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COVID-19 Testing Sites - Florida

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The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity is now giving daily updates on Florida’s Reemployment Assistance program


Access the Florida Department of Health COVID Dashboard


Graphs, Charts, and Real Time Tracking of COVID-19


Data Sources


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Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza

Harvard University recently announced that it will ban students from in-person classes for the entirety of the next academic year. The decision, not based on science, is typical of the decisions made by many elites in response to the novel coronavirus sweeping the globe.

Global pandemics aren’t new, but the way many Americans are responding to this one is. Americans have been blessed to experience few pandemics in recent decades. The swine flu of 2009 was no fun, as my husband can attest, but it resulted in only 273,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the United States. The Wuhan virus hospitalizations and deaths have eclipsed those numbers many times over.

But from 1918 to 1968, pandemics, deadly flus, and horrific childhood diseases were much more common. When the Asian flu hit the United States in 1957, during the Eisenhower administration, it was just the latest contagion college students had faced in a lifetime of contagious diseases. The 1957 Asian flu killed 116,000 Americans at a time the U.S. population was 172 million, just more than half the current population. That would be the equivalent of 222,000 Americans today. By comparison, the coronavirus has killed 133,000 Americans thus far.

By the time the Asian flu came along in 1957, many college students had already battled measles, mumps, chicken pox, German measles, and polio. For many years, there were no vaccines for these things. The parents of these college students had battled diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and the Spanish flu that killed 675,000 Americans and more than 50 million across the world. In today’s terms, that would be the equivalent of more than 1.6 million Americans dying from coronavirus.

There were brief, localized school closures in 1957 but the epidemic barely formed a blip in the American consciousness. It didn’t even elicit much of a mention in major Eisenhower biographies. Even the horrific Spanish flu was not a major media event. There is no historic record of President Woodrow Wilson even publicly mentioning the flu, which killed more than 0.5 percent of the U.S. population.

The 1968 Hong Kong flu was also bad, killing about 100,000 Americans when the population was just 60 percent of what it is now.

America is in an epic battle with the Wuhan coronavirus. It’s not fun. It’s been messing with us. It behaves oddly. But Americans should want America to win. Instead, it seems like a lot of our media and other institutions are rooting for the virus and have an attitude suggesting the virus has us dead to rights. See, for example, “Georgia’s experiment in human sacrifice.”


"Churches Were Eager to Reopen," says the headline over a story in today's New York Times. "Now They Are a Major Source of Coronavirus Infections."

The not-so-subtle subtext: Reopening churches was reckless, because they are more likely than other venues to be the sites of superspreading events, regardless of the precautions they take. But the evidence presented by the Times does not support that thesis.

"More than 650 coronavirus cases have been linked to nearly 40 churches and religious events across the United States since the beginning of the pandemic," the Times says, "with many of them erupting over the last month as Americans resumed their pre-pandemic activities."

The number of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the United States is now 3.1 million, meaning the church-related cases identified by the Times account for 0.02 percent of the total. On the face of it, that does not seem like "a major source of coronavirus infections." And there are something like 385,000 churches in the U.S., so the ones tied to COVID-19 infections represent around 0.01 percent of Christian congregations.

Also note that the Times is talking about church-related infections "since the beginning of the pandemic," so its tally of 650 does not even tell us what has happened since services resumed after lockdowns were lifted, which is ostensibly the story's focus. The article says "many" of those infections happened during the last month, but it never says how many.

More to the point, the Times never says how churches compare to other settings—such as bars, restaurants, offices, factories, house parties, and Memorial Day or Independence Day gatherings—as a source of virus transmission. Even if half of the infections tallied by the Times happened recently, that would still mean other sources account for around 99.8 percent of newly confirmed cases since mid-May, when testing should have begun detecting post-lockdown infections.

ProPublica reports that "more than 24,000 coronavirus cases have been tied to meatpacking plants." As of June 30, the Marshall Project says, "at least 52,649 people in prison had tested positive" for COVID-19. Yet the Times thinks 650 cases make "churches and religious events" a "major source" of infection.

Some church services have become superspreading events, and it is not hard to see why that could happen. "It's an ideal setting for transmission," Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease expert at Emory University, tells the Times. "You have a lot of people in a closed space. And they're speaking loudly, they're singing. All those things are exactly what you don't want."

But churches, like other venues, can take precautions that reduce the risk of virus transmission. Outdoor services are less risky than indoor services. Well-ventilated spaces are less risky than poorly ventilated spaces. Services where congregants wear masks and keep a distance from each other are less risky than services where people crowd together without masks. Services where people eschew singing, or keep the volume low, are less risky than services that don't.

As President Trump welcomes Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the White House for their first face-to-face meeting, they will tout the landmark United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The updated North American trade pact, signed in January after months of deliberation, modernizes the longstanding trilateral agreement that was a central issue in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The political importance of the agreement aside, the USMCA is a win-win for American workers, businesses and energy consumers, paving the way for sustained US energy leadership and expanded economic growth. Cross-border trade with Mexico and Canada is key to strengthening the domestic energy industry, which has made the United State the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas. Today, the US counts Mexico as its number one export market for natural gas and refined products, with Canada as its top destination for crude oil.

By solidifying these critical energy partnerships, the International Trade Commission projects the USMCA could support the creation of between 176,000 and 589,000 American jobs, in addition to the 12 million US jobs and nearly $1.3 trillion in trade already sustained by our partnership with Mexico and Canada. With this record of economic development and job creation among these trading partners, it is clear why Presidents Trump and López Obrador would take a victory lap this week.

However, amidst the celebration of this historic agreement, it is important that the Trump administration also use the occasion to begin to focus on implementation and how to address troubling developments in Mexico that contradict the investment protections provided by USMCA and threaten the agreement’s economic benefits.

Several recent actions taken by the Mexican government are harmful to U.S. investors, violate commitments made by Mexico and undermine the framework of the USMCA. For example, US entities are facing discrimination as foreign investors in the permitting processes for a range of projects in Mexico, including new or rebranded gas stations, third party storage facilities, imported fuels, liquids terminals, and liquefied natural gas terminals.


