Q Toon: Chaos at Kennedy Center

I introduced Max's mother into the Leo and Max series last winter as working in some undefined capacity at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Leo and Max are avatars for the divisions in the Ostensibly United States of America in general; Karen is just my opening for addressing a specific topic.

Open homocon Ric Grenell could have served as my excuse to draw cartoons about the JFK Center; I had drawn a few cartoons about him before Trump named him as his Trump’s chief lieutenant there. But he didn't last very long in that position; his career is in foreign policy after all, not performing arts.

So it turns out that having a recurring character remaining behind among Trump’s lickspittle Board of Misdirectors comes in handy. Leo, the liberal, seems to enjoy needling Karen about Donald Diva Trump’s mission of recreating it as a memorial to himself or razing it to the ground.

I took a risk in drawing this cartoon that the JFK Center would still be standing by the time my cartoon saw print. Trump's modus operandi has been to tear things down before anyone has a chance to stop him (e.g, the East Wing, trees of the East Potomac Golf Links, ethical standards, constitutional norms, and he's still just getting started).

Is it telling that the JFK Center board named a new Artistic Director, but as a contractor, not a hire? No, it's not Kimberly Guilfoyle; it's Rick Canny, who, I hear, has worked with ZZ Top and Tommy Lee, so at least he's not some random Trumpster. Since performers have cancelled in droves, and Executive Director Matthew Floca closed the Center's main building months ago on account of supposed life-safety concerns, however, I'm not clear on what art Mr. Canny has to direct.

The Center's current regime put an end to those rainbow ribbons that came with JFK Center awards, so perhaps Mr. Canny can work on a more Trumpy design for when Trump celebrates giving all the awards to himself. A Confederate flag motif, perhaps.

You can guess whose scowling face will be on the gold-plated marble award medal.

Well, if I keep this up, I'm gonna spoil any possibility of bringing Karen back in a future cartoon, so enough is enough. 

Unless she ends up working along with everybody else from the JFK Center at the Donald Commodius Trump Presidential White House Memorial Ballroom and Bunker for the Performing Arts.

Of Graham Bondage

Since last week's Graphical History Tour memorialized a sitting U.S. Senator who claims not to be dead, this week's episode rustles up my cartoons about one of his Republican colleagues whose passing is less, ah, speculative.

April, 2010

Lindsey Graham himself barely appeared in what I believe was my first cartoon about him, sixteen years ago. An anti-immigrant Tea Partisan then from South Carolina, William Gheen, alleged that Senator Lindsey Graham was being blackmailed over his widely rumored homosexual orientation to support Democrats' version of Immigration Reform.

"Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality. Come out of that closet, Lindsey. Come out of that Log Cabin closet," Gheen told a Tea Party Klatch. "Look, I'm a tolerant person. I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. Senator, I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure your being gay isn't it."

Whether in response to Gheen or not, Graham announced that he opposed the immigration bills proposed by the Democratic majority in Congress. As for Gheen, he has since migrated across the border to North Carolina, where he is President of an anti-immigration political action committee.

December, 2012

I drew this cartoon in response to Graham advocating against achieving marriage equality by congressional legislation or litigation in the courts.

Graham knew full well how unlikely getting a pro-marriage equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution approved by Congress and ratified by 34 state legislatures would be. For years, Republicans pushed an amendment to do exactly the opposite, not to mention other amendments for all sorts of their pet peeves, without getting anywhere. 

October, 2014

Did you know that Lindsey Graham ran for the Republicans' 2016 presidential nomination? Even people who were paying close attention at the time may not remember it.

Graham was running for a third term in the Senate in 2014, and told Politico that in the (inevitable) event that he won reelection, he was considering looking into a 2016 presidential run. He made his official campaign announcement on June 1, 2015, but failed to qualify for a Republican presidential debate cattle call on CNN two months later.

The highlight of his presidential campaign was calling Donald Trump "a jackass" in successive interviews on CNN and CBS. Trump responded by telling Fox & Fiends viewers Graham's personal cell phone number.

By Christmas, Graham had suspended his campaign; he then endorsed Florida Governor Jeb Bush in January. Republican voters didn't listen.

