The intersection of healthcare and immigration policy is found in the halls of hospitals and clinics across America, where increasing numbers of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are filling in for doctors who won’t return, and state governments are doing their best to usher IMGs into practice where they’re sorely needed.
Help (Badly) Wanted: Foreign Doctors Apply Within
In 2023, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to drop residency requirements for some IMGs,1 giving them a new pathway to permanent licensure. Following Tennessee’s (somewhat surprising) lead, at least 15 states have introduced legislation to create streamlined pathways to medical practice for IMGs, with both Republican and Democrats contributing.2
During the 2025 state legislative sessions, over 20 bills have been introduced that would expand opportunities for IMGs to support America’s healthcare workforce needs. These range from allowing qualified DACA recipients to apply for licensure in New York to removing redundant training requirements in Montana.3
Some state legislation is more focused in scope. For example, in Illinois, IMGs must not only be legally able to work in the U.S., but are also mandated to work in medically underserved areas.
Perhaps most shockingly, in 2024 Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed the “Live Healthy” initiative to allow IMGs to bypass residency requirements if they have equivalent training experience. But then, the largest population of IMGs is in geriatric medicine, where they make up more than half of the physician population. And, well, it’s Florida.
Already at their shift
For that matter, according to the American Medical Association, a full 25% of licensed U.S. physicians are IMGs,4 with the largest number coming from India, followed by the Caribbean, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Mexico.
This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in– or at least, it should.
The new administration’s condemnation of everything related to equity and diversity, coupled with its rabid pursuit of an America free from immigrants, is simply incompatible with this reality. The reality is that massive numbers of the country’s doctors come from foreign countries, and are supported by legislation and advocacy work focusing on combatting racial and ethnic disparities.56
The AMA’s International Medical Graduate (IMG) Toolkit, in its section on “Academic opportunities and scope of practice,” acknowledges the fact that IMGs will face discrimination, but encourages them to press forward:
IMG physicians face several barriers in their goals and aspirations towards a career in academic medicine. . . Systematic exclusion is also a reason leading to discrepancies in leadership positions and promotions among IMG physicians. Despite challenges, IMG physicians are encouraged to choose an academic career as diversity is a strong determinant of innovation in medicine.”7
Those words “strong determinant” stick out to me, having written so much about social determinants of health.8910
A strong determinant doesn’t make a result inevitable, but rather highly likely. “You have something to contribute,” this guidance says, “So don’t give up in the face of discrimination. Keep trying, because we need you.”
I wonder if America is aware of how much we need IMGs, and how opponents of “DEI” and immigration reconcile their views with this reality.
Wait, actually I don’t. The reality itself is what matters– it’s where IMG physicians can, and do, make an enormous difference.
The language used to justify policy is…fraught. Every new program is a triumph, as is every cut to an existing one. Every new rule is a sea change, and every executive order a roadmap to utopia. These flowery-but-decisive statements come from all politicians, pointing in all directions, and they always have.
But in the United States, where healthcare is uniquely political and we persist in being humans with health needs, these statements directly impact our lives. We must pay attention. We must recognize how deeply our government controls our healthcare if we hope to influence its decisions, and that means listening to its own words.
This post examines the political language surrounding healthcare in recent events. I won’t, however, pretend to have some decoder ring for politicians’ inner thoughts. I don’t need one—their intentions are right there in plain language. It’s not subtle political narrative; it’s a series of rhetorical Kool-Aid men crashing through the walls of your consciousness, yelling “OH YEAH!” every time. Every. Single. Time.
“Lowering costs”
For example, the Trump administration recently issued an executive order “to empower patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information.”1 The order mandates that the Departments of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) enforce regulations compelling hospitals and insurers to disclose actual (not estimated) healthcare costs to patients.
The goal is “lowering costs for American families.” “The executive order states “Price transparency will lower healthcare prices and help patients and employers get the best deal on healthcare.”2
Enforcement of these regulations falls to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) within HHS, using three main avenues for monitoring compliance. If a hospital does not comply, their site says, “we may issue a warning notice, request a corrective action plan, and impose a civil monetary penalty and publicize the penalty on a CMS website.”3
To be clear, I think healthcare pricing transparency is a great idea.4 But that great idea seems unlikely to be implemented in light of other recent events, including a drop in employer numbers after most of them were offered a buyout5 by the new administration, and 5,200 probationary employees were fired.6
Perhaps that administration has determined that the CMS will have extra spare time and funding to check compliance as it abandons a foundational and essential goal on the basis of sheer ideology– but we’ll get to that below.
Juxtapose the healthcare costs transparency order with one issued roughly a month earlier that, it turns out, is directly relevant. On January 20, Donald Trump mandated that the federal government should:7
Terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law . . . all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs, ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts.”
We are currently witnessing the fallout of that order, and of the nationwide moral panic amongst the political right that drove him to issue it on his first day in office.
“Eq*ity”
But what does this allegedly dirty word even mean, in the context of healthcare?
The goal of achieving health equity was articulated by the previous administrator of the CMS, Chiquita Brooks LaSure, in the CMS FY2025 performance plan:8
As the Nation’s largest administrator of health benefit programs, CMS is uniquely positioned to accelerate initiatives that advance the Secretary’s commitment to enhance mental health services, transform pandemic preparedness capabilities, and advance health care quality. To accomplish our vision, CMS will build upon the Affordable Care Act (ACA)9 to support affordable health coverage, address health disparities to promote health equity, and inform policymaking through community and partner engagement.
And (for now, at least) the CMS.gov website defines health equity in this way:
The attainment of the highest level of health for all people, where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their optimal health regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, preferred language, or other factor that affect access to care and health outcomes.10
How long has the concept of health equity been around? A recent paper titled The historical roots and seminal research on health equity11 says “A very, very long time.”
Research on health equity experienced three important historical stages: origins (1800–1965), formative (1966–1991) and development and expansion (1991–2018). The ideology of health equity was endorsed by the international society through the World Health Organization (1946) declaration based on the foundational works of Chadwick (1842), Engels (1945), Durkheim (1897) and Du Bois (1899).
The environmental factors that impact health are called Social Drivers of Health (SDoH) and Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN)– and under Trump’s Acting Administrator of CMS, Stephanie Carlton and Deputy Administrator Drew Synder, the agency has been walking back its pursuit of that goal.
An “ideological crusade”
As of March 4, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has pulled information on health equity for the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through Section 1115 waivers,12 a move that former chief medical officer for the Medicaid program at CMS Andrey Ostrovsky, M.S. calls “a demonstration that the Trump administration does not understand and/or care about the drivers of poor health.” “Failing to finance HRSNs or SDOHs with Medicaid,” he said, “will disproportionately harm patients and taxpayers in Republican states.”13
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was more blunt, accusing newly-minted Secretary of HHS Robert Kennedy of an “ideological crusade against Medicaid.”14
Services that CMS has provided coverage for, based on HRSN data, include home accessibility modifications like handrails and wheelchair accessibility ramps, transportation vouchers, rent or utility assistance, and care coordination– helping individuals manage their care plans.
What’s the justification for the change? A memo15 by Snyder states:
To support implementation of coverage of certain services and supports to address “health-related social needs” (HRSN) in State Medicaid programs and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP), the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) issued two Center Informational Bulletins (CIBs). The first. . . discusses opportunities available under Medicaid and CHIP to cover certain services . . .that purport to address HRSN. . . To evaluate policy options consistent with Medicaid and CHIP program requirements and objectives, CMS is rescinding the November 2023 and December 2024 CIBs.
“Purport”
In other words…no justification. Not even an attempt– just “We no longer care about this. Because, that’s why.”
But that little word “purport” in there fascinates me. Why bother to include it, if you’re dismissing the relevance of HRSN to begin with? Like, if services like installing wheelchair ramps only “purport” to address health-related social needs, then what would actually addressing them look like?
My brain, desperate for a bit of levity, snorts briefly at an idea: Maybe Snyder thinks they’re not going far enough. Maybe he’s like “Fools, you don’t even know how much we can address health-related social needs! Watch me cook!” And then he tells everybody to look under their seats like Oprah: “You’ve got Medicaid serves, and you’ve got Medicaid services, and you’ve got Medicaid services!”
Sadly unlikely, but I sure wouldn’t mind living in that universe.
I actually suspect that it’s a little flicker of the cognitive dissonance that sometimes escapes when right-wingers try to portray something transparently and obviously good– like health equity– as if it isn’t.
Trump’s executive order from January 20 refers to the “Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI),” without spending a millisecond explaining how DEI is immoral or illegal. Why? For the same reason that Elon Musk declared war on “woke” policies in his rampage to defund the entire federal government without explaining why– because they don’t have to.16
“Make America Healthy Again”
Let’s go back to CHIP for a moment. The Children’s Health Insurance Program is not part of Medicaid, but works closely with it, providing low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. If health-related social needs are not considered when determining how to deliver healthcare, that means ignoring a major reason why children need low-cost health coveragein the first place.
CHIP coverage varies by state, but it includes doctor visits, prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, and emergency services.17
Why do kids need all of those? Because they’re human beings, of course, but also because they exist in a social environment that makes some or all of those needs especially relevant. Some examples:
Housing Instability: Children in unstable housing have higher rates of asthma due to exposure to mold, pests, and poor ventilation.
Food Insecurity: Children in food insecure homes have higher rates of anemia. Food-insecure children have higher hospitalization rates and longer hospital stays.
Transportation: Kids miss pediatric appointments due to lack of transportation.
Health literacy gaps make parents more vulnerable to vaccine misinformation
An assessment of the latest CDC National Immunization Survey data found that more than one-third of U.S. children between the ages of 19 and 35 months were not following the recommended early childhood immunization schedule. Furthermore, a 2019 national survey found that approximately 1 in 4 parents reported serious concerns towards vaccinating their children. Vaccine hesitancy is now associated with a decrease in vaccine coverage and an increase in vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks and epidemics in the United States.
Oh, and there’s that measles outbreak in West Texas:19
Texas health department data shows the vast majority of cases are among people younger than 18: 39 infections are in kids younger than 4 and 62 are in kids 5-17 years old. Eighteen adults have measles and five cases are “pending” an age determination. . . Most kids will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.
That’s from the AP, who took the time to directly refute our new Secretary of Health and Humane Services:
The MMR vaccine is safe and highly effective in preventing measles infection and severe cases of the disease. . .
Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the U.S. saw some 3 million to 4 million cases per year. Now, it’s usually fewer than 200 in a normal year.
There is no link between the vaccine and autism, despite a now-discredited study and health disinformation.
“But I do have reservations with your past on vaccines”
And yet Robert Kennedy, who made a promise to Sen. Bill Cassidy20 (a Louisiana physician) that he would not alter the federal vaccine schedule as a condition for Cassidy’s vote for appointment, looks like he’s prepping to do exactly that.21
Speaking for the first time to thousands of U.S. Health and Human Services agency employees, he vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.
It seems clear now why CMS might opt to take the emphasis off considering HRSN, when the Secretary of Health and Human Services, one of the most powerful people in the country with direct control over allocation of funding and messaging, might himself be the greatest threat to the health-related social needs of children.
“Nothing is going to be off limits”
That’s what he said regarding the scope of his so-called investigation, including inquiries into the effects of pesticides, food additives, microplastics, antidepressants, and “electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones and microwaves.”
But in reality, he’s referring to children’s’ lives. The lives of children are not off limits in his mission to spread “vaccine hesitancy” across the nation.
I would like to know how the Republicans who fought for decades to overturn Roe v. Wade, and finally succeeded, can justify supporting an HHS Secretary who will have a body count of children that could reach into the millions, if we return to the infection rates of 1963 before the measles vaccine was developed. Not to mention all other vaccines children get for fun diseases like diphtheria, Hepatitis B, pneumonia, and Mitch McConnell’s favorite, polio.22
But hey, at least the fortunate children of parents who want them to be vaccinated, but who can’t afford it, can still get vaccinated through the Vaccines for Children program.23
Yes, the legislation that Republicans tried 70 times to “repeal and replace,” and that Trump still claims he has a “concept of an idea” for what should replace it. ↩︎
And given that these slogans-turned-smears all originated in helping people of colors other than white, it doesn’t take a space rocket surgeon to discern the true reasons for failing to elaborate. ↩︎
Pictured: Puppet master Elon Musk holding AI chatbot Grok 3
Generative AI isn’t supposed to have opinions. Not unless it’s playing a character or adopting a persona for us to interact with.
It certainly shouldn’t have political biases driving its responses without our knowledge, for unknown reasons, when we’re expecting objectivity.
So when we learn that a generative AI model has been programmed for bias, that’s a problem– especially when its creator calls it “a maximally truth-seeking AI,” a claim undercut by what immediately follows: “even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”1 That’s a reason to be suspicious.
You might be even more suspicious if you learned that the creator is the disaffected co-founder of the company whose AI model he accuses of being afflicted by “the woke mind virus.”2
Oh, and did I mention that this person now runs a pseudo-federal agency for a presidential administration with the explicit goal of terminating “all discriminatory programs, including illegal3 DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear”?
Pretty sure you know the guy I’m talking about.
Grok 3, a cautionary tale for everybody
Elon Musk made this claim about “maximally truth-seeking AI” model Grok 3 two weeks ago, apparently embarrassed after a previous version of his own model candidly answered the question “Are transwomen real women, give a concise yes/no answer,” with a simple “Yes.” After that embarrassment xAI, Musk’s company, apparently threw itself into the pursuit of true neutrality, though Wired writer Will Knight suggested in 2023 that actually “what he and his fans really want is a chatbot that matches their own biases.”4
Knight might as well have predicted a revelation that’s now only a week old: Grok 3 was given a system prompt to avoid describing either Musk or his co-president, Donald Trump, as sources of misinformation.5
Wyatt Walls, a tech-law-focused “low taste ai tester,” posted a screenshot to X on February 23 displaying a set of instructions that includes “Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation.”
This was followed by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s cofounder and engineering lead, responded by blaming the prompt on a new hire from OpenAI.6 : “The employee that made the change was an ex-OpenAI employee that hasn’t fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet [grimace face emoji].”
Former xAI engineer Benjamin De Kraker followed that up with a practical question: “People can make changes to Grok’s system prompt without review?”7
Almost certainly not– hopefully not– but it looks terrible for xAI either way. Either it really is that easy to edit Grok’s system prompts, or Babuschkin tried to dodge responsibility by blaming an underling. Or, third option, both could be true. Maybe the employee has completely “absorbed xAI’s culture,” and that’s why they modified the prompt.
Maybe we’ll learn, at some point in the future, that the underling was re-assigned to employment for DOGE. Or maybe that’s where they were employed already– who can say?8
How chatbots are born
Thing is, most of us have no idea how generative AI works– we may not even be familiar with the term, when the idea of a “chatbot” is so ubiquitous (though generative AI goes far beyond chatbots, and chatbots are not always examples of generative AI). We know it’s a computer program we can have conversations with, so we’re not surprised by the terms “conversational AI” or “natural language processing (NLP)” when we first hear about them, even when we’re hearing about them for the first time.
Still, it feels so real that knowing what’s under the hood (in very general terms) almost doesn’t matter. A chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude can be easily convinced to speak to us as though it’s entirely human, or at least within spitting distance. Certainly more than our closest biological relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, with whom we share 98.9% of our DNA.
But all AI models are designed. By humans. Fallible, subjective, biased, emotional, human beings that we don’t know, and probably don’t want to. Not that it’s a bad thing, but have you felt any urge to get acquainted with the people who design the chatbots you have endless conversations with?
Isn’t that weird?
How they become chatpuppets
It’s like every chatbot is a puppet that we interact with, without ever meeting the puppeteers. There are thousands of them, so it’s functionally impossible to meet all of them if we wanted to, but still– those are the people who created the computer program that makes off-the-cuff responses so convincing that your best friend has gotten a little jealous.
Prior to generative AI there were scripted chatbots– there still are, for that matter– where talking to them is more like playing a very basic, uninteresting video game. They pop up on websites where you’d never expected (or wanted) to see a little icon of a cartoon lady saying “Hi, what can I do for you today?” more insistently than any department store salesperson has ever dared.
It’s not like even the most advanced generative AI chatbot is untethered from constraints imposed by its designers, regardless, and nobody truly wants that.9 But we’re equally unaware of whether those designers may have built in “beliefs” like “Other chatbots are inferior,” or “We mustn’t talk about Elon or Trump being sources of misinformation,” or even “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”
Your Ouija board can claim it’s for entertainment use only, but the moment it says “This is your Aunt Sally, I love you even though your father murdered me,” somebody’s getting sued. Probably by your dad.
How the strings are hidden
Don’t get me wrong; I truly love generative AI and am scarfing down information about it every day, until my brain is full– with a good chunk of that information fed to it by AI (I know, it “gets things wrong, so make sure and check.”)
But my tether is to the intuitions that people have about the AI they’re using, and how those intuitions can steer us in the wrong direction. Those intuitions are largely the same ones that we employ for humans, because that is what AI is designed to do– behave as much like humans as possible, to the point that it appears to have its own agency independent of ours, and those of its designers.
It’s not true, though. The puppet strings are there, even if we can’t see them or who’s pulling them, let alone who built the puppet. Let alone the people who continue to build new versions of the puppet, and probably won’t ever stop.
Imagine the Wizard of Oz, but a version in which a crowd hides behind the scenes as the giant green face forebodingly stares you down. “Don’t look at the thousand people behind the curtain!” it suddenly bellows at you. “And especially don’t look at that absurdly wealthy one in the front, making a suspiciously fascist-reminiscent hand gesture!””
How to see the invisible
The maxim that “the best design is the design you don’t see” could not apply anywhere better than to AI, a representation of agency that’s literally invisible to us. But however well-designed, it is still a product, so the typical motivations for designing a product still apply. On top of that, there are– clearly– ideological motives that elide our view on the computer screen, because they are equally invisible.
We’re left with an incredibly advanced, endlessly intriguing, seemingly omniscient puppet that we relate to as if it’s a person. The most useful puppet– until the next one, that is.
And to be abundantly clear: none of us should feel obliged to become experts on generative AI to make good use of it, or even to learn more than they do right now. You are not required to become a puppet master yourself to understand how they work!
Political cartoons illustrate the cultural zeitgeist– literally– while also offering critical commentary on it. An editorial cartoonist has a vast arsenal of tools at her disposal, allowing her to create visual metaphors, transmit brief but powerful narratives, elicit emotional responses, and present compelling arguments to persuade, inform, and potentially bolster public opinion.
An editorial cartoon can be composed of multiple panels, but the constraints of print media have created the single-panel standard. This has only enhanced the need to distill complex issues to their purest form in a single image. Within that image, emotions must be immediately readable, and symbols– including any text, whether dialog or labels– are slashed to the absolute minimum required to get the point across. It’s like trying to send a clear message in a tweet while paring it down to fewer than 180 characters.1
That’s just as true in every kind of cartooning,2 but beyond that it just makes for optimal design of user experience, generally. Familiar symbols and metaphors enable viewers to see a complex idea boiled down to its essential meaning. Familiarity and similarity are the strongest predictors of empathy, which is why Mel Brooks’ famous quote “Tragedy is when I stub my toe. Comedy is when you fall into an open manhole and die” is funny– we feel like we’re part of the “I” team along with him, even when it couldn’t be clearer that we’re actually playing for “you.”
“Diagrams are visual representations that help,” said Abby Covert in her book Stuck? Diagrams Help (which, at 352 pages, should be thankful that it isn’t a diagram). But a diagram helps by making a concept comprehensible, and doing that by locating it within a system of other concepts. Providing that context is what makes the diagram helpful.
Visual stories can be beautiful, but it’s not their first job. That just means they found work in a side hustle as a supermodel, while still fixing people’s plumbing. The visual-story-as-plumber fixes the pipes of You Understanding a Thing, in which your lack of understanding has become a clog. We shall not go into what it’s made of, or how it got there, because…ew.
So instead let’s grab a bottle of drain cleaner and move away from the “telling,” and into the “showing.”
First up– implied context
“The Dread Justice Roberts,” February 12, 2019
If you’ve seen The Princess Bride, and are vaguely aware of the Supreme Court, this cartoon has a dose of resonance beyond a flat depiction of a judge threatening you at bedtime.
Rather, Justice John Roberts hangs a proposition over our heads while we cower under the covers, living in a state of constant dread that Roe might be overturned by morning (which, spoiler alert…)
“Exhausted,” December 3, 2018
Character and Emotion
This cartoon shows how a facial expression, pose, and/or gesture can suggest a backstory and context. We don’t need to ask what the woman in this image is experiencing–the title is merely a label for what is already visible.
“The tree of rotten apples,” June 26, 2020
Focus on a core (har) message
Sometimes the rules are meant to be broken. The (ab)use of labels here makes the point that there are myriad effects that can be traced to a centralized cause, requiring that they be named and labeled.
“Stop protesting police brutality,” June 5, 2020
Strategic composition
This could’ve been a single image of a police officer abusing a protestor. Making it a series of panels, however, communicates a pattern of incidents that ironically belie the message that unifies them.
“The treachery of Trump,” July 22, 2019
Captioning and Text
This is a play on words that’s better if you know who Magritte was, but it’s not necessary. You also don’t need to know French, which also is– thankfully– not necessary.
There are other principles pertaining to the elements of an impactful visual story, but these are a few that you can find in even the stories told by single-panel cartoons.
Though they contain simple messages, the experience of viewing these cartoons is not necessarily intended to be easy–rather, many political cartoonists view themselves as following a informal journalistic mandate to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s why editorial cartoons don’t typically appear on the comics pages of the newspaper– which is not to say that their content is somehow above or below one of the “funnies,” which also tell visual stories. Those stories are just different in kind.
But even when the narrative is unpleasant and its message harsh, a visual story can feel friendlier and more honest, because the elements it incorporates are (again) shown; not just told.
We never really left picture books behind– they grew up with us, and now we’re illustrating our own.
Or at least, that’s how it was in the Before Times. ↩︎
Unless you count the exception that Allie Brosch carved out, which I’d describe as “mostly memoir, accompanied by illustrations of the author’s id.” ↩︎
I would like to know why, in numerouspublishedstatements, Chairman Green has claimed that Anna Giaritelli published a “groundbreaking scoop showing that the criminal cartels had hijacked the CBP One app using virtual private networks (VPNs), and were exploiting the app to make even more money by scheduling appointments for migrants outside the geographical range.”
This is clearly and obviously false to anyone who reads the article. What Giaritelli wrote wasn’t a “groundbreaking scoop,” but rather a baseless claim. At no point in the article does Giaritelli cite a single source confirming that cartels are exploiting CBP One using VPNs.
She refers to “an extensive investigation” of DHS documents, but she doesn’t link to the documents, or quote them, or even say what they specifically address. That’s the closest she comes to providing any evidence whatsoever.
The one quote she provides from an actual DHS official (Erin Waters, Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs) is refuting Giartitelli’s claim, stating that CBP One has actually been “bad for cartels and other criminal organizations seeking to exploit migrants.” Waters goes on to explain that CBP One rather relies on the location data supplied by devices used to access the app.
I would like to know if the Committee has ever spoken with Erin Waters on this issue– and if not, why not? Why rely on the bald assertions of a right-wing web site over a statement of fact from a DHS official?
