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For Those Facing Addiction, Medicaid Is a Lifeline—Not a Luxury

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Care Advocates Lead 24-Hour Vigil at U.S. Capitol to Share Stories and Urge Lawmakers to Protect Medicaid - May 8

The fluorescent lights of the intake office hummed on Thanksgiving Eve in 2014, a stark contrast to the chaotic darkness I’d been living in. I was terrified, exhausted, and sick of myself. My addiction had stripped away everything: my career, my home, my dignity. I was at the absolute bottom, a place where the idea of work was not just impossible, but utterly irrelevant. My only focus was survival, and that meant finding a way out of the hell of active heroin addiction. Beyond the addiction itself, I was suffering from unresolved trauma, and with my substance use came untreated mental health challenges, including severe depression and at times suicidal ideations. A power greater than myself helped me find recovery—but so did Medicaid.

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It was my lifeline, the one thing that stood between me and a death I felt was inevitable.

Now, as Congress debates sweeping Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” I see that lifeline being severed for millions of Americans struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. This isn’t just about budget lines; it’s about lives. It’s about reversing the hard-won progress we’ve made in the fight against the overdose crisis, and condemning countless vulnerable individuals to a fate I barely escaped.

In the depths of my addiction, I was unemployable. The idea of holding down a job, showing up consistently, or even performing basic tasks was a cruel joke. My days were consumed by the relentless pursuit of the next fix, driven by a physical and psychological dependence that overshadowed all else. When I finally found a bed in a treatment center, it was Medicaid that covered the cost. Without it, I would have been left to die on the streets, another statistic in a crisis that already claims far too many.

Here is the stark reality: Medicaid is the single largest payer for mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) services in the United States. It covers nearly 40% of all adults with SUD. This isn’t a minor player; it’s the backbone of our nation’s addiction and mental health treatment infrastructure. When we talk about cutting Medicaid, we’re talking about dismantling this critical support system.

While the House of Representatives has made an exemption for individuals with substance use disorders from work requirements in the bill, there are dangerous nuances in the proposed changes. The bill still threatens to rip away healthcare from people with mental health challenges, without recognizing the critical link between substance use disorder and mental health. These are often co-occurring disorders, and denying care for one inevitably impacts the other. Taking away mental health care and essential healthcare services from low-income populations puts an already vulnerable group at a significantly higher risk for addiction. We’ve learned from the so-called “diseases of despair” that without adequate mental health care, individuals will often turn to illicit substances to cope, putting them at a higher risk of overdose.

The idea that these cuts will somehow incentivize people to enter the workforce is a dangerous fantasy. Access to treatment is not a reward for being “ready” or “worthy”; it is a fundamental human right and a public health imperative.

When people are denied access to care, they don’t magically get better. They get sicker. They cycle through emergency rooms, jails, and homelessness, costing taxpayers far more in the long run. . Economists estimate the total cost of opioid use disorder in the United States reached $4 trillion in 2024. Investing in treatment through programs like Medicaid is not an expense; it’s an investment in a healthier, more productive society. The estimated $280 billion in savings over six years that the CBO projects from Medicaid changes will be dwarfed by the increased costs to the government in emergency services, incarceration, and lost productivity.

Read more: The Truth About Fentanyl Is Scary Enough. Myths About It Don’t Help

We are at a critical juncture in the overdose crisis. After years of escalating deaths, we’ve begun to see glimmers of hope, thanks in part to expanded access to treatment. Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. significantly decreased in 2024, marking the largest one-year decline ever recorded, a testament to the power of comprehensive approaches that include accessible healthcare. To reverse course now, to pull the rug out from under those who are fighting for their lives, would be an act of profound negligence. It would destroy lives and undo the fragile progress we’ve painstakingly made.

While the House package has passed, it is now time for the Senate to do the responsible thing and ensure millions of Americans aren’t left in harm’s way with no access to doctors, emergency rooms, or treatment. I want to imagine a world where people are allowed to live despite our struggles. Where we’re not shunned as criminals or treated like lepers. I imagine us as valued citizens who are part of society.

My own journey to recovery was paved by the grace of a higher power, but also by the practical, tangible support of Medicaid. It allowed me to get the treatment I needed, to heal, and to rebuild a life I thought was lost forever. Congress has a choice: To continue down a path that will inevitably lead to more suffering and death, or to embrace compassion, evidence-based policy, and the understanding that for millions, Medicaid isn’t a luxury—it’s a lifeline.


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Lavrov: 2nd Round of Istanbul Talks to Begin on June 2

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia and Ukraine will return to the negotiating table in Turkey on June 2 to discuss the terms of a ceasefire. Kyiv has not confirmed its attendance.

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The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.-Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza

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When the Trump administration unveiled its plan to put a fledgling nonprofit with no humanitarian track record in charge of distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza earlier this month, the outcry among aid groups was widespread. 

Under the plan, which has the backing of the U.S. and Israeli governments, civilians would be concentrated into southern Gaza in so-called “sterile zones” controlled by the Israeli military. The new nonprofit, led by a former U.S. Marine, would be the sole distributor of aid from a handful of locations. American contractors would provide security, including one group run by a former senior C.I.A. officer.

The humanitarian community worried the Israeli government would use the new aid plan as a weapon against Palestinians, who are currently facing mass starvation under Israel’s 11-week blockade. Some aid experts likened the zones to a “concentration camp” or an “internment camp,” saying the plan would further displace Palestinians. Some Israeli officials said they hoped the plan would permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza.

Such fears proved prescient Tuesday, when the aid plan, led by the Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation, went forward in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood of Al-Mawasi, Rafah. Thousands of Palestinians were forced to walk miles to the site, where the large crowds packed into fenced-off corridors as private American security contractors, armed with assault rifles, guarded boxes of aid. 

During the distribution, guards initially subjected recipients to intense searches, but later loosened security, two sources monitoring the distribution told The Intercept.

At that point, the crowd began to storm the distribution site, attempting to receive the aid. Gunfire rang out at the site, prompting crowds to flee. At least three people were killed and 47 others were injured amid the gunfire and overcrowding conditions, according to reports citing Gaza officials. An additional six people were killed and 15 others were wounded by gunfire on Wednesday while attempting to receive aid at a site north of Rafah, according to officials. Elsewhere in the strip, in the Qizan Rashwan area, airstrikes killed six who were headed further south to receive aid, officials also said on Wednesday.

“Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional.”

Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor confirmed on Tuesday the death of one individual and said the 47 injured were wounded by bullets fired by both Israeli military and the U.S.-based private security firms. The group said Israeli military soldiers had entered the site to fire on the crowd. The monitor relied on its field researchers who confirmed the wounded had been seen at Al-Najjar Hospital and a Red Cross hospital. The group also received reports from three families who said their loved ones had left to get aid at the distribution hub but never returned. 

Videos posted to social media showed thousands of people rushing toward the distribution site. The crowds scrambled away for safety along dirt trenches and downed fences as gunfire rang out, footage shows. In one video, a man dragging a box of aid behind him said he had walked more than six miles to the distribution site, where he watched a young man killed in front of him.

“This is what happens when you try to replace the humanitarian system with a political agenda,” said Abdalwahab Hamad, Gaza office manager for the Palestinian humanitarian group Juhoud. “Those thousands of Palestinians, starving and desperate, stormed the distribution center, not because they’re violent, not because that people are hungry, but because aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.”


Related

In Gaza, Famine Is the Weapon — and So Is Aid


In a statement to The Intercept the Israeli military disputed field reports and downplayed any mention of violence, saying its soldiers had “fired warning shots in the area outside the compound” before gaining control of the site.

The Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. The foundation told other outlets its armed security did not fire on the crowd but “fell back” when the crowd ran toward the aid before returning to the site. 

Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, minimized Tuesday’s chaos, claiming the foundation had delivered 8,000 packages of aid to Palestinians, posting images of cardboard boxes filled with flour, pasta grain and oil. “Humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, not to Hamas,” he captioned the photo posted on social media. 

The pretext for this new aid distribution regime is the theory, espoused by Israel and the American government, that Hamas has been stealing aid to enrich itself and control the people of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the unsubstantiated claim on Tuesday during the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Conference, saying that he needed to move Gaza’s population to the south “for its own protection” from Hamas.    

Neither Israel or the U.S. has provided evidence to support such claims. 

Israel, however, has weaponized access to aid throughout the current war on Gaza, and the practice stretches back to at least the 1990s, but intensified in 2007 once Hamas was elected to control the strip. The practice continued throughout Israel’s latest invasion into the strip after Hamas’ October 7 attacks.

Since Israel imposed its latest total blockade on Gaza on March 2, famine risk has spread across the region, with one in five Palestinians in Gaza facing starvation. More than 9,000 children have already been treated for acute malnutrition this year. Over the past week, 29 children and elderly people have suffered starvation-related deaths, Gaza health officials said. 

During the first week of Israel’s latest offensive, Operation Gideon’s Chariots, more than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced, the United Nations said. More than 600 Palestinians have also been killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Just as the new assault launched, Netanyahu announced the government would allow “minimal” or a “basic amount” of aid into Gaza to avoid further international backlash. After UN-led groups were able to deliver small amounts of aid to Palestinians, some World Food Program bakeries in southern Gaza reopened last week, only to close again after three days due to a shortage of flour. 

Ramy Abdu, chairman of Euro-Med, a human rights watchdog that has tracked and opposed Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza, said the recent restrictions on aid evoked a 2008 Israeli military study which calculated the precise minimum number of calories a Palestinian needed to avoid malnutrition, which critics said was proof the government had been illegally limiting aid into the territory.    

“We are talking about starvation or hunger management and or hunger engineering,” Abdu said, “which in the end serves the Israeli agenda and purposes.” 

The aid plan sidesteps the United Nations, which has a staff of more than 13,000 workers in Gaza and has been largely responsible for delivering supplies to Palestinians throughout Israel’s war in Gaza. Aid groups criticized the plan, saying they did not want to be complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinians. 

The Gaza Humanitarian Aid Foundation, or GHF, had been headed by a former U.S. Marine sniper Jake Wood, who led aid missions to Haiti and other disaster sites around the world with his other organization, Team Rubicon. Wood resigned earlier this week before the new plan went into effect, saying the foundation would not be able to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”

GHF, which is operating on $100 million in funding, pressed forward on Monday without Wood, loading up its aid hubs for distribution on Tuesday. Armed contractors with private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions, based in Wyoming, and UG Solutions, based in North Carolina, manned the aid sites. Safe Reach Solutions is led by Philip F. Reilly, a former C.I.A. officer who trained right-wing Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s and deployed early to Afghanistan in 2001, eventually becoming station chief in Kabul before moving to the private sector, according to a New York Times investigation.

Hamad called Tuesday’s incident “a punishment dressed as a charity” and called on the Israeli government to allow the UN re-take control of the aid distribution process. 

“Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional, it only works when it is protected, when it is neutral, and is being led by organizations such as the United Nations,” Hamad said, adding that Palestinians in Gaza have built trust with UN-backed groups and that the UN already has the infrastructure to clearly identify and address needs.

“You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace,” he said, “because this is a military controlled charity and people have been there just out of desperation.”

The post The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.-Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.


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The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.–Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza

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When the Trump administration unveiled its plan to put a fledgling nonprofit with no humanitarian track record in charge of distributing aid to Palestinians in Gaza earlier this month, the outcry among aid groups was widespread. 

Under the plan, which has the backing of the U.S. and Israeli governments, civilians would be concentrated into southern Gaza in so-called “sterile zones” controlled by the Israeli military. The new nonprofit, led by a former U.S. Marine, would be the sole distributor of aid from a handful of locations. American contractors would provide security, including one group run by a former senior CIA officer.

The humanitarian community worried the Israeli government would use the new aid plan as a weapon against Palestinians, who are currently facing mass starvation under Israel’s 11-week blockade. Some aid experts likened the zones to a “concentration camp” or an “internment camp,” saying the plan would further displace Palestinians. Some Israeli officials said they hoped the plan would permanently expel Palestinians from Gaza.

Such fears proved prescient Tuesday, when the aid plan, led by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, went forward in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood of Al-Mawasi, Rafah. Thousands of Palestinians were forced to walk miles to the site, where the large crowds packed into fenced-off corridors as private American security contractors, armed with assault rifles, guarded boxes of aid. 

During the distribution, guards initially subjected recipients to intense searches but later loosened security, two sources monitoring the distribution told The Intercept.

