Donald Trump sends "3D Printer Barbie" press secretary Karoline Leavitt to threaten Americans with deportations!

 A dark day in American history:  Impeach Trump NOW❗

Echo opinion letter published in the Houston Chronicle:

Regarding "Trump says he wants to imprison US citizens in El Salvador. That's likely illegal," (Ya'Think❓🙄) (April 15): 

So, if you feel like you are safe from deportation, because you are a citizen, think again. Trump's press secretary (3DPrinter Barbie "Karoline Leavitt") told the media that the administration is "considering" the possibility of "deporting" U.S. citizens.

If you have committed any serious crimes — the seriousness of which is to be determined by the administration — you may find yourself on a plane to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), leaving friends and family wondering where you are.

And if you think that the law will save you, consider the fact that the Supreme Court gave Trump just enough wiggle room to "disappear" those immigrants to El Salvador. You should also remember that it was the court that gave the president the "presumptive immunity" to commit such (henious❗) acts back in 2024.

From Carl Lloyd, in San Antonio Texas

The article says that El Salvador Nayib Bukele and Donald Trump scoffed at the idea of sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia back, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the administration to "facilitate" his return. Since when did the word "facilitate" take on the new meaning of "do nothing"? It is disgraceful that the president of our country just sat there and nodded while Bukele said he won't return Abrego Garcia to the United States. As if Bukele had all the power when the Trump administration is paying for this man to be held in El Salvador.

This is a dark day for our country. A very dark day.

From Katherine Butler, in Houston

Experts understand how vaccines save lives. Learn from science experts.

 Vaccines are safe!

Maine Voices: We’re not guessing about safety or the effectiveness of COVID vaccines. They’ve been put to the test by duly skeptical scientists, and the findings are unmistakable: They save lives.

By Sam Zager, M.D. is a family physician, a Navy veteran and a Democratic state representative from Portland.

Vaccines are among the most beneficial and humane public health innovations in human history. 

I support Gov. Mills’ recent health worker vaccine mandate (or one like California’s, which offers frequent testing as an option) because ensuring that public places – especially health care settings – are as free from COVID transmission as possible will help reduce suffering and economic impacts caused by this evolving, awful pandemic.

Hesitancy about vaccination has huge implications for everyone. 

Therefore, it's important to respect that there are various reasons many Mainers have not received one of the freely available vaccines. Sometimes they have more than one reason.

• A small number of people may never believe that vaccines save lives and have excellent safety records (a refutation of verifiable evidence).

• Others have avoided vaccination because they oppose mandates or even recommendations about anything (a matter of authority and autonomy); often this is blended with entrenched fears about a controlling and sinister entity, such as corporations or the government. The U.S. Supreme Court has held since the 1905 Jacobson decision that the government can compel individuals to get vaccinated. When the Food and Drug Administration grants final (non-emergency) authorization of a COVID vaccine, I expect this aspect will be more widely discussed.

• A large and important group of vaccine-hesitant people includes folks who simply aren’t sure if the benefits exceed the risks (a matter of uncertainty and discomfort). It’s perhaps the most influential segment of the population, whose actions may grant the virus too many further opportunities to propagate mutations, and ultimately determine the duration and carnage of this pandemic. These vaccine skeptics are like swing voters in an election.

A measure of skepticism is natural and, in fact, implicit in the “scientific method,” the structured approach to understanding our natural world. The scientific method has enabled the discovery or invention of so much that we take for granted: e.g., the roundness of the planet; electric lighting; automobiles; weather forecasts; smartphones and other computer technology; prescription medicines, and some low-tech interventions that reduce suffering and mortality rates every single day.

For instance, in the mid-1800s, we did not yet know that bacteria, viruses, fungi and protists can cause disease. A Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, proposed that if doctors who attended childbirths scrupulously washed their hands before caring for their patients, far fewer newborns and mothers would die of what was then called “childbed fever.” 

This was out-of-the-box thinking at the time, for which he was harshly ridiculed for the rest of his tragically short life. But Semmelweis had done the work to test his thinking and share his results. When others replicated his work in different populations and circumstances, they kept finding that hand-washing saves lives. Even though Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch hadn’t yet explained to the world why hand-washing saves lives, the findings were unmistakable. Semmelweis’ once-radical idea eventually became recognized as fact. Ignoring it would mean infants and mothers would needlessly die. Getting to that safer place involved careful testing, not just supposing and guessing.

With COVID vaccines, we’re not guessing about safety and effectiveness. Just as others put Semmelweis’ idea to the test, scientists have subjected COVID vaccines to many studies among properly and ethically consenting individuals (quite unlike Nazi researchers, contrary to what a fellow legislator recently stated).

They have been proven over and over again to be highly effective and safe (scroll down here for a couple dozen such reliable studies). Furthermore, studies continue to refine our knowledge, and supersensitive reporting methods monitor for safety.

Before training to be a physician, I served aboard Navy ships, from the smallest (submarine) to the largest (aircraft carrier). So when I think about community health or other public issues, being “in the same boat” is both figurative and literal. Part of what kept us alive aboard ships and what enabled us to accomplish our missions was a shared awareness that one person’s actions could and often did have tremendous implications for everyone. The danger of politicizing public health, to me, is the same as politicizing navigation and engineering at sea. It just doesn’t make sense to completely disregard what shipmates who are experts in their areas are saying about what they’re observing. Ignoring verifiable facts is a recipe for disaster.

Catholic Bishops must obey the law and Trump must concede

America the Jesuit Magazine opinion:

The U.S. Supreme Court, as most legal observers expected, has swiftly disposed of an unprecedented lawsuit filed by Texas attorney general Ken Paxton asking that the court invalidate the votes of tens of millions of Americans in four other states won in the November election by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 

In a brief unsigned order, the court said that Texas had “not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest” in other states’ administration of elections. 

Prior to the court’s dismissal, a number of other states had filed a brief supporting the suit, as did more than one hundred Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Donald J. Trump also attempted to join the suit. Even more states and territories filed a brief opposing the suit, both because of the lack of standing for which the high court dismissed it and because it advanced claims of fraud already litigated and thrown out in many other courts.

In September, the editors of America warned that Trump’s “disregard for the system of laws and customs that establish the necessary conditions for debate, decision-making and public accountability in this republic” posed a unique threat to the American constitutional order. We are saddened but not surprised that Mr. Trump’s inability to accept his clear loss has proven our point repeatedly in the weeks since the election.

What is authentically shocking is that so many figures within the Republican Party have abetted Mr. Trump’s outlandish lies about “massive” election fraud, for which no one has provided any coherent evidence, and that they have cooperated with him in filing a swarm of clumsily drafted lawsuits for various courts to swat down over and over again. The country must be grateful for the professionalism and integrity of the judiciary, but its reliability as a backstop—this time—does not erase the danger of these attempts to overturn the will of the voters. Analogously, those sadly few Republican elected officials who have publicly accepted Mr. Biden’s victory likewise deserve praise, but their isolated courage cannot adequately substitute for their party’s near-total captivity to Mr. Trump’s delusional refusal to concede his objective loss.

To make matters worse—and bring them closer to the hearts of Catholics—some of those involved in these affronts against democratic norms are claiming the warrant of the Gospel, both praying for attempts to disenfranchise the populations of entire states to succeed and pretending that they are doing God’s will in supporting Mr. Trump’s assault on the integrity of American elections. That they have likely convinced themselves of the truth of Mr. Trump’s fabrications about the election being “stolen” from him does not reduce their culpability but instead underlines the degree to which their devotion to Mr. Trump has drawn them away from the facts that form the foundation of the truth.

The riches of the Gospel are being diverted into one of Mr. Trump’s bankruptcies.

The danger in such an idolatrous use of the Gospel for nakedly partisan ends is not primarily that it will succeed in overturning the U.S. election. At least at this juncture, the guardrails of the American republic seem to be holding. The danger, rather, is that the association of Christian faith with the corrupt project of installing Mr. Trump in a second term by any means necessary undermines the credibility of the whole church’s efforts to evangelize. The riches of the Gospel are being diverted into one of Mr. Trump’s bankruptcies.

Maine Writer- It was the Catholic bishops that are the same group that sinned when they broke the law by protecting sexually abusive priests by moving them around rather than demanding their resignations! For some bizarre reason, some of the Bishops are siding with Trump rather than support a law abiding  Roman Catholic President Elect Joe Biden.

As this editorial is being drafted, Bishop Joseph E. Strickland of Tyler, Tex., is scheduled to speak by video at a rally after a march on Saturday in Washington, D.C., dedicated to “praying for the walls of corruption and election fraud to fall down.” 

Several other Catholic figures are scheduled to appear as well. Bishop Strickland’s choice to lend episcopal support to this effort brings disrepute upon his office. We hope and pray that his brother bishops may exercise a ministry of fraternal correction by publicly clarifying for the faithful that the American bishops as a whole have not taken sides against the will of the voters in our democracy.

Indeed, the Supreme Court's swift disposal of this latest cynical attempt to reverse Trump's electoral defeat means that the inauguration of the next president will proceed smoothly and on schedule, as it has throughout our nation's history. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court's prudence is no replacement for the civic virtue of elected representatives. Voters should remember those who have abandoned such virtue and hold them to account in the next election.

Maine Writer- Donald Trump must obey the law and concede. 

He lost the 2020 presidential election, plus he has not succeeded in demonstrating his fake call about voter fraud in multiple unsuccessful attempts to overturn the vote counts in key states.