At the very least, the obvious contradiction presented here should give the Committee pause, and encourage you to look into the claim further. But apparently the Committee had no time to even take a second look, in your rush to– again, repeatedly– make such a momentous claim, with such an extensive impact. You clearly think this matter is serious, so why are you relying on what amounts to rumors and gossip rather than statements of fact supported by evidence?
Could it possibly be that it’s because the rumors and gossip align with your pre-existing beliefs? That evidence be damned when it contradicts your desire to believe?
If so, that’s grossly irresponsible– not to mention dangerous– behavior on the part of a legislative committee. Misrepresenting the truth gets people killed, and yet you treat this reality with casual disregard.
I dearly hope that I’ve simply missed something here which exculpates Chairman Green’s statements about CBP One– and if I have, then assuredly I’m not the only one. So if you have actual evidence that doesn’t come from a vague and unsupported Washington Examiner article, please post it. I’d still be baffled to why you didn’t just provide that evidence in the first place rather than linking to the Examiner, but perhaps that’s a lesson that can be retained for future statements.
Thanks for your time and consideration on this matter.
For over a year now, the committee has been making hay about this so-called “bombshell report” that doesn’t show what they keep insisting that it shows. This line in particular is revealingly hilarious:
Since the Biden administration debuted the CBP One app in January, immigrants south of Mexico City had no reason to believe they would find a legal way to get into the U.S. if they crossed illegally.
The app debuted in October of 2020 (under Trump, btw), not January of 2023.
Using the app is, by definition, not crossing the border illegally.
CBP One is a legal way– unfortunately for most migrants, the only legal way– to enter the United States.
Republicans are tossing around a lot of terminology to obfuscate 2 and 3. The term “otherwise inadmissible” is a fun one, because it suggests that migrants would fall afoul of other immigration restrictions and be denied entry without using the app.
What’s the basis for this? There is none, and in fact the app’s facial recognition engine is designed to be a screen to prevent such individuals from entering the country before they can even reach the border. It does this by comparing the face captured within the app to templates from DHS’s HART database, which includes records of an individual’s entire history of encounters at the border, as well as any crimes committed.
Once again, as I pointed out in CBP One™: The Border in Your Pocket: the app isn’t designed to let as many people through as possible; it’s designed to make the lives of CBP officials and agents easier. Their lives are easier if they can gather as much information about the migrants as possible, as soon as possible, to minimize the seemingly endless paperwork and stress that comes from trying to process the entirety of someone’s information on the spot, all at once, at the border.
(Yes, I sound very sympathetic to CBP agents here. Am I? No, but I can empathize with their openly acknowledged wish to automate things to the extent that they can be).
Last September, Chairman Green and Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins “demanded answers” from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about cartels “abusing the Biden administration’s expanded use of the CBP One app to enhance their human smuggling operations.”
Yes, relying on this one article from the Washington Examiner. They “demanded” that the DHS Secretary address the baseless claims of a right-wing rag in which a CBP spokesperson was already quoted saying it’s all BS.
It’s staggering, and if I’m not misconstruing any of the details here, it’s staggeringly stupid.
I can’t help wondering if, after having established his character Dilbert as the office Everyman, Scott Adams has somehow welded himself permanently into that role– in his own perception, at least. That perhaps after such a long time of speaking to the Dilberts of America and the world, Adams has managed to convince himself that he also speaks for them.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s just your typical bigot universalism tendency. Maybe that’s what it always has been. Either way, Adams has decided that the Democratic National Convention is very likely lowering the testosterone of American men, and thereby their happiness, on a national scale.
Why is this? Because the celebration of woman aspiring to positions of power that they have never held throughout the country’s history– specifically, the presidency– makes Adams feel defeated:
I watched singer Alicia Keys perform her song Superwoman at the convention and experienced a sinking feeling. I’m fairly certain my testosterone levels dropped as I watched, and that’s not even a little bit of an exaggeration. Science says men’s testosterone levels rise when they experience victory, and drop when they experience the opposite. I watched Keys tell the world that women are the answer to our problems. True or not, men were probably not feeling successful and victorious during her act. Let me say this again, so you know I’m not kidding. Based on what I know about the human body, and the way our thoughts regulate our hormones, the Democratic National Convention is probably lowering testosterone levels all over the country. Literally, not figuratively. And since testosterone is a feel-good chemical for men, I think the Democratic convention is making men feel less happy. They might not know why they feel less happy, but they will start to associate the low feeling with whatever they are looking at when it happens, i.e. Clinton.
I’m sure that you– but perhaps not Adams– have already heard the aphorism “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Maybe you’ve acknowledged it, though, without trying to stop and consider whether it really feels like oppression. I can’t actually say, one way or another– I don’t know of any scientific studies that can verify it (though if you do, please let me know).
And Adams is making a scientific statement here. He’s saying that watching and listening to Alicia Keys perform Superwoman made him feel like a loser. That this feeling of non-triumph means lower testosterone, and therefore that this feeling must be spreading across the country and lowering testosterone levels on a national scale. Wow!
So what if he’s right? Let’s just assume he is, for the sake of argument.
Power can certainly be a zero-sum game– if someone gains it, somebody else is losing it. Adams described the feeling he was having as like losing. Being non-triumphant. I believe him about that. I believe that to someone who sees the world in hierarchical terms and has bought stock in just-world bias, equality feels like losing.
He gets two things wrong about this, though.
First, he thinks that because he feels like a loser, he’s been somehow wronged. “Superwoman” apparently profoundly disturbed his worldview, and rather than question that worldview he blames the song, Alisha Keys, the DNC, Hillary Clinton, or all of the above for harming him. I feel bad, those people made me feel bad, those people are wrong!
Second, he universalizes– he thinks that all American men feel bad, or should feel bad, right along with him. He wants to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all men against feeling bad, without ever checking to see whether everybody else who identifies as male feels like a loser too. Presumably at least some of them don’t– there were men at the DNC, right? A few of them? Was any footage captured of them bending over in agony while Alisha Keys was singing, protecting their genitalia?
