How do we get out of this mess?

Many of my blog posts this year have been about the mess we’re in. American democracy is being challenged like no other time in recent history, if ever.

Some people have been known to say in the last six months that we could have another civil war in the United States. Perhaps you’ve thought it yourself or heard someone else say those words.

Series of Webinars Sponsored by The Carter Center

Photo of President Jimmy Carter — President Jimmy Carter Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

This spring I watched a series of webinars sponsored by The Carter Center about our divided country. Panelists explored how we got to this place, how we can learn from other countries, what we can do to avoid what other countries have experienced, and where we can start.

The country that served as the example in the four webinars was Northern Ireland.

The facilitator for the webinars was the Rev. Dr. Gary Mason, a Methodist minister, peacemaker, and peacebuilder from Northern Ireland. Dr. Mason founded Rethinking Conflict in 2015. It seeks to model the principles of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement.

That agreement finally ended the conflict on Good Friday, April 10, 1998. Dr. Mason has taken this model to the Middle East and now, to the United States.

Dr. Mason spoke from personal experience growing up during “The Troubles.”

If you are interested in watching the four “Why are we divided?” webinars, here’s the link: https://georgiadrn.org/divided-webinar/.

What if “The Troubles” happened in the United States?

British troops occupied Northern Ireland in August 1969. Everyone thought it would be over before Christmas, but there was an amazing amount of violence over the next 30 years. It was the longest occupation by the British Army in history.

To give Americans some perspective on the amount of violence that took place in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles,” Dr. Mason gave the following statistics: At that time, Northern Ireland had a population of 1.5 million. During The Troubles, nearly 4,000 were killed, 47,000 were injured, there were 37,000 shootings, 30,000 people went through the penal system, there were 22,000 armed robberies, and 16,000 bombings.

He extrapolated that out to compare with the population of the United States over a 30-year conflict. If we had such a civil war in the US, we could see 800,000 killed, 9 million injuries, 7 million shootings, 6 million political prisoners, 4 million armed robberies, and 3 million bombings.

Imagine that level of carnage in America. I can’t.

An estimated 618,000 Americans died in our Civil War in the 1860s. To bring it “home,” I’ve studied the local losses in my own church in that war. Out of a membership of 400 white members and 200 black enslaved members, the congregation lost 74 men in the war. I cannot imagine that number of deaths in this community.

Just like it, undoubtedly, took decades for my community to recover from the war, 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement, Dr. Mason says in Northern Ireland “we are still wrestling with the legacy of the conflict. It’s really the one piece of unfinished business of the peace process.”

Indeed, in the United States we’re still wrestling with the legacy of our civil war. Confederate statues were taken down, but Trump wants them put back in place. Confederate names were removed from US military installations, but now the names are being restored, albeit technically they are not being renamed for the Confederates.

For example, Fort Bragg here in North Carolina was originally named for Braxton Bragg, a Confederate Army General who owned slaves. His name was removed, all the signs and letterhead replaced to say “Fort Liberty” in June 2023, and then in February 2025, Fort Liberty was renamed Fort Bragg but this time for a decorated Private in World War II, Roland X. Bragg.

We are still wrestling with the legacy of our Civil War, so it is not surprising that 27 years after the fact, the people of Northern Ireland are wrestling with theirs.

In Northern Ireland, People Hated Each Other

When peace talks began in Northern Ireland, the people in the room hated each other. No wonder it took so many years for them to develop a peace agreement.

Is that where we are today in the United States of America?

In polite society, we generally get along with each other. But, as I wrote about in my April 17, 2025, blog post, Is your family getting together during Holy Week? Brace yourself!, it only takes one person making an inflammatory remark and a heated argument can break out even among a group of friends or a family gathering.

Do Americans hate each other?

I don’t hate anyone, but I hate what some individuals and groups are doing to our country.

I hate that the US Congress has relinquished its legislative responsibilities to a US President who is legislating via Executive Orders.

I hate that thousands of federal employees have been fired or forced to take early retirement.

I hate that medical research funds and researchers have been eliminated.

I hate that people are being shipped off to a prison in El Salvador without due process.

I hate when people are shipped off to a prison El Salvador by mistake, the US President says he is powerless to do anything about it.

I hate that USAID was halted and will result in people starving.

I hate that universities, museums, and libraries are being targeted and punished.

I hate that Moms for Liberty think they have the right to dictate which books should not be read.

I hate that the Heritage Foundation was able to slide Project 2025 into the White House while the Republican Presidential nominee denied having anything to do with it.

I hate that many of the most vocally hateful voices in this country come from people who claim to be Christians. They give Christianity and Christians a bad name.

So how do we get out of this mess?

If we take the peacemaking and peacebuilding experience of Dr. Gary Mason into consideration, since he has lived through a civil war, we will open avenues of communication with people with whom we disagree.

The core advice from How to Have That Difficult Conversation in Uncivil Times, by Janet Givens is that we start by finding common ground to break the ice with people we need to have that difficult conversation with. Surely, there is something you and they have in common. (See my August 22, 2022, blog post, <em>L.E.A.P.F.R.O.G.: How to hold a civil conversation in an uncivil era</em>, <em>Third Edition, </em>by Janet Givens.)

Photo of cover of L.E.A.P.F.R.O.G.: How to hold a civil conversation in an uncivil era, by Janet Givens — *LEAPFROG: How to hold a civil conversation in an uncivil era*, by Janet Givens, M.A.

Taking Dr. Mason’s advice, we will then calmly and sincerely ask the person or persons why they feel the way they do about the topic with which we know we disagree with them, and then we will respectfully listen to their story.

Hopefully, they will be equally curious about our story and allow us to explain our position and why or how we arrived at it. Without honesty by both parties and a genuine curiosity by both parties, and a real listening by both parties… it won’t be a successful conversation.

Then, we move on to another person with whom we disagree and repeat the process.

Hmmm. Sounds easy on paper?

No, it doesn’t even sound easy on paper, much less in real life.

Bottom line is, I don’t know how we get out of this mess.

It has been my experience that people who stand on the opposite end of the political spectrum from where I stand, are not interested in hearing my story. They tend to be loud, rude, and condescending. They tend to call names and belittle, like their political leader on Pennsylvania Avenue.

So I really don’t know how we will get out of this mess. When I consider having “that difficult conversation” with anyone I know who supports Trump, I honestly cannot imagine that I would be able to have a productive conversation with them about politics. Our worldviews and core beliefs about democracy are just that far apart.

A chilling perspective

I just reread White Robes and Broken Badges: Infiltrating the KKK and Exposing the Evil Among Us, by Joe Moore. I blogged about that book on October 7, 2024, in What I Read Last Month & a Hurricane Helene Update, and I will blog about it again on July 7.

Photo of book cover for White Robes and Broken Badges by Joe Moore — *White Robes and Broken Badges*, by Joe Moore

Speaking from the unique place of having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan twice for the FBI, Moore stated in his book, “The radical right cares nothing about process, only outcome. They’re not interested in a civil discussion to work out differences, because they are so consumed by ideology that it has hijacked their civility. They have a clear vision of what they want the country to look like, and democracy itself is the only thing standing in their way.”

That leaves us in a hopeless situation. I don’t want to be hopeless, but I admit I don’t know how to have a productive conversation about politics with anyone who supports Donald Trump.

Even when Donald Trump is no longer in office, the people who agree with his tactics will still be with us. Our mess is bigger than an election or two can clean up.

Until my next blog post

How do you think we can get out of this mess?

What have you tried? Did it work?

It is going to take all of us to get our country out of this mess. The politicians certainly aren’t going to save us!

Remember the people of Northern Ireland, Ukraine, and western North Carolina.

Janet

P.S. I wrote and scheduled today’s blog post before the United States bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran on Saturday night, Eastern Time.

13 additional questionable actions by the Trump Administration

Are you as tired of hearing this stuff as I am? That’s part of their plan. Just wear us out and wear us down. They want us to get so tired of being bombarded every day by more Executive Orders and lies that we will eventually tune it out.

We are faced with pure evil in America today.

I’m tired, but I’m not tuning any of it out. The following list is in no particular order.

Virtually every family has been touched by Alzheimer’s Disease. There were 35 research centers in the US that were studying Alzheimer’s Disease, many of them conducting drug trials. The Trump Administration stopped the funding for 14 of the 35. Some of them ran out of money three weeks ago. Let that sink in… drug trials for Alzheimer’s Disease suddenly stopped. If you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you voted for and I think it’s time for you admit it. I think it is time for all y’all who voted for him to tell him to stop. To stop everything he is doing. Every single thing. You put him in the White House, and you have the power to remove him from the White House. All you have to do is flood the White House and the offices of your Republican Senators and Representatives with phone calls, emails, and letters. Y’all are the ones with the power to stop every bit of this. Don’t say you didn’t vote for “this.” Yes, you did. You knew you were voting for a convicted felon who lies about everything. You knew he had no empathy for anyone, and if ending the funding for Alzheimer’s research doesn’t prove that, I don’t know what would.

Photo of a woman working in a medical laboratory — Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Continued assault on universities. CBS reported on April 23 that President Trump signed an executive order to change the college accreditation process so colleges are accredited based on “results,” with the president wondering aloud about looking into the math capabilities of students admitted to Harvard University and Yale University. In his campaign in 2024, he said the accreditation organizations were “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” He, of course, never offered any evidence to back that up. The problem is… the accreditation of institutions of higher education is, by law, controlled by third-party entities and not the federal government – much less the US President. The report quoted White Houe staff secretary Will Scharf as saying that Trump thinks the accrediting entities are focused on “woke ideology” instead of results. This Executive Order affects law schools and graduate program as well. First, Trump tried blackmailing universities by threatening to end their federal funding if they continued to admit students based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). That worked at Columbia University, but it didn’t work at Harvard or Princeton. Next, he said he would weaponize the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) that all international students must process through in order to be admitted to a college or university in the US. Now, he’s threatening all colleges and universities by saying he will take control of the accrediting entities. Attacking the intellectual freedoms of colleges and universities is right out of the fascist playbook. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this. If you didn’t know he was going to attack institutions of higher education, you didn’t read Project 2025.

