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

Abrego Garcia, Student Visas, DOJ Weaponization, & What Else Happened This Week

As we near the end of another week of governmental and stock market chaos, today I’m writing about various things happening in the United States. As I finished drafting this blog post at 7:45 last night, I hoped we would have an uneventful news evening so I wouldn’t have to edit it.

We didn’t. I could have added to it, but I chose not to. It will be published at 5:00 a.m. on April 10 without any more additions or edits. I’m sorry it is 2,400 words long. Keeping up with what the Trump Administration is doing is now a full-time job and it is exhausting.

President Trump wants $92 million four-mile long military parade from the Pentagon to the White House on his 79th birthday on June 14. It just happens to also be the 250th anniversary of the US Army and Flag Day, but we all know the real reason for the parade. He begged for one during his first term until people who had some sense told him the city streets of Washington, DC would buckle under the weight of missile launchers and such. He really, really wanted a military parade like they have in Beijing. I don’t know what will happen when he finds out his birthday falls on a Saturday this year. He’s usually in Florida playing golf every Saturday.

How many little blunders will the Executive Branch make before they get their act together? On April 3, Ukrainians who have sought legal safety here during the war in their homeland were told by the US Department of Homeland Security that they had seven days to get out of the United States. The next day they received emails telling them to disregard the earlier notice. Can you imagine the anguish they experienced overnight thinking they had to return to a war zone this week?

In US Senate hearings for her nomination to be US Attorney General, Pam Bondi firmly answered, “No, Senator, not unless they change the Constitution” when asked if President Trump could run for a third term; however, Forbes quoted her as saying in a Fox News interview on April 5, 2025, “We’d have to look at the Constitution” and “it would be a “heavy lift.” I’m not a Constitutional scholar and I know it is possible to repeal an Amendment (i.e. 18th Amendment about prohibition), but it seems clear to me…

Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, was fired last weekend. She is at least the ninth senior US military officer to be fired by the Trump Administration, four of them being women.

After slashing National Park Service personnel numbers, Secretary of the US Interior Department Doug Burgum has ordered all national parks to remain open regardless of severe staffing shortages this summer. That’s good news for those of us hoping to visit a national park this summer and support small businesses outside the park that have had a horrible time getting back on their feet since Hurricane Helene, but not such good news for the remaining park rangers and support personnel.

With promises of selling off the timber in our national parks, I don’t know what will be left of any of them if Trump clear cuts them. Maybe he won’t, but there is no one stepping up so far to stop him. Would someone please tell him that the lumber from the northern forests in Canada is stronger wood and less likely to warp than our pine trees? That’s why we buy lumber for construction from Canada. It takes the fir trees in Canada longer to grow than in most of the US. The slower a tree grows, the stronger the wood.

And would someone please tell him how many decades it takes to grow a pine tree or a hardwood tree? He probably doesn’t know, but the worst part is that he doesn’t care. He only sees dollars signs when he sees a tree. I feel sorry for people who have no sense of a forest’s true worth. It’s not measured in dollars.

Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, was awarded a $5.92 billion contract by the Pentagon to conduct Space Force rocket launches. No conflict of interest there!

Yesterday afternoon, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer learned about the 90-day pause in all tariffs except those against China while he was appearing before a Congressional committee. In other words, while he was on Capitol Hill to explain his president’s tariff policies, he learned about Trump’s about-face at the same time the rest of us did.

Anyone who agreed to work for Trump should have known from history, though, exactly what level of chaos they were signing up for. All they needed to do was see how he went through top officials during his first term. To work for Trump is to have your desk anchored to a revolving door.

The National Weather Service (NWS) will no longer provide any weather alerts in any language other than English although nearly 68 million people living in the US speak a language other than English in their homes. Of course, with so many firings in the NWS, extreme weather alerts will probably soon be a thing of the past. Who needs tornado warnings anyway?

The president now takes his human resources advice from Linda Loomer, a conspiracy theorist who says the attack on the US on September 11, 2001, was “an inside job.” After a meeting with Loomer, Trump fired two top national security advisors because they weren’t loyal enough to him. He said she didn’t tell him who to fire – she just told him who to hire.

US Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he might cut US military personnel by 90,000 because we’re turning our attention to Asia and away from Europe and we’ll rely more on technology than people in uniform.

Trump talked again about Gaza on Monday, calling it “real estate,” and casually saying “we’re” going to “own it” and the Palestinians will just be moved into other countries… other countries that are going to welcome them. Does that sound like a good plan to anybody? Just shove the people around like you’re playing chess but, if you were playing chess, you would give more thought to your moves. In Trump’s eyes, these aren’t human beings. Plain and simple.

What kind of person refers to part of another State (in this case, part of the State of Palestine) as “real estate” as if it is a parcel of land that’s for sale on the open market? Only a person who is up to no good and only looking out for himself.

In the midst of the stock market jumping all over the place and retirees seeing the value of their 401K accounts being jerked around yesterday, it was reassuring that President Trump was signing an Executive Order that removed limitation on water pressure from shower heads and household appliances. We each have priorities.

