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  • Britney Spears ends protracted battle with her father over conservatorship legal fees

    Britney Spears ends protracted battle with her father over conservatorship legal fees

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    Britney Spears and her father Jamie Spears, her former conservator, have settled their protracted legal dispute over the payment of his legal fees and how he managed her finances during her 13-year conservatorship.

    The two parties settled for an undisclosed amount Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court after first filing about the issue in December 2021. The settlement helps the 42-year-old pop superstar avoid continued litigation, including a hearing that had been set for May, over her father’s alleged financial misconduct during the controversial legal arrangement.

    The infamous court-ordered guardianship, which was implemented in 2008 after Spears exhibited a spate of erratic behavior, dictated the superstar’s personal and professional life, and controlled her money, for more than a decade. Jamie Spears, 71, served as the conservator of her person and estate for years before resigning as her personal conservator in 2019 over “personal health reasons.” He was removed as a conservator of her estate in September 2021, and the legal arrangement was terminated altogether more than two years ago, but the fallout over accounting issues and legal fees carried on in court until last week.

    “Although the conservatorship was terminated in November 2021, her wish for freedom is now truly complete,” the singer’s attorney, Mathew S. Rosengart, said Monday in a statement to The Times. “As she desired, her freedom now includes that she will no longer need to attend or be involved with court or entangled with legal proceedings in this matter.”

    Rosengart, who changed the trajectory of the Grammy winner’s situation after he was hired as her personal attorney in July 2021, said it has been an “honor and privilege to represent, protect, and defend Britney Spears in that matter.”

    Jamie Spears’ attorney, Alex Weingarten, also confirmed that a settlement had been reached to resolve all outstanding disputes but would not comment on the specifics because the settlement is confidential.

    “At the insistence of counsel for Ms. Spears, the settlement is confidential and I cannot discuss it,” Weingarten said Monday in an email to The Times. “Jamie has nothing to hide and would be happy to disclose everything about every aspect of the conservatorship so that the public knows the actual truth. Jamie loves his daughter very much and has always done everything he can to protect her.”

    Last week, Weingarten told People that Jamie Spears is also “thrilled that this is all behind him,” adding that it is “unfortunate that some irresponsible people in Britney’s life chose to drag this on for as long as it has.”

    Jamie Spears, who had sought court approval for more than $2 million in payments to multiple law firms before officially relinquishing control of his daughter’s finances, also sought fees to be paid to his own attorneys. However, Rosengart objected to the fees, arguing that Britney Spears should not have to pay her father’s legal bills because he had paid himself millions as her conservator, improperly surveilled her and engaged in financial misconduct during his tenure, the New York Times reported.

    Jamie Spears has denied any wrongdoing.

    The “… Baby One More Time” and “Toxic” singer appeared to address the latest legal development on Instagram in a since-deleted post that blasted her parents.

    “My family hurt me !!! There has been no justice and probably never will be !!!” she wrote, according to a screenshot of the Sunday post published by TMZ.

    “The way I was brought up I was always taught the formative of right and wrong but the very two people who brought me up with that method hurt me !!! I am so lucky to be here !!!,” she added.

    Spears, who has long contended that she’s afraid of her father, said she hasn’t told her parents her thoughts face to face. The mother of two also said she misses her home in Louisiana and wishes she could visit but “they took everything.”

    Meanwhile, citing sources with “direct knowledge,” TMZ reported Monday that Spears is in “serious danger” on both the mental and financial fronts, faring far worse than she had been when she was under the control of the conservatorship.

    Rosengart and Weingarten declined to comment on the allegations.

    After the conservatorship ended, the “Mickey Mouse Club” alum wrested back control of her life and narrative and has basked in her newfound freedom, including making moves that have seemingly led to new revenue streams.

    In 2022, the former Las Vegas headliner landed a $15-million book deal that resulted in the publication of her bombshell memoir “The Woman in Me” last fall. The revelatory account — chronicling her early career, romances with Justin Timberlake and Kevin Federline and the conservatorship — was released to much fanfare and impressive sales. It sold more than 1.1 million copies in the United States its first week. In January, Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, announced that the book had sold more than 2 million copies in the U.S. alone across multiple formats. The audiobook, recited by Oscar winner Michelle Williams, became the fastest selling in the company’s history.

    Hollywood producers, including Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Reese Witherspoon, have reportedly also been looking to adapt the book for the big screen.

    Although Spears has largely retreated from her live-performance career, she has been flaunting her freedom and lifestyle on Instagram, posting photos from the various destinations she has traveled to via private jet. She is also presumably enjoying the royalties from her 2022 collaboration with Elton John on “Hold Me Closer,” a reimagining of his 1970s classic “Tiny Dancer.”

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    Nardine Saad

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  • The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

    The Brutal Things Republican Voters Say About Mike Pence

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    Mike Pence is making little secret of his presidential ambitions. He’s written his book, he’s assembling his team, he’s mastered the art of the coy non-denial when somebody asks (in between trips to Iowa) if he’s running. In early Republican-primary polls, he hovers between 6 and 7 percent—not top-tier numbers, but respectable enough. He seems to think he has at least an outside shot at winning the Republican nomination.

    And yet, ask a Republican voter about the former vice president, and you’re likely to hear some of the most withering commentary you’ve ever encountered about a politician.

    In recent weeks, I was invited to sit in on a series of focus groups conducted over Zoom. Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.

    I’ve been covering Pence’s strange Trump-era arc since 2017, when I first profiled him for The Atlantic. By some accounts, he’s wanted to be president since his college-fraternity days. I’ve always been skeptical of his chances, but now that he finally seems ready to run, I wanted to understand the appeal of his prospective candidacy. My goal was to see if I could find at least one Pence supporter.

    From the January/February 2018 issue: God’s plan for Mike Pence

    Instead, these were some of the quotes I jotted down.

    “I don’t care for him … He’s just middle-of-the-road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I wouldn’t vote for him.”

    “He has alienated every Republican and Democrat … It’s over. It’s retirement time.”

    “He’s only gonna get the vote from his family, and I’m not even sure if they like him.”

    “He just needs to go away.”

    It went on and on like that across four different focus groups. Of the 34 Republicans who participated, I only heard four people say they’d consider Pence for president—and two of them immediately started talking themselves out of it after indicating interest.

    Some of the reasons for Pence’s lack of support were intuitive. Hard-core Trump fans said they were alienated by Pence’s refusal to block the certification of the 2020 electoral votes, as the president was demanding. This break with Trump famously prompted chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” to echo through the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

    Although the sentiment expressed in the focus groups wasn’t quite so violent, the anger was still present. During one session, three people—all of whom had reported “very favorable” views of Trump—took turns trashing Pence for what they saw as his weakness.

    “I’m so mad at Pence that I would never vote for him,” said one man named Matt. “He would be a horrible president … I just don’t think he has the leadership qualities to be president.” (I agreed to quote the participants only by their first name.)

    “That’s exactly it,” a woman named Christine said, nodding eagerly. “He didn’t have the leadership qualities to do what everyone wanted him to do on January 6. He just doesn’t have that spine.”

    A third participant, Nicholas, chimed in: “He just chose to go along with all the other RINOs and Democrats, not to upset the applecart.”

    Meanwhile, less MAGA-inclined Republicans thought Pence was too Trumpy.

    “The only thing I liked about him was that he actually did stand up to Donald Trump,” a woman named Barbara said. “He’s too a part of Trump. I don’t think Trump has a chance, and I don’t think anybody in that inner circle has a chance either.”

    “I think he put a stain on himself for any normal Republican when he joined the Trump administration,” said another participant, Justin. “And then he put a stain on himself with any Trump Republican on January 6. So I don’t think he has a constituency anywhere. I don’t know if anyone would vote for him.”

    Read: Republicans’ 2024 magical thinking

    Longwell told me this is how Pence is talked about in every focus group she holds. What to make of that 6 to 7 percent he gets in the primary polls? “I imagine there’s a cohort of GOP voters who are not particularly engaged who don’t want Trump again, and Pence is the only other name they really know,” she speculated. That, or “they’re all from Indiana,” the state where Pence served as governor. A second Republican pollster, who requested anonymity to offer his candid view, told me, “Seven percent is a weak showing for the immediate former VP.”

    Devin O’Malley, an adviser to Pence, responded to a request for comment in an email: “Mike Pence has spent the last two years traveling to more than 30 states, campaigning for dozens of candidates, and listening to potential voters. Those interactions have been incredibly positive and encouraging, and we place more value in those experiences than of a focus group conducted by disgruntled former Republicans like Sarah Longwell and paid for by some shadow organization that The Atlantic won’t disclose.” (Longwell told me the costs for the focus groups are split between The Bulwark and the Republican Accountability Project, two anti-Trump organizations with which she is affiliated.)

    What I found most fascinating about the voters’ digs at Pence was that they were almost always preceded by passing praise of his personal character: He was a “top-of-the-line guy,” a “nice man,” a “super kind, honest, decent” person. Not only did these perceived qualities fail to make him an appealing candidate, but they were also often held against him—treated as evidence that he lacked a certain presidential mettle.

    “I don’t like how Trump was just in your face with everything, but Pence is almost too far in the other direction,” one participant named Judith said.

    Perhaps these voters were identifying a simple lack of charisma. But their casual dismissal of Pence’s wholesome, God-fearing, family-man persona is emblematic of a sea change in conservative politics—and a massive miscalculation by Pence himself.

    When Pence was added to the ticket in 2016, his chief function was to vouch for Trump with mainstream Republicans, especially conservative Christian voters. Pence’s reputation as a devout evangelical gave him a certain moral credibility when he defended Trump amid scandal and outrage. He performed this task exceptionally well. Those adoring eyes, those fawning tributes, that slightly weird fixation on the breadth of his boss’s shoulders—nobody was better at playing the loyalist. And for a certain kind of voter, Pence’s loyalty provided assurance that Trump was worthy of continued support.

    Pence had his own motives, as I reported in my profile. All of this vouching for Trump was supposed to buy Pence goodwill with the base and set him up for a future presidential run. For many in Pence’s camp, the project took on a religious dimension. “If you’re Mike Pence, and you believe what he believes, you know God had a plan,” Ralph Reed, an evangelical power broker, told me back then.

    But in creating a permission structure for voters to excuse Trump’s defective character and flouting of religious values, Pence was unwittingly making himself irrelevant. In effect, he spent four years convincing conservative Christian voters that the very thing he had to offer them didn’t matter.

    In 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” By 2020, that number had risen to 68 percent.

    Peter Wehner: The moral desolation of the GOP

    Pence won the argument. Now he’s reaping the whirlwind.

    In one of the focus groups, a devout Christian named Angie was asked how much she factored in moral rectitude when assessing a presidential candidate. “I try to use my faith to choose someone by character, but it hasn’t always been possible,” she said. Sometimes she had to vote for a candidate who shared her politics but didn’t live her values.

    “Who comes to mind?” the moderator asked.

    “I think Trump falls into that category,” Angie conceded. “But quite honestly, the vast majority of others do as well.” She paused. “I would say Pence actually doesn’t fall into that category. I would say his character probably aligns with biblical values fairly well.”

    But Angie remained uninterested in seeing Pence in the Oval Office. If he had a record to run on, she wasn’t aware of it.

    “Anything he did got overshadowed by all the drama of these last four years,” she said, hastening to add, “Seems like a perfectly nice man.”

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    McKay Coppins

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  • I Bought a CO2 Monitor and It Broke Me

    I Bought a CO2 Monitor and It Broke Me

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    A few weeks ago, a three-inch square of plastic and metal began, slowly and steadily, to upend my life.

    The culprit was my new portable carbon-dioxide monitor, a device that had been sitting in my Amazon cart for months. I’d first eyed the product around the height of the coronavirus pandemic, figuring it could help me identify unventilated public spaces where exhaled breath was left to linger and the risk for virus transmission was high. But I didn’t shell out the $250 until January 2023, when a different set of worries, over the health risks of gas stoves and indoor air pollution, reached a boiling point. It was as good a time as any to get savvy to the air in my home.

    I knew from the get-go that the small, stuffy apartment in which I work remotely was bound to be an air-quality disaster. But with the help of my shiny Aranet4, the brand most indoor-air experts seem to swear by, I was sure to fix the place up. When carbon-dioxide levels increased, I’d crack a window; when I cooked on my gas stove, I’d run the range fan. What could be easier? It would basically be like living outside, with better Wi-Fi. This year, spring cleaning would be a literal breeze!

    The illusion was shattered minutes after I popped the batteries into my new device. At baseline, the levels in my apartment were already dancing around 1,200 parts per million (ppm)—a concentration that, as the device’s user manual informed me, was cutting my brain’s cognitive function by 15 percent. Aghast, I flung open a window, letting in a blast of frigid New England air. Two hours later, as I shivered in my 48-degree-Fahrenheit apartment in a coat, ski pants, and wool socks, typing numbly on my icy keyboard, the Aranet still hadn’t budged below 1,000 ppm, a common safety threshold for many experts. By the evening, I’d given up on trying to hypothermia my way to clean air. But as I tried to sleep in the suffocating trap of noxious gas that I had once called my home, next to the reeking sack of respiring flesh I had once called my spouse, the Aranet let loose an ominous beep: The ppm had climbed back up, this time to above 1,400. My cognitive capacity was now down 50 percent, per the user manual, on account of self-poisoning with stagnant air.

    By the next morning, I was in despair. This was not the reality I had imagined when I decided to invite the Aranet4 into my home. I had envisioned the device and myself as a team with a shared goal: clean, clean air for all! But it was becoming clear that I didn’t have the power to make the device happy. And that was making me miserable.

    Read: Kill your gas stove

    CO2 monitors are not designed to dictate behavior; the information they dole out is not a perfect read on air quality, indoors or out. And although carbon dioxide can pose some health risks at high levels, it’s just one of many pollutants in the air, and by no means the worst. Others, such as nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, and ozone, can cause more direct harm. Some CO2-tracking devices, including the Aranet4, don’t account for particulate matter—which means that they can’t tell when air’s been cleaned up by, say, a HEPA filter. “It gives you an indicator; it’s not the whole story,” says Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech.

    Still, because CO2 builds up alongside other pollutants, the levels are “a pretty good proxy for how fresh or stale your air is,” and how badly it needs to be turned over, says Paula Olsiewski, a biochemist and an indoor-air-quality expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The Aranet4 isn’t as accurate as, say, the $20,000 research-grade carbon-dioxide sensor in Marr’s lab, but it can get surprisingly close. When Jose-Luis Jimenez, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, first picked one up three years ago, he was shocked that it could hold its own against the machines he used professionally. And in his personal life, “it allows you to find the terrible places and avoid them,” he told me, or to mask up when you can’t.

    That rule of thumb starts to break down, though, when the terrible place turns out to be your home—or, at the very least, mine. To be fair, my apartment’s air quality has a lot working against it: two humans and two cats, all of us with an annoying penchant for breathing, crammed into 1,000 square feet; a gas stove with no outside-venting hood; a kitchen window that opens directly above a parking lot. Even so, I was flabbergasted by just how difficult it was to bring down the CO2 levels around me. Over several weeks, the best indoor reading I sustained, after keeping my window open for six hours, abstaining from cooking, and running my range fan nonstop, was in the 800s. I wondered, briefly, if my neighborhood just had terrible outdoor air quality—or if my device was broken. Within minutes of my bringing the meter outside, however, it displayed a chill 480.

    Read: The plan to stop every respiratory virus at once

    The meter’s cruel readings began to haunt me. Each upward tick raised my anxiety; I started to dread what I’d learn each morning when I woke up. After watching the Aranet4 flash figures in the high 2,000s when I briefly ignited my gas stove, I miserably deleted 10 wok-stir-fry recipes I’d bookmarked the month before. At least once, I told my husband to cool it with the whole “needing oxygen” thing, lest I upgrade to a more climate-friendly Plant Spouse. (I’m pretty sure I was joking, but I lacked the cognitive capacity to tell.) In more lucid moments, I understood the deeper meaning of the monitor: It was a symbol of my helplessness. I’d known I couldn’t personally clean the air at my favorite restaurant, or the post office, or my local Trader Joe’s. Now I realized that the issues in my home weren’t much more fixable. The device offered evidence of a problem, but not the means to solve it.

    Upon hearing my predicament, Sally Ng, an aerosol chemist at Georgia Tech, suggested that I share my concerns with building management. Marr recommended constructing a Corsi-Rosenthal box, a DIY contraption made up of a fan lashed to filters, to suck the schmutz out of my crummy air. But they and other experts acknowledged that the most sustainable, efficient solutions to my carbon conundrum were mostly out of reach. If you don’t own your home, or have the means to outfit it with more air-quality-friendly appliances, you can only do so much. “And I mean, yeah, that is a problem,” said Jimenez, who’s currently renovating his home to include a new energy-efficient ventilation device, a make-up-air system, and multiple heat pumps.

    Many Americans face much greater challenges than mine. I am not among the millions living in a city with dangerous levels of particulate matter in the air, spewed out by industrial plants, gas-powered vehicles, and wildfires, for whom an open window could risk additional peril; I don’t have to be in a crowded office or a school with poor ventilation. Since the first year of the pandemic—and even before—experts have been calling for policy changes and infrastructural overhauls that would slash indoor air pollution for large sectors of the population at once. But as concern over COVID has faded, “people have moved on,” Marr told me. Individuals are left on their own in the largely futile fight against stale air.

    Read: Put your face in airplane mode

    Though a CO2 monitor won’t score anyone victories on its own, it can still be informative: “It’s nice to have an objective measure, because all of this is stuff you can’t really see with the naked eye,” says Abraar Karan, an infectious-disease physician at Stanford, who’s planning to use the Aranet4 in an upcoming study on viral transmission. But he told me that he doesn’t let himself get too worked up over the readings from his monitor at home. Even Olsiewski puts hers away when she’s cooking on the gas range in her Manhattan apartment. She already knows that the levels will spike; she already knows what she needs to do to mitigate the harms. “I use the tools I have and don’t make myself crazy,” she told me. (Admittedly, she has a lot of tools, especially in her second home in Texas—among them, an induction stove and an HVAC with ultra-high-quality filters and a continuously running fan. When we spoke on the phone, her Aranet4 read 570 ppm; mine, 1,200.)

    I’m now aiming for my own middle ground. Earlier this week, I dreamed of trying and failing to open a stuck window, and woke up in a cold sweat. I spent that day working with my (real-life) kitchen window cracked, but I shut it when the apartment got too chilly. More important, I placed my Aranet4 in a drawer, and didn’t pull it out again until nightfall. When my spouse came home, he marveled that our apartment, once again, felt warm.

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    Katherine J. Wu

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