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
Janet's Writing Blog 