Cheryl Schmidt ☮️🇺🇸🇺🇦

Freelance writer/editor. Retired journalist. Cubs fan. Gator fan. Patriot and voting Blue

[Shannon @gardengirl125]

I really thought being against raping kids would be the one thing we could all agree on

[John Jackson @hissgoescobra]

I want to give you guys some facts about General Chappie James. He wasn’t a “DEI” hire—he was a complete badass that had to overcome MORE than any white pilot. Did 178 combat missions—that’s like 7 bomber tours on a B-17 in WWII.

His medal count? Impeccable. 3 Distinguished Flying Crosses, 14 Air Medals, Two Legions of Merit, and a Defense Distinguished Service Medal. One of the original Tuskegee Airmen, the first four-star African American General.

Hegseth couldn’t sniff the level of soldiering and warrior that was in Chappie’s DNA. God bless him. And Hegseth took down his picture from a hallway like a racist little child, which is what he is.

[Warren Gunnels @GunnelsWarren]

Can’t stop thinking about how Wall Street is celebrating Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, while he single handedly eliminated humanitarian aid that will lead to the needless deaths of 4.5 million of the poorest children in the world in the next 4 years.

[Covie @covie_93]

The crowd at the White House UFC fight will be one of the most diverse ever. There will be convicted felons, rapists, pedophiles, sex traffickers, domestic abusers and insurrectionists.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

84 years ago today, the Nazis erased an entire village for a crime it didn't commit.

June 4, 1942: Reinhard Heydrich, architect of the Holocaust, dies after Czech paratroopers ambush him in Prague. Hitler demands blood. The Gestapo follows a false lead to a small mining village of 500 people: Lidice. It had no connection to the assassination. None.

At dawn on June 10, every man and boy over 15 was marched to a farm garden and shot in groups of five against the wall. Too slow, the commanders decided. They increased it to ten. Each new group walked past the bodies of their neighbors before joining them. By afternoon, 173 men and boys were dead. Mattresses had been propped against the wall to stop the ricochets.

The women and children were held in a school gymnasium for three days. Then the children were ripped from their mothers' arms. 195 women were shipped to Ravensbrück concentration camp.

The children were told they were being taken to their parents. 82 of them were loaded into sealed trucks at Chełmno and killed with engine exhaust. The youngest was about a year old. Only a handful, judged "racially suitable," were given to German families and stripped of their names.

Then the Nazis erased the village itself. Burned the houses. Dynamited the church and the school. Dug up 400 graves and looted the corpses. Cut down the orchards. Diverted the stream. Rerouted the roads. They filmed it all. Proudly.

But it backfired. The Nazis publicized Lidice as a warning, and the world answered. Towns in Mexico, Brazil, and the US renamed themselves Lidice. Parents named daughters Lidice. The village meant to be forgotten became impossible to forget.

After the war, 143 women came home. Years of searching recovered just 17 of the children. Today the site is a memorial, its centerpiece 82 bronze statues of children standing together, facing the valley where their village used to be.

The Nazis tried to murder a village and its memory. The people are gone. The memory won.

Remember Lidice. June 10, 1942.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

There are credible allegations made against Donald Trump that he mutilated a child’s nipples while raping her.
Allegations so serious, his inner circle had to meet in the Situation Room to discuss them.

I mean, how the fuck isn’t this the biggest scandal in the world right now?

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Scientists at Trump’s EPA say they are being told to make chemical risks “disappear on paper.” Not to study or manage them, but to make them vanish.

When a safety test on a household chemical shows danger, supervisors reportedly ask to keep shrinking the scenario until the poison looks safe.

They have reassigned senior scientists to paperwork and handed life-and-death risk assessments to staff with less experience. They have installed former chemical industry lobbyists to run the very offices that are supposed to regulate the chemical industry.

A gift to industry, paid for with your family’s health.

They are even throwing out research on how certain chemicals hit certain communities harder, calling decades of established science “DEI.”

You can make risk disappear on paper.

The cancer does not disappear.

The birth defects do not disappear.

The infertility does not disappear.

The kids drinking the water and getting sick do not disappear.

The EPA exists to protect people, not to protect the profit margins of the people poisoning them.

Every American deserves to know what is happening. #TrumpMakesUsSick

https://t.co/5DwXgxBybt

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Honestly, i don't understand this economy when nursing homes are so expensive they bankrupt our grandparents but nursing home aides need to use food banks.

daycare is so expensive it eats up one parent's entire paycheck and yet daycare providers only make $10/hr and need second jobs.

college costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and puts students into debt for life and yet we have thousands of professors living in their cars.

everything we need is astronomically expensive and yet almost none of the money we pay is going towards the people actually doing the work and providing the services.

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

This is Sad!

For almost 30 years, leaders from both parties have set politics aside to honor the women veterans who gave their lives for this country at Arlington National Cemetery.

Then Trump and Hegseth shut it down.

Why? Because the ceremony recognized women.

This is an insult to every woman who wore the uniform, served with courage, and sacrificed for this nation.

Yesterday, @demwomencaucus stood with the women veterans Trump and Hegseth tried to erase and held an event anyway.

We see you. We honor you. We thank you. 🇺🇸

[Being J Wood @BeingJWood]

The larger picture gives perspective.

[Sheldrick Wildlife Trust @SheldrickTrust]

Do elephants remember who was kind to them?

Yes – and across decades. Our ex-orphans return to the stockades long after they've gone wild, recognise specific Keepers by name, and bring their wild-born calves home to introduce them. They even come back for help.

Last month, Melia walked her new daughter Moon to our Ithumba Reintegration Unit – sixteen years after we rescued her. She came back so the people who raised her could meet her calf.

[Lucas Sanders 👊🏽🔥🇺🇸 @LucasSa56947288]

RETWEET if you still call it Twitter to this very day!

[Mr. Nobody @MmisterNobody]

In Ancient Rome, stadiums were built
to host “bread and circuses” events
designed to distract the masses from
the problems of a decaying empire.

[Covie @covie_93]

Why couldn't trump just watch the NBA finals on TV at the White House like he did the Jan. 6 insurrection???

[Maria Shriver @mariashriver]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the extraordinary outbursts of the President of the United States against female journalists... well, actually against journalists in general and journalism. But it feels like he saves his most childlike behavior and irrational language for female reporters, calling them all kinds of names that kids in kindergarten are given times out for. It’s stunning to me to witness such behavior from any leader, any CEO, any person of influence or importance. I’ve never witnessed someone like this raging, this weekend with @meetthepress host @kwelkernbc, just last week in the Oval Office with @cnn’s @kaitlancollins, calling women stupid or piggy, telling them to “smile”, calling them darling, demeaning their credibility. Every good man should denounce this behavior. Every person should be able to stand up for their colleagues and say “No more.”

Imagine this man screaming like this at your daughter, your wife, your sister, your mother... would you stand for it? No, you wouldn’t! And neither should any of us. It’s unacceptable and undignified. Period. End of story.

[Tommy Beer @TommyBeer]

First, the loyal fans who supported the Knicks for decades when the team sucked (emptying thier wallets for tickets, shirts, jerseys) get priced out of the building when New York finally reaches the Finals (by insanely wealthy patrons willing/capable of casually blowing $20k on a pair of tickets to a basketball game, many of them having just hopped on the bandwagon or purchased tix to Game 3 solely b/c MSG is “the place to be” this week).

Then those same loyal, working-class fans get a second middle finger from ownership. Due to Dolan's desire to host Trump, thousands of diehard Knicks fans are denied the chance to gather outside the Garden, watch the game on a big screen, and share a once-in-a-lifetime moment with the community that helped keep this franchise alive when nobody else cared.

Access is reserved for the powerful, rich and/or connected, not the fans who stuck with this team through 20+ years of misery.

[Chris D. Jackson @ChrisDJackson]

President Joe Biden receives LGBT Ally Champion Award at the Stonewall Awards

After headlining a fundraiser for South Dakota Democrats on Friday, Joe Biden showed up in Philly to be honored for his decades of LGBTQ+ advocacy.

They could have invited Obama, Clinton, or any other “hot” political name.

They chose Joe Biden.

Why? Because they know the truth: no president has done more for LGBTQ+ Americans than Joe Biden.

They have his back because he’s always had theirs.

And to Jake Tapper’s shagrin, no wheelchair was in sight.

@malcolmkenyatta

[Court @boootyboppp]

“May you one day not have to audition for the empathy that should be freely given by this country that benefits from your beauty” is the most beautiful line I’ve ever heard. Ily Ali Louis Bourzgui, the most incredible speech I’ve ever heard #TonyAwards

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

Among the many offensive things about Hegseth's D-Day speech in France was that he lectured our allies on their commitment to freedom, while the @POTUS drags his feet and coddles Putin rather than standing with Ukraine.