Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 94

Can exercise counteract the effects of aging on our muscles?

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This article originally appeared on Massive.

Humans are living longer than ever — an average of 40 years more than just a couple centuries ago, raising the question of how our quality of life can be preserved into old age. Scientists have found that only about 25 percent of the variation in human longevity is due to genetic factors, which means other elements — like how much we exercise or what we eat — play a large role in driving how we age.

To better understand the link between exercise and aging, biomedical researcher Stephen Harridge of King’s College in London and his colleagues looked at whether changes in the characteristics of skeletal muscle result from the aging process itself or the affects of lifestyle choices that are strongly associated with aging — like the tendency to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle. Because of the latter, the current perception of muscle structure and age come from studies in people whose physical activity is low. In these individuals, a number of characteristics “typical” of older muscle have been identified, such as changes to muscle fibers, but few studies have gone as far as to investigate the underlying cause of those changes.

Harridge and his group recruited 125 male and female amateur cyclists aged 55-79, who had been cycling regularly for about 26 years. The scientists predicted that since these athletes would have a similar level of high physical activity, any changes in their muscle as they aged could not be explained by inactivity, but rather than an inherent aging process.

Biopsies were taken from one of the large muscles at the side of the thigh that we use during cycling — the vastus lateralis. Part of the biopsy was cut into thin slices so that its structure could be assessed under a microscope, and part of it was mashed up into a liquid so that its protein content could be calculated.

To investigate how the structure of muscle differs between cyclists aged 55 - 79 years of age, Harridge needed a set of easily measurable, clear muscle properties: capillaries, muscle fiber, and mitochondria, the highly specialized structures within our cells that use oxygen to make energy.

Capillaries supply the muscle with blood carrying oxygen, which is needed to make energy for muscles to function. Endurance exercise improves the delivery of oxygen to the muscle through increasing the number of capillaries that supply it. When the number of capillaries in the muscle biopsies were evaluated, Harridge and his colleagues discovered that there was no relationship between the age of female cyclists and capillary density, but there was a reduction in capillary density with increasing age in male cyclists. This finding, published recently in the journal Aging Cell, was one of the most important in the study, because it may prove that this change is affected by the aging process, and not because of the interaction between aging and inactivity.

Unlike capillary density, the effect of aging on muscle fiber composition was not as closely linked. Skeletal muscle is composed of two broad fiber types; slow twitch (type I) fibers, which contract slowly and allow us to carry out endurance activities like long-distance running, and fast twitch (type II) fibers, which contract in quick bursts, fatigue rapidly, and are used for power activities like sprinting or weight lifting. Older muscle tends to have smaller type II muscle fibers — partly explaining why elderly people find if difficult to make fast sudden movements.

The main characteristic of type I muscle is that it uses oxygen, and therefore, it is not surprising that there were more type I fibers in the vastus lateralis of the younger male and female cyclists who participated in this study compared to type II fibers. Harridge and his colleagues discovered that this ratio of more type I to type II fibers stayed the same as cyclists aged. The scientists found that mitochondria, which function better in younger master athletes, also did not change with age among their study participants. These findings suggest that using our muscles to exercise into old age prevents them from deteriorating and maintains their function.

However, one important question still remained for Harridge and his colleagues: How these properties actually relate to the physiological functions that allow us to perform physical exercise — in this case, cycling.

In 2015, Harridge and his lab carried out another study on the same group of cyclists focusing exclusively on physiological functions, those physical mechanisms relevant to endurance and explosive muscle function, and found no strong relationship between them.

Endurance exercise is dependent on aerobic metabolism — the way the body generates energy by burning carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in the presence of oxygen — which can be measured by VO2max, the maximum amount of oxygen a person can use during intense exercise. Back in 2015, the scientists measured VO2max during a continuous progressive exercise test on a cycle ergometer. Harridge and his group discovered that the greater the proportion of type I to type II fibers the participants had, the better their VO2max. They also found that VO2max linearly increased with capillary density in males. In contrast to endurance exercise, explosive physical activities engage fast twitch type II muscle fibers.

To investigate the relationship between type II fibers and the generation of force and high power outputs, the participants were also asked to perform a number of explosive, high-power exercises, such as cycle sprinting and knee extensor exercises. These tests revealed that in male cyclists, type II fiber proportion and size was associated with peak power output during sprints and the rate of force development during maximum voluntary contraction, when extending the knee.

By combining findings from the two studies, Harridge and his colleagues were able to show that there is no age-related decline in selected properties of the vastus lateralis that are relevant to aerobic function and explosive muscle power. Instead, these factors are more influenced by a person’s level of activity regardless of age.

While the general benefits of exercise are indisputable, there are a number of important caveats to consider before deciding to become a triathlete in the quest for eternal youth. The age range studied was relatively narrow, and participants already cycled regularly. Therefore, an important question that remains unanswered is whether or not it would be sufficient to take up cycling later in life.

They also only studied one type of exercise. Could it be the case, for example, that some muscles “age” while others do not depending on the type of frequent physical activity? Indeed, the findings from Harridge’s study differ from other studies looking at sprinters, endurance runners, and swimmers or just older people who regularly take part in moderate to vigorous physical activity of different ages. One study showed that in sprinters aged 18-84, for example, an age-related loss of type II fast twitch fibers was observed, suggesting that caution should be taken before concluding that any physical activity can stave of age-related changes in the characteristics of skeletal muscle in old age.

Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen to plead the Fifth in Stormy Daniels lawsuit

AP/Getty/Salon

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, declared on Wednesday that he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed by Stephanie Clifford.

Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, was previously paid $130,000 by Michael Cohen in what she alleges was hush money intended to silence her from speaking out about an affair she had with Donald Trump in 2006.

Cohen's declaration reads:

I have personal knowledge of the facts set forth herein, and if called and sworn as a witness, I could and would competently testify to the matters stated herein.
On April 9, 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed three search warrants on my residence, office and hotel room, respectively, without any prior notice. During the corresponding raids, the FBI seized various electronic devices and documents in my possession, which contain information relating to the $130,000 payment to Plaintiff Stephanie Clifford at the center of this case, and my communications with counsel, Brent Blakely, relating to this action.
Based upon the advice of counsel, I will assert my 5th amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and US. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
On April 10, 2018 I first realized that my Fifth Amendment rights would be implicated in this case, after I considered the events of April 9, 2018, described in the above paragraph 2. I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct.

Michael Avenatti, Clifford's outspoken attorney, called the development “stunning” on Twitter.

“Never before in our nation’s history has the attorney for the sitting President invoked the 5th [Amendment] in connection with issues surrounding the President,” Avenatti tweeted. “It is [especially] stunning seeing as [Michael Cohen] served as the ‘fixer’ for Mr. Trump for over 10 yrs. #basta”

And yes, my record of prediction stays intact. We will keep shooting until we miss. #searchforthetruth #basta

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) April 25, 2018

Given that the Fifth Amendment promises the right against "forced self-incrimination" (as Cornell Law scholars write), invoking it is often perceived by the public as an admission that there is something to hide. In 1990, after separating from first wife Ivana Trump, Trump himself invoked the Fifth to avoid answering a question during his divorce deposition.

