Tag: ICE

MASA? The Reimaging of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security

“Make America Safe Again” appears to be the new slogan of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but I’ve never felt less safe in my life.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs with masked faces in unmarked vehicles are turned loose to supposedly apprehend “the worst of the worst” among us. The Trump Administration’s catch phrase, “the worst of the worst” can be translated to “immigrant,” except for those who have married into Trump’s family.

In his ramblings at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts yesterday he mentioned not letting people into the country if you don’t like what they look like. That pretty much sums up the outlook of his Presidency. He doesn’t want them counted in the U.S. Census either.

I have not seen ICE thugs in person. I live in a semi-rural area. But I’ve seen enough photographs and news reports. All this heightened militarization of the federal government only scares me, even though I’m white and was born in the United States. What’s to say ICE nabs me by mistake?

I keep procrastinating getting a new passport to prove I’m a citizen. It seems like I shouldn’t have to pay $195 just to have a document to prove I’m a citizen. I could just carry a copy of my birth certificate everywhere I go, just in case; however, that merely proves I was born here, and that’s not going to be sufficient after the U.S. Supreme Court lets Trump do away with the 14th Amendment.

What’s to say they nab me because I write uncomplimentary things about Trump? Come to think of it, my passport won’t do me any good if that happens. Maybe I don’t need a passport after all.

The Department of Homeland Security website

Something told me to visit the website for DHS (https://www.dhs.gov/) yesterday afternoon, but I wish I hadn’t. Now I can’t un-see it.

At the top of the home page is a stern-looking image of “Uncle Sam” pointing his finger at the person viewing the computer screen. The text: “AMERICA NEED YOU! America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out. JOIN ICE.” The words, “JOIN ICE” are in a clickable button for your convenience.

I’ve seen photographs of the “Uncle Sam Needs You!” posters that were used in the 1940s, but that was during World War II. “Uncle Sam” needed every American to sacrifice and serve in some way to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan.

Uncle Sam "I want you U.S. Army" poster
Photo from the Library of Congress

For a government agency to use that image today to target immigrants minimizes the importance of the country’s need in the 1940s. To conflate the immigration problems of 2025 with a World War is a slap in the face to my parents’ generation who survived The Great Depression and World War II.

But the DHS website only got worse.

Under the red, white, and blue banner of Uncle Sam pleading for your help is a photograph of Secretary Kristi Noem all decked out like a cowboy atop a horse. She is surrounded by more cowboys on horses like a posse tracking down the bad guys in a B-grade movie set in the 1800s out in the mythical “wild West.

The photo brings back memories of the “Gunsmoke” TV series from the 1950s. Not what I want to see in the United States in the 21st century – not even in a movie or TV program – much less in real life.

I suppose it is all part of the Trump Administration and MAGA’s fascination with guns.

Too many meaningless slogans

Under that bizarre photograph it says, “Making America Safe Again.” Just what we needed: one more “Make America _____ Again!” This has turned into a multiple-choice exercise in which you can fill in just about any adjective that comes to mind.

I would say this “Make America _____ Again” is a broken record, but there’s a whole generation of people out there who wouldn’t have a clue what that means.

I consider it a privilege of birth that I was born and have lived my entire life in the United States of America. I didn’t do anything to deserve that, and I have considered it a blessing.

But I have apparently been living under the misconception that America was a great country. Now, at the ripe old age of 72, I find out it was all a hoax!

This land of opportunity and freedom I have happily lived in all these years which afforded me a free public education and an affordable public university education and gave me the opportunity to earn a living as I chose was all smoke and mirrors! What a shock!

My entire life has apparently been a joke. I only thought I was happy. I only thought I was free. Little did I know all this time I’ve been living in a hell hole, according to President Trump.

Make America Great Again. Make America Healthy Again. Make America Safe Again. For about 24 hours back on July 20, we even had Make Indians Great Again because Trump wanted the Cleveland Guardians baseball team to revert to being the Cleveland Indians.

Frankly, I’m sick of every bit of this. All of these bombastic slogans being made by a failed but somehow famous convicted felon businessman who is running roughshod over the United States of America ring hollow.

What does “great” mean?

Trump’s idea of “great” is equivalent to money, lies, a façade. It’s all a house of cards and it will collapse.

Money does not equate with greatness, to my way of thinking. Greatness is found in how you treat other human beings – how you treat all human beings.

Greatness is not found in calling people stupid, idiots, lunatics, scum, criminals, etc.

Building yourself up by making all manner of false claims about your intellect and accomplishments is not greatness; it’s a sign of weakness and insecurity.

Here we are.

Janet

The Immigration Debacle in the United States

I couldn’t say all I wanted to say in yesterday’s blog post. Ready or not, here comes more….

Photo of a paper with "Immigration" printed in bold capital letters
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash

Immigration was not handled well during the first Trump Administration (i.e. people put in cages and children separated from their parents without a means of identification). Immigration was mishandled by the Biden Administration (i.e. too lax about enforcing border security). But immigration is a disaster during the second Trump Administration.

Where is the voice of reason? Where is common sense?

Deployment of California National Guard

A full month after the major protests against ICE in a Los Angeles neighborhood, Trump decided it was finally time to let thousands of California National Guard members return to their families and their jobs. Some of them have started speaking out about that experience.

The New York Times is reporting that some of the National Guard personnel have voiced serious concern over being deployed by President Trump. They are calling it a “fake mission.”

The New York Times reported, “Six member of the Guard – including infantrymen, officers and two officials in leadership roles – spoke of low morale and deep concern that the deployment may hurt recruitment for the state-based military force for years to come.”

There are reports of some members of the California National Guard voicing misgivings from the beginning about the deployment.

For Trump to keep them in warehouses in Los Angeles for a full four weeks after all threat of civil violence was over, is the icing on the cake.

It is still beside the point that Trump did not have the authority to deploy a state’s National Guard under the existing circumstances. That authority rests with the state’s governor.

“The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring. This is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all,” one member of the Guard told The Times.”

The piece reported that National Guard personnel of Hispanic heritage were especially uncomfortable being deployed to assist ICE in rounding up illegal aliens.

Just one more instance of the chipping away of our democracy and rule of law.

“Take the rest of ‘those people,’ but don’t take my neighbor”

Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in The New York Times last Saturday. Here’s the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/opinion/immigrants-ice-deportation.html.

The situation he wrote about is a case-in-point of how people voted for Trump because he promised to get the violent immigrants out of the United States. They claim now that they didn’t think he meant ALL immigrants.

(My question to them is, “Why did you believe anything he said?”)

Kristof lives in a farming community in Oregon where the majority of people voted for Trump for president all three times. But now that community is upset because Trump is deporting immigrants they know. He wasn’t supposed to deport local immigrants like Moises Sotelo.

Mr. Sotelo has lived in the community for 31 years, established a vineyard, and employed 10 people. He is a pillar in his church. He is a respected businessman.

But ICE picked up Mr. Sotelo and deported him to Mexico. Kristof says the community is now up in arms. They have raised $150,000 to help with Mr. Soleto’s legal expenses. Good luck with that.

Photo of a man's hands grasping the wire fence he is being held behind.
Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash

The way I see it, many people voted for Trump because he voiced a hatred for immigrants and that appealed to his base. They hate immigrants, too, so Trump is their man. Trump called immigrants names, and that appealed to his base.

Trump said immigrants were a drain on our economy, that they didn’t pay taxes, and – worst of all – they are all violent criminals. He convinced his base that those things were true, even though they are all false.

Trump’s base refuses to accept the fact that immigrants – illegal as well as legal — pay income and sales tax. If they get a paycheck, income and Social Security taxes are deducted from that paycheck. When they purchase anything, they pay state and local sales tax — just like Americans. Who knew?

After Trump and his ICE thugs remove all the immigrants from the United States, the people in Trump’s base are going to be surprised that most crimes in America are committed by Americans. Many of them have white skin, and that’s going to be the biggest surprise of all for them.

The Case of George Retes, U.S. citizen, U.S. Army Veteran

George Retes is a United States citizen and a veteran of the United States Army. When he drove up to the Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California, to report for work, his car was approached by ICE agents. They broke a car window, sprayed him with pepper spray, and dragged him out of his car – all while he was telling them that he was a U.S. citizen and veteran just reporting for work.

ICE detained him for three days.

Photo of a U.S. Army soldier in full combat uniform from behind
Photo by Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash

I saw Mr. Retes interviewed on TV, and this is what the Associated Press reported:

“Retes was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, where he said he was put in a special cell on suicide watch and checked on each day after he became emotionally distraught over his ordeal and missing his 3-year-old daughter’s birthday party Saturday.

“He said federal agents never told him why he was arrested or allowed him to contact a lawyer or his family during his three-day detention. Authorities never let him shower or change clothes despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, Retes said, adding that his hands burned throughout the first night he spent in custody.”

I am embarrassed for the United States of America. Such federal police action is not “Making America Great Again.”

This is even worse

Eighty-two-year-old Luis Leon from Allentown, Pennsylvania had been in the United States LEGALLY for 38 years since being granted asylum from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chili in 1987. He was a victim of torture by the Pinochet regime.

Unfortunately, in June Mr. Leon lost his wallet which contained his green card.

Thinking all he had to do was request a replacement green card, Mr. Leon and his wife made an appointment to get that taken care of.

But when he arrived for his appointment, Mr. Leon was handcuffed and taken away. His wife was held for 10 hours until a granddaughter could pick her up.

For a month, Mr. Leon’s family had no idea where he was. His name never showed up on the immigration tracker list. ICE had no answers for them. The family looked for him in local prisons, hospitals, and morgues, but they could not find him.

A relative in Chile found him in a hospital in Guatemala and called his family in Pennsylvania on Friday. Mr. Leon had never been to Guatemala before the United States Government decided to disappear him to that country. ICE still won’t confirm their thugs had anything to do with this. ICE claims they are “investigating” the case.

Black-and-white photo of the back of an older man in a wheelchair beside a hospital-type bed.
Photo by Annabel Podevyn on Unsplash

In conclusion

I am at a loss for words to describe how angry I am and how embarrassed I am today to be an American – even though I did not vote for Trump.

Trump campaigned on the promise to deport illegal aliens who were criminals, but now Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) snatches people off the street, from their homes, from their places of employment, and occasionally (what seems like daily) they make egregious mistakes and kidnap the wrong person.

ICE agents are under pressure to arrest 3,000 immigrates every day. So what if they nab a few legal citizens or immigrants who are guilty of nothing more than a traffic ticket?

It is un-American for ICE agents to cover their faces, wear no badges, and not identify themselves. The excuse that they have to cover their faces because they are scared of retribution doesn’t hold water. Local police officers might fear retribution, too, but they don’t wear face masks.

If you voted for Trump, you voted for this. You knew he was a horrible man and you voted for him anyway. I don’t know how you sleep at night.

At least I don’t have to live with the shame of having voted for any of this.

Until my next blog post

Keep up with reliable news reports

Keep reading good fiction and nonfiction books.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

A little fascism here, a little fascism there…

I’ve read that some people who blindly voted for Donald Trump are having buyer’s remorse now. As far as I know, I don’t know any of them personally. If you now wish you had not voted for Trump, please tell me.

Not a day passes that we don’t learn of another fascist step the Trump regime has taken.

It is exhausting to watch the news. It is exhausting to try to digest it and condense it into a blog post. I refuse to stop. I love my country too much to give up or give in.

I love my four young adult great nieces too much to stop watching the news and scanning the internet for multiple reputable resources. I love them too much to leave them a tyrannical government in which they are commanded to march lockstep with the-power hungry freedom haters in charge.

I worked too hard to get an education and they have worked too hard to get an education for them to be doomed to a life of barefoot and pregnant, which is what the Trumpers apparently want for them.

Wannabe dictators don’t sweep in and convert a democracy into an authoritarian state overnight. They chip away at rights bit by bit. They ban a few books today, and they ban more books tomorrow. They institute laws that make it more difficult for citizens to register to vote.

They call the press “the enemy of the people.” They attack education. They push the envelope to see what they can get away with. They attack judges. They slowly but surely undermine the citizens’ confidence in everything until those citizens start questioning their own instincts.

They normalize lies and hate.

They exaggerate civil unrest so they can bypass a state governor and send in the National Guard. They overwhelming exaggerate civil unrest so they can deploy the United States Marines to a city.

They invent crises so they can declare martial law.

I am trying to sound the alarm bell out of a place of low and not anger.

Last Monday, June 16: Dr. Fiona Havers, a top scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, resigned because she could not in good conscience stay with the agency after Department of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices on June 9.

Photo of a nurse giving a little girl a shot.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Huffpost.com (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cdc-vaccine-expert-resigns-warning_n_6853013ee4b0ed75e67535cd) quoted Dr. Havers as saying, “It is a very transparent, rigorous process, and they have just taken a sledgehammer to it in the last several weeks. “CDC processes are being corrupted in a way that I haven’t seen before.”

Reuters reported that Dr. Havers’ email to her colleagues said that she had lost of confidence that her team’s output would “be used objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions.”

Dr. Havers’ fear is that “a lot of Americans are going to die as a result of vaccine-preventable diseases.”

She told The New York Times, “I could not be party to legitimizing this new committee.”

On June 11, Secretary Kennedy appointed eight new members to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Several of them have questionable qualifications for developing vaccine policy for the United States.

If you wish to read about the backgrounds of the eight new members, here is a link: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2025/06/12/acip-members.

Last Wednesday, June 18: The Associated Press (https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-73572/us-resumes-visas-foreign-students-access-social-media) reported that the US State Department will restart the process of vetting foreigners who apply for student visas. The new restriction is that applicants will have to set their social media accounts to “public” so they can be reviewed by US officials.

The report said, “The department says consular officers will be looking for activity, posts and messages showing ‘any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.’”

That would probably prevent me from coming here to study. So much for free speech.

Last Thursday, June 19: Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instituted a new policy (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/politics/ice-congress.html) that members of Congress must give 72 hours’ notice if they wish to fulfill their duty and responsibility to visit ICE Field Office. That is in direct violation of the annual appropriation act that states that members of Congress are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility.”

The ICE Field Offices and detention centers house undocumented immigrants, sometimes legal immigrants, and sometimes American citizens because the ICE agents who are clothed in black glasses and face masks apparently cannot see or hear well enough through all their Gestapo-reminiscent garb to tell a citizen from a non-citizen. Why don’t they just wear white hoods like many of them probably do when they are off the clock?

What do they want to hide from the members of Congress?

This is another in a long line of cases in which Trump or one of his appointees decided they don’t have to obey the law.

Also on last Thursday, June 19: Trump put on social media that we have too many holidays in the United States. Posting that on Juneteenth was no accident. He posted that “the workers don’t want it [a holiday] either.”

Photo of a couple enjoying the beach with their toddler. The little boy is sitting on his father's shoulders and laughing.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash

If you work for the government, at a bank, or the stock market and don’t want a paid holiday, raise your hand. Go ahead. Raise your hand.

Last Friday, June 21: Axios reported that on June 12 Trump pulled the plug on the 2023 Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement. The Biden Administration dedicated $1 billion through 2033 toward restoring salmon to the Columbia River Basin along with supporting tribal-led clean energy projects in the region. Trump called the agreement “radical environmentalism.”

It’s certainly not the first time the federal government has broken its promises to indigenous peoples, and it won’t be the last. Apparently, the hydroelectric industry, agriculture, and shipping had a stronger lobby at the White House than the Yakama Tribal Council. (https://apnews.com/article/columbia-river-snake-river-dams-tribes-salmon-745894c815e8951e9897b7a5a3544bfb) Money talks; salmon don’t.

Also last Friday, June 21: NBC News reported that on social media that day Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 elections. That’s the one he lost. Despite a raft load of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign since then, no evidence of mass voter fraud has come to light. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-posts-social-media-calling-special-prosecutor-investigate-2020-e-rcna214099) Here we go again….

Also last Friday, June 21: It came to light on several media outlets that the US Ambassador to Senegal had denied visas for two representatives of the Senegalese basketball federation, the team doctor, a physiotherapist, five players, a steward, the general manager, and the ministerial delegate. They were scheduled to come to the United States for ten days to train for the biennial AfroBasket Tournament to be played July 26 – August 3 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. No reason was given for the visa denials.

This does not bode well for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In fact, nothing that has happened since January 20 bodes well for those games.

Also last Friday, June 21: I desperately look for signs of hope. I found one on Friday. It has been reported that the section in Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would make it almost impossible for the Trump Administration to be sued for dictatorial behavior or almost anything else in federal court – has been removed from the bill being considered by the US Senate. The US House of Representatives passed the bill, but a few Senators and the Senate Parliamentarian have removed some parts of it. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-parliamentarian-knocks-pieces-out-of-trump-s-megabill/ar-AA1H6dqB)

Last Saturday, June 22: In a statement that would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous, this was published by The Washington Post:  “President Trump is restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch following four years of relentless abuse through weaponization, lawfare, and unelected bureaucrats running the nation via autopen,” [White House spokesperson] Harrison [Fields] said in a statement. “The President and his administration are the most transparent in American history, seamlessly executing the will of the American people in accordance with their constitutional authority.”

The article contrasted the post-Watergate actions the US Congress took to rein in the power of the president with the undoing of power of the legislative branch by Trump.

The article, written by Naftali Bendavid and which can be found at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-undermines-watergate-laws-in-massive-shift-of-ethics-system/ar-AA1H8Xbx. The article includes this example: “Watergate-era lawmakers, furious at Nixon for refusing to spend money they had authorized, passed a law forbidding “impoundment.” Trump ignored that when he temporarily froze government grants, and he has all but dismantled an agency created by Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development.”

It goes on to say, “In response to Nixon’s push to replace civil servants with political loyalists, Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1978 to hear cases of federal employees claiming unjust termination. Trump, who wants to force out thousands of workers, has dismissed a key member of the board and sought to neutralize it.”

On Monday, June 23: The US Supreme Court struck down a lower court ruling and said that it is perfectly find for the Trump Administration (and, therefore, all future administrations) to deport eight immigrants from various countries, including Vietnam and Cuba, to South Sudan even though none of them are from that country.

Photo of US Supreme Court Building in Washington, DC
Photo by Brad Weaver on Unsplash

Imagine being deported to a country where you know no one and don’t speak that language! It turns out the eight people had already been deported to Djibouti before the US Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 ruling on Monday. 

Until my next blog post

I will give you my weekly post-Hurricane Helene in North Carolina road update when I blog about my historical fiction writing and the little about the devotional book I’ve written but not yet published.

I hope you are reading a book that has you so captivated you can’t put it down except long enough to read my blog!

Don’t take anything or anyone for granted.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

The New American Dream?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Administration considers suspending habeas corpus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What has America become?

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

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

Miscellaneous news from the Trump Administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice of America Update

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

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

Another glimmer of hope

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

Until my next blog post

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

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet

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