Despite repeated nefarious actions that violate both American and international norms of behavior, American supply chains are reliant upon China for critical goods and materials important to U.S. national security. This is true of everything from automotive parts and electronics to pharmaceuticals and medical products.

Another supply chain that is overly dependent on China is that of critical minerals, including the “rare earth elements (REEs).” Critical minerals and REEs are used in electronic products like smart phones, computer and TV screens, and LED lights. But they are also needed to build satellites and important defense systems like aircraft and guidance systems, refine crude oil, and generate power from renewable energy sources.

According to recent figures, the United States is import reliant on 31 of the 35 critical minerals, meaning imports are greater than half of annual consumption, and we rely on China for 80 percent of rare earth elements (REEs). What is more, there are 14 critical minerals that we do not produce domestically.

President Trump has taken strong steps to safeguard American supply chains through executive action on critical minerals, including REEs. The Department of Energy (DOE) is playing a leading role in the Trump Administration’s plan, entitled “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals,” to reduce the United States’ dependency on China for critical minerals, including REEs.

Our plan is to combine innovation and a revived private sector to win the critical minerals battle against China. We will do it diversifying supply, developing substitutes, and driving recycling of critical minerals and rare earth elements.

The Department is researching ways diversify supply by identifying and extracting critical minerals and REEs from previously untapped sources, such as our vast coal reserves. We have already found recoverable coal reserves in the Appalachian and in western state basins that could produce a combined ten million metric tons of critical minerals. The catalyst for these discoveries was research done by our National Energy Technology Laboratory, which explores REE separation technologies.

At our Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a project currently under way that shows great promise uses a highly absorbent material to capture lithium – a key component in batteries – from the waste product generated by geothermal power production. This is a great example of the Department’s research approach, as we see a growing role for extracting critical minerals from unconventional resources, including mineral recovery from geothermal waste.


Overall energy consumption in the United States totaled 100 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2019, only slightly less than the record set in 2018 and the third-highest level of annual U.S. energy consumption ever. About 20% of U.S. energy consumption in 2019 came from sources other than fossil fuels. Several energy sources hit record consumption values in 2019, based on data in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) Monthly Energy Review: natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar.

Increases in nuclear and renewables consumption in 2019 resulted in the nonfossil share rising to 20% of total U.S. energy consumption. As coal, petroleum, and natural gas were developed, the nonfossil share fell from 100% in the mid-1800s to 6% in the 1960s and has since slowly increased as consumption of nuclear, hydroelectricity, wind, biofuels, and solar have grown. U.S. fossil fuel consumption peaked at 86 quadrillion Btu in 2007 and has since fallen to 80 quadrillion Btu in 2019, a 7% decline.

Petroleum has been the most-consumed energy source in the United States since surpassing coal in 1950. U.S. petroleum consumption remains lower than its peak in 2005 and most recently totaled 36.7 quadrillion Btu in 2019

U.S. natural gas consumption reached a record of 32.1 quadrillion Btu in 2019. U.S. natural gas consumption growth has largely been driven by increased use in the electric power sector, which has consumed more natural gas than any other sector in four of the past five years.

U.S. coal consumption fell by 15% in 2019, marking one of the largest annual declines for consumption of any energy source. U.S. coal consumption has fallen by more than half since its peak in 2005; much of this decline has been driven by reduced coal use in the electric power sector. In 2019, U.S. coal consumption fell to 587 million short tons, the lowest level since the 1970s.

Nuclear energy contributed a record 8.5 quadrillion Btu, or 809 million megawatthours, to U.S. energy consumption in 2019. Nuclear power plants operated at record levels—94% of their capacity—which allowed nuclear electricity generation in 2019 to surpass the 2018 level despite the retirement of two plants: Massachusetts’s Pilgrim and Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island.


U.S. operable atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity increased 0.9% during 2019, reaching a record of 19.0 million barrels per calendar day (b/cd), up 0.2 million b/cd from the previous record of 18.8 million b/cd the year before. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) annual Refinery Capacity Report, U.S. operable crude oil distillation unit (CDU) capacity has increased slightly in seven of the past eight years.

EIA measures refinery capacity in two ways: barrels per calendar day and barrels per stream day (b/sd). Calendar-day capacity is the operator’s estimate of the input that a distillation unit can process in a 24-hour period under usual operating conditions, recognizing the effects of both planned and unplanned maintenance.

Stream-day capacity reflects the maximum number of barrels of input that a distillation facility can process within a 24-hour period when running at full capacity under optimal crude oil and product slate conditions with no allowance for downtime. Stream-day capacity is typically about 6% higher than calendar-day capacity.

The number of operable refineries in the United States (excluding U.S. territories), which includes both idle and operating refineries, started 2019 at a total of 135. One refinery shut down in 2019: Continental Refining Company LLC’s 5,500 b/cd refinery in Somerset, Kentucky, which had been inactive since March 2018. However, Flint Hills Resources split out its reporting to EIA of the Corpus Christi East and West plants, bringing EIA’s calculation of the number of operable U.S. refineries back to 135.

The 335,000 b/cd Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery remained in EIA’s refinery count as of January 1, but it has not operated since shortly after a fire in June 2019 damaged part of the refinery complex; a sale of the refinery is pending.

As the United States has increased crude oil production over the past decade, the average density of U.S. crude oil has become lighter. Because U.S. refineries imported less of the crude oil they processed and replaced imports with domestically produced crude oil, the average API gravity—a measure of a crude oil’s density where higher numbers mean lower density—of crude oil inputs to refineries increased. For example, the U.S. Gulf Coast, which is home to about half of U.S. refining capacity, used imported crude oil for only 28% of its crude oil inputs to refineries during 2019, down from 69% in 2010.


SOCIAL SECURITY benefits are likely to be a big part of your retirement plan. Around 65 million Americans will receive more than $1 trillion in benefits during 2020, according to the Social Security Administration. Yet understanding exactly how this program works, as well as the best time to start taking benefits, isn’t always easy.

Here are some of the most common misconceptions surrounding Social Security:

Social Security will fully fund my retirement.
Taking benefits early is best.
Full benefits start at age 65.
Applying in person is required.
I can’t work and receive Social Security benefits.
Social Security benefits won’t be taxed.
It’s impossible to stop benefits.
Divorcees can’t receive benefits.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that religious schools are allowed to fire religion teachers for any reason they wish, a major expansion of protections for religious institutions against nondiscrimination laws.

The case, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, concerned the so-called ministerial exception, which exempts certain religious institutions from nondiscrimination laws. In a 7-2 decision with a majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held that "the independence of religious institutions in matters of 'faith and doctrine' is closely linked to independence in what the Court has termed ‘matters of church government.’"

Because of these reasons, the court found that in the interests of protecting the First Amendment, it should stay out of employment disputes. Alito wrote in his opinion that while the decision does not mean that churches and religious institutions are exempt from all secular laws, it is not the government's place to intrude upon their "autonomy with respect to internal management decisions that are essential to the institution’s central mission."

The case, a consolidation of several lawsuits, concerned whether or not Catholic parochial schools can hire or fire religion teachers at will, regardless of considerations such as age, race, or gender. The Supreme Court in 2012 provided a similar exception to churches for the employment of ministers. That case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ruled that any a church can fire any “minister” without regard to discrimination laws.

Supreme Court rules for Little Sisters of the Poor in long-running dispute over birth control mandate

Our Lady of Guadalupe focused on whether that exception could be extended to people who teach religion as well. In his opinion, Alito wrote that while Wednesday's decision was markedly similar to that in Hosanna-Tabor, he hoped it would make clear that a "minister" should not solely be regarded as someone who has that title in a church hierarchy.

"If titles were all-important, courts would have to decide which titles count and which do not, and it is hard to see how that could be done without looking behind the titles to what the positions actually entail," Alito wrote. "Moreover, attaching too much significance to titles would risk privileging religious traditions with formal organizational structures over those that are less formal."

What really mattered in the case, Alito wrote, was expressing the understanding that the "very core" of the mission of religious schools was to teach young people "to live their faith."


The national media might have “moved on” from the riots in Minneapolis, but residents have nowhere to go. Much of the Twin Cities is still in ruins. Boarded-up storefronts still display makeshift notices that read “black owned” or “minority owned” to ward off further destruction. Many locals are reluctant to speak on the record, but some are eager to do so.

“It’s been agony,” says Mohamed Ali, a native of Somalia. “I respect the public anger, but I think we carried it too far, to burn our city.” At the height of the chaos, rioters set a large fire in front of his apartment, which sits atop several streetside shops. He spray-painted desperate appeals onto plywood affixed to the storefront windows: “Don’t burn please . . . Kids live upstairs.”

“All these businesses are still boarded, and it’s over a month later,” Mr. Ali said, gesturing in every direction of his Minneapolis neighborhood. ”This was a thriving area,” he said. “Now a lot of minority businesses are burned.”

Long Her, a Laotian immigrant, has operated a clothing store in St. Paul since 1991. When he surveyed his losses after the riots, he openly wept: 550 suits, 249 pairs of pants, 227 dress shirts and 180 pairs of shoes, as well as his cash register, other electronics and damage to windows and the front door. Many of his most valuable possessions, kept in a heavy-duty safe, were stolen, along with his U.S. citizenship papers.

A month later, he hasn’t heard anything from the authorities. “They don’t have the law to protect the people,” Mr. Her says. He never had to call the police in nearly 30 years until the riots erupted in late May—and officers still have not come to investigate: “They say no one available.” His store is open, but the door is boarded up and customers are scant: “They call me,” he says, referring to his largely Hmong clientele. “They say, ‘We would come, but we’re afraid.’ ” He’s had to lay off five employees and sleeps in the store every night, on guard against another possible riot.

Flora Westbrooks owned a hair salon in North Minneapolis for 34 years. It had already been closed for several months due to Covid-19, but Ms. Westbrooks was planning to reopen on June 1. She’d already purchased sanitation supplies and prepared new protocols to comply with state and city regulations. On May 29, an arsonist burned the place down.

“Sometimes I’m like, OK, I gotta go to work,” Ms. Westbrooks says. “I gotta go do something at the shop. And then I forget—I don’t own anything anymore. Everything’s burned to the ground. I have nothing no more. Everything I worked for.” Through her business, she earned enough money to buy a home, a car and a law-school education for her son: “My salon was everything to me.”

Ms. Westbrooks’s plight attracted modest media attention in the immediate aftermath of the riots, spurring the creation of a GoFundMe page, but contributions have fallen off. She said she and a group of fellow shellshocked small-business owners met briefly with Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Gov. Tim Walz and other elected officials in a McDonald’s parking lot near the wreckage. But there has been no follow-up. “I haven’t heard anything,” she says. “You know, it’s been a month now.”

“They never told us what they was gonna do,” Ms. Westbrooks says. “What are you going to do for us? We have no job, we have no income. What are you going to do for us?” She had no insurance.

Ms. Westbrooks says she assigns at least part of the blame for what happened to negligence by government officials. The Minneapolis Police Department abandoned the neighborhood, she says. And the National Guard, whose deployment Ms. Westbrooks supported, arrived too late.

Mass-produced “Black Lives Matter” signs dot the yards of countless leafy homes across the area. Ms. Westbrooks’s next-door neighbor, a white woman, displays one in her window. Ms. Westbrooks, who is black, does not.


I'm not usually a fan of the saying "a hit dog will holler," which basically boils down to "if someone responds angrily to an accusation, they are probably guilty." Sometimes, when someone is unfairly attacked or wrongly accused, they respond to it with vitriol or other intense emotion—it's only natural.

That said, sometimes the expression is useful. If you accuse someone of having an anger-management problem and they fly into a terrifying rage, well: A hit dog will holler.

I kept thinking about this expression as I watched a sizable subset of the online progressive intelligentsia respond with intense fury, disbelief, and indignation to an open letter published online yesterday by Harper's magazine. The letter, which will also appear in the magazine's October issue, was simply a stout defense of liberal values from people primarily on the left at a time it feels like these values are under threat. It made no bones of the fact that President Donald Trump and right-wing authoritarianism in Europe are both major threats to liberal society. It simply said that in addition to these threats, it's probably time to get our own house in order. "The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted," the letter reads, in part. "While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought."

The letter was crafted with sufficient care that it attracted a large number of signatories who one might not usually associate with concerns about "cancel culture" and the like—and it also bridged certain ideological lines. Both J.K. Rowling and New York Times writer and English professor Jennifer Boylan (who is transgender and recently wrote a column critical of Rowling's views on trans issues), for example, added their names to the list, as did famous figures like Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie, and Garry Kasparov, and some less famous ones—like me.

Because the American left is basically a war zone at the moment—or online it is, at least—what happened next shouldn't surprise anyone: A group of us posted the letter and celebrated it, while another much angrier group denounced it and held it up as proof of…well, whatever it is they hate about us and want to get us fired over (this crowd likes calling the manager). Now, it shouldn't have surprised me—I have been through multiple rounds of this stuff—but I have to admit it did.


The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration acted within its authority when it expanded exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement for employers to provide insurance coverage that includes contraception -- in a victory for Little Sisters of the Poor, the Catholic group that has been at the center of the national debate over the mandate.

The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the Trump administration and the Catholic charity that cares for the elderly in two related disputes against Pennsylvania, which sued over the validity of a rule from the Trump administration that allowed religiously-affiliated groups and some for-profit companies to opt-out of providing contraception coverage to employees.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled that the Trump administration's challenged rulemaking was aboveboard, and hailed the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

"For over 150 years, the Little Sisters have engaged in faithful service and sacrifice, motivated by a religious calling to surrender all for the sake of their brother," Thomas wrote. "But for the past seven years, they -- like many other religious objectors who have participated in the litigation and rulemakings leading up to today’s decision -- have had to fight for the ability to continue in their noble work without violating their sincerely held religious beliefs."

He added: "We hold today that the Departments had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption. We further hold that the rules promulgating these exemptions are free from procedural defects."

Little Sisters of the Poor Sister Constance Veit told Shannon Bream on "Fox News @ Night" earlier this year that following the ACA mandate was "unthinkable."

"We dedicate our lives to this because we believe in the dignity of every human life at every stage of life from conception until natural death," Veit said. "So, we've devoted our lives -- by religious vows -- to caring for the elderly. And, we literally are by their bedside holding their hand as they pass on to eternal life. So, it's unthinkable for us, on the one way, to be holding the hand of the dying elderly, and on the other hand, to possibly be facilitating the taking of innocent unborn life."

The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of religious organizations in an employment discrimination case Wednesday. And last week it came down with a ruling that states could not ban religious schools from receiving money from state-funded scholarship programs that are available to non-religious private schools.

Lower court rulings had gone against the administration, with a nationwide injunction putting the exemptions on hold. But the Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday amounts to a huge win for religious conservatives who have been battling the ACA's contraceptive mandate for years.


For decades, Americans had been living in a period of increasing general safety. “Gun culture” grew somewhat foreign to us and especially to urbanites: “Why would you need a gun if there’s a police officer on every street corner?” That’s an understandable perspective, albeit a short-sighted one. When your greatest physical threat is a bad hot dog or taco from the local food truck, concerns naturally lie elsewhere.

But rural Americans, for whom the nearest police station is often 30 minutes away, have always had to rely on themselves to keep malevolence at bay. And as 911 response times crawl upward in cities, urban Americans face a change in perspective. Even notable fashion icon Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report just purchased a pistol. To which I say: welcome! The public at large is at last coming to remember the old truths that we so-called “gun nuts” never forgot. And the Second Amendment is having a moment. As reported in the New York Daily News, firearms sales have risen all year. A Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting analysis showed that, after upticks of 19% and 17% in January and February, March sales leaped by an estimated 2.5 million guns, an 85% increase over last year. A 71% jump in April was followed by an 80% increase in May. In the last three months, Americans have bought 5.5 million guns. An astonishing number? Yes, in one sense. But when you’re fearful for your family’s safety, when you witness unabashed violence permeating throughout streets, and when police are nowhere to be found, it makes sense: the quickest, most effective action you can take is to buy a gun.
George Washington and Self-Government

s George Washington’s first presidential administration, the first term of government under the United States Constitution, neared its end in 1793, the president found himself confronting a form of populism antithetical to stable politics in a republic. The situation emerged from the turbulent development of highly polarized partisan politics, along with efforts by France’s revolutionary government to interfere in American elections and in the expression of public opinion. In this context, there was an explosion in the formation of “democratic societies”—“so-called” democratic societies, Washington termed them—that sought to capitalize on the idea of popular sovereignty as an instrument to influence and shape government policy.

. . . representative government frames the only practical initiative that can make good or operationalize political authority consistent with individual liberty—that is, freedom of conscience and self-government.

This charged political atmosphere presented a challenge to the meaning of “self-government” as a practice compatible with stable politics. Washington took up that challenge in a manner that continues to define our understanding of the concept. To understand his response, however, it is important to understand the nature of the terms involved, for self-government has both a moral meaning and a formal meaning. The moral meaning defends the right (and duty) of individual self-government as the source (through consent) of all political authority. That meaning, in turn, produces the formal concession that representative government frames the only practical initiative that can make good or operationalize political authority consistent with individual liberty—that is, freedom of conscience and self-government. As a result, the term self-government comes to apply by analogy to the institutional arrangements or mechanisms designed to implement these moral conditions.

However, there remains to be explored the question of how far the institutions of self-government operate on the basis of the opinions of the citizens—and thus remain consistent with their self-governing intentions. Two options are immediately apparent (at least in the conditions of the late 18th century): either the expression of the opinions of citizens by means of the regular election of representatives or the ephemeral and irregular expression of public opinion by means of ad hoc, informal and spontaneous associations.

When Washington confronted the “so-called democratic societies,” he was articulating the view that the only legitimate expression of the public voice consistent with the rights and duties of self-government is through the formal activity of the people’s chosen representatives. In other words, public opinion is what the people’s representatives say it is. He asked, in a different context: “For Heaven’s sake who are Congress? Are they not the Creatures of the People, amenable to them for their Conduct, and dependent from day to day on their breath? Where then can be the danger of giving them such Powers as are adequate . . . to [what] concerns the Union at large”? The most authoritative response to this view was James Madison’s argument in his essay on “Public Opinion,” which held that the literal authority of public opinion was always entitled to prevail, however collected and expressed, and thus specifically as a means of intervenient or ad hoc direction between elections. These were two very different understandings about the meaning of the public expression of the popular will.

The significance of Madison’s position has often been elided by interpretation of the initiatives of the Republican Party formed to challenge Washington’s presumptive political party, the Federalists, as essentially aimed at contesting elections rather than at directing the formation of public policy. In fact, however, the principal defense of the activity of the Republican Party lay not in the organizational imperative of winning a pending election but in the programmatic imperative of shaping public policy under the trope, “vox populi; vox dei”—the voice of the people is the voice of God. Madison’s far more famous argument against “majority faction” does not contradict his position in “Public Opinion,” because Madison was persuaded that a properly constructed society could both give voice to majority rule and rule out the formation of unjust majorities. He was no crude majoritarian.

Representatives must deliberate and act, and the public can evaluate their judgments and choices and hold them accountable at the appropriate time.

Washington was less sanguine than Madison about the possibility of erecting stable political authority on the foundation of fluctuating public sentiment. Accordingly, his conduct of the government was based upon constant reaffirmation of the authority conveyed to representatives—as in his forceful response to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 and an express argument on behalf of the rule of law, rather than fluctuating opinion—brought together with complete confidence in the ability of the people retrospectively to evaluate the performances of their representatives. Representatives must deliberate and act, and the public can evaluate their judgments and choices and hold them accountable at the appropriate time.

Washington’s view required that two things be accomplished: first, he needed to adopt and defend clearly stated policies (while deferring to the deliberation of the legislature), and, second, he needed to anticipate the faithful fulfillment of the public’s wishes, even in cases that seemed to run counter to sentiment (such as the Jay Treaty’s abandonment of the claims of slaveholders).

The first objective Washington accomplished in a masterful manner by means of his approach to managing his Cabinet—requiring of diverse officers carefully deliberated and explicit enunciation of grounds for decisions, and then making the decisions based upon his judgment of what was fitting. This was manifested over a series of contested policy crises throughout his administration (public debt, national bank, excise taxes, Proclamation of Neutrality, the Jay Treaty, etc.). The second objective was pursued through deliberate addresses to the Congress and the public, in which Washington explicitly justified his conduct, not by claims of superior wisdom but by means of a willingness to submit the test of his judgment to the subsequent evaluation of the people, upon the presumption of good intent on his part.

[Washington] frequently emphasized the establishment of a “national character,” through which the people habituate themselves to acting in a certain manner.

Washington’s “Farewell Address” of 1796 takes up this task magnificently. However, it is important to remember that throughout his career he emphasized this posture as essential to the establishment of self-government. He frequently emphasized the establishment of a “national character,” through which the people habituate themselves to acting in a certain manner. He declined ever to claim authority for himself by right, deferring to civil authority when in military command (even when that authority was feckless); he retired from authority in a timely and deferential manner, disavowing reliance upon “influence” in responding to critical urgencies (such as Shays’ Rebellion), and arguing strenuously against the practice of “instructing” representatives how to vote, a practice that abolishes true political deliberation. All these precepts of just statesmanship coalesce in a powerful exposition in the “Farewell Address,” which rehearses the highlights of Washington’s career and forms his parting admonitions on the evidence of his consistent pursuit of these goals.


the Pacific Ocean covers almost one-third of the Earth's surface, yet centuries ago, Polynesian navigators were skilled enough to find and populate most of the habitable islands scattered between Oceana and the Americas. Now a new genetic analysis is revealing more about their incredible journeys—and the people they met along the way.

A provocative new study argues Polynesians and Native Americans made contact some 800 years ago. That date would place their first meeting before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas and before the settlement of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), which has been suggested as the site of such an initial encounter.

Researchers, published in Nature, sampled genes of modern peoples living across the Pacific and along the South American coast and the results suggest that voyages between eastern Polynesia and the Americas happened around the year 1200, resulting in a mixture of those populations in the remote South Marquesas archipelago. It remains a mystery whether Polynesians, Native Americans, or both peoples undertook the long journeys that would have led them together. The findings could mean that South Americans, hailing from what’s now coastal Ecuador or Columbia, ventured to East Polynesia. Alternatively, Polynesians could have arrived in the Marquesas alone having already mixed with those South American people—but only if they’d first sailed to the American continent to meet them.

Alexander Ioannidis, who studies genomics and population genetics at Stanford University, co-authored the new study in Nature. “The genes show that the Native Americans who contributed came from the coastal regions of Ecuador and Columbia,” he says. “What they can’t show, and we don’t know, is where exactly it first took place—on a Polynesian island or the coast of the Americas.”

Legendary voyagers

Launching one of history’s great eras of exploration, Polynesians journeyed by canoe across the vast Pacific Ocean. During several centuries of voyaging to the east they found and settled the tiny islands scattered across 16 million square miles from New Zealand to Hawaii, reaching the most distant, like Easter Island (Rapa Nui) and the Marquesas, by perhaps 1200 A.D., They left no written history to chronicle these voyages, but scientists have retraced the trips using various lines of evidence. Striking similarities in languages exist across widely separated island groups, for example, and the remains of structures and stones offer clues to who erected them. Even the spread of foodstuffs like the sweet potato—of American origin but found across the Pacific and nowhere else—could offer evidence of the skills and nerve by which people eventually populated the Pacific (though some scientists suggest that the sweet potato was dispersed naturally.)


The smell of the city is strong and foul as you make your way down Trajan’s Market. The narrow streets are hot and overcrowded with soldiers supervising, civilians running errands, and the aristocracy taking a stroll in their expensive togas. All around you peddlers and customers are squabbling and negotiating prices. Amidst all of the commotion, you can still hear the roars from the Colosseum as another gladiator meets their violent end. Welcome to Ancient Rome. While most people have a basic understanding of Ancient Rome, take a deeper look into the culture that’s credited with shaping the Western World..

Gladiator Fighting Wasn’t The Predominant Source Of Entertainment

When most people think of Roman entertainment, it usually involves gladiators in the Colosseum fighting to the death for the pleasure of the Roman public. While gladiator fighting was a beloved sport by the Romans, it turns out that it wasn’t the most popular. The sheer brutality and the size of such games was astounding, but not admired by all.

Chariot racing was the most popular sport of its time. The Colosseum, where the gladiator fights occurred, could seat around 50,000 people. Yet, the Circus Maximus, which was for chariot racing, could seat an audience of up to 250,000.

If there's one consistent message coming from activists and politicians pushing the Green New Deal and massive new subsidies for renewable energy it's that if we don't take radical action now, life on Earth as we know it will soon be irreversibly destroyed. Greta Thunberg, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden all have claimed that we have less than a dozen years left in which to save the planet.

Such fear-mongering is flat-out misleading and the findings of the scientists studying global warming don't support such alarmist claims, according to the new book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Michael Shellenberger argues that deforestation and deaths from extreme weather are actually declining, and concerns about environmental damage from plastics are fundamentally misplaced.

Shellenberger, who began his career as an advocate for more government spending on wind and solar, was eventually disillusioned after witnessing the failure of subsidies to fix the inherent drawbacks of renewables. Named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine in 2008, he is an "expert reviewer" for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose 2018 report has been widely misinterpreted as saying we had just 12 years to stave off catastrophic climate change. Shellenberger also appeared in the 2013 documentary Pandora's Promise, which was shown at Sundance, and featured several prominent environmentalists who have come around to see the virtues of nuclear power.

Nick Gillespie interviewed Shellenberger about Apocalypse Never and why he believes that environmentalism has become a replacement for religion in an increasingly secular world.

'Jurassic Park' got nearly everything wrong about Dilophosaurus, new study says
https://www.foxnews.com/science/jurassic-park-nearly-everything-wrong-dilophosaurus

It's a discovery, 65 million years in the making.

Even though Dilophosaurus was a beautiful, but deadly addition to Jurassic Park, the hit movie of the same name was wildly incorrect in how it portrayed the deadly dinosaur, a new study suggests.

The research, published in the Journal of Paleontology, notes Dilophosaurus was significantly larger than it was portrayed in the movie, reaching up to 20 feet in length and had more in common with modern-day birds than previously believed.

“It’s pretty much the best, worst-known dinosaur,” said the study's lead author, Adam Marsh, in a statement. “Until this study, nobody knew what Dilophosaurus looked like or how it evolved.”

At nearly 20 feet in length and weighing up to three-quarters of a ton, it was approximately half the size of a full-grown, adult Tyrannosaurus rex. During their teenage years, T. rex's had massive growth spurts, Fox News previously reported.

Early descriptions of the dinosaur depicted it as having a fragile crest, weak jaws and spitting venom to paralyze its prey, which was seen in the movie. However, Marsh and his team found that in addition to its large size, it had a strong jaw, with powerful muscles and bones that were marked with air pockets to reinforce its skeleton.

“They’re kind of like bubble wrap – the bone is protected and strengthened,” Marsh added.

The air pockets, or air sacs, are not only found in birds, but have been discovered in some larger dinosaurs as well, aiding in making their bones lighter, while allowing birds to take flight.

Scientists have found evidence that the Dilophosaurus’ skull served as scaffolding for powerful jaw muscles, shattering the image of the dinosaur as more fragile and svelte that has been promoted in scientific literature and popular culture. Credit: Skull reconstruction by Brian Engh, commissioned by The Saint George Dinosaur Discovery Site.
Scientists have found evidence that the Dilophosaurus’ skull served as scaffolding for powerful jaw muscles, shattering the image of the dinosaur as more fragile and svelte that has been promoted in scientific literature and popular culture. Credit: Skull reconstruction by Brian Engh, commissioned by The Saint George Dinosaur Discovery Site.

The first Dilophosaurus fossils were found in 1940, according to National Geographic, which Marsh looked at, along with a couple of other fossils, to paint a more accurate picture of the dinosaur.

“Dilophosaurus is clearly built for being a big macropredator,” Marsh told the news outlet. “It’s a large-bodied animal that was built for eating other animals.”

Marsh eventually used an algorithm to compare the other fossils with the first fossil to confirm they were Dilophosaurus. The algorithm also pointed out there is a "significant evolutionary gap" between Dilophosaurus and its closest relatives, meaning there are probably other relatives that have not yet been discovered.

Dilophosaurus' famous headcrest is seen in "Jurassic Park," which grossed over $1 billion at the box office and spawned several sequels. The headcrest is one aspect the movie got right, Marsh noted, adding it may have been used in a mating ritual to woo mates.


There's something unusual lurking out in the depths of space: Astronomers have discovered four faint objects that at radio wavelengths are highly circular and brighter along their edges. And they're unlike any class of astronomical object ever seen before.

The objects, which look like distant ring-shaped islands, have been dubbed odd radio circles, or ORCs, for their shape and overall peculiarity. Astronomers don't yet know exactly how far away these ORCs are, but they could be linked to distant galaxies. All objects were found away from the Milky Way's galactic plane and are around 1 arcminute across (for comparison, the moon's diameter is 31 arcminutes).

In a new paper detailing the discovery, the astronomers offer several possible explanations, but none quite fits the bill for all four new ORCs. After ruling out objects like supernovas, star-forming galaxies, planetary nebulas and gravitational lensing — a magnifying effect due to the bending of space-time by nearby massive objects — among other things, the astronomers speculate that the objects could be shockwaves leftover from some extragalactic event or possibly activity from a radio galaxy.

Langley Roby, a 38-year-old teacher, counts traveling to Walt Disney World in her mother’s womb as her first visit to the theme park in Orlando, Fla. Her mother was six months pregnant, but that didn’t stop her from riding Space Mountain, says Ms. Roby.

Ms. Roby’s next visit to Disney World may end up being even more unusual. Ms. Roby, from Owensboro, Ky., plans to arrive at the park early Thursday morning to be among the first guests welcomed back into the Magic Kingdom since the coronavirus pandemic closed its gates in March.

“It’s never going to be cleaner than it is that day,” said Ms. Roby, who said she has visited Disney World about 40 times. “I feel like it will honestly be a safer environment than just going to the grocery [store] or any place local because Disney has so much on the line.”

Walt Disney Co. is counting on die-hard fans like Ms. Roby to weigh the risks of traveling amid a pandemic and still decide to head to the park. In the most crucial test yet of its ability to resume operations while keeping consumers safe, Disney will begin opening its flagship park in phases starting on Thursday and continuing through July 15. Other theme parks have begun welcoming visitors, but Disney World carries a symbolic pull, with its closures and reopening plans serving as something of a barometer for the economic resuscitation at large.

The timing is particularly fraught, though, as the number of coronavirus cases in Florida reaches record levels. Disney is introducing safety measures that will inevitably disrupt the escapist environment of the Happiest Place on Earth.

Dozens of Florida hospitals have recently reported a surge in admissions. Gov. Ron DeSantis has nonetheless encouraged Disney to stay on course with the reopening plan it first announced in late May.

“We have to have society function,” he said at a news conference this week.

The park is open to annual passholders like Ms. Roby on Thursday and Friday, with the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom areas opening to the general public on July 11, followed by Epcot and Disney’s Hollywood Studios four days later.

Workers at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, Calif., vocally opposed Disney’s plans to reopen there, culminating in a protest outside the park and a consortium of unions pleading with California Gov. Gavin Newsom to ask Disney to delay. The company ultimately did, saying it couldn’t reopen on schedule after state officials delayed the release of theme-park safety guidelines.

Far less opposition has emerged among the Walt Disney World workforce, though the company has faced pushback over plans to have workers self-screen for coronavirus symptoms.

The Actors’ Equity Association, which represents some performers at the park, has called on Disney to postpone the opening as cases in Florida rise. The performers’ jobs make them particularly vulnerable to contagion, the association said.

“It is deeply disturbing that while coronavirus cases in Florida surge, Disney is refusing to provide regular testing to one of the few groups of workers in the park who by the very nature of their jobs, cannot use personal protective equipment,” said Mary McColl, executive director of Actors’ Equity Association, in a statement.

A Disney spokeswoman said Actors’ Equity members won’t be called back to work during the phased reopening. “We regret that their union hasn’t accepted the safety protocols.”

Disney is significantly reducing its capacity at the park, the spokeswoman said. But any revenue that could help Disney break even is welcome after months of closures that have cost the company billions of dollars in revenue. A popular summer day at Walt Disney World can attract more than 200,000 guests and generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue, according to a former executive at the parks. Disney World will have been closed for 118 days when it reopens to the broad public on Saturday.

Essentially all parks employees have been furloughed since April, and some have had such difficulty navigating Florida’s unemployment system that they have yet to receive a benefit check, workers say. Others, however, have taken home two or three times their regular income thanks to the extra $600 a week added by the federal stimulus package.

Disney’s parks in Shanghai and Hong Kong have already reopened, allowing revenue to start flowing back to what had been the company’s fastest-growing division. In May, Disney said the coronavirus had taken about $1 billion in revenue from its parks division in the January-to-March quarter, when a majority of parks were closed for only a few weeks. The scope of the problem is expected to prove even bigger in August. The company will disclose earnings from the following quarter, when the domestic parks were shut down and the international locations only open for a limited time.

Many of the most iconic aspects of a trip to Disney World have been reimagined for the Covid era. Carousel riders and monorail travelers will complete their journeys at a distance from others. Characters such as Cinderella or Gaston wave from balconies—or trot through the park on horses—rather than walk the grounds, pose for photos with guests and even hug them.

If workers see customers flouting the mandatory-mask rule, they are to approach them with the same demeanor as when they see someone smoking in a non-designated space, said Eric Clinton, president of an Orlando union local whose members operate rides and perform custodial work at the park. From there, things can escalate to summoning security or making the guest leave the park.

Ms. Roby is packing extra masks for her group, including her mother and sister. But she also has priorities beyond safety.

“We want to try and ride every single ride at Magic Kingdom,” she said. “These are going to be the lowest lines we’ve ever seen.”


Oh, no! With the planet still unlocking and some parts still tightly buttoned down, and with the world economy plummeting, “China Researchers Discover New Swine Flu with ‘Pandemic Potential,’ ” blares CNN. “Scientists Say New Strain of Swine Flu Virus Is Spreading to Humans in China,” shrieks the New York Times. Say it ain’t so!

Okay, it ain’t so. Not in any meaningful way. The media should go back to “murder hornets,” or find another asteroid with a chance in a zillion of hitting Earth.

The virus in question, G4 EA H1N1, is genetically descended from the H1N1 swine flu that caused what the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in 2009. G4 shows “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus,” said a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

But … there are a few little caveats.

First, while the Times says the virus “is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China,” that means pigs-to-humans and that’s been going on for so time. “This is not a ‘new’ new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016,” tweeted Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington. “There’s no evidence that G4 is circulating in humans, despite five years of extensive exposure. That’s the key context to keep in mind.”

Okay, but it’s a swine flu !!! Um, yes, pigs appear to play a role in most strains of flu, along with birds. Specifically, the massive swine farms of China are “mixing bowls” to produce new flu strains.

Also, the Times quoted a British scientist to tie it to you-know-what. “It may be that with further change in the virus it could become more aggressive in people much as SARS-CoV-2 has done,” he told them in an email. (They probably had to email 100 people to get that scary quote.) Except there’s no evidence of any such change in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Early on two strains were identified, one of which happens to be more aggressive in humans.

Selective Media Reporting Further Fuels Our Racial Divide
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/08/selective_media_reporting_further_fuels_our_racial_divide_143649.html

On Saturday, a man drove his car onto a Seattle freeway that had been closed by a Black Lives Matter crowd. The driver killed one person and seriously injured another after going the wrong way up a ramp and then around a barricade. Reports noted that police “don’t believe impairment was a factor.” Over the weekend, news outlets replayed the brutal hit, but there’s one thing you won’t learn from their coverage: The driver was black and his victims were white.

NPR linked this attack to other car-ramming incidents by “right-wing extremists targeting Black Lives Matter protesters.” They quote a researcher about how these right-wingers were “trying to intimidate the most recent wave of BLM protesters, to stop their movement.”

The driver was a Seattle local named Dawit Kelete. But you’ll find scant mention of the driver’s ethnicity in mainstream media coverage. You might have more easily learned that Kelete was black by going to the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. The American national media also doesn’t note that Kelete’s two victims were white. You can find that out over at the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

Among the few U.S. outlets to mention the race of the driver is Heavy.com. The rest of the news media seemingly would rather just have people assume that a white driver attacked two black protesters. Acknowledging the driver’s and victims’ ethnicity wouldn’t advance their narrative of oppression, so it apparently isn’t newsworthy.

One case doesn’t prove a pattern. It could just be that while the American media knows almost everything about this killer, including his name, age, and where he lives, they couldn’t find information on his race. Possibly the foreign news outlets were just lucky to discover that information.

Of course, the media outlets might honestly not view race as essential to the story. But their selective reporting of it shows that they think race is important when it involves certain races. The problem is that it gives readers a biased perspective, inflaming prejudice and creating stereotypes.

Research conducted by the Crime Prevention Research Center, of which I am president, on all police shootings from 2013 to 2015 found that while local news coverage will often mention the race of the officer and the suspect, the national coverage is much more selective. While the evidence indicates that black officers are no less likely to shoot suspects than white officers, local news coverage of black officers shooting black suspects gets picked up by the national news in just 9% of cases. By contrast, 38% of the cases in which local news reported on a white officer shooting a black suspect get national coverage.


New study links virtue signaling to "Dark Triad" traits. Being accused of "virtue signaling" might sound nice to the uninitiated, but spend much time on social media and you know that it's actually an accusation of insincerity. Virtue signalers are, essentially, phonies and showoffs—folks who adopt opinions and postures solely to garner praise and sympathy or whose good deeds are tainted by their need for everyone to see just how good they are. Combined with a culture that says only victimhood confers a right to comment on certain issues, it's a big factor in online pile-ons and one that certainly contributes to social media platforms being such a bummer sometimes.

So: Here's some fun new research looking at "the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue," published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The paper—from University of British Columbia researchers Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek, and Karl Aquino—details multiple studies the authors conducted on the subject.

Their conclusion? Psychopathic, manipulative, and narcissistic people are more frequent signalers of "virtuous victimhood."

The so-called "dark triad" personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—lead to characteristics like "self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity, and tendency to take advantage of others," the paper explains.

And "treated as a composite, the Dark Triad traits were significant predictors of virtuous victim signaling."

This held true "even when controlling for factors that may make people vulnerable to being mistreated or disadvantaged in society (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics) as well as the importance they place on being a virtuous individual as part of their self-concept," the researchers note.

They point out that virtue signaling is defined as "the conspicuous expression of moral values, done primarily with the intent of enhancing one's standing within a social group."

Meanwhile, victim signaling "may be used as a social influence tactic that can motivate recipients of the signal to voluntarily transfer resources to the signaler," they explain. More from the paper's theoretical background section:

An emerging literature on competitive victimhood documents the prevalence of victim signaling by various social groups and provides evidence for its functionality as a resource extraction strategy. For instance, victim signaling justifies victim groups seeking retribution against alleged oppressors. Retribution often takes the form of demanding compensation through some kind of resource transfer from nonvictims to the alleged victim. Claiming victim status can also facilitate resource transfer by conferring moral immunity upon the claimant. Moral immunity shields the alleged victim from criticism about the means they might use to satisfy their demands. In other words, victim status can morally justify the use of deceit, intimidation, or even violence by alleged victims to achieve their goals. Relatedly, claiming victim status can lead observers to hold a person less blameworthy, excusing transgressions, such as the appropriation of private property or the infliction of pain upon others, that might otherwise bring condemnation or rebuke. Finally, claiming victim status elevates the claimant's psychological standing, defined as a subjective sense of legitimacy or entitlement to speak up. A person who has the psychological standing can reject or ignore any objections by nonvictims to the unreasonableness of their demands. In contrast to victim signalers, people who do not publicly disclose their misfortune or disadvantage are less likely to reap the benefits of retributive compensation, moral immunity, deflection of blame, or psychological standing and would therefore find it difficult to initiate resource transfers.

The effectiveness of victim signaling as a resource transfer strategy follows the basic principles of signaling theory. Signaling theory posits that the transmission of information from one individual (the sender) to another (the receiver) can influence the behavior of the receiver. Signals can refer to any physical or behavioral trait of the sender, and are used by the senders to alter the behaviors of others to their own advantage.

Their results suggest that:

"a perceived victim signal can lead others to transfer resources to a victim, but that the motivation to do so is amplified when the victim signal is paired with a virtue signal" and "people high in the Dark Triad traits emit the dual signal more frequently."
"a positive correlation between the Dark Triad scores and the frequency of emitting the virtuous victim signal."
"evidence of how these signals … can predict a person's willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors …. frequent virtuous victim signalers are more willing to purchase counterfeit products and judge counterfeiters as less immoral compared with less frequent signalers, a pattern that was also observed when using participants' Dark Triad scores instead of their signaling score," and "frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to cheat and lie to earn extra monetary reward in [a] coin flip game."
"that a dimension referred to as amoral manipulation was the most reliable predictor of virtuous victim signaling."
"frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to make inflated claims to justify receiving restitution for an alleged and ambiguous norm violation in an organizational context."
The authors stress that they "do not refute the claim that there are individuals who emit the virtuous victim signal because they experience legitimate harm and also conduct themselves in decent and laudable ways."