Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalJFK's Niece Vows to Fix Trump's Kennedy Center Reno
Kerry Kennedy has announced a very DIY solution to the addition of Trump’s name to her uncle’s memorial center.
“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder,” Kennedy, 66, wrote on X Friday.
Alongside a photo of the freshly—and clunkily—renamed ‘The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,’ the lawyer added: “Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
Just an hour later, fellow JFK niece Maria Shriver added her own damning take on the change. While Kennedy went for a pickax, however, Shriver went straight for Trump’s jugular.
“Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man. Quite the contrary,” she began her post on the platform.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/jfks-infuriated-niece-vows-to-take-kennedy-center-renaming-into-own-hands/
Get him, ladies!
US plan for $1.6m hepatitis B vaccine study in Africa called 'highly unethical'
The Trump administration has indicated that it will fund a $1.6m study on hepatitis B vaccination of newborns in the west African country of Guinea-Bissau, where nearly one in five adults live with the virus – a move that researchers call “highly unethical” and “extremely risky”.
The news follows an official change in recommendations on hepatitis B vaccines at birth from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which called the shots an “individual” decision, despite decades of safe and effective vaccination and no evidence of harm. It is part of sweeping changes to childhood immunizations by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, which have global repercussions – including cutting funding for programs that bring vaccines to countries around the world.
“He has a fixed, immutable belief that vaccines cause harm,” said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “He will do everything he can to try and prove that.”
The actions taken this year by Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, have “a global impact”, said Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita at the University of Arizona and a founding member of the grassroots group Defend Public Health. “It is spreading like an infection all its own throughout the globe.”
esting established vaccines in a country with high rates of hepatitis B and a fragile health system “reeks of a neocolonialist attitude” and risks expanding global mistrust of the US and science, said Gavin Yamey, professor of global health at the Duke Global Health Institute.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/19/hepatitis-b-vaccine-study-guinea-bissau-rfk
When has this administration done ANYTHING in an ethical manner? I ask you.
ICE meets snow as midwesterners fight back against Trump immigration raids
ICE, meet snow. As federal agents aggressively raid and detain immigrants in cities across the US, people working to prevent these arrests are using the abundant snow on the ground to fight back.
In videos of confrontations in Minnesota and Illinois, people have thrown snowballs at federal agents who are trying to apprehend their neighbors, often as agents are using force or wielding weapons. In many instances, the agents then responded with more aggression, using pepper spray or teargas against protesters.
In Minneapolis on Monday, agents tried to arrest a woman, holding her in a snowbank, according to video of the incident posted by Minnesota Public Radio. At one point, she appears to be partially handcuffed, and an agent drags her around a snowy street. Bystanders shout at the agents to “let her go” as a chorus of car horns and whistles blare to let the neighborhood know agents are there. An agent holds a taser in one hand and points a weapon at the crowd. People start throwing snow at the agents, one of whom holds a canister of orange spray he repeatedly uses on the protesters.
One woman who joined the scene told the Associated Press that ICE agents were aggressive from the start of the interaction. “I didn’t see anybody throw any hard items,” she said. “The snowballs were definitely being thrown, but we didn’t start throwing snowballs until they started dragging her around by her wrist.”
Brian O’Hara, the Minneapolis police chief, spoke out against ICE tactics after the incident. Federal agents called local police to the scene, claiming they were under attack. He said his officers determined the scene was safe, so they “disengaged”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/18/snow-midwest-ice-raids-trump
ICE agents lie so easily. Didn't their mothers ever teach them?
Trump Spills Real Reason for Manic Address When Cameras Stop
President Donald Trump was heard explaining why he gave his bizarre national address as soon as the cameras stopped rolling.
In seemingly unguarded comments made in front of journalists after the address, the president admitted that it had not even been his choice—but that his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, had made him do it as she plays cleanup amid the fallout from her embarrassingly candid Vanity Fair article.
In Wednesday night’s 18-minute double-speed diatribe, the 79-year-old president fired off mistruth after mistruth about how well his administration is doing and attacked his predecessor, Joe Biden, without having anything new to say.
The White House address was carried live by the major networks, with CBS forced to interrupt the live finale of its reality TV show hit Survivor so viewers could catch the presidential speech.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-forced-to-address-the-nation-to-cover-up-susie-wiles-vanity-fair-disaster/
"Susie made me do it". Sounds like an excuse from "Calvin and Hobbes"
FCC chair suggests agency is not independent amid fears of Trump power grab
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is not an “independent” agency, its chairman suggested on Wednesday, as the word was scrubbed from its online mission statement.
Brendan Carr’s declaration to senators raised concerns of a further power grab by the White House, amid concerns surrounding efforts by Donald Trump and his officials to exert greater control over independent agencies since his return to office in January.
The FCC, Carr told the Senate’s commerce, science, and transportation committee on Wednesday, “is not an independent agency, formally speaking”.
Shortly before Carr spoke, the FCC recorded its status as “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress” in a mission statement on its website, according to a screenshot captured by Axios. During his testimony, however, the word “independent” was removed.
Carr is a vocal Trump supporter, and was accused in September of threatening TV networks that broadcast content the president did not like, notably ABC, after critical comments about Trump made by late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/17/trump-fcc-brendan-carr
Is this even constitutional? Oh wait, Shitler doesn't care about the Constitution.
UnitedHealth reduced hospitalizations for nursing home seniors. Now it faces wrongful death claims
hree nursing home residents died because employees of the American healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group helped delay or deny them critical hospital care, two pending lawsuits and a complaint to state authorities have alleged.
The three cases involve a UnitedHealth partnership initiative that places medical staff from the company’s direct care unit, Optum, inside nursing homes to care for residents insured by the company’s insurance arm.
UnitedHealth says one of the initiative’s goals is to protect patients by reducing unnecessary hospital admissions. Those are admissions the insurance giant would otherwise have to pay for.
In Georgia, the family of a woman named Cindy Deal filed a lawsuit alleging that the 58-year-old died because Optum and her nursing home failed to hospitalize her for hours after she started foaming at the mouth and appeared to be having a seizure.
In Ohio, the family of a retiree named Mary Grant filed a lawsuit claiming that the 70-year-old died after Optum and Grant’s nursing home failed to send her to the hospital, though she had suffered a traumatic head injury and began vomiting.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/17/unitedhealth-nursing-homes
I think Luigi Mangione was justified on behalf of these families. YMMV
Shitler is going to address the nation tonight
I have better things to do. I'm watching a basketball game. My JMU Duke ladies are opening conference play against Coastal Carolina.
What are you doing instead?
The Real Reason These Nativity Displays Bother MAGA Christians So Much
A Massachusetts church is under fire for their holiday display featuring a pro-immigrant take on a classic Christmas decoration: the Nativity.
St. Susanna Parish, a Catholic church in Dedham, reportedly first put up the display shortly after Thanksgiving. In lieu of the standard image of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, farm animals and wise men, the church had two simple signs: One reads “ICE was here” and another letting parishioners know “The Holy Family is safe in The Sanctuary of our Church” and advising them to contact the hotline for LUCE, an immigrant justice network.
While far from their first rodeo making statements of this nature, the latest move from the parish follows clear and pointed statements top-down from Catholic leadership on the “dehumanizing” immigration policies in the U.S., including the Pope calling them “disrespectful” himself.
Per Mass Live, Father Stephen Josoma, the priest at St. Susanna, defended the decision on Monday and said that he would refrain from taking down the signage, as requested by the Boston archdiocese, until he could have a clarifying conversation with leadership
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nativity-immigration-ice-protest_l_69386662e4b0447a52b87ef5?origin=article-related-life
When Christians call something ‘sacrilegious,’ what they usually mean is, ‘This challenges the version of Christianity that benefits me"
Merch commemorating drunk Virginia raccoon raises over $250,000 for animal shelter
Merchandise commemorating the raccoon that gained international fame by barging into a Virginia liquor store, smashing bottled spirits and passing out drunk in a bathroom on Black Friday has raised more than a quarter-million dollars for the local animal shelter where he slept off his bender.
The Hanover county animal protection shelter raised the charitable amount after caring for the inebriated raccoon in question and teaming up with custom apparel maker Bonfire to create and sell items seizing on the internet virality achieved by the creature.
Emblazoned with the words “Trashed Panda”, the shirts, sweatshirts, cups and stickers contain an image of a raccoon spread-eagle next to a spilled booze bottle – unmistakably evoking the compromising position the animal that burgled the Ashland ABC store on 29 November was found and photographed in.
Proceeds from the campaign anchored by those limited edition items “directly support shelter animal care and enrichment”, according to Bonfire’s website.
Figures posted by the company based in Richmond, Virginia, indicated the campaign had raised more than $254,000 as of Tuesday morning. At the time, the campaign was also within 250 sales of its goal of selling 19,000 items.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/16/drunk-virginia-raccoon-merch-fundraiser
On another note, the Virginia ABC stores have posters featuring "Raccoon's Recommendations" which advertise the various brands of booze the raccoon sampled
'You don't have to do it alone': how US cities are helping each other resist ICE
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on Chicago in September, Chicagoans sprang into action to protect their immigrant neighbors: teaching each other how to recognize and safely document ICE agents, setting up “know your rights” trainings, and distributing whistles en masse so people could loudly alert anyone in the vicinity when ICE was spotted.
In the months since, whistles have become a popular raid alert tool in other cities across the country – New Yorkers wear them around their necks to warn neighbors, the people of New Orleans blast them outside ICE facilities and Charlotte residents used them to ward off Customs and Border Protection officials. While strongly associated with Chicago, the tactic is actually one that city organizers learned in part from groups in Los Angeles. Its spread is illustrative of the many ways cities are helping inspire and equip one another in the face of often unlawful federal activities.
Rain Skau, a co-coordinator of the Fight Fascism campaign of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Los Angeles, said Angelenos began to use whistles to alert neighbors about ICE presence when agents first started hitting the city in June. Despite the federal government’s claims that these raids were targeting hardened criminals, Skau described one of the first raids at a Home Depot as mostly snatching women vending food in the parking lot, stuffing them into vans as meat sizzled on the grills they left behind.
DSA and other grassroots groups in the city set up patrols of ordinary citizens to create a consistent presence at the Home Depots when day laborers and vendors were most likely to be out and about. (A September report by Rent Brigade found that Home Depot locations became “the most dangerous places in LA for immigrant workers”.) Volunteers passed out “know your rights” information, and when a tip came via a citywide hotline about an ICE sighting, the groups sent out patrols to document what was happening, collect belongings and get in touch with family members if someone had already been detained.
By the time ICE hit the streets of Chicago in the fall, organizers in Los Angeles felt like they had some wisdom to share. Members of DSA in LA began having informal conversations with those in DSA Chicago. “One comment that someone made was, ‘We’ve never done anything like this before,’” Rain remembered. “And what I said to them was: ‘We hadn’t either, before all this happened. We had never operated ICE watch patrols, but we were able to do it. And here’s the great thing: you don’t have to do it alone. You don’t have to figure out all of this from scratch, because we’re here to support you.’”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/16/ice-immigration-raids-cities
Chicago showed us the way!
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