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I stayed up on Tuesday night to watch Donald Trump's longest-in-history State of the Union address. Though, as everyone else who stayed up to watch along knows, it was really less of a speech and more of a gala show, chock full of guest appearances, awards, frequent declarations of praise by Trump for himself,  ...alternating with his barbed scorn for his Democratic enemies, not to mention his fierce immigrant hatred, especially against Somalians. All of that was interspersed with heart-touching human-interest stories involving Olympic athletes, children, parents, working folks, wounded soldiers, and two centenarian veterans, most of whom appeared to be exceedingly grateful to the Presidential Master of Ceremonies, who appeared exceedingly gratified by their gratitude. There was just so much to take in, all of it the same old excruciatingly predictable, unchanging, perpetually self-aggrandizing Trumpian schtick that we've had playing in our ears and flashing in our eyes for the past ten and a half years. I didn't take most of it in. Except for three times during the show when I found myself sitting up, taking notice, and wondering, now, what's going on here? The first time was when the President began talking up the benefits of some government pharmaceutical program called Trump Rx that, according to Trump, "took prescription drugs from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest." He went on to say, "The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600 percent and more, all available right now at a new website called Trump Rx. gov." (He added that he didn't name the website, likely lest we suspect he had an oversized ego). I had never heard of Trump Rx and was intrigued, so I immediately went to the TrumpRx.gov website to check it out. Here's what I found on the hype-y home page:     However, when I went to the "Browse Medications" page, there were only 43 drugs listed, most of them for fertility, diabetes and weight-loss. Some of the drugs were not very expensive even without the discount,  ...though most were quite expensive even with the discount.  Apparently the way TrumpRx works is, one prints off a coupon from the website.  One then presents the coupon to a participating pharmacy in order to receive the discounted price on one's prescription. One must pay this price out of pocket, as insurance is not accepted with TrumpRx coupons. Nor does TrumpRx cover generic options. Subsequently, the price of the drug is likely to be much cheaper if one has insurance, but TrumpRx coupons are generally meant to be used by the uninsured. Ergo, mayhaps Donald Trump's State of the Union claims about TrumpRx giving Americans the lowest drug prices in the entire world was as inflated as the TrumpRx homepage? The second episode that made me wonder occurred when Trump directed attention to audience member Sage Blair.  Trump introduced Sage Blair as a young woman from Virginia who, when she was 14, school officials sought to transition from a girl to a boy without her parents' knowledge. He told of how Sage ran away from home, was sexually trafficked, then, in Trump's words, "After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son. Sage was thrown into an all boys state home and suffered terribly for a long time." Trump ended by saying that today all of that was behind her because now "Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University." He then asked Sage and her paternal grandmother, Michelle, who has been Sage's legal guardian since she was two, to stand for a round of applause.  Now, one couldn't help - at least, I couldn't help - but notice during most of Trump's tribute to Sage Blair the sadness in their face, their frequent blinking,   ...the brief, inscrutable glance they exchanged with the man sitting next to them.  I wondered what Sage Blair was thinking and feeling. Did they want to be there? Were they there of their own will? Were they trying in their mind to be somewhere or someone else? Were they in fact a "proud and wonderful young woman" for whom their terrible suffering in the past was behind them? Was the life and identity they were now living their choice or was it being forced upon them? Were they receiving whatever mental health care they needed? And who were those two men sitting close next to them who looked like guards? And I mostly wondered what they meant by the little finger clap they gave while the rest of the audience was cheering for them.  I googled "finger clapping" and learned that it signifies the expression "clock it," for which I found two meanings, this one:  ...and this one:  I wondered which meaning Sage Blair intended to communicate? And finally, I wondered about Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover who during the State of the Union was presented with the Medal of Honor (Which Donald Trump kept erroneously referring to as "The Congressional Medal of Honor"), the highest award given by the United States military. CW5 Slover is an army pilot who was shot several times in the leg and hip while landing the lead helicopter during the January 3 raid of this year that led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro. Though seriously wounded, CW5 Slover landed the helicopter, enabling his crew to carry out their mission of overthrowing Maduro and taking him prisoner. When Trump called CW5 Slover to come forward he appeared holding on to a walker beside his smiling wife.  However Slover looked like a prisoner of war, stone faced, his uniform cinched in at the waist and hanging loose on his frame. His stony, hollow-eyed, flat affect didn't change while he received his Medal of Honor,    ...except for once while he was being applauded, when his face showed, for less than a second, a robotic-looking effort at a smile.  And I wondered, what happened to that man? What is going on behind those lightless eyes?  References https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKYqf7emEo https://trumprx.gov/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8G4eQyjPSM https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/02/invited-an-ex-trans-christian-student-to-the-sotu-yesterday-who-is-she/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/virginia-trans-student-trump-sotu-guest.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFtxacUUmZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6S2xTlmGY4
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 It wasn't that the thought had never occurred to me that posting blogs critical of Donald Trump and/or his accomplices might be risky. After all, the abuse of power for self dealing and the abuse of power to deal out retribution are twin pillars of the Trump agenda. But I never took too seriously the thought that I might be affected. True, these days my blog posts do tend to be jeremiads against the authoritarianism, misdeeds and cruelty of the MAGA powers that be,      ...still, the collective readership of my blog is, in truth, pretty small. And so I always figured that no matter what I said, my voice was likely hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles below the radar or interest of the Trump MAGAverse. But then a couple of nights ago my hubby Tom and I sat scrolling on our devices through the day's news when he looked up from his reading. "Listen to this," he said. "It says in the New York Times that tech company workers have leaked that the Department of Homeland Security has subpoenaed all the social media sites for the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of people who criticize ICE on social media." Upon hearing this I felt in the middle of my chest a sudden sensation of...something: Fear? Anxiety? Anger? I'd say anxiety was the closest. "No, wait," I said, "that can't be right. Just about everybody I know criticizes ICE on social media. And my blog is on social media. I mean, my blog is social media...isn't it?" "You better read for yourself," said my mate. So I did. Sure enough, there was the article in the Times.  And in multiple other news sources, as well.       I read a few of the articles, which were generally a dissemination of the information published in the Times and stated that the Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, Discord and other social media companies demanding the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of users who've posted critical comments about Customs and Immigration Enforcement. But reading a little deeper, I learned that what DHS actually wanted was to find out the identities of the people behind social media accounts that don't have a real person's name attached to them. Such as:    Apparently the social media companies have given the Department of Homeland Security the personal information behind a few of the accounts, which is appalling. Still, I felt a moment of relief after reading that DHS was only after information on people whose names weren't attached to their critical posts. That wouldn't be me. My name is attached to the Facebook account on which I post my blogs. But then it took only another moment for the light to click on in my brain that the reason DHS didn't subpoena the names of the people whose names were already on their social media posts was because...our names were already on our social media posts. In an article in Military.com referenced below, Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology said, "The government can use (administrative subpoenas) to compel the disclosure of your personal information even when there is no suspicion that you committed a crime. ICE is apparently using them to silence people who speak out." Which is. of course, the obvious answer to the obvious question of why the Department of Homeland Security wants information on people who criticize ICE: to silence - or do worse to - those of us who speak out. In the same Military.com article there was a related story about a man in the Philadelphia area who, upon reading in the Washington Post about a person seeking asylum from Afghanistan who had been badly treated by the Department of Homeland Security, wrote an email to the DHS urging them to “apply principles of common sense and decency” in its treatment of the asylum seeker. Soon afterwards the man was notified that the Trump administration had issued a subpoena to Google seeking the man's identity and home address. Two weeks later two DHS agents and a police officer showed up at the man's residence and interrogated him. If this isn't proof that we are living in an authoritarian police state, I don't know what is. Still, I wonder - and worry: Is every one of us who has ever posted something negative about ICE on the radar of DHS? All tens of millions of us? Or are we all just little balls in a game of DHS police state roulette? In any case, do we dare to keep speaking up?  References: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/02/17/dhs-collecting-big-tech-users-personal-data-issuing-subpoenas-ice-related-criticism.html  I know the town of Springfield, Ohio well. That is to say, I knew it well 15 years ago when one of my daughters was a student there at Wittenberg University from 2007-2011. Back then Springfield was a rather down-at-the-heels place, except for the area around the University, from which I imagine Springfield drew a good portion of its financial sustenance. I myself contributed minutely to Springfield's economy during my visits to my daughter, which mayhaps happened a bit more often than was absolutely necessary for a parent to visit their college student after I was introduced to (and subsequently developed a sporadic craving for) several of what I considered to be Springfield's culinary delights: The incomparable subs and fries at the Our Hero Subs;    ...the pizza at the Hickory Inn,    ...though it never made sense to me how a place that served up the standard variety of tasty American fare could also whip up what had to be in the running for the best pizza on the planet. I once asked one of the Hickory House staff what was their secret to making such excellent pizza. They replied, "Oh, we just make the sauce, and grate the cheese..." And that was as much of the secret as they saw fit to reveal. And then there was Schuler's bakery, where the donuts were, if not to die for, at least to travel the hour from Gahanna, where I live, to Springfield.  (Apparently Schuler's has since closed this old location and moved to a new one since my donut days there). But back then Springfield was hemorrhaging population, the life blood of any city, and continued to hemorrhage until, beginning in 2013, Haitians, who had been granted Temporary Protected Status as refugees after the earthquake that further devastated their already impoverished country in 2010, began arriving in Springfield, Ohio. Apparently word had spread among the Haitian refugee community that here was a city offering jobs, affordable housing, and the opportunity to build a new life. And so, in building new lives for themselves, the hard-working Haitian immigrants brought new life to Springfield. They worked in the factories, in the warehouses, in the service industries, in retail,    ...and started a number of new businesses, including restaurants, food trucks, and markets.     And in earning an income, they also spent money locally. They helped revitalize the economy and expand the tax base. They filled the empty houses and increased the flagging student population in the schools. In total around 15,000 Haitians moved to Springfield, Ohio and today make up 25% of the city's population. But now, thanks to Donald Trump's agenda of cruelty and economic recklessness, all that may change for Springfield and its Haitians. As living conditions in Haiti continued to deteriorate and became more dangerous than before the 2010 earthquake, Temporary Protected Status for Haitians was extended by both Presidents Barak Obama and Joe Biden. Donald Trump, on the other hand, actively tried to end TPS for Haitians during all four years of his first presidency, but was continually blocked by the courts. During this his second presidency Trump continues his campaign to send Haitian refugees back to a terrible fate and came very close to succeeding last week. On Trump's orders February 3, 2026 was to be the day that all Haitians in the United States lost their protected status and after this date would no longer be in this country legally. Amid predictions that hoards of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were set to swoop into Springfield and round up the city's Haitians, Springfield's churches and faith groups protested,    ...and our Republican governor Mike DeWine and the mayor Springfield spoke out against ending the Haitians' TPS. As for Ohio's two senators, both Republicans, one, Bernie Moreno, said the Haitians should solve the problem themselves by self-deporting,  ...while the other, Jon Husted, has been on radio silence.  In those days before their legal status was to end, their last days before the ICE agents would come for them, I could see the Haitians of Springfield, desolate, crying, terrified of what the future had in store for them and their families, their children. I imagined this is how it must have been for the final days of the European Jews before they were herded off to the trains that took them to the concentration camps,  ...where they had no better chance of survival than will the Haitians if they are sent back to the violent, lawless, no-man's-land that Haiti has become. Thankfully, on February 2, the day before the Haitians were to lose their TPS, a federal judge stepped in and blocked Trump's order, citing its invalidity on several levels. And though the Trump administration has filed an appeal to the judge's decision, the Haitians of Springfield have at least received a reprieve. They need not fear looking out their windows and seeing ICE agents barreling up their walk or hear them pounding on their door. At least not today. Those of us whose hearts go out to the Haitians are filled with gratitude and hope that their lives - and the life of Springfield, Ohio - may be spared.  As for the others, those who are saying, "Temporary means temporary, send them all back to Haiti now..." Well, I don't understand how people can be so cruel. References:
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/this-is-good-for-us-patrons-at-springfield-haitian-restaurant-react-to-judge-blocking-end-of-tps-for-haiti/RMXV2EBOMRCVNOQPVCS55SK https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-02-06/ohio-agencies-making-plans-to-help-kids-of-haitians-if-tps-ends-and-ice-surges https://www.dispatch.com/picture-gallery/news/2026/02/02/hundreds-gather-to-support-haitian-immigrants-in-springfield-ohio/88477816007/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=69850be2a9c7ef00019d6938&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawPzbWZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVRXN3WVdFQTdTajNsdTU4c3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHschz3T14qXZFzKFQOqPE0_QVlMWYSjMg_Xp9eikjgtU1K-i5ULCTvPEmvMV_aem_sdQXuzuPVcSZQJOndnr_6w https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/02/05/ohio-senators-governor-respond-to-calls-from-brown-to-extend-protections-for-haitians/ https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5725642-ohio-gov-defends-haitian-tps/  Yesterday, Sunday, February 1, in my town of Gahanna, Ohio, our good townsfolk turned out in the 15-degree weather and 12 inches of snow for a demonstration calling for immigration justice.  The exact number of citizens who braved the chill to be part of the Intentional Chain of Empathy, as this peaceful gathering was called, I cannot say; I suppose as many as could fit along the shoveled half mile of sidewalk down our main street, from the Dairy Queen to the Golden China Restaurant.       Among the demonstrators were some of the members of my group of gal pals who refer to ourselves as The Posse.  Though The Posse's principle raison d'être is to get together once a week for brunch and conversation,  ...of late we've taken to showing up at protests around the Columbus area, as we did at a No Kings march last August.  For this protest I spent the day before constructing my sign, the message of which I figured was simple,    ...but to the point,  ...and the amateur artistry of which I figured would be okay from a distance.  There were plenty of signs at the event besides mine, some of them more cries of protest or lamentation,       ...though most were messages of kindness and hope.        Our protest seemed to hearten the drivers-by, as most who passed us gave a honk, a shout-out, or a peace sign. The local police were friendly and helpful, and even a postal truck that passed by gave us a wave and a honk of encouragement. After the protest my friends, my mate and I decided to get some food from the Blue Agave, the Mexican restaurant up the block from our protest location.    Meanwhile, on the same day on the other side of the country, some of my long-distance relatives were among the 15,000 marchers who staged a pro-immigrant, anti-ICE march for two miles along the Strand, the walking path that runs for 22 miles along the Los Angeles oceanfront. The marchers walked from Manhattan Beach to the next community over, Hermosa Beach. My relatives, who were involved in the coordination of the event, sent me some photographs,     ...and videos. We have not yet begun to protest.  |
"Tropical Depression"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTPN7NYY Archives
May 2026
I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
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