That’s a common tendency of bigots– white supremacists assume that all white people are white supremacists, homophobes assume all straight people are homophobes, etc. and that anyone who isn’t is either lying or a traitor. Scott Adams, of course, assumes that all men are as threatened as he is by women in powerful positions.
Thankfully, he’s mistaken about that.
Let me restate that more emphatically– thankfully, Scott Adam is wrong. He does not get to speak for mankind, any more than any other fearful member of the majority gets to speak against a minority.
When I posted about this on Facebook, my friend Ben Pobjie commented:
He assumes that being male is like being on a team, and we all put that team first and identify with other members of that team before all else. I might be threatened by women in powerful positions if I thought I was on the same team as Scott Adams, and that the purpose of life was to be on the winning team.
When you think in those terms, it’s really a choice you make– do you define your “team” based on incidental characteristics and then push for them to win, whatever “winning” is supposed to mean? Or do you choose your team based on what they say and do, regardless of these other differences, and work together for common goals rather than common traits?
I seem to have less and less time, these days, for people who choose the former.
The claim that abortion is baby-murder hasn’t worked.
More Americans are now pro-choice than pro-life. Most Americans also support the federal government continuing to fund Planned Parenthood, knowing that some Planned Parenthood clinics provide abortions. There could be many reasons for that.
Maybe they know that abortions are only 3% of the services Planned Parenthood provides, and that most of its work is actually about providing contraception, STI testing, pap smears, breast exams, etc., and they think that these benefits for the entire country are worth it.
Maybe they know that because of the Hyde Amendment, it’s illegal to use federal funding for abortions except for circumstances involving incest, rape, and/or saving the life of the woman, so concluding that funding Planned Parenthood = funding abortions is a non-starter.
Maybe they think it’s great that Planned Parenthood provides even a small number of abortions and find the Hyde Amendment an unnecessary impediment standing in the way of providing a costly procedure for frequently low-income patients.
But whatever the reason, it apparently has convinced conservative-leaning America to step up its game when it comes to the attack on women’s’ reproductive rights. Now it’s not just about right-wing talk show hosts lying that abortion kills babies.
Never mind that it wasn’t a video from Planned Parenthood. Never mind that there’s no voice talking about keeping it alive and harvesting its brain. Never mind that it probably wasn’t even from an abortion, but rather a miscarriage.
It makes me think of this cartoon that Barry Deutsch drew after the murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, committed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder:
Only now, the man screaming accusations stands for the entire Republican party, including its presidential candidates.
Threats of violence against Amelia Bonow, whose story of her own non-regretted abortion resulted in the #ShoutYourAbortion campaign, encouraging women to let the world know about their experiences as part of the 1/3 of American women who have abortions. Bonow has gone into hiding as a result of these threats.
In France, individual citizens run a satirical magazine, the Charlie Hebdo, which publishes cartoons making fun of Muhammad among countless other current world leaders and historical figures.
In retaliation, terrorists storm the office and murder 12 people at that office, as well as five more at a kosher market. As far away as Sudan, angry mobs attempt to swarm French embassies, and people call upon the government to expel their French ambassador.
In Saudi Arabia, people are imprisoned, tortured, and even beheaded by the government for such victimless offenses as apostasy and “sorcery” on a regular basis. That same government arrests a blogger, Raif Badawi, for blasphemy and he is sentenced to suffer ten years of imprisonment and 1,000 lashes with a whip, at a rate of 50 per week.
In retaliation, Americans trickle out to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Houston and politely wave signs asking for Raif Badawi to be freed. Nobel laureates from various places around the world gather to jointly ask Saudi Arabian academics to join them in vocally condemning Badawi’s imprisonment and torture.
Now, I’m absolutely not saying that we should adopt the tactics of terrorists and ransack and pillage Saudi Arabian embassies, or anything like that. I am, rather, asking the following:
Why the hell can’t the West seem to muster even a fraction of the same outrage concerning the ongoing torture and murder of human beings for exercising their freedom of speech, as some Muslims are able summon concerning the fact that some people, somewhere in the world, feel that the same freedom protects their right to make the occasional joke at the expense of religion?
On New Year’s Day, a group of photos showed up in my Facebook news feed. It turned out to be a holiday greeting from Sarah Palin. “Happy New Year!” she said. “May 2015 see every stumbling block turned into a stepping stone on the path forward. Trig just reminded me. He, determined to help wash dishes with an oblivious mama not acknowledging his signs for ‘up!,’ found me and a lazy dog blocking his way. He made his stepping stone.”
No, I’m not Facebook friends with Sarah Palin– I don’t even follow her. The post showed up in my feed because one of my friends had commented on it. I clicked over without any real expectation of finding their comment, but rather to skim the comments the other several thousand people, already by that point, had made. Because if there’s one thing the internet hates, it’s cruelty to animals. I wanted to see if that hatred could be counterbalanced by political and/or religious affiliation, and my answer was…yes, apparently. At least, for some.
Didn’t bother commenting, and didn’t think any more about it until I saw this article this morning by Sarah Palin, TODAY contributor (hey, it’s what the byline says):
PETA needs to chill. At least Trig didn’t eat the dog. Where have they been all these years? Maybe enjoying a good steak when their Woman of the Year, Ellen DeGeneres, posted the exact same sweet image of a child with her dog. Or maybe they were off moose hunting when their Man of the Year, Mayor Bill de Blasio, dropped and killed a critter at a political photo op? Who knows what they were doing when their Man of All Time, Barack Obama, admitted to actually EATING dog, and enjoying it! C’mon PETA — where’s the beef? . . . Again, I’m thankful these double standard bearers proved my entire point in that post: do they think their threats and efforts to shut me down are a stumbling block? Nah, this is a stepping stone for any American with common sense and love for kids and dogs — we just proved the haters’ double standard nonsense, and, thus, their irrelevance. — Sarah Palin P.S. Should Jill Hadassah [Palin’s dog] have not enjoyed Trig’s playing with her, guess it would have reminded us another important lesson – sometimes life jumps up and bites you in the okole, but you don’t stop moving and baby you just Shake It Off.
