Doctors are warning against the latest bogus TikTok health hack that involves taping your mouth shut before bed to lose weight.
Videos on TikTok extolling the benefits of mouth taping have amassed hundreds of thousands of views. One such benefit, according to mouth tape manufacturer Somnifix, is that forcing yourself to breathe through the nose only promotes fat loss.
Proponents also claim it improves airflow, relaxes the body, stops snoring and helps people stay asleep.
But Dr Raj Dasgupta, a sleep specialist at the University of Southern California, said mouth taping at worst could lead to obstructed breathing and suffocation, explaining that ‘if you have obstructive sleep apnea, yes, this can be very dangerous’.
Mouth taping is the latest TikTok trend to catch fire despite warnings from healthcare professionals.
Doctors recently warned against a similar viral trend called ‘vabbing,’ which involves smearing vaginal fluid behind the ears and neck, which proponents claim increases the chance of attracting men, by spreading their pheromones.
Tik Tok users claim mouth taping has helped them stay asleep, reduce snoring, and improve their energy during waking hours, a result of steady oxygen intake with nasal breathing
Some users also claim that the practice can help promote weight loss, citing evidence that breathing heartily through your nose is key to metabolizing fat particles in the body
Dr Dasgupta told CNBC: ‘There is limited evidence on the benefits of mouth taping and I would be very careful — and even talk to your health care provider before attempting it.’
Some mouth tape users report having more energy in the hours after waking as a result of their improved sleep quality.
Experts fear that taking part in the trend can harm the 22million Americans who suffer from sleep apnea – a condition where breathing repeatedly stops and starts at night.
It can occur when the relaxation of a person’s throat muscles while sleeping obstructs airways, or when the brain does not properly send signals to the body to continue breathing.
Experts warn that obstructing the mouth could make sleep apnea symptoms even worse.
Doctors also advise against taping your mouth if your nasal passages are not completely clear.
What is sleep apnea?
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) occurs when the walls of a person’s throat relax and narrow during sleep, blocking their airways.
This interrupts normal breathing, with symptoms including loud snoring, noisy and labored breathing, and repeated episodes when breathing is interrupted by gasping and snorting.
Roughly 22 million Americans have it.
During an episode, the lack of oxygen triggers a sufferer’s brain to pull them out of deep sleep so their airways reopen.
These repeated sleep interruptions can make the person very tired, with them often being unaware of what the problem is.
Risks for OSA include:
Being overweight – excess body fat increases the bulk of soft tissues in the neck
Being male
Being 40 or over
Having a large neck
Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol
Being menopausal – hormonal changes cause the throat muscles to relax
Treatment includes lifestyle changes, such as loosing weight, if necessary, and avoiding alcohol.
In addition, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) devices prevent the airway closing by delivering a continuous supply of compressed air through a mask.
A mandibular advancement device (MAD) can also be used, which is like a gum-shield that holds the jaw and tongue forward to increase the space at the back of the throat.
Untreated, OSA increases a person’s risk of high blood pressure, stroke, heart attacks and type 2 diabetes.
Dr Megan Acho, a pulmonologist and sleep specialist at the University of Michigan Health said: ‘Importantly, if you have nasal congestion or a deviated nasal septum, you could potentially limit airflow if you tape your mouth.
‘This is one reason why we would definitely recommend avoiding mouth taping in people with known nasal disease and in children.’
Mouth taping is not a new practice, but it has exploded in popularity on TikTok where millions of users have posted about their experiences.
Some videos have as many as 500,000 likes and the tag ‘mouth taping’ has been viewed more than 43 million times.
While doctors may warn against taping the mouth – there are some real benefits.
One influencer who tapes her mouth shut before bed rattled off a series of issues linked to mouth breathing such as cavities, gum disease, bad breath, brain fog, and sore throat.
Research also finds that breathing through the nose helps the body perform at its optimum level.
People who mouth-breathe are not absorbing enough oxygen. Without sufficient oxygen, our sleep quality and energy levels plummet.
Nose breathing, which brings more oxygen into the body, also helps lower blood pressure.
It is a crucial part of meditation because it activates the parasympathetic nervous system which dilates blood vessels and decreases the heart rate, reducing overall blood pressure.
Mouth taping also purports to help promote fat burning, a benefit of increased oxygen intake.
Oxygen helps break down fat molecules which are metabolized to become energy to help the body function. Evidence is limited, though, as studies have been relatively small.
In a 2018 study conducted in Korea, 38 people were asked to do different deep breathing exercises.
Some were asked to perform diaphragmatic breathing – a process where a person slowly inhales and exhales to relax themselves.
Those who did it through the nose, sometimes called belly breathing, had a higher resting metabolic rate than others.
This can help a person lose weight, cut fat and reduce their risk of heart disease, diabetes and other conditions.
Evidence that the practice works is mostly anecdotal, though.
It may seem like your heart is beating with regularity throughout the day unless you are exercising, but that’s not true. Your heart rate will go up and down as you go about your day. Doing something as simple as climbing a single flight of stairs will increase your heart rate, explains Harvard Health Publishing. Your heart beats faster and slower as the body’s need for oxygen increases or decreases. Lying on your couch watching TV? You’re probably using less oxygen and have a low heart rate. Doing sprints on the track? You’re gasping for air and your heart rate is probably very high.
There are ranges of what is considered a healthy resting heart rate or a healthy active heart rate. However, this depends on many factors like sex and age. For example, the average resting heart rate for most adults is 60 to 100 beats per minute (bpm). And while exercising, a healthy maximum heart rate is 200 bpm, according to the American Heart Association.
