For many people in the United States, the Federal government seems like an amorphous entity that doesn’t do much good. Years ago, when I was working at our town’s food pantry, I overheard a volunteer say in a vehement voice, “The government doesn’t do anything right.”

Turns out, that woman was wrong, very wrong. (I will be returning to this woman’s assertion in a future post.) With some agencies, such as Social Security, it’s easy to see how folks benefit from the federal government. Checks deposited in bank accounts have a way of attracting attention. Elon Musk and DOGE take note: checks not deposited in accounts also attract notice but of a very different kind. However, in other ways, the Federal government is so entwined in our lives that it’s often hard to see  exactly what it does.

For example, consider libraries, institutions that are dear to my heart. In Maine, libraries are mostly supported by their communities through property taxes. (As far as I’m concerned, it’s money well spent.) What, exactly, does the federal government have to do with town libraries?

As it happens, quite a lot. There’s a federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) that gives grants to states for library and museum projects. In Maine, some of that money goes to help finance our state’s interlibrary loan system, the jewel in our literary crown. This means that an avid reader with eclectic tastes—that would be me—can go online and request books from libraries large and small from around the state. The books are then transported to the reader’s town library, where she picks them up at her convenience. For avid readers in a small town such as Winthrop, this a vital service . The world of stories and ideas opens beyond what one little library in a town of 6,000 can offer.

I’m sure you can guess what’s in the works for the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the IMLS, and if he is successful, this could be the end of Maine’s interlibrary loan system. Across the state, most libraries run on a tight budget. (For six years, I was on the board of our town’s library, and I speak from personal experience.)  It’s hard for to me envision how libraries will be able to make up the money that came from the IMLS grant.

But all is not lost. In a PBS article, I read, “Since the IMLS was created through…congressional legislation, it cannot simply be eliminated by an executive order. Congress would need to pass a law to repeal or defund it.”

Unfortunately, so far anyway, the Republican House and Senate have pretty much agreed with whatever Trump has come up with. I have let my representative and senators know that I oppose this executive order, but I don’t know if it will make any difference.

What will I do if our interlibrary loan system is eliminated? I don’t know. What a terrible thought to consider as we head into spring.

I’ve got to hand it to the Trump Administration—it provides plenty of fodder for writers. So much, in fact, that it’s hard to settle on one subject. Do I long for the boring days of the Biden presidency when it seemed as though there were long stretches of time when not much happened? Indeed I do. I’ve started writing a new book, Iris Starmoss: Elf Detective, and that novel is pulling at me the way all new stories do.

If I had a choice, I would not be living in these times, but as Gandalf noted in The Lord of the Rings, “So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

Therefore, onward to Trump and his not-so-merry Band of Incompetents. Already, many of their actions are harming Maine—cutting funding to libraries, cutting funding to food banks, denying an approved grant to our own Farmer Kev. The effects of this presidency are not abstract, happening to other folks in other states. Instead, they have come home to roost, and I expect this is true across the country.

However, for some reason, I keep coming back to what has become known as SignalGate, when Trump’s team, with a messaging app named Signal, used their phones to discuss an attack on Yemen. While Signal is considered reasonably secure for private use, it is not considered secure enough for governmental/military use. But there was Trump’s team, using Signal to discuss military strikes in Yemen. Who was on that Signal chat? Among them, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense; J.D. Vance, Vice President; Marco Rubio, Secretary of State; Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence; and Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor. You know, the big guys. The ones we trust to protect our country. And better yet, while in Moscow, Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined the discussion to bomb Yemen.

There was also somebody else included in that chat, none other than Jefferey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, a magazine I subscribe to and like very much. You might be wondering why Jefferey Goldberg was added to that chat list.  I know I was. Goldberg and The Atlantic are no friends of the Trump Administration, and even if they were, it is unlikely that Goldberg would be involved in plans for an imminent military strike in Yemen.

It’s no surprise, then, that on March 13, when Goldberg discovered he had been included in a group chat with Trump officials, he at first thought it was a hoax. A reasonable suspicion. Then, on March 15, when Goldberg read the sensitive military operations being discussed, he stayed on for another two hours to see if what he was reading was correct. Yes, it was. Bombs and drones started attacking Yemen. Thereupon, Goldberg left the chat.

Of all the journalists and editors to pick for an unplanned leak, Trump’s team of Incompetents couldn’t have chosen anyone better—or worse from their point of view—than Goldberg. He, along with David Remnick from The New Yorker, are two of this country’s great editors leading two of the country’s best magazines. Not easily intimidated, they are erudite and confident. Best of all, they both have something that is sorely lacking in this administration—integrity.

Also, within journalistic circles, both are so well known that as soon as the story broke, all the major news outlets wanted to talk to Goldberg about the Signal farrago. And last week, Goldberg certainly made the rounds, explaining in his clear way what had happened.

To borrow from my British friends, that certainly set the cat among the pigeons. Trump and Co. have been spinning furiously—lying, denying, and trying to pin the blame on Goldberg. At one point, they even called him a spy. But as it turned out, on March 11, Goldberg had received a Signal connection request from Michael Waltz, which meant that the spy accusation lost its fizz.

Now they are trying to minimize the event, maintaining that since the results were good—Yemen was successfully bombed—this is all that matters in the end.

But somehow, at least for the moment, Trump and Co. have not been able to slither out of this one. Perhaps they will, but right now they are feeling the sting of their carelessness, and they look like fools.

I’m going to end with a famous quotation from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

That about describes it.