Trump saw on Monday how the stock market reacted from a rumor that he was going to lift tariffs. The market shot up for a few minutes until the Trump Administration denied that tariffs were going to be paused. On Tuesday he said a tariff pause was not being considered. Wednesday morning, he got on social media and told people to buy stock, but not just any stock. He ended his advice with “DJT.” He never does that. Those are his initials, but “DJT” is also the ticker symbol or stock symbol for his Trump Media & Technology Group Corporation. That stock opened at $15.52 per share Wednesday morning. A few hours later Trump suddenly paused all the tariffs except the 125% tariff on goods from China. DJT closed at $20.27.

On Tuesday, Trump said, “We’re making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day, do you believe it? I was told $2 billion a day.” Who told him that? Probably one of his “yes men.”

As this week progressed, Trump has played with tariffs like a yo-yo. No one knows from one hour to the next where any of the tariffs stand. It’s just a game for him to play and he delights in the power he has. Americans and everyone around the world are left not being able to trust the President of the United States. There is no credibility. There is nothing to trust. There is nothing to rely on.

Irreparable damage has been done to America’s standing in the world.

As I write this at 3:15 (ET) on Wednesday afternoon, April 9, Trump is taking questions from reporters on live TV. His responses to questions go seamlessly from tariffs to gangs cutting off the fingers of people who call the police to Liberation Day to the various geniuses who work in his Administration to Joe Biden’s incompetence to other countries sending us their prisoners to the “good old days” when Trump was young and already thinking about tariffs to the need for flexibility to walls to NASCAR and Indy race “champions” to China ripping us off to people “getting yippy”….

We’re left to wonder if the people “getting yippy” are the same people he called “panicans” earlier in the week. My dictionary is inadequate.

Trump’s press conferences and speeches are “word salads” (Trump calls it “weaving”) of endless incomplete sentences and nonsensical trains of thought in which no rail car is connected to another rail car and there is no locomotive leading the way. No one knows where the train is going or why it left the station.

Update on Abrego Garcia

On April 4, a district court judge gave the Trump Administration until 11:59 p.m., Monday, April 7 to return Abrego Garcia to the US after he was mistakenly shipped off to a prison in El Salvador. Trump was so concerned about this “administrative error” that he had to fly to Florida and play golf to deal with his stress. (Forgive my sarcasm.)

The White House line maintains that Mr. Garcia is now in the custody of El Salvador and the US must honor that diplomatic principle. That seems like a lame excuse to me while at the same time Trump is literally threatening to take Greenland away from Denmark by force if he has to. Where is the diplomacy?

On April 5, the immigration lawyer fighting for Mr. Garcia was fired by Attorney General Pam Bondi because he wasn’t toeing the Trump line. In other words, he argued that there was a court order allowing Mr. Garcia to stay in the United States and he should not have been deported to a prison in El Salvador.

Later Monday afternoon, April 7, the US Supreme Court “paused” the Monday night deadline so they could take more time to consider the case.

As far as I have been able to find, that’s where Mr. Garcia’s case sits. Why does everything have to get so complicated? He was sent to El Salvador in error, and he should be returned to his wife and son in Maryland.

Trump’s Treatment of Universities & Student Visas

Add Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern to the list of universities being threatened with loss of funds if they don’t cease the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio bragged that he had revoked the student visa for 300 international students in the United States. He said they were “lunatics” and that they had come to our country under false pretenses. He said they planned to do us harm. We were led to believe it was because 300 specific international students had either broken US law or posed a threat to US security

Now, we’re learning that student visas are being revoked to punish the governments of their home countries. How sad is that? How cruel to the students! For the most part, these young people have excelled in their studies and wanted the opportunity to pursue university degrees from some of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the world.

I’m beginning to wonder about the numbers. At least six visas have been revoked from students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, at least two from North Carolina State University at Raleigh, at least six from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and two Duke University graduate student and an alumnus on Optional Practical Training.

That’s 17 revoked student visas at just four universities in North Carolina. Why would six percent of the 300 revoked student visas target four campuses in North Carolina? Or is the total more than 300?

Weaponization of the US Justice Department

Late yesterday afternoon, Trump ordered the US Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Investigate them for what? For using words? For having the audacity of thinking they had freedom to criticize the US President under the First Amendment to the US Constitution?

Chris Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the first Trump Administration. Trump is accusing Krebs of being part of an effort to steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden just because Krebs repeatedly said he could find no evidence of election fraud.

Miles Taylor was chief-of-staff at the US Department of Homeland Security when he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the resistance he was witnessing within Trump’s first term as President. Taylor wrote that op-ed anonymously but later revealed in 2020 that he had written it. He had resigned from the Trump Administration the year before. He has written two books and has a podcast, “The Whistleblowers.” Trump is accusing Taylor of treason.

What will US Attorney General Pam Bondi do with this order? In her hearings before Congress, she said in no uncertain terms that she would not weaponize the Justice Department against Trump’s political enemies.

Two months in, what will Pam Bondi do? Will she stick by her words or will she make a farce out of her earlier words? Will she cave in to Trump’s rein of tyranny? What will the US Congress do?

What we have here is a Constitutional Crisis. It’s time for members of the US Congress and the American people to stop looking the other way. Stop thinking or saying anything about this is normal.

Who is Trump’s next target?

Until my next blog post

I apologize if I didn’t catch all my typos.

My planned blog post for tomorrow is an open letter to Trump supporters, but you’re welcome to read it, too.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Keep paying attention.

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

Janet

Too Busy Playing Golf and Banning Books

I look back fondly on “the good old days” when I wrote a weekly blog. I hoped to limit myself to just two posts this week, but things quickly got out of hand.

In case you’ve missed a post, this week I’ve blogged about the three books I read last month, and Harriet Tubman and slavery being temporarily scrubbed from the “Underground Railroad” webpage of the National Park Service. Some 130,000 government webpages have gone dark since January 20, 2025. Sort of a digital book burning, don’t you think?

Tomorrow’s blog post will be about a variety of things going on in the Trump Administration along with an update on the status of Mr. Abrego Garcia. On Friday I plan an open letter to Trump supporters.

Last week, the No Dollars for Dictators Act before the US Senate got almost no attention. That and the hypocrisy of the Party of Family Values (i.e., Republican Party) in the US House of Representatives begged for a blog post. Those are the two items I started with for today’s post, but it grew in direct proportion to the news coming out of Washington. In fact, I’ve split it between today and tomorrow.

Today’s post underwent a lot of additions and editing. I hope I caught all my typos and grammatical errors.

What’s going on?

We’ve all been distracted by wildfires, tornadoes, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, tariffs, massive federal employee firings, and massive layoffs in the automobile and related industries. It’s impossible to catch all the news, so in my blog today and tomorrow I will mention a few that I have heard or read about.

The massive tariffs on 185 countries took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, April 3 and by Friday afternoon, April 4 the President was on his way to a four-day golf weekend in Florida where he miraculously won his own tournament. (You know how you have to let a toddler win a game so they won’t cry? Just sayin’.)

His golf game prevented his being able to go to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday to accept the bodies of the four US soldiers from Camp Stewart, Georgia, who died in Lithuania. We all have our priorities. Thank you, Lithuania, for the respectful ceremony you had to send the soldiers’ bodies home. That’s the way dead soldiers should be honored.

On March 26, Trump called himself “the fertilization president” (which was beyond creepy!) but on April 2 he cut all the funding for the Department of Health and Human Resources office that monitors the success rates at the in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics across the nation. Patients considering IVF used to find such information helpful in selecting a clinic… back in the day… you know, back in March, 2025.

We’re left to wonder if Trump (a) was just saying what his audience wanted to hear on March 26, or (b) he still doesn’t know what IVF is, or (c) he already knew the office was going to be shut down a week later, or (d) he didn’t and still doesn’t care. Based on his track record, my hunch is that all those scenarios are true.

The US eventually sent three people to Myanmar to help with earthquake recovery. They worked for a company under contract with the government. They’ve already been fired and the contract cancelled.

And the little bit of food aid the US State Department originally said they would keep giving after USAID was trashed? They’ve already pulled the plug on that.

On Air Force on this past Sunday, Trump was asked about sending US-born prisoners to prisons in other countries. He told reporters that he is open to the idea. In fact, he said, “I love that.” He also said that the tariffs were “going very well.” It makes you wonder where he gets his information. Perhaps from all the “yes men” who surrounded him.

The Harriet Tubman/Underground Railroad webpage I wrote about yesterday has been restored, but most of the 130,000 government web pages that have gone dark under the Trump Administration have not been restored, and there’s no reason to think they will be. This amounts to a digital book burning.

The Defense Department removed the Holocaust remembrance pages from its website in the name of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” History is being erased before our very eyes, folks.

Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and books about the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights, and racism were among 381 titles removed from the Nimitz Library at the  U.S. Naval Academy last week.

A few of the other books on the list:

  • Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Eric Michael Dyson
  • The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, by Scott E. Page
  • No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing for Social Justice, by Karen L. Cox
  • Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, by Wil Havgood
  • How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi

I read No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing for Social Justice, by Karen L. Cox in July 2021 an wrote about it in my August 2, 2021, blog post, 2 Books about Racial Injustice. I was literally reading the book as a statue of Robert E. Lee sitting on his horse, Traveler, was being taken down in Richmond, Virginia, so it was a hot topic.

In No Common Ground, Dr.Karen L. Cox writes about the history of the Confederate statues, and I came to understand that they weren’t erected to honor the Confederate soldiers and officers as much as they were built out of a place of hate. Please take time to read my takeaways from reading the book four years ago.

The author, Karen L. Cox, is a professor emerita of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where she taught from 2002 until 2024. She is currently writing a book about the Great Migration, the Black press, and early Chicago jazz through the tragic Rhythm Club fire, which took the lives of more than 200 African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi in 1940. It will probably be banned by the Trump Administration, too.

I listened to How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi in June 2020 and wrote about in in my July 20, 2020 blog post, Three Books Read in June 2020. I invite you to read that blog post. I started my comments saying, “There are many eye-opening things to take from Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be An Antiracist, but the most important lesson I learned from reading it is the difference being “not racist” and “antiracist.” I’ve been guilty of saying, “I’m not a racist.” It’s possible I’ve even said, although I hope I haven’t, “I’m not a racist, but….” “But” says, “Oh yes you are!”

In the words of Mr. Kendi in his book, “What’s the problem with being ‘not racist?’ It is a claim that signifies neutrality…. The opposite of racist isn’t not racist it is antiracist.”

I’ve read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, and I thought I’d read Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, by Eric Michael Dyson. I haven’t found Mr. Dyson’s book on my list of books read or in my old blog posts, so maybe I meant to read it but never got around to it.

The US Naval Academy is essentially the midshipmen’s university, so what university would ban books? The Trump Administration has a basic lack of understanding of the purpose of higher education. Midshipmen should have easy access to any book they want to read! After all, they are 18 to 22 years old and can make their own decisions about many things, including which books to read.

I cannot understand why anyone thinks books should be banned from the Nimitz Library.

To my Republican friends and relatives who voted for Trump, “Is this what you thought you were voting for?”

I sincerely hope this level of cruelty isn’t what you wanted. If it is, I had no idea how miserable your life was.

The No Dollars for Dictators Act

As the stock market continued to be in free fall due to the tariff announcement, the US Senate had important business to tend to: “The No Dollars for Dictators Act.” It was introduced by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) and co-sponsored by Senators Rick Scott (R-FL), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Jim Justice (R-WV), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

Senator Scott was quoted as saying, “The No Dollars for Dictators Act will protect U.S. tax dollars from fueling the evils of dictators or terrorists who seek to destroy our way of life.” It wasn’t voted on.

Supposedly aimed at China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Syria, it begs the question, “Why isn’t Donald Trump’s name on that list?” He’s doing more to “destroy our way of life” than any of the countries on the list.

Just wondering….

A Proposal to Allow New Parents to Vote by Proxy in the US House

And while we’re talking about the US Congress… As of April 1, we know that it was quite all right for old white men in the US House of Representatives to vote in absentia during the Covid-19 pandemic, but female members of the House cannot vote in absentia the day after they’ve had a baby.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson suddenly sent the House members home on April 1 to block a vote that would allow US Representatives (male or female) to vote by proxy for up to three months after the birth of a child.

The House did not meet for the rest of the week because Johnson was afraid the bill might be brought to a vote.

A strange compromise has been reached between Johnson and Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who was pushing for the right to vote by proxy. Luna announced the compromise on Sunday, April 6.

This is how CBS News reported the “deal” reached by the two: “a deal to use vote pairing – an agreement between an absent member and a member who is physically present and plans to vote on the opposite side of the question, effectively canceling out the vote. The present member casts their vote, then withdraws it and announces that they have paired with the absent member. The vote is not included in the vote total, but their positions are published in the Congressional Record.”

WHAT?

It sounds to me like not only does the new parent’s vote now not count, but a Representative on the opposite side of an issue must also, in effect, forfeit their vote. Having their positions recorded in the Congressional Record means very little. Every word uttered on the floor of Congress is recorded and published daily in the Congressional Record, but no one reads it.

Am I missing something? This sounds convoluted to me and the end result is that the new parent essentially still doesn’t get to vote. And the wording is troubling. The new parent has to find someone who “plans” to vote in the opposite way. It sounds like they aren’t bound by their “plans.”

What about the logistics? What if that new parent is in labor or their spouse is in labor?. That time isn’t conducive for the Representative or the spouse to be calling around to find a Representative on the opposite side of the issue who is amenable to forfeiting their vote.

Surely, this could have been handled better! Let’s be honest. All that was wanted was for a nursing mother to be able to cast her vote from home instead of bringing her infant with her to the floor of Congress so she could cast a vote. That’s really what this boils down to, but most of the men in Congress would rather that she just stay home and keep her mouth shut. They don’t want her in Congress. Period.

Mid-Term Elections Reminder

Here’s a reminder for US Representatives and voters:  Mid-term elections are scheduled for November 3, 2026, and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs!

Some voters are paying attention. Many members of Congress and some members of the media like to say that only people “who live inside the Beltway” around Washington, DC ever pay attention or care what’s happening there. They might be surprised 19 months from now just how much we have seen, heard, and remember.

Millions of Americans took to the streets in non-violent protests on April 5. There is a ray of hope!

Until my next blog post tomorrow

I hope you have a good book to read.

Pay attention.

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

Janet

They’ve gone too far, Harriet Tubman!

NOTE: At 2 a.m., just three hours before this blog post was scheduled to be published, I learned that the Harriet Tubman/Underground Railroad webpage on the National Park Service website had been restored! Rather than cancel today’s blog post, I will go forward with it because the only thing that has changed is that for whatever reason that one webpage has been restored.

Nothing else has changed, though. The Trump Administration continues to recklessly… and intentionally… try to erase and destroy American history and democracy. Whether they justify it under the guise of getting rid of “waste and fraud” or eliminating “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” it is all part of this sham racist and misogynist Administration.

What has taken place regarding Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad since January 20, 2025, is a prime example of the incompetence and insidious hate held by members of the Trump Administration.