October, 2018

Neither did the Electoral College.

As Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham played a prominent role in the confirmation of Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointees. Allegations that the second of them, Brett Kavanaugh, was a beer-swilling bro in college suggested the "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" character Brick to me; casting Graham as Maggie followed as a matter of course.

That's Senators Maizie Hirono and Jeff Flake as Mae and Gooper (well, I needed somebody in those roles) and Trump as Big Daddy Pollitt.

March, 2021

Insinuating Lindsey Graham's Kinsey rating couldn't be the point of every cartoon I put him in. Sometimes, he was just a recognizable Senator to populate a cartoon about the Senate Republican Caucus. But as the supposedly closeted gay one, he afforded me the opportunity to draw a cartoon about a non-LGBTQ+ topic for the LGBTQ+ publications that run my cartoons. 

(Openly bi Senator Kyrsten Sinema also figured in this one. A two-fer!)

February, 2021

In the post for this week's cartoon, I included Lindsey Graham's "Count me out" comment on the evening after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, disassociating himself from Donald Trump. I also included Trump's more recent story of Graham then calling him up to apologize.

You certainly can't take Trump's word for anything, but Graham counting himself out on January 6 did not extend to his voting to convict Trump when the Senate voted on his impeachment trial on February 13.

Graham just couldn't stay mad at his latest infatuation.

September, 2022

Republicans who bothered at all to explain their votes against conviction claimed that since Trump was out of office, his attempt to overthrow the government should be a matter for the courts rather than the impeachment process.

As the prosecution of Trump for offenses starting with January 6, tax fraud, and sexual assault crept ever so slowly forward during Joe Biden's presidency, Lindsey Graham and quite a few other Republicans complained that pursuing justice in the courts was a bad idea, too.

In the fall of 2022, Citizen Trump was refusing to return classified papers included among dozens of bankers boxes of files he had spirited off to Mar-a-Lago, directing underlings to hide them away when the FBI showed up to seize them. Graham warned that if Trump were ever brought to trial for those actions, his hordes of MAGA minions would reprise January 6.

To his dying day, Graham was mute about any possibility of Antifa, DEI, or Woke Inc., getting violent over what now passes for the Justice Department's overtly political, Trumped up prosecutions of anyone who has ever crossed Donald Trump.

Q Toon: Breaking Bad News to the Boss

The Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™ was dealt a setback in its persecution campaign against transgender Americans last week. A federal judge in Oregon rejected in no uncertain terms Health & Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s new policy threatening to block Medicare and Medicaid funding from any hospital that offers gender reassignment therapy to transgender youth who want it.

At least 40 hospital systems across the country had halted gender therapy services after the Department of Health and Human Services issued the "Kennedy Declaration" on December 18, 2025; as a result, even families who had left transgender-hostile red states for transgender-friendly blue ones found that their children were still denied proper care.

“Unserious leaders are unsafe. There is nothing more serious than our leaders’ dedication to the rule of law so that we might maintain the integrity of our constitutional democracy,” [U.S. District Judge Mustafa T.] Kasubhai wrote.

“This case demonstrates how disregard for the rule of law does not merely result in an abstract infraction. Rather, and tragically, this case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader's wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.”

Ruling in favor of the 21 states* and the District of Columbia who filed suit against the Kennedy Declaration, Judge Kasubhai found that it exceeded the administration’s authority, violated federal rulemaking requirements, and conflicted with existing law, "effectively banning by fiat an entire category of healthcare."

Judge Kasubhai's 49-page decision rejected as "absurd" the HHS contention that reversing the Kennedy Declaration would deny the Secretary his right to express his views on important public issues. 

"Defendants cannot bully or gaslight this Court into ignoring the many procedural and legal flaws of the Kennedy Declaration by invoking one of the most sacred principles of our constitutional democracy — the freedom of speech — when that principle comes nowhere close to being implicated. Rather, Plaintiffs' claims challenge Kennedy's authority to unilaterally, categorically, and without any process, supersede professional standards of care regarding gender-affirming care that apply in the Plaintiff states."

