The latest:
- Panama says Trump is full of shit and it hasn't agreed to let US warships transit the canal for free.
- A judge has paused Trump's offer to federal workers to resign their jobs and still be paid through September.
- Another judge has issued a nationwide injunction against Trump's attempt to do away with birthright citizenship.
- Trump's effort to freeze federal spending was shot down last week.
- A judge has ordered the Treasury Department not to share sensitive data with Elon Musk's DOGE operatives.
- Greenland remains a part of Denmark.
- Trump has backed down over his tariff threats against Canada and Mexico.
- He's made himself a laughingstock over his proposal for US ownership of Gaza.
- ICE arrests of illegal immigrants are barely higher than in the past. As of February 1, ICE appears to have stopped releasing daily arrest counts.
None of this is to say that Trump hasn't done plenty of damage. USAID is in shambles. Perceived enemies have been fired all over the place. Gender-affirming care has been torched. Millions of acre feet of water in California have been dumped into the ground. J6 rioters were all pardoned.
Nonetheless, there's more bark than bite in Trump's actions, many of which have been halted or pared back now that court actions are being ramped up. Also, Trump has already run through most of the low-hanging fruit that he can accomplish via executive orders. It starts getting harder now.
I have been planning a trip for spring to a Nordic nation, I have been there many times before, and had been invited back to teach an art workshop to a group women. Over the last few days in trying to plan this, I've had a growing feeling of "Ugly Americans not wanted."
The civilized world feels like it's turning against the US.
You could always tell people you are Canadian. Of course they will then expect you to be familiar with the metric system.
Also, you'll give yourself away if you pronounce a hard second "t" in "Toronto." You have to kind swallow it to sound like a Canadian. And you cannot pronounce the last letter of the alphabet as "zee;" it's "zed."
Since I'm from Maine, I'm almost Canadian. Does that count?
That's not really how they do (or see) things.
No, they know me. It's more like they don't want to explain having an American friend to their neighbors.
Don't attribute your own thought patterns to anyone else (let alone senselessly generalize like this).
Right.
And when you get the unwelcome mat, you gonna come back and admit I told you it was being unrolled?
I know people all over the world, they don't really think like you think they think, from actual lived experience I'm telling you this, just be honest, people know we're a pretty politically divided country right now.
Wow. You know people all over the world.
You must be popular.
I express my fears, based on reactions I've been getting trying to plan a complex event, something I've done several years in a row, and where there's a significant change in people attitudes -- specifically from a few months ago when I was there to now, with the only difference being the swearing in of a new president.
And you think I'm thinking wrong. Go suck a costly egg, I'm not in the mood for your gaslighting.
You can order UNM sweatshirts that read "Universidad de Nuevo México"
So the people you are dealing with are making you feel unwanted based on Trump's behavior? How empathetic and inclusive!
There’s nothing wrong with making assholes feel unwanted or excluded. Having empathy doesn’t mean you have to take shit from other people.
None of this is actually happening, and no most people are smart enough not to stereotype or generalize that all Americans think the same way, or aren't pissed and/or embarrassed themselves about what's going on.
"So the people you are dealing with are making you feel unwanted based on Trump's behavior? "
where did the OP say that?
or are you just projecting your own insecurities on to someone else?
The OP (comment) and a few others are the ones projecting.
Jimm, I am not projecting.
but you sure are protecting something and it doesn't feel like Amerca's good will amongst other residents of Planet Earth.
I'm just being a voice of sanity, people around the world, especially those in allied and friendly countries, know we're pretty politically divided, just be honest and authentic, most are going to be cool and who cares about the jerks?
You're a voice of something.
As a woman I can tell you: pretending jerks aren't being jerks gets you date raped. And stuff like that. It's taken as consent to continue bad behavior by said jerks.
Men need to listen to women about stuff like this; truly. Particularly the nice calm ones who think they're smoothing the waters. You are not, you are aiding the jerks.
"Over the last few days in trying to plan this, I've had a growing feeling of 'Ugly Americans not wanted.'"
I think Europeans especially understand that if you were some hardcore Trump supporter, you probably wouldn't been teaching an art workshop in Sweden or wherever. They might ask, out of a sense of purely anthropological curiosity, how a country like American lost its collective mind, but I doubt they'll be hostile or blame you.
