There is Blood on Their Hands
Just say it. Shout it. Scream it...
Iowa Congressional delegation at a February 2023 breakfast meeting. Courtesy Laura Belin at Bleeding Heartland.
By now, most of the people on the planet and maybe sentient life forms on other planets know the story of how a constituent of Iowa Senator Joni Ernst challenged the cruel Republican effort to kick Americans off Medicaid and their SNAP benefits to give tax cuts to the rich. The person who challenged Ernst is India May, a 33-year-old Democrat from Charles City, who yelled out, “People are going to die.” Ernst responded, "Well, we all are going to die...” Ernst later posted a sarcastic “apology” video on Instagram, digging in even deeper.
Thursday morning on MAGA radio station WHO in Des Moines, host Jeff Angelo asked Ernst if she wished she had handled the situation differently, only for her to reply, “I regret nothing.”
India May has now decided to run for the Iowa House. Good. We need her.
But we already knew, before this viral moment, that a great many people around the world are dying from the Trump/Musk DOGE cuts. It’s not just something that will happen in the future—it’s happening right now.
Why did it take this moment in Parkersburg to bring it to our attention?
On March 14, the New York Times reported that with cuts to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID):
An estimated 1,650,000 people could die within a year without American foreign aid for H.I.V. prevention and treatment.
An estimated 500,000 people could die within a year without American funding for vaccines.
An estimated 550,000 people could die within a year without American funding for food aid.
An estimated 290,000 people could die within a year without American funding for malaria prevention.
An estimated 310,000 people could die within a year without U.S. funding for tuberculosis prevention.
And how much would this cost us? Just 24 cents per $100 of our national income. Isn’t that worth it? How can it not be worth it? Ah, because tax cuts for the rich are more important than human lives to MAGA Republicans, including all of Iowa’s representatives in Congress.
I can hear it now, some dumbass MAGA Republican is going to try to tell me that we need to take care of people at home first. But the fact of the matter is that MAGA Republicans don’t care about anyone but the rich here, too—they are gutting SNAP and people’s health insurance here in Iowa, as just two examples.
On May 30, Michelle Goldberg with the New York Times reported that “Elon Musk’s Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death.”
Goldberg also reports that Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University, has estimated that these cuts have already resulted in about 300,000 deaths, most of them children.
The Boston University School of Public Health estimates that 103 people are dying per hour because of the gutting of USAID. Most of them are children.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, did this by shoving USAID and the poorest people on the planet into the “wood chipper.”
And he laughed about it.
And Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley, Randy Feenstra, Zach Nunn, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Ashley Hinson are complicit in every single one of these deaths.
Some of my friends are thinking and writing about this too. Rekha Basu lays out some of the facts. Laura Belin writes about the lies of Joni Ernst. Matt Russell writes about why Republicans have no shame. Daniel Henderson writes about the DOGE death legacy. So does Ralph Rosenberg. Dave Busiek writes about Ernst and the arrogance of power.
Thank you, my friends. Sorry if I missed anyone.
So why did it take the event in Parkersburg for people to call out Ernst for the MAGA policies that are killing people? Perhaps it’s simply because it was at home and Ernst was in the room. Ernst gave the people a platform, and they used it.
Iowans, and particularly Iowa Democrats running for office against our MAGA Republicans in Congress, need to put this on the table at every town hall, debate, or whatever. Call them out on these needless deaths. Hold them accountable.
Just say it. Shout it. Scream it. There is blood on their hands.
As I’ve written before, Trump, Musk, and complicit Congressional Republicans are ending lives and livelihoods, not just here, but around the world, where the death count climbs as they work to make billionaires even richer. There is blood on their hands. Buckets of blood. Swimming pools of blood. Lakes of blood. And it’s on purpose.
Some of my friends have started asking me if I’m OK. No, I’m not OK.
When I lie sleepless in bed at night with my window open, I hear screams in the wind.
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I hear them too.
I think what it takes for us to notice, to begin to call our (so called) representatives to account, is story. Human beings are moved by story more than statistics. Most of us have a sister, a friend , a parent, who is in a nursing home, or is disabled or impoverished, and need the support Medicaid gives. It allows us to then hear the painful, grotesque statistics, and think of the dying children, people around the world. Thank you for bringing us story, Bob. We need you, too.
Will voters remember or care? The maga crowd will not. That leaves Democrats, independents and hopefully a few more who have a conscious. The question will be asked of all of us when our souls exit this world, 'what did you do for the least of my brethren'?