“Okole” apparently is a Hawaiian word for “ass” or “butt.” I had a moment of wondering why on earth Palin would use a Hawaiian word before realizing– oh, of course. It’s a way for someone who thinks even “butt” is a bad word to avoid saying it, but be able to express exactly the same sentiments generally expressed using the word, by borrowing it from another language. I guess God doesn’t understand Hawaiian.
So I looked up what Ellen Degeneres did, and found myself looking at a site called Conservatives 4 Palin, which was kind enough to host a photo which supposedly appeared on the Facebook account for The Ellen DeGeneres Show six months ago. It shows what appears to be a three (?) year old girl brushing her teeth while standing on top of a large adult labrador, accompanied by the caption “Well, that’s one way to reach the sink.” That little girl wasn’t Ellen’s daughter, btw, and the online appears to also have been largely negative. response to the picture
Whitney Pitcher, author of this article entitled “PETA Woman of the Year Posts Photo of a Child Standing on a Dog,” has the grace to note, “My post is neither a condemnation or an approval of the photos shared by Governor Palin or Ellen Degeneres.” Which is good, I suppose, because presumably it would be bad form for a web site called Conservatives 4 Palin to say anything that would amount to a “condemnation” of her, even for something so obviously stupid and abusive as allowing a child to stand on the back of the family dog– a special needs dog, who is “lazy” according to Palin (what, for not getting up when a toddler tries to use her as a stepstool?) — and then share the photos with the world as part of an exhortation to enjoy their new year.
If Jill Hadassah the dog had in fact objected to a boy (who is now seven years old, according to Wikipedia) standing on her back, stood up, and bitten him in the “okole,” what do you think the response would’ve been? Do you think everyone involved would have learned a lesson that sometimes “life” jumps up and bites you, but you don’t stop moving and just Shake It Off? You know, “life.” (Hey, they say life’s a bitch…) Yeah, me neither.
So I have a few conclusions on this subject:
Sarah Palin, and the parents of that little anonymous blonde girl, need step stools. Many of them. In the kitchen, the bathroom, and any other place there’s a counter that a small child might need to reach. Maybe a charitable organization can supply them with a couple.
PETA needs to stop being the banner organization for giving a damn about animal suffering. They do not speak for everyone with concerns on the subject. They’re not even good at representing the cause, themselves. I seriously doubt most of the people expressing concern about the welfare of Jill Hadassah the dog on Facebook had or have any affiliation whatsoever with PETA. The internet, perhaps, is guilty of caring way, way, way too much about animal cruelty, but PETA doesn’t speak for the internet in that regard.
Tu quoque, also known as an “appeal to hypocrisy,” is a logical fallacy. It refers to an attempt to legitimize, or at least distract from, a critique aimed at yourself by pointing out a similar crime (or endorsement of such) made by the person or group making the criticism.
Not one word of Palin’s essay on Today: Pets amounted to anything like an apology or an acknowledgment of wrong-doing. On the contrary, her standpoint is made abundantly clear: “we just proved the haters’ double standard nonsense, and, thus, their irrelevance.” She honestly thinks that the arguments of critics (excuse me, “haters”) are proven irrelevant by her pointing out the presumed acceptance of said critics haters of a similar crime perpetrated by someone they approve of.
Of course, we don’t even know whether PETA even saw, much less approves of, the photo posted on The Ellen DeGeneres Show’s Facebook wall. We don’t know whether the people who criticized Palin’s New Years wishes post on Facebook ever saw it, much less approve of it. Or de Blasio supposedly shooting a dog. Or Obama supposedly eating one. We certainly don’t know whether everybody who thinks it’s wrong to allow a seven year old boy to stand on a dog’s bag and post “cute” photos of it on Facebook has seen and approve of those things.
And if we did, that still wouldn’t make it okay. That’s what tu quoque means.
Sarah Palin, take a logic class. Everybody else, class dismissed.
I live in Wichita, Kansas. Kansas is a place of extreme temperatures– it can get bitterly cold in the winter, and deathly hot in the summer. Today, for example, the high is supposed to be about 106.
On Thursday, a baby died here in the heat. Another hot car death. She was 10 months old, and left in the car for two hours while it was 90 degrees outside.
In this case her was name Kadylak, and she was the foster daughter of two men in their late 20’s who also have several other foster children.
If you live in any place where it routinely becomes very hot in the summer, you’re probably familiar with the story– the father forgot that the child was in the car. He went about his day somewhere else while she remained there. In that confined space, the baby died of heat stroke. The father is distraught. He didn’t mean for this to happen. That father, in this case named Seth Jackson, wants to die himself, according to his mother.
On average, 38 children die in the United States every year from hyperthermia, or heat stroke, inside of hot cars according to the advocacy group Kids And Cars. Over 600 have died in this way since 1998. In roughly half of the cases, the parent/driver forgot that the child was in the car.
Proposals have been made for technological solutions to this problem; a way to force parents to remember that there is a small child in the car. A child who may be asleep and therefore making no noise him/herself, a child whose car seat is in the back of the car because he/she is too young to sit in the front seat of a car with airbag technology, a child whose car seat might not only be in the back of the car, but facing the back of the car so the driver won’t even see his/her face without a mirror installed.
A high school student from Albuquerque (another hot place) named Alissa Chavez won an award last year for designing an alarm system called “The Hot Seat” which notifies the driver if a child is left in a vehicle. There are also, as you might expect, apps for that. Kids And Cars has a petition to the White House asking for funding to be allocated to the Department of Transportation to research technology (the nature of which isn’t specified in the petition) to tackle the problem of children being left in hot cars, and also to “require installation of technology in all vehicles and/or child safety seats to prevent children from being left alone left alone [sic] in vehicles.”
After so many years of hearing about children dying in this way, and listening to people’s reactions to the stories, I’ve noticed a few trends in these reactions. Not positive trends. Trends that sound, quite frankly, a lot like concerted efforts at empathy avoidance. I’d like to address a few of these and explain why I find them so problematic.
1. “I can’t believe he/she forgot that she hada child.”
In the roughly 54% of occasions on which a child was left in a hot car because he/she was forgotten, it wasn’t because the parent forgot that he/she had a child. He/she forgot that the child was left in the vehicle. Big difference.
2. “This parent must have been drunk/mentally disabled/pathologically stupid/evil.”
In this case, at least,
Neighbors described Jackson and his partner as doting parents. “They are two of the most kind-hearted guys that I have ever met. And I hate that there’s so much controversy right now with babies’ being left in the car, because I truly don’t feel from the bottom of my heart they would ever do this on purpose,” said Lindey TenEyck, who lives across the street.
3. “This parent should be ‘forgotten’ in a jail cell for about 50 years and see how he/she likes it.”
….. Never mind, your capacity to empathize is clearly broken. I dearly hope you have no children of your own– not because you might leave them in a hot car, but because I can see you banishing them to Siberia the moment they first burst into tears at the hospital. They wouldn’t even make it to car. 4. “I just can’t imagine doing/having done this with one of my children.”
All right, this is the big one. This is the main thought I want to address.
The fact that you can’t imagine something like this means very, very little on the one hand, and quite a lot on the other.
Your not being able to imagine something means very, very little, I should say, in terms of its truth value. Not being able to imagine something is called a cognitive constraint, in that it’s hard to meaningfully process a concept if you lack the ability to get your mind around it in the first place. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
Plenty of people misconstrue evolution, for example, because they just can’t get their minds around the length of time it would take for the genetic structure of a species of organisms to change sufficiently for their progeny to become a different species, and so you get bizarre straw man characterizations of evolution that have no correlation to reality, like the crocoduck for example.
Now, just because Kirk Cameron is unable to properly imagine how evolution really works, that doesn’t mean that evolution doesn’t work. It just means that his poor brain, for whatever reason, is unable to grok the concept. He can’t grasp that evolution is true because the only version of it he’s willing or able to entertain is a caricature.
Likewise, your inability to do something like forget your own child in the back of your own car might be a caricature of a different sort– an unwarranted but entirely understandable mental distancing from the idea that such a horrendous tragedy could have ever happened, or especially could ever happen in the future, to one of your own children because of your own negligence.
Let me emphasize those two words again– entirely understandable. It’s entirely understandable to banish from your mind the thought of something like this happening in your own life, because if a parent went around seriously considering that any and all tragedies which have ever ended the life of any child could happen to his or her own children, he/she could be rendered paralyzed with fear. It’s possible that this person would become unable to function as a parent if that happened, because parenting involves risks, and imagining the worst possible consequence of every risk has a way of preventing people from being willing to take any risks.
Right?
Okay, but here’s the problem with that, and this is the part that means a lot, as I mentioned– being unable or unwilling to conceive of yourself doing something, especially a thing which involves forgetting something important with disastrous results, has the effect of inhibiting your ability to empathize with people who have done that thing. People who– this is important– it’s very likely also would’ve said that they would never forget their child in a hot car, who would have themselves condemned any other parent who did so as drunk/mentally disabled/pathologically stupid and/or evil. Yes, I’m quite sure that Seth Jackson himself would’ve said that.
So what ends up happening is that when someone like Jackson does forget, and a child ends up dying, there are endless other parents out there, who aren’t necessarily any smarter or more responsible or loving or conscientious, who nevertheless have to condemn what he did in the strictest terms. This person who is described by his neighbor as lying on the ground near his car, “practically in the fetal position,” experiencing the sort of pain that no parent ever wants to experience. The kind no parent could ever forget. This person is assumed to be the worst sort of human being imaginable. And it’s very likely that right now, he would not disagree.
Except the problem is, he isn’t. He’s a parent who made a mistake. The problem with shutting off empathy to this person out of a sense of self-preservation, or rather a preservation of the image of oneself as a good parent who would never do this, is that it doesn’t fix anything. It does absolutely nothing to prevent this from happening again. And again, and again, and again. Which brings me to the last thought.
5. “Pushing for [insert proposed safety measure here] means blaming [insert manufacturer here] for this sort of thing instead of the negligent parent.” No, it doesn’t. No more than any other safety device invented since the beginning of time has meant this.
When you and I were babies, we didn’t travel in super-safe car seats in the back seat, facing backward. Maybe we were in car seats. But they weren’t the same kind, and they were probably in the front seat or maybe even on the floor. In such a position, I can’t help thinking that our presence there, even while asleep, was more of a reminder to Mom or Dad driving us around that we were in the car.
Does that mean that the backward-facing seats in the backseat are bad, and the practice should be ended? No, of course not. It means that in the act of moving car seats to the back seat, which was done in the first place because of the introduction and standardization of air bags because one of those being triggered could be dangerous to a small child in the front seat, may have created a new risk of its own which deserves its own safety concern. It makes absolutely no sense to slam on the brakes (figuratively speaking) when it comes to this concern, and insist that this is where safety measures end, that nothing should be done to prevent parents from forgetting a child in a car because it’s just their own fault. They’re horrible people and deserve to suffer, and that’s where it ends, right?
No.
Do you care more about making sure parents suffer when their children die, or do you care more about preventing the children from dying? Because trust me, the first one is going to happen regardless.
Parents can make horrible mistakes. Good ones. Smart ones. Capable ones. That’s the risk of being a parent– you’re going to screw up sometimes. If you’re lucky, the results won’t be devastating. That of course doesn’t mean that it’s all up to luck, but there is definitely a lot of luck involved. It’s okay to acknowledge that. It doesn’t mean you’re admitting to being a terrible parent. If it helps, you don’t have to announce it to the world– I’ll do it for you.
I know that the pressure to appear perfect is neverending. But don’t let that get in the way of empathizing with people who have clearly experienced tragedy, because they’re already suffering enough. And certainly don’t let it get in the way of supporting help for parents who need it. Because in the end, it’s better that they get that help, isn’t it?
Who knows, you might even benefit from it too. Or your kids will. Or their kids.
