I write southern historical fiction, local history, and I've written a devotional book. The two novels I'm writing are set in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1760s. My weekly blog started out to follow my journey as a writer and a reader, but in 2025 it has been greatly expanded to include current events and politics in the United States as I see our democracy under attack from within. The political science major in me cannot sit idly by and remain silent.
The advisory committee on vaccinations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were hand-picked by notorious vaccine-denier Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He just happens to be Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. He received the blessings of and confirmation by the U.S. Senate to serve in that capacity.
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash
There are things I would like to say to and about the Senators who voted to approve Kennedy for that Cabinet position, but I will temper my remarks here. To give a person who for decades has promoted conspiracy theories about vaccines to Secretary of Health and Human Services was a travesty.
When the U.S. Senate approved the likes of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security… we get what they voted for: dangerous incompetence.
When people held their noses and voted for the likes of Donald J. Trump for U.S. President, we got what they voted for: dangerous incompetence and a colossal hatred for anyone who isn’t a rich, white male.
What we have now is a growing avalanche of physicians and other medical professions telling us not to trust anything that comes out of the CDC, the Federal Drug Administration, or Health and Human Services. Let that sink in!
On December 5, Trump said he supported the recommendations of the CDC vaccine advisory committee (many of whom are known vaccine deniers) in their recommendation that we abandon the 1991 CDC recommendation that all newborn babies in the U.S. receive the hepatitis B vaccine.
Apparently, Trump knows just as much about immunology as the quacks and Republicans on the advisory committee. Having a medical or any level of a health degree was not a prerequisite to be on the committee. Let’s just let any person off the street who supports Trump form new vaccinations policies and schedules for all Americans. What could possibly go wrong?
The hepatitis B vaccine decision flies in the face of medical data. In 1990, approximately 20,000 infants in the U.S. got hepatitis B. In 2020, twenty infants in the U.S. got hepatitis B. The vaccine not only prevents the liver damage caused by hepatitis B. It also prevents the liver cancer that can result from that liver damage.
It remains to be seen how this ill-advised new CDC policy will play out over the coming years. Will pharmaceutical companies limit production of the hepatitis B vaccine? Will parents who want their newborns to be protected from this highly-contagious disease be able to get the vaccine for their children? No one knows the answers to those questions.
A memo that Trump signed on Friday praised the new CDC recommendation and went on to endorse the new policy that instead of leading the world in health science, the CDC will now follow the lead of “peer, developed countries.”
I guess it’s fortunate that Trump’s children and grandchildren were all vaccinated as newborns before this 34-year-old mandate got scrapped last week. His future grandchildren and great-grandchildren might not be so fortunate.
When Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” we didn’t know he thought the CDC was part of the swamp.
We are left to wonder if the CDC will survive three more years of attacks by Trump and Kennedy.
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC last week…
In a move that is so blatantly racist and narcissistic, the Trump Administration removed Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth as days that all our national parks could be visited for free and replaced them with… you are not going to believe this… Trump’s Birthday!
This is not a joke. This is the truth. You can’t make this stuff up!
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.
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.
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 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.”
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 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.
Today’s blog post is the last in a three-part series about some of the things I learned by reading How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith. At the end of today’s post, I’ll include links to the other two.
Today I share with you some of the things I learned about Galveston Island, Gorée Island, and the Epilogue in the book.
There was just too much information in this book to give it appropriate time in one or two blog posts. Needless to say, I highly recommend the book. I’m just hitting the high points in my blog posts.
Galveston Island
I did a double take when I read the following words at the beginning of the chapter about Galveston Island: “The long-held myth goes that on June 19, 1865, Union general Gordon Granger stood on the balcony of Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas and read the order that announced the end of slavery.”
So soon after Juneteenth 2021, I couldn’t get past the word “myth.” What in the world could Mr. Smith mean by calling this a myth?
After rereading the opening sentence to make sure I hadn’t misread it, I had to keep reading. My curiosity had been piqued.
Mr. Smith continued with the following: “Though no contemporaneous evidence exists to specifically support the claim, the story of General Granger reading from the balcony embedded itself into local folklore…. It is an annual moment that has taken a myth and turned it into a tradition.”
I read on for several pages before I had a clue why Mr. Smith was calling any part of the Juneteenth celebration a myth. What I learned was something I’d never heard, and we’d do well to learn about the aftermath of June 19, 1865 in Texas.
Now that I have your attention, you’ll need to read Mr. Smith’s book to learn the rest of the story. I don’t want to steal all Mr. Smith’s thunder in my blog post.
Gorée Island
Gorée Island is off the coast of Senegal on the west coast of Africa. The native translator who accompanied Clint Smith to the island admitted he felt guilty for never having visited the Slave House. He explained his confliction over realizing that if his ancestors had been captured and taken to the United States as slaves, he would be an American. His ancestors weren’t captured. It gave him a confused feeling.
Over the centuries, Gorée Island was colonized and renamed by a variety of European countries. It was important in the slave trade from the 1500s until 1848 when France abolished slavery in its colonies.
The author just wanted to see where the Slave House was. He didn’t want the full tour, but that’s what he got. He was shown two tiny rooms where African captives were held while waiting to be shipped to America. There was a room that was more like a dungeon where captives who were rebellious were supposedly kept. Mr. Smith was reminded of the Red Hat cell block he’d seen at Angola Prison.
The Slave House has become a symbol of slavery. Bonbarer Joseph Ndiaye, the curator of the facility from 1962 until 2009, came up with the concept of the Door of No Return. I remember seeing pictures of the Door of No Return, but I didn’t remember the name of the island where it was.
The Door of No Return is the focal point at the Slave House. It is presented as the door through which the captives being held inside the Slave House passed just before being loaded on slave ships bound for the United States.
Since Gorée Island is the only chapter in Mr. Smith’s book set in Africa, he addressed the African end of the slave trade. I learned more than I had known about that. Based on what Mr. Smith was told by Eloi Coly, the curator and site manager of the Slave House at the time of the author’s visit, I learned why some African tribal chiefs decided to capture other Africans and use them as currency for what they wanted from the Europeans and Americans. I invite you to read Mr. Smith’s book if you want to learn more about that.
I found it interesting that Mr. Smith found parallels between Senegal and the United States. Just as towns in the U.S. are struggling to change street names from Confederate generals’ names to more appropriate names, in Dakar, Senegal, there is a move afoot to replace the names of streets bearing French colonial names to the names of African heroes.
And just as there is conflict over the removal of Confederate statues in the U.S., in Senegal there is a statue in the ancient capital of Governor Louis Faidherbe, but being an independent country since 1960, perhaps it’s time to take down statues of people associated with colonialism.
Mr. Smith talked to the history teacher at a boarding school for girls on Gorée Island to get his perspective about teaching about slavery in a school in Africa. They also discussed reparations. The teacher has some interesting things to say on that topic.
Epilogue
In the Epilogue, Mr. Smith wrote about how talking to his grandparents born in 1930 (if memory serves me right) and 1939 and hearing their stories as an adult made racial injustice and segregation real to him in a way that textbooks and old black-and-white photographs could not. His grandfather’s grandfather was a slave.
Mr. Smith expressed how jolting it is to realize how recently, in the big scheme of things, slavery was and school segregation was. He is 33 years old. I’m 68 years old. I was in the seventh grade when the schools in my county in North Carolina were optionally desegregated. At the end of that school year, the Black school was closed.
When Mr. Smith wrote his grandmother’s memories of the white children riding by them as they waited for their bus to the Black school, I was right there in my memories. When she told him the white children would throw things at them and hurl racial insults at them through the school bus windows, I was right back on my school bus on Peach Orchard Road at present-day John Bostar Road in the early- to mid-1960s.
I didn’t throw anything and I didn’t yell out the bus window because I was raised better than that. But there were white students on my bus who did those things, and I remember being embarrassed at the time because I knew it was wrong. I can remember it clearly nearly 60 years later, and I wasn’t even one of the victims.
Like Mr. Smith said in his Epilogue of the people who shouted insults in Little Rock and the people who threw things at his grandmother who was born in 1939, some of them are still alive. Likewise, the people on my school bus back in the 1960s and the children they called “the N word” out the bus window are also still alive. It wasn’t that long ago.
Since my last blog post
I keep studying books about the art and craft of writing. I’m working my way through Breathing Life into Your Characters: How to Give Your Characters Emotional & Psychological Depth, by Rachel Ballon, Ph.D.
This blog series about How the Word is Passed has created some good discussion. Every comment is appreciated. I hope you’ve gained some new insight into how we present our history in the United States. The book has reminded me that things aren’t always as they seem. Anything we read – even in history books – should prompt us to look deeper into the sources of information. Always search for the truth.
A case in point: The story from history that I originally based the ending of my historical novel on turned out to be a myth. Not wanting to perpetuate a lie, I had to drastically rewrite my book – and that process continues.
I hope you have a good book to read and a hobby to enjoy.
Note: September starts on Wednesday. It is Library Card Sign Up Month, Be Kind to Editors and Writers Month, National Literacy Month, and Read a New Book Month. Wow! Lots of literature-related things to celebrate in September!
You do know that library cards from your local public library in the United States are free, don’t you? That free library card can open up a whole new world to you. All you have to do is ask for it. Maybe the best things in life are free!
I had planned to blog about this being the 234th anniversary of the ratification of the United States Constitution today, but some of my #OnThisDay blog posts have not gone over very well.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed Juneteenth into law as a federal holiday last week. It was celebrated on Saturday, June 19 as an official holiday for the first time. This seemed like a more timely topic than the ratification of the United States Constitution.
When I heard of Juneteenth
I’m not sure, but I think last year was the first I’d heard of Juneteenth. Or maybe it was mentioned on a news broadcast a year or two before that. The first time I heard of it is immaterial. My point is that I was approximately 65 years old when I first heard of the celebration, and that is inexcusable.
In order to understand the significance of Juneteenth, one must know about the Emancipation Proclamation.
What the Emancipation Proclamation Did and Didn’t Do
U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In part, it declared “that all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
Word of the freeing of the slaves spread slowly. Communication was much different in 1863 than in 2021. Plus, the Confederate States of America did not recognize Abraham Lincoln as their president.
The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in ways that are often glossed over. It only applied to the states that had seceded from the United States. That meant that slavery was still legal in the border states. Southern secessionist states that had come under Northern control by January 1, 1863, were also exempt. Additionally, the freedom of the slaves depended upon the eventual military victory of the United States over the Confederacy.
The Emancipation Proclamation gave the Northern troops and citizens an added incentive for victory over the South. As Northern troops advanced, the freedom of slaves expanded. The Proclamation also made it possible for black men to join the United States Army and Navy.
What is Juneteenth?
I’m ill-equipped to explain Juneteenth, but this is what I’ve learned so far…
Federal troops reached Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865, and made it known to slaves there that President Lincoln had declared them free on January 1, 1863 – some two-and-a-half years earlier.
Since June 19, 1866, June 19 has been celebrated as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, and Juneteenth by black Americans. Most of their white counterparts, though, remained ignorant of the date’s significance until very recent history.
I don’t recall the mention of June 19, 1865 or Juneteenth in any history text book I ever had in elementary school, high school, or college.
Why is that?
The answer is simple. History books have always been written by white men. (I started to say “white people,” but “white men” seemed more accurate. I don’t remember ever having a history textbook written by a woman.)
That’s why the American populous has not been taught about the accomplishments of black Americans. It’s why it is now necessary for us to have Black History Month in February.
Where do we go from here?
Photo credit: Logan Weaver on unsplash.com
As long as black and brown Americans are by in large excluded from the decision-making process (such as voter suppression) and are elected to public office in miniscule numbers compared to their proportion of the population, the entire population will suffer. We’ll continue to just learn the history of white America. We’ll all suffer because the talents and ideas of black and brown Americans will be excluded from the workings of government and business.
It’s not enough not to be a racist. We must strive to be anti-racists. And beyond that, those of us who are white need to take anti-racism a step further. We need to be allies. That means when we’re in a situation where someone says something derogatory about people of another race, it is incumbent upon us to speak up against such talk. We need to have the courage to speak up for our fellow human beings who are being maligned.
Our silence is not only complacency, it signals our agreement, compliance, and acquiescence.
Our silence will convict us.
Instead of making snide remarks or having malevolent thoughts about the new Juneteenth holiday, let’s embrace it and learn from it.
Since my last blog post
Our almost-13-year-old rescue dog is hanging in there. The week before last, he spent four days in the hospital due to erratic glucose levels. He’s a diabetic. We’re starting to understand how sick he can become in just a matter of minutes.
Until my next blog post
I hope you have a good book to read. Among other things, I’m reading The Girls in the Stilt House, a debut novel by Kelly Mustian. She really has a talent for painting pictures with words.
Those of you living in the northern hemisphere, I hope you have a pleasant summer. Those of you living in the southern hemisphere, I don’t envy you. You know I’m not fond of cold weather.
Wherever you live, make the most of this week. I intend to get back to work on my historical novel.
Janet's Writing Blog 