People are fed up with the U.S. health care system, and rightfully so. Medical premiums and debt are rising, clinicians are burned out, and patients have less access to care. As another election approaches, these conditions are building up, just waiting to ignite change like wildfir
Is the solution Medicare for All? It remains a bumper-sticker topic in several local congressional races. This is somewhat unsurprising, given that many Democrats think it’s the answer and even some Republicans support it. But when it comes to politics, slogans tend to leave out nuances.
So I called Hayden Rooke-Ley, a professor of health policy and lawyer, to join me and weigh in on the practicalities of what could be the biggest change in health care since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.
Can we actually afford Medicare for All?
This is the first question everyone asks. And the answer is yes.
The U.S. currently spends more on health care than any other country, with private insurance driving the highest costs. That’s why most experts think Medicare for All would lower overall healthcare spending.
But what society can afford differs from government financing. Fully funding this without going into debt requires significant new taxes. Convincing Americans to send more money to the IRS is a hard sell, even if the argument is that they’d stop sending money to insurance companies.
That said, when you tally it all up, roughly 70% of the U.S. health care system is already financed by taxpayer money. So the real question is less about whether we want taxpayers financing the health care system. We largely already do that. It’s more about how we want to do it. (continued on Page 2)
Ed note: Please utilize our very near Memory Hub for resources and care options–along with a skilled neurologist. There are so many hopeful ideas that won’t bear out, so the future is unknown. Here’s a bottom line from ClaudeAI: “There’s good evidence you can meaningfully shift your odds through cardiovascular health, hearing care, activity, diet, and cognitive/social engagement — but nothing that guarantees prevention. Once diagnosed, current amyloid-targeting drugs can measurably slow decline, but the improvement is modest, drug access is restricted to early-stage disease, and whether it’s “worth it” given the monitoring burden and side-effect risk is still actively debated among clinicians. This is a fast-moving research area, so it’s worth checking for newer trial results if this matters for a specific decision.”
The outdoor apparel brand, which sued the Trump administration this month, is ramping up its environmental activism before the midterm elections.
The outdoor apparel company Patagonia hopes to get more than 300,000 people out to vote in the midterms this year.Credit…John Tully for The New York Times
Patagonia is offering customers a financial incentive to encourage friends and family to make a plan to vote in the midterm elections.
The outdoor apparel company announced it would give up to 112,000 customers a $100 discount on Patagonia merchandise if they enroll three people in a program to encourage registered voters to cast a ballot in the midterms. The initiative begins Saturday.
Support for the environment has been a core part of Patagonia’s brand for decades, yet the move is an extraordinary step in corporate activism. The company, based in Ventura, Calif., previously bought political ads, campaigned against the oil and gas industry and endorsed candidates who ran against lawmakers who rejected the scientific consensus on climate change.
Ryan Gellert, the chief executive of Patagonia, said he was concerned that many Americans had become disengaged with politics and environmental issues since President Trump returned to the White House last year. Company executives want to “get people off the sidelines,” he said.
“A lot of people are feeling a sense of hopelessness,” Mr. Gellert said in an interview. “We’re trying to cut through the apathy.”
The people Patagonia customers refer are sent to a third-party website where they can check their voter registration, and find out if they can vote early and whether they need to show identification at their polling site. They must then develop a plan to cast their ballot — by voting early, by mail or in person on Election Day.
Customers who made the referrals can choose to receive a $100 credit on their next order from Patagonia, or make a donation of the same amount to the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group.
Patagonia said that its goal was to reach more than 300,000 people with its campaign and that it had committed up to $11.2 million to the initiative. The company reported nearly $1.5 billion in revenue during its last fiscal year. More than 60 percent of its sales come from customers in the United States.
Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, has been a staunch activist since he began selling rock-climbing equipment in the 1950s, and the company has pledged 1 percent of sales to environmental groups for more than 40 years.
“We’ve never seen a government attack on nature — on public lands, on biodiversity and in climate — like we’re seeing right now,” Mr. Gellert said. “The stakes are more acute than we’ve ever seen.”
Both political parties have poured money into campaigns across the country in the final midterm stretch, with Republicans holding the financial edge. Mr. Trump has also proposed sending a $5,000 check to every American adult if the Republicans retain control of the House and Senate.
Many corporations have been involved in voting-related programs, often aimed at their employees. Levi Strauss co-founded a nonpartisan coalition to encourage companies to give employees time off to vote. Airbnb started a civic action center to help citizens check their voter information. Live Nation has used its concert venues as polling places.
Patagonia has been at odds with Mr. Trump during both of his terms, primarily over the protection of public lands.
In July, Mr. Trump shrank the size of two national monuments in Utah to less than 10 percent of their former dimensions, citing “critical minerals,” such as silver, copper and zinc, within their boundaries. Mining companies were quick to pounce, with at least nine new claims staked on land that had lost its protections from development.
This month, Patagonia joined a conservation group and a Native American-led nonprofit organization to sue Mr. Trump in an effort to overturn his cuts to Bears Ears National Monument, one of the affected areas.
Patagonia worked with the Environmental Voter Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit, to figure out how to approach its midterm push. Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder, said his group’s focus was not to change people’s minds about green issues but to change their behavior so that they would make the effort to vote.
Once they have earned the $100 credit, participants in the program will also have the option to see key dates for the early voting period based on their address and can confirm they are registered to vote and update their information.
“We found a huge number of these already registered super environmentalists who did not vote in the last presidential election,” Mr. Stinnett said. “People want to be a part of big campaigns that the environmental movement is taking seriously.”
The usual selection of fleece jackets and soft-shell windbreakers has already been pushed from the top of Patagonia’s website. Instead, the online store reads: “Vote Big.”
Mr. Gellert announced the initiative during Climate Week NYC. The annual gathering, to promote climate action, is held alongside the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Artificial intelligence systems that generate hypotheses, design experiments and analyse data, such as Google’s Co-Scientist, are revolutionizing how researchers work — and could change how scientists are valued. The aim of these systems is to free up researchers from the “routine aspects of discovery”, says geneticist Le Cong, co-founder of biomedical AI start-up Phylo. But doing so could deprive students and early-career researchers of opportunities to develop their skills, and require that scientists have unusually far-reaching knowledge to judge whether AI-generated ideas are sound.
I don’t think people understand what we are talking about when we say the Kennedy Center needs to be protected. This isn’t just a theater. It isn’t an old building somebody can gut, redecorate, rename, rearrange and then tell us, “Don’t worry, we improved it.”
The building IS part of the memorial.
Start with the marble. Italy gave the United States roughly 3,500 tons of Carrara marble for the Kennedy Center. Not Home Depot tile. Carrara marble, from the same historic quarry tradition associated with Michelangelo. The gift was pledged during John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Italy, only months before he was assassinated.
Then look around the building. France gave us two Matisse tapestries. Austria gave the Opera House chandeliers. Norway gave the Concert Hall chandeliers. Sweden gave the Grand Foyer chandeliers. Ireland gave crystal. Belgium gave the enormous mirrors. Canada gave the Eisenhower Theater curtain. Japan gave the Opera House curtain. Germany, Great Britain, Denmark and other nations contributed sculpture, furnishings and works of art.
Think about what that means.
Countries around the world helped build America’s memorial to John F. Kennedy.
They didn’t send gift cards. They sent marble, crystal, tapestries, sculpture and craftsmanship representing their own cultures. Those objects became part of the building and part of the memorial. And the building itself matters. It was designed by Edward Durell Stone, one of the major American architects of his generation, and it has been recognized as historically significant architecture. So before anybody starts ripping things out, covering things up, moving artwork, changing ceremonial spaces or deciding some original feature looks “dated,” we need to know exactly what is there.
Inventory it. Photograph it. Document it. Identify every diplomatic gift. Identify every original architectural element. Identify what belongs to the Kennedy memorial itself.
Do that FIRST. Because restoration can be repaired. Bad taste can eventually be corrected. But once original historic material is destroyed, it’s gone. You cannot replace a diplomatic gift from 1963 with something new and pretend it is the same thing. You cannot rip out the marble and order “historic-looking marble.” You cannot remove a Matisse, change the architecture around it and claim nothing important happened. And you certainly should not alter a national memorial first and ask the preservation questions afterward.
The fabulous playwright and USC professor Luis Alfaro posted about experiencing this piece:
I went to see a most upsetting, which is to say successful, theatrical experience called ‘The Ford/Hill Project’.
Four actors, working with earpieces, share the verbatim transcripts of both Anita Hill’s 1991, and Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 testimonies during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh.
Oof. It is a stomach-turning upsetting piece of necessary theatre staged to beautifully complicated minimalist effect. If theatre is indeed in its retraction mode, I suggest we all stage shows with nine chairs to great dramatic effect like this one did.
It is not only a powerful study of character, but an American history of power, abuse, and its language. Both women endure an overwhelming constructed punishment for simply telling their truth. There is so much we need to unlearn if we can ever dream of a healthy country, especially in this time of such extreme corruption.
Clocking in at a little over an hour, it was just enough to have me in total catharsis mode.
Brava/o/x to creators Lee Sunday Evans, artistic director of Waterwell, and the legendary actor, Elizabeth Marvel, who let this riveting piece of history sink into us as we ponder race, class, sex and all the harassments. Especially while we watch the men put on Supreme Court robes and take their place of seniority among the nine chairs. What a gut punch.
Brava to long time NYC pal, Melissa Kievman, who I had not seen in at least fifteen years, doing a tremendous producing job on this most important spectacle.
I would tell you to go, one last show tonight, but it’s sold out, as it should be.
From a backyard to Black Beauty Ranch: Elsa’s story – thanks to Bob Peterson
From a backyard to Black Beauty Ranch: Elsa’s story In February 2021, as a historic freeze gripped Texas, a six-month-old tiger was found in someone’s backyard in below-freezing temperatures, wearing a harness. Rescued from the wild pet trade, she was brought to Black Beauty Ranch, our sanctuary in Texas, and given a name: Elsa.
Use my trustee discount for tickets (I’m competing with Mary Kay Hagard!) *Go to the Seattle Rep website https://www.seattlerep.org/. Select a performance date. *On the ticketing screen, in the “Promotional Code” box on the right hand side of the screen, enter the promotional code LIN. *Press APPLY. *Choose which seats you want to purchase with the discount applied and proceed to check out.
Launched by the National Library Board on September 6, uses a gamified system where participants log their reading time, collect virtual coins and eventually redeem them for cash.
Singapore has launched ReadSG, a five-year national reading movement that encourages citizens to read for at least 15 minutes a day.
For a generation used to typing LOL, BRB, IDK and TBH, reading a few pages of a book can almost feel like a deliberate act of patience. Now, Singapore is putting a small price on that patience.
Singapore has launched ReadSG, a five-year national reading movement that encourages citizens to read for at least 15 minutes a day. The programme, launched by the National Library Board (NLB) on September 6, uses a gamified system where participants log their reading time, collect virtual coins and eventually redeem them for cash.
Launched earlier this month by the National Library Board, the idea is simple. Log at least 15 minutes of reading a day on the CrowdTask SG platform or app, and you earn 20 virtual coins. Collect 1,000 coins and you get S$1 (about 80 US cents). Only one session counts per day, so it takes 50 solid reading days to pocket that single dollar. Nobody’s getting rich, but the point isn’t the cash, it’s the habit
ADVERTISEMENT
“While short-form content helps us stay informed, long-form reading strengthens attention, critical thinking and imagination,” says National Library Board chief Melissa Tam. Officials are hoping this gentle gamification can push back against what everyone’s calling “brain rot”—that foggy feeling from endless doomscrolling.
And let’s be real, the language shift is wild. Gen Z texts look like a different dialect these days. Instead of “I don’t know,” it’s “idk.” “See you later” becomes “cya.” Full sentences? Rare. You’ll get “ngl this is mid fr fr” or “lowkey obsessed rn, no cap.” AI chatbots and constant short-form video have made proper spelling optional and slang the default. Deep reading feels almost rebellious when your brain is trained on 15-second clips and autocorrect that finishes your thoughts for you.
Singapore isn’t starting from zero, 89% of adults still read something more than once a week but only 28% actually pick up books. The campaign also has a charity angle: collective reading minutes can unlock up to S$150,000 for community programmes. The pilot runs till year-end, with tweaks based on feedback.
NLB chief executive Melissa Tam said long-form reading can strengthen attention, critical thinking and imagination, skills that can become harder to exercise when people constantly jump between pieces of short-form content.
The campaign’s timing is particularly interesting. Singapore’s 2024 National Reading Habits Study found that only around three in 10 adults read books weekly.
ReadSG is not only about earning virtual coins. Its Read for Good initiative will also count reading minutes towards charitable fundraising, while other programmes include book giveaways and reading events.
Some critics roll their eyes and say people should read for love, not loot. Others figure any nudge that gets someone past the algorithm is worth trying. As one local put it, better people miss their stop while reading than blast TikTok on the train.
Whether a dollar can outlast dopamine hits remains to be seen. But in a place famous for national campaigns that actually stick, Singapore’s betting that 15 quiet minutes a day might just rewire a few attention spans—and maybe even help the next generation remember how to spell whole words again.
It’s not every day you get to throw a bullpen with a Major League All-Star, but Bryan Woo recently gave one young fan such a chance.
Woo strolled over to a group of fans scouting the Mariners’ bullpen before a home game and spotted the young fan who happened to be wearing a Woo jersey. Woo lifted the youngster over the fence of the bullpen and set him up on the mound for a quick game of catch.
One wild pitch aside, the fan had the strike zone dialed in, earning a fist bump from Woo and a well-deserved cheer from the surrounding fans. That’s sure to be a lifelong memory.
SiestaOrigami meticulously crafted a manual typewriter from a single uncut sheet of paper measuring 124 cm (1.36 yards) across. The video follows the 24-hour creation process from the initial design through the complex folds that form the keyboard and other intricate structural details.
I tried folding a mechanical typewriter using a single sheet of uncut 124cm paper.
The burramy, or mountain pygmy-possum, supports fragile Australian environments by dispersing seeds from mountain plum-pines across rocky alpine landscapes.
The tiny, four-inch marsupial — which has a prehensile tail longer than its body — was long feared to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 1966 at Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps of Australia.
In the decades since, scientists across Australia have worked to engineer a species recovery plan.
One critical habitat scientists honed in on was a population of roughly 150 mountain pygmy-possums in Little Mount Higginbotham. But it faced a major problem: a 210-mile roadway that cut directly through its natural habitat.
“At Little Mount Higginbotham, the Great Alpine Road currently acts as a barrier for movement of possums from one side of the road to the other,” Jerry Alexander, the natural environment program officer for the Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning, said in a statement.
That’s particularly an issue when it comes to mating. While female mountain pygmy-possums generally live in higher altitude habitats amid boulder fields, males tend to live further down the slope. The Great Alpine Road, Australia’s highest accessible road, makes it nearly impossible for the males and females to reach each other safely. “We are making it easier and safer for the males to travel and breed with the females by linking their habitats,” Alexander said. “By increasing breeding opportunities, habitat restoration, and predator control, we are giving this critically endangered species the best possible chance to thrive.”
VICTORIA DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATE ACTION
Over two summers, researchers recorded 30 mountain pygmy-possums using the tunnel of love, often in springtime, after their mates had woken from hibernation. According to scientists, the marsupials can clear the nearly 50-foot tunnel in just 15 seconds – a rate that’s sometimes too fast for trail cameras to even capture them.
Today, fewer than 2,000 mountain pygmy-possums are believed to remain in the wild. In addition to nature-based, non-invasive methods of saving the marsupials, captive breeding programs have also proved critical to the species’ survival.
In March, Zoos Victoria’s Healesville Sanctuary welcomed 12 tiny joeys as part of its breeding and research program.
Mountain pygmy possums remain Australia’s only true hibernating marsupial — in the wild, they spend more than five months beneath the snow each year.
At Healesville Sanctuary, zookeepers use special thermal cameras to check in on the little critters as they hibernate.
“When in torpor (hibernation), mountain pygmy-possums can reduce their body temperature to two degrees Celsius,” Threatened Species Keeper Amie Hindson said in a statement. “They curl their bodies into a little ball with their head tucked into their chest or abdomen. Sometimes, the females will tuck their little noses into their pouch.”
Before hibernation, the little marsupials nearly double their weight to around 2 ounces, then shrink back to nearly half that size over winter.
“We already do weekly weight checks of the possums, record their activity levels each day, and record how much food they are consuming over the hibernation period,” Hindson explained. “But it was pretty cool to see the difference on the thermal camera between an awake and torporing possum.
“Any additional monitoring of our nocturnal species that we can do without extra disturbance is something that is really important for the well-being of those species in our care.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is on a mission. As described in his Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report, children are suffering more from chronic diseases than ever before. Rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, neurodevelopmental disorders, cancer, mental health problems, allergies, and autoimmune diseases are dramatically greater than in previous decades. The MAHA report states that children are simply receiving too many vaccines too soon, which are weakening, overwhelming, or altering their immune systems, causing an explosion of chronic illnesses. This must stop. And RFK Jr. sees himself as the man who will stop it.
On February 13, 2025, after he had been sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services, RFK Jr. said, “For 20 years, I’ve gotten up every morning on my knees and prayed that God would put me in a position where I could end the childhood chronic disease epidemic in this country. On August 23rd of last year, God sent me President Donald Trump.”
RFK Jr.’s belief that vaccines cause chronic illnesses isn’t new. RFK Jr. has said that the polio vaccine causes soft tissue cancers, that the HPV vaccine causes cancer and autoimmune diseases, that several vaccines cause autism, and that his voice disorder, which is genetic, was caused by an influenza vaccine. All these claims were wildly incorrect. Nonetheless, when he sees parents holding a child, he urges them not to vaccinate them; in that way, he believes that he has “saved” that child. He has also said that if he could go back in time, he would pay any amount of money not to have vaccinated his own children.
RFK Jr sees the current outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases as a small price to pay for what he believes will be a long-term reduction in chronic illnesses. And, if you don’t believe that, just look at his actions during a measles outbreak in Samoa between 2019 and 2020 that caused 5,700 cases and 83 deaths in an island nation of only 200,000 people. On June 1, 2019, RFK Jr. visited the Samoan Prime Minister and falsely claimed that the measles outbreak wasn’t caused by measles; it was caused by a defective measles vaccine. While there, RFK Jr. met with prominent local anti-vaccine activists like Taylor Winterstein and Edwin Tamasese to help with their efforts to discourage vaccination during the Prime Minister’s vaccination campaign. RFK Jr. also brought with him a data analyst named Michael Gavin whom he believed could help him compare children who hadn’t been vaccinated with those who had. He saw this as a “window of opportunity” to show that, in the long run, unvaccinated children were better off, even during a massive measles epidemic.
RFK Jr.’s actions in Samoa explains why, despite his role as our nation’s leading public health official, he never encourages vaccination during outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Quite the opposite. In March 2025, a couple of weeks after a child died from measles in West Texas—the first child death from measles in the United States in more than 20 years—RFK Jr. went on national television and claimed that the measles vaccine “causes blindness and deafness,” “causes the same symptoms as measles,” and “kills people every year.” He further claimed that “natural measles infections prevent cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases.” In May 2025, RFK Jr. said that children should no longer receive a COVID vaccine, even though thousands of children had been hospitalized with COVID and more than a hundred had died the previous year. In January 2026, after about 500 children had died from influenza during the previous two years—more childhood deaths from influenza than had been seen since the 2009 swine flu pandemic—RFK Jr. explained on CBS News that children “might be better off if fewer got a flu vaccine.”
For RFK Jr., the United States is the new Samoa. During the next two years, he will continue to discourage vaccination and hold up a series of bogus, poorly constructed, critically flawed studies showing that vaccinated children are at greater risk for chronic diseases than unvaccinated children. He’ll call them “gold-standard” studies. He’s done it before. And it’s the basis of his book, Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak.
Fortunately for Samoans, their Prime Minister quickly saw RFK Jr. for who he was. “I was not interested in his ideas,” he said. “He was not a medical doctor. Our medical experts are more credible to me.” When will political leaders in our country say the same thing? Because until they do, American children will continue to suffer and die from infections that are entirely preventable.
In November 2023, RFK Jr. said, “let’s give infectious diseases a break for a while.” Sadly, for as long as RFK Jr. is Secretary of Health and Human Services, they won’t be giving us a break.
Reaching Out from Within is a nonprofit that operates in correctional facilities across Kansas, North Carolina, and Missouri. In 1982, the program was founded on a central principle: Even within prison, incarcerated men and women are still members of their community.
So, this spring — when inmates at Norton Correctional Facility learned that Norton public county schools were left with approximately $6,000 of unsettled school lunch account debt — they stepped up to help.
The debt accumulated from breakfast and lunch meals served to children whose families faced food insecurity and were unable to reconcile their child’s school lunch account.
Within their facility, the inmates organized a fundraiser through ROFW with the intention of paying off the $6,000 tab.
During the fundraising period, residents donated $3,810 of their personal funds to the ROFW USD 211 School Lunch Account fundraiser.
To get them past the $4,000 mark, staff members from the Kansas Department of Corrections also pitched in an additional $457. On August 3, nearly 30 incarcerated men gathered to present Corey Roy, the USD 211 Superintendent of Schools, with a fina
The outreach successfully covered about 71% of the district’s remaining debt.
“I was moved at how the men I spoke with wanted to make a positive impact to help others in the community,” Roy said in a statement. “I think it gave them a sense of purpose and knowledge that they made a difference for a young person they don’t even know.”
After the ceremony, many inmates who donated told Roy that they had often gone hungry growing up, and the lack of support negatively impacted their studies.
Twice now, in 2023 and 2025, U.S. Senator John Fetterman has introduced bills that would have directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to erase all household school meal debt using Commodity Credit Corporation funds.
To date, Congress has failed to pass any legislation to pay off or eliminate nationwide school lunch debt.
Although USD 211 — the Norton, Kansas public school district — allows lunch accounts to go negative and continues serving hot meals to children, other school districts across the country have served lower-quality “alternative meals”or engaged in “lunch shaming” practices.
“Specific examples of lunch shaming include hand stamps, stickers, or other visual markers to identify children with lunch debt,” The Education Data Initiative states on its website. “Notes sent home with the child and withheld meals may also indicate lunch debt to peers. The USDA recommends more discrete reminders, such as phone calls to parents, emails, or letters sent via post.”
“When funding and programs are cut at the end of our state and federal funding cycle, participation will decrease, and meal debt will increase,” Amanda Kinnaird, a food and nutrition professional with Washington’s North Thurston Public Schools, told the National Education Association.
NORTON CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
“Research shows that students who come to school hungry lack concentration, which impacts their ability to learn,” Kinnaird continued. “Also, food insecurity can lead to students being socially withdrawn. They will be embarrassed to admit they are hungry, and don’t want to ask for food, which clearly has a direct impact on their emotional well-being.”
On August 3, Roy said he appreciated hearing personal stories from the inmates behind the school lunch debt fundraiser.
“I was very appreciative to have the chance to talk to them as a group, but also individually to hear how this made them feel to help someone else,” Roy said.
“I wanted them to know that they made a difference in a positive way. In listening to them, I believe this gave them a chance to reflect and know that moving forward they can make choices that are positive for themselves and others in the community.”
Roy said, “I felt very good about the opportunity to meet with the residents and try to reinforce what the prison staff are doing to help them be directed in the right direction as they move forward in their lives.”
By David Gibson who is the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. (in the NYT)
Andy Burnham, Britain’s new prime minister, is exactly the kind of Catholic that America needs.
That might sound odd, especially given that Mr. Burnham was raised Catholic but rarely attends Mass and leads the center-left party in one of the West’s least churchgoing nations. But Mr. Burnham’s Catholicism is still central to who he is as a leader, and it informs his approach to policy, which is oriented toward the common good rather than culture wars.
“Catholic social teaching underpins my politics,” he once said. In an expansive talk last year for the British religion and politics think tank Theos, Mr. Burnham called for moving from a crisis of trust between people and their government to a “culture of encounter,” a phrase he learned from Pope Francis.
That approach to politics — a “healthy ‘culture of negotiation,’” as Pope Leo XIV recently called it, that leaves no one behind — has gone missing from the American church and American politics, to the detriment of both.
For decades, Catholic politics in the United States has been more of an internecine battlefield than a search for common ground. Catholic politicians such as Al Smith, the “happy warrior,” in the 1920s, and R. Sargent Shriver, who helped found the Peace Corps and other programs in the war on poverty, in the 1960s, once found in politics a way to acceptance in society by focusing on social justice and the well-being of all.
More recently, Catholics in the political realm focused on divisive social issues such as the legal status of gay rights or abortion. (In their official political guidance, U.S. bishops called abortion the “preeminent priority” as markers to divide good Catholics from bad Catholics.) Those who didn’t measure up could be threatened with being barred from communion.
Prominent Catholic politicians including Vice President JD Vance spend time arguing with the pope about who is better at theology, while other Catholics argue over how much Latin to use at Mass. (continued on page 2)
The flu and COVID season are arriving in the fall. How should we think about that cough? Dr. Katy Horan is a Pulmonary Medicine specialist at Virginia Mason, focusing on bronchiectasis, non-tuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) lung disease, and chronic cough. After earning her medical degree, she completed her Internal Medicine residency and served as Chief Resident at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. She then managed a nutritional feeding center and tuberculosis ward with Doctors Without Borders in Angola before completing her Pulmonary and Critical Care fellowship at the University of Washington.
