Dear Everybody:
Disgustingly, the big news of the day is about two mass shootings yesterday:
--The first was at Brown University in Rhode Island, with 2 dead and 9 in the hospital in critical but stable condition. The shooting apparently occurred during a final exam review session in the Engineering/Physics building. Law enforcement worked well into the night to clear and evacuate Brown University buildings and bring students to the established reunification center. As of this morning, there’s a "person of interest" in custody, and the lockdown has been canceled. Finals have been canceled, and the students have all been sent home for Christmas.
--Trump managed to insert himself into the situation and screwed it up royally. A suspect was not in custody until this morning, but moments after the shootings happened, Trump was tweeting wildly, saying that a suspect was in custody. Trump: "I have been briefed on the shooting that took place at Brown University in Rhode Island. The FBI is on the scene. The suspect is in custody..."
--College authorities and police told him to stop it. The person in charge tweeted, "We know there will be misinformation available online. Please, when it comes to official updates, go to the city of Providence’s social media channels so you know you are getting accurate and official updates."
--Chris Stewart: "Crazy when you have to tell people not to listen to the leader of your country because he can’t be trusted to be an authoritative source."
--North Star Resistance; "He’s so desperate to be the main voice about anything and every-thing, he doesn’t care if he gets people killed in the process of stroking his ego. Worst president ever..."
--A few minutes later Trump issued a retraction, of course blaming it on confused messages the authorities had sent out--but it was all him.
--Kash Patel was nowhere to be seen, presumably off somewhere with his girlfriend.
--Ron Filipkowski: "Does anyone know where Kash Patel is? Are they trying to find a jacket for him again?"
--One of the most disgusting things about this is that two of the students on the campus had personally experienced a school shooting before. One said, "Policymakers need to be ashamed that they’ve let this happen to the point where someone like myself can go through this twice."
The other shooting was in Australia, on a beach in Sydney:
--It was a Jewish Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah. At least eleven people were killed and 29 wounded, and it has been declared a terrorist attack and said the Jewish community was specifically targeted.
--There were two gunmen. One was killed, and a second suspect is in critical condition. Explosive devices were found in a nearby vehicle.
--A truly brave man wrestled the AR rifle out of the hands of one of the shooters, getting shot himself, but managing to get the gun away from the shooter and then holding the guy at gunpoint till cops could get there.
It’s Sunday, so it’s time to catch up on a bunch of stories I didn’t have time to report on this week:
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In RFK, Jr. news:
--RFK, Jr. appointed Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg to head the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She is not only an anti-vaxxer, but she has never supervised a drug review and has never conducted a clinical trial. She doesn’t understand how laws or regulations work. Officials at the FDA called it "an extinction event," and multiple top-level officials are preparing resignation letters.
--the USFDA is adding a boxed warning to COVID vaccines to "notify the public of their risks," , a move that could make the vaccines more difficult to obtain.
--RFK, Jr. announced he is re-examining the effectiveness of the RSV vaccine, which could limit access to the shots and undermine trust in them.
--He said they have "a new way of looking at pregnancy and vaccines," but offered no details or evidence.
--Measles in South Carolina is experiencing a new outbreak, with 126 cases, 27 new cases since Friday, and over 400 quarantined after Thanksgiving and family gatherings spread the disease.
--The measles outbreak has also spread to Connecticut.
--Measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000. And here we are again.
--Dem Rep Haley Steens has filed articles of impeachment in the House against RFK, Jr., for endangering lives.
--All this is happening while scientists have found that the shingles vaccine reduces the risk of dementia.
In JD Vance news:
--Vance wants to ban the kids saying "6-7." (This is a fad where kids freak out every time they hear someone say 6-7. It apparently started out as a song lyric of some kind, but it caught on and then went viral and it has now become an in-joke among kids who use it to drive adults crazy.)
--Vance: "Yesterday at church the Bible readings started on pages 66-67 of the missal and my 5-year-old went absolutely nuts, repeating 6-7 like 10 times. And now I think we need to make this narrow exception to the First Amendment and ban these numbers forever."
--Supposedly this was him making a joke, but since it’s Vance, who knows? He might be serious. And I love the way his first instinct with something he doesn’t like is to make it illegal and the Constitution be damned. Plus, does he not know ANYTHING about kids? Making it illegal would just make it worse. (See Valley girl talk, elephant jokes, the Beatles haircuts, etc.)
In Trump Destroys Washington DC news:
--Trump now has his sights set on four government buildings which he wants to sell and/or demolish, including the Department of Housing building and the VOA. At least one of the buildings has famous Depression-era murals by artist Ben Shahn which are priceless and irreplaceable. He has already asked for bids for their demolition, and once again, has gotten no input from the GSA.
--Trump is also trying to take over all of Washington, DC’s golf courses. They are run by the National Links Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to making golf available and cheap for the public. They have a 50 year lease. Trump and the Department of Interior have issued a formal notice of default of their lease, claiming they are in violation of the deal and threatening to seize control of the courses so Trump can turn them into his own personal courses.
--Trump was sued Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, asking a federal court to block Trump’s White House ballroom project until it goes through independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.
--The lawsuit states: "No president is legally allowed to tear down portions of the White House without any review whatsoever--not President Trump, not President Biden, and not anyone else. And no president is legally allowed to construct a ballroom on public property without giving the public the opportunity to weigh in."
In Rats Deserting the Sinking Ship news:
--A ton of Republicans in the House have announced they will not seek re-election in 2026. Over 30 of them are stepping down, including Jodey Arrington, Don Bacon, Andy Biggs, Jolen James, Megan Luttrell, Michael McCaul, Troy Nehls, David Schweikert, and Lloyd Doggett, with more expected to come.
--Two--Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mark Green--have already resigned.
--Senators Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis, and Joni Ernst are retiring at the end of their term.
In It’s a Cult, I Tell Ya, a Cult news:
--Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said he thought GOP losses in the elections Tuesday were in no way a reflection on the Republican Party. (You just keep thinking that, sugar.)
--Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: "Washington, the founder of the War Department, appealed to God. Ronald Reagan did the same, appealing to heaven. We do the same tioday with Jesus Christ as our guide. May he grant us the wisdom to see what is right." (Gosh, I can tell you what’s right. Don’t blow up shipwrecked people clinging to the wreckage.)
--Joe Lonsdale: "If I'm in charge later, we won’t just have a three-strikes law. We will quickly try to hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others. Our society needs balance. It’s time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable."
--Tom Cotton told reporters that he thought the two guys the Coast Guard blew away while they were clinging to part of the blown-up boat were trying to get a suntan.
--Fox News’s Jesse Watters: "Women get hotter if they join the GOP!"
--Nick Fuentes (the neo-Nazi guy who the Republicans are now openly embracing) announced that he has never had sex. He said he hates women too much to ever sleep with them. (He also said, "A lot of women want to be raped," which might be the reason no woman will sleep with him.)
--Senator Ron Johnson is promoting a book that endorses the use of chlorine dioxide, a toxic chemical used for disinfecting, bleaching, and stripping paint off stuff, to treat COVID. The chemical has been proven to be poisonous and to cause injury and death. (But, hey, anything’s better than a vaccine, right?)
In literary news:
--Miss Ally: "Ian Fleming’s original James Bond novels haven’t aged well. For example, MOONRAKER, published 70 years ago in April, 1953, features a villain who’s a super-rich industrialist and rocket builder seeking to cause chaos because he’s a secret Nazi. Such a silly idea!"
--ohdog20: "I always thought the plot weakness in James Bond novels was the mass of stupd people on all the secret bases (in volcanoes, etc.) required to make the evil plans work. And then MAGA proved me wrong."
In The Kids Are Alright news:
--A federal judge in Alabama asked for public input for a new, fair state Senate map after the old one was struck down for gerrymandering. The judge chose one submitted by someone who called themselves DD, who turned out to be an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama.
In resistance news:
--The idea of Nativity scenes that make a point is spreading. In one the baby Jesus lies in a manger, his hands zip-tied. In another a sign says, "Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in Hiding," and in another, the Christ Child is missing from the manger, replaced by a hand-lettered sign: "ICE Was Here."
--The archdiocese in Massachusetts ordered that the manger must be "restored to its proper sacred purpose," which is a curious statement since the original story is about people under an oppressive rule who were forced to flee for their safety. When the wise men arrived from the East to worship a new king (who they assumed would be at the palace), King Herod told them to go and find the baby and then come and tell him where he was, and when the wise men, "being warned in a dream," didn’t and "returned to their own country another way," Herod ordered all the babies under the age of two to be slaughtered, just in case. Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph had to flee into Egypt to escape, so from the very beginning, the "proper sacred purpose" wasn’t just a story of "peace, good will toward men."
--Senior Minister at Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, Rev. Michael Woolf said Christmas is a time "when we have public art out on the lawn, and we get an opportunity to say something."
--The diocese’s spokesman in Boston said, "The people of God have the right to expect that, when they come to church, they will encounter genuine opportunities for prayer and Catholic worship--not divisive political messaging." (Having apparently forgotten about the Catholic Church’s VERY divisive stand on abortion.)
--Father Steve Josoma responded that the display’s purpose is to move "beyond static traditional figures and evoke emotion and dialogue" in response to the fear many parishioners face as federal forces arrest more than undocumented immigrants, sweeping up long-time legal residents and spreading anxiety.
--"Jillian Westerfield, associate minister at United Methodist in Evanston: "We wanted to reflect sort of the reality that our community is experiencing." She said critics either don’t fully understand the message or "find it really challenging to their conscience and are lashing out at the art rather than engaging with what the actual message is."
--Critics on the right aren’t just objecting to the displays, they’re threatening to get the churches’ tax exempt status revoked for engaging in political discourse. (I wouldn’t go there, guys, not after you shamelessly promoted Trump’s campaign and told your people who to vote for.)
--Steve Grieger, a former Catholic schoolteacher: "The Archdiocese says, ‘Oh, no, that goes against our tradition.’ Well, we’re living in times that are totally abnormal. We can’t just proceed as normal. If we’re following the Scriptures of Jesus, then we have to recognize that these ICE raids and all of these terrible things going on are totally against that.’
In other news:
--Border Patrol Head Bovino announced that they are still planning to go after Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even after a judge ordered his release and banned ICE and the Border Patrol from re-arresting him. Bovino: "When he becomes deportable, he is going to get deported. And he needs to be deported now."
--The DHS is still using Franklin the Turtle, a beloved Canadian children’s book character in memes online and ICE ads, the latest showing him as an immigration judge, in spite of the author’s and publisher’s insistence they stop. (Think Winnie the Pooh or Paddington Bear in ads showing them blowing boats away with a bazooka to know how the Canadians feel about this travesty.)
--Trump did the coin toss at the Army-Navy game yesterday, but managed to botch it up, not flipping it at all, just sort of throwing it at the ground.
--Harry Sisson: "Trump can’t even flip a coin?"
--Age of Genz: "He looked like a space alien wildly unfamiliar with the concept. The single worst coin flip in history."
In good news:
--Dozens of states are increasing the minimum wage. It’s being raised to $15 an hour in dozens of locations, including Nebraska, and Rhode Island has raised theirs to $16 dollars an hour.
--The ozone hole above the Antarctic is the smallest since 2019.
--MIT chemists have synthesized a fungal compound called verticillin A, which has potential as an anti-cancer agent. The substance has been known for fifty years, but scientists had not been able to synthesize it till now.
This evening marks the beginning of Hanukkah, an eight-day festival of lights in celebration of a miracle that took place around 200 B.C when the Maccabees revolted against the Greeks and the Syrians and took back the Temple in Jerusalem. When they rededicated it, they found that the Greeks had defiled all the oil in the temple, and there was only enough oil to light the Temple’s lamps for one night, but miraculously the lamp stayed lit for eight days, in memory of which the Jews light the menorah each night. It’s a celebration of love, happiness and blessings.
--Hanukkah gets short-changed in the movie department. Except for FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and a bunch of Hallmark movies (which are just as bad as the Hallmark Christmas movies), there’s not much out there. But I recommend Adam Sandler’s EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS and PeeWee Herman’s 1998 Playhouse Christmas Special, which highlights Hanukkah.
--Happy Hanukkah! May your candles burn bright this season!
Best comment of the day, from Simon Rosenberg: "We don’t know when the fever is going to break, when the curtain will be pulled back from the Wizard, when people come to realize the Emperor has no clothes, when we hit our ‘have you no decency, sir?’ moment, but I feel like we are closer to that point today than we’ve ever been...The bottom line--Republicans are growing weary of defending the indefensible."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis