Insidious tactics of politicians – Part II

If you missed Part I, here’s a link to it: https://janetswritingblog.com/2026/05/27/insidious-tactics-of-politicians-part-i/.

If you are a woman, you have been subjected to unwanted comments in a work environment and/or in public. You have had a man you did not know press himself up against you in an elevator. You have experienced other unwanted touching by a man.

If you are a woman of a certain age… say 73 … you have probably experienced a man saying to you in a job interview, “I don’t think a woman can handle this job” even though you held a master’s degree in the field in which you were being interviewed.

Carefully read the words of Project 2025. Look at the policies being pushed by The Heritage Foundation. They are anti-female. In the Trump Era, it is becoming increasingly acceptable for men in high positions or those seeking positions of influence and responsibility to say that they don’t think women should have the right to vote.

Before you cast a vote in November for a U.S. Representative or U.S. Senator… or a Governor… or a city council member… or a county commissioner… or a school board member, find out where they stand on gender equality and racial equality.

Don’t blindly vote for a state’s constitutional amendment or for anyone of any political party without knowing their opinions on these things. Your future and the future of your descendants hang in the balance.

I hate to throw North Carolina under the bus again, but here we go.

Keith Kidwell represents the 79^th State House District in eastern North Carolina. He is out to imprison a lot of women in the state.

Kidwell, who will be 65 years old in June, was born in Passaic, New Jersey. (I don’t want North Carolina to take all the blame for his existence.) He has represented the 79^th State House District since January 1, 2029

Kidwell is a member of the Oath Keepers. Need I say more?

Even if that’s all you need to know about him, I’m going to tell you more.

He is a health and life insurance salesman. That seems a strange occupation for a member of the Oath Keepers but, for all I know, that’s what they all claim to do for a living. You know… taking care of people.

On May 14, 2026, Kidwell filed House Bill 1232 in Raleigh. It proposes an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution that states that human life begins at the moment of fertilization – and that microscopic embryo is a person under the law.

Anyone doing anything to stop that embryo in its tracks will be charged with murder

It doesn’t stop there.

It goes on to legalize the “use of deadly force” against the woman or the person performing an abortion.

The wording is, “Any person has the right to defend… the life of another person, even by the use of deadly force… from willful destruction by another person. The State has an interest and a duty to defend innocent persons from willful destruction of their lives and to punish those who take the lives of persons, born or unborn, who have not committed any crime punishable by death.”

The bill makes no allowances for rape, incest, ectopic pregnancy, profound deformity of a fetus, or the mother’s age or health. The mother is fair game for anyone who wants to kill her.

Bottom line: The embryo has the right to live, but the mother does not have the right to live. In the split-second of its inception, an embryo has more rights than the woman carrying that embryo, regardless of the circumstances under which that embryo came into existence.

If this bill is approved, it will be effective as of January 1, 2027, and an amendment to the Constitution of the State of North Carolina will be on the ballot on November 3, 2026.

Kidwell was defeated in the Republican Primary in March; however, he will serve in the North Carolina House of Representatives until his term expires in January 2027.

The State of North Carolina might soon codify that a one-second-old embryo is a person with all the rights of a person. The United States Supreme Court has already ruled that a business is a person.

The people making such laws and rulings apparently only see the world in terms of black or white. It must be nice to not be bothered by any gray areas or “spirit of the law” considerations. Or common sense. Or humanity.

It must be nice to be a defeated old white man in the state legislature proposing laws that have nothing to do with you or your body.

I’m merely advocating for women’s rights. The trend I’m seeing in America in 2025 and 2026 is a serious widespread effort to take our rights away from us. Men don’t seem to understand that women were also made in God’s image, and Jesus Christ never belittled or pushed women and their concerns off into a corner. So don’t start quoting the Bible to me to try to prove me wrong.

If you would like to read NC House Bill 1232, here’s a link to it: https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewBillDocument/2025/9070/0/DRH10579-NJy-55.

Trump brags that Republicans won in the Republican primaries

Did you catch it?

In yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, Trump bragged that lots of Republicans won in the Republican primaries on Tuesday.

I guess he didn’t see that coming.

I have five questions

Why do we have to keep paying for new baseball caps for all the Cabinet members?

Why is Mount Rushmore gold on yesterday’s new baseball caps for the Cabinet members?

Does Trump plan to pour gold paint all over Mount Rushmore?

Why does a baseball cap sell for $55?

Who gets the money?

In what country were these caps made?

Asking for a friend. Nothing says redneck quite like a Trump baseball cap.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

P.S. My life would be so much simpler if I didn’t care.

Insidious tactics of politicians – Part I

It would be helpful for you to read my blog post from yesterday before you read today’s. Here’s the link to yesterday’s post: Public education is still under attack.

November 3, 2026 is Election Day in the United States. Political campaign ads will start any day now. We will be bombarded by hundreds of hours of smear campaigns

The GOP reportedly plans to spend $100 million to campaign against former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina as he runs for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Thom Tillis.

I think the right-wing conservatives have taken an ounce of misinformation and grotesquely twisted it to fit their agenda. What we have now are members of Congress making statements and laws denigrating public education. They probably don’t personally know a public-school teacher, a public-school administrator, or a public-school student.

That’s been part of the grand plan ever since the birth of the Tea Party. Day-by-day, these people chisel away at public education. We’ve certainly seen it played out by the North Carolina General Assembly!

I happen to know some public-school teachers. They are too busy trying to teach Johnny and Jane how to read and do basic math to spend time trying to force Johnny to become Jane or Jane to become Johnny.

It doesn’t help when we have a U.S. President who says that you send your son to school in the morning and he comes home that afternoon as a girl.

I know that transgenderism is an issue. I know that there are children and adults who feel trapped in a body with genitalia that does not feel right for them. My heart breaks for them. It has to be miserable to feel like you are not living in your authentic body.

