It’s just past midnight as I write this. It is day seven of my latest hospital stay, having come in by ambulance Jan. 22 right after I filed my story about Donald Trump’s executive order establishing two genders.
Like 21 million Americans, I have cancer. So I have been watching Trump’s actions even more closely than usual as they affect me more than just professionally as a journalist or personally as a lesbian. My very life is at risk due to Trump’s most recent orders about cancer research, health-care cutbacks and drug costs.
RFK Jr.
Looming over it all is the very real likelihood that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be heading the entire American health-care system in mere days as he heads into Senate confirmation hearings.
I have written extensively about RFK Jr. for several publications, including PGN.
In addition to being the most famous — or infamous — anti-vaccine activist in the U.S. and likely the world today, RFK Jr. subscribes to a host of conspiracy theories that are both delusional and dangerous. But he has strong support from Trump and the MAGA cohort. He has created his own hashtag parallel to MAGA, which is #MAHA: Make America Healthy Again.
If only.
Caroline Kennedy speaks out
On Jan. 28, RFK Jr.’s cousin, Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late assassinated president John F. Kennedy, posted a video where she read a letter she wrote to the Senate urging that RFK Jr. not be confirmed.
The former ambassador to Australia detailed not only her cousin’s anti-vax history, but his personal history with which she had grown up. She called him a predator and cited his past drug abuse and how he had led some of his 10 siblings into addiction and even death.
Caroline Kennedy said that her cousin had used her father’s assassination and that of his own father to bolster his political clout and maintain the limelight she said he craves.
It was a damning indictment of the kind only those closest to us with a long personal history can reveal. But as we saw this week in the Senate hearings as accused rapist and admitted alcoholic Pete Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense despite three GOP defections by senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. There is no guardrail against the worst and most unqualified Trump nominees because the GOP is locked into the Trump cult.
Immigrants and the price of eggs
It may seem a non sequitur to leap from RFK Jr. to immigration with no apparent segue, but the segue is my hospital stay.
As I write this, my night nurse is an immigrant from the Philippines. She is kind and calming and I am so grateful for her help.
The night before, I had a nurse who was an immigrant from Haiti. This called to mind JD Vance’s lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were, to quote Trump in his debate with Kamala Harris, “[Migrants are] eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
They were doing no such thing, but that narrative is now part of MAGA culture: it’s something all MAGAs believe because despite being called out by debate moderator and ABC News anchor David Muir, Trump insisted the pet story was true.
The demonizing of immigrants was a central theme in Trump’s rallies and interviews with right-wing media. He said other countries were sending America their criminals and mentally ill people.
Trump’s complaints about the price of eggs were also a regular theme in his campaign and he promised to bring prices down. Yet eggs have never been more costly and their price — and scarcity — is expected to increase.
The reason for the egg shortage and subsequent price gouging is due to bird flu which the Trump administration is ignoring and also, as ABC News reported Jan. 28, climate change-related losses.
ICE raids and migrant workers
Throughout my recent hospitalizations in December and January, I have been acutely aware of how many nurses and support staff in health care are immigrants.
While Trump continues to flog the narrative of a criminal class of — to quote DHS Secretary Kristi Noem — “dirtbag aliens,” the reality is that America is dependent on immigrant labor — likely much of it from undocumented workers — in the health care, hospitality and agricultural industries.
Who will take care of your aging parents in their nursing homes, assisted living facilities or in their own homes with visiting health-care aides when such a vast percentage of those jobs are being done by women from a range of countries not our own?
Now that border czar Tom Homan has broken all rules of engagement on ICE raids and told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he will order his people to go into churches, schools and hospitals, there are no safe spaces for the undocumented or those perceived to be undocumented. There are no stats on how many of the people ICE is rounding up are actual criminals — and no transparency from the administration.
The threats are real
Are Americans really being harmed by undocumented workers? It is difficult to envision how. These are people doing work most Americans refuse to do, from back-breaking farm work to bathing your incontinent parent with Alzheimer’s.
My own experience with the Haitian nurse was lovely and helped me through a very hard night. Will her dark skin and heavy accent get her caught in the Trump deportation net? I would hope not.
But as Philadelphians became aware on Jan. 28, ICE raids have come to our sanctuary city and they are not targeting violent criminals as promised, but rather people working in North Philly who may or may not be undocumented.
Who is vetting these raids and making sure those arrested are, in fact, criminals? Will there ever be any transparency around these raids, arrests and deportations or will it just be an announcement daily that there were 1,000 deportations to somewhere else?
As I fight for my own life. I fear for immigrants in this country who could be caught in this broadly flung net that Trump has authorized and which he claims will make America great again. And which will never lower the price of anything except perhaps the damage to our collective humanity.