Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on “Make America Wealthy Again.”
Republicans tell us to be patient. They say it’s coming. We must suffer through short-term pain while we focus on long-term gain.
The “American Dream” has always been that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you want. Another part of the American Dream is that each generation will be better off than the previous one.
That’s not the new message now from the Trump Administration.
Trump said he isn’t worried about empty store shelves.
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who has a permanent smile on his face, has said that with all the manufacturing facilities supposedly returning to the US, multiple generations in a family can look forward to working in the same factory.
That’s definitely a new twist on the American Dream of each generation being better off than the one before.
The Huffington Post quoted Lutnick as saying, “This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”
That sounds bleak to me. It sounds more like a nightmare than a dream.
Trump Administration considers suspending habeas corpus
According to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Friday, the Trump Administration is considering suspending habeas corpus.
Habeas corpus is a legal procedure by which a report can be made to a court alleging the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and requesting that the court order the individual’s custodian to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful.
We were a nation of laws until January 20, 2025. For any member of the Trump Administration to lecture us about the US Constitution is rich!
Mr. Miller, the United States of America has not been invaded. Illegal border crossings by people fleeing corrupt governments is not what the US Constitution means when it invokes the word “invasion,” and anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it.
Yes, we have a border problem, but we have not been “invaded” in the truest sense of the word.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been nabbing people and whisking them away in unmarked black vehicles for weeks now. The ICE officers are reportedly not usually in uniform. They present no identification. They rough up any bystanders who dare to ask them to show identification.
I have seen videos of some of the arrests. They look like the Gestapo, and they look a lot like the Proud Boys who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. We’ve never had law enforcement look like this in the United States, and it is unsettling to say the least. People, including young women as young as 16 are slammed face down on the ground or asphalt, handcuffed, and shoved into black military-style heavy vehicles.
People are being arrested and detained in undisclosed locations, usually hundreds of miles from home. The Trump Administration has ignored habeas corpus since he took office on January 20. The difference, if he decides to suspend it, will mean that his thugs can then legally arrest and detain people without a chance of a court hearing.
What has America become?
A Tufts University graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkey, was ordered to be released by a Vermont judge on Friday. She had spent six weeks in a detention facility in Louisiana after being arrested on the street by ICE. It was all caught on video. ICE accused her of supporting Hamas. Judge William K. Sessions III ruled that the government did not have enough evidence to hold her. Their only “evidence” was that she co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts Daily newspaper last year. The op-ed encouraged the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”
Rumeysa Ozturk’s case is proof that the Trump Administration is ignoring habeas corpus. If it can be ignored in cases against international students, it can be ignored for anyone.
Miscellaneous news from the Trump Administration
Via email last Thursday night, President Trump fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. The Library of Congress is our national library. It houses the world’s largest collection of books, films, photographs, and manuscripts. It is the home of the US Copyright Office.
Dr. Hayden is a professional librarian and had been the Librarian of Congress since 2016. I cringe to think who from Fox News Trump will replace her. Fox News is functioning as Trump’s human resources department.
Apparently, Trump got wind of the fact that Dr. Hayden had worked to add more works from minorities into the library’s collections. He’ll have none of that!
But on Monday, when Trump tried to put his former personal lawyer and current Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in as acting Librarian of Congress, the library staff would have nothing of it! Yea! Staff said Congress has a say in who holds that position, and they refused to let two top Department of Justice officials picked by Blanche to even enter the building! Way to go, librarians!
On Friday, US Copyright Register Shira Perlmutter had denied Elon Musk access to “troves” of copyrighted materials for the purpose of training Artificial Intelligence. It is no coincidence that she was fired by President Trump less than 24 hours later.
Perlmutter had been Register of Copyrights since October 2020. She had concerns about releasing copyright material for use by AI technology. As a holder of seven copyrights, I appreciate her efforts.
When I tried to look her up on the US Copyright Office website at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, all her information was already gone.
Looking elsewhere online, I found that Ms. Perlmutter is no slouch. She hold a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and has been a law professor. She has stated that copyright laws need to keep pace with technology. She was the chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
She has been executive vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and vice president and general counsel for intellectual property policy at Time Warner.
No doubt, the guardrails protecting copyrighted material from AI will be off when Trump puts his choice in Perlmutter’s place. He is all in favor of AI. He has no concept of intellectual property and how copyrights work.
Seeing live video at 2:00 pm Eastern Time yesterday of the US President being whisked away at 9:00 at night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a souped-up shiny black golf cart driven by a Saudi with two perhaps US Secret Service agents anxiously hanging on in the back seat was more than a little unsettling. I guess the Qataris, the Saudis, and the Iranians are Trump’s new besties. I enjoy writing fiction, but I don’t have enough imagination to make this stuff up.
