United We Stand

Let us trust God and our better judgment to set us right hereafter.  United we stand, divided we fall.  Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.  Let us preserve our strength for the French, the English, the Germans, or whoever else shall dare invade our territory, and not exhaust it in civil commotions and intestine wars.

-- Patrick Henry (1736 - 1799), American attorney, planter, and politician who became known as an orator during the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s, Last public speech (4 March 1799); as quoted in Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondences and Speeches (1891) by William Wirt Henry, Vol. 2, p. 609-610

Bound By Ideals

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil.  We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests, and teach us what it means to be citizens.  Every child must be taught these principles.  Every citizen must uphold them.  And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.  Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion, and character.  America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility.  A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness.

-- Former President George W. Bush (6 July 1946 -). First inaugural address (January 2001)

Uncontainable

"The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day." Youngstown, 343 U. S., at 594 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).  But "[i]t does come," "from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority."  Ibid.  By needlessly granting the Government's emergency application to prohibit universal injunctions, the Court has cleared a path for the Executive to choose law-free action at this perilous moment for our Constitution -- right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law's constraints.  I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends.  Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.

-- Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissenting in Trump v CASA, in which the majority ruled that federal district courts cannot be allowed to enter nation-wide injunctions (27 June 2025)

USAID

Background
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of all USAID funding on adult and child mortality over the past two decades and forecast the future effect of its defunding.

Findings
Higher levels of USAID funding -- primarily directed toward low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly African countries -- were associated with a 15% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality and a 32% reduction in under-five mortality. This finding indicates that 91 839 663 all-age deaths, including 30 391 980 in children younger than 5 years, were prevented by USAID funding over the 21-year study period. USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths). Significant decreases were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions. Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 051 750 additional all-age deaths, including 4 537 157 in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.

Interpretation
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.

-- Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti, PhD et al, The Lancet "Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis" (30 June 2025)

Eligible And Qualified

All right.  So what do I tell 663,000 people in 2 years or 3 years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?

I think people in the White House, the amateurs advising the President, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. ...

It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with Finance, where he said: We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs. ...

I am telling the President that you have been misinformed.  Your supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.

-- Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speaking on the Senate floor during debate on the "Big Beautiful Bill", quoted from the Congressional Record, p. S3646 (28 June 2025)

What Everything Else Isn't

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.  It's what everything else isn't.

-- Theodore Huebner Roethke (1908 - 1963), American poet, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954, Poetry and Craft (1965)

Narrow Escapes

It is happening here.  Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes.  We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us.  For that, we have only ourselves.

-- Bill Moyers (5 June 1934 - 26 June 2025), American journalist and political commentator, We Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident: It’s Happening Before Our Very Eyes (5 June 2020)