Category: Politics

More Trump Administration Shenanigans

I originally had most of today’s post included in yesterday’s, but at 2,500 words I was afraid no one would read it. Meanwhile, today’s post grew to 2,000 words. The sad and frightening part is that I am only learning about the tip of the iceberg.

As I get ready to publish this, President Trump is touring the Middle East. It remains to be seen how many “deals” he makes and how many promises he makes. It remains to be seen if he has kept the best interest of the United States or his own business interests as a priority.

Here are the items I salvaged from my draft of yesterday’s post to share with you today. They are in no particular order and cover and wide range of topics. None of this is good news, in my opinion.

US Department of Justice Attorney Richard Lawson said when questioned by US District Court Judge Loren AilKhan in federal court last Thursday that he has not seen any written agreements between President Trump and the nine big law firms that Trump claimed on Truth Social to have made agreements in which those firms will represent Trump’s pet projects pro bono. Do those agreements only exist in Trump’s mind?

Trump has fired all three Democrat-appointed US Consumer Product Safety Commission commissioners. They maintain their firings are illegal since Congress established the agency and, therefore, it is not under the President’s control. The agency has always been bipartisan, but I cannot imagine Trump will appoint anyone who isn’t one of his MAGA supporters. Maybe there are still some employees left at Fox News that he can draw from.

Fifty-nine white Afrikaners from South Africa were given refugee status in the United States on Monday. It is reported that up to 1,000 Afrikaners will be admitted as refugees in the US this year. The Trump Administration has closed America’s doors to all other refugees. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said it is a textbook case of how the refugee program is supposed to work.

A process that normally takes years only took the Afrikaners several months.

Just go ahead and read between the lines. That’s what I’m doing. (Be sure to read “Another bit of encouragement” below.)

The New York Times reports that 44 US Government contracts amounting to $220 million that Elon Musk and DOGE cancelled… have been restored. Don’t be fooled by any official DOGE reports or its website, though, because Musk is still listing them as cancelled. No surprise there.

According to the Associated Press, on Monday, “a federal judge refused to block the Internal Revenue Service from sharing immigrants’ tax data with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S.” The irony is that they are paying federal income tax and now that fact is going to be used to track them down and make their deportation possible.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Foreign Relations has reported that 181 Mexican nationals have died between January and April 2025 while trying to illegally cross into the United States. That is twice as many as the 91 who died in the same period in 2024. The Trump Administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings is blamed, as people are trying to cross in more dangerous areas than before. I’m not in favor of people coming into the United States illegally, but I think this drastic increase in deaths is worth noting. Of course, the United States is not reporting any of this.

In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into a law that had passed Congress with an overwhelming bipartisan vote. The Digital Equity Act was designed to make sure seniors and all parts of the United States would have access to the internet.

President Trump heard about it. Calling is “racist” and “unconstitutional,” he ordered an immediate end to the funding that was mandated by the Act.

The funding provided for states and localities, including indigenous tribal councils and school districts, to come up with plans to best serve their citizens and then be eligible for funds to implement the infrastructure aspect.

Trump has suddenly ended the funding! This is nothing more than a ruse for Trump to appear to be anti-racist, constitutional, and saving taxpayers “billions of dollars.” Like he proudly said during his campaign, “I love the uneducated!”

Trump’s blatant attacks on public education, private education, universities, libraries, museums, and now the internet should be a wake-up call to all Americans, but it won’t be.

I mentioned in at least one earlier blog post the Trump Administration’s termination of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) which provided some funding for local libraries and museums. Congress had appropriated the funds for this fiscal year, but Trump suddenly pulled the plug. More than 100 libraries on federally-recognized tribal lands lost their funding. Many of them are in remote areas where internet service is sparse. Those libraries are a lifeline for the indigenous communities.

Meanwhile… it is reported by various sources that Trump is prepared to accept an extravagant Boeing 747-8 luxury aircraft from the royal family of Qatar. I heard on Tuesday that the plane is already in the United States. It is reported that this plane will be used as Air Force One until Trump leaves office, at which time it will go to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation.

The Foreign Emoluments Clause in Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution prohibits anyone holding federal office or employment from accepting gifts, emoluments, office, or titles from foreign governments unless that get congressional approval. The purpose of this is to prevent undue external influence from outside the United States by decision-makers.

So far, I have not found any mention of the US Congress approving the transfer of this airplane. The acceptance of such an aircraft for any purpose – but especially for use by the US President – is wrong on more levels than I can enumerate.

During his first administration, Trump entered an agreement with Boeing that the company would modernize two Boeing 747s that would become two new Air Force One airplanes. The price tag on that contract has already gone more than $2 billion over budget and the planes aren’t scheduled to be ready until 2027 or later. In 2019 (the most recent year a price was made public), the cost of a new Boeing 747-800 series was around $400 million.

All the legal and ethical and common sense concerns aside… this flying palace from Qatar would have to be stripped down to nothing and rebuilt just to remove all the hidden listening devices. That alone will take years! But what do I know? I’m just a citizen. Maybe Qatari spying devices are not a concern of the Trump Administration.

The Washington Post reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired two of the top officials on the National Intelligence Council. The council wrote a report that contradicted President Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and the deporting of alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. Apparently, an honest assessment by intelligence agents is not allow if it does not repeat what Donald Trump says.

Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, were fired.

The Washington Post reports states: “The actions are the latest purge by Gabbard, who has said she is fighting politicization of the intelligence community but has removed or sidelined officials perceived to not support Trump’s political agenda.

“The NIC is the top U.S. intelligence community body for analyzing classified intelligence and providing secret assessments to the president and other top policymakers. Its reports include spy agencies’ annual global threat assessment and studies of the possible causes of anomalous health incidents, also known as Havana syndrome and the origins of the coronavirus that led to the pandemic in 2020.”

It has been reported that in his first 100+ days in office, President Trump has only had 12 “daily” briefings. That’s an even worse record than the first time he was President. They are called “daily briefings” for a reason. I can’t imagine being President of the United States and having no interest in what’s going on in the world.

According to the ACLU, members of Congress doing Trump’s bidding have snicked a provision into the “big, beautiful tax bill” still under consideration that would give the executive branch the power to shut down any nonprofit organization. The Trump Administration has no appreciation or patience for anyone or any organization that is not turning a profit.

The Trump Administration has cancelled a $6.7 million grant that would allow Dr. James Antaki, a professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University, to continue researching his PediaFlow device that could boost blood flow in infants with heart defects. He has been working on this device since 2003. It is designed to help infants survive until they can have a heart transplant.

His grant was withdrawn on April 8. It would have funded research over four years. His years of research are now in jeopardy, as well as the jobs of PhD students who were working with him.

The Trump Administration has shut down the office leading the Safe to Sleep campaign, which provided education on safe sleep practices for infants. Infant deaths decreased by 50 percent after the campaign launched in 1994. It is said that the campaign has saved thousands of infants’ lives.

This and the withdrawal of the PediaFlow device research both seem at odds with Trump’s plans to reward women who have more babies. It is sort of like the conservative’s “Pro-Life” motto. They are only interested in the baby being born. After it is born, they don’t want it to have adequate food or healthcare. They vote against all such support programs for children. They even threaten now to end the Head Start program which provides early childhood education and meals.

Go figure. I have no words for this level of evil in the richest country in the world.

Finally, the tiniest of tiny glimmers of hope from the US Senate

Finally! This has been a long time in coming, but on Tuesday the Republican US Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota sided with the Democrats in their fight to deny President Trump’s takeover of the Library of Congress!

As I reported in yesterday’s blog post, Trump fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress last week along with the head of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter. Trump named US Department of Justice people with no library or copyright experience to assume those and other positions.

The Library of Congress is not a library in the commonly accepted understanding of the word. The Library of Congress goes way beyond that! The US Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress. Within three months of any copyrightable work being published in the United States, two copies must be submitted to the US Copyright Office for inclusion in the collection at the Library of Congress.

It is not a circulating library. People can obtain access to the collection for research purposes, but materials are not checked out. Members of the United States Congress have access to the materials held there. As the name indicates, it is the Library of Congress.

On Tuesday, May 13, 2025, Senator Thune reported that people from the Trump Administration met with the US Senate Rules Committee, and “we made it clear that there needs to be a consultation around this” and congressional “equities” must be respected and protected.

I would have liked to have seen much stronger language. In fact, there doesn’t need to be any “consultation” with the White House about the Library of Congress!

As the Democratic US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries stated, “It’s the Library of Congress, not the library of the executive branch.”

We’ll have to wait and see how this shakes out but, personally, I would not trust anyone in Donald Trump’s realm of influence or friends with one single book or sheet of music in the Library of Congress. This whole mess started because Elon Musk wanted Dr. Carla Hayden to turn over a trove of books to him to use for Artificial Intelligence training and she refused!

Another bit of encouragement

I’m pleased to report that the Episcopal denomination has ended its decades-long partnership with the US Government to resettle refugees, citing this week’s plane load of 59 white Afrikaners brought into the United States as refugees from South Africa. The organization cited its ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Two weeks ago, the federal government informed the Episcopal Church that it was expected to resettle the white Afrikaners.

The request crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church. The Most Reverend Sean W. Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church explained that the denomination is part of the global Anglican Communion that boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated opponent of apartheid in South Africa.

Hurrah for the Episcopalians! Seeing individuals and groups standing up for their principles is a wonderful thing to see in 2025!

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Parts of the mountains in western North Carolina received more than five inches of rain in a couple of days earlier this week and experienced flooding and there was at least one mudslide on US-74 between Bat Cave and Gerton. These people can’t seem to get a break.

Janet

The New American Dream?

Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on “Make America Wealthy Again.”

Republicans tell us to be patient. They say it’s coming. We must suffer through short-term pain while we focus on long-term gain.

The “American Dream” has always been that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you want. Another part of the American Dream is that each generation will be better off than the previous one.

That’s not the new message now from the Trump Administration.

Trump said he isn’t worried about empty store shelves.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who has a permanent smile on his face, has said that with all the manufacturing facilities supposedly returning to the US, multiple generations in a family can look forward to working in the same factory.

That’s definitely a new twist on the American Dream of each generation being better off than the one before.

The Huffington Post quoted Lutnick as saying, “This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

That sounds bleak to me. It sounds more like a nightmare than a dream.

Trump Administration considers suspending habeas corpus

According to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Friday, the Trump Administration is considering suspending habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus is a legal procedure by which a report can be made to a court alleging the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and requesting that the court order the individual’s custodian to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful.

We were a nation of laws until January 20, 2025. For any member of the Trump Administration to lecture us about the US Constitution is rich!

Mr. Miller, the United States of America has not been invaded. Illegal border crossings by people fleeing corrupt governments is not what the US Constitution means when it invokes the word “invasion,” and anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it.

Yes, we have a border problem, but we have not been “invaded” in the truest sense of the word.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been nabbing people and whisking them away in unmarked black vehicles for weeks now. The ICE officers are reportedly not usually in uniform. They present no identification. They rough up any bystanders who dare to ask them to show identification.

I have seen videos of some of the arrests. They look like the Gestapo, and they look a lot like the Proud Boys who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. We’ve never had law enforcement look like this in the United States, and it is unsettling to say the least. People, including young women as young as 16 are slammed face down on the ground or asphalt, handcuffed, and shoved into black military-style heavy vehicles.

People are being arrested and detained in undisclosed locations, usually hundreds of miles from home. The Trump Administration has ignored habeas corpus since he took office on January 20. The difference, if he decides to suspend it, will mean that his thugs can then legally arrest and detain people without a chance of a court hearing.

What has America become?

A Tufts University graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkey, was ordered to be released by a Vermont judge on Friday. She had spent six weeks in a detention facility in Louisiana after being arrested on the street by ICE. It was all caught on video. ICE accused her of supporting Hamas. Judge William K. Sessions III ruled that the government did not have enough evidence to hold her. Their only “evidence” was that she co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts Daily newspaper last year. The op-ed encouraged the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

Rumeysa Ozturk’s case is proof that the Trump Administration is ignoring habeas corpus. If it can be ignored in cases against international students, it can be ignored for anyone.

Miscellaneous news from the Trump Administration

Via email last Thursday night, President Trump fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. The Library of Congress is our national library. It houses the world’s largest collection of books, films, photographs, and manuscripts. It is the home of the US Copyright Office.

Dr. Hayden is a professional librarian and had been the Librarian of Congress since 2016. I cringe to think who from Fox News Trump will replace her. Fox News is functioning as Trump’s human resources department.

Apparently, Trump got wind of the fact that Dr. Hayden had worked to add more works from minorities into the library’s collections. He’ll have none of that!

But on Monday, when Trump tried to put his former personal lawyer and current Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in as acting Librarian of Congress, the library staff would have nothing of it! Yea! Staff said Congress has a say in who holds that position, and they refused to let two top Department of Justice officials picked by Blanche to even enter the building! Way to go, librarians!

On Friday, US Copyright Register Shira Perlmutter had denied Elon Musk access to “troves” of copyrighted materials for the purpose of training Artificial Intelligence. It is no coincidence that she was fired by President Trump less than 24 hours later.

Perlmutter had been Register of Copyrights since October 2020. She had concerns about releasing copyright material for use by AI technology. As a holder of seven copyrights, I appreciate her efforts.

When I tried to look her up on the US Copyright Office website at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, all her information was already gone.

Looking elsewhere online, I found that Ms. Perlmutter is no slouch. She hold a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and has been a law professor. She has stated that copyright laws need to keep pace with technology. She was the chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

She has been executive vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and vice president and general counsel for intellectual property policy at Time Warner.

No doubt, the guardrails protecting copyrighted material from AI will be off when Trump puts his choice in Perlmutter’s place. He is all in favor of AI. He has no concept of intellectual property and how copyrights work.

Seeing live video at 2:00 pm Eastern Time yesterday of the US President being whisked away at 9:00 at night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a souped-up shiny black golf cart driven by a Saudi with two perhaps US Secret Service agents anxiously hanging on in the back seat was more than a little unsettling. I guess the Qataris, the Saudis, and the Iranians are Trump’s new besties. I enjoy writing fiction, but I don’t have enough imagination to make this stuff up.

The day after stating in sworn testimony before a Congressional committee, Acting Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cameron Hamilton, was fired by Trump. In the hearing, said, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” The Trump appointee and former US Navy SEAL was fired on Thursday.

The newest Trump hire from Fox News is Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Although she had a career in the court system in New York more than 20 years ago, her real claim to fame has been serving as a TV host on the Fox News network. On Thursday, May 8, Trump appointed her as interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

It is beside the point that Jeanine Pirro was one of the defendants in Smartmatic’s February 2021 defamation lawsuit against For News (Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network) because she made false accusations on the air about the voting machines being rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Fox News paid Smartmatic $787.5 million to settle out of court and was required to acknowledge that the statements made on air were false.

It is also apparently beside the point that she was charged with driving 119 miles per hour in the 65 mile-per-hour zone.

Now the attorneys working under Ms. Pirro will be expected to respect and abide by her directions and leadership.