Hypocritically, when a Hillary Clinton aide invoked the Fifth, Trump took the chance to lampoon them.

“The mob takes the Fifth,” Trump said, according to AP News. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

Perhaps Trump should ask the same question to Cohen.

“My House” on Viceland: The House and Ball community is “one of the original safe spaces”

Vice

It has been almost 30 years since the release of the seminal film "Paris Is Burning," which documented New York's House and Ball community in the 1980s. Interconnected in the narrative were the triumphs and struggles of the performers who electrified the floor during balls. While they vogued with unparalleled precision and vitality, these mostly low-income LGBTQ people of color also had to reckon with oppression. They were largely marginalized, if not shunned completely, from mainstream society.

But the underground balls were an outlet of reclamation, voguing a medium of communication and agency. "You can have a whole conversation with voguing without even saying a word," prominent ballroom commentator Precious Ebony tells Salon. "It’s a form of storytelling."

The powerful story of this subculture created for and by LGBTQ people of color lives on in the new series "My House," which premieres Wednesday night on Viceland. "My House" follows a new generation of ballroom stars who provide an "insider's guide" to New York's current, hyper-competitive scene. Houses, which form the organizational structure of the community, are surrogate families who adopt a house name as their surname. They include a "house mother," "house father" and "children."

Ebony emphasizes the values of acceptance, family and love, which she argues are the pillars of queer ballroom – and equally as central as the iconic dance form voguing. She added that it might get intense during competitions – but only after the performers leave the stage. "We hug each other," she said, "because at the end of the day, we know we’re all we got."

What initially drew you to the scene, and what keeps you inspired to stay connected to it?

What attracted me to the scene was the culture. I’ve never seen a place that you can be so open and be yourself and no one gives a f**k about it. What I mean [by] no one gives a f**k? I mean, like, BABY YOU CAN BE WHO YOU WANT TO BE! Your style can be crazy, unique and they’re going to accept it. Because they know how it feels to be different.

I love to be the center of attraction. With ballroom, everyone’s the center of attraction in their own little way. Every time you step up onto that floor, that’s your moment to shine. You get that spotlight, the fans hit the perfect wind at the perfect time, and you have your Beyoncé moment and everyone’s watching.

I remember going to high school and feeling like I wasn’t seen. And, in ballroom, I definitely feel like I finally was seen, and I finally was heard. And that’s an amazing experience.

As a commentator, what does your role consist of?

I definitely feel like I’m the ringleader, the ringmaster, like the conductor. I have to keep everything in order, because I feel like without me, the show’s not going to go on . . . I get on that mic, and I make people happy. I make people clap. I make people excited. I make people have a good time. And that’s a time where people get to release, and forget about all the struggles and the harsh things they’re dealing with.

The opening line of Episode 1 describes the House and Ball community as "one of the original safe spaces." What do you make of that? 

What I mean by the safe space is we have people from all different walks of life. We have different ethnicities; we have different colors; we have different shapes, sizes; people with no hair, long hair . . . We accept each other, because at the end of the day, we already know how it feels to be unaccepted. So we’re going to accept each other, because sometimes that’s the only thing we have to fall back on. Some of us can’t wake up in the morning to a parent or breakfast cooked by mom or to a house that you can call a home. Some of us wait for that ballroom moment to be able to see their brother, sister, their gay parents.

People come for acceptance. People come to release, to relate. And, also sometimes ballroom is a place for people who don’t have a home. Some people are homeless. Some people are lost. People who feel like they don’t have a place in the regular world, they come to ballroom. Besides the culture of voguing, ballroom is a place that is actually a family. Balls happen, people come just to get a hot meal, to get tested for free, to know that there are other people out there going through the same ordeals that they’re going through — that they’re not alone.

What are you most excited about for the show?

There’s nothing fake in "My House." Everything is 100 percent authentic. Everything’s real. Everything’s raw; the emotions, the feelings right before we’re about to walk up there; the adrenaline, the feeling of being scared. Because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

The fact that "My House" is keeping the legacy of "Paris Is Burning," it’s amazing. I’ve seen "Paris Is Burning" 20 times. One day I want to watch "Paris Is Burning," and then I want to be able to watch the whole season of "My House." I know it’s going to be the same thing, but so different. But the message is always going to be the same: It’s about culture, it's about ballroom. That’s what "My House" is about: culture, ballroom and experiences.

A central storyline in "My House" is performer Tati no longer being part of a house. What does it mean to not have a house? 

When you’re part of a house, you have support, you have the help you need, you have the rearing, you have the practice space . . . knowing what balls are coming up, management. Being a 007 is hard.

Normally when I walk out, you’ll hear my whole house. Everyone’s screaming at the top of their lungs, because I’m a product of that house. So being a 007, it’s like you don’t have anyone.

Just having that push when you come out, it makes a big difference. It was a big deal that she wasn’t a part of a house. But I think Tati definitely carried herself great. And I think she let us know that, even if you’re in a house or not in a house, a lot of it comes from within. If you want to win that category, you have to push yourself.

New Orleans rapper and icon Big Freedia, who is queer and black, is fresh from being featured on Drake's "Nice For What," although she is absent from the video. Myles E. Johnson wrote in Noisey about how mainstream artists are fine with using the culture and art of queer black people, but not through the bodies that created it. Do you have thoughts on this?

I get so hurt that people are so OK using the culture, but don’t want to support the culture. I keep saying it’s disappointing. How the f**k are you going to have Big Freedia’s voice on the song, but not show her in the video? I feel like Drake feels like that’s going to hurt his image, because she’s a person of LGBTQ experience.

I definitely feel like I’m tired of celebrities using the culture and not knowing of the culture . . . That’s why I’m definitely tip-toeing my way to success. For instance, I did a performance for Rick Owens, and Rick was like, 'Oh, I want to record a song with you, and play this song at my party.' And I was like, 'No, that’s not fair. If you want my music at your event, have me at your event.' And guess what? I flew to Italy for men’s fashion week, and performed at Rick Owens’ legendary, iconic after party.

And I had the time of my life. You know why? Because I didn’t close my mouth, I didn’t accept bullsh*t and I knew exactly what change I wanted to see.

All you needed to eat well in New York in the 1970s was roasting pan, a hot oven and mob connections

Getty/Shutterstock/Salon

I had one of those European string bags that I used to stick in my pack pocket in the morning, and after I left work at the Village Voice around 6:00 p.m., I would wander the streets of the Village on my way home shopping for that night’s dinner, filling the string bag as I went. There was a fish market on Bleecker Street off the corner of Sixth Avenue, just down the street from Zito’s Bakery, and Ottomanelli’s meats, and Faicco’s pork store. Somebody told me it had been there forever. They had live eels in season, and a big glass case filled with ice displaying the day’s catch fresh from the Fulton Street fish market. Soft shell crabs were often available. For the first couple of years I lived on Houston Street, they went for 25 cents each. Then one week they shot up to 75 cents apiece, and I stopped buying them. 75 cents! Who would pay 75 cents for a soft shelled crab?

