WHERE WE ARE NOW

Posted on June 10, 2025 by abroadintheusa

Someone asked me a few days ago if the reason I hadn’t posted a blog update in two months was because I was afraid. Well, yes—anyone who speaks up right now has good reason to be a tad shook, especially if you first came to this country as an Immigrant. (If you’re interested, my story is here: https://abroadintheusa.com/2017/01/30/becoming-a-u-s-citizen/) But realistically no, I’m not particularly scared – I’m white, silver-haired, and when needed can ramp up the accent into the lofty heights of genteel Home Counties in a way that, from experience, makes many Americans swoon.

Rather, the sheer volume of crap hitting us over the past two months has been overwhelming.

I’ve started and given up on half a dozen posts. There’s the illegal kidnapping and rendition of so-called gang members to El Salvador and Djibouti without due process, the courts yelling “you can’t do that!” and the regime basically shrugging. We’ve had the Secretary of Health and Human Services, R. F. Kennedy Jr, aka the eugenicist in chief, wanting to set up a “national registry of people with an autism diagnosis.” It seems to have been quietly dropped, for now, but how chilling is that? Oh, and there was the bonkers idea to give women who have six or more babies a medal and a “birth bonus” of $5,000 (guess who did that first? Yep, Germany under the Nazis). Also, tell me you’ve never had to pay for healthcare in the US without saying it; $5,000 to cover the cost of childbirth barely scratches the surface. 

So as best I can, here’s a look at some of the events over the past few days, starting with ICE agents raiding Home Depot parking lots and restaurants, schools and Immigration Courts—because the “violent criminals and drug dealers” are notorious for showing up at a parking lot at 6:00am looking for day labor work, reporting to the local pizza place for a 10-hour shift washing dishes, and dutifully complying with Immigration Court orders. (FYI, ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and was set up under the umbrella of the new Department of Homeland Security in 2002.) 

Picture from the local KUOW media station in Seattle. 

ICE have been doing this for weeks now, all across the country. (Some of the earliest raids happened in Chicago, but ICE staff complained they couldn’t do much there because too many Chicagoans “know their rights.”) On Friday June 6th, the raids ramped up in LA. 

So, LA residents started to protest—with mariachi bands and line dancing, and hot dog sellers rocking up to feed everyone. And all of this took place in only one small area of the vast urban sprawl of the city. Yes, there were some pockets of aggression, but people who actually live in LA have been emphasizing that the violence has been very much from ICE agents using flash grenades, tear gas, and rubber bullets on basically peaceful protestors. Then Trump sent in the National Guard.

This is a map of greater LA. The city boundary is the thick black line. The site of the protests? That tiny little red circle.

None of this is new. There is plenty of history of law enforcement of various stripes unleashing so-called “non-lethal” weapons on protestors—remember the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020? Or the LA riots in 1992? Kent State in 1970, where decidedly lethal weapons were used? National Guard troops were used to quell those protests, too, but at the behest of respective state Governors. 

What is new this time is the President sending in a contingent of the National Guard. To be clear, the President can federalize the National Guard units of individual states in specific circumstances, namely, when faced with insurrection or armed rebellion. The last time this happened was in 1965 when LBJ called on the Guard to protect civil rights demonstrators, over the objection of Alabama Governor Wallace. 

On Sunday, 2,000 Guards troops were sent into LA, and today that number was doubled. And now plans are underway to deploy some 700 marines, too. The regime reportedly is trying to figure out the deployment’s terms of engagement—which could be tricky, given how many lawyers have been fired from the Departments of Defense and Justice in recent weeks.

Apparently, a few thousand people line dancing in downtown LA in protest of their friends, neighbors, and family members being snatched off the streets counts as an armed rebellion.

California Governor Newsom, a Democrat who, until this weekend, had been trying some “we can all work together” BS with the Trump admin, has suddenly discovered a spine and furiously condemned this federal over-reach. The lawsuits are already being drawn up. The LAPD has released statements that there is no armed insurrection and that it doesn’t need help dealing with protestors ThankYouVeryMuch, while LA Mayor Bass has been publicily reminding protestors to “know your rights.” So-called Border Czar Tom Homan angrily threatened to arrest Bass and Newsom if they “interfered” with ICE operations, which prompted Governor Newsom, in a TV interview on Sunday, to say, “Arrest me. Let’s go.” (Note: Homan has no legal authority to arrest anyone but questions of legality mean nothing to this regime.)

From the list of grievances part of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Plain clothes agents in unmarked vehicles tried to take 1st graders (that’s Year Two, i.e., 6-7 year-olds) from two elementary schools in LA yesterday, claimed they had parental permission, then hid their IDs when asked for them. LA area schools are not the only ones that have been doing “how to protect the kids from raids” staff training for months. There are reports of parents afraid to send their kids to school and of neighborhoods scrambling to set up protection details at school drop-off and pickup. 

Anti-ICE protests have been getting bigger and more frequent in cities across the country, including in Austin, NYC, Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta in just the past few days. Many cities now have organized social media alerts when ICE agents are spotted in a particular neighborhood, including one that was sent out for South Philly as I started writing this, giving details such as which street intersection, and vehicle descriptions with license plate numbers.

Some Trump voters have been bleating “but we didn’t vote for this!” as their favorite restaurant is raided or ICE agents turn up at their kid’s school.

Yeah you did.

Picture from a Trump campaign rally last year.

Meanwhile, the incompetence is also mind-boggling. Yes, 2,000 National Guard troops were sent to LA Sunday, but the Department of Defense didn’t release any funds for things like accommodation, so the troops have been kipping out in the open or on concrete floors. Reportedly, no-one thought to organize things like food, water, and porta-potties, either. So, making troops homeless before they’re even veterans? That’s a new one.

In contrast, ICE agents were put up at hotels in Pasadena, LA county. Local media reported that the agents promptly started aggressively questioning the staff – because that makes sense, go after the people making your food and cleaning your room.

On Sunday afternoon, someone dressed in black and wearing a vest with “Agent” stenciled on the back showed up at a car repair business in north-east Philadelphia, tied up the Dominican woman cashier, claimed he was an immigration officer—then stole $1,000 out of the till. Given ICE’s propensity for plain clothes, it’s surprising this is not more widespread. Or maybe it is, and people are too afraid to report it.  

Elsewhere, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to allow DOGE access to social security data—so, detailed information on every single resident in the USA. I’m sure none of that will be used for nefarious purposes. (Hint: Look up Palantir and Peter Thiel and tell me we’re not headed rapidly into Skynet territory.)

Yesterday, RFK Jr fired the entire CDC vaccine advisory board—even as measles and whooping cough are spreading rapidly again, and a new and very infectious variant of Covid is headed our way. Not to mention bird flu—actually, you can’t with any accuracy because the scientists who were tracking outbreaks and researching vaccines have been, you guessed it, fired.

On the plus side, some 300 scientists at the National Institutes of Health yesterday issued the Bethesda Declaration, decrying the ongoing politicization of and damage to US biomedical research infrastructure. It now has over 8,000 signatories, and giving it a snazzy name has ensured lots of headlines and attention.

Meanwhile, DJT’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which runs to over 1,000 pages, is before the Senate, having narrowly passed in the House. The damn thing has so much stuffed into it, from slashing health insurance eligibility for the poorest to tax code changes, limitations on federal judge rulings to preventing states from legislating on things like AI, that some Republican congresspeople have admitted they don’t know what they voted for, and claimed if they had known, they would have voted no.

Oh, and there are truly chilling videos of trainloads of tanks rolling into the DC area in preparation for DJT’s “I’m a big boy” birthday ego-massage, aka military parade. The whole ugly spectacle is costing tens of millions of dollars; but that’s OK, we’re ripping healthcare and food assistance away from the poorest to pay for it. 

Trump et al have long made it clear they want to use the military to enforce their “mass deportations of all the brown people” agenda. It’s not a stretch to think they learned from January 6, 2021 (when armed terrorists actually DID try to attack America, remember?) and are now practicing for what they want to unleash next time—perhaps around the next federal elections in November 2026 elections? 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump, tariffs, and the increased risk of recession

Posted on April 4, 2025 by abroadintheusa

Yes, we’ve all had a good laugh at an administration so incompetent that they announced tariffs on a group of Antarctic islands inhabited only by penguins; and on the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose only inhabitants are the US and UK service members at the Diego Garcia military base. But the reality of Trump’s announcement on April 2 is far from funny.

By now, we’ve all seen the screenshot of the chart Trump brandished at his presser on April 2. He wants a baseline 10% tariff on all countries, effective April 5, and steep new import taxes on the likes of Europe, Vietnam, India, and South Korea, effective April 9. (Strangely, Russia is not on the list.) He also signed an Executive Order (number 109 in 73 days, according to the Federal Register) ending the de minimis exemption.

Why is that important? This exemption is a nifty little loophole that allows companies to send packages to the US duty free as long as the value of the goods is less than $800 (per person, per day). So, we can say goodbye to all those cheap online buys from Shein and Temu. Or bargains on Amazon—its online marketplace is heavily dependent on goods sold by third-party merchants in China. According to the Cato Institute, US Customs and Border Protection recently announced that, in 2024, it processed more than 1.3 billion (yes, with a B) de minimis shipments, more than 3.8 million per day.

I say this with all of my 25 years as a financial sector international economist and manager of country risk—it is impossible to overstate the stunning levels of deranged incompetency in this set of tariffs. They are NOT in any way “retaliatory tariffs” (i.e., reflecting what the other country has imposed on US goods) but rather are based on the US’s bilateral trade balance with each country. New York Times journalist James Surowiecki quickly reverse engineered some of the numbers and figured out the math (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/business/economy/trump-tariff-rates-calculation.html) Someone just took the trade deficit with each country, and divided it by that country’s exports to the US. So, the US had an annual $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia last year, while Indonesia’s exports to the US came to $28 billion; 17.9 divided by 28 = 0.64 so presto chango! The tariff is set at 64%. Some other commentators have shown that asking ChatGPT, Grok, or one of the other AI models out there “what is a fast and easy way to determine punitive tariffs” generates just this approach. Usually, tariff increases are the result of months of careful analysis and negotiation, and not something plucked from the electronic ether by some random idiot with a smartphone.

And yes, the list includes Taiwan as a country, which I’m sure Beijing is just thrilled about.

The first cover is dated October 25, 2024. The second is dated April 5, 2025.

As the Economist said in its leader this week: “Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded.” 

Trump claims these tariffs will somehow trigger a new age of American production, but the reality is that US consumers are used to easy access to cheap Stuff. There is zero evidence that they will really be willing to pay (significantly) more to ‘buy American,’ although they won’t have a choice. And let’s not forget how long it takes to set up a new manufacturing facility, establish supply chains, and hire workers. Yes, some existing US manufacturers and producers may see more demand for their goods, but their costs of imported materials will skyrocket, which will almost certainly offset any demand boost. Take cars; Trump has imposed a blanket 25% tariff on all cars wherever they are made, but auto production is one of the most global in terms of supply chains. So even if your new car says it was “assembled in the US,” the bulk of the parts likely came from Canada or Mexico. GM builds its most affordable models in South Korea, not the US. Analysts are anticipating new cars will see a $5,000 to $10,000 price jump. And this will bleed down into the used car market; remember the rising used car prices and tight demand of the pandemic? 

Oh, and all of this will mean increased inflation. You know, that thing voters were supposedly most worried about last year and wanted Trump to fix?

The US has run an annual trade deficit since sometime in the 1970s. Last year that deficit hit $1.2 trillion. In other words, the US imports a lot of Stuff from the rest of the planet—especially machinery, electrical equipment and electronics, vehicles, pharmaceuticals, and apparel. This is actually not surprising, given that the biggest driver of the US economy is consumption (i.e., you and me buying all that Stuff).

Shortly after Trump’s announcement, I saw an AP interview with the CEO of Basic Fun, the company behind iconic toys like Lincoln Logs and Tonka Trucks. He said that if these tariffs do go into effect, the price of a Tonka Mighty Dump Truck would have to rise from $29.99 to $39.99 and maybe even $45 this holiday season. Similarly, the CEO of ASM games said he can only hope “they negotiate out of this before the first shipments come into U.S. ports for Christmas sales.” 

Look at it another way: with a tariff of, say, 2%, the government “collects” revenues, but increase that tariff to 20% or higher and people will eventually stop buying those items. So, higher tariffs at some point will cause your revenue collection to drop. This is Econ101.

This cartoon is by Bruce MacKinnon, editorial cartoonist at the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, from last November. Apparently it wasn’t published then, but now it’s time has come.

A quick check of some of the comments on a post on our local neighborhood Facebook page suggests that people inside the MAGA cult still believe in the “stable genius” with 34 felony convictions and who applied for bankruptcy six times, even as he risks tanking the US economy and starting a global trade war. They believe the gaslighting claim that Liberation Day addressed the “decades of unfair trade practices that have ripped our country off and American workers off” (direct quote from White House Press Secretary Leavitt). But from outside the cult, it looks more like don Trump is gleefully grabbing the rest of the world by the short and curlies, so he can then spend months feeling like a big and clever boy while various countries and sectors come crawling begging for relief. It’s governing by hostage taking.

Trump has been ranting about global trade being “unfair” and saying other countries are “ripping us off” since the 1980s (yes, there are headlines and news reports), and obsessively saying tariffs are the answer. He cheerfully invokes the Gilded Age (roughly 1870-1902) when the USA was “at its wealthiest” and “a tariff nation.” He has said it made no sense to become “an income tax nation” in 1913. Yes, the US economy did grow rapidly between 1870 and 1913, but mostly thanks to high levels of immigration that fed rapid industrialization. It was also a time when the country was wracked by extreme inequality and widespread unrest—tariffs being a very regressive tax that hits harder the less money you have. That “inexplicable” move away from tariffs was actually in part due to widespread protests against tariffs and a growing union movement.

He would do better to pay attention to a different period of history. The infamous Hawley-Smoot tariff bill was passed in 1930, by a Republican-led government that at the time literally promised the new tariffs would usher in a period of sunshine and prosperity. (Hint, it didn’t. Look up Great Depression in Wikipedia.)

This chart shows the US overall weighted-average tariff. The blue dot on the right is just before April 2. The green dot is with all of the April 2 announcement included; the highest rate in over 100 years. Higher even than under Smoot-Hawley.

Of course, none of this may come to pass. The power to impose trade tariffs rests with Congress, not the President. Senators Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, are trying to remind their colleagues of this, today introducing the Trade Review Act of 2025, a bill which would require the president to notify Congress of new tariffs within 48 hours of imposition; gives Congress 60 days to accept or reject them; and also requires the administration to explain the reasoning for new tariffs and provide an impact assessment for American businesses and consumers.

Even so, a great deal of damage has already been done. Various US stock indices are tanking and economists are busy raising expectations for a recession in the US this year. Because if there’s one thing business hates it’s unpredictability. The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index has hit a new record high, above even the level it reached during the Covid pandemic.

Even a temporary disruption of trade patterns will impact a global economy that is only just recovering from the supply disruptions and inflation triggered by the pandemic (and by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). The EU reportedly is considering slapping tighter regulations and taxes not just on US goods but on US services, which would hit providers like Bank of America and Amazon. What can be destroyed in a matter of days will take years to rebuild, including the role of the US in the global economy and decades of international diplomacy with allies. 

Remember the Boston Tea Party? That was a protest against tariffs.

Meanwhile, the decimation of the scientific and health system continues, with thousands of staff fired from the National Institute of Health and its various subsectors on April 1. Tensions between the US and Iran are heating up. Yet another mammoth severe weather system is churning across the central US. Not only has no one of consequence been fired after Signalgate, there are ongoing revelations about senior staff conducting national security discussions over Gmail. The administration admits to sending “innocents” to a foreign gulag but shrugs and says “oopsie, well, nothing we can do about it now.” The President is apparently making personnel decisions based on recommendations from far right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. And the government has fired almost everyone at the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Oh, and the US imports most of its paper from Canada, Mexico, and China. It might be time to stock up on toilet paper again.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

ABOUT THAT WEATHER FORECAST

Posted on March 31, 2025 by abroadintheusa

Really? With all of everything going on, you’re going to talk about…weather? Absolutely—and not just because Brits love to talk about the weather and we’re expecting a big storm here this evening. (Although “weather” in the States is a whole different level of stuff that is just fascinating to talk about.) Rather, what this administration is unleashing on the national weather service is an illustration of what happens when ideology runs rampant at the expense of science—hell, at the expense of common sense—with likely catastrophic results.

The ‘everything’s bigger in America’ trope gets overused but when it comes to the weather, it’s true. There’s the Atlantic Hurricane Season, which runs from June 1 through the end of November. And Tornado Alley, which basically covers the entire center of the country (being in a high rise hotel in Chicago late at night and suddenly the tornado sirens go off is something I hope never to experience again). There are wildfires, especially but not solely in the west; periodic atmospheric rivers which, along with the hurricanes, can lead to epic floods; and let’s not forget the occasional earthquakes. And for the floods and fires, an increasing number of “once in a century” events that seem to hit more and more often.

Case in point, the massive storm that churned across the country over the weekend of March 14-16.

This monster left a trail of destruction across multiple states, spawning category EF-4 tornadoes (the second strongest class), and killing scores of people, including eight who died in a big car pileup on a major highway in Kansas after a dust storm hit. Turning on the radio to catch a news story about a deadly dust storm in Kansas was a level of apocalyptic “I’m sorry WHAT now?” that I did not expect to hear on a Saturday morning. 

The role of the NOAA and NWS

Obviously climate change is exacerbating all of this, which makes it even more important to use cutting-edge science to build sophisticated weather modeling, monitor developing problems, and predict where disaster may strike. Way back in 1870, Congress established a division within the US Army’s Signal Service tasked with issuing weather forecasts and warnings. It eventually became a civilian agency when Congress transferred its meteorological responsibilities to the US Weather Bureau. Today, it’s the National Weather Service (NWS), housed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the Department of Commerce. 

Note that NOAA tag line: “Science. Service. Stewardship.” This administration does not believe in any of that.

The NWS is owned by the American people, a public service that is paid for with our tax dollars. Yes, it provides the data that feeds into the nifty weather app on our phones but, like so many publicly funded services, it does way more than most of us realize. 

First, there’s the safety aspect. Across the country, airports rely on the NWS for reliable and updated storm forecasts. (Personally, I’d really like the airport to have accurate information on any massive storms lurking between me and my destination.) In mid-March, when wildfires broke out across Texas, life-saving evacuation alerts were issued by the NWS, while firefighters on the ground were using NOAA satellites for real time wildfire monitoring. In 2024, according to a Union of Concerned Scientists article published March 21 (https://blog.ucs.org/juan-declet-barreto/the-theft-harm-and-presidential-grift-of-privatizing-the-national-weather-service/) 418 people were rescued from incidents over water, land, and in downed aircraft, thanks to the Coast Guard and the military having access to NOAA’s search and rescue-aided satellites.

Then there are the widespread commercial uses for accurate weather data. Farmers rely on NOAA info for drought monitoring, so they can plan and prepare for the season. Forest managers and wildfire first responders rely on seasonal and monthly wildfire risk outlooks. Major manufacturers and infrastructure managers need weather-related risk data to keep things running smoothly. That includes getting information on rapid-onset events such as extreme heat domes and flooding. 

But like every other part of public services, the Trump administration has unleashed the DOGE wrecking ball on the NOAA, telling the Agency it plans to cut their workforce by 50%. The whole of the NOAA workforce currently stands at about 13,000—that’s less than one half of one percent of the three million-strong federal workforce. In early March, hundreds of workers were fired from the NWS. The Union of Concerned Scientists have accused DOGE of “illegally invading NOAA headquarters, firing thousands of its staff, and canceling leases on some of its key buildings.”

The impacts of all this are already being felt. One of the things the NWS does is launch weather balloons, a critical tool in gathering data. Apparently there are 83 balloon launch sites across the US, and according to one report, 14 are already doing only partial launches, or none at all. This weather data gives critical information to local governments, like tornado warnings, and to major installations like oil rigs, who like to know when there’s a hurricane headed their way.

(Screenshot from a Bluesky account)

Hurricane season starts on June 1 and the NWS has already warned it will be a “dynamic” season this year. In February, a slew of flight directors and other pilots were fired from the NOAA; news media suggests some have since been rehired, but no one seems to know if there will actually be planes, pilots, or plans ready to go when the first big storm of the year threatens one of the cities along the Atlantic or Gulf Coast. 

But fear not—Elon Musk owns a satellite company. Starlink will just step in and save us all, right? Actually, I’m pretty sure my tax dollars are a more efficient way to fund weather balloons than relying on a patchwork of private companies that will doubtless charge heavily for their precious data.

The Role of FEMA

In a country this big, you need large resources to cope with the aftermath of weather-related disasters.  Enter FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Trump has for months been saying he wants to get rid of FEMA, calling it an inefficient use of federal money. He’s already fired more than 200 employees at FEMA and recently signed yet another executive order, this one directing state and local governments to “play a more active and significant role” in preparing for disasters.

In truth, state and local governments are already in charge of disaster response. Only when a state government asks does FEMA step in, organizing thousands of federal workers to help with things like inspecting damage, distributing aid, planning for rebuilding public infrastructure, etc. It can also call on resources from the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, like helicopters and planes and ships. 

FEMA gives funding to local governments to rebuild public infrastructure after disasters, including schools, roads, bridges, and parks. It also gets aid to individuals for things like temporary housing and home repairs. And there are FEMA grants available to help communities be better prepared for disaster, for example building infrastructure that is less likely to be destroyed by floods or fires or tornadoes. The Agency is far from perfect and has been the subject of plenty of criticism over the years. But the reality is that without FEMA, it would be up to the states to find the resources to deal with all of this, including finding and training staff.

(Image from the FEMA website)

FEMA reportedly is responding to three to four times more disasters now that it did in the 1980s.

Last September the massive Hurricane Helene made landfall in northern Florida, then pounded its way inland, bringing once-in-a-century levels of rainfall that in turn triggered catastrophic flooding in places such as the Black Mountains of western North Carolina, a region that had not seen hurricane-spawned floods in living memory. Recovery and rebuilding will take years. But a few weeks ago, I saw a news report (from MSNBC) that the Trump administration has denied a funding request from the city of Asheville, North Carolina, to help its recovery from Helene—because in the city’s 125-page funding plan there is one line lauding the positive impact the plan can have for women- and minority-owned businesses.

(Picture from USA Today)

Meanwhile, Los Angeles is trying to recover from January’s massive wildfires. Firefighters came from all over the country to help—and also from Mexico and Canada. Can’t imagine they’ll be as willing to do that going forward. One of the decimated communities in LA is called Altadena. Imagine the linguistic hoops that local disaster recovery people are having to navigate, to claim federal rebuilding assistance without mentioning that this is an historically Black community.

So, what could Trump and DOGE possibly have against federally funded weather forecasts and disaster recovery? Yes, these spending cuts are part of the administration’s obsession with doing everything at the state level. But more to the point, the attack on the NOAA is yet another plank in the Project 2025 goal of clawing up the bulk of publicly owned resources into private hands. It’s the corporatization of the public good, and that leaves all of us vulnerable.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FLOODING THE ZONE

Posted on March 28, 2025 by abroadintheusa

In the past few days, we’ve been hit with a deluge of news stories any one of which would have been explosive just a few months ago; but now they’re just part of the daily flood of insanity. Except, when you look at the flood as a whole, it’s not insane, it’s a strategy to end the democratic republic.  

Hyperbole? Alas, no.

Sarah Jeong is a journalist with The Verge.

First came Signalgate, which makes the original ‘Gate” perpetrators look merely naive (that’s Watergate if you’re too young to get the reference). People in the government have variously denied the chat happened, denied the info on the attack plans was classified, denied the plans were capital-p Plans, and attacked the journalist who proved they were lying. Over the past few days this story has seen not just a staggering security breach, including use of a non-secure program on non-secure devices from non-secure locations (National Security Advisor Waltz was in Moscow?!), but also a clear criminal violation of the Federal Records Act (Signal messages are designed to self-destruct). It seems the most security-conscious adult on the chat was the one person who wasn’t supposed to be there. 

All of this culminated in members of the administration lying under oath to Congress in public hearings. Senator Tammy Duckworth, a veteran pilot who lost both legs in combat, was so infuriated at the grave risk to the military personnel conducting the operation that she publicly called Secretary of Defense Hegseth “a fucking liar.” 

Meanwhile, German newspaper Der Spiegel has reported that the emails, mobile numbers, and even some passwords for Hegseth, Waltz, and Gabbard—the administration’s supposedly most important security advisors—were all available online in commercial databases and publicly-available leaks.

