Op-Ed

[June 4, 2025: Chicago, IL] He did it again. Today, President Donald Trump doubled  the tariff on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%.

And it’s the steelworkers who will pay with their jobs. Stay with me, and I’ll explain these weird, weird facts:

Basically, everyone knows that “making America great again” means making America racist again – making racism the cultural norm again, unlocking the cage of political correctness and freeing, you know, regular Americans to strut again in a sense of superiority.

This cultural norm was “stolen” by the civil rights movement. Prior to the changes the movement wrought – I’m old enough to remember those days – polite ladies at church could say, “Oh my, that’s very white of you.” And lynchings were not only normal but quasi-legal, or so it seemed, far more likely to result in postcards than convictions.

Arthur Firstenberg passed away earlier this year. However, his work and his words must live on. He is most known for writing—and being an activist—on the health impacts of electromagnetic radiation. And he tackled other critical issues.

He authored the books “Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental impact of the Wireless Revolution,” “The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life,” and “The Earth and I.” 

“The Earth and I” was published in January. 

Firstenberg, at 74 died, in Santa Fe, New Mexico in February.

The slaughter goes on, usually in the name of war, which reduces human life to, at best, a strategic abstraction. Dead civilians – dead children – are collateral damage, which means they’re nothing at all.

How can we be more than just spectators as we learn, every day, more stunning details about the hell going on across the planet? How can the human race stand up collectively to the cancer of war? Humanity, in the name of nationalism, has essentially organized itself against itself: We’ve declared one another “the enemy,” which means that only some of us are human. The others are simply in the way.

Original Sin How About Original Spin? WOW!!! There are no words- Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson you had one job!! In a time when 64% of Americans report having "not very much" or "no trust at all" in the media according to the Pew Research Center. You two so-called “journalists” and the media outlets that pay you, put the cherry on the sundae. Collectively you all chose to sit on critical information about the unraveling of American democracy until it could be packaged, bound, and sold at Barnes & Noble.

We are at a perilous time, when our most basic freedoms are at risk.

It is vital that we not hand President Trump even more power to wreck our democracy than he already has. Among other things, that means not confirming anyone he nominates to be a federal judge.

In early May, Trump announced the first group of judicial nominations of his second term. One is for the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The other four are for district courts in Missouri. Senators on the Judiciary Committee are poring over the nominees’ records in preparation for a hearing expected in early June.

Senators are right to look at a nominee’s record. But in these unprecedented times, the most important record for them to look at is that of the president making the nomination. And Donald Trump’s record shows that he’s dangerously unqualified to be appointing lifetime judges to the bench.

Fair and independent courts are a vital part of our checks and balances. And with the Republican-controlled Congress so far unwilling to stop Trump’s ongoing abuses of power, the courts are more important than ever.

Right now, Congress is working on a giant, fast-track bill that would make historic cuts to basic needs programs to finance another round of tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations.

As the Communications and Policy Director for the Rural Democracy Initiative, I’ve been hearing from rural leaders across the country about the devastating impacts this bill would have.

The good news is it’s not too late. But there’s little time to spare.

Chicago

Anyone who listens to WBBM or WLS radio stations in Chicago or baseball games of the Chicago Cubs has heard them: seemingly incessant jingles selling a drug for an eye condition most have never heard of.

“Slow it down,” tease the ads with a musical lick culled from the 1975 R & B hit by the music group War, Low Rider. "I-Zer-Vay gets GA going slower,” chant the ads, trying to sell the drug IIzervay, which costs $2,220 per treatment without insurance, for the not well known disease of “GA.” (Moreover, the ads target the shrinking demographic of those who remember 50-year-old music hits.)

WHAT IS “GA”?

Geographic atrophy is a condition which can result from dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD)–another eye condition many have not heard of. It has been aggressively publicized by the former Happy Days star Henry Winkler (nee the Fonz) who says he “partnered” with IIzervay manufacturer Astellas Pharma after his father-in-law got the condition.