Maggie Westwater

Ms. Omar, visibly shaken after the assault, insisted to her staff and security that she would continue. She asked for a napkin and told them: "Just give me 10 minutes. I beg you. Please don't let them have the show." Ms. Omar then turned the crowd. "Here's the reality that people like this ugly man don't understand," she said. "We are Minnesota strong, and we will stay resilient in the face of whatever they might throw at us." Someone in the crowd later thanked Ms. Omar for staying and continuing after the assault, which had shaken not only her but the entire room. "I learned at a young age you don't give in to threats," Ms. Omar said.

Ilhan Omar is an American hero. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...

Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti “We are heartbroken but also very angry. Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact. I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti.

"Please get the truth out about our son."

Minnesota has jurisdiction over killings that occur on Minnesota soil. Minnesota has evidence: eyewitnesses, video, expert testimony. Minnesota has a grand jury with subpoena power. Minnesota has prosecutors.

USE THEM🧵

AOC: "How rich is it that she is saying showing up to the scene of a protest with a legally owned weapon should be grounds for a person's death, execution at the hands of the state, by the same party and administration that praises Kyle Rittenhouse."

Per his colleagues: The victim’s name was apparently Alex Pretti and he was an ICU nurse caring for severely injured veterans at the VA Hospital. He was acting as an observer, filming the raid. Any suggestion that he was there with violence on his mind is horrific gaslighting.

Writing a 20-page response to reviewers while your country faces a hostile government takeover

Ensures that all the diseases covered by the previous immunization schedule will still be available to anyone who wants them through Affordable Care Act insurance plans and federal insurance programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Vaccines for Children program. Families will not have to purchase them out of pocket. Among peer nations, the U.S. will continue to offer the most childhood vaccines for free to those who want them.

Copy Editing Matters, from HHS's release on the new childhood vaccine schedule: All the diseases will still be available to anyone who wants them

See Jim’s comments and the whole thread.

During Fiona Hill's testimony to Congress on Oct 14, 2019, she described how Trump and Putin discussed exchanging Ukraine for Venezuela. The quid pro quo was if Trump refuses to help Ukraine fight off a Russian invasion, Putin would not help Venezuela (a Russian ally) resist a US takeover.

Some polling:
Invading Venezuela - 19% approve, 60% disapprove
OK to go w/o Congressional approval - 11% yes, 74% no
👇

JAMES MERRILL CHRISTMAS TREE From loes torn hamin Had been fed, looked after, kept still, Meant, I knew— of course I knew - That it would be only a matter of weeks, That there was nothing more to do. Warmly they took me in, made much of me, The point from the start was to keep my spirits up. I could assent to that. For honestly, It did help to be wound in jewels, to send Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep Fragrant sables that cloaked me head to foot. Over me then they wove a spell of shining — Purple and silver chains, eavesdripping tinsel, Amulets, milagros: software of silver, A heart, a little girl, a Model T Two staring eyes. Then angels, trumpets, BUD and BEA (The children's names) in clownlike capitals, Somewhere a music box whose tiny song Played and replayed I ended before long By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals Plowed back into the Earth for lives to come — No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn't bear, Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin. Needles and bone. The little boy's hands meeting About my spine. The mother's voice: Holding up wonderfully! No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today's Dusk room aglow For the last time With candlelight. Faces love-lit, Gifts underfoot. Still to be so poised, so Receptive. Still to recall, to praise.

James Merril’s poem “Christmas Tree,” written while he was dying of AIDS. 1995.

Interpretation Issues With the Patient Health Questionnaire Instructions This survey study assesses whether responses to the Patient Health Questionnaire reflect symptom frequency and severity.

Cool study in JAMA Psychiatry confirms what many have suspected for a while: PHQ (depression questionnaire) instructions are widely misinterpreted by patients. It is unfortunate that a questionnaire as shitty as PHQ-9 has become so ingrained & ubiquitous

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Wildly unethical and grotesque to damn African children to lifelong chronic liver disease so some pseudo-'evidence based' medicine advocates can push fairy tales about a lack of placebo controlled trials.

Another sad chapter to come in Medical Apartheid.