Not me.

Bluefish cost just a quarter per pound, however, so I decided I’d try bluefish instead. The first time I cooked bluefish, it was terrible. It was gray and oily and fishy smelling, and my girlfriend and I managed only a couple of bites before we threw it in the trash. I reluctantly went back to buying flounder, a comparative fortune at a dollar a pound for fillets.

Then one night I was having dinner around the corner from my loft at Rocco’s on Thompson Street, and I saw they had bluefish on the menu, so I asked the waiter if it was good, and he made one of those classic Italian waiter moves, kissing his forefinger and thumb and closing his eyes. “Magnificent,” he promised.

So I ordered the bluefish. He was right. It was light, and fragrant of herbs and lemon and wine, served with boiled new potatoes and flat beans. I couldn’t believe it was the same fish I had bought on Bleecker Street and failed so miserably at cooking, so I asked the waiter how they fixed it.

“Come with me,” he said, heading for the swinging doors into the kitchen. I followed. He introduced me to the chef, and older Italian guy in an apron with a white cloth tied around his head. They passed a few words in Italian I couldn’t understand, and the chef gave me a big grin and headed for the walk-in refrigerator. He emerged with a whole bluefish which he quickly and expertly filleted. He spoke English with a heavy accent, but I could follow him all right.

“You take the fillets like this,” he said, laying them side by side, skin side down, in a black graniteware roasting pan on which he had sprinkled a few drops of olive oil. “Oregano. Not too much,” he said, sprinkling flakes of dried oregano on both fillets. “Now lemon.” He grabbed one and grated lemon rind over both fillets. “Salt, pepper,” he added with a flourish. “Now some wine.” He grabbed a bottle and splashed white wine liberally into the pan around the fish. “You must have hot oven,” he said, opening one of his ovens and sliding the pan inside. “Four hundred . . . five hundred is better.”

I asked him to show me how he had filleted the bluefish, so he went to the fridge and brought out another and more slowly this time, demonstrated how to cut the fish along the backbone and then carefully carve the fillet, cutting against the bones. “Like so!” he said, triumphantly holding aloft one of the fillets.

By the time he had filleted the other side, he declared that the bluefish was done, and removed the pan from the oven. He lifted the fillets onto a plate, cut a couple of pats of butter and swirled them around in the roasting pan with the wine and spooned a little atop each fillet. Handing me one fork, he used another to take a bite for himself and smacked his lips. I took a bite. Like the one I had ordered for dinner, it was perfect.

Over the next few years, I learned more from the guys in the kitchen at Rocco’s. One night, they taught me how to make Zabaglione, the classic Italian dessert made by whipping egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine into a froth in a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water.

Years later, I would make use of that skill when for an appetizer at the Millennium dinner I gave in L.A., I served wild mushroom soup with a cloud of Zabaglione floating on top. Another time, the chef gave me Rocco’s recipe for Bolognese sauce, which they made from ground beef, veal, pork and canned Italian San Marzano tomatoes. Still another time, they showed me how they achieved the incredibly crispy skin they got on the roast chicken they occasionally featured as a special. It was all about the oven, the chef said. You had to have a hot, hot oven.

I found a speckled black graniteware roasting pan like the one they used in the kitchen at Rocco’s for $6.00 at the Pioneer Market on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth, and I still have that pan today. Following the chef’s instructions, I learned to heat up the oven in my loft at least a half hour before I made the bluefish or roasted a chicken. It worked. My bluefish was flaky and light, and roasting a chicken at 450 or so took only an hour and came out with crispy brown skin and breast meat that dripped with juices as you sliced it.

The great thing about that old graniteware pan was that you could take it straight from the oven to a burner on top of the stove and make sauce from the drippings, scraping up bits of browned chicken or little flakes of fish skin into the sauce as you reduced it with a little wine in the pan.

That’s the way I learned to cook during those years I lived in the loft on Houston Street. I’d clip the "60-Minute Gourmet" recipe from Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne The New York Times ran every Wednesday, and make whatever the recipe called for.

One week, they featured Rock Cornish Game Hens a la Diable — split game hens you brushed with Dijon mustard and wine and broiled quickly on one side, then you turned them over and sprinkled with bread crumbs and finished by roasting them at 450 for about 15 minutes. They were served with a sauce made from shallots, white wine, Worcestershire, mustard, tomato paste and cream.

Incredible.

Later, I’d modify the recipe by coating split game hens with Dijon, marmalade and Worcestershire and cook them on a Weber grill, covering the grill and roasting them off the coals so they wouldn’t burn. I still make  Franey and Claiborne’s recipe for green peas and mint, which you can whip up in a skillet on top of the stove with a little butter in less than five minutes. If you look up the recipe, forget the half teaspoon of sugar. The peas are sweet enough by themselves, even the frozen ones.

New York in those days was a different place, and not because you could get soft shelled crabs for 25 cents a piece. The streets in the Village and elsewhere in Manhattan that are now crowded with restaurants had dozens of storefronts selling food you prepared at home. Across Houston Street from my loft, a single block of Sullivan Street had Joe’s Dairy, where they sold canned tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh mozzarella cheese, and not much else; a vegetable market that in good weather displayed what they had on tables outside; a meat market that sold beef, veal and pork; and right next door, a market that sold nothing but fresh chicken – whole, cut up, breasts tied around prosciutto and cheese or stuffed with bread crumbs. At the end of the block, around the corner on Prince Street was Vesuvio Bakery, owned by a guy named Tony Dapolito and his mother. They lived upstairs. People argued about whose bread was better, Vesuvio on Prince, or Zito’s on Bleecker. Trust me. Tony’s was better.

Tony Dapolito was the mob’s political guy in the Village. He was a member of the local planning board, he belonged to the Village Independent Democrats, if the “guys from the neighborhood” needed something done politically, Tony was their man. In the early 1960’s, Robert Moses was flexing his muscles and threatening to build the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a freeway across Canal Street that would have built an elevated highway over Washing Square Park in the Village and wiped out most of Little Italy and Chinatown.

One night, Tony Dapolito picked up Jane Jacobs (author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”) and Mary Nichols, the city editor of the Village Voice, the two of whom were leading the opposition to Moses and his insane plan, and drove them to an unmarked storefront on Mulberry Street. Inside sat Carlo Gambino, the mob boss, having a cup of espresso.

Tony served espresso to Jane and Mary, and with Tony standing by, asked them about their opposition to the Lower Manhattan Expressway. They told him of the blocks of Thompson and Mulberry and other streets that would be wiped out, the truck exhaust it would bring to the South Village. When they were finished, Tony drove them home. A few days later, the construction unions came out in opposition to Moses’ expressway. The city government rejected Moses’ expressway in 1964, and his career laying concrete was finished.

Years later, when I was living in the loft on Houston, the neighborhood suffered a spate of daytime burglaries. Somebody was going up fire escapes when people were out of their apartments at work and taking TV’s, stereos, jewelry . . . anything he could grab. Clark Whelton, who was also a staff writer on the Voice, lived on McDougal Street, and a couple of apartments in his building had been hit, along with others on his block.

So Clark and I went to see Tony. He gave a deep sigh and said he knew about the burglaries, that it was a “local kid” who had a drug problem, but “the boys” were looking for him, and they’d find him pretty soon and get him off the streets. In the meantime, Tony told us to take a sheet of paper and write in magic marker “STAY THE FUCK OUT” and put the signature “VINNIE” underneath. Tape the paper to the window leading to the fire escape. That would do it for the time being.

Clark and I both bought loaves of bread and went home and did what Tony told us to do. Neither his apartment or my loft got hit. The bread was delicious.

Meek Mill’s release from prison shows the path for criminal justice reform

AP/Matt Rourke

Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill was released from prison on bail Tuesday following a ruling from Pennsylvania's Supreme Court. He had been jailed in a state prison for the last five months on a probation violation stemming from a 2008 drugs and guns conviction.

The rapper's case inspired national outrage about the criminal justice system unfairly impacting black and brown people and put a spotlight on the perils of parole and probation. As I wrote when he was first sent back to prison in November, in Philadelphia, one out of every three people in prison today is not there because they committed any new crime, but for a technical violation of parole or probation.

"While the past five months have been a nightmare, the prayers, visits, calls, letters and rallies have helped me stay positive," Meek said in a statement. "To the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office, I’m grateful for your commitment to justice – not only for my case, but for others that have been wrongfully jailed due to police misconduct."

The statement continued, "Although I’m blessed to have the resources to fight this unjust situation, I understand that many people of color across the country don’t have that luxury and I plan to use my platform to shine a light on those issues. In the meantime, I plan to work closely with my legal team to overturn this unwarranted conviction and look forward to reuniting with my family and resuming my music career."

Pennsylvania's highest court "cited the credibility of Mill's arresting officer, Reginald Graham, who has since been identified on a list of so-called dirty cops in Philadelphia," NBC Philadelphia reported. He was the sole witness to testify during Mill's original 2008 conviction and a former police officer and ex-colleague to Graham accused him of lying under oath to ensure Mill was sent to prison.

In March, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner supported Mill being released on bail pending his appeal to the 2008 charge. "There is a strong showing of likelihood of (Mill's) conviction being reversed (in whole or in part)," Krasner said in a statement. "Therefore the Commonwealth is unopposed to (Mill's) petition for bail."

Krasner, who was a civil rights and criminal defense attorney elected to District Attorney as a staunch criminal justice reform advocate, continues to deliver on his campaign promises. The list of suspected Philadelphia police officers with a history of lying, corruption, racial discrimination or violence was not created by Krasner (it was ordered by former District Attorney Seth Williams,) but he made the list public, and his office has been working to expand it and verify it.

The Supreme Court ruling does not absolve Mill. But it is a necessary intervention.

Last week Assistant District Attorney told Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley that Mill should be granted a new trial given the questions raised about the arresting officer. Although both the defense and prosecution were now unanimous in requesting a new trial date, Brinkley was not moved and set an evidentiary hearing for June 18. She also refused to grant bail, in which Mill's team appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

"We are thrilled that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has directed Judge Brinkley to immediately issue an order releasing Meek on bail," Mill's lawyer Joe Tacopina said in a statement. "As we have said all along, Meek was unjustly convicted and should not have spent a single day in jail."

Mill's defense lawyers have accused Brinkley of inappropriate behavior and bias. She has presided over Mill's case since his 2008conviction when he served an eight-month sentence. In November, against the recommendation of the district attorney and Mill's probation officer, she sent him back to prison for two to four years citing two arrests in 2017: for popping a wheelie during a music video shoot and for allegedly getting into a fight. Both charges were either dropped or dismissed.

#FreeMeekMill has been a popular hashtag and rallying call since his sentence. Supporters believe Mill's case is indicative of the way the parole and probation system entraps and haunts people for life. "For about a decade, he’s been stalked by a system that considers the slightest infraction a justification for locking him back inside," Jay-Z wrote about Mill in the New York Times. "Instead of a second chance, probation ends up being a land mine, with a random misstep bringing consequences greater than the crime."

"Meek’s case is symbolic of hundreds of thousands of cases out there," Jessica Jackson Sloan, attorney and current mayor of Mill Valley, California, told Salon in November. "There’s 4.65 million people who are on probation or parole in this country. Even more alarmingly, there’s 61,000 people who are currently in prison because of a technical violation. You see a case like Meek Mill’s, it just highlights the worst injustices in the system."

Meghan Markle’s royal wedding madness is coming to TV — and here’s why we want to watch

Getty/Chris Jackson

Wednesday night’s season finale episode of USA Network’s hit drama “Suits” marks Meghan Markle’s departure from the series that made her a star. That chapter ends with, what else? A wedding.

Nuptial plans already were in the works for Markle’s character Rachel Zane and her fiancé Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams, also leaving the show) but circumstances, within the show and in the real world, inspire them to move up the joyous event.

I’m not giving anything away in saying the result is elegant, intimate and flawless. All in all, it’s a suitable send off for a woman leaving her career in Hollywood for a more regal life in Windsor Castle, not to mention her happily ever after (fingers crossed!) with a genuine prince, His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales.

Although CBS News aired “Meghan Markle: American Princess” on April 20, the Gayle King-hosted special did not result in the ratings equivalent of Guy Fawkes Night fireworks, netting a modest 5.18 million viewers. That could be interpreted as a sign that Americans may not care as much as the media suspects we do. Don’t be so certain.

It’s more likely that CBS came out swinging a bit too early in its effort to plant the network flag on Royal Wedding coverage. But after Markle's final farewell kiss on “Suits,” which is happening Wednesday at 9 p.m., button up — it’s off to the races.

Thus in keeping with the tradition of the royal town crier: oyez, oyez, oyez! on Saturday, May 19, NBC and CBS will start their coverage of the event from Windsor Castle (or a vantage point nearby) where, in St. George’s Chapel, the couple is set to wed. In the United States, the fun begins in the wee pre-dawn hours on the East Coast.

That would be 4 a.m. Eastern for King, Kevin Frazier and Tina Brown on CBS, and 4:30 a.m. for NBC’s Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, the latter of whom might trade in her signature “Today” show morning wine for a champagne glass, if not a strongly brewed pot of Earl Grey.

Surely ABC, whose parent company, Disney, all but invented the Princess Industrial Complex, is dreaming up its own live coverage plans. So far it has announced a special royalty-themed "20/20" airing Friday, May 18 at at 10:10 p.m., that examines the similarities between Markle and Diana, Princess of Wales. This is followed by a second "20/20" airing Saturday, May 19 at 10 p.m., in which ABC's David Muir and Deborah Roberts  join us in our collective wedding day afterglow.

ABC also has four-hour prime time event in the works titled “The Story of The Royals," but that won't debut until August.