Part of Trump’s “big, beautiful budget” is slowly working its way through Congressional committees and small snippets of it are coming to light. I’m angered that the budget proposal calls for four oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next ten years.

This Administration’s wholesale disregard for wildlife and the beauty and global importance of pristine areas is stunning in its greed, ignorance, and short-sightedness.

The leasing of 6,250 square miles of public land is mandated in his budget proposal to apparently help the coal industry. The world adopts solar and wind power as the US reverts to the filthy air of the 1950s and 1960s.

Coincidentally, Trump has cut off federal funding to support coal miners who suffer from Black Lung even as he pushes for more coal mining jobs and a resurgence of coal-burning power plants.

Voice of America Update

On a brighter note, CNN reported on Saturday that the US is bringing back Voice of America. That’s good news. Too bad the Trump Administration shut it down completely on a whim just two or three weeks ago. They had no appreciation of its 83-year history. We were supposed to get “tired of winning,” but so far we’re just tired of “losing” and being jerked around.

Trump takes a sledgehammer to an agency one day and then tries to resurrect it later. That’s no way to run a country. It is no way to run a business either, but I wish he’d give up his day job and go back to his businesses.

Another glimmer of hope

On Monday some two dozen clergy linked arms and stood outside the gate of the Delaney Hall ICE Detention Center in New Jersey where the Mayor of Newark was arrested on Friday and there was a confrontation between three Congress members and ICE security officers. The clergy spoke against what is going on at the detention center. One of them was quoted as saying that “what’s going on inside the center violates the tenets that God has laid down on this Earth.”

Until my next blog post

With librarians, park rangers, and clergy standing up to Trump, I have some hope that our current nightmare might eventually be stopped.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina were rattled by an unusually strong (4.1 magnitude) earthquake on Saturday morning. They must be wondering what’s next!

Janet

A blog post I never dreamed I’d have to write   

I’m embarrassed to be sharing old news today.

I’m even more embarrassed about the old news I’m blogging about today.

I learned a few days ago that CIVICUS Monitor, a global civil society alliance of local, national, regional, and international organization that monitors civil liberties in 198 countries, placed the United States of America on its Watchlist on March 10, 2025.

The Watchlist released on that date added Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan, Serbia, and the United States of America.

That beacon of freedom, that shining city on a hill, the United States of America is on a Watchlist for a “narrowing” of civil liberties.

Let that sink in for a few minutes.

No, let that sink in for a few days.

Photo by John Cardamone on Unsplash

What is the CIVICUS Monitor?

The CIVICUS Monitor website (https://monitor.civicus.org/) states, “The Watchlist draws attention to countries where there is a serious decline in respect for civic space, based on an assessment by CIVICUS Monitor research findings, our research partners and consultations with activists on the ground.”

Here is what the website (https://monitor.civicus.org/watchlist-march-2025/) reports about the United States of America, just as of March 10, 2025:

“The United States of America (USA) has been added to our Watchlist as the country faces increasing undue restrictions on civic freedoms under President Donald Trump’s second term. Gross abuses of executive power raise serious concerns over the freedoms of peaceful assembly, expression and association.

Following his inauguration on 20 January 2025, Donald Trump has issued at least 125 executive orders, dismantling federal policies with profound implications for human rights and the rule of law. Some of these orders have eliminated federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, falsely framing them as discriminatory, and have introduced measures targeting undocumented migrants and transgender and non-conforming people.

“Since mid-January, many civil society organisations, both in the US and abroad, have been forced to terminate or scale back essential human rights and humanitarian programmes due to growing uncertainty caused by the arbitrary suspension of foreign aid and a broad freeze on federal funding. The lack of clear guidelines has sparked legal challenges at the national level.

“The administration has taken steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a decades-old institution, and laid off thousands of its employees. It has also withdrawn from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Human Rights Council, exited the Paris Climate Agreement, rejected the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals, and announced sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), targeting its personnel as well as individuals and entities that cooperate with it. These actions could further undermine global efforts for climate justice, human rights, and civic freedoms.

“These measures come amid a broader potential curb on the freedom of association. On 21 November 2024, the US House of Representatives passed a bill allowing the Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profits it deems to be supporting terrorism, without due process guarantees. This would grant the executive branch sweeping authority to financially cripple civil society organisations based on broad and vague criteria.

“The sustained onslaught on peaceful pro-Palestine solidarity at university campuses has seen students and faculty members increasingly subjected to harsh sanctions without justification. On 30 January 2025, President Donald Trump,signed an executive order purportedly aimed at combating antisemitism, which calls for the cancellation of visas and the deportation of non-citizen college students and others who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests. On the same day, reports alleged that a far-right group was compiling a list of pro-Palestine protesters for potential deportation.

“Authorities have also targeted climate justice activists protesting the Mountain Valley Pipeline project in Virginia and financial institutions supporting fossil fuel expansion. Another concern is the growing role of private corporations in suppressing environmental activism. Two key developments exemplify this: the USD 300 million lawsuit against Greenpeace by the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline; and research exposing the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving the proliferation of anti-protest laws.

“The first months of 2025 have seen an alarming legislative push in multiple states, further threatening restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly. At least 12 state-level bills introduced between January and February 2025 would impose new restrictions on protests. Notably, bills in Indiana (SB 286), Iowa (HF 25), Missouri (HB 601), New York (S 723), and North Dakota (HB 1240) seek to criminalise the use of masks during protests. They could also expose protesters to heightened surveillance technologies and intimidation tactics, as evidenced by the doxing attempts over the past year against pro-Palestine protesters.

“Meanwhile, Minnesota’s new bill (SF 1363) introduces new civil and criminal liabilities for those supporting protesters who engage peacefully in demonstrations on a critical public service facility, pipelines or other utility property. These restrictions show a broader trend since 2017 of escalating constraints on protests and could trigger a new wave of repression against those expressing dissenting views.

“There are also serious concerns about freedom of expression and access to information, particularly for journalists covering politically sensitive issues. On 11 February 2025, two journalists from the Associated Press (AP) were banned access to White House-related press briefings due to the agency’s editorial policy to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally recognised denomination rather than the presidentially decreed “Gulf of America.” AP filed a lawsuit against administration officials, but a federal judge denied the agency’s request for the immediate restoration of full access to presidential events for its journalists, ruling that access to the president is at his discretion and not a constitutional right.

“Moreover, on 25 February, the White House press secretary announced that the administration will decide which media outlets can access the presidential press pool. These recent decisions raised concerns about unprecedented restrictions on public access to independent reporting on government affairs.”

What’s next?

CIVICUS Monitor will closely track developments in the United States of America, while calling on the United States Government “to do everything in their power to end the ongoing crackdowns immediately and ensure that perpetrators are held to account.”

What you can do

If you have information on civil liberty injustices in the United States of America, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan, or Serbia, you can send that information to monitor@civicus.org.

You can also make sure your US Senators and US Representative are aware of this. Ask them if this is a list they are proud for our country to be on. Ask them what they are going to do about it. Ask them when they are going to start holding the “perpetrators” accountable.

Photo by Chela B. on Unsplash

Until my next blog post tomorrow

Stop reading that novel!

Act on this now!

Spread the word. Contact your elected officials, not just in Washington, DC, but your state elected officials. Tell them to apply pressure in Washington.

That’s my plea to you today. This is your assignment this week.

Janet

“No less than 20,000 officers”

I had another blog post not only written, but scheduled to go live at 5:00 this morning. But it will have to wait until tomorrow.

At 11:30 last night, I learned that President Trump issued a Proclamation on Friday, May 9, 2025, titled “Establishing Project Homecoming.”

What a sweet-sounding name, but don’t be fooled. It’s not about a homecoming. It’s about a homegoing, or a “get-out-of-our-country-going.”

Some Americans will love this, but it makes me sick, and not just due to the obvious grammatical error.

Establishing Project Homecoming: A Proclamation, May 9, 2025

If you wish to read the entire proclamation, and I hope you will, you can find it on the White House website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/establishing-project-homecoming/.

Aside from the inflammatory introductory remarks about our country being invaded by illegal aliens, the most troubling part is Section 3(b):

“No later than 60 days after the date of this proclamation, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall supplement existing enforcement and removal operations by deputizing and contracting with State and local law enforcement officers, former Federal officers, officers and personnel within other Federal agencies, and other individuals to increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers in order to conduct an intensive campaign to remove illegal aliens who have failed to depart voluntarily.”

“and other individuals” – That leaves the door open to just about anyone. As if the ICE officers we have already seen on video act like they have ever read the US Constitution or anything else.

What we have seen so far is men wearing sunglasses just above their masks. They appear to have no identification or warrants. They ride in unmarked vehicles. They show up in large numbers to arrest one individual. They slam the individual to the ground, face down, hand cuff/zip tie them, and shove them into the what sometimes resembles a SWAT armored vehicle. They drive off to an undisclosed location, leaving the person’s family members wondering where they are and what to do about it.

If animals were being treated like this, animal rights groups would be all over it. These are people, though, not animals.

Now, in addition to the 80,000 officers Homeland Security already has, they want “to increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers” by July 8.

How many more people will be picked up by mistake? How many more people will be shipped to a prison in a country not their own due to an “administrative error” or some such lame excuse?

I’m at a loss for words to convey how sick and frightening this is, and I am not an illegal alien.

I don’t recognize the United States of America. I don’t recognize the brutality with which the Trump Administration is attacking immigrants, freedom of speech, due process, education, libraries, museums, scientists, medical researchers, the environment, federal employees, farmers, and small businesses reliant on imported goods and materials.

This scorched earth approach to every facet of our government and economy doesn’t make sense to me…  but I guess that’s what you get when you put a businessman in the White House.

If you voted for Trump, did you realize you were voting for a police state?

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 56 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helen. That count includes five US highways, five state highways, and 46 state roads.

There is nothing new about the I-40 or Blue Ridge Parkway reconstruction project.

The nonprofit Orchard at Altapass opened this weekend! It is on a six-mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that is open near Little Switzerland. Put it on your itinerary. Hurricane Helene wiped out 400 of their apple trees, but they still have 2,500 and need people to support them this year.

The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is underway in counties affected by Hurricane Helene. Under the program, as I understand it, property owners apply for consideration for acquisition, elevation, or land stabilization. Their property is evaluated for whichever category the owner prefers.

It is an effort to give homeowners the opportunity to secure their homes to mitigate damage from a future storm or to sell their land to be left vacant so there won’t be a structure there to be damaged or washed away if another major storm occurs. FEMA provides 75% of the funds and the State provides the remaining 25%. More than 400 property owners in five NC counties have submitted applications according to an online report by Karen Zatkulak of WLOS in Asheville on May 7. (I was not able to easily current statistics for the other 22 counties and Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians/Qualla Boundary that sustained damage from the hurricane.)

A new machine manufactured by Tigercat is operating in Haywood County, NC to convert wood into biocarbon. Since Hurricane Helene, an abundance of trees are lying on the ground over hundreds of square miles in western NC.

Twenty tons of wood debris can be reduced to 2,000 tons of biochar, which is “a carbon fertilizer that can revitalize soil and conserve water for long periods. The amount already made is now going to local farmers who lost their land during Hurricane Helene,” according to an online WLOS report by Ed DiOrio on May 6.

Until my next blog post, tomorrow

Read what you can

Get your news from reliable sources.

Don’t stop paying attention. Our country and our way of life hang in the balance.

Please overlook any errors. Writing a blog post at 1:00 a.m. is never a good idea. I couldn’t find an appropriate image to illustrate this post. All the officers in the free law enforcement photos online are identified as “Police” on their uniforms and their vehicles say, “Police.” I couldn’t find any free photos of masked men riding around in unmarked vehicles arresting people.

Janet

How are you?

I have followed John Pavlovitz’s blog for years. He is a pastor whose church left him. Notice my phrasing. In these times of evangelicals blurring the lines between church and state and morphing into what resembles a political party, Mr. Pavlovitz found himself out of step with his congregation.

Mr. Pavlovitz now writes on Substack. Like me, he is worried about the state of things in America and is baffled over how people who profess to be Christians think all the chaos, name-calling, lying, and destruction of our democracy that have taken place since January 20 are just fine. They say they would vote for it again, if given the opportunity.

On April 25, Mr. Pavlovitz wrote an excellent piece on Substack titled, “Do You Miss Who You Were Before All This? I Do.” Reading that article prompted me to write today’s blog post.

I wanted to address this on April 26 or April 28, 29, or 30, or May 1, 2, or 6, but I had already started writing my posts for those days. I was just trying to keep up with all the craziness going on in the US Government, so I had to plug today’s topic into my first available day… Friday, May 9.

Mr. Pavlovitz wrote eloquently in his April 25 piece about how he misses his former self. He realizes he has been dealing with the growing intolerance for others in our society and in our world for a decade now.

He misses his former self who laughed more easily, who naively thought most people around him had the same worldview, who more easily gave people the benefit of the doubt than he does today.

I can identify with everything he said, and I miss my former self. In fact, I miss the person I was before November 5, 2024.

The me I was before the election was a hopeful me. That me thought that surely there were enough good people in America that Donald Trump would not be reelected.

As the election results came in on the night of November 5, I realized how I had misjudged my fellow Americans.

The night that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in November 2016 was a huge disappointment.

The night Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris was a gut punch.

In the ensuing weeks, I tried to convince myself that even though the next four years would be bad, we would weather the storm. America was strong. Ultimately, good would prevail.

Then Inauguration Day came and whiplash set in. The Project 2025 playbook we had been warned about, was put into place at warp speed.

I have lost some things, like my sense of humor, joy to greet each new day, anticipating that day will be a good one.

But I have learned a lot about myself.

I have learned that I can speak up for democracy when it is no longer a safe thing to do.

I can speak out against injustice.

Photo of a woman speaking into a megaphone
Photo by Juliana Romão on Unsplash

I can put myself out there on the internet with my blog and say things that I know some people won’t like. Some of those people are my friends, relatives, and fellow church members.

I have found what I am willing to fight for. It was easy to be patriotic my first 72 years. It is not so easy now to be patriotic in America if you love democracy. The MAGA people have blurred the meaning of patriotism. In their eyes, if you don’t blindly and angrily support Trump, you are not patriotic. It is not so easy when you know that speaking up against the United States President can land you in harm’s way.

The MAGA people have blurred what it means to be a Christian. They seem to have a convoluted belief that God favors America and God wants America to be rich and turn its back on poor people here at home and around the world. They seem to believe that God wants America to wield such a fierce and powerful military that the rest of the world will cower in fear. The fact that they conflate that worldview with believing in Jesus Christ just doesn’t add up in my mind.

Coming to grips with this new Christian Nationalism movement is the most frightening part of our current situation in the United States. So many people who profess faith in Jesus Christ appear to have lost sight of his teachings. Instead of clinging to “Love thy neighbor,” they cling to “An eye for an eye.” Or, at best, they only consider people who are just like they are as their neighbors.

I am momentarily encouraged when I hear things like a US District Court for the District of Columbia granting a temporary restraining order to block Trump’s dismantling of the Institute of Museums and Library Services.

I am momentarily encouraged when I hear that the Voice of America shutdown is moving its way through the court system.

I am temporarily encouraged when I hear that there was enough public outcry and pressure put on by a journalist that the Guatemalan woman who was eight months pregnant and walked through an Arizona desert for two days with just one bottle of water is going to get a chance to tell a judge why she sought safety in the United States because she was scared to remain in Guatemala. If not for the press, though, she would have been deported as soon as her baby was born.

I cringe when Trump says the press is “the enemy of the people.”

It should not take a judge or a reporter to stop the injustices. The injustices should not be happening, but they are happening in such numbers and with such rapidity that there’s no way for the judiciary or the press to catch them all.

When I ask, “How are you?” please don’t say, “Fine.” If you are truly “Fine” right now in America, you’re obviously not paying attention.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a nice, relaxing weekend.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

 

I took one for the team

Exercising my freedom of speech by leaving a comment on someone else’s post on Facebook several weeks ago brought down the wrath of the MAGA folks on my head.

The post I commented on stated that France and the UK were going to give more aid to Ukraine. I merely commented that I was glad they were and that’s what the United States ought to be doing. That’s all I said. I didn’t say anything about boots on the ground because that wasn’t what I had in mind.

Most of the 600+ people who reacted to my comment left a “Like” or a “Heart” emoji. A good many responded that they agreed with me; however, you have to be on the lookout for those MAGA trolls.

The MAGA responses to me ranged from, “That war is none of our business” to “That war is Europe’s problem,” to “Here’s a history lesson for you: The US didn’t jump into World War II until Pearl Harbor was bombed” to “You should send your children there to fight” to “You should send your grandchildren there to fight” to “You should buy a plane ticket and go there to fight” to “You’re ignorant. You need to shut your mouth!” One man was so angry, he responded twice. His second response was my history lesson about Pearl Harbor. I must have gotten on his last nerve.

Photo of a man's hands holding a cell phone
Photo Credit: Marten Bjork on unsplash

Just out of curiosity, I clicked on some of the choleric responders’ names. What I discovered was that not a single one of them has ever posted anything on Facebook. They just troll people like me and leave hateful comments. I decided to mention it today in my blog post because it serves as a reminder to all of us just how vicious and determined Trump’s cult members are.

I guess these MAGA macho men get their kicks by essentially anonymously (since all the information on their Facebook pages are a name (probably bogus) and “gender: male”) by making crude remarks to a 72-year-old woman they don’t know. They are pathetic.

If they were trying to frighten me or silence me… it obviously didn’t work.

Until my next blog post

Read for pleasure.

Do what you can to fight authoritarianism.

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

Janet

The Importance of Looking Good to Hide Ineptitude

Today I decided to take a somewhat light-hearted look at the Trump Administration after yesterday’s list of many things we’ve lost.

This is old news from a couple of weeks ago, but I think it is indicative of the priorities of the Trump Administration. Everything in the Trump world is about money and looks.

We know from the comb-over to try to hide his bald spot and the abundance of make-up President Trump wears that looking good (or thinking you look good?) is his top priority.

There are memes making the rounds on social media about all the blond women representing the administration and the cross necklaces they all wear.

I don’t know what is in those women’s hearts. It’s up to God to judge, but I don’t see any reflection of the teachings of Jesus Christ in their actions and their words ring hollow. It’s not part of their jobs to demonstrate the love of Christ, but if you’re going to wear a cross necklace I think you should try. When your words and actions don’t reflect the beliefs your jewelry advertise, it gives non-Christians a disingenuous idea of what Christ is all about.

Besides, we used to have separation of church and state in the US. It’s one of the reasons we fought a big war in the 1770s.

But it doesn’t stop with the blond women.

Make-up room at the Pentagon

Photo of a make-up mirror
Photo credit: Tile Merchant Ireland on unsplash.com. (Not a photo of the make-up mirror at the Pentagon.)

CBS reported on April 24 that the US Department of Defense has spent several thousand dollars to give a room next to the Pentagon press room a face lift. The old mirror on the back of the door has been replaced with a larger mirror with make-up lights. A table was removed from the room and a chair was replaced. The person on the inside talking to CBS will, no doubt, be fired by the time I report this.

It is speculated that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth learned while working at Fox News that one must always be camera ready.

Who knew that looking pretty was a priority for a US Secretary of Defense?

Now, if he would just keep his shirt on. I really don’t want to see his tattoos again.

Does the wife of the US Defense Secretary need a security clearance?

Speaking of the Hegseths, CNN reported on April 24 that Pete’s wife, Jennifer, had applied for a security clearance although she does not have a government job. I don’t know if she has been issued that clearance, but I would be surprised if she is denied.

She has been included in her husband’s phone calls and texts about bombing schedules in Yemen.

It makes me wonder if he has instructed all his relatives and friends to apply for security clearances so he won’t be criticized for including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer on his future phone calls and text messages.

Perhaps he has one of those “friends and family” service plans on his cell phone.

I’m making light of this, but it really is a serious breach of security and erosion of confidence for the troops as well as regular citizens.

Until my next blog post, unless I lose internet service again

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet

Some things we’ve lost

President Trump held a National Prayer Day event in what is left of the rose garden at the White House on Thursday, May 1. It was a bizarre thing to watch on NPR on my tablet, since the man demonstrates no faith in God in his words and actions. That aside, it came just three days after North Carolina’s Rev. William Barber II (who has for years been an activist for the rights of poor people and teachers) and another pastor were arrested for praying aloud in the Rotunda of the US Capitol.

Photo credit: Andra C. Taylor, Jr. on unsplash

It turns out it is technically against the law to do that. Under a Washington, DC law, they were charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.”  It seems they were warned, about 20 law enforcement officers of several levels were summoned with zip ties (which seems excessive), then everyone else was cleared from the Rotunda (including reporters who could have recorded what was about to happen), the doors were locked, and the two pastors were arrested.

My confusion arises because it was apparently only weeks after Conservative activist Sean Feucht led a group singing while playing an electric guitar in the Capitol Rotunda with Republican US Representative and gun rights activist Lauren Boebert in attendance on her knees waving her arms to the music.

I wasn’t there for either incident, and I don’t have all the facts. On the face of it, there seems to be a double standard. Perhaps Mr. Feucht had permission to do what he did, and Rev. Barber apparently did not. Perhaps making prior arrangements or obtaining some type of permission is the difference in the two cases. But lesson learned: don’t pray out loud in the US Capitol Rotunda.

We’ve lost federal funding for mental health grants to public schools. When Trump and Elon Musk brag about the billions of dollars they have saved the American taxpayer, just remember that $1 billion was cut last week from the School-Based Mental Health Services Grant Program, which was established in response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which 19 students and two teachers were murdered. These grants were used to pay for more mental health counselors and therapists in our schools. School systems were notified on April 29 that the grants they had been awarded to use over the next five years have been cancelled.

On May 1, 2025, the same day US President Donald Trump made a big show of having a National Prayer Day event at the White House in which he spoke for the better part of an hour about how miserable his life has been and how the 2020 election was rigged and how “they” tried to rig the 2024 election but “they” failed… he also signed an Executive Order titled, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” in which he unilaterally stopped all federal funding support for National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Although most of programming on NPR and PBS are funded by corporate and individual contributions, they do receive some federal dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). It is reported that NPR gets 10% of its funding from the federal government. Losing that could spell doom for the radio stations in small markets… where it is needed the most.

The Order stops all current and future federal funding to the CPB.

Here is a link to the full text of this the Order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ending-taxpayer-subsidization-of-biased-media/.

I watch PBS every day and listen to NPR all the time I’m in the car. There is programming on both that is not available anywhere else. Trump would know that if he had ever listened to NPR or watched the wealth of educational programs on PBS.

PBS offers theatrical and musical productions, documentaries, worldwide travel shows, and numerous educational programs for children and adults. This programming is just not available on commercial TV networks. And there is not comparable radio programming to what NPR offers.

You have to be pretty low to attack “NOVA,” “Nature,” Ken Burns’ highly-acclaimed documentaries, Big Bird, Kermit, Ernie, The Cookie Monster, and Miss Piggy. I don’t recall ever hearing that any of them told the audience for whom to vote.

Trump is already threatening to force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel the broadcast licenses of the TV networks he doesn’t like. That’s any network that has programming on which anyone criticizes Trump. He started threatening CBS weeks ago. He belittles ABC, NBC, and CNN to their reporters’ faces in interviews and press conferences. Fortunately, none of them are backing down. He tells them their questions are “stupid.” He tells them what they should be asking. Then he usually launches into whining about losing the 2020 election. People of a certain age will understand when I say he is a broken record.

Photo of a cell phone with CBS on the screen

We’ve lost college students believing that they have the right to protest. Since the Trump Administration has come down hard on protests on university campuses by deporting international students suspected of participating in an anti-Israel war in Gaza protest at Columbia University, students hesitate to use their First Amendment right to assembly and free speech. Since Trump is financially punishing universities that allow student protests, students are getting mixed messages about how their school administrators will react if they dare to protest. Dakota State University in South Dakota invited US Secretary of Homeland Security and former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to give the commencement address on May 10. Students and faculty members there are hesitant to voice their displeasure with the decision and most refused to speak to the Associated Press reporter doing a story about the invitation. A university where students and professors are afraid to even verbally protest has lost the essence of what university is.

Two US Representatives plan to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump, so he is calling them childish names and calling for their expulsion from Congress. He says that have committed “real crimes,” I guess opposed to the 34 felonies he was convicted of before the last election.

We’ve lost Veterans Day. On May 1, Trump declared that May 8 will now be “Victory in World War II Day” because that’s the date in 1945 that Germany surrendered. That was a telling theory, since the war continued in the Pacific until Japan surrendered on August 6, 1945. But worse than that was his declaration that November 11 will now be “Victory in World War I Day” instead of Veterans Day. I just want to know how many more times he is going to insult veterans and still have their support.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Lee Zeldin, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Friday that he is reorganizing the agency to save $300 million. He plans to accomplish that by creating a new unit within the agency “to align research and put science at the forefront of the agency’s rulemakings.” Time will tell what happens to the EPA in an Administration that is openly anti-environment.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi is cracking down on journalists who obtain “privileged and other sensitive information,” not just classified material, “that undermine President [Donald] Trump’s policies.” The editorial board at The Washington Post is concerned about the future of the Justice Department’s regulation that limited the government’s ability to see journalists’ phone and email records. If we lose our free press, we lose our democracy.

We’ve lost common sense. Attorney General Bondi announced in last Thursday’s Cabinet Meeting that the fentanyl seized by the Trump Administration since January 20 has saved 258 million lives. I’m not good at math, but that would be 79% of the 326 million people who live in the United States. In other words, 79% of Americans would have died from taking fentanyl since inauguration day if not for President Trump? This is the kind of information the Trump Administration is putting out as facts.

We’ve lost the 120 portraits of victims of gun violence in the atrium of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Washington, DC. Justice Department spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said the decision to remove “The Faces of Gun Violence” was not political. That’s good to know.

We thought we had lost the Alcatraz Federal Prison on Alcatraz Island off San Francisco when it was closed in 1963 due to staffing problems and physical deterioration. It wasn’t cost effective in 1963 to repair it. Fast forward 62 years: Trump to the rescue! He announced on social media on Sunday that he has ordered the dilapidated prison to be expanded and reopened for our worst criminals.

Photo credit: Matt Briney on unsplash

We no longer have a US President who respects other nations’ sovereignty, so we’ve lost that internationally held principle in our Executive Branch of the federal government. In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, he said he would not rule out using military force to take Greenland. WHAT?

We’ve lost our confidence that the person holding the office of President of the United States will uphold our Constitution. Donald J. Trump demonstrates through his Executive Orders that he has little regard for the US Constitution, but now we have his actual words. He has taken the oath of office twice, and yet in the “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday, he admitted that he doesn’t know if he has to uphold the Constitution. We don’t know if he has no recollection of that oath or if he is willfully choosing to question the validity of the oath. If he cannot remember the oath he took 15 weeks ago, perhaps Section 4 of the 25th Amendment needs to kick in. If he does not understand the words of the oath… perhaps Section 4 of the 25th Amendment needs to kick in. (Of course, the prospects of Vice President J.D. Vance assuming the office of President is also daunting!)

Trump said he will have to ask his lawyers if he has to uphold the Constitution. The oath is short and straightforward: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

We no longer have a US President who knows what the Declaration of Independence is. In a much-anticipated ABC News interview with the President on his 100th day in office, Trump made a point to show a copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall in the Oval Office. ABC’s Terry Moran asked, “What does the Declaration of Independence mean to you?” Trump’s response was classic Trump: “Well, it means uhh exactly what it says. It’s a declaration of unity, love and respect.” That is the most bizarre description of the Declaration of Independence I’ve ever heard. He makes it sound like it was a love letter to King George. The look on Terry Moran’s face said it all.

Another thing we’ve lost is any sense of decorum or appropriateness. Trump posting an AI-generated image of him in full Pope attire over the weekend was in the very least in poor taste. I’m not Roman Catholic, but I found it repulsive.

That image of the Wizard near the end of the Wizard of Oz movie from 1939 comes to mind… the one when Toto pulls back the curtain and the Wizard of Oz is discovered to be just an ordinary man who is projecting a far different image of himself.

Is my country being run by a 12-year-old boy who has no knowledge of or interest in learning history and takes nothing seriously? That’s what is being projected for all the world to see.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

Do you enjoy National Parks? Plus 8 other good things being targeted by the Trump Administration

Just as I attempted yesterday afternoon to schedule this blog post to be published at 5:00 a.m. today, my internet and phone service were severed in a farming accident just up the road. With partial service restored and technicians coming back tomorrow to try to finish repairing the problem, I’m attempting to post this now at 7:40 p.m. on April 30.

I might not be able to post tomorrow. I’ll try in a few minutes to schedule it for 5:00 a.m. May 1 and hope for the best.

Today’s blog is a continuation of yesterday’s post. There is a limitless supply of things being done by the Trump Administration that cause me great concern. Here are a few.

  • I have been reading numerous sources that are reporting that US Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has handed the operation of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs  over to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)… a “department” by the way that was not created or approved by the US Congress. For example, DOGE has targeted the US Park Service’s Southeast Utah Group’s office. It oversees Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Hovenweep and Natural Bridges national monuments. DOGE says by cancelling the lease of that office will save $805,408 over a ten-year period. That is an annual savings of a whopping $80,548 per year and it is a loss of oversight over two of the most iconic national parks in the United States. For $80,548 a year…. Will the people who work in that 35,358-square-foot building be relocated? If so, how much will it cost to secure and pay for that space? Or perhaps they will all just be fired because the Trump Administration obviously have a vendetta against national parks and the people who love them. DOGE is nickel and diming the most beloved parts of our country to death in the name of “Efficiency.” That’s just one example. This puts the wrecking ball called DOGE in charge of more than 400 national parks and more than 500 million acres of federal land, wildfire preparation, financial management, and training. What makes all these even scarier is that the guy in charge of our National Parks, Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs background is in the oil industry. Anyone else think this one is cringe worthy? It’s been done very quietly because someone somewhere in the White House must know that we Americans love our national parks. They don’t, but we do. Repeated statements proving that the national parks generate much more money for the US economy than they cost continues to fall on deaf ears at the White House.
Photo of an arch in Arches National Park
Arches National Park.
Photo by Ben Stiefel on Unsplash
  • Pay to Play. Is a $239 million Presidential Inauguration what Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, and George Washington had in mind? That’s how much Trump raised for his 2025 inauguration. Due to bad weather, it wasn’t all spent. The leftovers can be spent for things like Trump’s presidential library, which is the grandest oxymoron ever. In all fairness, more than a dozen of Trump’s $1 million donors also donated to Biden’s inauguration. Back to the $239 million for the inauguration… Brazilian meat company JBS, which owns Pilgrim’s Pride brand, donated $5 million. JBS stands to benefit from Trump’s recent efforts to lessen restrictions on the poultry industry. Investment banker Warren Stephens donated $4 million and has been nominated to be US ambassador to the UK. Real estate investor Melissa Argyros has been nominated to be ambassador to Lativa for her $2 million donation. Jared Isaacman’s $2 million donation bought him a nomination to be the next NASA administrator. Florida attorney Dan Newlin’s $1 million bought his nomination to be US ambassador to Colombia. Former Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick donated $1 million and became US Secretary of Commerce. He literally can’t stop smiling. Just watch his next TV interview, if you doubt me. Linda McMahon donated $1 million and became US Secretary of Education, although her background is in the notoriously crooked wrestling industry. Tilman Fertitta donated $1 million and became Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Italy. Ken Howery donated $1 million and will likely be our next ambassador to Denmark. (Our apologies to Denmark for… everything.) Scott Bessent got off easy. His $250,000 donation resulted in his new job as US Treasury Secretary. Edward Walsh and his wife, Lynn Walsh, each donated $25,000 and got Edward his nomination to be US ambassador to Ireland. Ripple Labs, a cryptocurrency firm, donated $4.9 million and in March the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped litigation regarding a question over whether Ripple Labs’ cryptocurrency meet the legal definition of a security. Robinhood Markets, a financial technology company donated $2 million and in February the SEC closed its investigation into that business. I’m not saying “Pay to Play” has not happened in any previous presidential administrations. There have been rotten players in politics since the beginning of time. My point is, looking at it from the outside, it looks as if things have gotten out of control. A president who wants states to hire their Department of Transportation employees based on merit isn’t bothered with considering merit when it comes to Cabinet positions or ambassadorships.

  • The Museum of the Aleutians was notified that its three-year National Endowment for the Humanities grant for its Sharing Voices Project had suddenly been cancelled only partially through its first year. The project’s goal was to expand public access to more than 150,000 artifacts and other compiled histories of the Unangam village of Tachiqalax on Unalaska Island. “We had just finished our first podcast and hired staff to start in June,” says Dr. Virginia Hatfield, executive director of the museum since 2017. This was reported on the Alaska Humanties Forum Facebook page on April 25.
Photo of children at the museum
Photo of a children’s program. Copied from the Museum of the Aleutians.

  • Trump has pardoned former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore for her conviction on multiple counts related to fraud just weeks before her scheduled sentencing. Fiore raised money for statues of two Las Vegas police officers who were killed in the line of duty but then spent tens of thousands of the dollars for plastic surgery, rent, and her daughter’s wedding, according to prosecutors.
  • I read that some owners of artifacts and exhibits in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC have received emails telling them that their materials are being returned to them. Sadly, the surprising part of this is that those artifacts aren’t just being thrown away. Funny how politicians convicted of fraud are valued and rewarded by the Trump Administration while artifacts in the National Museum of African American History and Culture hold no value at all.
Photo of the National African American Museum in Washington, DC
Photo of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
Photo by Tomasz Zielonka on Unsplash
  • Although many educators caution against the use of AI in schools, the Trump Administration has a different theory. By Executive Order, Trump wants to bring more artificial intelligence into K-12 schools. We were all led to believe that Trump wanted to remove the federal government from public education, but here he goes signing more education Executive Orders.
  • The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice has long been considered the department’s crown jewel, but Reuters is reporting that about a dozen of the division’s attorneys have been reassigned. Former prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote that the new mission statement for the voting section of the Department of Justice “barely mentions the Voting Rights Act.” She said the losing the Civil Rights Division would be “unthinkable.” The article I read said, “Some of the work Vance’s office did with the Civil Rights Division included ‘protecting the rights of diabetic school children, making sure voters in wheelchairs could access their polling places, and prosecuting police use of excessive force that left people badly injured.’”
  • Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent with The New York Times has described the current White House Press Room as a place “of open hostility, and mockery and disparagement in a way that’s meant for he larger audience, not for the people in the room.” Mr. Baker has been a White House reporter through 17 different press secretaries over his career. He says the current atmosphere under Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt goes beyond anything he has seen before. He is quoted as saying the Trump Administration doesn’t “view the briefing room as a way to impart information. They don’t even view the briefing room as a way to shape reporters’ stories. They view the briefing room as a theater for the MAGA audience.” When journalists cannot get straight answers to their legitimate questions from the press secretary of the President of the United States without being scorned, mocked, or ignored, there is no point for holding the press briefings. Just like all of Trump’s press conferences, there are “planted” so-called reporters in the room to ask him planned softball questions that are often introduced with a few words of praise. That is not journalism.
  • Continuing in his predictable anti-environment vein, on April 24, Trump signed an Executive Order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.” It was no accident that this was ordered on the day that Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store was in Washington to meet with Trump. The Norwegian Prime Minister tried something similar last year when he tried to open up areas in Norway’s territorial waters for exploration by mining companies. He was stopped by an outcry from environmentalists. It remains to be seen if Trump will be successful. Katie Matthews, chief scientist and senior vice-president of global campaign group Oceana, said, “This is a clear case of putting mining companies’ greed over common sense. Any attempt to accelerate deep-sea mining without proper safeguards will only speed up the destruction of our oceans.”  My take: Look up “greed” in the dictionary and there should be a picture of Donald Trump.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine or western North Carolina.

Janet

How’s that Salmonella infection working for you?

Due to my ongoing internet service problems after underground cables were ripped up just up the road from my house, I will schedule this post for 5:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, 2025, and hope it goes out! More repairs are to be made tomorrow, so I don’t know when I’ll have internet service. I’m sending it without any photographs. Just trying to get it scheduled while I can. Please overlook my typos!

There is a lot going on in the Trump Administration. Some of it is proudly proclaimed on live TV. Some of it is announced with the President surrounded by colorful charts or a map of the Gulf of Mexico on a tripod. (Yes, I will continue to call it by it’s rightful and historical name, even though Trump gave each of his Cabinet members a “Gulf of America” baseball cap at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.)

Some things… I dare say most of them… are done quietly. I try to highlight as many of them as possible on my little blog. I bet some of the items that made my list today flew under your radar.

  • The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made the decision to withdraw a rule that would have finally set real limits on salmonella levels in raw poultry. Three years of work on this rule that could have prevented more than 160,000 infections every year was simply trashed. Salmonella makes 1.35 million Americans sick every year and kills 420 of them. This rule that the USDA just scrapped would have required poultry companies to test for the most dangerous Salmonella strains. Profits over public health It’s enough to make me want to become a vegan. Apparently, the USDA did not get the memo saying that the US Department of Health and Human Resources has a new motto: “Make America Healthy Again.”