The day after stating in sworn testimony before a Congressional committee, Acting Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cameron Hamilton, was fired by Trump. In the hearing, said, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” The Trump appointee and former US Navy SEAL was fired on Thursday.
The newest Trump hire from Fox News is Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Although she had a career in the court system in New York more than 20 years ago, her real claim to fame has been serving as a TV host on the Fox News network. On Thursday, May 8, Trump appointed her as interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
It is beside the point that Jeanine Pirro was one of the defendants in Smartmatic’s February 2021 defamation lawsuit against For News (Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network) because she made false accusations on the air about the voting machines being rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Fox News paid Smartmatic $787.5 million to settle out of court and was required to acknowledge that the statements made on air were false.
It is also apparently beside the point that she was charged with driving 119 miles per hour in the 65 mile-per-hour zone.
Now the attorneys working under Ms. Pirro will be expected to respect and abide by her directions and leadership.
Part of Trump’s “big, beautiful budget” is slowly working its way through Congressional committees and small snippets of it are coming to light. I’m angered that the budget proposal calls for four oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next ten years.
This Administration’s wholesale disregard for wildlife and the beauty and global importance of pristine areas is stunning in its greed, ignorance, and short-sightedness.
The leasing of 6,250 square miles of public land is mandated in his budget proposal to apparently help the coal industry. The world adopts solar and wind power as the US reverts to the filthy air of the 1950s and 1960s.
Coincidentally, Trump has cut off federal funding to support coal miners who suffer from Black Lung even as he pushes for more coal mining jobs and a resurgence of coal-burning power plants.
Voice of America Update
On a brighter note, CNN reported on Saturday that the US is bringing back Voice of America. That’s good news. Too bad the Trump Administration shut it down completely on a whim just two or three weeks ago. They had no appreciation of its 83-year history. We were supposed to get “tired of winning,” but so far we’re just tired of “losing” and being jerked around.
Trump takes a sledgehammer to an agency one day and then tries to resurrect it later. That’s no way to run a country. It is no way to run a business either, but I wish he’d give up his day job and go back to his businesses.
Another glimmer of hope
On Monday some two dozen clergy linked arms and stood outside the gate of the Delaney Hall ICE Detention Center in New Jersey where the Mayor of Newark was arrested on Friday and there was a confrontation between three Congress members and ICE security officers. The clergy spoke against what is going on at the detention center. One of them was quoted as saying that “what’s going on inside the center violates the tenets that God has laid down on this Earth.”
Until my next blog post
With librarians, park rangers, and clergy standing up to Trump, I have some hope that our current nightmare might eventually be stopped.
I hope you have a good book to read.
Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina were rattled by an unusually strong (4.1 magnitude) earthquake on Saturday morning. They must be wondering what’s next!
Janet
Janet's Writing Blog 
Very good information and quite important that all know these things. You are right, the ICE “agents” act more like street thugs than professional law enforcement. If that was happening here or in France or the UK we would all be in the streets protesting and I am sure most Americans would support us. But it is happening in the US and not even the elected officials are reacting with indignation! It is a great news report you’ve proffered but unsettling and frightening. Take good care Janet and all the best!
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A nightmare, indeed.
A Dutch newspaper (Trouw) headline today read: “A Boeing, a personal cryptocurrency, and countless other perks for the Trump family. ‘This is corruption’.”
And it is.
What I find ironic is that the U.S., known for speaking out against corruption around the world, is now facing such blatant misconduct from within — and it goes unanswered.
I always thought corruption was supposed to be punished. In this case, it seems to be rewarded.
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Thank you, Francis. The silence in Washington, DC is deafening. I keep finding hidden snippets of news. Unfortunately, more to come in tomorrow’s post. And this $400 million plane from Qatar! Can you even believe Trump and the US Attorney General think it is legal? The US Constitution become less relevant by the day. Can you imagine if Barack Obama had accepted a $400 million plane from another country… with plans to take it with him to his presidential library? If this were in a novel, it wouldn’t work… because it is unbelievable. Even fiction must be believable. New outlets today are still engrossed in Sean Diddy Combs’ trial, so I now have a clearer understanding of how this country elected Donald Trump. America has turned into Disney World and cannot be bothered with such insignificant ideas like democracy. We can’t be bothered to know what our president is doing or saying in the Middle East this week. We can’t be bothered to know what Russia is doing to Ukraine. We can’t be bothered to know what Israel is doing to Gaza. We can’t be bothered with any of that because we must keep up minute-by-minute with the Combs trial. That’s what America has become. As a student of political science and history, I am thoroughly disgusted.
