Memorial Day Observance

This is Memorial Day in the United States.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This is the day every year on which Americans are called on the remember the men and women who have died in the military service to our country. It dates back to 1868. After the Civil War, the 30th day of May was set aside as “Decoration Day” on which the graves of those soldiers who had given their lives for their country were to be decorated with flowers.

For decades it was called Decoration Day. Unfortunately, since it was begun as a day to remember those who had been killed in the military service of the United States, some in The South selected a different day in May to honor those who had died fighting for the Confederate States in the Civil War.

I can remember older people even in the 1960s who still marked Confederate Memorial Day. I’m glad we have gotten beyond that, or at least I hope and think we have.

Even after World War I, the day was specifically to remember those who died in the Civil War. After World War II, though, it was decided that it should be a day to honor the sacrifice made by all who had died in the military service, no matter the war or circumstances of their death during service.

Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971 and it designated that Memorial Day will be observed on the last Monday in May.

In 1915, Moina Michael was inspired by the poem “In Flanders Field” to write the following: “We cherish too, the Poppy red That grows on fields where valor led. It seems to signal to the skies that blood of heroes never dies.”

Photo of a field of red poppies
Photo by Irina Iacob on Unsplash

She then had the idea that we should wear red poppies on Memorial Day to honor those who died in the service. She sold them on her own and gave the money she made to benefit veterans in need. The custom was admired by a Madam Guerin of France, and she initiated the practice there to raise money for the children orphaned and the women widowed by war. The practice spread across many countries.

In 1922, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) organization became the first organization to sell the poppies across the US. IN 1924, disabled veterans started making the artificial poppies for the VFW members and their auxiliary members to sell.

So, if you see them selling poppies outside a supermarket, a shopping mall, or elsewhere today, stop and buy a poppy and wear it today to remind yourself and those who see you what this holiday is all about.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Spend time with friends and family for you and they won’t be here forever.

Remember the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and the flooding victims in New South Wales, Australia, and in southern France. No part of the world is immune to war or extreme weather

Janet

I couldn’t help myself…

I ended yesterday’s blog post with “Until my next blog post, which I hope won’t be until next week…,” but here I am posting again today.

I could write 1,000 words about today’s topic, but I’ll just stop with the following 168 words.

Harvard University

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Yesterday, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem informed Harvard University that it can no long accept international students unless it meets all the Trump Administration’s demands in 72 hours.

One of those demands to for the university to give Noem films of all student protests that have taken place over the last five years.

International students make up 27% of the undergraduate and graduate student body of Harvard. That’s more than 7,000 students who now must transfer to another university or go home.

Under the guise of punishing Harvard’s leadership for not punishing antisemitic activity, Trump is going out of his way to hurt not only the international students but all the students, faculty, and the ideals of higher education in the United States.

This is not technically blackmail under US law because Trump is not demanding money from Harvard, but I do believe it meets the spirit of the law.

Other words that come to mind are extortion and coercion.

Or perhaps exaction.

Until my next blog post

Let’s all just try to have a peaceful weekend, as Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer in the United States.

Janet

More Snippets of What’s Happening to and in the US

As we continue through another week of the Trump Administration, I’m blogging again today about some of the things that are going on here in the United States. I wish I did not need to do this. It is not what I ever had in mind for my blog. With the free press continually under attack by Trump, though, I believe I’m doing what I must do.

Yesterday’s ambush of South Africa’s President

In another embarrassing and bizarre ambush, yesterday Donald Trump blindsided President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa in the Oval Office with a video and stack of papers claiming widespread genocide of white farmers in South Africa. I had flashbacks of how he ambushed Ukrainian President Zelensky in February.

At least once, Trump made a mistake he has made before when he said, “Africa and other countries.” Apparently, the private education Trump claims to have received did not include geography.

Before the day was out, Agence Frances Presse was rightfully calling yesterday’s meeting: “The Ambush Office: Trump’s Oval becomes test of nerve for world leaders.”Perhaps other world leaders will not request meetings with Trump or accept any invitations that come from him.

With ambush as the US President’s modus operandi, it is unlikely any other nations want their presidents or prime ministers to visit our country.

Emboldened by his week of being praised in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, Trump is full of himself and showing his true colors. He just can’t help himself.

The flying palace

The US Secretary of Defense accepted the $400 million airplane “gift” from Qatar yesterday, so now the American taxpayers are on the hook for the estimated $1 billion it will cost to gut it and rebuild it to Air Force One security standards. All this, so Trump can take it to his future presidential library, which is an oxymoron if there ever was one.

States’ rights

I read on Sunday that although Trump brags about being all for “states’ rights,” there is a provision in his budget bill that bans state and local governments from regulating Artificial Intelligence for 10 years. States can’t make laws about AI. No state laws about facial recognition, AI surveillance, or the misuse of date AI collects.