A higher Court (ahem) might have five or six more charitable opinions of an unserious leader's wanton disregard for the rule of law. But for now, let's enjoy our successes and liberties while we still have them.

_____________

* The 21 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

 

This Week's Sneak Peek

This is my first attempt to caricature TV's Mehmet Oz, currently in charge of the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™'s administration of Medicaid and Medicare Services. Were you able to recognize him before checking out his necktie?

My Better Half tells me that I've drawn RFK Jr. too flatteringly (three times in this week's cartoon, more recognizably in the first panel than this one). In case there might be any confusion, there's always the brain worm peeking out from his ear to help the casual reader identify him.

Q Toon: Ric Rolls with the Punches

Since I had introduced Max's mother Karen during my vacation as someone working at the Donald J. Trump John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (hereinafter referred to as the DJTJFKMC4PA), who better to interact with newly former President of the DJTJFKMC4PA, Ric Grenell?

Gay Republican Grenell has a track record of stirring up opposition wherever he goes. Republican Theocrats were up in arms when presidential candidate Mitt Romney took him on as a foreign policy surrogate; he later repeatedly offended his hosts as Ambassador to Germany in Donald Trump's First Corrupt Presidency.

With the recrudescence of Trump, Grenell came on board to oversee the bastardization of the JFK Center, sending artists and audiences streaming toward the exits. He and a new board of Trump lickspittles and right-wing ideologues rubber stamped Trump’s impetuous response to shut the DJTJFKMC4PA down for so-called renovations for the next two years.

Now, we don't know whether Grenell quit or was fired. Nor do we know what his plans for the future are; New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson attempted to ask him that quite reasonable question, only for him to throw a hissy fit back at her, huffing that she is a "left wing hack” manipulating the news.

Not the response of someone who left of her own accord, girl!

I drew my cartoon before Williamson and Grenell’s exchange became public. I suppose I would have had to draw a completely different cartoon otherwise, but Karen is not a New York Times reporter or a left wing hack. I wrote her as a rock-solid Republican. Whether she's a lickspittle or an ideologue — well, you'll have to wait and see.

At any rate, to have Grenell snap at Karen would require him to be even more of an unhinged sissy than I think he is.

But what do I know? I'm just a left-wing hack interested in attacking Republicans and manipulating the news for my own far left agenda.

Q Toon: Exit Stage Left

Here's Part Two of Mama's visit to Max and Leo's humble abode.

I've made an effort to by coy about where Max and Leo live — in what city, town, or village (someplace with a couples therapist and a coffee shop, however), what part of the country, and whether in a house or apartment. Hence the introduction of Max's mother, who, it can now be revealed is on or works for the board of directors for the so-called Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

It can also be revealed that I was away on vacation when the deadlines for last week's and this week's cartoons arrived, so these two cartoons were drawn well ahead of time. In fact, they were drawn before the Washington D.C. Opera withdrew from the DJTJFKMC4PA last month. (The Center's President Ric Grenell claims they were fired; perhaps the company wanted to present Emmett Till: the Opera by Clare Coss and Mary D. Watkins. Or had commissioned an opera about Jeffrey Epstein.)

So anyway, I've spent the last few weeks hoping that none of the real entertainers mentioned in this cartoon kick the bucket, or get arrested by ICE for protesting in Minneapolis, or denounce the renaming of the DJTJFKMC4PA. 

But then our pouty mercurial president went and brayed on Trump Social that now he is shutting the DJTJFKMC4PA down for two years in order to redesign it into the gilded Louis XIV whorehouse he’s always dreamed of.

The center’s staff learned of the imminent closure through Trump’s Truth Social post, which proposed “temporarily” closing the “Trump Kennedy Center” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” starting July 4. Trump added the move is subject to approval by the center’s board, which he chairs. — https://wapo.st/3NRd901

Phuoc that gagh damask whole.

Q Toon: Culture Cancels Back

Who says there's never any news between the holidays?

Chuck Redd is a jazz vibraphonist and drummer who has presented the Christmas Eve "Jazz Jams" at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts every year since 2006. This year, he abruptly canceled his performance after Donald Joffrey Trump's handpicked board of directors voted to deface the building by bolting his name above President Kennedy's. 

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press.

If you were hoping to ring in the new year with the jazz stylings of The Coolers, they, too, canceled tonight's program. Redd and the Coolers are by no means alone in disassociating themselves from the Trumpified JFK Center. 

Trump, in one of the first acts of his second term as President of the United States, fired the JFK Center's existing Board of Directors, naming a new board who elected Trump its Chairman. In response, producers of Hamilton canceled its 2026 run at the Kennedy Center; actor/producer Issa Rae and J. Geils Band lead singer Peter Wolf and folk singer Kristy Lee called off their scheduled appearances, as has Doug Varone's Dance Company; and folk musician Rhiannon Giddens moved her concert to a different D.C. venue, The Anthem. 

The Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican band Balún canceled their concert there last February, explaining, "Recent events made it clear that the space no longer aligns with our values. Our safety, integrity, and commitment to justice come first." The Washington National Opera were also mulling leaving the DJTJFK Center due to a 43%  drop in ticket sales since the Trumpsters' hostile takeover, although they have since denied thinking about it

The Center's Trumpist president, Ric Grenell, has announced that the DJTJFK board plans to sue Redd for breach of contract, sending Mr. Redd an angry letter on "Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts" letterhead.

My guess is that Mr. Redd's lawyers might argue that he is not in breach of contract because anything calling itself "The Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Board of Directors" has no authority to act on behalf of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The Center's birthname was explicitly mandated by congressional act at its creation, and another act of Congress would be required to change it.

Given Mr. Trump's history of stiffing contractors and performers at the long since bankrupt casino bearing his name, I wouldn't count on paychecks from the transfigured DJTJFK Center being worth the paper they would be printed on. No doubt, the ether through which any bitcoin from them wafts is worth even less.

✍

By the way, per U.S. Code § 76j,

(b)Restriction on additional memorials

(1)Except as provided in paragraph (2) of this subsection, the Board shall assure that after December 2, 1983, no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

(2)Paragraph (1) of this subsection shall not apply to—

(A)any plaque acknowledging a gift from a foreign country;

(B)any plaque on a theater chair or a theater box acknowledging the gift of such chair or box; and

(C)any inscription on the marble walls in the north or south galleries, the Hall of States, or the Hall of Nations acknowledging a major contribution;

which plaque or inscription is permitted under policies of the Board in effect on December 2, 1983.

Q Toon: Kennedy-nial of Care

During Donald Joffrey Trump's first term, I drew a cartoon about his transphobic policies that suggested that he was only pursuing them to satisfy his supporters on the religious right. They are hardly a factor in his second term, so I have to conclude that his persecution of the transgender community is central to his psyche.

Somewhere along the line, there's a girl in his past who turned out to have a little something extra downstairs, and the experience haunts him like Freddy Krueger.

Trump has found a kindred spirit in Robert Felcher Kennedy. The erstwhile environmentalist readily forsook advocacy for renewable energy and fuel efficiency in favor of feels-based health care.

Don't like pills and needles? You're in luck. Newly revised Health & Human Services protocols recommend against vaccines in favor of poultices, whale blubber, and burning some parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. 

Suffering from gender dysphoria? You're in luck, too. Kennedy and the Republican establishment have declared that it doesn't exist any more. If you're unhappy looking in the mirror, botox, lip injections, and rhinoplasty are all hunky-dory, but everything below the chin has gotta stay just as God made it.

And they have ways of making you get used to it.

The ban takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare. The first prohibits doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care provided to transgender patients younger than age 18. Medicaid is the health care program that covers low-income Americans.

The second rule blocks all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care. Virtually every hospital in the country takes Medicare, which covers older Americans and the disabled. Because hospitals rely on Medicare, the rule would have a wide-ranging effect.

Supporters and opponents of transgender rights agree that, taken together, the forthcoming hospital rules could make access to pediatric gender-affirming care across the country extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Even non-chemical, non-surgical approaches are verboten. The Trump Food & Drug Administration has sent warning letters to companies that manufacture and sell chest binders, used by transgender men and some nonbinary people to flatten their chests. The FDA charges that the companies failed to register their products as Class I medical devices with the FDA, in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.  “Failure to adequately address this matter may result in regulatory action being initiated by the FDA without further notice. These actions include, but are not limited to, seizure and injunction.”

