In Common Dreams

Anelise Feldman, a freshman at Yarmouth High School in southern Maine, finished second to Soren Stark-Chessa, a multisport standout at rival North Yarmouth Academy, at a May 2 intramural meet. 

“I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards,” Feldman wrote in a letter to The Portland Press Herald published Wednesday. “I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race.” 

Feldman’s letter was prompted by State Rep. Laurel Libby’s (R-90) comments during a Fox News interview earlier this month in which the lawmaker, while not naming Stark-Chessa, referred to her accomplishments and accused transgender athletes of “pushing many, many of our young women out of the way in their ascent to the podium.” 

 Feldman stressed: “I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.”

“We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school,” she added. “Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.” 

 Sen. Bernie Sanders was the lone member of the Senate Democratic caucus to oppose advancing a $110.5 billion supplemental foreign aid measure on Wednesday, expressing opposition to the bill's unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government.

"I voted NO on the foreign aid supplemental bill today for one reason," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "I do not believe that we should give the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government an additional $10.1 billion with no strings attached to continue their inhumane war against the Palestinian people."

"Israel has the absolute right to defend itself against the Hamas terrorists who attacked them on October 7," Sanders added. "They do not have the legal or moral right to kill thousands of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children." 

Slate politics writer Alex Sammon wrote that "close watchers now expect AIPAC to spend at least $100 million in 2024 Democratic primaries, largely trained on eliminating incumbent Squad members from their seats."

Sammon said that Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Summer Lee (D-Pa.)—"the most outspoken and unapologetically leftist contingent of the Democratic Party in national office"—are among AIPAC's top targets.

"The price of defending apartheid keeps going up," quipped Palestinian American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer in response to the report. 

In his last months, I believe it was given to him to raise his eyes and see a little higher—beyond the doomsday scenarios on his yellow legal pad: to sense that he had done what was given to him to accomplish; the rest was out of his hands. In a letter he sent to friends, he wrote, “I’ve always known that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!”

That letter, which he posted in March, was a great step on his final journey. I believe it will stand as part of his legacy, a message about his own life, about what it means to be a responsible person, and the message of realism and encouragement he hoped to pass along. He described the risk he had undertaken in releasing the Pentagon Papers, and the unexpected results it had achieved, even contributing to the end of the Vietnam War. He was spared a lifetime in prison and allowed to spend the subsequent years attempting to alert the world to the perils of nuclear war. He regretted that his efforts to dismantle the Doomsday Machine had not shown better results. And yet, he wrote, “As I look back on the last sixty years of my life, I think there is no greater cause to which I could have dedicated my efforts.”