Miscellaneous Research

In the name of eliminating waste in the US Government, thousands of studies being conducted at state-supported colleges and universities have been cancelled by the Trump Administration. Without taking the time or even making the effort to analyze what they are cutting, they decided it would be easier to just de-fund anything and everything remotely associated with diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI).

The Charlotte Observer published a report about 17 grants totaling $469,069 that had been awarded to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte that have been cancelled by Trump, while WSOC-TV reported that UNCC has lost $14 million in federal funds.

The 17 grants that the newspaper wrote about were cancelled, some of which were already in progress, included such things as the spread of online misinformation; encouraging girls and black youth to pursue careers in computer science; youth with disabilities transitioning into independent living; autoimmune disease (pemphigus) research; and black youth suicide detection and prevention.

It is obvious that any studies or programs that had anything to do with diversity, equity, or inclusion (DEI) were the grants being cancelled. Grants to study or help African Americans were obviously targeted, while 74% of patients with the potentially fatal autoimmune disease pemphigus are white and 61% of them are women.

UNC-Charlotte is just one of the 16 institutions that are part of the UNC system. What UNC-Charlotte has lost is a drop in the bucket compared to the federal grant losses at UNC-Chapel Hill and NC State University at Raleigh.

This has happened in every state and at countless colleges and universities, both state-supported and private.

Our apologies to France

In a 51 to 45 vote, The US Senate confirmed Charles Kushner as US Ambassador to France. He is the father of President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. In 2005, the elder Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison for 18 counts, including tax evasion and witness tampering. He pleaded guilty to the tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions.

Ashli Babbitt Settlement

US taxpayers learned on Monday that the Trump Administration is paying the family of Ashli Babbitt nearly $5 million. Ashli Babbitt was the insurrectionist killed at the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Yes, you read that correctly.

Ms. Babbitt was shot as she tried to breach the barricaded House Speaker’s Lobby. President Trump has called her a “martyr” and a “patriot.”

Making America Safe Again?

There was a glimmer of hope after the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas in 2022. There was bipartisan support for investing in mental health support for students. But then the Trump Administration came along in 2025.

The US Department of Justice cancelled hundreds of grants that funded local government and community organizations’ gun violence prevention programs.

Photo of children holding signs saying thoughts and prayers don't stop bullets.
Heather Mount on Unsplash

Then the Trump Administration blocked $1 billion in grants for student mental health because this was no longer in “the best interest of the federal government.”

The latest example of the Trump Administration’s “Make America Safe Again” mantra is the legalization of “forced reset triggers.” I’m no firearms expert, but the best I can tell from reading and hearing the news reports is that this device enables a semiautomatic weapon to become even more deadly as it makes the shooter able to fire hundreds of rounds in a minute.

So when US Attorney General Pam Bondi said last week that this “will enhance public safety,” what did she mean? I guess I’m just stupid, because I don’t understand any of this.

Venezuelans losing Temporary Protected Status (TPS)

On Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump Administration. The Court granted emergency application to the Department of Homeland Security to proceed with the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who had been given TPS by the Biden Administration. This ruling overruled a district court order.

US loses its AAA bond rating

And then there’s this, which sent stock markets around the word into a loss on Monday.

Shall I say something good that Trump did?

To be fair, I will point out that on Monday President Trump signed into law the Take It Down Act. The bill, which was championed by First Lady Melania Trump, sets stricter penalties for the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery online and “revenge porn.” The bill had overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress.

Finally, something most Republicans and Democrats can agree on!

Trump’s US Interior Department loves plastic

The US Department of the Interior was recognized last June for its ongoing efforts to phase out the use of any and all single-use plastics. That was Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior.

Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior has rescinded the order behind that phase-out. So much for curbing pollution in our national parks. All bans on plastics on all federally managed land are being lifted.

US Secretary of Homeland Security’s Misunderstanding of Habeas Corpus

US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem got tripped up in a Congressional hearing on Tuesday when US Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire referenced White House advisor Stephen Miller’s comment earlier in May that the Trump Administration was “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus.

Senator Hassan asked Secretary Noem, “What is habeas corpus?”

Secretary Noem’s response was jarring. She said, “Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to –”

Senator Hassan jumped in to cut her off. “That’s incorrect,” Hassan said. She went on to explain to Noem what habeas corpus is.

As I stated in my May 14, 2025, blog post, The New American Dream?: “Habeas corpus is a legal procedure by which a report can be made to a court alleging the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and requesting that the court order the individual’s custodian to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful.”

I also referenced habeas corpus in my May 19, 2025, blog post.

Senator Hassan and Secretary Noem’s exchange did not stop there.