At that point, the crowd began to storm the distribution site, attempting to receive the aid. Gunfire rang out at the site, prompting crowds to flee. At least three people were killed and 47 others were injured amid the gunfire and overcrowding conditions, according to reports citing Gaza officials. An additional six people were killed and 15 others were wounded by gunfire on Wednesday while attempting to receive aid at a site north of Rafah, according to officials. Elsewhere in the strip, in the Qizan Rashwan area, airstrikes killed six who were headed further south to receive aid, officials also said on Wednesday.

Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor confirmed on Tuesday the death of one individual and said the 47 injured were wounded by bullets fired by both Israeli military and the U.S.-based private security firms. The group said Israeli military soldiers had entered the site to fire on the crowd. The monitor relied on its field researchers who confirmed the wounded had been seen at Al-Najjar Hospital and a Red Cross hospital. The group also received reports from three families who said their loved ones had left to get aid at the distribution hub but never returned. 

“Aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.”

Videos posted to social media showed thousands of people rushing toward the distribution site. The crowds scrambled away for safety along dirt trenches and downed fences as gunfire rang out, footage shows. In one video, a man dragging a box of aid behind him said he had walked more than six miles to the distribution site, where he watched a young man killed in front of him.

“This is what happens when you try to replace the humanitarian system with a political agenda,” said Abdalwahab Hamad, Gaza office manager for the Palestinian humanitarian group Juhoud. “Those thousands of Palestinians, starving and desperate, stormed the distribution center, not because they’re violent, not because that people are hungry, but because aid is being used as a weapon, not a lifeline.”


Related

Israeli Soldiers Killed 15 Protesters in the Same Place They Shot Aysenur Eygi


In a statement to The Intercept, the Israeli military disputed field reports and downplayed any mention of violence, saying its soldiers had “fired warning shots in the area outside the compound” before gaining control of the site.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation did not immediately respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment. The foundation told other outlets its armed security did not fire on the crowd but “fell back” when the crowd ran toward the aid before returning to the site. 

Oren Marmorstein, spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, minimized Tuesday’s chaos, claiming the foundation had delivered 8,000 packages of aid to Palestinians, posting images of cardboard boxes filled with flour, pasta, and oil. “Humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, not to Hamas,” he captioned the photo posted on social media. 

The pretext for this new aid distribution regime is the theory, espoused by Israel and the American government, that Hamas has been stealing aid to enrich itself and control the people of Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated the unsubstantiated claim on Tuesday during the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Conference, saying that he needed to move Gaza’s population to the south “for its own protection” from Hamas.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. has provided evidence to support such claims. 

Israel, however, has weaponized access to aid throughout the current war on Gaza, and the practice stretches back to at least the 1990s, but intensified in 2007 once Hamas was elected to control the Strip. The practice continued throughout Israel’s latest invasion into the Strip after Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Since Israel imposed its latest total blockade on Gaza on March 2, famine risk has spread across the region, with 1 in 5 Palestinians in Gaza facing starvation. More than 9,000 children have already been treated for acute malnutrition this year. Over the past week, 29 children and elderly people have suffered starvation-related deaths, Gaza health officials said. 


Related

In Gaza, Famine Is the Weapon — and So Is Aid


During the first week of Israel’s latest offensive, code-named Operation Gideon’s Chariots, more than 180,000 Palestinians have been displaced, the United Nations said. More than 600 Palestinians have also been killed in ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Just as the new assault launched, Netanyahu announced the government would allow “minimal” or a “basic amount” of aid into Gaza to avoid further international backlash. After U.N.-led groups were able to deliver small amounts of aid to Palestinians, some World Food Programme bakeries in southern Gaza reopened last week, only to close again after three days due to a shortage of flour. 

Ramy Abdu, chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the watchdog that has tracked and opposed Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza, said the recent restrictions on aid evoked a 2008 Israeli military study which calculated the precise minimum number of calories a Palestinian needed to avoid malnutrition, which critics said was proof the government had been illegally limiting aid into the territory.

“We are talking about starvation or hunger management and/or hunger engineering,” Abdu said, “which in the end serves the Israeli agenda and purposes.” 

Israel’s aid plan sidesteps the United Nations, which has a staff of more than 13,000 workers in Gaza and has been largely responsible for delivering supplies to Palestinians throughout Israel’s war in Gaza. Aid groups criticized the plan, saying they did not want to be complicit in the displacement of thousands of Palestinians. 

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, had been headed by a former U.S. Marine sniper Jake Wood, who led aid missions to Haiti and other disaster sites around the world with his other organization, Team Rubicon. Wood resigned earlier this week before the new plan went into effect, saying the foundation would not be able to adhere “to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.”

GHF, which is operating on $100 million in funding, pressed forward on Monday without Wood, loading up its aid hubs for distribution on Tuesday. Armed contractors with private security firms, Safe Reach Solutions, based in Wyoming, and UG Solutions, based in North Carolina, manned the aid sites. Safe Reach Solutions is led by Philip F. Reilly, a former CIA officer who trained right-wing Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s and deployed early to Afghanistan in 2001, eventually becoming station chief in Kabul before moving to the private sector, according to a New York Times investigation.

“You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace.”

Hamad called Tuesday’s incident “a punishment dressed as a charity” and called on the Israeli government to allow the U.N. to retake control of the aid distribution process. 

“Aid in Gaza should not be political, it should not be conditional. It only works when it is protected, when it is neutral, and is being led by organizations such as the United Nations,” Hamad said, adding that Palestinians in Gaza have built trust with U.N.-backed groups and that the U.N. already has the infrastructure to clearly identify and address needs.

“You cannot replace a humanitarian system with a checkpoint and expect peace,” he said, “because this is a military-controlled charity, and people have been there just out of desperation.”

The post The Rising Death Toll of the U.S.–Israel Aid Distribution Plan in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.


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Hamas Leader Mohammed Sinwar Killed In Airstrike, Netanyahu Says

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Health authorities begin evacuating patients from Gaza European Hospital

Hamas’s de facto leader in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, was killed during a recent airstrike, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Wednesday. 

Netanyahu previously said last week that it was probable the leader had been killed by significant airstrikes Israel carried out on the European Hospital in Khan Younis on May 13. 

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At the time of the strike, Israeli sources told CNN that it had targeted Sinwar, the brother of the previous leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar.

Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in October 2024 by an airstrike on Gaza, is regarded as the lead orchestrator of the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, in which over 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage.

The Prime Minister confirmed Mohammed Sinwar’s death during the airstrikes on Khan Younis during a May 28 speech in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, marking 600 days since the October 7 attacks and the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas has not yet commented on Netanyahu’s claim. 

Mohammed Sinwar is the latest of a number of Hamas chiefs and top figures to be killed by Israel since the start of the war. 

Last August, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that they had killed Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military leader, in a strike the previous month. The strike on July 14, 2024, targeted Deif, hitting a displacement camp. It reportedly killed 90 people, including children.

Days before confirming Deif’s death, Hamas announced the death of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s then-political chief. Haniyeh was killed in a precise strike on his residence in Tehran, Iran. 

After the airstrike on the European Hospital in Khan Younis on May 13, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the hospital was no longer accessible. Twenty-eight people were reportedly killed in the airstrike, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency. 

Israeli strikes on medical facilities across Gaza have been frequent, with the IDF claiming that these areas are used by Hamas to conduct their operations. The IDF said in a statement on X that the strike in Khan Younis “destroyed an underground terrorist infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization,” under the European Hospital. 

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said on May 28 that these strikes on medical facilities are part of a “systematic dismantling of Gaza’s already fragile health system,” in a press statement. 

The statement detailed that five hospitals have been directly hit in the last two weeks, leaving four non-functional. The organization added that as of May 23, more than 90% of health services across Gaza have become either completely non-functional or partially functional.


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Moscow Rejects US Role, Says Ceasefire Memo for Kyiv Only

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Moscow will present its ceasefire memorandum to Kyiv only, a Russian official said, dismissing the US envoy’s claim that Washington is awaiting the proposal.

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The Devastating History of Baby Relinquishment

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Foundling Child

In 2016, Monica Kelsey, a Christian anti-abortion activist, debuted an invention allowing for completely anonymous infant surrender: the Safe Haven Baby Box. A relinquishing parent simply opens the door to the device—now at more than 150 hospitals, health care centers, and fire stations across the United States—and places their newborn in the climate-controlled bassinet. When the parent closes the door, the box locks and a silent alarm alerts responders.

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Supporters frame baby drop boxes as a beautiful solution for all parties involved—relinquishing parents, infants anonymously surrendered, and families who eventually adopt them. They argue that this innovation protects vulnerable babies from grievous harm, though there is no reliable data to support these assertions. The federal government does not track how frequently babies are surrendered directly to professionals under safe haven laws, which exist in all 50 states, let alone how many babies are left anonymously in drop boxes.

Nevertheless, conservative religious groups position safe havens as an alternative to abortion. During arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that safe haven laws “take care” of the “problem” of “the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy.” This framing ignores evidence that 91% of women who are denied abortion in the U.S. choose parenting over adoption or relinquishment.

Read More: How Online Adoption Ads Prey on Pregnant People

Positioning Safe Haven Baby Boxes as a solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancy also ignores important historical lessons about the harms caused by anonymous infant relinquishment. Charitable institutions in our country supported this practice on a much larger scale in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the results were devastating.

While the technology they rely on has been updated for the 21st century, Safe Haven Baby Boxes are a new spin on a very old idea, motivated by religious conservatism and societal policing of women’s sexuality and reproduction. The earliest mechanisms for anonymous infant surrender debuted thousands of years ago in Europe. Among the first were so-called “ruota,” or wheel, systems at Catholic-run hospitals for orphans and foundlings in medieval Italy, where turntables were built into outdoor niches. A parent could place a baby on the turntable outside and rotate it indoors without being identified.

Institutions dedicated to the care of so-called “foundlings” and mechanisms like the ruota spread throughout Europe in the medieval and Renaissance periods—especially in Catholic countries that heavily stigmatized extramarital sex—in order to prevent infanticide and care for “illegitimate” babies surrendered by poor single women seeking to hide the evidence of their supposed sins. Historians now estimate that by the 18th century, as many as one third of babies born in cities in France, Italy, and Spain were abandoned.

The foundling trend didn’t reach American shores until the mid-19th century, when industrialization and mass migration brought huge numbers of people into cities like New York and, in turn, created conditions under which infant abandonment flourished. If a poor single woman who came to New York to work in an unstable low-wage job became pregnant out of wedlock, shame, stigma, poverty, lack of childcare options, and the anonymity of city living might lead her to leave her infant on a stoop.

In the 1860s, four different foundling asylums opened in New York City to care for abandoned children. Among them was the Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in 1869.

That October, Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, with two other nuns, placed a cradle on the stoop of their brownstone in Manhattan to secretly receive “illegitimate” babies. That very first night, someone left a baby in the cradle on the stoop. By 1871, they had taken in 2,560 foundlings through the cradle, which was moved into the entryway but still hidden from sight to ensure anonymous surrender. The Catholic New York Foundling Hospital, often referred to as simply “the Foundling,” was the only New York asylum that allowed for such secrecy.

For decades, the organization received babies in a self-described effort to save their souls and launder the reputations of their poor “fallen” mothers. In 1880, the charity opened St. Ann’s Maternity Hospital, which served unmarried mothers “seek[ing] shelter and seclusion with hope of preserving character and family reputation,” as the Foundling put it in a biennial report. The newborns would be cared for by the sisters, who baptized them into the Catholic faith. If they lived long enough to become “run around[s],” the children might be chosen to ride “baby trains” to go live with new Catholic families in far-flung towns all across the country, a practice that persisted through 1927. Some 30,000 children rode those baby trains.

The Foundling came to participate in the orphan train movement because its Protestant counterpart and progenitor of the social engineering experiment, the New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS), was seen by Catholic-run charities as “an unqualified menace that had caused thousands of Catholic children to lose their religion and thus their only hope for eternal salvation.” By sending toddlers off on baby trains, the Foundling worked to preserve the minority Catholic faith against encroachment by Protestant charities like the CAS, ensuring that Catholic culture would be perpetuated and reproduced across the United States.

Read More: Russia Is Trying to ‘Erase’ Ukrainian Identity in Captured Territories, European Officials Allege

With a secretive system whereby women who “sinned” by giving birth out of wedlock would be permanently severed from their children, who were then sent to live with new families, the Foundling may have propagated the Catholic faith. But it also harmed the very children it purported to save.

The Foundling’s own archives at the New York Historical hold evidence of how the organization’s practices, which cut children off from basic forms of self-knowledge and from the possibility of ever reconnecting with their birth families, caused lifelong suffering for some baby train riders. Nestled into folders of correspondence to the Foundling from the 1980s and 1990s are requests from former riders, now elderly, seeking vital information about themselves and their families of origin.

Some riders were hoping for details that would make sense of their medical histories. In 1994, a rider named Sylvia Wolk who was born in 1918, wrote asking for whatever information the charity had on her parents, an urgent request, as she and her brother, Joseph, were “both in poor health, in their seventies, and under a doctor’s care.” Sylvia wrote that she was “desperately seeking truth before Joseph dies.” After a lifetime apart, Sylvia and her brother had reunited in 1989—and not through the Foundling. Instead, the siblings reconnected after Sylvia’s search for her long-lost brother was featured on an episode of the television show Unsolved Mysteries. Joseph died in 1996, likely without ever learning the “truth” about his ancestry from the Foundling.

Other letters illustrate the frustration riders felt in the charity’s withholding of basic details about their lives. Helen Macior, who was born in 1913 and rode a baby train to Illinois in 1915, wrote in a 1994 request form that she was seeking information “to learn who I am.” The next year, she sent another letter: “Seven months have elapsed, and nary a word. This in addition to the last five years of correspondence. . . . If there is one thing I strongly believe, every human being is entitled to know from whence they came, be it good or bad.” Yet the Foundling’s system was entirely presaged on the idea that some people’s origins need to be concealed.

The tension between the Foundling’s desire to keep unwed mothers’ identities secret and the desire of former baby train riders to know about their origins foreshadows a central conundrum of modern adoption: the difficulty that adoptive children face in accessing information about their birth parents. The nationwide practice of sealing original birth certificates of adoptees and issuing revised documents that list the names of adoptive parents keeps secrecy alive. But that is changing—thanks to the efforts of adopted people and birth parents in recent years, adoptees in 15 states now have the right to access their original birth certificates.

The conservative movement for anonymous infant relinquishment and supporters of Safe Haven Baby Boxes ignore this history and create a system that makes it difficult—if not impossible—for child and parent to ever learn the truth about one another. Babies surreptitiously left in such drop boxes will likely never have accurate birth certificates, and relinquishing parents swiftly lose their parental rights and any chance of legally reclaiming or reconnecting with their children. History has already taught us the harms of withholding self-knowledge and the possibility of reunification. It is past time we learn these lessons.

Kristen Martin is the author of The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.


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DEI Strikes Back: San Francisco Rolls Out ‘Grading for Equity’ Program in Schools

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San Francisco’s public school system is quietly rolling out a “Grading for Equity” program that will reportedly exclude homework or weekly tests from final grades and allow students to pass with scores as low as 21 out of 100.

The plan, unveiled Tuesday by Superintendent of Schools Maria Su, will take effect this fall at 14 public high schools and affect more than 10,000 students, the Voice of San Francisco reported. Under Grading for Equity, semester grades will depend entirely on a final exam that can be retaken multiple times—even if students skip assignments or fail to attend class.

News of the plan comes as President Donald Trump cracks down on DEI initiatives both in public schools and in higher education. In addition to revoking billions of dollars in federal funding from elite universities, Trump has demanded that state education departments eliminate many DEI programs or risk losing their funding, prompting lawsuits that are making their way through the court system.

Su did not seek approval from the San Francisco Board of Education before announcing the drastic overhaul, according to the Voice. Her staff has told board members that they have no authority to reject the plan, which was revealed on the last slide of a PowerPoint presentation in a 25-page board meeting agenda.

She made the announcement the final week of the spring semester, as parents weigh whether to keep their children in San Francisco’s public schools this fall. The district is facing over $110 million in budget cuts amid declining student enrollment and mounting concerns about academic standards.

The district faced backlash last year after then-superintendent Matt Wayne paid a Stanford University professor $30,000 to create an “equity-centered” formula for deciding which schools to shutter. Parents argued that the formula rewarded poor-performing black and Hispanic schools while targeting low-income, high-achieving Asian children, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The controversy led Wayne to resign in October.

Su’s Grading for Equity system will allow students to earn an A with a score of 80, a C with 41, and a D with just 21 out of 100, according to the Voice. In the current grading system, students need a 90 for an A and at least 61 for a D.

The post DEI Strikes Back: San Francisco Rolls Out ‘Grading for Equity’ Program in Schools appeared first on .


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