What's next?

 

Donald Trump still manages to keep himself at the center of attention for Americans and also for the whole world. 

When he happens to be awake during a daytime meeting, Trump often looks rather glum, as though he'd really rather be somewhere else, either taking a nice long nap or out playing golf surrounded by a bevy of protective agents. Is he now getting tired of actually being president? A president faces constant pushback, not like a crown-wearing king of old whose every word was law. Trump had been under considerable pressure to release the Epstein files, and after much resistance on his part, he has given a surprise signal that releasing them is OK now. 

Has Donald Trump been thinking about his legacy and about how he might want to be remembered in the history books? This time around, unlike during his first term, he actually won his office by getting the most votes, though still not quite a majority of all votes cast. Yet ever since, citizen support has been sinking rapidly. Because Mr. Trump still has 3 years left in his term, many Americans wish he would now simply decide to retire. Many consider him too old and befuddled to be an effective president, just as many had felt about Joe Biden. 

 How should Donald Trump be remembered? 

       "No more Kings" demonstrations have not stopped, but actually have gained momentum. 

According to Wikipedia:

No Kings protests (also called No Kings 2.0 and No Kings Day 2.0) took place on October 18, 2025, as part of a series of demonstrations taking place largely in the United States against Donald Trump's policies and actions during his second presidency. The demonstrations, which followed the June 2025 No Kings protests, took place in some 2,700 locations across the country, including the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and New York City. Organizers of the protests estimated that the protests drew nearly 7 million attendees.

In a recent Newsweek poll: Trump's overall approval rating came in at 39 percent, with his disapproval rating actually coming in much higher at 56 percent. The poll was taken from November 7 to November 10.

E. Jean Carroll's $5 million judgment is still pending, though Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court, hoping to be granted relief there, having named 3 of the justices himself. 

                                        Trump, on Friday, called Rep. Greene a “ranting lunatic.”

                            Trump Cuts Ties With Marjorie Taylor Greene, Calling Her ‘Wacky'

This is because she supported a full release of the Epstein files, something Trump had been trying to stop in any way possible. Apparently there is something in those files that Trump had hoped to keep secret, but now, in an unexpected about-face, he has given the go-head for their release.  

Despite being a conservative Republican, former Vice President Dick Cheney had become a vocal critic of Trump in recent years. He and his daughter, former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, had declared their opposition to Trump after his denial of the 2020 election results and his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Liz Cheney said Trump had "summoned a violent mob" and "caused a constitutional crisis."

That is why Trump said nothing whatsoever about the nation's lowered flags on Nov. 16, but they still were lowered for Dick Cheney's burial. 

Dem Senator Goes All the Way There: Trump Was ‘Clearly’ at the ‘Center of a Child Sex Ring’

NY Times, Homeland Security Missions Falter Amid Focus on Deportations

Under President Trump, an agency intended to keep Americans safe has diverted resources from combating child abuse, trafficking and terrorism.

Now Vice President JD Vance has been trying to support the change in focus: "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive. Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens."

Absolutely false, quite simply incorrect, not true in any way, shape, or form. Illegal immigrants are not buying up all the houses. Not only can they not afford to even do so, but they wouldn't want to have their name appearing on a deed. Rather, many new houses are actually being built in the US by immigrants, legal or not, because Americans here since birth seem not so good at building houses and many aren't really eager to learn that skill.

Keeping immigrants out will only make housing more expensive, less well-made, and actually less available. Those folks are coming here because they know what they are doing and because we really do need them to keep on building homes for the rest of us.

The Trump administration has been deporting migrants to south Sudan, as well as to other countries willing to take them for a price. I once had a mission to south Sudan, allowing me to travel freely all over that country. Readers should look for a previous blog posting entitled Veterans' Day and Thanksgiving for details. 

I have a lifelong friend residing in rural Vermont, seen here below as a child out on the farm where she still lives today. Her mother, born in Egypt, was brought to Vermont by her father who had met her during his world travels and had immediately married her, as it was love at first sight! Their daughter, my longtime friend, still tends sheep and spins their wool on her family's remote Vermont farm.

 Is it possible to actually live too long? My good friend's mother, the lady once brought to Vermont from Egypt, lived to age 105. She never lost her accent when speaking English but still seemed mentally aware, even after age 100. 

I suspect that my own mother, who died at age 92 after refusing to eat, only accepting small sips of water, no longer wanted to go on living, so she actually starved herself to death. But that is another story.

 

In a phone conversation I once had with my Vermont friend's mother when she was 103, she told me that her own life after age 100 had not been particularly enjoyable, so that it might have been best for her to have departed Mother Earth on her 100th birthday. 

She had been faithfully attended by two Hispanic women taking turns caring for her all day long, day after day. These women probably had not entered this country legally, since very few people actually do so, something proving to be much too complicated and too expensive. Only Donald Trump's white South African farmers have come here legally, thanks to special visas that he had drafted specifically for them, done as a favor for Elon Musk before their falling out.  

When the visa lottery was still operating (now suspended by Trump), that was another way to enter the US legally. I did once have 3 lottery winners living together with me in DC, beating amazing odds by all living at the same address. Each was notified by mail of his win, one letter coming in right after the other. How could that possibly have happened? There was even an article in the Washington Post about their remarkable odds-breaking win, happening just by chance while we all were living together in my DC home. 

                                  

According to Wikipedia, high blood sugar, hearing loss, and low educational level are the top risk factors for dementia among the U.S. population. I do have moderate hearing loss and once had hearing aids, but can no longer find them since moving here from Washington, DC. I don't have high blood sugar and IU also have a master's degree from UC/Berkeley which I earned at about age 20, which possibly still provides me with some dementia protection. (I started college at age 16.) 

I've written a couple of books that continue selling very modestly, but am unable to collect the royalties, never having mastered a cell phone, as is required to access the royalties. I started trying to learn to use a cell phone too late in life and never have been successful.

 Here is a banking ad that came to me in Spanish, so someone out there knows I speak Spanish. My former neighbor in DC now says it's a scam. How does she know? 

PNC, Inspirando futuros mejores
para los niños pequeños

A FRAUD ALERT has come in from my former DC neighbor, saying the following about my posting shown above so no one should look for PNC online : Shs said:

please do not respond to that missive from ‘PNC.’  it’s not the bank but a scam pretending to be the bank.  you will b led down the ‘primrose path’ if you do.

  

I had said the following, but please disregrd this now, NO, NO, NO: I had said,

PNC stands for the merger of 2 banks, Pittsburgh National Corporation and Provident National Corporation.

PNC even has a bank branch operating near Berkeley Springs, W Va., where I'm living now. Should I actually visit that locatiion and try speaking Spanish there? (Speaking Spanish had worked when ordering a meal at a local hispanic restaurant right here in Berkeley Springs.)

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This letter below was submitted to the Washington Post by an acquaintance,

so let's see if actually gets published. I agree with everything he says,

On Sunday last the Post ran a column by Todd Pittinsky, identified only as
a Professor at Stony Brook. He did what I think can be called a hatchet
job on the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) and in
particular its educational system. The sources for his argumentation were
pro-Israeli organizations, and Googling him makes clear that his column was
no detached analysis but rather than exercise in Israeli hasbara, i.e.,
propaganda. Ought it not have been fairly identified as such? Did you
perhaps reach out to UNRWA USA, which has a Washington office, with an
offer of a chance for rebuttal?
 
Israel's hostility to UNRWA is not new. Pittinsky's assault on the agency
is at one with Israel's wartime ban on that agency's food distribution
system, which led to the chaos and the deaths, by violence and starvation,
of so many Gazans. Whatever is taught in Gaza's schools--and I would not
readily credit Pittinsky's version--it is far from the most crucial source
of Palestinian resistance, and hatred directed at Israel and Israelis. A
population subjected to a long and relentless occupation attended by
systematic theft, mass murder and wholesale displacement can be expected to
react unpleasantly. Violence will end when Israel ends its occupation and
agrees to a peace fair to the Palestinian people.