“So, Secretary Noem, do you support the core protection that habeas corpus provides, that the government must provide a public reason in order to detain and imprison someone?” the senator asked.

Noem’s response was lame and telling: “I support habeas corpus. I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.”

In case we needed any more proof, we now have a member of President Trump’s Cabinet and his close advisor both stating in public that the suspension of habeas corpus is under consideration.

Meanwhile

Against my better judgment, I signed up for my US Representative’s newsletter. This former Baptist preacher does not disappoint. This week’s newsletter sang the praises of Trump ad nauseum. He is pushing for congress to codify into law every Executor Order Donald Trump has signed.

Here’s just one paragraph from his long newsletter of Trumpian praise: “It doesn’t matter if we have to vote seven days a week. The Republican Congress needs to be passing bills that codify the executive orders that have been advancing the America-first agenda. That’s why I joined 16 of my colleagues in calling on Speaker Johnson to prioritize codifying President Trump’s wins into law.’

In case you missed my May 19, 2025, blog post, I gave a little background information about Representative Harris and the election fraud that landed him in court in 2018.

Mr. Harris has not responded to my email to him a couple of weeks ago about my distress over the fact that the United States is on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist for a narrowing of civil liberties.

He is a prime example of why I am frustrated with people who claim to be Christians but support Donald Trump. There is a disconnect there that I will never understand.

Until my next blog post, which I hope won’t be until next week…

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

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

Snippets of what’s happening to and in the US

Every time I think I won’t feel compelled to post on my blog multiple days a week, I am proven wrong. To live in the United States today is to live wondering what is going to happen next. Our new normal is to expect the unexpected. Every. Single. Day.

Our new normal is to expect things to get a lot worse before they will get better. Our new normal is to know that things are probably never going to return to what was normal for the last 80 years.

Last night, we learned that the Trump Administration, against a US District Court order, deported immigrants to South Sudan.

Photo of a person's head in the dark inside of an airplane peering out the window
Photo by kian on Unsplash

Apparently, Trump thinks it does not matter that it was against a court order. Apparently, Trump thinks it is okay to deport people to South Sudan where there is fighting between opposing forces and a civil war taking place in neighboring Sudan. He thinks it is all right to deport people to a country in Africa… even though at least two of those deportees were from Southeast Asia.

One of the individuals is from Vietnam and one is from Burma. The nationalities of the others – indeed, the total number of deportees on that flight – has not been revealed. Immigration attorneys say there are “likely” at least ten other immigrants on that deportation flight.

I apologize for referring to these two people as “deportees,” “immigrants,” and by their nationalities; however, I have not found their names. But they are human beings. They have names. They probably have families.

By living in the United States of America, they have had rights. They had a right to a hearing before a judge to determine if they could remain in this country or if they should be deported. That did not happen.

Common sense tells me that if a person is to be deported, they should be deported to their country of origin. They should not be deported to a country in which their language is not spoken. They should not be deported to a country in which their language is not spoken and in which a civil war is underway.

I have run out of words to express my horror at what the Trump Administration Regime is doing. My vocabulary is exhausted.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy of Boston held an emergency hearing yesterday about this case and scheduled another hearing for today. In the meantime, according to The Wall Street Journal, the judge ordered the US to maintain custody of the deportees and ensure they are treated humanely.

I often pray that Donald Trump will accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and turn from his evil ways. I often pray those words. It would truly be a miracle, but I believe in miracles. We experienced a miracle in my family on Christmas morning in 1978. Miracles do happen.

Now, to what I had originally written for today’s blog post…

While some of us are still struggling to understand how the technicality of the Trump Administration saying the $400 million flying palace from Qatar is going to the US Department of Defense and not to President Trump, small bits and pieces of the “big, beautiful budge bill” are coming to light.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wants the bill passed by Memorial Day (May 26) or at least by July 3.

It’s almost impossible find out what is in the bill, since it is not available online for the public. Hey, it’s just our money, right?

I have read that this budget will add $150 billion to the Pentagon’s budget, pushing the Defense Department’s budget to more than $1 trillion.

Photo of a pile of US paper money
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

I have read that this budget takes Medicaid healthcare coverage away from 13 million Americans. These are children, people living with disabilities, and the elderly.

This budget will give the wealthiest people in the United States additional tax breaks. It is those tax breaks and the increased defense budget that resulted in the politicians choosing to leave 13 million citizens without health coverage.

It is no big deal to them. Those 13 million people are not likely to raise a stink The ones under 18 years of age can’t even vote. They are America’s most vulnerable citizens and, hence, the easiest for the people in Congress to target.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Many, if not most, of the members of the US Congress claim to be Christians, so what about any of this follows the teachings of Jesus Christ? (At least, when they are running for office, they claim to be Christian. How many of them, when asked, “What the last book you read?” answer, “The Bible”?)

Why do so many Christians across this country think cutting Medicaid is wonderful. “It will save us money! Cuts must be made!”

Yes, it will save us money to spend on more weapons. It will save the richest among us money because they will pay less in income taxes.

Just like eliminating USAID will save us money because why would the richest country in the world want to send medical and food aid to the poorest countries in the world?

Just like cutting off the funding for medical research will save us money… but only in the short term.

The motive behind one “big, beautiful budget bill” is to overwhelm Congress and the public. Put everything in one bill, and it will be so long that nobody can read it.  That’s the point. At 1,116 pages, I would guess that very few members of Congress have read the entire thing.

Granted, there is wasteful spending in the federal government. Granted, if wasteful spending is not stopped, our national debt will continue to increase

My objection is with the manner in which the Trump Administration has chosen to address the problem. We hear example after example of worthwhile research and aid programs being slashed just because Elon Musk’s teenage employees with no knowledge or interest in the operation of government in a democracy were given free range to eliminate agencies and programs with the touch of a button on a keyboard.

Wholesale, sweeping cuts in government grants have resulted in the immediate loss of jobs, careers, and doctoral degree research studies. Those are just the instantaneous losses that are visible to the thousands of individuals affected.

The long-term effects will not be realized this year or next year. They will be identified in the coming decades when we learn that cures for various cancers would have been discovered in the 2020s if not for these budget cuts.

President Trump warned us that there could be short-term pain due to his single-handedly imposed global tariffs, but he is yet to even own up to the pain he has inflicted in the name of taking waste out of the government. He has yet to own up to the short-term losses in medical research, much less long-term losses we can only imagine.

And yet, his followers still say he is a “wonderful President.” Some of them still dare to say he was sent by God.

Under the Cover of Darkness

When a person or group is proud of what they are doing, they tend to do it in broad daylight. If that group is a legislative body, they definitely do it in broad daylight. If that legislative body is the United State Congress, they tend to do it at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time or later so the citizens in the Pacific Time zone will be awake to see it or hear it.

The US House of Representatives Committee on the Budget held a vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful budget bill” at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday. Who does that? Who meets late on a Sunday night to vote on something important?

Photo of the US Capitol building at night
Raphael Assouline on Unsplash

It gets worse. The House Rules Committee scheduled their next meeting for 1:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time this morning.

My erratic sleep habits almost guarantee that I am wide awake at 1:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, but I’m the exception to the rule.

Making America Healthy Again?

While politicians boast about money saved, they fail to mention the medical and social research being lost. What is the real cost in terms of lives?

We’ll never know what diseases could have been prevented, treated, or cured if the research Congress had approved had not been terminated by the Trump Administration.

We will have to pin our hopes on other countries picking up the slack and hiring the researchers the United States is losing.

Until my next blog post, which I hope won’t be until next week…

I hope you have a good book to read.

Value time with family and friends.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

#OnThisDay: Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 1775

Today is the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. It predated the national Declaration of Independence by more than a year.

A recreation of the
Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence.

In case it sounds familiar, I have blogged about the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on or near May 20th several times in the more than ten years I’ve been blogging.

My immigrant ancestors were among the Scottish Presbyterian pioneers who settled old Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Years of discontent in the American colonies were piled on top of the anti-British Crown feelings they brought with them across the Atlantic.

Weary of unfair taxes imposed by the Crown and the discrimination they were subjected to as Presbyterians slowly brought the settlers to the boiling point. An example of the persecution these Presbyterians felt were the Vestry and Marriage Acts of 1769. Those acts fined Presbyterian ministers who dared to conduct marriage ceremonies. Only Anglican marriages were recognized by the government.

On May 20, 1775, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declared themselves to be free and independent of the rule of Great Britain. It was a sober and sobering declaration not entered into lightly. Those American patriots meant business, and they knew the risks they were taking.

Archibald McCurdy, an elder in Rocky River Presbyterian Church, heard the document read from the steps of the log courthouse in Charlotte. When he got home, he and his wife, Maggie, listed everyone they knew of who could be trusted in the coming fight for American independence.

No original copies of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence survive today. The local copy was lost in a house fire at the home of one of the signers. The copy taken to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Captain James Jack on horseback was also lost. Later, signers of the document recreated it from memory.

Nevertheless, those of us who were raised on stories of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence and the brave souls who risked their lives to sign it know that the document was real. The blood of the American patriots still flows in our veins and their spirit of freedom still beats in our hearts.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of last Friday, 54 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included five US highways, four state highways, and 45 state roads. That’s a decrease of one state highway and one state road since the week before.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Their situations are quite different, but the people in both places are stressed and weary.

Janet

That’s pretty much all I wanted

I majored in political science and minored in history in college. My Master’s degree is in public administration. I can’t just turn all that off, even though I graduated 50 years ago.

I used to not be a political person. I just wanted government on all levels to work at their highest and best purposes. I wanted honesty and transparency in government. I wanted the politicians to have as little influence as possible over the actual daily operations of the government.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians to guarantee the water was safe to drink.

I wanted government employees left alone by the politicians to make sure building permits were issued and followed up by trained and certified building inspectors to make sure houses and commercial buildings were built to meet construction standards and codes.

Photo of construction workers on a high-rise building
Photo credit: Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

I wanted government employees left alone by the politicians to register the deeds for all real estate transactions within the county.

I wanted professional librarians left alone by the politicians to use their years of training to purchase age-appropriate materials to benefit all citizens.

Photo of a bookcase with a woman's hand reaching up to the books
Photo credit: Guzel Maksutova on Unsplash

I wanted the archivists at the State and National Archives to be left alone by the politicians and trusted to gather and preserve the articles of history for future generations.

I wanted governing licensing boards to be left alone by the politicians so that I could trust that a person with M.D. or R.N after their name had the knowledge and skill to treat me when I am sick or hurt.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians so they can regulate the insurance industry and speak up for a citizen when they believe they have been mistreated by an insurance company.

I wanted medical researches to be left alone by the politicians so they can work tirelessly to find causes and cures for diseases.

Photo of a man looking into a microscope
Photo credit: Lucas Vasques on Unsplash

I wanted university professors to be left alone by the politicians so they can teach from their knowledge of their chosen field without fear that they might say something that offends someone.

I wanted college and university students to be left alone by the politicians so they can take any course they want to take, read any book they want to read, and non-violently protest anything they want to protest without fear of being kicked out of school, arrested, or deported.

Photo of peaceful protestors
Photo by Duncan Shaffer on Unsplash

I wanted public school teachers to be left alone by the politicians so they can teach what their grade-level students need to learn so they can progress through the education system and be free thinkers.

I wanted park rangers to be left alone by the politicians who have absolutely no understanding of or appreciation for the natural world.

I wanted government employees to be left alone by the politicians so they can monitor air quality and prevent us from returning to the smog of the 1950s and 1960s.

Photo of a city enshrouded in smog
Photo by Nick van den Berg on Unsplash

I wanted our system of elections to be left alone by the politicians who are determined to make it more and more difficult for a person to vote… all in the name of preventing voter fraud, when fraud by politicians is a much bigger problem than voter fraud. (Case in point, my current US Representative, Mark Harris, who used to be a Baptist preacher, hired someone to go around marking absentee ballots for people in his 2018 run for the US House. His own son even testified against him. His operative was charged with several counts of obstructing justice and possession of absentee ballots, but he died before the case went to trial. Mr. Harris escaped being criminally charged, brushed the dirt off himself, and successfully ran from NC’s 8th District in 2024. In another case, Mark Meadows, who served as Chief of Staff for Trump in his first administration, claimed a home address in a remote area of the mountains and cast his vote in North Carolina in 2020. The address he gave as his residence was a dilapidated, vacant mobile home which he had probably never laid eyes on.) But somehow, it is the everyday citizens who cannot be trusted to vote.

I wanted the United States to continue the USAID program of distributing food and medical aid to the poorest people in the world.

Photo by Andrej Nihil on Unsplash

I wanted the United States to not only maintain but to strengthen its decades old (and in some cases, centuries old) international alliances.

I wanted to be allowed to be a Presbyterian and not have some right-wing conservative evangelical dogma forced on the public at-large that paints all American Christians with a broadbrush of misinformation.

I wanted the separation of church and state to remain a valued principle. I did not want a Presidential Administration to parade under the guise of being Christian while openly, as well as under the cover of darkness and behind closed doors, attacking everything from science to education to medical research to food safety to immigrants to museums to clean air to the arts to clean water to libraries to national parks to habeas corpus to national forests to the United States Constitution to our very sense of security.

I wanted a United States Government that did not operate through intimidation and threats to individuals, groups of people, and institutions.

I wanted our system of government, though flawed, to continue to generally work for the good of the whole.

Photo credit: Anthony Garand on unsplash.com

I wanted every citizen to have an equal opportunity to follow their dreams and be allowed to live in peace.

I wanted a President who did not embarrass me every time he opened his mouth.

That’s pretty much all I wanted.

I miss that America.

Janet

Why doesn’t the US Congress do something about Trump?

I rarely blog on Saturdays. Of my 755 blog posts, I doubt if more than two or three have been on a Saturday.

This week, I ran out of days. That has happened twice recently, so I’m afraid there is a trend developing.

I had originally planned today’s topic for Thursday, but it got pushed to Friday, and in the wee hours of Monday morning, it got moved to Saturday.

Today’s topic centers around a question I’ve seen a thousand times on social media and comments on my blog since January 20, 2025. I don’t begin to know the answer, but the other day I stumbled upon some information that shines a light on one of the ways the members of Congress who are trying to do something about the Trump Administration are being stopped in their tracks.

Photo Credit: Andra C. Taylor Jr on unsplash.com

Why doesn’t the US Congress do something about Trump?

Many of us are at our wit’s end wondering why the Democrats and Independents in the US Congress aren’t doing more to stop all the destruction being wrought by the Trump Administration.

Today’s blog post focuses on some efforts by Democrats in the US House of Representatives and how those efforts have been thwarted.

I would still like to know why neither the Republicans nor the Democrats in the US Senate have not been able to do anything to stop Trump. It seems to me that people in the US Senate should all have the welfare and preservation of our democracy as a priority, but it appears that few of them do.

The following information somehow got past me on April 29, 2025, but the new media can’t report everything. Or perhaps I was on politics overload that day and just missed it.

There are 435 seats in the US House of Representatives. On April 29, there were 220 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and two vacancies. That’s a slim majority for the Republicans, but it is a majority and means that the Republicans chair every House committee and sub-committee. The system virtually guarantees that the Speak of the House will be of the majority party, which Representative Mike Johnson, of course, is. The Speaker of the House controls what bills can be brought up for a vote, so he holds tremendous power.

A monkey wrench thrown in the system on April 29, 2025

This is complicated and, to my knowledge, was not reported at the time by mainline news organizations.

Under the rules of the US House of Representatives, any legislator may introduce a “resolution of inquiry” for consideration. That inquiry is then referred to a committee. Although the majority party can stall and essentially block a resolution of inquiry from going beyond committee referral, a resolution of inquiry has special dispensation: 

“If the committee to which such a resolution is referred has not reported the measure back to the House within 14 legislative days after its introduction, a privileged and non-debatable motion to discharge the committee of further consideration of the resolution becomes available on the chamber floor.”

In other words, if the committee to which an inquiry resolution has been referred does not report back to the full House within 14 legislative days after its introduction, it can then be introduced to the full House.

However, on April 29, 2025, an interesting and very pointed clause was included at the end of a House Resolution 354: “Each day during the period from April 29, 2025, through September 30, 2025, shall not constitute a legislative day for purposes of clause 7 of rule XIII.”

“What’s the big deal?” you may ask.

It means that none of the resolutions of inquiry put forth by Democrat members of the House will be considered until after September 30, 2025, if then… if ever. (For obvious reasons, no Republicans have put forth any resolutions of inquiry because they don’t want any Trump Administrations shortcomings to be investigated.)

Those resolutions of inquiry pertain to such concerns as the partial shutdown of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, Elon Musk’s possible conflicts of interest as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and the deportation of certain individuals to El Salvador.

Two specific House Resolutions that will now not be considered are H.R. 255 and H.R. 286.

House Resolution 255 calls for President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to turn over all communications regarding the Signal app interchange about US military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen that included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.

House Resolution 286 directs President Trump to share all communications and documents related to DOGE’s use of artificial intelligence to mine federal agency records of “sensitive, personally identifiable information of American citizens.”

So those investigations are dead in the water, thanks to the Republicans in the US House of Representatives. The Republicans in the House have no interest in finding out why the US Secretary of Defense thinks it is acceptable to relay military scheduled bombing details via a less-than-secure social media app.

The Republicans have no interest in delving into Elon Musk’s gathering of American’s personal information in the name of “Government Efficiency,” even though their own personal information has probably been compromised.

And the Republicans in the House have no interest in investigating the “administrative errors” being made in the deportation of people to El Salvador.

The only reason the Republicans don’t want any of these issues to be investigated is that the findings might reflect poorly on Donald Trump. Therein lies the fear those US Representatives live with 24/7. When they assumed office, each of them pledged to defend the US Constitution but when it comes down to it, all they want to defend are Donald Trump and their own reelection prospects.

Ever since the party-system evolved in the US, politicians have connived and created new rules to steer legislation in ways to benefit themselves or to protect the President if he is from their political party. That’s a practice as old as humanity; however, when a democracy is as divided as ours is now in the United States, it seems particularly reckless for the party that has such a slim 220 to 213 majority in the House. (There are currently two vacancies, in case you’re wondering why 220 plus 213 only adds up to 433.)

If there is nothing to hide…

If the Trump Administration has nothing to hide, it seems they would welcome the investigations the Democrats have called for, but that is not to be. Not until after September 30.

The incident in New Jersey on Friday, May 9, 2025

Three Democrat members of the US House of Representatives (Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver, all of New Jersey) visited the Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey on Friday, May 9. Members of Congress have the right to do that.

Also in the group was Ras Baraka, the mayor of the City of Newark, New Jersey.

The government’s side of the story is that Mr. Baraka was told he was trespassing and was asked to leave. He was there to protest the existence of the detention center which was constructed without the government obtaining a building permit.

Photographs show a heavy police response, with all officers wearing masks and sunglasses. Long story short, Mayor Baraka was arrested and held for a few hours.

The video shown on TV shows a lot of pushing and shoving by Homeland Security police officers. On Saturday, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Laura McLaughlin, said the three members of Congress who were involved might be arrested. The investigation is ongoing.

Although this incident happened just a week ago, it seems like a month ago. It has disappeared from the headlines.

It’s as if Oprah is back, “Here’s a plane for you, and a plane for you…

I haven’t heard this mentioned by any of the main TV networks. It has been reported by the Associated Press and The Washington Post that the Department of Homeland Security wants to buy a new $50 million plane for Secretary Kristi Noem, other DHS officials, and top US Coast Guard officials to use.

$50 million here, $50 million there. Pretty soon they’re be talking about a lot of money. Isn’t it nice that the Trump Administration is getting rid of waste in government?

This just seems wrong to me on so many levels. First of all, what’s wrong with flying commercial or traveling by car? Government employees are not supposed to fly around in $50 million private jets. Period.

At least we now know what the Trump Administration meant when they said they were ushering in a “Golden Age.”

But what are the major TV networks reporting?

They are reporting on the Sean Diddy Combs trial, the Menendez brothers parole order, and the Kim Kardasian theft some years ago.

In this age of instant information, it is becoming more difficult for Americans to get any real, substantive, or important news.

I am becoming as worried about the press as I am about our government. When reporters are too distracted by bright shiny objects to inform us about the dismantling of our democracy, we have indeed lost perhaps the most important pillar of our society.

Until my next blog post

As I write this on Friday afternoon, President Trump is on his way home from the Middle East. I’d like to think he is returning to real life after his week of being wined and dined by the oil-rich countries in the Middle East. I fear this week of praise and opulence will only leave him on “a high” that will embolden him to even more frightening words and actions.

I hope you have a book that is so engrossing that you hated to put it down long enough to read my blog!

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

National Cancer Institute Appears to be in Limbo

I wish I had included this in my “Some things we’ve lost, like …” blog post on May 6, 2025.

The National Cancer Institute is one of the 27 components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

A couple of weeks ago, the National Cancer Institute had 28 Scientific Advisors. Today it has none. I copied the following from the National Cancer Institute’s website (National Cancer Institute (NCI) | National Institutes of Health (NIH) on May 7, 2025, because it will probably disappear soon:

“The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the federal government’s principal agency for cancer research and training. Established under the National Cancer Institute Act of 1937, NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of 11 agencies that make up the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

NCI’s mission is to lead, conduct, and support cancer research across the nation to advance scientific knowledge and help all people live longer, healthier lives.

“As the leader of the cancer research enterprise, collectively known as the National Cancer Program, and the largest funder of cancer research in the world, NCI manages a broad range of research, training, and information dissemination activities that reach across the entire country, meeting the needs of all demographics—rich and poor, urban and rural, and all racial/ethnic populations. Specifically, NCI focuses on two broad roles:

“Cancer Research

  • Leads the nation’s research efforts to improve cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, and survivorship
  • Supports 72 NCI-Designated Cancer Centers and more than 5,000 grantees
  • Coordinates and supports all phases of clinical trials across 2,500 clinical trial sites nationwide, seeking the development of new and improved cancer treatments
  • Supports intramural research scientists in our own laboratories and clinics
  • Partners with industry, private philanthropic organizations, other federal agencies, and other national and foreign institutions to engage in cancer research and training opportunities that otherwise might not be possible because of their complexity and cost
  • Collaborates with private-sector life sciences companies to advance promising innovative technologies that fuel improvements in detection, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer
  • Supports the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, the only federally funded research and development center dedicated exclusively to biomedical research
  • Maintains long-term storage of publicly available cancer genomic and clinical data
  • Supports construction of laboratories, clinics, and related facilities for cancer research

“Training and Support for Cancer Researchers

  • Strives to attract, train, and retain the best minds to become the next generation of cancer researchers
  • Provides support to scientists and their institutions to create outstanding environments for researchers to train, conduct basic and clinical research, and care for cancer patients
  • Funds training and career development opportunities across a broad spectrum of cancer research disciplines through training grants, fellowships, research career development awards, and research education grants
  • Supports targeted cancer research training for individuals from backgrounds underrepresented in the biomedical and behavioral sciences to achieve and sustain a diverse workforce
  • Provides comprehensive training programs that support the needs of qualified individuals at all stages of their career development, ranging from middle-school students to independent researchers
  • Offers training opportunities centered in hospitals and research institutions across the nation, in addition to intramural training programs offered at NCI laboratories and offices in Maryland

“As a federal agency, NCI receives its funds from Congress. The bulk of our budget supports extramural grants and cooperative agreements to facilitate research conducted at universities, medical schools, hospitals, cancer centers, research laboratories, and private firms in the United States and abroad. These funds also support intramural research at NCI’s laboratories and offices in Bethesda, Rockville, and Frederick, MD.

“Our investments have led to declines in the rates of new cancer cases and cancer deaths overall in the last few decades in the United States. In line with this improvement, the number of cancer survivors in the United States has more than doubled from 7 million in 1992 to more than 15 million in 2016—and is expected to rise to more than 26 million by 2040. These trends reflect advances in cancer detection, diagnosis, and patient care that have resulted in people living longer, healthier lives than ever before.”

I copied the following paragraph from http://Grants & Funding | National Institutes of Health (NIH): “The National Institutes of Health is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. The NIH invests most of its nearly $48 billion budget in medical research seeking to enhance life and to reduce illness and disability. NIH-funded research has led to breakthroughs and new treatments helping people live longer, healthier lives, and building the research foundation that drives discovery.”

So how does the National Cancer Institute continue that work without any scientific advisors?

After reading online that the National Cancer Institute was looking for candidates to apply for the position of Advisor in Bioinformatics in the Surveillance Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, I copied the following from https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/careers:

“The largest of the institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is a premier research center that offers research, programmatic support, and training opportunities at its laboratories and offices in Maryland. 

“In accordance with the https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/hiring-freeze/ dated January 20, 2025, which is effective immediately, we have been informed that all recruitment activities must cease.”

If you voted for Trump and you did not want this to happen, it is time for you to let President Trump, your two US Senators, and your US Representative know you don’t like this. That power rests with you.

The Trump Administration should be afraid of YOU now. It should be afraid of the people who elected them. Please, please show them that they should be afraid of you!

When you write or call their offices, be sure to tell them you voted for them and you voted for Trump. They need to know that their base is not happy with this decision

If, like me, you didn’t vote for Trump, either of your US Senators, or your US Representative, you should contact them anyway and let them know your displeasure. Just don’t count on hearing back from any of them.

We need a businessman in the White House?

What really irritates me with my public administration background is that we keep being told the government needs to be run like a business. “We need a businessman in the White House.”

If this is the way business works, thank goodness businessmen (of course, they are all men!) weren’t in charge of our government for its first 248 years. If they had been, we wouldn’t have lasted into the 18th century, much less until 2025.

No wonder Trump has bankrupted so many companies. It must take a certain level of business acumen to bankrupt a casino.

Trump’s embarrassing remarks in Qatar

Speaking to US military personnel at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar this week, President Trump mocked France for celebrating the Allied victory in World War II on May 8.

I watched the video. Trump said, “We love France, right. But I think we did a little more to win the war than France did, do we agree?”

How dare he!

He continued, “You know. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But when Hitler made his speech at the Eiffel Tower, I would say that wasn’t exactly ideal.”

Trump went on to repeat a supposed conversation he had with French President Emmanuel Macron, mimicking Macron’s voice.

Trump said, “Russia was celebrating, France was celebrating, everybody was celebrating but us. And we’re the ones that won the war. We won the war.”

Someone needs to remind Trump that it was European countries like France that were bombed and occupied by German troops.

Someone needs to remind Trump that it was a joint effort by Allied troops from many countries that won the war. The United States of America did not single-handedly win World War II!

This was a pathetic show of ignorance of history by President Trump in front of a captive audience of American troops.

Until my next blog post

I sincerely hope you have a good novel to read. I hope you are not in the doldrums like I’ve been in since Inauguration Day, unable to enjoy a novel.

But I do hope you are disgusted with how our country is being run.

Support small local businesses and restaurants. They need your business.

Support your local public library system! They are always operating under tight budget restraints. If you don’t darken the door or ever check out a book, music CD, or other resource, it makes it difficult for them to justify their very existence. It makes it difficult for them to justify their budget requests for the next fiscal year. Did you not know that?

In North Carolina, at least, local governments’ fiscal years begin on July 1. May and June are when county commissions are studying budget requests and deciding where to make cuts. Public libraries are often a target of those cuts. This is a critical time to let your local elected officials know that libraries are important. Sadly, many of them never use a public library and are ignorant of the resources they hold.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

More Trump Administration Shenanigans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another bit of encouragement

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet

The New American Dream?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Administration considers suspending habeas corpus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What has America become?

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

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

Miscellaneous news from the Trump Administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice of America Update

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

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

Another glimmer of hope

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

Until my next blog post

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

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet