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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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).
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
Janet's Writing Blog 