04/07/25
Good morning! It’s Monday, April 7th.
International Snailpaper’s Day
It’s a day to celebrate actual newspapers, which I’m talking to you about in an audio medium.
What a time.
And now, the news.
Severe Weather
-via ABC News
Starting with weather on the 10s and 2s, which is never a good sign.
Severe weather struck ten states over a weekend that saw more than 90 tornados in Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia and flash flooding in Memphis and Little Rock.
As of this recording, at least 17 people have died, including a nine-year-old boy who was swept by flooding away at a bus stop in Kentucky and a 16-year-old firefighter who died in a car accident while responding to a water rescue.
More severe weather is expected this week, so as always – stay alert and pay attention to weather warnings.
Another Measles Death
A second unvaccinated child in West Texas has died from the measles.
The child did not have any underlying health conditions, just the bad luck of not having been given a wildly safe vaccine that has been around for more than 60%.
It’s April, and so far, measles cases have more than doubled all of the cases seen in 2024.
Based on the West Texas outbreak alone, more than 570 people in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas have gotten measles, which is incredibly, wildly contagious for folks who are not vaccinated.
And while another family mourns a child who died a completely preventable death, RFK Jr is touting vitamin A as the best possible cure for measles, leading to less than 10 kids being hospitalized for vitamin A toxicity.
Vitamin A is not a cure for the measles. And we know that because there is no cure for the measles. There is only prevention.
And instead of just being written off and then never given airtime again because he has been proven to be a health risk to the public, that same man, whose antivaxx conspiracy theories already led to the death of 83 people in Papua New Guinea and is now partly culpable for these two deaths as well, gets to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which announced last week that it would dismiss 10,000 employees.
In addition to small groups within the HHS, the firings massively, devastatingly shrink the workforce of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other departments that saw cuts are the Administration for Community Living, which helps house the elderly and disabled; the Division of Energy Assistance, which helps low-income households pay their heat and cooling bills; and the Division of Reproductive Health, which literally just focuses on helping people have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
They’ll force us to stay pregnant, take away the choice for anything else at literally all costs, but once that baby is born… they don’t care if you have a healthy pregnancy, they don’t care if you have a healthy baby – they care that you don’t have a choice in any of it.
A common sentiment about this administration is, “I hope you get everything you voted for.” Kind of a “consequences for actions” type vibe.
But these are kids who just have the bad luck of having the adults around them making dangerous decisions for them.
I don’t really know how to end a story like this, so once again we’re really going to leave on the whoosh.
South Sudan Visas Revoked
On Saturday, after complaining that South Sudan is not accepting South Sudanese nationals expelled from America, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders are being canceled, and no one from the African nation will be allowed into the country.
Many worry that this move will renew the five-year civil war that ended in 2008 after 400,000 people died.
Here in America, people who left South Sudan, most of which did so because of the dangerous civil war, were granted Temporary Protected Status. That TPS status will now expire on May 3rd.
This is similar to the move Trump pulled in January on 600,000 Venezuelans. Except in this case, it’s all passport holders from a country, which is the first time he’s done this.
Expect it won’t be the last.
And here in California, Stanford had four students and two alumni have their visas revoked as Marco Rubio continues combing through student visas to revoke the visas of students and alumni, who take part in political protests.
Imagine working all through high school, and probably junior high, studying, taking after-school classes, trying to excel in every single aspect, classes, volunteer work, extracurriculars… anything possible just for the opportunity to come to America and study at a school like Sanford. And then, while there, you have your visa revoked because you took part in the time-honored American tradition of using your First Amendment right.
How awful and embarrassing.
Hands Off
-via CNN
But the biggest story was, of course, Saturday’s nationwide protests.
All around the country, hundreds of thousands of people gathered together to tell his administration, in one loud voice, that this administration - the decisions they make, the people they surround themselves with – this administration does not represent us.
I saw a sign that said, “We’re not here because there’s hope, there’s hope because we’re here.”
I want to be honest and tell you that I didn’t go to a protest. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I don’t always know how to use a calendar.
And I was feeling guilty about it, but what do I always say? Time, money, influence – everyone has something.
This fight we’re in? It’s going to take all of us. We all need to be in it, in some way. If you didn’t, or couldn’t protest, there is still work that you can do. Work we all can do, in one way or another.
But on Saturday, April 5th, there were more than 1,400 boots-on-the-ground protests took place all around the country. State capitals, Social Security offices, national parks… it’s impossible to know how many people actually took park in the protests. But we know they happened all across the country and all around the world.
My mom and stepdad even protested! Made some great signs and everything.
Protests work.
This country itself is a protest. We are born of protest. Our First Amendment right is a protection of protest.
No forward motion that has ever been made in this country did not first begin in the streets.
The artist Barbara Kruger once said, “To me, these are the good old days not because they’re good, but because we are alive to experience and to change them.”
It is the call of this moment for people in this country to rise up against fascism, against authoritarianism, and hold onto this democracy with every ounce that we have. It is not a coincidence that, of the times and places you could be alive, it would be here. In this moment. To fight alongside everyone else.
There will be more protests to take part in. Join when you can.
But understand that, right now, every action we make has to be a protest. We will not comply in advance. Even you just being here, listening to me yap about the news, is a protest. They want us to stay uninformed and unmotivated.
Like James Baldwin said: “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
There are things here to fight for. This country is so much bigger, so much better, than this administration wants us to think.
Criticize. Protest.
We have a democracy to save.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of the people that protested. Whether you’re a first-time protestor or an old pro, you’re out there in the streets to let Trump know that we are not giving up.
Also newspapers.
But more than the crossword, because you know how much I love the crosswork, because you’re also only for the smartest of smarts… I’m proud of you.