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.

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.”

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.

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. 

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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