Amy Maxmen: Urgent data on flu goes missing
The picture at the right represents avian flu, the one at the left the most common influenza.
From Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
“Missing and delayed data causes uncertainty. It also potentially makes us react in ways that are counterproductive.”
— Jennifer Nuzzo, head of the pandemic center at Brown University
Sonya Stokes, an emergency room physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, braces herself for a daily deluge of patients sick with coughs, soreness, fevers, vomiting, and other flu-like symptoms.
She’s desperate for information, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a critical source of urgent analyses of the flu and other public health threats, has gone quiet in the weeks since President Donald Trump took office.
“Without more information, we are blind,” she said.
Flu has been brutal this season. The CDC estimates at least 24 million illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations, and 13,000 deaths from the flu since the start of October. At the same time, the bird flu outbreak continues to infect cattle and farmworkers. But CDC analyses that would inform people about these situations are delayed, and the CDC has cut off communication with doctors, researchers, and the World Health Organization, say doctors and public health experts.
“CDC right now is not reporting influenza data through the WHO global platforms, FluNet [and] FluID, that they’ve been providing information [on] for many, many years,” Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness at the WHO, said at a Feb. 12 press briefing.
“We are communicating with them,” she added, “but we haven’t heard anything back.”
On his first day in office, President Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the WHO.
A critical analysis of the seasonal flu selected for distribution through the CDC’s Health Alert Network has stalled, according to people close to the CDC. They asked not to be identified because of fears of retaliation. The network, abbreviated as HAN, is the CDC’s main method of sharing urgent public health information with health officials, doctors, and, sometimes, the public.
A chart from that analysis, reviewed by KFF Health News, suggests that flu may be at a record high. About 7.7% of patients who visited clinics and hospitals without being admitted had flu-like symptoms in early February, a ratio higher than in four other flu seasons depicted in the graph. That includes 2003-04, when an atypical strain of flu fueled a particularly treacherous season that killed at least 153 children.
Without a complete analysis, however, it’s unclear whether this tidal wave of sickness foreshadows a spike in hospitalizations and deaths that hospitals, pharmacies and schools must prepare for. Specifically, other data could relay how many of the flu-like illnesses are caused by flu viruses — or which flu strain is infecting people. A deeper report might also reveal whether the flu is more severe or contagious than usual.
“I need to know if we are dealing with a more virulent strain or a coinfection with another virus that is making my patients sicker, and what to look for so that I know if my patients are in danger,” Stokes said. “Delays in data create dangerous situations on the front line.”
Although the CDC’s flu dashboard shows a surge of influenza, it doesn’t include all data needed to interpret the situation. Nor does it offer the tailored advice found in HAN alerts that tells health care workers how to protect patients and the public. In 2023, for example, a report urged clinics to test patients with respiratory symptoms rather than assume cases are the flu, since other viruses were causing similar issues that year.
“This is incredibly disturbing,” said Rachel Hardeman, a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the CDC. On Feb. 10, Hardeman and other committee members wrote to acting CDC Director Susan Monarez asking the agency to explain missing data, delayed studies, and potentially severe staff cuts. “The CDC is vital to our nation’s security,” the letter said.
Several studies have also been delayed or remain missing from the CDC’s preeminent scientific publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Anne Schuchat, a former principal deputy director at the CDC, said she would be concerned if there was political oversight of scientific material: “Suppressing information is potentially confusing, possibly dangerous, and it can backfire.”
CDC spokesperson Melissa Dibble declined to comment on delayed or missing analyses. “It is not unexpected to see flu activity elevated and increasing at this time of the year,” she said.
A draft of one unpublished study, reviewed by KFF Health News, that has been withheld from the MMWR for three weeks describes how a milk hauler and a dairy worker in Michigan may have spread bird flu to their pet cats. The indoor cats became severely sick and died. Although the workers weren’t tested, the study says that one of them had irritated eyes before the cat fell ill — a common bird flu symptom. That person told researchers that the pet “would roll in their work clothes.”
After one cat became sick, the investigation reports, an adolescent in the household developed a cough. But the report says this young person tested negative for the flu, and positive for a cold-causing virus.
Corresponding CDC documents summarizing the cat study and another as-yet unpublished bird flu analysis said the reports were scheduled to be published Jan. 23. These were reviewed by KFF Health News. The briefing on cats advises dairy farmworkers to “remove clothing and footwear, and rinse off any animal biproduct residue before entering the household to protect others in the household, including potentially indoor-only cats.”
The second summary refers to “the most comprehensive” analysis of bird flu virus detected in wastewater in the United States.
Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, said delays of bird flu reports are upsetting because they’re needed to inform the public about a worsening situation with many unknown elements. Citing “insufficient data” and “high uncertainty,” the United Kingdom raised its assessment of the risk posed by the U.S. outbreak on dairies.
“Missing and delayed data causes uncertainty,” Nuzzo said. “It also potentially makes us react in ways that are counterproductive.”
Another bird flu study slated for January publication showed up in the MMWR on Feb. 13, three weeks after it was expected. It revealed that three cattle veterinarians had been unknowingly infected last year, based on the discovery of antibodies against the bird flu virus in their blood. One of the veterinarians worked in Georgia and South Carolina, states that haven’t reported outbreaks on dairy farms.
The study provides further evidence that the United States is not adequately detecting cases in cows and people. Nuzzo said it also highlights how data can supply reassuring news. Only three of 150 cattle veterinarians had signs of prior infections, suggesting that the virus doesn’t easily spread from the animals into people. More than 40 dairy workers have been infected, but they generally have had more sustained contact with sick cattle and their virus-laden milk than veterinarians.
Instead, recently released reports have been about wildfires in California and Hawaii.
“Interesting but not urgent,” Nuzzo said, considering the acute fire emergencies have ended. The bird flu outbreak, she said, is an ongoing “urgent health threat for which we need up-to-the-minute information to know how to protect people.”
“The American public is at greater risk when we don’t have information on a timely basis,” Schuchat said.
This week, a federal judge ordered the CDC and other health agencies to “restore” datasets and websites that the organization Doctors for America had identified in a lawsuit as having been altered. Further, the judge ordered the agencies to “identify any other resources that DFA members rely on to provide medical care” and restore them by Feb. 14.
In their letter, CDC advisory committee members requested an investigation into missing data and delayed reports. Hardeman, an adviser who is a health policy expert at the University of Minnesota, said the group didn’t know why data and scientific findings were being withheld or removed. Still, she added, “I hold accountable the acting director of the CDC, the head of HHS, and the White House.”
Hardeman said the Trump administration has the power to disband the advisory committee. She said the group expects that to happen but proceeded with its demands regardless.
“We want to safeguard the rigor of the work at the CDC because we care deeply about public health,” she said. “We aren’t here to be silent.”
Amy Maxmen is a Kaiser Family Foundation Health News reporter. amaxmen@kff.org
Sculpted dignity
“Arrow Maker” (circa 1868), (marble), by Edmonia Lewis, at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.
— Photo by Luc Demers
Daily workout
"Women's Work?” (gouache on paper), by Betsyann Duval, in the “Musings” show at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, though March 2.
Chris Powell: Daring to bring them back to the office?
The Connecticut State Capitol, in downtown Hartford.
Ragesoss photo
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Interviewed this week by WTIC-AM1080 morning host Brian Shactman, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont remarked that state government is in good condition. But as the conversation turned to the loss of vibrancy in the cities, with so many former office workers now working from home, the governor noted that he wanted office workers, including state-government employees, to return to their workplaces. In regard to the state employees, he added, "I lost in arbitration."
So how good can the condition of state government be when its chief executive lacks the authority even to get its employees to return to their workplaces?
While the governor seemed to shrug off the situation, his expression of haplessness should have mortified people in the radio audience who want their government to work for the public and not the public to work for their government.
The leader of the Republican minority in the state House of Representatives, Rep. Vincent J. Candelora, of North Branford, has proposed legislation to empower state government agencies to require their employees to work in state government offices. But Democrats overwhelmingly control the General Assembly and its Labor Committee, to which Candelora's bill has been referred, and the state- employee unions overwhelmingly control Democratic legislators generally and those on the Labor Committee particularly.
So does the governor want really want state employees back in their workplaces, to improve both state government's efficiency and the environment of the cities? Or was he just striking a pose? Does the governor really want, instead, the continued support of the state- employee unions during his prospective campaign for re-election next year?
He will answer the questions by insisting on passage of Candelora's bill -- or by winking as it is discarded.
xxx
Years ago many people who worried about social conditions, including the late Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, complained that television programs and movies had gotten too violent and sexually explicit, that children were spending too much time watching them, and that such entertainment was coarsening the culture and inspiring bad and even criminal behavior.
The Oklahoma newspaper publisher and columnist Jenkin Lloyd Jones may have lamented it best. "We are drowning our youngsters in violence, cynicism, and sadism, piped into the living room and even the nursery," Jones wrote. "The grandchildren of the kids who used to weep because the Little Match Girl froze to death now feel cheated if she isn't slugged, raped, and thrown into a Bessemer converter."
