Trump’s win convinced local conservatives they too have a mandate to rid Columbus of immigrants, but their tactics amount to nothing more than spreading lies, and hopefully that’s all they do. But the anxiety-inducing damage inflicted by these rumors is ongoing.

ICE agents are increasingly witnessed in Columbus making arrests of non-criminals, this is fact. Putting them in ICE-contracted county jails for overstaying their visa, for instance, which according to the Ohio Immigrant Alliance is a civil violation, not criminal. Thus, holding on to your job to achieve the American dream could get you sent to the hellhole that is Buter County jail which is run by Trump glory-hole lover Sherrif Richard K. Jones.

For weeks, Congress has been wrapped up in passing President Trump’s big, brutal budget — the one that pays for tax cuts for the wealthy and a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget by taking food stamps and Medicaid away from people struggling to get by.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives just barely passed this bill — it squeaked through by a single vote. Now the Senate is considering it.

Alongside trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, the bill also gives big handouts to the Pentagon and the president’s plans to separate immigrant families. It would result in the country’s first-ever trillion-dollar Pentagon budget — and triple annual spending on the mass detention of immigrants.

The current administration is not a supporter of “clean energy” alternatives

Brad Plumer and Harry Stevens report on the Trump/Republican aim to end the “clean energy boom” that occurred during the Biden administration (https://nytimes.com/2025/05/13/climate/ira-republican-tax-bill-clean-energy.html). 

“The party’s signature tax plan would kill most Biden-era incentives,” they write. Overlooked by the Republicans, “G.O.P. districts have the most to lose.” They refer to “wind farms in Wyoming, to a “huge solar factory expansion in Georgia. Lithium mines in Nevada. Vacuums that suck carbon from the air in Louisiana.” 

Shouts and cheers, honking horns, people banging on drums. Oshkosh! No kings – at least not today. I’m with my si  ster and great nephew, attending the nearest national rally, about twenty miles south of their home in Appleton, Wisconsin. I’m up here with them because I’m getting cataract surgery (left eye tomorrow), but what the heck, Saturday is open. Let’s go to the No Kings rally.
   One of multi-thousands of rallies across the country. Oh, yes!
   More than a thousand people are crowded in the park in the center of town. Most of them are holding signs. The collective vibration is enormous. Honk! Honk! Save the country! But as we walk among them, as the cheers and claps reverberate, I can’t stop feeling small and cynical – by myself, a spectator among the participants. Does creating change amount to nothing more than joining the cheers?