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All I can say Janet, is I don’t know what to say! You are right, no one could have made this up and think people would believe it! Incredible!
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Thank you for sharing that, Matroos. Yes. A nightmare. The whole world recognizes it as blatant, out-in-the-open corruption, but we are hearing deafening silence from most member of the US Congress. I never thought I would see such an across the board acceptance of such a corrupt and fascist US President! A few US Senators and US Representatives have voice “concern” over the $400 million flying palace from Qatar, but what I want to see from all of them is outrage… not concern. I am outraged! The US Constitution is clear. No government official can accept a gift from another country. For the US Attorney General Pam Bondi to say there is nothing wrong with this gift (shall we say bribe?) from Qatar “because they don’t expect anything in return” is the height of stupidity. With a US Attorney General like that, we are doomed! It doesn’t take a law degree to read and understand the US Constitution. The emoluments clause is very clear, and unless she is a moron she has to know that accepting this plane is in violation of the constitution. It is also in violation of common sense. I want to go out into the road in front of my house and scream, but I live out in the country and no one would hear me. I write letters and emails to my Senators and Representative and I either get no response or the email I receive isn’t about the subject I wrote them about. All we’re getting from the major TV news networks is blow-by-blow reports on the trial of Sean Diddy Combs! I want the news networks to tell me what Trump is doing and saying in the Middle East, what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in countries around the world, but half the 30-minute news programs are taken up with the trial of a so-called celebrity who beats up women. I want justice to be served in that case, of course, but in the meantime our democracy is failing and that isn’t being reported. I am so disillusioned.
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Your words are a cry that deserves to be heard. I understand your powerlessness and share your concern.
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After all this stamping on people who’ve protested over Gaza, I can’t help wondering what Netanyahu thinks of Trump becoming besties with the Arab nations, especially Syria, who have apparently agreed to build a Trump tower in return for having the sanctions lifted. Syria, of course, is now ruled by an ex(maybe)-member of Al-Qaeda. Netanyahu made a mistake – he should have given Trump a $500M gold-plated gift. That’s the way it works now apparently. If I was Iran I’d be making a giant solid gold statue of Trump right now…
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You are absolutely correct on all counts. I’m sure Iran is cooking something up. It needs to be the biggest and the brightest bribe of all. Sad but true. Trump, who holds a grudge for 100 years, said yesterday he didn’t believe in enemies staying enemies forever. We already knew he didn’t believe allies should remain allies forever. He’s got to be the most fickle human being or no morals there ever was. Where will the one-upmanship of countries heaping praise and gifts on Trump end? And when the gifts and praise slow down, he will turn on each and every one of them and demand more. His praise of them will turn into childish name calling, sanctions, and tariffs. He will whine, “It’s not fair!” That’s what toddlers do, and it is not becoming of a 79-year-old toddler.
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Janet, each day I find one action is more despicable than the next. This is the arsonist setting the fire then coming to the rescue to put it out. It’s reassuring to see everyday people speaking out and fighting back. I still have hope and a few good books to read, including a few banned books as well! 😜 Your narrative is well-said! 🤗🙏🏼💖
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I know, Kym. Every time I think it can’t get worse, it gets worse a few hours later! I’m glad one way you’re fighting back is by reading banned books. I keep meaning to do that myself, so thank you for the reminder. I need to get busy doing that! Thank you for the compliment. I’m just writing from my breaking heart. Stay strong, Kym. We’ve only just begun to fight!
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Oh my dear Janet, never in my wildest dreams would I think of this country going to such diabolical and tyrannical extreme “extremism!” You too stay strong and we shall continue to fight back in the ways we know how. 🥊🥊🥊
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Thank you, Kym, for continuing to read my blog and leaving encouraging comments. This fight is going to be a marathon instead of a sprint, I’m afraid. I’m so glad God does not let us know what the future holds. If I had known in advance how bad the first four months of the second Trump Administration were going to be, it would have ruined 2024 for us.
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Oh Janet, it is my pleasure to engage with subject matter that affects us all, even for those who voted for him. I felt it was going to be extreme, but I don’t think extreme accurately defines just how destructive it is and will be in the months to come. But, just remember, God is STILL in charge! 👍🏼
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Kym, I don’t anyone could imagine things were going to be this bad. I sure didn’t! Yes, God is still in charge, but it is the freewill he granted each human being that has me worried. God will step in at His own timing, but in the meantime humans can create a lot of suffering.
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