Stop Trump! – Page 3 – Cathy's Blog!

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Human Rights Day

Heather Cox Richardson: Today is Human Rights Day, celebrated internationally in honor of the day seventy-seven years ago, December 10, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Heather goes on and adds this –

Last year, under President Joe Biden, the White House celebrated Human Rights Day by recommitting to “upholding the equal and inalienable rights of all people.” The State Department bestowed the Human Rights Defender Award on eight individuals who have defended migrant workers, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and democracy. The recipients came from Kuwait, Bolivia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Burma, Eswatini, Ghana, Colombia, and Azerbaijan.

The U.S. government did not recognize Human Rights Day this year.

Instead, Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters reported, administration officials are threatening to place sanctions on the International Criminal Court to guarantee it will not investigate Trump and his top officials. “There is growing concern…that in 2029 the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them,” a Trump administration official told Pamuk. “That is unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.”

They will not allow it to happen. Hmmm! The world conscience against a few. We’ll see.

Aging Mountain lLon near our house decorated for the Holidays!

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Candlelight

These days I’m with the magic of candlelight even as I read the news.

I was on a Zoom Call on Monday and AI gave a beautiful summary of the experience and journey.

We can thank Chat GPT for this as posted by Heather Cox Richardson.

When G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbersasked ChatGPT to fact-check an article for him yesterday, the chatbot couldn’t get its head around modern America. It told him there were “multiple factual impossibilities” in his article, including his statements that “[t]he current Secretary of Defense is a former talk show host for Fox News,” “[t]he Deputy Director of the FBI used to guest-host Sean Hannity’s show,” and “Jeanine Pirro is the U.S. District Attorney for DC.”

“Since none of these statements are true,” it told Morris, “they undermine credibility unless signposted as hyperbole, fiction, or satire.”

But of course, Morris’s statements were not “factual impossibilities.” In the United States of America under President Donald J. Trump, they are true.

May that change as people wake and vote for democracy, support, unity, and humanity.

A burning candle shows the many ways to give and offer Light!

Posted on December 5, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Propaganda

I’ve been trying to understand Trump’s boat attacks. Why, especially when he pardons a man at the top of drug trafficking?

This guest essay by Phil Klay in the NY Times today allows me to understand.

Klay begins with this:

When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.”

In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort. He knew the people at the center of the empire delighted in cruel gladiatorial games, and he promised himself he would not go. Eventually, though, his fellow students dragged him to a match. At first, the crowd appalled Alypius. “The entire place seethed with the most monstrous delight in the cruelty,” Augustine wrote, and Alypius kept his eyes shut, refusing to look at the evil around him.

But then a man fell in combat, a great roar came from the crowd and curiosity forced open Alypius’s eyes. He was “struck in the soul by a wound graver than the gladiator in his body.” He saw the blood, and he drank in savagery. Riveted, “he imbibed madness.” Soon, Augustine said, he became “a fit companion for those who had brought him.”

We must continue to stay on top of what’s happening, and not allow what happened to Alypius, to happen to us. It’s a horrific manipulation to destroy humanity and the continuing development and evolution of peace, communion, fairness and democracy.

Posted on October 25, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Empathy, not Lies, Greed, and Hate

I‘ve been making every effort to post positively on this blog. I know we’re all worn down by the horrors, lies, and deceit of the Trump administration, but tonight as I read Heather Cox Richardson I must post excerpts from what she says. It’s unfathomable that when they control the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency, and much of the media, they continue to try to set the Democrats up to take the blame.

Heather Cox Richardson:

It appears the administration is using those Americans who depend on food assistance as pawns to put more pressure on Democrats to cave to Trump’s will. Today, Annie Karni of the New York Times reported that Trump has joked, “I’m the speaker and the president,” and Trump ally Steven Bannon calls Congress “the state Duma,” a reference to Russia’s rubber-stamp assembly.

With Republicans refusing to negotiate with Democrats in the normal way, with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) keeping the House out of session, and with Trump leaving for Asia for a week, Republicans are clearly making the calculation that Democrats who refused to give up their demand for the extension of the premium tax credit to stop dramatic hikes in the cost of healthcare premiums will cave when America falls into a hunger crisis.

I drop down to this: While a great deal has changed in nutrition support programs in the past sixty years, what has not changed is the importance of food assistance programs to retailers, and thus to local economies. In 2020, Ed Bolen and Elizabeth Wolkomir of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that about 8% of the food U.S. families buy is funded by SNAP. In fiscal year 2019, that amounted to about $56 billion. Beneficiaries spent SNAP dollars at about 248,000 retailers. While about 80% of that money went to superstores or supermarkets—in 2025, Walmart alone captured about 25% of that money—the rest of it went to small businesses. Bolen and Wolkomir note that about 80% of stores that accept SNAP are small enterprises. SNAP benefits are an important part of revenue for those smaller businesses, especially in poorer areas, where they generate significant additional economic activity.

Not only will the loss of SNAP create more hunger in the richest country on earth, it will also rip a hole in local economies just as people’s health insurance premiums skyrocket.

And yet, at the same time the Department of Agriculture says it cannot spend its $6 billion in reserves to address the $8 billion needed for SNAP in November, the administration easily found $20 billion to prop up right-wing Trump ally Javier Milei in Argentina.

What are we doing here? Yes, what are we doing here, and why?

My friend Karen at one of the many protests holding a sign we made!

Posted on October 25, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

A Photo Respite

I read the political news and contrast it with the beauty around me.

Posted on October 17, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Testing

I was speaking with my son who is dealing with some challenging health issues. How do we meet what comes? How do we see this world that Trump and cronies are turning upside down? Life is a series of tests, and we test our response.

And now the days are shorter. This morning, I see stars shining in the sky, beacons prompting us to look within, and bring forth our own light in the dark.

Tomorrow is a huge day, No King’s Day. Today, a friend and I are making signs for the protest though I’ll be at my grandson’s birthday party, where snakes are coming to be viewed and held. Snakes aren’t slimy; they are our friends.

I’m with the Oscar Wilde quote: I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Let’s prove Oscar Wilde wrong as the country unites in connecting us all as constellations in the sky.

Posted on October 6, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Democracy, Now

Yesterday, with a sold-out crowd, we attended a documentary on Amy Goodman at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. It was inspiring and told with the blazing torch of truth. While the credits rolled, Patty Smith’s powerful song People Have the Power rang out. Tears come even now as I reflect on Amy’s life and the battles she’s fought to defend our democracy. The film isn’t yet out in full release. This was the third showing and it will show tonight at 5:30 at the San Rafael theatre for the MV Film Festival.

Keep your eye out for “Steal This Story, Please.” It’s a non-biased account of what’s gone on in the last 30 years in our country, in our name.

Posted on October 3, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Contrast

On one hand we have Trump and his cronies carrying out the destructive policies of Project 2025 and on the other we have the role model of Dr. Jane Goodall, who passed at 91 years old while on a speaking tour promoting and demonstrating curiosity, generosity, compassion, and courage.

In Marshall, we stayed in a home where a dock partially destroyed in a storm was repaired with new wood. The two woods, old and new, were combined just as our constitution is meant to withstand storms and adapt. Jane Goodall is the example we’re meant to follow, an honoring and recognition of all the creatures and the environment we share.

Posted on October 2, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Geologic Plates

We’re in West Marin, in Marshall, on a house literally on Tomales Bay. I am bathed in the sound of lapping and waved in beauty as I sit on one continental plate and view another across the water.

What a contrast to reading Robert Hubbell today. Here’s an excerpt:

It is about whether Congress will retain its authority under Article I of the Constitution to lay taxes and appropriate funds through legislation. As of October 1, 2025, that remains an open question.

On Wednesday, Trump and his sidekicks announced billions of dollars in “cancellations” of funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. Trump has no authority to cancel those appropriations, but the GOP-controlled Congress is apparently willing to cede its control over the power of the purse—one of its chief constitutional duties.

But it gets worse. Not only does Trump claim the authority to cancel congressional appropriations, he also claims the authority to raise revenue through illegal tariffs.

He goes on and comes to this: If Democrats needed any further evidence that compromise with Trump is foolish, the president began canceling grants and projects in states that did not vote for him in 2024.

Withholding funds appropriated by Congress is unlawful in the first instance. But doing so to exact political revenge is among the most corrupt presidential actions in the history of our republic. The withheld funds do not belong to Donald Trump and should not be used for political purposes. Those funds belong to the United States of America, to be spent as directed by Congress.

Posted on September 24, 2025 by Cathy Edgett

Beginnings

Yesterday Trump again showed his true colors to the world at the United Nations.

Given 15 minutes to address the UN General Assembly, he spoke for 57 minutes in a rant that will go down in history as cruel, embarrassing, false, and insane.

Heather Cox Richardson ends her column today with this: The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”

We know that those Trump chooses to support and lie to him are incompetent, but who knew they can’t even ride an escalator without stopping it or manage to work a teleprompter. On the other hand, maybe it was purposeful, an underhanded way to stop him now so we can return to the well-thought out and considered values on which the country was founded.

Jimmy Kimmel was returned to us, and ended his beautiful monologue with the hope that the silver lining of this is bringing people from the left, right and center together to speak up for the First Amendment. He said he was touched by the speech that Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, delivered at his memorial on Sunday, in which she said she forgave the man who shot her husband.

“That is an example we should follow. If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was. … A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow.” Kimmel said. “And if there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that and not this.”