Another Tiff With Mexico

Remember in 2017, Trump sat down to make a round of phone calls on his first day in office, and one of them was a call with President Nieto, when Trump basically tried to get him to play WWE. "You talk shit about me, and I talk shit about you, and we make it look like a fight, but then we get together and make nice and the rubes eat it up. C'mon - it'll be fun."

Don't assume Trump's belligerence towards Mexico isn't:

a) just more theater

-or-

b) a way to rationalize ordering a few cruise missiles in to "teach those cartels a lesson - and that uppity woman president too."

Keep in mind that Trump is always playing the Game Of Opposites. He won't do what he says he'll do, and he will do what he says he won't.

(and that rule changes according to whatever advantage he sees might accrue to him)

So his whole bit about "stopping wars" can be used as cover for when he starts a few.

He's laid the foundation - "he's a peace-maker" - so when he starts some shit, the rubes will assume "the other guy made him do it."

Claudia Scheinbaum's letter to Trump:

Dear President-elect Donald Trump,

I am writing to you regarding your statement on Monday, November 25, concerning migration, fentanyl trafficking, and tariffs.

You may not be aware that Mexico has developed a comprehensive policy to assist migrants from different parts of the world who cross our territory en route to the southern border of the United States. As a result, and according to data from your country’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP), encounters at the Mexico–United States border have decreased by 75% between December 2023 and November 2024. Moreover, half of those who arrive do so through a legally scheduled appointment under the United States’ CBP One program. For these reasons, migrant caravans no longer arrive at the border.

Even so, it is clear that we must work together to create a new labor mobility model that is necessary for your country, as well as address the root causes that compel families to leave their homes out of necessity. If even a small percentage of what the United States allocates to war were instead dedicated to building peace and fostering development, it would address the underlying causes of human mobility.

On another note, and for humanitarian reasons, Mexico has consistently expressed its willingness to help prevent the fentanyl epidemic in the United States from continuing. This is, after all, a public health and consumption problem within your society. So far this year, Mexican armed forces and prosecutors have seized tons of various types of drugs, 10,340 firearms, and have detained 15,640 individuals for violence related to drug trafficking.

Furthermore, the Mexican Congress is in the process of approving a constitutional reform to classify the production, distribution, and commercialization of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs as a serious crime without bail. However, it is publicly known that the chemical precursors used to produce this and other synthetic drugs are illegally entering Canada, the United States, and Mexico from Asian countries. This underscores the urgent need for international collaboration.

You must also be aware of the illegal trafficking of firearms into my country from the United States.

Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country. We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours.

President Trump, migration and drug consumption in the United States cannot be addressed through threats or tariffs. What is needed is cooperation and mutual understanding to tackle these significant challenges.

For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises. Yes, shared. For instance, among Mexico’s main exporters to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tariff that would jeopardize them? Such a measure would be unacceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in both the United States and Mexico.

I am convinced that North America’s economic strength lies in maintaining our trade partnership. This allows us to remain competitive against other economic blocs. For this reason, I believe that dialogue is the best path to understanding, peace, and prosperity for our nations. I hope our teams can meet soon to continue building joint solutions.”

Is It Fate?

Did somebody pick the wrong one out of that big box of chocolates?

Are we seeing our national karma play out?

I have no idea about any of that.

But I think it's a safe bet that without the money, life turns out a bit different for Donald Trump.

"The Church"

Mr Orwell

Normal people will read this and take it as the warning it was meant to be. The bad guys will see it as a roadmap - a guidebook they can use to achieve the ends Mr Orwell told us we needed to watch out for, and to resist.

It's Not Hypocrisy

... it's more than that.

I don't know what to call it (other than NewSpeak), but there's something very wrong with people who buy the bullshit the GOP is peddling.

Maybe they're just so completely Borg-assimilated that they've lost the ability to self-reflect, so they obey whatever instructions they get from the mothership.

Maybe they've finally broken down and they've so fully accepted Daddy State conditioning, that they need reality dictated to them.

Any way I look at it, I'm always left a little confused that so many Americans can be so fucked up in the head.

In the not-too-distant past, Republican voters were like "If my guy wins, then it's OK, but if your guy wins, then it's gotta be rigged."

This new little wrinkle seems to be setting it up so they'll accept the premise that all elections are rigged no matter who wins, so why bother with elections at all? And of course, their guys own the White House, and bother chambers of the Congress, so "we'll just call it good for now, and dispense with all this democracy stuff - cuz this isn't a democracy anyway, remember? It's a republic - and never you mind about the contradictions, just leave it to the man in charge - he's playing 47-dimension chess so we couldn't possibly understand it - he's got it all under control, and blah blah blah."

Colorado GOP Alleges Decades of Election Fraud Conspiracies ... As Party Boasts Republican Wins

The Republican Party's luncheon featured talks of election rigging, political hangings and FBI brainwashing.

The Colorado Republican Party opened its luncheon on Tuesday, November 26, by celebrating the gains it made during the November election. Speakers then spent the next two hours preaching about why the election results cannot be trusted.

The state GOP held its bimonthly Capitol Club luncheon with a panel of election deniers as the special guests: Shawn Smith, Mark Cook and Joe Oltmann. What began as an event discussing the election results and Secretary of State Jena Griswold's errors in handling the state's voting system password leak, ended with the promotion of unsubstantiated conspiracies about decades of alleged fraud they say invalidates every election in recent memory.

"I don't think anybody has any idea what the election results have been in Colorado for twenty years. I would not be surprised if Colorado is still a red state," Smith said to thunderous applause from the crowd of around seventy people gathered at the Maggiano's Little Italy in Englewood.

The election rigging claims didn't end with Colorado: "This was the number-one strategic result I thought we would see in this election — let [Donald] Trump win while everyone steals the down-ballot while no one is looking," Cook said. "We don't know what the results of the election are. We haven't, likely, for a long time. Decades."

"If I was a bad actor, I would be your president right now," Cook said, spurring laughs from attendees between bites of Caesar salads and fettuccine alfredo. "I'm serious," he replied. "It would not be that difficult."

Smith, Cook and Oltmann are the state's most vocal election deniers, the former two of whom infamously coached Elbert County Recorder Dallas Schroeder on how to break into voting machines in 2021.

Smith is also the whistleblower who found the leaked voting system passwords posted on the Secretary of State's website on a hidden tab of a public spreadsheet. However, he's perhaps better known for participating in the January 6 insurrection or calling for Griswold to be hung in 2022 — a comment that he repeated during Tuesday's event.

"I think anybody who has engaged in election fraud needs to hang, deserves to hang," Smith said to scattered claps from the audience. "The media immediately said 'he's threatening Jena Griswold.' I'm not threatening Jena Griswold. If you violate the law, and you violate a law like treason law, then there are punishments for that."

Smith also addressed the whistleblowing, revealing that he did not discover the passwords on his own. Smith said he was tipped off by state Representative Stephanie Luck and failed House District 38 candidate Jeff Patty, who knew that Smith regularly downloads the office's spreadsheets and were informed by an unidentified party that there were hidden passwords in one of the files.

Because of the password leak, Smith argued that the results of Colorado's 2024 primary and general elections cannot be trusted. A judge ruled on Election Day that there was no evidence that voting system components were compromised due to the leak. The Denver District Attorney’s Office is now investigating whether the incident violated state law regarding accessing and tampering with voting equipment.

Smith called for a return to hand-counting ballots and in-person voting only, a demand echoed by the other speakers. He also said Griswold should be prosecuted for "election crimes," though he did not lay all of the blame at her feet.

"I uncharitably called Jena Griswold a meat puppet and meant it," Smith said. "She is probably one of the dumbest people to ever hold office in the state of Colorado."

The election fraud conspiracy goes much deeper than Griswold or Colorado, GOP speakers claimed. Cook alleged that the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies "psychologically condition the public to expect the [election] results they're about to manipulate."

He says these shadow government figures use voter registration information, social media activity and early voting results to "figure out how many votes they need to inject in order to" make elections go to their preferred candidate.

"It's a magic show. You're getting played," Cook said. "You've been fed an illusion. We are operating in a world that is different than what a lot of people think it is. There is something else going on in the background. ...I've got no more Fs to give. I'm on a warpath to expose all of this."

Oltmann, a conservative political activist and owner of DCF Guns, also spoke at Tuesday's event via Zoom. He's best known for his violent political rhetoric calling for the mass execution of politicians, including Governor Jared Polis. Most recently, he made headlines for calling for the execution of President Joe Biden in March over Biden's support for an assault weapons ban — a comment that Oltmann partially walked back on Tuesday.

