AI, Copyright Infringement, Trump, and Mark Twain

I would love to rant about the 90,000-square-foot $200 million gold ballroom that is to replace the East Wing of the White House beginning in September, but I won’t chase that rabbit today. I had already planned to write about artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright infringement today.

I hate to have to “beat a dead horse,” as the saying goes, but AI is on my mind. I’m just a novice author, but this hits home.

What could Mark Twain possibly have to do with AI? Trust me. I’ll get to that.

You may have read my July 16, 2025, blog post, My soul is worth more than $205.

I’m just small potatoes in the big scheme of things in the publishing industry, but even some of the most famous authors are being taken advantage of my AI.

David Baldacci

I will mention David Baldacci as an example. Many of you are, no doubt, fans of his novels.

Baldacci has testified before a Congressional committee because even he has been victimized by AI.

You can tout the wonders and benefits of AI all day long, but when it steals your intellectual property, you might change your tune.

Baldacci said to that Congressional committee, “I truly felt like someone had backed up a truck to my imagination and stolen everything I’d ever created.”

Along comes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

The Trump Administration has a long track record of using intellectual property without the creator’s permission. They use music without permission and First Lady Melania Trump gave a speech that was almost verbatim a speech First Lady Michelle Obama had given.

The latest incident occurred on July 1, 2025, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted a painting by the late Christian artist, Thomas Kinkade on X without his estate’s permission.

The Kinkade Family Foundation has asked Homeland Security to take the image down from X.

Furthermore, his estate says, “At The Kinkade Family Foundation, we strongly condemn the sentiment expressed in the post and the deplorable actions that DHS continues to carry out,” Kinkade’s family wrote, “Like many of you, we were deeply troubled to see this image used to promote division and xenophobia associated with the ideals of DHS, as this is antithetical to our mission.”

When will the Trump Administration learn that everything in the world does not belong to them?

Pending AI Court Cases

As of July 25, 2025, there were 29 “literary works” ongoing cases before the federal courts. Other AI cases before the federal courts were 11 “visual works” cases, five “musical works” cases, three “sound recording” cases, one “audiovisual” case, and one “computer program” case about copyright infringement.

Wise words on the subject from Mark Twain

You might be asking, “How could Mark Twain have said anything about AI?”

Artificial Intelligence was pure science fiction in Mark Twain’s day – if it was even fanaticized at all, but he said something about a machine writing a story. It precisely captures my feelings about AI and literature.

Photo of Samuel Clemmons (a.k.a. Mark Twain) from Library of Congress

I just happened to be reading “How to Tell a Story,” by Mark Twain Tuesday afternoon. (Disclaimer: Mark Twain has been one of my favorite authors since I was in elementary school.)

The point of Twain’s essay is the oral telling of a story and not the writing of one, but I think his main point applies perfectly to the conflict in 2025 between the creative writing by a human and the collection of words generated by AI.

Twain begins this essay with the words, “I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.”

He goes on to say that there are various kinds of stories but the only one that is difficult to write or tell is the humorous one. He maintains that, “The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.”

Twain explains that the humorous story meanders before getting to the point and, in fact, might have no point other than to entertain. On the other hand, he says the comic and witty stories “must be brief and end with a point.”

He says, “The humorous story is strictly a work of art – high and delicate art – and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous story – understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print – was created in America, and has remained at home.”

I won’t go into Twain’s detailed description of how a humorous story is told, for that would take you down a rabbit hole and distract you from the point of my blog post.

Suffice it to say that Twain claims that an American storyteller meanders and gives the impression that he or she is not even aware that the story is funny, while the teller of the comic or witty story across the pond not only tells the audience in the beginning that they are going to tell a comic or witty story but also starts to laugh at the punch line before they even reach it. Twain says, “It is a pathetic thing to see.”

In “How to Tell a Story,” Twain relates a story about a wounded soldier. First, he presents it in the straight forward way the story teller in England, France, Germany, or Italy would tell it.

Then, he tells it like someone in America would tell it in a simple and innocent yet sincere way by going off track and possibly adding details that were not in the original or are not necessary to the story.

Twain says, “This is art and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story.”

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine, the starving children in Gaza, and the people in western North Carolina who are still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Janet

Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes’ Legacy

Sometimes topics for my blog just fall into my lap. That was the case with today’s post about Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes.

As I was doing the research for yesterday’s blog about Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte, I was led to do some research about a July 17, 1911, train wreck near Hamlet, North Carolina. The train wreck research led me to a Richmond County Daily Journal newspaper article (https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/news/108231/pair-of-researchers-seeking-more-information-on-train-wreck-from-1111-years-ago) which provided additional information about the hospital. The link is a little elusive, but I hope you can find it if you want to read more about the train wreck.