Jones and Lieberman were right but little came of it, since sex and violence sell, money is hard to resist, and having government fix the problem might have involved unconstitutional censorship. The problem really was for parents to solve, but many parents preferred to use television as a babysitter, whether the kids were watching Sesame Street or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
These days social media are said to be bigger causes of psychological disturbance in children than television. So Connecticut Atty. Gen. William Tong and some state legislators want state government to regulate social media to reduce their appeal to children.
There will be constitutional problems with this too, as well as practical problems, since social-media technology is so advanced . Young people probably will figure out how to evade any regulation, creating an endless cycle of regulation and evasion even as state government already has more than enough to do.
As with television years ago, the real problem with social media is a lack of parenting. Children have cell phones, computers and Internet service only if their parents provide them. Educators are discovering that the distractions and conflicts caused by social media can be eliminated just by banning cell phones in school.
But the attorney general and the legislators proposing to regulate social media excuse parents from responsibility. While many children these days have only one parent, if that many, regulation of social media by parents would be far more effective and fairer than regulation by government. Parents should not be excused.
But then it's much easier for politicians to scold businesses than their own constituents.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Eric Nost/Alejandro Paz: How to find climate information that Trump regime tries to suppress
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
Information on the Internet might seem like it’s there forever, but it’s only as permanent as people choose to make it.
That’s apparent as the second Trump administration “floods the zone” with efforts to dismantle science agencies and the data and websites they use to communicate with the public. The targets range from public health and demographics to climate science.
We are a research librarian and policy scholar who belong to a network called the Public Environmental Data Partners, a coalition of nonprofits, archivists and researchers who rely on federal data in our analysis, advocacy and litigation and are working to ensure that data remains available to the public.
In just the first three weeks of Trump’s term, we saw agencies remove access to at least a dozen climate and environmental justice analysis tools. The new administration also scrubbed the phrase “climate change” from government websites, as well as terms like “resilience.”
Here’s why and how Public Environmental Data Partners and others are making sure that the climate science the public depends on is available forever:
The Internet and the availability of data are necessary for innovation, research and daily life.
Scientists analyze NASA satellite observations and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather records to understand changes underway in the Earth system, what’s causing them and how to protect the climates that economies were built on. Other researchers use these sources alongside Census Bureau data to understand who is most affected by climate change. And every day, people around the world log onto the Environmental Protection Agency’s website to learn how to protect themselves from hazards — and to find out what the government is or isn’t doing to help.
If the data and tools used to understand complex data are abruptly taken off the Internet, the work of scientists, civil society organizations and government officials themselves can grind to a halt. The generation of scientific data and analysis by government scientists is also crucial. Many state governments run environmental protection and public health programs that depend on science and data collected by federal agencies.
Removing information from government websites also makes it harder for the public to effectively participate in key processes of democracy, including changes to regulations. When an agency proposes to repeal a rule, for example, it is required to solicit comments from the public, who often depend on government websites to find information relevant to the rule.
And when web resources are altered or taken offline, it breeds mistrust in both government and science. Government agencies have collected climate data, conducted complex analyses, provided funding and hosted data in a publicly accessible manner for years. People around the word understand climate change in large part because of U.S. federal data. Removing it deprives everyone of important information about their world.
Bye-bye data?
The first Trump administration removed discussions of climate change and climate policies widely across government websites. However, in our research with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative over those first four years, we didn’t find evidence that datasets had been permanently deleted.
The second Trump administration seems different, with more rapid and pervasive removal of information.
In response, groups involved in Public Environmental Data Partners have been archiving climate datasets our community has prioritized, uploading copies to public repositories and cataloging where and how to find them if they go missing from government websites.
Most federal agencies decreased their use of the phrase ‘climate change’ on websites during the first Trump administration, 2017-2020. Eric Nost, et al., 2021, CC BY
As of Feb. 13, 2025, we hadn’t seen the destruction of climate science records. Many of these data collection programs, such as those at NOAA or EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, are required by Congress. However, the administration had limited or eliminated access to a lot of data.
Maintaining tools for understanding climate change
We’ve seen a targeted effort to systematically remove tools like dashboards that summarize and visualize the social dimensions of climate change. For instance, the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool mapped low-income and other marginalized communities that are expected to experience severe climate changes, such as crop losses and wildfires. The mapping tool was taken offline shortly after Trump’s first set of executive orders.
Most of the original data behind the mapping tool, like the wildfire risk predictions, is still available, but is now harder to find and access. But because the mapping tool was developed as an open-source project, we were able to recreate it.
In some cases, entire webpages are offline. For instance, the page for the 25-year-old Climate Change Center at the Department of Transportation doesn’t exist anymore. The link just sends visitors back to the department’s homepage.
Other pages have limited access. For instance, EPA hasn’t yet removed its climate change pages, but it has removed “climate change” from its navigation menu, making it harder to find those pages.
During Donald Trump’s first week back in office, the Department of Transportation removed its Climate Change Center webpage. Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Fortunately, our partners at the End of Term Web Archive have captured snapshots of millions of government webpages and made them accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The group has done this after each administration since 2008.
If you’re looking at a webpage and you think it should include a discussion of climate change, use the “changes” tool“ in the Wayback Machine to check if the language has been altered over time, or navigate to the site’s snapshots of the page before Trump’s inauguration.
What you can do
You can also find archived climate and environmental justice datasets and tools on the Public Environmental Data Partners website. Other groups are archiving datasets linked in the Data.gov data portal and making them findable in other locations.
Individual researchers are also uploading datasets in searchable repositories like OSF, run by the Center for Open Science.
If you are worried that certain data currently still available might disappear, consult this checklist from MIT Libraries. It provides steps for how you can help safeguard federal data.
Narrowing the knowledge sphere
What’s unclear is how far the administration will push its attempts to remove, block or hide climate data and science, and how successful it will be.
Already, a federal district court judge has ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s removal of access to public health resources that doctors rely on was harmful and arbitrary. These were put back online thanks to that ruling.
We worry that more data and information removals will narrow public understanding of climate change, leaving people, communities and economies unprepared and at greater risk. While data archiving efforts can stem the tide of removals to some extent, there is no replacement for the government research infrastructures that produce and share climate data.
Eric Nost is associate professor of geography at the University of Guelph, in Canada, and Alejandro Paz is energy and environment librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
William Morgan: A small shop sends me onto some trails of history
Consider this my $5 history lesson, or a ticket down the rabbit hole.
The White Whale, a delightfully cluttered shop in Hudson, N.Y., is one of my favorites along the mile-long row of antique emporiums that forms Warren Street. Even though Hudson became a very popular home for New York émigrés during COVID, earning it the nickname of “Brooklyn North,” the various whale-themed places recalls Hudson’s founding as a port by Nantucket whalers fleeing the Royal Navy during the American Revolution. I bought this Camden, Maine, harbor scene by the Cape Ann painter Frederick W. Smith at the White Whale.
Frederick W. Smith (1885-1967?), Camden Harbor
Not really being a collector, I tend to look for smaller items, such as postcards and photographs, which despite their diminutive size, have larger stories to tell. On our last trip to Hudson, I paid $5 for a bookplate. The woodblock print of woodland, stream, and windmill once identified a tome from the library of R. Percy Alden.
Clearly someone with New England roots, Robert Percy Alden (1848-1909) was unknown to me. He apparently went into the lumber business and built an English-style manor house in Cornwall, Penn., in 1881. That his architect was Stanford White, fresh from apprenticing with Henry Hobson Richardson in Boston and before he joined with Charles McKim and William Rutherford Mead to form the Gilded Age’s most important architectural firm, suggests that Alden was both well-connected and aspirational.
Percy’s wife, Mary Ida Warren, whom he married in Paris, died at the age of 46 when a candle set her bed clothes on fire. Villa Alden’s last public appearance was as the set for a 2001 slasher film called WatchUsDie. Today, the house is a wedding venue.
Alden Villa, Cornwall, Penn., 1881
The artist of the bookplate is identified only by initials, J.A.W. Given the familial connections of a certain caste of New Englanders, I am assigning the design to the famous turn-of-the-century landscape painter Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919). The bookplate turns up in a New York bookseller’s catalogue, in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of New England, printed in 1702, and for sale for $8,500. Before Alden, the book had been owned by Robert Weir, a Hudson River School painter mostly known for his monumental mural “Embarkation of the Pilgrims,” in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Weir was a professor at the U.S. Military Academy, and both his son Julian and Percy Alden were born in West Point.
The younger Weir had two farms in Connecticut, one in Branchville, near Ridgefield, and the other in Windham, places where he gathered such fellow artists as John Henry Twachtman and William Lathrop.
One presumes that the scene in the bookplate is in Branchville, where Weir and Twachtman spent a summer perfecting woodblock engraving. William Lathrop was the figurehead of the artists’ colony in New Hope, in Bucks County, Penn., and the leading practitioner of Pennsylvania Impressionism. Lathrop’s son, a flyer in World War I and founder of a private boarding school called Solebury, was named Julian. His grandson, also Julian, a bookstore owner in New Hope, Penn., is the son of the Finnish-American sculptor Karl Karhumaa, a professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
The Percy, a home style offered by Alden Homes in Lebanon, Penn.
William Morgan is the author of, among other books, Academia: Collegiate Gothic Architecture in the United States, Monadnock Summer and The Cape Cod Cottage (which will be published next month). He grew up in Bucks County, Penn., and is an alumnus of the Solebury School.
Anything to get to spring
Artful Ice Shanties, an outdoor display of fanciful ice-fishing-inspired structures, runs through Feb. 23 at Brattleboro's Retreat Farm. Come see the fanciful dome-shaped “Cosmic Energy Portal,” the wooden “Yurt John,” complete with compost toilet, a whimsical “Soup Shack" shaped like an oversized can of—you guessed it—Campbell's tomato soup, and many more
Our ignorance will cost us our liberty
Oliver Ellsworth
Remarks by Oliver Ellsworth (1745-1807), of Windsor, Conn., published Dec. 10, 1787, during the great debates about the U.S. Constitution. He would go on to become the third U.S. chief justice
‘To the Landholders and Farmers:
The publication of Col. Mason’s reasons for not signing the new Constitution, has extorted some truths that would otherwise in all probability have remained unknown to us all. His reasons, like Mr. Gerry’s, are most of them ex post facto, have been revised in New York by R. H. L. and by him brought into their present artful and insidious form. The factious spirit of R. H. L., his implacable hatred to General Washington, his well-known intrigues against him in the late war, his attempts to displace him and give the command of the American army to General Lee, is so recent in your minds it is not necessary to repeat them. He is supposed to be the author of most of the scurrility poured out in the New-York papers against the new constitution.
Just at the close of the Convention, whose proceedings in general were zealously supported by Mr. Mason, he moved for a clause that no navigation act should ever be passed but with the consent of two-thirds of both branches; urging that a navigation act might otherwise be passed excluding foreign bottoms from carrying American produce to market, and throw a monopoly of the carrying business into the hands of the eastern states who attend to navigation, and that such an exclusion of foreigners would raise the freight of the produce of the southern states, and for these reasons Mr. Mason would have it in the power of the southern states to prevent any navigation act. This clause, as unequal and partial in the extreme to the southern states, was rejected; because it ought to be left on the same footing with other national concerns, and because no state would have a right to complain of a navigation act which should leave the carrying business equally open to them all. Those who preferred cultivating their lands would do so; those who chose to navigate and become carriers would do that. The loss of this question determined Mr. Mason against the signing the doings of the convention, and is undoubtedly among his reasons as drawn for the southern states; but for the eastern states this reason would not do. It would convince us that Mr. Mason preferred the subjects of every foreign power to the subjects of the United States who live in New-England; even the British who lately ravaged Virginia—that Virginia, my countrymen, where your relations lavished their blood—where your sons laid down their lives to secure to her and us the freedom and independence in which we now rejoice, and which can only be continued to us by a firm, equal and effective union. But do not believe that the people of Virginia are all thus selfish: No, there is a Washington, a Blair, a Madison and a Lee, (not R. H. L.) and I am persuaded there is a majority of liberal, just and federal men in Virginia, who, whatever their sentiments may be of the new constitution, will despise the artful injustice contained in Col. Mason’s reasons as published in the Connecticut papers.
The President of the United States has no council, etc., says Col. Mason. His proposed council would have been expensive— they must constantly attend the president, because the president constantly acts. This council must have been composed of great characters, who could not be kept attending without great salaries, and if their opinions were binding on the president his responsibility would be destroyed—if divided, prevent vigor and dispatch—if not binding, they would be no security. The states who have had such councils have found them useless, and complain of them as a dead weight. In others, as in England, the supreme executive advises when and with whom he pleases; if any information is wanted, the heads of the departments who are always at hand can best give it, and from the manner of their appointment will be trustworthy. Secrecy, vigor, dispatch and responsibility, require that the supreme executive should be one person, and unfettered otherwise than by the laws he is to execute.
There is no Declaration of Rights. Bills of Rights were introduced in England when its kings claimed all power and jurisdiction, and were considered by them as grants to the people. They are insignificant since government is considered as originating from the people, and all the power government now has is a grant from the people. The constitution they establish with powers limited and defined, becomes now to the legislator and magistrate, what originally a bill of rights was to the people. To have inserted in this constitution a bill of rights for the states would suppose them to derive and hold their rights from the federal government, when the reverse is the case.
There is to be no ex post facto laws. This was moved by Mr Gerry and supported by Mr. Mason, and is exceptional only as being unnecessary; for it ought not to be presumed that government will be so tyranical, and opposed to the sense of all modern civilians, as to pass such laws: if they should, they would be void.
The general Legislature is restrained from prohibiting the further importation of slaves for twenty odd years. But every state legislature may restrain its own subjects; but if they should not, shall we refuse to confederate with them? their consciences are their own, tho’ their wealth and strength are blended with ours. Mr. Mason has himself about three hundred slaves, and lives in Virginia, where it is found by prudent management they can breed and raise slaves faster than they want them for their own use, and could supply the deficiency in Georgia and South Carolina; and perhaps Col. Mason may suppose it more humane to breed than import slaves—those imported having been bred and born free, may not so tamely bear slavery as those born slaves, and from their infancy inured to it; but his objections are not on the side of freedom, nor in compassion to the human race who are slaves, but that such importations render the United States weaker, more vulnerable, and less capable of defence. To this I readily agree, and all good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period after which they should not be imported.
There is no declaration of any kind to preserve the Liberty of the press, etc. Nor is liberty of conscience, or of matrimony, or of burial of the dead; it is enough that congress have no power to prohibit either, and can have no temptation. This objection is answered in that the states have all the power originally, and congress have only what the states grant them.
The judiciary of the United States is so constructed and extended as to absorb and destroy the judiciaries of the several states; thereby rendering law as tedious, intricate and expensive, and justice as unattainable by a great part of the community, as in England; and enable the rich to oppress and ruin the poor.
It extends only to objects and cases specified, and wherein the national peace or rights, or the harmony of the states is concerned, and not to controversies between citizens of the same state (except where they claim under grants of different states); and nothing hinders but the supreme federal court may be held in different districts, or in all the states, and that all the cases, except the few in which it has original and not appellate jurisdiction, may in the first instance be had in the state courts and those trials be final except in cases of great magnitude; and the trials be by jury also in most or all the causes which were wont to be tried by them, as congress shall provide, whose appointment is security enough for their attention to the wishes and convenience of the people.
In chancery courts juries are never used, nor are they proper in admiralty courts, which proceed not by municipal laws, which they may be supposed to understand, but by the civil law and law of nations.
Mr. Mason deems the president and senate’s power to make treaties dangerous, because they become laws of the land. If the president and his proposed council had this power, or the president alone, as in England and other nations is the case, could the danger be less?—or is the representative branch suited to the making of treaties, which are often intricate, and require much negotiation and secrecy? The senate is objected to as having too much power, and bold unfounded assertions that they will destroy any balance in the government, and accomplish what usurpation they please upon the rights and liberties of the people; to which it may be answered, they are elective and rotative, to the mass of the people; the populace can as well balance the senatorial branch there as in the states, and much better than in England, where the lords are hereditary, and yet the commons preserve their weight; but the state governments on which the constitution is built will forever be security enough to the people against aristocratic usurpations:—The danger of the constitution is not aristrocracy or monarchy, but anarchy.
I intreat you, my fellow citizens, to read and examine the new constitution with candor—examine it for yourselves: you are, most of you, as learned as the objector, and certainly as able to judge of its virtues or vices as he is. To make the objections the more plausible, they are called The objections of the Hon. George Mason, etc.—They may possibly be his, but be assured they were not those made in convention, and being directly against what he there supported in one instance ought to caution you against giving any credit to the rest; his violent opposition to the powers given congress to regulate trade, was an open decided preference of all the world to you. A man governed by such narrow views and local prejudices, can never be trusted; and his pompous declaration in the House of Delegates in Virginia that no man was more federal than himself, amounts to no more than this, “Make a federal government that will secure Virginia all her natural advantages, promote all her interests regardless of every disadvantage to the other states, and I will subscribe to it.”
It may be asked how I came by my information respecting Col. Mason’s conduct in convention, as the doors were shut? To this I answer, no delegate of the late convention will contradict my assertions, as I have repeatedly heard them made by others in presence of several of them, who could not deny their truth. Whether the constitution in question will be adopted by the United States in our day is uncertain; but it is neither aristocracy or monarchy can grow out of it, so long as the present descent of landed estates last, and the mass of the people have, as at present, a tolerable education; and were it ever so perfect a scheme of freedom, when we become ignorant, vicious, idle, and regardless of the education of our children, our liberties will be lost—we shall be fitted for slavery, and it will be an easy business to reduce us to obey one or more tyrants.
City planner
“Architects of the Future, City Inside Her” (woodblock and screenprint with gold leaf), by Chitra Ganesh, in the “Better on Paper’’ show at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.
The wind is winning
“This old world needs propping up
When it gets this cold and windy….’’
— From “Windy Evening,’’ by Charles Simic (1938-2023), Serbian-American poet. He taught for many years at the University of New Hampshire and lived in Strafford, N.H.
Llewellyn King: Trump/Musk ‘fraud’ search and lies defraud America
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Seminal is a strong word. It means that when an event is seminal, nothing will ever be the same again.
Elon Musk and his marauding young minions will leave the United States damaged in ways that won't be easily put right, toppling the country from the position it has held so long as the world’s pillar of decency, generosity and law. As President Ronald Reagan said, “a shining city on a hill.”
Every day the small but deadly Musk force, authorized and encouraged by President Trump, is tarnishing that image.
Once you have established yourself as a capricious and unreliable partner, you won’t be trusted again; trust lost defies repair. It doesn’t come back with an apology, a course correction or a change of administration. It is gone, sometimes for centuries. Distrust is enduring.
Treaties torn up today are treaties that won’t be written tomorrow. Disavowing the commitments of America is a Trump hallmark. Tearing up these commitments is more than an indication of instability, it is a burden on the future, a doubt about the sincerity of our handshake.
We have left the World Health Organization in the middle of a new wave of incipient pandemics and abandoned the Paris Agreement without reason. We are about to damage in grotesque ways our good relations with Canada and Mexico, our family here in North America.
Trump has drummed up an inexplicable animus to our good neighbors and best trading partners. With tariffs, he is planning to violate our trading agreement with them. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was signed into law — with praise for his own handiwork — by President Trump in his first term.
For me, the immediate excess of the administration has been the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development. I have seen the agency at work in Pakistan, Bolivia, and especially in Central Africa. My wife, Linda Gasparello, has seen its work in Egypt and across the Middle East, helping to save and enhance lives and stabilize those countries.
First, USAID was lied about and then it was shuttered. In that shuttering, America withdrew its helping hand to the world, its most potent and effective marquee for its values of caring, helping, educating and uplifting.
Musk’s blind and ignorant closing of USAID has blacked out our billboard to the world of what America is about. Women especially will suffer.
The immediate effect of shutting down USAID is that thousands of people who would have eaten today won’t. People who would have received their HIV treatment won’t. Children who would have learned to read and write won’t.
Uneducated populations are putty in the hands of extremists, from Marxists to jihadists. In damaging the recipients of USAID assistance, we are damaging America and its global interests.
“Fraud,” says Trump. “Fraud,” says Musk. “Fraud,” say their supporters. If there is so much fraud, where is the evidence and where are the prosecutions? Why are there no arrests?
In fact, for a relatively small agency, USAID has been examined, audited and inspected by the machinery of government and by Congress more than any other agency.
Steven Hendrix, who retired last year as the USAID coordinator for foreign assistance at in the State Department, said on television program “White House Chronicle,” which I host with Adam Clayton Powell III, that when he was working with USAID in Iraq, “We instituted a very rigorous performance evaluation and monitoring of all of these investments. We were also very responsive to the State inspector general and other authorities. I’ve got to tell you, in Iraq I had simultaneous audits from all of them.”
The toughest of these, he said, was the USAID’s own inspector general.
The fraud may be that the Trump-Musk duopoly is defrauding America of its potent soft power.
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. His email is llewellynking1@gmail.com , and he’s based in Rhode Island.
Limbering up
“Brujas” (oil on canvas), by Perla Mabel, at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, through Feb. 23.
Then they moved to the suburbs
An Irish flag, said to be the world’s biggest, hanging outside the Boston Harbor Hotel.
— Photo by John Hoey
“The Boston Irish have become people of education, culture, and refinement. To a great extent, in their prolonged struggle for survival and achievement, they did turn Boston into an Irish city.’’
— Thomas H. O'Connor (1923-2012), history professor at Boston College
Largest self-reported ancestry groups in New England. Americans of Irish descent form a plurality in most of Massachusetts and Americans of English descent form a plurality in much of the central parts of Vermont and New Hampshire as well as nearly all of Maine.
Couples agriculture
“Lloyd and Barbara Wescott, 1942” (tempera on gessoed board), by Paul Cadmus (1904-1999), starting in April at the Bennington (Vt.) Museum.
