News Day, written by Mary Turck, analyzes, summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to immigration, education, and journalism. Fragments, also written by Mary Turck, has fiction, poetry and some creative non-fiction.
Mary Turck edited TC Daily Planet, www.tcdailyplanet.net, from 2007-2014, and edited the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG, in its pre-2008 version. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues.
Republicans are singing a new song since failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act in March. The flurry of verses includes ending basic benefits, charging sick people higher premiums, and destroying the current system through uncertainty. With apologies to Paul Simon, their song sounds something like this:
The problem is all inside your head, he said to me, but there’s no coverage for your therapy. The answer is easy if you post a GoFundMe, There must be fifty ways to kill your health care.
Raise that deductible, Jill, and premiums, too, Lou, No more Medicaid, babe, just listen to me. So I repeat myself, at the risk of being cruel There must be fifty ways to kill your healthcare.
Maybe you thought that the defeat of the Republican health care act meant safety for a while? And that we could turn our attention to other battles? Not so fast. The Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — is still under attack, at both the federal and state level. Continue reading →
Laws are like sausages: it’s better not to watch them being made. So goes a venerable quote that, like many venerable quotes, has disputed origins. The truth remains: sausage-making is a messy business, and so is legislating. As the 2017 Minnesota legislative session draws closer to its end, the sausage-making mess is on full and awful display. Continue reading →
“It’s a good morning for Americans,” Congresswoman Betty McCollum told the Town Hall meeting on Saturday morning. She had flown back to St. Paul for the March 25 meeting after the defeat yesterday of the latest Republican attempt to kill Obamacare. And she was clear about how that happened: “The credit for the victory belongs to you — to the citizens, the millions and millions of citizens, because their engagement, their mobilization and their determination created an avalanche of opposition to President Trump’s health care bill.”
American citizens have an absolute right to religious freedom – to choose and practice any religion or none at all. Today, U.S. officials target Muslim Americans in airports and haters target them in our streets and cities. This is not normal. This is un-American. We need to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans and stop the bigotry and hatred.
Muhammed ibn Ali is the son of the late Mohammed Ali, heavyweight world boxing champion (three times), famous as well for his political stands, including opposition to the Vietnam War. Muhammed ibn Ali is a U.S. citizen, born and raised here. As a U.S. citizen, he has an absolute right to travel freely in and out of the country. Yet, when he returned to the United States with his mother after attending a Black History Month event in Jamaica, U.S. immigration officials stopped him and questioned him for more than two hours. Continue reading →
What’s happening in Washington and St. Paul right now goes way beyond muddying waters, both in the literal sense of what is flowing into our waters and in the metaphoric sense of how politicians talk about protection and pollution. Both in Washington and in St. Paul, politicians are shutting down water protection. They are ditching regulations that protect lakes, rivers and drinking water and slashing funds for enforcement. Continue reading →
Kernza bread is both delicious and thought-provoking, which is probably why it was on the menu at the Land Stewardship Project‘s annual Family Farm Breakfast. Kernza bread and all the rest of the “best breakfast in town” grown by LSP farmer members fed right into issues of science and farming and democracy and local control. Continue reading →
I missed getting my forehead smudged with ashes on Ash Wednesday, on the slushy, icy road out of the Twin Cities by sunrise. On Thursday, I walked out of the house into a cold sunrise, heading for the Lake Street Bridge and a different kind of smudging in another holy ritual. Continue reading →
Berta Caceres paid the ultimate price – she was assassinated one year ago in Honduras, killed for her work for indigenous rights and environmental protection. On February 17, indigenous leader José Santos Sevilla was assassinated in his home — another martyr paying the ultimate price for defending indigenous rights and working for environmental justice. Santos Sevilla, reports Democracy Now, “was the leader of the indigenous Tolupan people, who are fighting to protect their ancestral lands from industrial mining and logging projects.” Continue reading →
Five years after the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, the attacks on democracy and on elected officials continue. Yesterday, two politicians currently under attack by the Trump administration spoke out with anger and eloquence.
The New York Times today has plenty of coverage of who, how, when, and where the United States illegally attacked Venezuela and abducted its president and first lady. But that’s far from the whole story. A few easily overlooked but essential facts: For informed insights on the consequences of Trump’s attack on Venezuela, see:
50 USC Ch. 33: WAR POWERS RESOLUTION §1541. Purpose and policy (a) Congressional declaration It is the purpose of this chapter to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United […]
Over at Law Dork, Chris Geidner has a great column on the four key lessons we can and must take from 2025. The first: pushing back is essential — and it works. I won’t try to summarize his column, but encourage you to go and read it and, if you can, support the good work […]
Jamal Khashoggi was a U.S. permanent legal resident and a columnist for the Washington Post in 2018 when Saudi operatives lured him to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, and then abducted, tortured, and murdered him. Then they cut up his body with a bone saw. U.S. intelligence agencies investigated and determined that his assassination was ordered by […]
Mary Turck is a writer, editor, and blogger. She is also the former editor of theTC Daily Planet and of the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG and a recovering attorney.
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Mary Turck