Of course, your heart rate can become too high which is considered dangerous.
First of all, it’s important to understand that not every instance of a high heart rate should be considered dangerous. If you experience a single episode of your heart rate going higher while just laying on the couch, it probably isn’t cause for alarm, explains Healthline.
However, if this is happening consistently, whether you’re exercising or not, this is called tachycardia. There are different types of tachycardia and what is considered too fast of a heart rate depends on your age and health (via Healthline).
You may consider seeing a doctor if your heart rate is too high for your current activity, according to Mayo Clinic. For example, if your heart rate is above 100 while just lying on the couch, you may want to seek medical attention. Your heart rate may also be normal in one moment, but spike after only a short time of exercise.
In general, the symptoms of tachycardia include rapid pulse rate, shortness of breath, chest pain, and a racing and pounding heartbeat (via Mayo Clinic).
Read this next: Health Symptoms That Are Serious Red Flags
The research is an important step in the development of new effective drugs.
A new antibiotic that can fight against resistant bacteria.
Antibiotics were long thought to be a miracle cure for bacterial infections. However, many pathogens have evolved to withstand antibiotics over time and thus the quest for new drugs is becoming more urgent. Researchers from the University of Basel were part of an international team that used computational analysis to identify a new antibiotic and deciphered its mode of action. Their research is an important step in the creation of new, powerful drugs.
The WHO refers to the steadily increasing number of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics as a “silent pandemic.” The situation is made worse by the fact that there haven’t been many new drugs introduced to the market in recent decades. Even now, not all infections can be properly treated, and patients still run the risk of harm from routine interventions.
New active substances are urgently required to stop the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A significant finding has recently been made by a team headed by researchers from Northeastern University in Boston and Professor Sebastian Hiller from the University of Basel’s Biozentrum. The results of this research, which was a component of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) “AntiResist” project, have recently been published in Nature Microbiology.
Tough opponents
The researchers discovered the new antibiotic Dynobactin by a computational screening approach. This compound kills Gram-negative bacteria, which include many dangerous and resistant pathogens. “The search for antibiotics against this group of bacteria is far from trivial,” says Hiller. “They are well protected by their double membrane and therefore offer little opportunity for attack. And in the millions of years of their evolution, the bacteria have found numerous ways to render antibiotics harmless.”
Only last year, Hiller’s team deciphered the mode of action of the recently discovered peptide antibiotic Darobactin. The knowledge gained was integrated into the screening process for new compounds. The researchers made use of the fact that many bacteria produce antibiotic peptides to fight each other. And that these peptides, in contrast to natural substances, are encoded in the bacterial genome.
Fatal effect
“The genes for such peptide antibiotics share a characteristic feature,” explains co-first author Dr. Seyed M. Modaresi. “According to this feature, the computer systematically screened the entire genome of those bacteria that produce such peptides. That’s how we identified Dynobactin.” In their study, the authors have demonstrated that this new compound is extremely effective. Mice with life-threatening sepsis caused by resistant bacteria survived the severe infection through the administration of Dynobactin.
By combining different methods, the researchers have been able to resolve the structure as well as the mechanism of action of Dynobactin. This peptide blocks the bacterial membrane protein BamA, which plays an important role in the formation and maintenance of the outer-protective bacterial envelope. “Dynobactin sticks in BamA from the outside like a plug and prevents it from doing its job. So, the bacteria die,” says Modaresi. “Although Dynobactin has hardly any chemical similarities with the already known Darobactin, nevertheless it has the same target on the bacterial surface. This, we didn’t expect at the beginning.”
A boost for antibiotics research
On the molecular level, however, the scientists have discovered that Dynobactin interacts differently with BamA than Darobactin. By combining certain chemical features of the two, potential drugs could be further improved and optimized. This is an important step on the way to an effective drug. “The computer-based screening will give a new boost to the identification of urgently needed antibiotics,” says Hiller. “In the future, we want to broaden our search and investigate more peptides in terms of their suitability as antimicrobial drugs.”
Reference: “Computational identification of a systemic antibiotic for Gram-negative bacteria” by Ryan D. Miller, Akira Iinishi, Seyed Majed Modaresi, Byung-Kuk Yoo, Thomas D. Curtis, Patrick J. Lariviere, Libang Liang, Sangkeun Son, Samantha Nicolau, Rachel Bargabos, Madeleine Morrissette, Michael F. Gates, Norman Pitt, Roman P. Jakob, Parthasarathi Rath, Timm Maier, Andrey G. Malyutin, Jens T. Kaiser, Samantha Niles, Blake Karavas, Meghan Ghiglieri, Sarah E. J. Bowman, Douglas C. Rees, Sebastian Hiller and Kim Lewis, 26 September 2022, Nature Microbiology. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-022-01227-4
Nikita Dragun was placed in a male cell after she was arrested on Monday night — a decision that the transgender beauty influencer’s publicist finds abhorrent.
“The situation with Nikita, who is legally female, being placed in a men’s unit of a Florida jail is extremely disturbing and dangerous,” Jack Ketsoyan of Full Scope Public Relations tells Page Six in a statement.
“This decision made by the Miami-Dade County Corrections Department directly violates their protocol, which mandates that transgender inmates are classified and housed based on safety needs and gender identity.”
The YouTuber — whose real name is Nikita Nguyen — “has been released and is now safe,” her rep revealed, also adding, “Thank you for respecting her privacy during this time.”
Transgender beauty influencer Nikita Dragun was placed in a male cell after her arrest on Monday night. Miami Dade Corrections/MEGA
As previously reported, Dragun was taken into custody after she was caught walking around a luxury Miami hotel pool naked and throwing water at hotel staff and cops.
