Author: Kara Hurvitz

Hi there! If you're reading this, you're probably wondering who I am and why you should listen to me. (It's a fair cop.) So here's a little about me: I'm an advocate, educator, and activist with degrees in law and social work. By day, I help people access needed health care and health care coverage. By night, I fight crime--nah, just kidding; I write the NNR and related essays. Why the NNR? Well, I want to do everything I can to help folks stay informed, connected, and empowered during this difficult time, and this project lets me put work I already do to good use. Plus, I get to snark about the news and current administration. Everyone wins!

National News Roundup: Week 40 (October 22–28)

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FOTO:FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Manafort Monday, y’all! But don’t let the name fool you, because the real news of the week is that I got you news of an unsealed Papadopoulos conviction for Halloween. I super hope you like it, because we have a strict No Return policy here on game-changing secret convictions.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a uranium miner! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation is, without a doubt, the biggest news of the week:

  • Mueller Indictments Monday. The first two indictment lists have been issued to former Trump campaign staffers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, totaling twelve indictments between them (mostly relating to money laundering and tax fraud). Both Manafort and Gates have turned themselves in and pled not guilty on all counts. (Fun fact: Manafort is actually facing investigations on three different fronts right now.) But the biggest news of the day is that former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos secretly pled guilty a few weeks ago, and both the charges and the deal are really, really significant. The charges were lying to the FBI about collusion with Russia — I believe the words “dirt on Hillary Clinton” literally appear multiple times in the documents. And the plea deal itself provides that “the Government agrees to bring to the Court’s attention at sentencing the defendant’s efforts to cooperate with the Government, on the condition that your client continues to respond and provide information regarding any and all matters as to which the Government deems relevant” (emphasis mine). In other words, “as long as he tells us literally everything we’ll make sure he never goes to prison.” Manafort may be the bigger name, but Papadopoulos is the bigger story for today. (If/when Mueller manages to flip Manafort, though, that will definitely change.)
  • Uranium What Now?* In a (probably vain) attempt to distract from news that Mueller was about to announce indictments, the Trump administration began trying to claim that actually Hillary Clinton was colluding with Russians during the 2016 election (not Trump). As far as I can tell, this involved conflating the fact that the Clinton Foundation received a donation from some people who are tangentially tied to a uranium mining company and the fact that Bill Clinton was once paid by Russia for a speaking engagement in Moscow. It’s all… pretty flimsy at best. I recommend reading the Washington Post demystification article, because the whole thing is attenuated and ridiculous.
  • Bill Browder Appreciation Hour.* The other Russia-related news of the week is that Bill Browder, a famous critic of Putin’s human rights abuses who disclosed the horrors that led to the Magnitsky Act, was briefly barred from the United States this week. Though he had originally been granted a visa application, U.S. officials revoked it when Russia had him placed on an Interpol list — and yes, that would be the same Russian officials on whom Browder is famous for blowing the whistle. Browder did eventually get his visa reinstated, and the administration is maintaining that the first decision was an automatic response to the listing. But since it was changed after a massive bipartisan outcry, it’s hard to tell if that was accurate. At any rate, it appears to be mostly fixed now, and it’s probably a good thing that happened before the Mueller news broke.

And honestly, the Russia news can’t come soon enough, because we also saw more Threats to Human Rights this week:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

  • 401k Shuffle. Despite repeated promises from Trump, Congress is considering limiting 401k retirement contributions as part of its tax reform package. This is odd, not only because it’s unpopular with Wall Street, but also because it appears to discourage saving for retirement at all — and we already have problems with people saving too little. The 401k saga is likely unfolding the way it is because it’s an obvious way to offset tax cuts, and probably ultimately will result in more incoming government money than other options. But if everybody stops saving for retirement, it has the capacity to start costing the government large amounts in the long-term unless Medicare and social security are dismantled as well, because those are entitlement benefits — once people reach a magic age, they’re all allowed to ask for it and a lack of retirement planning means they’re more likely to need it. This is sort of like saying “we need people to buy our candy bars, let’s make it harder to pay for dental visits” and then hoping somebody else has to pay for all the dentures.
  • EPA Blocked Its Own Scientists from Speaking. The headline kind of says it all on this one; the EPA canceled its own scientists’ presentation at a conference on climate change. When pressed for an explanation, the agency said that the scientists were attending; they just wouldn’t be presenting because “it wasn’t an EPA conference.” But it sounds like everyone attending understood what was really happening; other scientists (fairly) described it as “a blatant example of . . . scientific censorship.”
  • Too Big to Sue.* The Senate voted this week to repeal a landmark Consumer Federal Protection Bureau regulation that limited mandatory arbitration clauses in bank account agreements. For those of you reading this who haven’t tangled with mandatory arbitration clauses before, they are a common corporate tactic to limit suits and force people through a “negotiation” process when they have grievances. It sounds good on its face, except that the deck is often stacked in the company’s favor because they have a relationship with the arbiters and the consumers don’t. In fact, it is because these clauses heavily advantage businesses and disadvantage consumers that the newly-repealed law was put in place in July in the first place; though Republican talking points suggest otherwise, the regulation merely required banks to draft user agreements that allowed consumers to retain the option to organize class action lawsuits. Adding insult to injury, it was a 50–50 tie, meaning that Pence cast the tiebreaking vote.
  • Opioid Not-Actually-An-Emergency. Despite earlier promises to the contrary, the Trump administration failed to declare an opioid national emergency this past week. What they did instead was declare a “public health emergency,” which sounds similar — except there’s no money attached (as there would be for a national emergency), because the public health fund is empty. And Trump appears to think we can solve this by Just Saying No. Basically, it’s the difference between “The house is on fire, let’s call firefighters” and “The house is on fire, let’s call my buddy Steve.” Except in this scenario, Steve thinks you can put out house fires by telling the fire to stop burning things.
  • Budget Proposal Movement. The House passed last week’s budget proposal by a very narrow margin this week; just like in the Senate, every single Democrat voted against it. Though the budget vote does not create fully-formed law — they still need to write the actual tax reform — this is a concrete first step, and that is not necessarily a good thing. But as mentioned last week, it might prove to be the bribe that makes the Republican party actually move to oust Trump, so it might be a mixed thing. We’ll have to see what happens from here.