I don't imagine that the FDA is going to send that same letter to the makers and sellers of girdles and brassieres.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary claimed that the brands were guilty of “illegal marketing of breast binders for children, for the purposes of treating gender dysphoria.”....

Makary did not cite evidence that any of the brands market their binders to children; Them found no such marketing copy supporting Makary’s claim on the brands’ websites. Conservatives have claimed for years that discussions of gender identity alone are harmful to children, and their rhetoric has escalated over time; during the HHS press conference, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz falsely claimed that trans youth regularly receive vaginoplasties and phalloplasties costing up to $150,000; in fact, the vast majority of gender-affirming surgeries performed on minors are breast reduction procedures offered to cisgender boys.

The House has also passed bills this month making it a crime to provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors and prohibiting Medicaid reimbursement for gender-affirming care for youth. Neither bill has much chance of passing the Senate unless tucked into other must-pass legislation ― such as the next temporary government funding bill.

All of which will be worth remembering every time Republicans try to tell you that they are not the party of big, obtrusive, over-regulating government.

P.S.: Merry Christmas, and Happy Miscellaneous Holidays!

This Week's Sneak Peek

The Trump maladministration won't tell you, but today is World AIDS Day.

Last week's cartoon mused that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Health and Human Services Department could use the occasion to spread unscientific garbage about HIV/AIDS. Instead, the State Department has issued a directive that forbids anyone in the executive branch from even mentioning World AIDS Day.

The state department has directed its employees and grant recipients not to use US government funds to mark the event – which falls annually on 1 December – and not to promote the day publicly. The news was first reported by the journalist Emily Bass and confirmed in an email viewed by the New York Times. ...

[T]hey should “refrain from publicly promoting World Aids Day through any communication channels, including social media, media engagements, speeches or other public-facing messaging”.

The email also reportedly said the government’s policy is “to refrain from messaging on any commemorative days, including World AIDS Day”, even though Donald Trump has issued proclamations for dozens of other observances, including Anti-Communism Week and National Energy Dominance Month.

As Emily Bass notes,

[U.S. Government] personnel may attend external, locally organized World AIDS Day events but may not speak at these events or promote their attendance via social media or media channels.

I suppose it's better than promoting the sort of half-baked crackpot fantasies that are the hallmark of the present regime.

But yes, Silence = Death.

Q Toon: Scoff Drops

Leo and Max, my heteropolitical homosexual couple, are back. And they have a dog!

Earlier this month, the CDC website under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Felcher Kennedy Jr. began promoting the unfounded fantasy that vaccines cause autism. Turning 180 degrees from its previous position, the U.S. public health agency's now purports, "The claim 'vaccines do not cause autism' is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism."

RFK and a cottage industry of flat-earthers and alien abductees have been promoting a link between vaccines (the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in particular, but not exclusively) based on a 1998 study which has long since and many times been discredited. The Lancet, which had published it, formally retracted its claims in 2010. Ten of its 13 authors had earlier done likewise. Its primary author, Andrew Wakefield, has since been stripped of his medical license in his native Britain for falsifying timelines and misrepresenting the case histories of his study's subjects.

But the present U.S. kakistocracy has replaced medical professionals at HHS and the CDC with unqualified bamboozlers whose main qualifications are that they claim know where Elvis lives and recommend sugar-loaded gum for patients who brush their teeth. Having brain worms, a history of drug abuse, and a penchant for cringeworthy love "poetry" is a plus.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has issued a statement criticizing the CDC's new language:

It is important to point out that the 2012 Institute of Medicine report assessing adverse effects of vaccines and cited by the CDC, found that very few health problems are caused by or clearly associated with vaccines. Further, based on our body of work on this topic and the overwhelming scientific consensus, we support the statement that vaccines do not cause autism.

There is a substantial body of work, including expert reports from the National Academies, dating back decades analyzing data and providing guidance on the important question of childhood vaccine safety.  That work has affirmed that childhood vaccines are safe for the general population with long-established benefits of preventing illness and averting death.

For a second opinion, the American Medical Association concurs:

"Vaccination is essential to protect individuals and communities from preventable diseases, making it a fundamental element of public health. The AMA is deeply concerned that perpetuating misleading claims on vaccines will lead to further confusion, distrust, and ultimately, dangerous consequences for individuals and public health.”

And from the American Association of Pediatrics:

 “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website has been changed to promote false information suggesting vaccines cause autism. Since 1998, independent researchers across seven countries have conducted more than 40 high-quality studies involving over 5.6 million people. The conclusion is clear and unambiguous: There’s no link between vaccines and autism. Anyone repeating this harmful myth is misinformed or intentionally trying to mislead parents. 

"We call on the CDC to stop wasting government resources to amplify false claims that sow doubt in one of the best tools we have to keep children healthy and thriving: routine immunizations. The American Academy of Pediatrics stands with members of the autism community who have asked for support in stopping this rumor from spreading any further.”

Q Toon: Catching Up

It is finally time to extricate Leo the Liberal from Trumplinka Concentration Camp and extrajudicial expulsion to Shitholistan, so I've decided that his partner, MAGA Max, finally checked his phone messages and discovered that Leo was waiting for him at the Ottawa airport.

How they will explain returning to the United States without any luggage I leave to your own imagination.

Having recently traveled by car through southern Ontario, I can report that passing into Canada at Niagara Falls was a breeze, whereas coming back into the U.S. at Port Huron entailed a twenty-minute traffic jam at customs. The questioning at either border was friendly and non-problematic; we did see one car directed aside for further examination, but of course, we have no idea why.

But while a real human being who was returned from unjust banishment to a Salvadorian concentration camp is now being threatened with expulsion to Uganda, I'm going to let Leo fall between the cracks of Trump's lawless deportation purges. Probably.

The stumbling block I had to surmount for this cartoon (besides the Canadian flight attendants union strike) was Max's dialogue in the second and third panels. It doesn't quite sound like something a MAGAzoid would say.

But for the past several months, Trumpian fascism has affected Max directly. Now that it no longer does, Max, like the rest of the MAGA flock who used to see threats to democracy and the Constitution everywhere, will go back to blind Trump l'oeilty.

In 2020, Trump's blustering, blundering response to the COVID-19 pandemic was something that affected all of us directly, and helped convince a majority of the U.S. electorate that he had to go. 

Four years later, few of us were still directly affected by COVID-19; the pandemic seemed manageable. So a majority of the U.S. electorate decided, hey, what the heck, better to elect a manifestly corrupt, lying, self-absorbed, dim-witted, venal, seditious convicted felon who nearly got us all killed, than that Black woman.

Q Toon: Consider This Your Trigger Warning

The 988 National Suicide & Crisis Lifeline of the U.S. Health & Human Services Department is set to stop providing tailored support options for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults on July 17.

The general 988 Lifeline offers free mental health support via call, text, or chat. It is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a subsidiary of the US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS). 

Currently, LGBTQ young people can select option 3 from a call menu in order to connect with counsellors. After the changes, the remaining 988 Lifeline services would "focus on serving all help seekers", including those who previously chose to access LGBTQ youth services, SAMHSA said.

But the hotline would "no longer silo LGB+ youth services," SAMHSA wrote in a statement, omitting the "T" and "Q" that refers to transgender and queer people in the LGBTQ acronym.

Given the Trump-DOGE regime's emphasis not on devotion to the mission of one's agency, on expertise, and on competence — but rather on fealty to Generalissimo Trump and a fierce commitment to banishing "wokeness" in all its forms — LGB+ youth cannot expect a sympathetic ear or helpful advice from whatever de-silofied government employees remain at the other end of the phone.

I have to suspect that T and Q youth are guaranteed not to.

If you don't believe me, believe Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, who described the present LGBTQ+ lifeline to NBC News as "a chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents."

I don't have any scientific studies to back this up, but I'll bet there is a significant subset of LGBTQ+ youth considering suicide for whom one or both parents are at least as LGBTQ-hostile as Ms. Cauley is.

