Tag: Trumps big beautiful bill

No more contempt of court? (& other concerns)

Today I will touch on a variety of things going on within the Trump Administration. None of the news organization can cover everything, so I try to gather items from reputable sources across the board.

No more contempt of court for people like US Presidents?

Photo of a gavel
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” which was passed in the US House of Representatives by a whopping ONE vote, is being hashed out in the US Senate. Various aspects of it get picked up by the broadcast news, but one item that is getting almost no publicity is perhaps the worst slam on our democracy yet: It will eliminate the power of courts to hold officials in contempt for disregarding court orders!

That bears repeating: As it was passed by the US House of Representatives, it will eliminate the power of courts to hold officials in contempt for disregarding court orders.

Trump is already ignoring court orders and no court has had the guts to hold him in contempt, so the remedy appears to be for us to strip the courts of any power they could hold over an elected official.

As a regular citizen, if I am called up for jury duty and I don’t show up, I will be held in contempt of court. The judge will order officers of the law to come to my house and transport me in the back seat of a police car to the courthouse where I must appear before the judge who is already unhappy with me. That’s the law. There are consequences when regular citizens break the law.

If this tiny part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is passed by the Senate, he will sign it into law, thereby making himself untouchable by the Department of Justice.

The last guardrail will be gone.

You have 215 Republicans in the US House of Representatives to thank, but they don’t need your thanks. They have already been thanked by Donald Trump.

Now, we wait to see what the US Senate will do with that 1,000-page “big, beautiful bill.” Will they have the guts to remove the part that strips the judicial branch of our government from its power of checks and balances? Or will they see it as their own way out of being held accountable by the justice system?

Suppose they pass it as it is written. How happy they will be if we have another presidential election someday and a Democrat is elected President? (I did not use the word “if” by mistake. I intentionally used it.)

Be careful, legislators, over what you codify into law. It might come back to bite you.

And that, my friends, is how a 249-year-old democracy is dismantled.

Harvard University

Photo of a red Harvard graduate school banner hung on a pole on the side of a building
Photo by Manu Ros on Unsplash

Another way a democracy is dismantled is to attack and take control of its institutions of higher learning.

It was great that a judge placed a temporary injunction against Trump’s order that he would prevent Harvard University from enrolling any international students, but the damage has been done.

Even if Harvard wins in court, Trump has done irreparable damage to higher education in the United States because there is now a level of fear among students from abroad who will, no doubt, think long and hard before coming to our country to study.

And will students who are American citizens now think twice before they participate in a peaceful protest? Will Trump sign an Executive Order to prevent them from finishing their education? If he can do it to foreign students who are here legally to study, what is to stop him from doing it to American citizens?

And if the courts rule that he cannot do that? Nothing will happen to him. In 2024, the US Supreme Court ruled that the sitting US President cannot be charged with a crime. In May 2025, the US House of Representatives voted 215 to 214 that an elected official cannot be held in contempt of court. Will the US Senators agree?

The irony in Trump’s order that Harvard can no longer admit an international student is that his order would eliminate foreign Jewish students from Harvard all in the name of ridding the university of antisemitism.

Trump is like a dog with a bone. Over the weekend, he took to social media to demand the names of the international students at Harvard along with the names of the countries from which they came. He wants those countries to now pay. Since those students already pay for their education, I’m not sure what their countries are supposed to pay for… or who gets the money. Probably not Harvard.

His governance via social media and Executive Order are really getting old. Since Trump rules by Executive Order, the “big, beautiful bill” passed y the House of Representatives last week was one of the only things they’ve had to do since January 20.

Let’s be clear. This is not an attack on Harvard University. It is an attack on and a threat against every college and university in the United States. Harvard is just the test case to see how far he can push back on academia.

After all, he did say, “I love the uneducated,” when he was campaigning for office.

In an oddly-related story, the Pentagon promotes Kingsley Wilson

I didn’t know her name either, so don’t feel bad. She has been promoted to the position of Press Secretary for the Department of Defense. She is an interesting pick, in light of President Trump’s outrage over antisemitism at Harvard.

It is reported that Wilson has repeated antisemitic comments regarding conspiracy theories against a Jewish lynching victim whose cause helped found the Anti-Defamation League. It’s so bad that some Republicans have criticized Wilson’s employment in any position at the Pentagon.

The Trump Administration is consistently inconsistent.

Speaking of the Pentagon, while I still can

Brian Stelter of CNN reported that more restrictions have been placed on journalists covering the US military. New credentialing constraints were issued by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last Friday night. Also, key parts of the Pentagon that journalists have had access to in the past will now require them to be accompanied by an official escort.

The Pentagon Press Association’s statement said it has tried to communicate with Hegseth “to keep in place a professional working relationship that as persisted for decades,” to no avail.

Stelter reported, “The association said it is ‘puzzled’ about why the Defense Department ‘is devoting such attention to restricting Pentagon media instead of engaging with it as senior leaders have long done.’ Hegseth’s public comments indicate that he views the media as the opposition. He has denounced what he called the ‘hoax press’ and promoted himself by appearing on Fox opinion shows hosted by his friends.”

Hegseth used to be a Fox News personality, like many of the other members of the Trump Administration.

Can someone please tell him to lose the red baseball cap?

First of all, the MAGA campaign caps are baseball caps. They aren’t “MAGA hats.” I know “hat” sounds more high class than “baseball cap,” but that’s not what they are. A man’s hat has a brim all the way around. A baseball cap has a bill on the front.

It was embarrassing enough that the graduating cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point had to listen to a political speech from Trump as their commencement speaker on Saturday, but did he have to wear his bright red MAGA baseball cap?

I have a hunch that he had to wear it because the event was held outside and there are some major issues with Trump’s balding head and his dyed blond locks of hair having to be swept in all directions. What if the wind picked up? What if his hair couldn’t be controlled with grease like it appeared during his Oval Office ambush of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier in the week?

Too bad he couldn’t just rent a cap and gown and dress like a normal college-level commencement speaker. And what was the pink necktie about?

A video clip that I saw on TV showed Trump saluting while wearing his campaign cap. I tried to find out what he was saluting, but I couldn’t find it. I hope he wasn’t saluting our flag! Whatever he was saluting, it was a ridiculous and embarrassing image of a US President.

In a world where President Barack Obama was heavily criticized by Republicans for wearing a tan suit once, how is it now acceptable for President Donald Trump to wear a baseball cap everywhere he goes? Asking for a friend.

If a man wears a cap to a baseball game, he automatically removes it for the playing of our national anthem. I imagine the national anthem was played at the West Point commencement ceremony. I wonder if Trump removed his cap for it. We’ll probably never know.

Before I leave Trump’s speech at West Point, I will quote one line from it that sent a chill down my spine. He said, “The job of the U.S. Armed Forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, but to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun.”

What a bizarre statement! That sounds like we’re going to force democracy on people “at the point of a gun” whether they want it or not. All the while, he is working every day to destroy our democracy. I don’t think another country wants his brand of democracy!

Photo of a building at West Point with a statue in front of a George Washington on a horse
Statue of George Washington on a horse in front of a building at the US Military Academy at West Point.
Photo by Dave Lowe on Unsplash

That was not the most bizarre thing Trump said in his nearly hour long “speech.” In addition to drag shows, he talked about trophy wives. (That must have made the female cadets uncomfortable… and that was probably why he brought up the subject.) He talked about boats and yachts.

His mind wonders and his words tend to follow his mind when he strays from reading the teleprompter. It has become one of his trademarks. He refers to it as “weaving” and justifies it as something he does by intention.

If any other US President had almost daily gone off the rails and rambled about sundry topics in every speech or other public remarks, the 25th Amendment would have been enforced and the Vice President would have replaced him.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read and time to read it.

Value time with family and friends. Tomorrow is promised to no one.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

Snippets of what’s happening to and in the US

Every time I think I won’t feel compelled to post on my blog multiple days a week, I am proven wrong. To live in the United States today is to live wondering what is going to happen next. Our new normal is to expect the unexpected. Every. Single. Day.

Our new normal is to expect things to get a lot worse before they will get better. Our new normal is to know that things are probably never going to return to what was normal for the last 80 years.

Last night, we learned that the Trump Administration, against a US District Court order, deported immigrants to South Sudan.

Photo of a person's head in the dark inside of an airplane peering out the window
Photo by kian on Unsplash

Apparently, Trump thinks it does not matter that it was against a court order. Apparently, Trump thinks it is okay to deport people to South Sudan where there is fighting between opposing forces and a civil war taking place in neighboring Sudan. He thinks it is all right to deport people to a country in Africa… even though at least two of those deportees were from Southeast Asia.

One of the individuals is from Vietnam and one is from Burma. The nationalities of the others – indeed, the total number of deportees on that flight – has not been revealed. Immigration attorneys say there are “likely” at least ten other immigrants on that deportation flight.

I apologize for referring to these two people as “deportees,” “immigrants,” and by their nationalities; however, I have not found their names. But they are human beings. They have names. They probably have families.

By living in the United States of America, they have had rights. They had a right to a hearing before a judge to determine if they could remain in this country or if they should be deported. That did not happen.

Common sense tells me that if a person is to be deported, they should be deported to their country of origin. They should not be deported to a country in which their language is not spoken. They should not be deported to a country in which their language is not spoken and in which a civil war is underway.

I have run out of words to express my horror at what the Trump Administration Regime is doing. My vocabulary is exhausted.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy of Boston held an emergency hearing yesterday about this case and scheduled another hearing for today. In the meantime, according to The Wall Street Journal, the judge ordered the US to maintain custody of the deportees and ensure they are treated humanely.

I often pray that Donald Trump will accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and turn from his evil ways. I often pray those words. It would truly be a miracle, but I believe in miracles. We experienced a miracle in my family on Christmas morning in 1978. Miracles do happen.

Now, to what I had originally written for today’s blog post…

While some of us are still struggling to understand how the technicality of the Trump Administration saying the $400 million flying palace from Qatar is going to the US Department of Defense and not to President Trump, small bits and pieces of the “big, beautiful budge bill” are coming to light.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wants the bill passed by Memorial Day (May 26) or at least by July 3.

It’s almost impossible find out what is in the bill, since it is not available online for the public. Hey, it’s just our money, right?

I have read that this budget will add $150 billion to the Pentagon’s budget, pushing the Defense Department’s budget to more than $1 trillion.

Photo of a pile of US paper money
Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

I have read that this budget takes Medicaid healthcare coverage away from 13 million Americans. These are children, people living with disabilities, and the elderly.

This budget will give the wealthiest people in the United States additional tax breaks. It is those tax breaks and the increased defense budget that resulted in the politicians choosing to leave 13 million citizens without health coverage.

It is no big deal to them. Those 13 million people are not likely to raise a stink The ones under 18 years of age can’t even vote. They are America’s most vulnerable citizens and, hence, the easiest for the people in Congress to target.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: Many, if not most, of the members of the US Congress claim to be Christians, so what about any of this follows the teachings of Jesus Christ? (At least, when they are running for office, they claim to be Christian. How many of them, when asked, “What the last book you read?” answer, “The Bible”?)

Why do so many Christians across this country think cutting Medicaid is wonderful. “It will save us money! Cuts must be made!”

Yes, it will save us money to spend on more weapons. It will save the richest among us money because they will pay less in income taxes.

Just like eliminating USAID will save us money because why would the richest country in the world want to send medical and food aid to the poorest countries in the world?

Just like cutting off the funding for medical research will save us money… but only in the short term.

The motive behind one “big, beautiful budget bill” is to overwhelm Congress and the public. Put everything in one bill, and it will be so long that nobody can read it.  That’s the point. At 1,116 pages, I would guess that very few members of Congress have read the entire thing.

Granted, there is wasteful spending in the federal government. Granted, if wasteful spending is not stopped, our national debt will continue to increase

My objection is with the manner in which the Trump Administration has chosen to address the problem. We hear example after example of worthwhile research and aid programs being slashed just because Elon Musk’s teenage employees with no knowledge or interest in the operation of government in a democracy were given free range to eliminate agencies and programs with the touch of a button on a keyboard.

Wholesale, sweeping cuts in government grants have resulted in the immediate loss of jobs, careers, and doctoral degree research studies. Those are just the instantaneous losses that are visible to the thousands of individuals affected.

The long-term effects will not be realized this year or next year. They will be identified in the coming decades when we learn that cures for various cancers would have been discovered in the 2020s if not for these budget cuts.

President Trump warned us that there could be short-term pain due to his single-handedly imposed global tariffs, but he is yet to even own up to the pain he has inflicted in the name of taking waste out of the government. He has yet to own up to the short-term losses in medical research, much less long-term losses we can only imagine.

And yet, his followers still say he is a “wonderful President.” Some of them still dare to say he was sent by God.

Under the Cover of Darkness

When a person or group is proud of what they are doing, they tend to do it in broad daylight. If that group is a legislative body, they definitely do it in broad daylight. If that legislative body is the United State Congress, they tend to do it at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time or later so the citizens in the Pacific Time zone will be awake to see it or hear it.

The US House of Representatives Committee on the Budget held a vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful budget bill” at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday. Who does that? Who meets late on a Sunday night to vote on something important?

Photo of the US Capitol building at night
Raphael Assouline on Unsplash

It gets worse. The House Rules Committee scheduled their next meeting for 1:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time this morning.

My erratic sleep habits almost guarantee that I am wide awake at 1:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, but I’m the exception to the rule.

Making America Healthy Again?

While politicians boast about money saved, they fail to mention the medical and social research being lost. What is the real cost in terms of lives?

We’ll never know what diseases could have been prevented, treated, or cured if the research Congress had approved had not been terminated by the Trump Administration.

We will have to pin our hopes on other countries picking up the slack and hiring the researchers the United States is losing.

Until my next blog post, which I hope won’t be until next week…

I hope you have a good book to read.

Value time with family and friends.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet