Nikki Haley, who not-so-subtly addressed Trump’s call to ban all Muslim immigrants during last night’s State of the Union response, has responded to criticism from Trump by holding fast to her position. And also by apparently forgetting that slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the Trail of Tears (along with the rest of a not at all insignificant portion of American history) ever happened.

Haley, who spoke last night through clenched jaw, urged the country’s conservatives not to follow “the siren call of the angriest voices”—which is a very fancy way of saying Donald Trump. Trump then called her “weak on illegal immigration.”

In defending her positions to reporters this afternoon, Haley let loose a bizarre, amnesiac tale of our country’s past.

“When you’ve got immigrants who are coming here legally, we’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion,” Haley said to reporters in South Carolina, which removed the state capitol’s Confederate flag just this past summer at Haley’s own behest.

“Let’s not start that now,” continued the woman who presides over a state that made it illegal for “any white man to intermarry with any woman of either the Indian or negro races” until 1967.

“We’ve gone too far than to go back into a race and religion issue. I’ve been through those fights. That’s not worth it.”

South Carolina forbid any restaurant or cafeteria from serving “white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter” until 1954.

[h/t Talking Points Memo, which was apparently unfazed by the Governor’s selective memory]

Note: This article’s headline originally read “Governor Whose Marriage Would Have Been a Crime in Her State 50 Years Ago: We’ve Never Had Racist Laws.” However, we’ve been unable to confirm whether the term “Indian” in South Carolina’s anti-miscegenation laws applied to Native Americans or people from India, so we have altered it to what you see above.

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

“I lived most of my life sexually assaulting kids—I never went to jail,” said 56-year-old Roy Bay at last night’s Jacksonville City Council meeting in Florida. During the meeting, many spoke in favor and against expanding the city’s Human Rights Ordinance to include LGBT people. Bay (and possibly his church*) apparently thought sharing his horrific story of preying on children (for 20 years, according to a follow-up interview by Jacksonville’s Action News) would bolster the side against expanding the HRO. The idiocy is nauseating.

The conceit of Bay’s reveal was to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality. He claimed he was sexually assaulted between the ages of 10 and 12 “by the homosexual community.”

“I entered into the life of homosexuality and did the same thing, because that’s what I thought life was all about: going into bathrooms of places and businesses and sexually assaulting kids,” he continued.

Bay claimed that “this happens in the homosexual lifestyle, over and over, OK?” “It’s been happening for years,” he added. Bay said after becoming a “born-again child of God, God set me free from that lifestyle.” And then people cheered and were reprimanded for doing so.

“If this bill does pass, it will unfortunately become more acceptable than what it is now,” is how Bay, a liar who molested children for 20 years by his account, concluded.

To Action News, Bay claimed to have done his molesting in St. Louis. Additionally, according to the site:

We reached out to police in St. Louis and emailed them the man’s picture. We are waiting to hear if they have any record of him or the attacks.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was at the council meeting and say they are now investigating, but the man was allowed to leave the meeting.

Regarding the statute of limitations for child sex abuse, current Missouri law states:

Prosecutions for unlawful sexual offenses involving a person eighteen years of age or under must be commenced within thirty years after the victim reaches the age of eighteen unless the prosecutions are for rape in the first degree, forcible rape, attempted rape in the first degree, attempted forcible rape, sodomy in the first degree, forcible sodomy, kidnapping, attempted sodomy in the first degree, or attempted forcible sodomy in which case such prosecutions may be commenced at any time.

In other words, Bay could be charged for at least some of his offenses (he claims he changed his ways in 1985).

Good news for people who hate the people of Brooklyn, or at least the idea of the people of Brooklyn: Gothamist reports that forthcoming Hurricane Sandy-related repairs to the the L train, which connects Williamsburg to Manhattan, could shut the line down for at least three years.

There is a tube that cuts under the East River. It contains two tunnels, which bring the L train to and from Manhattan. The tunnel that takes the train into Brooklyn has serious seawater damage from Sandy, and so it needs to be repaired. The MTA is getting around to it soon, and will be down there for a long while.

Per Gothamist’s Chris Robbins, construction to repair the L train will begin in late 2017, and could take anywhere from one year to three years. The length of the timeline would depend on which of two bad choices the MTA picks. If they want to get it all over with as quickly as possible, they could close down both tubes and maybe be out of there within a year, though that would mean stopping service at the already-choked Bedford stop and completely cutting North Brooklyn off from its most direct route into Manhattan. Or the MTA could shut down the tunnels intermittently—most likely on weekends—or one at a time, which would mean a timeline stretching over multiple years, perhaps as many as three.

Both options present differing but equal nightmares for the residents of North Brooklyn, aside from the general nightmare that is simply living in North Brooklyn. If recent history is any indication, the MTA may choose the option that gets things done the quickest. The city recently announced that it will be closing 30 subway stations across the city for six-to-twelve months for various repairs, and as Robbins writes, a recent total shutdown of the Montague R train stop ended with the MTA completing Sandy-related repairs a month and $58 million under budget.

But, as Robbins also notes, the Montague R stop serviced only about 65,000 riders per day. The L train is closer to 350,000. MTA spokesperson Adam Lisberg told Robbins that the MTA recently decided against full shutdowns of stops on the A/C/E and F lines because they were too popular. Regardless, a bid outline for the L train repair from last year stated it would cost at least $50 million and take 40 months. The money to pay for the project comes from Sandy relief funds provided by the federal government.

But perhaps the most unknowable question of all is who exactly the L train repairs will be inconveniencing when the project gets started in “late 2017.” Development across North and East Brooklyn is, of course, continuing to skyrocket. It is taking the price of rent all over the borough along with it, but that is especially true along the L train corridor. So the answer to whose lives will be most garbled by L train construction is a complicated one. There are the Brooklyn lifers, who live in public housing in the midst of gentrification or who have been pushed down the L’s long tail out to Canarsie. The latter group’s inexorable commute into Manhattan will get even worse, and New York stopped concerning itself with the former some time ago.

Then there are the many people who don’t currently live in Williamsburg, but who will soon, and who have more money than those who currently do. Their lives will be gummed up by the temporary plugging of the L train, but those are lives they will hardly recognize anyway.

In between those two groups is upwardly mobile, white Brooklyn, whose current collective fear regarding the L’s imminent shutdown is most visible on the internet if also the silliest. Those folks will likely be pushed out and away from Williamsburg (and even Greenpoint) over the next few years and into neighborhoods that bend all manners of south. In Bushwick and Ridgewood, the L is a convenient option but the J/M/Z is even more accessible, though currently less fashionable (give it time). Bed Stuy and the rest of East New York are serviced by different lines entirely. And less people figure to be commuting into Manhattan, anyhow.

One way to look at living in contemporary Brooklyn is that it’s all one chain of upheaval. The natives nudged out or swallowed up by the gentrifiers, who themselves meet the same fate at the hands of people with better jobs and more money, who then, I guess, have to learn shuttle routes or devote even more of their income to Uber, at least for a few years. Which is to say that maybe the MTA’s L train construction will be not a major inconvenience but instead a minor Pyrrhic victory.

[image via Getty]

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Ted Cruz likes to tell a story about how he and his wife Heidi financed his scrappy, underdog campaign for the United States Senate four years ago together, out of pocket. This, according to a report from the New York Times, is pretty much a lie.

“Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” Cruz said he told his wife. “What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation.”

Altogether, the couple put $1.2 million in “personal funds” into Cruz’s campaign—$960,000 before the May 2012 Republican primary and another couple hundred thousand before the scheduled runoff. This, Cruz said, was “all we had saved.”

That, however, is not exactly true. Ted and Heidi Cruz, the Times reports, in the early part of 2012, obtained two low-interest (3 percent) loans: one from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz worked (currently on leave, she was making six figures as a managing director in Goldman’s Houston office; her husband was making $1 million per year as a law partner); and one, in the form of a line of credit, from Citibank. Together, they amounted to as much as $1 million.

The Cruz campaign paid Ted Cruz back for the money he lent it—again, his own campaign—by the end of 2012, and his personal financial records show that he and Heidi paid Citibank back that same year as well. They still owe Goldman Sachs between $50,000 and $100,000, though. (While he did disclose the loans—without stating their purpose—in personal financial reports filed with the Senate, the Times reports that Cruz did not disclose the loans in his actual campaign finance reports.)

This is all a bit inconvenient for Cruz, who has attempted to position himself as a populist skeptical of the financial industry’s power and influence. “Goldman is one of the biggest banks on Wall Street, and my criticism with Washington is they engage in crony capitalism. They give favors to Wall Street and big business and that’s why I’ve been an outspoken opponent of crony capitalism, taking on leaders in both parties,” he said last March.

“Like many other players on Wall Street and big business, they seek out and get special favors from government,” Cruz added. “I think they’re entitled to practice their business, but without subsidies or special benefits.”

Incidentally, not only is Heidi Cruz on leave from Goldman, Cruz’s campaign chairman, Chad Sweet, worked at the multinational investment bank for ten years, from 1996 to 2006. (Before that, he worked at Morgan Stanley, and before that he worked at the CIA. After Goldman, he worked at the Department of Homeland Security, where he ultimately became chief of staff.)

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Ted Cruz said that Donald Trump “embodies New York values,” which may or may not have been coded anti-Semitism. On Wednesday, however, Kellyanne Conway, a Republican strategist at pro-Cruz SuperPAC Keep the Promise, clarified the Texan’s comments to Fox News reporter Dan Gallo: “New York is home to many wonderful people and places, but the emphasis is more on money than morality, on self-aggrandizment than humility. The line to get in Abercrombie & Fitch is a mile longer than the line to get into St. Patrick’s Cathedral.”

Maybe so! But it is still difficult to think of a New York institution that emphasizes money over morality more than Goldman Sachs.

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Contaminated water provided to the citizens of Flint, Mich. caused the levels of lead poisoning among children there to spike, and now, with the city in a state of emergency, officials are planning to find out if the water also explains the dramatic rise in cases of Legionnaire’s disease.

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In a press conference today, Governor Rick Snyder—who very well may be to blame for the entire fiasco—said that from June 2014 (two months after Flint started taking water from Detroit) to November 2015 (a month after the stopped), Genesee County, which contains Flint, saw 87 cases of Legionnaire’s disease, with 10 of those being fatal. According to state Health and Human Services Department Director Nick Lyon, 45 cases were observed between June 2014 and March 2015, with seven of those being fatal. The other 42 were found May 2015 to November 2015, with three of those being fatal.

Eden Wells, chief medical executive for the state’s Health and Human Services Department, said that “87 cases is a lot” and “that tells us that there is a source there that needs to be investigated.” Michigan officials stopped short of saying that the source is the dirty, lead-heavy water, but that is certainly the logical place to start.

Legionnaire’s disease—which can cause fever, headaches, shortness of breath and aching of the muscles—is carried by legionella, a bacteria found naturally in water. Per the CDC, the bacteria is usually inhaled through mist or vapor, and breeds especially well in warm water containers such as hot water tanks, hot tubs and large plumbing systems.

[image of Rick Snyder in 2014 via Getty]

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

On Wednesday, authorities released a journal belonging to John Houser, who killed two people and wounded nine last summer in a shooting at a Louisiana movie theater. On the last page, the Associated Press reports, Houser wrote, shortly before the shooting, that he was leaving the journal “in hopes of truth, my death all but assured.”

Houser, described as a 59-year-old drifter, left the 40-page, handwrittern journal, which describes the United States as a “filth farm” and praises Dylann Roof, in his room at a Motel 6 not long before the shooter. From the AP:

“If you have not stood against filth, you are now a soft target,” he wrote on the lined pages of the notebook.

“America is in the midst of celebrating filth, and as such they are the enemy,” he later added.

Houser described Dylann Roof — a young white man accused of killing nine people inside a historic black church in Charleston that June 17 — as “green but good.”

“Thank you for the wake up call Dylann,” he added.

