Now Will They Leave Joe Biden Alone?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2025 //
24

As I was scrolling through Twitter on Sunday, I read a bunch of anti-Biden tweets, so I added my two cents.

I tweeted:

Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp

I once wrote on this blog that I would never criticize Joe Biden because he was running against a man who was totally unfit for the job. Several Trumpers has since written to complain about that statement, saying that it demonstrated my bias, but time has confirmed my view.

Regardless of his mental state, Biden would never have appointed a crackpot to run the National Institutes of Health. He would never have defunded USAID, NPR, PBS, FEMA, the Voice of America, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Department of Education. Nor would he have let loose Elon Musk’s DOGS to ransack federal agencies, fire thousands of expert career officers, mess with the Social Security Administration, and hoover up all our personal data, for whatever nefarious purposes he chooses. Unlike Trump, Biden would not have terrorized institutions of higher education and threatened academic freedom and freedom of speech. Unlike Trump, Biden respected the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI and did not put political lackeys in charge of them or treat them as his personal attack dogs.

Frankly, I can’t keep track of the many federal programs and agencies that Trump has recklessly destroyed. If anyone knows of such a compilation, please share it. Trump and Musk have vandalized our government, and despite the thousands of injudicious, capricious firings, have not saved any money at all.

Then I came across this post by Julie Roginsky, which appeared shortly after the nation learned that former President Biden has prostate cancer, which has metasticized to his bones. She is writing about the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aims to prove that President Biden was experiencing severe mental and physical decline while he was in office and that his family and staff collaborated to conceal that decline from the public.

She wrote:

Maybe now they’ll leave Joe Biden alone — or, better yet, spend some time assessing his actual presidency, both in isolation and in comparison with what has followed.

Stick it to legacy media, which has consistently beaten up on a decent man.

Was Biden operating at half-capacity throughout his term? Was he operating at 10%? Here are some facts, regardless of the opinions rendered by amateur neurologists all over media these days.

“Biden inherited an economy that was flat on its back because of the pandemic, and he’s bequeathing an economy that’s flying high,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, which just lowered the credit rating of the United States for the first time in history under Donald Trump. 

Biden’s economic tenure was marred by the inflation that was a hangover of the Covid pandemic. But the numbers don’t lie about the rest of it. On his watch, the Dow Jones rose by over 40%, while the Nasdaq rose by almost 50%. The economy expanded by 11% during his four years in office (compared with under 9% during Donald Trump’s first term). Despite inflation, retail sales grew by more than 20%. Household net worth was 28% higher when Biden left office than when he took over from Trump. Unemployment was 2% lower at the end of Biden’s tenure than when he entered the White House. 

Most importantly, no one was predicting the demise of our 250 year American experiment while Biden was in charge.

Now, Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that the prognosis is not great.

So maybe now is a good time to reflect not just on Biden’s tenure but on what this obsession with his mental health means for the future of this country. Reporters who have spent the past several weeks on the fainting couch about “the cover up” of his mental condition in the Oval Office have consistently failed to acknowledge the successes of his tenure. They have failed to compare that tenure, both in economic and in governance terms, to what has followed. They have never stopped beating up a man who is no longer in the White House to take stock of the mental health of the current occupant of the White House.

Trump’s mental decline (which is apparent to anyone who has lived in the New York media market for the past four decades) is not happening, you see — because he does not stutter, because he shouts with vigor, because he “truths” at all hours of the night, unlike a septuagenarian who might require more rest. 

In short, all this is just “Trump being Trump.” It cannot be that he is stark raving mad. 

And Trump’s economic record, the one that is driving inflation ever higher, the one that is destroying consumer sentiment, the one that has driven both the stock and bond markets crazy? Never mind all that. Have you listened to Biden’s conversation with Robert Hur? Now that’s a scandal. 

Look, I really don’t care if Biden was confined to a gurney for four years. The facts speak for themselves. The country was more prosperous, the democracy was more stable, the nation was more respected, the people were less terrified, when he was in charge. 

