Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld

President Donald Trump directed the National Park Service (NPS) to remove the Rainbow Pride Flag from the Stonewall National Monument in New York City on February 5, 2026. This came just one year after the NPS deleted all references to transgender and queer people from its website of the Stonewall National Monument through Trump’s executive order. The initialism that once read LGBTQ+ has been reduced to LGB, standing for lesbian, gay, and bisexual. Local and state elected officials, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) and Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal (D), are planning to re-raise the Pride Flag in defiance of the […]

I  opened an email announcement sent by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, with the subject line: these colors don’t run – Independence Day special. I felt as if I were struck by one of the lightning bolts that had been igniting the skies the past few days above my western Massachusetts town. Initially I thought perhaps an right-wing organization had ripped off the mailing lists of queer and trans community members to co-opt our movement by employing similar imagery and textual phraseology used by those who oppose us. Along with the ad for a rainbow-winged eagle shirt, […]

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.” -Holocaust survivor, social justice writer, and activist Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on Dec. 10, 1986. Elie Wiesel’s words are as true today as they were the day he delivered them, […]

Since Donald Trump took over the White House for the second time, we, the people of the United States and across the globe, have suffered a virtual whiplash compared to the policy initiatives during Joe Biden’s first week in office and throughout his presidency. During his campaign, Trump threatened to be “a dictator on day one.” Well, if the dozens of executive orders he signed in his first few days in office are any indication, he is certainly following through on that promise. On oligarchy In his farewell speech to the nation before leaving office, President Biden warned of a […]

Political changes often seem like a pendulum swinging back and forth in endless motion. In our current era, the pendulum is on a rightward trajectory in many “liberal democracies” like France, Germany, and of course, the United States. Many of us who believe in the democratic principles of social justice are shocked by the right-wing direction the United States has taken with the second election of Donald Trump. Many thought his first successful bid for the presidency was a mere fluke, but his recent victory shows the underlying roots of anti-liberalism, or more appropriately, the deeply embedded patriarchal Christian white […]

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”― Lyndon B. Johnson When President Lyndon B. Johnson made this comment in the 1960s, he could have been gazing into a crystal ball. The words perfectly predict the political agenda on which Donald Trump based his racist and misogynistic campaigns in his effort to divide and conquer the electorate.  Trump has transformed the concept of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) into an accusation and […]

Ellen DeGeneres and her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, have placed their Montecito, California mansion up for sale and flown to the United Kingdom’s rural posh Cotswolds region, where they have relocated in the wake of Donald Trump’s second election as president. I seriously hope they take with them their absurd and irritating “Kind Science” cosmetics infomercials, where their airbrushed pearly white skin seems to fade into the background.  And that is actually the point. These two entitled white women with an inordinate amount of wealth can choose to pack up, fly away, and live abroad when the going gets rough here […]