Author: Syndicated

In late August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made headlines with a dubious declaration. “Florida is the state where ‘woke’ goes to die,” he said at a Republican Party event in his US state, celebrating a slate of conservative victories in school board elections. Given the governor’s policies over the last few years – including hostility to anti-COVID measures such as vaccines and masking – DeSantis’s Florida is indeed a prime destination for anyone with a death wish. But this declaration represents more than just a snappy sound bite. Rather, it is a willful distortion of the reality of “woke”...

Around two days a week, Natalee Hartwig leaves her home in Madison, Wisconsin, before her son wakes up to travel across the border into Illinois. “Luckily it’s summer,” said Hartwig, a nurse midwife at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. “For now, he can sleep in. But any getting ready that has to happen will be on my spouse.” She drives at least two hours each way, immersed in audiobooks and podcasts as she heads back and forth from a clinic in this northern Illinois suburb. She spends her days in the recovery room, caring for patients who have had abortions...

Last September, New York City was so thoroughly inundated by Hurricane Ida that some commuters waded through water up to their waists just to get in and out of the subway station. Across the country, extreme heat battered the West Coast, melting Portland’s streetcar power cables. This summer has seen similar headlines, with heatwaves warping the BART train tracks in San Francisco and sudden rainfall interrupting Northeastern commutes. These extreme weather events, which are increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change, pose a problem to the millions of Americans who rely on public transit to get to...

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) announced on August 9 that after more than two decades of effort, at least one photo has been found for each of the 58,281 service members whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In the Fall of 2001, a short-term initial effort was made to collect photos of those on The Wall, with a larger, more concerted effort launched in the Fall of 2009. Since then, hundreds of volunteers and family members have submitted photos for the effort. Volunteers tracked down photos in many different ways. “When VVMF began this effort,...

Gwyneth Paige did not want to get vaccinated against COVID-19 at first. With her health issues, that included hypertension, fibromyalgia, asthma, she wanted to see how other people fared after the shots. Then her mother got colon cancer. “At that point, I didn’t care if the vaccine killed me,” she said. “To be with my mother throughout her journey, I had to have the vaccination.” Paige, who is 56 and lives in Detroit, has received three doses. That leaves her one booster short of federal health recommendations. Like Paige, who said she doesn’t currently plan to get another booster, some...