My Fellow Americans........

I feel the need to address what's been going on in America lately.  After a month of the government shutdown, I can't help but worry about the furloughed employees who have had to suffer through the process of not being able to work and missing 2 paychecks.  The real scary part about this is the fact that most people would not be able to survive missing even 1 paycheck.  "Seventy-eight percent of full-time workers said they live paycheck to paycheck, up from 75 percent last year, according to a recent report from CareerBuilder". (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/24/most-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html).  

And even though the shut down has been put on hold for a couple of weeks, there is an even larger problem looming that most of us are unaware of.........

"Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/)

So, I hope I am not alone in saying that I am proud to be an American, but I am also very worried for our futures.  This country was built on the premise of freedom, and it seems as though this liberty is being challenged as time goes on.  And so many Americans have fought and lost their lives defending our freedom.  All I can do is pray that this state of unrest in America will settle and we can return to being the amazing country that we all love💙