The journal—which can be read here, via The Advocate—offers a glimpse into the mind of the man who killed himself as police entered the theater. “Yes, it will be said and said, ‘how senseless,’ but if my act drains the value of the dollar (because it is not based on anything) by creating new expenses (guards, bulletproof glass, etc. at movie theaters) it is for good overall,” Houser wrote. “The US is the enemy of good, of God.”

“Comments posted in his own writing revealed his ideals and that he had battled his local government and had a hatred for the United States Government,” one government assessment found. “Houser’s interests also included ‘Golden Dawn’ which is a Greek organization with neo-Nazi beliefs.’”

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Over the course of 15 years, since about 2000, three male boat operators and a supervisor sexually harassed at least 35 female National Park Service employees during work trips on the Colorado River, according to an investigation released by the Department of the Interior on Tuesday.

The report, which found “evidence of a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and hostile work environment,” stemmed from a letter of complaint and a request for investigation sent in September 2014 to DOI Secretary Sally Jewell by 13 former and current employees of the National Park Service, all of whom had worked, at various time, in the Grand Canyon National Park’s River District.

The complainants described incidents that they said were evidence of “discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment” over the course of 15 years. In the course of investigating the complaint, the DOI identified 22 other individuals who described similar experiences, which included inappropriate touching and threats.

“The behavior cited in the report is simply unacceptable,” James Doyle, a National Park Service spokesman, told Reuters.

Twelve times a year, the National Park Service conducts scientific and restoration trips, which sometimes last several weeks, up the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. The boats and boat operators are provided through the River District.

The DOI interviewed 19 individuals who stated that River District employees had behaved inappropriately, identifying four current and former employees—who are not named in the report—who touched them inappropriately, made sexual comments, or propositioned them for sex. From the report:

• Employee 1 described an incident in which Boatman 2 took a photograph under her dress during a 2005 river trip.
  
• Employee 2 described being repeatedly propositioned for sex by Boatman 1 during river trips.
  
• A former seasonal employee (Employee 3) reported that Boatman 1 repeatedly propositioned her for sex, that Boatman 3 was rude, and that Supervisor 1 had yelled at her. She said that she resigned from GRCA in 2012, after 9 years as an NPS employee, because of “undue levels of stress” caused by this treatment.
  
• Another former employee, Employee 4, said that during a 2005 river trip, Boatman 3 behaved in a threatening manner toward her—yelling at her while holding an axe—while he was intoxicated.
  
• Employee 5 said that Boatman 1 inappropriately touched her back and buttocks during a 2013 river trip, and that Boatman 3 yelled at and belittled her during her employment at GRCA.
  
• Another former employee, Employee 6, recalled Boatman 3 asking her to give him a massage during a river trip. She said that his request made her uncomfortable and that she declined.
  
• A former NPS volunteer (Employee 7) reported that Boatman 3 inappropriately touched her thigh during a 2010 river trip.
  

Last year, in January, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona declined to prosecute any of the individuals in the report, all but one of whom have resigned. One of the boatmen is still employed at the boat shop, Outside.com reports, but is not permitted to travel on river trips. In March, the Grand Canyon River District banned alcohol from trips for both NPS employees and commercial participants.

One of the women the DOI interviewed, a longtime Grand Canyon worker, said she had been friends with two of the accused for years, describing them as “free spirits” who told “off-color jokes.”

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Kate del Castillo, the Mexican actress who helped arrange Sean Penn’s Rolling Stone interview with Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, took to social media to speak up about the recent events. In both Spanish and English tweets, Castillo wrote: “Thank you for your support over the past few days. Not surprisingly, many have chosen to make up items they think will make good stories and that aren’t truthful. I look forward to sharing my story with you.”

Transcripts of text messages sent between Guzmán, his associates and del Castillo were published recently by the Mexican newspaper Milenio, reports CNN. “I will take care of you more than my own eyes,” promised Guzmán in one. “Tell Kate that when she comes we will drink tequila and dance. Tell her that,” he says in another.

Castillo, famous for her role as a drug trafficker in the telenovela La Reina del Sur, was first contacted by Guzmán’s lawyer in 2012 after she posted a tweet in which she criticized the Mexican government. “Today I believe more in El Chapo Guzman than in the governments that hide the truth from me even though it is painful,” she wrote. Castillo clarified her comments in an interview last year with CNN. “Someone like that, at least we know who he is, we know what he does, we know what his profession is,” she said. “The others sometimes are worse criminals, and have numbed us, and hide everything from us.”

Penn also commented on the interview through a brief statement to the Associated Press. When asked about images published by Mexican newspaper El Universal that appeared to show Penn and Castillo arriving at an airport before the infamous meeting occurred, Penn only replied: “I’ve got nothin’ to hide.”

Contact the author at marie.lodi@jezebel.com.

Image via Getty/Twitter.

The winning numbers in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing are: 8, 27, 34, 4, 19 and Powerball: 10.

Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Multiple explosions were reported in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, on Thursday, including at least one directly outside a United Nations building. At least three people have been reported dead. Gunfire is reportedly being exchanged around the city.

From the AP:

Gunshots were heard after the midmorning explosion Thursday in front of the Sarinah shopping mall in an area that also has many luxury hotels, embassies and offices.

It was not clear who was shooting but there was a massive police presence, which prevented reporters from going near the scene.

ABC’s Adam Harvey reported on Twitter that police said some of the attackers were riding motorcycles and throwing grenades.

This video appears to show one of the explosions, outside the Sarinah Mall.

Reuters reports that casualties include both civilians and police. Jeremy Douglas, a U.N. regional representative, is tweeting from the scene of one of the bombings.

Update – 12:00 am

A bank security guard told the AP that he saw at least five attackers, including three suicide bombers, at the Starbucks in the Sarinah Mall.

According to Indonesian network TVOne at least three explosions were reported near the Turkish and Pakistani embassies.

Update – 12:10 am

As many as six suspected terrorists are thought to be hiding in the P.T. Skyline Building, Topsfield reports. Police reportedly say the attacks are ISIS-related. Authorities have confirmed that there have been six casualties: three policemen and three civilians.

Photo via Getty Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.

Hillary Clinton is not going to make it easy for you to come around to supporting her. “You” meaning the good young liberal, who probably voted for Obama, and perhaps even (if you are old enough) supported him over her in 2008.

Earlier this week, Chelsea Clinton, rather suddenly acting as a campaign surrogate, delivered a blatantly dishonest attack against your favorite old socialist Bernie Sanders, and his plan to replace America’s expensive patchwork healthcare system with a federally-funded single-payer plan for everyone:

“Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,” she said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. “I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we’ll go back to an era — before we had the Affordable Care Act — that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”

This is not entirely new territory for the Clinton campaign. Clinton has already attacked Sanders’ plan for necessitating taxation, as Jim Newell pointed out last year. That line, that it is unfair of Sanders to propose that the tax burden for true universal healthcare be distributed widely, has also been repeated this week by numerous Clinton surrogates and advisers.

What distinguishes these attacks from prior Clinton attacks on Sanders—that he is soft on guns, that his attacks on her are unfair—is that they’re entirely cynical and disingenuous. Everyone involved in making these arguments knows full well that they’re bullshit, with a patina of plausible deniability. Chelsea Clinton has a masters degree in public health from Columbia. She knows exactly how what she’s saying obfuscates the issue.

Here is Clinton’s defense of her daughter’s line:

“Because if you look at Senator Sanders’ proposals going back nine times in the Congress, that’s exactly what he’s proposed. To take everything we currently know as health care, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP Program, private insurance, now of the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together.”

Yes, by “dismantle,” and “strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance,” we meant he’d roll these existing, popular programs together into one larger and more expansive one.

It would be one thing for Hillary Clinton’s campaign to say that a national single-payer plan is politically unfeasible, that it’s not achievable no matter who our next president is, that it would be too disruptive to the status quo to win the popular support necessary to overcome opposition from entrenched interests, etc. Those are perfectly legitimate arguments, that also have the benefit of being probably true. Hell, even pointing out that Sanders doesn’t (yet) have a detailed plan to pay for a national healthcare program is well within the bounds of honest political debate, as the question of how costs would be distributed is a pretty important one.

And the Hillary Clinton campaign has said some of those things. In fact, they’re mixing in some of those legitimate arguments alongside the bullshit ones. But the argument the campaign is making in a sustained way to voters, not reporters, is that single-payer is bad and scary and will cost you money. They’re going full-on demonize-the-tax-and-spender: Bernie Sanders will raise your taxes and kill Medicare. The implied corollary is that Sanders is raising your taxes to give benefits to someone else. Bernie Sanders wants to “dismantle Medicare.” It’s the scuzziest form of Democratic Party political scaremongering, pitched at low-information voters who probably couldn’t precisely define what “single-payer” is, but who know damn well what Medicare is.

There’s no defending the decision to pick this particular fight. Hillary Clinton ought to be running as—and for most of this campaign thus far she has been running as—the most liberal electable candidate possible. The only argument against Sen. Bernie Sanders that ought to be necessary for her to make is: Come on, this guy?

The deal mainstream Democrats make with liberals (and to a lesser extent, properly left-wing voters) is you hold your nose and vote for the less-bad one, because the Republicans are terrifying, and in exchange Democrats will do their best to at least not make liberal outcomes less likely. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is currently working to make a very popular liberal outcome less likely to be achieved. To have the standard-bearer for American liberalism—which the likely Democratic nominee for president is, like it or not—dismiss single-payer as unachievable policy is to is to decline an opportunity to shift the Overton Window. To have her attack it as bad policy on explicitly conservative grounds is to actively try to push that window to the right.

This should give enthusiastic (as opposed to grudging) Hillary Clinton supporters pause. In 2007-2008, the line among Clinton supporters was that Obama was not actually appreciably to the left of Hillary Clinton—that his differences were primarily symbolic, and largely meaningless. There was plenty of truth to that line, especially on domestic issues. (It papered over the primary reason Clinton was vulnerable to a liberal challenger, which was her Iraq War vote. Her undiminished hawkishness is still the most compelling reason to refuse to support her!) But the Clintons always find ways to complicate the claim that, at heart, they’re good liberals.

Assuming Bernie Sanders can’t actually win the nomination—and I am positive most people in Clinton’s campaign still believe that he cannot—Hillary Clinton doesn’t even have to make any sort of affirmative case for herself to liberal Democratic voters. She just has to not give them reasons not to want to support her.

Is she capable of that? Or does Clintonian contempt for the left run so deep that she can’t even make it to the general election without a cynical rejection of the arguments underpinning American liberalism?

Photo: AP

Drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán may not have had any idea who Sean Penn was before agreeing to meet with him in the jungle, but he definitely knew all about Penn’s companion, Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, a beautiful tequila spokesperson he wanted to bring home to his mother.

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The tone of El Chapo’s messages, the majority of which were sent via Blackberry Messenger, are that of a deeply dehydrated man trying to wring the last drops of water out of a crumpled Poland Springs bottle.

According to reports, El Chapo provided del Castillo with her burner phone, reportedly trying four different phone stores in search of a pink Blackberry before settling for a grey one. The cocaine-crossed texters apparently went by the code names “Mama” and “Papá.”

Still, one thing El Chapo has never been accused of is subtlety, and his textual seduction was no exception—though del Castillo appeared to be, at the very least, flattered by his affection. CNN translated some of the exchange, which was published in Spanish Wednesday by the Mexican newspaper, Mileno.

• Papá: I really want to meet you in person, friend.
• M: Well, me too.
• (Guzman provides details on the journey needed to reach his location)
• Papá: You are the best of this world. We will be great friends ... I will take care of you more than my own eyes
• M: I’m beyond moved that you say you will care for me. no one has ever taken care of me, thank you!

“How is the best and most intelligent woman in the world, who I admire a lot?” El Chapo would later write to del Castillo, a woman he knew from TV.

“I must confess that I feel protected for the first time. You’ll know my story when we have time to speak, but for some reason I feel safe and I know you know who I am, not as an actress or a public figure, but as a woman, as a person,” she later responded.

Penn’s visit—which marked El Chapo’s first time seeing del Castillo in person and was, according to some authorities, El Chapo’s downfall—appeared to be no more than a pretext for getting the actress alone.

“Tell Kate that when she comes we will drink tequila and dance. Tell her that,” El Chapo instructed an associate in the days leading up to Penn’s visit. Afterwards, the pair—using new codenames—recounted the visit over BBM.

• Ermoza (del Castillo): I haven’t been able to sleep much since I saw you. I’m very excited about our story. It’s true. It’s the only thing I can think of.

• 1 (El Chapo): Let me tell you that I’m more excited about you than the story, my friend.

• Ermoza (del Castillo): Ha, ha,ha! Knowing that makes me really glad. You make me blush.

“I must say, my mother wants to meet you. I told her about you,” he texted del Castillo a few weeks later.

It’s still unclear if he has any idea who Sean Penn is.

Image via AP. Contact the author at gabrielle@gawker.com.

Jezebel readers likely know Saba Ahmed as the woman who threw Olympic-level shade on Fox News when she wore an American flag hijab. She is also the 30-year-old founder and president of the Republican Muslim Coalition, and she has as much patience for GOP fuckery as anyone I’ve encountered.

Since September 11, 2001, Republicans have harped on the importance of the fight against radical Islam, causing a large portion of Muslims to seek political refuge in the Democratic party. Today, Ahmed—who was once a Democrat—is up against the most fervently Islamophobic slate of Republican candidates in years. Still, she would rather change minds within the party than desert it altogether.

I spoke with Ahmed on Wednesday, just one day before the Fox Business Republican debate, about why she has so much faith in a party seemingly intent on smearing her religion, and who she would vote for tomorrow if she absolutely had to choose.

Could you tell me a little bit about your background?

I grew up in Oregon, which is a pretty blue state. Everybody I knew was a Democrat, but I became Republican after getting involved with the Democratic party and realizing how I couldn’t support a lot of the liberal values. I felt my faith aligned with the Republican party: we were pro-life and pro-traditional family values. And that’s why I became a Republican.

So you really switched because of the social values?

Yes.

Can you cite a specific event that caused you to switch?

I worked on a bill in 2010 that repealed Oregon’s ban on Muslim teachers from wearing their headscarfs in public schools. We were able to change the law of the land in Oregon, and that was all because some Republicans had helped us get it passed on the Senate side. That was my first experience seeing Republicans being very strong in faith, values bills. And that helped change my views on them.

How did your organization come about?

This happened when I moved out here to Washington DC. We formed this group last year to promote Islam and Muslims within Republican circles because I felt there was so much animosity and hatred against Muslims and there was hardly any Muslim Americans talking about it.

How many people are a part of it today?

We’re just getting started. We have a small staff here but we’re trying to form chapters in all key electoral states to get more active for the 2016 elections. We’re hoping to have Republican Muslims in Texas, Florida, Virginia, and other places that host federal congressional delegations reach out to their Republican representatives. And possibly even host a GOP presidential candidate.

I feel like your role in the Coalition turns you into a spokesperson for Republican Muslims, and to Republicans on behalf of Muslims. What does that mean for you?

Yes, definitely, I mean I’m very passionate about my faith and I don’t like it being disrespected by people, especially some of the GOP frontrunners. And that’s why we’re working to develop good relationships within the GOP and we hope to be more active within Republican presidential circles. We’re hoping to meet with Donald Trump in the next few weeks to hopefully change his perspective with Muslims as well. And hopefully the other ones as well going forward, Ted Cruz and Rubio and others.

Do you feel the pressure to have to speak for all of one group?

Yeah, definitely. I definitely do. It’s challenging because I would love to see other Muslim American groups speak out, but there are so few Republican Muslims who are active on media. So I often get thrusted on that. But I do enjoy it. I do like doing that.

Why do you think there are so few?

Because not that many people like getting involved politically, especially because it brings with it a lot of—you become a target and a punching bag for a lot of people and especially in the political climate right now. There are a lot of Muslims that are hated, any of them who try to do anything become a target. And you know, I’ve been called a lot of names and a lot of things. But, you know, I feel like we have to still develop a thick skin and do what we need to do to achieve our objectives.

A lot of people view Islam and American conservatism as being incompatible—largely because the leading presidential candidates have been so vocally Islamophobic. How do you reconcile that with your political beliefs?

I think the reason they are so Islamophobic is because they don’t know many Muslims and they don’t have Muslims involved in their campaigns. That’s why I feel like, you know, just like with any other new group, you have to get involved in their politics in order to change their hearts and minds.

So you are a Republican and you share Republican values, but how do you feel about—

We have not endorsed any particular candidate. We’re working on educating a lot of them and so right now we have not taken the position of endorsing any of them. And we have to do our best to make sure that we can change their minds. It may take some time but I’m hoping by the time our GOP nominee gets elected they will have heard from us.

If you had to vote for someone tomorrow, who would it be?

We are working, like I said, with the Trump campaign right now to bring him to a mosque and meet with imams and Muslim American leaders. I think his economic policies are good, he has a good business background. If he puts his mind together to actually help fix the budget crisis and stuff, he could be a great presidential candidate. But because of his other rhetoric against Muslims and stuff, a lot of Muslims wouldn’t see themselves voting for him.

Trump specifically probably doesn’t align with the social values that drew you to Republicanism. Why would he be the candidate that you’d be interested in?

Because of his business background. I feel like Washington needs somebody new and non-establishment, and I think Washington could use a good businessman who knows how to fix the budget. Our economy is not doing so great. There is so much fiscal irresponsibility. I think having a good Republican president would certainly help.

Is the idea, theoretically, that if Trump were a Republican president, he would support the kind of values-based legislation you’re looking for?

Yeah, I would support his business skills, and I would like to see him help fix the issues facing our economy and help drive economic policy better and help Americans.

Do you have a pitch? Why Muslims should vote Republican?

Because our Islamic values align with the Republicans. Islamically, we believe in things that the Republican party stands for.

Right now the GOP platform is very strict on immigration. How do you feel about that?

We definitely want immigration reform. We would support legal immigration. I mean, I don’t think a blanket ban on Muslims is the right solution. I think there’s a lot more stuff that needs to be done. We can’t support unconstitutional laws and so hopefully we can work on good policies that support legal immigration from all over the world.

Do you think that pop culture representations of Muslims (like in Homeland or Quantico) have any affect on the lives of American Muslims?

Yeah I mean there’s that anti-Islamic climate, putting all Muslims as suspects. It’s playing on people’s fears and emotions. When you can scare someone and you can put them in that fear zone, you can get them to do anything pretty much. And so, sadly, some people are misusing that. Trump’s statements last month, they came out at a time right after San Bernardino attacks. They targeted American fears, especially in South Carolina where there aren’t that many Muslims.

A lot of these candidates are trying to take advantage of that fear.

Right, right. But I don’t think that’s sustainable. They might get a few poll points now but I don’t think that it’s going to fly through November. And their policies are definitely going to be more fleshed out. And anybody who is going to continue that rhetoric isn’t going to make it through.

Did you watch the State of the Union? Do you have any thoughts?

I was glad to see Muslim Americans attend the State of the Union. Many Democratic members of Congress invited Muslims to attend and I thought that was a brilliant step. Obama was, while we disagree with a lot of his policies, I was really appreciative of him calling out that we shouldn’t target all Muslims and we shouldn’t hurt our American values by condemning one religion.

What are you hoping to see in the GOP debate?

I’m looking forward to hearing about foreign policies and I’m gonna be watching for how many times they use the word “radical Islam.” Because every presidential candidate has an issue with radical Islam and I want to see how they’re planning to solve it, because you can’t blame an entire religion for the acts of terrorists, and unless they understand that they can never solve the problem of terrorism...

But, it’s a Fox Business debate. So I’m hopeful they’re going to be talking more about the economy and business issues that are going to be the deciding factor for us.

How much patience do you have?

[laughs] I’m trying to stay as patient as I can. You kind of have to be very patient to deal with and do the work that I’m doing, but I’m definitely trying to stay as patient as possible.

Contact the author at joanna@jezebel.com.

Image via Getty.

For whatever reason, this week’s collection of Wikipedia refuse is perhaps the most bizarre set yet. Put another way, this week’s articles are fucking phenomenal.

http://gawker.com/the-10-best-ar...

In this week’s set of unrighteously deleted Wikipedia articles, we bring you a creepy little town(?), a creepier alien cover-up, a possible murder plot on a vivacious, young centenarian, and beloved children’s characters Dora and Caillou all-grown up and playing a different kind of doctor. Regarding the latter: We are very, very sorry.

Olentangy Commons

Olentangy is a bizarre “planned development” neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio that, at least according to the photos, comes to us straight out of the uncanny valley.

It’s not entirely clear whether Olentangy actually consists of more than one residential building, but the photo below apparently depicts the “eastern side of Olentangy Commons.”

See that tree over there? That’s the murderin’ tree.

Best line:

Not a line so much as the entire “Entertainment” section, which contains the following list:

REDBOX (video rental)

Gallo’s Tap Room

UPS office

Chipotle Mexican Grill

Banana Leaf Restaurant

Tandoori Grill

Min-Ga Korean Restaurant

Lashish The Greek

McDonald’s

Wendy’s

Starbucks

Tim Hortons

Gallo’s Tap Room

Kenny Road Market

Columbus Asia Market Inc

C A M Group

Apna Bazaar

Marshalls

The Apothecary Shops

Avella Specialty Pharmacy

Olentangy’s illustrious education offerings are also worth noting, particularly that of Giggles and Grins Childcare Inc, a “licensed child learning center inside Olentangy Commons.” Here’s the front of the building.

Which seems like a wonderful, happy place (Inc.), and we’re sure the lack of any visible children doesn’t mean a thing.

Every photo is incredible and/or deeply upsetting in its own, special way, though, so we’ve included them all for your perusal below.

Why it got deleted:

The article appears to be largely “promotional” according to Wikipedia, which is a very weird way to refer to something that is clearly a warning to all who dare enter.

Why it shouldn’t have been:

STAY AWAY FROM OLENTANGY

The Misadventures of Dora

A (generously labeled) “animated movie” based on “the GoAnimate series The Awful Life of Caillou.” The budget, if we are to believe the article’s creator and why wouldn’t we, was roughly $50 million—a number that’s dwarfed by the astonishing $380.4 million the 35-minute “film” took in at the box office.

Best line:

Starring the voices of David, Kayla, Eric, Julie, Shy Girl, Kimberly, Diesel, Kate, Joey, Dave, Kidaroo, Princess, Jennifer, and other guest stars.

Why it got deleted:

The film is (allegedly!!) little more than an amateur fan cartoon made using a program that is “designed to allow business people with no background in animation to quickly and easily create animated videos.”

Why it shouldn’t have been:

Amateur fan cartoon? We’ll let you be the judge of that.

It is our objective opinion that this movie deserves every penny of that $350 million.

Montreal Bolide

On the evening of November 26, 2013, parts of Canada were witness to a blue flash in the sky followed directly by a “loud booming noise” According to unspecified scientists, “the eyewitness reports and data from acoustic detectors were consistent with a meteoroid entering the atmosphere.”

Yeah, okay. Sure thing “scientists.”

Best line:

Cloudy weather blocked the view of cameras placed to photograph meteors.

How convenient.

Why it got deleted:

According to Wikipedia’s editors, this article was deleted because “meteors are not inherently notable” and “this did no damage and had no lasting effect.” Which is exactly what They’d want you to say.

Why it shouldn’t have been:

The New World Order can hide the Truth, but they can’t make it go away. Scary for Montreal, eye-opening for the World.

Irmgard von Stephani

Our dearly departed Irmgard was once the oldest living person until her death at a spry 112 years and 5 days old.

Best line:

She became the oldest living German resident at age 109 on 22 July 2005, with the death of 110-year-old Frieda Müller.

Frieda always was a quitter.

Why it got deleted:

Again, the monsters editing Wikipedia for free in the dead of night don’t think that sweet, beloved Irmgard was notable.

Why it shouldn’t have been:

Everything in the article seems aboveboard until the last few lines:

When turning 112, she had moved into an old people’s facility just five months before. Despite being in seemingly good health, Von Stephani died not long after her last birthday, aged 112 years 15 days.

“In seemingly good health.” In seemingly good health. What—or who—could have possibly caused a lively, health 112-year-old to lose the beautiful light in her eyes so suddenly? Was it up-and-coming 111-year-old Elsa Tauser who would ascend to the throne the second Irmgard died? How could Elsa have possibly lived with herself (for the roughly 24 hours that she continued to live after Irmgards passing)?

All this and more, next season, on Serial.

Jeff Smith (meteorologist)

Jeff Smith works for a local news station in New York City as a meteorologist. A noble profession.

Best line:

In 2015, he married Dana Jones of Moorpark, California.

Huge congrats to Jeff!

Why it got deleted:

Apparently, “just” being a meteorologist doesn’t qualify one for an article on Wikipedia.

Why it shouldn’t have been:

Without meteorologists, we’d have no rain, no snow, no sun—we would be dead. For these reasons, Gawker Media stands with Jeff.

Honorable mentions:

Mohammed Ali (programmer)

Books written in unconventional ways

Incest in Entertainment

HIV Multiple Aids

Before Anyone Else

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com.

Dean Parker, Dr. Ben Carson’s finance chairman and top fundraiser, resigned from the campaign this morning, just hours after the publication of a Politico article exposing fractures in Carson’s inner circle allegedly caused by Parker’s unusually high salary, expenses and aggressive temperament.

The piece, written by Kyle Cheney, relays the displeasure of “some campaign insiders” regarding the $20,000 per month salary that Parker was hauling in despite occupying a role that goes unpaid in most traditional campaigns. Carson’s campaign also paid a total of $216,000 in expenses during the three months covering July through September of last year, with Cheney writing that much of the money was distributed to LLCs set up in the names of individual consultants working under Parker.

That information answers not just the question of why Parker is no longer working for the Carson campaign, but perhaps also a more fundamental one: Where exactly is Ben Carson’s money going? This question was more pertinent when Carson had more money (and better poll numbers) than he does now, but it nonetheless remains the central mystery of his campaign.

In November, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall posited that Carson’s campaign might have started off as the sort of direct mail fundraising scheme that is popular in conservative circles, in which vague political organizations raise money from small, vulnerable donors but don’t do anything with the donations they receive except funnel it back into the act of raising more money for the organization.

Details in Cheney’s article seem to back up that thesis. As he notes, a Wall Street Journal piece on the Carson campaign’s financials from December shows that the Carson campaign diverted a good portion of its cash back into its direct mail business. Cheney’s reporting also suggests that the Parker underlings pulling in thousands of dollars from the Carson campaign via specific LLCs don’t really appear to be qualified for their jobs:

In fact, much of the finance operation Parker built in Mobile is difficult to decipher from campaign filings. Nearly everyone on his staff set up a separate LLC after joining the campaign and received consulting payments in the quarter that ended Oct. 1. LLCs like Interim C, DB Operations, and Synergy Networks were established explicitly for the campaign and trace back to individuals who were paid as finance consultants.

Mary Broughton, who lists her occupation as a substitute teacher and graduated from Liberty University in 2014, collected nearly $15,000, through MC Consulting, established in June. Rachel Howat, who was a Mobile County nutritionist until joining the campaign in June as “finance operations director,” collected more than $15,200 throughThe Amna Agency. A further $8,000 flowed in September to Interim C, a Michigan-based LLC whose manager, Kevin Demery, used to work with Parker at Callis Communications. Demery lists his title as the campaign’s national vice chairman of finance.

So Parker was essentially raising money to pay himself and his staff, who would then raise more money to pay themselves. Employees need to get paid, of course, but Cheney quotes several veteran Republican campaign grunts who say that most people in positions like Parker’s don’t take paychecks—their job is to open the flow of money from their own networks of rich people to the candidate, not to tap that flow.

As Parker walks away from the campaign, the final question is whether he resigned on his own—as the campaign announced—or was pushed out. Parker is quoted extensively by Cheney, making it seem unlikely that he had expected the revelations within the article would be so harmful that he would need to resign before noon on the day it went up. Cheney also notes that Parker recently said he would “take a bullet” for Carson. So maybe he did.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com / image via Getty

House and Senate Republicans are in Baltimore for their annual retreat today, which explains why Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan got to break out their best Casual Friday wear on a Thursday. But it doesn’t explain why 45-year-old Paul Ryan looks exactly like a fussy 11-year-old whose mother dressed him up for church.

There was some talk on the internet recently about whether Paul Ryan’s new beard made him hot all of a sudden. I’m glad this photo finally puts that debate to rest. He looks like if you crossed the coolest people in the world with, well, a Republican from Wisconsin.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

Why can’t you find The Greatest Publication Ever Made on any newsstand or web browser or TV network? Because people don’t want it.

This is America, where journalism is a business like any other. This is not England. The government will not be raining down supplemental income to support quality journalism. Take that socialism elsewhere! Here in America, journalism is media and media is a business. The upside of this is that it serves to align the product that media companies produce with the true interests of the public. The downside is that the true interests of the public are, for the most part, garbage.

People are sentimental about journalism. The only people more sentimental about journalism than journalists are wealthy people who imagine that they would like to own a media outlet. Journalism straddles the line between literature and public service, and because of that its appeal is broad enough to intoxicate everyone from self-admiring intellectuals to civic-minded crusaders. Many writers believe that our brilliant writing will naturally create its own audience. The moving power of our words, the clarity and meaning of our reporting, the brilliance of our wit, the counterintuitive nature of our insights, the elegance with which we sum up the world’s problems; these things, we imagine, will leave the universe no choice but to conjure up an audience for us each day.

The problem is that nobody ever bothers to inform the audience. In fact, this imaginary Universal Law of Writing—“Make something great and the readers will come”—is false. It has always been false, though that does not prevent it from being harbored deep in the heart of every ambitious writer and prestige-starved press baron. The history of journalism is littered with the corpses of good publications. The “new media” world is no different. The “long tail” and “audience segmentation” and every other buzzword term does not change the nature of the business. The audience for quality prestige content is small. Even smaller than the actual output of quality prestige content, which itself is smaller than most media outlets like to imagine.

Name a publication or media outlet that is a thriving, successful business solely on the basis of its high quality, intellectual, prestigious stories. There are none. If you want to run a publication that only publishes things that are good, you have a few options. You can be a small operation that operates on a relatively shoestring budget (The Awl network, niche journals of all sorts). You can be independently wealthy, and spend that money on your publication (call me please). You can find someone else who is independently wealthy and wants to spend their own money on the publication as a sort of charity (Harpers). You can be the prestige product of a much larger media empire that makes money on a wide array of garbage and sends some of those profits to you to redeem itself (The New Yorker, Grantland). Or, you can somehow convince people to invest in you on the premise that you will be the amazing publication that does make money with pure quality, only to fail when that money runs out (too many to name).

None of this is an indictment of all of the people who dream of putting out quality “content” for a living. It would be great if their dream came true. But it never does—or if it does, it only lasts for brief moments, when economies are booming so profoundly that money is washing over everything in great waves. Very recent history shows that this timeless dynamic does not change. Grantland? Proof that even ESPN is unwilling to subsidize an unprofitable product forever. Al-Jazeera America? An oil-rich nation dreamt of a quality global news network and spent insane amounts of money building one. It did not attract many viewers. Then the price of oil dropped, and the money ran out, and now Al-Jazeera America is dead. The New Republic? It did okay for a long time as a small print publication catering to an elite niche, though it was never a moneymaker; when a rich guy bought it who thought he could turn it into a viable business, chaos ensued, complaints ensued, and now the rich guy is giving up.

What sorts of publications and media outlets are viable businesses? Mass media outlets that have huge scale and publish everything for everyone (TV news networks, major national newspapers, Buzzfeed) or very niche publications that focus solely on a very specific field and own it definitively (trade magazines). That’s about it. “Thing full of really amazing literary nonfiction” falls into neither of these categories. The compromise that most places tend to make is to publish a bunch of garbage with broad appeal—celebrity stories! Sex stories! Animal stories! Simplistic personal finance stories! Scary true crime stories! Sports stories! Real estate porn! Overly grim “us vs. them” narratives! Jazzed up horse race journalism! Listicles! Photo essays! Recipes! Food opinioneering! And countless other fluff beloved by the general public!—and then use the audience and revenue generated by these things to subsidize the good stuff. This, to some degree, is the model used by viable news outlets from the New York Times to Buzzfeed to Gawker Media to Slate to Vanity Fair. If this basic model proves at all shaky, publications will grasp for just about any other revenue stream they can find to shore things up, from a wine club (NYT) to a conference business (The Atlantic) to Amazon links hawking products (us).

Maybe there is a talented young writer out there with a dream of starting the very best, smartest magazine or website that has ever existed, and building it into their very own historic legacy. I am here to tell you that it will not work. The business of media has very little, if anything, to do with quality journalism. If you aspire to be a Writer of Legitimately Good Things, the best you can hope for is to get the prestige spot that is paid for by the garbage. To hope for a prestige spot that is not paid for by garbage, or by a lone rich wacko, or by a new advertising technology, but instead by the mass audience that will flock to your brilliance is to ask for too much. If you are able to get a job writing good stuff, you are one of the lucky ones in the big Exercycle of Mindless Entertainment that is “the media.”

The good thing about this fact, though, is that once you understand it, you will no longer be mystified as to why great magazines don’t flourish, or why your favorite writer ended up getting laid off. The answer is that quality and audience do not go together. The media is not the enemy of thoughtful writing. The public is. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can stop hating both of them for the wrong reasons, and start hating both of them for what they really are.

[Photo: Flickr]

Yesterday’s Donald Trump rally in Pensacola, Fla. featured all the hits: Crazy depraved old people in bad hats, mutual masturbation to the thought of a very large wall, and Trump himself publicly berating somebody for a minor perceived mistake. But it also featured what stands as a new classic in the Trump canon: a troupe of young girls clumsily performing a rather horrible pop song written in his honor.

You can watch the full two-minute rendition above. “Apologies for freedom / I can’t handle this,” they sing. “President Donald Trump knows how to make America great / Deal from strength or get crushed every time.” Something tells me they didn’t write these lyrics. Hey, just like real pop stars!

According to Fusion, the girls are part of a group called Freedom Kids. I would tell you more about Freedom Kids, but when I went to their website Chrome informed me I might become a victim of identity theft.

Feels about right somehow.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com.

A Gulf War veteran who legally uses medical marijuana to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder is fighting with Kansas child welfare officials for custody of five of his children, who were taken from him after a dispute in April, the Denver Post reports. According to their story, Raymond Schwab was told that a condition of the children’s return was that he provide four months of drug-free urinalysis tests, including cannabis.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_293812...

Schwab told the Post that Kansas Child Protective Service workers took custody of his and his wife’s five youngest children—aged five to sixteen years old—just before he moved from Topeka to Denver last year.

As a PTSD patient, Schwab tried a range of treatments—and at one point became addicted to heroin—before finding that pot was the most useful for easing his symptoms. A job opening with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs took him from Colorado, where he had a medical card, to Kansas, where medical and recreational marijuana is illegal, in 2013. When a job with the VA opened in Denver in April, he took it as an opportunity to move back to somewhere where he could legally use cannabis.

The Rumpelstiltskin-esque behavior of Kansas child services isn’t the only bizarre part of the story. Raymond and Amelia Schwab’s children were taken into state custody in the first place because Amelia’s mother alleged that they were abandoned after an unspecified “family squabble”:

But two years later, he decided to transfer to a VA job in Denver, where medical cannabis is legal. That’s when a family squabble led to the loss of five children aged 5 to 16.

Raymond and Amelia say that as they were packing to leave, her mother took the kids to a police station in another county and reported them abandoned, an action her mother now regrets.

The Schwabs allege that a subsequent investigation found no abuses of their children. Kansas child welfare department did not respond to the paper’s requests for comment.

Image via AP. Contact the author at andy@gawker.com.

And they were not permitted to kill anyone, but to torment for five months; and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death flees from them.

– Revelation 9:5-6

Contact the author at ashley@gawker.com. Photo via @AliABCNews.