Photographs of university students having a serious discussion — Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

On Friday, April 25, US District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, issued an order for a hearing to be held at 9:00 a.m. CT at the Federal Courthouse in Monroe regarding “In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” The two-year-old daughter of a woman was deported to Honduras after the child’s father’s lawyer informed the US Department of Justice that the child was a US citizen. Judge Doughty stated, “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that.” At 1:06pm CT, the Court was informed that a phone call to the mother could not be placed “because she (and presumably VML) [the child’s initial’s in Court documents] had just been released in Honduras.” ABC News reported that the child “was initially detained with her undocumented mother at a routine immigration check-in in New Orleans earlier this week. My first question is, Why couldn’t the US Government postpone the mother’s deportation until a judge could hear the facts in the case? My second question is, At what age does the US Government believe it is okay to deport an American citizen? My third question is, Will the US Government only deport American citizens who are minors, or should all of us be ready to be snatched up and shipped off to another country at any time?

Photo of a child in the dark inside of an airplane peering out the window — Photo by kian on Unsplash

In a similar case, a mother and her two minor children were deported to Honduras. Her four-year-old daughter who was deported is being treated in the US for Stage 4 metastatic cancer. The child was deported without access to her medications or medical care. I defy anyone to tell me what about that makes “America Great Again.” Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar” whose official job title is White Houe Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (his business card must have to be the size of a poster!), maintains that this mother wanted her children to be deported with her. Of course, a mother does not want to be separated from her children. Of course, a mother does not want to be separated from her child who is going through cancer treatment. BUT… this case could have been handled in a more humane way. From everything I’ve heard and read, there was no pressing need for that mother and her children to be deported on April 25, 2025. The mother was not a dangerous criminal. The mother had merely missed an appointment with immigration officials due to circumstances beyond her control. If the case could have been reviewed by a US District judge, I’m sure a postponement in deportation could have been worked out. But when deportation planes take off in the hours before daylight and deportees are detained in isolation without access to legal counsel, the court system is eliminated from the process.

In 2021, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation making the traditional Columbus Day holiday in October also Indigenous Peoples Day. Finally, the indigenous peoples in the US were getting a little bit of respect and recognition. On April 27, 2025, Trump made clear his disdain for indigenous peoples as he said we will no longer have Indigenous Peoples Day. He delighted in announcing that he is restoring Columbus Day as just Columbus Day. The point of his doing this can only be interpreted as a punch in the gut to every person in this country who has indigenous DNA. There is absolutely nothing constructive that can come out of this.

Bilungual “Welcome to Cherokee” sign in Cherkee, North Carolina

Last Thursday, Trump claimed that gasoline was down to $1.98 per gallon “in some states.” Of course, he couldn’t name which states because it wasn’t true. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), no state had an average price below $2.70 per gallon, and the national average price is $3.17. Why can’t he just tell the truth? Plus, Americans aren’t going to get any sympathy from the people in England or Scotland for our $3 to $4 petrol.

Photo of a sign displaying gasoline prices, including $3.59 per gallon for regular unleaded. — Photo by Thomas McKinnon on Unsplash

Last Thursday, Trump said that grocery prices have come down. According to the Consumer Price Index, grocery prices in March were 0.49% higher than in February, the biggest month-to-month jump since October 2022. Average grocer prices in March 2025 were up 2.41% over March 2024, the biggest year-over-year increase since August 2023. What can’t he just tell the truth?

Photograph of fresh citrus produce at a market — Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash

Last Tuesday, Trump said, “as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94% since we took office.” On Thursday, he said eggs prices had dropped by 87%. Actually, the average price of a dozen large Grade A eggs in January was $4.95. If the price had dropped by 93 or 94% since January 20, eggs should be selling now for less than 38 cents-a-dozen. The average price nationally in March was $6.23 per dozen. I paid $4.96 last Wednesday, which is about what I’ve been paying for a couple of months because I’m fortunate to live in a major egg-producing state. Why can’t Trump just tell the truth? Plus, the reason the price of eggs skyrocketed this winter was because chicken flocks were hit with the bird flu and infected flocks had to be slaughtered. It was a crisis of supply and demand, but the Trump Administration has maintained from the beginning that (1) chickens were unnecessarily slaughtered or (2) they have completely ignored the fact that there is a bird flu and chickens were slaughtered. It was convenient to just blame the Biden Administration for the price of eggs.

Last Thursday, the US Department of Justice stopped the funding of more than 350 grants for such things as hot-lines for drug addicts to call for help, programs for violence prevention and juvenile justice, crime victims, and the fight against opioid abuse. The reason? To protect Americans against “toxic DEI policies.”

Photo of a red telephone receiver lying off the hook with apparently no one at the other end to answer the call for help — Photo by Trintage on Unsplash

KTVX in Salt Lake City reported that Carlos Trujillo, a naturalized US citizen working as an immigration attorney in that city received an order on April 11 to self-deport within seven days. “I know the laws of this country,” Trujillo told Nexstar’s KTVX. “I am not leaving. I am not deportable. But I do want everybody to know that these kinds of things are happening.” The report continued, “Trujillo said the ‘threatening language’ of the email bothered him. Trujillo encouraged the immigrant community to be aware of the changes in the laws and to know their rights. He said many people who received the email are in the country under legal circumstances. Trujillo isn’t the only one receiving a letter from the Department of Homeland Security saying it’s time to leave – a similar email was sent to hundreds of thousands of people across the United States…. However, Trujillo came to the U.S. about 24 years ago, and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for roughly a decade.” I was born and have lived my entire life in the US, but I’m thinking about applying for a passport so I can prove that I am a US citizen. I realized my driver’s license does not prove citizenship.

Photo of a US passport — Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

CNN reported on April 24 that the court document that migrants are handed gives them 12 hours to say if they will challenge their deportation under the Alien Act of 1798, which gave the government the authority to deport people during wartime. (We are not at war, folks! Just sayin’.) The form is in English only. If they wish to challenge their removal, they have 24 hours to hire an attorney and file their challenge. During World War II, immigrants were given 30 days to do so.
It was reported on CNN on April 24, that more than 1,500 student visas have been revoked by the US State Department since January 20.

Photograph of college students — Photo by javier trueba on Unsplash

Reuters reported that US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has told states that they must ensure personnel practices are merit-based in order to receive federal funds. The Trump Administration said on Thursday that states could lose federal funds if they don’t cooperate with federal immigration efforts or if they continue DEI programs. Duffy had earlier announced that he will favor giving states priority for transportation funds for locations that have high birthrates. Transportation funding has traditionally been political, but this is the first time I remember the US Government announcing that as an official policy.

Aerial view of complicated highway interchanges — Photo by Jared Murray on Unsplash

Until my next blog post tomorrow

It’s difficult, but don’t give up on American democracy. (I’m saying that to myself. I need to hear it every day.)

Remember the people of Ukraine, Myanmar, and western North Carolina. They do not have the luxury of worrying about every little thing the Trump Administration does. They’re just trying to survive and put their lives back together.

Janet

Some unjust things going on in America

When I blogged The Importance of Marbury v. Madison Today on February 24, I didn’t intend to start an endless series of political and political science posts, but there seems to be no end to the chaos the Trump Administration is creating.

I don’t make this stuff up. I’m trying to put a human face on the madness. All the numbers are huge. The suffering is individual and collective. The grief for what the United States of America used to be is real.

Watching various politicians and representatives of the Republican Party interviewed or speaking as panelists on several Sunday morning news shows on TV only serve to reenforce my fear that worse days lie ahead for the United States of America. Through the voicing of their beliefs, they demonstrated that Republicans have lost their way. They have lost sight of the US Constitution. They have lost sight of the truth.

Here’s just one example. On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, this exchange took place between Host Kristen Welker and US Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/04/20/gop_sen_john_kennedy_if_trump_defies_a_court_order_ill_call_him_out.html):

“Kristen Welker: Do you believe that President Trump is following orders of the courts right now?

“Sen. John Kennedy: Yes. And I don’t believe that President Trump will defy a federal judge’s order. If he does, I’ll call him out on it.”

I hope when Senator Kennedy catches up on the news from the last several weeks, he will indeed call out President Trump.

Here we go…

As of April 14, 2025, all grants with the Office on Violence Against Women have been terminated because the US Department of Justice has concluded that these grants “no longer effectuate the agency priorities.” This is an admission by the Justice Department that they used to “effectuate the agency priorities.” I conclude that it is no longer a priority of the US Department of Justice to address violence against women. As a result, on April 14, 2025, the American Bar Association immediately cancelled “all its upcoming trainings.” This apparently refers to training lawyers on how to effectively prosecute men who violently attack women and educating women who find themselves in a dangerous situation. No wonder President Trump said he would “take care of women.” It creeped me out when I heard him say that because we all know how he personally takes care of women, but this official DOJ warning to women is a whole other level. It’s no longer creepy; it’s frightening. To use a term that Trump’s macho hunter friends use, I guess it is now “open season” on women.

The US Air Force has removed webpages, photos, videos, and biographies about several trailblazing female pilots, including retired Colonel Nicole Malachowski. She served in the Air Force for 21 years and was the first woman to pilot with the elite Thunderbirds team. Does anyone see a pattern here?

According to a Washington Post report, “Thiry-eight of 43 experts cut last month from the boards that review the science and research that happens in laboratories at the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards. The scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal…. These scientists rate the quality of the science on the nation’s largest biomedical research campus, where 1,200 taxpayer-funded investigators lead laboratories focused on Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, cancer immunotherapy, and other diseases and treatments.” A pattern, or a coincidence?

Proposed US Department of Health and Human Services budget cuts would slash 40% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes for Health budget. I hope all the medical researchers and physicians who have lost their jobs due to Donald Trump will be able to find new opportunities in other countries where their knowledge and skills will be appreciated.

A doctor who is a US citizen born in Pennsylvania received one of the US Department of Homeland Security’s emails informing her that she has to leave the United States immediately. Maybe the new Department of Government Efficiency needs to investigate the top officials at Homeland Security. Seems like they’re making a lot of mistakes in who they’re trying to deport.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

US Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has threated to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students unless it gives her information on all of its student visa holders’ disciplinary records and protest participation. Harvard has been given an April 30, 2025, deadline or it will “face immediate lost of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.” It’s difficult to imagine Harvard University without any international students.

On Friday, Trump, who was partially elected because he claimed he would bring down the cost of eggs and other groceries, said, “You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. So I just want to let you know that the prices are down.” Like he would know or care about the price of a dozen eggs!

In case you needed more proof that Donald Trump does not have a clue what Easter is about or who Jesus Christ is…

Looking out from the empty tomb on Easter morning
Photo by Pisit Heng on Unsplash

Sunday was Easter Sunday, and President Trump chose the occasion to issue perhaps the most off-the-beam Easter greeting ever issued by anyone. I wonder if any Evangelical Christians read it. If they agreed with it and saw it as anything but disrespectful to God, then maybe they need to reevaluate their religious beliefs.

On Easter Sunday, Trump took to social media and wished “Radical Left Lunatics” a happy Easter. He attacked “weak and ineffective judges and law enforcement officials” for calling for the return to the US of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador although the Trump Administration had already admitted that his deportation was an “administrative error.”

In light of the US Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that the Trump Administration must bring Mr. Abrego Garcia back to the United States, in his Easter message, the President blasted the legal pushback as “an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten!”

Violent? It was a decision made by the highest court in our country. There was nothing violent about it. I believe the violence was perpetrated against Mr. Abrego Garcia when he was sent to an El Salvador prison against a court order.

And Trump remains obsessed with President Joe Biden. Constantly drumming into the American people the lie that every immigrant is a criminal, in his Easter greeting he once again claimed that Biden “purposefully” allowed “Millions of criminals to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked” and called it “the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America.”

In case you missed it, this is how Trump concluded his angry Happy Easter greeting to the American people:

“But to him [Biden], and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

Whoa! That is just bizarre yet, sadly, not surprising.

But the worst thing that’s been proposed yet

This somehow got in under my radar since February 25. Blackwater founder, Erik Prince and its former Chief Operation Officer Bill Matthews sent a proposal to Trump’s advisers before January 20.To say it is chilling and horrific and un-American, is not strong enough language. Words fail me.

In a nutshell, what I read in a New Republic article online last Thursday: For $25 million, Prince and Matthews’ new company, 2USV, will transport 12 million immigrants from America to the notorious prison in El Salvador in two years’ time.

But wait… there’s more… the US will buy part of the prison campus, declare it an American territory, and then the Administration can’t be accused of sending Americans or anyone else to a prison outside the United States.

Let that sink in.

No one outside the Trump Administration or Prince and Matthew’s orbit know what the status of this proposal is.

Keep in mind, it was just last week that Trump and the President of El Salvador discussed the possibility of sending more prisoners from America to El Salvador. Now we know that idea did not just come out of nowhere!

To deport 12 million people in 24 months, an average of 500,000 would have to be rounded up and transported every month. To facilitate this, 10,000 private citizens would be deputized. I’m not making this up.

If this were a novel or a movie, it would be labeled as horror.

Until my next blog post … tomorrow

I hope you’re reading a good book.

Pay attention to what’s happening at the hands of the Trump Administration. This is the time to do what you can to stand up for American democracy.

Remember the people of Ukraine, Myanmar, and western North Carolina.

Janet

14 highlights of how things are going in America

This is a long blog post. Don’t blame me, blame Trump. If not for him, I would still be blogging just one day a week or occasionally skipping a week.

I am horrified that yesterday the President of the United States of America and the President of El Salvador sat in the Oval Office of the White House and agreed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia CANNOT be returned to the United States even though he was sent to an El Salvador prison by mistake without due process. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees everyone in the US to due process. That’s not just citizens. That’s anyone. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said returning Mr. Garcia to the US would be the same as smuggling a terrorist into another country. As Bukele voiced this ridiculous excuse, Trump smiled and nodded his head in agreement. (Have you noticed that Trump only smiles when showing delight in someone else’s misery?) The White House (i.e., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Advisor Stephen Miller) chimed in saying no court in the US has the authority to conduct foreign policy, that only the President has that power. Last week, the US Supreme Court ordered Mr. Garcia’s return to the US because he was sent to a prison in El Salvador due to a clerical error, so this whole display of an egregious abuse of Presidential power was directly aimed at the US Supreme Court. What we have here is a Constitutional Crisis.

Furthermore, on a hot mic at that same news conference, Trump said to the El Salvador President/Dictator, “The homegrowns are next. You gotta build about five more places.” They were both enjoying the moment and laughing. “Home-grown” means US-born. And the US Vice President, the US Secretary of State, and the US Attorney General were complicit in their silence. No US President has ever voiced a desire to send American citizens to prisons in another country. The way Trump throws around threats that many individuals and groups should be “locked up,” we are left to understand that he now plans or at the least contemplates sending anyone he considers to be a criminal to a prison in another country. Make no mistake: Trump’s words were aimed at any American citizen who dares to disagree with him or criticize him. Don’t take Trump at his word, look into his intent. Don’t make excuses for him. Don’t kid yourself. We no longer have a normal Executive Branch in the US Government. Trump’s words yesterday were in direct conflict with the “cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” phrase in the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution and were chilling on multiple levels.

Do you know why Trump has found a new ally and friend in President Nayib Bukele? Bukele “is the iron-fisted president of El Salvador (2019– ), who has unabashedly styled himself as the “world’s coolest dictator” and the country’s “philosopher king.” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nayib-Bukele)
On Sunday night, Trump jumped on social media and pretty much ordered the Federal Communications Commission to go after CBS because he did not like the news segments on “60 Minutes” that night about Ukraine and Greenland. Quoting from Trump’s post, “Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior.” He said CBS should lose its license. I watched the segment about Ukraine. Scott Pelley, interviewed President Zelensky of Ukraine. As an American citizen, it looked like an excellent and honest interview in which Zelensky invited Trump to visit Ukraine and go wherever he wanted to in the country and see for himself the condition in which the country is. Zelensky said that Russia invaded Ukraine – which the whole world knows is true – but apparently, Trump can’t tolerate anyone saying anything negative about his buddy in Moscow. (And, no, Mr. Trump… Russia’s bombing of Sumy, Ukraine on Palm Sunday morning was not an accident.) Threats to revoke FCC broadcast licenses is Step One, my friends, of Donald Trump shutting down the free press in the United States of America. He ended his Sunday night social media rant with the words, “Make America Great Again!” in all caps. In yesterday’s press conference, Trump lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlin Collins as follows: “You said if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, you’d abide by that,” Collins reminded him. Trump cut her off and it looked like he wasn’t going to address her question, but then he said, “Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our county? That’s why nobody watches you anymore.” You have no credibility.” The truth of the matter is that Kaitlin Collins is not afraid of Donald Trump. He is afraid of her because someone deep down he knows she does her research, she knows the US Constitution, and she will fight for freedom of the press with her last breath. His total disdain for the First Amendment to the US Constitution could not be more obvious. His total disdain for the First Amendment to the US Constitution could not be more obvious.

The Wall Street Journal reported on April 11, 2025, that the Trump Administration spent $154 billion more since the inauguration on January 20 than the Biden Administration spent in the same period last year.
Colonel Susannah Meyers, commander of the US Pituffik Space Base in Greenland was fired after not sharing Vice President J.D. Vance’s enthusiasm for the United States taking control of Greenland. She made the mistake of telling Vance that a US takeover did not reflect the community.
In my blog on Saturday, I wrote about my concerns about the Trump Administration declaring 6,100 living immigrants in the Social Security database as being dead. Another new bit of news about the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the announcement on Thursday that it will be making all announcements in the future on X instead of via press releases or announcements on its website. This, coupled with the recent announcement that many local SSA offices are closing and business cannot be conducted via phone means X is just one more roadblock for people needing SSA services. I’m going out on a limb, but I think most people on Social Security are not on X. Those of us who used to be on Twitter cancelled our accounts when Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name to X – and we aren’t going back!
The new image of Trump was hung in a prominent place in the White House – a place traditionally reserved for portraits of the immediate past President. President Obama’s portrait was taken down and hung elsewhere, but instead of a portrait of President Biden being hung in its place, a rendition of a campaign image of Trump was put up. It’s a defiant, angry image of Trump with his fist in the air. Can anyone say, “Petty?” Can anyone say, “Tacky” in the truest Southern US sense of the word?
Stocks and Bonds out-of-whack. Stocks were up a little on Friday, April 11, but US Treasury Bonds were down. With the stock market losing in general and causing investors to wonder what the future holds, one would think they would be turning to the more stable bond market. But that’s not what was happening on Friday. When investors and other countries are hesitant to purchase US Treasury Bonds, that sent up a red flag that economic instability might be worse than we thought, if that’s possible. However, on Friday afternoon as Trump flew to Florida for yet another golf weekend, the 27-year-old blond ever-cheerful and perky cross-necklace-wearing White House Pres Secretary Karoline Leavitt enthusiastically encouraged reporters in the White House Press Room to, “Trust President Trump. He knows what he’s doing.” You can’t make this stuff up.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to every US Embassy in the world instructing State Department employees to report their colleagues for any instances of “anti-Christian bias.” It is reported that accusations of such bias can be made anonymously, but they should be as detailed as possible. Trump created a task force by Executive Order in February to not only hunt down anti-religious bias in his Administration but also in the Biden Administration, so why did the Rubio memo specify “anti-Christian bias?” Call me a left-wing lunatic, but I think this smacks of fascism. Rubio is the son of immigrants from Cuba, and this is the way he thanks America?

The Associated Press reports that, “Some journalists are reporting that Trump Administration officials are refusing to engage with reporters who list their pronouns in their signature.” The New York Times reports that one reporter’s email received the following response from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”

On Thursday, April 10, 2025, the US House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act. That Act, if also passed by the Senate, will require proof of citizenship for voter registration. Republicans (and, apparently, four rogue Democrats in the US House) just cannot get it through their heads or hearts that millions of noncitizens are voting, so they had to come up with a hardnosed solution to a problem that does not exist. On the face of it, it does not sound that oppressive. One way to prove citizenship is to produce your birth certificate; however, that birth certificate must be in your current legal name. If you are a woman who took your husband’s surname when you got married, your birth certificate is no longer proof of your citizenship. Your only saving grace is your passport. You can’t afford $130 for a passport? Too bad! The Republicans want to take us back to “the good old days” prior to 1920 when women could not vote in the United States. One might not be able to prove that the SAVE Act is unconstitutional because it does not include words like “sex,” “women,” or “female,” but it is definitely in opposition to the spirit of the 19^th Amendment. How can it be interpreted otherwise when it is women who traditionally take their husband’s surname in the US? Voter suppression, plain and simple, under the guise of preventing non-citizens from voting.

While we are on the topic of voting… President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, voted in Hawaii last November even though she had sworn last June that her legal state of residence was Texas so she and her husband could take advantage of a homestead tax exemption in Texas. The excuse her office gave: she was trying to shield her address from public view for security reasons. Even if that is true, it did not make it legal for her to cast her vote in Hawaii. Can anyone say, “Voter Fraud?”
In my April 11, 2025, blog post, I expressed concern over the fact that 17 of the 300 student visas revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio were from four universities in North Carolina. It came to light on CNN on Saturday that the actual number is 525, but that number doesn’t make me feel any better. If the 525 figure is to be believed, that means three percent of them are from just four universities in North Carolina. Can that be possible? And if that is correct, why are North Carolina universities being targeted? Secretary Rubio sat in the Cabinet meeting on Friday and said they were only giving the boot to international students who came to America to “vandalize libraries,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. First of all, the Trump Administration has already shown its disdain for libraries in his Executive Order a couple of weeks ago ordering the Institute of Museum and Library Services to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Second of all, it looks like any international student is at risk of being sent back home, which short-term and long-term will be a brain-drain and tragedy for the United States and for those individual students. But then on Sunday I learned that a student at Appalachian State University has been added to the list of international students in North Carolina whose visas have been revoked. Counting the Duke University alumnus and an alumnus on Optional Practical Training that’s 18 students at five universities in NC alone. In a TV interview on Sunday, Congressman Robert Garcia of California, who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, said the total number now is more than 800. The Trump Administration needs to come clean about the numbers and the fact that most of these students are being kicked out of the United States for only one reason: they are from another country. That is horrible, anti-education, and anti-American. It is also a hallmark of a Fascist regime. But any government that can declare living immigrants to be dead can kick foreign students out of the country for no reason – many of them just a couple of weeks before the end of a semester and graduation for some of them. That’s cruel, plain and simple. All under the guise of stamping out anti-semitism. Nothing could be further from the truth and anyone with common sense knows it. Thank you, Harvard University, for not caving in to the façade.

I will blog about more such happenings in America tomorrow.

Reminder: Go to https://speakupforjustice.law for more information and to register for the 12:00 Noon Eastern Time “Speak Up For Justice” event on Zoom. In part, the website states, “The Speak Up For Justice event seeks to bring the country together to voice support for the judiciary at a time when it is under unprecedented attack.”

Janet

Abrego Garcia, Student Visas, DOJ Weaponization, & What Else Happened This Week

As we near the end of another week of governmental and stock market chaos, today I’m writing about various things happening in the United States. As I finished drafting this blog post at 7:45 last night, I hoped we would have an uneventful news evening so I wouldn’t have to edit it.

We didn’t. I could have added to it, but I chose not to. It will be published at 5:00 a.m. on April 10 without any more additions or edits. I’m sorry it is 2,400 words long. Keeping up with what the Trump Administration is doing is now a full-time job and it is exhausting.

President Trump wants $92 million four-mile long military parade from the Pentagon to the White House on his 79^th birthday on June 14. It just happens to also be the 250^th anniversary of the US Army and Flag Day, but we all know the real reason for the parade. He begged for one during his first term until people who had some sense told him the city streets of Washington, DC would buckle under the weight of missile launchers and such. He really, really wanted a military parade like they have in Beijing. I don’t know what will happen when he finds out his birthday falls on a Saturday this year. He’s usually in Florida playing golf every Saturday.

How many little blunders will the Executive Branch make before they get their act together? On April 3, Ukrainians who have sought legal safety here during the war in their homeland were told by the US Department of Homeland Security that they had seven days to get out of the United States. The next day they received emails telling them to disregard the earlier notice. Can you imagine the anguish they experienced overnight thinking they had to return to a war zone this week?

In US Senate hearings for her nomination to be US Attorney General, Pam Bondi firmly answered, “No, Senator, not unless they change the Constitution” when asked if President Trump could run for a third term; however, Forbes quoted her as saying in a Fox News interview on April 5, 2025, “We’d have to look at the Constitution” and “it would be a “heavy lift.” I’m not a Constitutional scholar and I know it is possible to repeal an Amendment (i.e. 18^th Amendment about prohibition), but it seems clear to me…

Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, was fired last weekend. She is at least the ninth senior US military officer to be fired by the Trump Administration, four of them being women.

After slashing National Park Service personnel numbers, Secretary of the US Interior Department Doug Burgum has ordered all national parks to remain open regardless of severe staffing shortages this summer. That’s good news for those of us hoping to visit a national park this summer and support small businesses outside the park that have had a horrible time getting back on their feet since Hurricane Helene, but not such good news for the remaining park rangers and support personnel.

With promises of selling off the timber in our national parks, I don’t know what will be left of any of them if Trump clear cuts them. Maybe he won’t, but there is no one stepping up so far to stop him. Would someone please tell him that the lumber from the northern forests in Canada is stronger wood and less likely to warp than our pine trees? That’s why we buy lumber for construction from Canada. It takes the fir trees in Canada longer to grow than in most of the US. The slower a tree grows, the stronger the wood.

And would someone please tell him how many decades it takes to grow a pine tree or a hardwood tree? He probably doesn’t know, but the worst part is that he doesn’t care. He only sees dollars signs when he sees a tree. I feel sorry for people who have no sense of a forest’s true worth. It’s not measured in dollars.

Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, was awarded a $5.92 billion contract by the Pentagon to conduct Space Force rocket launches. No conflict of interest there!

Yesterday afternoon, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer learned about the 90-day pause in all tariffs except those against China while he was appearing before a Congressional committee. In other words, while he was on Capitol Hill to explain his president’s tariff policies, he learned about Trump’s about-face at the same time the rest of us did.

Anyone who agreed to work for Trump should have known from history, though, exactly what level of chaos they were signing up for. All they needed to do was see how he went through top officials during his first term. To work for Trump is to have your desk anchored to a revolving door.

The National Weather Service (NWS) will no longer provide any weather alerts in any language other than English although nearly 68 million people living in the US speak a language other than English in their homes. Of course, with so many firings in the NWS, extreme weather alerts will probably soon be a thing of the past. Who needs tornado warnings anyway?

The president now takes his human resources advice from Linda Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who says the attack on the US on September 11, 2001, was “an inside job.” After a meeting with Loomer, Trump fired two top national security advisors because they weren’t loyal enough to him. He said she didn’t tell him who to fire – she just told him who to hire.

US Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he might cut US military personnel by 90,000 because we’re turning our attention to Asia and away from Europe and we’ll rely more on technology than people in uniform.

Trump talked again about Gaza on Monday, calling it “real estate,” and casually saying “we’re” going to “own it” and the Palestinians will just be moved into other countries… other countries that are going to welcome them. Does that sound like a good plan to anybody? Just shove the people around like you’re playing chess but, if you were playing chess, you would give more thought to your moves. In Trump’s eyes, these aren’t human beings. Plain and simple.

What kind of person refers to part of another State (in this case, part of the State of Palestine) as “real estate” as if it is a parcel of land that’s for sale on the open market? Only a person who is up to no good and only looking out for himself.

In the midst of the stock market jumping all over the place and retirees seeing the value of their 401K accounts being jerked around yesterday, it was reassuring that President Trump was signing an Executive Order that removed limitation on water pressure from shower heads and household appliances. We each have priorities.

Trump saw on Monday how the stock market reacted from a rumor that he was going to lift tariffs. The market shot up for a few minutes until the Trump Administration denied that tariffs were going to be paused. On Tuesday he said a tariff pause was not being considered. Wednesday morning, he got on social media and told people to buy stock, but not just any stock. He ended his advice with “DJT.” He never does that. Those are his initials, but “DJT” is also the ticker symbol or stock symbol for his Trump Media & Technology Group Corporation. That stock opened at $15.52 per share Wednesday morning. A few hours later Trump suddenly paused all the tariffs except the 125% tariff on goods from China. DJT closed at $20.27.

On Tuesday, Trump said, “We’re making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day, do you believe it? I was told $2 billion a day.” Who told him that? Probably one of his “yes men.”

As this week progressed, Trump has played with tariffs like a yo-yo. No one knows from one hour to the next where any of the tariffs stand. It’s just a game for him to play and he delights in the power he has. Americans and everyone around the world are left not being able to trust the President of the United States. There is no credibility. There is nothing to trust. There is nothing to rely on.

Irreparable damage has been done to America’s standing in the world.

As I write this at 3:15 (ET) on Wednesday afternoon, April 9, Trump is taking questions from reporters on live TV. His responses to questions go seamlessly from tariffs to gangs cutting off the fingers of people who call the police to Liberation Day to the various geniuses who work in his Administration to Joe Biden’s incompetence to other countries sending us their prisoners to the “good old days” when Trump was young and already thinking about tariffs to the need for flexibility to walls to NASCAR and Indy race “champions” to China ripping us off to people “getting yippy”….

We’re left to wonder if the people “getting yippy” are the same people he called “panicans” earlier in the week. My dictionary is inadequate.

Trump’s press conferences and speeches are “word salads” (Trump calls it “weaving”) of endless incomplete sentences and nonsensical trains of thought in which no rail car is connected to another rail car and there is no locomotive leading the way. No one knows where the train is going or why it left the station.

Update on Abrego Garcia

On April 4, a district court judge gave the Trump Administration until 11:59 p.m., Monday, April 7 to return Abrego Garcia to the US after he was mistakenly shipped off to a prison in El Salvador. Trump was so concerned about this “administrative error” that he had to fly to Florida and play golf to deal with his stress. (Forgive my sarcasm.)

The White House line maintains that Mr. Garcia is now in the custody of El Salvador and the US must honor that diplomatic principle. That seems like a lame excuse to me while at the same time Trump is literally threatening to take Greenland away from Denmark by force if he has to. Where is the diplomacy?

On April 5, the immigration lawyer fighting for Mr. Garcia was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi because he wasn’t toeing the Trump line. In other words, he argued that there was a court order allowing Mr. Garcia to stay in the United States and he should not have been deported to a prison in El Salvador.

Later Monday afternoon, April 7, the US Supreme Court “paused” the Monday night deadline so they could take more time to consider the case.

As far as I have been able to find, that’s where Mr. Garcia’s case sits. Why does everything have to get so complicated? He was sent to El Salvador in error, and he should be returned to his wife and son in Maryland.

Trump’s Treatment of Universities & Student Visas

Add Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern to the list of universities being threatened with loss of funds if they don’t cease the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio bragged that he had revoked the student visa for 300 international students in the United States. He said they were “lunatics” and that they had come to our country under false pretenses. He said they planned to do us harm. We were led to believe it was because 300 specific international students had either broken US law or posed a threat to US security

Now, we’re learning that student visas are being revoked to punish the governments of their home countries. How sad is that? How cruel to the students! For the most part, these young people have excelled in their studies and wanted the opportunity to pursue university degrees from some of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the world.

I’m beginning to wonder about the numbers. At least six visas have been revoked from students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, at least two from North Carolina State University at Raleigh, at least six from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and two Duke University graduate student and an alumnus on Optional Practical Training.

That’s 17 revoked student visas at just four universities in North Carolina. Why would six percent of the 300 revoked student visas target four campuses in North Carolina? Or is the total more than 300?

Weaponization of the US Justice Department

Late yesterday afternoon, Trump ordered the US Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Investigate them for what? For using words? For having the audacity of thinking they had freedom to criticize the US President under the First Amendment to the US Constitution?

Chris Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the first Trump Administration. Trump is accusing Krebs of being part of an effort to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden just because Krebs repeatedly said he could find no evidence of election fraud.

Miles Taylor was chief-of-staff at the US Department of Homeland Security when he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the resistance he was witnessing within Trump’s first term as President. Taylor wrote that op-ed anonymously but later revealed in 2020 that he had written it. He had resigned from the Trump Administration the year before. He has written two books and has a podcast, “The Whistleblowers.” Trump is accusing Taylor of treason.

What will US Attorney General Pam Bondi do with this order? In her hearings before Congress, she said in no uncertain terms that she would not weaponize the Justice Department against Trump’s political enemies.

Two months in, what will Pam Bondi do? Will she stick by her words or will she make a farce out of her earlier words? Will she cave in to Trump’s rein of tyranny? What will the US Congress do?

What we have here is a Constitutional Crisis. It’s time for members of the US Congress and the American people to stop looking the other way. Stop thinking or saying anything about this is normal.

Who is Trump’s next target?

Until my next blog post

I apologize if I didn’t catch all my typos.

My planned blog post for tomorrow is an open letter to Trump supporters, but you’re welcome to read it, too.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Keep paying attention.

Remember the people of Kentucky, Myanmar, Ukraine, and western North Carolina.

Janet

Too Busy Playing Golf and Banning Books

I look back fondly on “the good old days” when I wrote a weekly blog. I hoped to limit myself to just two posts this week, but things quickly got out of hand.

In case you’ve missed a post, this week I’ve blogged about the three books I read last month, and Harriet Tubman and slavery being temporarily scrubbed from the “Underground Railroad” webpage of the National Park Service. Some 130,000 government webpages have gone dark since January 20, 2025. Sort of a digital book burning, don’t you think?

Tomorrow’s blog post will be about a variety of things going on in the Trump Administration along with an update on the status of Mr. Abrego Garcia. On Friday I plan an open letter to Trump supporters.

Last week, the No Dollars for Dictators Act before the US Senate got almost no attention. That and the hypocrisy of the Party of Family Values (i.e., Republican Party) in the US House of Representatives begged for a blog post. Those are the two items I started with for today’s post, but it grew in direct proportion to the news coming out of Washington. In fact, I’ve split it between today and tomorrow.

Today’s post underwent a lot of additions and editing. I hope I caught all my typos and grammatical errors.

What’s going on?

We’ve all been distracted by wildfires, tornadoes, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, tariffs, massive federal employee firings, and massive layoffs in the automobile and related industries. It’s impossible to catch all the news, so in my blog today and tomorrow I will mention a few that I have heard or read about.

The massive tariffs on 185 countries took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, April 3 and by Friday afternoon, April 4 the President was on his way to a four-day golf weekend in Florida where he miraculously won his own tournament. (You know how you have to let a toddler win a game so they won’t cry? Just sayin’.)

His golf game prevented his being able to go to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday to accept the bodies of the four US soldiers from Camp Stewart, Georgia, who died in Lithuania. We all have our priorities. Thank you, Lithuania, for the respectful ceremony you had to send the soldiers’ bodies home. That’s the way dead soldiers should be honored.

On March 26, Trump called himself “the fertilization president” (which was beyond creepy!) but on April 2 he cut all the funding for the Department of Health and Human Resources office that monitors the success rates at the in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics across the nation. Patients considering IVF used to find such information helpful in selecting a clinic… back in the day… you know, back in March, 2025.

We’re left to wonder if Trump (a) was just saying what his audience wanted to hear on March 26, or (b) he still doesn’t know what IVF is, or (c) he already knew the office was going to be shut down a week later, or (d) he didn’t and still doesn’t care. Based on his track record, my hunch is that all those scenarios are true.

The US eventually sent three people to Myanmar to help with earthquake recovery. They worked for a company under contract with the government. They’ve already been fired and the contract cancelled.

And the little bit of food aid the US State Department originally said they would keep giving after USAID was trashed? They’ve already pulled the plug on that.

On Air Force on this past Sunday, Trump was asked about sending US-born prisoners to prisons in other countries. He told reporters that he is open to the idea. In fact, he said, “I love that.” He also said that the tariffs were “going very well.” It makes you wonder where he gets his information. Perhaps from all the “yes men” who surrounded him.

The Harriet Tubman/Underground Railroad webpage I wrote about yesterday has been restored, but most of the 130,000 government web pages that have gone dark under the Trump Administration have not been restored, and there’s no reason to think they will be. This amounts to a digital book burning.

The Defense Department removed the Holocaust remembrance pages from its website in the name of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” History is being erased before our very eyes, folks.

Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and books about the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights, and racism were among 381 titles removed from the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy last week.

A few of the other books on the list:

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Eric Michael Dyson
The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, by Scott E. Page
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing for Social Justice, by Karen L. Cox
Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, by Wil Havgood
How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi

I read No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing for Social Justice, by Karen L. Cox in July 2021 an wrote about it in my August 2, 2021, blog post, 2 Books about Racial Injustice. I was literally reading the book as a statue of Robert E. Lee sitting on his horse, Traveler, was being taken down in Richmond, Virginia, so it was a hot topic.

In No Common Ground, Dr.Karen L. Cox writes about the history of the Confederate statues, and I came to understand that they weren’t erected to honor the Confederate soldiers and officers as much as they were built out of a place of hate. Please take time to read my takeaways from reading the book four years ago.

The author, Karen L. Cox, is a professor emerita of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she taught from 2002 until 2024. She is currently writing a book about the Great Migration, the Black press, and early Chicago jazz through the tragic Rhythm Club fire, which took the lives of more than 200 African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi in 1940. It will probably be banned by the Trump Administration, too.

I listened to How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi in June 2020 and wrote about in in my July 20, 2020 blog post, Three Books Read in June 2020. I invite you to read that blog post. I started my comments saying, “There are many eye-opening things to take from Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be An Antiracist, but the most important lesson I learned from reading it is the difference being “not racist” and “antiracist.” I’ve been guilty of saying, “I’m not a racist.” It’s possible I’ve even said, although I hope I haven’t, “I’m not a racist, but….” “But” says, “Oh yes you are!”

In the words of Mr. Kendi in his book, “What’s the problem with being ‘not racist?’ It is a claim that signifies neutrality…. The opposite of racist isn’t not racist it is antiracist.”

I’ve read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, and I thought I’d read Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Eric Michael Dyson. I haven’t found Mr. Dyson’s book on my list of books read or in my old blog posts, so maybe I meant to read it but never got around to it.

The US Naval Academy is essentially the midshipmen’s university, so what university would ban books? The Trump Administration has a basic lack of understanding of the purpose of higher education. Midshipmen should have easy access to any book they want to read! After all, they are 18 to 22 years old and can make their own decisions about many things, including which books to read.

I cannot understand why anyone thinks books should be banned from the Nimitz Library.

To my Republican friends and relatives who voted for Trump, “Is this what you thought you were voting for?”

I sincerely hope this level of cruelty isn’t what you wanted. If it is, I had no idea how miserable your life was.

The No Dollars for Dictators Act

As the stock market continued to be in free fall due to the tariff announcement, the US Senate had important business to tend to: “The No Dollars for Dictators Act.” It was introduced by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) and co-sponsored by Senators Rick Scott (R-FL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Jim Justice (R-WV), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Senator Scott was quoted as saying, “The No Dollars for Dictators Act will protect U.S. tax dollars from fueling the evils of dictators or terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life.” It wasn’t voted on.

Supposedly aimed at China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Syria, it begs the question, “Why isn’t Donald Trump’s name on that list?” He’s doing more to “destroy our way of life” than any of the countries on the list.

Just wondering….

A Proposal to Allow New Parents to Vote by Proxy in the US House

And while we’re talking about the US Congress… As of April 1, we know that it was quite all right for old white men in the US House of Representatives to vote in absentia during the Covid-19 pandemic, but female members of the House cannot vote in absentia the day after they’ve had a baby.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson suddenly sent the House members home on April 1 to block a vote that would allow US Representatives (male or female) to vote by proxy for up to three months after the birth of a child.

The House did not meet for the rest of the week because Johnson was afraid the bill might be brought to a vote.

A strange compromise has been reached between Johnson and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who was pushing for the right to vote by proxy. Luna announced the compromise on Sunday, April 6.

This is how CBS News reported the “deal” reached by the two: “a deal to use vote pairing – an agreement between an absent member and a member who is physically present and plans to vote on the opposite side of the question, effectively canceling out the vote. The present member casts their vote, then withdraws it and announces that they have paired with the absent member. The vote is not included in the vote total, but their positions are published in the Congressional Record.”

WHAT?

It sounds to me like not only does the new parent’s vote now not count, but a Representative on the opposite side of an issue must also, in effect, forfeit their vote. Having their positions recorded in the Congressional Record means very little. Every word uttered on the floor of Congress is recorded and published daily in the Congressional Record, but no one reads it.

Am I missing something? This sounds convoluted to me and the end result is that the new parent essentially still doesn’t get to vote. And the wording is troubling. The new parent has to find someone who “plans” to vote in the opposite way. It sounds like they aren’t bound by their “plans.”

What about the logistics? What if that new parent is in labor or their spouse is in labor?. That time isn’t conducive for the Representative or the spouse to be calling around to find a Representative on the opposite side of the issue who is amenable to forfeiting their vote.

Surely, this could have been handled better! Let’s be honest. All that was wanted was for a nursing mother to be able to cast her vote from home instead of bringing her infant with her to the floor of Congress so she could cast a vote. That’s really what this boils down to, but most of the men in Congress would rather that she just stay home and keep her mouth shut. They don’t want her in Congress. Period.

Mid-Term Elections Reminder

Here’s a reminder for US Representatives and voters: Mid-term elections are scheduled for November 3, 2026, and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs!

Some voters are paying attention. Many members of Congress and some members of the media like to say that only people “who live inside the Beltway” around Washington, DC ever pay attention or care what’s happening there. They might be surprised 19 months from now just how much we have seen, heard, and remember.

Millions of Americans took to the streets in non-violent protests on April 5. There is a ray of hope!

Until my next blog post tomorrow

I hope you have a good book to read.

Pay attention.

Remember the people of Kentucky, Myanmar, Thailand, Ukraine, and western North Carolina.

Janet

They’ve gone too far, Harriet Tubman!

NOTE: At 2 a.m., just three hours before this blog post was scheduled to be published, I learned that the Harriet Tubman/Underground Railroad webpage on the National Park Service website had been restored! Rather than cancel today’s blog post, I will go forward with it because the only thing that has changed is that for whatever reason that one webpage has been restored.

Nothing else has changed, though. The Trump Administration continues to recklessly… and intentionally… try to erase and destroy American history and democracy. Whether they justify it under the guise of getting rid of “waste and fraud” or eliminating “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” it is all part of this sham racist and misogynist Administration.

What has taken place regarding Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad since January 20, 2025, is a prime example of the incompetence and insidious hate held by members of the Trump Administration.

It offends me when I hear people say that all government employees are corrupt and incompetent. That is the mantra of the Trump Administration. Trump and the people in his inner circle despise federal employees. They are perfectly happy to collect government paychecks and benefits, but no one else working in the government deserves anything but ridicule. Think about that for a minute.

If you want to see corruption and incompetence, you need look no further than the Trump Administration. It is made up entirely of businessmen. Businessmen are never corrupt or incompetent, are they? But evidence to the contrary lies in the fact that almost on a daily basis since January 20 this Administration has made an announcement then had to retract it, has fired federal employees and then had to try to re-hire them, has erased information from a website and then had to restore it. Not to mention high level national security people conducting business on a less-than-secure app, first denying it, then halfway owning up to it, then proclaiming it was no big thing.

The Administration’s total disregard for truth, transparency, and the rule of law and never taking responsibility for mistakes is on display daily for all to see.

It astounds me how the businessmen who are running the federal government have a total lack of knowledge of what government’s purpose is. They only think in terms of profit and loss, but that’s not what government is about. Government is about serving the people, and that’s why Trump and the people in his Administration have it all wrong. Serving the people is a foreign term for them. They only think in terms of making money from the people, and running over anyone who gets in their way. What a pathetic way to see the world!

They delight in firing employees willy-nilly. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. They don’t consider what anyone’s job is. They don’t consider anyone’s expertise. They just conduct wholesale firings.

Hours or days later, when someone has the courage to point out to them that some of those employees helped planes land safely, or some of them were conducting research into cancer treatments or possible cures, or some of them risk their lives to fight wildfires… then a handful of them might be re-hired. That is, if they can locate them, because in the name of anti-waste, anti-fraud, anti-diversity, anti-equity, and anti-inclusion, they erased all the fired employees’ contact information.

I guess that’s the business mentality. After all, more than one person said to me before Trump ran for office the first time, “We need a businessman in the White House.” And that’s supposedly what we got.

What follows is my original blog post scheduled for April 8, 2025:

Until around 9:30 Sunday night, I planned not to blog again about politics until Thursday. That’s when I learned that sometime between January 21 and March 19, 2025, the National Park Service removed all references to Harriett Tubman from its “Underground Railroad” webpage.

Yes, THAT Harriet Tubman! The Harriet Tubman who was the most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

That’s the Harriet Tubman whose image appeared on a 13-cent first-class postage stamp in the United States in 1978. If you weren’t born until the 1990s, you probably can’t truly appreciate how difficult it was to get the United States to honor a non-white person on a postage stamp. She was the first woman of color (almost any color!) whose image was chosen for a US postage stamp. (Here’s a list of them, if you are interested in digging deeper into that aspect of American history: https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/african-american-stamp-subjects.htm.)

If you don’t know what the Underground Railroad was, please look it up somewhere while you still can. It was not an actual railroad, but it operated like one in many ways except in secret.

Apparently, the “Underground Railroad” webpage’s lead story until the Trump Administration decided to erase all history except that of white men!

Not only did they remove Harriet Tubman and her photograph, they removed references to “enslaved” people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Harriet Tubman, enslaved people, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 have been replaced on the webpage with… and you aren’t going to believe this… or I guess you will if you are a person of color or a female… “Black/White Cooperation.”

The webpage used to (until a matter of weeks ago) open with FACTS about slavery, how slaves struggled to gain their freedom, how the Underground Railroad came about after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Now, the page’s first two paragraphs emphasize “American ideals of liberty and freedom” and slavery isn’t mentioned.

There is a separate National Park Service webpage dedicated to Harriet Tubman. It has not been removed… yet.

The name “Harriet Tubman” is was synonymous with “Underground Railroad.” Her name will continue to be synonymous with the Underground Railroad until her name is wiped from the entire internet and all books about her or the Underground Railroad are destroyed… and after that, her name will still be whispered and kept alive through oral history.

The Trump Administration has also targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum for having exhibits and using language he doesn’t like… or someone has told him he shouldn’t like. After all, we all know what a limited vocabulary he has.

The Administration continues to threaten universities, libraries, museums under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), but if Trump and his minions were truthful they would just admit that they are racists, bigots, and mysogenists. We all know, though, the truth is not in them. They are small, fearful, hateful bullies.

I believe God is weeping. He gave us freewill, but it must grieve him to see what so many Americans have done with that freedom and responsibility.

In case you can’t see the forest for the trees…

Before you jump on me for making a mountain out of mole hill… for getting all bent out of shape over “just” the removal of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and slavery from a US Government webpage, I’m worried about the big picture. Yes, I’m upset over those specific things being scrubbed from a government webpage, but I’m more concerned over what this portends.

I’m 72 years old and I NEVER thought the United States Government would erase our history. It has taken hundreds of years for indigenous peoples and Americans of African descent to get their stories – their history – in the history books. All that progress is under siege and threatened today.

Where do we go from here?

It falls on each of us to learn as much history as we can… while we still can… and commit it to memory so we can tell future generations the truth.

It falls on us to protest any way we can. It you are fortunate enough to be represented on any level of government by someone not affiliated with the Republican Party, call them, write them, encourage them, support them in their efforts to stop this madness.

If you are represented by Republican politicians, your have your work cut out for you. They have been advised not to hold town hall meetings. I know from experience that when you write them (letters or email) if you get a response it might not be on the topic you wrote them about.

The response you receive will quickly descend into a regurgitation of the usual Republican talking points singing the praises of Trump and how we all need to just be patient because great wealth is going to come to each of us and it is coming quickly.

On the other hand, we’re told it might take years for us to realize that prosperity because it took decades of our allies taking advantage of us to get us in the dire economic situation we were put in by the Democrats.

In other words, if we live long enough, this great American nightmare might end.

Make a sign and join a non-violent protest. Respond to hecklers with “Bless your heart!”

We must follow the example set by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and protest peacefully. Only the other side storms Capitol buildings and attacks police officers.

If need be, we can protest and wait patiently to vote in the mid-term election on November 3, 2026, when every one of the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives will be up for election and 33 US Senate seats will be up for election.

One thing I hope to live to hear

I hope to live long enough to hear a sane future US President speak the words that President Gerald Ford uttered to the nation after President Nixon was forced to leave the White House in shame:

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy. As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.” ~ newly-sworn in US President Gerald R. Ford, nationally televised from the East Room of the White House on August 9, 1974.

I heard President Ford say those words, and I desperately want to hear a future US President say them, substituting “the Trump Administration” for “Watergate.”

Until my next blog post, probably tomorrow

I hope you have a book or something to give you a few minutes respite from what’s happening.

Janet

Words Trump wants federal agencies to “limit or avoid”

Find a comfortable chair. This is another long blog post.

I’ve been mulling over today’s topic for several weeks. It’s one thing to erase history – and the Trump Administration seems to be doing an admirable job, if that’s what you want done.

And some people do want that done. As I voiced my displeasure with everything the Trump Administration has done in two short months a classmate, whom I’ve known for 65 years, told me “it’s a beautiful thing to watch.” His comment made me nauseous.

Photo of a taxidermied elephant on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC — A taxidermied elephant on display at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash

Several days ago, the Trump Administration (or should I say, Regime?) attacked the Smithsonian Institution and National Park Service. Both were targeted for having “divisive” and “anti-American” exhibits. “Divisive” and “anti-American” can be translated to mean that they have some exhibits about people of color and women of any color. It’s feeling more and more like 1931 in Germany around here.

I have a hunch the elephant pictured above that is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution will be safe, though, since the elephant is the mascot of the Republican Party.

Equally troubling to me as erasing history is the Trump Administration’s efforts to limit or perhaps erase perfectly good words from our vocabulary.

Photo of a pencil with an eraser on the end — Photo by Kim Leary on Unsplash

People are disappearing, history is disappearing, and words are disappearing. Our allies are disappearing, and who can blame them?

Several weeks ago, a list of words was cobbled together that the Trump Regime wants US Government agencies to “limit or avoid.” The White House denies issuing a list, but they have left government agencies to use some of their own judgment in erasing specific words from their documents and websites. It seems that the hints they’ve been given are fairly loud as they are supposed to use Trump’s too-numerous-to-mention Executive Orders as their guide.

This is rich, coming from a President who has difficulty speaking in complete sentence. (Before you jump on me… I’m not being disrespectful; there is proof all over TV, video and audio clips, the internet, and the printed word.)

You can’t make this stuff up.

In case you missed it here is the list of 298 words and combinations of words that The New York Times published on March 4, 2025, that US Government agencies are supposed to “limit or avoid”:

accessible
activism
activists
advocacy
advocate
advocates
affirming care
all-inclusive
allyship
anti-racism
antiracist
assigned at birth
assigned female at birth
assigned male at birth
at risk
barrier
barriers
belong
bias
biased
biased toward
biases
biases towards
biologically female
biologically male
BIPOC
Black
breastfeed + people
breastfeed + person
chestfeed + people
chestfeed + person
clean energy
climate crisis
climate science
commercial sex worker
community diversity
community equity
confirmation bias
cultural competence
cultural differences
cultural heritage
cultural sensitivity
culturally appropriate
culturally responsive
DEI
DEIA
DEIAB
DEIJ
disabilities
disability
discriminated
discrimination
discriminatory
disparity
diverse
diverse backgrounds
diverse communities
diverse community
diverse group
diverse groups
diversified
diversify
diversifying
diversity
enhance the diversity
enhancing diversity
environmental quality
equal opportunity
equality
equitable
equitableness
equity
ethnicity
excluded
exclusion
expression
female
females
feminism
fostering inclusivity
GBV
gender
gender based
gender based violence
gender diversity
gender identity
gender ideology
gender-affirming care
genders
Gulf of Mexico
hate speech
health disparity
health equity
hispanic minority
historically
identity
immigrants
implicit bias
implicit biases
inclusion
inclusive
inclusive leadership
inclusiveness
inclusivity
increase diversity
increase the diversity
indigenous community
inequalities
inequality
inequitable
inequities
inequity
injustice
institutional
intersectional
intersectionality
key groups
key people
key populations
Latinx
LGBT
LGBTQ
marginalize
marginalized
men who have sex with men
mental health
minorities
minority
most risk
MSM
multicultural
Mx
Native American
non-binary
nonbinary
oppression
oppressive
orientation
people + uterus
people-centered care
person-centered
person-centered care
polarization
political
pollution
pregnant people
pregnant person
pregnant persons
prejudice
privilege
privileges
promote diversity
promoting diversity
pronoun
pronouns
prostitute
race
race and ethnicity
racial
racial diversity
racial identity
racial inequality
racial justice
racially
racism
segregation
sense of belonging
sex
sexual preferences
sexuality
social justice
sociocultural
socioeconomic
status
stereotype
stereotypes
systemic
systemically
they/them
trans
transgender
transsexual
trauma
traumatic
tribal
unconscious bias
underappreciated
underprivileged
underrepresentation
underrepresented
underserved
undervalued
victim
victims
vulnerable populations
women
women and underrepresented

Some of my thoughts on the subject

I considered using bold font to highlight my favorites/most angering/most ridiculous words on the list, but that would have been all 298 of them.

As a writer, words are my life. Words help me communicate. I’ll bet they help you, too. Without words, our communications would be extremely limited.

I haven’t read how Trump intends to enforce this or what punishments will be meted out to offenders. And who comes next? Writers? Reporters? Universities? Teachers?

Depending on your background, gender, or ethnicity, there are probably particular words on the list that strike a nerve with you.

Here are 51 that set me off

“Black” (capitalized) — I have Black friends. I don’t see anything wrong with the word “Black.” In fact, my great-grandmother’s surname was Black. My sister and I mentioned her in one of the Morrison genealogy books we published in 1996. I hope the Trump Administration will not ban our book, but we’re on a slippery slope when we start outlawing words.

“female,” “females,” “women,” and “biologically female”– Hmmm. Now those are intriguing words to put on a government’s “limit or avoid” list. I couldn’t help but notice that “male,” “males,” and “men” are not on the list, but “biologically male” is. Surely, it was an oversight on the part of the “biologically male” person who obviously wrote the list to not include “male,” “males,” and “men” on the list.

“mental health” – I have some relatives who struggle with mental health. I’m not sure what to do with this word combination now. Does the Trump Administration think by not using the words “mental health,” mental health issues will no longer exist? How wonderful it would be if we could just use a word and make a whole category of illness disappear!

“belong” – My mind jumped back to a trip to Scotland where I learned that there instead of saying, “She’s Campbeltown,” the locals would say, “She belongs to Campbeltown.” Since the plural form of the word isn’t on the list, maybe that use of it would be legal. Otherwise, Scots might want to think twice before visiting America. Oh… my bad…. They’ve all taken America off their bucket lists since January 20.

“pronoun” and “pronouns” – This is going to be challenging for English teachers, but it will simplify diagramming sentences.

“sex” and “chestfeed” – I don’t know what to say about these. I don’t want my blog to be flagged as obscene, but is “chestfeed” really a word? Is it actually a thing we need to be concerned about?

“systematically” – What?

“orientation” – I guess there will be no more orientation meetings for new government employees or college freshmen at schools that receive federal funds.

“trauma” – Some hospitals are qualified trauma centers, but I guess they won’t be much longer. Heaven forbid if they receive any federal funds.

Photo of a poster with words like trauma, PTSD, and anger on it — Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

“environmental quality” – You’ve got to be kidding, Trump! Just because you don’t want the citizens of the United States to have “environmental quality” doesn’t mean that the citizens of the United States don’t want “environmental quality.” Just because you want to drink contaminated water and breathe polluted air, Mr. Trump, doesn’t me the rest of us do. You can’t just outlaw the words “environmental quality” and make the whole concept of a healthy environment go away.

“disability,” and “disabilities,” – I shudder to think what will soon become of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is that act that requires handicapped bathroom stalls, automatic doors to permit easy ingress and egress at government buildings, hotel rooms with bathrooms accessible to people in wheelchairs, etc. Need I keep going?

That leads me to “barrier” and “barriers” – which I think must be on the list because the Americans with Disabilities Act tries to prevent physical movement and communication barriers from remaining in place that make it difficult for blind, deaf, and people restricted to wheelchairs to do what they need to do. Have you ever wondered why you didn’t see many (or any?) ramps into public buildings in the 1950s, but now you do? They didn’t just happen. It wasn’t because architects started adding them out of the goodness of their hearts.

Photo of a really long staircase — Photo by Joseph Akbrud on Unsplash

“race,” “racial,” “ethnicity,” and “gender” – The folks who create US Passports better get busy figuring out how to get around those questions.

“historically” – I assume this is targeting “Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” Take out the words “historically” and “Black” and it is going to be difficult to know which “colleges and universities” one is talking about. Oh… my bad… that’s the point!

“discriminated,” “discrimination,” and “discriminatory” – Are we no longer allowed to talk about or file lawsuits regarding discrimination? This is appalling!

“minority” – Lucky for the US Congress that this list, at least for now, only applies to the agencies in the Executive Branch of the government because, otherwise, they would have to come up with a new term for “Minority Whip” and “Minority Leader” in their official titles.

“expression” – Wipe that silly expression off your face!

“identity” – Seems like a legitimate word to me.

“prejudice” – Since we still have a US Department of Justice, so to speak, I guess the lawyers are going to have to find a new way to label the rulings on certain lawsuits. You see, the term “without prejudice” is a legal phrase. It is used by judges to indicate that a case can be revisited or that the verdict is not final.

I noticed it’s acceptable to use the word “racist,” but it’s not okay to use the words “anti-racist” or “anti-racism.” Interesting.

“Native American” – I think it should be left up to the indigenous peoples of America to tell the rest of us what they want to be called. I don’t think that she be left up to Donald Trump. When I was doing the research to write my vintage postcard book, The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, I learned that the Cherokee Indians in the Qualla Boundary in North Carolina prefer to be called Indians. The official name of the tribe there is Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

“tribal” is also on the list. That’s unfortunate because some tribes, such as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have tribal courthouses and tribal councils. Please don’t tell them they can no longer use the word “tribal.” The US Government has already taken too much from them.

“bias,” “biased,” “biased toward,” “biases,” and “biases towards” are all on the list. I agree with “biases towards” being on the list because “towards” is incorrect grammar in the United States. I have a problem with the other four, though.

“allyship” – I must admit that was a new word for me. I looked it up and discovered that it refers to those of us in relatively advantaged groups who intentionally support or advocate for disadvantaged people. I hope I’m guilty of having done “allyship” in the past, and I hope I will continue to be guilty of it in the future! As a Christian, I am called on to do that.

That leads me to “advocacy,” “advocate,” and “advocates.” – Now that’s just sad. When you are in the hospital or a nursing home, you need an “advocate” to look out for your best interests. That can be a relative or a social worker or… hut oh….

My doctor says if I have osteopenia and I don’t exercise and eat a calcium-rich diet, I am “at risk” of developing osteoporosis. I assume the Department of Health and Human Resources can no longer “advocate” for “at risk” conditions and illnesses. That’s the least of our worries, though, with RFK, Jr. in charge of that department.

“equality,” “equity,” “inequalities,” “inequality,” “inequitable,” “inequities,” and “inequity” – Does anyone else see a blatant pattern here?

I noticed the word “justice” does not appear on the list. That’s nice, because that word is used in the Preamble of the US Constitution. Whew! That was a close call!

You know the words to the Preamble, don’t you, Mr. Trump?

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

I thought about highlighting my “favorite” words on the list, but before I knew it I had pulled out 50 of them. I’ll just leave it at that for today, but my new purpose in life is to make sure I use at least one word on the list every week in my blog. Heck, I might use more than one.

Some of my comments about specific words on the list were tongue-in-cheek, but I assure you that I take this very seriously.

In essence, Trump’s putting out the word that federal government agencies can read his myriad Executive Orders and surmise the words they need to “limit or avoid” pretty much makes their use on government documents and websites illegal.

No, there is no enacted law prohibiting the use of these words. However, one definition of “illegal” is “not sanctioned by official rules.” (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, 2001.)

How do you ban books in the 21^st century?

You make your citizens afraid to use words on an ever-growing list.

Just when you think things can’t get worse

PEN Americais a nonprofit organization that works to defend free expression in the United States and around the world through the advancement of literature and human rights. On March 21, 2025, the organization published a growing list of words being singled out by the Trump Administration as words Trumps doesn’t want us to use.

My blog post on Wednesday, April 2, 2025, will list the words identified by PEN America that did not appear on the March 4, 2025, New York Times list.

Arlington National Cemetery

With so much going on, and a couple of long blog posts in March, I waited until today to mention how the US Department of Defense is erasing history specifically on the Arlington National Cemetery website. US history seems to be in Trump’s cross-hairs.

Under the heading, “Arlington National Cemetery removed links to webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans,” Snopes.com (published March 14, 2025; updated March 15, 2025) verified that the following links had been removed from the Arlington National Cemetery website:

African American History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection;

Hispanic American History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection;

Women’s History, removed from the Notable Graves subsection;

African American History, removed from the Themes drop-down menu of the Education section; and

Civil War, removed from the Themes drop-down menu of the Education section.

This should be no surprise, since Trump has called veterans suckers and losers.

Until my next blog post

What are your “favorite” words on the list of 298 words I shared today?

I hope you have a good book to read.

Nurture your friendships and relatives.

Remember the people of Myanmar, Thailand, Ukraine, and western North Carolina.

Janet

Striving for a More Perfect USA

The idea of forming “a more perfect Union” dates back to the formative years of the United States of America. The words can be found in the preamble to the US Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

This introduction to the US Constitution sets the bar high. Sometimes we get it right. More often than not, we fall short.

The tragic events of last week tempt us to throw up our hands and give up on working toward “a more perfect Union,” but that’s not who we are. I believe most Americans will continue to strive for a more perfect nation.

In light of the hate crimes and acts of terrorism and political violence last week in the United States of America, I offer the following quote from The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels, by Jon Meacham:

A More Perfect USA — Quote from The Soul of America: The Battle for our Better Angels, by Jon Meacham

I also share the following famous words of Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade — Quote from Martin Niemoller

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading A Spark of Light, by Jodi Picoult.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog. I appreciate it! I welcome your comments.

Let’s continue the conversation.

What is it going to take to stop the hate crimes and political violence in the United States of America? What can we do as individuals wherever we live to make the world a kinder place?

Perhaps we could start by living the 39th verse of the 22nd chapter of The Gospel of Matthew as it is translated in the Contemporary English Version of the Bible:

The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is, “Love others as much as you love yourself.”

Many of the people who read my blog are not Christians — and that is one of the unexpected joys this blog has given me — but I hope we can all strive to adopt the above words of Jesus in our everyday lives and work for peace in our families, neighborhoods, cities, and nations.

And we can’t wait until they come for us, because by then there will be no one left to speak up.

Janet

Race in America, and The Dry Grass of August

Today’s blog post highlights the first paragraph of The Dry Grass of August, Anna Jean Mayhew’s debut novel. That paragraph is a great hook, for it draws you in and conveys that there’s bound to be a good story in the coming pages. Here it is:

“In August of 1954, we took our first trip without Daddy, and Stell got to use the driver’s license she’d had such a fit about. It was just a little card saying she was Estelle Annette Watts, that she was white, with hazel eyes and brown hair. But her having a license made that trip different from any others, because if she hadn’t had it, we never would have been stuck in Sally’s Motel Park in Claxton, Georgia, where we went to buy fruitcakes and had a wreck instead. And Mary would still be with us.” ~ Anna Jean Mayhew in The Dry Grass of August

The Dry Grass of August is a novel that takes you to the American South in the days of lawfully-mandated racial segregation. It is written from the point-of-view of a 13-year-old white girl from Charlotte, North Carolina. It sheds light on how it was in the 1950s for a black maid, Mary Luther, traveling from North Carolina to Florida with her white employer, Mrs. Watts, and the four Watts children. Mary couldn’t eat in restaurants, couldn’t sleep in motels, and couldn’t use public bathrooms because they were the legal domain of white people.

Mary Luther is in constant but often subtle danger. She was, no doubt, apprehensive and in danger even when the members of the white family she was riding with were unaware. That unawareness is today referred to as “white privilege.” When one lives his entire life as a member of the predominant and ruling race, he enjoys privileges and advantages of which he isn’t even conscious.

The Watts children witness things along the way to Florida that open their eyes to how differently whites and blacks are treated in the United States. They cannot return home to Charlotte unchanged.

In light of the August 12, 2017 violence

I chose the opening paragraph of The Dry Grass of August as my blog topic for today many weeks ago. When I selected it and put it on my blog schedule, I had no idea I would be writing it in the aftermath of the tragedy in Virginia of last weekend. I did not anticipate writing a 1,000-word blog post around that paragraph.

Although published in 2011, The Dry Grass of August speaks to us today as, in light of the murder of Heather Heyer and other violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, Americans are having a conversation like never before about race relations. That conversation is long overdue and painful. It will not and cannot be a short conversation.

For all the progress that has been made between the races in my 64 years, it is abhorrent and repulsive to me that in 2017 there are Ku Klux Klan members, white supremacists, and Neo-Nazis not only living among us but being emboldened by the words, actions, and inactions of President Donald J. Trump. It is Mr. Trump’s lack of moral leadership that has added fuel to the fire and given bigots a green light to publicly spew their hate.

I had hoped to keep politics out of my blog, but I cannot remain silent. This is bigger than politics. This is morals and humanity and freedom. Freedom to live without fear. My blog is not a huge platform, but it does give me an avenue through which to speak. My blog has 1,300 followers from all over the world. I don’t want my blog followers in other countries to think Americans are vicious and at each other’s throats. That is not who we are.

Whereas the people who doggedly hung onto the myth that white people were a superior race used to cowardly hide their faces and identities under white hoods and robes, they now demonstrate and march with torches in regular street clothes. When they marched in Charlottesville last weekend, some of them were outfitted with helmets and shields, making it difficult for the anti-Nazi protesters to tell the difference between police officers and the white supremacists.

There is no room in the United States of America for Neo-Nazis and other hate mongers. The good citizens of this country cannot allow the current occupant of the White House to lead us down this destructive road by his lame condemnation of evil and his attempt to equate the people carrying Nazi flags with the people who were there to protest their hateful agenda.

Three of the founding pillars of the United States are freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to assemble. I’m glad I live in a country where people can voice their opinions; however, no American has the constitutional right to threaten, terrorize, or murder other people simply because of the color of their skin or the way they choose to worship God.

The United States is in a watershed moment. We will come out a better people on the other side of the current self-examination and soul searching because we are a good and decent people. We are not who Mr. Trump would try to make you think we are. We are so much better than that.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. If you’re a writer, I hope you have a good book to read while you write your next good book.

Janet

Janet's Writing Blog

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