Category: US History

Environmental Justice

Today’s blog post is about one example of environmental justice… or, more accurately, environmental injustice.

What is Environmental Justice?

As succinctly stated on the website of The Goldman Environmental Prize (https://www.goldmanprize.org/), “Environmental justice is the idea that people of all cultures, races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds deserve fair protection from environmental and health hazards, as well as equal access to the decision-making processes behind environmental policies and development.”

Dr. Robert Bullard, a pioneer of the environmental justice movement told Earth First! Journal in an interview: “The environment is everything: where we live, work, play, go to school, as well as the physical and natural world. And so we can’t separate the physical environment from the cultural environment. We have to talk about making sure that justice is integrated throughout all of the stuff that we do.”

It seems like it would be difficult to argue with that, but the Trump Administration finds it easy to do so.

In Lowndes County, Alabama…

The Associated Press (AP) reported that on April 11 (That’s almost two weeks ago! See, I can’t keep up!) that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is “ending a settlement agreement regarding wastewater problems” in Lowndes County, Alabama. The Biden Administration launched an investigation into a sewage back up problem in Black communities in the county.

The AP’s report stated, “Federal officials said the decision follows President Donald Trump’s executive order forbidding federal agencies from pursuing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. ‘The DOJ will no longer push ‘environmental justice’ as viewed through a distorting, DEI lens,’ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.”

The AP report continued: “‘President Trump made it clear: Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect, and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria,’ the statement said.

“U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in February issued a memo rescinding a Biden-era directive to prioritize environmental justice cases.”

I was struck by the fact that this statement came from the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department.

Focusing on the “D” in DEI – diversity –, I’m left to assume that until sewage is backing up into every home in America, the Trump Administration won’t do anything because the last thing Trump would want to do is play favorites. <sarcasm>

But, hey, wait! He can’t do anything because that would be putting all Americans on an equal (the “E” in DEI) footing in the eyes of the US Government.

We can’t help one group because that’s diversity and we can’t help everyone because that’s equity.

And it goes without saying that under Trump there can be no “I” for inclusion.

Thinking back to my March 31, April 2, and April 3, 2025, blog posts… I can’t believe we’re even talking about DEI because the Trump Administration said US Government agencies should no longer use the words “diversity, equity, or inclusion.”

But I’ve gone off on a word tangent, when the immediate problem for the people in Lowndes County, Alabama is a sewage/public health issue.

And the deeper issue is the audacity of Donald Trump to think it’s all right for such a problem to continue so he pulls the plug on the agreement that made federal funds available to fix the problem.

The end result is now no one, no city, no county, no state, no school district, no university, no library, no museum, and no country can depend on the stated or written word of the United States of America because with the scratch of a black Sharpie pen, President Trump can apparently cancel any agreement or promise or guarantee made by any of his or her predecessors. And the US Congress lets him.

I don’t have enough imagination to contemplate where this blatant disregard for the integrity of the United States of America will end.

The 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners

The seven 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize winners were announced in San Francisco on Monday, April 21, the night before Earth Day. (I don’t know why that sentence is showing up in blue!)

Here’s a link to the April 21, 2025, Goldman Environmental Prize Award Ceremony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=0rGdW17dyPE. The entire program lasts an hour and 40 minutes and is inspiring, to say the least. I highly recommend that you take the time to watch it. At the very least, watching the first 11 minutes just to see the fantastic photography will relax you and serve as a wonderful reminder of how beautiful and precious our natural world is.

The seven prize winners this year:

Laurene Allen, a clinical social worker, moved to Merrimack, New Hampshire 40 years ago. Co-Founder of Merrimack Citizens for Clean Water. In 2016, it was found that the town’s drinking water contained high levels of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. The city water and well water had been polluted by an industrial plastics factory. Spurred into action by the local government downplaying the problems, she educated herself about the chemicals. Conducted door-to-door surveys to document health problems connected to PFAS. When she testified at a town council meeting, she was called out for using the word “contamination.” She was told that word was “inflammatory.” She was accused of fear mongering. Her citizens group engaged scientists and universities to test air, water, and soil. Members of the group ran for public office on the state and local level where they pushed for safer PFAS standards. And yet, production increased at the factory. In 2025, after eight years of fighting for clean water, Saint-Gobain decided to close the factory!

Photo of a clear, clean glass of water
Photo by Daniele Romanello on Unsplash

Semia Gharbi, a scientist & educator in Tunis, Tunisia & President of Association for Environmental Education for Future Generations. Six tons of illegal waste shipped to Tunisia from Italy… waste trafficking. Cargo ships of garbage!

Photo of a dumpster of garbage
Photo by Hannes Richter on Unsplash

Batmunkh Lavsandash, retired electrical engineer in Dornogavi, East Gobi Desert, Mongolia. His surveying and mapping efforts have saved 200,000 acres of land in the fragile and sacred Dornogavi Province from rampant mining operations, keeping that land available for the traditional Mongolian way of life.

Photo of a little girl in Mongolia
Photo by Uneke Ub on Unsplash

Olsi Nika, a social worker and Executive Director of Ecoalbania and Besjana Guri, a biologist and Communications Officer for Ecoalbania. Their work over 10 years to prevent the construction of 40 hydroelectric projects along the 120 miles of free-flowing Vjosa River in Albania, resulted in the river being saved and protected by the new Vjosa Wild River National Park. Established in 2023, the park protects more than 31,000 acres and ensures that the river will remain free-flowing.

Ariel photo of Vjosa River in Albania
A view of the Vjosa Wild River National Park. Photo Credit: Vjosa Wild River National Park website: https://www.vjosanationalpark.al/

Carlos Mallo Molina was a civil engineer who specialized in port construction. He moved to Tenerife, Canary Islands, to work on the construction of a major highway that would lead to the site of the proposed Fonsalia port. His life took a turn, though, when he went scuba diving and fell in love with the abundant wildlife and habitat for endangered green sea turtles and unique tropical pilot whales. He said, “I realized I’m doing something wrong. How can I love so much what I’m seeing here and at the same time I’m working to destroy it? I decided I needed to change what I was doing and find a way to protect what I love, so I decided to quit my job.” He founded Innoceana to oppose the Fonsalia port and dedicated himself to protecting the environment. He mapped the undersea area where the port was to be built, helped gather 420,000 signatures on a petition opposing the port’s construction. As a result of him and his team, the Canary Islands Parliament voted overwhelmingly in October 21 to abandon plans for the port and to create a marine education center there instead!

Photo of a sea turtle in the ocean
Photo by Kevin Wolf on Unsplash

Each of these stories is inspiring and each of the individuals has proven that one person can move mountains, but it was the story of Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari that touched me the most…

Mari Luz Canaquiri Murayari of Shapajilla, Peru. Founder of Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana, a women’s association whose mission is to promote the rights of the Kukama indigenous people and to protect the environment. The 1,000-mile long Maranon River that eventually forms the Amazon River was frequently being polluted by oil spills. She combined the Kukama belief that the river contains spirits with the concept of rights of nature. Successfully gained the legal Rights of Nature for the river to remain free-flowing and free of pollution. Court ordered Petroperu and the local government to immediately address oil spills and create a protection plan for the river. However, there is an authoritarian regime in control in Peru now that is hostile to indigenous peoples and the defenders of nature.

In her acceptance speech on Monday night, Ms. Canaquiri Murayari said that when anyone speaks up for nature they are criminalized and some have been assassinated. She said, “For the collective struggles that we have led, I have been criminalized. And this is why I want to leave this final message for the world: to recognize our collective humanity and to defend our common home, Mother Nature that provides the air we breathe, our daily food, and the water we drink. Together, we can weave a social fabric that safeguards… all life, for future generations across the world. We, the Kukama women, exist and we re resisting in defense of nature, its rivers and territories! Without our rivers, there is no forest!”

Photo of the Maranon River in Peru
The Maranon River/Rio Maranon. Photo Credit: https://lacgeo.com/maranon-river-south-america

I hope being the recipient of the Goldman Environment Prize Award on Monday will not make her an even bigger target for harassment by the government of Peru.

Until my next blog post

Keep reading! If you don’t have a good book to read this weekend, go back to the public library or your local independent bookstore and keep looking. You’re bound to find one!

Remember the people of Ukraine, Myanmar, Kentucky, 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

Is your family getting together during Holy Week? Brace yourself!

I did not want to write a blog post for today. I did not want to blog on Maundy Thursday.

Photo by Bobbie Wallace on Unsplash

Maundy Thursday is a day to ponder Christ’s Last Supper with His disciples. It is a day to remember Christ’s arrest and his betrayal at the hands of His disciples. It is a day to anticipate His brutal treatment and hideous crucifixion on the cross that we will remember tomorrow.

Maundy Thursday is a day to slow down and consider the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for each of us. The horrors He endured for us on “Good Friday” should weigh heavily on our hearts and minds today, tomorrow, and Saturday as we dare not let the joy of Easter Sunday creep into our thoughts yet.

I did not want to blog today. I did not want to rant and rave. I did not want to call out my fellow Americans for blindly following Donald Trump. I did not want to get all worked up and end up with a headache or high blood pressure or a stomach ulcer.

So that’s not what I’m going to blog about today. Instead, I am writing about some of my very deep concerns and try to put the pieces together of how in the world America got to this place of distrust and disagreement.

I never anticipated that writing my little blog this is supposed to be about my writing, my reading, and my love of studying history was going to consume all my time in 2025 or that a US President’s abuse of power would come to be all I can even think about.

I never thought I would be able to truly understand what happened in Germany in the 1930s, but I now have a crystal-clear understanding. It only takes an extreme level of evil in a handful of people and the brainwashing of enough of the population.

It comes on slowly.

Each thing that is said or done sounds bad when you see that one thing in isolation.

You convince yourself that good people will prevail.

Something else is said or done, and you start to realize that “good people” are believing the lies.

You eventually realize that too many of  the “good people” and “good Christians” in particular aren’t who you thought they were.

You realize that too many of the white people in America have a deep-seated prejudice against all the non-white people.

You realize that the white people in America who fly the Confederate flag in their yard or put a Confederate flag sticker on their pick-up truck aren’t just stuck in the past. They aren’t just showing their pride that one of their ancestors fought on the wrong side in the American Civil War. No. They hate black people. They don’t just hate black people… they wish them harm. If this is not how they really feel, they need to realize that’s the impression they are giving to black people and people who think racial prejudices are a bad thing.

You realize that too many of the professing Christians have completely pushed aside the teachings of Jesus and have put a political leader above Christ and the good of the whole. You start hearing them say they truly believe that Trump was chosen and sent by God to save our country.

They hijack the American flag as theirs and theirs alone, along with the color red which used to be my favorite color. Now I’m afraid to wear red for fear someone will assume I’m a Republican.

You realize you cannot reason with the people who support the President of the United States. You cannot have a civil conversation with them. You can find no common ground with them because their world view is something you can’t comprehend.

This is not only tearing our country apart. It is tearing families apart.

“As a lifelong Presbyterian, I was taught that one should always strive to agreeably disagree”… to respect others’ points of view… to be able to calmly discuss our differences. Although we may not convince the other person to see things our way and they may not convince me to see things their way, the two of us should respect each other and in the end agree that we see things differently but we will still be friends.

The prejudices and hate were already there, but it became common during the 2016 presidential campaign that family gatherings for holidays or family birthdays and anniversaries are strained to the point that such gatherings only leave people with a sense of dread because they know there is always at least one person in the family who feels compelled to bring up politics at the table even though they know everyone in the group does not agree with them.

It seems to always be the family member with the most extreme right-wing opinions that will bring it up. They don’t bring it up for discussion. They bring it up to start an argument… an argument no one wins… and eventually everyone goes home and either dreads the next time they have to be together or vows they will just cut themselves off from the relatives they disagree with. It is impossible to find common ground anymore.

One thing we were taught in school about the American Civil War was that it often pitted “brother against brother.” Those words never made any sense to me because I couldn’t imagine being at such deep odds with my brother that we would be on opposing sides in a civil war. How can siblings raised by the same parents under the same roof be at odds over basic tenets of their faith and the basic tenets of the US Constitution?

I can’t believe my country has turned into a nightmare of a place where authoritarian fear-mongering reigns and the US Constitution is trampled every day and no one seems able to stop it.

I can’t believe I live in an America where people defending the US Constitution are openly belittled, made fun of, and shouted down on live TV by people who are willing to defend a US President to the death because their allegiance is to one man and not the US Constitution. I can’t believe it, but I see it every day.

Our “founding fathers” (and founding mothers, who get no credit!) warned us about totalitarianism, kings, and wannabe-kings, but after 249 years we didn’t think it could happen here.

I don’t recognize my country anymore.

As I commented to a blogger friend earlier this week, “I’m at the point now that I watch the world going on around me and on TV as if it’s 2024 and I wonder how they can ignore what is happening in real life. It reminds me of the feeling that one has when a parent dies and as you drive to the funeral home you want to roll down the car window and scream, “Don’t you know my ________ just died? How can you be going around business as usual as if nothing horrible has happened?”

My faith is in God. I’m not afraid to die because I know where my soul is going to spend eternity. I look forward to eternity! It is everything between now and then that I dread.

On the bright side, at least I don’t have to spend Easter with relatives with whom I disagree on politics and religion.

Janet

16 more highlights of how things are going in America

Are you as tired as I am of being bombarded with the news of the day? And yet I feel called to lay out 16 more instances today of not just cracks in our system of government but some basic failings and actions that fly in the face of the US Constitution and common decency. You can thank me now or you can thank me later for deleting three items from today’s list.

Many of the items on today’s list are not being covered in the media. I hear or read a snippet of a story, and then I look for more information and documentation. I use reliable sources, and I don’t deal in conspiracy theories.

I used to not know or care what political party someone else aligned with, but we live in an era now where that seems to be the first thing someone wants you to know about them. That literally wear in on their heads and post it in their yards. There is little tolerance for anyone who does not agree with them, so it is tempting to keep one’s mouth shut.

Our current situation in the US is exhausting everyone who treasures democracy. I am exhausted, but when I learn about something that blatantly runs contrary to the US Constitution and is so viciously forced on the American people, I can’t seem to stay quiet.

For good measure, I’m including a couple of things that you just might not have heard about. Lots of things are slipping under the news cycle radar because too much is happening too fast.

Each thing considered by itself might not seem so bad or dangerous, but when digested together patterns appear.

  • The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian President Valdimir Putin has gifted Donald Trump with a portrait he commissioned by a Russian artist. US Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was giddy talking about it on TV. After all, Witkoff’s diplomatic experience could fit on the head of a pin with room left over. His qualifications for being US Special Envoy to the Middle East – which apparently includes Moscow? – are that he is an American billionaire real estate investor. The portrait? Who knows better how to flatter and gain the confidence of Donald Trump than ex-KGB Agent Vladimir Putin?

  • The Associated Press reported, “The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has proposed gutting the State Department’s budget by almost 50%, closing a number of overseas diplomatic missions, slashing the number of diplomatic staff, and eliminating funding for nearly all international organizations, including the United Nations, many of its agencies and for NATO headquarters, officials said. The proposal, which was presented to the State Department last week and is still in a highly preliminary phase, is not expected to pass muster with either the department’s leadership or Congress, which will ultimately be asked to vote on the entire federal budget  in the coming months.” It depends on if Congress grows a spine. Stay tuned!

  • Trump has cancelled almost all 1,200 current grants issued by the National Endowment for the Humanities to reappropriate the money to his pet project of a garden of statues of 250 people in American history he deems heroes. I shudder to think whom he would choose for the honor… and whom he will not select. It takes no imagination to come up with both lists. It’s just too bad for the individuals and organizations who were promised funds for their projects and now the rug has been pulled out from under them. Did you enjoy the PBS film series The Civil War, by Ken Burns? Guess where Burns got some of his funding. This is an insidious way for Trump to kill the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). He wants to pull all federal funds from PBS and now he has moved money from a major source of funding for much of the system’s programming. According to the website for the National Endowment for the Humanities, it is an independent federal agency. I guess it isn’t “independent” anymore.

  • It should be no surprise that US Secretary of Health and Human Resources Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. chose David Geier, a person without a medical degree, to conduct a study of possible links between vaccines and autism. Geier his late father published six papers claiming there is a connection between the two. Geier has a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology. The Maryland Board of Physicians charged him with practicing medicine without a license. Anyone want to bet on what Geier’s conclusion will be?

  • A glimmer of Congressional backbone? US House and US Senate versions of a bi-partisan Trade Review Act of 2025 have been introduced which would give Congress the authority to end a tariff ordered by the President after 60 days.

  • It should have come as no surprise that North Carolina’s request for an extension of 100% matching funds for Hurricane Helene recovery was denied, since US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has said she wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). NC Governor Josh Stein received the news, ironically, while he was in Avery County with country music star and North Carolina native Eric Church at the groundbreaking for a 40-home development for people who lost their homes in the storm. Eric Church’s foundation spearheaded the project. North Carolina suffered $60 billion in damage from Hurricane Helene last September, and the need for assistance is still great. In February, the State of Georgia’s request for an extension from FEMA was also denied. “Senior Official Performing the Duties of FEMA Administrator” (yes, that is his official title, according to the FEMA website) Cameron Hamilton said in his denial communication to Gov. Stein that the request was “not warranted.” The hurricane recovery aid to NC will continue as a 90% match to what the state spends.

  • On April 3, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins declared 112 million acres of national forests to be in an emergency situation due to their high risk of wildfires and hazardous tree conditions, allowing them to be open for logging. That’s 59% of our national forest acreage. The emergency designation allows the US Forest Service to bypass environmental laws. Trees in our national forests are logged, so that’s not anything new; however, the 59% percent is troubling and declaring an emergency situation so environmental regulations can be ignored also concerns me.

  • Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-4) which gives the Department of Defense authority to take control of federal lands to carry out military operation to repel invasions and seal the border. This includes national wildlife refuges and national forests. Indian reservations are excluded. The military can designate those areas as National Defense Areas, closing off public access indefinitely. Using “national security” to override environmental protections and civilian control of public lands can then easily be applied elsewhere. All Trump needs to do is call something a “national emergency.” This is a very slippery slope in the hands of a man who has absolutely no appreciation for nature or the American citizens.

  • Trump and Musk shut down the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To put a human face on this… Dr. Erik Svendsen, Director of the division, is known for his studies of the effects of the chlorine spill that resulted from a train wreck in 2005 a Graniteville, South Carolina. When the office was suddenly closed by the Trump Administration, Svendsen had to end his participation in a childhood lead investigation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and notify his employees who were working in western North Carolina where Hurricane Helene caused the worst flooding in the state’s history. Water and sewer infrastructure had been ripped apart in September and the area is still dealing with the environmental damage. Too bad! And too bad for state and local health departments across the country that depended on the expertise of Dr. Svendsen and his staff. Too bad for the localities across the nation that were being aided in children’s lead poisoning issues. The division was also in charge of the national asthma control program and other important environmental health tracking networks. The division helped states struggling to make sure private wells are properly built and free of contamination. It was Dr. Svendsen’s division in 2023 that helped health officials in North Carolina unravel a connection between children eating a certain type of applesauce and elevated lead levels in their blood. That work a few years ago resulted in Dr. Svendsen’s division launching efforts that identified 500 additional cases nationally. The result was a national recall of the applesauce polluted with a South American cinnamon high in lead content. An article about this CDC division’s closure in The State newspaper in Columbia, SC quotes Louisiana Sanders, a resident of Graniteville and former SC Department of Health and Environmental Control board member, as saying, “This is going to set us back another 20 or 30 years.”

  • US Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a deal with Guyana, a neighbor and enemy of Venezuela, to share intelligence information and come to the aid of Guyana if it is invaded by Venezuela. Venezuela wants the oil resources in Guyana. In response, on April 11, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro called Rubio an “imbecile.” I almost missed reading about this whole thing. We might need to just be aware.

  • Deportations on steroids: There have been quite a few heartbreaking and frightening stories about actions and inactions of the US Government over the last 12 weeks. (Has it only been 12 weeks since January 20th?) The most heart-wrenching stories so far have been about deportations. People being kidnapped on the street and forced into unmarked vans. University students forced out of the country because their visas are inexplicably revoked. American citizens receiving emails in the middle of the night telling them they have seven days to leave their country. (There are no instructions for just which country they are supposed to escape to. They are being told their “paroles” have been revoked. These are American citizens who have never sought a “parole” because, after all, they were born in the US and have always lived in the US.) One American citizen who received one of those emails from Homeland Security is an immigration attorney! The report I read said that the Trump Administration is revoking the parole of 532,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who came to the US under a Biden-era humanitarian parole program. The immigration attorney in Massachusetts does not fall into any of those categories.

  • I wish I could share with you the details about what happened to an Australian who has lived in the US for more than five years on a work visa, but I can’t write several thousand words about it. I invite you to do an online search and read the gory details for yourself. In a nutshell, he took his sister’s ashes to scatter them in Australia in March. When his return plane landed in Houston, Texas, he was detained, called names, accused of being a drug dealer, and was put on a flight back to Australia after 36 miserable hours of detention. Everything he owns except two changes of clothes are at his home in the US. He is barred from returning to the US for five years. The details are scary, but they can be found at https://www.theguardian.com/ if you want to read them. I’ve only heard his side of the story, but it appears he was denied due process of law. There is an alarming pattern that the Trump Administration only wants due process when it is a member of the administration who needs due process. The rest of us, not so much.

  • In an apparent effort to ward off Trump taking back the Panama Canal, an agreement has been quietly reached in which US troops will be able to deploy to a bunch of bases along the canal.

  • The National Museum of African America History and Culture opened nine years ago. It has been praised for exhibiting the good and the bad in African American history. But Trump said the museum is part of a “widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.” I have learned that one of his recent Executive Orders in which he attacked museums and national parks stated, “Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn ‒ not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Trump says there are exhibits in the Smithsonian museums that make America look bad. He singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Slavery is part of our national history, Mr. Trump, whether you like it or not. It is an ugly part of our history, but you cannot change the fact that it existed. The museums of the Smithsonian Institution are the envy of the world. At least they were until Trump came along.

  • This pales in comparison to Trump’s numerous threats to our democracy, but it deserves inclusion on my list. Michigan Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer arrived for a private appointment with President Trump on April 9 to discuss her concerns about the effects the tariffs will have on her State. Instead of being taken into the Oval Office for their meeting, she was blindsided by being ushered into the room for the signing of an Executive Order calling for the investigation of two high level people in the Biden Administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Trump, who has never before had a kind word to say about Whitmer, took that opportunity before cameras to praise the Governor and thereby humiliate her in a public setting and set her up for knee-jerk criticism from her own political party. Can anyone say, “Con man?”

  • Every time Trump, White House Press Secretary Leavitt, or anyone else in Trump’s orbit or on TV calls a judge “rogue,” like Leavitt did yesterday, they are putting all judges at risk. They are not only undermining our justice system, they are encouraging their followers and listeners to pick up a gun or make a bomb to intimidate or murder a judge or someone in a judge’s family. We all need to value and stand up for the rule of law and freedom of the press. We could lose both in the blink of an eye.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have time to read a good book, and I hope you can concentrate enough to read it. I can’t.

Perhaps next week will be the week I only blog once instead of the recent four or five times. We can hope!

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

Janet

14 highlights of how things are going in America

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

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

  • Furthermore, on a hot mic at that same news conference, Trump said to the El Salvador President/Dictator, “The homegrowns are next. You gotta build about five more places.” They were both enjoying the moment and laughing. “Home-grown” means US-born. And the US Vice President, the US Secretary of State, and the US Attorney General were complicit in their silence. No US President has ever voiced a desire to send American citizens to prisons in another country. The way Trump throws around threats that many individuals and groups should be “locked up,” we are left to understand that he now plans or at the least contemplates sending anyone he considers to be a criminal to a prison in another country. Make no mistake: Trump’s words were aimed at any American citizen who dares to disagree with him or criticize him. Don’t take Trump at his word, look into his intent. Don’t make excuses for him. Don’t kid yourself. We no longer have a normal Executive Branch in the US Government. Trump’s words yesterday were in direct conflict with the “cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” phrase in the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution and were chilling on multiple levels.
  • Do you know why Trump has found a new ally and friend in President Nayib Bukele? Bukele “is the iron-fisted president of El Salvador (2019– ), who has unabashedly styled himself as the “world’s coolest dictator” and the country’s “philosopher king.” (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nayib-Bukele)
  • On Sunday night, Trump jumped on social media and pretty much ordered the Federal Communications Commission to go after CBS because he did not like the news segments on “60 Minutes” that night about Ukraine and Greenland. Quoting from Trump’s post, “Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior.” He said CBS should lose its license. I watched the segment about Ukraine. Scott Pelley, interviewed President Zelensky of Ukraine. As an American citizen, it looked like an excellent and honest interview in which Zelensky invited Trump to visit Ukraine and go wherever he wanted to in the country and see for himself the condition in which the country is. Zelensky said that Russia invaded Ukraine – which the whole world knows is true – but apparently, Trump can’t tolerate anyone saying anything negative about his buddy in Moscow. (And, no, Mr. Trump… Russia’s bombing of Sumy, Ukraine on Palm Sunday morning was not an accident.) Threats to revoke FCC broadcast licenses is Step One, my friends, of Donald Trump shutting down the free press in the United States of America. He ended his Sunday night social media rant with the words, “Make America Great Again!” in all caps. In yesterday’s press conference, Trump lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlin Collins as follows: “You said if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, you’d abide by that,” Collins reminded him. Trump cut her off and it looked like he wasn’t going to address her question, but then he said, “Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our county? That’s why nobody watches you anymore.” You have no credibility.” The truth of the matter is that Kaitlin Collins is not afraid of Donald Trump. He is afraid of her because someone deep down he knows she does her research, she knows the US Constitution, and she will fight for freedom of the press with her last breath. His total disdain for the First Amendment to the US Constitution could not be more obvious. His total disdain for the First Amendment to the US Constitution could not be more obvious.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported on April 11, 2025, that the Trump Administration spent $154 billion more since the inauguration on January 20 than the Biden Administration spent in the same period last year.
  • Colonel Susannah Meyers, commander of the US Pituffik Space Base in Greenland was fired after not sharing Vice President J.D. Vance’s enthusiasm for the United States taking control of Greenland. She made the mistake of telling Vance that a US takeover did not reflect the community.
  • In my blog on Saturday, I wrote about my concerns about the Trump Administration declaring 6,100 living immigrants in the Social Security database as being dead. Another new bit of news about the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the announcement on Thursday that it will be making all announcements in the future on X instead of via press releases or announcements on its website. This, coupled with the recent announcement that many local SSA offices are closing and business cannot be conducted via phone means X is just one more roadblock for people needing SSA services. I’m going out on a limb, but I think most people on Social Security are not on X. Those of us who used to be on Twitter cancelled our accounts when Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the name to X – and we aren’t going back!
  • The new image of Trump was hung in a prominent place in the White House – a place traditionally reserved for portraits of the immediate past President. President Obama’s portrait was taken down and hung elsewhere, but instead of a portrait of President Biden being hung in its place, a rendition of a campaign image of Trump was put up. It’s a defiant, angry image of Trump with his fist in the air. Can anyone say, “Petty?” Can anyone say, “Tacky” in the truest Southern US sense of the word?
  • Stocks and Bonds out-of-whack. Stocks were up a little on Friday, April 11, but US Treasury Bonds were down. With the stock market losing in general and causing investors to wonder what the future holds, one would think they would be turning to the more stable bond market. But that’s not what was happening on Friday. When investors and other countries are hesitant to purchase US Treasury Bonds, that sent up a red flag that economic instability might be worse than we thought, if that’s possible. However, on Friday afternoon as Trump flew to Florida for yet another golf weekend, the 27-year-old blond ever-cheerful and perky cross-necklace-wearing White House Pres Secretary Karoline Leavitt enthusiastically encouraged reporters in the White House Press Room to, “Trust President Trump. He knows what he’s doing.” You can’t make this stuff up.
  • US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a memo to every US Embassy in the world instructing State Department employees to report their colleagues for any instances of “anti-Christian bias.” It is reported that accusations of such bias can be made anonymously, but they should be as detailed as possible. Trump created a task force by Executive Order in February to not only hunt down anti-religious bias in his Administration but also in the Biden Administration, so why did the Rubio memo specify “anti-Christian bias?” Call me a left-wing lunatic, but I think this smacks of fascism. Rubio is the son of immigrants from Cuba, and this is the way he thanks America?
  • The Associated Press reports that, “Some journalists are reporting that Trump Administration officials are refusing to engage with reporters who list their pronouns in their signature.” The New York Times reports that one reporter’s email received the following response from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”
  • On Thursday, April 10, 2025, the US House of Representatives passed the SAVE Act. That Act, if also passed by the Senate, will require proof of citizenship for voter registration. Republicans (and, apparently, four rogue Democrats in the US House) just cannot get it through their heads or hearts that millions of noncitizens are voting, so they had to come up with a hardnosed solution to a problem that does not exist. On the face of it, it does not sound that oppressive. One way to prove citizenship is to produce your birth certificate; however, that birth certificate must be in your current legal name. If you are a woman who took your husband’s surname when you got married, your birth certificate is no longer proof of your citizenship. Your only saving grace is your passport. You can’t afford $130 for a passport? Too bad! The Republicans want to take us back to “the good old days” prior to 1920 when women could not vote in the United States. One might not be able to prove that the SAVE Act is unconstitutional because it does not include words like “sex,” “women,” or “female,” but it is definitely in opposition to the spirit of the 19th Amendment. How can it be interpreted otherwise when it is women who traditionally take their husband’s surname in the US? Voter suppression, plain and simple, under the guise of preventing non-citizens from voting.
  • While we are on the topic of voting… President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, voted in Hawaii last November even though she had sworn last June that her legal state of residence was Texas so she and her husband could take advantage of a homestead tax exemption in Texas. The excuse her office gave: she was trying to shield her address from public view for security reasons. Even if that is true, it did not make it legal for her to cast her vote in Hawaii. Can anyone say, “Voter Fraud?”
  • In my April 11, 2025, blog post, I expressed concern over the fact that 17 of the 300 student visas revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio were from four universities in North Carolina. It came to light on CNN on Saturday that the actual number is 525, but that number doesn’t make me feel any better. If the 525 figure is to be believed, that means three percent of them are from just four universities in North Carolina. Can that be possible? And if that is correct, why are North Carolina universities being targeted? Secretary Rubio sat in the Cabinet meeting on Friday and said they were only giving the boot to international students who came to America to “vandalize libraries,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. First of all, the Trump Administration has already shown its disdain for libraries in his Executive Order a couple of weeks ago ordering the Institute of Museum and Library Services to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Second of all, it looks like any international student is at risk of being sent back home, which short-term and long-term will be a brain-drain and tragedy for the United States and for those individual students. But then on Sunday I learned that a student at Appalachian State University has been added to the list of international students in North Carolina whose visas have been revoked. Counting the Duke University alumnus and an alumnus on Optional Practical Training that’s 18 students at five universities in NC alone. In a TV interview on Sunday, Congressman Robert Garcia of California, who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, said the total number now is more than 800. The Trump Administration needs to come clean about the numbers and the fact that most of these students are being kicked out of the United States for only one reason:  they are from another country. That is horrible, anti-education, and anti-American. It is also a hallmark of a Fascist regime. But any government that can declare living immigrants to be dead can kick foreign students out of the country for no reason – many of them just a couple of weeks before the end of a semester and graduation for some of them. That’s cruel, plain and simple. All under the guise of stamping out anti-semitism. Nothing could be further from the truth and anyone with common sense knows it. Thank you, Harvard University, for not caving in to the façade.

I will blog about more such happenings in America tomorrow.

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

Janet

#OnThisDay: Various Events, including Black Sunday, 1935

I was determined to stick to my editorial calendar for my blog and my blog’s original objectives of sharing with you my journey as a writer and a reader. I hope to someday get back to writing historical fiction, so I want to demonstrate my knowledge of history through some of my blog posts.

As I edited today’s blog post on Saturday, though, today’s topic seemed unimportant. As learned that the Trump Administration declared 6,100 people dead who are still very much alive, I wondered if I should just delete today’s post.

I wondered what difference history makes in a world where the President of the United States through his appointees can declare people he doesn’t like to be dead.

But I had spent time doing some research, so here is the blog post I had scheduled months ago for today. Months ago, when life was simple. I just didn’t realize how simple and good things were a few months ago.

On April 14 in history

Many things of note have happened on April 14 throughout history. I’m listing a few of them in today’s blog post, and then I’ll concentrate on what’s known as “Black Sunday” from 1935.

Lincoln Assassination, 1865

Volumes (literally) have been written about US President Abraham Lincoln being shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. There is nothing I can offer that you don’t already know.

RMS Titanic, 1912

The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg off Newfoundland at 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912, and sank a few hours later.

Bacteria that causes Typhus Fever was isolated, 1914

On April 14, 1914, Dr. Harry Plotz isolated the bacteria that causes Typhus at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.

Black Sunday, 1935

“What was Black Sunday?” you may ask.

Was it a day when the stock market tanked? Was it a day like the day after Thanksgiving, which is now known in the US as Black Friday because it kicks off the Christmas shopping season?

No, Black Sunday in 1935 was the day when a “mountain of blackness” swept across the High Plains of Oklahoma and Texas and turned a beautiful spring afternoon into the blackness of the darkest night.

That’s not a mountain; that’s a wall of the approaching dust storm!

The Great Depression was dragging on and relentless drought pushed farmers and everyone to the breaking point. Farmers saw their top soil literally get blown away. Rain didn’t come, so there was no point planting another crop.

Here’s a quote from the National Weather Service website (https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19350414) which was still accessible on Saturday. I hope it will still be there when I post this on Monday morning. The way US Government websites, webpages, and agencies keep disappearing, though, nothing can be counted on anymore.

“The wall of blowing sand and dust first blasted into the eastern Oklahoma panhandle and far northwestern Oklahoma around 4 PM. It raced to the south and southeast across the main body of Oklahoma that evening, accompanied by heavy blowing dust, winds of 40 MPH or more, and rapidly falling temperatures. But the worst conditions were in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, where the rolling mass raced more toward the south-southwest – accompanied by a massive wall of blowing dust that resembled a land-based tsunami. Winds in the panhandle reached upwards of 60 MPH, and for at least a brief time, the blackness was so complete that one could not see their own hand in front of their face. It struck Beaver around 4 PM, Boise City around 5:15 PM, and Amarillo at 7:20 PM.”

Black Sunday prompted the writing of songs and the day after “Black Sunday” the region began to be referred to as “The Dust Bowl.”

How The Dust Bowl Got its Name

Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger and his photographer Harry G. Eisenhard were in Oklahoma on April 14, 1935. The dust storm engulfed them six miles from Boise City. They had to wait it out for two hours before they could return to town.

Geiger penned an article for the Lubbock Evening Journal the next day. It opened with, “Residents of the southwestern dust bowl marked up another black duster today.”

Where did some of The Dust Bowl dust go?

Some of it quite literally ended up in Washington, DC in March 1935 while Hugh Hammon Bennett, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s advisors was testifying before Congress to get some relief for the vast midsection of America that was in a dire situation. The sun was blotted out by dust from the Great Plains  during his testimony. He could have pointed out the window and pointed to it if there had been a window in the room. Before the end of 1935, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act.

If you want to read an historical novel about The Dust Bowl…

Reading about Black Sunday reminded me of The Four Winds, a novel by Kristin Hannah. I wrote about reading it in March 2021 in my April 4, 2021 blog post, 6 Books I Read in March 2021.

And The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, is a classic.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 108 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That is a decrease of a whopping 31 roads since the Friday before! This count includes seven US highways, 12 state highways, and 99 state roads. Although technically “open” now, I-40 in Haywood County is still open for just one lane in both directions with a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit.

There are still no estimates of when all of the Blue Ridge Parkway will reopen.

I know it snowed in New York this weekend, but it is spring here in North Carolina. People are eager to visit our mountains again to support local small businesses and artisans. Check online sources for recovery efforts in the areas and towns you want to visit. For instance, the town of Chimney Rock is still closed, and Chimney Rock State Park is still closed.

The small businesses in our mountains desperately need our business, so please plan your getaways accordingly. Instead of packing your traditional picnic items, this is an important time to support locally-owned and -operated restaurants and food-producing companies.

Support the incredible western NC arts community. There are quilts and a multitude of fiber arts items made here, as well as pottery, glass-blown items, corn shuck dolls, jewelry, woodworking, etc.

There are also craft shops in many small towns and scattered across the mountains where you can find handmade items of high quality.

The Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Asheville is a must-see gem if you are looking for items made by members of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild. It is located at Milepost 382. It can be reached via the Blue Ridge Parkway access from US-70 near the Asheville Veterans Administration Medical Center.

The Folk Art Center was opened in 1980 as a cooperative effort between the Guild, the National Park Service and the Appalachian Regional Commission. The center is open year-round except for Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and times during a US Government shutdown when the US Congress is unable to pass a federal budget.

When planning your trip to the mountains (or to any part of North Carolina) this is a helpful website to visit so you can anticipate road closures: https://drivenc.gov/.

Until my next blog post

This is Holy Week in the Christian faith. Next Sunday is Easter. I saw an ad online for a wreath that was supposed “to make my Easter more meaningful.” The wreath was a red, white, and blue Bald Eagle configured into a circle. If someone thinks the Bald Eagle or the colors of the American flag have anything to do with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, they have missed the entire point of Easter!

I hope you have a good book to read.

Keep friends and family close to your heart

Remember the people of Myanmar (because the US Government isn’t helping the earthquake victims!), Ukraine, and western North Carolina.

Janet

Speak Up For Justice Virtual Event

Yesterday I posted a rare Saturday blog. Today, I post an even rarer Sunday blog.

This is going to be short, because I am very tired of pounding the keyboard to write about some of the bad things happening in America.

I’m posting this today so you will see it before Tuesday.

If you don’t remember the murder of the son of US District Judge Esther Salas’ son in 2020, please look it up. He was murdered because his mother was a judge. I won’t try to give the details of that story here.

I saw her interviewed on CNN yesterday. The interview made me aware of an effort taking place this Tuesday, April 15, to draw attention to the escalation of intimidation tactics against federal judges.

In a nutshell, pizzas are being delivered to the homes of federal judges and to the homes of their children and the name of Judge Salas’ murdered son are attached to those pizzas in some way. Keep in mind, these pizzas were not ordered by the judges or their family members.

The pizza deliveries are being done by people who want to control and/or destroy our judicial system. They are being done to convey the message, “We know where you live and we know where your children live.”

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

Thank you for reading my blog! I hope I won’t have a reason to post again until tomorrow morning.

Janet, a disgruntled political science major

Social Security: “You are dead to me.”

Today’s blog post is dedicated to my classmate who said, “This is a beautiful thing to watch.”

Today’s blog post is dedicated to everyone who told me, “We need a businessman in the White House.”

Today’s blog post is dedicated to all the evangelicals who voted for this fascism.

If you take offense at my referring to the Trump Administration as being fascist, file your complaint with Merriam-Webster, not me.

This is how the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines Fascism:  “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

If legislating through Executive Orders is not dictatorial, I don’t know what it is. If the shoe fits….

The “red flag” was today’s headline on TV and online: “Thousands of immigrants declared dead, but they aren’t.”

A meme that reads, "First they came for the immigrants, but I wasn't an immigrant."

I had planned to include today’s topic in a blog post sometime next week. It is a post that will contain a list of “highlights” of how things are going in the United States of America; however, the deeper I dived into what is going on at the Social Security Administration, the more concerned I became. It quickly became obvious that this deserved its own blog post.

I looked forward to a respite from the news and a break from blogging over the weekend. I made the mistake of turning on my desktop computer and the TV this afternoon.

If you have not been paying attention today, you might not know what has happened since Thursday… and this is MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than Trump lifting the tariffs from electronics coming from China. The electronics tariff news taking the spotlight today is there is distract you from something happening at the Social Security Administration that should make your blood run cold.

The price of your iPhone or the price of eggs could soon be the least of your worries.

The purpose of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI)

The purpose of the SSDI was to prevent the Social Security number of a deceased person to later be assigned to someone else.

That sounds like a good purpose, doesn’t it?

My deceased parents’ names are in that database. I don’t want their Social Security numbers being reassigned to someone else.

But then the Trump Administration came along…

This is how it went down, according to The Washington Post:

  1. Social Security Administration (SSA) officials made the Trump Administration aware that they had concerns about the security of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) database. They (SSA officials) were worried that people could be added to the SSDI without proper proof of death.   
  2. The Trump Administration chose to exploit that revelation.
  3. Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk and the folks at the US Department of Homeland Security wanted to use the database for nefarious purposes, so on
  4. Greg Pearre, Associate Commissioner, Office of Systems Architecture at the Social Security Administration, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, “clashed with Scott Coulter,” telling Coulter that it was “illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead,” according to three people who had knowledge of the events.
  5. Trump appointees did not appreciate Greg Pearre’s knowledge of the law.
  6. The names of 6,100 living immigrants ranging in age from teenagers to octogenarians were declared dead by the Trump Administration and added to the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File, which is apparently being renamed “Ineligible Master File.” (This was done on April 8, 2025, as well as I can determine.)
  7. On Thursday, April 10, 2025, security guards escorted Greg Pearre out of his office and out of the Social Security building in which he worked. A sad ending to anyone’s 25-year career.

No one should be okay with this!

If you are okay with this, may God have mercy on your soul. Your level of hate and bigotry and your disdain for the United States Constitution is greater than I can wrap my head around.

In the name of “Make America Great Again,” my deceased parents (and perhaps yours?) and everyone else who has had a Social Security number and died since the creation of the Social Security Administration in 1937 are on that list, lumped together with living immigrants that Donald Trump wants to rid our country of.  (Forgive me for ending a sentence with a preposition, but the dismantling of American democracy is happening too fast for me to worry as much about grammar as I did three months ago.)

If the Trump Administration doesn’t like you (in other words, if you don’t financially support Donald John Trump, Sr. AND appropriately and publicly sing his praises), you, too, might just find your name on the new Death Index.

I just might find myself dead any day now. Literally or figuratively dead. And it really makes no difference which it is. If the wrong people discover my blog, it could happen to me. That’s the America in which I live in 2025.

A meme that reads, "First they came for the immigrants, but I wasn't an immigrant."

Please don’t think any of this is okay.

Thank you, Greg Pearre, for trying to save the Social Security Administration. I’m sorry your valiant efforts resulted in you losing your job. At least you still have your integrity from your 25-year career in government service.

Thank you for The Washington Post’s reporters who were brave enough to go public with this story!

No, Mr. Trump, the press is NOT the “enemy of the people.” You are, Mr. Trump. You are.

Janet

An Open Letter to Trump Supporters

It gives me no joy to write today’s blog post. I write it out of a deep concern and love for the United States of America.

I am not in my comfort zone with my blog anymore. That ship sailed a couple of weeks ago. But until I no longer have freedom of speech, I will speak out when I feel compelled to do so.

When, in the name of everything holy and moral are the courts, US Congress, and the almost 80 million Americans who voted for this chaos and destruction going to grow a spine and a brain?

Some of you are just gullible, some of you only get your news from one source, some of you are told every Sunday that the liberal bogey man is out to get you, but many of you just couldn’t bring yourselves to vote for a woman, or a person of color, much less a woman of color.

You just couldn’t do it.

You said you didn’t like her laugh.

You said she wasn’t qualified.

You even belittled her because she had never given birth to a child. Helping to raise her two stepchildren didn’t count.

Her opponent intentionally mispronounced her name. (A sign of a “stable genius,” which is what he calls himself.)

Her opponent called her a “s**t vice president.”

Her opponent called her “a stupid person,” “the worst,” and “slow,” with a “low IQ.”

He said, “She’s lazy as hell, and she’s got that reputation, and she’s a radical left lunatic, she’s further left than Bernie Sanders or Pocahontas.”

You thought every bit of that was funny. You think it is manly to belittle women’s intelligence. You think it is funny when he calls US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts “Pocahontas” because you think it is cute to make derogatory remarks about indigenous peoples.

Despite Kamala Harris’ education, government experience, and ability to speak in complete sentences, you preferred the man running against her.

You preferred a man convicted of sexual assault and 74 felonies.

You preferred a man who tried to overthrow an election that he lost.

You preferred a man who openly used vulgarity when talking about women.

You preferred a man who has cheated on every wife he has ever had… and there have been three, so far.

You preferred a man who paid hush money to a porn star.

You preferred a man who said there were “good people” on both sides in the confrontation between Neo-Nazis and non-violent protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia.

You preferred a man who does not speak in complete sentences.

You preferred a man who lies with abandon.

You preferred a man who childishly calls people names and mocks disabled people.

You preferred a man who said he was going to be a dictator on Day One.

You preferred a man who scoffed at an American who spent seven years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp and said he preferred soldiers who don’t get captured.

You not only voted for that man. You still defend him. You make excuses for all his wrongdoings. You laugh at the misery he has caused not only the poorest of the poor around the world but also your fellow Americans.

You laugh and sneer when people dare to voice an opinion in opposition to Trump.

You don’t care that some men who have nothing to do with gangs got swept up by ICE agents and shipped off to a horrible prison in El Salvador. After all, it wasn’t you or your father or brother who got sent there by mistake.

You defended Trump last Sunday when he said he loved the idea of sending US-born prisoners to prisons in other countries.

You hit that laughing emoji every time someone posts their concerns on social media.

You think it’s hilarious when another thousand federal employees or another female military officer gets fired.

You probably go to church every Sunday.

You might even wear a cross around your neck.

Even after he pardoned the rioters who trashed the US Capitol and assaulted police officers in an effort to stage a coup, you still supported him.

That is the face of the Republican Party. And if you defend that by saying it must be all right because y’all won the Presidential Election in 2024, my answer to you would be, “That is nothing to be proud of. That only tells me that the Republican Party has lost its way. This might surprise you, but I used to be a registered Republican, so I’m not saying this as a dyed-in-the-wool lifelong left-wing lunatic.”

But I believe the root problem in the United States today is not a Republican-Democrat problem. I think it is a world view problem. When half the population of America is so hate-filled that they cheer for a government of cruelty, we have a problem bigger than politics.

Some Trump supporters are not Christians. I am directing these questions to those who are Christians: Have you forgotten all the teachings of Jesus Christ? You know… all that stuff about loving your neighbor as yourself… when you do this to the least of these, you do it unto me? What about all that stuff about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger? You often quote the Old Testament. Maybe you need to spend more time reading the New Testament.

Don’t you see what Trump and his minions are doing to our democracy, to our country?

Do you not see what is happening with the tariffs? They were put in place by one person. To try to win that person’s favor, every country in the world except Russia and Belarus must now come crawling to Donald Trump and beg for forgiveness for treating America unfairly and then promise to support Trump and do whatever he demands. He bragged in a speech to his fellow Republicans on Tuesday night that these countries were kissing his a%&^. (He has such a large vocabulary and such decorum! You can put him in a tuxedo, but you can’t take the vulgarity out of his mouth.)

The vulgarity remark aside, that’s how these tariffs are going to go. Countries don’t have to negotiate with the United States Congress. They only have to negotiate with bow down to Donald Trump and, apparently, kiss his a%&^. They must pledge loyalty and allegiance to him, just as you have. Don’t you see? Do you still believe those other countries are going to pay the tariffs?

That’s not how tariffs work. If you don’t understand that, you need to read some history before all our history is erased and your only source of information is what Trump and Fox News want you to know.

It will very soon be too late for you to wake up.

That joint report that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are required by one of the first Executive Orders Trump issued on January 20, 2025, to give him on the situation at our border with Mexico by April 20 is fast approaching.

Surely, you know about that Executive Order. Surely, that TV network you get all your news from told you about it.

In that report, Hegseth and Noem are required to recommend to Trump whether or not he should invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. Not familiar with it?

Outlined in a number of statutes under Title 10 of the United States Code, the President of the United States is given the authority to declare martial law and the power to use military force against US citizens. Maybe he won’t do it, but it is a real possibility.

Is that what you thought you were voting for when he said he would “Make America Great Again” and only be a dictator for one day?

You said he was kidding. You were partly right. He was kidding about the “one day” part. What kind of a person running for the office of President of the United States cracks jokes about being a dictator? Only one who wants to be one. Besides, he has no sense of humor.

It is no accident that we are being distracted by tariffs, firings, and Elon Musk and various Cabinet Secretaries playing games with US history on websites. We aren’t supposed to be on the alert to find out what Hegseth and Noem’s report says.

Tell me I need to find another country to live in if I don’t support Donald Trump. Yes, a Trump supporter said that to me recently.

Another Trump supporter, whom I’ve known for 65 years, told me that all the mayhem that Donald Trump is pouring down on us every day “is a beautiful thing to watch.”

Go ahead and call me a bleeding-heart liberal or a leftist lunatic or woke, or a radical or that new word: “panican.” Those names you call me to hurt or belittle me? I wear them with honor because I believe God calls on me to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, and love my neighbor as I love myself.

And who is my neighbor?

You are my neighbor. Whether you are a Christian or not (or know it or not) you are a child of God and I am a child of God. He loves me just as much as He loves you. He loves you just as much as He loves me, and He wants me to love you, too. That’s what I strive to do every day, no matter how hard you make it for me to do that.

If some of the things I have listed today don’t apply to you personally, perhaps you should find some new people to hang out with because looking at you as a group from the outside, things appear to be very ugly and hateful.

If you don’t agree with everything on the list, you might want to stop wearing that MAGA hat.

That hat says you are quite all right with US Department of Agriculture food not going to the food banks.

That hat says you are quite all right with all those medical researchers at the CDC and the NIH being fired.

That hat says you are quite all right with anyone the Trump Administration doesn’t like the looks of or the accent of to be shipped off to a prison in El Salvador without being charged with anything and without a trial.

That hat says you are quite all right with ICE agents to drive around in unmarked vehicles, masked faces, and no identification to kidnap people on the street and haul them off to a detention center. (How do we know they are ICE agents? They might be gang members since they show no ID. Have you considered that?)

Maybe you don’t literally wear that hat. Maybe you just discuss politics among friends and agree with them when they praise the things Trump is doing. Or maybe you are the one who starts that conversation, and you assume everyone around you agrees with you. That seems to be a common thread among Trump supporters.

Maybe you don’t approve of the things Trump is doing, but you don’t voice that. You don’t tell your friends some of the things they are saying in support of Trump make you uncomfortable because you don’t want to jeopardize your friendship.

The time may come – and it may come sooner than you ever thought possible – when you won’t have the right to disagree with Trump. The time may come when your friend is asked to report you if you don’t toe the Party line or if you dare to criticize Donald Trump.

If you could go back to Nazi Germany and ask a regular citizen if they thought such a thing was possible in their country, I imagine they would say, “No! Never. Never here!” That’s what I would have said a few years ago about America.

If you are a Christian and I have stepped on your toes in this blog post, instead of hurling insults at me as your leader would do, I hope you will pause and ask yourself if you really think Jesus Christ approves of all the things President Trump has done.

Do you really think if given a choice between voting for Donald Trump or anyone else, Jesus Christ would have voted for Donald Trump?

How can a Christian continue to support Donald Trump? Maybe I’m wrong to ask that question, but it is something I’ve struggled with every day for the last nine years and especially for the last six months. No one has given me a satisfying answer. I’m asking in all honesty. If you have an answer, I welcome your response and a conversation. If we can’t have a conversation on this topic, all hope is lost for the future of our country.

Janet