Transgender people do not scare me, but right-wing regular folks and right-wing politicians who hate and fear transgender people do scare me.

As for their fear that a transgender person might enter a public restroom? That does not bother me as much as the time I was in a public women’s restroom when a man walked in and urinated in the sink.

The usage of keywords and catch phrases in campaign material should give you a clue where a candidate stands on a lot of issues.

I believe the Republican Party’s favorite word is indoctrination. Sadly, the “indoctrination” they seem most afraid of is that students might learn to be accepting of others.

They might learn that it is not right to bully others, even though the U.S. President does that daily.

They might learn that each individual should be allowed to aspire to and attain whatever occupation and level of achievement they strive for, even though daily the U.S. President berates journalists – especially those who are female and those who are female and of skin color other than white.

They might learn that girls have an equal opportunity to excel in education even though the U.S. President brags about grabbing women by their genitalia.

Politicians who spend their time worrying about non-existent problems while turning a blind eye to the horrendous corruption of the Trump Administration and its evil actions that cause the deaths of innocent people and animals do scare me.

All this right-wing broken record hoopla is pushed through the use of catch-words like “indoctrination,” “transparency,” and “parental rights.” But those hot-button words are not what’s behind this. They are just convenient ways the right-wing conservatives rely on to get our attention and try to scare us.

It will be tempting to turn off the TV from now until November 3 to avoid hearing the thousands of campaign ads. Don’t rely on what the ads say. Research a candidate’s track record. Look into the things they say when they think the microphones are muted. Look at their voting record if they’ve held public office before.

You owe it to yourself and everyone else living in the United States today and in the future.

Watch for my blog post tomorrow when I will write about a proposed anti-abortion bill under consideration in North Carolina.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Public education is still under attack

The right-wing conservatives are hell-bent on destroying public education through conspiracy theories.

My “representative” in the U.S. House of Representatives sent out an email last week that demonstrated how he has bought into all the lies being spread about public education. On May 20 he took to the House floor and waxed poetic about the indoctrination of “kids” in our public schools.

Are we talking about baby goats?

I’m sorry, but my mother was an English teacher and one of her pet peeves was people referring to children as “kids.” A “kid” is a baby goat.

I’m splitting hairs here, but our command of the English language has deteriorated to the point that Acts of Congress now use “Kids” instead of “Children.”

Last Wednesday, my congressman spoke on the House floor in support of H.R. 2616, the Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act. SIAPKA for short, I guess? (I was just trying to figure out a possible reason why “Kids” was used instead of “Children,” but the formation of a catchy acronym does not appear to fit the bill. Sorry for the pun.)

I find the wording irritating and indicative of the overall deterioration of the U.S. Congress as an institution. Why must they use slang when they name a piece of legislation?

But that’s not the point of my rant today.

My congressman’s speech on May 20 & weekly newsletter

In his remarks, my congressman made the following indictment of public education in America:

“For far too long, our education system has prioritized activism over fundamentals. Parents want their kids to learn how to read, write, solve math problems, and reach their God-given potential. Unfortunately, schools across the country have abandoned biological realities in favor of curriculum that’s infused with gender ideology, sexual education, and transgenderism. This is not education, this is indoctrination. What is equally concerning is the effort schools have put into leaving parents out of important discussions regarding their children. Parents have the right to know what their kids are being taught and what is happening to their children in schools. That’s why I am proud to stand against the indoctrination of our kids and for parents’ rights and I strongly urge my colleagues to do the same by joining me in supporting this bill.”

In his weekly e-newsletter on Saturday, he stated the following:

“Ahead of its passage this week, I spoke on the House floor in support of the Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act because our children deserve an education focused on academic excellence, not political indoctrination.

“This bill stands up for parents’ rights and reinforces a simple principle: classrooms should focus on teaching students how to read, write, think critically, and succeed in life—not pushing gender ideology, inappropriate sexual content, or radical left-wing activism.”

No doubt, Virginia Foxx will join him

Something I considered blogging about earlier this month but decided against is the written response U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx sent to a fourth grader in response to the essay he shared with her.

The boy’s mother, Emily Mango, of Greensboro, NC was furious about Ms. Foxx’s letter, so she went public with it. Her son’s school assignment was to write a persuasive essay about a topic of his choice. He wrote in favor of electric vehicles. He expressed his opinion that they were good for the environment.

In Ms. Foxx’s response to the ten-year-old, she wrote, in part, the following on May 9, 2026:

“Ask your teacher to explain propaganda to you. While I will never be able to know, my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.”

How dare she write that to a ten-year-old child!

My take

The right-wing conservations want to dictate what can and cannot be taught in our public schools. That’s what this comes down to. This proposed legislation falls in line with Trump’s Executive Orders 14168 and 14190 issued last year. That’s when he and his Department of Education went after schools and universities.

Federal grants disappeared if they supported DEI, science, or medical research. I won’t take time today to repeat those details.

It comes down to a few people who want to control what everyone studies and what everyone reads. They aren’t satisfied to control what their own children are exposed to. They want to control what your children are exposed to under the guise of “indoctrination” and “parental rights.”

Politicians who want to force their narrow-minded views on all of us? They scare me.

Politicians who were more interested in taking a couple of weeks away from Washington, DC on Friday than staying to address Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund? They scare me.

I’ll tell you how I really feel tomorrow

Tune in for how I really feel about this and some related topics in my blog post tomorrow.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

#OnThisDay: Constitutional Convention Opened, 1777

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. Take time to think about the members of our armed forces who have given their lives since 1775 so we can live in a free country.

Memorial Day used to be on May 31, but then the American people got spoiled and didn’t want a holiday to fall willy-nilly on just any day of the way, so now we remember our citizens who have died on the battlefield on a Monday so we can combine it with trips and furniture and car sales.

No excuse is too small for retailers to make a buck on such a sacred day.

My guess is that most Americans have no idea what Memorial Day is really about. When I hear someone say, “Happy Memorial Day,” I have to shake my head. What is happy about a day of remembrance of our war dead?

Since Memorial Day falls on May 25 this year, it shares the day with the opening of the 1777 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

After we declared our independence from Great Britain, we needed a framework for a government to replace the monarchy. The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress in November 1777. It was in that document, penned by John Dickinson of Delaware, that the name “United States of America” first appeared.

The Continental Congress continued to govern the new country through the end of the Revolutionary War.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Things I failed to mention earlier

With so much chaos being thrown at Americans every day, it is difficult to keep up. I have blogged four times already this week, but there are a few things I failed to mention. In fact, the first one of the items is from three weeks ago.

I started compiling the list for today’s post on Tuesday night. At first, I was going to blog about two items. As usual, though, the fire hose of egregious actions perpetrated by the Trump Regime continued to come at us. The result is seven items.

I could have added more.

White House Records

Every Presidential Administration is required to preserve all correspondence and documents and turn them over to the National Archives at the end of that President’s term.

The Trump Administration can’t be bothered with such evidence, so White House Counsel David Alan Warrington sent out a directive to the White House staff three weeks ago to alert them to major changes.

Those changes were not ordered by Congress or by the National Archives or by the U.S. Supreme Court. That leaves one source: The Trump Administration itself.

Mr. Warrington was quoted as saying the new guidelines are a “significant departure from historical practice.”

Maegan Vazquez of The Washington Post interviewed University of Maryland Professor Jason R. Baron about the policy change. Baron told the newspaper that there was nothing in the memo to prevent “the White House from directing the transfer or destruction of White House records, including tens of millions of e-mails, either before or after the end of the president’s second term in office.”

The article went on to describe the lackadaisical tenor of the memo as it told White House staffers they are “free to retain” previous policy. The article quotes Baron as saying, “The new guidance says such texts must be preserved only ‘when they are the sole record of official decision-making, government action, or contain unique information not available elsewhere. Staffers are ‘encouraged’ to memorialize the information in those exchanges ‘in a more accessible format, such as an email or memorandum,’ … rather than directly taking a screenshot or otherwise sharing the relevant exchange in its entirety.”

With Trump’s track record of the handling of government documents, what could we possibly have to worry about?

UPDATE: Federal Judge John Bates of the DC District Court ruled on May 20, 2026 that the White House must comply with the Presidential Records Act and preserve ALL presidential records. That includes text messages. It remains to be seen if Trump will comply or if there will be consequences if he doesn’t. It also isn’t known how many records have disappeared since Mr. Warrington’s memo was issued in April.

The $1.776 Billion Slush Fund & an Even Sweeter Deal

Surely you heard about it this week, unless you live in a cave.

Trump sues the IRS for $11 million.

Trump withdraws his suit against the government he leads.

The U.S. Department of (In)justice, formerly known as the Department of Justice, sets up a $1,776,000,000 slush fund for anyone who was treated unfairly by the Biden Administration to apply for compensation. This, of course, includes the MAGA rioters who assaulted police officers and trashed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, with the encouragement of Donald Trump.

These are the people who constructed a gallows on the U.S. Capitol property and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” These are the people who would have killed or severely wounded Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi if they had found her that day.

It wasn’t enough that Trump pardoned them. Now, he wants the American taxpayers to pay them $1.776 Billion for their “suffering.”

This is the same President who promised to bring prices down, promised to end inflation, and said a week or two ago that the United States can’t afford to pay for healthcare or childcare. I guess not. We have too many ballrooms, blue paint, and gold doo-dahs to pay for while giving money to the criminals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This week, Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney who is now the acting U.S. Attorney General drew up a sweet deal for not only Trump but his entire family. In a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, Blanche would not rule out a convicted felon being considered for the slush fund. I guess includes President Trump, since he is a convicted felon. Perhaps Trump will get the entire $1.776 billion.

Is the 1776 figure supposed to make us feel patriotic about this ruse?

Two police officers who were assaulted in the attempted coup on January 6, 2021 have filed suit to try to stop this slush fund from being created.

Since Congress holds the federal purse strings (at least on paper/according to the Constitution), we can hope Congress will put a stop to this corruption before it can go forward.

In return for dropping the suit, Trump and his family and any and all of their businesses are immune to Internal Revenue audits. This is from the person who is head of the U.S. Justice Department.

Every single day gets worse.

Come to think of it, Trump never shared any of his tax returns with the public during his first term. He claimed he could not because he was under an IRS audit.

Hmmm… looks like he just lost that excuse, but somehow it won’t matter.

This slush fund for Trump to use to monetarily reward the rioters who trashed the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police officers, and tried to stop a peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021 coupled with the Trump family’s virtual “Get out of jail free” card from the IRS is without a doubt the most egregious (even by Trump standards) and blatant act of corruption to ever be perpetrated by a United States President.

And yet… he still has supporters. Go figure!

Trump’s Ballroom

The Republicans in Congress want to set aside $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom, which started out at $200,000 and was going to be completely paid for by Trump’s friends.

A billion dollars here, a billion dollars there… pretty soon we’ll be talking about some real money.

On Tuesday, Trump said the ballroom will have six stories underground. A few seconds later, he said it will have three stories underground.

Either way, I’m sure Putin knows more about it than the American people who are paying for it. Anything the Russians can’t see from their satellites; Trump is bound to tell them. Anything he knows, he announces, and if he doesn’t know it, he just makes it up. He’ll probably give Putin a tour when it’s finished.

Ebola Outbreak in Republic of Congo

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a public health emergency of international concern.

You may recall that Trump pulled the United States out of WHO. He also ended USAID. He also decimated the Centers for Disease Control.

Not only can the United States not help Congo, we don’t have doctors or scientists to officially send there to analyze the current strain of Ebola. It is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There are no approved drugs or vaccines to fight it.

Famine in much of Africa

Meanwhile, the worst famine in decades is spreading in Africa.

The United States Government won’t be there to offer aid, unless the famine outlasts the Trump Regime.

Cyanide bombs on public lands

The Bureau of Land Management has gone off the rails.

The Biden Administration banned the use of spring-loaded cyanide bombs to kill wildlife on public lands in 2023.

Of course, the Trump Regime has reinstated the practice on 245 million acres of public land. Animals are baited by the scent. When they pull on the scented bait, a sodium cyanide pellet is fired into the animal’s mouth. This results in convulsions, paralysis, and then death.

It never ceases to baffle me at the joy this administration takes in killing any living thing.

More than 50 family dogs have been killed by these cyanide bombs since 1990. The bombs are an equal-opportunity killing machine. They can’t tell the difference between a coyote, an endangered species, or a child.

Way to go Trump!

Please contact your Representative in the U.S. House and ask them to vote for H.R. 4180 and you U.S. Senator and ask them to vote for S. 2179. Known as Canyon’s Law, passage of the bill would ban the use of M-44 cyanide bombs on public lands.

It is called Canyon’s law for 14-year-old Canyon Mansfield who was sprayed by a cyanide bomb along with his dog in 2017. The dog died, and Canyon was rushed to a hospital and survived. Canyon and his dog had gone for a walk in the hills behind his family’s Idaho home.

Netanyahu – Trump’s puppet

On Wednesday Trump said that Netanyahu “will do whatever I tell him to.” Actually, he said it twice.

Trump also said he has a 99% approval rating in Israel, so he might run for Prime Minister there.

Please! Go!

It seems that our Republic has slid right into a dictatorship. Trump can do anything he wants to do and there is no one to stop him. He promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, DC, but instead he has widened and deepened it. He has given “political corruption” a whole new meaning.

However, … “We the people….” Election day is November 3, 2026.

We the people can drain the swamp. We the people will drain the swamp. I have to believe that.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

A “rocky” start for Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1960

When I wrote local history articles for a newspaper a few years ago, I wrote one about the building of the Charlotte Motor Speedway and another one about the first NASCAR World 600 which was run in 1960.

It was a big deal in my childhood when the speedway was built way out in the country, miles from Charlotte. It’s not out in the country any more, due to residential and business development encroaching from all sides. Numerous NASCAR racing teams built their offices and shops in the area.

The Charlotte Motor Speedway complex of today dwarfs the original track and grandstands. The racing industry continues to be an important component of the local economy. There will be three races held here this weekend: a 200-mile race on Friday, a 300-mile race on Saturday, and a 600-mile race on Sunday. The 600-mile race on Sunday is the longest race in the NASCAR circuit. It is a 1.5-mile oval track.

It seems a waste, when people are struggling to pay for gasoline for their cars so they can commute to work, but it is what it is… and voicing concerns about an obscene waste of fuel for a motorsport is frowned upon in these parts.

History of the property

The location of the speedway holds a lot of history. It was built on the former plantation of Col. Moses Alexander. George Washington stopped by Col Alexander’s home on May 29, 1791, for a meal during his post-Revolutionary War tour of The South.

The area is known for having a lot of boulders. It is on the edge of a 22-mile syenite or ring dike. A syenite or ring dike/dyke is a circular dike around a volcano.

I am no expert on volcanoes, but what I have pieced together is that ring dikes form when there is no longer liquid holding the volcano up. The volcano collapses. When magma squeezes up in the cracks and faults in the collapsing volcano, ring dikes form.

It is an interesting geologic formation. In my research for writing the three-part series “Our 22-Mile Ring Dike” for the newspaper, I learned that there are also ring dikes in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, as well as in Africa, Australia, Scotland, and Scandinavia.

What is left inside the ring dike is a sunken area that resembles a bowl. There are places along the edge of the ring dike here where you can see long distances – more than 20 miles, while line-of-sight is limited within the “bowl.” Our ring dike was studied by U.S. Geological geologists Harry E. LeGrand and Henry Bell III in 1966.

Back to the speedway’s construction…

I mention the boulders and the ring dike because this became quite a problem when construction of the speedway was attempted. Anyone familiar with the community could have told them they were going to run into a lot of rocks and a lot of boulders.

The frustrated contractor, W. Owen Flowe, was quoted in the news media as saying, “You could have blindfolded me and dropped me in the mountains of Buncombe County and I could have picked an easier spot to build a race track.”

As if digging into tons of rocks was not enough to slow down construction, it snowed every Wednesday in March in 1960. The 19 inches of snow and additional rainfall made for a soupy construction site.

With the first World 600 race scheduled for Memorial Day weekend in May, the construction delays created headaches for everyone involved.

With the asphalt track not poured and the concrete grandstands not completed, on May 19, it was announced that the May 29 race had been postponed until June 19, 1960.

Fast-Forward to the 1960 World 600

Portions of the asphalt track broke down during qualifying, resulting in repairs being made right up until the night before the June 19, 1960 race. Most drivers sustained broken or cracked windshields while trying to qualify for the race. At least five race cars were outfitted with sheet metal to protect oil pans and gas tanks from flying rocks.

The original grandstands were built to accommodate 32,000 spectators, with room for 8,000 more in the infield. That first World 600 saw $107,775 awarded to the winners and top drivers. The winner, Joe Lee Johnson, took home $25,640 plus $480 for leading 48 laps.

Fast-Forward to the 2026 Coca-Cola 600

The annual 600-mile race is now sponsored by Coca-Cola, so it is the Coca-Cola 600.

It is highly unlikely that the asphalt track will fail or there will be flying rocks encountered during the race.

The 600-mile race draws 100,000 to 120,000 on-site spectators now in addition to a television audience of several million. There will be fans in attendance from all over the world.

The total purse for the 2026 Coca-Cola 600 is $13,855,363. The winner will take home $200,000 to $250,000. When I looked into it, I discovered that the $25,640 won by Joe Lee Johnson in 1960 would be the equivalent of more than $256,000 today.

Want to know more?

Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1 includes my articles about the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the 1960 World 600 NASCAR race, along with 89 other local history newspaper columns I wrote from 2006 through September 2009.

*Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1,* by Janet Morrison

Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 2 includes my three articles about the 22-mile ring dike in Cabarrus County, NC along with the other 81 newspaper columns I wrote from October 2009 through December 2012. Book 2 also includes my research notes on topics I did not get to write about when the newspaper suddenly ceased publication.

My books are available in paperback and e-book from Amazon and are also available in paperback at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local

#OnThisDay: Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775

Every year on May 20 or sometime that week I blog about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. It was signed on May 20, 1775 – a full year before the national declaration.

Unfortunately, the original copy was lost when John McKnitt Alexander’s house burned. The writers and signers got together after the fire and reconstructed the document from memory.

Since the original copy was lost, there are naysayers today. I don’t know what their motives are, but they insist on seeing the original in order to believe it existed. A newspaper account in the Raleigh Register on April 30, 1819 does not suffice as proof for them.

There has never been any love lost between Raleigh – the State Capital – and Charlotte (in Mecklenburg County), so I find it surprising that a Raleigh newspaper ever acknowledged the document. For a newspaper in Raleigh – of all places – to do so only indicates to me a level of certification.

May 20, 1775 was added to the North Carolina state flag in 1861, so there must have been a high degree of belief that the document was real. Again, with the historical seat of power in North Carolina being in the eastern part of the state, the legislators would not have been quick to given Mecklenburg County any credit on the state flag.

Here is the wording of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, as it was recreated after being lost in a fire, and as it is found in The Hornet’s Nest: The Story of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, by LeGette Blythe and Charles Raven Brockmann, published in 1961:

That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted or in any way, form or manner countenanced the unchartered & dangerous invasion of our rights as claimed by G. Britain is an enemy to this County – to America & to the inherent & inaliable rights of man.
We the Citizens of Mecklenburg County do hereby desolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country & hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British crown & abjure all political connection, contract or association with that nation who have wantonly trampled on our rights & liberties & inhumanely shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.
We do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people – are & of right ought to be a sovereign & self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of our God & the general government of the congress, to the maintainence of which independence civil & religious we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes & our most sacred honor.
As we now acknowledge the existence & control of no law or legal officers, civil or military, within this County, we do hereby ordain & adopt as a rule of life, all, each & every of our former laws – wherein nevertheless the crown of great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.
It is also further decreed that all, each & every military officer in this County is hereby reinstated in his former command & authority, he acting conformably to these regulations. And that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz, a Justice of the peace in the character of a “Committee-man” to issue process, hear & determine all matters of controversy according to sd. Adopted laws – to preserve peace, union & harmony in sd. County & to use every exertion to spread the love of country & fire of freedom throughout American until a more general & organized government be established in this province. A selection from the members present shall constitute a Committee of public safety for sd. County.
That a copy of these resolutions be transmitted by express to the President of the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia, to be laid before that body.

Ephraim Brevard

Hezekiah J. Balch

John Phifer

James Harris

William Kennon

John Foard

Richard Barry

Henry Downs

Ezra Alexander

Charles Alexander

Zaccheus Wilson

Waightstill Avery

Benjamin Patton

Matthew McClure

Neil Morrison

Robert Irwin

John Flennegin

David Reese

William Graham

John Queary

Hezekiah Alexander

Adam Alexander

John Davidson

Richard Harris

Thomas Polk

Abraham Alexander

John McKnitt Alexander

Recreation of the May 20, 1775
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence

Captain James Jack rode horseback from Charlotte to Philadelphia to deliver a copy of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and a copy of the May 31, 1775 Mecklenburg Resolves to the Second Continental Congress. It is disputed that he made it to Philadelphia with the Declaration, but he did get there with the Mecklenburg Resolves.

Archibald and Maggie Sellers McCurdy lived in the part of Mecklenburg County that became Cabarrus County in 1792. Mr. McCurdy stood on the steps of the Mecklenburg County courthouse in Charlotte on May 20, 1775 and heard the declaration read.

He came home and told his wife, Maggie, that they needed to make a list – perhaps written, perhaps mental – of all the people in the community that they could trust. The community was dominated by patriots, but they needed to evaluate which of their neighbors and associates could be trusted in the coming inevitable war for independence.

I wrote a story about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the McCurdy’s, “Whom Can We Trust?” and included it in my book, Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories.

My book is available in paperback and e-book on Amazon, and the paperback is available sometimes at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.

Janet

All history is local, but no history is just local

Attacks on Nature are Never-Ending

Some of my blog readers have dropped by the wayside. I suppose they got tired of my rants about the corruption in the Trump Administration. It’s a free country. Each individual is free to bury their head in the sand. Each individual is free to say, “I don’t watch the news any more. It upsets me.”

To that I say, “I’m glad it upsets you. It should upset you, but do you think that by ignoring it you are making things any better?” (If you are more than 90 years old, I will give you a pass. You have already done your part to try to preserve our democracy.)

The news upsets me, but the people who choose to ignore it upset me more. But, like I said, it is a free country. You don’t have to participate. You don’t have to care about the rest of us. You don’t have to care about future generations. You don’t have to do your part.

Today, I will draw your attention – if you’re still with me – to just three things that you might not have heard about, if you have stopped watching the news. Even if you still watch the news, you probably did not hear about these actions.

Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management quietly removed “conservation” as a use for public lands. Let that sink it.

What uses are approved?

Grazing, mining, and energy development.

The Public Lands Rule (also known as the Conservation & Landscape Health Rule) was finalized in 2024 to conserve and restore federally-owned public lands that had been damaged by drought, development, wildfires, and invasive species.

It is beyond sad that the Trump Administration hates nature so much. We, the American people, own these lands. They were supposed to be held in trust for future generations – you know… like previous generations put them in trust for us. Ever hear of the National Park system? It did not happen by accident.

This is what you get when you put a New York City alleged-businessman in the White House, and then blindly approve everyone he nominates to Cabinet positions and judgeships.

In repealing the 2024 Rule, the Bureau of Land Management says that by removing conservation as a legitimate use of land, “balance” will be restored as grazing, mining, and energy development will be prioritized.

They really think we are stupid.

The EPA and toxic coal wastewater

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rolling back the rules governing the release of toxic wastewater from coal plants. In the old days, like April 2026, coal plants were required to treat wastewater before it could seep into rivers, lakes, and streams.

Why, you may ask?

Because those rivers, lakes, and streams eventually provide drinking water for millions of Americans. Also, beings like fish and salamanders also live in those waters. They are part of our ecosystem. They are not beings to be trashed.

Why do reasonable people not want coal waste in their drinking water?

Because it contains such things as arsenic, mercury, and lead.

The policy put in place by the Biden Administration to restrict coal wastewater release was projected to keep 660 million pounds of toxic waste from reaching our waterways per year.

Why is the Trump Administration pushing to end this policy?

The official reason is to “bolster the power grid.”

Trump likes to talk about “clean coal.” I’m not sure what “clean coal” is. Trump hates wind power and solar power, but he loves coal-burning plants. He loves toxic black coal and calls it “clean.” Calling it “clean” does not make it so.

Ever heard of Black Lung? Anyone in your family want to be a coal miner? Anyone in Trump’s family want to be a coal miner?

I knew Trump hated the natural world’s beauty. The concept that the world’s natural beauty holds value just by being, well, natural and beautiful, is a concept he was obviously not taught at home or in the expensive private schools he attended.

The natural world allows us to breathe clean air and drink clean water, but Trump’s hatred for such things for the American people is overwhelmingly complete. In his eyes, the natural world only holds value when a dollar sign can be attached to it.

What a sad man. He is to be pitied for his narrow-minded short-sightedness and worship of the almighty U.S. dollar. Oh… and gold. The tackier the better!

Trump’s Triumphal Arch

I have had the privilege of visiting Washington, DC several times. Those visits always left me awestruck and proud… and wanting to visit again.

One thing that never crossed my mind was, “What our nation’s capital needs is a 250-foot-tall arch to block the view of the Lincoln Memorial from parts of Arlington National Cemetery.”

View of Arlington National Cemetery and the Washington Monument
Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash

Never crossed my mind.

Trump is hellbent on building this monstrous arch. He brags that it will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and will be 30 feet taller than the world’s tallest arch – the Monumento a la Revolución in Mexico City.

In the process, he is attempting to skip the permitting process and the competitive public bidding process (like he did when he gave one of his buddies the $7 million contract to paint the bottom of the Reflecting Pool bright blue like a swimming pool.)

He bypassed the legal requirement of public competitive public bidding by claiming that painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool bright blue was “an emergency.”

The way the Reflecting Pool was designed and built, government buildings such as the Washington Monument were reflected in the water. The beautiful blue sky was reflected in the water.

Trump said in one speech that some people call it a pond. He thought it was funny and said it could be called many things. I’ve always heard it called the Reflecting Pool.

Trump has no respect for its name or purpose. He has a better idea. Let’s paint it a gaudy bright blue so it will resemble a swimming pool! And while we’re at it, let’s not put the project out for competitive bids. I know a guy. He does not build pools, but I know a guy who might know how to paint. He can pocket $7 million and be beholding to me.

I’m glad I’m old and will never visit Washington, DC again. I want to remember it the way it was before Trump arrived. Before he tore down the East Wing of the White House without permission and lied about how “the ballroom will not touch the White House.” Surely you remember when he said, “It won’t touch the White House.” He failed to mention that he was going to demolish the East Wing.

I want to remember Washington, DC without a golden Trump arch.

To those of you who still worship Trump & his 20-foot Golden Statue at Doral Golf Club

I pray you will see the light before it’s too late and we lose everything.

I know your stock portfolio is brilliant. I’m sure your 401(k) is secure and soaring.

You preach the love of Trump from your church pulpits every Sunday and again on Wednesday night.

Do you really believe you and Trump are “doing the Lord’s work?”

Do you really believe Trump was “sent by God” to destroy the environment and break all our laws?

I pity you.

I hope your children and grandchildren will enjoy seeing all your money, because chances are they won’t ever see a national park, or breathe clean air, or drink clean water.

They are going to smell the waste that is dumped in our streams – like I smelled back in the 1950s and 1960s in the textile mill belt in the piedmont of North Carolina. They are going to breathe the dirty air in their cities like I saw first-hand in Charlotte in the early 1970s when I started working.

With the repeal of the laws and policies governing pollution, that’s what we are going back to. Young people don’t understand that, because they haven’t seen it. They didn’t smell Buffalo Creek in Concord, North Carolina before it was even in sight. They haven’t seen 20-story buildings shrouded in brown air.

To the rest of you

I wish I could ignore the rampant corruption in the Trump Administration and spend my time writing historical fiction. That’s what I would rather be doing instead of watching our beautiful environment and democracy crumble.

In my early adulthood, I worked for several city and county governments. Much of my job in each position was putting projects out for bid. It was… and is… the law. It was not up for debate or question. I just did it. I did it many times. I never considered trying to circumvent the law or the spirit of the law.

My upbringing and my education in political science and public administration grounded me in following the law. Those laws were there to protect the taxpayer. Those laws were there to protect our democracy.

Those laws are in place to protect the American taxpayer from the likes of Donald Trump, but the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have torn down the guardrails. Donald Trump has been left to ignore and trample such laws into the dirt.

The laws are still there, but Trump thinks he is above the law.

November 3, 2026 is election day for EVERY member of the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the U.S. Senators. Things could change with the November 3 election.

“We, the people….”

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

#OnThisDay: Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 & Lessons for Us

Plessy v. Ferguson is one of those landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases we would like to forget. Put it behind us. Consider it ancient history from the 19^th century.

Not so fast.

We have something to learn from Plessy v. Ferguson today, 130 years after the ruling.

Background

To refresh your memory from history or political science class, Homer Plessy was a man of mixed race. That meant, under the law in the United States, he was considered Black. Though reportedly seven-eighths white, he was not permitted to ride in a “whites-only” railroad car in New Orleans. The Louisiana State Legislature had passed a Separate Car Act in 1890. That law required separation train cars for white and Black passengers.

In 1891, a group of Black men in New Orleans formed “Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law.” Bolstered by a May 15, 1892 ruling by the Louisiana State Supreme Court in favor of the Pullman Company, the Committee decided to test the law in interstate travel. On June 7, 1892, Mr. Plessy purposely took a seat in a whites-only rail car on the East Louisiana Railroad to test the law.

What happened to Mr. Plessy

Mr. Plessy was arrested for boarding a “whites-only” train car. His defenders in court argued that the Separate Car Act of 1890 violated the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Section 1, 13th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution

When Mr. Plessy’s case went to District Court, the judge was John H. Ferguson. Judge Ferguson denied a request to dismiss the case and then ruled that the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890 was constitutional because the State had the authority to regular public accommodations.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, and Mr. Plessy took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Surely, that august body would see that the Louisiana law was unjust, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.

After all, the 13^th Amendment had abolished slavery in the United States in 1865, and Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment, which was ratified in 1866, not only extended citizenship to former slaves but also state, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Mr. Plessy and his lawyers maintained that the Separate Car Act on 1890 was unconstitutional under the last phrase in Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment.

Section 1, 14th Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution

The ruling

In a 7-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on May 18, 1896, that the State law in Louisiana was constitutional because it provided “separation but equal” accommodations for white and Black passengers.

That famous “separate but equal” wording is what took the United States down a terrible road of discrimination for the next 70 years.

It paved the way for “Jim Crow” laws. It made racial segregation in public education, in public conveyances, restaurants, lodging, etc. lawful.

The “separate but equal” doctrine stood until the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s. (The Brown v. Board of Education ruling, ironically, was handed done in a 9-0 decision on May 17, 1954, just one day shy of the anniversary of the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.)

We all know now that “separate but equal” was never equal; it was just separate. That doctrine became the umbrella and shield for untold acts of discrimination and violence until the late 1960s.

Who cast the dissenting vote?

Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter in the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. Although he came from a slave-holding family in Kentucky, Justice Harlan often cast the dissenting vote in civil rights cases that went before the U.S. Supreme Court. He sat on the Court from 1877 until 1911.

Lessons to be learned from Plessy v. Ferguson in 2026

If I had penned this blog post a couple of years ago, it probably would have ended there. Just a nice little history lesson. Just the facts of the case and the final ruling.

But I’m writing this in mid-May 2026, and that 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case has taken on a whole new significance.

As in 1896, in 2026 we have a U.S. Supreme Court majority who tend to be constitutional textualists or literalists, meaning they usually view the Constitution and laws as the people at the time of a law’s enactment would have interpreted it and not necessarily taking into account the spirit of the law.

In my six years of studying political science in college, I was taught to study the time and letter of the law but to look for the spirit of the law.

I offer a current example of how some people now want to interpret the 14^th Amendment as applying only to the people who had been slaves prior to and during the American Civil War. They argue that the 14^th Amendment does not grant citizenship to everyone who just happens to be born in the United States. They don’t want the 14^th Amendment to apply to the children of undocumented immigrants. Trust me. We have not heard the last of that argument.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, state legislators are falling all over each other to redraw Congressional District boundaries. They feel emboldened to eliminate majority Black or Democrat districts before this November’s mid-term elections.

This is history repeating itself. The hurried gerrymandering and shifting of Congression District lines in 2026 is in many ways a mirror image of the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s.

Why is it that we don’t learn from history? Or perhaps a more accurate question is “Why do we only learn how to repeat the harmful things from our history?”

The Roberts court is taking us down a road of easier corruption in politics (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010), less accountability for the U.S. President (Trump v. United States, 2024), and an attempted erasure of all the progress our country made in racial relations and equality in the 60 years following the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Louisiana v. Callais, April 29, 2026).

The racial discrimination the U.S. Supreme Court is fomenting by its Louisiana v. Callais decision a couple of weeks ago is far-reaching and should send chills done the spine of every American.

The lesson for us to learn from the last 16 years of U.S. Supreme court decisions, un-checked Presidential powers, and a U.S. Congress that acts more like a lap dog than a co-equal branch of the federal government is that our rights and the “guarantees” we have in our laws and U.S. Constitution are no more secure than the paper they are written on.

Every week I learn that more protected federal lands set aside generations ago for wildlife and the preservation of the natural world are being trashed by our own elected officials. It’s being done quietly, of course, because they don’t want us to know. If they were proud of what they’re doing, they’d be making grand announcements.

