Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Watertown Unified School District Board doubles down on its freak-out over LGBTQ-themed musical selection for wind symphony concert

 
7 more bricks in the wall
Photo credits:  Watertown Unified School District
Headline:  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/13/2026

Alec Johnson reports:
The decision didn't come without fiery opposition from most in attendance. 
Board members voted, 7-1, May 12 to prohibit the wind symphony from playing "A Mother of a Revolution" by Omar Thomas, a work inspired by Marsha Johnson, a trans woman credited with being an instigator of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, considered to be a pivotal event of the LGBTQ liberation movement, according to Thomas' website. 
Laurie Hoffmann [top left], the board's president, was the only board member to vote against banning the piece. Board member Craig Wortman [bottom right] was not at the meeting. The board's decision was met with a loud round of boos and shouting from most of the people in attendance before they walked out. [emphasis added]

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Trump's Big Beautiful Tariffs boost the cost of your groceries

 
Headline:  The New York Times, 

Peter Eavis reports on Trump's sabotage of the American economy:
Just over a year ago, Mr. Trump imposed high tariffs on steel to try to stifle imports of the metal and bolster domestic production. 
But imports of the kind of steel used to make cans surged in 2025, and American can makers say they will remain heavily dependent on foreign supplies — now made more expensive by the tariffs — for a long time. 
“We have to import all this tin plate,” said Scott Breen, the president of the Can Manufacturers Institute, referring to the thinly rolled steel that is coated with tin and used to make cans. “There’s not any more being produced here than there was before.” The institute is a trade group representing some of the largest can makers in the United States. 
Unlike some of Mr. Trump’s other tariffs, which have been overturned by courts, the steel levies have strong legal standing, according to scholars, which means they are unlikely to go away anytime soon. [emphasis added]

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94% of hantavirus cases in the United States have occurred west of the Mississippi River

 
With New Mexico leading the pack.

Map and headline: MedPage Today, 5/12/2026

Rachael Robertson reports:
There have been hundreds of hantavirus cases in the U.S. over the 30 years that the CDC has been tracking it -- and most of those cases have been in one region. 
CDC began tracking laboratory-confirmed hantavirus cases in the U.S. in 1993 when there was an outbreak of severe respiratory illnesses in the Four Corners region where Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico meet. Two years later, hantavirus became a nationally notifiable disease, meaning it is now reported through the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System when a patient has a fever and diagnosis is laboratory confirmed. The most recent CDC hantavirus data are from 2023. 
In that 30-year time period, there have been 890 laboratory-confirmed hantavirus cases; 859 involved hantavirus pulmonary syndrome cases while the remainder were non-pulmonary infections. About a third (35%) of people who had hantavirus died. [emphasis added]

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