Dear senators who think you can’t do anything,Today, Senator Van Hollen – through diplomatic pressure – got a meeting with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. So that thing you’re thinking about doing? DO IT. ~ All of Us
I do not know if this on below is true, but it hurts me greatly. I read on MS of poor souls who grew up in the 1950s that had their dad’s farm them out for sex to pay debts. Sadly it is happening even today. Kids being used as currency using their bodies as a way for their parents to survive or for them on the street to survive. It makes me cry. Hugs
Facts matter:
Here’s what we KNOW. The seven biological karyotype sexes that do not result in death to the fetus are:
X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people.
XX – Most common form of female.
XXY or XXX – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people.
XY – Most common form of male.
XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people.
XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births.
When you consider that there are over 7 billion people alive on the planet, there are almost assuredly tens of millions of people who are neither male (XY) nor female (XX).
This is why people look down on you for being stupid when you open your mouth with this “only two sexes” nonsense.
And this is just the genetics of it, gender is a social role construct.
So for the 1st time in American History a President is selling sponsorships for the Easter Egg roll at the WH. 25k minimum Sponsorship up to, what ever they can get. Where's the money going? Not to Vets, or Food Banks. Another grift by a corrupt Administration.
Soooo, just the mere presence of tattoos is grounds for no due process and immediate kidnapping to foreign jail for prison sentence administered by a dictator?
Paging Pete Hegseth!
Worse than Nazis.
This administration delights in being evil and that is just beyond sick.
The malignant narcissism has destroyed the Right. All their values are inverted.
Never coming back to see his children? For what crime? What sentence? Why does Supreme Court ruling not matter? Why deport to a supermax prison if there is no crime/sentence?
April 20, 1853 Harriet Tubman began her Underground Railroad, a network of people and places that aided in the escape of slaves to the north. Story of a liberator of her people from bondage Harriet Tubman
April 20, 1914 Troops from the Colorado state militia attacked strikers, killing 25 (half women and children), at Ludlow. Having struck the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company the previous September for improved conditions, better wages, and union recognition, the workers established a tent camp which was fired upon and ultimately torched during a 14-hour siege. The Ludlow Massacre
April 20, 1964 In his closing statement at the Rivonia Trial, African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela addressed the court: “We want a just share in the whole of South Africa . . . We want security and a stake in society. Above all, my lord, we want equal political rights, because without them our disabilities will be permanent.” He was in Pretoria Supreme Court in South Africa where he and eight co-defendants were charged with 221 acts of sabotage designed to “ferment violent revolution,” and were facing the death penalty. At the time, black South Africans had no civil or political rights whatsoever, though they composed over 80% of the population. He concluded: “During my lifetime I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. “ I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live and to see realised. But, my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” Mandela in 1958 The trial that changed South Africa
April 20, 1969 On the site of a parking lot owned by the University of California, Berkeley, a diverse group of people came together, each freely contributing their skills and resources to create People’s Park. People’s Park history
April 20, 1982 Seven women were arrested in an anti-nuclear protest outside Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento, California, in what had become a weekly vigil. Speaking after her arrest, Barbara Weidner, 72, said, “As a mother and grandmother, I could no longer remain silent as our world rushes on its collision course with disaster which threatens the lives and futures of all children, everywhere, and the future of this beautiful planet itself.” She later said, “I hope people will not think we are encouraging people to break the law,” she said. “But our actions should teach people, and children, to scrutinize laws against human life, and they should be broken to prove a point.”
April 20, 2002 More than 75,000 marched in Washington, D.C. to protest U.S. policies in the Middle East, specifically regarding Palestine and the threatened war in Iraq. The demonstration was organized by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) and included members of the Arab-American, Muslim and South Asian communities.
I want to thank brucedesertrat who sent me the link to this substack article. I enjoy learning about history but sadly this hits home too deeply. It is so close it is scary. Hugs.
Today President Trump is threatening to pull funds if Harvard does not comply with his demands for the school to shape it’s curricula to favor Trumpism. Harvard has refused to caved to Trump’s fascist demands which clearly violate free speech.
“The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber
The seizure of power by the MAGA Republicans in 2025, led by Donald Trump, brought far-reaching changes to American Universities. Some caved, some obeyed in advance.
The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, led by Adolph Hitler, brought far-reaching changes to German Universities. All caved. All obeyed in advance.
There is a parallel in German history for this American moment when books are banned, educational institutions are battered and a brutal and barbaric anti-intellectual ethos is on the rise.
A timeline of the Nazification of Munich University
1933
Hitler demands The University of Munich restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Nazism.
Trump demands Harvard University restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Trumpism. Abandon DEI. Police your students and faculty for viewpoint “diversity”.
Those faculty members who are not Nazi sympathizers are dismissed.
Trump’s letter calls for political undesirables to be gone.
The numbers of Jews admitted to university are restricted.
Munich University is the site of book burnings led by pro-Nazi students.
With the passage of these laws, the Nazis attempted to root out any opposition to their ideology that remain in German higher education.
Trump wants all of America’s Universities to root out anti-Trumpist thought, to be citadels of Trumpism, to employ MAGA professors who will teach American students how Trumpism will make America and her institutions of higher learning great again.
1941
Munich University appoints of Walther Wüst, an Aryan ideologue, Führer-Rektor of the University. By this time the Nazification of Munich University is complete. The once prestigious Munich University employs an all Nazi faculty.
1943
Sophie Scholl, a student attending Munich University, is guillotined for distributing anti-Nazi broadsides on campus.
Under President Trump students are deported or “disappeared”. I can safely assume an American student will be martyred for resisting fascism here in our nation in t he months ahead.
Hitler visiting the University of Munich
Here is a harrowing account of the Nazification of Frankfurt University witnessed by young Austrian economist named Peter Drucker:
Frankfurt was the first university the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with a faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience, and democracy. The Nazis knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia. And so did everyone at the university.
Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials. When the appointment of a Nazi commissar was announced . . . and every teacher and graduate assistant at the university was summoned to a faculty meeting to hear this new master, everybody knew that a trial of strength was at hand. I had never before attended a faculty meeting, but I did attend this one.
The new Nazi commissar wasted no time on the amenities. He immediately announced that Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15; this was something that no one had thought possible despite the Nazis’ loud antisemitism. Then he launched into a tirade of abuse, filth, and four-letter words such as had been heard rarely even in the barracks and never before in academia. . . . [He] pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.” There was silence when he finished; everybody waited for the distinguished biochemist-physiologist. The great liberal got up, cleared his throat, and said, “Very interesting, Mr. Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”
The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for “racially pure science.” A few of the professors had the courage to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends. I went out sick unto death—and I knew that I was going to leave Germany within forty-eight hours.
The Nazis attacked academic dissent with lethal cruelty
Some went to nearby Dachau. Some, such as our heroic young student Sophie, were beheaded.
Sophie Scholl, photographed by the Gestapo
Here is the text of the pamphlet that cost Munich University student Sophie Scholl her life. Her haunting critique of Hitler resonates eerily with the familiar critiques of our current leader:
Fellow Students!
Shaken, our people faces the downfall of our men of Stalingrad. Three hundred thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly rushed into death and ruin by the brilliant strategy of the man who served as a private in the Great War. Führer, we thank you!
It is festering in the German people: Do we want to continue entrusting the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of our young Germans to the base, power-seeking instincts of a Party clique? Nevermore.
The day of reckoning has come, our German youth’s reckoning with the most abhorrent tyranny that our people has ever endured. In the name of all young Germans, we demand that Adolf Hitler’s State return to us our personal freedom, the German’s most valuable possession, which he has cheated us out of in the most disgraceful way.
We have grown up in a State where every free expression of opinion has been ruthlessly gagged. The HJ, SA, and SS have tried to make us uniform, to revolutionize us, to narcotize us in the most fruitful educational years of our lives. “Ideological training” was the name given to the despicable method of stifling our budding independent thought and self-esteem in a haze of empty phrases. A “Führerauslese”1 of a kind as fiendish and at the same time as narrow-minded as one can possibly imagine, grooming its future Party bosses at Ordensburgen [special educational centers for Party cadres] to become godless, shameless, and unscrupulous exploiters and cutthroats, to become blind, mindless followers of the Führer. We “brain-workers” were exactly right for becoming the cudgel of this new ruling class. Front-line soldiers are disciplined like schoolboys by student leaders and would-be Gauleiter; Gauleiter, with prurient jests, assault the honor of female students. German female students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the insult to their honor, and German male students have intervened and stood their ground on behalf of their female classmates. That is a first step toward gaining our right to free self-determination, without which intellectual values cannot be created. We are grateful to our brave fellow students, female and male, who have led the way by setting this shining example!
For us, there is only one watchword: Fight against the Party! Get out of the Party formations, in which the goal is to keep us politically muzzled! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS Unter- or Oberführer and the Party bootlickers! True scholarly activities and genuine intellectual freedom are at stake! No threat of any kind can frighten us, not even the closing of our universities. Each of us must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a body politic that is aware of its moral responsibility.
Freedom and honor! For ten long years, Hitler and his comrades have squeezed these two magnificent German words and made them loathsome, have banged on them and twisted them as only dilettantes can, dilettantes who cast the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated what freedom and honor mean to them during ten years of the destruction of all physical and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance in the German people. Even the dumbest German’s eyes have been opened by the dreadful blood bath which they have brought about everywhere in Europe and continue to bring about each day. The German name will remain forever disgraced unless German youth stand up at last, engage simultaneously in revenge and expiation, smash their tormentors, and bring about a new intellectual and spiritual Europe.
Students! The German people is watching us! It expects us, as in 1813 with the breaking of Napoleon’s domination, now also in 1943 to break the domination of National Socialist terror through the power of the mind.
Berezina and Stalingrad blaze in the East; the dead of Stalingrad implore us!
“Fresh on, my people, the flame signals are smoking!”2
Our people is rising up against the enslavement of Europe by National Socialism, in a new, trustful breakthrough of freedom and honor!
As you read her courageous words consider how and why a regime would loathe and fear such a voice for liberty.
Now is the time to stand with all who see Trump for the terrifying tyrant he is.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and students who courageously stand against this tyranny.
Now is the time to join Thomas Jefferson in swearing “upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Now is the time to stand with Harvard University.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and educational institutions threatened by MAGA fascism.
David Fitzsimmons: Arizona’s Progressive Voice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
A 20 year old man who is a US citizen with a Hispanic sounding name has twice been arrested and ordered held by ICE. The first time he was released as he sowed the judge his birth certificate and his social security card. The second time he was ordered held for 48 hours for pickup by ICE for an immigration hearing even after the judge seen and vouched for his birth certificate. The prosecutor claimed the court had no jurisdiction now that ICE had a detaining order on him. I don’t think that is legally correct as blue states have said they won’t honor those orders. But the point is it has happened twice now, and if the US doesn’t grant due process people like him could be detained and removed to El Salvador where the tRump people claim they can’t get people back from. We can get our people from Russia, North Korea, and China but we can’t from tiny El Salvador. Hugs
Talk about weaponizing the government. tRump seems to think that the DOJ and all agencies work for him personally. The Department of Justice was founded not to be the presidents personal lawyer but the peoples attorneys to protect the rights of the public. The FBI was founded as the countries police not the private cops of tRump to do his dirty work. How far the US has fallen due to these people who think they are the superior race and that they are so great. Hugs
Graham Kates,
Katrina Kaufman
/ CBS News
The Department of Justice wants to stand in for President Trump in his ongoing appeal of a defamation case that could cost him tens of millions of dollars.
Lawyers for the taxpayer-funded agency and Mr. Trump’s personal attorneys said in a filing on April 11 that the Justice Department believes the federal Westfall Act shields Mr. Trump in the case, which has pitted him against the writer E. Jean Carroll.
A federal jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024, after concluding that Mr. Trump made defamatory statements when denying that he sexually abused Carroll. That award came less than a year after a separate federal jury concluded Trump was liable for sexual abuse, and instructed him to pay her $5 million.
The Justice Department asserts that Mr. Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he made the allegedly defamatory statements about Carroll in 2019, and therefore the court is required to substitute the United States for Mr. Trump in the case. Under the Westfall Act, federal employees are entitled to absolute immunity from personal lawsuits for conduct occurring within the scope of their employment.
Legal scholar James Pfander said Mr. Trump still needs to show that his actions, publicly denying Carroll’s claims, were within the scope of the presidency.
“As a legal issue ultimately for the courts, the [Justice Department’s] certification alone does not decide the question,” said Pfander, a Northwestern School of Law professor.
Pfander noted that the Westfall Act says it permits government employees to petition courts to certify they were acting within the scope of their office “at any time before trial.”
“By allowing an employee to pursue certification but limiting the time to ‘before trial,’ the statute would seem to suggest that a motion to substitute at the appellate stage of the litigation comes too late,” Pfander said.
A longtime advice columnist, Carroll published a book excerpt in New York magazine in 2019 accusing Mr. Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Mr. Trump denied the allegations and called Carroll a “whack job.” He claimed he had never met Carroll, accused her of “totally lying” and said, “she’s not my type.”
Mr. Trump would go on to repeat similar denials in public appearances, social media posts and depositions.
The Justice Department initially supported Mr. Trump’s effort to have the case dismissed, arguing the Westfall Act protected Mr. Trump from liability because he was acting as a federal employee when he denied Carroll’s allegations.
A lawyer for the department argued in 2021 — while Mr. Trump was out of office after losing the 2020 election to former President Joe Biden — that even though Mr. Trump “made crude and offensive comments in response to the very serious accusations of sexual assault” the law protecting employees from such a suit should be upheld.
The agency reversed its position in July 2023. An official for the Justice Department wrote at the time that the decision factored in the jury’s conclusion in the $5 million case that Mr. Trump was liable for sexual abuse.
“The allegations that prompted the statements related to a purely personal incident: an alleged sexual assault that occurred decades prior to Mr. Trump’s Presidency,” former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote. “That sexual assault was obviously not job related.”
Paul Figley, a former deputy director of the Justice Department’s Torts Branch, said Boynton’s decision was unexpected.
“I was very surprised by the withdrawal because we always viewed the president as behaving within the scope of office for anything he did,” said Figley, an American University professor emeritus who worked at the Justice Department for more than three decades.
An exhibit included with the case’s latest filing shows that the Justice Department, now under the purview of Mr. Trump, has again reversed course.
“I find that Donald J. Trump was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incidents out of which the plaintiff’s claims arose,” wrote Kirsten Wilkinson, the director of the agency’s Torts Branch Civil Division.
Columbia Law School professor Caroline Polisi said she believes the decision fits a pattern within the Trump administration.
“This is not at all a surprising move for this Justice Department. Trump has shown time and time again that he considers this DOJ to be his personal attorney,” said Polisi, a federal criminal defense attorney
“On their face, the comments at issue were purely personal in nature, and therefore outside of his scope of duties as president, thus excluding him from governmental immunity,” said Polisi. “However, the fact that the former administration took the same position – at least initially – shows that the argument is not entirely frivolous, and that a court may entertain arguments on the issue.”
The highest ranks of the Justice Department are filled with lawyers who just last year were Mr. Trump’s personal attorneys, but Figley said Wilkinson does not fit that description. He noted she’s risen steadily while serving through multiple administrations, before being appointed director in January.
“That appointment was an obvious choice, she’d been the deputy director in that office for many years, and the previous director retired,” Figley said.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump also argued last year that the case should be dismissed due to a Supreme Court ruling granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts”while they are in office.
Roberta Kaplan, an attorney for Carroll, argued in a January brief that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not apply to Carroll’s claims.
“If there were ever a case where immunity does not shield a president’s speech, this one is it,” Kaplan wrote.
Kaplan declined to comment Wednesday on Mr. Trump’s latest move, telling CBS News her response was forthcoming in opposition papers she expects to file next week.
A Texas doctor who has been treating children in a measles outbreak was shown on video with a measles rash on his face in a clinic a week before Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met him and praised him as an “extraordinary” healer.
Dr. Ben Edwards appeared in the video posted March 31 by the anti-vaccine group Kennedy once led, Children’s Health Defense. In it, Edwards appears wearing scrubs and talking with parents and children in a makeshift clinic he set up in Seminole, Texas, ground zero of the outbreak that has sickened hundreds of people and killed three, including two children.
This image from video posted on the Children’s Health Defense website on March 31, 2025, shows Dr. Ben Edwards with a measles rash on his face, while working in a makeshift clinic in Seminole, Texas. (AP Photo)
“Yesterday was pretty achy. Little mild fever. Spots came in the afternoon. Today, I woke up feeling good,” Edwards said in the video.
Measles is most contagious for about four days before and four days after the rash appears and is one of the world’s most contagious diseases, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors and public health experts said Edwards’ decision to go into the clinic put children, their parents and their community at risk because he could have spread it to others. They said there was no scenario in which Edwards’ conduct would be reasonable.
Kennedy met with Edwards about a week after the video was posted by Children’s Health Defense, the group Kennedy led for years until December. In an April 6 post on X, Kennedy said he “visited with these two extraordinary healers,” including Edwards and another doctor, and praised their use of two unproven treatments for measles.
Even as measles has exploded in Texas and spread across the country, Kennedy, the nation’s top health official, has declined to consistently and forcefully encourage people to vaccinate their children and remind them that the vaccine is safe. Kennedy’s post drawing attention to Edwards is inappropriate but unsurprising given Kennedy’s record, said Dr. Craig Spencer, a medical doctor who is also a professor at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, stands with Dr. Ben Edwards, left, outside the Reinlander Mennonite Church in Seminole, Texas, on Sunday, April 6, 2025, after a second measles death. (AP Photo/Annie Rice, File)
“I think is unfortunately perfectly on-brand for how he thinks that medicine should be practiced,” Spencer said. “And that is what makes me remarkably uncomfortable and extremely concerned and scared for the next three-and-a-half years.”
It was unclear whether Kennedy knew that Edwards had gone into his clinic while infected with measles before meeting him. A spokesperson for Kennedy said he is not anti-vaccine and that he is “committed to improving children’s health in America and has re-deployed resources to Texas to help with the current outbreak.” He did not answer why the health secretary chose to meet with and praise Edwards rather than any of the other doctors in West Texas who have been treating children in the outbreak.
Edwards told The Associated Press in an email that he “interacted with zero patients that were not already infected with measles” during the time he was infectious. “Therefore, obviously, there were no patients that were put in danger of acquiring measles since they already had measles.”
But Jessica Steier, a public health scientist, said the video shows Edwards in the room with people who do not appear sick, including parents of sick children and the people who visited the clinic from Children’s Health Defense. She also questioned what steps Edwards was taking to confirm people were sick with measles, rather than relying on guesswork.
Steier, who runs the Science Literacy Lab and co-wrote an article about Edwards’ conduct, said while there may be some extraordinary emergencies where it would be appropriate for a sick doctor to work, this is not one of those situations because there is no shortage of providers who are not infected. She also pointed out that the video shows Edwards was not wearing a mask.
“You have the HHS secretary lifting him up,” she said. “You know, it’s so, so dangerous. I really feel for the people who are on the ground.”
Children’s Health Defense has sued a number of news organizations, among them the AP, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines.
Kennedy’s promotion of a doctor who has touted unproven measles treatments is “wholly irresponsible” but is in line with Kennedy’s long public record of anti-vaccine views, said Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He said Kennedy has carried those views to his new job as the head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“He’s not the director of Children’s Health Defense anymore. He’s responsible for the health and well-being of children in this country,” Offit said. “It’s an emergency, but Kennedy is not treating it that way.”
This came in email a few days ago. The email has a few stories in it that are pertinent to our interests. This was going to be a snippet post of those, but as I read this, I realized everyone needs to read it all, because there’s not much opinionating in it, but/and the actual information does not stop.
Today, members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). As of this afternoon, all staff members have been placed on administrative leave. They received a letter from the Director of Human Resources that the leave would be paid for 90 days and that no one will be allowed on IMLS property during that time.
The union representing IMLS staff, AFGE Local 3403, indicated that the decision to fire staff came after a short meeting between DOGE and IMLS leadership. Everyone working at IMLS was required to return government property before exiting the workplace.
Email addresses for all IMLS staff were being disabled today. Those with questions or concerns over IMLS funding will no longer be able to reach the individual or individuals with whom they’d been working.
Further, all processing work on 2025 funding applications is over and there is no information about the status of awards that have already been granted for the year. The union believes most grants will simply be terminated.
IMLS makes up .0046% of the federal budget.
Two weeks ago, President Trump issued an Executive Order targeting funds allocated to libraries and museums nationwide. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is a federal agency that distributes fund approved by Congress to state libraries, as well as library, museum, and archival grant programs. IMLS is the only federal agency that provides funds to libraries. The Executive Order states that the functions of the IMLS have to be reduced to “statutory functions” and that in places that are not statutory, expenses must be cut as much as possible.
One week later, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) entered the IMLS offices. Many at IMLS were prepared to see their jobs disappear, but that didn’t quite happen. Instead, DOGE installed a new Acting Director of the agency, Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling.
It wasn’t just a new Acting Director, though. The IMLS took on a new direction thanks to the Executive Order and DOGE. It would now operate “in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
The new goal of the administration with the IMLS is for it to function as a propaganda machine. This wouldn’t be the first nor the last federal cultural institution to see its mission shift from serving the needs and interests of all of America. On March 28, the administration would issue another Executive Order, this time demanding that the Smithsonian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and other federal museums stop the “revisionist movement” through displays and installations that showcase American history and culture as “racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Such institutions are now to engage in “igniting the imagination of young minds, honoring the richness of American history and innovation, and instilling pride in the hearts of all Americans.” The Executive Order specifically notes that the Independence National History Park see time and energy poured into these pro-patriotic efforts in order to be prepared for the 250th American anniversary events in 2026.
The defunding and gutting of the IMLS did not happen without strong support shown for public library and museum resources across the country, both on the ground and in congress.
On March 24, the board of the Institution of Museum and Library Services drafted a letter that went to Sonderling as their new Acting Director. The letter outlines the essential functions of the agency, making it clear that any cuts to the IMLS would have a direct and long-lasting impact on public museums and libraries nationwide. It emphasized that an Executive Order alone is not enough to change the functions or services provided by the IMLS.
All such statutory obligations may not be discontinued or delayed under an Executive Order or other executive action. Sections 9133 and 9176 of the Act affirm IMLS’s duty to obligate and disburse funds to grantees, subject only to the availability of appropriations, not to executive discretion. Any failure to fulfill these legal obligations or to reduce staffing or program operations below the minimum required to meet statutory mandates would place the agency in noncompliance with Congressional intent.
Several members of Congress also pushed back against the Executive Order. On March 26, a bipartisan coalition consisting of Senators Jack Reed, Kirsten Gillibrand, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski sent a letter to Sonderling as well. The letter again defines the role of the IMLS and its obligation when it comes to funding institutions across the US.
Libraries and museums play a vital role in our communities. Libraries offer access for all to essential information and engagement on a wide range of topics, including skills and career training, broadband, and computing services. IMLS grants enable libraries to develop services in every community throughout the nation, including people of diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, individuals with disabilities, residents of rural and urban areas, Native Americans, military families, veterans, and caregivers. Museums serve not only as centers for education but also as drivers of local economic development. The IMLS Office of Museum Services is the largest dedicated source of investment in our nation’s museums, which typically support more than 700,000 jobs and contribute $50 billion annually to the U.S. economy. IMLS funding plays a significant role in this economic impact by helping museums reach more visitors and spur community development.
While that letter circulated, another was passed around the House of Representatives. Led by Representatives Dina Titus (NV-01) and Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), the letter was shared among House members. It urged them to sign on in asking for the administration to reconsider its Executive Order related to IMLS funding and structure.
Public libraries and public library associations nationwide have spoken loudly about how potential cuts to IMLS could impact state and local level services. Among the services that could most quickly and directly impact library users would be the end of digital resource availability through apps like Libby.
It is worth noting that despite some viral claims made online in the wake over fears of IMLS funding cuts, OverDrive’s Libby app and other similar digital resource programs are not funded by IMLS directly. They are, however, sometimes made available in individual states via funding received via IMLS. This is a crucial distinction. Libby and other eresources are not creations of libraries themselves by third-party systems that license access to materials. Libraries pay for that access.
Ebook and digital audiobook services are not funded by IMLS money in every state, and because of how many different types of ebook and digital audiobooks are available–indicative of how many different audiences and needs are being met–essential services without the Libby name recognition are being overlooked. In states where such services are made available through IMLS money, many times the apps and resources are not explicitly named by state funding, making it difficult to determine where such impact would be felt immediately. For example, Indiana libraries use IMLS funding for the Indiana Digital Library, which among its many databases and services provides access to Libby.
Find below a roundup of state library associations, local-level libraries, social media library workers/advocates, and/or local/regional news sources who have identified where and how IMLS cuts would directly impact their state libraries. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but you’ll see within the states here, many rely on IMLS funds to help acquire, fund, and maintain essential digital resources:
The future of IMLS remains uncertain, and with ongoing efforts to rewrite the truth of America via Executive Orders and whitewashing cultural institutions funded and respected by American taxpayers, it’s essential to continue speaking up on behalf of your local library, as well as one of your local library’s most crucial federal agencies.
Those which stand to be most devastated by potential cuts are rural and small libraries, who are also most impacted by the administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education and the United States Postal Service.
Whether or not Trump and his DOGE team have the legal authority to shut down the IMLS completely remains to be seen. Eliminating all staff and pausing all funding certainly defies the administration’s own order that only activities outside of “statutory requirements” be touched. Expect a lawsuit to be filed in the courts, much as we’ve seen with the other slash-and-burn efforts taken by an executive branch overstepping its constitutional authority.
April 17, 1959 22 were arrested in New York City for refusing to take shelter during a civil defense drill.
April 17, 1960 Inspired by the Greensboro sit-in of four black college students at an all-white lunch counter, nearly 150 black students from nine states formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker, James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., the founders set SNCC’s initial goals as overturning segregation in the South. They also considered it important to give young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement, as many had participated in sit-ins that had proliferated to dozens of cities over the previous three months. At the Raleigh conference Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” an adaptation of an old labor song. This song would become the national anthem of the civil rights movement. People joined hands and gently swayed in time singing “black and white together,” repeating over and over, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.” History of SNCC (It’s a Stanford.edu page, which “cannot be reached.” Take from that what you will. I’ve decided to note these things when they happen.) What SNCC did to make change happen (This page is good.)
April 17, 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion. An army of 1500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles, mercenaries equipped and trained at a secret Guatemala base by the CIA, landed at Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) in an attempt to “liberate” Cuba from Communist rule. Within three days, the invasion proved disastrous with nearly 1200 members of Brigade 2506 (who had been trained in the U.S.) taken prisoner. Known as Operation Zapata, it was conceived by Vice President Nixon, planned and approved by the Eisenhower administration, and executed shortly after President John Kennedy’s inauguration. President Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag in Miami in 1962 and declares: “I promise to return this flag in a free Havana.”
Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev sent a telegram to President Kennedy: “Mr. President, I send you this message in an hour of alarm, fraught with danger for the peace of the whole world. Armed aggression has begun against Cuba. It is a secret to no one that the armed bands invading this country were trained, equipped and armed in the United States of America. The planes which are bombing Cuban cities belong to the United States of America, the bombs they are dropping are being supplied by the American Government . . . .” What actually happened
April 17, 1965 The first national demonstration against the Vietnam War took place in the nation’s capital. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizers, had expected about 2000 marchers; the actual count was 15,000–25,000. This was the largest anti-war protest ever to have been held in Washington, D.C. up to that time. The number of marchers approximately equaled the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Several hundred students in the protest broke away from the main march and conducted a brief sit-in at the U.S. Capitol’s door. An exam prepared by SDS about the Vietnam War (answers available)
April 17, 1965 Gay rights advocate Jack Nichols The first demonstration promoting equal treatment of homosexuals, Jack Nichols, Barbara Gittings and others picketed in front of the White House. There were no media present.. Read more
April 17, 1986 Reverend Jesse Jackson, future congresswoman Maxine Waters and others co-founded the Rainbow Coalition, initially intended as a progressive public-policy think tank within the Democratic Party. Representative Maxine Waters, Harry Belafonte, John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Willie Nelson August 6, 2005-Atlanta, Georgia. Brief history of Rainbow Push Coalition
April 17, 1992 On Good Friday morning, about 50 people accompanied Fr. Carl Kabat and Carol Carson to Missile Silo Site N5 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the same silo that Carl and other members of the Silo Pruning Hooks (see below) disarmed in 1984. They cut through a fence and, once inside, Carol used a sledgehammer on the concrete lid of the silo while Carl performed a rite of exorcism. Eventually, the police arrived and arrested Carl and Carol. They were jailed and held until their court appearance. At that time, they made a preliminary agreement with federal prosecutors wherein they would plead “no contest” to trespass in exchange for the property destruction charge being dropped; they were sentenced to six and three months, respectively, in a halfway house. Carl Kabat A History of Direct Disarmament Actions About the Silo Pruning Hooks action
