Why It's Time to End the Dangerous Lunacy

If you’re like me, you just can’t take it anymore.  Every day it’s another travesty, another insane, infuriating action, more posturing, evasion, and lies, more threats to a midterm election, along with a heightened possibility of expanding wars, a global economic crisis, increased likelihood of living in a full-blown fascist autocracy, and on a planet in doubt of survival.

Post-Greenland and Venezuela, fantasies of controlling Canada and Cuba keep appearing, while admired oligarchs see a window to controlling Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Add to that the copious fears of what is already happening here. Enormous ICE prison camps are about to exist in several states where increasing brutality and violence towards people of color, unwelcome religious beliefs, human rights violations - including withheld healthcare, wormy food, floor sleeping and bodily abuse are ubiquitous - as is denial of habeas corpus, and access to family or lawyers. A ramped up domestic police force drunk on power enjoys assaulting mostly innocent people and dragging them into unmarked vans heading for deportation airports and lockups.  

Along with that Senator Adam Schiff noted in a Facebook post last month that the buildup of lethal military weapons is happening on a “scale [that] is staggering and the intent is terrifying.”  

An alarming possibility is increased terror attacks by cells already in this country.  Historian Timothy Snyder raised this issue in a recent Substack post, quoting himself from his book On Tyranny.  “Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.” He adds “If we choose to be surprised, we co-create a moment that Trump will exploit to undo what remains of our democracy.”

All the while Republicans in Congress and incompetent sycophants who lack relevant experience in Trump’s Cabinet refuse to grow backbones or study the lessons of history, preferring to kiss their king’s gold ring to avoid being accountable so they can hold onto what little power they have. Meanwhile the king is happy to sign off on whatever Steven Miller and others present to him. He is too busy trying to build a ballroom, plaster his image on buildings, cultural centers, airports, and possibly currency, while arranging praise and parades, while blathering incoherently in public appearances and dragging out press briefings. It’s pure Stalinism, except perhaps for the incoherence.

Meanwhile we’ve already seen Americans suffering because of cuts to agencies like FEMA, NOAA, EPA, NIH, CDC, HHS, FAA, the Departments of Education and Agriculture, Veterans Affairs, CDC, HHS, Commerce, Energy, and USAID. Other vital organizations that keep us healthy and safe in times of crisis, often with the help of research funds, have had to cancel key programs that help avert disasters in almost every sector of society. Healthcare is a good example. So are environmental protective programs that obviously link to preventive measures related to health status.

  There aren’t enough column inches to talk about the disastrous impact of budget cuts the current administration has made but here’s a sampling.

Americans of every socioeconomic status or geographical location are feeling the pinch when it comes to healthcare. Families and individuals are skipping meals or forgoing filling their tanks, or they can’t afford childcare or help with elder care. A recent report by the Gallup Poll revealed that people are dropping their health insurance, skipping medications, and borrowing money to get by.

We know that maternal and child health is dramatically impacted by budget cuts that affect critical and preventive care for that vulnerable group. But there are other healthcare crises arising every day that we don’t think about. Take lung disease as just one example.

A report in The Guardian revealed that policies are likely to drive up rates of lung disease and premature death. It included an analysis done by The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine that examined policies adopted during Trump’s second term across 10 areas, including healthcare access, environmental regulation, workplace protections and vaccine  uptake.

The interconnections of various sectors including public health, environmental safety, agriculture, and disaster relief, for example, are clear. Over the past year, the Trump administration has reduced dozens of air pollution standards aimed at increased profits for companies even though they lead to more asthma cases and hospitalizations for respiratory illness.

The list goes on and on as the focus shifts to war and aggression. and is grounded in the way the president and his minions ignore the Constitution, the courts, public opinion and our former global partners who, along with institutional safeguards, raise serious concerns about the future. Added to that the president’s continual abuse and censoring of the free press, and people exercising their right to free speech, so vital to democracy, while applauding and emulating long time dictators. 

We cannot allow him to continue destroying our country. As the late John Lewis said, “We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.” This is clearly the time to “Make good trouble.”

                                                            ###

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro,  Vt.

The War on Women Continues

 Every year when calendars mark International Women’s Day on March 8th many people take no notice. But a lot of women around the world do, as we mourn the travesties that are still being perpetrated against females of all ages in most places on the globe.  It’s worrying to note that we must begin this year witnessing (or ignoring) a staggering increase in political, personal, and cultural misogyny ranging from sexual abuse, anti-woman legislation, and violence.

Take for example a CNN report about the Taliban which has just decreed that men can beat their wives  “so long as they don’t break bones or leave lasting wounds.” A husband could be jailed for 15 days if there is physical evidence of assault. 15 days!  That is if a woman seeks justice even though her testimony will be worth half that of her husband’s.

Not all oppression of women is so dramatic. An article in The Guardian cited the street behavior of men who push women aside on the pavement, or ogle and cat-call them. “Loosening the grip men hold over all public space would go a long way toward helping women feel less oppressed,” Lucy Pasha-Robinson wrote in the article, adding that “men who are so angry they are lasing out at random women for their need to feel power.”

In between those two examples there are myriad ways to keep women in their place, which in many cultures, is seen by feminists as the angel in the house or the madwoman in the attic.

Consider the ominous restraints on women’s autonomy articulated in the infamous Project 2025, which are now becoming the mantra of arch conservative legislators here in our so-called developed nation.  Bans on abortion. Legislators going so far as to advocate executing women who have them. Imprisonment for miscarriage. Attempts to keep women from voting, and more, as Open Democracy points out citing legislative proposals and policy agendas that are on the table since Congress became dominated by conservative, rightwing zealots .

Then there’s the narrowing of how sex is defined, the reduced funding for reproductive health services which could save women’s lives, the attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and the possibility of reinstating the Comstock Act to remove access to abortion medication. Add to that the lack of childcare, aimed at physically and psychologically limiting women’s autonomy, economic security, and self-determination. It’s all about keeping us barefoot, pregnant, and afraid. All of that suppression constitutes acts of violence.

 So does the attempt to establish fetal personhood. The far right also wants to go further by defining “sex” as a biological assignment at birth which of course is meant to discriminate against transgender women. Other proposed bills are designed to eliminate funding for family planning, and limit contraception based on income. Then there’s the SAVE Act that would require people to show proof of citizenship to vote, creating barriers for married women who took their husband’s surname.

All these repressive legislative ideas and proposals are clearly forms of controlling women’s lives, including their access to education, healthcare, economic security, and a public presence in most sectors of society. The draconian idea of incentivizing women monetarily to bear children while restrictions on childcare and parental leave speaks loudly to an insidious agenda articulated by men who fear women’s intelligence, energy, competence, and agency.

When you connect the dots, it soon becomes clear that “the rising global far right is violent, racist and misogynistic – and depends on exploiting women,” as Sian Norris put it in Open Democracy.”

If you prefer a visual that represents political violence against women and girls, you have only to see ICE shooting Renee Good in the face or dragging women by their hair out of their cars and putting them in choke holds. You could watch the Epstein/Maxwell survivors who are brave enough to share their stories.  Or you could shudder to see pictures of babies and children being torn from their mothers at schools and workplaces while adolescent girls, called Blue Butterflies, are sequestered in separate spaces likely to be sexually abused or trafficked.   If that doesn’t work, look at nearly 200 beautiful faces of Iranian little girls slaughtered in their school, or peek at Burka-clad women with male escorts in Afghanistan streets while their female children are forbidden to attend school.

It’s important to understand that violence against women and girls in any form violates their basic human rights. These violations are grounded in centuries of patriarchal societies who have viewed women as a threat to male power. That threat goes beyond individual men.  It occurs at numerous structural levels and in male-dominated institutions in both private and public sectors.

Eliminating the injustices and deep harm these longstanding practices and behaviors cause women is a monumental task. We must recognize it, understand it, care about it, and condemn it for more than one day or month a year, because as writer Rebecca Solnit has said, “We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”

                                                            # # #

Elayne writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Reflections on Growing Older

"Do not go gentle into that good night," Welsh poet Dylan Thomas famously wrote, adding "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." The words are beautiful, but as I face another birthday, I think it is probably better to go gently into the inevitable night.

In two poems I wrote after the loss of my mother and both siblings I contemplated the inevitability of death. I revisited those poems recently which I do as each year passes. Here, abbreviated, is what I wrote, in edited prose.

One poem is called” Death Lessons,” in which I wrote “it is never the right time, and wanting more time is okay. It’s knowing that guilt and grief are poor bedfellows, and that only the important moments matter. It’s remembering that there is something special about family and friends and that no one can know that without being one. Also, it’s always too soon.”

In the poem “Going Gently into The Night” I wrote this: “In the deep caverns of my soul where existential thought resides, I think it is the ultimate void, an unending space, non-being, eternally quiet, kindly dark, not frightening, not anything. Still, being an inveterate traveler, if not always an optimist. Maybe something amazing waits on the other side, marvelous, if fleeting, and unimaginable in the trivia of life. Not frightening, but something. Then contemplating mortality, the light enters.”

I thought of these poems again because the older one gets the faster time seems to pass, and we find ourselves contemplating our own demise as people we know, or love, are no longer with us.

I’m not the only one who thinks about this. Poets and writers have written pieces like this rumination. New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote this a few years ago: “No matter how young I may look or feel time refuses to rest. It forges on. I’m not sure when the world will consider me old, but I know that I’m no longer afraid of it …. I have no intention of raging against my age. I embrace it as a pillar of wisdom and grace and I understand that age is not my body forsaking me, it is my life rewarding me.”

Good memories that drift back like colorful autumn leaves falling gracefully are precious. Stillness becomes quietly pleasant.  When we can escape toxic people and events we become liberated. We speak our truth without apology. We no longer ask permission to be ourselves. 

But there are things we know that we can’t control, including memory lapses, word retrieval frustrations, misplaced keys, glasses, and cell phones that remind us that this is a shared one-way journey. Sometimes we laugh about it. Other times we wish we had more control over our physical changes.

No one helped us confront aging with humor better than Erma Bombeck. Here’s one of her gems. “Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.” Or as Groucho Marx put it, “Getting older is no problem. You just must live long enough.”  

With age, we are relieved to find we need less and want less. Good friendships are more valued than new things that clutter our closets and our conscience. Warm places, literally and figuratively, become a treat, like a letter from an old friend makes us happy. Cherishing the present brings with it gratitude and kindness to enhance our daily lives as we contemplate what really matters. Sharing some of those epiphanies with others is a gift derived from our experiences and adventures. We enjoy sharing our stories as much as our audiences like hearing them.

This year I will again celebrate my new and somewhat stunning age with a friend I have fun with. It’s become a tradition. We will likely splurge on a special meal and a massage, see a show in New York City, people watch in Centra Park. What I know for sure is that we will talk late into the night, about politics, people, purposeful living, and the events that have shaped who we are now.

We might watch episodes of the “We Do Not Care Club” on TV which has women our age falling off their chairs laughing,  but we will not wonder or worry about what might lie ahead, because we will be thankful for the people we love and cherish, grateful for the experiences, and the challenges we’ve faced and overcome. They have shaped the lives we’ve been living and helped make us who are and they will continue to be, as long as the clock ticks us toward our mutual destiny.  If we’re lucky it might be another amazing journey, embarked upon without rage or resistance, but peacefully and with gratitude.

# # #

Elayne Clifts writes and ages in Brattleboro, Vt.

A Disburbing Dissonance

It was during the snowstorms in January when my family managed to meet up for a birthday celebration in sunny California where the temperatures were in the 60s and 70s and the sky was beautifully blue every day. The winter respite was lovely but sobering as well, because I knew we were lucky to be able to take the trip since we are what could be called, in economic terms, privileged. That alone made me feel guilty as we departed.

The guilt persisted as I watched children playing, skateboarding, and having fun in other ways on the beaches. I kept thinking of all the incarcerated children in what are called detention facilities, but which I view as concentration camps. Those kids are eating fowl food, sleeping on cold floors, being denied necessary healthcare, education, clean water, and fresh air. Worst of all they are often separated from their parents, even as infants and toddlers. The older ones draw pictures like the children starving and ill in Germany’s Holocaust camps did.  Others have written letters that are now surfacing in social media outlets. 

Here is an excerpt from a letter 14-year-old Ariana wrote after being detained for 45 days. “I have never felt so much fear as I feel here every day. I remind myself that once I go back to Honduras a lot of dangerous things could happen to my mom. My younger siblings haven’t seen their mom in over a month. Since I got to this Center all I feel is sadness and depression. … It’s sad to hear that people’s cases are being denied and they are being sent back to countries where they escaped from looking for protection and safety. Serious situations happen here and the officers don’t take them seriously. They don’t care.”

The juxtaposition of exuberant kids and the continuing traumatic news of incarcerated children was entirely dissonant. How could these two simultaneous scenarios possibly make sense?

That dissonance was mirrored and magnified by watching people in museums, parks, restaurants and cafes enjoying themselves as if nothing was wrong or troubling. I felt like I was being jolted back to normal times when we all felt relatively safe, and random acts of violence were not something we had to fear every day. Yet how could we ignore what was going on in our world?

Just a brief glance at the news each morning and evening gave me pause and reminded me of the worries that seemed ever present and inescapable. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty for enjoying myself as day by day the dissonance became more disturbing.

All over the world, while we were enjoying our time together, devastating weather events were a serious sign of possibly unsolvable climate change that could mean global water shortages, droughts that would increase migration, and other events that would irretrievably alter our ways of life and threaten social and political stability.

Added to these possibilities, and exacerbating threats and dangers we now face, is the lack of political will to do what is urgently needed while we still may have time. Given that science is seriously under attack, access to healthcare and public health preventive measures, no matter how sick people are, weaponized education mandates, while shutting down environmental protection via the EPA, disaster relief by FEMA, along with the absence of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which all rely on scientific experts across all sectors

 is a recipe for disaster.

As The Other 98% noted in a Facebook post in December, “What’s being spun as bureaucratic reshuffling is actually a brazen assault on research that keeps people safe and economies functioning in a world facing escalating climate chaos.”  The Facebook post which focused on relevant issues and pending crises that require scientific research and activity concluded with this warning: “It’s about whether we choose to prepare for the world we are living in. …This is our planet on the line, and our  democracy too.”

To expand upon this focus on the threatening absence of research I would add that the travesties we’ve witnessed and worried about, ranging from ICE murders to the threat of a cancelled election, all because of our current inept and inhumane powerbrokers in government who are acting in collusion with their financially privileged and deeply corrupt cronies.

 Since I am by nature a worrier, I have sleepless nights about all of this, but it’s something we all need respite from, and we shouldn’t feel guilty about how and where we find it. I’m trying to drop the guilt while recognizing the disturbing dissonance we are living with in these dark days. I hope others are seeing that as well.

Returning home from my respite there was plenty of ice, but it wasn’t unexpected or alarming. It’s ICE, and everything it represents, that gives me restless nights, along with the deep and disturbing dissonance that prevails.

                                                                        # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Facing a New World Disorder

This year has barely begun and already we find ourselves facing a dangerous world in which old norms and rules are changing or disappearing rapidly. We have yet to realize what the ramifications will be of what is taking place, not just for our own country but for all countries, irrespective of geography, economic stability, and political leadership.

A piece in the Washington Post in December shared a speech by Ishaan Tharoor on behalf of the World Food Program USA. It began like this. “A troubling dynamic seems to be shaping global politics. Humanitarian crises are surging as the support systems and international cooperation required to address them  are failing.”

Tharoor cite s a report by the International Rescue Committee, which chose the theme “The New World Order” for its 2026 report which illuminates unimaginable and growing crises in at least twenty countries already facing huge humanitarian crises.  These crises are directly connected to shifting global politics that will affect every one of us in one way or another because of increasing conflicts, and their impact, resulting in crises that are no longer local. These critical situations will pose the threat of wars driven by international power plays, the report says, citing “the growing importance of profit over protection in the world’s conflict zones.”

Tharoor adds that “we now have a case of disorder as the defining anchor of the global system. He worries about an “anarchic form of globalization without rules,” and an “age of impunity” that includes the loss of legal rights and ignores laws, including those related to war.

The U.S. actions in Venezuela are a sign of what could happen, in part because of growing impunity for world leaders, including Donald Trump and his attempts to interfere with Columbia, Cuba and Greenland for starters. Who knows what he plans to do in other countries. It’s clear already that the breakdown of national systems and international relationships are leading to chaos and possible anarchy which has huge implications. Analysts are already worrying about China taking over Taiwan, Putin taking over Europe, and Trump taking over several countries in Latin America while eying countries in the Middle East. Talk about a new world order in which oligarchs and dictators take over the world and fascism prevails.

The idea of a revised world order is not new. At the end of the second World War, for example, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin met in Yalta to consider the postwar reorganization of Germany and Europe which had significant implications for other regions of the world. Some analysts suggest that the idea of colonization became an issue there.

Politicians, academics, and economists have debated the idea of a world order historically and long before Yalta. It’s just that it seems terrifying in today’s global political landscape. The possible collapse of the NATO alliance is now real. That alliance has kept us safe from global disasters for nearly eighty years.  If it collapses, every country will be on its own should wars proliferate in every region of the world. It’s a stunning and frightening thing to contemplate.

The term as it’s being used now already suggests a significant and dramatic shift in the global balance of power, political thought, economic justice, food security, legal rights, and other issues that affect daily life. Migration, immigration, education, scientific advances, and access to healthcare are already threatened.

There are important lessons to be learned from the past. These lessons require qualified and humane leaders and advisors who can view the world as a global community through the lens of social justice, human rights, and a sustainable planet. That’s a tall order and it’s no secret that the three great powers right now - China, the U.S., and Russia - have leaders devoid of a commitment to peace, equity, rules of law, and social democracy. 

In addition to them, personal ambitions and corruption among their powerbroker acolytes play a large part in the idea of a new world order which makes a revised world order seemingly impossible.

But more than ever the need for global cooperation on myriad issues is vital because issues like climate change, pandemics, and economic crises now transcend national borders. Each of these potential crises highlights the limitations of a state-centric system and the need for new, negotiated, and agreed upon forms of governance. Most of us realize that alliances like that seem too difficult to achieve, but any change in governing arrangements and power dynamics among nations will ultimately require accountability, viable and effective legal structures, institutions grounded in shared progress, and guardrails if all of us are going to avoid a catastrophic future.

As historian and social critic Arthur Schlesinger once said, “We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.” But we can still hope and try to affect a likely new global order that calls for and is grounded in honesty, genuine collaboration, and a commitment to survival no matter who we are and where we inhabit our shared world.

                                                             # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Looking Back in Gratitude

 In 1964 Barbara Streisand sang the song “People.” It began like this: “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” That line seemed to me to include an oxymoron: People who need people, it seemed to me, were lonely and sad, not lucky.

 As I looked back on the troubling year that concluded just over a month ago, I realized how many of us mourned or experienced the cruelty, lack of compassion, and increasing violence we were subjected to, along with hateful rhetoric and policies that hurt so many of us. Too many of us felt helpless given the lies, gaslighting, and moral corruption leading us to a seeming abyss.

It blinded us to all the goodness and small acts of kindness surrounding us. Yes, we spoke up, protested, and participated in acts of resistance. Some of us wrote about the evil that was engulfing us as the year progressed. But we neglected to write pieces that honored the ordinary, extraordinary people whose actions generated hope, revealed kindness, caring, and communal support, and made us all feel better.

The more I thought about that, the more I felt the lyrics to Streisand’s song needed editing if they were to be relevant in these times.  I felt guilty that I had neglected to tell simple stories about good people who remind us daily about the power of good deeds and simple heroic actions.

So, in a mea culpa, I think the lyrics are a bit off base now. It’s people who help people, who hold or hug them in various ways, who are the kindest people in the world. As I was contemplating this, an abundance of human-interest stories started showing up on social media that reminded me of the goodness of human connection and caring, even when offered in small ways.

Suddenly I wanted to thank just some of the people who made this a better world in 2025.  Many of the stories I saw on videos or read about on social media moved me to tears, others to smiles.  There was the bus driver who stopped his bus to lift a disabled woman into the bus and seat her
gently before he folded her retrieved wheelchair and set it next to her locked, and ready to go..

Then there were the police officers who bought a kid on their beat a new bike when his couldn’t be fixed. Or the two cops – a male and a female – who rescued a small child who’d been abandoned in an empty house. Before calling for help, they sang to her, cuddled her, and gave her a stuffed animal she embraced. I suspect that child will recall those two people when her full story is told years later.

There were videos of irate clergy, store clerks, voracious food vendors, feisty women, and brave street witnesses who successfully shooed away ICE bullies in heroic ways, despite knowing that they could be in trouble.

Stories about teachers and school administrators, medical personnel, fierce mothers and fathers, and persistent grannies were matched by men and women who saw a need for help in grocery lines and pulled out their wallets with a smile. Similarly, there were waitstaff in diners who served food to families who looked hungry without presenting a tab. I wanted to give each of these people Emotional Emmy Awards. 

Stories like this are all around us.  Here’s one example posted by someone on the organization Upworthy’s website.

“One time, my dad and I were leaving the grocery store around Christmas time and there was a guy outside asking for money to buy some stuff for his kids. My dad asked him if he could give him groceries instead of money, and the guy said yes, so my dad gave him one of everything we bought. My dad hadn't gotten his paycheck because the company he worked for was going through a tough time, but he didn't care, he saw an opportunity to help someone, and he did. Another time, he gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I said he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said, 'whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine.' I never "forgot that.”

Those folks exemplify everyday people who make a difference because of their kindness, compassion, and generosity, and they stand with major philanthropists like MacKenzie Scott, Melinda French Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Dolley Parton and Taylor Swift, and their male counterparts.

I wish I could share my gratitude with every person who acts with kindness, no matter their social status, this year and every year. The song “People” ends like this: “But first, be a person who needs people.” I would end with this: First, be a person who helps people.  

As Upworthy puts it, just “Do good recklessly!” You won’t regret it.

A Plethora of Pardons and a Personal Ask

Given the numbers of pardons the president has granted in his second term it seems like a good idea to ask for pre-emptive forgiveness for any crimes of conscious I may commit.  The president is so happy to pardon people I figure my chances are pretty good that I won’t end up in jail for very long. Here’s a partial list of my pardon plea for the president.

Pardon me for hating that you released the likes of George DeSantos, Rudy Guliani, Steve Bannon, your political and financial allies, dubious celebrities, and notorious criminals, like Juan Orlando, the former President of Honduras, who was convicted of drug trafficking charges and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. prison while likely fishermen in the Caribbean are murdered. Is Ghislaine Maxwell next?

Pardon me for being upset that more than 1,600 people who were charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses, including those who got a blanket pardon even though they took part in the notorious insurrection that took place at the Capital, were granted clemency.

Pardon me for being desperately upset because 25 people have died in ICE custody or for weeping when I hear stories of traumatized children being separated from their parents and held in ICE detention indefinitely. I can’t bear seeing kids as young as three years old being forced to sit before a judge in immigration court before being sent God knows where.

My heart also breaks for the women in detention facilities that are more like concentration camps, mourning the loss of their children while being subjected to sexual abuse, and the pregnant women who are denied vital healthcare and basic nutrition along with clean drinking water or are forced to labor in shackles.  

As if that weren’t bad enough it’s sickening for anyone to be fed warm-riddled food, or to  sleep on the floor,  if sleep is possible with lights blaring 24 hours a day, or to use dirty showers if you can get one, or toilets that lack privacy.

This is just one of many testimonies about what detention life is like, reported by an advocacy group in Texas on CNN. “Families tell us that children are weak, crying because they are hungry and have limited access to clean drinking water, or can’t get medical help, even if they faint. Mothers have called it a prison and a living hell.” As Occupy Democrats posted on Facebook in December, “The war on terror has truly come home. Now we have dozens of Abu Ghraibs in our own backyards.”

Pardon me for wishing you could understand what it is like to be told, as one mother was, that she might never see her five-year-old daughter again, as reported by ABC News. Her daughter is one of at least 600 children sent by ICE to detention facilities this year. Experts note that the severe depression and anxiety these children and their parents experience is unimaginable, describing the trauma as unspeakable loss that leads to ongoing grief. Numerous accounts like these are documented by organizations, media, and first person accounts that families and friends share. They are utterly soul destroying.

Along with all of that, I beg your pardon for wishing that the United States could avoid committing war crimes, propping up autocracies and their self-appointed dictators, colluding with genocide, and destroying the alliances we have trusted and counted on for so long because of our shared values, which are rapidly disappearing. 

Pardon me please for abhorring the disintegration of agencies that are vital to a sane healthcare system that supports a reasonable life expectancy, basic economic security, much needed social services, as well as necessary research, educational excellence, clean air and water, disaster relief, healthy food and clean water, non-nuclear proliferation and environmental integrity.

We have an endangered planet and an unstable world right now that desperately needs to recover from the faults and failures of what we are now experiencing to avoid falling into a disastrous abyss. No amount of power, privilege, or wealth will protect those who enjoy those luxuries because we are all in this together.

Pardon me for loathing the way you treat women, people of color, immigrants and those living in poverty, illness, and lost hope. How I wish we could find our way back to basic kindness, compassion, integrity, humanity, and belief in a country and a world capable of restoring hope, joy, community, and personal and political respect.

Pardon me too for suspecting that our last election was rigged and hoping that we will have an election this year that is free, fair, and devoid of machinations or cyber-interventions that could lead us further into dysfunction and worse dystopian nightmares. 

Finally, pardon me for believing that you and your acolytes and appointees are completely devoid of human emotion, clear thinking, intellectual capacity, compassion or honesty. You have revealed who you are, and people of conscience reject your destructive and often cruel nature because we know that you are incapable of change.  So pardon us all for our conscientious pleas so that we can finally rejoice when you are relegated to history.

Gendercide: Misogyny Makes a Major Comeback

In 2025 the National World War 2 Museum declared on their website that “The concept of genocide has fundamentally altered international law, history, and global geopolitics forever, transforming the way we understand mass violence in the modern world.”

The word, coined by a Polish Jewish Lawyer in response to the Holocaust, referred to a historic practice as it relates to post war actions. Derived from the ancient Greek word meaning race or tribe and the Latin word for killing, as in homicide, infanticide, and femicide, the lawyer added that “genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation. It signifies a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” 

After the Department of Education declared women-dominated professions like nursing, teaching, social work, and other careers did not align with their definition of a “professional degree,” which “distinguishes programs that qualify for higher loan limits, not a value judgement about the importance of programs.” Tell that to any healthcare professional worthy of recognition, respect, benefits, and professional pride.

Take nursing for example. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, “nursing is the nation's largest healthcare profession, with nearly 4.7 million registered nurses (RNs) nationwide. Of all licensed RNs, 89% are employed in nursing.”

Here’s a Facebook post by one of them.  “Can you imagine obtaining three college degrees, three national certificates, obtaining thousands of hours in clinical practice before even entering the work force, and then holding people’s lives in your hands, caring for them during the hardest moments in their lives, diagnosing and prescribing for them. And then being told that you aren’t a professional.”

The president’s recent verbal attacks aimed at women journalists reveals another disrespected sector where females often prevail.  His rants against them are staggering. They include telling a reporter to be “quiet, Piggy,” followed by calling another reporter ugly, and third one  a "terrible person."

 It seems the perfect time to coin another new word: Gendercide. By that I mean the disappearing of women from professions, public squares, politics, pulpits and tables of decision-making.  It’s pure Handmaids Tale, and it’s designed to send women back to the suburbs of post WWII where, as Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in her 1898 book, Women and Economics, “Women were going mad all for the good of the gold ring” in her era.  Or as Betty Friedan said after WWII, they were dying from “the problem that had no name.”

The reason for disappearing women isn’t just born of ridiculous politics. It’s noteworthy that several healthcare professionals are mandated to report sexual abuse, and female reporters ask tough questions.

The problem of female oppression and dismissal or removal is even bigger.  It resides in sex assault and trafficking of women and girls, because its survivors courageously share their stories.

It’s part of the tragedy of domestic violence. The United Nations reported in 2024 that 50,000 women were killed that year because of the violence perpetrated by someone they lived with or knew.  The report noted that’s one death every ten minutes.

Child marriage is still legal in 34 states in America with some exceptions like judicial or parental approval, and the disappearance and murder of indigenous women and girls remains a silent crisis that includes homicide, sexual assault, and trafficking. On some reservations murder rates are more than ten times the national average.

The discrimination against and silencing of women have a long history and continuity that includes abuse and violence. It goes back to ancient history. Philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome believed women had no place in politics or public discourse.  Pilgrim puritanism treated women and girls harshly, demanding obedience. In colonial times girls were married by age 14 and those who weren’t wed by 25 were socially humiliated. (Even as late as the 1960s women were pitied if not married in their early 20s). How about the Salem witch trials of the 17th century. And Joan d’Arc who was burned alive because men were fiercely afraid of her.  

In Victorian times married women were the legal property of their husbands and had no control of their finances whether by owning land or inheritance. They couldn’t vote or appear in court as a witness. At the turn of the century Edith Wharton’s novels about the Gilden Age reveal these conventions for a fin de siècle generation. Later, suffragists were beaten and force-fed in filthy prisons for wanting women to vote.

Today, women who face the fear of dying or imprisonment if they have an abortion, miscarriage, or high-risk pregnancy are disposable.  Some male legislators have suggested that women who have abortions be executed.  That’s how far we’ve fallen into the legacy of patriarchy and its desperate hatred and fear of women. Whether affluent or poor, single or married, white or black/brown, we are all at risk of Gendercide - the killing of women professionally, economically, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

In these times, we must realize the context and connection throughout women’s history and understand how it relates to our lives and our place in the world now. It only takes one nurse’s, one teacher’s, one social worker’s, one victim’s testimony to see that we need a new word: Gendercide.

We must say it, explain it, and refuse it.

A Christmas Wish List

As a child I never wrote to the North Pole hoping Santa would deliver my requests. I knew it was a long shot, but it seemed worth a try. As an adult I don’t keep To Do Lists, a Bucket List, a shopping list, or any other kind of list. 

But this year I have a list as long as my left arm.  I know it’s a long shot that any of my current wishes will be granted, but it seems worth a try and it’s at least a catharsis. And there’s so much to wish for.

For example, I wish the right-wing legislators could wake up and realize that someone they love could be among the millions of people who will be extremely ill or die for lack of healthcare and vital research that could save lives. What if it were one of their kids or grandkids or other loved ones who will perish from the lack of cancer research, or vaccines, or expert medical attention. Do they really think they are under a magic umbrella that prevents them from growing morbidity and mortality?

I wish there were enough good politicians who could save generations of kids whose learning is becoming indoctrination as curricula morphs into indoctrination.  And I wish institutions of higher education would find the courage to push the bullies back instead of burying the purpose of Socratic learning and vigorous debate.  I also wish the media could grow a spine and act like they get the importance of a Fourth Estate that shares current events and their implications honestly and without shackles.

I wish Americans would have a collective epiphany about the beauty and importance of pristine National Parks and the Arctic and Alaskan wilderness. I also wish they will resist more self-adulatory parades, ballrooms, bunkers, and monuments like the Arch d’ Triumph. I wish they would resist mightily, increasing seven million marchers to 70,000 in time for a free and fair mid-term election.  I hope they realize what we are facing and that they have the power to stop the insanity of encroaching disaster.

I wish that Americans could fight to keep agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), USAID, the Voice of America(VOA) going as well as NPR, PBS, and cultural venues like the Smithsonian Museum, along with historical sites and monuments. I also wish the Kennedy Center and the Gilded Age ballroom would not be named after Himself.

I desperately wish that the evil being perpetrated on America’s streets against immigrants, people of color, and legally resident people, including citizens, would cease and all the wannabe warriors would be held accountable for their cruelty. The brutal militarization on our streets and in our neighborhoods and communities must end.  So should the so-called detention centers which are, in fact, concentration camps where cruelty and deprivation of food, healthcare, legal aid, and more prevail.  The cruelty extends to children, the disabled, pregnant women, and the elderly and disappeared.  How could any of us not wish the nightmare to end.

I wish that we could always remember and resist the carnage and genocide going on right now in places like Gaza, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere.

I deeply wish that we could learn to be honest, compassionate, humane, kind human beings who reject violence, barbaric practices and places, and dystopian ideals, actions and leaders. I’ve noted lately that we could learn some lessons from the animal world. Just notice how they behave in times of trouble, threats, grief, and joy.  Note how they bond with people who love them, people who save them, people who play with them, exemplified by the late Jane Goodall and others like her. (I learned in Africa what a small place we hold in the cosmos, and that we have many lessons to learn.)

So now I wonder who and where the elves are, who will work hard to fulfill this, and other necessary wish lists.   They must be out there, among us.  Would that we come together in strength, hope, solidarity, and full humanity so that we don’t have to plead again to sit on Santa’s lap, or write letters to the North Pole, or Congress, young or old.

As Albert Einstein once said, we must, "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning," to which I would add, and not stop being a writer of wish lists.

                                                                        # # #

Elayne Clift writes and wishes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Mourning the People's House

It was bad enough when the White House Oval Office was suddenly transformed into a fire sale of faux gold decorations dripping from the mantlepiece and every other available space. Before that it was an elegant room in the White House, lovingly called the People’s House, which has always been recognized as a national historic site. The “Oval” was a warm and elegant place where serious, important decisions were discussed by dignified, respected leaders and advisors with strong portfolios who realized the magnitude of the issues being addressed.  Today, sadly, it looks like a third-rate setting for a Moliere comedy.

Now comes the devastation of the East Wing. Photos of the desecration of that much loved part of the White House are a sickening metaphor for the destruction of democracy we are witnessing.  In addition to the building disappearing, some of us can’t stop wondering what happened to the artwork, furnishings, historic references and more that were housed in the East Wing.  Was it treated as debris, or simply looted before the demolition, as other dictators have done? 

Critics have compared the demolition of the historic building to “slashing a ”Rembrandt.” One of them called the East Wing “the heartbeat for more than 100 years” as first ladies worked from their offices there on important issues ranging from drug abuse to boosting literacy and preserving the White House itself. 

In an opinion editorial in Architect’s Newsletter, a columnist noted that “The East Wing historically housed the Office of the First Lady. [Now] it seems nothing was done to protect the history of women’s contributions to the presidency. By bulldozing the structure, Trump is effectively erasing women from the history of the White House.”

Roslyn Carter was the original First Lady to have an office in the East Wing. She wanted a private place to go to work where she “didn’t have to dress up and put on makeup,” she wrote in her memoir. Hillary Clinton became the determined First Lady to insist that her office be in the West Wing because she felt that her staff needed to be “integrated physically” with the president’s team. Michelle Obama worked to support military families and promote higher education for girls in poor countries from the East Wing and set a standard as a global role model. And Jill Biden, who continued teaching while serving as First Lady, advocated for cancer research and women’s health.

Historically notable, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated the White House movie theater in 1942 by converting a cloakroom in the East Terrace into a screening room so that he could watch newsreels during World War II. Other presidents used the theater to rehearse important speeches including the State of the Union.

The East Wing was originally known as the East Terrace in 1902 when Theodore Roosevelt was president. FDR created the East Wing as we have known it in 1942 to have more workspace during the war, and to conceal an underground bunker for the president and staff. Today some people posit that the bunker is the reason the current president wants to obscure it with a massive ballroom which, unsurprisingly, will be named The Donald J. Trump Ballroom. They suggest that the ever-paranoid president wants the bunker to be a safe, well-equipped space for him to indulge the ultra-right-wing fascist fantasies that he clings to, along with his sycophants who can be directed by their leader as he advances his autocratic regime.

 The idea of a massive ballroom, whether it is being built as camouflage or not where the beautiful East Wing once was, is obscene. It’s not only likely to be illegal, having ignored proper approvals from the National Park Service and the National Capital Planning Commission. It’s an especially heinous Gilded Age insult and anomaly in face of a government shutdown that will affect millions of Americans in numerous and terrible ways. It smacks of robber barons and “Let them eat cake.”  It’s clearly a corrupt moneymaker, an eyesore in the landscape of Washington, and a symbol of the narcissism that is tearing us apart.

No wonder historians, preservationists, art lovers, architects, and ordinary Americans are distraught, not only for the loss of this historical building, but for the lack of transparency, the lying about funding, the underlying corruption, and its implications – all of which the president chooses to call “manufactured outrage.”  The travesty of such narcissism is stunning.

 The bottom line is that a ballroom monument to oneself has no place in the People’s House, now or ever. It’s time to insist that such acts of ego be stopped.

                                                             ###

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com/blog

Why Gen Z Gives Me Hope

 While researching what Gen Z means, I had to understand the generation that was born between the 1990s and 2010.  I learned that they succeed Millennials and precedes Gen A (Alpha). Thankfully there’s a quote for every generation. This one, which originated with Walt Disney, seemed illustrative of Gen Z: “The Way to Get Started is to Quit Talking and Begin Doing.” Gen Zers want to act vs. eternally debating or studying issues related to governance.

I became interested in understanding this cohort because they seem to be showing up everywhere in political studies and generational discourse. What I learned gave me hope. For example, a study conducted this year by Tufts University about Gen Z Americans and democracy was enlightening.

The study explained that “Young Americans represent both the present and future of political leadership and participation in the United States, despite the current dissatisfaction with democracy in the United States. There is an overwhelming consensus among young people that democracy itself is fundamentally valuable; a majority have strong commitments to its core principles.”

The study points out that Gen Zers have grown up during a troubling time, and not just in American life. They have experienced a global pandemic, economic instability, major political shifts, increases in school shootings, activist movements related to racism, climate change, and the rise of social media and digital platforms as means of primary communication. 

Those factors don’t mean that people born between 1990 and 2010 are a monolithic generation. But their diversity, digital connection, education, and aspirations provide them with a collaborative identity, similar experience, and often an agreed upon ideology that informs the unique ways that they approach democracy.

AI helped me understand this generation. On my first search for more information the first thing to pop up online was a helpful list of key differences between Gen Z and prior generations. They include such facts as these: Gen Zers are “Digital Natives,” having never lived in a world without the internet. They are more cautious about economic matters with a view to securing their futures. They are prone to anxiety and stress given the pressures of daily life and political uncertainty. They also value authenticity, transparency and interpersonal relationships and feel globally connected in ways that helps them explore interesting career paths. To be succinct, they live in a uniquely modern world involving innovation, participation, and engagement in entirely new ways.

I wanted to write about Gen Z, not only because they show promise for the future when our current political nightmare ends, but because there are signs that this generation is already capable of making the world a better place for everyone, no matter what country they live in.

Recently, examples have been written about Gen Z efforts and actions in other countries that reveal a commitment to social justice, humanitarian governance, and  competent, compassionate, humane leadership by politically astute emerging leaders ready to work for the principles upon which our own country was built. The countries where activism is happening, and working are diverse and widespread.

In a string of articles showcased by apnews.com Gen Z activity in several countries, including Madagascar, where young protesters took to the streets to demonstrate for safe, reliable water and electricity across the country, and an end to corruption. Their actions led to the president dissolving the government. In a public speech he declared that the protesters’ demands were heard, as part of an apology for the failure of his government. Talk is cheap, but the protests clearly had an impact.

In Morocco, over a dozen cities saw young people using social media to mount a movement aimed at improvements in public health and education systems that authorities couldn’t ignore. Again, corruption was an umbrella theme aimed at political parties. In Kenya GenZ protests against police brutality and poor governance erupted throughout the country commemorating similar protests a year ago to oppose tax hikes. Current unrest in Peru was focused on the country’s pension system, and other youth movements took place in Indonesia and the Philippines.   

These examples are not just about idealistic youthful protests that will go nowhere. They are a distinct sign that a generation of young people have had enough political abuse and corruption worldwide. They are ready and willing as one protester said, “to get our nation[s] back.”

Historian Timothy Snyder, wrote a recent Substack post about “Youth Protest in Serbia” especially for. American readers.  In it he states that “Protests have to do with a basic concern with the rule of law. This is why it’s so annoying when photos in our media are tagged as ‘anti-government protests.’ People in Serbia are protesting for good government!”

He points out that the protests there were student-led but coordinated with the public. They included various actions that needed to be taken and articulated specific demands.  Community and sectoral coordination were important while people were urged to participate in governance. In other words, the protests were strategic, important, and productive, not random acts of ire.

It seems to me that Gen Z is learning, preparing, and waiting to take us into a sensible, sane, democratic future. It won’t be soon, or easy, but there is promise in their protests. Gen Zer Greta Thunberg helps sound an optimistic note.  “Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.”  I welcome her enthusiasm, courage, and world view.

                                                             # # #

Can Democracy Prevail and Thrive?

Two centuries ago, an obscure Scotsman named Alexander Fraser Tyler observed that “a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.” Yet here we are, nearly 250 years into America’s experiment with a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed in his Gettysburg address. Sadly, now Tyler’s idea that democracy fails when “the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury,” is upon us.

I’ve been pondering how we got here so quickly and asking myself some questions. Is democracy failing in America and in many other countries because of corruption for personal gain? (Looks like it.) Can democracy survive, thrive and prevail anywhere? What does democracy depend upon? Is the idea of democracy a misconception or myth? How is it so easily overthrown? Why are threats to democracy growing?

According to the United Nations the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism has more than doubled in recent years as polarization increases “to toxic levels” while pluralism declines and autocratic leaders take control of countries by fostering misinformation, media censorship, and increasingly repressive civil and human rights. Why has that been happening? This led to my remembering the history of democracy and then to considering another form of governance that seems to work better than ours.

As I learned in school democracy is rooted in ancient Greece followed and altered by the Roman Republic. Both systems led to changes that grew complicated. In Greece democracy fostered the idea of citizen participation in governance but limited it to free men. The Romans went a bit further, adding limited election of representatives.  Later, in medieval times, institutions added more liberal ideas like the English parliament’s Magna Carta in 1215, which limited the power of monarchs and gave some rights to various classes of people. That led to the idea that citizens should have certain rights when it came to how they were governed. When the American and French revolutions occurred the idea of human rights, though still limited, became widespread, and began to include more people in the working class, including women.

The idea of democracy relies on two principles: Individual autonomy and Equality. These two values resonated and made democracy popular, but putting those two ideas into practice proved to be complicated.  Ultimately it led to the idea of majority rule. Today the idea of “representative democracy” is a framework that offers “freedom of thought, expression, religion, and peaceful assembly.”

Social democracies take these rights further. They call for governments to provide social and economic rights to all, including education, healthcare, fair pay, and pensions. Proponents of this ideology, which have been successful in Scandinavian countries and some constitutional democracies in Europe, have proven to respect the fundamental ideas of autonomy, equality, and human rights.  It’s a system that has been proven to work well. Citizens are happy with such a humane form of governance and leaders are respected, trusted, and appreciated. It’s important to emphasize here that democratic socialism is not communism, a frequent trope that conservative and powerful elected leaders and their followers employ to convince others that it’s a dangerous system of governance.  In reality it’s a system that works and keeps countries safe and sane.

Our Constitution, written in 1789, begins with “We the People,” meant to capture the foundational principles that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed, ”for whom it serves. But democracy is not guaranteed. As some scholars say, it is still an experiment.  In 1947 Winston Churchill noted that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have tried from time to time.”

This brief history is important because we urgently need to recognize and resist our current and evolving system of government under the current administration, which is far from upholding the Constitution, the rule of law, human rights, and a viable and compassionate worldview. We are clearly living in a growing state of fear, shock, and illegal maneuvers that defy and threaten democracy while rapidly becoming a totalitarian state ruled by oligarchs and a dictator.

Unless you’ve escaped that or witnessed it, it’s hard to imagine what it is like, but a look at the Nazi playbook in Germany reveals the horror of those regimes.

Globally autocracies are growing exponentially. In some instances, they move to dictatorships by developing and refining techniques, including lies and propaganda, censorship, blackmail, and co-optation of entities including universities, media, the law, corporations, institutions and organizations that work toward and protect democracy.  Increasing, new methods of repression, indignity and humiliation are employed (e.g., Alligator Auschwitz and ICE detention centers) and strategic alliances manipulate information threatening elections.  Sound familiar?

I can’t answer the questions I’ve asked myself and I don’t know how we will emerge from this terrifying time, or how democracy can be restored and improved for the future. But I know the time has come for each of us to understand the situation, to act in our own and others’ interests, and to recognize the looming threat to our way of life. We must not only observe it, but act upon it if democracy is to prevail and thrive. We must ask ourselves hard questions in the hope that they lead us to a new and sustainable social democracy.

                                                                         # # #

 Elayne Clift writes and worries in Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com    

Pushing Back: Brava to Women Warriors Who Stand Up to Bullies

"The days of sweeping this under the rug are over. We survivors say no more. [We are] no longer weak, [we are] no longer powerless and [we are] no longer alone.”

When Anouska De Georgiou, a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s bottomless abuse, stepped to the podium at the U.S. Capital on a hot day in September and spoke those words, supported by a sisterhood of women who told their stories, the decades of silence gave way to the truth about unimaginable crimes.  Undeterred by a flyover meant to obscure what they were saying didn’t phase them.  Nor did the fear of retribution.  They were on a mission, and nothing was going to stop them. 

It was a milestone event that illustrated the power of women who stand up to bullies with courage and conviction. The women who spoke and rebutted the accusation that the event was “a hoax,” modeled with great dignity and oration that the time has come when women in all walks of life have had enough. In speaking truth to power they deserve our respect and gratitude.

They are part of a larger sisterhood that is spreading throughout every corner and sector of society “fired up and ready to go.”  They form a choir of voices that insist on truth, accountability, and consequences when called for. They will not stop pushing back against the bullies who demean them, discard them, and disavow their rights.

They are in good and inspiring company. They stand on the shoulders of slaves, suffragists, and lots of other women who told the truth about their lives.  Sojourner Truth was one of them. Her speech “Ain’t I a Woman,” delivered to a room full of 19th century misogynist men, rocked the room with her oratory. Alice Paul and her suffragist friends modeled speaking truth to power to get the vote, and writers like Virginia Woolf, Audrey Lorde, and Carolyn Heilbrunn are just a few examples of women who used their literary voices to support women who refused to be ignored or silenced.

In this moment there are women in every sector of society who refuse to be quiet. Among them are three women on the Supreme Court who fire back at their conservative colleagues when they empower a wannabe dictator. Justice Ketanji Jackson Brown stands out among them. Known for choosing her words carefully she doesn’t mince words. She has accused the  majority of favoring “the creation of a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes,” adding that the majority poses a “profound “danger to the country.” Her colleagues, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, are no wallflowers either. Neither are the judges in lower courts who have tried their best to keep the House of Trump in check.

Among them are Roberta Kaplan who helped E. Jean Carroll win a huge victory over the president for sexual abuse, Letetia James, the attorney general of New York who is standing up to Donald Trump, and Tanya Chutkin, who serves as a U. S. district judge for the District of Columbia. She vigorously refuted the president’s attempt to be shielded from prosecution when he argued that his actions fell within his duties as commander-in-chief.

Then there are the women warriors in Congress, past and present, who never failed to speak truth to power in amazing ways. Barbara Mikulski (D- MD), Pat Schroeder (D-CO) and Corie Bush (D-MO) were among them, and of course Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) have made their mark. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) are also among the sisterhood making a difference.

Women at the state level are equally vociferous. Ever watch the Attorney General of Colorado, Jena Griswold?  Or the governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, along with the mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu. The governor of Maine, Janet Mills, is someone to watch, along with the two women running for governor of their states, Mikie Sherill (NJ) and Abigail Spanberger (VA).

Some of the best women warriors remain nameless but wonderfully effective. There are multitudes of women who organize marches or sit-ins, fight like fury for gun control, quit good jobs, run for local office, and speak out at town halls because they won’t accept corruption or political chicanery.

Women journalists, historians, writers, artists, social justice organizers and advocates like Tarana Burke, founder of the Me-Too movement, are also women who speak truth to power.  Ida Tarbell wrote about corporate greed in the early 20th century, Ida B. Wells exposed the evils of slavery, and Nellie Bly, went underground to expose what happened to women in asylums.  More contemporary women writers and artists continue to expose the truth of women’s lives, enabling others like those who stood on the Capital steps to release their rage and translate it into action.

Today’s women are as committed and courageous as those who bore witness at the Capital and demanded accountability and reform.  Brava to every one of them, and to those they have inspired to speak their truth and to continue using their voices until justice prevails.

We owe them all a debt of gratitude.

Why Civilized Nations Embrace Art, History, and Culture

It wasn’t bad enough when the president took over the Kennedy Center.  It got worse when he signed an executive order in March that accused the Smithsonian Institution of being influenced by a “diverse, race-centered ideology” because of an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibit noted that race was a factor in “maintain[ing] systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” The solution, the president concluded, was to rewrite U.S. history, as New York Times essayist David Firestone said.

Subsequently Trump ordered the Interior Department to remove descriptions from national monuments and parks that “inappropriately disparaged Americans past or present” and instead focus on the “greatness of our nation (as he sees it) and the achievement of the American people.”

Further, the president told the Smithsonian Secretary, who oversees all operations of the Institution, that he was launching “a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions” in time for next year’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The review was said to be a “constructive and collaborative effort” that addresses the “curatorial process, exhibition planning, and ”narrative standards.”  It’s interesting to note that museums to be especially scrutinized address African American history and culture, Native American history and culture, and the National Portrait Gallery (who’s in, who’s out). These are among the most popular and highly visited museums in the Smithsonian system.  A Phase Two part of this “constructive effort” is planned. One can only wonder what’s next?

This is heartbreaking because the Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, and education and research complex.  It encompasses 21 museums, 14 education and research centers, and the National Zoo. Founded in 1846 by Englishman James Smithsonian, it was meant to “preserve heritage, discover new knowledge, and share our resources with the world.”

It’s no surprise that among the president’s areas of disinterest are art, history, and culture. Nor is it surprising that he wants to erase the truth of our history, the power of art, and the relevance of various cultural heritages, traditions, and rituals so that he can create them in his own image and control the narratives that are vital to our country and the world. He dislikes the connections that can be drawn from the overlap of art, history and culture. They bore him and more importantly they threaten him. He senses that art can be a powerful interpreter of life, build bridges, and connect different cultures that transcend barriers of language, politics, and geography.

Think about the storytelling that emerges from visual art and artifacts as they highlight social issues. Look at Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, Picasso’s Guernica, refugee photography, protest art, and more.

As Nancy Reyner wrote in the New York Times, “Art has always held a significant place in society, influencing and reflecting the culture and community it emerges from. From ancient cave paintings to contemporary digital are, the impact of art is profound and far reaching.”

She adds that “art plays a crucial role in forming and expressing cultural identity. It captures the essence of a community’s belief, traditions, and experiences preserving them for future generations,” adding that it a powerful tool for social activism.  Is it any wonder Donald Trump is terrified of art?

Then there is history as prologue. There are lots of important lessons to be learned from the past. It’s useful to know, for example, about the threat of fascism in this country as well as Hitler’s Germany, along with past and current oligarchies. It’s important to understand what happened when the stock market crashed in 1929 and how the New Deal helped the country recover from the Great Depression. Slavery and racism are fundamental to our history, and so is Native American history and culture. There’s the McCarthyism scare, the Cuban Missile crisis, the Vietnam War protests, the birth of the Civil Rights movement, the emergence of the Woman’s Movement and so much more.

History opens doors to critical context for positive or dangerous events. It helps us to have crucial perspectives that influence our values, beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors.  History also helps us build empathy as we begin to understand a changing world by opening critical thinking about really important issues that we face – like now.

Culture is another influence that the president would like to ignore or destroy, because understanding other people’s way of life threatens autocracy. It connects various people and communities as we begin to share, learn, and celebrate our similarities together. We become aware of flawed prejudice; we overcome stereotypes and dismiss negative myths about The Other.  We begin to realize that we are no longer living in tribal villages; we’re part of a global, diverse community that enhances our country, our relationships, and our experiences when we interact in relevant ways.

Mr. Trump and his acolytes and functionaries wish they could simply disappear these truths because they threaten their power, their dysfunctional world view, and their agenda. The day will come when that agenda fails.  Perhaps we can then join the civilized nations, throughout time, that have understood and embraced the place of art, history and culture in their daily lives. They have demonstrated the extraordinary part these three humanities play in national identity, and the quality of life for their citizens. We must do the same.

                                                             # # #

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.  www.elayne-clift.com

Food for Thought as the School Year Begins

I remember the days when school was about to begin for another year.  Kids went to the Five-and-Dime store to buy new pencil holders, good erasers, and tablets, before carefully covering their new schoolbooks with brown paper bags from the grocery store. Sometimes we got new saddle shoes too. It was exciting, and thankfully our parents didn’t have to worry about funding cuts that would affect our school district.

What a far cry from now, when deep and damaging cuts to essential school-based programs that would affect millions of people. The recently proposed cuts were unimaginable and cruel, but not surprising given this administration’s priorities and policies.

The pending crisis in education became obvious when Mr. Trump appointed Linda Marie McMahon as Secretary of Education, with Congressional approval. A former professional wrestling promoter with a bachelor’s degree in teaching French, McMahon has  no relevant experience that qualified her for a job running a massive organization that requires management, fiscal, organizational, and policymaking expertise. She has none of those skills and appears to have no interest in education and less interest in the people who need and benefit from educational objectives, programs, and sufficiently prioritized budgets.

The trouble started when the Trump administration took steps to dramatically reduce the size of the Department of Education by firing DOE employees. When a federal judge tried to have the fired employees returned to their jobs, the Supreme Court majority blocked the order with a temporary pause.

Justice Sonia Sotomayer was joined in a 19-page opinion by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.  In it they called the court’s decision “indefensible” and wrote that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of power is "grave.”

In June the Trump administration announced a seven billion dollar cut to state and local schools. Sixteen state attorneys general reacted to that cut by suing the administration for “unconstitutionally” ending over a billion dollars in mental health related grants created to help after mass school shootings.

The $7 billion in federal spending cuts for education included five important grants that fund summer and after-school programs serving millions of students nationwide. Other impacted programs included almost $4 million for migrant education, over $2 billion for professional development, almost $9 million for English-learner services, and over a billion dollars for before-and.-afterschool programs.

National education Association president Becky Pringle reacted with shock. “Withholding billions in promised federal education funding that students need, and states had planned to use to support children in their states, is a cruel betrayal of students, especially those who rely on critical support services,” adding that “Schools are already grappling with severe teacher shortages, burnout, and under-resourced classrooms.” The fact that teachers would be expected to fill the gaps in teacher shortages and classroom supplies and would be denied training is an outrage. 

To put a human face on these cuts, imagine being a migrant child who has been in school for years and now wants to graduate from high school but can’t pass the necessary academic standards. How would you like to be an educator who wants to help student achievement by furthering your training, but you are denied that opportunity. Wouldn’t you like your child’s school to have upgraded technologies like computers?  How about having literacy and other educational services available during non-school hours via after school or summer programs, particularly if you live in a rural area where schools have low performance records. These educational benefits, and necessities, help kids reach their potential and shape their futures.

Keeping children safe and cared for outside of routine school or summer hours is another benefit derived from educational programs. It’s not hyperbole to say that investing in educational opportunities and programs make a ton of difference for families, communities, and this country’s future. 

Interestingly, the Education Department released $1.3 million in previously held grant money for after-school programs just days after ten Republican senators sent a letter begging the Trump administration to allow frozen money to be sent to states. Withholding those funds would have meant some school districts and nonprofit organizations would have had to close or drastically scale back their educational programs this fall.

In addition to the released funds paying for programs before and after the summer the release of those funds will provide childcare for low income working parents or provide childcare options in rural areas. Beyond that, children can receive help with reading and math, as well as in science and art.

In July the remaining $5.5 billion cut was restored due to growing pressure on the administration from the public and professionals. Let’s hope that continuing pressure by parents, teachers, education administrators, and others will impact the administration, and Linda McMahon, enough to care about our kids, and  realize that education in all forms is  critical for all of us.

On this and other urgent matters, we need to keep the pressure up. It obviously works!

Mourning the Loss of Public Service Media

It’s 1950 and my family has become TV owners. A console with a little black and white screen faces the couch in our tiny den, where every day we kids watch shows that seem utterly ridiculous now. But then Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody, The Mickey Mouse Club and Superman held our attention just like soap operas did for adults. 

We were too old to visit Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood , which was launched in 1968, although we caught glimpses of it. (I loved the character Lady Elaine).  It was a dramatic change from the silly children’s shows, thanks to Fred Rogers, and  National Educational Television (NET), which later became PBS. To this day, Mr. Rogers’ show is recognized as the forerunner to educational programming for kids that proved to be hugely beneficial to children’s development, as Sesame Street does still, adored by children and many adults.

Following PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established in an act of Congress. Its mission, along with that of PBS, was to provide quality programming often overlooked by commercial broadcasters. It focused on education, history, culture, nature, science, public affairs, and children's content. PBS has been going strong all these years, and the thought of losing it is painful.

Thanks to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, NPR was created by the CPB and went on air in 1971 with coverage of a Senate committee hearing on the Vietnam War. It went on to programs like Morning Edition and All Things Considered which became extraordinarily popular. As NPR grew, it reached  across the country via nationwide satellite distribution which eventually opened up bureaus around the world. It has continued for decades as it provides quality news and cultural programming along with serving as a public service to rural communities.[1]

In July the Trump administration declared that it was ending funding for CPB, which funds PBS and NPR. The Senate passed the measure supporting that goal immediately. Followers of public broadcasting, editors, and journalists were stunned, and deeply troubled, at the thought that over a billion dollars, which had been appropriated by Congress for two years, would disappear.

They realized immediately, on the heels of the disastrous floods in several parts of the country, that people who rely on public broadcasting for emergency information in rural areas could be in grave danger.  Editors feared that they could be taken off the air at a moment’s notice. Listeners panicked when they couldn’t turn on their TVs or radios for lack of electricity.  Consumers were outraged, both at the practical consequences of such a move as they realized that they were watching “freedom of the press being eroded in plain sight,” as Edward Helmore, a Guardian writer, put it in a July essay, noting that “The US media is now in a deep crisis similar to the creeping autocracy in places like Hungary and other repressive regimes.”

New York University journalism professor Adam Peneberg adds that “journalist are scared. They’re afraid of a president who would gladly crush dissent, rewrite the rules and laws, and weaponize power to punish his critics.” He asks them to “imagines a world in which your mailbox is filled with death threats, your home address is leaked online, and fake 911 calls send armed police to your door.”

In a piece called “How Will the Fourth Estate Approach Trump’s Second Term” published in January, Peneberg quotes a colleague, James Devitt. “Trump’s war on media, calling journalists ‘the enemy of the people” isn’t new. Presidents have long bristled at being held accountable.” Devitt goes on to wonder if current and future challenges to the free press could prove existential. It seems to me that we’re already there, and yes, it's frightening.

According to the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

That quote speaks to the vital function of public media as well as independent journalism, both of which are the foundational cornerstones of democracy.  

While the media environment is constantly changing as is the public’s diminishing trust in media sources, that trust has not waned when it comes to PBS, NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Most of us still rely on their dedication to accurate, independent, fair and transparent news, sound political discourse, and factual information as well as entertainment, and exposure to cultural issues.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego. … The Fourth Estate is definitely a power, but to misuse that power is criminal.”

I hope we can realize that we too are a powerful force; one that uses our power to ensure that truth, integrity, decency, and a democratic society prevail. The time to use that power is now.

 Author Note: CPB has announced that it will be shuting down at the end of the year.

                                                            # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

[1] Informationon on PBS, CPB, NPR in paras 1-2 gleaned from AI.

SCOTUS Ignores the Law and Trades Compassion for Cruelty

Only three of them remain. They are women with integrity, refined intellect, a belief in human rights and a deep knowledge of the law. Now they mourn the betrayal of six colleagues on the Supreme Court who fail to respect the oaths they took to protect and preserve a 250-year-old document upon which our country was founded.  

One of those women is Justice Sonia Sotomayor who recently wrote, “The Government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law…free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard. … By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines the foundational principles of [ the Constitution].”

Another is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who added to Justice Sotomayor’s statement regarding the migrant crisis. “The government’s so-called ‘urgency’ about gaining this access [to due process] is the mere fact it cannot be bothered to wait for the litigation process to play out before proceeding as it wishes. Once again, this court dons its emergency responder gear, rushes to the scene, and uses its equitable power to fan the flames rather than extinguish them.”

 Along with Justice Elena Kagan, these women have spoken judicial truth to power.

As blogger Thom Hartmann wrote, “The American people got a taste of authoritarianism wrapped in judicial robes” when in June the Court allowed the Trump administration to deport masses of immigrants to random countries from which there is no hope of return. “The Government made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law … By rewarding lawlessness, the Court again undermines [a] foundational principle.”  … “The decision means that a future president with dictatorial ambitions could cite this ruling to round up political dissidents, journalists, or whistleblowers and ship them off” -- to places that feel like Hell without due process – which was the law of the land before this administration.

Shame on the Supreme Court for dealing a death blow to democracy by handing the would-be-king his crown.  How are we to understand such cruelty and judicial prejudice in the Supreme Court as it destroys the rule of law, the Constitution, human rights, and the essential elements of democracy?

As all of this was happening SCOTUS limited the ability of federal judges to pause Mr. Trump’s executive orders (largely written by Stephen Miller). It considered ending birthright citizenship, which violates the 14th Amendment guarantee of such citizenship, stating that anyone born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a citizen. The Court sycophants pleased the president who gleefully exclaimed that “Our country should be very proud of the Supreme Court.” This issue may be revisited in the fall.

Other SCOTUS decisions have reduced the ability of lower courts to keep the White house in check.  Now everything is at stake, from shutting down Planned Parenthood to Medicaid and SNAP cuts that can’t be challenged legally while the entire judicial system breaks down. That’s how dictatorships take hold and never let go.

All of this was foreshadowed when the ACLU challenged the power of the president in the Supreme Court last year after the Court ruled that President Trump is immune from criminal liability for a set of “core” acts and decisions, including his attempt to use the Justice Department to obstruct the results of  the election.

As ACLU pointed out in its argument against that ruling, SCOTUS left to the lower courts a good deal of the work required to determine which acts and decisions were or would be immune and which would not. That opened the door for the president, or others who follow, to engage in criminal acts free of accountability. The ACLU quickly cited the Constitution’s principle that no one is above the law in the United States, including the president.  The Court found that when the president acts as an individual s/he is not immune, but it held that presidents have immunity for their official actions, even when undertaken for personal ends and criminal purposes.

 A document called “How Do Dictators Destroy Judicial Independence,” written last year by several legal scholars, underscores how dictators consolidate power to control every facet of governance.  “Dictators often target the judiciary as a key institution to manipulate. The independence of the judiciary is a cornerstone of any democratic system, serving as a check on executive power and ensuring that laws are applied fairly and impartially. Dictators see an independent judiciary as a threat and potential obstacle to their ambitions. By systematically dismantling judicial independence, they transform the courts into tools of repression, allowing them to suppress opposition, evade accountability, and entrench their rule.”

As Adam Liptak noted in a New York Times essay last month, the three women justices cited here wrote a 19-page dissent to the Court’s use of the “Emergence Docket” applied to recent Court decisions, in which they stated that, “The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve but either way the threat to our constitution’s separation of power is grave.”

The betrayals of SCOTUS with respect to the Constitution, and the future, are clear. The abandonment of fundamental rulings and rights that made this country unique is a terrible, heartbreaking blow that demands reform. Dare we hope for that reform in time to preserve our way of life?

                                                ###

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, VT  www.elayne-clift.com

Art and Travel: Jouneying to New Places and Possibilities

Summer always reminds me of the sheer joy of traveling whether to new places, or to nearby venues or even back to favorite spots.

All my life I have disagreed with Henry David Thoreau who thought it wasn’t “worthwhile to [travel] around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.” The joy of travel has been in my blood since I was a child when our family summer vacation was a trip to visit our Canadian family. Our favorite stops included the gorges in Ithaca, the Thousand Islands, and Niagara Falls, especially when they were lit up with rainbow colors at night.  Each of these places were natural works of art, although at the time I didn’t think of it that way.  They were simply beautiful.

Later I realized that Mark Twain, was right. Travel is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” He suggested that it “would be well if an excursion could be got up every year and regularly inaugurated.” I agreed wholeheartedly so in my early twenties I took my first solo trip to Europe eager to explore the world.

In Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum I was awed by paintings that reflected the country’s history and culture in vivid portraits and painted landscapes that brought to life the homes and people of a country I knew little about. London’s National Gallery introduced me to England’s history and the people who experienced it via exquisite art, while Paris offered an endless array of gorgeous art and sculpture. In Florence, I marveled at Michelangelo’s David and contemplated perfection in his veined hands.

It wasn’t only museums that educated me as I traveled for work and pleasure. Sometimes I saw a landscape that Anzel Adams might have photographed. Other times it was a place that became a living museum, introducing me to the culture and traditions of a country.  In Portugal wall tiles were beautiful works of art.  I visited a small Peruvian village reknown for its hand-woven tapestries. Guatemalan women wore their beautiful weaving and embroidery, and South African beaded works were worn or displayed in gift shops. 

One day in France my husband and I stopped in a gallery in the ancient town of Vesely. The owner told us that his father had sculpted an extraordinary exhibit in a park we’d seen. Hand-carved wooden figures, called The Slaughter of the Innocents, commemorated the French deaths of WWII.  He lives in Auxerre,” his son told us, next to the Cathedral.  Auxerre was our next stop and that is how we came to meet Francois Brochet, whose powerful work was moving. An elegant man with the hands of a sculptor, I loved the soulfulness of his art.  Before we parted Francois escorted us to his garden to reveal more sculptures. Pointing at the blue sky above the hedgerow, the cathedral loomed. “You see,” he said, “I don’t need to go far for inspiration. It is here in my backyard.” 

Another travel event occurred in the northern region of Romania called Bucovina, which once belonged to Ukraine, where my grandparents had emigrated from to escape early 20th century pogroms. Bucovina is known for its painted monasteries. Bible stories are painted inside and out because 15th century peasants weren’t allowed inside churches. We were staying in a host home and in the morning their English-speaking daughter took us to the village. The little houses were painted in various colors and horse-drawn carts clopped across the cobblestone streets making their way among outdoor markets. It was a live portrait full of history, culture and village life.

 An elderly woman emerged from the fog wearing a babushka, apron, and big black shoes. She looked like my grandmother whom I’d never met but had seen in pictures. I suddenly burst into tears. Here I was in what could have been the shtetl where my ancestors lived and my mother was born. So began a pilgrimage connecting me to my parents’  birthplace, for the woman in the village was our host family’s grandmother. Suddenly we too were family, eating Romanian mamalika in the kitchen, enjoying photos, and listening to stories of dictator Ceausescu time.  Our parting was emotional. I had visited somewhere I’d never imagined and experienced a living portrait of painted monasteries, village landscapes, and a family whose home might have been my ancestors.

Museums share stories that help us understand other cultures, often while providing historical context that informs our worldview, but nothing compares to the living art all around us, especially as we explore and experience new places and people.  I have been blessed to travel on every continent and each new place offers a new palate, a new picture, and a new perspective. As I grow older, I embrace those opportunities and memories.

I can’t imagine having missed it all.  Nor can I imagine how Henry David Thoreau, and others like him, consider it useless.  To my mind, Hans Christian Andersen said it best and most succinctly: "To travel is to live."

                                                            # # #

Author note: This essay is adapted from one that appeared in Artscope Magazine, May 2025.

Elayne Clift travels from Brattleboro, Vt.  Her book “Around the World in 50 Years: Travel Tales of a Not So Innocent Abroad” was published by Braughler Books in 2019.

Baby Bribery: The Height of Hypocrisy

Remember the political phrase some years ago endorsed by Republicans who called themselves “the moral majority” while critics’ responded that they were neither? Or the Democratic crie de coeur that Republicans only cared about children from conception to birth?  Well, the time has come to recall those responses.

It’s clear that the Trump administration is embracing a pronatalist position taken straight out of the Hitler playbook. Adolf rewarded women who birthed lots of Aryan children, and Donald is now embracing the idea of incentivizing women to have at least six children.

At the same time as the president blathers on about “traditional family values,” he’s on a diabolical mission to convince women to have more babies – at least six of them. If they meet that goal (and what woman would want to?) he would reward them with a $5,000 “baby bonus” – get this – reserve some scholarships for mothers who are married with children.  But wait a minute: What mother of six would have the time or energy required in the marketplace, the academy, corporations, factories, farms or elsewhere other than the kitchen and laundry room. To top off this amazing offer, he would also give them “motherhood metals.”  Who could resist that?

To support baby making he would also bump up financial support for more IVF because he claims to be the “fertilization president” and the “king of IVF.”  This delusion at the same time that women are going to jail for miscarriage and dying from lack of pre-natal and birthing care.

The fact is that laws relating to miscarriage in many states have proliferated since Roe v. Wade was overturned, despite the statistic that about 30 to 50 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. That’s a lot of women who are at risk of criminal prosecution.

The hypocrisy doesn’t stop there. The faux IVF maven and his gang of goons are simultaneously slashing every program that helps children and their families, including cuts to maternal and child health programs, the Head Start program for low-income families, childcare support, paid maternity leave, and daycare, as well as Medicaid. It’s relatively easy to increase the fertility rate, but where does protecting our progeny fit into this Draconian plan?

So much for family values. In March the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program and cut more than $1 billion from two programs that help food banks and school meal programs, including $660 million for schoolchildren because, they said, it was “nonessential.” Hundreds of school systems and food banks are not facing rising food prices along with food insecurity, according to a .Stateline report.

As the 19th century clergyman, Frederick William Robertson, said, “There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy: Hypocrisy, fraud and tyranny. “

This White House fits that sentiment along with being amazingly inept in making moral decisions, understanding connections or caring about them, as it continues its insane tyranny over safety nets and vital resources.  Schools, for example, are taking a big hit when it comes to government support for all the babies it wants to see born.  Fewer financial resources for schools, from early education programs through higher education, impact how those babies will grow and develop in the best possible ways.

Minnesota based Walden University, which specializes in programs related to education, cites the results of fewer resources available to schools, especially those with ill-funded school budgets. Students in these schools don’t perform as well as they could because schools can’t buy updated textbooks in a variety of fields, and updated educational technology takes a hard hit when funds are cut, along with art supplies, extracurricular activities, and transportation. Larger classrooms stand to see dozens of students with one teacher, making individualized assistance unlikely.

As educator John Dewey noted, “Education is Life Itself.”  Would that this administration realized that and valued our children enough to act like grownups in the room.  

In the health sector, the impact of Medicaid cuts on children is alarming. They can lead to fewer providers, longer waiting times, and limited access to essential services, especially for special- needs children. Support services like school-based programs or important in-home care will be curtailed, and rural communities will be hit hard by cuts that lead to health disparities. Children with disabilities will suffer reduced interventions and therapies, which will compromise their physical development and mental health. These cuts are grounded in the fact that children are often overlooked in budget debates because they have no political voice.

As Nelson Mandela said, “History will judge us by the difference we make in the everyday life of children.”  And history will also judge this administration for its hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny along with its lack of compassion, humanity, and lack of morality.

As for bribes for babies, I wouldn’t start making any motherhood medals. 

                                                            # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

The Machinations Just Won't Quit

Lately, I’ve been worried about some new steps the Trump administration has in mind. There’s the gigantic Trojan horse airplane that the president is excited about. And the threat of millions of Americans losing Medicaid coverage as lawmakers consider changing the health care insurance program that benefits more than 70 million people nationwide, according to a Newsweek Report.

Republicans on the committee that oversees Medicaid had contemplated $800 billion in spending cuts, which largely affected Medicaid, so that the administration could increase tax breaks for the rich. The Congressional Budget Office estimated at the time that the bill could result in over 10 million people losing some coverage and more than seven million going without any insurance. Those most affected by Medicaid cuts include low-income individuals and families, the elderly, disabled, and immigrants. Amazingly, Republicans in Congress have argued for even larger cuts.

The original bill required that able-bodied adults work or volunteer for many hours a week. In a moment of generosity, the proposed bill would exempt pregnant women or anyone with a proven short-term hardship. There would also be new co-pays for those earning over a certain threshold. Medicaid recipients who make around $32,000 a year for a family of four would be required to pay $35 for some services.  That could mean a difficult decision when it’s time to buy groceries or your kids’ meds.

I’m also worried about a House bill that wants the Treasury Secretary to designate any nonprofit he choices a “terrorist supporting organization” without justification. Such nonprofit organizations would have their tax-exempt status removed without due process, according to the Americans Against Government Censorship.

As the AAGC notes, “no administration should be able to weaponize the government against their political opponents in a power grab [nor should] the federal government use its power to punish and attack any organization that stands in their way.”

In the first 100 days of his administration President Trump pursued an agenda aimed at silencing any organization that expressed views that were counter to his public policies. Churches, universities, government agencies and officials, law firms and media were subject to punishment because they spoke out against the administration’s agenda. The bullying of opponents was shocking, but it shouldn’t have been. It was all there, overtly or by inuendo in Project 2025.

There are close to two million nonprofit organizations based in the U.S. They include charities, private foundations and other types of NGOs that provide food assistance, medical care, disaster relief, educational resources, and more. If that law passes, every American would become vulnerable in a variety of ways should the multitude of programs, agencies, and funders of civil society and social justice organizations lose their tax-exempt status.

As the executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, put it, “It’s a sad day in this country when organizations that provide critical services to their communities are under attack from their government.” It’s also a sad time when a slew of executive orders and Draconian laws devised by ignorant, selfish people make others in all walks of life feel fearful, humiliated, insecure, ill, anxious and hopeless. 

Then birthright citizenship showed up on political radar screens. On Day One of his current presidency, Donald Trump followed up on his pledge to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. He signed an executive order that day. The problem is that only constitutional amendments, not executive orders or legislation, can change the Constitution.

According to the ACLU and other legal scholars the president’s order is clearly unconstitutional because it  violates the 14th Amendment, which states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” guaranteeing  that no politician can decide who among those born in our country is worthy of citizenship.

The issue loomed large recently when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments concerning Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship. The arguments weren’t about birthright citizenship per se. That issue in its entirety will be heard later. Instead, arguments were about the merits of the case with a focus on procedural questions. As MSNBC’s legal expert Lisa Rubin noted, the most significant moment in the hearing came when the Trump administration’s lawyer blew his case with an irrelevant statement to which Justice Amy Coney Barrett responded that it sounded like “a troubling sign of creeping authoritarianism.”

Now Attorney General Pam Bondi wants “subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to compel” reporters to reveal information about their sources. She has said that the Justice Department “will not tolerate disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies.” The Draconian act would overrule the PRESS Act, which had bipartisan support pre-Trump. It would have codified protections against subpoenas for reporters’ records if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hadn’t let the proposed Act die, according to a recent post on The Intercept.

It's obvious that further threatening legislation lies ahead. It will be up to the courts, public vigilance and protests, and pleas to Congress to end the dangerous dysfunction we are experiencing if we are to avoid the authoritarianism that already looms large.

                                                                        # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro Vermont.