Category: Uncategorized

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.
Photo of two bags of groceries
  • 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.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
  • 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?
Col. Nicole Malachowski
  • 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?
Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash
  • 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.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
  • 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.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
  • 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!
Photo by Raiyan Zakaria on Unsplash

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.

Photo by Alex Gallegos on Unsplash

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

Books I Read in March 2025, & Hurricane Helene Update

Several of my recent blog posts have been 2,000 words or more, which is way beyond where I like them to be. These are uncertain and stressful times, and some topics I have been led to blog about could not be covered in a few words.

Alas, today will be a somewhat shorter post because I did not get many books read in February; however, I have a couple of special items to share about Hurricane Helene recovery in western North Carolina, so this post isn’t as short as I thought when I started writing it.

There were several books I attempted to read or listen to, but a lack of interest or inability to concentrate meant that those books were not finished.

I only completely read two books last month, so this section of today’s post will be short.

Words to Remember: So that you don’t forget yourself, by Becky Hemsley

Words to Remember : So you don’t forget yourself, by Becky Hemsley

I discovered poet Becky Hemsley on Instagram a few months ago. Many of her postings struck a chord with me, so I purchased one of her books of poetry, Words to Remember: So that you don’t forget yourself.

This book is jam-packed with poems that inspire. I repeatedly thought about my four great-nieces (ages 20 to 27) as I read the 74 poems in this book.

If you need encouragement or you know someone – especially a young woman – who needs to be reminded that they are good enough, give them a copy of this book.

One Big Happy Family: Heartwarming Stories of Animals Caring for One Another, by Lisa Rogak

One Big Happy Family, by Lisa Rogak

My sister happened upon this book and let me borrow it before she had to return it to the public library. What a jewel! (My sister and the book!)

This book contains 50 stories, one- to three-pages in length (including wonderful photographs) about unlikely animals who have bonded, become best friends, adopted orphans of other species, and shown a deeper understanding of empathy than a lot of human beings are capable of.

A few examples of these unlikely friends: a cat and a squirrel, a Springer Spaniel and lambs, a Border Collie and her Vietnamese pot-bellied piglets, a goat and a wolf, a cat and her chicks, a chicken and her Rottweiler puppies, a rabbit and her kittens, a bulldog and her baby squirrels, an orangutan and his lion cubs, a dog and his baby monkey.

Each story includes a “Family Fact” sidebar with an educational sentence or two about one of the species featured in that story. For instance, I learned that pigs like to roll around in the mud because they lack the ability to sweat to cool off. And I learned why Dalmatians are associated with fire trucks.

This would make a great gift for any animal lover and for a child. These delightful stories from around the world will make you laugh and smile. Just what the doctor ordered for your mental health in 2025!

This next is in the “I didn’t see that coming!” category…

Beowulf: A New Translation (translated by Irish poet Seamus Heaney)  

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

Don’t laugh! Ann Patchett highly recommended this translation of Beowulf on Instagram on February 21, 2025. The said it was good to read when you can’t sleep because your mind is racing and worried about what’s going on. (I’m not sure now if that was a direct quote, but it is the jest of what she said.) I was pretty keyed up about what’s going on, so I decided to check it out of the public library.

Patchett seemed to be saying that reading this wonderful translation of this ancient work that I had to read in Old English as a high school student would renew my confidence that the monster will not eat me. In Beowulf, the monster (Grendel) is killed by Beowulf.

I was glad to learn that because after reading it in Old English in high school I had no idea what it was about. I didn’t even remember that it was a poem.

After bringing Seamus Heaney’s modern English translation of Beowulf home from the library, I struggled through around half of the 22-page Introduction. I eventually jumped ahead to the actual poem. If I could have read this translation as a teenager, I might have at least understood what the poem was about.

I did not read the entire translated version. Life is short. I needed something to take my mind off politics, but Beowulf wasn’t it.

In case you have a hankering to read Beowulf, this appears to be an excellent translation. The edition my county’s library system has is bilingual, with the Old English version on the left page and the translation on the facing page. It was published in the year 2000.

I gather from Patchett’s comments that the moral of this legend is that good wins over evil. I’ll try to keep that in mind as I navigate the minefield laid out by the Executive Branch of the US Government in 2025.

There are a couple of other books I started reading in March. I’ll finish them in April and tell you all about them in May.

Hurricane Helene Update

As I write this post late on Saturday night, areas from Texas to Missouri and Kentucky are experiencing major flooding. I would be remiss not to mention that flooding and the suffering of the people affected; however, as I have maintained since last September, I live in North Carolina and I will continue to blog about the Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in my state.

As of Friday, 139 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included nine US highways, 13 state highways, and 117 state roads. That’s an overall decrease of seven road since March 21.

Although the region received some rain last week, the weather turned unseasonably warm on Friday. Wildfires continued to be a problem.

I realized that I have failed to mention one 501(c)3 foundation that was born out of the devastation Hurricane Helene left in Mitchell and Yancey counties in North Carolina, so I’ll remedy that oversight today. First, I need to explain a word in the name of the foundation: hollers. If you look up the word “holler,” you will be told that the definition of that word is a loud shout (noun) or to give a loud shout (verb). That’s not what “holler” means as used by Rebuilding Hollers Foundation, based in Bakersville, NC. If you’re from the mountains of NC or anywhere close by, you know that a holler is the area at the foot of a mountain… as in “hills and hollers.” Now that you know what a holler is, here’s a link to the Rebuilding Hollers Foundation website: https://rebuildinghollers.org/page-18086. Six months after the storm and the flooding that resulted from 30 inches of rain, the need is still overwhelming.

I have reported a lot of bad news and scary news in my blog over the last couple of weeks, so I am delighted to share some uplifting news with you today! This next story makes my heart sing! Yancey County hasn’t received as much media attention as Buncombe County (where Asheville is) because that’s just the way it is when any natural disaster happens. For instance, New Orleans got most of the attention after Hurricane Katrina, although neighboring small towns on Mississippi’s coast were devastated. That’s just the way it is, but I recently learned about an amazing way the carpentry students at the only high school in Yancey County are actively aiding recovery after unprecedented destruction.

Photo by Chandler Cruttenden on Unsplash

The students in the Advanced Carpentry Class taught by Jeremy Dotts at Mountain Heritage High School in Burnsville, NC are building a tiny house to be given to someone impacted by Hurricane Helene. What a wonderful way a public high school is empowering students who were themselves affected by the hurricane! Thank you, Mr. Dotts, for teaching your students empathy and compassion while also teaching them carpentry skills! Here’s the link to a story a TV station in Raleigh-Durham did on the project: https://abc11.com/post/high-school-carpentry-students-turn-homebuilding-storm-victims/15903556/.

But that’s not the complete story, by any stretch of the imagination! I wanted to look deeper and I discovered that tiny house is just one part of the story. First, I found an article from 2022 about the carpentry program (https://www.ednc.org/the-construction-of-a-yancey-county-carpentry-program/) and then I found a website that gives details of how carpentry isn’t the only skill or trade the students in Yancey County can learn in high school and how course completions can transfer into credits at Mayland Community College. (https://mhhs.yanceync.net/page/skilled-trades/.)

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every high school or at least every county in America could have a program like this? After all, everyone can’t excel in science or math. Some people excel in carpentry… and those of us who don’t have woodworking and construction skills rely on those who do every day of our lives.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. Find something to read that will calm your nerves and enable you to escape the stresses of life for at least a few minutes every day.

Savor your memories of and time with friends and family.

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

Janet

Six Months After Hurricane Helene

It has been six months since Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina. The State of North Carolina has just allocated an additional $524 million for Hurricane Helene recovery, and the National Hurricane Center issued its final Hurricane Helene report last week.

Photo by JD Designs on Unsplash

As of Friday, March 21, 146 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included 9 US highways (that’s 2 fewer than the previous Friday), 15 state highways (that’s 2 fewer than the previous Friday), and 122 state roads (that’s 2 fewer than the previous Friday).

Last Wednesday, March 19, NC Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, signed a bill that had finally passed the NC Legislature that will provide $524 million in hurricane relief in the western part of the state. The bill emphasizes home and private road repairs, agriculture, and infrastructure to aid businesses.

Stein had asked the Republican-controlled General Assembly for an additional $1.1 billion for Hurricane Helene recovery on top of the $1.1 billion the State of North Carolina has already spent or appropriated.

The Associated Press reported last Wednesday night: “Stein’s administration projects that disaster relief approved by Congress in December and other federal funding sources may ultimately provide more than $15 billion in Helene recovery funds to North Carolina. Stein is now seeking another $13 billion from Washington.”

About 4,600 households in western NC were still receiving temporary housing assistance as of a couple of weeks ago.

The WUNC public radio website (https://www.wunc.org) gives the following breakdown of the $524 million for western North Carolina Hurricane Helene recovery:

  • $200 million for crop loss programs and agricultural debris removal
  • $120 million for rebuilding and repairing homes
  • $100 million for repairing private roads and bridges
  • $55 million for small business infrastructure grants
  • $20 million for debris removal
  • $10 million for volunteers and nonprofits actively assisting in the disaster
  • $10 million for fire department grants
  •  $9 million for learning recovery in the Helene-affected counties 
  •  $4 million for travel and tourism marketing 

The bill also extends the state of emergency and increases the number of counties eligible for school calendar flexibility due to missed school days.

In addition to the $524 million for Hurricane Helene recovery, the legislature allocated $217 million for Hurricanes Matthew (2016) and Florence (2018) recovery on the coast.

The $9 million for a voluntary summer school program in districts that were closed for many weeks due to Hurricane Helene is less than Governor Stein requested.

Stein had requested money for two business grant programs to help companies that suffered significant losses, but the legislature omitted those programs from the final bill. Instead of Stein’s request, the legislature designated $55 million in the form of grants to local governments for sewer, utility, and sidewalk repairs which will indirectly benefit small businesses.

The dollar amount for the damage caused by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina alone has been estimated to be $53.6 billion, so drops of relief continue to drip into the bucket.

The need is still great, but in the NC General Assembly the people who are still homeless or hanging on by a thread since the hurricane must compete for the millions of dollars our legislators want to give out in vouchers so children can go to private schools instead of our public schools. (Don’t get me started!)

The National Hurricane Center released its final report on Hurricane Helene on Friday. The full report can be found on the NOAA website: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092024_Helene.pdf .

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

A few highlights from the report as it pertains to the storm in western North Carolina:  106 deaths in NC were attributed directly or indirectly to the storm. Busick, NC in Yancey County got 30.78 inches of rain – the most recorded anywhere from the hurricane. Approximately 40 miles to the south (as the crow flies), a site in Transylvania County, NC recorded 29.98 inches. Ten counties in the state recorded more than 18 inches of rain, so you can see that a large part of the mountains in NC received incredible amounts.

Mt. Mitchell recorded sustained winds of 80 miles per hour and gusts as high as 106 miles per hour. The small town of Banner Elk recorded wind gusts of 101 miles per hour. The hurricane caused more than 2,000 landslides, most of which were in North Carolina.

The North Carolina Forest Service estimated 822,000 acres of damaged timberland, which resulted in $214 million in damages to North Carolina forests.

By the way, US Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, announced at Monday’s meeting of the President’s Cabinet that she plans to “eliminate FEMA.” Apparently, there are no natural disasters in her home state of South Dakota. At the age of 53, she is fortunate if she’s never experienced one. She and Trump think states can handle disasters better than the nation. States don’t have the resources the US Government has… but maybe that’s just my opinion. We’ll see how this works out.

Until my next blog post

My planned topic for next Monday is the 298 words Trump wants federal agencies to limit or avoid. As you can imagine, this hit a nerve with me!

I hope you have a good book to read.

Hold your family close.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

#OnThisDay: Ramifications of Backgrounds of US Supreme Court Justices

When I read that today is the anniversary of the 1777 birth of Roger Brooke Taney, I wondered why his birthday appeared on any lists. When I learned that Mr. Taney was a US Supreme Court Chief Justice when the landmark Dred Scott decision was made, I knew there was a story behind the story.

We are all products of the times in which we live but, fortunately, we can be influenced by forces other than majority or peer pressure. We each have freewill to come to our own conclusions and beliefs.

Some US Supreme Court Justices try harder than others to disregard their personal backgrounds and experiences when considering a case. Some don’t seem to try at all in the 2020s.

Photo of US Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC
US Supreme Court Building, Washington, DC. (Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash.)

Let’s learn who Dred Scott was, and then we’ll look at how the life experiences of Roger Brooke Taney and the other six Justices in majority vote probably played into the US Supreme Court Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

Settle in. This gets complicated.

Who was Dred Scott?

Dred Scott was born a slave in Southampton County, Virginia around 1799. He moved to Alabama with his owner, Peter Blow, in 1818. In 1830, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri where Mr. Blow ran a boarding house.

Dr. John Emerson purchased Mr. Scott after Mr. Blow died in 1832. Dr. Emerson took Mr. Scott to Illinois and later to the Wisconsin Territory. Illinois was a free state, and slavery was illegal in the Wisconsin Territory.

Mr. Scott married Harriet Robinson, who was also a slave. Ms. Robinson’s owner sold her to Dr. Emerson. Things got more and more confusing in the ensuing years after Dr. Emerson moved back to St. Louis, but hired out Mr. and Mrs. Scott, leaving them in Wisconsin.

Dr. Emerson moved to Louisiana. He married Eliza (Irene) Sandford in 1838. Dred Scott went there, but shortly thereafter the Emersons and their slaves, including Mr. Scott, moved back to Wisconsin.

Dr. Emerson was discharged from the US Army in 1842 and – you guessed it – he and his wife and the Scotts moved back to St. Louis. Mr. and Mrs. Scott, by then, had two daughters.

Dr. Emerson seemed to have financial problems, so he and his wife moved to Iowa. It is unclear whether the Scotts went with them or if they were hired out and remained in Missouri.

When Dr. Emerson died in 1843, the Scotts and all his other slaves became the property of his widow, Irene Sandford. She moved back to St. Louis, retained ownership of the Scotts, and hired them out.

Mr. Scott tried repeatedly to purchase his freedom from Irene, but she would not hear of it.

Photo of a dark-skin wrist and clenched fist with a rope tied around it.
Photo by Tasha Jolley on Unsplash

Dred and Harriet Scott lawsuits

Dred and Harriet Scott separately filed lawsuits against Irene Emerson in April 1846. They were firmly based on two Missouri statutes. One allowed anyone of any color to sue for wrongful enslavement. The other statute said that any slave transported to a free territory automatically became free and would remain free even when taken back into a slave state.

The Scotts’ church, abolitionists, and you’ll never guess who:  Dred’s previous owner’s family, the Blows, gave their support. Since neither Mr. or Mrs. Scott could read or write, they needed all kinds of support to fight their cases.

The St. Louis Circuit Court ruled against the Scotts in 1847, on a technicality. The cases were heard again in 1850 and the Scotts won their freedom. That should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.

Irene Emerson appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court. That court combined the two cases and reversed the decision of the lower court in 1852, making the Scotts slaves again!

Then, Irene Emerson transferred ownership of the Scotts to her brother, John Sandford, or so was thought. (Actually, the transfer did not happen, but that’s why the case was called Dred Scott v. Sandford as the Scotts’ legal struggle continued.)

In 1853, Dred Scott filed a federal lawsuit with the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri. The case was heard in May 1854, and the court ruled against Mr. Scott.

The Dred Scott Decision/Dred Scott v. Sandford

US Supreme Court Building, Washington, DC. (Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.)

Later that year, Mr. Scott appealed his case to the US Supreme Court. The case gained support and notoriety by the time the Justices heard the case in 1856. A curious aside is that by then, Irene Sandford Emerson had married Calvin Chaffee. An abolitionist, Mr. Chaffee was also a US Congressman.

When Mr. Chaffee learned that Irene still owned Dred Scott and his family, he sold the Scotts to Taylor Blow, the son of Scott’s original owner, Peter Blow.

On March 6, 1857, the US Supreme Court announced its 7-2 decision in favor of Mr. Sandford.

On May 26, 1857, Taylor Blow freed the Dred Scott family. Sadly, Mr. Scott died of tuberculosis just 16 months after finally becoming a free man.

What was Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s background?

Roger Brooke Taney was born in Maryland on March 17, 1777. He was educated in France. After coming home from France, he graduated from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and studied law with Judge Jeremiah Chase of the Maryland General Court.

In 1806 he married Francis Scott Key’s sister, Anne.

He had a private law practice. After being nominated by President Andrew Jackson, Roger Taney was sworn in as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in March 1836, replacing John Marshall.

Oh… and did I mention that he was a slave owner?

But what was Roger Taney’s personal track record with slaves?

Taney freed seven of his slaves on July 14, 1818. He also provided for the emancipation of the three older children of one of his freed slaves at later dates – one of them would be freed in 1836 at age 25, one in 1843 at the age of 30, and the other one in 1845 at the age of 30.

As a young lawyer, Taney was quoted as calling slavery a “blot on our national character,” but by 1857 (the year of the Dred Scott decision) he was an advocate in favor of slavery. It was then that he called the abolitionist movement “northern aggression.”

He wrote for the majority in favor of Dred Scott’s owner in Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Taney seemed to be conflicted on the subject of slavery. Yes, he gradually freed his slaves, but why did he drag it out over 27 years? If he was indeed against slavery as a young man, what didn’t he free all his slaves at that time instead of waiting until 1845 to free the last one? He made the children remain slaves until they were 25 to 30 years old. Where is the humanity in that?

What about the six Justices who sided with Chief Justice Taney?

Justice John Catron, a lifelong slave owner, joined in the majority opinion.

Justice Peter V. Daniel, who owned slaves throughout his adult life, joined in the majority opinion.

Justice Samuel Nelson voted with the majority but disagreed with Chief Justice Taney’s reasoning. Justice Nelson maintained that the states had the right to determine whether slavery was legal within their boundaries and that the federal government did not have the authority to tell the states what to do in that matter.

Justice Robert Cooper Grier voted with the majority and concurred that slaves were not citizens.

Justice James M. Wayne was a lawyer, politician, and judge from Savannah, Georgia. I did not find that he owned slaves. He agreed with President Andrew Jackson on the forced removal of Indians to the Oklahoma Territory. Surprisingly, he was against the formation of the Confederate States of America.

Justice John A. Campbell was a lawyer in Georgia and Alabama. Even though Justice Campbell did not believe that the Court could determine whether Dred Scott was a citizen, he agreed with the Chief Justice on most other points. He agreed that, as a slave under Missouri law, Mr. Scott could not sue in federal court.

The Majority Opinion of the US Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford

Although basing its decision on what was stated in the US Constitution at that time, the words are chilling. I’ll share just a fraction of the decision here.

Writing for the majority in the Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Taney stated, “A free negro of the African race, whose ancestors were brought to this country and sold as slaves, is not a ‘citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States.

“When the Constitution was adopted, they were not regarded in any of the States as members of the community which constituted the State, and were not numbered among its ‘people or citizen.’ Consequently, the special rights and immunities guarantied to citizens do not apply to them.

“And not being ‘citizens’ within the meaning of the Constitution, they are not entitled to sue in that character in a court of the United States, and the Circuit Court has not jurisdiction in such a suit. The only two clauses in the Constitution which point to this race, treat them as persons whom it was morally lawful to deal in as articles of property and to hold as slaves.”

And, “The plaintiff having admitted, by his demurrer to the plea in abatement, that his ancestors were imported from Africa and sold as slaves, he is not a citizen of the State of Missouri according to the Constitution of the United States, and was not entitled to sue in that character in the Circuit Court. This being the case, the judgment of the court below, in favor of the plaintiff of the plea in abatement, was erroneous.”

Chief Justice Taney said in the majority decision that slaves were property and the ownership of slaves was on the same footing as the ownership or anything else. It said, that the courts could not at that time, under the Constitution, deprive a citizen of their property. It said that just because a citizen took their property into “a particular Territory of the United States,” (Rock Island, Illinois) did not mean they did not still own that property.

The majority decision referred to the Missouri Compromise, enacted in 1820, which admitted Missouri to the Union as a state allowing slavery, but it outlawed slavery from the rest of the Louisiana Purchase lands located north of the southern border of Missouri (the 36-degree 30-minute parallel.)

In the Dred Scott decision, the court ruled that the Missouri Compromise (which had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854) was unconstitutional and, therefore, Dred Scott and his family “were not made free by being carried into this territory….”

Background of the 36-degree 30-minute parallel

Since our current president likes to call borders artificial lines drawn by someone with a ruler decades ago, I looked into the history of the 36-degree 30-minute parallel. It was originally drawn as the boundary between the Colonies of Virginia and North Carolina. Later, it was extended to be the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. When the Missouri Compromise came along, that line was extended to balance the number of states that allowed slavery and the states that did not allow slavery.

The moral of the story

The next time there is a vacancy on the US Supreme Court or on your state’s Supreme Court, you need to pay attention. Dig into the nominee’s background and let your elected officials know what your concerns are or if you think that nominee will make be a fair, honest, law-abiding Justice with integrity. Watch the Congressional hearings and listen carefully to the nominee’s answers – to what they say and what they don’t say. Watch their body language. Are they at ease? Do they smirk? Do they easily lose their cool?

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 152 roads in North Carolina were closed due to Hurricane Helene damage and repairs. That count included 11 US highways, 17 state highways, and 124 state roads. This is an overall increase over a couple of weeks ago.

Asheville’s application for a $225 million Disaster Recovery Block Grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is in limbo because it includes a $15 million Small Business Support Program that would prioritize Minority and Women Owned Businesses. The City, which sustained more than $1 billion in damage in Hurricane Helene, has been given until April to submit a plan that is in line with Trump’s anti-minority and anti-women regime.

Keep in mind that the application was submitted last year according to the regulations that were in place at the time. Does anyone else found it ironic that HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who is a black man, wrote that “DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] is dead at HUD”?

As employees of the National Park Service and National Forestry Service are fired by the Trump Administration in the name of “waste and fraud,” you can expect to see fewer post-Helene clean-up activities in the parks and forests in western North Carolina.

Photo by Janet Morrison.

As you plan a trip to the mountains in western North Carolina this spring, here’s a link to important details about the Blue Ridge Parkway: https://www.nps.gov/blri/planyourvisit/helene-recovery-projects-at-a-glance.htm. We probably need to continue to plan our mountain visits avoiding most of the parkway.

Since my last blog post

I heard from a number of you in reference to my March 10, 2025, blog post. I heard from fellow-Americans, and I heard from people in various parts of Europe and the Caribbean.

It seems we still have a lot in common with our European allies (I can’t bring myself to refer to them as “former allies” yet): We’re all deeply concerned – and dare I say scared – over the current political situation into which the US President has thrown us.

The people in Mexico, Canada, and Europe did not ask for this… and half of the Americans didn’t ask for or vote for this. The brave people of Ukraine certainly didn’t ask for and don’t deserve this chaos.

Until my next blog post

I hope you find a good book to read that will inform you and/or give you a few hours to escape into a fictional place or time.

We didn’t all vote for this, but we’re all in it together now. We’ll be watching in the coming days, months, and years to see how the US Supreme Court will rule on cases resulting from the chaos we’ve been thrown into since January 20th.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

I hope my next blog post will be shorter than this one. It depends on what’s going on.

Please remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina… and all the people terrorized by tornadoes over the weekend.

Janet

An Historical & Current Look at “America First”

It is sad that many Americans do not know history. I blame the results of the 2024 US Presidential election on that along with today’s popular mindset that is only concerned with how something affects “me” instead of being concerned with “the common good.”

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

A policy of isolationism has never turned out well for the United States, and I doubt it will as we find ourselves in a true global economy in which no country can thrive in isolation.

Donald Trump campaigned for President on an America First agenda. That apparently sounded good to half the population. The picture he painted of America First did not include alienating the allies we’ve had for our entire 248-year history. It did not include turning our backs on Ukraine and embracing Vladimir Putin. Trump so successfully sold half the voters a bill of goods that they find themselves unable to admit they were hoodwinked. They cannot admit they made a grave mistake in the voting booth.

They interpreted “America First” as an idyllic country in which we would literally build walls instead of bridges, we would have cheap eggs and cheap gasoline, we would not be bothered by having under-paid migrants picking our fruits and vegetables, we would not be bothered with immigrants cleaning our hotel rooms or cutting our grass, and we would not have to compete with highly-qualified foreigners for jobs we have not prepared ourselves to assume.

It is a fact that Americans already have cheap gasoline compared to such places as Great Britain. As the “Bird Flu” continues to spread, we already look back on $4.00-a-dozen eggs as “the good old days.” And how many of us are lining up to make the beds and clean the toilets in hotels for $7.25-an-hour?

Much of America finds itself in an “us versus them” mentality. It is a mindset based in a belief that anyone who doesn’t look and talk like I do doesn’t have the right to live… not a right to live in the United States, at least. When I voiced my political views on social media in January, one commenter told me I should find another country to live in.

I was fortunate to have been born in the United States. I did nothing to deserve that. My immigrant ancestors came here in the 1700s and — fortunately for me — were not deported by the Native Americans who had been living here for thousands of years.

By merely being born in the United States I am the recipient of blessings and opportunities about which the majority of people in the world can only dream.

Photo of the Statue of Liberty with the New York City skyline in the background
Photo by Priyanka Puvvada on Unsplash

Don’t get me wrong… illegal immigration into the United States needs to be addressed, but the mistakes of the past have turned Americans into an “us versus them” mentality in which the “us” no longer view “them” as human beings. The dehumanization of people leads to hate and violence.

It is tragic that we now have a President who repeatedly tells us that we are victims, suckers, and losers being taken advantage of by other countries.

“What’s the history of “America First?” you may ask.

Former Secretary of State, the late Madeleine Korbel Albright, explained it well in her book, Fascism: A Warning, in 2018, so I will quote some of what she wrote:

“America First is a slogan with a past. Founded in 1940, the America First Committee (AFC) brought together pacifists, isolationists, and Nazi sympathizers to fight against the country’s prospective entry into World War II. The AFC opposed creation of the Selective Service and also a Roosevelt initiative known as Lend-Lease, to keep the British in food and arms as they struggled to survive the German onslaught. Within twelve months of its founding, the committee had built a membership of more than 800,000 and attracted support from across the political spectrum – corporate tycoons and Socialists alike.”

Photo of a barbed wire fence at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II
Fence at a Nazi concentration camp. (Photo by Darshan Gajara on Unsplash.)

Albright also wrote, “Four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States. The AFC soon disbanded and, in the intervening decades, its name has carried a stigma of naivete and moral blindness. Now ‘America First’ is back – but what does it mean?”

Donald Trump stated at an assembly of the United Nations that every country should put its interests first. But Albright maintains, “What the assertion ignores is the stake that all countries have in the fates of others.”

My thoughts

I started Janet’s Writing Blog more than a decade ago. Until recently, I planned to basically blog about my journey as a writer and my journey as a reader. As time passed and I wanted to establish my credibility as a writer of history and historical fiction, I began to blog about historical events and documents, usually on anniversary dates.

I did not plan, intend, or want to turn my blog into a political platform. I still do not want to do that, but I find myself in a situation in which I cannot avoid it. I must live with myself. I cannot have this public platform and pretend that everything in our country and world are going well.

Writers are cautioned against being too political, but aren’t writers, teachers, and scientists the first groups and individuals fascist governments go after? I don’t want to turn my blog into nothing but a political sounding board; however, I will not sit idly by while our government is dismantled.

Until the day that I am silenced, I will continue to voice my opinions and speak out against injustices. I will come down on the side of the United States Constitution, and I will come down on the side of the downtrodden. My Presbyterian faith instructs me to do so.

The growing mindset in the United States is “us” versus “them.” I think the 2024 Presidential Election bears that out. In the words of Secretary Albright, “To reduce the sum of our existence to a competitive struggle for advantage among more than two hundred nations is not clear-eyed but myopic. People and nations compete, but that is not all that they do.”

Photo of a painting of the western hemisphere.
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

We have just experienced a week of whiplash caused by the policies, pronouncements, Executive Orders, and constantly changing mind of Donald Trump. One day we have tariffs, the next day we don’t, but the next day we do, and no one knows – apparently, not even Trump – whether they’re on or off later today, much less tomorrow.

The words of Trump supporters that “we need a businessman in the White House” echo in my head. Being a student of government and political science, I bristled at that mindset when it was first voiced and I continue to bristle and cringe at it today.

If this is the way businesses operate, I don’t think our democracy (or any democracy) can afford it. I know a democracy cannot afford this in a constitutional way – in a “this is what we stand for” way.

When facing excessive debt, do businesses fire all their employees only to try to locate and rehire the good ones later? Do businesses issue blanket lies in writing about the performance of the employees they fire or layoff in mass reorganizations in order to make it more difficult for them to find new jobs?

Oops! We didn’t mean to fire the air traffic controllers. We didn’t mean to fire the people who safeguard our nuclear stockpiles. We just meant to fire the scientists working on cures for cancer, the people who are trained to fight wildfires, the people who work at the Veterans Administration and the VA hospitals, and the people who make sure we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe food to eat.

We just meant to cancel classes at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the premier fire academy in the US where firefighters from all over the nation come for special training. (Too bad for the firefighters who had already bought their plane tickets, etc. for the new round of classes that were scheduled to begin this week.)

We just meant to traumatize the millions of disabled and elderly citizens who rely on Social Security. After all, we must find the money somewhere to give the millionaires and billionaires more tax breaks.

To me, that’s a sign of insanity, but I did not major in business administration in college. I majored in political science and my graduate degree is in public administration.

The government is not supposed to be a profit-making entity. It is service oriented. The government does not manufacture things. It contracts with private companies (and billionaires like Elon Musk) for those things. If the federal government is “getting ripped off” as Trump says, perhaps someone needs to take a look at federal contracts with private companies and see where the waste is.

Photo of a contract marked with a "sign here" sticky note
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

When I worked in government, I was required to recommend to the elected governing body that a contract be given to the lowest bidder unless the lowest bidder was deemed unable to fulfill the contract and accomplish the work as specified. If we think the federal government is paying too much for water faucets or whatever, perhaps the fault likes with the private company selling us those faucets.

If contracts are being issued to the highest bidder because an elected official has a personal relationship or a financial relationship with that bidder, perhaps the elected official needs to be impeached. And the bidder attempting to defraud the government (i.e., the American people) needs to be exposed.

In the Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln reminded us that in the United States of America we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is time for we, the people, to remind all three branches of the federal government of that.

Photo of the tops of three heads: a blonde, a brown, and a black haired and skinned group of people
Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

We are the government. We, the people, are not the enemy of the government. A free press is not the enemy of the people.

Until my next blog post

It is tempting during these uncertain and chaotic times to withdraw and stop listening to or reading the news; however, it is more important than ever that we pay attention. We need to stay as informed as possible about what is happening in and to our government. We need to get our information from a wide range of reliable sources.

I deleted my weekly western North Carolina Hurricane Helene Update today due to the length of my blog post. It should return next week.

I hope you have a good book to read. I have several going now, as usual. Regardless of your political leanings, I encourage you to read Fascism: A Warning, by Madeleine Korbel Albright.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

One Decision Changed the Course of History

Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to recognize the name of Hyman G. Rickover. Or perhaps you are not aware that he was born in Russia on this date in the year 1900.

His parents made the decision to leave Russia and settle their family in Chicago in 1906. When I read that, it struck me how just one decision made by an individual or a couple can change the course of history.

Statue of Liberty Photo by tom coe on Unsplash

Rickover graduated from the US. Naval Academy. He went on to work his way up through the ranks to head the Naval Reactors Branch of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and head of the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Division. He was instrumental in the design and construction of the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine.

He was known as a blunt man who sometimes butted heads with political leaders. Nevertheless, he went down in history as “Father of the Nuclear Navy.” The Soviet Union was unable to match the nuclear power held by the US military during the Cold War, and Admiral Rickover’s contributions and service were very much credited with that standing.

Admiral Rickover served in the United States Navy for 63 years, retiring in 1982.

Imagine how world history might have taken a different turn in the 1950s and beyond if Rickover’s parents had decided to stay in Russia in 1906.

Some reflections

After thinking about how one decision can change or set the path for the rest of our lives, as it did for Hyman G. Rickover and his parents, I thought about the decision made by my ancestors.

What about the day in the mid-1700s when my Morrison great-great-great-great-grandparents decided to leave Scotland and sail to America?

What about the day they decided to purchase land in the wilderness of North Carolina and set out down the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania?

What about the day my father applied for a job at Martin Aircraft in Middle River, Maryland and uproot his young family at the start of World War II?

What about the day he and Mama decided to move back to North Carolina as soon as the war was over?

What about the day Grandpa Morrison decided how to divide his farm among his three sons. His decision about what land to give his youngest son determined where I grew up and once again live today!

If my father had inherited the land Grandpa left to Uncle Gene, my parent’s house would have been destroyed by a tornado in the 1940s.

If my father had inherited that part of the farm instead of Uncle Gene, he would have rebuilt that house after the tornado just as Uncle Gene and Aunt Louise did. In that case, I would now be faced with the imminent construction of an 1,100-house development literally in my back yard. Thanks to Grandpa’s decision, I will live around the corner from that massive development and will, for the time being, still enjoy the beauty, tranquility, and wildlife of the woods behind my house.

Decisions.

And those are just examples from my Morrisons. My life and world view have been molded by the thousands of decisions made by all my ancestors. The same is true for you. Have you ever stopped to think about that?

Sometimes we agonize over a decision, and sometimes we make a choice on a whim. We usually have no idea how our decisions will affect those who come after us. We can make their lives easier or more difficult. We all just do the best we can with the information we have at the time.

Try not to judge your ancestors, and grant yourself forgiveness and grace for the choices you wish you hadn’t made. You did the best you could at the time. Like your ancestors, you did not have a crystal ball to see into the future.

Hurricane Helene Update

At the request of NC Gov. Josh Stein, FEMA’s Transitional Shelter Assistance program extended coverage of temporary housing in rental units/motels until May 26, 2025, for people who lost their homes in September in western NC due to Hurricane Helene. The coverage had been scheduled to end on January 18. With sub-zero temperatures and windchills in the negative double digits for days, people being turned out of temporary rental housing would have been another disaster for those individuals and families. Temporary housing assistance will not automatically be extended for everyone. Each case is periodically reviewed.

President Trump visited the Asheville area on Friday and talked about water in California, making Canada the 51st state, and what a good-looking guy Franklin Graham is. When he managed to focus on where he was, he said several times that he would be going out “to the site,” which sounds like the disaster was limited to one location. It actually covers hundreds of square miles of pockets of destruction in a challenging terrain.

Trump also said that NC had been treated “very unfairly” by FEMA, but the mayor of Asheville said she wasn’t sure what he was basing that remark on. Trump said he wants to overhaul FEMA or perhaps get rid of it. He left the impression that FEMA hasn’t done anything to help western NC since Hurricane Helene. He wants money to go through “us” (did he mean him? He said, “through us”) directly to the states and not through FEMA. He also talked about putting a litmus test on states before they could get federal disaster funds.

(I’m sure FEMA is not perfect, but to claim the agency has failed NC just is not true. There is confusion over what FEMA’s role is in a disaster. It will be interesting to see how disasters in the future are addressed if FEMA is overhauled or dismantled. There’s always room for improvement.)

As of Friday, 183 roads in North Carolina are still closed due to Hurricane Helene, including Interstate 40 near the Tennessee line. There is no estimate for when the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina will be fully reopened.

In these remaining 183 cases, it’s not just a matter of resurfacing a road, some cases involve reconstructing entire roadbeds (many on the side of mountains), reconstruction of infrastructure, and reconstruction of bridges. County roads, state highways, and Interstates 26 and 40 have been affected.

Until my next blog post

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

I hope you are reading a good book. I just finished reading The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction.

What decision(s) have you and your ancestors made that you realize now had long-range and perhaps unanticipated ramifications?

Remember the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and Los Angeles County.

Janet