s on the receiving end of the harassment and none on the structure, the infrastructure of these industries and these companies, and these harassers. It’s kind of nuts. . . .

It’s a culture of enormous, almost insurmountable difficulty for people, who are told basically, “This is your problem, you need to deal with it. Don’t make too much noise, just deal with it. This is how it’s always been and this is how it’s always going to be.” We are here right now to say, no, no, no, that’s changing now. The light is being shined on it.

As an activist since 2004 — specifically [working] a lot with violence against women and human trafficking — I really have come to a point in my life where . . . awareness is wonderful but it’s one side of the coin. The other one is action. We have to take this collective outrage and feelings of indignation amongst the entire world right now with women movements cropping up, and the #metoo movement rising up against all systems of sexual harassment, and let’s make actual changes. Let’s put structures in place so legally these things cannot just persist. There is now no longer impunity for predators, and it is no longer solely for the individuals to fight all this themselves.

Someone said something the other day about dignity, and I agree too, it’s about dignity but it’s in fact so much more than that. Think of all the times that I or other people in every walk of life around this country were thwarted, were not hired for something because they refused to accept a sexual advance. It is shocking how different all those lives would be, how much an economic loss it is to them and their families and how much a personal loss it is to that individual because they were not allowed to ply their professional trade on the basis of meritocracy. I find it disgusting that sexual politics shortened careers or hampered them. That’s why these laws are incredible support, because I think that we are putting in place ways people can access justice fairly quickly, and people will be far more educated to what is their right and what people cannot do to them, and what resources they have. I think this is going to shake things up and as California goes, this is something that would be good for everyone.

Mira, I saw you talking recently about the momentum of this, and people who think that this is going to go away. We have reached this point now where we are starting to see these backlash pieces and people who have been accused of harassment starting to actually slink their way back into the public eye. What can any of us do to keep this momentum going?

Sorvino: Women have less protection under the Constitution than gun owners. We still haven’t had passed an equal rights amendment in the constitution. There is so far to go. All we have done now is raise a lot of noise, which is fantastic. But now it’s the time for everyone to roll up their sleeves and get the work done for true equality, true fairness, true justice and true protection for people. We’re not going to be done until every woman I know has not been assaulted or harassed or raped. I don’t know a woman who hasn’t experienced something. When everyone I meet says, “No, that’s never happened to me,” that’s when it stops. Not before.

Farrell: We really are not done until sexual harassment stops being the price of the paycheck. I think this cultural zeitgeist has really let us get past the point of asking and questioning whether or not harassment exists. We’ve gotten to the point of, how do we make it stop? We have exposed the broader system that perpetuates and allows and profits from the devaluation of women in the workplace, not just in terms of sexual harassment — which is a really troubling barometer of how women are valued in the workplace — but also in terms of promotion and pay and opportunity and meritocracy, as Mira mentioned. We are not going to stop until we are actually done.

This slate of bills, why I’m so passionate about policy being the next next wave of our movement, is because it deals with the structure. It dismantles the structure that allows this discrimination to persist and profit from it. In some ways it looks like a little bill, but it’s a big punch in the gut of sexism to women in the workplace. We are really excited, and we hope that the rest of the country follows.

Portions of this interview have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Donald Trump Jr.’s celebrity-villain divorce: Forgive yourself for staring

Donald Trump Jr. (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)

The New York Post broke the news that Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from Donald Trump Jr. this week, and public response has run the gamut from delighted scorn to handwringing over the spiritual utility of Schadenfreude in these ugly times. (OK, maybe that’s just me.) Even some journalists, of the ilk that both Donalds Trump, junior and senior, constantly insult, have found themselves on the side of The Mooch here. “Really weird and upsetting to see folks acting gleeful at the Don Jr. divorce news. It’s his private life and he has five kids,” tweeted Sam Stein of the Daily Beast. “Leave it alone.” MSNBC host Chris Hayes agreed, calling Stein’s tweet a “100% Correct Take.”

These are admirable defenses of a fellow human’s feelings. As a person who has been trying to combat within herself the discourse-rot that Junior and his father have encouraged over the last few years, I sympathize with the desire to just “leave it alone,” lest I let myself be tempted by the meme-ification of someone else’s sorrow.

