As some may already know I have been struggling recently. Hopefully soon things will get better. But some of the problems are my eyesight, Ron being in NH, the van has a tire that is leaking air badly, other issues like the house renovations leaving the bathrooms torn up and two rooms unusable, also I am hurting, tired, and I noticed recently I was getting depressed over everything.
Yesterday I had an appointment with my pain doctor. I have to by Florida law see them every two months. It used to be 3 months but the people in the state legislature felt poor people needed pain help should pay for more frequent visits and jump through ever stringent and needless requirements. I filled the tire with air, went to the appointment, my back muscles were so spasmed that I needed 12 shoots into the muscles on both sides of my spine from my shoulders down to my butt cheeks. The muscles were so hard the provider struggled to get the needle in and each shot hurt a lot.
I left the office and had to fill the tire with air. It had gone from 36 psi to 20. Thankfully I took the small battery operated compressor with me. But lifting it from the passenger side of the van then carrying it to the driver’s front tire, kneeling to fill the tire, then carrying it back was enough to cause me so much pain I was crying. I drove went quickly to the store next to our home, got the stuff to make the sauce, and drove home. I again had to fill the tire back to 36.
I was so down I sat here in my Pink Palace office and broke down. Then after a while I decided I needed to break these feelings so I dried my eyes and started to cook. I made short videos of it as I went along. I had no plan for the recordings and just stumbled my way through them. I knew that I had to keep them short as before I tried to email them to WordPress and they were too large of a file. But I figured out I can hook my phone to my computer and transfer the files to the computer and then to WordPress. So the videos are not great, I made verbal mistakes and I repeated some of the same things I already said without realizing it. I start out rather shaky, but as I went along I felt a lot better. The sauce came out great. I used the rest of the peppers and the celery, but did not add more onion. Not a fan of strong onion flavor. So I combined them into a short video to post here.
My plan this morning is to go for a walk, fill the tire go to the vet and get the cat medications, come home and rest / blog. Tomorrow I will take the van to a nearby tire shop and see what the issue is with the tire. Thanks for reading and maybe watching the video. As always comments are welcome. I wish I could share the sauce. I sure made enough. Hugs
Detained children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, on 10 September 2014. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.
The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.
The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.
Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.
Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’
Read more
The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.
“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”
The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”
The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.
“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.
Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.
In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.
Today I want to introduce you to a friend of mine from years ago, a community leader in Beirut Lebanon, a man named Kamal Mouzawak.
Kamal and me at Souk el Tayeb a couple of years ago (photo Thomas Schauer)
I’m proud to know Kamal and his team, and to have spent time with them after the horrific 2020 explosion that rocked Beirut and destroyed so many lives. The World Central Kitchen team, who arrived in Beirut to help with the recovered, joined up with Kamal’s team at Tawlet, a kitchen in the city serving foods from around Lebanon (more about that later), along with our mutual friend Aline Kamakian—a brilliant chef, food writer, and culinary advocate. Together, we worked to feed the people of Beirut who were the ones cleaning up the streets. It was a difficult time, but also an amazing one, to see the incredible efforts of Beirutis helping their neighbors get back on their feet, to clean up their neighborhoods, and to make sure they were all fed. (snip-a little video I can’t get a link or embed.)
Kamal has for many years been a leader in the community. In 2004 he started a farmers market in Beirut called Souk el Tayeb, working with farmers from around the rural areas of the country to reach the people of the city. From there his mission has expanded…well, why am I telling you, when I could let Kamal do it? My team had a moment to talk to him recently, since Kamal and Souk el Tayeb were the recipients of a grant from my Longer Tables Fund—specifically to support a new vision for the market, transforming it into a community space. I am so thrilled to be able to support my dear friend Kamal in his work to bring fresh produce to more of his community.
So friends, now I want to give the floor to the super thoughtful Kamal:
Longer Tables: First of all…what is Souk el Tayeb, and what is Tawlet?
Kamal: The whole story has been an evolution since the beginning, in 2004.
Souk el Tayeb is what we call a farmers’ market and Tawlet we call a farmers’ kitchen (“Souk el Tayeb” means “good market” and “tawlet” means “table” in Arabic). That naming is intentional, to stress the fact that this is not another store, and it’s not another restaurant. It’s not about selling vegetables. It’s not about cooking food and serving food in a restaurant or in whatever we want to call it. It’s about changing the world, making the world a better place.
And it was for people to understand is that food is not just a commodity that you buy on a supermarket shelf but something that someone planted, produced, cooked, transformed—and it’s an exchange between you and him or her through money, but the idea is Why not meet the producers of our food? It was a move for farmers to come from rural to urban in order to be where there’s a demand and purchasing power. It was about farmers coming to meet people who would buy their produce. (snip-MORE, and it’s really nice)
No, really, it is. The history of the Tenth Amendment explains [almost] everything happening in politics and government today.
But before I get to the [scintillating] topic of the Tenth Amendment, I have an announcement: Today is the birthday of Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals: The Story of the Bill of Rights.
(I have created birth announcements on publication day for every one of my books beginning with my firstborn novel in 2001.)
And now . . . all about the Tenth Amendment.
* * *
The Tenth Amendment consists of a single sentence:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The Supreme Court has described the Tenth Amendment as stating a simple “truism”—“all power is retained which has not been surrendered.”
The problem with calling the Tenth Amendment a “truism” is that, since the start of the nation, there has been bitter disagreement over how much power has been retained by the states, and how much has been surrendered to the federal government. In fact, we fought a Civil War over that question. The Confederacy’s slogan “states’ rights!” was grounded in the Tenth Amendment.
* * *
The drafters of the Constitution debated whether to insert the word “explicitly” into the Tenth Amendment, so that it would read like this:
The powers not explicitly delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The anti-Federalists (the party of Thomas Jefferson), wanted to insert the word “explicitly,” which they understood would sharply limit the power of the federal government. At one point during the early debates on the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson suggested that the federal government should consist of a committee. The Federalists (the party of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton), on the other hand, didn’t want to place such a limitation on federal power because they worried that a situation requiring a national response might arise that they could not foresee.
The Federalist won. The word “explicitly” was not included. Had the word “explicitly” been inserted, the United States most likely would have become a loose coalition of independently governed states sharing a Post Office, armed forces, and not much more.
* * *
Shortly after George Washington was elected president, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the Treasury. This was a key post because the Revolutionary War left the nation almost bankrupt, and Hamilton understood commerce and finance. As a teenager in the Caribbean, he worked as a clerk in a trading company. After the Revolutionary War, he and a handful of other New Yorkers helped establish the Bank of New York, which allowed New York to grow into a hub of commerce and trade.