I am a Carolina Panthers fan, but I can’t afford to go to their games or to anything else at Bank of America Stadium; therefore, I have not seen the historical marker pictured in that online newspaper article. None of my online research about the hospital mentioned Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes.

That historical marker reads: “Good Samaritan Hospital (1891-1961) Site of the first independent private hospital in North Carolina built exclusively for African-Americans. Established by Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. One of the oldest black hospitals then in operation in the U.S.”

When I saw Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes’ name on that historical marker, I knew there had to be a story there.

As much as I just wanted to tell her story today, it soon became obvious that I could not tell her story without also telling a little bit about her husband. Since I had never heard of either of them, I had a lot to learn. There were some serendipitous findings along the way.

I was born in Charlotte and have lived most of my life in or near the city, but until a couple of weeks ago I’d never heard of Jane and Jack Wilkes. Jane’s is not the kind of name one easily forgets once they have heard it. The fact that I had never heard of her makes me sad, but it mainly makes me a little angry. I should have known her name and a little about what she did.

An online search of her name brought up so many articles and resources that I began to wonder how I would be able to condense her life into one blog post.

Reading that titles of some of the online articles about Jane piqued my interest and curiosity. She was born on November 22, 1827, in New York City to a wealthy family. She was one of 13 children and grew up on the family estate in the Catskill Mountains.

So how did she end up in Charlotte, North Carolina, being a nurse to Confederate soldiers, and establishing a hospital for black people?

My hunch was that marriage must have brought Jane to Charlotte, so I started my research there. Her story takes a strange turn.

This gets a little involved, but bear with me. In 1853, Charles Wilkes and a firm in New York entered an agreement and established The Capps Gold Mine Company. (You may recall that the first gold discovery in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in 1799. Cabarrus is the county immediately east of Charlotte. Goldmining in the area in the early decades of the 19th century necessitated the establishment of a branch of the United States Mint in Charlotte. The area was a hotbed of mining activity until the Civil War pretty much put a halt to mining.)

Charles Wilkes’s wife’s uncle, James Renwick, owned the land where the St. Catharine’s Gold Mine and St. Catharine’s Mill were in western Mecklenburg County (the county of which Charlotte is the county seat.) Silver, pyrite, and chalcopyrite were also mined there.

It turns out that Jane married Charles Wilkes’ son, Captain John “Jack” Wilkes, on April 20, 1854. Jane and Jack just happened to be first cousins, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole other to say they had nine children. Also, I can’t resist to comment that it is just the South that is the butt of jokes about cousins marrying cousins, but Jane and Jack were both from New York. Just sayin’.

I don’t know the details of it, but Jack Wilkes ended up coming to North Carolina to manage his father’s property. It took some digging, but I finally figured out how Jane of the wealthy Catskills family ended up in Charlotte.

After living near St. Catharine’s Mill, in the 1870s Jane and Jack moved into Charlotte and lived on West Trade Street. When I read that Jack owned and managed a flour mill, an iron mill, and a cotton mill, I had to delve into that part of their story.

An unexpected connection with my family

Reading that Jack Wilkes owned and managed an iron mill in Charlotte sent me on a search to find out more about that. My father was a structural steel draftsman. He worked for a few years in the 1960s as a draftsman at Mecklenburg Iron Works, which I knew at that time had been in operation for more than 100 years.

Sure enough, it turns out that Jack Wilkes acquired Mecklenburg Iron Works in 1859. There is proof that it was in business at least as early as 1846. My father’s connection with a company owned by the husband of Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes made me even more regretful that I had not learned about her before now.

Through my father’s employment at Mecklenburg Iron Works, I knew that the company made cannonballs for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The company also manufactured the gold stamp mill still in operation for demonstration purposes at the Reed Gold Mine State Park in Cabarrus County.

Jane and Jack’s married life

It pained me to learn that Jane and Jack owned more than 30 slaves. Many of them worked in their mills. That was interesting to learn because I tend to associate slaves in the United States in the 17th century and the first two-thirds of the 19th century as living and working on plantations. I honestly had never thought about any of those slaves working in factories.

And how was it that Jane and her husband owned more than 30 slaves, yet she ended up helping to establish Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte in 1891 to serve the black people of North Carolina?

Jack and Jane sided with the South in the Civil War, but tow of Jane’s brothers fought in the Union Army and Jack’s father gave monetary support and supplies to the Union.

It sounds like the classic “brother against brother” kind of story associated with the American Civil War!