"more babies will be infected with HBV

more babies will develop chronic HBV infection

more children will develop severe liver disease

more children will develop liver cancer

more children will die from a preventable disease"

Honestly, it's wild to watch the nutrition community continue to get behind a term like UPF (defined by looking at a ingredients and giving a 'bad' label by the presence of an 'industrial' additive) while this exact, scientifically hollow tactic is being rolled out to scare folks away from vaccines.

By the end of the spring semester, Gwen reached a breaking point with AI. “I felt like I didn’t deserve to be a Yale student,” she said. She thought that she was throwing away her education and the scholarship paying to support it. She decided to quit using ChatGPT altogether. She didn’t ask AI to help her sentences flow or to strike the right tone. She didn’t even use it to brainstorm. “I think that’s a skill you need to have on your own. That’s the core of being original, anyway.” Gwen recalled completing her final assignments without AI, sitting in the middle of a crowded library so that she felt watched. “I struggled. And they weren’t very good.” It was only then, she said, that she started to understand just how much learning she had missed out on. ∎

New feature article from TNJ (nation's best student magazine): Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI thenewjournalatyale.com/2025/10/insi...

Opinion | Democrats’ election wins showed they don't need to hide their support for trans rights Republicans repeated Trump's anti-trans strategy from 2024 and lost big. This should be instructive for Democrats.

For @msnbc.com I wrote about how Tuesday's election gives Democrats the blueprint for overcoming Republican anti-trans attacks and how thus should settle all the talk about throwing trans people under the bus.

www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

Citing Trump Order on “Biological Truth,” VA Makes It Harder for Male Veterans With Breast Cancer to Get Coverage A Department of Veterans Affairs memo obtained by ProPublica erects new roadblocks to care for veterans with the rare but deadly cancer. The agency cites no new science but relies on an executive orde...

Male veterans are encountering obstacles in getting treatment for breast cancer in the VA system because of Trump's executive order meant to oppress trans people. I say that again: non-trans men are struggling to get treatment for breast cancer due to transphobia.

www.propublica.org/article/vete...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Data only shows associations. Turning those into claims about mechanism or causation? That requires a Rosetta Stone of prior knowledge + theory. Resting-state fMRI is purely observational; correlation is its currency. From this, plenty of "theoretical toys" about brain function can be built...

The United States has half of all the guns in existence and less than 5% of the population, and people are still trying to pretend we don’t have a gun problem.

We are the only country in the world with more guns than people. www.usnews.com/news/best-co...

We're going to see a lot of bullshit in the coming days and weeks about "causes of autism", and most will be based on flawed, over-interpreted observational studies (1/n)

Write members of Congress - Will COVID-19 vaccines be available this fall? It is clear that HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is on a dangerous and fast-moving path to make COVID-19 vaccines totally unavailable here in the U.S. With COVID-19 cases on the rise in many parts of the US an...

Right now, your ability to get access to a COVID vaccine this fall is in jeopardy, whether or not you fit the new, restricted eligiblity criteria. Please send a letter to your member of Congress here. And spread the word. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...

With O'Neill (apparently) taking over CDC (if they ever get around to firing Monarez), I think it's worth looking back to Project 2025 and asking what they actually intend to *do* to CDC. So, I went to remind myself today. Here's what's in store:

Monarez refused to fire top CDC leaders, ‘rubber-stamp’ vaccine changes, confidante says The former CDC director was ousted late Wednesday after refusing to resign despite pressure from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The newly ousted director of the CDC refused to fire top agency leaders or approve changes to vaccines from RFK Jr.’s hand-picked panel of advisers.

Yes, call not matter which party you Representative and Senators belong to;

Yes, call if at all possible. You can *also, additionally* send an email if you'd like;

Yes, call after hours to leave a voicemail if you don't want to speak to a person;

Yes, you can change my script if you want to

ICE released this Mass. mom with no phone, 30 miles from home in the rain after detainment for a sealed marijuana conviction Federal authorities refused to tell the Canton woman's husband or lawyer on what grounds she was being detained until shortly before her release.

“Jimenez Rosa, a legal permanent resident and mother of four U.S. citizens, was detained over what her lawyer believes was a decades-old, personal-use marijuana charge, which is no longer a crime in Massachusetts today… “I was just like, ‘Girls, we might never see your mother again in this country’”

While masked agents were violently attacking a delivery worker this morning, bystanders repeatedly asked to see their badge numbers but they refused.

Bystander: You guys are ruining this country, you know that, right?

Agent: Liberals already ruined it.