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.
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.
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?
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
Janet's Writing Blog 