During the Civil War, the Confederate Government took over Mecklenburg Iron Works and it was used as a naval ordnance depot. Wilkes got the factory back after the war ended in 1865 and changed production from cannonballs to agricultural equipment. The company was sold to Carolina Steel Corporation in the 1960s.

Back to Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes, the original subject of today’s post

Jane joined St. John’s Episcopal Church in High Shoals, North Carolina. High Shoals is in Gaston County, just west of Charlotte. It was originally a textile community. I don’t know if Jack joined the church there or not. When they moved to Charlotte, they both became members of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church where Jane served as president of the church’s Aid Society.

During the Civil War, Jane volunteered at several of the camps in Charlotte where wounded Confederate soldiers were brought. The experience made a deep impression on her. Soon after the war she started leading the effort to build a civilian hospital in Charlotte.

Jane was the leading voice, apparently, in the establishment of St. Peter’s Hospital for white people in 1876. With that accomplished, she started working for the construction of a hospital to serve black people. The result was Good Samaritan Hospital, which was the topic of my blog post yesterday, https://janetswritingblog.com/2025/07/14/getting-a-local-history-lesson-in-a-round-about-way/.

In 2014, Charlotte Trail of History installed an 800-pound, 7.5-foot-tall statue of Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes just off East Morehead Street near the address 1445 Harding Place in Charlotte.

When I set out to find out something about Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes, I had no idea what a journey it would be! Thank you, Tangie Woods, for prompting me to go down this path.

Until my next blog post

If you have a good book to read, consider yourself fortunate. Many people in the world don’t have that luxury.

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

Janet

How do we get out of this mess?

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

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

Series of Webinars Sponsored by The Carter Center

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Northern Ireland, People Hated Each Other

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

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

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

Do Americans hate each other?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do we get out of this mess?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmm. Sounds easy on paper?

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

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

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

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

A chilling perspective

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

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

What have you tried? Did it work?

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

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

Janet

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

Eat at Joe’s! (Not at Donald’s)

“Eat at Joe’s” is a running joke on Looney Tunes and various cartoon studios, so I just couldn’t resist making the connection when I started seeing Forbes and many other news magazines and organizations reporting on the horrible sanitation rating one of President Trump’s golf clubs was given.

Photo of a restaurant with "Eat at Joe's" painted on the side of the building — Photo by Joel Durkee on Unsplash

They say there’s no such thing as “bad publicity,” but…

It took a month for it to hit the news, but Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey Golf Club scored 32 out of 100 on a Somerset County Health inspection on May 6.

The golf club received, by nearly 30 points, the lowest score of 115 retail eating establishments inspected in Somerset County in May.

Between having expired milk and raw meat stored at 50 degrees F. instead of the required 41 degrees, it’s a wonder people haven’t died of food poisoning.

Half of the 18 health violations in the report were deemed “critical.”

Ironically, three hours after the Forbes article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/06/04/trump-health-inspection-violations-golf-club-bedminster/) was published at 8:49 a.m. on June 4, inspectors made a reinspection at the golf club and managed to upgrade the restaurant to 86 out of 100, which is the threshold for obtaining a “B” sanitation rating.

How many of Trump’s rich friends did not feel well after eating there? “It must have been something I ate.”

I would not knowingly eat at a restaurant with less than an “A” sanitation rating. I’m glad I’m not rich enough to eat at a Trump golf club.

Something to cringe about

If this isn’t cringe-worthy, I don’t know what is.

President Trump says he is going to have a new ballroom built at the White House. He claims US Presidents have wanted it for 150 years, but he is the first one who knew how to build it.

If it is half as gaudy as what he has done to the Oval Office, I don’t want to see it. On Truth Social he wrote on June 6 that it “will be compliments of a man known as Donald J. Trump….”

I wouldn’t want to be the contractor, because Trump is known for stiffing the people he owes money.

I sort of wonder about people who speak of themselves using their full names, but I digress.

Something to smile about

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was shipped off to a prison in El Salvador by the Trump Administration by mistake has been returned to the United States to stand trial.

That’s what should have happened before he was sent to prison.

The US Department of Justice is now charging him with human trafficking, according to US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

According to US President Donald Trump on Air Force One yesterday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia “is a terrible person.”

Now, we’ll see if someone labeled “a terrible person” by the US President can get a fair trial. As Americans, that is all we wanted for him. That’s all I would want for myself if I were accused of a crime.

It is a relief to know that, to some degree, we are still a country of laws.

Something to laugh about

After having nothing to laugh about since January 20, President Trump and Elon Musk gave us plenty to laugh about on Thursday. Nothing like fighting in public! It was bound to happen sooner or later. Stay tuned, everybody!

Until my next blog post

Enjoy your weekend. Be careful where you eat!

Read!

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

Janet

Blowing up the King’s gunpowder in 1771

My blog today is about my favorite local history story. It was 254 years ago last Friday – May 2, 1771, that a group of teenage boys and young men from Rocky River Presbyterian Church in present-day Cabarrus County, North Carolina, decided to blow up a shipment of King George III’s gunpowder.

The Regulator Movement in Rowan and Alamance counties to our north was reaching a boiling point in April 1771. Word reached the settlement of Scottish immigrants at Rocky River that a shipment of gunpowder was coming from Charleston, South Carolina to Charlotte and on to Salisbury, North Carolina. That gunpowder was destined to be used to put down the Regulators.

The Regulator Movement never took hold in present-day Cabarrus County (which was part of Mecklenburg County), but there was a strong and growing anti-Royal government sentiment here. Destruction of that gunpowder shipment would be detrimental to the government.

Nine teenage boys and young men from Rocky River decided to take matters into their own hands. They found out the munitions wagon train of three wagons would camp for the night of May 2 at the muster grounds near or along the Great Wagon Road in what is now Concord, North Carolina.

They blackened their faces to disguise themselves and sworn an oath on a Bible that they would never tell what they were about to do and would never reveal the names of the participants. They set out for the militia muster grounds some nine miles away and surprised the teamsters and guards. They had no desire to harm those men, so they led them and their animals to a safe distance away.

The gunpowder and blankets were gathered into a pile, and a train of gunpowder was laid. James White, Jr., fired his pistol into the trail of gunpowder. The resulting explosion was heard some nine miles away in the vicinity of Rocky River Presbyterian Church. Some people thought it was thunder, while others thought it was an earthquake.

Photo by Vernon Raineil Cenzon on Unsplash

The nine perpetrators made their way home, cleaned themselves up, and said nothing about their overnight adventure.

The Battle of Alamance took place on May 6, 1771, and the Regulator Movement was effectively put down by the royal government. Governor William Tryon proclaimed on May 17, 1771, that he would pardon the rebels if they would turn themselves in by May 21.

That deadline was extended until May 30. Some of the perpetrators headed for Hillsborough to turn themselves in, but they were warned along the way that it was a trick. Governor Tryon planned to have them hanged. Some returned to the cane brakes of Reedy Creek, not far from the church, while others fled to Virginia and Georgia.

In a trail which began on May 30, 1771, twelve Regulators were found guilty of high treason. Six were hanged.

Perhaps news of that trial reached Rocky River or maybe half-brothers James Ashmore and Joshua Hadley simply feared that one of the other gunpowder perpetrators would disclose their identities. For whatever reason, Ashmore and Hadley went independently to tell Colonel Moses Alexander what they knew. Imagine their surprise when they ran into each other on Colonel Alexander’s front porch!

James Ashmore pushed his way into the Colonel’s house and told him he was ready to talk. He was taken to Charlotte on June 22, 1771, where he gave a sworn deposition before Thomas Polk, a Mecklenburg County Justice of the Peace.

Ashmore revealed the names of the other eight young men who had conspired and carried out the attack. The search for the men began in earnest. Several of them narrowly escaped capture, and their stories and more details of the progression of the case through the colony’s royal government at included in my book, Harrisburg, Did You Know? Cabarrus History, Book 1, which is available from Amazon in e-book and paperback and at Second Look Books in Harrisburg, NC.

William Tryon became Governor of New York and Josiah Martin was appointed Governor of North Carolina. Twenty-nine “inhabitants of Rocky River & Coddle Creek Settlement” (including my great-great-great-great-grandfather) signed a petition asking Governor Martin to pardon the perpetrators, but the request was denied.

For nearly a year, the women of Rocky River Presbyterian Church provided food and clothing for the perpetrators who hid in the cane brakes along Reedy Creek. Rev. Hezekiah James Balch prayed openly for the young men’s safety from the church’s pulpit. Their identities remained a well-kept secret.

The young men were fugitives until independence was declared. After the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was issued on May 20, 1775, followed by the Mecklenburg Resolves eleven days later, all county citizens were considered to be in rebellion.

Back to the present

Yesterday was “May Meeting” at my home church, Rocky River Presbyterian in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. It wasn’t a “meeting.” It was more like an annual homecoming. It dates back to 1757. It is held on the first Sunday in May. The 11:00 a.m. worship service includes The Lord’s Supper/communion.

After the worship service, we all gather around a long wire “table” for Dinner in the Grove except on the occasional year now like yesterday when it rains or has poured rain all night and we have to eat inside the fellowship hall. Everyone brings their best and favorite homemade dishes and it is the biggest feast you can imagine.

Imaging May Meeting 1771

The more I study and contemplate the blowing up of the King’s munitions wagon train by members of Rocky River Presbyterian Church on May 2, 1771, the more I try to travel back in my mind’s eye to May Meeting 1771.

Everyone for miles around knew that the King’s gunpowder had been blown up on Thursday night. Everyone probably had a pretty good idea who among them had participated in the act of civil disobedience.

I imagine the hushed conversations under the large oak, scalybark hickory, red cedar, and poplar trees in the former church grove a couple of miles from our present sanctuary where the congregation met in a log church.

Local people were, no doubt, coming to grips with which side they were going to attach their allegiances in the inevitable coming war. Most, as it turned out, would choose to be patriots. After all, they had left Scotland and some had left Ireland in search of a better life, and they were pretty sure the King of England was not offering them a better life. He was placing more and more taxes and tariffs on them.

On Sunday, May 5, 1771, I imagine individual men carefully approached one or two men they knew they could trust and then they made quiet comments about the gunpowder explosion while they roughed the hair on the heads of their little boys who were too young to know the gravity of the situation.

I imagine many of the individual women did the same with their trusted friends while they small daughters clung to their long skirts.

And I’m sure the teenagers huddled in their usual groups and talked about what had happened on Thursday night. There was, no doubt, speculation about which of their friends had taken part in the attack.

I can imagine them quietly calling the roll, so to speak, and speculating about why Robert Davis was not at church that day. Or why were Ben Cochran and Bob Caruthers in serious conversation away from the crowd? Had they taken part? How much trouble were they really in? What was going to happen to the boys and young men who were guilty? How would they be punished?

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 56 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included four US highways, four state highways, and 48 state roads.

This from https://governor.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2025/05/01/governor-stein-announces-55-million-grants-have-been-distributed-nearly-3000-western-north-carolina: “Governor Josh Stein announced that the Dogwood Health Trust, the Duke Endowment, and the State of North Carolina have distributed $55 million to 2,812 small businesses through the Western North Carolina Small Business Initiative. These grants are supporting western North Carolina businesses impacted by Hurricane Helene and bolstering regional economic recovery. More than 7,300 businesses applied.

“’These grants will go a long way in helping western North Carolina’s beloved small business owners keep their doors open after Helene,’” said Governor Josh Stein. “’But the volume of unfunded applications makes it crystal clear – more help is desperately needed. I’m ready to work with the legislature to deliver support for small businesses that power our mountain economy.’”

After being closed for seven months, Morse Park at Lake Lure, NC partially reopened last weekend. The 720-acre lake itself remains drained as storm debris, silt and sediment are still being removed.

The village of Chimney Rock, NC was nearly wiped off the face of the earth by Hurricane Helene. It had been hoped that the town and Chimney Rock State Park would open by Memorial Day, but that’s not going to be possible. The security checkpoint will continue until further notice. You must have a pass to enter and travel through the village on the temporary road. NCDOT is working on a temporary bridge in the village to help restore access to the state park. The park has not announced a reopening date. The notice I read last Wednesday night from the Village indicated that construction of a new US-64/US-74A/NC-9 has begun.

Until my next blog post

Get a good book to read.

Don’t forget the good people of Ukraine, Myanmar, 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

These 13 things bring me hope

You will see from today’s list that it doesn’t take much to make me happy these days. I will take little victories for democracy any time I can find them.

Writing blog post after blog post about bad and unjust things going on in America lately, I was determined to blog about things that bring me hope.

Today’s post is, unfortunately, not as long as any of my posts about the things that worry and frighten me, but today is dedicated to things that bring me hope.

It serves as a reminder that, just like the seven recipients of the 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize that I blogged about yesterday, Environmental Justice, sometimes it just takes one person to take a stand and make a difference.

Photo of a stack of books — Photo by Claudia Wolff on Unsplash

Twelve children of active-duty US military personnel in the US, Japan, and Italy are suing US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for removing books about race and gender from Pentagon schools.
At 1:00 a.m. (ET) on Saturday, April 19, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that blocks the Trump Administration from sending any more migrants to El Salvador under further notice. Not that a US Supreme Court ruling will stop him.
On April 18, Judge Amy Berman Jackson held an emergency hearing about the impending firings of 1,483 employees of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. She halted the employees’ access to their computers until an evidentiary hearing can be held on April 28 with witness testimony.
Under the lame guise of fighting antisemitism, the Trump Administration continues to attack universities every day. BUT… the faculty senates of the universities in the “Big 10 Conference” are creating a Mutual Academic Defense Compact (MADC). It’s sort of a mini-NATO. Under the agreement, if the Trump Administration attacks one of the member universities, it will be considered an attack on all member universities. The resolution is in response to the Trump Administration’s “legal, financial and political” attacks on academic freedom and universities’ missions. Yes, folks, it has come to this! This give me hope that other conferences throughout the US will create Mutual Academic Defense Compacts.
Millions of Americans held peaceful protests across the country on Saturday.
CBS News reports that District of Columbia US District Judge Royce Lamberth has ordered the Trump Administration to rehire all Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Network staff at least for the time being. He also ordered all Congressional funding must resume to those outlets. A Voice of America journalist and her colleagues filled a suit against Kari Lake, the acting CEO of the US Agency for Global Media – a supposedly independent federal agency that oversees public service media networks. With Kari Lake in charge, thought, there’s no chance for it to act independently of Trump. The judge granted a preliminary injunction. A preliminary injunction was not granted to Radio Free Europe because it filed a separate lawsuit.
The April 20 deadline for US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US Secretary of Homeland Security to give President Trump a joint report about border security was extended. In that report, they are supposed to state whether or not they think the President should invoke the Insurrection Act. That Act would give him the authority to declare martial law. The extended deadline for the report gave us a breather! We just don’t know what the new deadline is… or if Pete Hegseth will still be Secretary of Defense long enough to participate.
Three students in the Rutherford County, Tennessee School District and PEN America (a writers’ organization) are suing the school board for removing more than 150 books from school libraries. The lawsuit was filed with the US District Court Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville. The removals were based on a list circulated by Moms for Liberty instead of school board members or apparently anyone connected with the school district reading the books themselves. Moms for Liberty is known for pushing book bans based on their belief that reading a book will contaminate a child’s mind. They believe they have the right to dictate what all children should not read. Bizarrely, one of its chapters in Indiana quoted Hitler’s “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future” statement from a 1935 Nazi rally.
On April 17, four members (sadly, but predictably all Democrats) of the US House of Representatives Committee on House Administration signed a letter addressed to Vice President J.D. Vance asking him to reject possible changes made in the 21 museums, 14 libraries and research centers, and the National Zoo – all part of the Smithsonian Institution. As Vice President, Vance is a member of the Smithsonian’s board of regents. In a March 27, 2025, Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and prompted by Lindsey Halligan, Esq. of Colorado beauty pageant fame, Trump wants to eliminate “divisive” and “anti-American” content from the Smithsonian and restore “monuments, memorials, statues, and markers” that have been removed from public spaces since 2020. The Executive Order gives Vance the authority to determine what content is “improper.”
An indigenous woman has been named the new president of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Dr. Heather Shotton is Wichita and Affiliated Tribes and a Kiowa and Cheyenne descendant. What makes this especially notable is the fact that Fort Lewis College started out as a military fort from 1878 until 1891. Ironically, the fort was built to protect white settlers from Indian raids. In 1892, it was turned into a federal Indian boarding school and served in that capacity until 1909. Approximately 1,100 children attended the Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School, and at least 31 of them died there. Here’s a link to an article that gives more information about the dark days of the boarding school: https://www.cpr.org/2023/10/03/state-investigation-report-released-indian-boarding-schools/.
CBS and other news outlets reported that an article documenting the career of Nicole Malachowski, the first female US Air Force Thunderbird pilot, is back online. That gives me a fraction of an ounce of hope, but it should never have been removed! Women and ethnic minorities who have served with honor in the US military should not have to go through the humiliation and disappointment of seeing records of their accomplishments removed from government website. They or others on their behalf should not have to raise cane and make such a stink that the government finally caves in and puts the information back online. What we have here is much larger than one person’s military record being trashed. What we have is an attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion because apparently some white men are so insecure they just cannot tolerate a woman or a person of color being recognized for accomplishments that they themselves did not attain. It especially stinks coming from a US President who did not serve in the military. One person’s record being put back on a website is not sufficient. Some of the pages still cannot be opened. And what about all the people whose records were taken down and have not been restored to a place of honor?
This one might surprise you, but I found hope on Wednesday when Ukrainian President Zelensky rejected the peace agreement that Trump thought he could force on Ukraine. Trump thought Zelensky would roll over and play dead and agree to giving Russia everything. Trump has no understanding of Zelensky’s love of country. He cannot identify with that concept. Trump’s claim that Russia’s “concession” is not taking all of Ukraine is reprehensible.
And last, but not least, there are rumblings that Pete Hegseth might be on his way out as Defense Secretary! He must have one of those “Friends & Family” Plans so he can share real-time bombing details with his wife, brother, and his personal lawyer on his cell phone. Even a child knows when to keep a secret.