I imagine some Europeans really would look on Americans in a more hostile light than they did before because of Trump, some would be more nuanced, and there are even those who think Trump is terrific and think that we are smart for electing him.
Lots of different Europeans with lots of different opinions on things. And their opinions are not static either.
I could lend you my t-shirt that reads "I Didn't Vote For Him."
I had it made in 2003.
Working, relaxing and living in Europe for the last few years....this has not been my impression at all over the last several weeks.
That's one problem I don't have. The Chinese generally seem to like Trump. He's a colorful, brash celebrity president. Very much the embodiment of America in their eyes.
And why shouldn't they like him? He's steadily weakening their great rival.
They won't blame you (as long as you don't act like an asshole). I've worked for decades in many countries, rich and poor. Everyone has experienced bad governments, even bad elected governments. They may be curious how we got our particular bad government, but generally won't hold that against individuals. Don't go around advertising that you didn't vote for him, that's trying too hard. Just show openness and answer questions honestly.
And be ready to find out that some people like trump (as J-in-B mentioned above). You can learn stuff about them and people in general.
Sweden has its own problem with a rising far right movement.
The clown is putting on a clown show. Granted there's a side show of destructive behavior, the clown show is the main draw and distraction.
The focus on Musk is a decoy. The real power behind the throne is Russell Vought and his Project 2025 thugs.
Trump really should have pushed Vought through at beginning instead of Hegseth, all hell has broken loose and Project 2025 is really going to get hung over Vought now.
It's both. The aims of Vought and Musk aren't that different, at least insofar as the destruction of the administrative state is involved.
Musk is more willing to obviously and blatantly violate the law, betting (seemingly correctly) that no one will stop him. That makes him more dangerous than Vought.
This
Musk is the rusty axe
Vought understands how the levers of government actually work, and will be much more surgical, and much more damaging long term
The whole Project 2025 scheme was so patently unpopular that Trump had to lie and spin extra hard to pretend he had nothing to do with it and no plans to implement it. It's radioactively unpopular, even among Republicans. It should be hung like a stinking albatross across Trump's shoulders every single day.
By contrast, because people have no idea how anything works, least of all in government, the idea of Musk dashing around slashing wastefraudandabuse generates less of an immediate uproar, but we'll see how people like it when he pulls the plug on their kids' HeadStart program grandma's Medicaid nursing home payments or something.
The worm will turn on these people. The only problem is whether there will be any democratic way of getting rid of them when people eventually do wake up.
The focus on Musk is a decoy. The real power behind the throne is Russell Vought and his Project 2025 thugs.
Decoy? LOL. Vought is a scary figure, but why do so many people attribute Machiavellian cleverness to Trump? There's endless talk of "decoys" and "distractions." Donnie's not playing 7 dimension chess! The plain evidence before our eyes is that the President is suffering significant cognitive deterioration. In general they're united by a common disdain for norms and a loathing of democracy itself.
In many ways it's like any administration: there are competing power centers with different (sometimes complimentary, sometimes not) agendas. Musk is a techno-utopian libertarian who wants to reduce the scope and capacity of the state (while looking out for his own business interests). Vought wants to turn us into a theocracy. Miller wants to reverse the decline of whiteness. Various other players want various other things.
Trump mainly just wants to make money, stay out of jail, and exact revenge for perceived slights.
PushBack? Maybe liberal media, excuse me- Fake News
Other than those partisan fakes, remember congress is terrified of him, and every gov reporting source has been neutered. Of course conscientious Republicans needing a non government source, can always check with Fox News.
No sir everything T2.0 has done is a complete success.
C - trolling
You guys need to up your game
OldFlyer isn’t a troll, just left off the /s
As usual, the most significant development, the corruption of the DOJ and FBI, is not mentioned at all.
This was a list of lefty pushbacks. The failure (so far) list will appear separately.
It wasn't even that, a list of lefty pushbacks. It was a list of outrages, with a sense of how laughably wrong he is. That plus a headline referring to outrages.
In other words, it's the mainstream pundit class finally catching on to what even it knew all along and maybe, just maybe joining the fight. Meanwhile the outrages and their damage continue until the courts check them and the party with three branches of government in its hands, all but lines up in support. But hey, Kevin and many here are amused.
It is absolute bs that Trump ordered a flood and someone at Army Corp of Engineers disobeyed his orders and only released 1/2 the water Trump demanded. We could have been in a news cycle right now about Trump drowning and destroying farmers that support him in the central valley. Then another news cycle about them running dry this summer because of Trump. No one had to minimize his actions!
Guess I should have read through the comments first :), salud.
Let's not forget sending in "troops" to turn on the great water faucet, which luckily was reconsidered (level-wise at least) due to intervention by local farmers, legislators, and wiser minds in the army corps of engineers.
He still thinks he did it and bragged about it today. He is not living in the real world and his followers are willing to join him in Trump fantasy land.
One detail, important to us members of Democrats for an Informed Approach to Gender.
You refer to "gender affirming care". That is loaded terminology. What is gender, and what is being affirmed? That is all contested.
Another characterization of the same thing is "chemical and surgical mutilation". This is also biased. Mutilation is in the eye of the beholder.
It is time to consistently use the accurate and neutral term: "sex-trait modification".
What a weird comment. Not all gender affirming care modifies a sex-trait. Why would he want to stop using the generally accepted terminology for an inaccurate description?
Why would he want to stop using the generally accepted terminology for an inaccurate description?
I'm going with "bigotry."
"Another characterization of the same thing is "chemical and surgical mutilation". "
what?
did you get your definition of "gender affirming care" from Hannity?
I am going to address myself to the question "what is gender"? It's wildly off-topic fofr this thread, but wth, you started it.
Gender is the internal sense that almost all people have about their identity and whether that is male or female. (I don't say "all" because this is biology and pretty much nothing in biology is all-or-nothing).
This sense does not come from one's sex organs. Yes, this is a surprise. It surprised me, but there's a lot of support for it once you start looking around.
* If a woman suffers a double hysterectomy (which happened to my mother) and/or a double mastectomy, they don't stop thinking of themselves as women, they are more concerned that other people won't consider them women.
* If a man should lose his testicles to an accident or testicular cancer, he doesn't stop thinking of himself as a man. He is going to be worried about being diminished as a man, but that's a social worry. The answer to "diminished as compared to what" is a social one.
* It is well established that all mammals, probably, certainly all primates have a "model" of their body in their brain, and it is manipulation of this model is an essential part of actually walking around. Like everything else in biology, some unusual situations can occur with this. Such as ghost limbs.
* There are two surges of testosterone in an XY during fetal development. The first of these we understand to differentiate gonads. What the second one does is murky, but it is well-established that it affects brain tissue. This can't be on the level of individual neurons, we can't readily measure any difference between "male" neurons and "female" neurons. But it could affect the development of structures within the brain, some of which are more likely to be found in males, and others more likely to be found in females. This pattern of distribution of brain structures, which is again decidedly not "all or nothing" can be seen in many mammals, not just humans. I find it highly plausible that one or more of them might correlate with an internal sense of ones identity that might lean more toward male or more toward female.
I think this makes it quite plausible that humans have an internal sense of their "sex" identity that is not required by biology to be aligned with their physical body.
Again, this was surprising to me, but I have seen some very concrete practical realities that I find convincing.
For instance, one trans man reports that he expected to grow a penis at puberty. I think it's very unlikely that he was indoctrinated into that idea. So where did it come from?
"Gender is the internal sense that almost all people have about their identity and whether that is male or female."
Quite the catechism.
"I think this makes it quite plausible that humans have an internal sense of their "sex" identity that is not required by biology to be aligned with their physical body."
Or they could have a sense of their sexual identity that follows from their physiology. Nothing nothing in your catechism contradicts this conclusion.
Just so you know how this sounds from up here in the cheap seats? Doctor Jay sounds like a person seriously pursuing truth, and following where the evidence leads. And you sound like you're strongly committed to an already-chosen result.
You ass.
Doctor Jay is relying upon a mixed-up mess of social roles, sexual development, misunderstood neural anatomy, and an anecdote concerning a clearly delusional (or frighteningly young) individual.
To support what?
An aphorism fit for an "In This House We Believe" sign.
You don't do dispute resolution mechanisms, do you? So who cares if you refuse to play ball? Feel free to make all the mean-spirited mouth-noises you like from the sidelines; but you won't be allowed to play, and so you won't be able to affect the outcome of the game to any significant extent.
That was your call, so don't whine about how unfair the trivially predictable consequences are.
This is logical and fascinating. Suggest sources to learn more?
"None of this is to say that Trump hasn't done plenty of damage."
No, indeed. And the biggest damage of all is the precedence he sets and the state of democracy in the US that his re-election reveals.
Trump really does think he is a genius. Republican members of Congress and his own appointees certainly never miss a chance to tell him he is a genius. The result is this arrogant ignoramus thinks every time he has a brain fart it is yet another genius idea.
Looks like "shock'n'awe" is petering out in the face of a determined resistance. Good. So the First Felon got his sucker punch in. Now, Democrats and the system (but I repeat myself) are fighting back.
Sure, they could do better. Charles Schumer has never seemed up to the game, and Fetterman is the latest loose cannon. But it's a start, and needs to be encouraged, in my opinion.
"A judge has ordered the Treasury Department not to share sensitive data with Elon Musk's DOGE operatives."
Unfortunately, Pollyanna, this order doesn't actually say what you say it says AND it appears to be being ignored anyway. So... that's some pushback, huh?
https://www.crisesnotes.com/day-seven-of-the-trump-musk-treasury-payments-crisis-of-2025-yours-and-wireds-reporting-is-actually-doing-something/
https://www.crisesnotes.com/treasury-secretary-bessents-lawlessness-sorry-readers-read-and-write-code-still-seems-in-play/
Marko Elez still has access to BFS data (which is FUCKING ILLEGAL AS FUCK as well as having the potential for anti-democratic and economic catastrophe), and still has the ability to read and change the code for BFS's systems.
So yeah, what fucking pushback?
"ICE arrests of illegal immigrants are barely higher than in the past. As of February 1, ICE appears to have stopped releasing daily arrest counts."
So, how do you know that, then?
There's a headline article in the Guardian that ICE operatives are retrieving old arrest articles on the 'net from years back and changing the dates so that they come up as "recent news" in searches. So as to apparently inflate their seizure numbers, for people who don't read the fine print.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/ice-us-immigration-deportations-google
I hope the pushback continues, but it has to be effective pushback. For instance, I expect that the order to not allow DOGE to get sensitive data will be ignored.
Trump is pushing a motion that honors it, while retaining read-only access for two of the team.
They're lying and exploiting the text of the order. There's data, and then there's code. They're saying it's "read only" access for one of them but not the other.
Also, simply having read-only access is a breach of security and violation of democracy so flagrant that it's not really possible to exaggerate it. These people should not just have access because Musk says so, full stop.
Read-only in this context would only apply to data, as code goes through source control so is never really edited, and generally when a developer checks in code cannot do so directly to master (or main/production branch), there is some kind of devops process to some level of automation so tests can be run, code reviewed, and then approved for deployment (so any court order regarding code would have to be worded completely differently than data access, and honestly there probably is no legitimate scope to be checking in new versions of existing code right now, which doesn't work that fast for a programmer new to domain, and any needed observability can happen at data level with completely separate code).
Aside from that, I agree no view access to data should be given without clearance (tentative clearance after quick background check is customarily given while investigation in process however, but usually not to anything too sensitive and definitely not classified).
It's already being ignored.
As I hear it, the data has already been downloaded to a "private server", which is okay if you're a Republican. More disturbingly, they're hacking the Treasury disbursement codes and adding new stuff that hasn't been alpha-tested to the running system.
If you get regularly scheduled government payments, watch to see whether you actually get them.
Also, Trump has already run through most of the low-hanging fruit that he can accomplish via executive orders. It starts getting harder now.
This assumes, somewhat naively, I think, that going forward he'll follow the law and usual legislative channels to achieve his policies. He thinks he's a goddamn dictator and, thus far, the Republican Congress seems content to let him rule as such. It's going to get real fun when a federal judge orders him to hold off cutting funding to whatever entity is in his crosshairs and he just orders Musk's boys to log on to the Treasury system and shut off payments anyway and tells the court to go fuck itself.
Kinda waiting for the media to report on the fact that attacking Panama, Canada, Greenland and now occupying Gaza would be extremely expensive... Ok, maybe Trump would sell some condos in Gaza to recoup some of those costs, but hmm, I doubt that all things in it pencils out...
Oh, no sweat. He'll sell the Grand Canyon. Yosemite. All that other prime real estate that's being wasted as "national parks", "national monuments" and the like. Lotsa public lands in the West ... too much. Ought to be in private hands, doncha know?
He's doubling down hard on cartel focus, something is brewing, probably largely unaccountable and hard to measure actual progress, and maybe some shock and awe.
Looks like the funding freeze is still in place, at least for some things:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/billions-dollars-us-projects-remain-frozen-by-trump-managers-advocates-say-2025-02-06/
I'd like to see some confirmation that he's following any of the other judicial orders against him as well.
Push back only is effective if the Administration acts in accordance with the law, Congress asserts it's rights as the entity which enacts the budget and the laws which govern the Country, and if SCOTUS upholds the law and the Constitution.
Mango Mussolini and Heinrich Musk don't give 2 shits about the law, the Constitution, or the courts, or have any sense or right or wrong, or a conscience, or have even a gram of humanity between them. The MAGA GOP in Congress are a bunch of scared dickless ass hats, and will continue to ignore the fact that Trump has already neutered them. And SCOTUS with it's Christian Nationalist majority, could very easily reverse all the so called legal push back, and continue their creation of the imperial presidency.
By 2028, the Federal workforce will be decimated, along with the DOJ, FBI, CIA, NOAA, and the military. Good luck getting a passport, or an early warning of an impending massive hurricane. Don't need any passes to our National Parks, since they are all going to be turned into oil/gas wells or coal mines.
He's made himself a laughingstock over his proposal for US ownership of Gaza.
So I shouldn't plan on buying a penthouse in the Trump Gaza Resort?
Are you sure about (5)? I read the order, and to my layman's eye it seemed to allow EM's little drone to keep his read-only access to the sensitive info?
All this winning ... it's too much ... my heart ... aaaugh ... >thump<
And in Daily Kos points out that a lot of US farmers depend on USAID purchases to keep their heads above water.
They are now in danger of not getting paid. And if they've put investment into fertilizer, irrigation, cultivation, etc. there's an interesting question of whether the government will stiff them by not buying their harvest - leaving them stuck in the red.
I’m optimistic that the checks and balances will hold, but I still worry each day. The first Trump presidency was much easier to laugh about, but now it's really not very funny.
So here is the worst-case thing I worry about. As the courts keep blocking Trump's actions, what if at some point he simply declares he will not obey some court orders because he is the one following the Constitution? What law enforcement group will step up to stop Trump? The FBI? The DOJ? We'd have a real Constitutional crisis on our hands. Maybe someone can explain why this could never happen.
They've already blown through the checks and balances. The guardrails were gone.
We already have a constitutional crisis on our hands. The executive is simply declaring that laws don't matter, and that Congress doesn't decide spending. And by seizing the means of payment, they can ensure that nobody steps up to stop them. I think the door may have already closed on the FBI or Secret Service (which may be the relevant LE agency given its Treasury) to arrest Musk's goons (and possibly Musk himself) for forcibly gaining access to systems they aren't legally allowed to access. Nevermind the national security bits.
If they can arrest and charge somebody who leaked security footage of the DCA crash for the same thing, they can fucking charge the fake "DOGE" goons for the crimes they've committed.
The fact that they haven't is evidence of the crisis. I'm pretty sure our democracy effectively ended last Friday.
Trump has not yet said he will ignore court orders. I think that is when the Constitutional crises will arrive. Things Musk/Trump are doing now can still all be ordered stopped by the courts.
BTW, I think you are being too pessimistic. You must feel even crappier than I do about all this.
I think you're being too blase and casual about what is effectively an actual fucking coup.
The OMB memo itself was a constitutional crisis, as it asserted the executive branch could simply ignore appropriations. That was potentially catastrophic all by itself, but it's little league compared to what's happening with Musk's fake department goons in the BFS (and OPM and DOL). By effectively seizing the BFS, with the blessing of Bessent, they will eventually be able to control something like 80% of federal payments. The situation is incredibly dire.
Trump doesn't have to say he's ignoring the orders for the ignoring of the orders to already be happening (see reporting on how they're ignoring the "read-only" order). Nor do there need to be any orders for the quite obvious breaches of the Constitution that have already happened (faithfully executing the laws, only Congress shall have the power of the purse, etc.), which is the definition of a constitutional crisis. Congress is unwilling to stop the executive branch from becoming an autocracy, and the courts are both unwilling and unable.
All of what they're doing can be ordered to be stopped, but who's going to actually, PHYSICALLY stop them? They've already committed obvious crimes for which people are routinely arrested by the feds. The feds have conspicuously not done any arresting.
To paraphrase, "how many divisions does Congress or the Constitution have?"
What will 'saying he will ignore court orders' look like?
Are we doing fine as long as Trump doesn't explicitly and publicly state it in this way?
The crisis is here, we are right in the middle of it. Every time a new hurdle is breached, we quickly redefine new hurdles as the new crisis point and ignore that the line was already breached.
The manner in which Trump declares he will ignore the constitution and the law can always be shifted. Remember that it is no longer a crisis to elect a President who organized a violent attack on the government and no longer a crisis to have a President who declares he will simply ignore the parts of the Constitution he doesn't like.
These were huge red lines....right up until they were crossed and we told ourselves to forget how critical they were.
Now we likely have new red lines that we will throw out after they are crossed.
People who ignore court orders don't actually have to announce they are going to ignore court orders. They can just do the ignoring.
Kevin sounds to me like more and more of an isolated ideologue losing touch with reality. And this is a good example of what I'm talking about:
"None of this is to say that Trump hasn't done plenty of damage. USAID is in shambles. Perceived enemies have been fired all over the place. Gender-affirming care has been torched."
For one thing, Trump won for the simple reason that a plurality of voters really and honestly did prefer him to all other alternatives (and that's not because the whole country is inexplicably filled with racists and misogynists). Also, a lot of what Trump is doing so far in his second term is entirely aligned with moderate public sentiment (but Kevin doesn't mention that). And: Dems need to acknowledge as much.
What, for example, is "gender-affirming care"? Is Kevin referring to irreversible sex change procedures that should never ever have been legal for minors? Then why not say so? Because, for anyone still in so much of an epistemic bubble that they somehow don't know this, most of the public does in fact see "gender affirming care" as wildly inappropriate for minors.
So, for a dose of actual reality, as opposed to Kevin's discrediting attempt at Leftist propaganda, here is Ruy Teixiera:
"In short, all the early signs point to a party that has learned nothing from defeat. If only the Democratic Party were wearing lapels, because then someone could grab them, shake hard, and yell: 'What part of the voters just rejected your fixation on identity politics do you not understand?'
"Yet the simple recognition that they lost in November for a reason still seems inadmissible in the party’s deliberations about how to deal with Trump 2.0. Instead, they give every indication of doubling down on their least popular policy agenda items ...
"Unless Democrats acknowledge that much of what Trump says and does is not only popular but also, here and there, good policy, they can never recover."
A good start for Dems would be to listen to Ruy and to increasingly ignore Kevin.
The public was duped by a master populist demagogue. Trump used extreme exaggerations, slander, and huge lies to convince people of things that simply weren't true. Without these huge lies, Trump would have never won.
Sure, the public wants government to work better and spend less - who doesn't want this? But there are legal and ethical ways to go about doing that. Turning loose Musk to go on a law-breaking spree is no way to do this.
But I agree that Democrats constantly hurt themselves by staying silent when the leftmost 5% of the party pushes things that most in the public think are too extreme.
@ProgressOne:
Appreciate the comment:
"I agree that Democrats constantly hurt themselves by staying silent when the leftmost 5% of the party pushes things that most in the public think are too extreme."
But I would add that the "leftmost 5% of the party" that you refer to includes just about anyone so indoctrinated or radicalized that they use euphemistic terms like "gender-affirming care" (instead of reality-based terminology such as: irreversible medical procedures that are performed on minors).
And, in the case of this blog post, Kevin is one of those Democrats hurting the party.
Angry bigot Leo keeps trying to insist that the key to Dems success is more bigotry.
Bigot Leo is always quick to insist that his bigotry is your fault and the best thing you can do is get on board with the bigotry.
It is the people talking about free slaves that are really doing the harm! It is the nutcase insisting that black kids, yes BLACK KIDS!, should be allowed in our schools that are the extremists hurting the cause! They are the real danger!
The bigot crusade isn't a new one. Poor, bitter Leo isn't an original character.
The only way to end bigotry is to become a bigot!
"Gender affirming care" is not synonymous with "sex change surgery". It may be something as simple as referring to a person by their preferred pronouns.
Every form of plastic surgery is irreversible, would you ban all of it?
And still, he's managed to:
- bypass the de minimis rule for Chinese imports under the guise of national security;
- pull the US out of UNHRC;
- withhold monetary support for the WHO;
- block certain federal workers from accessing their own accounts;
- force a shutdown of most of USAID;
-- which has left people in clinical trials abroad w/o care;
-- in conjunction w/ defunding of the WHO, prevents the US from responding to current and future hemorrhagic fever outbreaks;
-- has resulted in the stoppage of NGO/humanitarian work in Ukraine;
- dangle the threat of defunding of Ukraine if the US does not gain Ukraine's mineral rights;
- force universities to exclude female trans athletes from sports;
- stop funding of gender-affirming care of American military personnel and Americans under age 19;
- remove DoJ and FBI employees who worked for/with Special Counsel Smith;
- reinstate military personnel who were discharged for refusing to take the COVID vaccine;
- block funding of travel costs for military personnel seeking an abortion;
- fire the head of EEOC and flipped its purpose upside-down to protect White Americans from "discrimination";
- start the process to roll back emissions by 2 decades;
- initiate the takeover of NOAA and the removal of climate change data;
- establish a commission to initiate the elimination of FEMA;
- fire the head of the CFPB and order the CFPB to stop work;
- selectively (preferentially) stop prosecutions of certain individuals;
- start investigations of Special Counsel Smith and people associated with the Special Counsel;
- remove the security detail to high profile Americans who'd previously worked under him;
- revoke TPS extension for Venezuelans;
- fire over a dozen IGs;
- send troops to the southern border;
- pause refugee resettlement leaving families separated and refugees in the lurch.
And even if most of these are successfully challenged, for the time being, they are harming people. And from my perspective, I would rather point to all the things that need to be challenged to show people all the damage he is actively doing, rather than minimize his administration's effects, fooling people into thinking all is well.
Lurker here who had to create an account just to add to your list because I lost the password for my previous lurker account (arra) 😛 :
- Trans people are now completely unable to change their gender marker on passports, Social Security records, etc. While the requirements were relaxed (IIRC) under Biden, the option to change it while meeting certain requirements existed long before him, i.e., this is not a reversal of the reforms that were meant to make trans people's lives easier, but rather a full-blown rollback of trans people's rights in regard to documentation. My understanding is that no one knows what exactly will happen to people who changed their gender marker previous to this and need to renew documentation or whether their documentation will be revoked at some point before that, but things don't look good.
Before anyone pretends this is somehow a civil disagreement (which the actual rollback should preclude, but hey, this is the one subject where bad faith abounds), this is the language used in the military ban on trans service members:
"Adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member"
So for those keeping count, it's: healthcare (including 18-year-olds, who are actually adults), participation in public life, documentation, and, of course, the basic dignity of not being demonized. But sure, let's keep blaming the "trans activists" who kept warning us that this would happen and saw how we helped this whole thing snowball into one of the dumbest moral panics I've ever seen (and I'm older than Kevin, so I've seen plenty) because we're not interested in learning anything about trans people but sure are very blasé about making their lives difficult and playing Helen Lovejoy.
Oh, almost forgot: Now parents who escaped the red states that have been shutting down services for trans youth have to see the federal government come after them and continue to destroy the nascent infrastructure that was helping such youth thrive after decades of cruelty and neglect. Lovely, just lovely.
Damn, that's right, I totally forgot about those things. Thanks.
Sure thing!
With the exception of all of that what has Trump done that is all that bad really.
Seriously, does Drum take Trump 2 as one big meh because he is a straight white male who is self -employed and who will never live in fear of having police knock his door down and be deported? Drum will only be effected if Trump tanks the economy or something like that.
No one should take the buyout offer, even if it is legal. Musk made the same offer to Twitter employees when he bought the company. They never got their money. They have sued and the case is still pending.
I call bullshit, especially on the judicial stays. This has to be fake news. I've been assured on numerous occasions in the past couple of weeks that our democracy is dead.
Krugman said it pretty well today:
"So what should those of us who would like America to remain America, to not see us descend into dictatorship, be doing?
First, acknowledge the reality. If my use of the word “dictatorship” disturbs you, if your first reaction is to say “Isn’t that a bit shrill?”, you’re part of the problem. The constitutional crisis isn’t something that might hypothetically happen; it’s fully underway as you read this."
Don't be part of the problem.