I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
In my blog post last Friday, I promised a near future post about U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
If you saw her performance last Wednesday in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, you probably do not want to be reminded of it. I saw all of it that was televised, and I wish I could unsee and unhear it.
The audacity of Pam Bondi to prance into The Capitol and call members of Congress names! It was a circus but not an entertaining one. It was an embarrassment. Her body language alone was abhorrent, not to mention her trash mouth.
Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash
It was a performance meant for one person only: Donald Trump. I am sure he thought it was a brilliant display. Even when she was reminded that it is her job and sworn duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to represent the United States of America (i.e., the people!) in all her dealings as U.S. Attorney General, she continued to call members of Congress derogatory names and refuse to look the Democrats on the committee in the eyes.
The hearing was supposed to be for Bondi to give U.S. Representatives some answers about the Epstein files and the recent and current operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Instead, it was half pep rally for Trump and half demonstration of how sarcastic and snarky the current U.S. Attorney General can be when facing legitimate questions that make her squirm.
In case you missed the performance, when being asked questions by Republicans on the committee, Bondi smiled and gushed. She thanked them profusely for “asking that question.” When asked “a yes or no” question, she replied accordingly.
When asked questions by a Democrat on the committee, Bondi made a great show of shuffling the papers in front of her and looking down. She was suddenly busy, busy, busy. Instead of answering “yes or no” questions by Democrats, she deflected – usually by turning to that Congress member’s section in her three-ring binder so she could attack that Representative personally with a reference (true or not) to a vote that Representative made sometime in their career along with her editorial comments (true or false).
She repeatedly said, “Mr. Chairman, I refuse to get down in the gutter with these people.” She called one of them “a washed-up lawyer.” She hurled various insults at most of the Democrats. The fact that she had that three-ring binder at her fingertips was visible evidence of her disdain for every Democrat Congress member. She used the same binder when testifying before a U.S. Senate Committee.
She accused one member of the committee of being antisemitic, even though that member’s grandfather died in the Holocaust.
Even the BBC questioned why Bondi lost her temper in the hearing.
Early in the hearing, survivors of the sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his rich and political friends in high places were asked to stand where they were seated in the audience. Bondi never acknowledged their presence. Even when asked by at least one member of the committee to turn around and look at the survivors and family members of at least one victim who is now deceased, Bondi would not do it. She is apparently incapable of looking truth in the face.
Bondi cares not that she is now the U.S. Attorney General because she was confirmed for that position by the Congress of the United States. She has a particularly peculiar way of showing her appreciation for the misguided confidence they put in her after her shaky confirmation hearings last year in which she said she would not “weaponize” the U.S. Department of Justice. Yet, that is all she has done since assuming office. I have heard people who knew and respected her as the State Attorney General in Florida say they no longer recognize her as the person they used to know.
Her behavior was bizarre, to say the least. When asked a question about the Epstein files, she “answered” by touting the fact that the stock market reached and broke the 50,000 mark the day before, then bristled when a Democrat on the committee asked, “What does that have to do with the Epstein files?”
It was horrible to see and hear a U.S. Attorney General stoop to such childish and insulting behavior. Such behavior as demonstrated by Bondi would not be tolerated in a court of law, and it should not have been tolerated in the U.S. Capitol. She should have been held in contempt of Congress, but she wasn’t because the committee is chaired by a Republican – a very self-righteous Republican who does not have enough respect for the institution or his position in Congress to even wear a suit.
In “answering” one question, she waxed poetic about what a wonderful U.S. President Donald J. Trump is. It was gag-worthy and inappropriate.
The U.S. Attorney General is not supposed to be beholding to the U.S. President.
The person in that position is not supposed to be political.
The person in that position is not supposed to be a cheerleader or public relations representative for the U.S. President.
The U.S. Attorney General is not supposed to do the President’s bidding.
In just one year, Bondi has broken every time-honored rule – written and unwritten — governing her position.
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
Pull up a comfortable chair. This post is long, but I believe its length stands as proof of the chaos here just in the last week or two. I considered breaking it up between two days, but I think its length alone makes a point.
In case you are wondering why I did not blog yesterday about Wednesday’s performance for Donald Trump by Pam Bondi, I did not have time to digest it and spit it onto the page. That will come either tomorrow or on Monday of next week.
Oh, daily life pretty much goes on as usual except in cities being targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. People must continue to work to support themselves and their families. Children need to continue to attend school. Life goes on, but life would be less stressful if we weren’t slammed every day with unnecessary crises.
I have taken the gloves off this week. Perhaps you noticed, if you’ve read my last four blog posts.
I know I irritate people who cling to Donald Trump, but I offer no apologies. Not because I see apologizing as a weakness (like Trump does), but because I refuse to apologize for standing up for the U.S. Constitution and the ideals upon which my country was formed.
As I tell the Trumpers who attack me on Facebook, you don’t have to read what I post. I have the right to post it and you have the right not to read it. If you want to convince me I’m a left-wing woke radical, don’t bother. I wear that moniker proudly.
I feel compelled to blog about more than a dozen things today that have me concerned or, at the least, intrigued.
Not a day passes without at least one piece of alarming news coming out of the Trump regime or from his followers. Most days there are so many pieces of alarming news that it feels like we Americans are being gut-punched by a fire hose.
That’s all part of the plan. That’s the only way they can ram Project 2025 down our throats and “take back” the “good old days” when blacks and women had no rights and few people spoke truth to power.
I try to keep up. I take notes. I pay attention. I get my news from various sources. But I cannot keep up. Things fall through the cracks. It’s overwhelming – which is all part of their plan.
Americans are weary. We are tired of the fire hose of hate and destruction. We. Are. Tired. That is part of their plan.
They are hellbent on confusing us with lies and throwing so much chaos at us 24/7 that we give up.
You will find that I freely refer to Republicans in this post. I hate to throw all Republicans under the bus, but I have lost my patience over the last 13 months. The Republican Party has blindly and completely embraced Donald Trump and everything he says and does, so I no longer feel the need to tiptoe around them.
If you are a Republican and have not removed yourself from that affiliation, I am left to assume that you agree with Donald Trump. It is his political party now. With rare exceptions, no one in the party has the gumption to challenge anything he says or does.
If you are a registered Republican and you have remained silent as Donald Trump has stomped all over the U.S. Constitution, torn down the East Wing of the White House, ordered masked men to round up people with Spanish accents – including children – and warehoused them, been found guilty of 34 felonies, bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, published racist words and images on social media, threatened our allies, taken Putin’s word over that of U.S. intelligence organizations, slapped his name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (and announced its closure on July 4, 2026), and lied to your face about more things than you can count… then perhaps you need to do some soul searching.
Silence is complicity.
Full disclosure: I used to be a registered Republican. I’m not proud of that. I was young and misguided. I have voted for Republicans and I have voted for Democrats. I used to “vote for the person, not the party,” but those days are over for the foreseeable future. I cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a Republican in light of what the Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly have done to destroy public education and what the Trump Administrations have done to every facet of our country.
Photo by Larry Alger on Unsplash
Hurrah for that Grand Jury!
The American people had a victory this week! A Grand Jury – made up of average Americans – refused to indict two U.S. Senators and four U.S. Representatives who participated in a video in which they merely stated the law: If you are in the U.S. military, you do not have to carry out an illegal order.