Yes, Biden’s staff may have covered up his medical condition while he was in the Oval Office. But the real scandal is the cover up happening now. The media so obsessed with kicking Biden now that’s gone that it is ignoring the very real danger that his successor poses to us all. 

I am not a religious person but I hope that whatever higher power exists will look out for Joe Biden. He is a good man, who did well on behalf of the people who entrusted him with the presidency. That is a hell of a lot more than could be said about his successor.

I repeat:

Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp

Categories Biden, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Health, Trump

Why Does the Trump Administration Want to Deport or Imprison This Cancer Researcher?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2025 //
4

I have been following the case of Kseniia Petrova, a cancer researcher at Harvard, with a sense of outrage and helplessness. She attended a conference in France and returned last February with samples of frog embryos for her laboratory. She was detained by Customs for failing to declare them and has been incarcerated ever since. The other day, the charge of bringing in an undeclared item was upgraded to a felony, and this young woman faces a possible 20 years in prison.

Is she the kind of dangerous, violent criminal that Trump promised to deport? No.

Jay Kuo is both a lawyer and a playwright, whose blog is called The Status Kuo. He writes about the case today in hopes of rallying support for her. Petrova left Russia to protest the invasion of Ukraine. If she is deported there, she will be immediately jailed.

He writes:

We need to pay close attention to the case of Kseniia Petrova. She’s a Russian-born researcher who was detained by Customs and Border Protection back in February when traveling back from a conference in France.

Like others caught up in the “immigration crackdown” by the Trump administration, Petrova has been held in ICE detention ever since. In her case, a custom agent alleged she had failed to declare frog embryo samples that she’d picked up from a colleague to bring back to the U.S.

For this, the government canceled Petrova’s visa and threatened to deport her. But her case is about far more than frog embryos.

For starters, her home country is Russia, where she was outspoken against the war in Ukraine and was part of the exodus of Russians opposed to Putin’s invasion. She now faces persecution or worse for her anti-war activism should she be sent home, even while the Trump administration bends over backwards for Putin and the Kremlin.

She’s also a researcher and valued member of the Harvard medical sciences community, which has been the constant target of the Trump White House. Being deliberately cruel to Petrova means Trump gets to traumatize Harvard in yet another way.

Petrova has been languishing in a detention facility in Louisiana, but things had begun to move her way. This week, Judge Christina Reiss, a federal judge in Vermont hearing Petrova’s habeas petition, questioned government lawyers over whether Customs and Border Protection actually had the authority to cancel Petrova’s visa. Judge Reiss had set a bail hearing for next Friday, and many viewed it as a hopeful signal that she was set to release Petrova from custody.

Not so fast, said the government. What they did next was frankly shocking, even in this corrosive and highly politicized environment.

The government charges Petrova criminally

Apparently out of sheer spite, and faced with the prospect of losing another case where they had egregiously overreached and overreacted, the government charged Petrova with felony smuggling. That’s a charge that carries up to 20 years in prison. 

Felony smuggling laws are intended to deter profiteers from deliberately carrying in endangered species, not to punish researchers who fail to declare frog embryo samples.

Normally when you fail to declare something that should have been itemized at customs, you could face a fine. It’s considered a minor infraction. And in this case, it isn’t even clear that frog embryos count. According to Petrova’s lawyer, customs experts conveyed that that she “did not need a permit to bring in her non-living scientific samples that are not considered biological material under U.S. Customs law.”

The criminal complaint itself is a just single page attaching an affidavit from a Homeland Security agent. In that affidavit, the agent makes much of the fact that, after checking her text messages on her phone (!!), he learned that Petrova apparently had been told by a colleague that she should declare the samples. But she had joked about not having a plan to carry them in, saying, “I won’t be able to swallow them.”

When asked, Petrova told the agent that she was not sure she needed to declare anything. (I should add here that advice from a colleague is not the same as legal advice from a customs lawyer.) Per the Customs and Border Protection website, U.S. government agencies “regulate the importation of biological materials that can pose a threat to agriculture, public health, and natural resources” (emphasis added). But frog embryo samples don’t pose any threat. So it’s hardly clear that Petrova knew these had to be declared.

“Yesterday’s hearing in federal district court in Vermont confirmed that Customs and Border [Protection] officials had no legal basis for cancelling Kseniia’s visa and detaining her,” wrote Petrova’s attorney. The judge in Vermont seemed prepared to agree and to rule that canceling her visa over this was excessive. 

Filing criminal charges now? Really?!

When someone is taken into custody by immigration officials, it is customary to charge them first with any crimes they have committed. This makes sense because criminal charges, which are far more serious, should always take priority over any immigration violations, which are normally just civil violations.

Once the individual has been prosecuted, explained Ingrid Eagly, co-director of the Criminal Justice Program at the UCLA School of Law, to the New York Times, the authorities can begin the process of removing them from the country. In Petrova’s case, “they put her in removal proceedings, and now are saying it is a criminal case.” Dr. Eagly explained that this was a “ratcheting up of the charges,” an atypical move that “seems retaliatory, designed for a particular end.”

Prof. Marisol Orihuela of Yale Law School told the Times that this was the first time she had seen a case where criminal charges were brought against someone who had already been in removal proceedings for so long. “The question it raises in my mind is why would it take three months” to decide to charge Petrova, remarked Prof. Orihuela. “It doesn’t really quite add up,” she added, wondering why the government would “need this amount of time if you thought this was a crime worth charging.”

Nor does it make any sense that after three whole months, there is still no further evidence beyond what one lone agent said Petrova did and said under questioning just before she was taken in. There are no interviews of Petrova’s colleagues. There is no showing, beyond a text thread with a colleague, that Petrova knew such samples must be declared. They’ve had three months, but the case has not advanced beyond what was known at the time.

On top of this, the timing of the charge is highly suspicious. Judge Reiss had only this week questioned whether Petrova’s visa revocation was proper, and from all accounts she would have likely ordered Petrova’s release on bail next Friday.

Here’s what I want to know. Who in the administration ordered Petrova to be criminally charged? Was there coordination between an overzealous Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Justice? When was the charging decision made? Did anyone object to it? Why was there apparently no investigation to obtain further evidence to support the charge?

Playing dangerous politics, holding political prisoners

Petrova’s case has been prominent in the headlines. She has received support from all across the country and the world. A feature on her plight was published in the New York Times. Her work as a scientist studying images for cancer diagnostics has been widely lauded, while her detention has been condemned as a pointless harm, not just to her but for medical science and the world.

It would not surprise me if orders to do everything possible to continue to punish and hold Petrova came from the very top of the Trump administration. After all, moving to criminally charge Petrova, three months after she was first detained, makes zero sense unless your point is to make an example of her and thumb your nose at customary prosecutorial practices.

The administration has basically said, “Oh, so you think you can get her out? We’ll stop you, just to show that we can. To hell with your ‘due process’ and ‘civil rights.’ We’re in charge, and she’s not going anywhere.”

This is of course the same position the government has taken with Kilmar Abrego García and all the other political prisoners in El Salvador’s CECOT facility. 

I say “political prisoners” because that is precisely what they’ve now become. Petrova, Abrego García, and others are being held for purely political reasons, by or at the request of the U.S. government. It’s not because they’ve committed any actual crimes or are in any way deserving of the treatment they are receiving. Rather, it’s because the administration wants to telegraph strength and cruelty, just like any other fascist regime.

It’s also why the White House is so desperate to cast them as “criminals” and stretch the laws and the truth, even to absurd degrees, to fit its narrative. That makes this fight not just about achieving justice for those wrongly arrested and held, but also about rejecting the raw politicization of their cases and of our immigration and criminal justice systems. 

Indeed, fighting for justice for Petrova and others now means no less than fighting for the rule of law, democracy and the very soul of our nation, now put at serious risk by the tyranny of the Trump regime.

Petrova is not a dangerous criminal. She has not raped or murdered anyone. She is a researcher trying to find a cure for cancer.