None of the other broadcasters could possibly outdo the efforts PBS is putting into the pre-wedding march festivities. Long the United States audience's main conduit for and erstwhile home of “Downton Abbey,” public television is going all out for Harry and Meghan: Its live broadcast of the wedding service will cap five nights of coverage, running at 10 p.m. Monday, May 14 through Thursday, May 17 , and at 10:30 p.m. on Friday, May 19. It will be co-hosted by Meredith Vieira and British television presenter Matt Baker.

Even Fox is getting in on this jazz with “Meghan Markle: An American Princess” — not to be confused with the aforementioned “Meghan Markle: American Princess” on CBS.

Note the subtle differences. Fox’s show runs for two hours starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, May 11, even though CBS barely held the viewer’s attention with one. Also, in lieu of Gayle King, Fox promises insight from none other than Piers Morgan, and that makes me wonder whether Gordon Ramsay was not available.

I’m only half joking. Ramsay cleans up well, and when he’s not screaming at would-be chefs who aren’t living up to his expectations, he's actually fairly genteel.

Anyway, two days after Fox’s bliss comes the Lifetime movie — of course there’s a Lifetime movie! — “Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance,” debuting Sunday, May 13 at 8 p.m. You may recall that in 2011, Lifetime gave the same treatment to those other Royals in the form of “William & Kate: The Movie” starring Nico Evers-Swindell and Camilla Luddington as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

“Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance” certainly sounds more dignified that “Harry & Meghan’s Excellent Adventure” or “Harry & Meghan Go to a White Castle”; at any rate, the groom will be portrayed by Murray Fraser while the bride will be played by Parisa Fitz-Henley. It is entirely appropriate to respond to that news with some version of, “Who dat is?”

Similarly, as we’ve previously noted, it’s also completely fine to ignore all this pomp and pageantry, although the voluminous coverage of Markle’s fashion choices could make that impossible. Very few of us knew who Kate Middleton was before she married Prince William and became Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, but even those of us who hid under a rock could not escape the tiny hat revolution sparked by that royal wedding’s impressive fascinator parade.

Neither is it my intention to add another expository essay as to why Americans continue to be obsessed with British Royalty to the hundreds currently recycling in our news stream. Instead, may I simply suggest that this focus on uniting the houses of a commoner from a former British colony with the Windsors offers respite from the maladroit, disordered tactlessness that has overrun our own palaces of governance.

We can celebrate that Markle, a mixed-race American divorcée who used to be a suitcase model on “Deal or No Deal,” stands as an example that even stratospheric romantic dreams are possible for American women to attain. We can mourn ever-so-slightly at the reports that she’s being subjected to etiquette and elocution lessons that would likely make Eliza Doolittle’s skull explode. We can roll our eyes at how outdated and paternalistic the continued enabling of a Western monarchy looks in the modern age.

The greater takeaway from all of this head-spinning coverage is that this wedding symbolizes that grace and dignity, as well as the certainty offered by traditional norms, are not dead. Such reminders can be calming. Those very same truths fuel repeat marathon viewings of "The Crown" on Netflix and "Victoria" on PBS. Stilted as royalty can seem to casual and comfort-focused Americans, the illusion of propriety and quietude in those series can feel therapeutic.

We may profess that we shun those concepts, that tradition can be constraining and when a declared adherence to such is taken to extremes, it can result in evil. That’s completely true.

This is a wedding we’re talking about, people. For crying out loud, brides around the country are being suffocated by boned foundations and familial demands to adhere to their own tradition and order, like walking around all day in heels with pennies in them, smiling all the while. We just don’t hear about the travails of those women.

And while decades of covering Prince Harry enables many us to rattle off all of his stages of development, from the bereft toddler left motherless after Diana's death, to his wild child phase, through serving in the military and his charity ambassadorships, his settling down was predestined.

Markle, however, is a lovely surprise. She’s this age’s Grace Kelly — sophisticated, media savvy and successful, as described in CBS’s special. A friend who attended Northwestern University with Markle describes her as impossibly stylish, and effortlessly so. “She’s going to be a princess,” another sorority sister of Markle’s observes, “and I’m driving to Costco!”

Point being, here’s an American woman who probably used to wear sweats and flip-flops like the rest of us, and who is in a real way rising above the mess most of us are living in.

Markle, her prince and in-laws are still part of our world and stand to be impacted by the worst of what could happen, terrors we’re praying we never see and fear we may live to.

So for a few hours, days — a week, even — there's no harm in turning our gaze toward visions of gemstones and tulle that aren’t garish or braggadocious.

Naturally, plenty of people will scoff at this suggestion. "Who needs all that?" they may ask.

Don't be surprised if the response is a resounding chorus of, "I do."

Fake drugs are one reason malaria still kills so many

mycteria via Shutterstock

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic infection that affects about 3.2 billion people in 95 countries, has become largely a disease of the young and poor.

Due to effective medications like chloroquine and artemisinins, malaria deaths dropped an estimated 60 percent worldwide between 2000 and 2015. The Americas and Africa saw the greatest improvements.

Still, 216 million new cases of malaria were reported in 2016, the latest data available. Most of them occurred in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Ivory Coast and Mozambique. And of the 445,000 people who died from the infection, about 70 percent were children under the age of 5.

If malaria is a curable disease with effective treatment, why does it still kill so many?

The rise of counterfeit drugs

Our research on the pharmaceutical industry has revealed that one reason for malaria’s continued virulence in the developing world is ineffective medicine. In fact, in some poor African countries, many malaria drugs are actually expired, substandard or fake.

Globally, some 200,000 preventable deaths occur each year due to anti-malarial drugs that do not work. Substandard and counterfeit medicines may be responsible for up to 116,000 malaria deaths annually in sub-Saharan Africa alone, according to recent World Health Organization estimates.

Fraudulent pharmaceuticals are on the rise. Reports of counterfeit or falsified anti-malarials rose 90 percent between 2005 and 2010, according to a 2014 article in the Malaria Journal.

In 2012, a research team from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that about one-third of anti-malarial medicines distributed in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were of poor quality. A few years prior, fully 44 percent of anti-malarial supplies in Senegal had failed quality control tests.

For as long as effective medicines have existed, people have produced fake versions. That’s because counterfeiting pharmaceutical drugs is profitable business for manufacturers. This illegal activity is most common in places with little government oversight and limited access to safe, affordable and high-quality medicines.

Various reports have found that many fake medicines originate in India, followed by China, Hong Kong and Turkey. Some illicit drug manufacturers appear to have connections with organized crime groups.

It’s a good racket: Public officials in the developing countries where these medicines are distributed typically struggle to detect and investigate the crime – much less prosecute it – due to lack of funding and regulatory restrictions.

Imitating good malaria drugs

Generally, fake malaria drugs imitate one of two types of common antimalarial medicines: quinines and artemisins.

Quinine and its chemical derivatives are derived from the bark of the South American quina-quina tree. Artemisinin is isolated from a variety of wormwood. Both medicines, which cost between US$12 and $150 per course, are affordable to rich-world patients but largely inaccessible to people in countries where malaria is most widespread.

