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      Baby formula shipment arrives from Europe, providing ‘some relief’ for US families

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      Baby formula shipment arrives from Europe, providing ‘some relief’ for US families Biden economic adviser says US to see more baby formula on shelves as 70,000lb of product lands in Indianapolis on Sunday A top White House economic adviser on Sunday said he was hopeful there would be more baby formula on American store shelves this upcoming week, especially after a plane full of the product arrived from an airbase in Germany. Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, told CNN State of the Union host Dana Bash that the plane carrying 70,000lb of baby formula – enough for half a million bottles – from Ramstein airbase in Germany which landed in Indianapolis on Sunday morning should cover about 15% of the product’s nationwide shortage. About 45% of baby formula products were out of stock across the US last week, according to figures that Bash cited during her interview of Deese, who didn’t dispute them.‘It’s a nightmare’: baby formula shortage leaves US parents desperateRead more“We’re going to see more formula … in stores starting as early as this week,” said Deese, adding that the incoming Nestlé product was “a specialty medical grade formula, the type that we most need in this market”.When asked how the US ended up needing to fly in baby formula from another country, Deese bluntly blamed the manufacturer Abbott, who apparently spent windfall profits on filling the pockets of investors and neglected to replace failing equipment which likely introduced dangerous bacteria to its infant nutritional products and set the stage for a recall that has wreaked havoc on the nationwide supply, according to financial records and whistleblower documents.“We had a manufacturer who wasn’t following the rules and that was making formula that had the risk of making babies sick,” Deese said. “So we have to take action on that front.”Deese suggested introducing more competition to the baby formula manufacturing industry so that the country’s supply doesn’t depend on just a handful of companies like Abbott.The country’s stock of baby formula was significantly curtailed after a February recall by Abbott worsened coronavirus pandemic-related supply chain issues among the product’s manufacturers, leaving parents with fewer options on store shelves to nourish their children.The recall resulted from illnesses and deaths among infants, and it hit poorer families hardest, because Abbott provides formula to about half the infants who receive benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or Wic, which primarily aims to help low-income women and their children.About half the infants who receive Wic benefits get their formula from Abbott, one of just four companies that produces 90% or so of US baby formula.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials have launched an investigation into reported bacterial infections in four infants who consumed powdered formula produced in Abbott’s facility in Michigan. All four infants were hospitalized, and two died.Biden invokes Defense Production Act to tackle baby formula shortageRead moreDeese said Abbott has indicated it will need about a month to bring their facility back online, “but we’re not going to wait that long”.Joe Biden last week took the relatively drastic step of invoking the Defense Production Act to speed production of more baby formula supply and authorize its import from abroad. The flight arriving at Indianapolis’s airport on Sunday stemmed from the order, which enabled the US defense department to use commercial aircraft to fly in overseas formula meeting federal standards.Deese, however, acknowledged Sunday’s flight would only “provide some incremental relief in the coming days”, and he said more are being planned for the coming days.TopicsUS newsUS politicsChildrenFoodnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganism

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      Interview‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganismEd Pilkington in New York Adams appears to have had some personal success with a vegan diet after a health scare, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?One morning in March 2016, before Eric Adams burst onto the national stage as the charismatic new mayor of New York City, he had a very rude awakening.The then Brooklyn borough president was startled to find that he could barely see the alarm clock that was sounding his morning call. His bedroom looked shrouded in mist.“I thought it was just sleep in my eyes and my eyes adjusting to the light,” Adams says. “But the cloudiness didn’t change. Something wrong was going on here.”He leapt out of bed only for the horror to intensify. Through the fog he could see that his right eye was bloodshot. His left eye was totally blind.“I had a piercing pain in my stomach which didn’t leave. I guess everything was breaking down all at once.”Adams is no stranger to fear. As he lays out in his book, Healthy At Last, he experienced plenty of it over more than two decades as an NYPD officer, patrolling the streets at night, raiding drug dens, investigating homicides, investigating the dark side of urban American life.This was different. This was the start of a journey into his physical dark side and the ugly truths he found there. He was quickly delivered a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Doctors told him that his condition and the multiple pills he would now be forced to swallow every day would define him for the rest of his life.American politics thrives on personal narratives of overcoming adversity, and Eric Adams is no exception. He didn’t accept the medical advice. He kept on searching until, with the help of scientists at the Cleveland Clinic, he discovered a way to beat his ailment with a radical whole-food plant-based diet.Now 61, Adams is reveling in his new stature as New York’s second Black (after David Dinkins in the 1990s) and first (almost) vegan mayor. Since he started in the post on 1 January he has been ubiquitous, popping up all over the city brandishing his trademark swagger. “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” is his mantra.There are many aspects of Adams’ first month in office that beg attention. He likes to present himself as the future of the Democratic party, a “radically practical” politician who is tough on both police brutality and crime, who gives working-class New Yorkers what they need and want while being scathingly dismissive of the progressive left.The stance clearly resonates with many New Yorkers who narrowly gave him victory in the Democratic primaries in July and with it the keys to Gracie Mansion. But Adams has had a troubled start, some of it self-inflicted.He tried to put his brother Bernard into a $210,000 job as his top bodyguard (the city’s conflict of interests board whittled that down to a $1 salary as an adviser). He appointed as head of public safety Philip Banks, who in 2015 came under federal investigation as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a major NYPD corruption scandal.Adams doesn’t want to talk about all that. Before he sits down for an interview with the Guardian, his press team stipulates that he will answer no questions about politics – he will only talk about his journey back from ill-health and his exuberant championship of a plant-based diet, as laid out in his book. Even here Adams is placing himself in choppy waters. A few days after the Guardian interview, he incensed groups helping those impacted by the opioid crisis by likening excessive cheese consumption to heroin addiction.Then Politico came out with a report that quoted several people claiming to have seen Adams regularly dining out on fish. The story inevitably spawned the Twitter handle #FishGate, and forced Adams to put out a statement saying “I am perfectly imperfect, and have occasionally eaten fish.”Adams clearly needs to get his story straight. Is he a strict vegan who only ever eats plant-based foods? (No.) Is he a pescatarian? (Maybe.) Is he someone who was given the scare of his life by contracting a devastating disease and drastically changed his life as a result?At least that last one is a definite yes. After Adams received his diabetes diagnosis, he began asking himself difficult questions about his lifestyle. He started reflecting on all those years of NYPD night shifts and the terrible diet that entailed.There were the inevitable McDonald’s drive-throughs and Wendy’s shakes and burgers. He became a connoisseur of the dollar menu, the double cheeseburger, coffee and fried chicken at KFC. It took its toll – by the time of the blindness episode he had such a stunningly elevated blood sugar level that his doctor said it could have put him in a coma.And then Adams dug deeper. Looking further into the root causes of his condition, he thought about the soul food that he had grown up with in New York and that his mother Dorothy and forebears had consumed in rural Alabama. He thought about the sugared buttered rolls, the chitterlings (pigs’ intestines), pigs’ feet and ears, fried chicken, ham hocks, fried steak and catfish.He thought how delicious. And how deadly. So much of it smothered in sugar, high in cholesterol and saturated fats, contributing to the epidemic of modern American diseases – diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart conditions.And then he thought, picking up on a debate that has been happening in African American communities for many years, this is not soul food, this is survival food, slavery food. “This was the diet our slave masters gave to us hundreds of years ago,” Adams writes. “We adopted a diet born from slavery and made it our own.”I asked Adams to elaborate upon the idea that the modern diet of millions of Americans today, in 2022, has its roots in the scraps of food tossed at slaves from the master’s table. All these years later, he replied, the long tail of slavery is still killing African Americans through morbid ill health.“Sometimes we think of being enslaved and we think about physical restraints,” he said. “Our hands and feet are in shackles. And we don’t acknowledge that the term ‘enslaved’ also applies to something you can’t free yourself of – and that’s what bad food is.”He goes on: “We have to free ourselves of it mentally. Sometimes physical restraint is easier to free yourself from than emotional restraint.”It’s striking that at a time when the enduring injury of slavery is increasingly being studied and debated, whether in terms of racial inequality or the injustices of the criminal justice system and mass incarceration, the same unbroken link to enslavement is rarely drawn when it comes to American food.“Food is doing more of an injustice than mass incarceration,” he says. “They are both bad, but the number of lives we are losing from bad food are X times the number lost to mass incarceration.”That’s a bold statement, given that there are about 670,000 Black people currently behind bars in the US. Yet Black Americans are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than white Americans, and that more than five million of them are assailed with the illness today.Certainly, he has witnessed the impact of food-related ill-health within his own family. He describes how diabetes was so rampant among his relatives that they even had a pet word for it – “sugar”. His aunt Betty died of sugar aged 57 – one year older than Adams was when he was struck with temporary blindness.No matter how prevalent disease has been among his community, it must have been a tall order trying to persuade people accustomed to soul and fast food to follow him into the strictly vegan, no-oil, non-processed, plant-based and whole food diet he has adopted. Among the recipes offered in his book are quinoa and tempeh stir-fry, chia oats with berries, and sweet potato and flaxseed smoothies. Try selling that to someone accustomed to St Louis ribs, hush puppies and oxtail.Adams said there have been times when friends would accuse him of elitism, turning his back on the traditional foods of his community and going all “white” on them. “There is a lot of pushback,” he told me.“Remember, when you talk about what a person is eating you are also talking about the emotions attached to what they are eating. When you talk about not eating soul food, people tend to believe that you are too good for it. ‘My grandmother was raised on this’, they’ll say.”So how does he go about trying to get beyond such resistance? “I give them the history. I make the connections. Sometimes people just need to connect the dots. When you start showing them the origins of fried chicken, the origins of chitterlings and pigs’ feet, of all the other food that were the scraps and waste from the slave master’s table, that hits folks and they begin to think differently about it.”It is ironic that his book, with its recipes and self-help bullet points, is focused very much on the individual. But out in East New York or in Brownsville, where Adams was born, and other low-income areas of the city, African Americans have scant chance of eating healthily even if they wanted to, given the food deserts they live in.Isn’t it the case that in neighborhoods where fast-food restaurants and delis stocked with sugary fatty products are the only outlets, a more systemic – rather than individualist – approach is needed?Yes, he says. “What I’m hoping to do, it’s almost like the Marines taking control of the beach. If I plant this seed in the minds of people while we are transforming these communities to have access to healthy food, then we will go from ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have access to it’, to ‘Hey, this is what Eric was talking about’.”I ask him what he means. “Imagine you see something on the shelf like quinoa and couscous, and you have no idea why you would want to eat those meals. But if you are given information before you walk into the supermarket then you might try this healthy meal next time round.”That’s all very well, but how are the food deserts in low-income African American neighbourhoods ever going to get access to the kinds of whole-grain, plant-based foods that Adams espouses? There is no shortage of guidance that Adams could draw on from other parts of the country where Black communities have long experimented with community gardens and vegan hot lunches in schools.When he was Brooklyn borough president he initiated “meatless Mondays” in local public schools, and campaigned to have all processed meat removed from school meals. Now that he’s mayor, he is expanding his push for healthy food. This week he introduced “vegan Fridays” for all New York public schools – a reform to the quality of school food that Adams still stands by despite his difficulties with #FishGate.Will there be more coming, and if so how will he use his new power to make lasting change? “How do I do it?” Adams says. “I look at where as government we are feeding people and I change that. We feed 1.1 million New Yorkers every day at school, people in hospitals, correction facilities, senior centres. How about giving them all healthy food?”It’s early days for the Adams administration, too early to make firm assessments. So far there are no signs of detailed plans emerging for actually carrying out such a food revolution.It leaves a question mark hanging over his undoubtedly powerful and positive mission to change what we eat. In his own life, the results of the transformation are dramatic and unanswerable, fish or no fish. He shed 35lbs, kicked diabetes, and now exudes glowing good health.He appears to have had some personal success, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?TopicsEric AdamsNew YorkUS politicsVegan food and drinkVeganismFoodinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Amanda Gorman’s Message to the World

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      More from our inbox:Teaching During Omicron: A Dinner Party AnalogyLet’s Consider SecessionAmerica Needs a Long GameA National Identity CardReasons to Be VeganAmanda Gorman delivering “The Hill We Climb” on Jan. 20, 2021.Pool photo by Patrick SemanskyTo the Editor:“If You’re Alive, You’re Afraid,” by Amanda Gorman (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Jan. 23), was one of the most insightful, provocative and emotionally uplifting pieces I have read in a very long time. It should be required reading for all world and American leaders.In just a relatively few words, Ms. Gorman, the poet at the inauguration a year ago, managed to touch my heart and the hearts of so many others who are in constant emotional turmoil because of events over the past several years: fear of getting sick, fear of losing one’s life or the lives of loved ones, and a fear of democracy on the edge of collapse, here and around the world.The rise of overt racism, antisemitism and hatred of immigrants that has taken hold of so many of us has been sheer torture.It is time for us to heal. That will not come from hatred, it will not come from greed and it will not come from destructive behavior. It will come only from compassion, love, patience and tolerance.Morton H. GruskySanta Fe, N.M.To the Editor:In this time of widespread fear in America, Amanda Gorman sends an important message: Strength comes from actively coping with fear rather than suppressing it. Recognizing that fear is an automatic and necessary alert to danger, Ms. Gorman provides an implied rebuttal to the common advice parents often give to their children, “Don’t be afraid.”Instead, worried families can best comfort their understandably anxious children by asking them, “How can I help you feel safe, in spite of your scary feelings?” That discussion can reassure children, validate their feelings and let them know that their own actions, words and/or play can make them feel safer and less overwhelmed.Robert AbramovitzNew YorkThe writer, a child psychiatrist and child trauma expert, is a senior consultant at the National Child Trauma Workforce Institute.To the Editor:As an American abroad, I was moved to tears by Amanda Gorman’s openness, clarity and courage! In a time of flagging hopes, spiraling hatred and wholesale despair, her words shone with their resilience and honesty.Any time I worry about being overtaken by my own fears I will reread it and continue my efforts to produce positive change in our country.Reavis Hilz-WardFrankfurtTeaching During Omicron: A Dinner Party AnalogyDeborah Aguet, the principal at Normont Early Education Center in Los Angeles, took Mila Gomillion’s temperature before school.Allison Zaucha for The New York TimesTo the Editor:What is it like teaching during Omicron?Imagine you are assigned to cater a dinner party, only you don’t know how many people are expected to show up. You are given a list of the guests, their allergies, food preferences, who is vegan, kosher, halal. Perhaps half the guests will stay home. You will know who is coming to dinner only when you open your door. You are expected to provide an excellent dinner, regardless of who is present to enjoy it.The next night, you are scheduled to have another party for those same guests. But with a slightly different menu. Something that builds upon the previous meal. Except for the people who didn’t show up for the first party. They need to have the meal they missed and the new meal. Again, you will not know who is coming to your dinner party until you open your doors.And the people who are still home need to have all the meals they missed. Even if they don’t have an appetite.And that is sort of what it is like to teach during Omicron.The remarkable thing is, you would not know how crazy this is if you joined me in visiting our classes. What you would see are teachers thoroughly engaged in their work. You would see our students enthusiastically engaged in the topics at hand. You would hear laughter and animated conversations, complex discussions and thoughtful questions. You would see learning taking place.David GetzNew YorkThe writer is a middle school principal.Let’s Consider Secession Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “We Need to Think the Unthinkable About the U.S.,” by Jonathan Stevenson and Steven Simon (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 14):I agree with the article, but here’s my unthinkable: secession — no war, no violence, just go separate ways. It is increasingly clear that there are two competing stories of American values.Let’s actually consider what will happen if Texas splits from the United States and is followed by a number of other red states. Maybe by thinking the unthinkable we can prevent it. Or maybe it is better to live in two different countries, separated by philosophical differences, while cooperating for economic and defense reasons, as in Europe.Think of how productive both countries could be if they didn’t have to waste time arguing over the things that currently divide us.Dan EvansHuntington, N.Y.America Needs a Long Game  Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times; photographs by Aurelien Meunier, Chip Somodevilla, Mikhail Svetlov, Ira Wyman via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Playing a Long Game, Putin Has America Where He Wants It,” by Fiona Hill (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 25):Ms. Hill’s excellent essay underscores a serious weakness in the government of the United States. Simply stated, this country does not have a long game, and our cultural bias toward short-term results means that we have little idea how to play it.Whoever is in political power disregards thinking the long game in favor of retaining political superiority and one-upmanship against adversaries in our own country.Playing against China’s long game of attracting foreign companies, many U.S. firms moved manufacturing to China to achieve short-term profits. The pandemic exposed the inherent weakness of manufacturing far away. Now our country is faced with the difficult task of unwinding the supply chain of various goods, cheap and expensive, after we victimized ourselves with critical, even lifesaving, goods in short supply during this pandemic.Economics, business, politics, the military and foreign relations are all very much intertwined. Except for strategic thinkers like Ms. Hill, we tend to compartmentalize them, to our detriment. It behooves the leaders of this nation, both political and business, to understand our close allies and our adversaries well in all aspects, so we can take the best actions in our long-term national interests. I am not sure I will live long enough to see this happen.Ben MyersHarvard, Mass.A National Identity CardTo the Editor:Re “Democrats Face Costly New Slog on Voting Curbs” (front page, Jan. 16):Many of the issues regarding the new voting regulations being implemented by both Democratic- and Republican-controlled state legislatures could be mitigated if the United States adopted a national identity card issued — free — by the federal government to everyone 18 years and older.The card would confirm both citizenship and identity, and could be used as an ID for voting, banking, domestic travel, and purchases of tobacco and alcoholic beverages. In fact, a prototype of this card already exists: the U.S. passport card.Many of the concerns voiced by Democrats regarding burdensome paperwork requirements that impedes voting by disadvantaged Americans and by Republicans regarding alleged fraud by voters would be eliminated. Anyone who believes that a mandatory national identity card raises a privacy issue should avoid using a smartphone!Ira SohnNew YorkReasons to Be VeganIn Tel Aviv, Eager Tourist offers vegan culinary tours that visit food markets, farmers and restaurants.Eager TouristTo the Editor:Re “Vegan Travel: It’s Not Fringe Anymore” (Travel, nytimes.com, Jan. 21):It was heartening to hear that veganism is being taken seriously in the travel industry. The article cites an elevated environmental awareness that is prompting people to go vegan. Preventing further environmental degradation is indeed an important reason to become vegan.But an equally vital reason is the world’s nonhuman animals that are regularly abused and exploited in our agricultural system as well as in fashion, entertainment and science.Veganism is so much more than a diet; it’s a commitment to live as compassionate a life as possible.April LangNew York More

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      in US Politics

      Kinky, us? Guardian readers can’t all be | Brief letters

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      Kinky, us? Guardian readers can’t all beWe, us and our | The US republic | Unpoetic fan chants | It’s all good for the stockpot | Jacob Rees-Mogg I wish the Guardian would stop using “we” and “us” to mean “some people” (How Covid killed the one-night stand – and made us all kinkier, 27 January). The chances that we are all kinkier are nil, as many of us weren’t kinky in the first place and mostly, I imagine, still aren’t. Also, there’s a heading about “our obsession with fish oil”. I’m so obsessed with fish oil that I can’t recall when I last even thought about it; surely I’m not the only one.Mark MillerKendal, Cumbria Thomas Zimmer ignores the fact that the United States is a republic, not a democracy (The US Senate presents a long-term threat to US democracy, 24 January). Americans pledge allegiance to “this republic”, not to this democracy. The US Senate and the electoral college are bulwarks against being ruled by the guillotine of democracy – a fact made clear by French history.Richard Sherman Margate, Florida, US Adrian Chiles might write of poetic expressions to describe players from West Bromwich Albion (Let’s not say ‘pip pip’ to our most poetic expressions!, 27 January), but that same team beat my own beloved Peterborough United 3-0 last Saturday, leading to much self-flagellation and chants of “We’re so shit it’s unbelievable”.Toby Wood Peterborough My husband says his mother kept a perpetual stockpot on the stove for leftovers. He was startled to see her adding old marmalade tarts on one occasion (Letters, 25 January).Maureen Bell Birmingham The most apt title for Jacob Rees-Mogg would be minister for the age of entitlement (Letters, 24 January).Ron Clarke Malvern, Worcestershire TopicsSexBrief lettersUS politicsWest Bromwich AlbionPeterboroughFoodJacob Rees-MogglettersReuse this content More

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      From Kremlin leak to sperm counts: our readers’ favourite stories of 2021

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      From Kremlin leak to sperm counts: our readers’ favourite stories of 2021 Here are 20 articles that may have helped convince people to support the Guardian’s journalismThe Guardian benefited from hundreds of thousands of acts of support from digital readers in 2021 – almost one for every minute of the year. Here we look at the articles from 2021 that had a big hand in convincing readers to support our open, independent journalism.Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White House – Luke Harding, Julian Borger and Dan SabbaghExclusive leak reveals Moscow’s deliberations on how it might help Donald Trump win 2016 US presidential race‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’ – Arundhati RoyThe author and activist plumbs the depths of India’s Covid catastrophe and finds much to reproach the prime minister, Narendra Modi, for‘I’m facing a prison sentence’: US Capitol rioters plead with Trump for pardons – Oliver MilmanThe past very quickly catches up with those who ransacked the seat of US democracyClimate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse – Damian CarringtonA shutdown of the Atlantic current circulation system would have catastrophic consequences around the worldAn Afghan woman in Kabul: ‘Now I have to burn everything I achieved’ – A Kabul residentAs the Taliban take the Afghan capital, one woman describes being “a victim of a war that men started”.Plummeting sperm counts, shrinking penises: toxic chemicals threaten humanity – Erin BrockovichA warning from the environmental advocate and author about the damage being wrought by toxic chemicalsPandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful – Guardian investigations teamMillions of documents reveal deals and assets of more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officialsThe Hill We Climb: the poem that stole the inauguration show – Amanda GormanShe spoke, and millions listened, at Joe Biden’s inaugurationRates of Parkinson’s disease are exploding. A common chemical may be to blame – Adrienne MateiIs an epidemic on the horizon? And is an unpronounceable chemical compound to blame?Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction – George MonbiotThe Guardian columnist at his most incandescent‘Take it easy, nothing matters in the end’: William Shatner at 90, on love, loss and Leonard Nimoy – Hadley FreemanThe actor discusses longevity, tragedy, friendship, success and his Star Trek co-star‘Our biggest challenge? Lack of imagination’: the scientists turning the desert green – Steve RoseIn China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick engineers want to do the same to the SinaiOff-road, off-grid: the modern nomads wandering America’s back country – Stevie TrujilloAcross US public lands thousands of people are taking to van lifeThe greatest danger for the US isn’t China. It’s much closer to home – Robert ReichThe columnist and former secretary of labour warns of enemies withinThe rice of the sea: how a tiny grain could change the way humanity eats – Ashifa KassamCelebrated chef discovered something in the seagrass that could transform our understanding of the sea itself – as a vast gardenRevealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon – Guardian staffThe Guardian teams up with 16 media organisations around the world to investigate hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO GroupBeware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth – James LovelockLegendary environmentalist argues that Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the planet to protect itself, and that next time it may try harder with something even nastierThe Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth? – Hadley FreemanEthel and Julius Rosenberg were sent to the electric chair for being Soviet spies, but their sons have spent decades trying to clear their mother’s name. Are they close to a breakthrough?Out of thin air: the mystery of the man who fell from the sky – Sirin KaleWho was the stowaway who fell from the wheel well of a Boeing plane into a south London garden in the summer of 2019?The life and tragic death of John Eyers – a fitness fanatic who refused the vaccine – Sirin KaleThe 42-year-old did triathlons, bodybuilding and mountain climbing and became sceptical of the Covid jab. Then he contracted the virusIf these pieces move you to support our independent journalism into 2022, you can do so here:
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      TopicsRussiaInside the GuardianDonald TrumpVladimir PutinCoronavirusIndiaUS Capitol attackClimate crisisfeaturesReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      The right’s new bogeyman: that Biden will take America’s hamburgers away | Art Cullen

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      First President Obama was coming for your guns. Didn’t happen. Then President Trump said the socialists were going to take away our energy. The lights are on after 100 days, although it got dicey in Texas for awhile (and no, wind turbines didn’t cause the ice storm).But whoa, Nellie! We hear a Hamburglar will steal your right to beef before you can say “pass the ketchup”.Since I don’t even own a BB gun, I was not alarmed by Obama. Since I barely have enough energy to get out of bed I ignored Trump’s warning. But I can get worked up if you have your eyes on my ribeye.Turns out Fox News had to eat crow and retract a story claiming that Joe Biden will foreclose your divine right to slay a fatted calf. It was a Big Lie like all the rest – that your property rights will be denied for the sake of the endangered Topeka shiner minnow; that the election was fraudulent, except in Iowa where Trump won in a rout; that Obamacare would divorce you from your doctor.This lie started in the Daily Mail, which of course would know exactly what the US secretary of agriculture is thinking. The Daily Mail insisted that meat consumption would need to be cut 90% to meet President Biden’s climate goals, citing part of a University of Michigan study.Meanwhile, here is what the secretary, Tom Vilsack, is really thinking about: cow burps and pig poop. He wants more cattle on grass as part of a system with reduced emissions resilient to extreme weather. He is proposing money for methane digesters on hoghouses to power farms and sell dry compost – and getting a ton of flak from the left for it.After Biden’s first 100 socialist days, Tyson is running full tilt cranking out pork and turkey from Storm Lake with non-union labor. Hoghouses are going up everywhere, spreading up the Missouri into South Dakota. Chicken hind quarters were only 69¢ a pound at the grocery store last week.There are a fair number of NRA members deeply suspicious of Obama and Hillary Clinton who also want cleaner rivers and lakes, more grass buffers for habitat and limits on livestock confinements. They know the difference between BS and apple butter.The ‘take away your meat’ scare belies the fear felt by Big Meat when its own system crashedAnd they sense the real threat to their way of life – including Saturday night sirloin – is an ossified oligopoly food system that teetered on the brink of collapse last spring when its workers were overcome by Covid. Meat prices shot up 50% when the Waterloo and Sioux Falls pork plants shut down for a week. There was no way they could let the squeal go out of Storm Lake. For the first time in my life, meat counters were empty. The system failed. We have wrung the diversity out of the food supply chain. Just a few producers and packers stand, and when one of them falls we are all the hungrier.The “take away your meat” scare belies the fear felt by Big Meat when its own, unsustainable system crashed up against its limits.Livestock can be sheltered humanely for efficient food production and better protection from disease. We can finish a lot more cattle on grass for the benefit of the planet. We can enhance food security with more diversity in production and open, competitive markets. Almost everyone in the midwest understands those basic facts.So when the meat scare is propagated it makes the messenger look stupid. It’s not going to sell, just like the idea that wind turbines kill geese. We know better.Eventually, the stupidity becomes obvious to the semi-zealous. The rush on bullets turned out to be a ruse from the ammo makers. It took a lot of shine off the gun lobby as the dues-paying members figured out they were getting played so prices could take a nice run. The organization’s membership dues are drying up accordingly.The more lies they tell, the worse they get.Eventually, people figure it out. Even the “QAnon shaman” who crashed the Capitol wearing a horn helmet realized he got duped when they didn’t serve organic in jail.Vilsack reassured the public that USDA loves it some more red meat. Biden gave a shout-out to cover crops in his address to Congress – foretelling a huge step in environmental progress broadly supported by agribusiness. In Iowa, Republicans and Democrats are working to strengthen small meat processors.Despite several fish kills from floods of manure in north-west Iowa rivers this spring, nothing will be done to prevent the next one. A meager fine will be assessed. People do care about that. They do care about antibiotic resistance and viral pandemics inherent in our system. They want reasonable solutions based on science and reality. When there is enough BS, they begin to think it stinks. That can have consequences.
      Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times in north-west Iowa, where he won the Pulitzer prize for editorial writing. He is a Guardian US columnist and author of the book Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in America’s Heartland More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans falsely claim Biden wants to restrict meat in climate crisis fight

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterAt a major summit hosted by Joe Biden last week, a procession of world leaders fretted over the spiraling dangers of the climate crisis, with some pledging further cuts to planet-heating emissions, others touting their embrace of electric cars and a few vowing the end of coal.In the US, however, Biden’s political opponents were focused on one pressing matter – meat.“Bye, bye burgers” screamed an on-screen graphic on Fox News, which ran the false claim that the US president would tyrannically allow Americans to devour just one burger a month. Larry Kudlow, a former economic adviser to Donald Trump now Fox Business host, baselessly envisioned Fourth of July celebrations where people would only be allowed to “throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussels sprouts” on the barbecue.Prominent Republicans seized upon the supposed Biden climate diktat – which does not exist. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, retweeted a claim of a 4lb-a-year meat allocation with the comment: “Not gonna happen in Texas!” The far-right conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative, called Biden the “Hamburglar” while Garret Graves, ostensibly a more moderate House Republican, said the president’s plan amounted to “dictatorship”.The unfounded claims, which appear to have somehow sprouted from a University of Michigan study on the impact of meat eating, do not reflect Biden’s actual proposals to tackle global heating, which make no mention of personal meat consumption. But they have dealt a hefty blow to Republicans’ latest efforts to present themselves as committed to taking on the climate crisis.A week prior to the White House climate summit, Republicans released what they framed as a sensible, market-based alternative to Biden’s climate plan. “Democrats often dismiss Republicans as disinterested in address global climate change – this is just false,” said Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader. McCarthy said that Republicans have been “working for years to develop thoughtful, targeted legislation” to reduce emissions that, unlike Democratic proposals, “won’t kill American jobs”.Cognizant of growing voter alarm over the climate crisis – a majority of Republican voters now support the regulation of carbon dioxide – McCarthy has brushed aside the objections of some colleagues to recast the party’s beleaguered environmental reputation by promoting various tax breaks for renewable energy, making it easier to import minerals for clean technology and supporting a push to plant one trillion trees around the world.Critics, however, say the proposals are wildly inadequate to avoid disastrous global heating, which scientists say must involve sharply cutting emissions this decade before reaching net zero by the middle of the century. In lieu of any mention of phasing out fossil fuels – the primary cause of the climate crisis – the Republican plan instead calls for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an oil project halted by Biden.“Getting to net zero requires extraordinary and sustained effort across all of society, not just the federal government, so you can’t just take a piecemeal approach like this, clap your hands and say, ‘We’re done here’,” said Nate Hultman, an expert in public policy at University of Maryland who helped draw up emissions reduction targets for Barack Obama’s administration. “This is a sort of mishmash of proposals, not a comprehensive strategy. I just don’t see how you get to a 50% cut by 2030 or to net zero with this.”Neither McCarthy’s office nor Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES), a conservative group that created a website for the plan, responded to questions on what emissions reductions the assorted proposals would achieve. Last week, Heather Reams, executive director of CRES, accused Biden of “radically impacting our already battered economy” by promising to cut US emissions in half by the end of the decade.During Trump’s presidency, Republicans laid siege to various climate regulations, largely backed his decision to remove the US from the Paris climate accords and acquiesced as the president repeatedly mocked climate science. Despite moves by some younger, more moderate conservatives to prod the party to respond to the increasingly severe wildfires, storms and heatwaves strafing the US, the party’s rhetoric has barely shifted following Trump’s election loss, according to Robert Brulle, a visiting professor of the environment and society at Brown University.“These guys need to get a new PR agency, it’s like they are talking about climate change in the 1990s,” said Brulle. “It’s just recycled arguments from the past or, on the meat thing, just outright lies. These arguments may have worked in the past to delay climate action but it’s so exhausted now. It’s different day, same old shit.”Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, said it was pleasing to see most Republicans shift away from outright denial of climate science but that a “new climate war” was opening up involving “reassuring sounding but empty rhetoric” to stymie regulations to reduce emissions.“They have the same intent as outright denial – to keep us addicted to fossil fuels as long as possible so that fossil fuel interests, who now have such great influence over the Republican party, can continue to make trillions of dollar profits, at our collective expense,” Mann said.Last week’s climate summit, which featured more than 40 world leaders, offered a stark illustration of the extreme position Republicans now find themselves in the global political landscape.During the virtual gathering, even leaders considered climate villains by environmentalists called for greater action on global heating, with Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, warning the “fate of our entire planet, the development prospects of each country, the well-being and quality of life of people largely depend on the success of these efforts” to reduce emissions.“The GOP is an extraordinary outlier in the political spectrum around the world, they have backed themselves into a political and rhetorical cul de sac,” said Brulle.“They are stuck in a really bad position that no other major political party in the world is in. Climate obstructionism is now a core part of Republican creed, much like opposition to abortion and gun control. As long as they remain competitive in elections I don’t see that changing.” More

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      No, Biden has not declared war on meat. But maybe that’s what the world needs | Arwa Mahdawi

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      It looks as if the right are giving themselves heartburn to own the libs. Over the weekend, some prominent US conservatives shared pictures of themselves eating enormous slabs of meat in response to fabricated claims that president Joe Biden is planning to limit red meat consumption. Despite the fact that Biden’s imaginary meat quotas exist only in these people’s heads, rightwingers have spent the last few days frothing at the mouth over them. Several Fox News hosts have repeated this baseless claim and a number of Republican politicians, including the governor of Texas, have tweeted their opposition to this fictional policy. Larry Kudlow, the former economic adviser to Donald Trump, even complained that Biden wants Americans to drink “plant-based beer”. You know, as opposed to the flesh-based beer that real Americans enjoy.What on earth sparked this carnivorous conservative fever-dream? MailOnline. On Thursday it published a highly misleading article claiming: “Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH.” The word “could” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there: Biden has said nothing of the sort. The assertion stems from a 2020 academic paper that has no connections to Biden; this study noted that if Americans made a 90% cut to their beef consumption, there would be a 51% reduction in diet-related US greenhouse gas emissions between 2016 and 2030.Factchecking all this is largely futile, of course: the people who get het up about an imaginary war on burgers tend to not let reality get in the way of their feelings. I suspect many of the high-profile people pushing the Biden-bans-beef narrative knew very well it was baloney; they just wanted to stoke the culture wars. Fox News, for example, rammed the story down people’s throats for days then acknowledged on Monday that its reporting about Biden’s meat quotas had been somewhat inaccurate. The rightwing grievance cycle goes like this: invent something to get upset about; have jowly men with names like Tucker and Chad amplify this imaginary grievance on conservative media outlets; find ludicrous and often self-defeating way to protest against this imaginary grievance; get Tucker and Chad to quietly admit they may have somewhat exaggerated things; conjure up something new to get outraged about.This isn’t the first time the right has had a meat-based meltdown. Meat has become a cornerstone of the culture wars, a recurring theme in the endless rightwing grievance cycle. “They want to take away your hamburgers,” the former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka yelled at the 2019 Conservative Political Action conference. “This is what Stalin dreamed about but never achieved.” Ah, yes, Stalin’s Five-Year Hamburger Eradication Plan – I remember learning about that in history class. In today’s polarised world, meat is no longer just a foodstuff: performative meat-eating has become a way to signal that you’re a Real Man (or a Traditional Woman who appreciates Real Men) who loves guns and freedom and is sceptical about the climate crisis. Fox News host Jesse Watters once ate a steak on air to “trigger” a vegan. Very edgy stuff! Jordan Peterson, the right’s favourite philosopher, has memorably endorsed a meat-only diet. (Tangentially, according to one study by researchers from the University of Hawaii, men incorporate more red meat into their diet when they feel like their manliness is threatened.)Ultimately, however, it is not just the right that has an unhealthy obsession with meat. Global meat consumption keeps rising: the amount of meat consumed per person nearly doubled in the past 50 years. “Plant-based” eating may have become fashionable, yet the world is on track to consume more meat in 2021 than ever before. That is a problem because the meat industry has a huge carbon footprint. While banning people from eating animal products obviously isn’t feasible, we desperately need to find ways to reduce global meat consumption. Food for thought while you enjoy a plant-based beer, anyway. More