The Demise of Education Priorities

“In America, one of its most characteristic and suggestive aspects is the recurring crisis in education that, during the last decade at least, has become a political problem of the first magnitude.” Philosopher and social critic Hannah Arendt wrote that in 1954 in an essay called “The Crisis in Education.”

She wasn’t the first to criticize educational failures and policies. Plato also pondered the place of education in society. In giving us the Socratic method which rests on asking questions that lead to enlightenment, he encouraged a view of education that goes beyond perception and opinions. In his famous “Allegory of the Cave” he focused on justice and morality.

Others throughout history like John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Mary McCleon Bethune, to name a few, are joined by contemporary advocates like Malala Yousafzai who works internationally for better educational systems that meet the needs of all students and learners. 

But none of them has faced what we are experiencing now when it comes to educational policy.

We are in our own “crisis in education” as the Trump administration continues to demolish the Department of Education.

In his campaign the president promised to abolish the Department and quickly appointed Linda McMahon, a billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, who has no background in education, to head the Department shutdown.  The agency’s layoffs have now reached at least 1,400.  And with the help of SCOTUS, which has allowed Trump and McMahon to continue dismantling the federal agency’s work, things are looking bad.

It should be noted that only Congress has the authority to close the Education Department, although some elected members of Congress have supported the aim to delegate programs to other governmental agencies. For example, Trump wanted to move student loan program to the Small Business Administration, but it is now expected to be in the Treasury Department. That would mean they would have to handle a $1.6 trillion portfolio affecting 43 million borrowers, among other things.

Further, the DOE is outsourcing several grantmaking programs for workforce training and adult education to the Department of Labor. And the agency plans to move special education and civil rights out of the Education Department. According to AP News, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services wilk move to the Department of Health and Human Services, which as we know is run by RFK, Jr. Advocates agree that “special education doesn’t belong in a health department that treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of differences in how children learn.” And the Office for Civil Rights will move to the Justice Department, despite any concern for justice there.

As both a teacher and a parent, I’m no stranger to what all of this will mean. It’s a sickening abrogation of human rights and social justice in our current government.  The consequences of all this will be unimaginably destructive and take a long time to overturn. It will hurt multitudes of people, including the disabled, people with special needs, those who identify as alternative genders or transgender, and those who are discriminated and bullied in schools because of their race or national origin.

Already parents of kids with disabilities, and their teachers, have had to wait for the DOE to process their complaints of bullying or other discrimination. As one mother put it, “It’s to the point that I don’t even check in anymore with the attorney.” She filed a complaint in the spring of 2024 with the Office for Civil Rights, reporting that her daughter was bullied because she wears hearing aids. The case is  still unresolved.

And the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Service has already shrunk by a third in the last two years, and the Office for Civil Rights is 40 percent smaller, while in the DOJ the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by 50 percent. 

These are staggering and deeply consequential reductions that we should all be concerned about. As Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president at the National Women’s Law Center notes, “Without enough staff and resources, students will face more barriers to educational opportunity and have fewer places to turn to when their rights are violated. This is part of a coordinated plan by the Trump administration to dismantle the federal government and roll back hard-won  civil rights protections.”

In her essay "The Crisis in Education" Hannah Arendt argued that the fundamental purpose of education was to introduce the young to the world so they can care for it and ultimately renew it. She believed that education is where society decides whether it loves the world enough to assume responsibility for it.

As the school year begins, we must all care for our communities, our kids, and our schools, especially after this nightmare ends. So too, as a society, we must love our country and its schools enough to revive our educational values and systems as we take responsibility for our collective future.  This is a fine time to start.

                                                                        # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Reclaiming Our Time and Treasure

There is a new urgency in the air and it’s palpable. Grounded in collective anxiety and a plea for a return to a civil society free of fear, oppression, oligarchs, and megalomaniacs who defy laws and ignore the Constitution. We’ve had enough of the dystopian nightmare propagated by an authoritarian regime rife with abuse and massive corruption. The threat of creeping totalitarianism is glaringly obvious, and we are waking up to what that means.