In fact, the Nazis who followed Hitler’s orders found at during the Nuremberg Trials that they didn’t have to carry out illegal orders. It is international law, not just U.S. law.
Donald Trump and Pam Bondi weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice when they tried to prosecute Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania for making a video in which they simply stated that members of the military do not have to follow illegal orders.
It infuriated Trump for these military veterans and lawmakers to remind the American public – not just military personnel – that there is a law of humanity in place. He ordered the U.S. Department of Justice, which he thinks is and treats as if it is his personal law firm, to go after those six members of Congress.
Trump called those six Democrat members of Congress “seditious” when the video aired. He wanted them to be executed for stating the law.
It would have been wonderful if the Republican members of Congress had shown outrage over Trump’s remarks. It would have been wonderful and encouraging if the Republican members of Congress had shown outrage over the attempted prosecution of their fellow lawmakers.
I believe we will see more such failures of the U.S. Department of Justice as it is headed by a woman who is only there to try to carry out Trump’s vindictive wishes.
FBI raid of Fulton County, Georgia, Elections Records
On January 28, 2026, the FBI raided the building where the voting records from Fulton County, Georgia, from the 2020 presidential election were housed. Some 656 boxes of ballots, ballot images, tabulators, and voter rolls were seized by the FBI and taken to an undisclosed location.
Even though voter registration records in the United States are public information and easily found on the Internet, it is creeper for the FBI to seize a county’s voter registration rolls.
The icing on the cake was that Trump spoke directly via telephone to the FBI agents who participated just minutes after the raid. That is not what the President of the United States is supposed to do. Until Trump assumed office in January 2025, the FBI was apolitical. The U.S. President is not supposed to direct, interfere with, or in any way get involved in the FBI investigations.
Fulton County filed suit against the Trump Administration to try to get the records back.
Until forced to this week, the Trump Administration gave no justification for the January 28, 2026, seizure, but Brad Raffensperger is running for Governor and Trump has endorsed his opponent.
You will recall that Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021 and asked Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes. That action by Trump should have disqualified him to ever run for office again, but it didn’t.
Trump will never accept the fact that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. His fragile ego cannot accept that he lost. “Loser” is one of the worst things he can think of to call someone.
Therefore, even though the Fulton County, Georgia votes were re-counted by hand twice after the initial count on election night in 2020, Trump thought he could pressure a state with a Republican Governor, a Republican Secretary of State, and a Republican Lt. Governor to cave and “find” him the votes he did not receive.
He accused the vote counters of cheating. He knows so little about how strictly ballots are counted, preserved, and transported that he made up lies about the containers holding the ballots and specifically two black women who helped count the votes.
So now the 2020 votes from Fulton County, Georgia, are who knows where. The Fulton County Board of Elections is responsible for the security of those ballots, but the Trump Administration has seized them and taken them to an undisclosed location.
As of February 9, Fulton County officials had not been told where the records they are responsible for were being held or what had been done with them or to them. As I write this on February 12, I cannot find that they have found out where those records are being held. The 2020 Fulton County voters don’t know what is being done with their personal information.
Last week, a federal judge ordered the FBI to unseal and reveal the warrant used on January 28 in Fulton County no later than Tuesday, February 10. Much to my surprise, the affidavits associated with the warrant were unsealed on Tuesday afternoon.
WSB-TV in Atlanta reported, “According to the documents, the FBI was told to investigate a discrepancy in the vote counts reported by Fulton County election officials, with the warrant alleging that there were missing ballot images from the 2020 election records.”
Here we are in 2026, still having to prove that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Why are none of the Republicans who were elected in 2020 claiming that the election was rigged? Odd how that worked out. Only Donald Trump is crying “foul.”
If you think the seizure of the Fulton County, Georgia, voting records does not pertain to you because you don’t live there, just think how you would feel if the FBI seized the voting records of your county. If they can do it in Atlanta, they can do it anywhere.
FBI briefing
Election officials from all 50 states have been summoned to an FBI briefing on “preparations for the midterms” on February 25. The email from the FBI was said to be from Kellie Hardiman, “FBI Election Executive.” I believe this briefing is unusual.
ICE, Steve Bannon, November mid-term elections
In a related matter, last week former Trump bestie and jailbird Steve Bannon proudly announced that ICE agents will surround the polling places in November. Of course, ICE agents do not work for Steve Bannon. (Thank goodness!) But Trump and his minions are wasting no time in trying to scare voters away from the polls. They continue to operate under the delusion that undocumented immigrants vote. They spend a lot of their time focusing on remedies for problems that do not exist, like voter fraud.
ICE statistics
Trump took office on January 20, 2025, promising to immediately get rid of “the worst of the worst.” He often claims that immigrants are murderers, rapists, and dangerous gang members. “The worst of the worst.”
It is hard to get reliable statistics about the arrests made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but some interesting numbers have been reported by various news outlets this week. I’m sure these percentages could be off my two or three percentage points, but these are the numbers I have read:
From January 25, 2025 through January 31, 2026, 40% of those arrested and detained have no criminal records, 14% are violent criminals, and less than 2% are gang members.
I have heard more than one county sheriff say they can only keep an undocumented immigrant in custody for 48 hours. If ICE agents don’t come to pick those prisoners up in 48 hours, they must be released. Perhaps it would be a better use of ICE agents if they would pick up the undocumented immigrants already in local police custody instead of it taking five ICE agents to murder a nurse who has knelt in the aid of a woman said agents have shoved to the ground.
The New START treaty
Remember The New START treaty between the United States and Russia? It was signed in 2011. Trump let it expire on February 5 while he was waxing poetic at the 74th Annual Prayer Breakfast. With the treaty’s expiration, there’s no longer a cap on the number of nuclear weapons either country can have.
I’m not sure which part of that equation worries me more, since Trump’s finger is on “the red button.”
Does this fall under the red “Make America Safe Again” baseball cap?
The National Governors Association Annual Meeting
It came to light last week that Maryland Governor Wes Moore – the only black governor in the U.S. – had been uninvited to the 2026 National Governors Association (NGA) dinner at the White House on February 20. Governors of every state, commonwealth, and territory in the United States are automatically members. Their annual dinner at the White House is a time for all of the governors and their spouses to get together, share best practices on a non-partisan basis, and have dinner with the President of the United States, Cabinet members, and other government officials.
I jumped to the conclusion that this was another case of racism; however, according to the last report I read, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, also a Democrat, has also been uninvited
Gov. Moore serves as Vice Chair of the National Governors Association. He was elected to that position by a non-partisan vote.
It was reported by Reuters on Tuesday, February 10, that the NGA’s annual meeting with Trump has been cancelled. Brandon Tatum, CEO of the NGA, released a statement saying, “To disinvite individual governors to the White House sessions undermines an important opportunity for federal-state collaboration.” He also said, “At this moment in our nation’s history, it is critical that institutions continue to stand for unity, dignity and constructive engagement.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president “can invite whomever he wants to dinner and events here at the White House.” It seems that someone has forgotten that the White House belongs to the American people, not to any sitting U.S. President. Of course, that became blatantly clear the day Trump demolished the East Wing.
According to The New York Times, Trump did the uninviting.
Does this “Make America Great Again?”
The possible renaming of Penn Station
Trump claimed that it was U.S. Senator Chuck Shummer’s idea that Penn Station in New York City could be renamed for Trump. Shummer denied it.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in Tuesday’s press briefing that it was Trump’s idea, not Shummer’s.
Ooops!