Categories Extremism, Fascism, Research, Science, Trump

Drag Show Owners Beat DeSantis in Court

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2025 //
2

Anyone who has ever seen a drag show knows that they are performances. I remember seeing “Dame Edna” on Broadway, and she was hilarious. There was nothing sexual about her show. And by the way, Dame Edna was played by a straight man who created an original character. Last year, I went to play “Drag Bingo” at a local restaurant, and the performers were funny. Their goal was to entertain.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, America’s number one prude, decided that drag shows had to be banned because they “sexualized” children. In addition to drag shows performed in bistros, there are also Drag Queen Story Hours at local libraries, where drag queens read children’s books out loud. Parents bring their children to these events; the little ones do not come alone.

To heck with parental rights, DeSantis wanted to close down all the drag shows.

Hamburger Mary’s, one of the leading venues for drag queens, sued.

They won.

Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sebtinel tells the story:

In recent years, Florida Republicans have been on a crusade to censor books, speech, theatrical performances and even thoughts expressed in private workplaces.

Their actions have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional — often by conservative judges who have more respect for the Constitution than these petty politicians with their phony patriotism.

Still, it takes courage to stand up to political bullies willing to spend unlimited amounts of tax dollars, paying lawyers as much as $725 an hour, even when they know they’ll lose.

DeSantis spends millions on legal bills at $725 an hour. And he just lost again | Commentary

That’s why John Paonessa and Mike Rogier deserve credit.

The Clermont couple and Hamburger Mary’s franchise owners are the victors in the latest court fight against Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP lawmakers’ attempts to silence speech they dislike.

This time it was Florida’s war on drag queens, which was pretty clearly unconstitutional from the day it debuted, mainly because it was so poorly written.

Authors of the so-called “Protection of Children” act claimed to want to protect kids from “shameful” and “lewd” performances, but couldn’t even explain what that meant.

When bill sponsor Randy Fine was asked on the House floor to define “shameful” — so that venue owners could know what kind of performances would be illegal — he responded:

“Um … um … [eight seconds of silence] … I think that it … again, that is things that are … I dunno … I mean, again, you can look these things up in the dictionary.”

Quite the legislative brain trust.

The reality is that Florida already has laws on the books that protect children from sexually explicit performances. Did you know that? A lot of these tinpot politicians sure hoped you didn’t. But two rounds of federal judges did. And they concluded that this law wasn’t written to target obscenity in general, but rather drag in particular. That’s selective censorship. And if you’re a fan of government doing it, you might prefer living in Russia.

Patriotic Americans don’t support government censorship of speech. Dictators in North Korea do.

So after Paonessa and Rogier saw lawmakers repeatedly target drag performers — and even nonprofit organizations like the Orlando Philharmonic rented out their venues for such shows — Paonessa said the two men decided: “If we just let them do this, what is next?”

Both a federal judge in Orlando and appellate judges in Atlanta ruled they were right to do so.

Appeals court sides with Hamburger Mary’s in suit challenging drag show law

The 81-page appellate ruling from the majority made several key points: One was that the state already has laws to protect minors and that out-of-court comments from guys like Fine and DeSantis made it clear that the politicians were trying to specifically — and unconstitutionally — target drag.

Another was that the state’s own inability to define the kind of behavior it was trying to outlaw proved it was overly broad. “The Constitution demands specificity when the state restricts speech” to shield citizens “from the whims of government censors,” the ruling stated.

The case also laid bare a lie: These chest-thumping politicians don’t actually believe in “parental rights” or “freedom.” Because this law attempted to make it illegal for teens to attend certain performances even when accompanied by their parents.

Keep in mind: These politicians are fine with parents taking their kids to see R-rated movies with hard-core sex and graphic violence. They kept that legal. It was only when drag queens got on stage that these politicians lost their minds.

Drag queens? Evil. Cinematic depictions of bestiality? That’s OK. Those are some strange family values.

I can’t recall ever taking my own kids to a drag performance. But that was my choice — not the government’s. And Paonessa said many of his restaurant’s offerings, including the Sunday drag brunch, were family-friendly affairs that some teens enjoyed so much, they would return with their own kids when they were older.