It offends me when I hear people say that all government employees are corrupt and incompetent. That is the mantra of the Trump Administration. Trump and the people in his inner circle despise federal employees. They are perfectly happy to collect government paychecks and benefits, but no one else working in the government deserves anything but ridicule. Think about that for a minute.

If you want to see corruption and incompetence, you need look no further than the Trump Administration. It is made up entirely of businessmen. Businessmen are never corrupt or incompetent, are they? But evidence to the contrary lies in the fact that almost on a daily basis since January 20 this Administration has made an announcement then had to retract it, has fired federal employees and then had to try to re-hire them, has erased information from a website and then had to restore it. Not to mention high level national security people conducting business on a less-than-secure app, first denying it, then halfway owning up to it, then proclaiming it was no big thing.

The Administration’s total disregard for truth, transparency, and the rule of law and never taking responsibility for mistakes is on display daily for all to see.

It astounds me how the businessmen who are running the federal government have a total lack of knowledge of what government’s purpose is. They only think in terms of profit and loss, but that’s not what government is about. Government is about serving the people, and that’s why Trump and the people in his Administration have it all wrong. Serving the people is a foreign term for them. They only think in terms of making money from the people, and running over anyone who gets in their way. What a pathetic way to see the world!

They delight in firing employees willy-nilly. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. They don’t consider what anyone’s job is. They don’t consider anyone’s expertise. They just conduct wholesale firings.

Hours or days later, when someone has the courage to point out to them that some of those employees helped planes land safely, or some of them were conducting research into cancer treatments or possible cures, or some of them risk their lives to fight wildfires… then a handful of them might be re-hired. That is, if they can locate them, because in the name of anti-waste, anti-fraud, anti-diversity, anti-equity, and anti-inclusion, they erased all the fired employees’ contact information.

I guess that’s the business mentality. After all, more than one person said to me before Trump ran for office the first time, “We need a businessman in the White House.” And that’s supposedly what we got.

What follows is my original blog post scheduled for April 8, 2025:

Until around 9:30 Sunday night, I planned not to blog again about politics until Thursday. That’s when I learned that sometime between January 21 and March 19, 2025, the National Park Service removed all references to Harriett Tubman from its “Underground Railroad” webpage.

Yes, THAT Harriet Tubman! The Harriet Tubman who was the most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad.

That’s the Harriet Tubman whose image appeared on a 13-cent first-class postage stamp in the United States in 1978. If you weren’t born until the 1990s, you probably can’t truly appreciate how difficult it was to get the United States to honor a non-white person on a postage stamp. She was the first woman of color (almost any color!) whose image was chosen for a US postage stamp. (Here’s a list of them, if you are interested in digging deeper into that aspect of American history: https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/african-american-stamp-subjects.htm.)

If you don’t know what the Underground Railroad was, please look it up somewhere while you still can. It was not an actual railroad, but it operated like one in many ways except in secret.

Apparently, the “Underground Railroad” webpage’s lead story until the Trump Administration decided to erase all history except that of white men!

Not only did they remove Harriet Tubman and her photograph, they removed references to “enslaved” people and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Harriet Tubman, enslaved people, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 have been replaced on the webpage with… and you aren’t going to believe this… or I guess you will if you are a person of color or a female… “Black/White Cooperation.”

The webpage used to (until a matter of weeks ago) open with FACTS about slavery, how slaves struggled to gain their freedom, how the Underground Railroad came about after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Now, the page’s first two paragraphs emphasize “American ideals of liberty and freedom” and slavery isn’t mentioned.

There is a separate National Park Service webpage dedicated to Harriet Tubman. It has not been removed… yet.

The name “Harriet Tubman” is was synonymous with “Underground Railroad.” Her name will continue to be synonymous with the Underground Railroad until her name is wiped from the entire internet and all books about her or the Underground Railroad are destroyed… and after that, her name will still be whispered and kept alive through oral history.

The Trump Administration has also targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum for having exhibits and using language he doesn’t like… or someone has told him he shouldn’t like. After all, we all know what a limited vocabulary he has.

The Administration continues to threaten universities, libraries, museums under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), but if Trump and his minions were truthful they would just admit that they are racists, bigots, and mysogenists. We all know, though, the truth is not in them. They are small, fearful, hateful bullies.

I believe God is weeping. He gave us freewill, but it must grieve him to see what so many Americans have done with that freedom and responsibility.

In case you can’t see the forest for the trees…

Before you jump on me for making a mountain out of mole hill… for getting all bent out of shape over “just” the removal of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and slavery from a US Government webpage, I’m worried about the big picture. Yes, I’m upset over those specific things being scrubbed from a government webpage, but I’m more concerned over what this portends.

I’m 72 years old and I NEVER thought the United States Government would erase our history. It has taken hundreds of years for indigenous peoples and Americans of African descent to get their stories – their history – in the history books. All that progress is under siege and threatened today.

Where do we go from here?

It falls on each of us to learn as much history as we can… while we still can… and commit it to memory so we can tell future generations the truth.

It falls on us to protest any way we can. It you are fortunate enough to be represented on any level of government by someone not affiliated with the Republican Party, call them, write them, encourage them, support them in their efforts to stop this madness.

If you are represented by Republican politicians, your have your work cut out for you. They have been advised not to hold town hall meetings. I know from experience that when you write them (letters or email) if you get a response it might not be on the topic you wrote them about.

The response you receive will quickly descend into a regurgitation of the usual Republican talking points singing the praises of Trump and how we all need to just be patient because great wealth is going to come to each of us and it is coming quickly.

On the other hand, we’re told it might take years for us to realize that prosperity because it took decades of our allies taking advantage of us to get us in the dire economic situation we were put in by the Democrats.

In other words, if we live long enough, this great American nightmare might end.

Make a sign and join a non-violent protest. Respond to hecklers with “Bless your heart!”

We must follow the example set by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and protest peacefully. Only the other side storms Capitol buildings and attacks police officers.

If need be, we can protest and wait patiently to vote in the mid-term election on November 3, 2026, when every one of the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives will be up for election and 33 US Senate seats will be up for election.

One thing I hope to live to hear

I hope to live long enough to hear a sane future US President speak the words that President Gerald Ford uttered to the nation after President Nixon was forced to leave the White House in shame: 

“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy. As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.” ~ newly-sworn in US President Gerald R. Ford, nationally televised from the East Room of the White House on August 9, 1974.

I heard President Ford say those words, and I desperately want to hear a future US President say them, substituting “the Trump Administration” for “Watergate.”

Until my next blog post, probably tomorrow

I hope you have a book or something to give you a few minutes respite from what’s happening.

Janet

Books I Read in March 2025, & Hurricane Helene Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Big Happy Family, by Lisa Rogak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurricane Helene Update

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Chandler Cruttenden on Unsplash

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

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

Savor your memories of and time with friends and family.

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

Janet

Authoritarianism does not happen overnight. It happens over 74 days.

In my March 24, 2025, blog post I said “no one wants to read a 3,000-word blog post.” I hope I was wrong, because today’s weighs in at 3,096 words, if you don’t count the words on the memes I created.

I’ve written more than 10,000 words in my four blog posts this week. If I could have added 10,000 words to my historical novel manuscript this week, I would be on Cloud 9 and much closer to publication than I am today. I didn’t work on my novel at all.

Unfortunately, I have “bigger fish to fry” now than completing my novel or my historical short stories. My country is in dire danger from within.

If you disagree with me or don’t know what I’m talking about, you are not paying attention.

My blog post today might make you mad and I hope it does!

The actions and inactions of the Trump Administration delineated below are just “off the top of my head.” It might look like I’ve been keeping a list since Inauguration Day, but I have not.

The most frightening part of this is that there are, no doubt, literally thousands of actions being carried out in locked-up government offices, museums, and libraries all over our country that I haven’t heard about… that have not been leaked out… that reputable news organizations have not been privy to or uncovered yet… that our President does not want us to know.

What has happened since Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025… in no particular order

A word here. A word there. A government agency here. A government agency there. Lies repeated ad nauseam.

Muzzle public television by cancelling their funding. Muzzle radio and television stations by reminding them that you can take away their broadcast licenses. “Plant” people in a press conference to ask ridiculous and programmed questions while banning certain reputable news organization such as the Associated Press from the room. My “favorite” so far was the “plant” who asked you on March 28, 2025, “What is a woman?” Your response made me want to vomit.

Your US Department of Agriculture orders 21 tractor-trailer trucks hauling nearly $1 million worth of food (more than 377,000 pounds) to turn around and not deliver the food to Tennessee food banks. The same thing happened in Ohio. How many other states? A US President has to be a certain level of evil to prefer to let tons of food rot than to be delivered to food banks for distribution to people who need that food to supplement what they’re struggling to pay for at the supermarket or corner store. Mr. Trump, you’ve not only never missed a meal, you’ve never had to give a thought to how to pay for the food you have eaten every single day of your life! You are literally taking food out of the mouths of children and old people in the name of “Make America Great Again.”

You shut down Voice of America. It was silenced for the first time in 83 years. It was broadcasting in 49 languages across the world – in accordance with Congressional funding — so people could hear the news in their own language and compare it to the propaganda their own governments were telling them. You claimed that Voice of America was “horrible.” You criticized it for reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic and for quoting people who disagree with you. Voice of America was also broadcasting what you were saying, Mr. Trump. It was telling people living under repressive regimes that in America it was okay to criticize the government. Oh… since it’s no longer okay to criticize the US President, I guess that message is no longer something we should brag about.

Ignore court orders day after day. Go after any judge, law firm, or attorney who dares to make a ruling or file a law suit not to your liking. Then have the Speaker of the US House of Representatives float the idea that US courts can be defunded and, therefore, shut down.

Put a host of incompetent people on your Cabinet, then fire thousands of government employees without regard to merit or risk to public health or safety.

Pardon 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, chanted “Hang Mike Pence” broke windows, assaulted police officers, defecated on the floors and walls, broke into and trashed offices, and tried to prevent the certification of the November 5, 2020 Presidential Election results. Say they were “treated unfairly” and call them “patriots.” Say they were just a bunch of grandmothers touring the Capitol.

Grant clemency to people like Jason Galanis – you know, the guy who was sentenced to 14 years and five months in prison back in August 2017 for his role in a bond scheme that defrauded the Oglala Sioux tribe and pension fund investors out of tens of millions of dollars. Such notices of clemency take place in quiet, so how many have taken place since January 20th?

Shut down the United States Agency for International Development, which was the bastion of goodwill for us throughout the poorest parts of the world. Turn the US Departments of State and Defense into bully pulpits to intimidate and threaten our long-time allies.

Declare an invasion when there wasn’t one. Invoke war powers in a time of peace. Imprison peaceful protest organizers on university campuses. Turn professors and medical researchers away at the border.

Pay El Salvador millions of dollars to take your prisoners without due process. Some are dangerous gang members, but some… well, we just don’t like what they look like or their accent. Even when your spokesperson admits at least one of them (that father from Maryland) was sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error” you claim there is no way to bring him back to the US? Until January 20th, we were the most powerful country in the world, but ten weeks later we can’t ask El Salvador to release someone from prison? You paid El Salvador to imprison these people. We don’t have to ask for any of our money back, Mr. President. Just ask for the prisoners we sent down there who aren’t guilty of any crimes and are not members of a gang to be released. The next plane load of gang members and collateral damage you send down there should be able to bring back the ones you shouldn’t have sent there. If you don’t have a phone, I believe your Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense have cell phones and know how to text on Signal.

Arrest university students from other countries whether or not they participated in a protest against the genocide taking place in Gaza. Hurrah for the Columbia University students who chained themselves to locked campus gates on Wednesday to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil! You renew my faith in today’s college students! The US Constitution protects the freedom of speech of everyone here – citizen or foreign student. Why were two students at North Carolina State University at Raleigh sent packing because Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled 300 student visas? One of them was a fourth-year chemical engineering student from Saudi Arabia who had never participated in a protest or written anything on social media or otherwise apparently said anything against Trump or the US Government. He has to complete his degree online from Saudi Arabia. I want to know what about that will “Make America Great Again” or anything else other than ensure that America will be hated by other countries.

Tell citizens the words they cannot put in writing or on government websites. Then tell them they cannot talk about things that are being discussed in Congress or on certain news networks. We’ve learned about 373 words, word combinations, and topics just this week.

Send masked ICE agents out in unmarked vans without identification or warrants to kidnap people walking their children home from school and take them away to who knows where. And at North Harbor Dairy in Hounsfield, New York, a third grader, a 10th grader, and an 11th grader were kidnapped by ICE agents in the same manner on March 24, 2025. There is speculation that they were taken to a detention center in Texas. Is this how you’re “making America great again” or “making America rich again” or “making America safe again” or “making America healthy again.” Call me dense, but I’m having trouble figuring out what kidnapping/arresting third graders is supposed to do for the United States. Instead of ICE making me feel safe, they are scaring the heck out of me!

Go after the National Park Service and world-renowned museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and tell them what they can and cannot exhibit.

Blackmail universities into caving to your racist whims in order to not lose federal grants. It seems you have a total lack of understanding of what a university is supposed to be. First, Columbia University. Now, it’s Harvard and Princeton under scrutiny. If professors, students, and researchers flee to other countries, it’s no skin off your teeth. After all, you told us years ago that you “love the uneducated.”

Appoint yourself as Chair of the Board of Directors of a beautiful facility such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and dictate from the Oval Office which artists should and should not be allowed to perform. You say it’s in bad shape. Please don’t tacky it up like you have the Oval Office!

Pick fights with long-established allies. Threaten to take other countries by saying you will use “any means necessary” to get control of them. (Sounds sort of like Russia invading Ukraine, doesn’t it?)

Tell the American people that they will not pay higher prices for goods and materials due to tariffs because the tariffed countries will pay the bill. (Does “Mexico will pay for the wall” ring any bells?)

Call Americans who attend town hall meetings held by the few members of Congress who are brave enough to face voters “paid troublemakers.” You simply cannot imagine that a citizen of the United States would do ANYTHING without being paid! On a basic level, that’s related to your comment about the soldiers who gave their lives fighting the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. You asked, “What was in it for them?” You were incredulous!

Have the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, launch an investigation into ABC (the American Broadcasting Company) and its parent company, Disney, because you think they’ve hired too many minorities and women? Or perhaps you’re mad because Disney is making children’s movies that feature princesses of color? (Carr wrote, “While Disney started as an iconic American company, it recently went all in on DEI.”)

Post on your Truth Social account on March 28, 2025: “People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”

Excuse your Cabinet members and top security advisors for taking part in a text exchange about the impending bombing of the Houthis in Yelen on a less-than-secure app (Signal) while reminding us that Hillary Clinton used an insecure server for some of her emails as Secretary of State. Now we learn that Michael Waltz, national security adviser to the White House, and staff members were using gmail? If Hillary was wrong, why aren’t your people wrong?

While we were distracted by “Signalgate,” there was also another breakdown in security. Two spreadsheets detailing work down by the US State Department and USAID were sent to Congress and leaked online. This put workers operating under repressive regimes at danger after they had been assured their work and identities would be protected.

And you remained silent while First Buddy, Elon Musk – who is maybe in charge of the not-authorized-by-Congress Department of Government Efficiency, or maybe he’s not… no one seems to know – offered to pay two voters in Wisconsin $1 million each for signing an online petition promising to vote a certain way in the April 1, 2025, election of a hotly-contested State Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. After the public started raising illegality issues, Musk took down his original online offer and posted different wording to make it sound not-quite-so-illegal. I’m sure votes have been bought before in the United States, but I don’t recall that it was publicly advertised in advance like Musk did this time. To announce such payments out loud for all to hear is a new low in American politics. He seems to work for you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him not to pay voters? Or were you enjoying another $3.2 million weekend at Mar-a-Lago at taxpayers’ expense and didn’t hear about it? A judge tried to stop this before the $1 million payments could be made on Sunday night but, an hour before the payments were being issued, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted unanimously to allow the payments! I would like to think that some people who voted for Trump would even think this isn’t right.

While countries around the world immediately sent teams of rescuers and aid workers to Myanmar and Thailand after last week’s devastating earthquake, the New United States of America sat idly by. The US “plans” to send three people to Myanmar. By the way, the tiny country of Vietnam already has 100 people helping in Myanmar. It is appalling that the Trump Regime is demonstrating on the world stage that they absolutely don’t care.

Before the election last November, you told us that if people voted for you “this time” they would “never have to vote again.” That was chilling to those of us who were paying attention. Even though the US Constitution bars a person from serving more than two terms, as a wannabe dictator, you said some interesting things on Sunday in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. The Washington Post quoted you as saying, “there are methods which you could do it.” Also, “A lot of people want me to do it.” The newspaper reported, “Welker then mentioned a hypothetical plan where Vice President JD Vance would run in 2028 and ‘pass the baton.’ ‘Well, that’s one. But there are others, too,’ Trump responded. ‘I’m not joking,’ Trump said.”

Threaten to bomb Iran if it doesn’t adjust its nuclear program to your liking. (In our arrogance, Americans think that only America should have nuclear weapons, but look who has our nuclear codes: the insecure bully in the White House!)

With a strike of your pen, put tariffs on 185 countries (including a couple of uninhabited islands) and tell us the money from those tariffs will start pouring in and will quickly “Make America Rich Again.” I thought our nation was already rich. And why did you not raise tariffs on goods coming from Russia and Belarus?

You are so completely self-centered that you fire medical researchers and employees who quite possibly saved your life when you had Covid-19 and were whisked away via helicopter to Walter Reed Medical Center. Dr. Peter Stein approved the monoclonal antibodies treatment that just might have saved your life, Mr. President. How do you thank Dr. Stein four-and-a-half years later? You fire him. He was the Director of the Office of New Drugs at the Federal Drug Administration, and you just fired him in the name of “waste and fraud” in the Department of Health and Human Services.

You take advice from conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who said that the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001, “was an inside job.”

Until Trump came along

Until you came along, we were one of the richest countries in the world. Until you came along, we were rich in things like readily coming to the aid of other countries. Until you came along, we were rich in allies and friends. Until you came along, other countries held us up as a beacon of freedom and the greatest democracy the world had ever know.

Until you came along.

Remind us every single day that everything that is wrong in America today is the fault of your predecessors, and only you can save us.

Sit in the Oval Office that you have tackied up (Southerners know what I mean!) to look as gaudy as your Mar-a-Lago resort and laugh. (Will we ever be able to repair its walls from all those nail holes? You’ve made the Oval Office look like a Frame shop!)

You have no sense of humor, but I imagine you are laughing with your minions and rich friends while this 249-year-old experiment in democracy called America disappears into the pages of history as a failed experiment that only children in other countries will read about years from now.

Whine, and tell the American people that we are victims. Tell us that the entire world has taken advantage of us and cheated us… even though America has been showered with blessings and resources and decades of peace on our soil that most people in the world can only dream of.

Has it only been 74 days? It seems like 74 years.

It is exhausting… and that’s what you want. You want us so tired that we can no longer speak out against your policies. You want us so distracted by a crumbling economy that we stop listening to you because we’re spending all our time wondering how to pay for groceries or car repairs. It’s easier for you to do your dirty work if we are too tired or distracted to keep up with the news.

People who know early- and mid-20th century world history know what comes next.

Mr. Trump, you might not get your comeuppance here on earth, but I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes on Judgment Day!

To my blog readers, until my next post and beyond

Pay attention, no matter how painful it gets. Get your news from a variety of reputable sources.

Don’t compromise your principles.

Read the US Constitution. It is a constitution, not a list of suggestions.

It’s time to stop agreeing to agreeably disagree when it comes to our American democracy. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It’s past time for us to be polite.

My next anticipated blog post will be on April 7 about the books I read in March along with a brief report on Hurricane Helene recovery in western North Carolina.

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

Janet, a disgruntled political science major