Slate mag

some sort of deAL THAt included lomborg?

punked?

provac contrarian?

===

RWW -->$ 11 26

BO FRENCH? HERERRA?

We Went Looking for the Most Extreme Candidates in the Nation. Four Stood Out.

It’s not easy to separate yourself from the extremist pack during Trump 2.0. These candidates found a way.

By Molly Olmstead

Nov 03, 2026

Mark Lamb, Bo French, and Brandon Herrera appear in a collage

It’s hard, these days, to define right-wing extremism. In the second Trump era, the window of acceptable speech has shifted so dramatically that it’s no longer considered apolitical to chastise a political figure for calling for the expulsion of all Muslims from the country, for example, or to expect them to distance themselves from white supremacists.

In fact, a candidate in a high-profile U.S. Senate race appears so comfortable with racism that his overtly white supremacist son-in-law attended his election party and his chief of staff was in a group chat with famous white nationalists. And yet, Mike Collins still has President Donald Trump’s endorsement, and he still stands a slim chance of being Georgia’s next senator. Similarly, Rep. Randy Fine has called for Palestine to be “nuked” and tweeted comments such as “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one” and “Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.” He is set to cruise to reelection in Florida’s 6^th Congressional District.

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Christopher Lewis @ Slate: How the Legal Mastermind of Trump’s Most Damaging Policies Stays Anonymous

Mark Paoletta is not a household name. Despite this, over the past decade, he has quietly become one of the conservative legal movement’s most influential operators, making Paoletta an underrated political power in his own right.

Over a career spanning roles in both House and Senate Republican leadership, the George H.W. Bush White House, the courts, and conservative advocacy organizations, Paoletta has formulated and defended expansive legal theories of presidential power, molding governing reality. Today he is helping Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought reshape the federal bureaucracy. Understanding why he matters means understanding that the modern federal government is shaped not only by elected officials but also by attorneys who craft legal arguments justifying government action.

There are two central components to Paoletta’s dangerous philosophy: fury at the independence of the civil service, and belief in nearly unlimited presidential authority. Close D.C. watchers should recognize these as the calling cards of Voughtism. Indeed, Vought and Paoletta are close allies—Vought executes the dubious budgetary procedures; Paoletta handles the legal arguments. As Politico’s Sophia Cai rightly points out, “If Russ Vought sees his question to dismantle the federal bureaucracy as a race against time, his lawyer sidekick Mark Paoletta is holding the stopwatch.” As Cai goes on to mention, Paoletta has been the center of Vought’s team, ensuring that funds are withheld from furloughed workers and redirected to Donald Trump’s ridiculous vanity projects.

Between the two Trump administrations, Paoletta bided his time as a senior fellow at Vought’s Center for Renewing America, the Trump-aligned think tank that effectively was another administration in waiting. There, alongside other Trump officials, like Ken Cuccinelli and Kash Patel, Paoletta wrote multiple articles about impoundment and expanding executive authority. One of those pieces bemoaned Congress’ constraints on the president’s ability to spend. He specifically claimed that the Impoundment Control Act “reverses an understanding of the Constitution’s allocation of executive and congressional spending authority dating to the Founding. The ICA is unconstitutional.”

For the record, this is nonsense. Fundamentally, what makes a legislature powerful is its control over taxing and spending, the power of the purse. That goes back to precolonial Parliament and the Magna Carta—at best, Paoletta is staggeringly ignorant of the “history and tradition” that conservative legalists claim to adore; at worst, his arguments indicate that he is an unrepentant monarchist (at least when a MAGA king is on the throne). Paoletta uses the real estate he is allotted to rationalize why presidents should be able to usurp the constitutional authority of other co-equal branches of government.

....

AN 1 26

SLATE

Many critics of the Trump Administration's mass deportations policy are arguing that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are creating a dangerous situation by putting poorly trained U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agents on the streets of U.S. cities. In an effort to ramp up deportations, they contend, Noem and border czar Tom Homan have significantly lowered ICE hiring standards. And journalist Laura Jedeed, in an article published by Slate on January 13, pointed to her own experience with ICE as an example.

Jedeed's article inspired an angry backlash from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which accused her of lying. But she proved that the allegations in her article were absolutely true.

Jedeed went undercover, applying for employment with ICE at a recruitment drive in Dallas. And the vetting process, she reported in Slate, was incredibly lax.

Jedeed, who said she was interviewed for only six minutes, wrote, "Many of ICE's critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugs — January 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc. — for a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICE's recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea who's joining the agency's ranks. We’re all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into America’s streets. And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is."

Jedeed's article was followed by an attack tweet from DHS, which tweeted, "This is such a lazy lie. This individual was NEVER offered a job at ICE. Applicants may receive a Tentative Selection Letter following their initial application and interview that is not a job offer. It just means they are invited to submit information for review, similar to any other applicant."

But Jedeed debunked DHS' claim that she was lying, posting the acceptance letter ICE sent her.

During a January 14 appearance on MS NOW, Jedeed told host Chris Jansing that ICE's hiring process is abysmal — and when they sent her an acceptance letter, they didn't realize she was a journalist who has been a scathing critic of Trump's deportation policy.

"The more you think about it," Jedeed told Jansing, "the worse it gets."

*Laura Jedeed's full article for Slate is available at this link (subscription required).

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AN SLATE 12 25

Slate Senior writer Mark Joseph Stern says the Supreme Court is gearing up to hand President Donald Trump kinglike firing powers over independent federal agencies in Trump v. Slaughter, peddling the false argument that the Constitution gives the commander in chief absolute control over the executive branch.

The argument from conservatives on the court is that this supreme power is rooted in tradition, but “they are wrong in every conceivable way,” said Stern.

“Their pop-historical account of the Constitution has been debunked from top to bottom by legitimate legal historians, who have refuted the rotten moorings of this bogus theory with devastating precision. And yet there is no real question that the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices will endorse it anyway in Slaughter, handing Trump sweeping new authority to abuse his office in direct violation of federal law,” said Stern. “This near-inevitable ruling confirms the most stinging critique of originalism: It allows judges to align constitutional meaning with the Republican Party’s preferences, disregarding evidence that contradicts their desired outcome.”

When Congress created the FTC in 1914, it allowed the president to fire commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Lawmakers wanted a panel of experts insulated from partisan pressure who would act in the best interest of the American people rather than promote the president’s ambitions. And in 1935 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld these good-cause protections against removal in a landmark decision called Humphrey’s Executor.

Leaders at more than two dozen multimember agencies are, for now, shielded against presidential termination by statute, giving people like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell independence from Trump, no matter how hard Trump boasts of wanting to remove him.

But when Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, sued over her firing lower courts reinstated her SCOTUS overruled them by a 6–3 vote through the shadow docket, without argument or debate. Stern said these six justices did the same when other agency leaders sued for their jobs. Then the conservative supermajority scolded lower courts for failing to accept that Trump’s removals were now endorsed and legitimized by the Supreme Court.

The Republican-appointed justices want Trump to be king because all six are deeply committed to the “unitary executive” theory, an idea that Stern said is foundational to the modern conservative legal movement.

“The premise of the theory is that the president does not merely lead the executive branch; he is the executive branch, because the Constitution vests the ‘executive power’ in him alone,” said Stern. “Agencies like the FTC and the NLRB ostensibly exercise this power by interpreting and enforcing the law. But under the Constitution, they may do so only on the president’s behalf. And so if the president disagrees with officers leading these agencies, he must be able to fire them at will. Any impediment to this ‘removal power’ unduly restricts the commander in chief’s inherent authority.”

But the actual text of the Constitution says none of this, Stern adds. There is no “removal clause,” nor any definition of “executive power” that implies total dominion over the executive branch.

“… [James] Madison acknowledged that some executive branch officials could be shielded from termination. So did Alexander Hamilton, who argued that the president could not fire executive officers without the consent of the Senate. So did Chief Justice John Marshall, who arguably did more in this period than any of his contemporaries to shape constitutional interpretation,” Stern said.

The fact that the first Congress enacted an independent agency, the Sinking Fund Commission, to manage repayment of the nation’s debt and the president was unable to fire several of its members alone “reveals that many of the men who wrote the Constitution did not think that it gave the president unlimited authority to fire high-ranking federal officials,” said Stern.

“Now Trump wants the Supreme Court to say that Madison, Hamilton, Marshall, Story, and all the rest were wrong. He wants the justices to give him the unprecedented authority to seize control of the FTC, the NLRB, and other independent agencies by sacking their Democratic members,” said Stern.

Read the Slate article at this link.

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yikes an 7 25

critics of far-right Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters often attack him as a highly performative MAGA troll. Walters' antics include purchasing Donald Trump-themed Bibles for classrooms and promoting the false, repeatedly debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

But Slate's Molly Olmstead, in an article published on July 22, emphasizes that Walters' buffoonish qualities don't make him any less dangerous. And she emphasizes that his plan to screen education applicants for MAGA purity shouldn't be taken lightly.

"This month," Olmstead explains, "Oklahoma's education department announced an innovative new approach to screening aspiring teachers in the state: any applicants from 'woke' states would need to first pass an ideology test created by the right-wing group PragerU. It was an announcement that seemed engineered to draw national news coverage and inflame liberal audiences. Under this plan, teachers from states with 'progressive education policies' would be tested on the U.S. Constitution, American exceptionalism, and 'the fundamental biological differences between boys and girls.'"

Olmstead continues, "The screening is guaranteed to test teachers for a deeply MAGA-inflected understanding of U.S. history, government, and society: PragerU, a right-wing group with a stated mission of countering leftism in education, is already known for its white nationalist-adjacent content for schoolchildren."

IFrame Content

PragerU is the brainchild of Dennis Prager, a far-right talk radio host and Trump supporter.

"Walters' proposals for the school system have included a mandate that all public schools teach the Bible; a plan to collect children's immigration status when they register for public school; and new social studies standards proposals that would have high school students 'identify discrepancies in 2020 election results,'" Olmstead observes. "Each of these announcements solidified Walters' reputation as a relentless attention-seeker, calculating every action from his office to appeal to the power players of the MAGA movement…. These stunts have paid off. Walters has been profiled in outlets all over the country, and he has become the face of the Christian nationalist campaigns into public education."

The MAGA Republican's stunts, Olmstead argues, raise the question: "Is Walters all superficiality, a media-obsessive without the stamina or standing for real, transformative politics? Or is he actually capable of remaking Oklahoma's schools — and signaling what MAGA could bring to schools across the country?"

"In sign of just how bizarre American politics have become in this second Trump era," Olmstead warns, "Walters may be a bit of both. As traditional institutions and procedures buckle under MAGA politics, Walters has proven that with the right national climate, slapdash own-the-lib pronouncements can become serious policy. He's a performer, but he also happens to be a major change-maker…. It may be tempting not to take people like Walters seriously, but he has proven that with enough volume, some gimmicks stick."

*Molly Olmstead's full article for Slate is available at this link (subscription required).

IFrame Content

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slate

no lnx

On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that he will not seek another term as leader of the Senate Republicans, stepping down from the post (though not his seat) in January 2025. McConnell will leave a legacy of extreme obstruction, having pioneered new ways to paralyze the upper chamber in an effort to stymie Democratic legislation. He also regularly kowtowed to Donald Trump, even voting to acquit the former president following his impeachment trial over the Jan. 6 insurrection. But McConnell’s most indelible mark on history is likely to be his fixation on stacking the courts with far-right ideologues, thus fundamentally refashioning the federal judiciary in the image of the modern Republican Party.

On a new episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the wrecking ball that McConnell took to the independent federal judiciary and its enduring impact on American democracy and civil rights. Their conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: Can we talk about Mitch McConnell for a minute? He announced that he’s stepping down as the leader of Senate Republicans in the near future.

Mark Joseph Stern: What was your first reaction when you heard the news?

My first reaction was that I hate this timeline so much. It’s the timeline where we have to miss Rep. Kevin McCarthy because the person who followed him was, as sure as night follows day, vastly crazier. That’s how I feel about McConnell. This is the person who singlehandedly did more to destroy Senate norms of comity and respect, to help Donald Trump evade accountability, and to steal and pack the Supreme Court with people who should not be sitting on the court. And still, in this moment, we’re going to have to thank him for respecting the vestigial norms that he did and not being an utter sociopath each and every day. Because the person who follows him will be worse.

I’ll add that, in my view, no one has done more to destroy the federal judiciary than Mitch McConnell. This is the guy who, under Obama, decided to block as many judicial nominations as possible, for no reason other than to leave the seats open so Trump could come in and fill them. This is the guy who violated every known norm to hold open Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, ostensibly because it came open in an election year, only to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat when people were already voting in the 2020 election. I think he made a lot of Americans wake up and realize that this was all Calvinball, that he had no principles to begin with.

But even more than that, Mitch McConnell was the guy who realized you don’t need to win elections to enact Republican policy. You don’t need to change hearts and minds. You don’t need to push ballot initiatives or win over the views of the people. All you have to do is stack the courts. You only need 51 votes in the Senate to stack the courts with far-right partisan activists like Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk. And they will enact Republican policies under the guise of judicial review, policies that could never pass through the democratic process. And those policies will be bulletproof, because they will be called “law,” and Democrats will need at least a century to win back the courts.

Anyone who believes in an independent judiciary with any integrity should loathe McConnell to their bones.

I want to add that McConnell, for so many reasons, stands out as somebody who knew exactly who Donald Trump was, exactly what happened on Jan. 6, exactly what his responsibility was in that moment. And he didn’t do it. He normalized the idea that you can mumble stuff and do nothing. Then we all live with the consequences. He made it easier for whoever follows him to do even less. And now he’s being praised as some elder statesman? Really? He’s totally morally bankrupt. The only silver lining, Mark, is that whoever follows him will not be as good as him at this crap.

Related From Slate

Jim Newell

Why Mitch McConnell Is Really Stepping Down in November

I agree. Under Trump, McConnell built the most impressive and efficient judicial confirmation machine ever seen. He really helped to keep the broader Republican Party and conservative movement behind Trump by saying, “don’t worry, we’re still getting all the right judges!” He pushed them through at a record clip. Aileen Cannon, the judge thwarting Trump’s trial over the Mar-a-Lago documents, was confirmed after the 2020 election, when Trump had already lost! This went on right up until the end. And I don’t think his successor will match those heights, even if he or she isn’t quite as loony as we’re speculating. Think about how much Joe Biden and his team have struggled to match the number of confirmations that Trump and McConnell achieved. They can’t do it. We may have passed peak efficiency for judicial confirmations under any president.

But is that anything to celebrate? McConnell’s successor will still scrape and strive to get crazy people on the bench. And sure, they might get 20 percent fewer judges through, because they won’t have the same ruthless efficiency. But Republicans will take that deal, because it only takes one insane district court judge to thwart an entire presidency.

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Miller said he felt compelled to speak out because of what he called Oz's "fear-mongering" on the issue of genetically modified foods, which Miller has written about in Slate and elsewhere. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/04/arctic_apple_safety_dr_oz_sows_seeds_of_mistrust_on_gmos.html

"He's been so wrong and so misleading and so unconstructive and antisocial on that subject, I thought enough is enough," Miller said.

Oz has come under fire before for making unsubstantiated claims and promoting questionable products on his syndicated program, "The Dr. Oz Show."

hertsgaard sorta ~ gmo

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/04/heat_resistant_seeds_ecological_agriculture_growing_food_after_climate_change_.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/12/08/global_warming_co2_emission_dropped_globally_in_2015.html

lomborg hit on seralini, tho looked ok (also study on climate cost)

Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate began with a question about the ongoing controversy over a breach in the Democratic National Committee’s voter database and ended with a question about the changing role of a president’s spouse. In between, ABC News’ David Muir and Martha Raddatz steered the candidates through several substantive issues, from ISIS to taxes to Black Lives Matter. There was one major topic, though, they failed to ask about: climate change.

Slate is an English-language online current affairs, politics and culture magazine in the United States created in 1996 by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. On 21 December 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company. Since 4 June 2008, Slate has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by the Graham Holdings Company to develop and manage web-only magazines. Slate is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington DC.^[2]

A French version (slate.fr) was launched in February 2009 by a group of four journalists, including Jean-Marie Colombani, Eric Leser, and economist Jacques Attali. Among them, the founders hold 50% in the publishing company, while The Slate Group holds 15%.^[3][4] In 2011, slate.fr started a separate site covering African news, Slate Afrique, with a Paris-based editorial staff.^[5]

In July 2014, Julia Turner replaced David Plotz who had been editor of Slate since 2008.^[6] Plotz had been the deputy editor to Jacob Weisberg, Slate's editor from 2002 until his designation as the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of The Slate Group. The Washington Post Company's John Alderman is Slate 's publisher.

Slate (ISSN 1091-2339), which is updated daily, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. According to Turner, the magazine is "not fundamentally a breaking news source", but rather aimed at helping readers to "analyze and understand and interpret the world" with witty and entertaining writing.^[7] As of mid-2015, it publishes about 1500 stories per month.^[8] Slate is known (and sometimes criticized) for adopting contrarian positions, giving rise to the term "Slate Pitches".^[9][10][11] It is ad-supported and has been available to read free of charge since 1999, but restricted access for non-US readers via a metered paywall in 2015.

[hide]

Background

Slate features regular and semi-regular columns such as Explainer, Moneybox, Spectator, Transport, and Dear Prudence. Many of the articles are short (under 2,000 words) and argument-driven. Around 2010, the magazine also began running long-form journalism. Many of the longer stories are an outgrowth of the "Fresca Fellowships", so-called because former editor Plotz liked the soft drink Fresca. "The idea is that every writer and editor on staff has to spend a month or six weeks a year not doing their regular job, but instead working on a long, ambitious project of some sort," Plotz said in an interview.^[12]

...

Reputation for counterintuitive arguments ("Slate pitches")

Since at least 2006,^[10] Slate has been known for publishing contrarian pieces arguing against commonly held views about a subject, giving rise to the #slatepitches Twitter hashtag in 2009.^[11] The Columbia Journalism Review has defined Slate pitches as "an idea that sounds wrong or counterintuitive proposed as though it were the tightest logic ever" and explained their success as follows: "Readers want to click on Slate Pitches because they want to know what a writer could possibly say that would support their logic".^[19] In 2014, Slate 's editor-in-chief Julia Turner acknowledged that a reputation for counterintuitive arguments forms part of Slate's "distinctive" brand, but argued that the hashtag misrepresents the site's journalism: "We are not looking to argue that up is down and black is white for the sake of being contrarian against all logic or intellectual rigor. But journalism is more interesting when it surprises you either with the conclusions that it reaches or the ways that it reaches them."^[7]

...

Notable contributors and their departments

Anne Applebaum (Foreigners)
John Dickerson (Politics)
Simon Doonan (Fashion)
Stefan Fatsis (Hang Up and Listen)
Fred Kaplan (War Stories)
Dahlia Lithwick (Jurisprudence)
Farhad Manjoo (Technology)
Michael Moran (Reckoning / Foreign Policy)
Timothy Noah (The Customer)
Meghan O'Rourke (The Highbrow / Grieving)
Mike Pesca (The Gist)
Robert Pinsky (Poetry editor)
Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy / Science)
Ron Rosenbaum (Spectator)
William Saletan (Human Nature)
Jack Shafer (Press Box)
Eliot Spitzer (The Best Policy)
Mike Steinberger (Drink)
Dana Stevens (Surfergirl through 2005/Movies)
Seth Stevenson (Ad Report Card / Well-Traveled)
Julia Turner (Editor in chief)
Tom Vanderbilt (Transport)
Jacob Weisberg (The Big Idea)
Tim Wu (Technology/Jurisprudence)
Emily Yoffe (Dear Prudence/Human Guinea-pig)

Other recurring features

Assessment
Books
Dear Prudence (advice column)
Dispatches
Drink
Food
Foreigners
Gaming
The Good Word (language)
Shopping
The Movie Club
Science
The TV Club

Summary columns

Slatest (news aggregator)

Blogs

The Vault, Slate's history blog
Future Tense, a technology blog produced as part of a partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University
Brow Beat, Slate's culture blog
Outward, Slate's LGBTQ blog
Wild Things, Slate's animals blog
Behold, Slate's photo blog
The World, a blog about foreign affairs
Moneybox, Slate's business and economics blog
XX Factor, a blog about women's issues. In 2009, it gave rise to "Double X", launched by The Slate Group a separate online magazine about women topics, edited by Hanna Rosin and Emily Bazelon, which was folded back into a Slate.com section after half a year.^[23]
Lexicon Valley, a blog about language
The Eye, a design blog
Crime, a crime blog

Past notable contributors

Company overview

Key executives

Julia Turner (Editor)
John Swansburg (Deputy Editor)
Rachael Larimore (Managing Editor)
Allison Benedikt (News Director)
Dan Kois (Culture Editor)
Anthony DeMaio (Publisher)

David Helvarg (born April 10, 1951) is an American journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the marine conservation lobbyingorganization Blue Frontier Campaign, a part of the Seaweed rebellion, which arose from his second book Blue Frontier.^[1] His first book, The War against the Greens, puts a case that violent organized resistance is being orchestrated against the environmental movement.^[2]

Helvarg began his career as a freelance journalist before becoming a war correspondent and then returning to news journalism. He writes about politics, AIDS, and sea life. He has reported from every continent and he has been published in specialist and popular magazines, and US newspapers both locally and in syndication. His experience of military conflict, civil conflict and marine biology is the basis of his lobbying.

[hide]

Early life

Helvarg was born April 10, 1951 in New York City, the son of refugees; his mother left Nazi Germany and his father escaped civil war in Ukraine.^[3] He grew up on Long Island, where he became a civil rights and anti-war activist.^[4] He attended Boston University and earned a bachelor's degree in history from Goddard College inVermont, in 1974.^[3]

Works

Journalism

While still a student, Helvarg traveled to Northern Ireland in 1973.^[5] The civil warfare known as "The Troubles" was at a height, and Helvarg submitted reports on the conflict to the Liberation News Service.^[5][6][7][8] Helvarg focussed on the role of women in the conflict,^[5] and highlighted allegations that agents of the British government had participated in sectarian murders.^[9] After graduating from college, he moved to San Diego to work as a freelance journalist. He published "Ireland Diary; A Day in the Life" in the underground publication San Diego Door,^[10] and wrote for the weekly newspaper San Diego Newsline.^[11]

From 1979 to 1983, Helvarg covered the U.S. role in Central American conflicts, initially as a radio reporter for The Associated Press and Pacifica Radio in Nicaraguaand El Salvador.^[3] His exclusive reports included combat coverage of the first town to fall to Sandinista rebels,^[12] the first delivery of U.S. gunships to El Salvador, the first visit to Contra camps in Honduras, and the last interview with Sister Ita Ford before her murder by the Salvadoran military. He was arrested by the Salvadoran army and deported from El Salvador in 1983 while reporting on a massacre of civilians.^[13]

After returning to California, he qualified as a private investigator,^[3] and resumed freelance writing. He wrote reports on underwater technology, articles about John Hoagland after conducting the photographer's last interview, and an interview with Jonas Salk. Helvarg became increasingly involved in television production, although he continued his freelance career. Throughout the late 1980s, his television topics were dominated by AIDS education, particularly for the Hispanic community.

In the early 1990s, he began to research the conflict between the US free-market environmentalist group Wise Use and the green movement, which was eventually published as The War against the Greens in 1994. The Wise Use movement alleged that the US environmentalist group Sierra Club commissioned Helvarg to write the book as an anti-Wise Use tirade and that his sponsors also sponsored a road show to tie Wise Use to an alleged far-right terrorist network. The same article described him as "a private investigator" without mentioning his role as a journalist.^[14]

A visit to Antarctica in 1999 became material for several articles and books, and a daily log was published in Slate, the online news magazine. His professional exposure to green activism and his ocean sports activities intersected in marine conservation, which became his focus. While researching his second book Blue Frontier—Saving America's Living Seas (2001), Helvarg concluded that marine conservation needed its own focal point for activism in the United States, so he moved toWashington, D.C., and founded a lobbying organization: the Blue Frontier Campaign. He also became a member of the board of Reef Relief, a more specific marine conservation advocacy group, about which he had made a television documentary in 1994.

Helvarg attracted nationwide US attention in early 2005 for a syndicated newspaper article debunking comments by conservative Christians (particularly James Dobson of the Focus on the Family) on the perceived homosexual tendencies of SpongeBob SquarePants, a cartoon character, by explaining the sexual biology of ocean life (Los Angeles Times January 26, 2005). In response to suggestions by Dobson and others that the We Are Family Foundation was exploiting popular animated characters, including SpongeBob, to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among young people, Helvarg used these incidents as a springboard to describe the "immorality" in the oceans.

Books

The Golden Shore - California's Love Affair with the Sea

"The Golden Shore" (in imprint of St. Martin's) 2013. "Boy, I loved this book. David Helvarg captures, in a really readable way, the quirky and head-over-heels love we have for our seas." - Ted Danson. "Having lived in California for forty-four years, I was surprised by how much I learned from David Helvarg's book The Golden Shore. It blew my mind. If you have the same love affair for the beautiful California coast and ocean as I do, this marvelous and compelling book is a must-read." - Jean-Michel Cousteau.

Saved by the Sea -- A Love Story with Fish

"Saved by the Sea"(an imprint of St. Martin's) 2010. Ocean Explorer Sylvia Earle says, "This book has the power to change the way you think about the world, about yourself, and the future of humankind." Helvarg writes what he knows about the changes in his life and our Ocean world over the last half century.

"Rescue Warriors - The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes" (St. Martin's 2009)

Robert Kennedy Jr. says, "David Helvarg's terrific new book takes you to the cutting edge of adventure as he rides along with the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard. This in-depth and lively look at the history and changing missions of America's 'Rescue Warriors' should be considered a must-read for anyone who loves the water or cares about the safety, security, and stewardship of our nation from sea to shining sea." Bill McKibben writes, "They say that 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help' is the ultimate oxymoron. But as this vivid book makes powerfully clear, in the case of the Coast Guard it's the simple truth. Stow this volume next to the chart case."

"50 Ways To Save the Ocean" (Inner Ocean, 2006)

Sylvia Earle writes, "Combining wisdom and humor, scientific accuracy and artistic genius, Helvarg and Toomey show why the ocean matters to us all...Everyone, from toddler to tycoon, can find inspiration for action in this must-have guide to ocean care." "This is a great book - it makes saving the oceans fun and doable (which it is, by the way)" adds actor Ted Danson "This book is an important guide for the public to saving our oceans." - Leon Panetta, former chair - Pew Oceans commission & co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative, former Director of the CIA, current United States Secretary of Defense.

The War against the Greens

Helvarg's book The War against the Greens (1994) describes organized opposition to the environmental movement in the United States. He investigated the Wise Usemovement, which he characterizes as a network of anti-environmentalist groups. Wise Use aims to facilitate extensive use of natural resources and to privatize theNational Park Service. The first edition explored the origins of the organization in 1988 and its covert support by the administration of U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Helvarg identified its funding and the multinational corporations and other powerful figures with which it was associated. He catalogued the use of violence that he believed to be organized by the movement against environmental activists, and the ineffective response of law-enforcement agencies. A revised edition published in 2004 extended this to cover the early years of President George W. Bush's administration.

Wisconsin Stewardship Network News described it as a book that "provides a fascinating and frightening insight into the violent fringe of the anti-conservation Wise Use movement [… and recommends it] in its entirety to readers who want a detailed examination of the origins, development and violent tendencies of Wise Use." The opposing view was put by Jesse Walker who, reviewing the book for American Enterprise, wrote that it "offers environmentalists a conspiracy theory to account for the populist backlash against their movement". Helvarg had accused Wise Use of astroturfing; Walker described his book as "a weapon in a propaganda war".

War against the Greens is widely cited by activists inside the environmental movement (for example Community Rights Counsel^[15] and Land Tenure Center^[16] ) and gave rise to numerous rebuttals from Wise Use and its supporters (including Ron Arnold).

Blue Frontier—Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness

Helvarg's second book, Blue Frontier— Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness (2001, revised 2006), was named on the Los Angeles Times "Best Books of 2001" republished in 2006. In it Helvarg explores the effects of human activity in general, and of commerce and policy in particular, on marine life. He postulates a trend towards destruction, and suggests that it is possible to reverse this. He then describes some of the people and groups that are working to preserve or enhance the marine environment.

This book prompted Senator John Kerry to observe that "David Helvarg underscores the full measure of the challenges before us: If we hope to explore the Blue Frontier, we must travel cautiously, repairing the damage we have done, understanding before we exploit, and always preserving the natural systems that have created it." It was also one of the catalysts for the establishment of the Blue Frontier Campaign and has become a definitive text for US marine conservation (characterized as 'the Seaweed rebellion').

The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide

Helvarg is the editor of Blue Frontier Campaign's first major publication: The Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide (2005), a directory for those interested in the protection and restoration of United States coastal lands and waters. Blue Frontier Campaign plans to publish a new edition of the guide every two years.

This reference book lists over 2,000 organizations involved in the conservation of the oceans and coastal areas that border the United States. Each entry includes contact information and a brief description of that organization's activities. The directory is divided into four listings: a geographical listings of groups; relevant government agencies; academic marine programs; and marine and coastal parks, and protected areas.

Feeling the Heat

Helvarg contributed two chapters to Feeling the Heat—Reports from the Frontlines of Climate Change (2004): Chapter Eight 'Australia, Florida and Fiji: Reefs At Risk' and Chapter 10 'Antarctica: The Ice is Moving' are about threatened ecosystems.

The book is a development of a suite of articles that appeared in the October/November 2000 edition of E/The Environmental Magazine. The publishers "aimed to move beyond the scientific debate […] to document […] the evidence for a changing climate". Each chapter is a first person account of places threatened by global warming. According to Helvarg, warming waters are killing the world's coral and threatening the extinction of Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the reefs around the Florida Keys, while the rising waters threaten to engulf the entire ocean nation of Fiji. In Antarctica he observed scientists measuring the krill population and concludes that the reduction that they found is a consequence of increased water temperatures.

Broadcasting

Helvarg has produced more than 40 television documentaries broadcast by PBS, The Discovery Channel, and others. His 1986 documentary Sex Inc. was the highest rating show broadcast on the San Francisco PBS station KQED. Other documentaries focused on the military, politics, health and environmental topics. He is a commentator for the National Public Radio station Public Radio International's program Marketplace.

His first documentaries drew upon his experiences as a war correspondent in Northern Ireland and Central America. When he moved to San Francisco he was commissioned to produce programs about AIDS awareness for the Hispanic community and these led to other documentaries about Hispanic health. In 1989 Globe TV commissioned a program about Greenpeace to coincide with the launch of the new *Rainbow Warrior* vessel. This brought Helvarg into contact with green activists, with whose cause he found he sympathized. He would return to green themes in 1991 and 1992 but in the meantime he continued to make series about health, and topical news. From 1992 onwards his energies were focussed on environmental programming with some health commissions.

As of 2005 he continues to plan a series of documentaries about ocean stewardship to support the work of the Blue Frontier Campaign.

Blue Frontier Campaign

Main article: Blue Frontier Campaign

In 2003 Helvarg founded the marine conservation activist organization Blue Frontier Campaign, of which he became the president. Originally entitled the "Ocean Awareness Project", the Campaign has established a nationwide network of grassroots lobbyists. It is campaigning for an American Oceans Act to protect what the members call "our public seas" and is working to improve local, state, federal and global policies on marine conservation. Helvarg writes articles and books on its behalf. He edited the 2005–2006 Ocean and Coastal Conservation Guide and (with Philippe Cousteau and 'Sherman's Lagoon' cartoonist Jim Toomey, the book, '50 Ways to Save the Ocean' and has organized several conferences: in Washington, D.C. in July 2004 and March 2009 and at the National Aquarium in Baltimore in April 2005 and San Francisco in 2005. These conferences brought together activists, academics, officials, and politicians in a series of seminars. The Campaign is based in Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area where Helvarg lives.

Awards

Helvarg won his first national award in 1988 when he won an Emmy for community service in recognition of his work on AIDS Lifeline, a networked television AIDS awareness campaign. His subsequent awards include two National Association for Interpretation awards for Interpretive Communications (in 1989 and 1991), the Nike Earthwrite Award (1997), a National Health Information Award (1999) and a CINE Golden Eagle Award (1999). In 2005, Coastal Living magazine gave him their Leadership Award. In 2007 he won the Herman Melville Award.

usrtk

The 55-point headline in Slate blares, “Letter from Prominent Doctors Implies Columbia Should Fire Dr. Oz for Being a Quack.” The story by Ben Mathis-Lilly is based on a letter by a group of doctors who want Columbia University to relieve Dr. Oz of his position as vice chair of the department of surgery at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

“Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” states the letter, which was sent soon after Dr. Oz aired a show about glyphosate, the herbicide associated with most genetically engineered crops that was recently designated as a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

The complaint to Columbia was signed by Dr. Henry I. Miller and nine colleagues, “all of whom are distinguished physicians,” the letter claims.

So who are these prominent distinguished physicians?

Mathis-Lilly didn’t ask that question, nor did reporters who covered the letter for the Associated Press, Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Vox or New York Daily News.

If they had, they would have learned that not all the physicians on the letter are so distinguished. One wasstripped of his medical license in New York and sent to federal prison camp for Medicaid fraud. Yet Dr. Gilbert Ross plays up his M.D. credentials in his role as acting president of the American Council for Science and Health (ACSH). Ross was joined on the Columbia letter by ACSH board member Dr. Jack Fisher.

So what is ACSH? Though some reporters treat it as an independent science source, the group has beenheavily funded by oil, chemical and tobacco companies, and has a long history of making inaccurate statements about science that directly benefit those industries – for example claiming that secondhand smoke isn’t linked to heart attacks, fracking doesn’t pollute water, and there is no scientific consensus on global warming.

Two other signatories of the letter – Miller and Dr. Scott Atlas – hail from the Hoover Institution, aconservative think tank based at Stanford University that has a special affinity for featuring the work ofclimate change deniers.

“In other words, it’s an institution whose commitment to science is highly questionable to nonexistent in one area, and it’s attacking Oz for pseudoscience?” pointed out Dr. David Gorski in his blog about the Columbia letter.

Though an Oz critic himself, Gorski dismissed the Columbia letter as unlikely to yield anything but a brief media blip, and noted that Miller did “a half-assed job” getting credible signers. (Gorski describes ACSH as “a group that is pro-science when that science aligns with industry interests, particularly the pesticide industry.”)

The obvious irony of Miller’s Hoover Institute association may be why he tends to downplay it in the press; for example, AP reported the Columbia letter was “led by Dr. Henry Miller of Stanford University.” But Miller has landed in hot water before for tying himself too closely to Stanford.

In 2012, a TV ad imploring Californians to vote against GMO labeling was yanked off the air because it identified Miller as an M.D. at Stanford and had him perched in front of the ornately vaulted campus walkway. Stanford demanded it be changed to reflect Miller’s true status at Hoover.

Along with his “colleagues” at ACSH, Miller has a long history of defending the indefensible for polluting and dangerous industries. Nicotine is “not particularly bad for you in the amounts delivered by cigarettes,” he wrote in 2012. He has repeatedly argued to bring back the banned pesticide DDT. After the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, Miller wrote that people exposed to low levels of radiation “could have actually benefitted from it.”

Now, he’s fronting for the GMO industry. Miller has become one of the most prolific and best-known promoters of genetically engineered food and crops, with frequent articles in Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other outlets – most recently Slate, where he attacked Oz for his coverage of GMOs. Among other industry talking points in the piece, Miller claims that glyphosate “has lower overall health impacts than white vinegar,” and fails to mention its recent listing by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen.

These facts are relevant in stories about scientific integrity. The scientific accuracy and motivations of the accusers matter when they are publicly challenging the scientific accuracy and motivations of somebody they are trying to get fired.

We urge reporters and editors to take a closer look at the sources selling them story ideas, and to act as better watchdogs for the public interest.

:{Also see:

}:Mother Jones – Paging Dr. Ross: A doctor who defends corporations from “inconvenient” science has a secret of his own

Mother Jones – Leaked Documents Reveal the Secret Finances of Pro-Industry Science Group: The American Council on Science and Health defends fracking, BPA, and pesticides. Guess who their funders are

USRTK fact sheet – Why You Can’t Trust Henry Miller

USRTK fact sheet – Why You Can’t Trust the American Council on Science and Health

Hall of Shame, Food For Thought

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