Here are ways to reach privately funded LGBTQ youth suicide prevention hotlines:

• Trevor Project LGBTQ Crisis Hotline: 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678
• Trans Lifeline (run for and by trans people): 1-877-565-8860 Monday-Friday, 8:00 am to 4:00 pm Central Time

Please note that reports of Canada making its hotline available to U.S. citizens are false.

Space. The Final Vomitorium.

When I slap together these Graphical History Tours featuring my own cartoons, I usually dredge up one cartoon from each decade marker for the month. But when I started looking through the cartoons from April of 1985, I couldn't decide which one I wanted to write about.

So here are a whole bunch of them.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Apr. 25, 1985

With the current maladministration punishing any media that don't kowtow to Trumpspeak, here's a reminder of an earlier president's efforts to get reporters to echo the Official Line.

Unlike the Gulf of Mexico, which has bore that name for centuries, the Reagan administration's space-based "Strategic Defense Initiative" was brand new. But it was popularly called "Star Wars" after the film series. Reagan and spokesflack Larry Speakes were up against late-night comedians and editorial cartoonists. "Star Wars" was shorter than "Strategic Defense Initiative" and pithier than "SDI."

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 4, 1985

This cartoon starred local Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI) in a triple role. The inset copies a cartoon I had drawn for the Ranger the previous November, after Aspin had debated Republican challenger Pete Janssen on the Parkside campus, cruising on his way to an eighth term. First elected in 1970 as a critic of the Vietnam War who had served as a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam and a Pentagon systems analyst under Robert MacNamara.

With some serious seniority under his belt in 1985, the Defense Department gadfly was named Chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and his more conservative positions soon came to the fore. I drew this cartoon after he voted in favor of Reagan's Star Wars program and the controversial MX missile system.

He would also support Reagan administration aid to the Contras fighting against the socialist government of Nicaragua, and later, George H.W. Bush's build-up to the Gulf War I. It got him deposed as Armed Services Committee Chair, but only briefly; it also got him named Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense.

In the meantime, his House position in those days got us Blue Angel fly-overs on Fourths of July hereabouts.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

Wharton School of Business D-student Donald Trump has been wreaking havoc recklessly imposing and revoking draconian tariffs, eviscerating your 401k and college savings fund. It's all part of his cunning plan to undo decades of global free trade.

Forty years ago, the postwar American dominance of world markets was suddenly challenged by Japan. In the 1960's, Americans considered Japanese products cheap and of inferior quality; but after the energy crisis of the 1970's made gas-guzzlers unfashionable, Japanese automakers produced fuel-efficient cars while U.S. automakers were slow to retool.

The U.S. complaint was that Japan was not letting American goods into their country while underselling our domestic manufacturers. (And then buying our domestic manufacturers.) At the end of March, both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions calling for retaliation against Japan unless it reduced its trade imbalance with the U.S. Over the course of the year, 300 protectionist bills were introduced in Congress by members of both political parties. 

So the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations hammered out free trade agreements wherever they could; and thus Coke was able to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. And domestic manufacturers moved all the jobs to Mexico, China, and wherever the median wage was a bushel of beans per month.

✍

I drew an alternating pair of comic strips for the Ranger that year. "Reductio and Absurdam" starred a man and a woman — I never established which was Reductio and which was Absurdam — who appeared in a variety of situations. They might be a couple, or co-workers, or teller and customer, as the gag warranted.

"Reductio and Absurdam" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., April 11, 1985

The only consistent conceit was that, except for any text, I drew the cartoon in charcoal. The problem with charcoal as opposed to india ink is that I couldn't go back and erase pencil marks showing around the charcoal. 

I called the other cartoon "Post Nasal Strip." That I drew with india ink, the medium I've relied on for most of my cartoons for not quite 60 years. 

"Post Nasal Strip" in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Apr. 11, 1985

"Post Nasal Strip" tended to be more topical than "Reductio and Absurdam," here highlighting a quote by Sen. Jake Garn (R-UT) upon his return from a jaunt into outer space on the space shuttle Discovery. NASA had publicly mused about sending a artist, journalist, or teacher as the first civilian into space, but gave the seat to the Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies instead.

Garn had flown as a pilot with the U.S. Navy and the Utah National Guard before winning election to Congress in 1974. Designated "payload specialist" for the Discovery flight, he was the guinea pig for experiments on Space Adaptation Syndrome. So basically, he was there to throw up.

And so he did. And the rest is History.

"Jake Garn was sick, was pretty sick. I don't know whether we should tell stories like that. But anyway, Jake Garn, he has made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most guys will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high. And within the Astronaut Corps, he forever will be remembered by that."

Two side notes about my cartoon: I snuck in the Ranger Features Editor, Jim Niebuhr, as the fellow delivering the punch line in the final panel. And yes, having performed on a thrust stage, I know what a vomitorium really is.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., May 2, 1985

Last week's Graphical History Tour was all about the fall of South Vietnam, so I'll close with this cartoon drawn for its tenth anniversary.

The cartoon was supposed to accompany an article about the anniversary. The article didn't run, but the Ranger ran my cartoon anyway, just below the cartoon I had drawn for the editorial page.

You'll notice that there is one president missing from my cartoon. There was a war in Vietnam (this time with China) during Jimmy Carter during his presidency, but the U.S. stayed out of if. Nor did Carter commit American troops to a shooting war anywhere else, so there was no particular reason for me to include Carter in this cartoon.

Q Toon: Healther Skelter

Faced with such a blizzard of wanton destruction from the Corrupt Trump Regime, it’s easy to miss the individual losses as they continually pile up. Today’s cartoon highlights the deep cuts in federal funding for health and safety programs under the reckless authority of one Mr. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy came to the Cabinet of Total Incompetence by virtue of his embrace of anti-vaccine quackery (although faced with a thoroughly predictable epidemic of measles out of Texas, he has reluctantly come out in favor of letting parents who haven't succumbed to anti-vax hysteria get their children vaccinated, while leaving the anti-vaxxers free to spread the disease far and wide).

Of particular concern to the LGBTQ+ community are cuts already made to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs.

The “reductions in force” last week at the CDC gutted branches responsible for a slew of prevention services: Expert guidance on preventing infant infections, a national at-home testing program, long-running surveys to follow people living with and at risk for HIV, statistical analysis to estimate national HIV incidence, and guidelines on how to use HIV prevention drugs or PrEP, including a powerful new medicine likely to be approved this summer.

STAT has also learned that funds have been suspended for the HIV Prevention Trials Network and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the two most prominent networks for testing prevention drugs and vaccines. Funds have also been suspended for the AIDS Clinical Trial Group, a nearly 40-year-old system that has been responsible for key breakthroughs dating back to the first effective AIDS drug, AZT. All three have been waiting on money that were supposed to be sent out in February. 

Another AIDS Clinical Trial Group study testing four interventions to prevent HIV in Black men who have sex with men in the South, a particularly vulnerable group, was also slashed. The ACTG announced that for lack of funds, it has paused enrollment for all of its studies but one.

HHS cuts are negatively affecting plenty of other department responsibilities as well, from Alzheimer's, to child welfare, Meals on Wheels, mental health, lead abatement, and more. My Dad serves on the local Board of Health here, which is one of many having to deal with deep cuts to COVID response funding.

When Kennedy was interviewed by CBS News's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Jonathan LaPook, this week, the HHS Secretary pleaded ignorance of specific cuts he had theoretically overseen.

LaPook provided Kennedy with an example of a $750,000 University of Michigan grant focused on adolescent diabetes, which was eliminated.
"I didn't know that, and that's something that we'll look at," Kennedy said. He added that he could not speak to if it should be considered a DOGE cut.

It's therefore hard to put any stock in any claims that Medicaid and Medicare will be spared debilitating cuts to workforce and services. Republicans from top to bottom dislike any program that does not directly benefit people who aren't their billionaire sugar daddies.

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I'm still working on how to capture RFK Jr. in caricature. For now, I trust that the little brain worm sticking out of his ear suffices in lieu of a text label.