The Signalgate story began to unfold on Monday. On Tuesday, March 25 a PhD candidate at Tufts, a well-known university in Massachusetts, was literally snatched off the street by masked plain clothes ICE agents. Why? Because she wrote an opinion piece supportive of Palestinian rights in the student newspaper last year. So, not a terrorist threat, not even an undocumented illegal (she’s here on a fully valid student visa), but just someone who once expressed a Wrong Opinion. You’ve probably seen the video, courtesy of @mattreednews. Rumeysa Ozturk was just walking down the street, on her way to meet friends to break her Ramadan fast. I cannot imagine how terrified she must have been in this moment, or in the hours since, hungry, and alone. 

Still, it should all work out, right? That very night her lawyers secured a court order that she must remain in Massachusetts. But all day Wednesday ICE wouldn’t tell her lawyers where she was; and on Thursday they finally admitted she’s been sent 1,700 miles away to an ICE detention center in Louisiana and claimed she was already out of the state before the order came down—do we believe them? The ICE center in Louisiana just happens to fall under the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of 13 US Court of Appeals, which Vox in December 2022 called “the Trumpiest Court in America.” (Twelve of the 17 active judgeship on the Court are held by Republic appointees, half of them Trump’s.)

Last night, Secretary of State Rubio said Rumesya’s visa had been revoked because America cannot accept people intent on creating “a ruckus.”

And Rumeysa is far from the only one. A State Department report gathered by Axios says that “more than 300 foreign students have had their student visas revoked in the three weeks ‘Catch and Revoke’ has been in operation.” Catch and revoke? These are not frickin’ Pokémon Go characters. By the way, there are about 1.5 million student visa holders nationwide. 40 years ago, before becoming a green card holder and then a citizen, I was one of them.

Meanwhile, a Washington, DC Court of Appeals panel continues to block so-called deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. This is just one of the cases involving the 200+ Venezuelan men shipped off to one of the worst mega-prisons on the planet for the crime of being brown, in America, with a tattoo. Mother Jones has reported on the case of a baker from Houston whose tattoo is an Autism Awareness logo in honor of his kid brother. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is covered in ink but I guess he’s safe, being Very White. (For the record, Hegseth was was pulled by his District of Columbia National Guard unit from guarding Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration because of concerns that his White Christian Nationalist tattoos didn’t show clear support for, or allegiance to, the Constitution.) On Wednesday Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem flew to El Salvador to record a chilling video of herself, sporting a $50,000 watch, gleefully standing in front of caged, shaven-headed Venezuelan detainees. Maybe some of them are gang members, but I doubt even they would think an Autism Awareness tattoo is a danger to national security.

What about the rest of the government? Well, over at the Department of Health and Human services, RFK Jr is doing things that are neither healthy nor supportive of humans. HHS has just abruptly canceled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states that were used amongst other things for tracking infectious diseases, mental health services, and addiction. He has also announced 10,000 job cuts (that’s 25% of the entire HHS workforce), the ‘consolidation’ of the Department’s 28 divisions to 15, and the closure of five of the 10 regional offices. Among other things, the HHS processes the only national healthcare schemes in this country, Medicare (for people aged 65+ and the disabled) and Medicaid (for those on very low incomes). Fewer staff will mean the services won’t work properly, which is bound to lead to “See, these programs don’t work well so let’s privatize them. Maybe Elon can run them.”

Speaking of Elon, here’s one that may not get much attention outside the US: Musk has now poured $20 million and counting into a State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, where one of the seven seats is up for election. He’s even launched a ‘Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges’ (their caps)—sign it and you get entered into a lottery to win $1 million. The first winner was gleefully announced on X on the evening of March 26. If the Republican wins in the April 1 election, it gives a 4-3 majority on the court. 

Why does Musk care? Well, Tesla has filed a petition for a judicial review of a Wisconsin law that says car manufactures cannot sell direct to consumers in the state (Wisconsin isn’t the only state with a law like this). Musk apparently thinks opening Tesla showrooms will give him a much-needed sales boost. Apparently, Trump’s White House Tesla showroom didn’t sell enough? Oh, and Wisconsin these days also just happens to be one of the closest swing states in the country. Guess who gets to decide the outcome of contested elections? Yep, the State Supreme Court.

Here’s a selection of other “I’m sorry, what now?” news stories I came across this week. 

Paula White is a White House Special Employee and a Senior Advisor in the newly created White House Faith Office. According to an utterly insane TV commercial, she is offering Passover/last supper relics and blessings. What you get depends on how much you pay. (And no, contemporary Passover seders are NOT What Jesus Did but let’s not expect nuanced scholarship from these dipshits).

That’s laughable, but what this administration is doing is definitely not funny. It has halted funding for a national database that tracks domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and school shootings, part of broader cuts to violence prevention programs. It is targeting large law firms that represent anyone Trump sees as an adversary—prompting a slew of state Attorneys General, law schools (but none of the top ten), and bar organizations, to speak out against attacks on firms, on judges, and on the whole Rule of Law thing. 

The National Weather Service announced a few days ago that they’re expecting a “dynamic” hurricane season this year. Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1. And yes, the NWS, along with FEMA (which helps with disaster recovery) has already endured massive cuts (more on this some other time).

Four American soldiers were reported MIA after a training exercise in Lithuania. Rumors of soldiers being MIA would normally be a major concern for any administration, but the news came first from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte while for hours there was silence from the Pentagon and the White House. When the news finally came that they had in fact been killed, Trump said he knew nothing about it. Either he wasn’t briefed, or he paid no attention to what he was told—hard to say which is worse.

Florida is busy loosening its child labor laws—because they suddenly don’t have enough immigrants to pick all the oranges and think letting 14-year-olds work overnight is the answer.

Then there are the endless Executive Orders that Trump loves to sign (note, these are not laws, they’re policy directives that then have to be put into practice or codified into laws by the machinery of government). One of the latest says no more using mail-in ballots to vote and reportedly specifies what kind of voting machines can be used. The tiny problem here is that each of the 50 states, not the federal government, decides the details of how elections are run (as long as they meet overall constitutional protections). But of course, this is don Trump so we’ll soon get something like “change your state election laws or we’ll stop all federal funding for your roads.” Is it paranoid to think this sounds like laying the groundwork to invalidate the 2026 election results? “Oh, no Pennsylvania’s results are illegal because they didn’t follow the president’s orders…” 

Oh, and there’s a growing list of European governments issuing travel advisories about going to America. Mostly it’s a case of “make sure all your paperwork is 100% correct or you risk detention,” but for LGBTQ+ travelers it’s pretty much a case of “just don’t.”

And we’re…two months in?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

THE THREAT TO ACADEMIA

Posted on March 17, 2025 by abroadintheusa

I started today’s post about six times. Between attacks on the federal workforce and various government departments; vote suppression moves; erasing Black, Hispanic and female stories from government websites; threatening Panama, Greenland, and Canada (Canada?!); and decimating support services for military veterans, there are just so many options to choose from in the How to do a Fascism playbook. Except maybe not that last one—going after the military makes no sense whatever flavor of Authoritarian you’re trying to cook up. Then, over the past weekend we had Overt Violation of the Rule of Law when deporting people, so that one’s going to have major ramifications going forward, too.

Because it happens to be the thing I’m most ticked off about today, let’s talk Higher Education. Going after academic institutions is very much part of the anti-intellectual playbook for authoritarians, who like to portray universities as variously hotbeds of Commie propaganda, breeding grounds for terrorists, or stuffed full of people working for foreign interests.

I don’t know how much of the goings on over here are getting attention in the wider world but the assault on universities, and especially on biomedical research programs, is staggering. What we are seeing is a combination of a chilling attempt to curb protest and free speech, a visceral loathing of science, and an attempt to re-segregate higher learning.

Curbing Free Speech

The first round of targeting students’ free speech has been made in the name of “protecting Jewish students on campuses,” a level of hypocritical hogwash that beggars belief. Yes, some of last year’s campus protests in support of the Palestinians of Gaza did cross the line into overt and frightening antisemitism. But the Trump administration is using this as an excuse to start interfering in academic freedom to an astonishing degree.

This issue first gained national attention last week when Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent who had been involved in the protests at Columbia University, was arrested in the middle of the night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (the infamous ICE). He has Green Card and is married to a US citizen. I have no idea what Mr. Khalil may have said or done and it’s entirely possible that I wouldn’t agree with him. But that’s beside the point. More relevant is the fact that he has not been accused of any crime. The Trump administration simply said it can deport any foreign nationals it deems a national security threat.

The government has also pulled $400 million from Columbia University over what it described as the Ivy League school’s failure to curb antisemitism on campus. And NPR has reported that federal officials sent a letter to the University demanding that Columbia place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership for a minimum of five years,” requiring them to create a full plan to do so by March 20. The letter reportedly gives no reason why this department was targeted.