The difference between civil societies and our governance today couldn’t be starker. Civil societies don’t have their highest court tilt so far right that they treat their country’s highest leader like a king with absolute power.  They have humane policies grounded in social justice so that people have basic human rights. They pass laws to provide housing, universal healthcare, childcare, quality education, and other issues that are poverty driven.

Supreme Court Justic Sonia Sotomayer made this clear in her compelling dissent in the recent SCOTUS decision that gave our president outrageous power in what is supposedly a democracy. She noted that the president and the policy-making people behind him disregard the Constitution along with settled precedent.  (It should be noted that three Supreme Court justices appointed by the current president committed perjury in their confirmation hearings when they said they would adhere to precedent and then proceeded to ignore or reverse it.)

Here is part of what Justice Sotomayer wrote. “The Court gave the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted. … “It also means respecting precedent…out of a recognition that, whatever our confidence is in the theories of the present moment, the wisdom of our founding document does not belong to today’s Justices alone.”

One example of precedent that has been battered is the overturning of Roe v. Wade. What civilized nation arrests and jails women who have suffered a miscarriage or lets them die for lack of urgently needed medical care. What parliamentarian would think that women who have abortions should be jailed or executed, both of which some rightwing legislators in the U.S have done!

According to Pregnancy Justice US over 400 prosecutions of women have taken place since the fall of Roe v. Wade. Charges include child neglect, endangerment, violation of abuse laws, and substance abuse during pregnancy. Every one of those charged suffered arrest, physical and psychological trauma instead of receiving the care they needed.

Eugenics is also making a comeback here. It’s like Hitler’s plan to have a completely Aryan race, which resulted in the Holocaust, and was based on discrimination against people he thought were inferior and shouldn’t be allowed to procreate. That was the basis of eugenics in the early 20th century. Followers believed in “planned breeding and racial improvement.” It resulted in involuntary sterilization, segregation, isolation, poverty and the “final solution.”

The idea led to baby breeding among German women who were rewarded for having lots of pregnancies. Today, we are seeing pronatalist propaganda fostered by politicians, White Supremacists and Christian Nationals. A group of rightwing women recently held their annual “Leadership Summit” in which they proclaimed that all women need to “normalize liking husbands again.”  Their playbook is the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.  

How did we become a country that terrorizes and arrests thousands of innocent immigrants, legal residents, and citizens and physically, sexually and emotionally abuses them, deports them, and incarcerates them in our version of concentration camps, where they are separated from their children, denied healthcare, decent food, access to family, lawyers, or Congressional oversight. How civilized is that? These people have been called “vermin” and other ugly invectives by this administration which fails to understand how much immigrants contribute to our lives, our economy, and our cultural diversity. I suggest that those who are troubled by vermin need to look in their own closets.

Then there’s the issue of gun violence that just keeps on growing and shocking people who live in civil societies.  Recently the Supreme Court struck down a law in Hawaii that barred gun owners from carrying handguns in public places. On June 30th they agreed to decide whether assault-style weapons like AR-15s can be banned in response to mass shootings.

Gabby Gifford, who was shot in the head while campaigning for her Congressional seat several years ago, has declared gun violence an American crisis.  Her organizations website reports that 46,000 Americans die annually from gun violence. That’s 125 a day.  What civilized nation would have people advocating for guns on the streets and in public places.

Giffords puts it this way. “Gun violence has become an inescapable fact of American Life. While families and communities across the country are regularly torn apart by bullets, the burden isn’t spread equally, particularly when it comes to the daily drumbeat of gun violence.”

All of this and more is why we must reclaim our time and treasure and rejoin the civilized countries of the world whose values and policies are commendable, achievable, humane, and compassionate before it’s too late.  The time has come for us to recapture our better selves, and to restore our values which are demonstrated in personal acts, and policies, that bring back the history, meaning, and brilliance of the Constitution. 

We know what we must do come November.

An Epidemic of Evil

 On May 19th a pregnant woman and her four-year old son arrived at Dulles International Airport coming from Ghana., She had a valid tourist visa to bring her son to the U.S. for medical treatment, but something unexpected happened when they landed.  U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents questioned the purpose of her trip, and for unknown reasons, locked her and her son in a windowless room at the airport with only a single bed, toilet, and sink. They spent ten days there until a federal judge ordered they be released immediately, after ACLU intervened.

The ACLU lawyer said, “She’s just one of a number of pregnant people who’ve been detained in shocking numbers in the wake of President Trump’s executive order trying to end birthright citizenship.” In another tragic incident a woman who was being deported to Honduras pleaded with authorities to allow her toddler to come with her, but they refused.  That child ended up dead after being given to an abusive relative. There are many stories like this, and they speak directly to the abundant evil that has become endemic in this country, and elsewhere.

In another horrific example, there are several state legislators who have sponsored or supported bills and amendments to classify abortion as homicide.  Four of them are from southern states where some women who suffered miscarriages have been imprisoned for assumed abortions. Women whose pregnancies are non-viable are frequently forced to wait until they are critically ill or die before medical intervention.

The brutal actions of ICE and its colluders make that kind of cruelty clear, as the videos we see prove, including the murders of innocent people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Take what has been happening in so-called detention centers like Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where there is abundant evidence of abuse. When Rep. Dan Goldman was allowed to visit that dreadful place, he heard about worms and maggots in food, no clean drinking water, overflowing sewage, and reports of sexual abuse. It’s a common story in victim testimonies from all ICE facilities. One protester at Delaney said seven ambulances came to the facility in four hours, perhaps connected to the routine beating of detainees he cited.

“How can this many people work at this facility and watch what happens inside these walls and say nothing?”  he asked. It’s a good question and one that leads us to a larger discussion about the nature of evil and why it’s growing.

How indeed did so many men in high places involve themselves in Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrous cruelty and evil abuse of women and girls. Why don’t we know the full extent of his unimaginable crimes, and others like it. Why are judges allowing young sexual abusers to get away with their crimes? How are so many legislators allowing children diagnosed with cancer to suffer and die when ongoing scientific research is having an impact on incidence, prevalence and prevention of diseases that are on the brink of amelioration or cure for all of us? How does a government with bundles of money for personal gain and vanity projects do such things as ending food assistance, housing help, and access to healthcare?

White America has always had a predilection for doing evil things to certain groups of people. Slavery and the abuse suffered by Native Americans are just two examples. But the exacerbation of what we are witnessing now is stunning.

The propensity for evil is not just an American problem. We only need to witness the genocide happening at the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu in Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond. A recent New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof called “The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” based on survivor testimonies, reveals what happens to prisoners, male, female, or child, and it is unfathomable. Described as “utter savagery” in a United Nations report called “More Than a Human Can Bear” unthinkable depravity is cited. Just one example:  it exposes the use of “trained dogs for raping Palestinian prisoners.”

So what are we to make of such depravity and evil?  Are we mutating as a species devoid of humanity and compassion? Is political narcissism to blame? Is the Internet depersonalizing us?

The philosopher Hannah Ahrent, who coined the term “the banality of evil,” may help us deconstruct the preponderance of evil thoughts, proclivities, and actions.

Ahrendt attended the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. She was also one of the first people to discover what had happened in the camps, which she called “corpse factories.” When she watched the Nuremberg trials, she thought the Nazis had “exploded the limits of law,” adding, “We’re never going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle.”

Eichman, she said, was banal, pompous, thoughtless, and self-important (sound familiar?). He made the evil he perpetrated and symbolizes more difficult to counter, Ahrendt posited. Lyndsey Stonebridge, a professor of Humanities and Human rights in England, adds to that. She points out that Eichman was a lot like Trump. “He couldn’t grasp the world that was full of plural, different people, so he determined to eliminate certain peoples.” Ahrendt said that his thoughtless evil “got into culture and spread like fungus.”  

Ending the brutality we face as we try to rid ourselves of individual people and organized entities that choose to engage in evil acts won’t be easy, but it’s been done before. Perhaps in this moment the words of Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim, will guide us as we “hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected, victims are treated with compassion, not shamed, and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else.”   It’s a start.     

A Healthcare Deficit Looms Large

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”  Mahatma Ghandi said that. 

His words strike the heart of a question we need to be asking, and indeed demanding: Where is humanity in our current state of healthcare? In a time that lacks compassion and empathy that is an omission that is dangerous, and depraved, because it causes people to suffer and even die.

It should be clear that humanity in healthcare is essential to the quality of life as well as survival. Every one of us has a stake in this objective, which doesn’t ask much; it simply means offering respect, dignity, and help to people who are ill and need help. Humanity calls for caring about people’s cultures, values, lifestyles and lives, things the current and administration lacks. Simply put, a humanistic approach to patient care and people’s healthcare needs underscores the civility of a country and its leaders. It’s sad that we don’t have that right now.

Instead, we face shocking and terrifying cuts to healthcare agencies, organizations, and scientific research on the threshold of new treatments and survival possibilities. We also have curtailed programs that serve the less fortunate among us, discriminate against sectors of society, and ignore the fact that morbidity and mortality among Americans is going to soar because of the ignorance and cruelty of powerful but ignorant people.  (Do they really think they won’t receive a terminal diagnosis, or their kids won’t succumb to measles or other diseases, or the women they love won’t die for lack of reproductive healthcare?)

These statistics and facts speak for themselves.  About half of adults in this country can’t afford health care costs, with people of color and young adults along with the uninsured are more likely succumb to treatable maladies because they can’t afford needed care. People are being forced to skip or postpone seeking healthcare because of the cost. Prescription drugs also prevent about 43 percent of adults in the U.S. from taking their medication as prescribed. Others are in deep debt because of .medical bills.

According to a New York Times article last month by Dr. Zack Cooper, a physician and professor at the Yale School of Public Health, “premiums for a family health plan can exceed $27,00 a year even as patients routinely get care denied.”  This denial is related to insurers’ restrictions on care and hospital costs, Cooper said.

Interestingly, just after I read that article a physician I know shared something relevant with me. She works for a private organization that hires healthcare professionals to assess whether a diagnosis or procedure is warranted and should be paid for by insurers. She often feels that insurers should be paying at least part of a medical bill, but she and her colleagues are pressured to deny coverage.  This is what she told me.  “It’s a form of factory driven healthcare that is irrational and inhumane. In a way it feels like they are asking us to collaborate with Health Maintenance and Managed Care Organizations. It’s a kind of passive scam that is devoid of ethics and morality. It feels like coerced collaboration.”

In his NYT article, Dr. Cooper noted that insurance premiums have escalated exponentially since the year 2000 with hospital prices growing three times as fast as inflation and twice as fast as prescription drugs and doctor visit. He also stated that” hospital prices are so high because they have market power, which brings them more bargaining heft when they negotiate prices with insurers,” which he says are in the business of making money.

It’s blatantly obvious that healthcare has become a profit-making industry devoid of any semblance of humanity. The corporate mindset coupled with an alarming absence of morality, ethics and kindness has clearly violated the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm,” which profiteers and policymakers ignore and some providers overlook.

Luckily, there are physician writers and nurse poets, including Chekov, William Carlos Williams, Danielle Ofri, Abraham Verghese, Atul Gawande, Courtney Davis, and Judy Schaeffer, along with others whose work addresses humanity in healthcare in their work, and often focus on the doctor-patient relationship, emotional labor, and the art of medicine, bridging the gap between clinical data and patient experience. They emphasize empathy and the moral imperative of compassionate care.

Through their narratives, essays, stories and personal experience we are enlightened about the significance of humanity at the heart of healthcare.  Some doctors, like Daniel Ofri, teach medical students and they require that they read and discuss some of these authors and poets. That gives us hope that when these budding physicians and healthcare administrators rise to positions of authority, they will move us to a more humane future.

But right now, we need the courage to demand that those in governance grow a conscience, a heart, and a plan for healthcare that equals those in countries with universal healthcare as a human right, not a profitmaking outfit. 

As the Dalai Lama said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”  You might want to share that quote with your legislators.

                                                             # # #

 Elayne Clift has a masters degree in Health Communication and teaches a class on Humanity at the Heart of Healthcare.  

From Cutting Flowers for Mother's Day to Cutting Women in Science

As May was nearing an end, two ideas kept nagging me. One was the commercialization of Mother’s Day, which florists and greeting card companies love, and the other was the slashing of funds for science, which profoundly affects women scientists.  I kept thinking that there was a connection between the two and finally I got it.

First, it struck me as superficial, disingenuous and trivializing to wish moms “Happy Mother’s Day” once a year. Didn’t mothers deserve more than a bouquet or a sentimental card? What would really make them happy? How about childcare, reproductive healthcare, a good education for their kids, time off and a bit of help sometimes.

Even more importantly how about a few good supportive and sane policies vs. cuts to social services like Medicaid, food stamps, rental and heating assistance, WIC which provides supplemental nutrition for women, infants, and children. Temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) would be nice.  And what could honor mothers more than knowing that their kids had a safe place to go when they were working, or feeling their children were safe wherever they were. Is that really asking too much to offer as a gesture of respect in honor of motherhood?  

That led me on a search to find out more about Mother’s Day. What I found was surprising. It was Julia Ward Howe, 19th century writer, women’s rights advocate, and peace advocate who believed that Mother’s Day should be a call for women to engage in global policymaking. And wasn’t it time to honor women’s work and role in the family, community, and marketplace. So, Howe issued a Mother’s Day Proclamation after the Civil War that not only urged the creation of an international body of women who could find a way to avoid war but also a day to recognize the contributions of women every other day in the year.

With that I had an epiphany that led me to connecting Mother’s Day to what’s happening now to women scientists.

Stick with me as I share some facts about federal cuts to science and why they impact women’s lives, including mothers who work outside the home.

Some time ago DOGE eliminated at least $3 million from grant programs that would have improved women’s health, and supported survivors of domestic and gender-based violence. More targeted program cuts were aimed at women’s economic security which especially threatened women of color and other working women who are often heads of households. Eliminating relevant longitudinal studies that could have led to new ways to address those needs was alarming to the scientists doing the research.

DOGE also cancelled funding for lifesaving projects that involved pregnant women. For example, a research program studying racial and ethnic differences in maternal health and their relationship to hypertension disorders was cancelled. This could result in avoidable maternal deaths, particularly among certain populations.  According to scientists studying these programs and their benefits the cuts “will derail years of research progress on health issues that primarily affect women. DOGE has not only rolled back years if not  decades of progress.”

These dramatic cuts and cancellations didn’t simply put women in general at risk. They also affected women scientists whose research and studies involved myriad issues that impact a huge number of people. A recent paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science showed that women, especially those in the early stages of their careers, were disproportionately affected by terminations even though they receive less funding by NIH than men. On average, the report said, women had 58 percent of their grants terminated while men experienced 40 percent of their studies terminated. Sixty percent of terminated grants were led by women doctoral students or assistant professors. It’s important to note that women conducting  studies that were financed by training grants will suffer derailed careers in science just as they are beginning their careers.

In March this year an analysis of NIH funding changes in 2025 found that almost 2,300 active research grants were abruptly terminated which resulted in $2.5 billion dollars disrupting thousands of scientific projects. The report noted that women were disproportionately affected.

It’s important to know that the words “women”, “diversity” and “inclusion” have been banned by the Trump administration in federal funding, which along with obvious racism, have influenced who or what gets funded and who or what doesn't.

So, what’s the common denominator shared by Mother’s Day and cuts or cancellations in scientific research that has enormous consequences for women?   

The more I contemplated that question the clearer it became. Misogyny and sexism are a big part of our culture, like everywhere else, but we are suffering an administration that is so anti-women it sees women as nothing more than sex objects, servants, and incubators. We are “The Other” that threatens autocratic Handmaid’s men mightily. They are powerful but pathetic because they know women are powerful in different ways.  We are compassionate. We are nurturers. We are smart, capable, competent, and persistent.  What they have yet to learn is that we are here and we are not going away.  So when the powerful men who loathe women right now have disappeared, we will be there to shape a future they can’t even imagine.

                                                             # # #

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Living with a Chinese Curse

It is believed that the phrase “May you live in interesting times” originated in China. But it didn’t start there. It likely happened when a British diplomat in the 1930s described that time as an era of turbulence, danger, and chaotic change.

That certainly suggests our own time of danger and chaos, caused by a regime that can only be called dangerous, chaotic, and crazy. It’s an unprecedent and frightening time that belies our history, our Constitution, and threatens our future, as well as the world’s.

It’s a time when our president is so mentally deranged that he attacks the Pope, uses ugly profanity in public, spews extreme vitriol aimed at anyone he sees as a threat, defies the Congress and the courts, and advances emotional and physical violence against women, immigrants, children, peaceful protesters, and even U.S. citizens.  He has a compulsion for self-adulation, the latest being the building of a huge arc de ’Trump that looks like the Brandenburg Gate, and a portrait of himself as Jesus Christ. On and on it goes.

No wonder Representative Jaime Raskin has introduced a bill to remove the president under Section 4 of the 25th amendment, which already has support from numerous members of Congress who signed as co-sponsors when he threatened to destroy “a whole civilization” on Truth Social. The challenge is to get most of the president’s cabinet to declare him unfit and to have two-thirds of the House and Senate to agree. It’s a long shot and some have said it won’t happen till Hell freezes over.  But it seems to me that it’s beginning to look like Hell has already frozen over.

Rep. Raskin has already demanded that the White House physician conduct an immediate, comprehensive evaluation of the president’s cognitive fitness, with full public disclosure of the result.

The impacts of the president’s policies are Draconian.  For example, cutting the budget for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had profound consequences for healthcare globally. The agency provides clinical guidelines, monitors infectious disease outbreaks, supports health worker training, and deploys staff to combat infectious diseases. The CDC also works with other countries to stop threats at their source. According to the CDC cuts in resources and staff have resulted in the departure of over 30% of its workforce while significant budget cuts have eroded expertise in epidemiology, lab science, and communication, diminishing the nation’s ability to respond to emergencies and leading to fears of increased preventable disease.

Further, cuts in vaccine development, medical research that could reduce the mortality rates for cancers, chronic diseases, and dementia, as well as healthy longevity means that people will experience illnesses that could have been treated or cured, and many of them will die prematurely.

Here’s another important example. The Trump administration has resulted in the dismantling and weakening of numerous environmental protections and public health standards because the administration is promoting coal production and relaxing regulations for the fossil fuel industry.  Under the EPA Administrator deregulatory efforts are ensuring “regulatory relief” to businesses enthralled with profits at the expense of clean water and clean air. The agency is also repealing prior legal actions that regulated gas emissions from cars and trucks, as it reverses climate policies that were put in place to decrease air pollution.

Further, the EPA is removing protections for millions of acres of wetlands that were in place under the Clean Water Act. The list goes on. The Interior Department has begun weakening regulations that controlled mining and oil drilling, including removing protections in place in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental research is also threatened with dissolved funds. 

FEMA is also a disaster itself due to prioritizing corporate profits over public health. Originally intended to support state and local responses in the event of climate change induced disasters, which are occurring more frequently, the Natural Resources Defense Council point out that “This is not reform, it is sabotage. There will be ”more suffering.

And the Forest Service, which controls 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering 193 million acres, is at risk. In a New Yorker magazine story environmentalist Bill McKibben shared this: “Sound science is anathema to the Trump Administration.”  He cites the shutting of the Service’s nine regional offices and the removal of its headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Utah, where Senator Mike Lee wants to sell huge tracts of lands to developers.  “Gutting the Forest Service couldn’t come at a worse time,” McKibbens said. “This winter was the hottest ever recorded across the Western U.S. and that has left the mountains in the West, where Forest Service lands are primarily concentrated, with the smallest snowpacks in recorded history, which is linked to wildfire danger.”

There’s so much more one can cite, but here’s a final chilling one. At this writing, it seems a Supreme Court Justice may be retiring. That would give Donald Trump the chance to seat another conservative justice for a lifetime appointment.

If that doesn’t feel like a Chinese Curse, I don’t know what will. As a Chinese writer said in 1627, It might be "better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." 

                                                            # # #

Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro.

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.

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.

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