Flu causing mass wild bird mortalities
Excerpted from EcoRI News
PROVIDENCE — This time of year isn’t supposed to be busy for Sheida Soleimani, the powerhouse artist, professor, and animal rehabilitator.
It’s not baby bird season, Soleimani explained, the time of year when worried good Samaritans swamp her clinic, Congress of the Birds, with calls about potentially failing fledglings.
But that rush is a few months away. Winter is a relatively quiet season, and Soleimani said she usually gets one or two calls on an average day. But this year, her phone is buzzing 15 to 20 times daily….
Most of the calls are about cases of bird flu, Soleimani told ecoRI News, or at least about birds who appear to be infected with the disease that has killed millions of animals around the country, including a flock in southern Rhode Island last month.
“What we are seeing is mass mortalities,” Soleimani said. “They’re falling out of the sky dying.”
But it’s not always like this
“(Winter Sky) Snow Clouds” (photo), by Bradbury Prescott (1922-2012), at the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine.
“
How do they evacuate?
Boston is famous for traffic gridlock.
Long Wharf in downtown Boston was once the main commercial wharf of the city’s port, but is now used by ferries and cruise boats.
—Photo by Chris Wood
(New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)
Over the years, we have periodically looked at the city’s disaster planning with a focus on possible evacuations.
Although not subject to forest fires like in Los Angeles, mass relocations due to super storms, terrorism or other possible disasters are possibilities.
Long ago, the city’s planning to relocate many of its citizens ended at Boston’s boundaries with no coordination with our suburban neighbors. Other plans had designated some of our busiest streets as “evacuation routes” although they were already gridlocked during normal commute times.
Over three weeks ago, we assigned one of our best reporters, Brandon Hill, to review the city’s plans with particular emphasis on the recent increase in bike and bus lanes which have constricted vehicular traffic.
He was met with either silence or uncertainty about who to speak with by both the Wu administration’s Office of Emergency Management and her press office. It almost seemed like Hill was asking for the nuclear launch codes or Elon Musk’s attempt to access sensitive government files.
As government’s primary responsibility is the health and safety of its citizens, we are left more than a little concerned and perplexed. It almost seems like Mayor Wu’s attitude about our wellbeing begins and ends with prayer with nothing in-between.
Patriotic about what?
“Democracy of the Land: Freedom’’ (down feathers, LED lights, mixed media), by Jay Critchley, in his show “Democracy of the Land, Inc. — FLAGrancy,’’ at the Montserrat College of Art Gallery, in Beverly, Mass., through March 5.
What to do now
“February,’’ from Très riches heures du Duc de Berry
“Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head.’’
— From “February,’’ by Margaret Atwood (born 1939), Canadian novelist, poet and literary critic
Musings in the mess
February 8, 2025
By Denis O'Neill (essayist and screenwriter)
Musings 2025 ~ Musings 2023
Past as prologue. Permit me a brief book hustle. My latest tome - a gathering of wit and wisdom from these very pages in 2023 – is now available for purchase through The Common Press in Amherst, Mass. and Amazon Books.
One of the things the first three weeks of Donald Trump’s second administration has taught us is to pay attention when people tell you they could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and their followers wouldn’t care. History is important. It is cyclical and repetitive. Just like human nature. George Santayana warned us: “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” Which is why this book - and my previous two in the Musings series (Pandemic Musings and Musings 2022) might be worth owning, particularly if you track politics, cultural shifts and world events.
“In the vein of celebrated English diarist Samuel Pepys, author O’Neill weaves his observations about contemporary politics, daily life and culture into an overview of America that is at once poetic, revealing, depressing and forever searching for people, events and behavior that define who we are.” ~ Kirkus Reviews
A few verses from “December 31 ~ The Year in Doggerel” “What a year for the rearview mirror,
The dumpster, the shredder, the bin. Forget about sloth and gluttony,
’23 feels like original sin.....
Our planet is warming like never before, We are frogs in a kettle slow boiling.
Mother Earth will give up If we don’t give in
to the science of heat trapping gasses. To solar and wind,
May conversion continue,
Turning petrol sugar to molasses....
I still believe in human kindness, More than ever, human touch.
And truth and science, And fairness and freedom,
Is that really asking too much?
And be sure to always speak your mind,
History warns us of silence.
Your voice in defense of what is right Can stifle future violence.
So shoot for bliss, and settle for joy, May the ponies you bet on run first. For the love of your friends,
And your lust for life,
May you never lose your thirst.”