But Columbia is far from the only institution being targeted. Another 60 colleges and universities, including famous names like Cornell and Yale, have received a letter from the Education Department warning they could lose federal money and face “potential enforcement actions” if officials determine the schools fail to protect Jewish students on campus.

Attacking Science

Some of the assault on science and biomedical research is the result of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s absurd beliefs; but it also reflects the knee-jerk authoritarian distrust of science in general. This strand of the attack on higher education risks setting back research in this country by a generation. It’s a lot easier to destroy something than to build it.

In February, the Trump administration announced deep cuts to National Institutes of Health grants for research institutions. To give just one example, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee is one of the top research hospitals in America. It received nearly half a billion dollars in 2024 for medical research, the second most in the country. Its budget looks set to be cut by more than 10 percent. With some 50,000 jobs and 4,000 businesses in Tennessee dependent on biosciences research, the impact on jobs and on the state economy could be devastating. 

Social media post from a biomedical engineer and vice chair of research for neurosurgery at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School:

Just as horrifying, Kennedy’s HHS has stopped all communications about NIH grants; throttled peer-reviewed grant-review meetings; and threatened to fire hundreds of expert reviewers and core staff at the agency. It has ordered the review of dozens of keywords in thousands of existing grants and is issuing funding termination letters based on what it finds. It has placed a cap on the indirect costs that underpin basic scientific and medical research; and according to one report “put woefully unprepared, lower-level career staff in charge of key functions at the agency.”

All of this has seen the work of the NIH—the world’s gold standard of biomedical research—grind to a halt. Some programs are rescinding offers of places in PhD programs. Major research labs are being shuttered or told to stop most of their research. These are the kinds of research institutions that have created nearly all our life-saving medical breakthroughs in the past quarter century.

Image of an abandoned lab, from RichardLewisPhotograpy.com

Attempting Re-segregation

The final strand in all of this is the ongoing assault on DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Which is shorthand for “stop including people we don’t like.”

The U.S. Department of Education reportedly has launched investigations into 52 universities in 41 states, accusing the schools of using “racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.” 

A few days ago, the department’s Office of Civil Rights said that 45 schools, particularly their graduate programs, violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act by partnering with The PhD Project, a nonprofit that helps students from underrepresented groups earn doctoral degrees in business. The program focuses on supporting Black, Latino and Native American students. Six additional institutions of higher education apparently are being probed for awarding alleged “impermissible race-based scholarships.” And another has been accused of “administering a program that segregates students on the basis of race.”

Once again, the government is taking some of the language of equality and civil rights and turning into something else—namely, narrowing the access pipeline so that only mediocre white boys can succeed.

This isn’t new, of course. Ever since the aftermath of the civil war and the subsequent rise of Jim Crow, America has seen periodic convulsions of those in power attempting to re-segregate all aspects of American public life. And now, between the election of a Black president in 2008 and the candidacy of a Black woman in 2024, some corners of white America have pretty much lost their collective minds.

Segregation sign from the 1950s

What Next?

The combination of curtailing free speech, going after scientific research, and shutting down any hint of diversity programing has stunned academia. Over the last two weeks, more than a dozen institutions have announced limits on hiring for faculty and staff positions, including Harvard; MIT; the University of Pennsylvania (where I got my own PhD); North Carolina State University; and many, many more.

Harvard said their hiring freeze was “meant to preserve our financial flexibility until we better understand how changes in federal policy will take shape and can assess the scale of their impact.”

Most universities have responded publicly to these attacks with strategies of self-preservation. They are lying low, avoiding public debate, and trying to appear cooperative, in the hope of mitigating the assault.

One notable exception has been the President of Wesleyan University, Michael Roth. Wesleyan, located in Connecticut, has just over 3,000 undergraduates and is one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. It also happens to be the spouse’s alma mater. In an interview with Politico Magazine published on March 12, Roth said, “The infatuation with institutional neutrality is just making cowardice into a policy.” He noted that “the idea that we now have a list of words we shouldn’t use is shocking. Schools are scrubbing their websites.”

Roth added that, with the current administration thinking of retribution as a legitimate political tactic, we are seeing “the greatest fear in civil society, including in the higher education system, since the McCarthy era.”

Ah yes, McCarthy. The US Senator whose incendiary claim in February 1950 that he had a list of known Communists working in the State Department ballooned into years of persecution that expanded to include gays and anyone he deemed guilty of “perversions.”

In 1953, one of the institutions targeted by McCarthy’s Senate Subcommittee on Investigations was the Voice of America, an international media network funded by the government and launched in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda. Despite weeks of VOA personnel being grilled in front of television cameras and a packed press gallery, McCarthy never managed to shut the VOA down.  

Today, the VOA, which includes entities like Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, claims to have over 400 million listeners worldwide every week. 

Or at least, it did, until Trump signed an Executive Order last Friday stripping the VOA of its funding because it is “radical” and “anti-Trump.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Elbows Up!

Posted on March 11, 2025 by abroadintheusa

As the Trumpian assault on this country’s constitution accelerated through the month of February, more and more people on social media were grouching along the lines of, “If this was France they’d be rioting in the streets of Paris already but all the Americans do is file lawsuits.”

Well yes, lots of lawsuits are indeed being filed at state and federal level, and are stacking up daily, as much of what Musk and Trump are doing is actually illegal. But that’s not the whole story. In fact, protests are accelerating across the country – it’s just that they are spread out across a very large area, so not as photogenic.

Some background: Here in the US, the contiguous 48, i.e., the 50 states minus Alaska and Hawaii, is a little over three million square miles (add Alaska and Hawaii and we’re talking 3.8 million). France? Around 200,000 square miles. So, a disgruntled resident of Marseilles who wants to get to Paris only has to drive about 480 miles. The UK is even smaller; even with all the little islands around its shores added in, it tops out at just under 81,000 square miles.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the US is a strongly federal system, with a great deal of political power also resting at the state level. Unlike France, which is the epitome of a unitary state, i.e., Everything happens in Paris. (Or so most Parisians believe, although when it comes to political power, they’re right.)

And, of course, mass protests in the US can get frighteningly violent, thanks to the preponderance of heavily armed police forces that aren’t afraid to open up. To give just one local example, the City of Philadelphia ended up reaching a $9.25 million settlement with protesters who were hit with tear gas and pepper spray during the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. At one point, the City brought in the National Guard (that’s sort of akin to the Territorial Army) and declared a curfew. 

Remember, too, that the social safety net has some massive holes here in the US. If you get fired from your job (because, say, you missed a couple of days to go wave placards, or your face showed up in some news story the company owner didn’t like) then you don’t just lose your income. Odds are, you’ll be losing your health insurance, too. 

All good reasons why protests in the US don’t usually look like those in France.

And yet, protests across the US are gathering strength. March 7 this year saw a series of protests under the banner Stand Up for Science. Started as a grassroots movement of grad students horrified by the impact of funding cuts across a broad swathe of scientific research, there ended up being over 120 separate events registered on the Stand Up website. This included 30+ major rallies in cities coast to coast, each with thousands of participants; plus, a slew of smaller events in deeply Republican states like Missouri. Pennsylvania saw big rallies in both Philadelphia (in the south-east corner of the state), and Pittsburgh (around 300 miles to the west).

The above was in Seattle; phagocytose is a biology term, something to do with engulfing and destroying (yes, I had to look it up). 

Being scientists, the standard of placards was particularly high.

Transgenic mice (if you don’t know the story behind this one, look it up, it’s depressingly hilarious).

The Columbia Missourian, a local newspaper from that area, reported, “The Missouri Capitol’s south lawn was packed Friday as nearly a hundred Missourians protested federal budget cuts as part of a national movement called Stand Up for Science.” In many ways, those smaller events are more indicative of the building groundswell of anger.

Anti-Tesla protests are also growing, with regularly scheduled events at Tesla showrooms and charging stations across the country. What started as a few people waving placards outside a handful of showrooms has escalated to the point that you can go to ActionNetwork.org and find out where the next events will be in your area.

It’s got to the point that Chicago’s finest were deployed ahead of a protest in that city.

President Trump ranted recently about the “Radical Left Lunatics…trying to illegally boycott Tesla.” Must be working, then.

Another grassroots group called 50501 (50 protests, 50 states, 1 movement) is organizing “to uphold the Constitution and end executive overreach.” Each successive ‘day of action’ has seen more locations and larger crowds involved. 

These are just some of the events I’m aware of; there are other grassroots actions being organized across the country.

Some of the most astonishing, however, have been the protests at the Town Halls held by Republican Representatives and Senators. Town Halls are when a pol leaves DC to go back to their home constituency or state and has a meeting with voters. They’re usually fairly civilized affairs with the pol bragging about the great things they’ve achieved and voters politely listening and taking it in turns to ask questions and raise local concerns.

From BlueSky. Jack Bergman townhall (congressman from Michigan)

The mounting level of vitriol GOP congresspeople have faced in recent weeks, even in the deepest of deep red states, has prompted the Republican leadership to tell party members to stop holding public events. Meanwhile, phone lines to Congress are jammed. I saw one report that the Senate switchboard is averaging 1,600 calls a minute, up from the usual 40—I doubt people are calling to register support and praise.

The rising tide of anger is not surprising. Funding and job cuts are hitting everything from cancer research to agricultural programs to Veterans’ Affairs to anyone who works for the federal government. Rumor has it that the postal service—a literal lifeline in rural areas—may be next. There’s also the chaos of on-again-off-again tariffs. The stock market is tanking. And now threats are being drawn up to slash Medicaid, the federal health insurance for the poorest, which covers about half of all births in this country, plus a third of kids, and more than half of all nursing home residents. Next on the block will be Medicare (federal health insurance for those age 65+), and social security (the state old age pension system).

So, the only people not being impacted at this point are … pretty much the richest 1%? Shocker.

Remember the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party meme, the parody of voters who support cruel policies and are then surprised when their own lives become worse? It started back in 2015 with this viral tweet:

We are indeed living in one big FAFO timeline.

The national Democratic Party leadership have been infuriatingly slow to react to the extreme political threat of this constitution-shredding moment, or to the levels of anger across the country. But some Democrats have seized the moment, offering to hold their own Town Halls in Republican districts. And some local organizers reportedly are planning “empty chair town halls” in Republican districts, akin to the one pictured above in Bergman’s district, saying they’ll hold the meeting even if invited pols don’t show up.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D) showed up at a rally organized by Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett at his patch in Austin, Texas, and over 3,000 people showed up.

(Screenshot from Warren’s BlueSky)

Will all of this change anything? Optimists point to the likelihood of a blue wave in the 2026 elections. Pessimists look at the degree of vote suppression tactics escalating in many states (which is a subject for another time). As for those holding out hope for the legal system—do we really want to depend on THIS Supreme Court to act as a constitutional bulwark?

But at the end of the day, there are no wrong tactics or wrong protests. The more the merrier.

There’s a Canadian response rapidly gaining traction on social media, apparently based on a very effective hockey playing tactic. Time to do like the Canadians. #ElbowsUp

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

FIRES EVERYWHERE

Posted on March 3, 2025 by abroadintheusa

So, it’s been a minute (OK, nearly 5 years) since I last posted on here; that was in mid-summer 2020 when the Covid crisis was in full swing and Black Lives Matter protests were unfolding in cities across the US. My nearest and dearest all survived the intervening years; spouse and I made a couple of trips back to the UK (on one of which I got Covid and was poleaxed for weeks); and there were a couple of presidential elections. I kept thinking oh, I should start that blog up again, but I’ve been getting into writing fiction (hey, the first book in my YA fantasy trilogy is complete and needs an agent, HINT) and somehow it was never the right moment.

Then came the disastrous November 2024 election that’s left us struggling to get a perspective on watching an established democracy being destroyed from the inside. All those alien attack movies (Independence Day?!) didn’t prepare us for an attack that’s 100% homegrown and that everyone saw coming. “Wait, you mean he wasn’t joking when he said he’d be a dictator? I thought that was just on day one!” 

Image from AP News

The sheer amount of garbage raining down on us right now is impossible to fathom, which is, of course, the point, and right out of the How to Do a Fascism playbook. Trump dashes off endless Executive Orders, Musk and his minions take a flame thrower to the entire structure of federal government, and the courts struggle to keep up with the resulting workload of cases—and through it all, the administration is running through the far-right Project 2025 checklist at a staggering pace. So how to restart a blog about being an expat Brit in the USA when all of everything is going on?

A couple of weeks ago there was an Event in our neighborhood, a huge fire at a large manufacturing plant about a mile from where we live. You may even have seen the news stories (it was reported globally). Hundreds of firefighters and hazmat specialists fought a massive blaze that started late one evening, hampered by bitterly cold temperatures and strong winds. Everyone within a one-mile radius was told to shelter-in-place for a couple of days, all local schools and businesses closed, and those within a five-block radius were recommended to evacuate. It took four days for everything to finally be extinguished. 

Image from Glenside Local newspaper 

This was a building I’d driven by countless times over the years, never realizing how big the whole complex was, how many people it employed (500+), or how long it had been there—the company was founded in 1900 and moved to that site in about 1920. I was vaguely aware of the firm’s support for local kids’ athletic teams (spent many a weekend afternoon on a field across from the plant watching Older Son playing various sportsball games), but I never thought about the hundreds employed there for over a century, or that at lunchtime its workers were a huge source of revenue for local pizzerias and fast-food places. I knew it made some kind of industrial fasteners—but not that those nuts and bolts and such were actually essential parts in the aerospace industry, supplying both civilian and military fleets. 

In case you hadn’t clocked to it yet—yes, there’s a not-so-subtle parallel here with what is being decimated by Musk et al, namely that the reach and impact of good government, like a major factory, is not noticeable until it’s not there.

The local response to the fire was and remains phenomenal. A total of 68 fire companies were called in (68!!!), from across southeastern Pennsylvania, almost all of them made up of volunteer crews. Nearby restaurants gave free meals to responders and one right next to the factory gave the crews a place to rest up.

Image from CBS News Philadelphia

The local community Facebook Group has been full of Opinions since the fire (it’s amazing how many people turn out to be environmental impact and hazardous waste experts…). At the height of the disaster, people were (understandably) clamoring for instant answers, but the various fire chiefs involved were busy actually, y’know, managing a potentially catastrophic blaze. I get it; we were very much on edge and we live at the outer limit of the shelter-in-place radius. But disasters unfold in chaos and initially the best you can hope for is that no one dies—in this case, all 60 workers in the plant at the time got out safe and unharmed.

(Image from Bucks County Courier Times.)

Still, this was a large manufacturing facility with drums of chemicals stored on site (reportedly the worst were in a building that did not catch fire); not to mention the building materials themselves that went up in (possibly toxic?) smoke and scattered (potentially hazardous?) debris across the neighborhood (remember those strong winds?). 

So, people are understandably skeptical of the information being put out by contractors hired by the firm, clamoring instead for answers from the state-level Department of Environmental Protection, and the federal-level EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives). 

Yes, that EPA, the one currently facing a 60% + reduction in staffing, and that ATF, the one some members of the government are insisting should be abolished.

Great though the local response has been, there’s a limit to what the neighborhood can do on its own. No state or local government agency has the resources to research and disseminate the latest scientific advice on the myriad of chemicals used in contemporary manufacturing. That takes federal level resources. Some local residents are upset that maybe the regulations weren’t stringent enough. Don’t worry, Trump et al are making sure they’ll soon be eliminated altogether.

Those of us who ranted about the dangers of a return of Trump are suddenly looking like prophets now that Trump 2.0 is underway. Swathes of the country have not yet been impacted in any meaningful way, but the unrest and protests are definitely picking up momentum as scores of federal workers are suddenly laid off, and news spreads about the chaotic and likely illegal shuttering of countless programs.

When the fires get really big, even the best of neighbors aren’t enough. For that, we need the federal government. But now we’re left wondering, who will come to our aid next time?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dear Fellow White People

Posted on June 2, 2020 by abroadintheusa

TL;DR “Fellow white people: sit down, shut up, and open your eyes and ears to what’s happening around you.”

I first arrived in the USA in 1985, a naïve grad student who thought years of watching TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Dallas had given me a decent background on what life would be like here.

My first “things are not what you think” came only a few days later. A friend’s parents invited me to a backyard barbecue—twenty or so well-meaning, educated, middle-aged and solidly middle-class white people. They were delightful; until someone made a comment about race. This was only a few months after the Philadelphia police department had dropped a literal bomb on the roof of a building housing black anti-government activists, and periodic protests had continued through the summer months.

I still vividly remember the comment: “I just don’t understand what these people want!”

Other people at the barbecue joined in, making statements about ”they need educating” and “they’re not really like us” and “I can’t understand what they say.” I was stunned. I’d heard these kinds of comments for years back in the UK, uttered by middle/upper class people against the poor and working class. I’d encountered such people for the first time when I went to university and quickly learned to hide my distinctly working-class and regional accent. I became a chameleon and learned to pass.

But the utterances at that sunny Sunday afternoon barbecue left me floored. Don’t get me wrong, I was profoundly aware of discussions about race—but in Leicester in the 1970s the narrative was all around issues of immigration. “XX go home!” was the chant of the racists pouring out their hatred on people of Indian, Pakistani, and Afro-Caribbean descent. I naively assumed that things in America would be different—the whole country was descended from immigrants (willing and otherwise) and the civil rights movement had happened more than 20 years earlier. America had moved on, right?

I quickly learned otherwise.

Over the years I’d be aware, like any good white progressive, that things were not as they seemed. I remember one day noticing a building site on campus, with 20 or so men of all colors working on the scaffolding. When the whistle blew for lunch, they all climbed down and sat along a wall, unpacking their bags and boxes to eat. All half-dozen or so Black workers sat together on one end of the wall, the white workers sat at the other end, and the Latinos perched uneasily in the middle.

Still, life got in the way. I was absorbed with school, career, family. Every so often I’d shake my head at some awful bit of racist claptrap and think, “there are still some crazies out there,” then get back on with my life.

Then came Obama’s election. The staggering levels of vitriol directed his way during the campaign. The foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria of the so-called Birther movement (people insisting that this Black man wasn’t born in America, so he wasn’t eligible to be president; Trump was a leading proponent). It dawned on me that the racism was more than just a few idiots and that some of them had voices that were heard far and wide. Fox News was suddenly more than a joke; it was spreading this stuff.

But I didn’t really start to wake up until a couple of years ago, when I read a twitter thread that still burns my heart. I’d started following a Black SciFi author whose work I really admire, and through her posts and retweets of other Black writers and commentators, had started to realize that there was a whole lot I just didn’t see. I learned the phrase “white privilege” for the first time (I know, late in life but I’m working on it).

I learned to notice how fiction writers address race—describing the color of a Black or brown character’s skin, but never that of a white character. Because white is the default setting that we all just assume is present.

I learned that yes, I had spent years feeling out of place as I hid my background and accent in order to ‘fit in’, but I can pass as middle class, especially in America where they assume a British accent means clever and cultured. Had I been anything other than lily white it would have been 100 times harder.

I saw the move “The Hate You Give” and realized that yes, as the mother of sons, I had taught them to be respectful and careful around the police: “Don’t answer back, don’t argue, just do what they say.” But I had never once thought that I should teach them how to avoid getting shot during a traffic stop: “Put your hands on the dashboard and keep them there; don’t make eye contact; say ‘sir’ a lot; never ever reach for something in your pocket or the glovebox.” And even if they followed all those rules, they may be get killed. The realization that Black acquaintances carried this burden was gut wrenching.

Then came the tweet: A Black woman asking something like, “Hands up sisters, how many of you have had a white woman stranger just come up and touch your hair?”

I was floored. That really happens? I started reading through the responses, found one who said, “It’d be easier to ask if any of us have never had this happen.”

Fellow white women, think about that. Think about the lived experience where total strangers assume it’s OK to violate your personal space and touch your hair.

And that’s what really brought it home to me, that being white means we get to drift through life in a state of blinkered ignorance, assuming that our experience is everyone’s experience because this society amplifies our voices in a way that silences others’.

So yes, the civil rights movement happened over 50 years ago and yes, we elected a Black president for eight glorious years, and yes, we all carry burdens and have Stuff we have to overcome.

But fellow white people, listen up: Black people have been trying to tell us for years that there’s a profound problem with racism in this country and we either didn’t listen or politely nodded and turned away. So now, when the frustration, the grief, what I imagine must be the utter mind-numbing exhaustion of just trying to Live While Black, finally boils over, stop with the “But the violence! But the looting! What do these people want?”

This moment is not about us, but we are the ones who must listen. Think about the lived experience where strangers assume it’s OK to touch your hair. Let that reality sink in for a while. Then start learning and try to do better.

Image 6-2-20 at 1.10 PM

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Graduation Covid-style

Posted on May 29, 2020 by abroadintheusa

May and June are graduation season in America; everywhere, students mark their high school and university graduations with all-important rites of passage including the senior prom, a walk across a stage wearing a cap and gown, and lots and lots of parties.

I remember Older Son’s graduation from a large university in Baltimore entailed military levels of organization and coordination. We gathered in a massive indoor arena with thousands of other proud family members; endured endless speeches and hours of watching not-my-kid walking up to the stage; and finally cheered loudly for ten seconds as his name was called and Older Son got to do The Walk.

But not this year. So, how do Americans celebrate graduation Covid-19 style? By invoking that most American of icons, the car.

Our neighbor’s daughter just graduated from a University about 150 miles away. Her aunties, who all live nearby and love absolutely any excuse for a big family get-together, are not the types to be thwarted by a mere pandemic and they decided this event needed to be marked. So, they put together a parade down our street. Led off by a police car, about a dozen cars drove by, all honking horns and filled with cheering family members, with a fire truck bringing up the rear. The young graduate was suitably surprised and moved (and probably a bit embarrassed). These pics are swiped from her mum’s Facebook post (with permission).

IMG_0031IMG_0027

Yes, that’s the proud dad perched on the ladder filming.

A number of houses in the area have personalized signs like this at a friend’s house, marking her son’s graduation from university.

IMG_0036

Many friends have been posting camp-and-gown pics on deserted campuses.

But I think this is probably toughest for all the soon-to-be-high-school-graduates, whose final weeks of senior year are supposed to be full of the kinds of events that you remember for the rest of your life. Let’s face it, angst about The Prom is a staple of just about every US high-school based movie ever made. Last week I got a sad text from the mother of one of Younger Son’s long-time friends: “She’s missing her 18th birthday, senior prom, and high school graduation, so friends, please send video messages that we will compile for her to mark this time of her life.” Not a lot of movie potential in that.

The SUV Color Day

Which takes us to one of our local high school rituals that had to be marked very differently this year.

The last Monday in May is Memorial Day in the US, a bank holiday in memory of those who died serving in the armed forces. Memorial Day weekend also marks the start of summer. In our small town, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend is Color Day—a school sports day where all the kids are split into two teams, red or blue, and spend the morning doing jump rope relay races and other goofy games straight out of a 1950s playbook.

School sports days are standard in America, but our school district is so small that the entire school community takes part in one big competition. Each grade has an event, from the five-year old kindergarteners all the way up to the 18-year old seniors, along with track races for the middle and high schoolers. Each win racks up points for the team color.

This pic is from one of Younger Son’s Color Days; I think they’re doing the wet sponge relay race. You can see the school assembled on the stands in the background (around 600 kids aged 5-18), waiting to be called down for each class event.

IMG_0094

In this small town, when your kid is first enrolled at the school, they are assigned red or blue—and they stay that color for life. Literally for life. Subsequent siblings keep the same color and parents identify as either red or blue, even passing on their color to their own kids if they stay here. The local bakery even sells red and blue bagels for Color Day.

IMG_0061

The night before Color Day many houses are decorated with balloons and streamers, and gangs of kids roam the streets attacking rival-color houses with chalk graffiti and throwing toilet paper. The occasional rogue street sign also shows up.

IMG_0095

The morning starts with a parade of the entire school population, led by the youngest kids, with blue on one side of the street and red on the other. Our sons would head off to school that morning sporting blue paint from head to toe. Spouse and I would don our blue shirts and walk down to the school to stand and cheer on the blue side of the street as the kids marched past, all singing and chanting, then hurry over to the high school football field to watch the events. Even after all their kids have graduated, many parents still go to see the parade.

After the final event is run and the numbers are added up, the winning team races to the corner of the football field and paints the big bell that stands there either red or blue.

So, you get what a big deal Color Day is for our little town.

But for the high school juniors and seniors, the day is not over. They now hurry home, wash all the paint out of their hair, then get primped and polished ready for the prom that evening. Prom starts with an hour or so of milling about and taking pictures at the house of one of the graduating seniors. (In neighboring school districts with more kids in a graduating class than we have in our entire school system, prom pictures usually take place at some outdoor venue like a particularly scenic park.) It’s breathtaking to see the morning’s mob of rowdy, sweaty kids suddenly transformed into elegant young men and women in tuxedoes and long dresses. Most schools have separate junior and senior proms—with an average of only 50 kids in each grade, ours combines the two into one event, held at a nearby country club.