I assumed the East Wing of the White House would be there forever. I assumed national parks and wildlife refuges were permanently protected.

The U.S. Constitution is a living and breathing document. It will always be up for discussion, debate, and amending. That’s the beauty of it, but it also makes it fragile and vulnerable to the whims of Presidents and others who wish to test it.

Democracy is more fragile than I realized.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

Clean energy backlash on a state level

I started writing this blog post almost exactly a year ago, when it looked like a law was going to change in North Carolina. NC House Bill 729 is still being debated, and it is a direct result of Donald Trump’s hatred of solar power.

The state legislature in North Carolina is known for quietly doing its work and voting on legislation under the cover of darkness. You know, those wee hours of the night when most taxpayers are asleep. That’s not a good thing.

Being in the Metro Charlotte TV news region and not in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill TV broadcast region puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to keeping up with bills under consideration in Raleigh.

That’s the way state legislators like it, since the center of power has always been in the eastern part of the state due to how the colony was settled in the early 1700s.

But that’s not the point of my blog post today. I offer today’s post as an example of how the Trump anti-clean energy policies can and have sifted down to the state level. If your state legislature hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon, just wait!

I was pleased to see WSOC-TV in Charlotte report this particular bill. Michelle Alfini pinned the station’s online report on this. Joe Bruno does a yeoman’s job reporting on the General Assembly, though based in Charlotte.

I lived in Raleigh for two years. The difference in news coverage of the state legislature there and in Charlotte is like night and day. The TV stations in Charlotte pretty much ignore what’s happening in the state capital some 125 miles away, and the media in Raleigh ignore what’s happening in the state’s largest city. It’s a tug-of-war as old as colonial North Carolina. But I digress.

The Farmland Protection Bill (NC House Bill 729)

The Farmland Protection Bill is slowly moving through committees in the North Carolina State House. It was introduced on April 30, 2025. That’s not a typo. It was introduced more than a year ago and was supposed to take effect on July 1, 2025.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? The Farmland Protection Bill. Who among us wouldn’t want to protect farmland? (Except real estate developers and state legislators!)

But this bill is the undoing of earlier legislation that gave farmers income options when it was becoming more and more difficult for them to make ends meet.

It’s sort of like the Farm Bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives. The name of the bill sounds like a good thing, but in the fine print it decreases money for SNAP (i.e., food for children and poor people.) That’s a topic for a different blog post.

NC House Bill 729 is a case of the North Carolina General Assembly – if the bill is passed – pulling the rug out from under farmers effective July 1, 2026.

It seems there are some members of the NC House of Representatives who are alarmed that too much of the state’s farmland is disappearing. Instead of blaming the real threats – urban development approved by local government boards and councils like a bunch of drunken sailors and the challenges that small farmers face as their profits cannot keep pace with their expenses – the NC House of Representatives has chosen to blame solar energy.

It’s a bill right out of the Trump playbook

The original bill, as reported in May 2025, would have repealed an 80% tax abatement on utility scale solar projects over a four-year period. At the end of four years, farmers who had invested in solar energy generation projects on their land would no longer receive a tax break.

After a full year of haggling and working its way through committees, the current substitute bill under consideration as of April 30, 2026, gives farmers a sliding scale of tax abatements per year until it is repealed – completely disappears – in 2029.

As reported by WSOC-TV last May, “Stakeholders with the sustainable energy industry and farmers who have chosen to lease to solar companies expressed their concerns that the bill would unfairly penalize a single industry for farmland loss, which occurs primarily through housing development, while interfering with agreements property owners and solar companies entered in good faith.”

We aren’t talking about huge solar farms here. We’re talking about farmers who own 100 acres of land who signed on to put a few feet of solar panels on their land. There’s one just up the road from my house.

Legislators are touting this bill as a windfall for local governments because counties are poised to receive a huge property tax increase from the affected farmers.

It is, apparently, beside the point that the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association reported in 2022 that solar energy apparatus only covered 0.28% of agricultural land in the state.

NC Secretary of Agriculture Steve Troxler supports the bill, as does the North Carolina Farm Bureau; however, having come from a family of small farms, I tend to identify with the individual farmers who took advantage of a way to survive financially a few years ago and are now facing the repeal of the program and income they have come to depend on.

The May 2025 WSOC-TV report highlights the following example:

“Joel Olsen, who runs an agrivoltaics facility in Montgomery County that Channel 9 visited earlier this month, spoke at the committee hearing, taking issue with the idea that he is not paying his fair share in taxes.”

Mr. Olsen said, “When I bought the land, we paid $972 a year in property taxes,” he said. “Once we completed the solar farm, we paid three years of back taxes. We paid 100% of the real property taxes, and we paid over $100,000 in personal property taxes.”

The report stated, “He said he built his solar project with agriculture in mind, with sheep grazing alongside the panels. Olsen said this bill and rhetoric pitting solar against farming doesn’t take farms like his into account.”

In conclusion

I admit that I don’t know the minute details of the history of this issue, but it sems to me that a compromise could be worked out so there’s not an “either/or” outcome.

It seems to me that solar energy panels and farming could co-exist, but politicians had to get involved and ruin a thing that appeared to be working well.

At a time now in May 2026 when farmers in North Carolina are battling drought conditions and skyrocketing costs for diesel fuel and fertilizer due to Trump’s short-sighted war with Iran, perhaps this is not a good time for the legislators to remove an optional stream of income some of them had taken advantage of under the law. Perhaps legislators will remember this is an election year and put the Farmland Protection Bill on the back burner or in the trash can.

If you wish to read the current wording in NC Bill 729 or keep up with its status, you can do so by visiting https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewBillDocument/2025/5298/0/H729-PCS30424-TQxf-20.

Janet Morrison

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.

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