Public Comment

Here is a quote I will probably keep coming back to in these uncertain times, “Once you sow ethnic hatred in this country you harvest a willingness among your supporters to be done with democratic principles, the rule of law.” Rich Benjamin, 2/15/2025 

On February 5, 2025 Trump signed to much fanfare “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/ 

This latest Executive Order (EO) builds on his forty-first EO from January 20, 2025, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/ 

Since I don’t watch football (stopped with learning of CTE – Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), I missed all the pre-election transgender attack ads, but I did find online estimates that over $94 million was spent on anti-trans ads and be afraid of the invasion of transgender men to women invading women’s sports and transgender persons threatening the safety of women and girls. 

To the Trump supporters these Executive Orders are promises made, promises kept.  

In one of the podcasts that played while I was preparing to leave for the protest at the Sacramento Capital on February 5, there was a statement from a physician, the binary definition of sex as a man and a woman / male and female was politics not science. I was reminded of Ash Zemenick’s article “Biological sex, no matter definition is not binary” on the front page of Insight in the June 4, 2023 San Francisco Chronicle. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/male-female-binary-sex-18087147.php 

Authoritarians need othering. In the list of twelve actions Orban took to transform Hungary from an open democracy to a largely authoritarian system, number twelve was, “Relentlessly attack the Other: immigrants, Muslims, liberal elites”. I found the list in After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made by Ben Rhodes and referenced it in my November 20, 2021, March 14, 2024 and February 1, 2025 Activist’s Diaries. 

There is nothing truly new in the list of Orban’s twelve actions. Authoritarians use the same playbook in their takeovers, find an Other to sow fear and attack, harken to a mythical past, enrich corrupt oligarchs to fund your politics, take control of the media, create a vast propaganda machine, and erode the independence of the rule of law. 

It is the erosion of the rule of law that is unfolding before our eyes. The other steps are well in motion. 

On February 15, 2025 on X DonaldTrump@realDonaldTrump posted “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”. 

I’m learning to go to Presidential Actions first and then follow that excursion with searches in Google, Safari and DuckDuckGo to find information on the potential impacts. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/ 

Trump’s February 18, 2025 EO ENSURING ACCOUTABILITY FOR ALL AGENCIES amends the Clinton Administration EO 12866 to include the independent regulatory agencies with the exception of the Federal Reserve. The purpose of the Trump EO describes independent agencies as “…exercising substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President…” 

This EO on Accountability for all Agencies affects the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other independent agencies. 

With this EO these former independent agencies regulating FTC - consumer protections, FCC -broadband, internet, radio, TV, satellites, and wireless and SEC - cryptocurrencies, stocks, bonds, commodities, and investor protections against market manipulation are now under Trump’s thumb. 

You can read the full EO ENSURING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR ALL AGENCIES at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/ 

There is a reason we have experts in government agencies writing regulations. 

No one person or even one department can know everything in every field of government services though Trump and Musk seem to hold themselves in such high esteem, they probably believe they know everything. 

In their (Trump, Musk and the DOGE boys) massive overreach and lack of understanding of government systems and the work done by our civil servants, those employees that Trump and Musk hold in such low regard and accuse of fraud, waste and abuse, it seems they “accidently” fired and are now attempting to find and rehire the workers who protect and manage the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpiles and waste and the scientists (disease detectives) that are needed in the bird flu outbreak that just since the start of December has resulted in the culling of 34.3 million egg laying hens (source USDA), spread to multiple other species, including over 900 dairy herds and 68 known human infections with one death. 

In CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy) Daily news USDA has confirmed H5N1 strain in rats in Riverside County. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/avian-influenza-bird-flu/canada-announces-avian-flu-vaccine-buy-usda-confirms-first-h5n1-detections 

To sign up for the CIDRAP newsletter from the University of Minnesota (it is free) go to https://www.cidrap.umn.edu 

Michael Lewis’s 2018 book The Fifth Risk is a great read about just a few civil servants and what they do for us. 

The public has been sold the false premise that government should be run like a business. Government is not a business. Government with all its complexities providing the services and protections we all depend on is not a business and never should be run as a business. 

In Trump 2.0 the list of Others grows daily but so far the immigrants, LGBTQ+ and in particular transgender youth, and civil servants seem to be at the top. 

There still exist indigenous cultures that recognize more than two genders. Some indigenous cultures celebrate as a divine gift individuals that don’t fit into the binary male or female. 

The estimates of the percentage of transgender persons in the United States is small ranging from 0.3% to 1.14% depending on which source is checked. Out of that small group, not every transgender person adult or child is interested in sports and even if interested being transgender doesn’t guarantee skill and talent to compete, but the attacks and focus on transgender children being competitively unfair to girls’ sports have been successful. 

I am not a parent or grandparent, but I wonder what happens when some child on a “girl’s” team is taller, more muscular, maybe big for her age. Is some adult going to pull down the pants of that child to inspect the genitals to verify which sex the child belongs? Is this what the world will come to in this hypervigilant anti LGBTQ+ surveillance under Trump? 

What happens when a child has intersex characteristics where the external genitalia fall somewhere in between what is typical. Zemenick wrote intersex is about as common as someone born with red hair. I expect as you read this you will never think about the incidence of red hair the same again. 

And what about those genitalia inspectors of children? Will the inspector’s inspection fall into the range of sexual abuse of a child or maybe question if the inspector is a pedophile. 

Some might associate this kind of genitalia inspection to the Holocaust to find circumcised Jewish boys hiding as Christians. 

How do we as a community show empathy, concern and support in a diverse community. Is being an inclusive community something we can embrace? 

These last paragraphs may sound pretty far out, but things are changing fast in who is being attacked and will be blamed for the troubles ahead. 

Meanwhile outlandish attacks divert our attention from Musk with his DOGE boys fulfilling Trump’s revenge wishes and at the same time emptying out government departments and agencies that were investigating Musk’s businesses and firing persons they find insufficiently loyal or compliant while harvesting the spoils.  

Of course, the propaganda for the Trump supporters (with no supporting evidence) is that Musk has found billions of dollars of fraud and abuse of our tax dollars. 

The size of the rallies are growing, but we are not where we need to be. 

I went to the Capital in Sacramento on President’s Day. There were about 2,000 there at any one time. While some leave others join. There wasn’t any structure with speakers, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to show a community of resistance. 

Sooner or later the purges, dismantling, destruction, cancelling of grants and funds will hit home if it hasn’t already. 

I believe in local government. It looks like there are tough times ahead. 

We have a new mayor and council. If we want them to hold and not fold, then we need to be present (council meetings are on zoom). 

As a closing note, I wouldn’t suggest picking up Rich Benjamin’s 2009 book Searching for Whitopia late at night. I made that mistake last night. I was so taken with Benjamin’s easy readable style of writing and personal immersive travels into white rural communities (Benjamin is Black) that it was past 2 am when I finally forced myself to put it down and shut off the light.