In my March 24, 2025, blog post I said “no one wants to read a 3,000-word blog post.” I hope I was wrong, because today’s weighs in at 3,096 words, if you don’t count the words on the memes I created.
I’ve written more than 10,000 words in my four blog posts this week. If I could have added 10,000 words to my historical novel manuscript this week, I would be on Cloud 9 and much closer to publication than I am today. I didn’t work on my novel at all.
Unfortunately, I have “bigger fish to fry” now than completing my novel or my historical short stories. My country is in dire danger from within.
If you disagree with me or don’t know what I’m talking about, you are not paying attention.
My blog post today might make you mad and I hope it does!
The actions and inactions of the Trump Administration delineated below are just “off the top of my head.” It might look like I’ve been keeping a list since Inauguration Day, but I have not.
The most frightening part of this is that there are, no doubt, literally thousands of actions being carried out in locked-up government offices, museums, and libraries all over our country that I haven’t heard about… that have not been leaked out… that reputable news organizations have not been privy to or uncovered yet… that our President does not want us to know.
What has happened since Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025… in no particular order
A word here. A word there. A government agency here. A government agency there. Lies repeated ad nauseam.
Muzzle public television by cancelling their funding. Muzzle radio and television stations by reminding them that you can take away their broadcast licenses. “Plant” people in a press conference to ask ridiculous and programmed questions while banning certain reputable news organization such as the Associated Press from the room. My “favorite” so far was the “plant” who asked you on March 28, 2025, “What is a woman?” Your response made me want to vomit.
Your US Department of Agriculture orders 21 tractor-trailer trucks hauling nearly $1 million worth of food (more than 377,000 pounds) to turn around and not deliver the food to Tennessee food banks. The same thing happened in Ohio. How many other states? A US President has to be a certain level of evil to prefer to let tons of food rot than to be delivered to food banks for distribution to people who need that food to supplement what they’re struggling to pay for at the supermarket or corner store. Mr. Trump, you’ve not only never missed a meal, you’ve never had to give a thought to how to pay for the food you have eaten every single day of your life! You are literally taking food out of the mouths of children and old people in the name of “Make America Great Again.”
You shut down Voice of America. It was silenced for the first time in 83 years. It was broadcasting in 49 languages across the world – in accordance with Congressional funding — so people could hear the news in their own language and compare it to the propaganda their own governments were telling them. You claimed that Voice of America was “horrible.” You criticized it for reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic and for quoting people who disagree with you. Voice of America was also broadcasting what you were saying, Mr. Trump. It was telling people living under repressive regimes that in America it was okay to criticize the government. Oh… since it’s no longer okay to criticize the US President, I guess that message is no longer something we should brag about.
Ignore court orders day after day. Go after any judge, law firm, or attorney who dares to make a ruling or file a law suit not to your liking. Then have the Speaker of the US House of Representatives float the idea that US courts can be defunded and, therefore, shut down.
Put a host of incompetent people on your Cabinet, then fire thousands of government employees without regard to merit or risk to public health or safety.
Pardon 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, chanted “Hang Mike Pence” broke windows, assaulted police officers, defecated on the floors and walls, broke into and trashed offices, and tried to prevent the certification of the November 5, 2020 Presidential Election results. Say they were “treated unfairly” and call them “patriots.” Say they were just a bunch of grandmothers touring the Capitol.
Grant clemency to people like Jason Galanis – you know, the guy who was sentenced to 14 years and five months in prison back in August 2017 for his role in a bond scheme that defrauded the Oglala Sioux tribe and pension fund investors out of tens of millions of dollars. Such notices of clemency take place in quiet, so how many have taken place since January 20th?
Shut down the United States Agency for International Development, which was the bastion of goodwill for us throughout the poorest parts of the world. Turn the US Departments of State and Defense into bully pulpits to intimidate and threaten our long-time allies.
Declare an invasion when there wasn’t one. Invoke war powers in a time of peace. Imprison peaceful protest organizers on university campuses. Turn professors and medical researchers away at the border.
Pay El Salvador millions of dollars to take your prisoners without due process. Some are dangerous gang members, but some… well, we just don’t like what they look like or their accent. Even when your spokesperson admits at least one of them (that father from Maryland) was sent to El Salvador due to an “administrative error” you claim there is no way to bring him back to the US? Until January 20th, we were the most powerful country in the world, but ten weeks later we can’t ask El Salvador to release someone from prison? You paid El Salvador to imprison these people. We don’t have to ask for any of our money back, Mr. President. Just ask for the prisoners we sent down there who aren’t guilty of any crimes and are not members of a gang to be released. The next plane load of gang members and collateral damage you send down there should be able to bring back the ones you shouldn’t have sent there. If you don’t have a phone, I believe your Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense have cell phones and know how to text on Signal.
Arrest university students from other countries whether or not they participated in a protest against the genocide taking place in Gaza. Hurrah for the Columbia University students who chained themselves to locked campus gates on Wednesday to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil! You renew my faith in today’s college students! The US Constitution protects the freedom of speech of everyone here – citizen or foreign student. Why were two students at North Carolina State University at Raleigh sent packing because Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled 300 student visas? One of them was a fourth-year chemical engineering student from Saudi Arabia who had never participated in a protest or written anything on social media or otherwise apparently said anything against Trump or the US Government. He has to complete his degree online from Saudi Arabia. I want to know what about that will “Make America Great Again” or anything else other than ensure that America will be hated by other countries.
Tell citizens the words they cannot put in writing or on government websites. Then tell them they cannot talk about things that are being discussed in Congress or on certain news networks. We’ve learned about 373 words, word combinations, and topics just this week.
Send masked ICE agents out in unmarked vans without identification or warrants to kidnap people walking their children home from school and take them away to who knows where. And at North Harbor Dairy in Hounsfield, New York, a third grader, a 10th grader, and an 11th grader were kidnapped by ICE agents in the same manner on March 24, 2025. There is speculation that they were taken to a detention center in Texas. Is this how you’re “making America great again” or “making America rich again” or “making America safe again” or “making America healthy again.” Call me dense, but I’m having trouble figuring out what kidnapping/arresting third graders is supposed to do for the United States. Instead of ICE making me feel safe, they are scaring the heck out of me!
Go after the National Park Service and world-renowned museums such as the Smithsonian Institution and tell them what they can and cannot exhibit.
Blackmail universities into caving to your racist whims in order to not lose federal grants. It seems you have a total lack of understanding of what a university is supposed to be. First, Columbia University. Now, it’s Harvard and Princeton under scrutiny. If professors, students, and researchers flee to other countries, it’s no skin off your teeth. After all, you told us years ago that you “love the uneducated.”
Appoint yourself as Chair of the Board of Directors of a beautiful facility such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and dictate from the Oval Office which artists should and should not be allowed to perform. You say it’s in bad shape. Please don’t tacky it up like you have the Oval Office!
Pick fights with long-established allies. Threaten to take other countries by saying you will use “any means necessary” to get control of them. (Sounds sort of like Russia invading Ukraine, doesn’t it?)
Tell the American people that they will not pay higher prices for goods and materials due to tariffs because the tariffed countries will pay the bill. (Does “Mexico will pay for the wall” ring any bells?)
Call Americans who attend town hall meetings held by the few members of Congress who are brave enough to face voters “paid troublemakers.” You simply cannot imagine that a citizen of the United States would do ANYTHING without being paid! On a basic level, that’s related to your comment about the soldiers who gave their lives fighting the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. You asked, “What was in it for them?” You were incredulous!
Have the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, launch an investigation into ABC (the American Broadcasting Company) and its parent company, Disney, because you think they’ve hired too many minorities and women? Or perhaps you’re mad because Disney is making children’s movies that feature princesses of color? (Carr wrote, “While Disney started as an iconic American company, it recently went all in on DEI.”)
Post on your Truth Social account on March 28, 2025: “People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes funders. WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!”
Excuse your Cabinet members and top security advisors for taking part in a text exchange about the impending bombing of the Houthis in Yelen on a less-than-secure app (Signal) while reminding us that Hillary Clinton used an insecure server for some of her emails as Secretary of State. Now we learn that Michael Waltz, national security adviser to the White House, and staff members were using gmail? If Hillary was wrong, why aren’t your people wrong?
While we were distracted by “Signalgate,” there was also another breakdown in security. Two spreadsheets detailing work down by the US State Department and USAID were sent to Congress and leaked online. This put workers operating under repressive regimes at danger after they had been assured their work and identities would be protected.
And you remained silent while First Buddy, Elon Musk – who is maybe in charge of the not-authorized-by-Congress Department of Government Efficiency, or maybe he’s not… no one seems to know – offered to pay two voters in Wisconsin $1 million each for signing an online petition promising to vote a certain way in the April 1, 2025, election of a hotly-contested State Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. After the public started raising illegality issues, Musk took down his original online offer and posted different wording to make it sound not-quite-so-illegal. I’m sure votes have been bought before in the United States, but I don’t recall that it was publicly advertised in advance like Musk did this time. To announce such payments out loud for all to hear is a new low in American politics. He seems to work for you, but you couldn’t bring yourself to tell him not to pay voters? Or were you enjoying another $3.2 million weekend at Mar-a-Lago at taxpayers’ expense and didn’t hear about it? A judge tried to stop this before the $1 million payments could be made on Sunday night but, an hour before the payments were being issued, the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted unanimously to allow the payments! I would like to think that some people who voted for Trump would even think this isn’t right.
While countries around the world immediately sent teams of rescuers and aid workers to Myanmar and Thailand after last week’s devastating earthquake, the New United States of America sat idly by. The US “plans” to send three people to Myanmar. By the way, the tiny country of Vietnam already has 100 people helping in Myanmar. It is appalling that the Trump Regime is demonstrating on the world stage that they absolutely don’t care.
Before the election last November, you told us that if people voted for you “this time” they would “never have to vote again.” That was chilling to those of us who were paying attention. Even though the US Constitution bars a person from serving more than two terms, as a wannabe dictator, you said some interesting things on Sunday in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker. The Washington Post quoted you as saying, “there are methods which you could do it.” Also, “A lot of people want me to do it.” The newspaper reported, “Welker then mentioned a hypothetical plan where Vice President JD Vance would run in 2028 and ‘pass the baton.’ ‘Well, that’s one. But there are others, too,’ Trump responded. ‘I’m not joking,’ Trump said.”
Threaten to bomb Iran if it doesn’t adjust its nuclear program to your liking. (In our arrogance, Americans think that only America should have nuclear weapons, but look who has our nuclear codes: the insecure bully in the White House!)
With a strike of your pen, put tariffs on 185 countries (including a couple of uninhabited islands) and tell us the money from those tariffs will start pouring in and will quickly “Make America Rich Again.” I thought our nation was already rich. And why did you not raise tariffs on goods coming from Russia and Belarus?
You are so completely self-centered that you fire medical researchers and employees who quite possibly saved your life when you had Covid-19 and were whisked away via helicopter to Walter Reed Medical Center. Dr. Peter Stein approved the monoclonal antibodies treatment that just might have saved your life, Mr. President. How do you thank Dr. Stein four-and-a-half years later? You fire him. He was the Director of the Office of New Drugs at the Federal Drug Administration, and you just fired him in the name of “waste and fraud” in the Department of Health and Human Services.
You take advice from conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who said that the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001, “was an inside job.”
Until Trump came along
Until you came along, we were one of the richest countries in the world. Until you came along, we were rich in things like readily coming to the aid of other countries. Until you came along, we were rich in allies and friends. Until you came along, other countries held us up as a beacon of freedom and the greatest democracy the world had ever know.
Until you came along.
Remind us every single day that everything that is wrong in America today is the fault of your predecessors, and only you can save us.
Sit in the Oval Office that you have tackied up (Southerners know what I mean!) to look as gaudy as your Mar-a-Lago resort and laugh. (Will we ever be able to repair its walls from all those nail holes? You’ve made the Oval Office look like a Frame shop!)
You have no sense of humor, but I imagine you are laughing with your minions and rich friends while this 249-year-old experiment in democracy called America disappears into the pages of history as a failed experiment that only children in other countries will read about years from now.
Whine, and tell the American people that we are victims. Tell us that the entire world has taken advantage of us and cheated us… even though America has been showered with blessings and resources and decades of peace on our soil that most people in the world can only dream of.
Has it only been 74 days? It seems like 74 years.
It is exhausting… and that’s what you want. You want us so tired that we can no longer speak out against your policies. You want us so distracted by a crumbling economy that we stop listening to you because we’re spending all our time wondering how to pay for groceries or car repairs. It’s easier for you to do your dirty work if we are too tired or distracted to keep up with the news.
People who know early- and mid-20th century world history know what comes next.
Mr. Trump, you might not get your comeuppance here on earth, but I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes on Judgment Day!
To my blog readers, until my next post and beyond
Pay attention, no matter how painful it gets. Get your news from a variety of reputable sources.
Don’t compromise your principles.
Read the US Constitution. It is a constitution, not a list of suggestions.
It’s time to stop agreeing to agreeably disagree when it comes to our American democracy. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It’s past time for us to be polite.
My next anticipated blog post will be on April 7 about the books I read in March along with a brief report on Hurricane Helene recovery in western North Carolina.
Remember the people of Myanmar, Thailand, Ukraine, and western North Carolina.
Janet, a disgruntled political science major
Janet's Writing Blog 