What they think is “fake outrage”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told us to stop our “fake outrage” last Friday after the photograph of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama with their heads on ape bodies was posted on Trump’s Truth Social account for 12 hours.
The only fake outrage I saw on display last week (and continuing this week) was Republicans who were in an uproar that a Puerto Rican performer, “Bad Bunny” was headlining the Super Bowl halftime show. They said he wasn’t American. They said only Americans should perform during the Super Bowl.
But Bad Bunny is American. Puerto Rico is part of the United States. Why else did Trump go there and throw rolls of paper towels at them in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 during his first term in office? Did he understand then that Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory? By the way, that’s when he discovered that Puerto Rico is an island, but I digress.
Besides the point that Puerto Ricans are American citizens, perhaps the Republicans can explain why they were not outraged when Phil Collins of Great Britain performed in Super Bowl XXXIV, U2 from Ireland in Super Bowl XXXVI, Shania Twain from Canada in Superbowl XXXVII, Paul McCartney in Super Bowl XXXIX, and Coldplay in Super Bowl L? Do you want more examples of “foreigners” performing at the Super Bowl?
It appears that the Republicans’ outrage over Bad Bunny is the fact that his first language is Spanish and he chose to sing in Spanish for the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Music has no language. Music has a beat, a mood, a spirit, a way of tugging at your emotions no matter the language in which the words are sung.
Sadly, though, I don’t think the outrage about Bad Bunny was fake. I think they were dead serious.
They see Americans of European descent becoming a minority in a few years, and the only way they know to deal with it is to lash out, call names, and discriminate. That’s their modus operandi.
Trump posted his displeasure over Bad Bunny again during the Super Bowl. He whined because he couldn’t understand a word Bad Bunny sang. He claimed that “nobody” could understand it. It’s too bad Trump did not celebrate all the countries in the Americas, like Bad Bunny did. I guess Trump did not agree with the huge “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” sign during the performance. That is obviously a concept and core value that Trump cannot fathom.
The Make America Great Again alternative half-time show featured Kid Rock, whose song lyrics should be considered cringe-worthy by the MAGA crowd who claim to be “the party of family values.”
The Epstein Files
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick can’t seem to get his story straight about his association with Jeffrey Epstein. He admits that he took his children to Epstein’s private island and residence in 2012. Lutnick had earlier said that he cut off all contact with Epstein in 2005, calling him “gross.”
Democrats in Congress are calling for Lutnick to resign.
Republicans used to call for the release of all the Epstein files, but Trump said last week that “it’s time to move on.” Nothing to see here.
The only person who has gone to prison for the raping of countless young girls on Epstein’s property is a woman.
Oh, the irony!
Speaking of irony… U.S. Olympic skier Hunter Hess
U.S. Olympic skier Hunter Hess dared to express his displeasure with ICE killing American citizens in Minneapolis. Hess is quoted as saying, “I think, for me, it’s more I’m representing my friends and family back home, the people that represented it before me, all the things that I believe are good about the U.S. If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
Trump took offense. He takes offense at anyone who speaks their mind if their opinions do not line up with his. When he is offended, he goes on the attack. It’s all he knows to do.
This was Trump’s response on Truth Social to what Hunter Hess said: “U.S. Olympic Skier, Hunter Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it.”
That’s not all Trump wrote about Hess, but you get the point even though to read his social media posts you must meander your way through randomly-capitalized words. They must have had top-notch English teachers at those expensive private schools he attended.
In the old days, if a U.S. President with extremely thin skin wanted to call a citizen or member of the U.S. Olympic team a name, he probably just muttered under his breath, but today Trump puts everything out there in cyberspace for the world to see.
The wife of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller weighed in, too. She said that if you don’t love America you should be representing it in the Olympics. What she and other Republicans cannot grasp is that we who protest and voice our anger and disappointment and disgust at what the Trump Administration is doing… we do it BECAUSE we love America! They think we hate America. No, we love America and we mourn for what the Trump Administration has done to destroy this once beacon of freedom.
By the way, Mrs. Miller, the First Amendment gives us freedom of speech, just like it gives freedom of speech to you.
U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida also weighed in. He twisted Hunter Hess’s words. Hess did not say he did not want to represent the United States. Senator Scott has been quoted as saying that the United States is a “for freedom and democracy,” but he doesn’t think an American participating in the 2026 Winter Olympics has freedom of speech.
Trump’s supporters, of which Rick Scott is one, think it is all right for Trump to say derogatory things about the United States, its elected representatives, its member states, its cities, and segments of its population.
I guess that’s more accurately described as hypocrisy instead of irony.
National Park informational displays and signs
It’s not getting publicity by the major news outlets, but the underground reports almost weekly of informational displays and signage being removed from our National Parks. Any display or sign that conveys an unfortunate or evil piece of United States history is being removed.
Displays about the removal and abuse of indigenous peoples, displays about slavery, and displays giving scientific facts about climate change are especially being targeted and removed.
United States history is being rewritten and erased. I shudder to think of future school history books that will be adopted by right-wing state school boards.
The “Melania” film by Amazon
It seems that music composed by Jonny Greenwood for the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, “Phantom Thread,” was used in “Melania’ without permission. Greenwood and “Phantom Thread” director Paul Thomas Anderson have asked for that music to be removed from “Melania.”
Although Greenwood does not hold the copyright to that piece of music he composed, use of it without permission from Universal is a breach of his composer’s agreement.
This is not the first time members of the Trump family have used music without permission. They seem to have little or no respect for copyright law or related law.
A ray of light on tariffs
Reports indicate that Trump’s tariffs, which he said would “Make America Rich Again,” cost the average American family $1,000 in 2025 and will cost them $1,300 in 2026 if left in place.
In a slightly bi-partisan vote of 219-211 in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the House adopted a resolution calling for Trump to remove tariffs on Canada.
In response, Trump threatened the six Republicans who voted for the resolution.
The Gordie Howe Bridge
Canada has built and paid for a bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan. Be sure to remember the phrase “and paid for.”
Those of us who live more than 500 miles from Detroit have not heard much about it.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge cost C$6.4 billion ($4.6 billion US) and was scheduled to open early this year. It is a grand bridge with six lanes for vehicular traffic plus bike lanes and pedestrian walkways. Government agencies in both countries worked together to select the name for the bridge.
Canada built the bridge “to make automotive trade between the two countries easier,” according to Forbes.
In a nutshell, the Ambassador Bridge, which opened in 1929, is currently the main automotive trade traffic carrier between the two countries, but the bridge’s owner (Detroit International Bridge Company) has been crossways with Canada for the last two decades or so. For instance, the company made plans to build another bridge right beside the Ambassador Bridge. The older bridge would be relegated to emergency traffic. Canada objected to that plan.
Canada proposed a new bridge to be built with the state of Michigan. and Canada sharing construction costs. Michigan declined, so Canada decided to finance construction of the Gordie Howe Bridge itself. During Trump’s first term in office, it was agreed that this would be a toll bridge and tolls collected would pay off the construction costs.
Fast forward to February 9, 2026. Trump posted on his social media outlet that he “will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them.” The “them” is Canada.
Here we go again. Trump trying to change the rules in the last quarter of the game. That is no way to conduct relationships with other countries – especially a wonderful neighbor country like Canada – and it’s no way to conduct business.
The oft-said line I heard during the 2016 presidential campaign, “We need a businessman in the White House” continues to ring hollow in my head.
And lest I forget to mention this…
The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight Committee subpoenaed former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify regarding the Epstein files. Committee Chair James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, just knew that the Clintons would refuse to come and could then be held in contempt of Congress.
But that’s not what happened. The Clintons agreed to come and testify in a public, televised hearing. After all, Rep. Comer talks a lot about transparency. It turns out that a public hearing is not what Rep. Comer had in mind, especially since he didn’t expect the Clintons to show up.
Democrats in Congress are taking note that this will set a precedent. Forcing a former U.S. President or the family of a former U.S. President to testify before Congress has never been done before. When will today’s Republicans learn to be careful what they wish for? Woe be unto Donald Trump and his family when the Democrats win control of the Congress!
Someone must have told Trump that turnabout could be fair play someday in the future, for he started talking about how much he has always liked bill Clinton and what “a very capable woman” Hillary Clinton is. He said, “I hate to see it in many way.”
Who knew that Trump though Hillary Clinton was “a very capable woman?” Is that why he encroached on her personal space from behind like a starving vulture in that President debate that I cannot unsee?
Who knew he held the Clintons in such high regard?
I try to learn something every day, but I didn’t see that coming.
Hillary Clinton is scheduled to testify on February 26 and Bill Clinton is scheduled to testify on February 27. Oversight Committee Chair Comer says their hearings will be taped and released “later.” In Comer’s mind, that qualifies as a “public” hearing.
I have some experience with public hearings and public informational meetings. Letting the public see and hear the hearing “later” does not meet the definition of “public hearing.”
Janet
P.S. Just so you know, we aren’t giving up. I just realized I forgot to even mention environmental issues!
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
For several weeks, the newsletters from my “representative” in the U.S. House of Representatives landed in my spam box. How apropos!
U.S. Capitol Dome Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash
But then Saturday, February 7, 2026, rolled around and there it was! Right there in my inbox. The title of his newsletter jumped out at me… just as he and his pitiful staff intended: “Americans’ Safety Is In Jeopardy– Courtesy Of Democrats.”
I took the bait. I did not want to read his newsletter because he has never said or written a word that was worthy of the time it took for me to listen or read. But, I thought, Okay, what’s he preaching about this time?
In case you wonder why I chose the word, “preaching,” it is because he is a Southern Baptist preacher. He used to be the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Charlotte. It’s unclear now as to why he is no longer on the staff there, but could it be the congregation got sick and tired of his far-right hypocrisy that runs counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ? I’m merely speculating. I know nothing of how grounded his congregants were in the New Testament.
Bear with me as I quote his newsletter from February 7:
“Dear Janet,
“Spot the hypocrisy: Democrats allowed the Obama administration to deport millions and raised no objections.
“An yet, when President Trump does the same, Democrats shut the government down because they want funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end.
“DHS is not just Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); it is: FEMA, ICE, U.S. Secret Service, etc. Democrats are willing to allow multiple vital organizations that provide SAFETY for Americans to be defunded.
“My Republican colleagues and I will not stand for this.”
My response to Representative Harris:
Dear Mark,
I assume I can call you Mark, since you addressed me by my given name. There is apparently no need to stand on ceremony.
Your gaslighting of your constituents continues to reach new lows. You forget that quite a few of us are old enough to remember the Obama Administration. Since you are unaware of the difference in deportations while Barack Obama was U.S. President and the deportations your constituents with eyes wide open have witnessed during the reign of Donald Trump, allow me to point out just a few of the differences:
Deportation agents under the Obama Administration did not hide behind masks;
Deportation agents under the Obama Administration did not drag American citizens from their cars and ship them off to detention centers hundreds of miles away;
Deportation agents under the Obama Administration did not break the car windows of American citizens;
Deportation agents under the Obama Administration did not murder American citizens who were driving cars; and
Deportation agents under the Obama Administration did not murder a nurse who was kneeling to come to the aid of a woman who had been knocked to the ground by masked, heavily armed, poorly trained deportation agents.
This list is just the tip of the iceberg.
So, Mark, I suggest you read 21st century U.S. History; read the U.S. Constitution that you swore to protect, defend, and uphold; read the oath of office you swore to uphold so help you God; and read the New Testament while you’re at it, if you can read. You are against public education, so that indicates to me that perhaps you never learned how to read.
By the way, most of your constituents were educated in public schools and public colleges and universities, so we know some history, we studied the U.S. Constitution, and we know how to think for ourselves. We know a puppet of Donald Trump when we see one.
And, Mark, when you are willing and able to speak the truth to me and to Donald Trump’s face, I’ll be happy to listen to you… but not until then.
Sincerely,
Janet, an angry citizen of North Carolina’s Eighth Congressional District
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
I don’t know if the Pledge of Allegiance is still recited in public school classrooms like it was in the 1950s and 1960s.
Photo by Cris Constantin on Unsplash
I will be 73 years old this week, and I remember standing beside my desk in elementary school, facing the American flag that hung from a wooden dowel at an angle from the wall of the classroom, putting my right hand over my heart, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
I did it even before I understood the words we were saying.
I pledged my allegiance to the flag and to the republic it represented.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
My generation learned from an early age to revere the flag and to revere the ideals the United States of America strives to attain and uphold.
We were born after World War II. Yes, we are the “boomers” who the Gen X-ers make fun of. We did not yet know or comprehend the horrors of war. We had no concept of liberty and justice. We were too young to know that our country was special and unlike any other country in the world.
We slowly learned those things. We learned that all American citizens did not enjoy the same rights and privileges that we in an all-white school took for granted. We learned about civil rights by living through the Civil Rights Movement and school desegregation. We learned that all people are the same, regardless of skin pigment.
Somehow, the 31 simple – yet profound – words of the Pledge of Allegiance settled into our bones and our minds and our souls.
I might not remember what I ate for breakfast this morning, but the words of the Pledge of Allegiance still easily roll off my tongue.
Did Donald Trump ever learn the words of the Pledge of Allegiance? Perhaps it was not taught and recited in the prestigious private schools he attended in New York. I don’t know.
Did James Donald Bowman recite the Pledge of Allegiance in his school in Ohio? My hunch is that he did, even though he seems to have forgotten. You probably know him as James David “J.D.” Vance. (I still think it is a stretch to call the northeastern suburbs of Cincinnati “Appalachia,” but I digress.)
What about Kristi Noem? Was she taught the Pledge of Allegiance in the school she attended in South Dakota? Surely, she was. I know nothing about the political science department at South Dakota State University, but I question the validity of her Bachelor’s degree.
And what about Gregory Bovino? Did he learn the Pledge of Allegiance as a young student in California? I am appalled to report that he graduated from Western Carolina University and received a Master’s degree from my alma mater, Appalachian State University. This sickens me. I don’t know what his degrees are in. I pray they are not in political science. His buzzcut, his olive-green uniform, his practice of hurling tear gas canisters at protesters have allowed him to become the poster child for the crackdown on illegal immigration that the Trump regime espouses. The cross body strap his uniform includes is reminiscent of Hitler’s “brown shirts.” This is not a look that we are accustomed to seeing in the United States. On Saturday, Bovino adamantly told us that the federal agents in Minneapolis had followed their training that morning when they killed Alex Pretti. Before Mr. Pretti’s bullet-riddled body was cold, Bovino claimed that Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” That’s how afraid members of the Trump regime are of a Veterans Administration ICU nurse armed with a cell phone.