One of Hamilton’s first acts as secretary of the Treasury was to propose a plan that would allow the federal government to assume state debt. There was much resistance to the idea, even by the states that were heavily in debt from the Revolutionary War. Many saw this as a federal power grab because it gave the federal government powers not “delegated” and thus violated the Tenth Amendment.
Hamilton got his way. The federal government assumed state debt. He next proposed a national bank to help the United States prosper the way the Bank of New York helped New York prosper.
The resistance to Hamilton’s proposed national bank was fierce. At stake was the kind of nation the United States would become. Thomas Jefferson and the other anti-Federalists believed a national bank would turn the United States into another Great Britain, which at the time was a vast and powerful financial empire governed by a strong central government. Jefferson believed the way to liberty was for power to reside locally. For Jefferson, the point of the Revolutionary War was for Americans to free themselves from a faraway, out-of-touch, commerce-oriented government.
Slavery, of course, was the underlying issue. The economy of the South and the wealth of people like Thomas Jefferson was built on slave labor. They were afraid that if the federal government grew too powerful, it would end slavery.
It’s Really All About John Locke
To understand how Jefferson reconciled his demand for freedom as an unalienable right with his belief that local governments should decide whether to legalize slavery, we need some John Locke, who — like Thomas Jefferson — was full of contradictions. At the time of his death in 1704, Locke was the most famous philosopher in Europe. Thomas Jefferson took his ideas and much of his famous language from John Locke. The idea that it is a self-evident truth that we all possess unalienable rights is pure John Locke, as is the idea that, to prevent a tyrant, power should be divided between independent branches of government. To quote Steven B. Smith, a political science professor at Yale, “Locke’s writings seem to have been so completely adopted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that Locke is often thought of as almost an honorary member of the American founding generation.”
Recall Thomas Hobbes’s theory about how government evolved: According to Hobbes, in the state of nature before government, there was violence and chaos. Government arose as a way to create order. For Hobbes, absolute monarchy is the best form of government because only a ruler with absolute power can maintain order. Government arises as a kind of social contract: People give up their freedom and submit to the rule of a king in exchange for protection and order.
John Locke offered a competing theory. In his view, in the state of nature before government, people lived in perfect freedom with unalienable rights. Moral law (or natural law) reigned supreme.
Among our inalienable rights, according to Locke, is the right to own property and a chief function of government is to protect private property rights, which, according to John Locke, derive from natural law. This immediately raises questions. In a state of nature without government, how do we know which property belongs to which person? Can I just claim the river for my own? Locke’s answer is that, “Our claim to property derives from our own work; the fact that we have expanded our labor on something gives us title to it. Labor is the source of all value.”
Okay, so I suppose this means that if a person in the state of nature gathers natural materials and uses their labor to make the material into a house, the person owns the house and has title to that property. But what if one person finds minerals in the earth and uses their labor to extract the minerals. Does the person then own the minerals? What about a forest? If I expend labor to cut down all the wood, does that mean I own it all? What about the servant who expends labor cleaning the master’s house. Does that servant now have claim to the master’s property? As Karl Marx later pointed out, the factory worker does not own the product of his own labor.
Liberty for John Locke was another unalienable right. Here is how Jefferson (and others) reconciled slavery with the belief that all people are born with an unalienable right to liberty: They believed it was part of natural law that Black people were inferior and best suited to laboring for others, which brings us to another problem with the entire idea. Different people will have different ideas of what is ‘moral.’ Locke’s answer is that rational people will all see things the same way, and irrational people are the ones we need government to protect us from.
See the problem? See how this leads to “Some people have unalienable rights and others do not.” It also leads to, “People who agree with me are rational. The purpose of government is to protect our freedom and property rights from those who are irrational.” This, combined with an ‘if I grab it first, I have title to it’ mentality, leads to the idea that one purpose of government is to protect the property rights of the wealthy.
Make no mistake — the idea of unalienable rights and checks on governmental power was a liberal idea and a step toward self-determination and dignity. My point is that the specifics of how this might be applied in the real world wasn’t very well thought out.
Another Lockean innovation is the movement away from feudalism — with its emphasis on a static social hierarchy — toward a market economy with opportunities for all. Locke said, “The world was created in order to be cultivated and improved” and “the world was given to the industrious.” He also believed that government should not stand in the way of industriousness, which you could say makes him the original free market capitalist. The problems here are the same: The idea that in the state of nature people lived happily in an unregulated market economy is fantasy.
Locke also says that people have the right to rebel against a tyrannical government, which raises even more questions. How do the people decide when rebellion is appropriate? What if people have different ideas about what is tyrannical? Wouldn’t this put us in an almost constant state of rebellion and civil war?
Locke’s ideas are naive, but, he did not have the benefit of modern neuroscience and modern psychology. He didn’t know what we know today about brain differences, and how these brain differences lead to personality differences. What is more important: Locke had never seen what actually happens in a world without positive law. Hindsight is always clearer.
And now . . . Back to the Story of the Tenth Amendment
Because George Washington and most members of Congress agreed with Hamilton about the need for a national bank, Hamilton got his way again. Hamilton’s bank did indeed allow the country to recover from years of war, but it remained controversial. Andrew Jackson, the country’s seventh president, dismantled the national bank because he believed it was unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment. The national bank was reinstated in 1863 to help the North with the Civil War effort. In 1913, the Federal Reserve—the national bank we have today—was established. (In the end, Hamilton won.)
* * *
On December 20, 1860—less than two months after Lincoln was elected—South Carolina declared itself no longer part of the United States. The leaders of South Carolina ordered the U.S. Army to abandon its forts and military bases within South Carolina’s borders. The U.S. Army refused to budge. Within four months, the Civil War broke out. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia also seceded.
The leaders of the Confederate States of America argued that the Constitution says nothing about whether states have the power to secede or whether the federal government has the power to stop them. Under the Tenth Amendment, any powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the states. Therefore, they argued that whether to remain part of the United States is up to the states.
Locke’s ideas thus underpinned some of the rationale of the Confederate States of America.
The Civil War ended after the South surrendered, but defeat on the battlefield did not persuade many of the Confederates that they were wrong as a matter of constitutional interpretation. Legal historian Cynthia Nicoletti suggested that the idea of “trial by battle” was inherently problematic. To this day, people believe self-governance means that states should be able to secede if their values cease to align with the nation.
* * *
In 1900, approximately two million children were working in mines, fields, and factories across the United States, often doing hard labor and performing dangerous jobs. As people became aware of the conditions children worked under, activist groups formed to address the problem. In 1908, a group called the National Child Labor Committee hired a photographer to visit fields, factories, and mines to report on child labor. More people became aware of the problem and pressured Congress to do something about it.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce between the states, so in 1916 — under the power of the commerce clause — Congress passed a law known as the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, which sought to prevent child labor by banning the sale of any products that were produced by children under the age of fourteen, or by children between fourteen and sixteen who were forced to work more than eight hours per day.
The Supreme Court struck down the Keating-Owen Act as unconstitutional on the grounds that regulating how products were created was reserved by the Tenth Amendment to the states. Specifically, the Court said, “It was not intended as an authority to Congress to control the States in the exercise of their police power over local trade and manufacture, always existing and expressly reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment.”
The idea was that if states wanted to allow child labor, that was up to the states, and the federal government did not have the power to interfere. If people didn’t like it, they could refuse to buy products produced by child labor. Obviously, this was a poor solution. What would prevent the factories from exporting their goods to markets where people didn’t know the goods had been produced by child labor?
Some see the late 19th and early 20th century as a glorious time when industry and the economy boomed. There were almost no federal regulations. Business tycoons could do as they pleased. Tycoons — also called robber barons — grew wealthy. Income inequality widened. There was no minimum wage, no 40 hour workweek, no social security.
You might say that the business tycoons of the late 19th century lived in a state of nature without government. Did they follow natural law and behave rationally? Of course they didn’t. They cheated. Their wealth then gave them power. They monopolized huge industries through the formation of trusts, exploited workers, and engaged in unethical business practices. For example, a group of well-respected investors would agree to buy a lot of a particular company’s stock on a given day. Others would see what they did, assume the stock was valuable, and also buy it, pushing the price higher. When the price was artificially high, the speculators would sell their stock at a large profit. Soon the prices would fall again. The people who had been duped into buying when the price was artificially inflated would lose their money, and the people who duped them would grow wealthy.
Then in 1929 the market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that the solution to the nation’s financial woes, and the way to prevent future financial crises, was to regulate businesses and commerce to create fairness and protect investors. He ran for president in 1932 promising what he called a New Deal—a series of federal laws designed to get the United States out of the Depression, offer protections for workers, and regulate commerce to stop unfair business practices such as manipulating markets and fixing prices.
After Roosevelt was elected, he and Congress set to work to enact his New Deal.
During Roosevelt’s first several years in office, the Supreme Court repeatedly invalidated the New Deal legislation as unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment. Then, in 1938, the Court did an about face and stopped invalidating New Deal legislation. Congress tried again to outlaw child labor and, in 1938, passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established among other things a minimum working age of sixteen, except in certain industries outside of mining and manufacturing. In a case called United States v. Darby, the Supreme Court held that the new labor laws were constitutional under Congress’s power to regulate commerce between the states. The Supreme Court thus overturned its previous 1918 case that had declared federal child labor laws unconstitutional.
Historians and scholars have offered various reasons for the Supreme Court’s sudden change of mind. It appears that the Court saw that Roosevelt and the New Deal were exceedingly popular and that Roosevelt was looking for ways to get around the Court, so the Court finally gave in.
The New Deal legislation created numerous federal regulatory agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission, an independent federal agency designed to protect investors by regulating the sale of financial products such as stocks. Roosevelt signed into law the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which allowed the government to regulate utilities such as electricity and water to make sure those companies didn’t unfairly raise prices for people who depended on their services. Roosevelt’s 1935 Social Security Act offered a way for workers to pay into a pension so that they would have something to live on in their old age. The nation got a forty-hour workweek and worker protection laws.
Among the most far-reaching of Roosevelt’s programs was the G.I. Bill, formally known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. It gave soldiers returning from duty the right to a government-paid college education, allowing ten million soldiers over a twelve-year period to attend college, thus helping lower-income families break out of poverty.
The New Deal had its critics. Right-wing activist Elizabeth Dilling denounced the New Deal as a piece of communism. One of the most famous journalists of the era, H.L. Mencken likened Roosevelt actions to a dictatorship. The New Deal critics not only despised the expansion of the federal government, they saw the New Deal as redistributing wealth, which — as they saw the situation — meant taking wealth from the people who expended their labor and were “industrious” and gave it to people who were not. This is the “makers and the takers” argument. The makers, of course, are business owners. Takers are those who accept government assistance.
Indeed, if your view is that, in the natural state, people lived free and happy, and government regulations infringe on liberty (which they do) you will despise the New Deal. You will hate agencies such as the CDC or the FDA. You will resent vaccine mandates because they infringe on your “liberty.” (You won’t consider the liberty of others not to be infected in public places and schools, because Locke’s idea that “each person is free” and the purpose of government is to protect our personal liberty was appealing, but not well thought out. One person’s “freedom” will often infringe on another’s.)
Roosevelt’s New Deal dramatically increased the size and complexity of the federal government and marked the beginning of what has been called the federal administrative state—a vast network of federal departments and regulatory agencies that has grown steadily since Roosevelt’s time.
* * *
While Roosevelt’s legislation helped create America’s first true middle class, the new suburbs were mostly white because of racial segregation. Among other things, legalized segregation meant that Black Americans found it difficult to get loans from banks, making it impossible for them to buy houses. Some sellers simply refused to sell them homes. Some neighborhoods made it clear that Black people were unwelcome.
Then, in 1954, the Supreme Court sent shock waves through the American South when it declared racial segregation unconstitutional. There was massive resistance on the grounds that the federal government, in telling people how they must live, was overreaching its authority.
A decade later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law three key pieces of legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This legislation further enlarged the size and power of the federal government because they gave the federal government the task of ensuring that all Americans were offered the opportunity to participate in civil and public life. Racial discrimination continued, but it was now illegal, so people who were wronged could bring their cases to federal court.
Those opposed to these new laws argued that the federal government overstepped its authority under the Tenth Amendment. In fact, when the Supreme Court invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act decades later, it did so by finding that the required procedures violated the Tenth Amendment.
The Republican Party’s opposition to the New Deal solidified in the 1930s. During the decades since, the opposition to the New Deal has been steadily gaining power. And here we are. A president — backed by Congress — working to roll back the authority of regulatory agencies.
Most of this material is from Chapter 10 of my new book, Rebels, Robbers, and Radicals.
And now a moment of reflection on my latest book’s birthday: After so many books (and several decades of writing) I understand that writing books is my way to leave my footprint on the earth. My contribution: Books that go to schools and libraries.
(Not that I am going anywhere. I intend to live forever. But occasionally I suppose we all think about mortality.)
Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, has spoken up on behalf of migrant workers — a stand that attracted social media taunts and a call for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at her farms from a far-right political opponent.
A Report for America corps member, Daniel Walters covers democracy and extremism across the region. He can be reached at daniel@investigatewest.org
Mar 26, 2025
President Donald Trump’s second term was only in its second day when Ryan Spoon — vice chair of the local Republican Party apparatus in Idaho’s Ada County — turned the force of the federal government against a political enemy.
“Could you please send some illegal immigration raids to the businesses owned by Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson?” he wrote in an X post, misspelling Mickelsen’s last name and tagging Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. “She has been bragging about how many illegals her businesses employ.”
As his social media posts about contacting ICE began to rack up more than 2,000 shares, Spoon stressed that simply sharing on social media wasn’t enough. He was officially reporting Mickelsen’s farming businesses to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line and website.
“You can report her, too!” he wrote in a post festooned with flexing muscle and American flag emojis.
Three days later, Mickelsen said, ICE agents appeared at Mickelsen Farms, where a slew of varieties of commercial and seed potatoes grow across thousands of acres in southeastern Idaho.
“They just showed up out of the blue Friday morning,” said Mickelsen, a moderate Republican legislator and the former director for the Idaho Farm Bureau, a lobbying group for the agriculture industry.
By Jan. 27, just one week into the second Trump administration, a Mickelsen Farms employee had been arrested by ICE. Records reviewed by InvestigateWest show that a Mexican immigrant who listed his employer as Mickelsen Farms on his Facebook page was being held at a Nevada Southern Detention Center in Las Vegas.
As the Trump administration attempts to carry out its campaign promise of mass deportations, it’s promoted the official ICE tip line as a vital part of its strategy. The phone tip line was so overwhelmed the day after Trump’s inauguration, Spoon wrote on X, that he hung up and submitted a tip on the ICE website instead.
Some on the right have wielded threats of ICE reports as kind of a gloating taunt — a way of rubbing Trump’s election in the faces of undocumented immigrants and anyone who supports them. A postcard sent to a Californian immigration non-profit, for example, touted the ICE tip line with the words “Have your bags packed — Trump’s coming” written on the return address line.
On X, Ada County Republican Central Committee Vice Chair Ryan Spoon has taken a scorched earth approach to those he sees as defending illegal immigration — including reporting at least one Republican state legislator to ICE.
Daniel Walters/InvestigateWest
But Spoon targeting a Republican state legislator by calling up ICE is particularly noteworthy – and all the more so because ICE responded within days.
“It’s so ripe for abuse,” Chris Thomas, a Colorado-based attorney with 28 years of experience practicing immigration law, said about the use of the federal tip line. “We’ve got the government under enormous pressure to respond to every tip they receive. … It’s just very clear that at all levels, this is a full assault on undocumented people in the country.”
Spoon, who moved to Boise from San Francisco in 2019 to work remotely as a loss prevention specialist, and Mickelsen, a state legislator who is one of the biggest potato producers in southeast Idaho, are on opposite ends of the state’s Republican Party. And immigration is a particularly incendiary flashpoint: Mickelsen argues migrants are an essential part of the agricultural economy, while Spoon portrays both undocumented immigrants and legal refugees as a sinister foreign invasion force.
Mickelsen had beaten back attempts by the hard right to defeat her in a primary — and even strip her of the Republican label. But Spoon’s tactics represented a new avenue of attack. For farm owners, it raises the possibility that speaking out — or running for office or backing the wrong bill — could trigger a political enemy to try to call down an ICE raid.
Mickelsen knows who the employee is, that he’s a father of three and that his criminal record was what got him deported. But even now, she said, she doesn’t exactly know the exact nature of the man’s immigration status during the time he worked for her family business. Employers of migrants can face legal risks if they inquire too aggressively into the immigration statuses of their employees.
Immigration is a complicated topic, Mickelsen wrote in a statement to InvestigateWest, but using the issue to “bully individuals and businesses trying to navigate complicated and often competing employee documentation laws is a disgusting and reprehensible way to act and should not be tolerated by anyone.”
She’s unsettled. She removed the names of her businesses from her campaign site, believing it would be unfair to subject her family to the same level of nastiness that politicians have come to expect.
“I’m being way more cautious in the bills that I’m standing up against, because I’m afraid of being targeted,” Mickelsen said. “Which makes me a less effective legislator for my community right now.”
Deportation glee
In early January, Homan, Trump’s pick for border czar, floated the immigration tip line as a “fresh idea.”
“I want a place where American citizens can call and report,” he told NBC News. “We need to take care of the American people.”
ICE, to be clear, has had a tip line for over two decades.
“The difference is, in many ways, the tip line in the past was a black hole,” Thomas said. “People would make tips and usually nothing would ever come of it.”
Thomas said immigration tips are always prone to be taken advantage by those with scores to settle — abused by bitter exes and business rivals. In the past, he’s defended at least three companies — a janitorial service, an agricultural company and a bakery — who were reported to ICE by competitors. But after Trump’s second inauguration, he said, the entire framework of the federal government was refocused on immigration-related offensives.
Ryan Spoon, vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, called for federal immigration raids at Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen’s farms in a series of posts on X just days after President Trump was inaugurated.
Ada County Republican Central Committee
“They have to arrest certain numbers of undocumented people each week,” Thomas said. “They need to serve employers each week with notices of inspection. … They’re even under pressure to conduct raids.”
Effectively, Thomas said, ICE was being forced to rely on the tip line and the online tip website to fill its quotas. ICE tips had been transformed from mostly inert to a live weapon.
While overall deportations have fallen due to fewer border crossings, Reuters reported, ICE arrests surged during the first week of Trump’s administration. In the weeks since, the agency indicated there’s been so much ICE activity that it’s too busy to provide many specifics about ICE activity.
Asked about Mickelsen, an ICE spokesperson said that because of their “operational tempo” and increased interest in their agency, they were not able to respond to queries about rumors or routine operations.
The news of actual ICE raids, along with the string of false reports and hoaxes, have made migrant farmworkers afraid. No matter their immigration status, many don’t want to come to work, much less attend protests or share their stories publicly.
“Nobody’s wanting to raise their head and speak up,” said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming, a group representing farmers in neighboring Washington state. “Regardless of whether they’re here legally or not, they’re afraid they’re going to get a target on their back and ICE is going to come knocking on their door.”
Freddy Cruz, who tracks extremists with the Western States Center, said he’s seen a surge of white nationalist groups like the White Lives Matter Montana chapter encouraging people to report unauthorized immigrants to ICE.
“The ICE information tip line has come up more and more as a tactic,” Cruz said. “Almost like weaponizing a government agency to try to intimidate not just undocumented immigrants, but also organizations that might be providing immigrant-rights services to folks.”
Along with the Californiannonprofit, three offices of the United Farm Workers union were anonymously sent postcards featuring the phrases “Report Illegal Aliens” and “There is nowhere to hide,” along with the ICE tip line.
At ArizonaStateUniversity, the College Republicans United club teamed up with a Hitler-saluting neo-Nazi to sell club T-shirts with the phrase “ICE Volunteer” and began urging students to report “their criminal classmates to ICE for deportation.”
But Spoon represents a more influential and mainstream example of this trend. Last year, Spoon was the chairman of the Idaho Freedom PAC, the political action committee linked to the political machine of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a historically influential think tank that purports to separate true conservatives from “Republicans in Name Only” — or “RINOS.”
When Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bill to expand the temporary farmworker visa program and give migrants a path to permanent legal status, he was accused by Ryan Spoon, the vice chair of the Ada County Republican Central Committee, of commiting “a literal act of treason.”
simpson.house.gov
In the last two decades, more radical Republicans like Spoon immigrated to Idaho from left-leaning states like California, flooding the local Republican parties. Many of them cared less about the bottom line of Idaho’s big businesses than culture wars and conservative purity — and immigration was a topic they were willing to drench with invective.
On X, Spoon accused those who argue that migrant workers are necessary for the region’s agriculture of being willing to pay anything “for cheaper blueberries” — “their daughters raped by illegals, their young people unemployed, foreign slaves exploited, drugs & crime flooding their communities.”
When Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bipartisan bill to expand the temporary farmworker visa program and give migrants a path to permanent legal status, Spoon accused Simpson of a “literal act of treason against the U.S., facilitating a foreign invasion.” Spoon argues he’s not anti-immigrant — his wife is a legal immigrant from Germany — just anti illegal-immigration.
“Americans across a broad spectrum of politics are really fed up with the illegal immigration issue,” he said. “The tone has definitely changed there, and people’s willingness to confront that issue has changed.”
The reactions he’s received for calling ICE on Mickelsen’s businesses, Spoon claimed, have been “overwhelmingly positive.”
But Mickelsen said she’s heard from a lot of legislators who were “completely disgusted” by his tactics.
“It’s probably very disturbing for them to see this kind of treatment of a fellow legislator,” Mickelsen said.
‘Now we’re playing offense’
Spoon has repeatedly accused Mickelsen of being a “Plantation Mistress,” taunting her that “we’re gonna take your farm slaves away from you.”
But he told InvestigateWest that it’s a “mischaracterization” to accuse him of going after Mickelsen. She’s the one to blame for the reports, he argued.
“Her own testimony drew attention to herself,” he said.
Mickelsen Farms operates potato farms and other agricultural businesses in southeastern Idaho.
Mickelsen Farms
Last March, during the debate about Idaho House Bill 753, intended to give local law enforcement and judges the ability to enforce immigration laws, Mickelsenbristledat what she felt was the denigration of the foreign-born workforce by her fellow legislators.
Pointing to the production chain involving everyone from construction companies to the hospitality industry, and “every food processor, probably, in the state,” Mickelsen declared that “if you think that you haven’t been touched by an illegal immigrant’s hands in some way … you are kidding yourself.”
To Spoon, it was practically a signed confession.
“While it is not reasonable to think that she is able to speak for every food processor, it is reasonable to think that she can speak for the food processor that she owns,” Spoon said.
To Mickelsen, she wasn’t saying anything that hasn’t been widely discussed: There likely are many unauthorized immigrants working for Idaho businesses. The Center for Migration Studies, a New York-based think tank focused on immigration issues, estimated that in 2021 there were roughly 10,000 unauthorized immigrants working in Idaho agriculture alone.
Mickelsen told InvestigateWest that their farming operation relies on the legal temporary seasonal guest worker program to hire migrant laborers — a program that has grown by nearly two-thirds since 2016.
“It would be wonderful if you could hire a domestic workforce. But the problem is, people don’t like to do farming jobs,” Mickelsen said.
Her son, Andrew, Mickelsen Farms’ chief operations manager, said in a statement that “we would never knowingly employ an undocumented worker” and that “our business cooperates with all authorities and supports our government’s efforts to secure the border and keep Americans safe.”
“We follow all applicable federal and state laws to stay in compliance,” Rep. Mickelsen said. “We want to be good neighbors.”
Farm owners like Mickelsen are caught in a pincer between two federal agencies, said Thomas, the immigration attorney: Either accept documents at face value — some of which may be fakes from unauthorized immigrants — and risk punishment by Homeland Security, or question documents too closely and risk being sued by the “wildly aggressive” Immigrant and Employee Rights division of the Department of Justice.
Ultimately, Mickelsen voted for HB 753. But that did little to appease her critics.
“Should we post RINO Stephanie Mickelsen’s (District 32) pro-illegal alien video every week until she is voted out of office?” asked the Stop Idaho Rino’s X account.
After Spoon bragged on X about reporting Mickelsen to ICE, one conservative Idaho commenter mockingly envisioned ICE listening to the “passion-filled speech she said on the House floor.”
“Bet once she talks they drop their badges and quit on the spot,” he snarked.
Spoon replied with wink and grin emojis.
Mickelsen is not the only legislator Spoon has gone after.
In September, Spoon targeted Rep. Jack Nelsen for the family dairy he’d worked on for decades, claiming on X that “Plantation slaves at the NelsenDairy in Jerome, ID are ILLEGAL immigrants.” (Nelsen no longer personally has a stake in the business.)
Spoon said he’s reported only Mickelsen’s businesses to ICE “so far,” but pressed about whether he planned to report others, would only say “I’m going to hold onto that for now.”
At what cost?
For Mickelsen, Spoon’s actions spurred restless nights.
“I laid in bed at night for two nights in a row, and I said to myself, ‘Am I willing to jump on this same bandwagon in the name of political theater, and not say anything? Not say ‘wait a minute, this is wrong?’” Mickelsen said. “Or am I just going to be silent?”
In her interviews with InvestigateWest, Mickelsen sounded energetically defiant at moments — floating the possibility of taking legal action.
Just a few days after being publicly reported to ICE, Mickelsen took another risky political stand on immigration: opposing a bill to require businesses to use E-Verify, a federal website intending to verify whether workers are legal. Mickelsen says that the program is plagued by inaccuracy, inconsistency and delays.
But at other moments, her frustration and exhaustion shone through.
“You have to say to yourself, as this rancor gets worse, at what point is it worth it for me to serve in the Legislature?” Mickelsen said. “If my family and everybody around me is at risk?”
On social media, Spoon has often relished the idea of making Idaho so miserable for “leftists” that they leave the state entirely.
That strategy sounds familiar to Mike Colson, chair of the GOP Central Committee in southeastern Idaho’s Bonneville County. Mickelsen helped Colson lead a wave of moderates last year to take back their local Republican party from hardliners with a similar approach to Spoon.
“That’s part of their playbook for these legislators, to make it so miserable and so uncomfortable for them that hopefully they won’t run again next time,” Colson said. “That’s what they’re hoping for. That’s what they want. They want us to quit.”
Mickelsen’s concern goes beyond any risk to her family’s business — it’s the worry that someone reading the vitriol online could do something drastic. She’s been reading a lot about white nationalists lately.
“I have to actually think about my physical safety in a way that I probably haven’t the entire time I’ve been in the Legislature,” Mickelsen said.
She said she was advised to carry a gun — she has a concealed carry permit. But she worried that if the gun was wrested away from her by a larger attacker, it could ultimately put her at more risk.
Today, Colson suspects Spoon’s ICE reports were part of “a coordinated attempt to send a chilling message to a number of persons that may not see eye-to-eye with some of their political allies,” he said.
But the immigrant ICE arrested from Mickelsen Farms was vulnerable for another reason as well. The Trump administration had been touting its focus on arresting “criminal aliens,” unauthorized immigrants with criminal records.
In November 2022, the Mickelsen Farms employee, Sajid Soto, had previously been charged with battery and drug possession. According to the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Department, he admitted to choking his wife during an argument and then, while being booked in the local jail, officers found a tiny amount of methamphetamine in his wallet.
Even a migrant with permanent resident status can lose that status as a consequence of a domestic violence conviction, Thomas said.
Soto had served his jail time, the restraining order had been lifted, and his felony possession conviction — which can cause a temporary agricultural visa to be revoked — had been dismissed after the farmworker completed probation.
“Now you have three children that are American citizens who are entitled to social benefits because their dad was supporting them and will not be any longer,” Mickelsen said.
“Works at Mickelsen Farms,” remains on the dad’s Facebook page. Scroll down, and his cover photo from six years ago, taken through the rain-flecked windshield of his truck, shows a long row of green-and-gold John Deere tractors and combines lined up on a stretch of farm soil.
“Listos para sacar papas,” he wrote.
Ready to pull out potatoes.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the family relationship of Andrew and Stephanie Mickelsen.
A Mississippi Gulf Coast restaurant came under fire after posting a video offering a free food deal to straight people only. The LGBTQ community is boycotting the business, and the owners’ stances on the matter have been erratic, swinging from backing the decision to apologizing before once again justifying their actions. Now, they’re defending the move.
On Tuesday, March 25, Darwell Yeager III and Nettie Mechelle Yeager shared a free food deal at Darwell’s Happiness Cafe in Long Beach.
Both spelled out that trans, lesbian and gay couples could not get the deal. Only heterosexual couples, regardless of how long they’d been together. In the following days, the owners have invoked President Donald Trump’s goal to “end to all this wokeness” and briefly shared a MAGA discount before deleting it.
A Mississippi eatery that appeared on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and, Dives” is facing backlash after its owners posted a video offering “something free” to only straight couples that stopped by to eat at the Cajun joint on Tuesday.
“If you come in and you’re a couple … husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, guy, girl couple, the real kind of couple,” Darwell Yeager said before his spouse cut in and said, “Because we don’t do the trans or the lesbian or gays, I’m sorry.”
“When you come in for the next hour and a half and you are a couple, can-produce-a-child couple, we’ll give you something free,” Darwell Yeager concluded in the since-deleted video that has spread online.
There’s a lot more at the first link, including multiple quotes from the couple’s now-deleted Facebook posts. The screenshot above is from a local station’s regular feature, “In The Kitchen With Darwell’s Happiness Cafe.” You should watch the video below.
MS restaurant owner defends anti-LGBTQ video offering free food after deleting apology https://t.co/m45OgjNHXF
The above is the tRump admin trying to get other countries with higher standards in their food to send us their eggs to protect tRump from the soaring prices.
This scares me because the fundamentalist and white cis straight male supremacists will demand it be used here. First on trans people to protect the children then expand it to the entire LGBTQ+ as they have been doing everything else they tried to use against trans kids / people.
Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites
Yes I know that these were restored. But now tRump is demanding Vance who is on the board of the Smithson and the National Zoo to remove all illegal (purge) references to race, gender, the LGBTQ+ and so much more. He is demanding a national landmark the US government doesn’t control to toe the fundamentalist straight cis white supremacy Christians agenda to deny anything but them into history or society. We really are seeing a complete take over of society and we must do all we can to prevent the rollback of all rights and equality of anyone not white straight cis Christian males. This is horrifyingly scary. Because these hate groups have learned if they can control information, control education, control what is considered good or bad by their standards they can force the youngest people in the country to voice that belief and grow up to enforce it. It is what theocratic Islamic nations do. Are we now a nation taken over by theocratic Christian fundamentalist demanding a change in even the constitution to force everyone to follow their god and their rules? Please kill me first.
Every accredited organization except those directly driven by fundamentalist religiously motivated agree this is simply torture. The religious just simply refuse to believe sexual orientation is not a choice and no one wants to be like that no matter what has to be done to change it. Including electroshock therapy to the genitals. Think of yourself, gay straight, or any other orientation. If you are cis and straight, how much conversion therapy would it take to make you believe you were gay / lesbian and desire that. How could who you are attracted to be changed. That all comes from the idea that it is a mental illness and a sickness that needs to be cured. Which the majority of medical organizations reject, agreeing it is an inborn part of a fetus development. Plus if you could change a sexual orientation … look at my childhood. I was forced to please sexually both males and females. But the only rapes that totally crashed me in the military was the one by a woman with more rank than me who demanded I have sex with her … four times. The last time I was so upset and humiliated that I ran nude up the stairs of the housing unit for higher enlisted and pounded on my soon to be E-7’s door. I was sobbing incoherently. I have been raped all my life and was able to stand that. Why did what this woman force me to do reduced me to that state? Because it was against my very nature of who I was. I was having same sex relations with another young guy and loving it. What she was forcing me to do was against everything I felt inside. That is what the people of these gay conversions want to do.
Some of them think that being gay is a choice because … well when did they decide instead of men they would like to have sex with women? No they just felt it, but what gay / lesbian people feel is not valid and must be forced to change. The rest of this group feels their interpretations of their view of what their god wants must be enforced on everyone even those that don’t follow their god. Because it is their god and he must be pleased because their god hates what they hate. Even if it is not in the bible or they misunderstood it, their hate preacher told them it was so. They can not let others live their lives, everyone must live by their church dictates. Why??? Because only that way their god will love them? I am an atheist that is willing to let religious people believe as they wish as long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others. You do you … but why can’t they do the same. They insist that no one can be different from them and their beliefs. That is scary just that they think like that and more that they are now running the US government.
PS. When James was a newly teen of 13 his parents went to the Florida Keys with a group of us. They always stayed apart even though they asked to be part of the caravan of RV going. Well I caused an issue. His … maybe abusive parents had lots of tattoos and were highly Catholic religious … even had a statue of the mother Mary in the entrance of their home. Yes the husband ruled the house and told the wife what she would do at all times. Which included the abuse of the child which is where we came in. In a year or so after this even the boy started staying at our home because he was not allowed home until the mother was there. I had seen a young kid come in with a Mohawk. The boy had his hair shaved on both sides of his head and long in the front and back. We had already talked to their son at our table because the parents they were trying to force the boy to get Christian tattoos.
When I spoke up and said there is …. next hair cut … it will look grand on him. His stepdad exploded and said he wouldn’t ever allow the boy in the house with that and he would hold him down and shave all his hair off. As anyone can imagine I got triggered, I had been held down and had my hair cut. I flew up from the table as Ron was grabbing at me and yelled you want him to have tattoos which is against the bible but a simple haircut which can be changed or grow back and has no mentioned in the bible upsets you so much you’re threatening the kid. I loudly said, “What the fuck is wrong with you”! They took the boy from our table and left his meal uneaten. I was furious. Others who did not know of my childhood tried to calm me down. The family of the boy left that day from our group at the campground. Next time the boy came to our home his hair was cut short and the parents never went on another trip with us. Hugs
Again an attempt to turn the country into a while male cis straight only nation. How much clearer can it be. And all these republicans or most of them are fundamentalist Christians who were funded by their church in a steal run to get elected. This not what the publican wants. But these republican fundamentalist groups understand … politicians can force change in public opinion if they support something loud and forcefully enough. Which is one why Kamala Harris l think lost the election, the democrats refused to respond to the attacks on trans people fearing it would hurt them. That is how you bring people along to a new understanding. The republicans are doing it in reverse of what the progressive movement did with government support in the early 2000s. Now that democrats have retreated only the hard right republicans are getting their voices heard returning the countries view to pre-rights for LGBTQ+ people. Hugs
What a day. I have been training my self to get up at 5 am. My body and bowels now wake me at anytime between 4:15 am to 4:30 am. Ok I can live with the waking up, but not with how the bowels like to do it. Warning for poop talk ahead. See since my primary care doctor figured out why I was having diarrhea and worked with my other doctors to change my medications, my poop went from diarrhea to being rocks that could be used as paving blocks. When they move through the lower system they let themselves be known.
Ron had been letting himself sleep in later and later until he got to after 9 am before he would wake up. I told him we couldn’t have that. So I asked him to pick a reasonable time to get up, he picked 6:30 am. But after a few weeks of that and coming to bed earlier, he now wakes up when I get up to start my day. He also now gets up with me. Sometimes he goes back to bed after he has his three cups of coffee and sometimes not. Today he stayed up and went out shopping for a bit of stuff at a bit past 9 am. But … big but.
Our getting things taken care of around here has been a bit haphazard. Sundays are a news day for me. This morning Ron wanted me to make a scrambled eggs and ham breakfast as he likes the way I do eggs the best. I normally add to the meal either fried the potatoes we did not eat from the night before or shredded hash browns along with a few sausages, separate from the eggs but as sides. But today we did not have anything but 6 bread slices, eggs, and the thick ham slices from what we sliced yesterday. So why does Ron want me to cook the eggs. Two reasons, eggs can turn very quickly when cooking no matter how you are cooking them other than boiling them. Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, it doesn’t matter. Ron is incapable of paying the eggs that much attention so they come out bad for him. So how do I make my scrambled eggs different.
First I have a system for breaking the eggshell that makes sure no shell bits get into the eggs. You have to do it when the eggs are very cold. Then take the sharp side of a knife and carefully hit the lower side of the egg at about midline. That causes the egg to makes its own clean break. Next in the bowl add water. Here is the normal thing. Milk adds something I forget since I don’t use it, water adds fluffy. So most cooking shows say add a teaspoon or such … screw that. I add about a huge dash. I never measure it, like I never measure anything I add to stuff I cook (except bread. That needs to be exact to make sure the bread forms correctly), I put the bowl under the faucet and give it a “shot” or today I put the water into a cup measuring cup and between the two bowls I added about a 1/4 cup of water.
Why don’t I worry about the amount of water? Because after stirring it up in the bowls, I put the sauce pot on the stove with a large tab of real butter. Ron used to ask why a sauce pot as he uses a flat pan. Because the smaller pot can let me get the temperature up to a point there the water comes out on top and boils off and lets you fold and refold the eggs until the moisture boils away, then you can fold / chop the scrambled eggs up into ever smaller bits of good dry but not desiccated plate of scrambled eggs. They still have enough moisture to let you mix ketchup or hot sauce into them.
Thinking I was done, I started making posts. But Ron had to go out and get stuff. Crap. But that was where all the other stuff of the last few days came to bite me in the butt. On Sunday I don’t do much but watch news, and I guess on Saturday we had not done dishes, so we had two and a half days of dishes this morning … to be washed. Ron wanted me to do that before he got home. Damn it … OK Ron I will. It took me until well after noon to wash / dry the dishes. Again I thought I had blogging time. But no.
I had barely sat down when Ron came home with the groceries. Actually there were few groceries but He had spent most of that three or four hours he had been gone in Home Depot getting parts for the plumbing project he needed. Ok now I could return to blogging right … Nope. Ron decided that it was time to have the roast he put in the crock pot this morning at about 6 AM. OK, help Ron make supper. Yes we eat early. About between 2 and 3 PM. Why because after 4 pm I can’t eat, or have no interest to eat. Help him with the corn, and potatoes which we decided to bake. 45 minutes later was lunch. The meal was great.
Then came clean up and putting away the food. It is now well after 3 pm, nearly 4 pm. So Ron decided he needed a nap. Would I like to nap with him? Yes of course. We never even got to the cuddle part as he went out right a way after putting on his C-Pap mask. I laid there trying to rest. At 5 pm my phone alarm for me to take my evening pills and set up my morning ones went off. Ron decided he had to get up as he was too sore to cuddle, I got up and made my pills. Now at 5:30 pm I am in my office finishing this post up. This is why it is hard for me to post and much harder to make a video. I did a load of laundry and still have one in the dryer that Ron forgot. I don’t have the energy to fold them or putting them away today. I am done. Just now one of our cats demanded wet food. I have not even managed a shower today, how can I find time to set up everything in my system, record, and then edit a video. Sadly most days I would go with Ron when he goes out shopping, today he fooled me which is why I kept texting him asking if he was OK. He had a small list of 10 items, and yet was gone over three hours. If he had told me he was going to go prowl Home Depot I would have insisted on going along. Not that he doesn’t know what he wants but he gets confused over if he got enough part a or enough part b, and maybe instead he needs part d or f and so he ends up getting far more parts than he needs. Then he says it is OK because they come in handy … some time. When I am with him he can bounce it off me and I can say well you got 5 of this and 6 of that, what is the goal.
Anyway I am going to proofread this. I want to stress that I do not regret spending my time doing housework or helping Ron. I do regret not getting to much of what I want to do with the blog. But I am reassured that even if I do not post some day or days, Ali and Randy will. Sadly that day may be coming sooner than I would like. I always figured that it would be my health that made it hard for me to keep up with the blog, now it is both my health and Ron’s. I have to tell you all, some days I only want to turn my 55-inch 4K TV to viewing position and just watch movies. But I can’t retreat like that. I hope you won’t either. Hugs.
Hi everyone. I am very tired but I wanted to do this post before I crash out and go back to doing other things. Ron and I just got done working together to slice three hams. Small boneless ones. We wait until they go on sale and get a couple. Turns out we had one in the freezer waiting for this. So a good sale came up on small boneless hams and Ron pounced like a lioness after an elk. We once got lucky, a large shoulder ham was at a really low price and had a small bone. That is important. The bone has to be small, if you get one of those that works great. You can have a ham dinner then carve the largest chunks off the bone. Those you slice on the meat slicer and the bone part you boil for soup. (insert Bernie Sanders yelling “Suooop”)! here.
So rather than describe it I will simply but the pictures below. But before I do that you might wonder why I have a meat slicer. Well for about 15 years I made bread for us and our friends. I love the taste of fresh baked bread and I had three great machines to do it. I made a two pound loaf every three days. I tried several ways to cut the bread loaves into slices. The meat slicer has a variable speed and worked great for cutting the bread into even regular slices. I used my machines so much I burned out three Breadman upright loaf machines. I liked that kind because the paddle was in only the one end of the bread loaf and so you did not lose much bread slices. I have never found another like it. I bought two, one was 200 dollars with a squat fat pan that gives an unusable loaf. If anyone has or knows of a good machine Ron keeps asking me to go back to making bread again. Ok below are the pictures. Loves, best wishes, and hugs to all.
A difficult anniversary—and a moment to remember Ukraine by José Andrés
Supporting recovery efforts with the Longer Tables Fund Read on Substack
Today is a day that I’m thinking about the people of Ukraine. It’s been a special place to me over the last few years, where I’ve spent over 100 days on the ground, as the team from World Central Kitchen has worked to keep communities fed since the Russian invasion in 2022.
This week marks three years since the invasion…and the beginning of our work there, so I hope we can all take a moment to remember.
Over these three years, we’ve learned so much about resilience, about innovation, about community—the Ukrainian people have been an incredible example to the world for how to live bravely in the shadow of war, in constant fear of losing their homes, their farms, their lives.
Yuliya and me
I’m proud of the part that WCK has played in the country, with leaders like Yuliya Stefanyuk, our Ukrainian Response Director. Yuliya has been with WCK from the beginning, first working to coordinate meal production in Lviv, then expanding operations across the country. She’s played a critical role to establish our food distribution networks, secure partnerships, and to make sure that meals are reaching people in need, even in the hardest-hit areas.
And I’m also proud to share that through the Longer Tables Fund, I am continuing to support some amazing organizations and people in Ukraine, to keep recovery efforts moving forward.
You might not have heard me talking about the Longer Tables Fund yet, but it’s one of the things I’m most excited about these days. (No relation to our Longer Tables newsletter here, though it’s a good name, right?) I launched it in 2022—powered by the Bezos Courage and Civility Award that I was honored to receive in 2021—to support people and organizations who believe, like I do, that food has the potential to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems.
Its goal is to make change in three areas: local food systems, where we are aiming to transform the way humanity is producing, accessing, and consuming food; education, where we are hoping to inspire the next generation of food leaders; and (re)building communities, where we are using the power of food to help people build resilience after times of crisis.
In Ukraine, we’re supporting a few amazing organizations doing incredible work to help the nation and its people respond, recover, and rebuild. I want to tell you a little about them—and I hope you’re inspired too.
A dairy farm supported by SaveUA. Photo from saveua.in.ua.
SaveUA
I’m really excited to announce that the Longer Tables Fund is now supporting the work of SaveUA. Representing thousands of Ukrainian farmers, SaveUA is an organization made to help the country’s agricultural system build resilience to the shocks of war. Ukraine historically has been one of the most important breadbaskets in the region, growing grain for Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s energy grid is in crisis due to the ongoing war, leaving many communities without reliable access to power.
We’re helping SaveUA purchase generators for dairy farmers on the front lines. These generators are more than just a source of electricity…they’re a lifeline. They will power milking equipment and refrigeration systems, ensuring that farmers can continue their work, sustain their communities, and feed their people even in the face of unimaginable challenges. This isn’t just about keeping the lights on—it’s about standing with the people of Ukraine as they seek to protect their land, their livelihoods, and their food supply.
A photo from the Superhumans rehabilitation center
Superhumans
The next organization is doing some incredible work for the people of Ukraine who have been physically injured by the war. Over the last three years, thousands of Ukrainians have lost limbs due to mines and shelling, and with mines buried across a huge amount of the country, there will be many, many more people who will require prosthetics and medical support in the years to come.
Superhumansis a rehabilitation center that provides prosthetics, reconstructive surgery, rehabilitation, and psychological support—free of charge. The Longer Tables Fund has supported medical staff at Superhumans by helping invest in advanced surgical and 3D laboratory equipment, which will let the Superhumans team expand their services to include complex facial reconstruction procedures.
I love this project because prosthetics and reconstructive surgery lets people transform trauma into resilience, empowering a new generation of survivors—truly making them superhuman.
Children rescued by Save Ukraine
Save Ukraine
The third organization that the Longer Tables Fund is supporting is called Save Ukraine, an NGO focused on rescuing Ukrainian children that were deported to Russia at the beginning of the war and over the last three years. It’s important work that offers a lifeline to families affected by these deportations, which horribly tear into the heart of communities around the country.
Save Ukraine’s three-pronged approach—to rescue, to restore, and to rebuild—ensures that every child regains the safety, stability, and care needed to thrive.
We are supporting their Community Center and Bomb Shelter in Irpin, one of the cities that I visited in 2022 after it was liberated from Russian occupation. The center will provide comprehensive services for children with disabilities and their families and give them tools to rebuild their lives.
My friends—I think you will agree with me that this work is super important to the rebuilding of a strong Ukraine. I’m proud to support it in the small way we can, especially as we pass such a difficult moment of commemorating three years of war. Since the beginning, World Central Kitchen has been on the front lines, making sure communities are fed. Now, the Longer Tables Fund is the newest step in continuing to build longer tables – creating a community where no one is left behind, where survivors are empowered, and where resilience is born from the hardest of circumstances. With these new projects, I know that the people of Ukraine will continue to be supported today, tomorrow, and for years to come.
Take care of yourselves this week, and please keep Ukraine in your thoughts.
Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, has spoken up on behalf of migrant workers — a stand that attracted social media taunts and a call for Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at her farms from a far-right political opponent.
Scottie's Playtime 