Editorial

This article first appeard on Rachel Coyle's Substack

Late last week, The Ohio State University announced its newest policy to prevent students from voicing their political opinions on campus:

We’re under assault in every direction without a safe space in sight. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m referring to street crime or border crossings, both of which have been plummeting. I’m talking about our ability to believe what we see or hear. I’m talking about our ability to absorb what we read and believe that we are dealing with fact-based truths that are objective, nonpartisan, and, even real. The evidence is overwhelming and the intent is pervasive.

No small part of this lies with the White House. Trump is transparent about his interests in this regard:

This article first appeared in the Buckeye Flame

Ohio Democrats have introduced two bills in both the state Senate and House of Representatives that would ban conversion therapy on minors, the universally discredited practice attempting to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Neither bill has been given a single hearing in the Republican-controlled Statehouse, and there isn’t a clear path to advance the legislation there.

Meanwhile, miles away from Columbus, LGBTQ+ activist Brandon West is working with local officials to ban conversion therapy on minors in his corner of Northeast Ohio.

West successfully pushed Lorain City Council in September 2024 to pass an ordinance that banned conversion therapy on minors. Now, he is working with Cuyahoga County officials to get a similar ordinance approved at the county level. West also has his sights set on Summit County and the city of Vermillion, he said.

The deadly Texas floods have receded,  leaving lost and shattered lives.  Donald Trump  tells us not to politicize the moment, with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt calling the floods “

The recent legislation passed by the United States Congress, oddly named One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), and signed by the U.S. president, shows that Republican lawmakers in the nation’s capital don’t care about excess and premature mortality in the United States.

If these increased deaths truly mattered to the Republican representatives and senators, the OBBB would not have included such a lack of concern for its dreadful consequences on human life and wellbeing. 

In the coming months, the OBBB can be expected to result in excess and premature deaths in the United States, especially among vulnerable groups, such as low-income individuals and families, children, people with disabilities, and seniors.

The lack of concern from Republican lawmakers about the expected excess and premature mortality resulting from the OBBB is evident in the candid remark made by an Iowa Republican senator during a recent town hall meeting. 

Dear Editor,

The term "Intifada" does not mean the destruction of Israel. Such claim is false, misleading, and unfair to the Palestinian struggle. "Intifada" originates from Arabic, meaning "uprising" or "shaking off." Intifada refers to the Palestinian uprisings against Israel's brutal military occupation and settlement construction on stolen/confiscated Palestinian land by nonviolent means or by armed resistance.

International law recognizes the right of Palestinians to resist their occupation by all available means including armed resistance. This right is based on the principle of self-determination for ALL people under foreign and colonial rule. The UN General Assembly has explicitly affirmed this right, including armed struggle.

To make it easy to understand, all what the Palestinians want is to be free and independent, no more, no less. Just like how Americans fought for their freedom and independence in 1776, so why attack and smear Palestinians when they aspire for the very same freedom?

We sat an outdoor platform in Nassjo, Sweden, awaiting the train that would take us to Arlanda Airport in Stockholm for our return flight to Texas. I had attended a professional conference there, and my wife had explored the city more thoroughly than my time allowed. Afterwards, we explored Scandinavia, wandering to Gothenburg, Copenhagen, and to my great-grandparents birthplaces in Smaland in Central Sweden. The morning train from Växjö to Nassjo had lasted about an hour, and we were enjoying the late summer afternoon, only to be interrupted by a barrage of text messages.

“You should call or text someone about your house; horrible flooding and people evacuating” The texts were variations on that theme. My brother returned my call with news that “things didn’t look good.” Anxiety prevailed for 24 hours. It was worse than we feared, damage that 18 inches of standing water would produce; outdoor furniture washed downstream, never to be seen; damaged photographs and pictures stored in closets, never to be hung; papers in our study drawers, illegible by mud stains.

The devastation embedded in the Trump-Republicans big bad budget bill for lower income families has been a drum that I’ve been beating for weeks now, but as it nears the finish line additional impacts are becoming clear. This bill has become a “whose on first, what’s on second” house of horrors. Like many other initiatives of this administration, most of its consequences are intended when it comes to its war on the poor, minorities, women, and others, but some are even surprising its fanboys, like the former Trump BBF Elon Musk, and not at all because of deficits. Ideology, not common sense or basic prudence is now running the government.

The belief that all people are equal and want peace is comforting. But comfort does not make it true.

The 20th century offered a brutal lesson: whole nations can be reshaped by totalitarian rule until their populations lose the moral instincts of free societies. And unless force intervenes, they do not return to normal on their own.

We see this in the starkest form in North Korea. One bloodline, one culture, and one language split in two by ideology. The result? One half of Korea became a global democracy; the other became a dynastic death cult. Over decades, North Koreans have been deprived not just of material comforts, but of history, truth, even selfhood.

They have not simply been ruled by terror. They have been reprogrammed.

Since the return of Donald Trump to the White House, he and his Republican allies have worked to destroy the U.S. government’s overseas humanitarian aid programs.

This action flies in the face of the U.S. government’s lengthy record of humanitarian assistance to people of other nations whose lives had been blighted by war, poverty, and illness.  From the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-devastated Europe, to Senator George McGovern’s Food for Peace project to feed the hungry, to massive international public health campaigns to eradicate global diseases, U.S. aid programs have played an important role in alleviating human suffering around the world.