[guest post by Dana]

Here is an update on little Charlie Gard’s heartbreaking situation. Giving parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard a glimmer of hope, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children has requested a new hearing in the case of their son:

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children has today applied to the High Court for a fresh hearing in the case of Charlie Gard in light of claims of new evidence relating to potential treatment for his condition.

We have just met with Charlie’s parents to inform them of this decision and will continue to keep them fully appraised of the situation.

Two international hospitals and their researchers have communicated to us as late as the last 24 hours that they have fresh evidence about their proposed experimental treatment.

And we believe, in common with Charlie’s parents, it is right to explore this evidence.

The preliminary hearing is set to take place tomorrow, with the hearing possibly continuing on Thursday.

While this is certainly good news, it’s nonetheless infuriating that precious time was wasted while Connie Yates and Chris Gard were stripped of their parental functions and official entities began making life and death decisions concerning Charlie. At least for now, Charlie Gard will live another day.

Also, two U.S. hospitals have offered to admit Charlie for treatment:

New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center said late Thursday that it would admit and evaluate Charlie “provided that arrangements are made to safely transfer him to our facility, legal hurdles are cleared, and we receive emergency approval from the FDA for an experimental treatment as appropriate,” according to a statement to The Washington Post.

Moreover, it is being reported that there has been an offer to send the necessary drugs to England so that Charlie could receive treatment there since the family has been forbidden to take him out of the hospital, let alone the country. Unfortunately, though, that option includes hurdling bureaucratic red-tape:

The U.S. hospital said another option could be to ship an experimental drug to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Charlie is being treated. The American hospital said it would provide instructions on administering the drug, provided the FDA gives clearance.

Sadly, in spite of these glimmers of hope, the parents are still being cruelly and unnecessarily jerked around by those in power:

The hospital fighting to remove 11-month-old Charlie Gard from life support blocked a Presbyterian minister invited by Charlie’s parents from praying at his bedside, and then reversed course and let him in.

Rev. Patrick Mahoney, pastor of Church on the Hill and Director of the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, D.C., is one of several international human rights activists who flew to England to help Chris Gard and Connie Yates in their ongoing struggle to treat their son.

…

Connie Yates said initially she was “heartbroken” that Mahoney was blocked from being allowed to pray with Charlie, as she and her husband wanted.

“Thankfully,” after a “long process,” the hospital “did recant and allow me to go pray for him,” Mahoney told LifeSiteNews in an exclusive interview at 1:42 p.m. EST.

“I can’t even put it into words, it was so moving,” Mahoney said of praying with the baby whose parental rights and bioethics case has garnered international attention. “Connie, his mother, was feeding him. Chris was there. We laid hands on him and prayed together. He has beautiful stuffed animals all around him. And it was just a touching, beautiful moment.”

Mahoney noted that initially being denied access to pray with Charlie was troubling and emotionally stressful for Chris and Connie. He said in a news release before being granted permission that never once in 40 years of pastoral ministry had a hospital refused to let him pray with a patient.

“First they said they would have to check” if Mahoney could pray with Charlie, he told LifeSiteNews. “Then they said we couldn’t go. Then they gave [us] permission and then when we were going with his mother into the room, they denied us. And then we sent the news release out” and then finally received permission.

Obviously, Great Ormond Hospital and the State have faced tremendous pushback from Charlie’s supporters who have staged protests at the hospital, Downing Street and outside Buckingham Palace. Further, after Pope Francis set his Archbishop straight and clarified the Vatican’s support of Charlie and his parents, followed by President Trump’s public offer of help, we just might be seeing a slow turning of the tides. Maybe this is just me being hopeful that the obscene treatment of one small family will somehow be righted. Not undone, not forgiven, but at least as far as one little life is concerned, permission to allow help for him will be granted.

A protest is scheduled outside of the hospital today along with the delivery of a petition which has 350,000 signatures on it supporting the cause of Charlie and his parents.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

So yesterday a wily former KGB agent got over two hours to have a crack at a simpleton who knows the nation’s most prized state secrets. What could go wrong?

Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard says, a lot went wrong. Indeed, he says that Trump caved to Putin yesterday.

Hayes complains that Trump let Russia skate entirely on its efforts to interfere with the United States presidential election. But where Hayes really hits home is in his criticism of the meeting as it related to Syria:

The embarrassment wasn’t limited to interference in U.S. elections. There was Syria, too, where Tillerson claimed that American and Russian “objectives are exactly the same.”

It is absurd to claim that our objectives in Syria—where the United States has called for the end of the Assad regime that Russia is supporting—are exactly the same. Forget being identical; in most cases, they aren’t even coincidental.

. . . .

[I]n April the U.S. government accused Russia of complicity in an unprovoked chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. And on Friday, the secretary of State claimed that America and Russia have exactly the same objectives in Syria.

And then Tillerson went even further. On matters where the United States and Russia have different views, he said, it may be that the Russians (who are actively backing a dictator slaughtering his own people) have got “the right approach and we’ve got the wrong approach.” Imagine for a moment the reaction from Republicans if John Kerry had made such a claim.

At PowerLine, Paul Mirengoff says that Hayes’s “Trump caved” characterization is “unfair.” I found Mirengoff’s argument less than fully convincing, though — especially this part:

Hayes also complains about what he thinks went down between Trump and Putin regarding Syria. He cites Tillerson’s statement that American and Russian “objectives are exactly the same.”

The statement is, as Hayes says, absurd. But there’s little reason to think that Trump, or even Tillerson, believes it.

Color me skeptical when your argument is: don’t worry about the “absurd” thing our Secretary of State just said. Probably neither he nor the President actually believes it.

But there’s a ceasefire! Isn’t that a good thing? Sure — if you think Vladimir Putin is a honest fella. Garry Kasparov, who knows a thing or two about Putin, has this to say:

Bingo. Few wars are as deadly as a ceasefire announced by Putin! Unless everyone he wanted to murder is already dead. https://t.co/CFyeLDsGVZ

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) July 7, 2017

To Hayes’s analysis above, I would add the shameful spectacle of a man who has ordered journalists to be murdered pointing at a group of journalists and asking Trump: “These are the ones who insulted you?” Not only is this apparent confirmation of the prediction before the meeting that Trump would whine to Putin about “FAKE NEWS!!” but it is also, to put it mildly, creepy and chilling given Putin’s history. Putin might have Trumpers fooled — but he knows that at least some of the journalists know what Putin did to journalists like Anna Politkovskaya.

I know many will say: hey, but Trump said tough stuff and took tough action regarding Russia before the meeting. Well, sure. Trump is fundamentally a coward who caters to his audience. He talks about “radical Islamic terrorism” in Warsaw, but not Saudi Arabia. He says in Warsaw: “We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression” — but when he speaks face to face with Putin, a man who kills journalists who engage in free speech and expression, he tells him he won’t meddle in Putin’s domestic affairs.

This cowardice sends a message to someone like Putin, who has sized up American leaders before. Putin determined that Bush and Obama were weaklings, and he has no doubt come to the same conclusion about Trump.

Expect aggression from Putin during Trump’s presidency. Yesterday’s meeting assured it.

UPDATE: Commenter shipwreckedcrew points out that the comment from Putin “These are the ones who insulted you?” was made “ahead of” the two-hour meeting. In the post, I said that the statement was “apparent confirmation of the prediction before the meeting that Trump would whine to Putin about ‘FAKE NEWS!!'” Since the comment was made ahead of the meeting, it was not right to call it “confirmation” of what they discussed in the meeting. It would be more accurate to say that the comment showed that Putin was aware of Trump’s attitude towards the press, and willing to exploit it in public. I find laughable the notion that Putin didn’t exploit as well in their private meeting. I find equally laughable the notion that Trump — who obsesses over his purportedly unfair treatment at the hands of the press — didn’t whine about the press during their lengthy meeting. In fact, I’d bet my house on it.

UPDATE x2: The same link shows that when Putin made the comment, Trump “chuckled.”

Scum.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]