Dear John,
It’s been a heavy week. Late last week, we learned of the death of Dr. Janell Green Smith, a certified nurse-midwife and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) in South Carolina. Dr. Smith was a Black maternal health advocate, who chose to become a midwife in order to help combat the Black maternal mortality crisis.
The fact that she died in childbirth is not lost on us. It’s a sobering reminder of why her work matters, and serves to further underscore its urgency. Black women are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the CDC. It’s a crisis that has only been compounded by abortion bans in the wake of Dobbs; on Ms.’s running list of preventable deaths caused by abortion bans, Black women are disproportionately represented.
“That a Black midwife and maternal health expert died after giving birth in the United States is both heartbreaking and unacceptable,” said the American College of Nurse-Midwives in a statement. “Her death underscores the persistent and well-documented reality that Black women—regardless of education, income, or professional expertise—face disproportionate risks during pregnancy and childbirth due to systemic racism and failures in care.”
And then Wednesday, videos emerged out of Minneapolis showing heavily armed ICE agents shooting and killing a community volunteer serving as a legal observer, Renee Nicole Good. Her killing is the ultimate consequence of the climate of misogyny and violence within ICE—which also regularly results in the cruel treatment of undocumented people held in detention facilities, including the rapes of women, denials of medical care and horrific conditions within the facilities.
An investigative report in the Washington Post reveals an ICE marketing campaign designed to purposefully recruit potential agents using rhetoric that echoes the violence that occurred this week. The agency’s latest recruitment push uses tactics from combining immigration raid footage with shots from action movies and video games, to running ads that target people who attend gun shows and UFC fights and go near military bases, and asks whether recruits are ready to “cowboy up.” This violent approach isn’t just a flaw in the system. It’s the bedrock.
On Thursday, the House, led by Democrats, voted to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. Although the extension faces an uphill battle in the Senate, there remains some hope for the vital lifeline that allowed millions of Americans to afford health insurance.
And this week RFK Jr. officially changed the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of and types of vaccines recommended for children. Childhood vaccine experts warn that the move will cause eradicated diseases like the measles to return—resulting in many more preventable deaths. Children will die, and be condemned to lifelong health complications. Older people will die. Nobody is safe.
These, too, are forms of violence. There's no easy way to calculate whose lives will be lost, or severely impacted. But make no mistake—these people are also victims of the Trump administration and Republicans’ callousness and disregard for science and respected medical experts.
Whether we ever know their names or not, we mourn the lives lost to this administration—and commit to fighting like hell for the rest of us.
Onward,
