Yesterday’s blog post (https://janetswritingblog.com/2026/06/04/whats-been-happening-since-last-week-part-i/) got to be too long, so I had to divide it.

Today’s blog post got even longer after the news broke about the removal of 900 scientific deep-sea instruments and Trump’s plans for the Lincoln Memorial.

Pour yourself a glass of sweet tea and settle in for a wild ride.

Golf Resort in Vietnam

Not satisfied just to destroy farmland and forests, etc. and rip people off in the United States, the Trumps are developing a $1.5 billion golf resort in the Hung Yen province in Vietnam.

Besides farmers being forced off their land for very little compensation, they are also having to exhume the bodies of their ancestors and bury them somewhere else.

It seems that Eric Trump is in charge of this project, which he says will be “the envy of all of Asia and of the entire world,” according The Daily Beast, which included a photo of Eric at the indoor ground-breaking ceremony.

Can Gaza be far behind?

Kushner’s Resort in Albania

Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners firm is building a $4 billion luxury resort, including 10,000 hotel rooms in the Vjosa-Narta “protected” coast in southern Albania.

At the mouth of the Vjosa River, the land became a protected national park three years ago. Flamingos, Mediterranean monk seals, loggerhead turtles, 200+ species of birds. Sounds like a beautiful place. No wonder it was given “protected” status.

But blatant corruption is not limited to Washington, DC. The Albanian Parliament conveniently changed the rules just weeks before Kushner submitted his resort plans. Would you believe the rules were changed to only allow five-star resorts? Surely that had nothing to do with Kushner’s father-in-law being the U.S. President.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Thousands of Albanians are protesting in the streets of the capital city of Tirana. They are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama. Power to the people!

CBS fires Scott Pelley

The Trump Administration did not fire Scott Pelley… directly. However, the current leadership at CBS has cow-towed to the Trump Administration on every turn.

“60 Minutes” was the longest running new magazine on TV. It was a highly-respected broadcast. CBS is destroying it. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. And with it goes a bastion of exceptional investigative journalism.

Long-time CBS journalist and regular “60 Minutes” contributor Scott Pelley dared to stand up to the CEO of CBS on Monday, so he was fired on Tuesday.

CBS fired one of its giants. I hope a more wise and honest television broadcast company will give him a job, if he wants it.

I include this news item in today’s blog because it is one more piece of evidence that Donald Trump’s campaign to rid our nation of truth in journalism and truth in history is trickling down into the corporations that for nearly 100 years stood for integrity. The example he sets as an alleged businessman now stands as the example the wealthy and influential capitalists in our country aspire to emulate.

Seeing the collapse of CBS in real time is sad. It is also infuriating, because it is being done on purpose by either short-sighted or evil people. I don’t know which.

Another thing that infuriates me

This month, the National Science Foundation will begin (or perhaps has begun) to bring up more than 900 deep-sea instruments that track the collapse of climate as we have enjoyed it.

The instruments, placed and monitored by the Ocean Observatories Initiative are off the coast of North Carolina (where the Gulf Stream famously collides with the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean), and off the coasts of Oregon and Alaska. They are also in the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland.

These instruments were collecting and transmitting data in real time about ocean temperatures, carbon absorption, chemicals, and geological and biological conditions.

But the Trump Administration is not interested in people knowing about trends in the climate or the conditions in the world’s oceans. After all, Trump hasn’t figured out yet how to build a money-making resort on the ocean floor.

He isn’t interested in people knowing about hurricanes until they hit. We saw that demonstrated in the Oval Office when Trump took a Sharpie pen and literally thought he could thereby change the path of a hurricane.

Congress tried twice to try to stop Trump from slashing the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s budget by 80%. By ordering the more than 900 climate measuring instruments to be hauled up from the oceans, he is essentially giving Congress the middle finger. Again.

“Theatened” Grizzly Bears are now threatened by U.S. Government

Grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were already officially “threatened,” but that did not satisfy the U.S. Government when it came to the grizzlies living in the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana.

For decades, scientific research has proven that a female grizzly bear needs 2,500 acres of land that is free of roads and other human activity, but the U.S. Government has decided that in order to cut down part of the forest, a female grizzly in the Helena – Lewis and Clark National Forest only needs just one acre.

The 2,500-acre policy still stands elsewhere… for now.

That particular area is crucial to the healthy genetic exchange between the grizzlies in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park.

Cut down the forest and squeeze a huge grizzly bear onto one acre of land surrounded by logging roads and see what you get. For starters… starving bears run over by logging trucks.

Maybe that’s the goal?

The “Greatest Show on Earth” invitation has a catch

Trump says he loves the military. He says he has done more for the military than any other U.S. President. (He also says he has done more for people of color, Puerto Ricans, children, the elderly, the poor, the middle class….)

He issued an invitation of sorts to our military personnel. He wants hundreds of them to come watch the display of men fighting on the White House grounds on his birthday. They must have a waist to height ratio of .55 or less. They must wear short sleeve dress uniforms. They cannot be stationed in the Washington, DC area, and … there’s just one other thing. They must pay for their own transportation.

Thank you for the invitation, Sir!

Too bad thousands of them were deployed to the War with Iran in March and April and won’t be able to make it to Washington on June 14. Of course, where they are, they’ll probably take a moment to remember that it is Flag Day.

“Rally to End all Rallies!”

I was ready to schedule this blog post last night when I read Trump’s announcement about his celebration of America’s 250^th birthday has changed names. It is no longer “The Great American State Fair” or whatever he was calling it a few days ago. It is now, “the Greatest Rally, EVER! It will be special at every level – A Rally to end all Rallies!”

All I can say is, “I hope it is the rally to end all rallies. We don’t need any more Trump rallies.”

Trump said that Christopher Macchio will sing “Ave Maria”. I don’t know what “Ave Maia” has to do with the 4^th of July. Am I missing something here?

There is no end to the tacky or the expense

It was revealed on Friday that without going out for competitive bids or getting permission from Congress or anyone, Trump had the two matching bronze statues of horses on either side of the street from the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery… you guessed it… painted with 23.75 karat gold leaf. They and two other bronze statues were painted gold by a company in Maryland.

Want to know what we, the American taxpayers paid for this? A mere $5 million.

How does that sit with you?

They look like something one would see in China… or the Land of Oz.

This is the same Administration that created DOGE to rid the government of all waste. That was just a year ago. Thousands of medical and scientific researchers were fired and the USAID program was ended, but I don’t think we were ever told how much waste was identified by the teenagers Trump and Elon Musk hired to do the job.

The price for painting of the bottom of the Reflecting Pool bright blue has increased from $13 million to $20 million.

Even tackier than that…

I didn’t know until yesterday that the tacky arch on the White House lawn over where the big birthday fights are going to be held has a name. It is “The Claw” and it holds the lights so the men can fight all night if they want to, I suppose.

“The Claw” is huge, tacky, and ugly. It dwarfs the White House and makes the place look like a poorly planned amusement park.

It prevents the Marine One helicopter from landing at the White House, which seems like a National Security issue to me. (The President must now be transported via motorcade to and from Andrews Joint Air Force Base for his weekly excursions to play golf.)

Lo and behold, Trump thinks it is so beautiful that maybe it will never be torn down. He even compared it to the Eiffel Tower, saying it was supposed to be there temporarily but the people liked it so much they left it up.

“The Claw,” Mr. President, is no Eifel Tower.

Comparing apples and oranges?

Was I the only one who found it bizarre that Trump displayed a large poster in the Oval Office on Wednesday to show us that the Reflecting Pool is longer than some skyscrapers are tall?

He also said it had never worked since it was built in 1922. Who knew? I’ve seen it several times. I didn’t realize it wasn’t working.

Trump takes aim at Lincoln Memorial

Yesterday, in addition to claiming to know about numerous times someone attempted to build an arch in Washington, DC, Trump spilled the beans on his latest project: Corrections made to the Lincoln Memorial.

He claimed from the Oval Office yesterday afternoon that the Lincoln Memorial is facing the wrong direction and two streets were built that shouldn’t have been built so he is going to add a promenade to the Lincoln Memorial. He, of course, sneaked in his favorite phrase: “some are even calling it the Trump Promenade.”

At that point I was literally in tears. The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite building in Washington, DC. It is devastating to think of what it will look like when TACO gets through with it.

Will it resemble the current East Wing of the White House? (A big hole in the ground.)

Will it have gold paint poured all over it? (Like the bronze horses at the entrance to Memorial Bridge.)

Will it be 80 stories high? (So it can be a tall as the Reflecting Pool is long.)

Will the exquisite statue of a seated Abraham Lincoln be replace with a triumphal statue to Trump with his fist in the air and that ever-present scowl on his orange face?

Ending this post on three positive notes…

1. On Friday, a federal judge ordered that Donald J. Trump’s name must be removed from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts because it is a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy!

          Trump’s minions have two weeks to remove his name from the building and all signage.

          The judge also called a halt to the two-year long “complete rebuilding” of the Kennedy Center that had been announced by Trump after he appointed himself as Director of the Board of the Center. That was set to begin after the 4^th of July.

          Thank goodness parts of our judicial system are still working for the    American people and not for the sitting U.S. President!

          That was the best news I’d heard in a long time.

• Then, on Monday, June 1, the White House announced that it will abide by the federal court ruling that paused Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund! He’s going to have to find another way to financially compensate his people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

          Of course, when asked by CNN’s Caitlin Collins on Wednesday if the fund is dead or just on hold, he said he did not know… he’ll have to ask his lawyers.

• Also on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (215 to 208) to force Trump to end the war against Iran if he fails to get Congressional approval for the war he threw us into without Congressional approval. Will the Republicans in the Senate have as much courage?

Light at the end of the tunnel? It’s too early to tell whether it is the light of justice on the horizon or an on-coming train. I know one thing: this is exhausting.

Janet

The government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around.