  • President Trump’s pick for US Surgeon General, Dr. Jannette Nesheiwat has been described by the president as “a double board-certified medical doctor,” and a “proud graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.” However, it seems now that she did a residency at the University of Arkansas, but she got her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten. Her LinkedIn account does not mention the school in the Caribbean. She might be highly-qualified, but it would be nice if the Trump Administration would vet its nominees for such positions of responsibility.

  • The Miami Herald is reporting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has built a two-story plexiglass “tent” in Krome, Florida to house 400 detainees. US Representative Frederica Wilson was taken on a tour last week, three weeks after she had requested to be shown the facility. The report says there are 200 cots on each floor, temporary bathrooms and a TV room. Since she smelled fresh paint on her visit, Rep. Wilson said her next visit will be unannounced so she can see for herself what the conditions really are. She indicated that what she was shown on her tour did not match what she has been hearing about the facility. A plexiglass “tent”? I can’t quite picture that.

  • The Miami Herald newspaper reported that a mother was deported to Cuba, leaving her US citizen husband and their one-year-old daughter who was still breastfeeding behind in Tampa, Florida. What about this makes America great? Absolutely nothing.

  • The wife and children of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the US Government admitted was shipped off to a prison in El Salvador by mistake, have had to go into hiding at an undisclosed location because that same US Government made their home address public! Can’t someone make this incompetence on steroids stop? My hunch is that the individual who made Mrs. Abrego Garcia’s home address public would not want their own address made public.

  • Trump is considering eliminating the 988 Suicide Prevention Hotline for LGBTQ+ Youth. The hotline has fielded 1.3 million calls since it was launched by the Biden Administration in July 2022. I’m left to conclude that it is being eliminated because it doesn’t turn a profit. With all these business people running the government now, they have no concept of doing anything just for the good of the people. Besides, this Administration has made it clear that they don’t recognize LGBTQ+ people as being human beings. They’ve never tried to hide their disdain for individuals who do not fit the mold of white and straight.

  • I read that the soon-to-be-proposed “big, beautiful budget” from the Trump Administration is going to eliminate the Narcan grant program, although the CDC has evidence that there was a 24% decrease in drug overdose deaths in the year ending last September, partly due to Narcan being distributed to first responders through the program. We’ll never know all the minute details of the budget bill, even after it is approved by Congress. It’s too massive, but many American families know that Narcan being available to first responders has saved lives.

  • Calling US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s new TV and radio ads telling immigrants not to come to America “propaganda,” and the President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is taking steps to ban the TV and radio ads in her country.

  • CNN is reporting that the Trump Administration is considering sending South American and Central American asylum seekers to Libya and Rwanda. I honestly cannot believe I’m having to type those words. I cannot believe this is seriously being considered. Anyone in the White House considering this is evil personified.

  • At his Cabinet meeting on April 30, Trump said that the current economic downturn is Joe Biden’s fault and the continued economic woes we will see in the next three months are also Joe Biden’s fault. He also in a roundabout way said that children aren’t going to have as many toys and the toys they get are going to be more expensive. The example he gave was that instead of having 30 dolls, a child might only have two dolls and those two dolls are going to cost a couple of dollars more. Trump seemed to be the last person in the country to figure that out. Only an out-of-touch billionaire President would speak in terms of a child having 30 dolls. There are some children in the US that would love to have just one doll. And, of course, it’s not just dolls or other toys that aren’t going to be available in the coming months.

  • On Wednesday afternoon, April 30, the executive in charge of the Port of Los Angeles told CNN that imports coming into his port are down 45% and very soon dock workers and truck drivers will not have much work to do, while the President was announcing at his Cabinet meeting that “cargo ships are making U-turns” in the Pacific Ocean to head back to China to pick up merchandise. Why would anyone believe Trump?

  • The Trump Administration launched an investigation of the University of California at Berkeley on April 25. The US Department of Education will examine all the foreign money the university has received in the last ten years. The Beast reported in May 2023 that UC-Berkeley had not reported $220 million it received from the Chinese government to build a joint Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI). TBSI opened in Shenzhen, China in 2014, but UC-Berkeley says it is no longer affiliated with it. Maybe UC-Berkeley’s foreign receipts do need to be looked at, but it seems like just another Trump attack on a public university. Time will tell.

  • Not giving us an evening to rest, on Monday night Trump floated the idea of using US military personnel for domestic crime prevention. In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in Charlotte, North Carolina in September 1989, I appreciated the National Guard personnel who directed traffic at major intersections for days until electricity could be restored, but I do not relish the thoughts of the normalizing of seeing military personnel on our streets to fight domestic crime. Besides being an extremely un-American concept, I don’t believe that is the highest and best use of soldiers, sailors, and US Marines. It remains to be seen what Trump will say his plan is. More importantly, it remains to be seen what the true intent and true objective is. If history tells us anything, it tells us that the promise and the delivery by the Trump Administration have very little in common.

  • On Sunday, April 27, Trump got on social media and told Republicans to have protesters removed from their town hall meetings and “not treat them nicely.” So much for the First Amendment to the US Constitution!

  • Citing “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House, Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino reported on X on April 24 that President Trump’s people are giving insider tips to Wall Street executives about trade deals in progress. In particular, one being worked out with India. When asked about this, Gasparino indicated that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s office made no comment but did not deny the truth of the report. If this report is true, it doesn’t sound legal to me. If not illegal, it should be.

  • Trump has removed former US Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff (who is Jewish) from the board overseeing the United States Holocaust Museum. He also removed four other people who were placed on the board by President Biden. That is the President’s prerogative, but it is highly unusual. He says he will only have people on the board who “support Israel.” This is just one more case of Trump conflating things like facts and purposes of museums or other public entities. He and many Americans continue to confuse antisemitism with anti-Israel. It is possible for someone to be against the actions of the government of Israel as a country while not being antisemitic. One is a political entity – a government – and the other is a religion. The political state of Israel created after World War II is not the same as the references to Israel in the Bible! The state of Israel in 2025 is a government that is forcing starvation of the children in Gaza by not permitting international food aid into Gaza. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing. No wonder he and Trump are friends.

  • Finally, an “honest” politician. In a live interview on CNN on Wednesday, April 30, Republican US Representative Randy Fine of Florida said, “I’m here to fight Democrats.” We knew that most the members of Congress like to talk about “reaching across the aisle, “working with my friends across the aisle,” and such platitudes when we know they have no desire to talk to their peers from the other political party. It was surprising to hear a Republican Congressman admit on live TV that he sees his purpose as a member of the US Congress “to fight against Democrats.” When there is no desire or incentive to compromise or try to work together for the good of the country in a time when there is an authoritarian in the White House, we are in a bad place.

Do you remember that war in Ukraine that Trump was going to end in one day? Do you remember how he was going to bring prices down? Do you remember how we were going to get tired of winning?

Most of us are tired 102 days into the second Trump Administration, but I don’t know anyone who is tired of winning.

By the way, Trump has not only denigrated Cabinet meetings into nothing but a Kum Ba Yah moment when every US Department Secretary has to praise him and tell him how wonderful everything is today in the United States, but now he literally rewards them with ridiculous baseball caps proclaiming that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America.

It looks like a parent handing out birthday favors to the children at a birthday party.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have “a businessman” in the White House? There is such an air of decorum at the Cabinet meetings!

Until my next blog post tomorrow

I hope you have a good book to read and time to read it.

I hope you have not lost hope in America even though my almost daily blog posts lately have given you little about which to be hopeful.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine, Myanmar, and western North Carolina.

Janet, a disgruntled political science major