Quinine was first used to treat malaria in the 17th century. Synthetic quinine-based drugs became available in the early 20th century. The most common is chloroquine.

Artemisinin came about in the 1970s, though it had been used as a traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. In combination with other anti-malarials, it is now the primary treatment for malaria, largely because it has less severe side effects than quinines.

What is a substandard medicine?

Poor quality medicines – not just for treating malaria but in general – usually fall into one of three categories.

Medicines may be falsified, meaning that the treatment has been deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity, source or pharmaceutical content. Some fake drugs contain no active ingredients at all or contain them in incorrect amounts. This is generally a scam to earn money illegally.

Anti-malarial drugs distributed in the developing world may also be substandard. Such drugs are produced by legitimate manufacturers but are not compliant with World Health Organization standards. Frequently, they are short on artemisinin, the key active ingredient.

Such medicines, which may be produced deliberately or unintentionally, do not prevent malaria in the individuals who take them. Worse yet, they can lead the malarial parasite to develop drug resistance, a significant danger for everyone who lives in a place affected by malaria.

So far, resistance to drugs derived from artemisinin has only been reported in southeast Asia, but doctors fear resistance will spread.

Finally, medical literature shows that some anti-malarial drugs found in poor countries have either expired by the time they reach consumers or been damaged by exposure to extreme heat.

Fake drugs an expensive fraud

Ineffective malaria treatments – whether fake, substandard or degraded – are also expensive for consumers and national health care systems.

Patients who unwittingly purchase ineffective anti-malarial drugs are out of pocket for medicines that do nothing. Then, they pay for additional treatments when the first course of medicine fails.

According to the World Health Organization, repeated medical treatments due to ineffective drugs is estimated to cost to sub-Saharan African patients and health care providers as a whole about $38.5 million annually.

The problem of fake and substandard malaria drugs is so widespread that the World Health Organization, Global Fund and the United States Agency for International Development have all developed guidelines regarding the procurement of malaria medicines.

Jackson Thomas, Assistant Professor/Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy, University of Canberra; Erin Walker, Medical Science Research Fellow, University of Canberra; Gregory Peterson, Deputy Dean (Research) Faculty of Health, University of Tasmania, and Mark Naunton, Head of Pharmacy (2013-present), University of Canberra

Could an industrial prehuman civilization have existed on Earth before ours?

AP

This article was originally published by Scientific American.

One of the creepier conclusions drawn by scientists studying the Anthropocene — the proposed epoch of Earth’s geologic history in which humankind’s activities dominate the globe — is how closely today’s industrially induced climate change resembles conditions seen in past periods of rapid temperature rise.

“These ‘hyperthermals,’ the thermal-maximum events of prehistory, are the genesis of this research,” says Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Whether the warming was caused by humans or by natural forces, the fingerprints — the chemical signals and tracers that give evidence of what happened then — look very similar.”

The canonical example of a hyperthermal is the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 200,000-year period that occurred some 55.5 million years ago when global average temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (about 9 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit). Schmidt has pondered the PETM for his entire career, and it was on his mind one day in his office last year when the University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank paid him a visit.

Frank was there to discuss the idea of studying global warming from an “astrobiological perspective” — that is, investigating whether the rise of an alien industrial civilization on an exoplanet might necessarily trigger climate changes similar to those we see during Earth’s own Anthropocene. But almost before Frank could describe how one might search for the climatic effects of industrial “exocivilizations” on newly discovered planets, Schmidt caught him up short with a surprising question: “How do you know we’re the only time there’s been a civilization on our own planet?”

Frank considered a moment before responding with a question of his own: “Could we even tell if there had been an industrial civilization [long before this one]?”

Their subsequent attempt to address both questions has yielded a provocative paper on the possibility Earth might have spawned more than one technological society during its 4.5-billion-year history. And if indeed some such culture arose on Earth in the murky depths of geologic time, how might scientists today discern signs of that incredible development? Or, as the paper put it: “If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today?”

Schmidt and Frank began by forecasting the geologic fingerprints the Anthropocene will likely leave behind — such as hints of soaring temperatures and rising seas laid down in beds of sedimentary rock. These features, they noted, are very similar to the geologic leftovers of the PETM and other hyperthermal events. They then considered what tests could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from otherwise naturally occurring climate changes. “These issues have never really been addressed to any great extent,” Schmidt notes. And that goes not only for scientists, but evidently for science fiction writers as well, he adds: “I looked back into the science fiction literature to try to find the earliest example of a story featuring a nonhuman industrial civilization on Earth. The earliest I could find was in a Doctor Who episode.”

That 1970 episode of the classic TV series involves the present-day discovery of “Silurians” — an ancient race of technologically advanced, reptilian humanoids who predated the arrival of humans by hundreds of millions of years. According to the plot, these highly civilized saurians flourished for centuries until Earth’s atmosphere entered a period of cataclysmic upheaval that forced Homo reptilia to go into hibernation underground to wait out the danger. Schmidt and Frank paid tribute to the episode in the title of their paper: “The Silurian Hypothesis.”

Lost in strata

Any plausibility for the Silurian hypothesis stems chiefly from the vast incompleteness of the geologic record, which only gets sparser the farther back in time you go.

Today, less than 1 percent of Earth’s surface is urbanized, and the chance that any of our great cities would remain over tens of millions of years is vanishingly low, says Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester in England. A metropolis’s ultimate fate, he notes, mostly depends on whether the surrounding surface is subsiding (to be locked in rock) or rising (to be eroded away by rain and wind). “New Orleans is sinking; San Francisco is rising,” he says. The French Quarter, it seems, has much better chances of entering the geologic record than Haight–Ashbury.

“To estimate the odds of finding artifacts,” Schmidt says, “The back-of-the-envelope calculation for dinosaur fossils says that one fossil emerges every 10,000 years.” Dinosaur footprints are rarer still.

“After a couple of million years,” Frank says, “the chances are that any physical reminder of your civilization has vanished, so you have to search for things like sedimentary anomalies or isotopic ratios that look off.” The shadows of many prehuman civilizations could, in principle, lurk hidden in such subtleties.

But exactly what we would look for depends to some degree on how an Earthly-but-alien technological culture would choose to behave. Schmidt and Frank decided the safest assumption to make would be that any industrial civilization now or hundreds of millions of years ago should be hungry for energy. Which means any ancient industrial society would develop the capacity to widely exploit fossil fuels as well as other power sources, just as we have today. “We’d be looking for globalized effects that would leave a worldwide trace” — planetary-scale physical-chemical tracers of energy-intensive industrial processes and their wastes, Schmidt says.

Next comes the issue of longevity — the longer a civilization’s energy-intensive period persists and grows, the more obvious its presence should become in the geologic record. Consider our own industrial age, which has only existed for about 300 years out of a multimillion-year history of humanity. Now compare that minuscule slice of time with the half-billion years or so that creatures have lived on land. Humanity’s present rapacious phase of fossil fuel use and environmental degradation, Frank says, is unsustainable for long periods. In time it will diminish either by human choice or by the force of nature, making the Anthropocene less of an enduring era and more of a blip in the geologic record. “Maybe [civilization like ours] has happened multiple times, but if they each only last 300 years, no one would ever see it,” Frank says.

Taking all this into consideration, what remains is a menu of diffuse long-lived tracers including fossil fuel combustion residues (carbon, primarily), evidence of mass extinctions, plastic pollutants, synthetic chemical compounds not found in nature and even transuranic isotopes from nuclear fission. In other words, what we would need to look for in the geologic record are the same distinctive signals that humans are laying down right now.

Signs of civilization

Finding signs of an altered carbon cycle would be one big clue to previous industrial periods, Schmidt says. “Since the mid–18th century, humans have released a half-trillion tons of fossil carbon at high rates. Such changes are detectable in changes in the carbon isotope ratio between biological and inorganic carbon — that is, between the carbon incorporated into things like seashells and that which goes instead into lifeless volcanic rock.”

Another tracer would be distinctive patterns of sediment deposition. Large coastal deltas would hint at boosted levels of erosion and rivers (or engineered canals) swollen from increased rainfall. Telltale traces of nitrogen in the sediments could suggest the widespread use of fertilizer, fingering industrial-scale agriculture as a possible culprit; spikes in metal levels in the sediments might instead point to runoff from manufacturing and other heavy industry.

More unique, specific tracers would be non-naturally occurring, stable synthetic molecules such as steroids and many plastics, along with well-known pollutants including PCBs — toxic polychlorinated biphenyls from electrical devices — and CFCs — ozone-eating chlorofluorocarbons from refrigerators and aerosol sprays.

The key strategy in distinguishing the presence of industry from nature, Schmidt notes, is developing a multifactor signature. Absent artifacts or convincingly clear markers, the uniqueness of an event may well be seen in many relatively independent fingerprints as opposed to the coherent set of changes that are seen to be associated with a single geophysical cause.

“I find it amazing that no one had worked all this out before, and I’m really glad that somebody has taken a closer look at it,” says Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright, who last year published “a fluffy little paper” exploring the counterintuitive notion that the best place to find evidence of any of Earth’s putative prehuman civilizations may well be off-world. If, for instance, dinosaurs built interplanetary rockets, presumably some remnants of that activity might remain preserved in stable orbits or on the surfaces of more geologically inert celestial bodies such as the moon.

“Look, 200 years ago the question of whether there might be a civilization on Mars was a legitimate one,” Wright says. “But once the pictures came out from interplanetary probes, that was settled for good. And that view became ingrained, so now it’s not a valid topic for scientific inquiry; it’s considered ridiculous. But no one’s ever put the actual scientific limits on it — on what may have happened a long time ago.”

Wright also acknowledges the potential for this work to be misinterpreted. “Of course, no matter what, this is going to be interpreted as ‘Astronomers Say Silurians Might Have Existed,’ even though the premise of this work is that there is no such evidence,” he says. “Then again, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Second federal judge rules against Trump’s attempt to cut funding to Planned Parenthood

Getty/Photo montage by Salon

In yet another notable judicial smackdown for President Donald Trump, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington blocked the Trump administration's efforts to cut grants to Planned Parenthood that pay for a teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) program.

The permanent injunction was delivered by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Rice on Wednesday, who wrote in his decision that the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services "arbitrarily and capriciously terminated the TPP Program."

"The Court determines that the public interest weighs in favor of (Planned Parenthood), as it would prevent harm to the community . . . and prevent loss of data regarding the effectiveness of teen pregnancy prevention," the decision read, according to the Spokesman-Review.

The suit was filed on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho on Feb. 15, and was joined by several other Planned Parenthood chapters across eight other states, the Spokesman-Review reported. The suit pointed out that "since its [Planned Parenthood's TPP program] inception in 2010 through 2016, the teen birth rate in the United States has dropped by 41 percent."

The lawsuit stated that getting rid of the teen pregnancy prevention program "is likely to harm some of the country’s most vulnerable youth by denying them high-quality information and education that will help them make healthy decisions about their futures."

The decision came less than a week after a D.C. federal judge ruled the Trump administration's cuts to the program to be unlawful. The Trump administration's budget puts $277 million towards extending abstinence education.

"The courts confirmed that the Trump-Pence administration’s attempt to impose its ideological agenda on young people is unlawful," said Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, according to Reuters.

Both cases highlight the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate programs that have helped 1.2 million youths across 39 states as well as the Marshall Islands. "HHS cut the funding to the 81 programs a month after Trump appointed Valerie Huber as chief of staff for the Office of Assistant Secretary of Health," the Spokesman-Review reported. Huber is a well-known advocate for abstinence education programs.

Trump has suffered several judiciary defeats as of late, including a ruling on Tuesday that determined the Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), must remain in place and accept new applicants.

Between Trump and a devastated place

Getty/Robyn Beck

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Seven months after Juan and Jonathan Leija were forced to evacuate their flooded homes during Hurricane Harvey, the cousins face challenges that go beyond just recovering their lives. Building back isn’t easy for anybody, but the Leijas are doing it as looming policy decisions threaten to uproot them again.

Juan and Jonathan are Dreamers — young adults who qualified for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era policy that granted clemency to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children. In September, President Donald Trump announced he was canceling the program, leaving it up to Congress to pass legislation on the issue — which it hasn’t been able to agree on.

Undocumented immigrants were hit especially hard by last year’s devastating hurricanes and wildfires. Immigrant populations were already struggling with higher rates of poverty and less access to medical care. Then storms, fires, and mudslides wiped out homes and disrupted industries like agriculture that employ a largely immigrant labor force. Despite the dire need for relief, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for federal disaster aid. Some were afraid to even go to emergency shelters or reach out for help out of fear of exposing their own or a relative’s immigration status. Post-disaster, many immigrants have turned to jobs in construction and face injury and exploitation rebuilding communities that were leveled.

“Yesterday was the first time since Harvey that it rained really hard,” Juan told Grist in March. “It definitely brought flashbacks and it triggered a little bit in me. And just to add onto it, tomorrow a year from now my DACA expires.”

While undocumented immigrants like Juan work to pick up the pieces after disaster, the Trump administration is placing targets on their backs. In addition to ending DACA, Trump has revoked Temporary Protected Status for countries at a faster pace than any other president and has intensified immigration raids, even in sanctuary cities, over the past year. For some immigrant Americans, it’s political insult to climate change-induced injury — and suggests that it may be a while before they find a measure of stability in the U.S. again.

When Hurricane Harvey struck the Houston area, it brought with it a year’s worth of rainfall over in less than a week. The storm affected 13 million people across Texas and Louisiana, killing 88. Causing $125 billion in damage, Harvey was the second costliest storm (behind Hurricane Katrina) to hit the U.S. since 1900.

Ten days after Harvey made landfall in Texas, President Trump announced an end date for DACA the following March.

“I was angry. I was confused. I was sad. I was anxious,” Juan Leija recalls. “I thought it was really heartless for him to do that after a national travesty.”

Harvey hit Juan’s family’s home hard. The Houston house they rent flooded up to his thighs. Juan is 6’1’’ and says the water level was probably above his mom’s waist. The family evacuated. They waded through water for two miles before reaching a friend’s home. For the next four months, Juan, his two siblings, his mother, and her boyfriend squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment.

The Leijas joined hundreds of Texas families struggling to rebuild after the storm. While Harvey swamped all of Houston, its impacts were not felt equally.

“In terms of the extent of hardship or suffering, we definitely found disparities across racial, ethnic lines, and across income lines,” said Shao-Chee Sim, a researcher at the Texas-based advocacy group Episcopal Health Foundation, who helped lead a study of adults living in Harvey-damaged counties.

The survey found that, after Harvey, 64 percent of immigrants suffered unemployment and income losses compared to 39 percent of their U.S.-born neighbors. Immigrants were also more likely to have fallen behind on their rent as a result of the storm and were more than twice as likely to have had to borrow money from a family member or payday lender in order to make ends meet.

When Juan’s cousin Jonathan’s mobile home flooded, it was a huge setback. “Basically, we had to remodel everything,” he said. “That was going to cost money that we didn’t have.”

Undocumented immigrants — including Dreamers — are ineligible for aid provided in the wake of natural disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Families with mixed immigration status, however, do qualify because parents can apply for relief on behalf of their U.S. citizen children. Even so, many eligible families avoided applying due to worries over providing personal information in an aid application. FEMA is, after all, an agency housed within the Department of Homeland Security, which also oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“In an immigrant community there is a huge concern about asking for aid because there is a fear — and a legitimate one — about, ‘will this come back to hurt my chances of gaining status at some point in the future?’” Kate Vickery, executive director of Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, said. “The answer has always been complicated, but under the Trump administration, it is pretty grim.”

Jonathan Leija’s younger siblings are U.S. citizens, and the family decided to apply for FEMA assistance. The officer who came to inspect their home canceled four separate appointments before finally showing up.

Jonathan, who is studying construction management at Lone Star Community College, north of Houston, missed class twice in order to be home for appointments that never happened. Before Harvey hit, Jonathan had to withdraw from school for a semester to save up money for tuition. Dreamers don’t receive federal financial aid, so he took up jobs roofing and working at a tire shop so that he could get back to class. The storm posed more delays and after all the missed appointments, his family’s FEMA application was denied.

Still, Jonathan counts himself lucky. A grassroots organization that defends workers’ rights, Fe y Justicia Worker Center, sent contractors to his home to repair the damage. That kind of help can be a godsend for undocumented immigrants who work in industries hit hard by flooding and fires. Immigrant-rights advocates are anticipating that those who lost employment because of last year’s disasters might seek out construction work as part of the rebuilding efforts.

Vickery, with Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, warns that undocumented immigrants are disproportionately part of what she calls the “second responder wave.” “They are the labor force doing the cleanup,” she explained.

The rebuilding booms that follow disasters come with their own threats. More than a third of day laborers informally employed in construction in the first few weeks after Harvey said they were injured on the job, according to a study conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago. Two-thirds of the respondents said that their workplace was unsafe. Eighty-five percent of day laborers who worked in hurricane-affected areas reported not receiving any training for the worksites they entered, and nearly two-thirds did not even have a hard hat to wear. Aside from all the safety risks, the study also found that more than a quarter of workers had experienced wage theft.

“The vulnerability of being a worker in a disaster recovery area if you don’t have status is a huge issue,” Vickery said.

 

* * *

Advocates in California are also concerned about the risks workers are facing after the state’s massive fires last year.

“A lot of people going into that labor might not have worked in construction. Those people need training,” said Christy Lubin with the Graton Day Labor Center.

Months after the blazes, many immigrants employed in affected industries — including agriculture, hospitality, and domestic work — have lost their homes and their jobs.

“A lot of people see wildfires in the hillsides of California or mudslides in affluent communities like Montecito as largely affecting wealthy homeowners,” said Lucas Zucker with the grassroots organization Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). “The reality is those wealthy homeowners employ domestic workers who are largely undocumented. They get no attention and really have nowhere to turn.”

In Santa Paula, an hour and a half northwest of Los Angeles, Marisol, a mother of three, and her family are still recovering from the Thomas Fire, which burned down their home in December. Marisol’s husband had worked on a horse ranch and wasn’t allowed time off to help his family after the wildfire. He lost his job as a result. Fearful of applying for aid that would require them to disclose their undocumented status, Marisol (whose name has been changed to protect her identity) and her husband are trying to get back on their feet with fewer resources available to them — and while U.S. immigration enforcement efforts intensify.

Like the Leija cousins, Marisol came to the U.S. from Mexico as a child — but she didn’t qualify for DACA because she doesn’t have a high school diploma, something she’s still working toward now. Her children, however, were born in the U.S. and are citizens.

“I don’t like to think about the consequences if me and my husband aren’t here,” Marisol told Grist through an interpreter as she fought back tears.

Undocumented folks and immigrant-rights groups have felt overwhelmed by the barrage of executive actions and policies targeting immigrants since Trump came into office. Deportations were already high under the Obama administration, but they jumped in the first year of Trump’s presidency. The number of people living in the United States who were deported rose nearly 25 percent, from roughly 65,000 in 2016 to more than 81,000 people in 2017.

For some migrants who received Temporary Protected Status because of a natural disaster that affected their home country, the experience of disaster and displacement is becoming a cycle — especially as climate change exacerbates extreme weather events. TPS is the only U.S. policy offering sanctuary to people displaced by environmental calamity, and Trump has been chipping away at the program by removing five countries designated for TPS, including Haiti and El Salvador, within the past year. More than 320,000 people could become undocumented as a result.

“We’ve kind of been in perpetual crisis mode for the last year as we’ve dealt with the disaster of the Trump administration on our communities to the literal disaster of wildfires and mudslides,” says CAUSE’s Zucker. “Immigrant families are basically caught in the middle of being under siege by the government and in desperate need of the government basically unwilling to provide that assistance.”

Marisol and her family in California got some much-needed financial help from an “UndocuFund” created by CAUSE and other groups, which provides grants to families affected by the raging wildfires and mudslides in California last year. But needs are still outpacing donations, and there are more than 800 disaster survivors awaiting assistance.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, Juan and Jonathan Leija are determined to keep moving forward. If Jonathan’s DACA status expires before Congress passes measures to replace the program, he’ll likely lose his job at the tire shop where he currently works. That will mean he will have to find another way to pay his way through school.

“Whatever happens, happens,” he said. “I’m still going to find a way to go to school, to finish it.”

Without DACA, Juan may be unable to find lawful employment even after graduating — but he doesn’t hesitate to speak out. Since before DACA was implemented, one of the Dreamers’ rallying calls has been  “Undocumented and Unafraid.” He still wants to replace fear with hope.

“I don’t want Dreamers to feel like they have to get back to the shadows.”