Until my next blog post… tomorrow

I hope you are reading a good book that you don’t want to put down long enough to read my blog.

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

Janet

17 more unjust things going on in America

Continuing in the vein of my blog posts on March 24 and 31, and April 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, and yesterday, today I highlight 16 more unjust things going on in America.

The Trump Administration has fired two Democrat-appointed members of the National Credit Union Administration. Since it was created in 1970 to credit union members and their deposits, it has been a bipartisan board.
The entire staff of the NIH office that sets federal poverty guidelines have been fired. It was the office that set eligibility guidelines for health programs such as Medicaid, food assistance, child care, and other services.

A top National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher quit his job after one of his research reports was censored because it did not reflect a preconceived outcome Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. desired.
US Secretary of Health and Human Service Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is so ignorant about the autism spectrum that he said, “And these kids will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” When that statement hit social media, people came out of the woodwork to express their disgust and anger at Kennedy for making such a statement. One person after another gave personal examples from within their families to contradict every word in Kennedy’s statement.
The BBC reports that the US is poised to place a 3,521% tariff on solar panels from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. (Is Trump just pulling numbers out of a hat?) The Solar Energy Industries Association says such tariffs will hurt American solar manufacturers because they will raise the price on imported cells for solar panels assembled in the US. Trump hates solar power and wind power, so he will do whatever it takes to destroy those industries. He is pushing “clean coal” energy.
As President Trump paves the way through Executive Orders to boost the coal industry through expanding coal mining into federal lands and removing emissions restrictions on coal-powered plants, there is concern over the simultaneous elimination of 900 employees of the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety. Included in those work force cuts are people from the respiratory health division in West Virginia that oversaw a black lung X-ray screening program.
More than 790,000 children under the age of six are in the Head Start program this year. They get educational help, meals, and healthcare. The Trump Administration is ending the program which has helped 40 million children since its establishment 60 years ago.

Photo of a little boy smiling with his school backpack on his back — Photo by TopSphere Media on Unsplash

In a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni last Thursday, Trump called himself a “tariff savior,” and admitted that he does not know what the Republic of the Congo is. He said, “You know they release jails, Giorgia, from all over the world. Not just South America. The Congo in Africa. Many, many people come from the Congo. I don’t know what that is, but they came from the Congo,”
The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments from the Trump Administration that the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution should end. The Court will hear arguments in May. Trump maintains that the children of mothers who are in the US illegally should not automatically have US citizenship.
Via Executive Order on Thursday, Trump ended all protections on the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. About 750 miles west of Hawaii, the area was set aside as a US Monument in 2009 by President George W. Bush and expanded in 2014 by President Barack Obama. Trump’s order opens it up to commercial fishing, although it contains more than 160 seamounts (undersea mountains), coral atolls, and endangered sea turtles and whales. Typical of his blind goal of being the first in everything, Trump said, “The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader.”
Remember the cancelling of 1,200 National Endowment for the Humanities that I mentioned in my April 16, 2025, blog post, 16 more highlights of how things are going in America? The Associated Press reports that one of those grants was $282,000 to enable the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to digitize more than 100,000 pages of boarding school records. For 150 years, indigenous children were taken away from their parents and put in US Government boarding schools where they were prohibited from speaking their language languages in the name of “Americanizing” them and “civilizing” them. It has only been in recent years that these stories have started coming to light. Another of the grants cancelled was $30,000 for the Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and the Alaska Native Heritage Center to broadcast oral histories of elders in Alaska. This coincided with the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s loss of a $100,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to curate a boarding school exhibit. I hope all tribes are taking steps to preserve their stories, and I hope that someday those stories will be available for all to read and hear.
Trump is going after the major TV networks. Specifically, he is suing CBS over an interview with Kamala Harris that they aired on “60 Minutes.” He is upset because the interview was edited. I’m sure he know from his own experience on TV that a lot of editing occurs in TV. Full interviews are rarely broadcast, but he sues people at the drop of a hat. This sounds silly on the face of it, but the Executive Producer of “60 Minutes,” one of the most-trusted investigative news programs on TV, resigned today because he said he is no longer able to produce the show like he has in the past and he’s not going to bend his knee to the Trump Administration. If Trump can get his tentacles into all the major news networks, we are most certainly doomed.