And yet Donald Trump Jr. is undeniably a public figure. If the Clintons and the Obamas embraced the celebrity culture surrounding the presidency like none since the Kennedys, the Trumps have exploited it, ruthlessly and with unprecedented efficacy, all the way from Fifth Avenue and NBC into the Oval Office. As the old chestnut goes, live by the sword, die by the sword, and nowhere is that maxim honored more thoroughly than in politics and celebrity culture. Just like his father and his sister Ivanka, Junior has wholeheartedly embraced both cutthroat worlds.

Anyone’s divorce has a way of dredging up our own feelings about the end of relationships — disappointment, heartbreak, humiliation, regret, relief, hope, the whole messy ball of human emotions. But high-profile divorces take that to the next level, and can easily turn into a collective exercise in projection. When a celebrity couple splits up — Anna Faris and Chris Pratt, to cite a recent example — it can trigger an irrational sense of introspection from strangers. They seemed so perfect for each other; they looked so happy — is anyone actually happy? As someone who’s been through a divorce, I get it. Nobody knows the truth about a marriage except the two people in it, says conventional wisdom, and humans rather like knowing things. When there’s a villain in the mix — via infidelity, abuse, Scientology, general haterade, whatever — the public can rally around the innocent party. Cue the Gloria Gaynor — maybe we will all survive!

I’m not saying divorcing a Trump is exactly like leaving Scientology, but the slice of Americans who were genuinely sad that those crazy kids Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise couldn’t make it work is likely small and very sheltered.

To most of America, Donald Trump Jr. is first and foremost a reality TV personality, ” for a decade. If a Real Housewife gets divorced, few question whether the headlines are earned. And if said Housewife has crafted a heel persona, all but the most sanctimonious pearls are going to remain unclutched. Even before his run as the head large adult son of the Trump presidential campaign, before he “out West”-ed himself to the New York Times style section, and even before his whopping seventy-three appearances on “The Apprentice,” Trump Junior displayed, after a period of laying low in early adulthood, a taste for the limelight to rival his old man’s. In 2004, he recreated his proposal to Vanessa, in what the Post called “a taste-deprived ceremony,” at the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey in exchange for a free engagement ring. Paparazzi and TV crews were the only “invited” guests, according to the Post. Look, if I know which mall you got engaged in and you didn’t skip geometry with me in 10th grade, you’re definitely a celebrity.

Between his current iteration as “not here to make friends”-style Twitter brawler and Fox News guest to his past as the face of elephant slaughter, the case for Junior’s famous-villain status among the haters is solid.

Vanessa Trump, on the other hand, has kept a fairly low profile as spouse and parent during Big Papa’s political ascendance. She hasn’t helped herself to a White House fiefdom like Jared Kushner or a chair at the Trump propaganda organ like Eric’s wife Lara. The ghastly incident in which Vanessa had to be rushed to the hospital after opening an envelope of white powder sent to her home — a despicable act of terror against anyone, I don’t care what your politics are — appeared to be even more unfair, if that’s possible, when we consider her status as a relative bystander in the Trump political spectacle. Meanwhile Donald Jr., who’s supposed to be running the family business, continues to fling himself into every spotlight he can find — which I suppose is part of his job description, in a way.

There’s long been a mandate to leave the children of presidents alone, even though it’s been broken time and again, and across partisan lines. Neither Chelsea Clinton nor the Bush twins deserved the media scrutiny, often mean-spirited, that their fathers’ jobs brought them. The tide seemed to have turned in the Obama administration, when a GOP staffer had to resign after her snark about Sasha and Malia during the 2014 Thanksgiving turkey pardon went viral. Barron Trump should absolutely be free to grow up as normally as he can in the White House without fear of unwanted media attention, too.

But an adult son of Donald Trump’s who worked tirelessly — “if it’s what you say, I love it” — to get the president elected and is in possession of an IMDB rap sheet a mile long enjoys no such freedom in America. He may be working toward a classy and conscious uncoupling from Vanessa, and, having been through this as a kid, he will likely do a better job protecting his kids than his own father did. But Junior shouldn’t be surprised if a narrative emerges in the wake of Vanessa’s filing casting her as the Katie to his Tom. Vanessa could end up becoming an accidental Resistance icon, no matter who she votes for. After all, she’s pulling off something more than half the country only dreams of doing — she’s divorcing a Donald Trump.

“Counterpart”: a prime example of prestige TV in any universe

Nazanin Boniadi as Clare in "Counterpart" (Credit: Starz)

On a college campus somewhere, a psych major with access to premium cable must be having a field day with analyzing “Counterpart.” I know this because I watched it with a psychologist, who pointed out the ways that “Counterpart” is staged around the Freudian concept of the death drive and mentioned Carl Jung’s concepts of shadow versus light. A person might also explore how the show’s setting manifests how Jung’s world cracked apart after World War II. There you have it, kids — the seeds of a decent term paper.

No matter how you look at it, the defining characteristic of “Counterpart” is its darkness. This refers to its visual palette: many of the action sequences take place at night, or in dim rooms and shadowed streets. Draw your curtains and adjust the contrast on your TV if you’re watching it in the daytime or else you’ll miss some pulse-pounding tangles. Thematically speaking, though, the truth of that opening statement holds. Regardless of where the story takes us, or whether a scene is taking place in the daytime or evening, its Berlin setting never looks bright. Even midday skies are a brighter or dimmer version of gray.

A bifurcated existence probably would look like this — as if, to paraphrase “Fight Club,” seeing life as a xerox copy. In “Counterpart” the question is which world deserves to be viewed as the genuine article. As its story goes, 30 years ago an experiment conducted by East German scientists accidentally duplicated our reality. Since then, existence as we know it has run parallel to one nearly identical to our own. Each side is accessible via a dim, underground passage beneath a UN office in a supposedly unified Berlin, but only a few high-level government employees are aware of this phenomenon and have the clearance to go back and forth.

A person may assume that “Counterpart,” created by Justin Marks (who scripted Disney’s live-action version of “The Jungle Book”), is a science fiction tale. The show’s setup reads like one, but its execution reveals it to be as a crisp espionage thriller that brings out the best in its star J.K. Simmons. He plays Howard Silk, a gentle intelligence agency paper-pusher whose loyalty to his employer is only outmatched by his devotion to his comatose wife Emily (Olivia Williams), and his counterpart Howard Silk, a calculating operative who has alienated his family, reserving displays of emotional warmth for his network of allies and contacts.

At the season’s start, Howard has no idea that the second Howard exists, in the way that some 99.9 percent of the world’s population hums along completely unaware that those myths and legends about dopplegängers are truer than they imagined.

No futuristic or alternate technology draws attention from the drama’s core narrative, which invites us to tag along with Howard A and Howard B, as they move between their existences and go undercover in each other’s lives to thwart a plot concocted by enemy agents in the second universe.

On that side, a powerful deep-state agency has spent years planning a cataclysmic strike at the Alpha world — you know, that place full of people who aren’t merely just like them, they are them. Everybody started in the same life, but due to circumstances they have no control over they are placed on different paths. And due to subsequent events, one side has better technology than the other. In Universe B humans don’t eat pork anymore; hence, no bacon. No wonder they’re pissed.

So basically, “Counterpart” is a story about two worlds populated by two versions of billions of individuals, whose destiny is being determined by a tiny group of people who, in a very real way, hate themselves. It’s a premise that may seem crazy or incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t been keeping up with the current state of affairs in the real world. Here, arguments about finding common ground with the other side by positing that once we get beyond politics, we’re all more or less the same, don’t seem to be working as well as idealists thought they would. We’re only a hop and a skip between viewing someone who is actually just like you, because she is you, as the “other.” There can only be one, right? One victor, one self. Me first and let God sort out the rest.

What we’re saying is, the conceit of “Counterpart” isn’t so vastly removed from reality. But it is a series that asks much of its audience. Skipping episodes is not recommended. Hence, if you haven’t seen it yet, maybe you should catch up before dropping in on the first season’s penultimate episode, airing Sunday at 8 p.m.

Catching up with the first season on Starz’ on-demand subscription service is easy enough. Those in a marathon mood need only to wait until Saturday, March 25, when Starz airs its first nine episodes in succession. The season 1 finale airs April 1.

And you really should watch it. Recognize the weight of that statement in this era of too much television. We are about to be slammed with a flood of series aspiring to be perceived as “prestige programming” and aiming to draw Emmy’s attention. But here’s a show that actually deserves award notice that the prestige designation, buoyed by Simmons’ next-level, double-duty performance and solid support from the cast around him. Some of the actors, like Simmons, are rendering two versions of their characters. Others contribute just as much shadow and intrigue in mono. Nazanin Boniadi and Sara Serraiocco are stand-outs doing outstanding work with roles that were written to be so. They and the excellent Williams dig into the complexity of the women they play in ways that allow them to transcend our binary concepts of protagonist and antagonist. Instead, they give us characters sculpted to fulfill a purpose but, in interacting with these two realities, are moved to question the wisdom of their respective missions. Anyway, that’s how it appears.

Appearances can’t be trusted in “Counterpart.”

But it’s not merely that kind of show, either. In a single span of episodes, “Counterpart” leads us to contemplate the nature of conflict within marriages, within family, within the self and within and without governments. The twists are bold and entertaining, but perhaps not as much as the scenes where Howard confronts himself. The action-ready, charismatic version of Howard despises his staid hermit opposite; the kindly Howard cannot fathom why spy Howard treats him with open disdain. When they inevitably trade places, a quiet magic occurs, some of it heartrending, as each walks that road not taken.

The panoramic view of  “Counterpart” is a creative externalizing of our global friction, woven in a wholly original and mesmerizing fashion. Universe B is a paranoid land populated by people hardened by conflict and disaster, whose agents envy the other side’s greener grass. But Universe A isn’t paradise. (Neither, for that matter, is Howard A’s insular marriage to his Emily.)

If an odd phenomenon suddenly duplicated the known universe, and all the world’s cities, countries, and its billions of people and their lives with it, it follows that all of our colors would be faded, and the glow of all lights would never quite power up to 100 percent. This is not the case yet. As “Counterpart” nears the end of its freshman season disaster still threatens tear these identical worlds apart, ensuring that these two Berlins will never feel whole again. At times, the challenge posed by this undercover threat looks insurmountable, although looking away is out of the question. This is because Simmons has made fans emotionally invest in the reversibility of Howard Silk, and if nothing else, we want to find out whether he can possibly live with himself.

Who’s in and who’s out? Trump’s cabinet chaos

(Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brando)

News reports of upheaval in the White House are almost certainly originating from the President Donald Trump himself, chief of staff John Kelly told reporters during an off-the-record briefing, Axios disclosed Friday.

“Trump is talking to people outside the White House and that reporters are then talking to those people,” reporter Jonathan Swan, who was not invited to the briefing, wrote. “Kelly cast Trump’s own conversations as a significant contributing factor to stories about the staff changes.”

Trump commented on the turmoil on Thursday, hinting that there would be more to come.

“I’ve gotten to know a lot of people very well over the last year,” Trump told reporters yesterday after he had fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via a tweet. “And I’m really at a point where we’re getting very close to having the Cabinet and other things that I want.”

“There will always be change. I think you want to see change,” Trump said. “I want to also see different ideas.”

Just why the president would be engaging in such behavior is the question of the moment here in Washington.

There’s much to suggest that there is no strategy at work. To the extent Trump cares about policy, it seems to be only about trade deficits (not that he understands them) and saber rattling with North Korea and Iran. His only real concern with Attorney General Jeff Sessions appears to be about thwarting Department of Justice special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

One possible principle at work is the idea of not making Trump look bad by either publicly disagreeing with him or by getting caught in embarrassing mini-scandals for wasting taxpayer money. The latter is what ended the leadership position of Health and Human Services chief Tom Price who spent upwards of $1 million on private jet flights and was forced to resign last September.

Disagreeing with Trump too much cost Tillerson his position, the president said during informal remarks on Tuesday before leaving on a trip to California.

“I actually got along well with Rex. But really it was a different mindset. It was a different thinking,” he said.

He specifically mentioned U.S. policy toward Iran as a point of contention.

“When you look at the Iran deal, I think it’s terrible. I guess he thought it was OK. I wanted to either break it or do something, and he felt a little bit differently.”

As of Friday evening, no one else seems to have been terminated. At this point, however, no one would be surprised to see any high-level official let go. The Washington Post reported Thursday that White House officials have established betting pools on who will be fired next.

One likely nominee is national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who has repeatedly rankled the president on Iran and some other issues. Several news outlets have reported that Trump has already decided to fire McMaster but is waiting for a less humiliating way to show him the exit.

Despite Trump’s expressed desire for more firings, congressional Republicans are beginning to openly counsel him to avoid too many dismissals.

“With everything else we have to do around here, having the prospect of two additional confirmation fights perhaps is going to be a challenge,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, told CNN after Tillerson was let go.

Donald Trump confused about how government agencies work: report

(Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

The White House is like a house of cards under President Donald Trump. Rumors surface daily, even hourly, that someone else in the administration is on the chopping block. White House officials are reportedly at the point where they’re taking bets on who will be ousted next.

But why? Perhaps Trump is fond of his days firing people on “The Apprentice”; or perhaps he doesn’t understand who does what still — which is precisely what one White House official told The Washington Post. In a report claiming that Trump was making plans to remove  H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser — something that hasn’t been officially confirmed — an official also told The Post Trump has reportedly expressed confusion about “what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties.”

From the text of the Post story:

“Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior administration official said. For example, this official said, he has complained to Pruitt about regulatory processes for construction projects, although the EPA is not in charge of the regulations.”

It is amusing, if not entirely surprising for a man who has blundered his way through the presidency. Indeed, Trump had never held a government position prior to being president, and was widely mocked for not knowing what a “nuclear triad” was.

As CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted, the president’s know-nothingism is worth discussing; if true, it’s scary.

This line in last night's Post story hasn't gotten enough attention: "Trump has sometimes expressed confusion about what agencies and secretaries are in charge of what duties, a senior admin official said." https://t.co/gtoQuINxvo

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 16, 2018

The Brookings Institute found in an analysis that Trump’s staff turnover in his first year of presidency was significantly higher than the last five presidents. Trump’s high-level staff turnover was at 34 percent in his first year of presidency. During Barack Obama’s first year, his high-level team turnover was at 9 percent; Bill Clinton’s was at 11 percent; George H.W. Bush’s was 7 percent, and Ronald Reagan’s was 17 percent.

While the high turnover portrays a White House that is unorganized and inefficient, that can actually be positive when it comes to the Trump administration’s quest to achieve policy goals, as Brookings Institute pointed out.

“In presidential politics, much like any business environment, the coin of the realm is personal relationships — ties to the Hill, party leaders, interest group leaders, advocacy organizations, and journalists are critical to presidential success,” the analysis said. “While a replacement may be able to reclaim those relationships, or at least some of them, to the degree the relationships cannot be replaced, too much turnover can be a hindrance for a new administration and its pursuit of policy goals.”

However, if the dismissals are a result of Trump’s lack of understanding who does what and who is responsible for what, it’s just more evidence that he’s clearly isn’t (and never was) qualified for the job.

Paul Ryan’s seat is less safe. Is the House now up for grabs?

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis., departs after speaking to the media after a Republican caucus meeting on Capitol Hill, Thursday, March 23, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (Credit: AP)

Pennsylvania Democrat Conor Lamb’s upset (but still unofficial) victory in Tuesday’s special election has election forecasters shifting their midterm predictions toward Democrats in races across the country, even in the Wisconsin district of House Speaker Paul Ryan.

In a Friday article updating readers on their projections, CNN’s deputy political director Terence Burlij and reporter Eric Bradner classified only 213 district races as leaning toward Republicans, five less than the 218 seats that the party needs to retain control the U.S. House of Representatives.

“In light of Tuesdays results, there are several districts that now appear more favorable for Democrats this year, with a similar mix of candidate quality, district composition and, in some cases, concerns about the Republican incumbent, or they represent open seats,” the duo noted.

According to CNN’s model, Democrats are now favored to win in 201 districts, with 21 labeled as “toss-ups” that either party might be able to win. The Friday update shifted 13 districts closer to the Democratic side, although several are still said to “lean Republican.”

Ryan is still expected to retain his seat in Wisconsin’s 1st district but CNN downgraded Republicans’ chances there from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” thanks to the tireless campaign of Democrat Randy Bryce, a former ironworker known for his prominent mustache.

Also on Friday, the Cook Political Report, a private newsletter that is widely popular among political professionals, shifted its projections in 9 different House races toward Democrats. One district in Pennsylvania was moved to “likely Republican” due to the fact that the state’s congressional districts have been redrawn by the state’s supreme court. Lamb and Rick Saccone, the Republican he ran against, will no longer live in the 17th district. Saccone has been seeking to run in a newly drawn 18th district while Lamb is expected to run for the newly redrawn 8th district.

Last week, University of Virginia election modeler Larry Sabato updated his own forecast to argue for the first time that Republicans are no longer favored to win a majority of House races.

Aside from the forecasters’ calls, some Democrats running in areas where President Donald Trump did well in 2016 now seem to believe they have a model in Lamb’s candidacy, which was based in part on refusing to endorse Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but also attacking Ryan’s austere economic views.

“If we’re going to take the majority, it’s going to be because we win districts like that,” Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, told Politico. “Running against Nancy Pelosi is going to help you a lot more than running with her.”

Some Democrats seemed divided on whether Lamb had run as a liberal or as a moderate.

“He didn’t run on an identity politics, one-size fits all message,” said Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., co-chairman of the Blue Dog PAC, a group of more conservative Democrats. “He ran on the Blue Dog message.”

Others disagreed.

“Conor Lamb basically did no harm on economic issues,” Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told Politico.

“Regardless of how progressive one thinks he is,” Green continued, “if Democrats can win in the district that Trump won by [20] points, there is zero excuse for running on corporate or conservative values in the dozens of districts that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump barely won.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have shifted their own messaging about Lamb.

During the campaign, they portrayed him as a liberal but since his victory, a number of them, including Trump, have claimed that Lamb ran as a conservative, despite his frequent criticisms of Ryan’s anti-government views.

New Hollywood scandal: Academy president accused of sexual harassment

John Bailey (Credit: AP/Jordan Strauss)

The president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, John Bailey, 75, is the latest man in Hollywood to be accused of sexual harassment. After the Academy received three complaints about Bailey on Wednesday, the Hollywood trade organization that hands out the Oscars opened an investigation immediately, Variety first reported.

Bailey has been the Academy’s president since August 2017 and under his tenure, the Academy has ushered in new and important approaches to handling sexual misconduct by its members. “In October, the Academy voted to expel Harvey Weinstein less than 10 days after the New York Times first reported on his history of sexual harassment,” Variety said. “The Academy also replaced Casey Affleck, who settled two sexual harassment lawsuits in 2010, as the presenter of the Best Actress award at this year’s Oscars.”

Bailey’s time as president has also been categorized by a major reckoning in Hollywood, as allegations of sexual harassment and assault mount against some of the industry’s biggest power players. So it’s difficult to say whether the avenues adopted by the Academy for people in the movie industry to report alleged misconduct stemmed from Bailey’s leadership or simply from the industry’s collective desire to make amends for its long history of protecting abusers.

In December, the Academy created a code of conduct stipulating that members can be disciplined or expelled for abuse, harassment or discrimination, including a claims process to determine the validity of such allegations. So depending on the results of the current investigation, Bailey could be forced to step down. He would be temporarily replaced by vice president Lois Burwell, who would serve as president until elections in July.

There is no public information yet available on the specific harassment claims against Bailey, a veteran Hollywood cinematographer whose credits include “Groundhog Day,” “The Big Chill” and “As Good as It Gets.” He won a CableACE award in 1994 for shooting and directing the TV version of Lily Tomlin’s stage show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,” and in 2015 won a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Cinematographers.

More than 1 in 4 Americans show some support for authoritarianism

(Credit: Getty/Fabrice Coffrini/Daniel Mihailescu/Salon)

A new survey reveals that although most Americans like to believe they prefer democracy over authoritarian forms of government, the actual content of their convictions can veer precipitously toward authoritarianism.

“If given a direct choice, the overwhelming majority of Americans choose democracy,” writes Lee Drutman, Larry Diamond and Joe Goldman of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. “In fact, on each of the five questions we asked, three quarters or more of all respondents provide at least some support for democracy, and half or more express support for the strongest pro-democratic option. By contrast, depending on the question, between an eighth and a quarter of respondents provide an answer that does not support democracy.”

They added that some of their evidence conflicts with the findings of a 2016 paper called “The Democracy Disconnect” by Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk. “(a) We do not find that public support for democracy in the U.S. is declining. (b) Nor do we find higher support among young people for an authoritarian political system,” the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group writes.

At the same time, the Drutman, Diamond and Goldman found that “only a slim majority of Americans (54 percent) consistently express a pro-democratic position across all five of our measures.” Even those who have a dimmer view of democracy, however, were still more likely than not to avoid supporting authoritarian alternatives. That said, the highest level of openness to authoritarianism came from voters who supported Donald Trump in the primaries, while the highest support for democracy came from voters who were either consistently liberal or consistently conservative.

“The highest levels of support for authoritarian leadership come from those who are disaffected, disengaged from politics, deeply distrustful of experts, culturally conservative, and have negative attitudes toward racial minorities,” the authors noted as their final major conclusion.

Perhaps most alarmingly, “29 percent of respondents show at least some support for either a ‘strong leader’ or ‘army rule,'” the authors noted.

They further elaborated on the implications of their findings in a piece for The New York Times.

“So when it comes to American authoritarianism, perhaps the problem isn’t so much Mr. Trump as it is hyper-partisanship,” they wrote. “Support for authoritarian leadership is concentrating in the Republican Party, and its elites are doing little to push back. In our highly polarized two-party system, this poses the risk that future partisan conflict could become a battle over democracy itself.”

Air travel needs its #MeToo moment

(Credit: Getty/supershabashnyi)

An Alaska Airlines pilot says that sexual assault — including her own experience — is “swept under the rug” in her industry. An American Airlines passenger says she was raped during a flight — and that the airline shrugged off her case as a “nuisance claim.”  These stories are just from this week.

Where’s the #MeToo reckoning for the airline industry?

On Friday, Alaska Air Pilot Betty Pina spoke on “Good Morning America” about what she alleges her captain did to her last June during a layover in Minneapolis. In her suit filed on Wednesday, Pina claimed that when the crew was staying in a local hotel to catch up on rest, the man gave her a glass of wine that “tasted funny.” After that, she said, “I don’t remember leaving the concierge room, the elevator ride or walking down the hallway to my room. When I woke up, everything was hazy. I remember seeing a figure, somebody pulling at my right ankle, and rolling over and trying to say, ‘No.’ And then, I was out again.” She said she woke up half-dressed and surrounded by vomit, with the man in the room.

In her complaint, she says the captain denied sexual contact but told her, “You were coming on to me pretty hard.” Two days later, she reported the incident to the Air Line Pilots Association, though she says he’s still on the airline’s “active seniority list” for pilots.

“I believe that this is an under-reported, swept-under-the-rug, not-dealt-with issue in our industry,” she told ABC News, adding, “It’s not just our airline.” And apparently it’s not just staff, either. Colorado real estate associate Aubrey Lane told the Dallas Morning News this week that during a June American Airlines flight, she was raped in a bathroom by a drunken passenger. When she alerted the crew, she was moved to the back of the plane and greeted by investigators and taken to the hospital when it landed. The alleged assailant, however, was not picked up. And in December, she received a letter from the airline regarding her “nuisance claim,” along with an offer of $5000. “I would like to see some sort of human response,” she said. “I would like them to acknowledge this is a problem.”

The Dallas Morning News also reported that “A 2017 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants CWA of nearly 2,000 members found that 1 in 5 had received a report of passenger-on-passenger sexual assault while working a flight.” It added that, alarmingly, “Most said they had no knowledge of written guidance or training on how to handle such reports, according to the union.”

If that industry-wide lack of clearcut protocol is indeed the case, it may go a long way to explaining why these incidents seem to keep happening — and happening across a demoralizing number of different airlines. Last month, a Washington state woman, Allison Dvaladze, went public about a 2016 incident in which she says a fellow Delta passenger repeatedly grabbed her crotch and groped her. While she was able to move seats, she says the crew made her return to her original spot near her assailant for landing. It later gamely offered her 10,000 SkyMiles as a “small token in hopes of easing some of the frustration and inconvenience you may have felt.” Her suit said, “The airline did not have clear policies in place to deal with sexual assaults and did not adequately train its flight crews on how to respond to victims.”

In January, a Spirit Airlines passenger claimed she woke up during a flight to discover her shirt and pants were unbuttoned and another passenger was in the midst of sexually assaulting her. In December, CNN reported on a number of women with similar stories, including a passenger who says she was harassed during a United flight. Despite her complaints to the crew, she said, “

America is waking up to the stupidity of being wasteful with plastic

FILE-This Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014 file photo shows a large pile of washed-up trash, including old plastic bags, sits alongside the Los Angeles River in Long Beach, Calif. On Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014 Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation on imposing the nation's first statewide ban on single-use plastic bags. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Josh Morgan,File) MAGS OUT; LOS ANGELES TIMES OUT (Credit: AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Josh Morgan,File)

It’s time to kiss the plastics goodbye. No, not the Mean Girls; I mean the plastics you use every day: straws, lids, containers, bags, even clothing, for goodness sake.

While a plastic clothing ban is a bit far off right now (though there is a movement to reduce its use), more urgently, many states and municipalities are campaigning to ban plastic bags, straws and lids, which are choking our oceans, killing ocean creatures and corals, and grossly polluting the environment.

 New York state is considering a plastic bag ban, proposed by two state senators. (New York City approved a ban over a year ago, but Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo killed the proposal.) The state proposal would ban plastic bags and charge 10 cents for each paper bag. According to the New York Daily News, “New Yorkers use 9.37 billion disposable bags” annually.

California now has legislation that will “ban detachable caps on plastic bottles.” The state’s bottle cap bill could force an industry-wide change to attach lids to bottles, in order to facilitate recycling. According to the Ocean Conservancy’s coastal cleanup data, plastic bottle caps are the fourth most common piece of litter found in ocean cleanups — behind cigarette butts, foam and plastic pieces. Plastic straws are sixth on the list, while plastic bags are seventh.

These plastic ban bills aren’t just about cleaning up the environment; China stopped accepting plastic trash imports for recycling, inspiring the U.S. to figure out what to do with its waste.

A bill in California to restrict plastic straw use in restaurants, unless one is specifically requested by a customer, might sound good, but many municipalities from Fort Myers, Florida to Malibu are banning plastic straws all together. In the Florida Keys, restaurant owners are voluntarily signing on to the Skip the Straw campaign, volunteering to stop offering plastic straws and stirrers.

“Straws are one of the top 10 sources of plastic marine debris, but we really do not need them,” says Mill McCleary, executive program director of Reef Relief, in Key West. “The best way to keep plastic out of the ocean is to stop it at the source, by simply using less of it.” McCleary says Americans use over 500 million straws a year, and that plastic straws are “generally too lightweight to recycle.”

In addition to making sea animals sick, McCleary and the Ocean Conservancy agree plastic straws break down into micro-plastics that kill already endangered coral. Plus, plastic is just gross washing up on otherwise pristine beaches.

Since mid-January, over five-dozen businesses have signed on to the Skip the Straw campaign in the Florida Keys. While such environmental mindedness might be expected in California, it’s exciting to see it proliferating in Florida— a state without a bottle recycling deposit and famous for its anti-environment language policing. “I think the overall motivation for supporting it is that for the most part, us locals really do care about our island and ocean,” McCleary says.

But some in Florida, along with others in toxic industry-friendly states, see the ban-plastics movement as a grassroots uprising that must be quashed. Nine state governments have banned the plastic bag ban before it even starts. The state of Michigan — the same folks behind the your-water-is-safe-to-drink Flint water crisis — banned the plastic bag ban. Michigan’s argument was, basically, poor people need plastic bags, so a plastic bag ban harms poor people by charging them for disposable paper bags. A lot of poor people in Michigan actually bought that spurious line of reasoning, with taxpayer dollars.

Yet “very few of the 100 billion single-use plastic bags used in the United States each year are recycled,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Instead, the bags end up caught in trees, blowing across lakeshores and beaches and otherwise contaminating the environment, and they will probably not decompose in our lifetime. Cleanup costs in California alone (before the state’s plastic bag ban), amounted to $428 million annually.

According to the EPA, it’s not uncommon for an urban community to spend more than $1 million a year cleaning up litter, much of it plastic. That’s a lot of local dollars that could be saved and spent elsewhere in ways that support the community.

In many states and municipalities nationwide, people pay 10 cents for a paper bag or carry their own reusable tote bags, many of which fold up into a purse-sized square. Using reusable bags is simple and it’s habit-forming, and it’s something everyone can do — even if your community doesn’t have a plastic bag ban.

 Want alternatives to plastic straws and other items? Don’t use straws or buy your own reusable straw and utensils and carry them with you. Look for creative alternatives. Keep reusable grocery bags with you. And try to avoid buying clothing made from plastic.