What about Stephen Miller? It is ironic that he allegedly campaigned to get the Pledge of Allegiance said in his high school in California. Most of the things he says about our rights as Americans call into question the political science education he received at Duke University.
Karoline Leavitt is of a younger generation, so perhaps she never learned the Pledge of Allegiance. She often wears a necklace from which hangs a cross – a symbol of Jesus Christ. It is offensive when people wear cross necklaces or verbally claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, yet the truth is not in them.
What has happened to these people? Did the Pledge of Allegiance not settle in their bones and their souls?
The Pledge of Allegiance does not mention telling lies. That comes from the Bible. The Eighth Commandment instructs us to “not bear false witness.’ In other words, it tells us not to lie.
When a person is raised in a home where the truth is always told, that commandment becomes second nature. It becomes a core value. Telling the truth is what you do. You don’t have to pause and decide whether to tell the truth. It’s just what you do.
When a person is exposed to lies in their home or in their work place, perhaps the telling of lies becomes second nature to them.
I don’t know much about the private lives of the people in the Trump Administration, but I know they are feeding the American people and the world a lot of lies about what transpired on Saturday morning in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
They are telling me not to believe my eyes and ears.
Two days after the murder, members of the Trump regime are still defiant. They will defend the actions of the ICE and Border Patrol Officers until the end. Until the end of our democracy. They told us weeks ago that Trump’s federal agents are above the law.
They seem to have lost sight of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Ten Commandments.
The United States is a country rooted in the rule of law and the ideals proclaimed in our founding documents. The political party to which Donald Trump and his regime belong claims to be rooted in the Bible. They don’t pay much attention to the New Testament, but they claim to love the Old Testament.
That’s where the Ten Commandments are found. It is in the Old Testament that we are instructed not to tell lies.
I suggest that Trump and the members of his regime take a few minutes to sit quietly and read the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Ten Commandments. All of this might be new literature for them, but I think taking time to read these documents and Bible verses might be beneficial for them and the nation they vowed to serve and protect.
My faith in what is being taught in the political science departments at the public and private universities in the United States is being shaken. I fear the students who were born after my college days are not being taught the tenets of democracy that I was taught in school and on the university level. I fear they are not being taught to serve the public with integrity and honesty.
I fear they were not taught that the government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
I would have much preferred to have written scene 43 in my historical novel this afternoon, but I’ve spent several hours contemplating and writing this blog post. And yet, people wonder why it is taking me so long to write my novel. My brain is being torn between 2026 and 1768.
The irony is not lost on me. The people I’m writing about who were living in North Carolina in 1768 were also rebelling against tyranny. That’s not what the novel is about, but the colonists’ patience with the English Crown was already growing thin.
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
I write this on Sunday afternoon during an ice storm. The worst of the storm is predicting over the next hours, but I will try to get this blog post written and posted before the power goes off. The events of this weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my government’s official response to it/explanation of it compel me to speak out.
We Will Not Be Silent, by Russell Freedman
The fact that we have a United States President that is hellbent on destroying the very foundations of our democracy is not bad enough. We have American citizens who are not only applauding the wrecking ball he has taken to the people of Minnesota; they are justifying what he is doing.
I am appalled at the number of Americans who are saying that Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good “got what they deserved.”
I am appalled at the number of Americans who can watch the same videos I’m seeing of Saturday morning’s murder in Minneapolis and not see what I see.
The video shows that the gun Mr. Pretti was legally carrying had been removed from him by a federal agent. Then four or five federal agents were all over him while he was held on the ground. Then, more than 10 shots were fired at him, and Mr. Pretti lay there dead. It appears that one of the federal agents fired five shots at Mr. Pretti, who was already lying motionless on the ground. Then, all the federal officers scattered.
The U.S. Government says Mr. Pretti was holding a gun when he approached to try to rescue a woman who had been shoved backwards to the ground by a federal agent, but what he held was a cell phone. They sprayed him with pepper spray or some other chemical because he was trying to shield the woman. He was trying to film the incident with his cell phone. He was not reaching for his gun.
He had a permit to carry a firearm. That is a right that Republicans hold as the most sacred right an American can have. They value it above our right to vote, above our right to worship, and above our right to assemble.
These are the same people who called 17-year-old high school drop-out Kyle Rittenhouse a hero for openly carrying a high-powered rifled down the street in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020 during civil unrest. Rittenhouse fatally shot three people. Trump invited Rittenhouse to the White House so he could honor him as an American hero. A real patriot, according to Trump and his ilk. Rittenhouse was acquitted, claiming “self-defense.” He is now a darling of the Trump regime.
However, these same people are saying that Alex Pretti deserved to be shot to death because he was legally carrying a firearm – a firearm that was not in his hand. It was in a holster.
The “weapon” in his hand was a cell phone, but the federal agents did not want their actions recorded. They had to do something.
The U.S. Government says the federal agents were being threatened.
A federal agent should never feel threatened by a cell phone, unless that agent is doing something illegal or immoral.
Mr. Pretti was a 37-year-old ICU nurse at a Veterans Administration hospital. He had apparently gone into the street with his cell phone to observe and record the protest.
The U.S. Government immediately accused Mr. Pretti of being a domestic terrorist. That’s also what they immediately called Renee Nicole Good after they shot her in the face as she drove away from the ICE agents.
This is now a U.S. Government that does not want us to believe our own eyes. This is now a U.S. Government that does not want us to believe our own ears. This is a U.S. Government that wants us to forget every word of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.
But the thing that frightens me more than my government is my fellow American citizens who think this situation is just fine. They are the citizens who say, “Trump is just going after the worst of the worst. He is just going after the murderers and rapists. He is just going after the people who are here illegally.”
The people who say those things are the people who scare me. Those are the people who would say that Anne Frank got what she deserved. They are the ones who would have defended Hitler’s thugs and “brown shirts” in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. They are the ones who would have said the Jews “got what they deserved.”
They are the ones who today are saying, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti “got what they deserved.”
They are the ones who today are saying, “If you just do whatever an officer tells you to do, they won’t kill you.”
They are the ones who say, “The Holocaust never happened.”
They are the ones who will say, “Nothing happened in Minneapolis on January 24, 2025.”
Never in my first 72 years of life would I have thought this would be the state of things in the United States of America in 2026, but here we are. We have a segment of the population who truly believe, “If you just do whatever an officer tells you to do, they won’t kill you.”
My questions for them are as follows:
If an officer tells you to wear a yellow star on your clothing, would you willingly do that?
If an officer tells you to climb into a train boxcar, would you do that?
If an officer tells you to watch them abuse and arrest a peaceful protester and never say a word about it, would you stand idly by and never say a word?
If an officer uses your five-year-old child as bait to try to bring you out of your home so they can haul you and the child away to a detention center more than 1,000 miles away, would you be okay with that?
If an officer uses your neighbor’s five-year-old child as bait to try to bring your neighbor out of his or her home so they can haul them away to a detention center more than 1,000 miles away because they committed a misdemeanor, would you be okay with that?
Are you aware that it is a misdemeanor to be in the United States illegally?
Are you aware that being shot to death is not a legitimate “punishment” for committing a misdemeanor?
Are you aware that being shot to death is not a legitimate “punishment” for filming a peaceful protest?
Are you aware that being shot to death is not a legitimate “punishment” for coming to the rescue of a fellow citizen who has been shoved to the ground by a federal officer?
And yet, we have a convicted felon “serving” as President of the United States.
We live in a country today that honors felons and murders American citizens for coming to the aid of another citizen being physically abused.
The U.S. Government says that Alex Pretti interfered with a federal operation.
It appears to me in the video that Alex Pretti saw an unarmed woman being pushed backwards to the concrete sidewalk in Minneapolis. Mr. Pretti tried to record the incident with one hand while trying to protect the woman with his body and his free hand.
If the federal agents were properly trained instead of being given $50,000 signing bonuses, they would not have murdered Alex Pretti.
Mr. Pretti, being a trained nurse and an American citizen, saw an abuse of power and tried to do what any law-abiding citizen should do.
God, help us.
Janet
The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.
I was tempted to blog about this yesterday, but I thought it best not to have a knee jerk reaction. I thought I should wait twenty-four hours after the shooting in Minneapolis before I put my thoughts in writing.
I hoped someone in the Trump Administration would step forth and speak with restraint and a modicum of wisdom. I did not expect it, so I was not surprised when Wednesday’s lies, accusations, and name calling continued for a second day.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem showed up dressed appropriately yesterday for a news conference about the killing of a 37-year-old American citizen by an ICE Agent. That was refreshing after we had to see her in a cowgirl outfit – perhaps her Halloween costume – when she spoke from Brownsville, Texas, about the incident a couple of hours after it occurred on Wednesday.
Yesterday, Noem said the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday was “standard operating procedure.” She once again labeled Ms. Good “a domestic terrorist.”
Shooting the driver of a moving vehicle does not seem to me to ever be a wise choice, but I am not a trained law enforcement officer. Perhaps Ms. Good felt her life was threatened by the masked officer who approached her car using profanity, tried to open her car door, and then stuck his arm through the opened car window. We will never know what was in her mind, since she was shot in the face and killed.
A nearby physician requested access to Ms. Good as she bled out in her car, but he was denied the fulfilling of his obligation as a medical doctor by the ICE agents. It has been reported that she did not receive medical attention for more than ten minutes.
Secretary Noem said the officer who shot Ms. Good was following his training.
All this is being said by the Trump Administration before the incident is investigated. In fact, Noem said the officer was within his rights, was following his training, and the woman who was shot was the instigator. In other words, she got what she deserved.
Yesterday, Vice President J.D. Vance blamed the “left wing lunatic fringe” for the shooting of Renee Good. He said, “It was a tragedy of her own making.” He said the ICE agent was “just doing his job.” He hinted that Democrats are funding the peaceful protests. He verbally attacked journalists for falling for the lies of the “lunatic fringe” on the left.
It sounds like the Trump Administration sits as law enforcement, prosecutor, witness, judge, and jury in this case. This is unconstitutional.
When a law enforcement officer in the United States is involved in a shooting, it is standard operating procedure for that officer to be removed from on-the-street duties until a full investigation can be conducted by a separate law enforcement organization.
It has been my experience that even local law enforcement officials know that. It is very telling that the top level of law enforcement in the United States is thumbing its nose at that commonly accepted – and commonly expected – practice. What federal officials should be saying is, “We cannot comment on the details of the incident because it is under investigation.”
However, what Secretary Noem has said is that the dead victim is going to be investigated. Apparently, her ICE agent will not be investigated.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said that the Trump Administration has denied the State of Minnesota the right to investigate the incident.
I believe the Trump Administration and, by association and blind allegiance, the Republican Party, have lost sight of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Americans have a constitutional right to peacefully protest. No one pays us to voice our opinions!
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
No one pays me to write my blog posts. I have a constitutional right to write my blog and express my opinions. It is beyond tragic that the Trump Administration and the Republican Party, which remains in lock-step with Trump, have completely lost sight of the First Amendment. They are obsessed with the Second Amendment, and they want us to forget the rest of them – especially the First one.
We will not be silenced. And we are not being paid to voice our opinions.
New Assistant U.S. Attorney General position
Yesterday, Vice President J.D. Vance announced we will have a new U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Fraud. This person has been guaranteed confirmation by the U.S. Senate by Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Perhaps the most frightening thing about this announcement was that this person will work in the White House and answer to the President and the Vice President.
That, my fellow citizens, is a dangerous precedent-setting action to blatantly announce that the U.S. Department of Justice is now officially a political arm of the U.S. President. It should send a chill down the spine of every American.
We have known since January 20, 2025, that Trump considers the U.S. Justice Department “his” Justice Department and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to be his personal attorney. But what Vice President Vance did yesterday was announce to all the world that what they have in practice demonstrated for a year is exactly what they believe and they believe they have the right to control and dictate the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice.
If the U.S. Congress does not stop them, the U.S. Constitution be damned.
In conclusion
I am writing this blog post mid-afternoon on Thursday, January 8 to be posted on the morning of January 9.
I hope there will be a fair and honest investigation to the shooting in Minneapolis, but I do not expect one as long as Trump is President.
It bears repeating: We will not be silenced. And we are not being paid to voice our opinions.
Janet
P.S. I thank Pat, one of my blog readers for bring it to my attention that I gave the wrong date in my blog post yesterday (“Go fight, Johnny!” – historical short story) for the Battle of Kings Mountain. I stated that the battle occurred on October 17, 1780, but it actually took place on October 7, 1780. Much to my embarrassment, I then realized that I picked up the wrong date in my blog post because I have the incorrect date in Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories. My apologies to my readers, and my thanks to Pat for having a sharp eye and for bringing this error to my attention. It just goes to show that even if you proofread a book’s manuscript eight times, you will still not catch all your errors.
Last week I wrote a blog post for today. As a result of what Trump did on Saturday, though, it no longer seemed appropriate to use it. I’ll save it for another day, because it is about one of the stories in my new book, Traveling Through History: A Collection of Historical Short Stories.
I have mentioned or alluded to Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro before.
Flag of Venezuela Photo by aboodi vesakaran on Unsplash
On August 28, 2025 in my blog, Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, I wrote that Trump was quietly stationing U.S. Navy Aegis guided-missile destroyers and other military ships and planes off the coast of Venezuela. I wrote, “The official White House explanation is that it is an anti-illegal drug operation, but it is no secret that Trump wants to overthrow the Maduro regime.”
On December 10, 2025, in my blog, Trump’s National Security Strategy – The Western Hemisphere, I gave some details of Trump’s November 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Among other things, it talked about our use of lethal force and how American businesses would benefit. The NSS went so far as to state that any U.S. Government employee who interacts with countries in the Western Hemisphere must understand that it is “part of their job to help American companies compete and succeed.”
Now that Trump claims the U.S. will “run Venezuela” and we will “take back our oil,” I guess Trump and U.S. oil companies will be the beneficiaries of Saturday’s military action.
On December 31, 2025 in my A look back at 2025 blog post, I listed a few of the things Trump did last year. One of my paragraphs read as follows: “He thinks he has the right to oust the dictator in a South American nation because that country sits on a lot of oil. He claims Venezuelans are bringing massive amounts of illegal drugs to the U.S. in those tiny boats. In his mind, though, it is easier to claim they’re transporting drugs and obliterate all the evidence along with the people in the boats.”
What Trump did in the wee hours on Saturday morning gives Putin the greenlight to take Ukraine and other European countries. It gives Xi the greenlight to take Taiwan.
Trump has left the United States without a moral leg to stand on when any other dictator in the world decides to go off half-cocked and overthrow a government or a leader they don’t like.
Trump says Maduro is a “bad person.” Just because a country has a “bad person” in charge does not give the United States or any other country the right to overthrow that person and their regime. After all, most of us think Donald Trump is a “bad person.”
The United States has overthrown foreign leaders before. It has never gone well. It goes against the Constitution of the United States of America. It overrides the authority of the U.S. Congress when a U.S. President launches a military attack on another country.
This is not rocket science; it’s just political science. It is the very foundation of our nation. It is not difficult to understand for those of us who have lived here for seven decades. We learned the tenets of American democracy from birth in our homes and at school in our formative years. We have continued to learn it throughout our lives just by having the privilege of being American citizens.
It is beyond unfortunate that we now have a U.S. President who was either never taught those things or has chosen to ignore them. He thumbs his nose at the law and those of us who love America. He believes he is above the law, and those of us who obey the law are “losers.”
And that, my friends, is how we arrived at Saturday morning, January 3, 2026.
Maduro and his wife are now being held in a prison in New York City. It is said that they will be charged with running illegal drugs to the United States.
This is all smoke and mirrors by the U.S. President, for just a few weeks ago he pardoned the former leader of Honduras for his running of drugs to the United States. So why spend an estimated $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to overthrow Maduro? And he is just getting started. The hard work comes after the overthrow, especially when you have no plan and the American people are not behind you.
In Trump World, it all depends on who you are and what Trump can get out of you.
The American people don’t want to run Venezuela. We don’t want to make Canada our 51st state. We don’t want to steal Greenland from Denmark. We don’t want a $400 million ballroom at the White House. We don’t want Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. We don’t want a massive arch in Washington, DC. We don’t want masked federal officers snatching people off the streets. We don’t want Trump’s face on our money or our national park passes. We don’t want Trump’s name on anything.
Americans want affordable healthcare and a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) we can trust. We want our food inspected by a reliable U.S. Department of Agriculture. We want people to make a fair wage that will enable them to reach the American Dream of home ownership. We want religion left out of our public schools. We want university professors free to teach without government interference. We want our national parks preserved and not destroyed for the sake of gas and oil exploration. We want endangered species protected from extinction. We want a country where citizens are encouraged to vote without intimidation. We want a country where we are all just Americans and minorities are not labeled “other.”
We want a U.S. Congress with the guts to stop Trump’s power grab and overreach.
We want a U.S. Supreme Court that admits the error of their ways when they ruled that a sitting U.S. President cannot be held guilty of breaking a law.
We want a President who speaks and acts from a place of intelligence and empathy – not a gutter-mouth bully. Is it too much to ask that we have a President who speaks in complete sentences? Is it too much to ask for a President who honors the U.S. Constitution? Is it too much to ask for a President who does not call our citizens vicious names?
In addition to the Western Hemisphere, the document addresses Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa – in that order.
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
Asia
As only a document coming out of the Trump White House can say, the Asia portion of the strategy begins with the words, “President Trump single-handedly reversed more than three decades of mistaken American assumptions about China: namely, that by opening our markets to China, encouraging American business to invest in China, and outsourcing our manufacturing to China, we would facilitate China’s entry into the so-called ‘rules based international order.’ This did not happen. China got rich and powerful, and used its wealth and power to its considerable advantage. American elites—over four successive administrations of both political parties—were either willing enablers of China’s strategy or in denial.”
That’s rich, coming from Trump who had so much of his Trump brand merchandise manufactured in China! And his daughter had her line of jewelry made in China! The Trump family took full advantage of the “mistakes” of precious U.S. Presidents and got richer and richer at the expense of the American factory worker.
The document goes on to state, “… the Indo-Pacific is already and will continue to be among the next century’s key economic and geopolitical battlegrounds. To thrive at home, we must successfully compete there—and we are. President Trump signed major agreements during his October 2025 travels that further deepen our powerful ties of commerce, culture, technology, and defense, and reaffirm our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. America retains tremendous assets—the world’s strongest economy and military, world-beating innovation, unrivaled “soft power,” and a historic record of benefiting our allies and partners—that enable us to compete successfully. President Trump is building alliances and strengthening partnerships in the Indo Pacific that will be the bedrock of security and prosperity long into the future.”
Several hundred words later, the Asia section of the document ends with, “We will also harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific, while in our dealings with Taiwan and Australia we maintain our determined rhetoric on increased defense spending. Preventing conflict requires a vigilant posture in the Indo-Pacific, a renewed defense industrial base, greater military investment from ourselves and from allies and partners, and winning the economic and technological competition over the long term.”
It appears that Australia was thrown into that last paragraph as an afterthought.
Europe
The European section of the National Security Strategy begins by throwing Europe under the bus, as Trump likes to do. He is critical of every country, including his own. Nothing is good enough. After laying out some supposed statistics (I say supposed because, sadly, I don’t believe anything the Trump Administration says), the document says if the current trend in Europe continues, “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies.”
The paper goes on to address the threat Russia poses with its nuclear weapons and the need to “reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
I find the following statement in the NSS interesting, considering the Trump Administration’s propensity to make it more difficult for U.S. citizens to vote and its blatant efforts to prompt states to gerrymander Congressional district lines to assure him of retaining the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
That statement: “A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis…. Not only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve. American diplomacy should continue to stand up for genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history…. Our goal should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory. We will need a strong Europe to help us successfully compete, and to work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating Europe…. We want to work with aligned countries that want to restore their former greatness.”
The document then addresses NATO and its future as “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”
The Middle East
This section of the NSS begins by addressing energy and how the Middle East is not as important in that arena as it was for decades. It touts the fact that the U.S. is now an energy exporter. It also boasts that Trump has “revitalized” U.S. alliances in “the Gulf.” It says the threats to peace in the Middle East are not as strong as the news headlines indicate. It brags about the U.S. June 2025 Operation Midnight Hammer attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
Africa
The NSS document starts this section by criticizing past American policy in Africa as spreading liberal ideology. Instead, the Trump Administration seeks to partner with “select countries” to create trade to replace the foreign aid of the past.
This section of the document ends with, “The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade- and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services. An immediate area for U.S. investment in Africa, with prospects for a good return on investment, include the energy sector and critical mineral development. Development of U.S.-backed nuclear energy, liquid petroleum gas, and liquified natural gas technologies can generate profits for U.S. businesses and help us in the competition for critical minerals and other resources.
In other words, what’s in it for Trump? He can only see the world through the lens of business. That lens only sees how he can personally benefit financially.
I hate to have such a distrust for and poor perspective of a U.S. President. I don’t enjoy writing any of this.
What we have here in the United States is obviously a Wizard of Oz situation.
The White House quietly released the November 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and posted it on the White House website. Since it is the announcement of the official U.S. foreign policy, there is usually a bit of fanfare with its release, but not this year.
Most Americans will never hear about it, much less read it.
It begins with a letter signed by Trump but obviously written by someone else. Probably Stephen Miller. Why do I say that? Simple. It is written in complete sentences.
The letter
That letter is enlightening because it does list the “eight raging conflicts” Trump claims to have put an end to in “just eight months” this year. In case you’re having trouble keeping up with the wars Trump has ended, here’s the list as found in this letter: Cambodia & Thailand, Kosovo & Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo & Rwanda, Pakistan & India, Israel & Iran, Egypt & Ethiopia, Armenia & Azerbaijan, and Israel & Gaza, although Israel is not named in the letter. (He wouldn’t want to show the government of Israel in a bad light, would he?)
The letter is full of bluster and boasts of all the amazing things Trump has done and all the “weakness, extremism, and deadly failures” of the Biden Administration. As only Trump can boast, the letter states, “Over the past nine months, we have brought our nation — and the world – back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster.”
The NSS document
The NSS document itself contains 29 pages of details of what the United States wants and what the United States wants from the world.
Some of the introductory remarks would be laughable if they weren’t so sad. For instance, “We want to maintain the United States’ unrivaled ‘soft power’ through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests” rings hollow considering the Trump Administration obliterated USAID.
The sudden obliteration of USAID not only resulted in the starvation of hundreds of thousands of children but also their preventable deaths by the withholding of medical treatments – not to mention how the cessation of the food aid programs hurt the American farmer terribly.
The paragraph that really made me gag, though, was this one:
“Finally, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long-term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age. We want a people who are proud, happy, and optimistic that they will leave their country to the next generation better than they found it. We want a gainfully employed citizenry – with no one sitting on the sidelines – who take satisfaction from knowing that their work is essential to the prosperity of our nation and to the well-being of individuals and families. This cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.” (Notice the subtle reference to “traditional families.”)
Dear Leader Kim Jong Un of North Korea couldn’t have written that paragraph better! Delete the words “American spiritual” and I would swear I was reading a translation of a statement by Kim or Xi.
A paragraph that sent chills down my spine, though, was this one: “We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; …we want …; we want … ; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine;….”
It was “Trump Corollary” that got to me. Why does his name have to go on every cotton-picking thing?
The document goes on to delineate U.S. policy by region: The Western Hemisphere, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Introductory remarks that preface the regional details include, “The United States is by every measure the most generous nation in history – yet we cannot afford to be equally attentive to every region and every problem in the world.”
The Western Hemisphere
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
The so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine involves making new partners and reconsidering our military presence in the Western Hemisphere. This seems to involve beefing up our Coast Guard and Navy presence “to control se lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.” It also includes “targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades.”
Also, “…as we prioritize commercial diplomacy, we will work to strengthen our security partnerships – from weapons sales to intelligence sharing to joint exercises.” This is in response to non-Western Hemisphere nations’ incursions of influence in recent years.
But the National Security Strategy goes on from there and seems to concentrate on the economy and what’s in it for United States companies. As a student of political science, it reads to me as a complete overhaul of the U.S. State Department and the responsibilities of our diplomats and State Department employees out in the field. This makes me cringe.
The U.S. “will reform our own system to expedite approvals and licensing – again, to make ourselves the partner of first choice. The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world….
“All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.
“The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. Government financing program, including but not limited to those within the Departments of State, War, and Energy; the Small Business Administration; the International Development Finance Corporation; the Export-Import Bank; and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.
“We should also partner with regional governments and businesses to build scalable and resilient energy infrastructure, invest in critical mineral access, and harden existing and future cyber communications networks that take full advantage of American encryption and security potential.
“The aforementioned U.S. Government entities should be used to finance some of the costs of purchasing U.S. goods abroad. The United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses. The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies. At the same time, we should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.”
The part about U.S. State Department – or any other U.S. Government employee – who interacts with countries in the Western Hemisphere to understand that it is “part of their job to help American companies compete and succeed” is a 180-degree change in the purpose U.S. Government employees. It is not part of the job of a State Department employee to promote American companies! At least, it wasn’t part of their job until last Friday. That is absolutely not the job of the U.S. diplomatic corps!
I suppose this being put in writing by the Trump Administration should come as no surprise. After all, the U.S. State Department no longer makes “peace agreements;” it makes “deals” because Trump has an overwhelming lack of understanding or appreciation for the traditional functions of government in a democracy.
Western Hemisphere Command
It was not a coincidence that we learned on Thursday or Friday that two U.S. military command centers will be moving to Fort Bragg here in North Carolina over the next year as a new “Western Hemisphere Command” has been announced.
Possible blog post tomorrow
If I can recover from reading the Western Hemisphere portion of the National Security Strategy, I will blog tomorrow about how it addresses Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
When the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) bends a knee to Donald Trump, we should all sit up and take notice.
Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash
It came to my attention this afternoon that BBC Radio 4 censored a sentence out of a Reith Lectures presentation by Rutger Bregman. The BBC invited Mr. Bregman to give a series of lectures in the highly-touted Reith Lectures. The Reith Lectures have a 77-year history and have been known for being champions of free expression.
“John Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation. It is in this spirit that the BBC each year invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest.”
Writer and historian Rutger Bregman was invited to deliver a series of four lectures for the 2025 Reith Lectures in London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, and the United States. Under the umbrella theme of Moral Revolution, his four lectures were “A Time of Monsters,” “How To Start a Moral Revolution,” “A Conspiracy of Decency,” and “Fighting for Humanity in the Age of the Machine.”
On November 25, 2025, Mr. Bregman (@rutgerbregman) posted on Instagram his shock that BBC Radio 4 removed a sentence from the broadcast of a lecture he delivered a month ago.
I quote from @rutgerbregman on Instagram
Mr. Bregman wrote on @rutgerbregman on Instagram: “The BBC has decided to censor the opening lecture of a series they invited me to deliver. They removed the sentence in which I describe Donald Trump as ‘the most openly corrupt president in American history.’
“This line was taken out of a lecture they commissioned, reviewed through the full editorial process, and recorded four weeks ago in front of 500 people in the BBC Radio Theatre.
“I was told the decision came from the highest levels within the BBC.
“This has happened against my wishes, and I’m deeply troubled by it. Not because people can’t disagree with my words, but because self-censorship driven by fear (Trump is threatening to sue the BBC) should concern all of us.
“This isn’t about left or right. It’s about the health of our democratic institutions. For decades the Reith Lectures have been one of the BBC’s most important platforms for open debate and free expression. That’s why this really matters.
“In this video, I explain what happened, why it’s important, and why we should remain calm but clear-eyed about the pressures facing our public institutions.
“I share this with respect for the many excellent journalists at the BBC. And with the hope that transparency helps strengthen, not weaken, our democratic culture.”
In Mr. Bregman’s Instagram video clip
In Mr. Bregman’s video on Instagram, he explains that the irony is that the title of his lecture was “A Time of Monsters.” The lecture was about the cowardice of today’s elites and elitist institutions – “bending the knee to authoritarianism.”
In the video on Instagram, Bregman said, “They deleted the sentence in which I said, ‘Donald Trump is the most openly corrupt president in American history.’”
He said, “It was a defensible and plausible statement. It’s well known that Donald Trump and his family are personally profiting from the presidency to a degree we haven’t seen before. According to a major investigation in The New Yorker published last August, the total gain, the personal gains, already exceed roughly $3.5 billion from real estate deals to meme coins.”
Mr. Bregman went on to say that this isn’t about him – “It’s about something much bigger. When institutions start censoring themselves, because they’re scared of those in power, that is the moment we all need to pay attention. Democracies don’t collapse overnight. They gradually erode in acts of fear. Let’s not be afraid to name what’s happening, and let’s not be afraid to tell the truth.”
In closing
I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’ll just leave it for you to draw your own conclusions about the state of the world.
I wish my fellow Americans a Happy Thanksgiving Day tomorrow.
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