The Good:

And that’s what I have for now! But the news is still moving very quickly, so daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. We tend to see a rough week after we get inspiring news, because this administration does not take lumps gracefully — and some are still worried that Trump’s about to fire Mueller — so let’s batten down the hatches and prepare for more storms. And hopefully we’ll meet under sunny skies again next week!

National News Roundup: Week 39 (October 15–21)

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By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

I saw an article that described this week as a “terrible week for Trump.” Needless to say, as a general rule, a bad week for Trump is a good week for the rest of America, and this week appears to be no exception. Though we’re not out of the woods by any means — in fact, some really concerning things did happen this week — we reached a bit of a summit in the slow slog back to a healthy country. It’s nice to have some news to report this week that’s actually good.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not Facebook staff! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was pretty all over the map this week — the short version is that the investigation is working, kind of, but what we’re learning is not awesome:

This has really not been a good week on the Threats to Civil Rights front either:

Your “Normal” Weird:

  • The Trump Reality Show Continues. I’m not going to dwell, simply because the most sensationalist chest-thumping seems like a vacuous distraction rather than a credible threat. But this week Trump continued the ongoing reality show, issuing more threats to McCain after the latter criticized his bonkers foreign policy and badly botching condolence calls after several soldiers were lost in Niger. Adding to the surreal reality-show feel of current politics, Dubya also said his piece about Trump (although he declined to mention him by name at any point). It’s been strange, y’all.
  • Tax Reform News.* The Senate passed a tax reform initiative this week along partisan lines, squeaking out the bare minimum of votes needed despite bloc opposition from Democrats (and Rand Paul). I place this under the ‘weird’ column rather than the ‘bad’ column for several reasons: First of all, few people have even seen the bill, despite its success on the floor; as this first fact suggests, the bill is being rushed for a variety of reasons (which I can only hope to speculate about, since the Hill is a such bizarre quagmire right now). But they are using the reconciliation process — which you may remember from the summer’s ACA Repeal Greatest Hits — to pass Go and collect their $200 without working with Democrats. And that process is inherently kind of tricky and complicated, which makes it odd that they are trying to rush and also use it. Senator Corker’s recent outbursts have caused some pundits to speculate that tax reform is the only thing keeping the GOP on board with Trump’s egregious and dangerous Presidency; if they’re right, the tax reform efforts are also odd because they’re being treated like a final hurdle to impeachment.

The Bad:

The Good:

And that’s what I have; some good, some bad, overall a bit less horrifying than normal. But the news is still moving very quickly, so daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Let’s see if we can keep this streak going!

National News Roundup: Week 38 (October 8–14)

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Still Life — A Boot on a Newspaper, by Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Preparing a draft on Sunday night, I turned to my editor and unironically said, “Oh wait, I’m not done with the Constitutional Crisis section yet, because I need to add a note about Larry Flynt under the Russia Investigation header.” As a friend of mine observed to me today, “This may or may not be the darkest timeline, but it’s sure as hell the weirdest.” (Although my money’s on both being true, for the record. I recommend comfort foods.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a firefighter! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was unfortunately pretty stymied this week:

  • What Russian Sanctions? Trump missed his own deadline for implementing Russia sanctions this week, deeply aggravating the members of Congress who drafted the sanctions bill. The sanctions, as you may remember, were designed to force Trump to punish Russia for tampering in the election, but since he so obviously benefited from said tampering it’s unsurprising that he dragged his feet on this. Still very frustrating, though.
  • Social Media Scarpering. This week we learned that Twitter deleted data that would be relevant to the Russia investigation, which is frustrating to say the least. But there was evidence that Facebook isn’t really cooperating either, and took down thousands of posts that could have helped the investigation to minimize their role. So, uh… thanks, guys. That was helpful.
  • Yes, That Larry Flynt Ad Really Happened. You didn’t have a Nyquil-induced fever dream; Larry Flynt really did take out a full-page ad in the Washington Post this week offering $10M for “information leading to the impeachment and removal from office of Donald Trump.” Putting aside how fascinating it is that the guy who literally runs Hustler finds Donald Trump distasteful, I haven’t yet heard anything about leads from the ad. I promise I’ll keep y’all posted.

This has really not been a good week on the Threat to Free Speech front:

But on the plus side, there is a new dark horse in the Why Is He Still President? corner:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • ACA Lawsuits. The silver lining to this past week’s ACA shenanigans is that there is already a growing pile of lawsuits filed on both executive orders and the subsidy announcement. The ACLU, Washington Attorney General, and California Attorney General are all suing Trump over rolling back the contraceptive mandate, arguing (probably correctly) that it violates the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses of the Constitution. Meanwhile, eighteen states and the District of Columbia are suing over the subsidies, seeking an injunction that would force the President to keep paying them. The National Governors’ Association issued a statement on the topic as well, indicating that they will be coordinating with Congress directly to facilitate a bipartisan fix on the subsidy issue. There are clearly a number of moving parts on the board already to try to fix both of these issues.
  • Animal Kingdom News. Homo sapiens is not exactly a shining star species right now, but several other members of the animal kingdom popped up in the news in better contexts! In particular, for your dose of warm fuzzies, you can read about this octopus who wanted to thank their rescuer in person. Erm, make that “in octopus.” Also, a duck in Devon got into a drunken bar brawl with a local dog. On the plus side, the duck pulled through! Which is my new catchphrase for annoying my editor. I’ve already used it on her four times.

And that’s what I have, in all its terrible and deeply strange glory. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

You, Too: How to Keep Helping After #IBelieveYou

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We are living in a heyday of toxic masculinity. Yesterday’s “Me, too” status movement — a movement predicated on the simple idea that sexual harassment and sexual assault are really, really common — was about the ongoing updates of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory practices throughout his career. But it’s reductive and untrue to say the movement was just about that; it was also about repeated threats to remove coverage of birth-related health treatments. It was also about threats to criminalize currently-legal abortion practices. It was about having a President who famously proudly announced he sexually assaults women. It was about news outlets publishing “warning” soundbites about “witch hunts” from other famously-known sexual predators like they are a credible voice of reason. As a culture, we create a safe haven for people like Harvey Weinstein, who demonstrably are able to aggress again and again and again without consequence over a multi-decade career.

Changing that takes action and focus. It takes coalition-building. It takes creation of accountability.

But here’s the good news: Yesterday’s movement was an excellent first step, as was the #IBelieveYou hashtag that people were posting in response. As the sheer volume suggests, sexual harassment and assault are appallingly common — across generations, across socio-economic status, across orientations, and across the gender spectrum. Silence is a necessary component of system navigation for sexual predation; a problem that isn’t identified cannot be fixed. It’s just that silence is not the only component.

So what are we doing from here? Now is a great time to turn social momentum into social action. But that’s easier said than done, especially when it’s so unclear what people can be doing to help! So here are some modest, concrete suggestions on how to do that:

  • Learn How to Become an Active Bystander. This one is on all of us, but it’s especially anyone who is placed in the role of a bystander to violence — people who are observing a casual interaction take place, especially in less high-stakes social contexts. (A friend of mine observed that he wasn’t sure how to handle violence in inherently power-stratified environments like the workplace, which is a very fair observation, and I’ll get to that below.) The potentially helpful role of bystanders, especially in instances of sexual violence, is very well–documented — and so is its corollary the bystander effect, which by definition helps perpetrators maintain a status quo. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center maintains a resource list and information packet for learning how to be an active bystander, as does Partners to Social Change and RAINN. Take some time to read up on what concrete actions are helpful to others in dangerous situations!
  • Learn How to Talk to Survivors. Statistically speaking, you probably know somebody who is a survivor. It’s a good idea to learn emotional first-aid generally in our current political landscape, but at minimum, it’s a great idea to take a few minutes to review resource suggestions on how to navigate assault situations specifically so that you know how to handle it when someone discloses this history to you. (The good news is, if you said “I believe you” yesterday, you are already doing a very important piece of this!)
  • Learn to Spot Attempts to Enlist Assistance to Violence. A systemic structure of sexual violence (or any structure of violence, honestly) relies on complicit assistance from everyday people. Those people are not monsters; they’re just people who aren’t aware what’s up and can be enlisted as tacit support as a result. And sometimes it’s not possible to speak up without taking on substantial risk, especially in our current environment, but you should always be making that conscious choice instead of just not noticing when your silence is taken as support. Take yourself out of the pool of people who are accidentally helping whenever you can — learn to recognize instances where your support is being enlisted indirectly through social interaction. This can be in big ways, but it can be in little ways, too — the stereotypical “women, amirite?” phrase exists for a reason; it’s building consensus and reinforcing the beliefs held by the speaker. No, that person is not right, and it’s okay to tell them so!
  • Go Forth and Do the Things You Learned in the Wild! Listening is an important first step, and learning is an important second step, but ultimately these things are building towards action. Now is the time to put the things you learned into practice when it’s practicable to do so — which is uncomfortable and it sucks, but not as much as people getting assaulted. Several of the resources listed above have concrete suggestions and steps for how to handle specific situations. It’s really, really valuable and important to spend some time figuring out how to integrate them.
  • Call Your Reps, Call Your Reps, Call Your Reps, Reps, Reps. A lot of the systemic changes happening right now are on a giant scale, and that’s big and scary and awful. But it also means that you can help by simply exercising your civic rights as a citizen on issues of policy. Stay attuned to issues like coverage changes to the ACA and the abortion bill in the House, and call when you can. If you can’t call, use resistbot to text faxes. If you can’t do either, stay informed. These things might feel like they aren’t related but they really, really are.

I have about a billion other thoughts on this topic, and I might ultimately say more, but for now, I think I’ve hit the major highlights. Thank you for paying attention and join the conversation, and please stay in the fight! We need to all participate if we’re going to build a better culture.

National News Roundup: Week 37 (October 1–7)

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FORTEPAN / Saly Noémi, via Wikimedia Commons

This week started out really rough and ended up really strange — we had a lot of very traumatic and troubling events in the earlier half of the week, but by the end of the weekend Trump was taking credit for inventing the word “fake.” It’s sort of like being stuck in a horror movie where the killer stabs someone on Monday and then comes back on Friday to ask the survivors “What’s the deal with soap?” (Also, I know the news cycle has practically become minute-by-minute these days, but this is ridiculous.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains a lot of detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a football player! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation saw a lot of movement this week:

We also are still in a stalemate on the Threat to Free Speech front:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

  • Trump Went to Puerto Rico and it was the Actual Worst. Trump did end up taking a trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, which ended up being an odyssey of blatant mischaracterizations, surreal t-shirt-cannon style paper-towel launching, and countless offensive and tactless comments — but not very much actual help. After it was over, FEMA removed statistics about how much of the region has power and water (which, according to an official Puerto Rican website, is about 15% power and 55% water respectively, in case anyone was curious). Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether Congress will provide more aid to the island, which is still sorely needed post-visit. Though government responses have been sluggish, several nonprofit entities have been working tirelessly; I’ll write more about that below.
  • Trans Rights Should be Civil Rights. Sessions reversed course on another Obama-era protection this week, this time on a directive clarifying that gender expression is covered under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The directive gave protection against workplace discrimination for transgender Americans, which has effectively been removed; it’s realistic for trans Americans to expect that workplace discrimination based on their gender expression has effectively become legal again. The Sessions memo made it clear that this would be the Department position on all legal issues related to sex moving forward. Ordinarily I would put a pithy statement here, but I’m still really mad about it, so I’ll content myself with saying that it is not ideal.
  • Trump’s Alarming Non-Diplomacy with North Korea.* Trump continued his disturbing gambit with North Korea this week, saying that Tillerson was “wasting his time” on diplomacy. Meanwhile, Russia is apparently claiming North Korea has missiles that can reach the west coast of the US, and Trump referred to this week as “the calm before the storm” but wouldn’t say more about what that meant (though it was probably in reference to either North Korea or abandoning the Iran nuclear deal, which he’s expected to do next week). Though Ted Lieu opined publicly (and probably accurately) this week that Trump has “no strategy on North Korea,” Trump did tell military leaders this week that “our goal is denuclearization.” Hopefully he doesn’t intend to achieve that by goading Kim Jong-un into chucking his entire arsenal at us.
  • Continuing UN Embarrassment. The United States joined twelve other UN countries this week in refusing to condemn the death penalty for certain kinds of conduct — namely, apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations — when the penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner. The resolution passed anyway, by a sound majority of 27 to 12. What we did support was a failed amendment by Russia asserting that the death penalty was “not necessarily a human rights violation.” ‘Murrica.
  • What Is Even Happening in the EPA.* News broke this week (well, for some definitions of ‘broke’) that Pruitt does many things that hurt the credibility and functionality of the EPA, such as spending lots of time with industry executives and spending agency funds on questionable things such as frequent travel to his home state and a $25,000 phone booth (yes, really). But Trump managed to one-up himself with his pick for deputy director, who is a literal coal lobbyist. As in, “he was registered as a lobbyist two months ago.” What’s particularly noteworthy about this pick is that Bannon is no longer advising Trump and yet his nominations look identical to when he was — either Bannon actually does still have Trump’s ear, or Trump hates the EPA so much that he doesn’t need to have any kind of deconstructionist agenda to actively try to destroy it.

The Good:

And that’s what I have, in all its terrible and deeply strange glory. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

National News Roundup: Week 36 (September 24–30)

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Still life — a boot on a newspaper, by Ernest Blaikley [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The news is a horrible, toxic trash fire this past week, and I don’t think I’m even capable of sugar coating that. Puerto Rico’s in a bad way, over 500 people were seriously injured (and 59 were killed) by one dude with way more automatic weapons than any one dude should ever have, and Trump still hasn’t been to the Caribbean but he somehow found time to go to the golf course. I recently posted an article about how to deal with weeks like this, and that’s about the best I got for you right now; I’m really sorry, folks. No judgment if your comfort food this week is an entire bag of Cheetos.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not an accountant! — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

The Russia Collusion Investigation was mostly pretty quiet this week, but we did have a little bit of movement:

  • But Her Emails. The big story of idiocy this week was the news that at least six White House advisers used private servers for sending and receiving emails in their official White House capacity. Some of the advisers, such as Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus, are already gone — but several, such as Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, and Steven Miller, are still present. Kushner in particular is estimated to have sent and received about a hundred emails between January and August, which is kind of horrifying when you consider that he went on several diplomatic trips in that time. The White House, as you can imagine, was just shocked to discover that — nope, sorry, that’s what would happen if we weren’t living in the darkest timeline. As it happens, the same administration that crucified Hillary Clinton over this hasn’t issued statements or censures of any kind to its own people — the best we’ve gotten on this so far is an internal probe being led by White House counsel’s office — and if you’re currently sitting here asking “But isn’t Don McGahn, current White House counsel, rumored to be about to quit over Jared Kushner?” Why yes, yes he is.

We also are still in a stalemate on the Threat to Free Speech front:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

Just like last week, the news required multiple drafts this week — the news cycle is still pedals-to-the-metal at the moment. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Here’s hoping that next week brings better tidings!

Living in Troubled Times: A Trauma Resilience Roadmap

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Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Let’s face it: As we’re navigating The Trashfire National Policy of 2017, we’re all getting traumatized — it’s tough to get used to that dull-roar screaming we all hear every time our illustrious President vents his spleen on Twitter. And many of us have other stressors in our lives that are making it even harder to navigate, because life does go on even in the face of an abusive relationship with our government — and life is hard. And all that is before we consider the very real practical realities of living without necessities like food or water, or living without healthcare, or living in fear of physical attacks. In the wake of this weekend of introspection, I’ve had many conversations with folks about how to live instead of just surviving, and in some cases simply about how to survive.

So I’m taking off my lawyer hat for a moment, and putting on my trained clinician hat, to talk to y’all about how to deal with trauma. And to begin this conversation, we need to start with a simple truth commonly understood by first-responders everywhere, and borne out by research: Trauma is a form of infectious toxin. You have to clear it out in order to get healthy, and staying healthy will help you resist it further, both in your own life and when loved ones’ trauma threatens to infect you. And that’s not to say that we should stop exposing ourselves to toxins, which often isn’t possible and in many cases would be morally reprehensible. Rather, I’m saying the opposite: Because we’re all in this toxic soup together, that means we gotta help each other, and to keep doing that we also gotta help ourselves.

So I’m submitting for your perusal a kind of Trauma Resilience Roadmap — concrete suggestions and links to research, separated into three buckets: Do This Immediately, Do This When You Feel Able, and This Will Take Startup Cost But Will Help I Promise. I can’t promise it will fix everything, but it’s my hope that for many people (including myself), it will be a start.

Do This Immediately (or: Emergency Recentering Treatments)

These are the things you need to do when you’re at the stage where you’re asking, “But how do I survive?” Acute crisis mode has its own set of rules, and that can be hard to accept but it’s important to acknowledge. The flip side is that acute crisis doesn’t last forever, and this list will hopefully help you come out the other side.

  • Give yourself permission to tune (non-essential) things out. Whatever secondary things are stressing you out, and I’m guessing this is a large list, it’s okay and even a very good idea to put it down for a moment or two when you’re in crisis. Twitter will survive a Monday without you. That friend who needs an ear about her mortgage payment can find another one this Tuesday. Obviously, this only works on the stressors that aren’t center-stage right now. But I honestly, truly mean this: It’s okay to be ruthless about random stressors when you’re in crisis.
  • Start a list of images and activities that always soothe you. This might be hard if you’re in the middle of a huge amount of stress, but even something as simple as “I feel better when I look at otter pics” and then looking at some otter pics can buy you a tiny bit of cope (which I’ll colloquially refer to here as “cope points”), and that can be pointed towards a larger and more permanent form of help down the road. Don’t aim for an exhaustive list right now; just list the stuff that you immediately think of as bringing you joy and comfort, with a bias towards things you feel able and ready to do right this moment. And if you know things that you don’t feel able to do right now but always help (e.g. going hiking, mindfulness exercises, book-binding), go ahead and put them on the list. But don’t try to do them right now; they’ll still be there when we get to Phase 2.
  • Accept (even trashy) activities that help you tread water. For me, this happens to be inane phone games — they take up my whole screen and block out social media, which means I’m definitely tuning things out as I play (and also, match-3 games are really satisfying for me; I have no idea why). It might be eating junk food for you, or watching really crap television, or reading truly awful fiction novels — things that if you were doing well might make you think “I’m judging myself for doing this right now,” but aren’t actively destructive or harmful. This can also be low-cost things that you’re less likely to be self-judgy about (e.g. watching really good television, eating delicious salads, reading excellent literature) but hopefully you started doing those already with Item #3. If you aren’t, you should let yourself do those things in your spare moments. If you are also doing Item #2, you have more spare moments to do them. 🙂

Here’s a sample beginner list:

1) Watch my favorite movie;

2) Read some really awful fanfic;

3) Look at cat GIFs on the Internet;

4) Cookiepalooza;

5) Play Rock Band

Do This When You Feel Able (or: Convalescent Recentering Activities)

These are the things you need when you’re at the stage where you’re asking, “How do I live instead of just surviving?” It’s my guess that after nine months of President Cool Ranch Mussolini, most of us are who aren’t in immediate crisis are hanging out at this stage. It’s the trauma equivalent of being stuck in bed with a stomach bug yelling “but I wanna eat tacos!” — we’re all well enough to miss things, but not well enough to have them yet. This part of the primer is the transition from “I can’t get out of bed” to achieving your taco-nomming dreams.

  • Stay well-fed. This one can be hard for people in the middle of crisis, for about a million reasons. But once you’re feeling okay enough to pay attention to it without feeling like OH MY GOD A MILLION THINGS I CANNOT EVEN, good food hygiene is an incredibly valuable foundation for mental health; there are lots and lots of studies that show that people who are experiencing trauma are less able to adhere to good food hygiene and also suffer more when they can’t. If you’re a person who has trouble eating when stressed, “good food hygiene” can look like “I ate some Cheetos at midnight before I fell asleep in an orange-coated haze” as long as other, more nutritious calories happened also — it doesn’t literally mean “only eat things that are good for you;” it means “put calories in your system on a regular basis so that a blood sugar crash doesn’t happen on top of everything else.” (Long-term daily Cheeto binges might lead to other problems, obviously, but we’re talking short-to-medium-term here.) Some people do have the opposite reaction to stress, and stress-eat everything in sight; for those people, good food hygiene might look more like “pause and evaluate whether I feel hungry before I put this thirty-first food item in my face.” (Note that we’re discussing common immediate stress reactions to food rather than systemic eating disorders, which obviously have their own set of rules and treatments.)
  • Get enough sleep. This is basically the same as the notes above — good sleep hygiene is a tremendously helpful foundation for mood. But this one is super hard to do if you’re not doing well; I personally find it about a million times harder than shoving food in my face when I’m too stressed to be hungry. For me, optimizing sleep hygiene looks like skipping that third cup of coffee (unless I really need it), taking a melatonin pill before bed, and hoping I don’t have nightmares. Your mileage may vary. But in general, the more other forms of decompression help, the more sleep stops being an elusive beast and becomes a regular part of life again. And that’s a really important step for resilience.
  • Ride the Hygiene Horse generally. There is absolutely zero shame in forgetting to brush your hair, skipping a shower, or otherwise forgetting a regular daily hygiene thing when you’re in immediate crisis — in fact, it’s a common symptom that something is very wrong. But once you’re out of crisis mode, it’s super easy to start being angry with yourself for forgetting things — or doing the opposite, and feeling like you just don’t have the energy for tasks like showering. (Or both. Some lucky people experience both.) But once you’re in “I feel ready to eat and sleep normally” mode, it’s a good time to make sure you’re keeping ordinary hygiene habits all around. They help, and they matter, and not doing them long-term can affect mood and keep you in a dark place.
  • Make a more complete, long-term list of recentering and joyful things. Once you feel able, make a comprehensive list of all the things that bring you joy and help you feel More Able to Even after you do them. Hopefully, most of the things that are really easy (e.g. “Look at doggo pics,” “Reread my favorite novel,” “Eat Cheez-Its”) are already on your list, but this is a good time to add the less low-hanging fruit — things that you know help but didn’t feel approachable in the middle of crisis. It’s also a good time to spend an hour or two really thinking about what brings you joy and comfort — and if you feel able, take your best guess at what is an easy thing, what is a medium thing, and what feels like a hard thing right now. You may or may not feel ready to do all these things (and my guess is some of them will feel super far away), but making a list of them helps you prep and move forward for when you do feel ready. And some of them might feel within reach, which can give you back extra cope!
  • Try simple meditative activities (that aren’t literal meditation). A friend of mine mentioned meditative coloring today, which honestly is a really good low-cost meditative activity. Some people find cleaning to be stress-reducing when they’re at this stage. If you’re like me and find repeatedly stabbing things really satisfying when stressed, embroidery is pretty great. The goal is to aim for things that give you a quick cope point in the moment, don’t eat more than maybe one cope point to set up, and then give you an extra cope point when you can look at them later and think “Look what a productive thing I did!” But at this stage, easy activities that you know how to do and feel comfortable doing mindlessly are best. Bonus points if they’re also on your list. (Also, this is a great way to slowly expand your list! 🙂

Here’s a sample second-stage list:

1) Easy activities — I’ve been doing these all along: 
Watch my favorite movie; Reread my favorite book; Look at cat GIFs on the Internet; Eat Cheez-Its; Play Caves of Qud

2) Medium Activities — try some of these if I can: 
Embroidery projects; Meditative coloring; Clean my workspace; Read nonfiction; Cook more meals

3) Hard Activities — I’m not ready for these yet: 
Learning book-binding; Going on regular hikes; Working on my novel; Going to the gym regularly

This Will Take Startup Cost But Will Help, I Promise (or: Long-Term/Preventative Recentering Activities)

These are the things that you want to keep in your life as you navigate low-grade ambient stressors (such as hearing 45’s voice on the television as he discussed tax reform) — it’s for when you’re feeling well enough that you should no longer be tuning out the white noise that accompanies an inherently traumatizing atmosphere. We owe it to ourselves, and to each other, to do what we can to stay engaged but healthy as we all walk through this nightmarescape. Here are my modest suggestions for how to do that when you’re not in crisis.

  • Get out of the house on your own terms. Meet a friend at a bookstore; go for a walk; get some coffee from that awesome cafe you haven’t been to in a while. Something that requires physical movement, brings you joy, and feels like the opposite of retreating or withdrawing. It’s super-important, by the way, that this be a thing that you are doing for yourself and on your terms, rather than because someone dragged you or guilted you into it. It’s not going to be useful for decompression if you’re being dragged (and you’re not the one doing the dragging).
  • Try some of the stuff marked ‘hard’ on your recentering list. Try your hand (see what I did there?) at watercolor, or some other task that you know brings you joy but has felt far away lately. Don’t be angry with yourself if it doesn’t quite click; these are things that take cope to give cope, and it just means you didn’t have the cope for them yet. Go back to some of the easier tasks and do those — you’re still healing, is all. But if the thing brings you joy and feels net-positive, it’s a really helpful marker for knowing where you are in this process. Plus you got to do a thing that brings you joy! (Note: Now is also the time to purge the list items that you felt kind of mixed about or would be harmful to rely on too long in the long-term.)
  • Try more complex meditation. Some people find going to the gym really meditative. Some people get a lot out of traditional mindfulness meditation, such as guided meditation or progressive muscle relaxation exercises or something similar. I’m partial to singing-based meditation. But basically, this is the time to try varying simple tasks that are meditative through repetition (e.g. coloring, sewing) with activities that are meditative in a more traditional sense. There are lots and lots of studies that show that meditation can be extremely helpful to people for stress resilience, but trying to do it when you’re still actively processing toxic trauma is really hard.
  • Consider setting up a therapy appointment. There is seriously zero shame in setting up an appointment if you think about it carefully and decide you need one. There’s also zero shame in deciding it’s not right for you. Basically, just a good thing to evaluate at some point — people see an eye/nose/throat doctor if they’ve had a sore throat for forever; people should also see a therapist if something has been wrong with their stress or trauma levels forever.
  • Evaluate what stressors you are managing. Some stressors (e.g. natural disaster, getting sick, jerks on public transit) are not avoidable, and will always require navigation and detoxification. Some (e.g. a romantic partner wanting to spend time with you) are stressors when you aren’t doing well, but are either positives or neutral things when you are doing better. And some (e.g. that one friend who wants you to loan them $20 literally every day) are literally always stressors and never necessary to navigate. Figuring out long-term planning for stressors, and how to set boundaries for the random white noise you just super don’t need, takes energy but also is generally a really good step for health. Approaching stressors with intentionality can both help you gate-keep and also give you a sense of control over your situation.
  • Keep doing all the things on the convalescing list. We don’t stop needing the things that bring us joy when we’re no longer in crisis; in fact, ability to do the things that bring us joy is arguably what it means to be living rather than surviving in the first place. And things like good food/sleep/personal hygiene and staying hydrated stop being optional when we’re constantly taking in stress.
  • View your stressor intake and decompression as an equation that needs to be balanced. You can take in more stressors when you have more in place to center you. You can take in fewer stressors when something major is going on — be it crisis, chronic limitations, or something else. At the end of each day, this equation needs to balance, or burnout, depression, and disengagement can occur. And that’s an outcome nobody wants, or even should want.

The reality is that most of us will yo-yo between these three stages as new horrors crop up and create new crises — it’s like a morbid game of Chutes and Ladders that we play with our mental health instead of meeples. And when something serious happens, and you have to go back to the beginning of the roadmap, that’s okay — being able to identify and acknowledge current stage of crisis, and current level of trauma, won’t fix everything. But it’s an important set of tools that we can use to support ourselves and each other. We can get through this, and we will. It’s my hope that this roadmap will help.

National News Roundup: Week 35 (September 17–23)

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It’s cold season Chez Roundup, and only my live-in editor escaped the plague. (You may note, by process of elimination, that this means your favorite news compiler did not.) I mention this because I feel a great temptation to conclude that this past week was a terrible fever dream — it’s been a strange, dark week. Sadly, no matter how much I nap, the news doesn’t seem to improve.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a tech guru — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

As we’ve come to expect, there were some developments in The Russia Collusion Investigation this week:

  • Walls Closing In on Manafort.* There was a lot of news about everybody’s favorite sketchy campaign manager this week. To begin with, Mueller apparently warned him to expect an indictment when they raided his home in July. But the more pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the more this just makes perfect sense — we also learned this week that the investigation of Manafort stretches back eleven years; that Manafort has been monitored by the FBI since summer 2016; and that the FBI discovered Manafort offered to give a Russian oligarch private briefings on the Trump campaign during that same window of time. So, basically, the surprising thing is that no indictment has been issued yet — though some analysts think Mueller is setting a tone, and that is probably true, I also think Mueller is just being extremely thorough and does plan to indict Manafort soon.
  • Facebook Now Cooperating with Congress.* It took them months, but they got there eventually: Facebook is now cooperating with congressional investigations into the ads they sold to Russian troll farms. (Facebook had already shared some information with Mueller, though this development was fairly recent as well.) Incredibly, Facebook had been claiming that it violated user privacy to share what ads had been stuck on their feeds without their consent — because we all know that Facebook is extremely good at figuring out what we want to see on our walls. (Though it is absolutely true that the company treats users like data mines, but that’s kind of besides the point on multiple levels here.) At any rate, it’s good that they are cooperating now.
  • Anti-Leaking Classes.* News broke this week that EPA staff have been ordered to attend anti-leaking classes as a condition of their employment, per a general Trump administration policy that everybody in federal government will eventually be required to attend. I can’t help but wonder if anybody is going to make Trump’s attorneys go. (Or Trump.)

We also saw some significant movement on the Threat to Free Speech front in the past week:

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • Maverick Maine and McCain (Maybe). John McCain announced this week that he won’t vote for the Graham-Cassidy bill, which is a bit confusing because when the bill first came on people’s radars he was one of the first to say he would. But his announcement was followed by Susan Collins announcing the same thing once she had reviewed the CBO report. So assuming McCain is accurately reporting, his decision puts the bill in serious jeopardy (as well as pissing off the President, which is always a nice bonus). If as few as three Republican senators vote ‘no’ on the initiative, it definitely won’t become law, and there are a lot of potential third ‘nos’ in the current landscape. (Though new versions of the bill court Lisa Murkowski, she hasn’t yet issued a final statement either way, and Rand Paul has been vocal in his opposition as well.) This is far from a done deal, and we need to keep calling our Senators! But the Graham-Cassidy bill may very well go the same route as the July bills.
  • Paris Accord Gains a Participant. (Just not us.) President Ortega announced that Nicaragua will join the Paris Accord this past week, leaving only two final holdouts from the world agreement — Syria and us. In statements on the topic, Ortega cited recent climate change natural disasters as his reasoning, saying, ““We have to be in solidarity with this large number of countries that are the first victims, who are already the victims and are the ones who will continue to suffer the impact of these disasters.” Nicaragua’s support makes the accord stronger, and might serve as an impetus for private entities in the United States to continue efforts to support the accord.

This week’s news changed so much that I had to draft it three times since yesterday — if anything, the news cycle is getting faster, which I frankly did not think was possible. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain a very good idea for the foreseeable future. Until next week, good night and good luck!

National News Roundup: Week 34 (September 10–16)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

Okay, y’all, another week, another pile of terrible news. This week at least contains some schadenfreude, so there’s that, but it’s a pretty rough ride otherwise — and that’s even with me holding off on a couple of stories that I think are about to break more fully. Comfort foods at the ready.

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a climate scientist — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

First and foremost, a bit of errata from last week:

  • Magnitsky Act Changes.* A reader (correctly) flagged that I should have remembered to include this point last week: Without much fanfare, last Friday Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum allowing the Magnitsky Act, a law imposing sanctions for very serious human rights abuses in Russia, to be enforced by proxies — more specifically, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (for visa sanctions) and Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin (for financial sanctions). Many people view this as a way for Trump and Russia to get around the Magnitsky Act — you may recall that Trump Jr’s infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer turned out to be about getting this same Act repealed. The Magnitsky Act generally requires the President to report any changes in policy to Congress, but there’s nothing in the Act shifting that responsibility to delegated agents. So, in effect, this presidential memorandum does repeal the Act unless/until Congress fixes it. And that’s fun.

There are a couple of odds and ends in The Russia Collusion Investigation this week as well:

  • Flynn Power Plants in the Middle East.* News broke this week that Flynn had business interests in the Middle East on top of everything else; more specifically, he took trips to the Middle East in 2015 to set up a deal for about forty private power plants in the region. The information came out in part due to a formal inquiry from House Democrats. Needless to say, this is yet another conflict in Flynn’s closet, and not a good look generally for the administration.
  • Cobb (Dowd) Salad Debacle. It is Attorney 101 that You Do Not Discuss Client Matters In Public, because you have both the obligation and the privilege of confidentiality to your client. When you represent someone, you don’t discuss their case in public at all, let alone at a working lunch. This is so fundamentally basic and self-evident that I have trouble believing Ty Cobb and John Dowd, members of the White House counsel team, didn’t know it when they were recorded opining in public on matters regarding the Russia Investigation yesterday. And even if they somehow forgot this point, it seems unlikely that they forgot not to discuss matters relating to their work with names and specifics at a restaurant that is literally next door to a major newspaper outlet. Which leads me to believe that they wanted to be recorded, and I’m honestly not even sure what to do with that.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

  • Shrkeli’s Bail is Revoked for Being a Gross Weirdo. (I stand by this headline.) Your second dose of schadenfreude for the week is Shkreli’s bail getting revoked while he awaits sentencing because he offered a $5,000 bounty on Hillary Clinton’s hair — which is both creepy and, as the judge correctly noted when he revoked bail, a solicitation of assault. It’s basically Criminal Defense 101 that your bail can be revoked for committing another crime, and he technically committed a (gross and weird) crime with the post. And while I don’t generally enjoy displays of misogyny and expectations of privilege, I do enjoy that the federal judge on this case didn’t put up with it.
  • New York Sanctuary Order Signed. The Governor of New York signed an executive order this past week prohibiting state agencies from inquiring about immigration status. (In layperson terms, that means people can’t just be randomly asked about their status while they’re seeking benefits, getting a driver’s license, or doing other things that involve ordinary day-to-day interactions with the state.) The order includes provisions protecting people who approach a police officer for help, are victims of crimes, or are witnesses to crimes. While it’s not a panacea by any means, it is a good start, and I definitely appreciate that it was issued.

And that’s what I got this week — and no, I can’t take it back again, much as I wish I could. I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again.

National News Roundup: Week 33 (September 3–9)

Kara HurvitzLeave a comment

I am seriously kind of in awe of just how much news has happened this week. In an ordinary democracy, the panopoly of natural disasters so close together would shut down most other things, beyond maybe some arguments about what bill initiative Congress should tie to the FEMA funds. But since we live in The Dystopia Nobody Bothered to Predict[1], instead apparently back-to-back hurricanes meant A Great Time To Take Away People’s Protections. Yaaaaaaay. (Also, there was a bunch of movement on the Russia investigation, but I can’t be mad about that, because Mueller might make the hurting stop.)

Standard standing reminders apply: I am no journalist, though I play one in your inbox or browser, so I’m only summarizing the news within my area of expertise. This week’s news contains some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise — I’m a lawyer, not a climate scientist — but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!

Constitutional Crisis Corners:

More news this week on that oldie-but-goodie, the Emoluments Clause. (Remember that thing? Cause Trump clearly doesn’t!)

Also just like last week, we saw several forms of real progress in The Russia Collusion Investigation.

Your “Normal” Weird:

The Bad:

The Good:

And that’s what I got this week — more than enough, I’m sure you’re thinking! I’ll do my best to keep touching on all the key points each week, but the news is still moving really fast, and we’re also increasingly seeing announcements at odd times. Daily news summaries like WTFJHT remain an excellent resource until we meet again.

[1] I do have one friend who says that the Hunger Games series is a prediction of this dystopia, and I’m not ultimately sure he’s wrong. Although at least we aren’t being ordered to die for reality television. (Yet.)