Blowing up the King’s gunpowder in 1771

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Vernon Raineil Cenzon on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Kate Remmer on Unsplash

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

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

Back to the present

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

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

Imaging May Meeting 1771

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hurricane Helene Update

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

Get a good book to read.

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

Janet

Do you enjoy National Parks? Plus 8 other good things being targeted by the Trump Administration

Just as I attempted yesterday afternoon to schedule this blog post to be published at 5:00 a.m. today, my internet and phone service were severed in a farming accident just up the road. With partial service restored and technicians coming back tomorrow to try to finish repairing the problem, I’m attempting to post this now at 7:40 p.m. on April 30.

I might not be able to post tomorrow. I’ll try in a few minutes to schedule it for 5:00 a.m. May 1 and hope for the best.

Today’s blog is a continuation of yesterday’s post. There is a limitless supply of things being done by the Trump Administration that cause me great concern. Here are a few.

  • I have been reading numerous sources that are reporting that US Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has handed the operation of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs  over to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)… a “department” by the way that was not created or approved by the US Congress. For example, DOGE has targeted the US Park Service’s Southeast Utah Group’s office. It oversees Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Hovenweep and Natural Bridges national monuments. DOGE says by cancelling the lease of that office will save $805,408 over a ten-year period. That is an annual savings of a whopping $80,548 per year and it is a loss of oversight over two of the most iconic national parks in the United States. For $80,548 a year…. Will the people who work in that 35,358-square-foot building be relocated? If so, how much will it cost to secure and pay for that space? Or perhaps they will all just be fired because the Trump Administration obviously have a vendetta against national parks and the people who love them. DOGE is nickel and diming the most beloved parts of our country to death in the name of “Efficiency.” That’s just one example. This puts the wrecking ball called DOGE in charge of more than 400 national parks and more than 500 million acres of federal land, wildfire preparation, financial management, and training. What makes all these even scarier is that the guy in charge of our National Parks, Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs background is in the oil industry. Anyone else think this one is cringe worthy? It’s been done very quietly because someone somewhere in the White House must know that we Americans love our national parks. They don’t, but we do. Repeated statements proving that the national parks generate much more money for the US economy than they cost continues to fall on deaf ears at the White House.
Photo of an arch in Arches National Park
Arches National Park.
Photo by Ben Stiefel on Unsplash
  • Pay to Play. Is a $239 million Presidential Inauguration what Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, James Monroe, and George Washington had in mind? That’s how much Trump raised for his 2025 inauguration. Due to bad weather, it wasn’t all spent. The leftovers can be spent for things like Trump’s presidential library, which is the grandest oxymoron ever. In all fairness, more than a dozen of Trump’s $1 million donors also donated to Biden’s inauguration. Back to the $239 million for the inauguration… Brazilian meat company JBS, which owns Pilgrim’s Pride brand, donated $5 million. JBS stands to benefit from Trump’s recent efforts to lessen restrictions on the poultry industry. Investment banker Warren Stephens donated $4 million and has been nominated to be US ambassador to the UK. Real estate investor Melissa Argyros has been nominated to be ambassador to Lativa for her $2 million donation. Jared Isaacman’s $2 million donation bought him a nomination to be the next NASA administrator. Florida attorney Dan Newlin’s $1 million bought his nomination to be US ambassador to Colombia. Former Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick donated $1 million and became US Secretary of Commerce. He literally can’t stop smiling. Just watch his next TV interview, if you doubt me. Linda McMahon donated $1 million and became US Secretary of Education, although her background is in the notoriously crooked wrestling industry. Tilman Fertitta donated $1 million and became Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Italy. Ken Howery donated $1 million and will likely be our next ambassador to Denmark. (Our apologies to Denmark for… everything.) Scott Bessent got off easy. His $250,000 donation resulted in his new job as US Treasury Secretary. Edward Walsh and his wife, Lynn Walsh, each donated $25,000 and got Edward his nomination to be US ambassador to Ireland. Ripple Labs, a cryptocurrency firm, donated $4.9 million and in March the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped litigation regarding a question over whether Ripple Labs’ cryptocurrency meet the legal definition of a security. Robinhood Markets, a financial technology company donated $2 million and in February the SEC closed its investigation into that business. I’m not saying “Pay to Play” has not happened in any previous presidential administrations. There have been rotten players in politics since the beginning of time. My point is, looking at it from the outside, it looks as if things have gotten out of control. A president who wants states to hire their Department of Transportation employees based on merit isn’t bothered with considering merit when it comes to Cabinet positions or ambassadorships.

  • The Museum of the Aleutians was notified that its three-year National Endowment for the Humanities grant for its Sharing Voices Project had suddenly been cancelled only partially through its first year. The project’s goal was to expand public access to more than 150,000 artifacts and other compiled histories of the Unangam village of Tachiqalax on Unalaska Island. “We had just finished our first podcast and hired staff to start in June,” says Dr. Virginia Hatfield, executive director of the museum since 2017. This was reported on the Alaska Humanties Forum Facebook page on April 25.
Photo of children at the museum
Photo of a children’s program. Copied from the Museum of the Aleutians.

  • Trump has pardoned former Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore for her conviction on multiple counts related to fraud just weeks before her scheduled sentencing. Fiore raised money for statues of two Las Vegas police officers who were killed in the line of duty but then spent tens of thousands of the dollars for plastic surgery, rent, and her daughter’s wedding, according to prosecutors.
  • I read that some owners of artifacts and exhibits in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC have received emails telling them that their materials are being returned to them. Sadly, the surprising part of this is that those artifacts aren’t just being thrown away. Funny how politicians convicted of fraud are valued and rewarded by the Trump Administration while artifacts in the National Museum of African American History and Culture hold no value at all.
Photo of the National African American Museum in Washington, DC
Photo of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
Photo by Tomasz Zielonka on Unsplash
  • Although many educators caution against the use of AI in schools, the Trump Administration has a different theory. By Executive Order, Trump wants to bring more artificial intelligence into K-12 schools. We were all led to believe that Trump wanted to remove the federal government from public education, but here he goes signing more education Executive Orders.
  • The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice has long been considered the department’s crown jewel, but Reuters is reporting that about a dozen of the division’s attorneys have been reassigned. Former prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote that the new mission statement for the voting section of the Department of Justice “barely mentions the Voting Rights Act.” She said the losing the Civil Rights Division would be “unthinkable.” The article I read said, “Some of the work Vance’s office did with the Civil Rights Division included ‘protecting the rights of diabetic school children, making sure voters in wheelchairs could access their polling places, and prosecuting police use of excessive force that left people badly injured.’”
  • Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent with The New York Times has described the current White House Press Room as a place “of open hostility, and mockery and disparagement in a way that’s meant for he larger audience, not for the people in the room.” Mr. Baker has been a White House reporter through 17 different press secretaries over his career. He says the current atmosphere under Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt goes beyond anything he has seen before. He is quoted as saying the Trump Administration doesn’t “view the briefing room as a way to impart information. They don’t even view the briefing room as a way to shape reporters’ stories. They view the briefing room as a theater for the MAGA audience.” When journalists cannot get straight answers to their legitimate questions from the press secretary of the President of the United States without being scorned, mocked, or ignored, there is no point for holding the press briefings. Just like all of Trump’s press conferences, there are “planted” so-called reporters in the room to ask him planned softball questions that are often introduced with a few words of praise. That is not journalism.
  • Continuing in his predictable anti-environment vein, on April 24, Trump signed an Executive Order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to “expedite the process for reviewing and issuing seabed mineral exploration licenses and commercial recovery permits in areas beyond national jurisdiction under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act.” It was no accident that this was ordered on the day that Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store was in Washington to meet with Trump. The Norwegian Prime Minister tried something similar last year when he tried to open up areas in Norway’s territorial waters for exploration by mining companies. He was stopped by an outcry from environmentalists. It remains to be seen if Trump will be successful. Katie Matthews, chief scientist and senior vice-president of global campaign group Oceana, said, “This is a clear case of putting mining companies’ greed over common sense. Any attempt to accelerate deep-sea mining without proper safeguards will only speed up the destruction of our oceans.”  My take: Look up “greed” in the dictionary and there should be a picture of Donald Trump.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet

How’s that Salmonella infection working for you?

Due to my ongoing internet service problems after underground cables were ripped up just up the road from my house, I will schedule this post for 5:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, 2025, and hope it goes out! More repairs are to be made tomorrow, so I don’t know when I’ll have internet service. I’m sending it without any photographs. Just trying to get it scheduled while I can. Please overlook my typos!

There is a lot going on in the Trump Administration. Some of it is proudly proclaimed on live TV. Some of it is announced with the President surrounded by colorful charts or a map of the Gulf of Mexico on a tripod. (Yes, I will continue to call it by it’s rightful and historical name, even though Trump gave each of his Cabinet members a “Gulf of America” baseball cap at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting.)

Some things… I dare say most of them… are done quietly. I try to highlight as many of them as possible on my little blog. I bet some of the items that made my list today flew under your radar.

  • The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has made the decision to withdraw a rule that would have finally set real limits on salmonella levels in raw poultry. Three years of work on this rule that could have prevented more than 160,000 infections every year was simply trashed. Salmonella makes 1.35 million Americans sick every year and kills 420 of them. This rule that the USDA just scrapped would have required poultry companies to test for the most dangerous Salmonella strains. Profits over public health It’s enough to make me want to become a vegan. Apparently, the USDA did not get the memo saying that the US Department of Health and Human Resources has a new motto: “Make America Healthy Again.”

  • President Trump’s pick for US Surgeon General, Dr. Jannette Nesheiwat has been described by the president as “a double board-certified medical doctor,” and a “proud graduate of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.” However, it seems now that she did a residency at the University of Arkansas, but she got her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten. Her LinkedIn account does not mention the school in the Caribbean. She might be highly-qualified, but it would be nice if the Trump Administration would vet its nominees for such positions of responsibility.

  • The Miami Herald is reporting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has built a two-story plexiglass “tent” in Krome, Florida to house 400 detainees. US Representative Frederica Wilson was taken on a tour last week, three weeks after she had requested to be shown the facility. The report says there are 200 cots on each floor, temporary bathrooms and a TV room. Since she smelled fresh paint on her visit, Rep. Wilson said her next visit will be unannounced so she can see for herself what the conditions really are. She indicated that what she was shown on her tour did not match what she has been hearing about the facility. A plexiglass “tent”? I can’t quite picture that.

  • The Miami Herald newspaper reported that a mother was deported to Cuba, leaving her US citizen husband and their one-year-old daughter who was still breastfeeding behind in Tampa, Florida. What about this makes America great? Absolutely nothing.

  • The wife and children of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the US Government admitted was shipped off to a prison in El Salvador by mistake, have had to go into hiding at an undisclosed location because that same US Government made their home address public! Can’t someone make this incompetence on steroids stop? My hunch is that the individual who made Mrs. Abrego Garcia’s home address public would not want their own address made public.

  • Trump is considering eliminating the 988 Suicide Prevention Hotline for LGBTQ+ Youth. The hotline has fielded 1.3 million calls since it was launched by the Biden Administration in July 2022. I’m left to conclude that it is being eliminated because it doesn’t turn a profit. With all these business people running the government now, they have no concept of doing anything just for the good of the people. Besides, this Administration has made it clear that they don’t recognize LGBTQ+ people as being human beings. They’ve never tried to hide their disdain for individuals who do not fit the mold of white and straight.

  • I read that the soon-to-be-proposed “big, beautiful budget” from the Trump Administration is going to eliminate the Narcan grant program, although the CDC has evidence that there was a 24% decrease in drug overdose deaths in the year ending last September, partly due to Narcan being distributed to first responders through the program. We’ll never know all the minute details of the budget bill, even after it is approved by Congress. It’s too massive, but many American families know that Narcan being available to first responders has saved lives.

  • Calling US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s new TV and radio ads telling immigrants not to come to America “propaganda,” and the President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico is taking steps to ban the TV and radio ads in her country.

  • CNN is reporting that the Trump Administration is considering sending South American and Central American asylum seekers to Libya and Rwanda. I honestly cannot believe I’m having to type those words. I cannot believe this is seriously being considered. Anyone in the White House considering this is evil personified.

  • At his Cabinet meeting on April 30, Trump said that the current economic downturn is Joe Biden’s fault and the continued economic woes we will see in the next three months are also Joe Biden’s fault. He also in a roundabout way said that children aren’t going to have as many toys and the toys they get are going to be more expensive. The example he gave was that instead of having 30 dolls, a child might only have two dolls and those two dolls are going to cost a couple of dollars more. Trump seemed to be the last person in the country to figure that out. Only an out-of-touch billionaire President would speak in terms of a child having 30 dolls. There are some children in the US that would love to have just one doll. And, of course, it’s not just dolls or other toys that aren’t going to be available in the coming months.

  • On Wednesday afternoon, April 30, the executive in charge of the Port of Los Angeles told CNN that imports coming into his port are down 45% and very soon dock workers and truck drivers will not have much work to do, while the President was announcing at his Cabinet meeting that “cargo ships are making U-turns” in the Pacific Ocean to head back to China to pick up merchandise. Why would anyone believe Trump?

  • The Trump Administration launched an investigation of the University of California at Berkeley on April 25. The US Department of Education will examine all the foreign money the university has received in the last ten years. The Beast reported in May 2023 that UC-Berkeley had not reported $220 million it received from the Chinese government to build a joint Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI). TBSI opened in Shenzhen, China in 2014, but UC-Berkeley says it is no longer affiliated with it. Maybe UC-Berkeley’s foreign receipts do need to be looked at, but it seems like just another Trump attack on a public university. Time will tell.

  • Not giving us an evening to rest, on Monday night Trump floated the idea of using US military personnel for domestic crime prevention. In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in Charlotte, North Carolina in September 1989, I appreciated the National Guard personnel who directed traffic at major intersections for days until electricity could be restored, but I do not relish the thoughts of the normalizing of seeing military personnel on our streets to fight domestic crime. Besides being an extremely un-American concept, I don’t believe that is the highest and best use of soldiers, sailors, and US Marines. It remains to be seen what Trump will say his plan is. More importantly, it remains to be seen what the true intent and true objective is. If history tells us anything, it tells us that the promise and the delivery by the Trump Administration have very little in common.

  • On Sunday, April 27, Trump got on social media and told Republicans to have protesters removed from their town hall meetings and “not treat them nicely.” So much for the First Amendment to the US Constitution!

  • Citing “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House, Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino reported on X on April 24 that President Trump’s people are giving insider tips to Wall Street executives about trade deals in progress. In particular, one being worked out with India. When asked about this, Gasparino indicated that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s office made no comment but did not deny the truth of the report. If this report is true, it doesn’t sound legal to me. If not illegal, it should be.

  • Trump has removed former US Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff (who is Jewish) from the board overseeing the United States Holocaust Museum. He also removed four other people who were placed on the board by President Biden. That is the President’s prerogative, but it is highly unusual. He says he will only have people on the board who “support Israel.” This is just one more case of Trump conflating things like facts and purposes of museums or other public entities. He and many Americans continue to confuse antisemitism with anti-Israel. It is possible for someone to be against the actions of the government of Israel as a country while not being antisemitic. One is a political entity – a government – and the other is a religion. The political state of Israel created after World War II is not the same as the references to Israel in the Bible! The state of Israel in 2025 is a government that is forcing starvation of the children in Gaza by not permitting international food aid into Gaza. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see what Benjamin Netanyahu is doing. No wonder he and Trump are friends.

  • Finally, an “honest” politician. In a live interview on CNN on Wednesday, April 30, Republican US Representative Randy Fine of Florida said, “I’m here to fight Democrats.” We knew that most the members of Congress like to talk about “reaching across the aisle, “working with my friends across the aisle,” and such platitudes when we know they have no desire to talk to their peers from the other political party. It was surprising to hear a Republican Congressman admit on live TV that he sees his purpose as a member of the US Congress “to fight against Democrats.” When there is no desire or incentive to compromise or try to work together for the good of the country in a time when there is an authoritarian in the White House, we are in a bad place.

Do you remember that war in Ukraine that Trump was going to end in one day? Do you remember how he was going to bring prices down? Do you remember how we were going to get tired of winning?

Most of us are tired 102 days into the second Trump Administration, but I don’t know anyone who is tired of winning.

By the way, Trump has not only denigrated Cabinet meetings into nothing but a Kum Ba Yah moment when every US Department Secretary has to praise him and tell him how wonderful everything is today in the United States, but now he literally rewards them with ridiculous baseball caps proclaiming that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America.

It looks like a parent handing out birthday favors to the children at a birthday party.

Isn’t it wonderful that we have “a businessman” in the White House? There is such an air of decorum at the Cabinet meetings!

Until my next blog post tomorrow

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

I hope you have not lost hope in America even though my almost daily blog posts lately have given you little about which to be hopeful.

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

Janet, a disgruntled political science major

13 additional questionable actions by the Trump Administration

Are you as tired of hearing this stuff as I am? That’s part of their plan. Just wear us out and wear us down. They want us to get so tired of being bombarded every day by more Executive Orders and lies that we will eventually tune it out.

We are faced with pure evil in America today.

I’m tired, but I’m not tuning any of it out. The following list is in no particular order.

  • Virtually every family has been touched by Alzheimer’s Disease. There were 35 research centers in the US that were studying Alzheimer’s Disease, many of them conducting drug trials. The Trump Administration stopped the funding for 14 of the 35. Some of them ran out of money three weeks ago. Let that sink in… drug trials for Alzheimer’s Disease suddenly stopped. If you voted for Donald Trump, this is what you voted for and I think it’s time for you admit it. I think it is time for all y’all who voted for him to tell him to stop. To stop everything he is doing. Every single thing. You put him in the White House, and you have the power to remove him from the White House. All you have to do is flood the White House and the offices of your Republican Senators and Representatives with phone calls, emails, and letters. Y’all are the ones with the power to stop every bit of this. Don’t say you didn’t vote for “this.” Yes, you did. You knew you were voting for a convicted felon who lies about everything. You knew he had no empathy for anyone, and if ending the funding for Alzheimer’s research doesn’t prove that, I don’t know what would.
Photo of a woman working in a medical laboratory
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
  • Continued assault on universities. CBS reported on April 23 that President Trump signed an executive order to change the college accreditation process so colleges are accredited based on “results,” with the president wondering aloud about looking into the math capabilities of students admitted to Harvard University and Yale University. In his campaign in 2024, he said the accreditation organizations were “dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” He, of course, never offered any evidence to back that up. The problem is… the accreditation of institutions of higher education is, by law, controlled by third-party entities and not the federal government – much less the US President. The report quoted White Houe staff secretary Will Scharf as saying that Trump thinks the accrediting entities are focused on “woke ideology” instead of results. This Executive Order affects law schools and graduate program as well. First, Trump tried blackmailing universities by threatening to end their federal funding if they continued to admit students based on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). That worked at Columbia University, but it didn’t work at Harvard or Princeton. Next, he said he would weaponize the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) that all international students must process through in order to be admitted to a college or university in the US. Now, he’s threatening all colleges and universities by saying he will take control of the accrediting entities. Attacking the intellectual freedoms of colleges and universities is right out of the fascist playbook. If you voted for Trump, you voted for this. If you didn’t know he was going to attack institutions of higher education, you didn’t read Project 2025.
Photographs of university students having a serious discussion
Photo by Antenna on Unsplash
  • On Friday, April 25, US District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, issued an order for a hearing to be held at 9:00 a.m. CT at the Federal Courthouse in Monroe regarding “In the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.” The two-year-old daughter of a woman was deported to Honduras after the child’s father’s lawyer informed the US Department of Justice that the child was a US citizen. Judge Doughty stated, “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the Court doesn’t know that.” At 1:06pm CT, the Court was informed that a phone call to the mother could not be placed “because she (and presumably VML) [the child’s initial’s in Court documents] had just been released in Honduras.” ABC News reported that the child “was initially detained with her undocumented mother at a routine immigration check-in in New Orleans earlier this week. My first question is, Why couldn’t the US Government postpone the mother’s deportation until a judge could hear the facts in the case? My second question is, At what age does the US Government believe it is okay to deport an American citizen?  My third question is, Will the US Government only deport American citizens who are minors, or should all of us be ready to be snatched up and shipped off to another country at any time?
Photo of a child in the dark inside of an airplane peering out the window
Photo by kian on Unsplash
  • In a similar case, a mother and her two minor children were deported to Honduras. Her four-year-old daughter who was deported is being treated in the US for Stage 4 metastatic cancer. The child was deported without access to her medications or medical care. I defy anyone to tell me what about that makes “America Great Again.” Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar” whose official job title is White Houe Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations (his business card must have to be the size of a poster!), maintains that this mother wanted her children to be deported with her. Of course, a mother does not want to be separated from her children. Of course, a mother does not want to be separated from her child who is going through cancer treatment. BUT… this case could have been handled in a more humane way. From everything I’ve heard and read, there was no pressing need for that mother and her children to be deported on April 25, 2025. The mother was not a dangerous criminal. The mother had merely missed an appointment with immigration officials due to circumstances beyond her control. If the case could have been reviewed by a US District judge, I’m sure a postponement in deportation could have been worked out. But when deportation planes take off in the hours before daylight and deportees are detained in isolation without access to legal counsel, the court system is eliminated from the process.

  • In 2021, President Joe Biden issued a proclamation making the traditional Columbus Day holiday in October also Indigenous Peoples Day. Finally, the indigenous peoples in the US were getting a little bit of respect and recognition. On April 27, 2025, Trump made clear his disdain for indigenous peoples as he said we will no longer have Indigenous Peoples Day. He delighted in announcing that he is restoring Columbus Day as just Columbus Day. The point of his doing this can only be interpreted as a punch in the gut to every person in this country who has indigenous DNA. There is absolutely nothing constructive that can come out of this.
Bilungual “Welcome to Cherokee” sign in Cherkee, North Carolina
  • Last Thursday, Trump claimed that gasoline was down to $1.98 per gallon “in some states.” Of course, he couldn’t name which states because it wasn’t true. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), no state had an average price below $2.70 per gallon, and the national average price is $3.17. Why can’t he just tell the truth? Plus, Americans aren’t going to get any sympathy from the people in England or Scotland for our $3 to $4 petrol.
Photo of a sign displaying gasoline prices, including $3.59 per gallon for regular unleaded.
Photo by Thomas McKinnon on Unsplash
  • Last Thursday, Trump said that grocery prices have come down. According to the Consumer Price Index, grocery prices in March were 0.49% higher than in February, the biggest month-to-month jump since October 2022. Average grocer prices in March 2025 were up 2.41% over March 2024, the biggest year-over-year increase since August 2023. What can’t he just tell the truth?
Photograph of fresh citrus produce at a market
Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash
  • Last Tuesday, Trump said, “as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94% since we took office.” On Thursday, he said eggs prices had dropped by 87%. Actually, the average price of a dozen large Grade A eggs in January was $4.95. If the price had dropped by 93 or 94% since January 20, eggs should be selling now for less than 38 cents-a-dozen. The average price nationally in March was $6.23 per dozen. I paid $4.96 last Wednesday, which is about what I’ve been paying for a couple of months because I’m fortunate to live in a major egg-producing state. Why can’t Trump just tell the truth? Plus, the reason the price of eggs skyrocketed this winter was because chicken flocks were hit with the bird flu and infected flocks had to be slaughtered. It was a crisis of supply and demand, but the Trump Administration has maintained from the beginning that (1) chickens were unnecessarily slaughtered or (2) they have completely ignored the fact that there is a bird flu and chickens were slaughtered. It was convenient to just blame the Biden Administration for the price of eggs.
Photo of a pile of brown eggs
  • Last Thursday, the US Department of Justice stopped the funding of more than 350 grants for such things as hot-lines for drug addicts to call for help, programs for violence prevention and juvenile justice, crime victims, and the fight against opioid abuse. The reason? To protect Americans against “toxic DEI policies.”
Photo of a red telephone receiver lying off the hook with apparently no one at the other end to answer the call for help
Photo by Trintage on Unsplash
  • KTVX in Salt Lake City reported that Carlos Trujillo, a naturalized US citizen working as an immigration attorney in that city received an order on April 11 to self-deport within seven days. “I know the laws of this country,” Trujillo told Nexstar’s KTVX. “I am not leaving. I am not deportable. But I do want everybody to know that these kinds of things are happening.” The report continued, “Trujillo said the ‘threatening language’ of the email bothered him. Trujillo encouraged the immigrant community to be aware of the changes in the laws and to know their rights. He said many people who received the email are in the country under legal circumstances. Trujillo isn’t the only one receiving a letter from the Department of Homeland Security saying it’s time to leave – a similar email was sent to hundreds of thousands of people across the United States…. However, Trujillo came to the U.S. about 24 years ago, and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for roughly a decade.” I was born and have lived my entire life in the US, but I’m thinking about applying for a passport so I can prove that I am a US citizen. I realized my driver’s license does not prove citizenship.
Photo of a US passport
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
  • CNN reported on April 24 that the court document that migrants are handed gives them 12 hours to say if they will challenge their deportation under the Alien Act of 1798, which gave the government the authority to deport people during wartime. (We are not at war, folks! Just sayin’.) The form is in English only. If they wish to challenge their removal, they have 24 hours to hire an attorney and file their challenge. During World War II, immigrants were given 30 days to do so.
  • It was reported on CNN on April 24, that more than 1,500 student visas have been revoked by the US State Department since January 20.
Photograph of college students
Photo by javier trueba on Unsplash
  • Reuters reported that US Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has told states that they must ensure personnel practices are merit-based in order to receive federal funds. The Trump Administration said on Thursday that states could lose federal funds if they don’t cooperate with federal immigration efforts or if they continue DEI programs. Duffy had earlier announced that he will favor giving states priority for transportation funds for locations that have high birthrates. Transportation funding has traditionally been political, but this is the first time I remember the US Government announcing that as an official policy.
Aerial view of complicated highway interchanges
Photo by Jared Murray on Unsplash

Until my next blog post tomorrow

It’s difficult, but don’t give up on American democracy. (I’m saying that to myself. I need to hear it every day.)

Remember the people of Ukraine, Myanmar, and western North Carolina. They do not have the luxury of worrying about every little thing the Trump Administration does. They’re just trying to survive and put their lives back together.

Janet

#OnThisDay: James Monroe’s Birthday, 1758

When I have an #OnThisDay topic to blog about, I try to tie it in with a current event. Sometimes that’s easier than other times.

When I created my 2025 editorial calendar for my blog months ago, I wondered what I could do with Jame Monroe’s birthday for my April 28, 2025, blog post. How could I make James Monroe’s 267th birthday interesting?

Then, the Trump Administration came along and US-international relations were disrupted like eggs in a turned over basket rolling in all directions and breaking.

Monroe Doctrine! US and Western Hemisphere relations! Bingo!

But what about James Monroe’s Birthday and early years?

Born in Virginia, he had to withdraw from the Campbelltown Academy at the age of 16 when his parent died. He was needed to manage the family farm and take care of his three younger brothers. One of his maternal uncles stepped in as sort of a surrogate father. He was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, so he took Monroe to Williamsburg and enrolled him in the College of William and Mary in June 1774.

About 18 months later, Monroe dropped out of college to join the Continental Army. He suffered a severed artery in the Battle of Trenton and nearly died.

After the Revolutionary War, he resumed his law studies under Thomas Jefferson until 1783.

Monroe served in the US Senate, but he left the Senate in 1794 to be George Washington’s Ambassador to France. He later served as Ambassador to Britain.

He was elected Governor of Virginia in 1799. As President Jefferson’s special envoy, he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. He served as President James Madison’s Secretary of State beginning in 1811. During the War of 1812, he served as both Secretary of State and Secretary of War.

He was what one might call an “over achiever.” And I haven’t even mentioned that he was elected US President in 1816 and was reelected for a second term in 1820.

And what about the Monroe Doctrine?

Are they still teaching school children about the Monroe Doctrine. I hope so, but it’s hard for me to keep up since I don’t have a close family member in grade school now.

In his annual speech before the US Congress in 1823, Monroe outlined his plans for a new American foreign policy.

Why did the Monroe Doctrine came about?

The US and Britain were both concerned that Spain was going to gain more control in Latin America, and the US was concerned about Russia’s territorial ambitions along the northwest coast of North America.

George Canning, British Foreign Minister, wanted a joint US-Britain agreement, but US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued against that and won. Hence, the Monroe Doctrine was officially just a US policy.

The four main points of the Monroe Doctrine, which made the US the protectorate of the Western Hemisphere:

  1. The US would not interfere in the internal affairs or wars between European countries;
  2. The US would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere;
  3. There would be no further colonization in the Western Hemisphere; and
  4. The US would consider further European colonization, military intervention, or other interference in the Western Hemisphere as a potentially hostile act.

Jump forward 200 years

In 1962, US President John F. Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy ordered a naval and air quarantine of Cuba after the Soviet Union started building missile-launching sites there.

President Ronald Reagan used the Monroe Doctrine as policy principle in the 1980s to justify US intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

President George H.W. Bush invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify a US invasion of Panama to oust Manuel Noriega.

After the Cold War and as the 21st century approached, US involvement in Latin America decreased, but there was a growing resentment in some countries over the US thinking it could call the shots.

Then comes the illicit drug trade.

Then comes a flood of immigrants trying to enter the United States legally and illegal.

Then comes Donald Trump.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 202 years later!

US President Trump in 2025 took it upon himself to rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America,” but only Republicans are calling it that.

In 2025, the US President has cozied up with the President/Dictator of El Salvador to the point that we’re helping to finance the most notorious prison in the world. Trump is threatening to steal the Panama Canal from Panama even though the two-fold Torrijos-Carter Treaties in 1977 transferred the canal to Panama as of December 31, 1999. Trump repeatedly says President Jimmy Carter sold the canal for one dollar, but the Torrijos-Carter Treaties were not a financial transaction. The Panama Canal Treaty gave Panama control of the canal over a 20-year period. The Treaty of Permanent Neutrality guaranteed the Panama Canal will remain open to international shipping.

President Trump claims he can make Canada the 51st state. Too bad for Puerto Rico. It’s been waiting to become the 51st state for decades.

President Trump threatens to steal Greenland from Denmark “any way we have to.”

Come to think of it… Trump claims he can make Canada, Greenland, Denmark, and Europe jump at his command, but he said he has no power to make El Salvador return to the US a man his Homeland Security people mistakenly kidnapped and shipped to the CECOT Prison. Who knew El Salvador was more powerful than the US? Well, we know now.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised Guyana that we’ll protect it if Venezuela invades it.

Just wait until Trump learns the names of some other Central and South American countries. He’ll want to take them, too, or maybe bow the knee to them like he has El Salvador.

Geography is not Trump’s strong point. Has he figured out what or where the Republic of the Congo is yet?

Incidentally, what has become of James Monroe’s house? OR… Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

In February, 2025, the owners of Oak Hill in Loudoun County, Virginia, offered to give the estate to the State of Virginia so the home and 1,200 acres could be turned into a State Park. It turns out that the State doesn’t want it!

The property owners were reportedly offered $55 million for the house and estate, but they were willing to take a fraction of that amount if the State of Virginia would make it a State Park.

The last I read about it the State hasn’t budged.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 58 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. That count included five US highways, three state highways, and 50 state roads. That’s an incredible improvement over the 105 roads that were still closed a week earlier. Good weather has surely helped.

Although technically “open” now, I-40 in Haywood County at the Tennessee line 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 the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina will reopen. I encourage you to watch the 18-minute early April video at https://www.nps.gov/blri/planyourvisit/helene-impacts-and-recovery.htm. Scroll down below “Common Questions” to get to the video. This is a wonderful recent update on the progress being made and the monumental task that lies ahead to get 157 more miles of the parkway open. Below the video is a map showing where the parkway is open and where it is still closed.

Until my next blog post tomorrow

Keep reading good books.

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

Janet

A War on Civil Rights

I didn’t want to post a blog on a Saturday, but here I am.

On Thursday, April 23, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.”

Under the guise of allegedly encouraging “meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism,” the order calls for an evaluation of all pending proceedings under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which was passed in 1974 and was amended in 1976 to prevent lenders from discriminating against women based on marital status.

Only Congress can change the law, but an Executive Order muddies the water. If a lender chooses to follow the order, they can do so.

If a woman or a person of a racial minority thinks they have been discriminated against by a lender, they can file a complaint with the lender or thet can hire a lawyer and take their case to court. It could be years before the case is heard and settled. In the meantime, they did not get that credit card, or home improvement loan, or that loan that would have made it possible to buy a car or a home.

As reported by Newsweek, “The EO’s main target is the principle of disparate-impact liability, the idea that racism, sexism, or some other form of discrimination can occur without explicit intent. The President believes that disparate-impact liability is a key tool in a ‘pernicious movement’ that ‘endangers’ the U.S.’ foundational principle of ‘creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.’”

In Trump’s mind, making sure that a dark-skinned person is not discriminated against equates with denying a white-skinned person being discriminated against. Or, the law making sure women are not discriminated against by financial lenders equates with denying men the opportunity to borrow money or get a credit card.

But that isn’t what it means at all!

Just because a woman gets approved for a loan does not mean that a man applying for a loan gets denied. There is enough pie for everyone who qualifies for a loan.

But this is all smoke and mirrors. Through Executive Order, Trump is putting dark-skinned people and women in their place. He is putting them at a disadvantage. He is denying them an equal opportunity to attain the American Dream.

That’s exactly what this is about. This is nothing but a white men’s backlash because some of them want to go back to “the good old days” when they didn’t have to compete with women or dark-skinned people. Some of them don’t want a level playing field.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

In case you are saying, “So what?”

In case any of this sounds all right or good to you, you are obviously not a woman “of a certain age” or a black person.

I am a white woman of a certain age, so I can and will speak to this. I grew up in the era in which women could not necessarily get credit or a loan without a man co-signing.

Women of a certain age know exactly what Trump’s end game is.

I was turned down for a credit card by a major gasoline company in the early 1970s, and the reason I was given was, “we don’t give credit cards to single women.” But who needs Exxon or Texaco? Amoco gave me a credit card and I was a loyal customer for years.

When I bought my first car (used) at the age of 22 in 1975 after earning a Bachelor’s degree, I was told by an agent for a nationally-recognized car insurance company that my rate for car insurance would be higher because I was a single woman. My father was with me, and this made him as mad as it did me. We stormed out of the insurance agent’s office. Rest assured, my father nor I ever considered doing business with Nationwide Insurance again.

I was interviewed for a job with the City of Charlotte in 1977 after I had earned a Master’s degree in public administration, and the interviewer said to me, “I don’t think a woman can handle this job.” My father had died. I was single. I was desperately looking for a job in my chosen field. Cities and counties weren’t exactly lining up to hire women for management positions. I didn’t want to burn my bridges, so I didn’t file a complaint.

I want women who came of age after the late 1970s to believe me when I say, “You don’t want to go back.”

Until my next blog post

Find time to read a good book and take a break from the chaos, but then come back and continue the fight for our democracy.

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

Janet

These 13 things bring me hope

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post… tomorrow

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

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

Janet

Environmental Justice

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

What is Environmental Justice?

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

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

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

In Lowndes County, Alabama…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners

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

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

The seven prize winners this year:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

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

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

Janet

17 more unjust things going on in America

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

  • The Trump Administration has fired two Democrat-appointed members of the National Credit Union Administration. Since it was created in 1970 to credit union members and their deposits, it has been a bipartisan board.
  • The entire staff of the NIH office that sets federal poverty guidelines have been fired. It was the office that set eligibility guidelines for health programs such as Medicaid, food assistance, child care, and other services.
Photo of two bags of groceries
  • A top National Institutes of Health nutrition researcher quit his job after one of his research reports was censored because it did not reflect a preconceived outcome Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. desired.
  • US Secretary of Health and Human Service Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is so ignorant about the autism spectrum that he said, “And these kids will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.” When that statement hit social media, people came out of the woodwork to express their disgust and anger at Kennedy for making such a statement. One person after another gave personal examples from within their families to contradict every word in Kennedy’s statement.
  • The BBC reports that the US is poised to place a 3,521% tariff on solar panels from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. (Is Trump just pulling numbers out of a hat?) The Solar Energy Industries Association says such tariffs will hurt American solar manufacturers because they will raise the price on imported cells for solar panels assembled in the US. Trump hates solar power and wind power, so he will do whatever it takes to destroy those industries. He is pushing “clean coal” energy.
  • As President Trump paves the way through Executive Orders to boost the coal industry through expanding coal mining into federal lands and removing emissions restrictions on coal-powered plants, there is concern over the simultaneous elimination of 900 employees of the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety. Included in those work force cuts are people from the respiratory health division in West Virginia that oversaw a black lung X-ray screening program.
  • More than 790,000 children under the age of six are in the Head Start program this year. They get educational help, meals, and healthcare. The Trump Administration is ending the program which has helped 40 million children since its establishment 60 years ago.
Photo of a little boy smiling with his school backpack on his back
Photo by TopSphere Media on Unsplash
  • In a joint press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni last Thursday, Trump called himself a “tariff savior,” and admitted that he does not know what the Republic of the Congo is. He said, “You know they release jails, Giorgia, from all over the world. Not just South America. The Congo in Africa. Many, many people come from the Congo. I don’t know what that is, but they came from the Congo,” 
  • The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments from the Trump Administration that the birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution should end. The Court will hear arguments in May. Trump maintains that the children of mothers who are in the US illegally should not automatically have US citizenship.
  • Via Executive Order on Thursday, Trump ended all protections on the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument. About 750 miles west of Hawaii, the area was set aside as a US Monument in 2009 by President George W. Bush and expanded in 2014 by President Barack Obama. Trump’s order opens it up to commercial fishing, although it contains more than 160 seamounts (undersea mountains), coral atolls, and endangered sea turtles and whales. Typical of his blind goal of being the first in everything, Trump said, “The United States should be the world’s dominant seafood leader.”
  • Remember the cancelling of 1,200 National Endowment for the Humanities that I mentioned in my April 16, 2025, blog post, 16 more highlights of how things are going in America? The Associated Press reports that one of those grants was $282,000 to enable the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition to digitize more than 100,000 pages of boarding school records. For 150 years, indigenous children were taken away from their parents and put in US Government boarding schools where they were prohibited from speaking their language languages in the name of “Americanizing” them and “civilizing” them. It has only been in recent years that these stories have started coming to light. Another of the grants cancelled was $30,000 for the Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and the Alaska Native Heritage Center to broadcast oral histories of elders in Alaska. This coincided with the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s loss of a $100,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to curate a boarding school exhibit. I hope all tribes are taking steps to preserve their stories, and I hope that someday those stories will be available for all to read and hear.
  • Trump is going after the major TV networks. Specifically, he is suing CBS over an interview with Kamala Harris that they aired on “60 Minutes.” He is upset because the interview was edited. I’m sure he know from his own experience on TV that a lot of editing occurs in TV. Full interviews are rarely broadcast, but he sues people at the drop of a hat. This sounds silly on the face of it, but the Executive Producer of “60 Minutes,” one of the most-trusted investigative news programs on TV, resigned today because he said he is no longer able to produce the show like he has in the past and he’s not going to bend his knee to the Trump Administration. If Trump can get his tentacles into all the major news networks, we are most certainly doomed.
Photo of a cell phone with CBS on the screen
Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash
  • Trump is going to reclassify federal employees who work on policy matters as “schedule policy/career.” They will be required to support the President’s policies, apparently, in thought, word, and deed.” He said, this will finally ensure that the federal government is run like a business. That sends a chill down my spine because by its very nature and purpose, the federal government is not a business. It does not produce a product to be sold on the open market or even on the black market. It does not manufacture shovels or picture frames or sheets and towels. It provides services for the good of the whole. It does those things that individuals cannot do for themselves. It protects citizens from outside interference. It provides for the common defense. It operates a system of courts to protect citizens and visitors alike. It secures fundamental individual rights as well as the rights of the people collectively. There is a fundamental blatant intentional misinterpretation of the purpose of a democractic government by Donald Trump and his followers. They are hellbent on destroying every shred of the US Government as we have known it for 249 years. May God forgive them, because I cannot.
  • The US State Department has issued “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” since 1977. These reports include all countries and are mandated by statute to give a “full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights.” Now that the United States is guilty of trashing human rights on our own soil, the Trump Administration has ordered major changes in what those reports include. The reports will no longer include involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices, arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, serious restrictions to internet freedom, extensive gender-based violence, and violence or threats of violence targeting people with disabilities. The elimination of these parts of the traditional reports are across the board. These abuses will no longer be reported for any countries. When the Trump Administration is guilty of such abuses (or planning to put them in place?), I guess it would be awkward to put in black and white that his regime is guilty of the same things as other dictator-led countries.
  • First Lady Melania Trump got credit for hosting the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn on Monday, but it became obvious weeks ago that her husband was calling the shots. It was the first Easter Egg Roll with corporate sponsors. There was a reading nook and photo op sponsored by Amazon; a “Bunny Hop Stage” sponsored by YouTube, owned by Google; and an “AI-Powered Experience and Photo Opportunity” sponsored by Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Thread’s parent company, Meta. A “Ringing of the Bell Photo Opportunity” was sponsored by the New York Stock Exchange. Call me sarcastic, but… nothing celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ like a bunch of billionaires buying more favor from the US President. To show how Trump has transformed the Republican Party into something unrecognizable… Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer who served in the White House Counsel’s Office during President George W. Bush’s Administration told CNN, “That would have been vetoed in about 30 seconds in my day.”
  • Four police officers from Seattle have asked the US Supreme Court to keep their names out of public records related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. I would like to think they are embarrassed about their participation. One has to wonder how dedicated they are to upholding the law.
  • And this from The New York Times on April 21: The White House is getting ideas from various sources on how to create a “baby boom” in the US. Ideas being floated are to pay a married woman $5,000 when she gives birth, and married women will be encouraged to have six children. Another idea is to set aside 30% of Fullbright Scholarships for married women with children. Another idea calls for government-funded programs to educate women about their menstrual cycles so they can better understand when they are ovulating. There could be a National Medal of Motherhood for mothers with six or more children. The new word being bounced around is “pronatalism.” Vice President Vance told a March for Life anti-abortion rally in January the he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them. It seems that Elon Musk thinks the low birthrate in America is a threat to civilization. (Some people think he is a threat to civilization!) It seems that the people behind this think women are putting too much emphasis on education and career and not enough emphasis on being reproductive machines. The Heritage Foundation, which led Project 2025 is a driving force behind this. Some of the people pushing this baby boom want the National Institutes of Health to ramp up research into infertility. Too bad Trump and Musk have already fired most of the researchers! Duh! The lengthy newspaper article does not address race or ethnicity, but it doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines. The Trump Administration certainly doesn’t want women of color having six or more children. I’m sure when all is said and done and the US is turned into a real-life Handmaid’s Tale, there will be restrictions on just which women qualify for the honor of giving birth and raising six or more children. It seems to me like if they were merely interested in boosting the birthrate, they wouldn’t be working so hard to deport 11 million people from Central and South America. Hmmm. But wait… don’t a lot of families today with even fewer than six children rely heavily on Grandma and Grandpa to help raise their children? Just what most grandparents need… six more children to raise! And let’s have a show of hands: How many of you men want six or more children? Go on. Don’t be shy. Raise your hands if you want six or more children. This is one more slap in the faces of single people and non-traditional families. As if single people aren’t already taken to the cleaners by the IRS! This would be funny if it weren’t so sick and misogynistic.

Until my next blog post … tomorrow

I hope you’re reading a good book.

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

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

Janet

Some unjust things going on in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here we go…

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

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash
  • The US Air Force has removed webpages, photos, videos, and biographies about several trailblazing female pilots, including retired Colonel Nicole Malachowski. She served in the Air Force for 21 years and was the first woman to pilot with the elite Thunderbirds team. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Col. Nicole Malachowski
  • According to a Washington Post report, “Thiry-eight of 43 experts cut last month from the boards that review the science and research that happens in laboratories at the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards. The scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal…. These scientists rate the quality of the science on the nation’s largest biomedical research campus, where 1,200 taxpayer-funded investigators lead laboratories focused on Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, cancer immunotherapy, and other diseases and treatments.” A pattern, or a coincidence?
Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash
  • Proposed US Department of Health and Human Services budget cuts would slash 40% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes for Health budget. I hope all the medical researchers and physicians who have lost their jobs due to Donald Trump will be able to find new opportunities in other countries where their knowledge and skills will be appreciated.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
  • A doctor who is a US citizen born in Pennsylvania received one of the US Department of Homeland Security’s emails informing her that she has to leave the United States immediately. Maybe the new Department of Government Efficiency needs to investigate the top officials at Homeland Security. Seems like they’re making a lot of mistakes in who they’re trying to deport.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
  • US Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has threated to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students unless it gives her information on all of its student visa holders’ disciplinary records and protest participation. Harvard has been given an April 30, 2025, deadline or it will “face immediate lost of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification.” It’s difficult to imagine Harvard University without any international students.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
  • On Friday, Trump, who was partially elected because he claimed he would bring down the cost of eggs and other groceries, said, “You can have all the eggs. You watch, we have too many eggs. In fact, if anything, the prices are getting too low. So I just want to let you know that the prices are down.” Like he would know or care about the price of a dozen eggs!
Photo by Raiyan Zakaria on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the worst thing that’s been proposed yet

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

Photo by Alex Gallegos on Unsplash

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

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

Let that sink in.

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post … tomorrow

I hope you’re reading a good book.

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

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

Janet