"I didn't call for violence. I said he should be tried for treason and if he's found guilty he should face the penalties — which, by the way, is death," Oltmann said.

Colorado voters largely resisted the red wave that hit the rest of the country during the November election, though GOP candidates managed to flip Congressional District 8, take three state House seats to end the Democratic supermajority and made gains on the state Board of Education and RTD board. In addition, their presidential candidate, Trump, won a decisive victory over current Vice President Kamala Harris.

Darcy Schoening, director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP, highlighted these achievements at the beginning of the event: "The liberal media is lying to you," she proclaimed. "The Republican Party made massive gains in Colorado and will continue to do that."

How does that align with the speakers' insistence that the state election, national election, and perhaps all elections for the last two decades, were fraudulent?

"I don't think that we know yet how to feel," Schoening tells Westword. "They ask valid questions. ...We're just looking for answers."

Perception vs Reality

What we think is true often directly conflicts with what's actually true.

Some of the rubes wear their ignorance like it's a t-shirt their moms bought them at their first Donnie & Marie concert.

Three Is Not The Charm

Another long one.

I don't know what else to do. I try to make calls, and I do some politicking on social media - all I can think of is to keep putting the problem in front of people.

So here it is.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.

Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.

Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage.

D&Cs — a staple of maternal health care — can be lifesaving. Doctors insert a straw-like tube into the uterus and gently suction out any remaining pregnancy tissue. Once the uterus is emptied, it can close, usually stopping the bleeding.

But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

ProPublica condensed 200 pages of medical records into a summary of the case in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists and then reviewed it with more than a dozen experts around the country, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in maternal health.

Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.

Misoprostol, the medicine given to Porsha, is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable. The drug is also part of a two-pill regimen for abortions, yet administering it may draw less scrutiny than a D&C because it requires a smaller medical team and because the drug is commonly used to induce labor and treat postpartum hemorrhage. Since 2022, some Texas women who were bleeding heavily while miscarrying have gone public about only receiving medication when they asked for D&Cs. One later passed out in a pool of her own blood.

“Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.”

Several physicians who reviewed the summary of her case pointed out that Davis’ post-mortem notes did not reflect nurses’ documented concerns about Porsha’s “heavy bleeding.” After Porsha died, Davis wrote instead that the nurses and other providers described the bleeding as “minimal,” though no nurses wrote this in the records. ProPublica tried to ask Davis about this discrepancy. He did not respond to emails, texts or calls.

Houston Methodist officials declined to answer a detailed list of questions about Porsha’s treatment. They did not comment when asked whether Davis’ approach was the hospital’s “routine.” A spokesperson said that “each patient’s care is unique to that individual.”

“All Houston Methodist hospitals follow all state laws,” the spokesperson added, “including the abortion law in place in Texas.”

“We Need to See the Doctor”

Hope and his two sons outside their home in Houston Credit:Danielle Villasana for ProPublica
Hope marveled at the energy Porsha had for their two sons, ages 5 and 3. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was chasing them through the house or dancing with them in the living room. As a finance manager at a charter school system, she was in charge of the household budget. As an engineer for an airline, Hope took them on flights around the world — to Chile, Bali, Guam, Singapore, Argentina.

The two had met at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. “When Porsha and I began dating,” Hope said, “I already knew I was going to love her.” She was magnetic and driven, going on to earn an MBA, but she was also gentle with him, always protecting his feelings. Both were raised in big families and they wanted to build one of their own.

When he learned Porsha was pregnant again in the spring of 2023, Hope wished for a girl. Porsha found a new OB-GYN who said she could see her after 11 weeks. Ten weeks in, though, Porsha noticed she was spotting. Over the phone, the obstetrician told her to go to the emergency room if it got worse.

To celebrate the end of the school year, Porsha and Hope took their boys to a water park in Austin, and as they headed back, on June 11, Porsha told Hope that the bleeding was heavier. They decided Hope would stay with the boys at home until a relative could take over; Porsha would drive to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land, one of seven community hospitals that are part of the Houston Methodist system.

At 6:30 p.m, three hours after Porsha arrived at the hospital, she saw huge clots in the toilet. “Significant bleeding,” the emergency physician wrote. “I’m starting to feel a lot of pain,” Porsha texted Hope. Around 7:30 p.m., she wrote: “She said I might need surgery if I don’t stop bleeding,” referring to the nurse. At 7:50 p.m., after a nurse changed her second diaper in an hour: “Come now.”

Still, the doctor didn’t mention a D&C at this point, records show. Medical experts told ProPublica that this wait-and-see approach has become more common under abortion bans. Unless there is “overt information indicating that the patient is at significant risk,” hospital administrators have told physicians to simply monitor them, said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who works in several hospital systems in Houston. Methodist declined to share its miscarriage protocols with ProPublica or explain how it is guiding doctors under the abortion ban.

As Porsha waited for Hope, a radiologist completed an ultrasound and noted that she had “a pregnancy of unknown location.” The scan detected a “sac-like structure” but no fetus or cardiac activity. This report, combined with her symptoms, indicated she was miscarrying.

But the ultrasound record alone was less definitive from a legal perspective, several doctors explained to ProPublica. Since Porsha had not had a prenatal visit, there was no documentation to prove she was 11 weeks along. On paper, this “pregnancy of unknown location” diagnosis could also suggest that she was only a few weeks into a normally developing pregnancy, when cardiac activity wouldn’t be detected. Texas outlaws abortion from the moment of fertilization; a record showing there is no cardiac activity isn’t enough to give physicians cover to intervene, experts said.

Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who recently worked as an OB-GYN resident in Austin, said that she regularly witnessed delays after ultrasound reports like these. “If it’s a pregnancy of unknown location, if we do something to manage it, is that considered an abortion or not?” she said, adding that this was one of the key problems she encountered. After the abortion ban went into effect, she said, “there was much more hesitation about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?”

At Methodist, the emergency room doctor reached Davis, the on-call OB-GYN, to discuss the ultrasound, according to records. They agreed on a plan of “observation in the hospital to monitor bleeding.”

Around 8:30 p.m., just after Hope arrived, Porsha passed out. Terrified, he took her head in his hands and tried to bring her back to consciousness. “Babe, look at me,” he told her. “Focus.” Her blood pressure was dipping dangerously low. She had held off on accepting a blood transfusion until he got there. Now, as she came to, she agreed to receive one and then another.

By this point, it was clear that she needed a D&C, more than a dozen OB-GYNs who reviewed her case told ProPublica. She was hemorrhaging, and the standard of care is to vacuum out the residual tissue so the uterus can clamp down, physicians told ProPublica.

“Complete the miscarriage and the bleeding will stop,” said Dr. Lauren Thaxton, an OB-GYN who recently left Texas.

“At every point, it’s kind of shocking,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco who reviewed Porsha’s case. “She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn’t move toward aspiration.”

All Porsha talked about was her devastation of losing the pregnancy. She was cold, crying and in extreme pain. She wanted to be at home with her boys. Unsure what to say, Hope leaned his chest over the cot, passing his body heat to her.

At 9:45 p.m., Esmeralda Acosta, a nurse, wrote that Porsha was “continuing to pass large clots the size of grapefruit.” Fifteen minutes later, when the nurse learned Davis planned to send Porsha to a floor with fewer nurses, she “voiced concern” that he wanted to take her out of the emergency room, given her condition, according to medical records.

At 10:20 p.m., seven hours after Porsha arrived, Davis came to see her. Hope remembered what his mother had told him on the phone earlier that night: “She needs a D&C.” The doctor seemed confident about a different approach: misoprostol. If that didn’t work, Hope remembers him saying, they would move on to the procedure.

A pill sounded good to Porsha because the idea of surgery scared her. Davis did not explain that a D&C involved no incisions, just suction, according to Hope, or tell them that it would stop the bleeding faster. The Ngumezis followed his recommendation without question. “I’m thinking, ‘He’s the OB, he’s probably seen this a thousand times, he probably knows what’s right,’” Hope said.

But more than a dozen doctors who reviewed Porsha’s case were concerned by this recommendation. Many said it was dangerous to give misoprostol to a woman who’s bleeding heavily, especially one with a blood clotting disorder. “That’s not what you do,” said Dr. Elliott Main, the former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and an expert in hemorrhage, after reviewing the case. “She needed to go to the operating room.” Main and others said doctors are obliged to counsel patients on the risks and benefits of all their options, including a D&C.

Performing a D&C, though, attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal, explained Goulding, the OB-GYN in Houston. Staff are familiar with misoprostol because it’s used for labor, and it only requires a doctor and a nurse to administer it. To do a procedure, on the other hand, a doctor would need to find an operating room, an anesthesiologist and a nursing team. “You have to convince everyone that it is legal and won’t put them at risk,” said Goulding. “Many people may be afraid and misinformed and refuse to participate — even if it’s for a miscarriage.”

Davis moved Porsha to a less-intensive unit, according to records. Hope wondered why they were leaving the emergency room if the nurse seemed so worried. But instead of pushing back, he rubbed Porsha’s arms, trying to comfort her. The hospital was reputable. “Since we were at Methodist, I felt I could trust the doctors.”

On their way to the other ward, Porsha complained of chest pain. She kept remarking on it when they got to the new room. From this point forward, there are no nurse’s notes recording how much she continued to bleed. “My wife says she doesn’t feel right, and last time she said that, she passed out,” Hope told a nurse. Furious, he tried to hold it together so as not to alarm Porsha. “We need to see the doctor,” he insisted.

Her vital signs looked fine. But many physicians told ProPublica that when healthy pregnant patients are hemorrhaging, their bodies can compensate for a long time, until they crash. Any sign of distress, such as chest pain, could be a red flag; the symptom warranted investigation with tests, like an electrocardiogram or X-ray, experts said. To them, Porsha’s case underscored how important it is that doctors be able to intervene before there are signs of a life-threatening emergency.

But Davis didn’t order any tests, according to records.

Around 1:30 a.m., Hope was sitting by Porsha’s bed, his hands on her chest, telling her, “We are going to figure this out.” They were talking about what she might like for breakfast when she began gasping for air.

“Help, I need help!” he shouted to the nurses through the intercom. “She can’t breathe.”

“All She Needed”

Hours later, Hope returned home in a daze. “Is mommy still at the hospital?” one of his sons asked. Hope nodded; he couldn’t find the words to tell the boys they’d lost their mother. He dressed them and drove them to school, like the previous day had been a bad dream. He reached for his phone to call Porsha, as he did every morning that he dropped the kids off. But then he remembered that he couldn’t.

Friends kept reaching out. Most of his family’s network worked in medicine, and after they said how sorry they were, one after another repeated the same message. All she needed was a D&C, said one. They shouldn’t have given her that medication, said another. It’s a simple procedure, the callers continued. We do this all the time in Nigeria.

Since Porsha died, several families in Texas have spoken publicly about similar circumstances. This May, when Ryan Hamilton’s wife was bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, the first doctor they saw at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville noted no fetal cardiac activity and ordered misoprostol, according to medical records. When they returned because the bleeding got worse, an emergency doctor on call, Kyle Demler, said he couldn’t do anything considering “the current stance” in Texas, according to Hamilton, who recorded his recollection of the conversation shortly after speaking with Demler. (Neither Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville nor Demler responded to several requests for comment.)

They drove an hour to another hospital asking for a D&C to stop the bleeding, but there, too, the physician would only prescribe misoprostol, medical records indicate. Back home, Hamilton’s wife continued bleeding until he found her passed out on the bathroom floor. “You don’t think it can really happen like that,” said Hamilton. “It feels like you’re living in some sort of movie, it’s so unbelievable.”

Across Texas, physicians say they blame the law for interfering with medical care. After ProPublica reported last month on two women who died after delays in miscarriage care, 111 OB-GYNs sent a letter to Texas policymakers, saying that “the law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need.”

Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas, told ProPublica that if one person on a medical team doubts the doctor’s choice to proceed with a D&C, the physician might back down. “You constantly feel like you have someone looking over your shoulder in a punitive, vigilante type of way.”

The criminal penalties are so chilling that even women with diagnoses included in the law’s exceptions are facing delays and denials. Last year, for example, legislators added an update to the ban for patients diagnosed with previable premature rupture of membranes, in which a patient’s water breaks before a fetus can survive. Doctors can still face prosecution for providing abortions in those cases, but they are offered the chance to justify themselves with what’s called an “affirmative defense,” not unlike a murder suspect arguing self defense. This modest change has not stopped some doctors from transferring those patients instead of treating them; Dr. Allison Gilbert, an OB-GYN in Dallas, said doctors send them to her from other hospitals. “They didn’t feel like other staff members would be comfortable proceeding with the abortion,” she said. “It’s frustrating that places still feel like they can’t act on some of these cases that are clearly emergencies.” Women denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, another exception in the law, have filed federal complaints.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about Houston Methodist’s guidance on miscarriage management, a spokesperson, Gale Smith, said that the hospital has an ethics committee, which can usually respond within hours to help physicians and patients make “appropriate decisions” in compliance with state laws.

After Porsha died, Davis described in the medical record a patient who looked stable: He was tracking her vital signs, her bleeding was “mild” and she was “said not to be in distress.” He ordered bloodwork “to ensure patient wasn’t having concerning bleeding.” Medical experts who reviewed Porsha’s case couldn’t understand why Davis noted that a nurse and other providers reported “decreasing bleeding” in the emergency department when the record indicated otherwise. “He doesn’t document the heavy bleeding that the nurse clearly documented, including the significant bleeding that prompted the blood transfusion, which is surprising,” Grossman, the UCSF professor, said.

Patients who are miscarrying still don’t know what to expect from Houston Methodist.

This past May, Marlena Stell, a patient with symptoms nearly identical to Porsha’s, arrived at another hospital in the system, Houston Methodist The Woodlands. According to medical records, she, too, was 11 weeks along and bleeding heavily. An ultrasound confirmed there was no fetal heartbeat and indicated the miscarriage wasn’t complete. “I assumed they would do whatever to get the bleeding to stop,” Stell said.

Instead, she bled for hours at the hospital. She wanted a D&C to clear out the rest of the tissue, but the doctor gave her methergine, a medication that’s typically used after childbirth to stop bleeding but that isn’t standard care in the middle of a miscarriage, doctors told ProPublica. "She had heavy bleeding, and she had an ultrasound that's consistent with retained products of conception." said Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, who reviewed the records. "The standard of care would be a D&C."

Stell says that instead, she was sent home and told to “let the miscarriage take its course.” She completed her miscarriage later that night, but doctors who reviewed her case, so similar to Porsha’s, said it showed how much of a gamble physicians take when they don’t follow the standard of care. “She got lucky — she could have died,” Abbott said. (Houston Methodist did not respond to a request for comment on Stell’s care.)

It hadn’t occurred to Hope that the laws governing abortion could have any effect on his wife’s miscarriage. Now it’s the only explanation that makes sense to him. “We all know pregnancies can come out beautifully or horribly,” Hope told ProPublica. “Instead of putting laws in place to make pregnancies safer, we created laws that put them back in danger.”

For months, Hope’s youngest son didn’t understand that his mom was gone. Porsha’s long hair had been braided, and anytime the toddler saw a woman with braids from afar, he would take off after her, shouting, “That’s mommy!”

A couple weeks ago, Hope flew to Amsterdam to quiet his mind. It was his first trip without Porsha, but as he walked the city, he didn’t know how to experience it without her. He kept thinking about how she would love the Christmas lights and want to try all the pastries. How she would have teased him when he fell asleep on a boat tour of the canals. “I thought getting away would help,” he wrote in his journal. “But all I’ve done is imagine her beside me.”

Here Comes The Pain

First Buddy Elon has told us to expect some hard times. And of course, that's being exuberantly translated by the rubes as meaning everybody will be rich and fat and happy at some point shortly thereafter.

Number 1, don't expect that pain to be evenly distributed. This is America, dummy - rich people won't be feeling it.

Number 2, anybody pulling down less than about $250K is likely to get slammed pretty hard - if  Trump does what he says he wants to do.

As usual, the word "if" is doing some heavy lifting, but we all know that Trump can't stand being told no, and that he thinks because he said it, somebody at least has to make it look like it's being done so he can lie about what a magnificent star-spangled president he is.

So, exactly as predicted, Trump 2.0 has all the earmarks of becoming another FUBAR wrapped in a clusterfuck tossed into a dumpster fire.

Tariffs on Canadian crude oil:

The ghost of Tariffs past:

What I worry about most is that this time, the circus will serve as cover not just for the billions in graft that will pour into the pockets of Trump and his merry band of leeches, but also for all the shitty things the Project 2025 plutocrats are working on. So when The Unitary Executive thing is more or less in place, the A25 coup will remove Trump and replace him with ... fuck if I know what happens after that, but it's got me keeping some pretty odd hours.

Fake lord help us.

Today's Quote

There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto. And in that understanding, there is a profound loneliness, a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself.

--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Today's IG

I don't know, of course, and neither does this guy. But tell me it's not possible.

Tell me there's just no way these MAGA assholes are going to "hire out" those detainees, and then tell us they're just trying to make the thing "sustainable - by getting it to pay for itself".

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