Then and now

As the US midterms approach, Donald Trump has been going out more in public to incentivize Republican voter turnout. No more daytime naps, not so much golf, showing that he is still the boss and still supported by voters.

Yahoo News

 "Every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship," Trump said on Wednesday, adding a false claim that "it never went down."

"The stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is," he said, "other than me, of course." Trump now takes full credit for stock market gains, but will he take blame when the market inevitably slumps? (Slumps will be the Democrats fault!)

Never mind the stock market right now, as President Trump is on a deportation rampage, on a real frenzy to deport just as many folks as he possibly can. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officially reports that its enforcement operations have deported more than 605,000 unauthorized immigrants, while also estimating that up to 1.9 million people have voluntarily self-deported. Yet, we still do need most of those folks to stay right here. Haven't you seen "Help Wanted" signs now posted everywhere? 

As the mother of my son Jon, whom I adopted frrom Colombia as an infant, I knew he also needed to become a US citizen. So when he was just 3 years old, we made sure he went through a citizenship ceremony, with random strangers putting dollar bills right into his little hands. Some parents of children adopted from abroad simply skip applying for their child's citizenship, assuming it to be automatic along with the adoption. But actually, it is not, as they find out later if he (often it is he) is then arrested, often for a minor crime like driving without a license. Then their son is suddenly deported to his original birth country, where he knows no one and doesn't even speak the language. So parents adopting from abroad must make sure that their child becomes a US citizen, just in case. That should protect him from possible future deportation because an American citizen like you and me usually cannot be deported, though Trump is now trying reverse that well established law by seeking to actually deport more US citizens. 

Google says: "Naturalized citizens generally cannot be deported. However, the U.S. government can deport a naturalized citizen if it successfully revokes their citizenship through a complex legal process called 'denaturalization'. Citizenship stripping is rare and difficult, but it can occur under specific legal circumstances. Donald Trump has announced a ramping up of denaturalization efforts and has said he may even go after birthright citizenship."  So, let's start right now with revoking Trump's own birthright citizenship. His mother came from Scotland--did she actually come here legally? No, she just walked off a ship at Ellis Island, walking right into our country, acting as if she already belonged here.

Merely ramping up deportations has not really satisfied the insatiable nastiness of Donald J. Trump. Since the first day of his second term in office, he has also taken aim at birthright citizenship. On Jan. 20, 2025, he signed an executive order seeking to strip some babies actually born here of their U.S. citizenship. Federal courts have since repeatedly blocked him from implementing that executive order, finding it violates the Constitution, as well as over a century of Supreme Court precedent, and also a longstanding federal statute. 

According to Google: The Supreme Court is poised to rule by late June or early July on major challenges to President Trump's efforts to end birthright citizenship and terminate protections for certain immigrant groups. The impending decisions target fundamental components of U.S. citizenship. 

Even though Trump himself has named 3 justices to the Supreme Court, he cannot guarantee that they will now rule in his favor by overturning long-running citizen precedents and laws. 

A Ukrainian family built a community in Cleveland. Now, they face deportation

Mykola (left) and Tamila Vashchuk with their son at their home in Bay Village, Ohio, on 19 June. Will they be deported back to Ukraine? 

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A friend just told me that he is staying in Tucson for the summer:

 I will be spending much of the summer in Tucson, where I volunteer for a local food bank. In the summer many Tucson residents, including food bank volunteers, flee the city for cooler places. So I am kept fairly busy delivering meals to people confined to their homes. Thank God for air conditioning! For example, high temps in Tucson for the rest of this week will be 102-107 degrees. But on several occasions, I plan to escape the city for cooler stays in nearby mountains.

Now here's a message from a fellow Cuba visitor from the days when the Castro regime was dubbed an arch-enemy of our country. (Some of what he says may not be fully clear except to other Cuba watchers.) We both had been arrested and expelled from Cuba at that time. My friend now says: Trump continues to pressure Cuba with an oil embargo, which I think is a serious mistake. But I do like his crackdown on regime-linked apparatchiks who are "fleeing" to Florida, where they claim political asylum. For example, the daughter of Carlos Lage, the former Vice Prez purged by Fidel, claimed asylum in Florida, where she ran prosperous businesses between lengthy stays in her patria. Her refugee status is being revoked. 

He then continues: 

After I was arrested, Aleida Godinez, one of the DSE fake dissidents I dealt with, went public as Agent Fulana & claimed that I "assigned" her the task of photographing Carlos Lage's house. Actually, Frank Calzon had asked me to urge dissidents, including Aleida, to photograph the houses of regime bigshots to publicize their lavish lifestyles. Later, after my library organization became an irritant to the regime, Aleida expanded her claims, saying I was a CIA agent who was plotting to assassinate Lage. (Of course, none of that was true.)

We had both gone to Cuba as neither friend nor foe, just trying to figure what was going on there. Since I'm told that I speak unaccented Spanish (though not Cuban Spanish either), then in those former days, I rarely revealed my US citizenship unless required to do so, trying to pass as someone from elsewhere in Latin America. It proved very informative for me to travel in Cuba back then, gaining insights rarely revealed to Americans, with much of what I learned revealed in my books (titles above). 

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Here's an annoucement in both Spanish and English of an award from a foundation headed by a longtime friend. LA FUNDACIÓN EMILIA BERNAL ANUNCIA  EL PREMIO LITERARIO-CULTURAL EMILIA BERNAL 2026, OTORGADO A:

Don HERMANN TERTSCH, estadista español, diputado a la legislatura de España y a la Unión Europea —en representación de su país—, con base en sus eximios méritos como promotor de la cultura hispánica, orador y escritor, así como activista de larga trayectoria en pro de la libertad, la democracia y los derechos humanos.

THE EMILIA BERNAL FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES THE LITERARY-CULTURAL EMILIA BERNAL AWARD FOR 2026, GIVEN TO:

Mr. HERMANN TERTSCH, Spanish statesman, representative to the parliament of Spain and to the European Union —as his country's delegate—, on the basis of his preeminent merits as a writer, orator and promoter of Hispanic culture, as well as a long-term activist in support of freedom, democracy and human rights.

(OK, let's post this now before it disappears.)