Coping with Internet and iPhone Aggravation

If you’re tired of being frustrated by less than user-friendly websites, you’re not alone. An increasing number of us are enraged as we wait for hours poised for online responses and viable actions or help, only to find patronizing “customer service” chatbots show up. There are dropped calls, links that don’t work, or hopes for a live agent who knows how to fix the problem or find a supervisor.

I decided to explore this problem while I was losing my mind waiting for someone to help me when my credit card website wouldn’t work as I tried to pay my balance on time. I had just had issues with an airline, a bank, and a donation site. But could I find a phone number or email address to talk to a corporate contact? Instead, I was provided with various help options that had no bearing on my problem.

In addition, Google, Zoom, and Squarespace, all of which I depend on, have changed their websites, instructions, and ability to access a live human being. It’s maddening to follow what they are asking me to do.  I’m not a website or computer Luddite but for God’s sake, “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it.”

My research revealed some interesting information. For example, as early as 2017 a survey reported that an increasing number of customers were complaining about the growing problems they were having trying to pay their bills, arrange appointments, understand dysfunctional instructions, or speak to a humana being. In that research survey 74 percent of 1,000 respondents reported experiencing significant problems.   And it’s only gotten worse over the last nine years.

The internet wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was based on systems working properly and on having highly trained and friendly human beings available when you needed technical help, information, and ways to address specific problems. Now friendly helpers are a thing of the past. They’ve been taken over by algorithms, financial incentives, AI, annoying options and ChatGPT.

As someone posted on Facebook recently, “By 2026, everything had become an app, a code, a portal. Yet the very people who built this country … now find themselves illiterate in their own homes. If booking a medical appointment or paying a bill requires the help of a child, then the system has failed.”

Here’s another post I saw on social media that resonated. “I don’t want to see technology evolve any more. I’m tired of needing an app. I don’t want to scan a QR code to see a menu. … I miss when self-checkout wasn’t becoming normal. I miss calling a business and speaking to an actual person. And I’m exhausted by everything requiring a password or a verification code.

Some people argue that the growing level of frustration and anger when Internet barriers occur has impacts on our mental health.  Many consumers are enraged and overwhelmed when they must fight against customer service hassles, billing mistakes, companies flawed websites, waiting online endlessly for an airline, cable company, or bank. As one advocate noted, “It feels like a war on consumers who feel like they’re being hit by a “tsunami of tricks and traps. It certainly feels like we’ve been jerked around.”

A piece in the Boston Globe recently nailed it when it described the frustration of holding on for an hour or more trying to fix a problem, searching for a document that needs to be uploaded, or begging an AI chatbot to understand what the problem is. “We’ve all been there,” it said.

Digital isolation is bad enough without dysfunctional Internet sites, referrals to apps, and technology failures. It’s exhausting navigating these issues or waiting endlessly for someone to be responsive. It’s elitist in many ways because ordinary people who lack human or financial resources that companies and organizations have must suffer the consequences or beg for help.

 As a National Institutes of Health paper on digital isolation points out, “Digital isolation represents a contemporary paradox in which increased connectivity through social media and digital technologies does not necessarily translate into improved psychological well-being.” That’s especially true for people who live alone or lack the necessary computer skills.

Perhaps the Internet could become more user friendly rather than making matters worse, if it prioritized simple web design, easy access to links and available technical assistance. It would also help if corporate America cared more about people over profit.  That’s not likely to happen anytime soon.  So, we are left with being challenged, frustrated, and sometimes enraged as our angst grows, our blood pressure rises, and we continually apologize for our rants when we can talk to a human being.  

Fortunately, the ubiquitous invasions of my cell phone and emails asking for political contributions are finite. I received more than a dozen pleas for money every hour as the midterm races tightened. They resorted to shaming me for not being a good democrat. They asked me for money in the guise of a survey, and they didn’t seem to know that I’d already contributed, often more than once, in which case I fire back that “I have only so much time, patience, and money.”

So, for now the best we can do is to hang in there, vent when we need to, take a walk, and know that we are not alone in trying to cope with technology’s pitfalls, corporate indifference, poor messages, and needing to ask kids to help. At least there’s that.

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Elayne Clift writes and rants from Brattleboro, Vt.

Bye Bye Baby and Good Luck Mom

There’s a maternal and neonatal crisis looming large across the country that isn’t getting much attention, even when the lack of access to healthcare is raised as a political issue. That may not be on your radar if you aren’t pregnant or planning to be pregnant, but for young couples who want to have a child it gives rise to anxiety and life altering decisions, given the fact that birthing centers and hospital labor and delivery units are rapidly closing. 

Between 2024 and now nearly a hundred hospital birthing units have closed in 35 states, along with dozens of freestanding birthing centers, and more places are closing their doors. In the New England states of Vermont and New Hampshire so-called “maternity deserts” are proliferating, in part because they are rural states.

In New Hampshire 11 hospital labor and delivery units, which accounted for nearly half of the state’s hospital birthing facilities, along with five freestanding birth centers, have been closed.

And in rural Texas 82 percent of people lack birthing facilities and 52 percent of women lack access to obstetric care. As Texas state representative Ann Johnson puts it, “It’s pretty hard to claim to be prolife when you can’t even give somebody an opportunity for healthcare at birth.”

Here are some other examples of the problem.  New Mexico’s longest operating freestanding birth center has closed, and Philadelphia shut down its 47-year-old birth center because of

operational issues while in Virginia rural facilities closures resulted in a third of the state’s counties becoming maternal care deserts. And California closed 19 centers over a four-year period due to economic strains vs patient care.

Vermont’s southern town of Brattleboro faces the closing of the Birthing Center in the community hospital in December. The hospital serves a rural population that includes 22 towns located across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts and routinely serves roughly 220 to 225 births per year, with 220 deliveries projected for 2027. Two other hospitals in Vermont have closed their midwifery led birthing centers already.

The estimated decline in numbers of births in Brattleboro and elsewhere reflects changing demographics. For example, young families who want to live in Vermont are considering other options in view of the projected closing of the Birthing Center.  The likely closing of the Center is also creating staff shortages because doctors, nurses, midwives and related professionals are leaving for positions elsewhere. The town’s economic consequences are obvious.

Part of the problem is that hospitals are facing the challenge of ensuring fiscal sustainability.  Lower reimbursement rates from Medicaid and insurers for women’s obstetric care along with rising operational costs and dropping fertility rates are legitimate concerns. But, as Katherine Bramhall, a midwife and owner of a Birth Center in Hanover, NH says, “There’s just fewer and fewer places for women to have babies safely without putting themselves or their babies at risk on the side of the road or at home unattended”.

As the National Health Law Program points out approximately two million “birthing people” live in maternity care deserts, and an additional 3.5 million live in counties with one or fewer hospital birth centers. They raise concerns over health equity issues, especially geographic isolation, poverty, transportation challenges, including long drives to access care, and risk management. They reveal the disproportionality that impacts people of color and indigenous communities who often risk adverse birth experiences due to the lack of pregnancy care and racism. Thus, “the urgency of maternity wing closures cannot be  overstated.”

Corina Tennant, the chief of OB-GYN at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, who partners with a midwifery and medical practice affiliated with the hospital, shared several examples of her professional birth experiences with Vermont Digger in an interview about the possible closure of the Birth Center. What she shared was compelling. For instance, she had delivered a baby at 23 weeks because the mother was too unstable to transfer, and she also treated a home birth patient who arrived at the hospital hemorrhaging and in shock. Had she not made it to the hospital she would have likely died, she reported.

I share this because it puts a human face on the issue. As a former volunteer doula at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, I joined the opposition to closing the exceptional Birthing Center. I wrote to every state agency involved in healthcare financing, my state and national political representatives, and the Governor.

The only reply I received was from the governor’s office. It was appalling. I was deeply offended by the lack of compassion for birthing mothers, respect for the amazing healthcare providers that supported them, and the total ignorance of what labor and delivery entails even if all goes well.  But I was outraged by the claim that laboring women would not have to travel more than 60 minutes to find another facility. (Where might that be?) I was enraged when the response suggested they could go to the Emergency Room. Really? The ER is overloaded and chaotic at best, and lacks trained birth professionals, an incubator, or an operating room should something go wrong.

Corina Tennant has her finger on the bottom line. “The question is not whether we can afford to keep the Birthing Center open – It is whether we can afford to close it.” That’s true across the country. The question is do decisionmakers understand the consequences of maternity desserts and do they have the political will to support birthing mothers and keep them alive.

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Author note: Brattleboro Memorial Hospital’s Board has voted to keep the Birthing Center open following community pressure

How Cornell Became the Poster Child for Institutional Sexism and Misogyny

It started two years ago after a fraternity party at the esteemed Cornell University in Ithaca, NY when a sophomore, now known as Jane Doe, was surfing the internet and saw a post that read, “I hear that [the fraternity called Chi Phi] have been doing hell Gang Banging. They do drugs and gang raped a sophomore.”

Thus began a huge crisis for the university as the country was horrified and the news went viral, and drew international attention because Doe decided to reveal what happened to her two years ago. Cornell was faced with dealing with allegations that seven fraternity members had sexually assaulted a student and coerced her to take a powerful drug.

Doe had gone to the campus police who failed to take the case to the District Attorney.  At that point New York Governor Kathy Hochul had had enough. “In what world would police not elevate allegations of a rape to the DA,” she demanded. Not long afterwards she appointed New York Attorney General Leticia James to conduct an independent investigation.

It wasn’t long before the district attorney in Tompkins County, NY, who had failed to seriously assess her complaint was forced to resign.  By then Doe then had filed a complaint that prompted several hearings by Cornell’s Title IX committee, which is meant to ensure compliance with federal civil rights law.

Things escalated from there. Doe filed a lawsuit against the seven men, three of whom hired lawyers who declined to bring criminal charges. That’s when the situation got worse.  Here was a district attorney refusing to investigate further, even when more evidence was showing up, and several lawyers were circling the wagons in solidarity.

Then the president of the university made a trivializing statement that was a travesty. “What happened to Jane Doe is ‘deeply disturbing,’ he said, and would “weigh heavily on our community for years to come.  All that mattered to him was Cornell’s reputation and recruitment. “My heart aches when I think of what she experienced, he continued.” Really? How patronizing and paternalistic can you get? He also moaned about the “troubling issues about sexual assault and dehumanization.” But not a word about Doe’s dehumanization or the more than 50 frat boys that posted messages like this when Doe was being assaulted: “Free pussy,” Shop still open?”

Not a word of apology or responsibility to Jane Doe or the campus community. And not an ounce of reflection about the epidemic and endemic problem of what is happening on college campuses all over this country and how it is encouraged by the Greek system. Not a whisper of the sexism it fosters that allows frat boys to laugh about sexually abusing, drugging, and raping campus women.

According to a report in the Washington Post incidents at Cornell are more likely to be reported but less likely to result in serious discipline (than writing essays) when compared to NY state figures. Two of the 7 perpetrators are still attending classes and none has been charged with a crime.

Here’s the reality. The Greek system is a mafia of misogyny and a breeding ground for the brutality of women, as well as a training stop for bad boys who will live in solidarity with bad men. No squealing.  The Brotherhood never outs a brother.  Frat houses are nothing more than big locker rooms where guys get off on dreaming up ways to diminish, trivialize, fantasize, sexualize, objectify, and yes, treat women like crap. They should be abolished on every single college or university campus.  Male students should come to university to study, learn, mature and learn to be good men. That should be the goal of administrators, faculty, and parents. Instead, if young men live in Greek fraternities, they will be unlikely to consider the gift of an education, the purpose of being there, and the contributions women make on campus and society. 

Here’s a quote from a Cornell University student who is one of the good guys.  “The case surrounding the Cornell 7 is as lurid at it gets. Whether these men face prosecution or not it won’t change the structural issue with Greek life…. This putrid treatment of women didn’t originate in this house. It is a culture created over years of ‘tradition’ and it is what fraternities are built to produce.”

Sexual abuse of women on college campuses is an urgent issue. Calls to the national sexual assault hotline run by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National (RAINN) have increased more than 80 percent since the news about Doe’s lawsuit.

Yet Cornell’s response to this crisis has left students, faculty, and some administrators feeling betrayed as frustration with the lack of accountability and action frustrates them to point of massive demonstrations and calls for the president to resign. According to the president of the Cornell chapter of the American Association of University Professor, David Bateman told CNN that “there’s been a real sense of frustration with university communications, that they are just being reactive and at no point has there been a palpable sense of concern for the students.

Despite Cornell hiring former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates who worked in the Obama

Administration to conduct an independent investigation, protests are growing at Cornell and elsewhere about sexual assaults against women. That should happen everywhere when one in five women have experienced rape, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Does Cornell have the guts to shut down their frat houses? Do other places of “higher learning” have the will to do that?

Welcome to the New Gilded Age

As the midterm elections draw closer, it’s déjà vu all over again. The robber barons are back big time. The wealthy have their mansions in the Hamptons and their urban pied-à-terre in New York instead of Newport. Their yachts are staffed while rivers of money flow from the coffers of billionaires who escape paying taxes and offer their obscene wealth in exchange for political favor and power. Clearly, we are once again a nation of prospering oligarchs and exploited paupers.

The glittering Gilded Age that reached its apex between 1880 and 1920 was a golden era of opulent architecture, extravagant fashion, expensive art, and expansive parties. Built on the economic growth that occurred following the Civil War and Reconstruction businessmen and bankers made out like bandits by investing in railroads, factories, and various industries that produced the raw materials needed for the development of innovative inventions that enabled mass production.

That led to “conspicuous consumption,” a term coined by a social critic at the time.  Mark Twain, who dubbed the era the “Gilded Age,” was among other critics troubled by the growing disparity between social classes.

While some in the monied class applied their wealth to building libraries, museums and public improvements in large cities which often displayed their names, they overlooked the dark side of the survival needs of those on the other end of the social and economic spectrum. They ignored the exploitation of immigrant workers. This time around we just abuse and deport them.

The Vanderbilts, Astors, and Carnegies looked the other way, dismissing life in the tenements of New York City and factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where a 1911 fire killed 146 trapped women workers. Journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis brought the reality of these travesties to light in stark photographs of slums, schools, factories, and more in his collection, How the Other Half Lives, housed at the Library of Congress.

Among today’s most recognized robber barons are the wealthiest and most morally corrupt men in America. Their enormous wealth and lack of social conscience make their predecessors seem tame. Among them are Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the entire Trump family. 

These oligarchs, and others like them, are wedded to power, prestige, and political influence. That makes them dangerous in ways that their forerunners were not, especially in a time of autocracy, patronage, and pathology. We are seeing this play out in an environment of massive corruption, chaos, and craziness as we face the imminent midterm election.

The onerous possibility of fascist behavior, massive exclusion, violence, and denial of our Constitutional and civic rights is deeply alarming. We are threatened by a regime that has one goal, and that is absolute power for those who are predominantly white, wealthy, male and racist, along with being threatened by diversity and competition.

Oh, for another Ida Tarbell. (Carol Leuning, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Maggie Haberman, co-author of Regime Change, are up there with her exposing the machinations of the Trump administration).

Tarbell was an investigative journalist who was called a muckraker when she took down John D. Rockefeller and his oil company in 1904. She famously said, “Very often people who admit the facts, are willing to…employ force and fraud to secure [their] ends…by declaring, ‘It’s business,’ meaning ‘business’ has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, and special privileges. It is a common enough thing to hear men arguing that the ordinary laws of morality do not apply in business.” (The History of the Standard Oil Company)

In our current Gilden Age we are being led into a different kind of conspicuous consumption. It’s one that consumes lies and clings to false narratives while ignoring history, facts, and good governance.

It overlooks social justice issues, slashes healthcare for everyone, ignores the needs of children, pregnant women, elders, the disabled, and those in need of disaster relief, clean water, and safe food. It denies Americans the rights guaranteed in the Constitution, most notably in the First Amendment which ensures freedom of speech, religion, peaceful assembly, and a free press.

 The fourth amendment stops the government from doing unreasonable searches and seizures of personal property and the sixth amendment guarantees the right to a fast and public trial by an impartial jury and the right to a lawyer.

These critical rights are ignored by those in power in our new Gilden Age while budgets are aimed at keeping tax free elites in their majestic mansions, boardrooms, and businesses in lieu of providing adequate housing, better schools, accessible healthcare and vital safety nets. It allows food and water to be contaminated because the ruling class doesn’t have to eat or drink what the lower classes do. It returns women to the Victorian age and abuses all the ‘Others’ amongst us. It is positively Dickensian.

Today’s robber barons and their elite political allies not only steal dignity and hope; they put us at great risk and conspire against anything that is fair and forward thinking while serving their own selfish purposes.  As Eugene Debs put it during the original Gilded Age, “"The time has come to regenerate society [while] we are on the eve of universal change."

Mark Twain and Ida Tarbell would clearly agree.

Book Bans and Museum Myths

 Along with other shocks that are bombarding us daily while the current regime thrives on cuts, insults, inaccuracies, and political power grabs, we are faced with some cuts that we should be paying attention to and resisting. Those cuts are aimed at our culture as a national community, our legitimate history, and our beloved literature.

Many of us grew up loving books like Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, the Dr. Seuss classics, Charlottes’s Web, and Wrinkle in Time, along with Katherine Patterson’s Young Adult stories. These books for children, and many others, are now banned in various venues, sometimes for ridiculous reasons.

Charlotte’s Web was apparently removed because it referred to death and talking animals who had interesting things to say. A Wrinkle in Time was taken off shelves because it “opposed Christian belief,” according to censors. Other books for young adults used profanity, or supported kids who had same sex parents, or told stories of people of color who had overcome prejudice, or had different cultural practices than white Americans. Organizations like Pen America who track such things have amazing lists of what has been culled for youth readers.

Censorship is not new, but it is escalating and mutating. PEN America found that more than 10,000 books had been banned during the 2023 – 2024 school year that led to more than 4,000 titles being removed. Most of those books were for young adult titles, and for picture books for young readers.

“Book bans are a bellwether for rising educational censorship,” Pen America says.  They also reveal a range of venues that are experiencing censorship, including “a range of institutions, including public libraries, colleges and universities. The policy changes…are designed to suppress education about certain viewpoints, identities, and histories,” especially if they concern people of color, LGBTQ people and sex. “This broad campaign uses falsehoods, fear, and hatred to dehumanize, dismiss, and diminish important voices in the public sphere, reshaping American public education.”

In 2025 the American Library Association tracked 4,2335 titles that were challenged. That was the second highest ever documented by the organization. And during National Library Week in April this year, ALA released data documenting attempts to censor books and materials in public schools, and  academic libraries.

Censoring literature for adults has happened throughout history and masterpieces have been banned for various reasons. In recent times classic works of literature have amazingly been banned. Among them are Lolita, because of perceived obscenity, and perversion, and The Grapes of Wrath for “communist” sympathies and alleged obscenity, according to PEN America. So too has Beloved, by Toni Morrison, because of its depictions of slavery and sexual content.

Since our president returned to office, adult literary works have been banned or removed via federal directives, including executive orders. The Handmaid’s Tale was widely banned for its perceived political themes and exposure to patriarchal governance.  Literary works have faced intensive censorship. Among them are To Kill a Mockingbird, and 1984, for explicit political context, and socialist themes.

But books are not the only thing that the Trump regime insists need to be controlled.  Museums are taking big hits too. Since Mr. Trump was elected for a second time his administration has repeated a narrative that claims museums are “centers of ‘woke’ activism and anti-American information.

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. has come under fire, along with its Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch, and other staff. According to the Yale Law Journal the president “has accused the Institution of ‘historical revision’ by portraying the nation as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

Even an exhibition honoring Dr. Anthony Fauci’s career was maligned in a White House newsletter claiming that the exhibit about the revered doctor was an example of the Smithsonian “rewriting our Nation’s history.” Other exhibits have been taken down if they are deemed to “divide Americans based on “race or ideology.”

The Smithsonian is not the only cultural institution to be targeted since Trump’s second term. Since the president has been in office again there has been an excessive focus on slavery and an improper ideology review. Exhibitions that share major events and eras in American history have become subject to executive orders that eliminate place names, signage, and photographs, denying us a truthful history aimed at undermining democracy’s values. It’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

As George Orwell warned us in 1984, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

The National Coalition Against Censorship expressed outrage when a White House report attacked the Smithsonian, citing its threat to the independence of the 21 museums that make up the Smithsonian, citing its threat to free expression in the United States. Lee Rowland, executive director of the Coalition, stated that “the government’s attempts to strong arm a revered private institution violates the values of open discourse and our First Amendment. It is deeply un-American.”

On July 4th as we celebrated our 250th anniversary another White House report called “Saving America’s Story” condemned the Smithsonian for “trading settled truths and basic history for political activism and division,” as a July New York Times story reported, citing the accusation that the Smithsonian fosters “anti-white activism, supporting ‘illegal aliens,’ and embracing transgender people.” There you have it in a nutshell.  We must bring back books, autonomous museums, truthful history and diverse cultures before it’s too late.

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.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Gift of Friendship

They sat on the steps of their cabin, two teenage girls, long into the night. It began as a camp conversation and quickly metamorphosed as they began their journey toward becoming best friends. The friendship grew and grew as they became BFFs over the years, like a perennial plant that blossoms in vibrant colors repeatedly over time.

Nurturing each other as they matured, nuanced thoughts found solace in the face of sadness, and joy too, as they explored their lives together, reflectively and with reciprocal respect, as their individual journeys proceeded, often on different paths. Steady and reliable over decades, like the sands in the hourglass of time, they are reminded still of the gift and power of friendship that make us glad to be alive.

I was one of those girls.

Recently I suddenly lost another close friend with whom I’ve had the glorious gift of female friendship for over four decades. She was one of those people you can’t imagine not being there, on the other end of a phone call, a trip, a crisis, a joke, a call for help or to share a milestone.

My memories of this friend drift back like colorful autumn leaves falling gracefully. They are precious. With age, our friendship became a treat, like a letter from an old friend makes us happy. Cherishing the present enhanced our daily lives as we contemplated what really matters. Sharing some of those epiphanies was a gift. They shaped the lives we’ve lived and helped make us who are. For that, I am forever grateful that Eileen was another soul sister. I miss her terribly.

The poet Rumi wrote that “A true friend is like a mirror, reflecting our souls back to us, reminding us of who we truly are.”  That speaks to me because of the many gifts of friendship I’ve been blessed to experience.

 Here’s another poet, Freya Manfred, whose words ring true to me too. “Friends are a steady spring rain, or late summer sunshine edging into fall, or frosted leaves along a snowy path—a voice for all seasons saying, I know who you are.”

 Female friendships sustain us, give us pleasure, a shoulder to cry on, and a way to process life’s events along with our personal experiences.  Our friendships are especially wonderful in ways that male bonding doesn’t equal. When I was first in a women’s group that met regularly my husband asked me once: “What do you do there?”  I told him we talk, share updates, ask for advice, laugh, and shore up anyone who is struggling with some aspect of their life. “But what do you DO there,” he asked again. “I think I’m missing something, he added. “I wish men could do that.”

 Differences between female and male groups are interesting.  A groundbreaking UCLA “Study on Friendship Among Women” conducted last year shared what researchers have learned about the benefits of female friendships. One study found that women who had the most friends over several years reduced their risk of death by more than 60%. A notable study conducted at the Harvard Medical School reported that “the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life.” The researchers concluded that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to [women’s] health as smoking or carrying extra weight.

  An article in Psychology Today a few years ago noted that in contrast to female friendships “male friendships are ‘side by side,’ and often built on shared activities, low-maintenance communication, and unspoken loyalty. In contrast, female friendships are typically ‘face-to-face,’ characterized by deep emotional intimacy, frequent verbal support, and a strong focus on processing personal lives together.” The article points out that men bond through shared experiences about work life, hobbies, and physicality, while women bond through intimate conversation, empathy, and emotional connection. And while men often gather less frequently, females get together frequently or regularly predicated on current needs and mutual interests that call for intimate conversation and emotional connection.

 For both men and women, I think Anais Nin, writing in her diary, hit the nail on the head. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world order is born.”

 I hope each of us has, or finds, the gracious gift of friendship that comforts us, expands our lives, accepts our truths, shares our laughter, and warm our souls. Bon Voyage!

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

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.

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 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." 

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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.”

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Elayne Clift 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.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Looking Back in Gratitude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

Baby Bribery: The Height of Hypocrisy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

The Power and Promise of Resistance

It’s become clear that the time to act against political evil is now because this is an extraordinary moment in our history: We stand to lose the democracy we have taken for granted. Luckily, we are not new to resistance. We’ve done it before, and we’ve learned lessons from the past. But there are new lessons to be learned.

As Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard, points out, we have a history of resisting authoritarianism. Pro-independence colonists organized campaigns refusing to buy British goods and refused to abide by laws that required colonists to export raw materials to Britain. They defied other orders from Britain when they mounted the Boston Tea Party and undertook other  rebellious acts

More recently we have realized success by resisting modern travesties. The civil rights movement achieved desegregation with noncooperation campaigns like the Montgomery bus boycotts, lunch counter sit-ins, strikes, business boycotts, marches, demonstrations and the power of Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratory along with legal action. The women’s movement of the 1960s that continues today changed social norms and misogynist legislation, and organized resistance helped end the Vietnam War.

Lessons from the past are instructive. For example, Plato wrote that Socrates risked “all consequences in preference to becoming a partner in their iniquitous deeds.” Perhaps that inspired him to write The Republic in 380 BC in which he envisioned a just society in which “The best and most just of all rulers are those who are most reluctant to govern, while the worst and most unjust are those who are most eager. “

            Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata, a play in which the women of Athens occupied the Acropolis and went on a sex strike until the men agreed to make peace. Lysistrata stated that even if I was born a woman, don't hold it against me if I manage to suggest something better than what we've got now."

             Gandhi’s Quit India campaign, a unifying rallying cry for civil disobedience spread quickly and culminated in his 1930 Salt March which inspired the march on Washington in 1963 and the Selma to Montgomery march two years later. “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt”, King wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which included his famous statement that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

             There are many ways to resist, and literature, music, and art have played their part. A strong artistic protest against injustice occurred in the Baker Library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH in the 1920s when Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco painted frescoes that depict the history of the American continent from the immigration of native peoples in prehistoric times to the arrival of the Europeans and their impact on native civilization.  Diego Rivera also used murals as a way to resist tyranny.  He called Orozco the conscience of his generation because of his intentional speaking out about things without fear of the consequences.  

            Music also rails against injustice. The Beatles, Arlo Guthrie, Helen Reddy, and many more recognized the importance of resistance through protest songs which still resonate today.

              American writers wrote books of resistance about political and social issues, mobilizing public opinion, advocating for the persecuted and marginalized, celebrating resisters, making space for direct action, aimed at a way forward. Protest literature made its mark with books like John Hersey's Hiroshima, a masterful anti-war book. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring woke people up to environmental issues, and James Baldwin’s essays in The Fire Next Time explored the American civil rights movement while Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee chronicled the violence of America's systemic destruction of Native America’s indigenous peoples and their culture.

            This cultural context is enlightening but as Erica Chenoweth points out “today’s political terrain calls for a more muscular movement strategy” centered on economic resistance given that our future elections are at risk. She agrees with other strategists that withholding labor and purchasing power along with strikes or slowdowns, are both effective methods of resistance.

I personally advocate for a national strike day, and a Project 2028 document (which needn’t be 900 pages long) that blasts Project 2025 and states specifically what new leadership would do to roll back Trump travesties and makes clear what antidotes will restore civil and human rights.

Another resistance tool for pressuring policy makers is employing a proven communication strategy aimed at raising awareness, increasing knowledge of what’s at stake, addressing attitudes, practices and beliefs and conveying a visionary, achievable future. Such a strategy calls for acting vs. reacting and focusing on “target audiences” by meeting them where they are and hearing what they say and think.

When stories are localized and opinion leaders and trusted change agents are in partnership with the media the results can be amazing.  I know because I worked internationally on a successful communication project that involved media advocacy methods vs. political public relations. It saved lives. Sadly, our politicians have not realized the potential and efficacy of well-researched and designed messages that rely on multiple ways to convey information and inspire action.

Add that to the mix and Erica Chenweth could be right. “Americans seem to be rediscovering the art, science, and potency of noncooperation, combined with a robust protest capacity and legal action, [that suggests] resistance against Trump’s agenda in America is not only alive and well. It is savvy, diversifying and probably just getting started.”

Let’s hope she’s right.

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

The Demise of Education is a Looming Catastrophe

It’s happening slowly but the consequences will be stunning. From pre-school to elementary and high school to higher education we stand to lose generations of youth and emerging adults who will have been denied their right to accessible, quality education that fosters critical thinking, higher learning, and skills that will allow them to be valuable members of society no matter what they choose to undertake as adults in the workforce.

They may want to be tradespeople, future teachers, scientists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, business owners, and more, but no matter what level they have achieved in school during the Trump administration their educational growth will not be met without a Department of Education. Their futures (and ours) will be compromised and stifled by the myopic, unformed policies promulgated by ignorant sycophants who don’t value education or expertise and fail to understand the importance of quality educated citizens if a nation is to thrive.

What we are facing is a frontal assault on excellence in education that will have higher social costs than we can imagine. We will have forfeited the “American exceptionalism” that many of us like to claim because curiosity and creativity will be absent from curricula.

 Right wing authoritarianism, couple with sheer stupidity, will mean no more excellent faculty at every level who leave the profession because they fear what they say, write, or say will be cause for dismissal. No longer will there be truthful historical context, great literature, and Socratic challenges upon which to build. The truths we tell our children and the ways we help them develop as competent, caring adults will disappear. Bullying will grow bigger while brains shrink, along with our values, compassion and sensitivity toward others because they are things we also learn in school.

Consider what an education department does.  It manages over a trillion dollars of student loan debt and oversees the Pell Grant that provides aid to students below a certain income. It also administers student aid which enables universities to offer financial aid. Its Office for Civil Rights conducts investigations and issues guidance on how civil rights laws should be applied and tracks a database that shows disparities in resources, course access, and discipline for students of color and lower socioeconomic groups.

But the Trump administration has instructed the office to prioritize complaints of antisemitism and has opened investigations that relate to transgender rights. Much of the department’s money for K-12 schools is allocated to large federal programs for low-income schools and disabled individuals.

The Trump administration has also slashed funding that colleges and universities depend on including grants and contracts that support research being conducted in these venues. These cuts result in researchers being fired, and fewer Ph.D. students being accepted at colleges and universities. This impacts highly motivated and competent immigrants who want to advance their scientific training in the United States and who contribute enormously to research and innovation in all fields.

The withdrawal of grants and contracts normally provided to places of higher learning along with targeting schools over antisemitism and diversity initiatives is why so many colleges and university have stopped student organizations and pro-Palestinian protests and have started violating First Amendment rights of free speech and peaceful assembly.

It’s sickening to see places that were once revered as bastions of growth, academic distinction, personal achievement, and logical thinking fold. Universities have always been the reservoirs of knowledge, discourse, increased insight, and realized aspirations. Now they aren’t playing that role because they are being silenced, made fearful and irrelevant, while bowing to power instead of upholding principles that were formerly embraced as guides to learning since the days of ancient places of learning.

At lower levels of education, teachers’ responses to what is happening as a result of the administration’s attitude toward the closing of the Department of Education are telling. In a survey by PBS News Hour in February respondents made clear what’s at stake.

They are worried about the elimination of special education and disability services because of teacher cuts or resignations which will result in larger classes and no accommodation for various learning needs. Rural schools will be among the hardest hit schools. Many will close or consolidate, and teachers will likely be less qualified.

One respondent noted that “the loss of DOE will be predominantly felt in all our programs designed to help economically disadvantaged students and families…it will be like going back in time to the 1960s, when children with learning differences and challenging behaviors were not entitled to an education at all.” Funding for computers, lab equipment and other learning tools will not be funded, nor will technical and training support for teachers exist. Graduate programs  will end.

Linda McMahon, who has no relevant credentials to bring to bring to her job as head of the Education Department, as long as it lasts. She has called her “final mission” to be eliminating what she sees as bureaucratic bloat. She wants to turn the agency’s authority to the states, and we all know how block grants turned out.  If you lived in some states, you were definitely screwed. While the elimination of the department requires an act of Congress, the show of ring-kissing at the State of the Union speech made clear that the department is in very deep trouble. 

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand what’s at stake here, whether you are a student, a parent, an educator, a policymaker, or a sensible, compassionate human being.  We cannot let this stand. Make sure your legislators know that.

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

The Shock and Awe of Immigrant Deportations

They left Colombia to escape violence hoping to legally apply for asylum in the United States. Tthey were among the first to be deported by the Trump administration. It happened after five flights returned hundreds of Colombian migrants to their home country in the waning days of January, the Washington Post reported on Instagram.

As the new administration got into full swing, applying for asylum instantly became increasingly difficult. One way to halt applications was cutting off established and future appointments with CBP One, a mobile app that offered migrants a legal pathway to apply. Without that option still available, the Colombian family turned themselves in at the border hoping they could keep their scheduled appointment. Within days they were deported.

Another family, profiled on Instagram by Occupy Democrats last month involved three generations, a three-year-old child, her mother, and her grandmother, all American citizens from Puerto Rico who spoke fluent English when they were shopping in a Milwaukee store. Denied the chance to talk to an official they were taken to a detention center where the child was separated from her mother. When presented with birth certificates an officer released them.

An immigrant daughter who graduated from an Ivy League college and later earned a law degree, told a cable TV reporter that she received a call to bring her father to a government office because his green card was pending. He had lived in the U.S. for dozens of years, worked and paid taxes, and never been in trouble with the law so she had no reason to think he would encounter difficulties. But upon arrival the daughter was told to leave the room. When she refused, security escorted her out. When she returned, her father was gone – deported. 

Errors, cruel separations, and  entrapment is happening in many places. Children are separated from their mothers. People are followed home in their cars by ICE, identified perhaps by a woman wearing hijab or a dark-skinned man spotted in a grocery store. People who contribute to their communities, are vital to our economy, and never disobey the law are dragged away in front of their families. Many are victims of mistaken identity. Stories like these vary but they are similarly painful, heartbreaking and grievous.

Physician-writer Danielle Ofri, writing in The New York Times just after the January election, said that “Doctors and nurses [who are immigrants] should get ready for mass deportations. Patients are scared too. One patient who had multiple chronic health issues told Ofri that she was afraid of being picked up because she would not be allowed to take her medications “in the immigration camps.” She had stopped coming to the hospital for checkups because she was “scared ICE will be in train stations and bus stops.”

As horror stories mount individuals and families are going into hiding, clinging to their children who no longer go to school and who can’t seek healthcare. The price of eggs doesn’t compare to that kind of trauma.

Yet the Trump administration continues to cling to ideas that are built on myth, assumptions, stereotyping, racism and an appalling lack of understanding about what will happen if millions of hardworking, productive, honest, skilled and unskilled workers are forced out of the country.

Historical context is called for here. In 1980 Congress passed the Refuge Act which meant that people claiming political asylum had to meet a set of requirements to qualify for refuge or asylum.  But Ronald Reagan chose to view people fleeing political violence in Latin American as economic migrants, a designation that caused many applicants to be disqualified for asylum.

At about that time the government began resisting the sanctuary movement, especially in places of worship. In 1984 the Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, launched a full-scale investigation into the sanctuary movement and its leaders. Undercover agents were employed to collect evidence that religion was being used as a covert way to push a radical political agenda and to thus undermine immigration laws.

Soon, leaders of the sanctuary movement were charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to violate federal law. Not long afterwards, sanctuaries began spreading from churches to college campuses, local legislative bodies and state level protections and laws.

Now Donald Trump insists that sanctuary cities are havens of crime so overrun by dangerous immigrants that he needs to have an army of agents like ICE, the National Guard, and the military to control a plague of epic proportions perpetrated by people of color, poor people who have suffered unimaginable violence and persecution. That, of course, demands an expansion of “detention centers” which are, in reality, concentration camps where innocent people and families can languish for years.

“Many of these deportations threaten a range of fundamental human rights including the right to family unity, the right to seek asylum from persecution, the right to humane treatment in detention, the right to due process, and the rights of children,” Human Rights Watch points out.

These rights are being denied by an administration that is hell-bent on making America white again, run by cowards and oligarchs who suck up to and financially support a wannabe lifetime dictator.  But as Rebecca Solnit wrote in The Guardian, “The more we stand up, the harder it is for this authoritarian agenda to succeed, and the more uncomfortable we make it for those going along with the lies and cruelty, the harder it will be to persecute any single person who says what’s being done to immigrants is terrorism.

 Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt. 

Welcome to the Gilded Age

It’s déjà vu all over again. The robber barons are back. The wealthy have their cottages by the sea in the Hamptons, in international mansions, and at Mara Lago instead of Newport. Their yachts are shining and staffed while rivers of money flow from the coffers of billionaires who escape paying taxes and offer their obscene wealth in exchange for political favor and power. Clearly, we are once again a nation of prospering oligarchs and exploited paupers.

The glittering Gilded Age that reached its apex between 1880 and 1920 was a golden era of opulent architecture, extravagant fashion, expensive art, and expansive parties. Built on the economic growth that occurred following the Civil War and Reconstruction businessmen and bankers made out like bandits by investing in railroads, factories, and various industries that produced the raw materials needed for the development of innovative inventions that enabled mass production.

That led to “conspicuous consumption,” a term coined by a social critic at the time.  Mark Twain, who dubbed the era the “Gilden Age,” was among other critics troubled by the growing disparity between social classes.

While some in the monied class applied their wealth to building libraries, museums and public improvements in large cities (often prodded to do so by their wives), they overlooked the dark side of the needs of those who were on the other end of the social and economic spectrum. For example, they overlooked child labor, dangerous working conditions, and the exploitation of immigrant workers.

The Vanderbilts, Astors, and Carnegies looked the other way, ignoring life in the tenements of New York City and factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where the 1911 fire killed 146 trapped young women workers. Journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis brought the reality  of these travesties to light in stark photographs of slums, schools, factories, public health, and more in his photographic collection, How the Other Half lives housed at the Library of Congress.

Among today’s most recognized magnates and robber barons are three of the wealthiest and most morally corrupt men in America. Their enormous wealth and lack of social conscience makes their predecessors seem tame.

Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon and owns the Washington Post is heavily invested in Uber, AirBnB, and X has a net worth of US$ 236 billion, while Amazon employees earn about $15 an hour despite the physical demands of the job and expectations about productivity. Amazon also continues to ban unions and illegally fires workers for trying to organize them. He also has had workplaces patrolled for signs of unionizing activity.  It’s positively Dickensian.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, is heavily invested in SpaceX, and owns X (formerly Twitter). He has Bezos beat in terms of net worth. According to Forbes, which tracks this kind of thing, Musk is worth over $420 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg is the third wealthiest man in America with a net worth of nearly $218 billion. He became a billionaire at the age of 23.  Owner of Meta, formerly Facebook, his latest travesty is ending fact checking on his social media platforms and that’s not the worst of it.  

Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are faux philanthropists who donate minimally to various pet organizations.  No libraries or museums for them. Just space capsules, AI, and a seat at high tables.

As Lasa Liberator points out, “they are often held up by the media as shining examples of philanthropists, but the reality is none of them has a foundation or philanthropic organization. By donating limited amounts of immense wealth, their public relations people argue they are changing the world for the better. That’s what they would like you to believe. While this philanthropy may seem generous from the outside, it is more often than not a ploy for the world’s wealthiest to dodge taxes, [or a way to]boost their public image, and increase their net worth, all while rarely doing that much actual good “along the way.

These newly anointed oligarchs, and others like them, are wedded to power, prestige, and political influence. They will do anything to curry favor. That makes them dangerous in ways that their forerunners were not, especially in a time of autocracy, patronage, and a good deal of pathology.

In this Gilden Age we are led into a different kind of conspicuous consumption. It’s one that consumes lies and clings to false narratives while ignoring history, facts, and good governance. It overlooks social justice issues like child labor which has made a comeback, as well as exploitive unsafe working conditions, especially for immigrants who mange not to be deported.

It burns the budgets that could help provide adequate housing, better schools, accessible healthcare and vital safety nets. It allows food and water to be contaminated because the ruling class doesn’t have to eat or drink what the lower classes do. It returns women to the Victorian age of silence and servitude.

Today’s robber barons and their elite political allies not only steal dignity and hope; they put us at great risk and conspire against anything that is fair and forward thinking while serving their own selfish purposes.  As Eugene Debs put it during the last Gilded Age, “"The time has come to regenerate society [while] we are on the eve of universal change."

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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro, Vt.