An Appreciation for Regional Dialects in North Carolina

With all that’s going on every day at the hands of the Trump Administration, it feels silly and out-of-touch for me to blog about something like regional dialects; however, I don’t want my blog to turn into just a political sounding board.

My blog has been a blessing to me. It has helped me hone my writing skills. It has given my life some routine and structure after I finally settled on blogging every Monday.

It has increasingly given me a platform through which to express my love of country and the degree to which I value democracy. Most of all, it has introduced me to a network of bloggers around the world. My interactions with them have enriched my life more than I can say.

Deep down inside, I still have an interest in things like words, so I will continue to try to set aside my Monday blog posts for something beside the dismantling of the American democracy or at least give an historical context to that current destruction when I blog about an event from our past.

Meme that says, Remember why you started.
Photo by Cristofer Maximilian on Unsplash

Today, I am reaching back to one of the reasons I started blogging on June 24, 2010. I wanted to blog about my reading and my writing. Gradually, my love of studying history entered the picture.

Today, I will not blog about my concerns for American democracy except for eluding to it in my introductory paragraphs.

I’m curious about how we all speak English in the United States, but we have beautiful regional dialects. This is something that has always intrigued me.

Today I will blog about our Southern accent and dialect and the Southern Appalachian dialect. There is some overlapping of the two, although the Southern Appalachian dialect is often singled out as something unique.

What prompted me to write about this today?

The short answer is the Rebuilding Hollers Foundation.

In my April 7, 2025, blog post, Books I Read in March 2025, & Hurricane Helene Update, I mentioned the Hurricane Helene recovery efforts of Rebuilding Hollers Foundation, based in Bakersville, North Carolina. Their website is https://rebuildinghollers.org/page-18086.

Not wanting to create confusion, I gave a brief explanation of what a “holler” is, as in “hills and hollers.” As a follow up, today I’m blogging about the Southern Appalachian dialect.

Photo of Blue Ridge Mountains with rhododendren in bloom in foreground.
Photo by Andrew James on Unsplash

You might be tempted to laugh about “hills and hollers,” and that is fine, but this is not a humorous post. I find dialects fascinating!

I lived and worked in Robeson County in the eastern part of North Carolina some 40 years ago when one-third of the county’s population of 100,000 was white, one-third was black, and one-third was Lumbee and Tuscarora Indian. There were interesting words and sayings in common use there that were new to me, even though I’ve lived in the state my entire life.

One example that comes to mind is “bees” as in “She bees comin’ later. And there is a flatness in the Lumbee speech that is the same as I’ve heard from Cherokee Indians. I can hear it on TV, for example, and immediately know the speaker is either from Robeson County or the Qualla Boundary (home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.) The flatness in their voices is counteracted by colorful and interesting sayings and pronunciations.

Pursuing more information about the Southern Appalachian dialect, I found several helpful articles online in the JSTOR Daily website.

“The Legendary Language of the Appalachian ‘Holler’,” by Chi Luu on the JSTOR Daily website goes so far as to state the following: “In fact, some say that the speech of the southern mountaineers is “pure Elizabethan English” just as Shakespeare would have spoken it. Others go even further and claim that ‘the dialect of the Appalachian people is the oldest living English dialect, older than the speech of Shakespeare, closer to the speech of Chaucer,’ apparently preserved by a brutally impoverished rural existence in the isolation of their mountain fastness, with little contact from the modern civilizing ways of outsiders.”

That article was published in 2018, and I find it a bit harsh in its description of the people who live in the southern Appalachians. It makes them sound like that have never had any contact with the outside world.

I’m no linguistics expert, but as a native North Carolinian I tend to think it was that for a couple hundred years few people from the outside moved into those mountains. That made it easy for the local dialect to continue.

Photo of a marsh at high tide
Photo by Chris Ross-Lewin on Unsplash

The same holds true for parts of coastal North Carolina. The high tider, hoi toider, or hoi toide English dialect is distinct and lovely to hear. My cousin married a man from Morehead City. He often said “hoi toide” for high tide, and I have never been able to say it like he did. But now I have digressed and gone 400 miles east of the southern Appalachians.

Back to the subject at hand and the JSTOR Daily article I cited in the beginning…

I must disagree a bit more with the writer of that article because I have lived in the southern piedmont of North Carolina most of my life and I don’t consider many of the examples in the article to be strictly from southern Appalachia.

Examples in the article include:

Britches (trousers)

Poke (bag)

Sallet (salad)

Afeared (afraid

Fixin’ (getting ready to do something, “I’m fixin to go to town.”)

Allow (suppose, as in “I’ll allow that you’re right.”

Yander (yonder)

Leetle (little)

Spell (as in “I’ll stay for a little spell”

My parents said “britches” and my father’s oldest brother (born in 1899) always called a paper bad a “paper poke.” I don’t hear it as much as I did growing up, but it was not uncommon to hear someone in the southern piedmont to say that they were “fixin” to do something.

And that brings us back to “holler”

Holler (hollow)

Winder (window)

Tater (potato)

Feller (fellow)

Again, I thought those were just southern pronunciations. I’ve probably heard window pronounced “winder,” but the common pronunciation where I live is “winda.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a hollow pronounced “hollow” except in references to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Along those same lines, I’m reminded that my mother had and Aunt Ella, but in my great-grandfather’s daybooks he wrote his daughter’s name “Eller.”

And around here we would never say, “fellow.” We would say “fella.” Same situation as “winda” instead of window.

One of my uncles married a woman from the NC southern Appalachians. She pronounced fellow as feller. I always noticed that because in the southern piedmont we would say “fella.” Remembering the time she said, “A feller’s gotta do what a feller’s gotta do,” still makes me smile. Don’t be surprised if those words show up in a piece of my fiction writing someday. Aunt Mary’s mountain dialect was definitely more distinct than my piedmont dialect, and I found it endearing.

Were the roots in Scotland and Ireland?

It is said that many pronunciations and words can be traced back to Scotland and Ireland. I was surprised to learn a few years ago that on the Kintyre Peninsula of Scotland, it is (or at least at some time was) common to call a bag a poke. That’s where my gggg-grandparents (Morrison) immigrated from, so somehow “poke” got carried down to my uncle. No one else in the family called it that.

Other words in Chi Luu’s article include might could or might should (“We might could go to the ballgame.”) I had a classmate in school who said, “might could.” We grew up less than ten miles apart, but I had never hear “might could” before. Perhaps it was something passed down in his family.

Another oddity pointed out in the JSTOR Dailyarticle is what the writer called “a-prefixing.” An example would be a-runnin’.

And then there is the perfectly good word, “reckon,” as in “I reckon it’ll take an hour to get there.” Chi Luu’s articles said “reckon” is in regular use in Australia and British English, but its use in the Southern Appalachians (and the wider region) is “stigmatized as backwards hillbilly talk. American language attitudes show a marked disrespect and prejudice for marked dialects like Appalachian English.”

One more example attributed to southern Appalachia but not uncommon in the southern piedmont is “like to” or “liketa.” One would say, “I got lost and liketa never found my way out.”

You’ve probably noticed that we Southerners tend to drop the “g” at the end of words. It’s not that we’re lazy. That’s just a part of our speech patterns. The “ah” sound is a softer pronunciation than the “ow” sound.

Like I said, dialects fascinate me, so don’t be surprised if I write about them against sometime. With the advent of television, the southern dialect and pronunciations have eroded. I hear it in my great nieces’ voices. They were all born and raised in Metro Atlanta, but my North Carolina southern accent is much more pronounced than theirs. That makes me sad. I don’t want the southern accent or dialect to die out.

Hurricane Helene Update

As of Friday, 105 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene. This count includes seven US highways, 13 state highways, and 85 state roads. Although technically “open” now, I-40 in Haywood County is still open for just one lane in both directions with a 35 mile-per-hour speed limit.

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

Until my next blog post

I hope you always have a good book to read.

Remember the people of Ukraine as they continue to beat back a much larger invader; Kentucky because the misery left behind from recent flooding there has completely fallen off the mainline media’s radar; the earthquake victims in Myanmar because they must be shocked that the US isn’t sending aid or aid workers to alleviate their suffering; and western North Carolina (because seven months after Hurricane Helene, the need is still great.)

Janet

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

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

Photo by Bobbie Wallace on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

It comes on slowly.

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

You convince yourself that good people will prevail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t recognize my country anymore.

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

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

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

Janet

16 more highlights of how things are going in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

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

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

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

Janet

14 highlights of how things are going in America

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

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

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

I will blog about more such happenings in America tomorrow.

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

Janet

#OnThisDay: Various Events, including Black Sunday, 1935

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

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

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

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

On April 14 in history

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

Lincoln Assassination, 1865

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

RMS Titanic, 1912

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

Bacteria that causes Typhus Fever was isolated, 1914

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

Black Sunday, 1935

“What was Black Sunday?” you may ask.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How The Dust Bowl Got its Name

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

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

Where did some of The Dust Bowl dust go?

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

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

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

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

Hurricane Helene Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post

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

I hope you have a good book to read.

Keep friends and family close to your heart

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

Janet

Speak Up For Justice Virtual Event

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janet, a disgruntled political science major

Social Security: “You are dead to me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The purpose of the Social Security Death Index (SSDI)

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

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

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

But then the Trump Administration came along…

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

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

No one should be okay with this!

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

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

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

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

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

Please don’t think any of this is okay.

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

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

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

Janet

An Open Letter to Trump Supporters

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

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

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

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

You just couldn’t do it.

You said you didn’t like her laugh.

You said she wasn’t qualified.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You preferred a man who lies with abandon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You probably go to church every Sunday.

You might even wear a cross around your neck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And who is my neighbor?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update on Abrego Garcia

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s Treatment of Universities & Student Visas

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

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

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

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

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

Weaponization of the US Justice Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Trump’s next target?

Until my next blog post

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

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

I hope you have a good book to read.

Keep paying attention.

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

Janet

Too Busy Playing Golf and Banning Books

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

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

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

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

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

What’s going on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few of the other books on the list:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The No Dollars for Dictators Act

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

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

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

Just wondering….

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT?

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

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

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

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

Mid-Term Elections Reminder

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

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

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

Until my next blog post tomorrow

I hope you have a good book to read.

Pay attention.

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

Janet