According to the police report, the hotel staff had allegedly told the 26-year-old to put her clothes back on. She purposefully threw water at them in protest, which is when the cops were called.
By the time police arrived at the hotel, though, Dragun had returned to her room where she proceeded to play loud music. She greeted officers after they repeatedly knocked on her door.
However, when they informed her she had to follow the hotel’s rules or risk being kicked out, she allegedly slammed the door shut.
Dragun was taken into custody after she was caught walking around a luxury Miami hotel pool naked.Nikita Dragun/Instagram
Dragun was then arrested when she allegedly opened the door and told officers, “Do you want more?” before throwing a water bottle at them.
The influencer was eventually booked for felony battery on a police officer, misdemeanor disorderly conduct and misdemeanor battery.
Smoking marijuana regularly may raise the risk of potentially-deadly irregular heartbeats, a study suggests.
Cannabis users were 35 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with atrial fibrillation within a decade compared to non-users.
Researchers believe the culprit is poisonous byproducts of inhaling toxic smoke.
The heart condition is the most common type of treated heart arrhythmia that can lead to stroke, heart failure, and other heart-related complications.
At least 2.7 million Americans are living with the irregular heartbeat, though it can often go undiagnosed because many people do not experience symptoms.
The latest study, which included data from 23 million patients also looked at the risk of heart arrhythmias among users of other drugs.
Cocaine users were 61 per cent more likely to develop AF than people who did not use the drug.
People who used opiates, which can include heroin and prescription drugs, were at 74 per cent increased risk of developing the severe arrhythmia.
Cannabis users were 35 per cent more likely to develop AF compared to people who do not use the drug. Researchers behind the the new study attribute the negative health effects to inhaling toxic particles.
People who used any of the four studied drugs were far more vulnerable to developing atrial fibrillation compared to the control group at baseline who did not use any drugs, represented here. People who used methamphetamine were at the highest risk.
Atrial fibrillation is a common form of cardiac arrhythmia. It occurs when the heart’s upper chambers (atria) beat out of sync with the lower chambers (ventricles). It can lead to myriad heart conditions as well as blood clotting which increases the risk of stroke.
The report, authored by researchers at the University of California San Francisco, was published in the European Heart Journal.
They write: ‘Despite exhibiting a weaker association with incident AF than the other substances, cannabis use still exhibited an association of similar or greater magnitude to risk factors like dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and chronic kidney disease.’
‘Furthermore, those with cannabis use exhibited similar relative risk of incident AF as those with traditional tobacco use,’ they said.
In cases of atrial fibrillation, the upper chambers of the heart, or the atria, beat chaotically and out of sync with the lower chambers, or ventricles, of the heart.
Researchers analyzed data from every hospital admission and every visit to outpatient surgical facilities and emergency departments in California from 2005 through 2015, collecting information from a total of 23 million people.
Just a fraction of patients included in the study used drugs: 132,834 used cannabis, 98,271 used methamphetamine, 48,700 used cocaine, and 10,032 used opiates.
Marijuana is the third-most commonly used drug in the US behind alcohol and tobacco, and its prevalence is growing as more states embrace its therapeutic and medicinal properties.
What are the health risks of marijuana?
About 48million Americans smoke cannabis at least once a year, official estimates suggest.
This figure is rising as states continue to legalize the drug.
But evidence is also growing over its health risks, particularly for young adults.
Researchers suggest it has the following negative impacts:
Brain damage: It can cause a permanent loss of IQ and even alter development in young adults;
Mental health: It has been linked to suicide, depression and anxiety in the past, although it is unclear if marijuana is the cause;
Daily life: Surveys link it to more problems in careers and relationships;
Driving: Those who drive under the influence have slower reactions and less coordination, research shows.
Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
More than 48 million Americans try marijuana annually — or 18 per cent of the population. About nine per cent of first-time cannabis users become drug-dependent within a decade.
Meanwhile, it has been legalized for recreational use in 19 states so far, with others such as North Dakota eyeing their own legalization measures in this year’s midterms.
The UCSF study was not meant to dissect the individual components of marijuana use, or any other drug’s use, that may lead to atrial fibrillation. But the researchers posit that inhaled particulates are a likely factor.
Principal investigator Dr Gregory Marcus, a UCSF professor of Medicine with the Division of Cardiology said: ‘It’s also intriguing to consider that inhaled substances travel directly from the lungs to pulmonary veins, which empty into the left atrium, and that the pulmonary veins and the left atrium are especially important in generating AF.’
Typically, seniors are at the greatest risk for developing AF.
Stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine have a stronger link to cardiovascular conditions because they prompt the heart to beat faster and with greater force, raising blood pressure to dangerous heights.
While long-term risks associated with marijuana use have been found to include chronic lung issues and cognitive impairment, especially among young people whose brains are still developing.
A large study conducted in 2012 in New Zealand found that persistent marijuana consumption starting in adolescence was associated with a loss of an average of 6 or up to 8 IQ points measured in mid-adulthood.
Many people consume marijuana with the theory that it will boost their creativity, though the science backing up that claim is dubious.
A recent study conducted by University of Washington researchers was recently published in which 400 participants took a creativity test either 15 minutes after smoking the drug or 12 hours later.
The researchers concluded that there was no significant difference in creativity between the high or sober groups, which led them to theorize it is users’ perception of creativity that is distorted when they are high.
Another replay of Armageddon? The earth isn’t the only celestial body in space, although a large planet it is still surrounded by many celestial elements that might potentially bring harm to it. One such space element is the asteroid Phaethon which, according to scientists, might become a threat to our planet in future.
A giant 6 km long asteroid is attracting scientists’ attention. The cause? It seems that its speed of rotation is increasing dramatically. Phaethon, as it is known, is a potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroid. It is the origin of the Geminids, the famous meteor shower.
Asteroid 3200 Phaethon. What‘s all the fuss about? Read the article: https://t.co/H9UQKFewhG pic.twitter.com/jcSXUrYEw5
— Asteroid Day ☄ (@AsteroidDay) November 25, 2017
Its orbit, which brings it periodically close to the sun, earned it the name of Phaethon, son of the sun god Helios in Greek mythology. It is considered ‘potentially dangerous’ by astronomers. Because it also passes close to the Earth, it is in the eye of the Destiny+ probe, which should reach it by 2028. But lately, the rotation speed of the unusual cosmic stone has been accelerating strangely.
An abnormal speed
According to planetary scientist Sean Marshall:
The model’s predictions do not match the data. The times when the model was brightest were clearly out of sync with the times when Phaethon was actually observed to be brightest. It is due to the fact that Phaethon’s rotation period changed slightly at some point.
The likely explanation would be related to cometary activity at the time when it was closest to the sun. Radiation effects from the sun could also be delaying its course. This is not the first time that Phaethon has behaved strangely. Indeed, the asteroid has rather strange characteristics, as its orbit (curve of displacement in space) resembles that of a comet rather than an asteroid, hence its nickname of ‘rocky comet’.
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In any case, thanks to the various observations produced on its deviation from the analysed data, we now know that Phaethon increases its rotation speed by four milliseconds per year.
This article was translated from Gentside FR.
Sources used:
–Futura-Sciences: L’astéroïde potentiellement dangereux Phaédon a un comportement qui intrigue les astronomes
–SciencePost: l’astéroïde “potentiellement dangereux” Phaethon se comporte étrangement
ASTÉROÏDEASTRONOMIE
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⋙ A massive asteroid will hit Earth in November, according to ‘time traveller’
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Kari Lake, the Arizona Republican candidate for governor and former Fox 10 Phoenix news anchor, seems to be everywhere lately.
Earlier this month, the Atlantic declared her “Trumpism’s leading lady,” then spent more than 3,500 words explaining why. The Washington Post elaborated a few days later. “[Lake] has emerged as a Republican phenom by amplifying Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen,” read the subhead of its even longer profile. Last week, Axios went several steps further and reported that top Democratic strategists now believe Lake has the “potential to soar to a vice presidential spot or a post-Trump presidential candidacy.”
Kari Lake, Republican candidate for Arizona governor, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas in August. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“If you get a candidate who has the performance skills of a major-market local TV anchor and the philosophy and thinking of Steve Bannon, that’s a potent and dangerous combination,” Barack Obama guru David Axelrod told the site. “Look at Italy.”
By last weekend, Lake was sparring with Dana Bash live on CNN — and sparking yet another media tizzy by refusing to say that she will accept the result if she loses in November.
“I’m going to win the election and I will accept that result,” Lake said (twice).
It remains to be seen, of course, whether she can actually defeat her opponent, Democrat Katie Hobbs. Long considered the frontrunner, Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state, made her own national headlines for holding the line against relentless right-wing efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss there.
Until recently, Hobbs had never trailed Lake in the polls; in August, she led by an average of 7 percentage points. But now it’s Lake who appears to have the momentum and a modest lead.
Part of the problem, local observers say, is that the subdued, soft-spoken Hobbs has proved to be a limp campaigner whose unwillingness to debate Lake has become almost as much of an issue as the issues themselves.
Arizona gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, once the frontrunner, is currently trailing Lake. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“Hobbs is a mediocre Democratic politician, and she’s running a mediocre race,” Robert Robb, a longtime columnist for the Arizona Republic and a former GOP political consultant, told Yahoo News. “So it’s no surprise that Lake’s competitive. It’s still a Republican-leaning state in a Republican-leaning year.”
But others see Lake’s own telegenic talent as the bigger factor. The national media has made much of what one might call her style: the “familiar pixie cut”; the large silver cross she took to wearing “for protection” shortly before she announced her campaign; the “impossibly smooth” skin showcased in “ethereal” campaign videos. And then there’s the power of her voice — “deep but still feminine; firm, even severe, but smooth,” as the Atlantic put it. “Like black tea with a little honey.”
“She’s a local celebrity,” Arizona pollster and political consultant Paul Bentz told Yahoo News. “She’s great with an audience. She’s great on camera. She’s a more polished version of Trump. And because of all that, she’s put herself in a position where she’s tied this thing up.”
For all their primary-season success, MAGA candidates haven’t exactly been taking purple states like Arizona by storm. In Pennsylvania, for example, hard-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano is lagging well behind his Democratic opponent for governor. And although he’s risen some in recent surveys, the GOP’s 36-year-old nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, Blake Masters, is still polling behind Lake.
So what makes Lake different? At first, Arizona Democrats were publicly rooting for her to beat establishment rival Karrin Taylor Robson in the GOP primary; no less of an authority than former Gov. Janet Napolitano told the New York Times in August that Lake was a “one-trick pony” who would be easier to defeat in November.
“If this is an election about Trump and 2020 in Arizona, then Democrats will win,” Napolitano said. Leading Arizona Democrats even tried to tip the scales for Lake by touting Robson’s past donations to Democratic candidates.
Donald Trump with Lake at a rally in Mesa, Ariz., Oct. 9. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Now they may come to regret that decision. “We wanted these extreme candidates on the Republican side,” Roy Herrera, the Arizona state counsel for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, told the Times. “Now we got them and, you know, are we sure we wanted that?”
By any normal standard, Lake remains one of 2022’s most out-there figures. In the wake of the 2020 election, Arizona’s far-right Republican activists and legislators pushed hard to reverse Trump’s 10,457-vote loss — the narrowest margin of any state in the country. But not a single one of the 24 challenges filed in Maricopa, the state’s largest county, since Nov. 3, 2020, was upheld in court. Multiple audits (including a private count funded by Trump supporters) found zero evidence of fraud; in fact, the partisan GOP audit actually widened Biden’s margin of victory by 360 votes.
Yet Lake has described Biden as an “illegitimate fool” who is president only because the election was “stolen and corrupt.” She has unapologetically promoted nearly every debunked conspiracy theory about 2020. As recently as last month, she was still demanding the decertification of the Arizona result. “We’re already detecting some stealing going on,” she said in the lead-up to her primary. “If we don’t win, there’s some cheating going on.”
Lake has also suggested that the Second Amendment protects ownership of rocket launchers. She told a summit of young conservative women that “God did not create us to be equal to men.” She has threatened to imprison Hobbs for fictional election-rigging offenses. She has threatened to imprison journalists as well. She has appeared with QAnon-linked activists at campaign events. She has vowed to deport undocumented immigrants without federal approval. And she has accused Biden and the Democrats of harboring a “demonic agenda.”
Lake at a campaign stop in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Oct. 7. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
None of these positions is mainstream. Yet Lake may soon show that with the right combination of poise, polish and bravado, none of them has to be disqualifying either — not even in a swing state like Arizona.
“It’s all based on personality,” Bentz told Yahoo News. “I mean, she’s an incredible actress. It’s not clear how much of this stuff she believes. Maybe it’s all of it. But she is absolutely the party’s next ‘great communicator.’”
And that’s why Democrats like Axelrod are starting to think that Lake might be one of the most “dangerous” politicians in America.
The danger, according to democracy advocates, isn’t so much that Lake might beat Hobbs and implement the policies we expect from Republican governors. Rather, they worry that, given the chance, she will try to steal the 2024 presidential election for the GOP nominee.
If Lake and her Republican ticketmates and fellow 2020 election deniers Mark Finchem (secretary of state) and Abraham Hamadeh (attorney general) win as well, they and Arizona’s almost-certain-to-be-Republican-led Legislature could make all kinds of changes to help Trump win the state two years from now, regardless of the actual results.
For his part, Finchem — who argues that Marxists conspired to manipulate the 2020 election, that people cast ballots with “software that flips votes” and that Biden is “a fraudulent president” — has already said he would ban early voting and sharply restrict mail-in ballots. More worryingly, he’s thrown his weight behind efforts to empower the state Legislature to overturn election results.
In May, Finchem assured his supporters that if he had been secretary of state last time around, “we would have won. Plain and simple.” Last month, he implied to Time magazine that he would not certify the state’s electoral votes for Biden in 2024.
Mark Finchem, GOP candidate for Arizona secretary of state. (Matt York/AP)
“I’m extremely concerned about candidates who make false claims about the 2020 election — and who applaud the things that were done to not only discredit the results, but to undermine the results and change the outcome,” Robb, the former GOP strategist, said.
“[Lake and Finchem] are not forswearing doing that again in the future. That’s deeply worrying.”
But the stakes go beyond 2024. The hope among Democrats — not to mention many Trump-wary Republicans — was that only Trump, with his all-consuming celebrity and shameless showmanship, could really sell pure, uncut Trumpism to the masses, and that without him MAGA would wither.
Lake and her emergence, however, suggests a new way forward for Trumpism after Trump.
The youngest of nine — eight girls and one boy — Lake grew up “off a gravel road” in rural eastern Iowa. Her father was a public high school teacher; her mother was a nurse. “My family was very poor,” she has said. “You had to work if you wanted shampoo.”
Describing Lake as someone who “sought attention in the newsroom,” a former Fox colleague recently told the Washington Post that “everything starts with her being the ninth of nine kids.” But when a reporter from Phoenix magazine asked Lake how her childhood shaped her, she batted the question away.
“I’ve read that young kids in big families sometimes have to fight for recognition and attention,” the reporter asked.
“We had to fight for food, not recognition,” Lake shot back.
A sign depicting Lake as Rosie the Riveter, seen at a Tucson, Ariz., rally in October. (Rebecca Noble/Reuters)
Either way, the spotlight found her soon enough. A few months after graduating from the University of Iowa, she was on the air as a weekend weather anchor in her native state; by the time she was 25, she was doing the same job in Phoenix. Lake went on to spend 22 years as a Fox 10 anchor, mostly covering the evening news — and becoming a household name in the process.
“I am beloved by people, and I’m not saying that to be boastful,” she told the New York Times in August. “I was in their homes for the good times and the bad times.”
It was a successful career — she was one of the few local news anchors to land interviews with both Obama and Trump — but it ended last year in controversy.
Although Lake was reportedly a Republican before she donated to John Kerry in 2004 — then registered as an independent in 2006, a Democrat in 2008 and a Republican again in 2012 — she didn’t come off as conservative. In fact, Fox colleagues have described her as a head-over-heels Obama fan who dabbled in Buddhism, wore a red Kabbalah string around her wrist and befriended John McCain’s son Jimmy as well as popular Phoenix drag queen Barbra Seville. (Lake “was the queen of the gays!” a former co-worker told the Atlantic.)
A primary attack ad in July from the campaign of Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson attempts to portray Lake as a supporter of former President Barack Obama. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In 2016, Lake pitched mass amnesty as a “humane and fair” solution for the roughly 11 million immigrants living in America illegally. In 2017, she shared a meme on Facebook declaring Trump’s inauguration a “national day of mourning and protest.”
But something flipped after Trump took office. In 2018, Fox 10 hung a widescreen monitor in the newsroom to rank on-air talent by social media likes, retweets and replies; that same year, Lake took to her official Fox 10 Twitter account to dismiss a movement for teacher pay raises as “nothing more than a push to legalize pot.”
Although she later apologized, colleagues noticed a shift. “When she found something that garnered attention,” one told Phoenix magazine, “she gravitated toward that.”
In 2019, Lake joined the right-wing social media platform Parler. Viewers complained; lawyers got involved. “F*** them,” Lake said, on a hot mic, when her co-anchor warned that the station could get blowback from outlets like the local alt-weekly. She later described the next year or so — when she started retweeting debunked COVID-19 misinformation and clashing with producers over calling Biden the “president-elect” — as the period in which “I got canceled.”
“That’s when all of this started going downhill,” Fox 10’s former human resources director told the Washington Post. “Her thing became, ‘It’s freedom of speech, I have the right to say what I want to say.’”
In March 2021, Lake resigned. “Journalism has changed a lot since I first stepped into a newsroom, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like the direction it’s going,” she said in a video posted to Rumble. “I found myself reading news copy that I didn’t believe was fully truthful, or only told part of the story. … I’ve decided the time is right to do something else.”
She launched her campaign for governor three months later.
Lake has explained her transformation as typical: a lifelong Republican becoming disenchanted with the overseas adventurism of the George W. Bush era, then reverting back to her roots. She claims to be in good company, citing other famous party switchers such as Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump and Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward.
Lake at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Aug. 5. (LM Otero/AP)
None of which, of course, has stopped rivals from questioning her sincerity. “I believe she’s an opportunist,” Robson, her primary opponent, told Fox News shortly before the August election. “She’s actually a fraud, a fake. She’s not who she says she is. She’s a fabulous actress.”
Old colleagues have advanced more nuanced theories. “The only thing I can come up with in watching this is that her conservative views, little by little, brought her power and recognition that she had never felt before,” Marlene Galán-Woods, another former Channel 10 anchor, told the Post. “It’s intoxicating. The Kool-Aid is the power and all these people fawning over you — you forget what the truth is anymore.”
Whatever Lake really believes, however, most observers seem to agree on one thing: She knows how to perform. The power of her MAGA magnetism — and the unusual skill set she brings to the table — have been on full display in the closing days of the campaign.
Two moments in particular stand out.
The first came Sunday, Oct. 9, at a Trump rally in Mesa, just east of Phoenix. Lake spoke in complete, composed sentences — without notes, or a teleprompter, or a single crutch phrase like “um.” But more important than how the former newscaster spoke is what she spoke about. Or rather, what she didn’t.
Lake at a rally in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 9. (Matt York/AP)
Instead of fanciful election denialism, she focused on mainstream, meat-and-potatoes fare: Her plan for more career and technical education opportunities; her plan to counter what she calls “Bidenflation” by barring local government from taxing groceries or rent payments; her push to secure the border so that fentanyl stops “kill[ing] our babies”; her desire to “replace the woke garbage with common sense” in public school education; her call for “tough love to get [unhoused] people into treatment.”
In her framing, “the new Republican Party” — the party, presumably, of Trump and Lake — isn’t the party of “very fine people on both sides” and Jan. 6. Rather, it’s “the most inclusive party in the history of politics.”
“I don’t care if you think you’re a Democrat. If you don’t like the way the Democrat Party is going, chances are you’re a Republican,” Lake said, throwing open her arms. “We don’t care what color your skin is. We don’t care what zip code you come from. We love all of you. And if you like common-sense solutions, then welcome.”
In July, the last time Trump stumped for her in Arizona, Lake had “railed about a stolen election five times during [her] 20-minute speech,” according to the Arizona Republic. Now her message was tailored for the broader electorate. One-third of Arizona voters are Latino; one-third are independents. To win in November, a Republican like Lake can’t afford to just rile up the base.
Lake supporters cheer their candidate in Mesa, Ariz. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
“If the focus is on who’s a potential rising star within the MAGA universe, Lake is a contender,” said Robb. “She does unquestionably well with Trump crowds and with Trump. But she’s got a way to go in the next few weeks just to squeak out a victory that ought to be a walk in the park for a Republican candidate for governor.”
The second moment came exactly one week later, after a “Black Voices for Kari” event at Phoenix’s Bobby-Q barbecue restaurant. Lake might not have mentioned 2020, but the press did. “Over the weekend your name was trending everywhere,” a reporter said right out of the gate. “And most of [those mentions] were asking, ‘Is she an election denier?’”
Lake didn’t hesitate. “Let’s talk about election deniers,” she said as an aide handed her what was presumably a GOP research document. “Here’s 150 examples of Democrats denying election results.”
She mentioned Hillary Clinton saying that “Trump is an illegitimate president.” She mentioned 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — who is running again in 2022 — “claiming she never lost.” She even invoked Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush after conservative Supreme Court justices stopped the recount in Florida.
“Since 2000, people have questioned the legitimacy of our elections,” Lake said. “And all we are asking is, in the future, we don’t have to have that happen anymore.”
Trump has been a big booster of Lake’s candidacy. Here they are at a “Save America” rally in July. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Never mind that Lake’s argument here — that her denialism, and by extension Trump’s, is just politics as usual, and nothing to worry about — bears little resemblance to reality. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, and the embrace of his conspiracy theories by Republicans nationwide, is without parallel in American history.
Regardless, Lake sounded like she believed every word of what she was saying. The next morning, she posted a video of the exchange on Twitter. It now has more than 2.1 million views.
NASA is up to something in Las Cruces, New Mexico. In this remote location, the agency is studying how different spacecraft designs will interact with super-tiny rocks whipping through space.
As NASA gears up for more missions off our planet, there’s a lot that can go wrong. From rocket failures to leaky airlocks, you might be surprised to hear that an equal or even greater threat are bits of tiny space rock that the untrained eye might categorize as nothing more than dust.
But to NASA, these rocks are a huge source of potential destruction for spacecraft traveling through the void, like the future Mars Sample Return Mission. These specks of dust are known to scientists as micrometeoroids, and in a remote facility in New Mexico, NASA is testing new ways to protect spacecraft carrying Martian surface samples.
“NASA White Sands is a remote test facility that the agency uses for some of the more dangerous testing that is needed to support the NASA missions,” said Marcus Sandy, a manager at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico, in a video.
NASA’s Mars Mission Shields Up for Tests
The Remote Hypervelocity Test Laboratory is located within White Sands and features a 225-foot-long (69-meter) gun. The gun is powered with pressurized hydrogen gas and is able to shoot small pellets through a vacuum at speeds up to 22 feet (6.7 meters) per second (At least, that’s according to the NASA press release. A quick search suggests the projectile traveled closer to 22,000 feet per second, which makes far more sense. We reached out to the team for clarification and will update this post when we hear back)—which could get you from New York to San Francisco in about five minutes. According to NASA, engineers spent three days setting up a one-second long experiment, which aims to simulate what would happen if NASA spacecraft collided with a micrometeroid during the trek to or from Mars.
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“The goal here is to see how well those materials withstand those impacts to make sure that we don’t lose containment of our sample,” said Russ Stein, a NASA product design lead specialist for the Mars Sample Return mission.
While the pellets that emerge from the gun are moving at incredibly fast speeds, the micrometeroids that pepper space are moving about six times faster—around 50 miles (80 kilometers) per second. Figuring out which designs and materials are best for protecting precious Earth-bound Mars samples is crucial for our ability to study—and possibly even travel—to the Red Planet.
More:NASA’s DART Spacecraft Successfully Moved an Asteroid
Hospital rooms, operating rooms and medical equipment are so inadequately cleaned that any patient going into a hospital is at risk of getting a deadly superbug. That’s true even if you’re going for the happiest reason of all, to give birth.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest data show alarming increases in the most dangerous superbugs: Acinetobacter up 78%, Candida auris up 60% and notorious MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) up 13% year over year.
When you’re a patient, which room or bed you’re put in largely determines your risk of getting infected. If the previous occupant had an infection, your danger of getting infected with the same organism goes up 583% — almost sixfold, according to Columbia School of Nursing research.
Cleaning is so shoddy that the previous patient’s germs are still lurking.
Unlike the COVID virus, which spreads primarily through air, the bacterial and fungal organisms terrorizing hospitals are spread by touch and can last for weeks and months on surfaces. Masks are useless against most superbugs.
In Washington, DC, politicians and drug companies are pushing legislation, such as the Pasteur Act, that will incentivize companies to invest in new weapons against superbugs. “We’re playing with fire if we don’t pass” it soon, said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), one of the bill’s sponsors.
Sorry, but that’s a long-term strategy. Patients who need hospitalization today, or this year, can’t wait for drugs that aren’t even in the pipeline yet.
Hospitals should be laser-focused on the strategy that will produce immediate results: rigorous cleaning and disinfection. Yet that is missing from the conversation.
The Pasteur Act in Washington, D.C. will incentivize companies to invest in new weapons against superbugs.Shutterstock / Roman Chazov
Hospital mattresses are so contaminated with bodily fluids that placing a patient in a bed occupied as many as 90 days earlier by someone with C. diff (Clostridium difficile, the most common hospital infection) puts the new patient at risk, found Dr. Lucy Witt of Emory University.
Even fragile newborns are in danger. A staggering 20% of surfaces in the neonatal intensive-care unit of a Chattanooga children’s hospital were contaminated with drug-resistant MRSA, per University of Tennessee at Chattanooga researchers.
Unclean medical equipment is another culprit. Researchers traced an infection outbreak in a Galveston, Texas, hospital burn unit to a contaminated electrocardiogram wire. The last patient treated with that wire had been discharged 38 days earlier, but the superbug had stayed alive.
These are not anecdotes. Hospitals are a germy mess everywhere. A survey of 23 academic medical centers from Washington, DC, northward to Boston by epidemiologists Michael Parry and Philip Carlin found that hospital cleaners overlooked more than half the surfaces that are supposed to be cleaned. (Hint: If you have to eat lunch in a hospital room, the safest place to put your sandwich is on the toilet seat, which is almost never overlooked.)
Surfaces in the neonatal intensive-care unit of a Chattanooga children’s hospital were contaminated with drug-resistant MRSA.Shutterstock / hxdbzxy
The good news is that cleaning reduces infection rates. Researchers at Rush Medical College in Chicago reduced the spread of a superbug by two-thirds by instructing cleaning staff on which surfaces they were skipping and the importance of drenching surfaces and waiting, rather than doing a quick spray wipe.
Parry reports that at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut, improved cleaning contributed to “dramatic reductions” in infections including a 75% drop in C. diff.
Mayo Clinic’s Robert Orenstein reduced C. diff by 85% in a pilot program by wiping the surfaces around patients’ beds with a bleach wipe once a day. Why isn’t every hospital doing that?
The stakes are too high to settle for the dirty status quo. A hospital patient who contracts a superbug faces a far higher risk of death than another patient with the same medical problem who doesn’t get infected.
Two Johns Hopkins physicians, Cynthia Sears and Fyza Yusuf Shaikh, warn that despite expected “enormous strides” against cancer in the coming years, “without an equally energetic effort to beat back superbugs,” many cancer patients will still lose their lives.
Beating back the superbugs starts with hospitals cleaning up. Meanwhile, when you visit loved ones in the hospital, bring bleach wipes and clean the surfaces near their beds. You could be saving their lives.
Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is becoming more dangerous and desperate as he faces growing pressure at home over the flailing war effort in Ukraine, observers of the conflict and Moscow say.
Putin in the last week has renewed his threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and moved to annex territories from Ukraine, while arguing attacks on that territory would amount to an attack on Russia.
His government is also suspected in leaks to a pipeline under the Baltic Sea that carries fuel to Europe, although the gas flow was earlier suspended.
The new threats come after a mobilization effort of 300,000 reservists in Russia, announced in response to criticism of Putin’s war effort, received blowback across the country. Images of lines of cars seeking to get across the border into neighboring states have circulated, underscoring internal tensions over the war.
The Biden administration and U.S. allies have reacted forcefully, warning that the use of nuclear weapons would lead to serious consequences.
Outside experts describe a tinderbox of sort.
“He is dangerous, he is desperate,” said Daniel Fried, distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former U.S. ambassador to Poland.
“Because he’s in a weak position he’s doubling down on what he may consider to be his strongest remaining assets: nuclear threat and ability to use violence to achieve his aims, such as blowing up the Nordstream pipelines, if in fact Russia is responsible, which it appears they may be. He’s hoping to use unpredictability as a tactical weapon to intimidate the West.”
Putin has warned that threats to use nuclear warheads are not a bluff, and the White House on Wednesday took notice.
“We take Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons seriously,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. “But we have not seen any reason to adjust our own nuclear posture and we will not be deterred from supporting Ukraine.”
At the Pentagon, a senior defense official reiterated that the U.S. had given a warning to Moscow.
“We have clearly warned Moscow that any use of nuclear weapons would result in serious consequences. We’re not going to get into the specifics of what those specific responses would be,” the official said.
“In terms of allies, we are very much in close consultation with our allies on all matters related to Ukraine, but also certainly on all aspects of the Russian threat,” the official added. “But of course, the United States also has its own prerogative to employ a U.S. option.”
More than 100,000 Russian men are reportedly fleeing the country, while protests are taking place at dozens of locations in response to the mobilization effort. There have been instances of violent retaliation against military recruiters.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has warned Americans to immediately leave the country and that dual citizens may be conscripted to fight.
The annexation of at least four territories in Ukraine — a process initiated through contests the U.S., allies and the United Nations have rejected as “sham referenda” with staged results — is raising the threat of a greater global confrontation.
Jean-Pierre on Wednesday condemned the votes as “pre-staged and orchestrated by the Kremlin,” pointing to armed guards who hovered near voting locations as attempts to intimidate and influence voters.
The Biden administration, in its delivery of heavy artillery to Ukraine, has requested and received assurances from the Ukrainians that they would not strike within Russian territory out of a fear that such an action would escalate a bigger reaction from Russia.
But that limit is not expected to apply to Ukrainian territory forcibly occupied by Russia.
“Ukraine has the absolute right to defend itself throughout its territory, including to take back the territory that has been illegally seized one way or another by Russia,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Tuesday. “The weapons that we and many other countries are providing them have been used very effectively to do just that.”
The U.S. has not adjusted its nuclear posture in response to Putin’s latest comments, a sign both that it does not see an imminent threat and that it does not want to escalate the conflict.
Still, lawmakers like Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, are raising alarm.
“I am concerned that Vladimir Putin is increasingly desperate,” Coons said in an interview with MSNBC. “We should always take seriously his threats to use nuclear weapons. But frankly we need to push back, as President Biden has, and make clear that for him to do that would bring a swift and decisive response by NATO.”
Some analysts say that Putin is unlikely to use nuclear weapons given the near unanimous blowback he would likely receive.
“Anyone who understands the dynamics of the international community knows there’s no way that the international community can stand by, the day after, any government uses a nuclear weapon for the first time since World War II, everything would change,” said Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University.
“Vladimir Putin has to know that. He has to know that he would face conventional attacks and that he would face an attempt to maneuver him out of the Kremlin, out of office, by the international community.”
Still, experts believe Putin’s latest moves — mobilizing troops, mentioning the threat of a nuclear response and annexing territory through manipulated votes — are signs of an increasingly desperate leader who is faced with the tide of the war in Ukraine turning against him.
Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he believes Putin’s strategy at this point may be to lengthen the war into the winter, when energy costs in Europe will rise, the fighting will grow more difficult and cracks may begin to form across the continent.
Farkas echoed that Putin has long employed actions as a strategy to buy time.
“Most of his political experience ruling Russia and waging war has taught him, that if he buys a little time, he may be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he might get a stroke of luck or something else might happen. So he has benefited from this ability to buy time until something else happens, or he can cause something else to happen, or he can wait out his opponents, or who knows what,” she said.