Of course some drag performances are vulgar — just like some movies are. But trying to use a snippet of one sexed-up drag show to represent all drag performances is about as honest and accurate as using a movie like “Eyes Wide Shut” or the “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to represent all movies. It’s a tactic of misrepresentation known as “tyranny of the anecdote” that’s particularly effective with the intellectually incurious

For the record, a dissent was authored by a 95-year-old judge appointed by Gerald Ford who invoked states’-rights-themed arguments and said censorship laws needn’t be that specific.

While the judges who shot down the drag law last week were appointed by Democratic presidents, the judges who shot down DeSantis’ other unconstitutional attempts to silence speech have been hard-core, Federalist Society conservatives.

GOP judges: DeSantis violated the Constitution again. Lawyers made $725/hr | Commentary

Like the ones who blocked the “Stop Woke Act” that tried to ban private businesses from holding employee-training sessions on topics like sexism and racism that GOP lawmakers found too “woke.”

And the Trump-appointed judge who invalidated the GOP law that called for arresting citizens who donated more than $3,000 to citizen-led campaigns for constitutional amendments.

If you think government should be able to imprison citizens for donating to campaigns that politicians dislike or silence private speech within the walls of private companies, don’t you dare call yourself a constitutionalist. Or even a patriot.

Scott Maxwell: First Target. Now Florida budgets $20 million to sue other companies | Commentary

In response to the latest judicial smackdown, a DeSantis spokesman whined about judicial “overreach” and said: “No one has a constitutional right to perform sexual routines in front of little kids.”

Once again, he was banking on your ignorance, hoping you don’t know Florida already has laws that protect minors — just not ones created specifically to target drag.

The appellate judges referred the case back to Orlando Judge Gregory Presnell, who issued the original injunction in a ruling that was maybe even more damning in effectively detailing the law’s many flaws. But there’s certainly a chance the state will continue trying to litigate the case, since it has unlimited access to your money.

Frankly, Paonessa and Rogier, who shut down their Hamburger Mary’s location in downtown Orlando last year in the middle of this court battle and are currently looking for a new home, probably couldn’t have afforded to fight back in this two-year court battle if they hadn’t had pro bono help. It came from a Tennessee attorney, Melissa J. Stewart, who fought a similarly unconstitutional attack on drag in that state.

But Paonessa said they decided to fight for their rights — and yours — because they concluded: “If not us, then who?”

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Creativity, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Freedom, Gender

Netanyahu Is a War Criminal. Will Trump Stop Him?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2025 //
5

Gideon Levy, a writer for the Israeli progressive publication Ha’aretz, excoriates the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. It’s about to get worse. Netanyahu is perpetuating the war for no reason. He has utterly destroyed Gaza. He has ordered the bombing of hospitals and schools, claiming that they sheltered terrorists while knowing that he was committing war crimes. For the last three months, Israel has prevented food, medicine and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

Nothing the Israeli Defense Forces do can eliminate Hamas. Their soldiers live in an elaborate city of well-supplied tunnels, protected from the bombing. When hostages were released, members of Hamas appeared in their uniforms, faces hidden, brandishing their weapons, letting the Israelis know that they are still a force, still in charge. This served to goad the extremists who surround Netanyahu. More killing lies ahead. The only one who could end it is Trump. He’s in the region. He’s not stopping in Israel. He’s not using his relationship with Netanyahu to stop the killing. He should.

He could intervene instead of musing idly about turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the .Middle East” and expelling its people elsewhere.

Gideon Levy wrote:

About 70 people from dawn to noon on Wednesday. Almost twice the number of those killed in the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz. 22 of them were children, and 15 were women. The previous evening, 23 were killed in a hospital. 

Operation Gideon’s Chariots has yet to begin, and the chariots of genocide are already warming their engines.

How will we call this massacre, so indiscriminate and pointless, even before the big operation has begun? 23 killed in the bombing of a hospital – one of the most serious war crimes – just to try and kill Mohammed Sinwar, the latest devil, with nine bunker buster bombs – everything to provide Yedioth Ahronoth in their lust for the main headline: “In his brother’s footsteps.” 

The readers loved it, Israelis loved it, no one came out against it on Wednesday.

They made peace in Riyadh, and in Gaza they massacred. It’s hard to think of a more grating contrast than this, between the scenes in Riyadh and those in Jabalya on Wednesday.

Children’s bodies being carried by their parents, the bulldozer trying to clear a way for the ambulance and being blown up from the air, the people burrowing in the ruins of the hospital searching for their loved ones – all this in the face of lifting sanctions from Syria and the hope for a new future.

Nothing, not even the elimination of another Sinwar, can justify the indiscriminate bombing of a hospital. This unwavering truth has been totally forgotten here by now. Everything is normal, everything is justified and approved, even the attack on the intensive care ward in the European Hospital in Khan Yunis is a mitzvah. 

No choice exists but to cry out again: You cannot attack hospitals – and not schools that have been turned into shelters, either – even if the strategic air command of Hamas is hiding underneath them. Even if Sinwar is there, whose kill is so pointless.

Is there anything left we can do in Gaza that will be seen in Israel as morally and legally unacceptable? 100 dead children? A thousand women for Sinwar the brother? It was necessary to eliminate him, they explained, because he was an “obstacle to a hostage deal.” 

We’ve even lost our shame. The sole obstacle to a hostage deal sits in Jerusalem, his name is Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his fascist partners, and no one can even conceive that it’s legitimate to harm them to remove the obstacle.

What happened on Wednesday in Gaza is just a promo for what will occur in the coming months, if no one stops Israel. The further Donald Trump’s colossal campaign in the Gulf advances, the pistol that will stop Israel has yet to be seen.

When supposedly there was still a purpose, when the goals were seemingly clear, when the human need to punish and take revenge for October 7 was still understandable, when it still seemed that Israel knew what it wanted at all; it was still possible somehow to accept the mass killing and destruction. 

But no longer. Now, when it’s clear Israel has no goal and no plan, there is no longer any way to justify what happened in Gaza on Tuesday night.

No Israeli leader opened their mouth, not a single one. The left’s hope, Yair Golan, on a good day calls to end the war, and like him, tens of thousands of determined protesters. 

They want to end the war to bring the hostages home. They are also worried about the lives of the soldiers who will fall in vain. 

But what about Gaza? What about its sacrifice? How have we reached a situation in which no Zionist politician can come out in its defense? Not one righteous man in Sodom, not a single one. 

The sights from there once again scorched the soul on Wednesday, once again body carts, once again children in a long line of body bags on the floor, here lie their bodies, and once again the heartbreaking weeping of parents for their daughters and sons. 

About 100 people were killed in Gaza on Wednesday. Almost all of them innocent, except for their being Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip. They were killed by Israeli soldiers. This is their appetizer for the campaign their military aspires to – and we remain silent.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Fascism, International, Trump

Georgia: Brain-Dead Woman Kept Alive Because She Was Nine Weeks Pregnant

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2025 //
10

This is one of the saddest stories I have read in a long time. Georgia has one of the most draconian abortion laws in the nation. Because of that law, a woman who is brain-dead will be kept “alive” until she gives birth. She is nine weeks pregnant. The baby will be removed when it reaches 32 weeks. One of those Bible-thumpers should offer to adopt the baby. Lots of Bible-thumpers or the State Legislature should pay the outrageous bills that will pile up.

Robyn Pennacchia of the Wonkette wrote about this horrendous case:

Adriana Smith of Atlanta, Georgia, has been brain dead for more than 90 days.

Back in February, Smith — a registered nurse at Emory University Hospital — started experiencing intense headaches and went to get checked out at a local hospital, because she knew “enough to know something was wrong.”

“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11Alive news. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”

The next morning, Smith’s boyfriend discovered her gasping for air and gurgling on what he believed was blood. She went back to the hospital, where they finally did a CT scan and discovered multiple blood clots in her brain. Unfortunately, they were too late and Smith was declared brain dead as they prepared to go into surgery.

This would have been a horrific enough scenario under normal circumstances, but Smith was also nine weeks pregnant … and in Georgia. Georgia has one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the nation, 33.9 deaths per 100,000 live births — 48.6 per 100,000 for Black women and 22.7 for white and Hispanic women. Part of that is because women like Adriana Smith are ignored when they tell doctors that something is wrong. 

Georgia also has a “Heartbeat Law” that bans abortion after fetal pole cardiac activity is detected (but before there is even an actual heart).

Because of Georgia’s garbage abortion ban, Smith now has to be kept on life support until the fetus is 32 weeks along and can be removed. Like, they are literally using her dead body as an incubator for a fetus. 

Please, take a moment to scream into a nearby throw pillow, if you need it. 

Via 11Alive:

Under Georgia’s heartbeat law, abortion is banned once cardiac activity is detected — typically around six weeks into pregnancy. The law includes limited exceptions for rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. But in Adriana’s case, the law created a legal gray area.

Because she is brain dead — no longer considered at risk herself — her medical team is legally required to maintain life support until the fetus reaches viability. 

The family said doctors told them they are not legally allowed to consider other options. […]

Now, due to the state abortion ban, Smith is being kept on life support.

“She’s been breathing through machines for more than 90 days,” Newkirk said. “It’s torture for me. I see my daughter breathing, but she’s not there. And her son — I bring him to see her.”

Newkirk said it’s been heartbreaking seeing her grandson believe his mother is “just sleeping.”

It would be bad enough if the state were just forcing the family to keep Smith “alive” on life support in order to be an incubator for the fetus, but they’re also requiring them to pay for it. While it’s not exactly easy to track down exact costs, an ICU bed in a Georgia non-profit hospital costs, on average, $2,402 a day on its own, without any additional treatment. According to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, mechanical ventilation costs, on average, “$3,900 per day after the fourth day.” So that’s $6302 a day just for the basics. Then there’s everything else on top of that. 

And health insurance doesn’t cover life support when there’s no chance of survival or improvement. 

So we’re already at $1.6 million before even getting into the cost of the baby’s care. The average stay in the NICU for a baby born at 32 weeks is 36 days, and a NICU stay can cost $3,000 to $20,000 a day. That is more likely to be covered by health insurance — though it is not actually clear if the baby would be covered by Smith’s health insurance if she’s dead, or for how long. And that’s just in the beginning. It is hard to imagine that a kid born in those circumstances would not have some pretty serious health issues down the road. 

This family is fucked. 

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I am going to need to point out, for the 80 bajillionth time, that the people who love the idea of forcing a woman to give birth against their will (or while braindead) are almost universally against universal health care. Especially the ones who are going around crying about “birth rates.” 

I’m not saying it would make anything okay, it wouldn’t, but the very fact that these absolute pieces of shit want to force people to give birth against their will and pay for the privilege as well is galling. In this case, the state wants to force this family to pay possibly $1.6 million or more to keep a brain dead woman alive so that she can give birth to a fetus that was only nine weeks along when she died. 

Perhaps it’s crass to think of money, given the fact that keeping a woman on life support just to incubate a fetus is appalling enough on its own. And it is. But a nearly two million dollar surcharge is a hell of an added insult to injury. 

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Georgia, Health

Bruce Springsteen’s “Message to America” and Trump’s Reply

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2025 //
9

The superstar Bruce Springsteen was giving a concert in Manchester, England, and he stopped to talk about what was happening in the country he loves.

Watch it here.

He was about to sing “My City in Ruins.”

Watching is better but if you prefer to read:

There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.

They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society.

They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.

They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.

The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.” Let’s pray.

President Trump was very angry when he heard that the very popular Bruce Springsteen spoke out in dissent about the darkness across our land.

Trump posted this:

Was that last sentence a warning? What a petty, thin-skinned, vengeful man he is.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Injustice, Shame, Trump

Trump’s Amazing Accomplishments in the Middle East

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2025 //
7

Donald Trump has had a remarkably successful trip through the Middle East in recent days. Incredibly successful, that is, for the Trump Organization.

He has been offered a $400 million jet by the government of Dubai. It is a “gift to the nation,” but only Trump will be able to use it. Not everyone is thrilled because the cost of turning it into Air Force 1 will be hundreds of millions, some estimates as high as $1 billion. The mammoth plane has been on the market since 2020, with no bidders.

The Trump Organization will be building two high-rise luxury buildings (Trump Towers) in Saudi Arabia.

The Trump Organization will be building a luxury golf resort in Qatar.

The Trump family made a deal with an Emeriti-backed firm, which invested $2 billion in Trump’s stablecoin.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Dubai just opened.

Trump met with the new leader of Syria, who previously served as the chief of Al Queda in Syria, and the first Trump administration had a $10 billion bounty on his head. Trump agreed to cancel All US sanctions on Syria, and Syria granted the Trump Organizatuon permission to build a Trump Hotel in Damascus. A win-win!

Trump says that the Arab nations will be investing in the U.S. The details will be revealed later.

This has been a great week for the Trump family.

Meanwhile, Trump did not schedule a visit to Israel, did not use his influence with Netanyahu to demand an end to the three-month blockade of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Trump showed no interest in this tragedy.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform

McMahon Announces Increase in Funding to Federal Charter Schools Program, Despite Multiple Failures

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2025 //
3

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced an increase of $60 million to the Federal Charter Schools Program, bringing the annual total to $500 million to open new charter schools or expand existing ones.

This decision ignored research produced by the Network for Public Educatuon, showing that $1 billion had been wasted on grants to charter schools that never opened; that 26% of federally funded charter schools had closed within their first five years; and that 39% had closed by year 10.

The charter sector has been riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.

See the following reports:

Charter failures

Doomed to Fail: An Analysis of Charter Closures from 1998-2022

The Failure of the Federal Charter Schools Program:

CSP https://networkforpubliceducation.org/stillasleepatthewheel/

OIG report on CSP https://oig.ed.gov/reports/audit/effectiveness-charter-school-programs-increasing-number-charter-schools

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, U.S. Department of Education

Breaking News: Trump Administration Cancels Scores of Research Grants at Harvard

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2025 //
10

The Trump administration is determined to punish Harvard University for defiance of its efforts to take control of Harvard’s curriculum, admissions, and faculty hiring policies. Having already suspended $2.2 billion in research grants, the Trump administration expanded its attack on Harvard.

This level of petty vengefulness is unprecedented. Trump is turning his wrath upon Harvard and weaponizing the entire federal government to force the nation’s most prestigious institution of higher education to surrender.

The headline of the story: “A Bloodbath.”

Chris Serres at the Boston Globe reported this story:

In yet another escalation of its fight against higher education, the Trump administration has moved to terminate scores of research grants at Harvard University and its medical school, imperiling scores of research projects and potentially upending the futures of dozens of young scientists.

Harvard researchers who rely on federal grants to study cancer, infectious diseases and a range of other topics began receiving termination notices en masse on Thursday from a number of federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Energy, according to emails shared with the Globe.

The termination notices threaten tens of millions of dollars in research funding for Harvard and affect a broad swath of the university’s scientific community, including graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are dependent on federal funding for income.

While not unexpected, the wave of termination letters has roiled the Harvard campus in Cambridge and has left many young scientists anxious about their futures, while others are scrambling to find ways to replace the anticipated loss of federal funding.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Evil, Fascism, Higher Education, Research, Science, Trump

How the New GOP Tax Bill Benefits the Rich and Forces Vouchers into Every State

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2025 //
1

www.instagram.com/reel/DJkOywKPU2u/

Josh Cowen of Michigan State University read the latest GOP tax bill closely. He explains what it contains for schools. It’s a plan to set up tax havens in every state for the wealthiest Americans. It forces vouchers for religious and private schools into every state, even states that don’t want them. It allows every voucher school to determine its own admissions policy.

It enables discrimination. It enriches those who are already rich.

It is a spike in the heart of public schools, which admit everyone and bring people from different backgrounds together.

Cowen is the author of the recently published book about vouchers, called THE PRIVATEERS: HOW BILLIONAIRES CREATED A CULTURE WAR AND SOLD SCHOOL VOUCHERS.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Inequality, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, Vouchers
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