About a week or so later comes the graduation ceremony for the seniors, also on the football field (or in the gym if it’s raining). This time it’s the families who sit in the stands while the graduating class marches across the field. Our little town even does high school graduation differently. There are no caps and gowns; instead, the boys all wear tuxedoes (with a red or blue tie, of course) and the girls wear long white dresses and carry large bouquets of red roses tied with blue ribbon.

This is Younger Son’s entire graduating class a couple of years ago assembled on the front steps of the school, before their ceremony got underway.

fullsizeoutput_1168

But the class of 2020 had none of this. No Color Day, no prom, no graduation.

Instead, our town combined all three events into a car parade for the seniors on what would have been Color Day.

Over the course of a couple of hours, with one family in each car, all of the seniors drove a carefully designed route around the town that covered almost every street and all of the seniors’ homes, escorted by fire trucks and police cars. We all stood out front and cheered and waved as they drove by.

Parents commented in the local community Facebook page that their students were surprised and delighted at the amount of support they got from the town. There was even a brief segment about it on the local TV news station.

Does all of this make up for missing your prom and graduation? I doubt it.

Welcome to adulthood, kids.

IMG_0038

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

This Lousy Pandemic Script

Posted on May 7, 2020 by abroadintheusa

A few days ago I watched an online talk featuring two of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman and Nora K. Jemisin (you can find it here  here). At one point they note that this pandemic is not the apocalypse that science fiction writers had anticipated.

Your standard plot usually assumes that there are at least some grownups around; and even if it all goes wrong at the start, eventually the grownups take control and show the stubborn bureaucrats what really has to happen so that everyone can survive. But here in the US right now, the reality is not just a serious lack of grownups at the national level but a coterie of leaders who seem to be going out of their way to actively make it all worse. And it turns out that the real heroes of survival are found in the local community groups just trying to do their thing. If this were a movie script?

Rejected. Combines surreal levels of political horror with mundane little acts of caring; unrealistic and unwatchable.

There are grownups in power in some places at the state and local level, mostly Democrats. I count Governor Wolf here in Pennsylvania as one, using a measured and science driven response in the face of impossible demands. In contrast, the Sister-in-Law who lives in Florida is horrified that (Republican) Governor DeSantis is reopening the beaches there. Which has prompted one Floridian to stalk the beaches dressed as the Grim Reaper, as seen in this screenshot from Twitter.

IMG_0017

OK, the optics are funny, but this script is veering into the absurd here, writers; maybe rein it in a little?

And then there’s Governor Hogan of Maryland, telling the Washington Post in an interview that he’d had to enlist the National Guard and state police to protect a shipment of Covid-19 tests from potential seizure by the feds. This came after Massachusetts Governor Baker reported that a planeload of PPE (personal protective equipment) had been seized by the federal government. (Both of these governors are Republicans.)

Hey, what idiot thought it was a good idea to have “state governments having to fight a venal federal administration in a desperate bid to keep doctors and nurses safe” as a major plot point?

Meanwhile, who would have anticipated that you could storm a state Capitol building while waving an assault rifle, as long as you are part of a group of similarly incensed white people squawking about not being able to hang out at your favorite bar. (If black protestors had done this, we’d be reading their obituaries, even supposing they’d been able to get within half a mile of any government building while carrying guns.) Yes, this really happened in Michigan. The same people who are always going on about the importance of law and order and “support the men and women in blue” were screaming into the faces of the cops standing in front of them.

Ugh, another ludicrous plot twist, writers.

What is it about this country that it seems to have more than its fair share of whack-jobs? They’re a very small minority, but the embarrassing relatives you hope will keep quiet at family gatherings are now out and about, screeching that they have the right to get sick if they want to and equating not being allowed to get a haircut with the policies of Hitler. As shown in a photo series at The Columbus Dispatch on April 18 (photo gallery), one of which is shown below, the slogans on the placards waved around in Ohio were distinctly, peculiarly white American.

IMG_0018

 

The “don’t tell me how to live my life…no forced testing or vaccines” slogans are of course coming from the same people who protest outside abortion providers.

Oh, come on, that’s just too unsubtle; this script really has been penned by rank amateurs.

Meanwhile, America’s fault-lines have been laid bare, particularly the profoundly disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on people of color. PA Governor Wolf has announced a task force to examine why this is so.

Maybe start with the ongoing impacts of 400 years of systemic racism? Did anyone do any research before starting to write this?

In this unexpected apocalypse script, the real heroes are the people slogging through their days as essential workers—the nurses, yes, but also the janitors and the Amazon warehouse workers and the bus drivers. The grownups keeping us all going are not leather clad warriors carrying rifles, they’re neighbors getting together to make sure elderly people get their groceries (because, forget deliveries, they just aren’t happening reliably around here). They are the many people helping out at our local foodbank and the restaurant owners who are donating food to the hospitals. They are the teachers figuring out how to keep kids educated online, and our local home and school association trying to create special memories for the soon-to-graduate high school class of 2020.

Another hero in our community is the local amateur photographer who launched a Porch Portraits project—walking around the neighborhood and taking pictures of people on their front steps and porches, then posting in the local community photography Facebook page. (Someone caught the pic below of him doing his thing and posted it online.) Many neighbors have asked that his series of pictures be turned into a book when this is all over. The local “buy nothing” Facebook group is also up and running again, with people posting stuff they can swap or donate, from clothes to kitchenware, plant cuttings to kids’ toys. This is how we survive.

IMG_0013

It turns out survival for me includes figuring out how to join a family Zoom for someone’s 65thbirthday (with nine family groups on the call, it was chaotic and noisy, just like our in-person gatherings, but definitely better than nothing). It also means re-reading some of the books on my shelves—but not the ones in Mira Grant’s post-zombie apocalypse NewsFlesh series. These books are brilliant but just a bit too on point right now.

IMG_0019

For all the whining of some protestors, the US version of lockdown is downright tame compared with the rigorous shutdowns enforced in Spain and parts of China. While parks and public spaces are closed here, there’s no limit on how much you can go outside, on foot or in a car. Despite being Covid-central for Pennsylvania, restaurants in this area are allowed to stay open for takeout. So, another key aspect of survival is restaurant managers figuring out how customers can order online or over the phone and do safe pickups.

A couple of days ago, I picked up hoagies for the family (that’s a long roll sandwich with a distinctly Philadelphia accent). This meant calling the local Lee’s Hoagie House, ordering and paying by credit card over the phone, then sitting in my car in their parking lot while a young person with a clipboard (and mask and gloves) checked my order number on the list, then collected the order from the restaurant and brought it out to the car. Not exactly a hardship.

Face masks are now required when you go out and about where we live, so I’m adding the neighbor who knows how to sew to my list of unexpected grownup heroes. www.SewSistersSew.org  makes masks that are CDC compliant, with washable double layer cotton, ties in the back, and a metal strip to shape over your nose. She even made us a kid-size one for the World’s Greatest Granddaughter.

I have no idea how this god-awful script will reach any kind of satisfying conclusion. Governor Wolf has released a color-coded map for Pennsylvania (below, from the state website) showing what counties will start to see some controls lifted in the next week or two. We’re in Montgomery County in the southeastern corner, firmly in the red still, with (at time of writing) 4,839  confirmed positive cases and 393 deaths county-wide since March 7.

IMG_0012

At the national level, election day is November 3 and the presidential inauguration isn’t until January 20, 2021. That’s a lot of time for the virus and its attendant whack-jobs to wreak havoc on this country.

OK people, scrap all this; clearly, the country that brought us the brilliant movie ‘Parasite’ is the only one that came up with a good script for Covid-19.

But wait, there’s more! Murder hornets have been spotted over in Washington State (the top-left hand corner of the USA). Our beleaguered honeybees are now at risk of getting their heads bitten off by an invasive alien species twice their size. So, compared with honeybees we have nothing to complain about?

According to National Geographic, there’s a strain of Japanese honeybees who co-evolved with the murder hornets and can defeat them— these bees surround a hornet in a big ball and flap their lil’ bee wings so fast it creates a heat vortex that literally cooks the hornets…which is not only metal as hell, it sounds downright inspirational.

Coming soon to your favorite streaming service: Sensible people forming swarms and flapping scientific papers and full copies of the constitution so fast it makes the alt-Right idiots spontaneously combust.

IMG_0016

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments