RFK Jr. is putting lives at risk!

                        

LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER.....

ALL POSTS ARE AVAILABLE ON

MIDDLEBORO REVIEW AND SO ON

⇩ BERNIE SANDERS JUST SLAMMED RFK JR ⇩ “RFK Jr. asked the FDA to revoke the emergency use of vaccines… [he] told people that they should not take COVID shots.” – Bernie Sanders **And now more than 1,000 Department of Health and Human Services staff are calling on RFK Jr. to resign!!!** Friend, will you stand with Bernie Sanders and sign on to demand that Robert F. Kennedy Jr resign? >> SIGN NOW: DEMAND RFK JR. RESIGN! >> Rachel Maddow just put RFK Jr. on NOTICE: “How is it possible that you have this job?” SIGN THE VIRAL PETITION: Demand RFK Jr. resign for spreading anti‑vax lies and putting Americans’ health in danger >> SIGN NOW: DEMAND RFK JR. RESIGN! >> RFK Jr. has been a DISASTER as Trump’s Health Secretary: > He FIRED thousands of federal workers;    > He SLASHED billions from lifesaving medical research;    > And he’s ATTACKING the vaccines that keep our children safe. Rachel Maddow sounded the alarm – but now, we need every good Democrat to stand up and fight back against Trump’s unqualified Health Secretary. Add your name now to demand that RFK JR. RESIGN as Health and Human Services Secretary >> SIGN NOW: DEMAND RFK JR. RESIGN! >>

Don’t forget to sign! 2026 Democratic Turnout Fund, A Project of Blue Wave America

Thank you for supporting 2026 Democratic Turnout Fund, A Project of Blue Wave America. Founded by former Democratic Congressman Mike Ward, our team is tirelessly training Democrats to stand up to Trump’s MAGA Republicans – in every state, in every district, in every city. That’s why we’re training organizers, investing in rural communities, and working to defeat Trump’s MAGA Republicans. If you believe in Mike’s mission to train Democrats and flip rural districts blue, rush a donation now to help us take on Trump’s extremist Republicans today → CHIP IN NOW TO HELP ELECT 2026 DEMOCRATS >> PAID FOR BY BLUE WAVE AMERICA [BLUEWAVEAMERICA.COM] AND NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE'S COMMITTEE.

 

Ramble On: Waiting for the Barbarians (video) Morning thoughts on exfiltrations, the gutting of the FDA, tomorrow's protests, and how to quiet the brain by visiting Alexandria Greg Olear Apr 4 Good morning! Here is today’s ramble: And here is the transcript, edited for clarity: Good morning. It is Friday, April 4th, 6:17 a.m. We’ve made it. Those of us who have made it have made it through another batshit crazy week, courtesy of Trump and Musk and Vance and this entire cockamamie administration. There’s so many things to discuss. The Five 8 is gonna be lit tonight. I encourage you to watch that if you’re around, at 8 p.m. Eastern, on our YouTube channel, The Five 8. This morning, I don’t know, I want to talk about a couple of things and my own emotional state this week, because I think that might be helpful. Two stories that really stuck out for me. One of them I wrote about on Monday, or Tuesday rather, in the April Fool’s piece, which is that the ICE Gestapo is just disappearing people. We’re using the term “deported,” but that’s not really accurate. They’re taking people off the streets and forcibly exfiltrating them to foreign nations without due process or anything, really. Many of these people are here legally. Almost none of them are members of whatever gang they’re trying to scare us into thinking they’re members of. And what occurred to me on Tuesday is that these people are not coming back. There’s not going to be any effort made in the administration to right any of the wrongs. So anybody that gets scooped up accidentally, that’s it for them. I’m thinking of the gay hairdresser who clearly was not part of the gang, or the guy who had the autism awareness tattoo in honor of his younger brother. And, you know, those people are gone. So this is horrifying. And it speaks to where this is headed, because the longer that they do this kind of thing without any repercussions, the more they’re going to push it and start rounding up other people also—which on The Five 8 we’ve been talking about for a long time now, that this is something that might happen. The other thing that has stuck with me: Katherine Eban, one of my first guests on the podcast, terrific reporter at Vanity Fair, wrote a piece about how RFK’s HHS is going about its dismantling of our national healthcare system, which is absolutely terrifying. She talked to people at the FDA, which is the Food and Drug Administration. Now I know that Trump and the MAGA like to pooh-pooh regulations, but we want regulations on things like the food we eat and the medicines we take and stuff like that. I think we can all agree that that’s probably a good thing rather than a bad thing. You know, I get that the free market can, you know, make decisions. “Well, I’m not going to buy that meat from that company anymore since they tainted the meat and killed all these people.” That’s not really an effective remedy, you know, realistically— here on planet Earth. So we want these kind of regulations. And what’s happening now is that these DOGE people, or whoever these people are that are working with DOGE, these security guys, I don’t know if they’re Erik Prince guys, I don’t know if they’re like Civil War reenactment cosplay guys that they’ve given different uniforms to. I don’t know who they are. But they’re going into these places and causing complete havoc. So this is from Katherine Eban’s piece: By 6 a.m. yesterday, a nightmarish scene was unfolding at the FDA’s White Oak campus as employees arrived. A security team working under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) lined them up and checked their badges against a list. Those targeted for elimination, including Pohlhaus, were then handed what are being called RIF (“reduction in force”) letters, with their jobs eliminated on the spot and in front of their colleagues. The scene was “brutal,” one FDA employee told Vanity Fair. “People were sobbing and crying like I never thought I would see. These pathetic lunatics chose April 1, as if this was a joke. People were being embarrassed in front of their coworkers and hand-delivered these notes of no-go.” Relying on algorithms rather than real-world understanding of how the FDA operates, DOGE lopped off key arteries of the public health system, decimating divisions for everything from the approval of new drugs to the regulation of tobacco products. An HHS fact sheet said that no food and drug inspectors were cut. But frontline staff members—who accompanied them on inspections, helped analyze their findings, cleared their reports for public release, and brought unsafe manufacturers into legal compliance—were cut all around them. One source says inspections at overseas manufacturing plants have already been halted due to lack of staff to coordinate travel and arrange visas. The FDA has allegedly reached out to some RIF-ed staff to ask them to temporarily return to work so that inspectors already overseas are not stranded and upcoming inspections can proceed. “The people making these decisions, they are clueless about what the FDA does,” says the FDA employee. This is scary. Like, there’s so much going on right now, but the health stuff is really scary because it’s going to end in death, mass death, eventually. You know, I feel like it’s a great big Jenga game and they keep pulling out these little blocks of wood and eventually it’s going to collapse. It’s only a matter of time and method. How will it collapse? So that was on my mind. Now, the other thing on my mind is obviously, you know, Cory Booker was on the floor of the Senate for well over 24 hours, breaking the record of that hideous racist Strom Thurmond for longest ever speech on the Senate floor. And I think that was wonderful. That provided hope and positive energy and guidance, right? Because the Democrats had been so weak, generally—not all of them, but generally, and the leadership especially. Chuck Schumer just is so beyond at this point…he’s…I don’t know, put him out to pasture. Retire, Chuck. Hand the keys over to somebody who can still drive the car, please. So that was good. And then coming into Saturday, which is now tomorrow, there are these Hands Off protests in cities all across the United States. And this is wonderful to see also, because if there are this many cities participating in this, offering places to gather, cities large and small, all over, that’s a major, major thing. Now, heading into that, I wanted to read a little bit from the Gene Sharp book, From Dictatorship to Democracy. Just this one little paragraph, because it’s important. Heading into this mass protest event tomorrow, I think there’s going to be a lot of excitement, certainly, a lot of anger and rage and fury, a lot of communal togetherness, and also probably a lot of fear. Because there is not no danger associated with going out in a large group right now. It’s dangerous. It is. Anything can happen. I don’t know. I might get rounded up and sent to El Salvador. And that would be terrible, because then I would miss the White Lotus finale. Some idiot MAGA could drive a truck into the protest. There’s all kinds of things that can happen. And what I want to encourage people to do is to be brave. (And I’m speaking to myself here.) So this is what Sharp says on openness, secrecy and high standards: Secrecy, deception and underground conspiracy pose very difficult problems for a movement using nonviolent action. It is often impossible to keep the political police and intelligence agents from learning about intentions and plans. From the perspective of the movement, secrecy is not only rooted in fear, but contributes to fear, which dampens the spirit of resistance and reduces the number of people who can participate in a given action. It also can contribute to suspicions and accusations, often unjustified, within the movement concerning who is an informer or agent for the opponents. Secrecy may also affect the ability of a movement to remain nonviolent. In contrast, openness regarding intentions and plans will not only have the opposite effects, but will contribute to an image that the resistance movement is in fact extremely powerful. The problem is, of course, more complex than this suggests, and there are significant aspects of resistant activities that may require secrecy. A well-informed assessment will be required by those knowledgeable about both the dynamics of nonviolent struggle and also the dictatorship’s means of surveillance in the specific situation. There’s gonna be lots of means of surveillance tomorrow, for sure. But I believe that what Sharp says is true. The image of the resistant movement tomorrow is going to be seen as very, very, very powerful. And I think it’s going to have a galvanizing effect, piggybacking on what Booker was doing and what he was talking about. So I wanted to talk again about my own week just a little bit and my mental state because, as I said, I think it’s helpful for people to understand what other people are going through emotionally and all that stuff. So I was in Baltimore. I came home on Sunday on the train and I got sick on the train. I started to get this stomach bug or whatever it was. And fortunately I made it home before the fireworks happened, but I was basically laid up for the rest of Sunday, all of Monday into Tuesday. And I really didn’t start to feel better until yesterday. Like, my head was foggy and I think it was Wednesday—Wednesday night—I was really freaking out a little. I had a bad day Wednesday. This happens to people that I know: one day, for whatever reason, you’re just not up for it. Right. And you feel like everything is too much. Everything is overwhelming. There’s too many things to think about, too many things to track. And it just feels like there’s no hope, you know, what are you going to do? So I was feeling this way in my brain. It was like, I don’t know, like disco lights going here, here, here, here, here, here, all over the place. And to quiet this, I put my laptop down, I put my phone off, and I got a novel that’s one of my favorite ones, which is Justine by Lawrence Durrell. (This is the picture that I wore on my t-shirt at The Five 8 event in New York City, this book.) And I like this book because it’s artsy and pretentious in the best possible way. And he’s so self-absorbed that you’re able to go into his world and not think about your own so much. But it also, the level of the writing—it’s a short book, but it takes a long time to read because the level of the writing is so high and so complicated, and he’s conveying thoughts that are complex. So you really have to read every word, every sentence carefully. You know, like you go through some books, you’re flying through to see what happens. Justine is not a book like that. It’s not complicated like Ulysses where you don’t know what he’s talking about, but it’s complicated enough that you have to stop and slow down and adjust to his pace. I focused on it. And when I found my eyes skipping ahead or my mind wandering, I would go back and read again and read again and read again. And it worked. It worked. It quieted down the noise in my brain and focused my attention on something else—quite like meditation does. And it enabled me to have a good night’s sleep, which I desperately needed, and feel better the next day. So why I wanted to bring that up is first of all, that does work. People have lots of things that work, I’m sure. This is an easy way to do it because everybody has books laying around. So don’t read a book about fascism; you know, don’t read a horror novel or something, but something sort of poetical will work. You don’t have to finish it. You just have to read part of it. Focus on it intently, and the brain will quiet. But the other thing is Durrell talks a lot about this poet, Constantine P. Cavafy, C-A-V-A-F-Y, Cavafy, C.P. Cavafy. He talks about him in Justine. The poet is from Alexandria, the Alexandria Quartet is obviously set in Alexandria, and he talks about this poet. I said, you know, I should probably look into that for “Sunday Pages” maybe. But again, there’s not gonna be a “Sunday Pages” this week. So I found this poem, and first of all, it was interesting because he’s written poems about many of the characters in Empress, my novel about the Byzantine empire, which is kind of crazy because it’s like, nobody knows who these people are, but here he’s writing poems about them. And I felt like that spoke to me on some way, on some level. But I found this poem. It’s one of his more famous ones. It’s called “Waiting for the Barbarians.” And I want to read this. And there’s not much to interpret here. You know, it’s not a complicated poem. There’s a poet named J.L. Williams over at the Scottish Poetry Library, who wrote a piece about Cavafy and analyzed this poem a little bit. I thought that J.L. Williams was going to be some stodgy Oxford guy from like 1920. And it turns out it’s a woman and she’s younger than me and she was born in New Jersey and lives in Scotland and is a poet. Anyway, she says, and I like this line a lot: “[S]ociety is so often dependent on that which it excludes.” And that’s what the poem is about, she says—but that’s also in itself a very poetical line. Because there’s no “Sunday Pages,” I’m going to leave you with the poem. And, you know, I’m not even sure exactly what it means. It means a lot of different things. It’s called “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Here we go: What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say? Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking. Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought? Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come. And some of our men just in from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution. NOTE: No “Sunday Pages” this week. Every piece at PREVAIL is free to read and always will be. No paywalls, ever. Your generous support keeps it that way. Thank you!

 

More Bad News

3.28.25

Ally Sammarco Mar 29

Happy Friday, readers! And welcome back to Today’s American News, your source for news and analysis on the circus that is American politics and entertainment. The weekend is here, and that’s a reason to celebrate no matter the headlines.

Courts update: CFPB, USAID, exec branch board members, Sotomayor comments… Lots of news from the courts today, as has been the case during the entirety of Trump’s second term with a man hellbent on testing or flat-out breaking the law to inflict harm on the American people. Here are four court updates from Politico. 1) U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the Trump Administration must reinstate, at least for now, workers fired from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau along with preserving all data. 2) A “ruling from a three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower-court judge’s injunction that had temporarily blocked Musk and DOGE from playing any role in dismantling USAID.” 3) “A federal appeals court has cleared the way for President Donald Trump to fire members of executive branch boards that oversee federal employee grievances and labor disputes across the nation.” 4) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, in an unmistakable reference to Trump, said: “One of the things that’s troubling so many right now is many of the standards that are being changed right now were norms that governed officials into what was right and wrong. Once norms are broken, then you’re shaking some of the foundation of the rule of law.”

PM of Canada declares end to long economic and security friendship with America… Canada will have to ‘dramatically reduce’ its reliance on the United States as the two countries’ relationship darkens, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned on Thursday, adding that the old bilateral relationship was ‘over.’ After holding a cabinet meeting to discuss Canada’s response to US President Donald Trump’s tariffs threats, Carney told reporters in Ottawa that he foresaw the coming of a “fundamentally different relationship” between the two countries. ‘The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,’ he said.” A sign of the times and a tragedy, but good for Carney for telling it like it is. Flashback to the Iran hostage crisis: The Canadian ambassador harbored American civilians and helped get them home, putting his life and the lives of his wife and diplomats at risk to do so.

Ally Sammarco's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Musks offers apparent bribe of $1 million to two Wisconsin voters in lottery… WPR in Wisconsin reports, “Billionaire Elon Musk says he’ll visit Wisconsin Sunday to personally give $1 million each to two people ahead of the state’s pivotal Supreme Court election — despite a state law that explicitly bans giving people anything of value in exchange for voting. The announcement prompted Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul to file a lawsuit seeking a court order to block the event, calling it an ‘illegal event’ and a ‘blatant attempt’ to violate Wisconsin’s ban on election bribery. Musk announced the giveaway on his social media platform, X. After it was scrutinized as a possible violation of Wisconsin’s bribery statute, he deleted the initial post and reworded a new one.”

RFK, Jr. to gut entire infectious disease and HIV/AIDS policy staff at Health & Human Services… CBS News reports, “The entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off, multiple federal health officials told CBS News Friday. The moves are part of a broader restructuring plan ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that involves cutting 20,000 HHS positions. Much of the government's efforts to buoy lagging childhood vaccination rates nationwide have been run through OIDP, including a new campaign called ‘Let's Get Real’ that had launched in the final months of the Biden administration to provide resources and information to health care providers talking to hesitant parents.” Let’s not sugarcoat this: Americans will die because of this anti-science, irresponsible move. Lest we forget how many Americans died in the 1980s when the Reagan Administration refused to take action on HIV/AIDS despite understanding the science and being able to save lives.

Today’s Furry Friend

Meet Louie, a foster Pittie who sits and lays on his canine siblings for security.

Today’s Buzz

The Academy admits it messed up by not supporting No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal after attack and arrest in the West Bank… The Hollywood Reporter writes, “The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has sent a statement to members, apologizing for not publicly supporting No Other Land co-director Hamdan Ballal after his recent assault and arrest in the West Bank, in the village of Susiya, his hometown. On Monday, Yuval Abraham — an Israeli director and one of the four directors behind No Other Land, which won the Oscar for best documentary feature film — claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that a group of settlers had beaten the Palestinian filmmaker, who members of the Israeli military later detained. Abraham said Ballal was released the following day but had ‘injuries in his head and stomach.’”

That’s it for this week. Tune back in on Monday evening for the next edition of Today’s American News, and enjoy your weekend!