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Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Policies Are Eroding His Poll Numbers, as Well as the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2025 //
17

So much happened in the past 24 hours that I couldn’t imagine how to summarize it. Fortunately Heather Cox Richardson did it. Trump continues to expand the imperial presidency, to attack our allies, to cozy up to Putin, to ridicule Zelensky. Courts continue to enjoin his executive orders, most importantly, his banning of DEI as infringement of the First Amendment. No one could get every autocratic action into one article; Trump is intent on taking control of the U.S. Post Office, as well as other independent agencies. Republicans continue to be docile and supine. Anyone who is not alarmed is either onboard with the destruction of our Cobstitution or asleep.

She writes:

In an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) yesterday, billionaire Elon Musk seemed to be having difficulty speaking. Musk brandished a chainsaw like that Argentina’s president Javier Milei used to symbolize the drastic cuts he intended to make to his country’s government, then posted that image to X, labeling it “The DogeFather,” although the administration has recently told a court that Musk is neither an employee nor the leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Politico called Musk’s behavior “eccentric.”

While attendees cheered Musk on, outside CPAC there appears to be a storm brewing. While Trump and his team have claimed they have a mandate, in fact more people voted for someone other than Trump in 2024, and his early approval ratings were only 47%, the lowest of any president going back to 1953, when Gallup began checking them. His approval has not grown as he has called himself a “king” and openly mused about running for a third term.

A Washington Post/Ipsos poll released yesterday shows that even that “honeymoon” is over. Only 45% approve of the “the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president,” while 53% disapprove. Forty-three percent of Americans say they support what Trump has done since he took office; 48% oppose his actions. The number of people who strongly support his actions sits at 27%; the number who strongly oppose them is twelve points higher, at 39%. Fifty-seven percent of Americans think Trump has gone beyond his authority as president.

Americans especially dislike his attempts to end USAID, his tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, and his firing of large numbers of government workers. Even Trump’s signature issue of deporting undocumented immigrants receives 51% approval only if respondents think those deported are “criminals.” Fifty-seven percent opposed deporting those who are not accused of crimes, 70% oppose deporting those brought to the U.S. as children, and 66% oppose deporting those who have children who are U.S. citizens. Eighty-three percent of Americans oppose Trump’s pardon of the violent offenders convicted for their behavior during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Even those who identify as Republican-leaning oppose those pardons 70 to 27 percent.

As Aaron Blake points out in the Washington Post, a new CNN poll, also released yesterday, shows that Musk is a major factor in Trump’s declining ratings. By nearly two to one, Americans see Musk having a prominent role in the administration as a “bad thing.” The ratio was 54 to 28. The Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed that Americans disapprove of Musk “shutting down federal government programs that he decides are unnecessary” by the wide margin of 52 to 26. Sixty-three percent of Americans are worried about Musk’s team getting access to their data.

Meanwhile, Jessica Piper of Politico noted that 62% of Americans in the CNN poll said that Trump has not done enough to try to reduce prices, and today’s economic news bears out that concern: not only are egg prices at an all-time high, but also consumer sentiment dropped to a 15-month low as people worry that Trump’s tariffs will raise prices. White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement: “[T]he American people actually feel great about the direction of the country…. What’s to hate? We are undoing the widely unpopular agenda of the previous office holder, uprooting waste, fraud, and abuse, and chugging along on the great American Comeback.”

Phone calls swamping the congressional switchboards and constituents turning out for town halls with House members disprove Fields’s statement. In packed rooms with overflow spaces, constituents have shown up this week both to demand that their representatives take a stand against Musk’s slashing of the federal government and access to personal data, and to protest Trump’s claim to be a king. In an eastern Oregon district that Trump won by 68%, constituents shouted at Representative Cliff Bentz: “tax Elon,” “tax the wealthy,” “tax the rich,” and “tax the billionaires.” In a solid-red Atlanta suburb, the crowd was so angry at Representative Richard McCormick that he has apparently gone to ground, bailing on a CNN interview about the disastrous town hall at the last minute.

That Trump is feeling the pressure from voters showed this week when he appeared to offer two major distractions: a pledge to consider using money from savings found by the “Department of Government Efficiency” to provide rebates to taxpayers—although so far it hasn’t shown any savings and economists say the promise of checks is unrealistic—and a claim that he would release a list of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s clients.

Trump is also under pressure from the law.

The Associated Press sued three officials in the Trump administration today for blocking AP journalists from presidential events because the AP continues to use the traditional name “Gulf of Mexico” for the gulf that Trump is trying to rename. The AP is suing over the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Today, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction to stop Musk and the DOGE team from accessing Americans’ private information in the Treasury Department’s central payment system. Eighteen states had filed the lawsuit.

Tonight, a federal court granted a nationwide injunction against Trump’s executive orders attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion, finding that they violate the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

Trump is also under pressure from principled state governors.

In his State of the State Address on Wednesday, February 19, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker noted that “it’s in fashion at the federal level right now to just indiscriminately slash school funding, healthcare coverage, support for farmers, and veterans’ services. They say they’re doing it to eliminate inefficiencies. But only an idiot would think we should eliminate emergency response in a natural disaster, education and healthcare for disabled children, gang crime investigations, clean air and water programs, monitoring of nursing home abuse, nuclear reactor regulation, and cancer research.”

He recalled: “Here in Illinois, ten years ago we saw the consequences of a rampant ideological gutting of government. It genuinely harmed people. Our citizens hated it. Trust me—I won an entire election based in part on just how much they hated it.”

Pritzker went on to address the dangers of the Trump administration directly. “We don’t have kings in America,” he said, “and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one…. If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

He recalled how ordinary Illinoisans outnumbered Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978 by about 2,000 to 20, and noted: “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the ‘tragic spirit of despair’ overcome us when our country needs us the most.”

Today, Maine governor Janet Mills took the fight against Trump’s overreach directly to him. At a meeting of the nation’s governors, in a rambling speech in which he was wandering through his false campaign stories about transgender athletes, Trump turned to his notes and suddenly appeared to remember his executive order banning transgender student athletes from playing on girls sports teams.

The body that governs sports in Maine, the Maine Principals’ Association, ruled that it would continue to allow transgender students to compete despite Trump’s executive order because the Maine state Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the grounds of gender identity.

Trump asked if the governor of Maine was in the room.

“Yeah, I’m here,” replied Governor Mills.

“Are you not going to comply with it?” Trump asked.

“I’m complying with state and federal laws,” she said.

“We are the federal law,” Trump said. “You better do it because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t….”

“We’re going to follow the law,” she said.

“You’d better comply because otherwise you’re not going to get any federal funding,” he said.

Mills answered: “We’ll see you in court.”

As Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times put it: “Something happened at the White House Friday afternoon that almost never happens these days. Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.”

Hours later, the Trump administration launched an investigation into Maine’s Department of Education, specifically its policy on transgender athletes. Maine attorney general Aaron Frey said that any attempt to cut federal funding for the states over the issue “would be illegal and in direct violation of federal court orders…. Fortunately,” he said in a statement, “the rule of law still applies in this country, and I will do everything in my power to defend Maine’s laws and block efforts by the president to bully and threaten us.”

“[W]hat is at stake here [is] the rule of law in our country,” Mills said in a statement. “No President…can withhold Federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will. It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws.”

“Maine may be one of the first states to undergo an investigation by his Administration, but we won’t be the last. Today, the President of the United States has targeted one particular group on one particular issue which Maine law has addressed. But you must ask yourself: who and what will he target next, and what will he do? Will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? In America, the President is neither a King nor a dictator, as much as this one tries to act like it—and it is the rule of law that prevents him from being so.”

“[D]o not be misled: this is not just about who can compete on the athletic field, this is about whether a President can force compliance with his will, without regard for the rule of law that governs our nation. I believe he cannot.”

Americans’ sense that Musk has too much power is likely to be heightened by tonight’s report from Andrea Shalal and Joey Roulette of Reuters that the United States is trying to force Ukraine to sign away rights to its critical minerals by threatening to cut off access to Musk’s Starlink satellite system. Ukraine turned to that system after the Russians destroyed its communications services.

And Americans’ concerns about Trump acting like a dictator are unlikely to be calmed by tonight’s news that Trump has abruptly purged the leadership of the military in apparent unconcern over the message that such a sweeping purge sends to adversaries. He has fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Q. Brown, who Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested got the job only because he is Black, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Chief of Naval Operations, who was the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and whom Hegseth called a “DEI hire.”

The vice chief of the Air Force, General James Slife, has also been fired, and Hegseth indicated he intends to fire the judge advocates general, or JAGs—the military lawyers who administer the military code of justice—for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Trump has indicated he intends to nominate Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Oren Liebermann and Haley Britzky of CNN call this “an extraordinary move,” since Caine is retired and is not a four-star general, a legal requirement, and will need a presidential waiver to take the job. Trump has referred to Caine as right out of “central casting.”

Defense One, which covers U.S. defense and international security, called the firings a “bloodbath.”

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Does Putin Own Trump?

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2025 //
22

Thom Hartmann sees how obsequious Trump is towards Putin and wonders: “Does Putin own Trump”?

Given that he has just given Putin everything he wanted in Ukraine, it’s a natural question.

Please open the link.

Categories Corruption, Education Reform, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, International, Stupid, Trump

Timothy Snyder: Trump is a “Weak Strongman”

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2025 //
9

Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University, who has written many books about European history. His book “On Tyranny” was a bestseller. He writes a blog at Substack called “Thinking About…”

Snyder writes:

Americans have a certain idea of freedom. We are fine just the way we are and the only problem are the barriers in the outside world. In this mental world, Musk’s hollowing out of the government can seem justified. Trump’s betrayal of friends and destruction of alliances can seem convenient. We will be great again by being all alone, with no one to trouble us.

This fantasy leads right to tragedy. It sets the stage for the weak strongman.

Trump is a strongman in the sense that he makes others weak. He is strong in a relative sense; as Musk destroys institutions, what remains is Trump’s presence. But other sorts of power meaning vanish, as Musk takes apart the departments of the American government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. And then the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world.

The strongman is weak because no one beyond the United States has anything to want (or fear) from the self-immolation. And weak because Trump submits to foreign aggression, putting waning American power behind Russia.

The weak strongman undermines the rules, but cannot replace them with anything else. He creates the image of power by his rhetorical imperialism: America will control Greenland, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Gaza, etc. From there, it is hard to say that others are wrong when they invade other countries. The weak strongman is left endorsing other people’s invasions, as with Russia and Ukraine. He lacks the power to resist them. And he lacks the power to coerce them. And, ironically, he lacks the power to carry out wars himself. He lacks the patience, and he lacks the instruments.

Many Americans fear Trump, and so imagine that others must. No one beyond America fears Trump as such. He can generate fear only in his capacity as neighborhood arsonist, as someone who destroys what others have created.

America’s friends are afraid not of him but of what we all have to lose. America’s enemies are not frightened when Trump kicks over the lantern and sets things on fire. Quite the contrary: he is doing exactly what they want.

Trump plays a strongman on television, and he is a talented performer. But the strength consists solely of the submissiveness of his audience. His performance arouses a dream of passivity: Trump will fix it, Trump will get rid of our problems, and then we will be free. And of course that kind of Nosferatu charisma is a kind of strength, but not one that can be brought to bear to solve any problems, and not one that matters in the world at large. Or rather: it matters only negatively. As soon as Trump meets someone with a better dictator act, like Putin, he submits. But he can only enable Putin. He can’t really even imitate him.

Trump’s supporters might think that we don’t need friendships because the United States can, if necessary, intimidate its enemies without help.

This has already been proven wrong. Trump can make things worse for Canada and Mexico, in the sense that a sobbing boy taking his ball home makes things worse. But he cannot make them back down. Trump has not intimidated Russia. He has been intimidated by Russia.

The cruelty that makes Trump a strongman at home arose from the destruction of norms of civil behavior and democratic practice. Unlike any other American politician before him, Trump has scorned the law and used hate speech to deter political opponents here. For years he has used his tweets to inspire stochastic violence. This intimidates some Americans. It has, for example, led to a kind of self-purge of the Republican Party, opening the way for Trump, or in fact for Musk, to rule with the help of tamed and therefore predictable cadres. The effect of this is that people who have submitted to Trump see him as a strongman. But what they are experiencing is in fact their own weakness. And their own weakness cannot magically become strength in the wider world. Quite the contrary.

Stochastic violence cannot be applied to foreign leaders. Trump has said that he can stop the war in Ukraine. He wrote a tweet directed at Vladimir Putin; but the capital letters and exclamation points did not change the emotional state of the Russian leader, let alone Russian policy. And no one in Irkutsk is going to threaten or hurt Putin because Donald Trump wrote something on the internet. Something that works in the United States is not relevant abroad. In fact, the tweet was a sign of weakness, since it was not followed by any policy. Putin quite rightly saw it as such.

Trump and his cabinet now repeat Putin’s talking points about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One could generously interpret Trump’s tweet to Putin threatening sanctions and such as an act of policy. I saw conservatives do that, and I would have been delighted had they been right. But I fear that this was just the characteristic American mistake of imagining that, because Americans react submissively to Trump’s words, others must as well. For words to matter, there has to be policy, or at least the possibility that one might be formulated. And for there to be policy, there have to be institutions staffed with competent people. And Trump’s main action so far, or really Musk’s action so far, has been to fire exactly the people who would be competent to design and implement policy. Many of the people who knew anything about Ukraine and Russia are gone from the federal government.

And now Trump is trying to make concessions to Russia regarding issues directly related to Ukrainian sovereignty on his own, without Ukraine, and indeed without any allies. He is showing weakness on a level unprecedented in modern US history. His position is so weak that it is unlikely to convince anyone. Trump is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. The wolves can tell the difference. Russians will naturally think that they can get still more.

Ukrainians, for that matter, have little incentive to give up their country. Trump can threaten them with cutting US arms, because stopping things is the only power he has. But Ukrainians must now expect that he would do that anyway, given his general subservience to Putin. If the US does stop support for Ukraine, it no longer has influence in how Ukraine conducts the war. I have the feeling that no one in the Trump administration has thought of that.

It is quite clear how American power could be used to bring the war to an end: make Russia weaker, and Ukraine stronger. Putin will end the war when it seems that the future is threatening rather than welcoming. And Ukraine has no choice but to fight so long as Russia invades. This is all incredibly simple. But it looks like Trump is acting precisely as is necessary to prolong the war and make it worse.

Thus far he and Hegseth have simply gone public with their agreement with elements of Russia’s position. Since this is their opening gambit, Russia has every incentive to keep fighting and to see if they can get more. The way things are going, Trump will be responsible for the continuing and escalation of the bloodshed, quite possibly into a European or open global conflict. He won’t get any prizes for creating the conditions for a third world war.

It’s an obvious point, but it has to be made clearly: no one in Moscow thinks that Trump is strong. He is doing exactly what Russia would want: he is repeating Russian talking points, he is acting essentially as a Russian diplomat, and he is destroying the instruments of American power, from institutions through reputation. No American president can shift an international power position without policy instruments. And these depend on functioning institutions and competent civil servants. In theory, the United States could indeed change the power position by decisively helping Ukraine and decisively weakening Russia. But that theory only becomes practice through policy. And it is not hard to see that Musk-Trump cannot make policy.

Even should he wish to, Trump can not credibly threaten Russia and other rivals while Musk disassembles the federal government. Intimidation in foreign affairs depends upon the realistic prospect of a policy, and policy depends, precisely, on a functioning state.

Let us take one policy instrument that Trump mentioned in his tweet about Putin: sanctions. Under Biden, we had too few people in the Department of the Treasury working on sanctions. That is one reason they have not worked as well against Russia as one might have hoped. To make sanctions work, we would need more people on the job, not fewer. And of course we would also need foreign powers to believe that Treasury was not just an American billionaire’s plaything. And that will be hard, because their intelligence agencies read the newspapers.

The United States cannot deal with adversaries without qualified civil servants in the departments of government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. All of these are being gutted and/or run by people who lack anything vaguely resembling competence.

Americans can choose to ignore this, or to interpret it only in our own domestic political terms. But it is obvious to anyone with any distance on the situation that the destruction of the institutions of power means weakness. And it creates a very simple incentive structure. The Russians were hoping that Trump would return to power precisely because they believe that he weakens the United States. Now, as they watch him (or Musk) disassemble the CIA and FBI, and appoint Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel, they can only think that time is on their side.

The Russians might or might not, as it pleases them, entertain Trump’s idea of ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. Even if they accept the ceasefire it will be to prepare for the next invasion, in the full confidence that a United States neutered by Musk-Trump will not be able to react, that the Europeans will be distracted, and that the Ukrainians will find it harder to mobilize a second time.

Trump is not only destroying things, he is being used as an instrument to destroy things: in this case, used by Russia to destroy a successful wartime coalition that contained the Russian invasion and prevented a larger war.

What is true for Russia also holds for China. The weak strongman helps Beijing. Time was not really on China’s side, not before Trump. There was no reason to think that China would surpass the United States economically, and therefore politically and militarily. That had been the great fear for decades, but by the time of the Biden administration the trend lines were no longer so clear, or indeed had reversed. But now that Trump (or rather Musk) has set a course for the self-destruction of American state power, Beijing can simply take what it would once have had to struggle to gain, or would have had to resign from taking.

A weak strongman brings only losses without gains. And so the descent begins. Destroying norms and institutions at home only makes Trump (or rather Musk) strong in the sense of making everyone else weak. In our growing weakness, we might be all tempted by the idea that our strong man at least makes us a titan among nations.

But the opposite is true. The world cannot be dismissed by the weak strongman. As a strongman, he destroys the norms, laws, and alliances that held back war. As a weakling, he invites it.

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Embraces Russia

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2025 //
17

The speed with which Trump embraced the Russian view of its war on Ukraine is head-spinning. Trump said that Ukraine started the war, even though the world saw that Russia invaded Ukraine and that Russia has destroyed Ukrainian hospitals, schools, apartment houses, cultural sites, its power grid, and other non-military targets for three years. Even now, American and Russian delegations are meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss how the war should end. Neither Ukraine nor Europe was invited.

Meanwhile, Trump lobs insults at Zelensky, calling him “grossly incompetent” and insisting that Ukraine must hold an election before peace can be reached. Zelensky was elected in 2019 with 73% of the vote while Putin had another fraudulent “election” after disposing of any other candidates. Yet today, Trump lashed out at Zelensky and called him “a dictator without elections.” Trump’s insults mirrored Russian propaganda.

After three years of international isolation, Putin has been rehabilitated by Trump and treated as the leader of a major power.

What has become clear is that Trump is hostile to our European allies and is excited to move the United States into an alliance with Putin, with Putin as the senior partner. It’s a shocking turn of events.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about recent events:

The sixty-first Munich Security Conference, the world’s leading forum for talking about international security policy, took place from February 14 to February 16 this year. Begun in 1963, it was designed to be an independent venue for experts and policymakers to discuss the most pressing security issues around the globe.

At the conference on Friday, February 14, Vice President J.D. Vance launched what The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour called “a brutal ideological assault” against Europe, attacking the values the United States used to share with Europe but which Vance and the other members of the Trump administration are now working to destroy.

Vance and MAGA Christian nationalists reject the principles of secular democracy and instead align with leaders like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. They claim that the equal rights central to democracy undermine nations by treating women and racial, religious, and gender minorities as equal to white Christian men. They want to see an end to the immigration that they believe weakens a nation’s people, and for government to reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal values.

Vance attacked current European values and warned that the crisis for the region was not external actors like Russia or China, but rather “the threat from within.” He accused Europe of censoring free speech, but it was clear—especially coming from the representative of a regime that has erased great swaths of public knowledge because it objects to words like “gender”—that what he really objected to was restrictions on the speech of far-right ideologues.

After the rise and fall of German dictator Adolf Hitler, Germany banned Nazi propaganda and set limits on hate speech, banning attacks on people based on racial, national, religious, or ethnic background, as these forms of speech are central to fascism and similar ideologies. That hampers the ability of Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to recruit before upcoming elections on February 23.

After calling for Europe to “change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction,” Vance threw his weight behind AfD. He broke protocol to refuse a meeting with current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and instead broke a taboo in German politics by meeting with the leader of AfD Trump called Vance’s speech “very brilliant.”

Bill Kristol of The Bulwark posted: “It’s heartening that today the leaders of the two major parties in Germany are unequivocally anti-Nazi and anti-fascist. It’s horrifying that today the president and vice-president of the United States of America are not.” German defense minister Boris Pistorius called Vance’s speech “unacceptable,” and on Saturday, Scholz said: “Never again fascism, never again, racism, never again aggressive war…. [T]oday’s democracies in Germany and Europe are founded on the historic awareness and realization that democracies can be destroyed by radical anti-democrats.”

Vance and the Trump administration have the support of billionaire Elon Musk in their attempt to shift the globe toward the rejection of democracy in favor of far-right authoritarianism. David Ingram and Bruna Horvath of NBC News reported today that Musk has “encouraged right-wing political movements, policies and administrations in at least 18 countries in a global push to slash immigration and curtail regulation of business.”

Musk, who cast apparent Nazi salutes before crowds on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, wrote an op-ed in favor of AfD and recently spoke by video at an AfD rally, calling it “the best hope for Germany.” In addition to his support for Germany’s AfD, Ingram and Horvath identified Musk’s support for far-right movements in Brazil, Ireland, Argentina, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, the Netherlands, and other countries. Last month, before Trump took office, French president Emmanuel Macron accused Musk of backing a global reactionary movement and of intervening directly in elections, including Germany’s.

Musk’s involvement in international politics appears to have coincided with his purchase of Twitter in 2022. And indeed, social media has been key to the project of undermining democracy. Russian operatives are now pushing the rise of the far-right in Europe through social media as they did in the United States. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long sought to weaken the democratic alliances of the United States and Europe to enable Russia to take at least parts of Ukraine and possibly other neighboring countries without the formidable resistance that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would present.

Russian state television praised Vance’s speech. One headline read: “Humiliated Europe out for the count. Its American master flogged its old vassals.” Russian pundits recognized that Vance’s turn away from Europe meant a victory for Russia.

Vance’s speech came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told other countries’ defense ministers on Wednesday, February 12, that he wanted to “directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.” Since 1949, the United States has stood firmly behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that said any attack on one of the signatories to that agreement would be an attack on all. Now, it appears, the U.S. is backing away.

In that speech, Hegseth seemed to move the U.S. toward the ideology of Russian president Vladimir Putin that larger countries can scoop up their smaller neighbors. He echoed Putin’s demands for ending its war against Ukraine, saying that “returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective” and that the U.S. will not support NATO membership for Ukraine, thus conceding to Russia two key issues without apparently getting anything in return. He also said that Europe must take over assistance for Ukraine as the U.S. focuses on its own borders.

On Wednesday, Trump spoke to Putin for nearly an hour and a half and came out echoing Putin’s rationale for his attack on Ukraine. Trump’s social media account posted that the call had been “highly productive,” and said the two leaders would visit each other’s countries, offering a White House visit to Putin, who has been isolated from other nations since his attacks on Ukraine.

Also on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and offered U.S. support for Ukraine in exchange for half the country’s mineral resources, although it was unclear if the deal the U.S. offered meant future support or only payment for past support. The offer did not, apparently, contain guarantees for future support, and Zelensky rejected it.

On Saturday, while the Munich conference was still underway, the Trump administration announced it was sending a delegation to Saudi Arabia to begin peace talks with Russia. Ukrainian officials said they had not been informed and had no plans to attend. European negotiators have not been invited either. While the talks are being billed as “early-stage,” the United States is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security advisor Michael Waltz, suggesting haste.

After Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke on Saturday, the Russian readout of the call suggested that Russia urgently needs relief from the economic sanctions that are crushing the Russian economy. It said the call had focused on “removing unilateral barriers inherited from the previous U.S. administration, aiming to restore mutually beneficial trade, economic, and investment cooperation.” On Friday, Russia’s central bank warned that the economy is faltering, while Orbán, an ally of both Putin and Trump, assured Hungarian state radio on Friday that Russia will be “reintegrated” into the world economy and the European energy system as soon as “the U.S. president comes and creates peace.”

But the U.S. is not speaking with one voice. Republican leaders who support Ukraine are trying to smooth over Trump’s apparent coziness with Russia. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) called out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “rookie mistake” when he offered that the U.S. would not support Ukraine’s membership in NATO and that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to demand a return to its borders before Russia invaded in 2014, essentially offering to let Russia keep Crimea. Wicker said he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments and added: “I don’t know who wrote the speech—it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.” Carlson, a former Fox News Channel personality, has expressed admiration for Orbán and Putin.

“There are good guys and bad guys in this war, and the Russians are the bad guys,” Wicker said. “They invaded, contrary to almost every international law, and they should be defeated. And Ukraine is entitled to the promises that the world made to it.”

Today on Face the Nation, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) said: “There is absolutely no way that Donald Trump will be seen—he will not let himself go down in history as having sold out to Putin. He will not let that happen.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark said: “I guess Republicans think this is how they manipulate Trump into doing the right thing. But Trump’s been selling out to Putin since Helsinki when he publicly sided with Putin over America’s intelligence community. And he hasn’t stopped selling out since. And the [Republican Party] lets him.”

European leaders reported being blindsided by Trump’s announcement. German leader Scholz on Friday asked Germany’s parliament to declare a state of emergency to support Ukraine, and on Sunday, European leaders met for an impromptu breakfast to discuss European security and Ukraine. Macron invited leaders to Paris on Monday to continue discussions. Representatives of Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, and Denmark will attend, as will the secretary-general of NATO and the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

After the Munich conference, in Writing from London, British journalist Nick Cohen wrote that those Americans trying to find an excuse for the betrayal of Ukraine are deluding themselves. He wrote: “[t]he radical right in the US is not engaged in a grand geopolitical strategy. It is pursuing an ideological campaign against its true enemy, which is not China or Russia but liberalism. The US culture war has gone global. The Trump administration hates liberals at home and liberal democracies abroad.”

Proving his point, on Saturday after Vance’s speech, Trump’s social media account posted: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” This message, attributed to French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, not only claims that the president is above all laws, but also signals to supporters that they should support Trump with violence. And that is how they took it. Right-wing activist Jack Posobiec responded, “America will be saved[.] What must be done will be done,” to which Elon Musk responded: “Yes[.]”

Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas posted: “There is now total clarity, no matter how unimaginable things might seem. And they amount to this: The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process everyone else.”

He continued: “The only hope lies in the sheer enormity of the threat: it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump

Trump Is Destroying Our Country, Putin Benefits

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2025 //
8

I am posting a large excerpt from Olga Lautman’s Tyranny Tracker. Christine Langhoff shares this link with us. I urge you to subscribe. I have given up trying to keep track of Trump’s destructive orders, but Olga Lautman has not. She is a patriot. Trump is not. He is Putin’s puppet. Hillary warned us.

Olga Lautman posted yesterday:

📆 Trump Tyranny Tracker: Feb 14

Welcome to today’s Trump Tyranny Tracker, where I’m breaking down the key news from the day alongside ongoing developments as Trump and his regime move swiftly to consolidate power, undermine democracy, and dismantle civil rights and freedoms.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!!

🔥 In Corruption News

Musk’s Treasury Appointee Retains CEO Role, Raising Conflict Concerns

What Happened: Elon Musk ally Tom Krause, newly appointed to oversee U.S. government payments, is still CEO of Cloud Software Group, a private tech company. Treasury’s ethics office approved the arrangement, which is a massive conflict of interest. 

Why It Matters: A sitting CEO running federal payment operations raises ethical and security concerns over potential financial manipulation, insider deals, and corporate favoritism. With Treasury’s $5.45 trillion in annual transactions, watchdogs warn of unprecedented conflicts as Musk’s allies tighten their grip on government finances.

Source: WIRED

Trump DOJ Guts Public Corruption Investigations

What Happened: Trump has dismantled federal efforts to fight public corruption, pausing investigations into corporate bribery, weakening the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and considering eliminating the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section. Trump also fired inspectors general across multiple agencies. The move follows the DOJ’s controversial dismissal of charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams, sparking mass resignations among prosecutors.

Why It Matters: The Justice Department is shielding Trump’s allies while curbing corruption investigations, signaling an unprecedented shift in enforcement priorities. The DOJ’s politicization raises concerns about legal accountability under Trump’s regime.

Source: CNN

Kash Patel’s Undisclosed LLCs Raise FBI Nomination Concerns

What Happened: Trump’s FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, failed to disclose multiple LLCs tied to a $1.8 million Virginia land deal in his Senate financial disclosures. His filings contradict each other on the land’s value, and he delayed submitting records until after his Senate hearing, avoiding scrutiny.

Why It Matters: Patel’s lack of transparency and hidden financial dealings—including ties to Kremlin-linked payments—raise serious ethical concerns for a potential FBI director. His pattern of secrecy and conflicts of interest fuels fears about his ability to lead an impartial agency.

Source: Mother Jones

🛡️ In Power Consolidation News

Mass Layoffs Spark Chaos as Trump Purges Federal Workforce

What Happened: Trump and Elon ordered mass layoffs of probationary federal employees, impacting thousands. Over 1,000 VA workers, including cancer and opioid researchers, were fired. The CDC lost 1,300 employees, cutting 10% of its workforce, while the Education Department, USDA, and DOE also saw deep cuts. Many were terminated without warning, including some who had already accepted buyouts.

Why It Matters: This politically driven purge weakens veterans’ services, public health, and environmental protections, prioritizing loyalty over competence. The purge will cripple government operations and vital social services.

Source: Associated Press

IRS Prepares for Mass Layoffs Amid Tax Season

What Happened: The IRS is set to fire thousands of workers, including many probationary employees, just as tax season reaches its peak. The move follows Trump and Elon Musk’s federal purge, aimed at gutting the government. The IRS had 100,000 employees, including 16,000 probationary workers, many of whom are now at risk.

Why It Matters: The cuts threaten tax processing, refunds, and enforcement, gutting Biden-era efforts to audit corporations and wealthy taxpayers. 

Source: Reuters

Elon Musk’s DOGE Arrives at Pentagon, Eyes Massive Cuts

What Happened: Elon Musk’s operatives arrived at the Pentagon as part of Trump’s push to gut government agencies and veterans’ services. This follows similar moves across Treasury, DOJ, DHS, and intelligence agencies, where Musk’s operatives have gained access to financial, security, and intelligence data.

Why It Matters: Musk’s Pentagon access raises major conflict of interest concerns, as SpaceX and Starlink hold billions in defense contracts. Unvetted DOGE operatives could gain access to classified military programs, including cyber defense, nuclear strategy, and global operations. The Trump regime’s prioritization of loyalty over security vetting risks espionage, military compromise, and insider financial manipulation.

Source: Reuters

Mass Firings Loom Over CDC and NIH as Trump Reshapes Public Health Agencies

What Happened: Senior officials at the CDC and NIH are bracing for mass layoffs, with up to 700 public health workers targeted, including members of the CDC’s elite “disease detectives” corps—the first responders to global infectious disease outbreaks. Some high-ranking officials could be forced to resign as the regime continues its efforts to gut agencies.

Why It Matters: Slashing frontline pandemic and disease response teams cripples America’s ability to contain deadly outbreaks. Experts warn this will devastate public health preparedness, drain critical expertise, and politicize key agencies—as the U.S. faces a bird flu outbreak, a resurging measles crisis, and the worst flu season in decades.

Source: The New York Times

DHS Cuts 405 Employees, FEMA Hit Hardest

What Happened: DHS laid off 405 employees, including 200+ at FEMA, 130 at CISA, and others at USCIS and Science & Technology. 12 Coast Guard DEI staff were reassigned to border security.

Why It Matters: This purge weakens disaster response, cybersecurity, and national preparedness.

Source: ABC News

Trump Purges Leadership at National Archives

What Happened: Trump purges senior leadership at the National Archives and Records Administration. Deputy Archivist William Bosanko resigned Friday, following the firing of Archivist Colleen Shogan last week. At least five other senior officials are expected to leave, as the White House moves to replace them with Trump loyalists.

Why It Matters: This purge comes after NARA’s role in referring Trump’s classified documents case to the DOJ, signaling an attempt to reshape the agency’s leadership for political control. The loss of experienced, nonpartisan officials threatens historical preservation and government transparency.

Source: CNN

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Trump

Trump Kisses Putin’s Ring and Betrays Ukraine

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2025 //
18

Phillips P. Obrien is a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrew’s in the UK. The title of this article on his blog at Substack is “This is Not Appeasement, It’s Worse.”

He begins:

In the last few days, the US has made concession after concession to Russia before any formal negotiations have even started. Trump has said that Putin should be allowed back into the G7, Defense Secretary Hegseth has said Ukraine should be kept out of NATO and the US forces will not provide any security guarantees for Ukraine. The US has also made it clear that Russia will be allowed to keep most/all of the Ukrainian lands it has seized, while at the same time making no new promises of aid to Ukraine.

In other words—Trump is helping Putin—at exactly the time Putin needs it most. If you have not noticed (will write more about this in the weekend update), the Russian army is really struggling right now. Its advances are slowing and its losses are extremely high. In fact, what Trump seems to be doing is offering a hand of friendship and support to Putin, when the Russian dictator and war criminal most needs it.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Failure, International, Trump

Trump Demands $500 Billion in “Rare Earth” Minerals in Exchange for Supporting Ukraine

By dianeravitch
February 12, 2025 //
15

In his interview with Brett Baier on FOX News, Trump revealed that he is making a deal with Ukraine in exchange for our continuing to support their fight against Russian aggression. He demands control and ownership of Ukraine’s natural resources. He says Zelensky agreed.

Imagine Trump as president when World War II begins. Winston Churchill begs him to help stave off Hitler s attacks. Europe is being overrun. Bombs are hitting central London. Churchill calls Trump and pleads for help, for arms and men. Trump says, “What’s in it for us?” Whatever Churchill offers is not enough. Trump says, “We will sit this one out.” Hitler overruns Europe and England, as Trump watches from afar.

We entered the war to protect Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. Ukraine was striving to join the West, to join the European Union, perhaps even NATO. President Biden thought it was in our national interest to prevent Putin from conquering a country that aspired to be a democracy. Most of the arms shipped to Ukraine were made in America; no American troops were deployed. It made sense to stop Putin’s aggression. It never occurred to Biden or his State Department to demand a price from a nation that was suffering daily from massive bombardments that wiped out schools, hospitals, transportation, the electrical grid, apartment buildings, museums, and whole cities, as well as thousands of innocent civilians.

Politico has the story. No paywall.

American support for Ukraine has a price tag: $500B worth of mineral riches, said U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the second part of an interview with Fox News that aired late Monday, the Republican said the U.S. should get a slice of Ukraine’s vast natural resources as compensation for the hundreds of billions it has spent on helping Kyiv resist Russia’s full-scale invasion.

“I told them [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent like $500B worth of rare earth. And they’ve essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid,” Trump said.

“Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them we have to — ‘we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,’” he added.

Ukraine holds huge deposits of critical elements and minerals, from lithium to titanium, which are vital to manufacturing modern technologies. It also has vast coal reserves, as well as oil, gas and uranium, but much of this is in territories under Russian control.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, International, Trump

Robert Reich: Plan to Resist Trump’s Tyranny on April 19

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2025 //
21

Robert Reich is a relentless fighter for our democracy. He served in the administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, in whose administration he was secretary of Labor.

He wrote recently to urge people to organize against Trump’s violations of the law.

Friends,

Before I post my Sunday cartoon, I want to share with you some thoughts about the third hellish week of Trump II.

As of Friday, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders, covering every aspect of American life and much foreign policy. 

It’s not just that this number of executive orders is unprecedented in modern American politics. Many are unlawful, unconstitutional, or both. 

In the age of monarchs, kings issued decrees. The tsars of imperial Russia proclaimed ukases. The dictators of the 20th century made diktats. 

Trump issues executive orders.

Average people in the age of monarchs, tsars, and dictators were largely powerless. Resistance meant almost certain death. 

Many people were resigned to vulnerability. They practiced passivity. They knew no life other than repression. But their deference entrenched and ensured the power of monarchs, tsars, and dictators.

Arbitrary power depends on the acquiescence of everyone subjected to it. 

Right now, after three weeks of Trump’s “flooding the zone” (as Trumpers like to say) some of you may be feeling powerless. 

Trump wants you to feel powerless. He depends on your passivity in the face of his takeover of American democracy. 

He wants to be a strongman who can act unilaterally and arbitrarily — who can issue orders about anything that pops into his head. Purging, firing, prosecuting, or deporting anyone he wants removed. Obliterating, freezing, and pummeling any institution he wants destroyed. Unleashing the richest man in the world to do whatever the hell he wants with the government of the United States. 

If you are dumbfounded into inaction, if you don’t even want to hear the news, if you feel as though you’re living through a nightmare over which you have no control, I get it. Every other day I feel the same.

But hear me out. 

You and I have no real choice but to stand up to Trump, Musk, and their lapdogs. To allow them to bully us into submission invites more bullying, more lawlessness, more gonzo executive orders.

Last week I suggested a number of actions we can take. It wasn’t an exhaustive list, of course, only some possibilities. 

Millions of Americans — including many who have been purged from their positions of responsibility — are standing up to Trump and Musk’s tyranny. 

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski says the Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute it usually gets — thus disrupting the system.

We are beginning to flood Trump and Musk’s zone. 

Let’s flood it out. 

This coming April 19 will mark the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution and our war against monarchical power. 

Anti-royalist militia in Massachusetts refused to disperse when ordered to by British troops. A shot was fired, and the troops kept firing, killing eight of those American resisters. Later that day, the militiamen returned that fire, killing a number of British soldiers. The revolution had begun. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate violence. I’m simply reminding you that this nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority. We built American democracy in the face of what seemed to be impossible odds. 

And we will never, ever give up that fight. 

My friend Harold Meyerson suggests that on April 19 we stage massive peaceful protests in every city and town — crowds of Americans celebrating the anti-monarchical uprising of 1775 and pledging their allegiance to that heritage by denouncing Trump’s increasingly autocratic rule: Thereby flooding Trump and Musk’s zone still further. 

Sounds like a good idea to me. You?

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Racism, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Budget Cuts Will Stifle Cancer Research

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2025 //
25

Heather Cox Richardson points out that Trump’s desire to cut the federal budgets threatens to undermine cancer research. Cutting cancer research? Yes. Is cancer research a “Marxist radical lunatic” or DEI activity?

Cancer research is important for all of us, regardless of our political views, or lack thereof. Why in the world would Trump want to cut its funding?

Yesterday the National Institutes of Health under the Trump administration announced a new policy that will dramatically change the way the United States funds medical research. Now, when a researcher working at a university receives a federal grant for research, that money includes funds to maintain equipment and facilities and to pay support staff that keep labs functioning. That indirect funding is built into university budgets for funding expensive research labs, and last year reached about 26% of the grant money distributed. Going forward, the administration says it will cap the permitted amount of indirect funding at 15%.

NIH is the nation’s primary agency for research in medicine, health, and behavior. NIH grants are fiercely competitive; only about 20% of applications succeed. When a researcher applies for one, their proposal is evaluated first by a panel of their scholarly peers and then, if it passes that level, an advisory council, which might ask for more information before awarding a grant. Once awarded and accepted, an NIH grant carries strict requirements for reporting and auditing, as well as record retention.

In 2023, NIH distributed about $35 billion through about 50,000 grants to over 300,000 researchers at universities, medical schools, and other research institutions. Every dollar of NIH funding generated about $2.46 in economic activity. For every $100 million of funding, research supported by NIH generates 76 patents, which produce 20% more economic value than other U.S. patents and create opportunities for about $600 million in future research and development.

As Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times explained, the authors of Project 2025 called for the cuts outlined in the new policy, claiming those cuts would “reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.” Dr. David A. Baltrus of the University of Arizona told Jewett and Stolberg that the new policy is “going to destroy research universities in the short term, and I don’t know after that. They rely on the money. They budget for the money. The universities were making decisions expecting the money to be there.”

Although Baltrus works in agricultural research, focusing on keeping E. coli bacteria out of crops like sprouts and lettuce, cancer research is the top area in which NIH grants are awarded.

Anthropologist Erin Kane figured out what the new NIH policy would mean for states by looking at institutions that received more than $10 million in grants in 2024 and figuring out what percentage of their indirect costs would not be eligible for grant money under the new formula. Six schools in New York won $2.4 billion, including $953 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would allow only $220 million for overhead, a loss of $723 million.

States across the country will experience significant losses. Eight Florida schools received about $673 million, $231 million for indirect costs. The new indirect rate would limit that funding to $66 million, a loss of $165 million. Six schools in Ohio received a total of about $700 million; they would lose $194 million. Four schools in Missouri received a total of about $830 million; they would lose $212 million.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Research, Science, Trump

Dana Milbank: When You Elect a Felon as President, You Get a Scofflaw

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2025 //
6

Trump has rolled out multiple executive orders that violate the law. He has installed submissive officials in key departments (like Justice) who will defend his law-breaking. The Republicans (who called Joe Biden a dictator) defend Trump’s reign of lawlessness. They have gleefully given Trump their Constitutional powers. Without a peep.

Dans Milbank advises Democrats: Don’t help him. He doesn’t need your vote.

He writes:

So, here’s a shocker: It turns out that, if you elect a felon as president of the United States, he will continue to break laws once he’s in office.

Who knew?

Ultimately, it will be up to the courts to determine which of President Donald Trump’s actions are illegal. But a case can be made — indeed, many cases already have been made in federal courts — that the new administration over the course of the last fortnight has violated each of the following laws. See if you can say them in one breath. In reverse chronological order of first enactment:

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act of 2024. The Administrative Leave Act of 2016. The Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014. The Affordable Care Act of 2010. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. The Inspector General Act of 1978. The Privacy Act of 1974. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. The Public Health Service Act 1944. The Antideficiency Act of 1870.

That’s a century and a half of statutes shredded in just over two weeks. And those don’t include the ways in which Trump already appears to be in violation of the Constitution: The First Amendment’s protections of free speech and association; the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and due process; the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment; the 14th Amendment’s promise of birthright citizenship; Article I’s spending, presentment, appropriations and bicameralism clauses; Article II’s take-care clause; and the separation of powers generally.

“The Trump administration so far has been the Advent calendar of illegality,” says Norman Eisen, whose group, State Democracy Defenders Action, has been filing lawsuits against the administration. At least seven federal judges appointed by presidents of both political parties have already blocked Trump’s moves to freeze federal funding, end birthright citizenship, extend a dubious buyout offer to government employees and deny treatment to transgender inmates.

Benjamin Wittes, who runs the popular Lawfare publication, predicts that, of the dozens of instances in which Trump is in conflict with existing law, he will ultimately lose 80 percent of the cases when they eventually arrive at the Supreme Court after 18 months or so of litigation. But that’s a long time to wait while the president’s lawlessness causes chaos and suffering. And even if the pro-Trump majority on the Supreme Court hands him a victory only 20 percent of the time, that could still fundamentally reshape the U.S. government, reducing Congress to irrelevance.

Republicans in Congress have for years asserted their Article I authority, and they howled about encroaching dictatorship when President Joe Biden did nothing more nefarious than forgive student-loan debt. (The Supreme Court struck that down.) So what are they doing about Trump usurping the powers of Congress? They’re applauding.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, acknowledged that what Trump and Elon Musk are doing to cut off congressionally mandated funding “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But, he told reporters this week, that’s “not uncommon” and “nobody should bellyache about that.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, at a news conference Wednesday, was asked by Fox News’s Chad Pergram about the “inconsistency” of Republicans who are now “ceding Article I powers to the executive branch under Elon Musk.”

“I think there’s a gross overreaction in the media,” Johnson replied, with a forced chuckle. He admitted that what Trump is doing “looks radical,” but went on: “This is not a usurpation of authority in any way. It’s not a power grab. I think they’re doing what we’ve all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.”

These are not the words of a constitutionally designated leader of the legislative branch. These are the words of a Donald Trump handmaiden. And it is time for Democrats to treat him as such.

Democrats have been negotiating in good faith on a deal to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2025; the government shuts down in five weeks if funding isn’t extended. There’s no doubt that Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, are also negotiating in good faith.

But the whole thing is not on the level. Trump has shown that he will ignore the spending bills passed by Congress and fund only those programs he supports — the Constitution, and the law, be damned. And Johnson has made clear that this is “what we’ve all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.”

In a letter to his Democratic colleagues this week, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said he told House GOP leaders that Trump’s efforts to cut off programs funded by Congress “must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill, if not sooner.” But even if Democrats extracted from Republicans language in the spending bill that the programs must be funded as Congress specifies, Trump has already made clear that such a law wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. And Johnson made it clear he has no intention of obliging Democrats with such a guarantee anyway; he said at his Wednesday news conference that Jeffries’s letter “laid out the foundation for a government shutdown.”

Clearly, there is no hope of good-faith negotiation with Trump, or with Johnson. Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. Let them pass a 2025 spending bill on their own. Let them raise the debt ceiling on their own. Let them enact Trump’s entire agenda on their own. They have the votes. Democrats ought not give them a single one.

Good parenting uses the idea of “natural consequences”: If your child refuses to wear her coat, let her be cold for the day. Either way, the voters will provide the consequences: FAFO. Trump knows what this means: He posted a picture of himself next to a FAFO sign, to deliver the message to Colombia’s president during their recent deportation standoff.

Democrats, by withholding their votes, will be giving Trump and Johnson some good parenting. Republicans can shut the government down. Or they can enact the sort of devastating cuts to popular programs that they like to talk about. Either way, the voters will provide the natural consequences.


The third week of the Trump presidency has been just as chaotic as the first two. Trump, who won the 2024 election promising to end wars and to put “America First,” now proposes to take over Gaza and to spend American taxpayer dollars to dismantle bombs and make it a “Riviera” on the Mediterranean. (He later clarified that Israel would handle the forced resettlement of the 2 million Palestinians there — “people like Chuck Schumer” — and then cede the Palestinian land to the United States.) The Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is using his agency to assist Trump in his personal vendetta against CBS News, forcing the network to hand over unedited tapes of an interview with Kamala Harris that are the subject of a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS.

Funding was shut off to some Head Start programs for preschoolers. And the administration, though it isn’t deporting any more migrants than the Obama administration did, stepped up efforts to humiliate them and is now sending deportees to Guantánamo Bay.

Meantime, the world’s wealthiest man runs amok through the federal bureaucracy, and he appears to have access to private records of all Americans and highly classified information such as the identities of CIA operatives. He is reportedly doing this with a group of unvetted men in their early 20s — as well as a 19-year-old heir to a popcorn fortune who recently worked as a camp counselor. Musk, though he seems to be running much of the country, has exempted himself from all government disclosure and ethics requirements. But fear not: If Musk, whose companies get billions of dollars in federal contracts, “comes across a conflict of interest,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, he will — Scout’s honor — recuse himself. The administration’s attempt to induce federal employees to take a legally dubious buyout came in the form of an email with the same subject line — “fork in the road” — that Musk used to drive Twitter employees to quit.

The South Africa-born Musk, fresh from his encouragement of far-right extremists in Germany, replied “yes” this week to a post on X that said “we should allow more immigration of White South Africans.”

Musk moved to dismiss staff and shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk calls “evil.” Maybe that’s because USAID’s inspector general was investigating the activities of Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine. But the administration and its allies rushed to justify the decision — by fabricating propaganda. At the White House, Leavitt told reporters that she was “made aware that USAID has funded media outlets like Politico. I can confirm that more than $8 million … has gone to subsidizing subscriptions.” Trump inflated the fiction further, to suggest “BILLIONS” went to “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS.” In reality, $44,000 of USAID money went to Politico over several years — not from “payoffs” or “subsidies” but from officials subscribing to Politico Pro, as they did throughout the government (hence the $8 million). On Capitol Hill, Johnson provided a different fabrication, crediting Trump and Musk for stopping USAID from funding “transgender operas in Colombia,” “drag shows in Ecuador” and “expanding atheism in Nepal.” But it appears USAID did not fund any of those things.

The willy-nilly cancellation of all foreign aid would end lifesaving programs and various counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts, dealing a lethal blow to U.S. soft power and driving countries into the arms of China and Russia, while hurting American farmers in the bargain. But it’s not just USAID. Trump and Musk, with their reckless and unfocused attack on federal workers, are raising the likelihood of any number of crises, at home and abroad. Their hollowing-out of the FBI and the Justice Department (with the notable exception of activities targeting Trump critics and migrants) raises the likelihood of a terrorist attack and foreign infiltration, not to mention more crime domestically. Their attempt to drive workers to quit at the CIA and NSA jeopardizes national security. Depleting the ranks of food-safety inspectors and bank regulators poses obvious dangers, as would Trump’s idea of abolishing FEMA. The administration tried to reduce personnel at the FAA — but last week’s plane crash in D.C. suddenly made it discover we need more air traffic controllers.

Yet Republican leaders on Capitol Hill either salute Trump or look the other way. They’re on their way to confirming all of Trump’s nominees, including vaccines opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the federal government’s health programs; Tulsi Gabbard, who has a bizarre fondness for Russia, to oversee intelligence; and Kash Patel, Trump’s agent of vengeance, to run the FBI.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said the sort of thing Trump and Musk are doing to USAID is “probably true of any administration when they come in.” Handmaiden Johnson even welcomed the proposed U.S. takeover of Gaza, saying, contrary to reality, that it was “cheered by, I think, people all around the world.”

A few Republicans are raising objections. Collins doesn’t think Musk’s upending of USAID “satisfies the requirements of the law,” and she pronounces herself “very concerned.” But what’s the senator from Maine going to do about it? Apparently, nothing.

That will have to be up to Democrats. The out-of-power party has been bashed in the news media and by progressives for doing too little to stand up to Trump. Then, when Democratic lawmakers protested outside USAID headquarters, they were criticized for doing too much. “You don’t fight every fight,” Rahm Emanuel told Politico.

In truth, Democrats have almost no ability to stop Trump, but they do have the power, and the obligation, to stand in lockstep opposition to what the president is doing. Some of them might argue that the only way to protect certain programs, and the vulnerable people who need them, is to cut a deal with Trump and Republicans. But Trump has demonstrated abundantly that he will try to use unconstitutional means to kill off those programs regardless of what Congress does.

But if Democrats can’t stop a reckless president from creating unnecessary crises and harming millions of Americans, they certainly don’t need to give a bipartisan veneer to the atrocity. Let Republicans own the consequences of breaking government. Don’t save Trump from himself.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Injustice, Trump
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