Tag: Jerome Powell

This and That Out of Washington, DC This Week

It continues to feel like news items are coming out of Washington, DC like water from a fire hose. I can’t keep up. For my mental health, that’s a good thing.

Some things get more coverage by the media than others, so I try to include some things in my blog posts that might have missed your attention.

I thought about listing the following items in order of outrageousness or evilness, but I gave up. Here they are in random order.

I believe God is weeping

The Trump Administration Regime has ordered nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food that was intended for distribution in Africa and the Middle East through USAID to be burned. Let that sink in.

Photo of a fire
Photo by Caleb Kim on Unsplash

The $800,000 (You read that right: that’s $800 thousand) worth of food was specifically intended for children under five years old in war-torn and disaster-stricken countries. It would have fed 1.5 million children for a week. By the way, it will cost $130,000 to incinerate the food.

Since the Trump Regime shut down USAID, there was apparently no one in the Trump Government that had the authority, capability, or the moral courage to get the food distributed to anyone – not even here in the United States.

Another 60 metric tons of food already paid for by the American taxpayer sits in warehouses around the world. Without USAID workers, it is doubtful any of it will be distributed. Therefore, it will eventually have to be destroyed.

It seems to me on the political level alone this is a slap in the face of the American farmer. You know – that American farmer that Trump and MAGA folks claim to love so much. That farmer grew that food.

How dare Donald Trump accuse USAID or any current or former U.S. Government agency of being wasteful!

More deportations to third-world countries

CBS News reports that the Trump Regime admitted on Tuesday that a group of violent criminals had been deported to Eswatini. Eswatini used to be known as Swaziland. It is a tiny country in Africa.

Photo of a jet plan in the sky
Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash

The deportees were not from Eswatini. They were from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen.

The Trump Regime says they were deported to Eswatini because they were such violent people that their home countries refused to take them.

It has not been disclosed what Eswatini gets out of the deal. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims that the countries accepting our deportees promise not to persecute or torture them.

I suppose we can take them at their word on that. (By “them” I mean the United States and the countries accepting our deportees.)

The irony is that Trump has maintained for years that other countries were sending us their criminals and the worst scumbags of society. It appears he has learned from those countries, and now the United States is doing it. We’re just proudly announcing that we’re doing it. Somehow, this is supposedly making America great again.

Corn farmers will have to take one on the chin for Trump

Trump has decided he’d rather his Coca-Cola be sweetened with cane sugar (mostly imported, by the way) than from corn syrup made from corn grown in Iowa. I understand that’s the difference between the Coca-Cola recipe in Mexico and the one used in the U.S. Who knew Trump preferred Mexican Coca-Cola to American Coca-Cola?

Photo of corn growing in a field
Photo by Katherine Volkovski on Unsplash

The American Medical Association says there’s not much difference in the “nutritional” value of a Coke sweetened with corn syrup and a Coke sweetened with cane sugar. When you’re dealing with a beverage that has no nutritional redeeming value….

Anyway, Coca-Cola appears to be just the latest private corporation that Trump wants to strong-arm into submission to his whims. Some of us remember the last time Coca-Cola tried to tinker with its recipe in America things did not go well.

FICA Club World Cup Trophy

It was embarrassing enough that President Trump refused to get off the stage so the Chelsea 2025 FIFA Club World Cup tournament champions could celebrate their win on July 13, but he didn’t stop there. The 24-carat gold trophy designed by Tiffany and Company and valued at $230,000 is now in the Oval Office. The Chelsea team got to take home a replica.

You simply cannot make this stuff up. I thought it couldn’t be true – not even for Trump – but I verified it on snopes.com.

I saw online that the Chelsea team photoshopped Trump out of the picture of them receiving the trophy and celebrating on stage.

I shudder to think how much gold Trump will take from the 2028 Summer Olympics!

Covid-19

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has dropped a case against a doctor in Utah who was accused of falsifying Covid-19 vaccination certificates and destroying $28,000 worth of government-provided Covid-19 vaccines.

Decrease in workforce at State Department

More than 1,300 employees of the U.S. State Department were let go last week. Waste, I guess?

Don’t you just hate it when diplomacy, time-honored relationship, goodwill, and mutual understanding get in the way of hate and war?

Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship threatened

President Trump threatened to take Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship away from her because she spoke out against his policies.

I had no idea the President of the United States could take away someone’s citizenship. (I’m being facetious… He can’t.)

The Federal Reserve

Trump continues to be critical of Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve. One day he’s going to fire him. The next day he isn’t going to fire him. On Wednesday he said he was surprised that Powell was appointed to the position.

Well, duh! Trump appointed him in 2017. Now he says Powell is a terrible person and claims that he was appointed by President Biden.

Firings at Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired 20 employees of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The 20 people worked on investigations into Donald Trump and his first administration while Joe Biden was U.S. President. In Trump’s 2024 campaign and in Bondi’s confirmation hearings, they both vowed to get rid of everyone at the DOJ who participated in investigations against Trump. The political firings at DOJ last week were made to get rid of the weaponization of the Justice Department. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

Photo on Unsplash

She also fired Joseph Tirrell, the Justice Department’s senior ethics attorney. He is a military veteran and has served his country in one way or another for nearly 20 years.

It is a sad day when the U.S. Department of Justice fires the top person looking out for ethics.

The IRS and the Johnson Amendment

The IRS announced on Monday that churches can now endorse politicians and not lose their tax-free status as a religious organization. My Baptist preacher Congressman sees this as a tremendous victory for our First Amendment rights of free speech.

Photo of a government building with the words "Internal Revenue Service engraved in the stone
Photo by Sean Lee on Unsplash

I don’t see it as a victory for anyone except pastors and churches that want to dictate how their congregants vote. It’s a shame their church members cannot be trusted to think for themselves.

I heard a audio clip of President Trump saying he didn’t see anything wrong with it if there is a candidate they like whose beliefs align with theirs. That shows how little he knows about religious organizations or Christianity. This is a slippery slope.

The Johnson Amendment was named for then U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. It became part of the U.S. Tax Code in 1954. It prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organization from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

I’m a little puzzled over how the Internal Revenue Service can just wipe part of the U.S. Tax Code off the books, but apparently in the land of Trump it can.

Recission Bill – Cuts to Public Broadcasting Corporation & USAID

The U.S. Senate gave Trump a huge gift yesterday morning when they voted 51-48 (one Senator was in the hospital and missed the vote) to cut $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $8 billion from foreign aid programs, including what little was left of USAID.

Although Senators Collins and Murkowski voted with the Democrats, Thom Tillis of North Carolina chose to vote for the cuts while at the same time making a speech on the Senate floor in which he said passing the bill was a mistake that the Senate would have to fix later.

What?

The bill was then sent back to the House of Representatives for that Republican-dominated body to rubber stamp it by today.

I am going to miss “NOVA,” “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates,” “Nature,” “BBC News America,” “Amanpour and Company,” “BBC News,” “PBS News Hour,” “North Carolina Weekend,” “Cook’s Country,” “Antiques Roadshow,” “Burt Wolf: Travels & Traditions,” “Rick Steves’ Europe,” “Doc Martin,” “My Music With Rhiannon Giddens,” every one of the Ken Burns documentaries, “Somewhere South,” “America’s Test Kitchen,” and “Lidia’s Kitchen.”

My sister will miss “Midsomer Murders” and “Death in Paradise.”

I’m sure others will miss “Sesame Street” and other children’s programming.

Photo by Meg von Haartman on Unsplash

Others will miss “This Old House,” “Woodwright Shop,” “Austin City Limits,” “Grantchester on Masterpiece,” “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries,” and “Sit and Be Fit.”

I could go on, but you get the picture. I hope you took time to let your Senators and Representatives know that you did not want the federal government to end its support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I did. It just fell on their six deaf ears.

Hearing U.S. Representative Randy Fine, a Republican from Florida, interviewed yesterday, it became clear that some of the members of Congress don’t know what they are voting on. Fine justified the elimination of money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Corporation (CPB) from the federal budget because “we have broadband and streaming now.”

First of all, if the public television stations don’t have the money to produce programming, no amount of broadband internet service or streaming capabilities will make non-existent programming available to people with broadband and/or streaming. In order to stream a TV program, it is my understanding that the program has to exist. However, I’m just a citizen, so what do I know?

Second of all, Mr. Fine, everyone does not have broadband internet service and everyone does not have internet service that is strong enough to enable streaming. I know that, because I’m one of them. I don’t live in a remote area; however, I do live on a road that does not have a high enough population for Windstream to upgrade our service. I can barely get so-called high-speed internet. Streaming? Forget about it.

Trump doesn’t like the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) – “public TV” or National Public Radio (NPR). Therefore, Republicans in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate cannot like them. Congressman Fine repeated the Republican Party line yesterday about PBS and NPR: They are “woke left-wing radical propaganda.”

That’s what this week’s email from my Congressman, Mark Harris, said, too. I guess Trump, Fine, and Harris nailed it. After all, when I watch “Antiques Roadshow” or “This Old House,” all I see is “woke left-wing radical propaganda.”

Margaret Taylor Green’s new concern

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that U.S. Representative Margaret Taylor Green of Georgia is afraid that passage of the GENIUS Act – a crypto currency bill pushed by Trump – could be a sign of the “End Times” referenced in the Book of Revelation in the Bible (Revelation 13:16-17).

Photo of a loose pile of bitcoins
Photo by Traxer on Unsplash

She fears it will be “the sign of the beast.”

That’s hilarious! I thought the red MAGA baseball caps might already serve that purpose as “a mark on their foreheads.”

Just a few things we’ve lost since January 20, 2025

We won’t fully grasp what we’ve lost due to Executive Orders and legislation in the United States since January 20 until next year and the years thereafter.

We’ve lost the sanctity of our national parks to name just one.

We’ve lost an estimated 90,000 children in Third World countries who have died of starvation or disease since January 20 because the Trump Administration halted food and medical aid programs.

We’ve lost medical insurance coverage for millions of our fellow citizens.

We’ve lost after-school literacy programs for millions of our children.

We’re rapidly losing the separation of church and state that was so very important to the people who fought in the American Revolutionary War.

We’ve lost much of our civility and respect for our fellow Americans.

We’ve lost the simple elegance of the Oval Office and seen it turned into a gaudy gold frame shop.

We’ve lost the beauty of the White House Rose Garden.

We’ve lost our position of diplomatic influence in the world and replaced it with a stance of bullying, intimidation, black-mailing, and strong-arming.

Just a few things we’ve gained since January 20, 2025

Oh… but we’ve gained the disrespect of the rest of the world.

We’ve gained a para-military masked national police force.

We’ve gained a concentration camp in the Everglades.

We’ve gained an ability to disappear people.

We’ve gained an ability to deport immigrants to remote war-torn countries of questionable motives.

We’ve gained two obscenely gigantic U.S. flags on the White House lawn. They block the view of the beautiful White House, but Trump says they are the most beautiful flag poles in the world. Those new flags at the White House remind me of the one at a huge RV park near the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

By cutting $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that $1 billion saved can be used to start renovating the dilapidated prison on Alcatraz Island off the coast of California. To use Trump’s favorite adjective, what a beautiful use of that $1 billion instead of using it to support educational TV and non-commercial radio and the national and local emergency alerts those PBS and NPR stations send out – especially in the rural areas of the country!

We’ve gained the realization that our American democracy was as fragile as the paper the U.S. Constitution was written on almost 250 years ago.

Until my next blog post

Keep reading that book you checked out from the public library or purchased from an independent bookstore!

Remember the people of Ukraine, western North Carolina, and the Hill Country of Texas.

Janet

Tying up some loose ends

I used to struggle to write a 500-word blog post. Now I struggle to keep them under 2,000 words. As long as Donald Trump is in the White House, I will not run out of material. Of course, I might be shut down before then. Nothing is guaranteed or taken for granted anymore.

You put a crooked New York City businessman in the White House, and this is what you get. I would like to think the voters have learned a lesson.

Pay to play

I don’t claim to understand crypto currency. Investing in it is not on my radar. It seems to be the newest, shiniest object to grab Donald Trump’s attention. If there is a way to make a buck, he will try it.

Photo by Scottsdale Mint on Unsplash

Making a profit is the only thing he understands. That’s why he is so bad at running the federal government. Government is not designed to turn a profit. Therefore, Trump sees it as something unnecessary. Something to be torn apart. Trashed. But I digress.

The business side of Donald Trump – which no one would ever confuse with the public Donald Trump – found a way to cash in on the crypto currency industry. It is a way for him to receive millions of dollars from rich Americans and even richer foreigners.

Trump has again pushed the limits. No other president in our history would have considered doing anything like that.

He hosted a dinner for his investors at his golf club just outside Washington, DC. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was quick to defend the entire thing. She explained that it was all on the up-and-up because he did it at night “on his own time,” and the dinner was not held at the White House.

When one is a government employee at a high level or in any position of respect, they are still representing the position they hold even “on their own time.” If you don’t believe it, just ask any public school teacher.

Government employees are not free to break the law “on their own time.” Those in positions of authority are never really “off the clock.” Again, just ask any public school teacher.

Ms. Leavitt also emphasized that the dinner attendees, who had paid an average of $1.7 millions did not expect anything in return except a dinner.

Yeah, right, Karoline.

When Jake Tapper of CNN asked US Speaker of the House Mike Johnston, about it, he said he didn’t know anything about the dinner. He went on to indicate that he was too busy last week to know about it. Keep in mind that if something isn’t important to the Speaker of the House, it doesn’t get brought up on the floor of the House Chamber.

Nothing to see here.

Harvard University, again/still

On Tuesday, Trump cancelled all government contracts with Harvard University totaling around $100 million. Those contracts include medical and agricultural research. President Emeritus of Harvard University and former US Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, called it “extortion” in an interview on CNN. Mr. Summers said, “If Harvard can’t resist these steps toward tyranny, who can?”

Yesterday it was revealed that Trump wants to limit Harvard to having no more than 15% of its students from other countries. In the 2024-2025 school year, 27% of the student body were international students.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

A bill of attainder is a legislative act that declares a person or group guilty of a crime and it goes on to provide for punishment, often without a trial. The US Constitution probits bills or acts of attainder. I’m no expert on Constitutional Law, but it seems like President Trump is crossing a line as he targets Harvard University.

Nuclear Energy

Trump signed four Executive Orders on Friday easing regulations on the nuclear power industry. As reported by NBC News, “The executive orders aim to reform nuclear energy research at the Department of Energy, clear a path to allow the Energy Department to build nuclear reactors on federally-owned land, overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and expand uranium mining and enrichment in the U.S.”

A photo looking down on a nuclear power plant.
Photo by Patrick Federi on Unsplash

I cringe to think about which federally-owned lands he will put nuclear power plants on and which national parks and national monuments will be decimated by uranium mining.

The regulations were put in place for a reason, but Trump cannot be bothered with evidence or regulations. The safety of the public is the least of his concerns.

50% Tariffs on the European Union

On Friday, May 23, Trump announced that 50% tariffs would begin on Sunday, June 1 on all goods coming into the US from countries in the European Union.

Oh, wait! That was last Friday. On Sunday, May 25, Trump announced that 50% tariffs on the European Union will begin on July 9.

It’s just Thursday, May 29. He will probably change his mind many more times before July 9.

When Democrats change their minds, Republicans call it “flip-flopping.” When Trump does it, they don’t call it anything.

Or maybe this is all a moot point. As I was preparing to schedule this post last night, the three-person United States Court of International Trade ruled that President Trump cannot use the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs. That law requires a “national emergency” for tariffs to be imposed, so Trump declared a series of “national emergencies” that did not exist.

The ruling last night gets to the question of whether the US President has the authority under the IEEPA to impose “unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.”

Of course, the Trump Administration will appeal the ruling. He never passes up an opportunity to appeal a court ruling.

Here we go!

Deal with Nippon Steel

When asked to talk about the new deal between US Steel and Nippon Steel on Sunday, President Trump called Nippon Steel “Nissan” three times in forty seconds.

Photo of a metal worker
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

This was a deal that President Joe Biden blocked late in his term in office due to national security concerns. Trump used to be against it, but now he’s all for it.

Is Trump “flip-flopping,” or is this nothing?

The EPA needs a new name

Calling the EPA the Environmental Protection Agency is now a farce. On Saturday, May 24, Reuters reported the following: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing internal agency documents.

“The EPA argued in its proposed regulation that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions, according to the NYT report.

“The EPA also said that eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the report added.

“According to the United Nations, fossil fuels are by far the largest contributors to global warming, accounting for more than 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.

“The EPA did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters could not immediately verify the details of the NYT report.

“The U.S. government under President Donald Trump has moved quickly to remove all federal spending related to efforts to combat climate change and to eliminate any regulation aimed at addressing greenhouse gas emissions as part of its effort to bolster oil, gas and mining operations.

“On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives advanced Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which may end numerous green-energy subsidies that have supported the renewable energy sector.”

The draft of the EPA’s plan reportedly went to the White House on May 2. The President has not acted on it specifically yet. The New York Times report indicated that there will be an opportunity for public comment probably in June. I’ll believe that when I see it.

The public hasn’t been given a time to comment on anything since January 20.

Perhaps the EPA can be renamed the Environment Attack Agency (EAA) or the Attack the Environment Agency (ATEA).

 How about a new Trump battle cry? MACA! Make America Choke Again!

National Security Council

On Friday, May 23, it was announced that the Trump Administration was cutting the staff of the Office of the National Security Council by half with those employees putting placed on administrative leave.

These were the people who monitored events and trends around the world so the US President could be kept up-to-date daily on the things a person in that position should know about. Since Trump rarely reads his daily briefings, I guess he decided the support staff of the National Security Council was a waste of taxpayer money.

ICE instructed to triple arrests

It was reported by CNN yesterday that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are demanding 3,000 arrests per day by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Considering ICE has already made a number of false arrests, we can now expect that number to triple.

Ximena Arias Cristobal, a 19-year-old college student of Dalton, Georgia, has finally been released after being mistakenly arrested for a traffic violation made by another driver in a car similar to hers. She was detained by ICE for two weeks.

She was brought into the United States by her parents when she was four years old. She said in an interview on CNN that the family has tried repeatedly through various lawyers for 15 years to become American citizens, but every door has been closed to them. If deported to Mexico, she will be sent to a place she is not familiar with and it will be difficult for her to continue her college studies in Spanish.

Should ICE set up a staging area in a church parking lot?

On May 20, ICE set up a staged an operation in the parking lot of Central United Methodist church in Charlotte as preschool children were being picked up by their parents and grandparents. The church had not approved the intrusion.

This activity by ICE has been condemned by local faith leaders and state legislators. Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director of the North Carolina Council of Churches said, “The places where people come to worship, pray, study, and live out the tenets of their faith should be unavailable for this kind of posture.”

Central United Methodist Church offers Bible studies in Spanish and the church’s preschool is bilingual.

An uplifting commencement address by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell

In my blog post on Tuesday, one of my topics was President Trump’s commencement “speech” at West Point. If you missed my post or didn’t otherwise hear about it, please read my Tuesday post:

In contrast to Trump’s speech at West Point, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell spoke at Sunday’s commencement at Princeton University. His audience apparently got a more appropriate speech that the cadets at the US Military Academy.

Reports say that Mr. Powell told the Princeton Class of 2025 that universities in the United States are “the envy of the world and a crucial national asset.” He called on them to preserve democracy and not to take universities in the United States for granted.

Fortune reported online: “I strongly urge you to find time in your careers for public service,” Powell said. “Since the founding of this great democracy 250 years ago, generation upon generation have assumed the burden and the honor of moving us closer to the ideal that all are created equal. Now it’s your turn.”

President Trump has long been critical of Mr. Powell.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

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

Janet