Photo of a cell phone with CBS on the screen — Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash

Trump is going to reclassify federal employees who work on policy matters as “schedule policy/career.” They will be required to support the President’s policies, apparently, in thought, word, and deed.” He said, this will finally ensure that the federal government is run like a business. That sends a chill down my spine because by its very nature and purpose, the federal government is not a business. It does not produce a product to be sold on the open market or even on the black market. It does not manufacture shovels or picture frames or sheets and towels. It provides services for the good of the whole. It does those things that individuals cannot do for themselves. It protects citizens from outside interference. It provides for the common defense. It operates a system of courts to protect citizens and visitors alike. It secures fundamental individual rights as well as the rights of the people collectively. There is a fundamental blatant intentional misinterpretation of the purpose of a democractic government by Donald Trump and his followers. They are hellbent on destroying every shred of the US Government as we have known it for 249 years. May God forgive them, because I cannot.
The US State Department has issued “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” since 1977. These reports include all countries and are mandated by statute to give a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights.” Now that the United States is guilty of trashing human rights on our own soil, the Trump Administration has ordered major changes in what those reports include. The reports will no longer include involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices, arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, serious restrictions to internet freedom, extensive gender-based violence, and violence or threats of violence targeting people with disabilities. The elimination of these parts of the traditional reports are across the board. These abuses will no longer be reported for any countries. When the Trump Administration is guilty of such abuses (or planning to put them in place?), I guess it would be awkward to put in black and white that his regime is guilty of the same things as other dictator-led countries.
First Lady Melania Trump got credit for hosting the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn on Monday, but it became obvious weeks ago that her husband was calling the shots. It was the first Easter Egg Roll with corporate sponsors. There was a reading nook and photo op sponsored by Amazon; a “Bunny Hop Stage” sponsored by YouTube, owned by Google; and an “AI-Powered Experience and Photo Opportunity” sponsored by Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Thread’s parent company, Meta. A “Ringing of the Bell Photo Opportunity” was sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange. Call me sarcastic, but… nothing celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ like a bunch of billionaires buying more favor from the US President. To show how Trump has transformed the Republican Party into something unrecognizable… Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer who served in the White House Counsel’s Office during President George W. Bush’s Administration told CNN, “That would have been vetoed in about 30 seconds in my day.”
Four police officers from Seattle have asked the US Supreme Court to keep their names out of public records related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. I would like to think they are embarrassed about their participation. One has to wonder how dedicated they are to upholding the law.
And this from The New York Times on April 21: The White House is getting ideas from various sources on how to create a “baby boom” in the US. Ideas being floated are to pay a married woman $5,000 when she gives birth, and married women will be encouraged to have six children. Another idea is to set aside 30% of Fullbright Scholarships for married women with children. Another idea calls for government-funded programs to educate women about their menstrual cycles so they can better understand when they are ovulating. There could be a National Medal of Motherhood for mothers with six or more children. The new word being bounced around is “pronatalism.” Vice President Vance told a March for Life anti-abortion rally in January the he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them. It seems that Elon Musk thinks the low birthrate in America is a threat to civilization. (Some people think he is a threat to civilization!) It seems that the people behind this think women are putting too much emphasis on education and career and not enough emphasis on being reproductive machines. The Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025 is a driving force behind this. Some of the people pushing this baby boom want the National Institutes of Health to ramp up research into infertility. Too bad Trump and Musk have already fired most of the researchers! Duh! The lengthy newspaper article does not address race or ethnicity, but it doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines. The Trump Administration certainly doesn’t want women of color having six or more children. I’m sure when all is said and done and the US is turned into a real-life Handmaid’s Tale, there will be restrictions on just which women qualify for the honor of giving birth and raising six or more children. It seems to me like if they were merely interested in boosting the birthrate, they wouldn’t be working so hard to deport 11 million people from Central and South America. Hmmm. But wait… don’t a lot of families today with even fewer than six children rely heavily on Grandma and Grandpa to help raise their children? Just what most grandparents need… six more children to raise! And let’s have a show of hands: How many of you men want six or more children? Go on. Don’t be shy. Raise your hands if you want six or more children. This is one more slap in the faces of single people and non-traditional families. As if single people aren’t already taken to the cleaners by the IRS! This would be funny if it weren’t so sick and misogynistic.

Until my next blog post … tomorrow

I hope you’re reading a good book.

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

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

Janet

Some unjust things going on in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here we go…

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the worst thing that’s been proposed yet

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

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

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

Let that sink in.

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post … tomorrow

I hope you’re reading a good book.

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

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

Janet

Janet's Writing Blog

Category: Uncategorized

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