Tag: freedom of speech threatened

Happy “No Kings” Day!

I’m not able to participate in a “No Kings” Protest today, but I will be there in spirit. I will continue to voice my protest via my blog.

Photo of a white crown suspended in air
Photo by Megan Watson on Unsplash

The Republican Congressional leaders attacked the demonstrations in advance, calling today’s demonstrations “The Hate America Rally.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It sounds like something a dictator would say.

In America, we have a First Amendment right of freedom of speech. We are free to demonstrate and protest.

Photo of a piece of paper coming out of a typewriter. The words, "Freedom of Speech' are typed on the paper.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Isn’t that what the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, said they were doing: exercising their First Amendment right? Of course, they went beyond protesting when they tried to kill police officers and broke into the U.S. Capitol as they tried to prevent the certification of the November 2020 Presidential election.

Whatever bizarre or nasty thing Trump says, the Cabinet members all have to repeat. Even Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent jumped on that bandwagon to toe the party line.

The President said participants in “The Hate America Rally” are paid. He said their signs look professionally made and that is proof that they are being paid to protest.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the participants are members of ANTIFA. Since ANTIFA is an acronym for Anti-Fascist, it seems to me that every American should be ANTIFA. Do you not find it worrisome that the U.S. President and Congressional leaders are against anti-fascists? It indicates to me that they are pro-Fascism. But we aren’t supposed to call them that. It makes them angry and they are offended when they are called Fascists although they claim to hate anti-Fascists.

The “Hate America” rally was held at Donald Trump’s urging on January 6, 2021. That’s the day his followers tried to stop the certification of the November 2020 Presidential election because their guy whined and said he won even though he didn’t win. He convinced them that the election was stolen. And now, almost five years later, he wants that election investigated again. He is so small, he cannot stand to be a loser.

Photo credit: Andra C. Taylor, Jr. on unsplash

The rioters that day physically attacked the police officers the Republicans claim they love and respect so much. They defaced the U.S. Capitol. They erected a gallows and chanted “hang Mike Pence!” They smeared their defecation in the halls of the U.S. Capitol and broke into the offices of U.S. Representatives. They broke things. They stole things. They made a wholesale attack on our form of government

That was the official “Hate America” Insurrection. I watched it live on TV in horror. I can’t imagine the level of hate for the United States those people held in their hearts. Then, the nail in the coffin was when Donald Trump pardoned them.

That is all I need to know about Donald J. Trump, Sr.

The people demonstrating today are doing so out of love for America. They are horrified to see how our democracy being chipped away daily with a sledgehammer.

They are horrified to see the National Guard used as a political pawn and weapon by their President.

They are sick and tired of being called “left wing radical lunatics” and worse by their President.

They are horrified to see masked ICE agents violently attacking people – citizens and non-citizens – and hauling them off to detention centers.

Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash

They are horrified that their President is ordering boats in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea to be blown to smithereens because they might be transporting drugs to America, and now their President threatens to launch a land attack on Venezuela – ignoring The War Powers Act.

They don’t like that their President is bailing out Argentina to the tune of $20 billion while the American farmer goes bankrupt due to the dismantling of USAID and the tariffs he has issued on China and other countries.

They are furious that public education and public health programs are under attack by the Trump Administration.

They are horrified to see the blatant hate for people of color, the objectifying of women, the homophobia, and the hate for transgender individuals demonstrated by the Trump Administration.

In anticipation for the peaceful “No Kings” demonstrations being held today, the Governors of Virginia and Texas mobilized their states’ National Guard members yesterday.

It’s a shame that the National Guard wasn’t called up to defend the members of Congress and the U.S. Capitol and our form of government on January 6, 2021.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt showed her true colors this week when she said, “The Democrat Party’s main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

Photo of the White House, Washingon, D.C.
The White House, Washington, D.C.

The fact that President Trump did not make a statement to reprimand her or disavow her comment, indicates that he agrees with her.

We have reached a dangerous time in our country when the person who was elected to be President of the United States – president of all 50 states – president of all citizens of the United States – thinks it is acceptable to call the citizens who are registered Democrats “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

I resent being called a Hamas terrorist, an illegal alien, and a violent criminal, but the worst part of this is that such a thing can be said from the official communicator and spokesperson of the White House and no one in the Trump Administration or the Republican Party speaks out to condemn the remarks.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America

And that, my friends, is one more reason why millions of Americans are protesting today. They are sick and tired of being sick and tired and being on the receiving end of a fire hose of attacks since January 20, 2025.

Janet

Political Jokes and the First Amendment

In the old days, if a king didn’t like the court jester’s jokes, he could have him executed. In some countries, that might still be the case.

Photo of a piece of paper coming out of a typewriter. The words, "Freedom of Speech' are typed on the paper.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

But in America, we have First Amendment rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution… or so we thought until last Thursday.

That was when CBS announced the May 2026 end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Colbert will not be replaced. The show will cease to exist.

CBS says it was purely a financial decision, but it seemed more than coincidental for it to happen to a show whose host keeps us laughing five nights-a-week as he masterfully puts a humorous spin on that day’s latest pronouncements and blunders made by Donald Trump.

There is nothing coincidental about it, and we all know it – no matter how many of Trump’s minions get on TV and try to convince us that it was.

Here’s the background, as reported by The Washington Post on July 18:

“On July 1, the announcement came that the network’s parent company, Paramount Global — which needs Donald Trump’s administration to approve the pending sale of the company to Skydance Media — was settling (rather than fighting) the president’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview of then-candidate Kamala Harris. They will be paying the president $16 million. Before the settlement, CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens both left (or were made to) after registering their disapproval. Those who remain are clearly shaken. “Can you hold power to account after paying it millions?” John Dickerson, the anchor for “CBS Evening News,” said while reporting on the deal the day the settlement was announced. “Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?”

Photo of a microphone.
Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Trump’s cult members go on CNN and try to convince us that Stephen Colbert “isn’t even funny.” The Republicans have lost any sense of humor they ever had. Colbert is hilarious, and he’s been known to poke fun at politicians of all stripes.

Stephen Colbert, from everything I’ve heard, read, and seen is a descent guy. He does not hide his Roman Catholic faith, nor does he use it to shame or beat someone over the head with it. It is just part of his being and he is not ashamed to mention it on occasion when doing so seems appropriate.

He is never mean-spirited in his jokes. He is a consummate professional who goes out in front of a live audience five nights-a-week to offer them a release from the stresses of every day life.

Mr. Colbert’s father and two of his brothers died in a plane crash in 1974 when Colbert was just 10 years old, so he knows loss and grief on a very personal level. It gives him a heartfelt empathy for others. He demonstrates that empathy by sometimes including in the show ways to encourage others to show their empathy and open their wallets to help people in times of a natural disaster.

If you don’t like Stephen Colbert’s jokes, you don’t have to watch his show. As we used to say, “It’s a free country.”

Trump’s track record on humor

Trump proved on live TV in 2016 that he cannot take a joke. When then U.S. President Barack Obama made a light-hearted joke about Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump never cracked a smile. If Trump had had even a tiny understanding of the White House Correspondents Dinner, he would have known that (1) it was a huge fundraiser for journalism and related internships and (2) it was an annual dinner dominated by good-hearted political jokes.

There was nothing mean-spirited by Obama’s remarks. He mainly poked fun at himself. That’s what people who have good mental health do. But Trump took it as a serious affront, and he will go to his grave still angry about Obana’s words.

An official photo of President Barack Obama from the Library of Congress
U.S. President Barack Obama.
Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

A transcript of President Obama’s remarks, along with parenthetical inclusions of when the audience laughed) can be found at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/05/01/remarks-president-white-house-correspondents-dinner. The live television broadcast of the Obama’s remarks that night can also we found on YouTube. You can judge for yourself if President Obama’s remarks were mean-spirited. Here is the joke read by President Obama that made Trump so angry:

“Sitting at the same table, I see Mike Bloomberg.  (Applause.)  Mike, a combative, controversial New York billionaire is leading the GOP primary and it is not you.  (Laughter.)  That has to sting a little bit.  (Laughter.)  Although it’s not an entirely fair comparison between you and the Donald.  After all, Mike was a big-city mayor.  He knows policy in depth.  And he’s actually worth the amount of money that he says he is.  (Laughter and applause.)”

Trump sat stone-faced while the audience laughed at the joke. Trump couldn’t find the humor in it, I guess because he knew it was true.

Political humor is as old as mankind. It is unbelievable that someone as old as Donald Trump would not have known that. He clearly didn’t know it in 2016, and he hasn’t learned it yet in 2025.

Back to CBS and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” … Trump went on social media within hours of Thursday’s announcement by CBS. He berated Stephen Colbert and belittled his comedic talents. He celebrated Colbert’s “firing,” and announced that Jimmy Kimmel of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on ABC will be next.

The bigger picture

This is much bigger than the cancellation of a television show. This is much bigger than the attempt to silence one comedian.

This, my friends, is an attack on our First Amendment right to free speech.

Photo of a young woman with blue tape across her mouth
Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash

It puts that ounce of fear in every decision a commercial television network makes, so they will constantly second guess themselves. It makes television producers think twice before they have a certain guest on a show.

It puts that little bit of intimidation in the mind of a comedian who has built a 40-year career poking fun at every United States President because that’s what we do in America. We make fun of our elected leaders.

One-by-one, Trump plans to rid television in America of comedians who dare to make jokes about him. He as much as said so on his social media platform.

It has come to that.

Here in the United States, we now have a President who thinks he has the authority to run roughshod over anyone and everyone.

He even attacked his own supporters last week when some of them dared to ask for the release of the Epstein files. He immediately called them “stupid.” These are the people who have voted for him three times and would happily vote for him again, but he has turned on them and called them names.

You cross Donald Trump, and you pay the price.

He believes he has the right to dictate every facet of our lives – the polluted air we breathe, the medical care we get or don’t get, and now – the television shows we can’t watch.

He has defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because it received federal funds. Now, he has strong-armed CBS into ending a late-night talk show that has been on the air for decades because the host tells political jokes. CBS claims the decision was strictly financial, but we all know the real reason.

On Monday night, Colbert made a joke about CBS paying Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit. Three days later, Colbert’s show gets cancelled. You do the math.

Shame on Trump, but the lion’s share of the shame sits on the shoulders of CBS. First, you let him bully you about “60 Minutes” and now you’ve let him dictate your late-night programming.

Where do you think this will end, CBS? You have given in to a bully!

It is sad when an adult not only cannot laugh at himself but only finds humor in the suffering or misfortune of others. It is tragic when that adult is President of the United States.

Many days, 11:30-11:40 p.m. is the only time during the entire day that I find something to laugh about. I might not know or have an interest in his celebrity guests, but I’m tuning in for the show’s opening monologue.

I will continue to watch “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” every weekday night until May 2026. I’m not sure how I will cope with the Trump regime after that.

Until my next blog post

Keep laughing at politicians.

Keep reading whatever you want to read.

Keep watching whatever you want to watch on TV.

The day may come when you cannot do those things, so don’t take them for granted.

Remember the people of Ukraine. They were living their lives in a democracy one day and the next day Russia started dropping bombs on them.

Remember the people of western North Carolina where people are still recovering from a hurricane and massive flooding that hit ten months ago this week.

Janet

How’s that Salmonella infection working for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until my next blog post tomorrow

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

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

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

Janet, a disgruntled political science major